by Peter Straub
Laura’s footsteps came down the stairs; a moment later she opened the living-room door. “I’ll work on one more floor,” she said, “and then I’ll have to quit. How are you doing with the windows?”
“One more to go in there. About forty-five minutes’ work. When you’re done, come in and keep me company.”
“Well, I don’t know. My last employer knocked me up.”
“He remembers the occasion with gratitude,” Richard said.
A few minutes later Laura poked her head around the door again. “Say Richard, I was thinking.”
“Yes?” He looked up, letting the heavy weight swing on the white new cord.
“If you really want to go over to that old man’s house tomorrow, I won’t mind. Honest. I’ll just go to bed early.” She smiled at him. “Only because you were nice enough to pretend you saw that cat too.”
“I wasn’t pretending.”
Laura withdrew her head from the doorframe, and Richard turned back to his job. He looped the cord over the pulley and tied the loose ends to the upper weight. He moved the sash up and down and saw that now it worked smoothly. Then he took up a handful of four-inch finish nails and used one to fix the stop molding in place. He moved the sash up and down again; it still worked smoothly. He carefully hammered in the other nails, checking the movement of the sash after each one.
Another window repaired, and only one more to go in this room. Three more days’ work would see all the windows in working order. On Monday he and Laura would sign the papers in Ulick Byrne’s office, and the lawyers could stop having heart attacks.
He deliberately was not thinking about Billy Bentley: that had not happened.
Then for a moment, not knowing where the vision came from, Richard saw a graveyard erupting on his front lawn: saw the graves splitting open, earth and headstones exploding into the air, then the bodies, the skeletons, the individual separate bones spewing up out of the ground: now saw the earth vomiting corpses and bones. The very earth was tearing at itself, destroying itself in a paroxysm of revulsion. Grass, clods of earth, broken pieces of headstones and broken pieces of bone went spiraling up. He shook his head. Oh, God. Billy Bentley, rest in peace.
He moved on to the next window. His hands were shaking.
PART TWO
Establishment
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fond kiss, and then for ever.
—Robert Burns
1
The First Threshold
1
For most of that week, Patsy and Les McCloud avoided each other, wrapped in their separate and very different conceptions of what had happened between them. Patsy did not want to fight with Les, so she was uncharacteristically happy that he had retreated; she wanted to sit quietly and chew on the new perception of herself and her husband she had come to before meeting Tabby at Deli-icious. Since that Tuesday, Les had been acting aggrieved and wounded, barely meeting her eye; he was pouting. He thought he could force her to apologize for the things she had said by putting on these infantine looks, and such tactics had been successful in the past. But Les looking stricken no longer infected Patsy with guilt, in fact she resented that once it had; as long as he was sick she would care for him, but she did not intend to bring in his tray, as it were, on her knees. When she looked at the pouting whiskery man on her marital bed she saw a patient, not a husband, and her mind led her through a series of propositions: if your man is supposed to be a tough masculine businessman, but if he is afraid that he can never be as tough and manly as he thinks he must be, then you are supposed to assure him that he already is; if his insecurities mean that he has to beat you several times a year just to make sure that your assurances were not lies, then you are supposed to take the beatings quietly; if he comes home with shit in his pants like a baby, then you can be certain that pretty soon reassurance time is going to roll around again.
By Saturday Les was out of bed, and Patsy retreated into the spare bedroom with the library’s copy of D. B. Bach’s History of Patchin. At eleven-thirty, Les looked in and said, “What about lunch?”
She said that she was not hungry.
“What about my lunch?”
“I’m sure there’s food in the refrigerator.”
“Jesus Christ.” Les slammed the door.
Two hours later he came in the room again. He was glaring at her and his fists were balled. “You trying to get back at me or something?”
“I just want to be alone,” Patsy said.
“Okay. I’m going to the golf course. Be alone, if you want to act like a spoiled kid.”
