Authors: Thomas Cater
“I’m not going back,” he said firmly. “Let’s stop and
rest.”
He slumped against a tree in a near faint,
perspiration beaded on his forehead and face.
“I’m burning up,” he said. “This place is hot, like a
jungle in Nam. I’m so dizzy I can’t see straight.”
I thought maybe the murdered man’s suit worked that
way, or hoped it worked that way. It was clear he couldn’t continue. I told him
to rest and I would go in and get what I came for, Elinore’s notebooks. I also
wanted to look again at Samuel’s room. I thought it might open a few more
possibilities. Virgil shook his head and staggered to his feet
“Nothing doing; I came this far to get a good look,
and I’m going in.”
“Good,” I said, but with uncertainty. “You’re not
going to believe this place; it looks like a house in Southern Living
magazine.”
I had to carry him up the steps. I felt like a Judas
goat leading the fatted calf to the altar. Every step I took filled me with
more apprehension. His body was growing weaker by the minute.
“Maybe you should go back,” I said.
“No!” He shouted. “I’m going in!”
The door was still ajar from my previous visit. It
swung open. Once inside an ancient odor of must, mildew, dry rot and decay
struck like a fist.
“Wonder where the bad odors came from? They weren’t here
a day or two ago.”
I helped Virgil into the hall. Where it had once been
light and airy, it was now gloomy and nearly impossible to see the end of the
hall.
“Give me the flashlight,” I said anxiously.
I flicked it on and the beam sprang across the room to
a patch of badly stained and scaling wallpaper. I moved the beam around the
room. It was not the same room I encountered the last time I was here. The
furniture was sagging, worn and rotten. Not a shred of material was intact and most
of it smelled of mold.
“Southern Living?” Virgil said. “What part of the
south you come from?”
“Two days ago this house was a showplace,” I said.
“Someone must have come in and trashed it.”
Virgil heaved a weary sigh. “It would take years of
trashing to make a place look like this,” he said.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “This house looked fine the last
time I was here.”
He wasn’t paying much attention to my words. It took
most of his strength just to stand erect. I swung the light around the room
again. The photos on the table I had so easily identified were indistinguishable.
No matter how hard I tried, I could not identify a single person.
Virgil was becoming a burden. I was unable to
accomplish that which brought me back to the house. I tried to reposition him
higher on my shoulder, but his sagging weight resisted.
“I can’t get you up those stairs,” I said.
He was coughing, nearly choking on the mildew in the
air. It was also beginning to aggrivate my sinuses.
“You’re going outside,” I said, “you need some fresh
air.”
I shouldered him out the door and onto the porch where
fresh air smelled and tasted better. I lowered him to the top step, propped his
back against the banister and sucked in a few lungfuls of oxygen.
“You wait here until I get back,” I said, “or if you
feel up to it, start back to the car; I’ll catch up.”
I wanted Elinore’s notebooks, but if the downstairs
was any indication of what the attic was going to be like, I couldn't have Virgil
complicating my departure.
He rolled his head back and forth against the
banister. “I feel lousy,” he said. “I’ll rest here for a few minutes and then start
back.”
I risked a grim smile and went back into the house,
followed the main hall to the stairs that led to the second floor, instead of
the kitchen. There was a shadowy gloom gathering inside the house. It was so stifling
it took on a solid shape. The heat, I sensed, seemed to follow me through the
hall and up the stairs. For a moment, it felt as if Virgil was still on my
shoulder and I was shouldering his weight. I thought it might be the tight odiferous
dead man’s suit taking its toll. With every step I took, I could feel it
gathering weight around my shoulders. By the time I reached the top of the
stairs, I was nearly crawling on my hands and knees. I tried to straighten up,
but the odor held me down. For several seconds, I could feel a dank, humid
presence, and then quite suddenly,
it
was gone. It spilled like water upon the floor and
flowed off in the direction of Elinore’s room. I heard a distant whooping and
howling, a wicked tittering, but it was far from human.
Doors started slamming throughout the house, not one
but several, two or three at a time, until I thought every door in the house
was going to fly off its hinges. It was a moment I preferred to share.
“Virgil!” I shouted, but he was too far away to hear. If
he heard the doors banging, he would have also found the strength to leave.
I tried to sniff the air like an animal for anything
suspect, while I worked the painful kinks from my back
and shoulders
.
Even though the mildew was strong, there was also a distinct fragrance coming
from the attic.
I walked as quickly as I could to the stairwell. The
attic door was
ajar, and
waiting. I could not remember whether I had time to
close it previously. There was a breeze flowing from the window and coming down
the attic stairs. Warm and sweet, it reminded me of a tacky little carnival on
a hot summer night. I could almost taste the cotton candy and caramel-coated
apples.
I took the attic steps two at a time. The vague
possibility occurred to me that I might possibly surprise whatever was waiting at
the top of the stairs. I turned the corner toward Elinore’s desk and ran toward
it.
I caught sight of a faint translucent glow, like
someone moving around the desk. A fading light was slanting through the window
and falling on the chair. In one all-encompassing sweep, I gathered up the
three pieces of magic glass and every notebook in sight. A few tablets, yellow
with age, were in good shape, as if they had been in use within the past few
months. I scooped them all up and without hesitating,
turned and made
for the stairs. The air had taken on a curious property. It was no longer cool or
fragrant. I could feel a slithery arm pushing through the dead man’s jacket and
down my back, reaching for my spine and the back of my skull. I trembled in its
icy grasp.
