And all the time, the witch-compass rattled in his hand with ever-increasing eagerness.
He had just reached the hairpin bend that would take him down to the highway, when he heard a car coming, from quite a long way off, but coming fast. He began to hurry around the bend and down the steeply sloping road, and as he did so he glimpsed headlights from the direction of New Milford. It looked as if it were travelling at more than seventy miles an hour.
He hadn’t even reached the highway when he heard a sickening bang and a shrieking of tyres, and then a sound like an entire junkyard dropping out of the sky. Wheels, fenders, mufflers, windows, crunching and screeching and smashing. Then complete silence, which was worse.
Paul came running around the corner and saw the bloodied body of a dead deer lying in the scrub on the far side of the highway, its legs twisted at extraordinary angles, as if it were trying to ballet dance. Almost a hundred feet further up, a battered, dented Chevrolet was resting on its roof. Shattered glass glittered all over the blacktop.
‘Jesus.’ Paul started to run towards the wreck. As he came closer he saw that the driver was still in his seat, suspended upside-down in his seat belt. His deflated air bag hung in front of him, and it had obviously saved his life. He was groaning loudly and trying to wrestle himself free.
‘Hold on!’ Paul called out. He crunched though the glass and then he realized that he was splashing through a quickly widening pool of gasoline.
‘Get me out of here,’ the driver begged him. He was a heavily built, fiftyish man. His grey hair was matted with blood. ‘I think my goddam legs are crushed.’
‘OK, OK, just hold on,’ Paul reassured him. He was about to put the witch-compass into his pocket when it gave a high-pitched shikkashikkashikka! that sounded like a snake hissing. Paul looked down and saw the driver’s pigskin billfold lying on the road, right in front of him. Even without picking it up, he could see that it was stuffed with money.
‘Oh God, please get me out of here,’ moaned the driver. ‘This is hurting so much.’
Paul reluctantly took his eyes away from the billfold. He took hold of the Chevrolet’s door handle and tried to drag it open, but it was wedged solid. He went around to the other side of the car and tried the passenger door, but that wouldn’t budge either.
He came back to the driver’s side and reached into the broken window. He managed to locate the man’s seat-belt buckle. But the crash had jammed it and the man’s bulging stomach was straining against it. His shirt was soaked in warm, sticky blood.
‘Please, I’m dying here. Please.’
Paul said, ‘OK, but I can’t get you out by myself. I’m going to have to call the fire department.’
‘Hurry, please.’
Paul took hold of his hand and squeezed it. ‘Just hold on. I’ll be as quick as I can.’
But in his pocket the witch-compass went shikkashikkashikka!
Paul slowly stepped away from the wreck. He looked down and there was the pigskin billfold. He could see fifties and twenties. More than enough to settle his restaurant bill. More than enough to buy him a new coat and a new pair of jeans and see him through the next few days. He hesitated for a second and turned back to the man hanging in the car, and the man was looking up at him, bleeding and broken and pleading with him: Get me out of here, for Chrissakes. But the worst possible idea came into his head – an idea so terrible that he could hardly believe that he had thought of it. And inside his pocket, the witch-compass rattled and shook as if it were a living thing.
He stooped down and picked up the billfold. The man in the car watched him, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Paul took all of the cash out of the billfold except for $50. He didn’t want to make it obvious that the man had been robbed. He held up the billfold for a moment and then he dropped it back on to the road.
Shikkashikkashikka.
‘What are you going to do?’ the driver asked him. ‘Look, take the fucking money. I don’t care. Just call the fire department, get me out of here.’
But Paul knew that it would be different once the man was released. I was trapped, I was dying, and he stole my money, right in front of me.
He walked a few paces back down the road. ‘No!’ the driver screamed at him. ‘Don’t leave me here! Don’t!’
Paul stopped. He lowered his head. In his pocket he felt the witch-compass, warm and thrilling. The witch-compass was guiding him away from the wreck, back to his parents’ house. Leave him, what does he mean to you? He was driving too fast anyhow. Everybody knows there are deer on these highways. Supposing you hadn’t woken up? Supposing the witch-compass hadn’t brought you here. The stupid bastard would have died anyhow, alone.
