Keeper of the Children Page 8

  Garman stood up. “Up yours too. These questions are none of your goddam business, and if you want any more information you can call my lawyer.”

  He walked out of the morgue—righteous, indignant, with a great exit line for once in his life—and onto the night streets. Done. It was done.

  He walked back to the saloon and ordered a double. The barmaid served him without a word, then watched him carry the drink to a back booth and sit down.

  He was astonished when he suddenly, without any warning, began to sob.

  It was well after ten when he wobbled from the saloon. He decided to take a cab to the house: a cab waiting in the driveway while he cleaned out the desk would be reassuring. He felt so tired now—spent and sloshed. Five martinis on the house: quite a girl, that barmaid.

  Instead of feeling free, Garman felt depressed, hassled, angry. He hated the goddam monk, Kheim, he told himself over and over. Hated Pammy, bitch, and the beefy-faced Irish flatfoot. He felt alone. The word homeless occurred to him again: it shocked him. Without Cecelia, there was no home.

  Now he felt apprehension—fright. He looked out of the back window of the cab, as if he were being pursued. “Hurry it up,” he told the driver.

  The whole house was dark. Nothing hostile-looking about it, he told himself. Just a home with no lights on.

  “I’ll be right out.”

  The first thing he smelled when he opened the door was the kitty-litter box. It needed changing. He glanced back at the cab in the drive. With its running lights on and its engine idling, it looked safe. He pushed the front door shut, to keep the cat in. She cried at him and moved between his feet. He felt waves of panic again. He wanted to run out to the cab and race to the airport.

  The house had a deadness to it, a muffled silence, a great sadness. Light from the streetlamps illuminated it with pale rays. He put on the stair lights, then decided to keep the lights out as much as possible to discourage the approach of his nosy neighbors. Bearing the small suitcase, he hurried up the stairs into the master bedroom and put on the light inside the main closet. He made the mistake of glancing into the bathroom, then slammed the door on it: he’d forgotten to ask where she’d died, and now he knew. It was all bad—bad and coming apart. He told himself to hurry: the strange apprehension in his gut was awful.

  The papers in her desk were jumbled in the pigeonholes all anyhow and whichway, and by the faint light from the closet he could see that it was going to take a lot of sorting—old restaurant menus were stuffed in with checkbooks, expired passports, government bonds and billybedamned. He took the whole lot to the bed and opened the case.

  Gone! All the money from the savings account, the jewelry and the safety-box cash and the securities and the bank papers—all! Gone! The case was weighted with two old newspapers. He clutched at his wallet pocket—gone! The word screamed at him: gone! gone! gone!

  In one motion he flung himself across the unmade bed and yanked open the drawer of the night table and pulled free the handgun. He stood up and flung it into the empty case, piled the papers from her desk on top and slammed it shut.

  He hopped down the stairs two at a time and lunged into the television room.

  There, he shut the door, turned on the small low-watt lamp on the television set and looked around. He had to hurry back to that bar and catch the woman. She was going to return it all or die right there, shot right through her motherly balloons.

  Hurry.

  He slammed a coffee-table drawer on his finger; swearing, he kicked the drawer and broke it. The next drawer was stuffed with old Christmas cards: he flung them against a wall, fluttering seasons of Santas and Currier & Ives.

  The cat hissed suddenly and leaped up the curtain; still hissing, she leaped from there to the television console and issued a wild scream, dancing on her legs sidewise, her hair standing on end.

  The urgency was overpowering now. He could see the glow of the cab lights through the drape. The hell with the rest! Seizing the case, he groped for the door.

  When he opened it, a wave of cold air washed over him. There in the semidarkness of the doorway stood a clothing dummy with segmented arms, holding high a golf club.

  CHAPTER 5

  Benson turned in at the gate to his house and drove up the gravel drive to the garage. What am I trying to prove? He wondered again if he’d traded the trip to Africa for a coffin.

