Someone in the House (36 page)

Authors: Barbara Michaels

BOOK: Someone in the House

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“Perhaps the essential core is, or was, human—the sum total of all the people who have lived in the house and loved it. Caught, while living, in the web of that love, and dying, adding their strength to the total. Perhaps it started with Roger’s ancient priests and the principle of Life they worshiped. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that now it’s too strong to be defeated. No one will ever get rid of the spirit, the psychic energy, without destroying the physical house all the way down to the deepest foundations. And even then something may survive—some seed, some root, that will gain strength over the years.

“All that is academic because no one will ever want to destroy it. No such hostile, hating thought could ever enter the mind of anyone who lived there. If it did…Well, I don’t know what would happen. I think the house would find a way of protecting itself, by one means or another.

“Not by violence, if it could find any other way. It is not malevolent. It’s not a hell house, or a house of evil or a house of blood.It wants people to be happy . That was what I found unbearable.

“I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble. Not unless you continue playing games with it—summoning up troubled spirits, or trying to photograph the invisible. And don’t worry about Kevin. He’ll be all right. That’s exactly what the house wants—that Kevin should be all right.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t stay. I can’t explain why. I love you all. I’m sorry.”

The woman sitting next to me got up and changed seats. I didn’t blame her. I wasn’t enjoying my own company.

The last paragraph of my letter had given me a lot of trouble. I wanted to say more, to explain, to justify myself. But I couldn’t without making myself sound conceited or condemnatory, or just plain touched in the head. I couldn’t hurt Kevin by telling him what I suspected—that his feelings for me were just another contrivance. I was admirably suited for the position in so many ways, and at first it must have appeared that I was adjusting nicely—taking up needlepoint and flower-arranging and all the other lady-of-the-manor hobbies. Yes, I was ideally suited—in every way but one. Call it stubbornness, call it independence of mind, call it a neurotic rejection of happiness—there was some rock-hard nugget of will that would not succumb to a manufactured content. I would like to think that quality was unique and wonderful, yet I doubt that it was; there must have been others, Mandevilles and Weekeses and Romers, who never sensed the glamour. But how could I say this without seeming to gloat over my superior strength of mind? How could I tell Kevin he never cared about me, not really—that it was all part of a pattern, a role he played under the guidance of an unseen director?

I wasn’t playing a role. At least I don’t think I was. And that was why I ran away—because I couldn’t be sure.

The airport was teeming with people who had priority because of flights canceled the day before. I couldn’t get a seat on a plane. I spent the night in a cheap hotel in the city; I was afraid that if I stayed at the airport Kevin would, somehow, manage to find me. I mailed the keys of the Vega to him, with a brief note telling him where I had left the car. On my way back from the mailbox I stuffed my pretty lime-green dress in a garbage can.

Late the next afternoon I walked into my apartment. My tenant was a relatively imperturbable lady; she looked up from her book and said calmly, “I wasn’t expecting you till next week. Didn’t you have a good time?”

“No,” I said. “Not very.”

Chapter

ISAW ROGER and Bea last month in Chicago. They stopped over on their way back from their honeymoon in Denver just to meet me. It was Bea who suggested I “write it out.” She thought it would be therapeutic. She may be right—though not in the way she meant. She told me, not once but several times, that I looked just fine.

One of the reasons why they made a special effort to see me was to break the news gently. Kevin is engaged. He and Debbie plan to be married in June, after she graduates. All very formal and proper. There was an announcement in the paper, and an engagement party, and a diamond—not big enough to be flashy, just big enough to brag about. I smiled and said I hoped they would be very happy. They will. Of that I have no doubt.

Roger asked about my plans. I told him of the grant I’m hoping to get, which will mean a year’s work in England, and about my students. Bea’s big brown eyes were so imploring I hated to tell her that, no, I had no romantic plans. I see Joe now and then in the cafeteria. His department doesn’t have much to do with the English people.

