Carrion Comfort (46 page)

Anne was so proud of her little house that she kept blushing as she showed it to us. It was an anachronism: a pleasant white frame home— it might once have been a farmhouse— set a few dozen yards from Germantown Avenue on a narrow street called Queen Lane. It had a high wooden fence, badly scarred and graffitied in front despite obvious efforts to keep it clean, a postage stamp of a yard smaller than the courtyard at my Charleston house, a minuscule front porch, two dormer windows proclaiming a second floor, and a single stunted peach tree that looked as if it would never bloom again. The house itself was sandwiched between a dry cleaning establishment that seemed to be advertising dead flies in the front window and a three-story apartment building that appeared to have been abandoned for decades except for the evidence of dark faces peering out of windows. Across the street was an assortment of small ware houses, sagging brick buildings turned into duplexes, and the beginning of the ubiquitous row houses half a block to the south.

“It isn’t much, but it’s home,” said Anne, waiting for me to contradict the first part of her statement. I contradicted her.

Anne’s large bedroom and a smaller guest room were on the second floor. A tiny bedroom off the kitchen had been her brother’s, and the room still smelled of medicine and cigars. Anne obviously had planned to offer the lower room to Vincent and the small guest room to me. I helped her offer us the two upstairs rooms while she took the downstairs room. I looked at the rest of the house while she moved her clothes and personal items.

There was a small dining room, too formal for its size, a tiny living room with too much furniture and too many prints on the wall, a kitchen as prim and unpleasant in appearance as Anne herself, the brother’s room, a bathroom, and a small back porch that looked out on a backyard no larger than a dog run.

I opened the backdoor to let a bit of air into the stuffy house and a fat, gray cat brushed past my legs. “Oh, that’s Fluff,” said Anne as she carried an armload of clothes into the small bedroom. “He’s my widdle baby. Mrs. Pagnelli has been watching after him, but he knew that Mommy was coming home. Didn’t ooow?” She was addressing the cat.

I smiled and stepped back. Women my age are supposed to love cats, fill their homes with them at every opportunity, and generally act like idiots around the arrogant, treacherous creatures. When I was a child— no older than six or seven— my aunt brought her fat Siamese with her each summer she visited. I was always afraid the beast would lie on my face in the night and smother me. I remember stuffing that cat in a burlap sack one afternoon when the grown-ups were having lemonade in the backyard. I drowned it in a water trough behind the neighbor’s carriage house and left the damp corpse behind a barn where a pack of yellow dogs often congregated. After Anne’s conditioning was completed, I would not be at all surprised if her “widdle baby” was fated to have a similar accident.

If one has the Ability, it is relatively easy to Use someone, much harder to successfully condition them. When Nina, Willi, and I began the Game in Vienna almost half a century ago, we amused ourselves by Using others, strangers usually, and there was little thought given to the necessity of always having to discard these human instruments. Later, as we grew older and more mature in our exercise of the Ability, each of us found need for a companion— part servant, part bodyguard— who would be so attuned to our needs that it took almost no effort to Use them. Before I discovered Mr. Thorne in Switzerland some twenty-five years ago, I traveled with Madame Tremont, and before her, a young man I had named— with youthful, shallow sentimentality—Charles, after my last beau. Nina and Willi had their long succession of catspaws, culminating in the disastrous presence of Willi’s final two companions and Nina’s loathsome Miss Barrett Kramer. Such conditioning takes some time, although it is the first few days that are critical. The trick is to leave at least a hollow core of the personality without leaving any possibility of in de pen dent action. And although the action must not be in de pen dent, it must be
autonomous
in the sense that simple duties and daily routines can be initiated and carried out without any direct Using. If one is to travel in public with these conditioned assistants, there must also be at least a simulacrum of the original persona left in place.

The benefits of such conditioning are obvious. While it is difficult— almost impossible, although Nina may have been capable of it— to
Use
two people at the same time, there is little difficulty in directing the actions of two conditioned catspaws. Willi never traveled with fewer than two of his “boyfriends,” and before her feminist phase, Nina was known to travel with five or six young, single, handsome bodies.

