Night Things: A Novel of Supernatural Terror (14 page)

As she stood staring at the book and the table she noticed something else. The floorboards in front of the table were worn as if someone had spent a great deal of time kneeling before the book, and then suddenly it hit her. The book and the table were some sort of altar.

She tilted the front of the book back with her knuckle so as to avoid touching its moldering surface. As she did so a sheath of spiderweb snapped free from the binding and wrapped around her wrist. She looked at the book and saw that embossed across its cover were the words:
The Book of the Secrets of Enoch.

The title left her at a loss, but the import of the altar and the worn patches on the floor did not, and in a flash several disparate pieces of the puzzle suddenly clicked into place. When the shopgirl at Clearwater Lodge had said that Sarah Balfram was clever crazy, what she really meant— or, at least, what the original truth had probably been before it had trickled down through the great sieve of time and local tradition—was that Sarah Balfram had been some sort of religious fanatic.

At least religious fanaticism explained why an eccentric recluse like Sarah Balfram might have gone around and given the lectures the shopgirl had alluded to. It also explained why her bedroom was so ascetic. Indeed, as Lauren continued to gaze at the book she could not help but think that if she knew more about it and the specifics of Sarah Balfram’s religious convictions, it might even explain why she had built the house the way she had. For a moment this thought caused her to consider taking the book with her. But then she decided it was too decayed and crumbling to risk touching.

No sooner had she made the decision than suddenly deep within the bowels the house there came another groaning of wood against wood, only this time longer and more sustained, like the baleful creaking of an ancient and abandoned ship listing in a storm.

“Come on,” she said, afraid the sound indicated that the twisted and forgotten hallway could no longer endure the stress of their intrusion. But as she guided Garrett to the door, something else occurred to her. Although she had not realized it before, it struck her suddenly that the creaking, now so immediate and menacing, was the same sound which had awakened her the night before.

Given the creaking had started only after they had entered the hallway, she wondered if the previous night these sounds had also been caused by some sudden and unexpected stress. If this was the case, she wondered what had caused that stress. But again there came a groaning of timbers somewhere deep within the corridor and she realized they had already ventured too far, and they hastily retreated.

When they arrived back in the out-of-kilter drawing room her thoughts were in such tumult, she had to stop and collect herself. She was beginning to think Garrett was right. There was a method to Sarah Balfram’s madness, and the house did seem to be some sort of gigantic puzzle. The real question was, what was the solution to that puzzle? Was the disused corridor all that the house concealed, or did it harbor something more? And if so, what?

The discovery of the derelict hallway and bedroom had filled her with such a sense of foreboding she felt she should not waste another second before telling Stephen about it.

When they arrived downstairs, she burst into the coachmen’s waiting room, a thousand and one things ready to tumble from her mouth. But to her surprise, instead of finding Stephen, she found only a note taped to the receiver of the portable telephone:

Dear Lauren:

 

The telephone is acting up, so I decided to go to Clearwater Lodge to finish my calls. I will be back in a couple of hours.

 

Love,
Stephen

She crumpled the note in her hand. “Damn,” she murmured. But when she turned back around she saw Garrett looking at her with concern.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said, feeling it might frighten him if he knew how upset she really was.

“Then why did you say ‘damn’?”

“Because I wanted to talk to Stephen about something, and he’s gone out on an errand.”

“You mean about the part of the house we discovered?”

“No, I wanted to talk to him about what we should have for dinner tonight,” she lied.

“Oh,” he said. He started to walk away, but she stopped him.

“Garrett?”

“Yes, Mom?”

“You know the part of the house we were in just now?”

“Yes?”

“Well, I think it would be a good idea if you stayed away from it. I think it might be a little unsafe, and I don’t want you getting hurt, okay?”

“Okay, Mom.”

She breathed a sigh of relief, satisfied that she had made her point without making the forgotten hallway seem so forbidden that it became alluring to him. And after he walked away she went and sat out on the veranda to wait for Stephen.

She waited for over an hour, and when Stephen still hadn’t shown up she decided to go inside and prepare dinner. However, it wasn’t until after she and Garrett had eaten and night had fallen that she finally heard his car pull up in front of the house. She raced to the front door and opened it just as he was coming up the steps.

“My God, Stephen, where have you been?”

He looked at her quizzically. “At Clearwater Lodge. Didn’t you get my note?”

“Yes, but I thought you’d be back by now. I was getting really worried.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s just that one call seemed to lead to another and I couldn’t get away until now.”

“Well, you won’t believe what Garrett and I discovered—”

“Wait!” he said, stopping her in midsentence. “Before I do anything else, the first thing I’ve got to do is go for a swim.”

At first she thought he was kidding. “But Stephen—” He held up his hand. “No, listen, I’ve had a day like you wouldn’t believe, and for the last two hours all I’ve thought about is coming home and relaxing by taking a dip in the lake.” He started up the stairs, but then stopped. “So why don’t you come with me?”

“But what about Garrett?” she asked.

“What about him?”

“He’s in the drawing room watching television. Should I ask him if he wants to come with us?”

“Nah, let’s just the two of us go.”

She started to object, but he quickly intervened.

“Come on—you said that if I started agreeing to do more things as a family, you wouldn’t complain on those occasions when I just want the two of us to be alone. Well, this is one of those times.”

He gave her one of his beguilingly boyish smiles, and she sighed and gave in. “Okay.”

They both went upstairs and changed into their swimming suits, and when they went outside she saw that the moon had formed a ribbon of light on the lake. Stephen charged full-speed into the water and then dove in.

