The Black House (27 page)

Not a cap or a glove someone might have forgotten on the floor. “Not a sock!” Tim said out loud.

Courage flowed back into him. Well, he had seen the place. The floorboards held. There were no ghosts, and not a tramp or a hitchhiker was making use of the house as a pad, even though the winter was coming on.

Tim looked at the other two rooms upstairs, found them equally unrewarding, and then made his way downstairs. He felt like running downstairs, but he went down rather slowly. An old step could still give way, he supposed, and he didn't want a broken leg or ankle. On the ground floor, he turned and looked up at the dark tunnel of the stairwell.

“Ha-ha!” Tim laughed softly.

One look into the closed room back? This turned out to be the remains of a kitchen. A scarred white sink was still there, but no water taps projected from the wall. Four marks in the green and white linoleum showed where the legs of a stove had rested.

This was enough!

“Hal-loo-
oo
!” Tim shouted, and let his voice break, as he pulled open the front door. “Happy next Halloween!” he added.

Carefully, as if he were observing himself trying to do the right thing, Timothy closed the front door, using his fingers in the hole where the doorknob had been, trying to leave the door as he had found it.

It was good to be on solid ground again, to hear grit and pebbles under the soles of his tennis shoes.

On the familiar streets that he took driving homeward, he began to relax. Here he was, safe! Safe from what? There hadn't been one spookily creaking door in the black house, not a current of wind through a crack that could have suggested the moan of a ghost. He felt proud for having explored every room, and he realized that his pride was silly, juvenile. He had best forget his satisfaction and simply state to the men on Sunday that he had gone in and . . . looked the place over.

And what was the matter with telling them now? Tim saw by his watch that it wasn't yet midnight. Mightn't a couple of the fellows be at the White Horse? If no one was there, he'd drink a beer by himself. He turned right at the next corner.

The White Horse was indeed busy this Friday night. Tim had an impression of yellow lights everywhere, balls of yellow lights across the eaves, yellow light pouring through the door when it opened and a couple came out. Tim parked his car in the graveled forecourt, and entered the bar. The jukebox music which he had heard only faintly outside now sounded nearly as loud as that of a disco. Of course Friday night wasn't Sunday noon after church! And there were the fellows, the men, in their Sunday noon place at the back half of the bar, but in rather different clothes. Frank Keynes wore blue jeans and a turtleneck sweater. Ed Sanders was even in overalls with shoulder straps, as if he had been painting or working on his car, as maybe he had.

“Evening, Ed!” Tim shouted over the music, nodding and smiling. “Frank!”

“Timmy!” Frank replied. “Out on the town?”

Ed laughed, as if the town didn't offer much.

Tim shook his head, and when he caught the eye of the barman, he ordered a draft beer.

Then Tim saw Sam Eadie turn from the jukebox into which he had evidently dropped some coins, because he was stuffing a hand back into his baggy trousers. He had a drink in his hand. The tables were only half-filled, and these mostly with young fellows and their girls.

“Not walking in the woods this time of night, Tim?” asked Ed.

“Na-aw.” Tim had his beer now, and sipped. “No, matter of fact I went up to the black house. Just now. Again.” Tim smiled, and wiped a bit of froth from his lips with the back of his hand.

“You did?” asked Frank.

Tim saw that he had caught their attention at once, including that of Sam Eadie who had been close enough to hear.

“You went in?” asked Frank sharply, as if Tim's answer yes or no would be important.

Tim knew it was important, to them. “Yes. I had a flashlight. Went in all the rooms. Up to the third floor. No sign of tramps—or anything else.” He had to talk loudly and clearly, because of the jukebox song which was something about
Golden
. . .
golden
. . .
hair and eyes
. . . and
paradise
. . .

The three stared at him, Frank frowning in a puzzled way. Frank looked a bit tight, pink-eyed. Maybe Frank didn't believe him.

“Just nothing. All quiet,” Tim said with a shrug.

“What do you mean—nothing?” Frank asked.

“Oh, take it easy, Frank,” said Sam Eadie, pulling cigarettes from a pocket. He brought the package to his lips.

