The Broken Hours

by Jacqueline Baker

  And yet, as soon as I settled, I could not shake that image of him bending over me in the darkness. I rose and, feeling the fool, locked the door to my room.

  The story of Aralyn and Oakley Eakinns unfolded as I read and typed and read some more. Several years passed at the hotel. None there had seen or heard from Aralyn. Oakley continued his nightly visits without fail. Then Oakley disappeared, too. At first, no one noticed his absence, so accustomed were they to his presence; the great irony of the familiar and the reviled. And, because of this late notice, there was some dissension as to just when his visits had stopped. Some claimed it had been more than a month, some a week, two at the most. One girl who worked in the laundry swore she’d seen him there just the previous night, owl-eyed and reeking of cinders, as always. But she was a known teller of tales, and scarcely to be believed. Then they heard he had been seen that previous Sunday, out on the bay. Boys who frequented the docks to smoke and throw stones at the pilings for a nickel a strike claimed to have seen him row out in his little, rotting boat around nightfall, just as the late November frets were beginning to drift in over the water. He seemed to be toting something in his boat, something wrapped in a white sheet, the corner of which hung over the prow, trailing in the black water. It looked, they claimed with typical adolescent imagination, like a body. One of the boys had called out as much to old Oakley, jocularly, some nonsense jibe. The old man had turned upon them then, teeth bared, a gaze so ominous as to silence them all and send them home, one by one, early to their lighted houses. Oakley’s boat was found by a small fishing tug at dawn the next morning, drifting empty in the murderous, icy tides.

  Aralyn appeared at the hotel not a month later, imperiously, decked in jewels and furs as black as her hair. Her husband did not accompany her; she made hasty excuses, ordering dishes of caviar, which she ate with great relish, downing goblets of water as if her thirst could not be quenched. Her colour, many remarked, was not good. She had aged, markedly, paled and shrivelled under that west coast sun. Her lips had taken on a greenish tinge. Her breath stank of the sea. Her former co-workers were hardly welcoming, distant, uneasy at her sudden, glittering appearance, casting glances through the glass doors to the Providence night, half expecting Oakley to step through at any moment, wreathed in sour sea-mist, announcing in a watery voice, High time you come home.

  But he did not. There was only Aralyn, alone in the center of the dining room, draped in furs that could scarcely be called glossy, as if they’d been cut from animals left dead sometime in the black of the woods, a silver dish of caviar before her, white hands placed palms down on the table, waiting for her former co-workers to fawn over her, as she seemed to expect they would. But, instead, they ignored her, were repelled by her. She grinned, finally, her teeth blackened with roe, and, in a rage, turned over the dish of caviar, the silver, the crystal goblets, and spat a dark curse upon the hotel and all who worked or slept within its finely papered walls, before blasting out the glass doors into the night, gone, some said, to find Oakley.

  The telegram arrived the following morning. From a Mr. Wolfe of Windsor Hills, Los Angeles, California, inquiring as to whether anyone at the hotel had heard from his wife, Mrs. Aralyn Wolfe, missing this past month.

  Though the story was indeed gripping, I could not say I liked it. It was not good. And yet I was compelled by it nevertheless. There was something about it so haunting, a certain desolation that rang quite true.

  But dark, dark. I rose and took up a handful of the magazines and flipped through them. I could not help but wonder at the kind of imagination—the kind of man—who would not only read but write such, well, I scarcely knew what to call it. Horror, I supposed. But not quite that, either. There was something about the world he depicted, the coldness of it, the meaninglessness, which disturbed me. There was nothing of humanity in it. Nothing of goodness. Nothing of hope. There was something dreadful and empty at its heart and, therefore, I imagined, at the heart of its author.

  To be the creator of all that hopelessness—well, how could one live with oneself? Darkness, I knew too well, begat only darkness. One way or another.

  Most peculiar: working on the story of Aralyn and Oakley, I began to lose track of the passage of time. I settled in to my work, then lifted my face to find an hour, two hours, had passed. Later, what felt to be hours would be minutes, moments.

