Houses Without Doors

by Peter Straub

He still had all the time he needed.

  Standish turned from the window and placed his hand on the first doorknob. He quietly opened the door.

  Light from the corridor spilled into the first few feet of a room in which Standish made out the shape of an iron bed, a cheap wooden chair, an open suitcase on the floor. Paperback books lay scattered around the chair. He moved through the opening and closed the door. In the darkness he became aware of the pain in his hands and his back. Oily grime covered his body. He could smell fear, sweat, blood—he stank like an animal in a cave.

  Inside his head he heard the sound, more an echo than sound itself, of a baby crying. Standish began to move on tiptoe across the room toward the untidy bed. When he was a foot or two from it he was able to make out the pattern on the thrown-back coverlet. The sheets were white and rumpled, and the dented pillow lay across them like a fat slug. From the wrinkled sheets floated up an odor of perfume and powder. A spattering of his own blood fell on the sheets.

  Standish turned around and left the room as quietly as he had come in. The door let yellow meaningless light flood over and around him.

  In the window on the other wide of the hallway he saw the reflection of a crouching half-human animal, its body smeared with dirt and blood, come creeping around a door. It carried an axe in one hand. With something like glee, Standish saw that this stooped, monstrous creature was himself—the inner Standish. Twenty-four hours ago he had glimpsed him in the bathroom mirror, but now he was really out in the open. It seemed that he had been waiting for this moment all of his adult life. “Why, Miss Standish,” he whispered, and pressed a hand to his mouth to keep from giggling.

  Through the creature’s body he saw the square of fire that was the window of his old room.

  He turned toward the next door. The bent creature with the axe turned too. Bloody matted hair covered its shoulders. Its dark hand was still pressed to its mouth. He watched the creature float down the corridor until it moved out of the window.

  A few mincing steps brought him to the second door. His slippery fingers touched the knob. He ground his teeth and soundlessly turned the doorknob. The door moved inward a few inches, and Standish tiptoed with it. A few inches more, and he slid into the room.

  A pair of shoes stood on the bare floor. A white shirt draped over the back of a chair glided toward him like a spirit out of the breathing dark. He closed the door behind him. The shirt looked like a spirit waiting to be born, it may be through the pair that occupied the bed across the room. Slow sweet exhalations and inhalations came from them. Over his own stink Standish caught the delicate scent of perfume and the other, coarser odors of sweat and sex.

  He sighed.

  As his eyes grew used to the dark, he saw the bare dim walls that would be white in daylight, the masculine clutter of socks and sweatshirts and jeans on the floor. A tennis racquet leaned against the wall. The bed was an untidy tangle of long white limbs and wild hair.

  Now Standish felt as if he had awakened from a long trance. He was simply himself, what all the days, weeks, hours had brought him to. He was a stunted monster carrying an axe. For perhaps the first time since his childhood, Standish entirely accepted himself.

  “Mnnn,” came a voice from the bed.

  Standish stood inside the door breathing slow shallow breaths. He could imagine himself in bed with the couple, lying in a loose tangle of arms and legs, absorbed into them.

  But soon they would begin to hear the fire and smell the smoke. He waited until they had settled down into one another’s arms and begun to snore light, funny, almost charming snores. He stepped forward. There was no response from the bed. He took another gliding step forward. The beautiful double animal on the bed lay still. Standish moved directly beside it and raised his axe.

  He swung it down with all his strength, being both the executioner out in the tundra with his chopping block and the bureaucrat at his desk. The axe landed at the base of one of the animal’s two heads and almost instantly cleaved through the vapor of the flesh and the fishbones of the spinal column. The animal’s other head lifted itself from the pillow just as Standish raised his axe again and presented a perfect target, extended in disbelief and confusion which ended with the axe’s downstroke.

