A Sense of Shadow (v1.0), page 14
“I’m not sure. He paid me five thousand, and I admit I can use the money. He suggested that I might want to write another paper, or even a book, afterward. I don’t think so.”
“I suppose he thought you would be able to remain objective. Wrong, of course. At least you’re not emotionally involved, not like we are.”
“Not emotionally, or financially either. I’ve had all I had coming. Look at this from an outsider’s point of view. You all have cause to hate him, and for whatever his reasons, he apparently hated all of you. His entire life was one of losing people—wives and kids. Maybe it warped him. He had a heart attack four years ago and nearly died.” They really had not known, he thought, watching their reactions. Surprise, doubt, confusion, more guilt? He could not read their expressions well enough to know what passed through their minds. He continued, “It’s true. You can ask Sizemore. Anyway, when he recovered, be changed his will and arranged this whole encounter group. Think of the ingredients he managed to include: a fortune in real estate, isolation for an extended period, strict rules about who can be here and who can’t, even a piece of technology to make it look scientific—the EEG before and after. And he made certain his interest in possession was obvious. If the word had never come up, you couldn’t have failed to notice the nutty books in the library. I think you ail underestimate his intelligence and his grasp of psychology. He knew exactly what he was doing. And I would bet the five thousand he paid me that he knew what would happen almost down to the last detail.”
Lucas looked both angry and disbelieving. “He wasn’t that smart.”
“Yes, he was. I talked with him on two separate occasions, remember, and I was not a kid scared to death of him, or hating him for anything and everything. We talked about mass psychology and he understood the subject thoroughly. He had read a lot over the years. He understood about expectations, about heightened suggestibility, about fear and guilt and the power of associative memory. He knew almost as much about stimulus-response mechanisms as any practicing psychologist. He knew damn well that the response may be delayed twenty years, or thirty years, but that eventually it will happen. He was counting on that.”
“Hear, hear,” Conrad said; his voice lacked conviction.
“I think we’re having a freshman lecture,” Janet said, getting up from the table. “Also, I think the professor is planning to write a paper after all, that he’s been thinking quite a bit about what will go in it. It could present an interesting legal problem.”
Hugh didn’t bother to deny it. He had not been thinking those things at alL It surprised him that he had been able to present such a convincing case without preparation. Push my button, he thought disgustedly, and watch me dance! S-R lives.
Hugh sat at his window looking at the dark countryside wondering why no one had asked the obvious question: Why? Why had Culbertson changed following his massive heart attack? Why had he spent months, maybe even four years, preparing this grotesque experiment?
It was raining and the night air was warmer now that the weather was coming from the Pacific instead of the mountains. He liked the Pacific fronts that came with a regularity that was almost moon-phase dependable.
In his room, Mallory was staring into darkness, going over and over scenes from his childhood, that night in the unfinished living room, hating himself, hating his dead father more.
And Conrad was awake, full of self-hatred because he had let the old man whip Janet until she fell unconscious. He had let it happen, paralyzed by fear of the threat of her death, more terrified that he would be beaten, that he would be killed, and suddenly convinced that she had it coming to her, that it had been her own fault. And with that thought had come the real terror that he was exactly like his father.
Janet lay thinking about the apple pie at dinner, almost smug that she had resisted although she had wanted it so much it had been a physical ache. She thought about her mother’s beautiful gold sandals with glass-needle heels and ankle straps. She had wanted shoes just like them, she had wanted those shoes so much that she had sneaked into her mother’s room frequently just to slip them on and teeter about, pretending she was grown up with lovers coming to call. She could remember nothing else about her mother, only that she had been beautiful and had worn gold sandals, and of course that she must never be like her, act like her, look like her, or she would be evil and he would kill her.
In the library Lucas and Regina watched a late movie; the sound was too loud, but neither wanted to turn it down. Without it the silence was unbearable. In the silence you could hear them, Lucas was thinking; they were around corners, in the next room, behind you. Screaming, cursing…And Regina was thinking: When he was talking after dinner, I believed him, all of it. I don’t believe in ghosts. What he said sounded right. I should keep repeating key phrases—stimulus and response, stimulus and response, stimulus and response…
Hugh jerked away from the chair in which he had been sitting. He was very cold. He had fallen asleep after all, sitting up with the draft from the open window on him. Dreaming of them, all of them by turn. He had been dreaming, he repeated. Now he was wide awake. He glanced at his watch and was dismayed to find that he had been in his room less than half an hour; it was only eleven-forty now. And he was wide awake.
He tried to read and could not understand the words, which seemed foreign. He could not concentrate on anything long enough to make a note. He began to walk back and forth from the window to the door, thinking about that hallucination in the master suite. He had actually hit her, many times. He could remember how it had felt when his hand struck flesh, how satisfying it had felt. The scene played on the surface of his mind where he could rerun it over and over, and suddenly he found that he was seeing Laura’s face, not the other woman’s. It was Laura that he was beating up, relishing beating her up, wanting to keep hitting her again and again, and not just with his open hand. She deserved it, he thought, just like the others, all of them.
