They mounted the steps. A dark, heavy door loomed. Sam swung the huge knocker, and the door opened.
“Come in. Come in,” came a booming voice.
They went in.
The man at the door was outrageously handsome, blond and tall, dressed in a tuxedo, shirtfront all foamy with lace, self-consciously cordial. “Glad you came,” he greeted them.
“We had some problems,” said Nora. “Where’s Steve?”
“Oh, never mind Steve for a moment. My name’s Patrick. Come on in and join the crowd.”
The hubbub inside was unbelievable. Nora took hold of Jeff’s coat, seeking reassurance. For what reason she didn’t know. They had come into a huge, swarming room, a multitude of bodies. All kinds—tall, thin, short, fat, every one of them completely strange to her. Maybe Willie knew some of them, she thought. They could be part of Steve’s publishing company. She stepped back to let Willie lead the way.
“Keep straight ahead,” Patrick advised from behind. He was dismayingly handsome, and Nora speculated for a moment whether his hair had been permanented. “Food and drink over there,” he smiled. “You’ll find some friends there, probably.”
“With my sort of friends, that’s just where I’ll find them,” said Jeff, grinning now.
The four wove in and out among packed groups. Everybody was talking to everybody else and nobody seemed to notice them. A dull red fire glowed on a broad hearth, but did not seem to send out any heat. Several extremely thin men stood there and listened to a grossly heavy man. His face was bearded, toothy. Nora remembered the driver of that killer van. High along an inner wall ran a balcony. Faces looked down, the faces, perhaps, of children. One gnawed on what might have been a chicken wing.
“It’s positively unreal,” Nora whispered to Jeff, and it was. They seemed to walk through people, as though people dissolved from in front of them. “My imagination’s going haywire,” she said, and squeezed his hand for comfort.
Willie’s brilliant, curly head had led the way to a butler’s pantry. It, too, thronged with people, filling trays with barbecued chicken, cold cuts, sliced cheese. Baskets of crackers and little cakes sat here and there. In the midst of everything, a gigantic glass bowl of rosy liquid.
“Pink wine,” whispered Sam, crinkling his nose. “The cheapest.”
For a moment, they thought they saw Steve Thomas’s beautiful wife balancing an empty tray toward a rear door, perhaps the kitchen. “Hey, Florence,” Willie called out. But whoever it was didn’t turn. She vanished so abruptly, they couldn’t be sure if they’d seen her.
Sam picked up a plate and piled it high with salad and meat. “Let’s dig in,” he said. “That ride would give a skeleton an appetite. I’ll even try this sorry wine—it’s not worthy of Steve. Or is it? I think he outdid himself this time.”
“There’s Em Selden, there by the fireplace,” said Nora to Jeff.
“Where?”
“No, she’s gone. Maybe it wasn’t Em. Anyway, let’s stick together. What a strange bunch of people.”
As she spoke, she thought she heard singing somewhere. A radio, a record player? It died away as she wondered.
“Look,” said Willie, putting down her plate. “At the end of the hall. It looks like Patrick, summoning me. I’d better go see—maybe it’s time for me to autograph some books.”
Briskly she headed for the long hallway, striding fast on green high-heeled sandals and swinging the skirt of her flowered green dress. There were chairs lining the hall. They seemed to be heaped with mink coats. “Hmm,” Nora heard her murmur as she left. “None of Steve’s authors could afford those.”
Nora chewed on a strangely tasteless slice of sausage as she watched Willie out of sight. “I hope she sells enough books to make this trip worthwhile.”
“You’re not having fun?” worried Sam.
“That means you aren’t happy either.” Nora looked from platter to platter. “What happened to the chicken wings? They’re my favorite food?”
“If I had a pair of chicken wings, I might just fly out of here,” said Jeff. Nora laughed, but Jeff didn’t join her.
The crowd had grown thicker, noisier. The air seemed damp and close; it had a smell like a roomful of old clothes. Sam frowned and brushed back his silver hair.
“Let’s go somewhere quiet,” he said.
“How about up on the balcony with the kids?” suggested Nora.
But the balcony seemed empty, lost in dark shadows. Maybe a hint of movement. Or maybe not.
