The Dark House

by John Sedgwick

  “I did not want to know, nor did I need to. Your father had certain—needs—that I could never satisfy. That was very clear to me from early on.” Her eyes found Marj, who had been listening intently. “What a wonderful introduction to our family this must be for you.”

  “But Mother, what about Neely’s money?”

  “I have dealt with the devil,” Mrs. Rollins said. “This is what comes of it.”

  “Were you the one to tell Jerry Sloane about Neely’s additional inheritance?”

  “No. We didn’t discuss such things.”

  “He knew about it somehow.”

  Mrs. Rollins fell silent. “Possibly, I mentioned it to your father.”

  “So you are in touch?”

  “From time to time, yes. When he needs me.”

  “Mother, did you ask Jerry Sloane to keep tabs on me?”

  “Absolutely not. My goodness, the idea.”

  “He hired two other people to help him. One of them tried to follow me down here. He tried to hit my car, Mother. Fortunately for Marj and me, his car went off the road and slammed into the side of an underpass.”

  “How awful!” His mother seemed stricken. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”

  “You don’t know why he might have wanted to do that, Mother?”

  “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to do such a thing.”

  Rollins fixed her with his eyes. “Mother, did you ever think about what might have happened to Neely?”

  “I’m happy to say I’ve put that matter entirely out of my mind.”

  “Yesterday, I found a poem that she wrote shortly before she disappeared,” Rollins continued. “It sheds some new light on ‘that matter.’”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s all about Father, about how he used to come for her at night. I think he’d just come back to see her. He was in the East around that time, living in Townshend.”

  “When did she write this, did you say?”

  “On September fourteenth, nineteen ninety-three. Just before she vanished.”

  “Before—before she vanished,” his mother repeated slowly. She seemed dazed, uncomprehending.

  “He might have been there that very night, Mother.”

  Finally, shock as the full implications kicked in, and the woman who had always been in full control finally lost control. Her frightened eyes and gaping mouth gave away her surprise, her terror. “Your father? There that night? But—but he told me he’d given her up. He promised—” Mrs. Rollins gave out a strange, muffled cry, and her face went white with a look of pain and horror, as if she were being strangled by unseen hands. Her legs buckled underneath her, and she crumpled to the floor.

  Twenty-four

  She landed on her side, her head and shoulder on the Persian rug. Her skirt had pulled up, exposing her slip, and her arms and legs were at awkward angles. Rollins stared down at her, this woman who had dominated his life, now lying on the floor before him. He was several feet away, but he found himself unable to move closer.

  Marj crouched down to her almost immediately. “Mrs. Rollins? Are you okay?”

  Rollins’ mother’s eyes were open. Her lips quivered, but no sound came out except a gasping noise as she drew the air into her lungs. An arm shifted and a knee flexed, as if she were twitching in her sleep.

  Rollins just watched, transfixed. His world had tipped over.

  “Rolo, come on. We’ve got to do something.”

  “Just lie there, Mother,” Rollins said, finally coming to his senses. He grabbed a pillow off the couch and Marj gently slipped it under Mrs. Rollins’ head. “Stay still now. Don’t try to move.”

  Rollins went to the telephone. There was a sticker on it listing the retirement center’s emergency number. He dialed it. “It’s my mother, Jane Rollins,” he said. “She’s fallen to the floor. There’s something terribly wrong. She can’t get up. She needs help. Quickly, please.”

  A nurse from the center came moments later. She was young, with her hair up in combs; her blue-and-white uniform rustled when she moved. Rollins pointed to the spot just outside the kitchen where his mother lay. Marj was kneeling by her head, touching a cool cloth to her forehead. The nurse tried to talk to his mother, but she got only a babyish whimper in reply.

  “We were—we were talking,” Rollins hurriedly told the nurse. He hoped he didn’t sound defensive. “And she just…fell over.”

  “She have a history of heart trouble?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Is she on any medication? Heart pills, anything like that?”

  “Not that I know of.” Rollins weakened: “We’ve been a little out of touch.”