“Aahhh,” he said happily as he resurfaced about fifteen feet out and shook his mane of dark ringlets.

Lauren opted for a more tentative approach and started to immerse herself gingerly in the water. But then Stephen raced forward and began dragging her in.

“No, Stephen! No!” she shouted, but before she could stop him he had pulled her in. At first the water felt icy, but after she resurfaced and swam forward a few feet, it felt wonderful.

“That wasn’t fair,” she complained.

“Well, you can’t enter a lake like this by taking little baby steps. You’ve got to do it all the way.”

He disappeared under the water again and then reappeared still farther out in the lake. She was still anxious to tell him about her discovery of the forgotten hallway, and she realized she had no choice but to follow after him.

When she reached him she stopped and treaded water beside him. “Now can I tell you?”

“Well, I guess if even a moonlight swim hasn’t made you forget about whatever it is, it must be important, so go ahead.”

She told him everything, about the palindrome, about the existence of the disused hallway, and about the book they had found in Sarah Balfram’s room, and when she finished she waited expectantly for his reaction.

“You mean you found a part of the house that hasn’t been cleaned?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that really pisses me off.”

She didn’t quite understand. “
What
pisses you off?”

“I told Marty I wanted the entire house cleaned before we moved in. I mean, I fucking paid for the entire house to be cleaned. But from what you’re telling me it sounds like they didn’t.”

She gave a nervous and incredulous laugh. “Stephen, I can’t believe that’s all you’re upset about.”

“Why? What else should I be upset about?”

“Well, for starters I don’t think the floor in that place was very safe. I mean, you should have heard how it creaked when we walked across it.”

“Honey, the house is a hundred years old. I don’t think a few creaking floors mean we necessarily have to hang a condemned sign on the door.”

“But you should have seen the place. It looked like it was sculpted out of clay and then caught in a cyclone before it had a chance to dry.”

“I don’t see why that’s such a surprise,” he said, swimming another few feet. “I told you when we first moved in, the place is a bit strange here and there.”

Somehow she felt she wasn’t getting through to him. “No, Stephen, it’s
more
than strange. Don’t you hear what I’m telling you? There’s a subtle rhyme and reason to the way the house is laid out. It’s a sort of labyrinth or something. Only I think there’s more to the labyrinth than just madness. I think Sarah Balfram built the house the way she did for some very specific reason.”

“Like what kind of reason?”

“I don’t know. Like maybe she intended it to be some kind of giant puzzle or something,” she said, feeling a little guilty about saying this after the way she had reacted when Garrett had first suggested the idea.

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Why is that so ridiculous?”

“Because if the house were some kind of giant puzzle, Marty would have told me about it.”

“But if he didn’t even know about the existence of the secret hallway, what makes you think he would know about the house being a puzzle?”

“Because the broker who rented the house would have told him.”

“Maybe the broker didn’t know.”

Her persistence in the matter nettled him. “Oh, come on, Lauren. Don’t you think if Sarah Balfram had designed the house to be some sort of grand and imposing riddle, somewhere along the line someone would know about it and would have told us by now?”

“Maybe not,” she said, also becoming a bit ruffled. “Maybe it’s something that just isn’t that commonly known. I mean, I wouldn’t have figured it out if Garrett hadn’t—”

“Garrett!” he cried. “So that’s who’s behind all of this. I should have known!”

“Listen,” she said angrily, “that kid was the first to notice there was even an inscription over the door.
You
certainly didn’t notice. And that kid was also the first to figure out it read the same forward as it did backward. Neither you nor I caught that one. Given his track record so far, I don’t think it’s so absurd to listen to what else he has to say.” She started to swim briskly toward the shore.

“Hey, wait a minute!” Stephen called after her. She heard him thrashing around vigorously in the water behind her, and before she knew it, he had swum up beside her. “Will you just wait a minute?” he soothed again as he reached out and playfully jiggled her shoulder with one hand. “I don’t want to fight with you, Lauren. Jesus, it seems that all we’ve been doing lately is fighting about something.” His words caused a mingling of both astonishment and remorse to pass through her as she realized he was right. “I know,” she said, looking down unhappily at the sparkling surface of the water between them.

“So look up at the stars,” he murmured as he swam around behind her. “Look at how beautiful the night is. Do you really think we should be arguing with all this beauty around us?” He put his arms around her, and for a moment it felt as if the dark waters of the lake were engulfing her. But she felt unmistakably that some sort of wall had started to form between her and Stephen.

“Yes, it is a beautiful night,” she said, hoping he did not detect the distance in her voice.

She pulled away from him and once again started toward the shore. Then suddenly she thought of something else. “Oh, by the way, did you and Marty figure out what to do about that singer you were worried about?”

“Yeah, we did.”

“What?”

“We signed him to a six-year contract with this record company I own. Only he doesn’t know I own it. He thinks we’re going to give him the big push, but we’re just going to let his career die on the vine. You know, talk him into recording songs we know are lousy. Send him on tour before he’s ready. That sort of stuff. We had to offer him an awful lot of money to get him to sign so quickly, but it was worth it. At least this way I know he’ll no longer be a threat.” He nuzzled up against her. “Pretty clever of your main squeeze, huh?”

She drew back in horror. “But Stephen, that’s terrible!”

“Why?” he asked with surprise.

“It’s just so cold-blooded, so Machiavellian. I mean, when you told me about getting that junior exec fired, that was bad enough. But this is a person’s life you’re talking about. All his hopes and dreams. Is it really so easy for you to just snuff it out like that?”