The Need

by Andrew Neiderman

  Alison had bought their house as is, furniture included. All of the furnishings were nineteenth-century vintage Victorian—ornate, flowery carvings in dark woods with patterned upholstery. She didn’t have to buy a single piece, not a vase, not a statue, not a painting, not even a knickknack. The house even came with linens and towels.

  “All we had to do was steam clean the rugs,” she had told me, “and of course scrub down the tiles and bath fixtures. The previous owner wanted to start with everything new.”

  They had bought it from a widow whose husband had made a fortune in West Side commercial real estate. She had remarried and purchased a relatively new house in Beverly Hills.

  Alison always had wanted to live in Beverly Hills, but Nicholas preferred the more rustic and more isolated Brentwood Park. It made coming and going much easier and provided a great deal more privacy. When Alison discovered how many celebrities were living in the vicinity, she relented. A real estate agent, who was one of our kind, found them the property.

  I had found the house much too dark for my taste. Beside the twelve-foot-high hedges that blocked it from street view, there were enough trees and bushes to keep the morning and afternoon sun almost completely away from the front windows. Only the rear of the house, where there was a free-form pool set in mauve flagstone and a cabana, got any real sunlight and then only for a short time in the afternoon.

  Today the house looked murkier than ever to me. When I drove up, I found the front gate open, but the driveway looked more like a tunnel because of the thick, dark shadows cast by the trees that lined it. The unlit, somber windows reflected the gloom. The breeze turned the silhouettes of branches and leaves framed in the glass into tormented spirits struggling to free themselves of invisible chains.

  Unlike most times when I had arrived at Alison and Nicholas’s residence, there were no gardeners mucking about, no service people of any kind caring for the property. It had a deserted, lonely appearance, the look of a house that hadn’t been lived in for years. Leaves blown loose of limbs performed a macabre dance freely on the slate walkways and the tile patio as well as the driveway. The grounds were so strikingly desolate, I came to a stop about three-quarters of the way up the drive. Nicholas had presumably dismissed everyone so we could have our private, undisturbed talk.

  I went to the front door and clapped the ridiculous knocker. The subsequent tap could be heard echoing through the vast and grand entryway toward the spiral staircase with its hand-carved mahogany balustrade. How Alison loved making an entrance descending the carpeted stairway when guests arrived, the hem of her long dress or skirt floating over the steps. I waited, listening keenly for Nicholas’s footsteps, but I heard only the silvery sound of the breeze whistling through the trees and around the corners of the estate.

  I knocked a second time, striking the plate harder this time. Again there was no answer, no sign of life within.

  Of course, I thought, Nicholas never expected I would appear. He assumed by now I’d be flattened at the bottom of that ravine.

  Suddenly enraged now, I cried out, “Nicholas!”

  In my angry tone, my voice suddenly sounded more like Richard’s than mine; it resonated that deeply. Frightened at the hint of a change, I placed my palm against my breast. My heart was pounding.

  “Nicholas!”

  Had he gone to my mountain road to see my wreckage?

  I stepped to the left and peered through the window. There were no lights on in the sitting room within and no one visible.

  “Damn you, damn you both,” I muttered and stepped off the patio to go around the building. Every time I reached a window, I gazed in, but I saw no one until I reached the windows of the office. Although it was really too dark to be sure, it looked like someone was sitting in the winged back chair that faced the desk. There appeared to be an arm and a hand resting on the arm of the chair. Why didn’t whoever it was come to the door?

  I continued around until I reached a side entrance. I didn’t have to wonder if it was unlocked; the door was slightly ajar. I stepped in quickly, finding myself just outside the pantry. There were no servants inside, no maids, no cooks, no one.

  The corridor led me to the kitchen and then to the enormous dining room with its twin chandeliers, its fifteen-foot-long table and its gold-lined satin drapes. I entered the main downstairs hallway and walked quickly to the doorway of the office, which was open.

