Compared to the big house in Brookline, or his grandmother’s seaside palace, the farmhouse had always seemed small. But had it always been this run-down? The trim wanted paint, the brick steps needed repointing, and the few shrubs that grew along the side of the house looked dry.
“Hello?” he shouted. “Father?”
There was no answer.
Whatever optimism Rollins had first felt upon seeing the verdant Vermont hills had left him. It was scary to be here. There were no kind spirits in this house. Rollins moved quietly across the driveway, which was sprinkled with rust-colored pine needles. He might have been a child again, creeping about. As before, the silence reminded him of how much he didn’t know.
There was a small shed off to the side of the house, by some poplars. Rollins swung open the door and poked his head inside. In the dim light, he could make out various woodworking tools hanging off hooks along the far wall. Rollins had never seen his father work with his hands, except for an occasional afternoon spent washing his precious Saab. He’d always avoided all machinery, never worn work gloves. All that had fallen to Gabe. Yet on the workbench rested a large red engine with two rubber tubes attached, one of them splattered with what looked like mud. Rollins wiped away some grime from the housing with his fingers. He made out the word HALE in large, angled type. On the table beside it was an instruction booklet concerning the operation of a diaphragm pump, along with several wrenches, some pliers, and a pair of soiled gloves.
He stepped back out onto the driveway. “Father?” he called again. But he heard nothing except the wind swishing through the trees.
Rollins went up onto the small, screened-in porch at the front of the house and peered in the sidelights by the front door. It was so dark inside all he could see was his own dim reflection in the glass. He rapped on the door and shouted, but received no answer. He tried the knob; it turned, and he stepped inside. “Father?” Still silence, except an occasional creak of the floorboards. As Rollins surveyed the shadowy interior, he realized that, for all he knew, his father could be lurking in the darkness like some savage.
The hallway was bare except for a throw rug across the floor. So different from when he was a child and winter clothing was scattered about. The household had never been exactly joyful, but it was usually somewhat active, and there was often a bright fire going in the hearth. Now, it was cool inside, and dark and silent.
“Hello?” he called again.
The living room was just to the right. The adults had taken their cocktails here on the chintz sofa by the old stone fireplace. Now, the room was dominated by a metal desk bearing a dusty computer with a small screen. There were some papers piled up, most of them investment-related: annual reports, newsletters, prospectuses. From what Rollins could make out, few displayed signs of any profitable business activity on his father’s part.
Off to the side of the desk, however, by itself, lay a single, folded-up sheet tucked under the flap of an envelope. Rollins slid it free and opened it up. The handwriting was scrawled, and the text began without salutation:
FYI, the woman’s name is Marjorie Simmons, called Marj. She’s late-twenties, a bit of a looker, and your son appears very attached. I agree, the best way to close out your son’s inquiries is to scare her off. Last night, I placed that call to her we talked about. I’ll let you know what happens. Remember—burn this letter. Leave nothing between us.
The letter was unsigned, but Rollins had no doubt that it was from Jerry Sloane.
So he had made the frightening call that brought Marj to his apartment several days ago.
Rollins jerked open the desk drawers. He discovered office supplies and stationery (with Henry P. Rollins, investment counselor on Xeroxed letterhead), plus a few meager bills for necessities like gas and electricity. He checked the credit card statements: payments of under $100 a month, mostly for gasoline and groceries. To Rollins, who rarely passed a month without incurring at least $800 in restaurant bills on his American Express card, it looked as though his father had taken a vow of poverty. The incoming mail was stacked in a holder on top of the file cabinet. Rollins flipped through it. He found mostly the usual solicitations, but one envelope stopped him. It was from JAR in Farmington, Connecticut. It was slit open, and there was a note inside. Perhaps this will tide you over. Call me, would you please? I can never reach you. It was signed, Missing you, J. In the lower left was a notation in pencil. Rec’ved, $2,000.00
Rollins’ hand trembled to hold such an odious bill of sale. Two thousand dollars for what? A few moments of affection? Was that always his price? And was Rollins himself the product of such a bargain?
