The Pariah Read online

  Close by, on the overgrown garden path, lay the blind and broken head of a stone cupid. I picked it up, carried it quickly over to the window, and tossed it like a bowling-ball through the glass. There was a splintering smash, and then a heavy thud as the head hit the floor down below. I kicked out the remaining splinters, and then put my own head through to see what was inside.

  It was utterly black, and it smelled of damp, and mould, and the peculiar fustiness of hundred-year-old buildings, as if the accumulated experiences of all those decades of time had permeated the timbers, and dried out, leaving a saltpetre of sadness, and passion, and evaporated joys.

  I withdrew my head, and re-entered the cellar window feet first. I tore the knee of my pants on a glazier’s nail on the window-frame, and said, ‘Shit,’ in the stuffy stillness of the cellar; but it turned out to be quite easy to lower myself down to the floor. There was a sudden scurrying noise in the far corner of the cellar, and a flurry of squeaks. Rats, and vicious ones, too, if they ran true to the tradition of Granitehead rodents, most of whom had jumped from ships. I groped my way across the floor, hands out in front of me, feeling like Blind Pew for the cellar steps.

  I went around three walls before I eventually found the wooden banister rail, and the first stone step, and everywhere I shuffled around the rats would squeak and scamper and jump.

  Inch by inch, I worked my way up the cellar steps to the cellar door itself, and turned the knob. Mercifully, the door was unlocked. I eased it open, and stepped out into the hall.

  Mrs Simons’ house had been built when Salem was the fifth most prosperous seaport in the world, and the sixth city in the United States, collecting one-twentieth of the entire Federal revenue in import duties. Its hallway ran all the way from the front door to the back garden door, and a magnificent suspended staircase came curving down one wall.

  Even though I was wearing soft-soled shoes, my footsteps set up a murmuring of echoes as I walked across the black-and-white marble floor, echoes that came back to me from the darkened living-rooms, the empty kitchens, and the galleried landing upstairs.

  ‘Mrs Edgar Simons?’ I called; too quietly for anyone to have heard. And my voice whispered back to me, from quite close by, ‘Mrs Edgar Simons?’

  I walked into the main living-room. It was high-ceilinged, and smelled of lavender and dust. The furniture was old-fashioned but not antique, the kind of traditional furniture that had been popular in the middle of the 1950s, clumsy and expensive, Jacobite by way of Grand Rapids. I saw my own pale face across the room in the looking-glass over the fireplace, and I looked quickly away, before I started getting the wind up again.

  Mrs Simons was nowhere to be found, not downstairs. I went into the dining-room, which smelled of snuffed-out candles and stale pecan nuts; the pantry, which would have been an innovation when this house was first built; the old-fashioned kitchen, with its white marble working surfaces. Then I took a deep breath, and went back out into the hallway, to mount the stairs.

  I was halfway up the stairs when I saw the blue-white flickering again, from one of the bedroom doors that led off the landing. I stopped for a moment, with my hand on the banister rail, but I knew that it was no use hesitating. Either I was going to find out what this electrical flickering was, or else I was going to run away and forget about Mrs Edgar Simons and Neil Manzi and everything, including Jane.

  ‘John,’ said a familiar whisper, close to my ear. I felt that tightness in my scalp again, that prickle of slowly-sinking fear. The light flashed again, from under the bedroom door.

  It was quite silent, unlike the buzzing, crackling flash you usually get from a heavy electrical discharge; and there was a coldness about it which unnerved me.

  ‘John,’ whispered the voice again, but more blurrily this time, as if it were two voices whispering in chorus.

  I reached the top of the stairs. The landing was covered in carpet, once thick but now threadbare. There were very few pictures on the walls, and it was so dark in the house that it was impossible to tell what they were. An occasional wan face peered out of the blackness of the oil paint but that was all; and I didn’t want to turn on the lights in case I frightened away whatever it was that flickered and flashed in the bedroom.

