Ash Wednesday

by Chet Williamson

  Bastard, she thought, hearing in her mind a word she never spoke. It was the Clyde Thorntons, she realized with sudden bitterness, who kept her here in this town of the dead collecting her dimes, counting profits in increments of pennies, the Clyde Thorntons who had caused the pressures that had finally killed her husband, Lloyd, who now lay mute under his shroud of green canvas, lay right where the stroke had killed him in 1964.

  Well, maybe now was the time to get some of her own back. Just enough to go somewhere where no dead people glowed blue, somewhere where life wasn't so damn dull that she had to pry into other people's lives in order to make her own exciting enough to be livable. Maybe Atlantic City. Or Arizona. She had friends in Arizona.

  She waited a half hour, and then called the number of Ted Bashore’s big, expensive house.

  CHAPTER 15

  Beth Callendar finished stacking the dishes in the dishwasher, then walked back into the dining room, where Jim sat gazing at the far wall.

  "It is not easy for me to do this.

  "If you had done something, anything, to show me that you care, that you'd just try to change. Not even try, but just want to try . . . if you'd only want to. But you don't. You don't at all, do you?"

  Jim shook his head as though it weighed a hundred pounds. "I can't," he said. "It's not a matter of wanting or trying. It's a matter of being. `I am what I am.' "

  "Goddamn it!" she flared. "Don't quote the Bible to me! The Bible, the Koran, the fucking Upanishads, you name it—every moral system in the world would call you . . . sick! You are . . . are . . . sick! You've got an obsession, Jim. I tried. I have done everything I could. I babied you, I listened to you, I shared your guilt, and when that didn't work, I bullied you, threatened you . . . but none of it's worked. None of it." She sat wearily in the chair across from him. "Don't you love me?"

  "I love you. Very much."

  "I've still got to go."

  "I know."

  "You can still come with me."

  "No, I can't."

  "Jim"—she leaned toward him intently—"my car is packed. I've got everything I need out there. It's today. I'm ready. And once I go, I'm gone."

  "You could come back. When this is over—"

  "What? When what's over? The bodies? The manifestations? They could disappear now and I'd still go. It's not these ghosts that haunt you."

  He swallowed deeply. "Maybe someday . . . I'll be over it. I can . . . can come to where you'll be."

  "I don't know if I'll want you then."

  His lip quivered and a large, wet tear rolled down to rest on his cheek like a tiny glass globe. It was not too difficult for her to keep from circling the table and holding him. She'd been ready for his tears, and to her surprise and relief found herself barely moved by them.

  It had been less than six weeks before that she'd begun looking for another job. Even if Jim had been as normal as anyone could be in Merridale, she still would have wanted to leave. The night haunts that Jim nurtured were grim complements to the voiceless, incorporeal terrors that stalked many of the children who still attended Hatch Road. Although most had come to a wary acceptance of the still and harmless figures, there was a dull fear in many of the young eyes, a lack of interest in classes until midmorning, when the bus rides to school were finally forgotten, a nervous foreboding that began to creep over them around 2:00, when they realized that soon they must go outside again to be driven past and through the grisly residue of fled lives.

  The sentiments were contagious, and she soon found that the intense curiosity that had followed her own first feelings of awed terror had been in time replaced by a violent loathing of the revenants. She was at the point now where she could not bear to look at one.

  Yet in a deeper sense it was not the phantoms themselves but the lack of meaning for their existence that bothered her. She found the phenomenon irrational, and irrationality was one of the few things with which Elizabeth Callendar could not cope. It shook her prescribed ideas about life, made her edgy and irritable. If there had been an explanation, she might have been able to accept it, but no one was offering any.

