Punish the Sinners (40 page)

His only solace was Margo Henderson. They began to spend each evening together; each evening Peter would reiterate his theory to Margo. And she would listen.

But nothing was happening. Neilsville was quiet. The days were beginning to take on the dull sameness they had always had, and Margo found it a relief. The town was still restless, people were still talking, but the tension was easing.

Except that each evening Peter Balsam would tell her again that what they were going through was only a respite, that the horror would begin again.

“But how can you be so sure?” she demanded one night “I mean, if anything’s going to happen, why isn’t it happening?”

“I don’t know,” Peter said doggedly. “But I know it isn’t over yet I won’t be able to end it until I know why it’s happening.”

Margo looked at his pale complexion and haggard eyes. It was becoming an obsession with him. Their evenings weren’t fun anymore; he was too wrapped up in a problem Margo was no longer sure even existed.

“Even if you find out, what makes you so sure you can do anything about it?” She tried to keep her voice level, but her own growing doubts about Peter came through.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Peter asked.

Margo saw no point in denying it The doubts had been growing for days.

“I don’t know,” she said, compromising with herself. “I
want
to believe yon, Peter. But it’s ail so—” She groped for the right word. “—so farfetched. Peter, it just isn’t rational.”

“I never said it was,” Peter countered.

“No, you didn’t” Margo complained. “Maybe if you had tried to make the whole thing sound reasonable it would be easier. But you dont. You just insist that I believe you. You know, there really isn’t any difference between you and Monsignor.”

The words stung, and Peter winced. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said stiffly.

“So am I,” Margo said coldly. “But it’s the way I fed, and I can’t do anything about it”

Peter rose from his chair and went to the kitchen to fix himself a drink. As he pried the ice loose, and measured the liquor, he reflected on the fragility of the threads of faith. His faith in the Church had broken, and he had turned to himself. Now the carefully nurtured threads between himself and Margo had broken, too. Where could he turn now?

He returned to the living room.

Margo was gone.

Peter Balsam was alone.

   It was on Tuesday that Peter Balsam overheard Marilyn Crane. He was sitting behind his desk in Room 16, trying to grade Latin exams. In the small room adjoining Room 16, Marilyn Crane and Jeff Bremmer were working with the rats. Peter had been vaguely aware of their conversation as they worked, but it wasn’t until Marilyn suddenly began talking about the rats that Peter
gave up trying to concentrate on his work and began listening to the two adolescents in the next room.

“They aren’t any good anymore,” Marilyn suddenly commented.

Jeff Bremmer glanced at her, annoyed first that he had been assigned to work on the experiment with Marilyn, and currently because now she was insisting on talking, instead of simply getting on with it.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Marilyn ignored the implied rebuke.

“Look at them. They don’t even try anymore. It doesn’t matter what you do; they just plod along until they get through the maze. A few days ago, you could tell them apart. But not anymore. Now they’re all alike. It’s like their personalities are gone.”

“They never had any personalities,” Jeff said, his irritation growing. “They’re just rats, for Christ’s sake!”

Marilyn shot him a look. “You shouldn’t talk that way.”

“What way?”

“Swearing.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Jeff said deliberately.

Marilyn didn’t hear him this time; her attention was back on the rats.

“Why do they do it?” she mused. “Why don’t they just sit in a corner and wait it out? All they get for finding their way through the maze is a little piece of food, and they’d get that anyway.”

“They don’t know that,” Jeff said, anxious to get back to work. “For all they know, if they sit down and do nothing, they’ll starve to death.”

Marilyn didn’t seem to hear him. “Sometimes I feel just like them,” she said. Her voice had taken on a dreamy quality, and Jeff was no longer sure if she was talking to him, or to herself. “Sometimes I feel like my
life is just like that maze, and every time I figure out what I’m supposed to do, somebody changes the rules, and I have to start all over again.”

In Room 16, Peter Balsam put down the exam he had been working on, and devoted his full attention to Marilyn.

“Why do I bother to do it?” she was saying. “Why don’t I just quit? I mean, what could happen to me? I’m just like the rats.” Her voice grew bitter. “They keep going, and I keep going, and they’re all starting to seem alike, and I’m starting to seem like all the rest of them. It must have been the same for them. They must have felt just like I do, like someone else is running their lives for them. But they all gave in, and did what they were supposed to do. Except Judy. But she never does what she’s supposed to do.”

