Dark on the Other Side (18 page)

Michael felt sure of this hypothesis when he started the
next letter and found Randolph’s name in the opening paragraph. The
context was not precisely what he had come to expect of Gordon Randolph.

“These sporadic flashes of brilliance baffle me,” his
father had written of the school’s star athlete and president of the
student body. “I expected great things of the boy, he’s already a
school legend, but he never happened to take any of my courses until
this year—which is his last. I’d say that literature simply wasn’t his
field, if it weren’t for that rare outstanding essay.”

The rest was inconsequential, for Michael’s purposes.
There was another reference to the devil worshipers, whose existence
was now a well-established rumor. His father found them exasperating,
whoever they were: “They’ve been reading about the Hellfire Club and
decided to imitate that bunch of nasty-minded little——”

The next word was indecipherable; which, Michael thought,
with a reminiscent grin, was probably just as well. His father’s
collection of epithets and expletives were drawn from the riper
Restoration dramatists; some of them had curled his hair even in his
supercilious high school days.

As he read on, his sentimental nostalgia increased; but
so did his bewilderment. There were eight letters in all. One of them
didn’t even mention Randolph, the others contained more references to
his father’s pet student—what was the kid’s name?—Al Something—than to
Gordon. Poor old Dad must have been losing his grip, Michael thought.
Gordon was only a few years away from his great book; according to the
publisher’s blurb, parts of it had actually been written while he was
in college. If his father hadn’t spotted a talent of that magnitude…

The last letter was no more informative, but it was
something of a shocker. His father’s handwriting was shakier than
usual, and his sentences were so garbled by emotion as to be relatively
incoherent in parts. The feeble idiocy of the campus Hellfire Club had
exploded into scandal and disaster; one student was dead as a result of
an occult experiment, which his father’s Victorian inhibitions had kept
him from describing in detail. And that student was the boy for whom he
had had such hopes—Alfred Green.

Large as the affair had been in the minuscule world of
the university, it hadn’t made much of a splash in the press. Michael
remembered hearing something about it, but the influential board of
trustees had succeeded in suppressing the details. Still, reading
between the lines, it must have been a nasty business. The word was his
father’s. It kept recurring, through the scribbled agitation of the
lines: nasty, foul, disgusting. It would seem that way to him, Michael
thought. Then, at the end of the letter, came a hasty postscript.

“Young Randolph came by this evening, to express his
regrets. Alfred was one of his closest friends. It was kind of the boy,
and perceptive, to know that this has hurt me worse than an ordinary
scandal would have done. Perhaps I haven’t been fair to him. Antipathy
is an odd thing.”

Michael sat staring at the last page for a long time,
while the cigarette burned down between his lax fingers and his second
cup of coffee grew cold. He felt completely deflated. He had expected a
complete, startling answer to the enigma that had begun as a simple
problem of character, and which had now taken on such ominous outlines.
But there was no answer in these letters, only new questions. In the
back of his mind the mental call still pulled, confusing what wits he
had left.

It was not until he was trudging through a blue twilight
on his way to the place where he had left the car that he realized what
the letters had told him. Another death. Randolph’s triumphant career
seemed to be unnecessarily littered with corpses.

He forgot this new piece of the puzzle, which was merely
an addition to his list rather than a clue as to why the list existed,
as he drove through the streets of the village near Randolph’s estate.
The street lights had come on and the houses looked peaceful and homey,
with lights twinkling through the gathering darkness. The temperature
had dropped, though; the wind that tossed the boughs was sharp. He
rolled up the car window.

He hit a snag when he turned into the curving streets of
the suburb. He had already observed that the inhabitants of Brentwood
liked their privacy. There were no quaint mailboxes with names on them
along the curving drives and walled estates. There weren’t many street
lights, either. Maybe the rich didn’t need them. They had their own
methods of guarding against crime—burglar alarms, dogs, even private
guards.

Nor did Andrea court publicity. Michael found the house
at last only because it was at the end of the sole road that was
unpaved and unlandscaped. A survival from a simpler past, he thought,
jouncing down the rutty lane. If there was a house down here, it was
well hidden. Mud squelched under the tires, and he had visions of being
thoroughly stuck, at the end of a road that petered out into forest.

As the thought formed, the road ended. The dark shapes of
trees loomed up, and Michael jammed on the brakes, skidding. He saw the
gate, and knew that he had arrived.

