People of the Dark (10 page)

"Sure," I said, obviously unconvinced. "I suppose it is."

"You don't think so?" This seemed to surprise her. She stared silently at me a moment, then went back to her sleeping bag, rolled and tied it, and started to put her boots on. She said, as she laced one of them, "I've been coming here for several years, Jack." She thought a moment, looked quizzically at me. "I have permission, I mean, if you're someone who should be concerned about that."

I shook my head. "No. My wife told me about this place. She came by a couple of days ago."

"Yes," Sarah said. "I saw her car." She slipped the other boot on, began to lace it. "No one else comes here anymore. They used to, in the first couple of years, but no more. The novelty has worn off, I think."

"Oh?" I said.

She straightened, stuck her hands into the pockets of her overalls. "Uh-huh. And it suits me fine, Jack. I'd just as soon not be tripping over the tourists—that sounds crass, I know—"

"Sarah," I cut in, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

She looked at me. "Really?"

"Really."

She smiled. "Then you're something of a virgin, aren't you?" Her smile flattened. "It's pretty grim stuff, Jack, real
National Enquirer
I-ate-my-grandmother kind of stuff, and it's more than just a little depressing. I mean—people were not only murdered here—" She stopped, picked up her sleeping bag, and walked toward me. "Come on, Jack. I'll show you around the place. There's not much to see anymore but there's lots to tell—more, I think, than you'll probably want to hear."

"It sounds intriguing," I said, and followed her outside.

I
think that people are beginning to drift back, now, to the village, to Cohocton. Occasionally, when I'm in the living room listening to music or waiting quietly for Erika, I see a furniture-laden pickup truck pass by, going toward the village, or a car loaded with people and belongings. I'm not sure what I think of this. I think it's sad, on the one hand, that a village should stand idle and empty. Villages are meant to be lived in, after all. But of course, Cohocton has never lacked for inhabitants.

And so I assume, when I see that people are coming back, that a season is done. And I assume that another has begun. I have no real way of knowing. It's a romantic notion, I think. Living with Erika has filled me with romantic notions.

That life continues, for instance. That there is a kind of vast reservoir of life beneath our feet and that everything living rises up from it, in one way or another—the mechanics of the thing aren't very important, only the fact that it happens—and then goes back after a while to the place where it started.

Toss a pail of water into the ocean. It doesn't go anywhere, of course, but out of that pail.

E
rika used to have nightmares. She tells me they were nightmares from her childhood, and when she first started having them I told her I was surprised, that I thought, from the photographs and from what she'd told me, that her childhood had been pretty good. I asked her if her nightmares had to do with her parents' deaths and she said no, she didn't think so. She said they had to do with hunger, and with eating, with becoming engorged. That was the word she used. "I become engorged, Jack. And I drift. I drift away from . . . things. From events. From existence. And for a while I'm very happy."

"It sounds like limbo," I said.

She shook her head. "No. No, I think something happens, there. I think I grow there; I think I
grew
there," she corrected, apparently because she realized she'd been talking about dreams of her childhood.

"Then it's Freudian," I suggested. "It has to do with puberty, with growing up, and becoming a sexual being." I leered at her.

She chuckled softly, quickly. "It depends a lot on what I'm eating, doesn't it?"

I nodded. "Yes, it does."

Occasionally, she still has nightmares. She had one a couple of nights after I found her huddled in the darkness, and when I woke her from it—because she'd been moaning pitifully—she told me that it was a dream of hunger again. "But not the same kind of hunger, Jack," she added. "It's something else's hunger, I think. It's the earth's hunger."

I smiled at her; I touched her cheek—my way of trying to comfort her, because she clearly needed comforting. But I could say nothing because I have learned from her that silence is preferable to the comforting but meaningless phrase.

I hugged her instead. She hugged me. Eventually she stopped hugging me and went back to sleep.

I
t was some time later that night, several hours before dawn, that I was awakened by the sound of voices at a distance, as if a couple of
moths
were caught between the window and screen. I pushed myself up on my elbows, glanced at Erika, whose back was turned, and decided there was no point in waking her. I got out of bed, went to the window, drew the curtains. The road is a good three hundred feet from the house, and the night was nearly pitch-dark, but I found that if I looked up slightly from the level of the road, I could see random movement, as if people were walking there.

I opened the window and leaned forward, so my nose and cheek were touching the screen. I could hear the chorus of voices more clearly and I could make out individual voices, even an occasional string of words. I thought at first that I was seeing a line of Boy Scouts on some early morning hike because there was a Boy Scout camp not far off, certainly within hiking distance. Then I realized that the line was too ragged, that the voices were a mixture of male and female. And after all, Boy Scouts probably said very little when they were on a hike.

From the bed, Erika asked. "What are you doing, Jack?"

"Nothing," I answered. "I'm watching some people out there, some Boy Scouts, I think."

"It's cold, Jack. Come back to bed, okay?"

"In a moment." I could see the people on the road more clearly now. There were at least a dozen of them. Some seemed to be on the narrow path which led to Martin's house. "Friends of the guy across the road, I think."

"The Boy Scouts are friends of the guy across the road? What in the hell are you talking about, Jack?"

