He just relaxed and let what was happening take its course, until it seemed it would go on forever…
61
Ralph Cazaubon had tried to call the house all afternoon, without success. The first day he had left Sam Towne to his strange vigil undisturbed, but on the second had found himself wondering so much what was going on that it became hard to concentrate on anything else.
All the same, he'd waited until after lunch to call. The morning had been spent looking at apartments to rent. So far he'd found nothing that seemed ideal for Joanna and himself, but there was no hurry: she was happy with her parents, and he'd promised to drive out to join her that night. Perhaps they'd take a vacation, he'd suggested, fly off to the sun where they could put the nightmare behind them. She had liked the idea. They said they'd talk about where over dinner.
So the afternoon was his last chance to find out what was happening with Sam Towne, preferably before dark. Although he disliked admitting it even to himself, he had no wish to be in that house-his house-after dark. He had already made up his mind that he was going to sell it. Even if the events of two nights ago never happened again, he couldn't bring himself to live there any longer. Above all, he couldn't let Joanna take that risk. He hoped only that Sam would somehow find a way of ending the possession that had so mysteriously entered the place; a house in the grip of such a thing would not be easy to sell, not even in that neighborhood and at a bargain price.
He rang the bell for several minutes before taking the duplicate keys from his pocket and inserting them in the door's two main locks. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves, and entered.
The coat stand was still where it had been two days ago, so he couldn't push the door all the way back but had to slide through sideways. He saw Sam Towne the moment he was through.
His naked body lay facedown at the foot of the stairs. His arms were out, as though he'd tried to break his fall, and his head was twisted at an angle that left no doubt that he was dead. His eyes were open as though staring in shock at the pool of his own blood that had congealed on the floor into a patch of dark and lusterless vermilion, almost black in the fading light of the late Manhattan afternoon.
EPILOGUE
If I don't go back,” she said, “this thing will stay with me for the rest of my life, and I refuse to accept that. I have to walk through the house just once, and then it will be over. Exorcised.”
Ralph tried to talk her out of it, but she was adamant. It had been ten days since Sam Towne's death. Ralph had met one of Sam's brothers, who had come down from Boston to arrange for the body to be shipped to Cape Cod for a family funeral. The death had been classified as accidental, with no suspicion of foul play: the fact that the deceased had fallen down the stairs while attempting to establish whether or not the house in which he'd died was haunted was of no great interest to the city authorities. Even if the presumption was that he'd been pushed, the law made no provision for the criminal prosecution of ghosts or other disembodied spirits.
The only real problem Ralph had had was what to do with the manuscript that he'd found on his desk in the music room. He hadn't discovered it until after the body had been removed. He'd taken it back to the hotel and read it there, after calling Joanna with the tragic news. He read it through twice, and then a third time, before facing up to the fact that he was going to have to make a decision. Even then he'd put it off, slipping the handwritten pages into an envelope that he'd placed in the hotel safe.
There it had remained for several days, until all the legalities had been taken care of. Even when one of Sam's colleagues from the university, Peggy O'Donovan, had come over to see the place where he had died, Ralph didn't mention its existence. With each day that passed, during which time there was no evidence of any renewed unnatural activity in the house, he grew less inclined to do so.
He had workmen come in and clean the place up. The mirror in the bathroom was replaced. Nobody reported feeling anything strange or noticing anything out of the ordinary. Even Ralph himself began to feel as much at ease in the house as he had in the past, though he still did not spend a night there, and formally put it in the hands of a real estate agent after a week.
The more he thought about Sam's manuscript, the less inclined he was to let anyone else see it. Legally and morally, he supposed, it was the property of Sam Towne's family. Or perhaps his colleagues at the university. But the fact that Sam had left no written instruction, no indication whatsoever as to whom he was actually addressing in the document, gave him surely, Ralph thought, some leeway in his choice of what to do with it.
The night before leaving the hotel and moving into the comfortable apartment he had found on Madison and Sixty-fourth, he took it from the hotel safe and burned it, page by page, in the metal wastepaper basket in his suite. The act made him feel that the whole episode was now over and a line drawn under it. What Sam Towne had written was something that no normal person could accept as any kind of literal truth. It was fantasy at best, the invention of an unbalanced mind. Characters like Ellie and Murray Ray were figures from cheap fiction, not real life. The Joanna Cross to whom the whole unlikely story was supposed to have happened had never existed. The whole thing was best ignored, and if possible forgotten. There was no point in causing needless trouble for himself or, above all, for Joanna. Sam Towne's story was the kind of superstitious nonsense, neither provable nor disprovable, that got printed in the tabloid rags you found on sale at supermarket checkouts. It could blight their lives forever if some sensational rumor of this kind got into circulation. He felt no remorse as he took the blackened ashes to the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet.
After that he had thought his troubles were over, until Joanna began to insist on returning to the house. Just once, she said. An exorcism. Not of the house but of herself, of her fear that she had been touched by something alien and unnatural that she could only leave behind by making this one last ritual visit.
Ralph didn't know why he felt such apprehension at the prospect, but he did.
“All right,” he said, “I can't stop you, but I can at least come with you. You aren't going to complain about that, I hope.”
“Of course you can come with me.” She slipped her arm through his and kissed him. “We'll go together, then leave it all behind.”
The following day was bright and clear, with a frosty sun that gave the city a sharp-edged clarity. They entered the house just after ten, descending first to the kitchen, then back up to the drawing room where the whole thing had begun. The damaged furniture had been removed, the carpets and light fittings put back in order, and a new mirror installed above the fireplace.
They went upstairs, into the music room, the guest rooms, and the small room at the back that Ralph had made his library. Finally they went upstairs to their bedroom and adjoining bathroom, and stood for some moments in silence as the sun streamed brightly through the windows.
“You know,” she said, “I'm beginning to regret we said we'd sell it.”
“I know,” he said, “me too. But I still think we should, don't you?”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, I suppose so. It couldn't ever be the same, could it?”
They started down the stairs again. They were halfway down when they heard the front door open and shut. They stopped and looked at each other. They both felt a momentary unease, but then he gave her a slightly shamefaced, reassuring grin.
“I forgot,” he said. “Madge Rheinhart called from the real estate office. She said she was bringing some people to see the house. She thinks they're serious. It's exactly what they're looking for, and they have the money. Let's go down and say hello.”
As they reached the hall, Joanna frowned. She didn't know what it was, but something about the short, elderly couple with the tall and elegant Miss Rheinhart seemed oddly familiar. The woman was wearing an expensive-looking fur coat, the man a camel-hair coat and a black fur hat. But when they turned as she and Ralph approached, she realized that she had never seen them before.
“Oh, Mr. and Mrs. Cazaubon,” Madge Rheinhart said, all charm and studied poise, “I didn't know if you'd still
