The zipper. He fumbled for it, found it drawn all the way down. What in God’s name had she tried to do? This was his wife, who loved him. This was the girl who only a few weeks ago, at the club, had savagely slapped the face of the town’s richest, handsomest playboy for daring to hint at a mate-swapping arrangement. Slowly he drew the zipper up again, then held her at arm’s length and looked again at her face.
She seemed unaware he had touched her. Or that he even existed. She was entirely alone, still gazing into that secret world in which he had no place.
The rest of that night had seemed endless, Linda lying on the bed, he sitting beside her waiting for daylight. She seemed to sleep some of the time; at other times, though she said nothing even when spoken to, he sensed she was as wide awake as he. About four o’clock the wind died and the snow stopped its wet slapping of the windowpanes. No dawn had ever been more welcome, even though he was still unable to free the car and they both had to walk to the village to send a tow truck for it.
And now he had let her persuade him to come back here. He must be insane.
“Norman?”
She sat there on the bed, the same bed, but at least she was looking at him now, not through him into that secret world of hers. “Norman, you do like this house a little, don’t you?”
“If you mean could I ever seriously think of living here—” Emphatically he shook his head. “My God, no! It gives me the horrors!”
“It’s really a lovely old house, Norman. We could work on it little by little. Do you think I’m crazy?”
“If you can even imagine living in this mausoleum, I know you’re crazy. My God, woman, you were nearly frightened out of your wits here. In this very room, too.”
“Was I, Norman? Really?”
“Yes, you were! If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never stop seeing that look on your face.”
“What kind of look was it, Norman?”
“I don’t know. That’s just it—I don’t know! What in heaven’s name were you seeing when I walked back in here after my session with the car? What was that mist? That smell?”
Smiling, she reached for his hands. “I don’t remember any mist or smell, Norman. I was just a little frightened. I told you—I thought I heard something.”
“You saw something too, you said.”
“Did I say that? I’ve forgotten.” Still smiling, she looked around the room—at the garden of faded roses on shreds of time-stained wallpaper; at the shabby bureau with its solitary broken cut-glass vase. “Old Mr. Halper was to blame for what happened, Norman. His talk of demons.”
“Halper didn’t do that much talking, Linda.”
“Well, he told us about the woman who was hanged in Salem. I can see now, of course, that he threw that out as bait, because I had told him you write mystery novels. He probably pictured you sitting in some sort of Dracula cape, scratching out your books with a quill, by lamplight, and thought this would be a marvelous setting for it.” Her soft laugh was a welcome sound, reminding Norman he loved this girl and she loved him—that their life together, except for her inexplicable interest in this house, was full of gentleness and caring.
But he could not let her win this debate. “Linda, listen. If this is such a fine old house, why has it been empty for eight years?”
“Well, Mr. Halper explained that, Norman.”
“Did he? I don’t seem to recall any explanation.”
“He said that last person to live here was a woman who died eight years ago at ninety-three. Her married name was Stanhope, I think he said, but she was a Creighton—she even had the same given name, Prudence, as the woman hanged in Salem for worshipping demons. And when she passed away there was some legal question about the property because her husband had died some years before in an asylum, leaving no will.”
Norman reluctantly nodded. The truth was, he hadn’t paid much attention to the real-estate man’s talk, but he did recall the remark that the last man of the house had been committed to an asylum for the insane. Probably from having lived in such a gloomy old house for so long, he had thought at the time.
Annoyed with himself for having lost the debate—at least, for not having won it—he turned from the bed and walked to a window, where he stood gazing down at the yard. Right down there, four months ago, was where he had struggled to free the car. Frowning at the spot now, he suddenly said aloud, “Wait. That’s damn queer.”
‘What is, dear?” Linda said from the bed.
“I’ve always thought we left the car in a low spot that night. A spot where the snow must have drifted extra deep, I mean. But we didn’t. We were in the highest part of the yard.”
“Perhaps the ground is soft there.”
“Uh-uh. It’s rocky.”
“Then it might have been slippery?”
“Well, I suppose—” Suddenly he pressed closer to the window glass. “Oh, damn! We’ve got a flat.”
“What, Norman?”
“A flat! Those are new tires, too. We must have picked up a nail on our way into this stupid place.” Striding back to the bed, he caught her hand. “Come on. I’m not leaving you here this time!”
She did not protest. Obediently she followed him downstairs and along the lower hall to the front door. On the piazza she hesitated briefly, glancing back in what seemed to be a moment of panic, but when he again grasped her hand, she meekly went with him down the steps and out to the car.
The left front tire was the flat one. Hunkering down beside it, he searched for the culprit nail but failed to find any. It was underneath, no doubt. Things like flat tires always annoyed him; in a properly organized world they wouldn’t happen. Of course, in such a world there would not be the kind of road one had to travel to reach this place, nor would there be such an impossible house to begin with.
Muttering to himself, he opened the trunk, extracted jack, tools and spare, and went to work.
Strange. There was no nail in the offending tire. No cut or bruise, either. The tire must have been badly made. The thought did not improve his mood as, on his knees, he wrestled the spare into place.
Then when he lowered the jack, the spare gently flattened under the car’s weight and he knelt there staring at it in disbelief. “What the hell . . .” Nothing like this had ever happened to him before.
He jacked the car up again, took the spare off and examined it. No nail, no break, no bruise. It was a new tire, like the others. Newer, because never yet used. He had a repair kit for tubeless tires in the trunk, he recalled—bought one day on an impulse. “Repair a puncture in minutes without even taking the tire off the car.” But how could you repair a puncture that wasn’t there?
“Linda, this is crazy. We’ll have to walk back to town as we did before.” He turned his head. “Linda?”
She was not there.
He lurched to his feet. “Linda! Where are you?” How long had she been gone? He must have been working on the car for fifteen or twenty minutes. She hadn’t spoken in that time, he suddenly realized. Had she slipped back into the house the moment he became absorbed in his task? She knew well enough how intensely he concentrated on such things. How when he was writing, for instance, she could walk through the room without his even knowing it.
“Linda, for God’s sake—no!” Hoarsely shouting her name, he stumbled toward the house. The door clattered open when he flung himself against it, and the sound filled his ears as he staggered down the hall. But now the hall was not just an ancient, dusty corridor; it was a dim tunnel filled with premature darkness and strange whisperings.
He knew where she must be. In that cursed room at the top of the stairs where he had seen the look on her face four months ago, and where she had tried so cunningly to conceal the truth from him this time. But the room was hard to reach now. A swirling mist choked the staircase, repeatedly causing him to stumble. Things resembling hands darted out of it to clutch at him and hold him back.