If You Could See Me Now

by Peter Straub

  “The man didn’t give his name. He said he was frightened.”

  “Do you really think screams from the quarry can be heard on the road?”

  “Evidently they can. And in these times, Miles, people remember your old story.”

  “Goddam it,” I said. “Don’t you think I know that? Even Duane’s daughter has begun to hear rumors about it. Her crazy boyfriend, too. But I’m bound by my past. That’s the reason I’m here. I’m innocent of the other thing. My innocence is bound to come out.”

  “I hope with all my heart that it does,” she said. I could hear the wind rattling the branches and leaves outside, and I felt like a character from another century—a character from a fairy tale, hiding in a gingerbread house. “But that is not enough to save you now.”

  “I know what my salvation is.”

  “Salvation is work.”

  “That’s a good Norwegian theory.”

  “Well, work, then. Write! Help in the fields!”

  I smiled at the thought of Duane and myself mowing hay side by side. “I thought you were advising me to leave the state. Actually Polar Bears won’t let me leave. And I wouldn’t, anyhow.”

  She looked at me with what I recognized as despair. I said, “I won’t let go of the past. You don’t understand, Auntie Rinn.” At the end of this sentence, I shocked myself by yawning.

  “Poor tired boy.”

  “I am tired,” I admitted.

  “Sleep here tonight, Miles. I’ll pray for you.”

  “No,” I said automatically, “no thanks,” and then thought of the long walk back to the car. By now the batteries had probably run down, and I would have to walk all the way back to the farmhouse.

  “You can leave as early as you like. You won’t bother a dried up old thing like me.”

  “Maybe for a couple of hours,” I said, and yawned again. This time I managed to get my hand to my mouth at least halfway through the spasm. “You’re far too good to me.”

  I watched her bustle into the next room; in a moment she returned with an armful of sheets and the fluffy bundle of a homemade quilt. “Come on, youngster,” she ordered, and I followed her into the parlor.

  Together we put the sheets on the low narrow seat of her couch. The parlor was only marginally cooler than the kitchen, but I helped her smooth the quilt over the top sheet. “I’d say, you take the bed, Miles, but no man has ever slept in my bed, and it’s too late to change my habits now. But I hope you won’t think I’m inhospitable.”

  “Not inhospitable,” I said. “Just pigheaded.”

  “I wasn’t fooling about praying. Did you say you’ve seen her?”

  “Three times. I’m sure I did. She’s going to come back, Auntie Rinn.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing certain. I’ll never live to see it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she won’t let me.”

  For a solitary old woman close to ninety, Rinn was an expert in the last word. She turned away from me, switched off the lights in the kitchen, and closed the door to her bedroom after her. I could hear fabrics rustling as she undressed. The immaculate tiny parlor seemed full of the smell of woodsmoke, but it must have come from the ancient stove in the kitchen. Rinn began to mumble to herself.

  I slipped off my jeans and shirt, sat down to remove my socks, still hearing her dry old voice rhythmically ticking away like a machine about to die, and stretched out between the papery sheets. My hands found one nubbly patch after another, and I realized that they had been mended many times. Within seconds, to the accompaniment of the dry music of her voice, I passed into the first unbroken and peaceful sleep I’d had since leaving New York.

  —

  Several hours later, I woke to two separate noises. One was what seemed an incredible rushing clatter of leaves above me, as though the woods had crawled up to the house and begun to attack it. The second was even more unsettling. It was Rinn’s voice, and at first I thought her praying had become a marathon event. After I caught its slow, insistent pulse I recognized that she was saying something in her sleep. A single word, repeated. The whooping clatter of the trees above the house drowned out the word, and I lay in the dark with my eyes open, listening. The smell of woodsmoke hung unmoving in the air. When I heard what Rinn was saying, I folded the sheet back and groped for my socks. She was pronouncing, over and over again in her sleep, my grandmother’s name. “Jessie. Jessie.”

