The Dark House (9 page)

“Where do you think this was taken?” Marj asked.

“Looks like the side porch at her house in Londonderry.” Rollins had gone there many times when he was working on the story. (Not in, though. The house was locked up tight as a drum.) He still went back there, from time to time, if he was in the area. He thought he might pick up a feeling for her, a sense of what had happened, where she had gone. But nothing had ever come to him.

“How'd you find it?” Rollins asked.

“The Sloane file was cross-referenced to a file on Twenty-nine Elmhurst.”

“But what did Neely have to do with the dark house?”

Marj shrugged. “Beats me.”

Once again, the dark house was swelling with portent and significance. It was sprouting black towers and creeping vines; it was looming up against a night sky. He wanted to discharge that ominous specter, to break any connection to it. He wanted to turn it back into a house like any other. He didn't at all enjoy the idea that Neely—and through her, he himself—might be linked to a house that he had visited only at random. For that would force him to reconsider his understanding of chance, which was, after all, the basis on which he had constructed his many years of pursuits. If his arrival at the dark house was not arbitrary, then it was planned. And if it was planned, it was certainly not planned by him. So, who planned it, and why and how? These were large, immensely troubling questions, and Rollins recoiled from them.

He slapped the photograph down on his desk. “Why would this have ended up in a file on Twenty-nine Elmhurst? Why would there even
be
a file on Twenty-nine Elmhurst?”

“The librarian said there were some handwritten notes in with it. They referred to some rumors about the place that a reporter was trying to track down for a ‘Metro' story.”

“What sort of rumors?”

“The librarian wouldn't say anything about them, except that they were ‘a little bizarre.'”

“What's
that
mean?”

“I don't know, Rolo,” Marj said irritably. “I'm just passing on what Sally told me. Apparently, the librarian tossed them. She said they shouldn't have been there in the first place. Supposedly, those files are only for published material.”

“Well, it's probably nothing,” Rollins said.

Marj's eyes flared. “Oh, stop.”

“I mean it.”

“You're going to tell me this is nothing? Look at me.”

He didn't mind. She was so lovely, particularly around the eyes. They didn't speak, but he felt something pass between them.

Marj reached for his hand where it lay outstretched on his desk
top and ran her fingers lightly over his knuckles. “Trust me a little, okay?”

“Okay.” Rollins smiled. “Sorry.”

“Good.” Marj picked up the pencil and started her drumming again. “So where are we going tonight?”

T
he house was a two-story Cape, somewhat run-down, with cracked shingles and peeling peach-colored trim that seemed all the more drab in the fading light. The houses around it were all neatly landscaped with well-tended shrubs, lush grass, and weedless flower beds. The Cape had only a parched lawn and a pair of scraggly rhododendrons by the front steps. But it did have a small satellite dish and, by the walkway, a sign out front bearing the words
THE SLOANE RESIDENCE
in cast iron.

“Will you look at that,” Marj said from the driver's seat. “That little fucker.”

Rollins was in the backseat, his head low. The whole trip from Boston, he'd been scanning the rearview for any signs of the gaunt man. More than twenty-four hours had passed since the episode outside his
apartment, and Rollins was beginning to feel a little silly about his continued vigilance. As he kept telling himself, he had only sensed the gaunt man, after all, not actually seen him clearly. Still, as a precaution this evening, he was also wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap—a memento from that abortive baseball game of almost a year ago—with the brim down low over his eyes. Al Schecter had once mentioned how a hat helped conceal your identity.

Rollins and Marj were in her Toyota this time. Marj had said she'd been afraid Sloane might recognize Rollins' Nissan from the Elmhurst house, but Rollins had the odd idea that she was trying to assert control.

“You sure you want to?” he'd asked, as they left work.

Marj hadn't hesitated. “Sure I'm sure.” Then she'd thrown it back at him. “Why, you're not?”

“No, no, it's fine with me.”

It had taken Rollins a little while to get used to her driving. She went a little faster than Rollins might have liked, and faster still when approaching yellow lights. But she was an attentive and confident driver, and before too long Rollins had stopped sneaking anxious looks at the road up ahead, and concentrated entirely on the road behind, watching to make sure they weren't being followed.

Rollins had found the address—14 West Marshfield Road, in this modestly upmarket section of Medford—on Sloane's business card. Driving out tonight, Rollins had half-expected the address to turn out to be a vacant lot or some other dead end. But here it was, with that
SLOANE RESIDENCE
sign as a giant advertisement for itself. Sloane's green Land Cruiser was in the driveway, by a rusting basketball hoop.

“Slowly now.” Rollins tapped Marj's shoulder (hitting bare skin on either side of the strap of her halter top) for emphasis as he craned around to get a good look at the house from the side window. The downstairs drapes were pulled, and the lights were all off on the street-side rooms above, making it hard to see anything inside. But, from the dilapidated exterior, Rollins picked up a strong impression of negative cash-flow.

