At first that one fact was all I was able to decide about it. The cold, heavy air of my room was threaded with sound which appeared to have no point of origin and which was as much a vibration I felt through my skin as a resonance in my ears themselves. If you have ever waked in a Western night to hear coyotes howling on a ridge, you will know something of the primitive, irrational fear that it induced in my mind, but nothing of its quality. Perhaps the slither of a snake’s scales across a stone floor . . . I thought of those things and others as I lay there listening. I remembered a night I had once passed in an anchored boat. There had been a small leak in her hull, and all night long I had heard the gurgle and bubble of the sea, deep and very cold, coming in through her bottom. It had not been a dangerous leak and we pumped it out easily in the morning, but the chuckle of the water as it came up from that gulf under our keel and
invaded our small floating world had remained in my mind as a symbol of dread.
Not that the thing in the air of that old house resembled in any physical way these sounds that I have described. It was rather a sort of cold, humming whisper which seemed as I lay listening to increase and increase by such imperceptible degrees that whole minutes must have passed before it was recognizably louder. At the beginning I had to strain my ears to catch it, but after a time it was inescapably easy to hear. Then it stopped abruptly and there was nothing but an occasional night noise in the timbers of the house. I began to relax. The air was easier to breathe without that undertone in it. When it began once more it was so low that I was unsure at first whether I was hearing it again or only remembering. After a while there was no possible doubt and I lay there, feeling fear collect in me more and more coldly and insistently, until the tension was almost unendurable. Any kind of action was preferable to this lying in the dark with terror for a bedfellow. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and got up.
By the time I had groped for matches in the pocket of my coat and got the candle lit the noise had stopped. I stood there in the raw air of the room, holding the candle in a hand that shook in spite of all my will power, and staring stupidly toward the door. How long I waited like that I have no way of reporting. Long enough to be chilled to the core, at any rate. Gradually I was aware of another kind of noise, a faint rustle which came through the wall behind me. Anne was moving in there and the thought steadied me. No matter what was happening it was my job to keep unafraid and calm. She must be as terrified as I, and she would need whatever strength and poise there was in me. I started toward the door.
Before I had taken three steps I knew, rather than heard, that the noise had begun for the third time. It was in the air again, as intangible as the first smell of smoke and more frightening. The boards under my bare feet were like ice, and it took all my resolution to keep walking cautiously toward the door and the thing, whatever it was, that was making that sound. Julian’s invention it must be, of course,
but I wondered what his invention really was; what abominable sort of thing would make that noise . . .
It was louder when I opened the door into the hall and, for the first time, I was aware of the general direction from which it came. A hall ran past me to right and left, and the noise was stronger toward the left. As I stood indecisively looking along that dark passage, there was a click on my right. Anne’s door was opening cautiously, the yellow shine of her candle came through it and in a second she was beside me. She could not have been as cold as I, for she’d had sense enough to put on a long red dressing robe and slippers, but she was shivering violently.
“What is it?” Her whisper was low.
“That thing of Julian’s I suppose. Beat it back to your room, Anne. I’ll look into it.”
“No. I don’t want to be alone.” “
All right,” I told her, “but stay behind me.”
We went down the hall toward the crescendo of that sound and as we walked, I noticed a curious thing to which I paid only casual attention at the time. There was a draft along the floor of the hall, a trickling creep of air that froze my ankles and made the hem of Anne’s robe flutter. It was a quiet night. I should have thought more about such a draft of air around our feet, about where it was going and what had set it in motion. But I was so deeply preoccupied with the business of forcing myself to approach the source of that rushing, humming whisper of fear that I could think of nothing else.
Our candles threw a good deal of light when we started, but by the time we had covered half of the eight full paces that lay between my door and the one to Julian’s workroom, they had begun to flicker and burn blue. My shadow tumbled and darted ahead of me down the hall, cast by the light from Anne’s candle. There was something horribly incongruous in the way it alternately shrank and grew on the boards before me.
No, I don’t think I shall ever forget that short eternity of a walk from my door to Julian’s.
His door, when we came to it, was tightly closed. To my surprise
there was no knob on it, in fact, nothing at all except a new round brass lock that shone yellow in the light of our candles. The door, I saw, was not like any of the others in the house. They were old Maine pine, paneled in a graceful twofold cross. This door was perfectly flat and when I touched it I perceived that it was not even made of wood, but of metal. The cold of steel came through the paint to my fingers,
The noise was on the other side of that door. There could be no doubt of it. It was louder here than at any other point and I could discriminate a number of the elements that went to make it up. There was, below everything else, a humming, tonal constant, but besides that there was a faint, roaring sound which I find it hard to describe, but which was something like the noise of a firebox in a furnace that is running full blast. And then, mingling with those two elements, was a third which I could recognize—the hiss of moving air. The draft which had swirled round our feet was strong in front of that door. Air, it seemed to me, was being sucked into the room, forcing its way into it through the crevices where door and jamb met, brushing past Anne and me as if it were impatient to seek the heart of that sound.
