I took my time and thought carefully. I couldn’t afford to blow what might be my only chance.
I decided to approach her as a journalist, and told her I was researching a story on the subject of stalkers. She wasn’t a Galveston resident, so had no idea how unlikely a topic that was for the weekly Shore Times. And although she told me she didn’t want more publicity, when I swore I wouldn’t use anything she didn’t approve, and said I just needed some ‘insider detail’ to help me understand the experience of being stalked, she agreed to meet me, suggesting a Starbucks’ near her office. People do like to tell their stories.
I made the most of our first meeting. I’ve never worked harder to make somebody like me. Never felt so desperate for acceptance. But it worked. I racked up a lot of miles on my old car, pretending urgent business in Houston so that I could take her up on her invitation to ‘call, if you happen to be in town’. To keep her talking to me about Hutch, I told her that although my editor had spiked ‘our’ story, I was considering writing a book about stalking.
I sucked up to her shamelessly - and it all paid off, finally, when she invited me out to her house for dinner. She knew I would have a long drive back to Galveston, and one of the things we had in common was a liking for good wine with our dinner, so she invited me to stay the night.
I had been afraid that she might have sold her house and moved, unable to bear to go on living in the place where she had killed someone, but no, she was still there, in the house where Hutch had died.
Why not? she asked me, shrugging. She liked it there. Why should she let ‘that bastard’ drive her out? Since ‘that business’ she’d had an alarm system installed. She felt as safe here as she could feel anywhere.
‘So you don’t feel the house is haunted?’ I held my breath waiting for her answer, hoping. Maybe, despite his determined materialism, Hutch’s spirit was still hanging around.
But she shook her head firmly. ‘I’m sure it’s not. I had this psychic, she’s supposed to be really, really good, come to check it out, and she said there was no evil here, nothing but good vibrations, lots of love.’
I felt my heart turn over. Poor Hutch.
‘But I did get the kitchen completely redone, just to be on the safe side, and I had a Feng Shui expert advise me about the energy flow. . .’
‘The kitchen?’ That was where we were sitting now, with glasses of wine and bowls of olives, nuts and taco chips set out. I gaped at her. ‘Why the kitchen?’
She stared at me, obviously suspecting my journalistic credentials. It must have been publicised, or maybe she’d told me when I wasn’t listening. ‘Because this is where I shot him, of course! He actually died in the laundry room, just there—’ she pointed across at a louvred shutter, painted sunflower yellow, which screened off the narrow back hallway from the rest of the room - ‘but there’s not much to redesign in there. It’s not like I ever spend much time in there, anyway, not like I do in the kitchen. But I did everything I could. I had the carpeting taken up, of course, put down Mexican tiles instead, and had the walls repainted blue, a very harmonious colour, instead of white like they were before, because white’s the colour of the dead in China, after all, and—’
I got up. ‘Do you mind if I look?’ I was already walking away from her as I spoke. I didn’t want her to see the tears which had sprung to my eyes at the thought of poor Hutch dying all alone in that cramped space while his killer sprinted out the front door to safety.
It was a tiny little room, all right, tightly packed with a big washing machine and even bigger dryer; cupboards overhead held the usual sorts of cleaning stuffs. I tried with all my might to get some sense of Hutch, some lingering trace of his personality, in that little room, but there was nothing. Maybe the Feng Shui had got rid of his hungry ghost. Or, more likely, what Hutch had always believed was true, and there was nothing left of us after death; ghosts were just vibrations aided by imagination and the hope that springs eternal.
I got myself under control and returned to the kitchen, where Melanie was starting to get our dinner together.
The evening dragged on. I’d never realised how exhausting it could be to be constantly ‘on’, always on my guard, like a spy, having to pretend to like someone I would rather have hated. Not that I did hate her, actually, because I understood too well that, in similar circumstances, under siege in my own home, I would have done my best to kill my stalker. What difference would it have made to me to be told that he was somebody else’s beloved friend? At least I didn’t have to pretend to be interested in her. I did, genuinely, want to know everything there was to know about her. Somewhere in that mass of personal detail must be the answer to what had happened to Hutch. I had no idea what I was looking for, but I was determined to find it.
Yet somehow the more I knew about her, the less I understood. Melanie was becoming deeply familiar to me, almost a part of myself. Not like the friends we make by choice, but like the playmates forced on children by proximity or family. I thought she was like the boring cousin, a year younger than me, I’d had to play with whenever my mother or my aunt wanted a day off. I knew every detail of her life, knew her room and her toys almost as well as my own, and yet I knew nothing at all about her. When, halfway through college, she dropped out and became a Moonie, I couldn’t say I’d seen it coming, but neither could I be genuinely shocked, because, after all, why shouldn’t she? I had no idea who she was inside.
Was Hutch as mystified as me, or would being in Melanie’s presence have given him what he needed, answered all his questions? As she chatted on, I tuned out, my thoughts drifting back to Hutch, the pain of his loss, the endless regrets...
