Foundations of Fear

by David G. Hartwell

  This seemed the propitious moment. I unstoppered the bottle of chloroform, dampened a wad of surgical gauze, and held it to Amberwell’s face. He succumbed to its anesthetic influence without struggle.

  While he was unconscious, I abraded the skin of his forehead with one of those miniature graters Dr. Scholl markets for filing away at the calluses on your feet. I scraped at Amberwell’s forehead till the skin was raw, but I tried not to draw blood. Then I affixed a compress soaked in salt water to the area thus sensitized and secured the compress in place with loops and loops of surgical gauze until Amberwell’s head was properly mummified from chin to crown. Strangely, as Amberwell became more abstract, he became more pathetic too. I pitied him as a mummy as I never had as a man.

  I have no idea whether the sensation of a salty compress on sandpapered skin is more or less painfull than the aftermath of a tattoo—but neither would Amberwell. Surely he wouldn’t be able to resist the power of the suggestion, but to be doubly sure I left on the floor beside his bandaged head a sketch of his hypothetical tattoo. It represented—crudely, I confess, for I’ve never been much of a draftsman—the goddess Kali, as she is described in my Britannica: “a naked black woman, four-armed, wearing a garland of heads of giants slain by her, and a string of skulls round her neck . . . with gaping mouth and protruding tongue.” To which devout motif I added a further decorative surround of interlinked U’s and C’s, the corporate emblem of Unitask Corporation. It looked, quite literally, god-awful.

  February 14

  I greeted Amberwell, who was already wide awake, with a cheery “Happy Valentine’s Day!” and he lunged and plunged about like a rodeo rider. Donald Duck lives again. Amazing that after more than two weeks of semi-starvation he should still have such reserves of strength.

  “Now how are you going to eat your good breakfast if you’re in such a state of frenzy?” I asked rhetorically.

  Amberwell replied with his limited stock of curses. Even rage can’t fire the man’s imagination.

  Very well then, I’ll just leave them here—” I placed the juiceless orange rinds on the floor beside the drawing of Kali. (It’s remarkable, by the way, how much altogether edible food the average person disposes of as “garbage.”) “—and tonight when you’re calmer, we’ll take the photos to send to the press.”

  I left Amberwell still fuming and clanking his chains and took the train into town through the dazzling, redesigned landscape that Friday’s great blizzard had left behind.

  That was this morning. Since when my scenario has just been through a major revision at the hands of chance or tragic fate—take your pick.

  Briefly: When I got home, at about seven, I found a valentine chocolate box on the dining room table, together with a comic homemade card.

  From Adelle, of course. Adelle always remembers Valentine’s Day. I always forget. She had, as I should have foreseen, made herself a spare set of keys—not from any deep need to be sneaky, just because she can’t accustom herself to the idea that she’s been excluded from my life.

  At first I didn’t think to be alarmed. I made a mental note to get this further set of keys from her and helped myself to a nut cluster from the chocolate box. Then I turned on the stereo to find out what, if anything, Amberwell might be up to. The torture chamber was silent.

  Something in that silence made me uneasy. I went downstairs and discovered—beyond the door that stood ajar—Adelle dead and Amberwell gone.

  It may have been my specific prohibition of the cellar on her previous visit that had piqued her curiosity. (Her valentine was inscribed “To Bluebeard.”) Or she may have heard Amberwell carrying on. She knew where I hung the key to the room, since it had served not only as a darkroom but as a storage vault for our choicer stealables when we’d gone off on holidays. Naturally enough, when she’d discovered Amberwell straitjacketed and wrapped in gauze, she had released him. (Conceivably, so mummified, she might have thought him to be me; we’re of the same general stature.)

  Amberwell, seeing the woman he recognized from her photograph as Kali-Ananda, might have said very little. Or, just as possibly, he’d pleaded to have his straitjacket removed. In either case, how could Adelle have acted otherwise than to release him? Probably she’d taken off the straitjacket first, whereupon, having been provided with the only weapon he required, Amberwell had strangled her. Then, with the other keys on the ring she’d brought into the room, he’d been able to free himself from the shackles about his feet and the belt that was chained to the bolt in the floor.

