Mrs. God (18 page)

He turned toward the next door. The bent creature with the axe turned too. Bloody matted hair covered its shoulders. Its dark hand was still pressed to its mouth. He watched the creature float down the corridor until it moved out of the window.

A few mincing steps brought him to the second door. His slippery fingers touched the knob. He ground his teeth and soundlessly turned the doorknob. The door moved inward a few inches, and Standish tiptoed with it. A few inches more, and he slid into the room.

A pair of shoes stood on the bare floor. A white shirt draped over the back of a chair glided toward him like a spirit out of the breathing dark. He closed the door behind him. The shirt looked like a spirit waiting to be born, it may be through the pair that occupied the bed across the room. Slow sweet exhalations and inhalations came from them. Over his own stink Standish caught the delicate scent of perfume and the other, coarser odors of sweat and sex.

He sighed.

As his eyes grew used to the dark, he saw the bare dim walls that would be white in daylight, the masculine clutter of socks and sweatshirts and jeans on the floor. A tennis racquet leaned against the wall. The bed was an untidy tangle of long white limbs and wild hair.

Now Standish felt as if he had awakened from a long trance. He was simply himself, what all the days, weeks, hours had brought him to. He was a stunted monster carrying an axe. For perhaps the first time since his childhood, Standish entirely accepted himself.

“Mnnn,” came a voice from the bed.

Standish stood inside the door breathing slow shallow breaths. He could imagine himself in bed with the couple, lying in a loose tangle of arms and legs, absorbed into them.

But soon they would begin to hear the fire and smell the smoke. He waited until they had settled down into one another's arms and begun to snore light, funny, almost charming snores. He stepped forward. There was no response from the bed. He took another gliding step forward. The beautiful double animal on the bed lay still. Standish moved directly beside it and raised his axe.

He swung it down with all his strength, being both the executioner out in the tundra with his chopping block and the bureaucrat at his desk. The axe landed at the base of one of the animal's two heads and almost instantly cleaved through the vapor of the flesh and the fishbones of the spinal column. The animal's other head lifted itself from the pillow just as Standish raised his axe again and presented a perfect target, extended in disbelief and confusion which ended with the axe's downstroke.

Now the bed was a bloody sea. Standish dropped the axe and plucked both heads off the soaking sheets by the hair and lowered them to the floor. He picked up two pillows, yanked them from their cases, and tossed them back on the bed. Without looking at either of the faces, he stuffed the heads into the empty pillowcases and carried them out into the hallway. They were surprisingly heavy, like bowling balls. Standish trotted down the hallway in misty smoke, went through the arch, and into the barren room at the top of the stairs. The heavy pillowcases swung at his sides.

Black smoke had accumulated against the ceiling in cloudy layers. From what seemed a great distance came the sound of rushing wind. Standish passed through the opposite arch and looked down the left wing of the staircase.

Several distinct layers of smoke hung from the ceiling and moved toward him with a massive gravity. A wall of heat met him at the top of the stairs and pushed him back like a giant hand. As yet there were no flames before him. He began to run down the stairs, and felt as if he had stepped into an oven. The hairs in his nose crisped painfully, and his eyebrows turned to smoke. He saw the thick hair on his chest, arms, and belly curl inward and turn to ash.

When he reached the main body of the staircase a combination of smoke and heat blinded him. He kept running with his right hand on the hot banister. The heads in their pillowcases rhythmically banged against the balusters. His skin felt scalded. His right hand struck the newel cap at the bottom of the stairs, and the things in the pillowcases slammed into the post.

Standish plunged through scalding black soup. A flat red glare exploded off to his left. When he reached the screened passage he sensed the thick tapestries writhing as their fibers shrank and dried. He ran straight into the door, bounced back, then grabbed the scalding knob with a hand wrapped in hot cotton cloth.

Frigid air rushed over him. Blind and coughing, Standish stumbled out onto the terrace. He tottered down three or four steps, then collapsed backward and wheezed, trying to fight the smoke out of his lungs. He landed hard on his bottom and lost his grip on the pillowcases. They slid out of his hand and bumped down the steps. Standish felt as if he had been blowtorched. Smoke poured from the fabric of his trousers and clung to his shoes. Down at the bottom of the steps, the pillowcases smoked like smudge pots. His legs took him down the steps, and he limped to one pillowcase, picked it up, then limped across the gravel and picked the other up too.

The heads tried to pull the ends of the pillowcases from his hands as he trudged over the gravel. After a few seconds he stopped to look back. Flames showed in the first-and second-floor windows, and smoke poured through the roof.

Standish carried his heavy trophies around the left side of the house. Something inside Esswood let go, and a thunderous crash sent a flurry of sparks and flames into the air. Standish trudged forward through a rain of fire and stepped over a burning chunk of Esswood. He was too tired to look back and see what happened.

Around the left side of the house and across the drive stood a long low structure with four sets of wide double doors inset with windows. Standish pulled himself toward the building and looked through the first window into an empty darkness.

Through the second window he saw an old saddle and harness hanging on the back wall.

In the third window reflected fire burst through Esswood's roof.

Standish looked through the fourth window and saw the back end of a turquoise Ford Escort. He pulled open the doors and carried the heavy pillowcases inside. As soon as he touched the car he remembered that he did not have the keys, which were probably inside the pocket of a pair of incinerating jeans on the second floor of the East Wing. He opened the door and collapsed into the driver's seat. The two sacks leaked onto the ground between his legs. He reached down and swung both the sacks and his legs into the car.

