Set This House In Order Part 45

I didn't try to follow her. Instead, I went downstairs and gave the mystery door another try. It still wouldn't open. On a whim I tried knocking; that didn't work either, and the echo of my knocks in the empty common room spooked me so much that I quickly stopped. Finally -- feeling the draft again -- I got down on my hands and knees and listened at the crack under the door. I heard a faint irregular sigh that might have been m.u.f.fled snoring.

I stood up, and felt eyes on me again: the Witness was back, watching me from the gallery. This time, I didn't ask what she wanted; I left the house. "Sam!" I called, hurrying across the geography to the column of light. "Time's up, Sam."

We were in Indiana already; Aunt Sam and Maledicta had made good time. They'd been good, too, except for a twenty-dollar dessert orgy that I caught the tail end of. I didn't make a big fuss about that; it was midafternoon, and I was anxious to get to Horace Rollins's grave before dark, to see if he'd been cooperative enough to die in April, early May, or June.

No such luck. The death date on the gravestone was May 24th, which put it right in the middle of the two-week blackout period. So we weren't in the clear.

It was going on six o'clock by the time we left the cemetery. We could still have made it to Seven Lakes before nightfall, but while I didn't want to show fear or hesitation, I also didn't want to push it; next morning, I decided, would be soon enough.

We went back to Muskegon and found a motel. To avoid a repeat of the previous night's events, I asked for two widely separated rooms. But when we had our respective keys and it was time to part company, Penny was suddenly reluctant. "Wait," she said.

"What?" I replied, instantly on guard.

"It's still me," she promised. "Not. . . not Loins. But I don't want to become Loins tonight, or anybody else either, so do you think you could just sit with me until I start to fall asleep?"

"Ah. . . Penny. . ."

"Please? I know it's awkward, after. . . but I don't want to wake up in some stranger's room tomorrow morning. Or with another hangover."

"You know if you do switch, I might not be able to do anything about it."

"I know. But. . . please?"

We went to her room. Penny lay down on the bed, and I sat in a chair.

"How far is it to Seven Lakes from here?" Penny asked. "I know we're close --"

"Very close. Less than an hour away."

"What will you do when we get there?"

"Go up to the house first, I guess, and see if. . . if there's anything to see. Then maybe the town library." She flashed me a quizzical look. "Old newspapers," I said.

"Oh right."

"Hopefully there'll be a story about his. . . how he died. With enough details so that I don't have to bother the police about it. The police, I guess they'd be our third stop. There's a Police Chief Bradley who might be able to help."

"You're brave," Penny said.

"I don't feel brave. It's just my job."

"You know," she said, "this is as close as I've been to my hometown since my mother died."

"That's right," I said, "Ohio. Would you want to go there, after --"

"No!" Penny said firmly. "There's nothing in Willow Grove I need to check on. Ever."

"Nothing about your father, even?"

"I know what I need to know about him." A small smile attached itself to her face. "My grandmother told me lots of stories."

"That must have been nice," I said. "To have at least one good parent. Even if he died."

"What about your biological father?" Penny asked. "Was he a bad person?"

"I don't know. I don't know much about him. I know he served in the army, and that he drowned a few months before Andy Gage was born, but as for what kind of person he was -- if we have any stories about that, I haven't heard them."

"Well maybe you'll hear some tomorrow. Maybe we'll meet someone in town who knew him."

"I don't know, Penny. I'd rather not talk to anyone in Seven Lakes if I can help it. I'd like to just go in, find out what I need to about the stepfather, and then go home."

Which reminded me: I picked up the phone and tried to call Mrs. Winslow again. "Still no answer?" Penny said, after I'd let it ring two dozen times.

"No." I hung up. "I don't understand. Where could she be?"

"Remember it's earlier there. She could still be out. . . well. . ."

"Out looking for me," I finished for her. I grabbed the phone again and dialed Dr. Eddington's number. His answering machine picked up, and I left another message, talking until the machine cut me off.

I replaced the receiver in its cradle and started to sit down on the bed. "Sorry," I said, catching myself. "I guess I should go to my room now."

"You don't have to," said Penny, looking uncomfortable. "I mean. . . if you want to stay, I won't --".

It was probably a bad idea, and if I'd seen even a trace of a smile on her face I'd have left immediately. But this wasn't Loins being coy; it was Penny, still frightened of what she might do if she were left alone. And when I thought about being alone myself, with all the things I had to worry or feel guilty about. . .

I lay down carefully, staying as close to the edge of the bed as I could without falling off; Penny likewise scootched as far over on her side as possible. We remained like that, talking quietly, until at some point, drowsing, I reached out an arm, and Penny did too, and we clasped hands long-distance, and in that way fell asleep.

In the morning I slipped out quietly while Penny was still snoring and went to my own room to shower. As I stepped into the shower stall, Adam surprised me by appearing on the rebuilt pulpit and asking for his customary two minutes. "What's the matter?" he said. "It's only been a few days. Don't tell me you've forgotten what it's like to hear voices."