  Now the bed was a bloody sea. Standish dropped the axe and plucked both heads off the soaking sheets by the hair and lowered them to the floor. He picked up two pillows, yanked them from their cases, and tossed them back on the bed. Without looking at either of the faces, he stuffed the heads into the empty pillowcases and carried them out into the hallway. They were surprisingly heavy, like bowling balls. Standish trotted down the hallway in misty smoke, went through the arch, and into the barren room at the top of the stairs. The heavy pillowcases swung at his sides.

  Black smoke had accumulated against the ceiling in cloudy layers. From what seemed a great distance came the sound of rushing wind. Standish passed through the opposite arch and looked down the left wing of the staircase.

  Several distinct layers of smoke hung from the ceiling and moved toward him with a massive gravity. A wall of heat met him at the top of the stairs and pushed him back like a giant hand. As yet there were no flames before him. He began to run down the stairs, and felt as if he had stepped into an oven. The hairs in his nose crisped painfully, and his eyebrows turned to smoke. He saw the thick hair on his chest, arms, and belly curl inward and turn to ash.

  When he reached the main body of the staircase a combination of smoke and heat blinded him. He kept running with his right hand on the hot banister. The heads in their pillowcases rhythmically banged against the balusters. His skin felt scalded. His right hand struck the newel cap at the bottom of the stairs, and the things in the pillowcases slammed into the post.

  Standish plunged through scalding black soup. A flat red glare exploded off to his left. When he reached the screened passage he sensed the thick tapestries writhing as their fibers shrank and dried. He ran straight into the door, bounced back, then grabbed the scalding knob with a hand wrapped in hot cotton cloth.

  Frigid air rushed over him. Blind and coughing, Standish stumbled out onto the terrace. He tottered down three or four steps, then collapsed backward and wheezed, trying to fight the smoke out of his lungs. He landed hard on his bottom and lost his grip on the pillowcases. They slid out of his hand and bumped down the steps. Standish felt as if he had been blowtorched. Smoke poured from the fabric of his trousers and clung to his shoes. Down at the bottom of the steps, the pillowcases smoked like smudge pots. His legs took him down the steps, and he limped to one pillowcase, picked it up, then limped across the gravel and picked the other up too.

  The heads tried to pull the ends of the pillowcases from his hands as he trudged over the gravel. After a few seconds he stopped to look back. Flames showed in the first- and second- floor windows, and smoke poured through the roof.

  Standish carried his heavy trophies around the left side of the house. Something inside Esswood let go, and a thunderous crash sent a flurry of sparks and flames into the air. Standish trudged forward through a rain of fire and stepped over a burning chunk of Esswood. He was too tired to look back and see what happened.

  Around the left side of the house and across the drive stood a long low structure with four sets of wide double doors inset with windows. Standish pulled himself toward the building and looked through the first window into an empty darkness.

  Through the window he saw an old saddle and harness hanging on the back wall.

  In the third window reflected fire burst through Esswood’s roof. Standish looked through the fourth window and saw the back end of a turquoise Ford Escort. He pulled open the doors and carried the heavy pillowcases inside. As soon as he touched the car he remembered that he did hot have the keys, which were probably inside the pocket of a pair of incinerating jeans on the second floor of the East Wing. He opened the door and collapsed into the driver’s seat. The two sacks leaked onto the ground between his legs. He reached down and s
wung both the sacks and his legs into the car. He put his hands on the wheel and stared at the dashboard, remembering movies in which people jump-started cars. Something heavy fell on the roof of the building. He smelled smoke, and his eyes filmed and his stomach churned. When he had finished coughing and wheezing, he reached over and opened the glove compartment. Two keys linked by a metal ring lay on top of the owner’s manual. Standish slid them out.

