Charnel House (5 page)

My name's John Hyatt, which is one of those names that people think they recall but in actuality don't. I'm thirty-one, and quite tall, with a taste for subdued, well-cut sport coats and widish 1950s-style pants in gray. I live alone on the top floor of an apartment block on Townsend Street, with my stereo and my house plants and my collection of paperbacks with broken spines. I guess I'm happy and content in my work, but haven't you ever gone out at night, someplace quiet maybe, and looked over the Bay at the lights twinkling all across America, and thought, well, surely there's more to life than
this
?

Don't think I'm lonesome, though. I'm not. I date girls and I have quite a few friends, and I even get invited to pool parties and barbecues. Right at the time we went up to Seymour Wallis's house, though, I was going through a kind of a stale period, not sure what I wanted out of life or what life wanted out of me. But I guess a lot of people felt like that when President Carter was elected. At least with Nixon you knew which side you were on.

Maybe what happened to Dan Machin helped me get myself together. It was something so weird and so frightening that you couldn't think about anything else. Even after he closed his eyes, just a few seconds after we burst into the room, and sank back against his pillow, I was still shivering with shock and fright, and I could feel a prickling sensation of fear across the palms of my hands.

The nurse said, “He … he …”

Dr. Jarvis stepped cautiously up to Dan Machin's bed, lifted his wrist, and checked his pulse. Then he took a deep breath and raised Dan's eyelid. I felt myself flinching away, in case the eye was still that fiery red color, but it wasn't. It had returned to its normal pale gray, and it was plain that Dan was in another state of coma.

“Nurse, I want full diagnostic equipment brought up here right away. And page Dr. Foley.”

The nurse nodded, and left the room, obviously glad to have something distracting to do. I walked up to Dan's bedside and looked at his pale, fevered face. He didn't look so much like the scientific hick from Kansas anymore. The lines around his mouth were too deep, and his pallor was too white. But at least he was breathing normally.

I glanced up at Dr. Jarvis. The doctor was jotting notes down on his clipboard, his expression intense and anxious.

“Do you know what it was?” I asked quietly.

He didn't look up, didn't answer.

“Those red eyes,” I said. “Do you know what could possibly cause that?”

He stopped writing and stared at me.

“I want to know just what this breathing business you were involved in last night was all about. Are you absolutely sure it wasn't drugs?”

“Look, I'd tell you if it was. It had to do with a house on Pilarcitos.”

“A house?”

“That's right. We both work for the sanitation department, and the owner invited us to come up to his house to listen to this breathing. He said the house made a breathing noise, and he didn't know what it was.”

Dr. Jarvis made another check of Dan's pulse.

“Did you find out what caused it?” he asked. “The breathing?”

I shook my head. “All I know is that Dan's been breathing just like it. It's almost as if the breathing in the house has gone into him. As if he's possessed.”

Dr. Jarvis set down his clipboard next to Dan Machin's bowl of grapes.

“Are you a full-fledged member of the nuts club, or just an associate member?” he asked.

This time I didn't take offense. “I know it's difficult to understand,” I said. “I don't understand it myself. But possession is just what it seems like. I heard the house breathing, and I heard Dan breathing just now, when his eyes were all red. It sounded to me like one and the same.”

Dr. Jarvis looked down at Dan and shook his head. “It's obviously psychosomatic,” he said. “He heard this breathing noise last night, and it frightened him so much that he's begun to identify with it and breathe in sympathy.”

“Well, maybe. But what made his eyes go like that?”

Dr. Jarvis took a deep breath. “A trick of the light,” he said evenly.

“A trick of the light? Now, wait a minute I”

Dr. Jarvis stared at me, hard. “You heard me,” he snapped. “A trick of the light.”

“I saw him myself! So did you!”

“I didn't see anything. At least, I didn't see anything that was medically possible. And I think we'd both better remember that before we go shooting our mouths off to anyone else.”

“But the nurse—”

Dr. Jarvis waved his hand in deprecation. “In this hospital, nurses are regarded as housemaids in fancy uniforms.”

I leaned over Dan and examined his waxy face, and the way his lips moved and whispered as he slept.

