Harlandale was a section of small estates just west of the city. The green meadows, shaded vales, and rolling and wooded hills were divided and hemmed by quaint split-rail and whitewashed wooden fences. Long, private driveways snaked to secluded homes. Here and there a blooded colt cavorted around in the pastures.
The area was approached by a two-lane macadam county road that turned off the state highway.
A large trucker’s restaurant and filling station occupied a comer of the intersection. Bill pulled in and braked at one of the bays of gas pumps.
A wiry old man in neat coveralls came across the cement apron. “Howdy there, young fellow.”
“Good morning.” Bill got out of the car. “How about dosing it with a dollar’s worth of the regular?” Bill watched the old man remove the gas cap and slip the hose nozzle in the vent.
“Know a place called The Oaks?”
The attendant cut his eyes from the clicking pump meter to glance at Bill. “Who doesn’t? That’s the Braxley place. Mile up the road.”
“You know Mrs. Braxley?”
“Sonny, I reckon nobody really knows her—'cept that big galoot of a caretaker, George Kahler. The old man rounded off Bill’s purchase with a final small squirt. “But we know of her, poor woman.”
Bill wondered what the attendant meant.
“Friend of Elizabeth’s?” the old man asked as he reached for Bill’s dollar.
“Yes,” Bill said. The word came so readily and naturally that it didn’t seem a distortion of the truth.
“Figured you was. About the right age. Guess the poor girl never had many friends, sick so much of the time.”
Bill slipped under the steering wheel and clicked the door shut.
The attendant stepped back from the car. “Good luck on your visit, young man. Lotsa luck.”
The statement brought Bill’s finger to pause on the ignition key. He watched the old man bandy-legging toward the office. Then he shrugged, started the engine, and slipped the car in gear.
The humpbacked county road was deserted, and the fields lay silent, showing their first touch of brown in the Indian summer haze.
Bill passed a white-graveled road flanked by stone pillars. Farther along, a private driveway was arched with iron filigree. He almost missed The Oaks turnoff, the weathered wooden sign blending so well with the background of trees and unkempt brush.
He braked, backed, and hunched a second look at the sign through the windshield. Supported by a tall, rusty iron post and crossbar that tipped tiredly, the rotting wooden panel creaked its supporting chains in the soft breeze. Bill could hardly make out the faded lettering that once in proud simplicity had announced The Oaks.
He looked at the driveway beside the sign with a slight turn of his head. Disuse and inattention had reduced it to no more than ruts on either side of a crown. The remnants of once-white gravel showed a yellowish band across a field where wild thickets and brambles strained to overrun the narrow road.
The land rose in a hillock dark with the shadows of trees. Far up on the gently rounded crest, Bill could glimpse a large house.
He turned in and jounced across the unkempt meadow. When the road rose to part the trees, he had a clearer view of the house. It overlooked a long lawn that retained but a ghost of its green charm. Bare spots and clumps of crabgrass mottled the original finery of the grass like splotches of mildew on a moth-eaten green velvet gown. Tufts of wild grass sprouted between the flagstones of the walkways, the stone steps, and a front terrace. Two-story and fortress-like in its dimensions, the house was of weathered brick, the windows reflecting the blankness of sightless eyes.
The place had the air of abandonment, except for the big brute of an old Mercedes that was parked in the otherwise empty three-car garage attached to the porte cochere at the north end of the house.
The trees obscured the house as the driveway made a final climbing turn. Then suddenly Bill jerked his foot from the accelerator and slammed on the brake. A huge man and German shepherd dog had leaped in view around the bend as if the driveway had spewed them up.
The man was holding the dog with a chain leash and choker collar. They stepped forward in unison.
The man was dressed for the American countryside, in corduroy slacks and woolen plaid shirt. But his personage inspired the thought of a gigantic Mongolian warrior. Carved from the barrel-like body, a stumpy neck supported a face composed of hard, flat features, yellowish skin, and dark slanting eyes under hairless brows. The bullet skull was bald and glistening, with an earless look.