  “I see.” The nurse fetched a blanket from the bedroom and placed it over his mother. “You’ll be just fine, Mrs. Rollins. Just lie there, all right? We’ll be taking you to a hospital in a few minutes and getting you all fixed up.”

  The EMTs arrived a few minutes later. There were three of them, clean-cut young men in pale green jumpsuits, with walkie-talkies blaring. They bent down to her to check her vital signs. Marj stood up to give them room.

  “All of sudden, she just went,” Rollins told him. The truth was too private—not just that he had provoked her collapse, but that he took grim satisfaction in doing so. It was the dark pleasure of revenge.

  “Looks like stroke,” one of the men told Rollins. “It can go like that. Just—boom.” He asked more questions about medication and medical history. Rollins felt guilty not to know the answers. He knew so little about his mother.

  “We better get her to the emergency room,” another medic said. They gently leaned her sideways, slid a slim, metal board under her, and strapped her onto it. They lifted her up onto the gurney, secured her, then wheeled her to the door. She was merely a package now.

  “Where are you taking her?” Marj asked.

  “Hartford Hospital. Downtown.”

  Rollins trailed along behind the gurney. He was conscious of the worried stares of the other residents in the hallway. Outside, Rollins was puzzled by the glare; he seemed to have forgotten what season it was, or even what year.

  Marj had to remind him where he’d left the car. “You okay there, Rolo? You want me to drive?” she asked him.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Yet as he maneuvered the Nissan out to the street, and then to the highway, he found that it was difficult to stay with the ambulance. Despite its flashing lights, he kept tuning out, losing focus, as he watched his mother fall, over and over. It was so remarkable, like seeing a building dynamited. One moment, a grand, outdated edifice stands there, tall and imperious. The next, it’s nothing but rubble and billowing dust.

  And Rollins himself had lit the fuse.

  The hospital was a massive, gleaming structure in a leafy part of town just off the highway. Nearing it, Rollins drove by some children splashing about an open hydrant. The technicians pulled up at the emergency entrance and wheeled his mother directly into the hospital through a pair of double doors.

  Rollins and Marj hurried around to the visitors’ entrance, where a nurse behind a glass partition took down Mrs. Rollins’ basic information. They settled into the chairs farthest from the overhead TV. Marj reached for Rollins’ hand. “You doing okay?” she asked.

  “It just keeps going, doesn’t it?”

  “What does?”

  Rollins had to search for the word. “The pain. All the pain in the family. Stephanie’s dying, Neely, the divorce, my parents’ sick relationship. It’s like our family keeps getting torn apart until there’s nothing left.”

  “And now this.”

  “Yeah. Now this.” Rollins turned to her. “Do you think she feels it, Marj? Do you think it finally hit her, everything she’d done?”

  “I don’t know, Rolo.”

  Rollins looked into Marj’s eyes, which seemed to search his in return. “It always seemed like I was the only one who felt it. The only one who even noticed.” He stiffened. “That’s why I got pac
ked off to the child psychiatrist.” He reached for her, brought his face close to hers. “You don’t still think I’m strange, do you?”

  She brought her hand around to the back of his head, gripped him. “Oh, honey.”

  “You did, at first. I know you did.”

  Marj smiled devilishly.

  “But you understand me better now, don’t you?”

  She kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Of course, Rolo.”

  It took about a half hour before the chief resident, Dr. Adams, a tall, bespectacled man in green surgical garb, emerged from the ER and came up to Rollins. “You Jane Rollins’ son?” he asked.

  Rollins nodded, and Dr. Adams beckoned him back into the hallway, away from the noise. “Look, there’s no good way to put this,” he began. “Your mother’s had quite a massive stroke.” Rollins listened numbly as the doctor reported the grim particulars: mental function difficult to determine; speech impairment severe; the right side of her body almost completely paralyzed.

  The facts struck like a stick against some distant drum. His words had the sound of fate, of finality.