"I don't think they're Boy Scouts, Erika. Not really. I
thought
they were Boy Scouts . . ." It looked as if one of the people on the road had started wandering toward the house. "Jesus," I whispered.

"Come back to bed, Jack," Erika pleaded. "It's cold."

"In a few moments," I said. "I have to go downstairs. I'm hungry. I'm going to go get a snack."

"A snack?" I heard her fumble with the alarm clock. "You're going to get a snack at 4:00 in the morning?!"

"I won't be long. Really. Just a minute or two." I closed the window—quietly, because I didn't want whoever was wandering toward the house to hear me. I drew the curtains, went down to the library, then onto the porch. But when I looked, I saw no one. And I heard nothing. Only, from above, Erika pleading for me to come back to bed. I heard the word "cold" from her, again and again.

I pulled open the porch door, noisily—it was a very snug fit with the porch floor—stuck my head out, and said, "Hello? Is someone there?" I got no answer. I went out onto the porch steps. "I'm going to call the police," I said. "If there's someone out here, I'm going to call the police." Still nothing. I stayed on the porch steps a good ten minutes. Erika continued calling to me. I called back, several times, "I'll be up!" I didn't want to say too much, and I didn't want to stray too far from the front of the house.

It was a very still morning, and it came to me that if I listened hard enough, I could probably hear the trespasser because no one can stay absolutely quiet for long. So I listened. But I heard nothing, and because the morning was cold and I was tired, and I longed to be back in bed, I started getting angry. "
Goddamnit
!" I hissed. "This isn't funny anymore. I'm going inside, I'm going to call the police." And I went inside, into the living room, and stood just to the right of the big window.

A huge and elegant maple tree stands twenty-five feet in front of that window. If I waited long enough, maybe I'd see the trespasser step out from behind that tree and walk off. It didn't happen. And after several minutes I heard behind me:

"What the hell are you doing, Jack?"

It was Erika. I jumped a little; I hadn't heard her open the library door. I answered, "I'm waiting for someone to come out from behind that tree."

"Who? A Boy Scout?"

"There are no Boy Scouts, Erika . . . I mean, there are Boy Scouts, sure, but there are no Boy Scouts out there."

"Then what's the problem?" Her voice betrayed her irritation. "My God, Jack, it's 4:30 in the morning, and here you are standing at the window looking at the darkness."

"I saw
people
out there, Erika."

"Out where?" I heard her cross the room, felt her stop just behind me, so her gown was touching my hand.

I nodded at the maple tree. "Out there. Behind that tree. I think they're behind that tree."

"Come up to bed, Jack. It's cold; I want you to come back to bed."

"Soon, Erika. A few minutes—"

"Now, Jack."

"Erika, this is a matter of security here. Go on up, get an extra blanket. I'll be up before you know it."

"I need you, Jack. Please."

"In a
moment
, Erika. I think there's someone around the house. This is important, for Christ's sake!" I became aware that I could no longer feel her gown on my hand. I turned my head. She was gone.

I went up to the bedroom, switched the light on, found her sitting on the edge of the bed, hugging herself as if for warmth. "Erika?" I said. "Are you okay?"

"Just cold, Jack," she answered. "Come to bed, now. Please come to bed."

"You're very quick, aren't you?" I said. "I never realized you were so quick."

"Quick?"

"Yes. You move very quickly."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Jack. Come to bed. Turn off the light and come back to bed."

She'd been pleading with me for half an hour, I realized. And in bed, with her, was where I wanted to be, so I said, "Yes, I'm sorry, it's late," and I went to bed.

"'M
urders, mutilation, and mayhem,' Jack?" Erika was clearly upset. "This woman actually said that—what was her name?"

"Sarah."

"Sarah what?"

"Sarah
Talpey
."

"And she actually used that phrase? Was she trying to be funny?"

"I don't think so." We were folding laundry. Erika has shown me how to fold shirts at least two dozen times, but my hands never cooperate. I handed her the shirt I was trying to fold. "Could you do this, hon?"

She took it from me.

I said, "She wasn't trying to be funny, Erika. I think she was trying to . . . distance herself."

"From what?" Erika used quick, stiff, agitated movements to fold the shirt I'd given her.

"From that place. She spends a lot of time there—"

"She sounds perverse, Jack."

I shook my head, made a production of folding a pair of my boxer shorts. "She's not perverse. Her brother was killed there—"

She cut in, looking suddenly very smug, "No one named
Talpey
died at Granada, Jack."

"
Talpey
is her married name, Erika."

Her look of smugness quickly dissipated. She grabbed a pair of socks, stuffed one into the other. I nodded at them. "That's how
I
fold socks, and you yell at me for it." I paused. "How did you know that no one named
Talpey
died in Granada, Erika?"

She lowered her head, shook it briskly. "We'll talk," she said.

"I hope so," I said.

But we never did.

T
his is what Sarah
Talpey
told me about Granada.

She told me that a dozen or more people died there, that several of the houses were burned, apparently to destroy evidence, and that several of the victims had been mutilated and cannibalized. "It happens in the best of cultures," she said. "I guess people get sick of the same old meat and potatoes."