Figures of Fear: An anthology (24 page)

He left the house by the kitchen door, taking care to wipe the door handle with the tail of his shirt. He drove back the way he had come, through Gaylordsville, crossing the Housatonic at Fort Hill so that he could deny having driven back towards his parents’ house on the South Kent Road. He even made a point of tooting his horn and waving to Charlie Sheagus, the realtor.

And how do you feel?
he asked his eyes, in the rear-view mirror.

Satisfied, his eyes replied. Not
fully
satisfied, but it’s taken the edge off.

His father was waiting for him in the living room when he returned. He was wearing a chequered red shirt and oversized jeans and he looked crumple-faced and serious. His mother was sitting in the corner, in the shadows, her hands clasped on her lap.

‘Where’ve you been?’ his father wanted to know.

‘Hey, why the long face? I went down to Randolph’s to settle the check.’

‘It’s a pity you haven’t been settling all of your checks the same way.’

Paul said, ‘What? What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about Budget Rental Cars, who just called up to say that your credit rating hadn’t checked out. And Marriott Hotels, who said that you bounced a personal cheque for two hundred dollars. And then I called Dennison Minerals, your own company, in Gabon, and all I got was a message saying that your number was discontinued.’

Paul sat down in one of the old-fashioned wooden-backed armchairs. ‘I’ve been having some cash-flow difficulty, OK?’

‘So why didn’t you say so?’

‘Because you didn’t want to hear it, did you? All you wanted to hear was success.’

His father jabbed his finger at him. ‘What kind of person do you take me for? You’re my son. If you’re successful, I exult in it. If you fail, I commiserate. I’m your father, for Chrissakes.’

‘Commiserate? Those Gabonese bastards took my business, my house, they took everything. I don’t want commiseration. I want revenge.’

His father came up to him and laid both of his hands on his shoulder and looked him straight in the face. ‘Forget about revenge. You can always start over.’

‘Oh, like you started over when you lost your job at Linke Overmeyer? With a little house, and a millionth-of-an-acre of ground, and a row of beans? I had a mansion, in Libreville! Seven bedrooms, four bathrooms, a swimming pool, a circular hallway you could have ice skated on, if you’d had any ice, and if you’d had any skates.’

‘So what?’ his father asked him. ‘That’s what life is all about. Winning and losing. Why did you have to lie about it?’

‘Because of you,’ said Paul.

‘Because of
me
? What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Because you always expected me to do better than you. That was all I ever got from you, from the time I was old enough to understand anything. “You’ll do better than me. One day, you’ll be rich and you’ll buy a house for your mother and me. With a lake, and swans.” Jesus Christ! I was nine years old, and you wanted me to give you fucking
swans
!’

His father closed his eyes for a moment, trying to summon up enough patience not to shout back. His mother said nothing, but sat still in the shadows, a silhouette, only the curved reflection from her glasses gleaming. In the distance, Paul heard the dyspeptic rumbling of thunder. It had been a dry day, and the air had been charged with static electricity. Lightning was crossing Litchfield Hills, walking on stilts.

Paul’s father opened his eyes. ‘Are you going back to Africa?’

‘There’s nothing to go back to. I’m all washed up in Gabon. I still owe my lawyer seven thousand francs.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know. Right now, I don’t want to do anything.’

‘You’re going to have to find yourself a job, Paul, even if it’s waiting tables. Your mother and I can’t support you.’

‘I see. So much for my fucking four-hundred-dollar dinner then! “Who has a son who takes his parents out for a meal like this?” You didn’t even offer to pay half.’

‘I’m sorry. If I’d known that you were busted I wouldn’t have suggested going to Randolph’s at all. We could have eaten at home. And don’t use language like that, not in this house.’

‘Oh, I beg your pardon. First of all you won’t support me, and now you take away my rights under the First Amendment.’

‘The First Amendment doesn’t give you the right to use profanity in front of your mother.’

Paul was about to say something else, but he took a deep breath and stopped himself. He felt angrier than he had ever felt in his life. But what was the point in shouting? He knew that he wouldn’t be able to change his father’s mind. His father had almost made a religion out of self-sufficiency. Even when Paul was young, he had never given him an allowance. Every cent of pocket money had been earned with dishwashing or raking leaves or painting fences. He would rather have burned his money than given anything to Paul for nothing.

