Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

  “What is it I’m supposed to see, Ben?” Marian persisted.

  He shook his head helplessly. “It doesn’t matter.” He waited. The sound had stopped again.

  “In that case,” Marian said, “dinner’s still on the table.”

  Ben grabbed her arm and stopped her, his voice trembling now. “I’ll ask you just once more. Come back home with us.”

  It was a plea, flat and abject. And why couldn’t he see it? How much clearer could she make it? She was home.

  She clenched her hands tighter and tighter at her sides, until the pressure drove the words out of her with a finality he would have to accept: “I CAN’T! I CAN’T! GOD! DON’T YOU SEE THAT YET? I CAN’T!”

  He thought he heard her sob in the long silence, just once, very quietly. And then touch him, letting her fingers pass lightly over his shoulder. He felt her move away from him, and when he turned he was alone on the terrace. Above him, the fresh black tiles absorbed the last of the sun.

  He didn’t see her again that night; and while he did go back into the dining room where the candles had burned halfway down and the food remained cold and untouched on the table, and then up to their bedroom which was empty when he turned on the light, he wasn’t consciously looking for her. He’d pushed it to a choice and Marian had chosen – finally, unequivocally. And while the implications of the choice were shattering – what in Christ’s name would they do? After the packing up and the flight back to the apartment, what then? – To stay in a house whose malevolence was destroying them (and why, why couldn’t she see that?) would be the clearest evidence of his own insanity.

  Madness, terror, cowardice, whatever – they’d leave in the morning, he and David, and if he saw her before they left . . . Well, of course he’d see her; she’d come into the bedroom eventually, from the sitting room where he knew she had locked herself, and maybe being alone in there and having time to realize exactly what kind of choice she had made and what it would mean to all of them . . .

  He moved the chair from beside the bed, closer to the open door, where he could watch David sleeping in the dim light across the hall. And waited, and felt the throbbing inside his head accelerate and drum above the soft chiming of the clocks throughout the house. It was after three when a stillness that was almost palpable descended on the room and the house. He had been dozing, and it woke him with a start. He looked across the hall at David who was sleeping with the covers thrown off him. Ben rose from the chair and then fell back into it as the film, more opaque than it had ever been, came over his eyes – not merely a blurring, but a shadowless white; and with it a deep feeling of nausea. He sat without moving, feeling his hands sweat against the fabric of the chair, and a tightening in his groin that made him gag and then suck at the still air in the room.

  The feeling was still there when the clocks chimed four times. Then he heard rain, very softly. And even softer at first, the sliding sound again that he had heard on the terrace. Again, and then again, louder – above him, outside the windows. And then down the hall and below him and all around him, the sounds rising and becoming chambered. And even when he covered his ears with his hands, he could still hear the tiles slide with grating sharpness.

  The clocks chimed again, barely audible under the sounds that continued to shake the house. Ben pushed himself out of the chair and felt his way to the door. There were vague outlines now in the whiteness, and then David in bed, clearer, as Ben approached him and leaned over him.

  “David!” He shook him and David stirred and moved away from his hand. He called, “David!” again, and as he did he felt his eyes clearing. But the sounds continued, stronger. David was fast asleep. A first dim light was penetrating the darkness outside his windows.

  Ben went out into the hall and looked first at the double doors still closed at the end of the corridor, and then at the top of the staircase where the metal inclinator jutted out from the wall. He headed for the stairs, and then down, into the living room, where the sounds followed him with no lessening of intensity.

  He crossed the room, faint and gray in the rainy dawn, and went to the clouded French door which he rubbed and tried to see beyond. He pulled it open and the fine, mist-like rain covered his face and arms with a gentle coolness. The sounds were on the terrace as well. He backed across the flagstone, toward the stone balustrade, looking up at the side of the house.

  The tiles were falling from the roof with that same dreamlike motion, dissolving in the air and silently on the terrace. The gray shingles below them as well, slipping from the sides of the house, cascading down, as if the house were throwing off its old skin and revealing an immaculate whiteness underneath that glistened in the rain. Wherever he looked they were falling – tiles and clapboards and weathered cornices. He moved down the length of the terrace with his back to the balustrade, feeling his way with his hands, unable to pull his eyes away from the frightening apparition of the house.

  There was a sudden break in the balustrade and he felt himself falling backwards, down the three steps descending to the lawn and the wide flowerbeds following the line of the terrace. He grabbed at the last baluster and broke his fall, landing on his knees and his right hand in the soft wet earth that was pushing up a thick bed of green – spear-like shoots that seemed to be growing around him as he pulled himself to his feet.

  The clapboards showered down, faster, louder. Ben moved below the terrace, still looking up, following the balustrade until it curved and stopped against the glass of the greenhouse built out under the west wing of the house. He lowered his eyes to it and then moved closer to the glass and stared inside. And then rushed into the house and pulled open the greenhouse door. And stared again.

  And instantly found himself upstairs again, lifting David out of the bed.

