The Waiting Room (31 page)

"My God, Abner," I breathed, head lowered.

"Go away, Sam!"

I looked up. Abner was standing on his little open porch, hands on his hips and a look of grim determination on his face. "You're not welcome here, Sam."

I pushed the gate open and started toward him down the narrow fieldstone walkway.

"Don't come in here, Sam. This is
my
house," Abner warned as he backed away toward the front door.

I continued shaking my head. There was nothing I could say to him, and although I had no idea what I was going to do when I got inside, I knew that inside, into that house, was where I had to go.

"Don't you know that Art probably
followed
you here, Sam?" Abner pleaded.

"Yes, Abner," I said. "I know. But you don't have to worry about him anymore."

He guffawed. "You ignorant bastard."

"Maybe," I said, and started up the porch steps. He had his back to the front door now. He grabbed the knob, turned it, pushed the door open, and started backing into the house.

I saw someone behind him. Someone nearly as tall as he was, but, in the darkness beyond that door, someone who was visible only as a dark
presence
in the house. I was certain it wasn't Phyllis. I was certain that Phyllis had fallen to the same fate that the Haislip brothers and Florence and God-only-knew how many others in Brookfield had that morning.

I started across the porch. Abner backed further into the house so all I could see of him was his arm holding the door open.

I thought then,
If he really wanted me to go away, he wouldn't stand there holding the door open!

"Christ, Abner," I sighed. And I lunged forward.

He threw the door shut at the same time. I slammed into it with my shoulder, then with the side of my head. The door flew open and crashed against the wall of the small foyer beyond. The foyer was empty.

I felt blood trickling down my cheek; I fingered it. "Dammit!" I whispered.

"Sam," I heard. The sound came from my right, from a short hallway that appeared to lead into a darkened living room. "You're not welcome here! Please go!" I heard anger in his voice. And pleading.

I started down the hallway toward the living room. I heard movement beyond, as of someone walking unsteadily across the hardwood floors there. I heard, too, a low shuffling noise, as if someone in slippers were trying to sidle across the same floor.

"Abner," I called, "you're my friend; I'm here to help you."

"We don't need your help," he called back, and again I heard pleading in his voice. "We have… each other!"

"We?" I called.

"Phyllis and me."

"But, Abner, the storm—"

"I sheltered her. I love her, and I sheltered her."

I was at the end of the hallway now. Before me lay a large living room, furnished with what looked like antiques from various periods. The only light was what streamed in through a pair of tall, narrow windows covered by lace curtains. These windows let copious amounts of light into half the big room and left the rest of the room in a kind of sugary darkness.

That's where Abner was, in that sugary darkness; in a doorway which led to the kitchen.

I could see the suggestion of his face, his eyes wide and his mouth moving as if he wanted to speak but couldn't think of the right words.

And Phyllis stood behind him.

I could see her head, her neck, her shoulders, the upper part of her breasts. I guessed that she was naked.

Abner's mouth stopped moving. Apparently he knew what I was looking at, because a nervous grin appeared on his mouth and he said, "She won't . . ." —another grin—". . . she won't keep her clothes on, Sam."

I could see her face more clearly than I could see Abner's, because she was a foot or so behind him, in light coming through the kitchen windows. It was the face that I remembered seeing at the beach house. But it was a face that was now at most the mask of beauty, a face that was the remembrance and imitation of beauty.

"I love her, Sam," Abner pleaded.

"Let her go," I said.

"I want to . . . to take her out, you know? To the store. To a restaurant. My Phyllis and me."

I started moving across the living room. Abner backed slowly away toward the kitchen. I realized then what the shuffling noise was. It was the soles of Phyllis's bare feet on the hardwood floor.

Abner babbled on, "I dress her up, you know—I dress her up the way she used to dress up. Sam, she's beautiful, she's really beautiful."

"You've got to let her go, Abner," I said gently, firmly.

"But she gets . . . angry, Sam." He stopped, seemed to think about that. His head lowered for a moment. Then he looked up and smiled as if he'd hit on the right word. "No, Sam. Not angry. She doesn't get angry. She gets
hot
, you know—like the clothes are too
hot
. I can tell. She doesn't say anything. She never says anything anymore. But I can tell."

I was halfway across the living room, and closer to him now, so I could see him more clearly. I could see that his shoulders were raw and naked, as if he'd been burned.

"Good Lord, Abner!" I breathed.

He knew what I was talking about. "It's nothing," he said. "Nothing. I had to shelter her from the storm, didn't I?" I got a mental picture of him huddling over her, protecting her from the awful, cleansing rain, the rain that even the roof and bulk of his house could not protect her from, but that his love could.

"Let her go," I said again. "She has to move on—"

He chuckled grimly, falsely. "And what do
you
know, Sam?! You don't
know
anything. I've lived with these people for two years, goddammit! Two years!" He had stopped moving. "And I
know
them, Sam. I know they
move
on.
Big deal. What do you think? Do you think it's like high school graduation or something? It isn't. Once they're gone, that's it, they're gone. I don't know where they go. No one does. So I'm sure as hell not going to let it happen to Phyllis. Not my Phyllis."

