The Open Curtain

by Brian Evenson

  Should he put her in the trunk now? No, he thought, better to hide it in the closet out of sight and wait for nightfall.

  He sat on the bed, staring out the window, waiting. The sky, he could see, was going slowly dark. He felt drained, physically exhausted. He sat and stared.

  When it was fully dark he drew the curtains and got the trunk out, dragging it across the bedroom floor and into the kitchen. He had just begun to tug the body out from under the sink when someone spun the ringer of the door.

  He stopped, stayed still, holding the girl’s legs in his arms. After a moment’s silence, he tugged her the rest of the way out. He had just lifted her off the floor and was beginning to push her into the box when the ringer spun again.

  He steadied her on the lip of the box, tried to decide what he should do.

  “William?” said a voice through the door. “Is it you, William?”

  “Who is it?” he called. It was awkward holding her, crouched over the box as he was. He let go of her head and her torso fell into the open box, her legs still hanging over the edge. Her body was much suppler than he imagined it would be, this long after death. And her eyes were blinking at him again.

  “It’s me,” the voice behind the door claimed. “May I come in?”

  Me? he wondered. Me who?

  He lifted her legs and forced them into the trunk, let the lid fall. He went to the door, opened it a crack. A man, well-groomed, stood there.

  “Yes?” said Hooper. “Can I help you?”

  The man shook his head. “What a strange thing to say, William,” he said. “Don’t you recognize me?”

  He looked at the man a long moment, his thin face, bright eyes. “Elling?” he said.

  The man laughed. “Not Elling, William. One of the elders. From across the hall.”

  Behind his back, Hooper could hear a dull thumping. He half turned, saw the lid of the box give a leap.

  “Yes,” said Hooper. “I go by Hooper.”

  “Ah,” said the elder. “As you wish, Hooper. Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  “Can’t,” said Hooper. He glanced quickly behind. She had gotten one foot mostly out. What would it take for her to realize she was dead?

  “Can’t?”

  “Indisposed.”

  The other man regarded him quizzically. “Indisposed?” he asked.

  Hooper nodded.

  The elder nodded. “Well,” he said. “I can deliver my message from the doorstep, as it were. My companion and I wanted to invite you across the hall to join us for dinner. Do you care to come?”

  In just a moment, he thought, she will start screaming.

  “Can’t,” he said.

  “Can’t?” the man said.

  Hooper shook his head. “Indisposed,” he said. “Terribly sorry.”

  “Ah,” said the elder. “Indeed. I wish you the best, then.”

  “And I you.”

  The man started to say something more but Hooper was already closing the door. He turned and went back to the trunk, forced her foot back in. He closed the latches and bound the straps, then sat down on top of the lid to smoke. His hands, he realized, were shaking.

  Some time later he heard a sharp rap at the door. Like a man in a trance, he found himself moving to it, watched his hand turn the handle.

  The door slid open. It was a man who looked neither young nor old, wearing gloves. “Charles,” Hooper said.

  “Hooper,” said the man. “You didn’t imagine I’d abandon a friend in need, did you?”

  “I admit the thought had crossed my mind.”

  Elling came in, peeling off first one glove then the other, then held them like a bouquet in one hand. “She’s in the trunk?” he asked.

  “Who?” asked Hooper.

  “The woman,” said Elling. “Mrs. Pulitzer. You didn’t leave her in the closet again, did you? I thought we talked about that. I thought you’d understood.”

  “No,” said Hooper. “She’s in the trunk.”

  “Good,” said Elling. “Why didn’t you say so from the beginning?”

  He went to the trunk, opened it up, stared in. The girl was inside, knees folded up near her chest.

  “What exactly do you have to do with this?” asked Hooper.

  “Me?” said Elling, turning. “What makes you think I have anything to do with it?”

  “Come on,” Hooper said. “Why did you kill her?”

  “Kill her?” asked Elling, smiling. “But I didn’t kill her, Hooper.”

  He turned back around and fastened down the trunk. Putting his gloves on again, he took one of the handles of the trunk. “Give me a hand with this, Hooper. A cab is stationed below.”