‘All right,’ said Paul. ‘If that’s the way you feel.’

He walked around his father and went to his room. He slung his suitcase on the bed and started to bundle his clothes into it. His mother came to the door and said, Paul … don’t be angry. You don’t have to leave.’

‘Oh, but I do. I might accidentally breathe some of Dad’s air or flush some of his water down the toilet.’

‘Sweetheart, he doesn’t mean that you can’t stay with us, just till you can get yourself back on your feet.’

‘You don’t get it, do you? I don’t want to get back on my feet. I’ve spent eleven years working my rear end off, and look what I’ve ended up with. One tropical suit, two shirts, and a rental car I can’t even pay for. I just want to lie down and do nothing. That’s all.’

‘Do you want to see Dr Williams?’

Paul pushed his way past her. ‘I don’t want to see anybody. I’m not sick. I’m not disturbed. I’m just exhausted, that’s all. Is it a crime to be exhausted?’

‘Paul …’ his father began, but Paul opened the front door and went down the steps. ‘Paul – we can talk about this. I’m sure we can work something out.’

‘Sure,’ Paul retorted. I can clean out your gutters and mend your roof and you’ll pay me in hamburgers. Forget it, Dad. I’d rather go to the Y.’

With that, he climbed into his rental car and backed out of the drive with a scream of tyres. His father sadly watched him go.

By nine o’clock that night the rain was lashing all the way across Litchfield County and the hills were a battlefield of thunder and lightning.

Paul had driven into New Milford, where he spent his last $138 on a steak and fries and a bottle of wine at the Old Colonial Inn. Now he didn’t even have enough money for a room. It looked like he was going to have to spend the night in the car, parked on a side road.

He left the inn, his coat collar turned up against the rain, but by the time he reached the car his shoulders were soaked. He wiped the rain from his face and looked at himself in the rear-view mirror. If only he had someplace to sleep. A warm bed, and enough money to last him for six or seven months, so that he wouldn’t have to do anything but sit back and drink beer and think of nothing at all.

He started the engine, and the windshield wipers flapped furiously from side to side. It was then that he heard the softest of rattles.
Shikk – shikk – shikk
.

A prickling sensation went up the back of his neck. The witch-compass was telling him that he could have just what he wanted. A bed for the night, and money. But the question was, how was he going to get it, and what kind of moral decision would he have to make?

Shikka – shikka – shikka
rattled the witch-compass, and Paul took it out of his pocket.

For one second, Paul was tempted to throw it out into the rain. But it felt so smooth and reassuring in his hand, and he knew that it would guide him to a place where he could sleep, and where he wouldn’t have to worry for a while.

He nudged his car out of the green on to the main road to New Preston. He turned the wheel to the right, and the witch-compass was silent. He turned it to the left, and the witch-compass went
shikkashikkashikka
.

He was almost blinded for a second by a crackling burst of lightning. But then he was driving so slowly through the rain, hunched forward in his seat so that he could see more clearly, heading northwards.

After twenty minutes of silence, the witch-compass stirred again.
Shikk – shikk – shikk
. He had reached the intersection where the Chevrolet had collided with the deer – the intersection that would take him up the winding road towards his parents’ house.

‘Oh, no,’ he said. But the witch-compass rattled even more loudly, guiding him up the hill. Another fork of lightning crackled to the ground, striking a large oak only a hundred feet away. Paul saw it burst apart and burn. Thunder exploded right above his head, as if the sky were splitting apart.

He drove around the hairpin bend towards his parents’ house. Now the witch-compass was shaking wildly, and Paul knew without any doubt at all where it was taking him. He saw the roof of his parents’ house silhouetted against the trees, and as he did so another charge of lightning hit the chimney, so that bricks flew in all directions and blazing wooden shingles were hurled into the night like Catherine wheels.

The noise was explosive, and it was followed only a second later by a deep, almost sensual sigh, as the air rushed in to fill the vacuum that the lightning had created. Then there was a deafening collision of thunder.