  I stood outside that bedroom door for a very long time. What are you frightened of? I asked myself. Electricity? Is that it? You’re frightened of electricity? Come on, you’ve just invented a really neat explanation for the appearance of ghosts, electrical matrices and discharge impulses and all that garbage, and now you’re scared to open the door and take a look at a few sparks going off? Do you believe your own theory or not?

  Because if you don’t, you shouldn’t be here at all, you should be hightailing it down that highway to the nearest Ramada Inn, which is the only place where you certainly won’t be disturbed by ghosts.

  I took hold of the bedroom doorhandle, and, as I did so, I heard the singing. Faint, fainter than faint, but clear enough to freeze me where I stood.

  ‘O the men they sail’d from Granitehead To fish the foreign shores…’

  I closed my eyes, and then immediately opened them again in case something or somebody appeared when I wasn’t looking.

  ‘But the fish they caught were nought but bones With hearts crush’d in their jaws.’

  I found myself clearing my throat, as if I were about to propose a toast. Then I turned the doorhandle, and cautiously started to push open the door.

  There was a fierce crackle, and a blinding flash of light, and the door was banged wide open, the knob wrenched right out of my grasp. I stood in the doorway terrified, staring into the room, and the sight that I encountered left me open-mouthed, unable to speak, unable to move.

  It was one of the huge master bedrooms, with a wide curtained window and a draped four-poster bed. In the far corner, dazzling and flickering, stood the figure of a man, his arms spread wide. All around him, in the air, there was a living, crawling, aura of electrical power, rising up from the floor with a jerking motion that put me horribly in mind of incandescent maggots. The man’s face was long and thin, strangely distorted, and his eyes were impenetrable sockets. But I could see that his eyes were raised towards the ceiling, and with an inexplicable feeling of dread I raised my own eyes up towards the ceiling, too.

  A vast glass chandelier was suspended there, with tier upon tier of crystal droplets, and a dozen gilded candle-holders. To my alarm, the chandelier was swaying from side to side, and as the crackling of electricity died down, I could hear the crystal pendants tinkling and ringing, not musically, but frantically, as if someone were trying to shake them down, like apples from a tree.

  There was something spreadeagled on the chandelier. No, worse than that, there was somebody impaled on it. I took two or three mechanical steps into the bedroom, and stared up at the chandelier in complete horror, unable to believe what was suspended in front of my eyes.

  It was Mrs Edgar Simons. Somehow, unbelievably, the chain which held up the chandelier had penetrated right through her stomach, and now she was lying face down on top of its twelve spreading branches, writhing and shuddering like a hooked fish, clutching at the candle-holders and the crystal droplets, twisting herself in the agonizing impossibility of her torturous situation.

  ‘God, God, God,’ she babbled, and strings of blood and saliva dangled from her mouth.

  ‘God, get me free, God, get me free, God, God, God, get me free.’

  I stared wide-eyed at the flickering apparition which still stood on the opposite side of the room, his arms raised. There was no smile on his face, no scowl, just dark and incomprehensible concentration.

  ‘Let her down!’ I screamed at him. ‘For Christ’s sake, let her down!’ But the apparition only flared and crackled, and ignored me, if he could even hear me at all.

  I looked up again at Mrs Edgar Simons, who stared back down at me through the sparkling crystal pendants with bulging eyes. Blood began to drip on to the carpet, a few patters at first, th
en more quickly, and then there was a sudden gouting gush of it. She clutched at the crystal, and it shattered in her hands, so that shards of it penetrated the flesh of her fingers and sliced right through her palms.

  I took two or three steps back, and then rushed forward and jumped up to catch hold of the chandelier’s branches, in an effort to pull it down from the ceiling. At the first try, I only managed to catch hold of the chandelier with one hand, dangled for a moment, and then had to let go. At the second try, I managed to get a better grip, and swung grimly backwards and forwards, while Mrs Edgar Simons shuddered and bled and wept for God to save her.

