The Broken Hours

by Jacqueline Baker

  It was in my room.

  3

  I rose late the next morning, exhausted, consumed by a deep uneasiness, a creeping damp, in that attic which, I realized with some shock, I had begun to think of already as a kind of home. The presence was still there, though fainter than it had been the previous evening. The sense of someone watching me, always. I had slept poorly, the door to my room locked, though against what—whom—I knew not. I’d had terrible dreams and when I woke periodically, gasping, the light from the dormered building across the city flickered, filling the room with its cold, staccato light before I sank again into exhausted, uneasy sleep, with the vague sense of someone, something, moving in and out of the dark corners of the room.

  And another thing: I had begun to notice that upon waking, I did not feel like myself, as if I’d spent my few sleeping hours dreaming the dreams of someone else; perhaps that, too, a result of the manuscript, that eerie story, or a symptom of the work at least, typing someone else’s correspondence, someone else’s thoughts. I wondered if there wasn’t some syndrome or other which affected personal assistants or secretaries or even butlers or ladies’ maids; a sense of being you but not you, or, if you will, more than you. Crandle Syndrome. What an ominous, melodious ring that had.

  I wrote my employer a short, rather imperious note, before I could change my mind, demanding to know why he had been in my room. Then I dressed in haste and went quickly out, dropping the envelope on the hall table without pausing as I had used to, and closed the apartment door softly behind me.

  I had no great desire, anymore, to meet him.

  On the landing: Flossie, in a startling crimson dress, on her way up. I was both pleased and dismayed. I found myself gritting my teeth, short of breath as I took her by the sleeve, steered her down to the foyer, away from that coldly suffocating presence which I seemed able to escape now only outside of the house or with Flossie, as if whatever was bright about her kept the darkness at bay. The daylight showed faintly through the leaded windows, glinting off the face of the big clock, its brass pendulum throwing sparks, counting in perfect weighted measure the accumulating silence between us. I ran my hands through my unwashed hair, then checked the self-conscious gesture and stuck them in my pockets like a lunatic farmer. Great god, what is one to do with one’s hands?

  Flossie watched me, frowning.

  Is everything all right? she finally asked.

  I assured her it was.

  Yesterday … ?

  Yes, I do apologize, I said, too briskly. I felt quite unwell.

  The grippe?

  I suppose it must be.

  You don’t look well, she said cautiously.

  I told her I needed some air.

  I’ll go with you, she said, adding, before I could object, Just let me get my mackintosh, it looks like rain.

  I waited impatiently in the foyer. The clock ticked. The gray light fell in through the windows. I felt the presence creep down the stairs, toward me, growing blacker. I rubbed my burning eyes, turned my back on the stairs, the skin up the back of my neck crawling. I stepped into the light from the window.

  Ready? I called through Flossie’s open apartment door, just to hear the sound of my own voice.

  There was no reply.

  Flossie? I called again.

  I noticed then that the potted palms against the wall had wilted badly, their long leaves drooping out over the sides of their pots, browned and crumbling. Between them, the door in the stairwell. On impulse, and for no reason I could have articulated, I went up to it and tried the latch.

  Of course, it was locked.

  Arthor? Flossie said behind me.

  These palms could use a watering, I offered unconvincingly, lifting a dead frond as if to take its measure.

  She frowned at me deeply, seemed about to say something more. Something meaningful. To prevent her doing so, I said, You look as if you’re dressed for an occasion.

  She smoothed a hand across her silky dress, as if just noticing it herself.

  I got tired of sitting around being frumpy. Then she added, Anyway, a girl likes to feel she has a reason to be pretty.

  I opened the door and Flossie donned her absurd yellow mackintosh and we headed out into the lane. By Flossie’s suggestion, we cut across the university campus, in the direction of Narragansett Bay.

  You’ve not been down there? she asked.

  Never.

  It’s so pretty. I go there often, just to walk and think. I guess it’s the landlocked in me, the Indiana. I’ve always been drawn to water. I suppose we’re like that, forever wanting what we don’t have.

