House Haunted

by Al Sarrantonio

  “Lower your head and get in the car,” Bridget told him. Jan stiffened.

  “He won't know the difference. And he's Polish, so you can tell him whatever you want.”

  Jan straightened his coat and walked over to the car. The driver bowed and opened the back door. Jan got in. The door slammed shut behind him.

  He nearly gasped at the accommodations. A long leather backseat was flanked on one end by a bar, on the other with a writing desk complete with telephone (red! Jan noticed). There was a television and radio set into the partition between driver and passenger.

  Bridget told Jan to tap on the partition window. The driver slid back a small window.

  “Yes?” the driver inquired.

  Following Bridget's instructions, Jan said, “Take me to the airport immediately. Does your phone work up front?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well. Estimate our time of arrival and tell them to have my plane ready to go by the time we get there. Tell them we are going to New York. Call my office in Moscow and tell them the same. There is very important business at the embassy in New York that I have to attend to. Tell them I'll be back in two days. I'm going to take a nap now. Don't disturb me until we get to the plane.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The partition slid closed.

  As the limousine pulled away, Jan saw another car pull up before the elevator doors. Two men got out of the back. Then the driver emerged from the front. Jan recognized them immediately. They were the three who had tracked him down like a dog and taken him to this place. The leader still wore his same trench coat. The other two argued as they pulled a limp body from the backseat and propped it upright. Jan saw faint movement as the prisoner tried to stand on his own. The two thugs holding him let him go, and he collapsed, falling forward and striking his head on the tarmac. The two thugs laughed.

  “Enough!” the trench-coated man said. They picked their prisoner up under either arm and dragged him toward the elevator.

  A bolt of hate and remembrance shot through Jan; angrily, he reached to pull open the partition between himself and his driver to tell the man to stop.

  “No,” Bridget said, close-by. It sounded as if she were curled like a kitten next to him. Jan felt the weight of her hand on his lap, working its way inside the coat to his belt. “Think about me, Jan. Think about what it will be like when we're together.”

  Jan's eyes were glued to the retreating image of the three men stumbling their prisoner toward the elevator doors.

  “Think about me, only me,” Bridget cooed in his ear.

  Jan felt the beginnings of arousal. He glanced at his lap to see that she had placed his hand where hers had been.

  “Think of me, Jan. All of me,” she purred.

  “Yes,” Jan said, suddenly very aware of her presence, aware that she was everything to him.

  “Yes . . .”

  14. THE ASSISTANT

  I'm going to kill her.

  And after they had been getting along so well. The last two weeks, in particular, had been heaven. Bridget had warned him that there might be a little work coming up at the end of October, but in the meantime, he could enjoy the calm before the storm. A couple of trips upstate was all she had asked, stocking supplies, things like that, and the rest of the time he had had to himself. He had almost begun to believe that the “storm,” the busy times she had talked about, wouldn't come at all.

  And then—boom!—all at once. She had woke him out of a sound sleep, the first he had had in four nights, since Mr. Felligan liked to play blackjack until all hours of the morning. The old fool didn't get off work until midnight, and Gary had had to listen to stories till the sun came up about how Felligan would not be a night watchman forever. “Temporary! Temporary!” Felligan always reminded him, his bent finger in the air next to his head, his thin, balding head rigid, his foolish little dreamer's eyes lost in his dreams. “Ah, Gary, I can't tell you how wonderful it'll be, me a croupier in Atlantic City, ever since I seen that Burt Lancaster movie Atlantic City, Burt, that's me, me with that little redheaded piece of ass, what's her name, Sarandon—Susan Sarandon—the one in that baseball movie, yeah, that's me, Burt Lancaster, I'll be happy down there, did I tell you I was born by the saltwater, Gary, I can't tell you how much I 'ppreciate you helping me practice it and all, won't be long now, I can tell you, the money's in the bank, five hundred dollars and this time next year I'll be living off that boardwalk, one of them not too fancy boarding houses, just a few more hundred dollars if I could just stay away from the ponies, that goddamn exacta, guy that invented that should be shot for taking the money right out of my wallet, did I say five hundred in the bank? Well, maybe like two hundred or a hundred, but it won't be long, Gary, no sir. . .” It wouldn't be long before Felligan dreamed forever, the long dream. But then Bridget had woken him up out of that good sleep, his first in four nights, and told him there was work to do.

