The Architecture of Fear (5 page)

I'd lost track of time while I was ill. I thought you'd be at work, but this was Saturday, and you'd been out shopping. I felt like smashing the cot and tearing off the wallpaper and waiting for you to find me in the nursery, ready to fight for the house. But I ran down as I heard you slam the car doors, and I hid under the stairs, in the cupboard full of mops and brushes.

I heard you come in, talking about how much better the house looked now you'd knocked the wall down and put in sliding doors so that you could have two rooms there or one as the mood took you. I heard you walk along the hall twice, laden with shopping, and then close the kitchen door. I inched the door under the stairs open, and as I did so I noticed what you'd done while you were putting in the central heating. You'd made a trapdoor in the floor of the cupboard so that you could crawl under the house.

I left the cupboard door open and tiptoed along the hall. I was almost blind with anger at being made to feel like an intruder in the house, but I managed to control myself, because I knew I'd be coming back. I closed the front door by turning my key in the lock and almost fell headlong on the icy path. My legs felt as if they'd have melted, but I held onto garden walls all the way to the flat and lay down on my bed to wait for Monday morning.

On Sunday afternoon I felt the need to go to church, where I hadn't been since I was a child. I wanted to be reassured that my wife was still alive in spirit and to know if I was right in what I mean to do. I struggled to church and hid at the back, behind a pillar, while they were saying mass. The church felt as if it was telling me yes, but I wasn't sure which question it was answering. I have to believe it was both.

So this morning I came back to the house. The only thing I was afraid of was that one of the neighbors might see me, see this man who'd been loitering nearby last week, and call the police. But the thaw had set in and was keeping people off the streets. I had to take off my shoes as soon as I'd let myself in, so as not to leave footprints along the hall. I don't want you to know I'm here as soon as you come home. You'll know soon enough.

You must be coming home now, and I want to finish this. I thought of bolting the front door so that you'd think the lock had stuck and perhaps go for a locksmith, but I don't think I'll need to. I haven't much more to tell you. You'll know I'm here long before you find me and read this.

It's getting dark here now in the dining room with the glass doors shut so that I can't be seen from the street. It makes me feel the wall you knocked down has come back, and my memories are beginning to. I remember now, my wife grew house plants in here, and I let them all die after she died. I remember the scents that used to fill the room—I can smell them now. She must be here, waiting for me.

And now I'm going to join her in our house. During the last few minutes I've swallowed all the pills. Perhaps that's why I can smell her flowers. As soon as I've finished this I'm going through the trapdoor in the cupboard. There isn't enough space under the house to stretch your arms above your head when you're lying on your back, but I don't think I'll know I'm there for very long. Soon my wife and I will just be in the house. I hope you won't mind if we make it more like ours again. I can't help thinking that one day you may come into this room and find no sliding doors any longer, just a wall. Try and think of it as our present to you and the house.

With more than five dozen books and over one hundred short stories to his credit, multiple Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winner Charles Grant is a pervasive presence in contemporary fantasy, a successful author whose ear tends toward mood and atmosphere and yet who reads human reaction like a country physician. He is a writer who knows the darker sides of love.

The clock in the belfry ends the morning's first hour with a single slow chime; the north wind ends the season with a single slow moan; and the trees in the backyard dance in stiff-armed, creaking steps to the wind, and the chime, and the clouds that slip the moon into a glove of starless black.

A nightbird on the peak of an uneven roof, waiting for prey with its eyes half closed.

The muffled crack of a small rock finally splitting in the cold.

A few lights in a few windows, mostly on the second floor; a car rushing down the Pike as if it knows it should be home; a leaf, a single leaf hanging on the wall that separates the Station from the graveyard flutters and cracks and falls in shreds to the frosted ground.

Timothy watched it, watched the pieces, and turned away from the gust that blew through the iron gates of Memorial Park. To be here now was foolish. To be here at any time was giving in to his loss when he ought to be home and sleeping, or working, or seeing his friends at the Chancellor Inn and flirting with the women and proving to the world that he had finally put it all behind him.

