The Trapdoor

by Andrew Peterson

  And the road wound through the crystal night. And the trees hovered in silhouette against the sky, and the stars shone through them. We went past the old church where her hotline was. We went into town. Past houses first, then into a quaint New England city center.

  “Turn here,” she said. She spoke very softly.

  I guided the car off the main drag. We went past a row of streetlamps. They lay halos of light down on neat little lawns. Back on the lawns sat a number of red-brick apartment buildings, all the same.

  Chandler Burke pointed to one of them. “This is it.”

  I pulled over to the curb. Stopped. Without a word she yanked at the door handle. It stuck.

  “Oh damn!” I heard her whisper.

  The handle snapped. The door swung open. She got out.

  For a second I sat behind the wheel, watching her go up the walk. The Dodge’s engine idled. Its lights peered aimlessly into the night.

  Then I killed the lights, the engine. I got out of the car and went after her.

  I followed her up the concrete path. I heard her heels clicking in front of me. She didn’t turn. She came to the brick building and paused as she unlocked the front door. She disappeared inside. I followed, caught the door before it shut. Went in after her.

  I saw her going up the stairway. I went up too. I saw her skirt flicking around the banister on the second-floor landing. When I reached the landing, she was standing in the hall before an apartment door. She was fighting to get her key in the lock. She couldn’t do it. She was too upset. I stepped forward, took her keys from her. She stood by, pale and frowning, while I opened the door for her.

  She went into the room before me, snapped on the light. I stepped in. We were in the living room. It was neat, drab, and dim. Colorless sofas, chairs, and bookshelves stood against the white walls. Faded pictures hung on them. An orange-and-white cat, curled on an easy chair, lifted its head. “Meow,” it said and thumped off the chair onto the floor and padded forward. It wound itself around Chandler’s ankles.

  “Know you?” she said. Her voice was still soft, but it went through me. “I haven’t seen you in almost twenty years, John. How on earth could I know you?”

  I came toward her. Her lips were tight. Her hands folded and unfolded on her coat.

  “It had to be this way, Chandler. You know that.”

  The anger flared in her eyes like embers in the wind. “I know nothing like that. It didn’t have to be this way at all. Know you!” And now the anger glittered behind tears. I couldn’t look. I turned away. “Don’t do that!” she snapped. “The last time I saw you, you did that. You turned away from me.”

  I stared at the floor. “I was married,” I muttered.

  “To a cruel, selfish, nasty little rich girl who didn’t even—” She bit back the rest of it. “And you had a daughter then. And you had something about you, about the way you were …”

  I raised my head and nodded. “Yeah. Well, now my daughter’s dead.”

  “That’s not it!” she cried. “That’s not it at all. It isn’t that she’s dead.” She was trembling all over. “It’s that you are. I saw it the minute I recognized you in the church. Empty … Trying not to look up from your work … I hate to see it. Why do I have to see it? What is it to me? Why don’t you go away? I have my own—”

  So I stepped forward and kissed her. I guess I did it just to prove her wrong, just to show her there was still some life left in me. I don’t know why I did it. And then it didn’t matter much why. I had her shoulders in my hands, and her hands were moving, fevered, on my face and neck. I had my lips pressed to hers and her lips were parting for me and our tongues were hot together. Even through her coat I felt how warm her body was, and soft. I felt that surprising eagerness, that hunger, that I remembered from long ago. We strained to be closer to each other, and closer still.

  Then we pulled away. We looked into each other’s faces—the haggard and saddened faces that we’d earned.

  “Long time no see,” I said.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  And we were together again.

  28 For a long time we said nothing. A sweet time that was not like time at all. Nothing moved or changed in it but us, and our bodies together. And when we lay still in each other’s arms, naked on the naked bed, I thought I could feel the great darkness motionless all around us.

  Her body was as warm as I had thought it would be. She lay with it pressed along the length of mine. Her head was on my chest. I smelled her hair.

