Lasher

Twenty-four

THEY STOOD IN the mist, forming a vague circle. What was that low grinding sound? Was it thunder? They were the most dangerous people he had seen. Ignorance, poverty, that was their heritage, and everywhere he saw the common imperfections of the poor and the untended, the hunchback, the man with the club foot, the child whose arms were too short, and all the others, thin-faced, coarse, misshapen and frightening, in their gray and brown garments, to behold. The grinding noise went on and on, too monotonous for thunder. Could they hear it?

The sky above pressed down upon them, down upon the entire grassy floor of the glen. The stones did have carvings, the old man in Edinburgh had told Julien the truth. The stones were enormous, and they were all together in the circle.

He sat up. He was dizzy. He said, “I don’t belong here. This is a dream. I have to go back where I belong. I can’t wake up here. But I don’t know how to get back there.” The grinding sound was driving him mad. It was so low, so insistent. Did they hear it? Maybe it was some awful rumble from the earth itself, but probably not. Anything could happen here. Anything could happen. The important thing was to get out.

“We would like to help you,” said one of the men, a tall man with flowing gray hair. He stepped forward, out of the little circular gathering. He wore black breeches and his mouth was invisible beneath his gray mustache. Only a bit of lip showed as the deep baritone voice came from him. “But we do not know who you are or what you are doing here. We do not know where you come from. Or how to send you home.”

This was English, modern English. This was all wrong. A dream.

What is that rumbling? That grinding. I know that sound. He wanted to reach out and stop it. I know that sound. The stone nearest to him must have been some twenty feet high, jagged, like a crude knife rising from the earth, and on it were warriors in rows, with their spears and their shields. “The Picts,” he said.

They stared at him as if they did not understand him. “If we leave you here,” said the gray-haired man, “the little people may come. The little people are full of hatred. The little people will take you away. They’ll try to make a giant with you, and reclaim the world. You have the blood in you, you see.”

A sharp ringing sound carried over the blowing grass, suddenly, beneath the great span of boiling gray clouds. It came again, that same familiar peal. It was louder than the low grinding noise that ran on, uninterrupted, beneath it.

“I know what that is!” he said to them. He tried to stand, but then he fell down again into the damp grass. How they stared at his clothes. How different theirs were.

“This is the wrong time! Do you hear that sound? That sound is a telephone. It’s trying to bring me back.”

The tall man drew closer. His bare knees were filthy, his long legs streaked with dirt. Rather like a man who has been splashed with dirty water, and has let it dry on his skin. His clothing was matted with dirt.

“I’ve never seen the little people for myself,” he said. “But I know they are something to fear. We cannot leave you here.”

“Get away from me,” he said. “I’m getting out of here. This is a dream and you ought to leave it. Don’t wait around. Just go. I have things to do! Important things that must be done!”

And this time he rose full to his feet, and was thrown backwards and felt the floorboards beneath his hands. Again the telephone rang. Again and again. He tried to open his eyes.

Then it stopped. No, I have to wake up, he thought. I have to get up. Don’t stop ringing. He brought his knees up close to his chest and managed to get up on all fours. The grinding noise. The Victrola. The heavy arm with its crude little needle caught at the end of the record, grinding, grinding, looking for a new way to begin.

Light in the two windows. His windows. And there the Victrola under Antha’s window, the little letters VICTOR printed in gold on the wooden lid, which was propped open.

Someone was coming up the stairs.

“Yes!” He climbed to his feet. His room. The drafting board, his chair. The shelves filled with his books. Victorian Architecture. The History of the Frame House in America. My books.

There was a knocking at the door.

“Mr. Mike, are you in there? Mr. Mike, Mr. Ryan is on the phone!”

“Come in, Henri, come in here.” Would Henri hear his fear? Would he know?

The doorknob turned as if it were alive. The light fell in from the landing, Henri’s face so dark with the little chandelier behind him that Michael couldn’t see it.

“Mr. Mike, it’s good news and bad news. She’s alive, they’ve found her in St. Martinville, Louisiana, but she’s sick, real sick, they say she can’t move or speak.”

“Christ, they’ve found her. They know for sure it’s Rowan!”

He hurried past Henri and down the stairs. Henri came behind him, talking steadily, hand out to steady Michael when he almost fell.

“Mr. Ryan’s on his way over here. Coroner called from St. Martinville. She had papers in her purse. She fits the description. They say it’s Dr. Mayfair, for sure.”

