"Maybe she wasn’t calling from home," Collins suggested.
"Or maybe she wasn’t answering the phone," Kenner said.
"Are you going to pursue it further?" Collins asked.
"Yes," Kenner answered.
~ * ~
The rest of the yellow cottage was spotless, but the crawlspace attic was home to a hundred varieties of spiders and insects; the cellulose insulation—installed two decades earlier—had begun to disintegrate and, because there was an opening to the crawl space from under the eaves—caused by the effects of dry rot—the brisk winds that day pushed the disintegrating insulation about like dust.
The pudgy-faced housekeeper hiding in the crawlspace—she was hunched precariously on the joists; there was no floor, only the old, rotting joists, the decaying insulation between, the Sheetrock kitchen ceiling below—could see nothing except a sliver of yellowish light at the bottom of the small attic-access door. But she could feel a hundred tiny legs tickling her exposed arms and calves, and the cellulose dust blowing about was quickly clogging her nose so she had to breathe through her mouth, which was nearly impossible because her terror was forcing her to breathe very rapidly. As a consequence, she was hyperventilating and becoming dizzy.
She did not think it was possible she was going to die.
She thought it was a certainty.
She began to pray. Silently.
And somewhere behind her terror, she wondered about heaven.
~ * ~
"David?" Christian Grieg mouthed silently. "David? I know you’re up here." No words came out, only the passage of air, a whisper so small even he could not have heard it.
The small room stank of cleaning fluids. This displeased him. David was trying to clean him out of his life. That wasn’t friendly. They had known each other a good long time—Who knew how long?—and now David wanted to clean him out of his life, as if he—Christian—were nothing more than a spot of dirt, a mote of dust, a stain.
"David?" he mouthed. "David?" He looked about. A full-sized bed, beige comforter, newly fluffed pillows. A nightstand—oak. A wastebasket. Track lighting above. "David, I saw you come up here." No words. Only air. He moved quietly across the room, to the front of the bed. He looked right. A window. It opened onto the lake. There were whitecaps. They were silent. The room was silent. "David?" Air moving. "David?" He looked left. The door. The stairs. A chest of drawers. Cherry. A mirror.
A man was there, in the mirror. He stood silently, eyes wide, head cocked, mouth crooked.
"Hello," Christian said.
"Hello," said the man in the mirror.
Christian looked straight ahead. Another door. Much shorter, waist-high. Closet? he wondered. Attic?
"David?" Only air. Stillness. Silence.
He leaned over. There was no knob, just a rectangular block of wood nailed vertically to the door. He grasped the block of wood, pulled it. The door would not open.
He chuckled silently.
He pulled the door harder.
He heard a scream from beyond the door, the sound of wood cracking, another scream, something thumping hard—with grim finality—to the kitchen floor below.
"David," he said.
~ * ~
The woman stretched her arms out to touch the walls that were never close enough. She needed closeness. She needed space. She felt pulled and compacted all at once. She wept. She laughed.
She remembered.
The soft, oval face of a man with sensitive gray eyes.
"Brian," the woman said. But it meant nothing to her. It was a little more than a tic, a random movement of her lips, that made her feel warm for an instant.
Then the face dissipated.
And, again, the woman found herself trying almost desperately to reach the walls that were never close enough.
~ * ~
The thin man sat in an uncomfortable-looking wooden rocking chair and sipped orange pekoe tea from a delicate blue teacup as he rocked. White daylight streaming in through the room’s tall, narrow window illuminated his legs, his middle, his legs, his middle.
He has been watching David for some time.
Because David, standing very still near the manuscript-laden bookcase, had not spoken for some time.
The faceless man wanted to coax David. He wanted to ask David lots of questions—questions that had plagued the man forever, questions the man was certain David could answer. But the man was telling himself that he had patience and sensitivity, and that he knew that David had suddenly become very troubled. So, he would hold his tongue for the moment. It was difficult—his lips quivered with the effort—but he remained silent.
Suddenly the light through the room’s one window grew dimmer. "Darkness again," the man said, and wanted desperately to elaborate.
David said nothing.
"It’s very unusual," the man said. "Darkness so soon after darkness."
"Darkness," David whispered. "My sister’s name is Anne."
"Anne," said the faceless man wonderingly.
"She’s here. Anne’s here," David said, and his voice rose in pitch as he spoke, as the excitement and certainty mounted within him. "Anne is here. In this city. I can
feel
it!"
"Anne," the thin man whispered, lost in the name, trying to find meaning in it. He said, "Sister," and wondered at it. He said, "Anne," and wondered at it. "Anne. Sister," he said.
"I can’t stay here," David said, and started for the door.