They invited me to come for a visit, and I said I would, sometime. I lied. They knew I lied, but they didn’t know why. I wouldn’t go back. I’d be afraid. Even at this distance, after so many months, the attraction is too strong. Sometimes it’s all I can do to resist it. If I were only a few miles away, if I saw Kevin again…

We didn’t talk about it, at least not much. What would be the use? They’re part of the pattern now, moving smoothly along the appointed paths. All the snarls and rough spots have been rubbed away. Everything seems to be working fine.

I’m fine too. Oh, there are moments—on those endless gray afternoons when the sleet raps sharply at the windows and the one-room apartment seems as big and empty as a warehouse. Or in the early morning hours, before it’s light, when I wake up for no reason and can’t go back to sleep. Then for the hundredth time I go through the long list of unanswerable questions. What was it, really? Was my final explanation as incomplete as the ones that satisfied Bea and Roger? Did four seemingly normal people simultaneously and coincidentally reach critical breaking points in their emotional lives, and imagine the whole thing? Was there some simple, factual explanation none of us discovered? And the last, the worst question of all, the one that keeps me sleepless sometimes until the sun rises—did I deliberately throw away love, happiness, comfort, because of some mental distortion that will keep me lonely all my life?

I have dreamed, not once but several times, of going back. The dream is always the same. I am walking along the curving avenue beyond the gateposts, but instead of tall trees the road is lined with the statuestiff forms I saw in other nightmares. This time I am moving in the opposite direction, from the beginning forward in time. The shapeless masses of protoplasm take shape, reptilian, then four-footed and finally human. Priest and soldier, lord and lady, robed and kirtled and armored. And at the end I see Kevin, the last of that dreadful company, but not yet one of them; for he is aware of me as I approach. His lips shape words, his hands reach out. I cannot hear the words; I cannot tell whether the gesture is one of appeal or rejection.

I will never know. “I have heard the key turn in the door once, and turn once only…” I got out the door. It won’t open again.

Sometimes it’s cold out here in the big wide world.

About the Author

ELIZABETH PETERS (writing as BARBARA MICHAELS) was born and brought up in Illinois and earned her Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago’s famed Oriental Institute. Peters was named Grand Master at the inaugural Anthony Awards in 1986, Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America at the Edgar® Awards in 1998, and given the Lifetime Achievement Award at Malice Domestic in 2003. She lives in an historic farmhouse in western Maryland. You can visit her website atwww.mpmbooks.com.

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Praise
for the novels of

Barbara Michaels

highly satisfying

“Barbara Michaels’s thrillers are always a highly satisfying blend of unearthly terrors and supernatural suppositions.”

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

a master

“A master of the modern Gothic novel.”

LIBRARY JOURNAL

great story

“With Barbara Michaels, you always get a great story.”

OCALA STAR-BANNER(FLORIDA)

atmosphere

“Michaels has a fine sense of atmosphere and storytelling.”

NEW YORK TIMES

hooked

“We are not normally disposed to read Gothic novels…but when Michaels turns her talents to the genre, we admit to being hooked.”

DENVER POST

consummate

“Barbara Michaels is a consummate story teller.”

MARY HIGGINS CLARK

Books by Barbara Michaels

Other Worlds

The Dancing Floor

Stitches In Time

House of Stone

Vanish with the Rose

This Quiet Dust

Into The Darkness

Smoke and Mirrors

Search the Shadows

Shattered Silk

Be Buried in the Rain

The Grey Beginning

The Dark Duet

Here I Stay

Black Rainbow

Someone in the House

The Wizard’s Daughter

The Walker in the Shadows

Wait for What Will Come

Wings of the Falcon

Patriot’s Dream

The Sea King’s Daughter

House of Many Shadows

Witch

Graygallows

The Crying Child

The Dark on the Other Side

Prince of Darkness

Ammie, Come Home

Sons of the Wolf

The Master of Blacktower

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SOMEONE IN THE HOUSE. Copyright © 1981 by Barbara Michaels. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound™.

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Microsoft Reader September 2005 ISBN 0-06-089275-7

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