The Wolves of Midwinter Page 5

  “Marchent,” Reuben whispered. “I saw her, out there.”

  Now came the prickling sensations again. He looked down to see his fingers emerging from the disappearing hair.

  He could feel the hair receding on his scalp and on his chest.

  The expression on Felix’s face startled him. Never had Felix seemed so vulnerable, so almost hurt.

  “Marchent?” Felix said. His eyes narrowed. This was acutely painful for him. And there wasn’t the slightest doubt that he believed what Reuben was telling him.

  Reuben explained quickly. He went over everything that happened. He was heading for the coat closet near the butler’s pantry as he spoke, Felix tagging after him. He put on his heavy coat, and picked up the flashlight.

  “But what are you doing?” Felix asked.

  “I have to go outside. I have to look for her.”

  The rain was light, little more than a drizzle. He hurried down the front steps and walked around the side of the house till he was standing beneath the large library window. He had never been on this exact spot before. He’d seldom even driven his car along the gravel drive here to the back of the property. The whole foundation was elevated of course, and there was no ledge on which Marchent, a living breathing Marchent, could have been standing.

  The window was bright with the lamplight above him, and the oak forest stretching out to his right beyond the gravel drive was impenetrably dark, and filled with the sounds of the dripping rain, the rain forever working its way through leaves and branches.

  He saw the tall slim figure of Felix looking out through the window, but Felix did not appear to see him down there looking up. Felix appeared to be looking off into the blackness.

  Reuben stood very still, letting the light drizzle dampen his hair and his face, and then he turned and, bracing himself, he looked off into the oak forest. He could see almost nothing.

  A terrible pessimism came over him, an anxiety bordering on panic. Could he feel her presence? No, he couldn’t. And that she might, in some spiritual form, some personal form, be lost in that darkness terrified him.

  Slowly he made his way back to the front door, looking off into the night all around him. How vast and foreboding it seemed, and how distant and hideously impersonal the roar of the ocean he couldn’t see.

  Only the house was visible, the house with its grand designs, and lighted windows, the house like a bulwark against chaos.

  Felix was waiting in the open door, and helped him with his coat.

  He sank down in the chair by the library fire, in the big wing chair that Felix usually claimed early every evening.

  “But I did see her,” Reuben said. “She was there, vivid, in her negligee, the one she wore the night she was killed. There was blood on it, all over it.” It tormented him suddenly to relive it. He felt for a second time the same alarm he’d experienced when he first looked up at her face. “She was … unhappy. She was … asking me for something, wanting something.”

  Felix stood there quietly with his arms folded. But he made no effort to disguise the pain he was feeling.

  “The rain,” said Reuben, “it had no effect on her, on the apparition, whatever it was. She was shining, no, glistening. Felix, she was looking in, wanting something. She was like Peter Quint in The Turn of the Screw. She was looking for someone or something.”

  Silence.

  “What did you feel when you saw her?” Felix asked.

  “Terror,” said Reuben. “And I think she knew it. I think she might have been disappointed.”

  Again, Felix was silent. Then after a moment, he spoke up again, his voice very polite, and calm.

  “Why did you feel terror,” he asked.

  “Because it was … Marchent,” Reuben said, trying not to stammer. “And it had to mean that Marchent is existing somewhere. It had to mean that Marchent is conscious somewhere, and not in some lovely hereafter, but here. Doesn’t it have to mean that?”

  Shame. The old shame. He’d met her, loved her, and failed utterly to stop her murder. Yet from her he had inherited this house.

  “I don’t know what it means,” said Felix. “I have never been a seer of spirits. Spirits come to those who can see them.”

  “You do believe me.”

  “Of course I do,” he said. “It wasn’t some shadowy shape as you’re describing it—.”

  “Utterly clear.” Again his words came in a rush. “I saw the pearls on her negligee. The lace. I saw this old heavy lace, kind of dagged lace along her collar, beautiful lace. And her bracelet, the pearl chain she’d been wearing, when I was with her, this thin little bracelet with silver links and little pearls.”

  “I gave her that bracelet,” Felix said. It was more a sigh than words.

