Set This House in Order

by Matt Ruff

  “I see,” the trooper says. He steps back from her door. “Could you get out of the car please, ma’am?”

  “OK,” Mouse says, and does. “I’m sorry, I know I was going pretty fast—”

  “Yes ma’am, you were. Could you step over here to the back of your car, please?…That’s fine, now what I’m going to ask you to do is hold your arm straight out from your shoulder like this, close your eyes, and touch your nose.”

  Mouse does as she’s told. Finger on the tip of her nose, eyes still closed, she waits for the next instruction. But when the trooper speaks again, the words are not directed at her: “Sir!” he calls, his voice moving away from Mouse, “Sir, would you stay in the car, please? Sir!”

  Mouse opens her eyes. In the back seat of the Buick, her anonymous passenger has panicked and wants to get out. But the trooper steps up to the car door and blocks it with his body. Mouse’s passenger makes a frightened mewling sound and shoves hard against the door; the trooper, dropping his flashlight, shoves back. “Sir!” he says, his voice straining with the effort it takes to keep the door closed. “I need you to stay in the car, sir!”

  “Oh God,” says Mouse. “Please, he’s…he’s claustrophobic! Please, don’t—” She takes a step towards the car; the trooper draws his gun.

  —and all is quiet again. Mouse is back in the driver’s seat. The Centurion is still parked on the road shoulder, but the patrol car is gone. The dashboard clock reads 7:48.

  With a shaking hand, Mouse turns on the Centurion’s inside lights. A speeding ticket is tucked into the sun visor; Mouse pulls it down, glances at it unseeingly, and sets it aside.

  “Andrew?” she says, looking behind her. The back seat appears to be empty—but then a head rises into view.

  “Why are we stopped?” he asks. “Are we in Michigan yet?”

  “Xavier?”

  “I’m sorry, I must have fallen asleep.” Xavier looks out the windows at the darkened landscape. “Where are we? Is this Michigan?”

  “N-no,” says Mouse, heart hammering in her chest. “No, it’s…we’re about halfway there.”

  “Only halfway? Why are we stopped, then?”

  “Uh…car trouble,” Mouse tells him. “I, I think it’s OK now, but I’m going to have to make a stop at a garage to get it checked…”

  “Another stop?” Xavier says.

  “It’s OK, really,” says Mouse. “We’re making great time.” She turns around and reaches for the ignition.

  “Mouse,” he says. “Don’t.”

  Mouse stops, her hand on the ignition key. She feels like crying.

  “Get out,” he tells her. “I’m driving.”

  Mouse fights back the tears. “You can’t,” she says.

  “No? You don’t think so?”

  “What if we get stopped by the police again?”

  “I’m not going to drive like it’s the Indy 500.”

  “What if we get stopped again anyway?” Mouse says. “Do you even have a driver’s license?”

  “Do I—” He pauses. Mouse hears him pull out his wallet and flip through it. “Ah-hah!” he cries triumphantly, but the cry cuts off too soon. “Wait,” he says. “What year is this?”

  “1997,” says Mouse.

  “Goddamnit!…”

  “So you don’t have a driver’s license,” Mouse says. “And if we do get stopped again, especially with the car smelling like this, you’ll probably be arrested.”

  “Fine,” he says. He reaches for the door handle. “I’ll just get out here, then, and—”

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Mouse reminds him. “It’s getting cold out. You might freeze before you get another ride.”

  The look he gives her is withering. “All right,” he says. “You want to drive, then drive—to the next big town. Then I am getting out.”

  Mouse hesitates. “Look,” she says, softening her voice, “I really wasn’t trying to get us pulled over. If you want to go on traveling together, I promise, I won’t—”

  He cuts her off. “Just drive…or else.”

  She drives.

  The next big town is Rapid City, South Dakota—no more than an hour and a half away, even if Mouse keeps the car’s speed down. She has ninety minutes to think of something. At first it seems hopeless: every time she checks the rearview mirror he’s staring at her, as if he can hear her plotting against him.

  But as Mouse herself has learned firsthand, vigilance can be exhausting. Not long after they cross the state border, she looks in the mirror for the umpteenth time and finds him asleep.

