Each of the other women came forward as well. They bent over the bed one after the other and spoke a comforting word or two, and then kissed her on the brow. She could feel the kisses burning there long after they had stepped back. And then the three of them, waving to her, slowly moved out through the door and away. She heard them walking in a group through her living room, and then the change in the sound of their footsteps as they entered the kitchen, and then the sound of the apartment door opening and closing. And then they were gone and she was alone.
Only not exactly alone as it turned out. As she lay there, with the room blurring in and out around her, she began to feel that something was there, watching her. Her eyes drifted around the room, slowly coming to rest on the end of the bed. There was something there, at the foot of it.
Steve?
she tried to say, but nothing came out.
Her eyes crossed, and the end of the bed doubled itself. She let one bed drift away from the other and then drift back again. When she blinked and they returned to being one bed again, she could see what was there.
She wished she couldn’t.
Something was perched there, huddled at the end of the bed. It was
small, hardly bigger than her forearm, humanoid in form but with skin that had the striated texture of bare muscle. It was blotchy and red, and in places oozed with pus. Wherever they touched it, the bed linens grew damp and filthy. Its eyes, too, were strange and protruding and seemed ready to burst.
It just stayed there, watching her. Not doing anything, just watching.
She was terrified. She tried to move, but she could not move. She tried to scream, but she could not scream. Her body no longer belonged to her. All she could do—all she would ever be able to do, she felt—was lie there and watch it watch her, and wait for it to move closer, inch by inch, until it was on top of her chest, taking away her breath.
Where was that book again?
wondered Francis. He had just been looking at it yesterday. Now where had he put it? He searched through the kitchen, then looked around the living room, then the bedroom without finding it. But when he went back into the living room he immediately saw it, open on the piano, right in plain sight. Of course. He should have seen it right away.
He closed it and shoved it into his briefcase, momentarily glimpsing the cover illustration, which was of a hanging witch. Last night after getting the wrong number he had tried to dial again, but this time nobody answered. If Heidi was there, she wasn’t picking up. So he’d made a note of her address. Assuming she hadn’t moved, he’d be able to talk to her in person, which was probably the best thing to do anyway, considering what he had to tell her. He would take the book with him and show her the Lords symbol, see if she’d let him compare it to the symbol on the record. And if she had a piano or a keyboard or something maybe she’d be able to play the tune for herself. Once she did that, maybe she’d be ready to hear what he had to say.
He headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Alice asked.
Almost instinctively he lied. “I have to drop by the museum for a second and check on something for the new exhibit.” Feeling guilty, he added, “Should I pick up lunch on the way back?”
It wouldn’t do for Alice to know where he was really going. She’d
just tell him he was being crazy and that he should “leave that poor girl alone.” But two of the female descendants of the men who had judged and slaughtered the Salem witches had been involved in ritualistic murders. Heidi was the only other female descendant he knew of, and she’d been sent a record with the Lords symbol on it, and thus she should be warned. He probably should tell the police as well, but that was a harder proposition. He didn’t know what he could say to them without making them think he was a nut job.
“Can’t someone else handle it?” she asked.
“Well, they could,” said Francis slowly. “But they’d do it wrong and then I’d have to redo it and that would take twice as long. Better just to get it over with. I’ll only be an hour.”
“Unbelievable,” said Alice. “You retire from teaching and suddenly you’re busier than you’ve ever been. What are they going to do when you give up working for the museum?”
“Close up shop, I guess,” he said.
And giving her a kiss on the cheek he headed for the door.
Alone in her apartment, Heidi sat cross-legged on her bed, morning light pouring through the window. She stared blankly ahead as she raised a cigarette to her lips and took a long drag. Something was missing, she kept thinking, but no matter how much she wracked her brains, she couldn’t figure out what it was. She kept staring straight ahead, trying to remember what it was, but it just wouldn’t come to mind.
