by Peter Straub
Now Lily supposed that she’d have to use the plural. One fantasy had burgeoned into half a dozen. “Wants a little cold water thrown over her,” Lily muttered, and checked the angle of her skirt in the mirror. She was ready.
Outside in the warm sun, she strode into the park. It was Friday afternoon, and Holland Park seemed always to be more crowded then than at any other time save the weekends. Lily’s neat figure moved, her bag swinging in time with her heels, through crowds of young people. Layabouts, most of them. Students. Though what they found time to study she couldn’t say. Of course there’s one famous subject, she thought, seeing a couple kissing on the grass. Magnus should really have married someone his own age: a man like Magnus needed a respectable woman for a wife. And certainly not an American. Americans failed to understand so much, for all their automobiles and electric toothbrushes. Magnus should have been Queen’s Counsel by now, but any chance of that had disappeared when Julia became Mrs. Lofting. She was a dear girl, of course, and no one could say that all that money hadn’t been helpful. But even that had its shady side. The old rogue who’d made it was a sort of pirate, from what Lily could gather. Julia’s great-grandfather had been one of those ruthless railroad barons of the end of the last century—he had blood on his hands up to the elbows, Magnus had said. The grandfather was cut from the same cloth, apparently: whole forests had been felled for him, rivers spoiled, wars fought and companies stripped and men killed to increase his holdings. There was a taint, an historical stain, to Julia’s money. Lily lifted her head and turned, her heels making a neat staccato sound on the asphalt, deeper into the park.
Descending a short flight of steps beside the little gardens, Lily noticed a small blond girl leap up from one of the benches where old people sunned themselves and run in the direction she was now walking. After a few yards, the girl began to walk. What a sweet old-fashioned-looking child, Lily thought: she even looked a little like Kate, at least from the back. After a moment she recognized that it was the girl’s trousers which gave her the old-fashioned aspect: they were high-waisted and elasticized around the top, like children’s trousers of twenty-five years before. The girl seemed almost to be leading lily to Julia’s house. She began to skip ahead of her, slowing tox a walk whenever she got more than fifteen or twenty yards away, and then, Lily approaching, skipped and ran once more—just as if, Lily thought, she were on a leash.
When they reached the children’s play area, within sight of Julia’s house, the girl vanished. Lily checked her stride for a moment, puzzled. She looked over the children playing in the sandboxes and sporting beside the trees, but saw no flash of that astonishing hair—that hair like Kate’s. To her left, on the long stretch of grass, she saw only three small wailing children, none of them the girl.
Lily glanced from side to side once more, then shrugged and was about to resume walking when she felt a quick chill over her entire body. She had seen, she was now looking at, a stout elderly woman seated on a green bench, her profile to Lily. It was Rosa Fludd. She was far off to Lily’s right, staring straight ahead of her, unmoving. She wore the hideous tweed coat she had worn the night of the last gathering. Lily slowly turned in the woman’s direction; her stomach felt frozen, and the ends of her fingers were tingling. She realized that she was unable to speak.
By, a violent effort of will, Lily turned her head away from Mrs. Fludd and looked back at the children. They played on, scrabbling in the sand. Their voices came clear and sweet to her. She snapped her head back to look at the park bench. It was now empty. Like the girl, Rosa Fludd had disappeared.
Lily’s breath gradually returned to her body, as if it had been suspended for some minutes in the air before her. She self-consciously straightened her back and patted the back of her head. She looked once again at the bench. No one sat there. No sad gray fat lady. Of course. No one had ever been there. What an extraordinary thing, Lily thought. And to have an hallucination just at the time when she was preparing herself to drum sense into Julia! A less stable person than herself might immediately join Julia’s fantasies and condemn himself forever to unreality. Lily permitted herself a smile at the thought of the response of Miss Pinner or Miss ‘Roth to the resurrection of Mrs. Fludd. Then she wondered just what Miss Pinner had seen in the bathroom on that awkward night; and then reminded herself on no account to bring up the subject with Julia. She found herself, she reflected, in the position of a priest taking a hard line on miracles with an overenthusiastic new convert.
