Here I Stay (36 page)

Relieved of this impediment, Satan went on washing himself. Andrea looked at her find. It was the smallest possible fragment, only a few threads—dark blue, like the fabric used for jeans.

She watched Satan for a few minutes. Then she went to the refrigerator. There were a few pieces of chicken left from supper. Stripping the meat off a thigh, she put the dish in front of the cat.

Not until then did she hear footsteps thumping down the stairs. Martin was a heavy sleeper; if aroused in the middle of the night he was inclined to be bumbling and incoherent. When he appeared in the doorway, yawning and rubbing his eyes, she allowed herself to be sarcastic.

"Never mind, hero. It's all over."

His half-closed eyes moved from her to the poker on the table and then to Satan, noisily chewing chicken. "There was somebody out there, then. I thought I heard a noise..."

"It's a good thing I wasn't counting on you or Jim to defend my honor," Andrea said.

"Jim is sleeping the sleep of the just." The full meaning of what he had observed finally penetrated and Martin's eyes opened all the way. "You didn't go charging after him with that poker, did you?"

"I have better sense than that. What you heard was Satan—and a scratched, bitten burglar."

"Oh."

"I think I'd better get a dog," Andrea said thoughtfully. "I'll do it first thing tomorrow."

Martin dropped heavily into a chair. "Why bother? You've got him." He indicated the cat, who looked back contemptuously.

"The man probably stepped on his tail. I can't count on that happening twice in a row. A dog is more dependable."

"There's another alternative," Martin murmured.

"I'm not going to sleep in your room, if that's what you're suggesting. I may as well hand out keys to all the local hoodlums as leave this part of the house empty at night."

"I could sleep in your room."

"Sleep is the word. It would probably take me ten minutes to get you up and on your feet."

"The world's most alert bodyguard I am not," Martin admitted. "But I have other qualifications you might take into consideration."

"Another time, perhaps," Andrea said, surveying his rumpled face and drooping eyelids with unconcealed amusement. Yet she felt a slight pang of disappointment when he nodded sleepily.

"I'm not at my best right now. You aren't nervous, are you? If you'd like me to sleep on the couch—"

"Oh, go to bed," Andrea exclaimed. "Luckily I've got Satan to protect me."

She was looking through the advertisements in the newspaper next morning when Jim and Martin joined her. "I really don't know much about dogs," she confessed, after explaining to Jim what had happened and cutting short his exclamations of distress and concern. "What's a good kind?"

Martin laughed. "It depends on what you want."

"Well, obviously."

"Do you want a guard dog, an attack dog, or just a mutt that will bark on demand? You can pay up to a thousand dollars for a Doberman that has been taught to pursue and hold a suspect, or you can go to the pound and pick out a cheap barking machine."

"Oh. I don't think I want a Doberman. They look
mean."

Jim didn't join in the discussion, but when Andrea asked if he would go with her to the Humane Society, he was not unwilling. "Martin and I planned to look for a car today," he said. "Martin, how about if we go to the pound with Andy first?"

"Not me," Martin said. "I can't stand animal shelters. All those big sad eyes begging me to take them...Most of them are on their way to quick extermination."

"It's a lot more merciful than being abandoned or mangled by a car," Andrea said.

"I know, I know. I kick in a few bucks to the Humane Society every year, and I admire the job they do. But I'm a gutless coward and I don't mind admitting it. You go, Jim. When you get back we'll head out."

The animal shelter was more of a trial than Andrea had expected. Martin's fault again; he was sensitizing her to a lot of things she had never thought much about. She finally settled on a large shaggy brown specimen of indeterminate breed that was, the shelter assistant assured her, "just a pup," although he was already the size of a sheep and almost as woolly. He acted like a puppy, though, failing over his own large feet in his frantic attempt to get out of the cage and into her grasp, licking her hands furiously, and wagging his tail so hard it stung her calves. He also proved his ability to bark.

"What do you think, Jim?" she asked.

There was no answer. Jim was sitting on the floor getting his face washed. "We'll take that one," Andrea said.

She found she would have to wait a few days until the dog got its shots. Even then she had a dog before Martin had a car. Ragmop had been installed, with all his accoutrements—feeding dish, water dish, doghouse, collar and leash, and a huge stack of newspapers—while Martin and Jim were still looking.

