The Tea Party - A Novel of Horror (25 page)

“From what?” he said kindly. “Neither one of us is exactly terrified of the wolf charging through the door.”

“From old age.” She twisted out of his arms into the living room, where she stood in a shimmering patch of moonlight and took off her shirt. “I have to change.” Half her face was ivory, half in a deep shadow that sank her eyes into her skull, turned her lips a dead flat black. Her jeans slid off easily. “I can’t go on like this.” She lay on the rug, only shoulders to knees caught in the light, dismembered by the moon. Her voice was disembodied—spider web, waiting: “Doug. Please. Let me protect you.”

He hesitated, thinking of Liz; Judy whispered, and Liz vanished; he felt himself responding, felt his legs lower him to the carpet, felt his hands skim over her, lightly, not recoiling at the mooncold dry flesh though his fingers began to jump. He nearly stopped when he thought,
she feels like stone,
then felt his chest constrict as she tugged at him to straddle her, plucked at his buttons, his belt, his zipper.

He could not see her face—the moonlight shaft had cut off her head.

“Marry me,” she whispered, beer on her breath, perfume in her hair, while his shadow became her blanket, her chest his pillow.

When he glanced up, the room was black; when he looked down, her one eye was staring. Blindly. Like a corpse.

“Forget about Liz,” she whispered. “I want to protect you. I want to feel alive.”

Her tongue played at his ear, her hips rising to meet him; and she gasped when he entered her, grunted when he thrust.

The moonlight was cold on his back and soles, the carpet abrasive on his knees, but he felt nothing at all, not even her rhythm, an act and nothing more in the dark living room of her darkened house, while she demanded an answer and drained the breath from him.

When it was done, when she was done, she caressed his back with her nails (spiderlegs walking), clutched at his buttocks (spiderlegs digging), pulled teasingly at his hair. “Well?”

He swallowed an immediate
no,
thinking of a way to tell her about Liz, and in the hesitation felt her hands stiffen, felt a nail penetrate his skin like the dull edge of a razor. Then she rubbed the spot quickly, apologizing, finally shifting and rolling her eyes.

“I’m crazy, right? Jesus.” Softer; “Jesus, Doug, you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this. You have no idea at all.” Lightly: “Of course, you realize I had rather hoped for a bed.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” he mock-scolded. “I think I’m crippled for life.”

She pecked his neck, his chest, hugged him so tightly he thought he would suffocate before she released him, led him by the hand to the bathroom upstairs and left him to dress.

From down the hallway he could hear her singing to herself, giggling once, laughing once and cutting herself off.

He looked in the mirror, expecting to see his soul’s accusation of his betrayal of Liz. But there was no guilt. There couldn’t be. His hair was unmussed, and there was no blush on his cheeks—it was as if it hadn’t happened. Except for the cold, and the ache in his groin, it was as if nothing had happened at all.

Judy hummed as she dressed; it was all going to be fine. The poor helpless man never knew what hit him.

She put on cotton slacks, a light blouse and light sweater, wore loafers and white socks, then allowed him to drag her over to the Bazaar—to find Bud, he said, and bring him back to the party. Ollie needed him, and they wanted him to feel as if they weren’t taking sides.

The VW was still in the driveway, but the lights were all out and no one answered their ringing, or Doug’s increasingly angry pounding on the door. She tried to make it a game, hide-and-seek and they were It, and shrugged to herself when Doug refused to be anything but solemn, anything but quiet. It was to be expected. She had ambushed him, and it was only natural that he retreat—to figure out what was going on.

She knew.

No matter what he thought about Liz or anyone else, she had him, he was hers, and unless the unforeseen tripped her up, he would still be hers long after tomorrow. This time there was no mistake. This time she had chosen wisely, and the best of it was, this time she really cared. This time the buoyancy that floated her over the yard and into the Jeep when Bud went unfound, was unquestionably genuine. He was hers. He belonged to her now. Nothing Liz could do tonight could alter that fact. Hers. All hers.

The next fifty years would not be spent alone.

* * *

They checked the restaurant, returned to the Depot to leave word with Gil, and drove on to the Hollow. He filled her in as they went, trying to be as rational as he could and realizing that by the time they reached the lane she was much too silent.

“Sounds dumb, doesn’t it,” he admitted sourly.

“It doesn’t sound like anything at all, actually,” she said. “I just don’t know what the big deal is.”

“Neither do I,” he said. “That is, the Winterrest sale thing is a big deal, to be sure. Deerford as far as anyone has told me has no history of planned growth except for Meadow View, and with all the people who will be coming in here, there’ll be too much strain on what little services we already have. It really doesn’t make sense when you think about it. And the more I do think about it, the more I wonder if Parrish isn’t just out to make a fast buck or two and the hell with what anyone else around here says.”

They passed Piper Cleary’s; all the lights were out.

Judy squeezed his arm. “Well, you’re wrong about Parrish. He’s not like that at all. Besides, the big deal I was talking about was those pictures you found. I don’t get the excitement.”

“It’s not excitement, exactly. It’s a feeling. A very strange feeling I don’t like at all.”

“Ah,” she said. Her chin tucked in, her voice deepened. “We have a premonition, do we? A little touch of the old ESP, eh? You think maybe Eban Parrish is a demon or something?”

For some reason he couldn’t laugh. “No, I don’t think he’s a demon or something. That kind of crap I leave to Sitter and Piper. Be serious, Judy, okay? The others—”

“Are crazy too if they’re getting chills just because you found some pictures of an old man who sells real estate.”

He gripped the wheel harder, not understanding why she should be so negative when she hadn’t even seen what they had. He concentrated then on weaving with the road through the woods, flickering in and out of the waning grey moonlight until his vision began to blur and he was forced to slow down. When she squeezed his arm again, he gave her a one-sided smile.