  He sat beside Elling on the driver’s board, listening to the horses’ hooves. The trunk was behind them and inside the closed cab. Did I kill her? he wondered. He had no memory of doing any such thing. But if he hadn’t killed her, why would Elling suggest he had?

  Unless he wanted to protect himself.

  He turned and regarded the man beside him. He was wrapped in his coat, barely visible. How well did he know Elling? He couldn’t remember.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  The wrapped figure turned slightly, regarded him. “To free ourselves of this awful burden,” he said.

  Before long they reached the outskirts of the city, and soon too they had arrived at a drawbridge. Elling called out for the bridgeman, who came down and held up his lantern. Hooper turned his head away, and saw that Elling was doing the same.

  “Where are you going?” the bridgeman asked.

  “Across the bridge,” said Elling, his voice strange and hoarse.

  The man kept his lantern up a moment more and then turned. He went to his wheel, worked the drawbridge down.

  They crossed in silence. “We shall return a different way,” said Elling.

  They followed the road west down to where it crossed a canal over a stone-sided, wood-slatted bridge just wide enough for a narrow road and a brace of trolley rails.

  “As good a place as any,” said Elling.

  Hooper swallowed. “I suppose,” he said.

  Elling smiled. He tied the reins back and stepped down from the cab. Hooper followed him. They opened the door of the cab and dragged the trunk out.

  “Do we throw the whole thing in?” asked Hooper.

  “No point wasting a good trunk,” said Elling.

  He put his hands under the girl’s arms and pulled her out. “Take her legs,” he told Hooper, who did so. They carried her onto the bridge and rested her on the wall to one side.

  “We need something to weigh her down,” Elling said. “Otherwise she’ll float.”

  Hooper stood dumbly.

  “Go find something, Hooper,” Elling said. “And hurry.”

  Hooper nodded and turned away. What was there? A stone from the walls of the bridge? They were, it seemed, mortared in place. Was there anything in the cab? No. But on the floor of the cab was a square of yellow paper and on it, he could just make out in the moonlight, the word under.

  He stooped down. And he could see, hanging between the horses and the cab proper, a hitching weight. It looked absurd and in flux in the darkness, as if its shape had yet to be determined. Even after he had unhooked it and taken it in his hands it remained troublingly protean.

  He carried it back to Elling. “Will this do?” he asked.

  Elling regarded it, nodded. “A lodestone,” he said. “To be slung around the neck.” He fished a leather strap from one pocket and threaded it through the weight, then tied it around the woman’s waist.

  “I thought you said neck,” said Hooper.

  “Manner of speaking,” said Elling. “Up we go then, brother Hooper.”

  He took her again by the shoulders, waited for Hooper to grab the legs. Together they lifted the body over the side of the bridge, and let it fall into the canal below.

  It hit with a hard sound, like a stick striking rock, and was quickly swallowed
up. It was too dark in any case to see much of anything.

  They walked together back toward the cab, climbed in. They sat in silence for a moment, unmoving.

  “Well, that’s that,” said Hooper.

  “Don’t be too sure, friend,” Elling said, regarding him with a piercing eye. “Don’t be too sure.”

  It was nearing light by the time they got back to Young’s father’s apartments. There was already the bustle of noise and bodies in the streets, torpid still, just a few figures here and there, but growing.

  Elling pulled the wagon up short. Holding the reins in one hand he reached over to clasp Hooper’s hand with the other.

  Hooper took the hand dully, then slowly climbed down.

  “And the wagon, then?” asked Hooper, looking up.

  “Rented,” said Elling. “I’ll drive it about the streets a few hours and then return it.”

  Hooper nodded. He turned and walked to the street door, which he opened with a key he discovered in his pocket. When he turned about again, the street was empty, the cab gone.

  He climbed the stairs as quietly as he could, crossed the landing, and went into his apartment, locking the door behind him. Inside it was dark, a little dim light flitting through the windows. He felt his way through the kitchen and into the bedroom, let himself fall on the bed, fell almost immediately asleep.

