Hologram: A Haunting Read online

  Table of Contents

  ALSO BYJAMES CONROYD MARTIN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  THE POLAND TRILOGY

  NEXT FROM JAMES CONROYD MARTIN

  CONNECT WITH THE AUTHOR

  Hologram: A Haunting

  Copyright © 2014 by James Conroyd Martin. All rights reserved.

  First Kindle Edition: 2014

  Editor: Mary Rita Perkins Mitchell

  Cover and Formatting: Streetlight Graphics

  House on cover: Houmas House, Burnside, LA; Kevin Kelly, owner www.Houmashouse.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  For Scott H. Hagensee

  ALSO BY

  JAMES CONROYD MARTIN

  The Poland Trilogy

  Push Not the River Book One

  Against a Crimson Sky Book Two

  The Warsaw Conspiracy Book Three

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This novel would not have been possible without the inspiration of Scott Hagensee, his research into the history of a particular Hammond house, the family that had it built, and the characteristics of Hammond, Indiana, in 1910-11. Moreover, occurrences experienced in the house provided the impetus of the fictional story.

  Kudos go to editor extraordinaire Mary Rita Perkins Mitchell for her editing skills and incisive continuity suggestions.

  This is one of those books writers sometimes set aside for a while. It was brought to the forefront first by Kathryn Mitchell and then by John Rdzak, Ellen Longawa, Linda Hansen, and by master of the science fiction and fantasy genres, Piers Anthony.

  Angels, and ministers of grace, defend us!

  Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn’d.

  Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell.

  Be thy intents wicked or charitable.

  Thou com’st in such a questionable shape …

  Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.4

  PROLOGUE

  Hammond, Indiana

  July 1911

  “Damn!” nine-year-old Claude Reichart whispered under his breath as he kicked a stone across the gravel drive that led to the old barn. His father’s favorite curse tasted good on his tongue. Good enough to repeat it, louder. He kicked again. The dust of a dry summer lifted, eddied, and slowly settled, its effect pleasing the boy.

  He looked up at the barn that was being used as a garage, squinting in the glare of the sun. His wire-rimmed spectacles had become dusty. He removed them and wiped the lenses with a hanky, all the while mesmerized by the fading and blistering red of the barn.

  Forbidden territory.

  Claude replaced the spectacles and looked sideways, to the house. He knew he should return to the swing on the verandah. But it would be another hour, his mother had told him, before he would play for the church ladies, who would whisper and coo and nod, fans flashing and huge hats bobbing. He deemed most of them silly women, their doting something to endure. He was anxious to be back at the black and white keys, feeling the vibration and noise and power of the music at his command. It was only then that he felt happy.

  Now, for once he wished he had a friend to help ease his boredom. Not that he got any pleasure out of the kind of play children his own age found fun.

  Claude was too smart not to be aware of his difference from other children. He did have a vague recollection of that day, at four years old, when his father sat him down on a stool in front of a new upright Steinway. Or perhaps his father had repeated the story so many times that he merely thought he remembered. But he could not recall a time before the piano. Music, it seemed had been his existence always, as much a part of him as breathing. His father often remarked that playing and inventing melodies came to him as if to a bird. Mr. Schmidt, the music master his father had hired, agreed.

  The heat of the noon sun stung Claude’s face and arms and legs, and the discomfort prompted Claude to move. Ahead of him, temptation beckoned. He started slowly toward the two-story structure that housed the family’s two electric cars.

  He knew the barn was full of curiosities from the past. Harnesses, riding crops, and implements from the days when the land had been farm land. Things to examine, wonder at, touch. Things more modern, too, like the mysteriously massive and intricate transformers that charged the family cars. There was danger in electricity, his father had warned, but Claude was thinking now that it would be cool inside.

  After ten or twelve paces, he brought himself up short. He paused, listening to the lilting cadences of the women’s laughter, his mother’s soprano ringing above the others’.

  He sucked in a long breath. He knew that he should return to the verandah, that his mother would look for him there. And yet . . .

  He removed his spectacles and wiped at them again. By the time he put them back on, his indecision had evaporated.

  His body lurched into motion, and with just a few quick and furtive steps, he slipped into the structure his father had proclaimed verboten.

  “Where is the child?” Polly Davis questioned. “When shall we hear him play?”

  Alicia Reichart nodded in the direction of the dining room door that led out onto the verandah. “Claude’s out on the swing. He’ll play for us after luncheon.”

  “Oh, we are so looking forward to it,” Polly said in her throaty voice, nodding to her cluster of friends as if she spoke for all. “You are so fortunate, my dear, having a child like that. A prodigy, the paper says.”

  “Everyone says that!” Mabel Tryon said.