‘Becky, what’s wrong?’
She reached across the table to touch my hand and I jerked away, spattering fresh tomato sauce all down my shirt.
We both cried out in dismay.
‘Oh, gosh,’ Melanie said, jumping up as I began to dab at myself with my napkin. ‘No, don’t do that! You’ll set the stain - the best thing is to take it off right away and put it under cold, running water. Take if off, take it off now.’
I looked up at her and she blushed. She turned away. ‘I’ll go get you something else to put on, of course,’ she said in a strained voice. ‘Put it straight into the sink, put the cold water hard on it, you hear?’ She kept her back to me as she spoke, and hurried out of the room.
By the time she got back I had remembered: there are no coincidences in this life. Every action is meaningful. Suddenly it made sense to me: I had been thinking about Hutch. This might be a way of getting closer to him, of finding out more.
‘Could I wash this? Really wash it in the machine, I mean?’
‘Uh, if you want. Sure. There’s a couple of towels in it now, they’ll be okay with it.’ She held out her hand but I kept a grip on my dripping shirt.
‘I can do it. Just tell me where the soap is.’
‘Oh, well, if you look in the cupboard just above the machine - are you sure? Okay then, put it on half-load.’
I performed the simple actions slowly, like a ritual. The little room was like a chapel, high-ceilinged, bare, stone floor...My naked arms goose-pimpled. I’d been over-warm in the kitchen, but it was freezing out here.
‘Are you okay?’ I’d taken too long, and she’d come to check on me.
‘Sure, I’m fine.’ I managed a smile, took the T-shirt she offered, followed her back to the table.
About twenty minutes later, as we were still sitting there, sipping wine, I felt it: a sort of low rumble like an approaching storm, and the fine hairs on my arms prickled with electricity. There was a high-pitched whine like a plane taking off.
‘Oh, that machine. ‘ Melanie said crossly. ‘You can’t hear yourself think.’’
As she got up and walked towards the laundry room door - which I’d left open - I followed her. I wanted to get back into the little room, sure that he would be there, invoked by the nearly palpable noise.
But I didn’t get in,
because of course Melanie wasn’t going in, she’d only gone to close the door, and I was behind her. When she stopped, I ran smack into her.
We were there on the threshold between the two rooms, possibly on the very spot where he’d been shot. I felt a presence, unmistakable, absolutely electric, as we collided. She gasped, and then gave a sort of helpless little moan and turned around - a tight little turn, more a rotation, which kept her pressed against me, only now it was her breasts I felt, soft and firm against mine.
An absolute imperative brought our lips together. I’d never been attracted to a woman before in this way, but I didn’t question it. I couldn’t. It was the most natural and necessary thing in the world to kiss her. And as I did, I knew that this was what Hutch had wanted. And now it was what I wanted. In this feeling between us was all that was left of him.
If he’d been alive, Hutch would have been horrified, I’ll bet, by my ignorance in thinking that an ordinary domestic washing machine could produce infrasound waves powerful and concentrated enough to haunt a room. But he’d never shared the specifications of his ghost-machine with me, so why shouldn’t I think it?
I still thought it as, still kissing her, I pushed Melanie through the doorway, against the vibrating machine, and moved slowly down her body, kissing her through her clothes and then beneath them. I think I imagined that I was doing this for Hutch, or that he was working through me.
But he’d been just as ignorant, just as foolish, in imagining that he could solve the mystery that was Melanie by pursuing her, and forcing himself on her.
I know otherwise now.
She’s still a mystery to me, although I know her better, inside and out, than I’ve ever known anyone before. And she knows me, even about my connection to Hutch. I’ve told her everything. And yet the mystery remains, which I think we’ll forever try, and probably fail, to solve. It’s called love.
Lisa Tuttle was born in Texas, but has lived in the United Kingdom since 1980. She currently resides in Scotland with her husband and daughter. Her novels include Familiar Spirit, Gabriel, Lost FuturesandThe Pillow Friend,along with several titles aimed at younger readers. Her short fiction has been collected inA Spaceship Built of Stone, A Nest of Nightmares and Memories of the Body,and she has edited the anthologies Skin of the Soul and Crossing the Border.She has recently compiled a new short story collection, My Pathology (the title story is fromDark Terrors 4),and is currently working on a dark fantasy novel called The Changeling. ‘The theory about infrasound and ghosts is absolutely real,’ explains the author. ‘I based my story on a newspaper article (the Sunday Telegraph, June 28, 1998) about research done at Coventry University. Although I haven’t heard about anybody actually attempting to create a “real” haunted house on this basis, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it had been done. And Austin, Texas, strikes me as one of the more likely venues for such an attempt. Like the narrator, I grew up in Texas and in my youth hung out with a group which was into ghost-hunting and semi-scientific psychic research. So far as I know, I’ve never seen a ghost, but I’ve encountered weird atmospheres where the appearance of a ghost felt pretty immanent.’