“How much of this putrid wine did you drink, Jeff?” asked Sam.
“No more than I could help. I hope Willie’s in her element, autographing books.”
“I’m going to go see,” said Sam.
He moved toward the hallway where Willie had vanished. The crowd let him through without seeming to make way.
“At least Steve had the sense to stay away from his own party,” growled Jeff. “Look there in the corner. Isn’t that Genevieve and Joe?”
Nora peered. “Let’s go see.”
They pressed their way through a huddle of people, who made a path for them. Nobody looked familiar. Except, against a far wall—the bearded van driver? The voices, all s’s and all loud, hurt their ears. The air thickened, and was hard to breathe.
“Here we are,” said Jeff, reaching the corner.
But nobody stood there. Nobody. Only a flicker from the fireplace that did not seem to give off heat.
“I’ll be damned,” Jeff muttered. “Do we have a single friend in this room?”
They looked around. Halfway across the room drifted a face, wan as lemon custard, peering from under the brim of a worn, shapeless felt hat. The body seemed lost in foggy darkness—they imagined a long black caftan. Behind him, or it, there grimaced the bearded driver.
“Jeff,” said Nora, “I don’t like it here.”
“It’s just that you don’t know anybody,” said Jeff. But his dimples did not show. “But you’re right. The whole thing’s a crashing bore. Let me go check with Willie and Sam. Maybe we can sneak out if they’re through.”
“Yes, go look for them.” Nora tried to smile.
“I’ll be right back.”
Away he tramped, huge among the others. She watched him enter the hallway between the piled fur coats. Watched his dark head disappear. Then she stood alone, nobody noticing her, nobody talking to her. She felt dull, sticky, as though she hung in a mass of warm jelly.
Haze crawled in the air of the crowded room. It smelled, not like tobacco, not like that other familiar-grown marijuana smell. Nora did not belong there. She knew it. She hadn’t been invited, really; she and Jeff had only come with Willie and Sam. For moral support. She wished they had stayed at home. Or wished, anyway, she had gone along with Jeff to find the others.
I’ll follow them, she said to herself. Follow them. Maybe they’re ready to go.
The hallway seemed to narrow as she entered. Those piles of furs closed in around her. Maybe the little white rabbit in the Alice book had felt closed in like that. And the hallway was shadow-barred, with open doorways shedding light along the side.
Nora looked in at a door. Music seeped out. Something in there like a little old-fashioned organ. It seemed to be playing, all by itself, a tune like a hymn, but dissonant, repelling. Voices echoed through the next doorway. Nora went there.
“Come in,” somebody called. “We’ve been waiting.”
A man in a very dark suit put out a very white hand to her. His chalky face grinned with dark, narrow teeth. His hand was clammy as it touched hers. “Come in,” he said again.
Staring past him, she saw dull paneled walls, a hanging lamp that sprouted a shaky flame, a closely drawn knot of people. They, too, wore dark clothes, tight-fitted to gaunt bodies. They seemed to have faces of pale clay. Their eyes looked little and beady. They spoke from thick red lips, unintelligibly.
But on the floor lay three others, instantly recognizable—a bit of green cloth. Jeff’s great, l
imp body. The red curls of Willie, the silver hair of Sam. None of them moved.
“Come in,” a chorus, bidding.
All hands rose toward her, beckoning.
Nora screamed thinly and whirled to run.
Run anywhere, away from that little room, anywhere. A door stood at the end of the hallway. Escape. That was all she could think of. She gasped stranglingly. At the door, she clawed for the knob. She strove hard against the panel, and the door grumbled open.
She filled her lungs with fresh air. Somehow, miraculously, she was outside. Where to go? It didn’t matter. Only get away.
She ran in the dark night, stumbling over the heavy coiled roots of trees, tearing her sheer hose. A slipper came off and desperately she kicked the other away. She kept running. Stones hurt her bare feet, biting painfully at her ankles. A mockingbird sang, strangely comforting. She was escaping. Away from that house.
A broad, open lawn loomed ahead of her. A beautiful house, standing tall and proud against sentinel pines. She floundered to one knee, dragged herself up again and to the door, beating at it with her fists.
“Why, Nora!”