Anne Bishop was easily conditioned, eager for a subjugation of self. In the three days I rested in her home, she was thoroughly brought into line. Vincent was another case entirely. While my initial “teaching” had destroyed all higher order volition, his subconscious remained a riotous and largely unrestrained tangle of surging hatreds, fears, prejudices, desires, and dark urges. I did not wish to eradicate these, for here were the sources of energy I would tap at a later date. For those three long days on the weekend before Christmas 1980, I rested in Anne’s slightly sour-smelling home and explored the emotional jungle of Vincent’s dark undermind, leaving trails and leverages there for future use.

On Sunday, December 21, I was eating a late breakfast that Anne had prepared and asking her about her friends, her income, and her life. It turned out that she had no friends and very little life. Mrs. Pagnelli, a neighbor down the alley, occasionally came to visit and sometimes watched over Fluff. At the mention of the missing feline, Anne’s eyes filled with tears and I could feel her thoughts sheer sideways like an automobile on black ice. I tightened my mental grip and brought her back to her new and central passion— pleasing me.

Anne had over seventy-three thousand dollars in savings. Like many selfish old women approaching a boring end to a boring life, she had lived on the edges of poverty for decades while storing away money, stocks, and bonds like a compulsive squirrel hoarding acorns it would never eat. I suggested that she might consider converting the various commodities to cash during the coming week. Anne thought this was an excellent idea.

We were discussing her sources of income when she mentioned Grumblethorpe. “The Society pays me a small stipend for watching over it, leading occasional private tours, and checking it when it is closed for long periods, as it is now.”

“What Society?” I asked. “The Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks,” said Anne.

“And what kind of landmark is this Grumblethorpe?” I asked. “I would love to show it to you,” Anne said eagerly. “It is less than a block from here.”

I was bored after three days of resting and conditioning these two in the confines of Anne’s little house. I nodded. “After breakfast,” I said. “If I feel up to the walk.”

It is hard for me, even now, to convey the charm and incongruity of Grumblethorpe. It sits directly on the deteriorating brick thoroughfare of Germantown Avenue. The few fine old buildings there are flanked by bars and junk shops, delicatessens and five-and-dime stores. The narrow streets that lead off this section of the main avenue soon turn into true slums, row houses, and empty lots. But there at 5267 Germantown Avenue, behind a picket line of parking meters and two soot-blackened, knife-gashed oaks, not ten feet from the traffic and trolleys and endless parade of colored pedestrians, sits the stone-walled, shuttered, and shingled perfection of Grumblethorpe.

There were two front doors. Anne brought out a cluttered key ring and let us in the eastern entrance. The interior was dark, the windows shielded by heavy drapes and tightly closed blinds. The house smelled of age and centuries-old wood and furniture polish. It smelled like home to me.

“The home was built in 1744 by John Wister,” said Anne, her voice growing stronger and taking on a tour-guide’s tone. “He was a Philadelphia merchant who used this as a summer home. Later, it became the family’s year-round residence.”

We stepped from the small entrance hall into the parlor. The broad floorboards were highly polished, the elegantly simple ceiling molding was in the “Wedding Band” style, and there was one wing-backed chair next to the small fireplace. A period chairside table held a single candle. There were no electric lights or outlets.

“During the Battle of Germantown,” said Anne, “the British General James Agnew died in this room. His bloodstains are still visible.” She gestured toward the floor.

I glanced at the faint discoloration of the wood. “There are no signs outside,” I said.

“There used to be a small card in the window,” said Anne. “The house was open to the public on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons between two o’clock and five o’clock. The Society arranged private tours for those interested in the history of the area. It is closed now— and will be for at least another month— until funds become available to complete some restoration begun in the kitchen.”

“Who lives here now?” I asked.

Anne laughed— a small, mousy squeak. “No one
lives
here,” she said. “There is no electricity, no heating except for the fireplaces, and no plumbing whatsoever. I check on the place regularly and once every six to eight weeks, Mrs. Waverly from the Society makes an inspection tour.”

I nodded. “There is a Courting Door here,” I said. “Ah yes,” said Anne. “You know the custom. It was also used for funerals.”

