The House That Jack Built (43 page)

    'There's only one way to stop him,' said Pepper. 'And that's to demolish the whole house.'

    'You're kidding, aren't you?' Norman protested. 'The Bellmans have their entire savings sunk into this property, and I've done thousands of dollars' worth of work already.'

    'There's no other way,' Pepper insisted. 'So long as this I louse goes on standing, Jack Belias will always be able to move from one decade to the next, and one person to the next.'

    'But come on, mom, supposing you're wrong? Supposing we pull down the house and the guy's still here, like strolling around the gardens and smelling the flowers? Then what?'

    Effie said, 'If we demolish the house… do you think that I'll get Craig back, the way he was?'

    Pepper nodded. 'Almost sure of it.'

    'Almost sure of it?' Norman protested.

    Effie said, 'I'll have to think. I'll have to talk to our lawyers. I'll have to talk to Craig.'

    'It's too late. You can't talk to him any more. Craig is Jack and Jack is Craig. They're living completely coincident lives.'

    Norman checked his watch. 'Why don't we do one more search, and then call it a day? This coincident stuff is like making my head hurt.'

    'Okay,' said Pepper. 'What do you think, Effie? One last look around?'

    'Yes,' said Effie. 'And I think I'll start with the library.' She went across to the library doors and opened them wide. It was empty. Not a bookshelf in sight, no baccarat table, no cigar smoke, no gamblers. She cautiously stepped inside and walked around it, trailing her fingers against the walls.

    
Where are you, Jack Belias?
she thought.
You must be hiding close… in the darkness of tomorrow morning, just before dawn… or the shadows of yesterday morning.

    She walked to the very centre of the room, where the baize topped table had stood. She looked down; and saw a small greyish object on the floorboards. When she bent down to try to pick it up, it crumbled between her fingers. Cigar ash.

    'What is it?' asked Pepper, coming across to join her.

    'He's so close,' Effie whispered. 'He and Gina Broughton, both of them. I can almost feel them, they're so close.'

    'I can feel them, too,' Pepper agreed. Her feet were bare and gold coins jingled on her headband.

    Effie went to the window. 'What I don't understand is how Gina could be here, too, trying to take over me! She was dead, wasn't she, stuck on the railings? He could come back here and use the house to turn to a different time; but she couldn't.'

    Pepper lit an awkwardly-shaped joint, and blew smoke out of her nostrils. 'Maybe he went back before he went forward, and got her while she was still alive. Who knows? Suddenly I feel like nothing but a quack.'

    Effie held her hands over her breasts. She felt a sensation inside her that was nothing like anything she had ever felt before. It was a warm, blossoming feeling, similar to stepping out into the sunshine, but on the inside.

    'Do I look different?' she asked Pepper.

    'In what way?'

    'I don't know, just different. I feel different. Do you think that Nico is coming tonight?'

    'What?'

    'I said I feel different.'

    'No, after that. You asked me if Nico was coming tonight.'

    Effie walked slowly back across the library floor. 'I really said that? Yes, I did, didn't I? And I knew who I meant, too. Zographos.'

    Pepper took hold of her and gave her a quick, warm hug. 'Come on,' she said. 'Let's go on looking. We might find something that gives us a clue.'

    Effie said, 'It's started, hasn't it? This is what Jack Belias came back for. Or forward for.'

    'Don't be frightened,' said Pepper. 'He didn't break Gina and he won't have the chance to do the same to you.'

    

    

    Norman and Brewster climbed the main staircase for the second time that evening, Norman taking, the left-hand flight and Brewster taking the right.

    'My grandma believed in magic,' Brewster remarked, as they joined up together again on the upper landing. 'If anybody bullied me at school, she used to make me take a secret snip of their hair and bring it back home to her. Then she used to mix it with chicken's blood and salt and a handful of wheat, and hang it up on the porch so that the moonlight would get to it. She used to say that it would make my enemies go crazy, but at our school most of the kids were crazy anyway so I never knew if it really worked.' They opened the doors to the anteroom. For a millionth of a second, Norman was almost expecting to see his mother lying on the floor with Craig Bellman on top of her, her feet lifted in the air. But it was empty and shadowy and it smelled of dust.