Andrea was firm about keeping the dog outside most of the time. "He's going to be as big as an elephant. I can't have an animal that size underfoot all the time, especially during the busy season. He's unsanitary—"

"I have to concede that," said Martin, examining his shoe.

"He'll stop doing that eventually," Andrea said hopefully. "I was referring to his other, permanent disabilities—shedding, fleas and so forth. He has a perfectly good doghouse, for which I paid a small fortune. I don't know what you two bleeding hearts are complaining about; I'm the one he keeps up half the night with his howling."

"What are you talking about?" Jim demanded. "I can hear him too. Anybody within a ten-mile radius can hear him. If you'd let him sleep in my room—"

Ragmop liked Jim's room. He preferred any room in the house to his kennel, but he liked Jim's room the best, partly because Jim was there and partly because Satan wasn't. The first meeting between the two animals had been almost as violent as Andrea expected, but she had to admit it wasn't Satan's fault. After one incredulous look at the panting, palpitating bundle of brown fur, Satan would have preferred to ignore the vulgarity; but Ragmop, impervious to snubs, wanted to play. Satan sat unmoving until the dog got within six inches of him and then neatly bisected Ragmop's nose with one casual swipe. The first encounter should have been enough, but Ragmop was either dim-witted or incurably absentminded; he couldn't resist Satan, even though he knew better.

Ragmop was only allowed inside under supervision and he wasn't allowed in the library or the parlors under any conditions. Martin's room was out of bounds because of Satan, so Jim's was almost his only refuge. The first time Jim took him there, Andrea and Martin trailed along. Neither would have admitted it, but both wanted to see how the dog would react. When he settled down beside Jim's bed, tail wagging and tongue hanging out, the conspirators exchanged a long look, hers triumphant, Martin's noncommittal. Either there was nothing wrong with the tower room, or the well—
advertised
sensitivity of canines to supernatural entities was a fraud.

Martin had not referred again to his theories. He succeeded in nagging Jim into sending away for college catalogs, but they interested him more than they did Jim; as Martin pored over them, reading excerpts aloud, Jim listened politely but did not commit himself.

The house was quiet. It was as if Martin's admission of his fears had exercised them; for weeks there had not been the slightest manifestation of anything abnormal. Yet Andrea was conscious of a mounting sense of expectation—not apprehension or alarm, just a feeling that something was going to happen. She was looking forward to Kevin's visit, as was Martin, who had approved highly of the idea after she told him about it. Perhaps that accounted
for the way she felt.

She was alone in the house one afternoon when the doorbell rang. She wasn't expecting a visitor. When she saw who it was, her eyes opened wide in surprise.

"Reba! I didn't know you were back."

"I got back yesterday."

"Come in. I'm so glad to see you. Jim and Martin are out—"

"I know. I saw them in town just now. That's why I came."

She let Andrea draw her into the house but when the latter tried to take her coat she shook her head.

"I can't stay. I came because there's something I have to tell you. Once you've heard it, you probably won't want me to stay anyhow."

"Why, Reba—"

"We've been friends, haven't we?"

"We are friends. Though I'm miffed at you for running off without telling me."

Reba shook her head. Her face was pale but controlled, and Andrea noticed that she spoke without her usual affectations of careless grammar and vulgarity.

"Let me talk, Andy. It's taken all the courage I possess to make myself come here. I wasn't going to say anything. I ran away. But I finally realized I had to. It may end our friendship, and that means a good deal more to me than you know. But if I failed to speak, and something happened, I'd always feel guilty.

"I let you talk me into coming here Christmas Eve because I had decided I had to stop running away from it. I hoped you were right—that it was only an impersonal impression of something long-past and harmless. I didn't really believe that. But I had to take the chance because of you. If there was something wrong, something dangerous, I had to find out about it and warn you."

She stopped, breathing heavily. Andrea was too dumbfounded to speak.

"It wasn't so bad at first," Reba went on. "Not until I saw that picture. If I'd been a dog, I'd have put my tail between my legs and howled. But you came—and I thought, this is it, this time I'll see it through. The cat's eyes were like gold coins, like the shining objects hypnotists use to put people under. I let myself go.

