People of the Dark (25 page)

I stood at the center of the front room and called for Erika again. No answer. I called once more and heard, faintly, as if she were speaking from a room well removed from the one I was in, "Oh, hello."

"Erika, stop playing games."

"Oh, hello." It was closer, just to my right, near the south wall. I looked. I saw nothing.

"Erika?"

"Hello there." Closer still. I took a step forward, toward the south wall.

The floor of the cabin is smooth, hard earth. And as I looked at the dark south wall, I saw Erika rise up, in the corner, and I assumed she'd been crouching there. I said, "Erika, my God, what have you been doing?"

She stepped closer to me so her face and body were in the crisscross pattern of sunlight coming through the front wall. She held her hand out; there was a very small mole in it. She said, "Don't be angry, Jack. I've just been talking to a friend."

T
he German Shepherd I found on the shore of Irondequoit Bay twenty years ago is still there, unless some civic-minded citizen instituted a cleanup of the bay; if so, the carcass languishes in a landfill somewhere. And I think it's safe to say that there's not much left of it. The skeleton doubtless remains intact. Under the right conditions, it could remain intact for several million years. But the soft stuff—the muscle, the intestines, the skin and cartilage, the eyes and the tongue, the brain, the ligaments, the glands—all has been recalled, has broken down, and been pulled back into the earth. And someday the earth will put the puzzle back together. Another German Shepherd will appear. Or maybe a mole. Or an azalea. Or a woman with blue eyes and dark skin whose life will come to its end in a Dodge Dart.

I
saw a man through the lace curtains, in Martin's living room. He was sitting in a soiled white club chair, facing me, his head thrown back so the back of his neck was resting on the back of the chair; his mouth was open slightly. He was wearing dark pants and a short-sleeved white shirt, and his bare feet were together, knees parted. He was a young man, I guessed, in his early twenties. He appeared to be very pale, so it was easy to see that there were jagged, dark areas where his skin touched the chair, at his elbows and forearms, for instance, and around his bare feet. These jagged, dark areas grew very slowly as I watched, as if mud were covering him from where his skin touched the chair and the floor; this darkness stained the skin, retreated, stained it again, higher, retreated. I rationalized this at first. I said to myself that I wasn't really
seeing
it. I said to myself that since I couldn't explain it, then
of course
I wasn't seeing it. It was one of the laws of magic—
If you think you're seeing the impossible, then of course you aren't
. I told myself that I was seeing only the room, the soiled white club chair, the man's shoes—
Wallabees
—next to it, blue socks stuffed inside. I was seeing nothing magical or impossible. Only more remains of lousy lunches—candy wrappers, ginger ale cans, empty bottles of Genesee Light Beer. And the body of a young man sat in the midst of it. Like a totem.
To life!
it said,
This is life!
it said.

But the dark areas were not just dark areas. They were areas of decay where the skin and tissues were breaking down very rapidly, like sand sculptures being broken down by tides.

That's when I turned and ran back to my house.

And found there, at the front door, John, the man who claimed to have shot a woman several weeks before. He was standing with his shotgun held diagonally across his chest, barrel pointing upward. He had a wide grin on his mouth.

"Good Christ!" I managed; the run from Martin's house had left me breathless. I hadn't seen John until I'd rounded the privet hedge.

"Hi," he said.

I cursed again, stopped a good fifty feet from him. "What are you doing here, John?"

He nodded once at the shotgun. "I got it loaded, Mr. Harris."

I stared silently at him for half a minute. Then I started walking very slowly toward him. When I was within twenty-five feet of him, I held my hand out. "Why don't you give me the gun, John? Please."

"And I shot someone, too. I really did."

"Did you, now?"

"I did. I shot a man this time." He lifted his chin toward the north. "Over there. I shot a man because he was trespassing. I didn't shoot a woman; I shot a man."

"What man?"

"I don't know. A man who was trespassing." He held the shotgun out to me. "Take it. Go ahead. It ain't loaded. It was loaded, but it ain't no more."

I stepped forward, took the shotgun from him. "Show me the man you shot, John."

He nodded. "Okay. Careful of the mud this time, though. Don't want you
gettin
' stuck again."

H
e took me down the wide grassy path that had once been Old Hunt's Hollow Road. We walked for five minutes, no longer, then he stopped and nodded to his right, into the woods. "There he is, Mr. Harris."

I looked. I saw a pair of blue jeans, a brown tweed jacket in the weeds. John saw it, too, and he chuckled. "Must be a
naked
man now, Mr. Harris—this man I shot. Must be a naked
dead
man, now."

And from behind us I heard, "What's in there?" The words were like a sudden pain, sharp and quick; a small grunt of surprise came out of me. Again I heard, "What's in there?" Then: "What do you think you're seeing in there, Mr. Harris?"

I turned my head. Martin stood several feet away. He had his hands shoved casually into the pockets of his blue jeans, and when he said "What's in there?" again, he nodded toward the blue jeans and the brown tweed jacket as if we were merely out window-shopping and he was asking about a display of luggage.

A low curse came out of me.

"Don't swear at me, Mr. Harris. Just tell me what you see in there."

I shook my head in confusion. "I don't know."

He stepped forward slowly, hesitated, lifted his head again. "What do you
think
you're seeing there?"

And I answered simply, "A man who has died."

"But there is no man there, Mr. Harris. So that's not what you're seeing at all. You must realize that by now." He stuck his hands into his pockets again. "This is where they come. Some of them. To this place. Because this is where they were born."