Eugenia was standing in his bedroom holding the phone in her hand.

“Yes, sir, we’ve found him.”

Michael took the receiver.

“Ryan?”

“She’s on her way in now,” came the cool voice on the other end. “The ambulance is taking her straight to Mercy Hospital. She’ll be there in about an hour, if they use the siren all the way. Michael, it doesn’t look good. They can’t get any response from her. They’re describing a coma. We’re trying to reach her friend Dr. Larkin, at the Pontchartrain. But there’s no answer.”

“What do I do? Where do I go?” He wanted to get on I-10 and drive north till he saw the oncoming ambulance, then swing around, cutting across the grass, and follow it in. An hour! “Henri, get me my jacket. Find my wallet. Down in the library. I left my keys and my wallet on the floor.”

“Mercy Hospital,” said Ryan. “They’re ready for her. The Mayfair Floor. We’ll meet you there. You haven’t seen Dr. Larkin, have you?”

Michael had on his jacket within seconds. He drank the glass of orange juice Eugenia pushed at him, as she reminded him in no uncertain terms that he had had no supper, that it was eleven o’clock at night.

“Henri, go bring the car around. Hurry.”

Rowan alive. Rowan would be at Mercy Hospital in less than an hour. Rowan coming home. Goddamnit to hell, I knew it, knew she would come back, but not like this!

He hurried down to the front hall, taking his keys from Eugenia, and his wallet and stuffing it in his pocket. Money clip. Didn’t need it. Mayfair Floor. Where he himself had lain after the heart attack, hooked to machines and listening to them, like the grinding of that Victrola. And she was going to be there.

“Listen to me, Eugenia, there’s something real important you gotta do,” he said. “Go upstairs to my room. There’s an old Victrola on the floor. Wind it and start the record. OK?”

“Now? At this hour of the night? For what?”

“Just do it. Tell you what. Bring it down to the parlor. That will make it easier. Oh, never mind, you can’t carry it. Just go up there, and play that record a few times and then go to bed.”

“Your wife is found, your wife is alive, and you’re headed to the hospital to see her, and you don’t know whether she’s all right or been hit in the head or what, and you’re telling me to go play a phonograph record.”

“Right. You got it all exactly right.”

There was the car, a great dark fish sliding beneath the oaks. He hurried down the steps, turning quickly to Eugenia:

“Do it!” he said, and went out. “The point is, she is alive.” He climbed into the backseat of the limo. “Take off.” He slammed the door. “She is alive, and if she is alive, she’ll hear me, I’ll talk to her, she’ll tell me what happened. Jesus Christ, Julien, she is alive. The hour is not yet come.”

As the car moved onto Magazine Street and headed downtown, the rest of the poem came back to him, all of it, a long string of dark and dreamy words. He heard Julien’s voice, with the fancy French accent illuminating the letters, just as surely as the old monks had illuminated letters when they painted them bright red or gold and decorated them with tiny figures and leaves.

Beware the watchers in that hour

Bar the doctors from the house

Scholars will but nourish evil

Scientists would raise it high.

“Isn’t it the most terrible thing?” Henri was saying. “All of those poor women. To think of it, all of them dead the same way.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” asked Michael. He wanted a cigarette. He could smell that sweet cheroot of Julien’s. The fragrance clung to his clothes. Like a bolt it came back. Julien lighting that cheroot, inhaling and then waving to him. And the deep glint of the brass bed in the room, and Violetta singing to all those men.

“What poor women? What are you talking about? It’s like I’m Rip Van Winkle. Give me the time.”

“The time is eleven-thirty p.m., boss,” said Henri. “I’m talking about the other Mayfair women, Miss Mona’s mother dying uptown, and poor Miss Edith downtown, though best I can remember I never met her, and I don’t even remember the name of the other lady, and the lady in Houston and the one after that.”

“You’re telling me all these women are dead? These Mayfair women?”

“Yes, boss. All died the same way, Miss Bea said. Mr. Aaron called. Everybody was calling. We didn’t even know you were home. The lights were out upstairs in that room. How would I know you were asleep on the floor?”

Henri went on, something about looking all over the house for Michael, saying to Eugenia this and that, and going outside to look for him, and on and on. Michael didn’t hear it. He was watching the decayed old brick buildings of Magazine Street fly by; he was hearing the poem.

Pain and suffering as they stumble

Blood and fear before they learn.