  When he awoke, it took him a moment to understand where he was. At first there was only a gray space, featureless, unlit, as tight upon and around him as a coffin, which slowly began to congeal, if congeal was the right word, into something else. There, the edge of a cabinet, glass-fronted and snug against the wall, there a television, its screen lit and sound oozing—

  “Not a television,” said Elling, behind him. “Wrong place. No such thing as a television yet.”

  “What?” said Hooper. “How did you get in? How long have you been here?”

  But Elling was nowhere to be seen. Had he been imagining things? He sat up in bed, examined the room more closely. It was, he realized, his father’s room, in New York. He knew exactly where he was, exactly.

  But why had he slept in the bed where Anna had been killed? It made his skin crawl to think about it. He got up and brushed off his clothes. Her clothes, he realized, were still there, in the apartment, bundled in the closet with the sheets. He should have dumped them into the canal along with her corpse, shouldn’t he have? No, perhaps not. They wouldn’t have sunk like the body had.

  In any case, it was too late. He would have to dispose of them separately now. He would have to ship them away, somewhere far.

  Like Chicago, maybe.

  Why Chicago?

  No reason. Why not?

  He gathered the sheets from the closet and carried them out into the kitchen, stopped dead. In the middle of the floor was a trunk, lid thrown open, empty.

  But he hadn’t brought the trunk in. It was still in Elling’s rented cab.

  But perhaps Elling had realized and turned the cab around and brought the trunk back to him.

  But the lock was still on the door. He had locked the door and the door was still locked. How was it possible for the trunk to be here? It was as if he were missing something. Like he was having those blackouts again. He glanced at the cuff of his shirt, expecting to see it stained and spattered with blood.

  Wait a minute, he thought. What blackouts?

  “Lael?” he called.

  There was a slight nickering laugh. You have to try better than that to keep your friends straight, Rudd.

  He reached out and took the closet door handle. Still sitting, he turned it, pushed. The door slid slowly open to reveal a large room with perfectly straight walls and regular angles, a carpet on the floor that stretched from wall to wall to wall without gap or seam. A large bed with a woman on it, her ankles tied together with duct tape, her arms hidden behind her back. Her mouth was gagged and she was looking at him with fierce and determined eyes, trying to speak through her gag.

  He shut his eyes and kept them shut tight. On his knees he moved far enough back into the room to feel out the door handle and pull the door shut again.

  For a while he could hear, through the door, the noise of the girl, the sound of her thrashing. He tried to slow his breathing, tried to focus on the real world, tried to see the streets of New York, his father’s apartment. After a time he felt sufficiently himself to open the door again. This time he found only a closet, the girl gone, bloody sheets draped over the trunk and ready to be packed and shipped. Everything was as it should be.

  He dragged the trunk out of the apartment, leaving it on the landing as he turned around and locked the door. When he turned back, he could see one of the elders peering out of the other apartment, watching him.

  “Greetings, William,” the man said.

  “Please, Hooper,” said Hooper.

  “Hooper it is and shall be,” the elder said. “You’re going away, I take it? Traveling?”

  “No,” said Hooper.

  “Oh. I just assumed, the trunk and all—”

  “Not at all,” said Hooper. “Just a few things to be shipped to a friend.”

  “Can I be of service?”

  “No,” said Hooper. “I can manage, thank you.”

  “Well, then,” said the elder, somewhat stiffly, touching his hat. “A pleasure speaking with you.”

  When he was gone, Hooper dragged the trunk to the bottom of the stairs and out the front door. A boy was there, just across the street. He looked vaguely familiar. Hooper gestured to him and he came over.

  “Sir?” the boy said.

  “How’d you like to earn a little pocket money, lad?” asked Hooper.

  “Yes, sir,” said the boy, and then stopped and looked at Hooper askance. “For doing what?”

  “Just grab a handle and help me lug this trunk to the station.”

  The boy smiled and took hold. They started off down dusty streets, past brownstones, along the boardwalks.

