Boundaries

by Wright, T. M.

  David turned toward the open door and the darkness. He said, "I know that my sister Anne is out there, in the city somewhere. I can feel it. That’s why I have to leave." He felt very odd, suddenly. Lightheaded and heavy and bloated all at once, as if he had eaten too much and drunk too much and was just beginning to feel the effects.

  "Then leave," said the thin man.

  David looked back at him. The darkness covering the man’s face dissipated all at once, as if it were merely an exhale on a cold day, and David saw the man’s wide nose, and large, friendly eyes, and full mouth. There was a look of bemusement on it. "Leave?" David said.

  The man said nothing.

  "Go into the darkness?" David was astonished by the idea.

  Still the man said nothing.

  "Who goes willingly into the darkness?"

  "No one," the man said, and reached and closedthe door. "Some orange pekoe tea, then?”

  “Tea?" David said.

  "Orange pekoe."

  "Yes," David said.

  SIXTEEN

  Leo Kenner knocked for the third time on Christian Grieg’s front door and, receiving no answer, put his hand to the knob and tried it. The door was unlocked. He opened it, stuck his head in through the opening.

  "Hello?" he called, and looked about, past the small foyer, into the large, neat living room. "Is anyone here? Mr. Grieg? Miss Duffy?" He listened. The house was silent. The driveway had been empty. No one was at home, that was obvious.

  ~ * ~

  White house, green shutters, green house, white shutters. White shutters, white shutters . . .

  “David, dammit, David—"

  Christian’s foot lost purchase on a slick beach rock and he almost toppled backwards. But he made his arms flail about as if he were a windmill, let out a couple of enthusiastic "Whoops!" and stayed upright, barely.

  "Oh, I do feel very foolish!" he whispered. "Foolish, foolish, oh foolish me!"

  A gull, intent on a fish carcass, screeched at him from nearby. Three gulls had found the fish carcass. One gull stretched its neck out and flatfooted it after another, who ran squawking away. Then the aggressive gull put its attention once more on Christian, and screeched again. Christian screeched back. The gull stared for a moment, beak shut tight, dark eyes full of confusion.

  Christian, who was not very far off, put his arms out, as if he were a bird, lowered his head, and ran at the three gulls, scaring them away from the fish carcass. They flew squawking into the air. One—the easily bullied—went off toward land and the other two went off over the water, where they circled at a good stone’s-throw distance and watched him uneasily, certain he was going to steal their fish.

  But he brought his foot down very hard on it, instead, and mashed it into a gray, bony, pulpy mass on the beach stones. This pleased him.

  After a moment, he continued his search for David.

  ~ * ~

  The woman asked herself, How large is this place? but she was uncertain of the significance of the question, or of how it pertained to her.

  She remembered coming here.

  She remembered the house. The windows free of glass. The open doorways. That was the starting point. The beginning. (And how was that significant? Beginning? What did it mean?)

  She remembered leaving the house. Remembered the forest.

  People gathered around.

  But these memories were fading quickly, as a dream does.

  And now there was this city, these houses and brick streets. The smells of cooking and of animals—a heady mixture. Life goes on here! she thought, and was momentarily happy because of it, though she did not know why. Life? she wondered.

  A shadow approached. It darkened the brick street, the close wooden walls of the houses. Then it passed over her and made her shiver.

  She turned, looked where it had gone. She saw it receding, darkening the streets and houses as it went. She looked up, thought something had flown over; there was nothing visible in the slim rectangular path between the houses, only the fiercely moving white and gray and blue sky.

  This word escaped her: "Christian." She heard it, wondered briefly at it, and, like the shadow on the brick streets and wooden walls, it made her momentarily cold.

  Then it too was gone, and she forgot it.

  ~ * ~

  Christian saw at last the green cottage with white shutters and he stared at it for a long time, while the gulls screeched their complaints at him from above for his destruction of their meal.

  But he paid them no attention.

  He kept his attention on the cottage. On its lines and its greenness. He thought that it was very green—a lovely, deep green reminiscent of grass that has been allowed to grow tall and thick.

  Above and out over the lake, the gulls screeched one last complaint in unison and then flew off.

  He paid them no attention.

  He did not become aware of the sudden quiet. Because his mind was not quiet.

  There was the sound of wind in it, a wind blowing the lovely, thick grass which rustled and swished and made a noise like water crashing over rocks.

  Wind and water.

  "David!" he yelled. And could not hear himself over the white noise, in his head, of the wind and the water.

  He yelled "David!" again, and again.

  Then he stopped.

  The wind and water stopped.

  Blessed silence.

  Deep, blessed silence.

  No sound.

  His mouth moved. Air. His friend’s name moving on the air. David.

  David.

  David.

  Slow movements of air, a little whisper, the whisper of sleep, the sound of dying.

  He moved forward, toward the green cottage.

