The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal (33 page)

She poured herself another glass, wondering how long it would be until Marcus, that jealous little demon, went in to wake up his napping sister. The nanny had put Jacqueline down before she left, and the little baby hadn’t woken up yet. Patricia checked the clock again, remarking at this extended period of quiet in the house. Wow—sleeping like a champ. Fortified with another swallow of pinot, and mindful of her impish little four-year-old terrorist, she pushed back the ad-crammed
Cookie
magazine and started up the back steps.

She looked in on Marcus first, finding him lying facedown on the New York Rangers rug next to his sleigh bed, his portable game-unit thingy still turned on near his outstretched hand. Worn
out
. Of course, they would pay dearly for this late nap when the whirling dervish wouldn’t settle down at bedtime—but by then it would be Mark’s turn to deal.

She went down the hall—puzzled by and frowning at a few clumps of dark soil on the runner (
that little demon
)—to the closed door with the
SH-SH-SH!—ANGEL SLEEPING
heart-shaped silk pillow hanging from the doorknob on a frilly lace ribbon. She eased it open on the dim, warm nursery, and was startled to see an adult sitting in the rocking chair next to the crib, swaying back and forth. A woman, holding a little bundle in her arms.

The stranger was cradling baby Jacqueline. But in the quiet warmth of the room, under the softness of the recessed lighting, and feeling the high pile of the rug underfoot, everything still seemed okay.

“Who …?” As Patricia ventured in farther, something in the rocking woman’s posture clicked. “Joan? Joan—is that you?” Patricia stepped closer. “What are you …? Did you come in through the garage?”

Joan—it
was
her—stopped her slow rocking and stood up from the chair. With the pink-shaded lamp behind her, Patricia barely made out the odd expression on Joan’s face—in particular, the strange twist of her mouth. She smelled dirty, and Patricia’s mind went immediately
to her own sister, and that horrible, horrible Thanksgiving last year. Was Joan having a similar breakdown?

And why was she here now, holding baby Jacqueline?

Joan extended her arms to hand the infant back to Patricia. Patricia cradled her baby, and in a moment knew that something wasn’t right. Her daughter’s stillness went beyond the limpness of infant sleep.

With two anxious fingers, Patricia pinched back the blanket covering Jackie’s face.

The baby’s rosebud lips were parted. Her little eyes were dark and fixed and staring. The blanket was wet around her little neck. Patricia’s two fingers came away sticky with blood.

The scream that rose in Patricia’s throat never reached its destination.

A
nn-Marie Barbour was literally at her wits’ end. Standing in her kitchen, whispering prayers and gripping the edge of the sink as though the house she had lived in all her married life were a small boat caught in a swirling black sea. Praying endlessly for guidance, for relief. For a glimmer of hope. She knew that her Ansel was not evil. He was not what he seemed. He was just very, very sick. (
But he killed the dogs.)
Whatever illness he had would pass like a bad fever and everything would return to normal.

She looked out at the locked shed in the dark backyard. It was quiet now.

The doubts returned, as they had when she saw the news report about the dead people from Flight 753 who had disappeared from the morgues. Something was happening, something awful
(He Killed the Dogs)
—and her overwhelming sensation of dread was alleviated only by repeated trips to the mirrors and her sink. Washing and touching, worrying and praying.

Why did Ansel bury himself under the dirt during the day? (
He killed the dogs.)
Why did he look at her with such craving? (
He killed them.)
Why wouldn’t he
say
anything, but only grunt and yowl
(like the dogs he killed)
?

Night had again taken the sky—the thing she had dreaded all day.

Why was he so quiet out there now?

Before she could think about what she was doing, before she could lose her reserve, she went out the door and down the porch stairs. Not looking at the dogs’ graves in the corner of the yard—not giving in to that madness. She had to be the strong one now. For just a little while longer …

The shed doors. The lock and the chain. She stood there, listening, her fist pressed hard against her mouth until her front teeth started to hurt.

What would Ansel do? Would he open the door if it were she inside? Would he force himself to face her?

Yes. He would.