He had been pacing faster and faster; abruptly he stopped and clutched the footboard of his bed. “Go away! Get the fuck out of here!” Silence returned in his head. The chaotic images and thoughts were gone. He drew in a long breath, waiting to see if an attack of pain would follow. He took another deep breath, let go the bed and looked about blankly. He couldn’t stay alone. He needed to be with people, others who would help hold the silence with him. He left his room quietly and went downstairs. No one was in the library, or the television room, or the breakfast room. He was on the way to the kitchen when he saw the light coming from the living room. The door was open a crack.
At last, he thought very distantly. He started toward the living room; it was like walking under water, or through a monstrous snowdrift. His body was trying to stop, his feet were weighted, his legs leaden.
Part Three
October 23
Sometimes that night Lucas was watching a recent movie on the television set, and sometimes he was watching the shows that had captivated him as a child. His father had bought one of the first TV sets in the valley at a time when the signal seemed to bounce around in the mountains and each bounce produced a new ghost. The ancient ghosts mingled with the garish color of the movie, gray shadows haunting the new stars. The volume was turned too high, adjusted deliberately by Lucas to forestall conversation, to try to drown out the voices that were clearer in his head than the voices that issued from the console. His grating voice, demanding, ordering, cursing; her voice mocking, laughing in a register a little too high; and his own childish voice whispering, “Don’t fight. Please don’t fight.” No one had heard that plaintive voice, and hearing it now he despised the frail, frightened child he had been.
The child turned off the TV and looked for a place to hide, a place where neither of them would find him. He groaned in despair as their voices rose, hers not very distant.
“Did you speak?” Regina asked, begging him to speak, to say anything at all.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” he said, getting up with effort. For a second or two he saw Regina, so pale she looked ill and fragile, too vulnerable. He started across the room. She was in the dining room now screaming furiously, drunkenly. What if he saw her, if she saw him? What if they met in the hallway? He squeezed his eyes closed knowing it was in his head, not out there, yet afraid that the out-there and the inhere would somehow merge, take on an enduring reality. He went into the hall with Regina so close behind him that he could feel her warm breath on his neck. A rush of feelings, memories, sensations in sharp contradiction to each other threatened to fling him into an abyss from which he would never be able to rise again. He fought vertigo as he felt himself running barefooted through the hallway, clutching an illustrated Connecticut Yankee, praying she wouldn’t leave the dining room before he turned the corner and darted into the living room. He wanted to stop, to take Regina into his arms, reassure her, tell her over and over how much he loved her, now more than ever because of her loyalty, her courage in this insane house. And he wanted her out and away from the house, back in New York. She had no business here, spying on him, learning things he had never intended to tell anyone. His head ached from trying to sort out the contradictions; it was like calling snow black, or water dry, or hot cold. His thoughts raced out of control, opposites lined up like sames; wants became fears, fears became needs, love became hate…Shame and fear drove him up the spiral stairs, terror stopped him at the top, suddenly aware that he might run into his father in the plant room. At the top of the stairs his head seemed to spin, and in the hallway leaning heavily on his crutches, his dizziness increased. He groped for the door to the bathroom, and was grateful for the cool glass knob that was real, that his hand could close over, thankful that Regina was behind him where she could not see, could not be aware that he was losing all contact with reality, that he was slipping away in madness. The door opened and he nearly fell. He heard Regina gasp and he caught himself, dragged his foot and the crutches inside the bathroom, and pushed the door hard behind him, even grateful for the resounding slam that was also real, in present time.
Regina stared at the door, one hand outstretched as if to test it. She drew back feeling foolish and turned to go down to the kitchen to wait for Lucas. The kitchen was bright, humming with appliances that gleamed, cheerful with blue patterned tile floor, yellow daisies on the wallpaper…She had gone inside the room only two or three steps when she heard the woman calling Lucas.
“Lucas, where are you?” It was a voice thick with alcohol, slurring the words.
“You can’t have him, Viola!” A man’s deep voice yelled back.
“Come on, honey. We’re getting out of here. Where are you, Lucas?”
“Leave him alone! He stays with me. You’re drunk. You’ll kill yourself and him too.”
“Lucas, are you in there?” She was searching. “Lucas, answer me!”
Regina knew where he was. She had seen him on the balcony, hiding under one of the plant tables near the window. He was hunched over, fetus-like, his hands crushing his ears, his eyes shut. Regina ran from the kitchen, through the hallway, into the living room, up the curved stairs, and stopped abruptly. Empty. No plants. No hiding child. She turned around and started to go down again.
Hugh entered the room and looked up to .where Regina was standing on the balcony, holding a trowel in one hand, a potted plant in the other. She nodded at him, put down the plant, and started down the stairs, talking as she came.
“Froelich, are you? Read your paper. Don’t believe in possession, eh? Neither do I. Neither do I…”
She could not stop her insane words, could not .stop her descent, could not stop the flow of thoughts that were not her thoughts. He was younger than she had expected, maybe too young, too naive, too green. Maybe not as smart as she had hoped. But he would do, he had to do; he was the only fish in the waters and the season was opening right now.
