UNEARTHLY

by John Farris

  A search through her wardrobe convinced Barry that she had nothing suitable to wear, and her hair was too long and frowzy at the tips. She drove down to the big shopping centers in White Plains, had a wash, cut, and; set at Bloomie's, bought a hostess skirt and a new pair of gold shoes at Charles Jourdan to go with it.

  Midafternoon she arrived home. Mark was sprawled in a big hammock strung between oak trees with Meanness in the shade beneath. She leaned over and kissed Mark and glanced at the book that lay open on his chest. A biography of Mary Shelley.

  "Had my hair done," she said, showing off her stylish tresses.

  "Um-hm."

  "What did you and Dad talk about while I was gone?"

  "The garden."

  "Didn't say he was sorry or anything?"

  "Should he?"

  "Well—it's all Dal's fault, really. But I don't want to get started again." She gave him a fresh kiss—an ear this time.

  "Tickles," Mark said amiably. He was glad to see her. He loved the attention. He held her hand.

  "I could eat you up," Barry said, and she clicked her front teeth rapidly at him. She felt more than a little steamy. Under the hair dryer she had dreamed of Mark, buying shoes she had seen him in every passing pair of strong shoulders and trim hips. His shirt was open; his thick hair curled against her lips. She sighed.

  "Do you want to make love?" he asked, recognizing all the signs.

  Barry straightened and looked tenderly at him. It was what she called it and it was the rite they performed, Mark participating to the best of his abilities, but still too much was lacking. Not his heart, she was sure of that, nor his soul. Otherwise she couldn't have been with him at all—it would have been, ultimately, humiliating and demeaning, despite her passion. She did get a lot out of their lovemaking, Barry had to admit. She only wished there could be more. While remaining hopeful that any day—

  "Later. I'd better see that Mrs. Aldrich and Sparky have everything they need. Let's see, did I call the bartender? Yes. Flowers, flowers—"

  "They came."

  "Good."

  "How many will there be for dinner?"

  "Oh, a dozen, not counting us. Not a big crowd."

  Mark looked relieved. He was basically shy and didn't care at all for crowds of strangers; he didn't even like sitting in a row with anyone else at the movies.

  "Maybe you'd better try on that blazer we bought," Barry said. "You may have gotten bigger with all the weights.

  "Okay."

  "Oh, and why don't you drive over and pick up Alexandra for me? I won't have time. I'll tell you how to find her."

  By seven o'clock black clouds had moved in. The light was dusky and the air storm-heavy. The trees on the property had begun to show the pale undersides of their leaves in anticipation of a big rain. Barry was occupied with last-minute details—setting out place cards, lighting tapers on the round tables for six that had replaced the trestle table in the dining room, removing a chipped goblet no one else had noticed, chilling white wine, and letting the youngest of the red Bordeauxes breathe. She coaxed her father into changing jackets, borrowing one of Dal's because his own hung on him, emphasizing his recent loss of weight. Tom did have some color from his exertions in the garden, and he was bright-eyed in anticipation of good conversation with old friends.

  The first guests to arrive, by limousine from Manhattan, were Les Mergendoller and the Broadway actress he'd been squiring around, and Dal's date, a Eurasian girl named Tepei, who wore a clinging jade-green dress. Tepei had warm oaken eyes, skin like a saucer of cream with two drops of coffee added, nutmeg hair so thick and luxurious she must have had to currycomb it. Barry had earlier spent two and a half hours dressing and felt, by comparison, as if she were wearing the kind of stuff that came in packing crates.

  Les was a big shambling man with fat features and twinkly little spectacles. His actress was named Stacey; she was one of those dieting women who seemed to be all cheekbones and brightly frosted, famished mouths. She was currently unemployed and had just returned from three weeks in Barbados, where she had baked herself the color of a Virginia honey glazed ham. Her eyes opened wide in wonderment when she took in all of Mark, and she spent the rest of the evening auditioning for him. Barry felt that she could afford to be good-natured about the intended trespass.

  Claude and Millicent Copperwell arrived with the first raindrops; Mark ducked out for Alexandra and returned in a smoking downpour.

