House Haunted (10 page)

“I say, Jan,” the old pensioner said. The glow of concentrated purpose that Tadeusz had spoken of was in the man's eyes,. “Do you think I might have a game of chess with you sometime soon?” He trembled; he must have practiced the speech before approaching Jan. His great shyness, and the great need bursting now from within him, made Jan reach out and put his hand on the man's arm.

“I—“

Behind the old man, Jan saw the man in the trench coat with his two henchmen approaching Tadeusz's flat. He gripped the old man's arm tenderly.

“I'm sorry, Jerzy, not anytime soon.”

He turned away, nearly as much in avoidance of the disappointment on the old man's face as in haste.

As he had hoped, the marketplace stalls were busy. He was able to blend with the crowd of haggling women, schoolboys playing hooky and the young marrieds out together to buy vegetables and, perhaps, a little meat for dinner. He mixed with the hagglers, arguing himself over the price of a bag of chestnuts, which he leisurely ate as he strolled.

When he reached the last stall, Jan thought it must be at least noon. But, to his great surprise, the clock over the bus depot showed it to be only twenty minutes past nine. His initial feeling that the bus station would surely be watched by the police was replaced by a conviction that it was not. They had been looking for him for only a little more than an hour. At this point, there would only be the three men he had seen after him. When he was not located, there might be more, and a general alert would be posted, but now it was three against one.

His theory was proven correct when a covert inspection of the station revealed no sign of police activity. Jan's spirits were further lifted when he discovered that a bus heading out of the city in the direction he wanted was preparing to leave. He had no difficulty hiding his features from the ticket seller, who was more intent on his magazine than on studying the faces of bus passengers. He took the same precaution handing his ticket to the driver, using the opportunity to glance out over the driver's shoulder to see if his three pursuers might have shown up. They had not, and a few moments later, as Jan reached an empty seat halfway toward the back of the bus and away from the driver's direct gaze in the rearview mirror, the bus lurched forward.

Twenty minutes later, they were out of the city and passing into the rural region north and east of Warsaw.

Though Jan never actually closed his eyes, a great feeling of lassitude overcame him. He felt as if he had been detached from himself, floating above the unfolding drama of his life, watching his own plight on a television camera. With some interest, he wondered what would happen next. In the drama, the man had eluded his pursuers, but now what would the script call for? In every television crime show he had ever seen, it was easy to plot the destiny of the felon. If he was a good character, he would elude his hunters and ultimately triumph. If he was a villain, he would be caught and brought to justice. But what was Jan? Was he hero or villain? If the police wanted him, did that not make him an automatic villain? On the television productions, whenever the state wanted a man, he was obviously a criminal, to be judged and sentenced. But what had been Jan's crime? Why did the state want him? It didn't matter.

About halfway to Kolno, the bus stopped to let passengers off. Jan waited for them to continue, but instead the driver left the bus. Jan nervously waited for his return. After fifteen minutes he was sure that word had somehow spread and that policemen would appear momentarily and drag him from the bus. But as he was rising to leave, the bus driver suddenly reappeared, reclaiming his seat and pulling the door shut behind him.

Jan was filled with anxiety, undecided as to whether he should stay or rush to the front of the bus, throw the door open, and flee, until he overheard one of the passengers in the seat in front of him laugh and say to her companion, nodding toward the driver, “There he is with his loose bowels again, it never fails.” And the other one replied, knowingly, “Sausage for breakfast as a habit will do that. I tried to tell him that our last trip, but he wouldn't listen.”

“Men never do,” the other woman answered, and they both laughed and nodded their heads.

Jan settled back into his seat.

The trees thinned, showing dry farmland, but then trees reappeared again. And then, suddenly, they had reached Kolno. The two women in front of Jan got out ahead of him, stopping a moment to scold the bus driver on his breakfast habits. The bus driver waved them on impatiently, and Jan hurried out behind them, keeping his face averted from the driver and from the two women, who were nosy enough to remember a face. The bus doors closed with an airy hiss and the bus groaned off. Jan noticed that it leaned slightly to one side in the back, another state vehicle in need of repair it wouldn't receive.

The bus had left him at the edge of the small town square. So as not to draw attention to himself he went to the statue at the other end and sat down on one of two benches there. An old woman occupied the other bench. She was blind, one of her hands rubbing softly at the blue-veined wrist on her other arm. Her black cane rested against one hip. Her eyes calmly stared into blackness.

“Excuse me,” Jan said.

“I'll tell you anything you want,” the woman said, “if you buy a pear from me.” She lifted the corner of her cloak, revealing a small wicker basket of pears nestled beside her. “It will cost you five hundred groszy.”

“Certainly,” Jan answered, drawing out one of the coins Karol had given him and pressing it into her hand. “Can you give me change for this?”

“I don't have change to give,” she answered.

Jan was about to say that she could keep the whole coin, but realized her game. “I'm sorry,” he said, reaching to remove the coin from her palm, “I can't buy your fruit, then.”

“I'll give you change,” she said, smiling mischievously.

She pulled a purse from beneath her cloak. She drew out coins, shorting him one to see if he would notice. When he protested, she handed him all she owed him.

“I'm looking for the hotel with a pot of flowers out front,” he said to her.

“Oh, I can't help you,” she said. Her mischievous smile returned.

“You promised to help me. I can tell you you won't get another groszy from me, old woman.”

“I was playing with you.” The old woman laughed. It was a hoarse, unpleasant sound. “It's just outside of town. It's haunted, you know. Demons. Are you sure you want to stay there? There's another, much finer hotel on the other side of town, and for another hundred groszy—”

“That's where I want to stay,” Jan said impatiently.