It was the sort of gate Andrea might have had constructed
to her specifications if she had set up shop as a newly certified
witch—wooden, rickety, sagging on rusted hinges. Thick, untrimmed
shrubs concealed the path beyond and leaned out over the fence like
watchful sentries. The house beyond was visible only as a crazy shape
of roofs and chimneys that cut off a section of starry sky. There was
no light, and no sign of human life.

Shapes other than man-made cut off the starlight. Half
the sky was curtained by clouds. The wind lifted Michael’s hair from
his forehead and turned the boughs of the tall shrubs into armed
appendages, which thrust out in abrupt challenge. The clouds hung
heaviest toward the east. As Michael watched, distracted from his
search by the eerie movement of the night, a glow of light flickered
above the tops of the pines, like the ghost of a sick sunset. It was
followed by a slow, far-off roll of thunder.

Practical considerations intruded on the fascination of
the approaching storm. This trek might turn out to be more disastrous
than a plain old wild-goose chase. The road was already gluey with mud;
another heavy rain could maroon him in this abandoned lane. He had
better check the house and get out.

The mental call that had brought him a hundred miles was
gone.

When it had left—if it had ever existed, save in his
imagination—he could not remember. But its absence left him feeling
blind or deaf, bereft of a sense that had, even in so short a time,
become something he depended on as uncritically as he accepted the use
of his eyes. For the first time in nearly twenty-four hours he examined
his activities in the cold light of reason, and found them folly. Only
his inborn stubbornness brought his hand to the latch of the gate.

It screeched rustily. He had half expected that it would,
but the sound, shattering the quiet night, made him jump. As he took a
tentative step forward, something streaked across the path in front of
him. He grabbed instinctively at the branch of the shrub, stabbed his
thumb on something sharp, and let out a yell. The shrub had thorns.

The darting streak that crossed his path hadn’t triggered
any fantasies, though; he knew what it was—a cat, one of the dozen that
Andrea was reputed to keep. He wondered where the others were, and what
arrangements Andrea made for their comfort while she was off on her
frequent trips. Then he realized that all the shrubbery was alive with
movement. The action of the wind made the foliage mutter; but there
were other sounds. Small, ground-level movements rustled branches and
made leaves whisper. He saw something glow into life at the base of a
bush near the house—two small round dots of red fire. The cats prowled.

He went down the path, feeling with feet and extended
hands. The clouds had grown heavier; there was no moon, and even the
faint starlight became increasingly obscured. He found the house by
running into it, literally. By daylight it was probably attractive;
there was a low porch, flanked by pillars and draped with vines. He had
banged his head on one of the pillars. The roof hung low, almost
brushing his head. He made his way to the door and fumbled for a bell
or a knocker.

This was the moment of low ebb. The expedition seemed
utterly futile, his mood of the last few hours a wild delusion. The
door did not seem to have a bell, and even if he found some means of
making his presence known, he did not expect an answer. Then lightning
split the sky—nearer now, a thin sword of light instead of a far-off
glow. For a split second he saw the details of the door starkly
outlined—brass knocker shaped like a frog’s head, small leaded window,
even the splinters in the wooden panels where impatient cats had
demanded entry. Then the light vanished, leaving his eyes blinded. But
his muscles remembered, and his hand found the knocker.

The damn thing made a sound like a bass drum. Echoes
rolled into the windy night; he heard them mutter and die inside,
beyond the door. Then the panels moved.

The inside of the house was darker than the night. He saw
only the pale oval of her face, suspended in blackness. He never
doubted her identity, even though she seemed smaller than he
remembered, as small as a child, as small as a bent old woman.

“I knew it was you,” she said, in a breathy whisper.

Michael nodded, then realized that she could see no more
of him than he could see of her.

“I figured you’d be here.”

“Why didn’t you come before?”

“It wasn’t until last night that I got your—” Michael
stopped; it was hard enough to mention his fantastic experience, but
the phrase he had been about to use reduced it to inanity, as if the
thing he had received had been a telegram or phone call.

Then he realized she was not listening. She was looking
past him, out into the dark garden.

He was slower to perceive. He realized first that the
wind had died; leaf and bough hung motionless, as if in apprehension of
what was coming. He thought,
This is going to be one hell of
a storm
. And he knew the thought for what it was—the
desperate defense of the commonplace against a phenomenon it was afraid
to admit. For the stillness was abnormal. Linda’s hand gripped his arm,
her fingers digging in like claws. At the same instant the silence
burst. He recognized the sounds, but they sounded different, here, than
they had coming from the back alleys of the city. Cats. The howls and
snarls seemed to come from more than a dozen feline throats. The
shrubbery was animate with glowing eyes and flying bodies.