The faceless man rose abruptly from his chair, sending it rocking way back, until it nearly fell, then way forward. The faceless man crossed the room in a moment. He grabbed David’s arm.
David looked at the man’s long, dark fingers, then into the man’s face, the large eyes, wide nose. The mouth was set in a stern, straight line.
The man said, "I can see your face now. I think that that may be of some significance.”
~ * ~
Christian stared silently at the chunky woman lying dead on the kitchen floor of the yellow cottage. The woman was on her back, her arms wide, ankles crossed beneath her calf-length blue housedress. The dress had ridden up to just above her fat, dimpled white knees.
She was surrounded and covered by bits of gray cellulose insulation, whitish-gray Sheetrock and blond lengths of splintered, decayed, floor joists. Spiders of varying sizes and colors—they had fallen with her from the attic crawlspace—were busily retreating to hiding places in the kitchen.
The woman’s eyes were open and Christian thought that that was interesting—whatever could she be looking at?
"Well, now," he said aloud, and leaned over and put his open hand on the woman’s face, so his palm was on her nose, and his lower palm was on her mouth, and his fingers were touching her open eyes. He had never touched the open eyes of another person. He had always been interested in how they might feel. Moist? Cool? Warm? He found that the chunky woman’s eyes were cool and hard, like whole eggs.
He lingered with his open hand on her face for half a minute, then he straightened and gently toed her at the waist. He whispered at her, "Dead, huh?"
He sighed. He had the wrong cottage, that was obvious. But the past few minutes here had been wonderfully entertaining.
~ * ~
"Detective Kenner, this is Karen Duffy again. I’m afraid we . . . somehow we got cut off a few minutes ago. It’s this phone, I think. It’s very old. One of those black table models that weighs a ton—"
"Could you tell me where you’re calling from, Miss Duffy?" Kenner interrupted.
"Do you mean you want the number here? The telephone number?" She started to give him the number.
He interrupted again, "No. Whose house are you calling from? Your own?"
A moment’s silence. Then, "Christian’s house," she said.
"That’s the man you mentioned earlier? The writer?"
"Yes. Christian Grieg."
"Could you spell that, please."
"Grieg? Of course." She spelled it. "And Christian, his first name, is spelled as you’d imagine it is."
Kenner spelled Christian for her, anyway, then asked, "Is that right?"
"That’s right, yes," she answered, her voice shaky.
"Are you nervous, Miss Duffy?"
She hesitated, then said, "A little, certainly." She was trying to sound casual, offhand. "I imagine that lots of people are nervous talking to police detectives."
"Of course. Could you tell me the reason for your call, please?"
Silence.
"Miss Duffy?"
"I’m not sure." Her voice still was shaky. "Perhaps I’ve . . . " Silence.
"Please, Miss Duffy."
"No, I’m sorry for bothering you unnecessarily," she said. Then there was a click, a dial tone.
"
Goddammit
!" Kenner whispered. He got the phone book out of his desk drawer and looked up Christian Grieg’s number and address.
~ * ~
"Ah, but there you go again," said the thin man. "I can’t see you." He sounded playful. "It’s sort of a game of
peekaboo
you’re playing, isn’t it?"
"No," David said, his tone heavy with meaning. "No game. I’m dying."
The thin man shook his head; the darkness covering his face moved from side to side.
"You haven’t the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you?" David said.
"I don’t know about dying," the man said. "God, I don’t know about dying, but I surely want to, I have
always
wanted to know about dying, ever since I first put the word to paper—"
There was a loud, harsh gurgling noise from close by.
The man crossed quickly to a length of fat gray pipe that emerged from the floor near the darkened window and disappeared into the ceiling. He rapped on the pipe. The gurgling stopped. "Unequal pressure," he said. "No one knows why. There are these pipes everywhere. They go down through the houses and then into the ground, and from time to time they make that awful noise."
David turned toward the open door and the darkness. He said, "I know that my sister Anne is out there, in the city somewhere. I can feel it. That’s why I have to leave." He felt very odd, suddenly. Lightheaded and heavy and bloated all at once, as if he had eaten too much and drunk too much and was just beginning to feel the effects.
"Then leave," said the thin man.
David looked back at him. The darkness covering the man’s face dissipated all at once, as if it were merely an exhale on a cold day, and David saw the man’s wide nose, and large, friendly eyes, and full mouth. There was a look of bemusement on it. "Leave?" David said.
The man said nothing.
"Go into the darkness?" David was astonished by the idea.
Still the man said nothing.
"Who goes willingly into the darkness?"
"No one," the man said, and reached and
closedthe
door. "Some orange pekoe tea, then?”