David Ambrose: Superstition

He felt a movement of her hand against his chest and realized she was unbuttoning his shirt. Brushing her fingers aside, he tore off his clothes in what seemed like a single unbroken movement. He didn't try to speak, he knew he couldn't. The beating of his heart was like a hammer in his chest as she led him blindly through the dark until he felt the bed against his legs.

They tumbled onto it, devouring one another with a violence and a passion that seemed inexhaustible and endless. The only sounds they made were cries and gasps of need, desire, and satisfaction, until, sated at last, they lay entwined in silence.

“I'm so happy,” she whispered. “I knew you'd come. There's nothing to be afraid of anymore.”

He pulled her to him, feeling the swell of her breasts, the curve of her stomach and thighs, and the film of perspiration covering her skin as it pressed against his own. He could feel her, but he could not see her. He knew that the dancing lines and contours he fancied he had glimpsed from time to time as they made love were simply his imagination creating mental images from the sensual contact of their bodies.

“I want to see you,” he said. “I have to.”

“Yes, I know.” There was a softness in her voice, as though the words came through a smile of tenderness. Her hand traced the contours of his face. “It's all right. You can put on the light.”

He reached out to where he remembered seeing a bedside lamp, his fingers feeling for the switch. He found it-but, for some reason he did not fully understand, he hesitated.

“Don't be afraid,” she said.

He pressed.

There was a searing flash of light, like an explosion. Worse even than the pain that scorched his eyes was the blistering, asphyxiating sound-like the roar of an inferno, all around him, all consuming, burning through his brain.

He didn't know how long it lasted, but as the blinding whiteness faded and the silence gradually returned, there came too a strange emptiness and an absence of all feeling.

Somewhere he heard a howl of pain and fear. It was his voice, he knew, but it no longer seemed to be a part of him.

She spoke again, calm, reassuring, in control, as though she had known all this would happen and was here to guide him through it.

“It's all right, my darling…don't be afraid…you're safe now…”

He cried out in startled rage, “I can't see…where am I…?”

Feeling returned abruptly, as it does after an injury when the body has been momentarily anesthetized by shock. But it was not pain he felt now, merely the sensation of being on his feet, stumbling forward like a blind man, arms outstretched in search of unseen obstacles.

Her voice came again-so close now that it seemed to be inside his head.

“Come…come with me…”

He felt her hand on his, its touch so light as to be barely there at all. He took a few more steps, and then the ground beneath his feet seemed suddenly to fall away.

But he himself did not fall. It was as though the house, the city, and the world around it were opening into endless space. He felt that he was flying, borne aloft by a mysterious, all-powerful and all-embracing force. He knew that she was with him, but he was not sure how he knew.

Then the thought came to him that she was not with him, but was now in some way part of him. The idea seemed so obviously and inevitably true that he did not question it, or wonder how it could be so, or where it was that they were going.

He just relaxed and let what was happening take its course, until it seemed it would go on forever…

Ralph Cazaubon had tried to call the house all afternoon, without success. The first day he had left Sam Towne to his strange vigil undisturbed, but on the second had found himself wondering so much what was going on that it became hard to concentrate on anything else.

All the same, he'd waited until after lunch to call. The morning had been spent looking at apartments to rent. So far he'd found nothing that seemed ideal for Joanna and himself, but there was no hurry: she was happy with her parents, and he'd promised to drive out to join her that night. Perhaps they'd take a vacation, he'd suggested, fly off to the sun where they could put the nightmare behind them. She had liked the idea. They said they'd talk about where over dinner.

So the afternoon was his last chance to find out what was happening with Sam Towne, preferably before dark. Although he disliked admitting it even to himself, he had no wish to be in that house-his house-after dark. He had already made up his mind that he was going to sell it. Even if the events of two nights ago never happened again, he couldn't bring himself to live there any longer. Above all, he couldn't let Joanna take that risk. He hoped only that Sam would somehow find a way of ending the possession that had so mysteriously entered the place; a house in the grip of such a thing would not be easy to sell, not even in that neighborhood and at a bargain price.

He rang the bell for several minutes before taking the duplicate keys from his pocket and inserting them in the door's two main locks. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves, and entered.

The coat stand was still where it had been two days ago, so he couldn't push the door all the way back but had to slide through sideways. He saw Sam Towne the moment he was through.

His naked body lay facedown at the foot of the stairs. His arms were out, as though he'd tried to break his fall, and his head was twisted at an angle that left no doubt that he was dead. His eyes were open as though staring in shock at the pool of his own blood that had congealed on the floor into a patch of dark and lusterless vermilion, almost black in the fading light of the late Manhattan afternoon.

If I don't go back,” she said, “this thing will stay with me for the rest of my life, and I refuse to accept that. I have to walk through the house just once, and then it will be over. Exorcised.”

Ralph tried to talk her out of it, but she was adamant. It had been ten days since Sam Towne's death. Ralph had met one of Sam's brothers, who had come down from Boston to arrange for the body to be shipped to Cape Cod for a family funeral. The death had been classified as accidental, with no suspicion of foul play: the fact that the deceased had fallen down the stairs while attempting to establish whether or not the house in which he'd died was haunted was of no great interest to the city authorities. Even if the presumption was that he'd been pushed, the law made no provision for the criminal prosecution of ghosts or other disembodied spirits.

The only real problem Ralph had had was what to do with the manuscript that he'd found on his desk in the music room. He hadn't discovered it until after the body had been removed. He'd taken it back to the hotel and read it there, after calling Joanna with the tragic news. He read it through twice, and then a third time, before facing up to the fact that he was going to have to make a decision. Even then he'd put it off, slipping the handwritten pages into an envelope that he'd placed in the hotel safe.

There it had remained for several days, until all the legalities had been taken care of. Even when one of Sam's colleagues from the university, Peggy O'Donovan, had come over to see the place where he had died, Ralph didn't mention its existence. With each day that passed, during which time there was no evidence of any renewed unnatural activity in the house, he grew less inclined to do so.

He had workmen come in and clean the place up. The mirror in the bathroom was replaced. Nobody reported feeling anything strange or noticing anything out of the ordinary. Even Ralph himself began to feel as much at ease in the house as he had in the past, though he still did not spend a night there, and formally put it in the hands of a real estate agent after a week.