John Manning: The Killing Room

He began to trudge up the hill from the village. He knew there was an old stone staircase cut into the side of the cliff. It led almost all the way up to Uncle Howie’s house. He found it without too much trouble. The steps began in the mossy backyard of the town’s drugstore. When Douglas was a boy, it was called Andersen’s Pharmacy, and he’d sit there with Dad and drink strawberry milkshakes at the counter. Now the old building had been torn down and replaced with a shiny new CVS. But the old staircase was still out in back, even if it was largely grown over with ivy and grass. Douglas started up.

He wasn’t a guy who was easily spooked. He’d gone down in that shark cage off the coast of Maui many times and had witnessed plenty of fangs gnawing against the iron bars in front of him. He’d found it thrilling. On the merchant ship, he’d survived many storms; one time, they’d nearly capsized. Even when he’d found his mother’s lifeless body in the kitchen of their house, some ten months after his father had died, Douglas hadn’t freaked out. He was just fifteen years old, but he calmly called 911 and followed the operator’s instructions carefully. He shut off the gas, then checked for a pulse. When he reported that there was none, the operator told him to stay right there, that help was on its way. So he’d sat on the linoleum floor, holding his mother’s cold hand, for twenty-five minutes. He didn’t cry until the funeral, and then only for a moment.

But his famed self-control had taken a spill back there along with his bike. He couldn’t get that woman’s eyes out of his mind. Who was she? Why had she run out in front of him? Why had she stood there staring at him? And why hadn’t Murphy seen her?

Halfway up the cliff, the staircase was nearly obliterated by intrusive tree roots and years of rockslides. Still, Douglas managed, careful not to lose his footing even if his knees were really starting to ache. He thought maybe he’d scraped his thigh, too. He thought he could sense blood under his dark blue jeans.

He turned as the path led through an old cemetery. And not just any cemetery. Douglas knew it had been the private burial ground for the Young family for several generations. His parents weren’t buried here; they were back in Connecticut. But his grandparents were here, and lots of other old relatives dating back to the early nineteenth century. This was where Uncle Howard insisted he would be buried someday as well.

A big black crow alit on top of one old brownstone grave marker. It let out a caw and spread its wings, then folded them against its sides. Douglas squinted to make out the words that were engraved on the stone.

DESMOND D. YOUNG

1880-1930

That was his great-great-grandfather. Uncle Howie’s father. He had passed on his middle name Douglas all the way down through five generations. Glancing around the cemetery as the crow let out another cry and took off into the air, Douglas shivered as the bird’s shadow passed across his face. Across the way stood a newer stone. This one marked his great grandfather, the first Douglas Desmond Young. Died 1940. And then, off to the right, a shiny marble slab, flush with the earth. This was Douglas’s grandfather. Died 1980.

They all died in the first year of a new decade, Douglas thought. He’d never realized that until now. The first year of a new decade-when the family reunion was held.

Like this year.

Douglas continued to make his way up the path. Dead leaves crunched underfoot. A blue jay seemed to scold him from somewhere in the trees above.

And then he saw it.

Through the trees, the great stone house on the top of the hill came into view. It was a house that seemed to grow bigger and more impressive every time Douglas saw it. Usually, places you knew as a kid seemed smaller when you saw them again as adults. But Uncle Howie’s house seemed to grow another wing every time Douglas visited. Of course it hadn’t. There was nothing new about the house, nothing at all, unless one counted that terrace out back that Murphy had said he’d worked on. Uncle Howie’s house was like a trip back into time. The stones worn smooth by decades of wind and salt air told the story of its long existence.

Crunching through the leaves up the final bluff, Douglas neared the great lawn of the estate. In the far distance he spied the barn, where Uncle Howie kept his stable of prize horses. To the right were the tennis courts; to the left was the greenhouse, where the old man tended his rare and exotic orchids. Here on top of the hill, the wind whipped hard against Douglas’s face. He could hear it howling through the eaves of the house as he got closer. He was happily anticipating the look of surprise when Uncle Howie saw him-a look that would turn to both joy and bemusement, Douglas thought. Joy because his little hoodlum had come for an unexpected visit, and bemusement when he saw the mud all over his clothes.

A small smile had begun to stretch across Douglas’s face when suddenly he saw her again.

The young woman who had run in front of his bike.

Douglas froze.

She stood across the lawn. She was just a tiny figure, about a hundred yards away. At this distance Douglas couldn’t see her eyes as clearly as he had earlier, but it was her all right. The same dark hair, the same filmy white dress, both blowing in the wind.

“Hey!” Douglas shouted.

She stood there looking at him.

“Hey! Who are you? Why are you following me?”

He began to approach her across the grass. He had made it about halfway when she suddenly turned and bolted. “Hey!” Douglas called again.

The woman ran along the cliffs. Douglas could see now that she was barefoot.

He ran after her.

“I don’t want to hurt you!” he cried. “I just want to make sure you’re okay! And find out why you’re following me!”

She just kept running toward the cliffs.

“Be careful!” Douglas shouted, slowing down himself. “Okay, I won’t come after you!”

But still the woman ran. She was just a distant speck on the far side of the cliffs by now, though her dark hair was still discernible in the bright sunlight. She ran as if she were terrified. She ran so fast-

Douglas blinked.

She ran straight off the side of the cliff!

“Jesus!” Douglas cried and began running himself again.

Had he seen right?

That crazy woman ran right off the cliff!

He reached the spot where she had gone over and looked down. There was no sign of a body on the rocks below. The water was just far enough beyond the rocks that there was no way she could have fallen into the surf. If she’d run off this cliff at this spot, she’d be lying right down there, mangled on the rocks below. It was at least a forty-foot drop. No one could have survived that, especially not at the rate she’d been running. There was no way she could have jumped off and then run down the beach. She’d have smashed onto the rocks. But there was no body anywhere.

It was as if she’d vanished into the air.

Douglas ran his hands through his long hair. “Jesus,” he whispered to himself.

Has he imagined the whole thing?

He remembered how stunned and dazed he’d felt back on the road, right after the accident. Had he hit his head and not realized it? He must have. This had all been a hallucination. There was no woman. At least not up here. Maybe there had been, down on the road-there had to have been, for someone had run in front of him-but not up here. Thinking rationally, Douglas concluded he was certain that he’d been alone as he climbed up the cliffside staircase. And if the woman had come by the road, there was no way she would have beat him here. The road from the village up to Uncle Howie’s house was long and winding. To walk it would take at least double the amount of time that it took to take the staircase. So there was no way the woman could have gotten here before him.