“I told them the dog wasn’t in the room. when it began to happen.”
“Well, they didn’t know that and, um, I heard that Mose had some sort of marks on his throat that might have killed him so — Anyway, Nestor ran off and Dean Jorg heard about it, and called the trembling beast into his van and drove him across the county line, so Nestor’s all okay. What next?”
“I want to go back to that dammed old house. and I need some plastic bags.”
At the supermarket, leaning on the back of a superannuated cart containing aluminum cans, empty bottles, and odds and ends of light junk was someone whom Vlad recalled meeting. Remembrance was mutual. Stopping his wagon, the old black man said, “I sorry, sir, about you daddy.” Why bother with a correction? Vlad nodded, sighed. “Must be you daddy fo’get, done git between it and the wall. fine ol’ gentleman.”
Vlad stared. Remnants of thought came whirling by, as if caught in a gale. “What do you mean, Pappa John? Get between what and the wall. what wall?”
The age-glazed eyes in the furrowed face looked at him. “Them bad things as we finds sometimes in old houses. Them Rustlers or Clickers. them Paper Men. The Boss, sir, the Boss in the Wall. How the lady and the lee girl? The Boss done stole the lee girl’s soul and you gots get it back.”
He pushed off, leaving Professor Branch looking after him, leaving Vlad with his mouth twitching. “Did you understand what old John meant, Branch?”
“I believe I do, which is not to say that I believe it as facts.”
“I should tear that damned house apart. find evidence.”
They drove beyond the small town and along the country road. The old house looked far different in late afternoon sunshine than it had at night. In the room where Uncle Mose and Bella had cheerfully agreed to spend the night lay a well-worn red rubber toy.
Vlad pointed out to Branch a portion of the wall deeply and recently scored by talons. “Those are Nestor’s claws, I guess.” He put his ear against the wall; heard nothing. “It’s hollow,” he said.
“It would be. Proves nothing by itself.”
Vlad abruptly said, “Ah, that’s what I came for.” He pointed to something in the corner. “It was in her hand, and she dropped it when I picked her up.” He took the plastic bags out of his pocket.
Branch knelt and looked, then he sniffed. This time it was his face that writhed. “Paper. It looks like old newspaper. well, this is an old house. What a godawful stench. You say it was in your wife’s hand?”
“No, it wasn’t my wife,” said Vlad, as he carefully used one plastic bag to scoop the object into another. “It was my daughter who had it clutched in her hand. It was Bella.”
No further search could legally be made of the house, and no walls would be torn apart. According to the sheriff’s department, the deceased died from a stroke or a heart attack, possibly following an attack by a dog or some other animal. Case closed.
At the hospital, Elsa woke up and took a light supper, then she slept again. Bella’s condition was unchanged. Elsa’s aunt, Uncle Mose’s sister, invited them to stay at her big house in the country after they were released. Elsa softly told Vlad that she thought the change would do her and Bella good. Vlad reluctantly agreed.
“Jesus, Branch, what should I do?” said Vlad when they returned to College Housing. “It is my belief that Uncle Mose died of a severe bite in the throat by some sort of degenerate or derelict creature, for lack of better words, and that’s what terrified my wife and daughter, and messed up our lives. That’s what I told the doctors and the sheriffs, and nobody believed me. No autopsy was done before his body was cremated, and. ”
“Do? Well the first thing to do is take Doctor Branch’s prescription of a big drink of whatever booze you have on hand, and then you are going to lie down and pretend to sleep. I will put on some sleepy-type music and. ah, I’d like to look through your files. I promise not to read any love notes or old paternity warrants; I want to look for learned matter. Folkloric shop stuff, okay?”
Pretending to sleep was, as expected, succeeded by genuine slumber. Then by awakening and finding Branch reading by lamplight. “What’s that you’re reading, Branch?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” He tilted up an old red folder mended with tape. “Look familiar?”
Vlad felt that it did look familiar, that he knew what was in it, and somehow he did not like what was in it. He recalled a small voice saying, “Is this our new house? I don’tlike it.” He leaned his head on his hand and choked back tears.
Branch shoved the folder over to Vlad, who slowly opened and leafed through it. What was this on yellowed paper, laboriously typed in old-fashioned typescript? Transcript of Alleged Rare Pamphlet Allegedly Entitled “The Treatise on the House Devil.” And this: a sheaf of sundry papers, typed and penned and machine copied on various sorts of copy-machines, attached by a large rusting paper clip, and labeled Bagnell’s Notes. An item caught his eye; Preliminary Survey of the Folklore of Two Ohio River Tributaries: “I had the usual difficulties: first you must find your source. Then you must make him talk. Then you must make him stop talking. Or her. In fact it was from a her that I learned a folk remedy for pubic lice which is too gross for learned journals. Also I heard the following account which might interest you: Near a place called Wide Waters, where two large boats could pass each other, was a tower. It was originally as tall as a three-story building, but then kind of crumbled. Some say it was used as a shot-tower or a lighthouse. Others say it was built by a wicked Frenchman to remind himself of France. He was cruel to his slaves and nearly starved them to death. Well, as soon as Lincoln freed the slaves, they mixed up a big batch of cement and carried over a big pile of stones, and walled their evil old master — their Boss — inside the tower. Then all the former slaves ran off. There were no windows in the tower, just little slits. And before anybody came around and found him, long after he must have died, they say he got so thin he was able to poke his hands through the slits and wave them around. And they say you can still sometimes see the skeletal hands of the cruel ‘Boss in the Wall’ waving through the slits on stormy nights.
“You can recognize elements of countless Old World legends of cruel leaders walled in towers, such as the Sultan of Baghdad and the Mouse Tower on the Rhine. Though the skeletal hands waving through the slits may be strictly a local touch.”
“Okay, Branch, okay. I got it now; I remember,” Vlad wept. “Why didn’t I remember it before?”
Branch had poured moderate drinks for both of them from a bottle, sipped his own and gestured to his old friend to do the same. “Here’s a possible explanation. Why did you originally forget it? Because you forgot, that’s why. Who the hell remembers everything? Every wife in the world feels compelled to shove some of her husband’s old crap out of sight, and you had other things to do, so you forgot. Then you went to the old house, and just the sight of the place, or some little sound or smell started to bring back memories. But you didn’t want the memories. You and your wife and uncle wanted the old house, and the memories weren’t very nice. So your mind suppressed them. Until that moment. Let’s say that your uncle had some kind of stroke, or fit of convulsions. He couldn’t breathe, so he clawed and tore at his own throat. Suppose your daughter woke up and saw him, and she started to scream and scream.” Branch took another sip and continued, “Suppose that what you saw was so terrible, your mind couldn’t admit that you saw it. You had to be seeing something else. Your mind, so to speak, slipped down, down into the sub-basement. And down there in the mud and jumble, your mind found something. It found those old tales that old Pappa John had babbled about, and it substituted those old terror-tales for the terrible thing you were really seeing. All of this in an instant, of course, but the memory lingers on. Maybe your little girl’s defense was to retreat into convulsions and unconsciousness.”