A Stir of Echoes (11 page)

  Then I became conscious of Anne awake, looking at me in the darkness. She didn't speak. She didn't make a sound; but I knew the angry fear in her.

  Deliberately, ignoring every impulse screaming in my mind, I lay back and let breath trickle from my lungs, then lay there fighting the need to shiver violently. I clutched at the sheet with talon like ringers and closed my eyes tightly. My brain seemed lightninged with awareness, my body tense and sick with it. But I had to pretend it was nothing. I knew she was there, waiting.

  I don't know how long it was that I struggled against the pull of that woman. She was a living presence to me now. I actually hated her as I would hate another human being; hated her for being in there, for trying to drag me to herself with cords of icy demand.

  Only after a long while did I sense a breaking up of her power. Still I remained tense, ready to fight. Only when it had passed completely did I let my muscles go limp. I lay there, strengthless, knowing that Anne was still awake.

  I jolted again when the lamp clicked on.

  For a moment she said nothing; just looked at me without expression. There the resistance in her seemed to drain off. She looked at me more carefully.

  "You're soaking wet," she said.

  I looked at her speechlessly, feeling the cold drops trickle down across my cheeks.

  "Oh… Tom." She threw aside the covers and suddenly ran from the room. I heard her go into the bathroom, then she came back with a towel. Sitting quickly on the edge of the bed, she began patting my face. She didn't say anything.

  When she'd finished, she put down the towel and brushed back my damp hair with her fingers.

  "What am I doing to you?" she asked.

  "What?"

  "I should be helping you, not fighting you," she said.

  I must have looked very frightened and very hapless because she leaned over and pressed her cheek against mine.

  "Tom. Tom," she whispered, "I'm sorry, darling."

  After a few moments she kissed my cheek and sat up. I could tell from the obdurate expression on her face that she was going to try to face it fully and resolutely.

  "She-was in there again?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "And… if you'd gone in," she said, "do you think you'd have seen her?"

  I drew in a deep breath and let it flutter out.

  "I don't know," I said. "I just don't know."

  "You're sure she exists, though," she said, "I mean-"

  "She exists." I knew she had been about to ask me if I was sure the woman didn't exist in my mind only. "I don't know who she is or what she wants here but… she exists." I swallowed. "Or
did"

  "You… really think she's a-"

  I shook my head tiredly. "I don't know, Anne," I said. "It doesn't make sense. Why should a place like this be haunted? It's only a couple of years old-and the only person who ever lived here was Mrs. Sentas' sister. And she just went east." I smiled wryly at the memory. "Not west," I repeated Phil's little joke.

  She had to smile.

  "Tom, Tom," she said, "remind me to kick my baby brother right smack in the teeth the next time we see him."

  "Will do," I said weakly.

  She hesitated a moment, then said, "You think maybe we should-"

  "No," I said, forgetting my resolve not to anticipate her words. "I don't think Phil could help. Although it wouldn't hurt to write him and tell him to cut out hypnotizing people if he doesn't know what he's doing."

  "I'll write in the morning," she said.

  In a little while, she turned off the lamp and lay down beside me.

  "Do you forgive me?" she asked.

  "Oh, honey…" I put my arms around her and felt the warm fullness of her body against me. "There's nothing to forgive."

  Which was when it came to me; simply, with absolute clarity.

  I started to tell her, then stopped.

  "What were you going to say?" she asked.

  I swallowed. "Uh… in order to get out of going to another of her damned parties," I said, "I told Elsie we were going to your mother's tomorrow night for dinner."

  "Oh." Anne made an amused sound. "So what do we do? Take in a drive-in movie until it's safe to return?"

  "Exactly."

  I lay there quietly, holding her close. What I'd started to say to her hadn't been about Elsie. I'd only said that to conceal my original words. Because, as I'd started to speak them, it had occurred to me that Anne might not want to hear them; whether she believed them or not. And, somehow, I felt that she would believe them now-even though the working out of them might be only an accident. After all there was a fifty percent chance of my being right no matter how or why I made the prediction-that our coming baby would be a girl.

