She felt shaken and upset, but at the same time she wasn't reacting in the way that she thought she would, if she ever found out that Craig was having an affair. She felt disturbingly aroused, too, at the thought that he had such virility. She tried to stop herself from feeling that way, because she knew she ought to be blazing with fury. But the more she thought about Craig the less angry she became, although she was still seethingly jealous that he hadn't devoted all of his virility to her.
The right-hand top drawer in the bureau was locked, and Craig had taken away the key. She tugged it and rattled it without success; and then she took out the drawer below and tried to reach into it from the back. In the end she took the long shoe-horn out of the bottom of her closet, wedged the end of it into the gap at the top of the drawer, and forced it downward, breaking the lock. The bureau was a fine Colonial antique, but Effie thought, damn it, Craig can pay for it.
She tugged out the drawer, accidentally spilling its
contents all over the carpet. Packs of playing cards, twenty or thirty packs of professional playing cards, most of them still sealed up in cellophane. But at least three packs were unwrapped, and they scattered across the floor.
Effie knelt down and quickly began to pick them up and arrange them back into suits. Clubs, hearts, diamonds and spades. It was when she reached the first suit of diamonds that she knew what was wrong. There was no nine of diamonds anywhere.
She sat up on her heels, and she felt shivery with dread. She could guess where those four nines had gone to; and the thought was more than she could bring herself to accept.
She stood up, sat on the edge of the bed, and picked up the phone.
'Can you put me through to the county sheriff's office, please?'
She waited for a while, and then a snappy voice said, 'Sheriff's department, how can I help you?'
Effie looked down at the cards lying all over the carpet. A house of cards, collapsed. A marriage, fallen apart. Four lives, savagely taken away.
'Hallo? Sheriff's department, how can I help you?'
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It's nothing.' She replaced the receiver, and continued to stare at the cards.
In the book that she had read about Jack Belias, the author had quoted Athanase Vagliano, one of the Greek Syndicate, who had asked Belias why he gambled. 'What else is there?' Belias had replied. 'The cards are life, and the cards are death, and beyond life and death, what is there to worry about?'
She picked up the phone again and called Pepper. Pepper said she was mixing up an ouanga for one of her regular clients, and could she call back later?
'Pepper, this is it. We have to do the cleansing right now. The police have been here looking for Craig. They said they went to Valhalla but he wasn't there. Pepper, he went up there with Norman and he wouldn't have tried to walk back. The police think he's killed some people. The police think he killed the barman from the Hudson Inn. Please, Pepper, we have to do something now!'
'Hey, hey, hey, calm down,' Pepper soothed her. 'Now what's all this about killing a barman?'
'They found him dead last night and he was the same barman that Craig was arguing with. And they found a none of diamonds on him and I've opened up Craig's drawer and there's all these packs of cards but none of them have the nine of diamonds.'
'And the nine of diamonds was the card that Jack Belias used to mock Zographos, right?'
'Pepper, I don't know what's happened to Craig but please, please help me.'
'Okay… give me twenty minutes to get my stuff together and then you can come pick me up in that fancy BMW of yours.'
WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 5:26 P.M.
They drove up past the Red Oaks Inn and down through the weather-twisted trees. It had clouded over, and a strong, unpleasant wind had risen, so that the lawns were scuttling with leaves and twigs. As they pulled up outside Valhalla's front steps, they heard a deafening slap-rumble noise, and looked up to see a huge tarpaulin flapping on top of the roof like a manta ray swimming through a powerful current.
Builder's sand whipped up from the patios, and Eftie caught some of it in her eye. She was still trying to nudge it out with the tip of her handkerchief when the front doors opened and Norman appeared. He was brown with dust and his head was wrapped in a green bandana. 'Mom? What are you doing here? Hi, Mrs. Bellman.'
'Hi, Norman. Is Mr. Bellman anywheres around? We know the cops have been looking for him.'
Norman shook his head. 'He came up with me this morning. I saw him walk upstairs and that was it. I never saw him again. We looked for him just about like everywhere, but I guess it would be pretty easy to hide for ever in a house this size.'
