House of Windows

by John Langan

  "We ate there last night."

  "True, but I believe I heard you say that you would not need to dine anyplace else, now."

  "Can we just go?" I said. All at once, it was too much effort to keep up the light and witty banter. I wanted out of Provincetown, away from Marine Salvage and its gas mask, and that was that.

  "Of course we can," Roger said. "Sweetie, what's wrong?"

  "Nothing," I said, "low blood sugar, I guess." Because, really, how could I tell him I'd been freaked out by surplus military equipment?

  The gas mask was at the forefront of my thoughts during the ride to Wellfleet and our meal at Aesop's Tables. Have you eaten there? Isn't it good? It reminds me a little of the Canal House, mostly because they're both old houses—I think I read that Aesop's used to belong to a sea-captain, or something like that. We were seated in the back room, and the first thing I did was order a glass of white wine. Between the wine and the meal that followed, I relaxed enough for casual conversation not to take a concerted effort. After we'd paid the check, we went for a walk, toward the bay. There was a house for sale, this big white colonial thing that was a B&B. Roger paused. "What do you think?" he asked, "Should we take it, relocate here, abandon academia for the lives of innkeepers?" His tone was light as ever, but an undercurrent of seriousness startled me out of my gas mask meditations. I opened my mouth to say something that would prolong his musing. What came out was, "And leave Belvedere House?"

  I meant to ask him if he was serious, but my words ran away from my intentions. Roger turned to me, and I could see that he'd taken my question as a reproach, that implied in it he'd heard, "And abandon your son—again?" I said, "Roger," trying to add that that wasn't what I'd meant, but he sighed and said, "You're right, of course. There are responsibilities at home—I have duties that cannot be shirked. It was only the moment's whim."

  I swear, I could have kicked myself. Why couldn't I have said, "Yes"? How complicated is that? All the way back to the car, I kept trying to think of ways to revive the subject, but by the time Roger was unlocking my door, the moment had passed. Frustrated as I was by my inability to say the right thing—or my ability to say exactly the wrong thing—I felt a faint stir of hope. The jury was out on the long-term effects of my strategy of separating us from Belvedere House, but in the short-term, Roger's sleepwalking had abated and he was joking about moving up here. Yes, I could be clutching at straws, but these seemed good signs.

  I, on the other hand, was obsessed with army gear. As I lay awake on sleepwalking watch that night, it occurred to me that while coming to the Cape might have been a good idea for Roger, the change of scenery hadn't worked any wonders for me. Yes, I couldn't sense the house anymore. The feeling had steadily drained away the further we'd driven. But I was uncomfortably aware of where the sensation had been. It was like when an especially deep cut is healing, and it itches deep under your skin, where you can't scratch it. If those feelings had receded, they'd been replaced by other things, by my fixation on this gas mask.

  Roger breathing steadily, the house quiet, I pictured the mask, the flat disks of its eyes, the round canister dangling below them, the assortment of straps at its rear. It was olive green, except for the straps, which were black. Despite what I'm sure must have been the dozens of people who'd handled it, its lenses were clean enough for you to see yourself reflected in them. I lay in bed listening to the ocean breeze rustling the trees, trying to understand the urge that had driven me back inside Marine Salvage. I knew that the gas mask reminded me of Ted, but you have to admit, it's a pretty strange object to fixate on. A camouflage jacket, a regimental patch, even the kind of knife he'd carried—any of the things I'd seen in the photos of Ted I'd hung around the house would have made more sense. Branches whispered. Roger snorted once, twice, made a sound that might have been a word, might have been a cough, and resumed his sleep. I was near the edges of unconsciousness, myself, and probably would have slipped across the border had it not been for the gas mask, which I knew was waiting on the other side. What role it was going to play, I wasn't sure, only that it wouldn't be pleasant. The anticipation of encountering it in a place where I had even less control than I did in the waking world kept me on this side of sleep.

