'Well, Mr. Bellman,' said Norman. 'I don't know what to say.'
'Say you'll restore it, that's all.'
Norman looked at Effie, and again she had the strongest feeling that he was trying to tell her something, but she couldn't understand what it was.
Then he said, without taking his eyes off her, 'Sure, I'll restore it, if that's what you want. I'd love to. But it could need more than restoration, couldn't it, don't you think?'
Craig ignored him, and started to walk further down the corridor. 'Let's go see the master bedroom, shall we? That's what I really want to see.'
Effie stayed behind. She looked into the bedroom with the stained blue carpet and the rag-cluttered fireplace and she knew that there was something badly wrong here. The sobbing - well, she could have imagined the sobbing. The man on the stairs, he could have been a derelict. But it was the thick and terrible atmosphere that frightened her the most. Throughout Valhalla, the very air that she inhaled seemed to be denser, and pungent with antiseptic, as if somebody had committed the most hideous of all imaginable acts, and had been scrubbing and scrubbing in a futile attempt to expunge it.
Valhalla was filled from attic to cellars with the unbearable tension of unforgiven sin.
Effie was about to follow Craig and Norman when she glimpsed a quick dark shadow crossing the landing behind her. Without a word, she scrambled back over the heaps of broken tiles, until she reached the head of the stairs. The same man was standing halfway down, staring up at her. His face was unfocused, his eyes were black as smudges of ink.
'Who are you?' she said. She was so frightened that her lips could scarcely form the words.
He leaned his head forward, as if he were trying to focus on her. He looked bewildered but hostile at the same time.
'Who are you?' she repeated.
The man hesitated for a moment longer. Then he shook his head, and continued to hurry downstairs.
SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 9:36 P.M.
'Mother? It's Effie.'
'Effie, how are you, darling? How's your vacation? More to the point, how's Craig?'
'Well, Craig's much better.'
'Why do I have the feeling that you're not ecstatic that Craig's much better?'
'He's better because he wants to buy a house.'
'A house? Where?'
'Here,' said Effie. 'You remember the Red Oaks Inn… there was a house beyond it called Valhalla.'
'Valhalla? Yes, I remember. But didn't they tear it down? That's what I heard.'
'Actually it's still standing. It's in terrible shape. Part of the roof has caved in. There's dry rot and wet rot and every other kind of rot. It needs reroofing, replumbing, rewiring, you name it.'
'And Craig wants to buy it?'
'He's so excited about it, you wouldn't believe! We went to look it over this morning, and he hasn't stopped talking about it!'
'You don't really want to live way up here in the valley, do you, darling? What about Craig's law business?'
'He wants to give it up.'
'Give it up! And do what?'
'I don't know. I can't understand him at all. He says we'll manage.'
'Your father always used to say that. No disrespect meant, but look at me now, living with your Aunt Rhoda. I'm not quite a charity case, but the next best to it. You tell Craig to think again.'
'I'm trying, mother, but he's so determined. Not only that, he's so enthusiastic, he's so excited. It's got him right out of his depression, in just one day.'
'Effie… you have to think of the future. You're going to want children soon.'
'Well, that's if our love life ever gets back to normal.'
'He still won't-?'
'No. But he has been much more affectionate.'
'Oh, darling. I wish there were something I could do to help.'
'There's nothing, mother. It's just this house. I can't understand why he wants it so much. I mean, it's huge, thirteen bedrooms- thirteen bedrooms! Not to mention four huge reception rooms and a library and a ballroom. What are we going to do with a ballroom?'
'My God,' said Effie's mother.
'I know,' said Effie. 'But he loves it, and he wants it, and it's changed him so much. What on earth am I supposed to do?'
'Well… if you want my advice, you'll humour him. Just for the time being. He's still in recovery, remember. As soon as he finds out what this house is really going to cost him, I think you'll find that his enthusiasm starts to wane.'
'I hope you're right,' said Effie. 'But there's something else, too.'
'Effie… what? You don't sound happy at all.'
'It's hard to explain. It sounds so stupid.'
