CHAPTER 41
ETHAN GLANCED AT HIS WRISTWATCH, THEN at the indicator light on Line 24, timing the telephone call.
He didn?t believe a dead person had dialed up Palazzo Rospo, dropping metaphysical coins into a pay phone on the Other Side. Dependably, this would be either a wrong number or a solicitation from a salesman with such a high-pressure approach that he would rattle out his spiel even to the answering machine that recorded these messages.
When Ming du Lac, spiritual adviser to the Face, had explained Line 24, Ethan had been perceptive enough to realize that Ming would be impatient with even so much as a raised eyebrow, and hostile to any expression of disbelief. He had managed to keep a straight face and a solemn voice.
Only Mrs. McBee on the household staff and only Ming du Lac among Manheim?s other associates had the influence to get the great man to fire Ethan. He knew exactly with whom he must tread softly.
Calls from the dead.
Everyone has answered the phone, heard silence, and said ?Hello? again, assuming that the caller has been distracted by someone on his end or that there is a problem with the switching equipment. When a [271] third ?Hello? draws no response, we hang up, convinced that the call must have been a wrong number or from a crank, or the result of a technical glitch in the system.
Some people, the Face among them, believe that a portion of such calls originate with deceased friends or loved ones trying to reach us from Beyond. For some reason, according to this theory, the dead can make your phone ring, but they can?t as easily send their voices across the chasm between life and death; therefore, all you hear is silence or peculiar static, or on rare occasion whispery scraps of words as if from a great distance.
Upon investigating this subject after Ming explained the purpose of Line 24, Ethan had learned that researchers in the paranormal had made recordings on telephone lines left open between test numbers, operating on the assumption that if the dead could initiate a call, they might also take advantage of an open line specifically set aside to detect their communications.
Next, the researchers amplified and enhanced the faint sounds on the recordings. Indeed, they discovered voices that often spoke English, but also that sometimes spoke French, Spanish, Greek, and other languages.
Most of these whispery entities offered only scraps of sentences or disjointed words that made little sense, providing insufficient data for analysis.
Other, more complete ?messages? could sometimes be construed as predictions or even dire warnings. They were always short, however, and often enigmatic.
Reason suggested that the recordings had caught only bleed-over conversations from living people using other lines in the telephone system.
In fact, many of the coherent snippets seemed to deal with matters too mundane to motivate the dead to reach out to the living: questions about the weather, about grandchildren?s latest report cards from school, bits like ? always loved pecan pie, yours best of [272] all ? and ? better put your pennies away for a rainy day ? and ? at that cafe you like, the owner keeps a dangerously dirty kitchen ?
And yet
And yet a few of the voices were said to be so haunted, so bleak with despair or so full of desperate love and concern, that they could not be forgotten, could not be easily explained, especially when the messages were delivered with urgency: ? fumes from the furnace, fumes, don?t go to sleep tonight, fumes ? and ? I never told you how much I love you, so much, please look for me when you come across, remember me ? and ? a man in a blue truck, don?t let him get near little Laura, don?t let him near her ?
These most eerie messages reported by paranormal researchers were what motivated Channing Manheim to maintain Line 24 strictly for the convenience of the chatty dead.
Every day, wherever they were in the world, Manheim and Ming du Lac used part of their meditation periods to broadcast mentally the area code plus the seven-digit number for Line 24, casting this baited hook into the sea of immortality with the hope that it would catch a spirit.
Thus far, over a period of three years, they had recorded only wrong numbers, sales pitches, and a series of calls from a hoaxer who, before Ethan?s arrival, had proved to be a security guard on the estate. He had been let go with generous severance pay and, according to Mrs. McBee, with a lecture from Ming du Lac to the effect that he would be wise to put his spiritual house in order.
The signal light winked off. This call had lasted one minute and twelve seconds.
Sometimes Ethan wondered how the Channing Manheim who managed an acting career so brilliantly and who had proved himself an investment wizard could be the same man who employed Ming du Lac and also a feng-shui adviser, a clairvoyance instructor, and a past-life researcher who spent forty hours a week tracking the actor?s reincarnations backward through the centuries.
[273] On the other hand, the singular events of this day left him less certain of his usual skepticism.
He turned his attention to the computer screen once more, to the telephone log. He frowned, wondering why Fric would have invented the heavy breather.
If someone had in fact made obscene calls to the boy, chances were good that this related to the implied threats against Manheim that had come in those black boxes. Otherwise, there were two sources of threats that had arisen simultaneously. Ethan didn?t believe in coincidences.
The heavy breather might be the real-life inspiration for the ?professor? mentioned in Reynerd?s partial screenplay, the man who had conspired to send the black gift boxes and to kill Manheim. If so, he had somehow acquired at least one of the house?s unlisted numbers: a disturbing development.
Yet the phone log had never failed to record any call in the past. And though they might err, machines didn?t lie.
The recent incoming call to Line 24 was now the last item on the day?s log. As it should be.
Ethan had timed the call at one minute twelve seconds. The monitoring software registered one minute fourteen seconds. He had no doubt that the two-second error was his.
According to the log, Caller ID blocking prevented notation of the point-of-origin number. That was peculiar if the call had been from a phone-sales agent, a breed now forbidden by law to block their ID, not peculiar at all if it had been a wrong number.
Neither was it unusual for a wrong number to have tied up the line for a minute or longer. The outgoing greeting on the special answering machine that serviced Line 24 was not an elaborate hello to those in the spirit world, but a simple ?Please leave a message.? Some callers, failing to realize that they hadn?t reached the desired number, complied with that invitation.
Anyway, whoever called Line 24 wasn?t the issue. The question [274] was if the ever-dependable machine had erred or lied in failing to record the calls that the boy claimed to have received.
Logically, Ethan could only conclude that the machine couldn?t be faulted. In the morning, he would have a talk with Fric.
On the desk beside the computer were the three silvery bells from the ambulance. He stared at them for a long time.
Beside the bells was a nine-by-twelve manila envelope that had been left here for him by Mrs. McBee. She had printed his name in matchless calligraphy.
As with all things McBee, her graceful penmanship made Ethan smile. She knew the best and most elegant way that every task ought to be performed, and she held herself to her own high standards.
He opened the envelope and confirmed a truth that he already knew: Freddie Nielander, Fric?s mother, was a braying jackass.