  She hated too what the phenomenon had done to Jim. He had, she thought, been getting better, had not seemed as withdrawn and private as before, even though she could see that he was still partially and perhaps eternally haunted by the memory of the accident. But the visitations had changed everything. She had suspected from the start that he would go out to the crash scene, and when he had returned, she'd asked him about it. He'd admitted it freely enough, but did not say what he'd seen. As for herself, she had no desire to see the embankment, especially after seeing how pale and shaken Jim looked after his visit.

  "When are you going to go?" he asked in a choked voice. Beth looked up. "Now, I think."

  "I don't want you to."

  "I've done what you wanted for too long. Now I've got to do what's right for me."

  The opening had been a godsend. A pregnant teacher quitting right after Christmas, her former replacement deciding not to take the position at the last minute, and Beth's résumé right on the principal's desk top when the news came. An interview had followed, and Beth was in, starting January 3. Leaving now gave her a week to find an apartment, get settled, and prepare her head for being in the classroom once again. Jim had refused pointblank to go. If he would have argued or gotten angry, it would have been easier for her. But he only sat stoically, as he did now, looking and speaking for all the world like a suffering pseudo-Christ who would tearfully accept whatever blows were thrown at him.

  It sickened her, and it was with relief that she left the driveway, left the town, drove past the final blue form, and passed through the roadblock. And all the way to Pittsburgh she did not once weep or feel any sorrow at leaving Merridale.

  CHAPTER 16

  His fingers were so fine, so beautiful. They were long and thin, like those of a violinist. It was strange, she thought, that those lovely fingers of the right hand should have remained untouched. Such fragile things, always dangling freely at arm's end, unprotected by thick pads of muscle, layers of fat. Only pencil-thin bones, small strands of ligament holding them to the palm. She examined the back of the hand again and saw how the veins stood out against the skin, blue on blue like blade channels on a frozen lake in moonlight. She remembered again how warm and soft that hand was, holding her own, resting lightly on her shoulder, and moving down her back, under her blouse with the clumsy craft of youth, then up to cup her breast through the thick cotton sponginess of her brassiere, and reaching behind her to undo the glowering lock of hook and eye, freeing her to the grateful touch of that warm hand, a touch that gave her grace, bestowed on her something beyond girlhood.

  And here was that hand still, unsullied, pure as that first night, nails lovingly pared, scrubbed immaculately clean so as not to offend death when he came to the bedside and took it in his own.

  It seemed like only moments before. So much time had passed, yet it was as though all of it had been compressed in Alice Meadows's consciousness, like that time she had smoked that bit of opium at a party. Tim's life, Tim's death, her return to him, were all stuffed into a tiny pill, a true time capsule she had swallowed effortlessly.

  ~*~

  She was in Merridale a week before she gathered the courage to call the Reardon home, but when she did, there was no answer. She borrowed the Rankins' Volkswagen then, and drove to the house.

  It was a large house, a long and wide two and a half stories painted a somber dark green. Thick-boled maples shaded it from the sun and separated it from the other houses on Park Street. It was precisely as she remembered it, down to the wide wooden swing dangling from the hooks screwed into the porch ceiling. The autumn leaves, however, were unraked, and weeds swelled Mrs. Reardon's gardens, covering whatever blooms might still remain in October. Blinds were drawn over all the windows, and a sign proclaiming "For Sale or Rent—Brouther Realty" stood slightly lopsided in the yard.

  Despite all the evidence
of vacancy, Alice walked up the cracking cement path and up the steps to the porch. Knowing she would receive no answer, she knocked. The wooden door was thick, so that no reverberations returned from within, and she waited half a minute, then knocked again. At last she left the porch and circled the house. The doors of the garage were closed, and she looked through the dusty glass panes to find it empty of cars. Garden tools were standing neatly inside, and three rusting bicycles, 1960 vintage, huddled together in a corner, their tires so low the rims touched the dirt floor.

  How could they have gone? How so quickly?

  She drove downtown then, parking the car in the square. There were still people there, by the dozens now, rather than the hundreds who had gathered when the visions first struck. There were still news people, some wandering idly from group to group, most waiting near or sitting inside their mobile offices parked in a row in front of the newsstand.