  There was a cracking noise, and the chandelier dropped a few inches. Then, with a hideous jingling sound, like a thousand angry Christmases, the chandelier collapsed to the floor, bringing Mrs Edgar Simons down with it. The whole bedroom was scattered with blood and broken glass.

  I got up off my knees, where I had awkwardly fallen when the chandelier began to drop.

  On the other side of the room, the apparition had flickered away almost to nothing now, a dim and fitful flame. I crunched through the glass to Mrs Edgar Simons, and crouched down beside her, resting my hand on her head. She felt deathly cold, although her eyes were still open, and she was murmuring under her breath.

  ‘Help me,’ she appealed, but there was no hope in her voice at all.

  ‘Mrs Simons,’ I told her, ‘I’ll call for an ambulance.’

  She tried to lift her head a little, so that she could look at me. ‘Too late for that,’ she murmured. ‘Just … take out this chain.’

  ‘Mrs Simons, I’m not a qualified medic. I couldn’t even begin to - ‘

  ‘It’s so cold,’ she said. Her head dropped back against the broken glass. ‘Oh, God, Mr Trenton, it’s so cold. Don’t leave me.’

  I didn’t know what to say to her. I held her hand for a moment, but she didn’t seem to be able to feel it, so I let her go. ‘Listen,’ I insisted, ‘I’m going to have to call an ambulance.

  Tell me where the phone is. Is there a phone upstairs?’

  ‘Don’t leave me. Please, whatever you do. He might come back.’

  ‘Who might come back? Who was it, Mrs Simons?’

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ she repeated. Her eyelids were beginning to flutter now. I could see the whites of her eyes in the darkness of the room, sending a few last hopeless signals to a dimming world. ‘Don’t leave me. Don’t let him hurt me again.’

  ‘Who was it, Mrs Simons?’ I asked her. ‘You have to tell me. It’s important. Was it Edgar? Was it your husband? Will you nod if it was Edgar?’

  Her eyes closed. Her breath rattled in her throat, slowly and laboriously. I knew that I ought to go call for the ambulance, but I also knew that it was useless, and that it was far too late.

  I bent down close to her ear. There was drying blood in it, and blood on her diamond earring, too. ‘Mrs Simons, you have to tell me. Was it Edgar?’

  She died without saying anything more. The last breath came out of her lungs like a long regretful sigh. I stayed beside her for a while, and then stood up, my feet crunching on the broken glass.

  It hadn’t really been necessary for her to tell me whether it was Edgar who had appeared in this room tonight or not. I knew it had to be him. The same way that the apparition which had appeared on my swing had inevitably been Jane. The dead had returned to haunt the living who had once loved them.

  I now knew something else, though, something terrifying. And that was that, far from being harmless flickers of cerebral electricity, these apparitions had the power to do strange and horrifying things. Not only the power, but the will.

  I found a telephone on the hall table downstairs. I picked it up, and said unhappily, ‘Get me the police department, please. Yes, it’s an emergency.’

  TEN

  The police sergeant unlocked my cell and Walter Bedford came in at a bustle that was far too fast for the size of the room. He pulled up, and looked at me, and gave his head a little shake, and said, ‘John?’ as if he were amazed that it was actually me.

  'Thank you for coming, Walter,’ I told him. ‘I appreciate it.’

  ‘They say you killed this woman?’ asked Walter. He didn’t put down his briefcase.

  ‘She was killed, yes. But not by me.’

  Walter turned around to the sergeant who had let him in. ‘Do you have someplace more comfortable where we can talk?’

  The sergeant looked doubtful for a moment, and then he said, ‘Okay, there’s an interview room across the corridor. But you understand that I’ll have to leave the door open.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Mr Bedford. ‘Just lead the way.’

  We were ushered into a pale-green painted room with a scratched table and two steel-and-canvas chairs. There was an overcrowded ashtray on the table and the whole room smelled of stale cigarette smoke.

  ‘You can open the window if you like,’ Mr Bedford told the sergeant, but the sergeant only smiled and shook his head.