* * *
Tabby and Clark Smithfield spent Saturday in a gloomy, but not a poisoned, silence. Clark tried to explain to his son that the fault for his charade had been Sherri’s—that Sherri’s unwillingness to adjust to Hampstead and Connecticut had driven him out of the house, and Tabby saw that his father believed this. “We’ll get by, kid,” Clark said. It was noon, and he was working on his second drink. “We’re better off without her.”
They watched television all afternoon. At six Clark drove to an Italian restaurant on the Post Road and came back with an enormous pizza. Wordlessly they watched the local news, the national news, Solid Gold, Enos, and the beginning of the Saturday Night Movie, From Russia with Love. Tabby kept looking at his watch as the light from the windows died and the nearly bookless “library” at “Four Hearths” darkened. “Dad,” he said, “are you going to need a real job pretty soon?”
“I have a job,” Clark said. He sipped at his Irish whiskey, looked sideways at Tabby. “I can get work anytime I need it.”
“But you don’t have a job,” Tabby said. “You don’t have a job now.”
“I told you I did, didn’t I?” Clark said, not looking at him.
Tabby stood up and left the room. Being with his father was like watching somebody drown. For a time he stood outside on the front steps. The trees of Greenbank and Hermitage Avenue inhaled on the short front lawn of “Four Hearths,” exhaled farther down the quiet street. Above them the passive stars marched in order. Tabby went down the steps to sit on the grass and wait for the Norman twins.
2
Shortly after nine-thirty that night, Richard Allbee pulled into Graham Williams’ driveway. When he got out of his car, he turned around to see how the old Sayre house looked from across the street. Already it looked improved, he thought—it looked inhabited. Like children and animals, houses too were civilized by the touch of informed love. That he had imagined seeing Billy Bentley there more than ever seemed a delusion; he was glad that he had told Laura, now in the hated water bed reading a Joyce Carol Oates novel and watching a James Bond movie, no more of it than that he had seen the cat.
Light footsteps came tapping toward him from the Charleston Road corner. Involuntarily Richard tensed his muscles. He braced himself to see a large gray tomcat padding silently into the circle of light just up from the corner.
Delusion, delusion.
A figure turned the corner. It was coming toward him. Then the figure emerged into the light of the streetlamp, and Richard saw that it was Patsy McCloud. She was carrying a thick book under one arm. Apart from the relief at the disappearance of his ridiculous fear, Richard felt a certain guilty pleasure in the sight of Patsy. He waved at her. She wore a pale blue shirt and white bib overalls which fit snugly at her waist and billowed around her legs. Patsy waved back when she recognized him.
“I should have known that you’d be here,” he said.
“I thought you and Laura might both be here,” Patsy said as she walked toward him over the lawn.
“Laura’s in bed with James Bond.”
“And Les has the flu. On the whole, Laura has the better bargain.”
Richard asked her about the book she was carrying as they went toward the front door.
“Did Mr. Williams tell you anything about why he wanted to see us together? Did he show you the plaque on Mount Avenue?”
R
ichard shook his head and pushed the bell.
“Then I’d better wait for him to explain it.”
“All Will Be Explained.”
“All.” She smiled at him.
Williams opened the door and peered out through the screen. “Both of you! I’m very gratified.” He opened the screen door and stepped out of the way, allowing them in. He was wearing his Yankee cap and a gray PAL T-shirt too small for him.
Patsy and Richard came into a hallway lined with bookshelves. Books leaned, books formed skyscrapers and towers on the top shelves, books were lined spine-up on the floor in front of the shelves. “Where do we go?” Patsy asked. The light bulb hanging from a cord in the middle of the hallway had burned out.
“First door on the left.”
