Dark on the Other Side (23 page)

The letters were too small a scrap. They told her nothing
she didn’t already know. But the warm drink and the forced
concentration helped her nerves. Lethargy replaced her earlier anxiety.
Even the sudden movement of the cat did not startle her; but Michael
started and swore as the long, lean body streaked for the kitchen.

“That’s funny,” he said.

“What?”

“There goes a plate…. Oh, nothing. But he usually doesn’t
move that fast unless he hears someone coming.”

He was sitting upright, frowning. Funny, Linda thought.
Now he’s getting nervy, and I’m falling asleep. She put the last letter
down.

“Your father didn’t like Gordon,” she said.

“No. I wonder why.”

“Antipathy, he says.”

“That’s just a word people use to explain reasoning they
aren’t consciously aware of. What I don’t understand is that letter
about the Hellfire Club.”

“Oh, that was Gordon,” she said vaguely. She yawned.

“What do you mean?”

“He’s been dabbling with demonology for years. Good God,”
she said, roused by anger, “you still think I invented all this, don’t
you? Where do you think I got my ideas? Why did you think Gordon and
Andrea were at swords’ points? Why do you think she hated him?”

“I never imagined…” Michael looked dazed. “He’s such a
fastidious person….”

“You’re thinking of Satanism in terms of Aleister
Crowley, and the Great Beast, and sexual orgies. That’s only a
perversion added by some psychotics. It was never like that with
Gordon. If anything, he’s too puritanical, too cold. It’s power he
wants, power and control. Isn’t that the ultimate control—over the
minds and the will of others? He tried teaching and he tried politics,
but they weren’t enough. Through them he could partially dominate
certain types, but there were always a few who were immune, and they
were the ones he wanted most to dominate.”

Another wide yawn interrupted her. It was a pity, she
thought sleepily, that she should be so tired. This was an important
point, something Michael hadn’t realized, something he had to know.

“The clue to Gordon Randolph,” Michael muttered. “Is this
what I’ve been groping for? Hey—you’re going to fall apart, you’re
yawning so. We’ll talk more in the morning. Bed for you.”

Linda let him lead her toward the bedroom, knowing that
she ought to be tending to him, but too sleepy to care, too sleepy to
pay attention to his explanations and his arrangements. He said
something about sleeping on the couch. Linda looked up at him,
blinking; her eyelids were so heavy.

“All right,” she said obediently.

She might have been able to prevent it if she had seen it
coming; but she was too sleepy, and he was too strong. His arms went
around her; even the arm that was bandaged from wrist to elbow held her
close. His mouth was warm and hard and insistent on hers. For a few
sleep-dazed moments she was lax in his embrace, not responding, but not
resisting. Then a frenzy of revulsion filled her, and she struggled.

He let her go at once.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to do that. But you
looked so…”

He was pale; whether with pain or anger, she could not
tell. Linda swayed, gasping for breath; and the words that came out of
her mouth were not the words she had meant to say.

“Michael. Lock me in!”

His eyes widened, and then narrowed to slits as the
meaning of her words struck him.

“No,” he said violently.

“Please.”

“No.” His voice was gentler but inexorable. “I won’t,
even if I could. Hell, I don’t know where the key is, if there is a
key. There is no need for me to lock you in. Now go to sleep. Sleep
well.”

With a whimper she turned away, stumbling, and threw
herself down on the bed. The movement took the last of her strength; a
great weight seemed to be pressing down on her, on mind as well as
body. But her mind fought off the pressure for several seconds after
her body had succumbed; she knew what was coming. And knew also that
those few seconds of awareness were part of Gordon’s plan—the
realization of danger coupled with the inability to avoid it is the
highest refinement of cruelty. Then, finally, the weight closed in, and
her last spark of will flickered out.

III

Michael watched until her breathing slowed and she lay
quiet. His hand went to the light switch, and then withdrew. If she
woke, in the dark…

Was it only an irrational symbol, this concept of
darkness versus light? Darkness concealed; but why need the objects it
hid be objects of fear? They might be friendly things, things of
beauty. Perhaps they only feared the dark who had seen some frightful
thing come at them out of the veils of darkness. From the dark, the
dark on the other side…

Turning away from the door, Michael wished fervently that
he had never met Kwame nor heard that enigmatically threatening phrase.
What did it really mean? It meant something to Kwame, something he felt
so strongly that he could transfer the impression to other people.
Michael remembered the horrifying vision he had had when Kwame first
spoke the words. That had to have been some kind of ESP; he couldn’t
have thought of it by himself.

And it was a hell of a picture to have in the back of his
mind, especially after a night like this one. Michael found himself
reluctant to turn out the lights in the living room, though the glow
from the open bedroom door was brighter than his sleeping room usually
was.

