The House That Jack Built

by Graham Masterton

  'Memories, hmm?' said Craig, looking up at the dilapidated roof.

  She nodded. 'Dad took me here on my eighteenth birthday.'

  Craig unexpectedly laid his hand on her shoulder, and gave it a squeeze. Effie turned and looked at him, but his head was turned.

  'I like it here,' he said, almost as if he couldn't believe it himself.

  'I'm pleased. I always did. There were two lovely people who used to run it, Mr. and Mrs. Berryman. They loved cooking and they loved making people feel contented and happy. Mrs. Berryman used to let me go into the kitchen and make pastry-people.'

  They went back down the steps. In the distance, they could see the blueish peaks of the Hudson Highlands, and the darker cloud-cloaked outline of Storm King Mountain. They could have been alone in the world, here by this deserted and broken-down inn, explorers of a long-lost civilisation. Whippoorwills called sadly from hill to hill.

  'Did you ever go up as far as Valhalla?' asked Craig.

  She shook her head. 'We came up here to eat, we ate, we went home. Dad was always promising to go for a walk in the woods, but he never did. He was always too full.'

  'I'd like to see what Valhalla is.'

  'It's just somebody's house.'

  'All the same, I'd like to see it.'

  Effie said, 'Okay.' She didn't mind what they did, so long as Craig remained as affable as this. He hadn't been so relaxed since the day before his 'accident', and she was beginning to think that this enforced vacation was really going to work.

  This morning, he had dressed in a camel-coloured linen suit, with a sky-blue shirt, a city dweller's ultimate concession to the countryside. But now he stripped off his coat and rolled up his sleeves and twisted open two more shirt buttons. 'I shouldn't have worn these goddamned loafers,' he said. 'I'll see if I can pick up some Timberlands when we get back to Cold Spring.'

  'You? In Timberlands?'

  He grinned, and patted her on the back. 'I'm on vacation, I'm allowed.'

  Up above the Red Oaks Inn, the gradient was so steep that Craig had to shift down into 2. But after a few minutes of laboured climbing, the road began to level out, and described a gradual left-hand loop to follow the upper contours of the hill, between slopes of tawny dried-out grass and nodding, undernourished wildflowers.

  They were so high up now that the wind began to fluff and whistle through the open windows. As they reached the crest of the hill, a thick barrier of hunched old oaks came into view, like an army of ogres rising to their feet. Although they were all mature, these oaks, most of them were so exposed to the weather that they had grown stunted and deformed, and several had been dramatically split apart by lightning strikes. But they formed a natural barrier from one side of the hill to the other, so that Effie could only imagine what lay beyond them. When she was a child, she had thought it was quite romantic for somebody to name their house Valhalla, but now when she was here, now she was actually standing in front of its gates, it seemed unsettling and perverse.

  The house might just as well have been named Purgatory; or Mictlampa, which was the Mexican land of the dead, where skeletons danced. Her parents' housemaid Juanita had told her all about Mictlampa, when she was little, and the memory of those stories still made her shiver.

  'This is so spooky,' she said.

  But Craig kept on driving with a look on his face that was almost one of dawning recognition. 'It's fantastic. I love it.'

  The road surface deteriorated into broken asphalt and shingle, with weeds and grass growing through it, but Craig continued to follow it at the same speed as it curved around the trees, even though it looked as if it came to a dead end. Past the last stand of oaks, however, a pair of tall wrought-iron gates came into view, sagging between two tall stone pillars. Craig drew the BMW right up to the gates, and stopped.

  'This must be it,' he said. 'Valhalla.'

  In places, the wrought-iron was rusted through, and the pillars were pockmarked and spotted with lichen. But all the same, the gates were gaunt and deeply impressive, as whoever had raised them had obviously intended them to be.

  Beyond here, these gates said, you are trespassing on land that belongs to me.

  Craig climbed out of the car and looked around. The summer wind whipped the grass around his ankles. Effie climbed out, too, her denim dress flapping.

  'What a place to have a house,' she said. 'Can you imagine trying to get up here in the winter?'

