Ammie, Come Home (22 page)

“I feel so sorry for her!” Sara burst out. “I've felt her; you haven't. Bruce is right, she's confused and lonely….”

“Emotionally involved with a ghost!” Pat groaned. “Well, I won't hypnotize you, and that's flat.”

“She would come tonight,” Sara pleaded.

“Well, she can't come.” Bruce continued to contemplate the ceiling. “Tomorrow Ruth and I are going to finish searching the attic. We haven't exhausted the conventional sources yet.”

“Bruce,” Ruth said reluctantly, “I hate to bring this up, but—maybe I'd better search the attic alone.”

She had never seen Bruce so surprised. He swung his feet to the floor and sat up.

“Why?”

“It just occurred to me tonight, when I saw you and Pat facing one another…. There was a third person involved in the story. If Captain Doyle was a young man, desperately in love with Sara—I mean, Amanda—”

“A third overshadowing?” Bruce brooded. “I never thought of that….”

Pat was staring.

“I don't like the way this is going,” he said slowly. “Are we still on the wrong track, even now? If three of the four of us repeat a pattern of dead time, what about the fourth? Douglass Campbell was married. Are we trapped in some ghastly repetition of history?”

“Campbell's wife died in childbirth,” Ruth reminded him, “and there's no hint of another woman. No, Pat; I didn't feel myself—shadowed—ever. But I did feel, tonight, as if that confrontation had happened before. If Campbell found you a suitable host, what about Anthony Doyle and Bruce?”

“No,” Bruce said, with a finality that surprised them all. “I'd have felt it, Ruth. If I'm sure of anything, I'm sure that Doyle is, in his own way, at rest.”

“You didn't see yourself,” Ruth insisted. “You didn't feel….”

She knew then that she would never, ever, be able to tell anyone about the final collapse of the fabric of time, when she had smelled lilac that had withered two hundred springs before. “It had happened, another time,” she said stubbornly. “You and Pat, Campbell and young Anthony. The same positions, the same emotions—”

She was expressing herself badly, she knew that; but Bruce seemed to catch something of what she was trying to say, and his response fascinated her. His jaw dropped, with a slow, mechanical movement, and his eyes opened so widely that they seemed to fill the upper part of his face. But before he could speak the girl sitting cross-legged before the fire lifted her head.

They had all chosen to forget that Sara needed no help in doing what she wanted to do. The rapport was established; her new-found pity, and her fear for the others, did the rest. While they argued and ignored her, she made her decision. The thing was done in silence, without struggle. But they knew, even before they turned to look, that what they saw was no longer Sara.

 

IV

“Sara….” Bruce's voice was a groan.

“Not Sara. Gone.” The dark head moved in negation, and Ruth went sick at the unfamiliarity of the gesture.

“Ammie,” she said.

“Ammie…” the soft slurred voice agreed sweetly.

“Where is she?” Bruce demanded. He was so white that Ruth thought he was going to faint; but she could not move, not even to prevent him from falling. It was Pat who took charge; his hand on Bruce's shoulder pushed the boy back on the couch; his voice, professionally flat, took up the questioning.

“Forget that. Amanda, you come to Sara. Why do you come?”

“Help,” the voice wailed, and Sara's body shook from shoulder to heels. “Help… Ammie….”

“We will help,” Pat said quickly. “Don't be afraid. You're safe here, safe with us. No one can hurt you. Whom do you fear? Is it Douglass Campbell? Is he the one who comes in the darkness?”

“Father.”

“Your father, Douglass Campbell. Is he still there, in the house?”

“Still there,” the soft voice whispered. “Still…hurting. Help…Ammie….”

“What does he want?”

“Hurt…oh….”

The voice was unbearably pitiful. Pat's face was as pale as Bruce's, but his voice retained the professional calm of the trained hypnotist's.

“He can't hurt you, Amanda. You are safe. Safe. I tell you that, and you know it is true. But you must help us, so that we can keep you safe. What does your father fear? Was he involved in the Plot—when they were trying to free the British soldiers in Georgetown?”

“George Town,” said Ammie's voice; and Ruth heard, with a terrible thrill, that it broke the word into two parts. “Father helped…. Anthony knew….”

“Anthony Doyle?”

“Anthony…knew father….”

“I understand,” Pat said, as the voice rose. “Anthony knew your father was a traitor. Anthony was a soldier, wasn't he? In the Continental army?”

