Dark on the Other Side (21 page)

The storm rose up, howling with wild winds around the
eaves, battering at the walls. As Linda sat frozen, staring at the old
woman’s empty eyes and still face, Michael got to his feet. He
staggered as his numbed legs took his weight, and then leaned forward
over Andrea’s body. When he turned, Linda knew what he was going to say.

“She’s dead. We must—good God Almighty!”

The impact of the mighty wind was strong enough to break
the window; but it was not wet air that came through the shattered pane
in one great leap. Michael’s left arm swept out, catching Linda as she
stood up, and throwing her back against the wall. Most of the candles
died in the gust of rain and wind. The pair that flanked the crucifix
wavered and held. Pressed against the same wall, her body aching with
the violence of the impact, Linda saw him go down, buried under the
solid black mass of the thing that had come through the window. It made
no sound, none that she could hear over the agonized wail of the storm,
which was whistling through some crevice in the broken glass with a
noise like that of a pipe or whistle. And there was another sound—the
sound of Michael’s gasps, as he fought for his life.

LINDA’S OUTFLUNG HAND TOUCHED AN
OBJECT,
and she seized it without looking to see what it
was. She felt only its weight and convenience of shape, fit for
grasping; she wanted a weapon, and that was how she used it, swinging
it high and bringing it down with all her strength. If it struck home,
she never felt the impact; at the same moment the air erupted like a
volcano, deafening her with sound, blinding her eyes, shaking the floor
under her feet. Swaying, her hands over her dazzled eyes, she heard the
echoes roll and die. Echoes of thunder…The lightning bolt must have
struck the roof, or something just outside.

Linda opened her eyes. Through the chaos of wind and
rain, the two small lights on the wall burned steadily.

Andrea’s body lay huddled on the floor, grotesquely
tumbled by the struggle that had gone on over it. Michael was on the
floor too, flat on his back, his arm thrown up across his face. The
curtains billowed at the broken window; a branch protruded like a bony
arm through the gap between the torn curtains. The big oak tree outside
the window had been the lightning’s target. There was nothing else.
Whatever else had been in the room, it was gone.

On the floor beside Michael lay the crucifix, which she
had used as a club. It was cracked, straight across the stem.

She went to Michael and bent over him. His eyes were
closed. His sleeve, and the arm under it, were shredded. Blood dripped
down and formed in a dreadful pool beside his head. But the gesture had
saved his life. The dog had gone for his throat.

He opened his eyes when she touched him.

“It’s gone,” she said quickly, feeling him stiffen under
her hands as memory returned.

“Gone? How?”

“I don’t know. I hit it—with that.” She touched the
crucifix. “But the last lightning flash was so violent that it stunned
me for a few seconds. It hit the tree outside the window, and—” She
broke off, her eyes widening with a new fear. “Michael, there’s fire
out there. I can see the light. The rain is stopping, too.”

The light was only a flickering redness, but as she spoke
the curtains at the window caught in a flare of flame.

“That does it,” Michael muttered, struggling to stand.
“The outside of the house is soaked, but inside it’s as dry as sawdust.
It will go up in a second. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Get out!” She caught at his injured arm, heard him
groan, and transferred her weight to support him as he swayed. “We
can’t just walk out and leave the house to burn!”

“How can we stop it? The wood is dry with rot, and there
are all these papers and books. Someone will see the flames and call
the fire department. We must be away from here before anyone comes.”

“I can’t leave.”

“You aren’t afraid of—what’s out there, are you? It, or
its master, will be too canny to stick around. The place will be
swarming with people in five minutes. There couldn’t be a safer time
for us.”

“It’s not that. I can’t leave…her.”

She was surprised to feel wetness on her face. Michael’s
own face, bloodless with pain and shock, softened. They looked at the
huddled body, roused to a terrible imitation of movement by the
flickering light of the fire, which had seized avidly on the wooden
walls.

“She’s dead,” Michael said. “There’s no doubt of that,
Linda—I know. What else can you do for her? It’s purifying—fire.” He
added, with a glance around the strange little room, “I know, she
thought she was doing good. All the same, it seems fitting, somehow,
that this should burn…. Linda, please.”

His weight was heavy against her; the fact that he made
no mention of his own need was the strongest appeal of all. With one
last look at the still body, she turned, bracing him; as they passed
through the door, the flames leaped from walls to floor. Half the room
was ablaze. As they went down the passageway, Linda wondered why
Andrea’s body had looked so small. Shrunken, almost, as if part of its
substance had been sucked out.

