Old Order

by Jonathan Janz

  He had his pants half down when Susan looked at him.

  He froze.

  There was no conceivable way she could have heard his breathing, and if she was aware of the peephole, she certainly wouldn’t allow Deek to spy on her each afternoon. Would she?

  Before he realized what was happening, Susan scampered into the daylight. She disappeared around the right outer wall of the lean-to, and as Horace turned, she burst through the screen door and stood before him, awesome and frightening in her natural state.

  His trance broke as she took in his condition. He turned, humiliated, and attempted to pull up his black trousers, but she was saying something, coming closer, and to Horace’s supreme dismay, she was spinning him around to face her. He made to cover himself, but she slapped at his hands, drew him nearer. He opened his mouth to speak but her lips were covering his, her tongue licking hungrily at his teeth, his paralyzed face. She shoved him backward, and the cool bare mattress cushioned his fall.

  Susan fell on him like a lioness, biting his neck, scratching, hurting him as much as she pleasured him. Then, like her mother the night before, she began to ride him, but this time the lovemaking was bereft of tenderness. Hers was a frantic, selfish grinding, an arrhythmic assault of pagan lust. Many times Horace nearly cried out in pain, but the thought of Deek walking in, of McCarrick discovering them and chasing him into the forest made him bite his bottom lip until it bled.

  When she’d finished, she pushed off of him without a word and exited as quickly as she’d entered.

  Horace lay there stunned. Were it not for the red, chafed ache between his legs and the sweat moistening the smelly old mattress under his body, he would have doubted their tryst had happened at all.

  For the first time Horace wondered if Susan or her mother were on the pill.

  * * *

  At bedtime Horace showered and entered his room with the intention of reading the newspaper. He was eager to see how his stocks had performed, but The Eleusis Reader—which read like a bizarre hybrid of the Farmer’s Almanac and a horoscope—proved to be as devoid of useful information as the countryside was of houses.

  A knock on the door arrested his thoughts. Though he wore only his underpants, he made no move to cover up. It would be Belinda or Susan, and though it was no later than nine o’clock and there was still daylight outside, he was more than ready for another bout of passion. If they weren’t worried about McCarrick discovering them, why should he be?

  “Come in,” he said.

  Grandma Shirley stepped inside. The huge woman shut the door behind her, and as she approached, Horace’s confusion gave way to revulsion. Would the old woman try to bed him too? She weighed more than he did and was pushing seventy. Certainly, he thought as she stood over him, smiling, she didn’t believe he fancied her?

  “Get into bed, Mr. Yoder.”

  He did as he was told, feeling oddly like a child again. She drew the covers up under his chin and, reaching out, twisted off the lamp. Just when he was certain she would make an attempt to climb under the covers with him, she sat on the bed, her huge rump pinning down the bed sheets and making movement impossible.

  She leaned over him, bracing herself on one flabby arm. She stared down at him, disgustingly close, and made a little humming sound.

  “Mrs. McCarrick,” he began.

  “Shirley.”

  He shuddered. “Shirley, I’m not sure—”

  “It’s uncanny.”

  He paused. “What is?”

  “You have his eyes, his mouth,” she said with a faraway look.

  She brought a framed photograph up and examined it tenderly. Though the room was dark, Horace could see Jim McCarrick’s face in the photo, and he had to admit there was a resemblance.

  “My Jim,” the woman said. “My Jim.”

  She regarded Horace with shining eyes, and for one horrible moment he was sure she would kiss him. Then, she sniffed, went on in a dispassionate voice, “I don’t know why you’re here, Mr. Yoder, and further, I don’t care to know.”

  Instinct told him to defend himself, but she was going on, heedless of his look of protest: “I trust you’ve gotten what you wanted from our family, and I’ll expect you gone by first light.”