  Most of him, anyway: his body has slumped down in the seat, and his head is lolling back. But as Mouse continues to watch him, dividing her attention between the mirror and the road ahead, his right arm comes up, like a cobra rising out of a basket, until the back of his hand brushes the roof of the car. His hand recoils from the contact, tenses, and begins striking the roof deliberately, alternating between soft and hard blows.

  Thump-THWACK-THWACK-thump…thump…THWACK-thump…THWACK-thump…THWACK-thump-THWACK-THWACK…

  “Xavier?” says Mouse. But this isn’t one of Xavier’s drum solos; it’s something else.

  …thump-THWACK-THWACK…thump-thump-thump-thump…thump…thump-THWACK-thump…thump…

  Code, Mouse realizes. It’s a message in code.

  “I don’t understand,” she says.

  The rapping hand pauses, then starts over again: Thump-THWACK-THWACK…thump-thump-thump-thump…

  “No,” says Mouse, “I mean I don’t know Morse code. Unless…Maledicta? Do you—”

  Suddenly he snaps awake, his head jerking forward. “What…?” he exclaims, staring at his upraised arm. He glowers at Mouse. “What the hell just happened?”

  “Nothing,” Mouse says, not very convincingly. “You were just stretching in your sleep.”

  “Right.” They are passing a road sign: RAPID CITY—42. “Drive faster,” he says.

  “I’ve got it at fifty,” says Mouse. “I thought you didn’t want me to—”

  “Drive faster. I want this ride over with.”

  He settles back in the seat, his left hand gripping his right forearm as if to restrain it. Mouse can see that he is scared now. The encounter with the state trooper must really have shaken him up; he is starting to lose control. But barring a second police stop, Mouse still doesn’t know how she is going to push him over the edge in the short time she has left.

  In the end, the South Dakota state tourist bureau does the job for her.

  Besides the mile markers, they are passing a lot of billboards touting various tourist attractions: Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Monument, Wounded Knee, Petrified Gardens, and something called Wall Drug, which Mouse has never heard of, but which is apparently a very big deal around here. FILL UP YOUR JUG…AT WALL DRUG, one billboard invites, somewhat cryptically. Another, showing a display case overflowing with merchandise, reads: WALL DRUG STORE—ALL THIS AND FREE ICE WATER, TOO!

  “My goodness,” he says from the back seat. “Is that the Wall Drug Store?”

  It’s a new voice. “I-I don’t know,” says Mouse. “I guess so. What is it, some kind of mall?”

  “It’s supposed to be one of the most amazing malls in the country,” he says. “It’s much better than Westlake Center, I bet.”

  “Oh. Well—”

  “I got cheated out of my last mall visit,” he adds confidentially. “Do you suppose we could stop at Wall Drug for just a few minutes? No one else would have to know.”

  “Sure,” says Mouse. “Sure, I’d be glad to stop there, only—do you think I could talk to Andrew first?”

  Andrew’s body convulses, and he comes back out. “Stop the car!” he shouts. “Stop—”

  Another billboard goes by. “Ooh!” he cries, in a little-boy falsetto. “Wooly mammoths!”

  Mouse says nothing, only waits. They pass another billboard, this one advertising Camel cigarettes.

  He leans forward, blinking rapidly.
“Dear,” he says, in a woman’s voice, “could I get a smoke to clear my hea—”

  “NO!” He convulses again. “Stop the car! Stop the car!”

  Mouse keeps driving.

  “Stop the car!” he bellows, and kicks the back of her seat. “Stop it, stop it, stop it—”

  A sliver of time drops out, and then they are pulled over at a curve in the highway. Mouse, turned halfway around in her seat, gets just a glimpse of her passenger as he bails out of the car, leaving the door open behind him.

  “Andrew!” Mouse calls—

  —and then she is out of the car too, standing at the edge of a big ditch that runs alongside the road shoulder. She hears him screaming.

  “Andrew?” Mouse calls. “Andrew?”

  The ditch is about eight feet deep, and by the glow of the Buick’s taillights, Mouse can just make out Andrew’s body thrashing around at the bottom of it. He’s caught in something; from the violence of his motions, and the bloodcurdling shrieks coming out of his mouth, Mouse is afraid it’s a bear trap, or something equally gruesome. Then another car drives by on the highway, and as its headlights sweep the ditch, Mouse sees what he has blundered into: barbed wire.

