Dark on the Other Side (19 page)

II

The lights had returned to normal. The storm muttered
more softly, held in abeyance. Linda sat with her hands folded in her
lap, watching Michael as he paced up and down. He was followed by an
entourage of interested cats; but the sight of Michael as a feline Pied
Piper did not seem amusing. His distress was too great.

“I can’t buy it,” he said, swinging around to face her.
“I’ve believed in enough mad things in the last few hours so that you’d
think a little detail like that wouldn’t stick in my craw. But it does.”

“I didn’t expect you to believe it,” she said.

His face twisted, as if a sudden pain had struck him. She
watched the spasm with dull disinterest, wondering why he felt such
distress. The lethargy that gripped her was pleasant, compared to what
she had endured; she knew how a patient must feel after a critical
session with his analyst, or a penitent after a bad session in the
confessional—drained, empty, oddly at peace.

“How about settling for an abstract manifestation of
evil?” Michael suggested hopefully, and won a wan smile in response.
“I’m serious,” he insisted. “Half serious, anyhow…Linda, you’ve been
through a terrible strain, it would be a miracle if your nerves were
normal. I’m not suggesting that you’re insane, I wouldn’t be talking to
you like this if I thought so. But isn’t it possible that you’ve
concocted this—this fantastic theory out of a very real, legitimate
fear of Gordon?”

She looked up, a faint spark of interest in her face.

“You’re willing to admit that I might have a legitimate
fear of a paragon like Gordon?”

“He’s no paragon,” Michael said slowly. “Not of virtue,
anyhow. I don’t know what he is. But I’m ready to concede that there’s
something seriously amiss with him. I’m all the more willing to admit
it because it cost me such a struggle to admit it. Linda, do you
remember a boy named Joe Schwartz? He was a student of Gordon’s when
you were in that class.”

“Joe? Of course I remember him. He wrote some of the
funniest, most scurrilous verses I’ve ever heard.”

“Scurrilous?”

“About the professors, and the other students, and human
foibles in general. Some topical, some more basic. He had a gift for
hitting people’s weaknesses, but he was never cruel; he could sting,
delicately, without really hurting. None of the parties that year were
a success unless Joe performed. He’d sit there on the floor whanging
out chords on his guitar and bellowing out his infamous comments in a
raucous voice, grinning from ear to ear…. Why are you looking like
that?”

“It doesn’t sound like the Joe Schwartz I know,” Michael
said grimly.

“He did get a little peculiar toward the end of the year.
People said he’d changed. I’m afraid I wasn’t much aware of others just
then. Love’s young dream, you know.”

Michael looked uncomfortable, but he went on doggedly.

“What about Tommy Scarinski?”

“You’ve been busy, haven’t you? Yes, he was one of
Gordon’s acolytes. Always unstable, of course…At the time, I thought he
was preying on Gordon, instead of…”

“The reverse?”

“You don’t understand a process, sometimes, until it
happens to you personally.”

“We’re getting there,” Michael said. He spoke slowly,
without looking at her. “We try to talk around it, but we’ll have to
discuss it sooner or later. Why, Linda? Why is he doing this?”

“I don’t think I could explain it to you—or to any other
man.”

She hadn’t meant it to hurt, but it did; she could tell
from the change in his face. She went on quickly,

“You see? I can’t even talk about it without sounding
like one of the militant feminists you men despise—like an embittered
woman whose marriage has gone sour and who rants about the whole male
sex instead of facing facts. But it wasn’t like that. I’m not a
romantic adolescent, I know that few relationships, marital or
otherwise, are based on true equality and respect. As a rule, one
partner dominates the other; and in human society there’s a long
tradition of masculine superiority. So—all right. I could have accepted
that, I’m conditioned to it. Maybe I even wanted it. But Gordon doesn’t
want to dominate people; he wants to absorb them, body and soul and
spirit. Living with him was—indescribable. I felt as if he were
fastened to me, like a gigantic leech, pulling out every ounce of will,
every thought…. I can see myself making that speech in a divorce court,
can’t you? It might come straight out of some ghastly day-time serial.”

“Why didn’t you leave him?”