  Once at liberty, he’d behaved with remarkable composure and—given what I must assume to be his purpose—well-considered purposefulness. He could not, having just murdered Adelle, call 911 for help. Instead, he helped himself—first to some food (most of a box of Wheaties and two quarts of milk), then to clothes from my closet, then to a suitcase into which he packed all of the paraphernalia from the torture chamber. Finally he’d taken the keys to Adelle’s Datsun from her purse, together with her spare cash, and driven . . . where? To a hotel? To one of the banks where he’s established a clandestine account? In the long term I’m quite sure I know what Amberwell intends.

  I think the moral of the story is clear: I’ve converted Amberwell to the wrong religion.

  February 21

  Can it be only a week gone by? I feel . . . I don’t know what I feel. Adelle would always be asking me that question: What are you feeling? And I would say I didn’t know, or that I was feeling nothing in particular. And it’s still the case. No, that’s not quite true—I feel jittery. I’ve locked up the house and taken a hotel room around the corner from work. But apart from the nervousness of feeling hunted, I’ve been really quite self-possessed. There’s been no overwhelming guilt or grief.

  And that’s not quite true either, for there was a day last week when I had to excuse myself from a staff meeting and go into the john and cry, and for a while I thought I might not be able to stop. But it wasn’t the thought of Adelle’s death that had undone me. It was remembering a scene from the end of Gandhi, when Gandhi, who’s fasted himself almost to death, advises a vengeful Hindu, whose son has been slain by Moslems, that he can only cure the wound of that loss if he will adopt an orphaned Moslem child as his own, and raise him in the Muslim faith. I don’t know why that should rack me up so, but it does. I could go off on another crying jag right now if I let myself.

  Would I (I’ve been wondering) have killed Amberwell finally? I did make provision for that eventuality. (Fortunately, for I was able, thereby, to dispose of Adelle’s corpse expeditiously.) But I like to think that in the end, when my satisfaction in acting as public avenger had palled, I would have simply driven the chloroformed Amberwell to some secluded spot—ideally one of Unitask’s own dumping grounds—and left him there to wake up as a free man, leaving it to him whether to raise a public hue and cry for what had been done. Somehow I doubt he’d have done that. I also doubt he’d have been able, with or without the help of the authorities, to discover who had played such a nasty trick upon him, since I’d taken reasonable precautions to cover my tracks. Amberwell never saw me without my Phantom of the Opera mask.

  In the event my precautions are all quite pointless. Amberwell has my entire curriculum vitae. He took my business papers, my passport, a family photo album, a stack of family letters, my Rolodex—everything but this manuscript, which had accompanied me to work in my attaché case.

  Should I give some kind of warning—at least to my parents? They spend their summers at a lakeside cabin whose seclusion is half of its charm. I haven’t done so from a dread of having to enter into explanations. In any case, what is the use of a warning so ill-defined? My hope, such as it is, must be that Amberwell’s appetite for revenge will be limited to my sole self.

  On the cue of my finishing the preparation of this manuscript, which will be entrusted to my attorney, to be opened only in the event of a prolonged and unexplained absence, I received a phone call here in my hotel room. After I a
nswered the fourth ring—which I did with reluctance, having registered here under an assumed name—there was a longish pause, then a click, and then the voices of the Mother Goose Consort singing:

  One-ery, two-ery, tickery, seven,

  Hallibo, crackibo, ten and eleven,

  Spin, span, muskidan,

  Twiddle-um, twaddle-um, twenty-one.

  Eeerie, orie, ourie,

  You, are, out!

