In the face of something such as Miriam, had a man any power at all? There was no place to turn. Prayer meant nothing to him. His childhood prayers had gotten only silence in reply.
If that silence was sacred, he had not known it until now, and he felt it was too late to challenge the rock of his disbelief. He could not turn to God for strength.
There seemed nowhere to turn. He just didn’t have the courage to break the spell of Miriam. Or did he? He imagined taking Sarah in his arms and shouting out his love so loud it would penetrate to the depth of her soul.
That love, that was truth.
That was his weapon.
He took a step toward the door. One step, no more. He remembered the look in Sarah’s face as she had pleaded with him not to come near her. “I love you, Sarah! I love you!” His voice echoed. Sunlight echoed across the living room. He saw little clouds beyond the window, white and fluffy. He screamed the scream of nightmare.
Miriam decided to wait a bit before telephoning the victim. It would be best if he could get up the courage to come on his own. That way she could let him force his way to Sarah, to succeed where he had failed last night. It was doubtful, however. Human courage had its limits.
She went to the garden to pick flowers. It was a soothing pastime and it would be best if the house appeared as cheerful and sweet as possible. The windows must be opened, the curtains drawn back. There should be music on the stereo, something soothing, perhaps Delius’ Florida Suite, or the overture from The Land of Smiles. Perhaps there should be some fruit and wine set out. No, just wine. Fruit was too much trouble. She didn’t even know if they still sold natural fruit, it had been so long since she had noticed.
Carefully avoiding even a glance at her destroyed rose arbor, Miriam clipped until her basket was heavy with marigolds, snapdragons, iris, all the wealth of her garden. She loved the exuberant life of the flowers. Nature demanded nothing more of them than that they open each morning to the sun. Miriam’s race was not so lucky. From her and her kind much more was demanded. Not all that nature wants from its children is innocent.
She carried the cut flowers onto the sun porch, laid them on the table which contained the portrait of Lamia. She looked into her mother’s eyes, rendered by the artist as pale blue. Before the invention of contact lenses and shaded glasses Miriam’s species was marked as having the evil eye. The artist had not wanted to offend his client by giving her eyes their true color.
The portrait was a source of peace and reassurance to Miriam. The eyes said to her, ‘Go on, never stop. For me, be immortal.’
Tom had managed to get as far as Miriam’s front door. The house stood before him, the vortex of a deadly whirlpool. He was reminded of the flowers that eat flies, using their nectar and their beauty as bait. Tom hated most the beauty of the place. It should have foreboded somehow of the danger within. Must Miriam always smile?
It was a sunny morning, the sky now clear blue. Before him the house glowed in sunlight dappled through budding trees. The green shutters were open. Behind them silk curtains billowed in the fresh breeze. He heard music and saw shadowy movement in the living room.
For an instant he was ready to run, but the music seemed at odds with danger. It was happy, rich music, the kind of thing he might have heard drifting up from the bandshell on a summer night of his boyhood. He supposed that he had been seen, and the music was meant to make him feel just as he did.
He had imagined how life was going to be without Sarah, and had wound up here, telling himself how he loved her. Still, it was going to be hard to get to that front door to ring the bell. If anything the obvious musical attempt to soothe him made him more uneasy than ever.
Either he go in that house now or face the fact that he would never see Sarah again.
How desperately she needed him. When somebody you loved has nowhere left to turn, you help. If there was such a thing as a human compact, that was part of it.
Sarah had to be gotten out of there and taken by force to Riverside. And as for Miriam — she belonged in a specimen container.
A face appeared at a downstairs window. Miriam smiled at him.
In a moment she opened the front door. He mounted the steps and went in. It was as simple as that. She stood before him, blond and beautiful, smelling of flowery old-fashioned perfume, her expression welcoming. As the door closed she regarded him with concern. “I’m so glad you came. I was just going to call you. Sarah needs help.”
“I’m aware of that. I came to get her.”
“I had hoped she would stay with you this morning. When she came back I just didn’t know what to do.”
