by Peter Straub
Just out of the center of Guildford Julia saw a Jolyon restaurant and her stomach again cramped savagely. She pulled up to the curb and went inside. Going down past the ranks of cafeteria food, she grabbed at whatever fell beneath her hand, at the cash desk finally paying for yogurt, chips, two sausages, an egg, toast and coffee. She carried her tray to one of the room’s few clean tables and, scarcely bothering to look around her, began to bolt the food. After a few bites her hunger ceased as abruptly as it had begun, but she continued to eat until the sausages and egg had been consumed. The rest lay untouched on the table as she hurried out.
Half an hour later Julia saw the brass plate identifying the Breadlands Clinic and turned into the long narrow drive, which circled through a small wood before ending at a gray manor house. Julia’s mouth was very dry: her heart seemed to be skipping beats, skittering. To calm herself she called up the photographs she had seen of Heather Rudge. Finally she was able to open the door of the Rover and walk across the crunching gravel to the steps of the manor.
An elderly woman in white greeted her. “You are Mrs. Lofting? Mrs. Rudge is so pleased that you wrote. And you know that Dr. Phillips-Smith wishes to see you afterward? Good. It’s rather at long way away, so please follow me—of course, the poor old dear’s not so difficult, not any more, but we have to obey all the regulations, don’t we? Of course. And she does have her rough spots. Keeps going on about her daughter, as I expect you’ll know. You look as though you could use a rest, dear. Do you want to take a minute before you see her?” Small, bright squirrel’s eyes.
“No, please, no,” Julia got out.
She received a professional smile which seemed to conceal a good deal of metal. “Then please come this way, Mrs. Lofting.”
They went briskly down a featureless corridor, past numbered doors. All eggshell-white. “We were able to move her into E wing,” the elderly woman said.
“Oh? How—how does she look?”
“Much better.”
“Better “
As the nurse inserted a key into a locked metal door, Julia turned her head and looked into a small white room where a motionless form lay beneath a sheet. Beside the bed stood a steel table crowded with ampules and hypodermics. Julia nearly stumbled, The food bounced in her stomach like an angry cat.
“Just through here.” At the end of the corridor, another heavy metal door. A large bald man in dirty white hoisted himself from a stool. His stomach Gobbled as he came forward.
“Will you fetch Mrs. Rudge, Robert? I’ll take Mrs. Lofting to the visitor’s room.”
Robert nodded and moved slowly off. The nurse led Julia through a small room bright with watercolors—a few old men working about a scarred table gaped at them. The men looked frightened, their faces oddly smooth and unmarked. One wore dark glasses which froze his face into granite.
Why am I here? Julia thought. I can’t stand this place.
The feeling grew as the nurse brought her through two more chambers, each with the unsettling contradiction of bright, haphazard walls and pale, stunned-looking inhabitants. Faces which fled from experience…Julia felt trapped by their hunger.
“Here we are, dear.” The nurse had turned another corner and was holding open a door to an anonymous little room where two chairs stood on either side of a green metal table. Gesturing at a tattered pile of magazines, the nurse said, “She will be right with you.”
Julia took the far chair as the nurse pivoted from the room.
A second later footsteps came. The door opened on Robert, who then stood aside to allow a woman to pass by him. Julia at first thought he’d brought the wrong woman. The flabby creature in the faded housedress bore no resemblance to the photographs of Heather Rudge, who had been trim and oval-faced in her forties, clearly sensual. Julia glanced at Robert, but he had moved to the stool in the comer of the room and now sat with his hands locked across his belly. He stared at the floor.
The woman still stood just inside the door. She was the sister of the faded, hopeless women Julia had seen in the other rooms.
“What is your name?5’ the woman asked. Her words scattered Julia’s first impressions.
“I’m sorry …” said Julia, rising from her chair. “I’ve wanted so badly to meet you. You are Heather Rudge?”
“Mrs. Lofting?”
They’ve tricked me, they’ve given me someone else, thought Julia.