She reached the bottom of the stairs, talking all the way down, and he crossed the room, staring at her in horror.
“Don’t believe in coincidence…” her crazy voice went on. She reached out to touch him on the chest and they both saw the hand—slim and smooth, yet gnarled and brown-spotted with thick veins…She laughed, a dry sound of rattling bones or sticks.
She snatched her hand back and Hugh saw a look of terror transfix her and at the same time his stomach cramped so hard that he could not bear it.
Regina screamed and Hugh fell down like a dead man. The voices were everywhere, all around her, inside her. Desperately she jerked the whistle up and blew it and could not stop blowing it until someone tore it from her.
The whistle brought them all: Mallory pulling on his robe as he rushed downstairs; Conrad pushing past him, not undressed yet; and Janet barefoot, feeling dazed, afraid of staying on the second floor alone, more afraid of what they would find. They grouped themselves like a wax-worker’s tableau: Mallory on one knee examining Hugh, the others clustered around Regina. Conrad had grabbed the whistle from her, but she had not moved yet Lucas was the last one to enter the room, thinking: Not Regina! Not Regina! Please, not Regina! He was weak with relief when he saw her unhurt, upright. Then he stopped. A second wave of emotion hit him: fury, a rage so great he felt himself swelling with it felt himself expanding to fill the room, fill the house, fill the countryside, and he wanted to hit her, beat her senseless, and senseless, hit her again and again. His vision blurred…No, he whispered to him* self. Go away! Everything left him and he staggered, almost fell.
Mallory looked up and nodded briefly. Not dead, Conrad realized, with relief. He had been certain Hugh was dead. He looked dead. Janet was shaking violently and he put his arm around her shoulders, held her for a moment She had thought him dead also, thought he would now become one of the ghosts wandering the house-laughing, mocking, taunting, whispering obscenities. Her shaking subsided.
Mallory stood up looking at the unconscious man, and for a moment he almost wished he had died; that would end the madness, bring in the police who would stay the night, keep guard. Thickly he said, “I’d better take him to the hospital.”
“Not one of us,” Conrad said. “Maybe this is a trick to get us out of the house. We all have to stay. Call Carlos.”
Disappointment surged through Mallory. It would have been a relief to get in the wagon, drive through the night, forget the house, the will, the others. Wearily he went to make the phone call.
Regina had not yet looked up from Hugh; she was afraid to look away, as if he might change there on the floor. If she did not keep the vigil, he might turn into the old man.
Watching her, Lucas wondered how she could stay upright. She was as pale as a ghost herself. She had met Hugh, he thought clearly, and the old man had punished him. She was lucky he had not touched her. Next time…Abruptly he turned and stumbled from the room.
Regina realized that the house was still, that the voices had been hushed by the strident whistle. She looked up and saw Lucas going through the doorway, and started after him. Conrad caught her by the arm.
“We have to know what to tell them at the hospital,” he said gently. “What happened?”
She shook her head. “He just fell down, as if he had a heart attack. He didn’t cry out or anything.”
Conrad regarded her for a moment, then shrugged. “Okay. You and Janet go back to the television room, make yourselves a drink. We all need a drink right now. Well be in as soon as Carlos gets here.”
In Conrad’s mind an image flashed: He saw Regina approaching Hugh, her hand outstretched, a look of terror transfixing her face. But it wasn’t Regina. And it was he, Conrad, whom she was approaching. He closed his eyes hard, until they hurt and he saw a dull red.
When he opened his eyes he was alone with Hugh. “We’re slipping in and out of each other’s heads,” he murmured to the unconscious man. “And frankly, old friend, I don’t like it.” Not only did he not like it, he thought, but it scared him beyond words. The fear was without form, abstract, so atavistic it predated language, and no words had ever been invented to describe it Such fear must have paralyzed the earliest hominids, crouching, huddling together, staring into a black night alive with unseen presences. From such fear had arisen gods, demons, magic, and with concepts made sharable by language, those first people had shielded themselves. But the fear was still there, in the genes, waiting only for a trigger to release it, and now, as then, it was beyond words. Conrad shook his head sharply. He looked around the room, and for a moment it wavered, seemed to come undone in a curious way, as if layer by layer something was unpeeling the years, taking it back to how it had been that night…
Mallory returned, breathing hard, like a man at the end of a marathon run. “Carlos is on the way,” he said. “And I called Sizemore. Hell arrange things at the hospital.” He did not look again at Hugh, and kept his eyes averted from the balcony, thinking that if he fought it consciously, deliberately, he could keep the room from shifting, keep everything in focus. He felt as if he couldn’t fill his lungs, the way he always felt when he swam underwater, almost frantic for air as soon as his head was submerged.
“Go wait with the women,” Conrad said abruptly. “I don’t know where Lucas took himself off to and they shouldn’t be alone.”
Mallory tried not to rush from the room, tried to achieve the control Conrad was displaying, but he knew his haste showed, and now, faintly, as if the speakers had been sleeping and were only half awake, he could hear their murmuring voices begin again, gathering strength, growing louder.
When Conrad joined the others in the television room Mallory put a drink in his hand. “Was he still out?”
