"Then it's Freudian," I suggested. "It has to do with puberty, with growing up, and becoming a sexual being." I leered at her.
She chuckled softly, quickly. "It depends a lot on what I'm eating, doesn't it?"
I nodded. "Yes, it does."
Occasionally, she still has nightmares. She had one a couple of nights after I found her huddled in the darkness, and when I woke her from it—because she'd been moaning pitifully—she told me that it was a dream of hunger again. "But not the same kind of hunger, Jack," she added. "It's something else's hunger, I think. It's the earth's hunger."
I smiled at her; I touched her cheek—my way of trying to comfort her, because she clearly needed comforting. But I could say nothing because I have learned from her that silence is preferable to the comforting but meaningless phrase.
I hugged her instead. She hugged me. Eventually she stopped hugging me and went back to sleep.
It was some time later that night, several hours before dawn, that I was awakened by the sound of voices at a distance, as if a couple of moths were caught between the window and screen. I pushed myself up on my elbows, glanced at Erika, whose back was turned, and decided there was no point in waking her. I got out of bed, went to the window, drew the curtains. The road is a good three hundred feet from the house, and the night was nearly pitch-dark, but I found that if I looked up slightly from the level of the road, I could see random movement, as if people were walking there.
I opened the window and leaned forward, so my nose and cheek were touching the screen. I could hear the chorus of voices more clearly and I could make out individual voices, even an occasional string of words. I thought at first that I was seeing a line of Boy Scouts on some early morning hike because there was a Boy Scout camp not far off, certainly within hiking distance. Then I realized that the line was too ragged, that the voices were a mixture of male and female. And after all, Boy Scouts probably said very little when they were on a hike.
From the bed, Erika asked. "What are you doing, Jack?"
"Nothing," I answered. "I'm watching some people out there, some Boy Scouts, I think."
"It's cold, Jack. Come back to bed, okay?"
"In a moment." I could see the people on the road more clearly now. There were at least a dozen of them. Some seemed to be on the narrow path which led to Martin's house. "Friends of the guy across the road, I think."
"The Boy Scouts are friends of the guy across the road? What in the hell are you talking about, Jack?"
"I don't think they're Boy Scouts, Erika. Not really. I thought they were Boy Scouts . . ." It looked as if one of the people on the road had started wandering toward the house. "Jesus," I whispered.
"Come back to bed, Jack," Erika pleaded. "It's cold."
"In a few moments," I said. "I have to go downstairs. I'm hungry. I'm going to go get a snack."
"A snack?" I heard her fumble with the alarm clock. "You're going to get a snack at 4:00 in the morning?!"
"I won't be long. Really. Just a minute or two." I closed the window—quietly, because I didn't want whoever was wandering toward the house to hear me. I drew the curtains, went down to the library, then onto the porch. But when I looked, I saw no one. And I heard nothing. Only, from above, Erika pleading for me to come back to bed. I heard the word "cold" from her, again and again.
I pulled open the porch door, noisily—it was a very snug fit with the porch floor—stuck my head out, and said, "Hello? Is someone there?" I got no answer. I went out onto the porch steps. "I'm going to call the police," I said. "If there's someone out here, I'm going to call the police." Still nothing. I stayed on the porch steps a good ten minutes. Erika continued calling to me. I called back, several times, "I'll be up!" I didn't want to say too much, and I didn't want to stray too far from the front of the house.
It was a very still morning, and it came to me that if I listened hard enough, I could probably hear the trespasser because no one can stay absolutely quiet for long. So I listened. But I heard nothing, and because the morning was cold and I was tired, and I longed to be back in bed, I started getting angry. "Goddamnit!" I hissed. "This isn't funny anymore. I'm going inside, I'm going to call the police." And I went inside, into the living room, and stood just to the right of the big window.
A huge and elegant maple tree stands twenty-five feet in front of that window. If I waited long enough, maybe I'd see the trespasser step out from behind that tree and walk off. It didn't happen. And after several minutes I heard behind me:
"What the hell are you doing, Jack?"