  That was too much for me. I could not bear to hear, mixed up with the windy racket of the woods, the evidence of how greatly I had disturbed the one person in the valley who wanted to help me. Hurriedly I put on my clothes and went into the kitchen. The undersides of leaves, veined and white, pressed against the back window like hands. Indeed, like the pulpy hand of one of my would-be assailants in Arden. I turned on a small lamp. Rinn’s voice went dryly on, scraping out its invocation to her sister. The fire in the woodstove had died to a red glowing shadowy empire of tall ashes. I splashed water on my face and felt the crust of Rinn’s herbal mixture. It would not wash off: my fingers simply bumped over it, as over the patches on the sheets. I inserted a fingernail beneath the edge of one of the crusty spots, and peeled it off like a leech. A thin brown scale fell into the sink. I peeled off the rest of the dabs of the mixture until they covered the bottom of the sink. A man’s shaving mirror hung on a nail by the door, and I bent my knees to look into it. My heavy bland face looked back at me, pink in splashes on forehead and cheek, but otherwise unmarked.

  Inside a rolltop desk crammed with the records of her egg business I found the stub of a pencil and paper and wrote: Someday you’ll see I’m right. I’ll be back soon to buy some eggs. Thanks for everything. Love, Miles.

  I went out into the full rustling night. My mud-laden boots felt the knotted roots of trees thrusting up through the earth. I passed the high cartoon-windowed building, full of sleeping hens. Soon after that, I was out from under the dense ceiling of branches, and the narrow road unrolled before me, through tall fields lighter than the indigo sky. When it traversed the creek I once again heard frogs announcing their territory. I walked quickly, resisting the impulse to glance over my shoulder. If I felt that someone or something was watching me, it was only the single bright star in the sky, Venus, sending me light already thousands of years old.

  Only when the breeze had dissipated it over the long fields of corn and alfalfa did I notice that the odor of woodsmoke had stayed with me until I had gone halfway to the road, and left Rinn’s land.

  Venus, light my way with light long dead.

  Grandmother, Rinn, bless me both.

  Alison, see me and come into my sight.

  —

  But what came into my sight as I trudged down the valley road was only the Volkswagen, looking like its own corpse, like something seen in a pile of rusting hulls from a train window. It was a misshapen form in the dim starlight, as pathetic and sinister as Duane’s Dream House, and as I walked toward it I saw the shattered rear window and the scooping dents on the engine cover and hood. Eventually it hit me that the lights were out; the battery had died.

  I groaned, and opened the door and collapsed onto the seat. I passed my hands over the pink new patches of skin on my face, which were beginning to tingle. “Damn,” I said, thinking of the difficulty of getting a tow truck to come the ten miles from Arden. In frustration, I lightly struck my hand against the horn mechanism. Then I saw that the key was gone from the ignition.

  “What’s that for?” asked a man approaching me from the high slope of the Sunderson drive. As he crossed the road I saw that he had a thick hard belly and a flat face with no cheer in it. He had a pudgy blob for a nose, signaling his family connection to Tuta Sunderson. Like the hair of most men called “Red,” his was a dusty tobaccoish orange. He came across the road and laid an enormous hand on top of the open door. “Why do you wanta go honkin’ that horn for?”

  “Out of joy. From sheer blinding happiness. My battery’s dead, so the car won’t move,
and the damned key’s gone, probably lying somewhere in that ditch. And you might have noticed that a few gentlemen in Arden decided to work over the car this evening. So that’s why I was honking the horn.” I glared up into his doughy face and thought I saw a glint of amusement.

  “Didn’t you hear my callin’ you before? When you jumped out of this-here jalopy and tore on up toward the woods?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I didn’t have time to waste.”

  “Well, I been waitin’ on the porch to see you come back. I sacked out up there a little bit—didn’t think you’d be so long. But just in case, I took your keys out of your jalopy. And I turned off your lights to save your battery.”

  “Thanks. I mean it. But please give me the keys. Then we can both get to bed.”

  “Wait up. What were you doin’ up there anyhow? Or were you just runnin’ away from me? You were sure goin’ like a jackrabbit. What are you tryin’ to get away with, Miles?”

  “Well, Red, I can’t really say. I don’t think I’m trying to get away with anything.”

