House of Fear

by Joe R. Lansdale

  The first lesson did not go well. Nor the second, after lunch, even though Louisa was, as she promised, a keen pupil. He felt her magnetic presence so keenly that at first O’Leary had to force himself to concentrate.

  He always began with a performance of the illusion, then followed it by revealing the secret. She laughed with delight at each effect, but as soon as he began to show her how the trick was done – the sleight of hand, the concealment, the pass, the false shuffle, the fake, the force, the substitution – she was unable to follow. He reassured her that most magicians take years to perfect their skill, and that many went on practising and rehearsing until the end of their careers, but she was frustrated by her failure to learn.

  They took a light salad for lunch, seated again at the long table in the conservatory. She sat close beside him, contriving several times to touch him or brush her hand against him. O’Leary was alive with awareness of her. They sat drinking wine together after the meal, all the initial awkwardness between them now gone. A thin mantle of snow lay on the glass panels in the roof, filtering the weak daylight. The wind was still gusting strongly, but it was warm in the house.

  “I realize how difficult it is for you to reveal secrets,” Louisa said. “You are too used to secrecy. You don’t mean to, but you are holding back. Only when you truly want to yield your knowledge will it pass across to me.”

  “I have been telling you everything,” O’Leary said. “It’s what I’m here to do.”

  “I believe you, but you are not yielding. We both seek atchievements.” She squeezed his hand, then lifted it towards her, resting it briefly on the square of firm bare flesh above her breasts. “Tomorrow it will be easier, I promise you that. When you are willing to yield to me everything I want, then I shall reward you. And I am not talking about money.”

  She lowered her gaze, and allowed his hand to lift away from her.

  They persevered with the magic techniques, but by mid-afternoon they were both tired and agreed to halt for the day. O’Leary locked the various pieces of apparatus into his case. Louisa left the room without saying anything. Some time later, when she still had not returned, O’Leary took a book from one of the piles, then spread himself comfortably on the settee in front of the fire.

  They met again for dinner, but Louisa seemed listless. At the end of the meal, when they had moved to the settee and were hand-warming their balloons of brandy, Mrs Acland came in.

  “I am about to retire for the night, madame,” she said. “I have placed the package in Mr O’Leary’s room, as you asked. I trust that will be all?”

  “Yes, thank you. Goodnight, Grace.”

  “Good night, madame; good night, sir.”

  The doors closed. O’Leary, pleasantly relaxed after a meal and a day of concentration on his techniques, and by Louisa’s heady presence, held up his brandy towards the nearest gas mantle and peered through it, swirling the liquor slowly.

  “What package did she mean?” he said.

  “Let’s call it your atchievement. Tomorrow I shall have mine.”

  They sat in silence for a while, hearing the sound of Mrs Acland moving around on the floor above. O’Leary was remembering the £10,000 that had been mentioned long ago during their email period, the fee that had been promised once but never mentioned since. He still wanted it, but just at that moment, money no longer seemed a priority.

  At last the house was still. Louisa suddenly revived.

  She placed her glass on the table before them, then took O’Leary’s and placed it next to hers. She leaned towards him, her lips parted. They kissed. She quickly guided his hand to her breasts, pressing her body against him, encouraging his fingers to explore the curve of her bodice, then to slip gently inside. O’Leary closed his eyes, his senses loaded with her fragrances, the quiet sibilant rustling of her gown, the warm softness of her flesh. She leaned further and further towards him, pressing him back, easing him down to the horizontal. With her weight upon him, she raised her face away from his.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “What? Yes! But why not now?”

  “Because I have not atchieved. Tomorrow, we will both be satisfied. I have promised.” Outside, the wind suddenly intensified, rattling the windows and sending a surge of air down the chimney flue. The smouldering logs flared briefly into flame, and a billow of smoke pushed into the room. “Let’s hasten tomorrow on!” she said.

  She straightened and stood up with a smooth movement. Smiling, she tidied the front of her gown, quickly closing the two buttons that his hand had forced apart.

