Barbara Michaels: The Dark on the Other Side

They had been muttering, like stage conspirators. Linda was about ten feet ahead of them. She stopped and turned, and Gordon’s reply was never uttered.

“Wait up,” he said easily. “What’s the hurry?”

“I thought you wanted to get to work. Didn’t you come in hot pursuit of your biographer?”

The color had come back to her face, and it was perfectly composed. Too composed; the animation that had given it life was gone, and she looked like a tinted statue.

“No, I finished the letters and thought I’d like a walk.” Gordon came up beside her, but he did not touch her or take her arm. “It’s a beautiful day,” he added.

“Yes, isn’t it.”

They walked on together-a perfect picture, Michael thought sardonically, of a happy three-some spending a morning in the country. Diffused sunlight trickled through the overhanging boughs, waking highlights in Linda’s satiny black hair, turning the tan on Gordon’s bare forearms to a golden brown. They made a handsome couple.

“By the way,” Linda said casually, “Andrea is back. I’ve asked her to dinner tonight.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” The words were explosive, but there was more amusement than annoyance in Gordon’s voice. “Not Andrea!”

“I thought I’d better warn you well in advance,” Linda said, smiling up at her tall husband from under the brim of her hat. It was a charming, provocative look; no doubt, Michael thought, it was the oblique slant of those oriental eyes that made him think of something sly and malicious peering out between dark leaves.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Gordon said resignedly. “I find the old witch amusing, even if she does hate my guts. But I don’t think you’re being fair to Mike.”

“I thought he might find her amusing too,” Linda murmured.

“Who is she?” Michael asked.

“Just what I said.” Gordon was smiling. “The local witch.”

“What?”

“She lives in a stone cottage that’s over two hundred years old,” Linda said dreamily. “She keeps cats. One whole wall of the kitchen is fireplace-brick, darkened by centuries of smoke. There’s a black pot hanging over the flames, and oak settles on either side of the hearth. The roof is raftered; things hang from hooks in the beams. Bundles of herbs-vervain and mandragora, and Saint-John’s-wort. And a stuffed cockatrice.”

“And hams and strings of onions,” Gordon said drily.

“You’re putting me on,” Michael said, looking from one smiling face to the other.

“Her mother was a witch, too,” Linda murmured. “And her grandmother. It goes back for generations, like the house.”

“Cut it out, honey.” Gordon smiled. “The old lady is a little touched in the head, that’s all. She calls herself a white witch and denies all traffic with the powers of darkness. I think she really believes it herself, which makes her an entertaining conversationalist.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting her,” Michael said. “One forgets that people really do believe these things, even in this day and age.”

“‘There are more things in heaven and earth…’”

“That, of course.” Michael studied his host with new interest; none of his perfunctory research had exposed a mystical streak in Gordon Randolph. “The limitation of human knowledge, at any given point, must be admitted by any rational person. What I meant was that some people believe, literally, in those old superstitions. I read some books once by a man named Summers-a twentieth-century priest, Anglican or Catholic, I forget which, but a trained scholar-who believed in witchcraft. Not as a historical phenomenon, but as a living force. He thought-”

“I remember old Montague,” Gordon interrupted. “Amazing mind.”

“But it follows logically, doesn’t it,” Linda said, in a high voice. They had reached the terrace; she stopped, outside the French doors. “Especially for a priest. If you believe in God, you must admit the existence of His adversary.”

“Certainly; but orthodoxy in these matters is a narrow tightrope to walk. You can’t deny Satan; but you can’t attribute too much power to him without risking the heresy of Manichaeism. Good and evil-two equal, opposing powers-that doctrine was condemned at some church synod or other centuries ago.”

He would have gone on, for the subject was one that had interested him once upon a time, if he had not realized, tardily, that his audience wasn’t listening. Linda’s face was as blank as a doll’s, and her husband was watching her with that familiar look of concern.

“I’d better go and change for lunch,” Linda said.

Michael watched her disappear through the doors. He half expected Gordon to speak to him, but Gordon went after his wife, like a faithful dog. Dog…What the hell, Michael wondered, making up the end of the procession-what the hell is going on in this house?

That afternoon Linda searched her husband’s room.

Though their bedrooms were connected through the twin-mirrored dressing rooms, she had not been in Gordon’s room for almost a year. Not since that night…Her memory shook, and went dark, as it always did when she thought about that night. But surely, today, it would be safe. Gordon and his repulsive secretary were with Michael, and would be until dinnertime. The maids cleaned the bedrooms in the morning. No one else had any business upstairs, except possibly Haworth, the butler, who doubled as Gordon’s valet, and she had set him to polishing the silver. It was a week before the silver was supposed to be polished, but…so what? That was what she had said to Haworth when he courteously pointed out the discrepancy. So what?

She repeated it now, taking an infantile pleasure in the cheap defiance of the phrase. She giggled softly, remembering Haworth ’s face when she said it. Then she stopped the giggle with a quick hand that covered her lips. None of that. She had done well, so far today-except for that one slip. If he hadn’t sprung it on her unexpectedly, just when she was beginning to relax, to feel confident of her power to charm and convince…That had been a bad one. It was all the more necessary now that she be calm. Calm, and charming, and gracious and…sane.

Yet, when the heavy door moved under the pressure of her hand, she caught her breath with a sharp sound, and stepped back, jerking her hand away as if the door had been red hot. Fine courage, she jeered silently. You really hoped, deep down inside, that the door would be locked on the other side. It had been locked on her side; surely Gordon had an even stronger reason to keep his door bolted and barred. But he had not done so.

There had not been bolts on either side of the door at first. She had put hers on herself, after that night, on an afternoon when Gordon was out of the house. The whole thing had come in a neat package, enclosed in plastic-the bolt and the screws with which to affix it. She hadn’t remembered the need-the so obvious need-for hammer and screwdriver until she stripped off the stiff plastic, kneeling with pounding heart by the closed door. Even now she could recall the wave of terror that had gripped her when she realized she couldn’t do the job without tools. It had taken cunning as well as courage to get rid of them long enough to sneak into the hardware store in the village. She could never do it again. The thought of boldly entering the tool shed, where the gardener kept his tools, made her stomach turn over. What if he came in and caught her, standing there, with the hammer in her hand?

In the end, with a resource she had thought long forgotten, she had used the heel of a shoe and a nail file.

The whole performance had been ridiculous, of course. She could see that now. Gordon must have known about the bolt. If he had not wanted her to have it, he could have had it removed. But he had never said a word about it. Yet someone must have oiled it, because its surface shone as brightly as it had when she took it out of its plastic cover, and it had slid back without a sound.