‘Don’t leave me!’ the driver screamed at him. ‘I’m dying here, for Chrissake! Don’t leave me!’
In one pocket, Paul felt the witch-compass. In the other, he felt his father’s cigarette lighter. He turned around. There are two prices, Jonquil had told him. Fourteen francs; and a moral choice, every time the witch-compass finds you what you want.
The driver was suddenly silent. He had seen Paul flick the cigarette lighter, and stand in the road with the flame dipping in the early-morning breeze. The flame was reflected in the gasoline which was running across the road into the ditch.
Paul genuflected, and lit it.
The fire raced back towards the upturned car. The driver twisted and struggled in one last desperate effort to pull himself free.
‘You could have had the money!’ he screamed at Paul. ‘I would have given you the fucking money!’
Then the whole car exploded like a Viking fireship and furiously burned. Paul gradually backed away, feeling the heat on his face and the cold wind blowing on his back. He saw the driver’s arm wagging from side to side, and then it kind of hooked up and bent as the heat of the fire shrivelled his tendons. As he walked up the winding road towards his parents’ house he could still see it burning behind the trees.
Afterwards, he sat down on his bed and counted his money. Six hundred and fifty-five dollars, still reeking of gasoline. On top of the bureau, the witch-compass lay silent.
He drove into New Milford the next morning to pay off Randolph’s Restaurant. ‘Glad you didn’t try to leave the county.’ The owner smiled, counting his money. ‘I’d have had to set my old dog out looking for you.’
The dog lay in the corner of the restaurant, an ancient basset hound, snoring as loudly as Paul’s father.
On his way home, he took a different route, the road that led up to Gaylordsville and then meandered through the woods to South Kent. He didn’t want to go past the scene of last night’s auto wreck again. This morning, when he had driven by, the rusty and blackened Chevrolet was still lying on its roof in the road, surrounded by fire trucks and police cars with their lights flashing.
It was another pin-sharp day. All around him, the woods were ablaze with yellows and crimsons and dazzling scarlets. Every now and then he checked his eyes in the rear-view mirror to see if he could detect any guilt, or any emotion at all. But all he felt was reasonably satisfied. Not over-satisfied, but the edge had been taken off his anxiety.
He slowed as he reached the intersection where the road led back towards New Preston. About a quarter of a mile beyond it, screened by trees, stood the yellow-painted house where Katie Sayward’s aunt lived, and where Katie was staying after the break-up of her marriage. The times he had driven past here when he was younger, hoping to see her. Maybe he should pay her a visit now. But what would he say? ‘You thought I was an idiot when we were at school together, sorry about your marriage’?
He drove past slowly, no more than ten miles an hour, ducking his head so that he could peer beneath the branches of the trees. Nobody was in sight. But as he pressed the accelerator to move away, he heard a crisp shikk! shikk! shikk!
He slowed down again. The witch-compass was inside the glovebox. It started a series of quick, rhythmic rattles. As he drove further away from Katie’s house, how
ever, the rattles became less and less frequent. When he reached the next bend, they stopped altogether.
He pulled the car in by the side of the road. The witch-compass remained silent. It’s trying to tell me something about Katie. It’s guiding me back.
He turned the car around and drove slowly back towards the yellow-painted house. Inside the glovebox, the witch-compass started to rattle again shikkaSHIKKAshikkaSHIKKA like a Gabonese drumbeat.
Katie’s marriage has broken up. Maybe the witch-compass is trying to tell me that she needs somebody. Maybe it’s trying to tell me that Katie needs me.
Cautiously, he drove in through the gates and up the driveway to the house. Nobody came out to greet him and the place looked as if it were deserted. No vehicles around, and no smoke pouring from chimneys. Paul climbed out of the car and went up to the front porch and knocked. There was no answer, so he knocked again. He didn’t like the knocker. It was bronze, cast into the face of a sly, blind old man. He waited, whistling between his teeth.