  Three o'clock came and went. Roger stirred, but only to turn over. Fatigue and unease were waging a battle in me, fatigue pulling my eyelids down, unease pushing them back up. It wasn't going to be long until unease gave in and left me to my nightmares, which I was almost tired enough to accept as the cost of sleep. Then, in one of those intuitive leaps that are so sudden you're halfway to accepting them before you've thought about whether they make any sense in the first place, I realized that I had fixated on the mask because that was what Ted looked like, now. Not literally—it was more a kind of analogue for the changes death had made to him. He had become something like this—something other. Even as the more rational part of my brain was throwing up its hands and saying, "Wait a minute! How do you know this? Since when have you had any contact with Ted?" I was back in the land of the completely awake, chased from sleep by the conviction that this grotesque mask was like a shadow cast by Ted's true face.

  However irrational—a-rational—that belief was, I was immediately and totally convinced of it. Dawn was paling the sky. I pushed myself out of bed and went downstairs, where I made a bitterly strong pot of coffee that I drank while watching an old John Wayne movie on PBS, Red River.

  By the time the credits were rolling, the sun had crested the horizon and was shouting light into the house. From the kitchen, I heard a mug thunk on the counter, the coffee pot rattle. Roger must have come down while I was engrossed in the end of the movie and made straight for the caffeine. Upstairs, the bathroom door closed. I sat up on the couch. For the briefest of instants, that feeling I had in Belvedere House, that almost-sensation I thought I'd left in another state, flickered on like a candle teased into flame just long enough to be blown out. There was—it was different from what I experienced in the other house. There was no awareness of the Cape House as such. To be honest, there wasn't much of anything except—except in the kitchen, where I could sense—nothing, really—it was as if I could tell that someone had been there, but wasn't anymore. I stood, and walked into the dining room, expecting to see a steaming cup of coffee sitting beside the coffee maker.

  The counter was bare. I heard Roger's feet padding down the stairs, and decided that this was the day we were going back to Martha's Vineyard. Obviously, the Cape House was not remote enough to let us escape the weirdness that had invaded our lives in Huguenot. We'd never made any good memories here, so there was nothing in place to keep the bad stuff out. The Vineyard, though—from one end to the other, the island was crowded with echoes of the four days we'd spent there seeing the sights, shopping the shops, sampling the restaurants. To my sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated brain, it seemed like a haven, one I was prepared to spend the rest of our vacation on if it offered me peace. By the time Roger reached the bottom of the stairs, my arguments were ready. He took some convincing. Coffee in hand, he heard my request that we drive to Wood's Hole this morning so that we could take the ferry to the Vineyard in time for lunch. When I was finished, he said, "Why go to Martha's Vineyard? We've barely arrived here."

  "We have," I said, "but we're not going to be here for very long, and how often are we this close to the Vineyard?" I was talking too fast; I couldn't help myself.

  "But we've just been, the other month."

  "I know, and wasn't it wonderful?"

  "Yes, but—"

  "Then doesn't it make sense for us to go back there?" It didn't—not really. We had been recently enough, and there was plenty to do around us, for Roger to have an argument, but I didn't let him realize that. The debate wasn't done—hadn't gone much further than what I've told you—and I was hustling him back upstairs, telling him he had a half-hour to be showered, shaved, dressed, and ready to go. To speed things up, I would use the downstairs shower. All the way down Ro
ute 6, Roger questioned why we were doing this, not angrily, but in the tone of someone who finds himself carried along by forces beyond his control. I answered him with variations on the same response. We'd had such a great time on the Vineyard before, how could we not visit it when it was so near?

  Once we'd arrived in Wood's Hole, Roger had accepted that, impromptu as it was, this was how we were going to be spending the rest of our day. Should the Vineyard feel more congenial, I wasn't sure how I was going to convince him to stay there tonight. I could try to delay us enough that we'd miss the last ferry, but that would be an uphill fight. Roger was one of those people who knows where you have to be when, and plots out the shortest route there and when you'll have to leave if you want to arrive ten minutes early. I could fake illness, but if I didn't time it properly that could land me on the ferry even sooner. I might have more luck telling him I wanted to spend the night there and that was that. Especially if the B&B we'd stayed in the last time had a vacancy, I might be able to pass it off as more romantic impulsiveness.

