In the House on Four Mile Creek
The Same Moment
They were like termites in the house. They huddled together in corners in its many rooms. And if a person had been listening to them, that person would have heard what sounded like a deep purring noise—throats responding to the quivering that kept them warm, that produced heat, and kept them alive in this place where huddling together was the only way to contain heat.
Occasionally, amid this purring, a listener might have heard words, too. The voice of a male, and the voice of a female. A listener would have heard, "Do you think this is safe?" and "Okay, so what do we do now? Spread our sleeping bags out here?" and "Maybe there's a fireplace," and, "Inner room where?"
In this month, under this desperation, these creatures had no idea what such words meant. They had heard the words, and they were repeating them. They repeated much. They loved the sounds they heard. They repeated the sounds of animals, too, and insects, and birds. In summer, a listener might be walking in a meadow and hear what he supposed were only the many and varied sounds of the meadow. And, after a fashion, he would be right.
But this month, under this desperation, these creatures quivered for warmth, and sounds came from them involuntarily, like the grunting of bears on a lazy stroll. And the twittering of insects, too, the raucous cries of blue jays, a human conversation born of fear and impending panic.
Under their desperation, these naked forms knew nothing of time and everything of cold, which was death. And so they huddled together in the corners in all the rooms of the big house, and the noises that came from the house were like the noises of meadows, and conversations, sleeping cats, and strolling bears.
The homeless man's wife had done what the man thought was a very stupid thing, though he couldn't blame her for it. She had run from him, out of the room, into the hallway, and then, in the dark, had blundered over the place where the stairs should have been. Now she lay groaning somewhere below him; the young man wasn't sure if she was on the first floor, or beneath that, in the cellar—he could see her only dimly. And he was trying to imagine how he would reach her, because, in her fall, she had knocked the homemade ladder over.
He called to her, "Are you all right?" but she only groaned in response, and he tried to convince himself that this was a good sign, really—at least she could groan—and he repeated, "Are you all right?" though he knew that she wasn't. How could she be? She'd fallen . . . what?—fifteen, twenty feet in the pitch dark, in the cold, and God only knows what she might have fallen on, or what bones she might have broken. He imagined her lying in pain and in terrified resignation about her own death, and it tore him apart because he loved her, and because he had loved the life they had once planned to live.
"I'm coming down there, babe," he called. And he knew that this was true. He really was going down there, to where she lay. He simply didn't know, at that moment, how he was going to do it.
When Erthmun woke he saw black and white floor tiles, beige walls, shadowless fluorescent light, and he smelled antiseptic, blood, freshly cooked eggs, and he heard people talking at a distance—"Look what Karen brought you, darling. Isn't it sweet?" and, from another place, "He says it's not a problem and that we have nothing to worry about."
Erthmun sighed. No high hills and golden grasses in this place. No crickets hopping out of his way.
This was the place of the grinning dead.
Chapter Thirty-two
Morning in Manhattan
It had been a bad night for the homeless man. What could he do? It was too dark to find his way down to his wife, who had groaned for hours, and now was silent. He could see her, though not clearly because the storm was stealing sunlight from the morning. He saw her as if through a fog. He saw that she was on her back in the cellar and that her arms and legs were spread wide. He couldn't see her face. He wasn't sure that he wanted to see it.
And the storm had lashed the brownstone all night, too, which had been maddening for a couple of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that he hadn't been able to hear anything beyond his wife's groaning—which had been as loud as a scream, and was clearly the result of terrible pain. But he hadn't been able to hear anything else, hadn't been able to hear if something were moving toward him from within one of the bedrooms. So he had sat with his all-but-blind gaze on the second-floor interior of the brownstone, and had listened to the screams of the storm and the screaming groans of his wife, and he had prayed for morning.
The doctor said, "He checked out, Miss David."
"When?" Patricia asked.
"About a half hour ago, I think."
"Just like that?"
