Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense

by Joyce Carol Oates

  For happiness is not fixed but alterable. For some, happiness is the ability to draw a deep breath without recoiling in pain. Happiness is the little stoma that is not reddened and infected but functioning perfectly. In our small town, however, it is not possible to remain secluded for long. The more you wish to hide from us, the more we wish to seek you out.

  Hello? Sorry can’t talk right now.

  Yes it’s been years … Will call you back. Busy time can I call you back.

  Yes just for the summer. Thanks but—Work. No. Don’t think so.

  Work. Deadline. September first. Sorry! Somebody at the door.

  Signaling in the very jauntiness of his voice and the vagueness of his words God damn you let me alone will you! I have not returned to my childhood home at the bottom of a fetid lake to squander a moment of my remaining life with any of you.

  He is not hiding. He is not one to hide.

  Eventually whoever is ringing the bell will go away.

  In the wake of the mysterious visitor a scribbled note stuck beneath the door knocker, or a US postal form shoved into the crack of the door, or an advertising flyer, or—nothing.

  Not a trace! No one.

  He is safe from prying eyes. In fact, he is in an upstairs bathroom. In the midst of changing the plastic pouch attached to the stoma—the little surgical hole in his stomach that bleeds easily, thinly.

  Very careful washing hands, sanitizing hands, shaky hands. Very careful positioning the plastic pouch that is soft, malleable as an intestine. And very careful disposing of waste in toilet and used pouch in secure opaque white plastic bag.

  His forty-second birthday is rapidly approaching.

  Swiftly and deftly the chloroform-soaked cloth is pressed over her mouth, nose. She fights him bravely, desperately. He will see her eyelids flutter. He will see the light go out in her eyes. But she will not have seen his face.

  Within seconds her limbs grow limp.

  Surprising heaviness of the limp, slender body as if death is an icy lava flowing into her bones.

  Unwittingly, he has trapped several small birds in the garage. Shutting the slow-sliding overhead door, not realizing the birds are inside.

  Cumbersome sliding door that moves—so—very—slowly—you hold your breath expecting it to stop midway.

  Frantic birds! He hears their panicked cheeping, the flutter of their small wings. A scrambling sound like mice amid stacks of cardboard cartons piled to the ceiling.

  Birds have built nests in the garage. In the rafters.

  Quickly he presses the switch to reverse the slow-sliding overhead door but even when it is fully open the panicked birds continue to flutter their wings, throw themselves against unyielding objects, make their cheeping sounds. He can see them overhead, shadowy little shapes, blinded in terror.

  “Go on! It’s open! Go.”

  Claps his hands. Impatient with the birds too frightened to locate the opened door, and so save themselves.

  The garage has three sliding doors. In theory the garage will hold three vehicles.

  In fact, the garage is crammed with things. Too many things. L____ can barely fit his station wagon inside and from now on he won’t bother shutting the door.

  The birds have fallen silent but L____ knows that they haven’t escaped. He presses the switch to cause another of the slow-moving doors to rise, rumbling overhead.

  Presses the switch to open the third door.

  All three garage doors are open now. Still the interior of the garage feels airless, trapped.

  He claps his hands again: “Now go.”

  The interior of the garage is crammed with the detritus of his parents’ lives. He has not wanted to see. He has not wanted to feel this sensation of dread, vertigo.

  His parents have been dead for seven years (father), and for three years (mother). There is a deadness beyond dead that is pure peace and it is this L____ wishes for them. He feels grateful that they’ve been spared knowing how their only son has been eviscerated.

  They had loved him, he supposes. But love is not enough to keep us from harm.

