The Dark on the Other Side

by Barbara Michaels

  “When did you start to think that it might not be a real dog?”

  “Not that time. Not even when a search failed to turn up any sign of such an animal. Gordon was alarmed when I told him,” she said expressionlessly. “He insisted on looking for it, right then, even though it was almost dark. He and the yard servants searched again next morning, and he called all the neighbors, and the police, to see if anyone else had reported seeing it. No one had. But the worst was…I told you the ground was soft and wet. When they searched the field where I had seen it, they found no prints.”

  From Michael’s expression, she realized that, despite his comments, he had been clinging to the hope that the creature was material. This piece of news hit him hard.

  “How could prints show on grass?”

  “There were large bare patches,” she said inexorably. “Something would have shown, somewhere.”

  “I see. But that wouldn’t be enough, in itself, to convince you that you were having hallucinations.”

  “No. I didn’t start thinking that until Jack Briggs failed to see it, the next time it came.”

  “If he wasn’t looking…”

  “It ran straight across the terrace while we were looking out the drawing-room window. It went fast, but it was in sight for several seconds. That’s a long time, Michael.”

  “Long enough. Any other non-witnesses?”

  “Several. My maid, for one. That was from an upstairs window, of course, and it was pretty dark.”

  “Not easy to see in that kind of light, especially if she had already been told you were suffering from hallucinations. Most people see only what they expect to see.”

  “Gordon told her something,” Linda said doubtfully. “I think he must have warned all the servants about me. They started treating me peculiarly about that time. But God knows I was acting pretty peculiarly anyhow.”

  “I imagine he pays excellent salaries, doesn’t he? Yes; money, and his famous charm, could convince them of anything he wanted them to believe.”

  The room was full of cats by this time-fat cats, thin cats, striped, spotted, and Siamese. One of them jumped onto the table, with that uncanny suggestion of teleportation that surrounds a cat’s suave quickness, and Linda stood up, overturning her chair.

  “What are you trying to prove?” she demanded wildly. “You still don’t believe in it, do you? You think it’s real.”

  Michael stroked the cat, a round orange creature, which was investigating his half-empty plate.

  “That shouldn’t be the main point, for you,” he said mildly.

  “I’m grateful, don’t think I’m not. Whether it’s real or just a plain apparition, it isn’t a figment of my imagination, or you wouldn’t have seen it too. You aren’t the suggestible type. You’ve come a long way to bolster me up, to support me. But you’d stop-you couldn’t go on-if you knew what I really believe…”

  The lights flickered and faded, leaving the room in brown obscurity; and a violent clap of thunder seemed to rock the foundations of the house. Linda covered her face with her hands. On the roof, a thousand minuscule feet began dancing. The rain had started.

  Michael stood up. He had scooped up the cat, to keep it out of his food; and the animal, already full, hung complacently from his hands with a full-moon smirk on its fat face. The contrast between its furry blandness and Michael’s drawn features turned Linda’s cry of alarm into a semi-hysterical gasp of laughter.

  “Stop it,” Michael said sharply. “You’re losing your grip-no wonder, in this place…”

  He turned, looking helplessly around the room, which still swam in an evil dimness. The stuffed monster dangling from the ceiling seemed to grin more broadly, and the heavy beams seemed to sag. Outside the window, the night was livid with the fury of the storm. But Linda noticed how gentle his hands were, holding the unwanted bundle of cat. Finally he put it back on the table, with the air of a man who is abandoning lesser niceties, and sat down firmly on his chair. The cat started licking his plate. Michael regarded it curiously.

  “The cats are calm enough now,” he said. “They blew their stacks when it was outside.”

  Linda dropped back into her chair.

  “Cats are traditionally sensitive to influences from the other side,” she said dully.

  Michael’s head turned sharply; on the verge of speaking, he caught himself, and she knew that his comment, when he did speak, was not the one he had meant to make.

