The Broken Hours: A Novel of H. P. Lovecraft (8 page)

I returned inside. That feeling of heaviness, that stirring, met me on the landing and followed me upward and into the apartment. Eerily, the light still showed beneath the study door. So unnerved was I by this, and by my lingering fear—irrational though it was—that perhaps he had been in my room that night after all, that I determined, in spite of his forbidding it, to knock. As I approached the door, I heard, or thought I heard, a faint scratching coming from beyond it, so soft it could have been a branch against a window, a gust of wind.

I felt an irrepressible shiver. I raised a fist. And I knocked.

Something dreadful shot through me, a chill, as if emanating from the wood of that door and passing in a current through my knuckles, up my forearm, down the left side of my flesh. I stood like that, stunned at the force of it, my fist still raised, my blood loud in my ears.

I waited, heart pounding. There was nothing.

When at last I turned away, my eyes happened to settle upon the door to the aunt’s room. Something, that cold weightiness, seemed to be leaning out from that space, leaning toward me. On an impulse, I crossed the hall and tried the handle.

Locked. As I somehow knew it would be.

What could I do? I placed the pages with my note upon the hall table, clicking off the emerald lamp, and made my way back up the narrow stairs, feeling myself eaten up by the darkness as I went.

Two

1

On the third morning, I was forced, finally, from Number Sixty-Six and out to the shops to purchase some few necessities. I had slept poorly, again. Sometime, during the dark hours, I had awakened, gasping, to see that light in the dormer window across the city, flickering on and off, on and off. I rose and positioned my bed so as not to face it. Then, the light seemed to filter in, fill the room. I turned my back upon it, the covers up over my eyes to shut it out.

Finally, just before dawn, I rose and dressed in my suit and shoes and sat on the bed, turning and turning the piece of gravestone in my hands, waiting for the hour at which the shops would open.

At eight o’clock I went downstairs, past the lighted room and out the apartment door. Once outside, I made a point of stopping again in the wet, cobbled lane and looking up. All the windows on the second floor, again, were dark. The drapes still pulled, tinged crimson by day, but lightless nevertheless from the inside.

From the outside, in daylight and fresh sea air, and with the ordinary sounds of sparrows rattling the tree branches, and pedestrians passing on the street, and the steady hammering from a building under construction across the lane, the house seemed quite benign. I could almost laugh at my fears. The air already seemed to be doing me good. I certainly felt better, clearer. I wondered at the simple possibility of blackout curtains at the study windows.

As I stood speculating, an elderly man in an overcoat stepped out of the house at the far end of the lane, toting with him on a leash a small dog the precise colour of the overcoat. It minced along on the wet cobblestones, as if loathe to dampen its paws, shaking its body dry periodically, though it was not raining. I wondered with dark amusement just how many such dogs would be required to make such a coat. I thought of the cats on the shed roof, how they would devour the creature.

The man was almost upon me when he glanced up with an air of angry surprise.

Good morning
, I said.

He looked affronted. I had often heard such things about older, dying, aristocratic neighbourhoods, no one deigning to speak even to their own neighbours on the street lest they address someone beneath them. I had little patience for such posturing.

I wonder
, I said,
if you could point me in the direction of the nearest shops.

The dog sniffled about, ogling my shoes. I repressed an urge to boot it aside. The old man shot me a quick look, almost hostile, as if perhaps he’d read my thoughts, then looked swiftly away, frowning.

Come now, Daisy
, he said, and tugged on the silvery leash.
Just keep going the way you are?

He phrased it as if it were an angry question, and did not look up at me, giving the impression he was still addressing the loathsome Daisy.

You’ll come upon it in another few blocks. Everything you want there, I should suppose.

I thanked him and wished him good day and began to turn away, but he said, grudgingly,
There’s something in particular, some special item, you’re seeking?

No, indeed
, I said,
just the usual things. Any department store should do.

He hesitated, as if he would say more, and then gave me another irritable, I would even say furious, look. He said,
I hope you will beg my pardon.

Yes?

Have you not been down there?

It’s rather early. I suspect they don’t open until after eight o’clock.

The old man continued to glare.

Come along, Daisy
, he said, finally, and frowned deeply, rattling the leash and startling the dog from where she squatted peeing on the cobblestones next to my shoe.

I stepped with pointed care over the puddle and went on my way. When, a few steps on, I happened to look back, the old man still stood in the lane, glaring after me. Or at least, I thought he did. But then Daisy emerged, that vile little beast, kicking up some leaves over the steaming pile she had left beneath the elms, and they moved on.

The air was silken and fresh after the rain, though the cold yet held the bite of a New England winter. I did feel better, though still chilled, weakened. It was only to be expected. I descended College Hill in search of the commercial district, down and down, past students on their way up to their morning lectures, bundled in their tweeds and corduroys and woollens, scarved brightly in the current fashion. The boys, absurdly young, carried themselves with an important air, nodding to me, pink-faced under their tilted caps, man to man, while the few lone girls stared hard at their sturdy shoes as I passed, clutching books to their chests as if I might wrench them away; in groups the girls chattered and fluttered and did not notice me at all.

The crowds thinned the farther I walked from the university, winding down between rows of colonial houses, whose square edges and strong, deep reds and blues were softened in the misty light. An automobile passed now and again, looking coldly bestial, mythical, as if it had just lumbered in from some other place, studded with night rain and chugging plumes of exhaust. A familiar radio show played from a kitchen window cracked to the morning air, Vivian someone or other—Jane would have known—as the insipid Mary Noble, the worst of the soaps, until I realized it was only a commercial for Lux toilet soap. It all sounded the same to me. Still, there was a friendliness in the filtered household sounds, the clatter of dishes; the smell of coffee, bacon; the electric lights shining through the many-paned windows like the chambers of gilded hearts.

