The Girl in the Attic

by Ed Gorman

  "Jamie—listen—please. . ."

  Then Jamie started crying again, quietly. "I don't know what's going on with me, Mom. Anne keeps telling me there are things she wants me to do. So. . ."

  "Jamie—listen—I love you so much. . ." Now Sally was crying, too.

  "I know you do, Mom. And I love you." Jamie hung up.

  Two minutes later, Sally fled her hotel room in search of a graveyard with a Burger King at the base of its hill.

  2

  Bobby had read some western novels over the past two years (the large-print kind that you got in a special section at the library), and so he had developed a sense of what the frontier must have been like.

  He had that sense now as he stood in a copse of willow trees and looked down into the trailer park, on the east edge of which sat Bethel's place. Lights blinked dimly in the gloom. He could imagine himself on horseback, heroic and weary, coming upon a village lost in drizzle and fog in the late part of the last century. He'd have a cheroot in his mouth and six guns on his hips and the first thing he'd want besides a shave was to visit the whorehouse . . .

  A beat-up Ford going faster than the posted 25 MPH speed limit splashed Bobby as it roared down the washboard asphalt.

  Bobby got mad, of course, but decided against yelling anything at the guy. He'd done something like that once when he'd thought some people were picking on him, and they'd beat the hell out of him.

  Bethel's place during daylight hours was green, but on a rainy night it was black and slick, and the yellow light that escaped from it gave the impression not just of illumination but of intense heat as well.

  Bobby turned around and looked back behind him. The nearest trailer was a quarter-mile back. He felt suddenly lonely and scared. He thought of her big wondrous breasts, wanting them; terrified of them.

  He went up to the door and knocked. The door swung open.

  Bethel stood framed in the light; you could see the outline of her entire body through the wispy material of her night clothes. Bobby recognized them as baby doll pajamas—sometimes women in magazines such as Big Ones and Handful(mags he had to ride his bike over to Center City to gaze upon) wore them when they lay back on couches with their legs spread wide, a bored look in their eyes.

  "I was afraid you wasn't gonna show up," she said. Then laughed. "Figured you got scared."

  "Huh-uh."

  This time her laugh was gentler. "If you promise to keep it a secret, I'll tell you something."

  "What?"

  "It's raining."

  "Raining?"

  "Yeah. Raining. Wet stuff fallin' down from the sky."

  "Oh, yeah, raining."

  "And you're gettin' wet."

  "Right: I'm gettin' wet."

  But she didn't invite him inside, and he didn't make any moves.

  She just looked at him, and some of the hard lines of her overly made-up face softened. "You never been with a woman, have you?"

  He hesitated before speaking. "You mean besides my mother or my cousin Darlene or somebody like that?"

  Bethel smiled. "Why don't you come inside and get out of your wet clothes? Then we'll smoke a joint or two and then you can say it. When the lights are out."

  He didn't move.

  "You scared, Bobby?"

  "I guess I am. Yeah."

  "Well, now, I’m goin’ tell you a secret for real."

  "What’s that?"

  "All that's gonna happen tonight is that I'm gonna do you a favor and then you're gonna do me a favor."

  "What favor you gonna do me?"

  "I'm gonna teach you how to be with a woman. I'm gonna teach you real good. I'm gonna teach you so good that every woman you meet will want you to be good to her."

  "Even Connie Morris?"

  "Who's Connie Morris?"

  "She's a varsity cheerleader at Haversham High."

  Bethel laughed. "Even Connie Morris is gonna want you to be good to her."

  He paused and looked up at the sky. Behind the racing clouds there was a silver-gold light. The raindrops as they fell on his upturned face were silvergo1d tears and they kind of tickled and made him feel better.

  "Then," Bethel said, "then you're gonna do me a favor."

  He brought his head down and looked right at her. "What's that?"

  "You're gonna tell me about the book."

  He knew she knew his worst secret, and he froze right there. "I don't have no book, Bethel."