  We sat down facing each other. Mr Bedford opened up his briefcase and took out a yellow legal pad; then unscrewed an expensive lacquered fountain-pen. At the top he wrote the date, underlined it, then J. Trenton, Homicide. Outside the door, the police sergeant loudly blew his nose.

  ‘Can you tell me what you were doing in this woman’s house?’ Mr Bedford asked me.

  ‘I was attempting to pay her a visit. I wanted to talk to her.’

  ‘But according to the police you entered the house through the cellar window. Is that the normal way you visit people?’

  ‘I went to the door but I couldn’t get any answer.’

  ‘If you don’t get any answer at the door, don’t you usually assume that there’s nobody in, and go away?’

  ‘I was going to, but then I saw somebody’s face at an upstairs window. A man.’

  Walter Bedford jotted down ‘man’s face’; and then asked, ‘Was it a man you knew?’

  ‘It was a man I knew of.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Well ,’ I said, ‘earlier in the evening, Mrs Edgar Simons had given me a ride back from Granitehead Market, and she had mentioned him to me.’

  ‘Had she described him?’

  ‘No.’

  'Then how did you know that the man you saw at the window was the same man?’

  ‘Because it had to be. Because he wasn’t the normal kind of man.’

  ‘What do you mean by that - “the normal kind of man”? What kind of man was he?’

  I raised my hands. ‘Walter,’ I said, ‘the way you’re questioning me now, I’m finding it very difficult to explain to you exactly what happened.’

  ‘John,’ said Mr Bedford, ‘I’m questioning you now the way you’re going to be questioned by the district attorney. If you can’t find a way of explaining what happened when I ask you direct questions like these, then I can warn you here and now that you’re going to find yourself in a great deal of difficulty when it comes to court.’

  ‘Walter,’ I told him, ‘I understand that. But right now I need your help, and the only way that I can give you the means to help me is if I tell you in a different way. You’re getting the facts out of me, but you’re not getting the story.’

  Mr Bedford made a face, but then shrugged, and put down his pen, and folded his arms.

  ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘Tell me the story. But just remember that it will have to be adapted to fit the conventional methods of court questioning; otherwise, whether you’re guilty or not, you’ll lose. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘You think I’m guilty?’

  There was a slight but visible twitch at the corner of Mr Bedford’s mouth. ‘You were found alone in a darkened house with a murdered woman. Several people saw you riding in her car earlier in the evening, and the police have witnesses who say you were in a disturbed state of mind just before you went to her house. One of them says you were “rambling, and deranged, as if you had something on your mind.” ‘
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  ‘Good old Keith Reed,’ I said, bitterly.

  ‘Those are the facts, John. And let’s face it, they’re pretty cast-iron. Of course, if you tell me you’re not guilty, then I believe you, but for the sake of saving yourself quite a few years in the penitentiary, you might find it worthwhile pleading guilty. I can always do a little plea-bargaining with Roger Adams, he’s an amenable man. Or, you could plead insanity.’

  ‘Walter, I am not guilty and I am not insane. I didn’t kill Mrs Edgar Simons and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘You suggesting this other man did? This other man who wasn’t quite the normal kind of man?’

  I pushed back my chair and stood up. ‘Listen, Walter, you have to hear me out. This isn’t easy for me to tell; and it won’t be any easier for you to believe. But it’s one saving grace is that it’s the truth.’

  Mr Bedford sighed. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Go ahead.’

  I walked across to the green-painted wall and stood with my back to him. It seemed easier to explain what had happened to a blank wall. The police sergeant poked his head around the door to make sure I hadn’t taken a dive out of the window, and then went back to reading the Salem Evening News.

  ‘Something’s happening in Granitehead this spring, although I don’t know why. People are beginning to see things. Ghosts, if you like, if that’s the easiest way to understand what they are. But in any case, they’re images, flickering brightly-lit images, of people who used to live in Granitehead and have recently died.’