The Woman Next Door Read online

  "Legionnaire's disease?" Tim was suddenly close to panic.

  Tichell explained hurriedly, "Only in the respect that it is new, Mr. Bennet, something not encountered widely until a few years ago. Christine's symptoms are almost classic—"

  "Can you treat it?"

  "Yes, we can, if it is toxic-shock syndrome. It's actually a staph infection, you see."

  "Dr. Tichell"—he was close to panic again—"will she live, for Christ's sake?"

  Tichell put his hand comfortingly on Tim's shoulder. "I've been your wile's doctor for a long time, Mr. Bennet, almost fifteen years. And I've gotten to know her quite well—especially from a medical standpoint. She's a very very strong woman, and I think she has a strong will to live."

  Tim lowered his head; Tichell could say no more than that, he realized.

  The paging system squawked: "Dr. Tichell to Intensive Care . . . Dr. Tichell to Intensive Care. . . ."

  Tichell stood abruptly. Tim stood.

  "No," Tichell said. "You'll have to stay here, Mr. Bennet. Trust me."

  Tim looked helplessly at him. "But—"

  "Trust me, Mr. Bennet," Tichell repeated. He left the waiting room quickly.

  Marilyn watched the closed door move inward slightly, heard the dull thudding noises from the other side. She put her hand to her mouth, curled her fingers up.

  "Don't," she whispered. "Please!" She reached out very quickly, turned the key in the lock, withdrew the key. She backed up a step, hesitated, took another step, and another. "Don't!" She felt the back of her foot connect with something. She glanced around, saw the black . . . walnut table fall, watched the robin's-egg-blue washbasin fall with it, watched it hit the floor and shatter into a dozen large pieces. "Please," she whispered.

  "Marilyn," she heard. It was Brett's voice—low, insistent, a little off-key, as if he wanted to tell her some grotesque joke.

  "Mommy." Greg's voice—a high-pitched, brittle, mechanical screech. I want, it said. I want, I want, I want!

  Marilyn screamed, "Go away! Go away from my house!"

  The door moved inward.

  The dull thudding noises continued.

  Tichell had no expression. Tim stood, waited for him to cross the room, and realized, suddenly, Jesus, the man is wearing a poker face—something's happened! "She's dead, isn't she," Tim called. "My wife is dead!"

  Tichell covered the remaining few feet quickly. He helped Tim into a chair. "No," he said. "No, Mr. Bennet. Her fever has risen slightly, that's all. A degree. Not even a degree."

  "You mean you can't . . . you can't bring it back down?"

  "We are doing what we can, Mr. Bennet. What happens from this point is as much up to Christine as it is up to anyone. I told you before, she has a strong will to live—"

  "May I . . . see her?"

  The doctor thought a moment. "You can look in on her, yes." Tim was immediately suspicious of the concession. Was the doctor allowing him one last look? "But please remember," Tichell continued, "that she may not recognize you. She slips in and out of consciousness. And she's been babbling."

  "Babbling?"

  "It's not uncommon in cases of high fever, Mr. Bennet."

  "Has she been calling for me? Is that what she's been saying—my name?"

  "From time to time, yes, Mr. Bennet. She has said your name several times." He stood. "I'll take you to her."

  Tim stood and followed him to Intensive Care.

  He didn't like what he saw. The hospital's efforts to keep Christine alive had reduced her to something half-machine, half-human.

  "I should have warned you about all this; I'm sorry," Tichell said. "But without it, Christine would—"

  "I understand, Doctor."

  "Yes, I believe you do." Tichell addressed the nurse by Christine's bedside: "Has her fever stabilized?"

  "It's holding at a hundred and five point five, Doctor. There's been no change in the last fifteen minutes."

  Tim nodded grimly at the heart monitor above the bed; it was beeping steadily, rhythmically. "Can't you turn that thing down or something?"

  "I'm afraid that wouldn't—" Tichell began. And Christine interrupted: "Mith King?"

  Tim's mouth dropped open. He looked helplessly from Tichell to the nurse to Tichell; his gaze steadied on Christine. "My God," he said. "My God, what was that? That wasn't even her voice. My God." It had been the voice of a child—a very small child. "Dr. Tichell, please—"

  "Mith King? I'm thorry, Mith King."

  "It's a regression of sorts, Mr. Bennet."

  "A regression? To what? I don't understand."

  "To her childhood—her early childhood, I'd guess."

  "Thirsty, Mith King. Cold, Mith King."

  "Christ!" Tim muttered.

  "Apparently she's reliving the time before her accident—the accident that paralyzed her. Before I brought you in here, she made some oblique, but unmistakable, references to walking. The accident itself was, of course, a traumatic time for her, an extremely traumatic time for her, and it has—"

  "My dolly, my dolly!"

