The Paper Grail Read Free Page A

just as surely as if the Studebaker had driven through the wall. It was a car that lacked credibility. The ghosts might as well have been pedaling unicycles and wearing fright wigs. If only it had been some sort of generic Ford or Chevy, people might have bought the idea.
    For Uncle Roy, though, the ghost museum had been a scientific study in the paranormal. He didn’t care what sort of car the ghosts drove. He didn’t require a ghost to follow fashion. The public ridiculed a Studebaker, largely because it had a front end that you couldn’t tell from the rear; it was a sort of mechanical push-me pull-you. But if such a vehicle was good enough for the ghosts, then to hell with the public; it was good enough for Uncle Roy, too. That’s what made it about ten times as sad when the museum closed down—Uncle Roy’s sincerity.
    Realizing that he wasn’t very hungry, Howard opened the glove compartment in order to put the brownie away. A glass paperweight lay inside, dense with flower canes and ribbons that looked like Christmas candy. He meant it to be a gift for Sylvia, who had always loved pretty things. It had cost him a couple hundred dollars, though, and it might seem like an ostentatious gift. He would have to be subtle with it.
    A half mile north of Albion there was a turnout on the land side of the highway. Howard slowed the truck and bumped off onto the shoulder, which widened out behind a line of trees into a gravel parking lot that had been invisible from the road to the south. Sitting at the far edge of the lot, overhung by fir and eucalyptus, was a long bunkhouselike building, empty and boarded up. There was a fence of split pickets running along in front, with three or four cow skulls impaled on random pickets. A painted, weathered sign over the front porch read, “Museum of Modern Mysteries.”
    He cut the engine and sat on the edge of the lot, just able to hear the muted crash of breakers through the rolled-up windows. So this was it. He had known it was out here somewhere, sitting lonesome and empty along the highway. Somehow he had expected more, although exactly what he had expected he couldn’t say. He was tempted at first to climb out and have a look, but the windows were shuttered, and the longer he sat there, the sadder the place seemed to be. Some other time, maybe. He was planning on spending a couple of weeks; hecould always get Uncle Roy to drive him back out and show him around, if his uncle was up to it and still had a key.
    Howard thought about the Hoku-sai sketch, hanging on the wall of Graham’s house, back down the road. It was time to have a look at it. To hell with laundromats and appointments. He had waited long enough. It was almost two years ago that he had written a letter suggesting that Graham give the sketch to the museum in Santa Ana on what was called permanent loan. Graham could write it off on his taxes. Howard would use it as the focus of a new wing of oriental artwork.
    Two years ago that had sounded enterprising—something new. But for nearly a year after he sent the letter he hadn’t heard anything in return, and had almost forgotten about the sketch. Then, unexpectedly, he had got a letter back, agreeing to the permanent loan business. Graham wouldn’t ship the piece, though; Howard would have to come after it. He had done nothing about it for most of a year. Then a month ago something shifted in him—the dreams, the accidental rediscovery of the origami lily—and he began to feel like a man whose spirit was beginning to recover from a long dry spell.
    He came up with the idea of going up north, of taking a slow, zigzag route, driving back roads out of obscure beaches and primitive campgrounds. It would be nothing less than a matter of sorting out his life. He would visit Uncle Roy and Aunt Edith in Fort Bragg, get to know Sylvia again. He would take a month to do it, just like in the old days. Mrs. Gleason, his boss, hadn’t liked the idea of month-long vacations,