by Harvey Click
Okpara looked in his rearview mirror and said, “We seem to have picked up a tail.”
“Peter?”
“No. I see Mr. Easton’s car following us about half a block behind.” Okpara smiled. “You seem to have found yourself a very vigilant watchdog. That is good.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Wednesday evening Ben grilled two T-bone steaks, and Sarah was surprised to find that she ate all of hers. She ate all of her baked potato too and her salad and even a slice of store-bought cherry pie.
She realized that she was feeling a bit better, and she had no idea why. She had been reciting Ben’s mantra every time she started feeling guilty, and maybe it was helping. Even Ben seemed happier than he had that first night she met him; he was still taciturn, but he seemed warmer and he even smiled occasionally. She noticed too that he hadn’t been drinking much, maybe just one beer during the day and a glass of whiskey after dinner.
He poured himself one now and asked her if she wanted anything. “Some wine,” she said, and he poured a glass for her.
“I don’t have any appointments tomorrow,” he said. “I’m thinking of driving to Mount Vernon, but I don’t want to leave you here alone, so I’m thinking of asking a friend to come over and help you keep an eye on things. Is that okay?”
“What’s in Mount Vernon?”
“A good friend of mine lives there. He’s a folklore collector and local history buff, wrote a book a few years back about haunted houses in Ohio. He called me today, and I asked him about the Gus Dietrick place because if anything awful has ever happened in Ohio, Ed Hardin knows about it. He says it’s the most haunted house in Ohio—he has a bunch of stories about it. He says it’s still standing, sort of. After Gus died the land was auctioned for back taxes, and the farmer who bought it never bothered to tear down the house. Ed says teenagers go there to make out and come back with stories that don’t have anything to do with sex. He knows the owner and thinks he can get permission for me to see it. I know it sounds crazy, but I’d like to look at the place and try to get some sense of it. I want to know what makes Darnell tick.”
Sarah pictured a bleak, rotting house, and it seemed to fit right into her gallery of horrors, along with Gus Dietrick’s coffin, the bones in Angel’s closet, the headless body in the tub, the casket she had seen yesterday. But she also remembered the Philo Vance mysteries she had enjoyed reading as a kid: the way to find a murderer was to understand him psychologically. Even a decaying house and some old ghost stories might be helpful.
“I want to go too,” she said.
“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think the place will just depress you more.”
“I want to go,” she said.
***
Matthew Hamelin staggered down the stairs and out the door into the transfigured night. His van was parked near Angel’s apartment, but his head was exploding with so many images that he didn’t believe he could drive, and he chose to walk the many blocks to his apartment though his achy legs moved jerkily like rotting bones wired together.
He wanted to pick up a few things, clean clothes and a pair of sunglasses and all the cash stashed under his mattress, and then he would walk back if his jerky legs could do it. But he would make them do it—even if his legs fell off he would somehow walk back to his beauteous Pre-Raphaelite muse, his lovely haunter of tombs and ruins, his mistress and queen for now and evermore.
Headlights burst like grenades in his head even if he shut his eyes. To avoid them he reeled into alleys and dark narrow streets, hugging the shadows. Every shadow was a poem woven of darkness. He was astonished that he had never noticed this before, but he realized that until now he had been nothing more than a blind poseur. There were poems everywhere, holy litanies whispering from every puddle of darkness, and while he plunged through the alleys hearing dogs bark at him and seeing the flicker of TV screens through the windows of the blind, the strange poems of the night rushed through his head on a river of ebony:
Brain staring blankly at blank dumb matter dancing for the moment with a dying fire’s flicker—the night is ill in the alleys where she wanders—flames beating wings of shadow on walls scribbled with holy graffiti this shadow show of animal teeth and breath—each place where she lies down to sleep is his grave—flames beating wings of shadow against a cave wall a TV screen flickering secrets in the dark—stones hushed over her dead give her sweet poison for succor—a cave drawing etched in the first moment of time glimpsed in the dying fire’s ballet of flame before walls return to darkness and primordial goblins suck your bones—drink deep of his dark poison and be free—a ghost of other light flutters and murmurs with hidden whims where his old bones wait—see, see again, see anew, see with altered eye—then the graffiti’s secrets are hidden in the dancing darkness the lips of death pressed against your eyes to shut off the world each eye the planet’s dying ember—then go to worship where old bones lie.