One good look at Michael’s arm made Linda forget her
other concerns, but he wouldn’t let her do much, except apply a bandage
to stop the bleeding, and arrange a rough sling. A swig of brandy from
the bottle on the table brought some of the color back to his face. It
also brought him to his feet.

“Take the bottle,” he said, thrusting it at her. “Hurry.
God, I can hear the fire now, it’s not raining hard enough to stop it.
Let’s go, Linda.”

She lingered, looking affectionately at the old kitchen.

“I hate to see it go without making a fight to save it.
The house is two hundred years old.”

“Yes, you’re a fighter, aren’t you. But pick your causes,
for God’s sake. Do you want to be found here, with the house ablaze, a
dead body, and signs of what the newspapers will be delighted to refer
to as unholy practices? The least that can happen is that I’ll go to
jail and Gordon will lock you up for the rest of your life. I can just
see what his tame psychiatrists could do with this mess.”

It was brutal but effective. She turned, without another
word, and started toward the door.

“Wait a minute,” Michael said. “The cats. We can’t leave
them inside.”

“They can get out, through the cellar.”

“Just in case…”

Michael drew the bolts on the back door and threw it
open. The rain was falling gently now, as if spent by its effort.

“Come on,” he said, and led the way to the front of the
house.

II

They made it, but with only seconds to spare. As the car
skidded onto the paved road and turned, they heard sirens and saw the
flashing red lights of fire engines coming the other way.

Linda was driving. Michael had tried to, but the effort
of turning the car in the narrow lane, which was now a bog of mud, was
too much for him; he blacked out, over the wheel, with the first
movement.

“Stupid,” he said hazily, as she took his place. “Too
dangerous, on the highway…I hope you can drive. I forgot to ask.”

“I hope so too. It’s funny, though,” she added, nursing
the wheel and the brake as the car curtsied coyly into a rut, “how it
comes back to you. I drove one of my boyfriends’ jalopies through an
entire Cleveland winter. Ice and snow and mud and…woops.”

He didn’t answer, either to commend her skill or to make
suggestions; she knew he was fighting to stay conscious, and she did
her best to avoid jolting him. When she swung onto the highway, she was
conscious of an absurdly warming glow of pride. It was a long time
since she had done anything for herself. Some of the dependence was
inevitable when you were married to a man as wealthy as Gordon; you
didn’t mend your own socks or scrub scorched pans. Even so—hadn’t
Gordon overdone the servant bit? He didn’t do anything himself, except
for the exercise necessary to preserve his splendid physical condition.
He didn’t even drive a car; he hired the best chauffeurs that were to
be had. He didn’t build a fire in the fireplace, or plant a bulb, or
groom a horse. The moral value of work was a myth, of course; or was
it? Surely there was a healthy feeling of satisfaction in doing some
small, needed job and doing it well: cleaning a dirty kitchen, mending
a piece of broken furniture—getting a car out of a muddy back lane.

She thought Michael had lost consciousness, he was so
still; but once they were on the paved road, he spoke.

“You’ve got a good, efficient fire department. There they
come now. Maybe they can save the house after all.”

“I hope so. Don’t think I’m sentimental—”

“What’s wrong with being sentimental?”

“Well, this is no time for it,” she admitted. “I don’t
know what you want to do now; I didn’t think about anything except
getting away from there. But you’ve got to see a doctor, Michael, right
away.”

“Sounds good,” Michael said.

“Doctor Gold lives down the next street,” she said, her
eyes on the road.

“Isn’t he your little pal? The one I met?”

“Yes.”

“I think we’ll pass him up.”

“But, Michael, he’s the closest.”

“Too close. He’d be on the phone to Gordon before he did
anything else.”

“I could stay in the car.”

“Alone? No.”

“I can’t stand knowing how much it hurts you,” she said
unsteadily. The car swerved.

“Keep your eyes on the road…. Don’t waste your sympathy.
I am just about to pass out…. Thank God.”

“There must be a doctor in the next town,” Linda said,
putting her foot down.

“No, wait….”Michaelroused himself; his voice sounded
miles away. “Whatever you do, don’t panic. Keep at the speed limit, we
can’t risk…a wreck, or a cop. One thing to do…obvious…”

“Michael…Michael!”

“Don’t wreck the car,” he said; weak as it was, his voice
was amused, and Linda was conscious of a strange constriction somewhere
in the region of her diaphragm. “Don’t stop…Put a couple of dozen miles
between us and the house….”

