I rang Fay's bell. After a good deal of ringing, she came to the door. The door was on a chain that wouldn't let it open more than an inch and a half, and Fay had a kitchen knife in her hand.
When she saw who it was, her expression changed from nervous to wrathful. "Dick! For God's sake! What are you doing here?"
"I've brought Carol."
"So what?" (All this interchange was carried on in whispers, for fear of alerting the neighbors.) "It's not my responsibility." She started to close the door.
I put the toe of my shoe in the opening. "Fay, wait. It's not Carol's fault, or mine, that we have to ask you to take us in."
"What's the matter with her? Why does she have to be taken in?"
"She's having withdrawal symptoms."
"From what?"
"Atter-corn."
"Atter-corn! And you bring her to me!" Fay's eyes were indignant. "You've got more nerve than anybody I ever knew in my life. Get going! Get your stinking big foot out of my door before I scrunch it!" She began to push on the door.
"But, Fay, we're not to blame. Hood's behind all this. He may even have arranged for Carol to be kidnapped in the first place. It's Hood."
At the mention of Hood's name, a peculiar expression passed over Fay's face. It was a ripple, a quiver, like the wind blowing over the surface of water. After a moment, she silently unchained the door.
"Bring her in," she said in a resigned whisper. "Don't make any noise."
I hurried to the car. Carol was only semiconscious, her body knotted in one big cramp. I got her into a modified fireman's lift, with a good deal of effort, and carried her into the apartment. I put her down on the sofa. From the corner of my eye I saw Merlin's sword quietly gleaming on the wall, and it made me feel a little better. I had been gone from the apartment less than three days, but I felt that an enormous length of time had elapsed.
Fay had closed the door and locked it. "My, she is bad," she said, looking down at Carol. "What's that on her face?"
"Scum from a pond. She was eating it."
"It's so hard just to get by these days. And then you saddle me with a thing like this."
"I'm sorry."
Fay's shoulders moved in a little shrug. "Let's try putting her in a warm bath. It might help those cramps."
She moved off to the bathroom, the silk of her dressing gown rustling softly. In a moment, I heard the water running.
I got out my handkerchief and wiped Carol's face carefully. Then I raised the upper part of her body from the sofa and began undressing her. Her clothing was soaked with sweat, and she was even thinner than I had thought her. Thin and ill, she was still beautiful; she was like the waning moon that, worn and eroded, yet dominates the sky.
Fay shut off the water. I carried Carol into the bathroom and laid her gently in the tub. Fay tested the temperature of the water with her wrist. "It could be a little bit hotter," she said. "Rub her arms, Dick, and see if you can loosen up those cramps."
I obeyed. Fay turned the hot water on in a thin stream. She knelt and began to help with the massage. Except for the small noise from the water tap, the room was quiet. Then we heard a burst of scurrying and scratching that seemed to come from the floor.
Fay and I exchanged glances. "So they're after her," she said. "What happened with Hood?"
I filled her in on the occurrences in Fresno while we both continued to massage Carol's shoulders and arms. "He said freeing her of her addiction could be done, you see," I finished, "but that it would be very dangerous, because of the elves."
"Yes, it would be. Was he dead?"
"Hood? I'm positive."
"Um. I don't suppose anybody's going to regret him." Fay transferred her massage to Carol's thighs, which were cramping severely. "Her symptoms came on promptly, didn't they? Awfully promptly, really. I wonder if he was giving her something besides the atter-corn. Barbiturates, or something like that."
"I don't know. She complained of being sleepy most of the time. But I think the main trouble is that she's hooked on the meal. If she could get over needing that, she'd be O.K.
"Fay, you said you used to play with elves—"
"Yes. I'm not particularly proud of it, but—" Her voice trailed off. I could smell the rose perfume of the bathsoap in the holder beside the tub.
I said, "Do you know how to control the elves?"
"Nobody controls elves," she replied promptly. "Did you spend three years wandering in Underearth and not learn that?" She grinned at me.
