It replayed over and again in his head, like a song. He could
hear
it—the passage of air, the movement of his arm through the air.
Whoosh!
It was song.
Whoosh, thump! . . . Whoosh, thump!
So beautiful!
So beautiful!
Whoosh, thump, whoosh thump. Whoosh. Thump! Thump!
He pushed open the front door of the green cottage and told David, whom he could not yet see, "I love you, my friend."
~ * ~
In Anne Case’s house, the martins had fled through an open window on the third floor, and the spiders and insects that had been their food were again insinuating themselves in the house’s many rooms.
"I don’t remember coming here," David said. "I think I should remember coming here."
He was confused, astonished, frightened. He felt alone, and afraid, like a child who comes home to an empty house for the first time in his life and tries to convince himself that he’s actually in someone else’s house. But it is his house, the child knows. And it’s a very strange place, now, because no one else is in it; it echoes appallingly, and the rooms are too large, or too small, and the shadows cast by lamps and chairs and tables are shadows the child does not remember seeing in the house before.
The thin man said enthusiastically, "Tell me about dying. I want to know about dying." His face vanished into darkness, returned, vanished. "It sounds intriguing; it sounds like some experience I would like to have—though I really can’t say how I would know that—"
"I don’t know about dying," David told him.
"I’m disappointed," said the faceless man simply.
David looked at the window. "I know about darkness," he whispered.
"Everyone knows about darkness," said the faceless man. "When it comes, some people stay away from it, and some people don’t. Some people welcome it. But when they welcome it, no one sees them again. And no one knows where they’ve gone off to, either." He paused. "It’s a very wonderful mystery."
~ * ~
The green cottage smelled of lake air.
T
he body lay on its back halfway into the green cottage through the side door. "Lilac perfume," said the elderly man to the deputy sheriff. "That’s what you’re smelling."
The deputy leaned back from the open driver’s window of the shiny blue Toyota. He said grimly, "It looks like someone made her drink it, then strangled her."
The woman with the crown of black hair lay very still. A couple of flies buzzed about inside the Toyota. One settled on the woman’s cheek; the deputy, seeing this, grimaced and said, "Jesus, flies."
The elderly man said, "That’s a very perverse thing for someone to do, Deputy—making that woman drink her own perfume. A man who would do something like that would have to have a very dark soul."
"Yes, sir," the deputy said. "Very dark indeed." Another patrol car pulled up then, lights flashing.
~ * ~
Christian was on his haunches near the green cottage’s side door; his knees were close to David’s face; David’s mouth was open a little, and his eyes were closed lightly, as if he were asleep. Christian was running his fingers through David’s hair.
"Are you already dead, my friend?" Christian mouthed. No sound came out. Only air. "Dead already, David?"
But he thought not.
It did not seem so.
David’s chest wasn’t moving, but his skin was warm. He was in some twilight sleep, clearly.
I’m going to have to kill you myself, aren’t I?
Christian mouthed. He felt so pleased and titillated by the idea that a rush of excitement coursed through him and made him tremble.
He took his hand away from David’s hair. His fingers were damp and trembling; David’s hair was wet, he realized.
He cocked his head at this. Before dancing off to the other side, David had made sure that his hair was clean and fresh.
Christian stayed on his haunches.
Before his death, the man washed his hair
.
He watched as his fingers continued to tremble. Finally, they quieted.
How am I going to kill you, my friend?
The method was so important. Method in life was everything.
He would have to do it with finesse. And with subtlety.
Just as he had with Anne.
And with the woman in the blue Toyota. Making her strangle on her own perfume.
He couldn’t simply drop a very large rock on David’s head. It would get the job done, certainly, but it wouldn’t get it done with the care and artistry that the task demanded. It would be brutish to drop a rock on his head.
Too large a rock would leave David disfigured and unrecognizable. If, in the instant before the rock went
Sploosh
!
onto his head, David awakened from his gentle twilight sleep and saw what was happening, and he got a look on his face of great revelation and astonishment, that look would be lost forever. His lips and teeth would be squashed this way and that, and his nose would be flattened, and his eyes—depending on the jaggedness of the particular rock that was used—might well puncture. And punctured eyes were wholly incapable of expression. So, no one anywhere would talk about the look on David’s face when he died, because he would have no face. The people who discovered David’s body would never say, "He looked astonished. Did you see?"
It
would
be possible, on the other hand, to drop a rock on David’s throat and crush his windpipe. That would lead to suffocation. Such an act would leave no marks at all on David’s face. David’s face might well bear an expression of revelation and astonishment, and so people would talk about it for a long time.
