The Elementals

by Michael McDowell

  “You shouldn’t have gone inside,” said Luker primly. “I told you not to. And Odessa, you shouldn’t have let her go with you.”

  Odessa shrugged. “Child can take care of herself, I—”

  “I couldn’t though!” shouted India. “I would have died in there, I would have suffocated or gotten eaten or something if you hadn’t pulled me out of there! I tell you, I’m pissed! I’m pissed at the whole business! Why the hell did you take me to a place like Beldame? Why in the hell do Dauphin and Leigh and Big Barbara keep going back when you’ve got these demons—”

  “Spirits,” corrected Luker.

  “These Elementals in the goddamn house, every one of ’em ready to pounce on you at any time of day or night? I mean, it’s dangerous out there! Martha-Ann got killed, didn’t she, Odessa? Martha-Ann didn’t drown. Whatever tried to get me got Martha-Ann, but you weren’t there to drag her out. And when I went up to that room on the first day I got there, it was Martha-Ann I saw inside. She’s still there, she’s dead but she won’t lie down! Luker, next time you want a vacation why don’t we just kayak to Iceland?—it’d be a hell of a lot safer!”

  She breathed, heavily after her tirade, and Luker gently pressed the bottom of her glass to make her drink more. She swallowed too much, it went down wrong; she coughed and began to weep.

  “India,” he said softly. “You don’t really think I’d take you to Beldame if I had thought it was going to be dangerous, do you?”

  “But you knew about the Elementals—you said you did.”

  “Yes, of course I did. But when you’re away you forget that you believe in them. Sure, when you first get to Beldame and you see the third house, you say, ‘Oh, fuck, there’s something inside and it’s going to get me,’ but then you forget because nothing happens. I was scared when I went to Beldame when I was real young, but it was just once that something happened to me, and now I can’t really remember how much of it was just nightmares that came later, or my bad memory, or what—maybe nothing happened . . .”

  “Then if nothing happened, tell me about it, Luker. Did you go in the house, did you just see something? What?”

  Luker glanced at Odessa, and Odessa nodded for him to proceed. India couldn’t tell by this signal whether or not Odessa knew the story. There were times she felt as if all this Alabama family had entered into a conspiracy against her, the only true Northerner among them.

  “There’s nothing to it,” said Luker, with a deprecating wave of his hand. “Nothing really happened. It’s just one time I saw something . . .”

  “What?”

  “It was one year early in the season and just Big Barbara and I were down there—we went down to open up the house or something like that and we were gone stay overnight, I guess. So I was out playing by myself. It was broad day and the sun was shining, and before I knew it I was standing on the front porch of the third house—that was when the sand had just started to come up that high, it probably wasn’t more than a foot deep then. So I must have been nine or ten.”

  “But weren’t you afraid of the house? Why’d you go up there all by yourself?”

  “I don’t know,” said Luker. “I wonder why myself. I wouldn’t do it now, and I can’t figure out why I did it then either. I don’t remember making a decision. I have an image of myself. I’m walking up and down on the Gulf side looking for shells or something, and then suddenly there’s a jump-cut, and I’m standing on the front porch of the third house. I try to remember what came in between—but it’s as if there were nothing in between. That’s why I kept thinking of this as a dream and not as something that really happened. That’s probably what it was, just a dream that I’ve confused with a memory.”

  “I doubt it,” said India. “What did you do when you got up on the porch?”

  Luker trembled as he said it. “I looked in the windows.”

  “What’d you see?”

  “I looked in the living room first, and it was in perfect condition. None of the sand had gotten inside yet—”

  “There’s plenty there now,” said India, glancing at Odessa for confirmation.

  “I wasn’t really scared,” said Luker, “it didn’t bother me, it was just this room that was in a locked house and that was all, and I thought, ‘Well why have we been so scared of this?’”

  “And then?”

  “And then I went to the other side of the verandah; and I looked in the dining room window—” Luker glanced at Odessa and didn’t go on. India saw that despite the air conditioning in the room, her father was perspiring heavily.