  “I saw her hand. She reached, as if she were going to reach through the glass.” Again there came the prickling on his skin but he fought it. “Let me ask you something,” he continued. “Was she buried here, in some family cemetery or something? Have you been to the grave? I’m ashamed to say I didn’t even think of going there.”

  “Well, you couldn’t have attended any funeral, could you,” said Felix. “You were in the hospital. But I didn’t think there was a funeral. I thought her remains were sent to South America. To tell you the truth, I don’t honestly know if that’s true.”

  “Could it be that she’s not where she wants to be?”

  “I can’t imagine it mattering to Marchent,” said Felix. His voice was unnaturally a monotone. “Not at all, but what do I know about it?”

  “Something’s wrong, Felix, very wrong, or she wouldn’t have come. Look, I’ve never seen a ghost before, never even had a presentiment or a psychic dream.” He thought of Laura saying those very words, more or less, that very evening. “But I know ghost lore. My father claims to have seen ghosts. He doesn’t like to talk about it over a crowded dinner table because people laugh at him. But his grandparents were Irish, and he’s seen more than one ghost. If ghosts look at you, if they know you’re there, well, they want something.”

  “Ah, the Celts and their ghosts,” said Felix, but it was not meant flippantly. He was suffering and the words were like an aside. “They have the gift. I’m not surprised Phil has it. But you can’t talk to Phil about these things.”

  “I know that,” said Reuben. “And yet he’s the very person who might know something.”

  “And the very person who might sense more than you want him to sense, if you begin to tell him about all the things that puzzle you, all the things that have happened to you under this roof.”

  “I know, Felix, don’t worry. I know.”

  He was struck by the somber, bruised expression on Felix’s face. Felix seemed to be flinching under the onslaught of his own thoughts.

  Reuben was ashamed suddenly. He’d been elated by this vision, horrific as it was. He’d been energized by it, and he hadn’t thought for one second about Felix, and what Felix must surely be experiencing just now.

  Felix had brought up Marchent; he had known and loved Marchent in ways that Reuben could scarce imagine, and he, Reuben, was going on and on about this, the apparition having been his, his brilliant and unique possession, and he was suddenly ashamed of himself. “I don’t know what I’m talking about, do I?” he asked. “But I know I saw her.”

  “She died violently,” Felix said in that same low and raw voice. He swallowed, and held the backs of his arms with his hands, a gesture Reuben had never seen in him before. “Sometimes when people die like that, they can’t move on.”

  Neither of them spoke for a long moment, and then Felix moved away, his back to Reuben, nearer to the window.

  Finally in a raw voice he spoke.

  “Oh, why didn’t I come back sooner? Why didn’t I contact her? What was I thinking, to let her go on year after year …?”

  “Please, Felix, don’t blame yourself. You weren’t responsible for what happened.”

  “I abandoned her to time, the way I always abandon them …
,” Felix said.

  Slowly he came back to the warmth of the fire. He sat on the ottoman of the club chair across from Reuben.

  “Can you tell me again how it all happened?” he asked.

  “Yes, she looked right at me,” Reuben said, trying not to give way again to a gush of excited words. “She was right on the other side of the glass. I have no idea how long she’d been there, watching me. I never sat in the window seat before. I always meant to do it, you know, curl up on that red velvet cushion, but I never did it.”

  “She did that all the time when she was growing up,” said Felix. “That was her place. I’d be working in here for hours, and she’d be in that window seat reading. She kept a little stack of books right there, hidden behind the drapery.”

  “Where? On the left side? Did she sit with her back to the left side of the window?”

  “She did, as a matter of fact. The left-hand corner was her corner. I used to tease her about straining her eyes as the sun went down. She’d read there until there was almost no light at all. Even in the coldest winter she liked to read there. She’d come down here in her robe with her heavy socks on and curl up there. And she didn’t want a floor lamp. She said she could see well enough by the light from the desk. She liked it that way.”

  “That’s just what I did,” Reuben said in a small voice.

  There was a silence. The fire had died to embers.

  Finally Reuben stood up. “I’m exhausted. I feel like I’ve been running for miles. All my muscles are aching. I’ve never felt such a need for sleep.”