  The house was empty, dark in the nearing twilight. The rain made a muffled pattering. Soaked, the naked trees were black against the gray light of the afternoon; over them, a flight of wheeling crows called to each other. The smell of wood smoke drifted across the fields: someone had a fire in his fireplace, and the odor of burning applewood at dusk made Benson feel more isolated than ever.

  He pushed the key into the front-door lock and stepped into his house. In the weak light he stood in the doorway and listened. Then he shut the door firmly. He was home for the night—until dawn.

  He walked through the rooms on the first floor, the living room, the family room, the kitchen, the dining room, then opened the door to the first-floor bathroom. Now he walked to the staircase by the front door and went up. On the landing he could look into Renni’s room and Top’s and, up a dozen steps more, into the master bedroom. Next to the doorway stood the high armoire used as linen closet.

  Here he paused to listen again. A dog. He heard a dog bark. From Top’s bedroom he could look out over the backyard: the cocker spaniel stood outside his doghouse in the rain at the end of his chain, barking up at Benson. Benson walked down the stairs and opened the back door. Swaggers pranced on his hind legs and barked at him as he released the chain and brought him inside. He leaped eagerly at his master.

  Benson went back up the steps to the landing and walked into Renni’s room. Looking at the rows of hanging marionettes, he remembered standing there in the middle of the night, the babble of their laughter echoing in his ears. They’d laughed at him scornfully. Now they hung silent in the sullen light.

  And he understood: Kheim would choose one of these dolls. The attack would come from one of them. And, following the pattern, it would come after dark.

  He gazed at them like a victim studying a police lineup, trying to pick his assailant from the crowd. He felt that if he averted his eyes momentarily, the painted-on smiles would slip an infinitesimal degree into a scornful smirk. He studied the princess and the crowned toad and all the others, including the puppet-skeleton and scarecrow. He considered the witch, Signora Strega, three feet high and beautifully made with her drawn chin and crone’s nose, her flowing black gown and peaked black cap. Then his eyes went to the bear. And on the bear he settled—this would be his assailant; more than five feet high, it stood in the corner, both paws raised, mouth opened in a half-smile to show large canine teeth.

  Darkness was approaching when Benson went to his workbench in the garage for the portable circular saw and electric drill. He carried wet lumber from the car-top carriers up to his bedroom, where he cut the wood to size and drilled holes for the bolts, assembling the pieces into an oblong, three-sided framework. He shut the bedroom door and pushed the frame between the closed door and the opposing bedroom wall. A perfect fit. Now, in order to batter open the bedroom door, that bear would have to drive the rugged frame through the opposing wall, through the outer wall of the house in fact. Benson decided that even a bulldozer would have trouble doing that.

  Next he drilled a half-inch hole in the vertical center board of the bedroom door. When he squinted through it, he had a clear view of the landing outside his door, the steps, the lower landing—and a partial view into Renni’s room, including the bear standing in the corner and staring at his peephole. At him. He could even see part of Top’s bedroom door. Above the peephole he drilled another half-inch hole.

  Darkness was filling the eastern sky when he got the stepladder. He set it up on the stair landing and carefully removed the hanging hallway lamp, then hung in its place the big-wheeled pulley. When it was secur
e, he went down to the trunk of the car and got the nylon mesh. He spread the net on the stairs and, climbing the ladder, payed the lifting line through the pulley and put it through the upper half-inch hole in his bedroom door.

  Now he had a peephole, a line through another hole to the net via the pulley and a wooden frame to prevent the doorframe’s being battered down. When the bear left Renni’s room and started up the steps toward the master bedroom, one pull on the rope would capture it in the net and hoist it in the air: there it would be, swaying in a ball, helpless, five feet above the landing. Not even King Kong could tear that nylon, the clerk had said.

  The house was now in total darkness. Benson settled down with the dog in the bedroom and pushed the heavy frame in place.

  It was eight o’clock.

  He sat by the window in the dark, watching the lane lights. The old moon, lopsided, grown thinner, leaner in her endless chase, peeked through a cloud briefly, then was muffled for the night. Shortly after, under a steady breeze, the rain began its slow patter again.

