The dark fantastic (26 page)

"That doesn't take care of Thorne," said Kate.

"She can sleep on the trundle, as she always does when there's company."

"She won't like it."

Jane murmured, "I feel guilty, taking her bed."

A voice came unexpectedly from across the room. "Thorne will sleep where she's told to sleep, whether she likes it or not."

The Tomlinson women turned with a start. They had not realized their talk could be overheard.

Judith was standing near the table, about to pick up her night candle. She had taken no part in the domestic discussion for the simple reason that she was not interested. But she turned now and sharply addressed Thorne.

"You will sleep in the trundle bed as Miss Ann says, and no acting the crybaby about it. Do you understand?"

Since Thorne had not complained, the reprimand seemed uncalled for.

Richard said, "There's no need to speak to her in that tone. Judith." He turned to his mother. "The trundle bed is too short for Thorne. Why can't one of the younger children take it?"

Miss Ann explained that the younger children were doubling up as it was.

Judith said, "Thorne will sleep in the trundle bed and we'll hear no more about it." She turned to Alec Mitchell. ''Will you draw the bed out, please?" She seemed to have taken charge of operations.

But Miss Ann was still, to her sons-in-law, the head of the house. Alec cast an inquiring glance in her direction and received a nod of assent.

A queer tension gripped Judith as she watched Alec draw the trundle from under the bed in the alcove and pull it out into the center of the room.

As she remembered it afterward, they were all standing in an irregular circle about the bed: Hugh Turner, Otis Huse, and Lucius at the right of the fireplace; Richard a few feet away near the piano; herself by the table where stood the night candles. Jesse Moffat, who had already picked up his candle, was near the hall door. Miss Ann and her daughters, With the children, formed a group near the alcove.

Judith saw Thorne, who had been standing near the hearth, move closer to Richard. Anger rose within her, followed by a queer nausea. She felt—as she had felt that other time when she heard the clock strike—as though the temperature of the room had suddenly dropped. A strange premonition of impending mischief gripped her. She told herself that this was imagination and looked about to see if others felt it too. Then suddenly, while she was looking at it, she saw Jesse Moffat's candle go out. One by one she watched the candles all over the room go out. The smell of smoking tallow was acrid in her nostrils.

All the people in the room were in shadow now. She could not see their faces, only indistinct shapes. The only light was the glow from the fireplace, which fell upon the trundle bed. This was the bed on which she had sat with Thorne while she listened to Abigail's dying gasps. She stared at it now as though it were a sentient thing that could remember and accuse.

While she watched with fearful fascination the bed began to move. It trembled convulsively in all its joints, like a palsied old man. Its agitation increased until it rattled like a wooden cart rolling over a corduroy road.

A voice rose thinly: "She's doing it, Richard! Make her stop!" Tone, cadence, pitch were like a reproduction of another voice, heard long ago when a cucumber cow was milked. Judith, listening, chilled. And then she realized it was her own voice she had heard. At the realization she sickened and closed her eyes. When she opened them the bed had stopped shaking. But she no longer saw a trundle bed. She saw a replica, in miniature, of the bed in the south room.

Richard started toward his wife, alarmed at the ghastly pallor of her face. The skirts of his coat almost brushed the bed. Judith cried, "Don't touch it! Stay where you are."

The bed shuddered and began shaking as before. Judith closed her eyes against the motion, which made her seasick. When she opened them the bed was still. It was again the trundle bed.

In the silence that followed there was no sound except her own heavy, half-strangled breathing.

She turned on Thorne, screaming in that voice which did not seem to be her own, "You did this, you little witch! This is another of your magic tricks. Light the candles, Richard. We'll see if she gets her way by frightening people out of their wits."

Richard said, "The candles were lighted some time ago."

Judith looked about the room. Incredibly, flame flared from every taper, including Jesse Moffat's. The shadows had receded; faces were again visible. And every face was turned toward her in curious wonder. She looked to her husband. He was regarding her anxiously.

"Are you ill, Judith?"