“Doctor, this guy is more than just sick,” I told him. “This guy has something really, really wrong. Now, what are we going to do about it?”

“There's only one thing we can do. Diagnose his problem and give him recognized medical treatment. We don't undertake exorcisms here, I'm afraid. In any event, I don't believe this is any worse than an advanced case of hypersuggestibility. Your friend here went up to the house, and became hysterical when he thought he heard breathing. It was probably his own.”

“But I heard it, too,” I argued.

“Maybe you did,” said Dr. Jarvis offhandedly.

“Doctor,” I said, angry. But Dr. Jarvis turned on me before I could tell him how I felt.

“Before you start censuring me for lack of imagination, just remember that I work here,” he snapped. “Everything I do has to be justified to the hospital board, and if I start raving about demonic possession and eyes that glow red in the dark, I'll suddenly find that my promotion has been shelved for a while and that I only get half the facilities and finance I need.”

He came around the bed and faced me directly. In a low, urgent voice, he said, “I saw Mr. Machin's eyes go red, and so did you. But if we want to do anything about it, anything effective, we'd better keep it quiet. Do you understand?”

I looked at him curiously. “Are you trying to tell me that you believe he's really possessed?”

“I'm not trying to tell you anything. I don't believe in demons and I don't believe in possession. But I do believe that there's something wrong here that we need to work out for ourselves, without the knowledge of the hospital.”

At that moment, Dan stirred and groaned. I felt the hair on the back of my neck prickle upright in alarm, but when he spoke, he was obviously back to some kind of normal.

“
John
…” he murmured. “
John
…”

I leaned over him. His eyes were only open in slits, and his lips were cracked.

“I'm here, Dan. What's wrong? How do you feel?”

“
John
…” he whispered. “
Don't let me go
…”

I glanced across at Dr. Jarvis. “It's okay, Dan. Nobody's going to let you go.”

Dan weakly raised one of his hands. “Don't let me go, John. It's the heart, John.
Don't let me go
.”

Dr. Jarvis came close. “Your heart? Is your heart feeling bad? Do you have any constriction? Any pain?”

Dan shook his head, just a fraction of an inch each way. “It's the heart,” he said, in a voice almost too faint to hear. “It beats and it beats and it beats. It's still beating. It's the heart, John, it's still beating!
Still beating!
”

“Dan,” I whispered urgently. “Dan, you mustn't work yourself up like this! Dan, for Christ's sake!”

But Dr. Jarvis held me back. Dan was already settling back on to his pillow, and his eyes were closing. His breathing became slow and regular again, slow and painful and heavy, and even though it still reminded me of the breathing we'd heard at Seymour Wallis's house, he seemed at last to be catching some rest. I stood up straight, and I felt shaken and tired.

“He should be okay now. At least for an hour or two,” Dr. Jarvis said quietly. “These attacks seem to come at regular ninety-minute intervals.”

“Can you think of any reason for that?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “There could be any number of reasons. But ninety minutes is the time cycle of REM sleep, the kind of sleep in which people have their most vivid dreams.”

I looked down at Dan's drawn and haggard face. “He mentioned dreams to me earlier on,” I said. “He had dreams about doorknockers coming to life, and statues moving. That kind of thing. It was all to do with that house we visited last night.”

“Are you going back there? To the house?” Dr. Jarvis asked.

“I was planning a trip up there this evening. One of my engineering people thinks that what we heard could have been an unusual kind of downdraft. Why?”

Dr. Jarvis kept his eyes fixed on Dan. “I'd like to come with you, that's why. There's something happening here that I don't understand, and I want to understand it.”

I raised an eyebrow. “All of a sudden you're not so sure of yourself?”

He grunted. “Okay. I deserved that. But I'd still like to tag along.”

I took one last look at Dan, young and pale as a corpse on his hospital bed, and I said, very softly, “All right. It's fifteen-fifty-one Pilarcitos. Nine o'clock sharp.”