Effie said, 'He's done it. I'm sure he's done it. Just like Jack Belias did when Gina Broughton was killed. He's vanished, he's gone. He's left us all behind.'
'You can't be sure about that,' said Pepper. 'He may just be hiding in the housed-'
'We still have to cleanse it,' Effie insisted. 'Maybe if we cleanse it, he'll have to come back.'
'One of them will have to,' said Pepper, picking up the hem of her long maroon kaftan and hefting her tapestry bag on her shoulder. 'The only reason that Jack Belias has been able to take Craig over is because this house is so disturbed. Take away your disturbance, and they'll have to separate - body, personality and spirit. And since two people can't normally occupy the same body at the same time, you're going to have the psychic equivalent of organ-trans-plant rejection.'
'Sounds, like, messy,' Norman remarked.
'I've never seen it happen, but I guess it could be,' Pepper replied. 'Look what happens when two people in automobiles try to occupy the same space.' She walked into the house and Norman followed close behind her, carrying her battered brown suitcase full of mirrors. Norman snarled at the knocker on the door and Effie almost expected it to snarl back.
'We've been working on the library floor today,' said Norman, as they traipsed along the corridor towards the ballroom.
'Do you think that Craig is still here?' asked Effie.
Pepper put down her bag in the centre of the ballroom floor, knelt down, and rummaged around inside it. Eventually she produced a dried-looking root on a silver chain. 'Mandrake,' she explained. 'If he's here, it'll soon tell us.' She held it up so that it dangled in the air. 'The legend is that mandrakes grew where the sperm of hanged men dropped onto the dirt underneath the gallows. That's why they're so sensitive to the presence of any man, particularly an evil man.'
'Come on, Pepper. Craig may have got himself into trouble, but Craig isn't evil.'
'Maybe not. But Jack Belias was; or is; and right now, who's to lay money on which of them is which?'
They watched the dried mandrake root slowly winding and unwinding itself on its silver chain.
'What's it supposed to do when it senses that somebody's here?' asked Effie.
'Watch,' said Pepper.
'But the root did nothing but wind and unwind, wind and unwind.
'Nothing?' said Norman.
'Not yet,' Pepper told him. 'But I can still feel some serious disturbances. My God, it feels like a storm's brewing up. Can't you feel it, Effie? Can't you feel it in the air?'
Norman looked around the ballroom. 'I can sure feel some kind of atmospheric tension. You know, like, very low barometer weather. Like it's going to storm soon.'
'It's not the weather,' said Pepper. 'It's Jack Belias. He's found his way from one page of history into the next.'
She laid down her mandrake necklet, and then she started to set up her mirrors and her candles like she had before, when Craig had interrupted her. Effie meanwhile paced around the perimeter of the ballroom, listening for any doors opening or closing; or any footfalls. She went over to the library doors, and was about to open them when Norman said, 'Careful! Half of the floor is still, like, up. I'll show it to you later.'
Effie carried on circling around, waiting for Pepper to finish lighting her candles and angling her mirrors and setting up her herbs and talismans and her
pot-pourri. The ballroom was already beginning to smell like the inside of the Hungry Moon. Effie was just about to walk around for a third time when she heard footsteps approaching along the corridor from the direction of the front door. Sharp, decisive footsteps, like those of an angry man.
'Pepper... he's here!' she hissed, as loud as she dared. 'He's coming along the corridor!'
Pepper said, 'Who's here? Craig your husband or Jack the gambler?'
'I don't know- it's just that he's-'
At that instant, the ballroom doors shuddered open. They all stepped back, Norman included. A tall, dark figure stepped inside, carrying in its arms a large metal box, almost the size of a baby's coffin. It walked slowly to the centre of the room, right up to the circle of candles, paused, and then laid down its burden with infinite care.
'I found something that might interest you,' it said; and as it turned towards Effie the candlelight swung and brightly illuminated its face, and Effie could see that it was Brewster Ridge, the black surveyor whose partner had died on their very first day of evaluating Valhalla.