  Horace struggled to muster the anger he wanted to feel, but the smell of the old woman, the oppressive feel of her weighing down one whole side of the bed, made speech impossible. All he knew was he wanted her out of his room, wanted time to think. In the dying summer light he could just see the dry twist of her mouth, the coldness in her eyes. He couldn’t begin to guess what she knew or what she thought she knew about the last twenty-four hours.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Yoder,” she said, and amid a chorus of creaking bedsprings, she gathered herself up.

  At the door, she turned and gave him a wistful look. “My Jim has the same brown eyes.”

  * * *

  When it reached midnight he rose and dressed. He knew he had to leave. It was regretful, but obviously Grandma Shirley knew something of his amorous activities, and the longer he stayed, the better chance of her revealing all to Daniel McCarrick. Or worse, Grandma Agnes.

  He carried his hat into the hallway and set it on the top stair. The McCarrick house was preternaturally silent as he crept down the hall toward Grandma Agnes’s room. Outside her door, he fished the penlight out of his pocket but did not turn it on. Horace concentrated on his breathing. He let it deepen, a peaceful cooling in his lungs.

  It was a point of pride for him that despite his two hundred and seventy pounds he could prowl as silently as a panther. In fact, that was how he pictured himself as he turned the knob: a giant panther stalking its prey in some distant primordial jungle.

  He opened the door soundlessly.

  Since the hallway was dark he didn’t need to worry about a stray shaft of light awakening the old woman like something from a Poe story. He stepped inside Agnes’s room and listened for her breathing. It came to him, a sibilant whisper, like winter sleet on a rooftop. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he could easily make out her sleeping form—a slight bulge in the corner of the room, the thin ribcage barely stirring the bedclothes.

  Straight ahead, under the lone window, stood the dresser.

  Even better, he thought as he padded quietly across the wood floor, careful to distribute his weight as evenly as possible, avoid any creaky floorboards. With the moonlight pouring through the window he wouldn’t even need the penlight.

  The wooden jewelry box was plain and large.

  Focus on your breathing, he told himself. Remain calm. Always calm.

  He peered down at Agnes. Had she stirred?

  Calm, he reminded himself. The old woman was out for the night, her scattered dreams a dim carousel of youthful memories. He watched her several moments longer, though, to make sure. When no movement came from the bed save the almost imperceptible rise and fall of her blanket, Horace turned back to the wooden box, which he now saw was shut with a latch in the shape of the letter D.

  Shit, he thought. Was it locked?

  Holding his breath, Horace lifted the D-shaped latch and only exhaled when the wooden lid rose easily. He supposed he could carry the whole thing out, but taking the box would draw attention the moment Agnes woke up, and it was always best to delay discovery as much as possible. If he cherry-picked the best pieces, Agnes might not discover their absence until well into the day.

  Horace nearly gasped when moonlight fell on the jewels. In the glittering field of precious gems, he could see a large diamond ring, a ruby bracelet, a trio of brooches that sparkled with an array of valuable stones. And yes, the canary earrings, they were there too. He had been afraid that Agnes, at her advanced age, might be eccentric about her jewels, neglecting or refusing to take them off even when she slept.

  But they were all here, plus a dozen more she hadn’t worn to dinner.

  Horace placed them, one by one, into his pockets. He was careful to place the earrings in his back pockets to ens
ure they would not be scratched by other stones.

  Horace straightened. Now that the haul was on his person the flight fever gripped him. The impulse was a dangerous one, he knew from experience. The one and only occasion he’d been caught had been due to his nervous need to escape. He’d bumped a sleeping woman’s bedpost, of all things, and awakened both her and her brute of a husband. The broken nose and badly split lip were as nothing compared to the subsequent arrest, the indignity of spending six months in prison.

  But that was another lifetime. He was a dozen years older now, and much, much wiser. He would take his time, moving, if anything, more cautiously now than on the way in. Three more steps and he’d make the doorway.

  There. Agnes’s catlike snoring behind him, Horace moved stealthily down the hallway, an upright panther departing from the kill. He felt them in his back pockets, the canary diamonds. Their sharp points pressed his skin as he advanced, reminding him to take his time, to breathe. At the top of the stairs he bent and retrieved his hat. Then, step by careful step, Horace descended the stairs.

