The Open Curtain

by Brian Evenson

  Or not, he thought. Would the police be likely to credit his story? And what if he told the story and it wasn’t his house, wasn’t his apartment at all, but the girl’s? How, then, to explain his own presence to the officer?

  “Your relation to the deceased?”

  “None.”

  “Then how is it you came to be in her apartment?”

  “Was it her apartment?”

  The officer would look at him sternly. “This one,” he would say to his recorder, “he’s not telling what he knows. Make a note of it.”

  “But I am telling all that I know,” he would protest. Yet by then it would already be too late.

  And then, sitting in the chair, staring at the unmoved body, he realized that it would be already too late long before that. Indeed, it would be too late the moment after the officer sat down at the table across from him and said:

  “Name?”

  What was his name? That indeed was the first thing. And the second, he thought, is like unto it: Was this his apartment or was it not? And finally, Who was this girl?

  He covered the body with a coverlet. This did not make him queasy and this indeed surprised him; he was made of stronger mettle than he would have believed.

  He left the apartment, crossed the hall to knock on the door opposite. But this too, he realized, was probably an error: were this not his apartment, he should not be seen.

  He could hear footfalls on the parquet on the other side of the door; lithely he crept back and away and closeted himself in the bathroom on the landing between apartments, leaving the door ajar so as not to give himself away, standing in the dark.

  The door opened and he heard a man’s voice.

  “Hello?” the voice said. “Is anyone there?”

  He tried to see the man through the crack between door and wall, but the angle wasn’t sympathetic and he saw nothing. He heard the man call out again, then heard him cross the landing, knock on the other apartment’s door.

  “Hooper?” the man called. “Are you there?”

  Hooper? he thought. As good a name as any other, and one he was vaguely willing to accept as his own. Was it his apartment, then?

  He stayed in the dark room until the other man had left the landing and gone back into his own apartment. Then he crept down the stairs and out the front door.

  The day outside was bright and slightly cold. He stayed as he could to the walk, to avoid the puddles that at times were splashed up by the passing wagons—

  Wagons? he thought. Can that be right?

  Yes, he thought, that’s right.

  There was, he could see, on the other side of the street, a boy, possibly twelve years old, leaning against the wall. His face looked somewhat familiar. The boy was looking at him from under his hat, tossing some trinket up in the air and catching it in his palm. As he came closer, he saw that it was a rabbit’s foot on the end of a length of thong.

  “You get luck out of that?” he asked the boy.

  The boy nodded. “Never did bad by it,” he said. “You need luck? I’ll sell it to you cheap.”

  Hooper shook his head. “Superstition,” he said.

  The boy smiled. “What’s wrong with superstition?” he asked. “Who says it don’t work?”

  Hooper took a coin out of his pocket, held it between himself and the boy. “This coin is for you if you fetch the police,” he said, “bring them back to that house over there.”

  “Yeah?” said the boy. “And what if I say the coin’s for the rabbit’s foot.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I’m not going to any fucking police,” said the boy, his face growing red, contorting. “The last thing you need right now is police, brother. What you need is a little luck.”

  “Are you asking for a fight?” Hooper started to say, but even as he said it the boy folded over and then seemed to gather himself like a bird. When he unfolded again he was big, taller than Hooper, with a face that looked simultaneously young and old.

  “Goddam it, Hooper,” he said, “don’t you remember the fucking sequence? I’m not even supposed to be in this part of it.”

  “Lael?” Hooper said.

  “No, you shit, Elling. It’s Elling now.”

  “Oh,” said Hooper. “Elling. Right.”

  Elling took him by the hand, began to walk. “Listen carefully. You don’t go to the police.”

  “I don’t?”

  “That’s the last thing you want. You’ve got to stop screwing this up.”

  “But—”

  “I mean it,” said Elling, leading him up to the stairs and into the house. On the landing, he motioned for Hooper to be quiet, didn’t speak again until they were behind his door. He said, “And the other thing: I didn’t do this. Don’t blame me.”

  “Do what?”

  “The girl. I didn’t do that. You did it, friend.”

  “I did?”

  “Don’t you recognize her?”

  “Should I?”

  The room around him, what he could see of it, was beginning to fade, going gray. He watched the walls before him shiver, and began to feel there was something underneath—

  Elling put a hand on either side of Hooper’s head, staring into his eyes. “Focus, Hooper, focus.”

  “Oh,” said Hooper, confused. “All right.”

  “Look,” said Elling. “We’ll leave you clues or something. Notes. Will that help?”

  Hooper looked at him, confused. “It can’t hurt,” he finally said.

  “Right,” said Elling. “Third time’s the charm.”

  1

  For a moment he was not certain where he was. There was at first only a gray space, unlit, without features, closed in tight around him like a coffin. Yet after a moment he could see that some portions were not uniform, and began to make out simple planes that became more complex, more intensive, shades of lighter and darker gray. A moment later he could not understand how he had seen it as gray at all, for he now could see a high variance of both color and contour.

  He was, he could see, in a room. He was sitting on a chair beside a bed. No, no, he was lying on a plank floor, beside a bed, beside a chair. Carefully he pulled himself up, into the chair. His body felt weak, his limbs hesitant to accept his commands. His hands ached.