There stood Steve Thomas, opening to her. Steve was slim, impeccable. His curled black hair was carefully groomed, a smile was on his face.
“For heaven’s sake. Where have you been? Where are the others?”
She flung herself into his arms, and he held her close to quiet her trembling. “Where are they?” he asked again.
“I don’t know,” she chattered. “I saw them on the floor—over there at your party—”
“What are you talking about?”
She fought her choking sobs. “Over in that big house, right over there—”
“My God, Nora, there hasn’t been a house there for years.” Steve held her closer. “You’re imagining things. No house. It burned down, long before I came here.”
“B-burned down?”
“I’ve heard a crazy story. A bunch of far-out people, who had a belief of some sort about human sacrifice. And one night, when they celebrated it, lightning struck and burned the place to the ground, with everybody inside.”
“But—”
“Look, Nora. There’s nothing there. Nothing whatever.”
Nora made herself look.
There was nothing there. Nothing whatever.
THE CHAIR by Dennis Etchison
Dennis Etchison describes himself as an “overworked, underslept, professional wrestling fan” with the “goal to teach John Studd a thing or two in the squared circle.” Friends would add that he passed up a career as a stand-up comedian as well, when he turned to writing his own particular brand of horror fiction. Etchison has been selling short fiction since 1961, but only in the last few years has he begun to receive deserved acclaim as the finest writer of psychological horror this genre has produced. It is never an easy matter to make a name (or earn a living) solely through short fiction, and Etchison, never very prolific, didn’t help things with his intensely introspective stories of urban paranoia and personal alienation. Not the average shock fan’s cup of tea.
Incredibly, it took twenty years for his first collection of stories to be published; this, The Dark Country, quickly went through four printings in a deluxe hardcover edition and will be reprinted in paperback this fall by Berkley. A second collection, Red Dreams, is due this October from Scream/Press as a companion volume to The Dark Country, and a novel, Darkside, is due from Berkley in 1985. Etchison also wrote the paperback novelizations of the recent horror films, The Fog, Halloween II, Halloween III, and Videodrome—these last three under his pseudonym, Jack Martin. Born in Stockton, California on March 30, 1943, Etchison now resides in Los Angeles, where he teaches creative writing at UCLA when not writing or watching game shows and wrestling matches on television. Jack Martin, the protagonist of “The Chair,” also appears in The Dark Country.
“Marty,” she said, “I need you.”
He studied the lips. The air was opalescent with cigarette smoke, the lights too far away to make it easy. Her complexion was smooth and taut; a faint bloom of perspiration glittered in the shadows below her cheekbones. It was impossible, of course. And yet ...
“Christy?” he said, incredulous.
He wanted to reach out and touch her to be sure. At the same time he was seized by a desperate impulse to leave his chair and run: between tables to the bar, even to the dance floor where faces he seemed to know had been grafted onto bodies he would never recognize, bodies that now gyrated feverishly to music he thought he had forgotten long ago.
“I’ve been looking for you all night,” she said. “I—I was afraid you wouldn’t come.” He heard her voice masked by the noise, as though through a wind tunnel. “Can we go somewhere? We can’t talk here.”
Martin rose uncertainly and followed. The crowd surged. Her form grew smaller and was lost to him. He threaded a path between abandoned chairs, his arm brushing a table, upsetting a half-finished glass of wine. A red blot spread across the white linen. He righted the empty glass and tried to move on.
A powerful hand stopped his wrist.
“Didn’t think you’d get away that easy, did you?”
Martin looked up. A smudged copy of a face from his childhood towered over him. Around the eyes grainy skin crinkled in amusement, emphasizing preternaturally blue contact lenses.
“Bill Crabbe,” said the tall man expectantly.
Martin gaped. It was true. Crabbe, the baseball star from high school. Martin shook his hand.
“How ya doin’, buddy?” Crabbe pumped his arm. “My gosh, Jerry Marber! You’re sure lookin’ good. What you been doin’ with yourself all these years?”
Martin realized he had been mistaken for someone else.
He considered correcting the tall man. At that moment there was a pause in the music and hyperventilating couples pressed back between the wooden pillars to their banquet tables. An intoxicating cloud of hair spray and cologne blew over him. He gazed through the crowd to the polished walls and round windows, searching for Christy’s face. He cleared his throat.
