House Haunted

by Al Sarrantonio

  Tadeusz said, “We must get him to my house, off the street, then move him to a place that can't be connected to him.” He took Jan by the arm. “Quickly.”

  Jan looked at him. Comprehension of what was happening to him on this fine day, with its cool, late-summer breeze and fine gray clouds—on this day when he had smoked a cigarette with his best friends, and leaned on a rope railing overlooking the roiling water of the Vistula—dawned on him. Something out of his control was closing in on him, a machine in the form of a hunting hound had been set in motion, with his name imprinted on it, and unwavering instructions to bring him to tree. The police would not go away. They had been told to talk him, and they would.

  “I'll give myself up to them,” Jan said.

  Karol's face came before his own, flushed and angry. “Come with us,” he said. “They're not going to take you.”

  Tadeusz's grip on Jan's arm tightened. Karol took his other arm. For a brief moment Jan felt as though he were going to faint. But then the world, the gray sky, the billowing gray clouds, the smell of the moving river, came back to him.

  They moved briskly away from the bridge, Jozef darting glances behind them, and ascended stone steps to the street above. “Walk casually,” Tadeusz ordered. They began to converse, trying to keep the tension out of their voices.

  The street was filled with late factory workers hurrying to their jobs. Some wore winter coats, since the last few days had been colder than today, but they were opened at the collar, enjoying the last hint of warmth before the damp winter settled in. Most carried black lunch boxes.

  They walked along with the workers. The pace quickened as the clock in the church steeple near the end of the street began to toll the hour, promising reprimands for those not at work by the time it had ceased. Jan and his friends hurried along until Tadeusz said, “This way is quicker,” and brought them through a narrow alleyway lined with discarded boxes to the next street. “Stay back,” he ordered when they reached the far end. He went ahead, slipping out onto the street before motioning for them to follow. They crossed the road and mounted a flight of wooden steps to the second floor.

  Tadeusz fumbled a huge iron key out of his pocket and turned it in the lock. Below them, on the street, someone rounded a corner, a man in a trench coat and brown hat. “Shit, he's right out of the movies,” Karol said as they pushed Jan into the flat. The man in the trench coat was followed by two uniformed policemen, who kept a discreet distance.

  They watched through the window as the man in the trench coat stopped and waited for the two uniformed men to catch up with him; there followed a discussion over a piece of paper that the man in the trench coat produced, which escalated in volume, with the uniformed cops arguing and the man in the trench coat waiting for them to stop.

  “Are they the ones you saw come out of Jan's house?” Tadeusz asked Jozef.

  “I think so.” He squinted hard through the window, then pulled his head back. “Yes.”

  “Jesus,” Tadeusz said, “they must have gone right to the factory and found we weren't there. They're looking for this place.”

  The man in the trench coat suddenly threw his hand up and his companions ceased arguing immediately; the three of them then proceeded down the street away from them.

  “They'll be wanting a telephone, and then they'll find the correct address,” Tadeusz said. “We can't wait here. There's no time to waste.” He reached into his pocket, pulling out a clip of bills and handing it to Jan. The others did likewise, Karol cursing when he could produce nothing more than one small bill and a handful of coins.

  “You must get to a bus,” Tadeusz said to Jan. He held him by the shoulders, looking hard into his eyes to make sure that Jan understood what he said. “You must get out of the city. Go to a hotel in a town called Kolno. It's about a hundred kilometers northeast of here. I had relatives there, once. There are only two hotels in the village. Pick the less conspicuous one. I can't remember the name. It had a pot of flowers by the sign out front. On Sunday, two days from now, I'll meet you there. We'll get money together. I'll go to the priest and he'll help. They all will.” He squeezed Jan's shoulders tight, bringing him close. Then the three of them, Jozef muttering good-bye, Karol punching Jan on his arm with his fist, looking angry and impotent, were gone, leaving Jan alone in the room.

  They'll all help, Tadeusz had said to him. But even as his friend was saying- it, even as their eyes met while he was uttering the words, they both knew that, in the end, the police would find and take him.