  I put aside the manuscript and turned to the typing of his correspondence, formal, self-deprecating letters filled with my employer’s obvious insecurities and with sophomoric references to, and whimsical drawings of, the cats I’d seen lounging on the shed roof, a society he’d dubbed the Kappa Alpha Tau (KAT). Such playfulness hardly seemed possible in such a man. It made me feel, again, that my uneasiness had more to do with my own precarious state of mind than with this man I had not met. He was a mystery, certainly. A recluse. He was ill. But he was, it seemed after all, not really frightening.

  His correspondence solved one mystery, at least: among the various pseudonyms used by my employer—Grandpa Theobald, Lewis Theobald Jr., Augustus T. Swift, Lawrence Appleton, John J. Jones, Humphrey Littlewit, Archibald Mainwaring, Henry Paget-Lowe, Ward Phillips, Richard Raleigh, Amos Dorance Rowley, Edward Softly, Albert Frederic Willie, Zoilus and the puzzling Ech-Pi—was his actual name. Not Ech-Pi, but H. P. Only that. Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

  So ordinary. And sad, also. As the solving of every mystery must necessarily be.

  Finally, putting aside my work, I gathered up the few finished pages for my employer, and stood and stretched and made my way downstairs.

  Halfway down, I was hit by a foul, charred smell and I recalled the chili I had left to warm on the stove. I found it untouched, burned thickly to the bottom of the pot. I began to scrape the mess out into the trash and then, changing my mind, pulled a chipped bowl from the cupboard and, depositing the remains there instead, carried the bowl to the window, thinking with some amusement of that saying I’d once heard: that if you fed a dog, it would think you were a god; if you fed a cat, it would think it was a god. The cats were there on the shed, godlike, despite the darkness, and I tapped the spoon against the bowl. They glanced up at me, not with charming playfulness as in my employer’s drawings, but with obvious loathing. I shivered and set the bowl on the roof, closing the window.

  It was after midnight, I noted to my surprise by the clock in the kitchen. According to his schedule, he should be awake and working. I took the typed pages back out to the hall. My note inquiring about the advance still lay untouched there on the pedestal table. The light glowed from beneath his door, as always.

  On a whim, I went out the apartment door and down to the darkened courtyard. I stood in my shirt sleeves, shivering, and looked up at the second floor. Though there were windows there where windows should be—at the corner at which I placed his study—all were black. Surely, even with heavy draperies pulled shut, my employer’s light should show through at that hour. I slowly circled the entire house: there was the kitchenette, the rear door leading out of it and down a set of rickety stairs to the garden, the frosted bathroom window, another set of windows which must belong to the aunt’s rooms, and then back around again to the front and the lightless windows of my employer’s study.

  I returned inside. That feeling of heaviness, that stirring, met me on the landing and followed me upward and into the apartment. Eerily, the light still showed beneath the study door. So unnerved was I by this, and by my lingering fear—irrational though it was—that perhaps he had been in my room that night after all, that I determined, in spite of his forbidding it, to knock. As I approached the door, I heard, or thought I heard, a faint scratching coming from beyond it, so soft it could have been a branch against a window, a gust of wind.

  I felt an irrepressible shiver. I raised a fist. And I knocked.

  Something dreadful shot through me, a chill, as if emanating from the wood of that door and passing in a current through my knuckles, up my forearm, down the left side of my flesh
. I stood like that, stunned at the force of it, my fist still raised, my blood loud in my ears.

  I waited, heart pounding. There was nothing.

  When at last I turned away, my eyes happened to settle upon the door to the aunt’s room. Something, that cold weightiness, seemed to be leaning out from that space, leaning toward me. On an impulse, I crossed the hall and tried the handle.

  Locked. As I somehow knew it would be.

  What could I do? I placed the pages with my note upon the hall table, clicking off the emerald lamp, and made my way back up the narrow stairs, feeling myself eaten up by the darkness as I went.

