Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (23 page)

“She depends on me!” Marian was saying. “There’s no one but me to take care of her. You can’t expect me to give up that kind of responsibility.”

He was silent, long enough to make her look back at him, and then up at the roof, following his stare. The movement beside him called him back, and he said, vaguely at first, and then more controlled, “I didn’t come back here to stay, Marian; that’s not why I brought David back either. If you’re willing to sacrifice your family to a house, to an old woman . . . I suppose there’s nothing I can do about that. But, Christ! – we’ve got to mean a little more to you than that. Or am I wrong?”

He heard it again, another sliding sound, and Marian’s voice rising above it, pleading now, “I
can’t!
There’s no way I can give it up. Not now – ”

“
When?
”

“I don’t know! In a while maybe, but, God, Ben – not now!”

Again
. She had to have heard it; it couldn’t be that clear to him and not actually exist. The dark black area of the roof had spread a little, another tile falling and dissolving no more than ten feet away. Why wasn’t she seeing it as well? Or was she, and only pretending not to?

Marian was looking directly at him, deliberately it seemed, with a concentration that seemed to be blocking out everything else; very close but not once touching him, despite the intensity that had come into her voice.

“It has to be now,” he started to say, but the words came out weak and distracted, and what he was asking her, what he was trying to tell her was too important for him to be distracted by anything else, especially something that might be happening only in his mind. And so he asked her suddenly, “You see it, don’t you?” and pointed up at the roof.

She kept her eyes on his face, even more intently, never once looking in the direction of his pointing finger. Another tile slid off the roof and dissolved dreamlike in front of him.

“You
do
see it,” he insisted.

“See what, Ben?” she said, and there was weary sympathy in her voice. Still, she refused to look, or to hear.

He searched her face for even the slightest indication that she had seen it, had heard the sound, but there was nothing. He lowered his hand slowly and turned his back to the house, staring blankly at the bay. “All right,” he said, “it’s selfish . . . it’s unreasonable, it’s insane, it’s whatever you want it to be; but I’m asking you to give it up anyway.”

“What is it I’m supposed to see, Ben?” Marian persisted.

He shook his head helplessly. “It doesn’t matter.” He waited. The sound had stopped again.

“In that case,” Marian said, “dinner’s still on the table.”

Ben grabbed her arm and stopped her, his voice trembling now. “I’ll ask you just once more. Come back home with us.”

It was a plea, flat and abject. And why couldn’t he see it? How much clearer could she make it? She
was
home.

She clenched her hands tighter and tighter at her sides, until the pressure drove the words out of her with a finality he would have to accept: “
I CAN’T! I CAN’T! GOD! DON’T YOU SEE THAT YET? I CAN’T!
”

He thought he heard her sob in the long silence, just once, very quietly. And then touch him, letting her fingers pass lightly over his shoulder. He felt her move away from him, and when he turned he was alone on the terrace. Above him, the fresh black tiles absorbed the last of the sun.

He didn’t see her again that night; and while he did go back into the dining room where the candles had burned halfway down and the food remained cold and untouched on the table, and then up to their bedroom which was empty when he turned on the light, he wasn’t consciously looking for her. He’d pushed it to a choice and Marian had chosen – finally, unequivocally. And while the implications of the choice were shattering – what in Christ’s name would they
do?
After the packing up and the flight back to the apartment,
what then?
– To stay in a house whose malevolence was destroying them (and why,
why
couldn’t she see that?) would be the clearest evidence of his own insanity.

Madness, terror, cowardice, whatever – they’d leave in the morning, he and David, and if he saw her before they left . . . Well,
of
course
he’d see her; she’d come into the bedroom eventually, from the sitting room where he knew she had locked herself, and maybe being alone in there and having time to realize exactly what kind of choice she had made and what it would mean to all of them . . .