  Marian heard the sounds very dimly beyond the closed doors to the sitting room. She was half-awake in the wingchair. She opened her eyes and listened. It had been Ben’s voice raised indistinctly down the corridor. She rose and went to the inner door, unlocked it, and went out into the small corridor. There was another sound then, more distant. David?

  She opened the door and came down the five steps. David’s room was empty when she reached it, the covers hanging off the bed. The light was on in the bedroom opposite, hers and Ben’s. She heard something downstairs – the front door closing. She rushed to David’s window and looked down.

  They had reached the bottom of the steps. Ben was pulling David who had his blue terrycloth robe wrapped around him. David stumbled and Ben lifted him, carrying him along the gravel drive toward the garage.

  Marian called, “David!” feebly through the half-closed window. She tried to raise it; it was stuck, and she hammered the heels of her hands against the frame. It wouldn’t move. She lowered her face to the opening and shouted, “Ben!” several times, and then saw them disappear, without turning, beyond the frame of the window. And felt something that had been dying inside herself spring back to life – instinctively, without her willing it; despite what she had said, despite the choice she had been forced into making on the terrace. The fact of it – the jolting fact of it now . . .

  She hurried out of the room, and when she reached the bottom of the long white flight of stairs outside, she saw the car pull away from the garage and disappear in the colorless gray that was misting the field.

  It was the rain against the windshield blurring his vision, and the slow streaking arc of the wipers, and David’s frightened voice protesting sleepily beside him that was distracting him, and making the car swerve over the gravel. The thick green of the woods appeared ahead of them, and again David cried, “Where are we going?”

  “It’s going to be all right,” Ben said, and when he lifted one hand from the wheel to touch him reassuringly, the car swerved sharply and David had to throw his hand against the dashboard to protect himself.

  An
d then again he asked for Marian. Why wasn’t she with them, where were they going without her?

  The car slowed in front of the dark green tunnel of the woods, even darker and thicker in the mist shrouding the narrow gravel road.

  “Sit back in the seat,” Ben said to David, and leaned closer to the fogging windshield.

  He drove a few feet in, passing over the vines that in a day had raised fresh green shoots. Ben’s hands tightened on the wheel; he accelerated slowly, pushing into the dense growth choking the road and forming a solid wall of green a few feet ahead of him. His foot pressed down on the gas pedal; the car lurched forward and then stopped, the rear wheels spinning over the gravel. He backed up a bit, and then came forward again faster. Branches screeched against the sides and roof of the car. He stopped, and David saw him wet his lips with his tongue and then strain to see ahead and left and right. He shifted into Park and told David, “Wait,” pushing his door open against the foliage.

  David shivered and sank lower in the seat, pulling the blue robe closed over his chest.

  Ben squeezed himself along the side of the car, his hands raised to protect his face. He moved forward, trying to see beyond the solid green ahead. A vine noosed suddenly around his foot; he stumbled and as he caught himself against the hood of the car, a twig struck against his face with a force that made him reel and press his way back into the car. He sat with his face buried in his hands, his fingers rubbing against his forehead and eyes.

  “I wanna go back,” David said, watching him, seeing the mud caked on his pants and hands, and the streaks of dirt across his face now.

  Ben raised his face and shifted the car into reverse, backing fast down the rise of gravel; and then forward, faster, smashing into the bushes with a snapping of wood and a metallic scraping. Faster. Breaking through. He was hugging the wheel. A branch slapped against the windshield, and against David’s sealed window, making him jump and cry out. The car accelerated, the twigs and leaves striking against it with growing fury. Ben was pushing forward blindly. A branch caught under the wiper on his side and snapped it. There was sound on all sides of the car, and green lashing at the windows. The leaves glued themselves to the windshield and the rear window and all the side windows. And if he could just break through to the road, just press down blindly on the pedal and break through. David heard the sounds he was making, the incoherent pleading, and he began to cry. The car sped forward suddenly and then came to a wrenching halt, throwing David off the seat. Ben’s head hit the windshield, and it was only a second later, it seemed, that Marian was opening the door on his side and trying to push him away from the wheel; repeating his name and shaking him back to consciousness, saying, “Let me in.” And then turning to David who was whimpering in the back seat, and saying, soothingly, “It’s all right, sweetheart, everything is going to be all right now.”

  Ben looked at her distantly, waiting for her face to come into focus. He let himself be pushed to the passenger side. The leaves had been wiped from the windows. Marian, her hair gray and streaming, and the white and gold she was wearing soaked through, turned on the ignition and began to back the car slowly down the drive, the leaves merely whispering against the top and sides. The road ahead, when he could see, had, incredibly, cleared, and the wiper on the driver’s side swept slowly over the glass.

  Marian was watching the rearview mirror, carefully backing over the twenty or so feet the car had penetrated into the drive. The field spread behind them, and beyond it, out of view, the house. They had almost backed out of the woods when Marian found herself pressing harder on the brake pedal and then stopping the car. She stared ahead through the rain-streaked window at the drive twisting beyond the trees and climbing up to the dirt road past the woods and the two stone pillars marking the gate.

