The Tea Party - A Novel of Horror

by Charles L. Grant

  In the back, however, was a room filled with genuine stock insured for more than half a million dollars, and it was Bud’s constant dream to clear it out in a single afternoon, salt the resulting fortune away, and go off on a real buying trip, to Pennsylvania or New England.

  The Retirement Room, their whole lives bound in carved wood and tufted velvets.

  Ollie, however, kept reminding him that it had taken them almost five years and a lot of debts to build that much of a showroom. What would they do in the meantime, live on love and orange peels?

  She looked up again and saw his disappointment, the way his lips were not quite twisted into a pout. She smiled but did not relent, instead skirted the counter and slipped her hand around his waist, two fingers insinuating themselves between the buttons of his shirt. She was only an inch shorter than his own six feet.

  “You’re feeling guilty, that’s all.”

  He took a deep breath and looked out the door. “I am not.”

  “You hate it when some wicked city woman sashays in here and picks out a table she calls mid-Victorian that you knew damned well was made in Albany in 1931, and you don’t tell her she’s wrong.”

  “Well, it’s cheating.”

  “It’s giving the public what it wants.”

  Their routine was simple: his earnest boyishness took care of the women, her somewhat earthy and frank sultriness usually lined up the men. They were also experts at picking out fellow experts, and never once had they tried to pass a bad deal on someone who could do them irreparable harm by dropping the wrong word.

  If people wanted to be fools, on the other hand, they were more than willing to accommodate them—if the opportunity arose and the sucker asked for it with a smile.

  “You wanna go upstairs?”

  He was being consoled and he knew it, and he also sighed at the way her fingers scratched at his stomach.

  “No. Someone might come.”

  “It’s after four. No one’s coming now. C’mon, let’s go.” She tugged at him gently and leaned over to kiss his cheek, gently pressing her chest into his arm. “Huh? You wanna?”

  He did. He always did. He could barely stand it when he hadn’t touched her for over five minutes, and was worse when he saw her with a male customer, playing her role, just out of reach. He felt his blood pressure rising when he saw a male friend give her a hug or kiss her or flirt openly with her. She loved the attention, and she loved him as well, and as far as he knew she had never been unfaithful.

  But the other men drove him crazy.

  She kissed his ear, and her tongue circled it once.

  “Hey!” he said, jerking his head away. “Jesus, Ollie, someone could see you out there.”

  She checked the road—no traffic, no pedestrians, Parrish’s office across the way was closed for the day.

  “Besides,” he said glumly, “you told me you weren’t feeling well.”

  “I never said anything of the sort. And my not feeling well,” she said, nuzzling his neck after a brief hesitation, “has nothing to do with what I have in mind. I may not be up to par, but I ain’t dying either. C’mon. Smoke a little, do a little. What about it, sailor?”

  His arm found her shoulders, and he pulled her closer. “I love you, you know, even when you’re wanton.”

  She grinned and relaxed; his pouting was over. “I love you, too. You wanna get married?”

  “Never. I don’t want to spoil it.”

  “Let’s go.”

  She released him and threaded her way along the deliberately complicated system of aisles and passageways created for the shop’s layout. The stairs to their rooms above were off a short hallway in back, opposite the Retirement Room’s locked door. There was nothing in the hall but an overhead light, and seven fire extinguishers on the floor, and on the walls.

  Ollie wriggled her hips once in a gentle parody of seduction, stopped at a polished milk can, and opened the first button of her shirt. A raised eyebrow, a silent whistle, and she laughed as she turned around.

  “All right, all right,” he said, stepped inside and shut the door, turned the Closed sign outward and hurried in her wake. It was crazy the way she maneuvered him, and there were times when he wondered if it was unmanly. But at least she didn’t nag him. There was no pressure to make a million dollars before they were thirty, no pressure to fill their house with children, no pressure to do anything but pay the bills on time and continue learning their craft.

  He reached the stairs and looked up to the landing. She was waiting, the shirt open and off her shoulders, her breasts not large but filling the transparent bra to give her what he thought was marvelously ample cleavage. She stuck out her tongue, slowly, reached into one cup and pulled out a breast, and he took the stairs two at a time, had his hands out to grab her when she whirled to the left and raced up the last three steps.

  “You’re a pain, Olivia,” he said in disgust at her playing. “You’re a regular pain in—”

  He stopped, frowned, sniffed.

  “What?” she said.

  He sniffed again. She saw him this time and did the same. And her eyes opened in fear.

  “Bud? Oh god, Bud?”

  He looked down fearfully, and gasped when he saw dark ribbons of smoke curling rapidly from under the Retirement Room door.

  “Oh my god! Ollie, the extinguishers!”

  “But the smoke alarm didn’t go off!”

  He ignored her as he dashed back down and snatched an extinguisher from the wall. Then he took hold of the doorknob. It was warm, not yet hot, and he wondered what in god’s name was going on. No one had been in there since this morning, and the back window pane was over two inches thick—anyone breaking in would be heard all over town.