He threw himself down on the couch, too tired to look for
blanket or pillow. His feet were propped on one arm of the couch. It
was too short for comfort, but tonight he didn’t care; he could have
slept on a stone. He was too tired to think—and that was just as well,
because the thoughts foremost in his mind were ugly thoughts. Satanism,
possession, werewolves, the dark on the other side…His arm was
throbbing. The pain killer was wearing off. He thought about getting up
and taking another pill. But the bottle was in his coat pocket and his
coat was in the closet and the closet was ten feet away, and that was
just too damned far for a man who had been up all night, battling
werewolves and witches and…Heavily, Michael slept.

And woke, with one of the wrenching starts that sometimes
rouse a sleeper from a dream of falling. He had only been asleep for a
few minutes; his muscles still ached with fatigue. Something had
wakened him.

Mind and body drugged by the short, annihilating nap,
Michael lay quiescent and listened. There were sounds, out in the
kitchen. That was what had roused him. Someone was in the kitchen,
moving around.

The most logical source of noise was Napoleon. But his
sleeping mind was accustomed to the cat’s comings and goings, it would
have noted the sounds, classified them, and let him sleep. These were
not the noises the cat made when it thudded down into the sink or
lapped water or chewed the hard, crunchy bits of cat food. These were
small, metallic sounds, like coins chinking in someone’s pocket…a loose
metal strip blown by the wind against another piece of metal…knives and
forks in a drawer, being shifted….

When he recognized the sounds and identified the key
word, his brain refused to accept the conclusion. Maybe Linda had been
unable to sleep. Looking for the wherewithal to make coffee or food,
she would naturally move quietly, so as not to disturb him.

Then he saw her. The kitchen, out of the direct beam of
light from the bedroom door, was very dark. As she moved out into the
diffused dimness of the living room, her slim body seemed to be forming
out of shadows like a dark ectoplasmic ghost. She stood still for
several seconds, as if listening; and Michael remained quiet, not from
design, but because his paralyzed body was incapable of movement. There
was just enough light to reflect, with a pale glitter, from the long
shiny object in her right hand.

SHE MOVED VERY SLOWLY. WHEN SHE
REACHED THE
couch, she stood motionless for several long
moments. He could see the knife distinctly now, it was only inches from
his face. It hung from fingers so lax that they seemed about to lose
their grip altogether. He could hear her breathing. It was quick and
deep, long gasps of effort.

Her fingers tightened and her arm began to move.
Up—slowly, in abrupt jerks and starts, as if struggling against a force
that tried to hold it. Michael watched in an unholy fascination; the
whole bizarre episode might have been happening to someone else, with
himself an unwilling and helpless spectator. Now her arm was high above
her head. A strained, impractical position for a downward blow…The arm
started down.

Michael moved. To his outraged nerves it seemed as if the
whole thing were taking place in slow motion: that he had an infinite
amount of time in which to act before the knife struck. In an almost
leisurely movement his right arm lifted and his fingers clamped around
the wrist of the hand that held the knife.

His touch affected her like a jolt of electric current;
every muscle in her body stiffened, her wrist twisted frantically in
his grasp. She screamed, a thin, high sound that was more like the
voice of an animal in agony than anything human. It was the scream as
much as anything else that made Michael take more than defensive
action. A few more moments of that, and someone would call a cop.

He tried not to hurt her. Rolling sideways off the couch,
he pulled her down with him, pinning her kicking legs with his body,
his right hand still tight around her wrist, his left fumbling for her
mouth. They struggled in darkness; the back of the couch cut off the
feeble light from the bedroom. He could feel her struggling, feel the
writhing of her lips against his palm. He had half expected the
maniacal strength he had read about, but he encountered very little
difficulty; she was a small woman, and it took only seconds to
immobilize and quiet her. Flaccid and cold under his hands, she lay
still. He couldn’t even feel her breathing.

It never occurred to him that her collapse might have
been a ruse. He scrambled up. His need for light was more than a need
to see, it was a craving for the power that opposed the dark.

She looked like a sick child in a sleep troubled by
pain—tumbled hair, pale face, mouth drawn down in a pathetic grimace.
She was wearing his old bathrobe, which had helped to hamper her
movements; the struggle had torn it open, but she was still wearing her
slip and underclothing. Michael revised his comparison. Not a child,
no. But she looked pitifully young. The wrist he had twisted seemed too
fragile to resist the lightest touch. By her right hand lay his big
carving knife.

Michael kicked it out of the way. He knelt down and put
his ear to her breast. Faint and abnormally slow, but it was there—the
pounding of her heart. He straightened, studying the pale face with a
mixture of different terrors. The closed lids veiled the eyes; he
wondered what he would see in those eyes when the lids lifted.