“I want to take her to Riverside.”
“That would be best, Tom. I’m afraid I’m at my wit’s end. Sarah’s reactions have been all wrong. I — I never intended to harm her.” The gleam of a tear appeared in one eye. “Now she’s up in that bedroom and she won’t unlock the door!”
“Upstairs? What room?”
“First door on the right at the head of the stairs.”
“You lead the way.” Tom had absolutely no intention of wandering around this house on his own. Miriam walked ahead of him, down the very hall where he had been attacked the night before. It was nothing but beautiful now, with flowers on the tables and a cheerful coaching print on one wall. The room’s innocent appearance only intensified his caution.
Miriam seemed aware of his feelings, as if the act downstairs had been little more than a formality. “Sarah,” she said, “Please let me in. I have a surprise for you.” She turned to Tom. “I’ve got a key, but I hate to open a door somebody else has locked.”
“Why don’t I just bust it down,” he said caustically.
She used her key.
It was the most beautiful room Tom had ever seen. The windows opened across a magnificent garden. He could see thousands of flowers, and there were more arrangements of cut flowers on the desk and nightstands. There was something a little obscene about the profusion of flowers. They were a kind of overstatement of an innocence that did not exist, and Tom was beginning to see them as the exact opposite of what they were obviously intended to suggest. They seemed to confirm Miriam’s guilt.
The breeze blew past gossamer pink curtains and sunlight poured in the windows. Tom found himself estimating the distance to the ground, and then saw in the garden something that chilled him. There was a path of broken shrubs and upturned earth right across to the brick wall on the garden’s far edge. He could see from here the brown scuff marks his shoes had left on the wall.
Sarah lay in a magnificent rosewood bed. She was not asleep, but in a sort of trance-state. Her eyes followed him from beneath half-closed lids. She looked languid, but he had the impression that she was far from it. The eyes hardly blinked.
A fly came in the window, buzzing energetically. Tom watched it spiral up to the ceiling. For a moment he was stunned. He had not noticed that the ceiling was magnificently painted to resemble a blue, cloud-flecked sky. Clouds billowed and larks soared in that magical, ineffably romantic air. The fly, crawling across the painting birds and clouds, was the only thing that disturbed the perfection of the illusion.
Sarah moaned. Tom went beside the bed. Gone were the protests he had heard in the apartment. Her face, beaded with perspiration, became almost sensual. Her eyes were dreamy, softened by desire. Her arms opened wide. He bent close to her, kissed the tears that stained her cheeks.
The next thing he knew her arms had come around him and he was lying beside her on the bed, drawing the delicate silk sheets away from her body. She was more beautiful now than he had ever remembered her.
He was vaguely aware that Miriam had retreated to the hall and pulled the door closed behind her. He feasted his eyes on Sarah’s body. It was smoother, softer. He touched her cool breast, felt the heart beating there beneath the firm flesh. Only her eyes told him that she was conscious of his touch. What turmoil was in those eyes. They looked at once delighted, avid with need, and as deeply troubled as any eyes he
had ever seen. He tried to comfort her with soft sounds, soothing caresses. This was what he had longed to do at home. This was the truth of love. Surely this would reach her.
* * *
Sarah was anguished. She could not even speak, much less cry out. Her body screamed with silent need, her mind hummed with excuses and justifications.
She had determined to lie here until she died. Then Tom had appeared. She hoped at first that it was a hallucination. Then their eyes met and she knew that he was real.
How could anyone be so foolish.
She hadn’t the strength for both of them, not anymore. Every cell of her being demanded action. This hunger was not the slow desperation of starvation, it was something far worse. Where starvation was dreamy and sad, this was quick and cunning and frantic.
“Sarah, we can conquer this thing together.”
He lay close to her, unendurably close. She let her arms twine around him. It felt so good to give in. So very good. “Yes,” she said, “we’ll do it together.”
His body was growing tense with passion. She noticed his eyes flick to the door.
“Miriam won’t bother us,” she said. “This is exactly what she wants.”