  Alexandra had with her a package wrapped in what looked like paper bags she'd saved from the supermarket. She presented her gift to Tom and Barry, which Barry unwrapped and then almost dropped in surprise and apprehension.

  "Careful, Barry," Tom said, getting his hands on the heavy leather casket. Together they placed it on a table in the family room. Barry was certain it was the same casket she had seen earlier in the week under the arm of Alexandra's double.

  "It's gorgeous," Stacey said breathily. "It must be very old."

  "Perhaps a thousand years old," Alexandra affirmed. "It was the property of a very rich monk and a substantial figure in the cabinet, the government of Tibet, whose house on the Lingkor Road contained many such treasures. Unfortunately only a few of them survived the last rape of the Chinese."

  "Priceless," Les said, licking his lips. Dal and Tepei were transfixed.

  "Can you read these inscriptions?" Dal asked her. Tepei was multilingual.

  "No. I have no idea what language it is."

  "Sanskrit," Alexandra informed them.

  "We can't accept this," Tom protested.

  "But you must! I have many things, and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to know how often this casket will be seen and appreciated by your friends, people of taste and discernment."

  Barry was staring at Alexandra, who smiled and produced a key for the gold lock.

  "Will you open it?"

  Barry was a little shaky, but the lock, though old, accepted the key easily and worked at once. The lid of the casket clicked open. Inside there was nubby orange silk, two long objects wrapped in a parchment-like paper, which also was heavily inscribed in Sanskrit.

  "What are they?"

  Alexandra obligingly unwrapped the ceremonial bronze daggers for her. But she was careful not to separate them entirely from the paper. "Ohhhh!" Stacey sighed.

  "They are called phurbu—ritual weapons of sorcery."

  "Look at that workmanship!" Les said, frankly lusting. "I've never seen anything to match them—maybe some odds and ends at Topkapi or the Cairo Museum."

  "There is a most interesting story about these particular daggers."

  Alexandra looked around at their faces slowly, already knowing she had their full attention. Her eyes lingered on Mark, who smiled encouragingly.

  "They belonged to a Grand Lama famous for his magic who used them often in his rites. In this way they acquired considerable power—they became possessed—just as humans, animate creatures may be possessed. When the lama passed on, the weapons remained in the monastery, but without his influence to guide them they became, shall we say, pesky. They began to float around in the air by themselves, interrupting prayers, creating havoc. A monk who encountered one of the floating phurbu was attacked and died of his wounds. The entire assembly was in terror. Prayers were conceived to invoke the spirit of the Grand Lama and they gathered, huddled together, for three days and nights around the banner of benediction in the courtyard, having abandoned the interior of the monastery to the frightful phurbu.

  "At last there arose from the monastery a terrific racket, a howling as of demons provoked. They shook and prayed louder. In the morning, at first light, the bravest of them crept inside to see what had happened. He found the phurbu wrapped tightly in the paper you see there, on which the spirit of the Grand Lama had written charms that rendered the daggers forever harmless. But who knows what might happen, even today, if they should become separated from the parchment?"

  The steady drone of rain had lulled them all, alo
ng with the sound of Alexandra's voice. At a crackling bolt of lightning nearby they all jumped, and laughed edgily.

  Alexandra, not looking up, her lips moving slightly as if she were reciting a brief, arcane ritual, wrapped the phurbu again in the old, decaying paper. The bartender offered drinks. Barry looked again at the daggers. Only a little bronze showed as Alexandra closed the lid of the casket on them.

  "Hundreds of years have gone by," she said with a shrug and a fatalistic look at the guests. "It isn't likely that the phurbu have any wanderlust or wrong intentions. But perhaps you can't be too careful. Yes, just a little white wine, thank you."

  "Alexandra," Tom said, "this is too kind of you. The story would have been gift enough."

  "Wouldn't it be terrific if it was true?" Barry said cynically in an aside to Mark, and he squeezed her elbow, looking amused.

  "Hey, I like her. She's fun."