  Jan stood in the middle of the empty, cold flat. He looked down at the money in his hand. Suddenly, for no real reason except that he refused to give up, a sort of life came into him. Maybe they won't take me. Maybe there was escape. Even if there wasn't, he would not let his friends down by not trying. He owed them something. He thought of his mother, in her tiny kitchen, cleaning the remains of his breakfast, which he had cavalierly refused because he was anxious to get out of the stuffy little house, to smoke cigarettes with his friends. (No, mother, I can't eat it, I'm not hungry), the almost arrogant way he had refused her cooking. He thought of all the little things she did for him, her mending his boots, the way she had replaced the lining of his coat after he had had it ripped during a brawl in the pub the previous March. She hadn't even scolded him about his fighting—though, later, he had seen her in her bedroom, the faded, colored quilt still tucked under her pillow, the mattress of the bed high and uneven from the old filling it possessed, kneeling with her elbows on the quilt, hands clasped around her rosary, head bowed. When he went to his own room, he would find a holy picture tucked under his pillow, just as he had every night since he was a boy, since his father was killed during a worker's strike. Jan thought of his mother, and his eyes filled with tears. She would never see him again. She had been in her kitchen, probably scraping the remains of his uneaten breakfast back into the pot, to save for later, perhaps to serve with the potatoes at dinner, and the policeman had come into her house, and had asked her rough questions, and then had left her, not laying a hand on her, perhaps, but just as well striking into her body, into her heart. He cried not because he would never see her again, but because she would never see him. He was the one thing in her life she truly cared for—Jan, her only son, the image of her husband preserved in youth, the boy who would, perhaps, be a priest.

  He had told her that once, when he was young, with his tongue connected to a boy's confused heart, mostly because she had wanted to hear it so badly. Yes, he had said, he would become a priest. Later, when he had realized that he was now a man and not a boy, he had almost stopped speaking to her because he realized that he could never be what she wanted of him. He resented her for wanting him to be something he could not be. She had never said anything to him about it, had never mentioned the priesthood again, but still, every night, under his pillow the holy pictures, the image of Christ, the Sacred Heart burning in His open breast . . .

  I'm sorry I couldn't fulfill your dreams, Mother, he thought. I'm sorry I didn't tell you mine.

  More than anything, he must get away for his mother. If she knew he was safe, she would be all right.

  Jan's eyes were dry by the time he opened the door. The street below was empty. But it would not stay so. At any moment, the man in the trench coat and his two thugs might reappear, heading with certainty toward the very spot where he stood. That would be the end of it. He would have betrayed his mother. He would have betrayed his friends—and their money, which they had thrust into his hands and which the police would quickly confiscate, would be gone.

  He turned his collar up and descended the stairs. As calmly as possible, he crossed the street, heading for the alleyway Tadeusz had taken them through. From the next street he could reach the bus depot by mingling with the shoppers in the marketplace.

  “You there, just a minute.”

  He was turning into the alley when someone called to him. He thought of turning with his fists out. He could use the boxing move Ka
rol had taught him, which they had used to such good purpose during the bar brawl last winter. But there were three of them. There was no way he could overpower them. The one in the trench coat would be a few steps behind him, his two companions to either side, guns drawn, already aiming at a point between his shoulder blades. There was nothing the cops loved better than a prisoner resisting arrest. It was sometimes a quick road to promotion to add the shooting of a wanted man attempting to escape to one's record.

  “I—” he began, turning around. Confusion was replaced by elation. It was one of Tadeusz's friends, a man named Jerzy who had sometimes observed their chess matches. He was a pensioner who lived alone, and though he never spoke while he watched, Tadeusz claimed that he recorded every move in his head, learning the game voraciously. “One day,” Tadeusz said after one of their matches, when the old man had limped down the stairs to his own apartment, giving Tadeusz the chance to bring out his good tea, which he hoarded, “he will beat us all. His eyes are a hawk's eyes.”