“I just thought,” Tim continued over the music, “you thought the place might be partly occupied. Not at all! Not even any interesting graffiti for all the—the—” Tim couldn't find the phrase for what he meant, which was taking or meeting girls there, making love to them on the barren floors, probably, unless the fellow or the girl had thought to bring a blanket. Tim shifted on his feet and laughed. “
Nothing
there! Empty!” He looked into the faces of the three men, expecting a smile in return, a nod of approval, because he'd gone all over the place at night.

Their expressions were a bit different, each man's, but in each was disappointment, a hint of disapproval, perhaps. Tim felt uncomfortable. Sam Eadie's face seemed to combine contempt with his disapproval. Ed's long face looked sad. Frank Keynes had a glint in his eye.

“Nothing?” Frank said. “You better step outside, boy!”

Ed suddenly laughed, though his frown remained.

Tim laughed too, knowing what Frank meant: a fight over the reputation, the charisma of the black house. What was he supposed to say, that he'd seen a lot of
memories
there? Ghosts or ghostly faces of pretty girls aged fifteen? In which room had that teenaged boy had his throat cut, Tim wondered suddenly.

The barman arrived at the tap of Sam's empty glass on the bar.

The jukebox song ended with a long drawn out
paradi-ise
. . .

“I said, step outside,” Frank repeated, plucking at Tim's sleeve.

This little half-pissed middle-aged guy! Tim found himself following, walking beside the slightly wobbling Frank toward the door. Tim was still smiling, a little, because he felt like smiling. What had he done to antagonize them, or Frank in particular? Nothing at all.

Outside, as soon as Tim, who had walked ahead of Frank through the door, turned to speak with him, Frank hit him with his right fist in the jaw. Tim had not been prepared, and he staggered and fell to the gravel, but at once leapt up. Before he could get a word out, or his fists up, Frank hit him in the pit of his stomach. Then came a shove in his chest, and a loud crack at the back of his head.

“Frank, cut it out!” a voice shouted.

Tim, flat on his back, heard feet crunching on gravel, more voices.

“His head's bleeding!”

“O-kay, I didn't meant to—didn't mean to knock him
out
!”

Tim struggled to stay conscious, to get up, but he could not even move his arms.

“Just lay still, boy, we're getting a wet towel.” It sounded like Sam Eadie, a stooped figure on Tim's right.

“. . . doctor maybe? Or an ambulance?”

“Yeah . . . his head . . .”

Tim wanted to say,
It's a handsome house, a fantastic house. I can still see the ivory-painted moldings all covered with dust now, and the good floorboards that held my weight. I didn't mean to insult the black house, to make fun of the house
. But Tim could not get any of these words out, and worse, he heard himself moaning, and felt ashamed and afraid because he couldn't control the idiotic sounds coming from his throat.

“. . . blood out of his mouth now! Look!”

A siren's scream rose and fell.

“. . . that—house,” Tim said, and warm blood ran over his chin.

Many more feet on gravel.

“Sh-h! Up!”

Tim's body was lifted suddenly in a sickening way, and he felt that he fainted, or maybe died. If he was dead, his thoughts, his dreams were worse than before. He saw the dark interior of a room in the black house, and Frank Keynes coming at him from a corner with a big stick like a club that he was gripping with both hands, about to take a swat at him, grinning. In a dark hall stood Ed with a faint smile, and behind him, just visible enough to be recognizable, stood Sam Eadie, hoisting his belt a little over his paunch, smiling also in an unfriendly way, as if he were about to witness something he would enjoy.
You have failed, Tim
, the men were saying. And
Nothing? Nothing?
in a scoffing way, as if Tim had sealed his doom by uttering that word in regard to the black house. Tim could see it all clearly now as he journeyed through space into hell, perhaps, into an afterlife of some kind that might go on forever.

Now he was moving through a ringing space. His ears rang, and he was jostled on the journey. Voices came through the ringing. He felt a touch on his shoulder.

“It's Ed,” a voice said. “Look, Frank didn't mean to hit you so hard. He's too cracked up even to ride with us—now. He's—”

“If your name is Ed,” said another deeper voice, “would you please keep quiet, because . . . doing you a favor letting you ride with us . . .”

Tim could not speak, but words came abundantly to his mind. He understood. That was all he wanted to say. The house was of great importance and he had treated it as if it were—nothing. He remembered Frank saying just a while ago, “Nothing—Nothing?” But to die for this mistake? Was it that serious? The words did not come. Tim moved his lips which were sticking together with blood. His eyelids seemed as heavy as his arms. They had given him a needle in his arm, a long time ago.