  There was definitely someone in the chair.

  “Nicholas?”

  I looked around when there was no response. Everything looked in place; nothing I had seen in the house so far had been disturbed. The grandfather clock in the corner ticked with the regularity of a calm, mechanical heart. I gazed at the figure in the chair again and then stepped forward slowly. When I came around the chair, I saw it wasn’t Nicholas after all. It was Alison drowned in Nicholas’s clothing.

  She was slumped over, her chin to her chest so that the bullet hole in the back of her head was clearly visible, the now dried trickle of blood drawing a maroon line down the back of her neck and disappearing within the collar of Nicholas’s dark gray silk sports coat.

  I gasped, involuntarily putting a hand to my mouth. I suddenly felt Richard nudge out of his sulk. Both sides of my nature were stirred by this grisly sight.

  Before I knew what was happening, we were screaming in unison. A caterwaul reverberated through the deep well of our mutual essence until the spirit of all of our ancestry joined in the cry.

  The sorrow was horrendous. One of our own had been taken. Vivid memories of our mother’s gruesome death returned. I felt Richard lash out inside me, his soul flaring madly like a prisoner too long in solitary confinement, precipitously beating on the walls of his prison until his knuckles bled. I did all that I could to keep him contained. I closed my eyes to shut out the view of poor Alison. For a long moment, I saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing.

  Richard’s fury subsided like a passing storm, but his clouds remained ominously on the horizon of my consciousness. After regaining my composure, I opened my eyes again. Alison was dead in Nicholas’s clothing which could only mean one thing: whoever had fired the shot had murdered Nicholas. Androgyne could die only in their female state. A fatal blow, a deadly arrow would trigger them into instant metamorphosis.

  It occurred to me that Nicholas might very well have been innocently awaiting my arrival. He may have called me from the phone on that very desk. Whoever had killed him had snuck up on him, shooting him before he had had an opportunity to turn about. The killer must have moved on air. Nicholas would have surely heard him otherwise. Androgyne are keen; our senses are sharp; we are rarely taken by surprise.

  Could it be that some other Androgyne, angered by how Alison and Nicholas were handling me, had done this? But in that case why would they not warn me first?

  And if Nicholas hadn’t tampered with my brakes, then who had?

  I spun around. I heard a sound. There was someone in the front of the house.

  Richard began clamoring to come forth. I was not the strong one; I couldn’t face an opponent. It was the role of the male to defend the female part of us, he reminded me.

  What would I do? If I permitted him to metamorphose, he would go wild and do something to prevent me from returning.

  I was positive I heard someone approaching slowly, the steps were ponderous, heavy, deliberate.

  “It’s the great Evil Eye,” I whispered. Or was it Richard warning me?

  I backed away from Alison’s corpse. Poor Alison, I thought. Her complexion already wan, her skin drying, her beautiful eyes that had glittered so with life, with sexual energy, were now as dark as blown bulbs. In death, her features barely resembled those I had known. Without the blush in her cheeks, the ruby red in her lips, the softness in her skin and the sheen in her hair, she was mortal.

  And then it occurred to me: In death we were no different from the inferiors. Death reminded us we were all of one family, a family at war with itself, but
nevertheless, a family spawned of the same seed.

  Why did God put us through this torment then? Why burden us with all these curses and weigh us down with the baggage of hate and fury, a luggage of wrath that was particularly His and not ours? We are as damned as the inferiors, I thought. Even the Androgyne become dust.

  I turned and fled the way I had entered. Every time I stopped and listened, I heard those footsteps. Now they were following me, I was sure. I rushed on through the kitchen and past the pantry to the side door. When I emerged, I caught my breath and listened again. I heard nothing, but I hurried to the car and got in quickly.

  Richard was crying, pleading, demanding I settle back and let him take charge. He chastised me for fleeing. This was our chance to face the devil, our chance for revenge and I was running away from it. But I couldn’t help myself; I had things yet to do.

