Ammie, Come Home (18 page)

Bruce looked up.

“I thought we had agreed that this is possible. Damned if I see why you cavil over a little thing like devil dances, if you admit devils. Or,” he added gently, “do you?”

“Of course I'm still fighting it,” Pat shouted. “Everything I've been taught for fifty years is fighting it. Damn it, Bruce, allow me my moments of sheer incredulity, can't you?”

“I'm not sure I can.” Bruce closed the book but kept one finger inside the pages; Ruth was reminded of that other book and the circumstances of its discovery. “Pat, if you weaken…. We need all the belief we can get.”

“I'm trying.”

“Are you? Or do you begin to suspect, again, that we're hallucinating? You can't claim anything so simple as schizophrenia now. Not with that ghastly thing in the parlor every afternoon.”

“I don't make any such claim, of course.”

“There's another possibility,” Bruce went on carefully. “One we've not mentioned, but one which I'm sure has occurred to you.”

“Some natural phenomenon? Gas, or subterranean tremors, or something?”

“No, not something. I mean fraud. Deliberate, conscious fakery.”

“I'd have been a fool not to have thought of it,” Pat said.

Bruce put one hand casually on the back of a chair. Ruth was the only person near enough to see that he was inobtrusively supporting a good deal of his weight on that hand, and to note the tiny beads of sweat on his upper lip.

“We know you aren't a fool. All right, let's drag it out and look at it; I hate things festering in the subconscious. If it were fraud, who would be promoting it—besides Sara?”

Sara smiled; Ruth gave a gasp of protest.

“Naturally Sara would have to be in on it,” Pat said calmly. “She's Ammie. The medium as well—the séance was the opening gun in the affair.”

“I had the dream,” Ruth said.

“That could have been induced—by the same phonograph record or tape that produces the ‘Ammie-Come-Home' voice.”

“You're crazy,” Ruth said indignantly. “And the—the Adversary? I suppose that could be produced by a tape?”

“It could be produced,” Bruce said coolly. “I don't know how, just off hand, but I'll bet any good stage magician could reproduce any of the effects we have seen. Including the cold.”

“And the story of Douglass Campbell and his daughter, which we so painfully ferreted out?”

“If we found it, someone else could. Someone who used it as the basis of the plot.”

“You'd make a good Devil's Advocate,” Pat said, smiling reluctantly. “Now you've got me turned around so that I have to defend the case. What about motive?”

“I can think of at least three possibilities, just off hand.”

“One,” Sara challenged.

“Someone wants to buy Ruth's house cheap,” Bruce said promptly. “Buried treasure in the basement, maybe, or just a passion for old houses.”

“Two?”

“Hatred. Of Ruth, or you, or even Pat. Get him mixed up in something like this and then expose it in a blaze of publicity. It wouldn't do his scholarly reputation much good. Three, some nut trying to prove spiritualism—and don't ask me to explain the kind of mentality that creates fakes to prove truths; I can't. I just know they exist.”

“I see you've given the matter some thought,” Pat said.

“I'm no fool either. Only I happen to know Sara wouldn't do such an insane thing. Of course there is that convenient item, hypnosis. Sara could be unwittingly producing her bit of the supernatural through posthypnotic suggestion.”

“An outside villain?” Pat considered the suggestion.

“Not necessarily.” Bruce cleared his throat. “I thought of you, naturally. In a mystery story you'd be the obvious suspect. You protest too much.”

Pat choked; then his sense of humor came to the rescue, and he laughed.

“Okay, Bruce, you win again. We're committed. Let's be consistent in our folly, at least, and not waste time.”

Bruce's breath came out in a louder gasp than was compatible with calm nerves. But he said coolly enough,

“Then let's look at Frazer. I balk myself at the Bantu ceremonies, but we could try some of the herbs. Vervain, Saint John's-wort, garlic—”

Sara giggled.

“What are you going to do, make a lei and hang it around my neck?”

“The big problem will be finding the stuff,” Ruth said. “Garlic we can get, but vervain is not exactly in stock at the grocer's.”

