Ammie, Come Home (21 page)

“Oh, don't be so stinking humble; you couldn't have seen it coming—don't you understand? You were already half-shadowed.”

Ruth moved, with a soft questioning sound, and Bruce nodded gravely at her.

“Yes, the night he had you down on the couch was the first time. I gather you were all wound up in certain private emotions, so you didn't see, as I did, how nasty it looked. It was out of character for Pat, very much out of character, especially with you—it was pretty obvious that he was getting—uh—sentimental about you. I mean, there are women you seduce and women you rape, and the women you—”

“You make your point,” Pat said, trying to maintain a feeble semblance of dignity, although his face was almost as red as his hair.

“Oh. Well, the second time was when Father Bishko ran. You may not be devout, but you're polite. Your behavior on that occasion, again, was alarmingly atypical. But tonight, in the cellar, you really scared hell out of me. You kept coming up with those odd flashes of intuition, bits of knowledge you couldn't possibly have known—unless you were in some sort of contact with It, getting Its thoughts.”

“Yes, I see,” Pat said thoughtfully. “Amanda failed with Sara. She had to try someone else.”

“No!” Bruce's voice rose. “No, Pat, you still don't get it. You've got it wrong. We all have it wrong. We were on the wrong track from the beginning.”

In the silence the crackling and hissing of the flames were the only sounds, except for the dog's comfortable snoring breaths. Ruth never forgot the picture they made, her friends and allies, wearing their battle scars and fatigue like medals. The firelight ran bronze fingers through Sara's tumbled hair and made dark sweet shadows at the corner of her mouth. Bruce, leaning forward in his eagerness, his bandaged hand lifted for emphasis; Pat swathed in a horrible old bathrobe furred with dog hairs, his own hair standing on end like a cockatoo's crest, and his face crisscrossed with scratches…. And her own hands, at rest in his.

When Bruce began to speak, he had as intent an audience as any lecturer could hope for.

“We decided, early in the game, that we might have two ghosts. As soon as we learned about Ammie, it was obvious that she was the entity who came to Sara. Where we made our big mistake was in identifying her with A, the thing that materializes in the living room. I'd begun to have my doubts about that even before tonight; because, if there was one thing we agreed on, it was that the smoke, or fog, was evil. It produced an overpowering repulsion and terror. Ammie never affected us that way.”

“But, Bruce,” Ruth protested. “She wasn't very—well, very nice.”

“She was frightened and confused,” Bruce said, with a curious gentleness. “The—well, the residue, let's call it—of Amanda Campbell that lingers in the house is not a conventional ghost, a complete sensate personality. She's more like a phonograph record, stuck at a certain point. That's why she has been so incoherent and so unhelpful when we have contacted her.”

He paused, waiting for a comment. None came, not even from Pat; and Bruce continued, “But Ammie, though vital in the arousing of the house, is not the source of danger. That entity, as dark and violent as the smoke and fire it suggests, is still aware, still reacting.”

“Smoke and fire,” Ruth said thoughtfully.

“No.” Bruce answered her thought rather than her words. “I don't think the form of the apparition is necessarily conditioned by physical fire. It conveys the emotions that drive him, even beyond death—violence, darkness, threat. That was what possessed you tonight, Pat. And it was not a woman, however malevolent. I had already come to sense this presence as that of a man, a man like you in many ways, Pat—hot-tempered, passionate, potentially violent. That's why he was able to reach you, and why you didn't sense the change yourself. Ruth didn't realize because— well, because…”

“That's all right,” Ruth said wryly. “This is no time to spare my feelings. I didn't realize because I was operating on the assumption that all men are beasts.”

“You saw the overshadowing tonight,” Bruce said, passing over the admission. “Was there any doubt in your mind that what you saw was male, not female?”

“Overpoweringly male,” Ruth said promptly. “Bruce, of course! It works out like those little syllogisms of Lewis Carroll's. The thing that overshadowed Pat was a man. The thing that overshadowed Pat was the blackness. Therefore the blackness is male. Ammie is female….”

“Ammie is not the blackness,” Bruce finished. “So who is? It can only be one person, I think.”

