Ariel

by Lawrence Block

  Ariel

  Block, Lawrence

  Berkley (1996)

  Tags: ebook, book

  ebookttt bookttt

  * * *

  * * *

  ### Review

  “Block is one of the best!” —_The Washington Post_

  ### Product Description

  Ariel Jardell, an adopted 12-year-old girl, is possessed, her mother thinks, by jealousy and by forces far more bizarre. An unnerving tale woven together with a fascinating, terrifying child at the center of each twist and turn it takes, this book gives new definition to the old conflict of good versus evil, sane versus insane.

  Ariel

  Lawrence Block

  Berkley (1996)

  Rating: ★★★☆☆

  Tags: ebook, book

  ebookttt bookttt

  * * *

  * * *

  ### Review

  “Block is one of the best!” —_The Washington Post_

  ### Product Description

  Ariel Jardell, an adopted 12-year-old girl, is possessed, her mother thinks, by jealousy and by forces far more bizarre. An unnerving tale woven together with a fascinating, terrifying child at the center of each twist and turn it takes, this book gives new definition to the old conflict of good versus evil, sane versus insane.

  Ariel

  Lawrence Block

  For Patrick Farrelly

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  A NEW AFTERWORD BY THE AUTHOR

  A BIOGRAPHY OF LAWRENCE BLOCK

  ONE

  Was there a noise that woke her? Roberta was never sure. The old house was full of night sounds. Floorboards creaked. Curtains rustled. Windowpanes, loose in their frames, rattled at the least touch of a breeze. She had been a light sleeper all her life. Caleb had just recently taken to sleeping through the night, and she had not yet entirely adjusted to his new schedule. The slightest sound could rouse her.

  Or had she dreamed a sound? There might have been music, that thin reedy music Ariel made on her flute. Roberta sat up in bed, curiously troubled, straining to hear something in the silence.

  Then she saw the woman.

  A dark shape hovered in the far corner of the room near the window. A woman, wrapped in a shawl, her face averted.

  Roberta pressed one hand to her breast. Her heart was fluttering, her mouth dry. She thought David, and her other hand reached out to her side, patting at empty air.

  In the other house they had shared a bed, and she had always been able to reach out and touch him in the night. Now they slept in twin beds separated by the width of a night table. She had selected the bedroom furniture and donated the old double bed to Goodwill Industries. And she had been the one who picked this house. And now David slept, his breathing audible now in the room’s stillness, while this woman lurked in the corner of their bedroom.

  There was a lamp on the night table. Roberta’s hand left off patting the air between the two beds and groped tentatively for the lamp. Her fingers found the switch, then hesitated. She was afraid to turn the light on even as she was afraid to remain in the dark.

  She closed her eyes, opened them. The woman was still there.

  Then a windowpane shook in its mullions and suddenly the woman was gone. It was as if she were a creature of smoke, and as if the wind that rattled the pane had slipped into the room and dispersed her. Roberta stared, blinked her eyes.

  There was no woman in the room.

  But she had seen—

  An illusion, of course. Some trick of lighting, some shadow cast by moonlight through the old handmade windowpanes. But how extraordinarily real it had appeared to her! And what menace the shape had seemed to hold!

  Unafraid now, she switched on the bedside lamp, then flicked it off again. There had been nothing and no one in the bedroom. Some forgotten dream must have awakened her, an unpleasant dream that left her anxious and suggestible. And so she’d seen a shape where there was no shape, and her imagination had cloaked that shape in a woman’s shawl and touched her with a sense of evil.

  Roberta lay down, closed her eyes. After a few moments she opened them again and stared at the corner of the room where she had seen the woman.

  Nothing.

  She closed her eyes again and tried to summon sleep. But it wouldn’t come. Her mind was racing, and every stray thought that came to her seemed to increase her anxiety and focus it upon the baby. She had seen a woman who wasn’t there, and now she was worried about her son.

  It was ridiculous, and she knew it was ridiculous, but she also knew that she would not be able to sleep until she had checked Caleb. And wasn’t it even more ridiculous to lie awake until daybreak? She sighed, then slipped out of bed and padded barefoot across the bedroom floor. David had wanted to carpet the whole upstairs, even as the other house had been carpeted wall to wall. She’d explained as patiently as possible that you didn’t buy a house almost two hundred years old and cover its random-width pine floor with Acrilan broadloom. Now, though, she could almost sympathize with his position. The floorboards were cold underfoot and she found herself setting her feet down on them with exaggerated care to lessen their creaking.

  Halfway down the hall, she hesitated at the open door to Caleb’s room, then entered and approached his crib. There was enough light so that she could easily see his face. He was sleeping soundly. She stood there for a long moment, listening to the night sounds and gazing down on her son.

  Before returning to her own room, Roberta walked the length of the hallway and stood outside Ariel’s door with her hand on the knob. Then, without turning the knob, she went back to her bedroom.