No, nobody in. The witch-compass must have made a mistake. He walked back to the car and opened the door. The rattling inside the glovebox was practically hysterical, and he could hear the witch-compass knocking from side to side, as if it were trying to break out.
‘All right, already,’ he said. He took the witch-compass out of the glovebox and held it in his hand. Then he walked back to the house, and knocked again – so loudly this time that he could hear the knocks echo in the hall. Still no reply.
‘There, what did I tell you? There’s nobody home.’
Shikkashikkashikka rattled the witch-compass.
Paul pointed it towards the front door of the house, and its rattling died away. He swept it slowly backwards and forwards, and the witch-compass rattled most excitedly when he pointed it to the side of the house.
‘OK, let’s check this out.’
He walked around the house, past a trailing wisteria, until he found the kitchen door at the back. He knocked with his knuckle on the window, just in case there was somebody inside, and then he turned the handle. It was unlocked, so he opened it and stepped inside.
‘Hello!’ he called. ‘Anybody home?’
Shikkashikkashikka.
‘Look, it’s no good shaking like that. There’s nobody home.’
Shikkashikkashikka.
The witch-compass guided him into the hall, towards the foot of the staircase. At the top of the staircase there was a landing with an amber stained-glass window, so that the inside of the house looked like a sepia photograph.
Shikkashikkashikka.
‘Upstairs? All right then. I just hope you know what you’re doing.’
Paul climbed the stairs and the witch-compass led him along the landing to the very last door. He knocked again, but there was no reply, and so he carefully opened it. The witch-compass was shaking wildly in his hand and he had to grip it tight so that he wouldn’t drop it.
He found himself in a large bedroom, with an old-fashioned dark-oak bed, and a huge walnut armoire. The windows were covered in heavy lace curtains with peacock patterns on them, so the light inside the bedroom was very dim. The bed was covered with an antique patchwork quilt; on top of the quilt lay Katie Sayward, naked.
Now the witch-compass was silent. Paul took a breath and held it, and didn’t know if he ought to leave immediately, or stay where he was, watching her. She was older, of course, and she had cut her long hair short, but she was still just as beautiful as he remembered. She was lying on her back with her eyes closed, her arms spread wide as if she were floating, like Ophelia. She was full-breasted, with a flat stomach and long legs. My perfect woman, thought Paul. The kind of woman I’ve always wanted.
He took two or three steps into the room. The floorboards creaked and he hesitated, but she didn’t show any signs of waking. Now he could see between her legs, and he stood transfixed, breathing softly through his mouth.
He took another step closer. He wanted to touch her so much that it was a physical ache, but he knew what would happen if he tried. The same ridicule that he had suffered when he’d asked her for a date at high school. Shame and embarrassment, and trouble with the law.
It was then, however, that he saw the empty bottle of Temazepam tablets on her nightstand and the tipped-over bottle of vodka on the quilt and the letter she was holding in her right hand.
He took another step closer, then another. Then he sat on the bed beside her and said, ‘Katie … Katie, can you hear me? It’s Paul.’
Katie didn’t stir. Paul gently patted her cheek. She was still breathing. She was still warm. But she was deathly pale. He peeled back one of her eyelids with his thumb. Her blue eye stared up at him sightlessly, its pupil widely dilated.
He lifted her right wrist so that he could read the note. ‘Dearest Aunt Jessie. I know this is a selfish and horrible thing to do to you. But a life without James just isn’t any kind of life at all.’
Paul felt her pulse. It was thready, but her heart was still beating. If he called the paramedics now, there was a strong possibility that they could save her. She would be grateful to him, wouldn’t she, for the rest of her life? There might even be a chance that …
His arm brushed against her bare breast and it gave a heavy, complicated sway. There might be a chance in the future that he and Katie could get together. But if they got together now, then he could be sure of having her. Maybe just once. But even once was better than never.
He stood up and very deliberately took off his clothes, staring down at Katie all the time. He had never dared to dream that this could ever happen; and now it was, and he could do whatever he wanted to her, anything, and she wouldn’t resist.