  “Uh-huh.” The amusement became more acid. “According to my ma, you been doin’ some pretty peculiar things up to Updahl’s. Says that little girl of Duane’s been hangin’ around more than she should. Specially considering the problem we got here lately. You kinda got a thing about hurting girls, don’t you, Miles?”

  “No. I never did, either. Quit wasting my time and give me my keys.”

  “What’s so good you got up in those woods?”

  “Okay, Red,” I answered. “I’ll tell you the truth. I was visiting Rinn. You can ask her yourself. That’s where I was.”

  “I guess you and that old witch got somethin’ going.”

  “You can guess all you want. Just let me go home.”

  “This ain’t your home, Miles. But I guess you can go back to Duane’s. Here’s your keys for this piece of shit you’re driving.” He held them out by extending one big blunt finger protruded through the keyring so that ring and keys looked dwarfed, like toys. It was a gesture obscurely obscene.

  PORTION OF STATEMENT BY LEROY (“RED”) SUNDERSON:

  July 16

  It was just eatin’ at me that Ma had to be working in the same house as that Miles Teagarden—I’ll tell you, if I’d been in Duane’s shoes, I wouldn’t of let my daughter hang around a man with a reputation like that. And some say he learned, good. I’d have run him off first thing, with a load of birdshot. So I thought, let’s see what we got here, and started comin’ down the drive to talk to him as soon as I saw his car begin to slow down outside below our house. Well Miles he jumps out of his car and looks away like he was seein’ things, and he just begins to run like crazy. When I yelled he just kept on running.

  Now there’s two ways of looking at that. Either he was in one hell of a hurry to get at something in these woods, or he was runnin’ away from me. I say both. I’ll tell you, he was scared as hell of me when he came back. And that means he sure as hell was plannin’ out what was gonna happen up in those woods—see?

  I just said to myself, Red, you wait on him. He’ll be back. I went down and switched off the lights in that beat-up junker of his. Then I waited for him. Ma and me both looked out for him for a little, and then she went up to bed, and I laid out on the porch. I had his keys, so I knew he wasn’t going anywhere without me.

  Well, a long time later, he comes back. Steppin’ light. Loose as a goose. Walkin’ like a city nigger. When I got up close to him he was workin’ away at his car, swearin’ and bangin’ on the horn. Then I saw his face. He looked all burned or something—he had big red spots all over. The way Oscar Johnstad did when he got alcohol poisoning a few years back. Maybe somebody coulda been scratching on him.

  I said, well Miles, what the hell you been up to?

  I been makin’ myself happy, he says.

  I says, up in the woods?

  Yeah, he says, I go up there to make myself happy. I been seein’ Rinn.

  How do we know what those two was up to? Funny things go on with these old Norwegians in the valleys around here—I’m a Norwegian myself, and I won’t say a word against ’em, but some of those old people get up to crazy things. And that Rinn was crazy as a coot all her life. Sure she was. She was just about the only friend Miles had around here. You remember about old Ole, down at the Four Forks? Well, he was related to half the people in this valley, me included, and when he started going crazy he tied that half-wit daughter of his to a beam up in his attic and he started usin’ his other daughter as his wife. On Sundays he stood there at the back of the church lookin’ like an angry chunk of God that happened to land near Arden. That was twenty-thirty years ago, but funny things still go on. I never did trust Rinn. She could put the spooks in you. Some folks say Oscar Johnstad started drinking heavy because she put the evil eye on a heifer of his and he was afraid he was next.

  The other thing you got to think about is Paul Kant. Pretty soon after this, no more than a couple of days, is when he saw Paul. And then he tried to kill himself, didn’t he?

  I think he wanted to get out of it, fast—maybe Rinn told him to do it, crazy as she was. Maybe little Paul did too. Well, if he didn’t he sure was sorry later. I mean, whatever Paul Kant did to make himself happy, he didn’t go up into the valley woods at night to do it.

  I feel all involved in this, you know. I found that poor Strand girl and talked to you fellows a couple of hours that day. I almost puked too, when I saw her—I knew nothing normal had been at that girl. She was damn near ripped in two. Well, you were there. You saw it.

