Someone in the House (16 page)

“Kevin came home at twelve fifty-three,” Roger began. “I gave him ten minutes to settle down, then went out to arrange my equipment. I then returned to my room and took up a position on the balcony, midway between his room and mine. At precisely one forty-seven I heard a soft creaking that might have been the springs of Kevin’s bed. Up till then he hadn’t made a sound. He must be a quiet sleeper.”

He stopped to accept the cup of tea Bea handed him. I could have kicked him.

“I am able to be precise about the times because my watch has a luminous dial,” Roger said pedantically.

“I could have figured that out,” I told him.

“It is necessary to be precise. After approximately a minute and a half I began to hear murmurs. That continued for—oh, about ten minutes.” His voice cracked and he put his hand to his throat. “Oh, hell,” he said. “I’ll have to cut it short. My pharynx is beginning to swell up. I didn’t hear what you two heard. I could not swear there were two different voices. Nor did I see your apparition, Anne. In my opinion you were imagining that. There is no ghost.”

7

ISHOULD HAVE been relieved. Instead I knew how Noah must have felt when his neighbors chuckled and told him to stop worrying—it couldn’t go on raining for forty days and forty nights. He knew it could, and would. The denials didn’t comfort him, they simply added frustration to his sense of doom.

Bea pulled up a chair and sat down by the bed. Quietly she said, “You can’t dismiss it as Anne’s imagination, Roger. I didn’t see anything, but the voices were…I don’t think I have been able to express to you how much they disturbed me.”

“Hey, now, I’m not dismissing anything. I am simply trying to explain that manifestations of this sort may vary according to the personalities and predilections of the beholders. That’s true of even so-called normal occurrences. Witnesses of a crime or an accident seldom agree as to the details; you get the most incredible variants, even from honest and sensible people. In a case like this, the phenomenon itself is paranormal, outside the range of ordinary experience. Naturally witnesses interpret it differently.”

“Thank you, Sigmund Freud,” I said.

“Jung would be more like it,” Roger replied. “I didn’t see your apparition or hear your lady vampire, but I saw enough to convince me that there is a psychic force operating in this house, at or through Kevin. Now do you feel better?”

I considered the question. “I don’t know,” I said.

“There was something abnormal about the acoustical conditions in Kevin’s room,” Roger went on. “I had the feeling that something was muffling the sounds, as if a heavy curtain had been drawn across the windows. It hadn’t; his windows were wide open and I could see his curtains moving in the breeze.

“At five minutes after two I left the balcony and hid in the alcove. Fifteen minutes later Kevin opened his door. I was struck by the openness of his movements; he wasn’t making any attempt to be secretive. I saw no one but Kevin. However—here I do agree with you, Anne—I am one hundred percent convinced that Kevin saw something. His expression, the way his eyes moved…. The light bulb in the fixture near his room was pretty dim; as you may have noticed, it gave up the ghost (excuse me) not long afterward. Nothing strange about that; light bulbs do burn out. But it made it hard for me to see. Increasingly I had an impression of something there; it grew stronger as the seconds passed. I need not tell you that I was snapping pictures as fast as I could. I had an excellent view, straight down the hall. Just before Kevin went back into his room and closed the door, I caught a glimpse of something. The best way I can describe it is as a column of dim light, about four feet high. It was faintly luminous, and it was moving. It passed around the turn in the corridor and disappeared. There was a faint, very brief afterglow.

“I could hear my heart pounding and I knew my pulse was faster than usual, but I had no sense of horror or fear. I took my last couple of shots and waited for a full quarter of an hour before I collected my gear. I didn’t stop to examine any of it, just shoved it into the bag. I got back to my room without any trouble and stowed the bag away; then I went to the bathroom. I was on my way back when Kevin came out. Having concluded that he had long since dropped into a deep sleep, I was so startled that I acted without thinking—and he jumped me. The kid has reflexes like a cat’s. There’s nothing wrong with him physically.”

None of us spoke for a few moments, as we pondered the implications of this remarkable story. Roger kept massaging his throat. Finally I said, “You think something is wrong with Kevin mentally?”

“Something is wrong, but it isn’t mental in the sense you mean,” Roger said hoarsely. “Now I understand why you two were so opposed to discussing this with him. He’s probably incapable of discussing it or even admitting it. Do you know the real definition of the word ‘glamour’—not the corruption Hollywood has foisted on us?”

I murmured,

“‘Oh, what can ail thee, knight at arms,

Alone and palely loitering….’”

Bea nodded. “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” she said. “The theme is an old one—the human, male or female, who falls under the spell of a supernatural lover. Gods and goddesses, mermen, succubi…”

“Mind you,” Roger said, “I’m not saying that Kevin is bewitched by some soulless immortal creature. The thing that is operating here takes that form for him. Why it has picked on him and what it wants I can’t even begin to imagine at this stage. But he needs help; he can’t help us. And I am of the opinion that it would be worse than useless, perhaps even dangerous, to tell him what is happening.”

“I agree with that, if not with your main premise,” Bea said. She was sitting primly upright, her back straight, her hands folded in her lap. The sash of her robe, a soft, flowing garment printed with lilacs and sprays of ivy, was tied in a neat bow.

“You’re still hooked on a beautiful fair-haired ghost?” Roger demanded. “Her lover was killed in the Crusades, so she pined away…. Or she was ravished by a wicked lord of the manor and threw herself off the battlements…. Or her cruel father starved her to death because she wouldn’t marry the man he selected for her….”

“I don’t intend to discuss the subject any further,” Bea said. “You pursue your theory; I’ll pursue mine.”