ELEVEN

  THE LETTER WAS DELIVERED SHORTLY AFTER TEN THE NEXT MORNING.

  I took it into the kitchen to Anne, wondering why I felt so uneasy about it. I could see, from the handwriting on the envelope, that it was from her father. For a moment, I thought about my telling Elsie we were going to see Anne's mother that night; and wondered if it had been more than a coincidence.

  Anne opened the letter and started to read it. I watched the expression of worry come into her face.

  "Oh, no," she said.

  It
is
your mother. I almost spoke the words aloud; then, quickly, closed my mouth before she noticed. She looked up.

  "Mother's ill," she said.

  I stared at her. I could hear the clock ticking on the cupboard.

  "No," I said.

  She thought I was referring to the letter. She went on reading it and I felt a great weight dragging down inside of me. I kept staring at Anne, beginning to feel sick.

  "Dad say she's-"

  She stopped instantly and looked at me in blank surprise.

  She started to speak, stopped again. She did this several times. When, at last, she managed to force it, I knew it was against her will.

  "What is it?" Her voice was low and frightened. I shook my head suddenly.

  "Nothing," I said. My voice sounded brittle and artificial.

  She kept looking at me. I felt my heart thudding heavily. I couldn't take my eyes from her. I saw her chest shake with uncontrolled breath.

  "I want you to tell me what it is," she said.

  "It's nothing." I felt dizzy. The room wavered around me. I thought I was going to fall.

  "What
is
it?"

  "It's nothing." Like a brainless parrot repeating. I kept staring at her.

  "Tom-"

  That was when the phone rang.

  The sound that came from me was terrible. It was a moaning sound, a guttural, shaking exhalation of fright. Anne actually shrank back from me.

  The phone kept ringing.

"What is it?"
Her voice was hollow, ready to shatter.

  I swallowed but the lump stayed in my throat. The phone kept ringing, ringing, I tried to speak but couldn't. I shook my head again. That's all I could do; shake my head.

  Suddenly, with a gasp, she pushed by me and I stayed rooted there as she ran across the living room into the hall. The ringing stopped.

  "Hello," I heard her say. Silence.
"Dad!"

  And that was all. Absolute silence. I pressed both shaking palms down on the sink counter and stood there staring at the spread ringers.

  I heard her hang up. I stood waiting. Don't, I thought. Don't come in here. Don't look at me. I heard her footsteps, slow and heavy, moving across the living room rug. Don't, I begged. Please.
Don't look at me.

  I heard her stop in the kitchen doorway. She didn't speak. I swallowed dryly. Then I had to turn. I couldn't bear it, just standing there with all her thoughts assailing me.

  I turned.

  She was staring at me. I'd seen a stare like that only once before in my lifetime. It was on the face of a little girl who was looking at her dog lying crushed in the street; a look compounded of speechless horror and complete, overwhelming disbelief.

  "You knew," she said.

  I reached out an imploring hand.

  "You
knew"
she said-and there was no hiding the revulsion in her voice now; the fear. "You knew this too. You knew before he called."

  "Anne-"

  With a gagging sound, she whirled and fled the living room. I started after her. "Anne!"

  She rushed into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. I banged against it just after she'd locked it. Inside, I heard the start of her dry, chest-racking sobs.

  "Anne, please!"

  "Get away from me!" she cried.
"Get away from me!"

  I stood there, shaking helplessly, listening to her heartbroken sobs as she wept for her mother who had died that morning.

* * *

  She left for Santa Barbara early that afternoon, taking Richard with her. I didn't even ask if she wanted me to go along. I knew she didn't. She hadn't spoken a word to me from the time she'd come out of the bathroom till the time she drove away. Dry-eyed and still, she'd packed a few of her and Richard's things into an overnight bag, then dressed Richard and herself and left. I didn't speak to her. Can you speak to your wife at a time when you are a horror in her eyes?

