Julia

by Peter Straub

  “Something’s funny in this house,” she said.

  “You think I should leave?” said Julia, transfixed.

  “Do you see anything? Hear any noises? Has anything unexplained occurred?” Even her diction had altered.

  “I don’t know,” Julia confessed. “Sometimes I think I hear things—”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Fludd nodded sharply.

  Remembering something Mark had said, Julia asked, “What are poltergeists, exactly? I feel sort of foolish, asking you, but is it possible that there might be one here?”

  “Never any harm in a poltergeist,” replied Mrs. Fludd. “They move things, sometimes break a mirror or a vase—mischievous creatures. You’d be in danger only if you were very receptive, like your pretty friend across the room. Or if you were dominated by some strong destructive emotion. ^Hate. Envy. Then, if the spirit wished revenge, it might influence you. That’s rare, but it does happen, if the spirit is particularly malefic. Or« if some coincidence links you to it. In Wapping, a thief dead for fifty years set fire to a house containing a burglar’s family. Killed them all.”

  “But how do you know?” asked Julia.

  “I felt it. I knew.”

  Such monolithic assurance always influenced - Julia. In any case, it permitted no argument. “You feel something here?” she asked.

  Mrs. Fludd nodded. “Something. Can’t pin it down yet. But I don’t like this house, Mrs. Lofting. Who lived here before you?”

  “A couple named McClintock. He made carpets. I bought this furniture from them.” “Any deaths in their family? Any tragedies?” “I don’t know. They were childless people.” “But you’ve seen something. Things in this house.”

  “Well, I’m afraid it might be my husband,” Julia said, and laughed.

  Mrs. Fludd immediately closed up, separating herself from Julia; then, relenting, she took Julia’s hand. “Ring me if you ever want advice,” she said. From her bag she extracted a white card which read Rosa Fludd, Interpreter and Parapsychologist Printed at the bottom was a telephone number.

  Mr. Piggot approached the couch, followed by the perky Mr. Arkwright. “It is time?” said Mr. Piggot. I’m eager to investigate some theories I had at the shop since our last meeting.”

  “Of course, love,” said Mrs. Fludd, firmly back in her former role. She clapped her hands together twice and conversation in the room ceased. Miss Pinner and Miss Tooth turned their white faces raptly to the couch.

  “Time,” breathed Miss Tooth.

  At opposite ends of the room, Lily and Mark also turned to face Mrs. Fludd; Lily with an expression combining eagerness with satisfaction, Mark wearily. Julia had time to wonder what was wrong with Mark before Lily asked her to turn off the lights.

  She jumped up and went quickly to the light switch. Glowing gray light entered the room from the big windows; in this soft diffused semidarkness, Julia could see the fixed, rapt expressions on the faces of the “group.” She and Mark were outsiders here, and she moved to his side.

  “Have you a candle or small lamp, Mrs. Lofting?”

  Julia went into the dining room and turned on a little ceramic lamp in the shape of a toby jug.

  “Move it further away, please,” commanded Mrs. Fludd. “I must ask you all to join hands at the beginning. Look at the light behind me. Cleanse your minds.”

  The little lamp cast only a feeble light into the living room. Julia, joining the group, found herself being gripped by Mark on her right; he was holding her hand tight enough to hurt her. On her left Mr. Piggot’s hand was surprisingly soft and damp. His wafery skull shone palely in the twilight.

  The group members, once they had joined hands, moved to sit on the floor, awkwardly, pulling Julia and Mark down with them. Only little Miss Tooth accomplished the move from standing to sitting with grace, seemingly floating to a cross-legged position; Miss Pinner moved with a machinelike efficiency. Julia, covertly watching her, thought she could smell oil and gears.

  Once on the floor, the group members looked past Mrs. Fludd’s head to the soft light emanating from the toby jug lamp. Mark, brooding, had set his face into a mask of weary tolerance. Both apprehensive and skeptical, Julia too looked at the lamp. After a bit her eyes began to burn. When she glanced at the others, she saw that the group members had closed their eyes; their faces hung in the air like death masks. Mrs. Fludd sat in a perfectly ordinary position on the couch before them, her hands folded in her lap. In the pane of the tall back window, her head and the lamp glowed against the darker glass. Whitish clouds scudded above the flame-like, dissolving orb of the lamp.

