Chapter 21

When Lindy entered the dining room, the only other customers were a young couple at one of the far tables and a family of four. No one looked up when she came in. The couple was too engrossed in each other, and the family too busy arguing about the menu.

"Just one of you?" the hostess said. She wore a black sheath gown that was at least a size too small. Her hair was frizzed out in an approximation of the style affected by some of the younger movie stars.

"Right," Lindy told her. "One."

The hostess signaled to the blond waitress who was still gossiping with her redheaded friend. With some reluctance she picked up a menu from a stack by the cash register and came over. She had the kind of face that should have been chewing gum, though as far as Lindy could tell she was not. Thank God for small favors, she thought.

The waitress led the way to a table equidistant between the young couple and the fighting family.

"Is this okay?"

"Fine."

Lindy sat down and opened the menu. At least the prices were reasonable. This unplanned trip would really screw up her budget. A busboy appeared and deposited a glass of ice water and a basket of bread sticks.

The busboy vanished and the waitress took his place. "Would you like something from the bar?"

"I don't think so." She could still feel the drinks she'd had earlier.

The waitress poised a ballpoint pen over her order pad. Lindy waited for her to lick the point, and was vaguely disappointed when she didn't.

"How's the stuffed trout?"

"It's really good," the girl said earnestly. "Fresh every day right out of the lake."

"I'll have that."

"You want soup or salad?"

"Green salad. Oil-and-vinegar dressing."

"Wine?"

"No, thanks. I'll have coffee later."

The girl went away. Lindy took a sip from the glass of ice water. She glanced over at the arguing family. There was a comfortable familiarity about their squabbling that said there was nothing seriously wrong there. On the other side of her the young couple leaned close to each other, laughing softly together. Lindy envied all of them.

A man came in and was greeted by the hostess. He had beefy shoulders and the florid face of a serious drinker. Good hair and even teeth. Probably as a young man he had been -

The glass slipped from Lindy's grasp and bounced on the carpeted floor, splashing ice water over her shoes.

Roman Dixon.

Twenty years older, heavier, and with the mark of defeat on him that he'd not had before. But unquestionably Roman.

He saw her. His mouth dropped open, and he ignored what the hostess was saying. He came toward her, the hostess following uncertainly.

"It's Lindy Grant, isn't it?"

He put out a hand, and she took it. There was a strength in the hand, but it was uncallused. Soft.

"Hello, Roman."

The hostess looked from one to the other.

"You two know each other, then?"

"We're old friends," Roman said. To Lindy: "Okay if I sit with you?"

"Sure, there's plenty of room."

The busboy hustled over with another place setting. Roman ordered Jack Daniel's with a splash, and said give him a few minutes before they talked to him about food.

He leaned back and let his eyes range over Lindy. "So... you're looking great."

"You too."

"Where you living now?"

"California."

"No kidding. I'm up in Seattle. Got a chain of sporting goods stores up there."

"Good for you."

The conversation continued in this vein for about five minutes, touching on how they were doing and how long since they'd been back to Wolf River and the old town sure had changed. Lindy was reminded of the old song "The Babbit and the Bromide" as done by Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in some movie whose title she couldn't remember.

Then the small talk died. They looked at each other with a touch of guilt two decades old.

Roman took a deep pull from his drink. "It doesn't look like this is going to be much of a class reunion."

"It isn't a reunion at all, is it, Roman?"

He took a few seconds before answering. "No, I don't suppose it is." He looked around at the all-but-empty dining room. "But what the hell is it?"

"I think we're afraid to guess."

Lindy saw the other man enter the dining room and look around. He wore an expensive tweed jacket and tailored slacks, but looked frail despite the clothes. When he saw her and Roman he froze. His hair was thinner and his face more pinched, but she knew him. There was no mistaking the pointed, foxy look, or the quick little hand movements.

Alec McDowell.

The hostess brought Alec over and seated him with a cheerful smile. "Well, this table's beginning to look like old home week."

She looked around, but when she got no answering smiles she left quickly.

The men got their food orders out of the way - prime rib rare for Roman, consomme, cottage cheese salad, and dry toast for Alec. Roman ordered another drink.

The waitress left them, and the silence grew heavy.