  Craig limped up to the gates and shook them. The left-hand gate had rusted completely off its hinges, and the bottom rail was buried in the shingle, but it would probably be possible to swing open the right-hand one. Beyond the gates, the road curved off to the right and down the other side of the hill, and so it was impossible to see anything but more trees.

  'I feel like…' Craig suddenly began, and then stopped, and looked around some more.

  'What do you feel like?' Effie prompted him.

  'I don't know. It's really strange. I feel like I was meant to come here.'

  She thought of his 'accident', and his repeated denials that destiny had guided him to the darkened doorway of K-Plus Drugs. Yet here he was, trying to suggest that destiny had brought him here.

  'You're feeling relaxed, that's all,' she told him. 'Your mind's off-guard. It's kind of like deja vu.'

  'No, no,' he said, shaking his head. 'It's not like deja vu at all. I don't have any feeling that I've been here before. I can't explain it. I just feel that I was meant to come.'

  Effie took hold of the gate, and tried shaking it, too, but it didn't even rattle. 'You may have been meant to come, but you sure weren't meant to go inside.'

  Craig paced up and down for a few moments. 'We could try pulling them open with the towrope.'

  'Craig... are you kidding me? This is somebody else's property. We could be sued. Besides, I don't want you ruining my car. Supposing you strained the engine? Supposing one of the gates fell onto the back of it?'

  'Okay, okay. Just an idea.'

  Effie stood watching him for a while. He seemed extraordinarily agitated, yet pleased, too, because he kept chivvying the palms of his hands together, the way he always did when he was excited or inspired.

  'What is it?' She took hold of his arm, and his face was radiant. 'Tell me what it is.'

  He grasped her shoulders, and then he hugged her close, really hugged her, for the first time since he had left home on the morning of March 16. Effie was so surprised and touched that she suddenly felt as if she had burrs in her throat, and her eyes filled up with tears. It had been so long since he had spoken with any affection at all, let alone showed it, that she was overwhelmed.

  'I was meant to come here,' he repeated. 'I don't know how, or why. But it's like hearing music, almost.'

  'Music?' Effie was moved, but completely baffled.

  He released her from the hug, but he still kept hold of her hands.

  'I can't explain it. I just can't explain it. But do you know what it's like, when you're passing somebody's house, on a summer afternoon, and they've opened all the windows, and you can hear music playing? Dance music, do you know what I mean? Dance music - tango, foxtrot, that kind of thing. And you think to yourself, I wonder what memories this is conjuring up, for the person who's listening to it. Is it happy, or is it sad? Maybe they danced to this music with somebody who's dead. Maybe they never had anybody to dance with.'

  'Craig,' said Effie, half-pleased and half-concerned. He had delighted her, with this sudden burst of affection, but he had alarmed her, too. She had never heard him talking this way before, even when they were first married.

  'It's all right,' he said. 'Everything's fine. Everything's going to be fine.'

  After a while, they climbed back into the car, and he started the engine. He turned around in his seat to back the BMW along the road. Effie took a last look at the rusting gates. They reminded her of Edward Gorey's drawings; the sort of sinister Gothic gates that might have been familiar to The Dwindling Party or the Gashlycrum
b Tinies ('A is for Amy who fell down the stairs').

  'We must be able to find out whose property this is,' said Craig. 'One of those realtors in Cold Spring should know.'

  'What does it matter whose property it is?'

  'I want to see it, that's why it matters.'

  'I expect it's all run down, just like the Red Oaks Inn.'

  'I want to see it, is that such a bad thing?'

  'No, no, of course not,' said Effie. She didn't want to upset him now that he was being so effervescent. If it took a visit to some derelict old house to lift him out of his trauma, then terrific.

  They had almost backed up to the point where Craig could turn the car around when she saw something moving, beyond the gates, where the oaks were darkest. It could have been nothing at all, a stray flicker of sunlight through the leaves. But she was sure that it was a figure; a very slim pale figure dressed in white or cream, watching them go.

  She didn't know why, but the sight of this figure alarmed her out of all proportion. She opened her mouth to say something to Craig, but then the figure was gone, or dissolved, or vanished. She suddenly thought of the man in the homburg hat she had seen through the red stained glass segment of the window at the inn.