  Now their lives have been stored in the old garage, which had once been a carriage house. In the corners, stacked to the very rafters. Taped-up cardboard boxes, cartons and files of financial records, legal documents, IRS records. Household furnishings—a swivel chair, a floor lamp, an upended mattress. A tall oval mirror shrouded in a gauzy cloth. Neatly folded curtains and drapes, covered in dust. Stacks of books, magazines bound with twine. And there are myriad forgotten things of L____’s own—bicycles with flat tires, broken wagon, toys. Weights he’d lifted in high school. Tennis rackets. Old skis, snowshoes. Boots. Mud-stiffened running shoes. L____ feels a twinge of guilt, and a stronger twinge of resentment.

  No he will not. He will not sort through these things.

  It is too late. The detritus of the past means nothing to him now. He stumbles away, back into the empty house. Leaving the small fluttering birds to find their own way out.

  Hello! Please come inside.

  We won’t stay long. I will just show you—the inside of my life.

  The house is locally famous; in fact, it is “historic”—a “landmark” in Cattaraugus County. An architectural oddity composed of cobblestones and mortar, built in 1898 with a low, sloping shingled roof above windows like recessed and hooded eyes.

  Though Mura House looks large from Road’s End Lane behind a scrim of ravaged trees, the interior is divided into small rooms with small windows emitting a grudging demi-light. Upstate New York with its savage protracted winters, driving snow, subzero temperatures had not been hospitable to a wish for larger windows, scenic views. Low beamed ceilings, wood-paneled walls, hardwood floors. Heavy leather furniture, brass andirons.

  And oddly named—“Mura House.”

  “Why does our house have a name? Nobody else’s house has a stupid name.”

  Growing up in Mura House he’d been embarrassed, resentful. At the same time he’d felt a twinge of pride, that the L____ family house was locally recognized as something out of the ordinary, distinguished by a small oval marker at the stately front door.

  He’d asked his parents about the name. He can remember only his mother’s vague explanation—We were told “Mura” might have been the builder’s name. We’ve made inquiries at the historical society …

  Except for a glassed-in porch at the rear of the house, constructed in such a way that it is not visible from Road’s End Lane, and except for renovations in kitchen and bathrooms, Mura House has not been substantially altered since 1898. If L____ wished to remodel the house he could not, restricted by New York State law protecting “historic” properties.

  L____ has no interest in remodeling, rebuilding. He has said to several intrusive persons who’ve made inquiries about his plans in Cattaraugus, that he didn’t plan to live in Mura House “much beyond the summer.”

  He has not been seeking her.

  He has avoided the lakeside park. The esplanade along the lake. He has been avoiding even thinking of her and in this he has become slack, careless, negligent, like one who has let his guard down prematurely.

  And so when he isn’t prepared he sees her for the second time: entering the Cattaraugus Public Library.

  A glimmering figure in white, at dusk. In the heat of summer of upstate New York there is a moist heaviness to the air that seems to gather like an electric charge with the waning of the light in the sky and it is at this time he sees her, not certain at first if it is her …

  A tall, pale gliding figure. And her tangled silvery hair partway down her back.

  Without a backward glance at L_____, who stands stunned and breathless on the flagstone walk outside the library, staring after her. Should he follow her into the library? As if he were entering by chance?

  (But of course it is chance.)

  (L____ has not been following her. L____ had not even been aware of her being nearby.)

  Or (he is thinking) he should continu
e past the library as if he has no business in the library after all.

  (No one will notice! He is sure that no one is watching.)

  The Cattaraugus Public Library is a small library housed in the first floor of a gaunt, faded-redbrick colonial on Courthouse Square; it shares the house with the headquarters of the Cattaraugus County Historical Society at the rear. The historical society is darkened but the library is still open at seven P.M., though most of the staff has gone home and there are few patrons in the library.

  This is the first time since his return to Cattaraugus that L____ has revisited the library and it is both gratifying to him and a little disturbing that the library has changed so minimally over the years. Obviously, the library budget for Cattaraugus County isn’t generous. All of central upstate New York has been locked in a “recession” for years—decades. (When does a “recession” become a permanent state of being? Who is there to formally acknowledge such transformations?) Still, the Cattaraugus Public Library retains the power to excite L____ with the prospect of a new adventure—a book he has not read yet, an author of whom he hasn’t heard. L____ experienced his first sense of the forbidden in the rear of the library, where, as a boy, he’d been looking through novels in the section marked Adult Fiction and a frowning librarian had surprised him skimming impenetrable pages of James Joyce’s Ulysses—“Excuse me? What is your age?”

