Here I Stay (26 page)
Authors: KATHY
"He resents you. Blames you and Jim for breaking up his affair with Linnie."
"I'd rather have a gun than a dog," Andrea said flippantly. "Pass the word, Al—I'm going to buy a gun, and if Gary Joe sets foot on my property I'll fill him full of holes."
"That's the spirit," Al said with an approving nod. "You'd do it, too."
"Well—"
"That's an even better idea. You'd have no trouble getting a permit, and I can find you a nice little handgun—a thirty-eight police special, for instance."
"I'll let you know," Andrea said.
When they parted, after discussing a date for the next Association meeting, Wyckoff added, "Don't put off getting that weapon, Andrea. Not that I think you've anything to worry about, but..."
Damn him, Andrea thought as she turned the car and headed homeward. He's just trying to scare me. She wasn't afraid of Gary Joe. She had dealt with the likes of him before; most were cowed by her resolute air and biting tongue, and she had not scrupled to employ any means necessary on the exceptions. While working at the Washington hotel, she had felled a foul-mouthed drunk who was annoying guests in the lobby by hitting him over the head with a vase when he lunged at her; her victim had required nine stitches, and she only wished it had been more. No, she wasn't afraid of a local yokel like Gary Joe.
Al had a point, though. The house was isolated, and some of her guests were well-to-do. Dog or gun, or both? Maybe Jim would like a dog. He hadn't had one since his adored old mutt had died, a few months after the plane crash. So far as she was concerned, a dog would be an unmitigated nuisance. She had no illusions as to who would feed, water, walk, and clean up after the animal. She would. And it made her shudder to think how Satan would react to a dog. Anything smaller than a Doberman would be torn to shreds.
Yet in some ways a dog was preferable to a gun. She didn't share Martin's silly liberal ideas about gun control, but she did recall reading that more householders were shot with their own weapons than were burglars. Accidents could happen. Boys were unreasonably fascinated by guns...She was thinking, naturally, of the children of guests. If a sixteen-year old boy found a gun lying around he wouldn't be able to resist handling it, and if he managed to shoot himself, the publicity could ruin her.
A dog might not be a bad idea. Maybe—oh, delightful thought!—maybe the dog would tear Satan to shreds. She would talk to Jim about a dog that evening.
Monday nights were the best in the week. The weekend guests had gone by then and the midweek crowd had not arrived; Peace and Plenty was closed on Mondays, so Martin had gotten into the habit of eating with her and Jim that night. (He paid extra, of course.) Usually they spent the evening quietly, watching television and talking, nothing exciting— but Andrea looked forward to Mondays.
Mrs. Horner had baked one of her delicious apple pies. Jim loved apple pie. Andrea had planned a casserole, but instead she took a package of steaks from the freezer. A good, well-balanced meal, that was what Jim needed. All that pizza and spaghetti couldn't be good for him.
As twilight deepened, she was tempted to go and
call him, but something held her back. When at last she heard the sound of his crutches she was absurdly tense; she had to force herself to relax.
Standing in the doorway, he surveyed the dinner preparations and let out a whistle. "That's quite a spread. What are we celebrating?"
"I couldn't face another of those damned casseroles," Andrea said, returning his smile with an unaccountable sense of danger eluded. He was as anxious to forget the incident as she; even an apology would have recalled a singularly unpleasant moment.
While they were eating Andrea brought up the subject of a dog. Jim's response was unenthusiastic.
"I don't know; it would mean a lot of work for you, wouldn't it?"
"It would be your dog, Jimmie."
"I don't know."
"Why don't you wait till spring?" Martin suggested. "Housebreaking a puppy is a lot easier when the weather is fine."
"That's a good idea," Jim said. "Maybe in the spring."
As soon as he'd finished eating Jim pushed his chair back and picked up his crutches. "That was great, Andy. Leave me a piece of pie, will you? I'll have it later."
"But..." Andrea caught herself. Jim's expression, watchful, defiant, warned her of trouble ahead if she objected.
She couldn't stand another explosion like the last one. "I thought you wanted to see that special," she said tentatively.
"I changed my mind. A couple of things I want
to finish..." He went quickly out.
"Has he always been like this?" Martin asked.
"Like what?" As always, his question put her on the defensive.
"So single-minded—so obsessed."
