A Winter Haunting

by Dan Simmons

  He turned on the console radio and listened to the scratchy jazz coming from St. Louis. As he skimmed over Beowulf, the last of the day’s light faded and died through the windows high on the cement wall. The furnace came on with its wheeze and roar, but Dale was too lost in the Beowulf tale to notice.

  The monster Grendel and his mother—not to mention the wolves circling close around the beleaguered mead hall—were described several times by the word wearg or its variant, wearh. A marginal note in Dale’s own hand read, “German form warg—wolf, but also denotes outlaw—someone who has committed a crime that is unforgivable or unredeemable.” Then, next to his note, in Clare’s slanting script, “Those cast out from their communities and doomed to wander and die alone. Warg = corpse-worrier (from Indo-European wergh, to strangle = ‘one who deserves strangulation’). The outcast human warg could be killed on sight with impunity.”

  Dale’s hands were shaking again as he lowered the heavy anthology. He’d forgotten that he’d loaned Clare his text when she’d audited his Beowulf graduate class four years ago.

  Dimly, slowly, Dale became aware of the blues song being played on the old radio. It was as if someone had turned up the volume. He dropped the book and reversed positions on the bed, leaning closer to the glowing dial.

  It was a powerful and classic piece of blues. Legend said that the composer/player, Robert Johnson, had sold his soul to the devil to be able to write and play such music. Johnson had never denied the rumors.

  Dale closed his eyes and listened to the ancient recording of Johnson wailing to the tune of “Hellhound on My Trail.”

  ELEVEN

  * * *

  TWO weeks after Clare Hart joined Dale’s 20th- Century American Authors class and a week before they became lovers, Dale—Dr. Stewart—had her stay a few minutes after the seminar ended. It was a beautiful early autumn day that felt like summer, and the windows to the old classroom were open, looking out onto green leaves and blue sky.

  “You’re Clare Two Hearts,” said Dale. “Mona Two Hearts’s daughter.”

  Clare frowned at him. “How did you find out?”

  “Some supplementary transcripts arrived from the university in Florence and your real name was on them . . . unlike the earlier transcripts. Your mother’s name was also on one of the documents.”

  Clare stood silent, looking at him. He was soon to learn just how still and silent this young woman could be. After a moment, Dale cleared his throat and went on, “I apologize . . . I mean, I really wasn’t snooping. But I was just curious why . . .”

  “Why I hid my identity?”

  Dale nodded.

  Clare had smiled without warmth. “Dr. Stewart . . . it isn’t easy being a famous diva’s daughter. Not even in Italy. And that part of my identity had no role in my graduate work here.”

  Dale nodded. “I knew that your mother had grown up on the Blackfeet reservation up north . . .”

  “Actually, she didn’t,” said Clare in that no-nonsense tone that he’d already grown to enjoy in class. “All of Mama’s press kits say that she grew up poor on the reservation—not far from St. Mary—but in reality she was born there but grew up in Cut Bank, Great Falls, Billings, and half a dozen other little towns before she went to Juilliard and then on to Europe.” Clare looked him straight in the eye. “Mama’s mother had married a white man who was ashamed of the rez. I’m part half-breed.”

  Dale shook his head at that. “Miss Hart . . . I really didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I just noticed the difference in names, recognized your mother’s name. I thought that I should tell you about the supplementary transcripts.”

  “Does anyone else know?” asked Clare.

  “I don’t think so. I just happened to see the file on the day that the transcripts came in because we were trying to allocate credits for the nondegree graduate students.” He pulled the file out of his drawer, removed the telltale transcripts, and handed them to her. “I’ll refile the rest,” he said. “The supplements weren’t necessary.”

  Clare slid the papers into her backpack without looking at them and turned to go. She stopped at the door and looked back at him. He expected to hear a “thank you,” but what she said was “I’ve been in Missoula for almost a month, but I haven’t had the nerve to drive up to the reservation.”

  Dale had amazed himself by saying, “I go up to Glacier and the reservation every fall. I could show you around there if you want.”

