Authors: Thomas Cater
Chapter Nine
Virgil was showing property, but said he could
finish in time to drive me to the house. An hour later, I borrowed a
sledgehammer, mattock and flashlight from his tool shed and we headed for Scary
Creek. I felt more confident and capable during the bright daylight drive to
the house. I thought I knew a little about the wall and the man who built it
and possibly why, and that gave me courage, even though it was all no more
substantial than a hunch. I told Virgil about my conversation with Kepler.
“Is that why you want the hammer and mattock?” he
asked.
“I’m curious to see how deep the footer goes beneath ground
level,” I said. “I want to know why, after 80 or 90 years, it hasn’t slipped an
inch and not a stone is out of place.”
“Something there is that doesn’t like a wall,” he
said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A line from a poem by Robert Frost,” he said, and
continued. “He moves in darkness so it seems to me, not of woods only, or the
shade of trees.”
He drove faster today, easier and more relaxed. He
wore a pressed shirt and tie, and didn’t talk much. He was enjoying himself,
preoccupied with some pleasant thought he did not want to share. A potential
sale, I suspected. What else could make a realtor grin? A nerve ticked at the
corner of his smile.
He stopped within an inch of the gate. I got out and
examined the lock and chain again, made a half-hearted attempt to shake them
loose from the iron pickets, but they would not give an inch.
“Tradesmen earned their keep in those days,” Virgil
said, smiling.
I removed the tools from the car and carried them to
the wall.
“I hope Kepler knows what he’s talking about,” I said.
“I’d hate to be responsible for destroying this
fine old
wall.”
I dropped my tan windbreaker in the tall grass, rolled
up the sleeves of my shirt and took the hammer in hand. Planting my feet firmly
on the ground, I lifted the sledgehammer over my head and brought it down
solidly against the top of the wall. It glanced off nearly snapping my wrists,
but not a single stone cracked. The second time I put more effort into the
swing and brought the hammer down against the wall’s side. It glanced again as
if it had struck a sheet of steel.
“I don’t believe it,” I said. I tried again, but each
time the hammer simply ricocheted off the wall without leaving a scratch.
“Let me try,” Virgil said, annoyed by my lack of
deliberate and determined aggression.
He swung the hammer rapidly overhead and brought it
down solidly atop the wall. The handle splintered and sent him sprawling head
over heels onto the ground. The steel head of the hammer disappeared in the
tall grass.
“Kepler’s right,” he said. “We couldn’t knock this
wall down with dynamite.”
I picked up the mattock and began swinging at the ground
beside the wall. I scooped buckets of dirt out of the hole. The wall continued
down into the earth. At nearly two feet, I stopped. The wall kept going, deeper
and deeper into the ground.
“I don’t get it. The frost line is about eighteen
inches; why would anyone dig a hole deeper, unless they were building a Holiday
Inn.”
Virgil took a few swings with the mattock and I
shoveled the dirt out of the hole. Ten minutes later, we were still looking for
the bottom. “It goes on and on,” I said. “I’m ready to quit. I’ve got to save my
energy for the house.”
He glanced at his watch. “And I’ve got an
appointment.”
I decided to leave the hole exposed. “If it rains,
maybe something might wash out.”
I leaned the shovel near the wall, checked and
re-checked the flashlight.
“You’ll still have plenty of light inside … if you
make it,” he said. “There are nearly one hundred windows in that house.”
I wanted to ask how he knew, but it didn’t seem
important at the moment. He glanced at his watch again.
“Do you want me to wait?” he asked.
“I promised your mother-in-law I wouldn’t let anything
happen to you. Besides, I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone.” He didn’t need a
lot of convincing.
“I’ll pick you up in about three hours,” he said. “Be
careful.”
I selected my route up the overgrown drive and swung
over the wall. Once I started moving, I didn’t look back. Virgil shouted
cheerfully, but I was moving too fast to turn around. A swiftly moving target,
I believed, had to be more difficult to asSamuelt than one standing still.
The key to the front door was in my pocket and I was
formulating a ground plan, when the air filled with gnats. It was the stuff of
a childhood nightmare. The tiny insects invaded my eyes, nose and mouth. I
closed my eyes, kept running and swatting and crashing into trees and vines. I
could barely move my arms or legs as I struggled to push through the dense and
formless cloud of insects.
I felt panic and anxiety rising inside me and heard Virgil
shouting as if from a great distance. I turned with the intention of crying out
for help, but the swarm vanished as quickly as it appeared. I could feel the
welcome relief of air in my lungs. A tangle of vines dropped away from my arms
and legs and I was free once more
The steps looked higher than before, but not as wide.
The porch seemed narrow and long, distorted. The house was larger than I
remembered and seemed to loom over the land. I ran up the steps, two at a time,
trying at the same time to be swift and silent on my feet.
The porch showed few signs of weathering. Chestnut and
poplar boards peered through the scaling paint. Two huge oak doors barred the
way into the house. I say barred because of their formidable appearance. I
could not believe the slim brass key I held in my hand would open those heavy
portals.
I pushed and turned, rattled, cursed and was ready to
give up and leave while I had the chance, when the lock tumbled into place and
the door swung open to a silent vestibule. Two more doors of ranch oak with
long thin panes of frosted glass stood before me. They were less intimidating
and more inviting. I tried the same key and the doors opened easily. I stepped
into the hall.
For a mid-afternoon in fall, there was more than
enough light by which to see, and what I observed, I liked. Antique prints and
wall hangings decorated the hall. Decorative lamps and an array of family
photos covered an oak library table.
