by John Gault
“Oh Christ, Jamie, I . . .” Then, instantly, her eyes softened, and she looked down into his face for a few seconds before she replied, her tone more subdued. “I really can’t answer that, Jamie. Have you . . . uh . . . offered them any kinds of food?”
He shook his head. “I never thought of it until now. Isn’t that weird, Sandy, I mean we’ve been friends for nearly three months now, and I never brought them food. Do you know what trogs eat?”
“Well,” she said, sounding like she really wanted to help, “what do you like to eat best, I mean, for a treat?”
“Chocolate bars,” he replied, very excited at the possibility of a solution to his new problem. “Three Musketeers, especially. That’s what I’ll do. Tomorrow. I’ll see if they like chocolate bars. Oh, thank you, Sandy!”
He hugged her, quickly and clumsily, and ran off into his room. She stood there for a little while, and the worry returned to her face.
“Constable,” Margaret Livingstone said with enough edge on her voice to establish that she was at least half-serious, “if you don’t hurry up and get your butt out of here, I’m calling the police.”
“Please, Margaret, just a few more minutes.”
“David, it’s one thirty in the morning!”
“I’m almost done,” he mumbled, putting the fifth-last photostat face down on a stack of paper that had grown to a thickness of about an inch-and-a-half. He read quickly down the page in front of him, stopping every few moments to make tiny scrawls in his official police notebook.
“Police business,” he repeated for perhaps the sixth or seventh time that night and the fourth time in the past hour.
“Oh sure! And tell me, Inspector Dupin, whom do you really suspect in the murders of the Rue Morgue? My money’s on the trained ape.”
Other than something muffled and unintelligible, no response. Oh well, she sighed, and made herself another drink. This time, she didn’t even bother to ask if he wanted one and just automatically filled his coffee cup instead. He was having one of his self-denial days, working like hell to do penance for his sins of the night before. It’s amazing, she thought, how even the most staunch of ex-Catholics were never really free of that need.
She left him alone with his stats and his notes and tiptoed down the hall to stand outside Abergail’s room, listening to the breathing patterns through the door and assuring herself that her niece was still asleep. Abergail had been very upset earlier, when she’d returned home from her modern dance class and found this man—David had changed into faded jeans and an old University of Wisconsin T-shirt before arriving—in the living room. She hadn’t said anything, but Margaret had seen it in her eyes. And it had made her feel guilty. (See, Margaret, you don’t have to be Catholic!) At first she’d thought Abergail’s distress had been due to the fact that she’d allowed David to come over, instead of sticking to her guns and delivering the material to his place. Abergail, for her part, had been polite, but cold and formal, and had made excuses to go to bed long before her usual time.
With Abergail’s chill fresh in her mind, and with David incommunicado for all intents and purposes anyway, Margaret began to think about the life she’d created for herself and her niece. It was not the first time she’d brought her isolation from men into serious doubt, but she was beginning to feel a certain amount of urgency about her future now, more so than before. Being with David again, last night and again tonight, had set her off; but it wasn’t just that. In two weeks, Abergail would be thirteen years old, and she had been menstruating for three months, but her interest in boys remained absolutely zero. In fact, it was worse than just simple lack of interest: there was hostility there, both spoken and unspoken.
Margaret could understand her niece’s hatred of kids like Freddy Hoekstra, who was a bully and a showoff, and of that disgusting Benjamin child. (Or, Margaret stopped and asked herself, do I just understand why she hates Jamie because I hate him so much? And, for that matter, why do I hate him? Because of the picture? Well, that’s part of it, but the truth is, he gives me the creeps, the way he looks at me, like . . . like . . . a dirty old man. He makes me want to get into a boiling hot bath and scrub myself with a brush. One thing I know for sure and that is that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere around him when he grows up.) But no, Abergail’s attitude to all boys and, for that matter, to all men, seemed to her to be pretty unhealthy.
What if she ends up a lesbian, Margaret asked herself, will it be my fault? Should I have acted differently with her? Was my so-called “sacrifice” really for her good or was it just some kind of irrational reaction to my sister’s death, an ill-conceived decision I was too stubborn to change? David’s sitting in there, and he looks so very beautiful to me and, God help me, there’s nothing I want more than to go in and take him by the hand and lead him to my bedroom.