  The woman's face was hard again. "Don't you fuckin' lie to me, Bobby. I know better 'cause One Eye himself told me you have it."

  "One Eye told you?"

  "You're damn right he did," she said.

  She put out her hand, and for a long time he didn't take it but just stared at it as if he didn't know quite what it was.

  The cold rain continued and the night smelled of wet elm leaves and mud. From inside Bethel's trailer, he could hear a laugh track on a TV show and smell marijuana smoke. He leveled his eyes so that they rested right on her breasts. Despite himself, there was a lot of activity in his pants. He got dry-mouthed and scared again, but this time scared in a really thrilling way.

  Her hand was still out there for his, waiting. "You come on in here, Bobby, and let me teach you how to be with a woman."

  He made himself forget all about the book. He'd worry about the book later.

  He put his hand next to hers and let it stay there a minute. His fingers twitched.

  Then she took his hand, pulling him closer, and put his hand over her breast so he could feel the texture of her baby doll pajamas and of her nipple beneath them.

  He couldn't speak. He couldn't even think.

  He followed her up the three steps and inside the trailer.

  4

  It took Sally twenty minutes to find the graveyard, and when she got there it was empty.

  The downpour of the past few hours had made the entire place little more than a mud hole with headstones sticking up at odd angles in the gloom.

  Next to a huge black stone angel whose wings were as wide as the branches of a small tree Sally saw a lighted phone booth on the road below.

  She found a narrow path that passed between the graves. She didn't know what she expected to find in the booth, but she felt compelled to check it out.

  A few minutes later, she stood with the receiver in her hand, knowing her daughter had been doing this same thing only a short time ago.

  But where had she gone?

  And why?

  Frustrated, she slammed the receiver back into its cradle and put her head against the cold glass. Through it she could see the Burger King on the road below, teenage cars lining the driveway, the red neon, brilliant in the gloom.

  Then her eyes saw the name scrawled in lipstick on the glass above the phone.

  Anne Edmonds.

  She reached up and touched a finger to the name. The lipstick was fresh.

  She ran from the phone booth back to the path, then stood there a moment looking up at the hill and the graveyard.

  It should have been obvious why Jamie would be here, whose grave she would visit.

  Sally started up the hill again, relieved that she at least had some definite purpose for being here now.

  If she could find the grave of Anne Edmonds, there was a good chance she'd be able to find her daughter.

  5

  "You don't believe in life after death, do you?"

  "Can't honestly say I do," Ron Evars told Carlotta.

  They sat in the lobby of the Royal Hotel. From the crystal chandelier to the potted palms, you could see what the place had been in its heyday. Now there was an element of melancholy that hung on the air surely as the odor of stale cigar smoke.

  Carlotta, bored with life at her apartment, often returned to the hotel at night. Here she'd sit in one of the fancier suites and watch cable TV, which she didn't have at home. She was often joined, as tonight, by Ron Evars. Like Carlotta, he too was bored with his home life—in his case it was his wife. How
could such a pretty, sweet little woman have turned into such a shrew? He did not want to spend his nights arguing that he was not taking an active enough role in the politics of their local Baptist church. Nor did he want to know all the gossip she picked up at the supermarket or at the hairdresser's. He just wanted to sit, as he sat now, in front of a TV with a bowl of buttered popcorn in his lap, watching an old movie on cable.

  So what did Carlotta do but bring up the subject of religion?

  "Then you don't believe it's her up there."

  "Who? Up where?" He was stuffing popcorn in his mouth and watching Edmund O'Brien realize that he'd just been fatally poisoned—and still Carlotta went on.

  "Anne. Up in the attic."

  "Yeah."

  "Yeah what? You're not listening, are you?"

  "Sure I am."

  "The hell you are."

  Then the tube went to a station break and he said, "I heard every word you said."

  "Repeat it to me."

  "Aw, Carlotta, Christ."

