Boundaries (32 page)

Goose down. Big rocks and thumbs

Thumbs

such foolish things
.

The watchword was affection. David was his friend. He loved David. He had always loved David.

David was deserving of his affection and his gentle touch and caress and he had

himself breathed life into David not too long ago and not too far from this very spot either

breathed life into him so why not

WHY NOT

SUCK IT OUT OF HIM, the very air, the air that pumped his lungs up and kept him in this twilight sleep WHY NOT

lay down beside him there with affection and pinch his nose shut and do that same thing he had done before only

IN REVERSE,

SUCK OUT THE LIFE, SUCK OUT THE LIFE

~ * ~

The woman crouched in a doorway and looked up at the slice of moving sky high overhead. She felt alone, it was true. She felt hemmed in, it was true. She felt the need for space, and the need for closeness, and the two needs fought themselves within her and made her insides knot up. It was true.

But she did not feel pain.

And she remembered pain. It was like a tug from behind that was designed to keep her from moving forward.

She felt a little dizzy, even as she crouched in the doorway. But then she stood, shakily, the word "Brian" escaped her, and was gone, and forgotten.

A shadow moved swiftly at a distance down the narrow brick street. It darkened the houses as it made its way toward her. But when she looked up, thinking that something must be flying over, a bird, perhaps, something very large, she saw nothing. And when she looked back, down the narrow street and the close-packed houses, she saw nothing. The shadow had gone.

"Christian," she said, and then the name was gone, too.

She was bathed in light.

And her memory of pain began to fade.

~ * ~

"
Uhdarcknass
," wrote the chunky man in the below-ground-level apartment, "like
knowuthar
chasez
hymn
awl
over
thuh
plas
—and he looks
bahk
and
ittz
ganeingon
hymn
fasst
, he’s
knott
wonteeng
2b
quik
enuf
oar he wants it to catch hymn, this
theeng
frum
insid
hymn. it
chaases
lika
dawg
awoolf
, a
murdereeng
theeng
and it wonts2
overwelm
hymn,
eet
hymn,
mak
hymn itself"

I
t is ten years later. The people gathered in what was once Anne Case’s house are of various minds about what they’re doing, sitting in a circle, listening to—making themselves a part of—entreaties being made to the dead to appear, to show themselves.

One woman thinks mostly of her son, and the tough time he’s having in school. She’s worried about his future. She thinks that he may end up in a dead-end job and be unhappy for the rest of his life because he will always have to worry about money. Her thoughts are only partially with what Maude is doing. She thinks that it’s a bit silly.

Another woman is frightened. She believes that there are things moving in the house and that they intend harm to them all, and that Maude is being foolhardy indeed playing with the supernatural in this way.

"
Speak
to us, show us a
sign
, Anne!" Maude pleads.

And the thing in another part of the house that has stirred and awakened has made its way to the top of the stairs, and has started down.

In the semidarkness below, a man gathered with the others in a circle for the
seance
looks toward the stairs, and his head cocks a little because he thinks he’s heard something. After a moment, he looks away. A shiver goes through him.

"I have
seen
you here, Anne!" Maude declares.

"I’m sorry," says a young man—youngest in this group made of mostly of thirty-to-forty-year-olds. His name is Dorian. "But I really have to use the bathroom. Do you mind?"

Maude gives him an oblique, subtly offended look. Then she says, "Upstairs. Second door on the right."

Dorian stands, smiles
quiveringly
. He is very embarrassed. "It’s okay," he says, and sweeps his hand to include the circle remaining, "go ahead without me."

"We can wait," Maude says.

"I won’t be long, then," says Dorian, and starts for the stairs.

~ * ~

When the deputy stood beside the open driver’s window of the Buick that was parked down the dead-end path off Sylvan Beach Road, he smelled lilacs.

Lilacs?
he wondered.

There were no lilac bushes here. Only cattails moving fitfully in what had, in the past few moments, become a stiff breeze.

Lilacs?

He leaned into the driver’s window.

Lilacs?

He saw that the keys were in the ignition.

Lilacs?
he wondered.
Lilac perfume
, he realized. "Good Lord," he whispered.

~ * ~

The stairs that David descended were metal and they clanged dully with each footfall.

Below, the tall rectangle of light that was the exit to the street grew no larger as he descended, and he wished desperately that he could see the stairs he was on, that he could see his own feet on them, that he could see himself
actually descending
, actually going down to the first floor.