***
Angel watched from her window as the poet stumbled away. She let the drape fall and turned back to the box surrounded by black candles in the center of the room.
One reason she had chosen this small apartment was the old refrigerator, with a latch instead of magnets to hold the door shut. She had removed the shelves, dragged it to the middle of the room, laid it on its back and punched a few air holes in it.
It had done its work. It had given her the last key, the seventh name. Her years of toil would soon bear fruit.
In the beginning her job had been almost impossibly difficult because then she had been weak, able to overpower Darnell for only a few hours at a time and only a few times each year, but with each new key she had grown stronger and wiser. After receiving the fifth key, she had become more adept at choosing men who had the ears to be name-bringers. Instead of toiling through several failures for each success, she had recognized Peter Bellman at once as a name-bringer, and likewise Matthew Hamelin.
The other one, Paul Finney, had been a mistake. He had gone mad in the darkness.
Angel stepped inside the ring of lit candles, knelt before the box, and began to speak each name in succession. They were names but more than names, words but more than words. They were three-dimensional shapes in space that unlocked realms the uninitiated knew nothing about. They were seven incantations, the seven seas of occult knowledge, the seven keys to the seven doors of the soul, the seven runes for the seven stigmata.
As she spoke the new name, the seventh and final key, she felt its power sweep through her as swiftly as a wind. The candles guttered and blew out.
Then she heard her loved one’s voice clearly at last, not as vague sounds in her ears but as sharp ciphers in her brain, a secret placement of hermetic symbols, a sacred pattern of augury sticks, an omen of entrails, a language of dancing crows, a whisper of dried leaves rustling along the furrows of her brain.
She strained to hear the beloved voice, and it showed her an image of a house that she recognized from childhood, a brick mansion with a tall watchtower in the center of the roof.
It told her what she must do.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
By Thursday Sarah had recovered enough to enjoy the country drive, the green farms sprawling on either side of the road, the smell of hay and field corn blowing in through the windows of Ben’s car.
She had never seen Mount Vernon before, and she liked the attractive town square surrounded by a quaint downtown, the old courthouse and old churches, the pleasant streets lined with big Victorian houses that seemed to belong in New England. She decided that when all of this was over she was going to make an effort to be happy again. But that would be a while.
After a long hot dry spell, the sky was trying to rain but seemed to have forgotten how. It darkened and roiled and brooded and occasionally even grunted with thunder, but it couldn’t produce a drop. When Ben parked in front of Ed Hardin’s big gabled house, the clouds that strained above it echoed the gray-blue paint on its wood siding and the lilac and purp
le that accented its gingerbread.
Ben banged the bronze knocker, and a moment later several images of a man appeared in the leaded-glass window as he unlocked the door. The door opened, and Ed Hardin smiled at them, a white-haired man about 70 with a neatly trimmed white beard.
While Ben introduced them, Sarah could see that Ed was under the impression she was Ben’s lover. He seemed to approve heartily, giving her a welcoming smile and a warm handshake. Then he winked at Ben and said, “Ben, you’re looking so much happier!”
If Ben looked happier now, Sarah hated to think what he had looked like before. But come to think of it, maybe he had been looking a bit more cheerful lately, and she wondered what there was to cheer him up.
“Well, I got permission to look at the house,” Ed said. “Your timing is good. The owner said he’s planning to knock it down this fall. He’s afraid some teenager will fall through the floor and sue him. You sure you really want to see that dump?”