  That hadn't gotten him so mad. She had done that before, always apologizing. She had this time, but there was an urgency to her that made him feel she was telling him, not asking him. That he didn't like. It was one thing for her to ask his help, another for her to tell him to drive upstate right away and get things ready.

  And that was only the beginning. He drove around for her like a madman the next two days, which put Felligan completely on the back burner (“See you early next week, Burt”—for the last time, Gary didn't add, and Felligan had only snuffled and wheezed in the self-pitying, disgusting way he had, and said, “If you must, Gary, if you must . . .).

  But the thing that had really gotten to Gary, had made him decide that there might be a score to settle (unless she really made this up to him, which, so far, she had not), was her insistence that he suddenly turn bellhop and chauffeur. It had started out easily enough, with the arrival of the strange-looking girl from Ottawa who had driven down in an old Honda that smelled like spilled beer and piss. All he'd had to do was drive the foul-smelling thing around back and park it in the weeds.

  But the next day he had been back up there, just waiting like a bellhop until, about four-thirty in the afternoon, a limo half as long as the block had pulled into the drive, letting out a skinny young man in a topcoat and red scarf, speaking English with a foreign accent, with the craziest smile on his face Gary had ever seen.

  Up till then he had put up with it. But the next day, after he had finally driven back down to the city, with an ache in the back of his neck, and parked out on the street, running up to his apartment to get a change of clothes before going out to meet Felligan, the phone had rung and she had told him to rent a van, now.

  “My car's on the street. Let me just park it in the garage.”

  “Immediately, Gary.”

  That was the first time he had felt her order him to do - something, instead of ask, the first time he had ever really felt her anger. That made him mad.

  But what really made him mad was that it had scared him.

  So he had gotten the van and picked up the third delivery at LaGuardia Airport. It was a cripple in a wheelchair, coked out of his mind, a twenty year old with the eyes of a hundred-year-old man (okay, so Gary understood why the van, he'd never have gotten the goddamn wheelchair in the Datsun), and then after driving all the way upstate and then back to the city again, he'd found that his Datsun had been towed.

  He'd almost lost it, right there on the street. What he remembered himself doing was putting big dents in the side of the van with his fists and then whacking at it with a discarded umbrella, blood rushing to his eyes—then suddenly realizing what he was doing, that a crowd was forming. He had stumbled away and into his building just before real notice was taken of him (the crowd had mostly been interested, not alarmed, these were New Yorkers, you could have sold peanuts) and up to his apartment. Mrs. Fogelman had got on the elevator with him, appearing it seemed out of no-where, her bland, self-absorbed face seeing but not registering his rage as she began her litany, “You know, Gary, your moth
er was a good woman. I wonder if they'll ever do something about the heat in this building. It's been a little cold the last few nights, don't you think? Your mother . . .” If Gary had had a weapon on him, he might have killed her, knifing her throat right out of her neck, just to shut her up. But he had managed to stumble out of the elevator to his apartment door, getting the key into the lock, opening the door, thinking all these bad thoughts about Bridget and the way she had been treating him—

  The phone was ringing. Automatically, he picked it up, put it to his ear.

  “Gary,” she said, her voice subsumed in static. “You have to go out once more, tonight. There's a ship getting in from Bermuda at the Forty-sixth Street pier, the S.S. Eiderhorn. A boy on it named Ricky . . .”

  Gary went blind with fury. “They took my car.”

  She laughed. “You'll have another car. All the cars you want.”

  Gary's anger was undiminished. “I want Felligan. Now.”