  “It only appears at dusk, or in a dim light?”

  “Yes. Michael, I know what you’re trying to do. But it won’t work. The fact that the thing only comes at night is just as much confirmation of my theory as of yours.”

  “You think it’s supernatural, then,” he said calmly. “Something from-the dark on the other side.”

  “Don’t! Why did you say that?”

  “Never mind, I’ll get to that later. All right, so it’s supernatural. The supernatural has many forms. What precisely is this thing? A hound of hell, à la Conan Doyle? A manifestation of hate and ill will? The old Nick in one of his standard transformations? A werewolf, or a…”

  His voice trailed off and his eyes widened. Linda nodded. She felt quite numb now that the moment of truth was upon her, but she felt no impulse to conceal that truth. Even if he stood up and walked out of the house, leaving her more alone than she had ever been, she had to be honest with him.

  “The word is too simple,” she said. “But-yes. That’s what it is. It’s Gordon.”

  II

  The lights had returned to normal. The storm muttered more softly, held in abeyance. Linda sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching Michael as he paced up and down. He was followed by an entourage of interested cats; but the sight of Michael as a feline Pied Piper did not seem amusing. His distress was too great.

  “I can’t buy it,” he said, swinging around to face her. “I’ve believed in enough mad things in the last few hours so that you’d think a little detail like that wouldn’t stick in my craw. But it does.”

  “I didn’t expect you to believe it,” she said.

  His face twisted, as if a sudden pain had struck him. She watched the spasm with dull disinterest, wondering why he felt such distress. The lethargy that gripped her was pleasant, compared to what she had endured; she knew how a patient must feel after a critical session with his analyst, or a penitent after a bad session in the confessional-drained, empty, oddly at peace.

  “How about settling for an abstract manifestation of evil?” Michael suggested hopefully, and won a wan smile in response. “I’m serious,” he insisted. “Half serious, anyhow…Linda, you’ve been through a terrible strain, it would be a miracle if your nerves were normal. I’m not suggesting that you’re insane, I wouldn’t be talking to you like this if I thought so. But isn’t it possible that you’ve concocted this-this fantastic theory out of a very real, legitimate fear of Gordon?”

  She looked up, a faint spark of interest in her face.

  “You’re willing to admit that I might have a legitimate fear of a paragon like Gordon?”

  “He’s no paragon,” Michael said slowly. “Not of virtue, anyhow. I don’t know what he is. But I’m ready to concede that there’s something seriously amiss with him. I’m all the more willing to admit it because it cost me such a struggle to admit it. Linda, do you remember a boy named Joe Schwartz? He was a student of Gordon’s when you were in that class.”

  “Joe? Of course I remember him. He wrote some of the funniest, most scurrilous verses I’ve ever heard.”

  “Scurrilous?”

  “About the professors, and the other students, and human foibles in general. Some topical, some more basic. He had a gift for hitting people’s weaknesses, but he was never cruel; he could sting, delicately, without really hurting. None of the parties that year were a success unless Joe performed. He’d sit there on the floor whanging out chords on his guitar and bellowing out his infamous comments in a raucous voice, grinning from ear to ear�
� Why are you looking like that?”

  “It doesn’t sound like the Joe Schwartz I know,” Michael said grimly.

  “He did get a little peculiar toward the end of the year. People said he’d changed. I’m afraid I wasn’t much aware of others just then. Love’s young dream, you know.”

  Michael looked uncomfortable, but he went on doggedly.

  “What about Tommy Scarinski?”

  “You’ve been busy, haven’t you? Yes, he was one of Gordon’s acolytes. Always unstable, of course…At the time, I thought he was preying on Gordon, instead of…”

  “The reverse?”

  “You don’t understand a process, sometimes, until it happens to you personally.”

  “We’re getting there,” Michael said. He spoke slowly, without looking at her. “We try to talk around it, but we’ll have to discuss it sooner or later. Why, Linda? Why is he doing this?”