Ann-Marie undid the lock with the key from around her neck. She threaded out the thick chain, and this time stepped back to where she knew he could not reach her—past the length of the runner leash fixed to the dog pole—as the doors fell open.

An awful stink. A godless fetor. The stench alone brought tears to her eyes. That was her Ansel in there.

She saw nothing. She listened. She would not be drawn inside.

“Ansel?”

Barely a whisper on her part. Nothing came in return.

“Ansel.”

A rustling. Movement in the dirt. Oh, why hadn’t she brought a flashlight?

She reached forward just enough to nudge one door open more widely. Enough to let in a little more of the moonlight.

There he was. Lying half in a bed of soil, his face raised to the doors, eyes sunken and fraught with pain. She saw at once that he was dying. Her Ansel was dying. She thought again of the dogs who used to sleep here, Pap and Gertie, the dear Saint Bernards she had loved more than mere pets, whom he had killed and whose place he had willingly taken … yes … in order to save Ann-Marie and the children.

And then she knew. He needed to hurt someone else in order to revive himself. In order to live.

She shivered in the moonlight, facing the suffering creature her husband had become.

He wanted her to give herself over to him. She knew that. She could feel it.

Ansel let out a guttural groan, voiceless, as though from deep in the pit of his empty stomach.

She couldn’t do it. Ann-Marie wept as she closed the shed doors on him. She pressed her shoulder to them, shutting him up like a corpse neither quite alive nor yet quite dead. He was too weak to charge the doors now. She heard only another moan of protest.

She was running the first length of chain back through the door handles when she heard a step on the gravel behind her. Ann-Marie froze, picturing that police officer returning. She heard another step, then spun around.

He was an older man, balding, wearing a stiff-collared shirt, open cardigan, and loose corduroys. Their neighbor from across the street, the one who had called the police: the widower, Mr. Otish. The kind of neighbor who rakes his leaves into the street so that they blow into your yard. A man they never saw or heard from unless there was a problem that he suspected them or their children of having caused.

Mr. Otish said, “Your dogs have found increasingly creative ways to keep me awake at night.”

His presence, like a ghostly intrusion upon a nightmare, mystified Ann-Marie.
The dogs?

He was talking about Ansel, the noises he made in the night.

“If you have a sick animal, you need to take it to a veterinarian and have it treated or put down.”

She was too stunned even to reply. He walked closer, coming off the driveway and onto the edge of the backyard grass, eyeing the shed with contempt.

A hoarse moan rose from inside.

Mr. Otish’s face shriveled in disgust. “You are going to do something about those curs or else I am going to call the police again, right now.”

“No!”
Fear escaped before she could hold it in.

He smiled, surprised by her trepidation, enjoying the sense of control over her that it gave him. “Then what is it you plan to do?”

Her mouth opened, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. “I … I’ll take care of it … I don’t know how.”

He looked at the back porch, curious about the light on in the
kitchen. “Is the man of the house available? I would prefer to speak with him.”

She shook her head.

Another pained groan from the shed.

“Well, you had damn well better do something about those sloppy creatures—or else I will. Anybody who grew up on a farm will tell you, Mrs. Barbour, dogs are service animals and don’t need coddling. Far better for them to know the sting of the switch than the pat of a hand. Especially a clumsy breed such as the Saint Bernard.”

Something he’d said got through to her. Something about her dogs …

Sting of the switch.

The whole reason they’d built the chain-and-post contraption in the shed in the first place was because Pap and Gertie had run off a few times … and once, not too long ago … Gertie, the sweetheart of the two, the trusting one, came home with her back and legs all ripped up …

… as though someone had taken a stick to her.

The normally shy and retiring Ann-Marie Barbour forgot all of her fear at that moment. She looked at this man—this nasty little shriveled-up excuse for a man—as though a veil had been lifted from her eyes.

“You,” she said. Her chin trembled, not from timidity anymore but from rage. “
You
did that. To Gertie. You
hurt
her …”

His eyes flickered for a moment, unused to being confronted—and simultaneously betraying his guilt.

“
If
I did,” he said, regaining his usual condescension, “I am sure he had it coming.”