Paul stopped in front of the house, stunned. The rain drummed on the roof of his car like the juju drummers in Marché Rouge. He climbed out, shaking, and was immediately drenched. He walked up the steps with rain dripping from his nose and pouring from his chin. He pushed open the front door and the house was filled with the smell of burned electricity, and smoke.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said.

He walked into the kitchen and the walls were blackened with bizarre scorch-marks, like the silhouettes of hopping demons. Every metal saucepan and colander and cheese-grater had been flung into the opposite corner of the room and fused together in an extraordinary sculpture, a medieval knight who had fallen higgledy-piggledy off his charger.

And right in the centre of the floor lay his mother and father, all of their clothes blown off, their bodies raw and charred, their eyes as black as cinders, and smoke slowly leaking out of their mouths.

Shikk – shikk – shikk
rattled the witch-compass.

So this was how he was going to find himself a warm bed for the night. However stern he had been, his father had always told him that he was going to inherit the house, and all of his savings, as well as being the sole beneficiary to their joint-insurance policies. No more problems. No more money worries. Now he could rest, and do nothing.

He slowly sank to his knees on the kitchen floor and took hold of his mother’s hand, even though the skin on her fingers was crisp and her fingernails had all been blown off. He pressed her hand against his forehead and he sobbed and sobbed until he felt that he was going to suffocate.

‘Dad, Mom, I didn’t want
this
,’ he wept. ‘I didn’t want this, I swear to God. I’d give my right arm for this never to have happened. I’d give anything.’

He cried until his ribs hurt. Outside, the electric storm grumbled and complained and eventually disappeared,
perdendosi
, into the distance.

Silence, except for the continuing rain. Then Paul heard the witch-compass go
shikk – shikk – shikk
.

He raised his head. The witch-compass was lying on the floor next to him, softly rattling and turning on its axis.

‘What are you offering me now, you bastard?’ said Paul.

Shikkashikkashikka.

‘This doesn’t have to have happened? Dad and Mom – they needn’t have died?’

Shikk – shikk – shikk.

‘What are you trying to tell me, you fuck? I can turn back the clock? Is that what you mean?’

Shikk – shikk – shikk.

He let his mother’s hand drop to the floor. He picked up the witch-compass and pointed it all around the room, 360 degrees. ‘Come on then, show me. Show me how I can turn the clock back.’

Shikkashikkashikka.

The witch-compass led him to the kitchen door. He opened it and the wind and the rain came gusting in, sending his mother’s blackened fingernails scurrying across the vinyl like cockroaches. He stepped outside, shielding his face against the rain with his arm upraised, holding the witch-compass in his left hand, close to his heart. He wanted to feel where it was taking him. He wanted to know, this time, what it was going to ask him to do.

But of course it didn’t. He stumbled on the wet stone step coming out of the kitchen and fell heavily forward, with his right arm still upraised. It struck the unprotected blade of his father’s circular saw and the rusty teeth but right through the muscle, severing his tendon and his axillary artery. For a terrible moment he hung beside the saw-table, unable to lift himself up, while blood sprayed on to his face and all over his hair. The rain fell on him like whips, and his blood streamed across the patio in a scarlet fan-pattern and flooded into grass.

Jonquil was waiting for him at the very end of the Marché Rouge. On the upturned fruit-box in front of her stood the carved figure of a woman with her lips bound together with wire, and a rattle with a monkey’s head on top of it, and several jars of poisonous-looking unguents.

He walked along the row of brightly lit stalls until he reached the shadowy corner where she sat. He stood in front of her for a while, saying nothing.

‘Your feet brought you back,’ she said.

‘That’s right,’ he told her. ‘My feet brought me back.’

‘How is Papa and Mama?’ she asked, with a broad, tobacco-bronzed smile.

‘They’re good, thanks.’

‘Not dead, then? Bad thing, being dead.’

‘You think so? Sometimes I’m not so sure.’

‘You’ll survive. Everybody has to survive. Didn’t you learn that?’

‘Oh, sure. Even if I didn’t learn anything else.’