Nightlight (16 page)

Then, barely able to see, she slipped the folders back into the box, and locked it. She shuddered but she gripped herself, digging her nails into her flesh. When she stopped shuddering she put the boxes where she had found them, moving very slowly.

She took the chair from beneath the doorknob, but she did not bother to shut the door behind her. She did not bother to establish any pretense. Her face was frozen into what she knew must be a grimace, a mask of terror mastered by the most powerful will.

She took each step slowly, and passed by the study. She stepped across the dew-wet lawn in the darkest part of the garden.

She fell onto the grass and sobbed, shuddering, retching, blind with everything she had seen and wishing she had never had eyes, never lived beyond her childhood so she could never have been brought to this.

She hid her face in the damp lawn and groaned into it, and even when she was empty, belly and soul, she still could not move, but lay like a lifeless thing.

21

“You'll have to go. You can't live here anymore.”

Len met her eyes. “Why?” he whispered.

“You know why,” she said quietly.

For a long moment she thought he might strike her. But at last he laughed, a dry, empty, hissing laugh. He bowed, a quick jerk of his head. “I understand,” he said. Why did he seem amused?

For the next few years she had seen less and less of him, although she called him on the phone, hating the sound of his voice, which became almost entirely a whisper, like the sound of something dragged across snow. And he called her once a week, always polite, always secretive.

He went north at last to do “research,” as he put it. And then she stopped hearing from him, and what was she supposed to do? She wanted to forget him completely, but that was impossible.

And then the nightmares had begun, the terrible dreams of the intruder in the seemingly peaceful place, the slow steps, and the terror that woke her night after night.

The terror that still kept her awake. She sat in her dressing gown. Rain pattered on the window, and she nearly prayed aloud for sleep. As if she could pray. As if she would be heard even if she did.

She would not be able to sleep. She probably should see Mark's doctor. Sleeping pills would be a blessing, although she wondered if she might take the entire bottle, every single pill, and sleep forever.

The idea was almost amusing. Not that she would ever do that. No, she was not destructive to herself. Only to the people entrusted to her. She ate them like a vulture. She had not wanted to be evil. It had been tricked into her somehow, at some point. Some alloy in her makeup, the sort of fault that had made the foil snap and turn into a jagged rapier.

Sandy opened the door into the kitchen, spilling light across the floor. “Oh!” she gasped. “It's you!”

“I thought I'd have a toddy, after all. I didn't mean to scare you.”

Sandy took over the filling of the kettle. “Tonight, I don't know why. But tonight I am so nervous.”

“There's no reason to be nervous,” said Mary.

“No reason! Every day all these ghastly things happen. Crazy men all over, hurting people. And always crazy men, you notice. Never women.”

“There are sick women.”

Sandy paused, bottle of rum in her hands. “Of course. Many miserable women. But they don't go around hurting people. Strangling. Beating to death. Slaughtering innocent people in their houses. Men do that. Crazy men.”

Sandy added honey to the cup, and poured rum, the gurgling of the liquor like a sinister chuckle. The sound of it dazed Mary, and she gripped the counter top to bring herself back into what she supposed was reality: the gleaming stove, the faucet a hook that dripped water.

“Men who have no idea what it is to be a human being,” Sandy continued. “Who are totally wrapped up in their own minds. Who think the world is all inside their heads.” She stirred hot water into the cup. The spoon jangled in the china, and a drop of rum glistened on the countertop. “They should do something about these men.”

“What?” Mary whispered. “What can they do?”

“Sometimes I think it would be better for everyone if they did not have news about craziness. If when someone was killed, they didn't even talk about it. How many times have I turned on the television and seen policemen carrying a bag with a body in it.”

Sandy was obviously nervous tonight. She was rarely so talkative. “Make a toddy for yourself,” Mary suggested.

“No. I will sleep well. Nothing interrupts my sleep. It's just something about tonight. Made me scared.”