Marj drove down to the end of the street, then U-ed back for a second look.

On the return, Rollins checked for possible sight lines from behind the house, but it backed up onto the wide waters of the Mystic River. “See any good angles from the back?”

“Not without swimming.” Marj stopped again two houses down from Sloane's, where they could see the murky water flowing past. “What about from over there?” She pointed to what looked like a kiddie park on the river's far shore, maybe a hundred yards off.

Rollins could barely make out a swing set and some tiny plastic horses in the twilight. “You kidding?” Sloane's window would be barely the size of his fingernail from there, not to mention blurry. “My eyesight isn't that sharp, you know.” The girl still had a lot to learn.

“That's what you think.” Marj reached down to the floor in front of the passenger seat and handed Rollins a small shopping bag. “I got you something.”

Rollins pulled it back over the headrest, then held it for a moment in his lap, unsure how to proceed.

“Open it, dummy.”

Rollins reached into the bag and extracted a small, bright-blue cardboard box. He popped the masking tape with his index finger, and, from the tissue paper inside, he fished out a pair of binoculars.
NIKON MONARCH
, it said on the label that dangled from one eyepiece. They were small and demure, a sleeker version of old-fashioned opera glasses. He felt a thrill, a kind of brightening within him, to realize that Marj had given him a gift. And such a personal one, too. But then he worried that the two of them might be achieving too great an intimacy. His pursuits were meant to be solo.

“Pretty light,” Rollins said, placing them in the palm of his hand. “Nice workmanship.”

“Go ahead, try them.”

As Rollins put the glasses to his eyes to look around, the world swelled with possibility. The distant houses suddenly seemed enormous. They almost pressed in on him. “Amazing.”

“Aren't they great? They were on sale at the drugstore. I had to go in for Tampax, and I thought of you. When I saw the binoculars, I mean.” She colored a little, which surprised him.

He almost kissed her. But he waited too long, and the moment passed. “Thanks,” he said instead.

“So you don't already have a pair?”

“No. Never even thought of it.”

“Well, I wasn't sure.”

 

It was past nine when they swung open the low gate to the kiddie park on a slight rise up from the river and across from the Sloanes'. Marj climbed onto a spring-mounted, polka-dotted horse and started careening wildly about, her hair flouncing with each bounce. But Rollins took up position beside a thick maple. A bright moon was out, and he figured the tree would offer good cover. He had some trouble focusing the lenses, since his right eye was weaker than his left. He called out: “I can't get these to work.”

Marj dismounted, took the glasses from him, adjusted the outer ring of the right eyepiece, then handed them back. “Better?”

“Much.” Rollins quickly lost himself in the view. The binoculars were marvelous. They seemed to put him right inside the house, even though it was indeed nearly a hundred yards away. There were no shades on this side, where no neighbors encroached. Rollins roamed around the dated, yellow countertops and hulking maroon refrigerator of the Sloanes' kitchen. A slightly overweight brunette was laboring at the sink. He almost flinched when his eyes settled on Sloane. He was leaning back comfortably in an oak chair. At that magnification, Sloane nearly filled the lenses, and Rollins was suddenly afraid Sloane might reach out and grab him by the throat.

“Got anything?” Marj asked.

“Not too much. Sloane's sitting in the kitchen while his wife does the dishes.”

“Typical.”

“Want to look?”

Marj took the glasses and adjusted them slightly. “Jeez, the guy doesn't even lift a finger.” She watched silently for a few minutes. “Look out, we've got movement.”

“Oh?” Rollins looked over to the house, but couldn't make out anything from that distance.

“Jerry's headed to the TV. Oh, that's nice. He pours himself some hooch first. Wifey's stuck with the dishes, while hubby gets sloshed in front of the tube. I bet it's the porn channel.” She fell silent, watching. “Wait a sec, he's leaving, the jerk. No, wait, there must have been someone at the door. He's coming back, with another guy. Some schmo. Take a look. Maybe you know him.” She passed the binoculars back to Rollins. By the time Rollins managed to get the focus right, Sloane was sitting, drink in hand, on the couch in front of the TV. From this angle, Rollins couldn't tell if the set was on. Diagonally across from him was a slightly older man. The sight of him knocked the air out of Rollins for a moment. He had to clamp down on the binoculars to keep them from wobbling in his hands. The gaunt man. Here. He was nodding, as if in powerful agreement to something that Sloane was saying.

“It's him,” Rollins said.

“Who?”

“The one I followed that first night, back to the Elmhurst house.” He was thin, graying, mid-fifties, wearing a sport coat.

“With the Audi?”

“Yes.”

Marj took the glasses from him again. “So, that's the guy.”

“And they know each other,” Rollins said. “What do you suppose they're talking about?”

“You, I bet. Just kidding.”