  “What did you see?” she asked grimly.

  Luker looked away, and when he spoke his voice was soft and halting. “There were two men sitting at the table right next to each other, one of them on the end. But I could see under the table, and they didn’t have any legs. They were just bodies and arms.”

  “Were they real?” stammered India, “I mean . . . what were they doing?”

  “Nothing. The table was set. Good stuff, china and silver and crystal, but everything right around where they were was all broken. Like they had deliberately smashed it.”

  “And they didn’t have any legs? Were they like . . . freaks or something?”

  “India!” cried Luker. “These weren’t like people—you looked at them and you knew they weren’t real people! You didn’t say to yourself, ‘Oh, those poor men they got their legs cut off in a train accident’! And you know what they were wearing?”

  India shook her head.

  “They were wearing flowered suits . . .”

  “What? Like clown suits or something?”

  “The material had these big flowers on it, camellias I think.”

  India sat very still a moment. “The drapes in the dining room of the third house have big camellias on them. I saw them.”

  “I know,” said Luker. “They were sitting there wearing suits that were made out of the curtains.”

  “Did they see you?”

  “They looked at me—they had black eyes with white pupils. They wanted me to come inside . . .”

  “So they talked, they said something to you.”

  Luker nodded. “They whispered, but I could hear them even through the window glass. And when they talked, sand fell out of their mouths. Just sand. I couldn’t see any teeth or tongues. But sand sprayed out when they talked. They said they had things they wanted to show me upstairs, things I could have if I wanted them. They told me I could look in boxes and trunks and have anything I wanted. They said there were boxes there that hadn’t been gone through in thirty years, and there was great stuff inside them . . .”

  “Did you believe them?”

  “Yes, I did. Because that’s exactly what I had always thought about the third house, that there were all these trunks upstairs with old letters and old clothes and stamp collections and coin collections and antique stuff.”

  “Nothing in that house . . .” whispered Odessa.

  “Did you go inside?” demanded India.

  Luker nodded.

  “How did you get inside? I thought the house was locked, I thought—”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if I opened the window or went through the front door. That part is blank. The next thing I remember I’m standing at the foot of the table, and I’m holding on to the corners of the tablecloth and my fingernails are tearing holes in the cloth because it’s so old and rotten.”

  “And those two men—”

  “All of a sudden one of ’em jumps up on the table and I see he’s got feet. No legs, just feet, coming right out of his hips, and he starts walking down the table toward me, kicking all the dishes and crystal out of the way. Everything breaks on the floor. And the other one hops down off the chair and starts coming round the table toward me and he’s carrying a dinner plate like he wants me to do something with it. They’re still whispering but I’m so scared I can’t understand what they’re saying. The last thing I remember is feeling sand hit me in the face—sand
that was sprayed out of their mouths.”

  “But you got out,” protested India. “You must have done something to get away. I mean, you’re here now, you didn’t get hurt. They obviously didn’t kill you or anything.”

  Luker looked askance. “I dream about it,” he said softly.

  “They must have let you go on purpose,” India persisted. “They had you there, they must have had a reason for letting you go.”

  “India, you’re trying to make sense out of all this, and the point is there isn’t any sense to it. I don’t know if I’m remembering a dream or something that really happened. And that’s all I remember. And when I remember it’s not like I’m remembering what I saw, it’s like I’m playing over a little film. I see me as a little boy walking along the beach, me as a little boy standing on the verandah and looking in the window. I’ve got camera angles and cuts and everything—it’s not a real memory any more. I don’t know what really happened.”

  “But things happened to other people too, didn’t they?” protested India.

  “Something happened to Mary-Scot one time, and she told me but I didn’t believe it—I don’t think I even believe it now. And Martha-Ann died, but really probably Martha-Ann just drowned. Nothing’s ever happened to anybody really. Marian Savage never believed in any of it. You couldn’t even talk to her about it, she’d just walk away.”

  “But something happened to me!” protested India, her ferocity dissipated and nothing but trembling weakness in its place.