Then why don’t you?
Abergail. I’m worried about Abergail. What if she woke up, what if she heard?
Then go back to his place with him.
I can’t. I can’t leave her alone.
Are you sure it’s for Abergail’s sake?
No, I’m not. But I can’t do anything right away. I have to talk to her about it. We have to talk it over. I have to undo what I’ve done, what I might have done, more slowly. Tomorrow. No, she’s going out tomorrow night. Maybe on the weekend.
When she returned to the living room, David was carrying around the last of his coffee in his left hand and stuffing his notebook into the rear pocket of his jeans with his right. He was bleary-eyed, but his smile was just glorious. Her belly went pang.
“So,” she said, gathering up the dirty dishes and the ashtrays, “are the forces of law and order any closer to their inevitable triumph?”
He laughed. “Let’s just say that my suspicions remain unconfirmed.” Then, more seriously, “Margaret, I know that you think I’m letting my imagination run away with me, and that a cop, of all people, should not allow that to happen. But . . .” He reached for her cigarettes, but she brushed his hand away, took two from the pack, lit them and passed one over to him. “Love your lipstick,” he said, and then began coughing as a little of the smoke accidentally found its way into his windpipe. When he finished choking, he picked up again on his original thought. “But, Margaret, there have been some very strange things happening on that Whately place, as I told you. And tonight I found at least one more.”
She glanced down at her watch.
“Just a few more minutes, Margaret,” he apologized.
“Oh, go ahead,” she said. “My evening’s all shot to hell anyway.”
“Anyway,” he said, looking at his own watch and making a surprised face, “did you know that during the mid-Thirties, when they were quarrying that red granite deposit out there near the Whately place, there was an outbreak of dead livestock in these parts?”
“No, of course I didn’t know that. And, David, you’re roots are showing.”
“What?” he said, uncomprehending.
“You said, ‘these parts,’ David. When are you going to start spitting tobacco and predicting changes in the weather?”
But he was just too wound up to be either embarrassed or sidetracked. “It happened in the late fall. Mostly dairy cattle, but there were a few sheep and horses too. They found about fifteen carcasses in all, with their throats slashed and most of the meat eaten off them. It was cold, so they were in pretty good shape—for carcasses—but because the ground was frozen, there were no footprints around them. And do you know what else? The three farmers who lost the livestock told the police—my father was a young cop then, and his name is mentioned in the story—that they’d lost more than just fifteen cows. There were twenty-five head of cattle, two horses, and six or seven sheep not accounted for. That means more than half of that livestock just disappeared. Oh, and another thing: there were deer in the woods then, whitetails, and four or five of them, including this huge buck, were killed and eaten in the same way as the cattle and sheep.” He stopped to
let his discovery sink in.
“Wolves,” she said. “Or wild dogs. David, just what the hell are you trying to get at, what are you trying to tell me? That there are monsters in the woods? Sasquatches? Well, where the hell have they been for the last forty-five years, and why hasn’t anybody ever seen them? Come on, David, this Whately’s Copse or whatever it’s called is on the edge of a good-sized town that’s been here for a hundred years; it’s not some rain forest in the African interior. Are you, David Bentley, a fairly intelligent man and a policeman, going to lay some silly superstition on me? If you are, stop right now, because I don’t want to hear it. And, what’s more . . .”
Abergail was standing in the doorway from the hall, rubbing at her eyes, her red hair sticking up all over the place. “Aunt Margaret,” she said, taking a step backward out of the light, “I heard shouting. I thought something bad was happening.” Awake now, she turned toward David and glared.
Oh Christ! “No, it’s okay, honey, it was all my fault. I just got too worked up about something Constable Bentley was saying. You go back to bed and I’ll be in in a few minutes.” Abergail shot David a look that he felt. It was so full of hate and anger that he had to turn away from it. Then she disappeared down the dark hall and they could hear a door slam.
“David, you’d better go.”
