Dark on the Other Side (20 page)

Michael’s mouth curled expressively, and Linda turned on
him.

“Leave her alone! She’s not young, and her heart isn’t
too good.”

“Nothing wrong with my heart,” Andrea said decisively.
She shoved the bottle away and set her empty glass down with a thud. “I
said I needed that, and I did. As for you, Mr. Collins, if you’re such
a pretty little skeptic, what the hell are you doing here? Stooging for
the great Gordon Randolph? The delectable decoy, to lead her out into
his waiting—claws?”

Michael took a step toward her and stopped himself with
an effort that left him shaking.

“Sit down,” Andrea said gruffly. “I take it back. If you
are a decoy, you’re an unwitting one. I know what you’re thinking—this
crazy old bat has corrupted the innocent girl with her weird ideas of
witchcraft. Baby, I didn’t give Linda the idea. She gave it to me. And,
God help me, I didn’t believe her until tonight. I saw him. I knew him.
He’s waiting out there, waiting for her. He can’t get in. Not yet. But
he’s summoning his powers. Can’t you feel them, growing, feeding on
evil? Soon he’ll be strong enough. Soon he’ll come.”

The high, crooning voice was semihypnotic. Crouched in
her chair, monotonously stroking the black cat that had sprung to her
lap, Andrea cast a spell of conviction. Michael shook himself.

“I thought you said you had a protective spell around the
house,” he said.

“Ordinary white magic, against ordinary intruders. This
isn’t ordinary. He’s strong. Very strong. But it takes time to build up
the power. It’s building now. Can’t you feel it? I can feel it. Like
electricity in the air. When it’s strong enough—then he’ll come for
her.”

The cat’s fur crackled under her moving hand.

“What does he want?” Michael demanded. “Damn it, there
has to be a reason, even if it’s a crazy reason. What is he after?”

Linda felt like a spectator, or a piece of meat over
which two merchants were haggling. She hated the feeling, but she could
not fight it; the force of the other personalities was too strong. They
faced one another like duelists. Michael’s fists were clenched.
Andrea’s weapons were more subtle—the crooning voice, the air of
conviction.

“He’s after her soul,” she said softly. “Her immortal
soul. His own is already in pawn to the powers of darkness. He wants
hers, not to redeem his own, but to suffer with him, in flames, through
eternity.”

Michael turned away.

“That’s insane.”

“Why should you stop at that, when you’ve accepted so
much?” Andrea asked, in the same insidious whine. “You came here to
save her, didn’t you? Oh, you don’t need to answer; I know, I know it
all. I’ve seen the thread, the silver thread that binds the two of you.
It’s knotted and tarnished now, but there’s no break in it. It will
bind you forever, into death and beyond. It drew you here, to her side,
when she needed you.”

Andrea stood up. The cat slid down like a pool of viscous
ink. There was a power in the old woman, if only the power of her
belief. It forced Michael to face her.

“But you can’t save her,” she said. “Love is a strong
force, the purity of the soul is stronger; but nothing can avail
against the powers of darkness except the concentrated power of good.
And only I can control that power. I can save her. And I will! All my
life, all my studies, have led me toward this moment.”

Michael spoke to Linda. He had himself under control now;
there was even a certain compassion in his face as he glanced at the
old woman.

“Will you stay here, with her?” he asked. “Or will you
come with me, now? The choice is yours, Linda. It has to be yours.”

Linda hesitated. The tone of his appeal reached her,
drawing on some core of sanity and strength. The appeal of being
allowed—no, forced—to decide her own fate was something only she could
fully appreciate, after years of life with Gordon. Michael waited
patiently for her to answer, but Andrea did not.

“No, no,” she shrieked. Rushing toward Linda, she caught
at the girl’s shoulders with both hands. They felt like bird’s claws,
fragile and fleshless.

“You can’t go out there,” she whimpered. “Don’t think it,
don’t dream it. He doesn’t understand. He wants you, he wants you for
himself, to save you for himself and keep you. Make him stay. He can
help. He can help if he will, he’s strong and young…. But if he will
go, don’t go with him. Stay, I’ll save you. Andrea will save you, she
knows….”

“All right,” Linda said. “All right, Andrea.”