  Clare had looked at him with that neutral, intense stare of hers, and then turned and left without another word. Later, after he came to know her as well as he could—perhaps as well as anyone could—he realized that she had probably decided to have an affair with him at that moment.

  Dale awakens to a loud banging.

  He looks around. He is in the study—he’d fallen asleep in the chair—and with the exception of the single desk lamp, the farmhouse is dark. He does not remember dozing off or what he was working on here when he fell asleep. The ThinkPad is turned off.

  The banging is coming from upstairs.

  To hell with this. Dale is suddenly very angry. He looks around for the baseball bat, but he’s left it in another room or it has rolled under the bed.

  The banging intensifies.

  Dale leaves the lighted study and walks down the darkened hallway, up the narrow steps. A pale light glows through the yellowed plastic.

  He pulls out his pocket knife, selects the sharpest blade, and makes rough incisions through the plastic, diagonally, X marks the spot. He tears at the layers of brittle plastic with his hands until he rips a hole, widens it, tears plastic from the frame.

  The air wafts out from behind the plastic and it carries the scent of lilacs and decay. Tutankhamen’s tomb. Dale steps through the torn plastic, feeling the strands of the brittle stuff trying to hold him back, and then he is standing on the faded runner in the upstairs hallway, the stale air still rushing past him and downstairs as though he had opened an airlock.

  There is one open door on his right, two on the left. The light is coming from the rear room on the left.

  The banging has stopped.

  Still holding his small utility knife, Dale strides down the hall, pausing to glance in the first room on his left and the open door to his right. A small bedroom to his left, an even smaller bathroom to his right. Both rooms are dark. The light from the rear bedroom flickers like candlelight.

  Pausing in the doorway, Dale peers around the door frame.

  A tall bed, a massive chest of drawers, a low dressing table with an opaque mirror, a flickering kerosene lamp on the dressing table, and a hand-built closet—painted a faded yellow—that seems strangely familiar to Dale. The windows are so heavily curtained and draped that no hint of moonlight or sunlight could find its way in. Holding the pathetic little knife ahead of him, Dale crosses to the bed.

  There is a dark outline there on the age-tarnished quilt. At first Dale thinks it is a figure, then he sees it is merely an indentation in the quilt, but as he steps up to the high bed he sees that it is more than an indentation.

  The center of the bed has sagged into a deep hole shaped in the form of a man. Or of a corpse laid out there. Even the pillow is dented down a foot or more into the mattress, the hole shaped like the oval of a human head. Dale hears the slightest noise from the deep indentation and leans over the bed, trying to ignore the stench—the same death-smell he had encountered on his first moments in the house—and wishing that he had brought a flashlight.

  The bottom of the human-shaped pit in the mattress is crawling and oozing with life. Maggots. Worms.

  Dale backs away, holding his free hand to his mouth, glancing behind him at the dark hallway.

  The old oil lamp flickers as if to a strong breeze, the light almost going out but then steadying at the lowest glimmer.

  The banging resumes—louder, wilder, more insistent. It is coming from the hand-built closet in the corner.

  Dale looks at the closet and realizes tha
t it is a huge coffin, crudely painted yellow and set on end. The door splinters and begins to open as he watches.

  Dale awoke to a loud banging.

  He sat up. He was not in the study, but in the basement, the heavy Norton anthology lying next to him on Duane’s old bed. The console radio was still whispering static and music. It was not night. Midmorning light shone through the narrow windows at the top of the basement wall.

  The banging resumed.

  Dale looked around for the crowbar or baseball bat and remembered that he had left both of them upstairs last evening. He shook his head, ran his fingers through his tousled hair, and went up the steps and through the kitchen toward the banging.

  Michelle Staffney was knocking at the side door.

  Dale rubbed his face and opened the inner door.

  “Dale, I hope you don’t mind that I dropped by.” She looked him up and down.

