41
Ben’s Citroen was still sitting in Eva’s parking lot, now plastered with wet leaves from the elms that shaded the square of gravel. The wind had picked up but the rain had stopped. The sign that said ‘Eva’s Rooms’ swung and squeaked in the gray afternoon. The house had an eerie silence about it, a waiting quality, and Jimmy made a mental connection and was chilled by it. It was just like the Marsten House. He wondered if anyone had ever committed suicide here. Eva would know, but he didn’t think Eva would be talking… not anymore.
‘It would be perfect,’ he said aloud. ‘Take up residence in the local boardinghouse and then surround yourself with your children,’
‘Are you sure we shouldn’t get Ben?’
‘Later. Come on.’
They got out of the car and walked toward the porch.
The wind pulled at their clothes, riffled their hair. All the shades were drawn, and the house seemed to brood over them.
‘Can you smell it?’ Jimmy asked.
‘Yes. Thicker than ever.’
‘Are you up to this?’
‘Yes,’ Mark said firmly. ‘Are you.
‘I hope to Christ I am,’ Jimmy said.
They went up the porch steps and Jimmy tried the door. It was unlocked. When they stepped into Eva Miller’s compulsively neat big kitchen, the odor smote them both, like an open garbage pit-yet dry, as with the smoke of years.
Jimmy remembered his conversation with Eva-it had been almost four years ago, just after he had begun practicing. Eva had come in for a check-up. His father had had her for a patient for years, and when Jimmy took his place, even running things out of the same Cumberland office, she had come to him without embarrassment. They had spoken of Ralph, dead twelve years even then, and she had told him that Ralph’s ghost was still in the house every now and then she would turn up something new and temporarily forgotten in the attic or a bureau drawer. And of course there was the pool table in the basement. She said that she really ought to get rid of it; it was just taking up space she could use for something else. But it had been Ralph’s and she just couldn’t bring herself to take out an ad in the paper or call up the local radio ‘Yankee Trader’ program.
Now they walked across the kitchen to the cellar door and Jimmy opened it. The stench was thick, powering. He thumbed the light switch but got no response. He would have broken that, of course.
‘Look around,’ he told Mark. ‘She’s got to have a flashlight, or candles.’
Mark began nosing around, pulling open drawers and looking into them. He noticed that the knife rack over the sink was empty, but thought nothing of it at the time. His heart was thudding with painful slowness, like a muffled drum. He recognized the fact that he was now on the far, ragged edges of his endurance, at the outer limits. His mind did not seem to be thinking, but only reacting. He kept seeing movement at the corners of his eyes and jerking his head around to look, seeing nothing. A war veteran might have recognized the symptoms which signaled the onset of battle fatigue.
He went out into the hall and looked through the dresser there. In the third drawer he found a long fourcell flashlight. He took it back to the kitchen. ‘Here it is, J-’
There was a rattling noise, followed by a heavy thump. The cellar door stood open.
And the screams began.
42
When Mark stepped back into the kitchen of Eva’s Rooms, it was twenty minutes of five. His eyes were hollow, and his T-shirt was smeared with blood. His eyes were stunned and slow.
Suddenly he shrieked.
The sound came roaring out of his belly, up the dark passage of his throat, and through his distended jaws. He shrieked until he felt some of the madness begin to leave his brain. He shrieked until his throat cracked and an awful pain lodged in his vocal cords like a sliver of bone. And even when he had externalized all the fear, the horror, the rage, the disappointment that he could, that awful pressure remained, coming up out of the cellar in waves-the knowledge of Barlow’s presence somewhere down there-and now it was close to dark.
He went outside onto the porch and breathed great gasps of the windy air. Ben. He had to get Ben. But an odd sort of lethargy seemed to have wrapped his legs in lead. What was the use? Barlow was going to win. They had been crazy to go against him. And now Jimmy had paid the full price, as well as Susan and the Father.
The steel in him came up.
He went down the porch steps on trembling legs and got into Jimmy’s Buick. The keys hung in the ignition.
His legs were too short to reach the pedals. He pulled the seat up and twisted the key. The engine roared. He put the gearshift lever in drive and put his foot on the gas. The car leaped forward. He slammed his foot down on the power brake and was thrown painfully into the steering wheel. The horn honked.
And he seemed to hear his father saying in his logical, pedantic voice: You must be careful when you learn to drive, Mark. Driving is the only means of transportation that is not fully regulated by federal law. As a result, all the operators are amateurs. Many of these amateurs are suicidal. Therefore, you must be