“General's…aid….” The voice had an echo of dead pride that struck Ruth more coldly than anything it had yet said.

“Why didn't he tell the General?” Pat asked. “About your father?”

“Told…father….”

Ruth writhed with the ambiguity of it; she wanted to take Amanda by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. But she knew this would be dangerous, for Sara as well as for the dazed girl ghost. And Pat seemed intuitively to understand the incoherent words.

“He told your father he knew? Is that right? He wanted to warn him?”

“Told father. Fair….” Sara's lips twisted in a spasm of silent laughter, and Ruth shrank back against the couch.

“Of course, that was the only fair thing to do,” Pat agreed soothingly, though his forehead was shining with perspiration. “He was your father, and Doyle loved you. He came for you, didn't he? Now, Amanda, listen to me. You are safe; no one can hurt you here. Tell me what happened the day Captain Doyle came to take you away.”

“Night,” Amanda said strongly. Sara's eyes, and what lay behind them, grew glazed and fixed. “Came…night….”

“At night,” Pat agreed. “What happened, Amanda?”

“Night. Came…Father saw…Father….”

The glazed eyes lifted, and for the first and only time Ruth saw the living face of Amanda Campbell, as it had looked on that night in April (oh, the lilacs!) of 1780. It was the same face she had seen in her dream.

“Father,” the voice began again, with obvious strain; and then the last syllable lifted and soared into a scream that made Ruth's heart stop. “Not dead! Not dead!” the dead girl cried, and the body of the living girl wrung its hands and twisted as if in pain.

Pat's arm swept out just in time to heave Bruce back onto the couch. He dropped out of his chair onto one knee before Sara, and took her by the shoulders.

“Ammie, be still, stop, be quiet, everything is all right….”

It was the tone rather than the words that did the job, the blend of firm confidence and cajolery. The screams died to a wild sobbing; and finally the mesmerist, now gray to the lips, was able to insinuate his final command.

“All right, Amanda, you're a good girl…. You helped, you helped very much, it's all over now…. Forget. Safe…. You're safe. It's time for you to go now, time for Sara to come back. Time for Amanda to go home.”

The sobbing was quieter and less endurable; it had a piteous quality that wrung the heart. The fading voice said, in tones of infinite desolation,

“Can't. Ammie can't…go home.”

 

V

A single silver chime sounded. Ruth looked dazedly at the clock. Only an hour, for all that turmoil…. She turned back to Pat, putting the fatbellied glass into his lax hand.

“Drink it, all of it. You need something.”

“She's asleep?”

“Yes, finally. The sleeping pill worked.”

“God, I hated to give it to her! I'm terrified of drugs in these abnormal states. But what could I do?”

“Nothing. You had to.” Ruth sat down on the couch beside him. She was abnormally calm herself; seeing everyone break down all around her had strengthened her will. Resolutely she pushed to the back of her brain the memory of Sara after the invader had finally gone. Or had she? In the moments before the sleep of exhaustion and drugs had claimed her niece, she had not been at all sure what part was Sara and what the lingering remnant of Amanda Campbell, now firmly implanted in the channels of another girl's brain.

“I sent her away,” Pat insisted, as if to convince himself. “I tried, Ruth.”

“You did marvelously, I couldn't have spoken, let alone handled her as you did. Pat, it's all right! She'll be fine in the morning.”

“Is Bruce still up there?” Pat gulped roughly two ounces of brandy and sat up a little straighter.

“Yes, I told him to lie down on the other bed. This is no time for the conventions.”

“I don't give a damn about the conventions; the kid needs sleep himself. You'll have to sit up with her, Ruth. We can't risk it. I'd do it myself, only….”

He hid his face in his hands with a painful groan, and Ruth rescued the brandy glass just before it baptized him.

“It was a crazy, touching thing for her to do,” he said between his fingers.

“In a way I know how she felt—and I don't even have this fantastic empathy with Ammie. She's desperate to end it, Pat. We'll all go out of our minds from the strain, even if nothing worse happens.”

“Bruce has an idea.” Pat took the glass back and finished its contents. He gave a short, unpleasant laugh. “I never thought I'd see the day when I would hang breathless on the words of a young twerp like that.”

“He's better able to handle this. More involved than you, brighter than I. And less hidebound than either. He was right about that, Pat; they all are, darn them. You do get petrified in your thinking as you grow older.”