  I drove out quickly, not looking back until I reached the bottom of the driveway.

  I was going to go directly home, but when I reached the Pacific Coast highway, I turned south toward Venice Beach. I needed advice; I needed help; I was afraid of being alone.

  The streets were very busy. The slow-moving traffic irritated my already inflamed nerves. Impatient, I wove the Thunderbird in and out of traffic, threading it through openings barely wide enough to accommodate its width. Horns blared at me. Complacent faces turned furious as I lurched by, but I was lucky. I had no accidents and I didn’t attract any police.

  When I reached Washington Boulevard, I turned left and drove to a building with a clouded storefront window. The structure was a Pueblo revival with a flat roof and stuccoed walls. It had projecting wooden roof beams over the parapeted front entrance. The walls were gray and streaked with soot and pollutants now. Whatever it had been originally was lost in the smudged print fading on the window. Of course it was dark, but I knew that did not matter. Diana would be there. I sensed it and knew that she sensed when she was needed.

  I parked and went to the door, but before I had a chance to knock, a handsome young man opened the door. His big, dark, piercing eyes, firm lips and almost Oriental bone structure immediately told me who he was. I couldn’t forget what I had envisioned. This was Diana’s daughter, Denise, the androgynous child Alison had brought to see me. She had gone through her first conversion.

  His good looks nearly stole my breath. I saw the look of recognition in his eyes and in the tight, small smile at the corners of his mouth.

  “My mother is waiting for you,” he said. Then he widened his smile. “She anticipated your arrival. I’m sorry,” he said extending his hand quickly, “I should introduce myself. I’m Thomas. You’ve met my sister.”

  “Yes.” I took his hand and entered a small sitting room with a rattan sofa and settee and one rocker. There was a rectangular glass table in front of the sofa. At the center of the table was a large piece of jagged crystal set in a red clay leaf.

  “Please, be seated. I’ll tell her you are here.”

  “Thank you,” I said and quickly sat on the settee. Moments later, Diana appeared alone. She was an ageless Androgyne who had long passed through her menopause. Although her hair had streaks of gray, it was still long and thick, falling to the middle of her back. She had deep blue, serious eyes. They were her most striking feature. I could gaze nowhere else but into those searching orbs that were themselves two small crystal balls. Centuries of our history spiraled within. How could I look away?

  Afterward, I would have trouble recalling much about her. Perhaps she changed with her visitors—growing larger with some, smaller with others. In a sense she reflected whoever had come to see her. She became a mirror revealing that part of her visitor that she or he could never see for herself or himself.

  “Alison is dead,” I said quickly. She nodded, her eyes closing slowly, her face, for one fleeting moment, becoming the face of a corpse: Her lips were bland, her eyes shut as if by death, her skin yellow and parched.

  When she opened her eyes again, I felt myself drawn into them, falling through them. My screams trailed behind me like long, bone-white ribbons.

  Down I descended, down through a tunnel of the dead. Their faces appeared around me, faces of Androgyne who had lived and died since time began for us. Each seemed trapped in some terrible agony. Suddenly, I saw my mother’s face: her mouth twisted and distorted, her eyes leaking a grayish white ooze that turned into bright red blood as it passed over her pockmarked cheeks. Her chin was nothing but bone and tendons. The skin under the streams of blood was smoking as if my mother’s blood itself was an acid scorching away whatever trace of beauty remained.

  I screamed and reached out for her, but she was sucked back into the dark. I fell on, passing other faces in similar torment until I saw Alison. She was as beautiful as she had been in life; her eyes sparkled with that same joyful glint, that joie de vivre that had always set her apart. It brought me some relief until suddenly a spidery shadow appeared in her cheeks. Her skin began to sink into the shadow. I saw the pallid bones within, and then her eyes popped as easily as egg yolks. Maggots emerged and began to cover her forehead, consuming her skin, her eyebrows, tearing down her nose and feasting hungrily on her lips.