"Of course. We have no right to keep him here."
"Do you know where he went?"
"My assumption is that he went home."
"Thanks," Patricia said, and hung up.
Erthmun was like many New Yorkers; he didn't own a car. It was too much of a hassle to keep one parked and secure. You paid as much a month to park a car in a secure parking garage as many outside the city paid for a mortgage. And if you parked on the street—assuming you could find an empty parking space—the chances were more than even that you'd wake in the morning and find that the car had been stripped of everything except its gas tank and brake pedal. So, at work, he used his unmarked police car, which he turned in at the end of his shift, and took a bus home, or walked.
This morning, there were no buses, only a few taxis, and even fewer private cars moving on the streets of Manhattan. The snow was knee-deep on many of the side streets, and on the main streets—Broadway, Lexington, Fifth Avenue, Madison—plows were trying gamely to bring the city back to some semblance of normalcy. But it was impossible because storms of this magnitude were a once-in-a-decade occurrence here, and no one knew how to deal with them properly. The city had come to a standstill.
He found a little deli called Marty's on 32nd Street. It was empty, except for the owner, who was standing behind the counter in a white T-shirt and white apron, looking glumly at the storm beyond his windows. Erthmun went into the deli. "Jesus, mister," the owner said to him, "what the hell are you doin' out there?"
Erthmun sat at the counter. It was a highly polished pale green, and squeaky clean; there were ketchup bottles and little metal baskets filled with Equal packets placed neatly every couple of feet on it. "Dying, I think," Erthmun said. He folded his hands in front of him, noted their reflection in the countertop, saw that they were shaking.
The owner of the deli smiled and said, "Ain't we all, huh?"
Erthmun nodded.
"Ain't we all dyin'?" the owner said, and then announced that he was Marty himself, and extended his hand. Erthmun stared at it a moment, then lifted his own quivering hand and shook Marty's. "Tell me you ain't a cop," Marty said.
Erthmun said, "I'm a cop."
"I know cops," Marty said, grinning. He had a round face and big, oval dark eyes, and his grin was pleasant and nonjudgmental. "I been servin' cops here for twenty-five years, huh. Coffee?"
Erthmun said, "Coffee? Yes."
Marty gave him a concerned look. "You okay?"
"I'm okay."
"You don't seem okay. Maybe you need more than coffee, huh?"
"No, just coffee." Erthmun could feel that he was shaking now. He thought that in the very recent past he had felt the same way that he was feeling at that moment, and that it had not boded well for him. He added, "Have I been in here before, Marty?"
"I don't think so," Marty said, and put a big, cream-colored mug full of pitch-black coffee in front of Erthmun. "But who can say? What, you don't remember?"
Erthmun shook his head, sipped his coffee, spilled some on the counter because his hands were shaking. Marty mopped up the spill immediately with a towel.
Erthmun sipped his coffee again. He thought that he was being very noisy about it, and he apologized.
Marty said. "Every morning I got fifty noisy sippers in here. It's like music." He grinned again.
> Erthmun said, "I'm being stalked, I'm being hunted." Marty said nothing.
Erthmun sipped his coffee.
Marty said, as if concerned, "Who's stalking you?"
Erthmun said, "It could be anyone." He realized that he was shaking badly now, and that it was affecting his speech. He thought that he sounded like a fool, but these were such important things to say. "It could be you. It could be anyone. It could be Helen."
"It ain't me," Marty said.
"It could be Helen," Erthmun repeated. "Do you know her?"
"Who?"
"Helen."
"No, I don't know no Helen."
"Who does? Who does? She's like . . . a puff of . . . smoke, Marty. Smoke. She's like smoke. Do you know her?"
"No," Marty said again.
"Who knows her?" Erthmun said. "I don't."
"Sure," said Marty; he was getting nervous.
"She could be you, or me, or anyone," Erthmun said. "But she isn't. She isn't. She's . . . Helen. And she does what she does!"