Jeff Bremmer had stopped working, and was gaping at Marilyn. She no longer seemed to be aware of his presence, or even of where she was. Though she was still staring down into the maze, her eyes had taken on a faraway look, and Jeff wasn’t sure she even saw the rats. Her voice continued to drone through the sudden quiet that had fallen over the two rooms.

“Janet tried to fight it, too; she just wasn’t as strong as Judy is. But she was stronger than me. If she couldn’t hold out against him, how can I? And why should I? It would be a lot easier just to give in to him, and get it over with.”

Jeff picked up on the word. “Him.” She had said “him.” He reached out and grabbed Marilyn’s arm.

“Who?” he said. “Give in to who?”

Marilyn didn’t respond for a second or two, but then her eyes focused on Jeff, and her body stiffened. She hadn’t realized she’d been talking out loud. She’d been thinking. Only thinking. But Jeff had heard.

She shifted her gaze, and looked through the open door to Room 16. Mr. Balsam was staring at her too. Everything she’d been thinking—no, said—they’d heard. Now they’d think she was crazy. She had to get out. Get out of the room. Get out of the school.

She wrenched her arm free of Jeff’s grasp, and bolted toward the door. As she passed through Room 16 her tears began to come, and she tried to force back the sob that was in her throat She began to run, out of the room, down the halt Out.

She had to get out. By the time the wracking sob tore loose from her throat, Marilyn Crane was halfway down Cathedral Hill.

She hadn’t even noticed the smoke curling up from the roof of the rectory. She was only aware of her own sobbing, and the noises in her head. The sounds. The awful, compelling sounds.

   By the time Peter Balsam could react, she was gone. He hurried to the door of the room, but she had disappeared around the corner; all he could hear was the pounding of her feet. He went slowly back into Room 16. Jeff Bremmer was waiting for him.

“What did she mean?” Jeff asked. “It sounded like—”

“Never mind what it sounded like,” Peter snapped. Immediately he regretted his tone; he hadn’t been thinking when he spoke. He tried to ease the hurt that had sprung into Jeff’s face.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was worried about Marilyn.”

“She’s getting worse,” Jeff commented.

“Worse? What do you mean, worse?”

Jeff fidgeted uncomfortably. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. “Well, she was always a little, you know, weird. But lately it’s really gotten bad. I mean, most of
the kids think—” He broke off, unwilling to condemn a peer in front of an adult, even if the peer was Marilyn Crane.

“Think what?” Peter asked. Then: “Never mind. I know what they think.”

Jeff looked at his teacher curiously, remembering the word Marilyn had used. “Him.” And then, when she had seen Mr. Balsam looking at her, she had run.

“You,” Jeff said suddenly. “She was talking about you, wasn’t she?”

“Me?” Balsam said blankly.

“When she was talking about giving in. She said something about giving in to ‘him.’ She was talking about you, wasn’t she?”

“No,” Peter said definitely. “She wasn’t talking about me.”

But there was something in his eyes, something in his face, that made Jeff doubt him. When he left the room, Jeff Bremmer was sure that whatever had happened to all the girls—what was happening now to Marilyn Crane—Mr. Balsam was to blame.

   Peter Balsam sat alone in the room for several minutes, trying to decide what to do. Whatever he did, he would have to do it alone. There was no one left to turn to.

He made up his mind. He would call Marilyn’s mother. He would warn her, tell her to watch out for Marilyn, to talk to her.

Peter gathered his things together, locked the uncorrected quizzes into his desk, and left the room. His mind was so occupied with trying to decide exactly what to say to Mrs. Crane that he passed the rectory without even looking up.

No one answered the telephone at the Cranes’ home until nearly nine o’clock, and as the hour grew later, Peter became more and more worded. Maybe he was too late. Maybe something had already happened to Marilyn. But when the phone was finally answered, the voice speaking in his ear sounded normal.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Crane?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“We haven’t met, Mrs. Orane. Pm one of Marilyn’s teachers.”

Geraldine Crane’s impulse was to hang up. How dared he call her? Didn’t he know what everyone was saying about him?