I felt like an intruder. Someone had to be living in
the house, cleaning and taking care of things. The oak floors glowed from a
recent polishing. The house had the appearance of ongoing habitation. The
inside was free of dust and the usual musty odors of age and decay that
inevitably invaded derelict property were absent. It lacked absolutely nothing
in the way of homespun comfort. Only the absence of an occupant raised speculation
to a nervous height.
There were large open rooms on both sides of the hall.
A sitting room furnished with couches and chairs and bright oriental carpets with
vivid colors were scattered on the floor. Everything looked relatively new,
except for the style, which was solidly Victorian.
The silence was even more impressive. I had never been
in a structure where the absence of sound accounted for so much of its
character. No sighing drafts, no creaking boards or chimney breezes stirred.
The house’s construction was without fault.
I crept through the sitting room, fearing discovery,
even though it was officially my property. I had not reached that state of mind
where I could freely possess it. I examined each piece of furniture, reluctant
to try it out for fear of leaving an impression. It was all expensive, good
leather, velvet and hardwood.
I gazed at the pictures on the tables without touching
them for fear they might cry out, or vanish in my hands. I had no trouble
spotting Elinore in her rose-colored glasses. Samuel, I could see was a man to
be reckoned with. He was tall, broad-shouldered, robust, and a burning
intensity raged in his eyes like a smoldering fire. I would never live long
enough to understand the thoughts in the mind of a man that could create that
kind of paralyzing stare. There were many pictures of Samuel and Elinore, but
she appeared to be the same age in all of them, while his appearance changed
subtly. In each picture, she seemed to grow wiser, fragile and vulnerable. When
her eyes were uncovered, they become more opaque in their search for light.
I continued to move silently about. I found other
photos of Elinore on bookshelves and a library table. There were pictures of
Amy Taylor, and other curiously dressed women. One of the women, stunted in
size, was also slim with dark skin and dressed in formal clothes. She concealed
her face in a hat and veil that covered her very large head. There were no identifiable
pictures of Elinore as an older woman. It was almost as if she ceased to exist
after the age of twenty.
I crossed the hall and entered a room that was very masculine.
There were no pictures, no decorations, only the timeless fragrance of wood,
leather and tobacco.
Down the hall, there were other closed rooms. I opened
one and made a brief inventory. It wasn’t intended to make an impression. In
all probability, Ryders occupied the spare rooms when they weren’t receiving guests.
The kitchen was primitive. The bird's eye maple
cupboards and shelves reached to the ceiling. Heavy maple tables and chairs
occupied the kitchen. The stove was an ancient heirloom standing on short bandy
legs with burners beside a boxed-in oven. A refrigerator, the color of old
ivory, wore its cooling element on top like a crown. A hand pump, affixed to
the kitchen sink, still drew its black and smelly water from a nearby well.
There was a door in the kitchen that led to a stairwell.
The stairs down led to the basement and the stairs going up led to the
bedrooms. The enclosed stairwell was narrow and cool, with an odor of mildew and
… something else. The skin on my arms tingled. I knew the odor. I discovered it
in Asia and it lingers
in my olfactories
. Even the vilest and smelliest farts could not conceal
it. I knew the stink of decomposition. I felt ensnared by its odor, as if it
were a web. It pinned me against the wall, passed through the sleeves and
buttonholes in my clothes and wrapped my body in a stifling cocoon.
I tried to push away, but it was like smoke. The odor
entered into my mouth and nostrils, played with me as if I were prey, a tasty
morsel, but it was devouring me, from the inside out. I could feel it entering
every available orifice, trying to
make
contact
. The odor invaded my lungs. I
twisted away from the wall, stumbled on the stairs and into the kitchen. I
slumped to the floor and tried to clear my head.
I began to murmur. Although I had no idea what I was
saying, the words came into my mind and I spoke them aloud. “Tza ba di jia.” It
was a chant
an
old Abidji witch doctor had intoned after he sold me a
‘
We
’ wisdom mask. At the time, I thought I was getting less than I’d
bargained for. I never expected to remember the words
with such clarity
.
When I asked him to translate, he said ‘there are no equivalent words in any
other language’.
I repeated the chant, while I waited for my mind to
clear. The door to the stairwell remained open.
The sun’s rays slanted through the window and
illuminated a microcosmic universe of dust particles swirling around a
miniature black hole. For one hapless second, I gimpsed the mystery and
dimension of dark matter.
Touching my face, I noticed it was hot and enriched
with blood. Whatever I had encountered on the stairs didn’t think enough of my
presence to continue its investigation. If it was dangerous, why was I shaken,
but unharmed? The encounter reminded me of the ‘aromatic invasion’ of xenodusa
cava, an ant predator. Xenodusa emitted a fragrance, a sweet narcotic from
hairs on its back. Ants courted the beetle, stroked its head with their
forelegs so it would emit secretions, which they greedily devoured. Within minutes,
the ants were addicted to the narcotic and the beetle had acquired the ‘nest’
smell. He was than free to prey on ant eggs and larvae.
Something, I believed, had stroked me, tried to seduce
me with its deathly fragrant odors.
I returned to the stairs, extended my arms like a
blind man and felt my way along the wall. It was not a sudden revelation. I had
thought all along that it might be Elinore, but her method of communication was
puzzling. It did not occur to me that even in death she might still be blind or
seeing things differently, or surviving in a different color spectrum.
Ants communicate by sharing bits of food with bio-chemical
messengers spread throughout the colony; it’s called trophallaxis. The system
suggests a collective stomach. I suspect it was communication in a non-sensory
way, or they were imbuing me with a ‘nest’ fragrance. It was okay by me, but I
was confused.
I’ve heard the afterlife described as a place where spirits
never realize that death has no meaning, but life exists, after a fashion.
Maybe the other side was not as orderly as we prefer to believe. Maybe the
blind here and there are equally the same with all their attendant problems.