“I did leave him. He brought me back.” She laughed
bitterly. “That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? In this day and age…But
it was so easy, really. I had to get a job, I didn’t have much money. I
never did. Credit cards, charge accounts, but no cash. I couldn’t very
well go to one of the big hotels and charge my escapade to Gordon’s
account. Even if I’d had the gall, I knew it would make it easier for
him to find me. So I had to get a job—and quickly; I couldn’t pick and
choose. I have a B.A. degree, no special training; you’d be surprised
how few jobs there are for women with no special skills and no
experience. Even my typing was rusty, after all those years. I turned
down a couple of offers because there were special conditions of
employment involved, and I was in no mood for another man who wanted to
own even that small part of me. I don’t know…I’ve never known…how many
jobs I lost because of Gordon’s quiet influence—he must have located me
immediately—and how many because of the ordinary handicaps of my
situation. There were a few things I didn’t try: washing dishes,
ushering at movie theaters…. It wasn’t false pride; I was afraid of
places like that.”

The look in Michael’s eyes hurt her, and yet she found a
perverse pleasure in seeing how deeply she could move him.

“I finally got a job as live-in maid and baby-sitter for
a family in the suburbs,” she went on. “I held it for three days before
the woman told me she didn’t need me. I’m pretty sure that was Gordon’s
pressure; household help is darned hard to get these days. Maybe he
told the woman I was mentally disturbed.

“I was pretty desperate by then. When Gordon popped into
my slummy little hotel room, with his tame psychiatrist in tow, I was
in no condition to put up a fight. It probably wouldn’t have mattered,
even if I could have kept my cool; the doctor was under Gordon’s famous
spell. But of course I didn’t stay calm, I started yelling and
screaming, and got an injection for my pains. When I woke up, I was
back—home. And all the servants walked around shaking their heads and
sighing. I thought at first that I’d try again, plan more
carefully—scrape together enough money to get away, a long way away.
But it is not easy to fool Gordon. And—I just didn’t have the strength.
It took all the energy I had to keep myself from giving in, from
admitting that I was losing my mind.”

Michael stooped and picked up a tiger kitten, which had
gone to sleep on his foot. The motion of bending brought a little color
back to his face.

“I still don’t understand why,” he said.

“Why Gordon wants to have me declared insane? I wouldn’t
be sent to a sanatorium, you know; he’d keep me at home, in a nice
quiet padded cell, with nice quiet attendants watching me every second.
Gordon doesn’t give things away, or let go of the things he owns. He
discards them; they don’t leave him. Does that degree of vanity seem
monstrous to you? It does to me, too; but that’s Gordon, he’s always
been that way, he cannot endure rejection. Especially from me. I gave
him love, devotion, admiration—but they weren’t enough. When he
demanded more, I started to fight back. But that’s the insidious thing
about a plan like his. How do you prove you’re sane? It’s a vicious
circle; the more desperate and frightened you become, the more
erratically you behave; before long you begin to wonder yourself, and
then the progression downhill is rapid. I started drinking. But not
until after I tried—”

“I know about that,” Michael said quickly.

“You do? Oh, of course, he’d tell you that. And you—you
came here?”

Michael shook his head, dismissing irrelevancies.

“I don’t know what made you do it,” he said. “But the end
result is clear.”

“Oh, yes, it was the final bar on the prison door. If I
tried to escape again, he had the ultimate weapon. I was
dangerous—homicidal—and he had witnesses to prove it.”

“Good Lord,” Michael muttered. His fingers continued
their automatic caress of the kitten, which was curled in the crook of
his arm, purring loudly. Linda watched the animal, using it,
illogically perhaps, as a kind of live barometer. So long as the cats
were quiet…

“But I did it,” Linda went on. “I don’t remember anything
that preceded it, but I remember lying there on the floor, with the
knife beside me, where it had fallen from my hand. There was blood on
the knife…. He’d knocked me down; you can’t blame him for that. He
wasn’t even particularly rough about it. The lights were blazing and
the room seemed to be filled with people, and Gordon stood there with
blood running down the sleeve of his shirt….”

“Shirt? Wasn’t he in pajamas?”

“I don’t think so…. No. Does it matter?”