  BOOK THREE

  IS, WAS, AND IS

  ONE

  It is ten years later. Maude and Peter, who live in the house that once belonged to Anne Case, have invited a half dozen friends over. Some of these friends are people that Maude and Peter have known for some time; some are new friends, or lovers, of Maude and Peter’s old friends. A formal dinner of veal parmigiana, stuffed grape leaves, and chocolate mousse has been enjoyed, and people are wandering about with cups of coffee or espresso in hand, when Maude suggests that they hold a séance to try and contact the spirit of Anne Case, which, Maude explains, she’s seen moving "with great sadness" from room to room. "Mostly upstairs, you know. In that huge room on the third floor. I see her there quite a lot, in fact." It’s a gentle lie. It’s meant only to heighten the atmosphere of romantic moodiness that Maude feels pervades the house, anyway.

  "Really?" says a young, svelte, dark-haired woman named Barbara; she’s clearly incredulous but intrigued.

  "How terribly bizarre," says another woman, also young and also svelte.

  "Well, yes, it is bizarre," Maude says. "But she was murdered, after all, and, as you know, such a dark death precludes any possibility of rest or peace at all."

  "Poor thing," Barbara mutters.

  "Precisely," Maude agrees, and repeats her interest in holding a séance to try and contact the spirit of Anne Case.

  There are a few reservations about the idea of a séance, but there is much more in the way of enthusiasm, so the people in the house busy themselves with arranging the heavy, wooden, kitchen chairs in a circle, which is the way—they know after watching dozens of movies and endless hours of TV—that all good séance are prepared.

  "Anyone for more mousse?" asks Maude.

  "Is there more?" a man asks enthusiastically.

  "Is there?" Maude asks Peter.

  "I’ll check," Peter says, and goes into the kitchen. He comes back a few moments later, looking crestfallen. "No more mousse, I’m afraid."

  "No mousse, I’m afraid," Maude declares. "So I guess we can get started."

  There are some grumblings of disappointment, then the lights are dimmed and nearly everyone takes a seat.

  There’s a minute of self-conscious babble, some giggling; a
man, still standing, protests that "this is nothing to fool around with, you know," but he quickly makes himself part of the circle, too.

  Then, very solemnly, Maude bids them all to join hands.

  They do it.

  There’s another giggle.

  Barbara says, "Boo!"

  The séance begins.

  TWO

  In his quick search of Christian’s house, Leo Kenner found nothing but a half-completed letter from Christian to someone unknown—there was no salutation—which spoke of "urgencies" and "desperations," and ended up giving Leo the very odd feeling that he’d met this man—Christian Grieg—before, though he was positive he hadn’t.

  He folded the letter—one handwritten page that he’d found under a coffee table in the living room—put it in his sports coat pocket, and quickly left the house.

  ~ * ~

  David asked the thin man if he had ever heard of the phenomenon of interior voices. The man said that he hadn’t, and David told him about various murderers he had read about—"The Son of Sam, for instance," he said—who had been moved in their actions by interior voices. These people were certain that the voices they heard were, indeed, not interior at all, that they were real people—or, in the case of the Son of Sam, real animals—who had the right and the power to tell them what to do, and most often what they told people like the Son of Sam to do was to kill other people.

  The thin man said that he did not understand, because he didn’t know what "kill" meant, but that he very much wanted to understand, and David told him that he, David—he did not name himself; he could no longer name himself, although his memory was replete with the names of others—was beginning to hear interior voices and these voices were telling him to get away, to go back down the tunnel, back to the earth before it was too late.

  To which the thin man said, "What tunnel? What earth?"

  And David, though he tried mightily to answer him, had no answer.

  So he began to weep, and to feel very alone, and very afraid.

  ~ * ~

  Karen Duffy said, "Well then, where is Detective Kenner?"

  The desk sergeant said, "I’m sorry, I can’t give you that information."

  "Shit!" Karen breathed.

  "He’ll be back shortly," the desk sergeant said, and nodded at a couple of brown metal folding chairs set up near the double front doors. "Why don’t you wait for him."

  "I can’t wait," Karen told him. "Don’t you understand, if I wait . . . if I wait, then—"

  "You could speak to another detective," the desk sergeant suggested, sensing a strange sort of urgency in Karen’s tone. "Why don’t you do that, Miss . . . Miss . . .”

  Karen turned suddenly, whispered "Dammit to hell!" and left the building.

  ~ * ~

  Christian was remembering Anne Case’s last moment, and he was finding some glee in it, like a high school basketball star remembering the best shot of his career.

  Christian could see the point of his small knife going in through Anne’s gray housedress, and in his mind’s eye he could see the point of the knife puncturing her heart, and her heart deflating slowly.

  It had maddened him, then. It had made him do the thing he would never have thought of doing otherwise, the thing he remembered so often, the thing which was, now, only a blur of movement, quick and abstract, like the beating of a hummingbird’s wings. The knife coming up, the knife going down, the knife going in, and the knife coming up, the knife going down, the knife going in, and the knife coming up, the knife going down, the knife

  It replayed over and again in his head, like a song. He could hear it—the passage of air, the movement of his arm through the air. Whoosh! It was song. Whoosh, thump! . . . Whoosh, thump! So beautiful!