He moved the chair from beside the bed, closer to the open door, where he could watch David sleeping in the dim light across the hall. And waited, and felt the throbbing inside his head accelerate and drum above the soft chiming of the clocks throughout the house. It was after three when a stillness that was almost palpable descended on the room and the house. He had been dozing, and it woke him with a start. He looked across the hall at David who was sleeping with the covers thrown off him. Ben rose from the chair and then fell back into it as the film, more opaque than it had ever been, came over his eyes – not merely a blurring, but a shadowless white; and with it a deep feeling of nausea. He sat without moving, feeling his hands sweat against the fabric of the chair, and a tightening in his groin that made him gag and then suck at the still air in the room.

The feeling was still there when the clocks chimed four times. Then he heard rain, very softly. And even softer at first, the sliding sound again that he had heard on the terrace. Again, and then again, louder – above him, outside the windows. And then down the hall and below him and all around him, the sounds rising and becoming chambered. And even when he covered his ears with his hands, he could still hear the tiles slide with grating sharpness.

The clocks chimed again, barely audible under the sounds that continued to shake the house. Ben pushed himself out of the chair and felt his way to the door. There were vague outlines now in the whiteness, and then David in bed, clearer, as Ben approached him and leaned over him.

“David!” He shook him and David stirred and moved away from his hand. He called, “David!” again, and as he did he felt his eyes clearing. But the sounds continued, stronger. David was fast asleep. A first dim light was penetrating the darkness outside his windows.

Ben went out into the hall and looked first at the double doors still closed at the end of the corridor, and then at the top of the staircase where the metal inclinator jutted out from the wall. He headed for the stairs, and then down, into the living room, where the sounds followed him with no lessening of intensity.

He crossed the room, faint and gray in the rainy dawn, and went to the clouded French door which he rubbed and tried to see beyond. He pulled it open and the fine, mist-like rain covered his face and arms with a gentle coolness. The sounds were on the terrace as well. He backed across the flagstone, toward the stone balustrade, looking up at the side of the house.

The tiles were falling from the roof with that same dreamlike motion, dissolving in the air and silently on the terrace. The gray shingles below them as well, slipping from the sides of the house, cascading down, as if the house were throwing off its old skin and revealing an immaculate whiteness underneath that glistened in the rain. Wherever he looked they were falling – tiles and clapboards and weathered cornices. He moved down the length of the terrace with his back to the balustrade, feeling his way with his hands, unable to pull his eyes away from the frightening apparition of the house.

There was a sudden break in the balustrade and he felt himself falling backwards, down the three steps descending to the lawn and the wide flowerbeds following the line of the terrace. He grabbed at the last baluster and broke his fall, landing on his knees and his right hand in the soft wet earth that was pushing up a thick bed of green – spear-like shoots that seemed to be growing around him as he pulled himself to his feet.

The clapboards showered down, faster, louder. Ben moved below the terrace, still looking up, following the balustrade until it curved and stopped against the glass of the greenhouse built out under the west wing of the house. He lowered his eyes to it and then moved closer to the glass and stared inside. And then rushed into the house and pulled open the greenhouse door. And stared again.

And instantly found himself upstairs again, lifting David out of the bed.

Marian heard the sounds very dimly beyond the closed doors to the sitting room. She was half-awake in the wingchair. She opened her eyes and listened. It had been Ben’s voice raised indistinctly down the corridor. She rose and went to the inner door, unlocked it, and went out into the small corridor. There was another sound then, more distant. David?

She opened the door and came down the five steps. David’s room was empty when she reached it, the covers hanging off the bed. The light was on in the bedroom opposite, hers and Ben’s. She heard something downstairs – the front door closing. She rushed to David’s window and looked down.

They had reached the bottom of the steps. Ben was pulling David who had his blue terrycloth robe wrapped around him. David stumbled and Ben lifted him, carrying him along the gravel drive toward the garage.