He climbed on to the quilt. His body was thin and wiry and his skin was very white, except for his face and his forearms and his knees, which had been tanned dark by the equatorial sun. He kissed Katie on the lips, and then her eyelids, and then her cheeks, and he whispered in her ear that he loved her, and that she was the most desirable woman he had ever known. He squeezed her breasts and sucked at her nipples. Then he ran his tongue all the way down her stomach and buried his face between her thighs.
He stayed in her bedroom for over an hour, and he used her body in every way he had ever fantasized about. He couldn’t believe it was real, and he wanted it never to end. He turned her over, face down in the pillow, and forced himself into her, but it was then that she gave a shudder that he could feel all the way through him, right to the soles of his feet.
He leaned forward, his cheek close to hers. ‘Katie? Speak to me, Katie! Just let me hear you breathing, Katie, come on!’
She was silent and her body was completely lifeless. He took himself out of her and stood up, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead. Shikk! went the witch-compass.
Paul dressed, feeling numb; and then he rearranged Katie as he had found her. He cleaned between her thighs with tissues, wiped her face. He had bruised her a little: there were fingermarks over her buttocks and breasts, and a lovebite on her neck. But who would ever think that he had inflicted them? So far as anybody was aware, they hardly even knew each other.
He left the house by the kitchen door, taking care to wipe the door handle with the tail of his shirt. He drove back the way he had come, through Gaylordsville, crossing the Housatonic at Fort Hill so that he could deny having driven back towards his parents’ house on the South Kent Road. He even made a point of tooting his horn and waving to Charlie Sheagus, the realtor.
And how do you feel? he asked his eyes, in the rear-view mirror.
Satisfied, his eyes replied. Not fully satisfied, but it’s taken the edge off.
His father was waiting for him in the living room when he returned. He was wearing a chequered red shirt and oversized jeans and he looked crumple-faced and serious. His mother was sitting in the corner, in the shadows, her hands clasped on her lap.
‘Where’ve you been?’ his father wanted to know.
‘Hey, why the long fac
e? I went down to Randolph’s to settle the check.’
‘It’s a pity you haven’t been settling all of your checks the same way.’
Paul said, ‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about Budget Rental Cars, who just called up to say that your credit rating hadn’t checked out. And Marriott Hotels, who said that you bounced a personal cheque for two hundred dollars. And then I called Dennison Minerals, your own company, in Gabon, and all I got was a message saying that your number was discontinued.’
Paul sat down in one of the old-fashioned wooden-backed armchairs. ‘I’ve been having some cash-flow difficulty, OK?’
‘So why didn’t you say so?’
‘Because you didn’t want to hear it, did you? All you wanted to hear was success.’
His father jabbed his finger at him. ‘What kind of person do you take me for? You’re my son. If you’re successful, I exult in it. If you fail, I commiserate. I’m your father, for Chrissakes.’
‘Commiserate? Those Gabonese bastards took my business, my house, they took everything. I don’t want commiseration. I want revenge.’
His father came up to him and laid both of his hands on his shoulder and looked him straight in the face. ‘Forget about revenge. You can always start over.’
‘Oh, like you started over when you lost your job at Linke Overmeyer? With a little house, and a millionth-of-an-acre of ground, and a row of beans? I had a mansion, in Libreville! Seven bedrooms, four bathrooms, a swimming pool, a circular hallway you could have ice skated on, if you’d had any ice, and if you’d had any skates.’
‘So what?’ his father asked him. ‘That’s what life is all about. Winning and losing. Why did you have to lie about it?’
‘Because of you,’ said Paul.
‘Because of me? What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Because you always expected me to do better than you. That was all I ever got from you, from the time I was old enough to understand anything. “You’ll do better than me. One day, you’ll be rich and you’ll buy a house for your mother and me. With a lake, and swans.” Jesus Christ! I was nine years old, and you wanted me to give you fucking swans!’
Figures of Fear Page 18