  Her voice hardened, the way it had when she had first frightened him. But he was too enraged to be frightened now. “When you've finished—”

  “I said now!” Gary began to hyperventilate. A memory bolted through his head: himself at four years old, on the floor, face flushed red, pounding on the floor with his fists, his feet, getting up to punch the walls, his mother impassionately saying, “It will do you no good to throw a tantrum, young man,” before turning back to talk intimately with the man who sat on the sofa with her, giggling laughter at something the man said into her ear as Gary screamed and railed and beat at his own body till he wept, curling in on himself, looking out at her on the couch as the man put his hands on her, and Gary wanted her to look only at him...

  “You won't get me to do ANYTHING for you! Not ANYTHING!” he screamed into the phone.

  He continued to scream.

  There was silence on the other end of the phone when he stopped screaming. He didn't know how much time had passed. He looked out the window, through the slatted blinds. It was dark. He stretched the phone cord to the hall and looked at the round clock on the wall: eight o'clock.

  He walked back into the living room, easing the phone cord, and now registered the ripped carpet in the center of the living room, the scratches on the china hutch (his mother's china hutch) net to the phone. The wall around the phone was scored, chunks of plaster gone. On the floor under it was the tiny pocketknife he carried as a key chain. The blade was bent.

  “Gary?”

  Her tone had changed. She sounded the way she had when she had first called him. She sounded like a friend, someone who understood him.

  “I treated you badly, Gary, and I'm sorry.”

  “It's all right,” he said.

  “Will you forgive me?”

  How could he not forgive her? How could he hold anything back from her, who understood him, knew what was in him? “Yes.”

  She sighed, as if she had been afraid he would refuse her. “Are you all right, Gary?”

  “Yes, I'm all right.”

  “These past few days. . . I've been very thoughtless, selfish. I've just had so much to do. I don't want you to think that I ever don't appreciate the little things you do for me, Gary.”

  “Sometimes I do.”

  “That's why I'm sorry. You don't know how happy I was that day you broke into the house and I was able to talk to you. You don't know how long I had waited for someone like you. You have to admit you didn't recognize your greatness, your invincibility, until I told you of it. You're a great man, Gary.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Yes.”

  “Sometimes I forget that. Selfishness is a terrible thing.” 'It is.''

  “You're invincible, Gary. Just like I told you. I may have been busy, but I haven't forgotten that.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you very upset about your car?”

  “No. It's all right.”

  “You could get it back tomorrow, you know.”

  “Yes, that would be all right.”

  “After tonight, Gary, I won't need you again. You'll be free to do whatever you want. I want you to do whatever makes you happy.”

  Gary was silent.

  “Tonight is the last thing I'll ever ask of you.”

  “All right.”

  “Gary.” The way she said his name, with pride, as if it meant something—formed a lump in his throat.

  “I'll leave now,” he said.

  “Thank you, Gary. Thank you.”

  He heard her voice fade into the static, and he put the phone down. Felligan could wait one more night.

  He put his change of clothes away, put his duffel bag back into his closet. He straightened the living room, sweeping the pulls from the carpet, putting the furniture back into place. By the time he got down to the van in the garage, he was whistling.

  Invincible.

  Maybe he wouldn't have to kill Bridget after all.

  The Forty-sixth Street pier was jammed with traffic. He could see why: the huge, brightly lit S.S. Eiderhorn was just nosing in. But Gary was lucky. A minibus from an earlier arrival shot out of a parking space right next to the debarking area just ahead of him. He pulled immediately into it. He was whistling again as he got out of the van and slammed the door.

  Huge ship, huge passenger list. There were families lined up like Noah's animals against the railing, smiling in the artificial light, searching for a sign of their newly tanned loved ones.

