After I paid the fee, Zilla gave me a fluffy towel with a washcloth and a clear plastic bag containing a miniature bar of soap, a tiny bottle of shampoo, and an equally tiny bottle of conditioner. When she reached for the key to Shower 7 that hung on the Peg-Board behind her, I asked if I could have Shower 5 instead. Zilla said they were all identical, and I explained that five was my lucky number. If she thought I was a geek for having a lucky-shower number, she didn"t show it.
Shower 5 was actually a complete no-frills bathroom with a toilet, a sink with a mirror above it, and a shower with a frosted-gla.s.s door fitted with a towel bar. The floors and walls were covered with glossy-white ceramic tile, including a built-in bench just outside of the large shower stall. Everything sparkled and appeared to be not just clean but sanitized. You would have been willing to stand barefoot on the floor, but you wouldn"t have been willing to eat off it.
Trucker teams often had sleeper tractors with a double bed, an under-counter refrigerator, and a microwave behind the c.o.c.kpit, but they didn"t have a bathroom. On long hauls, they didn"t want to pay for a motel room just to take a quick shower.
After hanging the towel and the washcloth on the shower door and setting everything else on the counter beside the sink, I glanced in the mirror, decided I looked only slightly more buffoonish with the sungla.s.ses atop my head, as if I had a second pair of eyes nestled in my hair, and then turned in place, studying the room.
Five isn"t my lucky number. I don"t actually have a lucky number any more than I have an official Odd Thomas tree or flower, or bird. Claiming to have a lucky number wasn"t a lie, at least not a serious one, because no one could possibly be harmed in any way by such a statement. It was instead a finesse. I finesse a lot.
I was drawn to Shower 5 by psychic magnetism. Considering that I was searching for the rhinestone cowboy and considering that this room was unoccupied, I"m not sure what I expected to find.
If he had been here earlier, perhaps I detected a residue of psychic energy much the way that a bloodhound can track an escaped convict by the scent of the man"s shed skin cells, drops of sweat, and other spoor.
Although the shower room smelled of a lemon-scented disinfectant and seemed to have been thoroughly cleaned between users, I sought paranormal evidence of my quarry by touching the chrome spigots on the sink, the flush handle on the toilet, and the pull on the shower door. None of them inspired a frisson of weirdness reminiscent of the trucker in the supermarket parking lot.
As I considered whether I should turn on the water and pretend to take a shower for the benefit of Zilla at the attendant"s desk or just leave without explanation, movement at the periphery of vision caused me to turn to my left in alarm. I remained alone. The activity seemed to be in the mirror, to which I stood at such a severe angle that I could not see what moved impossibly in the reflection of this stilled chamber.
When I stepped to the sink, the shower room in the mirror was not lined with white tiles. The walls were bare concrete. Instead of several flush-mounted lights in the ceiling, a single fixture with a cone-shaped metal shade dangled on a chain. Although I felt no draft, the hanging lamp swung lazily, its swooning circle of light causing phantoms of shadow to glide around like dancers in a slow waltz.
Something spattered wetly against my right cheek, and I turned to find myself no longer in the Star Truck shower room but in a drab chamber, as grim as a dungeon, with concrete walls like those in the mirror. Maybe not concrete. It was more like ... the idea of concrete. I don"t know what I mean by that. And now I felt the draft that swayed the hanging lamp. More startling than the sudden change of venue was the presence of the rhinestone cowboy, whose spittle slid down my face.
His materialization, like a summoned demon manifesting inside a pentagram, caused my breath to catch in my throat, and the big .45 Sig Sauer pistol with the silencer, aimed at my face, fully paralyzed me.
My only weapon was my wit, and though it could wound, it could not kill. In fact, at that moment, I couldn"t think of a cutting line and, disgusted by the gob of spit, I said only, "Yuck."
In the gloom, the spiky white hair made him look like one of those troll dolls that, to me, have always appeared less cute than psychotic. His cyanide-blue eyes, which seemed to glow from within, matched the poisonous character of his words: "Are you all out of Granny Smiths and Red Delicious, Johnny Appleseed? I"d like it if you explained to me who and what you are, but I"d like it even better if you were just dead."
Without giving me the courtesy of a brief reprieve to tell him what I would like, he pulled the trigger, and the flesh of my throat dissolved like gla.s.s, a thousand shards of pain shattering through me as blood fountained up my throat and drowning darkness pulled me down.
Seven.
DEATH PROVED TO BE DREAMLESS, IF DEATH IT WAS, AND then I woke, lying on the white-tile floor.