  So beautiful!

  Whoosh, thump, whoosh thump. Whoosh. Thump! Thump!

  He pushed open the front door of the green cottage and told David, whom he could not yet see, "I love you, my friend."

  ~ * ~

  In Anne Case’s house, the martins had fled through an open window on the third floor, and the spiders and insects that had been their food were again insinuating themselves in the house’s many rooms.

  "I don’t remember coming here," David said. "I think I should remember coming here."

  He was confused, astonished, frightened. He felt alone, and afraid, like a child who comes home to an empty house for the first time in his life and tries to convince himself that he’s actually in someone else’s house. But it is his house, the child knows. And it’s a very strange place, now, because no one else is in it; it echoes appallingly, and the rooms are too large, or too small, and the shadows cast by lamps and chairs and tables are shadows the child does not remember seeing in the house before.

  The thin man said enthusiastically, "Tell me about dying. I want to know about dying." His face vanished into darkness, returned, vanished. "It sounds intriguing; it sounds like some experience I would like to have—though I really can’t say how I would know that—"

  "I don’t know about dying," David told him.

  "I’m disappointed," said the faceless man simply.

  David looked at the window. "I know about darkness," he whispered.

  "Everyone knows about darkness," said the faceless man. "When it comes, some people stay away from it, and some people don’t. Some people welcome it. But when they welcome it, no one sees them again. And no one knows where they’ve gone off to, either." He paused. "It’s a very wonderful mystery."

  ~ * ~

  The green cottage smelled of lake air.

  THREE

  The body lay on its back halfway into the green cottage through the side door. "Lilac perfume," said the elderly man to the deputy sheriff. "That’s what you’re smelling."

  The deputy leaned back from the open driver’s window of the shiny blue Toyota. He said grimly, "It looks like someone made her drink it, then strangled her."

  The woman with the crown of black hair lay very still. A couple of flies buzzed about inside the Toyota. One settled on the woman’s cheek; the deputy, seeing this, grimaced and said, "Jesus, flies."

  The elderly man said, "That’s a very perverse thing for someone to do, Deputy—making that woman drink her own perfume. A man who would do something like that would have to have a very dark soul."

  "Yes, sir," the deputy said. "Very dark indeed." Another patrol car pulled up then, lights flashing.

  ~ * ~

  Christian was on his haunches near the green cottage’s side door; his knees were close to David’s face; David’s mouth was open a little, and his eyes were closed lightly, as if he were asleep. Christian was running his fingers through David’s hair.

  "Are you already dead, my friend?" Christian mouthed. No sound came out. Only air. "Dead already, David?"

  But he thought not.

  It did not seem so.

  David’s chest wasn’t moving, but his skin was warm. He was in some twilight sleep, clearly.

  I’m going to have to kill you myself, aren’t I? Christian mouthed. He felt so pleased and titillated by the idea that a rush of excitement coursed through him and made him tremble.

  He took his hand away from David’s hair. His fingers were damp and trembling; David’s hair was wet, he realized.

  He cocked his head at this. Before dancing off to the other side, David had made sure that his hair was clean and fresh.

  Christian stayed on his haunches. Before his death, the man washed his hair.

  He watched as his fingers continued to tremble. Finally, they quieted.

  How am I going to kill you, my friend?

  The method was so important. Method in life was everything.

  He would have to do it with finesse. And with subtlety.

  Just as he had with Anne.

  And with the woman in the blue Toyota. Making her strangle on her own perfume.

  He couldn’t simply drop a very large rock on David’s head. It would get the job done, certainly, but it wouldn’t ge
t it done with the care and artistry that the task demanded. It would be brutish to drop a rock on his head.

  Too large a rock would leave David disfigured and unrecognizable. If, in the instant before the rock went Sploosh! onto his head, David awakened from his gentle twilight sleep and saw what was happening, and he got a look on his face of great revelation and astonishment, that look would be lost forever. His lips and teeth would be squashed this way and that, and his nose would be flattened, and his eyes—depending on the jaggedness of the particular rock that was used—might well puncture. And punctured eyes were wholly incapable of expression. So, no one anywhere would talk about the look on David’s face when he died, because he would have no face. The people who discovered David’s body would never say, "He looked astonished. Did you see?"

  It would be possible, on the other hand, to drop a rock on David’s throat and crush his windpipe. That would lead to suffocation. Such an act would leave no marks at all on David’s face. David’s face might well bear an expression of revelation and astonishment, and so people would talk about it for a long time.

  Oh, these were dark, dark thoughts, weren’t they, on such a fair and breezy afternoon.

  (But he had always been fond of darkness.)

  Or he could get a pillow and do it or simply put his hand over David’s nose and mouth or get a knife a big knife from the kitchen and push it all the way into David’s chest.

  ~ * ~

  "About an hour, I think," the first deputy said to the deputy who had just joined him. "Judging from body temperature, I’d say an hour."

  The other deputy—older, jaded—smiled to himself, went over to the Toyota, leaned into the window, sniffed, and said, "Jesus, what’s that smell?"