  “I say, Jan,” the old pensioner said. The glow of concentrated purpose that Tadeusz had spoken of was in the man's eyes,. “Do you think I might have a game of chess with you sometime soon?” He trembled; he must have practiced the speech before approaching Jan. His great shyness, and the great need bursting now from within him, made Jan reach out and put his hand on the man's arm.

  “I—“

  Behind the old man, Jan saw the man in the trench coat with his two henchmen approaching Tadeusz's flat. He gripped the old man's arm tenderly.

  “I'm sorry, Jerzy, not anytime soon.”

  He turned away, nearly as much in avoidance of the disappointment on the old man's face as in haste.

  As he had hoped, the marketplace stalls were busy. He was able to blend with the crowd of haggling women, schoolboys playing hooky and the young marrieds out together to buy vegetables and, perhaps, a little meat for dinner. He mixed with the hagglers, arguing himself over the price of a bag of chestnuts, which he leisurely ate as he strolled.

  When he reached the last stall, Jan thought it must be at least noon. But, to his great surprise, the clock over the bus depot showed it to be only twenty minutes past nine. His initial feeling that the bus station would surely be watched by the police was replaced by a conviction that it was not. They had been looking for him for only a little more than an hour. At this point, there would only be the three men he had seen after him. When he was not located, there might be more, and a general alert would be posted, but now it was three against one.

  His theory was proven correct when a covert inspection of the station revealed no sign of police activity. Jan's spirits were further lifted when he discovered that a bus heading out of the city in the direction he wanted was preparing to leave. He had no difficulty hiding his features from the ticket seller, who was more intent on his magazine than on studying the faces of bus passengers. He took the same precaution handing his ticket to the driver, using the opportunity to glance out over the driver's shoulder to see if his three pursuers might have shown up. They had not, and a few moments later, as Jan reached an empty seat halfway toward the back of the bus and away from the driver's direct gaze in the rearview mirror, the bus lurched forward.

  Twenty minutes later, they were out of the city and passing into the rural region north and east of Warsaw.

  Though Jan never actually closed his eyes, a great feeling of lassitude overcame him. He felt as if he had been detached from himself, floating above the unfolding drama of his life, watching his own plight on a television camera. With some interest, he wondered what would happen next. In the drama, the man had eluded his pursuers, but now what would the script call for? In every television crime show he had ever seen, it was easy to plot the destiny of the felon. If he was a good character, he would elude his hunters and ultimately triumph. If he was a villain, he would be caught and brought to justice. But what was Jan? Was he hero or villain? If the police wanted him, did that not make him an automatic villain? On the television productions, whenever the state wanted a man, he was obviously a criminal, to be judged and sentenced. But what had been Jan's crime? Why did the state want him? It didn't matter.

  About halfway to Kolno, the bus stopped to let passengers off. Jan waited for them to continue, but instead the driver left the bus. Jan nervously waited for his return. After fifteen minutes he was sure that word had somehow spread and that policemen would appear momentarily and drag him from the bus. But as he was rising to leave, the bus driver suddenly reappeared, reclaiming his seat and pulling the door shut behind him.

  Jan was filled with anxiety, undecided as to whether he should stay or rush to the front of the bus, throw the door open, and flee, until he overheard one of the passengers in the seat in front of him laugh and say to her companion, nodding toward the driver, “There he is with his loose bowels again, it never fails.” And the other one replied, knowingly, “Sausage for breakfast as a habit will do that. I tried to tell him that our last trip, but he wouldn't listen.”

  “Men never do,” the other woman answered, and they both laughed and nodded their heads.

  Jan settled back into his seat.

  The trees thinned, showing dry farmland, but then trees reappeared again. And then, suddenly, they had reached Kolno. The two women in front of Jan got out ahead of him, stopping a moment to scold the bus driver on his breakfast habits. The bus driver waved them on impatiently, and Jan hurried out behind them, keeping his face averted from the driver and from the two women, who were nosy enough to remember a face. The bus doors closed with an airy hiss and the bus groaned off. Jan noticed that it leaned slightly to one side in the back, another state vehicle in need of repair it wouldn't receive.