  “You know,” she murmured, “I really wonder …”

  “Don’t,” I said. I kissed her hair gently.

  “You feel so good.”

  “You too.”

  “I just wonder, that’s all. About all that time …” She raised her face to me. I kissed her. “It makes me sad.”

  “Chandler—”

  “Ssh. Let me.” She lay her cheek against my chest again. “Everything is also what it might have been, that’s all. That’s all I’m saying.…”

  “No,” I said. “A thing is only what it is. I’m sure of it.”

  She took a long breath, let it out in a sigh. I trailed my fingers up her back. She whispered: “Why didn’t you?… Ever call me, come to see me? Try to find me? When it was over with Constance.”

  “It just wasn’t that way,” I said. “It took a while before it ended, and then, I don’t know, I was other places. There were other people.” After a moment I asked her: “Why? I mean, did you? …”

  “Pine away and die for you?” I didn’t answer. She said: “No. Well. I pined away. I nearly died. But not for you.”

  “Has it been that tough?”

  “Not really. Not all of it. Most of the time my work has been satisfying. There hasn’t been much else. A few … relationships along the way. Not much. Or, at least, after a while it didn’t seem like much to me.” She pressed even closer. “My parents died a while back. About ten years ago. First my father had a heart attack. Then my mother. She took a long time to go. I was very close to both of them, Mom especially. Too close, I imagine. And one night … not long after she died … One night, I was in my room in White Plains. Making dinner. And I turned on the gas—and the flame didn’t catch. And I just stood there. With the gas on.”

  I closed my eyes, my lips against her brow.

  “It made me feel … woozy,” she said. “The gas, I mean. Like all the blood was rushing to my head.” She rubbed her face against my chest. Very softly, she murmured: “Then I turned it off. Called up a friend of mine. She worked at a clinic nearby.”

  I didn’t say anything. I had nothing to say.

  Now, Chandler moved away from me. Rolled over on her back, her head resting on my arm. She stared blankly at the ceiling in the dark.

  “And you?” she asked.

  “Oh. You know. The work,” I said.

  “The work.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been at the Star almost … Jesus, it’ll be ten years, I guess, pretty soon. They hired me out of White Plains after I did this series on the mob there …”

  “The one where they blew up your car.”

  “You heard about that, huh?”

  “It was pretty big news.”

  “Yeah, well … A lot of indictments came out of the thing, you know, so the Star called me.” I put my free hand behind my head. Lay beside her, sort of gazing up at nothing like she was. “That’s what I wanted. To be in New York and all.”

  “You sound … regretful.”

  I considered. “No. They’ve been pretty good to me, for the most part. I do pretty much as I please, cover what I want. It’s a good paper, too, no matter what the management tries to do to it. You know, they’d put the funnies on the front page if they could get away with it. But the staff’s good, the reporters, the people. That’s what matters, what makes it good.” I shrugged a little. “I’ve gotten offers. A couple magazines. L.A. was after me for a while. And every year, the Star asks me if I want to be an editor. I don’t
know. I’ve thought about doing a column recently, but … I don’t know … I like the beat. I like what I do.”

  A few seconds of silence passed between us. Then Chandler said: “I ask you how you’ve been, and you tell me about your job.” I kept quiet. “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Well, what about the rest of it?”

  “For the rest of it …” I told her. “For the rest of it, I got by.”

  She turned to me. “And when your daughter died?”

  “Still. I got by.”

  She smiled a little. “Somehow, that’s what I thought you’d say.”

  “It was a long time ago, Chandler.”

  I felt her lay her palm very softly against my cheek. I leaned against the coolness of it. “What can I give you, John?” she said.

  “Nothing. You don’t have to give me anything.”

  She withdrew her hand. “She talked to them, you know. Michelle.”

  I shifted. “What?”

  “To Nancy Scofield and Fred Summers. She had a number of conversations with them on the hotline. She talked with both of them before they died.”