Oh, these were dark, dark thoughts, weren’t they, on such a fair and breezy afternoon.
(But he had always been fond of darkness.)
Or he could get a pillow and do it or simply put his hand over David’s nose and mouth or get a knife a big knife from the kitchen and push it all the way into David’s chest.
~ * ~
"About an hour, I think," the first deputy said to the deputy who had just joined him. "Judging from body temperature, I’d say an hour."
The other deputy—older, jaded—smiled to himself, went over to the Toyota, leaned into the window, sniffed, and said, "Jesus, what’s that smell?"
"Lilac perfume," the other deputy told him.
"Yes," said the elderly man.
"Is it?" said the second deputy. "It’s awful."
"Well, sure," said the first deputy, "but I think you’re putting that smell into the context of the event—"
The second deputy looked around at him.
"Huh?"
The first deputy shrugged. "Nothing. Just talking. Do you think I should try and go find someone who might know this woman?"
"You haven’t looked at her driver’s license?"
"Not yet. I thought I should leave everything alone."
The second deputy sighed. "Sure. You were probably right to do that. But you could have called the plate number into DMV." He straightened. "I’ll do that. You go and see if you can find someone who might have seen something here. This area’s mostly deserted this time of year, so I doubt you’ll have much luck." He paused. "I’ll radio you with this woman’s ID."
~ * ~
"
Uhdarcknass
," wrote the chunky man in the below-ground-level apartment, "like
knowuthar
chasez
hymn
awl
over
thuh
plas
—and he looks
bahk
and
ittz
ganeingon
hymn
fasst
, he’s
knott
wonteeng
2b
quik
enuf
oar he wants it to catch hymn, this
theeng
frum
insid
hymn—"
I
t is ten years later. People are gathered for a séance in what was once Anne Case’s house. They’re clasping hands in a circle while the lights are dim.
Some of them have shut their eyes.
Some are looking about in the semidarkness, at the others, and wondering, variously, if this is a proper way for adults to spend their time; if the ones who have their eyes closed are sleeping, or if they really believe this stuff; if the woman of the house really thinks that the ghost of Anne Case still walks here.
And perhaps she does, some of them think.
Maude is the one who’s expected to lead this séance, but she’s temporarily at a loss because she has never led a séance before and isn’t certain of the protocol. It would be terrible, she thinks, to offend the spirits of those departed with the wrong terms or salutations. It would be even more terrible to offend the spirit of Anne Case or, and the thought is very fleeting, the stocky, mannish thing that she has seen in the house.
Does anyone know how to begin?
Maude wants to ask. And she almost asks it, but, not wanting to appear foolish, begins instead, "We are gathered in this circle, Anne, to appeal to you to . . . to speak to us, to show us a sign. For ten years you have been silent. Now you may speak."
It’s a good beginning, she believes.
She continues, "I have seen you here, Anne, and I know of your loneliness—"
There’s a giggle from somewhere in the circle and Maude hesitates, looks around the circle stonily for the giggler, says, "I know this seems funny to most of you"—she hopes that she doesn’t sound too terribly severe— "and if I were in your shoes, I’d be giggling, too, I’m sure. But just imagine what can be accomplished here if we simply focus all of our . . . uh . . . spiritual energy on this for a few minutes."
"Sorry," Barbara says from across the circle. "I’m a little nervous about this whole thing, I guess."
Maude says, "It’s okay. We’re only human, after all." She hesitates, takes a breath, goes on, "Let’s start over again, shall we."
In a far corner of the house, something stirs, and awakes. It has been trapped in the house for nearly a decade, and it is
tinglingly
aware of a kinship between itself and the gathering of souls in the house. The love of darkness that they share.
T
he view David had out the room’s tall window was of a wooden building across the narrow street; the street itself, made of brick; and, if he leaned out the window, and looked up, a long, rectangular slice of the furiously moving gray and blue sky.
The building across the street—it seemed only an arm’s length away, though that was probably an illusion; it was probably twenty feet or more from the window he was looking out of—was decorated with drawings done in what could have been charcoal, and with what looked like colorful oil paints—deep red, bright yellow, a strange, phosphorescent blue. Some of the drawings seemed to have actually been carved into the wood.
The drawings were everywhere. They snaked across the tops of windows, connected windows and doors. And they depicted many things. There were what looked like people. There were animals, buildings, mountains, trees.
Many of the drawings were childlike—some of the people were mere stick figures, some of the mountains simple triangular shapes, and the trees like straws with a ball at one end.