Ann-Marie burst with hatred suddenly. Everything she had been bottling up over these past few days. Sending away her children … burying her dead dogs … worrying about her afflicted husband …

“She,
” Ann-Marie said.

“What?”

“She.
Gertie. Is a
she
.”

Another tremulous groan from within the shed.

Ansel’s need. His craving …

She backed up, shaking. Intimidated, not by him, but by these new feelings of rage. “You want to see for yourself?” she heard herself say.

“What is that?”

The shed crouched behind her like some beast itself. “Go ahead, then. You want a chance to tame them? See what you can do.”

He stared, indignant. Challenged by a woman. “You aren’t serious?”

“You want to fix things? You want peace and quiet? Well, so do I!” She wiped a bit of saliva off her chin and shook her wet finger at him.
“So do I!”

Mr. Otish looked at her for one long moment. “The others are right,” he said. “You
are
crazy.”

She flashed him a wild, nodding grin, and he walked to a low branch of the trees bordering their yard. He pulled at a thin switch, twisting it, tugging hard until it finally tore free. He tested it, listening for the rapierlike
swish
as he sliced it through the air, and, satisfied, stepped to the doors.

“I want you to know,” said Mr. Otish, “I do this for your benefit more than mine.”

Ann-Marie trembled as she watched him run the chain through the shed door handles. The doors started to swing open, Mr. Otish standing near enough to the opening for the pole chain to reach him.

“Now,” he said, “where are these beasts?”

Ann-Marie heard the inhuman growl, and the chain leash moving fast, sounding like spilled coins. Then the doors flew open, Mr. Otish stepped up, and in an instant his stupefied cry was cut short. She ran and threw herself against the shed doors, fighting to close them as the struggling Mr. Otish batted against them. She forced the chain through and around the handles, clasping the lock tight … then fled into her house, away from the shuddering backyard shed and the merciless thing she had just done.

M
ark Blessige stood in the foyer of his home with his BlackBerry in hand, not knowing which way to turn. No message from his wife. Her phone was in her Burberry bag, the Volvo station wagon in the driveway, the baby bucket in the mudroom. No note on the kitchen island, only a half-empty glass of wine abandoned on the counter. Patricia, Marcus, and baby Jackie were all gone.

He checked the garage, and the cars and strollers were all there.
He checked the calendar in the hallway—nothing was listed. Was she pissed at him for being late again and had decided to do a little passive-aggressive punishment? Mark tried to flip on the television and wait it out, but then realized his anxiety was real. Twice he picked up the telephone to call the police, but didn’t think he could live down the public scandal of a cruiser coming to his house. He went out his front door and stood on the brick step overlooking his lawn and lush flower beds. He looked up and down the street, wondering if they could have slipped over to a neighbor’s—and then noticed that almost every house was dark. No warm yellow glow from heirloom lamps shining on top of polished credenzas. No computer monitor lights or plasma TV screens flashing through hand-sewn lace.

He looked at the Lusses’ house, directly across the street. Its proud patrician face and aged white brick. Nobody home there either, it seemed. Was there some looming natural disaster he didn’t know about? Had an evacuation order been issued?

Then he saw someone emerge from the high bushes forming an ornamental fence between the Lusses’ property and the Perrys’. It was a woman, and in the dappling shadow of the oak leaves overhead she appeared disheveled. She was cradling what looked to be a sleeping child of five or six in her arms. The woman walked straight across the driveway, obscured for a moment by the Lusses’ Lexus SUV, then entered the side door next to the garage. Before entering, her head turned and she saw Mark standing out on his front step. She didn’t wave or otherwise acknowledge him, but her glance—brief though it was—put a block of ice against his chest.

She wasn’t Joan Luss, he realized. But she might have been the Lusses’ housekeeper.

He waited for a light to come on inside. None did. Superstrange, but whatever the case, he hadn’t seen anyone else out and about this fine evening. So he started out across the road—first down his walk to the driveway, avoiding stepping on the lawn grass—and then, hands slipped casually into his suit pants pockets, up the Lusses’ drive to the same side door.