“You can look for it tomorrow,” Bruce said. “It'll be a nice job, out in the open air for a change. Find out the scientific name of the stuff, it's in here someplace—” He was again flicking through the pages of Sir James Frazer's classic. “Funny,” he muttered. “The standard remedies, in western culture, are the holy relics. We lost a big group there.”

“You know,” Sara said, “that reminds me of something I read—”

At the same time Pat remarked, “Maybe we need holier relics. A sliver of the True Cross or a bone of a saint.”

And Ruth chimed in with, “Pat, do try to call him again!”

Faced with two people talking at once, Pat turned to Ruth.

“Okay, dear. If it will make you feel better.”

The telephone was on a table by the couch. They could all hear the muffled ringing at the other end, and they heard the ringing stop when the instrument was lifted.

“Dennie?” Pat's face lightened. He had not voiced his concern, for fear of encouraging Ruth's, but it had been profound. “Are you all right? Where've you been?”

The listeners could hear the tinny rattle of the other voice, but could not distinguish words. For them the conversation was one-sided but perfectly intelligible.

“I'm more relieved than I can say…. No, no, Dennie, you mustn't feel that way; quite the contrary. Mrs. Bennett has been beside herself with worry…. Yes, she's here…. Sure.”

Ruth took the telephone with some trepidation. The priest brushed her stumbling apologies aside; he had other, more important things on his mind.

“Mrs. Bennett, I've made an appointment, the first of the necessary steps for the procedure we discussed. It will take a little time; this is a busy archdiocese. In the meantime, I want you to promise me that you won't enter that house again, or allow anyone else to do so.”

“But, Father….”

“I am…deeply shaken and ashamed. I do not say this in defense of my own behavior, but in fear for you—this visitation is strong, strong and evil. You must not risk yourself.”

“I know the sensations are dreadful,” Ruth said, very much moved. “But you saw it at its worst—and faced it, may I say, with a courage that few people could have shown. But it is impalpable; I'm sure it can't do any physical harm.”

“Physical?” Father Bishko's voice rose. “My dear, my dear—that is not the danger. Promise me. I shan't sleep tonight unless I have your promise.”

“I promise,” she said; and then, on request, handed the instrument back to Pat. A few more sentences passed, and then Pat hung up.

“Poor guy,” he said. “He's all shaken up.”

“It might not do him any harm,” Bruce said sharply. “A priest, enduring the universe, ought to be shaken up now and then. People ought to be shaken up.”

“The trouble with the young,” Pat remarked, “is not that they speak in platitudes, but that they are so damned intense about them.”

“Don't, Pat.”

“Sorry, dear. We are none of us at our best.” He ran his fingers through his hair so that it stood up in the familiar cockatoo crest. “What did you promise?”

“That I wouldn't go back to the house. I had to,” she said defensively. “He was genuinely distressed. And say what you will, I feel responsible. We should have warned him.”

Bruce gave her a disdainful glance. He did not need to tell her that he did not feel himself bound by her promise. All he said was, “He's going to try the exorcism?”

“When he gets permission.”

“I have to admit I admire his guts, then,” Bruce said grumpily. “If a little bitty prayer produced that outburst today, God knows what a full-scale exorcism will bring out. I wouldn't care to face it myself.”

“Maybe it will work. He seems to think so.”

“He's going on the theory that if one pill doesn't do the trick, maybe six pills will,” Bruce said. “I'm afraid this is a case of if one pill doesn't work, why bother with more? The technique is wrong. Sara, let's start on
The Golden Bough.
”

It was like a well-rehearsed play, Ruth thought; take your places for Act One, Scene Two. They had only played these roles for a few days, but they had come to accept them. Sara found pen and paper; she made an unorthodox secretary, squatting cross-legged on the hearth rug, with the falling waves of her hair curtaining her face. Bruce, shoulder against the mantel, slim height lounging, moved his hands as he spoke; Pat slouched in his worn leather chair with the light setting the crest of his hair ablaze and leaving his face shadowed, remote. And Ruth herself was on her way to the kitchen to put the coffeepot on, so that the great minds might be stimulated to think. In the doorway she paused, appreciating the warmth and homely charm of the family scene: the vivid colors of Sara's forest green skirt and sweater, Pat's coppery bright hair, Bruce's black- and-white elegance, the glint of light off the silver bowl on the table. They might have been any comfortable family, chatting casually after dinner.

