The Dark House

by John Sedgwick

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t give them my name.” He paused for a second. “I dialed 911 and said there’d been a murder at his house. Then I hung up. It was simple, really.”

  Marj brought a hand to her mouth. “Shit, Rolo. I thought I was crazy.” She shook her head, as if her mind was balking at the whole, impossible idea of what he had done. “Whoa.”

  Rollins told her how he’d watched the police converge on Jeffries’ door. “You should have seen the look on his face,” he told her proudly.

  Marj was more concerned that Jeffries had seen him, but Rollins assured her he couldn’t have.

  “Still, he’s going to be so pissed, Rolo,” she told him.

  “Maybe, but he’s on notice now. He’s not going to fuck with me any longer.”

  Marj’s eyes flickered at Rollins’ choice of words. “What about Sloane?”

  Rollins shifted in his chair. “That’s something we’ll have to decide.”

  Marj stood up and walked over to the painting on the wall. It was the English landscape; its rural calm seemed very quaint at this moment. “Rolo, what do these people want from you? That’s what I don’t get. You say you don’t know them. But why do they seem to know all about you?”

  Rollins nearly mentioned his trip to New Hampshire and the shady dealings he’d discovered between Sloane and his aunt and uncle, but he was on shaky ground with Marj already. He thought it safer to say nothing than to risk her ire.

  Marj returned to him. She stood beside his big chair. “It’s Cornelia, isn’t it?”

  Rollins was taken aback: almost Schecter’s exact words. “Why do you say that?”

  “You told me she’s got all this money, right?”

  “But she’s gone. Dead for all anyone knows.”

  “Maybe Sloane and his friend Jeffries think you think differently.”

  “But I don’t!” Rollins said with a vehemence that surprised him. He stood up, crossed the room, and, with a tug, closed a small crack between the draperies. “I wrote that one story about her, and that was it. That is absolutely all I know.”

  “Maybe you know more than you think.”

  Rollins pushed his fingers into his hair in exasperation. “I don’t know what I know.”

  That hand clawing a bare back. The thrashing.

  It was infuriating: His own life suddenly seemed like the lives he watched. He had only a partial, temporary view. Vivid at points, but nothing more.

  Marj moved to him, grasped his shoulder. “But you do know, you do! Like when I found Cornelia’s picture.” Marj looked into his eyes as if she were searching for something. “That didn’t surprise you, Rolo. I was watching you. You didn’t look shocked or amazed. It was more like, ‘Oh.’”

  “I was stunned,” Rollins insisted. “I didn’t know what to think.” He was softening; he could feel it. His voice had lost some of its force. Something was giving way deep within him.

  Marj must have sensed it, because she pressed her attack. “Bullshit, Rolo. A thought went through that head of yours. I watched it happen. You just didn’t want to tell me.” She paused a moment, thinking. “I still don’t get why she’s such a big deal to you. All right, she disappears and it’s a big mystery, I get that part. But I keep wondering why every time her name comes up you get this weird look on your face. You go blank—it’s like I’m not even here.”

  She turned back to him. “You ever, like, do anything with her?”

  “Marj, I was only six.” He was grateful that this claim, at least, was easy to refute.

  “What about later—when you were a teenager, or off at college? You told me how she came to your room that night.”

  “No.” Rollins was quiet but firm.

  Marj gave a calm-down gesture with her hands “O-kay! You didn’t sleep with her. But what’s with her, then?”

  “I liked her, that’s all.” He saw her again in her light, summer clothes, her gremlin smile that drew him to her to be hugged and, sometimes, tickled. (His sides, just below the ribs, would produce hysterics every time.) She touched him. Except for Stephanie, she was the only one in that family who ever did. Was that it? Was it that simple?

  “Oh, please. Liked her. Gimme a break.”