  From the chair he could see someone lying in the bed, a young woman, turned on her side and away from him. She was lying on top of a thinnish tapestry, but partly beneath a coverlet. Her shoulders were bare, her hair tangled and spreading wispily away from him.

  His hands tingled. He looked down at them. They looked as his hands had always looked. Yet there was something odd about his sleeve. Attached near his wrist was a perfectly square piece of paper with some writing on it. The paper was colored an oddly uniform and pale yellow, unlike any paper he had ever seen. It was resting on his sleeve and clearly affixed, but he could see no pin affixing it.

  He reached out and touched it, tugged it. It came away in his hand without much effort. Yet when he pressed it again to his sleeve it affixed itself again. He removed it again and found a strip on its underside to be covered with a gummy substance not unlike glue.

  Ingenious, he thought. He stuck the slip onto his sleeve again, and it held! He removed it, then stuck it to the back of the chair. It stuck there too, equally well. He removed it, saw that it left no residue. Incredible! he thought. So simple and yet—

  For a brief moment he saw flash up before him a quivering and angry face, simultaneously young and old. It startled him, confused him, and when he turned back he found that he had been mistaken about the paper. It was a simple piece of ordinary paper, machine milled, a pin through it. He sat staring at it a long moment before thinking to read what was written on it:

  Your name is William Hooper Young. You go by Hooper.

  Of course it is, he thought. Of course I do. But why bother to write this on a piece of paper and pin it to my arm?

  When he lifted his head he realized there was a scrap of paper pinned t
o the girl as well, fluttering on the end of a straight pin stuck lightly into her back, just to one side of her spine. He reached out, took hold of the pin, carefully worked it free. The tip of it was red and slick, but no blood oozed from the hole it left. He pushed the pin into the bed frame, read the note.

  Anna Pulitzer. An acquaintance and a sinner.

  He crumpled the paper up and dropped it onto the floor.

  “Anna,” he said. “Wake up, Anna. While you’ve been sleeping someone’s been pushing pins into your back.” He began to reach for her, to prod her bare shoulder, but did he know her well enough to do so? What was the degree of their intimacy, if any? An acquaintance, the note had said. What was she doing nude in this bed, and he himself fully clothed?

  She did not move. He cleared his throat. She still did not move. He cleared it again, louder this time. She was a sound sleeper.

  “Anna,” he said again and reached out to take her shoulder. Her flesh was cool to the touch.

  He began to be very afraid.

  He stood and leaned over her. He could see through her hair something amiss with her forehead; blood was matting together strands of hair. When he brushed the hair back he saw blood puddling in her eye socket, starting to coagulate and film over. With the flat of his hand he rolled her off her side, turning her face up. Beneath her the tapestry and bedding were stained dark with blood, and he saw her left temple caved in, slowly leaking blood and brain. Her belly too was neatly slit, the gash almost as long as his hand, slightly puckered. A scrap of paper had been wound into a tight scroll and inserted into her belly button. When he removed and unrolled it, he saw that it read:

  Deceased. Murdered.

  Sweet Lord, he thought. And then thought, Who is leaving these notes? The handwriting was small and spidery, nearly illegible. Was it his handwriting? He did not think it was. But he wasn’t certain.

  But there, didn’t he just see the body’s eye blink? Anna’s eye? No, it was impossible. Anna was dead, the note said as much. But there again, the eye, blinking. But how could he even see the eye, filmed as it was with blood? And weren’t her lips moving?

  Am I going mad? Hooper wondered. And there was, he now saw, a note on the bedside table, two notes in fact. One folded around a knife, saying:

  Your knife.

  Another, lying flat on the bedside table:

  Stay focused, Hooper.

  Focused? he wondered. But on what exactly?

  He crumpled the note and dropped it to the floor. When he looked up he saw that there were notes everywhere, on the walls, on the doors, on the floor. How he had not noticed them before, he did not know. He began to be very afraid. Please help me, he thought, and made his way slowly through the room and toward the front door. He tried not to step on any notes, but by the time he reached the front door he found notes pinned to his arms and legs and the front door too was bristling with them. He reached out for the knob, and they began to flutter all around him.

  Son of a bitch, he thought.

  What was going on exactly? He needed to relax, to focus, to stay focused. The note had said as much. Calm down, relax, stay focused. But how was that to be done exactly?

  When he took a few steps back from the front door, the notes settled, and the breeze, if it had been a breeze that had so motivated them, died out. And when he took a few more steps back the notes seemed to melt away into the door.

  He turned back and went into the bedroom. Anna was still lying on the bed, same position, still dead, still winking at him. Stay focused, he told himself.

  There was, he saw, a note on the bedside table, beneath the knife. Why he hadn’t seen it before, he couldn’t say.

  Hide the body, you fool, the note said.

  Ah, he thought, immediately feeling calmer. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  He wrapped the body in the sheets and the tapestry, then dragged it off the bed, the body sliding all at once into a heap. He dragged her by the feet across the floor and opened the door that was marked with an unusual-looking square yellow piece of paper—or rather (what was he thinking?) an ordinary scrap of paper—closet.

