by Steven Brust
“You’re wasting my time.”
“I just want—”
“Quiet,” she said, and I was quiet. Her eyes pinned me in place, then forced me down, first to my knees, then onto my face in the snow. It was very cold, and it came to me with a sense of rage that I would not be able to stand in front of the fire because of those damned children. I should have liked to have slaughtered them, but Jim would never have forgiven me.
“You have nothing to say to me,” said Kellem. “I have decided your fate, and that is an end of it. You will wait, no more. That is all.”
When I looked up she had gone.
I was, as I said, unable to type yesterday because of the children, so I may have left out some details. In any case, they were gone when I awoke, and I trust they will not return.
FIVE
en⋅er⋅gy n. 1.a. Vigor or power in action. b. Vitality and intensity of expression. 2. The capacity for action or accomplishment: lacked energy to finish the job.
AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY
I’ve been sitting here remembering things.
The last time I saw Laura Kellem was in County Mayo, Ireland, perhaps a score of years ago. I had been living in London, which seems to be the place in all the world I keep coming back to. I don’t remember exactly where I’d found digs, but it was probably either Soho or the East End, because that’s where I’ve been most often.
I remember that for several months I’d been feeling listless, careless, and generally uninterested in life. I didn’t know, then, that I was, to some degree, subject to whatever moods Kellem might be having, at least if they were intense. If I’d known that, I’d have probably been expecting something like what happened. As it was, I didn’t even realize what was happening to me until much later, when I reconstructed the events.
I slowly began to get the feeling I would like to leave England—an idea that grew stronger and stronger over the course of about a week. Then the feeling became more specific, in that I was taken by a wish to see Ireland. I realized what was going on, and allowed it to happen because there was nothing I could do, and I never minded seeing Laura anyway.
So I went to her, where she was living in a small house, almost like a cottage, outside of the town of Ballina, in the province of Connaught in the west of the Republic of Ireland. It was beautiful country, full of broken, craggy rocks and seacoast, but I saw little of it. I was guided to her doorstep, which fact was unusual in itself, and then she let me in. While she was not living in complete squalor, I don’t think the floor had been swept for months, nor had anything been dusted. She seemed very, very old; I would have taken her for an eighty- or ninety-year old woman, and it seemed that the effort of walking to the door and back to her chair was almost too much for her; the fire had all but gone out of her eyes.
I said, “What’s happened to you, Kellem?” But I could see what had happened: lethargy, self-neglect, weakness.
When she spoke, I could barely hear her. She said, “Jack, help me.”
So I did. I cleaned up the place, which took a couple of days, and then I went to the local pub and got acquainted with a few residents. Eventually I found a fine, strong-looking young man with a booming laugh and pearly-white teeth who was willing to follow me home and keep drinking after the pub closed. I introduced him to my “grandmother,” and fed him Scotch whisky, his secret passion, until he burbled, hiccuped, and passed out in his chair.
Of course, Laura became drunk too, which I’d never seen before, and I think that did as much good as anything else. She began breaking up the place, after which she slept for two days, by which time the constabulary were nosing around us and we had to leave the vicinity.
Kellem went on to Dublin, while I, at her suggestion, returned once more to America, and so we went our separate ways, but when we parted she seemed a changed woman—her fire was back, and she had learned how to laugh once more, as if she had drawn it out of the young man.
Her train left first, and I stood with her at the station and waited for it. She squeezed my hand, and for just a moment things were again as they had been so many years before. One part of me realized that it was a facade, because by then I knew her, but I think, experienced as I was, I wanted to believe there still remained some trace of affection for me.
I guess I continued to think so until last night.
I went for nice little walk around the area, and met our neighbor across the road, although he doesn’t know we are neighbors, and I didn’t see fit to enlighten him. He was walking his dog, a little brown and white terrier. I was returning to the house and he was approaching me, and the dog suddenly went into a frenzy, barking at me, bristling, and growling, until I nearly lost patience with it.
The owner, a nice old gentleman in his early sixties, seemed quite embarrassed by the dog’s behavior and apologized profusely, all the while trying to calm the annoying beast. I bent down and held out my hand for the dog to sniff, at which time the animal suddenly backed away and started whimpering, which made the old man even more apologetic.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Animals often don’t like me.”
“He doesn’t usually behave this way—”
“As I said, not to worry.”
“Well, thanks. I’m Bill Kowalsky.”
“Jack Agyar.”
“How d’you do, Jack. Live nearby?”
“Back that way,” I said, gesturing vaguely. “I was just taking a walk.”
“You must be new around here.”
“How did you know?”
“I always take Pepper out after supper, and I haven’t seen you before.”
“Well, it’s a pleasure.” Our gloves shook hands.
“You own a house, or rent?”
“Neither one, actually; I’m just visiting.”
“Oh? For how long?”
“Hard to say. I’m doing some work at Twain.”
“Really? So am I. What field?”
“Oh, just reading some dusty old manuscripts. You?”