'For goodness' sake tell me. Your father was always saying "this sounds so stupid", and that was when he wanted to tell me the most important things ever. Like he'd lost his job; or fallen in love with his secretary.'
'You never told me he'd fallen in love with his secretary.'
'Of course not. You were only seven; and nothing came of it.'
'Mother -'
'Tell me what you were going to tell me, please.'
Effie took a deep breath. 'We were in the house - Valhalla - and Craig was downstairs in the cellar, looking at the boilers... and... I thought I heard a woman crying. I mean really crying, as if she were hurt. I went upstairs to look for her, but I couldn't find her. I got frightened, so I went back downstairs, and half-way down the stairs I saw a man. He was smart, he was dressed all in black, or maybe dark blue. His hair was combed back. I asked him why this woman was crying, but he didn't seem to hear me. He disappeared downstairs, and even though Craig was coming upstairs, Craig didn't see him; or at least he said he didn't. The man just vanished, like a ghost.'
'Effie… you're ridiculous. There are no such things as ghosts.'
'Then who was he, mother, and how did he manage to run downstairs without Craig bumping into him? And what was more, I saw him again, only a few minutes later, in exactly the same place.'
'You need a rest. You need Craig. If you want my opinion. When you're sexually frustrated… well, that causes all kinds of problems. You remember Mrs. Teeman? After her husband died, she kept imagining there were men in her bed. She said she even saw the sheets all humped up; and heard breathing.'
'I saw this man with my own eyes. He was there. He was real.'
'Did he speak to you?'
'No.'
'You spoke to him, but he didn't speak to you?'
'That's right.'
'What did he look like? Tell me.'
'I don't know. Pale. Shocked. He looked like he'd seen a ghost.'
SUNDAY, JUNE 20, 1:34 A.M.
She dreamed that she was being buried, and that heavy clods of earth were dropping onto her coffin. She felt a rising sense of panic, because she knew that she was still alive. But they kept dropping earth on top of her, and the weight felt heavier and heavier, and in the end she knew that she was going to be pressed to death, like the Salem witches.
She started to gasp, and struggle, and then she woke up and opened her eyes. Her nightgown was pulled up around her waist, and Craig was on top of her, naked. His hot breath blasted against her cheek, and she could feel his hairy thighs forcing their way between hers. She reached up and put her arms around him, and felt his back muscles, which were tensed-up and hard as pebbles. He had kicked away the duvet because the night was so warm, but all the same he was slippery with sweat.
'Effie…' he breathed, so close to her ear that it sounded like thunder. He grasped her breast, and tugged at her nipple. He kissed her forehead, he kissed her eyes, he kissed her lips. He took her chin between his teeth and he bit her neck, teenage love-bites that really hurt, but which suddenly excited her, so much that she wanted him to bite her and bite her and make an indelible mark.
He took her nipple between his teeth and bit that, too, and she dug her fingers into his hair and pulled at his roots.
She was frightened and excited at the same time. Even when they had first
slept together, he had never made love to her as violently as this. His whole body was totally tense: his stomach muscles bunched hard and his thighs corded.
He bit her nipples again and again, nipping them and stretching them until she gasped for him to stop.
With his right hand, he pinned her upraised arm against the pillow. With his left hand, he reached down between her legs and opened her vulva. She was very wet: she could feel it. He pressed the head of his penis between her parted vaginal lips, and it felt huge and taut and silky-skinned, the size and texture of a large plum. There was a moment when everything stood still. Time, the world, and all the stars that anybody could ever count. Then he slowly plunged himself inside her, as deep as he could, and she closed her eyes and threw back her head on the pillow and all she could feel was his erection, right inside her. Every ridge of it, every swollen vein.
She reached down and opened herself even wider, so that he touched the neck of her womb with every thrust, and made her jolt. With her right hand, she grasped his scrotum, with its single heavy testicle.
To her, this one testicle seemed enormously potent, because he was just as capable of impregnating her with one ball as he was with two. But when she took hold of it, he jerked reactively, and drew himself out, and stayed out, and she thought she might have made a terrible mistake. 'Craig,' she whispered. 'Craig, I want you.'