  He inserted a key into the ignition, turned it, and stepped on the accelerator. All these actions seemed to be remembered from some other, very different, past life. He heard the engine catch, and dropped his forehead to the wheel and rested. Another great chunk of Esswood fell onto the roof. Standish forced himself to straighten up. He put the car in reverse and stepped on the accelerator. The Escort smashed into the half-opened doors and rolled out. Standish cut the wheel and turned the car forward. Shreds and dots of fire rained down from the house. Standish jammed the car into drive and floored the accelerator. The car mushed up a spray of gravel and shot forward. Red light wavered on the drive and the tall straight oaks. Steam hissed from the trunks of the trees closest to the house. Standish turned on his lights, and streams of yellow floated into the wavering red night. He saw the long drive curling away between the steaming trees, and he aimed for it.

  Then he was rolling down the drive, trying to figure out which side he was supposed to be on. Everything was backward.

  A pair of headlights appeared before him down through the tunnel of trees at the bottom of the drive. Standish let the accelerator drift upward while he tried to solve the interesting problem of which side of the road was his. He swerved all the way left, then right. The oncoming car flicked its lights off and on. In the rearview mirror, Esswood blazed merrily. The other car moved into his headlights. It was a Jaguar, and Robert Wall—”Robert Wall”—was driving it. Standish’s beloved, his sister, sat beside him. Both of Edith’s children looked startled, perhaps even transfixed. Robert honked his horn and waved at Standish. His beloved spoke words he could not hear. Standish drove on. When he went past the Jaguar, Robert yelled at him and his beloved leaned forward and questioned him with her eyes. Standish picked up speed. Neither one had recognized him.

  After a couple of seconds Standish looked in the rearview mirror and saw Robert Seneschal running down the drive after him. He moved his head to see himself in the mirror. He did not recognize himself either. He was a totally new being, bald, covered with grease and blood, pink and blue-eyed: he was his own baby. The car shot out into the road at the end of the drive, and grinning giggling Standish turned the Escort toward the village.

  NINETEEN

  After a time the red blur faded from the sky. Standish drove without maps, without memory, guided by a sense of direction that seemed coded into his body. He drove through a landscape of1 tiny villages filled with cheery lights and flashing signs, of dark fields and dense woods. He saw marsh lights flicker and understood that they too were part of the great sentence that went on forever until it passed from visibility. Every human life fit into that grand and endless sentence. Occasionally he glanced with admiring satisfaction at the newborn baby in the rearview mirror.

  He moved swiftly through the villages and fields. Churches, pubs, and thatched cottages went by in the dark. Once he saw a house even greater than Esswood on the crest of a long hill, and Rolls-Royces and Bentleys and Daimlers were drawn up before it, and light spilled from every window. Somnolent cows and horses in the fields swung their heads to watch him pass by.

  Once in a deep wood he struck an animal and heard it cry out with a terrible cry.

  His hands stiffened and froze to the wheel. Still Standish drove easily through the night. He was a great fat chuckling baby, and he shat and peed in his filthy trousers and kept driving.

  At last he came to the open-air factories. The strings of light had been turned off; the torches were put away. The machines rested in the dark passages, and the swirling dust had settled for the night. Yet the great slag heaps rose up into the starry sky, and when Stan-dish saw them he slowed down.

  He peeled his right hand from the steering wheel and leaned sideways to crank down the passenger window. When the car drifted alongside the first slag heap, Standish lifted one of the pillowcases and swung it through the window. It struck the road and rolled toward the slag heap. He supposed that was good enough. He tossed the second pillowcase after the first. This one made it nearly across the road before it thumped down and tumbled into a drainage ditch.

  Standish groaned and sat up straight again.

  Eventually the huckstall sign flashed in his window and disappeared behind him. Chuckles emanated from the two dripping bags no longer beside him on the passenger seat. An empty world without end or beginning spread out on both sides of the road. Then headlights appeared far ahead down the road. As he drove toward them the figure of a man with outstretched arms stepped forward into the beams of his own lights. Standish was near enough to see in his own headlights that the man was smiling as he waved his arms. The man moved nearer to the center line. He was not what Standish had expected—a tall smiling man in a sports jacket. His fair hair flopped appealingly over his forehead.

