Fever Dream

"Excellent! I'll be heading back to town, then. Will you follow?"

"I think I'll drop in on Maurice. He'd be crushed if I left without paying him my respects."

"Quite, quite! To think he's been looking after Penumbra unassisted for--what?--twelve years now. You know, Mr. Pendergast--" Here the little man leaned in and lowered his voice, as if to impart a secret. "--you really should fix this place up. You could get a handsome sum for it--a handsome sum! Antebellum plantation houses are all the rage these days. It would make a charming B and B!"

"Thank you, Mr. Ogilby, but I think I shall hold on to it a while longer."

"As you wish, as you wish! Just don't stay out after dark--what with the old family ghost, and all." The little man strode off chuckling to himself, briefcase swinging, and soon vanished, leaving Pendergast alone in the family plot. He heard the Mercedes start up; heard the crunch of gravel fade quickly back into silence.

He strolled about for another few minutes, reading the inscriptions on the stones. Each name resurrected memories stranger and more eccentric than the last. Many of the remains were of family members disinterred from the ruins of the basement crypt of the Pendergast mansion on Dauphine Street after the house burned; other ancestors had expressed wishes to be buried in the old country.

The golden light faded as the sun sank below the trees. Pallid mists began to drift across the lawn from the direction of the mangrove swamp. The air smelled of verdure, moss, and bracken. Pendergast stood in the graveyard for a long time, silent and unmoving, as evening settled over the land. Yellow lights--coming up in the windows of the plantation house--filtered through the trees of the arboretum. The scent of burning oak wood drifted on the air; a smell that brought back irresistible memories of childhood summers. Glancing up, Pendergast could see one of the great brick chimneys of the plantation house issuing a lazy stream of blue smoke. Rousing himself, he left the graveyard, walked through the arboretum, and gained the covered porch, the warped boards protesting under his feet.

He knocked on the door, then stood back to wait. A creaking from inside; the sound of slow footsteps; an elaborate unlatching and unchaining; and the great door swung open to reveal a stooped old man of indeterminate race, dressed in an ancient butler's uniform, his face grave. "Master Aloysius," he said, with fine reserve, not offering his hand immediately.

Pendergast extended his and the old man responded, the ribbed old hand getting a friendly shake. "Maurice. How are you?"

"Middling," the old man replied. "I saw the cars drive up. Glass of sherry in the library, sir?"

"That will be fine, thank you."

Maurice turned and moved slowly through the entry hall toward the library. Pendergast followed. A fire was burning on the hearth, not so much for warmth as to drive out the damp.

With a clinking of bottles, Maurice muddled about the sideboard and poured a measure into a tiny sherry glass, placed it on a silver tray, and carried it over with great ceremony. Pendergast took it, sipped, then glanced around. Nothing had changed for the better. The wallpaper was stained, and balls of dust lay in the corners. He could hear the faint rustle of rats in the walls. The place had gone downhill significantly in the five years since he had last been here.

"I wish you'd let me hire a live-in housekeeper, Maurice. And a cook. It would greatly relieve your burden."

"Nonsense! I can take care of the house myself."

"I don't think it's safe for you to be here alone."

"Not safe? Of course it's safe. I keep the house well locked at night."

"Naturally." Pendergast sipped the sherry, which was an excellent dry oloroso. He wondered, a little idly, how many bottles were left in the extensive cellars. Many more, probably, than he could drink in a lifetime, not to mention the wine, port, and fine old cognac. As the collateral branches of his family had died out, all the various wine cellars--like the wealth--had concentrated around him, the last surviving member of sound mind.

He took another sip and put down the glass. "Maurice, I think I'll take a turn through the house. For old times' sake."

"Yes, sir. I'll be here if you need me."

Pendergast rose and, opening the pocket doors, stepped into the entry hall. For fifteen minutes, he wandered through the rooms of the first floor: the empty kitchen and sitting rooms, the drawing room, the pantry and saloon. The house smelled faintly of his childhood--of furniture polish, aged oak, and, infinitely distant, his mother's perfume--all overlaid with a much more recent odor of damp and mildew. Every object, every knickknack and painting and paperweight and silver ashtray, was in its place, and every little thing carried a thousand memories of people long since under earth, of weddings and christenings and wakes, of cocktail parties and masked balls and children stampeding the halls to the warning exclamations of aunts.

Gone, all gone.

He mounted the stairs to the upper landing. Here, two hallways led to bedrooms in the opposite wings of the house, with the upstairs parlor straight ahead, through an arched doorway protected by a brace of elephant tusks.

He entered the parlor. A zebra rug lay on the floor, and the head of a Cape buffalo graced the mantel above the massive fireplace, looking down at him with furious glass eyes. On the walls were numerous other heads: kudu, bushbuck, stag, deer, hind, wild boar, elk.

He clasped his hands behind his back and slowly paced the room. Seeing this array of heads, these silent sentinels to memory and events long past, his thoughts drifted irresistibly to Helen. He'd had the old nightmare the previous night--as vivid and terrible as ever--and the malevolent effects still lingered like a canker in the pit of his stomach. Perhaps this room might exorcise that particular demon, at least for a while. It would never disappear, of course.

On the far side, against the wall, stood the locked gun case that displayed his collection of hunting rifles. It was a savage, bloody sport--driving a five-hundred-grain slug of metal at two thousand feet per second into a wild animal--and he wondered why it attracted him. But it was Helen who had truly loved hunting, a peculiar interest for a woman--but then Helen had been an unusual woman. A most unusual woman.

He gazed through the rippled, dusty glass at Helen's Krieghoff double-barreled rifle, the side plates exquisitely engraved and inlaid with silver and gold, the walnut stock polished with use. It had been his wedding present to her, just before they went on their honeymoon safari, after Cape buffalo in Tanzania. A beautiful thing, this rifle: six figures' worth of the finest woods and precious metals--designed for a most cruel purpose.

As he looked, he noted a small edge of rust creeping around the muzzle rim.

He strode to the door of the parlor and called down the stairs. "Maurice? Would you kindly bring me the key to the gun cabinet?"

After a long moment, Maurice appeared in the hall. "Yes, sir." He turned, disappearing once again. Moments later, he slowly mounted the groaning stairs, an iron key gripped in his veined hand. He creaked past Pendergast and stopped before the gun case, inserted the key, and turned it.

"There you are, sir." His face remained impassive, but Pendergast was glad to sense in Maurice a feeling of pride: for having the key at his fingertips, for simply being of service.

"Thank you, Maurice."

A nod and the manservant was gone.

Pendergast reached inside the case and--slowly, slowly--grasped the cold metal of the double barrel. His fingers tingled at the mere touch of her weapon. For some reason his heart was accelerating--the lingering effects of the nightmare, no doubt. He brought it out and placed it on the refectory table in the middle of the room. From a drawer below the cabinet he removed the gun-cleaning paraphernalia, arranging it beside the rifle. He wiped his hands, picked up the gun, and broke open the action, peering down both barrels.