  I didn’t answer. Chandler lifted off my arm. She propped herself up on a pillow. I reached for my shirt where it lay on the floor and wrestled a cigarette from the pocket. Leaned back, lit it. Chandler eyed me, but she let it go.

  “I just wanted to tell you,” she said. “I just wanted to give you that.”

  “I understand.” I smoked, waited for her to go on.

  “All the conversations are confidential,” she said after a while. “We keep records, but they aren’t detailed at all. Just a first name, usually, maybe a note or two on an index card. They’re mostly for statistical purposes: for grant proposals and things like that. Anyway, after Michelle died, I got curious and went through them, looking to see if she’d spoken to any of the others. I found Fred and Nancy both. On Fred’s card she’d written ‘Family problems.’ After Nancy’s name she’d written the word ‘Love’.”

  “And you’re sure they were the same kids?”

  “Yes. She marked the date down when they died.”

  I considered it. “Do you think their deaths may have pushed her over the edge?”

  “I think … it’s possible,” Chandler said slowly. “I mean, she never even told me about them. She never mentioned them to me. That wasn’t like her at all.”

  I thought about Chris Thomas. I thought about him and Michelle meeting in the woods, talking in the woods. She told me everything, he’d said. Had she discussed the suicides of her hotline clients with him?

  Beside me Chandler Burke shifted, rolled over onto her side. She closed her eyes.

  “I wanted to give you that,” she said again.

  I glanced over at the bedside table. My watch was there, the dial glowing. It was after two A.M.

  “John?” Chandlers voice was growing dim, sleepy.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I’m glad.”

  I nodded. “Yeah,” I said.

  “I’m very glad,” she said.

  In another moment her breath came long and even. She was asleep.

  29 I didn’t stay. I wanted to. Almost did. The prospect of the morning almost held me there. The warmth of her, the gentleness again after sleeping. Her slow, speculative approach to pleasure. I could guess they would be something to wake up to. Something new under the sun. But I didn’t stay. The thing was working in me now. I had to move. I had to think it out.

  I got out of bed and dressed quietly. I left her a note. Never mind what it said. I kissed her while she slept, and left.

  I drove back to Grant Valley slowly. The roads had remained clear. The stars were still shining. The forests at the roadside seemed mysterious, like no one had ever seen them at this hour but me. The moon was down. The darkness was complete.

  The center of town was nearly as dark. The unlighted windows of the stores and offices reflected nothing. Only the streetlamps broke the night. I passed on under them, toward the hills.

  I came to the old graveyard at the bottom of the hotel’s mountain. The skewed, time-washed stones shone in my headlights for a moment, then faded back into the night. I passed on. I saw the Capstandard office park on the mountain’s other side. My mind flashed back to last night’s meeting. The thought made me shiver. I went up the hill.

  There were no lights on at the hotel. When I came into the parking lot and switched off the engine, the night dropped over me like a curtain. I got out and tentatively made my way toward my room.

  I got about halfway down the slate path and stopped dead. I stood there—frozen—for several long moments. There was a scrabbling sound in the darkness ahead of me. It was coming from my door. I squinted toward the sound. I couldn’t see a thing.

  Now, I edged forward. A cool breeze came up the mountain and, in the forest to my left, the empty branches rattled. I stopped again to listen. I told myself that that was all I’d heard. But the breeze died, and the other sound continued. A rattling sound. Someone was working the doorknob.

  I took another step, and I knew that Death was there—or whoever it was who’d decided to play the part. I saw his silhouette dimly against the pale door. His white skull mask glowed in the starlight. He was trying to get into my room.

  I didn’t think. I just went for him. It was a bad move. I must’ve had twenty yards to cover. About halfway there a stick snapped under my shoe.

  I saw Death spin around. I stopped, waiting for him to charge me. There was a long moment when we both stood still, staring at each other through the depths of the darkness.

  Then, silently, he bolted.