"Sure," Marty repeated.
"She eats," Erthmun said. "We all eat."
"Sure we do. We eat," Marty said.
"I don't know," Erthmun said. "I met someone once. A long, long time ago, in another place. But she wasn't Helen. Only Helen is Helen. Helen isn't me, or you."
"Maybe you'd like your coffee warmed up?" Marty asked.
"But she could be you and you wouldn't know it," Erthmun said.
"You're shakin' real bad, mister," Marty said. "I can't understand what you're sayin'."
"You don't need to," Erthmun said. He set his cup down hard, so more coffee sloshed onto the counter. Marty did not step forward to clean it up.
"Jesus!" Erthmun shouted.
Marty lurched.
"It could be you, it could be you!" Erthmun shouted. "Why did I come in here?" The energy of his sudden anger was overcoming the fact that he was cold and shaking, and his words were easier to understand now. "Did you invite me in here?"
"You came in here all on your own," Marty said.
"Did I? Why would I do that?"
"I guess to get some coffee," Marty said.
"Are you human?" Erthmun shouted. "Are you human?"
"Sure I'm human."
"But do you know? Can you prove it? No. Who knows? Can you reach back and pull yourself out of your mother's womb and say, This is me, and I'm human? No. Who can? No one. Do you realize that there are dead women with chocolate stuffed in their mouths in this city right now as we speak? Think of it, think of it. Chocolate in their mouths! Naked, dead women with chocolate in their mouths, and no one knows why! Do you know why? No. No one knows! These are previous women!"
"Sure," said Marty. He was backing away as Erthmun ranted.
Erthmun said, "Women who are no more than soil, no more than the earth itself, women who are like plastic dolls, women who will never taste the chocolate that fills their mouths!"
"Sure," said Marty.
"And what do you know, Marty? Can you reach into your mother's womb, can you go back in time and reach into your mother's womb and say, Yes, this is me, and this is my father, who fucked my mother one night, who fucked her sweetly and said he loved her when he was done, and put his seed into her, and it was that seed that made me? And can you say, And this is my mother, whose womb I'm in? You can't say any of that. You can't say any of it!"
Erthmun stood suddenly. Marty lurched. There was a small handgun beneath the counter not far from him.
Erthmun said, "It is these women who are stalking me!"
"Sure," said Marty, bent over, and put his hand on the gun beneath the counter.
"What's that?" Erthmun said. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing," said Marty.
"Good," said Erthmun.
At that moment, Patricia was trying to telephone him from her cellular phone. She was in her car and the car was stuck in snow near the corner of Lexington and 37th Street. There were other cars stuck around her; most had been abandoned, but a few drivers were furiously trying to get their cars moving.
She let Erthmun's number ring a couple of dozen times.
The homeless man could see well enough now, and he thought that was wife was dead. He could see her eyes, and they were closed. He could see her mouth, and he thought that it was open a little. He didn't think that her chest was moving at all. She lay directly beneath him, in the cellar, and her legs and arms were splayed out.
He hoped that she wasn't dead. He thought that he actually loved her and that he didn't want to lose her like this.
He wondered if he could jump from here to the first floor. It was only a little farther, he guessed, than if he stood with his arm straight up. It wasn't twenty feet, as he had first thought. It was fifteen feet, tops—not a whole bunch more than the distance from a basketball hoop to the ground. He could jump it. He could do it, and when he had done it, it would be done, and he wouldn't have to think about it anymore. It would be behind him. He'd be on the first floor, and he'd be able to tell if his wife was dead. And if she wasn't . . . What then? What was he going to do then? Carry her somewhere? Carry her to a hospital? Go and call an ambulance? How would he pay for it, because for sure they'd want him to pay for it. He didn't even know the address here. A brownstone on West 161st Street—is that what he'd say? And how are you going to pay for this ambulance? they'd say. He'd have no answer.