“Excuse me, Jer,” said Crabbe abruptly, “but there’s Wayne Fuller. I gotta say hi. My gosh, look at him. He hasn’t changed a bit, has he? Old Wayne. Hey, over here!”
Crabbe moved on, paddling against the throng with his big pitcher’s hand outstretched.
Martin spotted an exit. Christy or someone very much like her was leaning against the lacquered door, trying to light a cigarette while her eyes grew whiter, sweeping the ballroom.
For me, he thought. She’s waiting for me, even after so many years. I should have known. I should have kept the faith. Well, maybe I have without realizing it.
We’ll find out now, won’t we?
Couples swept past in a frenzied rush. The room seemed to tilt as bodies hurried to one side. The backs of men with polyester suits and indeterminate waistlines bobbed six deep in front of the cash bar. Martin took a deep breath. He felt drunk. He steadied himself against a chair and aimed for the other side.
“Jimmy!” called a booming voice.
He pressed on through louvers of crepe paper strung from the bandstand, a wall of voices closing in. Heads streaked with graying sideburns and permanent wave curls blocked his way. When they moved aside, he noticed that Christy was gone from the doorway.
“Jimmy Madden! Knew it was you!”
The gravel voice of a bull-necked football coach boomed again. This time it jarred him to a standstill.
Martin turned and was confronted by a short-sleeved sport shirt, the same print he remembered from school. He scrutinized the face above and nodded, smiling impatiently.
What was the coach’s name?
Then he realized it was not the coach’s face, after all. It was Warrick. Mark Warrick, once star lineman for the Greenworth Buckskins. He had made it to the state play-offs, if Martin remembered correctly.
“Nice to see you, Mark,” said Martin reflexively. “Only I’m not not ...”
&n
bsp; A sweet-smelling woman disengaged from the pack and took possession of Martin’s left arm. He felt her breast push into his side.
“Gail!” said Warrick. His lantern jaw dropped open and uneven teeth shone there wetly. “Are you still with Bob? I mean—”
“Not for a year-and-a-half,” announced Gail. She kneaded Martin’s forearm as if measuring it. “And how are you, Joe?”
The man in the sport shirt plowed ahead. “Guess what, Gail? I’m Head Coach at GHS now. Did you hear? Uh, are you, I mean, did you come alone?”
She said, “Don’t I see your wife, Mark? That sweet little thing over there in the corner, waiting for someone to ask her to dance? What was her name?”
Martin was aware of the underwiring of her bra prying his ribs apart. She turned on him again, inches away, and blinked into his eyes from beneath lids heavy with raccoon mascara.
“Joe Ivy. Did you know that I used to have the most humongous crush on you?”
“Yes,” said Martin hurriedly. “No. I didn’t. I don’t. That is, it isn’t me. I’m not really here.”
He disembraced and tripped forward, wrinkling someone’s satin. The exit still appeared the length of a football field away, as if seen through the small end of a telescope. He jostled wrists and left ice cubes clinking thickly in plastic cocktail tumblers, and made a final run for the deck and the night outside.
He was chilled by the sudden touch of a harbor breeze on his neck.
He did not slow until he had gone all the way astern on the Promenade Deck, where he leaned back on his elbows and allowed the image of the Windsor Room to recede into a frame of brass portholes and freshly painted guardrails.
The doorway to the ballroom remained open, throwing a rectangle of yellow light onto the boards below the main mast. Through the doorway he made out a hand-lettered streamer of bunting on the aft wall, above the bar. WELCOME GREENWORTH HIGH SCHOOL CLASS OF ’62, it read, 20 YEAR REUNION.
She stepped in front of him, eying him in the old way. Behind her head a warm glow caught her hair. He tried to read her expression, but in the backlight there was no clue. He sought for the right way to begin again. He straightened, his body inching involuntarily closer to her, and the spill of warmth diminished to a sliver and faded as the exit door whispered shut. A round of whooping applause rose up inside as a toast was made onstage, and then the door sealed and there was only the rhythm of a drumroll to blend with the lapping of dark waters that rocked the bulkhead almost imperceptibly beneath his feet.
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