Fifteen minutes later Hack was standing on a hilltop, looking down at the hodgepodge of tents and shanties that made up New Canaan. He turned to face a rambling farmhouse; just as Ruthie had said, peeling paint belied what she'd heard was an expensively remodeled interior.
Perfect. Right where I wanted to be.
He knew his astral body was invisible. Ruthie probably wishes I was invisible - and odorless! - back in the trailer, too. Washing his body had been easy enough, since the trailer had plenty of soap and water. But clothing was another matter. He couldn't have obtained a change without halting the convoy, and he wasn't willing to do that. The more distance between Ben and New Canaan, the better.
He wasn't seeing any remarkable activity outdoors, so he headed for the house. Not surprisingly, a police car was parked in the driveway.
Hack could have entered simply by passing through the wall - could even have conjured up a phantom "door" to be opened, if he was more comfortable with that. But force of habit led him to treat the wall as a real barrier, and make his first observations through a parlor window.
Inside, two uniformed officers were talking with a distraught-looking middle-aged woman. Crowe's sister Iris, he realized. Samson had told him about the sister, saying she'd apparently welcomed Justin's death. It was unclear whether she'd welcomed it for personal reasons, or because she understood what he really was. Either way, she doubtless wasn't sharing her true feelings with the police.
The only other person in the room was a young woman, whose hovering in the background suggested she was nothing more than a maid. A somewhat dirty and rumpled maid...but this wasn't a normal day for anyone.
Hack decided to slip inside, unseen, so he could hear what Iris was telling the police. But as he tried to take another step toward the house, he found himself involuntarily drifting backward. Wh-what? Is Ruthie trying to pull me back to the trailer?
No. He realized this was something different. His head was spinning. He was losing his moorings in time and place -
And then, suddenly, he was back in the trailer, sitting up in his body, and wiping a smear of disgustingly red blood off his face. "Damn!"
"What happened?" Ruthie asked urgently. "Your nose is bleedin'. Is that a problem? Did it bring you back?"
"No," he said wearily, "I'm all right. Nosebleeds are common when I do this. It seems I'm just not as good at it as I used to be. This is one way my powers were diminished when I lost the Prophethood. I use them so seldom that it's taken me till now to recognize a difference."
"So you won't be able to go back?" Without waiting for an answer, Ruthie demanded, "What did you see?"
"One question at a time," he told her mildly. "Yes, I will go back, and if I keep plugging at it, I should be able to manage longer stays. After all, this isn't even a power unique to Avatars. My experience will stand me in good stead.
"As for what I saw, the police are interviewing Iris Crowe. What she's telling them may be interesting. So I'm diving back in. Right...now!"
The confidence he sent surging into that announcement swept him out of the trailer - and in the blink of an eye, he was once again outside the Crowes' parlor window. This time the invisible Avatar dispensed with the niceties and walked right in.
And at that moment, an inner door opened to reveal...Justin Crowe.
Not a body laid out in a casket. A living, breathing human being, clad in a cassock and seemingly in the pink of health!
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The shock thrust a sputtering Hack back into the trailer.
"What's wrong?" This time, the look on his face undoubtedly told Ruthie something was.
He let out a string of curses. Then he calmed sufficiently to report, through clenched teeth, "Crowe's alive. Alive and apparently well."
The color drained from her face. "That can't be!" Shaking her head, she insisted, "I saw him dead, Hack! And it was Samson himself who checked for vital signs. He's the most competent person I know."
By now Hack was thinking clearly. "There's only one possible explanation. His Avatar son brought him back to life, just as my Avatar son did me. Crowe's son is still Prophet, but for some reason he chose to revive his father. That proves he's an adult who knows how to use his powers. And they're both unimaginably dangerous."
"Oh my God." Ruthie gazed anxiously at Ben. Then she asked the question Hack was anticipating. "How come Crowe's in better shape than Ben, when he'd actually been dead? You said Ben's wounds won't heal completely 'cause o' the kind o' weapon Crowe used. Didn't he have one as good to use against Crowe?"
"Yes, he did," Hack assured her. "It was as good, or better, for the purpose of killing the Usher. If he hadn't struck correctly with the right kind of blade, Crowe wouldn't have died or even been wounded."
Too bad I trusted Belyakov to make that clear to Ben. Him and his symbols...from what I've heard, his vagueness almost got Ben killed.