She heard his sigh of exhaled breath as his head fell
back against the seat.

The drive was almost too much of a challenge; it was one
of the worst jobs she had ever undertaken. Terror is strong and
breath-stopping, but it is usually brief; it passes quickly. Fear, the
kind that had haunted her for months, has its own built-in anesthesia.
And when despair is deepest there is no need to struggle, only to
endure. What made the drive so bad was the need to keep constantly on
the alert, to anticipate, not only the normal hazards of the road, but
any unexpected, almost unimagined supranormal danger. She realized that
the worst kind of fear is fear for someone else. She damned herself for
involving Michael in her danger, and speculated wildly as to how she
could extricate him—if it wasn’t already too late.

Through it all she drove steadily, surely, never taking
her eyes from the road. The torrential rains had flooded out many
sections, and she drove through shallow sheets of water at a crawl, her
throat tight with fear of flooding the engine. But the worst moment was
the roadblock.

A tree was down on the road ahead; but she didn’t know
that, not at first, she saw only the barriers and the flashing lights
of the police car.

Her foot hit the brake and her hand fumbled for the gear
lever. There was a side road, a block or two back…. She realized the
stupidity of that move, just in time, and brought the car to a sedate
stop. She had barely time to reach over and pull Michael’s jacket
across his slung arm as the police officer came up to the side of the
car.

She rolled down the window.

“What’s the trouble?” she demanded, with the ordinary
annoyance of an innocent motorist who is delayed.

“Tree across the road. The crew is working on it, but
you’ll be better off going around; it’ll take some time.” The man’s
eyes moved past her, to the silent figure sprawled across the other
seat. “Something wrong, miss? Need any help?”

He was very young, the policeman; his voice was kind.
Momentarily Linda fought the urge to break down and tell him the truth.
A doctor, a nice safe hospital for Michael…Then she saw the boy’s
nostrils quiver, and she realized that the brandy bottle must be
leaking. Either that, or Michael had taken more than she thought.

“That must have been quite a party,” the policeman said.
“Your husband, ma’am?”

“What makes you so sure we’re married?” Linda asked, with
an attempt at a smile.

He was young, but he wasn’t stupid. Pushing his cap back,
he smiled back at her.

“I didn’t see your ring at first,” he explained,
indicating her left hand, which was taut on the wheel. “But, you know,
it’s a funny thing; we see a lot of drunks, you can imagine. Sometimes
a girl’s date passes out, but usually it’s a married guy.”

“That must give you rather a jaundiced view of marriage.”

“No, not really. Oh—oh, I get it. You mean the husbands
are driven to drink?” The young man laughed. He had pink cheeks and
even, white teeth, and he was obviously bored with his dull post.
“Well, maybe. But what I always figured was, I figured the boyfriends
were more anxious to look good. It’s not a very nice thing to do, pass
out on a date and make her drive you home.”

“I’m sure you’d never do a thing like that, whether you
were married to the girl or not,” Linda said. Every nerve in her body
was screaming for haste, but she couldn’t show it. If she gave him any
cause to ask for her driver’s license, they were finished.

“Well, I’ll tell you, ma’am, you pull a few bodies out of
the wrecks and you get to realize it isn’t worth it. Well, I guess you
don’t need a lecture; you look like you’d never had a drink in your
life.”

“Thank you,” Linda said sweetly. She batted her lashes at
him. “I certainly haven’t had one tonight.”

“No, I could tell that. If you had—well, I’d have wanted
to stop you from driving. It’s even more dangerous on a bad night like
this. You sure you don’t need any help with your husband?”

“Thank you, but I can manage.” Michael stirred and
muttered; and Linda said quickly, “I’d better get him home to bed. You
say there’s a detour?”

“Yes, ma’am. Two blocks back, you turn right, then left
at the next corner, and you’re on Main Street….”

She didn’t need the directions, but she nodded her thanks
and pretended to listen intently. She turned the car carefully under
his benevolent but critical eyes, and started back; wondering, as she
did so, why she had the urge to hide their tracks. She was acting as if
they might be objects of an ordinary search, instead of a quest by
something not limited by human senses. Was that her intelligence,
struggling against superstition, or simply overcaution? She gave it up,
with a shrug that was a little desperate. Rational or not, the purpose
was achieved; that nice boy would not think of her and her drunken bum
of a husband if anyone came looking for a crazy girl fleeing with her
lover.