"I'm not so sure," I answered. "I think you know things about them that I don't."
"Maybe." Her voice was noncommittal.
"Couldn't what you know be used to keep them off while I shed her blood?"
There was a silence. "Maybe it could," she said at last. "But why should I put myself out any more for you?"
I tried to think of a reason. "Well," I said finally, "you're a kindhearted girl."
"You mean I'm a chump. But I'm not going to be a chump any longer.
"I'm always helping you, Dick, and always getting the short end of the stick. I refuse to knock myself out this time to help an ex-lover and his current sweetheart.
"I took you in for tonight. But that's it. That's all. Tomorrow you get out."
"Fay!"
"Or I'll call the pigs," she finished triumphantly.
Chapter Fourteen
I kept on arguing. I don't know why, really, Fay was so stubborn. She didn't appear to be jealous, and it was certainly to her advantage to restore Carol to normal and get rid of us. Perhaps she did simply feel that she was always acting as a patsy for me and resented it. Or it may have been that she disliked and feared the prospect of having her Otherworld inclinations strengthened. She snapped at me when I tried to find out what her reason was.
Carol she seemed to regard as a victim and was gentle toward. She dosed her gingerly with quarter-tablets of meprobamate and managed to get a few spoonfuls of warm soup down her throat. She helped me lift Carol in and out of the bath, dry her and rub her. It was during one of the rubbing intervals, when Carol, still damp from the bath, was lying on Fay's bed and we were both massaging her legs, that I said, "Hood would have wanted it to turn out like this."
"Turn out like what?" Fay snapped. She pushed a strand of her brown hair out of her eyes. "Remind me to call my supervisor and tell her I don't feel well enough to come to work today."
"All right. I mean, he'd have liked his death to be the beginning of hell for Carol. He was a sadistic man."
"Yes, I suppose he was."
"But if you were to help us, it would be a postmortem defeat for him. And indirectly, for the whole of Otherworld."
Fay shot me a suspicious glance. "Otherworld is too fragmented for anybody to speak of it as being a whole," she observed. All the same, I felt she was weakening.
"It's ironic he should be causing more trouble for her now he's dead than he did when he was alive," I continued.
"Um. Shut up, Dick. It's not my responsibility."
"O.K. But he got away with everything, didn't he? Kidnapping her, abusing her, getting her hooked on drugs—the whole bit. He tried to kill me, and he did succeed in making me lose three years out of my life. Hood got away with everything."
"I expect he got away with other things, too," she said absently. She fingered her lips for a moment. I went on rubbing Carol's legs, almost holding my breath as I waited for her next words.
"All right," she said at last, "I'll help you. But this is the last time, Dick. If I see you drowning in a pool of burning sulfur, you can just drown."
"I won't ask you for help again," I said. I meant it. I was afraid to let her see how much her promise of assistance had relieved me, for fear she might change her mind. "What's the procedure? What do we do?"
"The first thing to do is to move the furniture back in the living room so I can lay out a circle about ten feet in diameter. It's going to be a close squeeze."
She led the way to the living room. Now that she
had decided to help, she was energetic and active. Under her direction, I began to move pieces of furniture back against the wall. "Don't make any noise," she cautioned me. "Mrs. Schumucker, the building manager, is a night prowler and an old snoop. She's been hanging around for the last two days, trying to find out what happened to 'my young man'. She has ears like a cat."
Fay was right, it was going to be a tight squeeze. I carried the TV, the armchair and the floor lamp into the kitchen. I pushed the dining table—Fay's living room doubled as a dining room—against the wall. I carried the straight chairs into the bedroom. There were some scurryings and noises while I was doing it.
I started to push the sofa back and found it had to be lifted. I got one end up and slid my back under it. I was carrying the whole thing, insecurely balanced, toward the side wall when there came a long, moaning scream from Carol, in the bedroom.
The noise startled me so that I dropped the sofa with a crash. It was a loud noise for any time and particularly for two-thirty in the morning. Fay and I looked at each other.