Her nose was lifted as if she smelled something nasty. Roger let out a shout of laughter, then clutched his throat. “You’re adorable,” he croaked.

“Hmph,” said Bea. “I’m going to get some ice for your throat.”

“No, don’t bother. I’ve got to go. I want to get to work on that film. I’ll bring the prints over tomorrow.”

“You’re going home now?” I asked.

“Why not? I can’t wait to see what I got on film.”

“No reason, except that Kevin may get suspicious of your sudden retreat.”

“Kevin wouldn’t notice a bishop in full regalia conducting an exorcism,” Roger said. “However, you may have a point. I’ll stay.”

“You can’t go back to that room,” Bea said.

“Is that a proposition?”

“Certainly not! I just don’t think it’s safe—”

“I agree.” Roger took her hand. “I’m scared to go back there. I need somebody to stay with me and hold my hand. A nice, warm friendly person.”

They didn’t notice when I left. I don’t know where Roger slept that night, but I hoped for the best. Bea’s protests had lacked sincerity.

II

As I drifted off to sleep I thought that if Kevin came bursting in next morning and woke me, wanting to play tennis, I would break the racket over his head. He didn’t come, and neither did anyone else. I snored until the sun crept across the room and shone in my eyes.

As usual, morning brought reassurance and the familiar sense of comfort, dulling the alarms of the night. Yet I was conscious of a morbid curiosity, which was to stay with me for some time—a need to know where Kevin was and what he was doing. After I finished breakfast I went looking for him.

Following a not-too-subtle hunch I went first to the tennis court. Sure enough, he was there, and I saw why he had not bothered to wake me up. Debbie was as cute as a button in one of those adorable little tennis dresses dripping with eyelet and short enough to show darling little ruffled panties underneath. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail that kept swinging from side to side in an inconvenient manner. It didn’t signify; she had no intention of winning that match anyway. Once or twice she forgot herself and returned a shot with an effortless skill that showed how good a player she really was, but for the most part she managed to play badly enough to accomplish her end. When the victory was official, Kevin bounded over the net—Mercury in white shorts and alligator T-shirt—and threw his arm around her, laughing. She cuddled into his embrace, but when his hand cupped her breast she giggled and pushed it away. This confirmed what I had suspected. She wasn’t one of the kind that “does it on a first date.” No wonder poor old Kevin had been tired when he came home last night. He was due for some more heartache and hard breathing now, if I was any judge; the two of them wandered off toward the garden, entwined like Laocoön and the snakes. I went back to the house.

Bea had sent the cleaning team to the library; the mahogany surfaces shone, and the traces of our informal meeting the night before had been swept away. I inspected my desk. There wasn’t a speck of dust to be seen, but the books had an abandoned look, like babies left on the doorstep of an orphanage. My notes looked yellow around the edges. Pure imagination, of course. They weren’t more than eight months old, and paper doesn’t turn color that soon.

I started looking through those antique notes. Some of our ideas had been good ones. It would have been a first-rate book. The poetry section, for instance. I sat down at the desk and reached for a pen.

I had been working for about an hour when Kevin appeared. I was about to ask him where Debbie was when I realized, in the nick of time, that I wasn’t supposed to know she had been here. So I just said, “Hi,” and Kevin sat down beside the desk.

“Working?”

“Trying to.”

Kevin slid down onto his spine and stuck his legs out. Moodily he contemplated his knees.

“I’ve been a lazy rat, haven’t I?”

“I haven’t been exactly energetic myself.”

“No, but you’d have put in some work if I hadn’t dragged my feet. It’s your own fault, Anne, you’re too damned polite. Why didn’t you tell me off?”

This was the old Kevin—charming, apologetic, considerate. “Oh, well,” I said deprecatingly.

“I’ll do better from now on,” Kevin said.

“Why should you? One of the things we had in mind when we began was making a few bucks. You don’t have to worry about that now.”

“Yeah, well, I suppose that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t felt any sense of urgency; but it’s no excuse. Money was only one of our motives. It could be a good book. Besides…”

“You don’t owe me anything,” I said, anticipating him. “Except honesty. If you want out, just let me know. I can get another collaborator, or do it myself.”

“That’s damned nice of you.” Kevin gave me one of his sweetest, most disarming smiles. “Let’s see what we can accomplish this summer, okay? If I cop out it’s all yours, including what we’ve done jointly.”

He held out his hand.

What could I say? It sounded fair enough. Only…three months of intensive work would have given us a book, or most of one. I didn’t have a prayer of finishing it now. Yet to reject Kevin’s offer would have been ungracious. So I gave him my hand and we shook.

He then proceeded to make me feel even more of a jerk by putting in two solid hours of productive activity. We had just about finished a rough outline of the first section when Bea came looking for us to tell us lunch was ready.

Fortunately for my conscience, which is all too prone to indulge in masochistic self-recrimination, Kevin went up to his room after lunch instead of returning to work. So I felt free to resent him all over again.

I started helping Bea clear away the dishes.

“Don’t bother,” she said. “The cleaning team hasn’t tackled the kitchen yet. They can deal with this.”

“I sort of expected Roger to show up by now,” I said.

“I haven’t heard from him,” she said shortly.

So I went back to the library.

I worked for a couple of hours, stoically ignoring the soft breeze that wafted in from the garden, and the cute gambols of Pettibone, who wanted me to play with her. Kevin never came back. At three o’clock I decided he must have gone for a swim. I could have used one myself. It was another hot day. But I figured Debbie might be there, so I made a martyr of myself, working doggedly on and dripping perspiration onto my papers.