The Woman Next Door (30 page)

"I really do not—"

"A hundred and three, Doctor. She appears to be regaining consciousness."

"Christine? Christine, can you hear me?"

"A hundred and two."

"Christine?"

"Dr.
Tichell
?"

"Yes, Christine. You're in the hospital. You were quite ill, but—"

"Why? Why am I in the hospital?"

"You were sick, Christine. You had us a little worried, as a matter of fact."

"Dr.
Tichell
, where's Tim? Where's my husband?"

"I'll bring him to you shortly, Christine. Right now, I think you've got to rest a while."

Christine's eyes closed slowly, and she sighed. "Yes," she said. "I do feel a little weary. I feel like I've run ten miles." She smiled. "Tell Tim I love him very much. Tell him I'm all right, now."

She was asleep.

H
er
room. Let them wait outside. Let them! If they could wait forever, so could she.

And let them have the house. Let them corrupt it, dirty it, leave their droppings all around.

Let them wander back to that door. And wait there forever.

She'd beat them.

It didn't matter.

She would beat them!

Four weeks later

S
onny Norton was happy the winter was ending. Spring brought the people out of their houses—the children especially, and they were fun to watch. He thought, suddenly, that that is what he might do this year: just watch. Because maybe he was getting a little old to be playing with the children. A little old, and a little big, and a little clumsy. Things changed. He had changed.

I
n the room, the woman in the big, comfortable chair was beginning to close in on herself, like an old jack-o'-lantern. In the first few days here she had moved haltingly back and forth, back and forth, from the door to the chair to the window and back to the door, at one moment convinced that the things on the other side of the door had gone, and, at the next, equally convinced that the things waited for her very patiently. Very quietly. Because they had an eternity to wait. And nothing else to do.

The woman in the chair couldn't know the truth—that her husband and her son had started a new life together, that, in time, it would be a good and happy life. Despite the memories. The woman in the chair believed what she had seen. And felt. Because, like all of us, she was a slave to her senses. The things beyond the door were real because they had called to her, touched her, driven her here, into this big, airy room. And now—there was no doubt; it was an absolute and awful certainty—they waited for her to come out.

But, she told herself (as she had told herself a hundred times), she would beat them.

S
onny Norton shoved his hands into his pockets. He wondered why he was sad about the pictures going away. He had never understood them, and sometimes they frightened him. There were many things he did not understand, and many things that frightened him—babies, for instance, and the big, noisy street-cleaning machines, and thunderstorms. But they were all things he had to live with, and sometimes he enjoyed them.

"Hi," he heard. He looked up.

The boy was smiling warmly; he had a wet snowball in his bare hands.

Sonny said, "Better put that in the '
frigerator
or it'll melt."

"
Naw
," the boy said, "it won't melt; it's too cold." He heaved the snowball at a lamppost, missed it, bent over, scooped up some more snow, packed it hard. He hefted the finished snowball and looked pleased. "See
ya
," he said, waving slightly, and ran off.

Sonny watched until the boy rounded the corner onto Aberdeen Street; then he turned and started walking again.

T
he woman in the chair had sensed the approach of death several days before, as if it were a train just beyond the horizon and she could do nothing but sit and wait for it. That is when she had started babbling. "Thank God for the space between us, Brett," she said, over and over again, like a windup doll. "Thank God for the space between us, Brett." Eventually, her mouth stopped working and she began repeating the words mentally. It was an attempt to shut out the images that had been assaulting her since her second day here. Images of the things on the other side of the door. Images of Christine and of the child Christine had been, and of the vengeance that child had taken, at last. "Thank God for the space between us, Brett."

On the sixteenth day, these words came back to her and she wanted, needed to cry, but couldn't: "They will
always
be with you, Marilyn."

The woman in the big, comfortable chair in the big, airy room silently repeated the words again and again: "They will
always
be with you, Marilyn." Because there was sense in the words, reason in the words—a reason for her to be in the room. To be dying in it.

On the twenty-eighth day, at a little past 3:00 p.m., these words—as if from an ancient wax cylinder—came from the woman, very quickly, on a long and shuddering exhale: "And no
no
I'm not sorry not
freakin
' sorry to you Christine, go to hell, or to anyone." And her lungs and heart stopped, and she thought, incredulously, This is death?
This is death? Big deal! All those stupid scare stories, shit on '
em
, shit on '
em
. Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus! I want to live. Jesus, I want to live! I want—
"

I
n front of the
Bennet
house, Sonny Norton stopped once more. The house was empty, his sister had told him—though she hadn't needed to; he could feel that it was empty. The young couple had moved out. A pity, his sister said—they seemed to fit so nicely in Cornhill. Sonny knew better.

He turned his head and studied the Courtney house a long while. He saw a curtain move slightly in one of the second-floor windows. Only the wind, he supposed. It was an empty house. As empty as death. He had nothing to fear from an empty house.

He bent over, scooped up some snow, packed it hard. He hefted the snowball. Maybe what he'd do when he got home was put it in the refrigerator. Maybe that's what he'd do. Then he could save a little bit of this winter forever.