  Still aflame, O’Leary said, “I don’t understand, Louisa.”

  “Soon you will.” She was already progressing around the room, turning down gas mantles, snuffing candles. A soft darkness began to spread through the room, from the far wall, to the corners, circling around the fireplace.

  The photograph, with François’s glaring face, was briefly picked out by the remaining light.

  With the fire once more glowing with embers behind the wire guard, she returned to him. He raised his arms to take hold of her, but she warded him off.

  “Good night, Dennis,” she said. “I asked Mrs Acland to stoke up the fire in your room.” She brushed his cheek with her fingertips. “At least that freezing wind has stopped. To hasten our meeting tomorrow, I ask you to sleep naked. Sleep on your back. Sleep deeply.”

  She twitched an eyebrow suggestively, then slipped away from him, across the shadowed drawing room, stepping around the crowded objets and antiques, then through the doors and into the hall. O’Leary collected his case of apparatus and hurried after her. There was no sign of her out there.

  The bedroom felt warm when O’Leary entered. It was as yet much earlier in the evening than the time he normally went to bed. He stood in agitation and frustration for a while, wondering what the hell she was playing at, but eventually he calmed down. He sat in front of the fire in an easy chair, poked the logs a few times to get them flaring again, then read more of the book he had picked out downstairs. He warmed his toes in front of the fire.

  Later he went for a shower and came back shivering into the main part of the bedroom. He stirred up the fire again and added another big log. Flames burst from the bark in a satisfactory way. Wearing only his dressing gown, O’Leary stood before the fireplace, feeling the heat on his back.

  When he looked in his valise he discovered a large padded envelope had been squeezed inside. He opened it eagerly and immediately saw several bundles of banknotes. Each wad was wrapped in a paper sleeve imprinted with a bank’s logo. With his dressing gown hanging open, O’Leary counted the first of the wads: it was a mixture of £20 and £50 notes, and totalled £1,000 in all. He found another nine, identically wrapped.

  There was more. Deeper inside the padded envelope was a small cardboard box, sealed with tape and a note wrapped around it with an elastic band. He put it to one side, because below it, even deeper inside, were many more wads of notes, in their paper sleeves.

  He unwrapped the slip of paper and opened the cardboard box. There was a small glass bottle inside, stopped with a cork. The paper had a handwritten message. He sat down beside the fire so that the light from the nearest gas mantle fell on the words. He read:

  My darling Dennis – We agreed a transaction, and here is what I promised you. As money does not interest me, and because you have suddenly become special to me, I have in fact trebled the amount we agreed.

  This bottle you have found contains a tincture I formulated myself. I should like you to drink about half of the mixture, and spread the remainder of it across the parts of your body you and I no doubt consider most sensual. There is nothing for you to worry about: the mixture is a light alcohol distillation, much diluted, with some special herbs and a few secrets I learned from my dear husband. You will adore what this tincture will do to you, and what it will do for me.

  As soon as you have read this, apply the mixture as I have described, then take to your bed in the way I asked. There
you will wait for tomorrow to come, because tomorrow is when we shall both atchieve what we most desire.

  Louisa

  The tincture had a sharp taste, but there was so little of it in the bottle that a mouthful was easily consumed. It left hardly any aftertaste. Discovering the package and the note had made him feel somehow observed in that room, and therefore self-conscious. He drank only half the contents and did not follow the second part of Louisa’s instructions. He pushed back the cork and placed the bottle on the bedside table. He put his wristwatch beside it, with the face visible. It was now a few minutes before midnight.

  He was still not sleepy and wished there was a tv in the room. It was warm now and he lay on top of the bedclothes, his dressing gown open, his back propped against pillows. He turned off the gas light above his bed, and lay waiting for sleep. He heard the calendar wheel of his wristwatch click to the next date, as midnight passed.

  Suddenly, Louisa was there. He thought he must have drifted off, because he had not heard her open the door. But there was no mistaking her presence in the room.