She could feel even' eye upon her, particularly Otis Huse's. She was conscious of the fascinated interest of the farm hand. But she saw only Thorne's white face, with dark eyes wide and watchful. She noted that from where the girl was standing she could not have touched the trundle bed.

Richard repeated his question: "Are you all right, Judith?"

"Quite all right, thank you."

There was a concerted sigh of relief from the onlookers. Miss Ann began collecting the children, marshaling them to bed.

Thorne asked, "Am I to sleep down here in the trundle bed?"

"No," said Richard. "Anyone can see the bed is too short for you. There's a couch in our room which will do for me. You can sleep with Judith."

His mother agreed. "Put the trundle back in the alcove. Alec."

Before Alec could obey, Judith astonished them all by countermanding Miss Ann's order.

"Leave the bed where it is. We might as well have a showdown now as later, Richard."

He said, "I don't know what you mean by showdown."

"Tliome's cleverness tonight has gone to her head. She doesn't want to sleep in the trundle, so she performs a sleight-of-hand trick, making the bed appear to—dance." Judith passed her hand across her eyes. She shrank from mentioning the weird metamorphosis she had seen. Now that it was past, she told herself it had been a trick of her own eyesight, caused by the movement of the bed. She appealed to the others for support. "You all saw the magic Thorne worked tonight. A dancing bed is no more remarkable than a burning match that disappears within a cloth without leaving a trace."

Curious, half-fearful glances passed among the people in the room. Half-audible murmurs and whispers circulated among them.

Richard said to Thorne, "Cricket, did you do anything to the bed?"

Thorne said, "No. I wasn't near it."

"That's true." Richard turned to Judith. "Thorne was at least six feet from the bed when yoti screamed. I know because you frightened her so, she grabbed hold of me."

"Then who played that trick with the bed?" demanded Judith.

"There's been no trick played with the bed. What are you talking about?"

Suddenly she knew sickeningly that he was going to deny having seen the thing which had frightened her.

"If you didn't see it, Richard, it was because you were looking elsewhere. It was perfectly visible, even if the candles did gutter down. The rest of you saw it, didn't you?" She looked about the room; sharply, at first, then frantically, as she saw blank denial in every face. "You know you saw it! You, Will—you, Jesse Moffat—Lucius—why do you all just stare at me, pretending you didn't see Thorne's trick of legerdemain? You were kinder to Abigail. You were quick to assure her that you had seen milk come from a cucumber cow."

No one answered her appeal. The men addressed returned her frantic gaze in silence that became so oppressive it was like shutting off the air to her lungs. She loosened the ribbon at her throat and looked about for a window to open, wondering why it was so hard to breathe. Her eyes bulged as though she were choking, and she breathed openmouthed like a fish, gasping for air.

Richard's voice seemed to come from a vast distance. "No use having hysterics, Judith. I'm putting the trundle bed away."

His brother Will came forward to assist him. Judith saw them whispering together as they pushed the trundle back under the bed in the alcove. She told herself that they were agreeing on some course of action to protect Thorne.

After that there was a slight rearrangement of sleeping accommodations. For when Richard said, ''There! That puts the trundle out of sight!" a wail arose from an unexpected quarter.

"If you think I'm going to sleep in the alcove with a piece of furniture Judith saw cuttin' up, you're crazy!"

Three hundred pounds of quavering terror faced him belligerently. Cousin Lutie, her mouth still full of the coconut cake for which she had made a surreptitious trip to the kitchen, looked so ludicrous that Richard began to laugh, and his laughter eased the tension.

"The furniture has not been cutting up. Cousin Lutie."

"Judith said it did. Personally, I'd take a schoolma'am's word against a farmer's any day."

"All right, if you're afraid to sleep down here, you can have our room. And Thorne can sleep with you. Judith and I will sleep in the alcove. Unless Judith is afraid."

Judith had recovered from her hysteria. Kate had brought smelling salts and made her lie down upon the couch. She sat up now, protesting that she was not afraid and never had been. She was merely annoyed at having tricks played on her. If Richard slept in the alcove, of course she would sleep there too. Whereupon the rest of the family took their candles and departed for rooms above, still laughing at Cousin Lutie. The fat woman's round face, smeared with fright and coconut icing, had restored to the Tomlinsons their forgotten sense of humor.

