Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  Carrie went briskly up the steps to the front door, while her brother, following some impulse of his own, slipped down into the areaway where he was for the moment concealed from the street. Glancing quickly down at Christopher from the high steps, Carrie thought he was doing something to one of the cellar windows.

  Giving a long pull on the bell, she heard a distant ringing somewhere inside. And at the same moment, she saw to her dismay that what she had thought was a modest light somewhere in the interior of the house was really only a reflection in one of the front windows. There were curtains inside, but other than that the place had an uninhabited look and feel about it.

  “Not a-goin’ ter let yer in?” One of the youths following her had now stopped on the pavement at the foot of the steps, where he stood grinning up at her, while his fellow stood beside him, equally delighted.

  “I know a house where you’d be welcome, dear,” called the second one. He was older, meaner-looking. “I know some good girls who live there.”

  Turning her back on them both, she tried to project an air of confidence and respectability, as she persisted in pulling at the bell.

  “My name’s Vincent,” came the deeper voice from behind her. “If maybe you need a friend, dearie, a little help—”

  Carrie caught her breath at the sound of an answering fumble in the darkness on the other side of the barrier—and was mightily relieved a moment later when her brother opened the door from inside. In a moment she was in, and had closed and latched the door behind her.

  She could picture the pair who had been heckling her from the pavement, balked for the moment, turning away.

  It was so dark in the house that she could barely see Christopher’s pale face at an arm’s-length distance, but at least they were no longer standing in the rain.

  “How’d you get in?” she whispered at him fiercely. Then, “Whose house is this?”

  “Broken latch on a window down there,” he whispered back. Then he added in a more normal voice, “It was awful dark in the cellar; I barked my shin on something trying to find the stair.”

  It was a good thing, Carrie congratulated herself in passing, that neither of them had ever been especially afraid of the dark. Already her eyes were growing accustomed to the deep gloom; enough light strayed in from the street, around the fringes of curtain, to reveal the fact that the front hall where they were standing was hardly furnished at all, nor was the parlor, just beyond a broad archway. More clearly than ever, the house said empty.

  “Let’s try the gas,” she whispered. Chris, fumbling in the drawer of a built-in sideboard, soon came up with some matches. Carrie, standing on tiptoe, was tall enough to reach a fixture projecting from the wall. In a moment more she had one of the gaslights lit.

  “Is anyone here?” Now her voice too was up to normal; the answer seemed to be no. The sideboard drawer also contained a couple of short scraps of candle, and soon they had lights in hand to go exploring.

  Front hall, with an old abandoned mirror still fastened to the wall beside a hat rack and a shelf. Just in from the hall, a wooden stair, handrail carved with a touch of elegance, went straight up to the next floor. Not even a mouse stirred in the barren parlor. The dining room was a desert also, no furniture at all. And so, farther back, was the kitchen, except for a great black stove and a sink whose bright new length of metal pipe promised running water. An interior cellar door had been left open by Chris in his hurried ascent, and next to it a recently walled-off cubicle contained a water closet. A kitchen window looked out on what was no doubt a back garden, now invisible in gloom and rain.

  Carrie was ready to explore upstairs, but Christopher insisted on seeing the cellar first, curious as to what object he had stumbled over. The culprit proved to be a cheaply constructed crate, not quite wide or long enough to be a coffin, containing only some scraps of kindling wood. Otherwise the cellar—damp brick walls; floor part pavement, part dry earth—was as empty as the house above.

  Now for the upstairs. Holding the candle tremulously high ahead of her, while dancing shadows beat a wavering retreat, Carrie returned to the front hall, and thence up the carved wooden stair. Two bedrooms, as unused as the lower level of the house and as scantily furnished. The rear windows looked out over darkness, the front ones over the street—side walls were windowless, crammed as they were against the neighbors on either side.

  From an angle in the hallway on the upper floor, a narrow service stair, white-painted, went up straight and steep to a trapdoor in the ceiling.