Alec finally spoke. "I guess we might as well talk about it."

There was silence for a moment. Roman frowned and said, "Talk about what?"

"What we're all wondering," Alec said. "Why we're here. Who brought us."

"All right," Lindy said. "I'll go first. I'm here because I had no choice."

She told them about the messages, the strange voice speaking through Nicole, and the unnatural blemish that had bloomed on her daughter's face, with the threat of worse if she didn't return to Wolf River on the specified day. All she left out was the frightening hallucination in bed the night before.

"I'll be damned," Roman said. "That's the kind of stuff that happened to me, too."

He spoke defiantly, but Lindy could sense the fear underlying his words as he told of the encounter with his mother-in-law. Without being specific, he said some unspecified physical thing that was done to him. Finally there was the doctor's prescription with the ominous message.

"Similar story with me," Alec said. He told them about the voice from the cleaning woman, the strange gypsy, the messages, and the tongue problem. He hesitated for a moment, then said, "Did your messages mention the clown?"

The others nodded.

Roman drained his Jack Daniel's and signaled for another. "There's only one thing it can be," he said huskily. "Somebody knows about Frazier."

"That doesn't make sense," Lindy said.

"What else does a clown mean to the three of us?"

"What if somebody did know?" Alec said. "Why would he wait twenty years to do anything about it?"

"How do I know?" Roman said belligerently. "Maybe he just found out."

Alec wrinkled his nose as the waitress placed another drink in front of Roman. "Maybe you ought to go a little easy on that."

Roman's jaw tightened. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Just that we've got some serious talking to do here, and we ought to keep our heads clear."

"My head's plenty clear," Roman said. "I don't know about yours."

"Cut it out," Lindy said. "I haven't got time to sit here and listen to you two argue."

"So what's your opinion?" Roman asked, sulking.

"First, I don't think anybody just found out about Frazier, and I don't think anybody waited twenty years to get to us either."

"What else can it be?"

"I don't know," Lindy admitted. "But if you can tell me how somebody could make my daughter's face break out, swell up Alec 's tongue, and do whatever it was he did to you, I'll be willing to listen."

No one talked at the table for several minutes. Roman ate some of his dinner and ordered another drink, watching Alec closely. Alec tasted his consomme and salad, drank a little milk, and looked back at Roman.

Lindy reflected that she was sitting with the two men she had spent the most important year of her life with, and she really didn't know them at all.

The quiet couple in the corner got up and left, walking close together. The family of four began arguing about dessert.

Roman shivered. "You'd think they'd put some heat in here."

"Heat?" Alec said. "In July? In Wisconsin?"

Roman looked over his shoulder, then turned back to scowl at Alec. "Must have been a draft for a minute there."

Alec jumped up, yanked his chair out from the table, and stared at the padded back.

"What's wrong?" Lindy asked.

Alec ran his hand over the padded leather of the chair back. "It felt like something in the chair was jabbing my neck."

"It's all that milk you're drinking," Roman said. "When did you get on that stuff anyway?"

"At least I'm not rotting out my liver."

"God, will you two cut it out?" Lindy said. "We've got to get our acts together here and figure out what's going on."

"And what we're going to do about it," Alec said, sitting back down gingerly.

"I'm getting the hell out of here first thing in the morning is what I'm doing about it," Roman said.

Lindy stared at him. "Do you think he'll let you do that? Just walk away after all the elaborate arrangements he made for getting us here?"

"Who do you mean, 'he'?" Roman signaled to the waitress and pointed to his empty glass.

Alec spoke up suddenly. "All right, somebody's got to say it. Are we talking about a ghost?"

Roman waved a hand disgustedly. "Be serious, for Christ sake."

Alec glared at him.

"No, it's worth thinking about," Lindy said. "Things have happened to all of us that there isn't any logical explanation for."

"But ghosts? Give me a break."

"The first time it occurred to me I thought it was crazy too," Lindy said. "Ghosts are not my style. But maybe this isn't that kind of ghost. Maybe it's something created in our own minds."

"What are you talking about?" Roman said.

"How does conscience grab you?"

The waitress came over with Roman's drink. Out of habit he gave the girl a wink and patted her on the fanny. The others were silent while he took a thirsty swallow.

