“There was no need to make an international call to prove that,” Leila whispered furiously. “There are newspaper directories in the…”
Redpath held one finger to his lips and spoke into the phone. “I have an interesting story for your paper—could you put me through to a reporter, please?” He grinned at Leila during the brief wait, filled with a heady confidence in his own ability.
“Reporters’ room, Dave Knight speaking,” a male voice said with some diffidence. “Did you say you were calling from England, Mr Redpath?”
“Yes, indeed. I’m connected with the Jeavons Institute, Calbridge, which is a research offshoot of the University College of South Haverside. My department is researching some aspects of E.S.P., and something interesting has just cropped up which—believe it or not—has a direct link with Gilpinston, Illinois.”
“Did you say E.S.P.?” The voice was alert now.
Redpath winked at Leila. “That’s what I said.”
“Is there someone from Gilpinston working on this research?”
“It’s more interesting than that, Dave, as I think you’ll agree. The reason I’m calling you is that one of our subjects swears he has projected his consciousness into a house in Gilpinston. Visited it yesterday without actually going there in the flesh, if you know what I mean.”
“Are we talking about something like an astral body?”
“Something like that, although we wouldn’t use that particular term. The point is that our subject has given us a precise description of the house and the street it’s in. We have no way of knowing how much of this is just his imagination, but if the details did happen to check out you would have a very nice little offbeat story on your hands. What do you think?”
There was a pause. “It would be a nice story if I could be sure it wasn’t some kind of a hoax, Mr Redpath. I’m not implying anything, but…”
“No, no! You’re right to be sceptical—I’m sceptical myself. I’ll give you my number here in England so that you can call me back, and I’ll also give you Professor Nevison’s number at the institute. You could speak to him there tomorrow and confirm everything before you go into print. Of course, if you’d prefer that I went to some other paper…”
“No, I don’t want you to do that, Mr Redpath—I’m very glad you rang us first. Now, did you say you had an exact address in Gilpinston?”
“The street is 13th Avenue S.E. and the house number is 2224. Does that sound feasible?” Receiving an affirmative, Redpath went on to describe the house, mentioning that the owner’s name could be Rodgers, and giving every significant detail he could recall—pale blue front door, diagonal line of metal numerals, fire hydrant immediately outside, Gruber’s Delicatessen at the corner, a bar known as Pete’s Palace next door… He concluded by stating Leila’s telephone number and saying he would wait for a return call.
“Okay, it won’t take me long to drive out to 13th Avenue and check this out,” Knight said. “Is there anything else?”
“Well…” Redpath hesitated, sensing that he was going too far, introducing an unaccountable element of danger, but Leila’s earlier remark had implanted a nagging doubt about the blurring of the line between reality and nightmare. “I don’t want to give you the subject’s name at this stage, but there was something about the bathroom in the house, something frightening that he didn’t want to talk about. I don’t even know why I’m mentioning this—you’ll hardly be going right into the house, will, you?”
“It all depends,” Knight said, the dubious note returning to his voice. “You have to play this sort of thing by ear.”
“I’ll look forward to hearing from you.” Redpath set the phone down and got up to face Leila, who was standing with her hands on her hips in what was almost a caricature of outrage. His feeling of manic elation had ebbed, but in its place was a comforting sense of having taken a positive action, no matter how slight, against the forces of chaos and unreason. It had been his first opportunity to strike back.
“You’d no right to do that, John Redpath,” Leila said, her eyes brilliant with anger. “What’s Henry going to say if the newspapers do pick this up? Do you realise the position he could be in?”
“Do you think I’m enjoying this?” Redpath reached for his shirt and began getting dressed. “Do you think I’m having fun?”
“Perhaps not, but…”
“Perhaps not! Leila, I’m trying to fight my way back into the human race. I’m all alone in this thing, but if that reporter calls back and says those details have checked out… Well, somebody will have to sit up and take notice, that’s all.”
“What if it works the other way?” Leila said. “What if the other place doesn’t exist?”
He gave her a wry smile. “Then I’ll know I was bombed out of my mind all day yesterday. I’ll just have to take it from there.”
“Promise?”
“Don’t even need to promise—I wouldn’t go against the facts.”
“In that case, do you want a green salad or a potato salad with your chicken?” Leila said, with a visible change of mood.
Redpath understood at once that she was anticipating a negative report from Dave Knight, and that she would prefer not to discuss the subject in the meantime. The idea of a truce, of a return to normal living—no matter how temporary—had an undeniable attraction for him, and he readily entered into the game.
“Green salad,” he said, “but I want to mix my special Italian dressing for it. This new recipe I’ve got doesn’t just stimulate the taste buds—it makes them roam up and down your tongue in armed gangs demanding more and more.”
Leila went to the door. “Why do you always exaggerate?”
“Have you ever seen a mob of taste buds in a threatening mood?” he said, following her into the kitchen. “A fearsome sight!”
He helped Leila prepare a simple evening meal, and while they were eating it discovered that one of his favourite films—a 1944 comedy-thriller called Scared Stiff, starring Jack Haley—was having a rare showing on television. Leila agreed to watch it with him, and while they sat together in the companionable dusk, laughing at the same things that people had laughed at in another time and place, building bridges, he found himself wishing that the telephone would not ring. He wanted to rest for a while. He was tired of arguing and being afraid, and of struggling to assimilate concepts which were alien to the world-view which had sustained him since infancy, and there was a magical peace-fulness in being able to lie back on a deep settee beside the woman he loved while darkness drifted down from the sky and there was no need to resist being drawn into the beguiling little universe of the cathode ray tube, where Jack Haley’s face periodically floated in space…a comet…a comic comet…a comic comet rendering him comatose…
Redpath slipped easily and cleanly into sleep.
Some miles away, on the far side of Calbridge, the blue-white street lights had begun to glow all along the redbrick canyon of the Woodstock Road, casting unnatural shadows, producing odd changes in the apparent colours of people’s clothes and cars. Buses were still plying the road—compact, mobile constellations of yellow stars—and further salients were carved into the darkness by the lights of the corner shops; honey-coloured in the case of the confectioners, tobacconists, fish-and-chippers, and the old-style public houses; cold, motionless fluorescent white in the case of those building society branches, estate agencies and utilities stores whose fronts were illuminated all night to encourage window-shoppers and deter thieves. Traffic lights added their contributions of ruby, topaz and emerald to the slim chain of radiance, and would continue to do so all through the night, patiently orchestrating the flow and counter-flow of vehicles which existed only in the proto-minds of their automatic control boxes.