It was Erika. I jumped a little; I hadn't heard her open the library door. I answered, "I'm waiting for someone to come out from behind that tree."
"Who? A Boy Scout?"
"There are no Boy Scouts, Erika . . . I mean, there are Boy Scouts, sure, but there are no Boy Scouts out there."
"Then what's the problem?" Her voice betrayed her irritation. "My God, Jack, it's 4:30 in the morning, and here you are standing at the window looking at the darkness."
"I saw people out there, Erika."
"Out where?" I heard her cross the room, felt her stop just behind me, so her gown was touching my hand.
I nodded at the maple tree. "Out there. Behind that tree. I think they're behind that tree."
"Come up to bed, Jack. It's cold; I want you to come back to bed."
"Soon, Erika. A few minutes—"
"Now, Jack."
"Erika, this is a matter of security here. Go on up, get an extra blanket. I'll be up before you know it."
"I need you, Jack. Please."
"In a moment, Erika. I think there's someone around the house. This is important, for Christ's sake!" I became aware that I could no longer feel her gown on my hand. I turned my head. She was gone.
I went up to the bedroom, switched the light on, found her sitting on the edge of the bed, hugging herself as if for warmth. "Erika?" I said. "Are you okay?"
"Just cold, Jack," she answered. "Come to bed, now. Please come to bed."
"You're very quick, aren't you?" I said. "I never realized you were so quick."
"Quick?"
"Yes. You move very quickly."
"I don't know what you're talking about, Jack. Come to bed. Turn off the light and come back to bed."
She'd been pleading with me for half an hour, I realized. And in bed, with her, was where I wanted to be, so I said, "Yes, I'm sorry, it's late," and I went to bed.
CHAPTER NINE
"'Murders, mutilation, and mayhem,' Jack?" Erika was clearly upset. "This woman actually said that—what was her name?"
"Sarah."
"Sarah what?"
"Sarah Talpey."
"And she actually used that phrase? Was she trying to be funny?"
"I don't think so." We were folding laundry. Erika has shown me how to fold shirts at least two dozen times, but my hands never cooperate. I handed her the shirt I was trying to fold. "Could you do this, hon?"
She took it from me.
I said, "She wasn't trying to be funny, Erika. I think she was trying to . . . distance herself."
"From what?" Erika used quick, stiff, agitated movements to fold the shirt I'd given her.
"From that place. She spends a lot of time there—"
"She sounds perverse, Jack."
I shook my head, made a production of folding a pair of my boxer shorts. "She's not perverse. Her brother was killed there—"
She cut in, looking suddenly very smug, "No one named Talpey died at Granada, Jack."
"Talpey is her married name, Erika."
Her look of smugness quickly dissipated. She grabbed a pair of socks, stuffed one into the other. I nodded at them. "That's how I fold socks, and you yell at me for it." I paused. "How did you know that no one named Talpey died in Granada, Erika?"
She lowered her head, shook it briskly. "We'll talk," she said.
"I hope so," I said.
But we never did.
This is what Sarah Talpey told me a
bout Granada.
She told me that a dozen or more people died there, that several of the houses were burned, apparently to destroy evidence, and that several of the victims had been mutilated and cannibalized. "It happens in the best of cultures," she said. "I guess people get sick of the same old meat and potatoes."
And she told me that the case still was open, after twenty years. "Of course, no one cares much anymore. It's old news, and I guess there are bigger fish to fry these days. But it intrigues the hell out of me, Jack."
I told her that was obvious. She made the revelation that her brother had died in Granada. "I was doing postgraduate work at Barnard College then. I remember that someone from the FBI called and told me, point-blank, 'I'm sorry, Miss Gellis'—that was my maiden name—'but your brother's been killed. We'll need you to identify the body. Et cetera, et cetera. Norm was quite a bit older than I. And I'm the first to admit that the world has produced nicer people. But I cried a lot in the next couple of weeks, not merely because he was dead, but because he died that way. He was one of those who was cannibalized. Not completely, of course. That would hardly have left anything to identify, would it?" She took a breath. "Anyway, I started coming here, as a naturalist, several years ago." She smiled as if in apology. "That requires an explanation, I know. Why would a naturalist be interested in this place? And actually, it's not so much that I'm interested in the houses themselves as much as I'm interested in what visited them." Another pause. Another grin of apology. "Do you understand that, Jack?"