  Dale shook his head and stepped back, welcoming her into the kitchen. “Uh-uh,” he said. “Sorry for the way I look, but I must’ve fallen asleep last night. I was downstairs on . . . I mean, I didn’t really go to bed last night. I fell asleep reading and listening to music. What time is it . . . ah, Mica?”

  “Michelle will do,” said the redhead with a slight smile. “And it’s about nine-thirty. I guess you were tired.”

  “Yeah,” said Dale. He crossed to the refrigerator. “Like some orange juice?”

  “Sure.”

  “Take your jacket off. Just set it on the chair there. Do you want some breakfast?”

  “No thanks, Dale. I already ate. I just wanted to give you an invitation. I would have called, but . . .”

  Dale handed her a jelly glass half-filled with orange juice. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s sort of hard to get in touch with me by phone.” The taste of the orange juice helped reduce the buzzing in his head. He felt hung over but didn’t remember drinking more than one lousy beer the previous evening. “Invitation?” he said.

  “For Thanksgiving,” said Michelle Staffney.

  Dale motioned to the kitchen table, and the two sat across from one another. The morning light was weak through the windows. Another gray day.

  “Thanksgiving?” said Dale.

  “Next Thursday,” said Michelle. “I hadn’t planned to be here this long, but it looks as if I will. I don’t know anyone else around here and I thought that we could . . . well, hell, I don’t know, cook a turkey together. Drink some wine. I don’t know.”

  “So are you and your friend throwing a party . . . I’m sorry, I forget her name,” said Dale.

  “Diane Villanova,” said Michelle, and looked down at the table. “No, Diane headed back to California yesterday. I just thought it would be nice if you and I . . . I mean, that we not spend Thanksgiving alone . . . but I bet you’re headed somewhere or expecting someone . . . sorry, bad idea, Dale . . .”

  “No, no,” Dale said hurriedly. “I didn’t even know that Thanksgiving was coming up. I’ve sort of been ignoring the calendar. Are you sure it’s next Thursday?”

  “Pretty sure,” said Michelle.

  “I’d love to have turkey together,” said Dale. Well, not really, he thought. It would just remind him of Anne and the girls—the girls would be home from college—and of holidays past and holidays lost.

  Something must have showed in his expression. Michelle said, “It’s probably a dumb idea. In fact, my kitchen’s all torn up and I’m not even sure I can get it in working order by Thursday. Diane and I had planned . . . well, this was a dumb idea.”

  Dale didn’t know what kind of falling-out the two women had suffered, or why Michelle had remained here in Illinois, but he did know that he’d been a boor. He stood up, showing energy and enthusiasm he didn’t feel at the moment, and walked over to pat the huge old stove. “Let’s cook it here,” he said brightly. “Otherwise I’ll never use anything but the burners on this damned thing. I’m tired of soup. I’d love to share a turkey with you on Thursday.”

  Michelle nodded, but in a distracted way. “Are you all right, Dale?”

  “Sure. Don’t I look all right?”

  “Well, I don’t know you, of course. But you seem . . . tired.”

  He shrugged. “Haven’t been sleeping too well and then last night . . . zonko.”

  “I have some sleeping pills,” said Michelle, obviously making an offer. “Prescription. Plenty of them.”

  Dale held up his hand. “I have a prescription, too. It knocks me out eventually, but gives me shitty dreams . . .” He paused. The yellow coffin-closet. He remembered now where he’d seen it before. Their old house in Elm Haven had had such a closet in the room where he and Lawrence had slept.

  “Dale?” Michelle stood and walked over next to him.

  “Sorry. I just remembered the nightmare I was having before I woke up.” He found himself telling her about it, keeping his voice light.

  “My God,” said Michelle, not at all amused. “Is the upstairs here really sealed off like that?”

  “Come on,” said Dale. “I’ll show you.”

  Before they got to the stairway, he was suddenly and absolutely certain that the plastic would be torn and ripped where he had opened it, that a dim light would be burning at the end of the hall, that the air blowing out through the ripped plastic would smell of a tomb, and that there would be a dark figure standing at the head of the stairs.

  The plastic was solid and secure in its frame. Only pale sunlight showed through the yellowed membrane.