"That's a horrible word to use. He's finding new interests—"
Martin shook his head. "It's becoming more pronounced. He spends most of his time up there working like a navvy. What's so urgent about the job?"
"I'm not pushing him, if that's what you think."
"I'd rather think that. Then I could give you one of my much-loved lectures. I'm only too well aware of the fact that it was his idea from the start and that he is obsessive—sorry, but that's the only word for it—about getting it done."
"He wants to move into the room—"
"I know. I'm in favor of that."
"You would be."
Martin got up and began clearing the table. "I can also understand why he likes the tower room. It's charming. What I do not understand is why he can't think about anything else. Was that, by any chance, where you found those extremely curious sketches?"
"What are you getting at?"
Her voice was sharp with challenge, not only of what he had said, but what she feared he was about to say. Martin was not the man to avoid an argument; when he shrugged and went to put the dishes in the sink she knew he was not surrendering to her but acknowledging his own uncertainty.
"Nothing that makes any sense. Maybe I'm getting senile."
"You should be working, instead of inventing
things to worry about, like a bored old lady." Andrea rose. "Let me do that. You're splashing water all over the floor."
"All right. With such a splendid example of industry before me, I can do no less than attempt to emulate it. Good night, Andrea."
If he hadn't splashed water she would have found some other excuse to interrupt him. She had a fairly good idea of the direction in which his thoughts were running. He dreaded them as much as she did; they contradicted the entire structure of assumptions and axioms on which his life was based. Broad-minded, skeptical, and tolerant, he had no faith, even in his own religion. She understood his quandary, for it was her own. Without fixed rules and prescribed guidelines there were no answers, only an infinite series of possibilities, unproved and unprovable.
Later, she crept up the back stairs, crawling on hands and knees in the dusty darkness for fear that light might betray her presence. There were no sounds from the tower room, not at first. When she pressed her ear to the keyhole, a big old-fashioned aperture to which the key had never been found, she heard the murmur of Jim's voice.
He might have been reciting poetry or reading aloud. But he wasn't. He was talking to someone, pausing, and then responding. She could not make out the words, nor could she hear a second voice. Just Jim's, talking to someone who wasn't there.
After a while he stopped talking. There was silence for a time. Then she heard another sound— the soft, desolate weeping of a child lost in the dark.
Long after Jim had come downstairs and gone to bed, Andrea lay awake staring at the ceiling. She had left a light burning, but the shadows it cast were almost worse than darkness. She was tired, but she was afraid to sleep—afraid of attack from the, hidden enemy in her own mind. Wings, beating against invisible bars, trying to escape—it was a classic symbol whose meaning she could no longer deny. Breaking the bonds of the flesh, soaring into the sunset, releasing the spirit to seek the light; the literature of all the world's religions contained similar phrases. And that was all they were—empty phrases, wishful thinking, desperate hopes for which there was no substantiation. "That undiscovered country from whose bourne No traveller returns..."
Ah, but what if some One had returned? Some One who passed like a shadow through the dark house, perceptible as a terror of the soul to those sensitive enough to feel it—who assailed her with guilt and fear and was luring Jim into the darkness it inhabited? Under all his recent acts lay a common obsession-death. The dead past, the long-dead women who lay in the old graveyard, but whose presences remained in the space where they had once lived.
Andrea's eyes turned to the picture on the opposite wall. She could barely see it, but Mary's features were as familiar to her now as her own, and as she concentrated on them her depression began to lift. There were reasonable explanations for all the
things that troubled her, and they made a lot more sense than the fantastic theory she had been considering. Jim was going through a period of adjustment. The doctor had warned her it wouldn't be easy. Temporary setbacks were only to be expected. Leave him alone and let him work it out.
Mary would have understood and agreed. Mary was like her—pragmatic, skeptical—a fighter, a survivor.
Andrea yawned. Turning on her side, she slept, and did not dream.
The week before Thanksgiving Kevin called to say he couldn't come. His father had had a severe heart attack in early November, and he had decided to brave the maternal wrath and spend the holiday with his dad.
"Sooner or later you have to do what you think is right, even if it's inconvenient," he explained seriously to Andrea.
"You've made a very mature decision," she said, with equal gravity, and with a new compassion. She of all people knew the devastating shock of that first confrontation with the fact of mortality. She said a few more things—mere platitudes, but they seemed to comfort Kevin—and after she had passed him on to Jim she realized that she was actually disappointed. I must be mellowing in my old age, she thought, faintly amused. Or else Reba is getting to me with all that "nice" nonsense of hers.