“We’re sure,” said Ben. “But first let me see your bathroom.” He headed down the hallway.
Ed smiled at Sarah and shook his head. “A brain surgeon couldn’t change that man’s mind. Would you like a Coke or something?”
“No thank you.”
“Well, let’s sit down.”
The foyer was so regal with its crystal chandelier that Sarah almost hated to leave it, but the living room was even more magnificent. She sat on a sofa that Victoria herself might have sat on.
“Nice,” she said, glancing around at display cases and shelves filled with curios.
Ed smiled, his blue-gray eyes warm and merry. “I suppose it’s a bit excessive for a single man, but I enjoy it. Have you known Ben long?”
“No, just a few days.”
“I’ll bet he’s not told you a word about helping me with my book.”
“He said you’d written one.”
“But I’ll bet he didn’t tell you that he wrote a long introduction. Very interesting, too, the psychological significance of ghost sightings. Really the best part of the book. Without his introduction, it would be just another collection like a thousand others. He wouldn’t take a dime for doing it, seems almost embarrassed if I mention it. That’s the way Ben is. He never beats his own drum.”
Sarah wondered if Ed was trying to play matchmaker.
“I’ve known him for many years,” Ed said. “We belong to the same shooting club. Did he mention that?”
“No.”
Ed certainly didn’t resemble what Sarah had always pictured as a gun nut. Funny world, she thought: a gun-control zealot like Peter trying to strangle her and a shooting enthusiast sitting here looking as dangerous as Santa Claus.
“Of course Ben wins all the trophies,” Ed said.
“He seems so, I don’t know, so shut off,” Sarah said. “Sometimes I wonder what shut him off.”
Ed frowned. “You mean he hasn’t told you? No, come to think of it, I suppose he wouldn’t. Not like Ben to talk about his problems.” He heard Ben returning and said, “Well, shall we go before this storm hits?”
Ed insisted on sitting in back so Sarah could sit up front with Ben. “I didn’t put any stories about the Dietrick house in my first book,” he said, “because I’m devoting an entire book to the place. I’m almost finished writing it. They’re not the usual tales. Usual ghost story goes something like this: old woman murdered in her house so people who go there see her ghost moaning and banging around. So in this case you’d expect people to see ghosts of the children who died there, or maybe creepy old Gus, but almost no one has reported seeing them, and the few who have don’t sound convincing, just some kids who want to sound interesting but probably haven’t even been there. I always try to verify their stories by questioning them on details of the house.”
“So you’ve been inside it?” Ben asked.
“Yes, but I don’t believe I’ll ever go inside it again. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just wait in the car. And I won’t be very happy waiting there, either. Turn left up here.”
They were already out of town, and Ben turned from the highway onto a narrow road lined with woods. It was beautiful countryside, sparsely populated and gently hilly. Storm clouds hung over the knolls and valleys, still keeping their dark burden to themselves. Sarah remembered that it had been raining the day Darnell was found in the box, and she hoped it wouldn’t rain while they were in the house.
“Sounds like you’ve got your own story to tell,” Ben said.
“Maybe so, but I’m not telling it. Ruins the scientific objectivity of the collector, you know.”
“If they didn’t see ghosts of children, what did they see?” Sarah asked.
“Nothing remarkable, most of them. A dark presence, a suffocating shadow, an evil mist. Some of them say they saw a shadow moving like a man. Pretty vague and unsensational, I know, but the remarkable fact is the number of people who’ve experienced it. And the number who say they’ll never go back, not for love or money. You hear other ghost stories calmly recounted, sometimes even humorously, but not the Dietrick stories. When people tell you about their experiences there, I tell you, the sweat breaks out on their foreheads.”
“Any place where bad things happened will provoke people’s imaginations,” Ben said. He was driving slowly because the road was pocked with chuckholes.
