‘Aunt May, I could rent a car and take you to a doctor – or maybe we could find a doctor willing to come out here.’
May turned her grey head back and forth on the pillow. ‘No. No. There’s nothing a doctor can do, no medicine in the world that can help me now.’
‘Something to make you feel better . . .’
‘My dear, I feel very little. No pain at all. Don’t worry about me. Please.’
She looked so exhausted, Ellen thought. Almost all used up. And looking down at the small figure surrounded by bedclothes, Ellen felt her eyes fill with tears. Suddenly, she flung herself down beside the bed. ‘Aunt May, I don’t want you to die!’
‘Now, now,’ the old woman said softly, making no other movement. ‘Now, don’t you fret. I felt the same way myself, once, but I’ve got over that. I’ve accepted what has happened, and so must you. So must you.’
‘No,’ Ellen whispered, her face pressed against the bed. She wanted to hold her aunt, but she didn’t dare – the old woman’s stillness seemed to forbid it. Ellen wished her aunt would put out her hand or turn her face to be kissed: she could not make the first move herself.
At last Ellen stopped crying and raised her head. She saw that her aunt had closed her eyes and was breathing slowly and peacefully, obviously asleep. Ellen stood up and backed out of the room. She longed for her father, for someone to share this sorrow with her.
She spent the rest of the day reading and wandering aimlessly through the house, thinking now of Danny and then of her aunt and the unpleasant stranger called Peter, feeling frustrated because she could do nothing. The wind began to blow again, and the old house creaked, setting her nerves on edge. Feeling trapped in the moldering carcass of the house, Ellen walked out onto the front porch. There she leaned against the railing and stared out at the grey and white ocean. Out here she enjoyed the bite of the wind, and the creaking of the balcony above her head did not bother her.
Idly, her attention turned to the wooden railing beneath her hands, and she picked at a projecting splinter with one of her fingernails. To her surprise, more than just a splinter came away beneath her fingers: some square inches of the badly painted wood fell away, revealing an interior as soft and full of holes as a sponge. The wood seemed to be trembling, and after a moment of blankness, Ellen suddenly realised that the wood was infested with termites. With a small cry of disgust, Ellen backed away, staring at the interior world she had uncovered. Then she went back into the house, locking the door behind her.
It grew dark, and Ellen began to think longingly of food and companionship. She realised she had heard nothing from her aunt’s room since she had left her sleeping there that morning. After checking the kitchen to see what sort of dinner could be made, Ellen went to wake her aunt.
The room was dark and much too quiet. An apprehension stopped Ellen in the doorway where, listening, straining her ears for some sound, she suddenly realised the meaning of the silence: May was not breathing.
Ellen turned on the light and hurried to the bed. ‘Aunt May, Aunt May,’ she said, already hopeless. She grabbed hold of one cool hand, hoping for a pulse, and laid her head against her aunt’s chest, holding her own breath to listen for the heart.
There was nothing. May was dead. Ellen drew back, crouching on her knees beside the bed, her aunt’s hand still held within her own. She stared at the empty face – the eyes were closed, but the mouth hung slightly open – and felt the sorrow building slowly inside her.
At first she took it for a drop of blood. Dark and shining, it appeared on May’s lower lip and slipped slowly out of the corner of her mouth. Ellen stared, stupefied, as the droplet detached itself from May’s lip and moved, without leaving a trace behind, down her chin.
Then Ellen saw what it was.
It was a small, shiny black bug, no larger than the nail on her little finger. And, as Ellen watched, a second tiny insect crawled slowly out onto the shelf of May’s dead lip.
Ellen scrambled away from the bed, backward, on her hands and knees. Her skin was crawling, her stomach churning, and there seemed to be a horrible smell in her nostrils. Somehow, she managed to get to her feet and out of the room without either vomiting or fainting.
In the hallway she leaned against the wall and tried to gather her thoughts.
May was dead.
Into her mind came the vision of a stream of black insects bubbling out of the dead woman’s mouth.
Ellen moaned and clamped her teeth together, and tried to think of something else. It hadn’t happened. She wouldn’t think about it.
But May was dead, and that had to be dealt with. Ellen’s eyes filled with tears – then, suddenly impatient, she blinked them away. No time for that. Tears wouldn’t do any good. She had to think. Should she call a funeral home? No, a doctor first, surely, even if she was truly past saving. A doctor would tell her what had to be done, who had to be notified.
She went into the kitchen and turned on the light, noticing as she did so how the darkness outside seemed to drop like a curtain against the window. In the cabinet near the phone she found the thin local phone book and looked up the listing for physicians. There were only a few of them. Ellen chose the first number and – hoping that a town this size had an answering service for its doctors – lifted the receiver.
There was no dialling tone. Puzzled, she pressed the button and released it. Still nothing. Yet she didn’t think the line was dead, because it wasn’t completely silent. She could hear what might have been a gentle breathing on the other end of the line, as if someone somewhere else in the house had picked up the phone and was listening to her.
Jarred by the thought, Ellen slammed the receiver back into the cradle. There could be no one else in the house. But one of the other phones might be off the hook. She tried to remember if there was another phone upstairs, because she shrank at the thought of returning to her aunt’s room without a doctor, someone in authority, to go with her.
But even if there were another phone upstairs, Ellen realised, she had not seen it or used it, and it was not likely to be causing the trouble. But the phone in her aunt’s room could have been left off the hook by either her aunt or herself. She would have to go and check.
He was waiting for her in the hall.
The breath backed up in her throat to choke her, and she couldn’t make a sound. She stepped back.
He stepped forward, closing the space between them.
Ellen managed to find her voice and, conquering for the moment her nearly instinctive fear of this man, said, ‘Peter, you must go get a doctor for my aunt.’
‘Your aunt has said she doesn’t want a doctor,’ he said. His voice came almost as a relief after the ominous silence.
‘It’s not a matter of what my aunt wants anymore,’ Ellen said. ‘She’s dead.’
The silence buzzed around them. In the darkness of the hall Ellen could not be sure, but she thought that he smiled.
‘Will you go and get a doctor?’
‘No,’ he said.
Ellen backed away, and again he followed her.
‘Go and see her for yourself,’ Ellen said.
‘If she’s dead,’ he said, ‘she doesn’t need a doctor. And the morning will be soon enough to have her body disposed of.’
Ellen kept backing away, afraid to turn her back on him. Once in the kitchen, she could try the phone again.
But he didn’t let her. Before she could reach for the receiver, his hand shot out, and he wrenched the cord out of the wall. He had a peculiar smile on his face. Then he lifted the telephone, long cord dangling, into the air above his head, and as Ellen pulled nervously away, he threw the whole thing, with great force, at the floor. It crashed jarringly against the linoleum, inches from Ellen’s feet.