“Okay, but first, let me defend myself. I’ll be quick.”
No, she thought. “Yes,” she said, “but do hurry.”
“Right. Okay, there were no wolves spotted that fall, and besides, wolves only come near civilized areas when they’re starving, which means late, winter, usually. There were no wild dogs, and no cougars either: no cougar could do all that killing, and no cougar would take on a buck deer if he didn’t have to. Also, the killing of the livestock apparently ended with the first snowfall, which was about the same time as the water in the quarry froze over. And, for your information, Whately’s Copse might as well be in the middle of Africa, because nobody goes there and nobody has for a hundred years—except the very brave or the very foolish.” He realized that his voice was rising, and that Margaret was looking from him to her watch to the darkened hallway, so he whispered the rest. “Margaret, I’m not suggesting that anything supernatural went on out there, or is going on out there, and I’m certainly not suggesting that good old Reverend Morley and all the other folks who’ve disappeared were eaten by demons. But . . . but I’m telling you this—and I beg you never to mention it to a living soul—when I was down in that hole, Margaret, I could feel eyes on me. I didn’t see anything, I didn’t smell anything, and I didn’t hear anything. But I felt them. I felt I had to get out of there, or I was going to die.”
She couldn’t help herself, she reached over and took his hand, which was cold to the touch and trembling. “David,” she said, ever-so-softly, “I think you need that drink now. I’ll just see to Abergail, and I’ll be right back.” She wondered, as she left him slumped there in the chair, what he was really going through, to make him so suddenly obsessed with this ridiculous notion.
When she returned, he was asleep. And while she didn’t want to wake him, she did and sent him on his way. On the weekend, she reaffirmed to herself, I will definitely have that talk with Abergail.
C H A P T E R
14
Sandy had wakened with a vicious headache and even now, at twelve forty-five in the afternoon, after four aspirins and an ice bag, it wasn’t a damn bit better; if anything it was worse. She wondered how genuine migraine sufferers kept from killing themselves. Breakfast with Jamie—bacon and eggs far inferior to his batch of the previous day—had seemed like it would never end. Jamie, oblivious to her expression and mood, had babbled on happily about the trogs and what a great idea she’d had about feeding them chocolate bars and, yes, that’s just what he’d do on his way home from school, and . . .
Oh yes, she suddenly realized, that’s where he was: feeding chocolate bars to troglodytes. She was as embarrassed as she could feel under the circumstances that she was just noticing his absence half an hour after he was supposed to be home for lunch. Yeh, he’s out feeding his monsters. She wished Allan would come, and she wished that Barbara and Tom Benjamin would hurry up and find their fucking house in Seattle and get their stupid asses back home, and she wished most of all at that very moment that her head would stop hurting. She had even tried talking to herself about this whole mess, this whole insane deteriorating mess, but she was just feeling too mean to listen. Shit and double shit!
“Hiya, Sandy!” The happy little shout was immediately followed by the cannon-crack of the screen door slamming.
“Goddamnit, Jamie!”
Instantly she was ashamed of herself, and as she watched the bright smile dissolve into trembling lips and little confused tears, she began to crumble. Somehow, as everything began to grow gray and hazy before her eyes, she managed to sit down on a kitchen chair. And then, face buried in her hands, she wept. “Oh Jamie, Jamie!” she sobbed, “I’m so sorry, I’m so terribly sorry!” Blindly she reached out for his hand, but it was Jamie who reacted first. He was standing beside her, one arm over her shoulders, squeezing too tightly but the only way he knew how. He stroked her arm with his other hand, and through his own pain and bewilderment, he tried to comfort her with soothing words that she only half-heard.
