Night Relics (43 page)

“It’s that man again,” she said to him. There was sudden fear in her voice, and she put her hand to her mouth. He shook his
head even though it was true. He was almost happy that she reacted like that. It meant she still had a stake in him and in
what he was. “How bad is it?” she asked. “What have you done?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I honestly don’t know. But I’ll tell you what I tried to do.”

B
ETH WATCHED FROM THE DOORWAY AS
P
ETER ONCE
again rearranged the odds and ends on top of the old bookcases along the wall. She felt restless and out of place, almost
intrusive, and as he worked, making what must have been minute adjustments in the positions of things, he’d grown silent and
preoccupied, and the atmosphere in the room was leaden and close. What the room needed—what Peter needed—was a dose of Bobby’s
Whoopee Cushion. Or maybe just a dose of Bobby himself, although by now she was glad she hadn’t brought him along. This was
too morbid, too unsetting.

“What was the name of the Jetsons’ dog?” she asked suddenly, trying to distract him. “It wasn’t Conroy, was it?” Her voice
sounded utterly out of place in the room, and the question fell flat. It even sounded to her like lunacy. She’d meant to force
him to sing the theme song to the old television program, but something in the atmosphere made that kind of clowning around
almost physically impossible.

And anyway, he didn’t answer. After several seconds of silence he looked up at her with a puzzled frown, then went straight
back to work, polishing the glass panes in the bookcase doors now. Many of them were cracked, and the glass was so dusty and
filmy that the few books within were visible only as a dark blur. As he wiped them clean, the glass reflected the candlelight,
and the books behind the glass gained dimension, their outlines and age-dimmed colors growing distinct. Outside, the wind
seemed to heighten,
as if it drew energy from the darkness.

Peter moved a glass decanter on the bookcase a half inch to the right of where it had been sitting, then leaned over to examine
the wood, shifting the decanter slightly again. There were four cut-crystal glasses next to it. Two of them were broken,
but he arranged the broken glasses as carefully as the others, examining the wood closely before drawing a book out of the
case and laying it next to the glasses. After peering at all four edges of the book, he picked it up, put it back into the
case, and drew out another one, blowing the dust off the top before laying it down.

“It’s strange how you can tell just where things ought to go,” he said suddenly, the sound of his voice breaking the tension
in the room. He struck a match, stepping to one of the tarnished old candleabras and relighting two candles that had gone
out.

“
Ought
to go? According to whom?”

“According to all the marks on things, the traces and shadows. You can see the rings where the glasses and the decanter sat.
Must have been years in the same place. The finish is discolored underneath. It’s the same under the book. It’s lighter than
the wood that was exposed around it. Out of all the books in the crates, I think I’ve found the one that must have been left
sitting there.”

“Good,” she said. “It probably
wants
to be there, after all that time.”

“That’s it exactly.” He stood back and looked at the wall, gesturing at one of the chairs in front of the hearth. “Go ahead
and sit down,” he said. But abruptly he leaned down and looked at the chair legs, then shifted the chair minutely on the rug.

“Just right,” she said, testing out the chair cushion. “We’ll be living easy when the porridge cools down.”

“I want to reproduce a scene,” he said, oblivious to the tone of her voice.

“Why does that give me the creeps?” she asked.

He busied himself with the fire, carefully feeding it broken eucalyptus branches.

“Why don’t we trade chairs for a while, just to break the spell? You sit in mine and I’ll sit in yours. Maybe
I’ll
get a chance to see the ghosts then, and you’ll have a chance to see it all from my perspective. And while we’re at it, I
don’t mean to complain, but those paintings on the wall are just downright ghastly, aren’t they? Whoever painted them never
paid any attention to sunlight.”

He looked distant, lost in thought, as if he couldn’t or wouldn’t listen to that kind of talk, and for a moment he sat there
in silence, tilting his head slightly as if he were listening.

“Did you know that a few minutes ago you called me …” she started to say.