  Of course there was no dark shape in the corner. She shook her head, amused at her own fear, reassured now by the sight of her sleeping infant son.

  Funny what tricks the mind played …

  David stirred in his sleep and she looked down at him. The smell of alcoholic perspiration touched her nostrils. It was a sour smell and she wrinkled her nose at it.

  Odd, she thought. He was never drunk, not as far as she could tell, but after dinner he would sit reading in his ground-floor study and during those hours he always had a glass in his hand. It didn’t seem to change him—as far as she could tell it didn’t do anything to or for him—but while he slept his body eliminated some of the alcohol through the pores, and in the morning his sheets were often damp with it. But he never staggered and he never slurred his words, and if he had hangovers in the morning he never mentioned them.

  She got into bed, settled her head on the pillow, let her thoughts drift where they wanted. Now the night sounds comforted her—the wind in the branches of the live oak outside her window, the loose windowpanes, the occasional creak of a floorboard, the inexplicable sounds that come from within the walls of an old house, as if the house itself were breathing.

  Once she thought she heard the piping of Ariel’s flute. But perhaps she was already asleep by then, already dreaming.

  She was up later than usual the next night. She often went to bed right after the eleven o’clock news, occasionally hanging on for the first half hour of the Tonight show. But something kept her in front of the television set. She watched Johnny Carson through to the end. Even then she was faintly reluctant to go
upstairs, and she dawdled on the ground floor, rinsing out a couple of cups and glasses she’d have ordinarily left for morning. She checked the pilot lights of the large old six-burner gas range. There were three pilots, one for each pair of burners, and they were forever going out in the damp brick-floored kitchen. One was out now, and she took a moment to light it.

  She checked both outside doors, making sure they were locked and bolted, and she found herself testing the window locks and became impatient with herself. She felt like an old maid checking under the bed for burglars. What on earth was she afraid of?

  She checked the children. Ariel was asleep, or pretending to be asleep. She lay on her back, her arms at her sides under the covers, her breathing deep and regular. Caleb, too, was asleep, and while Roberta stood beside his crib he stretched and made a sweet gurgling sound. Air currents in the room shook the mobile suspended over his crib, an arrangement of gaily-colored wooden fish equipped with tiny bells that sounded when the air moved them. Caleb made his gurgling sound again, as if in response to the light tinkling of the bells, and Roberta felt a rush of love in her breast. She lowered the side of the crib, bent over and kissed Caleb’s forehead.

  How sweet he smelled. Babies had the most delicious scent …

  In her room, David was already sound asleep. Maybe that was what the drinking did for him, maybe it enabled him to get to sleep and sleep soundly. Maybe she should have had something herself. But that was silly—she was tired, she would sleep with no trouble, she had never needed help getting to sleep.

  And indeed it wasn’t that long before she slept. Nor was it too long after sleep came that she was suddenly wide awake, fearfully awake, with her heart hammering against her ribs and a pulse working in her temple.

  Her eyes were open and the woman, wrapped in her shawl, was standing by the bedroom window.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  There was a gust of wind. She heard it in the live oak, rustling the leaves, tossing the bunches of Spanish moss. It rattled the window glass and seemed to blow the woman about, as if she were a bundle of old rags. But she was a woman, it was very clear that she was a woman, the same woman who had been there the night before. Her form was quite distinct in the dim corner. She stood facing the window, her hip and shoulder toward Roberta, her face invisible.

  Roberta reached for the bedside lamp. Her fingers rested on the switch. She thought David, but did not speak his name aloud.

  The woman turned toward her. She had a quick impression of a pale face. And the woman was holding something in her arms. Roberta squinted, trying to focus on the woman’s face, trying to see what she was holding, and even as she narrowed her gaze the woman began to fade away, to merge with the shadows.

  She switched on the light. The woman was gone.

  She couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She was drained, exhausted, and for several minutes all she could do was remain where she was, breathing raggedly, willing her heartbeat to return to normal. David slept on. She checked the time on the alarm clock, something she hadn’t thought to do the night before. It was a quarter to four.

  She told herself to go to sleep. She turned off the light and tried to lie still but it was impossible. She had to get up, had to check the baby.

  She hurried down the hall. Caleb was sleeping like a lamb. The sight of him was evidently all she needed. She sighed with relief and tiptoed out of his room, returning to her own room without bothering to check Ariel.

  In her own bed, she had a sudden impulse to go downstairs again, to check the doors and windows, to make sure none of the pilot lights had gone out. But she resisted the urge and sleep came to her with surprising swiftness.

  When she awoke a light rain was falling. She changed Caleb and fed him, then went downstairs. David had made his own toast and coffee and was sitting behind the morning paper. Ariel had helped herself to orange juice and a bowl of sugared cereal. Roberta joined them at the table with a cup of black coffee and a cigarette.