She ran her hands under his shirt. She knew just what Tom liked. Deep within, a voice shrieked at her to warn him, to drive him away once again. She purred and arched her back, offering herself to him.
She knew just how to excite him and he found himself responding to her more passionately than ever before. The beauty of the surroundings, the quiet, the warm sunlight combined to encourage him to forget the horrible problems that were besetting them, to forget for just a few minutes. He caressed her breasts, her thighs, sought her lips with his own. ‘It’ll help,’ he told himself, ‘it’s healthy and normal and positive.’
She unbuttoned his shirt, touched his nipples with her deft little hands. Their delicacy had always delighted him, and he kissed them now. He felt himself growing erect and guided her hands to his zipper.
“Yes, Tom,” she said. She was smiling now. He burst out of his unzippered pants.
He hugged her. “We’ll be free again,” he said, “you’ll see.”
“Oh, Tom, I hope so!”
He entered her. Every tiniest move brought intense pleasure. This was what they had needed. They should have trusted love more.
Tom closed his eyes, heard her whispering his name to the rhythm of their movements. Her voice merged with the hypnotic buzzing of the fly on the ceiling. He nuzzled close behind her ear and buried his face in her hair, where it was as soft as the fur of a rabbit.
A new feeling entered him, one that hurt like the contemplation of great beauty. He held her to him, riding her.
With every bit of concentration remaining to her, Sarah tried to resist her need. He lay atop her in his disheveled clothes, sweating out his passion. Beads of perspiration glittered on his forehead. His cheeks were red, as if he had been running.
She was emptied of hope.
Tom’s passion rose. She loved him, she realized, as she might love a child. His sexual significance, in the past few days, had dwindled to nothing.
Bang-slap, his body went as it plunged against her. She felt his heat, smelled his breath, tasted the salt of his hot flesh as she waited.
She knew perfectly well what Miriam wanted. And that she wasn’t going to do. She couldn’t, even if she wanted to. Miriam had forgotten one simple thing. There was no weapon in this room, and without one she could not make Tom’s blood flow.
She had almost called out to Miriam for one. But now she was sure she wouldn’t do that. Her suffering became a kind of hypnotism. She was lost in it when a flash of light on her face made her open her eyes.
Miriam stood at the foot of the bed, holding up an object so bright it dazzled Sarah.
Tom went on making love, his human senses oblivious to the silent drama being enacted around him.
Miriam was closer now. The object in her hand was a gleaming knife.
A scalpel.
Miriam placed it on the bedside table and departed at once.
Sarah touched the sharpness of it with her fingers.
“Oh, Tom, Tom!”
“Sarah! I love you, love you! Oh, God!”
His pumping shook her. The scalpel dazzled in her hand. So light, so strong.
His face, melting with love, gazed down into hers. She closed her eyes, held her breath. ‘No, I will not,’ she thought, a chant within her. ‘No, no, nono, no no.’
It came rolling from the depths, the thing within her.
The scalpel belonged to it. Had always belonged to it.
No no no no.
This was her truth. She pushed it into him.
“SARAAAAAH!”
She took it out, shoved it in again. It whispered through his flesh and all at once the purple miracle of his life was pouring into her.
Alive again. She heard a song that hurt like a memory. Somebody was sobbing. She was sobbing.
Why? She was happy.
His head bobbed, his jaw went slack. To escape his collapsing weight she wriggled out from under him, slipped from the bed. He shook horribly, huddling in the sheets. Blood spread. Then she touched him, bent to him, made believe she was kissing him. She took his life out of him.
She twirled slowly around and around, her whole body rapturing with a fine pleasure. She spread her arms in the warm air. The world had become dream-golden, touched with every beauty she had ever known. She could feel everything — the gentle movement of air past her body, the slow warmth of the sun, the secret pumping of her own blood.
She could feel Tom.
Feel him!
Her eyes went to his dead body. Something extraordinary was happening. Emotions almost seemed to pour from him like some healing water: sorrow, pity, peace.