  At nine Benson saw it: a cat. It approached under the dripping bushes and shrubs along the road and paused under the light of the gate posts to gaze at the house. It seemed to be looking right at him. Then it moved on. Now a car drove up the road and paused at the driveway, flooding the lane with light. It too passed and went on.

  Out on the highway, the cars and trucks were rolling, an endless procession of rain-smeared headlights going in both directions.

  Swaggers stirred and slept, shook himself and slept some more. He got up at eleven o’clock and went to the door, waiting patiently.

  “Go lie down. You can hold it.”

  He lay down by the door and, waiting, went to sleep again.

  The rain fell heavily for a while, drumming on the roof, making it difficult to hear noises inside the house. The wait was excruciating. Panic would seize him, bringing with it the urge to run down to the car and flee.

  He paced the room, peered through the hole until his eye watered, scanning the dolls on their pegs, watching the bear until it seemed to dance before his watery eye, wishing finally that it would attack and be done with it.

  He heard a thud somewhere in the house, watched the staircase for fifteen minutes without a break, then decided he hadn’t heard a sound after all.

  At one A.M. he decided he’d made a fool of himself and considered lying on the bed. He was exhausted, from tension and from the relentless panic he’d been fighting all day. Even a few minutes’ sleep … He dozed, sitting with the pull cord in his hands.

  Swaggers woke him with a low woof. Benson looked at him, barely visible in the darkness. The dog put his nose to the edge of the door and sniffed, cocked his head, made a circle in the room up to Benson and back to the door. Benson tried to see out of the bedroom window to his front door; softly he opened the window and stuck his head over the sill. In the weak lamplight he could see there was no one at the door.

  The dog began to bark, over and over, running in circles. He stood on his hind legs, leaping at Benson, barking urgently, incessantly. Finally he jumped on the chair and leaped through the open window.

  Benson went back to the sill and looked down. Swaggers was on his side on the lawn, his neck bent back and twisted, obviously broken.

  Benson went quickly to the bedroom door to look through the peephole. When he put his eye to the hole, he drew back involuntarily: an eye was looking in at him. It moved—saw the heavy wooden frame, the rope—and looked at Benson. Into Benson. Then it was gone. He heard something drop on the carpet just outside his door.

  He put his eye again to the peephole and looked out. There was nothing on the landing. Nothing. The net was still in position, the line to the pulley still limply hanging.

  He looked at the window, wondering if he should shut it.

  When he turned back he saw that the rope through the door was being pulled out. He hadn’t thought to knot the end of it. He lunged for it only to see the last few inches disappear. He’d lost his hoist line. He looked through the peephole and saw the pulley line dangling just outside the door. Without the line through the hole in his door, his defense was crippled.

  He hurried back to the window and considered jumping. But the dog’s body warned him: it was too high.

  He turned and went back to the bedroom door to watch. Now he saw the movement in Renni’s room. A shadowed figure stepped into the doorway and onto the lower landing, head up, looking directly at him. It was the witch.

  She turned her head and looked around the landing, seeking. Approaching the stair rail, she effortlessly twisted a banister from its mooring. Holding it two-handed like a baseball bat, she took several practice swings with it, then slammed it down on the carpeted step. The boom echoed throughout the house.

  Now she turned, looked at Benson and stepped toward the stairs to his bedroom. The lifting line dangled, tantalizing, just beyond the door.

  Benson moved the frame away, opened the door and stepped out on the landing. They were less than ten feet apart. He reached for his line and started to put the end back through the hole in the door. Quickly, he told himself. Quickly.

  Signora Strega made several more swings in the air with the banister as she paused before the first step. It was high for her, and she had to lean forward to mount it. She paused again to put her right foot on the second step and leaned forward. She seized the line attached to the net, looked up to where it went through the pulley, then down to where it went through Benson’s hand. She yanked it almost casually. Her strength was awesome: the pulley, jerked from the ceiling, fell and bounced on the carpeted steps by her side.