  It was the sound that drew him first. Dripping water. Ka-plink. Ka-plink. The bathroom door was ajar. The white, dirt-smudged door of his room to the bathroom he shared with Stephanie. He followed the sound, moving silently, as always. He pushed the door open, so quietly. Just a little, then a little more. Steam was rising off the water of the big tub with claw feet, the only one in the house. He saw Neely’s blond hair up on top of her head as she lay back, eyes closed, sleeping. Ka-plink. He came closer, fascinated to see her, to peer into the bright mystery that was her. Her neck widened to bare shoulders. Then he looked down from the bathtub rim to a pair of breasts, pink from the hot water. Little scrunched-up nipples poking up like raspberries. Were they as soft? As sweet? Ka-plink. Staring and staring, his mouth dry. Her knees were up; a light fuzz between her legs, fluttering. He stayed a long time, watching. Ka-plink. Ka-plink. Ka-plink.

  “It’s happening again, Rolo. You’re, like, out of here. You’re thinking something. What?”

  “Oh, nothing.” The memories belonged to him, inside him. But they had such force, he wasn’t so sure he could hold them in any longer. He felt suddenly dizzy.

  Her face reddened by the heat of the water. One knee out of the water, like a tiny island.

  Marj gave him an imploring look, and he had to speak.

  “You’re right. Something did happen.”

  Thirteen

  Marj was silent, hand to mouth, waiting.

  “I saw her once,” Rollins said finally.

  “What do you mean, ‘saw her’?”

  Rollins felt terribly light, as if he might fly away. “In the bath.”

  “You mean—?”

  Rollins nodded.

  “Well, that’s something. See the whole deal?”

  Rollins nodded again. He started to tremble. He was there again, back in the big house. He was very young. Frightened, but so eager.

  “She let you?”

  “She didn’t know I was there. She’d fallen asleep. The door was ajar. I pushed it open and went in.” He felt the steamy air on him, heard the drips, saw her.

  Her glistening breasts, surrounded by lapping bathwater.

  “She pretty?”

  Rollins said nothing. He’d never thought in those terms. It was just her—Neely. But the real her. “Sure. I mean, I suppose.”

  “You touch her?”

  He’d wanted to touch those raspberry-like nipples, the fluttering pubic hair. But he hadn’t dared. Rollins shook his head quickly. “God, no.”

  “That’s it, Rolo? You saw her, nothing more?”

  Rollins nodded.

  “I saw my mom and my stepdad fucking. I came home one night, and they were bare-assed on the living room rug. Not a pretty sight. But it’s no big deal, Rolo.”

  A bad feeling spread through Rollins’ gut. This memory had led to another. He spoke quietly. “Mother caught me.”

  A click and a rush of cold air and his mother charging toward him from Stephanie’s room. And a slap—hard—and an angry shout. “What are you doing?” Then Neely splashing a towel into the water, and it swishing about like thick rope. Then a hard shove, and he was back in his room again, his mother’s finger in his face.

  “Don’t you ever do that again.”

  “Ye-yes, Mother. I’m—I’m—I’m sorry, Mother.”

  Rollins turned his face to the wall and clenched his eyes shut, trying desperately to lock out the memory of the moment that had ruined everything. He tensed, bracing himself for a blow.

  “I’m losing you, Rolo. Talk to me.”

  “I thought she was going to hurt me.”

  Her hands on his chest, pushing him.

  “Who?”

  “My mother. She was absolutely furious. I’d never seen her so angry. She scared me to
death.”

  “How’d Neely take it?”

  His jaw quivering. His face pushing into his pillow. Wet footsteps out of the bathroom through to Stephanie’s room. Then quiet again.

  “Rolo? How’d Neely take it?” Marj repeated.

  “I don’t know. She never said anything about it. She was embarrassed, I guess.” Afterward, Rollins had crept back into the bathroom. There were wet spots on the floor from where Neely had gone out. The tub was still full, but the water cool. He’d felt it.

  “Maybe she liked it—that you saw her.”

  Rollins looked up at Marj in amazement.

  “Girls do, sometimes, you know.” Marj looked at him. “So, then what?”