  The small room was empty, the walls a cheap pasteboard, cracked in places. He pushed her in, leaned her against the wall, tucked the sheets in with her. He closed the door, stepped back for a look.

  There was something underneath the note. He reached out and pulled the note away. Beneath was another note.

  Not safe enough, the note said.

  No, he thought, not safe enough. Anybody could come in and open the closet door, catch sight of the body. Not that people normally did come into one’s house and open one’s closet, but still. What if they did?

  Not safe enough, not safe enough, he thought. He was getting anxious. He looked at the closet door. Where is the note? he wondered.

  What note? he wondered.

  Oh Christ, he thought, holding his head in his hands, stay focused.

  What was it he was supposed to be worrying about? Yes, the body.

  No, the closet was no good. But what then? He couldn’t put her under the bed, the bed had a box frame, so there was no under to the bed. The closet might be good if there was something else in the closet, something he could hide her body under or beneath. The pantry? Same problem as the closet. Under the sink?

  Yes, he thought, under the sink. Would she fit?

  He dragged her out of the closet. Carefully he dragged the mass of bedding and body out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. He parted the sink and looked under it. Was there enough room? Well, not with the bedding perhaps, but the body, yes, if he folded it over, perhaps so. Was it too stiff to fold? No, it seemed supple enough. Probably she had not been dead for long.

  He took the body under the neck and knees, folded her so her knees were touching her breasts. Turning her sideways, he forced her back-first under the sink. He had to hook her ankles behind a pipe to get her to stay in place.

  He stood and admired his handiwork. When he dragged the sink’s skirt into place, she could not be seen at all.

  And what about the bedding? He carried it around the kitchen and through the bedroom, finally dropped it in the closet, turning it round so the bloodstains and gore could not be immediately seen. It looked ordinary, like any other heap of soiled bedding.

  He returned to the kitchen, poured a glass of silty water from the sink, drank it down. She was there, he thought, a few inches from his feet.

  Why am I not anxious? he wondered. And why too was he doing this, hiding a dead body, a murdered body? What, if anything, do I have to do with her death? And these notes, who was writing them, and why was he paying attention to them? No, he thought, getting anxious again, something is wrong. Something didn’t click, something was out of joint. He would be well served to figure out what it was.

  He began to pace back and forth.

  At last he put his water glass down on the table, dropped wearily to his knees, and with the back of his hand parted the skirt surrounding the sink.

  The girl was there, still folded up. There was, he realized, a rag stuffed into her mouth, filling it. Had that been there before? He didn’t remember it. He reached out and very carefully tugged it free. It kept coming and coming.

  “Please,” the dead girl said, once it was completely free of her mouth. “You don’t have to do this to me. Untie me.”

  “But you’re not tied up,” he said. “You’re just folded up. And you’re dead.”

  The girl was silent a long moment. “I want you to listen,” she finally said. He could hear her words clearly but somehow did not see her lips move. “See these? These are ropes. I want you to untie them.”

  But see what? he wondered. She hadn’t moved, not at all. What did she think she was showing him? It was like fingernails or hair, he thought, growing on after death. Her voice didn’t know she was dead yet.

  “This is some sort of trick,” he said.

  “No,” the body was saying, and went on about the ropes. But what was that, flutte
ring, on her shoulder?

  “You’re having a bad dream, Anna,” he told her, and reached out and took from her shoulder a small perfectly uniform piece of yellow paper.

  Do not hold converse with the dead, it read.

  Good advice, he thought.

  “Anna?” she was saying. “But who’s Anna? I’m—”

  But luckily he had already begun tucking the rag back into her mouth. Soon the skirt was hanging properly again, and she was nowhere to be seen.

  2

  What he needed, he realized, was a trunk. A large trunk. He would put the body in that and smuggle it from the house. No one would be the wiser. He would get it out of the house and then they would have no way of implicating him in the crime. Or Elling either. Where was Elling? He had thought it would be, considering Elling’s own proclivities for men, safe to leave him with the girl—he and Anna had been alone before, never to disastrous result. But apparently he had been wrong. Elling had killed the girl, who admittedly was a sinner. An acquaintance and a sinner, he wanted to say for some reason. They were never that close, despite what Anna herself had hoped for. But he had not killed her; Elling had killed her. Or at least that was what, if asked, he would tell the police.

  What was the truth of it? The truth was that he couldn’t remember. Better then not to go to the police. Better simply to divest himself of the body and continue on as if nothing had happened.

  The trunk, then. Easy enough to acquire. He simply stepped out into the street and spoke to a boy who struck him as oddly familiar. A few coins were exchanged and moments later the boy came back down the street, lugging an empty trunk behind him.

  Inside the apartment, boy dismissed, Hooper opened the trunk and looked in. It will do, he thought. He could tuck her in and carry her out; she was small enough to fit, if he bent her right, if she wasn’t stiff yet. He reached his hand in past the sink’s skirt, felt her. No, she was still warm, not stiff yet. She must not have been dead long.