“Mrs. Crane, are you still there?”

“What do you want?” Geraldine asked coldly.

“Pm calling about Marilyn. Is she there?”

“Of course she’s here. Where else would she be?”

“Mrs. Crane, Pm very worried about Marilyn. I think she may be in danger, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Danger?” Geraldine Crane held the receiver away from her ear and stared at it What was the man talking about?

“She was working in the lab this afternoon, and I—well, I don’t know how to put it exactly—”

“I suggest you put it the way it happened, whatever it was.”

“Well, she was sort of talking to herself.”

“Marilyn? Don’t be ridiculous.” Geraldine was finding the man more annoying every minute.

“I’m sorry, maybe I put it badly.” He told her what he’d overheard, and what had happened after Marilyn realized she’d been talking out loud.

“I tried to go after her,” Peter finished. “But by the time I got to the hall, she was gone.”

“Well, I can assure you, she’s quite all right now,” Mrs. Crane said idly. “She came home this afternoon, and we all went out for dinner. Right now she’s upstairs, doing her homework.”

“Mrs. Crane, I know it sounds like a strange request, but I think you ought to spend some time with Marilyn. Talk to her. Try to find out what’s bothering her.”

Geraldine Crane lost her patience. “Mr. Balsam, apparently you don’t know who you’re talking to. I happen to be her mother. I talk to Marilyn every day. You spend perhaps one hour with her each day, and now you presume to tell me how to behave with my daughter. I know you claim to be a psychologist, but I have to tell you that I don’t have much faith in that sort of thing. I never have, and after what’s been happening in Neilsville since you arrived, I have even less. As far as “I’m concerned, I think it might be best for everyone if you spent a lot less time meddling in the affairs of your students, and stuck entirely to your classes.”

“Mrs. Crane—”

“Mr. Balsam, I’ll appreciate it if you don’t interrupt me. Marilyn isn’t like any of the other children in Neilsville. She’s always, since she was a baby, been somewhat withdrawn. I don’t know why, but it’s always been that way. So you see,” she went on, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “your wonderful perceptions are no news to me. I’m aware that Marilyn has been upset lately, but why wouldn’t she be? My Lord, Mr. Balsam, she’s lost three of her best friends. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but Marilyn was very close to those girls. She visited Judy Nelson in the hospital, and Karen Morton had Marilyn at her party. So of course she’s upset She’s a
nomai teen-ager, Mr. Balsam, and I would think you’d understand that” Without waiting for a reply, Geraldine Grane firmly placed the receiver back in its cradle.

Peter Balsam stared at the dead phone in his hand, and wondered what to do. But there didn’t seem to be anything left He put on the coffee pot, and took one of the pills that helped him stay awake. It was going to be along night

   Geraldine Grane sat seething for several minutes after she hung up on Peter Balsam, and congratulated herself on how well she’d handled the impudent teacher. Then, as her anger eased, she remembered what he’d said. Could he have been right? Was something bothering Marilyn?

Marilyn was on her bed, a book open in front of her. She looked up when her mother came into the room, but didn’t close the book.

“Marilyn?” Geraldine’s voice was tentative, as if she weren’t quite sure how to approach her daughter.

“I’m studying, Mother.” There was a flatness to Marilyn’s voice.

“I just thought you might like to talk awhile.”

“I don’t I talk too much. Can’t you just leave me alone?” Marilyn turned her attention back to her book.

Geraldine stood helplessly at the door, wondering what she should do. Then, following the path of least resistance, she started out of the room.

“Marilyn? If you need to talk, I’m here.”

“I know, Mother.” But it was a dismissal, and Geraldine knew it She left her daughter, and went back downstairs.

Marilyn got up and closed the door to her room. Why couldn’t they leave her alone? All of them? It was
Mr. Balsam on the telephone. She was sure of it. If it wasn’t him, who else would have called and induced her mother to try to talk to her?

She couldn’t talk to them. What could she talk to them about? The strange things she wanted to do to herself? They wouldn’t understand. She didn’t even understand it herself, so how could they?

Maybe they wanted her to be upset. Maybe it all was Mr. Balsam, or he was part of it, whatever it was. But it couldn’t be him, could it?