Steven Brust - Agyar

“It worked. How else could I see you? You’ve carefully arranged things so all communication is one-way.”

“Well, I’m here. Shall we go inside?”

“Sorry, company.”

“Excuse me?”

“Some children have shown up to see if they could spend the night in the haunted house.”

Kellem laughed.

“Not so loudly, if you please,” I said.

She nodded, still grinning. “Is your ghost friend doing anything to their poor, dear heads?”

“No; he’s showing great restraint.”

“What are they doing now?”

“I’ve been out. When I left they were lighting a fire in the fireplace and talking about telling ghost stories. I wonder if they’ll notice that the fireplace has been used lately.”

“I doubt it.”

She looked around at the yard, so overgrown with weeds that one could see them above the snow, surrounded by a faded, rotting fence that had once been painted red, featuring, on one side of the now invisible walk, a single apple tree of the variety someone had once called Mushy Rome Beauty, and, on the other, a catalpa with enough twists to give the place a creepy feeling even if it didn’t have Jim to lend it authenticity. “A nice place, actually,” said Kellem.

“Yes. A good location, too; not far from St. Bart’s, not far from the Tunnel, a couple of parks nearby. It was built by a professor of one of the colleges, I forget which, right around the turn of the century.”

“Why was it abandoned?”

“Last family to buy it thought it was haunted. They wouldn’t live there, and refused to sell it to anyone else without the guarantee that it would be torn down. The Historical Society wouldn’t let that happen, even if they’d found someone stupid enough to do it.”

“So here it sits,” she said.

“Yes. From time to time the city comes in and cleans up the yard and sends the owners a bill. As long as they pay the taxes, no one cares.”

She looked at me fully. “What do you want?”

“I would like,” I said, “to negotiate.”

“Pardon me?”

I repeated myself.

She shook her head. “I don’t understand. For what?”

“Eh? For my life.”

It seemed to get through at last, and she looked like she didn’t know if she ought to laugh or just look perplexed. “What would you have that I might want? Or that I couldn’t get anyway?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Can we discuss it?”

“You’re wasting my time.”

“I just want-”

“Quiet,” she said, and I was quiet. Her eyes pinned me in place, then forced me down, first to my knees, then onto my face in the snow. It was very cold, and it came to me with a sense of rage that I would not be able to stand in front of the fire because of those damned children. I should have liked to have slaughtered them, but Jim would never have forgiven me.

“You have nothing to say to me,” said Kellem. “I have decided your fate, and that is an end of it. You will wait, no more. That is all.”

When I looked up she had gone.

I was, as I said, unable to type yesterday because of the children, so I may have left out some details. In any case, they were gone when I awoke, and I trust they will not return.

I’ve been sitting here remembering things.

The last time I saw Laura Kellem was in County Mayo, Ireland, perhaps a score of years ago. I had been living in London, which seems to be the place in all the world I keep coming back to. I don’t remember exactly where I’d found digs, but it was probably either Soho or the East End, because that’s where I’ve been most often.

I remember that for several months I’d been feeling listless, careless, and generally uninterested in life. I didn’t know, then, that I was, to some degree, subject to whatever moods Kellem might be having, at least if they were intense. If I’d known that, I’d have probably been expecting something like what happened. As it was, I didn’t even realize what was happening to me until much later, when I reconstructed the events.

I slowly began to get the feeling I would like to leave England-an idea that grew stronger and stronger over the course of about a week. Then the feeling became more specific, in that I was taken by a wish to see Ireland. I realized what was going on, and allowed it to happen because there was nothing I could do, and I never minded seeing Laura anyway.

So I went to her, where she was living in a small house, almost like a cottage, outside of the town of Ballina, in the province of Connaught in the west of the Republic of Ireland. It was beautiful country, full of broken, craggy rocks and seacoast, but I saw little of it. I was guided to her doorstep, which fact was unusual in itself, and then she let me in. While she was not living in complete squalor, I don’t think the floor had been swept for months, nor had anything been dusted. She seemed very, very old; I would have taken her for an eighty- or ninety-year old woman, and it seemed that the effort of walking to the door and back to her chair was almost too much for her; the fire had all but gone out of her eyes.

I said, “What’s happened to you, Kellem?” But I could see what had happened: lethargy, self-neglect, weakness.

When she spoke, I could barely hear her. She said, “Jack, help me.”

So I did. I cleaned up the place, which took a couple of days, and then I went to the local pub and got acquainted with a few residents. Eventually I found a fine, strong-looking young man with a booming laugh and pearly-white teeth who was willing to follow me home and keep drinking after the pub closed. I introduced him to my “grandmother,” and fed him Scotch whisky, his secret passion, until he burbled, hiccuped, and passed out in his chair.

Of course, Laura became drunk too, which I’d never seen before, and I think that did as much good as anything else. She began breaking up the place, after which she slept for two days, by which time the constabulary were nosing around us and we had to leave the vicinity.

Kellem went on to Dublin, while I, at her suggestion, returned once more to America, and so we went our separate ways, but when we parted she seemed a changed woman-her fire was back, and she had learned how to laugh once more, as if she had drawn it out of the young man.

Her train left first, and I stood with her at the station and waited for it. She squeezed my hand, and for just a moment things were again as they had been so many years before. One part of me realized that it was a facade, because by then I knew her, but I think, experienced as I was, I wanted to believe there still remained some trace of affection for me.

I guess I continued to think so until last night.

I went for nice little walk around the area, and met our neighbor across the road, although he doesn’t know we are neighbors, and I didn’t see fit to enlighten him. He was walking his dog, a little brown and white terrier. I was returning to the house and he was approaching me, and the dog suddenly went into a frenzy, barking at me, bristling, and growling, until I nearly lost patience with it.

The owner, a nice old gentleman in his early sixties, seemed quite embarrassed by the dog’s behavior and apologized profusely, all the while trying to calm the annoying beast. I bent down and held out my hand for the dog to sniff, at which time the animal suddenly backed away and started whimpering, which made the old man even more apologetic.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Animals often don’t like me.”