"But the way to kill the Usher," he explained, "was to stab him in the fork of his tree tattoo. A key point magically, not biologically. Ben's dagger didn't pierce his heart or any other vital organ. And he didn't lose as much blood from a single deep stab wound - with the blade probably in it until he was revived - as Ben did from great, gaping slashes."
Ruthie cursed, then asked distractedly, "What can we do?"
"I'm going back. I'll try to get a handle on what's happening, maybe get a look at his son."
"Hack - does the son's having revived him mean he's there? The son, that is?"
"No. He could have done it from a distance. But I'm hoping he is there, and he'll show himself." He gave her hand a squeeze that was meant to be reassuring. Then, without another word, he plunged back into the maelstrom of New Canaan.
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He found himself in the Crowes' parlor, as invisible to his fellow Avatar as he was to the police. Considering everyone a suspect, he decided neither of the officers was young enough to be Crowe's son. They were interrogating the Reverend now; his sister sat stiffly on the couch, and the stolid maid was just...there, like a piece of furniture.
He made himself pay attention to what the men were saying. Crowe was claiming he'd had an epileptic seizure on the Ferris wheel, and his followers had panicked and begun rioting because they thought he'd been shot. Of course, all the subsequent deaths were the work of carnies! Fury over some unidentified carny's murder of a Reverend Balthus had driven Crowe to pursue "Benjamin St. John" - who'd pulled a knife on him. But after Crowe had fended St. John off by slashing him with a gardening tool - doing no serious damage, he was sure - he'd conveniently had another seizure and passed out.
Hack was seething. He knew he was hearing a pack of lies. But the cops were lapping it up.
The officers explained how they'd been confused by encountering three "innocent" carnivals. Hack's reaction was a smirking Bravo, Samson! It became apparent that the investigation, such as it was, was winding down, with everyone expressing insincere regret that no more could be done.
As the police prepared to leave, the thug Hack now knew as Varlyn Stroud strolled into the room. Hack glowered at him. But vicious as he is, he's no more Crowe's son than I am.
Crowe expressed some initial surprise at seeing Stroud, then anger with him. It seemed even to Hack that the man was being inexplicably arrogant, ignoring Crowe and defying his orders.
But everyone else in the room was looking strangely at Crowe, not at Stroud...
Iris screamed.
And Stroud disappeared. Into thin air.
Crowe dropped into a chair, shaking like a leaf. "Wh-what?"
Hack was almost as stunned as Crowe, but he made himself concentrate on what was happening.
The senior police officer said awkwardly, "Uh, Brother Justin...I don't know who you think you've been talking to, but no one's come into the room. Whoever this Varlyn is, he's not here."
"He's dead!" Iris burst out. "Varlyn is dead!"
Two other men came racing in. Bodyguards, Hack guessed. Neither one's young enough to be the son.
They stopped, looking confused. "Sure he's dead, Miss Iris," one of them said reasonably. "Why are you screamin' about it? You've known he's dead for hours."
"Justin was talking to him!" she wailed. "As if he was here!"
"He was here," Crowe whispered. "He was!"
The maid emerged from her corner and set about getting rid of the police. "Everyone under a strain"..."not a police matter"...and so forth. The men seemed grateful she was giving them permission to leave.
Hack paid scant attention to that, or to her subsequent admission to Crowe that she'd accidentally killed an abusive Stroud. He was still grappling with the realization that he and Crowe - but no one else - had seen a ghost.
Can't be because we're both Avatars. If I'd always been able to see ghosts, I would have realized it before now. And Crowe's shock wasn't simply at Stroud's being dead - he'd never seen a ghost before, either.
Neither of us killed the man, let alone both of us. So it wasn't a targeted haunting of his killers.
There's only one other possibility. The two of us are able to see ghosts because we were both dead, and were brought back!
Now that he'd grasped the idea, Hack found it intriguing rather than alarming.
I can make sense of it, he realized, because I know it's affecting two people, and I also know what we have in common. Crowe doesn't have a clue as to why this is suddenly happening to him.
My God. He may not even realize he was dead!
Focusing on the group around him again, he realized they were all heading for another room - which turned out to be the kitchen. He belatedly registered that they'd lost Iris at some point. But of far more interest was the man already sitting at the kitchen table. The ghost sitting at the kitchen table.
Hack's reaction to seeing Wilfred Talbot Smith was a leer. No regrets about killing you, my old false friend! You got what you deserved. My only regret is that I obviously did what Crowe hoped I'd do - played into his hands. I should have left on foot after I killed you, instead of waiting for a chance to steal a car. But for all I knew, I could have been a thousand miles from civilization.