  The B&B, when we came to it, was booked solid, but by then the only thing that could have kept me on that island was a major storm cutting off ferry service, and even then, I probably would have insisted we hire an intrepid fisherman to get us away from here as quickly as possible, whatever the risks. Needless to say, the day had not turned out as I'd planned.

  While we were waiting to board the ferry, a heavy fog rolled in off the water. One minute, Roger and I were gazing out over the harbor; the next, it was gone, whited out. Daytime fog is strange, different from the fog you encounter at night. Maybe it's the conditioning of hundreds of horror movies, but nighttime fog is inherently creepy. It makes what you see even darker, more threatening, and of course it's the perfect substance to write all your fears onto. But—because of those same movies—it's like a special effect, you know? You half-expect your headlights to pick out a massive vat of dry-ice steaming off to one side of the road. Daytime fog is grayer than the nighttime stuff; although I guess that's because of the time it's out. It does the same thing: fades what's near, obscures what's far, but to a different effect. Daytime fog turns what's around you into a giant stage set, setting off what you can see as so many props, reducing the rest to folds of gray backdrop. Standing in this kind of fog—especially when it's as thick as this stuff was; I swear, this may have been the thickest fog I've ever been in—I always feel like I'm seeing through to how the world really is, although I'm not sure what that state is. All the world's a stage? Sort of, but not really.

  The fog filled the distance to the Vineyard. We were out of sight of the mainland while we were still in the harbor, and we didn't see the island until we were docking at it. In between, we hardly seemed to be going anywhere. If you paid attention, you could feel the ship moving up and down on the water; if you stood outside, a strong wind fluttered your hair and tugged at your clothes; if you looked over the side, you saw the sea foaming away from the hull—but it all seemed curiously static. Gulls came and went out of the fog, as if pieces of it had broken off, swooping in to keep pace with the ferry, then veering away. A few passengers stood at the rail and threw food to them. Our previous trip, the day had been overcast and dim but clear. We'd watched the mainland sink into the ocean behind, the Vineyard rise from the water ahead. Roger and I had sat on deck, squinting out across the pewter waves at the various boats sharing the ocean with us, sailboats with their sails up and full of wind, speedboats skipping over the waves, trawlers chugging out to their fishing grounds. Now, we sat in the galley, nursing cups of coffee.

  Despite the fog, I was relieved to be on our way somewhere safe—relieved and excited, enough so that I could've done without any more coffee. I let Roger buy me a cup because there was no harm in being sure, and because it gave him something to do. Since we'd climbed the ramp up to the ferry, he hadn't spoken. I asked him what was on his mind, he said, "Nothing," and I couldn't decide if nothing meant nothing, or something masquerading as nothing.

  When the captain announced that we'd be docking shortly, Roger and I abandoned our table and returned to the deck, where we stood straining to see anything. Through the soles of my shoes, I felt the ferry slowing, even as I heard its engine changing pitch. There were dark shapes to the side—poles, pilings, the pier. With a last lurch that had me grabbing for the rail, the ferry came to a halt and we were at Martha's Vineyard. The fog was heavier here. Crossing the gangplank to the pier, I couldn't see the water slapping the pilings below, while the pier itself dissolved into grayness a short distance ahead of us. I had been sure I'd have no trouble finding my way around the island once we arrived—on our last trip, I'd had the lay of the land by the end of our first day there, and I could still visualize the Vineyard's towns and roads and how they intersected. But the fog confused everything.

  You know how it is in dense fog. You can't see any landmarks, all the distances are off—longer or shorter than they should be. The end of the pier seemed to take forever to reach. For a moment, I was afraid I was leading us in the wrong direction. When we reached the road and found a bus letting out passengers, we hurried on board without asking the driver his destination. I hoped it was Oak Bluffs, which was where we'd spent most of our previous visit and which is the next town over from where the ferry docks. Even if the bus was headed in the opposite direction, I didn't care. The road loops around the island. We'd get where we were going.