  No one spoke during breakfast. Twice Roberta was on the point of mentioning what she’d seen in the room the past night, but both times she repressed the impulse. The sentences she tested in her mind proved inadequate. “I had the strangest dream last night.” But had it been a dream, last night and the night before? If so, it was unlike any dream she’d ever experienced before. “I thought there was someone in the room last night.” But it was more than that, more than a trick of lighting and shadow. She’d sensed a menacing presence, had seen the woman turn to her before disappearing. “There was someone in our bedroom last night.” But was there? Or was her own mind conjuring up images?

  David was the first to leave. They chatted briefly, perfunctorily. Then he carried his briefcase to the car while she poured a second cup of coffee and lit a third cigarette and picked up the newspaper he’d abandoned. As usual, it told her precious little about what was new in the world and rather more than she needed to know about Charleston. She scanned an article about plans for the next Spoleto festival, skimmed a report on activity in the state legislature at Columbia, and read wire service pieces on arms-limitation talks and congressional maneuvering without really taking them in. She turned with some relief to Ann Landers and immersed herself in other people’s problems. A secretary found her boss’s wife domineering, a man felt guilty about putting his old mother in a home, and an adolescent girl felt unloved, unwanted, and singularly unpopular. Ann told her to make a list of all the positive things in her life.

  “Time for school, isn’t it?”

  Ariel nodded, rose from the table, carried her dishes to the sink. How pale the child was, Roberta thought. Pale skin, pale blue eyes. Expressionless eyes—looking into them gave her a feeling that verged on vertigo, as though one could fall through the child’s eyes into a bottomless abyss.

  “Have a good day, Ariel.”

  ”Thank you. I will.”

  “You’ll be home afterward?”

  ”Where would I go?”

  Where indeed? The child didn’t seem to have any friends. She spent all her time alone, reading or doing homework or playing her horrible flute. Had she been as isolated when they lived in the suburban split-level? It seemed to Roberta that Ariel had been less thoroughly alone, that she’d had a playmate or two, but it was hard for her to be certain. That had been before Caleb’s birth and so many things had been different.

  But she was always a solitary child, Roberta thought. She seemed most content that way, as if she required solitude as other children required companionship.

  The door closed. Roberta hesitated a moment, then went to the front room and drew the drapes a few inches apart. She stood at the window long enough to watch Ariel walk to the end of the block and turn the corner, disappearing from view. Then she opened the drapes all the way.

  Back in the kitchen, she rinsed the dishes and thought about Ann Landers’ column. Perhaps she ought to make a list of all the positive things in her life. Well, there was the man she’d married, the daughter they’d adopted, and the son she had recently borne. And there was this house, historic and well-preserved, on one of the best blocks in the Old Charleston section south of Tradd.

  An impressive list. So what if the marriage had turned loveless? So what if there was something strange, almost frightening, about Ariel? So what if the house made sounds in the night, and the pilot lights wouldn’t stay lit, and the damp was so pronounced you could grow mushrooms on the kitchen’s worn brick floor? So what if sleep was interrupted by nightmares, or visions, or whatever had possessed her two nights running?

  Caleb fussed in his crib, demanding her attention. “I’m coming, sweetie,” she called out, crushing her cigarette in the ashtray, hurrying up the stairs, grateful for the distraction from her own thoughts.

  The rain stopped by late morning, and shortly after noon the sky cleared and the sun came out. Roberta gave Caleb a bottle, lunched on leftovers, then bundled the baby into his carriage and took him for a walk. She headed aimlessly up on
e street and down another. She never seemed to tire of walking in the neighborhood, its houses dating clear back to Colonial times, its narrow streets free of heavy traffic, its walks shaded by ancient live oak and crape myrtle and magnolia.

  Soon, she thought, the leaves would be turning. It was her favorite season, autumn was, a welcome relief after a summer that was invariably too hot and far too humid. Caleb had been born in the spring, and summer had been hard on both of them, but it was autumn now and autumn was a long season on the Carolina coast. Winter, when it finally came, was brief and not too bad, yielding before long to spring.

  “And in the spring you’ll be able to sit up in a stroller,” she told Caleb, cooing the words to him. “You’ll be able to see everything—dogs and children and people. You’ll be a big boy in the spring.”

  He beamed at her and something clutched at her heart.

  Around one-thirty she was seated on a green-slatted park bench at the Battery, gazing out at the ocean. Off to her left, several old men were fishing, their poles extending over the iron railing.

  “They don’t be catching nuffin but a cold,” a voice said. Roberta turned to see an old black woman ease herself down onto the far end of the bench. She had frizzy white hair and very dark blue-black skin. She was tiny, small-boned and gaunt, and her skin clung to her bones like leather that had been soaked and left to dry in the sun.

  “A million fish in the ocean but they don’t be catching none of ems,” the woman said. “You got a fine baby. A manchild, innit?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do his name be?”

  “Caleb.”

  The woman nodded, halved the distance between them, got up on her feet and peered down at Caleb. She nodded again, smacked her lips once and sat down. “You live round here,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “One of them old houses?”

  “Yes. Just a few blocks from here.”