Ammie, Come Home (10 page)

Bruce stiffened.

“Sara ought to have some ideas about that,” he said.

“Well, Sara?” Pat said. “I suspect that you were not—”

“No leading the witness,” said Bruce; the words were meant to be mildly humorous, but the tone definitely was not. After a moment, Pat nodded.

“Sorry. Sara?”

“You say something happened at the séance?” Sara looked at Bruce. “I don't remember that. Nor the time I walked in my sleep, the night Ruth fell and hurt herself.”

Bruce's eyes caught Ruth's, with a command as clear as words. He had not, then, told the girl everything. Ruth nodded slightly. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Pat was looking smug, and wondered why.

Sara went on, “But tonight was different.”

“You were aware of what was going on?” Pat asked. Ruth wondered if other people could read his face as easily as she could. He was now as crestfallen as he had formerly been smug.

“I sure was. Want me to describe it? I'm not sure I can….”

“If it upsets you, darling,” Ruth began.

“Tell it anyhow,” said Bruce.

“All right.” She gave him a look of such blind trust that Ruth's heart contracted painfully. “You know the feeling, when you're waiting for something that you know will be very painful or unhappy? Like an operation; or somebody is going to die. Something you can't get out of, but that you know you are going to hate. You can't breathe. You keep gasping, but the air won't go down into your lungs. You can hear your own heart thudding, so hard it seems to be banging into your ribs. Your hands perspire. You want to run away, but you can't, it won't do any good, the thing you're afraid of will happen anyhow.”

The worst part of the description, for Ruth, was that Sara was not trying to be terrifying, but simply to give facts.

“The feeling was like that,” Sara said. “But this time—there was no reason for it. Do you understand? I wasn't afraid of any
thing.
I was just afraid. And that's the worst fear of all, the fear of nothing.”

Now Bruce's face was troubled, Pat's confident. Apparently the sensation the girl was describing had meaning to them, though it had none for Ruth.

“Then it came,” Sara went on. “It—filled me up. Like water pouring into a pitcher. Pat, I could hear you when you were talking to me—but I couldn't answer. I heard somebody, something else, talking. And I couldn't speak or move a muscle.”

“That's all?” Bruce said, after a rather painful moment.

“Yes, it went away, and I fainted, I guess. It's so hard to describe…. Did you ever wear clothes that were too tight? Shoes that pinched? That was how—it—felt. Something didn't quite—fit.”

Somehow that was the worst description yet. Ruth's mouth went dry; Pat's face was disturbed.

“All right,” he said. “Relax, Sara. You were aware of an invasion—right?—but cannot identify the invader. So far—let's be blunt—this proves nothing, one way or the other.”

“I haven't begun to fight,” Bruce said grimly. “Ruth, your turn.”

“I told you my impressions of the séance,” Ruth began.

“I don't mean that. I want to know whether you've noticed anything else out of the ordinary.”

“Where? When?”

“Any time, but probably recently. Here. In this house.”

“The house,” Ruth exclaimed. “You think—”

“Let's not jump the gun. Anything, any impression at all.”

For a few seconds Ruth could not think. Her glance wandered around the kitchen—polished brass winking, smooth scrubbed counter tops, mellow brown maple…. Then, from nowhere, it came back.

“I had a dream,” she said slowly. “Probably just—”

“Describe it.”

She did; and it lost considerably in the telling, as dreams usually do.

“The shadow loomed up,” she ended, lamely. “And I thought I was awake, but I wasn't. It was an awful feeling, trying to get up, and not being able to move.”

“What did awaken you?” Bruce asked. He had begun to lose interest. It was obvious he had no great hopes for the dream.

“I don't remember….” Ruth wrinkled her brows. Then memory dawned, with such impact that she knocked her coffee cup over. Sara dived for it, but Ruth caught at her arm.

“Wait, wait. The voice. Sara, you heard it too; it must mean something. That was what woke me—the same voice you heard. Only there isn't any animal named Sammie!”

It took Bruce almost five minutes to extract a coherent story.

“The time,” he said, almost as excited as she was. “What time was it when you woke up?”