He held his hand up, and she stopped, waiting for him. Then she heard something. From somewhere far away, and yet from no
real direction, there came a scattering of sounds—nothing she could identify absolutely, what with the wind and the crackling
of the fire. Taken altogether it sounded vaguely like the rustle and shuffle and clink of an occupied room. There was a sound
like a cat meowing, and then, unmistakably, a door shutting. Peter narrowed his eyes, waiting, but the sounds diminished and
were gone. “I guess it’s nothing,” he said finally.

“No, it wasn’t nothing,” she said. “I heard it, too.”

“Did you
smell
anything?” His voice was animated, eager.

. “The fire, maybe. It’s pretty smoky in here. Look, I think I really
did
hear something. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. I thought I smelled whiskey, and maybe jasmine, a woman’s perfume.”

“You’re more tuned in,” Beth said. Too tuned in, she thought.

“Did you start to say something a moment ago?”

“I was going to say that you called me Esther again.”

“When?” He stared at her.

“Just a moment ago, when I was standing in the doorway. I
guess
you were talking to me.”

“I remember saying something, but I don’t remember what.”

“I’m
very
skeptical of this,” she said seriously.

“Think of it as a scientific test.” He stepped away from the fire and surveyed the room critically.

“Do you want me to write it all down?” she asked. “Maybe by being
really
scientific about it we can keep it under control.”

“Like having rules in a boxing match,” he said. “Marquis of Queensberry.”

“Exactly. We’ll force it to behave rationally. That’s the thing with ghosts. They’re like spoiled children, always demanding
to have their way. Sometimes you’ve got to take a hard line with them.”

He grew silent again, distant, clearly unable to keep up any kind of banter. “What do you think of the room?” he asked finally,
gesturing at the newly rearranged furniture, apparently satisfied at last.

“Nice,” she said. “Good thing the light’s dim, I guess.”

“I wanted things to be perfect, the way things used to be. I’ve got this picture in my mind that’s almost photographic—sort
of developed while I was working, as if the room was waiting all these years to be restored.”

“Uncanny,” she said flatly.

“There were depressions in the rug from the feet of the chairs and tables, and the wall was shadowed around where the bookcases
used to stand. There was even a sort of afterimage of shadow on the bookcase shelves so that I could make out where each of
the books had been. Mostly they’re old medical books, but there’s a few novels that must have belonged to her.”

“Esther, you mean?”

He nodded, lost in thought again.

“I’m not sure you should be so anxious to give these things what they
want
.”

“You sound like Mr. Ackroyd.”

“It’s because I don’t know what we’re doing, and I’m telling you it’s starting to scare me. I’ll admit it. In the daylight
it all sounded reasonable. Now it doesn’t.”

He reached across the table and put his hand on her arm. “I still don’t know what happened to Amanda and David,” he said,
“but I believe they’re here somewhere. I don’t think they ever left at all.”

“You’ve said that. After all that’s happened to you, I guess I can’t argue with it. But admit it—it’s just a little obsessive,
restoring the room so fanatically, putting everything in its place like you were getting ready to perform a spell. It’s like
sending the devil an invitation.”

“Listen to that wind!” Peter said, sidetracking.

“I don’t like the wind,” she said. It made a strange humming sound outside, blowing through chinks and cracks in the old house,
which shook ominously with successive gusts.

He left her statement hanging in the air, unanswered. The flames in the fireplace burned with a silvery glow, threads of trailing
smoke drawn downward, through the cracks between the stones of the hearth. It was a miracle that the old chimney was standing
at all.

Suddenly nervous, she stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the dark woods. She was damned if she was going to
be a prisoner of another woman’s chair, no matter how carefully positioned it was. Peter sat in silence, seemingly unaware
that she’d gotten up. She glanced back at him. He was gone again, lost in the ozone. It was going to be an evening of long
silences despite the very nice afternoon they’d spent together. Actually, the afternoon had contained some long silences,
too, but of a different variety.

After their doughnut conversation she had known that they were going to see their various troubles through together. She’d
had to convince him of that—to let her stay with him tonight, as a sort of brake. In the end he’d seen
reason. And now here she was, trying to talk him out of whatever harebrained thing he was up to.

