The Woman Next Door

by T. M. Wright

  "I was just about to call an ambulance," he said. "I thought you were sick."

  "I was." She smiled weakly. "I guess I still am." "I'll call the doctor." He started to leave the room. "No, Tim." He stopped. "It's not necessary." She paused. "It was only a nightmare."

  Tim looked incredulously at her. "It must have been one hell of a nightmare. You should have seen yourself."

  "Yes, Tim, it was one hell of a nightmare."

  "Do you want to talk about it?"

  She shook her head. "No, I don't. I can't."

  Tim went over to her, sat on the edge of the bed. "It might be better for you if you talked about it, Christine. It's obvious you're sublimating something—"

  "I can't talk about it, Tim, because I don't remember it."

  "You don't remember it? How can you not remember it? I don't understand."

  "All I remember is that Jimmy Wheeler was in it."

  "Jimmy Wheeler? Who's Jimmy Wheeler?"

  Christine sighed. "That little boy, the one I met in the park. You remember—I did his portrait."

  Tim remembered. "Oh, you mean the boy who died."

  Christine looked pained. "Yes."

  "I'm sorry." He took her hand, caressed it. "I didn't mean to sound insensitive. I just didn't know he meant that much to you."

  "Apparently he does, Tim."

  "Yes," Tim murmured, "I can see that." He paused, then: "I can still call Dr. Tichell, Christine."

  "Not now, Tim."

  He stood, went over to his side of the bed. "If It happens again, Christine, I'm calling the doctor."

  "I hope you do, Tim. And if you do, I hope he can help."

  A half-hour later, the thought that accompanied Christine into sleep was: I am dying. Something inside, a part of me, is slowly killing me. And there's nothing I can do about it.

  Chapter 32

  It didn't make any sense to Greg, but it didn't need to. She had good reasons for shutting him up in here and not feeding him very much (which was okay, he thought, because he didn't feel hungry anymore, just thirsty) and keeping the radiator broken. It was cold, sure, but at least he had this heavy blanket. He wished he had a TV, though. There were no hours here, just mornings and afternoons and evenings. A TV would let him count the hours, and the half-hours, and, something inside him said, that would make the wait here a little easier.

  She would tell him what her reasons were soon enough. Because she loved him. She had said it more than once. She had said it a million times: "I love you, my Greg." A zillion times.

  He wondered, suddenly, what she meant.

  He heard the door being unlocked. He looked toward it. The door opened.

  His mother, a tray of food in hand, stepped into the room. She didn't bother to turn on the light; it was nearly dawn.

  "Greg"—she kicked the door closed—"I'm sorry. Can you forgive me? I was sitting and talking with Mrs. Bennet about one thing and another, and we got onto the subject of food—she was giving me a recipe, I believe—and I suddenly remembered I hadn't fed you in a long, long time." She grinned hugely. "So I hurried to the market and I bought all the things you like so much." She held the tray out so he could see what was on it. "Macaroni and cheese," she said, "peanut butter and jelly sandwiches—grape jelly—lemonade, and some root beer, too, and over here"—she pointed happily—"spinach (it always amazed me, my Gregory, that you liked spinach so much) and some salad with Russian dressing, and, for dessert, sherbet and whipped cream (I must confess, Gregory, that I like that, too) and pound cake." She rushed to the bed with the tray of food, held it out to him. He pushed himself to a sitting position and took the tray. He was bewildered, a little frightened, speechless. "And then, my Greg, when you're done with that, you can settle down and watch TV." She gestured toward the door.

  And vanished.

  Greg stifled a gasp.

  The tray of food vanished.

  And Greg felt suddenly hollow, alone, like a bamboo fishing pole tossed overboard and allowed to drift.

  She's going to let me starve to death!

  No she won't.

  She couldn't.

  She was his mother!

  He still felt the metal tray in his hands, still smelled the cheese, and the jelly. And, strangely, the smells made him a little sick—the way taco smell made him sick. He needed to vomit, suddenly, but knew if he did it would hurt, because there was nothing in his stomach. He fought the smells back, and very slowly his nausea disappeared.