I shook my head.
"Of course you don't. And I probably sound like I'm not all there, right—the eccentric, bucolic naturalist?" I grinned. She grinned back. "No, Jack. I'm smart, I'm tough, and I'm pragmatic." She looked away, seemed lost in thought a moment, then continued, "And when I dig into the earth I find . . . life!" She looked up at me, smiled broadly. "I find life, Jack. Do you understand that?"
"Yes," I said.
"Yes," she said. "I think you do. I can tell that you do. And I'm glad you do, because that means we can talk. Later."
"Later?"
"Come back here when you can. You'll find me. We'll talk. I'll tell you what's on my mind." And then she said good-bye, got into her bright red Chevy Lux 4 X 4 pickup, and drove off at a speed that my Toyota could never have maintained on that road.
We did talk; we talked quite a lot, and I learned much from her. I still do.
Our problems with moles stopped late in March, when the air turned bitterly cold.
We found one morning that some of the old copper water pipes had frozen. I had to creep around on my belly in the crawl space in the cellar, blow dryer in hand, find the offending pipes, and thaw them.
One of our cats, Ginger, got herself lost around this time, too. I tromped through the woods, calling for her, several days in a row, with no luck, and at last decided that she'd either been picked up by someone or killed by a raccoon or a fox, or by one of the dozens of stray dogs that roamed the area—they always kept at a distance, so what we heard of them were only occasional barks and long howls. The most painful possibility was that she had frozen to death. This bothered me a lot because she was a creature who dearly loved warmth.
It bothered Erika, too, though she'd never seemed to like Ginger much, had always seemed merely to tolerate her. "She's a cat, Jack. Cats don't freeze to death," she said, but it was a question more than a statement.
"Sure they do, Erika, if it gets cold enough."
She spent the next three days on long, lone hikes through our woods, calling for Ginger. She didn't find her. And for the next couple of weeks she said to me now and again, "My God, Jack, I hope she didn't freeze to death," and I said to her that it was okay, that if she had, it was probably one of the best ways to die. But Erika didn't seem to understand that.
Late in March we went to the antique shop that the Alnors operated in their white barn. We were looking for a settee to put in the big, open room at the top of the stairs—we'd put some plants there, and a red beanbag chair (we could think of nowhere else to put it), an aquarium, and we'd decided at last to start giving it a look of some kind, ambiance. We'd seen a sturdy late-Victorian settee there on a previous visit, had priced it, and said that we hoped it would be there when we came back—although we had no plans to go back soon. The Alnors had nodded and smiled and said they thought it would be there, that business was not too good in the winter.
But it was gone. "A nice young couple bought it," Mr. Alnor told us. "Right after you looked at it, in fact."
The shop was incredibly cluttered, the aisles narrow, the atmosphere stiff and businesslike. Signs here and there warned that "Children must be accompanied by an adult." One sign proclaimed, "You break it, you bought it!" Another: "We'd like to keep your friendship—Don't ask for credit!" And there was the stiffly smiling presence of one of the Alnors at all times. "Just let us know how we can help you" was their line.
When we got to the shop that afternoon late in March there were several other people there: an older, well-dressed couple who walked arm in arm through the aisles, and what sounded like a family above us, on the barn's second floor, where furniture was kept. We could hear the slow clop-clop of several pairs of feet and the quicker, frantic noises of children. Noise seemed to carry well through the simple plank flooring above us, and the sounds of the children clearly upset Mrs. Alnor, who crossed her arms, grimaced, and said to her husband, "What do you suppose they're doing up there, Harry?"
Then we heard "Mommy?" very faintly from upstairs. I looked toward the stairway because I'd sensed a kind of tense urgency in the word.