  His age! He’d been twelve or thirteen at the time. The prim-faced middle-aged woman with staring eyes had known very well that the trembling boy she’d apprehended was hardly eighteen.

  She’d taken the forbidden book from him, shut it, and replaced it on the shelf. Abashed, he’d fled.

  L____ smiles, recalling. That was a long time ago, when anything in any library could possibly be “forbidden” to him.

  Now, L____ is standing on the walk outside the library, uncertain. It is near dark. The gaunt old brick house is lighted from within and so he can see a few figures, a wall of bookshelves, a display of books—but he can’t see her.

  Out of restlessness he’d been walking in the early evening. Down the mile-long hill at Juniper Avenue, from Road’s End Lane to Lake View Avenue; avoiding the lake, he’d decided to visit the historic quarter—a town square bounded by the Cattaraugus County Courthouse and post office, the YM-YWCA and the library. Here there’s a small park with a World War II memorial, a Revolutionary War cannon, a rain-worn American flag, a few benches. Near deserted, which is a relief.

  The library is one of those small-town public libraries of the kind scattered across America, often housed in a “historic” building. L____ feels a tug of nostalgia, seeing it.

  The Cattaraugus library has very few books in which L____ is interested, and none helpful for his current project. Yet L____ is drawn to the library, as a haven of sorts. The welcome of warm lights within, which seem to beckon to him. He recalls how he was sent here by his grandmother to take out books for her, slender mysteries with little black skulls-and-crossbones on the spine of the plastic covers, and the black letter M. (Mystery? Or Murder?) Strange that his genteel grandmother had devoured murder mysteries!—as if death were some sort of entertainment.

  She’d given him her card for this purpose, not to be confused with L____’s own (child’s) card.

  In a trance of indecision L____ has been debating whether to enter the library. He thinks: he can simply ignore the woman with the tangled silvery hair—she’s a stranger to him, she will not “recognize” him. And truly she is nothing to him.

  Still, he feels some hesitation. A part of his brain cautions him against behaving recklessly.

  The library is small, cramped. It is not really possible to avoid other patrons if they are in the front area, at the checkout desk, as you enter. L____ feels a visceral dread of getting too close to the woman with the shimmering silvery hair for fear that he will (unwittingly) call attention to himself and she will see him staring at her and if she sees him she will know.

  Oh but what will she know?—something. Something she will see in his face?

  A premonition of something that will happen, or something that will never happen?

  Something that has already happened?

  He decides not to enter the library. Yet not—quite—to leave.

  Finds himself walking along a darkened pathway beside the library. Staring up into the windows as he passes—sees several figures—a man with a fleshy flushed face—a middle-aged woman—but not the silvery-haired woman.

  Then at the rear window he sees her: her back to the window.

  She is leaning over an oversized book, like an atlas. Probably it is, as L____ recalls, The American Gazetteer, a nineteenth-century book of maps kept with other, similar atlases in a corner of the reference section of the library.

  He sees the woman’s slender arm, her fingers turning the oversized parchment-like page. He sees silver filaments in her hair, which falls in tangled waves over her shoulders. He can see the side of her face, just barely: the curve of her cheek, her parted lips.

  The scene is brightly lit from within. Only a few yards away he is standing in darkness, invisible. The sharpness of Vermeer, he thinks. He feels a yearning in the region of his heart so powerful he is almost faint.

  Why is the young woman interested in that old book? Why The American Gazetteer? As a boy, he’d paged through atlases in that library, examined the Rand McNally globe that spun with geriatric slowness; its carefully outlined countries were defined by faded colors, outdated thirty years ago. Perhaps it was a collector’s item, a novelty of history like Mura House.