  “It is midnight,” she said. “Tomorrow is today! Let us atchieve!”

  She was standing between him and the open fire, which had become the only source of light in the room. He could see the radiance of the fire through the material of what she was wearing – it was some kind of nightgown or shift, made of diaphanous white fabric. He could see the silhouetted shape of her legs, then as she hurried towards him, heading for the side of his bed, he glimpsed the rest of her. The gown barely covered her.

  She seized the bottle, shook it.

  “You have not used it all,” she said, and waved it at him in mock scolding.

  “I drank most of it,” O’Leary said, amazed and thrilled by her arrival. He was acutely aware of lying exposed before her, even in the half-light. He sensed her perfume, could make out her loosened hair falling about her face, watched her quick hands as she pulled the cork from the bottle. The gown was falling carelessly from her shoulder, revealing one of her breasts. He yearned to have her.

  “It must be on you too,” she said, and immediately turned over the bottle and sprinkled it across his naked legs, chest and groin.

  O’Leary took a sharp intake of breath, because the liquid stung as it landed on him. It was not unpleasant. He was already aroused.

  “Louisa ...”

  “No. Say nothing.”

  She clambered up on to the bed, straddled him, raised her gown to her waist and squatted across his body. He reached up to take her breasts in his hands, groping and caressing her beneath the gown, while she found him and eased him into her.

  What followed was unhurried.

  For most of the time O’Leary had his eyes closed, his senses sated by the physicality of the woman and the fragrances of their lovemaking. But towards the end, while his heart was racing and his breath was rasping in his throat, Louisa suddenly yelled.

  “Is he there?” she gasped. “Can you see him?”

  O’Leary opened his eyes. The logs had shifted in the grate, bright flames were darting. Across the room, back from the bed and close to the glowing fire, stood the figure of a man. He was young, tall, erect. He held an ebony cane. He was wearing grey trousers and a dark frock coat. His hair was short, tousled, black. He had long sideburns and a goatee beard. He was glaring angrily at O’Leary, and raised his cane.

  “Is François there?” she cried again. Her back was turned away from the apparition. O’Leary could say nothing, terrified by the sudden manifestation, but knowing he was at the very moment of climax. “Can you see him?” she said again. “That is what haunts me!”

  Their lovemaking came rushing to an end. O’Leary felt the familiar increase of tension, the exciting suspense, the release, but it was more intense than ever he had known it, a voiding, an emptying, a draining, a flow from a deeper source. Where their bodies pressed together, where the tincture had fallen, he felt an almost electrical discharge of energy. Louisa was twisting herself against him, pressing and moving herself deliberately against those parts. O’Leary continued to ejaculate, beyond passion, beyond sexual union, a decanting of himself into her.

  From the other side of the room came a man’s voice, hollow, dismissive, loudly filling the small room: “Adieu, monsieur le prestidigitateur!”

  And Louise whispered, “Au revoir, mon brave.”

  O’Leary’s consciousness began to fade and the apparition of the dead husband drifted away. Louisa’s bodily weight slumped down hotly across him, moist with perspiration, soft and shaking with her climax. Her long hair tangled wetly about him, covering his face and chest. He could not breathe, he was in fearful dark, his senses dying.

  He heard her shout, “This house to let, on s’occupé encore une fois, François, mon chéri. I am occupied again.”

  Then there was silence, a muting blackness.

  The elderly Volvo lurched across the ruts of the unmade lane, throwing up mud whenever its wheels spun as it momentarily sought traction. The thaw had set in during the night. Pools of water lay everywhere, and on each side of the lane the ditches were full. The driver, Rick, struggled with the steering wheel, nervous of accidentally sliding to one side or the other. White clouds moved slowly overhead in a sky of wan sunlight.