“Almost two
A.M
. And Sara heard it just before dawn. That in itself makes our first assumption ridiculous; who would be chasing a lost pet around at that hour?”

“And through a yard which is completely enclosed,” Bruce agreed. “Ruth, we may have something here.”

In her triumph Ruth turned toward Pat; and his expression punctured her like a pricked balloon. He looked so sorry for her.

“Now,” Bruce said, “I'm going to give Pat a chance for a big ha-ha at my expense. Ruth, did you ever hear any stories about the house being haunted?”

“No….”

“But then you don't know much about the place, do you?”

“I guess nobody does, nobody in the family, at any rate. Cousin Hattie was here so long….”

“Still, it seems to me that we ought to start with the house,” Bruce argued. “Nothing like this ever happened to Sara until she came here, and….”

He broke off, his mouth hanging open; and Ruth said hopefully, “And what?”

“Nothing, I guess. I thought for a minute I had an idea, but it got away.”

“Maybe you'll catch it in the morning,” Ruth said. “It's been a hard day. We all could do with a good night's sleep.”

But she knew that none of them would sleep well that night.

 

III

“How about the Civil War?” Bruce asked.

They were sitting around the kitchen table the following afternoon. Rain slid tearily down the windowpanes, blurring the garden into a gray dismal landscape of bare trees and withered vines.

Inside, the coffeepot was perking and the kitchen was warm and bright as usual; the tiles over the stove glowed in the light of the hanging copper lamp. Ruth had worn pink that day, a bright glowing rose, and Sara's crimson sweater and royal Stewart plaid skirt made another patch of brightness. They had turned to vivid colors as a protest—and not only against the dreary weather.

Bruce leaned across the table, one hand wrapped around his coffee cup, the other shuffling through a pile of papers. He wore a checked waistcoat, which Ruth privately considered the height of affectation; yet somehow it suited the period air of his facial adornment and finely cut features.

The front door slammed and heavy footsteps announced the arrival of the missing member of the impromptu committee. Pat's red head gleamed with rain, challenging the copper-bottomed pans on the wall.

He stood across the room from the others, with one hand braced against the wall, and looked down at them.

“How did it go?”

“We just got here ourselves,” Bruce said. “We were starting to compare notes.”

“And what a day,” Sara said gloomily. “Remember our conversation about Georgetown traditions, Pat? If I was rude to you, I've been punished. I spent the whole morning and most of the afternoon plowing through books on Georgetown history.”

“Serves you right.” Pat's voice was casual and his smile bland, but Ruth fancied that his eyes lingered on Sara's face with an almost clinical curiosity.

“Some of it was sort of interesting, at that,” Sara admitted. “Ruth, did you ever run across the story of Baron Bodisco, who, at the age of sixty-three, fell in love with a sixteen-year-old girl?”

“No. Who was Baron Bodisco?”

“Russian ambassador, about 1850. He lived a couple of blocks from here, on O Street.” Sara's eyes twinkled with amusement. “He was a sprightly old gent, obviously. The girl came to a Christmas party he gave for his nephews, and he married her six months later.”

“Nasty old man,” Bruce muttered.

“No,” Sara said, surprisingly. “It was sort of pathetic. He said she might find someone younger and better looking, but no one who would love her more. And he absolutely showered her with jewels and money and gorgeous clothes. There was a description of one of her dresses—white watered silk embroidered with pale pink rosebuds and green leaves. With it she wore emeralds and diamonds.”

“I'd be inclined to suspect the young lady's motives, myself,” Ruth said, amused at Sara's unexpected streak of romanticism. Did the miniskirted young really yearn, deep down inside, for ruffles and pink rosebuds?

“There was a picture of her in one of the books,” Sara said. “She was pretty, all right; but her mouth had a sort of self-satisfied smirk….”

“Did you find time,” Bruce inquired with commendable restraint, “to spend maybe five minutes on the Civil War?”

“Why the Civil War?” Pat dumped his coat on a chair, found a cup, and poured himself some coffee.

“The General,” Bruce said.

“What?” Pat looked blank. “Oh. Sara said that, didn't she?”