  We lucked out. Oak Bluffs was the next stop. In town, the fog was slightly less dense. Looking up Main Street was like looking through sheets of gauze hung one behind the other. The closest shops and restaurants were reasonably clear; the ones a little farther away were washed out, like a painting someone had smeared a brush full of white across; the buildings beyond that were faint geometry. Roger wanted to have lunch. I wanted to ride the carousel.

  Do you know about the carousel? I'm pretty sure it's on the national register of historic landmarks or something. We'd discovered it on our last trip. I'd read about it in a guidebook. I hadn't realized how elaborate it was, with all the hand-carved and -painted horses, and the arm they lower so you can grab for the brass ring as you swing by. I'd never done that before, never been on a carousel that had one of those long cartridges full of hand-sized rings. To be honest, I hadn't known they existed. I hadn't gotten the brass ring. There were these kids, teenagers, who could slide out four or five rings at a time. Video game reflexes, right? One of them got the ring almost every time, except for when a tourist who shouted in Spanish took it. I didn't care. I mean, I would have liked to find out what prize the brass ring brought you, but being on the carousel was enough. I'd dragged Roger to it at least once a day for the four days we were on the Vineyard, except for Saturday, when I went twice.

  Yes, I am a big fan of carousels. My dad used to take me on them at every opportunity. Like every little girl, I'd wanted a pony, which there was no way for my parents to afford. Apparently, I was pretty insistent. Not only did I ask for a pony for my birthday, Christmas, and Easter—in the months between, I'd draw elaborate pictures of me and my pony-to-be that I'd magnet to the refrigerator. I invented lengthy adventures for the two of us that I'd spend all of dinner narrating to my parents. I asked my mom to make me a list of everything I'd have to do to insure Santa brought me a pony this December. (Which, may I say, she took full advantage of, year after year.) I was a girl on a mission. That my pony continuously failed to appear did nothing to diminish my resolve. For a while, I think my parents were worried about me. To compensate for my lack of a flesh-and-blood pony, they bought me all kinds of toy ones, from tiny porcelain horses to a stuffed animal that was practically big enough to ride. With the amount of money they spent on fake ponies, I'm sure they could have afforded a real one.

  Anyway, the other thing Mom and Dad did was find carousels for me to ride and then let me stay on them till I was so dizzy I almost fell off my wooden horse. Mostly, this meant visiting all the county fairs within a two-hour radius of our house, but
they also took me to theme parks like Great Adventure and the Great Escape. I have to give them credit. I can't imagine it was any fun for them to drive two, two and a half, sometimes three hours so I could ride a wooden horse into nausea. The benefits of being an only child, I guess. And you know that, as soon as my stomach had settled, I was ready for another thirty or forty circuits. I wouldn't say I outgrew my pony obsession so much as other things occupied my attention. Every now and again, if circumstances allowed, I would indulge it, go horseback riding, or spend the day at the races in Saratoga—or ride the carousel on Martha's Vineyard.

  When we'd first walked into the big barnlike building that houses the carousel, I'd been delighted. Roger had been amused by my enthusiasm; then a bit befuddled by my insistence that we return the following day; then more than a little annoyed when I compared him accompanying me to this carousel to my father taking me to past ones. I thought it was funny; he could be prickly about things like that. So much for Freud.

  Roger's experience with carousels had been limited. His parents hadn't taken him to any when he was a child. Joanne hadn't liked them—there's a shock; although, with that face, she'd have fit right in. Ted had wanted rides with more action, roller coasters, bumper cars—apparently, he and Roger had never missed a chance to drive undersized cars into one another. How's that for blatant symbolism? If Roger didn't fully appreciate the carousel, he was willing to stand holding my jacket as I rode a wooden horse up and down to the strains of calliope music. On the car ride down from Wellfleet earlier that morning, he had said, "I assume we will be returning to the carousel," and do you know, with everything that was going on, my fixation on the gas mask, I had forgotten about it?