“I didn’t come on too strong, did I?” she said.

They pulled into the garage. The engine faltered and died, and it was too dark for comfort.

“I was . . . not really prepared.”

mooncold, like stone

“Who would be?” she said, and pressed close to his side as they walked to the house. “Just don’t forget what I said.”

“How could I?”

She said nothing more, only smiled and patted his arm as he opened the door.

The kids were at the kitchen table, thick sandwiches piled on a platter in front of them, soda cans open, their voices raised in earnest argument about the name of Straight Arrow’s horse. The others were in the living room, TV trays laden with cold cuts. Doug noted that the study light was off, and the magazines were now piled on the coffee table.

There were questions then: about the weather, about Bud, about what Judy thought they should do about the sale. She stood at the hearth and told them she hadn’t the faintest idea. Yes, it was a lousy prospect, and yes, she agreed with Doug that Deerford was not the place for such abrupt growth, and yes, the more she thought about it the more pissed she grew.

Doug sat on the windowsill and listened, and was reminded of men he had known in prison, men who spent hours in the library teaching themselves the law, the same hours again every night preaching passionately to each other about the injustices of it all and what they were going to do about it the next time their lawyers visited.

It was preaching to the converted.

An hour later they realized it as well, and decided they would confront Parrish at the party tomorrow and pump him for all the information they could. They quieted then, and waited until he had spread the magazines in front of Judy and asked for her opinion.

None of them were prepared for her response.

The first photograph made her grow pale; the second had her left hand shaking; the third and the fourth made her drop the magazines and push herself to her feet.

“Lord,” Clark said with a grunted laugh, “he’s not all that ugly, you know.”

“Judy,” Liz said, “what’s the matter?”

She waved away the question, waved away Doug when he took a step toward her. “I’m all right. I. . . it must be the food. I ate too fast.” She hurried to the staircase, to the bathroom, and slammed the door.

Doug stood with one hand on the newel post and looked up. “Clark,” he said quietly, “I think you’d better take her home, if you don’t mind. Ollie, too, We’ve done enough for one night.”

“No, hey,” Ollie protested angrily. “All you guys are forgetting about me, aren’t you? I mean, what the hell are you going to do about me?”

Liz wrapped an arm around her shoulder to hold her down, to comfort her while she struggled not to cry again, struggled not to lose control. “Ollie, the doctor—”

“Shit on the doctor!” she snapped, and stood up. “Clark, please. I want to go home.” She strode to the front door, one hand absently on her stomach, and waited while the attorney’s face shifted from petulance at being elected chauffeur again to a firm decision that someone ought to be the man around here since Doug was clearly not offering himself.

Then Judy burst out of the bathroom, ran down the steps no more composed than before, and nodded brusquely when Ollie told her Clark was their cabbie. She did not look at Doug. She ignored Liz’s good night. And Doug stood in the doorway until they were gone.

Liz joined him, a hand at his back. “I’ll take the kids.”

He didn’t look around. “Yesterday, I want to Winterrest. Just to look at it. I like to, it’s an impressive piece of work. Liz, I leaned on the wall, and it moved.”

She said nothing immediately. Then: “Your imagination. Walls don’t move.”

“And New Jersey doesn’t have earthquakes. And women don’t get pregnant overnight.”

Her hand slipped away from his waist. “That isn’t the same, Doug, and you know it. There are explanations for earthquakes, and there are denials of unwanted pregnancies. But walls just do not move.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, I know.”

She backed away and called the children. They protested, saw that Doug was no longer on their side, and grumbled out to the car. Liz turned on the stoop.

“Doug, what are you going to do? I mean, about the tea party tomorrow?”

He stared at the dark. “I don’t know, Liz. I don’t know.”

“Well, I can tell you now I’m not going. I don’t give a damn if he builds those condos from here to Pennsylvania, I’m not going to set a foot on that place tomorrow.”

He nodded and watched them leave, watched the moon make corpses of the trees straight ahead.

Five minutes later he closed and locked the door, locked all the windows, and stood in the dark—listening, not thinking, to the terrified race of his heart.

PART FOUR

THE MENU

ONE

1

Doug rolled over too quickly in the bed, clamped his hands gingerly to his temples, and cursed, damning himself for even thinking of moving. What had awakened him was a none-too-subtle ache in his head—it settled there, digging in with dull claws, stirring only when he shifted to sit on the edge of the mattress and massage his brow, the back of his neck.

Through a vertical gap in the draperies he could see sunlight as if diffused through grey glass, and a strip of black cloud scarred white around the edges.
Rain,
he thought;
good god, it’s going to rain.

But the only chill he felt was the one that coasted along his skin, tightening it, making him shudder to send it away.

He forced a groan for the sake of his conscience, jammed his knuckles into his eyes and rubbed, pulled, then lowered his hands and blinked until he could see without a laving of tears. His head still complained, but he managed to feel a bit more alive, and could remember what had gotten him here in the first place.

After the others had left and he had gotten control of the fear that had gripped him, he had wandered into the kitchen, had seen an unopened bottle and poured himself a dram of scotch. Back in the living room he had sifted through the magazines again, sipping, puzzling, refilling his glass and sipping.

He had no idea when the thought
herded
first surfaced. He only knew that he had abruptly given up the pretext of genteel drinking and had taken a long numbing swallow straight from the bottle. Later, with the window dark and the air leaden around his shoulders, he had made his way to the bed; sometime after that he managed to pass out.

Now he stumbled into the bathroom, gritted his teeth, and let the shower run hot; thirty minutes later he was shaved and dressed, out in the stable providing fresh water and hay for an impatient Maggie. As he spoke with her, apologizing, he stepped back from the scene and took a close look at the week.