She was as real as his own flesh, standing naked as she had that first day. For a moment, he felt a need greater than that in his loins. She represented all that was left of sanity to him. She was the earth itself, not its dying bowels, but its living surface, the warming sun enfolding it as he longed to enfold her in his arms.
“I want you,” he almost sobbed.
“You will have me soon.”
He tried to get up. She put her creamy white hand on his shoulder and he did not move.
“Have me,” she whispered, her smile deepening, taking his hand and pressing it back to the hardness at his groin, “like that.” He put his hand back behind the trousers and began to milk his hardness, his eyes locked on hers.
“Yes. Yes,” she whispered. “Jan, do you remember the day they took you?”
For a horrible moment he was sure that his greatest fear was realized, that she, too, was part of what they did to him in the room of pain. He felt the jab of a needle in his arm, the taut pull of a strap around his middle, around his arms and legs, the sharp blurt of electricity through his head, the swim of lax white faces over him, asking him, asking . . .
“Oh, God . . .”
“No, Jan, they don't own me. You own me. Don't you remember?”
She let his hand, a finger, touch her as he came. “Never forget, Jan,” she said.
She moved away from him. Her form mingled with the wet, cold walls. “Soon,” she whispered. He felt the wetness in his hand, and, for a moment, he possessed her. She left him slowly, her head slightly tilted, her shaded blue eyes, with her smile, vanishing . . .
He fell back on the cot, turning to the weeping wall, his lust and need draining away into the cement, the damp floor, sucked into the mole-tunnels of the underground world that had captured him. He heard screaming, his own, and a long time later, he awoke from dreamless sleep to see that his hands were bloody and that the wall before him, the weeping cement wall of his cell next to his wooden bed, was stained in blood, showing the perfect outline of a hand, the imprimatur of a weeping man, the red copy of perfect fingerprints.
He brought his reddened hands to his face and cried.
“Soon . . .”
4. SOUTH
Standing on tiptoe on the highest limestone shelf of his mother's roof, Ricky could just see the water.
That made him proud. It was said that there was almost no place in Bermuda where the water was not in sight's distance. He had always thought that their house, the lowest in the line of houses on the road, blocked in back by a line of trees bordering the golf club, hampered in front by hedges and the sweeping curve of the winding roadway, was one of the few exceptions. But now, in his fifteenth year, after a spring of sudden growth that had stretched him to two inches under six feet, Ricky caught sight of a thin crystal-green ribbon of water.
He had climbed up to the roof to make sure the water trough was clear. The roof's white limestone tiers were pure white, clean as a baby's bottom, and after clearing the remains of a dead bird from the water gutter that ran to the tank at the side of the house, he stepped up to the very top of the roof and stood tall against the sky. He imagined for a moment that this little, square, pink stucco house, in the middle of this road whose silence was broken only by the waspy buzz of a lost tourist's motorbike or the mail car, was in another place. The sun, high above, between the puff ball clouds, was a spotlight. He was standing on the flat bright wood of a Broadway stage, bowing for an audience that had come to see him dance and sing, he, Ricky Smith, the equal of Ben Vereen, Tommy Tune, Gregory Hines, a Broadway star as great as any.
And then his eyes had caught a pencil-thin flash of pure green light, and there, at the top of his height, with his arms above his head, his feet on tiptoe: there was the water.
He was filled with happiness and pride, because he was within sight of water as the tourist brochures bragged, and his mother's little pink house was not so little and insignificant after all.
He stood admiring his discovery, savoring his Broadway dream, until a bulging line of gray-bottomed clouds from the east moved in, blotting the sun, his spotlight. It had rained only once in the past two weeks, a brief night shower dropped from a low scudding storm front that was gone almost before it was noticed. Since then there had been high wisps of cloud only momentarily obscuring an otherwise perfect string of blue, high days. Perfect June weather. The Royal Gazette had taken note of it every day, mentioning repeatedly, for the sake of the tourists, that this was why everyone came to the Islands of Bermuda—and, of course, why they would certainly come back again.