“Transference into a tree,” Bruce said. “Bore a hole in the trunk, insert a lock of the sufferer's hair. Then plug up the hole….”

Ruth didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

THEY ALL OVERSLEPT THE NEXT MORNING
,
AND TWO OF
them refused breakfast.

“And it's not because I'm hung over, either,” Ruth said sullenly. “I had the most ghastly dream last night—witch doctors in feathers and masks chasing Sara around a fire. It ended with somebody getting eaten, I'm not quite sure whom. Me, probably. I'll just have coffee, thanks.”

Sara rose and obliged.

“I had a dream, too,” she said; and something in her tone made the others stop in mid-swallow and mid-bite to look at her.

“Messages from the beyond?” Pat asked. His attempt at lightness was not a success.

“I don't know.”

“Well, what did you dream?” Bruce asked.

Sara settled down with her elbows on the table. Ruth started to point out that her hair was unsanitarily involved with her plate of scrambled eggs, and then decided not to bother. There were obviously more important matters at stake.

“I dreamed I was in the house,” Sara began. “Just walking through the rooms. I started out in the kitchen, and it looked funny; I mean, I couldn't make out any of the details, just the view of the garden. The room was all blurry and unshaped. Then I walked through the dining room and things got a little clearer, but the furniture was still shapeless blobs.”

She paused, her eyes dark with memory, trying to choose her words.

“I couldn't see into the living room. There was like a curtain pulled over the doorway. In the hall things were still misty, but I noticed one thing. The cellar door was open.”

“The cellar again,” Bruce muttered. “Damn it, I just don't see….”

Pat waved him to silence.

“Was that all you dreamed?”

“No, there was one bit more. I tried—I wanted—” Again she paused; she had gone a trifle pale. “This was the only bad part,” she said. “I told you what happened in the dream, but I haven't described the atmosphere. The feeling of it. I was anxious all through this, but not really frightened; just—like trying to sneak something out of the house before Mother could catch me. But it kept building up, the anxiety, and when I was in the hallway I knew I was getting near the source of the trouble. I wanted to go into the living room. But I couldn't. Something held me back, something that almost gibbered with terror. Finally the struggle got to be too much. I woke up.”

She took a large bite of toast, and Ruth said, in a voice that was tart with relief, “You don't seem particularly upset this morning.”

“No, I told you it wasn't that bad,” Sara said thickly.

“The cellar,” Bruce mumbled. “It must mean something.”

“What?” Pat demanded. “We looked once. There wasn't an extra cobweb that shouldn't have been there.”

“Something under the cellar?” Sara said. Ruth looked at her, somewhat startled.

“Douglass Campbell's buried treasure?”

“God, I hope not,” Bruce said morosely. “The floor is concrete. If we have to drill that out and then excavate the whole bloody floor area—”

“Our spirit guides are going to have to be a little more specific before I tackle that one,” Pat agreed. “I suggest that if the dream does have meaning it lies in the latter part. The suggestion that there is something in the living room that we haven't found.”

“Books?” Ruth guessed wildly. “There are more of Hattie's in the bookcase at the back, the same one the Maryland history book came from.”

“It sounds crazy,” Bruce said despondently. “But we might as well look. I keep thinking that, with the old lady's interest in family, there ought to be more in the house that we've missed.”

“I promised Father Bishko—”

“Well, I didn't,” Bruce said. “I wouldn't consider such a promise binding, Ruth. I'd like you to come, if only to show me likely places to look, but you don't need to.”

“Bruce is right,” Pat said. “I don't consider myself bound by any such promise.”

Bruce studied him thoughtfully; Ruth thought she could see the dark eyes weighing possibilities.

“There's something you could do that would be a helluva lot more useful.”

“What's that?”

“Trot over to Annapolis,” Bruce said.

“What the hell for?”