  “What’s up there?” she wondered aloud.

  “Couldn’t be nothin’ but an attic.” Only a short time on the street had begun to have a serious effect on Christopher’s English, of which a certain Canadian schoolmaster had once been proud.

  Carrie spotted fresh footprints in the thin layer of dust and soot that had accumulated on the white-painted stairs. A clear image of the heel of a man’s boot. Only one set of footprints, coming down.

  The trapdoor pushed up easily. The space above was more garret than attic; it might once have been furnished, maybe servants’ quarters. The floor entirely solid, no rafters exposed, though now there were dust and spiderwebs in plenty. The broad panes of glass in the angled skylight, washed by rain on the outside, were still intact, and it was bolted firmly shut on the inside; if you stood tall enough inside, you could look out over a hilly range of slate roofs and chimney pots, with the towering dome of St. Paul’s visible more than a mile to the east.

  On one side of the gloomy space rested an old wardrobe, door slightly ajar to reveal a few hanging garments. But the most interesting object by far was a great wooden box, somewhat battered by much use or travel, which had been shoved against the north wall.

  Chris thought it looked like a coffin, and said so.

  “No. Built too strong for a poor man’s coffin, not elegant enough for a rich man’s.” What was it, though? There were two strong rope handles on each side, and a plain wooden lid, tightly fitted by some competent woodworker.

  Christopher, ever curious, approached the box and tried the lid. To his surprise, and Carrie’s, it slid back at once.

  “Look here, Sis!”

  “Why, it’s full of dirt.” She was aware of a vague disappointment in her observation, and not sure why. Only about half-full, actually, but that was no less odd. Stranger still was the fact that the neat joinings of the interior seemed to have been tarred with pitch, as if to make them waterproof. Of course so tight a seal would also serve to keep the soil from leaking out. But why would anyone—?

  The earth was dry. When Carrie picked up a small handful and sifted it through her fingers, it gave off a faintly musty, almost spicy smell, with a suggestion of the alien about it.

  Christopher was downstairs again, moving so silently on his bare feet that Carrie had not realized he was gone, until she heard him faintly calling her to come down. She slid the lid back onto the box, and carefully lowered the trapdoor into place behind her.

  Her brother had turned on the gaslight in the kitchen and discovered some tins of sardines abandoned in the pantry. Presently they remembered the box of kindling in the cellar, and it was possible to get a wood fire started in the kitchen stove.

  The sardines were soon gone. Brother and sister were still hungry, but at least they were out of the rain.

  That night they slept in a house, behind locked doors, curled up in a dusty rug on the kitchen floor, where some of the stove’s warmth reached them. Barely into October, and it was cold.

  Next day, waking up in a foodless house and observing that the rain had stopped, they were soon out and about on the streets of London, trying to do something to earn some money, and keep out of trouble. But in each endeavor they had only limited success. Carrie was certain that the neighbors had begun to notice them, and not in any very friendly way. So had the bobby who walked the beat during the day.

  There was one bright spot. On the sideboard, as if someone had left it there deliberatel
y, they found a key which matched the locks on both front door and back.

  Vincent still had his eye on them, too, or at least on Carrie. And “Don’t see your parents about,” one of the neighbors remarked as she came by. She answered with a smile, and hurried inside to share with Christopher the handful of biscuits she had just stolen from a shop.

  Shortly after sunset, threatening trouble broke at last. The rain had stopped, and people were ready to get out and mind each other’s business. One of the neighbors began it, another joined in, followed by the walrus-mustached policeman, who, when voices were raised, had decided it was his duty to take part.

  And joined at a little distance by the nasty Vincent, who before the policeman arrived boldly put in a word, offering to place Carrie under his protection. He had some comments on her body that made her face flame with humiliation and anger.

  Carrie could not slam the door on Vincent, because he had his foot pushed in to hold it open. He withdrew the foot as the bobby approached, but Carrie did not quite dare to close the door in the policeman’s face.