  The realty office was unpleasantly hot, but the heavyset woman within beamed with a rosiness that showed she flourished in heat, like an orchid. She smiled heartily, with a trace of cynicism. "Hello," she said. "Are you going to make me guess?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Whether you're a newswoman, a seller, or a buyer." Alice laughed uncomfortably. "I . . . a buyer maybe . . . or a renter."

  The cynicism vanished, but the smile remained. "I'm sorry. It's just that I haven't had anyone in here but reporters and sellers for the past week. Everybody wants out, it seems." The woman frowned slightly. "You really want to rent a place?"

  "Yes. Maybe. The house on Park Street. The one with your sign.”

  The woman's face became blank, unreadable. "A green house? Big?"

  Alice nodded. "110."

  "Yes. That's the Reardons'. Just went up this week." The woman snorted what might have been a laugh. "Most of what I have went up this week."

  "So it's available?"

  "Yes. It's available. Would you like to see it?"

  Would you like to. Alice? See it?

  "If it's no trouble."

  "Not at all. Oh, sorry to be rude. I'm Ellen Brouther." She stuck out a thick hand.

  "Alice Meadows."

  "Meadows . . . Say, didn't you used to do shows at the high school?"

  Alice said she had, and they chatted about past shows as they walked to Ellen's Chrysler. They talked the whole way to Park Street, and when Ellen pulled up in front of the Reardons', she turned to Alice. "I just want to warn you. There's one of these . . . these weirdies in the house."

  "That's all right."

  "It doesn't bother you?" Alice shook her head. "This one," Ellen went on, "is . . . well, bad. One of the worst I've seen."

  Then he's here, then he's here . . .

  "In fact, I think that's why the Reardons left. They've got a summer home up in Clinton County they went to. Now, it's in an upstairs room, and you wouldn't have to see it at all—just keep the door shut."

  "It's okay. I'd just like to see the house."

  Ellen Brouther babbled about the house's good qualities as they crunched through the autumn leaves on the sidewalk. Inside, the house was chilly, the furnace off, and though the furniture was still in place, all the books and knickknacks that enlivened a home were gone. Only an unfaded patch of wallpaper remained to mark the family portrait that Alice remembered hanging over the fireplace.

  "Everything's still hooked up," Ellen said. "Electricity, water, even the phone. And the furnace is full of oil."

  "It's very nice," Alice said, and her words, despite the carpet and draperies and overstuffed furniture, still echoed as though the house were empty.

  "This was the parlor, just a sitting room really. The living room's a little bigger, right through here, and then back into the dining room, and of course the kitchen, nice big kitchen. The cellar's unfinished, but there's a washer and dryer down there. Would you like to see?"

  Alice shook her head. "That's all right. I'd just like to see the upstairs."

  At the top of the stairway a hall ran the length of the house, with two doors opening off each side and another at the end. Ellen showed Alice a large bedroom done in a soothing green, a smaller daisy-yellow one with twin beds that was obviously a guest room, another room with only a few chairs remaining ("They used it as a den," Ellen told her), and a fair-sized bath with an old, claw-footed tub.

  Alice waited until Ellen was moving toward the stairs before she asked about the room at the end of the hall.

  Ellen licked her lips nervously. "That's the room where the apparition is. The one I told you about."

  "I'd like to see it."

  "Are you sure? I mean, you could just leave it closed. You'd never even have to look at it."

  "No. If it's here in the house, I have to know what it is."

  Ellen Brouther sighed. "It's not pretty," she said, moving slowly toward the door. "It's the son of the people who lived here. He was . . . hurt badly in Vietnam." She put her hand on the knob and looked at Alice.

  Last chance, Alice thought. Last chance. Do you want to? Do you want it? And something made her nod, and Ellen Brouther opened the last door.