“State papers. I've gone through most of the material at the Library of Congress, but there are all kinds of local records at Annapolis. Two such collections—the Red and Blue Book papers—have letters relating to Georgetown people during this period. And somebody ought to look through the newspapers.
The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser
is the one covering our period, I think. They'll have it on microfilm at Annapolis.”

Pat's face took on the stubborn look Ruth was coming to know so well. She could understand his reaction. Bruce was right; but his glibness and inclination to assume authority were extremely irritating.

“Why don't you go?”

“A, I don't have a car. B, I lack your academic prestige. And C,” he added quickly, as Pat's mouth opened in protest, “I'm having trouble with my eyes and I'd rather not drive.”

“I didn't know you had eye trouble,” Sara said. “Bruce, what is it?”

“I have to use drops, and they blur my sight,” Bruce said.

“But you never told me—”

“What do you expect me to do, give every girl I date a list of my physical disabilities? Forget it. Well, Pat?”

“I can hardly refuse, can I? Okay. I'd better start right away. It's getting late.”

“We'll meet you back here about six,” Bruce said. “The Hall of Records probably closes about four or five. We'll have left the other house by that time, so don't go there. Can you give us an extra key, in case we get here before you do?”

“All right,” Pat said without enthusiasm.

He got up and promptly tripped over Lady, who was, as predicted, flat on the floor in front of her food dish.

“Stupid dog,” Pat said automatically.

Lady moaned.

Bruce stared at the dog.

“Hey, Pat. Can we borrow Lady?”

“What in heaven's name for?”

“As a canary,” Bruce explained.

Sara giggled, Ruth stared, and Pat explained, “He's not over the edge yet. They used to use birds in coal mines in the old days to detect the presence of lethal gases. Being so much smaller the birds passed out before the concentration got high enough to damage men. You may certainly borrow Lady, but you ought to consider three factors. First, you will probably have to carry her out to the car, and she weighs almost as much as Sara; second, we have no proof that the supposed sensitivity of animals to supernatural influences is anything more than an old wives' tale; third, even if most animals are sensitive, Lady is such a lump that she probably wouldn't stir if Satan himself came up and leered in her face.”

“I'll risk it,” Bruce said. “It's worth a try.”

As she went in search of her purse and coat, Ruth knew that there was one implication of the dream which none of them cared to explore, or even comment upon. If Sara had been visited in sleep, then her immunity was broken. She was no safer out of the house than in it.

 

II

Bruce refused Pat's offer to drive them to the house. Ruth felt almost certain that he had been lying about his eye trouble. The conclusion was inescapable: He did not want Pat to come with them. Why?

On the way over, Bruce made the taxi stop before a supermarket. He came out carrying a small bag and wearing a slightly sheepish expression. He refused to let Sara see what was in the bag. She took it as a joke, teasing and pretending to snatch; but Ruth could not enter into the game. Doubt assailed her. Was it possible that, after all, she had been led astray, her weakness expertly played upon by an unscrupulous or deranged young man? When they reached the house it took all her willpower to force her to enter. With every visit the atmosphere got worse; the whole house now seemed to vibrate with sounds just below the range of hearing, the air to quiver with unseen forces. Her newborn doubts made the situation even more unpleasant.

Once inside, however, Bruce seemed to improve. At least his odd behavior about his purchase was explained, to Ruth's satisfaction, when she saw what it was. Bruce opened the bag in the kitchen and produced a handful of objects that looked like little gray-white oranges.

“Garlic!” Sara said, with a whoop of laughter. Then she suddenly sobered. “Oh, no, you're not,” she said, backing away. “Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes.” Bruce eyed his purchase doubtfully. “Ruth, have you got a drill? I don't know how else—”

“I think a big darning needle,” Ruth said, smiling. “I suppose you want to release the juices? Otherwise we could just tape the bits all over her.”

Sara exclaimed in outrage, and Bruce began to laugh.

“What a gaudy picture! We'll settle for the conventional necklace.”

When it was done, Sara studied herself critically in the mirror and admitted, “It's not bad. I've seen worse-looking things in those psychedelic shops on Wisconsin.”

“And you could always give away a free set of nose plugs with each ensemble,” Ruth suggested, pinching her nostrils together.