  With his free hand he fumbled with the key chain clipped to his belt. “Come on, come on, come on!” The smoke wrapped around his loafers, snaked up his legs. He shook his head violently, then closed his eyes prayerfully when the bolt turned over. A deep breath to steady himself, but when he threw open the door he nearly dropped to his knees.

  Smoke. Filling the room like a caged, pacing thunderhead, acrid and swirling, thick and blinding, shot through with flashes of flickering red and gold.

  He choked, put one hand over his face and moved in, squinting to locate the source of the flames, hearing Ollie enter behind him and give voice to her shock.

  “Help me!” he shouted. “Get this shit outta here!”

  Ollie dropped the extinguisher she was holding and began pulling and yanking and dragging and kicking at everything within reach, piling it haphazardly in the hall and returning for more.

  Tears blurred his vision, smoke drew bile into his mouth as he aimed the nozzle and played it over a Sheridan chair, an Empire headboard propped beside it against the wall. He could feel but not see Ollie scuttling around somewhere else in the room; he could see nothing but his arms and the pointing black cylinder in the smoke that filled his lungs, the flames that curled the hairs on his arms and scorched the hairs on the back of his neck. Sparks wafted out of the grey-black and landed on his wrist, landed on his cheek, and made him wince at the stabbing. He shook his head because he didn’t dare stop to brush them off.

  Then he heard glass breaking, and the smoke began to move. Slowly, ponderously drifting toward the smashed window. The flames roared now, and he realized he had spent the extinguisher. He stumbled back back into the hall and grabbed another from the floor.

  He swallowed and coughed, spat black phlegm onto the wall, and ducked his head to one side as he plunged in again.

  “Ollie!”

  The flames had moved to the far wall, and he attacked them at their base, adding cold smoke of his own to the already stifling room. His arms were stinging, and he was sure he could feel flames crawling up his back.

  “Olivia!”

  “Here!”

  The smoke was thinning, and he could see her in the corner drenching a Revere cobbler’s bench and sobbing. When she was done, the extingui
sher thunked to the floor and she staggered past him, shaking her head angrily when he reached out to grab her. A look around, and he realized they had beaten it. More noise and smoke than actual fire, and after ten minutes of poking numbly through the charred rubble, he threw his extinguisher through the broken window with a despairing yell, lashed out with his foot at whatever stood in his way, and fell into the hallway, gasping, coughing, ready to weep.

  Ollie was on the stairs, her face in her hands. She parted her fingers, looked at him, and laughed.

  Oh hell, she’s hysterical, he thought as he pushed himself to his feet; now she’s gone and gotten hysterical. He limped to sit beside her and hold her in his arms, comfort her, tell her everything was going to be all right, they could start over, don’t worry, no problem.

  She giggled, and he was ready to slap her when she pointed to the open door.

  “I know,” he said soothingly, stroking her hair, kissing her cheek. “It’s all right. I know.”

  She shook her head and laughed again, pointed again, then grabbed his cheeks and forced his head around.

  “Ollie, I can’t—holy shit!”

  The room was clean.

  The window facing him was unbroken.

  When he examined the length of his arms he couldn’t find a single burn, or see a single ash.

  TWO

  1

  There was no organization, official or otherwise, known as the Deerford Historical Society, nor was there a handful of old-timers who indulged in colorful oral history around a cracker barrel in the general store. As far as anyone knew, Deerford had been here before Sussex became a county, before New Jersey became a state, though after Winterrest had been built in its meadow. What people did know was that at one time it had been a coach stop, that it served as a place for buying staples for the area’s farmers, and when vacationers wanted to get away from it all, they passed through Deerford on their way to wherever “away” is.

  There were very few corners, and its only traffic light blinked monotonously at the county road. All the houses—clapboard or brick, colonial or Victorian— were on or just off Deerford Road, set back behind elms and maples whose trunks were almost as wide as the porches. The children attended a regional school, the adults either had their own shops or they commuted to the county seat in Newton to work as clerks, secretaries and, once in a while, lawyers.

  There was the Depot Tavern, a Mogas station, a general store with a post office, five houses whose first floors had been converted into antique shops and a handmade toy shop, the Shade Tree restaurant, and Eban Parrish’s real estate office.

  No one really cared that Deerford never grew. The reason the two thousand year-round residents stayed was because they could count on stability, count on their friends, count on the fact that aside from those who stopped at the restaurant or an antique store no one was going to bother them with progress. The county maintained the roads and the sewers, the cable company gave them television, and whenever there was a problem they held a town meeting.

  Permitting construction of the Meadow View development had been a mistake, and everyone knew it. It had opened with six basic models duplicated four times, and stayed that way. It took the developer four years to sell the nineteenth house, and he never bothered to build any more. To live in the country was one thing; to live close to nothing at all but rolling fields, treed hills, and a traffic light that never turned red was something else again.

  Those who did remain did so because they either couldn’t afford to move again, or because they realized that Deerford was what they had been looking for all along. It wasn’t unusual, then, that the “new folks” were the most militant about restrictions in town, the most enthusiastic about local affairs, and the most eager to be accepted.