  Rollins shook his head. “Nothing. That’s all I remember.”

  Marj got up and headed to the kitchen. “Mind if I get some water?”

  “No, go ahead.”

  Marj passed through the kitchen door. Rollins could hear a couple of cupboards open. “The glasses are over the sink,” he called out to her.

  “Got it,” Marj shouted back.

  Rollins went to the doorway. “There’s some Pellegrino if you like.”

  Marj ran the water for a moment, apparently waiting for it to get cold. “This is fine.” She filled herself a glass. “I take it there haven’t been any more Cornelia sightings.” In the Beacon, Rollins had referred to reports from Schecter of various people who had supposedly seen Cornelia after the disappearance. There was one at a dog track, another at a mall.

  “No, that’s pretty standard in missing persons cases, especially if there’s publicity involved. Cornelia was beautiful, but something of a classic beauty. There were a lot of women who looked like her.” Rollins reached into the refrigerator for the Pellegrino. “Actually, I’ve seen her a few times myself. I thought I did, I mean.”

  “Really?” Marj seemed amazed.

  Rollins hadn’t realized how unusual this might sound. “At a restaurant once. Another time on Fifty-seventh Street in New York. I followed her for three or four blocks before I decided it couldn’t be her. And there’s even a woman up at Johnson who looks a lot like her. Every time I see her, I get this pang.” Rollins pounded his chest with his fist.

  “But couldn’t she have, like, gone somewhere? Malaysia, or Iceland, some place like that?”

  Rollins poured himself a glass. “Not without changing her name. Schecter checked. No one with her passport had left the country. Plus, her bank account was untouched, and same with her credit cards. So what was she going to do for money? And why wouldn’t she have told anyone?”

  Marj shook her head, then drained her glass. “I still want to hear that tape,” she said finally.

  “Oh, right.” Rollins had almost forgotten. “It’s in the bedroom. I’ll get it.”

  Rollins took a couple of gulps of water, then set their glasses in the sink and crossed through the living room to his bedroom. Inside, he climbed onto his bed and brought down the second case from the end—the one detailing his trip to the dark house—and placed it beside his bed.

  “Hey, where’s the TV?” Marj shouted from the living room.

  “In the closet,” Rollins yelled back.

  “Figures. And what’s all this—Greek?”

  “Latin. I was a classics major,” he called back. “I should toss them out. I almost never look at them anymore.”

  Rollins slid out the case two from the end and opened it with a soft click.

  “You can come in if you want to,” he called out to Marj.

  “I’m not sure I dare.”

  He’d left the door open about a foot, and he was watching as Marj pushed the door open and stepped quietly inside. For a moment, she seemed like a complete stranger, it was so startling to see anyone in his bedroom, especially a young woman in running clothes. But then he could see that it really was Marj, and he felt better. She didn’t seem to notice the tapes as she glanced about. She crossed to his bureau, and reached for a photograph of himself as a child on the bureau top. It was a small photograph, one he’d made even smaller by cropping his mother out of it. His eyes were downcast and his suit ill-fitting, but there was an uneasiness to the image that captured him in those days.

  “This you?” she asked.

  Rollins moved closer. “From when I was eleven. A few months after my parents’ divorce.”

  “You look a little out of it.” She looked at the picture again. “I’ve heard that when a kid dies, it can really mess up a marriage.”

  “Father left the day after Christmas.” Rollins spoke the words as if in a trance. “I was in the kitchen having breakfast with my mother and brother. Poached eggs. My mother was never a morning person, but she was particularly quiet this morning. She wasn’t eating, not even reading the paper, which was very unusual for her. I asked when Father was coming down. ‘He isn’t,’ she said. Then she ran out of the room in tears. Ran. She knocked into the corner of the table when she left, spilling some orange juice. She just ran off. I didn’t know what to think. My brother and I looked at each other. Then we went to search for my father, started calling for him all around the house. Mother had locked herself into the bedroom. Later that afternoon, I saw Gabe, our handyman, putting all my dad’s clothes out with the trash.”