  “This is really spooky,” said Michelle. She backed down the steps, one hand on the railing, as if not wanting to turn her back on the sealed doorway.

  Back in the kitchen, she said, “What do you think’s up there?”

  Dale shrugged. “What do you say we work up our courage after dinner on Thursday—a lot of glasses of wine, maybe—and we end the evening by going up there and cutting that wall of plastic away and exploring the second floor?”

  Michelle smiled, and Dale suddenly remembered the days and years of his longing for her in fourth through eighth grade. “It’ll take more than wine to give me that much courage.”

  “We can arrange that,” said Dale, smiling. He thought, What the hell am I saying? The last thing I want right now is to be flirting with some woman.

  Michelle walked to the door, tugging on her jacket as she went. “I’ll talk to you before I buy the turkey . . . oh, I forgot. I can’t call.”

  “I’ll call you,” said Dale. “My cell phone works when I get out of this part of the county. Here, give me your number again.” He handed her a pencil and yellow pad from the counter.

  She scribbled the number, nodded, and went back out to her pickup truck. She started the engine but then rolled down the window. Dale leaned out from the stoop to hear her. It had started to rain.

  “I forgot to tell you,” she said. “I almost ran over your black dog on the way in. It just stood in the driveway, looking at the house, not even turning around when I honked the horn. I had to drive around it on the grass.”

  Dale shook his head. “Not my black dog. It’s just been hanging around here. A black pooch with pink on its muzzle, right? Real small—maybe ten, twelve inches tall?”

  “Black with pink on its snout,” agreed Michelle. “But not that small. It must have been a couple of feet tall. Big chest.”

  “Too big to be the black dog that I’ve seen,” said Dale. “Must be its big brother.”

  Michelle nodded. “Well, see you on Thanksgiving.” She sounded a bit uncertain now that it had been planned.

  Dale smiled. “Talk to you on the phone before then.”

  She waved and drove down the lane in the rain. There was no sign of the black dog. Dale went back in to turn up the heat and make some breakfast. He decided to splurge and have some bacon and was draining the grease from the pan, setting out a paper towel to blot the bacon itself, when a loud voice came from his study.

  “You’ve got mail!”

  TWELVE

  *
* *

  Welcome back, Dale.

  Dale stood in the study staring at the screen of his IBM ThinkPad. There was nothing unsettling about receiving an e-mail except for the fact that (a) the modem was not currently connected to a cell phone or to any phone line, (b) the message had not come through his AOL account, and (c) the computer was not even running in Windows. Somehow the computer had exited to DOS and the message had been typed directly after the C prompt.

  Then where the hell did the “You’ve got mail” voice come from? It had been the AOL voice. There was no mistake about that.

  Dale came closer to the desk and studied the computer. Had he turned it on—or off—the previous evening before going down to the basement and falling asleep while listening to the radio? He couldn’t remember.

  The message burned white against the black screen. Without touching the keyboard, Dale checked the serial ports, the PCMCIA slots, and the other connections. He knew that more and more computers and PDAs were operating wirelessly these days, but as far as he knew, his older ThinkPad didn’t have that capability. And even if it did, it would require Windows and his AOL account for him to receive or send mail. He subscribed to no other ISPs and had long ago deleted the other Internet alternatives that had been bundled with his laptop.

  Which means that someone typed this directly onto the screen. Dale sat, keeping his fingers away from the keyboard, looking over his shoulder. Did Michelle come in here during her visit? They had gone up the stairs together to look at the plastic sheeting, but Dale could not remember her being out of his sight at any time.

  Someone could have come in the house during the night. The door was unlocked this morning. That seemed more probable, but why this silly welcome note? Why not just steal the computer and be done with it? And where the hell did the AOL “you’ve got mail” voice come from? Dale was not terribly techno-savvy, but he’d been writing with and grading on and Internet researching with computers long enough to know that the AOL sounds were stored in wavefile form on the computer itself, so if someone wanted to activate it, all they would have to do would be . . .