  Alicia Reichart smiled. She was lucky, she knew. Life had certainly blessed her and she thanked God every day for her poor but happy childhood, a fine husband, wealth, status in her church and community—and most of all, little Claude. The tow-headed, green-eyed child was the joy of her days. He was her future. His name—Claude Reichart—would one day be revered along with the masters like Liszt, Chopin, Mozart. And she would be right there with him on his journey toward immortality. She shivered. How had she become so fortunate?

  Although Hammond had been a thriving Midwest city since the turn of the century and now boasted a bustling downtown center and three opera houses, it would be the name of Reichart that would put it on the map there at the bottom of Lake Michigan in letters large enough to elicit notice, real notice. Alicia had her worries, however. She knew that her son’s talent was destined to one day take him from Hammond. Would it take him from her, as well? There
already had been overtures from abroad. Her husband Jason had spent a year in Paris after law school and favored a school there. Would she be able to send Claude away? Or, if she were to go along, could she part with her husband and the two-year-old twin boys? That Jason could go was out of the question. The family law firm held its considerable success to his involvement on every level.

  “Is the stained glass from the Tiffany Company?” The question pulled Alicia from her thoughts. It came from Ruth Mason, a newcomer to the First Presbyterian Church and so a new guest at 33 Springfield Street.

  “Yes,” Alicia Reichart replied, holding in check her pride. She dared not appear smug. That is another thing, she thought. This house! How am I ever to leave this house?

  They sat in the music room and the conversation turned to other things. Alicia’s eyes were focused on the horizontal panel of three square windows above the Steinway. The sunshine caught every flashing nuance of the glass, both clear and frosted, and of the hues of green and amber. The side windows opened inward and were adjusted now only so far as to admit fresh air, while still allowing for the pleasure of the eye. All three were to have been stationary, like the massive triptych vertical panels on the staircase, but she had insisted that the two side windows be made to open. Although the room had two ordinary windows on the west wall, she knew the western sun could be brutal and that when the shades on those windows had to be drawn, the family would relish a breeze from the north. Jason had seen to it that she confer with the architect on such things throughout the planning and building stages.

  Such activities naturally took her away from her children and for this she had felt some sense of guilt. But they did not want for good care and—oddly—it seemed as if the new home had become for her another child.

  Nearly a mile due south of the city’s center, the house was the first on a street newly developed on the old Hayley farmstead. The architect had blended the most beautiful and functional aspects of the Greek, Federal, and other styles. Facing south, away from the sprawling city, the sixteen-room house of planking with its Doric columns and wide windows sat perched like a large unblinking matron in starched white. The views east and south from the balconies were of Indiana’s breathtakingly lush green farmland and prairie studded with purple and yellow flowers. Just a stone’s throw to the west, across the state line into Illinois, lay the rustic village of West Hammond. Behind and a bit east of the great square structure, at the end of a gravel drive, sat the old Hayley barn. It was an eyesore and Alicia looked forward to the fall when a proper coach house would be erected for their electric carriages, white as the house and replete with living quarters above for a servant or two.

  Upon the sound of his mother’s voice, Claude Reichart peered down from the hayloft window. His mother stood on the back porch speaking sharply to Della, the kitchen maid. His mother’s face looked mean, a meanness mirrored by Butch and Sally, the family dogs who had trailed her. She was scolding the Irish maid for taking time away from her luncheon duties to bring a plate of food out to a hobo. Claude was used to seeing such men, who came through Hammond on freight trains, sometimes stopping in town long enough to find their way south to Springfield Street and the big white house. Drifters, Papa called them. He often warned Claude to steer clear of them. Some could be very dangerous, he said in his deep, disapproving way.

  The old hobo was large, his face red beneath a tangled mass of greasy hair, dark but graying. Claude felt the man’s embarrassment. Or is it anger? he wondered. Papa’s face would turn just as red on those few occasions when he became very angry.

  Claude’s mother hustled the maid into the house and in the exchange the contents of the plate—chicken salad, beans, corn bread—fell to the ground. The German Shepherds tore into it at once. His mother’s face softened a bit, and she told the man to come back later in the day if he wished food.

  After she had gone in, the man attempted to salvage some of the food, but the dogs’ low growls were menacing enough to dissuade him. They were not about to share. Incensed, he kicked at the dirt and moved away, out of Claude’s sightline.

  Claude turned from the window and started to move toward the opening leading down. He knew that he should get back to the verandah. After that little scene he had just witnessed, his mother would be completely out of sorts if she were to find him gone. She insisted that her luncheons go off like clockwork, and could be quite a bear to live with—so his father said—when they didn’t. Besides, it would not be long before he would be called in to play. And he had a new piece he was anxious to try out.