  He grinned at the small victory.

  And felt Little Rat lie down beside him.

  "A freakin' goddamned old scumbag, yeah—"

  "Don't," Greg hissed, his clenched fists suddenly pressed hard to his ears. "Don't!"

  "She crawled out from under some kinda slimy rock and she was draggin' you behind her." He chuckled that low, earthy chuckle. "Yeah, you were fallin' outa her, fallin' outa her she was so slimy—"

  Greg had never imagined he could move so fast. One moment his right fist was at his ear—though it did no good; he still heard Little Rat—and the next it was connecting with something hard, but something that gave, too, under pressure, something that snapped dully, like a live, moist twig.

  He heard a quick, short-lived gurgling noise, then realized that Little Rat's weight was off the bed. Greg rolled over and opened his eyes wide. "Mommy!" he screeched, so loud it hurt his ears and throat and made bile creep into his mouth.

  Little Rat was tearing madly at his own throat, as if there were something awful inside it and the only way to get it out was through the skin and bone. And he was stumbling around the room, like his legs were slowly breaking. And hoarse "ak-ak" noises were coming from him. And every other second he turned his head and stared round-eyed, accusingly, at Greg.

  "Mommy! Mommy!"

  Little Rat crumpled near the window, lay still on his back, hands still at his throat.

  Greg screamed again, and again, and again. Until the bedroom door burst open. Until Marilyn crossed the room, her hand raised, and he saw that horrible smile on her face. Until he saw that she had left the door open. Until he jumped from the bed, ran across the room through the open door, down the hallway—

  He stopped screaming, at last, when he felt the cold air of the early spring morning through his pajamas.

  He wondered where he was. Behind the garage, he realized.

  And his mother was in front of it, calling to him: "My Gregory? My Gregory?"

  He knew what she would do with him: She would shut him up in that room again. With Little Rat. "Gregory, you're going to catch your death."

  He could hear her coming around to the side of the garage now. He glanced about. He knew Cornhill well; he had lived in the district all his life. He knew that it was big, but not awfully big, and that downtown was about a thirty-minute walk from here. Or a fifteen-minute run.

  "Please, Gregory, Mommy needs you—"

  He ran. Through a dozen backyards and a dozen front yards, over a half-dozen fences, causing a dozen chained dogs to bark wildly. He ran wildly, certain she was behind him, right behind him, her outstretched hand almost on him, and Little Rat—his hands still at his throat, those "ak-ak" noises still coming from him —right behind her.

  He ran until he collapsed, barely able to breathe. He looked up. The morning sun cast the raised letters above the doorway in harsh relief: "Sibley Building." It was the right place.

  He closed his eyes.

  It was like watching some pretentious avant-garde movie, Marilyn thought. Still, there was much to be said for it, real benefit to be gained from it.

  She had never before been able to weep spontaneously. She remembered weeping only once, as a girl, and then out of need, because tears had been expected from her, because, if she failed to produce tears, eyebrows would be raised and accusations made.

  But now. . . .

  Six hours. . . . She thought it was pathetic, and wonderful, that she had actually wept without stopping for six hours. And much of it—all of
it?—was genuine. But it had been progressive—at first a heavy, heart-thumping, throat-closing remorse. Greg had run from her, he was afraid of her, he hated her, at last. It was a phrase that stayed with her, that lingered in the darkest corners of her remorse for the first two, three hours—during the time her remorse was for her loss, the loss of her son. A time when her senses dulled, and her vision blurred, and she felt certain her whole beautiful, ordered world was coming apart. Then, gradually, the truth of the phrase revealed itself to her:

  At last! At last! Greg hated her. At last!

  And, in that moment, the cause for her weeping changed. The weeping itself changed; occasional squeals of almost childish laughter came into it.

  Greg hated her at last!

  It had been so terribly obvious, she hadn't even seen it:

  Only one thing really mattered. Not Brett, that whoremongering, abhorrent bastard stinking her house up; no, not him! And not Greg, always sniveling at her, calling her "Mommy" as though she were some ghastly, milk-producing, soft-skinned moron who would one day be a grandmother and that's what she did with her life; no, not Greg!