“The weather.”

“I like rain. Comforts me, makes me glad to be indoors. But do you know what? If they didn't have the bad news on television, they'd never catch the crazy men who do all these things.”

“Naturally, if something happens, they have to tell us. No matter how ghastly it might be. It is, I suppose, their responsibility.”

“That's right. They have to do it. They have to tell us the truth, even if we don't want to hear it.”

The drink was still too hot. “We should,” said Mary weakly, “try to think of pleasant things.”

Sandy nodded. “We will.”

Mary turned on the television in her bedroom. Hills and trees, and a herd of wild beasts sprang into focus. A lioness lowered herself into tall, brown grass. The herd twitched. One of the animals was aware of something. Another lioness hulked through the grass.

Her father had hunted in Africa many times, although he had rarely talked about it. What he had enjoyed there was a secret, a ripeness that he had held to himself. Once, squeezing a tick out of a dog's fur, he had remarked that in Africa they had ticks as big as nickels.

The herd churned, and Mary turned off the television. She knew too much about hunters and their quarry.

Someone answered immediately, but she knew it was a switchboard designed more to screen than to admit as soon as she heard the tone of her voice. “I'm sorry, Dr. Kirby doesn't have night duty.”

It was important.

“I can have you speak with the physician on duty.”

When would Dr. Kirby be in?

“We don't expect him tomorrow, but we do expect him …”

Mary could, she supposed, insist on speaking to Kirby. She could identify herself, describe herself as a client, and insist on his home phone. But what could she say? How could she start from the beginning over the phone?

“Is there a message?” the voice was saying.

She had been obsessed with her father, and so broken by his death that she had imagined—or had she believed—that his spirit was alive in the body of her son. That burden had twisted her son into an inhuman thing. But Mary could not say any of this to the bland voice on the switchboard. “No, no message.”

“Can I tell him who called?”

Mary smiled to herself. Tell him that a woman who wishes she could change everything she ever did called up and wanted to say hi.

“No,” said Mary. “No message.”

Mary slept, waking briefly once as rain clawed the window. She listened for a moment to the rain, and then, once again, she slept.

This time the dream was more detailed than it had ever been. The house was dark, and cold, but somehow pleasant, a large fireplace before her with a half-charred log. There was a kitchen off to her left somewhere. She sensed it, and felt that something cheerful was possible there, perhaps even some sauce simmering on the stove. It was raining, but she was safe from the rain.

Then there was a bump upstairs. Someone was treading the floorboards above her, a slow, jerky step. The steps half-stumbled to a doorway, and then someone stood above her, watching her, someone who knew her, and she could not turn around. Whoever it was walked slowly, gathering strength, to the head of the stairs, and once again stood watching her as the rain fell outside.

The person descended the stairs, carefully, the steps creaking with the weight of the body, and when his foot left the bottom step she wanted to turn, she wanted to cry out, but she could not, and then she wanted to wake, but she could not. The steps one after another crossed the floor, a slow, heavy stride that was in no hurry and yet determined, and then the person was just behind her, a long, cold breath on the back of her neck.

A hand fell upon her shoulder and gripped her hard, so hard she wanted to cry out, but she could not. Her voice leaked a long hiss of air, and then she turned her head.

“Len!” she gasped, because it was Len, but then he turned his head so the light fell on it clearly, and it was the ruined face of her father's corpse.

22

She got out of bed at once. She hurried into clothes, barely stopping to decide what to wear with what, because this had not been an ordinary dream.

This had been a warning. Paul should have called by now, and she knew he was in danger.

She had blundered badly by sending Paul into the wine country. She remembered him as a boy, brought over by her husband's sister, a bland woman with a large face. She did not want to cause him any pain, and what was waiting for him in the wine country was worse than pain.