He put his hands on the wheel and stared at the dashboard, remembering movies in which people jump-started cars. Something heavy fell on the roof of the building. He smelled smoke, and his eyes filmed and his stomach churned. When he had finished coughing and wheezing, he reached over and opened the glove compartment. Two keys linked by a metal ring lay on top of the owner's manual. Standish slid them out.

He inserted a key into the ignition, turned it, and stepped on the accelerator. All these actions seemed to be remembered from some other, very different, past life. He heard the engine catch, and dropped his forehead to the wheel and rested. Another great chunk of Esswood fell onto the roof. Standish forced himself to straighten up. He put the car in reverse and stepped on the accelerator. The Escort smashed into the half-opened doors and rolled out. Standish cut the wheel and turned the car forward. Shreds and dots of fire rained down from the house. Standish jammed the car into drive and floored the accelerator. The car mushed up a spray of gravel and shot forward. Red light wavered on the drive and the tall straight oaks. Steam hissed from the trunks of the trees closest to the house. Standish turned on his lights, and streams of yellow floated into the wavering red night. He saw the long drive curling away between the steaming trees, and he aimed for it.

Then he was rolling down the drive, trying to figure out which side he was supposed to be on. Everything was
backward
.

A pair of headlights appeared before him down through the tunnel of trees at the bottom of the drive. Standish let the accelerator drift upward while he tried to solve the interesting problem of which side of the road was his. He swerved all the way left, then right. The oncoming car flicked its lights off and on. In the rearview mirror, Esswood blazed merrily. The other car moved into his headlights. It was a Jaguar, and Robert Wall—“Robert Wall”—was driving it. Standish's beloved, his sister, sat beside him. Both of Edith's children looked startled, perhaps even transfixed. Robert honked his horn and waved at Standish. His beloved spoke words he could not hear. Standish drove on. When he went past the Jaguar, Robert yelled at him and his beloved leaned forward and questioned him with her eyes. Standish picked up speed. Neither one had recognized him.

After a couple of seconds Standish looked in the rearview mirror and saw Robert Seneschal running down the drive after him. He moved his head to see himself in the mirror. He did not recognize himself either. He was a totally new being, bald, covered with grease and blood, pink and blue-eyed: he was his own baby. The car shot out into the road at the end of the drive, and grinning giggling Standish turned the Escort toward the village.

nineteen

A
fter a time the red blur faded from the sky. Standish drove without maps, without memory, guided by a sense of direction that seemed coded into his body. He drove through a landscape of tiny villages filled with cheery lights and flashing signs, of dark fields and dense woods. He saw marsh lights flicker and understood that they too were part of the great sentence that went on forever until it passed from visibility. Every human life fit into that grand and endless sentence. Occasionally he glanced with admiring satisfaction at the newborn baby in the rearview mirror.

He moved swiftly through the villages and fields. Churches, pubs, and thatched cottages went by in the dark. Once he saw a house even greater than Esswood on the crest of a long hill, and Rolls-Royces and Bentleys and Daimlers were drawn up before it, and light spilled from every window. Somnolent cows and horses in the fields swung their heads to watch him pass by.

Once in a deep wood he struck an animal and heard it cry out with a terrible cry.

His hands stiffened and froze to the wheel. Still Standish drove easily through the night. He was a great fat chuckling baby, and he shat and peed in his filthy trousers and kept driving.

At last he came to the open-air factories. The strings of light had been turned off; the torches were put away. The machines rested in the dark passages, and the swirling dust had settled for the night. Yet the great slag heaps rose up into the starry sky, and when Standish saw them he slowed down.

He peeled his right hand from the steering wheel and leaned sideways to crank down the passenger window. When the car drifted alongside the first slag heap, Standish lifted one of the pillowcases and swung it through the window. It struck the road and rolled toward the slag heap. He supposed that was good enough. He tossed the second pillowcase after the first. This one made it nearly across the road before it thumped down and tumbled into a drainage ditch.

Standish groaned and sat up straight again.

Eventually the
HUCKSTALL
sign flashed in his window and disappeared behind him. Chuckles emanated from the two dripping bags no longer beside him on the passenger seat. An empty world without end or beginning spread out on both sides of the road. Then headlights appeared far ahead down the road. As he drove toward them the figure of a man with outstretched arms stepped forward into the beams of his own lights. Standish was near enough to see in his own headlights that the man was smiling as he waved his arms. The man moved nearer to the center line. He was not what Standish had expected—a tall smiling man in a sport jacket. His fair hair flopped appealingly over his forehead.

Standish accelerated when he drew near to the man, and when the man began crisscrossing his arms over his head—for this one was used to getting what he wanted, you could see it in his wide-set eyes and smooth cheeks—Standish turned the wheel sharply toward the man and ran straight into him.

The man bounced against the car with enough force to jolt Standish painfully against the wheel. He spun off like a marionette and disappeared beneath the car. There came another, milder jolt. Standish braked to a halt and threw open the door. He put the gear lever at park but did not turn off the car. He slid off the seat. With slow determined steps, not bothering to inspect the crushed body beneath the car, the poor baby set off into a wide desolation.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This novel first appeared as part of
Houses Without Doors

copyright © 1990 by Peter Straub

interior design by Maria Fernandez

This 2012 edition distributed by Open Road Integrated Media

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