“Mrs. Lofting?”
“Yes,” Julia said. “I’m sorry, it’s just such a moment, meeting you—I bought your house, you know. I think about you. I think about you a lot.”
The old woman shuffled across the floor and sat facing Julia. Her jowly face sprouted a few white whiskers.
“Why were you interested in my name?”
The woman looked slyly at Julia. “Nothing.”
Julia leaned forward. “I don’t know quite where to start… Do you like having visitors? Do they treat you well here?”
“It’s bad here. But better than prison. I was in prison, you know.” Julia could hear in her voice the flat vowels of the Midwest. “You don’t have to tell me about outside. They let us read—things.”
“Oh, I should have brought you something, a book, something, or magazines, a stack of Penguins—I didn’t think.”
The blunt-faced woman stared impassively at her.
“I came to talk about you.”
“I’m nothing. I’m safe here. Nothing happens to you here.”
Julia could not speak. Finally she blurted, “My daughter is dead too. We have things we share, things in common, important things.”
“You think mine is dead?” The old woman shot a quick sly glance across the table, “That’s what they all think. But they didn’t know her. Olivia isn’t dead. And why should I care about your daughter, Mrs. Lofting?”
“Not dead? What “
“It isn’t ‘what.’ It’s what I said. Why are you interested in Olivia? Didn’t you come here to talk to me, Mrs. Lofting?” Unexpectedly, the old woman chuckled. “You poor cunt. You don’t know where you are.”
The heavy food churned in Julia’s stomach. “I have to begin at the beginning…”
“First you have to know where it is.”
“Something’s been happening to me and I have to tell you about it. I’ve been reading about your case in the old newspapers, I’ve been reading them for days, I believe there is some connection between us…”
“Look at me, Mrs. Lofting,” said the other woman. “I’m the one who is dead, not Olivia. Mrs. Lofting. Nice Mrs. Lofting visiting the crazy woman. Eat your own shit, Mrs. Lofting. Rub yourself with your shit. Then you’ll know what I am.”
Julia threw herself into it again. “I think I can help you too—part of you is caught in my house, I can hear you there sometimes. Does that make me crazy? Why did you talk about being safe?”
Now Mrs. Rudge’s attention was wholly fixed on Julia. “I can’t do anything for you, Mrs. High-and-Mighty Lofting. I scorn you.” Her face grew distorted; she nearly spat her words. “Live in your house. I’ll tell you about Olivia, Mrs. High-and-Mighty, Mrs. Nice. Do you want to know? Olivia was evil. She was an evil person. Evil isn’t like ordinary people. It can’t be got rid of. It gets revenge. Revenge is what it wants, and it gets it.”
“What—what was her revenge?”
The silence was better than scorn.
“Do you mean that she made you do what you did?”
“She’s laughing at me. She’s laughing at you too. You hear her, don’t you? You don’t know anything.” The flabby white face, contracted about a writhing mouth and narrowed eyes, loomed before Julia. “J did what I did, Mrs. Shit, because I saw what she was like. Do you have to ask me what her revenge was?”
“Mrs. Rudge,” Julia pressed, “did she do what people thought she did?”
“What she was was worse than what she did. Ordinary people can’t touch it. I’m happy to be in here, Mrs. Lofting. Do you want to know a secret?” Malevolence gleame
d from her distorted face.
“I want to know,” said Julia. She was leaning across the table, straining to hear the thick words.
“You’d be lucky to be me.”
Robert snorted from the corner.
“You’re stupid, Mrs. Shit. As stupid as us in here.”
Julia bowed her head. Spittle shone on the table’s battered surface. The room seemed horribly small. A rank odor floated about her and for a moment she felt dizzy, assailed.
“Who else can I talk to?” she brought out. “Who else knew you?”
“The Braden bitch,” snarled Mrs. Rudge. “Tklk to that sauerkraut eater. Tklk to my daughter’s friends. They’ll have found out.”
