"Derek Rayne! Beware!"
The silent cry tore through his mind. He struggled for breath. He was
smothering, drowning. Grappling with the blankets, he fought to the surface of his
sleep. Awake now, he strove to control his lungs. "In... out," he concentrated, "in...
out... in... out."
At last the rhythm came of its own will. Derek Rayne rolled onto his side and
fumbled for the light switch. He sat on the edge of the bed and pushed his hands
through his damp hair, surprised that he was sweating. Shivering, he reached for his
watch on the night stand... 3:22 a.m. He felt ill.
Born with psychic "gifts," Derek was accustomed to the slight nauseousness and
vertigo that could accompany his shifts in perception from reality to vision and back
again, but nothing was worse than bursting to consciousness in a strange, dark place...
alone, dizzy, and disoriented. Sometimes that psychic birthright could overload his
brain and senses to produce dramatic symptoms, but this was not now the case. He
simply felt like shit. He pulled the bedspread around his shoulders and stumbled off to
the bathroom. He had to get warm. He was freezing... the room was freezing. What
was the damned air conditioning doing on in mid-March? He checked the thermostat...
eighty degrees.
He pressed the button for the heat lamp... nothing. He turned on the shower...
at least there was hot water. After a few minutes under the near-scalding stream he felt
better... perhaps not better, but a little warmer. Derek wrapped himself in his robe and
the blanket as well, then reached for the phone and dialed the desk.
"Concierge."
"This is Derek Rayne in room 318. The air conditioning is on full blast in here.
Could you please send someone up to adjust it?"
"Certainly, sir. Right away."
"Also...would you have room service bring a pot of coffee and some aspirin?"
"Of course, Dr. Rayne. Will there be anything else?"
"No," Derek responded. "That'll be all." He flipped on the television and surfed
through the channels until he found CNN. He listened to the various major and minor
world crises as he quickly dressed, knowing there would be no more sleep.... So why
try?
CNN announced the local time... 4:00 a.m. mountain standard time. Derek
sighed... nine hours until his flight left Albuquerque for San Francisco. He knew they
were going to be a very long nine hours. God! He wished he was home... why had he
taken a commercial flight? His eyes hurt and his head throbbed, but not from the
"Sight." His skin burned at a touch, his joints ached, and he could feel his throat and
chest beginning to tighten. No doubt about it... Dr. Derek Rayne, double Ph.D.,
Precept of the Legacy's San Francisco House, Chairman of the Luna Foundation, and
Director of the Winston Rayne Hall of Antiquities was coming down with the flu. He
was angry with himself, and nature... the timing couldn't be worse. He was returning
to San Francisco to face an exhausted staff and a full agenda: two probable hauntings
near Sebastopol, a manifestation of stigmata in Salinas, a possible demonic possession
in Pleasanton, a reception for the Moroccan cultural minister, a fund raiser for St.
Anthony's hospice, and a law suit against Psychic Phone Phrends for daring to mention
the Luna Foundation in one of their infomercials. He was going to put Psychic Phone
Phrends out of business for good.
< < + > >
Since Influenza C had ravaged the hotel staff, Ricardo Baca, the night concierge,
had been virtually alone when the phone rang. "Great!" he mumbled. Juan, the older,
more experienced day concierge made it a practice of appraising Ricky of "who was
who" on the guest list. Tonight, when he had come on duty, Juan had warned him that
there was a rowdy Hollywood group occupying several suites, a Japanese real estate
developer, a Bahrainian sheik in the penthouse, and Dr. Derek Rayne, the wealthy
philanthropist who headed the Luna Foundation. Dr. Rayne was the only one he had
ever heard of before, and it was Dr. Rayne on the other end of the line.
In his few years on the staff of Santa Fe's most exclusive hotel, Ricky had
learned that money can breed peculiarity. He grimaced at the memory of the opera
singer who had insisted that his southwestern styled suite be repainted and decorated
completely in brown, but had to smile at the thought of the Chinese financier who
refused to enter his room because the door was in the wrong place. As if they could
move it. Since it was impossible that the air conditioning could be on in one room
when the whole system had been converted to heating back in mid-October, he
wondered what this Dr. Rayne's problem was.
