by Cave, Hugh
As the tall stringbean with the gritty voice came into the room, Jeff struggled to his feet without reaching for the hand outstretched to help him. Everol, was it? Yes, Everett Everol. "You all right?" the man said. "You fall or something?"
"I must have."
"Nothing worse than that?" Apparently unconvinced, Everol turned to look around the room. "What's that on the glass there?" Fiercely scowling, he strode to the window from which Jeff had watched the car. "You do this, mister?"
Bewildered, Jeff walked over and stood beside him.
A star? A pentagram? The dream came back to him: the monstrous snake-thing at the window, threatening to smash the glass and do to him what the vulture had done to Jacob. In the dream he had leaped out of bed in a frantic effort to save himself by hurriedly tracing pentagrams on both windowpanes with his finger. Was there something significant about such five-pointed stars? Something that might keep dream monsters at bay?
But had it been a dream? The glass at which he stared now in total confusion was gray with dust and dirt; evidently no one had washed these windows in ages. And something had unquestionably drawn a five-pointed star on each pane.
Well, all right. Even though the threatening serpent had been only a figment of his imagination, he must have stepped here to the window in his sleep and done this. There had been nothing but grime on the windows when he first examined the room, he was certain.
Or. . . had someone come into the room and done this while he slept? Everol, say, or one of the women. Or Jacob, whose room this was.
No, no, not Jacob. Jacob was dead. His twin sister Ethel was in an institution.
Now how did he know that Ethel was Jacob's twin? Had they told him, or were things coming back? They wouldn't have had any reason to tell him such a thing. . . would they?
The tall man at his side was speaking to him. "Mister, let's just forget this for the time being, hey? Why don't you get dressed and come downstairs for some breakfast?" He glanced at his wristwatch. "It's close to nine o'clock."
"I—yes, of course. Thank you."
"How you like your eggs? I have to tell our cook."
"Any way. Any way at all."
"Soft-boiled? We like 'em soft-boiled."
"Fine."
"All right, then. Be ready in just a few minutes, so don't be too long." With a final quizzical look at the marked window, Everol strode from the room, leaving the door open behind him.
Their voices guided Jeff to the dining room when he went downstairs. All four of them were seated at an old, dark mahogany table, apparently waiting for him. Everett stood up and motioned him to an empty chair beside the tiny woman who might be his wife's sister.
"'Case you don't remember from last night," the man said, "this is my wife, Blanche, this is my sister Amanda, and this is Blanche's sister Susan." He glanced at each as he spoke. So—yes—the two diminutive women were sisters.
"Good morning," Jeff said, including them all in his nod. "I want to thank you again for taking me in last night."
"Did you sleep well?" The question came with an oddly intense look of concern from little Susan, who was seated beside him and spun herself to face him as she spoke.
"About as well as could be expected, I guess, under the circumstances."
"Everett found you on the floor just now, he says."
"Yes. I thought I had only dreamed about getting up in the night, but evidently I actually did it, and fell."
"Getting up to do what?" asked Everett's tall sister, Amanda, leaning across the table as if afraid she might not hear his answer.
"There was something at the window, I seem to remember. I mean, of course, I dreamed there was."
In silence the three Everols and Blanche's sister exchanged glances before the man said with a frown, "What'd you see at the window, mister? A bird, maybe?"
"No, not a bird. A snake. But it was only a dream. Snakes don't climb to second-floor windows, do they? Besides, this one was something huge and—well—I guess the word is prehistoric." With a little laugh, Jeff tried to break what he felt was a growing tension.
They didn't seem amused. Instead, they exchanged glances, as if what he had said disturbed them in some way. Then, "They've found prehistoric things here in this part of Florida," said little Susan. "Scientists have, I mean."
"So I've heard." But where, Jeff asked himself, could he have heard such a thing? Until these people had told him so last night, he hadn't even known he was in Florida.
At that moment two other members of this strange household appeared. A black woman of about thirty-five, followed by a black man much older, came from the kitchen with coffee, toast, and the boiled eggs Everett Everol had promised.
Seeming to feel she had to explain their presence, little Blanche said, "This is Lelio Savain and his wife, Lucille. They're Haitians who live here on the property."
"Bon jou', compere. Bon jou' commère," Jeff heard himself saying. "Comment ou yé?"
Freezing in the act of putting the food on the table, the couple turned their heads to look at him. The others stared, too—first at him, then at the Haitians. The black man said, "Eské ou parlé Creole nou, m 'sieu?"
"Do I speak your Creole?" This time the words Jeff heard himself speaking were English, because he was thinking out loud, not really answering the question. "Well, yes, I do. A little, at least."
In Creole, Lelio said, "You have lived in our country, then?"
"Yes." Was it true? Had he at one time lived in Haiti, or spent enough time there to learn the peasant tongue? He could continue a conversation with this old fellow if he wished to, he realized. But he had better not. The members of the Everol clan were apparently not too pleased. "Perhaps we can talk about this later," he said in Creole, and then became silent.
They were all silent until the two Haitians had gone back to the kitchen. Then Everett Everol said, "Have you lived in Haiti, mister?"