  It was worse than she had imagined, yet her response to it was not one of revulsion, horror, nausea. She saw Tim on the bed, his body honestly laid before her, with no tubes or prosthetics that over a dozen years before had drawn a film over her recognition of him, so that she had gone away certain that this was not, could not be, Tim Reardon. Youth and pride and insensitivity to the fact that this heap of stumpy flesh was still human had blinded her to other things as well, and she had laughed, laughed at the terrible joke someone had tried to play on her. And then she had started to cry as the twisted face puckered in an emotion she couldn't read, and weeping, she had told the Reardons to let her know when Tim came home, and had walked out of the room under their shocked stares.

  I was wrong. You've waited all this time because you knew I'd realize it someday. That I'd come back. Her lips curved upward in a slight smile as she saw him as he was all those years before, whole and strong.

  But Ellen Brouther had no memory of that. She saw only a flagrant obscenity. Only a torso, head, and right arm remained of what must at one time have been a strong, young man. Both legs ended near the tops of the thighs. Where the genitals should have been was only a folded-over flap of skin that accentuated the incised pockets that further wrinkled the parchment-like abdomen. The pockets gaped roundly, as though invisible hoses were still there to suck away ghostly wastes. The chest was thin, the ribs visible, the skin sallow and sickly; the face was a rag doll's, torn and sewn up without skill, so that the seams showed whitely. "Why make him pretty?" Ellen imagined the surgeons saying. "Who will want him like this?" All this she saw in seconds, before turning away to look at her client, to see how she responded.

  "Miss," she said, not at all surprised at how hushed and weak her voice seemed. Alice did not turn. "Miss Meadows?"

  The girl looked at her then, and Ellen Brouther shivered. There was a beatific smile on the young woman's face, and her red hair framed that placid mask like a halo, glimmering in the light, so that Ellen felt she beheld a Madonna, but a scarlet one, with secrets deeper than motherhood.

  "All . . . all right?" Ellen said. "Have you seen enough?"

  Alice nodded and they left the room, Alice closing the door softly, as one secures the door of a room holding a dearly loved collection. "I'll take the house," she said when they had returned downstairs.

  "You will?" Ellen could not hide her surprise. "But . . . we haven't talked about the price."

  "How much, then? To rent it."

  "Well, it'll rent furnished. Actually, the Reardons preferred to rent. They had wanted two-fifty a month."

  "That's fine." Alice's three-room apartment in the city was twice that.

  "How long are you planning to stay in Merridale?”

  “I'm not really sure."

  "Well, the lease has a condition that the Reardons can move back in on thirty days' notice."
r />   "That's all right," Alice replied. "One thing though—is there any way that you can avoid telling the Reardons my name?"

  Ellen's eyes narrowed. "Why?"

  "I knew the family when I lived in Merridale. I wouldn't want them to . . . be embarrassed."

  "You knew the Reardons?"

  "Yes. Slightly."

  "Miss Meadows, is there something you're not telling me?"

  "No. I like the house, and I've no problems with the boy upstairs. I'll just keep the door closed, that's all." Alice Meadows was a consummate actress, and Ellen Brouther believed her, allowing her to sign the lease under the name of Dorean Oates. Alice could imagine what might happen if the Reardons learned who their tenant really was. They'd storm down from upstate and evict her personally.

  After she left the realty office, she bought cooking utensils at the hardware store and groceries at the Acme, then drove back to the Rankins'. Bob was on duty, and Kay was just finishing the lunch dishes. "I found a place, Kay. Moving in today."

  "What?" Kay turned from the sink, tea towel and glass in hand. "What do you mean you found a place?"

  "I just can't mooch off you and Bob anymore. I don't know how long I'll be here, and—"

  "Alice, are you crazy? You can't stay here in Merridale, not indefinitely. What about New York, your career?”

  “I can pick it up again. That's no problem."

  Kay set down the towel and glass, and stood directly in front of Alice. "What house did you rent?"