But today looked as though it might be different. The gray clouds had elbowed their way in and looked ready to stay. The air smelled thicker, less fresh and open. The tourists wouldn't be happy.
Neither would Mr. Harvey.
Ricky made his way down the steps off the road, lowering himself to the ground and calling out, “Roof's fine—off, Mum!” through the half-open doorway. From somewhere inside he heard her say, “Bye,” as he pulled his motorbike from the wall. He boarded it and kicked off.
Any day, rain or shine, was too good for work. He'd much rather be with Spook and Reesa and Charlie, down at the ferry dock, jumping with a shout into the clear water, scattering the angelfish. You could see straight to the bottom, which wasn't always a good thing, since some of the tourists chucked their Heineken bottles from the boats, messing up the seafloor. Ricky had once caught Spook chucking a ginger beer can off the quay and had pushed him in after it, telling him he might as well be a tourist himself. Spook had laughed it off, but later on, when Ricky was talking to Reesa alone, sitting at the far end of the pier, bouncing his naked feet off one of the huge rubber bumpers that held the ferry off the concrete of the dock, Spook had snuck up behind and lifted him up under the arms and into the water, the soda can following.
“Off with you—and pick it up yourself!” he shouted, only he had been laughing so good-naturedly that Ricky had only come up from the warm water, laughing himself, with the can.
But today there would be no swimming. He sped by the turnoff for the dock, consoling himself with the fact that even if Reesa and the others were down there, their swimming wouldn't last when the storm came.
Ricky braked, then gave the bike a little gas, pulling out carefully on the Somerset Road, eyes alert for reckless Americans on motorbikes or the occasional bus driver with his mind on his wife or his rum, and took the long, slow curve into the village, past the cluster of shops and the Bank of Bermuda. In another moment he had passed the police station, giving a quick lookout for Constable Wicks, who wasn't in his accustomed spot, leaning against the doorway, looking at the weather, lost in cop's thoughts.
Not seeing Wicks, who didn't like speeders, Ricky gunned the bike, skimming right and then left to the Cambridge and then Daniel's Head Road before turning abruptly into the short lane cut into the curb that led up to the house.
He parked the bike on the side drive, jumping off, moving with a springing step to the back door. The front was locked tight from the inside, the historic house open only on Tuesdays and Thursdays to visitors. The shuttered windows, too, were locked, because Mr. Harvey liked the place closed tight when it wasn't open to the public. Which made it quite stuffy and uncomfortable inside. But Mr. Harvey cared more about protocol than about stuffiness.
He expected the old gent to meet him at the back door. But instead there was a note. It read, “GONE THE DAY TO ST. GEORGE'S, DO THE BACK ROOMS,” and was signed, James Harvey, in the old man's florid script. Mr. Harvey fancied himself original stock and acted accordingly, constantly commenting on his former duties with the Tucker family, as well as other former governors. Ricky knew the truth, be-cause the old man's wife had told him one day with a wink behind his back, that he had come from Ireland in 1965 and she with him. But Ricky had never said anything, letting the old man have his dreams, just as he himself did. Just like everyone in the world did.
Ricky knew his own dreams well enough.
His mother laughed, and Spook did too, and sometimes even Reesa, though none of them, especially Reesa, ever laughed mean at him, only gently, shaking their heads and giving him looks that said, dream, Ricky, dream. But he would make his dreams come true. He would go to the High School for the Performing Arts, just like the one in that TV show Fame he sometimes saw off Mr. Bigg's satellite dish, and he would learn to dance, and be at the head of his class, and go to Broadway and be more famous than Ben Vereen. He loved the way Ben Vereen danced, but Ricky knew he would be even better.
He would dream, just like Mr. Harvey did, and someday he would make his dreams real. But for now he would do the back rooms like Mr. Harvey wanted.
He lifted the note off the door. He was fishing out the key when he saw a shadow pass lightly between the half-closed shutters on the window next to the door.