By now Lily felt recovered; well, nearly recovered. The experience had been decidedly dégoûtant. She glanced once more at the bench—empty—and firmly marched on her way down the path.
On the corner of Ilchester Place Lily paused, trying to marshal her arguments. She had nothing in mind as to her exact words, but she knew she must have a lever—Julia in effect had to be pried from that house. Perhaps she could use Magnus. Some subtle threat was needed. If she could drop the word “hospital” in the proper way…Lily stood for a moment, enjoying the unaccustomed flavors of power and connivance.
She glanced up at Julia’s bedroom windows. Or were those for the unused rooms? The house did have an empty look: more romancing, Lily thought. That damnable hallucination had upset her. Yet she could look obliquely through the side windows and see that at least half the living room was empty. From directly across the street she’d be able to look straight through the house: and if the drapes were drawn, wouldn’t that mean that Julia was probably at home? lily felt an inexplicable reluctance to begin her crusade immediately.
She took the ten paces across the street and looked through the double set of windows to the garden which glowed greenly, as if reduced in scale, through its frame. She’d have to ring the bell. Why this odd reluctance? Some memory pulsed below the level of consciousness and then opened to her: Mrs. Weatherwax at a postwar cocktail party (in the Albany, she remembered). A giant hulk of a woman, the wife of a Minister, the queen of her set, Mrs. Weatherwax had been in particularly foul mood, and had occupied a settee, her face frozen into disapproval—she had nearly dared anyone to approach her. Absurdly, the house had reminded her of Mrs. Weatherwax, .exuding hostility from a flowered settee in the Albany. Those crushed flowers along the side of the house: had it been some sort of visual pun? Yet pun or not, the impression had been clear and strong.
What nonsense, Lily thought, and took a step off the pavement. Then she saw Magnus’ face appear in the light square of green at the back of the house, and she froze in the attitude of taking her second step. She quickly retreated backward. After a second, she moved as far to one side as she would go while still watching the windows at the rear of the house. Magnus was jerking on the handle, his mouth working. As Lily watched aghast, he took some sort of card from his wallet and slipped it into the frame where the two halves of the window joined. His arm pumped rapidly; the windows parted, and Magnus climbed into the house. Lily could watch no more.
6
Magnus stood in the sunny dining room, listening carefully. Somewhere in the empty house a switch moved, inspiring a hum from machinery hidden behind the walls. Magnus fumblingly replaced his Access card in his wallet. He lurched forward a step, then paused again and listened like an animal. Perhaps the buzzing noise came from inside his head. He’d had no more than seven or eight hours’ sleep all week, fueling himself with whiskey, keeping his adrenalin flowing by imagining scenes with Julia—sleep was caught in his office between clients, on park benches; once he’d fallen asleep in the flowerbed in the garden, keeping watch on Julia’s window. He could imagine beating Julia, making love to her, waking her up an hour before dawn and _ talking to her urgently, cogently. Like many gregarious men, Magnus hated to be alone, and at times this week, locked into his house, patrolling from room to room with a bottle in his hand, he had talked to Julia so earnestly that he seemed to see her before him, her own ghost. Twice he had heard her calling his name in distress or pain and sped drunkenly across town to park before the dark hou
se on Ilchester Place. He didn’t know what he expected to see—unless it was Julia pinned by Mark, fighting him off a final desperate second before yielding.
That scene came into his dreams and sent him rocketing awake, his heart thudding. He had begun to masturbate again, as he had not done since adolescence. There was a woman five minutes from this house, a former client who lived in Hammersmith, another woman nearly as close, the wife of a man in prison, but Magnus knew that he went to them largely because he frightened them; and they made sense only as temporary alternatives to Julia. Without her, they were useless to him. So he had come to lurk outside this house at night, his anger and frustration undimmed by whiskey, with no plan other than to speak to Julia the words he could always find when alone. On the telephone he could not control himself: she sounded snippy and pert, dismissive. It infuriated him.
Now the memory of that anger, and the tone of Julia’s feigned coolness which inspired it, momentarily helped Magnus to quiet his apprehensions. That, of all the houses in London, Julia had chosen this one was nearly enough to encourage belief in all of Lily’s mystical claptrap. Twenty-five Ilchester Place contained too many frustrating memories for him to feel comfortable with Julia’s living there. Even after all these years, it was the past stirring again, wretchedly.