“Not really. But it stimulates my nasty suspicious mind.
You don’t remember actually striking the blow?”

Suddenly it was difficult for her to speak, or to look at
him.

“You do go all the way, when you take up a cause,” she
whispered. “Michael, it’s no use. I wouldn’t remember that, it’s the
one thing my mind would utterly reject, would blot out. But I…had
thought about it. Sometimes it seemed to me that I could hear the
words, they were so loud in my mind:
Kill him. It’s the only
way you can ever get away.
You can twist and evade all you
like, but you can’t free me of that act—or excuse it. There’s no excuse
for killing, unless it’s the only means of self-defense left to you.
And he was not threatening my life.”

“What about your soul?”

“Don’t,” she said breathlessly. “Don’t talk about that.
It’s the excuse I’ve used…but I’m not sure I believe in the soul.”

“Maybe that’s not the right name. But it exists—some
entity other than the body. It brought me here—your call.”

“My call?”

“That’s not a good word either, but I can’t describe it
because I’ve never felt anything I can compare it with. It hit me last
night—a sudden, peremptory mental calling. You wanted me, you needed
me, and I had to find you.”

“But I didn’t call you,” she said slowly. “Not that way
or any other way.”

Michael stared.

“You must have. I couldn’t have been so sure without…Last
night, near midnight—didn’t you ask for help? Not necessarily of me—a
prayer, a mental plea…”

“No. Nothing.”

“Then who…”

In his surprise, Michael almost dropped the kitten. It
eluded his fumbling hands, jumped down, and streaked for the door. In
the silence they both heard the sounds. There was someone, or
something, at the front door.

They moved closer together, like children afraid of the
dark; their hands groped and clasped. Linda’s first impulse, to hide,
was canceled by Michael’s behavior. He stood rock-still, facing the
darkened doorway; and Linda accepted his decision. Whatever it was,
running away wouldn’t help.

But when the opening door was followed by the sound of
footsteps coming slowly down the hall, she went limp with relief. She
recognized those footsteps.

Andrea stood in the doorway like a figure straight out of
Grimm. The black, hooded cloak she wore, even while grocery shopping in
the village, blended with the darkness of the hallway behind her, so
that her wrinkled face stood out with uncanny distinctness. Over her
arm was the basket she carried in lieu of a purse. She paid no
attention to the cats, who were weaving patterns around her feet, but
surveyed her unexpected visitors without surprise.

“I thought you’d be here,” she said.

Linda would have accepted that statement as an example of
the old woman’s boasted ESP, but when Andrea raised a hand to push back
her hood, she realized that there might be another explanation. Andrea
was trembling. Terror and a strange exultation blended in her face.

“It’s out there,” she said. “Waiting for you. I saw it.
Heavenly saints—I saw it!”

“It can’t be,” Linda gasped. “The cats didn’t notice.”

“There is a circle of protection woven about this house,”
Andrea chanted. The effect was only slightly marred by her stagger as
she crossed the room to put down her basket and lay her cloak aside.

“Where was it?” Michael asked.

“Under the white lilac bush at the side of the house.”
Fumbling in a cupboard, Andrea accepted his presence without question.
She straightened up with a bottle in her hand, jerked out the cork, and
put the bottle to her lips. She drank deeply, her prominent Adam’s
apple bobbing up and down. When she lowered the bottle she shuddered,
and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“I needed that,” she said. “Have some?”

“No, thanks,” Michael said.

“Suit yourself.”

Andrea put the bottle down on the table. Michael’s eyes
moved from it to Andrea, to Linda, and then off into space; and Linda
knew that he had deduced the source of her private liquor supply. He
must have wondered about that….

Andrea got a glass from the cupboard and poured herself a
stiff drink. Michael moved, as if in protest; and Andrea gave him a
hostile glance.

“Need this,” she muttered. “Had a bad shock.”

“Why a shock?” Michael asked coldly. “You’re the one who
believes in demons.”

Andrea collapsed onto the nearest chair. A cat left it,
in the nick of time.

“Poor Tommy,” Andrea crooned, reaching out an unsteady
hand. “Did Mama hurt the baby?”