  "And don't say 'Christ.’"

  "You were talkin' about Anne."

  "All right. And what else?"

  He thought a moment. His eyes strayed to the TV. Was the commercial over?

  "And what else?"

  He mumbled on purpose. "And something about the attic."

  "What about it?"

  "Aw, hell, I guess you'll have to tell me."

  "What I asked was whether you believe it's her up there in the attic. Do you?"

  "No."

  "And you don't believe she took possession of that girl Jamie last night either, do you?"

  "Nope, I sure don't."

  "Then what do you believe?"

  "I don't believe nothin' one way or the other," Ron Evars said.

  Carlotta stared at him. Ever since the killings ten years ago, Ron got curiously reticent whenever you brought up the subject, as if he knew—or at least suspected—something he had no intention of sharing with you.

  "I want you to tell me."

  "Tell you what, Carlotta?"

  "What you think about all this."

  "About all what?"

  "You know damn good and well what." Whenever she swore, you knew Carlotta meant business.

  "Well," Ron Evars allowed, "I guess a man's got his opinions about things."

  "Opinions about what things?"

  He shrugged. "About what happened that night, I guess."

  Carlotta frowned. "I want you to tell me what you really think. You've been holding it in for ten years now."

  "Don't see how it would do any good to say, anyway. Who'd listen? Everybody's got their mind made up."

  The movie came back on.

  "I'll listen," Carlotta said. She was eager now. She'd waited ten years. Maybe he had something to tell her she could share with Hanratty that would help prove Anne Edmonds innocent.

  But he slipped back to his old ways. He put so much popcorn in his mouth he looked like he had the mumps. He looked up at her and said, nodding to the TV, "You wait till the next commercial, then we'll talk all about it, all right?"

  6

  She had found the grave marked ANNE EDMONDS.

  She had to kneel in the mud and push her face very close to make sure that this was the right grave. There was a bit of illumination from a nearby streetlight.

  The air smelled of pine and chill; her skin felt numb and dirty.

  Sally reached out and touched her hands to the words carved on stone, as if she were blind and it were Braille.

  She was vaguely aware that she was sobbing and that her trench coat was torn at the elbow and along the hem.

  She hadn't even noticed that she'd lost one of her flats on the way up the hill and that it stuck straight out of the mud like a knife.

  She fell against the gravestone and began beating useless fists against it, as if it had secrets to reveal but remained mute just to spite her.

  Down below her on the road that ran past the Burger King, Hanratty jumped from Gonzalez's van and stopped a kid with purple hair and an earring encrusted with fake jewels.

  "You seen a blond woman walk by here?" The kid grinned with mossy teeth. "I did, man, I'd keep her for myself."

  "Yeah, you and Robert Redford," Hanratty said.

  He pushed past the kid and went inside.

  You could see him from the street, somewhat frantically moving among the patrons in the brightly lit interior, gesturing to the dark street and asking if they'd seen a blonde woman around here lately.

  You could also see them, the patrons, one by one, shaking their heads.

  No blond woman.

  When he got back to the van, he saw that Gonzalez was behaving in a most undoctorly way.

  He had the kid with the purple hair mashed up against the side of the door.

  "I don't think you took my friend's question very seriously," Gonzalez said.

  "Fuck yourself, spic."

  By now Hanratty stood next to Gonzalez. "What a mouth on that cocksucker," he said.

  "Really," Gonzalez said.

  Hanratty grabbed him and got the earring and held it up in the air. "You saw her, didn’t you?"

  "Gimme my fucking earring."

  "You don't tell me where you saw her, I'm going to throw this on the ground and smash it."

  "Bullshit. You do and I call the cops."

  "Yeah, right. I'm sure the cops'll be glad to help you out."

  "That's the one nice thing about this town," Gonzalez said. "They do everything they can to help guys with purple hair."

  Hanratty held it out to the kid. When the kid started to reach forward, he snatched it back and threw it on the ground.