The fury of the cats might have warned him, if he had had
time to think. The next flash of lightning came too quickly; it caught
him unprepared. The storm was moving in. All the horizon was dark with
boiling masses of cloud, and the thunderclap came close on the heels of
the light, booming like a cannon’s roar. In the ghastly gray-blue light
he saw it. Standing stiff-legged and huge, it might have been only a
monstrous image, cut out of basalt or obsidian. But the pricked,
listening ears were alive, and so were the eyes, glowing with an inner
fire. When the darkness returned, he felt as if every light in the
world had failed, and the darkness was worse than the vision itself,
because he knew it was still out there, waiting—the black dog.

LINDA KNEW IT WOULD BE THERE. SINCE
THE THING
first appeared to her, she had developed a
special sensitivity; she didn’t have to see it now, to know it was
coming. It was a tension in her very bones, like fear, a stench like
the foulness of decay. But familiarity did not breed contempt, or
acceptance. Every time she saw it, the feeling was worse. She would
have stood there, frozen, if Michael had not pushed her into the house
and slammed the door.

Two inches of wood were a frail barrier against the thing
in the garden. But it seemed to cut off some of the aura of terror that
enveloped it. Only then did she realize the enormous importance of what
had happened.

“You saw it,” she gasped. “Oh, God, oh, God—
you
saw it!”

“I saw it.” His voice was queer; she thought that the
emotion that made it shake was fear, until he went on, “God forgive me.
I thought you were imagining it.”

He caught her to him, holding her so tightly that
breathing was an effort. For a long moment she stood quiescent in his
arms, recognizing the impulse for what it was, a desire untouched by
ordinary physical passion. She felt it too—the reassurance of contact
with another living human body.

“You’re not afraid,” she murmured.

“Like hell I’m not,” Michael said promptly. “Linda—what
is it?”

“You saw it.”

“Yes, and I know too well that eyesight is a damned
unreliable witness. We can’t stand here all night. Are you sure it
can’t get into the house?”

“I’m not sure what it can do.”

“That’s comforting. Aren’t there any lights in this hole?
I’d be happier if I could see what was coming at me. I think.”

“Of course there are lights. I was afraid to use them,
before.”

“We’ll risk it now.”

As she switched the lights on, Michael turned from the
door. He had been peering out through the small window, and he answered
her question before she could voice it aloud.

“Nothing there now. I could see clearly during that last
big flash.”

“It’s gone,” she said. “Not—vanished. Withdrawn.”

“You can feel it? Sense it? Damn the language, it’s
inadequate.”

“I can tell when it’s coming, sometimes. But not long in
advance.”

Michael laughed, a short, explosive sound that held no
amusement. The antique wall sconce, which was the sole source of light
in the hall, held pink bulbs shaped like candle flames—one of Andrea’s
cuter affectations. The rosy light gave Michael’s cheeks a healthy
flush, but she knew, by the shape of the lines around his mouth, that
he was badly shaken.

“We’re talking about it as if it were susceptible to
natural laws,” he muttered. “Damn it, I’m still not ready to admit that
it isn’t. It was the shock of seeing it like that, when I hadn’t…And
you’ve been living with that for—how long?”

“I don’t know…. Months.”

“And you’ve held on to your sanity.”

“By the width of a fingernail,” she said. “By the breadth
of a hair.”

Separated from her by the width of the hall, Michael did
not move; but the steady dark eyes held hers with a look that was as
palpable as a touch, and as expressive as a page of print. Linda knew
the look; no woman with a single normal instinct could have failed to
read it. Her eyes fell before his, and after a moment he spoke in a
casual tone.

“As a companion in a haunted house you’re not very
cheering. You look like a little ghost yourself. How long has it been
since you’ve had any sleep, or a decent meal? And speaking of food, I’m
starved. Is there anything in the house except toadstools and henbane?”

“Yes, of course. Come out to the kitchen.”

