He shook his head, keeping the grimness of his face away from her. He had got the link through in one place now and had begun to make a new cut. He thought that she was talking in order to quell her nervousness. He sweated heavily, wishing that he hadn’t dirtied the water in the pail; the thirst was on him again.
“But you know, when I couldn’t find you, I honestly just knew it was something like this, I honestly did. The way you’ve been poking about into every nook and cranny in this house a person would think you were expecting to find a fortune, a pot of gold. Behind a secret panel or something like that. Really. I’ve never seen anyone so dopey about something before. Of course, that’s your way—I know it—if there’s anything at all around you can take as seriously as cancer, you’ll do it. Know what? Watching you wander around all mopey like that, I’ve just wanted to tell you that if the house bothered you all that much we could get a tent and set up in the fields. Or if you were really bothered we could go home. But you wouldn’t let loose of the house, not for anything. Just like those monkeys they catch.”
He was almost free now, but he had to stop. The muscles in his forearm were jerking from the fiery exertion. She went on talking and now he wished she would be quiet, just hush up. He stroked his forearm against his thigh and wiped the sweat from his face on his left shoulder where his shirt was already wet and filthy from the reflex. He went back to work.
“…And if you think I’m giving you a hard time, you’re right,” she said. “And don’t think you don’t deserve it, every bit.”
The longer length of chain slapped against the wall, rebounded. His arm plummeted, the cuff banged against his thigh; there would be a bruise there. He was free. He sat down, hugging his knees, pain rushing to them. He put his head on his knees. His seeing was contracting and expanding in circles. He was almost weeping.
At last he stood up, Sheila helping him. “Let’s go down,” he said. He took the lamp from her, turned down the wick, and they went down together. He had retained the file; the four links dangled from the cuff, touched his leg. Stranger than ever, the house in the moving lamplight; shadows deeper and alive, shifting upon themselves. The varnished furniture reflected the dull glow in spots like dull eyes. They were enclosed in the lamp’s burning, he leaning slightly against her, dirty, tired, musing, the chain flopping; she took his weight on her shoulder, her arm thrown over his shoulders, her hand gripping his shirt.
In the kitchen they let go. He set the lamp on the drainboard of the sink, ran cold water on his face and hair, shaking his head. When he straightened the water streaked his shirt. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll take a look at the fuse box.” Now she took the lamp and followed him to the short hallway by the kitchen. He didn’t open the box. “The switch is thrown,” he said. His foot encountered something soft and warm, and he bent and picked up a heavy woolen overcoat; blue this one was. The house was cluttered with them. “This coat,” he said, “it must have got hung on the switch here. The weight of it pulled the power off.”
She put her fingers on her open mouth, all embarrassed. “I was just straightening up,” she said. “I didn’t know that it…I’m sorry.” She brushed her chin lightly, a gesture of disbelief. “I’m sorry.”
He threw the switch. All the lights went on. Everything looked naked now, the walls, the furniture; and they seemed naked too and turned away from each other as if in shame. Only for a moment. He took the lamp from her and screwed the wick down almost out of sight; a fragile bloom of black smoke rose from the chimney where the flame went out. “Here.” He handed her the heavy coat and she took it, not quite meeting his gaze yet, and hugged it to her. The tail of it fell, hiding her body. She stared at him. “I really am sorry,” she said. “Really.”
He tapped the cuff on his wrist with the big file. “I’m going to get this off,” he said, “and then I’m going to take a bath. Hot water and six bars of soap.”
“All right,” she said. “Good enough. And I’ll fix us some supper. It must be nine o’clock.”
He considered. “None for me, though. I really don’t feel like eating.”
“Well…How about coffee then?”
“Coffee, fine.”