  “Close your eyes,” said Mrs. Fludd, her voice very slow and quiet. Mr. Piggot, to Julia’s left, sighed and slumped backward, tugging her hand. “You may open them later if you wish.”

  She closed her eyes. About her she heard breathing. Mark gripped her right hand harder, and she shook her hand in his, signaling him to loosen; he pinned her hand yet more tightly.

  “One of us is having trouble,” said Mrs. Fludd. “Who is it?”

  Mark said, “I’m getting out of this.” He broke contact with Julia and stood up.

  “Close the group,” said Mrs. Fludd. “Mr. Berkeley, you will sit quietly outside the group and observe.”

  Julia hitched sideways and grasped Lily’s cool hand. It lay passively in hers. Lily had not opened her eyes when Mark had spoken, though all the others had. Mark now sat behind them, still facing Mrs. Fludd.

  “I need your help, Mrs. Lofting,” said Mrs. Fludd softly. “Make your mind empty, completely empty and white. Let nothing enter it.” Her voice was slowing and becoming deeper in timbre. Julia opened one eye and saw, looking up toward the couch, Mrs. Fludd’s heavy jowls outlined by the soft light behind her. Her hair was a white gauze. She seemed to have become heavier and older. Julia closed her eyes again and thought of a white saucer.

  Miss Tooth, at the left end of the seated line, began to breathe stertorously. Lily’s hand still lay utterly passively in Julia’s. After a bit, Julia felt an ache in her thighs. Her eyes closed, she began to see flashes of scenes, people’s faces or landscapes appearing momentarily before her and then melting into other scenes. Moses Herzog, his face that of an elderly English professor at Smith, metamorphosed into Blake’s flea. The hideous features of the flea in turn were transformed into Magnus’ face. By an effort of will, Julia dismissed this last vision—she thought of clouds covering that big, powerful face,

  obscuring it. When the clouds blew off, they revealed one of the lounging, shabby men who had been in her dream. Now the man was her father, and he examined her with an expression of exhausted pity. She could see herself standing on the black tarpaper of the rooftop, Kate dead in her arms. Both of her thighs ached; the right was on the verge of

  cramp. Julia lurched to one side and twisted her legs out before her. Mr. Piggot twitched at her hand in rebuke. ‘

  Opening her eyes, Julia again saw Mrs. Fludd, who now sat slumped in the chair as if she had fallen asleep. Her mouth was open, black and toothless in the fleshy mass of her face surrounded by the penumbra of her hair. The woman’s squat body was as if compressed—”slumped” was the wrong word, for she appeared to be under gathering tension.

  “Close eyes,” she said in a gravelly voice. Julia, startled, immediately pressed her eyes shut. She heard Mrs. Fludd’s heavy boots scuffing on the carpet. She was again on the rooftop, now alone with the men. Her father, who had died one summer while she and Magnus were in Perigord, turned his face from her. Internally, she began to speak to him, as she frequently did when moved by guilt. You were a decent man, but too forceful. I can see that now. I married Magnus because he had your power, he could dominate like you, and then I saw what a weapon your power was. But Daddy, I loved you. I would have gone to your funeral if I had known, I want you to forgive me for being away, I loved you always, please forgive me, grant me that… As the words became rote, the vision dissolved. She was alone on the roof, oppressed by the comprehensive at
mosphere of moral loss. All was grimy, all was inferior and flawed. She bent her head. The scene turned to opaque blackness through which she fell: Julia was dizzied, and seemed actually to be slowly falling. The room seemed to have turned about; surely she was now facing the front window instead of Mrs. Fludd? She resisted the temptation to open her eyes. Again, she imagined the white saucer— cool, without blemish, entirely surface—and filled her mind with it.

  For a time the only noises in the room were Miss Tooth’s strained breathing and the hushing noise of Mrs. Fludd’s boot scuffing the carpet. Julia grew calmer and wondered what Mark, behind them, was doing and thinking in the darkness. He had begun to be uneasy after he had crossed the room to sit beside Mrs. Fludd. She must have said something to him—as she had to Julia. And now how did they look to him, seated on the carpet like fools before the massive image of Mrs. Fludd? She could scarcely restrain the impulse to turn her head to look for him. Mr. Piggot’s boneless hand, stirring momentarily in hers, returned her to her context.