  “I don’t think I could explain it to you-or to any other man.”

  She hadn’t meant it to hurt, but it did; she could tell from the change in his face. She went on quickly,

  “You see? I can’t even talk about it without sounding like one of the militant feminists you men despise-like an embittered woman whose marriage has gone sour and who rants about the whole male sex instead of facing facts. But it wasn’t like that. I’m not a romantic adolescent, I know that few relationships, marital or otherwise, are based on true equality and respect. As a rule, one partner dominates the other; and in human society there’s a long tradition of masculine superiority. So-all right. I could have accepted that, I’m conditioned to it. Maybe I even wanted it. But Gordon doesn’t want to dominate people; he wants to absorb them, body and soul and spirit. Living with him was-indescribable. I felt as if he were fastened to me, like a gigantic leech, pulling out every ounce of will, every thought… I can see myself making that speech in a divorce court, can’t you? It might come straight out of some ghastly day-time serial.”

  “Why didn’t you leave him?”

  “I did leave him. He brought me back.” She laughed bitterly. “That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? In this day and age…But it was so easy, really. I had to get a job, I didn’t have much money. I never did. Credit cards, charge accounts, but no cash. I couldn’t very well go to one of the big hotels and charge my escapade to Gordon’s account. Even if I’d had the gall, I knew it would make it easier for him to find me. So I had to get a job-and quickly; I couldn’t pick and choose. I have a B.A. degree, no special training; you’d be surprised how few jobs there are for women with no special skills and no experience. Even my typing was rusty, after all those years. I turned down a couple of offers because there were special conditions of employment involved, and I was in no mood for another man who wanted to own even that small part of me. I don’t know…I’ve never known…how many jobs I lost because of Gordon’s quiet influence-he must have located me immediately-and how many because of the ordinary handicaps of my situation. There were a few things I didn’t try: washing dishes, ushering at movie theaters… It wasn’t false pride; I was afraid of places like that.”

  The look in Michael’s eyes hurt her, and yet she found a perverse pleasure in seeing how deeply she could move him.

  “I finally got a job as live-in maid and baby-sitter for a family in the suburbs,” she went on. “I held it for three days before the woman told me she didn’t need me. I’m pretty sure that was Gordon’s pressure; household help is darned hard to get these days. Maybe he told the woman I was mentally disturbed.

  “I was pretty desperate by then. When Gordon popped into my slummy little hotel room, with his tame psychiatrist in tow, I was in no condition to put up a fight. It probably wouldn’t have mattered, even if I could have kept my cool; the doctor was under Gordon’s famous spell. But of course I didn’t stay calm, I started yelling and screaming, and got an injection for my pains. When I woke up, I was back-home. And all the servants walked around shaking their heads and sighing. I thought at first that I’d try again, plan more carefully-scrape together enough money to get away, a long way away. But it is not easy to fool Gordon. And-I just didn’t have the strength. It took all the energy I had to keep myself from giving in, from admitting that I was losing my mind.”

  Michael stooped and picked up a tiger kitten, which had gone to sleep on his foot. The motion of bending brought a little color back to his face.

  “I still don’t understand why,” he said.

  “Why Gordon wants to have me declared insane? I wouldn’t be sent to a sanatorium, you know; he’d keep me at home, in a nice quiet padded cell, with nice quiet attendants watching me every second. Gordon doesn’t give things away, or let go of the things he owns. He discards them; they don’t leave him. Does that degree of vanity seem monstrous to you? It does to me, too; but that’s Gordon, he’s always been that way, he cannot endure rejection. Especially from me. I gave him love, devotion, admiration-but they weren’t enough. When he demanded more, I started to fight back. But that’s the insidious thing about a plan like his. How do you prove you’re sane? It’s a vicious circle; the more desperate and frightened you become, the more erratically you behave; before long you begin to wonder yourself, and then the progression downhill is rapid. I started drinking. But not until after I tried-”

  “I know about that,” Michael said quickly.