"I don't remember what I said. But I remember what I saw.

"The first thing was a flower—a rose, I guess. A pair of scissors cut through the stem. The flower started to fall, but a hand caught it, and held it, in spite of the thorns. Blood ran down its fingers, but it held on. Then the rosebush started to grow. It shot out long tendrils stretching and writhing. Jim was there. The stems wound around him like ropes, holding him. He didn't try to free himself. He just stood there, and the thorns tore him.

"I couldn't tell you. It would have sounded like Ruby Starflower playing psychic, and I knew how much you hate that sort of thing...Then, the next day, when Jim and I shook hands...It's going to happen soon, Andy. Very soon. I don't know what you can do to stop it, but you have to try."

"Something is going to happen—to Jim?"

"I'm going now," Reba said. "Good-bye, Andy."

Andrea made no attempt to stop her. Reba walked like a sick old woman, shoulders bowed and feet dragging. She didn't look back.

Andrea knew she ought to run after her and tell her it was all right. She recognized the courage Reba's visit had required; friendship of that quality was worth preserving. She should reassure her friend that the danger she feared but could not define had passed. The symbolism of Reba's dream was so direct she felt sure Martin must have told her of his beliefs.

A small silent voice in her mind jeered, "Aren't these rationalizations becoming a little strained?" but she refused to listen to it. She ought to go after Reba...But she stood still, scarcely feeling the cold wind that numbed her arms and face, watching the Mercedes pull away.

The air was so thick she could hardly breathe; it clogged her straining lungs like heavy liquid. Her heart was pounding and her hands were sticky with perspiration, despite the cold. Then into the deathly silence came a sound that lifted the hair on her arms and neck—the sound of a dog howling.

Ragmop had resigned himself to the kennel after a few noisy nights, but even at his worst he had never sounded as he did now. The quivering lamentation rose and fell in a wordless litany of despair.

Andrea ran, stumbling in her haste, and threw open the back door. She had chained the dog that morning; he would have followed the men, demanding to be taken with them, if she had not. He sat in front of the doghouse, his muzzle raised, pouring out his grief to the indifferent sky. Andrea pressed her hands to her ears, "Stop it!" she shouted hysterically. "Stop it, stop it!"

Instead of running to greet her as he always did, even when she was scolding him for some misadventure, the dog dropped flat, head between his
paws. His tail dragging, he crawled into the kennel.

Andrea was shivering violently, but not from the cold. No wonder the howling of a dog had become the classic portent of death; there was no more poignant expression of hopeless grief than that terrible lament. Jim and Martin...Why didn't they cone home? They had been gone a long time.

The dog was silent now. She went back into the house, to the telephone. But that was no use; she didn't know where they were; she could hardly call every automobile dealer in the county. Mary's picture looked down at her from above the desk. Not Mary; Mary still watched the door. Strange that she had never observed before how tense and expectant was the pose of the stiff body, the tilted head.

Andrea started up the stairs, slowly at first, then running faster and faster. She was panting when she reached the steps that led to the tower room. The door was unlocked. Jim never locked his door now. He knew she seldom went there. He cleaned it himself, with a little help from Mrs. Horner. He had been hard at it the past week, carrying down bag after bag of discarded belongings. An early spring cleaning, he had called it. Getting rid of a lot of old junk...

The room was as neat and impersonal as a hotel room before a guest arrives. Andrea went to the desk. Its top was bare—not a scrap of paper, nor an empty beer can. She started to open the drawer but her hand refused to move; she was afraid of what she might see. Emptiness. All gone, discarded.

She could hardly breathe. The air felt even thicker here, dense as oil. She went back to the door. A small mat covered the floor inside the threshold. Andrea kicked it aside.

The loose board came up in her hands. The sketches were there, in the old hiding place. Something else was there too, on top of the book. An envelope with her name on it, in Jim's writing.

She left the board lying aside, the door open. When she reached the second floor she knew she couldn't go any farther. Her legs wouldn't hold her up. She opened Martin's door. His clothes, tossed carelessly over the foot of the bed, his papers littering table and chairs, the smell of his tobacco and shaving lotion...Feeling a little stronger, she sat down on the bed and opened the envelope.