He passed through to the small room behind. The bird-filled wallpaper he’d always loved was badly water-stained in places, and there was a small TV (never allowed in his day) in the corner, plus a stack of old New Yorkers beside a couch. Rollins went back across the hall through the barren dining room, where oil portraits of his Arnold grandparents hung, and through the open doorway to the kitchen. The refrigerator buzzed, and the large clock over the stove ticked noisily, but otherwise the room was silent.
“Father?” he called again. Yesterday’s New York Times was spread open across the table, and some dirty dishes were piled in the sink.
There was an answering machine on the counter below the wall phone. The message light was on. Was there a message that would explain his father’s whereabouts? Rollins pressed the replay button. “You have one new message,” said a chirpy, automated voice. “First new message. Four-seventeen P.M.” There was a pause, and a gruff, male voice came on the line. “Hey, you there? Look, I’ve got some things to take care of, and I won’t get to your place until nine. Be there, okay? I need to see you.” Sloane’s voice.
Rollins checked his watch. It was 7:28. He had about an hour and a half.
He opened the back door, and went out onto the steps. A bad odor—manure, probably—seemed to be blowing in from the far field. Before him, on the grass, slender wickets had been set up for croquet.
Neely’s blond hair down over her face. The mallet between her tanned legs. And Father watching.
“Neely?” he called out. A whisper this time, a quiet plea. But the rank smell got to him, and he turned back inside, the screen door snapping shut behind him.
He checked the front window. No car had pulled in the driveway.
Uncertainty had turned to unease, and now was deepening into an almost bottomless dread. It was the thought of Neely again, as she once was, flitting about the croquet balls. That thought in the gathering dusk, amid the silence, the poverty and the stench from the fields. That thought gave shape to the fear growing within him. Death was here, close by. He could feel it.
Where he stood in the hallway, there was a pair of large cabinets. In his mounting terror, all he could think was that they were big enough to store a body in. He grabbed the knobs, and yanked open both doors. But when his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw only mops, paper plates, glass jars, and various cleaning supplies.
Farther along that same wall, a narrow door led down to the basement. As a child, Rollins used to go down sometimes with his father to replace a blown fuse in the antique fuse box at the foot of the stairs. That had been a rare thrill, a quiet acknowledgment of shared manhood. But he dreaded venturing down now, afraid of what he might find below. Still, he lifted a small flashlight off a pegboard on the adjoining wall, opened the door, and started down.
The stairs were rickety, and there were some spiderwebs in the top corners of the stairwell. He made his way down slowly, shining his light ahead of him. The old fuse box had been replaced by a more modern one in a shiny bluish case. But otherwise the basement was unchanged. It was as cold and damp as ever, and the rough stone walls were wet in places from condensation. The floor was packed earth, rock hard. Shining the flashlight across it, he checked for any indentations or uneven places to suggest a shallow grave, just as Schecter had years before in the woods by Neely’s house. If she had
indeed been buried down here, the floor had long since been smoothed out over her. It was now as flat as poured concrete.
Rollins flashed his light about—to some shelves laden with dusty plates, piles of newspapers, an abandoned washing machine. In the far corner, a stack of empty cardboard boxes were heaped up. He went closer and scattered them with a kick. It took a few more swipes of his hand to clear away the last of the boxes, revealing a massive wooden crate that had been hidden within. It came up to his waist, and it bore stickers saying FRAGILE and HANDLE WITH CARE. It was not empty: When he squatted down and gave it a push, he could barely move it. Reluctantly, he brought his nose down to it, but, to his relief, he detected no particular scent. He tried to pry up the lid with his fingers. But it was sealed tight with heavy staples all the way around. Then he remembered seeing a hammer in the work shed.