Marian called, “David!” feebly through the half-closed window. She tried to raise it; it was stuck, and she hammered the heels of her hands against the frame. It wouldn’t move. She lowered her face to the opening and shouted, “Ben!” several times, and then saw them disappear, without turning, beyond the frame of the window. And felt something that had been dying inside herself spring back to life – instinctively, without her willing it; despite what she had said, despite the choice she had been forced into making on the terrace. The
fact
of it – the jolting fact of it now . . .

She hurried out of the room, and when she reached the bottom of the long white flight of stairs outside, she saw the car pull away from the garage and disappear in the colorless gray that was misting the field.

It was the rain against the windshield blurring his vision, and the slow streaking arc of the wipers, and David’s frightened voice protesting sleepily beside him that was distracting him, and making the car swerve over the gravel. The thick green of the woods appeared ahead of them, and again David cried, “Where are we going?”

“It’s going to be all right,” Ben said, and when he lifted one hand from the wheel to touch him reassuringly, the car swerved sharply and David had to throw his hand against the dashboard to protect himself.

And then again he asked for Marian. Why wasn’t she with them, where were they going without her?

The car slowed in front of the dark green tunnel of the woods, even darker and thicker in the mist shrouding the narrow gravel road.

“Sit back in the seat,” Ben said to David, and leaned closer to the fogging windshield.

He drove a few feet in, passing over the vines that in a day had raised fresh green shoots. Ben’s hands tightened on the wheel; he accelerated slowly, pushing into the dense growth choking the road and forming a solid wall of green a few feet ahead of him. His foot pressed down on the gas pedal; the car lurched forward and then stopped, the rear wheels spinning over the gravel. He backed up a bit, and then came forward again faster. Branches screeched against the sides and roof of the car. He stopped, and David saw him wet his lips with his tongue and then strain to see ahead and left and right. He shifted into Park and told David, “Wait,” pushing his door open against the foliage.

David shivered and sank lower in the seat, pulling the blue robe closed over his chest.

Ben squeezed himself along the side of the car, his hands
raised to protect his face. He moved forward, trying to see
beyond the solid green ahead. A vine noosed suddenly around his foot; he stumbled and as he caught himself against the hood of the car, a twig struck against his face with a force that made him reel and press his way back into the car. He sat with his face buried in his hands, his fingers rubbing against his forehead and eyes.

“I wanna go back,” David said, watching him, seeing the mud caked on his pants and hands, and the streaks of dirt across his face now.

Ben raised his face and shifted the car into reverse, backing fast down the rise of gravel; and then forward, faster, smashing into the bushes with a snapping of wood and a metallic scraping. Faster. Breaking through. He was hugging the wheel. A branch slapped against the windshield, and against David’s sealed window, making him jump and cry out. The car accelerated, the twigs and leaves striking against it with growing fury. Ben was pushing forward blindly. A branch caught under the wiper on his side and snapped it. There was sound on all sides of the car, and green lashing at the windows. The leaves glued themselves to the windshield and the rear window and all the side windows. And if he could just break through to the road, just press down blindly on the pedal and break through. David heard the sounds he was making, the incoherent pleading, and he began to cry. The car sped forward suddenly and then came to a wrenching halt, throwing David off the seat. Ben’s head hit the windshield, and it was only a second later, it seemed, that Marian was opening the door on his side and trying to push him away from the wheel; repeating his name and shaking him back to consciousness, saying, “Let me in.” And then turning to David who was whimpering in the back seat, and saying, soothingly, “It’s all right, sweetheart, everything is going to be all right now.”

Ben looked at her distantly, waiting for her face to come into focus. He let himself be pushed to the passenger side. The leaves had been wiped from the windows. Marian, her hair gray and streaming, and the white and gold she was wearing soaked through, turned on the ignition and began to back the car slowly down the drive, the leaves merely whispering against the top and sides. The road ahead, when he could see, had, incredibly, cleared, and the wiper on the driver’s side swept slowly over the glass.