Still he hesitated, his juicy cockhead touching her lips, touching, and tantalising.
'Craig,' she repeated. 'Please, Craig, it doesn't make any difference. Don't you understand that? It doesn't make any difference. I want you.'
She thought for one teetering moment that her marriage was over for ever. If he couldn't do it now, then he could never do it. But then, without a word, he thrust, and thrust again, and soon his penis was flying in and out of her, and both of them were clutching and gasping and greasy with sweat.
She felt such pleasure that she laughed out loud. But Craig made love to her with urgency and deadly seriousness, almost as if he wanted to punish her. He thrust and he thrust, grunting harshly with every thrust.
'Oh Craig I want you,' she panted. 'Oh Craig I need you so much.' The antique wooden bed went squonk-squonk-squonk with every thrust and she was sure that everybody else in the inn could hear them, but she didn't care. In fact, she wanted them to hear, because now she had passion back in her life, passion and fire and greedy, ferocious sex.
She reached her orgasm long before he did. It wasn't violent, although his thrusting was violent. It poured all over her, warm and dark and slow, like oil pouring over a polished floor, one of those subtle ever-expanding climaxes that seemed to reach all the way to the furthest and darkest horizon. Craig kept on gasping and pushing and she was sure that he hadn't realised that she had climaxed.
'Bitch,' he gasped, and the sweat dropped from his forehead onto her face. 'Dirty, disobedient bitch.'
She grasped the tensely-knotted muscles of his thrusting buttocks, trying to restrain him. He was ramming himself into her so hard that he was beginning to hurt her. His single testicle swung against her again and again.
'Bitch!' he repeated. 'Filthy conniving bitch!'
'Craig!' she said. She was frightened now, yet she was still excited. In a strange way, her fear aroused her even more. He was thrusting himself in and out of her so forcefully that she was pushed up the bed with every thrust, until her head was pressed against the carved wooden panel. She thought the whole bed was going to be shaken apart, disassembling right underneath her.
There was a second of tightly-compressed silence. Craig stayed stock still, holding his breath, every sinew tight as a twisted-up cord. Then Effie felt his penis pulsing inside her - pulse, pulse and pulse again - and he let out a cry that was closer to pain and frustration than deep release.
He dropped onto the pillow next to her, his chest heaving, his body glistening in the darkness. He was too breathless to speak. She curled herself in close to him, sliding her hand down his chest and over his stomach and grasping his juicy, softening penis. She kissed his shoulder again and again, like a supplicant kissing a holy effigy. 'You were wonderful,' she whispered. She kept squeezing him and squeezing him. 'You were absolutely wonderful.'
At last he managed to catch his breath. 'It's all so clear,' he panted. 'I never saw everything so clearly before.'
She kissed his shoulder, again and again. 'I love you,' she told him.
'You know what I said about Valhalla being like a map. I understand it now. There's a room for every part of my personality. A room for my pride, a room for my ambition, a room for my anger. A room for my sense of humour. Everything.'
'Craig…' said Effie. 'Valhalla's only a house, and a derelict house, too.'
'No, no. It's much more than that. It's me. That house is me. It's just as if somebody analysed my whole personality and then turned their analysis into a building.'
'I still don't understand.'
'I was drawn there. You saw how much I was drawn there. And when I went inside, I felt as if I knew it. I felt as if I'd lived there all of my life. I can't describe it. But I felt as if I belonged there. I felt as if I was home.'
She let go of his penis, and wrapped herself up in the sheet, pressing her arms protectively down by her sides. 'Then you're not going to change your mind about making an offer for it?'
He propped himself up on one elbow, and kissed her. on the forehead. 'Hey… I'm not going to be stupid about this. I'm going to have the house surveyed first. We don't want to pay over the odds for it.'
'But I don't like Valhalla. In fact I hate it. And the very last thing I want to do is spend the rest of my life and the rest of my money trying to restore it. Valhalla may be you but it sure as hell isn't me.'