  Red world, green world, and sickly amber world. Perhaps there was another world, too. A world glimpsed through closed gates and half-closed doors. A world where dance music was always heard through other people's open windows. She looked at Craig and he looked back at her, and she wondered if she had actually understood what he meant.

  SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 3:23 A.M.

  She opened her eyes. Somebody was standing at the end of the bed, watching her. A bulky, shadowy shape, its eyes glistening in the darkness. She was clutched with such fright that she couldn't breathe, couldn't speak. She tried to whisper, 'Craig' and reach out for him, but her voice wouldn't work and her hand wouldn't do anything but grip the sheet.

  'Sweetheart?' said the shape, all of a sudden. 'Are you awake?'

  She let out an exhalation of relief that was practically a scream. 'God, you scared me! God, you almost gave me a heart attack!'

  He came around the end of the bed and sat down close to her. He was wearing his white cotton pyjama pants, but that was all. He gently held her wrists and kissed her on the forehead. 'I'm sorry. I couldn't sleep.'

  'I thought you were a ghost or something.'

  'A ghost, weighing 200 pounds?' He kissed her again.

  'Do you want a Nytol?' she asked him.

  He shook his head. 'I don't feel like sleeping. I feel like I've just woken up.'

  'What do you want to do, then? Play Scrabble?'

  'I know this sounds crazy, but I thought I might drive back to Valhalla.'

  'Well, I don't mind. But I thought you were going to talk to a realtor first.'

  'I can't talk to a realtor at three-thirty in the morning.' Effie propped herself up on one elbow. The sheet slid down, and her breasts were bare. 'You want to drive back there now?'

  'I don't know. I have the urge to, that's all. I never felt this way before. It's like, if I go there, I'm going to find the answer to all of my problems.'

  'Oh, Craig, that's impossible. We can't. I don't mind going back with you in the morning, when it's light. But not now.'

  He sat up straight. For a moment she was afraid that she might have lost him again; that he was going to lose his temper. But then he nodded, and nodded again, and said, 'You're right. We'll talk to the realtor first, then we'll go back.'

  He climbed back into bed. She thought for a split second that he might make love to her, but then he turned his back like he always did, and by the time the clock in the hallway below struck four he was deeply asleep.

  SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 10:19 A.M.

  'Mr. Van Buren can see you now,' announced the secretary with the fiery hair and the firetruck-coloured lips and the huge circular spectacles. She waggled her way along the corridor in front of them, her bright green dress swinging from side to side.

  Walter Van Buren turned out to be an amiable old coot in a beige seersucker coat and brown Staprest pants and a necktie that proclaimed him to be a friend of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. He had a soft, beige, jowly face, and the palest eyes that Effie had ever seen, eyes that were strained to the colour of weak tea.

  On his beige hessian-covered walls hung photographs of his children and grandchildren, and framed awards from the Hudson Valley Realty Association and the Cold Spring Elks. Out of his window there was a view of a parking-lot, where a 10-year-old full-sized Buick baked in the morning sun; and a children's playground, where a lone mother sat reading, while her scarlet-suited child went around and around on the merry-go-round.

  'Understand you're interested in Valhalla,' said Walter Van Buren, indicating with a wave of his hand that they should sit. They sat. 'Valhalla's stayed empty since 1956. There's been some restoration work, but the only reason it's still standing is that it hasn't fallen down and nobody's gotten around to knocking it down.'

  'I'd still like to see it,' Craig put in. His hands were resting calmly in his lap.

  Walter Van Buren shrugged. 'You can see it, I guess. But if you're looking for large, high-class Hudson Valley property, then I can show you scores of homes you're going to like better, and which are much better value. One of them came onto the market just last week… here, look, Oscawana, a very fine property with seven bedrooms and four bathrooms and two half-bathrooms, not to mention a pool and a squash court and a view of Lake Oscawana. Here, take a look.'

  He nudged a brochure across his desk but Craig didn't touch it; didn't even drop his eyes to look at it.