  “You do? Oh, of course, he’d tell you that. And you-you came here?”

  Michael shook his head, dismissing irrelevancies.

  “I don’t know what made you do it,” he said. “But the end result is clear.”

  “Oh, yes, it was the final bar on the prison door. If I tried to escape again, he had the ultimate weapon. I was dangerous-homicidal-and he had witnesses to prove it.”

  “Good Lord,” Michael muttered. His fingers continued their automatic caress of the kitten, which was curled in the crook of his arm, purring loudly. Linda watched the animal, using it, illogically perhaps, as a kind of live barometer. So long as the cats were quiet…

  “But I did it,” Linda went on. “I don’t remember anything that preceded it, but I remember lying there on the floor, with the knife beside me, where it had fallen from my hand. There was blood on the knife… He’d knocked me down; you can’t blame him for that. He wasn’t even particularly rough about it. The lights were blazing and the room seemed to be filled with people, and Gordon stood there with blood running down the sleeve of his shirt…”

  “Shirt? Wasn’t he in pajamas?”

  “I don’t think so… No. Does it matter?”

  “Not really. But it stimulates my nasty suspicious mind. You don’t remember actually striking the blow?”

  Suddenly it was difficult for her to speak, or to look at him.

  “You do go all the way, when you take up a cause,” she whispered. “Michael, it’s no use. I wouldn’t remember that, it’s the one thing my mind would utterly reject, would blot out. But I…had thought about it. Sometimes it seemed to me that I could hear the words, they were so loud in my mind: Kill him. It’s the only way you can ever get away. You can twist and evade all you like, but you can’t free me of that act-or excuse it. There’s no excuse for killing, unless it’s the only means of self-defense left to you. And he was not threatening my life.”

  “What about your soul?”

  “Don’t,” she said breathlessly. “Don’t talk about that. It’s the excuse I’ve used…but I’m not sure I believe in the soul.”

  “Maybe that’s not the right name. But it exists-some entity other than the body. It brought me here-your call.”

  “My call?”

  “That’s not a good word either, but I can’t describe it because I’ve never felt anything I can compare it with. It hit me last night-a sudden, peremptory mental calling. You wanted me, you needed me, and I had to find you.”

  “But I didn’t call you,” she said slowly. “Not that way or any other way.”

  Michael stared.

  “You must have. I couldn�
�t have been so sure without…Last night, near midnight-didn’t you ask for help? Not necessarily of me-a prayer, a mental plea…”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Then who…”

  In his surprise, Michael almost dropped the kitten. It eluded his fumbling hands, jumped down, and streaked for the door. In the silence they both heard the sounds. There was someone, or something, at the front door.

  They moved closer together, like children afraid of the dark; their hands groped and clasped. Linda’s first impulse, to hide, was canceled by Michael’s behavior. He stood rock-still, facing the darkened doorway; and Linda accepted his decision. Whatever it was, running away wouldn’t help.

  But when the opening door was followed by the sound of footsteps coming slowly down the hall, she went limp with relief. She recognized those footsteps.

  Andrea stood in the doorway like a figure straight out of Grimm. The black, hooded cloak she wore, even while grocery shopping in the village, blended with the darkness of the hallway behind her, so that her wrinkled face stood out with uncanny distinctness. Over her arm was the basket she carried in lieu of a purse. She paid no attention to the cats, who were weaving patterns around her feet, but surveyed her unexpected visitors without surprise.

  “I thought you’d be here,” she said.

  Linda would have accepted that statement as an example of the old woman’s boasted ESP, but when Andrea raised a hand to push back her hood, she realized that there might be another explanation. Andrea was trembling. Terror and a strange exultation blended in her face.

  “It’s out there,” she said. “Waiting for you. I saw it. Heavenly saints-I saw it!”