  “Paralyzed, you say?” Rollins asked finally. It was so hard to believe that he’d heard right, that the damage might be lasting, even permanent.

  “On the right side, yes. I’m afraid so.”

  “Could I see her?”

  “Of course.”

  Rollins returned to the waiting room to get Marj. She seemed so alone there in her seat.

  “It’s a stroke,” he told her. “She’s half paralyzed.”

  “Oh, Rolo,” Marj said, her features darkening. She reached for him, and Rollins took her hand and together they followed the doctor back down a long corridor, through a pair of double doors and into the ICU. His mother was in a private room near the nurse’s station. She lay on her back, motionless, beside a great stack of high-tech monitors and arrays. An IV tube ran into her left arm. She seemed terribly small in the bed, as if she’d been swallowed up by the sheets and blankets that lay on top of her. A white bandage was wound tightly around her head like a skullcap, and there was an angry bruise over her left eye. She seemed to be sleeping. Her eyes were shut, but her lips still quivered. Rollins wondered if she was being tormented by her dreams.

  “We’ve got her on blood thinners. They’ll clear out any blockage,” Dr. Adams said, looking down at her. “We’re going to keep an eye on her here for the next few days.”

  “And afterward?” Rollins asked.

  Dr. Adams turned grim. “Well, we’ll have to see.”

  Back in the waiting room, Rollins had Marj check her answering machine again for word from Schecter. This time, Marj reported that a message had come in. “He says Sloane is continuing on out Route 2. He’s up by the Vermont border.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Rollins exclaimed. “He’s probably going to my father’s! He’s going to Townshend! When did Al leave that message?”

  “An hour ago.”

  Rollins checked his watch. It was 11:30. Sloane and Schecter could be almost to Townshend by now. He used the pay phone to try Schecter’s cell phone, but was unable to get through. He slammed down the receiver and turned back to Marj.

  “I never told Al my father was there in Townshend. He could be walking into a trap.”

  “He’ll be all right. He can handle himself.”

  Rollins spoke firmly: “I’ve got to go up there, Marj.”

  “And leave me here with your mother?” Her voice rose in anger. “In the hospital, after this huge stroke? When I hardly know her?”

  “I’ve got to finish this, Marj. I’ve got to get there. I’ve got to find out what happened to Neely. That’s the only way out of this mess. And my father knows, Marj. I’ve got to see him.”

  “But he might hurt you!” She was near tears.

  “I’ll be all right. He’s still my father.”

  “And Sloane?”

  He had no answer to that. He simply took her in his arms and drew her slim, soft body tightly against his. “I’m sorry, Marj. But I’ve got to do this.” He stroked the back of her neck, wishing that he could do that forever. Finally, he pulled himself away from her. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Then we’ll be free of all this for good, I promise.” He reached into his back pocket for his wallet. “Here.” He gave her his bank card, and whispered his password. “This will keep you going.”

  “I don’t want your money.”

  “Take it.” He pushed the hand holding the bank card back toward her. “Please.”

  “But I don’t want to stay here. I hate hospitals.”

  “Please, Marj. For me.”

  “I want to be done with all this.” The tears started to fall.

  Rollins kissed them away. “You will be—very soon. I promise.”

  In the end, she’d walked him to his car. She gave him a big hug before he climbed into the Nissan. “Be careful, okay?” she whispered. Then she grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him to her and kissed him on the lips.

  From Hartford, Rollins took Route 91 north along the broad Connecticut River up past the old mill towns of Springfield and Chicopee. The highway was fully stocked with cars heading to unknown destinations, but Rollins scarcely noticed them. He checked occasionally for Schecter’s Cressida, or Sloane’s massive Land Cruiser, but for the most part he thought only about where he was going now. In Marj’s honor, he kept the radio tuned to hard rock as he cruised along, and, for a couple of songs he knew she liked, he even cranked up the volume till he could feel the beat in his chest. He imagined that it was Marj’s touch on him, as if their bodies were pressed together, even now.