Now, Magnus thought, I should burn this place to its miserable roots. This idea gave him a shade more courage, and he moved around in the dining room, picking up things and putting them down. He would not be spooked by the place. And now it was bright day, unlike the other times when he had crouched outside, tapping at the windows before trying to force his way in. Then he had felt the house beating at him, almost—it was the only way he could describe it.
Magnus pulled the little bottle of brandy from his pocket and took a long swallow before entering the living room. Noticing that he had begun to perspire, he loosened his tie and swabbed at his forehead with his handkerchief. In the old days, the house had never been so hot—if anything, it had been rather cold. Someone had installed these damnably ugly storage heaters. This warmth was unpleasant, oppressive. Magnus tore the tie from his neck and balled it up in his trouser pocket.
He called Julia’s name. When no answer came, he staggered toward the couch and leaned on its cushiony back. He bellowed her name again, then swore when he heard only the soft, buzzing noises of the house. Looking toward the staircase, he saw double for a moment and forced himself to stand straight upright. He focused his eyes. Of course all the furniture was different. Years ago the room had been brighter, with satin wallpaper—could that be right? It had looked like satin. Her sheets had been satin too, and silk. Down here had been small couches, bright paintings: the room had looked much larger. Everything gets smaller as we age, Magnus thought. This isn’t a bit like the room where I came years ago—that room had been cheerful, frivolous, a bit silly. And we silly young men had thronged here. As an alternative to Cambridge, the house had attracted him by its carelessness, its perpetual atmosphere of carnival, the license he had thought of at the time as American. That was not to neglect the attractions of his hostess. He could visualize Heather Rudge slipping through the arch of the doorway with a cocktail shaker in her hand, a Sobranie cigarette wobbling in her charming mouth. But all of that was what he wished to keep Julia from discovering. And what he must not think of. Magnus pushed himself away from the couch and went toward the kitchen.
There too everything had changed. Now all was white—white as a hospital. Magnus threw open several cupboards. Bottles of Malvern water, plates, glasses. A drawer of new silverware. To one side beneath the sink he found a clutch of whiskey bottles. The malt he’d taught her to like. He touched one of the bottles. They were somehow reassuring.
She must be dead by now, he thought. Then his mind blurred, and he thought he had meant Julia. The fear he had felt on the night he had broken the vase began to leak back into him. No, it was the other one who was dead, not Julia. She must have died in that place where she’d been put. That weak, foolish woman. He’d sent her money for years. Presumably other men sent her money too. She kept the same claim on all of them. Magnus slammed the door to the liquor shelf, hoping to chip away some of the white paint or damage the catch.
From the kitchen he stalked into the downstairs bathroom. He hovered just within the door, sensing that someone was near. Cunningly, he glanced into the rose mirrors. Something was just flickering out of sight. He was drunk. There was nothing to be afraid of. His head seemed to hum in sympathy with some deeper vibration. Watching himself in the mirrors, he took another pull at the brandy. And there it was again, just vanishing from sight. “Damn you,” Magnus uttered. His thick gray hair lay across his forehead; his suit was spattered and wrinkled. He combed his hair with his fingers. “You’re not there,” he said aloud. “Bugger yourself.”
What was it that had frightened him that first night he had come in from the garden? He had been slightly more sober that night: he’d half wanted to pound sense into Julia’s fuzzy mind, half simply to sit in her house and relish her atmosphere. He had lifted the vase of flowers to smell them. The house was a particularly taut web of noises, none of which he could identify. But he’d thought he could hear Julia moving about upstairs, talking to herself. Then, at first quietly, almost modestly, a feeling had grown in him that he was being watched, as if by some little animal. A feeling of eyes on him. Irrationally, this had grown: the mouse had become a tiger, something baleful and immense and savage. He had never felt such sudden terror. And it was as much despair as fear—an utter and complete hopelessness. Gripping the vase, he’d been afraid to turn around, knowing that something loathsome crouched behind him. Kate’s death. That very second seemed to hang behind him, about to engulf him. His head had hurt intolerably. Something rushed toward him, and he threw down the vase, making an awful clatter, and raced outside into the little garden without looking around.