Patsy, then Richard, went into the living room. Here too the walls were covered with bookshelves, and books were stacked to waist height at intervals before the shelves. Framed graphics and posters for ancient films stood on the floor, propped either against the shelves or against the stacks of books. A dim overhead light burned, as did a standard lamp beside the shabby green couch, and a brass gooseneck lamp on the white pine table which held a typewriter—an old black manual—and several neat stacks of paper. The room smelled of must, age, books.
Williams hovered in the door. “Make yourselves comfortable on the couch. Or on the chair.” He nodded toward a brown leather library chair which seemed to dissolve back into the shelves of unjacketed books. The chair was so worn it looked as though it had been sanded—the dye had shredded away from the leather. A tall floor lamp and a heavy marble ashtray stood beside it. “Can I get you anything? A drink? Coffee?”
Both Patsy and Richard asked for coffee.
“Perking away. Be right back.”
In seconds he was back with three cups; he set the tray on the coffee table before the green couch. Then he picked up one cup and pulled a metal chair from under the typing table and sat, facing the other two. Simultaneously they sipped the hot strong coffee. Richard was not sure why he had thought he ought to come. This would be a waste of time: Williams was a lonely old man. He had invited them for their company, that was all. Richard rubbed his hand over the arm of the couch. The raised ornate pattern had been almost worn away.
“I suppose I ought to apologize,” Williams said. He removed the Yankee cap and danced his fingers over his freckled bald crown. “This place deserves to be fixed up, and I never had the money to do it. Just got used to it instead. I put up all the bookshelves myself, forty years ago. Nowadays I couldn’t even afford the lumber.” His fingers still danced and drummed on the top of his head. The old man was nervous. Richard wondered how long it had been since another person had been in the house with Williams; how long it had been since a woman had been in this room.
Then the old man startled him by saying, “Patsy’s a psychic, you know. Same as her grandmother, Josephine Tayler. There’s a boy in the neighborhood who’s another one. Tabby Smithfield. James Tabb Smithfield, that is. Up on Hermitage. Don’t suppose you’re one too, Allbee?”
“Me?” Richard said, swallowing too much coffee. “A psychic? No.”
“I’m not either. Except for the one time I was, when I saw a man and knew . . . well, never mind what I knew. I’ll save that for a time when young Tabby’s with us. I gather you know about your family and all that? About the Greens?”
For a moment Richard had thought Williams had meant his father, and he was already shaking his head impatiently. “Oh. The Greens. I know a little.”
“You ever see the plaque in front of the Academy?”
Richard glanced at Patsy and caught her staring at him. He shook his head again.
“Smyth, Tayler, Green, Williams,” the old man said, mystifying Richard. “And Gideon Winter. Smyth, which became Smithfield; Tayler, who is our beautiful little friend sitting next to you; Green, who is you; and Williams, who is me. And Gideon Winter, who could be just about anybody. I guess I better explain.”
3
“You’re a smart little fuck, Tabs,” Dicky Norman said, rubbing his knuckles painfully over the top of Tabby’s head. They were jammed into the front seat of the old black Oldsmobile beside Bruce. The Normans were happier than Tabby had ever seen them. Both of them stank of excitement and beer, of marijuana too.
“Hey, I knew he’d come through,” Bruce said, knocking Tabby’s ribs with a huge elbow. “Our little buddy’s a great guy. And you never made a sound about who you were going to be with, did you, little buddy?”
“Of course not,” Tabby said. “But this is the last time I do anything like this. No more, after tonight. I want you guys to know that.”
“After tonight, man, you’re cool with us,” Bruce said. “Ain’t that right, Dicky? Tabs is cool with us.”
Dicky responded by trying to play washboard on Tabby’s head again. They had turned into Beach Trail and were going downhill toward Mount Avenue.
“Because I hate doing this,” Tabby said. “I just want to keep my ears, that’s all.”
Both Normans responded with violent beery laughter. Bruce turned right on Mount Avenue and went past the front gates of Greenbank Academy.
At the thruway overpass Mount Avenue joined Greenbank Road; Bruce was driving south, toward town. Tabby asked, “Where are we going?”