"Oh, well," he sighed, "as Juan would say, 'Pamper them and they'll purr like
gatitos.'" He decided to add a full choice of breakfast goodies... scones, muffins, a
fruit platter, juice, and whatever else he could think of... to Dr. Rayne's order of coffee
and aspirin "Oh, oh... aspirin... not good!"
Ricardo prepared his profuse apologies as he rolled the room service trolley off
the elevator. He hoped he wasn't going to have to listen to a litany of complaints about
the room not being the one requested and, therefore, having been totally unsuitable
from the outset. "I'm sorry, sir," he would patiently explain. "It was all that was
available for one night on short notice. It was fortunate that we had a cancellation."
He straightened his tie, knocked softly on the door, and said quietly,
"Concierge."
A tall man of about forty-five opened the door. Ricardo restrained a smile at the
sight... the man had his robe on over a wool cardigan, a pullover, and a turtlenecked
sweater. With his tousled hair, he looked like a great bear startled from hibernation.
"Welcome to the North Pole," Derek said, only half joking.
"I'm Ricardo Baca, the concierge. We're short staffed tonight, so I'm doing
double duty," the young man explained as he pushed the trolley through the door.
"Que frio!" he exclaimed. "It is freezing in here."
"It must be a short or something... the thermostat reads eighty degrees," Derek
said, as he poured himself a cup of coffee and watched Ricardo examine the device,
then reach up to run his hand across the vents. Ricardo was surprised. There were no
complaints, no diatribe... only a quiet confidence that seemed to whisper, "It's
broken... do something," and expected something to be done.
"I must apologize... not only for the malfunction, but for all this dust that the fan
evidently blew out. I hope you don't have any allergies," Ricardo said, dragging a
finger across the night table. He wondered how a central heating/air conditioning
system could manage to break down like this. "Unfortunately, I can't offer you another
room. We're completely full... skiers on what's probably the last good outing of the
season. Of course, there'll be no charges.... If there's anything else I can do?"
"I understand." Derek replied with a sigh. "I wouldn't sleep anyway... I only
have to avoid turning into an icicle for another couple of hours. If I didn't have to drive
to Albuquerque this morning, I'd have you send up a bottle of cognac to warm the
insides."
"I can arrange a driver for you," the young man suggested. He was beginning
to like this man with the curious lilt to his voice. Of course, he tended to like anyone
who didn't turn a minor annoyance into a major catastrophe on his shift.
"No, thank you, Mr. Baca... but a portable heater would do nicely," Derek
responded.
"You'll have one in twenty minutes, Sir."
< < + > >
Humming with energy, the small electric heater burned orange, but could
scarcely cast its warmth more than two feet. Derek had tossed everything into his small
carry-on and had packed up his laptop. Finally, he sat down on the floor directly in
front of the heater in hopes that it could warm his cramping back and shoulders. He
glanced at his watch... 4:45... and decided to make some notes on his trip. The
bureaucrats at London House had been giving him fits about keeping two sets of
journals, his own and the Legacy's. "If they want trivia, they'll get trivia," he mumbled
to himself, hurriedly scribbling:
27 March, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Met with gallery owner, Sam Begay, yesterday afternoon.
The artifact he wished me to examine was a large,
unbroken platter, with black and red anthropomorphic
images and unknown symbols along the rim. It was
indeed looted from an Anasazi site near Hovenweep. A
nearly identical specimen rests in the Winston Rayne
collection. I recall that my father found it at the
Hovenweep site during a Legacy sponsored dig. He
believed that it was used for some sort of ritual sacrifice
or presentation. Hoping that one day he might be able to
decipher the symbols, he added it to the collection before
the stringent site preservation laws were enacted. Mr.
Begay called the police and an arrest was made. Legacy
interest is probably unwarranted.