  Violet Hunt

  The Prayer

  Violet Hunt was a socially connected British author, journalist and biographer, who was a friend and correspondent of Henry James, H. G. Wells and Ford Madox Ford, among others, and travelled in the social sphere of the finest writers of her day. She was a committed feminist. She published two collections of weird and supernatural stories, Tales of the Uneasy (1911), which is a rare book, and More Tales of the Uneasy (1925). Her fiction is characterized by a somewhat Jamesian manner and eye for social detail, and is worthy of serious attention and comparison to Edith Wharton’s ghost stories. “The Prayer” is a straightforward story of the Christian supernatural, an uncommon form of horror practiced notably in the contemporary period by Russell Kirk, but without any theological allegory in Hunt’s penetrating psychological portrayal of a bizarre marriage. The story resembles nothing so much as a Victorian children’s story, with the ironic moral: be careful what you pray for—you might get it and be punished horribly. It is interesting to compare it to the children’s stories of Lucy Clifford, a close friend of Hunt’s (and James’). Also to Thomas Hardy’s “Barbara, of the House of Grebe,” which deals with similar thematic material.

  I

  “It is but giving over of a game,

  That must be lost”

  —Philaster

  “Come, Mrs. Arne—come, my dear, you must not give way like this! You can’t stand it—you really can’t! Let Miss Kate take you away—now do!” urged the nurse, with her most motherly of intonations.

  “Yes, Alice, Mrs. Joyce is right. Come away—do come away—you are only making yourself ill. It is all over; you can do nothing! Oh, oh, do come away!” implored Mrs. Arne’s sister, shivering with excitement and nervousness.

  A few moments ago Dr. Graham had relinquished his hold on the pulse of Edward Arne with the hopeless movement of the eyebrows that meant—the end.

  The nurse had made the little gesture of resignation that was possibly a matter of form with her. The young sister-in-law had hidden her face in her hands. The wife had screamed a scream that had turned them all hot and cold—and flung herself on the bed over her dead husband. There she lay; her cries were terrible, her sobs shook her whole body.

  The three gazed at her pityingly, not knowing what to do next. The nurse, folding her hands, looked towards the doctor for directions, and the doctor drummed with his fingers on the bed-post. The young girl timidly stroked the shoulder that heaved and writhed under her touch.

  “Go away! Go away!” her sister reiterated continually, in a voice hoarse with fatigue and passion.

  “Leave her alone, Miss Kate,” whispered the nurse at last; “she will work it off best herself, perhaps.”

  She turned down the lamp as if to draw a veil over the scene. Mrs. Arne raised herself on her elbow, showing a face stained with tears and purple with emotion.

  “What! Not gone?” she said harshly. “Go away, Kate, go away! It is my house. I don’t want you, I want no one—I want to speak to my husband. Will you go away—all of you. Give me an hour, half-an-hour—five minutes!”

  She stretched out her arms imploringly to the doctor.

  “Well . . .” said he, almost to himself.

  He signed to the two women to withdraw, and followed them out into the passage. “Go and get something to eat,” he said peremptorily, “while you can. We shall have trouble with her presently. I’ll wait in the dressing-room.”

  He glanced at the twisting figure on the bed, shrugged his shoulders, and passed into the adjoining room, without, however, closing the door of communication. Sitting down in an arm-chair drawn up to the fire, he stretched himself and closed his eyes. The professional aspects of the case of Edward Arne rose up before him in all its interesting forms of complication . . .

  It was just this professional attitude that Mrs. Arne unconsciously resented both in the doctor and in the nurse. Through all their kindness she had realised and resented their scientific interest in her husband, for to them he had been no more than a curious and complicated case; and now that the blow had fallen, she regarded them both in the light of executioners. Her one desire, expressed with all the shameless sincerity of blind and thoughtless misery, was to be free of their hateful presence and alone—alone with her dead!

  She was weary of the doctor’s subdued manly tones—of the nurse’s commonplace motherliness, too habitually adapted to the needs of all to be appreciated by the individual—of the childish consolation of the young sister, who had never loved, never been married, did not know what sorrow was! Their expressions of sympathy struck her like blows, the touch of their hands on her body, as they tried to raise her, stung her in every nerve.

  With a sigh of relief she buried her head in the pillow, pressed her body more closely against that of her husband, and lay motionless.

  Her sobs ceased.

  The lamp went out with a gurgle. The fire leaped up, and died. She raised her head and stared about her helplessly, then sinking down again she put her lips to the ear of the dead man.