Mrs. Alnor said again, "What do you suppose they're doing up there, Harry?"
And Harry said, "I'll go and see."
"Mommy?!" we heard again. Then, a second later, "Joyce?" It was a man's voice.
I felt Erika grab my arm. "Jack," she whispered, "something's wrong."
"Joyce?" we heard again. "What's wrong? Tell me what's wrong."
Mr. Alnor started for the stairs then. I followed. Erika followed me, her hand still on my arm.
"For God's sake, Joyce," we heard. "What in the hell are you doing?"
"Mommy?!"
"Get out of there, Joyce!"
"Harry," Mrs. Alnor said, "don't go up there, Harry."
He glanced incredulously around at her. I yelled up the stairs, "Is something wrong?"
"It's okay," the man yelled back. "This is our problem; we'll deal with it."
And that's when Harry Alnor vaulted up the stairs. I heard him, moments later: "What's she doing in there, mister?" The words were spoken with tight anger. A brief pause, then: "Come on out of there, young woman; you'll break it."
Erika and I went up. We stopped at the top of the stairs. I felt her grip on my arm strengthen, heard her whisper tremblingly, "Why's she doing that?"
Joyce—an attractive, dark-haired woman in her late twenties, I guessed, who was dressed in jeans and sneakers, a blue shirt, and denim vest—had crawled into a tall and very narrow cupboard, had gotten into a fetal position in it, and was looking very fearfully out from it at her husband and her daughter and at Harry Alnor.
She was whispering something, too. I couldn't hear her words, but I could read her lips. She was whispering, "The dark!" over and over again.
It bothered the hell out of Erika. The woman eventually got out of the cupboard, of course, and was led, trembling, from the antique shop to her car.
But Erika and I stayed a few minutes. Erika seemed confused, at odds with herself, caught at the verge of weeping, or laughing. Harry Alnor noticed it.
"Jesus Christ, mister," he said to me, nodding at Erika, "what the hell is wrong with her, now?"
"Please," I said, "don't use that tone."
"Give them room, Harry," Mrs. Alnor said.
We were at the doorway. I had my arm around Erika, who still was staring at the spot where Joyce's car had been. She'd said nothing since we were upstairs in the shop. "Why's she doing that?" she
'd said then, several times. Now she said, "Why'd she do that, Jack?'
"She was confused," I said.
"She was nuts out of her head," said Harry Alnor.
"Shut up!" said Mrs. Alnor.
"Don't tell me to shut up, woman!"
And Erika said, "Please, let's go home, Jack." And we did.
I lost track of her that evening. She was in the spare room, rummaging through some boxes that were labeled MISC. JUNK, which meant only that whatever was in them was unimportant. I was in bed, reading an old Stephen King story, had lost myself in the world of Jody Verrel—who became one with the green stuff from a meteorite—and I heard Erika call, "Jack, come here, please." I heard nothing urgent in her tone. I supposed that she wanted me to help her move some boxes, so I called back, "In a moment."
I finished the King story, got up and went to the spare room. It's cluttered there. Besides the unpacked boxes, there are empty boxes, empty suitcases, photographic gear—from a time when I had a passionate, if short-lived, love for amateur photography—clothes baskets, an ironing board. It's a large, L-shaped room. The lower part of the L is short and narrow, and there are rough, handmade bookcases there, with odds and ends on them.
I paused in the doorway to the room. The bare overhead light was on, so it was bright enough that I could see most of the room, though not the far corner, and not, of course, the lower part of the L. "Erika? You rang?"
Nothing.
"Erika? Are you in here?"
Nothing.
I shrugged, guessed that she was downstairs, went to the top of the stairs, called to her, got no reply.
I saw that the door to the stairway was closed. I called louder, "Erika, are you down there?" heard nothing, cursed, went back to the spare room.
She was there. She was leaning over a box, some photographs in hand—some of the photographs that I have, now. When I came in, she looked up, bemused: "What are you doing, Jack?"
"I was looking for you," I told her.
"I've been right here."
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