  He crossed into Vermont and finally turned off 91 by South Woodstock and pulled in for gas at the shiny new Mobil station, and then, famished, bought a sandwich and a bottle of ginger ale in the accompanying convenience mart.

  As Rollins continued on from Brattleboro, there was a blanket of green all around, and an occasional sprinkling of wildflowers; mauve shadows stretched across the foothills. Vermont had always been a frosty, white world when he’d come as a boy. Now, Rollins felt almost hopeful as he drove along with the window down, taking in the fresh, grass-scented breeze and all the scenery. Perhaps the dreadful suspicions about his father, Sloane, and Neely were merely a terrible misunderstanding. Yes, his father might have had an affair with Neely years before, and he might have come by to see her in the days, possibly even the hours, before she disappeared. But that didn’t necessarily mean that he’d killed her. His father’s hands had never felt particularly soft on Rollins, but they weren’t brutal. He could have come and gone without incident—one of the dozens of people who had harmlessly crossed Neely’s path shortly before her disappearance. Why single out his father?

  After South Woodstock, the valley opened out, cows and horses appeared in the fields, a few hay barns sprang up, and houses crowded together along the roadside. They were mostly white, with steep metal roofs that gleamed in the setting sun. Finally, Rollins reached the village of Townshend itself: a cluster of small shops, a tiny library, a gas station, and a country store with baskets of vegetables for sale out front. He used to trudge along this snowpacked street as a youngster: Bells would jingle when the shop doors opened with a blast of warmth. It was just the four of them back then, since the family was “roughing it,” as his mother said, without help. Cooking, skiing, shoveling snow—the family had seemed to Rollins almost cheerful on these winter holidays.

  On the far side of town, Rollins took the third left by an A-frame onto Bald Mountain Road, an unpaved cul-de-sac that climbed up to a trailhead ten miles in. The family place was a few miles down on the right. His apprehension rose as he neared it, and he kept a careful eye out for Sloane’s SUV as he drove along. The entrance had always been marked by a towering birch that rose up by a snow-covered boulder. But, as he slowly drew near, he could see only the boulder, bare now except for the name ROLLINS painted in black letters that had dribbled a little. Through the swaying pines, Rollins could
just make out the shadowy outline of the house. No lights were on now, in the gathering dusk, and, to his surprise, he didn’t see any cars in the driveway. Still, he thought it wise to go well past the house, on beyond the next bend in the road. Better not to reveal himself too soon.

  He pulled over by a thick stand of slender beeches, their leaves fluttering in the evening breeze. He rubbed his hands together and took a few breaths to calm himself. He’d hide his car here and approach the house on foot. Because of the dead end, neither Sloane nor his father were likely to drive past; he didn’t want to give either of them advance notice of his presence. Still, it was better to leave the Nissan facing town, so Rollins could make a quick exit if necessary.

  The unpaved road was narrow, and it was bounded on either side by soft shoulders of dirt that was thick with weeds. He pulled on the wheel and carefully inched around to the far edge. But when he backed, he could feel the rear of the car drop suddenly as his left rear wheel slid over the edge of the hardened surface. “Damn.” He pressed on the accelerator, but the wheel seemed only to dig in deeper. Any benign feelings toward his father faded with the realization that he absolutely did not want him—let alone Sloane—to find him here, stuck, vulnerable. He tried the gas again. Nothing. In desperation, he mashed down the accelerator one last time. The tires gave out a fierce roar, and the Nissan lurched back onto the road with a squeal. Rollins’ blood surged out to his fingertips, but he hit the brakes to keep the car from slipping over the far edge. After checking the sightlines to make sure the car was not visible from the house or the approaching road, he pulled on the hand brake and climbed out.

  Heart pounding, on foot he headed back down the road toward the house. After checking again to make sure there was no car in the driveway, and that no lights burned in the house, he turned in to the driveway.

  It changed everything to be here. His senses were so heightened, he somehow imagined he could hear the light glinting off the windowpanes of the old farmhouse and could feel on his own skin the scraping of the pine branches against the weather-beaten shingles.