"The old hag will be around within five minutes," she said. "She never goes to bed before three o'clock. Go into the bedroom, Dick."
I obeyed. Carol was twisting uneasily on the bed, her eyes glazed and wild. I closed the door, sat down beside her, and began rubbing her body. I was ready to put my hand over her mouth if she should cry out again, but she grew quieter.
The ring at the door came punctually. The dialogue between Mrs. Schumucker and Fay went something like this:
mrs. schumucker: Are you all right, Miss Reece? I heard a cry and a terrible thump in this apartment. It sounded like a body falling. I thought I'd ask you before I called the police.
fay: Yes, Mrs. Schumucker, I'm all right. My friend and I were only moving some furniture.
mrs. schumucker: Moving furniture? At this hour? It's nearly three o'clock, Miss Reece.
fay: Oh, is it that late? I hadn't realized. He just got back from Stockton.
mrs. schumucker: I'm sure I heard a shriek—
fay: Oh, that. [Rubbing ankle realistically.] I tripped over the coffee table. It hurt. I couldn't help yelling. And then he dropped the sofa. He said I startled him.
mrs. schumucker [craning neck inquisitively]: I don't see him in the apartment.
fay: No, he's in the bathroom. He always shuts the door.
mrs. schumucker [retreating modestly]: Oh. Well, if I think there's any trouble, I'll call the police. I'm never afraid to call the police, you know.
fay [beginning to close the door]: Good night, Mrs. Schumucker.
mrs. schumucker: Hunh? Oh, good night.
Fay came back in the bedroom. "The old bag!" she said in a furious whisper. "The funky old bag! 'Never afraid to call the police,' indeed! Last year, when my apartment was robbed, she stood by with her door ajar and watched while the thieves carried out my TV! When I asked her why she hadn't called the police, she said she thought the thieves were TV repairmen. And when I asked her what TV repairmen would be doing calling for a set at three o'clock in the morning, she said, 'Well, you keep such irregular hours!' "
"What do we do now?" I asked.
"Wait until she goes to bed, I guess. Then we'll go down to the basement. I ought to have thought of it before. The living room is really too small, anyhow."
"But if she heard us down there, we'd be sunk," I said. "We couldn't make any excuses about moving furniture."
"She won't hear us. Once the old devil goes to sleep, nothing wakes her. Besides, she'd be afraid to come down if she did hear us. The stairs are too steep. She'd be afraid she'd break her god-damned neck."
Fay called her supervisor and made her excuses. Then we turned all the lights in the apartment off, except for a shaded light in the bedroom, and settled ourselves for a lengthy vigil. We didn't dare to put Carol back in the bath for fear of alerting Mrs. Schumucker.
It was a tedious wait. There was a good deal of scurrying in the darkness, so much that Fay finally got the sword from the living-room wall and laid it across the bed. Carol was doing a lot of twisting and writhing about, but as Fay said, Mrs. Schumucker would undoubtedly expect to hear the bed springs squeaking.
Carol seemed worse. Fay tried to give her a little more soup, but she wouldn't take it, and her muscle cramps were getting more severe. I think that both Fay and I were haunted by a fear that Carol might die before we could try to free her from her addiction. It was a possibility, not a probability. We had plenty of time to think about it, though.
About four-thirty, Fay thought we might risk the descent to the basement. We began to gather up the things we would need: the sword, of course, and a length of heavy cord to mark out the circumference of the circle, candles from the dining table, whiskey to sterilize the knife I had in my pocket, and material for bandaging Carol's wrist after I had cut it. These supplies seemed reasonable enough, and so did the saucer Fay got, in which to catch Carol's blood. But I was surprised when she added a loaf of bread and a container of salt.
I wrapped Carol in the comforter from Fay's bed. There was no point in trying to dress her. It was only a short distance, and Fay had said that we must all three be naked. "They don't like nudity," she whispered when I asked her why. "It's too much like the light."
