Peter Straub - If You Could See Me Now

“Sometimes it is right to fear the dark.” She looked at me fiercely. “But it is never right to lie to me, Miles. You were not looking for a vandal. Were you?”

I was conscious of the trees bending over the house, of the darkness outside her circle of light.

She said, “You must pack your things and leave. Come here or go back to New York. Go to your father in Florida.”

“I can’t.” That thick smell hung over my face.

“You will be destroyed. You must at least come here to stay with me.”

“Auntie Rinn,” I said. My entire body had begun to shake again. “Some people think I have been killing those girls — that was the reason they attacked my car. What could you do against them?”

“They will never come here. They will never come up my path.” I remembered how she had terrified me when I was a child, with that look on her face, sentences like that in her mouth. “They are only town people. They have nothing to do with the valley.”

The little kitchen seemed intolerably hot, and I saw that the woodstove was burning, alive like a fireplace with snapping flames.

I said, “I want to tell you the truth. I felt something monstrous out there. Something purely hostile, and that’s why I was frightened. I guess; it was evil I felt. But it all came out of books. Some toughs chased me through Arden, and then Polar Bears shook me up, as he would say. I know the literature about all this. I know all about Puritans in the wilderness, and it caught up with me. I’ve been repressed and I’m not myself.”

“What are you waiting for, Miles?” she asked, and I knew that I could prevaricate no longer.

“I’m waiting for Alison,” I said. “Alison Greening. I thought it was her I saw from the road, and I ran up into the woods to find her. I’ve seen her three times.”

“Miles—” she began, her face wild and angry.

“I’m not working on my dissertation any more, I don’t care about that, I’ve been feeling more and more that all of that is death to the spirit, and I’ve been getting signs that Alison will come soon.”

“Miles—”

“Here’s one of them,” I said and took the crumpled envelope out of my pocket. “Hovre thinks I sent it to myself, but she sent it, didn’t she? That’s why the writing is like mine.”

She was going to speak again, and I held up my hand. “You see, you never liked her, nobody ever liked her, but we were always alike. We were almost the same person. I’ve never loved any other woman.”

“She was your snare. She was a trap waiting for you to enter it.”

“Then she still is, but I don’t believe it.”

“Miles—”

“Auntie Finn, in 1955 we made a vow that we would meet here in the valley, and we set a date. It’s in only a few weeks from now. She is going to come, and I am going to meet her.”

“Miles,” she said, “your cousin is dead. She died twenty years ago, and you killed her.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said.

“Miles,” she said, “your cousin died in 1955 while the two of you were swimming in the old Pohlson quarry. She was drowned.”

“No. She drowned,” I said. “Active verb. I didn’t kill her. I couldn’t have killed her. She meant more to me than my own life. I would rather have died myself. It was the end of my life anyhow.”

“You may have killed her by accident — you may not have known what you were doing. I am only an old farm woman, but I know you. I love you. You have always been troubled. Your cousin was also a troubled person, but her troubles were not innocent, as yours were. She chose the rocky path, she desired confusion and evil, and you never committed that sin.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. She was, I don’t know, more complicated than I was, but that was part of her beauty. For me, anyhow. No one else understood her. And I did not kill her, accidentally or any other way.”

“Only you two were there.”

“That’s not certain.”

“Did you see anyone else that night?”

“I don’t know. I might have. I thought I did, several times. I got knocked out in the water.”

“By Alison’s struggles. She nearly took you with her.”

“I wish she had. I haven’t had a life since.”

“Not a whole life. Not a satisfied life. Because of her.”

“ Stop it ,” I shouted. The heat of the kitchen was building up around me, seeming to increase with every word. The stuff on my face was beginning to burn. My shout had frightened her; she seemed paler and smaller, inside all those wrinkles and the man’s baggy jacket. She slowly sipped at her coffee, and I felt a great sad inevitable remorse. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I shouted. If you love me it must be the way you’d love some wounded bird. I’m in a terrible state, Auntie Rinn.”

“I know,” she said calmly. “That’s why I have to protect you. That’s why you have to leave the valley. It’s too late now for anything else.”

“Because Alison is coming back, you mean. Because she is.”

“If she is, then there is nothing to do. It is too late for anything. She has hooks in you too deep for me to remove them.”

“Thank God for that. She means freedom to me. She means life.”

“No. She means death. She means what you felt out there tonight.”

“That was nerves.”

“That was Alison . She wants to claim you.”

“She claimed me years ago.”

“Miles, you are submitting to forces you don’t understand. I don’t understand them either, but I respect them. And I fear them. Have you thought about what happens after she returns?”

“What happens doesn’t matter. She will be in this world again. She knows I didn’t kill her.”

“Perhaps that doesn’t matter. Or perhaps it matters less than you think it does. Tell me about that night, Miles.”

I let my head drop forward, so that my chin nearly touched my chest. “What good would that do?”

“Then I will tell you. This is what Arden people remember about you, Miles. They remember that you were suspected of murder. You already had a bad reputation — you were known as a thief, a disturbed, disordered boy with no control over his feelings. Your cousin was — I don’t know what the word is. A sexual tease. She was corrupt. She shocked the valley people. She was calculating and she had power — I recognized when she was only a child that she was a destructive person. She hated life. She hated everything but herself.”

“Never,” I said.

“And the two of you went to the quarry to swim, no doubt after Alison had deceived your mothers. She was ensnaring you even more deeply. Miles, there can exist between two people a kind of deep connection, a kind of voice between them, a calling, and if the dominant person is corrupted, the connection Is unhealthy and corrupt.”

“Skip the rigamarole,” I said. “Get on with what you want to say.” I wanted to leave her overheated kitchen; I wanted to immure myself in the old Updahl farmhouse.

“I will.” Her face was hard as winter. “Someone driving past on the Arden road heard screams coming from the quarry and called the police. When old Walter Hovre got there he found you unconscious on the rock ledge. Your face was bleeding. Alison was dead. He could just see her body, caught on a rock projection down in the water. Both of you were naked. She had been… she had been abused.” Her complexion began to redden. “The inference was there to be made. It was obvious.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I think she seduced you and died accidentally. That she died by your hand, but that it was not murder.” Now her blushing was pronounced: it was a ghastly effect, as if she had rubbed rouge into her cheeks. “I have never known physical love, Miles, but I imagine that it is a turbulent business.” She raised her chin and looked straight at me. “That is what everybody thought. You were not to be charged — in fact, many women in Arden thought that your cousin had gotten just what she deserved. The coroner, who was Walter Hovre in those days, said that it was accidental death. He was a kindly man, and he’d had his troubles with his own son. He did not want to ruin your life. It helped that you were an Updahl. People hereabouts have always looked up to your family.”