Late at Night (28 page)

And that had been her undoing.

It all comes back to get you in the end. What had one of her occult instructors told her? ”
When you mess around with the universal order of things, the very fabric of nature, you start in motion actions and reactions that are awesome and terrible to contemplate. One should think carefully before interfering with life’s natural progression.”

If only she had listened.

If only she had let go of that object before returning to her own time.

If only she had let go of
the book.

Chapter 48

Betty sped down the narrow hallway between the servants’ quarters and the kitchen, trembling and crying and half out of her mind. She had seen quite enough in Mrs. Plushing’s room, enough to last her a lifetime. There had been nothing more that she could have done.

She darted through the kitchen, out the door and past the dining room table. People. The others were all in the lounge, drinking and talking while Mrs. Plushing bled to death. What did they care? What did any of them care?

Betty was surprised to see only the two men. Where was everyone else? Lynn? Andrea?

Anton spotted her and patted the space next to where he was sitting. It was obvious that he’d had a great deal to drink. Ernie was standing over the pianist, his hand on the other’s shoulder. They must have been whispering, talking about her, laughing at her.
Stop that,
she told herself.
Anton likes you, really likes you, he’s told you so. Why must you think that everyone hates you?
Still, after all she’d been through, it wasn’t easy trusting people.

She said hello to the two men, but declined Anton’s invitation. Instead she went to the bar and made herself a cocktail. A nice, sweet concoction with lots of sticky grenadine and two or three cherries. What would one call this? She wondered if she should ask the fellows, but the two of them seemed so solemn, Anton’s joviality so forced. Suppose neither of them answered her and she had to put up with the silence that came afterwards?

The silence. The awful silence. She had had her fill in it in school, at home. Parents who ignored her, siblings who resented her, friends who only used her, boys that never called, girls who neglected to send invitations, phones that never rang, teachers who looked through her. Silence. All her life, silence. Worst was the silence that issued from her own mouth.

She wiped away a tear from her cheek—
silly goose, feeling sorry for yourself when an important, dignified man like Anton has been at your side practically all day; a world-famous concert pianist.
She sipped her drink and smiled. Why, Anton had been saying such flattering things, wonderful things about her. And Anton had been seen with some of the most glamorous women in the world—but
they
‘d been too shallow, he’d said, too self-absorbed. He needed somebody different, somebody who could really care about him. Betty knew this was only the beginning of a beautiful romance. She sensed, knew deep down, that after a proper interval he would ask her to marry him. She had never been one for marriage and babies, the whole bit, but she had a desperate need to be
wanted
by someone, to share her life with someone else. To be less lonely.

To endure less
silence.

With Anton at her side she could endure just about anything.

She thought again of Mrs. Plushing, of the ones who’d disappeared on the island, and shuddered. What if something like that happened to Anton? No—she wouldn’t let it. She wouldn’t let anything happen to Anton. Not him. The others could go to blazes—snooty Cynthia, haughty Andrea, condescending Lynn, all the others—but Anton must remain safe and sound and whole— for her.

Feeling a little bit better now, she took her drink and sat down beside the pianist. Anton smiled down at her. “Hello, my pretty,” he said. He looked up at Ernie, who began walking over to the corridor leading to his room. “Well, Mr. Thesinger, do you think we should tell her? Should we tell Betty about the danger that all of us are in.”

Betty’s hackles rose. Something was wrong.

Ernie stood in thought for a moment, then said. “No. There’s no need to upset her.”

“Why?” Betty asked. “What’s going on? You can tell me.”

“Yes,” Anton agreed. “I think she should know. Everything. Our Betty is a brave one, aren’t you Betty?”

What
was
going on?
she wondered. Anton sounded so bitter, almost frightened. Surely his odd remarks, his sardonic delivery, the nasty way he looked at her, that had something to do with it. He was upset, that’s all. Surely he couldn’t be mad at her?

“What are you talking about?” she asked, looking from Anton to Ernie and back again. “Is something wrong?”

