Barbara Michaels - The Dark on the Other Side

“You jeered at me tonight, Gordon Randolph, for fighting the powers of darkness. Take care-for They are not mocked. The time may come when you will beg on your knees for the help you despise now. Be sure that I will not deny you.”

She spun on her heel, her skirts belling out like a monstrous purple flower, and stalked toward the door. Michael arranged his facial muscles into a conciliatory smile, but Andrea was not disarmed. She had a parting word for him, too.

“As for you-you are a mocker and a doubter…”

An uncanny transformation came over voice and face, as the first trailed off into silence and the other lost its rigid anger. The old woman’s throat worked hideously as she struggled to speak. When the words finally came, they were shocking because of their softness-faint and whispering, like a child’s voice calling out in the terror of a nightmare.

“Help,” Andrea said. “Please…help…”

Too amazed to move, Michael stood rooted, staring at her, and in another second the act was over. The wrinkled face snapped back into its malevolent expression and Andrea stamped out of the room, leaving a silence that vibrated.

“Whew,” Michael said feebly. “She’s really something, isn’t she?”

Gordon removed himself from the sideboard, against which he had been leaning, and sauntered toward Michael, holding out one of the glasses. The incident, which had shaken Michael, seemed to have removed some of Gordon’s tension. He was clearly amused.

“Sit down and have a drink, in that order. That’s what I love about Andrea. She always provides me with an excuse to have another drink.”

Michael laughed and followed his host’s suggestions.

“How does she get home?” he asked.

He was about to add the obvious witticism, but there was no need; his eyes met Gordon’s and they both grinned.

“Not by broomstick,” Gordon said. “Believe it or not. No, she walks everywhere she goes; the old bitch is as tough as they come. I’d have ordered the car out for her if I hadn’t known, from past experience, that she’d refuse it. With commentary.”

“That I can believe. Why does she dislike you so much?”

“I can think of about ten good reasons,” Gordon said promptly. “Six pathological, three socioeconomic, and one-well, maybe it’s psychotic too.” He tilted his head back and finished his drink in one long swallow, rising as soon as it was gone. “Another?”

“No, thanks.”

Michael contemplated his barely touched glass with some constraint. It was coming now; and he couldn’t refuse to listen. Just as one human being to another, he owed Gordon that much. And as a potential biographer…Maybe the best thing he could do for Gordon was get him started talking.

“She hates you because of Mrs. Randolph.”

“Why not call her Linda?” Gordon came back to the couch and sat down. “You’re a perceptive young man, aren’t you?”

“It doesn’t require much perception to see that.”

“No, you’re right. It sticks out like a sore thumb.” Gordon’s shoulders relaxed as if an invisible burden had been lifted from them. The glance he gave Michael was a compound of apology and relief. “Sorry I said that.”

“I’m not looking for juicy tidbits for a best seller.”

“I know. Thanks.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then Gordon sat up straighter.

“Okay. Professionally or otherwise it’s damned good of you to listen to this. Frankly, I’m at my wits’ end. I don’t know what to do-and this is one thing I must do right.”

“I understand.”

“I think you do. You see,” Gordon said, staring down at his glass, “I love her.” He gave a queer, smothered laugh. “The oldest, tritest cliché in the language. From a writer, at that, a man who’s supposed to know something about words. But that’s it. That’s what it comes down to, when you strip away all the verbiage. I love her and I won’t let her go.” “Go?”

“Not physically. Although she has tried…I mean retreat, withdraw into some dark world of her own. That’s what she’s trying to do.”

“Neurotic? Or psychotic?”

“Words, words, words,” Gordon snapped; his suave courtesy had left him, and Michael liked him all the better for it. “A psychiatrist can think up labels. I can’t. But I know, better than anyone else can. She’s pulling away, moving back; and now the world she’s invented is becoming real, for her. She-sees things.”

“Interesting,” Michael said carefully. “How that phrase, which has a perfectly matter-of-fact meaning, can suggest so much that isn’t at all matter-of-fact. I gather you mean she has hallucinations?”

Gordon’s swift glance at his guest was not friendly; but Michael returned it equably, and after a moment the queer empathy between the two men had reestablished itself. Gordon laughed suddenly and leaned back, putting his glass down on the table.

“Thanks again. That’s my greatest danger, I guess-becoming mystical myself. We all do, when catastrophe strikes. What has brought this curse upon me?-that kind of thinking. And it is, to say the least, nonconstructive. Yes, she has hallucinations.”

Michael nodded silently. He was afflicted with an unusual constriction of the brain. Three words. That was all she had said-groaned, rather-just before she slid through his fumbling hands in a genuine faint. But those words, coupled with the similar incident in the grove earlier that day, had told him enough. He was on the verge of repeating his knowledge to Gordon when something made him hesitate. After a moment, Gordon went on,

“The hallucinations are only part of the problem, but to me-and to Hank Gold, whom I’ve consulted-they seem a particularly alarming symptom. It seems to be an animal of some kind that she fancies she sees-a dog, perhaps. Why it should throw her into such a frantic state…”

The black dog.

The words formed themselves in Michael’s mind so clearly that for a moment he thought he had spoken them aloud. He did not; nor did he stop to analyze the reasons for his continued silence on this point. Instead, he said, “It seems to be an animal? Don’t you know?”

Gordon laughed again; this time the sound made Michael wince.

“No, I don’t know. Don’t you understand? Whatever her fear is, I’m part of it. I’m the one she hates, Mike.”

It all came out, then, like a flood from behind a broken dam. Michael sensed that this had been building up for a long time, with no outlet. Now he was the outlet. He listened in silence. Comment would have been unnecessary.

“Linda was barely twenty-one when I met her,” Gordon said. “She was a student, taking the course I taught that one year-you know about that, I suppose. It was an experiment; I thought perhaps teaching might give me something I had failed to find in other pursuits. It didn’t. But it gave me something that meant more.

“She was beautiful. She never knew, nor did any of the clods around her, how beautiful she really was. You can see it still, though it’s contaminated now, faded. What you may not realize is that she was also one of the most brilliant human beings…Oh, hell, that’s the wrong word; why can’t I find the right words when I talk about Linda? Intelligent-yes, surely. Original, creative, one of those rare minds that sees through a problem to its essentials, whether the problem is social, arithmetical, or moral. But there’s an additional quality… Wisdom? Maybe that gives you a clue, even if it’s not quite right. The quality of love. You know how I mean the word-‘And the greatest of these…’I know, I’m making her sound like a saint. She wasn’t. She was still young, crude in some ways, impatient in others, but that quality was there, ready to be developed, drawing…