Barbara Michaels - The Dark on the Other Side

The night had sunk into its deadest hours by the time they arrived. Passing the now familiar landmarks, Michael recognized the entrance to the unpaved lane that led to Andrea’s house. Darkness and silence, now, along its length…He wondered where, and how, the old woman had been buried, and who had come to mourn her. Poor old witch-another victim of Gordon’s insane urge for human souls, or the victim of her own-what had Galen called it?-thanatomania. The ability to induce death by suggestion alone. Mental aberration, or genuine curse, it didn’t matter. Linda had it too.

The ornate gates that marked the entrance to the Randolph estate stood open. Michael brought the car to a stop just inside, switching off the lights. The house was invisible from this spot, and he doubted that anyone could have heard the car. Unless someone had been watching for it…

Linda was awake. For several minutes now he had heard the mumble of voices from the back seat. With the engine no longer running, he was able to make out the words.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.

“Shut up,” Galen said. “All right, Linda, you believe me, don’t you? Say you do.”

“I believe you.”

Her voice was slurred and drowsy.

“Tell me again.”

“I can’t hurt you,” Linda said obediently. “I can’t hurt Michael. I don’t want to hurt anyone. No one is going to hurt me…”

“And you aren’t afraid.”

“I’m not afraid,” said the soft doll’s voice. The hairs on Michael’s neck lifted.

“You,” said Galen, turning on him with a cold savagery that made him flinch, “are going to keep quiet. You will not speak unless I tell you to, or move unless I tell you to. Understand?”

“Yes, master… What did you do, hypnotize her?”

“No,” Galen said, in a peculiar voice. “I didn’t. Just keep your mouth shut and come along. We must get into the house. Linda, you have a key?”

“Yes.”

“Where is it?”

“In my pocket.”

“Get it out.”

The way she moved made Michael feel cold. Her gestures were competent, without fumbling or hesitation, but they lacked all her normal grace. He followed the stiff, mechanical figure up the driveway, and he let Galen take her arm; he had the feeling that it would have had the solidity and coldness of wood under his fingers.

After some probing-she only answered direct questions, and those absolutely literally-Galen had got her to produce a back-door key, and lead them to that entrance.

The servants’ rooms were on the upper floors, so there was no danger from them; but the kitchen entrance was the length of the house from their ultimate destination. That couldn’t be helped; Linda had no key to the other doors, and to climb the twisting stairs around the tower would give those within warning of their approach.

Michael could see the light in the tower window; it shone like a sleepless eye on the topmost floor, the window of Briggs’s study. His sleeping quarters were on the floor below; the secretary was the only inhabitant of this part of the house, which was out of bounds to the servants. Briggs did his own cleaning. Linda herself had not been in the tower since the man moved in.

Galen elicited this information while they stood shivering in the shadows outside the house. He had already made it plain that he wanted no conversation after they entered. A slim sliver of moon had risen, and its rays were enough to show Michael the tension of Galen’s body and the wax-like calm of Linda’s face. Her face, and her soft, docile voice, gripped him with a pain as sharp as an actual wound. How much more could she stand? He had read some of the literature of witchcraft, and he had seen Gordon’s livid face; he had an excellent idea of what they might discover in the tower room. The sacrifice, the shrouded altar, drugs and incense…A sight like that might break her mind completely.

“It’s not too late to turn back,” he said, turning to Galen.

“It is too late.”

“We’re guilty of breaking and entering…”

“Don’t be melodramatic. Mrs. Randolph is the mistress of the house. She has every legal right to go where she chooses, and to invite her friends to accompany her.”

The shrubbery rustled as they crossed the wide lawn, silver-washed by moonlight. On such a pale expanse an object would be clearly visible; but the absence of any seen threat did not calm Michael’s nerves. He was half hoping that the dog would come. It was better to know where it was than to imagine it, lurking unseen.

Somewhere, back on a tree near the gate, a petrified cat squatted on a branch. It had been Galen’s suggestion that they free Napoleon; he had not needed to give his reasons. Gordon’s malice might extend to any creature Michael was fond of, and the cat had a better chance, free, against danger. As Michael extracted the limp, unprotesting body from the carrying case, he recognized the symptoms. Only one thing roused Napoleon to his former fury, and that was when Michael inadvertently brought him near Linda-one of the few people for whom he had displayed a tolerance verging on affection. Michael had to lift him up into the lower branches of the tree, and as he turned away he saw Napoleon squatting there, motionless, looking like the Cheshire cat, even to the twisted snarl of his teeth. There was a certain element of the gruesome in Alice, come to think of it…

They made their way through the darkened kitchen, with its vagrant gleams of chrome, and down the hallways. Wide double doors admitted them to a part of the house Michael had never seen. At the end of a long corridor, flanked by closed doors on either side, the tower steps led up. One window gave a scant light-a narrow, mullioned window half obscured by tendrils of ivy through which the moonlight slid in surreptitious trickles, casting more shadows than it relieved.

Linda stopped. It was so dark Michael could not see her face. Not until he put a steadying hand on her shoulder did he realize that she was shaking from head to foot.

His hand was struck down.

“Don’t touch her,” Galen hissed in his ear. “Linda. Go on. Up the stairs.”

Michael didn’t need to touch her to feel her resistance. It was a painful thing to witness, for the struggle was mute and confined. Galen’s command broke her will instead of calming it. She shivered violently, and went on.

They were almost at the top of the stairs before Michael heard the sound. Its faintness made it worse, for it seemed to come from the inner chambers of his brain instead of an outside source.

Michael half recognized it, and wondered why his mind should reject the attempt at identification so violently. A picture formed in his mind, to match the sound: a high-vaulted place, great expanses of marbled flooring, adorned with columns…the walls a blend of colors and shapes…and the high, pure, sexless voices filling the echoing heights of the…

“God!” he said, involuntarily, and heard Galen’s hand thrust heavily against the panels of the door.

The entire picture came at him in a single vast blasphemy; it was much later before he could isolate the details, and by that time he was already trying to forget them. Lights all around the room, burning with the clear softness of wax. Lights on the black-draped, table like object at the far side of the circular chamber. Black candles. Black hangings, draping walls and ceiling. Briggs stood before the altar; and as Michael’s mind had denied the parody of the ritual music, it rejected the obscene caricature of priestly vestments that adorned Briggs’s fat body and set off the pallor of the pale, epicene face. The reek of incense he had expected was present; some of it came from the golden censer in Briggs’s hand. It was mixed with another smell. Michael averted his eyes from the thing that lay, mercifully motionless now, on the table.