  His trap was worthless now. He should return to the bedroom, he knew, but he was fascinated, almost hypnotized. How was she animated? Where was the human operator?

  The witch readied herself without haste for the third step. She was angrily panting now with the great bellowslike breathing of a huge powerful animal.

  Benson looked around for a weapon or a device—anything. He pressed himself between the armoire and the wall.

  He pushed. Signora Strega seemed indifferent to him as she coped with the net on the steps. She was on the fourth.

  Benson pressed against the armoire again. And it moved—slightly. An inch. He pressed harder and it moved several more inches. She was on the fifth step now, looking eagerly at him, extending the banister toward him. He knew she could shatter him with two strokes. Snorting, she pounded the banister on the step again; the floor shuddered under Benson’s feet. Her grin was as absurd as it was terrifying.

  Benson pressed harder, harder. The armoire tilted. The witch hesitated. The armoire pitched, fell forward, toppled.

  She was turning when it reached her. Riding the steps like a chute, it passed right over her and slid to the bottom of the stairs, skimmed across the landing and crashed into Renni’s doorway. Every beam in the house shook from its force.

  The witch lay on the first step. Benson hurried down to wrap the net around her, but even as he did he saw that she was utterly limp, a corpse doll weighing only a few ounces, soft as cotton wool. Where had the enormous strength gone?

  That was when he saw the dark area near Top’s bedroom doorway. It wasn’t a shadow, it had an amorphous shape, indistinct and not fixed, an opacity as insubstantial as smoke. Benson squatted near it to study it. About three feet long, it seemed to hover above the floor. He reached out and touched it. It was cold—as cold as dry ice and without body. As he passed a hand through it, tried to grasp it, it rose and pulled smoothly through his fist and disappeared, leaving his palm and fingers numb from cold.

  He had urgent work to do.

  On the stairs, in the dark, with rain muttering at his window, he fought the insistent urge to simply lie down where he sat and sleep.

  He was shivering from the lingering cold air on the landing, the palm which had grasped at that strange blackness was still icy, and he was vulnerable to another attack at any instant.

  He seized th
e handrail and pulled himself to his feet. The pulley lay on the step with the scribble of limp rope and the litter of ceiling plaster. He stepped around the armoire that filled the landing, noting the long split in the back panel.

  Down the steps he went to get out his boots and rain slicker from a closet. Then he walked through the kitchen and out onto the patio. The night was filled with the sound of falling rain; it shattered loudly on the patio, which was running with water.

  He groped his way across the patio to the utility shed and got out a long-handled shovel. In the garage, among the collapsed summer chairs and the garden-table umbrella, he found the kerosene hurricane lamp. He lit it and, holding it high, guided his feet to the front lawn. The dog lay as before, just as he had struck the ground. Benson squatted over him and moved his head gently. Completely limp, he was soaked, matted, in a puddle.

  Memory was ready with the photo album again: instant history. Puppy in a basket. Older puppy in Top’s lap. Teenage dog barking at Renni’s dog puppet. Sue and the grown Swaggers.

  He glanced around in the darkness, miles from a human face, hearing the rain and seeing the blackness of his empty house, feeling the wet fur of a dead animal he had loved. He wondered what he was doing there.

  Bracing his legs, he picked the dog up, held it under one arm and gripped the lamp by the bail. Dragging the shovel with his other hand he walked through the soggy yard in the downpour, following the small circle of light.

  The lantern hissed and sizzled in the rain, casting a yellow light on the dog’s white coat and on the black shrubbery. Behind the azalea bed, the shovel bit easily through the sod and turned up conical lumps of muddy soil. Benson dug down about a foot and a half and watched a flow of mud wash back in.

  Now he picked up the dead animal and with a last glance laid him in the grave. The first shovelful of dirt was the hardest. He covered his head with it, then quickly scooped the remaining dirt into the wet hole. He gave the grave several whacks with the back of the shovel and straightened up.