  At their base he went straight to the kitchen. On the way he deliberately ignored the antique kerosene lamp, the Winchester rifle on the parlor wall that he suspected was an original and not the cheap reproductions he too often encountered.

  No, he needed to travel light. Because of the paucity of houses in Eleusis, he’d been forced to park farther from his target than was his wont, and though the clearness of the night sky would make it easier to find his way back to the Beetle, it also heightened the possibility of discovery.

  Horace crept through the kitchen, listening for any sound from upstairs. He checked the windowsill above the sink and saw that Belinda had taken her wedding ring to bed with her. The diamond would have been a nice addition, but maybe it was just as well. Belinda had already given him something nearly as sweet as diamonds…her wonderful pale body…her moaning.…

  Horace ridded his mind of the thought.

  He twisted the lock and eased open the wooden door. Listening for any sound, he pushed open the screen door and shut the wooden one behind him. The screen door closed, he made his way down the porch steps and set off toward the road. As he did, he peered through the yard at the bunkhouse and wondered if Deek were dreaming about Susan.

  The poor bastard, Horace thought. Deek’s only joy in life was watching his boss’s daughter bathe, and though that was better than nothing, it was no substitute for the real thing. His feet crunching on the gravel road, Horace remembered the way she’d stormed into the bunkhouse, gloriously nude, and ravaged him. He laughed, realizing how apt the verb was. Who’d have ever thought that he, formerly Horace Yoder and now—thank Christ—Richard Ramsey again, would be ravaged by such a beautiful creature? He regretted the lack of evidence—what he wouldn’t give for a film of the event! The look of her alone was enough to—

  Richard paused, a sick tightening in his belly.

  He turned and saw, in an upstairs window of the farmhouse, a small white face. Though the farmhouse was fifty yards or more away, the dark eyes, the pale skin, the black scar of a mouth, were clearly discernible.

  His mouth went dry, and as he strained his eyes to make out the identity of the watcher, the shape moved, disappeared, and the only evidence there’d been someone at all was the faint stirring of the curtains.

  Richard set off, heart thudding heavily, and calculated in which room he’d spied the face. It couldn’t have been Susan’s—her room and Grandma Shirley’s were on the opposite side of the house. Daniel and Belinda’s bedroom faced north, which meant it was either Agnes’s room or his own, the one that had belonged to Thomas McCarrick.

  Had it been Thomas’s ghost?

  Richard grinned. The thought of Susan’s dead brother returned from the dead was just the farcical note his reason needed to rout his marauding imagination. A Country Ghost Story, Richard thought. The Phantom of Eleusis.

  Ridiculous!

  Richard turned his back on the farmhouse for the last time, glad to be rid of his irrational fear. He was sure now that the face had been nothing more than a trick of the shadows, a specter spun by starlight. He smiled, thinking of the physiological reaction the vision had brought on. Lord, you’d think he was ten years old again, hiding in the barn while his father—

  He shook off the thought. Best not to entertain such ghoulish memories. Funny how the moonlight, the stillness of the countryside, made seeing things so easy, made the impossible appear real.

  Ahead, the road curved and dipped as it entered a long stretch of forest. Humming a little, he followed the gravel road as the shadows swallowed it. Here and there flitted sparrows, the occasional robin. Once, in the distance, he heard a horse whinny.

  It brought back Susan, the way she’d pistoned her fine hips, her head thrown back so far she appeared headless, a sweaty, muscular Venus de Milo. His body ached, remembering it. Richard suddenly regretted not saying goodbye. Or at least looking in on her as she slept. He was certain she went to bed naked, covered herself with a thin white sheet, her voluptuous curves clearly outlined in the smooth linen.

  With something akin to physical pain, Richard banished the thought. He’d walked too far to return to the farmhouse. On the morrow she would know what he was and hate him for it. Or perhaps she would remember him fondly, a daring rogue who loved her and left without saying goodbye.