  Barry had placed Mark as far from Dal as she could, seating him next to Alexandra, so there would be someone he knew at the table. She had made the mistake of also seating Les and Stacey, of Broadway fame, at the same table. Oh, well. Barry sat with her father, the Tad Kameos (he had been an early ardent collector and booster of the artist's reputation, and still continued to buy everything by Tom he could get his hands on), and a sculptor named Harry Ott Frankel, a friend of her father's whom she detested. Frankel was about sixty, a squirt of a man who dyed his hair crow black, greased it away from his forehead, and wore dark glasses day and night, perhaps because he was careless with his arc welder. He looked, from a distance, as if he had stepped out of one of those gritty fifties flicks about high school delinquents. Rock Around the Blackboard Jungle. He liked tough talk, too, and never spared the sensibilities of the company he was keeping. He said "fucken" a lot. Women were "cunts." And so on. He created, for huge prices, behemoth structures commissioned by the architects of ritzy office building plazas.

  Frankel's wife was named Estelle. She was his age, but unlike Harry Ott she certainly showed it. Carelessly kept hair, the strands equally divided between white and black, a nose that looked as if it had been shaped with a hammer, a hairy wart or two, a shapeless body in the only dress Barry had ever seen her wear, a not-quite-in-season cotton print with big blue dahlias all over it. She was never bidden to open her mouth. When Frankel wasn't ignoring her, he was critical, in his irritating, side-of-the-mouth manner. They had been together twenty-five years. Barry had heard that once upon a time Estelle had drawn a bead down a hallway of their home with a Fox .410 and had just about blown the seat of her husband's pants away. She hoped the rumor was true, while deploring Estelle's lack of aim.

  Chalyce Kameo, who sat at Barry's left hand, took a break from art biz gossip and said, "Is Mrs. Prye going to tell fortunes for us tonight?"

  "I'm afraid not. Mrs. Prye, uh, had sort of a breakdown."

  "Oh, dear. Can she be fixed?"

  "I don't think so."

  Chalyce leaned a little closer. Her blued hair was intricately whorled and looked as hard as glazed ceramic. "Tom just doesn't look well at all."

  "He's a lot better than he was."

  "Is he working?"

  "He will be soon."

  "Your young man is delightful. Is he the one who—"

  "He's the one."

  "You'd just never know what a trauma he's been through. He said something about being a painter."

  "He's a whiz, but not ready yet."

  "Oh. Well, you know how interested Tad and I would be in seeing the work of one of Tom's protégés."

  "I'll tell Mark. He'll really be excited."

  Barry glanced at Mark. She felt heady from wine and the pleasure of a candle glow evening that had been, so far, without a hitch—excellent food prepared by Mrs. Aldrich and good company except for Harry Ott Frankel, whose only virtue as far as Barry was concerned was his tendency to mumble; half the time you couldn't understand what he was saying. Her father seemed to be holding up pretty well, although he became more of a listener than a talker as dinner progressed. Dal, absorbed in the cultured and beautiful Tepei, was behaving himself. Outside the dining room the rain fell on the terrace without letup, a pleasant silvery backdrop. She envisioned Mark famous, celebrated for his talent and his portraits of his favorite subject, who happened to be Mrs. Mark Draven. Barry was having a lovely time.

  The patty ended early, around eleven o'clock. Mark brought the Volvo around in the rain to the front door and Barry, holding an umbrella, took Alexandra out to the car.

  "I feel so badly, putting you to all this trouble."

  "Mark doesn't mind driving you home."

  Mark got out, came around to help Alexandra into the front seat. Alexandra seemed to suffer a chill as she was about to step inside. She trembled and dropped her purse. It spilled open at her feet; some things from the purse rolled underneath the Volvo.

  "Oh, how stupid!"

  "Let me help you," Barry said; she was mildly exasperated. They were all getting soaked."Mark, there's a flashlight in the glove compartment."

  She let Alexandra hold the umbrella and stooped to retrieve the purse, a comb, a pair of reading glasses.

  Mark leaned inside the Volvo; left hand braced against the door frame, and opened the glove box. He handed the flashlight back to Barry, who turned the beam on the driveway beneath the car. Mark stood beside the open door; hand still on the door frame.

  "Is that everything?" Barry asked Alexandra, making another sweep with the light.

  "My gold atomizer's missing." Alexandra tried to check her purse and hold the umbrella at the same time.