    'I can't believe that my mom could think of demolishing this place,' he said. 'I mean, it's totally unique.'

    'Do you believe that this Jack Belias is really using it to come back?'

    'What can I say? He built it on the same principles as the Benton House… and you can sure use that place for some pretty weird effects.'

    'Do you think Mrs. Bellman really saw Morton?'

    'It sure sounded like him, didn't it? And as far as I know, she never met him.'

    'Jesus, poor Morton. My grandma believed in ghosts. She wouldn't have an empty vase in the room, in case a ghost was hiding in it.'

    'What was your grandma's name? Winnie the Witch?' They crossed the anteroom and approached the master bedroom doors with their silent, carved faces. 'This place might be totally unique, but I wouldn't want to live here,' said Brewster. 'I'd have to cover up these doors, for one, in case one of these faces suddenly opened its eyes.'

    'Come on, man, you're spooking me.'

    'Sorry. We searched the master bedroom, didn't we?'

    'No harm in taking another look.'

    They opened the double doors and went into the huge, churchlike bedroom. The windows were juddering in the gale, and outside the house, they could see the trees thrashing and bending like demented dancers. Brewster said, 'Urgh' and trailed his hand away from his face.

    'What's wrong, man?'

    'Spiderweb. I can't stand spiders.'

    'This house is full of them. It's like Arachnid Apartments.'

    'You're determined to spook me, aren't you?'

    They crossed the bedroom and peered into the en-suite bathroom. Cold, empty, with a large black spider sitting in the white tub. Brewster promptly closed the door and locked it. 'I'd rather face a ghost than one of those suckers any day.'

    They left the bedroom and walked along the south-facing corridor. 'Looks like a storm's getting up,' Brewster commented, as they looked into the sewing-room. Almost on cue, lightning flickered on the distant peak of Storm King Mountain. 'I should be getting back soon. My wife's going to be wondering where I am. She's expecting a baby.'

    'You told me.'

    'Did I? Sorry. I'm still so proud.'

    They reached the landing where the plaster-creature stood. 'You start looking upstairs and I'll finish off this floor,' Norman suggested. 'Otherwise this is going to take us forever.'

    'You got it,' Brewster agreed, and climbed the staircase past the stained-glass window. He started to walk along the corridor, opening each bedroom door in turn and taking a look inside. He didn't like this house at all. Although it was so huge, there was something about its atmosphere which made him feel edgy and trapped - as if, once he was in it, he was never going to find his way out. As he made his way along the corridor he made up a rap, singing it under his breath. The wind tugged at the window-frames as if it wanted to shake them out, and the tarpaulin which covered the collapsed section of the roof began to rumble and snap.

    'I was checking out this spooky house the other day… the ghosts came out and they began to play…'

    He reached the third door, and placed his hand on the handle. As he did so, he thought he heard somebody let out a suppressed sob. He froze, and listened. All he could hear was the windows rattling and the boom-flap-boom of the tarpaulin on the roof.

    He thought he glimpsed a fleeting shadow, out of the corner of his eye. He looked back along the corridor, towards the landing. There was nobody there. His heart was knocking against his ribcage, and his breathing seemed to be absurdly noisy, like bellows blowing in and out.
Somebody's here,
said his instinct.
They can't be,
his logic replied.

    
Somebody's here!
his instinct insisted.
Somebody's here!

    Brewster waited and waited. Then he heard it again, quite distinctly this time, a high muffled sob, like a child crying or a woman in pain.

    
I don't want to do this, somebody's here.

    But all the same he turned the handle and opened the door. 'Anybody here?' he asked, in a phlegmy, constricted voice. Then, 'Anybody here?'

    There was a figure in white standing at the window, looking out. It had its back to him, and it didn't move, although its sheet-like covering was idly stirring in the draught. Outside, the sky was intensely grey, like moleskin rubbed with charcoal, although the rooftops were sdll gleaming. The empty fireplace sighed, and whistled, and sighed again.