Above his head, a narrow ventilation window faced the driveway. He dragged a bundle of newspapers over; standing on tiptoe, Rollins could just see out. No car had come into the driveway. He should be safe if he hurried. He climbed the stairs and ran back outside to the work shed. He quickly grabbed a hammer off the wall and dashed back down the kitchen stairs. Breathing heavily now, he pried up one of the crate’s staples, then another, and another. He listened for any sounds from the house as he worked; several times, he stopped to check the basement window. Staple by staple, he made his way around two sides of the box, then three, then four. Finally, he pulled up the lid. The crate was filled with wood shavings. He plunged his hands in—and struck something cold and hard with his fingertips. He scooped out some of the shavings, and shone his flashlight in. He could see something dark inside, way down deep. He frantically dug out some more shavings, and a large, engraved card flew out with them and fluttered to the floor. He picked it up. Cupid, it said in flowing letters at the top. The text began: Congratulations on your purchase of the very finest outdoor statuary available…
He’d found a large, well-packed garden ornament.
He breathed again.
Just then, Rollins heard a thump upstairs, then rapid clicks, suggesting movement. He scooped the shavings back in with both hands, then replaced the lid and piled the boxes back up over it. He held on to the hammer, just in case, and returned up the stairs. Back in the kitchen again, he checked his watch: 7:45. Sloane wouldn’t have come this early, would he?
He called out: “Father? That you?” The clicking noise continued, louder now, like shoes crossing a wooden floor. The hammer up to protect himself, he went back through the dining room, then out to the hall. The house was darker now, but he didn’t dare shine his light. “Father?” he called again. He looked in the sitting room—nothing. He checked the living room. The same. But the rapping sounds continued. He mounted the stairs, his heart beating madly. There were three bedrooms up there. “Father?” Then a whisper. “Neely?” It felt good—hopeful—to call her name. Perhaps she was held prisoner there. Gagged, bound. Locked in a closet. Alive. The sound grew louder as he rose. The click was sharper, more insistent, and he could hear a rubbing sound, too. He went into the end room, where he’d always slept as a child. The same twin beds, with their matching green bedspreads, the same red bureau. For a moment, silence. Then a heavy shape swinging toward the window and a loud crack. In the wind, a pine branch was jostling a loose shutter. Rollins relaxed the arm that held the hammer. Thoughts of Neely receded again.
His brother’s room was behind him. It was identical to Rollins’ own, except the bedspreads were a matching blue. Closet, bureau—empty. He glanced out the back window as he passed through. In the fading light, he could just make out a small mound of dirt in the hay field past the edge of lawn. The house was on a slight rise, giving fine views of the mountains out the back; the surrounding fields sloped down, so the mound had been hidden from the ground floor. A hose ran into the pit, which—judging by the dirt—must be barely a foot deep. It looked like the hose came up from the brook that flowed through the far trees. His father must be irrigating some new planting with brook water. Hence the toolshed pump. That was all he could figure.
His parents’ room was across the hall. It had a double bed, unmade. What strange passion had it held? The closet was filled with clothes, all of them men’s. He recognized some of his father’s fine suits and jackets in see-through garment bags off to one end, evidently unused. He turned back to the room. A couple of Tom Clancy paperbacks were out on the bedside table by the telephone. The bureau was past the window under the eaves. He checked the driveway once more, then tried the drawers. The lower ones had the usual pants, sweaters, and shirts. All of them coarse and cheap; none were made of the splendid, rich material he’d always associated with his father. The smaller, upper-right drawer was filled with balled-up socks and jockey underwear. As he rummaged through these underthings, his flashlight caught on a patch of white toward the back.
He pulled the drawer open all the way. A small white box was taped to the drawer’s rear wall. He peeled the box loose and set it down on the bureau top. He removed several rubber bands and lifted off the cover. Inside, there was a slender gold necklace, a couple of rings, and a woman’s wristwatch, a slim Omega. Its crystal was shattered, and the watch hands were frozen at 10:23. The broken glass suggested violence, pain. With trembling fingers, he turned the watch over. The back bore an engraving. From E. P. to C. B. it said. Love, always. In a flash, Rollins could see his father’s blows raining down, hear Neely’s screams.