She turned to Michael.

“I can’t go,” she said. “It isn’t only because of Andrea.
I’m afraid, Michael. I’m afraid to go out into the dark—even with you.”

She knew that Andrea’s hysteria had convinced Michael,
but not in the way she had hoped. The very wildness of Andrea’s appeal
had swayed his mind back toward rational rejection. If there ever was
an obvious picture, this is it, Linda thought dully—a crazy old woman
and a weak-minded young one. She wondered how much of her decision to
stay was due to her pity for Andrea rather than fear—and how much to
her instinctive recoil from one of Andrea’s statements: “He wants you
for himself.”

“We’ll stay, then,” Michael said. “If that’s what you
want. I guess it can’t do any harm.”

Her purpose achieved, Andrea turned brisk and
businesslike. The volte-face was so sudden that Linda was left
wondering, futilely, how much of Andrea was real and how much was
calculated theatricalism.

“We must begin,” Andrea said, rubbing her hands together.
“At once. The time is short. Purification. It must be symbolic, I
daren’t let you out of my sight. Come along, both of you.”

Andrea’s workroom, as she called it, was a small separate
building, once a shed or outdoor kitchen, now connected to the house by
a lowceilinged passageway. Linda heard Michael’s gasp, and sympathized;
if the kitchen had been picturesque, this room came straight out of the
ages of alchemy.

Its single window was heavily draped. There were no
electric lights. Andrea moved about lighting candles—candles in
bottles, candles in tall brass candlesticks, candles stuck onto saucers
in puddles of grease, candles in glass-covered brackets on the wall. In
their eerie, moving light, the room looked even more uncanny than it
did by daylight.

A long, rough table was completely covered with a
fantastic collection of miscellany, from papers of all sizes, shapes,
and colors, to samples of dried vegetation. Small baskets, boxes, and
ordinary brown paper bags were strewn about. One pile of papers, whose
vivid colors and angular shapes suggested Japanese origami creations,
was held down by a human skull. Another, narrower, table had oddly
shaped glass bottles and beakers, filled with colored liquids, like
those in an old-fashioned pharmacist’s window. The contents of the
flasks glowed, lambent in the mellow candlelight—sea blue, crimson,
gold, and green. Rough wooden shelves along one wall held a collection
of crumbling leather books. The walls, of whitewashed, unfinished
planks, were hung with drawings and diagrams. Dominating the room, on
the wall opposite the door, was a huge medieval crucifix with its
tormented Image, flanked by glass-covered candle sconces. The center of
the floor was empty and uncarpeted and almost without varnish after
centuries of traffic. The air in the room was close and stale,
permeated by a cloyingly sweet smell.

As soon as the candles were lighted, Andrea fumbled in
the basket she had brought with her. Another scent, pungently different
but equally unpleasant, wafted forth to war with the stench of stale
incense. Linda recognized it; her guess was confirmed when Andrea
scooped up a double handful of small whitish-gray bulbs. She opened her
hands and the bulbs separated, like the Dutch chocolate apples which
are made up of pre-formed slices; but instead of dropping to the floor,
the segments of garlic hung from her hands, suspended on long pieces of
twine.

Michael sneezed.

“God bless you,” Andrea said, with the force of an
incantation.

She draped the threaded cloves of garlic over the window
and the threshold of the closed door. Michael watched silently. Linda
watched Michael. She saw, with growing despair, that the pendulum of
his thinking had swung back, toward the rational world and away from
her. Andrea’s mumbo jumbo had destroyed his sensitivities; his
hostility and distaste for her were so strong that he couldn’t feel
that dreadful reality behind the ritual. Linda felt it even more
strongly here, in this frail wooden box that was exposed to the night
on all four sides. No. Not four sides—five. On the roof, the rain
drummed with importunate demand; but above the normal pressure of the
storm, Linda was conscious of other forces gathering, closing in.

When the garlic was in place, Andrea went to a cupboard
and took out a flask, crossing herself as she did so.

“Sit over there,” she ordered brusquely, indicating the
spot with a jerk of her head. “In the middle of the floor. Take some
cushions from that corner. We’ll be here for a good long time.”