  Walter Van Buren eased himself back in his chair and blinked with those colourless eyes and said, 'Valhalla… I have to be frank with you… Valhalla is more what I'd call your serious developer's buy. The house was something special, once upon a time. But it would take hundreds of thousands just to make it liveable. Millions, maybe. We had an approach from Trump but when their surveyors took a look over it… well.'

  'I thought realtors were supposed to sell realty,' Craig riposted. 'You know, stretch the truth a little. Make their property sound temping, even when it's nothing but a crock.'

  'Oh, no, don't get me wrong,' Walter Van Buren retorted, holding up his hand. 'Valhalla has one of the finest locations in the Hudson Valley Highlands. Unparalleled views. Privacy, seclusion. It's a house in a million.'

  'But it's badly run down?' asked Effie, trying to stop Craig from badgering Walter Van Buren so intently, and to see some sense.

  'I can't tell you a lie, Mrs. Bellman.'

  'How badly?' Craig wanted to know.

  Walter Van Buren took a worn green manila folder out of his in-tray and opened it up. He passed over an architectural side-elevation of Valhalla, and a blurry black-and-white aerial photograph. The house was designed in the neo-Gothic style, with tall chimneys and leaded windows, and it was huge.

  'My God,' said Effie, and laughed.

  'Let me put it this way,' said Walter Van Buren. 'This is a house you'd really have to have a passion for.'

  Craig picked up the photograph and stared at it for a long, long time. 'It's incredible. It really is.'

  'Well, it belongs to another time,' Walter Van Buren explained, watching him keenly. 'It belongs to the Rockefeller days, the FDR days, the Vanderbilt days. A very big house for a very big man.'

  'Do you know what needs doing to it, roughly?' asked Craig.

  'As I say, Mr. Bellman, I can't tell you a lie. The whole roof needs fixing, most of the windows need replacement, and like most of these older properties, it'll probably need rewiring, and replumbing, too.'

  'But it could be restored?'

  'By somebody who really had the passion for it, yes.'

  'Craig,' said Effie, 'I hope you're not seriously thinking what I think you're thinking. We need a house like this like a hole in the head.'

  'Oh, come on, sweetheart, I'd still like to take a look at it,' Craig told her. 'Who
owns it now?'

  'Well, what does it say here?' said Mr. Van Buren. 'A realty trust fund managed by Fulloni & Jahn, up at Albany. That's unless they've sold it or transferred it without letting us know. We haven't had any enquiries about Valhalla for well over a year.'

  'Maybe I should talk to these Fulloni & Jahn people.'

  'You could, for sure, if you really wanted to. I could give you their number. But I'm just trying to be realistic here, Mr. Bellman. Valhalla could seriously damage your financial health; and I wouldn't want that; because you'd never forgive me for it. Every time you drove past this office or saw me in the street, you'd say, "That's Walter Van Buren, who sold me that goddamned house, and ruined me." ' He gave a little dry laugh that was more like a dog barking.

  'Mr. Van Buren,' said Craig, 'I don't think you understand. I haven't even seen Valhalla from the outside; never laid eyes on it. But the moment we drove up that mountain and stopped outside of those gates... well, I don't know. I felt like I was there for a reason. I felt like I was meant to be there.'

  Walter Van Buren glanced edgily at Effie and cleared his throat. 'And, uh, what do you think, Mrs. Bellman?'

  'I think-' said Effie, and Craig lifted his head. 'I think that-' Craig focused his eyes on her. 'I think that, really, yes, maybe we could take a look, at least. If that's okay with you.'

  Walter Van Buren drummed his fingers on the green folder. Then he said, 'Okay… if that's what you folks want to do, then do it, by all means. As you so rightly say, Mr. Bellman, I'm here to sell realty, not to discourage you.' He stood up, and crouched in the corner of his office, where a small grey safe sat, and started to turn the combination lock. 'When would you care to view?'

  'Today?' Craig suggested. 'How about right now? We don't have any plans.'

  Effie said, 'Craig... don't forget we have a one-thirty lunch reservation at the Vintage Cafe...'

  But he waved her into silence and said, 'That's okay, that's okay. We'll make it easily.'