Richard showed Lucius and Otis Huse into the downstairs bedroom. As he set his candle on the mantelpiece he said casually, "Judith has not been well lately. I'm afraid her eyes are bothering her." And that was the only apology offered for his wife's unusual behavior.

Lucius was chagrined to find himself quartered with the lawyer. He had hoped for a chance to talk privately with Richard, and the presence of Huse made this impossible. But when he was alone with his uncongenial roommate he decided it might be as interesting to get the attorney's reaction to Judith's strange conduct as Richard's.

"Well, what did you make of it?" he asked chattily as he began taking off his boots.

Huse was looking about him with interest. This was the first time he had been in the room in which his cousin had died. He noted the outer door in the south wall, the window in the east—the window through which the alleged bricks had come. He examined this window with interest. It was closed, its pane intact.

Lucius, watching him, repeated his question: ''What do you think Judith Tomlinson saw tonight?"

The lawyer frowned thoughtfully. "I'm more interested in what she sees when she claims bricks are thrown through that window, only to disappear."

"What do you mean?" asked Lucius.

Huse indicated the angle at which the window set to the outer door. "Bricks thrown through the window could pass straight through the door if it was standing open."

"Oh no." On this point Lucius was positive. "The bricks always land on the floor. They make a loud thud when they fall."

"Has anyone ever heard them fall except Judith Tomlinson?"

"Not that I know of."

The lawyer shrugged. "And no one else has seen them," he said dryly.

His attitude nettled Lucius. "Why should you doubt the

woman's word? Do you think she's making this up out of whole cloth?"

"Do you consider her a creditable witness," countered Huse, "after the way she behaved tonight?"

"I think her behavior tonight proves that something is frightening her to death," said Lucius stoutly.

''Are you suggesting," said Huse coldly, "that she saw something which was not visible to anyone else?"

"Did you see anything?" retorted Lucius.

They undressed in chill silence, literally, for the fireless room was cold. Huse snuffed the candle; and Lucius, already submerged beneath the bedcovers, was surprised to find a misty light coming from the east window. The skies had cleared. There was a late-rising moon.

He mumbled, "Pull the shade, will you? Bad luck sleeping in the moonlight."

With a disdainful sniff for the other man's superstition, Huse drew the blind to its full length, then climbed into bed. Within a matter of seconds both men were asleep.

They awakened simultaneously, with a crashing sound in their ears and a streaming light in their eyes.

"Did you hear "

"What the devil "

Both men were sitting erect, rigid with cold and some nameless alarm. It was like waking from nightmare: still gripped with fear, but unable to recall its origin.

Huse muttered, "What was it?"

"Sssh!" whispered Lucius. "There's something in this room."

They waited, listening, their eyes strained to pierce the black shadows that lay on either side of the bed. The moon focused a spotlight on the counterpane.

"I don't see anything," said Huse.

"Did you hear that noise?"

"Yes. That's what woke me."

"Damn that moonhght! It blnds me."

"Look! The window bhnd. That's what made the noise."

The dark green bhnd, which Huse had so carefully lowered, had fallen. Moonlight streamed through the unshaded window.

With a snort of absurd relief Huse climbed out of bed and found the fallen window blind on the floor. It had rolled itself neatly back upon its roller as it fell.

"Here's what made the noise," he explained. "The spring in the roller suddenly released, and the blind flew up with such force that it jerked the roller off the hook. Simple, eh? I suppose you thought it was a ghost."

Lucius withheld comment. He pulled the covers over his head again, while Huse replaced the roller on its fixtures, lowered the shade to exclude the moonlight, and crawled back into bed.

"One of the hooks was bent. I straightened it. It won't happen again, I'll warrant." And turning on his side, the lawyer was soon asleep.

But Lucius could not sleep. One of those wakeful spells that sometimes beset the healthiest sleeper descended upon him. He turned on his left side, he turned on his right; he sprawled on his stomach, he flopped on his back; but he could not regain the sound slumber he had lost.