Finally she could feel the spell ending, and slowly she lifted her head and turned to look into Jamie’s still-frightened eyes. What she saw only served to make her hate herself even more, and if she had been able to do so, she probably would have begun crying again; but she had nothing left, nothing except the still-excruciating throb in her head and a terrible sense of helplessness. She had begun to realize—when? last night? a few days ago? this morning?—that for the first time in her young life, she was losing control of her own situation, and she feared as well, thanks to four years of psychology, that she was close to, if not in fact caught up in, the early stages of an emotional breakdown. But why? What had happened to make her feel this way? Jamie? Come on, Sandy, what the hell has he done, anyway? Looked at you funny. Well, isn’t that too goddamned bad! So he has imaginary friends—okay, imaginary monsters—that he talks to in the woods. What has that got to do with you? Admit it, Sandy, you just don’t like him. Even though his mother warned you, you wouldn’t believe her. She said that nobody liked Jamie, and you figured she was just making excuses for herself, didn’t you? You figured you were so goddamned smart and so goddamned understanding and so goddamned compassionate that you could overcome it all, that you could be this boy’s friend. Do you know what your problem is, Sandy? You’re arrogant. You think you can make everything you touch work, and that you can change people into what you think they should be, just because you’re you. What the hell did you expect from this boy, anyhow? That he’d just suddenly become normal, become a model child just through sheer exposure to your presence?
“Jamie,” she said, unwilling to look him in the face again, at least for a little while longer, “I’m just having a hard time I can’t explain and I’m putting it all on you. I’m sorry and I’ll try to stop. I know I keep saying the same thing to you, over and over, that I always seem to be apologizing, but I promise this will be it.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said that unsettling deep voice that she’d heard once before. She shifted backward involuntarily at the sound of it, and when she turned her head toward the boy, she was deeply afraid of what she might see. But it was just Jamie, still looking confused and concerned. For a long moment their eyes locked, and then they each managed a little smile, mutually acknowledging that this crisis, at least, was over.
“Look what I brought you,” Jamie said. In his hand was a crumpled Three Musketeers bar, still in its wrapper. “They didn’t like the chocolate bars, Sandy. One of them tried to eat one and he spit it out, and then they all got grunting at one another, and they went away where I couldn’t see them.”
“Oh?” she said. No matter what happens from here on in, you are
going to go along with him, and that’s that. Unless he tries to take you there. You cannot go there.
“But don’t worry, Sandy. We’ll figure something out.”
“Yeh, sure, Jamie.”
“Maybe Teddy’ll know. I’ll . . .” His hand went to his mouth suddenly, as if to stuff the words back in. Before she could read the new expression on his face, he turned his back to her and walked toward the sink, where he poured himself a glass of water. Who’s Teddy? He’s never mentioned a Teddy before? Is it the bear, that stuffed bear? Does he talk to that, too? Oh, my God!
“Teddy’s a kid at school,” he said quickly, his back still to her. “He’s only in the sixth grade, but he’s kind of my friend.”
“I thought . . . I thought”—her mouth was so dry she could only croak ineffectually—“I was the only one who knew about the . . . uh . . . troglodytes?”
“Oh,” Jamie said, facing her now and very composed, “you are. But I might tell him, if that’s okay with you, Sandy. I mean, it is our secret.”
She was sure he was lying, but she just didn’t care. “Go ahead,” she said. Then she rose slowly and dragged herself to the refrigerator. She took out two Saran-covered bowls and carried them to the table. “Now we’d better eat lunch, don’t you think? You’re due back at school in half an hour.”
He devoured his tuna fish salad greedily. When he left, closing the screen door carefully behind him and glancing back to ensure that his consideration had not gone unnoticed, Sandy spooned the rest of her lunch into the garbage can and stuffed their bowls and milk glasses into the dishwasher.
Then, for no reason she could be sure of, other than the fact that Jamie’s bed needed making, she went up to his room. The bear was propped up against the headboard, its button eyes staring at her as she came through the door. Sandy, don’t be stupid! She lifted the bear off the bed and sat him on the desk while she stripped away the sheets and pillow cases and made a bundle for the washing machine. She could still feel the eyes on her, but she was damned if she was going to show it. This was Teddy, she was sure of it. But he was only a stuffed toy, a pajama bag, and if . . . Her hand touched something slick and cold as she straightened the mattress. She pulled out an old, tattered copy of Playboy. In spite of herself, she smiled. A hidden-away copy of Playboy was such a terribly normal thing; it was almost reassuring.