"I was getting used to the peace and quiet, now that you mention it," I said. Then: "I'm not sure you deserve any time out, after what you pulled in South Dakota."

"All I did in South Dakota was turn on the TV -- it was Sam who went to the bar. And even so, you gave her half a day in the body yesterday. . . but I'm not going to harp on that."

I let him have his two minutes, which were actually more like ten. When he finished, I tried to see if any of the others wanted their usual morning time, but Aunt Sam and Jake wouldn't even answer my call. "They're hiding in their rooms," Adam informed me. "A lot of the other souls, too. They're scared; they know where we're going today."

Seferis wasn't scared, though. When we got out of the shower, he ran through a modified workout, mindful of the body's still-sore hands and arm; and after he finished, I got back in the shower and rinsed off a second time. By the time all that was done, Penny was awake. She knocked on the motel-room door just as I finished dressing.

We ate a quick breakfast and then set out. The drive was no more than forty miles, but it seemed to take forever; I pa.s.sed the time by digging my fingers into the seat upholstery. "We could still turn around," Penny said, when she saw how white my knuckles were.

"No." I shook my head. "I have to do this."

Seven Lakes sits right on the edge of the Manistee National Forest. The lakes that it is named for are more like big ponds, and according to my father their exact number varies from year to year, depending on the amount of rainfall. We saw the first one just moments later: a kidney bean-shaped body of water that lapped up against a bend in the road. It hardly seemed large enough to support more than a token fish or two, but there was a man in hip-waders standing out in the middle of it just the same, making a lazy cast with a fis.h.i.+ng pole. The man looked around as we drove by, but between the big straw hat he had jammed down on his head and the glare of the morning sun off the water's surface, I couldn't see his face.

A few hundred feet past this "lake," there was another bend in the road, and a sign that said entering seven lakes. We rounded the curve, and found ourselves on the main street of Andy Gage's hometown.

My father and Adam had been out on the pulpit the whole way from Muskegon; now, despite their apprehension -- in some cases, terror -- other souls began to come forward. Many of them only stepped onto the pulpit long enough for a quick peek before darting back inside the house; the sounds of their coming and going formed a constant shuffle at the back of my mind.

Penny slowed the car to a crawl, and I examined each building and storefront we pa.s.sed in turn, waiting on a glimmer of recognition that never came: there was a one-engine firehouse with a sleepy bulldog lazing in the driveway; an Exxon station; a bakery; a diner named Winch.e.l.l's; a CD, record, and book exchange; a tiny post office; a barber shop; a clothing store, a tailor's, and a Laundromat, all in a row in the same brick building; the Seven Lakes police station; a video rental shop; a grocery store; a hardware store; a beauty salon; a couple of shabby-looking antique stores; and a boarded-up, partially dismantled fast-food restaurant that, judging by the outline and the color scheme, had probably been a Kentucky Fried Chicken. All this on the main street; and looking down the cross streets as we pa.s.sed them, I also saw a pair of churches, a bar, a school, and what was either a library or the town hall.

I didn't recognize any of it. Of course there was no reason why I should, but still I'd been expecting something, some sense of familiarity. It seemed like I should know this town, although I'd never been here. But the only recollections I had were secondhand, from the pulpit, where the shuffling of the souls was punctuated by whispers and exclamations about this or that landmark.

"Which way now?" asked Penny, after we pa.s.sed the defunct KFC.

"I'm not sure," I said. "Why don't we -- wait! Stop here!"

The Centurion jerked to a halt in front of what looked like a private house. A wooden s.h.i.+ngle hung from the eaves above the front porch; it read "Oscar Reyes, Esq. -- Attorney At Law."

"A lawyer?" I said, speaking to my father. "I thought you told me he was an exterminator."

"He was both," my father replied. "A lot of people in Seven Lakes have more than one job. His law practice must have picked up a lot since we left, though -- this house is new."

I turned to Penny: "Can you park here and come inside with me?"

"You want to hire a lawyer?"

"No," I said. "At least, not yet. This may sound a little strange, but I'd like to see if this man reminds you of Xavier at all."

"All right. . ."

When we got up on the porch, though, there was a note on the front door that said Mr. Reyes was vacationing in Canada and wouldn't be back until June 1st. Frustrated, I tried to look in through the front windows -- looking for what, I can't say -- but the curtains and shades were drawn.

As Penny and I returned to the car, I noticed a couple of pa.s.sersby casting glances in our direction from across the street. At first I a.s.sumed they were curious because they'd seen us nosing around Mr. Reyes's house; then I realized that it could be because they thought they knew me. I wasn't ready to deal with that, so I climbed hurriedly into the car and asked my father for directions to the Gage house.

I relayed his instructions to Penny: "Straight down this road another three miles. Then we turn left onto a dirt trail, and go another mile and a half through the woods." The first part went smoothly enough, but when we got to the trail it had been widened and blacktopped, and Penny drove right by it. After my father caught the mistake and we made a U-turn, we discovered that large sections of the woods had been cut down and cleared to make room for new houses. "Huh," I said; not having seen what it was like before, I couldn't fully appreciate the extent of the changes, but I got a general sense from my father's reaction. "Not so isolated anymore."

