Boundaries (11 page)

There were books here, too. They were written in longhand, in various languages, on paper made slowly and methodically by hand from wood pulp. The words and sentences in these books were fragmented and often unreadable except by the people who had written them. One such book, written in English, began:

Link own
freon
at the moreover
blakness
diskribing
us.
Sewwee
rise UP!!
 
. . .
 

It went on, at very great length, to describe the effects of the Emancipation Proclamation as seen through the eyes of a young black man. In life, the author had been a white professor of history at Dartmouth College.

Another book, by a woman who had written fiction for various literary magazines, read, in part:

Arown
that bed the
Missusgathered
wept
weree
teres
in vane; for the
maen
wus
thair
dying
inhis
sleep;

He
smild
; he
sayd
to them
awl
, winking, ‘Oh, I
luvu
.’ Then he
pastoff
lykair
; going up, going up, lingering
arown
them his last
embras
,
tuching
them with
feengirrs
madof
air. . . .

Which were the woman’s jumbled memories of her own death.

Painting and drawing were very popular here. They were done in primitive, and very artistic, polished ways, on handmade paper, on wood, on walls, with paints made from flowers and grasses ground in a mortar and pestle; drawings were done with charcoal made from scorched wood.

All these things were reflective of memory. For most of the people here, conscious memory was nonexistent. Artists worked as if from some genetic memory that was incredibly strong but also incredibly elusive. A
déjà vu
kind of memory.

And when David made his way through the still forest, through the dust that hung motionless in the air, through the tangy odor of pine tar, he heard movement around him, as of bodies pushing gracefully through the dense foliage. And now and again he saw a flash of color.

He experienced this as if he were experiencing the landscape of a dream.

He felt no tug of gravity. He felt a pull from above.

Above.

What he supposed were the leaves of a maple tree were, on closer look, something else, something unrecognizable, something spiky and pale green, with a tinge of orange or red at the center.

From this, he supposed that it was autumn.

~ * ~

Jackson could not find a way into Anne Case’s house and it was nearly night. The house had many windows, but none were open, as he had discovered when he had leaped into one that was especially clean.

He had seen someone smiling pleasantly and invitingly at him from the window, and it had given him a good feeling, the kind of feeling he once had had when he heard the words, "Do you want to eat, Jackson?" and knew that his dinner was being served. But he did not think about it now, toward nightfall, and he would not think of it again. His memory was selective and defensive. He remembered the boy who had spoken to him. He remembered the car driving away. He remembered the thud of footfalls in the dark, the martins peering silently at him from their perch on the curtain rods in Anne Case’s house. Those were memories that were real, things that had touched him, and had changed him. The smiling face in the window had been fleeting and had not touched him.

Because of a street lamp a hundred feet from the house, the front of the house was brighter than the back, and Jackson seated himself near the front door, so his dim shadow was cast on the stone walkway (inexplicably, the shadow gave him comfort), and he watched the front door. He gave a soft and pleading “meow” now and again because he sensed that he was being watched from within the house and that, sooner or later, the door would be opened for him.

But it was not. And, after a long while, Jackson wandered off.

BOOK TWO

A CREATURE TO RECKON WITH

I
t is ten years later. Two people sit in the living room of what was once Anne Case’s house. Their names are Maude and Peter. They’re newly married and unsure of each other and of their lives together, which spread out before them like a desert.

But they tell each other that they are very much in love, and they believe it.

Maude says to Peter that she’s not sure just how long they’ve been at the house.

Peter, who has the unfortunate habit of answering a question before it has been fully stated, answers, "Three weeks." He thinks and adds, "Twenty-three days, actually."

Maude asks if he likes being at the house. "Yes," he says. "I like it."

She tells him that she’s uncomfortable. She claims that there are "presences" in the house and reminds him of its history, about the murder ten years earlier.

Peter gives her a long-suffering smile because he has heard this sort of thing from Maude quite often in their relationship. She has claimed not only to have seen ghosts—when she was a child—but once to have spoken to one. She also proclaims that she’s psychic.

He tells her now, "There are no ghosts in the house, Maude."

She tells him that she isn’t so sure of that.

"Because, very simply," Peter explains, "there are no ghosts," and he gives her a soft half smile which begs her forgiveness for being rational.

Maude smiles back her forgiveness. "I’ve heard screams," she says.

"I haven’t," Peter says, his words overlapping hers slightly.

"You aren’t here when I am."

Peter says nothing.

Maude continues, looking away from him, "During the day."

