Ritual

by Graham Masterton

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Charlie. ‘This reminds me of something. Déjà vu, I guess.’

  He drove around the green until they reached Naugatuck Avenue. This was one of the oldest streets in Allen’s Corners, running directly west to east away from the green. At one time, before the main road had been laid at the lower end of the green, Naugatuck Avenue had been a main highway through to Hartford. English redcoats had marched drumming along here, while the people of Allen’s Corners had watched them from their upstairs windows.

  Mrs Kemp’s boarding house stood at the corner of Naugatuck and Beech; a gaunt saltbox house with flaking weatherboard and windows blinded by grubby lace curtains. It was fronted by a paling fence, half of which was sagging sideways, and a small brick yard in which a single maple grew. Charlie drew up outside it, and eased himself out of the car. ‘Are you coming?’ he asked Martin.

  ‘Are you sure it’s open?’ Martin frowned. ‘It looks derelict to me.’

  ‘It could use a lick of paint,’ Charlie admitted. He opened the wooden gate and walked up the path. ‘The last time I was here, the place was immaculate. I gave it a Gold Feather for comfort. Maybe Mrs Kemp has closed up shop.’

  Martin followed Charlie cautiously up to the front door. There were two stained-glass panels in it, one of them badly cracked as if the door had been slammed during a violent argument. In the centre of the door hung a weathered bronze knocker cast in the shape of a snarling animal – something between a wolf and a demon. Charlie nodded towards the knocker and said, ‘That’s new. Welcoming, isn’t it?’

  Martin looked up at the loose tiles that had slipped down the porch in a straggling avalanche. ‘This can’t be open. And I wouldn’t want to stay here, even if it is.’

  ‘There’s no place else, not in Allen’s Corners, anyway.’

  Charlie picked up the knocker. It was extraordinarily stiff and heavy, and he didn’t much like the way the wolf-demon was snarling into the palm of his hand. He couldn’t think why, but the knocker seemed familiar. He could vaguely remember reading about a wolf-like knocker in a book, but he couldn’t remember what book, or when.

  He banged it, and heard it echo flatly inside the house. He waited, chafing his hands, smiling at Martin from time to time. A stiff breeze had arisen with the setting of the sun, and Charlie felt unnaturally cold.

  ‘Nobody here,’ said Martin, standing with his hands in his pockets, ‘Looks like we’ll have to go on to Hartford after all.’

  They were just about to turn away when they heard somebody coughing inside the house. Charlie banged the knocker again, and after a while footsteps came along the hallway. Through the stained-glass windows a small pale figure appeared, standing close behind the door. After a moment’s pause, the figure reached up and drew back two bolts, and opened up the door on the safety-chain. A woman’s face appeared, white and unhealthy-looking, with dark smudges of exhaustion around her eyes. Her hair was untidily clipped with plastic barrettes, and she was wearing a soiled blue quilted housecoat. From inside the house there came the vinegary odour of stale air and cooking.

  ‘Mrs Kemp?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘What do you want?’ the woman demanded.

  ‘It says in the guidebook that this is a boarding house.’

  Mrs Kemp stared at him. ‘Used to be,’ she told him.

  ‘I see. You’ve given it up.’

  ‘It gave itself up. I tried to keep open but nobody wanted to come here any more.’

  ‘Is there anyplace else to stay the night?’

  ‘There’s the Wayside Motel outside of Bristol, on the Pequabuck road.’

  ‘Nowhere in Allen’s Corners?’

  Mrs Kemp shook her head.

  ‘Well,’ said Charlie, ‘I guess that fixes it. I might as well introduce myself. My name’s Charles McLean, I’m a restaurant inspector for MARIA. I guess I can take your boarding house out of the book.’

  Mrs Kemp’s eyes narrowed. ‘I remember you. You stayed here three or four years ago.’

  ‘That’s right, you’ve got some memory.’

  ‘I remember you specially because you asked for the Brown Betty. That was always my late husband’s favourite, and that was why I kept it on the menu. Maybe two people asked for Brown Betty in seven years, and you were one of them. Well, well. If I’d known you were an inspector, I would have done you better, I’m sure.’

  Charlie smiled. ‘That’s why I never tell anybody. I want to get the ordinary treatment everybody else gets.’ He stepped back a little and looked up at the house. ‘Pity you’ve closed up, I liked it here. You ran a good cosy place.’