    'Pardon me,' said Brewster. 'I'm looking for Mr. Bellman. Have you seen him at all?'

    The figure said nothing; and didn't move. Brewster took two or three steps across the blue-carpeted room, but he wasn't sure that he had the courage to go any further. The figure hadn't acknowledged him in any way, and it surely wasn't Craig Bellman. It was far too slight, far too narrow shouldered. It had to be a woman, rather than a man. But that didn't lessen Brewster's apprehension. He took another step forward, and then another, but he kept thinking of the red-coated dwarf in Don't Look Now and all of the other horror movies he had seen where people keep their backs turned, and then suddenly look around to reveal terrible faces.

    He raised his left hand toward the figure's right shoulder. At the same time, clouds rolled over the last remaining brightness in the sky, and the room was plunged into gloom. Brewster thought I just can't do this, I'm too damned scared. But before he had time to stop himself, he grasped the figure gently, feeling bones beneath the sheet, and twisted it around to face him.

    He was so shocked by what he saw that he involuntarily jumped back. It was a woman's face, as white as the sheet she was wearing. Her eyes were milk-white, too, and totally blind.

    'Oh shit,' said Brewster, and crossed himself, and crossed himself again. 'Oh shit, I didn't mean to-'

    The woman said nothing at all but stepped forward with her left hand outstretched. Brewster tried to back away, but she found his arm, and then his shoulder, and gently curled her fingers around the back of his neck. Brewster stepped back. I mean this was a nightmare, man! But then he felt a punch in the stomach, not hard, but painfully, and sharply.

    'What the hell are you trying to do?' he demanded. 'Are you crazy or what?' He pushed himself away, trying to untangle himself from her arms. It was then that he saw that her sheet was splattered with red, and that she was holding something that looked like a sharpened poker. He stepped back again, and felt an excrucialing pain gripping his stomach, like the worst indigestion he'd ever had. The front of his shirt was glistening wet and soaked in blood.

    'For Christ's sake, what did you do that for?' he shouted at her. 'I came here to help you!'

    Either she couldn't hear him or she didn't care to hear him, because she suddenly groped towards him again, her left hand sweeping wildly from side to side; her poker upraised.

    Brewster staggered back against the bed, then turned, tilted, and tried to make it to the door. The woman came rushing after him, her left hand still sweeping from side to side. She stabbed at the air, then she stabbed at Brewster's shoulder, and he actually heard the point dig into his muscle, as well as feeling it. He dropped on his hands and knees onto the carpet, coughing up blood. But then he felt the woman's hand touching his back, deftly and excitedly, to locate where he was.
Gala,
he thought.
My darling Gala. How the hell am I going to explain all of this to you, baby?

    Gripping the poker two-handed, the woman stabbed Brewster in the back and the shoulders, six or seven times. Brewster felt each stab like a sharp, painful knock. He heard the woman gasping, but that was all she did. She didn't speak. His back felt as if it had been beaten with a baseball bat, but what he didn't realise was that she had already punctured both of his lungs, and pierced his liver, and that her last stab had missed his heart by less than a quarter of an inch.

    He stayed on his hands and knees, unable to move, dripping blood like a slaughtered pig. He was conscious of the woman circling around him, and the sheet sliding to the carpet. He tried to raise his eyes, but all he could see was her bare feet and her ankles. He tried to say 'Why?' but all that came out was a large gludnous bubble of blood. He could taste it. It tasted like metal.

    Slowly, very slowly, he bent forward until his forehead was touching the carpet. He couldn't feel any pain now, but he knew with absolute clarity that he was dying. The woman's bare feet prowled around him but he didn't bother to look. She didn't matter any more, no matter who she was. He thought: Only the living worry about the identity of murderers. The dead are always too dead to care.

    He thought that was so stupidly profound that he almost laughed. And it was that choking attempt at laughter that was the last sound he ever made, before he dropped heavily sideways onto the carpet.

    The woman stood over him, although she couldn't see him. She was completely naked, but her body was decorated with scars and burns and scratches and bruises. She was heavily pregnant, and her swollen breasts rested on her stomach like two overripe fruit.