FIVE
He had found a little straight chair with a sagging cane bottom and he sat there in the short hallway slowly and steadily rasping at the cuff. The grainy powder dripped on his shoes. He figured he could cut through on one edge where the cuff snapped shut and then cut through the tongue. Then he would be free. There was no hurry now, but fear wouldn’t leave him. He had seen his father like that, a short man with huge terrifying eyes. Inheriting the farm he had inherited Mina, inheriting the house he had inherited chains. There was more to come, something was catching up with him. He had never considered that fright could have such dimensions as when Sheila had brought in the lamp, he taking her for Mina. He ought to see the girl again; of course, she was only poor and ordinary. It was the house and the isolation working in his head. Incongruous images falling together all silly. But he could not convince himself; all his thoughts, and even his body, lacked conviction.
How well, really, was he remembering?
He has lost the way, his grandmother said. But her voice couldn’t have sounded the way it did in his mind, like metal creaking on metal; no one had ever sounded like that—it was the way her image in the tinted photograph in the sun parlor would speak. He has lost the way, now see what he has come to. You will too if you ever get lost like your father. He was squirming to get away from her, struggling not to see, but her fingers, complacently strong as iron, held his wrists. He would not look at the attic wall, but he could not help looking. Now he felt that he had been called upon to judge his father, but now he did not know the standards by which judgment was to be made. He stopped the filing and rubbed his nose. Perhaps in his first encounter with the house he had been correct: those standards had disappeared from the earth forever….No….
What was certain was that he couldn’t quench the image of Mina; it came to his mind ever more insistently. The confusion between Mina and his wife seemed incredible, even with the crouched darkness and the bad light. It could be explained only by expectancy; he had been convinced that it was Mina who would come through that door. And her face remembered was intractable entirely; it wouldn’t respond to any maneuver of his imagination, it offered no similes, as totally itself as the taste of garlic. But what did it mean? Why did it drift in his thought unattached, coming and going like a light winking an indecipherable code?
The cuff dropped to the cool tile floor and he let the file drop too, his right hand hot from the pressure of it. The weight of the iron he still felt on his wrist. He leaned forward to rest, his elbows on his knees. Then he straightened in his chair and kicked the gaping iron ring as hard as he could. It slid across the floor, struck the wall and rebounded, came slithering back and touched against his foot. He rose and went down the hall to the bathroom, rubbing his wrist.
He leaned over the ugly yellowing tub which sat high on four legs with claw feet, and pushed in the plug. He breathed gratefully the steam that rose when he drew the hot water; he had been afraid that the power had been off so long the water would be cold in the tank. When he saw his face in the little streaked cabinet mirror he wasn’t shocked, but regretfully assured instead. His eyes and mouth seemed holes poked in stiff gray paper. His eyes were pink-edged, his hair stiff and spiky with the clotted dust. While the water was drawing he washed his face at the little chipped lavatory. The water made his wrist itch and burn and he saw there the broad raw ichorous streak the iron had put on him. Then he stripped; his shirt and undershirt came off reluctantly, plastered to his skin with sweat and grime. He held them at arm’s length, they were almost unrecognizable. He let them drop, he had decided to burn them. He climbed into the tub and lolled back, just letting the water lap into the dust. After a while he began to scrub earnestly and the water became almost inky. He had to let it out and draw a new tub.
<
br /> He lay there, eyes closed, resting in the new water. He heard the door open and looked to see Sheila entering, her full arms cradled. He watched her face, pink and oval but with the sharp chin, a face like a brightly buffed fingernail. “Well,” she said, you seem well out of danger now.”
“I think I’ll live.” He spoke very slowly, his throat still feeling dense. “I hope to God.”
“I brought you some clean clothes and things. You think maybe that will help?”
“It’ll be fine. How about the coffee?”
“You want it now—in the bathtub?” Then, seeing his expression: “Oh. Okay. I’ll go get it. It ought to be about ready now.”
In a while she came back, carrying cup and saucer, balancing them with exaggerated care in her left hand. He sat up and reached for it, but she stepped back sharply. The coffee slopped into the saucer. “My God,” she said. “Look at your wrist. It looks horrible. Just look at your poor wrist.”
He was totally ashamed; dropped his injured hand into the water, hid it behind his naked left thigh. “It’s nothing,” he said.
“It’s not nothing. It’s all torn up. Here, let me see it. We’re going to have to do something about that. It looks just awful.”
“It’s all right, it’s nothing.”