  ‘Do you want to come inside for some coffee and cake?’ asked Mrs Kemp. ‘I mean, if you’re really pushed for a place to stay, I could air a couple of beds for you. I wouldn’t charge, it’d be company.’

  Charlie glanced at Martin. It was quite plain from the expression on his face that he didn’t relish the idea of spending the night here at all; and the truth was that Charlie didn’t exactly fancy it either. But his curiosity about Le Reposoir had been aroused too strongly for him to leave Allen’s Corners until he found out more about it. And maybe it would do Martin good to find out who was boss.

  ‘We’d appreciate that,’ he said.

  Mrs Kemp slid back the safety-chain. ‘You’ll have to pardon the way I’m dressed. I wasn’t expecting company.’

  They followed her into the hallway. It was chilly and stale in there, and although the tables had once been highly polished, they were now covered by a fine film of dust. Old hand-coloured engravings of colonial Connecticut hung on the cream-painted walls.

  Mrs Kemp brought them coffee in the best parlour, a gloomy room crowded with massive sawed-oak furniture of the Teddy Roosevelt era, when bellies and walrus moustaches had been in fashion. She had changed into a plain grey day-dress with a white lace collar, and sprayed herself with floral perfume. The coffee was hot and fresh; the Jubilees stale and chewy. Martin sat in a dark spoonback chair silent and bored.

  ‘I guess you could say that one bad season begets another,’ said Mrs Kemp. She kept dry-washing her hands, over and over, and then fiddling with her wedding ring, as if it needed adjusting for size. ‘Business was good until late last year; I used to have all of my regulars, Mr King from American Paints, Mr Goldberg the Matzoh Man – well, that’s what I always used to call him, the Matzoh Man. And there was good steady family trade through the summer and fall, right past Thanksgiving.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Charlie, setting down his coffee cup. ‘They didn’t build any new detours.’

  Mrs Kemp looked down at her lap for a moment. When she spoke her voice sounded muffled and different. ‘I don’t suppose you remember, it was three or four years since you came here last, but there was a girl who used to help me in the kitchen.’

  ‘I think I remember,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Her name was Caroline. She was my niece. My brother and his wife were killed in an auto accident in Ohio when she was seven. I’d been looking after her ever since. When my husband passed over she was all I had left.’

  Mrs Kemp paused, and then she said, ‘You can imagine, we were very close.’

  Charlie said nothing, but waited for Mrs Kemp to continue.

  ‘Last November 18, Caroline disappeared,’ said Mrs Kemp. ‘She went to New Milford to see a friend of hers, but she never arrived. Of course it was hours before I found out that she was missing. I called the police, and the police searched every place they could think of, but no trace of her was ever found. Nothing. It was just as if she had never existed, except for her clothes of course, and her personal belongings. The police said that it happens all the time, young people walking out on their parents or their guardians. They usually end up in California or some place like that, working as dancers or waitresses or – well, you know what kind of a world we live in these days, Mr McLean.’

  ‘Call me Charlie,’ said Charlie.

  Mrs Kemp nodded, although Charlie wasn’t altoge
ther sure if she had heard him or not. She said distractedly, ‘I suppose what happened to the boarding house after that was my fault, really. Every salesman who came here, I used to give him a printed sheet with Caroline’s picture on it, and ask him to keep a look out for her wherever he went. I suppose I used to carry on about her too much for most people’s comfort. The regulars stopped calling by, and then the casual trade fell off. I wanted to keep the business going, I did my best, but I wanted to find Caroline even more, and that kind of affected everything I did.’

  ‘It seems to me that a lot of young people have gone missing from Allen’s Corners,’ Charlie remarked.

  ‘The sheriff said that it happens a lot in backwater places like this. The kids get bored, that’s what he said, but they know that their parents won’t let them go, not voluntarily. So they run away, and that’s the last that anybody ever sees of them. Not just children of Caroline’s age, neither. Some of them are not much more than nine or ten years old. Well, you’ve seen their pictures on the Knudsen’s milk cartons. I used to look at them and wonder how any parent could possibly let their child disappear like that. But it happened to me, too, and all I can tell you about it is that it hurts a good deal, and that you can never get over it.’

