Peter Straub - If You Could See Me Now

As her body warmed, the strangeness began. It was not that her body changed — it was not as crude as that — but that it seemed at times during the night double-exposed, shifting imperceptibly in shape so that in one half of a second it was that body I had seen flashing in the water and in the other half it was fuller, so that a leg drawn up against my flank seemed to increase in weight, to press with greater urgency. The breasts against my chest were small, then heavy, then small; the waist, slim, then sturdy; but it is more accurate to say that both were present at once and when I was aware of this double-exposure I dully imagined it as a flickering between the two halves of a second.

Once, for only a moment that was submerged deep into an onrushing succession of longer moments — a moment like the smaller fraction concealed within a fraction — my hands seemed to touch something besides flesh.

Hours later I opened my eyes and saw young skin beneath me, a curve of flesh which resolved itself into a shoulder. Hands were kneading my back, a round knee lifted between my legs. The bed was a lath of odors. Sexual perfume, that raw, pungent odor, talcum powder, young skin, newly-washed hair. And the smell of blood. I jerked my head up and saw that the girl beneath me, even now sliding her hand to excite me once again, was Alison Updahl.

I scrambled off. “You.”

“Mnnn.” She crept forward into me. Her eyes were flat and pale as ever, but her face was soft.

“How long have you been here?”

She laughed. “I wanted to surprise you. But last night you didn’t even act surprised. Just starved. You really make a girl feel welcome.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Since about one last night. Your face is all cut up where Mr. Hovre hit you. You know that dumb deputy he has, Dave Lokken? He’s been telling everybody. About two days ago. About how Mr. Hovre hit you. How it was Paul Kant all along. So I thought I’d help you celebrate. Even though you tried to make him think it was Zack. But that was just stupid.”

“I want you to leave.”

“Oh, it’s okay. I mean, he won’t know anything about it. It’s Thursday morning, and on Thursday mornings he always goes over to the Co-op. He doesn’t even know I’m out of the house.”

I looked at her carefully. She seemed to be entirely comfortable, unaware of any oddity.

“You were here all night?”

“Huh? Sure I was.”

“You didn’t feel anything strange?”

“Only you.” She giggled, and put an arm around my neck. “You’re pretty strange. You shouldn’t have said that about Zack to Mr. Hovre. Zack really likes you. He even read some of those books you gave him, like he told you. He usually only reads books about crime, you know, murder and stuff. Did you say it because of out at the quarry? What we did? We were just fooling around. You were cute then. Even after, when you were mad, you were looking at me — you know. ‘Course I didn’t have any clothes on. Like now.”

She grimaced, apparently having scratched herself on something in the bed, and brushed off her hip with her hand; the gesture uncovered all of her compact upper body, and I felt an involuntary flame of sexual interest — the Woodsman was right. I had been starved. I still felt as though I had not made love in months. I reached over and cupped one of her breasts. The smell of blood began to pour outward again. My only excuse is that we were in bed together, and that she was being deliberately seductive. It was an experience entirely different from that of the night before. Her body was altogether foreign to me, our rhythms did not match, and I kept being thrown out of stride by sudden charges and spasms from her. Eventually I rolled over and let her direct things, as she evidently wished to do. It was an awkward performance, I suppose unhelped by my doubts about my own sanity. I had been so certain that my partner had been my cousin; when I tried to recall the “double exposure” sensation, it seemed very vague. But one thing was certain — Alison Updahl was a sexual stranger to me, less melodic with her body.

When it was over, she sat up in the bed. “Well. Your heart wasn’t in that one.”

“Alison,” I said, having to ask it, “did Zack do those things — the killings? Because Paul Kant didn’t, in spite of what Polar Bears thinks.”

Her tenderness had vanished before I had finished speaking. She swiveled her legs over the side of the bed, making it impossible for me to see her face. I thought that her shoulders were trembling. “Zack only talks about stuff, he never does it” She lifted her head. “Hey, what do you have in this bed anyhow, I was scratching myself on it all morning.” She stood up, turned to face me, and threw back the sheet. On the bottom sheet lay a scattering of thin brown twigs — I about enough to cover the palm of a hand. “Time you changed your sheets,” she said, in control of herself again. “They’re starting to sprout.”

I looked with a dry throat at the small things beside me on the rumpled sheet. She turned away.

“Alison,” I said, “answer something for me.”

“I don’t want to talk about those things.”

“No. Listen. Did you and Zack request a song on the radio about two weeks ago? From A and Z, for all the lost ones?”

“Yes. But I said I can’t talk about that — please, Miles.”

Of course Alison had no notion of what those finger-like twigs meant to me, and when I got hurriedly out of bed she at first ignored me as she dressed. “Not, exactly chatty, are you? Except for stupid questions,” I she said, yanking a T shirt over her head. “Not exactly big on smalltalk, hey Miles?” She squirmed into her jeans. “You just like to ruin things. Well, you don’t have to worry. I won’t invade your privacy any more.” Then, when I did not protest, she looked at me more closely. “Hey Miles, what is going on? You looked just as spooked as you did that first day you came back.”

“I’m not surprised,” I said. “I have the same reason. For your own good, you’d better leave.”

“For my own good? Jesus, are you ever a case.”

“No doubt,” I said, and she stamped her feet into clogs and clattered down the stairs without saying goodbye.

Other explanations — there had to be other explanations. I had picked up the twigs on my clothing as I had walked into the woods, or simply while walking around the farm. Or they had adhered to my clothing when Polar Bears had permitted Dave Lokken to let me fall. I stood up and brushed them from the sheets. Eventually I straightened the bed, dressed, went into my office and took a pencil and some sheets of paper downstairs to try to work at the kitchen table. Tuta Sunderson showed up not long after, and I asked her to change the sheets.

“Heard you was over at Andy’s the other morning,” she announced, hands on hips. “Lot went on there, I guess.”

“Um,” I said.

“You’ll be grateful for some of it, I guess.”

“Nothing like a good beating.”

“Red says that Paul Kant should have been run off a long time ago.”

“That sounds like good old Red.”

“I think he killed himself. That boy Paul was always a weak one.”

“Yes, that’s one of your favorite theories, isn’t it?”

July 18

The way I saw it, I wasn’t going to rush into thinking something just because everyone else did. There wasn’t any proof, was there? I think Paul Kant just snapped — he was too weak to take the pressure, and he broke. He never even confessed, did he? No. And you still hadn’t found that other girl yet. I keep an open mind.

Anyhow, I was goin’ to keep on watching Miles. In case he decided to run or something. So I went over on Wednesday morning just like always, and I’ll tell you what I was thinking about — that torn-up picture of Duane’s girl I found. That just sat in my mind, bothering me. I mean, what goes through a man’s mind when he tears up a picture of a girl? You think about that.