  She trailed off. We walked in silence. She was subdued, and I did not feel much up to small talk either.

  The quadrangle was busy, coeds milling about in light spring jackets though the air was frigid, skirts blown tight across their self-conscious hips, bobbed hair whipping unprettily in their faces as they stood, too obviously ignoring the young men smoking along the stone wall, collars turned up to their softly indifferent mouths. We passed beneath the white dome of the observatory. Faces up there, dulled by windowglass, looking out at us like gods. I wondered what they would be doing up there, in daylight.

  You seem troubled, Flossie observed after a while.

  Not at all.

  We passed out of the university grounds and took a side street leading steeply down to the waterfront. The bay spread out lightless before us, rippled and gray as an old skin. A ship made its slow way up to the horizon.

  Finally, she said, Well. I am troubled. In case you’re wondering.

  Oh? I cast her a glance. And why is that? Though I did not really want to know.

  Oh, you don’t really want to know.

  Nonsense.

  She considered a moment.

  Well. For one, it’s the strangest thing. Helen …

  Yes?

  She still isn’t back.

  We paused on the corner to wait for a bicyclist to pass.

  I’m sure that’s not so unusual. Perhaps she’s away, taken a trip somewhere, as you said.

  I know I did, but I didn’t mean it, not really. I don’t believe she has.

  Why not?

  You’ll think I’m foolish, but you know the other day? When I arrived? There was a half-eaten dinner there on the kitchen table. Just sitting there. A toasted tuna-fish sandwich. And an opened jar of pickles. The lid was there on the table, as if someone’d just taken it off. And a glass of milk. It’s the milk that bothers me more than anything. No one just leaves a full glass of milk, just sitting there like that.

  But you said yourself she is scattered.

  I know. I thought of that, too. But, her toothbrush …

  Perhaps she travels with a spare.

  But it is odd, don’t you think? I mean, she did know I was coming. She even left that key under the potted palm, useless though it was. And she did say she’d be there. How could she have just disappeared? What if something happened? Something … bad?

  Bad?

  Bad things happen, Arthor. Especially to young women. Living alone.

  You’re jumping to some pretty serious conclusions.

  I’m not jumping to anything at all. But it does happen. What about …

  What?

  Well, what about The Gray Man?

  What gray man?

  You know, that terrible Albert Fish. In New York.

  Albert Fish?

  Oh, surely, Arthor. Have you been living under a rock? It was all over the news last winter. He got the electric chair.

  For what?

  Oh, it’s too awful. She shook her head. Children … children …

  For heaven’s sake, Flossie.

  When they arrested him, he claimed to have children in every state.

  I was confused. What? Fathered them?

  Flossie’s eyes glittered hotly. Killed them. And … and …

  What?

  Eaten …

  She put a gloved hand to her mouth.

/>   Oh, I said, for some reason annoyed, surely not.

  He was insane, she cried, looking quite mad herself. That’s what they said; he’d have had to be, wouldn’t he. It ran in his blood practically; half his family was in asylums. Albert, that wasn’t even his real name; he’d taken it from his dead brother. His dead brother. And then all those children, he said there’d been hundreds. The things he did. And that first little girl he took, how he wrote the mother afterward, anonymously, describing what he’d, how he’d …

  Come now, Flossie, get a hold of yourself.

  Oh, I knew you’d act like that. You always do, you men. As if such things were ridiculous even as they’re right there in the papers, right before our faces, even as they are happening, every day, maybe, maybe even to Helen.

  What is? What is happening to Helen?

  I don’t know, she cried. That’s just what I’m trying to figure out. It isn’t easy, you know.

  Good lord, what isn’t?