  They talked for a while about Caroline. Mrs Kemp opened up her rolltop bureau and produced a handful of the printed pictures that she had distributed to her guests. Charlie and Martin dutifully examined them. They showed a pretty fair-haired girl with a snub nose and a wide smile. She could have been a cheerleader or a roller-skating waitress at a drive-in soda fountain. Underneath the picture, a short appeal said, ‘MISSING, Caroline Heyward, 17 years old. Last seen Allen’s Corners, CT, 11/18 last year. 5ʹ 4ʺ tall, slim build. Wearing brown-and-white wool coat, brown wool hat. $500 reward for information.’

  ‘Pretty girl,’ said Charlie, offering the flysheet back.

  ‘Keep it,’ Mrs Kemp told him. ‘You never know, the way you restaurant inspectors travel around, one day you might just find her.’

  Charlie folded up the flysheet and tucked it into his wallet. ‘Would it be too much to ask you to put us up for the night?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Mrs Kemp. ‘I’d be glad to. I can give you the big room right at the back, that’s the room I always used to give to honeymooners. Well – they weren’t all honeymooners. “Romantic couples”, that’s what I used to call them.’

  ‘I tried to get to eat at that French place,’ said Charlie.

  Mrs Kemp lifted her head. In the lamplight, the dark circles under her eyes looked like bruises. ‘What French place?’ she inquired sharply. So sharply that she must have known exactly what he was talking about.

  ‘Le Reposoir, up on Quassapaug,’ said Charlie. ‘They seem to have quite a reputation around here.’

  ‘They’re not the kind of people you’d choose to have as neighbours, if you had a choice,’ Mrs Kemp replied.

  ‘Oh?’ said Charlie.

  ‘They keep themselves to themselves, that’s all. They live here, but you couldn’t say they’re part of the local community. They seem to do whatever they like, though. They built a whole new wing on that house of theirs, up on Quassapaug, and I never heard a whisper about zoning laws. I talked to Mr Haxalt about it – Mr Haxalt’s the chairman of our community association –’

  ‘Yes,’ Charlie told her. ‘I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Haxalt this afternoon. I parked my car in his sacred parking place.’

  ‘Well, then, you’ll know what he’s like,’ said Mrs Kemp. ‘He’s an expert at giving folks the brush-off. And that’s what he did when I tried to talk to him about Le Reposoir. “Don’t you worry, Mrs Kemp, those people are here to bring more trade into Allen’s Corners.” But did they bring in more trade? They certainly didn’t. I can tell you – lots of people come and go, up on Quassapaug Road – lots of wealthy people, too, in limousines – but none of them stop at Allen’s Corners, and even if they did, you can’t imagine that they’d be the kind of people to buy cream or corn-dollies or home-cured bacon. Let me tell you, Mr McLean –’

  ‘Charlie, please.’

  ‘–well, let me tell you, Charlie, that place is a curse on Allen’s Corners. It takes everything and gives nothing. There’s people around here who won’t go near it for money in the bank. And don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. But it has the feeling about it. Allen’s Corners has never been the same since that place opened, and until it closes down it never will. This used to be a happy town, but you look at it now. Sad and lost and anxious, that’s what it is. Maybe Le Reposoir isn’t to blame. Who can say? It could be the way that life is going everywhere, the recession and all. But I believe that place is a curse on Allen’s Corners, and that the sun won’t shine here until it’s gone.’

  Martin said, ‘It’s only a restaurant.’

  Charlie turned around in his chair and looked at him. Martin repeated, ‘It’s only a restaurant, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Charlie. ‘And since when have you been the expert?’

  Martin pouted, but didn’t answer. Mrs Kemp glanced from Charlie to Martin and smiled, as if she were trying to make peace between them.

  Charlie said, with a frankness that was unprecedented for him, ‘Martin and I haven’t seen too much of each other–well, not for years. His mother and I were divorced. You have to make allowances on both sides I guess.’

  Martin looked at his father with an expression that was a mixture of embarrassment and respect. I wish you hadn’t said that, Dad, and anyway, who was it who never came home? But he held his tongue. There are some feelings which are mutually understood between father and son, but which are better left unspoken.

  ‘You must know Mr Musette,’ Charlie said to Mrs Kemp.