He shivered, something he might not have done had the sun been out. But then the shadow, if it had been one, was gone.
There were stories about Chambers House, of course. There were stories about nearly every house in Somerset Parish that was over fifty years old. Springfield, another old Bermuda family home a mere half mile away, which had been restored as the Somerset Library, certainly had its share. And there were others. But Chambers House was the oldest, and because people craved superstition so much, there were more stories about it than most. It was one of the earliest built on Bermuda, which made it a tourist attraction. There were more rooms than in most houses on the islands, which again made it a topic of conversation. There were stories of piracy, of murdered slaves and buried treasure, which made it all the more romantic, a great lure to Americans especially, whose movies filled them with a lust for adventure.
Ricky had never believed any of it. Spook did, which was why they all called him Spook. He believed in demons and ghosts. He read Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Ricky and the rest of his friends told him his head was filled with nonsense.
Old Mr. Harvey pooh-poohed—the stories, except when drunk on his weakness, rum, which was the reason his wife wished they had never come to Bermuda. She said that at least in Ireland he drank rye, which she favored, and could share with him, but rum made her sick. Old Harvey didn't drink often, but when he did, he became a different man, all his stuffy manner evaporating as his face flushed and his brogue surfaced. “I was clearing out the cellar once,” he told Ricky one day, when the house was closed and they were supposed to be cleaning the cellar themselves. But it was August, and the heat so blinding hot, that they went out on the back porch and watched the flowers and the trees, and smelled the water, and waited for whatever wind might blow at them from the east, “when I swear something touched me on the shoulder.” Harvey's eyes got wide and he ran his hand back through his thinning hair. “Oh, Ricky, I jumped like a frog, I did.” He leaned over in his wicker chair, giving Ricky a hard, unmistakable tap on the shoulder. “It was just like that. And the hell of it was, when I turned around, I saw something fly away from me like a ghost in the storybooks, white gauzy linen and all, in the shape of a dress. When I blinked it was gone.” He ran his hand through his hair again, then picked up his rum glass. “Ten minutes later I was in the fresh air out here and looking at the blue of the sky and trying to believe I'd seen it at all.” He drank and put the glass down. “And I've heard things, seen things fall where no one pushed them, found things moved when I opened up the house the next day, after closing it myself.”
The next day Mr. Harvey was sober as a calf. When Ricky asked him about the stories, he just waved his hands and said, “Bah.”
As Ricky stood staring at the shutters the shadow passed across them again.
He rushed to the window, pressing his face to the angled wooden slats. He saw nothing. He could view the entire room from where he stood. It was the cooking cellar, next to the kitchen, and there was little in it to begin with—two chairs, a table used for cutting vegetables, a deep, waist-high fireplace with a thick iron grate over it.
“Hey now,” he called nervously, “anyone there?”
He felt foolish—as if Spook had gotten him scared with one of his stories. Spook had a scary story about everything from the full to the new moon and back again.
As Ricky stood, staring into the room through the shutters, the shadow passed once more, an invisible yet substantial thing.
A fist of fear formed in Ricky's stomach. There was nothing in that room, and yet theme was. He wondered what Mr. Harvey would say if he went home and begged off sick. He already knew the answer. He would lose his job. If he could catch Mr. Harvey in his rum, there might be a chance of getting away with it, if he told him what had happened with the shadows, but there was little chance of that since Mrs. Harvey had gotten him to give the rum up, saying the very smell of it made her ill. And without the rum in him, Ricky had no chance with the old gent. Especially since he wasn't here today and was relying on Ricky to get the house ready for tomorrow's visitors.
So the choice was between losing his job or staying and doing his duty.
The shadow hadn't reappeared. Ricky turned around and saw a close-hanging tree branch that could have thrown its shadow, even with the near absence of sun, across the window.
He waved his fear aside and unlocked the back door and went in.
The green-painted door banged shut solidly behind him. It didn't bounce and bang again the way it normally did. Ricky looked back at it. It looked as though it were glued. He resisted the urge to go and check it, and then remembered that with the humidity in the air from the coming rain, the wood would swell, making the door stick.