  Standish accelerated when he drew near to the man, and when the man began crisscrossing his arms over his head—for this one was used to getting what he wanted, you could see it in his wide-set eyes and smooth cheeks—Standish turned the wheel sharply toward the man and ran straight into him.

  The man bounced against the car with enough force to jolt Standish painfully against the wheel. He spun off like a marionette and disappeared beneath the car. There came another, milder jolt. Standish braked to a halt and threw open the door. He put the gear lever at park but did not turn off the car. He slid off the seat. With slow determined steps, not bothering to inspect the crushed body beneath the car, the poor baby set off into a wide desolation.

  THEN ONE DAY …

  Then one day she saw him again. It must have been a year since the first time, because another summer had passed and the weather was now misty gray and the air had turned slightly chilly. She had just realized that, alone of all the people she knew, she was glad to be out of summer. She preferred these days, for summer was a pleasure machine like a strong drink that stroked you and stroked you and never got you any further than a slow stunned warmth, but on days like this—a slight haze hanging in the air, and the tops of the buildings invisible in the bog—she felt a close, lifting sense of anticipation, as if some unforeseen transformation were literally in the air, hovering. Then she saw him walking toward her again and remembered him perfectly, though she had not seen or thought of him in the year that had passed.

  He might have been wearing the same clothes—a black sweater and jeans so faded they were almost white. No, the jeans were different, and the long red scarf was new. But it was the same young man. The sense of illumination still clung to him. Neither smiling nor crying now, he was walking along with a comfortable stride.

  There was nothing special about his face, nor was he as young as she had thought, but a teenage girl turned to look at him curiously as he passed, and a tall man in a tan raincoat with a heavy, buttoned lining swung his head to watch him go by. It was as if a pale light shone upon him, or within him, a light of which he was absolutely unaware. That was the grace note she had noticed a year ago. He walked past her without pausing. She turned around, hesitated, then began walking after him. She felt faintly silly, even foolish, even a bit ashamed, but her curiosity was too strong for her to let him walk away again. She had a second chance, she saw, and the moment she began to follow him she forgot her plans for the rest of the afternoon in the oddity and interest of her present occupation.

  She walked down the avenue half a block behind the man. Her life had changed, it came to her, it would never again be what it

  ^had been, and with every step she took the change deepened. She had been set free: this was what had been promised, it was this she

  —had a
nticipated. An entire year had been wasted in the realm of the ordinary, and now she was slipping away from the ordinary altogether. The air darkened about her, and she followed the man out of everything she had ever known.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Most of these pieces had their origins or inspirations in other books. The central action of “Blue Rose” occurred to me while I was reading a neurologist’s contentious book about Freud called The Freudian Fallacy. “The Juniper Tree” came to me, very forcefully, while I was reading Marguerite Duras’ short novel The Lover. “A Short Guide to the City” was the product of reading a long essay about St. Petersburg in Joseph Brodsky’s Less Than One. And I wrote Mrs. God immediately after I had read a great many stories by Robert Aickman so that I could write an introduction to a collection called The Wine-Dark Sea, and Aickman’s enigmatic and assured example was very much in my mind all the way through William Standish’s adventures at Esswood House.

  “Blue Rose” and “The Juniper Tree” have deep connections to another book besides those already mentioned. They are the stories written by Tim Underhill, the secret hero of my novel Koko, and represent the first part of Underhill’s efforts to comprehend violence and evil by wrapping them in his own imagination. It follows that the “Harry Beevers” of “Blue Rose” is not quite the character in Koko who bears his name.

  “The Buffalo Hunter” was inspired by Rona Ponkik’s show of sculpture, Bed Milk Shoe, at the Fiction/Nonfiction Gallery in New York.

  “Something About a Death, Something About a Fire” is one of the first stories I wrote, and I include it here because it is the only early story of mine that I still like and because it fits—like Bobby Bunting, William Standish, good old Harry Beevers, and the unnamed narrator of “The Juniper Tree,” Bobo lives in a house without a door, and finds there a terror and splendor he can share with the rest of us.