Ellen hugged her. 'Oh, Aunt May,' she said softly. 'I'm going to be a help to you, I promise. You just take it easy. I'll look after you.'
May pulled away from her niece's arms, nodding. 'Yes, dear, it's very nice to have you here. We welcome you.' She turned and walked away down the hall.
Alone, Ellen suddenly realized her own exhaustion. She sank down on the bare mattress and surveyed her bleak little room, her mind a jumble of problems old and new.
She had never known her Aunt May well enough to become close to her — this sudden visit was a move born of desperation. Wanting to get away from her husband for a while, wanting to punish him for a recently discovered infidelity, she had cast about for a place she could escape to — a place she could afford, and a place where Danny would not be able to find her. Aunt May's lonely house on the coast had seemed the best possibility for a week's hiding. She had expected peace, boredom, regret — but she had never expected to find a dying woman. It was a whole new problem that almost cast her problems with Danny into insignificance.
Suddenly she felt very lonely. She wished Danny were with her, to comfort her. She wished she had not sworn to herself not to call him for at least a week.
But she would call her father, she decided. Should she warn him against telling Danny? She wasn't sure — she hated letting her parents know her marriage was in trouble. Still, if Danny tried to find her by calling them, they would know something was wrong.
She'd call her father tonight. Definitely. He'd come out here to see his sister — he'd take charge, get her to a hospital, find a doctor with a miracle cure. She was certain of it.
But right now she was suddenly, paralyzingly tired. She stretched out on the bare mattress. She would get the sheets and make it up properly later, but right now she would just close her eyes, just close her eyes and rest for a moment…
It was dark when Ellen woke, and she was hungry.
She sat on the edge of the bed, feeling stiff and disoriented. The room was chilly and smelled of mildew. She wondered how long she had slept.
Nothing happened when she hit the light switch on the wall. So she groped her way out of the room and along the dark hall towards the dimly perceived stairs. The steps creaked loudly beneath her feet. She could see a light at the bottom of the stairs, from the kitchen.
'Aunt May?'
The kitchen was empty, except for the light of a fluorescent tube above the stove. Ellen had the feeling that she was not alone. Someone was watching. Yet when she turned, there was nothing behind her but the undisturbed darkness of the hall.
She listened for a moment to the creakings and moanings of the old house, and to the muffled sounds of sea and wind from outside. No human sound in all of that, yet the feeling persisted that if she listened hard enough, she would catch a voice…
She could make out another dim light from the other end of the hall, behind the stairs, and she walked toward it. Her shoes clacked loudly on the bare wooden floor of the back hall.
It was a night-light that had attracted her attention, and near it she saw that a door stood ajar. She reached out and pushed it further open. She heard May's voice, and she stepped into the room.
'I can't feel my legs at all,' May said. 'No pain in them, no feeling at all. But they still work for me, somehow. I was afraid that once the feeling went they'd be useless to me. But it's not like that at all. But you knew that; you told me it would be like this.' She coughed, and there was the sound in the dark room of a bed creaking. 'Come here, there's room.'
'Aunt May?'
Silence — Ellen could not even hear her aunt breathing. Finally May said, 'Ellen? Is that you?'
'Yes, of course. Who did you think it was?'
'What? Oh, I expect I was dreaming.' The bed creaked again.
'What was that you were saying about your legs?'
More creaking sounds. 'Hmmm? What's that, dear?' The voice of a sleeper struggling to stay awake.
'Never mind,' Ellen said. 'I didn't realize you'd gone to bed. I'll talk to you in the morning. Good night.'
'Good night, dear.'
Ellen backed out of the dark, stifling bedroom, feeling confused.
Aunt May must have been talking in her sleep. Or perhaps, sick and confused, she was hallucinating. But it made no sense to think — as Ellen, despite herself, was thinking — that Aunt May had been awake and had mistaken Ellen for someone else, someone she expected a visit from, someone else in the house.
The sound of footsteps on the stairs, not far above her head, sent Ellen running forward. But the stairs were dark and empty, and straining her eyes towards the top, Ellen could see nothing. The sound must have been just another product of this dying house, she thought.
Frowning, unsatisfied with her own explanation, Ellen went back into the kitchen. She found the pantry well stocked with canned goods and made herself some soup. It was while she was eating it that she heard the footsteps again — this time seemingly from the room above her head.
Ellen stared up at the ceiling. If someone was really walking around up there, he was making no attempt to be cautious. But she couldn't believe that the sound was anything but footsteps: someone was upstairs.
Ellen set her spoon down, feeling cold. The weighty creaking continued.
Suddenly the sounds overhead stopped. The silence was unnerving, giving Ellen a vision of a man crouched down, his head pressed against the floor as he listened for some response from her.
Ellen stood up, rewarding her listener with the sound of a chair scraping across the floor. She went to the cabinet on the wall beside the telephone — and there, on a shelf with the phone book, Band-Aids and lightbulbs was a flashlight, just as in her father's house.
The flashlight worked, and the steady beam of light cheered her. Remembering the darkness of her room, Ellen also took a lightbulb before closing the cabinet and starting upstairs.
Opening each door as she came to it, Ellen found a series of unfurnished rooms, bathrooms and closets. She heard no more footsteps and found no sign of anyone or anything that could have made them. Gradually the tension drained out of her, and she returned to her own room after taking some sheets from the linen closet.
After installing the lightbulb and finding that it worked, Ellen closed the door and turned to make up the bed. Something on the pillow drew her attention: examining it more closely, she saw that it seemed to be a small pile of sawdust. Looking up the wall, she saw that a strip of wooden molding was riddled with tiny holes, leaking the dust. She wrinkled her nose in distaste: termites. She shook the pillow vigorously and stuffed it into a case, resolving to call her father first thing in the morning. May could not go on living in a place like this.
Sun streaming through the uncurtained window woke her early. She drifted towards consciousness to the cries of seagulls and the all-pervasive smell of the sea.
She got up, shivering from the dampness which seemed to have crept into her bones, and dressed quickly. She found her aunt in the kitchen, sitting at the table and sipping a cup of tea.
'There's hot water on the stove,' May said by way of greeting.
Ellen poured herself a cup of tea and joined her aunt at the table.
'I've ordered some groceries,' May said. 'They should be here soon, and we can have toast and eggs for breakfast.'
Ellen looked at her aunt and saw that a dying woman shared the room with her. In the face of that solemn, inarguable fact, she could think of nothing to say. So they sat in a silence broken only by the sipping of tea, until the doorbell rang.
'Would you let him in, dear?' May asked.
'Shall I pay him?'
'Oh, no, he doesn't ask for that. Just let him in.'
Wondering, Ellen opened the door on a strongly built young man holding a brown paper grocery bag in his arms. She put out her arms rather hesitantly to receive it, but he ignored her and walked into the house. He set the bag down in the kitchen and began to unload it. Ellen stood in the doorway watching, noticing that he knew where everything went.
He said nothing to May, who seemed scarcely aware of his presence, but when everything had been put away, he sat down at the table in Ellen's place. He tilted his head on one side and eyed her. 'You must be the