He closed the journal, slipped it in with the computer, then called Mr. Baca to
have the two cases removed to his rental car. Since the hotel's dining room would not
open for hours, Derek decided to take a walk until he found a cafe or coffee shop
open... better to keep moving than to sit and have his joints freeze, literally and
figuratively.
Yesterday, because of Santa Fe's narrow streets and limited parking, he had
been forced to leave his car some distance from Sam Begay's shop and walk. He had
been coming from the opposite direction, but thought that he recalled seeing a small
cafe just down from the Plaza. It seemed to be a local holdout against the upscale,
nouveau cuisine bistros that had invaded the area. Derek hoped that any establishment
that dared to prominently display a bright red neon Good Eats sign in such an
environment might just open at five in the morning.
< < + > >
Derek cut through the pool area to the rear gardens, now bare of all but cactus,
evergreens, and rock, past a small grotto shrine dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe.
He smiled... someone had left a large votive at the statue's feet. It's candlelight
flickered across the Holy Mother's blue and gold robes. From his balcony he had
noticed a rustic wooden gate that let onto a path which seemed to head toward the
Plaza. He found it and tried the latch. It wasn't locked.
Once he left the hotel's light, Derek found the path to be dark and treacherous.
Following the rough stone wall to his right, he was careful about where he placed his
steps. He could sense soft, slick places under the long dead leaves and smell the cool
mustiness of decay. Finally, he came out onto a wooden bridge, which he knew
crossed the Santa Fe River, a mere creek at this point so close to its origins. He could
hear its gurgles, but all below was pitch blackness. Already out of breath, he stopped
to rest... not good, he thought. The cold air was painful to breathe. He adjusted his gray
dotted scarf, tucking the wool more closely around his neck and doubling it over his
chest. He blew warm breath onto his numb fingertips... he'd forgotten his gloves... and
fastened his anorak up to his chin. Derek blew into his hands again and shoved them
deep into his pockets. A twig snapped behind him, back down the path. He turned to
see a dark, animal shape glide into the naked bushes... perhaps a dog.
He glanced up through barren cottonwood branches at an ice blue moon. For
some reason, the memory of cottonwood trees on a hot desert day always triggered a
nostalgic sensation. He walked on, across a small park, then up Cathedral Place, past
the red stone, Romanesque Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi, for whom Santa Fe, like
San Francisco, was named. By the time he had gone the half block to round the corner
onto Palace Avenue, he needed to rest again. He stopped to lean against a set of
elaborate wrought iron gates that kept prying tourists from a cozy private courtyard.
A small fountain gurgled within. A ceramic wind bell clanked in the morning breeze.
"'Scuse me, mister. What are you doing here?"
Derek started and turned to face a police officer, whom he knew had to be
wondering if he was drunk."Good morning, officer," he said as the cop shone a
flashlight in his face. "I was just going for breakfast. I recall seeing a little cafe just off
the Plaza yesterday. Do you know if they're open yet? Am I headed the right way?"
"Yep, should be open," the officer replied, deciding that he wasn't going to have
to haul another drunk in to sober up in the tank. "Are you OK? You don't look so
good?"
Derek decided he'd better be pleasant to the powers that be. "I seem to have
come down with the flu... couldn't sleep... hotel dining room wasn't open yet... so I
thought a walk might clear my head a bit. It might have been a mistake though."
"Well, you're headed in the right direction... it's not much farther. Irene'll fix
you up with something. I'll be back by... make sure you're OK. Hope you feel better."
"So do I," said Derek, as the cop turned to finish his round. He gathered his
strength for the last leg and pushed himself away from the gate. When he reached the
Plaza and the long, squat adobe Palace of the Governors, a few Navaho and Pueblo
Indians were already spreading out their blankets to display their wares, mostly jewelry
and pottery, for the tourists. It was a custom that went back for generations and it was
rare that a prized spot in the Palace's portico changed hands. He turned the corner and,
with relief, saw the bright red neon sign.
