The Elementals (23 page)

India shook her head and looked to her father. “How can she say that?” she pleaded. “Nobody played tricks with that camera or that film. This film got developed at a drugstore, it all goes through a machine, they don’t even
look
at it there! And I’ve looked at the negatives. All the images are on the negatives too.”

“No,” said Odessa, “wasn’t nothing there. Spirits got in the camera, that’s all. They wasn’t there when you took the pictures. They got inside the camera and got on the film.”

“I would have seen them if they had been there,” said India weakly, and both Odessa and Luker nodded agreement with her. They sat in the glassed-in porch of the Small House early on Sunday afternoon, the second of July. Leigh and Dauphin had gone to a summer flower show at the Armory, this not only in order to please Lawton but also to keep an eye on Big Barbara, and make certain that her plastic glass contained ginger ale and not champagne.

Luker fidgeted for a minute, and when he spoke it was with a tone of voice that tokened unhappy resignation and giving-in. “India, listen,” he said, “the images that you see on those photographs are images of things that weren’t really there.”

“I don’t understand,” said India plaintively, for she could tell that her father was sincere in this incredulity.

“It was the Elementals,” he said quietly. “It was the Elementals playing tricks on you—playing tricks on all of us.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Elementals—what are Elementals?”

“That’s the kind of spirits that’s in the third house,” said Luker. He had another drink, and had prepared India one as well. It was weaker than his own, but not much.

“You knew more about this than you let on,” said India, and he nodded glumly. “You two have been treating me like a child! So now you tell me why I’m supposed to look at these photographs that have got monsters and dead people on them and say to myself, ‘Hey, India, they weren’t really there . . .
’
”

Odessa sat rocking with her arms folded across her breasts; she’d say nothing. Luker must talk.

“Well,” he said, “you must know there are two kinds of spirits. Good spirits and evil spirits—”

“I don’t believe in spirits,” cried India.

“Shut the fuck up! You’ve got the goddamn pictures, and you want to know what’s on ’em, well, I’m gone tell you, and don’t give me this bullshit about not believing in things! I don’t believe in things either. God’s dead and the devil lives under a rock! But I know enough to know that I’m not supposed to go in the third house and that’s what I’m telling you now, so sit there and shut up and don’t be such a bitch! This is hard.”

India was still.

“Well, to begin with, there’re good spirits and there’re evil spirits . . .”

India rolled her eyes and took a long swallow of her drink.

“And I guess you can guess what kind of spirits are in the third house. And the evil spirits in the third house are called Elementals.”

“How do you know that?”

“Know what?”

“How do you know they’re called Elementals? I mean, you don’t seem to know anything about ’em really, but then you give ’em this big name, why—”

“That’s what Mary-Scot calls ’em,” said Odessa. “Mary-Scot went and talked to the priests and then came back and told us they were Elementals.”

“And
you
’
re
going by what a priest tells you?” India said accusingly to her father.

Luker shrugged. “It’s a . . .
convenient
name, India, that’s all. It sounds better than saying
spirit
or
ghost
. But really all we know is that there’re presences in the house at Beldame, and they’re evil.”

“And they’re called Elementals because they belong to the elements of nature or something like that?”

“Right.”

“Big deal,” she said. “So how the hell did they get in the third house?”

Luker shrugged and Odessa made echo.

“All right,” said India. “So they’re in there. And so there’re three of ’em. And one of ’em is this thing that hangs out on the roof and one of ’em looks like an aborted frog that’s the size of a collie and one of ’em is Dauphin’s mother.”

“No,” said Odessa.

“No,” said Luker. “That’s the thing about Elementals. You don’t know what they are or what they’re like. They don’t have any real shape. You don’t even know if they have real bodies or not. They showed up on your film, but you didn’t see ’em when you took the pictures, did you?”

“No.”

“They might have been in the camera itself.”

“Yeah,” said India contemptuously, “maybe they came up and pasted pictures of themselves on the lens.”

“Something like that,” said Luker. “See, the point is you can’t assume that spirits—and especially Elementals—work the way you and I do. Just because you get an image of them on your negative doesn’t mean that they were really there. All it means is there were spirits in the house.”

“But what do they
look
like?”

“They don’t look like nothing,” said Odessa, “they’s just tricks and badness. They’s this and they’s that, and
this
and
that
’s not ever gone be what you expecting. They look like anything they want.”

“That’s right,” said Luker. “Maybe they knew you hated frogs so they put on their frog costume.”

“I love frogs,” said India. “It’s lizards I hate.”

“That’s not the point. The point is they can look like anything. They can look like Marian Savage—”

“Or Martha-Ann,” said India cruelly, glancing at Odessa.

“Or anything they want. See, they want to fool you, India. They want you to look at those pictures and say, ‘My God, there’s three of ’em, and they have this shape and this shape and this shape, and if I can avoid ’em, then I’ll be all right.
’
”

India thought this over for several moments: the business was insane.

“But why don’t they just show themselves like they really are?”

“Because they don’t
have
any particular shape,” said Luker. “Because they’re just presences.”

“So why do they go to all this trouble? I mean when you look at these pictures—and they’re
not
faked—we’re talking about a major work schedule for somebody. Why do they want to fool us like that?”

“Don’t know,” said Odessa shortly. “Don’t nobody know that.”

“Then are they dangerous?” asked India of the black woman.