  “Edward—dear Edward!” she whispered, “why have you left me? Darling, why have you left me? I can’t stay behind—you know I can’t. I am too young to be left. It is only a year since you married me. I never thought it was only for a year. ‘Till death us do part!’ Yes, I know that’s in it, but nobody ever thinks of that! I never thought of living without you! I meant to die with you . . .

  “No—no—I can’t die—I must not—till my baby is born. You will never see it. Don’t you want to see it? Don’t you? Oh, Edward, speak! Say something, darling, one word—one little word! Edward! Edward! are you there? Answer me for God’s sake, answer me!

  “Darling, I am so tired of waiting. Oh, think, dearest. There is so little time. They only gave me half-an-hour. In half-an-hour they will come and take you away from me—take you where I can’t come to you—with all my love I can’t come to you! I know the place—I saw it once. A great lonely place full of graves, and little stunted trees dripping with dirty London rain . . . and gas-lamps flaring all round . . . but quite, quite dark where the grave is . . . a long grey stone just like the rest. How could you stay there?—all alone—all alone—without me?

  “Do you remember, Edward, what we once said—that whichever of us died first should come back to watch over the other, in the spirit? I promised you, and you promised me. What children we were! Death is not what we thought. It comforted us to say that then.

  “Now, it’s nothing—nothing—worse than nothing! I don’t want your spirit—I can’t see it—or feel it—I want you, you, your eyes that looked at me, your mouth that kissed me—”

  She raised his arms and clasped them round her neck, and lay there very still, murmuring, “Oh, hold me, hold me! Love me if you can. Am I hateful? This is me! These are your arms . . .”

  The doctor in the next room moved in his chair. The noise awoke her from her dream of contentment, and she unwound the dead arm from her neck, and, holding it up by the wrist, considered it ruefully.

  “Yes, I can put it round me, but I have to hold it there. It is quite cold—it doesn’t care. Ah, my dear, you don’t care! You are dead. I kiss you, but you don’t kiss me. Edward! Edward! Oh, for heaven’s sake kiss me once. Just once!

  “No, no, that won’t do—that’s not enough! that’s nothing! worse than nothing! I want you back, you, all you . . . What shall I do? . . . I often pray . . . Oh, if there be a God in heaven, and if He ever answered a prayer, let Him answer mine—my only prayer. I’ll never ask another—and give you back to me! As y
ou were—as I loved you—as I adored you! He must listen. He must! My God, my God, he’s mine—he’s my husband, he’s my lover—give him back to me!”

  “Left alone for half-an-hour or more with the corpse! It’s not right!”

  The muttered expression of the nurse’s revolted sense of professional decency came from the head of the staircase, where she had been waiting for the last few minutes. The doctor joined her.

  “Hush, Mrs. Joyce! I’ll go to her now.”

  The door creaked on its hinges as he gently pushed it open and went in.

  “What’s that? What’s that?” screamed Mrs. Arne. “Doctor! Doctor! Don’t touch me! Either I am dead or he is alive!”

  “Do you want to kill yourself, Mrs. Arne?” said Dr. Graham, with calculated sternness, coming forward; “come away!”

  “Not dead! Not dead!” she murmured.

  “He is dead, I assure you. Dead and cold an hour ago! Feel!” He took hold of her, as she lay face downwards, and in so doing he touched the dead man’s cheek—it was not cold! Instinctively his finger sought a pulse.

  “Stop! Wait!” he cried in his intense excitement. “My dear Mrs. Arne, control yourself!”

  But Mrs. Arne had fainted, and fallen heavily off the bed on the other side. Her sister, hastily summoned; attended to her, while the man they had all given over for dead was, with faint gasps and sighs and reluctant moans, pulled, as it were, hustled and dragged back over the threshold of life.

  II

  “Why do you always wear black, Alice?” asked Esther Graham. “You are not in mourning that I know of.”

  She was Dr. Graham’s only daughter and Mrs. Arne’s only friend. She sat with Mrs. Arne in the dreary drawing-room of the house in Chelsea. She had come to tea. She was the only person who ever did come to tea there.