  I never really had a chance to catch him. He was strong and fast. He darted around the building and off into the woods. I ran after him as best I could, but I was no match for him at all.

  He went down the far side of the mountain. I trotted behind, losing ground with every step. I plunged into the night woods. Among the trees the dark grew thicker still. For a while I could see the glowing white skull vanishing and reappearing between the trunks. Once, he glanced back at me, but he did not slow his pace. My ears filled with the sound of my own breathing. My chest hurt as I fought for air. But the steep incline carried me forward. I kept going, even when I knew he’d as good as gotten away.

  Finally, as the ground evened out toward the hill’s base, I lost him completely. I saw him faintly for another instant, still moving as quickly as before. Then the night just seemed to swallow him. He was gone. Maybe if I’d kept running, I’d have caught sight of him again. But my cigarette-battered wind had finally given out, and I could see it was hopeless.

  I stood still. The forest had opened up before me. The moaning trees still clustered at my back, but in front of me there were only a few of them. In the place of the waving branches, of the still, silhouetted trunks, I saw dim gray shapes rising from the earth like ghosts. I had come down into the graveyard.

  I turned and looked back over my shoulder. It was a long trek back up the hill. I leaned over and put my hands on my knees. I drew deep breaths trying to recover. I thought about the Dellacroce trial, about how pleasant it would’ve been just then to be seated in a warm, well-lighted courtroom, scribbling endless notes on endless pads. I straightened. I could see the black ribbon of the road beyond the cemetery’s edge. I decided to walk down to it and hike back up to the hotel on solid pavement.

  I came down among the graves. They leaned this way and that, gray and faceless. The night seemed solemn as I moved among them.

  I walked toward the road. I caught sight of a white figure in the corner of my vision. I spun. I saw the statue of an angel, bent in silent mourning. The sight of her sent a chill up my spine.

  I heard something. Something in the grass. I looked down. I was standing beside a hip-high monument. Faintly, I could make out the words chiseled on it: I could see where the name was, and the dates of birth and death beneath. Nothing else. I shook my head, annoyed with myself.

&nbs
p; And then a clay-encrusted hand shot out of the earth, grabbed my ankle, and held on fast.

  30 I screamed like hell. I was terrified. I yanked my foot back hard. The hand stretched out of the grave. It held on. I cursed, desperate. I yanked again. This time my leg came free. I stumbled back with the force of the reaction. I reached behind me blindly. My fingers found the cold, slippery stone above another grave. I clutched it. It kept me on my feet.

  Now I stood petrified, staring, as a second hand clawed its way free of the earth. My mind kept screaming, It’s him! It’s him! as I fought to regain my senses.

  I peered through the dark. The two hands clutched the ground. They were pulling their way up. A head came into view. I wanted to run, to get the hell out of there. But I battled the urge. Whatever it is, I told myself, it can only be human. Human is all there is.

  And it was. It was human, all right. Now the head came clear of the ground. White in the blackness, the sweating, bewildered young face of Chris Thomas appeared.

  He gasped with the effort of pulling himself up. “Give me a hand, for God’s sake, will you, Wells,” he said.

  It took another moment before I could register what I saw. But that was all it took to dispel the fear. In its place, almost at once, came red fury. I reached down and grabbed the idiot by the lapels.

  “I’ll give you a bloody hand,” I said. And I dragged him roughly out of the hole. It was hidden in the grass, that hole, but already I’d figured out what it was: another entrance to the limestone caves that networked the mountain’s underground.

  I yanked the punk to his feet. Maybe he was on his feet. Maybe I had him a couple inches off the ground, I’m not sure.

  “You!” I shouted into his nose. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  A lopsided grin split the pale, boyish face idiotically. “Uh …” he said.

  “Listen, Creature Features,” I said. “I’ve been dragged out of bed to meet a hanging dog, I’ve been run off the road and chased with a tire iron. My reputation is shot and my body hurts all over. I’m in a bad mood, so talk to me before I put you back in that grave for good.”