She got up for a moment, wandered through the apartment, her face still expressionless. The place was a wreck, and for some reason she’d moved the mats and the runner in the kitchen and folded the rug back in the living room. She couldn’t remember any of it, not a fucking thing.
In the kitchen on the floor were a water bowl and a food dish. What were those doing there? She must have been watching someone’s pet and forgotten to take them back. Probably they’d been there for a while.
She wandered a while more before suddenly finding herself in bed again. The cigarette hanging from her fingers was dead. Where had that come from? When had she started smoking again? She flicked it onto the floor and reached into the pack for another, got it lit, drew deep on it.
Her cell phone rang. She let it ring a few times, then reached out and flipped it open. Slowly, she raised the phone to the side of her head and pushed it against her ear.
“Hello,” she said. Her voice sounded happy, perky. But her face remained expressionless, seemed almost dead.
“Hey, girl,” said Herman.
“Hey,” said Heidi. “What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing,” he said. “I’m just a worried Mother Hen checking in to make sure that everything is hunky-dory on the other side of the tracks.”
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said. “In fact, I slept really well last night.”
Her voice was still animated and lively but her face remained a mask, her eyes continuing to stare off into the distance.
“Well, that’s something anyway,” said Herman.
“Yeah,” said Heidi. “Hey, I’m sorry for being such a flake this past week. It’s all good now. I’m all good now.”
“I hope so,” said Herman.
“So, did you touch base with the band yet?” she asked.
“The Lords?” he asked. “Negative. As far as I know, nobody has. Sounds like amateur hour to me. I guess we just basically head over there, go through the motions, and hope that at showtime someone actually turns up and does a gig.”
“Well, worst case, I guess if they’re a no-show, then we get an early night.”
“Either that or a riot. Anyway, Whitey will swing by for you around five and then you can head over and experience this magical evening firsthand.”
“Sounds like a plan, Stan,” she said.
“So,” said Herman. “He’ll be over around five.”
Heidi laughed. “Dude, heard you the first time. Don’t worry. I’ll be ready for him. Bye.”
“Bye,” said Herman.
She snapped the phone shut and for a moment sat motionless. Slowly, she raised her other hand to her mouth and took another long drag on the cigarette.
She let her eyes slowly cross, the room suddenly doubling itself.
She held her gaze like that for a moment and then slowly, very slowly, let it come back together.
When the image was singular again she realized that the apartment was not what she’d thought it was. The carpet was not a carpet after all but thousands of rats. Her blanket, too, wasn’t a blanket after all, but rats. When she lifted her cigarette to her lips, it was not a cigarette she lifted, but a smouldering rat’s tail. Rats were everywhere.
I should be upset by this
, she told herself, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not be. She watched them come and go, felt them move under her and around her, but made no effort to drive them away or to flee. She just stayed where she was, motionless, her face utterly expressionless, like that of a doll.
Francis moved his briefcase from one hand to the other and then reached into his trouser pocket. Where was that piece of paper? He reached across his body, patted his other pocket but it wasn’t there either. No, he had just had it. Where—and then when he reached into the breast pocket of his suit coat, there it was.
He unfolded it and straightened it, then compared the address written on it to the address on the house’s steps. Yes, the same. He headed up them and peered at the buzzers until he found Heidi’s name.
Just as he was about to ring the buzzer, he noticed a woman standing inside, watching him. It startled him so much that he almost dropped his briefcase.
She opened the door partway, looked at him. “Are you all right?” she asked. She was attractive, perhaps a few years younger than Alice. She was wearing a batik dress. She had a good head of curly blond hair, a little gray running through it.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m fine. I wonder if you can help me. I’m looking for Heidi Hawthorne.”
The woman gave him a strange smile. “Do you perhaps mean Adelheid Elizabeth Hawthorne?” she asked.
Francis nodded, smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Actually, I do.”
The woman looked him over more carefully. “You look familiar,” she said.
“I do?” he said, surprised.