'Mr. Ridge, what are you doing here?' asked Effie.
Brewster jerked his head towards the battered, green-painted box. 'I took it down to Pig Hill Inn, but they told me you were gone, headed up here. I found it in Albany, in the New York State Archives, while I was searching for any old planning permits that might enhance Valhalla's value. I didn't find any, but this box has been rusting in some old storeroom since 1941. It's padlocked and nobody has the key. Nobody seems to care, either. In all of that time, nobody has claimed it or even asked to see what's inside it.'
'Well, what is inside it?' Effie demanded.
'Catalogue number 13444965IJB… a fireproof box containing the diaries and construction plans of Mr. J. Belias, of Valhalla, Red Oaks Lane, Highland Falls, state of New York.'
'Have you tried opening it?' asked Pepper, excitedly.
'I wasn't sure that I had the authority.'
Norman was down on his hands and knees, peering closely at the padlock. 'Want me to give it a try, Mrs. Bellman?'
'You might as well, seeing that Mr. Ridge took the trouble to bring it all the way up here.'
Norman reached into a pocket and produced a screwdriver, prised the padlock off and opened up the box.
They all gathered around it. On the left side, in two neat stacks, were calfskin and crocodile-skin diaries, in red and black, neatly bound together with black ribbon. In the middle were rolls of architectural tracings of Valhalla, plans and elevations. On the right side there were five or six decks of cards, the larger professional size, unopened, a black leather-bound book with gold lettering The Edicts of Balam and a large manila envelope, sealed with black sealing-wax.
Norman lifted out the diaries, untied one of the ribbons, and flicked through two or three of them. They were all written in a slanting, precise hand, in black ink that had faded to a rusty colour with age.
'Anything interesting?' asked Pepper.
'If you're a card-sharp, maybe. This is like a record of every game of baccarat and chemin-de-fer and trente-et-quarante this guy ever played in his life. Nothing else, by the look of it. No intimate confessions. No juicy scandals.' Brewster took out the plans and carefully unrolled them. 'These are worth having,' he said. 'Copies of the original architect's drawings. They could help you a whole lot with your restoration. Look here... the way this parapet was designed, up on the roof. That parapet's gone now, but you could restore it just the way it was meant to be.'
'Yes,' said Norman, without much enthusiasm; and it was then that Brewster looked around and saw the candles burning and the mirrors and the bowls of herbs.
'You people having some kind of a party here?'
'More of a ceremony,' said Pepper.
Brewster prowled around the candles and peered into the bowls of herbs. 'My grandma used to do something like this… said it chased away the evil spirits. That's not what you're doing here?'
'Well, no, not exactly. We're just… housewarming.' Brewster stood still, and looked around, and then he said, 'I've been surveying houses in the Hudson Valley since I was twenty-four, and I've been in houses like you wouldn't believe. I've been in houses where the person who built it was dead for twenty years, but you can still feel them there. You can feel their pride. You can feel their arrogance. Sometimes you can feel the love they had for the countryside around them; or the person they built it for.
'But this house…' He shook his head. 'It wasn't built to live in. Nobody builds a house like this, not just to live in. This was built for a very special purpose. The windows are out of proportion, the doors are too wide, the floors are built like no floors I ever saw before. This is like the crazy house they have at the carnival. It was deliberately designed to make a visitor feel small, and unsettled, and indecisive. Two staircases in the hall, both leading to the same landing? Which one are you supposed to take? And when you do, the risers are slightly higher than normal, to make you feel small. Stained-glass windows of nuns with their eyes closed and people with their backs turned? The Garden of Eden, gone to ruin? This house was made for something; I can tell you. I just can't figure out what.' Norman had opened the manila envelope and pulled out some of its contents. They looked to Effie like large black-and-white photographs. He frowned at two or three of them, and then he shoved them back.
'Norman?' asked Effie.
'Maybe you should see these later.'
'Why, what are they? Let me see them now.'
'I don't think so,' said Norman, uncomfortably.