The sungla.s.ses had been flung off my head and broken at the bridge. They lay directly under the fluffy white towel and washcloth that hung from the bar on the door to the roomy shower stall.
I was on my side, in the fetal position, and I might have been crying for my mommy if Mother hadn"t been a deeply disturbed woman who, during my childhood, had often threatened me with a gun. I was raised not with the principles of Dr. Benjamin Spock in mind, but according to the even darker theories of Dr. Jekyll.
I felt no pain, but I was reluctant to raise a hand to my throat, for fear of finding torn flesh, a gaping wound. When I dared to swallow, however, I was able to do so, and I realized both that I could breathe and that the taste of blood didn"t foul my mouth.
Having lost my reason for existence when I lost Stormy Llewellyn nineteen months earlier, I lived a life I didn"t need. Although I had no fear of death, I hoped to avoid excruciating pain, long suffering, and concussion-induced blackouts from which I would awake with embarra.s.sing tattoos. Now I was relieved to find myself mysteriously alive, relieved largely because I had pledged to protect Annamaria from those who would kill her, because I felt compelled to save the three innocent children that the cowboy trucker intended to set afire, and because suddenly I had a fierce appet.i.te for a platter of cheese meatloaf, steak fries, and coleslaw, which I hoped to satisfy before I died again and stayed dead.
One good thing about a condemned man"s last meal is that he doesn"t have to worry about acid reflux.
Getting to my feet, I realized that I wasn"t alone. I spun toward the other with less than balletic grace, as Baryshnikov might have moved if he had ever performed Swan Lake while drunk, my hands out in front of me as if to catch any bullets that might shortly be in flight.
On the tiled and built-in bench adjacent to the shower sat a famous portly man in a three-piece black suit, white shirt, black tie, and black wingtips polished to a high shine. His round face, full cheeks, and two chins had been less p.r.o.nounced but evident even in photographs of him as a young child. Then as now, his lower lip protruded far past the upper; however, as both a boy and a man, he never appeared to be pouting, but seemed instead to be pondering some profound idea.
"Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k," I said, and he smiled.
So soon after being shot dead and finding myself miraculously alive again, I wasn"t ready for Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k. Bewildered, I went to the sink, leaned toward the mirror, searched the reflection for the concrete walls and the single hanging light-for the dungeon or abattoir, or whatever the place had been-but saw only the clean, bright shower room.
I have never liked looking at myself in a mirror. I don"t know why exactly. I"m not movie-star handsome, but I"m not the Creature from the Black Lagoon, either. I"m pretty much a face in the crowd, which is a blessing when, like me, you have a reason not to draw attention to yourself. There"s just something unsettling about studying your reflection. It"s not a matter of being dissatisfied with your face or of being embarra.s.sed by your vanity. Maybe it"s that when you gaze into your own eyes, you don"t see what you wish to see-or glimpse something that you wish weren"t there.
At least my face was not splashed with blood, and my eyes were not dead-flat yet fevered like those of a zombie. I didn"t know what it felt like to be a lingering spirit unwilling to pa.s.s over to the Other Side, but I was certain that it didn"t feel like this. If the encounter with the rhinestone cowboy had not been a hallucination or a vision of a future confrontation, if I had in fact been shot in the throat and killed, I was nevertheless alive again by virtue of a miracle.
I didn"t try to puzzle through how such a thing could be. The world is filled with mysteries; and I have learned that every mystery will either explain itself-or it won"t. I can"t force Nature to draw back her curtains and reveal the hidden machinery that const.i.tutes the true workings of the world.
When I turned once more to Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k, the great director gave me two thumbs up.
I sat beside him on the bench. My hands were shaking. I clutched my knees to still the tremors.
"I saw you the other day," I said, "walking on the sh.o.r.e, past the cottage we"ve been renting. You waved at me."
He thrust out his lower lip even farther and nodded. Although his face was perhaps best suited for a dour expression, he smiled and seemed almost merry. Judging by the wry look in his eyes, I thought that he had something to say that would have made me laugh. Having died in 1980, however, he was a spirit, and spirits never speak.
In previous volumes of these memoirs, I have written of other famous souls who have sought me out, hoping that I could help them find the courage to cross over. Mr. Elvis Presley was with me for a few years before I understood why he lingered in this world and could convince him to leave it. Mr. Frank Sinatra kept me company for a much shorter time, a more volatile spirit than the King of Rock "n" Roll, always exciting and perhaps more helpful to me than I was to him, though Old Blue Eyes eventually did cross over.