  Two

  1

  On the third morning, I was forced, finally, from Number Sixty-Six and out to the shops to purchase some few necessities. I had slept poorly, again. Sometime, during the dark hours, I had awakened, gasping, to see that light in the dormer window across the city, flickering on and off, on and off. I rose and positioned my bed so as not to face it. Then, the light seemed to filter in, fill the room. I turned my back upon it, the covers up over my eyes to shut it out.

  Finally, just before dawn, I rose and dressed in my suit and shoes and sat on the bed, turning and turning the piece of gravestone in my hands, waiting for the hour at which the shops would open.

  At eight o’clock I went downstairs, past the lighted room and out the apartment door. Once outside, I made a point of stopping again in the wet, cobbled lane and looking up. All the windows on the second floor, again, were dark. The drapes still pulled, tinged crimson by day, but lightless nevertheless from the inside.

  From the outside, in daylight and fresh sea air, and with the ordinary sounds of sparrows rattling the tree branches, and pedestrians passing on the street, and the steady hammering from a building under construction across the lane, the house seemed quite benign. I could almost laugh at my fears. The air already seemed to be doing me good. I certainly felt better, clearer. I wondered at the simple possibility of blackout curtains at the study windows.

  As I stood speculating, an elderly man in an overcoat stepped out of the house at the far end of the lane, toting with him on a leash a small dog the precise colour of the overcoat. It minced along on the wet cobblestones, as if loathe to dampen its paws, shaking its body dry periodically, though it was not raining. I wondered with dark amusement just how many such dogs would be required to make such a coat. I thought of the cats on the shed roof, how they would devour the creature.

  The man was almost upon me when he glanced up with an air of angry surprise.

  Good morning, I said.

  He looked affronted. I had often heard such things about older, dying, aristocratic neighbourhoods, no one deigning to speak even to their own neighbours on the street lest they address someone beneath them. I had little patience for such posturing.

  I wonder, I said, if you could point me in the direction of the nearest shops.

  The dog sniffled about, ogling my shoes. I repressed an urge to boot it aside. The old man shot me a quick look, almost hostile, as if perhaps he’d read my thoughts, then looked swiftly away, frowning.

  Come now, Daisy, he said, and tugged on the silvery leash. Just keep going the way you are?

  He phrased it as if it were an angry question, and did not look up at me, giving the impression he was still addressing the loathsome Daisy.

  You’ll come upon it in another few blocks. Everything you want there, I should suppose.

  I thanked him and wished him good day and began to turn away, but he said, grudgingly, There’s something in particular, some special item, you’re seeking?

  No, indeed, I said, just the usual things. Any department store should do.

  He hesitated, as if he would say more, and then gave me another irritable, I would even say furious, look. He said, I hope you will beg my pardon.

  Yes?

  Have you not been down there?

  It’s rather early. I suspect they don’t open until after eight o’clock.

  The old man continued to glare.

  Come along, Daisy, he said, finally, and frowned deeply, rattling the leash and startling the dog from where she squatted peeing on the cobblestones next to my shoe.

  I stepped with pointed care over the puddle and went on my way. When, a few steps on, I happened to look back, the old man still stood in the lane, glaring after me. Or at least, I thought he did. But then Daisy emerged, that vile little beast, kicking up some leaves over the steaming pile she had left beneath the elms, and they moved on.

  The air was silken and fresh after the rain, though the cold yet held the bite of a New England winter. I did feel better, though still chilled, weakened. It was only to be expected. I descended College Hill in search of the commercial district, down and down, past students on their way up to their morning lectures, bundled in their tweeds and corduroys and woollens, scarved brightly in the current fashion. The boys, absurdly young, carried themselves with an important air, nodding to me, pink-faced under their tilted caps, man to man, while the few lone girls stared hard at their sturdy shoes as I passed, clutching books to their chests as if I might wrench them away; in groups the girls chattered and fluttered and did not notice me at all.