Anton chuckled and she didn’t like the sound of it. ” ‘Is something wrong? Is something wrong?’ ” she asks. “Poor deluded little fool.” He whirled on her, snarling. “Everything is wrong, you little—”

“Anton!” Ernie’s voice was a command. Betty was grateful. She could tell that Anton had been building up to saying things they would both have regretted later. She reached out and held his hand. “Please tell me what’s wrong. Maybe I can help. I want to help.”

Anton looked down at the hand covering his own as if he had discovered a slug or earthworm crawling across his fingers. He shrugged it off, fidgeting in his seat. “She wants to help,” he told Ernie.

“There’s no point in upsetting everyone,” Ernie said. He looked squarely at Betty. “Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s had too much to drink.”

“I can see,” Betty said calmly, her face scrunched up in motherly concern. She took Anton’s glass away from him. “Please, dear—I don’t want you to get sick. Are you sure you should be drinking this?”

“ ‘Dear?
Dear!
‘ ” he said incredulously, mimicking the woman’s voice. “Did you hear that? She called me ‘dear.’ ”

 “Anton, there’s no need—”

The pianist turned on her, his little victim, done to a turn, all ripe and rare and ready for him to sink his fangs into. “I am not your ‘dear’—”

“Anton, we’ve been so close these past few hours, you don’t have to—if you’re upset—”

“Shut up, you little cow. Close to you? I’d sooner be close to a pile of excrement.”

Ernie kept saying, “Anton, Stop It!” He was trying to head him off, trying to keep him from uttering the terrible words that followed, and for that Betty was deeply grateful, truly grateful, but it was much too late. They just came pouring out, those awful things, those cutting words, the truth, the real truth, Anton Suffron’s real, true feelings for her.

“You should be glad I even bothered to associate with you. You’re a—a worm of a woman, a nobody, a squat, homely piece of diseased tissue without a sole redeeming feature. It’s women like you—dogs,
rodents—
that make up the most useless, the must utterly hopeless segment of society. To think you would interpret my attentions as flirtation, as
love;
I’d sooner romance an orangutan. Look at you, sitting there whimpering —always that damned whimpering—your eyes red, those fat cheeks and teensy lips, your face white and bloated like a horrible little fish, a blow-fish—
that’s it!”
Anton stood up abruptly, began to lower the zipper on his pants. He pulled out his rather tiny penis and flapped it in Betty’s face. “Go on, little blowfish, isn’t this what you were after? A thrill to last you a lifetime. Go on—suck it, suck it, suck it. Blow me now, my little fish.”

Ernie took two long steps and socked Anton in the jaw. The pianist plummeted to the floor, falling across where Betty’s legs would have been had she not jumped up from the couch seconds earlier and ran in tears towards the staircase.

“Betty!” she heard Thesinger yelling after her. “He was drunk. Don’t listen to him. He’s a fool, an asshole.”

No,
she thought bitterly, her face turning crimson, her tears scorching her cheeks,
I’m an asshole. Me, me, me, me, me!

And she ran into her room and slammed the door behind her.

Chapter 49

Hans got up from the lower bunk bed and paused, steeling himself for what he’d see after he crossed the room to where Mrs. Plushing was lying. He had gotten hold of himself, wiped away the tears, and decided the only thing to do was to wait for Mr. Everson to get back and to hope— and pray—that his employer would know where there was a seaworthy boat on the island. There was nothing he could do for Mrs. Plushing. Nothing. He had pulled the covers up, made sure she was still breathing—she was making ragged, choking gasps now—checked her faint, fading pulse. Blood dripped down off the sides of the mattress,
her
blood, from all her terrible wounds. He had wrapped torn sheets, bandages around each tear in her flesh, but the blood came out, soaked through, ran down her limbs and onto the bed. He knew it was only a matter of moments before she might die. He thought of getting the others, but doubted they would know what to do any more than he had. He was afraid to leave for even a second, afraid he would return and find that something even worse had happened to the woman.

What could be worse?

He walked over slowly, studying her prostrate form, begging silently for her to recover. The red stains on the uppermost blanket were spreading, but had not yet completely soaked the material. Her condition was unchanged. Her head, if anything, seemed puffier, the outer skin almost translucent. He could see every vein, every capilary in her face. The skin looked so fragile he was afraid it would crumble like old parchment if he so much as touched it.

Death. He was looking at death.