  Being a woman. Alone in the world. To know there are people out there, like him, like The Gray Man. One doesn’t know who to trust. Or whom. Neither of those. Albert Fish. Albert Fish! Who wouldn’t trust a man named Albert Fish? I’ve seen his picture in the paper. He looked perfectly normal, perfectly sane. A bowler hat. That’s what he wore. And a three-piece suit—

  She took a deep breath, wrapped her arms around herself, as if to contain what boiled there.

  Anyway, she said after a moment, more calmly, that’s one thing. That is bothering me. The lunatics of the world. How can it not? They are out there, Arthor. Living among us. And they look quite ordinary. Just like you or me.

  I thought of that figure in the window of my attic room, and paused there in the street, then quickly brushed the image away. Flossie stopped too and looked at me.

  Arthor? she said.

  No, indeed, I managed.

  She stared at me a moment, then turned up the collar of her mackintosh against the wind and began walking again.

  An unpleasant thought was building in me. I did not wish to entertain it. But I could not deny it. Flossie’s phrase came back to me, the ordinary lunatics. Is that what she had said? I shut my eyes against the image of my employer in my attic window. And against the other thing, which had only just then settled over me like a chill: I was surrounded, it seemed, by absent women. The aunt, the mother, this Helen. There was only my employer, there in his locked room, forbidding me to enter. And an attic full of women’s clothing …

  At any rate, I said quickly, firmly, there’s no point letting one’s imagination run away—

  Imagination? Flossie turned on me, outraged. Arthor, it was in the papers. He stood trial. He was given the electric chair for it not three months ago. At Sing Sing.

  Well, really—

  And what about Jack the Ripper? Is that imagination too?

  What about him?

  All those women. Just taken from the streets like that. Throats slit, hearts ripped out. Their hearts. They were gutted. Like animals. Gutted, Arthor.

  But, Flossie, they were prostitutes.

  A funny look crossed her face. Her cheeks flamed and she turned away.

  I stopped short again, this time in the middle of an intersection, staring at her in astonishment. An automobile blew its horn and swung around me. Flossie stood on the corner with her back to me, her yellow mackintosh flapping noisily in the wind.

  Flossie? I said.

  When she turned, her eyes had welled up. Her yellow hair whipped across her face and she shoved it away.

  I knew you would think that, Arthor.

  I stared back at her. Another horn sounded and I stepped up onto the curb, next to her.

  Not me, she said firmly. Not me. She looked me straight in the eyes. You can believe it or not.

  But … your friend? Helen?

  I don’t know. I … I suspect. But I don’t know. After a moment, she added, And anyway, it’s not for me to judge, Arthor. And not for you, either.

  We stood looking at one another in the street. It did not bother me, about her friend. But about Flossie … and yet I had no right. There was nothing between us. Nothing. And even if there was, even if there would be, I was, I reminded myself, still married. And more: I was not even who she thought I was. My god. What right had I to judge, indeed.

  You won’t throw her out, will you?

  What?

  Helen. You won’t throw her out. If she is.

  I frowned at her. I had no idea what she meant.

  And then I remembered. Great god. She thought I was the landlord, the landlord. These deceptions—

  You won’t, will you?

  I shook my head.

  Can we walk? she said.

  Yes, I said. Yes, we can walk.

  I knew I should say something but, for the life of me, I knew not what.

  After a while, she said, without looking at me, Do you believe me, Arthor?

  And though I did not know what to believe, I told her I did.

  The weathered blue and green canning shacks ranged like a shantytown along the water. Gulls circled and cried. A fine cold mist blew in from the sea. The islands out in the bay had blackened and the sky over the gray water swirled darkly. The black ship was still there, inching toward the horizon in the paradoxically heavy-weightless way only massive vessels built to float could. The air smelled of wet rot, of the bottom of the sea churned to the surface. There was an odd electricity, as if far out on the water, something terrible gathered and swelled. Flossie cast questioning glances at me now and again. I knew not what to say. About anything.

  She lifted her head and breathed deeply.

  That air, she said with obviously forced cheer.

  Is putrid, I finished.