“Samson among the Philistines,” Ruth said. “Samson was a husky specimen, wasn't he? The man who died by fire…. I know you don't agree with that, Bruce, but I can't help feeling that it must have shaped him, somehow. Of course. It's Douglass Campbell.”

Bruce nodded.

“That explains why the Bible stopped It, when the crucifix didn't.”

“You're so damned smart I can't stand you,” Pat said gloomily.

“Douglass was a rabid Protestant,” Bruce said with a grin. “He had no respect for Papist mummeries while he was alive. Why should he pay attention to them after he was dead?”

“Whereas the Bible….” Ruth began. “Good heavens—it was probably Douglass's own Bible! How pertinent can you get?”

“But that's what I tried to say once before!” Sara's voice rose, and they all stopped talking to stare at her.

“What was it you tried to say?” Bruce asked.

“Oh, I didn't think much of the idea myself,” Sara said. “And then you all drowned me out the way you do…. It was just something I read in a book of ghost stories. The man who wrote it was a psychic investigator and he said, someplace or other, that he always suspected ghosts couldn't be exorcised by rites they didn't accept when they were alive.”

Bruce sank back onto the couch. Pat hid his face in his hands.

“Sara….” Ruth began.

“Well, I'm sorry,” the girl said defensively.

“What are you sorry about?” Pat's hands dropped from his face; it was red with amused chagrin. “It's so damned typical of us, bellowing our loud-mouthed theories, and ignoring the small voice that had the vital clue.”

“I don't suppose we'd have paid any attention if she had been able to get it out,” Bruce said glumly. “Sara, I've been lectured on my sins by a lot of people, but nobody ever made me feel quite so small and wormy.”

“If it's true,” Ruth murmured. “If it should be true—it opens up a number of incredible possibilities….”

“All sorts of possibilities,” Pat agreed. “Multiple afterworlds, diverse heavens, created by the belief of the worshipers….”

“And it explains why the methods of exorcising evil spirits vary so much from culture to culture,” Bruce said. “Devil masks and loud noises in Africa, crosses and holy water in Europe. And—” he glanced with oblique humor at Pat— “the analyst's couch and hypnotism today.”

“What a heaven that would be,” said Pat, still fascinated by his idea. “The Great God Freud and his disciples. Sort of a Brave New World, without sex taboos and frustrations….”

Bruce sat up with a grimace of pain.

“There are more immediate applications for us.” He leaned forward, and the firelight played on his set features, deepening the shadows under his eyes and cheekbones, giving a satanic flush to the flat planes of cheek and forehead. “We're all a little giddy with relief just now, but we have to face the unpleasant truth. Which is that our situation, bad enough to begin with, is steadily getting worse. Now that this force has been aroused, it is gaining strength.” He looked at Ruth. “You said once that It was impalpable, and thus incapable of doing physical harm. Maybe that was true at one time. But now Douglass has found himself a body.”

Pat stirred.

“No, he hasn't. Once, maybe, because I didn't know what to expect….”

“We can't count on your powers of resistance,” Bruce said ruthlessly. “It took Douglass longer to find a host than it did Ammie; maybe the tie of blood relationship has meaning, I wouldn't know. But now that Douglass has succeeded once, he may find it easier a second time. Your friend Bishko has the wrong idea, Pat. It's not Ruth who's in danger in that house. It's you.”

“And Sara,” Ruth said. “You think Ammie is harmless, but I'm not convinced.”

Sara tossed her head, throwing the hair back from her face, and smiled at her aunt.

“Ammie won't hurt me, Ruth. I guess I've always known that.”

“No, not Ammie,” Bruce said. He heaved himself up with a grunt of pain, and extracted a sheaf of papers from his hip pocket. “Maybe you've forgotten that dream of yours, Ruth; but I wrote it down, that first morning. The core of it was a threat to Sara, and the thing that threatened her was a shapeless darkness. Why do you think I got in the way of that hellish thing tonight? Because I could see where its eyes were looking and where its steps were heading. It wanted Sara.”

“I knew that too,” Ruth said dully. “And even then I couldn't—do what you did. If you hadn't…. I can't say it. I can't even think about it. Bruce, I've made up my mind. I'm going to sell the house.”