  ‘I’ve seen him, yes, but no more than twice.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He’s charming. Very foreign, of course. He likes to be called Monsieur Musette. A lot of the ladies around here think he’s tray charmong. Only from a distance, of course. He keeps himself to himself. And then of course there’s Mrs Musette – Madame Musette – although I’ve never seen her.’

  Charlie waved away the offer of another Jubilee. ‘Tell me something,’ he asked Mrs Kemp. ‘What is it about Le Reposoir that can affect a whole community?’

  Mrs Kemp said, ‘What can I tell you? Maybe it’s nothing at all. Your son’s quite right. It’s only a restaurant. Why should anybody be frightened of a restaurant?’

  The atmosphere in the parlour was very strange. Charlie felt as if he had been asked to complete a sentence to which there was no logical conclusion – such as, ‘I like the shifting of the tides because...’ He couldn’t rid himself of the suspicion that Martin had been talking to somebody back in the parking lot of the Iron Kettle, no matter how much Martin denied it, and he also felt that his conversation with this unknown somebody had been connected with Le Reposoir. After all, where had Martin found that visiting card from Le Reposoir? And why had he denied seeing that pale-faced child in the garden?

  Mrs Kemp showed them up to their room. It was stuffy, high-ceilinged, with maps of damp disfiguring the plaster above their heads. The walls had been papered with huge green flowers that were supposed to be roses but looked more like efflorescing mould. In one corner loomed a gigantic wardrobe, with blistered veneer and mottled mirrors. The bed was enormous, an aircraft carrier of a bed, built of green-painted iron with brass decorations in the shape of seashells. Martin tried to bounce on it, and complained, ‘Jesus, this mattress is as hard as a rock.’

  ‘Hard beds are good for your posture,’ said Charlie. ‘And don’t profane.’

  ‘Do we really have to stay here?’

  ‘Maybe you can answer that,’ Charlie replied, taking off his coat and hanging it up inside the cavernous depths of the wardrobe. There were five wire hangers in there, and a dried up clove and orange pomander that looked like a shrunken head.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Martin. He went over
to the opposite side of the room and stuck his head inside the carved wooden fireplace. ‘Halloo–halloo–any skeletons up there?’

  Charlie watched him in the wardrobe mirror. ‘You still haven’t told me the truth about what happened at the Iron Kettle.’ He tried not to sound too petulant.

  ‘Dad,’ said Martin. ‘Nothing happened.’

  Martin turned away from the fireplace, and as he did so Charlie saw in the mirror that his face had peculiarly altered. It seemed to have stretched out, so that it was broad and distorted, and his eyes had the same blind look as the eyes of a dead fox he had once found lying by the road. Charlie jerked in shock, and turned around, but Martin appeared quite normal when he confronted him face-to-face. He looked back at the mirror. It must have been the mottling, and the dirt. He remembered how old he had looked himself, in the men’s room mirror at the Iron Kettle.

  ‘Do you want to go down to the car and get the bag?’ Charlie asked Martin.

  Martin said, ‘Okay,’ but on the way out of the door he hesitated. ‘Do you really not believe me?’ he asked.

  Charlie said, ‘I believe you.’

  ‘You’re not just saying that to stop us from having an argument?’

  Charlie unfastened his cufflinks. ‘Since when did boys talk to their fathers like that?’

  ‘You said we were supposed to be friends.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Charlie, and felt a wave of guilt. He went over to Martin, and laid his hand on his shoulder, and said, ‘I’ve been travelling around on my own for too darn long, that’s my trouble. Too much talking to myself in hotel mirrors. I guess it’s made me a little nutty.’

  ‘You can believe me,’ Martin told him; although Charlie detected a strange hoarseness in his voice that didn’t sound like Martin at all. ‘You can believe me.’ And it wasn’t so much of an affirmation as a command. It wasn’t really, You can believe me. It was more like, You must believe me.

  He sat on the side of the bed and waited for Martin to return with the suitcase. He thought about a quiet foggy afternoon in Milwaukee, parking his car and walking up the concrete pathway to a small suburban duplex. Six or seven children had been playing ball at the end of the street, and their cries had sounded just like the cries of seagulls. He remembered pushing the bell, and then the front door opening. And there she was, her brown hair tangled, staring at him in complete surprise. ‘You came,’ she had whispered. ‘I never thought you would.’