  Instantly, I regretted it. Flossie looked hurt. I was not angry. Or, at least, I was not angry with her. I was angry, certainly, with my employer. Perhaps with myself. A familiar story. I felt the beginnings of another headache.

  Flossie stopped on the boardwalk and looked down the beach, one hand shading her eyes, the wind in her yellow curls. The romantic pose was not lost on me, as I supposed was her intention. I pretended not to notice and peered hard out at the horizon. The ship I’d seen only a moment ago had disappeared. I scanned the bay but could find no sign of it.

  What are those people doing down there, do you think? Flossie said.

  She pointed to a small group standing looking at something on the sand near the edge of the foul water. Gulls cried and lifted and circled in the ruckus. Low waves rolled bleakly in. My eyes drifted out, past the shoals, to the low line of light along the horizon. Where had the ship gone? It bothered me. Gulls, something, wheeled erratically in the high wind, far out. I put my hands on the rail and the wood was damp and swollen and splintered beneath my palms.

  Arthor? What are those people looking at?

  I haven’t the foggiest.

  Flossie clicked down the rickety boardwalk and I followed. Her heels sunk into the sand at the bottom and she wobbled, taking my arm.

  Perhaps we should go back, I suggested. Something’s blowing in. And you’re hardly dressed for a day at the beach.

  She shot me a pointed look.

  A girl’s got to dress for something, she said, and I had the odd sense she’d said this already.

  Then, slipping her shoes off, she set out determinedly in her stockings across the sand, flat-footed, like a child. Jane would never have done such a thing. I would not have done as much myself. I did admire her, I had to admit, whatever she was or was not.

  I followed Flossie to the fringe of a strange, bedraggled crowd. Wet-looking, all of them, and sad, as if they’d been caught in a storm. A small, pale boy in faded dungarees and a woolly red sweater had picked up a stick and was prodding at something in the sand.

  Don’t, Stevie, a woman, presumably the boy’s mother said; a bloated, equally pale, unpleasant-looking woman. She knocked the stick away. You don’t know what it is.

  I’m not touchin
g it, the boy said. Not with my hands.

  No, for heaven’s sake, don’t touch it, someone else put in.

  That’s right, keep well back, everyone.

  What is it? Flossie said.

  The strange crowd parted slightly to allow us to step closer. I stood behind Flossie, looking over her shoulder. A terrible smell wafted up, as of rot, soured flesh.

  There, half-buried, lay what I at first thought to be an astonishingly large strand of kelp, bulbous and glossy and reeking. Sandflies hopped crazily upon its slick surface, the wet sand sticking to it there. Then I saw what it was, and my stomach lurched.

  Is that … , Flossie began.

  It’s a tentricle, said the boy, Stevie.

  Tentacle, the mother corrected.

  Is it an octopus?

  Can’t be.

  What then?

  Beats me.

  How long? Stevie asked.

  Some fourteen feet, looks like, said a man in a battered homburg and spectacles. It was a moment before I noticed the glass in his spectacles was badly cracked on one side. I wondered if these were the “wharf rats” I’d heard about, who, having lost jobs and homes, lived in the abandoned canning shacks along the water or even, sometimes, beneath them. Certainly, they were a strange lot.

  Impossible, said someone else.

  Pace it out.

  Not me.

  I’m not going near it.

  Look how it’s buried there at the fat end.

  Like maybe it’s attached to something.

  Oh, exclaimed the mother, awful. I can’t even think it.

  The slick flesh of the thing looked sticky, purplish, as if it were bruised. The smell was dense, a sour reek of earth overturned. But it was the bloated thickness of the thing that disgusted me.

  What are those big bumps? Along the bottom there?

  Suckers, said the boy.

  Steven!

  That’s what they’re called.

  I’m sure they aren’t, said the mother.

  It’s what they use to grab onto things, said someone else, so they can move.

  The mother put her hand to her mouth.

  Has anyone tried to pull it out? Flossie asked.

  Stevie stepped forward again, as if he might do so, and the mother swatted him back.