  The crowds thinned the farther I walked from the university, winding down between rows of colonial houses, whose square edges and strong, deep reds and blues were softened in the misty light. An automobile passed now and again, looking coldly bestial, mythical, as if it had just lumbered in from some other place, studded with night rain and chugging plumes of exhaust. A familiar radio show played from a kitchen window cracked to the morning air, Vivian someone or other—Jane would have known—as the insipid Mary Noble, the worst of the soaps, until I realized it was only a commercial for Lux toilet soap. It all sounded the same to me. Still, there was a friendliness in the filtered household sounds, the clatter of dishes; the smell of coffee, bacon; the electric lights shining through the many-paned windows like the chambers of gilded hearts.

  As the houses grew shabbier and finally gave way to larger brick storefronts and businesses, I passed now and then an archway leading into what appeared to be solitary courtyards which still held the detritus of a long coastal winter in their corners, rotted piles of leaves and dirt still dreaming darkly against the cobblestones.

  Altogether a charming neighbourhood and one I thought I would enjoy occupying while I was there employed. I considered how well Jane would like it and, before I could stop it, a picture flashed before my eyes, of Jane and I strolling those streets arm in arm, Molly trotting ahead in a little red raincoat. I gasped with the shock and pain of it. Stood a moment in the street, openly gaping. Two girls in thick, bright cardigans shouldered past me, giggling, and I roused myself and walked on, breathing deeply of the cold air to steady my thoughts.

  Of hope, there was none. Only atonement. If there was such a thing. Money. How ill-matched to my sins. But what else was there?

  And yet I had not even that; could send no money if no money were forthcoming. I wondered, then, for the first time, at my employer’s financial circumstances. The shared, worn accommodations, the dearth of foodstuffs. It all pointed in a certain direction. Still, I knew it was not unusual among his class. Thrift and economy as well as a certain cultivated shabby gentility were highly prized traits among New England aristocracy. It could just as easily have been that he was well off indeed. Impossible to know.

  I heaved a great sigh in the cold air and, taking my gloves from my overcoat pockets, rubbed fruitlessly at the inky tips of my fingers, making a note to purchase another cake of lye.

  By the time I returned to College Street with my purchases, the sun was bright and my spirits from the air and exercise somewhat improved. Still, I was not eager to return to the dark, oppressive atmosphere of that lonely apartment, my mysterious employer. I pulled open the front door and was hit by that scent of old cherries, though not nearly so strong as on my first arrival. I was thinking how quickly the strange becomes familiar, when I stopp
ed short.

  A young woman in a pale blue velvet cloak and bobbed yellow hair stood on the landing, a white handbag on her wrist, apparently deciding whether or not to go up. She held a key in one gloved hand and a white leather travelling case sat on the floor at the foot of the stairs beside a fully opened umbrella, still lolling fatly against the floorboards, as if she’d only just set it down. She half-turned as I came in.

  Gracious, she said, you startled me.

  Good morning, I said.

  Thank goodness you’re here.

  She came down the stairs as she spoke, walking directly to the padlocked apartment door, her heels clacking against the polished boards.

  This lock has me fit to be tied, I swear.

  She stuck her key into the lock and banged it uselessly against the door frame.

  Helen left this … key … for me, she said, addressing the lock, under one of those palms there. She gestured with her head to a potted palm, soil tipped out on the shining floor. But I can’t get the darned thing to work and I’ve been trying ever so long.

  She pushed a curl back from her forehead impatiently with a gloved hand as if to demonstrate how long she’d been trying. Her fair cheeks were flushed, as with embarrassment or from the outdoors. She said she’d be here. I might have expected as much from her, from Helen.

  Helen?

  She’s unreliable that way. That’s why I told her to leave a key. Just in case. Not that it’s helped any. She probably left the wrong one. I don’t know her all that well, actually. The sister of a friend back home. She was always, you know. She waved her hand in a meaningless gesture. It seems just the sort of thing she would do. Bit of a nut, even back then.