Now the two men in the ambulance with him argued, their voices came like gusts of angry wind, sometimes singly, sometimes together. And Tim saw the club in the grinning Sam Eadie's hands now. Sam meant to kill him.

Timothy Porter fell into a coma from which he did not awaken. His uncle Roger came to visit. Tim's lips remained parted, wiped free of blood which had ceased to flow, and a slender tube in one nostril furnished extra oxygen to him. His eyes were slightly open, but he no longer saw or heard anything. On the third day, he died.

Frank Keynes had to appear in the town court. He had already been to Roger Porter's house, made his apologies and expressed his grief and regret at having been responsible for the death of the young man. The town judge considered it a case of manslaughter. Frank Keynes was not imprisoned, but a fine was imposed, which Frank paid, and he was admonished not to drink any alcohol in any public place for six months, or his driving license would be taken away for two years. Chastened, Frank Keynes obeyed Judge Hewitt's orders, but he did still visit the White Horse, where he drank Coca-Cola or 7Up, both of which he disliked.

He felt that his old pals liked him less now, kept a funny distance from him, though Frank wasn't sure, because at the same time they tried to cheer him up, reminding him that he hadn't meant to cause any damage so serious, that it was a piece of bad luck that the boy had hit his head on something—the parking area curb that was made of stones as big as a man's head—when he fell.

Then came a Sunday in April when Frank could have a drink, according to the date of the calendar. Frank and his chums were gathered at the bar of the White Horse Tavern after church, as usual, while their wives sat around at the little tables. On his second scotch, which felt like four to Frank, because his wife Helen had been quite stern with him at home about not drinking, almost as if their home were “a public place,” Frank said to Ed and Sam:

“Any one of us might have done it too. Don't you think so?”

Grant was standing nearby, and Frank included him in this question. Frank could see that Ed took a second to realize what Frank was talking about, then Ed glanced at Sam Eadie.

There was no answer from anybody, and Frank said, “Why don't you admit it? We were all—a little annoyed that night, same as me.”

Ed leaned close to Frank, Ed in his Sunday suit, white shirt and silk tie. “You had better shut
up
, Frank,” Ed said through clenched teeth.

He won't admit it. They won't admit it
, Frank thought.
Cowards!
But he didn't dare say another word. As bad as they were with their wives, Frank thought, just as cowardly! And he admitted that he had to include himself here. Did they ever talk to their
wives
about what they'd all done in the black house when they were kids? No. Because the wives weren't the girls—mostly weren't, Frank was sure—that the fellows had been with in the black house. Frank understood, a little bit: they were like a club, maybe, and the club had rules. Certain things, facts, existed, but were not talked about. You could boast even, but not talk, somehow.

“Okay!” said Frank, feeling reproached but unbent. Not cowed by any means, no. He stood taller and finished his drink, glanced at Ed and Sam and Grant before he set his empty glass down on the bar. They had a certain respect for what he had done, Frank was sure. But like a lot of other things, facts, that respect was never going to be put into words by any of them.

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921, Patricia Highsmith spent much of her adult life in Switzerland and France. She was educated at Barnard College, where she studied English, Latin, and Greek. Her first novel,
Strangers on a Train
, published initially in 1950, proved to be a major commercial success and was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. Despite this early recognition, Highsmith was unappreciated in the United States for the entire length of her career.

Writing under the pseudonym of Claire Morgan, she then published
The Price of Salt
in 1952, which had been turned down by her previous American publisher because of its frank exploration of homosexual themes. Her most popular literary creation was Tom Ripley, the dapper sociopath who first debuted in her 1955 novel,
The Talented Mr. Ripley
. She followed with four other Ripley novels. Posthumously made into a major motion picture,
The Talented Mr. Ripley
has helped bring about a renewed appreciation of Highsmith's work in the United States, as has the posthumous publication of
The Selected Stories
, which received widespread acclaim when it was published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2001.

The author of more than twenty books, Highsmith has won the O. Henry Memorial Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, and the Award of the Crime Writers' Association of Great Britain. She died in Switzerland on February 4, 1995, and her literary archives are maintained in Berne.