  “God, Rolo.”

  Rollins said nothing. He didn’t have the strength to speak, just as he hadn’t all those years ago.

  Rollins looked up and saw Marj staring at the long shelf of tapes over his head. He had always been proud of his tapes, just as he had been proud of his collection of toy cars as a child, and for some of the same reasons. He’d viewed the tapes as a unique accomplishment; in the deepest possible sense, they were his. He’d hoped, at some point, to share them. But now, Rollins could see through Marj’s eyes how strange they were. And he had the horrifying realization that he himself, the maker of those tapes, must seem strange, too. Marj edged closer, tipping her head sideways to scan the dates along the spines of the cases holding the earliest tapes.

  “‘November twelfth, nineteen ninety-five, nine-seventeen P.M.,’” Marj read out slowly. “‘November thirteenth, nineteen ninety-five, ten-twelve P.M.; November fourteenth, nineteen ninety-five, seven-fifteen P.M.’” She paused for a moment, gaping. “I don’t believe this. It’s just like she said.”

  Rollins looked at his tapes. They seemed so different now, with Marj there. He hadn’t quite realized there were so many. There probably were several hundred. He wasn’t sure he dared speak. “I’ve never—I’ve never shown them to anyone before.”

  “Oh, like this is supposed to be an honor.”

  “Well, kind of.”

  Rollins expected some sarcastic rejoinder, but none came.

  Marj turned back to the tapes. “All of them about following people?” she asked. “No music or anything?”

  “No music.”

  “Man oh man.” She shook her head slowly. “So these are all, like, notes?”

  “You could say that.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. To remember, I guess. And maybe to explain to somebody…” His voice trailed off. It suddenly seemed ridiculous to think that these tapes could produce understanding. Revulsion seemed much more likely.

  “Explain what?” Marj prompted. “What you’re really like? What you’re about?”

  The sarcasm was gone from Marj’s voice. Rollins’ heart banged in his chest, and there was a rhythmic thudding in his ears. Understanding was out of the question, obviously. He might understand himself one day, if he worked at it. But no one else ever would. That was obvious. “Something like that,” he said quietly, hoping to end the conversation.

  Marj raised her voice slightly. “You lonely? That what we’re talking about here?”

  “I’m just interested in seeing what other people do.”

  “Seeing—that’s all?” She looked over at him. “You don’t like to be touched, is that it?” She was by his bed.

  Rollins eyed her from th
e bureau. “I like to feel safe, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Well, you can’t always be safe, now can you?” Marj returned her attention to the row of tapes. “So where’s the one about the North Reading house?”

  “Right here.” He picked the tape up from the bedside table and popped it into the recorder.

  “Wait—I need a pencil.”

  “I’ll get you one.” Rollins retrieved a pen from the fold-up desk in the living room along with a few sheets of his stationery.

  “I didn’t disturb anything, you know,” Marj said when he returned. She brought a chair over from under the window, kicked off her running shoes, and took a seat with her feet up on the edge of the bed. “Okay, fire away.” Rollins set the tape player down on the bed near her and hit the PLAY button. The tiny wheels of the cassette started to whirl, a light hissing sound came up, and then a rustling noise.

  “Turn it up a little, would ya?” Marj asked. She had the paper on her knee, the tip of the pen at the edge of her mouth.

  Rollins cranked up the volume knob high enough that the recorder buzzed slightly when it hit a certain pitch. Still, it returned him to the Nissan, where he was setting the newspaper down on the passenger side beside him, hearing once more the rush of cars through a dreary Somerville intersection.

  Rollins’ voice rose up from the tape: “It’s eleven-twenty-four. I’m by a little newsstand called the Mid-Nite Convenient in Union Square. I’ve got an Audi up in front of me at the light. Dark blue, black maybe. It’s a little hard to tell. Just the driver, middle-aged I’d say, a little hunched over.”