All of it.

His hands, chapped and fisted, pressed against his legs from within his overcoat pockets; his shoulders rose to help the scarf keep the wind from diving down the length of his spine. His feet began to ache from the cold and the standing and when he turned to walk away he did so with a sigh that was neither relief nor sorrow, just another sound for company to keep the other sounds away.

And once decided, he crossed Park Street in a hurry and headed north toward the dark hill that marked the village's northern boundary, following the houses on his right until he reached the next to last and stopped, panting out of breath, closing his eyes and opening them and seeing the place that had seen him being born, that had seen his marriage in the front room, that had seen him throughout his life, and protected him when he needed it, whenever Ellen wasn't around.

Nothing special, and more special than anything he'd ever owned—simple white clapboard and a peaked slate roof, canted chimney and solid porch, a frosted pane in the front door and windows that had watched him take his first steps as a child, take his first steps with his wife.

Nothing special.

A slow inhalation, and he swerved through the gap in the tall hedge that had never held a gate, lurched onto the small porch, pushed open the door with shoulder and hand, and slammed it shut behind him.

"Tim?"

"Here," he said, not quite loudly. Coat and scarf on the mirrored rack in the foyer, unworn gloves on the table that held a small silver bowl. "Just in, where are you?"

"The kitchen. You want some cocoa?"

Rubbing his hands, breathing the warm furnace air deeply, he took his time getting to the back of the house, squinting at the bright light as he sat at the table and scrubbed his cheeks with his palms.

Ellen, waist aproned and hair bunned, turned from the stove with a small sad smile. "You shouldn't be walking this time of night, you know. There'll be questions."

He shrugged, made a perfunctory swipe at his hair that was too thin to do much but lie there on his head in memory of its former brown, and accepted the cup she gave him with a wince at the heat that made his fingers tighten.

"I mean it," she told him, taking the seat opposite and holding her own cup as if it were fine china. "The police will start on you again, you know that."

He shrugged again. "Don't care. They can't arrest a guy for taking a walk, right?"

Her smile returned, warmer now, and wider. "After midnight? In the middle of the week? They'll think you're a pervert or something."

He laughed, briefly but true, and took a sip of the liquid because she was waiting. His tongue burned, his throat burned, but by the time it reached his stomach it felt fine, just fine.

The clock over the stove ticked another minute before they moved again, each blowing over the cocoa, watching the steam curl and vanish.

"Did you go in?"

"No. They always lock the gates."

"Oh. So you didn't try to climb the wall?"

"No."

"Oh."

He finished the drink quickly and politely refused another. Tired, he said, and wanted his sleep. Ellen understood and walked with him to the stairway, kissed his cheek, held his hand, patted his back as he started up. He looked down when he reached the turn at the darkened landing, watched her walk away, back to the kitchen, and wondered not for the first time how he'd managed to get so lucky to have a wife like that when even his closest friends were in hell in their marriages.

And it had to be luck. It wasn't because he worked at it; he didn't know how, not really. You just lived with each other, he thought as he undressed and slid into bed, you just lived with each other in a house you called your own and told her you loved her and either it works or it doesn't and there's no magic there at all.

He slept, lightly, barely feeling her join him several hours later, barely feeling the sun rise through the window on his left. He slept, and he didn't dream, and in silent prayer thanked the house for letting him have his own, for helping him carry on when carrying on sometimes seemed foolish.

When he awoke there was blue sky, and the furnace greeting him with a warm kiss.

And on his way to work at Station Motors he saw the squirrel at the curb.

"Jesus," he said, and turned his head away.

It must have been hit by a car the way it looked, and the early morning wind flopped its tail back and forth as if it were still alive and trying to get to its feet.

"Jesus," he said again, and hurried on, crossed the Pike and passed the library, ducked into the luncheonette and picked up a New York paper before moving on to the showroom.