  “Agh. Agh,” The soft choking noise came, Julia thought, from Miss Tooth. Then she heard a wail which was unmistakably Miss Tooth’s and realized that the insistent choking noise was made in Mr. Arkwright’s throat. Lily too was making a noise; the most moth-like, ladylike of noises, an exhalation of breath carrying the slightest coloration of voice. This was astonishingly sexual. Julia’s hands were tugged forward and backhand soon she too began to rock. Her legs had once more begun to ache, but she could not think of interrupting the resistless rocking motion to swivel them back under her. Daringly, she slitted her eyes and saw, as in a haze, the dark heads on either side bobbing forward and back. Each was making some low noise, rhythmical and insistent, Miss Pinner was growling like a cat. Before them sat Mrs. Fludd, her feet now still, her face distorted. Mr. Piggot’s hand had grown very sweaty. Julia* closed her eyes and resumed rocking back and forth. Not wishing to remember the image of Mrs. Fludd’s face, she made her mind utterly void of thought. She thought of the thought of nothing. Soon she was a rocking particle of nothing.

  Then she saw Kate—Kate with her back turned to her.

  A deep croaking voice stopped them all. “Aah, stop.” Jolted back to herself, shaken by the vision of Kate, Julia withdrew her hand from Mr. Piggot’s while still clinging to Lily’s. She opened her eyes. Mrs. Fludd was pressed back against the cushions of the couch, her face nearly purple. She had none of the repose Julia associated with the notion- of mediumistic trance: her eyes bulged, her mouth worked. “Stop. Stop.”

  “Something’s wrong,” whispered Mr. Piggot.

  Together they watched Mrs. Fludd struggling, not knowing what should be done. Lily tugged at Julia’s hand, indicating that she was not to rise. Gradually Mrs. Fludd’s face cleared of purple and her eyes closed; she lay back drained and apparently powerless, her face heavy and dead. As Julia watched, the old woman’s face became chalky. “It’s over,” she uttered, her voice low as it had been earlier in the evening. Yet it seemed to shake. Her hands, too, trembled as she placed them on her chest, forcing herself to breathe regularly.

  “Over?” inquired Miss Pinner. “Why, we were just—”

  “This must stop,” said Mrs. Fludd in her trembling voice. “I’m sorry. I can’t do more. I can’t finish.” The woman, Julia saw, was terrified. “Get my coat,” she ordered. She was trying to struggle up from the sofa. “No more tonight. My coat. Please.” She fell back exhausted, and Julia saw with horror that the old woman had begun to blink back tears.

  The group members stood about in the darkness, uncertain and disturbed. Only Miss Pinner seemed indignant. While she hissed something to Miss Tooth, Lily approached Mrs. Fludd. “Get my coat,” said Mrs. Fludd. Now she was openly weeping.

  “Somebody get some water, please,” Lily said, and Miss Pinner looked up from her intense talk with her companion. Julia stood by, frozen, incapable of movement.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Mrs. Fludd, what happened to you?”

  “Get out of this house,” Mrs. Fludd whispered. She lolled back on the cushions, her mouth dryly opening and closing. Tears continued to roll down her meaty cheeks. “Some water.” She began to whimper.

  Miss Pinner exasperatedly went from the room. Julia noticed that she was going not to the kitchen, but in the direction of the hall bathroom.

  “She’s frightened,” Lily whispered to Julia. “What was that she said to you?”

  Julia shook her head. Mrs. Fludd was again trying to speak. She bent near. Foul breath assaulted her. “Danger. I’m in danger. You too.” The woman was trembling violently. A sharp, acetic odor floated up to Julia, and she recognized it only when Mrs. Fludd gasped and made a violent, thrashing attempt to get up from the couch. Now she was both humiliated and terrified, and Julia, the sour odor swirling about her like ammonia, could not hold her to the couch. She looked into the dark recesses of the living room, over the heads of Miss Tooth, Mr. Piggot and Mr. Arkwright, but Mark was nowhere in the room. He had left the house unseen.