  Someone has dumped a length of barbed-wire fence in the ditch, and he has gotten tangled in the coils. Instead of holding still and trying to pick himself out carefully, he has panicked and is fighting. Mouse can see the whole heap of wire and fence posts shaking.

  “Oh God, Andrew!” Mouse says. “Andrew, don’t, you’ll really hurt yourself…” She wants to go down and help him, but she’s afraid that the way he’s flailing around, he’ll end up knocking her into the wire too. She hovers at the top of the ditch, pleading with him to stop thrashing.

  He lets out one last piercing scream and falls still. Mouse waits another ten seconds, then scrambles down to him.

  It’s not as bad as she thought. She’d gotten the impression that Andrew’s whole body was wrapped in barbed wire, but it turns out only his left arm is caught. Still, it’s bad: the wire is looped around his forearm at least twice, and his struggling has pulled it taut, digging the barbs in deep. When Mouse touches his sleeve, she finds it tacky with blood.

  “Andrew…” It looks like he’s fainted, which is just as well, although she doesn’t know how she’s going to get him back into the car. First she needs to untangle him. Feeling carefully in the dark, Mouse traces the barbed wire where it loops around his arm, trying to determine if there is any slack to work with. It feels like there might be; but when Mouse gives an experimental tug on the wire, Andrew comes alive again.

  His free hand comes up and seizes her roughly by the shoulder. “Pou eimaste?” he demands of her. “Ti symbainei?”

  Mouse squeaks.

  21

  “—and that’s the last thing I remember,” Penny concluded. “The next thing I knew, we were here.”

  We’d gone back inside the motel room while she told her story; now she retrieved a sheet of dinosaur-themed stationery from the top of the television set. “The Society left me a note,” she said, and handed it to me.

  The note read:

  Penny,

  We are in a town on the edge of the Badlands National Park, southeast of Rapid City; I didn’t think it would be smart to stop in the city itself, or to continue on towards Wall, so I left the main highway and came here (see map on reverse side). Andrew was unconscious for most of the drive, and hopefully he will continue to sleep for a while yet. I cleaned and bandaged his arm as best I could, but he’ll need to see a doctor for a tetanus shot. Call Dr. Eddington.

  Duncan

  “Duncan,” Penny said, as I finished reading. “I don’t know who that is.”

  “I do. I met him once. He’s—” I paused, seeing how she was looking at me. “It’s OK, Penny,” I said. “Duncan is one of your protectors. He’s good.” I glanced down at the note again. “So did you call Dr. Eddington?”

  “I tried,” Penny said. “But the phone was out of order”—she gestured at the nightstand—“and I was afraid if I left the room to call from somewhere else, you’d run away again. So I slept in the chair, and when I woke up you were still out cold, so I thought I could sneak a shower, but—”

  She was on the verge of tears. “Penny,” I said. “It’s all right. You did fine. I—”

  “I didn’t do fine!” Penny said, pounding her fist against her thigh. “I almost lost you again! I wanted to take a shower, but I didn’t want to leave the bathroom door open, in case he woke up—”

  “It’s OK, Penny. I didn’t run away. And I’m certainly not going to begrudge you a shower, after all that…really, I don’t know how I’m even going to begin to thank you for following me all this way…I mean, when I think about the last couple weeks, I’m not sure I deserve it.”

  She shook her head, dismissing the notion. “You came after me when I ran away.”

  “What, you mean when you ran into the woods? That was a couple miles, Penny. But this…What I did for you doesn’t compare.”

  “You helped me,” Penny insisted, “so I helped you. But I shouldn’t have left you alone, not for a moment, not until I was sure…”

  “Penny, come on…you know if one of us is going to beat themself up, it really ought to be me. This is all my fault.”

  “No. You couldn’t help—”

  “Oh yes I could,” I said. “I should never have gotten drunk. It’s against my father’s rules—I don’t think I ever really appreciated why it’s against the rules, but now I know. I let myself lose control.” I sighed, feeling all sorts of guilt-thoughts and self-recriminations—about the drinking, about Julie, about Dr. Grey (Dr. Grey!…could she really be dead?)—just waiting for a chance to surge forward and swamp me. But I couldn’t afford that right now.