Odessa regarded her sharply. “Look at your leg, child.” India wore long pants; she slowly shook her head. Luker reached down and pushed up the corduroy pants leg. India’s right ankle was badly bruised.

“What happened?” demanded Luker.

“I fell,” said India meanly. “There was this Elemental, and it turned itself into a banana peel and it made me go and slip on it. Listen Luker, I want to know how much
you
know about all this. Have you had any run-ins?”

“Just one,” replied Luker, “but mine wasn’t so bad. It was poor old Mary-Scot who got the worst of it.”

“What happened to Mary-Scot—and what happened to you, Luker?”

“India, why don’t you leave well enough alone?”

“Goddamn it!” cried India. “It’s not ‘
well enough
’
so far as I’m concerned! I’ve got bruises, you saw ’em! Listen, Luker, last night Odessa and I went inside that fucking house and there were two bedrooms that had something in ’em. We locked the doors, and we were just going out when something knocked over a table right in front of me. There was something inside that dune. It tried to pull me under the sand. I’ve taken about five showers since we got back to Mobile, and I can
still
feel that sand on me. That’s not what I call ‘
well enough
.
’
”

“You shouldn’t have gone inside,” said Luker primly. “I told you not to. And Odessa, you shouldn’t have let her go with you.”

Odessa shrugged. “Child can take care of herself, I—”

“I couldn’t though!” shouted India. “I would have died in there, I would have suffocated or gotten eaten or something if you hadn’t pulled me out of there! I tell you, I’m pissed! I’m pissed at the whole business! Why the hell did you take me to a place like Beldame? Why in the hell do Dauphin and Leigh and Big Barbara keep going back when you’ve got these demons—”

“Spirits,” corrected Luker.

“These
Elementals
in the goddamn house, every one of ’em ready to pounce on you at any time of day or night? I mean, it’s dangerous out there! Martha-Ann got killed, didn’t she, Odessa? Martha-Ann didn’t drown. Whatever tried to get me got Martha-Ann, but you weren’t there to drag her out. And when I went up to that room on the first day I got there, it was Martha-Ann I saw inside. She’s still there, she’s dead but she won’t lie down! Luker, next time you want a vacation why don’t we just kayak to Iceland?—it’d be a hell of a lot safer!”

She breathed, heavily after her tirade, and Luker gently pressed the bottom of her glass to make her drink more. She swallowed too much, it went down wrong; she coughed and began to weep.

“India,” he said softly. “You don’t really think I’d take you to Beldame if I had thought it was going to be dangerous, do you?”

“But you knew about the Elementals—you said you did.”

“Yes, of course I did. But when you’re away you forget that you believe in them. Sure, when you first get to Beldame and you see the third house, you say, ‘Oh, fuck, there’s something inside and it’s going to get me,’ but then you forget because nothing happens. I was scared when I went to Beldame when I was real young, but it was just once that something happened to me, and now I can’t really remember how much of it was just nightmares that came later, or my bad memory, or what—maybe
nothing
happened . . .”

“Then if nothing happened, tell me about it, Luker. Did you go in the house, did you just see something? What?”

Luker glanced at Odessa, and Odessa nodded for him to proceed. India couldn’t tell by this signal whether or not Odessa knew the story. There were times she felt as if all this Alabama family had entered into a conspiracy against her, the only true Northerner among them.

“There’s nothing to it,” said Luker, with a deprecating wave of his hand. “Nothing really happened. It’s just one time I saw something . . .”

“What?”

“It was one year early in the season and just Big Barbara and I were down there—we went down to open up the house or something like that and we were gone stay overnight, I guess. So I was out playing by myself. It was broad day and the sun was shining, and before I knew it I was standing on the front porch of the third house—that was when the sand had just started to come up that high, it probably wasn’t more than a foot deep then. So I must have been nine or ten.”

“But weren’t you afraid of the house? Why’d you go up there all by yourself?”

“I don’t know,” said Luker. “I wonder why myself. I wouldn’t do it now, and I can’t figure out why I did it then either. I don’t remember making a decision. I have an image of myself. I’m walking up and down on the Gulf side looking for shells or something, and then suddenly there’s a jump-cut, and I’m standing on the front porch of the third house. I try to remember what came in between—but it’s as if there were nothing in between. That’s why I kept thinking of this as a dream and not as something that really happened. That’s probably what it was, just a dream that I’ve confused with a memory.”

“I doubt it,” said India. “What did you do when you got up on the porch?”

Luker trembled as he said it. “I looked in the windows.”

“What’d you see?”

“I looked in the living room first, and it was in perfect condition. None of the sand had gotten inside yet—”

“There’s plenty there now,” said India, glancing at Odessa for confirmation.

“I wasn’t really scared,” said Luker, “it didn’t bother me, it was just this room that was in a locked house and that was all, and I thought, ‘Well why have we been so scared of this?
’
”

“And then?”

“And then I went to the other side of the verandah; and I looked in the dining room window—” Luker glanced at Odessa and didn’t go on. India saw that despite the air conditioning in the room, her father was perspiring heavily.

“What did you see?” she asked grimly.

Luker looked away, and when he spoke his voice was soft and halting. “There were two men sitting at the table right next to each other, one of them on the end. But I could see under the table, and they didn’t have any legs. They were just bodies and arms.”

“Were they real?” stammered India, “I mean . . . what were they doing?”

“Nothing. The table was set. Good stuff, china and silver and crystal, but everything right around where they were was all broken. Like they had deliberately smashed it.”