She searched his face with the cool gray gaze. It felt like a spray of cold water on him. He discovered that he wanted to cower away from her stare; now she had the goods on him, now she knew his whole guilt. She stepped carefully away from him and around and set the cup and saucer atop the cistern of the toilet. Then she came back, sat on the tub edge. “It’s not all right. How can you say that? It’s raw and bleeding.…Here.” She reached for the wrist, but he jerked it away, behind his back.
“No,” he said.
She straightened herself, shook water from her gleaming plump hand. She began to talk slowly, in a quiet voice. “Peter, what is it? What’s been wrong with you lately? What happened up there in that attic?”
He shook his head. “Nothing; nothing happened. I was just being silly, messing around with those chains.”
“That’s not right.” She too shook her head, setting the blond strands atwitch. “I’ve never seen you like that. I’ve never seen anyone like that.” She rubbed her eyes with her forearm. “I hope I never see anybody in such a state again.”
She was merciless. He waited, but finally had to speak. “There’s nothing wrong. I just got too curious about the chains. Like the monkeys you were talking about. There’s not much that can happen to a fellow alone in an attic, after all.” And now he felt that he was betraying her, betraying both of them. But, really, wasn’t it merely a harmless lie designed to shelter her feelings?
“Oh, that’s not right, that’s not right at all.” Verge of exasperation. “You know it’s not like that.…Because it’s been going on too long. There’s been something wrong with you ever since we got to the farm.”
“What’s that? What are you talking about?” A question meant to embarrass her, to force her to describe behavior for which there was no good description; thus, to draw from her an accusation because of the lack of concreteness. Perhaps an accusation was what he most wanted….
She skirted the trap as easily as a plump dowager, lifting her hem demurely, would avoid a puddle. She looked at his dampening forehead. “I don’t think this place is healthy for you, I know it’s not. I don’t think we ever should have come here.”
Now he knew he was on safer ground, but he didn’t feel any more confident. “That’s pretty silly, don’t you think? I mean, really; it sounds like something out of a horror story or a Bela Lugosi movie or something….It doesn’t really mean anything, does it?”
She rose slowly (but she was angry) and began walking up and down, taking precise military strides like a man. How often it had seemed to Peter that she was a man, maybe more male in the way it counted than he….“Don’t you do that,” she said. Baldly warning tone. “Don’t you patronize me. Don’t say to me, 1 mean, really. You’re not the kind to patronize, you don’t have the weight. And you know me too well. You know I don’t talk just to be talking.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. Of course I didn’t. But you’ll have to admit, the way you, put it, it does seem sort of silly and made-up.”
“No, it doesn’t.” She was behind him now, standing still. Her voice was tight and even. “But you’ve made up your mind not to talk to me about it. You don’t even know whether you ever will talk to me again. You’re as transparent as a child. Fuck you, just fuck you, Peter Leland.”
He turned amazed, his torso jerked around, and she flung at him the cup of coffee. Her face was hot and white, pale as her eyes. She threw it at him with the awkward grace of a ten-year-old boy. —The fierce coffee splashed on his shoulder and side. The cup smashed on one of the tub faucets. Coffee, the dark stain, spread in the water like a storm filling the sky. He could not speak, could not think; could never have guessed her violence. She did not relent. She marched out, again tightly military, not glancing at him. Going away, she held her back and shoulders stiff. She didn’t slam the door, didn’t close it. The cold air of the hall poured in on him.
He could not speak, he could not smile at her rage. He had never felt less humorous. He got up very slowly and carefully. It was hard to see the chips of the broken cup in the darkened water. He sat poised on the edge of the tub, searching the floor. There lay the slim curved handle of the cup, retaining its identity in a surprising manner. He picked his way tiptoe over the floor and put on his underwear and his socks and shoes. Then he felt safer, but no better. He picked up the shards from the floor and dropped them into the toilet; he drained the tub, but let the broken china remain.