  “Do you know,” Penny asked, “who the nasty one is? The one who wouldn’t tell me his name?”

  “No. I don’t know either of the souls you met. I’ve never heard of Xavier before. And the other one…he sounds like Gideon, but he can’t be.”

  “Gideon,” said Penny. “He’s bad?”

  “He’s selfish.” I fingered the bandage on my arm. “He’s also really afraid of sharp things with points—knives, nails, thorns—I mean really afraid, like he can’t deal with them at all. But the thing is, he’s not supposed to be able to come out anymore, so if it was him running the body…”

  “So what happens now?” asked Penny. “You’re back in control now, right?”

  “I hope so…I guess the first thing, we have to find a phone that works, and call Dr. Eddington and Mrs. Winslow. God, Mrs. Winslow! She’s got to be so worried by now.”

  “Well,” Penny said, “Maledicta did tell Julie that we were going after you. So maybe if Julie talked to Mrs. Winslow…”

  “Maybe,” I said, doubtful. Somehow, I didn’t think hearing about Julie’s encounter with Maledicta would have put Mrs. Winslow’s mind at ease. “I’d still better go call her. And then, afterwards, I’m going to need to go inside to talk to my father, and see what kind of shape the house is in. Maybe you could watch the body for me while I do that.”

  “Um…OK,” said Penny. She pinched the collar of her bathrobe. “Just let me get dressed, and I’ll come with you to make the phone call.”

  As I waited for Penny outside the motel room, I tried to call out my father. At first there was no response—the pulpit still wasn’t there—but then I heard my name, from what sounded like a long way off: “…drew?…”

  “Father?” I said.

  The motel-room door opened and Penny came out in a rush, hopping on one foot as she struggled to pull on her shoe. She saw the distant expression on my face and got scared. “Andrew?” she said.

  “It’s all right,” I told her, abandoning my attempt to make contact with the house. “It’s still me.”

  We went to the motel office and told the manager that the phone in our room was out of order. He shrugged, as if unclear why this should be his concern; but when I
pressed him, he reluctantly agreed to let me use the office phone.

  I dialed Mrs. Winslow’s number, and was surprised to get an answering machine: “This is Mrs. Winslow speaking. If this is Andrew, Aaron, or another member of their family, please leave a message telling me where you are. If you don’t know where you are, you need to dial 911 immediately; tell whoever answers that you’re lost, and give them my phone num—”

  The recording cut off with a beep in midsentence. “Mrs. Winslow?” I said. “It’s all right, Mrs. Winslow, I’m—” There was another beep, a crackle of static, and then the connection was broken.

  “What?” Penny said.

  “I got an answering machine,” I told her. “I didn’t know Mrs. Winslow had one of those…I mean I guess it makes sense that she would, but she’s almost always home.”

  “You didn’t leave a message?”

  I shook my head. “Something was wrong with it…” I dialed the number again, and got a busy signal. Frustrated, I hung up, and started to dial Dr. Eddington’s number.

  “Ahem.” The motel manager cleared his throat. “Just how many calls are you planning to make, exactly?”

  “Just one more,” I said. The phone rang twice, and then Dr. Eddington’s answering machine picked up. But at least it seemed to be working properly. I left a lengthy message.

  “All right,” I said to Penny after I hung up. “Let’s go back to the room, and—”

  The manager cleared his throat again. “That’ll be fifteen dollars.”

  “Fifteen—…for what?”

  “Three long-distance calls,” the manager said. “I figure five bucks per.”

  “The first call was only thirty seconds long,” I pointed out. “And the second was a busy signal.”

  The manager shrugged. “I didn’t hear any busy signal.”

  “You…” I gave up; I didn’t have the energy to argue.

  “Sorry,” Penny apologized as we walked back to the room. “I guess Duncan picked the wrong motel.”

  “He had more important things to worry about—you both did. Anyway, the money doesn’t concern me so much as not being able to talk to Mrs. Winslow.”