The dog was no more inviting, full grown to mastiff proportions, straining forward with ears laid back.
“Easy, Blitzen.” The man checked the dog.
Bill rolled down the car window. “Mr. George Kahler?”
The man nodded and said coldly, “This is private property. You’re trespassing.”
“My name is Bill Latham. I drove out from the city to see Mrs. Braxley.”
“She’s not receiving visitors.”
In the edge of his vision, Bill glimpsed the drawing of a window curtain inside the house.
Kahler took a step forward. “If you're a reporter, we had a gutful when her husband died—and for a long time. There’ll be no more raking over the bones for Sunday feature pieces.”
“I’m not a reporter, Mr. Kahler, but a student at Crownover University. One of my subjects is parapsychology, and I....”
“Get outl” Kahler bit the order viciously. The mere mention of psychic research stoked the cold fire in his eyes.
Bill eased the transmission lever into reverse. “I think Mrs. Braxley has seen me from the house. At least tell her a friend of Elizabeth’s came.” “Elizabeth had no friends!”
“She does now. You tell Mrs. Braxley that.”
“Out!” Kahler slackened the leash as a threat. “Or you want me to feed you to Blitzen?”
Bill's face reddened in angry reaction. He bit back a retort that would have matched Kahler’s discourtesy, stared the man down for a second, and let the car slide backward. He inched off the driveway between two trees and turned the car around in a tight maneuver.
Kahler stood where he was until he saw the car turn onto the highway. Absently, he slipped the choker collar from Blitzen’s neck and walked to the house with a heavy stride.
The door opened as he mounted the front steps. Carlotta Braxley stood framed, a pale glow against the shadows of the foyer behind her. Her slender, wasted form was draped in a pale pink dress, calf length, a quarter of the century behind the style. Her thin, delicately boned face was a hovering mask of garish makeup. Her suffering had been unique, and she tried to hide its ravages, at least from her mirror, with layers of white powder, globs of mascara, and smears of bright red lipstick. The results were ghastly and pitiful, for one who remembered her as George Kahler did.
She lifted a thin, waxen hand to touch the misty hair still worn in the pageboy style of yesteryear. Once her hair had been honey gold, a burst of sunlight in any room she entered. Now it was a thinning sheen of silver.
“Who was the caller, George?” Her voice was pleasant and musical. In spite of everything—the dress, the bone-white face, the urge to turn away from too-grim reality in her blue eyes—she still retained a hint of the old charm. Once it had captivated everyone. Now everyone was gone.
“Just a young fellow.” George brushed past into the foyer. The house was furnished as Carlotta’s father had left it. Overstuffed couches and chair in the living room off the foyer. A baby grand piano draped with a shawl. Even a large cabinet radio that had sparkled with Fred Allen’s jokes and Ben Bemie’s music in a bygone era.
“What was his name, George?” she insisted, following close on his heels.
He was moving along the hallway toward the kitchen. He, like Carlotta, had known the house from childhood. His father had superintended the farm and the orchards in the days when the house had teemed with guests and sparkled with parties.
Carlotta had been like a little
sister, unspoiled by her father's money and prestige. She would worshipfully follow George about his chores in those days. He was the first she always invited to her birthday parties. When her father had given her a pony, nothing would do but that George had one, too.
Then one day she was grown up, and George had beamed from a front row as she married Jonathan Fitfield Braxley. Guests, some from a thousand miles away, had packed First Church, happy with future prospects for the rare young couple. She was the loveliest bride of the season, and the handsome Jonathan Braxley had already earned his doctorate in the then-young field of atomic physics.
Future prospect, indeed. A future turning on its apparent favorite. A future filled with heartbreak and despair, the marks of which today lay so heavily upon her.
