Peter Straub - If You Could See Me Now

“Just tell me this,” I said. “When everybody was silently condemning me while hypocritically setting me free, didn’t anyone wonder who had made that phone call?”

“The man didn’t give his name. He said he was frightened.”

“Do you really think screams from the quarry can be heard on the road?”

“Evidently they can. And in these times, Miles, people remember your old story.”

“Goddam it,” I said. “Don’t you think I know that? Even Duane’s daughter has begun to hear rumors about it. Her crazy boyfriend, too. But I’m bound by my past. That’s the reason I’m here. I’m innocent of the other thing. My innocence is bound to come out.”

“I hope with all my heart that it does,” she said. I could hear the wind rattling the branches and leaves outside, and I felt like a character from another century — a character from a fairy tale, hiding in a gingerbread house. “But that is not enough to save you now.”

“I know what my salvation is.”

“Salvation is work.”

“That’s a good Norwegian theory.”

“Well, work, then. Write! Help in the fields!”

I smiled at the thought of Duane and myself mowing hay side by side. “I thought you were advising me to leave the state. Actually Polar Bears won’t let me leave. And I wouldn’t, anyhow.”

She looked at me with what I recognized as despair. I said, “I won’t let go of the past. You don’t understand, Auntie Rinn.” At the end of this sentence, I shocked myself by yawning.

“Poor tired boy.”

“I am tired,” I admitted.

“Sleep here tonight, Miles. I’ll pray for you.”

“No,” I said automatically, “no thanks,” and then thought of the long walk back to the car. By now the batteries had probably run down, and I would have to walk all the way back to the farmhouse.

“You can leave as early as you like. You won’t bother a dried up old thing like me.”

“Maybe for a couple of hours,” I said, and yawned again. This time I managed to get my hand to my mouth at least halfway through the spasm. “You’re far too good to me.”

I watched her bustle into the next room; in a moment she returned with an armful of sheets and the fluffy bundle of a homemade quilt. “Come on, youngster,” she ordered, and I followed her into the parlor.

Together we put the sheets on the low narrow seat of her couch. The parlor was only marginally cooler than the kitchen, but I helped her smooth the quilt over the top sheet. “I’d say, you take the bed, Miles, but no man has ever slept in my bed, and it’s too late to change my habits now. But I hope you won’t think I’m inhospitable.”

“Not inhospitable,” I said. “Just pig-headed.”

“I wasn’t fooling about praying. Did you say you’ve seen her?”

“Three times. I’m sure I did. She’s going to come back, Auntie Rinn.”

“I’ll tell you one thing certain. I’ll never live to see it.”

“Why?”

“Because she won’t let me.”

For a solitary old woman close to ninety, Rinn was an expert in the last word. She turned away from me, switched off the lights in the kitchen, and closed the door to her bedroom after her. I could hear fabrics rustling as she undressed. The immaculate tiny parlor seemed full of the smell of woodsmoke, but it must have come from the ancient stove in the kitchen. Rinn began to mumble to herself.

I slipped off my jeans and shirt, sat down to remove my socks, still hearing her dry old voice rhythmically ticking away like a machine about to die, and stretched out between the papery sheets. My hands found one nubbly patch after another, and I realized that they had been mended many times. Within seconds, to the accompaniment of the dry music of her voice, I passed into the first unbroken and peaceful sleep I’d had since leaving New York.

Several hours later, I woke to two separate noises. One was what seemed an incredible rushing clatter of leaves above me, as though the woods had crawled up to the house and begun to attack it. The second was even more unsettling. It was Rinn’s voice, and at first I thought her praying had become a marathon event. After I caught its slow, insistent pulse I recognized that she was saying something in her sleep. A single word, repeated. The whooping clatter of the trees above the house drowned out the word, and I lay in the dark with my eyes open, listening. The smell of woodsmoke hung unmoving in the air. When I heard what Rinn was saying, I folded the sheet back and groped for my socks. She was pronouncing, over and over again in her sleep, my grandmother’s name. “ Jessie. Jessie .”

That was too much for me. I could not bear to hear, mixed up with the windy racket of the woods, the evidence of how greatly I had disturbed the one person in the valley who wanted to help me. Hurriedly I put on my clothes and went into the kitchen. The undersides of leaves, veined and white, pressed against the back window like hands. Indeed, like the pulpy hand of one of my would-be assailants in Arden. I turned on a small lamp. Rinn’s voice went dryly on, scraping out its invocation to her sister. The fire in the woodstove had died to a red glowing shadowy empire of tall, ashes. I splashed water on my face and felt the crust of Rinn’s herbal mixture. It would not wash off: my fingers simply bumped over it, as over the patches on the sheets. I inserted a fingernail beneath the edge of one of the crusty spots, and peeled it off like a leech. A thin brown scale fell into the sink. I peeled off the rest of the dabs of the mixture until they covered the bottom of the sink. A man’s shaving mirror hung on a nail by the door, and I bent my knees to look into it. My heavy bland face looked back at me, pink in splashes on forehead and cheek, but otherwise unmarked.

Inside a rolltop desk crammed with the records of her egg business I found the stub of a pencil and paper and wrote: Someday you’ll see I’m right. I’ll be back soon to buy some eggs. Thanks for everything. Love, Miles .

I went out into the full rustling night. My mud-laden boots felt the knotted roots of trees thrusting up through the earth. I passed the high cartoon-windowed building, full of sleeping hens. Soon after that, I was out from under the dense ceiling of branches, and the narrow road unrolled before me, through tall fields lighter than the indigo sky. When it traversed the creek I once again heard frogs announcing their territory. I walked quickly, resisting the impulse to glance over my shoulder. If I felt that someone or something was watching me, it was only the single bright star in the sky, Venus, sending me light already thousands of years old.

Only when the breeze had dissipated it over the long fields of corn and alfalfa did I notice that the odor of woodsmoke had stayed with me until I had gone halfway to the road, and left Rinn’s land.

Venus, light my way with light long dead.

Grandmother, Rinn, bless me both.

Alison, see me and come into my sight.

But what came into my sight as I trudged down the valley road was only the Volkswagen, looking like its own corpse, like something seen in a pile of rusting hulls from a train window. It was a misshapen form in the dim starlight, as pathetic and sinister as Duane’s Dream House, and as I walked toward it I saw the shattered rear window and the scooping dents on the engine cover and hood. Eventually it hit me that the lights were out; the battery had died.

I groaned, and opened the door and collapsed onto the seat. I passed my hands over the pink new patches of skin on my face, which were beginning to tingle. “Damn,” I said, thinking of the difficulty of getting a tow truck to come the ten miles from Arden. In frustration, I lightly struck my hand against the horn mechanism. Then I saw that the key was gone from the ignition.