He wept. He felt trapped here, in this building, in this place.

He said as he wept, "My name is David Case, my name is David Case," and as he said it, as he wept, as he descended the metal stairs—
clang, clang, clang
—the meaning and importance of the words grew and faded, grew and faded, like a heart pumping, a heart losing air.

~ * ~

Christian Grieg lay beside the body that lay halfway in the doorway of the green cottage. He was on his back. He said, with tight excitement, his unfocused gaze on the top of the doorway above him, "I destroyed a fish that the seagulls wanted, David."

An almost imperceptible groan escaped the body beside him.

"I brought my foot down,
sploosh
!
" Christian said, and his arms tightened with the memory, "onto that fish and it was no more!" He smiled.

He turned his head so he was looking at the closed eyes of the body in the doorway, whose head had turned toward him. "Listen to me, my friend." He rolled toward David, reached, slapped David’s cheek softly. "Listen to me. Open your eyes." He slapped David harder, lifted one of David’s eyelids; the pupil had ascended, he saw only white. "Disgusting," he said.

He rolled to his back again, focused on the top of the doorway above him. "This is very pleasant, isn’t it?" He grinned. "Two pals having a chat."

A car passed by swiftly on Sylvan Beach Road.

The body beside Christian groaned once more. Louder. But not loud enough that anyone farther away than Christian was now could have heard it.

Christian said, still grinning, gaze still on the doorway above him, "That was a purely rhetorical comment, I assume."

He rolled his head to the side so he was looking again at David’s closed eyes. There was movement in them. David’s eyes were moving behind his closed eyelids. Christian lifted one of the lids. He saw David’s light blue iris and dilated black pupil staring back. A quick, "Ah!" of surprise escaped him and he let David’s eyelid go. His grin vanished. Returned.

He said, gaze still on David’s face, "That was a neat trick, my friend. You scared the piss out of me."

He put his hand on David’s chest. He thought that there was movement. He wasn’t sure. It was very subtle. It could have been his own hand trembling with excitement.

He lifted David’s eyelid again. He saw the light blue pupil, the dilated black iris staring back. The iris began to contract as daylight found it.

Christian said, "Are you in there, my friend?" He paused, continued, "Or is this just some randomness of your bioelectronics—I want to know!" The fierceness of his last comment surprised him. Some untapped and unknown reserve of anger? he wondered.

What was the exact breadth and width of his power and anger?

He was intrigued.

Clearly, the smashing of the fish was only a minute part of his capabilities.

Look at the wild creatures. The natural creatures that existed on the earth. Look at their power, their anger!

Anne, the woman with the crown of black hair, the fish—what he had done to them was nothing compared with his true power.

He was still staring into David’s eye. David’s eye was still staring back. Christian said tightly, "You see me here, don’t you? I know that you do." He slapped his open hand onto David’s chest again and stopped breathing a moment.

Yes. There was movement.

He jumped to his feet, leaned over, grabbed David with both hands by the neck, yanked his body up toward him. "Damn you! Damn you!"

He couldn’t suck the air from David anymore. That time had passed.

He had to do something else.

Something more overt.

~ * ~

It was no longer a doorway that David was seeing below, down the black stairway, and his feet no longer clanged on the metal stairs. He was seeing something else.

The metal stairs were gone.

The building was gone.

He was seeing light ahead, below, beyond him. He was seeing an opening.

Movement.

"David Case!" he whispered. "David Case." The words came out and he heard them, but he heard them as if they were at a great distance, and were being shouted to him by someone else.

He had no idea what the words meant.

"Damn you!" he heard.

He saw a face in the opening, in the light. It was a face that was alive with anger, it was surrounded by darkness, and it was shouting. "Damn you!" it shouted, "Damn you!" as he—David—slid toward the opening, as the opening widened and drew him closer, like a mouth taking in food, "Damn you! Damn you!" the face in the opening shouted, "Damn you!" the face shouted, "I brought my foot down
sploosh
!
" the face shouted, "onto that fish and it was no more!"

~ * ~

Christian lifted David’s body, held it in his arms. David’s head fell backwards. His eyes opened halfway.

Christian left the cottage, and headed toward the lake.

~ * ~

David saw blue sky, now. He saw the tips of pine trees. A gull soaring.