She nearly wept with anxiety as she fastened snaps, and glanced at her face in the mirror. She had aged terribly. Perhaps, someday, after a long voyage among the Greek islands, and long walks along Aegean shores, she would regain her beauty. But now she was shattered, and anyone who saw her would see a broken woman.

She would muster her powers as best she could.

She drove through the early-morning rain. Water spurted from around manhole covers like long, gray tentacles, and lapped over the curb carrying rolls of half-dissolved newspaper.

To her annoyance the locksmith was not familiar to her, a surly Hispanic who seemed reluctant to speak English. She explained that she was an artist who had lost the key to her studio. Dropped it down a street drain, wasn't that the most annoying thing?

He listened to her as if she were a talking tree, and glanced to the Mercedes, parked with one wheel on the curb. He hefted his toolbox, as if the clank of tools communicated something to him.

“It's terrible when a person loses something,” she said, “it disrupts not only your life, but your peace of mind, too. And that is so important.”

The door was open in five seconds. The locksmith shook his head. “Is no good.”

“What?” she said, fumbling for money.

“No good. The lock. I have made it so that, now it will no longer work without repair.”

“That's all right.”

“I will go to my truck and bring another lock.”

“It's all right.”

“These things happen. It is unfortunate.”

“I don't mind. Please don't mention it.” She squeezed past him on the stairs.

“There will be no charge. This is a very nice lock. Very well built. It is very unfortunate that I have broken it.”

She looked back at him. She calmed herself in an instant. “Yes,” she said. “I would very much appreciate it if you would replace it at once. I keep valuable things here.” She stared across the expanse of empty floor to the huddle of furniture. “Computers. Cameras. I need a good lock. A lock that will work.”

The man knelt to the key slot, and spoke as if into it. “I will fix it.”

He lumbered down the stairs, and she scurried to the small living area. Paul had left a very un-Len-like clutter. Canceled checks were scattered across the desk. They were scraped into the most casual semblance of order, and she despaired for a moment that she would be able to follow Paul's tracks, thoughtless ramble that they no doubt were.

She stared into the screen of the computer, finding the distended reflection of her face somehow calming. She let herself grow peaceful, and began to search in her thoughts not for where the hiding place of Len might be, or how she could find out where the name of the place might be hidden, but how Paul might have discovered it.

“I will have it fixed in almost no time at all,” called the echoing voice. “It will be a very easy matter.”

She nodded, pretending to be impatient, but actually glad to have someone there with her. This place was too cavernous, and too cold. Looking around the room, she felt that Len had never expected to return here. He had taken most of the books he would want to have by his side, and he had put the cemetery pictures into a kind of snapshot album. Tears filled her eyes as she saw the careful, fastidious manner in which her son pursued his madness.

She had told Paul that he was a ghost investigator. She had to offer some explanation for what Paul would no doubt realize was an odd hobby. She wished that he were a ghost investigator. It seemed like such a sane pursuit.

The metal box, the one he had kept locked, was gone. For an instant she thought that perhaps he had changed. Perhaps he had outgrown that obsession. But she laughed at herself. He had simply taken it with him. He would not let himself be parted from such an important collection.

If there were any sign of a memo, a notepad, a letter—anything—Paul had taken it. She was lost. She sat on the bed and stared at her hands. There was nothing she could do. Paul would be destroyed.

She wept. She would not allow herself to collapse. Not now. She dried her eyes with the linen handkerchief her mother had used, one of many her mother had brought back from Italy one spring. Her poor mother. Lost in the shuffle between a sportsman and his daughter, she had simply sat one morning a few months after her husband's death, closed her eyes and died. A stroke, but in the sense of a “stroke of fortune.” She had suffered mostly bewilderment in living, and in her death had suffered not at all.

She put her hand on it before she realized what it was. The canceled check read, “North Coast Realty. Deposit, Parker Cabin.”

So it would be easy, after all.

“It is fixed now. It is okay.”

She put down the phone. Money crackled in her hand. “Thank you.”