  And for the most part they were, and by the time the sapling maples planted along the curving streets had grown large enough to have foliage worth the name, it seemed as if they had been there forever.

  And the last time a farm went up for sale the whole town chipped in and hired Eban Parrish to buy the land for them and lease it to a farmer who would work the fields hard and leave none of it to fallow.

  If it seemed boring, it was only because some people had lost the knack of imagination.

  And if it seemed tranquil, it was only because Winterrest was still sleeping.

  2

  The darkened house just to the left of the Depot was a squat, bulging Victorian that had been, at some time in it’s recent past, shorn of the ornate gingerbread that had coiled around the rim of its house-long porch, the tiny-paned gables at each corner, and just above the sagging eaves on the black slate roof. It was freshly painted white, its shutters black, and its windows low enough almost to be square. Just inside the solid oak front door was a tiny vestibule barely wide enough for guests to utilize the coat closet on the left; and the inner, glass-paned door couldn’t be opened if the closet was in use. Few visitors lingered there; it was too much like being in a glass-fronted casket.

  The large, high-ceiling parlor which held most of its original, overstuffed, or back-breaking furnishings was on the left, the dining room with a refectory table and eight-foot china closet was on the right, and a narrow, red-carpeted staircase loomed directly ahead, climbing to a broad landing above which was a rose window perpetually dark.

  The walls were papered in floral patterns now faded, the trim was dark and polished, and the fireplace in the parlor was made of grey stone.

  At night the house, because it was not air conditioned and the untended attic did not have a circulation fan in either its front or back windows, tenaciously held the summer’s worst heat to an unpleasant degree; it was, however, cool during the day.

  Judith Lockhart sat on the heavy, embroidered couch facing the long front window and watched the day’s light traffic pass by on Deerford Road. Her short-sleeved blouse was pale green, her jeans were faded, and her feet were bare with the toenails lacquered dark red.

  She was alone.

  All the other shades in the house were down, and she shivered in the faintly golden light, rubbing her thin arms and thinking she ought to go upstairs and find herself a sweater. It was ludicrous; hot outside, and here she was raising a bumper crop of gooseflesh on skin that had very little meat beneath it. What she ought to be doing was getting some sun—lying in the standing hammock in the backyard and listening to the trees tell her stories and the squirrels telling her to mind her own business; or trimming the dense privet hedge that surrounded her property; or going to the Depot to get ready for Friday night.

  She ought to be behaving like ordinary people.

  Instead, she sat in the midday gloom and watched the traffic, and listened patiently for signs of her brother returning.

  And as she did she thought about Douglas Muir, and the trouble he was causing her because he was so damned stubborn, and so infuriatingly polite, and so maddeningly determined not to relinquish any control over his life.

  He was getting to be a pain in the ass.

  But it was almost time to force him into a decision. Not that he wasn’t aware of her plans for him, and not that he had ever given her any solid encouragement. On more than one occasion over the past five years she had thought with certainty he would ask her to marry him, yet she had not pushed him because she knew she had plenty of time. She had not pushed, and Doug had not asked, and more than one tavern regular had told her with a sly wink that if she didn’t get moving she’d surely lose him to that blond lawyer who lived over in Meadow View with her two children.

  She had not pushed, and time, without her realizing it, had run out on her. Only a few days remained, if that, and then it would be too late.

  She knew it would help her courage a lot if she loved him, but she wasn’t sure she knew exactly what love was, or would even know it if it came up and bit her on the rump. God knew she had had her share of failures, spectacular and otherwise, the latest though not the most painful one with a man from New York City who thought
it marvelously quaint that she lived in what he laughingly called bucolic isolation, a throwback to the pioneer days when men were men and women were women and the only thing they had to do in winter was fuck their little brains out while the snow piled up to the roof.

  That he was a lousy lay didn’t help, and that he refused to leave the city for Deerford sounded the death knell.

  She shook herself to shed the disgust, ran a steady hand though her curly black hair and stood, walking stiffly back into the kitchen where she busied herself with the kettle and the instant coffee. She checked her watch and sighed. Two o’clock. One more hour and she would have to head next door, open the tavern, and get ready for the influx of the Friday crowd. There were a few, generally the newcomers like those in Meadow View, who wondered aloud and not very politely why she didn’t open the place as early as the law allowed. On Saturdays she did; the rest of the week there was no call for it. The Shade Tree had its own liquor license and the lunch crowd, such as it was in a place like this, and she didn’t think she really had to work herself frazzled to the nub just to provide a shot of rye for the drunks and Bloody Marys for those desperate for the hair of the dog.

  And she certainly didn’t need the money. The Depot provided for her well enough. Her needs were quite simple. Certainly more simple than most of them knew. Deerford proper never complained, and the others . . . they only waited for her to open the damned bar.

  Now if she could only get Doug to move his butt out of the Hollow and into her bed, she could show him that just because she didn’t have big tits or long legs didn’t mean she didn’t know a thing or two about screwing around, or making love.