“What are their names?” Julia softly asked.
“Names. Minnie Leibrook. Francesca Temple. Paul Winter. Johnny Aycroft. Do you want more? David Swift. Freddy Reilly. Hah! Go ask them about your problems, Mrs. Shit.”
“Thank you,” Julia said.
“You’re just what I thought,” said Mrs. Rudge. “You belong in here. Stupid cunt. Now get out.”
“You have eight minutes,” said Robert from the corner.
“No, I’d better…” Julia began. She stood up.
“Stupid cunt bitch. Stupid murdering cunt bitch.”
Julia bolted around the body of the old woman and threw open the door. Robert looked up startled and held out a pudgy hand. Julia ran down the corridor and turned blindly at a corner. When she saw a large door with a light over it, she rushed through; impelled by a vision of Mrs. Rudge’s sullen, working face and Robert chasing heavily after her, Julia fled the hallways and spun into a long hall filled with men and women.
Their faces were sagging and gray, or drawn and gray. They had all swiveled to stare at her entrance. Julia at first stopped, and then moved quietly among them toward the far end of the hall. The men were bent; their faces mooning and unconscious, they shuffled aside to let her pass, some of then fumbling toward her with unsteady hands. One cadaverous man grinned slackly from beneath wild hair. Julia only half saw the Ping-Pong table, the metal chairs pushed together to form rows. The odors of clean linen and sour flesh and disinfectant swam about her, as if Heather Rudge had leaped on her back.
These faces—they looked as though they would leak sawdust A hand with enormous knuckles brushed at her wrist, snatching at her. Julia flinched, and the elephantine man at her left hissed at her. A squashed-looking woman with terrible bright hair joined his hissing. A man whose face was all drawn to one side, as if snagged by a hook, scuttled before Julia and grabbed for her elbows as she twisted to pass him. She felt as if drowning in grotesque, stinking flesh …She pushed at the man in blind revulsion and ran to the end of the hall just as Robert appeared at the far corner.
She was in a long dim corridor. Behind her she could hear lurching bodies, heavy footfalls. She ran. At the corridor’s end there was a flight of steps down to a narrower, darker hallway with a rough stone floor. Here she ran in darkness for half its length; then, holding her side and gasping for breath, Julia walked quickly to a large barred wooden door. She pushed aside the bolts and swung the door open, grunting with the effort. Three broad stone steps led upward to a grassy lawn. At the far end of the lawn, the wood began. The names Heather Rudge had spat at her came thrillingiy into her mind. Braden. Minnie Liebrook. Francesco, Temple. Paul Winter. Johnny Aycroft. David Swift. Freddy Reilly. She looked into the dark tangled wood and moved up over the steps toward the wood’s darkness, repeating the names.
Magnus stood in shock beside the sandboxes, children all about him. He was staring up at the window of Julia’s bedroom. It was impossible, what he had seen there for a moment. He touched the bottle in his jacket pocket. A little boy brushed against his legs and Magnus stepped backward, feeling sand grind beneath his heel. His pulse seemed to have stopped. Gradually, into the silent vacuum which had dropped over him like a bell jar, sounds began to come. He heard children’s piping voices and the far-off booming wash of a jet. One of the children pressed against his left leg. He had walked through the park from Plane Tree House, irritated. Lily had been more than usually coy with him, as if she were keeping a secret. She’d assumed her you’re-such-a-naughty-boy manner, as she sometimes did when she had learned something upsetting about him, but she had refused to speak directly about his supposed transgression. Instead, she had babbled about Julia’s “privacy,” about her need for “an honest meeting” with Magnus, about “the needs of all concerned,” all the while her eyes shining with bright, needling admonition. He had supposed that all this had to do with his drinking.
Then she had got onto his not being a Queen’s Counsel again.