“Not in all your thinking.” He gave her a feeble, sidelong smile, and then withdrew his hand from her touch. “Ruth, I'm afraid to touch you, and that's the truth. But you know—”

“Yes, I know. This can't last forever, Pat.”

“Then the other ghosts are laid?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“Then maybe some good has come out of this ghastly mess. I'd like to believe it. I'd like to believe something.”

The low flames on the hearth sputtered, dying, and the stillness of late night gathered closer.

“My own beliefs are all jumbled up,” Ruth said somewhat shyly. “But, Pat, I can see hints of things I never dared believe before…. Isn't this one of the great questions? Survival?”

“Yes, survival—but of what? We've been given no proof of Heaven, Ruth. Only of Hell.”

SARA PICKED UP A FORK AND STARED AT IT BLANKLY
; and Ruth's heart stopped. Her panic was only slightly lessened when Sara shrugged and plunged the fork into a piece of bacon. There had been too many such incidents already this morning, and it was not even eleven o'clock.

Ruth had not meant to sleep at all, but her body was too much for her; it demanded rest. She fell into a solid, dreamless sleep at dawn. Bruce had already eaten and left the house by the time the others stumbled downstairs, and there was no sign in the kitchen that he had any breakfast beyond a cup of coffee.

The doorbell rang as they were finishing breakfast, and Pat went to answer it. The ringer was Bruce, who ambled into the kitchen with something less than his usual grace. He looked like Death—a decadent, elegant Renaissance version, bearded and long-haired.

“I borrowed your car,” he told Pat, and held out a bunch of keys on one forefinger. “Hope you don't mind.”

Pat took the keys and looked at them stupidly for a moment before shrugging and putting them in his pocket. They were all stupid with weariness, Ruth thought; and felt a surge of hope. Maybe Sara's frightening moments of unresponsiveness meant no more than that.

“Where'd you go?” Pat asked, pouring more coffee.

“Huh? Oh. Hardware store.”

“Did you have any breakfast?” Sara seemed more alert in Bruce's presence. “I'll cook you some eggs.”

“No, thanks,” Bruce said. A look of profound distaste curled his lips. “Not hungry.”

“Well,” Ruth said, with a bright air which even she found hideously inapropos, “let's get to work, shall we? The attic for me and Bruce—”

“Not the attic,” Bruce cut in. “Have you got some slacks with you? Well, you can change after we get there.”

“What do you—Bruce. What did you get at the hardware store?”

“Tools. Ax, crowbar, wrenches.”

“The cellar door,” Pat said. “Is that it, Bruce?”

The eyes of the two men met and a flash of understanding passed between them.

“We've a problem of tactics,” Pat went on, while Ruth sat speechless. “Ruth isn't exactly bulging with muscle, and it's your right hand, isn't it, that's damaged. If I remember that door, you need a bulldozer. Or two strong right arms.”

“Of all the people who shouldn't—” Bruce began.

“I couldn't agree more. But I don't see how you can do it otherwise.”

Bruce said nothing, but his shoulders sagged visibly. His hands lay on the table, curled around his cup of coffee. The bandages on the right hand were amateurishly clumsy, bulky enough in themselves to make any effort awkward.

“You should have a doctor look at that hand,” Ruth said, still groping. “I used half a bottle of iodine, but—”

“Time for that later,” Bruce said. The implication hung heavy in the air, but he did not voice it. “God. I wish I knew what to do.”

“You can't call anyone else in to help,” Pat continued, with hard insistence. “If what we suspect is true, this is going to be a hell of a mess. Don't forget, Bruce, we haven't seen Douglass materialize in the daytime yet.”

“Yet,” Bruce repeated witlessly.

“If we keep the women out….”

“Sara, yes,” Ruth said. “But I'm coming.”

In the end it was decided that they should all go. Ruth knew that Bruce gave in to Sara's insistence only because he was equally afraid of leaving the girl alone. And as they prepared to leave the house he took Ruth aside for a moment, and she learned the other, principal reason for his surrender.

“I want you to have this,” he said, and handed her a can, a fat aerosol spray container.

“What on earth….”

“Sssh!” Bruce glanced over his shoulder. Pat's footsteps could be heard in the hall upstairs; Sara was finishing the breakfast dishes in the kitchen. “It's one of those chemical gas sprays they use in riots. You know how to operate it, don't you? Point it, like shaving cream—what else comes in these cans? Furniture polish? Then you've operated them before.”