"I don't know. It would seem so, wouldn't it? But I don't remember."
"Can't understand why anyone would want to live in that backward country." Everol shook his head vehemently. "These two people, months ago we found them shacked up in an old caretaker's cottage on the property here and let them stay because they had nowhere to go and offered to help out around the place. He looks after the grounds and she does some of the housework." He shrugged. "Nobody local would have worked for what they were willing to accept, so we let them stay." He shrugged again. "I suspect they're in the country without any proper papers, but that's no business of ours."
Jeff was reluctant to talk about Haiti until he had done more thinking about his unexpected ability to speak Creole. "Tell me," he said, "did you go looking for my car last night, Mr. Everol?"
"Yes, I did."
"And did you find it?"
"Two miles down the road. Banged up, like you said, with the lights still on."
"I hope you took down the license number and called the police. They might be able to tell me who I am."
"There was no license plate, mister."
"What?"
"The car'd been stripped. Keys gone, glove compartment empty. Trunk open and empty, too. And, like I say, the license plate was missing. Somebody must have come along and taken everything after you walked away from there."
Or, Jeff thought, I was run off the road by people who do that sort of thing for plunder on these back-country roads.
"So it looks like you won't find out from the police who you are," Everol said, with another of the shrugs he so liked to use when talking.
"Is there a garage in Clandon that can repair the car?" Jeff asked. For some reason he felt he knew there was.
"Well, yes." The old man really seemed reluctant to admit it. "After we eat, I can call and see if they'll send out a tow truck, I suppose."
"Please."
"Don't want you to think you're not welcome here."
"You've been very kind. But I mustn't impose any longer than I have to."
"Eat your breakfast now," said Blanche's si
ster, Susan. "You must be hungry after all you've been through."
Silence took over, but when the Haitian woman, Lucille, returned to fill the coffee mugs, Jeff caught himself wondering again where he had learned to speak the peasant tongue of her country. Far back in his mind lay a hazy picture of himself seated on a bench at some kind of ceremony in which women in white robes were doing a slow, rather stately dance around a painted post, and a man in black pants and a red shirt was drawing designs in cornmeal on the dirt floor, and a throbbing of drums accompanied a sound of chanting, and he was taking notes. But it was all too vague. He could not pull the blurred bits of the picture together and make any real sense of it.
Breakfast finished, Everett said, "Well, mister, let me call that garage and see what they can do for you." He rose and went into the adjoining room, the living room in which Jeff had talked to all of them the night before. In a few minutes he was back, nodding.
"Their wrecker's out on a job, so they can't come right off. But they'll be here soon as it's free."
"Would you, then—would you mind very much if I went for a short walk? It might clear my mind."
"Do anything you like."
"But be careful," little Susan warned, leaning toward Jeff and shaking her head at him. "You've been in an accident, remember, and could have things wrong with you that you don't know about. Don't go too far and get lost, now."
"I'll be careful. I promise."
"If the garage man turns up before you get back, I'll tell him where your car is," Everol said.
"I won't be gone that long. But thanks."
Chapter Six
In silence they watched him walk out of the room. When they heard the front door click shut behind him, little Susan frowned across the table at her sister's string-bean husband.
"I just don't understand, Everett. He seems such a nice man, and we know who he is from that picture in the magazine he sent. So why can't we tell him?"
Everett's sister Amanda said, “Susan's right, you know, Everett. You're just not making any sense!"
"And you told him there was no license plate on his car," Everett's wife Blanche said. "You took it off and brought it back here, then told him somebody stole it. I don't understand, either."
Everett prefaced his reply with one of his eloquent shrugs. “Can't you see what will happen if we tell him who he is? He's been hurt and must be scared half out of his mind. He doesn't even know he's at the place he was coming to, for God's sake. If we tell him who he is, he most likely will leave us and go to some hospital to get himself looked at."
"I disagree," said Susan with a toss of her head. "I say he's much more likely to stay here and help us if he knows who he is. Didn't he just about beg us to let him come here in the first place?"
Amanda jabbed a forefinger at her brother. "And if it's beginning again, Everett, we need him! He saw something at his window last night, he said. And I'm telling you I heard something at mine the night before."
"And I say you only dreamed it," Everett shot back.
"Everett, please!" There were tears in Amanda's eyes. "I swear to you I heard—"
"Oh, be quiet!"
"No, you be quiet, Everett Everol." His wife leaned closer to glare at him. "If Amanda says she heard one of them again, I believe her. And you're not making any sense at all about Mr. Gordon. For heaven's sake, just a few minutes ago you phoned Staley Howe to pick up the man's car, if you don't want him leaving here, why'd you do that?"
"You didn't see the car. I did." Everett's hands were clenched on the table now, wrinkling the cloth.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It'll be days before Staley and his boy can fix that machine so anyone can drive it. By that time, the way I see this, our man will be over his loss of memory and anxious to get on with his investigation here."
"So why can't we help him get over it?" Susan demanded. "Everett, you're going at this all wrong!"