A thought tripped lightly across the back of his brain, stopped, receded, came forward again, teasing him, taunting his memory. Finally, he caught it, held onto the thought, refusing to release it into his subconscious again. The content chilled him.
What if Mrs. Plushing’s illness was contagious?

He could not think of such things. Not now. Not yet. Not ever. Nothing could make him leave the dying woman’s side.

Still, it hurt just to look at her.

He went back to the bunk bed, sat down, put his face in his hands. He wondered idly where the girls and Eric had disappeared to. He could have used their company. He heard the voices filtering down the hall from the room beyond the kitchen. Anton’s. Thesinger’s. Mr. Everson was not back yet. He didn’t want to go in and see the others, didn’t want them to see that he’d been crying. “Show your weakness and they destroy you.” His father had told him that many years ago, and he still knew that it was true.

Staring down at his feet without seeing, Hans did not notice the movement on the other side of the room. On the bed. He did not see the lifting, shifting motions underneath the sheet. Did not see the fingers digging out from underneath the covers. In a few seconds, Mrs. Plushing’s entire right arm was exposed.

It was not connected to her body.

Moving under its own power, the arm pulled itself down the length of the bed, trailing jagged red pieces of torn ligament and the towel that had been wrapped around it. It reached the end of the bed, then tumbled onto the floor and out of sight.

Five minutes later Mrs. Plushing’s left foot, detached from the leg, thrust out from under the blanket of its own accord and squeezed into the aperture between the mattress and the bottom of the bed.

Hans got up, wondered where he might find a cigarette—anything to keep him from shaking-decided against smoking, sat down again.

The right arm was slowly crawling along the baseboard perpendicular to the bed. It left a narrow smear of reddish fluid.

Four minutes later Hans heard a strange
plopping
sound and got up to investigate.

He looked down at Mrs. Plushing. Everything seemed to be all right. The stains in the blanket had gotten no larger. Perhaps the bleeding was slackening. The covers seemed a little loose on Mrs. Plushing’s right side. He leaned over and grabbed the end, meaning to tuck it under the woman’s shoulder. She should be kept as warm as possible.

Something was wrong. There was too much-space. Space where there should have been substance. Space where there should have been—

He lifted up the blanket. Her right arm was
gone.

He heard the same plopping sound again, pinpointed it, looked over to Mrs. Plushing’s left side. As he stood there watching, Mrs. Plushing’s left arm wrenched off her body, pulling away from the shoulder like a piece of candy at a taffy pull, the fleshy fibers stretching, parting, breaking with a moist wet snap.

A low keening sound of horror and disbelief ushered forth from the handyman’s mouth. Mrs. Plushing’s arm was pulling itself up onto her chest, the fingers working, working, struggling to get over the twin mounds of the bosom, across the torso to the other side. Once there, the hand rose upwards in the air, the rest of the arm still laying on the bed. Hans backed away from the fingers that reached and stretched in the direction of his face.

Something had wrapped itself around his ankle. He looked down and saw the other hand by his foot. It was exerting a tremendous pressure on his leg, trying to topple him to the floor. He lifted his leg, shook it furiously, screaming. The severed arm flew across the room and crashed onto the top of the dresser. He looked back to see where the other arm had gone. He gasped.

The spot on the pillow where Mrs. Plushing’s head had been was empty. There was a large gaping hole at the top of her neck, discharging viscous fluid.

Hans jumped at the sound of another harsh noise at the bottom of the bed. He looked, saw the woman’s right leg falling to the floor, skittering towards him under its own power. It was as if the pieces of her body were attached to invisible strings, manipulated by an unseen puppeteer. Their movements were jerky, hesitant, but surprisingly speedy. The right foot slid across the room, slamming painfully into Hans’ ankle. He tottered on his feet, tried to grab something to hold him up, fell hard onto the cold wooden floor. His shoulder ached; something felt broken. As he began to pick himself up, his head was grabbed from behind by five disembodied fingers. The left arm was hanging down behind his head, the fingers trying to dig into his eyes. He reached behind and got a grip of the lower half of the arm, tried to yank it off. The fingers clawed his face, drawing blood, the nails puncturing the flesh.