Dr. Jarvis took out a ballpen and made a note of the address. Then, before I left, he said: “Listen, I'm sorry about the way I spoke to you earlier on. You have to realize that we get a whole lot of friends and relatives who watch too much ‘General Hospital' and think they know it all. I mean, I guess we're kind of defensive.”

I paused, and then nodded. “Okay. I got you. See you at nine.”

That afternoon, a gray and gloomy line of ragged clouds blew in from the ocean and threatened rain. I sat at my desk fidgeting and doodling until half after two, then I took my golf umbrella and went for a walk. My immediate superior, retired Naval Lieutenant Douglas P. Sharp, would probably choose this very afternoon for a snap inspection, but right now I couldn't have cared less. I was too edgy, too nervous, and too concerned about what was happening to Dan. As I crossed Bryant Street, a few spots of rain the size of dimes speckled the sidewalk, and there was a tense, magnetic feeling in the air.

I guess I knew where I was headed all the time. I turned into Brannan Street, and there it was, The Head Bookstore, a tiny purple-painted shop lit from within by a couple of bare bulbs, and crammed with second-hand paperbacks,
Whole Earth Catalogs
, posters, and junk. I stepped in and jangled the bell, and the bearded young guy behind the counter looked up and said, “Hi. Looking for anything special?”

“Jane Torresino?”

“Oh, sure. She's out back, unpacking some Castaneda.”

I shuffled past the shelves of Marx, Seale, and Indian incense, and ducked my head through the small door that led to the stockroom. Sure enough, Jane was there, squatting on the floor and arranging Yaqui wisdom into neat stacks.

She didn't look up at first, and I leaned against the doorway and watched her. She was one of those girls who managed to look pretty and bright, no matter how scruffy she dressed. Today she was wearing tight white jeans and a blue T-shirt with a smiling Cheshire cat printed on it. She was skinny, with very long mid-blonde hair that was crimped into those long crinkly waves that always remind me of Botticelli, and she had a sharp, well-boned face and eyes like saucers.

I had first met her at a party out at Daly City to welcome the Second Coming of Christ, as predicted by an eighteenth-century philosopher. The principal guest of honor, not altogether surprisingly, didn't show. Either the predicted date was wrong, or Christ didn't choose to come again in Daly City. I wouldn't have blamed Him. But whatever went wrong with the Second Coming, a lot went right between me and Jane. We met, talked, drank too much Tohay, and went back to my apartment for lovemaking. I remember sitting up in bed afterward, drinking the intensely black coffee she had made me, and feeling pleased with what life had dropped so bountifully in my lap.

However, it didn't work out that way. That night, Second Coming night, was the first and only time. After that, Jane insisted we were just good friends, and even though we went out for meals together, and took in movies together, the lovelight that shone over the
spaghetti bolognaise
was mine alone, and eventually I accepted our friendship for what it was, and switched the love-light off.

What had developed, though, was an easy-going relationship that was intimate but never demanding. Sometimes we saw each other three times in one week. Other times, we didn't touch bases for months. Today, when I dropped by with my golf umbrella and my anxieties about Dan Machin, it was the first visit for six or seven weeks.

“The sanitation department sends you its greetings and hopes that your plumbing is in full operational order.”

She looked up over her big pink-tinted reading glasses and smiled. “John! I haven't seen you in weeks!”

She stood up, and tippy-toed carefully toward me through the piles of books. We kissed, a chaste kiss, and then she said, “You look tired. I hope you're not sleeping with too many women.”

I grinned. “That should be a problem? I'd rather stay tired.”

“Come outside,'” she said. “We just got a new shipment of books in this morning, and we're pretty cramped. Do you have time for coffee?”

“Sure. I've given myself the afternoon off, for good behavior.”

We left the bookstore, and went across the street to Prokic's Deli, where I ordered us capuccino and alfalfa sandwiches. For some reason, I had a craze for alfalfa sandwiches. Dan Machin (God preserve him) had said that I was probably metamorphosing into a horse. I was trying to graduate from manure disposal (he said) to manure production.

Jane took a seat by the window, and we watched the rain spatter the street outside. I lit a cigarette and stirred my coffee, and all the time she watched me without saying a word, as if she knew that I had something to tell her.