"That's insane," I said. "Obviously, this lunatic here"—I indicated John—"has actually shot someone this time, and it has nothing at all to do with these creatures you've conjured up."

"I didn't conjure them up. The earth did. The earth"—he took his right hand from his pocket, made quotes with his fingers—"'conjured them up.' Just like your mother and father conjured you up. And now these creatures, these
people
, Mr. Harris, are going back to the earth. It's all very, very simple. They're going back
into
the earth."

I looked silently at him for several seconds. I sighed. "I'm going to call the police. I'm going to call what's-his-name . . ."

"Larry Whipple?"

"Yes. I'm going to go back to my house now, I'm going to call him and I'm going to tell him what's happened here."

"Of course you are."

I started backing away, turned, stopped.

Martin said, "You do have my sympathies, Mr. Harris. These people are very easy to love." And he grinned.

I was close to him, within arm's reach.

He added, "It's just too bad they don't last longer, isn't it?" His grin broadened.

I dropped the shotgun. I didn't hit Martin with my fist. As a teenager, I'd made that mistake. I'd challenged the school bully, had seen a quick and lucky opening, and had hit him square in the cheekbone with my clenched fist. I'd broken his cheekbone, and three of my knuckles as well.

I hit Martin with an open hand so my palm landed just on the left side of his nose. I felt his nose crumble, and for an instant I experienced immense, almost numbing satisfaction. Then he fell backwards. His hand went to his nose, and a low snuffling sound came from him, like the noise a pig makes. Even before he hit the ground, I was apologizing to him. "Jesus, I'm sorry, my God—"

He hit the ground, sat for an instant, then thudded backwards, hand still at his nose. An "Uh!" came out of him, followed by a muffled "Fuck!"

I stepped forward, reached to help him up, straightened. Nearby, John said, "Hey, good one."

"Yes," I whispered, "wasn't it?" And I walked quickly back to my house and locked the doors.

T
he house was cold, the kind of cold that slides over the skin and pushes into the pores. It even smelled cold, like a freezer that needs defrosting. I went into the dining room, turned the thermostat up, heard the furnace kick on, felt momentarily grateful for that small distraction.

"Jack?" I heard distantly, from the second floor. "Is that you?" It was Erika's voice. "It's your turn to cook tonight, Jack."

S
he was at the top of the stairs. She was wearing blue jeans, a cream-colored long-sleeved blouse, the wristwatch I'd bought her for Christmas three years earlier. And when I looked at her from the bottom of the stairs, she smiled and said again, "It's your turn to make supper tonight, Jack." It was well lighted there, where she was standing. I could see that the left-hand sleeve of her blouse was unbuttoned; it caught my eye because she was holding that arm up, elbow bent, and she was idly rubbing her cheek.

I said her name of course, a low and incredulous whisper, and she cocked her head to the right, looked bemused, and asked, "What's wrong, Jack?" She noticed her blouse was unbuttoned then, and began buttoning it with her right hand. "I'll be down in a few minutes." She disappeared into the bedroom.

I screamed her name. Once. Then again, halfway up the stairs, and again, softer, as I entered the bedroom. I was aware that a quivering, disbelieving smile was on my lips. "Erika?" I hesitated, said it again, "Erika," glanced about, saw the rocking chair, the unmade bed, the tall, dark chest of drawers. "Erika?" I said once more. I looked into the open closet; I stepped into it. "Erika?" I swept my arm into the clothes hanging there, said loudly, "Erika?" I swept the clothes to the floor; I screamed, "Erika!"

I
t was several hours before I left the bedroom. I spent some time mumbling her name. I spent some time hunched forward in the rocking chair, my fists clenched in front of me, my head down. And I spent some time weeping, a lot of time weeping. Then I sat back in the chair, put my head back, and whispered her name. I wasn't calling to her anymore; I was admitting how much a part of me she was and how much a part of the house she was. At last, mid-afternoon sunlight broke into the room and I pushed myself out of the chair and went downstairs to pre-pare the dinner. I found spinach and garlic pasta in the cupboard, which pleased me, and a large can of Italian-style tomato paste, which makes an excellent sauce. The house had warmed up considerably, so I turned the thermostat down. I hesitated, went to the stairway, and called tentatively, "Erika?" waited a moment, got no reply, went into the kitchen and made a lavish dinner. I prepared the table lovingly. I set two places, of course. I put some daffodils that I'd found just outside the kitchen door in a vase in the center of the table. I put candles on the table, too, on either side of the vase, and lit them. I ladled out the pasta, the sauce, the salad. I stepped back, congratulated myself. Then I turned my head slightly. "It's ready, Erika," I called.

And I sat. And waited.

S
he loved the meals I prepared, was always on time for them, so there was a clear purpose in waiting, but even as I waited (and I waited a long time—until the pasta got cold and the salad went limp), I asked myself if I was really doing something rational. I supposed that I wasn't. I supposed that I was merely putting time off, that waiting at the dinner table was a kind of
timeless
thing.

But I wasn't sure I wanted her to come to dinner. I didn't know who she was; she was playing games. She'd played games with Will, and now she was playing them with me, and I started asking myself just how she'd conned me into sharing my life with her.

I even said at one point while I waited, "
Goddamnit
, Erika, will you cut the horsing around!"

She did not come to dinner. I ate both plates of cold pasta, both limp salads, snuffed out the candles, and went into the living room to sleep.