“For God’s sake, Lily,” he had said. “I’ve explained this to you a hundred times. If I wanted to be a QCI could be one. But all I would do would be to double my prices and drop my cases down to a fourth of what they are now. You don’t understand what a Queen’s Counsel is. For a man in my position it would be a ludicrous mistake.”
“I want my distinguished brother to be a QC.”
“You mean you want to be the sister of a QC without first understanding what it means. Absurd. And it has nothing to do with Julia. Can you get that into your head?”
“Magnim “
“And don’t start to stroke me with Durm.”
She had brightly pulled back. “You should have your clothes looked after. That suit looks as though you’ve slept in it.”
“I probably did, damn it.”
By the time he had left Lily’s flat, he had a headache and the sour beginnings of indigestion. He had walked gloomily through the park, irritated with the sunshine and the loafers sprawling on the grass. The newspapers predicted a change in the weather in the next few days, which suited him. He wanted rain. He longed for clouds and cold blustery weather. Eventually he reached the play area and stepped off the path onto the springy grass. Then he looked angrily up at Julia’s window and saw Kate—the back of her head shining through the glass. In the next second she had disappeared. But it was Kate. He knew the color of that hair better than he knew the color of his own. For a long moment Magnus forgot to breathe.
He extracted a grinning black girl of two or three from his leg and, gulping air, stepped forward on the grass. His stomach burned. His tongue was a wooden oar lodged in his mouth. He could not have seen Kate. Yet he had seen her—that hair shining like the hair of a princess in a fairy story. For a moment Magnus felt one of the strongest and most unselfish emotions of his lifetime, an overriding fear for Julia’s safety.
His legs took him over the lawn, racing, to the road out of the park. He ran a few laborious steps into Ilchester Place and then, puffing, began to walk quickly. He scanned the expressionless facade of the house. Impossible to tell what was going on inside. The great moment of the fear had receded, but it lay close enough to bring Magnus up the walk, leaping the three steps, to the door. He pushed the bell.
From far within the house Magnus heard the bell’s chime, falling away: the house was empty.
He jumped off the doorstep and half circled the house, peering in the windows. The interiors he saw looked motionless, tomblike, immaculately dead, He pounded on the window of the kitchen until its whiteness and sterility repelled him; then he continued around to the back of the house where he tried the handle of the French windows. They were locked. He leaned forward and looked past the parting of the drapes, cupping his hands about his eyes. The stolid furniture bulked on the floor as if it had come from a taxidermist’s show window. Before taking out his Access card he glanced at the house next door and saw Julia’s kittenish little neighbor staring down at him in horror from an upstairs window.
He shook his fist at her before noticing the tall, weedy man cutting around the corner of Julia’s house to come toward him. The expression on his face, that of a policeman about to dress down a tramp, infuriated Magnus, as did everything about the man, his modishly long blond hair and his velvet jacket and glinting ascot. When the man glance
d suspiciously at Magnus’ rumpled and stained, tieless exterior, Magnus whirled to face him, balling his fists.
“Just a minute,” the blond man began. “Just a minute there, you.”
Glowering into his face, Magnus saw, with the sureness of years of sounding witnesses and juries, an essential weakness beneath the bluster. “Piss off,” he growled.
The man stopped, as if hesitating, and then approached to within two feet of Magnus. “I don’t blow what your game is, mister, but you shall be in trouble with the law if you don’t leave this house alone. I’ve seen you here before and I don’t like the look of you.”
“You utter twit,” Magnus said. “Piss off and leave me alone. My name is Lofting. My wife lives here. I don’t know who the bloody hell you are and I don’t care. Now get going.”
Amazement came into the well-cared-for face. “My name is Mullineaux,” he blurted. The admission caused him anger and Magnus, seeing it, braced himself. “I live next door to this house you were about to break into. Now I must ask you to leave.”
Magnus leaned his forehead against the window-pane, grinning ferociously. “You have a lot of guts for a Golden Wonder,” he said. “I’m going inside. I think my wife is in danger.” He straightened up and smiled at the man, knowing despairingly that he would have to fight him.