Peter nods slowly, as if he’s thinking about this. Then he says, "Have you heard these screams at any particular time?"

Maude shakes her head. "Not really. The afternoon."

"What time in the afternoon?"

Maude shrugs. "Late, usually. Shortly before you get home."

"And are they loud, these screams?"

Maude shakes her head. "Not very."

Peter smiles. "But loud enough?"

She nods. "Loud enough to hear, yes."

Peter’s smile grows a bit broader. "And it’s someone in the house, you think?"

"Not some
one
, some
thing
!"

"Of course. Some
thing
."

She eyes him suspiciously. "You find this very amusing, don’t you?"

He shakes his head earnestly. "I would never laugh at you, darling. Never. I’m a little
amused
by what you’re saying, I think. Can you blame me? If there’s someone screaming in the house late in the afternoons, if the place is haunted, then what in the hell are we still doing here?"

"We’re here because she needs me."

"She?"

"The woman who screams. The woman who was murdered here."

"Oh. Does she have a name?"

"I don’t remember her name. But what does that matter?" She hesitates. "It
doesn’t
matter."

Maude and Peter are sitting side by side as they talk. Occasionally, she looks at him or he looks at her; both believe they have the full measure of the other. Peter believes that Maude is touting her "sensitivity," and Maude believes that Peter is taking the pose of the "rational man" (as always). She’s amused by it, so she keeps him talking. She says, "Names don’t matter."

"For ladies who scream in the afternoon it does," he says, and his eyes sparkle as if to say that it was a wonderful comment.

Maude suppresses a smile. She suspects that he is very pleased with himself.

He confirms her suspicion: "That was a good thing to say wasn’t it? ‘For ladies who scream in the afternoon it does.’ It was kind of . . . pithy and . . . theatrical."

"Very," she says, without looking at him.

Peter looks silently at her a moment. His mouth twitches a little; clearly he’s on the verge of some critical remark. But he looks away and says, "The lady’s name was Anne . . . something."

"Anne Case," Maude says, because the name has just come to her.

"It’s a strong name," he says, "in a feminine way." He gives her a puzzled look. "Did you understand that?"

"A strong name," she says. Then, "Yes, I understood." She looks away. "I see her drifting about in this big house, all alone. It’s very tragic. Very tragic. To be strangled in one’s own house. One’s own sanctuary. Then left alone in it . . . to . . . wander about in the place of your own murder for all eternity."

"I believe that she was stabbed," Peter says.

"No. I’m sure she was strangled," Maude says. "Strangled. And left to linger here forever."

Peter says nothing for a moment. Then: "Do you really think that’s what happened to her? That she’s in some kind of limbo in this house? For all eternity?"

She shrugs. "Of course. What else is there?"

He shrugs. "Nothing, I guess."

~ * ~

Fred Collins passed Anne’s house three times on the Saturday two weeks after her murder. He had stopped trying to rationalize this behavior by telling himself it was only a part of his work. He knew that it was something beyond that. He knew that he was in love with the woman he supposed she had been—in love with her vulnerability, with her illness, with her strength (for putting up with what life had thrown at her, after all). He would have wanted to protect her, he knew; there was no getting around that fact, unseemly as it might have appeared to some. But, beyond that, there was the inescapable truth that she was earthy and wise within her frailty. She had suffered under enormous pain (the pain of her illness) from day to day, and so it could not be otherwise.

And now, in these past two weeks, she was suffering under a very different but incredibly more immense kind of pain. But ironically, perhaps there was something he could do about it.

Perhaps his love and attention could ease it.

~ * ~

Nineteen years before her death, Anne Case is sitting with her twin brother, David, in their parents’ house and they’re discussing what—she does not then realize—are the beginnings of her illness. Its onset. Occasionally, she glances out the window at the snow-covered street as they talk. Her oval, pleasant face and gray eyes are expressive and changeable from one moment to another; mostly, they’re expressive of sadness, and this confuses her brother. At sixteen, he can’t understand what his twin sister would have to be sad about.

"I get scared sometimes, David," she says, and her eyes flit to the window, then to her brother’s face. She grins a little, as if embarrassed, and looks away.

David says, "Scared a what?" and grins too, though she’s no longer looking at him. His gaze settles on a soft blue vein which is just barely visible beneath her cheek. The color of the vein surprises him.

She says, eyes averted, "Things."

"You’re scared a things? What things?"

She shrugs; her eyes are still turned away. His eyes are still on the blue vein in her cheek. "Lots of things. Most things."