  After she'd gone, I stood on the lawn looking at the spot where the car had turned left onto the boulevard. The sun was hot on my back. It made my eyes water the way it glinted metallically off the sidewalks. I stood there a long time, motionless, feeling empty and dead.

  "You too, haah?"

  I twitched sharply as someone called to me. Looking across the street I saw Frank in his shorts coming out of his garage with a lawn mower.

  "I thought you were a staunch supporter of Saturday work," he called.

  I stared at him. He put down the mower and started toward me. With a convulsive shudder, I turned away and went back into the house. As I closed the door behind me, I saw him picking up the mower again, squinting quizzically toward our house. He shook his head and then bent over to adjust the grass-catcher.

  I turned from the door and walked to the sofa. I sat down and lay my head back. I closed my eyes and saw, in my mind, the look on her face when she had come back from the telephone. And I remembered something I'd said to Anne the night after Phil had hypnotized me.

  Maybe we're all monsters underneath, I'd said.

  About two-thirty I got the lawn mower out of the garage and started working on the front lawn. Staying in the house was more than I could manage; it was a closet of cruel reminders. So I put on my shorts and tennis shoes and tried to forget by labouring.

  It was a fruitless effort. The monotonous act of pushing the whirring mower back and forth across the grass, if anything, enhanced introspection. Then again, in the state I was in, I doubt if there was an activity in the world which could have made me forget.

  To put it simply-life had become a nightmare.

  Not even a week had passed since that party at Elsie's house; yet, in those short days, more incredible things had happened to me than had happened in the previous twenty-seven years. And it was getting worse; much worse. I dreaded the coming days.

  I thought about Anne, about the horror in her eyes as she realized that I'd known her mother was dead- even before her father had phoned. I put myself in her position. It wasn't hard to see why she'd reacted as she had. The double shock of dread and grief could have snapped anyone.

  "Hey, there."

  I started and looked around. Harry Sentas was standing on his porch looking at me and I realized that I was halfway onto his lawn, cutting a crooked swath lower than the level of his grass,

  "Oh, I-I'm sorry," I said, flustered. "I must have been dreaming."

  He grunted and, as I turned with a nervous smile and started back again, I saw, from the corner of my eye, Sentas step down off his porch to examine the damage.

  I kept mowing without looking up until he'd gone into his house again. Then I dropped the mower and went in for a towel. I sat on the edge of the cool cement porch, mopping at my face and staring across the street at Frank's house.

  I thought about picking up his and Elizabeth's thoughts. I thought about his having an affair with a redhead at the plant. I thought about Elsie hiding the carnal clutter of her mind behind a face of bland innocence; about her brow-beating her husband mercilessly. I thought about Sentas and his wife and the tension that always seemed to be between them. I thought about the bus driver up the block who was an alcoholic who spent half his weekends in jail; about the housewife on the next street who slept with high school boys while her salesman husband was on the road. I thought about Anne and myself, about the incredible things that were happening to us.

  All these things taking place in this peaceful neighbourhood of quiet, little houses basking in the sun. I thought of that. It reminded me of Jekyll and Hyde. The neighbourhood was two creatures. One presented a clean, smiling countenance to the world and, beneath, maintained quite another one. It was hideous, in a way, to consider the world of twists and warps that existed behind the pleasant setting of Tulley Street.

  So hideous that I got up and started mowing again and tried to blank my mind.

  It was about then, I think, that I considered the possibility that I was losing my mind. I mean
considered
it. Before that it had been a droll fancy to smile about. It was no longer that.

  It was something I had to face. My mind was a prism. It broke up thought rays and scattered them into visions and impressions. That was simple enough. The difficult part lay in determining where those rays came from-without or
within.

  While I was finishing up the lawn, Ron came out of his house and got into their Pontiac convertible which was standing in the driveway. He made a little gesture of greeting with his hand and squeezed out a smile. I smiled back.