'Come on, Norman's going to help us. He knows a guy upstate who can supply us with roof-timbering at cost.'
'I thought you said you weren't going to rush into this.'
'I know. But the minute I walked into the door, I felt so alive. I thought about all of those corporate law suits and all of those Japanese board meetings and I thought, no… this is where I want to be. Here, in Valhalla.'
Effie didn't know what to say. For herself, she didn't mind the idea of giving up her job at Verulian art galleries and moving upstate. She certainly wouldn't miss any of those effortful business dinners… 'I hear that Kyoto is very beautiful at this time of year. Do you grow bonsai trees?'
She would be nearer to her mother; and maybe she and Craig could even start talking about a family.
She didn't like Valhalla at all. But she had managed to convince herself that her mother was right, and that there were no such things as ghosts, or ghostly sobbing; and that the atmosphere which had disturbed her so much was nothing more than damp, and neglect, and her own feeling of disaffection.
More importantly, Valhalla had filled Craig with so much energy and so much enthusiasm; and tonight he had made love to her - not weakly or reluctantly, but with all the carnal fierceness of a man possessed.
'All right,' she said, at length. 'We'll have a survey.'
Craig didn't answer, but kissed her on the lips. Then he dragged off the sheet which she had wound around herself, and straddled her, and when she reached down she discovered that his erection was just as hard as it had been before.
He pushed himself right into her. He was so hard when he arched himself back, he almost lifted her hips off the bed. 'Bitch,' he whispered, and this time she felt degraded more than stimulated.
'Craig,' she said, touching his lips with her fingertips. 'Craig, darling, don't call me that.'
'Bitch,' he repeated, and she could actually feel him smiling.
THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 11:11 A.M.
Morton Walker parked his beige Buick station wagon next to the statue of the headless woman holding up the sackful of dead puppies. He eased himself out of the driver's seat, and stood beside the open door for a while, methodically' mopping his forehead and the back of his neck with his handkerchief.
It was a hot, oppressive morning, and the landscape around Valhalla looked as if it were covered with a thin coat of amber varnish. Valhalla itself seemed unnaturally large and out-of-scale, as if the heat had magnified it.
Morton had visited Valhalla just once before, for a Dutch hotel group called Kuypers, but he had recommended that they look elsewhere if they wanted to open a health resort and golf complex. In his opinion, it would have cost over $51 million to bring Valhalla up to luxury hotel standards, with very little guarantee that Kuypers would ever recoup their investment. The terrain wasn't suitable for the Gary Player championship golf course that Kuypers had envisaged, the weather up here was notoriously unpredictable, and the simple fact was that Valhalla was far too isolated, especially for weekenders. Jack Belias had built it on this awkward and inhospitable hilltop for the specific purpose of shutting himself away from the world around him.
Still, a private buyer was a different matter. A private buyer wouldn't have to concern himself with all the health and safety regulartions that a resort complex would have been obliged to meet, such as fire doors and emergency exits and entrances widened for wheelchairs; and a private buyer could take as long to restore the house as he felt like. Years, if necessary - and it probably would take years. Why the hell anybody should want to buy a decaying mausoleum like Valhalla, Morton couldn't understand. As far as he was concerned, it was fit for nothing but demolition. He was a Federalist man himself: he hated Gothic.
He reached across to the passenger seat and picked up his cassette-recorder, his flashlight and his notepad. His assistant Brewster Ridge was supposed to have been here to meet him; but it didn't surprise him that he wasn't. Brewster had probably been too carried away by the Snoop Doggy Dogg CD whomping on his car stereo to have noticed the Red Oaks-Valhalla turnoff. Morton and Brewster didn't get along particularly well, although Brewster had genuine respect for Morton's experience in detecting the kind of flaws in construction that slipshod builders would do their best to disguise, like hiding subsidence cracks with folded-up slices of bread and flexible filler, and nailing clean sheets of expanded polystyrene over walls that were running with damp. Morton for his part was grudgingly impressed by Brewster's college qualifications in the work of residential architects. He definitely knew his Irving Gill from his Barry Byrne.
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