“Yes,” she said. “You do.”
“I work as a volunteer over at the Salem Wax Museum,” he said. “Sometimes I walk by here on my lunch break. Maybe you’ve seen me then.”
“Ah, the wonderful wax museum,” said the woman. “Got to teach those impressionable kiddies about Salem’s glorious past.”
Here at last,
thought Francis,
someone who understands.
He smiled, extended his hand. The woman took it, shook.
“My name is Francis Matthias,” Francis said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
The woman nodded. “Now, are you friend or foe?” she asked.
“Of Heidi’s?” he asked. He pondered. “I wouldn’t exactly say I’m a friend. I don’t know her well enough for that. But I’m certainly not a foe. An acquaintance, shall we say?” He made an effort to withdraw his hand, but she kept hold of it. “And may I ask who you are?” he said.
“Lacy,” she said. “I… I take care of Heidi.” She let go of his hand.
“Can I see her?” asked Francis.
For a moment Lacy just stood there and blinked, but then she smiled. “I don’t see why not,” she said. “Please come in.”
Lacy pushed the door open wider and ushered Francis past her. Smiling and nodding to her, he made his way in.
I should get up
, Heidi was thinking, as she’d been thinking for the last half hour.
I’ve got to leave. I’ve got things to do.
But she felt like she didn’t have complete control over her own body. It was as if she was living in her body but no longer filling it, like the person who was Heidi existed in a small place deep within the body itself and the rest was blankness and empty space. It made her body feel bloated, ungainly.
She managed with great effort to leave the bed and wander into the living room. Her boots were in a heap there and she sat on the
fainting couch and pulled them on. Her faux fur coat had been balled up and thrown near the entrance to the kitchen, and she slipped it on and stumbled toward the front door.
But when she opened it, she found that it opened not into the hallway but into another manifestation of her apartment. She walked out and found herself back in the same room, confused.
She closed the door, waited. When she opened it again, the apartment was still there on the other side. She walked through again, moving from her apartment into her apartment, and then stared around. It should have felt backward but it somehow didn’t. It was the same apartment. She simply couldn’t leave.
She closed the door and waited, counting slowly to one hundred. Her heart was beating faster and she tried to relax, tried to breathe deeply, and she did calm down a little. Then, gathering herself, she reached out and opened the door again.
It opened this time not onto her apartment but only onto a bricked-up doorway. The bricks were old and weathered and the mortar was dusty and filthy, as if the wall had been there for a very long time.
What the fuck?
she wondered.
A little panicked now, she closed the door again and went to look out the bedroom window. Yes, everything looked normal out there, just the same old ordinary street.
An older man came down the sidewalk and stopped in front of the house and stared up at it. He looked familiar, but it took a moment still for her to place him. It was Francis, the guy they’d interviewed a few days ago, the witch guy. What was he doing here? Maybe he was coming to see her. That was good. Maybe he could help her get out.
She watched him until he began moving down the walk and toward the house and then she moved back into the kitchen, waiting for the doorbell to ring so she could buzz him in.
But the doorbell didn’t ring.
Maybe the door downstairs was already open, she told herself.
Sometimes Lacy left it propped open, particularly on a nice warm day. If that was the case, he might just come up the stairs and knock on her door.
She waited. And then waited some more. But nobody rang the bell or knocked on the door.
What happened to him?
she wondered. Maybe he hadn’t come to see her after all, but if not, it was a weird coincidence. Probably he’d just run into Lacy and she was talking his ear off, she told herself. Probably he’d be up here soon.
She waited another ten minutes, watching the wall clock in the kitchen tick its slow way forward. No, she finally admitted to herself. He wasn’t coming. What had happened to him?
She stared at the door. She reached out and placed her hand on the knob and then pulled the door slowly open.
This time it was a little different. Behind the door, flush up against it, was another door. There was a brass plate on it, with a number inscribed on it. The number was five.