  His hands had only just touched the ladder that jutted up into the loft when he heard a noise from below. He stopped, his heart pausing as well, then racing.

  Wide sliding doors were situated at both the front and back of the barn. It was one of the doors at the rear that was creaking slowly open now, strangely so. A widening angle of light poured in—and with it the gigantic shadow of the hobo in the doorway. He had merely made the pretense of leaving the property, disappearing instead around the rear of the barn and out of sight of the house.

  Damn. What am I to do now? Claude was not supposed to be in the barn, much less in the hayloft. Only last week he had begged permission. His father’s words rang in his ears now: What if you were to fall and break an arm or hand? You might never play the same way again!

  The boy trembled. His grip on the ladder tightened. How was he to avoid this man, this hungry and angry man who had lost his chance at a good meal?

  Of what terrible things was such a man capable? He had been warned about the transients who came and went with the trains.

  Claude stared down. The light that had filled the downstairs suddenly disappeared. The door had been shut again.

  He listened.

  The man was inside the barn. Claude’s heart hammered in his chest. He could hear the man shuffling about below in the shadows, mumbling unhappily to himself.

  Then the man came into view, the top of his head framed—as if by a camera—in the square opening leading downstairs. Claude held his breath, praying the man did not look up. Slowly, noiselessly, the boy drew away from the ladder. His head reeled. He sensed danger. He was not usually afraid of strangers, but he felt something stir inside him, something as instinctive as his talent. Something poisonous.

  He would not try to get past the man. He would wait.

  He swallowed hard, his stomach turning. Why have I done this? I’ve been warned.

  Claude heard a familiar metallic noise now. He inched his way to where he could peer down again. He knelt on the floor and brought his head low until he could make out what the intruder was doing. His father had taken his own car to the law office, so it was his mother’s Woods Victoria that had caught the man’s interest. He was leaning inside now, as if fishing for something.

  Claude drew back, wondering if he should attempt the ladder . . . if he were quick enough . . . But when he looked again the man was sitting on the hard ground, absorbed in a paper package he had found. A match flared in the gloom. The man had found Claude’s father’s cigarettes—or did they belong to his mother?

  The rising sulfur and cigarette smoke caused Claude to move back, slowly, carefully. The smell had always caused him to sneeze. He felt a sneeze welling up now and held his breath.

  He prayed for the urge to pass. He prayed very hard.

  The man won’t stay, Claude told himself. He’ll be too afraid of getting caught.

  The inclination to sneeze passed.

  The boy lay down soundlessly on a soft mound of old hay, curling into a fetal position, praying that the man would not venture up the ladder. I’ll just wait him out, he thought. He’s bound to go soon.

  Time passed.

  Claude was right. The strange man did rise to leave soon after he finished several cigarettes, but he had stayed long enough for the sense of danger to sl
ow, like Claude’s pulse, coaxing the boy into slumber.

  One arm was not enough for the man to pull open the wide carriage door. He grunted to himself and freed the other by tossing aside the butt of his last cigarette.

  Although the chicken salad hadn’t been seasoned in the way she liked—too much pepper, too little poultry seasoning—Alicia Reichart smiled to herself at the way the luncheon was progressing. She prayed that the nanny would be able to keep the twin boys contained once they were awakened from their naps and the recital began.

  Overseeing two men hired for the occasion, she was trying to fit as many chairs into the modest music room as she could manage. Only twenty could be accommodated. Some guests would have to be seated in the hall and double parlor. Perhaps, she thought, next time it would be better to have the piano moved to the dining room so that more people could appreciate the sight as well as the sound of little Claude’s playing.

  “Alicia!” Julia Mulvihill’s shrill cry wrenched Alicia from her thoughts. “Alicia! Come at once, there’s a fire!”

  A cry of alarm rose among the ladies, who were all on their feet in a great crush, pushing toward the dining room door that led outside. They spilled out onto the columned verandah that flanked the driveway, their faces—like a stage of tragic masks—drawn to the north, their cries rising at what met their eyes.

  Alicia pushed through a mass of trailing dresses, silk and laces, shoulders and elbows. Her heart thumped wildly.

  What was afire? Was it a fire downtown? The Lion Store? Her mind would not work.

  Then she saw the smoke coming up onto the verandah and realized how close the fire must be.

  When she got to the door, she could feel the fire’s heat and did not look to the left—in the direction of the barn—for she had already determined what it was that was ablaze. Those bulky transformers had given her shivers of fear the very day they were installed. She knew it was the barn and so she shouldered her way onto the porch, looking instead to the right, to the porch swing where she prayed to find Claude sitting.