Almost frantic, Rollins stuffed the watch in his pocket, then dropped the other jewelry back into the box and resealed it in the back of the drawer. His lungs burned for air, and his heart pounded. But mostly he was conscious of a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach. He needed a bathroom, desperately. Hunched over, he clapped a hand over his mouth and rushed down the hall. He pushed open the bathroom door, reached the toilet just in time before he bent over and delivered two heaves of vomit.
Then—the sound of an engine. The crank of a hand brake and the slam of a car door. He turned the tap for some water, but the faucet only sputtered, producing a dribble of water that he swished around inside his mouth then spat into the sink. He pushed the plunger to flush the toilet, but nothing happened. He closed the toilet lid, slid the hammer under the bathtub, and hurried downstairs. He heard a dog yip, and out the front window, he could see a tall man striding across the driveway.
“Hold on there, Scamp,” the man said gruffly.
Rollins moved slowly, his stomach uneasy.
The man looked rugged in blue jeans and a faded T-shirt, clothes that had always been foreign to his father. He was reaching into the back of a red pickup truck, a vehicle that was all wrong, too. What had become of his beloved Saab? Stranger still, the man pulled out a rifle. This was inconceivable. His father had never hunted, never shot.
But it was his father, unmistakably.
Rollins yelled out to him: “Father! It’s me! Edward!” His first impulse was to run to him, confess everything, and cling to him as he had when he was a boy. But the stiff, purposeful way his father moved, and his tight grip on the gun, caused Rollins to stay by the door.
“Edward?” his father called to him. He sounded as if he’d half-expected him.
A small black dog rushed toward Rollins, growling.
“Quiet,” his father commanded.
His father’s hair had gone gray, and he was nearly bald on top. His eyes were hooded, and the set of his mouth suggested despondency. He came toward Rollins slowly. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, shaking his head. “Look at you.”
Rollins had forgotten about his clothes.
“No car?” his father asked.
“I parked on the road.” Rollins paused, unsure how that would go down. “I didn’t want to get in your way.”
His father eyed him a moment. “What brings you up here?”
“Well, I—I hadn’t seen you in a while,” Rollins began. The dog continued to growl.
“Scamp!” His father slapped the
side of his leg. The dog cowered on the driveway.
Henry Rollins finally extended his hand toward his son, who shook it. The formality felt both strange and familiar. There’d never been any kisses or hugs from his father when Rollins was a child. Now, the skin felt leathery; the contact was brief, perfunctory, meaningless.
“Why the gun?” Rollins asked.
His father looked down at the rifle. “Oh, this?” He smiled. “Just for security. You have to be careful, living alone around here.” He led his son inside the house. “How long you been here?” His accent used to be so crisp and properly Bostonian. Now, his voice had dust in it, and some wear.
“Just arrived. I thought I’d find you inside.”
Mr. Rollins flipped the switch in the front hall, and the house blazed up. “What—you don’t need light?”
“I didn’t want to frighten anyone.”
For the first time, Mr. Rollins looked at his son suspiciously. “You’re not scared of your old man, now, are you?” He went into the kitchen, propped the gun up in the corner, then dropped down into the nearest chair. “There’s probably a beer in the refrigerator.” His head drooped slightly, as if he’d grown tired of being tall. In the kitchen’s harsh, overhead light, his skin—which had once radiated health and confidence—looked worn and sallow.
“I might take some coffee.” Rollins checked his watch again: 8:05. He’d pass a little time with his father, then slip away well before Sloane arrived. He’d hide in the shadows somewhere by the turn off the main road onto Bald Mountain Road, watch for Sloane, then warn off Schecter following behind. That was his new plan.
Mr. Rollins went to the stove and put on the kettle. He got out a mug and spooned some instant into it. “Hope this is all right.” He showed his son the jar. “It’s all I’ve got.”
“Fine.”
His father went to the refrigerator and snapped open a can of beer.
Rollins eyed the rifle. “I spoke to Kathi. That’s how I found you.”
The Dark House Page 38