“Show me the rest of the house,” I commanded.

The dining room held a rustic table and chairs harking back to the simpler beauty of early Colonial design. There was an incredible journey-man’s bench there that combined all of the skills of a cabinetmaker. Anne pointed out a chair crafted by Soloman Fussel, who had made the chairs for Independence Hall.

The kitchen looked out into the backyard and despite the brown, frozen soil and traces of snow, I could make out the plan for the beautiful old garden that must bloom there in the summer. The kitchen floors were of stone and the fireplace was large enough to walk into without stooping. There was an odd assortment of old tools and utensils pegged to one wall— antique shears, a six-foot scythe, a hoe, an ancient rake, iron tongs, other things— while a large pedal-driven whetstone sat nearby. Anne pointed to a large section of the corner that had been torn up, stone stacked, and an ugly piece of black plastic covering an excavation. “There were loose stones here,” said Anne. “During some maintenance in November, the workers discovered a rotted wooden door under the floor and a partially collapsed tunnel.”

“An escape tunnel?”

“Probably,” said Anne. “There was still some Indian activity when the house was built.”

“Where does it go?”

“They found what must be the stone exit point just beyond that neighboring garage,” said Anne, gesturing through ice-rimmed panes. “But the Society did not have enough funds to continue excavating until a grant from the Philadelphia Historical Commission comes through in early February.”

“Vincent would like to look into the tunnel,” I said. “Oh,” said Anne and seemed to waver, running a hand across her forehead, “I am not sure if it would be proper . . .”

“Vincent will take a look,” I said. “Of course,” agreed Anne.

There was a candle in the parlor, but I had to send the boy back to Anne’s house to get matches. When he removed the plastic tarp and descended the short ladder to the tunnel, I closed my eyes to get a better view.

Dirt, rock, the smell of dampness and the grave. The tunnel had been excavated barely a dozen feet out under the backyard. Fresh timber shored up the ceiling of the partially reopened tunnel. I brought Vincent back up and opened my eyes.

“Would you like to see the upstairs?” asked Anne. I assented without speaking or gesturing.

The nursery whispered to me as soon as I entered it.

“The legend is that this room is haunted,” said Anne. “Mrs. Waverly’s dogs will not enter it.”

I assumed that Anne heard the whispers, but when I touched her mind there was no awareness of them, only the growing eagerness to please me.

I stepped deeper into the room. The window facing the street allowed almost no light through the wooden blinds. In the gloom I could make out a low metal crib that was ugly and out of era— a tarnished cage for an evil infant. There were two small string beds and a child’s chair, but the items that commanded attention were the toys and dolls and life-size mannequin. A large doll house sat in one corner. The thing was also from the wrong time period— it must have been constructed at least a century after the real house— but the striking thing about it was that it had rotted away and partially collapsed much like a real abandoned home. I half expected to see tiny rats scurrying through the miniature halls. Near the doll house, half a dozen dolls lay tossed on a low string bed. Only one looked old enough to date back to the eighteenth century, but several looked real enough to be the mildewing corpses of actual children.

But it was the mannequin that dominated. It was the size of a living seven-or eight-year-old boy. The clothes were old reconstructions of a Revolutionary War-era boy’s outfit, but the cloth had faded over the past decades, seams had parted, and a scent of rotting wool filled the room. The hands and neck and face had lost their pink surface in many spots, showing the dark porcelain beneath. Real human hair had once made up a lustrous wig, but only scabrous patches remained and the scalp was mottled with cracks. The eyes seemed absolutely real and I realized that they were human prostheses. The glass eyes alone had retained their luster and luminous quality as the mannequin decayed: a boy’s eager eyes in a standing corpse’s body.

For some reason I assumed that the whispering emanated from the mannequin, but when I approached it the vague susurrations grew fainter rather than louder. It was the walls that were speaking. As Anne and Vincent watched passively, I leaned against the plaster walls and listened. The whispers were audible, but just below the level where individual words could be distinguished. It sounded like more than one voice, but I had the distinct impression that I was hearing sentences directed at me rather than eavesdropping on a conversation.