“Biology.”
“You’re a professor?”
“That’s right.” He laughed.“And I’ve even published.”
“Good for you,” I said. “I’m hoping to.”
“Oh? What do you want to publish?”
“Summaries of dusty old manuscripts.”
He laughed and nodded and asked a few more questions to which I told a few more lies. He ended by suggesting I drop in for coffee, and I told him I’d take him up on that sometime. That’s when he pointed out his house, which turned out to be just across the street from ours. I said, “You must be tired of staring at that fence all the time.”
“Naw, I kind of like it. The place is supposed to be haunted, you know.”
“Really? Do you believe in that kind of thing?”
“No, I’m afraid not. But it really is a wonderful place. You should look at it.”
I told him I would, said goodbye, and continued my walk. Bill, I think, didn’t give me another thought, but I could feel Pepper watching me all the way down the street.
Tonight it is unusually still outside, as if nature were holding her breath waiting for something to happen. This is not the first time in my long and checkered life that I’ve had this feeling, and I can never remember it meaning anything; yet I am always affected by the sensation. The early hours of the morning have a kind of loneliness to them that at once attract and repel me.
I am not a loner by disposition. Part of the reason Kellem got into so much trouble in Ireland was that she can be perfectly happy by herself for long periods of time. Of course, her great age and naturally cynical disposition had more to do with it, but still, if she were as I am, surrounded by people as often as possible, laughing and crying with them, drinking in the successes and failures of their lives, I don’t think it would have happened.
I suppose that is one reason I am so glad that Jim is here. It’s funny, because while this is not the first house I’ve lived in that was haunted
, it is the first where the ghost has been at all communicative. When I first moved to Staten Island, six or seven years ago, I found, as was my custom, a deserted house and at once felt the presence of a very strong spirit. Yet, in all the time I lived there, which is up until last November, when I answered Laura’s summons, I never had any contact with whomever or whatever it was; I know no more about it today than I did the day I arrived.
With Jim it was different. I felt his presence right away (indeed, I think I am drawn to places with such phenomena). I made a brief inspection of the lower floors of the house looking for a place to store my luggage, and had settled on a nice corner of the basement, when a voice behind me said, as cool as you please, “There is an old vault behind that bookcase.” I think I must have jumped a foot into the air, and if I didn’t scream it was purely accidental. I must get Jim to tell me how that looked from his side.
When I turned around, there he was, staring past my shoulder and looking apologetic. “I’m sorry, I really hadn’t intended to frighten you,” he said, or something like that.
I took a moment to recover myself, then said, “Do you know, it has been so long since I’ve been frightened by anything that I almost don’t mind.”
He introduced himself, and so did I, and I asked him how he came to be haunting the place and he just looked uncomfortable, and he asked me what I was doing in Lakota and I shrugged off the question.
He told me how to get into the vault, which turned out to be an old counting room. It was extraordinarily well hidden; even the false wall was much thicker than I’d have expected. It was only just large enough for me and the crate, but it was snug and, after only a few minutes of work, quite clean.
Then I started asking about his life, and it turned out he was even older than I was, and for some reason that endeared him to me; perhaps it made me think of Kellem, who is the only other person I know who can say that.
He seemed desperately anxious to hear about the places I’d been, I suppose because he’d never done much traveling. I was equally anxious to learn what life was like for him in this part of the world, but he didn’t seem inclined to discuss it.
The other thing I remember is that, at one point, he was talking about the superstitions among black people of his time (he calls them “Negroes”), and I asked if he shared any of those beliefs, and he seemed genuinely insulted.
He’s a fascinating man. On the one hand, he never really does anything, I guess because of his nature; but on the other, ever since this business with Kellem has come up he’s been nagging at me to “do something about it.”
And, do you know, I’m beginning, more and more, to think he’s right. Perhaps there really isn’t anything I can do to stop Kellem—I must obey any order she gives—but I ought at least to try. If I were to be destroyed tomorrow, well, there are things I would miss. I do not really believe in Heaven or in Hell, for if these things were true, why do we so busily create them on Earth? And I do not believe in reincarnation, because if it were true, why would we try so hard to continue our existences, in one way or another, through as much time as possible?
What matters to me are those experiences I can take into my memory to look back on, with pleasure or remorse as the case may be. Maybe that is why this little typewritten journal has become so important and why I’ve been writing as if I were telling myself a story; it is a way to preserve parts of my memory, which seems to be very gradually fading, or rather, diffusing, as a photograph will when it has been enlarged too many times.
Yes, I am convinced. I must do something. And I think I know what. Tomorrow, then, I will cast aside the remains of this laissez-faire existence, and see what I can do to make at least some gesture toward self-preservation.
If nothing else, it will make the days pass quickly.
I think it was the experience with Kellem that drove me to action, although I’d been thinking about this in general ever since placing the advertisement in the personals for her. I must say I had hoped for a better result from the advertisement.