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* * * *
My Present Wife
DENNIS ETCHISON
The road was wide and well-lighted for the first mile or so, then narrowed to a single lane and led into the foothills, where the signs were impossible to read even with her high beams. That was almost enough to make Lesley turn around and go home, especially when the other car sped up and began to close the distance. It had been on her tail since she left the freeway.
She tried to ignore the headlights and stopped under the first streetlamp in several long blocks, took the invitation out of her purse and looked at it one more time.
The hand-drawn map on the back was useless. It might have been a child’s sketch of a tree made with black crayon, the branches leading off the page into unknown territory. The lines were not labelled and there was only an X at the top, a house number and the words Saddleback Circle.
When the headlights glared in her rearview mirror she had to glance up.
The other car slowed, pulling even and hovering for a moment. Her side window was milky with frost. She reached for the button and rolled the glass down.
‘Richard,’ she shouted, ‘leave me alone or I’ll call the police! I mean it this time!’
Then she got a good look at the other car. It was a brand new Chrysler, shiny black and heavy with chrome fittings, so dark inside that she could not see the driver. Embarrassed, she held up the invitation and waved it, accidentally brushing the controls by the steering wheel.
‘Sorry, I - I thought you were someone else. Do you know where—?’
But now her wipers were on, skittering back and forth across the windshield, drowning out her own voice. The tinted passenger window on the other car remained closed.
‘Wait, please! I think I’m lost. . .’
The Chrysler glided silently past her to the next corner, a plume of white exhaust billowing up behind it.
* * * *
She spotted the same car a few minutes later, its turn signals winding uphill in a pattern that vaguely resembled part of the hand-drawn map. Then there was an entire row of red taillight reflectors ahead, stopped along both sides of the road, so many that there could be no doubt she had finally found the party. It took a few minutes more to locate a parking space next to the split-rail fence on Saddleback Circle.
A sharp wind blew out of the canyon, gathering force and turning back on itself as if chilled by the cul-de-sac at the end. Lesley walked towards the glow of a big house, while heavy steps sounded beyond the fence and white breath condensed in the air between the trees. A riderless horse, pale and steaming against the darkness, stood snorting and pawing the earth. She closed her collar and hurried on.
The house shone like iced gingerbread, all the doors and windows sparkling with colour and movement. The gravel driveway was still full of cars. Someone stepped forward from the shadows and she put her hand up to shield her eyes from the glare of Christmas lights over the porch.
‘Hello?’ she called out, shivering.
‘Les, you made it.’
‘Coral? It feels like it’s going to snow!’
‘Don’t say that in LA. It’s bad luck.’
‘Am I too late?’
‘Come on in, for God’s sake.’ Coral led her up the wooden steps. ‘Get yourself some eggnog and I’ll introduce you around.’
A dozen people were jammed around the coatrack in the foyer, the faces of the taller ones blurring as they moved aside for their hostess. The air was warm with body heat but Lesley’s fingers trembled as she undid the button at her throat and smoothed her collar.
‘I can’t stay.’
‘You have a late date?’
‘Right, Coral.’
‘Then stick with me. I’ll fix you up.’
‘No, really, I’ll just mingle...’
Lesley squinted in the sudden brightness, gazing through crepe paper and popcorn strung from the vaulted living room ceiling. The party was close to breaking up but a few tanned women in satin and denim stood talking to men with cowboy boots and silver belt buckles, while long-legged teenagers whispered behind a table full of empty pie tins and half-eaten cookies. When she turned around Coral was not there.
She rubbed her hands together and wandered into the hall, past matted photographs of her friend in a black hunt cap and coat jumping a chestnut mare over hurdles. A man’s voice droned from one of the bedrooms, describing how he had broken his ankle during a flying dismount the previous year. Only his broad shoulders and pressed Levi’s were visible through the doorway. Three women sat on the edge of the bed, listening with lips parted. Lesley continued down the hall before he could roll up the leg of his jeans to show them the scar.
* * * *
In the den, Coral took her arm and led her to a balding man on the sofa.
‘Ed, you remember Les, f
rom the Tri-Valley meet. We went out for dinner after.’
‘Oh, right,’ he said, half-standing, the top of his head a pink smear. ‘Did you ever sell that Hermes saddle?’
‘Not yet,’ said Lesley.
‘How much do you want for it?’ asked a drunk woman on the other end of the sofa.
‘I haven’t decided.’
‘Where’s your friend?’ said the balding man.
‘Who?’
‘Big guy, longrider coat. What’s his name?’
Coral said in a low voice, ‘Honey, that was last summer.’
‘Richie, that’s it.’ He looked around. ‘Is he here?’
Coral rolled her eyes. ‘They’re not together anymore.’
‘Oh. Too bad. Nice fellow.’
Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology] Page 41