Then he felt that he had nothing to do, he was at a loss. Had it really been so bad, trapped in the chains? He went through, sensing the whole presence of the house about him, and in the kitchen took down cup and saucer and poured coffee. A package of Sheila’s menthol-flavored cigarettes lay on the table and he got one out and lit it. He hadn’t smoked one of this sort since he was twenty years old. The sensation was surprising, but not unpleasant. He puffed assiduously and felt gratified. He drank the coffee slowly. Then he rose; he felt, rather than heard, Sheila’s movements in the upstairs bedroom. She was readying for bed.
He went back through the house again, turning out the lights, and he mounted the stairs in the dark, sliding his hand along the solid cool banister. As he went up, it came to him how the things in the house, the furniture, even the stairs and the walls, seemed important to him, seemed to mean intelligible puzzling comments, while things not connected with the house, with his new knowledge—whatever sort it was—did not touch and were unimportant. Even alien, perhaps. What real connection did Sheila have with the house, with his past? With him? The thought felt true, that she was an intruder, nettlesome.
She lay in the bed with her face turned away from him toward the wall. The bed had a high solid headboard, about six feet tall, and was dark, like almost all the furniture in the house. Her pale head looked small, settled at the bottom of the headboard, not larger than a thumbnail. It would be best not to speak to her. She had left only the lamp on the big dark vanity burning, and by this light he undressed. His body was reflected in the three mirrors. He looked extremely pallid—the lamp was very small and had a clear white shade—but he looked dark too somehow. It was as if his body gathered some of the darkness of the furnishings, or as if it had been tinged by the thick obscurity of the attic. Especially about his eyes the shadows stayed, and the eyes too looked dark and liquescent, reflecting only in pinpoints the light of the lamp. He was extremely thin and ribby, as if there were just barely enough skin to cover him. But it all seemed natural.
He turned off the lamp, went cautiously through the dark to the bed and clambered awkwardly in. The sheets were of coarse cotton, but they felt soothing. He stretched his thin legs and then let them relax, and it seemed he could feel strength d
raining into them again. He hadn’t quite realized how exhausted he had become. He spoke softly, “Sheila.” But she wouldn’t answer; her body didn’t respond to his voice even by a movement of aversion. It was no good trying to talk to her now. Wearily he began to wonder exactly what there was between them that he had to patch up; he honestly couldn’t say what the quarrel was about. And he abruptly put it out of his mind, just shrugged it away, and fell asleep.
A bitter sleep, immediately shot through with yellow sick dreaming. He was still himself, but somehow impersonally so, huge, monolithic. There was no one else, but there were momentary impressions of great deserted cities which flashed through his consciousness, gleaming white cities with geometrics so queer and dizzying as to cause nausea. And when the cities remained stationary they were immediately engulfed by a milky-white odorous ocean. This same smelly chalky sea water was attacking him also and he began to dissolve away; he was becoming transparent, he was a mere threadlike wraith, merely a long nerve, excruciatingly alive. Somehow he perceived a voice in the milky substance, talking clearly and with immense resonance. “Iä, iä. Yogg Sothoth. Nephreu. Cthulhu.”
…And all that, flashing away. Still dreaming, but now the next dream came to him lucid and so immediate he could taste its pattern. Sheila lay by him, still, absolute, still as rock. His limbs had gathered a terrible energy, felt too light, moved too easily and quickly under his great dry hunger for her. He murdered her. He was confused, the whole time he was killing her he imagined he was making love. And she never spoke, never uttered a sound.… The night had increased, it was much later; a shred of moon had driven into the gabled window. The moon looked thin and cheap, like something made of plastic. He was talking, kept murmuring monotonously, his voice thick and deep and full of words he could not distinguish, could not hear. Light poured into the room webby and grimy. It clung to all objects like a gritty gray ash. He kept speaking to her and she would not answer, but in the bed lay a tangle of blood, dark, bluish, in the cheap moonlight. It was streaked, blue, on his forearm and shoulder and chest. It lay tangled with his sperm in the bed; and his body was trembling, evanescent as steam from coffee. He wanted to rise but he kept floundering back; it was like bathing or drowning. The tall headboard stood over him, a black threshold. Every fiber of him was sinuous, but frenzied and impotent. His body suffered agony in the detestable light.
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