"Oh, for God's sake, Susan, shut up and put yourself in his place for a minute. Try to see this through his eyes. You've been hurt and don't know who you are or how bad it is. You're scared. Now suppose I was to tell you your name and that you came here from miles away to investigate some hellish things that have been happening here in this house, but you don't even know what I'm talking about. Wouldn't you want to get to a hospital or a doctor and find out what's wrong with you?"
With a petulant toss of her head, little Susan pushed back her chair. "Very well, have it your way. You will anyway."
Blanche and Amanda gazed at Everett in silence, both of them frowning and slowly shaking their heads from side to side.
"What's more," Susan continued, on her feet now, "I think we're not just talking about Jacob being killed and Ethel sent to the asylum and those things coming back to torment us again when we thought we were free of them. There's something going on here in this house that you're hiding from the rest of us, Everett." At the door she turned for one last challenge before marching from the room. "And don't any of you try to tell me different!"
Chapter Seven
Leaving the house, Jeff Gordon started down the driveway with no destination in mind, only the thought that a stroll about the property might help him to remember. In daylight the driveway was most attractive: a curving lane of what looked like gray beach sand, one car wide, through a woodland of tall pines and heavy undergrowth.
He turned to look back at the house and saw that it, too, was attractive in daylight—obviously one of the "old Florida homes" he had read about. Old, yes, and rather badly in need of paint, but impressively big, with a long, wide veranda and many windows.
Windows. Had he, in fact, seen something like a monstrous, prehistoric snake at his window last night? Had he drawn pentagrams on the glass to keep it at bay? Shaking his head, he turned again and went on.
But before he reached the blacktop highway that he remembered walking along the night before, a footpath on his right caught his eye. Curious to know where it went, he turned along it and presently came to what had probably once been a caretaker's cottage. Little more than a shack now, it nevertheless appeared to be occupied. On a line between two pines in its small yard hung some sheets, towels, a white dress, and a man's white long-sleeved shirt.
He stood for a moment, undecided. Then when he saw no sign of movement and heard nothing to indicate that anyone was at home, he crossed the yard to a window and looked in. Yes, despite its condition, the shack was being used. The room he was looking at contained chairs and a table, an old, small TV on a stand. At the far end an open door revealed a chest of drawers and one side of a neatly made double bed.
Was this where the two Haitians lived? "We found them in an old caretaker's cottage on the property and let them stay," Everol had said, hadn't he?
Objects on the table were close enough to the window to catch Jeff's eye and arouse his curiosity. Maracas? Those dried gourds used as rattles in Latin American music? Yes, probably. He had heard such instruments used in Haiti, he remembered. Perhaps the old fellow was a musician.
Curiously, though, the tabletop was strewn with small colored stones, colored beads, and what appeared to be snake vertebrae.
Take a dried gourd, Jeff thought. Put into it some small stones of different colors and some vertebrae from a snake, because the revered old god Damballah comes in the form of a snake. Then wrap the outside of the gourd with colored beads and you have an asson, a sacred rattle used in voodoo by houngans and mambos. In a way it was even more essential than the drums, flags, ceremonial urns, and other such paraphernalia.
So was Lelio a voodoo priest? Or his wife, Lucille, a priestess? Were they practicing voodoo here?
He shrugged. He evidently knew something about voodoo, just as he had known how to talk to the two Haitians in their own tongue. Ordinary voodoo was no terrible thing, merely a peasant religion dealing with the spirits of gods and the dead. Of course, there were some dangerous deviations on the dark fringe of it, but what the old man and his wife c
hose to do here on the Everol place was no concern of his, was it?
He continued his walk. After a while he circled a small, dark body of water—a sinkhole, he guessed it would be called here—and climbed a rather steep wooded knoll. Then the sound of voices disturbed the woodland stillness, and he heard the growl of an engine. Turning in that direction to investigate, he found himself gazing down the other side of the knoll at a body of water larger than the one he had just circled.
In it, some fifteen feet out from shore, was a car. At least, he could make out a solitary red fender protruding from the gloomy water. And at the edge of the pond or lake—whatever it should be called—stood a battered old tow truck.
The red fender tugged at something in his memory. Had he seen it before? Almost shoulder deep in the lake beside it, a young fellow appeared to be trying to attach a chain to some submerged part of the car, while an older man, on the bank, called out instructions.
Suddenly a young woman, standing near the truck, saw Jeff on the knoll and waved to him.
With a feeling he had met her somewhere, he walked down to her.
"Well, hi, Jeff" she said with enthusiasm. "I didn't expect to see you until this evening."
Jeff. Was that his name?
"How are things going at the house?" she asked.
"All right, I think." He knew he was staring in a way that could be frightening to her, but he could not help it. "Look—I've had an accident and don't remember things too well. Do I know you?"
"Do you know me!" She came closer and did some staring of her own. "You don't remember picking me up and giving me a lift last night?"
"Picking you up where?"
"Out there on the highway, the other side of those trees." She turned to point. "Just after my car went into the lake here. You were going to the Everols' place, you said, but went out of your way to take me to Clandon."
Clandon. A small town in the rain, and the name Earl Watson on a mailbox. It was beginning to come back to him. "Are you—did you ask me to do something for you at the Everols'?"
