People of the Dark (11 page)

And she told me that the case still was open, after twenty years. "Of course, no one cares much anymore. It's old news, and I guess there are bigger fish to fry these days. But it intrigues the hell out of me, Jack."

I told her that was obvious. She made the revelation that her brother had died in Granada. "I was doing postgraduate work at Barnard College then. I remember that someone from the FBI called and told me, point-blank, 'I'm sorry, Miss
Gellis
'—that was my maiden name—'but your brother's been killed. We'll need you to identify the body. Et cetera, et cetera. Norm was quite a bit older than I. And I'm the first to admit that the world has produced nicer people. But I cried a lot in the next couple of weeks, not merely because he was dead, but because he died that way. He was one of those who was cannibalized. Not completely, of course. That would hardly have left anything to identify, would it?" She took a breath. "Anyway, I started coming here, as a naturalist, several years ago." She smiled as if in apology. "That requires an explanation, I know. Why would a naturalist be interested in this place? And actually, it's not so much that I'm interested in the houses themselves as much as I'm interested in what
visited
them." Another pause. Another grin of apology. "Do you understand that, Jack?"

I shook my head.

"Of course you don't. And I probably sound like I'm not all there, right—the eccentric, bucolic naturalist?" I grinned. She grinned back. "No, Jack. I'm smart, I'm tough, and I'm pragmatic." She looked away, seemed lost in thought a moment, then continued, "And when I dig into the earth I find . . .
life
!" She looked up at me, smiled broadly. "I find life, Jack. Do you understand that?"

"Yes," I said.

"Yes," she said. "I think you do. I can tell that you do. And I'm glad you do, because that means we can talk. Later."

"Later?"

"Come back here when you can. You'll find me. We'll talk. I'll tell you what's on my mind." And then she said good-bye, got into her bright red Chevy
Lux
4 X 4 pickup, and drove off at a speed that my Toyota could never have maintained on that road.

We did talk; we talked quite a lot, and I learned much from her. I still do.

O
ur problems with moles stopped late in March, when the air turned bitterly cold.

We found one morning that some of the old copper water pipes had frozen. I had to creep around on my belly in the crawl space in the cellar, blow dryer in hand, find the offending pipes, and thaw them.

One of our cats, Ginger, got herself lost around this time, too. I tromped through the woods, calling for her, several days in a row, with no luck, and at last decided that she'd either been picked up by someone or killed by a raccoon or a fox, or by one of the dozens of stray dogs that roamed the area—they always kept at a distance, so what we heard of them were only occasional barks and long howls. The most painful possibility was that she had frozen to death. This bothered me a lot because she was a creature who dearly loved warmth.

It bothered Erika, too, though she'd never seemed to like Ginger much, had always seemed merely to tolerate her. "She's a cat, Jack. Cats don't freeze to death," she said, but it was a question more than a statement.

"Sure they do, Erika, if it gets cold enough."

She spent the next three days on long, lone hikes through our woods, calling for Ginger. She didn't find her. And for the next couple of weeks she said to me now and again, "My God, Jack, I hope she didn't freeze to death," and I said to her that it was okay, that if she had, it was probably one of the best ways to die. But Erika didn't seem to understand that.

L
ate in March we went to the antique shop that the
Alnors
operated in their white barn. We were looking for a settee to put in the big, open room at the top of the stairs—we'd put some plants there, and a red beanbag chair (we could think of nowhere else to put it), an aquarium, and we'd decided at last to start giving it a
look
of some kind,
ambiance
. We'd seen a sturdy late-Victorian settee there on a previous visit, had priced it, and said that we hoped it would be there when we came back—although we had no plans to go back soon. The
Alnors
had nodded and smiled and said they thought it would be there, that business was not too good in the winter.

But it was gone. "A nice young couple bought it," Mr.
Alnor
told us. "Right after you looked at it, in fact."

The shop was incredibly cluttered, the aisles narrow, the atmosphere stiff and businesslike. Signs here and there warned that "Children must be accompanied by an adult." One sign proclaimed, "You break it, you bought it!" Another: "We'd like to keep your friendship—Don't ask for credit!" And there was the stiffly smiling presence of one of the
Alnors
at all times. "Just let us know how we can help you" was their line.

When we got to the shop that afternoon late in March there were several other people there: an older, well-dressed couple who walked arm in arm through the aisles, and what sounded like a family above us, on the barn's second floor, where furniture was kept. We could hear the slow
clop
-clop
of several pairs of feet and the quicker, frantic noises of children. Noise seemed to carry well through the simple plank flooring above us, and the sounds of the children clearly upset Mrs.
Alnor
, who crossed her arms, grimaced, and said to her husband, "What do you suppose they're
doing
up there, Harry?"

Then we heard "Mommy?" very faintly from upstairs. I looked toward the stairway because I'd sensed a kind of tense urgency in the word.

Mrs.
Alnor
said again, "What do you suppose they're doing up there, Harry?"

And Harry said, "I'll go and see."

"Mommy?!" we heard again. Then, a second later, "Joyce?" It was a man's voice.

I felt Erika grab my arm. "Jack," she whispered, "something's wrong."

"Joyce?" we heard again. "What's wrong? Tell me what's wrong."