  The bus had left him at the edge of the small town square. So as not to draw attention to himself he went to the statue at the other end and sat down on one of two benches there. An old woman occupied the other bench. She was blind, one of her hands rubbing softly at the blue-veined wrist on her other arm. Her black cane rested against one hip. Her eyes calmly stared into blackness.

  “Excuse me,” Jan said.

  “I'll tell you anything you want,” the woman said, “if you buy a pear from me.” She lifted the corner of her cloak, revealing a small wicker basket of pears nestled beside her. “It will cost you five hundred groszy.”

  “Certainly,” Jan answered, drawing out one of the coins Karol had given him and pressing it into her hand. “Can you give me change for this?”

  “I don't have change to give,” she answered.

  Jan was about to say that she could keep the whole coin, but realized her game. “I'm sorry,” he said, reaching to remove the coin from her palm, “I can't buy your fruit, then.”

  “I'll give you change,” she said, smiling mischievously.

  She pulled a purse from beneath her cloak. She drew out coins, shorting him one to see if he would notice. When he protested, she handed him all she owed him.

  “I'm looking for the hotel with a pot of flowers out front,” he said to her.

  “Oh, I can't help you,” she said. Her mischievous smile returned.

  “You promised to help me. I can tell you you won't get another groszy from me, old woman.”

  “I was playing with you.” The old woman laughed. It was a hoarse, unpleasant sound. “It's just outside of town. It's haunted, you know. Demons. Are you sure you want to stay there? There's another, much finer hotel on the other side of town, and for another hundred groszy—”

  “That's where I want to stay,” Jan said impatiently.

  The old woman shrugged. “There's a horse path behind us, and you take that for about a half kilo. It's on the left side. A man named Edward runs it.” She laughed again. “A skinflint like me. Don't let him cheat you. There isn't a room in the place worth more than ten. The best rooms are in the rear, where there's plenty of sun in the morning.”

  Jan stood up. The woman's sightless eyes followed him. “Are you going to stay long? Perhaps there ar
e other things I could tell you, people you should watch for.”

  “Thank you for your help,” Jan said, not trying to hide the annoyance in his voice. He moved on.

  It was a longer walk than the woman had said. After what must have been a kilometer the road narrowed, leaving space for barely a cart, certainly not two horses abreast. The day had grown almost oppressively hot, an anomaly for this late in September. There were thick hedges beside the road, the branching trees getting their brown coats of turning leaves overhead. It was like walking through a close burrow. Jan began to feel claustrophobic. He carried his coat over his arm. He rolled his shirt sleeves up and loosened his tie. It felt like July; the humidity in the air was palpable. He wanted to sit and rest, but the hedge was cut so close to the road there was nowhere to do it. His entire former life seemed like a dream, something he had left behind only a few hours before but which was a lifetime away from him. He tried to conjure up his mother's face, or Tadeusz's, but could not precisely remember what they looked like. If someone had told him a day ago that in twenty-four hours he would be stumbling through a darkling, hot tunnel, hiding from the police, running from a crime that was unknown to him, he would have laughed or executed the fighting move with his fists that Karol had taught him—the quick one-two.

  Or maybe he was dreaming. Perhaps he would awaken at any moment, pushed gently on the shoulder by his dear mother, and would look up into her face, and tell her that he had had a dream of guilt, that he loved her more than anything, that he was sorry he had not told her of his feelings for her in such a long time. He would tell her that he was sorry that he had grown arrogant and distant; perhaps he would embrace her. Hopefully, the breakfast he had left on the table this morning was yet to be faced, waiting for him out of this dreamland on the kitchen table at this moment; and his mother stood over him right now, ready to end this guilt dream, about to give him that gentle nudge, this mother who had awakened him so many times, gotten him off to school, changed the sheets on his bed, seeing the stains he had sometimes left there with his wet dreams—his mother who was closer to him than anyone ...