There was no immediate reaction. Bruce sat back, lids lowered. Pat, intent on the cigarette he was lighting, said nothing.

“You could,” Bruce said finally.

Pat raised his eyes from his match to encounter Ruth's waiting gaze. His mouth twisted in a grimace which was a poor imitation of the smile he intended.

“You aren't beating a dead horse, Ruth; you're beating the wrong horse. If you mean to give up, the thing to avoid is not the house. It's me.”

It was an inappropriate moment for Ruth to become aware, finally and positively, of the fact she had denied so long.

“We'll be living here,” she said calmly. “I won't need the house in any case.”

Pat swallowed his protest the wrong way and began to cough violently.

“You're both jumping to conclusions,” Bruce said; his expression was an odd blend of amusement, embarrassment, and sympathy. “Ruth, you can't sell the house; if someone else had experiences there your finicky conscience would devil you all the rest of your life. And, while I think Douglass is bound to the house, I can't be certain; and you can't spend your declining years toting a twenty-pound Bible around under one arm.”

Cherry red with coughing and emotion, Pat tried to speak, but Bruce cut him off with an autocratic wave of his hand. Ruth was brooding about the phrase “declining years,” and did not interrupt.

“We've got to get rid of Campbell for good,” Bruce went on. “That's the only way out. The situation is not as hopeless as it looks, we've already learned a great deal. So far the only thing that has had the slightest effect on our visitant is the Bible. The logical conclusion, I suppose, would be that we should turn for help to a Protestant minister. But frankly, I'm dubious. I don't think there is such a thing as a ritual for exorcism in any of the Protestant creeds; and even if there were we'd be taking a terrible risk in exposing someone else to Douglass. A certain type of personality might be driven hopelessly insane.”

“What a cheery little optimist you are,” Pat said bitterly. “You've just eliminated the last possible hope.”

“Man, you are obtuse,” Bruce said scornfully. “We've found out a helluva lot in the last couple of days, but we're still missing the one vital clue. What does Douglass want? What is it that is keeping him from his rest?”

“He wants her—Ammie,” Ruth said despairingly. “How can we satisfy that desire?”

“How do you know that's what he wants?” Bruce countered. “Even if it were—suppose he's obsessed and haunted by not knowing what became of her. Maybe we could find out. Maybe that would satisfy him. Myself, I can't believe his desires are that innocent. He's seething with rage and malevolence; the whole house is rotten with his hate. Why? I tell you, there's a part of the story we still don't know.”

“You may be right, at that.” Pat was looking more cheerful. “You know, Bruce, there are several factors that don't fit into your interpretation. The voice, for instance. It's not malevolent; it's kind of pathetic. How do you account for that?”

“I can't, and I'm not sure I need to. Maybe it's Douglass, at one moment of time, and the apparition is the old man at a less attractive period. Maybe the voice is Ammie, echoing the cry that calls her back. The thing that interests me is what we called Apparition D. The one that moved the book.”

“It wasn't Douglass,” Ruth said. “He was the one who tried to prevent us from finding it. So it must be—”

“Ammie,” Pat finished. “But she isn't much help, is she? Was the book only meant to give us the year, so that we could identify the right Campbell? Or does the Loyalist Plot have a specific meaning that we haven't yet discovered?”

Sara, pensive and shy in her squatting position, raised her head, swept the hair back from her brow, and broke her long silence.

“Why,” she said simply, “don't you ask Ammie?”

 

III

The clock struck midnight, and they were still arguing. Bruce had worn himself out in outraged argument; he was reclining, his profile very young and sulky.

“I won't do it,” Pat said. He folded his arms. “That's final.”

“We'll never find out otherwise,” Sara said, for the fifth or sixth time. “It's the only way.”

“But the risk, Sara,” Ruth exclaimed. “We opened the door once before for Ammie, and see what happened! So far this place is safe—uninvaded. We can't—”

“You said that before,” Sara pointed out. “And I said you have to take risks to gain anything worth having. Even safety.”

“It's more than safety that interests you,” said Bruce, staring malevolently at the ceiling.