“So Ruth believes. She didn't say it the first time. The words she spoke at the séance were significant, though. I forgot to mention them last night; but they are part of my evidence.”

“Ghosts?” Pat asked amiably, sitting down at the table and stretching out a long arm for the sugar bowl.

“Pat,” Ruth said warningly.

“Never mind, let him have his fun.” Bruce shrugged. “Yes, ghosts. The phenomenon of possession is defined—”

“By those who believe in it—”

“By those who believe in it,” Bruce accepted the amendment without a visible change of expression, “as being invasion by the spirit of someone who has died. Oh, sometimes you hear talk of elementals, demons and the like, but I think we can dismiss that for now. The theory is borne out by Sara's own words, which have been reiterated several times. ‘Not dead.' That's what the Invader says. It sounds to me like an assertion, almost a defiance.”

He lit a cigarette and waited for a comment. None came. Pat's eyes were hooded by drooping lids.

“Additional confirmation—the behavior of the medium at the séance. She said she felt an intrusion—one which frightened her so much that she was reluctant to continue. Now, since she maintains that her contacts come from the spirit world—”

“You suggest,” Pat interrupted, without looking up from his contemplation of his coffee cup, “that the Invader tried Madame Nada first, found her unsatisfactory, for one reason or another, and then took over Sara.”

“Not exactly. But I think the Madame did sense the Invader. Which doesn't mean that she isn't faking ninety-nine percent of the time.”

“That was what scared her,” Ruth said. “When she did encounter something genuine, she was petrified.”

“And yet she does have a certain talent,” Bruce insisted. “I'm thinking of the sensation of cold in that particular part of the living room. She felt that acutely. Ruth and Sara are aware of it—correct me if I'm not putting this accurately—but it doesn't affect them so much.”

“That's right,” Ruth agreed. “The others didn't seem to notice it at all. Mrs. MacDougal said she didn't.”

“I don't either,” Bruce said. “Not a quiver. Come on, now, Pat, be honest—you sense it quite strongly, don't you? It almost doubled you up the other night; I thought for a minute you were having a heart attack.”

“I felt a chill,” Pat said; and, catching Ruth's expressive gaze, he widened his eyes innocently. “I'm giving you as precise and unemotional a description as I can.”

“Okay, I won't push,” Bruce said wearily. “I won't even mention Ruth's dream, or the voice that calls in the night. We haven't proved yet that they are relevant. I think we have enough, without them, to formulate a theory. As Pat says—ghosts. So I spent the day at the Georgetown branch of the library reading ghost stories.”

“While I was plodding through big fat history books!” Sara exclaimed. “You have your nerve.”

“I used to enjoy them,” Bruce said briefly. “Point is, there is usually a key motif for hauntings. Violence—that's the most common cause. A suicide seeking rest, a victim seeking revenge, a murderer doomed by his sin to linger at the scene of the crime.”

“Those aren't the only reasons.” Sara began foraging in the cupboards. She put a plate of cookies and another of crackers and cheese on the table, and sat down. Leaning forward, with her chin propped on her hands and her hair swinging in black satin waves across her cheek, she looked enchanting. Only Ruth saw, with an inner pang, the faintest smudge of dark shadow under her eyes.

“Buried treasure,” Sara said. “That's a reason. Remember
Tom Sawyer?
Or protection—warning the living of danger to come.”

“They may be motives for hauntings, but not for physical possession,” Bruce said direly. He swallowed a cookie—it was a small one—whole, and looked a bit more cheerful. “There's another point I wanted to make. Last night I said that nothing had happened to Sara till she came to the house. I was too beat to see the converse—nothing seems to have happened in the house until Sara arrived. That suggests that something lingers, in the house, which finds Sara a suitable host.”

He reached for another handful of cookies; and Pat took advantage of his enforced silence to say thoughtfully, “That's ingenious. Completely without solid foundations, of course….”

For a few minutes there was silence except for the sound of Bruce munching. Then Ruth murmured, “It's getting dark. So early these days….”

“We're going out,” Pat said firmly. “Out among the bright lights. I need a couple of drinks before I listen to any more of Bruce's theories.”