“Parking lot,” Bruce muttered. He went down Greenbank Road to the first light, then turned right toward the Post Road on the Sayre Connector.
The man Tabby had seen across the street from school was standing beside his van in an empty corner of the Lobster House lot. Bruce drove up alongside the van, and the man watched them get out of the car. He doesn’t look like a burglar, Tabby thought. Gary Starbuck had a pronounced nose—a perfume tester’s nose—steady dark eyes, and a worried forehead. He was dressed entirely in dark blue. He looks like an algebra teacher.
The dark eyes rested on him for a moment. “Yeah, I see,” Starbuck remarked, though no one had said anything. Then he spoke directly to Tabby. “You know what you’re supposed to do?”
Tabby shook his head.
Starbuck reached into the window of his van and brought out a pair of small two-way radios. He handed one to Tabby. “Switch it on,” he said. Tabby turned it over in his hands until he found a sliding button on the top. Both radios squealed loudly, and Tabby hurriedly slid the button back toward him. “They’re too close now,” Starbuck said softly, still looking straight into Tabby’s eyes. “They have to be about fifty feet apart to really work right. But that’s how we’ll talk. You sit in the van. Front window, back window. You keep looking at the drive and the road. Simple?”
Tabby nodded.
“And if you see anything, you tell me about it. We’ll be in that house maybe half an hour. That’s a long time. Anybody stops and looks at the van, you tell me and describe who it is. What kind of car. Anything you see. If there’s a cop, lie down on the floor of the van and call me fast. We’ll come out and take care of him, but we’ll have to get to him before he gets to his radio. You get your money afterward, as soon as we get away. Understand, kid?”
“I understand.”
“I was beginning to think you couldn’t talk,” Starbuck said. “Here’s one more thing for you to understand. If you ever talk about this with the cops, or if I even think you’ll talk about this with the cops, I’ll come back here and kill you.” The sweetly, seriously worried expression on his face never altered as he said this. “I’m a businessman, see? I gotta stay in business.”
The Normans were so impressed they looked as though they might levitate.
“And that goes for you two glandular cases too,” Starbuck said.
“Hey, shit, man,” Bruce said.
“Get in the van,” Starbuck ordered, abruptly turning away. He got in the driver’s seat, Bruce in the passenger’s seat. Dick climbed in the back with Tabby, who was clutching his radio.
As Starbuck swung out of the lot across the Post Road to go back down the Sayre Connector, th
ey passed the statue of John Sayre posing as a World War I soldier. Tabby noticed the statue for the first time: the young soldier’s face seemed demonic to him, the creases in the bronze cheeks exaggerated by shadows.
Dicky leveled a forefinger at Tabby’s chest and pretended to pump bullets into him.
“I never lived in a place like this before,” Gary Starbuck said. “Not exactly like this, anyhow. What do they call this, anyhow? It’s not suburbia, is it? Do they call this exurbia?”
“I dunno,” Bruce said. “Who cares?”
Starbuck turned left on Greenbank Road. Tabby silently groaned. He should have known—they were going back to his neighborhood.
“Well, I been reading the local rag,” Starbuck said, swinging the van around the curves on Greenbank Road. “You know what goes on in this town? You know how many drunken-driving arrests you get on the weekends? How many accidents? How many drug busts and stupid goddamned amateur break-ins by kids without any professional knowledge? Without any training? I say this isn’t suburbia, and it isn’t exurbia. It’s disturbia.”
4
Richard surveyed the bookshelves as Graham Williams spoke, randomly reading off names and titles to himself. Half of the longest wall seemed to be fiction, the other half history and biography. There was a long section of screenplays bound in black vinyl. The wall to his left held art books. Paperback mystery novels had been jammed in above the outsized art books—Williams was an addict of Raymond Chandler and John D. MacDonald, of Amanda Cross and Dorothy Sayers.