  He came to the gates of the house, but almost passed them by. Since his last visit, a mass of ivy and other creeping plants had grown across the twisted railings. Rick briefly thought that this was not the right place, that it was another entrance, perhaps one that led to an abandoned or derelict house, but he squinted across at the satnav, where confirmation of his destination was shown. He slammed on the brakes immediately, causing the painted trailer behind the Volvo to skid on the muddy surface, swinging around to the side.

  He left the car where it had halted and pushed open the gate. He walked up the waterlogged drive, stepping over several fallen small branches. On each side of the drive the bushes and plants were overgrown and drooping, with weeds springing up all over the surface of the driveway. To one side, what looked as if it had once been a lawn with surrounding flowerbeds was a riot of tumultuous weeds, mostly bare and brown in the winter air.

  The house, which he could see ahead, did not look ruinous, but it was clearly in need of urgent repair work. Some of the bricks were loose, with many gaps in the mortar, the painted doors and window frames were peeling, and several slates were missing from the roof. The windows were dull, as if they had not been washed in years. One was broken and had been roughly repaired with cardboard.

  There was no sign of a doorbell, so he hammered on the door with his fist. After a long pause the door eased open. Someone peered at him through the crack, then scraped the door wide open.

  It was a woman, wearing a woollen pullover, blue jeans and a tweed cap.

  “I have come to see Madame de Morganet,” Rick said. “I was told she has a package for me.”

  “And you are – ?”

  “Rick. Just say it is Rick.”

  “May I have your surname?”

  “Rick will do. She knows who I am.”

  “Oh, yes. Of course.”

  The woman turned away and bent down, and almost immediately came back holding a valise, which Rick recognized as being Dennis’s.

  “Madame de Morganet is resting and is not receiving visitors today,” she said. “But she has instructed me to tell you that the bag contains everything Mr O’Leary brought with him, as well as what was agreed. You will have to sign for it.”

  “That’s all right.”

  She handed over a pen and a blank scrap of paper, on which Rick dutifully tried to scribble, resting the paper against the peeling wall of the wooden porch.

  “Madame has asked me to convey her sincere thanks to you, Rick,” the woman said while he was still trying to get the pen to write. “She was pleased and satisfied with your arrangements.”

  “Is Dennis here?” he said, as he handed the pen and paper back to her.

  “Mr O’Lea
ry left the house during the night.” She stared at him noncommittally.

  “Left? Where did he go?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. It’s a matter for Monsieur and Madame.”

  He hefted the valise on to his shoulder. “Look, should Dennis turn up, would you ask him to phone me as soon as possible?”

  But the door was already closing, the warped old wood scraping against the stone flags. He heard her say, just as the door closed with a double push from inside, “Mr O’Leary’s phone is inside the bag.”

  Rick set off down the drive. As he walked, he eased open the top cover of the valise, and reached inside. He felt the hard weight of the laptop, the plastic case of the mobile phone, clothes and a bathroom bag. He groped deeper and found what he was seeking: many neatly packed wads of banknotes, satisfyingly crisp, down at the bottom of the bag.

  He walked past Madame de Morganet’s display board, but did not glance at it. He opened the passenger door of the Volvo, put the valise on the front seat, then went back to look.

  Unlike the untidy, weed-filled state of the garden, the sign looked clean and cared for, the glass shining in the wintry sunlight. He read her claimed list of ‘atchievements,’ then noticed the final line:

  ...Actuarial Calculations, Tax Returns, Law of Probate, Law of Property, Law of Torts, Illusionism and Prestidigitation...

  There was a blank area near the bottom, as if to leave room for more skills to be added, then a telephone number.

  Rick climbed back inside the car, started the engine and waited for the heater to warm him up. He reached deep into the valise, tossing Dennis’s possessions on the car floor, then removed all the wads of notes and counted them. Each one contained £1,000 in mixed notes, and there were thirty of them in all.

  He put the money away, out of sight, and sat in the car, thinking. He inspected the laptop, which booted normally when he tried. The mobile phone’s battery was low, but nevertheless the handset switched on. There were no text messages for Dennis, he had no missed calls.