"Just, please, look at her, Abner," I said.
"Look
at her."

He smiled. "Yes," he said, without turning to look at her, "she's beautiful, isn't she?"

"She's dead, goddammit!"

Another guffaw. "We're all of us dead in one way or another, my friend—just because we can't get up and scarf down a Twinkie or think as clearly as we used to or—"

"She's
dead,
Abner! Phyllis is
dead!"

"But, ah, you see, there's a difference, Sam, and the difference is, she
loves
me!"

I lunged for him.

I think now, two months later, that he wanted me to do that. Because when I tackled him about the waist, he went down, and as we were toppling over into Phyllis, who toppled over, too, onto her back—and a long, foul-smelling gust of air, the smell of rotted wood, rose up from where she fell—Abner whimpered, "Help me, Sam."

And I remembered thinking that throwing myself on him was like throwing myself on a live grenade, which was a particular fantasy I'd had during my tour of Nam—throwing myself on a live grenade to save the lives of my buddies. (The chance never came up, thank God, because I wasn't at all sure how I'd have reacted. I think if there were a bunch of us and the grenade fell between us we'd all have sat waiting for the other guy to be the hero.)

Because there, in Abner's idyllic house in Brookfield, Vermont, I wasn't at all sure how he was going to react. He loved Phyllis, for God's sake, and I had come to take him away from her. I wasn't sure how he was going to react to that. Maybe he'd explode.

And I wasn't sure how Phyllis would react, either. She didn't react. She lay still, that foul smell—the smell of damp wood, the smell that had permeated the beach house—wafting over us and a continuous ragged kind of purring sound coming from her. After a few minutes, the purring sound stopped and she lay very, very still.

I pushed myself up from Abner so I was over him as if I were doing push-ups. I held his wrists with my hands and I hissed at him, "Let her go! Abner, let her go!"

His mouth moved. His eyes had a stark look of hurt and pleading in them, like a small child who has fallen and scraped his knee.

"Abner," I pleaded, "come back to us. Please come back to us!"

Again his mouth moved. He quivered a sigh. Then he closed his eyes, and he wept.

~ * ~

He's going to be the best man at my wedding next month. He tells me that he'll rent his own tux, thank you, that my taste in clothes is even worse than his, if that's possible. He also claims to like Leslie a lot, though, secretly, I think the two of them have a bit of a personality-clash problem. It happens.

Leslie buried her father in a little cemetery in Queens. He died during my trek from Manhattan to Brookfield. She tried to call to tell me but, of course, got no answer. His death hit her very hard. When I came back, and for a month or so afterward, she broke into tears everywhere—in restaurants, at a movie, watching TV, whatever. And I don't know how many times I wanted to say something like, "It's okay, Leslie. Really. It's not as bad as you think," but for one, she wouldn't know what I was talking about, and for another,
I
wouldn't know what I was talking about, either. As I said several hundred pages ago, if I've learned one thing these past few months, it's what a really ignorant bastard I am.

Art DeGraff got hauled away, what was left of him. He could barely walk, couldn't talk, and was all but blind. No wonder. He had, after all, been kept prisoner in someone's wall for a year. I thought Kennedy Whelan would be all smiles while the troopers shuffled poor Art into their car and took his—Whelan's—report. But he wasn't. He was awfully glum. I guess it had been a pretty wearing day for him.

Madeline disappeared one fine morning, leaving everything behind in that room of hers, except Gerald's dirty softball. The day before she disappeared, she said, "I go where I'm needed, Sam. I'm not needed here anymore. Don't look so judgmental. Hell, there are lots worse ways I could spend my time."

And I suppose she's right. I suppose there really are lots worse ways to spend your time than helping to keep the traffic flow between this world and
that
one not only one-way but smooth, too, which is what she's chosen to do with her life. I suppose so.

But there are lots better ways to spend your time, too.

~ * ~

Abner's moving out of the beach house tomorrow. He rented a studio apartment in the West Village, using money another publisher advanced him to begin work again on a new photographic look at Manhattan. This morning, he collected a broom, a couple of pails, two boxes of Spic and Span, and a lot of gritty resolve, and headed out to the beach house. He says he wants to make it spotless, which will take some doing.

"My time will come eventually, Sam," he said. "So will yours. Until then, I think I'll do as much living as I can." From the fire in his eyes, I knew he meant it. And hell, if that fire dims, he'll have me around to kick his butt back into place.

After all, that's what friends are for.

T. M. Wright is the author of several previous horror novels, including
Strange Seed, The Playground—
published by Tor in 1982—and
A
Manhattan Ghost Story,
published in 1984. Mr. Wright lives near Rochester, New York, where he spends much of his time feeding his cats, teaching, reading, and staying warm.

"Letters from admiring readers," he says, "are encouraged."