“But what—” Ruth was beginning to feel as if she had never been allowed to finish a sentence. Bruce interrupted, “You pick out a nice safe spot, out of the way, near the exit. Keep this thing handy, but out of sight, your finger on the nozzle. If you see the slightest sign of anything you don't like, from Pat or Sara—or me, for that matter—point the thing and let 'em have it. It's a new kind, works instantaneously. Remember to hold your breath; but since you'll be behind it—”

“I don't believe it,” Ruth muttered. She eyed the harmless-looking can with repugnant incredulity.

“Ruth, I'm counting on you! I don't think we're in any danger at this time of day, otherwise I wouldn't dare risk it. But you're the reserves. I was planning to keep this can myself if Pat and I went down there together; I don't much enjoy the idea of meeting Douglass Campbell when he's armed with an ax. But this is better. You can keep it ready, and he won't know…. Sssh, here they come. It's important that he doesn't know you have it, stick it in your purse till we—”

He turned to give Sara a fairly convincing smile; and Ruth, her hands trembling, jammed the can into her bag.

 

II

The atmosphere of the cellar had not improved since their last visit; it was still dusty, damp, and grim. After the ominous, unused stillness that overlay the rest of the house, a stillness that seemed to Ruth to hum with ominous anticipation, the cellar was even worse.

With a meaningful glance at Ruth, Bruce turned on the electric lantern he had brought and ducked into the space behind the furnace. Pat followed without a word, heaving the heavier of the two crowbars onto his shoulder. He had shed coat and overcoat, as well as his tie, upstairs, and the muscles of his back and shoulders, visible through his thin shirt, were impressive. Ruth felt a shiver slide down her spine. She had never had a higher opinion of Bruce's courage. To be trapped in that dusty, confined space, with something armed for murder, something that still raged with an insane fury that had survived two centuries….

“Sit here,” she said to Sara, indicating a place on the stair; and, rising, she went to stand near the wall in a spot from which she could see the two men. She still wore her coat, on the not invalid excuse that the basement was chilly, and her right hand was in the large patch pocket.

Bruce glanced at her over his shoulder and Ruth smiled at him, willing him all the strength she could give, by her presence and her knowledge. He produced a rather strained smile in response; and she thought, I've done him an injustice. If Sara can catch him, she'll have a prize. This isn't an intellectual game for him; he's risking his life for her sanity. How many men would do that for a girl?

Then the ax in Pat's hands came down with a crash that echoed through the close, dank air.

After all it took less than an hour to force the door. Pat's strength made the difference. The solid planks had hardened with age, the nails had rusted in place, and each piece of wood had to be hacked to pieces before it could be wrenched out. But finally only an inch of wood lay between them and the hidden space beyond. Nothing could be seen; there was not a trace of light from the inner cellar. But a breath of dead, noisome air penetrated the cracks and made both men back away.

“Why don't you rest for a minute?” Ruth suggested.

She was half sick herself with apprehension. It had gone too smoothly; she could not believe that they would accomplish their aim without interference. Unless, she reminded herself, it was pointless. Perhaps their effort had been for nothing, and the mysterious blocked-off space was only an empty, abandoned cellar.

But in her innermost mind she did not believe it. The tension could not be all imaginary; some of it, thickening as the moments wore on, must come from the outer air. At one point she had thought she felt a breath of the familiar, deadly cold, and she had risked leaving her post just long enough to dash up the stairs and close the door. Illogically, she felt more secure with even that frail barrier between her and the ominously quiet living room. On her way down she had almost stumbled over an object which lay on the stairs beside Sara. She recognized it—the big Bible, which the girl had evidently carried down from the living room. Ruth approved the thought, but her glance at Sara did nothing to lighten her apprehension. Silent and withdrawn, the girl sat on the step staring into nothing, like a statue.

Now as the final barrier lay before them, ready to be breached, her fingers were so wet with perspiration that they slipped on the slick surface of the can in her pocket.

“Why don't you rest for a minute?” she repeated.

“Better not wait,” Pat said briefly and significantly. He inserted his crowbar into the center boards. They gave, with a creak and a screech, and Pat stepped back, his hand before his face, as the unwholesome air gushed out.

“Whew,” he said. “The place is like an ancient tomb. Wait a minute, Bruce, and let the air clear.”