  "It has stayed with her, Mr. Bennet—the essence of it, the flavor of it."

  "I'm thorry, Mith King."

  Tichell said, "I don't know who this 'Miss King' was, but it's obvious that Christine is using her now as a kind of handhold to the past. And it's possible that the child you're listening to—locked up inside Christine all these years—is replaying events in an attempt to correct them, in an attempt to change history, so to speak." Tichell paused, pursed his lips. He shook his head slowly. "And it's possible, Mr. Bennet, that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I must be truthful with you—"

  "Dr. Tichell?" It was the nurse.

  "Yes?"

  "Her fever's dropped. It's a hundred and four point nine now."

  Tim smiled nervously. "That's good, isn't it?"

  "It might be," Tichell said. "You'll have to leave now."

  "But—"

  "Please. For her sake."

  Tim left reluctantly.

  Marilyn held her breath. Listened. It had all stopped so abruptly. The house was quiet now; she could hear only an early spring rain pinging against the room's three large windows, and something—a mouse?—scurrying about inside the walls. Quiet sounds.

  She stared blankly at the broken washbasin. It had been such a treasure, so beautiful, so frail, so very, very old, as old as the house itself, older maybe—

  "Brett?" She said the name tentatively, cautiously. "Brett, are you there?" In fear he would answer, she hurried on: "Brett, are you there? Go away now. You have no place here. This is my house. You have the attic. Take the attic. Both of you." She moved slowly toward the door. "I'm sorry I hurt you, either of you; I am sorry." She put her hand on the knob, turned it. "I'm coming out now and I don't want to see you there. I don't." As she opened the door, she closed her eyes tightly. "Go away now," she said, her voice low and pleading. She opened her eyes. She saw the stained glass window at the opposite end of the hall. It was dull now; it cast no colorful pattern on the wood floor. Marilyn kept her eyes on it; she felt a tear slide down her cheek.

  "Dr. Tichell, her fever's rising—a hundred and five."

  "Oh, good Christ. I want more ice packs."

  "A hundred and five point three."

  "This is absolutely unbelievable."

  "Mith King?"

  The hands were Brett's; Marilyn knew it immediately. They touched, caressed, probed as if she were naked.

  Her body stiffened under those hands; her eyes shut. She felt the hands suddenly tugging at her, heard Brett's voice:

  "Come, Marilyn. Away from that room."

  "Doctor, her fever's at a hundred and six."

  "Get an ice bath ready, nurse."

  "Yes, sir."

  "We can't let this fever go any further."

  Marilyn snapped her eyes open. She thought at first that it was the stained glass window she was seeing, its dull blues and reds and yellows fused at the edges. An
d then she saw that the colors had form, substance, topography—here, what had been a nose; there, the places where eyes should be; and below, the dark mouth, opened as if in an endless yawn. The yawn narrowed and expanded rapidly, like the sucking motion of a fish. Words came from it: "Come away from that room, Marilyn. Come away from that room."

  And Marilyn realized instantly where safety lay. She struggled desperately against Brett's strong grip.

  "A hundred and six point five, Doctor."

  "Where is that damned ice bath? This woman has only moments to live!"

  Marilyn's gaze fell slowly, disbelievingly, down the length of the thing tugging at her, pleading with her, touching her. She lurched away from it, stepped to the side of it.

  And saw her son at the end of the hallway.

  He was waving, smiling, telling her in his gestures, Come here!

  One word—"Nooooo!"—escaped her, but, in its pitch and volume, it was unintelligible.

  Like an automaton, she turned. And saw the open door to her room. The broken washbasin. The windows, and the soft, steady rain hugging them. The old, sturdy chair.

  Safety. Security. Peace, and quiet.

  She stumbled through the open door, felt a hand at the back of her housedress. "Noooooo!" she repeated, and wrenched free of it.

  She turned again, threw her weight against the door, fumbled for the key—"Oh, God! Oh, God!"—found it, shoved it into the lock, turned it.

  And crumpled, smiling, to the floor.

  She was safe. Here she was safe.

  This was her room.

  A big, beautiful, airy room.

  "Doctor, her fever's down to a hundred and five."

  "Blood pressure?"

  "Increasing. Heart rhythm normalizing."

  "I don't understand any of this."

  "A hundred and four now."

  "I really do not—"

  "A hundred and three, Doctor. She appears to be regaining consciousness."

  "Christine? Christine, can you hear me?"

  "A hundred and two."

  "Christine?"

  "Dr. Tichell?"

  "Yes, Christine. You're in the hospital. You were quite ill, but—"

  "Why? Why am I in the hospital?"

  "You were sick, Christine. You had us a little worried, as a matter of fact."