  "I think I—" Barry started to say. She reached under the Volvo.

  "Need help, Barry?" Mark asked.

  The moment his attention was diverted Alexandra moved decisively, shutting, with all of her strength, the door on Mark's left hand.

  Mark let out a scream. Barry leapt up, casting the flashlight beam on him. She saw at once what had happened. Alexandra was paralyzed. Barry forced her out of the way and opened the car door. Mark snatched his bloody hand away, pressed it beneath his other arm, and sank to his knees. Dal came running out of the house, followed by Tepei and Tom and those guests who had remained for a nightcap.

  Barry was on her knees too, holding Mark, who was crying in agony.

  "Oh, my God," Barry said. "Mark, let me look."

  He slowly revealed enough of his left hand to the flashlight's beam so that they could all see the little finger had been severed.

  "'It's my fault," Alexandra said. "I don't know how it happened—I'm so sorry—"

  Dal took the flashlight from Barry and looked inside the car. Tom and Barry got Mark to his feet. Alexandra just stood there, mouth open, looking petrified. Dal found the cut-off finger and wrapped it gingerly in his pocket handkerchief.

  They helped Mark inside to Tom's study and sat him down. He was gray and gasping.

  Tepei assumed control of the situation. "Barry, can you find some clean gauze pads?" Tepei said. "And bring hot water."

  "Tepei, what do I do with this?" Dal asked, showing her the wrapped finger in the bloody handkerchief.

  "I think a surgeon can restore it. Put it on ice right away."

  "You do it. I'll call the hospital so they'll be ready for him when we bring him in."

  Tom was left alone with Mark, who sat, drenched and moaning and shivering, in Tom's favorite chair.

  Mark's eyes were open but he wasn't focusing on anything. Tom's nerves were bad. He poured whiskey for himself and whiskey for Mark.

  "Mark, drink this. It'll help the pain."

  Mark looked up slowly, teeth chattering. He looked so hurt and devastated that Tom felt a rare moment of empathy for him.

  He was so unprepared for the rage that flooded into the boy's eyes that he couldn't react at all when Mark, finding strength from his pain, bolted up from the chair and struck him brutally in the face on his way to the door.

  In the kitchen Barry watched numbly as Dal and Tepei packed Mark
's finger in a small lidless Tupperware bowl packed with ice. The finger, Saran-Wrapped, was blood dark and ragged at one end. She looked quickly away, thinking, left hand, left hand. Mark was ambidextrous, but he usually painted with his right.

  Alexandra appeared in the kitchen doorway, pale and bedraggled. She looked at Barry, groped for a chair, and sat down.

  "He's gone," she said.

  "What?"

  "Mark. I saw him running out of the house." She gestured vaguely. "That way. Into the woods."

  Tom was sitting on the floor of his den when Barry and Dal got there. He looked dazed. There was a little blood at one corner of his mouth where a tooth had cut when Mark hit him.

  "I don't know what happened," he said. "He just got up and ran out. Hit me as he was going by."

  "But where did he go?" Barry cried. "He'll bleed to death!"

  Tepei, who had some nursing experience, pointed out that there was little chance of exsanguination, but shock might set in and leave Mark helpless in the rain. They had to find him.

  "Shouldn't we call the police?" Tepei said.

  "Saturday night," Dal replied. "They're spread thin. Might take them half an hour to get one man out here."

  Millicent Copperwell volunteered to drive Alexandra home. Mrs. Aldrich's husband had shown up to drive her home and offered to help look for Mark. Tom insisted on going out too. The searchers divided into two groups. Barry went with her father and Ethan Aldrich; Claude Copperwell teamed up with Dal and Tepei.

  Barry had let Meanness out about ten thirty to do his business; now he was nowhere around, though she called and called. The rain had begun to slacken, but it was dark and dangerous in the woods. The groups went separate ways. For a while each group heard the other calling for Mark, but there wasn't a trace of him.

  Dal, Tepei, and Claude Copperwell reached the gristmill first and went inside. Dal flashed the light around. Since being banned from Tom's studio, Mark had moved his incomplete paintings and materials to a corner of the mill.