George didn’t like to think about it, but hardly a day passed that he didn’t. First her parents had passed away, bringing her back to The Oaks for a short time. She had closed the house and asked George to stay on in the caretaker’s cottage. Before she’d recovered from this loss, the terrible thing had happened to Dr. Braxley. When the pain of the radiation poisoning was over for him, she had returned to The Oaks for good. She and her baby, Elizabeth. More years of drawn-out suffering, but the child had lived longer than anyone had really expected. And in her way she had been happy . . . her strange, shy way, as if she really wasn’t a creature of this earth but a misty shadow passing through.
George pushed the swinging door to the kitchen, struggling out of his thoughts. “His name? Bill Latham, he said,” he replied finally to her question.
George turned toward the pantry to inventory grocery needs he would fill on his weekly shopping trip into the city.
Mrs. Braxley wandered to the small window recessed between rows of shoulder-high cabinets. “He looked like a nice young fellow, George.”
“Yes, Mrs. Braxley,” George said idly, eyeing the shelves of canned goods. The pantry, like everything else about The Oaks, was as familiar to him as the back of his hand. Once, when she’d closed the house, he’d tried city living for a while. But he had missed the fields, the open spaces, the quiet of the nights. He had disliked the hurry, the straitjacket of a time clock.
He had been glad to have The Oaks to go back to. And in time he had reconciled himself to the thought of spending his life here. It would all be his one day; she had no one else to leave it to. Meanwhile, she needed a father, a brother. He couldn’t have walked out on his responsibility under any circumstance. Without help and protection, the remaining thin threads that bound her together would all come undone.
“You sent him away so quickly, George.”
He glanced across the kitchen. She was standing with her back to him. “I always do, the way you asked. Just like I don't cut the fields with a plow and drag harrow because that’s the way you want it.” “Yet they grow, George, if only weeds. Nothing stands still.”
His eyes sharpened. He took a couple of steps from the pantry. She hadn’t expressed a thought like that for a long time.
“That’s right, Mrs. Braxley.”
She looked at him over her shoulder. “What business was the young man in?”
George hesitated. “He wasn’t selling anything.” “Then what on earth brought him here?”
“It really isn’t important.”
“But I want to know! No one but you and I have driven up and down that driveway for a long time. Now there’s no need for me . . . since the hospital visits have ended.”
George didn’t want her thinking about the hospital. He said quickly, “Well, he was a student.”
“At Crownover?”
“Well, yes.”
He saw her face shadow. He’d expected and dreaded it, with a mention of Crownover. He wished he’d put her off with some kind of explanation. That the young man was inquiring directions. But George had difficulty with words. He always thought of clever things to say when it was too late.
“Yes,” she said pensively. “Crownover ... I was a cheerleader. It seems only yesterday.”
George watched her move, wraithlike, to the old-fashioned kitchen table and sit down.
“The freezers pretty low. Think we should fill it this week?”
The question didn’t distract her thoughts. George saw the skittish movements of her eyes, the beginnings of a twitch in the hollow of her slender neck.
“George, I simply must know what would bring a young Crownover student all this way.”
“Please, Mrs. Braxley. . . .”
“You talked with him. You do know. You must tell me.”
“Well, he—he just wanted to say hello to me. Can’t a friend. . . .”
“When did you meet him, George?”
“Look, now,” he said with a sort of gentle roughness, “you cut this out. Strangers are rare, I know. But you’re letting the sight of one....”
“You don’t know him, George. That’s the truth of it! He didn’t come to see you—but me. It’s been so long since anyone came to see me... except a lawyer with papers to sign or a doctor patting my shoulder and telling me to be brave.” Her head began to shake. The movement was loose, without control.
“George, you really shouldn’t have sent away the only visitor I’ve had in ages.”
“Your orders have stood for a long time,” he reminded her.
“I know.” She was almost on the verge of tears. “You’re not to blame. You’re nothing but good, George. But the young man must have wanted to know something about Dr. Braxley’s pioneering work in atomics. Perhaps he is preparing a paper and thought it would be a good idea to get some firsthand...