Now he repeated “Bugger yourself,” and left the bathroom to stand at the foot of the stairs.
If Mark were up there he’d …he’d strangle him.
Magnus put a foot on the lowest stair.
Something was up there. His skin seemed hot.
He stepped back down to the carpet and felt an immediate release of pressure. Even the buzzing in his head diminished. The upstairs of the house was full of noises. A running, rushing noise: for reasons Magnus could not begin to define, this meant an appalling danger to him. He put his foot back on the stair and felt the atmosphere thicken about him. An iron band clamped about his forehead and tightened; his chest pulled for air.
He backed away further into the hall. Now the house almost palpably lay about him—to stay there would kill him. He felt it with utter certainty. He tried to pull his handkerchief from his pocket and found that his fingers were unable to close properly. His hand shook. The fingers could not coordinate. He was afraid to turn his back to the staircase. Eventually he made his way to the door.
When he stood outside on the front doorstep in the sun, Magnus wobbled a little and touched the bottle in his pocket, stroking it as a man pets a ‘‘clog. Out of the side of his eye he saw a face peering through a window at him and he wheeled to face it. The woman’s face, as pretty and mild as a saucer of cream, hung there by the drapes for a second and then jerked back. Magnus contracted his face at the spot where she had been. If he saw Julia, he’d beat the life out of her. Someone had to pay for this— humiliation. He’d batter anyone who got in his way.
The day after these events Julia drove her car south along the motorway, following the directions given her by the director of the clinic. She felt bright and illuminated with sleeplessness, her consciousness high and clear. She was driving very fast, and became aware of her speed only when she accidentally glanced at the dashboard. It seemed to her that she had never driven so well, with such confidence. Below the bright center of her consciousness, her body piloted the little car like an extension of her nerves.
In Guildford, the sight of a restau
rant made Julia suddenly aware that she was hungry. She had not eaten since receiving the letter; two letters, actually, the short scrawled note from Mrs. Rudge folded within a typed sheet from the director. The first of these had read:
Julia Lofting,
Is that your real name and do you live in my old house? You remember my case. Visit me if you wish.
HR
In her excitement she had been able only to skim the covering letter, which claimed for its writer a great pleasure that Mrs. Rudge was to be visited after so many years and that no official impediment would block such a visit. There had once been a problem with the press, who had treated “the patient” badly. It would be a further pleasure to the director if he could meet Mrs. Lofting after her talk with “the patient.” This had the whiff of a laden desk and busy secretary, behind them the stronger odor of hospitals and ammonia, and Julia had thrust it away after memorizing the directions to the Breadlands Clinic. She had reread Heather Radge’s scrawl a dozen times, looking for whatever she might find in her cramped, spidery letters. It was, most noticeably, an American handwriting, without the copperplate flourishes and separations of that generation’s hand in England.
Julia had spent that morning and afternoon foreseeing her meeting with Mrs. Rudge—she was like a greyhound pulling at its leash, blind to everything but what had just scrambled out of the bush. She had let the telephone ring unanswered, had finally left her home and walked until dark, through dingy sections of Hammersmith and Chiswick; past eleven, she realized that she was wandering near Gunners-bury Park, and took the underground back to Kensington. Not even the increasing noises and furies in the house had frightened her: they were a sign that she was indeed getting closer to whatever was directing her life. She was at last able to act.
And the poltergeist, the spirit, was pleased. It was almost showing itself. Of course if it were Kate’s spirit, it could not reveal itself until the very end—she was certain of that. But the heat in her bedroom had doubled in intensity and the noises at night—the rushing and rustling—were almost frantic. At times Julia heard voices, a woman’s and a girl’s, muttering from the hall. Snatches of music. Magnus had dwindled in her imagination. He was merely an outside force—baleful but not central to her. Magnus was a tool. Julia felt as though she were approaching the center of a blinding light too burning and intense to permit fear; she had to stand in the full clarity of that light, she had to understand all. Otherwise, Mrs. Fludd had died in vain. Perhaps even Kate’s death would be for nothing. She felt the full weight of the past impelling her toward this hot center of light.