Such peace.
She heard his voice in the air around her, saying her name in the rhythm of their lovemaking. It got fainter and fainter. More than anything she had ever wanted, she wanted the sound of that voice.
She was desolated.
* * *
Miriam cringed at the scream that pealed in her ears. It was an incandescence of grief. She could not remember measuring such sorrow as this before. The intensity was too great, much too great.
Miriam went to Sarah. As she hurried through the silent halls to the bedroom she felt a twinge of concern for her own safety. Anguish such as Sarah’s could turn easily to anger. Killing anger. Miriam could be endangered.
She paused at the bedroom door, listened to ascertain Sarah’s position. The long, ragged sounds of her breathing came from the far side of the room. Miriam fitted her key into the lock. After an instant the mechanism made a soft chunk and the door swung open. Its weight of steel faced with ordinary wood panels was perfectly balanced, and it moved silently.
A glaring pillar of sunlight dazzled Miriam’s eyes. Sarah was standing near the window, staring into the dawn-lit garden. The remains of her lover lay in the crumpled sheets of the bed.
Miriam put all her affection into her voice when she called to Sarah, trying to speak as a mother to a child, as lover to lover and as friend all at the same time. Sarah gave no indication that she had heard. Miriam began a slow approach, aware that Sarah might at any moment lunge at her.
“Sarah, I know exactly how you feel.”
“You have no idea.”
“You may not believe me now, but you’ve got more to live for than you ever did before.”
“Miriam, I just killed the man I love! You don’t seem to understand that. I haven’t got more to live for. I have nothing to live for.”
“Don’t say that! You have me, Sarah.”
Sarah looked at her, then bowed her head. Her shoulders shook. She wept silently.
“All you’ve done is trade one way of life for another.”
“You’re obscene, do you know that? Obscene!”
“You’ve joined a new race. We have our rights too. And we never kill more than
we need.”
Sarah tossed the scalpel aside as if it had burned her. Miriam took the opportunity to get closer. They needed physical contact.
“Stay away!” Sarah twisted away from her. “Don’t you dare touch me.” There was warning in the tone. Sarah was unarmed now, but still capable of inflicting an injury.
Miriam circled her, trying to maintain contact with her eyes. “You’re more than human now. You’ve acquired the right of life and death over human beings.”
“You disgust me!”
Closer and closer Miriam moved. From the depth of such despair, Miriam felt sure a new Sarah would soon emerge. Tenderly, Miriam spoke again. “You’re alone without me. All alone. Come to me.”
The look of revulsion that crossed Sarah’s face hurt Miriam more than any blow. She guarded the kindness in her own face carefully. In a moment Sarah was going to break. No matter what her feelings might be, instinct would take her to loving arms.
Until now Sarah had not realized how unpleasant Miriam smelled. She was revolting, sweet and touched with rot. Sarah kept edging away from her, thinking only of what a fool she had been to toss that scalpel aside, wishing she could cut Miriam open exactly the same way she had Tom.
Miriam kept coming closer, her movements swift and obsessive. On her face was an expression that made Sarah long to kick it, to feel her foot connecting with that condescending smile.
Although she tried not to look at him, Sarah’s eyes returned again and again to Tom. His face was half-hidden by the sheets but she could see the staring eyes, filled even yet with surprise and sorrow.
He had died in agony. Her heart beat hate for the one who had so corrupted her that she would have done that to him.
“You don’t deserve to live, Miriam.”
“But I will live. And so will you.”
Sarah did not reply. ‘Oh no we won’t,’ she thought. ‘No we won’t.’ Her eyes searched for the scalpel. Miriam stiffened slightly, stopped moving toward her.
“Sarah, please try to understand me. I’ve given you a new life, and it’s worth living. Believe me when I say that. It’s a better life than you could ever imagine.”
Sarah stilled her urge to scream insults, to howl out her rage. Her whole soul concentrated on one thought: how good it would be to cut into that evil being, to push the knife deep and feel the heart shake the blade.
The Hunger Page 28