  How erotic, the sight of the silvery-haired woman’s arm as her sleeve slips down to her elbow. And the faint shimmer of her hair. Every movement of the woman is exciting to L____, the more that she’s unaware of him watching her so intently.

  She must never know. She must be protected from—whatever is happening.

  L____ rouses himself, and passes quickly by the window. He has not meant to linger, and stare.

  His heart is beating rapidly. How absurd! He is ashamed of himself but he is very excited.

  At the rear of the library he pauses. Here is a shadowy alcove, a little distance from the street. A grassy patch, not well lighted. A pedestrian pathway that functions as a shortcut to the next street and it is quite reasonable that L____ might take this pathway, close beside the library. You might think that he’d parked his car nearby. A library patron, like others.

  He has positioned himself in such a way that he can see, not the front entrance of the library, but much of the front walk, which leads to the street. No one can leave the library without being seen by L____—he is certain.

  From his vantage place in the shadows he observes a heavy-hipped woman leaving the library, picked up at the street by someone in a station wagon. A solitary man in shorts, trotting across the street to his parked car. It must be closing time: 7:30 P.M. on a weeknight in summer. L____ can’t see anyone else inside except the librarian, an older white-haired woman whose name he should know.

  Still, the silvery-haired woman must still be there. He seems to be waiting for her to leave the library after all. But he will not follow her.

  Under a hypnotic spell, time passes slowly for L_____. In fact, it is a pleat in time; L____ is neither here entirely in the shadows at the rear of the Cattaraugus Public Library nor is he elsewhere. He is suspended in time.

  Earlier that evening he’d had to walk out of his parents’ house, where the air of late afternoon becomes thick as suet and where it is difficult to breathe.

  He wants to plead with the silvery-haired woman—There has been some mistake. The person you see is not really me. What was done to me and what I have become …

  And the woman will turn to him, and she will touch his arm, gently. All of his senses are alert, to the point of pain: he can scarcely breathe, in anticipation of what she will tell him.

  Why she has entered his life, what she has been meant to tell him …

  There is a jolt.
Time has passed. L____ rouses himself to realize: the library is empty except for the librarian, who is switching off lights.

  How is this possible? Where is the silvery-haired woman? He wants to protest: he could not have missed her. Not for a moment has he turned his gaze away from the front walk. He has scarcely dared to blink.

  (Is it possible she left the library by another door?)

  (But there is no other door for library patrons, he is sure. Only an emergency door at the rear, which would sound an alarm if opened.) Admonishes himself: It is not possible that she left by the front door, and he didn’t see her. He could not have missed her.

  In a state of agitation he approaches the front entrance of the library. How familiar the doorway is, the truncated view into the library, as if he has never left his childhood home, and his adult life has been a delusion …

  He peers inside—as one would; a husband, for instance, or a father, waiting for someone inside to emerge from the library, who has (unaccountably) not emerged.

  Must happen all the time. Nothing to alarm anyone.

  However, there is no one visible except the librarian, Mrs. McGarry. “Hello! Can I help you? I’m afraid we’re closing just now …” Doesn’t Mrs. McGarry recognize L_____? He is older than she has ever seen him, of course; his face is lined, his once thick, dark hair is scanty, thin like the feathers of very young birds not yet fledged. Perhaps he is unnaturally pale. And perhaps he is grimacing impatiently, irritably, his face so contorted that Mrs. McGarry can’t seem to recognize the boy who used to come into the library so often, a lifetime ago.

  “Oh! Is it—”

  The light of recognition comes into the white-haired woman’s face. Now L____ cannot escape.

  Mrs. McGarry speaks his name. Mrs. McGarry greets him warmly. She is just locking up the library, she explains. Switching off lights and the ceiling fans. Would he wait a moment? Of course! How can L____ possibly say no?

  “I was a friend of your dear mother for many years …”

  “Yes. I know.”