Mr.
Alnor
started for the stairs then. I followed. Erika followed me, her hand still on my arm.

"For God's sake, Joyce," we heard. "What in the hell are you doing?"

"Mommy?!"

"Get
out
of there, Joyce!"

"Harry," Mrs.
Alnor
said, "don't go up there, Harry."

He glanced incredulously around at her. I yelled up the stairs, "Is something wrong?"

"It's okay," the man yelled back. "This is our problem; we'll deal with it."

And that's when Harry
Alnor
vaulted up the stairs. I heard him, moments later: "What's she doing in there, mister?" The words were spoken with tight anger. A brief pause, then: "Come on out of there, young woman; you'll break it."

Erika and I went up. We stopped at the top of the stairs. I felt her grip on my arm strengthen, heard her whisper tremblingly, "Why's she doing that?"

Joyce—an attractive, dark-haired woman in her late twenties, I guessed, who was dressed in jeans and sneakers, a blue shirt, and denim vest—had crawled into a tall and very narrow cupboard, had gotten into a fetal position in it, and was looking very fearfully out from it at her husband and her daughter and at Harry
Alnor
.

She was whispering something, too. I couldn't hear her words, but I could read her lips. She was whispering, "The dark!" over and over again.

I
t bothered the hell out of Erika. The woman eventually got out of the cupboard, of course, and was led, trembling, from the antique shop to her car.

But Erika and I stayed a few minutes. Erika seemed confused, at odds with herself, caught at the verge of weeping, or laughing. Harry
Alnor
noticed it.

"Jesus Christ, mister," he said to me, nodding at Erika, "what the hell is wrong with
her
, now?"

"Please," I said, "don't use that tone."

"Give them room, Harry," Mrs.
Alnor
said.

We were at the doorway. I had my arm around Erika, who still was staring at the spot where Joyce's car had been. She'd said nothing since we were upstairs in the shop. "Why's she doing that?" she'd said then, several times. Now she said, "Why'd she do that, Jack?'

"She was confused," I said.

"She was nuts out of her head," said Harry
Alnor
.

"Shut up!" said Mrs.
Alnor
.

"Don't tell
me
to shut up, woman!"

And Erika said, "Please, let's go home, Jack." And we did.

I
lost track of her that evening. She was in the spare room, rummaging through some boxes that were labeled MISC. JUNK, which meant only that whatever was in them was unimportant. I was in bed, reading an old Stephen King story, had lost myself in the world of Jody
Verrel
—who became one with the green stuff from a meteorite—and I heard Erika call, "Jack, come here, please." I heard nothing urgent in her tone. I supposed that she wanted me to help her move some boxes, so I called back, "In a moment."

I finished the King story, got up and went to the spare room. It's cluttered there. Besides the unpacked boxes, there are empty boxes, empty suitcases, photographic gear—from a time when I had a passionate, if short-lived, love for amateur photography—clothes baskets, an ironing board. It's a large, L-shaped room. The lower part of the L is short and narrow, and there are rough, handmade bookcases there, with odds and ends on them.

I paused in the doorway to the room. The bare overhead light was on, so it was bright enough that I could see most of the room, though not the far corner, and not, of course, the lower part of the L. "Erika? You rang?"

Nothing.

"Erika? Are you in here?"

Nothing.

I shrugged, guessed that she was downstairs, went to the top of the stairs, called to her, got no reply.

I saw that the door to the stairway was closed. I called louder, "Erika, are you down there?" heard nothing, cursed, went back to the spare room.

She was there. She was leaning over a box, some photographs in hand—some of the photographs that I have, now. When I came in, she looked up, bemused: "What are you doing, Jack?"

"I was looking for you," I told her.

"I've been right here."

"No. Not a few minutes ago."

She looked silently at me. Her look of bemusement changed to one of quick confusion; she said, "Sure I was." She straightened, crossed the room, showed me the photographs. "This," she explained, "was taken when I was ten or eleven." She pointed to the boy beside her. "His name was Timothy." She handed me the photograph. "Keep it, Jack. I want you to have it."

I shrugged. "But I have
you
, Erika."

"Of course you do, but take it, anyway. Please." I took it. She seemed pleased. She showed me another one: "And this is me with my mother . . ."

T
he following morning I had to go into the cellar once more, blow dryer in hand, because the pipes leading to the kitchen faucets had frozen again. They freeze easily if the temperature dips into the teens or lower—the foundation directly in front of them is cracked, allowing cold air to focus on them.

Though it was easy to figure out which pipes were frozen, getting to them was another matter entirely. They're at the far end of a long, two-foot-tall crawl space which has a dirt floor and a ceiling that's alive with insects and spiders. The whole area smells strongly of sewage, too. (I vowed to have that smell checked out when I first went into the crawl space, but I never did.) And there were no lights in the crawl space, so it was necessary to creep along on my elbows and knees, a flashlight in one hand, blow dryer in the other—attached to a thirty-foot-long extension cord—while I tried hard not to bang my head on the joists above.

When I got to the frozen pipes, I could see daylight through the inch-wide crack in the foundation. I could see, too, that someone was on the other side of the foundation, looking in.

I said, "Hello," surprised not only because I'd found someone looking at me but because I'd actually said hello to him.

He said "Hello" to me. His voice was a high tenor and very friendly.