  “What’s your name, girl?” he wanted to know, without preamble.

  “Carrie. Carrie Martin. This’s my brother Chris.”

  “Is the woman of the house in?” demanded the boldest neighbor, breaking in on the policeman’s dramatic pause.

  Carrie admitted the sad truth, that her mother was dead.

  Another neighbor chimed in. “Your father about, then?”

  The girl could feel herself being driven back, almost to the foot of the stairs. “He’s very busy. He doesn’t like to be disturbed.”

  Somehow three or four people were already inside the door. There was still enough daylight to reveal the shabbiness and scantiness of the furnishings, and of the children’s clothes, once quite respectable.

  “Looks like the maid has not come in as yet.” That was said facetiously.

  “Must be the butler’s day off, too,” chimed in another neighbor.

  “You say your father’s here, miss?” This was the policeman, slow and majestic, in the mode of a large and overbearing uncle. “I’d like to have a word with him, if I may.”

  “He doesn’t like to be disturbed.” Carrie could hear her own voice threatening to break into a childish squeal. For a little while, for a few hours, it had looked like they might be able to survive. But now. . .

  “Where is he?”

  “Upstairs. But—”

  “Asleep, then, is he?”

  “I—I—yes.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Oh yes, you are, I don’t think! See here, my girl, unless I have some evidence that you and the young ’un here are under some supervision, you’ll both be charged with wandering, and not being under proper guardianship.”

  Carrie, standing at bay at the foot of the stair, gripping her brother by his shoulder, raised her voice in protest, but the voices of the others increased in volume, too. They seemed to be all talking at once, making accusations and demands—

  Suddenly their voices cut off altogether. Their eyes that had been fixed on Carrie rose up to somewhere above her head, and behind her on the stair there was a creak of wood, as under a quiet but weighty tread.

  She turned to see a tall, well-built, well-dressed man coming down with measured steps. Perfectly calm, as if he descended these stairs every day, a gentleman in his own house. His brownish hair, well-trimmed, was touched with gray at the temples, and an aquiline nose gave his face a forceful look. At the moment he was fussing with his cuffs, as if he had just put on his coat, and frowning in apparent puzzlement at the assembly below him.

  Carrie had never seen him before in her life; nor had Christopher, to judge by the boy’s awestruck expression as he watched from her side.

  The newcomer’s voice was strangely accented, low but forceful, suited to his appearance, as his gaze swept the little group gathered in his front hall. “What is the meaning of this intrusion? Officer? Carrie, what do these people want?”

  Carrie could find no words at the moment. Not even when the man came to stand beside her in a fatherly attitude, resting one hand lightly on her back.

  “Mr. Martin—?” The bobby’s broad face wore a growing look of consternation. Already he had retreated half a step toward the door. Meanwhile the nosy neighbors, looking unhappy, were moving even faster in the same direction.

  “Yes? Do you have official business with me, Officer?”

  Vincent had disappeared.

  The policeman recovered slightly, and stood upon official dignity; thought there might be some disturbance. Duty to investigate. But soon he too had given way under the cool gaze of the man from upstairs. In the space of a few more heartbeats the door had closed on the last of them.

  The mysterious one stood regarding the door for a moment, hands clasped behind his back—they were pale hands, Carrie noted, strong-looking, and the nails tended to points. Then he reached over to the hat rack on the wall behind the door, and plucked from it a gentleman’s top hat, a thing she could not for the life of her remember seeing there before. But of course she had scarcely looked. And then he turned, at ease, to regard her with a smile too faint to reveal anything of his teeth.

  “I take it you are in fact the lady of the house? The only one I am likely to encounter on the premises?”

  The children stared at him.

  Gently he went on. “I am not given to eavesdropping, but this afternoon my sleep was restless, and the talk I could hear below me grew ever and ever more interesting.” The foreign accent was stronger now; but in Soho accents of all kinds were nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Yes sir.” Carrie stood with an arm around her brother. “Yes sir—that is, there is no other lady, er woman, girl, living here at present.”