  Only the house, big and eternal; only the house mattered.

  Greg and Brett had been trespassers in it. They had corrupted it, dirtied it, trespassed in it. Just as they had trespassed on her. Through her. And into her.

  Greg hated her at last!

  Her scheme to rid herself of him, and to rid her house of him, had worked at last. At last!

  She looked at the clock: 12:15. It was time.

  She got out of her wing chair, crossed to the telephone, lifted it, got the phone book from beneath it. She turned to the Yellow Pages, looked under "Antiques—Dealers." She knew the value of what she was selling. She'd make a pretty penny. She wouldn't tell anyone it had all been dirtied, soiled, corrupted. She cringed. Christ, could she imagine, could she imagine?—the whole house, even the walls. But not the attic. It was sealed now.

  She would call the painters later.

  Part Three

  THE HOUSE

  Chapter 33

  June 19, 1961

  Alone! I am all alone! And nobody will help me! The child's thoughts were not as clear as that, but, in substance, said as much. She tried to move, and couldn't. Tried to cry out, but her fear stopped her.

  She waited. There was no pain. Only numbness. And confusion.

  After many minutes, the babysitter turned the TV down; it was ruining her concentration. She glanced at the telephone on the small white table just inside the entrance to the kitchen.

  Later, she thought.

  One thing was certain: Six months of dull Friday nights shouldn't have ended like this. There was no reason for it to have come to this. Well, her own stupidity was the reason, wasn't it? Her own colossal stupidity. . . .

  She stood, went to the telephone, picked up the receiver, dialed, waited.

  "Hello?" she heard.

  "Is Mrs. Winter there, please?" she said.

  "May I ask who's calling?"

  "Her babysitter. This is her babysitter."

  "Just a moment."

  She heard, as if from a distance, "Evelyn, it's for you. Your babysitter."

  She waited again. Then: "Yes, this is Mrs. Winter."

  "Mrs. Winter?"

  "What is it? Is something wrong?"

  "I don't know, Mrs. Winter." The babysitter paused briefly. "I mean . . . it's the baby—"

  "The baby? What's happened to the baby?"

  "Nothing. I mean . . . I don't know. She's so quiet. I think you'd better come home, Mrs. Winter."

  "Quiet? What do you mean quiet?"

  "Well, I mean she's breathing and everything, but . . . she's not moving. She fell. Out of her crib. She fell."

  A short silence.

  "Mrs. Winter?"

  Then, again as if from a distance: "Oh, Jesus!" And a click, a dial tone.

  The babysitter put the receiver on its rest. She went back to the child's room, turned the light on.

  She saw that the child was almost exactly as she had left her—on her side at the back of the crib—except now her huge, impossibly blue eyes were open.

  Would she tell? wondered the babysitter. Would the child tell her parents what had happened? Would she say something like, "I pee-peed, and I got her wet, and she said a bad thing and threw me down, real hard"? Would she say something like that? Or would it all end right here? Because the child was too damned scared and confused. Yes, she decided. It would all end right here.

  She saw that the child was staring at her. Hard. Not with a bubbling smile ready on her lips, as if the babysitter were merely an object of amusement or curiosity. But hard. And cold. In emotion so intense that the muscles of the child's face had frozen, and all the energy in her small, quiet body had massed in the eyes.

  Chapter 34

  It had been a long morning for Roger Peterson, and it promised to be an even longer afternoon. There were exactly twenty-three Courtneys in the Rochester section of the phone book and, he estimated, at least a dozen more for the outlying towns. But that was all the police had been able to give him—the boy's last name, Courtney, and a description: eight or nine years old, four feet six inches tall, eighty-five pounds, sandy-blond hair, large gray eyes. A good-looking boy. And Roger Peterson had some bad news: The boy was in Intensive Care at Highland Hospital. The boy had been able to tell police only his name—his whole name, though the first part had been unintelligible—before slipping into unconsciousness. Now the boy was comatose. The temperature had just risen to twenty degrees when they found him—dressed only in light blue cotton pajamas—curled up in front of the Sibley Building. No one knew precisely how long he'd been there. "A couple hours at least," was the attending physician's guess. "I'm really surprised nobody noticed him."