“No, that isn’t it at all.” George sighed grimly. “I wish you hadn’t seen the guy. He didn’t say a thing about Dr. Braxley. Instead, he. . . George caught the words that were about to spill from his lips.
“He what, George?”
He had the feeling that her eyes could knife right through his, to the hidden thought behind.
“Nothing,” he said.
“George,” she said, too calmly. A mist of sweat was gathering in the translucent hollows beneath her eyes. “George, I can tell when you’re ducking. Who did the young man mention?”
“Nobody!” George’s voice was angry with his own heavy awkwardness. “I mean, you ... he mentioned you...
“And what else, George?” She was reading him now with every nerve, straining forward, studying him like a trainer divining a doltish horse.
“Now, you listen to me.” His near shout was that of a roughly protective big brother. “I’m telling you for the last time. You’re climbing a molehilll”
Her eyes glinted with a cunning that wasn’t altogether sane. Without actually moving, she seemed to slip into a crouch there in the chair.
“You’ve eliminated yourself and all the Braxleys except one, George.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “Elizabeth. Did he meet her while she was in the hospital that last time?”
George dropped his eyes, almost in the manner of an upbraided child. “He didn’t say.”
“Does he know the truth about her?”
“Of course he doesn’t!” George took a blue bandanna from his hip pocket and swabbed the creases of his short neck. “Now I am going to get you a pill,” he said sternly. “And you are going to take it and relax and forget all this.”
“No, George,” she said slyly. “That isn’t what we’re going to do at all. You are going to look up this young man and bring him back here.”
George looked at her dumbly. A sharp fright knifed through him. He’d never seen her quite this way before, with that rapt smile, that look of eagerness in her eyes.
“You know his name, George, and where he goes to school. You can find him, easily.”
Kahler was meshed in the grip of her stare. “He’s probably sore at me.”
“Nonsense. He looked like a nice boy who wouldn’t carry a grudge.”
“I guess you could tell all about him—with one look from the house.” George’s mumble was one of surr
ender, of knowing that objections would be ineffectual.
“In any case,” she closed the discussion, “he must come back, George. And you will bring him—one way or another.”
7
An Unbridgeable Gulf
WHEN HE TURNED into the student parking lot, Bill was still peeved about the experience with Kahler. But a sense of mystery overshadowed Bill’s rankled personal feelings, which he could handle with a mature cool.
He slid into his space in one of the long parallel rows of parked cars. But with the car at rest, he made no immediate move to get out. He reviewed the morning, picking at the details. His hands remained curled on the steering wheel. The engine idled without purpose.
He was nagged with a sense of incompletion. Staring through the windshield, he thought of the unknown woman who had watched from the silent seclusion of a window.
What was the real scene out there at The Oaks? Did any of it actually have anything to do with the Presence (the name for it came naturally) in B-3?
The questions stirred a dim struggle in a dark corner of his mind, a groping toward a shadow flitting just out of reach.
The campus surrounded him like a not-quite-real painting, trees blushing with the first touch of autumn, far-flung buildings serene and strangely silent.
The painful valley of a frown pressed between Bill’s eyes. His shoulders twitched. He didn’t feel entirely alone in the car....
Then the sensation seeped away as quickly as it had come. It didn’t seem to have happened at all. The campus focused in prosaic normality.
Bill pushed away his tinge of fright with a sheepish grin. His hand stabbed motions, clicking off the ignition, snapping the door handle.
He got out and started walking toward the weathered stone building a hundred yards distant. Pat Connell often detoured by his office on the way to lunch.
He reached the shallow stone steps as his father stepped from the front door. Both stopped in surprise. Then each moved, Bill going up, his father down.
They met midway, and Bill saw the gray tone of his father’s husky face, the flare of relief in his eyes.
“Young man, will you please tell me why you spend good money on tuition and cut classes?”
The Thing in B-3 Page 7