But Rollins did have the feeling that a net was spreading out before him—and threatening to enclose him. He'd tailed the gaunt man to the dark house, only to find Sloane there when he and Marj returned. Then Marj had gone off to find out more about Sloane—and she'd come across a photograph of Rollins' vanished cousin Neely. And now, here Sloane and the gaunt man were together. Why? What did this have to do with him? He couldn't think—yet it was scary to see the two of them obviously allied. It was as if Rollins were exerting some unaccountable gravitational attraction, drawing these two strangers into orbit around him. He'd read stories of blind people who'd finally gained sight, and how overwhelming they'd found it to be confronted
by a sudden profusion of dazzling colors. Now, Rollins feared that he, too, was gaining a shattering new sense of the world. For the first time since he'd started his pursuits, he suspected he may not have been invisible after all, and that thought made the world look like a new and far more dangerous place.

He took the binoculars back from Marj and watched more intently. After a few minutes, the light went off in the kitchen and the pudgy brunette emerged in the living room, where she dropped down at the far end of the couch from Sloane and stared at the TV, which must have been on, although neither Sloane nor the gaunt man had been paying any attention to it. Finally, as Rollins stared, the brunette got up from the couch and left the room. Rollins scanned the various windows and picked her up again at the top of the stairs. From there, she crossed into a child's bedroom—festooned with sports posters—where a boy's head was outlined against a glowing computer screen.

Marj was sitting cross-legged on the grass beside Rollins as he watched, her shoulder grazing his leg ever so slightly. She didn't interrupt him.

The brunette placed a hand on the child's shoulder. When the boy wobbled his shoulder in a “not yet” gesture, she grabbed him under the armpit and hoisted him out of his chair. The boy wriggled out of her grip for a moment, but she snagged his hand and swung him around and swatted him on the rear end. Rollins shifted his lenses to the living room window in time to see Sloane tilt his head up toward the ceiling, bellowing, furious. Perhaps the commotion upstairs had interrupted his conversation with the gaunt man. Sloane stormed out of the room; Rollins switched back upstairs as Sloane appeared in the boy's doorway. Sloane looked daggers at his wife, who gestured angrily back at the boy, now slumped on the bed. Rollins would have liked to hear the words. What was the language of their rage? His own parents had never yelled, not at each other, not within his earshot, anyway. He'd hidden in that sideboard, and other places, to eavesdrop. Several times, he'd sneaked out of bed when he was supposed to be asleep to listen at their bedroom door, hoping to discover a spoken truth that would explain everything. But he never did. For the most part, he'd heard only the
silence that he always heard in that house, as if their voices were muted by all the plush rugs, the sumptuous furnishings. Or maybe the silence
was
the truth; his was a house full of nothing.

Sloane stepped toward his wife, a hand raised, as the boy cowered on the bed. The wife raised an arm to defend herself, but too late. With a great, sweeping motion, he smacked her hard across the face. The blow slammed the woman toward the wall, past the window. The boy cringed, but did not move. Rollins lingered there, waiting to see if she would get up. It was too terrible, this violence of husband against wife. If he'd had his tape recorder, Rollins would have made a note. He willed the boy to pay attention, offer sympathy to his mother, something. But the boy only looked on warily, his elbows tight. After a while, he got off the bed and drifted out of the room. When the mother did not rise into view again, Rollins searched for the boy and found him in the bathroom, using the toilet. Rollins checked for the mother downstairs, but he saw only Sloane in the kitchen again, where he poured himself a highball, drained it, then settled back down by the gaunt man once more.

Rollins lowered the binoculars from his eyes and looked around for Marj. She was standing barefoot at the river's edge, the water up to her ankles.

“It's polluted, you know,” he called over to her.

“What isn't?” She waded slowly about, back and forth. “That guy still there?”

“Yeah.”

“They doing anything?”

“No. Just sitting there.”

“What do we do now?”

Rollins paused a moment, to clear his mind of all he'd seen. “I thought maybe we should drive back around, see if we can get a license plate number. Maybe we can figure out who he is, where he lives or something.”

“Sounds good.” Marj stepped out of the water. She sat down on a tree stump and started to dry her feet with her socks.

Rollins came over to help, not that there was much that he could do.
After what he'd just seen, he just wanted to be near her, for comfort.

“There was a bit of a fight, actually.”

Marj looked up, amazement on her face. “Sloane and that guy?”

“Sloane and his wife. Just now. It was over their son, I think.”

“Any blood?”

Rollins was relieved she took the news as a joke. “No. Tears, though.” He'd seen the woman's body quake.

That got Marj's attention. “Oh?”

“He slapped her.”

“No shit.” She shook her head. “Right then, while you were watching?”

“Yeah, quite a blow, actually. He really smacked her.”

“She okay?”

“I don't know. I couldn't see.”

Marj continued drying her feet, but very slowly. “Can I ask you a question? Do you
like
seeing that sort of thing?”