In any case, upon rising today, I remembered my resolve at once. I sat in the living room stewing for a few minutes, then left the house, made my way to the offices of the Plainsman (I don’t even remember who or what I met on the way), and entered. There were a few fluorescent lights on in the building, and only one watchman, standing near a door. I didn’t use that door so he didn’t see me.
It took a while to find what I wanted; there were several floors to search; but eventually I found someone sitting alone in front of a computer screen. He was in his late forties or early fifties, about half of his hair was gone and the rest very short and dark, he had a bit of a potbelly and several hours’ growth of whiskers on his heavy face. Maybe he was starting a beard; if I’d had a chin like that, I’d have grown one.
His desk was overflowing with Diet Coke cans, bent paperclips, an ashtray leaking peanut shells, four audio cassettes, a framed photograph of a couple of ugly grammar-school-aged children (no wife shown), a few issues of various news magazines, reference books, and memo pads. He was reading one of the news magazines, and I must have been standing next to him for most of a minute before he noticed me. He wasn’t startled, he just looked confused, then he said in a voice that was much higher-pitched than I’d expected, “Who are you?”
“Jack,” I said. “Jack Agyar.”
“Yeah? What do you want?”
“I need you to dig something up for me on the computer.”
“Huh?”
I repeated myself. He still didn’t seem to understand. I pointed to the terminal and said, “Start that thing up, I need you to ask it some questions for me.”
He looked at me like a Labrador retriever that’s been given a command outside its vocabulary. He said, “Who did you say you are?”
I gave him my name again. I can be very patient.
“You work for the paper?”
“No.”
He finally seemed to have figured out what was going on. “Then why the hell should I—”
I took him by the throat and lifted him up, so his feet were kicking wildly in the air. He made gurgling sounds, but couldn’t get much volume. “Because,” I said, “I would appreciate your help.”
I dropped him back into his chair and smiled at him. He had a coughing jag, and when it was over I noticed that he was covered with sweat and stank badly. He just stared at me until I pointed to the screen. “Now,” I said. “I’m in a hurry.”
He nodded, wide-eyed, and turned to the screen. His hands were shaking. He typed a space, and the screen, which had been blank, became filled with nonsense, some of it almost in English. There was a blinking line in front of a copyright symbol at the bottom of the screen. He typed “call out library,” stopping to correct several errors in his typing. It said, “Login.” He typed something I couldn’t see because it didn’t appear on the screen, then the copyright symbol came back on.
“What do you want to find?” he squeaked.
“First homicides, then missing persons, then deaths from unknown causes, over the last six months.”
“Okay.”
He typed “F homicide,” and a return. There was a brief pause, then the screen began to fill up. First was a line that said, “Doc date freq lines database headline” (I know this because it is reproduced on these papers in front of me), which was followed by information that, presumably, he understood. The only thing that made sense to me were the ends of the lines, which said such things as “Third Shooting in Commons—Neighbors Frightened.” He made notes on a pad, recording what seemed to be the document numbers.
I pulled up a chair. “It seems this is going to take a while.” I said. “I might as well be comfortable.”
Three hours later I had a nearly complete list of homicides, deaths from unknown causes, and disappearances within the last six months, along with all known details as provided to the Plainsman. The police files would have been better, but also much harder to get access to.
&nbs
p; It surprised me how much of this sort of thing there was. It would have taken quite a bit longer, but my associate had become very cooperative, even friendly, and had started pointing out ways to, as he put it, “let the machine do the work.”
Still, it was quite a respectable bundle of papers. I might have had some trouble getting them home if my friend hadn’t volunteered his briefcase.
But enough of that. I have the papers, and will begin to study them tomorrow.
I have spent some time going over the files from the newspaper, and discovering that it isn’t quite as easy as I’d thought it would be to find what I want. I guess I was expecting to see either clear signs of Kellem’s handiwork, or else clear signs of suppressed information. Unfortunately, after going through everything, I found at least a hundred cases of deaths or disappearances that could have been her work.
Perhaps she was not quite so indiscreet as she thought. Part of the problem, I suppose, is that what I’m looking at is information that has seen print, and the details that would help me are mostly those that, for one reason or another, were not included in the article. I would certainly have better luck if I could find the reporters who covered the cases, or at least their notes, but the names of the reporters are not included in the information, so I’d have to do the whole thing again. Better yet, I suppose, would be to attempt to break into the police files, rather like the lamb sneaking into the lion’s den to steal food. The notion does not appeal.
I will keep this information anyway and perhaps later I will come up with some useful way to proceed. This has been only a cursory glance; a careful study might yet produce something I can use.
Perhaps the idea was pointless to begin with. My thought had been to try to determine which crimes were going to be hung on me, so I could make some effort to protect myself. But, really, what could I do? If she is determined to destroy me in order to protect herself, than I cannot prevent it; that is the nature of our relationship, and I understood that from the beginning. She made me who I am, and she did not do so out of kindness.