Pepper snatched the envelope, went through the photographs very quickly, her face expressionless. Then she handed them to Effie. 'You'd better see them. That was what Harry Rondo was talking about.'
The photographs were very dim and lacking in contrast. They showed a bedroom with an iron-framed bed in it, a small fireplace and a window overlooking a rooftop. Effie recognised the bedroom at once. It was the blue-carpeted bedroom where she had heard a woman sobbing. When Effie had ventured into the bedroom, it had been bare. But in these pictures, there was a nightstand and a closet and religious pictures on the walls.
And on the bed, a woman. A woman whom Effie recognised.
She was naked, tied hand-and-foot with ropes. Her white skin was blotched and bruised; although the photographs weren't clear enough to show her injuries in any detail. She was obviously pregnant; six or seven months, Effie would have guessed.
In another photograph, she was covered in masses of cockroaches. They were crawling all over her, and she was powerless to brush them away. A close-up showed cockroaches crawling in and out of her mouth, and up her nose. Her eyes were staring directly at the camera, unblinking, as if she were dead.
There were more photographs, and they were all worse. Although she knew that this must have happened almost sixty years ago, Effie was still appalled. She found herself biting her left thumbnail, digging her teeth into it, which was something she hadn't done since she was at high school. She glanced at Pepper and Pepper looked back at her: but Pepper's face was unreadable. Effie had the feeling that a long time ago, in her Woodstock days maybe, something like this may have happened to her.
She didn't want to go on looking but she did. Every photograph was a cold, straightforward record of unspeakable degradation - degradation without any meaning or purpose, except that the woman was helpless, and her persecutor could do with impunity whatever he chose.
She glimpsed a photograph in which a man appeared to be holding a long needle close to the woman's left eye. The expression on the woman's face was so terrible that she pushed all the photographs back into the envelope, her heart racing and her cheeks flushed. 'You know who this is, don't you?' she said. She felt so disoriented, so angry, and yet so excited too.
Pepper nodded. 'Gina Broughton. The woman who agreed to stay for three days and ended up staying eighteen months. The woman who was blinded.'
'Why?' Effie demanded. She was almost screaming. 'Why did she let
Jack Belias do that to her?'
'You remember what Harry Rondo said. She let him do it because he could. She let him do it because her husband agreed to stake her in a game of cards. What did anything matter, after that? Three days, three weeks, three months. It didn't matter any more. At least Jack Belias wanted her enough to degrade her. Her husband didn't want her at all.'
'My God,' said Effie. She was hyperventilating. 'We are dirt, after all, aren't we? We're all Lilith; none of us is Eve.'
WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 6:17 P.M.
While Pepper finished setting up her arrangement of candles and mirrors, Norman and Brewster went around the house one more time to see if they could find any sign of Craig.
'He could have tried walking, or hitching a ride,' Pepper suggested, but Effie knew that she didn't mean it. If Craig had wanted to leave Valhalla early, all he had to do was ask Norman to drive him. He was paying Norman's wages, after all.
'This house has been waiting for somebody like Craig for years,' Effie said. 'The very first time we drove up here, it drew him, almost like a magnet. You don't know how completely that mugging destroyed his self-confidence, his pride in himself. It must have been bad enough knowing that somebody else can hurt you like that, and get away with it. But to have them damage your whole manhood like that…'
Pepper said, 'It isn't the house that wants him. It's Jack Belias. He wants to live again, for real. He wants to live in the here-and-now, and if it means that he has to live in somebody else's body, then that's what he's prepared to do. It's just too bad for you that he found Craig.'
She lit another row of candles with a long sandalwood spill. Her eyes shone silver. 'When you first saw Jack Belias running down the stairs, he saw you, too, but only as an unreal figure, the same way that you saw him. In other words, you were haunting him in 1937 as much as he was haunting you. You were both caught in the same psychic disturbance, which is like somebody thumbing the pages of a book backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, so that two events become superimposed on each other and you can't tell which is which. Like a flicker-book. He must have realised then that you and Craig had arrived in his life, and you were his chance of escape.'
The House That Jack Built Page 30