Carol wasn't heavy, as I've said, but she was so much in motion it was difficult to get a firm grip on her. All the same, I had the impression that, beyond her haze of suffering, she was trying her best to cooperate. I clutched her as tightly as I could and followed Fay down the back stairs.
The door to the basement was unlocked. Fay turned the knob, softly, and we went in.
The basement was a big room. It had served as a laundry at one time; there was a row of stationary tubs along one wall, and dusty clotheslines still dangled overhead. Fay indicated a spot in the center of the space, and I set Carol down in it. A faint glow came from the burners of the gas furnace.
Fay began to lay out the cord she had brought, making a big circle with the three of us within it. When she had the cord arranged to her satisfaction, she took her clothes off and motioned to me to do the same.
"Where shall I put them?" I asked, holding pants in my hand.
"In the middle of the circle, with my clothes," she answered a little absently. "They'll be out of the way there. Take off your shoes, too." I had the impression that she was withdrawing from her surroundings, trying to put herself into a frame of mind at once alert and remote.
Carol, lying on the comforter, was twisting uneasily. I thought I heard a burst of twittering from behind the furnace. Fay stood for a moment with her head bent. Then she picked up the sword in both hands, knelt, and began to move about the circle of cord with it.
Holding the sword at either end, she pressed it flat against the cord, in a series of short, straight lines, so that she was outlining the circle by superimposing on it a polygon of a great number of sides. As she worked, she recited, in a loud, singsong voice, the following words:
"Merlin's bigghes have mickle might,
Power to daunt, and power to dight,
Bold to bless, and bold to ban, Power to hold as naught else can.
By the power of Merlin's sword,
Elfins-daunting Merlin's word,
Be the circle duly cast,
Triple-formed, not to be passed,
None may cross the sun-strong line,
None may dare the salt-blessed cord."
When she had finished her circumambulation, she got to her feet and put the sword down with its point to the east.
Next she picked up the loaf of bread. She pulled its soft interior out little by little, crumbled it up, and cast the crumbs in a broad band on top of the circle of cord. There was only just bread enough for her purpose; she had to finish her circle with some of the crust from the loaf's exterior.
The circle had now been doubly formed. Fay formed it for the third time by laying a thick train of salt on top of the band of crumbs.
I wondered about the effi
cacy of bread and salt against elves, since they include both items in their diet, but I did not mention my doubts to Fay. Carol was becoming really agitated, and I hardly noticed what Fay did next. I believe she lit the candles and stuck them upright in their own drippings at appropriate points around the circle. At any rate, one or more of the candles had been lit when Carol rolled over into a four-footed stance and began to crawl rapidly toward the basement door.
I dived for her. I caught her around the waist, and we struggled silently and desperately for a few seconds. Her body was slippery with sweat. At last I forced her back and made her lie down again on the quilt. There was something unspeakably odious in the use of force against this naked, frightened, helpless girl. Our common nudity made my actions into a parody of love. It roused a dreadful civil war in my heart.
Fay had been watching. When she saw Carol on the quilt once more, she knelt beside her and touched the hilt of the sword to her lips. Carol had made no noise since we entered the basement; at the touch of the sword, her lips opened as if she were about to scream, and I had to put my hand over her mouth. She shook her head wildly from side to side, trying to rid herself of the gag. Once more we were intertwined in a struggle that nauseated me.
All the same, the touch of the sword seemed to have done her good. She was relatively quiet as Fay got the knife from my pocket and sterilized its blade in the whiskey. "Help her up, Dick," Fay whispered. "Can you hold her up with one hand and cut her wrist with the other? I'll try to keep her from crying out."
I nodded. I felt sick. I knew that what we were doing was for Carol's good and had to be done. But how I loathed it! Love and violence met in uneasy combination in me. That the violence had to be invoked to rescue my love made it no easier.
I set Carol on her feet. I wanted to say something that would pierce through her fog of suffering and comfort and soothe her. No words came to my lips. My mind was too occupied with wondering how I could hold her upright and simultaneously keep her arm steady enough to make an accurate cut. I needed an extra arm.
The Shadow People Page 12