As the houses grew shabbier and finally gave way to larger brick storefronts and businesses, I passed now and then an archway leading into what appeared to be solitary courtyards which still held the detritus of a long coastal winter in their corners, rotted piles of leaves and dirt still dreaming darkly against the cobblestones.

Altogether a charming neighbourhood and one I thought I would enjoy occupying while I was there employed. I considered how well Jane would like it and, before I could stop it, a picture flashed before my eyes, of Jane and I strolling those streets arm in arm, Molly trotting ahead in a little red raincoat. I gasped with the shock and pain of it. Stood a moment in the street, openly gaping. Two girls in thick, bright cardigans shouldered past me, giggling, and I roused myself and walked on, breathing deeply of the cold air to steady my thoughts.

Of hope, there was none. Only atonement. If there was such a thing. Money. How ill-matched to my sins. But what else was there?

And yet I had not even that; could send no money if no money were forthcoming. I wondered, then, for the first time, at my employer’s financial circumstances. The shared, worn accommodations, the dearth of foodstuffs. It all pointed in a certain direction. Still, I knew it was not unusual among his class. Thrift and economy as well as a certain cultivated shabby gentility were highly prized traits among New England aristocracy. It could just as easily have been that he was well off indeed. Impossible to know.

I heaved a great sigh in the cold air and, taking my gloves from my overcoat pockets, rubbed fruitlessly at the inky tips of my fingers, making a note to purchase another cake of lye.

By the time I returned to College Street with my purchases, the sun was bright and my spirits from the air and exercise somewhat improved. Still, I was not eager to return to the dark, oppressive atmosphere of that lonely apartment, my mysterious employer. I pulled open the front door and was hit by that scent of old cherries, though not nearly so strong as on my first arrival. I was thinking how quickly the strange becomes familiar, when I stopped short.

A young woman in a pale blue velvet cloak and bobbed yellow hair stood on the landing, a white handbag on her wrist, apparently deciding whether or not to go up. She held a key in one gloved hand and a white leather travelling case sat on the floor at the foot of the stairs beside a fully opened umbrella, still lolling fatly against the floorboards, as if she’d only just set it down. She half-turned as I came in.

Gracious
, she said,
you startled me.

Good morning
, I said.

Thank goodness you’re here.

She came down the stairs as she spoke, walking directly to the padlocked apartment door, her heels clacking against the polished boards.

This lock has me fit to be tied, I swear
.

She stuck her key into the lock and banged it uselessly against the door frame.

Helen left this … key … for me,
she said, addressing the lock,
under one of those palms there. S
he gestured with her head to a potted palm, soil tipped out on the shining floor.
But I can’t get the darned thing to work and I’ve been trying ever so long
.

She pushed a curl back from her forehead impatiently with a gloved hand as if to demonstrate how long she’d been trying. Her fair cheeks were flushed, as with embarrassment or from the outdoors.
She said she’d be here. I might have expected as much from her, from Helen.

Helen?

She’s unreliable that way. That’s why I told her to leave a key. Just in case. Not that it’s helped any. She probably left the wrong one. I don’t know her all that well, actually. The sister of a friend back home. She was always, you know.
She waved her hand in a meaningless gesture.
It seems just the sort of thing she would do. Bit of a nut, even back then.

She straightened and lifted a gloved hand abruptly to her mouth, looking at me over her shoulder.

Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. How terrible of me. But, really, it’s so vexing. I don’t know what I am to do. She said she’d be here.

I fished from my pocket the key my employer had left me.

I have only this one
, I said, by way of apology.

Obviously misunderstanding, she waved me toward the door.

Please
, she said.

I hesitated, opened my mouth to correct her, then came forward and slid the key in with an air of embarrassed indulgence.

The lock fell open.

I stepped back in astonishment. The woman clapped her gloved hands together in delight.

Oh, bravo
, she said and, flinging the door open, stepped past me in a faint waft of green apples.

The suite, from where I stood blinking in the doorway, seemed bathed in light, though the day was overcast and the draperies drawn, and this I put down to the rich green paint of the walls. Almost everything in the main living room was some shade of green: the pale upholstered sofa, the bright rug, the draperies, the row of elvish ferns in their pots along the window, even a large, coarse—to my eyes—marble effigy of a horse which reared crazily on the mantle. All in greens. The light itself was green.

I must have stood staring with something like amazement, for the woman turned to me and said,
It’s very … fresh, isn’t it?

She pulled the draperies open with a grand gesture over the main window overlooking the lane, loosing billows of gold dust that turned lazily in the light. She blinked her eyes prettily, then tilted her head back and laughed, as though she’d done something extraordinarily clever.

Well,
she said, beaming a smile at me,
thank goodness you turned up just now, is all I can say
.
Talk about timing.

She crossed to the other window and pulled the draperies open there as well with a dramatic swish.

It’s wonderfully bright and spacious, but I’ll confess it could use a decorator. All this green could make a gal go stark raving out of her mind. I don’t know how Helen can stand it. Like living inside a bottle, isn’t it? Like a genie. Pretty in a way, though. If you blur your eyes up it’s like sunshine. But crazy, too. You know what I mean? But what am I saying, you must think I’m a madwoman. Flo
, she said, then flung up a gloved hand and laughed again.
Gracious, I’m so rattled. It’s amazing what one little locked door can do to a person.