  Gary waited next to the open door of the van. He wished the damn thing had a tape deck so he could listen to some good jazz. A momentary flash of anger bolted through him; all of his tapes were in his impounded car. He balled his fist, then relaxed it, slowing his breathing. He'd get the car tomorrow, no problem. He'd get the fucking car, and soon he would have any car he wanted, just like she said. He was invincible, and soon, very soon, he could have anything he wanted.

  He saw someone that looked like his pickup.

  At the top of the ramp, a young boy was leaning over the railing looking down at the pier. He looked confused. He moved in place, mingling with a group of tourists debarking the ship, disappearing in the midst of their bags and hats and loud laughing voices .

  At the bottom of the ramp, just past the steward, he appeared again when the laughing group, gaily dressed, carnival in the sodium-vapor lamps, moved on, leaving him behind, staring into space.

  Gary left the van and moved up close to him. This was the one. The kid stared up into his face as Gary took his arm, registering little. “Come on,” Gary said, pulling him toward the van. He followed. He seemed weak, ready to stumble, light as a feather.

  Whistling, Gary let go of the kid's arm at the side of the van and slid open the cargo door. “Get in,” he said. The kid followed meekly, stumbling on the second step up into the cab. “Whoa,” Gary said, laughing, and caught him under the arm, lifting him up onto the seat. The kid stared at him for a moment.

  “Who are you?” he asked tepidly.

  Gary shrugged, then laughed. “Maybe I'm your worst fucking nightmare.”

  The kid lay down on the bench seat of the van and stared glassily through the window as Gary slid the door shut with a bang.

  Gary pulled out onto Forty-sixth Street and headed across town. He flipped on the digital radio, finding an all-talk show. He dialed up and down, looking for something listenable on the AM band, and finally gave up in disgust, leaving the radio on a country-western station.

  They hit Broadway and Gary turned downtown as Bridget had directed. She'd told him to drive through the theater district. The lights got brighter. He felt a rustling from the backseat. When he checked the rearview mirror, the black kid was sitting up, staring out the window. They were crossing Forty-second Street now, and the sex show signs and movie marquees brightened and then gave way to theater marquees—The Shubert, the Nederlanden

  Gary looked into the rearview mirror again and then turned around in his seat. The black kid had his face pressed against the glass of the side window. He was t
rying to clutch at the glass. Tears streamed down his face. He was making low moaning noises.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Gary snapped. He reached back, slapping at the kid's knees with the flat of his hand. He swerved back into the middle lane, just avoiding a taxi that had shot out of Thirty-fourth Street into his path. The moaning noises continued in the back.

  “Shut up!” Gary screamed, turning quickly to hit at the kid again. But Ricky had already turned from the window and was quieting down, curling up onto the bench seat.

  Gary shot crosstown to the FDR Drive, up the Third Avenue Bridge, and then the Deegan Expressway. When he got to the Saw Mill River Parkway, he played with the radio again. This time he found a station playing Dave Brubeck. He tapped out the rhythms of “Take Five” on the steering wheel. The station, a college one, Fordham or Columbia, then played an entire Art Farmer record.

  By the time the college station faded into static, he was past Poughkeepsie. He snapped off the radio and checked the cargo in the back. The kid was asleep, tight in a fetal position.

  Fifteen minutes later, Gary left the Taconic. He maneuvered twenty more minutes through town and out into the country-side. The moon was up; everything looked cold and clean. Gary passed a few houses with jack-o'lanterns on their porches and remembered that it was almost Halloween.

  He caught a quick glimpse of the house from the rise that led down to its valley. The thin glint of silver from the stream shone in moonlight. Two windows were filled with illumination—one up at the cupola, the other on the ground floor: one of the living room lamps.

  Five minutes later he pulled into the driveway, then off that to the half-circle offshoot that curled around to the front of the house. The porch light was off. He switched off the engine and got out of the van.

  He slid back the door. The black kid stirred. The dome light was on. The kid shivered, tried to roll into a tighter ball.

  “Ride's over, kid,” Gary said. He punched the kid on the thigh

  Ricky shivered again.

  “Get out.”