From those experiences, I wrongly concluded that if another famous person among the lingering dead came to me for counseling, he or she would be a legendary singer. Perhaps Bing Crosby or Bobby Darin, or John Lennon. On some bad days, I worried that it might be Sid Vicious or Kurt Cobain.
Instead, Mr. Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k, surely one of the five greatest directors in the history of Hollywood-maker of Psycho but also of the sparkling comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith and numerous masterpieces in between-had come to me for help, decades after his death. I already knew much about him. Later I would learn much more. But at that moment in the Star Truck shower room, I felt intellectually inadequate to counsel a man of such accomplishment.
Still shocked from being murdered and resurrected, if in fact such a thing had happened, I found myself speechless. I stared at him for a long moment, and then looked around the white room as if what I ought to say to him might be printed boldly on the walls. It wasn"t. Consequently, more embarra.s.sed by my loss for words than by any stupid thing that I might say, I babbled in search of substance.
"Sorry, I"m a little shaken. The walls were concrete. The cowboy was just suddenly there. Or maybe he wasn"t. He shot me point-blank in the throat. Or maybe he didn"t. I"m sorry. You don"t know about the cowboy. He"s not a cowboy, really. He drives a big truck, not a horse. n.o.body drives a horse, of course, it doesn"t have wheels, but you know what I mean. The creep called me Johnny Appleseed. Not that the name Johnny Appleseed is an insult. Johnny was really a great guy. It was the way he said it. Scornfully. With contempt. He"s a nasty piece of work. I mean the cowboy guy, not Johnny Appleseed. I don"t have anything against Johnny Appleseed. If he hadn"t planted all those trees a couple hundred years ago, I wouldn"t have had any ammunition in that supermarket and I"d probably be dead now in the produce section."
Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k raised one hand to rest his chin on it, and he regarded me with keen interest, as if I were Sherlock to his Watson, although I was more likely Larry-Curly-Moe to his Einstein.
After several deep breaths, I regained my composure. "Sir, I"ll do what I can for you. I"m honored that you"ve come to me. But since you weren"t murdered, then you must be reluctant to cross over for personal reasons. Psychological reasons. Maybe a sense of guilt. Maybe remorse for something done in life."
He raised one eyebrow.
"Mr. Presley and Mr. Sinatra," I said, "were almost as public about their private lives as they were about their careers, so I was able to puzzle out the reasons why their spirits lingered here. I think you kept your family and your personal life private, and since you can"t talk, this is probably going to be a difficult case for me, so I just hope you"ll be patient."
He removed his hand from under his chin and used it to pat me on the shoulder in a kindly manner, as if to rea.s.sure me that, having lingered in this world so many years, he did not expect to be led directly to a celestial escalator.
The spirits of the lingering dead feel as warm and solid to me as does any living person. They could comfort me with a pat, as Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k had just done, or accept comfort from me, but they could not punch, claw, strangle, or otherwise mutilate me. If they struck out in anger, their fists pa.s.sed through me without effect.
The only human spirit that can be dangerous to the living is one that goes poltergeist. This condition results from frustration and rage. The furious ghost draws energy from some dark place and pumps it into this world, flinging everything from books to furniture, to storms of cutlery.
Generally speaking, spirits capable of going poltergeist were unredeemed if not malevolent. If they ever finally departed this world, they would most likely wind up in the Dark Side of the Other Side, where you never get cookies or hot chocolate. There were exceptions, poltergeists of good intent, of which Mr. Sinatra had been one, when he came to my rescue in a desperate moment in Magic Beach, little more than a month earlier.
I am aware that this part of my experience has started to sound like shameless name-dropping and calls into question my veracity. In my defense, I can only say that the spirits of famous people are a tiny fraction of the lingering dead whom I have helped to cross over. And if you think I"ve imagined them in order to sell more copies of my books, you are proved wrong by the fact that these memoirs will not be published while I"m alive, to ensure that I will never be imprisoned in a secret government facility and studied like a lab rat.
Besides, regardless of where I might be going on the Other Side, whether into the Light or the Dark, I won"t have a use for royalties after I"m dead. If I"ve got my theology right: In the Light, all that I could ever need or want will be free; and in the Dark, no currency ever minted can buy my way out.
Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k stopped patting my shoulder, rose from the tiled bench, and crossed the room. He beckoned with one finger, and as I rose to my feet, he walked through the closed door, into the hallway.
Apparently, travel is much easier when you"re dead. No need to concern yourself with doors, tollbooths, or airport security agents who want to probe your b.u.t.t.
When I opened the door and stepped into the hall, Zilla was at her workstation, folding freshly laundered towels.
Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k stood a hundred feet away, at the intersection of this corridor with one serving the TV lounge and the chiropractor"s office. He raised his right arm high and waved, as if we were in a crowded train station and he needed to attract my attention through the bustling throng.
The attendant couldn"t see him, of course. She said to me, "Is something wrong?"
"I decided I didn"t need a shower, after all, ma"am. The idea of a shower was refreshing enough."
"I can only give you a partial refund," she said apologetically.
Eager to follow Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k, who seemed to intend to lead me somewhere, I said, "That"s all right. I don"t need a refund."
As I turned away, she stepped out from behind her station and approached me. "Wait a minute, sir, please. It"s just, you see, whether you used the towel or not, we still have to wash it, and clean the room."
She was earnest and clearly wanted to treat me fairly.
"I understand," I a.s.sured her. "No problem."
"But I can return half your money."
"No, ma"am, really, it"s fine. It was only the idea of a shower, but I paid for it with paper money, which is only the idea of money, so it was a totally fair exchange."
My att.i.tude perplexed her into silence as I hurried toward Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k.
He led me along the intersecting hallway to the very back of the building, where he phased through a fire door labeled STAIRS. I opened the door and entered the stairwell in a more traditional manner, in time to see him floating down the first flight, his feet a few inches above the treads.
As I followed, looking down on him, I decided he had manifested not as he had been late in life but as he had been in his early fifties, hair still dark but receding, the beginning of a bald spot at the crown of his head. He was born in 1899, so his fifties were the 1950s, a decade in which he made Rear Window, Dial M for Murder, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest, To Catch a Thief, The Wrong Man, and Vertigo, more cla.s.sic films than most directors produce in a lifetime. Rebecca, the first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, Notorious, Spellbound, Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt, and so many other great works were already in his past. Psycho, The Birds, and others were in his future.
We descended four flights, which put us in the bas.e.m.e.nt. With the aplomb that he exhibited routinely in life, the director floated through another closed door, and I discovered that beyond it lay the mechanical heart of the truck stop, a chamber that perhaps seemed more vast than it was, housing huge boilers, chillers, a maze of big PVC pipes serving the heating-cooling system, and banks of circuit breakers. There was also much equipment that I could not identify, in fact so much that I might very well have been in the engine room of a starship.
Cold harsh light fell from the fluorescent fixtures. Shadows had sharp edges, and the stainless-steel housings of the various machines glistened as if crusted in ice.
Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k cast no shadow at any time, of course, and my own shrank under my feet as we came to a halt beneath a large array of fluorescents in what seemed to be the center of the room. He put one finger to his lips, suggesting silence, and then tilted his head to the right, cupping a hand around that ear in a theatrical gesture, which reminded me that he had begun his long career in silent films.
I c.o.c.ked my head, too, and we stood there in a comic posture, as if we were Laurel and Hardy puzzling over the source of a peculiar sound that would prove to be a block-and-tackle failing in the moment before a piano dropped on our heads. The humming and purring of the machinery had no menace, however, and I heard nothing else, certainly nothing that would put the hairs up on the nape of my neck.
But then I did hear something, two men arguing, their words m.u.f.fled and not quite decipherable-yet close. Surprised, I turned, but no one shared the open center of the room with us, and between the banks of machinery, the aisle by which we had arrived here was also deserted. Other pa.s.sageways serving additional rows of machines waited to be explored, but I didn"t think I"d find the two men in any of them. That angry pair seemed near but not quite real, their voices sonorous and distorted like those of malevolent presences in a dream.
Their conversation faded, then returned, louder and closer than before, though still indecipherable, as if they were just a few feet away but on the farther side of a wall that I couldn"t see. I turned again, and an infuriated man in jeans and a black-leather jacket stalked past close enough to touch, oblivious of me.
His face was hard and seemed subtly broken, the countenance of a stubborn but inept boxer who had taken too many devastating punches. Fierce under heavy lids, his eyes shifted here, there, here with the desperation of a beast born to be free but caged from an early age.
And he was semitransparent.
The lingering dead look as real to me as they would have appeared in life. If they don"t manifest with mortal wounds-as did the decapitated woman crossing the street-and if they don"t pa.s.s through walls or float inches above the ground, I am not often able to recognize them as spirits.
This stocky, thick-necked man with the fractured-stone face was not a spirit. His voice, though seeming to be filtered through a foot or two of cotton batting and distorted like a recording played at too slow a speed, was nonetheless far different from the silence imposed upon the deceased.