  Luker glanced away and clinked the ice in his glass. “It’s never happened before, though. No one ever got touched by one of the spirits before. I always thought they were essentially visual manifestations—and of course I can accept anything that’s essentially visual. You just pretend it’s a photograph, that’s all. An image is an image is an image. An image can shock you, but it can’t hurt you.”

  India lifted her pants leg and showed her bruises.

  CHAPTER 24

  India could not get her father to continue the conversation of that afternoon. She wanted to hear Mary-Scot’s story, but Odessa wouldn’t let him tell it. “You heard enough, child. You heard plenty,” the black woman said. Next morning Leigh took India out shopping with her, promising many new clothes and lunch at the best restaurant in town, while Luker spent this time at the home of a man he had gone to high school with. They had not been friends at the time particularly, but now they found they had several important things in common. Luker returned to the Small House refreshed in spirit.

  Dauphin telephoned, wanting not Leigh, but Luker himself.

  “Listen,” said Dauphin, “I’m over here at your mama and daddy’s, and you better come over.”

  “Why?” asked Luker grimly, knowing.

  “Lawton’s been talking to Big Barbara, and Big Barbara’s upset.”

  “What’d he say to her?”

  “Luker, listen, why don’t you just come on over? If Leigh’s there, tell her to come too.”

  Luker knew that his mother was drunk; nothing else could account for the guarded, tragic tone of Dauphin’s voice. He left the house immediately, and gave word to the two maids that Leigh was to go to her mother’s house as soon as she and India returned.

  Big Barbara was in a bad way. When Dauphin got to her she had already consumed five large glasses of bourbon. She was morose and distracted, and the unaccustomed liquor was making her ill. She wept because Dauphin saw her throwing up in the bathroom. When Luker arrived, Big Barbara said that Lawton had left an hour before. She had no idea where he was now.

  Big Barbara sat sobbing at the foot of her bed. Luker brought a wetted cloth from the bathroom and tenderly wiped her face with it. Dauphin wanted to leave, but neither Luker nor Big Barbara would let him. He must sit opposite them, no matter his discomfort.

  “Oh, y’all!” sobbed Big Barbara. “I’m so ashamed! Y’all worked so hard on me down at Beldame and I thought I was doing so good, and I’m back in Mobile for one day and look at me! I couldn’t walk a straight line if it was painted with creosote! I don’t know what y’all must think of me!”

  “We don’t think anything of you at all,” said Dauphin soothingly.

  “What did Lawton say to you, Barbara?” asked her son.

  Big Barbara hiccoughed convulsively until Luker must beat her on the back.

  “Luker,” she wailed, “you were right and I was wrong!”

  “He said he was gone divorce you,” said Luker.

  “When he came down to Beldame, he told me everything was gone be just fine from now on. And I come back today and he says he’s changed his mind, and he’s gone get a divorce come hell or high water. I told him I had quit drinking, and he said it didn’t make any difference.”

  “Barbara,” said Luker, “something must have happened to make him change his mind like that. What happened?”

  “Oh, nothing! Not much!” she cried. “We were at that old luncheon this afternoon, Rotary Club or Jay-Cees or something, and I was sitting across from Lawton and everybody was talking about filing income tax forms. That’s all they ever talk about at things like that—taxes and going out hunting. And everybody was complaining how much they had to pay, and I just said, ‘Well y’all ought to come over and get some lessons from Lawton—you ought to see what Lawton can do with a 1040 form and a sharpened pencil . . .’ That’s all I said, honest to goodness. But Lawton looks at me like I was testifying against him on the stand.

  “And then we get in the car right afterwards—he wouldn’t even let me stay for dessert—and he starts talking about signing the papers again. He says that it doesn’t matter—drunk or sober I cain’t keep my mouth shut. I said, ‘Lawton, are you telling me that you cheat on your taxes, really and truly?!’ And he said, ‘Of course, what did you think?’ And I said, ‘Well, I didn’t think that! I was just saying how good I thought you were at itemizing deductions on the long form’—and honest to goodness, that’s all I did mean by it! But he wouldn’t listen, he dropped me off here and then said he was going to the lawyer’s and I didn’t even have to wave good-bye!”