  The road. It was as close, as simple as a movement of her foot a few inches to the right. Just press down on the gas pedal . . .

  She kept the car idling a few seconds, and then let her foot up on the brake slowly, as the thought passed, as suddenly as it had come to her. The car rolled backwards out of the drive.

  She braked again, one last time, and then resolutely looked away from the narrow opening in the foliage. She turned the car, and began to drive back to the house.

  Ben continued to stare at her and then said, very slowly, “You’re accepting it . . . all of it. You know . . . and you’re accepting it . . . Aren’t you . . . ? Aren’t you . . . ?”

  Marian’s face remained impassive, while the house rose out of the mist and loomed ahead of them, white. Whiter. Blinding. Dissolving the mist and the glass in front of him and the sweep of the wiper, and the sound of David behind him. He closed his eyes against it, and when he opened them again, he was sitting in the back seat, and the padding around him was thick and rich and a deep gray, and in front of him, driving, was the chauffeur. Ben tried not to see him, tried to look beyond him at the whiteness rising again, coming at him like a great annihilating force, like a blow against his brain.

  White. White nothingness. White.

  (11)

  For the first time in over a week she had gone to sleep beside him, in the double bed in their room, with a guilt or a sympathy or a fear strong enough to overcome the magnetic pull of the sitting room. She had led him up to the room herself after she had brought him and David back to the house, had even undressed him and, later in the day, carried the lunch and dinner trays up to him, just as she still did, ritualistically, for Mrs. Allardyce. And spooned the food into his mouth.

  Something, somewhere between the drive and the house, or in the house, had happened to him, so traumatic that it had effectively anaesthetized his mind, reducing him to a state of shock that was as deep and paralyzing as a coma. He couldn’t see, as far as Marian could make out, or could only see dimly, and couldn’t hear, or wouldn’t, and wouldn’t speak as well. At least not to her.

  If it was shock, then it might well pass eventually, she had reassured herself. But some part of her – the part that found comfort in the sitting room, and that did indeed, as Ben had said in the car, accept it, all of it, as much of it as she could understand (and when would the understanding be complete?) – knew instinctively that it was something deeper than shock; instinctively enough to make her search through the faces on the sitting room table before she had come into bed with him that night.

  It was before seven the following morning when the sound of a car coming down the drive, and then the slamming of its door in front of the house jarred her awake. She had been sleeping on her right side, facing the open bedroom door and the sound below David’s windows. She propped herself up, listened for a moment, and then turned to look at Ben beside her. And gasped when she saw him sitting motionless in the chair next to the bed, staring at her, continuing to stare at the empty bed when she rose and came beside him, lowering herself and searching for some sign of recognition in the open blankness of his eyes.

  They’ve come back, flashed into her mind, and if she hadn’t been looking at Ben at that moment, if his absolute helplessness hadn’t summoned up what was left of her old self, would the feeling of relief have been so overwhelming and so liberating? They’ve come back.

  She crossed to David’s room, and there it was below the windows, parked directly in front of the steps – the Allardyces’ huge old Packard.

  “Oh, God, they’ve come back!” she said aloud, and went back for her robe and slippers, repeating it to Ben, and then leaving him and rushing halfway down the stairs before she saw Walker standing in the middle of the entrance hall and smiling up at her.

  “Mornin’, Mrs.,” he said, and tipped his sweat-stained baseball cap.

  Marian looked beyond him expectantly, at the door he had left open. “Where are they, Walker?” she asked. “The others.”

  “What others?” He replaced his cap, and tested the rug with his scuffed shoes.


  “The Allardyces. Roz and Brother.” She came down the rest of the stairs.

  Walker looked up at the walls and the ceiling, inspecting. “Why, away of course,” he said casually.

  “Where away?”

  “Just . . . away. Like always.” He smiled and said, “Excuse me,” walking away from her into the living room. She followed him. “Sorry for the interruption,” he called over his shoulder; “thought I’d be in and out before any of you was up.” He was surveying the room, passing his hands over the tables and lampshades and figurines, and nodding approvingly to himself.

  “You mean they haven’t come back with you?” Marian insisted.

  “How could they?” He walked to the end of the room and disappeared into the alcove leading to the greenhouse. When he came back in he looked genuinely impressed. “Nice job,” he said, “darn nice job.”

  “Walker, listen to me,” Marian said without hearing him, “ – they’ve got to come back. Will you tell them that for me? Please?”

  “What for?” Walker said. “Place is yours, ain’t it? From whenever to . . . whenever.” He walked past her, back into the hall, and then down the corridor, peering into the dining room and the library and the kitchen and the servants’ rooms, with Marian close behind him.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Marian said suddenly, “I don’t – it’s too much, it’s more than I can handle.”

  “Don’t look that way to me, Mrs.,” Walker said.

  “Whatever it looks like – you’ve all got to come back.”

  “Afraid that’s not for me to decide. Or you, for that matter, Mrs.”

  “But you’ll tell them anyway, won’t you?” Marian pleaded.