I wondered at that motion of air, of course, but only with a small segment of my attention. The rest was engrossed in listening. In both Anne’s mind and mine, I think, the irrational fear which that sibilant, roaring hum evoked was overlaid with another, horrible sort of dread. Suppose that noise should change, should alter, should begin to define itself? As we heard it then it was a sort of echo of chaos, but if it were to change and become coherent? If, indeed, there should be whispers that were not those of air in motion?
The anticipatory dread of voices was so tremendous that for a time I could only stand before that steel door, pressing the fingers of my free hand against it to steady myself. Half consciously I began to mutter to myself under my breath: “The dead do not come back. No matter where or what or if they exist at all, they will not speak through this thing of Julian’s. He is mad, and it doesn’t matter that he is a genius and that I know it. He is mad and there is no possibility there will be more than one voice on the other side of this door. Julian’s voice yes, but only his. Never that of Helen or Mrs. Marcy, or the old captain who used to lie in this room and look down the river. They are all gone.”
The noise continued. It grew louder, until it seemed to me that the floor trembled with it. The air that went past us whittled the flames of our candles to bluepoints. I could not stand it a second longer. With my clenched fist I beat against the door. “Julian!” I shouted. “Julian! Stop it, I say! Turn that damned thing off!” My fist made a kind of metal thunder against the door and, though I was ashamed of the way my voice trembled when I shouted, I kept on yelling until the noise on the other side of that door stopped.
It ceased abruptly, with a roaring crash that was almost like an explosion. It was, on a lesser scale, the clap of thunder that Anne and I had heard in the meadow.
The sudden hush that followed that final crash rang in my ears almost as loud as the clamor of the minute befo
re. Anne drew a deep uneven breath. “Thanks,” she said, whether to me or to the silence I don’t know. We stood there together, shivering and weak, and waited. I was determined to speak to Julian. He would have to leave that monstrous business of his alone, at least for the rest of this night. The kaleidoscope of all that had happened since I came to Barsham Harbor rushed over me; I felt tired, bewildered, afraid, and more than anything else, angry.
Two things happened at once. The door before our faces opened the fraction of an inch and Mrs. Walters came heavily down the hall at our backs. Julian’s voice, hoarse with some emotion which I could not define, came through the crack of the door. “Get away,” he said. “Get back down the hall and I’ll talk to you. But get back from this door.”
Mrs. Walters was saying, in a tone of sneering triumph, “So, Julian. You see I was right!” She looked at us with contempt. “Hasn’t either of you enough sense to stay where you belong?” she demanded.
I put my hands against her shoulders and pushed her backward down the hall. “Later,” I said. “We’ll have all this out in the morning. But not now.”
She retreated. From the expression on her face I think she was surprised that I had dared to touch her.
Julian came out of his room before we had time to become further embroiled. He opened the door, I noticed, just enough to slip out and then drew it shut and locked it before he turned toward us. His face was gray-white in the glow of our candles—burning steadily now that the draft was gone from the hall—and his eyes were rimmed with the black stain of fatigue. He came toward us down the hall as if his strength were almost gone. Apparently he had not yet been to bed. At any rate, he was fully dressed in the suit he had worn to the inquest.
“Never do that again,” he said and his voice trembled with wrath. “Never!”
“See here, Julian,” I said in as restrained a tone as I could bring myself to employ, “you simply cannot run that damn thing of yours in the house at night. Neither I nor Anne can bear the noise it makes. You ought to be in bed.”
He looked at me dully. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know. After midnight.”
“Two in the morning,” Anne’s voice contributed.
“Trying to do it all yourself, Julian?” Mrs. Walters’ tone was harsh and sarcastic, but her face was strained and there was pleading in it.
Julian made a motion toward me. “All right, Dick. No more tonight, I promise. In the morning I want to have a talk with you.” He sounded merely tired. There was no more anger in his voice.
“Good,” I told him. “Only get some sleep first. There’s no need to work yourself to death you know. You mustn’t drive yourself so hard.”
He shook his head. “I’m not so sure, my boy. Not after today— and yesterday,” he added as an afterthought.
Mrs. Walters was still staring at him. “Three years, Julian. Three years. And you lock me out at the end.”
His voice was dull, everything but fatigue and despair was gone out of it. “You know why that is, Esther. I cannot trust you any
more.” With that he turned on his heel and opened a door across from the steel one which gave onto his workroom. “Good night,” he said heavily. “Anne, my dear, I am sorry that you were frightened. It’s all right now.”
The three of us looked at each other after he went. Mrs. Walters was haggard, her face modeled by frustration and unhappiness. I felt an uncomprehending pity for her. “Well,” I said with an unpleasant false brightness, “we may as well get some sleep now.”
Anne’s shoulders shook, and suddenly she was crying and clinging to me. Over her shoulder I said to Mrs. Walters, “All right. I’ll take care of her.”