  Then he brought his right leg up and got it ready to bring it down on the earring.

  "Graveyard," the kid said.

  "What?"

  "Graveyard. That's where I saw her go."

  Hanratty followed the kid's eyes. In the gloom above he could make out rusty iron gates opening on a cemetery.

  "Why the hell didn't you tell us that in the first place?" Hanratty yelled.

  "'Cause I didn't feel like it," the kid said. "So fuck off. And gimme my earring back."

  Hanratty started to hand it over, then thought better of it. He dropped it on the ground and then without saying a word, smashed it hard and good.

  "You motherfucker," the kid said. "Why'd you do that?"

  Hanratty didn't answer until he and Gonzalez had climbed into the van and were heading out for the graveyard. "Because," he said sternly to the kid, "people with purple hair should know better than to call other people Spics. 'Cause that makes you just another two-bit bigot who just happens to put purple dye in his hair. You understand me, punko?"

  Then they were gone.

  Jamie stood in the woods a hundred yards from the cabin looking at the yellow flowers getting soaked in the rain.

  She went up to one of the flowers and picked it.

  An image filled her mind like a movie: Anne, years ago, bending to pick a similar flower, holding it up to the sky.

  Then the image faded and Jamie was left in her soden clothes standing before the cabin.

  Ground fog lapped at her knees and rain flattened her hair against her head.

  Thunder rumbled, then lightning ripped across the sky, making the cabin white in its fury.

  There was only one thing to do: she ran to the porch and stood under the overhang.

  She liked the feeling of being out of the rain and felt less cold, less alone with the smells of the wooden porch and the paint of the walls.

  Of course it would be even nicer inside.

  She tried the door, rattled the knob.

  Then she began looking in all the obvious places for a key—under the rubber welcome mat; up above the door frame; under the flower pot holding a geranium—but nothing.

  She huddled up against the front door as if simply willing hard for it to open would in fact make it so. But no.

  Then she remembered her aunt's hous
e, and how, when she was a little girl and her aunt wasn't home, she was sometimes able to jimmy the back door and get in.

  Gulping, hoping, soaked, and cold beyond feeling now, she ran through the downpour to the rear of the cabin.

  It took ten minutes, yanking this way and that on the back doorknob, but she knew right away that she'd be successful because it was loose under her hand and felt as if it would yield at the merest twist.

  Then she was inside.

  Through the two windows above the sink she saw lightning again, but now she felt protected, especially after closing the door behind her.

  She spent the first five minutes exploring. The place was very much like a doll's house with bookcases and a fireplace and nice furniture. The kitchen smelled of spices and the living room of sweetly burned firewood and the big walk-in closet in the bedroom of moth balls and perfume.

  Maybe it was the perfume, she would never know for sure, but it was while she walked around the bedroom, fascinated by how much all this reminded her of a big doll's house when she saw the first image of the man and the woman.

  The woman had golden hair and a beautiful laughing face and she lay next to a man on a bed, a hairy man with thick, almost brutish muscles. Both of them were naked and the man was putting himself into the woman the way Jamie had once seen a man in a picture book put himself into a woman . . .

  Then the woman and the man were gone from her mind and she was back in the bedroom, silver lightning erupting on the other side of the window like the flare of bombs going off, the rain sounds steady against the roof.

  She was hungry.

  She went to the kitchen and started searching the refrigerator. It yielded a big plastic bottle of Diet Coke that tasted flat. Then she went through the cabinets, where she found some Saltines and raisins.

  She went into the living room, turned on the TV, and found a rerun of "Friends." When she glanced outside, she had another vision.

  The woman and the man (a different one this time; red haired like the woman, well-muscled but very white-skinned as if he never got outdoors) stood in the yellow flowers outside the cabin in soft summer moonlight. They were not naked, but the man had slipped his hand inside the woman's paisley blouse and had cupped his hand over her breast. . .