The old woman shrugged. “There's a horse path behind us, and you take that for about a half kilo. It's on the left side. A man named Edward runs it.” She laughed again. “A skinflint like me. Don't let him cheat you. There isn't a room in the place worth more than ten. The best rooms are in the rear, where there's plenty of sun in the morning.”

Jan stood up. The woman's sightless eyes followed him. “Are you going to stay long? Perhaps there are other things I could tell you, people you should watch for.”

“Thank you for your help,” Jan said, not trying to hide the annoyance in his voice. He moved on.

It was a longer walk than the woman had said. After what must have been a kilometer the road narrowed, leaving space for barely a cart, certainly not two horses abreast. The day had grown almost oppressively hot, an anomaly for this late in September. There were thick hedges beside the road, the branching trees getting their brown coats of turning leaves overhead. It was like walking through a close burrow. Jan began to feel claustrophobic. He carried his coat over his arm. He rolled his shirt sleeves up and loosened his tie. It felt like July; the humidity in the air was palpable. He wanted to sit and rest, but the hedge was cut so close to the road there was nowhere to do it. His entire former life seemed like a dream, something he had left behind only a few hours before but which was a lifetime away from him. He tried to conjure up his mother's face, or Tadeusz's, but could not precisely remember what they looked like. If someone had told him a day ago that in twenty-four hours he would be stumbling through a darkling, hot tunnel, hiding from the police, running from a crime that was unknown to him, he would have laughed or executed the fighting move with his fists that Karol had taught him—the quick one-two.

Or maybe he was dreaming. Perhaps he would awaken at any moment, pushed gently on the shoulder by his dear mother, and would look up into her face, and tell her that he had had a dream of guilt, that he loved her more than anything, that he was sorry he had not told her of his feelings for her in such a long time. He would tell her that he was sorry that he had grown arrogant and distant; perhaps he would embrace her. Hopefully, the breakfast he had left on the table this morning was yet to be faced, waiting for him out of this dreamland on the kitchen table at this moment; and his mother stood over him right now, ready to end this guilt dream, about to give him that gentle nudge, this mother who had awakened him so many times, gotten him off to school, changed the sheets on his bed, seeing the stains he had sometimes left there with his wet dreams—his mother who was closer to him than anyone ...

Oh, Mother—

He did not wake, because it was not a dream. But suddenly he came up short, nearly walking into a black wrought-iron post curving out above the road to hold a brass basket of white and red roses. Riveted to the pole was a tarnished sign that said, KOLNO INN.

Flanking the sign was a lane, and he turned into it.

The path was lined with rosebushes, trellised up nearly to Jan's height. He could see where some had been clipped for the basket out front, strong green stems covered with thick red thorns, which ended suddenly in sharp, slanting lines. But there were more than enough, in various states of bloom. The largest, in full flower, was wider than his closed fist. But these vague observations, which battled with all of the other fears and anxieties that had been in his mind since this morning, were pushed aside at the sight of the hotel.

It seemed to appear before him out of thin air. One step he was on the rose-enshrouded path, and the next step he was in the courtyard. His first thoughts were of a peasant cottage on a monstrous scale. There were three stories. The front was flat, lines of ornamentally shuttered windows set on a dark chocolate-brown façade of diagonally laid planks of wood. The roof was edged in scrollwork, and at the four corners, there were turrets, each with a small, square window.

The front door of the inn was low and wide. Dark flat stones led up to it.

Fearing only what lay behind him more than what lay ahead, Jan walked to the door and used the heavy brass knocker.

The sound echoed once and then was swallowed from within. No one came to let him in. He pulled at the wrought-iron handle, curved against the door in the shape of a long, open-mouthed gargoyle. His fingers drew back; he thought fleetingly of the old woman's words about “demons.” But she had only been seeking money. He put his hand on the monstrous door handle and tried the door.

It opened, and he entered.

At the end of a short hallway, through an entranceway was a small lobby. It looked as though it might once have been a taproom. The ceiling was oppressively low. The front desk might once have served as the bar. Above it, abutting the ceiling, was a thick square beam that ran the length of the desk. On it were intricate carvings of animal grotesques. Jan shivered. There were bloated pigs with the faces of wild men, mouths grinning, sitting on their haunches, bellies sliced open to reveal hanging strings of sausages and bacon slabs immersed in twisting clouds of smoke. There were goats with the heads of women, sprouting great tufts of hair, open mouths full of sharp teeth. Some were biting themselves; one had its head thrust into the gaping stomach of an adjacent sow. Above these fantastic animals, at the line of the ceiling, had been carved scenes of violent weather: fat thunderclouds with thick jets of rain pelting down, hailstones square as bales of hay, blizzards of snow stacked up in leaning drifts against the unheedful animals below. Jan studied the bizarre scenes, moving along the desk slowly from depiction to depiction. The thick black beam drew him, mesmerized.

“What do you want?”

The rough sound of a human voice startled him. A short man was now facing him from behind the front desk. A door behind him, which had been closed, was now open wide. The man had a shock of white hair like those of the fantastic goat-women above him. But there was no goat body below his neck, only a hard torso sporting a green felt vest. In one sharp-fingered hand he held a piece of bread that had been torn from a loaf and a slice of sausage, which he now pressed together before bringing them to his mouth. Half of this meal disappeared into his mouth, and he chewed, waiting for Jan to speak, regarding him with his unfriendly eyes.

“Are you Edward?”

The other continued to chew, his hand holding the remaining sausage and bread, pressing them together. He started to bring his hand up to his mouth but stopped and said, “You have a reservation?”

“No. Your hotel was recommended to me by a friend.”

“Recommended, eh?” For a moment the man's stare lessened, but then he put the rest of his meal into his mouth and wiped his hands across the front of his vest. “It will cost you extra if you don't have a reservation.”