After a moment he stood up and went into the bedroom.
When he came back, she hadn’t moved. Carefully he wrapped the bathrobe
around her; the coldness of her skin and the sluggish pulse suggested
shock. Then he set about the rest of the job. His mouth was set in a
tight, twisted line as, using the neckties he had brought from the
bedroom, he tied her wrists and ankles together.

A pale, ugly dawn was breaking before she came to.
Michael had tried everything he could think of to bring her out of her
faint—wondering, all the while, whether he really wanted her to wake
up. Faces in sleep or unconsciousness were like blank pages; waking
intelligence, the expression of eyes and mouth, are what give
individuality and character. What would he see when her eyes opened?
The face, now familiar and beloved, of the girl he wanted; or the Medea
figure who had stood over him with a knife?

He had carried her back into the bedroom and piled every
blanket he owned over the waxen body. He had bathed her face and rubbed
her wrists. The slow, mechanical breathing did not change; the muscles
of face and body remained flaccid. And the night wore on. It seemed to
Michael at times as if the sun would never rise, as if some
astronomical miscalculation had stopped the earth on its axis. Then the
first sullen streaks stained the clouds; and her eyes opened.

Michael saw what he had hoped, but not really expected,
to see. His relief was so great that he dropped with a thud onto the
edge of the bed. But the realization that dawned in her face, as memory
returned, was almost worse than the madness he had feared. Her horror
and consternation were genuine; if he had had any lingering doubts of
her honesty, they vanished then. Her eyes moved from his face,
downward, toward her bound wrists and ankles. They were hidden under
the piles of blankets, but he knew she could feel the bonds.

“I’ll take them off,” he said quickly. “I just wasn’t
sure…It’s all right now, I’ll get them off….”

He turned the covers back, and she twisted frantically
away from his hands.

“No—no! Leave them on, don’t let me—”

“It’s gone,” Michael said, hardly knowing what he was
saying. “It’s all right.”

“How do you know?” Her voice was quieter, under a fierce
control, but she still held herself away from him. Michael’s hands
dropped back onto the blankets.

“Don’t you see,” she went on, “that we can’t take the
chance? I can’t take it, even if you will. Call your friend. Call
Bellevue, some hospital. And leave me tied until they come for me.”

Michael shook his head dumbly. He was incapable of
speech, but she read his face, and her own expression changed. Her eyes
flickered and then dropped away from his.

“All right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I was upset. Untie me.”

She held her bound wrists toward him. The cloth was soft,
and he had not tied the knots tightly; but he saw the red marks on her
wrists, and his first impulse was to do as she asked. Yet he
hesitated—noting her reluctance to meet his eyes, remembering the
quick, cunning expression that had flickered across her face.

“What will you do if I untie you?” he asked.

Her silence was all the answer he needed. The minute his
back was turned, she would run, and not stop running until she had
found a safe padded cell in which to hide. She might even go back to
Gordon, she was desperate enough for that…. And through the black
despair that enveloped him he felt an incongruous flash of something
like triumph. She hadn’t reacted this way after her attempt on Gordon.
Rather than risk hurting him, she would run to meet the fate she had
been fleeing.

“No,” he said decisively. “Not that way, Linda.”

Her eyes blazed up at him, and she started to speak. The
words caught in her throat as they heard the sound of a knock at the
front door.

The same idea came to both their minds simultaneously:
Gordon. Michael moved just in time to stop the scream that had gathered
in her throat. He knew what she meant to do, and he knew what his
course of action must be. The struggle was short but ugly, because now
he was not fighting some sick manifestation of hate, but Linda herself.
When he stood up, he was wet with perspiration. His stomach contracted
in a spasm of sickness as he looked down at the writhing figure on the
bed—gagged with a towel, its wrists and ankles tied firmly to the
bedposts. The knock was repeated. It had come again twice while he
was…Whoever it was must know he was there.

Michael turned on his heel and went out, closing the
bedroom door tightly behind him. As he reached the front door the knock
was repeated. He wrenched the door open with a violence that did little
to relieve his fury and frustration. He was almost hoping that his
surmise was correct. It would have been a pleasure to get his hands on
Randolph.

But it was not Randolph. It was his secretary.

“Good morning,” Briggs said politely.

Michael stared back at him, deflated and uncertain. He
was not sure of Briggs’s role. Involved he must be, but perhaps only as
one of Gordon’s blinded disciples. If that was the case…Michael’s
stomach contracted as he remembered what lay on the bed in the next
room. Linda wouldn’t be the only one to be locked up if Briggs happened
to see that pretty picture.

“Good morning,” he answered, wondering how his voice
could sound so normal. “Looking for something?”

Briggs blinked; a sly, appreciative smile moved his
mouth. The expression was so ugly that Michael fell back a step. Briggs
took advantage of his movement to enter.