“I don't know what you're complaining about,” Sara said. “You're a lot farther away from it than I am. Luckily I like the smell of garlic.”

They dragged the banter and laughter out a little too long, reluctant to leave the warm modernity of the kitchen for that other room. But when they entered, they found Lady stretched out in front of the fireplace, and Ruth's spirits rose. Up to this point they had not found the conventional trappings of the supernatural particularly reliable, so Lady's calm was meaningless until it had been tested—an eventuality which Ruth hoped would never occur. But she felt, somehow, that it would be impossible for anything to look so comfortable unless the room really was clear. Bruce obviously felt the same way; he made a detour just to scratch Lady behind the ears. She twitched one of the ears feebly but made no other acknowledgment, and Bruce said, as he straightened, “That dog manages to convey the impression that she's worn out from a hard day's work. I wish I knew how to do it.”

“It makes me feel one hundred percent better just to look at her,” Ruth said. “Now. Where do we start?”

“Here.” Bruce advanced upon the bookcase.

They found several astounding things, including a copy of
Ruth Fielding in the Rockies,
whose cover showed an adventurous damsel in long skirts and a pompadour preparing to mount a horse. Sara appropriated this masterpiece, and sat chortling over it for some time, reading excerpts aloud.

“It's the old-time equivalent of Nancy Drew,” she said. “Imagine Cousin Hattie keeping this around.”

“Who's Nancy Drew?” Bruce asked, distracted.

“The girl's equivalent of the Hardy Boys,” Ruth said. “Bruce, here's something called
Recollections of Old Georgetown.
”

“No soap. I looked through it at the library.” Bruce got up off the floor in one effortless movement. “Nothing else. Let's try the attic.”

Ruth groaned with dismay at the sight of the place; she had forgotten how many articles had been put away “till I have time to sort through them.” There were boxes and cartons and old trunks and suitcases; there was a dress form, and a chair with one leg broken, and a sofa that had lost most of its stuffing. There was an untidy stack of old pictures….

“I wonder,” Bruce said, heading toward them, “if anybody we know is here?”

Nobody was. The pictures were daguerreo-types of desperately bearded gentlemen and grim-faced ladies, or engravings of classical subjects in funereal black frames.

“You wouldn't find anything that old in the attic,” Ruth said, as Bruce tossed the last of the pile aside with a gesture of disgust. “Colonial portraits are chic; they would be downstairs.”

“I can't help wondering what she looked like,” Bruce murmured. Ruth nodded.

“I know. I've wondered too. But it would be too much luck to discover a portrait of her.”

“I guess so. Well…I'll take the big trunk, you take the little one.”

They worked steadily for three more hours and then stopped for a quick lunch. Lady roused at that—Sara swore she heard the can opener being removed from the drawer—and dragged herself out to the kitchen to indicate that she might consider joining them. Bruce pointed out that she was only supposed to be fed twice a day, but the argument convinced neither Lady nor Sara, who persisted in sneaking tidbits to her under the table.

The hours in the airless, dusty attic had given Ruth a headache, so after lunch they adjourned to the living room, whither Bruce had taken several promising-looking cartons. They spent an unprofitable and increasingly tedious afternoon reading yellowing newspapers and clippings of recipes, fashions and gossip columns—all fascinating under most circumstances, but none dating back to the period they were interested in. Finally Ruth's eyes gave out; she rose, stretching cramped muscles, and went to draw the drapes. The sunlight was too explicit; it showed the dust on tables and bookcases.

“Don't do that,” Bruce said, looking up. “I don't want to lose track of the time. You ought to have a clock in this room.”

“Don't you trust the garlic?” Sara asked lightly.

“No, and I suspect Pat may be right about Lady. She doesn't look very sensitive.”

“She wants me to light the fire,” Sara said.

Bruce gave the recumbent rump of Lady a disparaging glance.

“How can you tell?”

“She communicates. Telepathy.”

“Go ahead and light it,” Ruth said. “It seems chilly in here to me….”

She stopped, with a catch of breath, but Bruce shook his head.

“No, it's not that kind of cold. I turned the thermostat down when we came in.”