While she made coffee and scraped together a scanty meal,
Michael wandered around the kitchen making casual remarks. This was an
interlude of comparative sanity in the midst of madness; both of them
recognized its artificiality, just as they recognized the need for a
breathing space. But she knew that he looked out the window each time
he passed it, and she did not miss the fleeting glance he gave the
door. It was bolted and chained; Andrea had left it that way, and she
had checked those bolts daily, knowing their inadequacy but knowing, as
well, that no precaution could be neglected. Only once did he refer to
the thing that loomed large in both their minds.

“The cats,” he exclaimed, as a tabby-striped tom
appeared, demanding sustenance. “How do they get in and out?”

“One of those pet doors, in the cellar. No,” she said, as
he made an involuntary movement of alarm. “It’s too small for anything
but a cat. You know how they can compress themselves—like rubber—”

“Yes, I know,” he said.

The meal was a poor one—she had already depleted Andrea’s
stock of food—but Linda ate ravenously. She hadn’t had much appetite
the last few days. Michael watched her with satisfaction, eating little
himself. She didn’t blame him; canned lima beans and tuna fish were
unappealing unless you were half starved. When she pushed her empty
plate away and looked up, she found him braced and ready.

“Talk to me,” he said. “I don’t know how much time we
have.”

“About—it?” She made a helpless gesture with her hands.
“How can I? How do you talk about something that is either supernatural
or else a—”

“Delusion? You still believe that?”

“At first, when you saw it too, I thought…But Michael,
you’ve heard of collective hallucinations.”

“The fact that you can still admit that possibility is a
good indication of your sanity,” Michael said. “I’m willing to admit it
myself, but only as one theory among others. Linda, are you sure that
damned thing isn’t real? That it isn’t an actual, living dog?”

“There is no such animal in the neighborhood. Believe me,
I made sure.”

“A wild dog? Even a wolf? It sounds unlikely, I know,
but—”

“Even a wolf can’t live without food. Sooner or later it
would rob a poultry yard, or attack a pet animal. It might not be seen,
but its presence would certainly be known.”

“And no one else has seen it?”

“No…” She found it hard to meet his eyes after that
admission, but he seemed undismayed.

“Not Andrea?”

“She knows about it,” Linda admitted. “She believes in
it. But she’s never seen it.”

“Odd,” Michael muttered. “That she hasn’t seen it. She
believes it’s supernatural, of course.”

“Of course. But don’t make the obvious mistake about
Andrea. For all her superstitions, she has a hard core of common sense.
She can believe in various fantastic phenomena, but she doesn’t imagine
things. There’s a difference.”

“I know what you mean. I could believe in flying saucers
without too much effort; there has been a certain amount of evidence.
But I can’t believe that I saw one land, and a bunch of little green
guys get out of it, unless I have a screw loose somewhere.”

“None of Andrea’s screws are loose. She has some screws
in unusual places, though.”

Michael laughed.

“Then you and I are the only ones who have seen the dog,”
he said. “When did you see it first?”

“It’s hard to remember exactly…. About a year ago, I
guess. I remember the occasion very clearly, though.”

“I can see why you might.”

“I went for a walk, at twilight. I like that time of
day—at least I used to. I wasn’t in a very happy mood. There had
been…words, with Gordon. I walked out under the trees, just wandering
around. The ground was wet and soggy, but everything smelled so fresh
and sweet. The sky was a pale greenish blue, there was a new moon. I
went down that avenue of cherry trees. It ends, if you remember, at a
fence; there’s a pretty view from that point, out across the pastures.

“I was leaning on the fence, thinking, when—there it was.
I saw it quite distinctly; the light was fading, but it seemed to stand
out, as if something shone behind it. I was frightened, but only
because it appeared so suddenly, out of nowhere, and because it was a
fierce-looking dog and a stranger. Honestly, Michael, I couldn’t be
mistaken about that, I really like dogs, I was friends with all the
neighbors’ pets…. Well, I knew better than to run, but I retreated as
quickly as I could. It didn’t follow me. Not until later did I realize
that it hadn’t moved, or made a sound, the whole time. It just stood
there, looking at me….”

“When did you start to think that it might not be a real
dog?”

“Not that time. Not even when a search failed to turn up
any sign of such an animal. Gordon was alarmed when I told him,” she
said expressionlessly. “He insisted on looking for it, right then, even
though it was almost dark. He and the yard servants searched again next
morning, and he called all the neighbors, and the police, to see if
anyone else had reported seeing it. No one had. But the worst was…I
told you the ground was soft and wet. When they searched the field
where I had seen it, they found no prints.”

