Julia

NOVELS

The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine

A Dark Matter

In the Night Room

Lost Boy, Lost Girl

Black House
(with Stephen King)

Mr. X

The Hellfire Club

The Throat

Mrs. God

Mystery

Koko

The Talisman
(with Stephen King)

Floating Dragon

Shadowland

Ghost Story

If You Could See Me Now

Julia

Under Venus

Marriages

POETRY

My Life in Pictures

Ishmael

Open Air

Leeson Park and Belsize Square

The Devil’s Wine

COLLECTIONS

Wild Animals

Houses Without Doors

Magic Terror

Peter Straub’s Ghosts
(editor)

Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists
(editor)

Poe’s Children
(editor)

5 Stories

American Fantastic Tales
(editor)

Peter Straub is the
New York Times
bestselling author of more than twenty books. His many accolades include multiple Bram Stoker awards, most recently for his novel
A Dark Matter
, and lifetime achievement awards from the Horror Writers Association and the World Fantasy Awards. Straub was the editor of the two-volume Library of America anthology
American Fantastic Tales
. He lives in New York City.

www.peterstraub.net

Cover

Other Books by This Author

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

The little blond girl, about nine or ten—Kate’s age—and enough like Kate to make Julia feel dizzy, ran floating up from nowhere along Ilchester Place and, windmilling her arms at the street corner, flew into the path to Holland Park. Standing on the steps of the house with the man from Markham and Reeves, Julia’s first sensation was the sharp, familiar ache of loss, now so strong as to make her feel that she might shock the man from Markham and Reeves by being sick into the wilting tulips; but the real-estate agent, who had clearly decided that his customer was precipitous and eccentric to the point of lunacy, might have done no more than mutter something about the heat and pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. That Julia had already twice lost the keys to Number 25, that she had written a deposit check for twenty thousand pounds on the first day she had seen the house (the first house he had shown her), that she was buying, as well, all the furniture from the previous owners, a retired carpet manufacturer and his wife already in Barbados, that she intended to live alone in an eight-bedroom house—but he had his own ideas on that point—had prepared him for almost any conceivable vagary on her part. Conscious of her haste and her oddness, and a little fearful of the man’s subtle contempt for her, Julia yet felt it possible that the estate agent attributed some of this behavior to her being merely another comically “rich American”;
and so she felt, with a little flare of independence, only the smallest qualm about obeying her second response to the sight of the running blond girl, a feeling that she must follow her. The impulse was overwhelmingly strong. The man from Markham and Reeves was holding her by the elbow, very delicately, and beginning to produce the third key from his waistcoat pocket—he had tied a bright yellow ribbon through the hole at the top of the key.

“Yellow for remembrance, Mrs. Lofting,” he was saying, the edge of condescension clear in his voice. “Confess I pinched the idea from a pop song. May you—”

“Excuse me,” Julia said, and went quickly down the steps to the pavement.

She did not want to run until she was out of the man’s sight, and restrained herself until she, too, had rounded the corner to the park and was shielded by the wall. The girl looked remarkably like Kate. Of course she could not be Kate. Kate was dead. But people sometimes caught sight of friends in a crowd or riding past in a bus when those friends were in reality thousands of miles away—but didn’t that mean that the friends were in danger or about to die? Julia ran a few awkward steps into the children’s play area and, already panting, began to walk. Children were everywhere, in the sandboxes, racing around on the patchy grass, climbing the trees she could see from her bedroom window. The blond girl could be far into the park by now, Julia realized, either on the long sward of green to the right or on one of the paths up ahead, or over toward the Orangery. The child might not even have taken the path into the play area but run straight up the long lane to Holland House. Surely Holland House
was
that way? Up there past the peacocks? Julia did not feel sure enough of the park’s geography to pursue her phantom—who
in any case was just an ordinary little girl on her way to meet friends in Holland Park. Julia, who was still unthinkingly walking up the path past the sandboxes, stopped. Chasing after the child had been unreasonable, perhaps hysterical: typical of her. I really am losing my grip, she thought, and said “Damn” so loudly that a stout man with a brushy gingery mustache stared at her.

She turned about, embarrassed, and looked up across the back walls of gardens to the upper row of windows in her new house. The house was monstrously expensive: she could not allow Magnus to know that she had purchased it, that she had signed every paper put in front of her. For a moment the thought of Magnus—the idea of Magnus, enormous with rage—drove everything else from her head, and she felt a second of terror. She might have been unreasonable, even unbalanced—he would be quick to say it—but about Magnus, reason was not possible. The long, restrained lines of the house, which she had thought beautiful the moment she had seen it, helped her to quiet her feelings.

Holding one hand to her chest, Julia walked back down the path to the corner of Ilchester Place. She remembered the man from Markham and Reeves only when she saw him leaning against the front door, his expression one between confusion and boredom.
He
had written her off when, telephoning her bank from his office, he had learned how much money she kept in a checking account.

She expected the man to say something, but he appeared to be past courteous formulas. He merely straightened his shoulders and offered the key, holding it by the flagrant yellow ribbon. Now he did not look so much bored as weary. And in any case, what could Julia say? She could not explain her sudden action by telling him that she had wanted to look
again at a girl who reminded her of her dead daughter: he did not know anything about Kate or about Julia. She did the best she could.