Barbara Michaels - The Dark on the Other Side

They talked, but no longer of theories and interpretations. They spoke of defense, like the decimated garrison of a beleaguered fortress. But the weapons they discussed were not in any modern arsenal.

“I don’t happen to have any holy water on hand,” Michael said, driven to a fruitless sarcasm. “Ran out last week…It didn’t help Andrea, remember?”

“Could you-could you pray?” she asked diffidently.

“No.” Michael looked at her. “Yes. I could pray. If I knew What to pray to.”

The idea came into both their minds at the same moment, or else she read his face with uncanny quickness.

“You can’t do that,” she said.

“Why not? If we’re right-or even if we’re wrong. Any kind of mental assurance, confidence-”

“Not that kind, no-there’s a limit, Michael. It would be spiritual prostitution, unimaginably worse than any physical contamination. You couldn’t do it-not if you really believed. And if you didn’t, it would just be a dirty game.”

Again Michael was reminded of the gulf between their minds. His idea of trying to fight Gordon on his own ground had been partly a counsel of desperation, partly an academic theory. There was nothing academic about Linda’s attitude; she looked sick with disgust.

“Besides,” she went on; her voice was shaking. “Besides, you’d be a novice, a probationer. He’s studied these things for years. All you would do is weaken yourself, don’t you see? He could walk right into your mind and destroy it.”

“Okay, okay. It was just an idea. Then what can we do?”

Linda relaxed.

“Do you love me?” she asked.

The question was so unexpected that it caught Michael off guard.

“Someone asked me that, once,” he said slowly.

“Well?”

“I said I didn’t know what the word meant. I still don’t. But I love you.”

“Then love me. No-” His hand came toward her and she shook her head. “Don’t touch me, don’t think of touching me. Think of love. Not of desire; they aren’t the same. I don’t know what love means either. But most people confuse loving with being loved. Love isn’t reciprocal. It doesn’t ask, or expect, or demand. It isn’t an emotion, it’s a state of being. Love me, Michael.”

“It sounds rather one-sided to me,” Michael said; for the life of him, he could not have kept the bitterness out of his voice. “And also rather esoteric. You aren’t talking to Saint Francis, you know.”

“I noticed that… Oh, Michael, I’m sorry! I’m sorry you’re involved in this, I’m sorry for talking to you like a third-rate mystic, I’m sorriest of all for asking, demanding, and not offering you anything in return. I haven’t anything to give, not any longer. I did once; I think I did… But I lost it, somewhere along the way, when Gordon taught me his way of loving. He does love me, you know. He calls it that. And I’m almost as bad as he is now; the only difference is that I know that that insatiable demand is not love, but a perversion of it. That’s why I can’t fight him. But you can.”

Without answering, Michael stood up and walked across the room. From Linda’s earnest confusion of half-digested philosophy he derived only despair. Even if they fought their way out of the present crisis, there was no future for him with a woman who was literally frightened to death of loving. She was sick, incurably sick, if she could believe what she said she believed. Like most theories, hers sounded fine on the surface; but if love was not reciprocal, only the saints could derive much satisfaction from it. A normal human being had only so much to give without getting something in return. Depletion was inevitable.

And this present situation, which she had talked him into, was impossible. Linda was immobilized, defenseless. If she was wrong-and she had to be wrong!-about her idea of vulnerability through the lack of love, then he was as susceptible to mental invasion as she was. The logic of Gordon’s next move came to him so strongly that it was as if he had read the other’s mind. Even if Linda had not been bound, she would be no match for him; he was stronger and heavier. She could scream; and she would, as long as she had breath left with which to scream, long enough for the neighbors to call the police, who would not arrive in time… They would find him standing there, over the bloody thing on the bed. Gordon would keep control over him that long. Just that long. He would release the mental bonds in time for Michael to see, and comprehend, what he had done…

Just in time, Michael realized what was happening. He flung himself around, grasping blindly at the first solid object that came within reach. Something rocked under the thrust of his body, something fell and crashed; and he found himself leaning against the big dresser, his arms grasping it as a drowning man would clutch an oar. A broken ashtray lay on the floor. His face was streaming with perspiration, and his heart pounded as if he had been running a race. Something else was pounding-an irate neighbor, from the floor below. The howls of Napoleon, imprisoned in the bathroom, were loud enough to wake the dead.

“Michael! Michael-is something wrong?”

How long had she been calling him? With an enormous effort, Michael removed his hands from the dresser and turned around.

“It’s all right,” he said thickly; and then said it again, because his voice had been almost inaudible.

He saw Linda staring at him. There was concern in her face, but no fear; apparently the meaning of his sudden movement had escaped her.

“What is it?” she repeated.

“Liver, or something,” Michael said promptly. His voice and body were once again under his control. The mental grasp had left his mind, but he derived no comfort from his victory. This might have been only a preliminary, testing thrust. He knew that he did not dare tell Linda what had happened.

“Hadn’t you better let Napoleon out?” she asked. “He’s beside himself.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.”

Michael opened the door warily, putting himself into a posture of defense. Napoleon’s shrieks stopped abruptly, but he did not appear; looking around the corner of the door, Michael saw him crouched in the farthest corner, behind the hamper.

“It’s all right,” he said. “You can come out now.”

The cat refused to move until Linda called him. He curled up on the foot of the bed.

“I’ll make some coffee,” Michael mumbled, and fled without waiting for an answer.

He got to the kitchen before his legs gave way, and collapsed into a chair, letting his head drop down onto the table. For a long time he sat and shook, while his mind raced desperately from one blank wall to another. He had thought, when he fought Linda for his life, that that was the worst thing that could happen. He knew now that he had yet to experience the worst. If he hurt Linda, Gordon wouldn’t have to take any further steps; he would sit screaming in a cell for the rest of his life, until he found some means of ending it. And even this might not be the ultimate disaster. Gordon had a fertility of imagination that was far beyond his own feeble concepts of evil…

And the end of it all was that there was nothing he could do. He was boxed into a corner. Whatever he did now would be dangerous. He could lock himself in one room and Linda in another; but his controlled mind would find some means of breaking through any barricade he could construct. He could go out, and smash a window, or insult a cop, and maybe get thrown in jail-if he could find a cop willing to arrest him. That would leave Linda alone, at the mercy of whatever attack Gordon planned next. He could let the police take Linda-which would be just what Gordon wanted. If he untied her, and begged her to immobilize him, she would know what had happened, and with her susceptibility to suggestion-or mental control, call it what you liked-she would then become his Nemesis, instead of the reverse. There was no way out.