Crowe's response, on the other hand - to the ghost of a man someone else had killed! - was that of a person on the verge of a breakdown. He screamed, babbled, and clung pathetically to the maid.
She seemed much more anxious to help, Hack noted, than did the bug-eyed, hastily retreating guards. He took a closer look at her, and guessed her to be in her early twenties. Must be the woman he's banging at the moment. She doesn't look like much now, but I suppose she might be attractive when she's cleaned up.
He forgot about the young woman when Crowe began another string of babbling. Doubtless unaware he was speaking out loud, he maudlinly acknowledged having been indirectly to blame for Smith's death, and for having taken a callous risk with Stroud's life.
He fled back toward the parlor - and Hack was struck by inspiration. If he's driven this nearly mad by the ghosts of men he didn't kill, I wonder how he'll react to the "ghost" of one he did kill?
He had his answer in less than a minute. He let Crowe see him outside the window - flyaway gray hair, bloody blue scar ringing his neck - and the fearsome Usher of Destruction went into hysterics. He wound up blubbering in his paramour's arms.
Hack thought he'd seen the best part of the show. But he decided to stick around a few minutes longer - and was glad he had. Crowe closed his eyes for a few minutes, trying to rest. When he opened them, he saw - as Hack also did - a white-haired, pajama-clad man in a wheelchair.
This time he only stopped shrieking when he fell down in a faint.
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"The ghost-viewing is making him as crazy as a loon!" Hack gleefully informed Ruthie. "And it doesn't distress me at all, because there aren't any deaths for which I blame myself. I did kill Wilfred Talbot Smith. But under the circumstances, I don't have guilt feelings about it."
There was a strange look on her face. "You're sayin' this seein' ghosts is caused by a person's havin' been brought back from the dead?"
"Yes..." Belatedly, he realized she had been brought back from the dead, and allowed to think she'd merely been "healed."
When he looked into her eyes, he realized he couldn't evade the question now. "Hack," she demanded, "was I dead? Did Ben bring me back?"
He said simply, "Yes."
She thought about that for a few seconds. "Then...did Ben have some other reason for keepin' it from me, beyond just thinkin' the idea would scare me?"
"I don't know what you mean." I wish I didn't know what you mean.
Ruthie's exasperated snort told him she wasn't fooled. "Did he have to kill someone else to bring me back? Like Lodz, who went missin' at just that time?"
Hack capitulated. "All right, I'll admit it. He did have to kill someone, but it wasn't unjust. Lodz had killed you."
"I figured that," she said absently. "I mean, I didn't know till now that I'd actually died, but I was sure it was him put that snake in my mendin'. On purpose."
Hack knew he had to get her back on track. "Did the ghost-viewing remind you of this, Ruthie? Do you experience it too?"
She nodded in appreciation of his not letting her ramble. "No," she said crisply. "Not now. But I did, for three or four months. I thought that if what happened to me really was the same as what's happenin' to you an' Crowe, you should know it wears off."
He gave a soft whistle. "Thanks for the tip. I'll take that into account."
"What are you plannin' to do next?"
Hack guessed she already knew. "Leave the troupe, Ruthie, as soon as I can scrounge up some clean clothes, and head back to New Canaan in the flesh.
"I won't have any trouble hiding in a community of 17,000. I'll make sure one man Crowe killed is around to 'haunt' him, whatever others may do!
"The truth is, my powers enable me to work illusions - appear and disappear, show different faces to different people - in my physical body as well as my astral. And I can do real harm to enemies in my physical body. The only power I 'lose' is instantaneous travel."
"Ben needs you -"
"I don't think he's about to die, Ruthie. I can do more to help him back there, if only by identifying the new Dark Prophet."
"You believe he's there?"
Hack frowned. "At the moment, no. I think that if he were, he would have found a way to sit in on the police questioning of his father.
"But however far away he is, he cares about that father, for some reason. And when word gets out, as it surely will, that Crowe's acting crazy, seeing ghosts everywhere..." He didn't have to finish the thought.
They exchanged smiles. Ever-so-faintly hopeful smiles.
Then he said, "I'll have to pound on the wall to get someone's attention, so I can borrow clean clothes. Hold Ben in your arms, will you, so the noise won't upset him?"
"Sure."
They both knew it wouldn't.
But Ruthie welcomed any excuse to hold Ben Hawkins in her arms...especially with his father's approval.
And Hack knew that.
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The End