He put the glass down. "Are you saying that after twenty years the three of us, in different parts of the country, all of a sudden get conscience-stricken about something that wasn't really our fault to begin with?"

"Not our fault?" Lindy repeated.

Roman backed off. "Well, not really."

"Whose fault was it, then?"

"Nobody's. It was an accident. Hell, you talk like it was something really bad."

"Wasn't it?" Alec said, staring at his cottage cheese. "The kid died."

"Look, what did we do, really? It was a prank, that's all. Kids do worse than that every day. It wasn't our fault Frazier fell out of the boat."

"We didn't tell anybody afterwards," Lindy said.

"We got scared, that's all. Hell, they couldn't have done much to us if they'd caught us."

"Maybe they should have caught us," Lindy said. "Maybe we should have tumed ourselves in. We could have taken the punishment, whatever it was, and the debt would have been paid."

"I still don't see that we owe any kind of a debt," Roman said. "What happened happened. Anyway, it wasn't my idea. All I wanted to do was shake the kid up a little for peeking in your window."

"Just a minute," Alec cut in. "Are you saying I'm the one to blame for what happened?"

"I'm not saying anything. But it was you who thought up the whole dumb idea - dress him up funny and leave him out in the boat to make a fool of himself."

"You sure didn't try to talk me out of it. In fact, who provided the boat? Who brought the rope we used to tie his hands?"

Roman gripped the edge of the table and leaned toward Alec. "You've suddenly got an awful good memory about something that happened twenty years ago."

"You bet I have. And if you tell me you don't remember everything about it, you're a liar."

Roman started to rise. "Goddamn it, I'm not gonna take -" Lindy hit the table with the flat of her hand. "Stop it!"

The men looked at her in surprise. Roman lowered himself back into the chair.

"Arguing among ourselves isn't going to do any good," she said.

"I don't like being called a liar," Roman grumbled.

"Okay, forget it," Alec said. "I'm upset."

"We're all upset," Lindy said. "Now let's try to calm down and discuss rationally what we're going to do."

"Pretty surely something is going to happen tomorrow," Alec said. "Whoever... whatever is behind this business made the date quite definite."

"So what are we going to do, just wait and let it happen?" Roman asked.

"We're ready to hear suggestions, if you've got any," Lindy told him.

They stopped talking at the approach of the waitress. She came across the dining room in a strange stiff-legged walk, carrying something before her in both hands. She reached the table, stopped, and smiled down at them. It was a smile without any warmth. A smile that did not belong on the innocent face of the girl. She held out the covered soup tureen she carried like an offering.

"A classmate of yours sends this over to you," she said. Her voice had an unearthly synthesized quality.

"What classmate?" Roman said, looking around. The other two stared at the unblinking waitress.

"He had to leave. He said you should enjoy the reunion."

She placed the tureen in the center of the table. Lindy, Alec, and Roman looked at each other. Finally Lindy reached out, grasped the handle, and raised the lid.

The waitress screamed.

She staggered back, both hands holding her head. Roman jumped up and caught her as she was about to fall.

"Hey, you all right?"

"I don't know. I had a dizzy spell or something." She blinked several times and rubbed her eyes. "Thanks, I think I'm okay now." She looked down at the contents of the tureen.

"What the heck is it, anyway?"

The tureen was filled with murky water. Floating face down in the center was a small plastic doll. The doll was dressed in a clown suit.

THE FLOATER

From a cobwebby corner high up on the beamed ceiling he watched the scene below, pleased with the commotion he had caused at the table. He had probed each of their minds, gently, gently, and found the two men would be easy to enter here where his power was greatest. He had given Roman a chill, and Alec a twinge in the back. Just a sample. A very small sample of what was coming to them. The waitress had been easy. A perfect messenger to deliver his "gift."

Lindy was something else. Her mind was stronger in its way then the men. Difficult to enter and control. Difficult, bnt not impossible. He had managed it deeply enough to give her the hallucination on her last night in California. She would not escape. None of them would. Not now. Not after all the years of waiting and planning.

* * *

Lindy looked up from the floating clown at the faces of the others. From their expressions she knew Roman and Alec felt it too. A terrible, inexplicable sense of dread. The feeling that none of them was ever going to leave Wolf River.