Karl Judd was already there, three-piece brown suit and red cheeks, talking with a customer; Zaller was in his office, talking to a customer on the telephone, one hand scratching his scrawny neck while the other tapped a pencil on a blank sheet of pink paper. Timothy thought the place was too much like a funeral parlor and was tempted to start whistling just to see what they would do.

Tempted, but it passed, and he hung his coat up in his office, looked at the message slips on the blotter, and dropped into his chair where he closed his eyes and thought: if I never sell another car in my life, who would know except Ellen?

A knock on the doorframe.

He looked over and waved a hand. "C'mon in, Dan, pull up a chair and tell me how miserable you are."

Zaller shook his head and leaned against the jamb. "I was just talking to Hy Regal," he said.

Timothy covered his eyes, pulled at his nose, and grabbed a pen and began doodling on a purchase order he ripped off the pad. "Oh."

"Oh," the man said. "Right. You were supposed to call him last week, Tim. Twice you said you'd call." He shook his head; there was no sympathy left in him. "What happened?"

How many excuses did he have? None that would please his employer, and none, he knew, that would even please himself.

"I forgot."

Zaller stared at him. "You what?"

A spurt of anger, quickly settled. "Well, what do you want me to say, for Christ's sake—my grandmother died? The kids I don't have are in the hospital? I went to see my ailing father in an old folks' home in Denver?" He threw the pen down. "The hell with it. I forgot, that's all. No excuses, Dan. I forgot."

Zaller's face showed him nothing, but his left hand lightly slapped the jamb before he straightened, and straightened his tie. "Call him, Tim. In one hour, call him.

"I mean it, Tim. I can't carry you forever."

He lowered his head.

Zaller blew in exasperation. "Christ, Edding, it's your commission, you know, and you're not that hot that you can afford to snub a man like that."

No kidding, he thought, and watched the man amble across the showroom floor, touching a hood there, finger-dusting a fender there, standing at the entrance with hands in pockets and watching the street. He supposed that, given enough hard work and enough people who wanted cars priced as high as his salary, he too could be studiously casual, he too could treat the automobiles in the showroom as if they were nothing more than joy wagons for the young instead of machines that cost more than his house had when his father built it.

He supposed, but he doubted it, and he spent the next fifty minutes leafing through his empty appointment book, reading the understated brochures, and wishing that Zaller wouldn't keep looking at him like that—as if he were going to suddenly leap out of his leather chair and run screaming into the street, waving an ax and beheading young children.

Even Karl avoided him.

Then he called Hy Regal and made an appointment for the following morning, made no excuses, and was pleased that the man didn't demand a thing but his time.

That afternoon he sold a black-and-silver Rolls to a couple who had walked by the showroom several times before finding the courage to come in. Timothy knew the feeling:
they say it's an investment, but honey, are you sure this is what we really want?
He assured them it was, and he grinned as Dan Zaller gaped at the final papers.

"Edding, you're amazing," he said. "I can't figure you out."

"That's me, one of life's constant mysteries."

And on the way home, the sky darkening for snow and the wind snapping at his hair, he saw another squirrel beside the first one, freshly dead, still bleeding.

A look to the trees.

A look up and down the street.

A look at the tail being pushed by the wind, and when the body shifted, he swallowed hard and moved on, blinking, licking at his lips, tucking his chin to his chest and turning his head side to side.

At the walk he paused and looked over his shoulder at the wall of the park, frowned for a moment with indecision before taking the porch steps in a leap, throwing open the door, and calling Ellen's name. Loudly. Almost frantically. And sagging against the hall table when she didn't answer to her name.

Damn, he thought, and unbuttoned his coat as he walked into the kitchen, his nose up and ready to test for the scent of dinner. But the room was empty, and unlighted save for the glowing dial of the clock over the stove.

"Damn," he said, and went upstairs to change his clothes, lingering in the bathroom to watch his reflection in the dust-streaked mirror over the sink. It told him nothing, gave him no hints, and a fingertip touched it just to make sure it was real.