The moon hadn’t risen yet, and the night outside the windows was a mass of moving shadows that were only barely discernible
as trees. The candles cast a flickering glow that seemed almost to reflect off the wall of darkness beyond the glass. Dimly,
from somewhere out in the night, came the sound of weeping. She tensed, listening. It trailed away into silence. She heard
only the wind and the clicking of leaves and twigs against the wooden siding like tapping fingers. The crackling of the fire
sounded unnaturally loud behind her, and seemed to contain within it the noises she’d heard earlier—the clink of glasses,
the groaning of springs in a seat cushion, the swish of book pages turning.

She glanced at Peter. He seemed almost to be scowling, his face dark and unhappy.

“Penny for your thoughts,” she said, walking to his chair.

He was silent. She could see the fire reflected in his unblinking eyes.

“What’s six times six?” She looked straight into his face, waving her hand in front of his eyes, snapping her fingers.

“What?” His voice was flat, trancelike.

“Quick,” she said, “what’s the capital of Ohio? Say something.
Speak
.”

He stared into the fire.

“Where did King Henry keep his armies?” she asked, right into his face. “Come on, tell me. Don’t make me hurt you.”

He blinked at her, shook his head, maybe grappling with the ridiculous question.

“In his
sleevies
,” she said, then waited.

He looked at her in utter bewilderment, as if she’d gone crazy.

“It’s a
joke.
Get it? Armies, sleevies, handsies … Heh, heh.” She laughed woodenly.

Then, in a voice like an incantation, Peter said, “Moses supposes his noses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously.”

“Thank God,” she said, collapsing backward into her chair. A cloud of dust rose around her, and she waved her hand through
it, turning her face. “I thought you wigged out on me. Are you okay? You keep zoning out. It’s better if you talk.”

“What’s better if I talk?” He yawned and stretched. “I nearly fell asleep there.”

“With your eyes open? What were you staring at?”

He started to say something, then stopped abruptly. His head swiveled toward the window, and a noise escaped his throat—the
sound of raw fear. Beth twisted around to look, half standing up out of the chair, her heart accelerating.

A boy stood just outside, staring in, his face the color of gray clay in the dim light. The wind blew through his hair, and
one of his hands was pressed against a pane of glass. His dull eyes searched the room for a moment before he turned away,
gliding into the darkness beyond the edge of the window frame.

K
LEIN TOLD HER ALL OF IT—ABOUT
W
INTERS AND
S
LOANE
, about Pomeroy and their dealings with the local cabin owners, the fraud, the collusion. Getting out from under it would
cost them. If they were lucky they could resell the cabins at some kind of profit, pay off the fronts, pay off Winters and
Sloane, put it all behind them. The words rushed out until he had played it all through, even his finding
out about Pomeroy’s obsession with Beth and his confrontation with Pomeroy in Beth’s house yesterday.

She looked at him and shrugged, shaking her head again. “I don’t know what to say,” she said. “Except that I knew. I knew
there was something, and I knew that it was getting to you. That’s what I was talking about yesterday afternoon.”

He realized suddenly that he’d come to the end of it. He couldn’t tell her anything more. He had driven out here determined
to unburden himself of the whole story—the blackmail, revelations about his past. But he saw that there was no reason for
that now. Pomeroy was dead. And he knew that he couldn’t tell her about the blackmail anyway. If holding that back was the
same as lying, then he’d have to learn to live with being a liar. Telling her anything about Pomeroy’s death, about moving
the body, ditching the car and identification papers, would make her an accessory. What could she do, turn him in? Or would
she live with the day-to-day, month-to-month fear of his being arrested?

Once again Pomeroy would have insinuated himself into their lives, his ghost muttering threats, making his nasty phone calls
from the grave. Bury him, Klein told himself. For Lorna’s own protection he had to stop talking now. Confession was over.
It was true that a day might come when there was a knock on the door, and men in gray suits stood outside wanting to ask a
few questions about a body found in the hills. But if that day
did
come, then at least he could tell Lorna truthfully that he had kept it from her out of love and hope….