  “That is good. It would seem superfluous to introduce myself, as you have already, in effect, introduced me to others. Mr. Martin I have become, and so I might as well remain. But when others are present, you, Carrie, and you, young sir, will address me as ‘Father.’ For however many days our joint tenancy of this dwelling may last. Understand, I do not seek to adopt you, but a temporary arrangement should be to our mutual advantage. A happy, close-knit family, yes, that is the face we present to the world. When it is necessary to present a face. Ah, you will kindly leave the upper regions of the house to me—if anyone should ask you, it is really my house, paid for in coin of the realm. In the name of Mr. de Ville.”

  “Yes sir,” said Carrie, elbowing her brother until he echoed the two words.

  “And now, my children.” Mr. Martin, or de Ville, set his hat upon his head, and gave it a light tap with two pale fingers, as if to settle it exactly to his liking. Carrie noticed that as he did so, he ignored the old mirror on the wall beside the hat rack. And she could see why, or she imagined she could, because the small mirror did not show the man at all, but only the top hat, doing a neat half-somersault unsupported in the air, its reflected image disappearing utterly just as the hat itself came to rest on the head of the mysterious one.

  “I am going out for the evening,” he informed them. “I advise you to lock up for the night as solidly as possible. Do not expect to see me again until about this time tomorrow. Pleasant dreams. . . .”

  On the verge of opening the door, he checked himself, frowning at them.

  “The two of you have an undernourished and ill-clad look, which I find distasteful, and will only provoke more neighborly curiosity. Here.” White fingers performed an economical toss; a small coin, glittering gold, spun through the air. Christopher’s quick hand, like a hungry bird, snatched it in midflight.

  That night brother and sister slept with full bellies, having gone out foraging amid the early evening crowds, to a nearby branch of the Aërated Bread Company. At a used furniture stall Carrie had also bought herself a nice frock, almost new, and a couple of pillows; it was awkward living in a house where there were no beds or chairs. And Christopher had found a secondhan
d pair of shoes that fit him well enough. They were going to sleep on the kitchen floor again, but they were getting used to it.

  “Where’d he sleep, is what I’d like to know,” said Chris next day, climbing the stairs up from the parlor. The man had said he’d not be back till sunset, so now in midafternoon there was no harm in gratifying their curiosity, never mind that he’d said to keep below.

  Both of the bedrooms were as desolate as ever, and the dust on their floors showed only their own footprints, one set shod, one five-toed, from the first night’s exploration.

  “And how’d he get into the house?” Carrie wanted to know. “Didn’t come past us downstairs.”

  “You don’t suppose—?”

  “The skylight? Why’d a man do that?”

  “ ’Cause he don’t want to be seen.”

  And they went up the narrow white stair, through the trapdoor.

  The skylight was as snugly fastened as before. Out of persistent curiosity they approached the mysterious box again. The lid, once moved, fell clattering with shock and fright.

  “Oh my God. He’s in there!”

  But none of this awakened Mr. Martin.

  After initially recoiling, both children had to have a closer look. In urgent whispers they soon decided the man who lay so neatly and cleanly on the earth in his nice clothes was not dead. His open eyes moved faintly. In Carrie’s experience, people sometimes got drunk, but never had even the drunkest of them looked like this. Some people also took strange drugs, and with that she had less familiarity.

  A ring at the front door broke the spell and pulled them down the stairs. A solid workman stood on the step, cap in hand. In a thick Cockney accent he said he had come to inquire about a box, one that might have been delivered here “by mistake.” Carrie, in a clean dress today, and with her face washed, denied all knowledge and briskly sent the questioner on his way.

  “I don’t think he believed me,” Carrie muttered to her brother, when the door was closed again. “He’ll be back. Or someone will.”