“Foolishness,” he said out loud, to himself.
Stepping into the kitchen, he peeked into the cooking cellar.
It was empty. But as he turned his head away, he saw something move.
“No way,” he said, inspecting the still-empty room. He shook his head and walked out.
The house was dark. The big overhanging window shutters in front and on the side windows were fastened down. He lifted a few of them, letting light and air into the house. It didn't help much; the air was muggy, the day so cloudy that the rooms stayed gloomy. As he straightened and dusted one of the back bedrooms he sang, his voice pleasantly high. He liked Bob Marley, and performed, “I Shot The Sheriff,” beating out the rhythm on his chest or a passing piece of furniture.
As he finished the song, his hands slapping the last reggae beat on a chest of drawers, there was a crash in another room. He stopped cold, fighting off a rush of fear.
Finally, he went to investigate, his hands continuing to slap the beat of Marley's song nervously against his side. The sound had come from one of the middle rooms. When he looked in, he saw a vase he knew had been centered on a small rectangular table in pieces on the floor, the table unmoved.
He heard another crash, at the front of the house. Slowly, breathing through his dread, he edged down the hall and stared into the main dining room.
The heavy glass door in the center of the china hutch was open on its hinges. On the oriental rug lay the smashed shards of one of the dinner plates that nested inside.
Ricky snapped his head up at a sound. Above him, the tin-plated chandelier began to swing on its chain, slowly and then with widening arcs. One of the candles flew from its beaten-tin holder to break beside him.
“Lord Jesus,” Ricky whispered, crossing himself. Another dinner plate tipped out of the hutch, crashing beside the first. One of the side doors of the cabinet opened leisurely, and a heavy gravy boat and ladle tipped out and fell to the floor.
From the rear of the house he heard his own voice singing “I Shot the Sheriff,” and then there was a heavy crash.
The singing voice moved closer. When it reached the room where Ricky stood, shivering, the singing stopped.
In the adjoining living room, a painting fell from the wall over the couch, the corner of its frame cracking.
He backed cautiously out into the hallway. Silence fell and stayed. His body tense, waiting fo
r the next assault, he took another step backward.
He felt a tap on his shoulder.
Gasping, he slapped his hand at the spot, whirling about in time to see the retreating leg of a figure vanish into one of the back bedrooms.
From the same room, his own voice began to sing Bob Marley's “Redemption Song.”
There was a shuttered window in the dining room, and he walked to it. He was sure it was one of the windows he had opened when he came in. It was closed now. There was a hook and eye holding the large green shutter down; to open it, he had to slip the hook and then push the shutter out.
His voice in the other room continued to sing, louder.
He fumbled with the hook, not getting it to come out the first time. It had gotten very dark in the house. He thought he heard a roll of thunder, the first tentative splatters of big raindrops. He wanted to be in the midst of that storm, speeding home on his bike, hot wet rain falling on him. The rain would wake him up from this nightmare, and then the warming sun, later, would make him forget.
If Spook had told him a story like this, he would have laughed. Spook had told him lots of stories, on nights when they sat on lawn chairs in front of Spook's house, Spook sipping rum from his father's bottle, pulling it out every once in a while from the bush behind the chairs, leaning back his big wide frame and laughing, keeping one ear open for his parents. Spook made Ricky scold or laugh with his stories about ghosts in trees, or the ghosts of dead buccaneers that were supposed to inhabit one corner of Hamilton Harbor, asking a penny of any passing soul on a certain late summer night, slitting their throats if the penny wasn't offered.
This was worse than any of Spook's stories, and it was no comfort to know that if Spook had told him this he would have laughed long and hard.
From the bedroom down the hallway, the singing became very loud. It was as if an amplifier had been turned up. Then, abruptly, in mid-lyric, the singing stopped.
The hook on the shutter slipped from its eye in Ricky's fingers. The window shutter moved out a half foot before stopping.
House Haunted Page 4