Michael muttered something under his breath, but obeyed.
As he and Linda seated themselves, Andrea anointed the doors and
windows with liquid from the flask and then, walking backward, dribbled
the contents of the flask in a wide circle around the seated pair. She
was careful to stay within the circle. When it was closed, a dark,
unbroken wetness on the worn boards of the floor, she came to Linda.

“Hold out your hands,” she ordered, and poured a few
drops of the remaining liquid into Linda’s cupped palms. As she
directed, Linda touched the water to her forehead. Michael followed the
same procedure, reluctance slowing his movements.

Andrea scrambled to her feet. She seemed to have
regressed, both mentally and in time; hobbling, mumbling, she might
have stepped out of a sixteenth-century village street—the wise woman,
the white witch, Old Mother Demdike. She took a piece of chalk from one
of the pockets concealed in her ample skirts and crawled around the
interior circumference of the circle of holy water, scribbling designs
and symbols onto the floor-boards, taking care not to touch the dark
dribble of wetness. When she had finished, she crouched down on the
floor facing the other two, and poured the last few drops of water into
her right hand, crossing herself repeatedly. Her scarlet skirts made a
puddle of bright color in the candlelight; her back was curved. The
drone of her voice was unbroken except for quick, shallow breaths that
came faster and faster and reminded Linda unpleasantly of an animal
panting.

Gradually, as Linda watched the old woman’s intent face
and glazing eyes, the drone of her voice and the monotonous drumming of
the rain blended into a single soft whine, like the buzz of a giant
insect. Linda’s cramped legs grew numb. She tried to move her hand and
found it would not respond to her will. The man beside her, the other
objects in the room, drew back and lost reality. There was nothing else
in the universe except the mingled drone of voice and rain, and the
steadily mounting pressure of an invisible force.

The room seemed darker—or were her eyes failing? The low
sound was inside her head now, reverberating against the bony dome of
her skull. She could hardly feel the wooden floor under her bent legs,
but every inch of her skin tingled with the force. It was as if the
encompassing air had grown heavier, or as if she were newly sensitized
to its constant, unfelt pressure. A picture began to form behind her
eyes. She saw the room in miniature, like a small cube of light in the
midst of towering, indistinct shapes of darkness, which surrounded it
like storm clouds. Featureless and black, yet living, they leaned in
over the frail walls; but within, another force moved and grew, holding
back the dark. She saw it all, in that moment, as a cosmic
manifestation—the struggle of light against darkness. Across the world
and the ages the battle raged, unseen, with the balance swaying now to
one side and now to the other. In their small microcosm of the
universe, the scales were balanced; but the struggle was not static.
The pans dipped and swayed as the opposing strengths changed to counter
each other’s weight. She could not see beyond the darkness; but within
the light, the power emanated from one hunched figure. She herself was
not part of that cosmic struggle; she was only a pawn, a fly trapped by
two great winds, an animal caught between two armies massed for battle….

Deep down inside her dazed consciousness, a small spark
of outrage flared. True or false, a cosmic vision or a fancy of
hysteria, that view of the universe was not to her liking. She would
not surrender her will, even to good, without a voice in the decision.
Linda made the greatest effort of her life—an effort all the harder
because it was without a physical counterpart. It was like pushing,
with her mind, against a barred and bolted door. Then something gave
way, with an almost audible snap, and the room flashed back into focus.

Michael’s hand clasped hers; she felt the pain of his
grasp now. He was not looking at her, but at Andrea; his face was as
white as paper. As Linda turned dazed eyes on the old woman, Andrea’s
voice faltered, caught, and stopped. The rain pounded on the roof in a
roar of water. Linda saw the candle flames swaying like live things
trying to escape from an attacker. The gritty boards of the floor were
harsh against her bare legs. Only one residue of her vanished vision
remained: the consciousness of pressures mounting, building up to a
tension that could not hold. Like an overload on an electrical
system…Sooner or later something would blow.

Andrea raised clawed hands to her throat. Her mouth gaped
open. She made hoarse sounds, her eyes bulged. Then her hands fell, and
for a dreadful moment she balanced on hands and knees, head dangling,
like a sick animal. Knees and elbows gave way; she rolled over onto her
side and lay still.