She looked at us for a slow minute, almost as if she doubted our existence, turned, and went back to her room. We were left standing together in the hall, and I forgot about everything else while I used my arms and hands and lips to exorcise Anne’s tears. I put our candles on the floor, and after that it was easier.
25.
BREAKFAST next morning was a strange meal. None of us had slept much, so that we all looked hollow-eyed and as if we hated each other. Certainly there was a coldness between Julian and Mrs. Walters, but it took no overt form because none of us said anything. I ate my food with determination and coaxed Anne to swallow a few mouthfuls of toast beside the coffee which we all gulped.
When we were clearing up the dishes, Mrs. Walters announced that we would have to drive into town to buy food. She volunteered for the trip, but I think she was relieved when I vetoed that idea at once, and declared that Anne and I would go. I had no intention of risking the effect of Mrs. Walters’ appearance in the streets of Barsham Harbor.
It was odd how our spirits lifted when the two of us got past the Marcy house and onto the open road. The day was gloomy enough, with an overcast sky and a thin, cold wind that came down the river valley as though it were scouting the way for winter. But the car ran smoothly, we were warm in its cabin and, most of all, the house on Setauket Point was behind us.
“I was a dreadful baby last night,” Anne said.
“I’m glad you were,” I answered. “Knowing that you needed support was the only thing that kept me from losing my own grip.”
The memory of that eternity in front of Julian’s door made us both silent.
Long before I was ready for it, Barsham Harbor was on our either hand. Without discussion we selected the A & P store that stood at the far end of River Street. It was out toward the edge of town, for one thing, and, for another, it was a chain store and I felt that it would not be so likely to serve as a gathering place for . . . well, for people who might be talking about us.
All the same there were a good many people there when I went in with the grocery list. I wouldn’t let Anne come in with me, and I’d made her promise to lock the doors of the car. She didn’t argue about it. The moment I pulled open the screen door I knew that this was not going to be pleasant. There had been a hum of voices before I entered, but in almost no time the store was heavy with silence. They were all looking at me and they had all stopped buying—if that’s what they had been doing. Clerks and customers alike, they stared at me.
The mass silence and hostility of a group of unfamiliar people can be a terrible thing. I felt my skin crawl when I went to the counter. The clerk who waited on me was a pallid youth with adenoids. He took my list, looked at it, and began taking things off the shelves without a word. It was a big order and by the time he’d finished collecting it, two cardboard cartons were pretty well full. I paid and the clerk shoved the two boxes toward me without a word. I had a struggle to get them both into my arms, but I knew better than to ask him to carry one of them out to the car for me.
As I went toward the door a voice behind me said, “Some people can eat, I guess, no matter if there’s blood on their hands.” It was a woman’s voice, harsh and bitter with prejudice. I paid no attention. Another voice, this time a man’s, observed, “If I was them, I wouldn’t be buyin’ all that food. I’d take the fust train,” and a third added, “And they wouldn’t need but a one-way ticket, at that.” The rest I could not distinguish clearly; there was only a hissing gaggle of voices at my back.
As I was loading the boxes into the car, a man came out of the store after me. He was a heavy-faced fellow with huge shoulders and some kind of badge pinned to the inside of his coat. “Buddy,” the man said.
“Yes.”
“Don’t take that talk about leavin’ town too much to mind. Don’t none of you go till Dan Hoskins gives the word.”
“And who are you?”
“Pete Barnstable, Deppity.” He touched the badge. “Thank you,” I told him. “And let me give you a word of advice, while we’re both on that track. Don’t take sides. All we ask is justice.” It sounded fatuous when I said it, but it made me hot with anger to find one man who should have been open-minded so obviously join the rest in hating us.
He spat into the road, just past my foot. “You’ll
git justice,” he remarked briefly and went back into the store.
We drove home without talking.
26.
JULIAN was waiting for me in the living room when we returned to the house. I looked at him with something close to dislike. Perhaps it was the aftermath of that five minutes in the store, but it occurred to me that I had had about enough of this house and the people in it. I wanted to leave it and them behind me forever. Anne I wanted to take with me when I went, but beyond that I did not care. I reminded myself that Julian was my friend, had given me the opportunity to go into my own chosen field of work, and that there were inescapable ties between us. But they meant nothing in my mind at that moment.
“Hello, Julian,” I said dully.
“Richard. I have been waiting for you to come back . . .” he hesitated and then went on with a rush “to have that talk that I promised you last night.”
“Anything you want to tell me, Julian, I’ll be glad to hear. But I don’t know that I can help you. I don’t know that you ought to go on with this notion of yours. It’s absurd to believe it will work.”
He stood up and the corners of his mouth twitched with something that might have been a smile. “No,” he said, “it’s absurd, as you say. And yet, last night, you were hammering at my door and shouting—”
“I give you that. But the damn’ noise gets on your nerves.” That was the most complete understatement I think I have ever made.
He nodded vaguely. “I suppose it might, if you were not as familiar with it as I am. But come, my boy. We cannot talk here. I don’t want anyone to overhear us. We can talk best in my room, I think.”
The Rim of Morning Page 44