Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Terror

“Let’s go sit on the couch.”

“Goody.” When we were settled, I said, “So there is somebody? What’s the big secret? Who is he?”

“Do you have some reason for wanting to know? Apart from prurient curiosity?”

I laughed. “Prurient curiosity was good enough in the past. Look, as far as I knew, after Leland dumped you there wasn’t anybody. For, what is it, two years?”

“Not quite.”

“Whatever – in all that time, as far as I know, you haven’t gotten involved with anybody else, and it seems like you haven’t wanted to, either. Same as Lecia. You seem so calm, so happy. I want to know your secret, because I have this awful feeling that William’s fixing to dump me, and the way I feel now, it’ll just kill me. If I can’t keep him, I need to know how to survive – more than survive – without him.”

Her eyes searched my face. “You love him?”

“Oh, God. Yes. More than anyone I’ve ever – yes.”

“Could you live with him?”

I hesitated. “I don’t know. It’s never been an option. He’s tired of me, anyway. If I pushed him, now, or tried to make him choose between me and his wife, I’d lose him for sure. I can put up with sharing, with uncertainty – I’ve done that for years. If I’ve lost him, though – what I really want is to be okay about it. Like you and Lecia and Hillary. You seem so together, like you know something. You do, don’t you? There is a secret?”

She gave the tiniest nod, then shook her head as if frantically trying to cancel it.

“There is! Oh, God, I can’t believe you know something and you haven’t told me. You and Lecia – I thought we were friends! What did I do to you?” We stared at each other like two kids on a playground, one the betrayer, one the betrayed, and I saw my anguish get to her. She couldn’t resist the claim of friendship.

“You didn’t come with us,” she said in a low, pleading voice. “I know it wasn’t your fault, but that’s why, that’s the only reason. If you’d been with us, you’d know, too. We swore we’d never tell anyone else.” She hesitated, convincing herself. “But you’re not just anyone else – you should have been with us. It was meant for you, too. I’m sure I’m right. Wait, look, I’ll draw you a map.” She got up and went to her drawing table, found a piece of light card which was just the right size, and began to sketch and write something on it, muttering to herself. Then she presented it to me.

“What’s this?”

“It’s where you have to go.” She leaned close and spoke very low, although we were alone. “Take William. Any excuse, a nice hike in the country, just get him there, find the fountain, and make him drink. Not you. Just him. If you can’t get him to drink there, take a flask and make sure he drinks it later, when you’re alone together.”

I’d known Janet to be loopy sometimes – she was the fey and temperamental artist, she believed in angels, fairies, witchcraft, magic, anything going, really. For a time she had lived in an occult spiritual commune upstate somewhere.

“And what happens then?” I asked.

“Shh! Just do it. I really shouldn’t be telling you. Now, go.” She pushed me toward the door, and I went without protesting that I hadn’t had my cup of Red Zinger.

I looked at the card when I was in the elevator. The directions were to the Adirondacks, to the middle of nowhere, halfway up the side of a mountain where there was a magical fountain . . .

Then I remembered. The fountain. Three years ago, the others had gone on a camping trip, to a “magical place” with a “special fountain” that Janet had learned about in her commune days. It was meant to be a spiritual retreat and a bonding experience for us four friends. Only the night before we were to leave I ate a bad shrimp, and so while my friends were hiking through the woods I was laid up at home with a case of food poisoning.

Something had happened to them, something they had never told me about, but which explained their solitary contentment.

Outside, I crossed the street and walked past a couple of still unconverted warehouses with trucks in front and big, sweaty men unloading boxes and shouting at each other. I walked past, around, through them like a ghost. I can’t say I missed the whistles and sexual commentary my presence would once have inspired, but just then I could have done without the reminder that I was an aging, invisible woman.

A garish green poster, plastered on a wall, caught my eye. It had a spiral pattern and the only words I could read at a distance were TIR NAN OG. That was what the Celts called the Land of the Ever Young, but probably it was the name of a band or a club – my not knowing, my recognizing it only as a reference from an ancient culture, was just another proof of how out of it, how past it, I was.

This was not my city anymore, I thought. This was not my country. The problem was, I didn’t know where else I could go, or what else I could be, now that I was no longer a young and beautiful immortal.

I looked at the card again. If it was the fountain of youth, why shouldn’t I drink it? Why should I give it to my lover? Janet had been so definite. But what did it do? If it was supposed to make your man love you again, why had Leland and Jim disappeared?

Well, I had asked a question. Now I must make what I could of the answer.

You were swept away, you were charmed, by my sudden insistence on a weekend away. It had been a while since I’d swept you off your feet. You were intrigued, too, because it was so unlike anything we’d done together before. A day of hiking in the mountains! As an excuse, I’d claimed that I needed to check on the existence of a spring-fed fountain mentioned in one of the books we were going to publish. You had so little notion of what a book-editor did, and, really, so little interest, thatyou believed what I said without question. I didn’taskwhat you’d told your wife.

At first it was like old times. The strain that had been between us disappeared, and we laughed a lot and touched each other as you drove us out of the city in the freshness of early morning. But the farther I got from the city and the world I knew, the more uneasy I felt. What was I doing? I’m a good walker, but only in the city, when there is some point to it, things to look at, places worth going to. I don’t like the country. It bores me and it makes me nervous; okay, there have to be farms, and places for wild animals and plants, but I don’t see the point of it for me. As for this magic fountain – did it follow that because I believed in romantic love I’d also believe in magic? I wasn’t Janet-what sort of desperation had made me believe in her magical fountain?

Naturally, I took it out on you. Your enthusiasm began to irritate me. What were you getting so excited about? A walk in the country? I didn’t like hiking, why didn’t you know that? You wanted me to be something I wasn’t; you would have preferred someone else. Before long and I’m sure to your complete mystification we were arguing.

By the time we reached the place where Janet had indicated we should leave the car, we were barely speaking to each other. You cheered up a little once you were out of the car, lacing on your new Danish hiking boots and inhaling the clean, cool air, but I felt an undissolved lump of dread sitting heavily in my stomach. But I was determined to go through with it now. I couldn’t imagine how getting you to drink some water would result in my feeling better, but I would try.

I am a good walker in the city, but I wasn’t used to hills, or to pathways slippery with pine needles, damp leaves, loose rocks. Nor could I keep up the pace you set. I had to keep stopping to catch my breath; I had to keep calling you back. At first solicitous, you quickly became impatient.