He changed course abruptly, pa.s.sed through me, and I shuddered as a chill marked the moment when we occupied the same s.p.a.ce. As I turned, he stopped one step away, swung back to me, and we were face-to-face. He had abruptly ceased talking. He looked left, right, up, down, and I suspected that he"d felt a chill, as well, but he didn"t otherwise react to me. From my perspective, he was a see-through ghost, as in a movie, but I was invisible to him.
For a moment I perceived-without quite seeing-that the room he occupied had the same dimensions as the chamber in which I stood, but that it was an empty and desolate s.p.a.ce. Cold concrete and ashen light.
The second man in that other bas.e.m.e.nt now spoke again, stepping into view: the rhinestone cowboy. He was as semitransparent as the guy with whom he argued.
Turning from me, the first man joined the would-be murderer of children, and they walked away, swiftly fading from sight as their voices slid into silence.
I no longer sensed that alternate bas.e.m.e.nt. But then came a sound like two metal fire doors falling shut, one a fraction of a second after the other, the former softer than the latter.
When I turned to Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k, I found that he was watching me. As though soliciting my reaction to what had just happened, he raised his eyebrows.
Although I am not an important person by any definition, at that moment I almost felt like one. In spite of my paranormal ability, I am just a hapless out-of-work short-order cook who struggles to fry well when he has a job and, if possible, at all times to do the right thing. But now I suddenly thought of all those male leads in Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k"s films, and I felt obligated to fulfill his directorial expectations, to answer his raised eyebrows with a remark witty enough to be delivered by Cary Grant.
Instead, I said, "Uh ... wow ... see ... you know ... the thing is ... I don"t understand. Where were those two men? Where are they now? Was their argument something that happened here earlier? Or something that"ll happen in the future?"
He shook his head and then tapped the face of his wrist.w.a.tch with one finger, perhaps to indicate that the time in both bas.e.m.e.nts was the same, that what I"d seen had happened just now. Or maybe he had done a Rolex commercial during his life and felt a duty to sell the brand even after death.
"Sir, I"m confused."
With fingers widely spread, hands framing his face, with an expression of amazement, Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k mocked me, as if to say, You? Confused? Who knew? Astonishing! Impossible! It beggars belief!
If he"d been Quentin Tarantino or Oliver Stone, I might have been a bit offended-or even alarmed by the possibility of mindless violence-but in his day he"d been known for his unexpected clowning and practical jokes. His friend, the actor Gerald du Maurier, had been appearing in a play at St. James Theater, in London, when during a performance Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k somehow had gotten a full-grown horse into the star"s dressing room without anyone seeing it happen. When du Maurier returned at the end of the play, he found the huge animal contentedly eating grain from a feed bag.
Now the director turned from me and glided across the bas.e.m.e.nt as if he wore ice skates and the floor were a frozen pond, and I had to hurry to keep up with him. He pa.s.sed through a heavy fire door, which I yanked open in his wake, wondering if this might be the door that I had heard crash shut twice in quick succession when the see-through cowboy had departed the other bas.e.m.e.nt or this bas.e.m.e.nt, or both.
With my confusion growing more profound, I rushed along a drab corridor to a pair of elevators-the smaller for people, the larger for freight-where Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k stood. As I arrived, a bell sounded, the first set of doors slid open, he stepped into the waiting car, and I followed him.
Even if I"d been able by then to come up with a line worthy of Cary Grant, before I could have delivered it, the director soared through the roof of the elevator and disappeared. I had never known a ghost to be this exuberant, this frolicsome, and his apparent delight in his supernatural abilities flummoxed me.
Stepping out of the elevator into the hallway lined with shops on the main floor of Star Truck, I spotted Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k to my right, standing by the service-map kiosk in the lobby. He raised his right arm high and waved at me, as though I might not recognize him among the dozen or so truck drivers currently entering and leaving the building.
As I approached, he winked out of existence-and then reappeared on the far side of the gla.s.s doors of the main entrance.
Exiting the building, joining Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k, I sensed the cowboy nearby, although he was nowhere in sight. Then I saw the ProStar+ receding along the exit lanes from Star Truck, speeding toward the Coast Highway.
The roar of a nearer engine followed by the shrill squealing of brakes startled me backward. The superstretch Mercedes limo ran down Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k and slid to a smoking-rubber stop in front of me.
He couldn"t have been roadkill, of course, because he lacked material substance. He was just gone.
Through the open window in the driver"s door, Mrs. Edie Fischer said, "Hurry, child, or we might lose him."
In the distance, the red-and-black rig disappeared into the underpa.s.s beneath the highway.