  I cried out for her, but she, too, was drawn back into the darkness. I began to fall again until I reached a mirror and my descent ended.

  “What do you see?” Diana asked.

  “Myself.”

  “How do you look?”

  “The same.”

  “Yes,” she said, “but there is a place for you there, a place prepared.”

  Her words brought me back to the moment. I blinked and looked at her.

  “Do you understand?” she asked. “You are in grave danger.”

  “Yes, I understand. But where was I?”

  “You were in our hell,” she said. “All those you saw, including your mother and Alison, were taken by him.”

  “He’s waiting for me. And for Richard,” I said. She nodded.

  “I can’t tell you where or when.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m almost at the point where I would welcome him,” I said.

  “That’s what he hopes.”

  “What should I do?” I lifted my eyes to hers.

  “Find yourself again. Love yourself again. Find a way to stop denying who you are.”

  “What if I hate who I am?”

  “Then you belong in the darkness, imprisoned in the place prepared for you.”

  “Why?”

  “All of us must bear the burden of our own creation and find a way to turn that burden into a blessing.”

  “Even if it brings us pain?”

  “Find a way to turn that pain into pleasure. You had it once. There are some things we must accept just as God had to accept that Man is imperfect.”

  She pulled herself back, her shoulders high, her face suddenly becoming radiant.

  “We are the Androgyne,” she said. “He chose us to help Him overcome His own pain.”

  I nodded. She reached out and touched me, and when I looked up again, I saw my mother’s face in hers. It brought tears to my eyes.

  “Thank you,” I said and I left her, my mind in a turmoil. I felt carried off in a river of confusion. It seemed too hard to continue to swim and so easy to just stop and let myself be carried down.

  But I had the sense that Richard was standing on the shore waiting for me, waiting to rescue me from myself.

  TWELVE

  I DON’T REMEMBER the ride home. Suddenly, I was pulling into my drive, and the day that had begun bright and warm had turned dismal and gray, a thick layer of marine clouds sliding in over the deep blue, resembling some infinite gray curtain God was drawing over the world. I felt shrouded in misery.

  As soon as I passed through my gate, I saw the detective’s car parked in front of the house. I recalled his saying he would return to take me to dinner, but he was here far too early. I found him seated comfortably on the sofa, his feet up on a hassock and Richard’s diary in his ha
nds. He had made himself a drink as well and looked quite at home. After all I had been through, his complacent demeanor annoyed me.

  “Where’s Sylvia?” I demanded. She knew better than to let him in without me.

  “She’s gone.” He smiled. “There was no one here when I arrived.”

  “Gone? How did you get in here then?” I asked without disguising my displeasure. Despite the intimacy we had shared, I detested the presumption on his part.

  “Police powers,” he replied, that self-satisfied smirk embedded in his face. “Actually,” he said, “I’m just as surprised seeing you as you are seeing me.” He held up the diary. “I was expecting to see Richard come through that door.”

  “You had no right coming into this house without me, and you had no right to take that and read it until I had given it to you,” I snapped. I wasn’t in the mood for any of his humor.

  “It’s evidence now. Especially now,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He killed Nicholas today, didn’t he?” he said, not changing expression. “That’s why I was expecting him and not you. Yes,” he said in reply to my look of surprise, “I discovered what he had done, but I didn’t call it in yet. I was hoping to wrap it all up tonight.” He narrowed his eyes and scrutinized me.

  “Why did you permit the metamorphose? Did you want him to kill Nicholas?” he asked.

  I stood there, staring.

  “And what is your car doing at the bottom of that gully? It’s all tied together somehow, isn’t it? You might as well come clean,” he said. “There’s no point in holding anything back now, no point in playing games with each other.” He leaned forward. “How did you survive that automobile crash, anyway? Androgynous powers?”

  “I was lucky. I didn’t enjoy any assistance,” I added, recalling Richard’s stubbornness within me.