  Miss Pinner’s shriek stopped her speculation and froze her as she stood, her arms on Mrs. Fludd’s shoulders. Miss Tooth rushed from the room. Mrs. Fludd too had heard the scream, and sank back into the couch, closing her eyes. Julia ran after Miss Tooth. When she reached the bathroom, she saw Miss Pinner supine just inside the door; Miss Tooth was cradling her friend’s head. Julia stepped over Miss Pinner’s body and entered the bathroom. The mirrors reflected her startled, wide-eyed round face, making her look unnaturally healthy and beautiful. Then, momentarily, flickeringly, she saw someone behind her move out of her field of vision: she whirled around, but no one else was in the room. And if anyone had been there, Miss Tooth would have seen him. Julia turned back to the mirror; and there the figure was again just slipping from sight. Yet Julia, like everyone, had seen this happen before: it was a common experience brought on by nerves. It was no more unusual than hearing one’s name called in the street. Surely, this or something similar had startled Miss Pinner. Julia approached the sink for a glass of water and saw that her blue seersucker dress, forgotten; still soaked; the water in the basin had turned the color of rust, but the dress still bore its stain.

  4

  When Julia finally returned home that night, shortly after eleven, she went early to her bed. She felt as though she would be apprehensive all the rest of her life—and half of the disquiet lay in the inability to be definite about what was its source. She and Lily had taken the quaking Mrs. Fludd to her flat in a taxi; driven through the grim, hopeless streets which were so much like the streets of her dream, they had come to Mrs. Fludd’s block of flats, in a cul-de-sac off the Mile End Road. The street-lamps had all been broken, and whitish shards of glass shone up from the dirty pavements; the road too was littered with broken glass, the pebbled green spray of shattered windshields. A lighted plaque on Mrs. Fludd’s building announced that the gray, prisonlike structure, one of a series of similar buildings forming a compound, bore the name Baston; before Baston, roving gangs of boys in rolled-up Levi’s passed back and forth, shouting in raucous voices. Several of them stopped to gape at the taxi. When they saw Mrs. Fludd they began to hoot. “Bloody ol’ witch! Bloody ol’ witch!” Mrs. Fludd had not spoken a word during the long ride from Kensington, though Julia had twice asked her what had happened to her, what had she seen. The old woman’s mouth had tightened with such pressure her upper lip went white. The gang of boys terrorized her even further, and she initially refused to leave the cab. Lily, on the street side, got out and at first disconcerted the boys. When they began again to hoot, it was at Lily. She ignored them and, together, she and Julia coaxed Mrs. Fludd from the taxi. “Wait for us,” Lily said to the driver, and the two women helped Mrs. Fludd into the open court. Several of the boys trailed along behind, calling out obscenities. “Here,” said Mrs. Fludd, flipping up a hand at an entrance: she lived on the building’s ground floor, as Julia had expected.

  Julia supported her through the small, antiseptic f
lat to the tiny bedroom where a dusty budgerigar slept in its cage. The bedroom, no larger than a big closet, contained a single bed and a dwarfish chest of drawers. On the white walls hung crosses, star charts, a dozen odd paintings which Julia scarcely noticed. Lily had gone into the kitchen to see if anything could be found for Mrs. Fludd, and Julia helped the old woman down onto the cramped bed and bent to unlace her boots.

  Bending and struggling with the tight knots, Julia felt a pudgy hand settle on the nape of her neck. “Get out of here,” Mrs. Fludd croaked.

  “I just thought I could help,” Julia said, looking up into the old woman’s flaring face—she wondered if Mrs. Fludd’s heart was all right.

  “No. I mean, get out of this country,” muttered Mrs. Fludd. Her breath was like a buzzard’s. “Go back to America. Where. You belong. There’s danger here. Don’t stay.”

  “Danger here in England?”

  Mrs. Fludd nodded as if to a backward child, and rolled onto her bed.

  “Does it have to do with what we were talking about? What did you see?”

  “A child and a man,” Mrs. Fludd said. “Be careful. Things could happen to you.” She closed her eyes and began to breathe heavily through her mouth. Julia, looking up at the wall, found herself looking at a Keane print.

  “Is the man my husband?” she asked.

  “The house is yours,” Mrs. Fludd said. “You must leave.”