  “So you came in the house and ran to the liquor cabinet,” said Luker grimly.

  “Didn’t even take off my shoes first,” sighed Big Barbara. “In the car Lawton said to me there was no such thing as a former alcoholic, there was only alcoholics that told people they weren’t drinking any more. He said I could have the house if I put up maps in the hall so I wouldn’t get lost after my fourth bottle of the day.”

  “Barbara,” said Luker, “you should have jabbed your fingers between his ribs and ripped his liver out—that’s what I would have done. Then he wouldn’t have to worry about a divorce.”

  “I know,” sighed Big Barbara, “but I just wasn’t thinking straight. But y’all know what?”

  “What?” said Dauphin earnestly.

  “I think,” she said, looking at her son and son-in-law carefully and laying a hand on Luker’s thigh as she spoke, “I think I just may let Lawton go on and get his divorce. I think it might do me as much good as it would him.”

  Luker didn’t trust himself to say anything and just whistled.

  “You think—” began Dauphin, then left off for he did not know what he had wished to say.

  “And I tell you why I decided. It was because of this drinking thing. I’m not thinking straight now, but all yesterday and this morning too, I was. I wasn’t even thinking about bourbon—alcohol didn’t cross my mind. At breakfast this morning I drank a whole glass of grapefruit juice and it wasn’t till after I had put it down in the sink that I thought about putting vodka in it. And if that’s not being cured, I don’t know what is!”

  Dauphin nodded encouragingly.

  “I was cured, I told myself. And you know, I did the whole thing for Lawton, because Lawton didn’t want to be married to a drunk. I didn’t care about me, in fact I liked getting sloshed every afternoon, and—I hate to say it—but it didn’t really matter what all you children thought about it.
If it had been just you telling me to stop, I wouldn’t have listened. I’d have gone to a wedding reception with a necklace of pint bottles around my neck—I didn’t care what other people thought! But Lawton didn’t want to be married to a drunk, so I decided to give it up. All the time I was suffering at Beldame, I’d be thinking, now I’m not drinking any more, I’m not an alcoholic any more, and when I go back to Lawton, he’ll say to me, ‘Good God, Big Barbara, you can drive my chariot!’ But it turned out that Lawton just didn’t want to be married to me! He let me off in the driveway and he said, ‘Go on inside and have a drink, Barbara, it’ll make you feel better!’”

  Dauphin shook his head as if in disbelief—though knowing Lawton McCray, the story was not at all improbable.

  “You should have taken a spoon,” said Luker, “and dug his eyes right out of their sockets.”

  “And I thought, if that’s all that he cares about me, then there’s nothing that I can do. Let him have his grass widow! If he gets elected to Congress, she’s gone have a hard time in Washington, D.C. Grass widows with kinky hair don’t have any idea what it takes to throw on a party for people in politics—they’ve got no idea!”

  “You’re gone live with Leigh and me,” said Dauphin. “You let Lawton have everything he wants, I don’t want you worrying about . . . things.” He meant money. “Leigh and I are gone take care of you, we can all move into the Great House. Oh, we’re all gone have such a good time from now on, I know it!”

  “Now that you’re finally sober again you can see what a turd that man is,” said Luker.

  “India picks up her language from you,” said Big Barbara with a sigh. “Lawton says he’s got papers he wants me to sign at Ward Benson’s on Wednesday. He wants an uncontested divorce. I’m gone tell him I’d be happy to sign the divorce papers, I’d be happy to sign over to him all the stock I have in the fertilizer company, and all those mineral rights I have in Covington County. I’m gone tell him he can have everything—except Beldame. Isn’t that smart of me, y’all! Beldame’s gone be mine. That’s the only thing I’m gone take. And that way we’re not gone ever have to worry about the oil company coming in. I’ll give Lawton the world and my good name, just as long as I can keep Beldame. I’ll sign the papers on Wednesday morning, and we’ll be back at Beldame by Wednesday night.”