The man was dressed in an imitation of Gordon’s
impeccable taste. The suit had been well fitted; but not even Savile
Row could have done much with Briggs’s figure. The expensive leather
belt had slid down below the equator of his round belly, and the
Italian silk tie curved out to follow the hump. In his hand Briggs held
a hat. He put it down on a table and glanced around the room.

“Nice place you have here,” he said.

There was no sound from the bedroom. Michael wondered
whether Linda had recognized Briggs’s voice and found him too much even
for her new resolution. He couldn’t risk it, though. He had to get the
man out of here.

“I don’t like to seem inhospitable,” he said, “but I’m
just about to go out.”

It was such a glaring lie, considering the hour and the
state of Michael’s apparel, that Briggs didn’t bother to comment. But
another of those faint, unpleasant smiles touched his pale mouth.

“Oh, I shan’t stay. I just came by at Mr. Randolph’s
request. You haven’t seen anything of Mrs. Randolph, I suppose?”

A series of soft thuds came from behind the closed door.
Michael glanced at it.

“That damned cat,” he said.

“Your cat? How nice that you have a pet.”

“If you don’t mind…” Michael felt he couldn’t control
himself much longer. In about thirty seconds he was going to grab
Briggs by the collar of his pretty suit and heave him out the door.

“Yes…You see, there was a sad occurrence last night. You
remember our local witch, I’m sure. Apparently she got carried away by
one of her experiments and set her house on fire.”

“Really?” His tone didn’t even convince Michael himself,
but suddenly he no longer cared. Briggs knew. He knew all about
everything.

“Yes,” Briggs cooed. “Very sad. Burned to a crisp, the
poor old lady was. Well, naturally Mr. Randolph thought Linda might
have been involved.”

“Linda,” Michael repeated.

“I think of her that way,” Briggs said, with an
indescribable smirk. “I wish we could find her, helpher…. She’s a
beautiful young lady. A shameto have all that go to waste in some
asylum.”

Two things kept Michael from planting his fist right in
the center of Briggs’s leer. One was the thought that it would be like
hitting a fat woman. The other was the knowledge that Briggs was trying
to anger him into an indiscreet act.

“How is Mr. Randolph?” he asked.

“Not well.” Briggs shook his head sadly. “He’s very
upset, naturally. Knowing Linda’s sad history as he does, he wondered
about what happened to Andrea. Luckily the evidence was destroyed. The
body, I mean.”

“I’m late now,” Michael said.

“How thoughtless of me to keep you, then.” Briggs turned
toward the door. Then he made a sudden dart to the side, his pudgy hand
shooting out.

“Here it is,” he exclaimed guilelessly, holding up a
small black notebook. “Mr. Randolph thought he might have misplaced it
here.”

Michael looked at it.

“Randolph’s? But it must have been here for days. I never
saw it.”

“Somehow it seems to have worked its way under a heap of
magazines,” Briggs said blandly. “You busy writers aren’t the neatest
housekeepers in the world, are you? He’ll be glad to have this back.
And to think this was the reason why he asked me to stop by. I declare
I’d have forgotten to ask if I hadn’t seen it, peeping out. Well, then…”

“Wait a minute,” Michael said. An insane suspicion had
entered his mind. “Let me see that.”

Briggs surrendered the notebook without comment. Only his
raised eyebrows indicated courteous surprise.

Michael flipped through the pages of the notebook. It was
an ordinary little loose-leaf pad, except that its cover was of tooled
leather instead of plastic. It was certainly not Michael’s property,
and the handwriting on the pages resembled what he remembered of
Gordon’s script. The entries were cryptic and abbreviated; they might
have been written in the sort of personal shorthand a busy man had
developed in order to jot down appointments and reminders. A few of the
signs reminded Michael of chemical or mathematical symbols.

With some reluctance he returned the notebook to Briggs.
He had an odd feeling that if he could study those entries at leisure,
he might learn something important. But he couldn’t refuse to let the
man have it, and the need to get Briggs out was stronger than any
possible gain from the book.

“Well, I must be running along,” Briggs said affably. “I
hope you’ll excuse the intrusion, at this hour. I have a busy day ahead
of me. Oh, and by the way…”

Already in the doorway, he turned.

“If Linda should turn up, do be kind to the poor girl.”

“Naturally.”

“But don’t forget…”

“Forget what?” Michael snapped.

“She might be dangerous,” Briggs said softly. “Be
careful.”

He went out, and just in time; the itching in Michael’s
fingers was almost intolerable. He slammed the door and leaned against
it, twisting his hands together. When he was able to speak without
stammering, he went back to the bedroom.

She lay quiet, staring at him over the gag, her eyes
liquid and enormous. Michael took the gag off and untied the cords that
held her down. Neither spoke. He sat down on the edge of the bed,
knowing he dared not touch her, and watched the tears slide down her
cheeks and soak into the pillow on either side of her face.