Jim bore the disappointment with apparent equanimity. Enlisting the help of Wayne, Martin, and anyone else who could be coerced into carrying
things, he moved his belongings to the tower. In Andrea's opinion the room looked odd—Jim's masculine, utilitarian old furniture in that bower of roses and virginal white paint—but he seemed satisfied.
The only comic note in an otherwise depressing week was the arrival of John William Holderman, author and authority on old houses. He came the Friday before Thanksgiving, the last of the four guests Andrea expected that day. The sun was setting in a satanic blaze of scarlet when she opened the door; baring artificially white teeth and enveloped in a long black cape, Holderman appeared to loom over her like Dracula looking for a jugular vein.
Once inside, he shrank to normal size—a dapper little man whose sleek black hair was as artificial as his teeth, and who walked on tiptoe trying to look taller. His manners were reminiscent of the court of Louis the Seventeenth; bowing, kissing Andrea's hand, he thanked her for her courtesy in receiving him and assured her that her lovely home would be prominently featured in his forthcoming book.
Martin took an instant dislike to him. "Pompous little jackass. Who the hell does he think he is, telling me smoking is bad for my health?" Jim was amused and interested. If Holderman had been twice as odd, Andrea would have welcomed him for distracting Jim. He joined them next morning when Andrea showed Holderman over the house and asked a number of questions about construction and materials. Holderman knew all the answers, or sounded as if he did. His admiration of the tower room pleased Jim.
"You did this, young man? Splendid! You have a real feeling for period restoration."
Later, as she made beds and emptied wastebaskets, Andrea caught glimpses of Holderman trotting around the grounds, weighted down with photographic equipment whose straps crisscrossed his slight body like bonds. If she had not known what he was doing she would have thought him an escaped lunatic; he lay flat on the lawn, skulked behind bushes, and climbed trees as nimbly as a monkey, to get a closer shot of a particular architectural feature.
The hope of being mentioned in Holderman's text—"Miss Torgesen, the lovely and gracious chatelaine..." inspired Andrea to search her closet for something glamorous to wear that evening. To her dismay, most of her dressier garments, which she had not tried on for months, were now too big for her. She had lost more weight than she realized. Finally she selected,
faute de mieux,
a dark-green wool that hung loosely from the yoke and could be belted to any diameter required. Forcing her feet into pumps, she limped into the library.
The presence of not one but two celebrities brought the other guests out that evening. Even Jim was there. Martin was chainsmoking, and glaring at Holderman.
Later, Andrea could not recall which of the guests introduced the subject of ghosts. It had happened before; old houses of any era seemed to inspire speculation of that nature, and she had developed a stock response: "I hate to disappoint you, but we've never had anything of that sort here."
On this occasion, however, the question was not directed at her. "Now, Mr. Holderman, admit it— you are ghost—hunting. I read your book and absolutely loved it."
Holderman giggled self-consciously. "Oh, dear.
I hoped that youthful effort was forgotten. I haven't dabbled in folklore for many years."
Wreathed in smoke like an evil genie, Martin said, "You're sure of that, Holderman? Miss Torgesen has a prejudice against psychic investigators."
"Dear lady!" Holderman turned to Andrea, his hands fluttering agitatedly. "I hope you don't suppose I would take such an advantage. You have seen my work on architectural history—"
"Of course." Andrea smiled stiffly. "We're honored to be included in your next volume, Mr. Holderman. It's such an interesting subject."
The sensation-seeking lady was not so easily distracted. "Oh, yes, but I do love ghost stories, Mr. Holderman. Please tell us about something absolutely terrifying!"
"I can only refer you to the classics, dear madam. Poe and James, Machen and Blackwood—"
"But those are stories. I'm talking about real ghosts."
"That is a contradiction in terms," Holderman said flatly. "Ghosts are unreal; therefore there can be no such thing as a real ghost."
Andrea gave him an approving smile. Preening himself, Holderman went on, "The stories I collected in my book, and others of the same nature, can be attributed for the most part to one of two causes: subjective hallucination, or misinterpretation of purely natural phenomena. They are entertaining, particularly on a windy winter night, but they are—stories. Nothing more."
No one spoke for a moment. Holderman's manner was so dogmatic and so positive that no one wanted to contradict him.