He stared at his wife. He hoped to see that her chest was moving a little, that her lips were spluttering—though, if they were, he realized, he wouldn't be able to see it from here—or that her eyes would open.
He wanted her to live.
He wanted them both to live.
Christ, he was hungry!
Chapter Thirty-three
Morning at the House on Four Mile Creek
Sunlight fell on some of the creatures huddled in a corner in that house. It was like a salve, a healing potion. They had watched it creep across the floor toward them as morning started. They had known what it was, and that its very touch brought wonderful pleasure and warmth. But they didn't move to greet it. No one got up from the naked heap and moved across the floor to greet it. This would have taken heat away from the others and would have brought cold and pain to the individual who did it. Better to wait for the sunlight together, as one.
The sunlight touched a few of them at the feet, though not all of them; and when this happened, all groaned in pleasure because all could feel the sunlight through the ones that it touched.
He was still bent over, still had his hand on the butt of the gun. He could see the other man's eyes on him, and he could read no threat or danger in them. But the man was so odd with his talk of naked women and chocolate and stalkers. The man was crazy, sure, and crazy people did crazy things, unless they were stopped.
Erthmun said, "I don't have a gun. Did you believe that I had a gun?"
Marty said, "I want you just to leave, okay?"
"I'm cold," Erthmun told him.
Marty gripped the gun, straightened with it in his hand, but kept it pointed at the floor.
Erthmun said, "Would you shoot another human being?"
"I don't know if I ever would shoot anybody," Marty said.
"I'm another human being," Erthmun said. "I'm another human being," he repeated. "And I'm cold. I need to be here."
"I don't think you can stay in my delicatessen," Marty said; his words alone would have indicated uncertainty, but his tone was firm. "I have the gun and I don't know what I would do with it. I think that you should go to the hospital."
Erthmun pointed stiffly to indicate the street and the storm. He said, his voice quaking again, "Do you see that?"
"I see it," Marty said.
"If I leave here, that storm will kill me," Erthmun said.
Marty shook his head. "No. Not in this city. There are places for you to go. So I want you to leave and go to one of those places. Go to Penn Station. It's not far. It's warm. Go there."
Erthmun stared at the man
for a long moment. These words went through Erthmun's head; What's happening to me? What do I know? Why am I here, in this city, in this restaurant? Why does that man have a gun in his hand? What does he want to do with it? What am I? What am I?
As quietly and as gracefully as a moth opening its wings, Helen had stepped out of the near-dark in the cellar of the brownstone on West 161st Street, and now she stood naked and incredible in the dim morning light, dark hair streaming down her back, her sky-blue eyes fixed on the homeless man above her, on the second floor, as if she were mentally weighing his worth to her. And he stared back in awe, because he knew that this was the incredible creature that had haunted him the previous evening.
Under other circumstances, the homeless man would have thought, "She's naked, she's a woman—she's vulnerable." But these were not such circumstances. This creature was no more vulnerable than the storm that still lashed the house. No more vulnerable than Death itself.
So he stared silently at her. His gaze did not move more than once from her eyes to her body, which was as exquisite as any female body he had seen.
And, still as if assessing his worth to her, she stared silently back. And after not too long, she bent quickly over the body of the homeless man's wife, ripped open the woman's gray wool jacket, tore at the blue sweater beneath, and the pink blouse beneath that, and shoved her hand far into the woman's stomach. Then she devoured what she pulled out of that stomach—the woman's small intestine, part of the woman's liver, a kidney—while the homeless man watched silently from above.
"Who the fuck moves that quickly?" Erthmun snarled. "Who?"
Marty's mouth was open and the nose of his own gun was stuck into it. Erthmun was holding the gun, and he had bent Marty backward over one of his stoves—which had not been lit. Erthmun was holding the neck of Marty's white shirt tightly in one hand.
A dollop of drool fell from Erthmun's mouth to Marty's neck, which caused Marty to make a little squeaking noise.
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