“Sure,” Ed agreed. “Every ghost story takes place where something creepy happened. But, Ben, you should hear some of these people tell their stories. I have tape recordings, and you can hear it right over the tape. Big macho teenage bullies with their voices shaking like scared schoolgirls. They tell some doozies, too. Some of them say they saw more than scary shadows, but they didn’t see ghosts of children. This might interest you, Ben. What they saw was always a ghost from their own past, not from the history of the house. One young woman saw her mother, who had died of cancer, saw her walking in the dining room, emaciated and naked. The tumors were outside of her body, hanging onto her white skin like enormous purple leeches. Turn right after this hill.”
They turned from the narrow road to a narrower one. There was a woods on one side, a field of soybeans on the other. Ahead, Sarah saw a small boxy house that looked empty.
“Is that it?” she asked.
“No. There are a couple other deserted houses on the road,” Ed said. “That’s another thing: no one seems to like to live on this road.”
Ben chuckled. “Think you just stretched it a little too far, Ed. You had me half believing you for a minute.”
“Well, it’s true. A family named Siskens used to live in that one back there. They live in town now. They say they couldn’t stand the place. They say it drove their daughter insane. Something sure did, she’s a raving lunatic now.”
“So you’re saying the whole road’s full of haunted houses?” Ben asked. “Maybe you can get a movie contract on this.”
“Maybe they’re all haunted, but none of them are as haunted as the Dietrick house,” Ed said. “Okay, here’s one. A man, and he wasn’t a teenager either, he was a crusty old farmer, nobody’s fool. He was driving by the Dietrick place when his dog jumped off the bed of his pickup truck and ran into the house. The dog was in there barking its head off and the man couldn’t get him to come out, so he went in after him. The dog was upstairs, barking at something in the hallway. It was the man’s brother, who’d been killed a year before when he fell into a hay bailer. I’ll let you imagine what he saw, all mauled up, pus and blood dripping from the wounds. But here’s the interesting part. This farmer and his brother had always been as close as that, but since this experience he’s repudiated his brother’s memory. He’s burned all his brother’s things, even photographs. He says his brother is damned and in hell. No one can change his mind.”
“You love ghost stories, Ed, and like any good storyteller you’re building us up for the moment when you leap up from the campfire and say ‘Boo!’“
“I’m just a collector, and I’m just telling you what I’ve co
llected. Here’s an interesting story for you. A young guy saw his murdered girlfriend in there. He was so shaken up that he went straight to the police station and confessed that he’d killed her a year before. He’s sitting in prison right now.”
There was a large red barn on the left and past it an enormous brick house with curtains in the windows and a car in the long driveway.
“Doesn’t look like those people moved out,” Ben said.
“That’s the Stonebrenner place,” Ed said. “A young couple live there, probably because the rent’s cheap. That place has an interesting story too. Now, the Dietrick house is on the right just past this hill.”
Sarah gazed at the Stonebrenner mansion, which sat nearly as far off the road as Ben’s place. It looked out of place on this forlorn road, darkly majestic with a round belvedere or watchtower in the center of the roof that rose a story above the rest of the house. About 100 yards past it was a small family cemetery inside a grove of trees. She had seen places like this in the east, estates belonging to families who had gained their prominence back in the days of the pilgrims.
The Dietrick place, when it appeared on the right, looked anti-climactic, a plain two-story farmhouse, its rotting wood siding utterly devoid of paint, its front porch roof caved in, its yard a field of thistles and milkweed. Almost not a house anymore. With every door open and every window broken, it looked as if its secrets would have escaped long ago.
Ben pulled into what was left of the driveway, and Ed pointed to a pile of wood and tin to their right. “There’s the barn where Gus Dietrick was found. We’ll, now you’ve seen it. Why don’t we get back before these clouds break.”
“Sarah, you stay here with Ed,” Ben said. “I’m going to step in for just a minute.”
She stared at the gray windowless hulk, the dark clouds brewing above it.
“I’m coming too,” she said.