  Richard cast a glance at the sky, but the overhanging boughs made it difficult to see anything save a tapestry of leaves, broken only by the occasional pinprick of a star. Something to his left scurried through the underbrush, a squirrel probably, or a possum. He hoped it was the former. Though docile creatures, possums nevertheless gave him the willies. Something about their albino faces, their pinkish eyes and sharp ivory fangs. He saw them dead by the roadside quite a bit, their nasty maws fixed open in a silent howl, their round bellies—

  Richard stopped, a cold rush of fear dousing his senses. Had he heard footsteps in the road behind him?

  Frightened by the prospect of what he’d see, but even more frightened by the idea of not turning around, Richard whirled and scanned the gravel road for the ghostly white face, for Thomas McCarrick, back from the grave to take his revenge.

  Richard exhaled.

  Nothing. No ghostly face, no spectral follower.

  Not even a possum.

  Get a grip, he told himself. You’ve a good mile to go, and at this rate, it’ll take you until dawn to get there. The thought of the Beetle, his salvation, was enough to get him moving again. He’d turned halfway around when something caught his attention, something far back along the country road, up the rise he had just descended.

  There, at the edge of the forest, stood a small boy.

  Jimmy McCarrick.

  Through his sudden terror, Richard remembered the boy’s face, peering through the window at him during dinner two nights ago. It was the only time he’d seen the child at all.

  Save when Jimmy stared at him from the second-story window a few minutes ago, spoiling his escape.

  God damn the little urchin, Richard thought. Had the boy already told his parents of Richard’s flight? Was it time to make a run for it?

  The boy’s face, a hundred feet away and shadowed by leaves and branches, was impossible to read. Was he simply curious, engaged in some childish sport? Or was he biding his time, toying with Richard before sounding the alarm?

  Richard took a step in that direction, thinking to draw the boy into conversation—Just out for a stroll, Jimmy. I was just about to head back—when he realized how ridiculous that would sound, even to a child. No, the boy knew something; otherwise he’d not have come all the way out here in the middle of the night. If Richard could only lead him farther into the forest, get near enough the abandoned barn, the Beetle parked inside, he could make a dash for it. Certainly he could back the Volkswagen out of the barn before the child could run all the way home, rouse his parents, and then either catch him or alert the authorities.

&nb
sp; He gave himself no more time to consider. He set off down the road again at a leisurely pace, praying the boy would follow. After twenty yards or so Richard glanced back and saw that yes, Jimmy had taken the bait. Richard’s legs itched to go faster, but he mustn’t press his luck, mustn’t let on he was in a hurry. It was very possible the child was still unsure of his intentions. Jimmy knew nothing of the Beetle, was almost certainly ignorant of Richard’s thievery.

  He debated once again whether or not to speak to the child—Richard was quite skillful at talking with the children who entered his shop—but again he dismissed the idea. Best not to complicate things. Get to the Beetle and get back to Hartford. By this time tomorrow he’d be snug in his four-poster bed, adrift in dreams of Belinda and her daughter.

  Richard rubbed his chin and thought of how nice it would be to shave off this ridiculous goat beard. Yes, shave it off and proceed to count his money. He estimated that his total Midwest haul would allow him to move his shop to a better location and perhaps even provide him with a down payment for a home. Getting out of the apartment would be wonderful. He wouldn’t miss its cramped spaces, its—

  “Where are you going?”

  He froze, shocked by the child’s voice. It was high-pitched, insinuating. Not at all the tone of an ordinary little boy. There had been something sinister…

  He turned and saw that the boy was much closer.

  Breathe, he told himself. With luck you can convince this spiteful little bastard to follow you on, all the way to the Beetle if you’re lucky. And then it’s goodbye Eleusis.

  “I’m enjoying the night air,” Richard said, pleased at how easily the words came. “You seem to like the outdoors, too. I saw you looking out your bedroom window earlier.”