The Face
after tomorrow.
On the front page, under the frightening headline, were two photographs: a publicity shot of Ghost Dad, and the front gate of the estate.
Reluctant to read the report for fear that reading it would make it come true, Fric glanced at the bottom of the column and saw that the story continued on page 8. He turned to page 8 in search of the picture most important to him.
And there he was.
Under his photo were these words: Aelfric Manheim, 10, missing since Tuesday night.
As he stared in shock at the photo, his black-and-white image morphed into that of the mirror man, Mysterious Caller, his guardian angel: the cold face, the pale gray eyes.
Fric tried to throw the Times down, but was unable to let go of it, not because his hands were moist with fear but because the newspaper seemed to have acquired a static charge, and clung to him.
In the picture, Mysterious Caller became animated, as if this were not a newspaper photo but a miniature TV screen, and he spoke warningly from the Los Angeles Times: Moloch is coming.
Then with no recollection of having taken a step, Fric found that he had crossed the rose room to the door.
He gasped for breath, though not because of his asthma. His heart boomed louder than the thunder that earlier had knocked through the sky.
The Times lay on the floor by the overturned hamper.
As Fric watched, the newspaper exploded off the Persian carpet as if caught in a wild wind, although not so much as a faint draft could [430] be felt. The several sections of the Times unfolded, blossomed; in seconds, they rumpled and swirled and noisily assembled themselves into a tall human figure, as if an invisible man had been standing there all the time and as if the blown newsprint had adhered to his heretofore unseen form.
This did not have the aura of a guardian angel, though surely it was. This felt
menacing.
The paper man turned from Fric and flung himself at the bay windows. When the crackling newsprint hit the glass, it ceased to be paper anymore, became a shadow, a flowing darkness, that swarmed through the beveled panes in the very way that it had pulsed through the ornaments on the Christmas tree the previous night.
The phantom faded, vanished, as though it had traveled by glass into the rain, and then had ridden on the rain to some place far away and unthinkable.
Fric was alone once more. Or seemed to be.
CHAPTER 65
DR. JONATHAN SPETZ-MOGG LIVED IN A PRICEY Westwood neighborhood, in a fine Nantucket-style house with cedar-shingle siding so silvered by time that not even the rain could darken it, which suggested that the silvering might be an applied patina.
Spetz-Moggs British accent was eccentric enough to be captivating, inconsistent enough to have been acquired during a long visit to those shores rather than by birth and upbringing.
The professor welcomed Ethan and Hazard into his home, but less graciously than obsequiously. He answered their questions not in a spirit of thoughtful cooperation, but in a nervous, wordy gush.
He wore a roomy FUBU shirt and baggy low-rider pants with snap pockets on the legs, looking as ridiculous as any white man trying to dress like a homey from the hood, twice as ridiculous because he was forty-eight. Every time he crossed his legs, which he did frequently, the baggy pants rustled loudly enough to interrupt conversation.
Perhaps he affected sunglasses indoors more often than not. He wore them on this occasion.
Spetz-Mogg removed the shades and put them on again nearly as often as he recrossed his legs, though these two nervous tells were [432] not synchronized. He seemed unable to decide whether he had a better chance of surviving interrogation by presenting an open and guileless image or by hiding behind tinted lenses.
Although the professor clearly believed that every cop was a brutal fascist, hed never be one to climb a barricade to shout the accusation. He wasnt incensed that two agents of the repressive police state were in his home; he was simply, quietly terrified.
In answer to every question, he vomited up a mess of information with the hope that garrulous responses would wash Ethan and Hazard out of his door before they produced brass knuckles and truncheons.
This was not the professor for whom they were
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