  "Dr. Tichell, where's Tim? Where's my husband?"

  "I'll bring him to you shortly, Christine. Right now, I think you've got to rest a while."

  Christine's eyes closed slowly, and she sighed. "Yes," she said. "I do feel a little weary. I feel like I've run ten miles." She smiled. "Tell Tim I love him very much. Tell him I'm all right, now."

  She was asleep.

  Her room. Let them wait outside. Let them! If they could wait forever, so could she.

  And let them have the house. Let them corrupt it, dirty it, leave their droppings all around.

  Let them wander back to that door. And wait there forever.

  She'd beat them.

  It didn't matter.

  She would beat them!

  Chapter 37

  Four weeks later

  Sonny Norton was happy the winter was ending. Spring brought the people out of their houses—the children especially, and they were fun to watch. He thought, suddenly, that that is what he might do this year: just watch. Because maybe he was getting a little old to be playing with the children. A little old, and a little big, and a little clumsy. Things changed. He had changed.

  In the room, the woman in the big, comfortable chair was beginning to close in on herself, like an old jack-o'-lantern. In the first few days here she had moved haltingly back and forth, back and forth, from the door to the chair to the window and back to the door, at one moment convinced that the things on the other side of the door had gone, and, at the next, equally convinced that the things waited for her very patiently. Very quietly. Because they had an eternity to wait. And nothing else to do.

  The woman in the chair couldn't know the truth—that her husband and her son had started a new life together, that, in time, it would be a good and happy life. Despite the memories. The woman in the chair believed what she had seen. And felt. Because, like all of us, she was a slave to her senses. The things beyond the door were real because they had called to her, touched her, driven her here, into this big, airy room. And now—there was no doubt; it was an absolute and awful certainty—they waited for her to come out.

  But, she told herself (as she had told herself a hundred times), she would beat them.

  Sonny Norton shoved his hands into his pockets. He wondered why he was sad about the pictures going away. He had never understood them, and sometimes they frightened him. There were many things he did not understand, and many things that frightened him—babies, for instance, and the big, noisy street-cleaning machines, and thunderstorms. But they were all things he had to live with, and sometimes he enjoyed them.

  "Hi," he heard. He looked up.

  The boy was smiling warmly; he had a wet snowball in his bare hands.

  Sonny said, "Better put that in the 'frigerator or it'll melt."

  "Naw," the boy said, "it won't melt; it's too cold." He heaved the snowball at a lamppost, missed it, bent over, scooped up some more snow, packed it hard. He hefted the finished snowball and looked pleased. "See ya," he said, waving slightly, and ran off.

  Sonny watched until the boy rounded the corner onto Aberdeen Street; then he turned and started walking again.

  The woman in the chair had sensed the approach of death several days before, as if it were a train just beyond the horizon and she could do nothing but sit and wait for it. That is when she had started babbling. "Thank God for the space between us, Brett," she said, over and over again, like a windup doll. "Thank God for the space between us, Brett." Eventually, her mouth stopped working and she began repeating the words mentally. It was an attempt to shut out the images that had been assaulting her since her second day here. Images of the things on the other side of the door. Images of Christine and of the child Christine had been, and of the vengeance that child had taken, at last. "Thank God for the space between us, Brett."

  On the sixteenth day, these words came back to her and she wanted, needed to cry, but couldn't: "They will always be with you, Marilyn."

  The woman in the big, comfortable chair in the big, airy room silently repeated the words again and again: "They will always be with you, Marilyn." Because there was sense in the words, reason in the words—a reason for her to be in the room. To be dying in it.

  On the twenty-eighth day, at a little past 3:00 p.m., these words—as if from an ancient wax cylinder—came from the woman, very quickly, on a long and shuddering exhale: "And no no I'm not sorry not freakin' sorry to you Christine, go to hell, or to anyone." And her lungs and heart stopped, and she thought, incredulously, This is death? This is death? Big deal! All those stupid scare stories, shit on 'em, shit on 'em. Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus! I want to live. Jesus, I want to live! I want—"

  In front of the Bennet house, Sonny Norton stopped once more. The house was empty, his sister had told him—though she hadn't needed to; he could feel that it was empty. The young couple had moved out. A pity, his sister said—they seemed to fit so nicely in Cornhill. Sonny knew better.

  He turned his head and studied the Courtney house a long while. He saw a curtain move slightly in one of the second-floor windows. Only the wind, he supposed. It was an empty house. As empty as death. He had nothing to fear from an empty house.

  He bent over, scooped up some snow, packed it hard. He hefted the snowball. Maybe what he'd do when he got home was put it in the refrigerator. Maybe that's what he'd do. Then he could save a little bit of this winter forever.

 

 

 
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