  So after we finally found out about the next one I got a call from one of the boys who drinks down at the Angler’s, about that car idea, and I said, sure go ahead, I’ll give you all the help you want. You set it up, and I’ll help over at this end.

  —

  By the time I got the car into the driveway, my face had begun to burn and itch; my eyes watered, and I left the car just past the walnut trees and walked diagonally across the lawn, pressing the palm of my unbandaged hand to my face. It felt as cool and healing as water. My face was blazing. The night air too seemed ovenlike and composed of a million sharp needling points. I was moving slowly, so that the rush of hot gelatinous air would not scrape at my face.

  As I approached the house, all the lights came on at once.

  It looked like a pleasure boat on dark water, but it made me feel cold. I lowered my hand from my face and went slowly toward the screen door. The mare in the field to my left began to whinny and rear.

  I half-expected a jolt from the metal doorknob. I almost wished that I were back on that bed of mold, beneath those giant dark trees.

  I crossed the porch, hearing no noise from the interior of the house. Through the mesh of the screen, I looked sideways to see the mare’s body plunging up and down, scattering the dumbfounded cows. Then I swung open the door to the sitting room and looked in—empty. Empty and cold. The old furniture lay randomly about, suggesting an as-yet-unlocated perfect order. All the lights, controlled by a single switch beside the doorframe, were burning. I touched the switch, aware that the mare had ceased her whinnying. The lights went off, then on, apparently working normally.

  In the kitchen the overhead bulb in its shade illuminated the evidence of Tuta Sunderson’s work: the plate of cold food had been removed from the table, the dishes washed and put away. When I touched the light switch, it too worked in the usual fashion.

  The only explanation was that the wiring had gone massively wrong. At the moment that this possibility came to me I became aware that something—something important—was out of place in the living room. And that my face was still reacting painfully to contact with air. I returned to the kitchen and turned on the taps over the sink and splashed water over my forehead and cheeks. The feverish sandpapered feeling began to lessen. The only soap within reach was dishwashing liquid, and I squeezed a green handful into my right palm and brought it to my face. It felt like balm. The stinging disappeared. Delic
ately I rinsed away the soap: my skin felt tight, stretched like canvas over a frame.

  This transformation, temporary as it was, apparently also made me more acute, for when I was in the living room again, I saw what had caused my earlier sense of dislocation. The picture of Alison and myself, the crucial picture, no longer hung on the nail over the doorway to the stairs. Someone had removed it. I looked around at the walls. Nothing else had been changed. It was an unthinkable violation, a rape of my private space. I rushed into the old bedroom.

  Tuta S. had evidently been at work. The mess I had left on the floor had been bundled back into the broken sea chest and the splinters of wood from the chest’s lid were laid out beside it like gigantic toothpicks. I knelt to open the chest and threw up the lid to see Duane’s unhappy mulish countenance scowling at me. I lowered the lid gently. Pandora’s box.

  Unless it had been stolen, there was only one place where the photograph could be, and it was there I found it—in fact, even while I was ascending the narrow staircase I knew where I would find it. Propped between wall and desk, beside the earlier photograph of Alison.

  And I knew—if the unknowable can be at all said to be known—who had put it there.

  —

  Following what seemed to be a general rule about nights spent in the old Updahl farmhouse, my sleep was interrupted by a succession of disturbing dreams, but all I could remember of them when I awoke—too late, I noted, to witness the parting of the lovers on the road and Alison’s athletic, comic entrance through her window—was that they had made me start into wakefulness several times during the night. If you cannot remember them, nightmares lose all of their power. I was as hungry as I could remember ever being, another sign of renewed health.

  I was as certain as if she’d left a note that Alison Greening had moved that photograph, and the information that she had influenced another hand to do it for her did not alter my conviction.

  “You don’t mind my moving that picture, do you?” said Mrs. Sunderson when I came down for breakfast. “I thought since you had that other one up there, you might want them both. I didn’t mess with anything in that writing room of yours, I just put the picture on your desk.”