  “Sir,” said the boy, half-turning.

  “What is it, you little scamp?” asked Hooper.

  “Did you hear word of the murder, sir?”

  Hooper stuttered in his steps but went on. “What murder?” he asked.

  “A woman, sir. Killed and then abandoned in a canal. Only the killer didn’t realize the canal went dry at low tide. A trolley man saw the body first thing this morning.”

  “I see,” said Hooper.

  “Grisly, sir,” said the boy. Turning, he half-looked at Hooper as he continued to shuffle forward. “What do you suppose drives a man to kill?”

  “Do I know you?” Hooper asked the boy. “I must confess you look familiar to me.”

  “No, sir,” said the boy. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen me in your life nor ever shall again.”

  Hooper nodded. They kept on, heading west, toward the train station.

  “Shouldn’t you hire a cab, sir?” asked the boy.

  Hooper shook his head.

  “Well,” said the boy. “You know best, sir. It isn’t very heavy in any case. What’s in it, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Personal effects.”

  “What’s meant by that, sir?”

  “Just a few things to be shipped to a friend.”

  “There can’t be much in there,” said the boy. “Not that I’m complaining.”

  It was suddenly becoming dark. Around them, the apartments and brownstones had begun to give away, opening up onto houses set back from the curb and from perfectly manicured lawns. Hooper could see a man, at the far end of the sidewalk, coming toward them.

  “This isn’t the way to the station,” said Hooper.

  “I’ve just been following your lead, sir,” said the boy. “I’m not to blame.”

  The man was coming toward them, walking slowly. Hooper looked about for a street sign, saw not the usual wooden post but on the corner a pole with a flap of metal painted green and lettered white. Timpview Drive, it read.

  Tim
pview Drive? he wondered. Where is that in relation to Penn Station? He was very lost, he realized, though a moment ago he had known exactly where he was. And now, he found, he was not even sure from which direction he had come.

  He turned to the boy, but he was gone, the other end of the trunk resting on the sidewalk. And it was not a trunk, he could now see, but a suitcase ingeniously wheeled at one end, a square of yellow paper reading trunk attached to it.

  The man was already there, nearly on him. Hooper looked up, smiled. The man nodded, squinting into the darkness, then stopped a few feet shy.

  “Nice evening,” the man said.

  “Yes, indeed,” said Hooper.

  “Not too hot, not too cold.”

  “That’s right,” said Hooper.

  “You’re a block over, aren’t you?” said the man. “Mrs. Theurer’s boy. Rudd. Married now, aren’t you?”

  Hooper began to shake his head and then stopped. Rudd Theurer. Did he know anyone by that name? “Yes,” he said. “That’s right. Rudd.”

  “Thought so,” said the man. “I have a way with faces. Mel Johnson,” he said, extending his hand. “You’ve got your father’s face.”

  Hooper took the hand, smiled. “You know my father?”

  Mel Johnson nodded. “Quite well before he died. A shame, that.”

  “But my father’s not—” Hooper started to say, but then stopped.

  The man, in any case, wasn’t paying much attention. “What’s in the suitcase?” he asked. “Traveling, are you?”

  “No,” said Hooper. “Just a few odds and ends.”

  “Where are you living now, then, young Rudd?” asked the man.

  “A few blocks away.”

  “What street?”

  “Over there,” said Hooper. “Just a few blocks that way.”

  “Just off Canyon Road? And what’s that on your suitcase? A post-it note?”

  “I have to go,” said Hooper. “I’m sorry.”

  “All right, then,” said the man, smiling. “Off you go. Nice to see you again.”

  Rudd passed the man and walked on, dragging the suitcase down the sidewalk. He would just keep walking, he thought, until he recognized something. If this Mel Johnson were questioned by the police, he would only say he had seen Rudd Theurer out pulling a suitcase down the sidewalk. And now he, Hooper, had a false name he could use. Perhaps others would mistake him for Rudd Theurer as well. If the police were to sniff out his trail, they would not find him at the end of it but only Rudd Theurer. He himself would be left safe and sound.