  Roger Peterson called the tenth Courtney of the afternoon.

  "Hello?"

  A woman's voice—a young woman, Peterson thought. "Is this the Courtney residence?"

  "Yes, it is, and we've got all the life insurance and all the magazines—"

  "This is Roger Peterson, ma'am, from the Department of Social Services."

  "Oh? Are you peddling food stamps over the phone now?"

  "Mrs. Courtney, please, I'm calling in reference to—"

  "Or are you passing out those welfare checks to just anyone? We happen to be white, Mr. Peterson."

  "Do you have a son, Mrs. Courtney?"

  "A son? No, I don't have a son."

  "Thank you, Mrs. Courtney." He hung up. "For Christ's sake," he whispered.

  Obviously the boy had been abandoned, hard to believe as that was; otherwise there would have been panicked calls to every official agency in the city by now. It had been over twelve hours since the boy was found.

  Peterson checked his log sheet. Of the ten Courtneys called, three apparently were not home, two—a Mark Courtney and a B. Courtney—yielded busy signals, two were elderly people, one number was "no longer assigned," and two were obvious blind alleys.

  He dialed the eleventh number. Surely something would happen when the afternoon newspaper appeared, he thought as he waited. The police had arranged to have the boy's picture and name at the bottom of the front page. Obviously the boy had relatives, classmates, teachers, neighbors. Yes, the chances were excellent that the whole thing would come to a head this afternoon.

  Marilyn checked the grandfather clock near the living-room archway: 1:30. The antique dealer, a Mr. Hardin, of Hardin and Hardin Antiques, was due in an hour, with his truck. She wondered if she should tidy things up for him—dust here and there, vacuum, wash down the walls where Greg had left his dirty little fingerprints. Goddamnit, she'd be forever liberating the house from Greg and Brett's corruptive, lingering, nasty presence. Forever! She'd need new sheets, to begin with, and new pillowcases. And she'd need new toilet fixtures, too. And new mattresses, new quilts, new flatware . . . Christ, was there anything they hadn't touched, anything at all left that she wouldn't have to c
hange, make right, clean, cover over? Anything?

  Only the room, she realized.

  Her room.

  She suddenly cocked her head toward the stairway. Were those really the soft cries of a child she was hearing? She listened. The sounds stopped abruptly, and she decided it had probably come from outside—a pigeon under the eaves, some kids passing by, a breeze moving around the house. It wouldn't be the first time, she reminded herself, that the house had made noises of its own.

  The phone rang. She snapped her gaze toward it, quickly angered by the intrusion. She went to it. "Yes?" She hoped her tone carried her annoyance.

  "Mrs. Courtney?"

  "Yes."

  "This is George Hardin; we spoke a short while ago."

  "What is it, Mr. Hardin?"

  "If it's convenient, Mrs. Courtney, I'd like to come over immediately. You see, another client called to change his appointment—"

  "It's fine with me, Mr. Hardin."

  "Good. I'll see you in ten or fifteen minutes?"

  "Yes. I'll be waiting, Mr. Hardin. Good-bye."

  She went to the kitchen, opened a closet door, got out dust rags, a mop, a broom, floor wax, lemon-oil furniture polish. Soon her arms were so burdened that she dropped the can of furniture polish. She swore, and kicked it toward the hallway.

  Christine wished Tim had stayed home. It was difficult being alone in the house today, uncomfortable—as if something had taken Tim's place when he left and was following her from room to room. Not a malevolent something. It might even be herself that followed her, that lingered at each window she passed and in every doorway, counseling, Slow down—her rational self berating her for the turmoil she had allowed to grow inside her, her rational self punishing her for holding onto the dream momentarily, then letting it go. Because that was the way small children behaved. She remembered, with almost frantic fondness, the story Becky Foster had told her about the Cornhill ghosts: "Each house has one. Yours is of a young woman killed when the roof of this house collapsed." She longed for just such a ghost—for some classic, unseen, archetypal thing she could blame her fears on.