Bruce nodded. He was leaning frankly against the wall, his chest heaving in and out, his shirt clinging damply to his body. Ruth knew that his exhaustion was not solely the product of physical exertion. After a few minutes Pat said, “It's better now.”

He picked up the ax and knocked out the remaining fragments of wood. Hoisting the lantern, he vanished into the hole, which brightened with wavering light.

Bruce gave Ruth a desperate, wordless look, and followed.

Ruth glanced from the rigid form of her niece to the dusty yellow-lit hole in the wall. She did not like Sara's look or Sara's position, so near the upper doorway; but she knew her presence was more badly needed elsewhere.

It would have taken some resolution to enter the condensed atmosphere of the hidden room under ordinary circumstances. But for Ruth, personal distaste was swallowed up by her fear for the others. She was afraid to let Pat out of her sight for an instant; and, under the other emotions that drove her, she was conscious of a feeble flicker of plain, ordinary curiosity.

At first glance the old cellar was a disappointment.

It had even fewer features of interest than the outer room. It had always been windowless. The walls, of heavy stone instead of cement, were covered with slimy lichen, of a sickly yellow-green, and they gleamed wetly in the light of the lantern. The floor was beaten earth, so hard that the dampness lay on its surface in oily-looking beads. In a corner, out of the direct lantern light, something shone with pale luminosity. The basement

made a splendid nursery for mushrooms, very big, very white, and oddly swollen-looking.

Despite the seeming normalcy of the room, Bruce was not at ease. He had gotten his back up against the wall—or as close against it as he could get without actually touching the slimy surface—and he still held, with an attempt at casualness that was definitely unconvincing, one of the crowbars. Pat seemed comparatively unmoved. He looked up as Ruth hesitated fastidiously on the threshold.

“Hand me that shovel, Ruth, will you?”

Ruth obeyed, concealing her reluctance at stepping onto the nasty-looking floor. The space was larger than she had anticipated. It must lie under most of the long living room area, and—she shied back, uncontrollably, as the realization struck her—it must be, in actual fact, the original stone-built foundations of the first house. Douglass Campbell's house.

After a wordless consultation with Bruce, who only shrugged helplessly, Pat went to the far, back corner and shoved the spade into the earth. The floor was not as hard as it looked; Pat's big foot, placed firmly on the head of the spade, forced it several inches into the ground.

It was as if the shovel touched a spring buried deep in the earth, and set off the reaction. Ruth had turned to watch Pat. She was still puzzled as to his intent, though it seemed clear enough to Bruce, and for a moment she had forgotten nervous fears in curiosity. Bruce was the first to see it come, perhaps because he was expecting it. His mouth opened in a shout which never emerged; and Ruth's eyes followed the direction of his pointing hand.

She had actually expected to see Sara, once more in the grasp of her unwelcome visitant. But the other—no, she had always seen it in a certain spot, and never expected to see it elsewhere. The cloud of black was dim; it writhed as if in struggle. Douglass Campbell did not like the daylight. But his need, now, was more desperate than custom.

“Not here,” Ruth said, hardly aware that she had spoken. “No…not here….”

“This is where it comes from, this is the center,” Bruce shot at her. “The spray, Ruth—get it. Pat….”

Ruth obeyed, though with difficulty; her fingers were already numb with cold. Balancing the crowbar in unsteady hands, Bruce swung around to face Pat; and Ruth hesitated, because the field of her weapon included both men.

And because, this time, Douglass Campbell was not having it all his own way. Perhaps it was because he was weaker, between cockcrow and dusk; perhaps because Pat now was warned and reacting with all the strength of his will. From first to last he did not utter a sound, nor move beyond the first involuntary start of surprise that swung him back, away from the shovel. Somehow his immobility only made the struggle more apparent, and its ferocity more felt. Ruth watched the perspiration gather and stream down his face, saw the muscles tighten in the arms that still gripped the spade handle. His lips were drawn back in a spasm that bared his teeth. She stood waiting, her hand on the incongruous weapon, and as she watched the wavering column of darkness seemed to shrink.

Then the cry she had choked back rose up in her throat. In the doorway, behind the Thing, stood Sara. It was Sara, not the other girl, but a Sara who appeared to be walking in her sleep. In her arms she cradled the heavy Book as another woman might hold a baby.

Bruce lunged forward, raising the heavy steel bar. Ruth never knew what he intended to do with it, for as he moved his foot slipped and he skidded to his knees. Before he could rise, Sara spoke.