Read Online City of Masks by Daniel Hecht - Free Book Online Page B

delusive behavior. We're on the same side here, Mr. Warren."
    Cree had driven away trying to sort through the several levels of that short conversation. Jack Warren wasn't as sophisticated or cosmopolitan or assured as Ron, or even, despite her disarray, Lila. His accent was deeper, his suit didn't fit as well, he was clearly trying harder - as Lila said, a man feeling perpetually on the outside of New Orleans's wealthier society, looking in. His concerns for his wife's well-being were no doubt sincere, but they were complicated by his desire to live at Beauforte House. And though he certainly wanted his wife "back," she suspected he wanted her returned to him in the form he was used to: timid, compliant, self-effacing, supportive. Which Cree could not promise. Lila would come through this a stronger person, or not at all.
    Wanting to make a credible first impression, Cree had dressed in a businesslike outfit of skirt, white blouse, silk jacket, nylons, and moderate heels, but after fifteen minutes at her computer she suddenly realized that if she didn't get out of them she'd go crazy herself, run screaming down the hotel halls, flinging clothing left and right. She stood up and peeled off the layers, then took a quick shower. Still naked, she went to the minibar, found a Heineken, opened it, drew a satisfying swallow, and stood for a moment in the middle of the room, rolling the tension out of her shoulders. Through the gauze curtains, the busy street seemed very alluring. New Orleans!
    Jeans and a T-shirt, she decided at last, walking shoes. Feeling much better, she dressed and carried the beer back to the laptop.
    Lila's experiences, from what Cree had heard so far, were anomalous, particularly the table's claw feet clenching their globes. The shoes were possibly a spectral manifestation and the most scary kind, too - the furtive and secretive kind, the kind with some weird agenda. Just the thought made Cree shiver. But that type was very rare; put it together with the table coming alive, and you had to consider other alternatives.
    One was that Lila Warren did have a brain disorder, or was facing some normal-world psychological crisis. She was certainly a woman arriving at certain physical and situational passages: last kid just off to college, the empty-nest syndrome. Maybe the beginnings of menopause? Moving to a too-big, too-empty house, redolent with memories of her distant childhood. The clash of past, present, and that long, looming future as Jack Warren's little wife. The strong possibility of a medical dimension here upped the stakes and greatly increased the level of Cree's responsibility: Her actions now would have direct bearing on the mental health, the survival, of another person.
    Another possibility was that the experiences were epiphenomenal: that is, Lila's perceptions were psychological in origin, not delusory per se but rather "side effects" of being in the proximity of a real extracorporeal presence. Cree's sometime mentor, Mason Ambrose, had lectured her from time to time on the diversity of epiphenomenal effects. They could include anything, as the witness's hyperstimulated mind, triggered by subconscious perceptions of inexplicable phenomena, churned out images, sounds, feelings, sensations. Dr. Ambrose's several papers on epiphenomenal manifestations stressed that though the perceived images were not "real," as symbol-rich products of the witness's subconscious they could be very helpful in determining the nature of the actual haunting entity and the witness's link to it.
    There were other possibilities, progressively less likely. One was that the things Lila experienced were indeed the manifestations of some awful revenant, part of a once-human being locked into its own scary imaginings. In effect, the ghost of a crazy person. That would be a hard one - hard to study, hard to communicate with, hard to shake out of Lila. And very dangerous for the empath who tried to make contact. Madness could be