For the final half mile the trail reverted to dirt and the woods came back, pressing in close on both sides. And then, without fanfare, we were there, pulling into the front yard of the house where Andy Gage had lived and died. Penny set the Buick's parking brake and switched off the engine; we sat there in the sudden stillness -- the pulpit had gone dead quiet, too -- staring at the house as though it were the bones of a dragon, or some other thing out of myth.

It was smaller than I'd expected. Not that I'd given it much thought, but I guess, extrapolating from the two houses I was most familiar with -- the house in Andy Gage's head, and Mrs. Winslow's Victorian -- I'd been picturing something fairly substantial, with two or even three floors, and lots of rooms. Instead, the Gage house was what a realtor would optimistically describe as "cozy": a cottage, basically, with just one story, plus a low-ceilinged attic tucked beneath a shallow-peaked roof.

The outside walls of the cottage were white, and looked to have been painted since Andy Gage's mother's death. And though it was immediately obvious -- for a reason I will get to in a moment -- that the cottage was not currently occupied, there were other signs of at least intermittent maintenance: the front yard had been mowed recently, and the narrow beds on either side of the front door had been planted with new spring flowers.

"Do you want to go inside?" Penny asked.

"No," I said, meaning: I have to.

"It might not be safe," Penny suggested.

"No," I agreed.

One other important fact about the cottage: it leaned. Soil erosion had undermined the foundation on one side, to the point where the house was visibly tilting, like a s.h.i.+p beginning to capsize.

Someone -- probably the same someone who'd been tending the grounds -- had sh.o.r.ed it up with a bunch of long wooden planks and a cut-down telephone pole. This emergency bracing appeared to have worked, for the moment, but it was only a temporary solution: most of the planks were bowing under the strain, and the telephone pole had developed a spiral crack around its midsection. While I had no general objections to the cottage collapsing, I didn't want it to happen while Penny and I were inside.

Best to get it over with quickly, then: I went up to the front door to see if the maintenance man had left it unlocked. He hadn't. But then at Adam's suggestion I checked around the threshold, and found a loose flagstone.

The canting of the house had begun to warp the front doorframe, not enough to jam the door completely, but enough to make it stick; after wrestling the lock open, I had to shove hard to gain entry.

The door swung in to a small vestibule. Beyond the vestibule was a living room full of ghosts.

Not real ghosts. Not emotional ghosts, either -- I still didn't recognize any of the things I was seeing. The ghosts in the living room were furniture ghosts: a loveseat, a rocking chair, a coffee table, a tall skinny thing that turned out to be a grandfather clock, all of them draped in white sheets like dusty trick-or-treaters. Through an open doorway on the opposite wall I could see a kitchen where more ghosts were gathered.

"Does it look safe to go in?" Penny asked, coming up behind me.

"I guess so," I said. I started to step forward into the living room, but then from outside came the sound of another car entering the yard. "Who's that. . . ?"

My first thought, seeing the police car pull up beside Penny's Buick, was that I'd walked into a trap. It was true: I had killed the stepfather, the Seven Lakes police knew it, and they'd had the house staked out all this time, just waiting for me to come back. . .

"Don't panic yet," said Adam. "We pa.s.sed this guy on the main road, right after we made the U-turn. He must have seen us turning onto the trail and gotten curious."

The driver had gotten out of the patrol car and was walking towards us. He had thick blond hair and a pencil moustache; I guessed he was about my age. "Hey there, folks," he greeted us. "You have business on this property?"

"Not official business," I told him. "I used to live here."

Either because of what I'd just said, or because he was close enough to get a good look at me, the patrol-car driver's eyes suddenly widened in recognition. "Who is this man?" I asked urgently. "Do we know him?"

"Yes," my father said from the pulpit. "This is going to be awkward. He's. . ."

The patrol-car driver continued to walk towards us. As he came within conversational distance, I saw that the nameplate on his uniform read officer cahill. His first name was James, although his friends -- and his girlfriends -- knew him as Jimmy.

"Hey there, Sam," he said.

26.

Officer Cahill doesn't get it.

"Sam. . ." he says, in a wounded, wheedling tone.

"I'm not Sam," Andrew tells him, for the third time.

"Look, I know you're mad --"

"I'm not mad; I'm just not who you think I am. My name's not Sam, it's Andrew. . ."

"Sam. . . Andrea. . . please. I can understand you wanting to cut me dead after what I did, but --".

"You don't understand at all," says Andrew, and Maledicta weighs in from the cave mouth: "That's for f.u.c.king sure." Andrew continues: "I'm not pretending to not know you to punish you for whatever it is you did to Sam; I really don't know you. I'm not the person you think I am."

"I'm not the same person either, Sam," the officer replies. "When I think about that selfish young kid who ran out on you --"

"Officer Cahill --"

"Sam --"