From Michael’s expression, she realized that, despite his
comments, he had been clinging to the hope that the creature was
material. This piece of news hit him hard.

“How could prints show on grass?”

“There were large bare patches,” she said inexorably.
“Something would have shown, somewhere.”

“I see. But that wouldn’t be enough, in itself, to
convince you that you were having hallucinations.”

“No. I didn’t start thinking that until Jack Briggs
failed to see it, the next time it came.”

“If he wasn’t looking…”

“It ran straight across the terrace while we were looking
out the drawing-room window. It went fast, but it was in sight for
several seconds. That’s a long time, Michael.”

“Long enough. Any other non-witnesses?”

“Several. My maid, for one. That was from an upstairs
window, of course, and it was pretty dark.”

“Not easy to see in that kind of light, especially if she
had already been told you were suffering from hallucinations. Most
people see only what they expect to see.”

“Gordon told her something,” Linda said doubtfully. “I
think he must have warned all the servants about me. They started
treating me peculiarly about that time. But God knows I was acting
pretty peculiarly anyhow.”

“I imagine he pays excellent salaries, doesn’t he? Yes;
money, and his famous charm, could convince them of anything he wanted
them to believe.”

The room was full of cats by this time—fat cats, thin
cats, striped, spotted, and Siamese. One of them jumped onto the table,
with that uncanny suggestion of teleportation that surrounds a cat’s
suave quickness, and Linda stood up, overturning her chair.

“What are you trying to prove?” she demanded wildly. “You
still don’t believe in it, do you? You think it’s real.”

Michael stroked the cat, a round orange creature, which
was investigating his half-empty plate.

“That shouldn’t be the main point, for you,” he said
mildly.

“I’m grateful, don’t think I’m not. Whether it’s real or
just a plain apparition, it isn’t a figment of my imagination, or you
wouldn’t have seen it too. You aren’t the suggestible type. You’ve come
a long way to bolster me up, to support me. But you’d stop—you couldn’t
go on—if you knew what I really believe….”

The lights flickered and faded, leaving the room in brown
obscurity; and a violent clap of thunder seemed to rock the foundations
of the house. Linda covered her face with her hands. On the roof, a
thousand minuscule feet began dancing. The rain had started.

Michael stood up. He had scooped up the cat, to keep it
out of his food; and the animal, already full, hung complacently from
his hands with a full-moon smirk on its fat face. The contrast between
its furry blandness and Michael’s drawn features turned Linda’s cry of
alarm into a semi-hysterical gasp of laughter.

“Stop it,” Michael said sharply. “You’re losing your
grip—no wonder, in this place….”

He turned, looking helplessly around the room, which
still swam in an evil dimness. The stuffed monster dangling from the
ceiling seemed to grin more broadly, and the heavy beams seemed to sag.
Outside the window, the night was livid with the fury of the storm. But
Linda noticed how gentle his hands were, holding the unwanted bundle of
cat. Finally he put it back on the table, with the air of a man who is
abandoning lesser niceties, and sat down firmly on his chair. The cat
started licking his plate. Michael regarded it curiously.

“The cats are calm enough now,” he said. “They blew their
stacks when it was outside.”

Linda dropped back into her chair.

“Cats are traditionally sensitive to influences from the
other side,” she said dully.

Michael’s head turned sharply; on the verge of speaking,
he caught himself, and she knew that his comment, when he did speak,
was not the one he had meant to make.

“It only appears at dusk, or in a dim light?”

“Yes. Michael, I know what you’re trying to do. But it
won’t work. The fact that the thing only comes at night is just as much
confirmation of my theory as of yours.”

“You think it’s supernatural, then,” he said calmly.
“Something from—the dark on the other side.”

“Don’t! Why did you say that?”

“Never mind, I’ll get to that later. All right, so it’s
supernatural. The supernatural has many forms. What precisely is this
thing? A hound of hell,
à la
Conan Doyle? A
manifestation of hate and ill will? The old Nick in one of his standard
transformations? A werewolf, or a…”

His voice trailed off and his eyes widened. Linda nodded.
She felt quite numb now that the moment of truth was upon her, but she
felt no impulse to conceal that truth. Even if he stood up and walked
out of the house, leaving her more alone than she had ever been, she
had to be honest with him.

“The word is too simple,” she said. “But—yes. That’s what
it is. It’s Gordon.”