The flashlight flickered. I thought it was going out. I
kept moving, reached the stairs and took two, sometimes three lifts at a time,
hoping I wouldn’t fall on my face.
I made rapid progress through the hall and to Samuel’s
room, when I collided with … something. I sat motionless on the floor while chilling
vapors churned the air. A small table
in
the hall began to tremble. An empty vase sitting on it
toppled to the floor, and then the vapor vanished like condensation.
The suit, I assumed, was working, though I did not
know how. I continued down the hall.
Daylight filtered through a stained glass window above
the landing I sprinted down the dusty stairs, through the dinghy hall and once
more onto the front porch. I was overflowing with confidence, convinced I had
outfoxed the spirited occupants of the house.
Virgil however was not where I left him. I hoped he
had the good sense to return to the car. I also heard a low moan. There was
something painfully humble in that sound. I knew it could only be human. I
stared toward the gate and saw Virgil lying near the overgrown flagstone path circling
around the trees. He was writhing in the grass and moaning. I ran to his side, but
was not ready for what I saw. His face was contorted
and it
looked
like a grinning skull.
He was convulsing. I stumbled back, caught my heel on
a raised flagstone and fell. My instincts made several recommendations, such as
‘haul ass’ and ‘scream like a banshee,’ but in all conscience, I couldn’t leave
him.
He moaned and the sound rumbled as if it came from
deep within the earth and not his body. I took one of his arms in both hands
and tried to lift and drag him out of the woods. Before I could stand him on
his feet, he began to vomit
.
I tried to give him
room
, but again I was unprepared.
Instead of partial bits of digested food, he began to vomit
snakes. Not the common domestic variety, but the long and deadly species found in
a well-provisioned serpentarium. The frightening exception was that these were
far more active. With every gut-wrenching spasm, he spewed green and black
mambas, vipers and other venomous reptiles that vanished into the weeds. I
thought it was never going to end.
I grabbed Virgil by the belt from behind and dragged him
toward the car. He was indifferent to the discomfort as his head bumped over
fallen limbs and stones. Once I felt his hand on mine crawling up my arm, like
a serpent trying to stop or slow me down. It was as cold as a dying man’s
curse. I could feel dry scaly skin and sharp teeth against my flesh, but I kept
pulling, unwilling to acknowledge or accept the fear.
At the wall, I refused to look at his face, at those
dark, empty eye sockets. I propped him up, lifted and tried to roll him over
the top, but something held him tight. I pulled and pushed repeatedly, but
still he would not move. I suddenly noticed several thin bony hands protruding
from the wall. Not just one or two, but several hands grasping and pulling at
his head and hair, his jacket, arms and legs, refusing to release him, and the
number of hungry grasping hands were growing. Hungry, snapping jaws and teeth
were also emerging from the wall. I grabbed Virgil by the lapels and pulled him
back and away. The skeletal hands and teeth vanished into the wall.
I picked him up,
carried
him on
both
shoulder
s
and threw him on
the other side. He landed with a bone-crushing thud and a groan. With one hand
on
top of the
wall, I made a leap and hurtled over.
Virgil lay quietly on the ground. The spasms had ended
and his breathing returned. I did not want to look at his face, but when he
rolled over, his color had returned. His eyes opened and they were again nestled
neatly in their sockets.
I grinned. He made an effort to respond, though I
could see it weakened him to do so. There was no evidence of the reptile-like
effluence he had recently disgorged, and the hands extending from the wall had
vanished. I chose not to mention them to him either.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“Like I been corn-holed by a grizzly,” he replied.
“How do I look?”
“Like you been corn-holed by a grizzly. You want a
cigarette?”
He examined the suit, pressed the fibers between his
fingers. “I don’t know if this
outfit
works or not.”
“You’re alive,” I said, “that ought to be some consolation.”
His eyes turned to the notebooks in my hand. “Is that
why I went through this friggin’ nightmare?”
I grinned and nodded. “I think I got them all, unless
she has more hidden away. I’ll know as soon as I start reading. We can always
come back now that we know how it’s done,” I said, feigning certainty.
He shook his head and thumbed through a notebook. “Not
me, I’ll never come back, not anymore.” He stared at a page in a notebook.
“Besides, whoever heard of a blind girl keeping a diary?”
“Not so strange,” I said, “
Have you ever heard of Greek guy called Homer?”
Chapter Fourteen
We drove to town. I dropped Virgil at his office and
settled down in the RV with Elinore’s notebooks. Why a blind girl wa
nted to
keep a
notebook was a mystery to me too. I tried to establish a chronological order,
starting with the earliest date, but wasn’t making much headway. My eyes were
playing tricks on me. I thumbed through one tablet and scanned several references
to Samuel.
I learned Elinore was not
without faith
, even
though she thought Samuel was a
godless republican
. He was a man who
believed in the
work of the head and not the heart
. Samuel’s problems
were foremost among Elinore’s concerns.
Competitors were nibbling
away
at the corners of his empire. More and more railroads were competing for the
outlying
businesses.
Fisks and Goulds came in all sizes. No matter which way he
turned, he was
unsure
of
how much was enough
?
He delighted in calling his competitors
devils,
demons, bloodsuckers, parasites, greedy, devil-worshipping, God-hating fiends
straight out of hell
, and they were
destroying him
and the world he
created. It was the kind of twisted rhetoric that went straight to the head and
heart of a young woman. All the knowledge of the external world siphoned
through a suspicious old man who lived by the
rule of fear
, and an old
black woman unable to recognize evil.