  Felix rose slowly, reluctantly.

  “Well, tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll make some calls. I’ll talk to her man friend in Buenos Aires. It ought to be easy enough to confirm that she was buried as she wanted to be.”

  He and Felix moved towards the stairs together.

  “There’s something I have to ask,” said Reuben as they went up. “Whatever made you come down when you did? Did you hear a noise, or sense something?”

  “I don’t know,” said Felix. “I woke up. I experienced a kind of frisson, as the French call it. Something was wrong. And then of course I saw you, and I saw that the wolf hair was rising on you. We do signal each other in some impalpable way when we go into the change, you’re aware of that.”

  They paused in the dark upstairs hallway before Felix’s door.

  “You aren’t uneasy being alone now, are you?” Felix asked.

  “No. Not at all,” said Reuben. “It wasn’t that kind of fear. I wasn’t afraid of her or that she’d harm me. It was something else altogether.”

  Felix didn’t move or reach for the doorknob. Then he said, “I wish I’d seen her.”

  Reuben nodded. Of course Felix wished for that. Of course Felix wondered why she would come to Reuben. How could he not wonder about that?

  “But ghosts come to those who can see them, don’t they?” Reuben asked. “That’s what you said. Seems my dad said the same thing once, when my mother was scoffing at the very idea.”

  “Yes, they do,” said Felix.

  “Felix, we have to consider, don’t we, that she wants this house restored to you?”

  “Do we have to consider that?” Felix asked in a dejected voice. He seemed broken, his usual spirit utterly gone. “Why should she want me to have anything, Reuben, after the way I abandoned her?” he asked.

  Reuben didn’t speak. He thought of her vividly, of her face, of the anguished expression, of the way that she had reached towards the window. He shuddered. He murmured, “She’s in pain.”

  He looked at Felix again, vaguely aware that the expression on Felix’s face reminded him horribly of Marchent.

  5

  THE PHONE WOKE HIM EARLY; when he saw Celeste’s name flashing on the screen, he didn’t pick up. In a half sleep he heard her leaving her message. “… and I suppose this is good news for somebody,” she was saying, her voice uncharacteristically flat, “but not for me. I talked to Grace about it, and well, I’m considering Grace’s feelings too. Anyway, I need to see you, because I can’t make a decision here without you.”

  What in the world could she be talking about? He had little interest and little patience. And the strangest most unexpected feeling came over him: he could not remember why he had ever claimed to love Celeste. How had he ever become engaged to her? Why had he ever spent so much time in the company of someone who personally disliked him so much? She had made him so unhappy for so long that the mere sound of her voice now irritated him and bruised him a little, when in fact his mind ought to be on other things.

  Probably Celeste needed permission to marry his best friend, Mort. That was it. That had to be it. It was only two months since he and Celeste had broken their engagement and she was feeling uneasy about the haste. Of course she’d consulted Grace because she loved Grace. Mort and Celeste were regulars in the house on Russian Hill. They’d been dining there three times a week. Mort had always loved Phil. Phil loved to talk about poetry with Mort, and Reuben wondered how that would set with Celeste these days, since she had always thought Phil such a pathetic person.

  As he showered, he reflected that the two people he really wanted to see today were his father, and his brother, Jim.

  Wasn’t there some way to broach the subject of ghosts with Phil without confiding in Phil about what happened?

  Phil had seen spirits, yes, and Phil would have some old folklore wisdom on the matter, undoubtedly, but there was a wall now between Reuben and all those who didn’t share the truths of Nideck Point, and he could not breach that wall.

  As for Jim, he feared Jim’s suspicion of ghosts and spirits would be predictable. No, Jim didn’t believe in the devil, and maybe Jim didn’t believe in God. But he was a priest and he often said the things he thought a priest had to say. Reuben realized that he hadn’t really confided in Jim since the Distinguished Gentlemen had come into his life, and he was ashamed. If he had had to it do over again, Reuben never would have confided in Jim about the Wolf Gift. It had been so unfair.

  After he’d dressed and had his coffee, he called the only person in the world with whom he could share the haunting and that was Laura.

  “Look, don’t drive all the way down here,” Laura immediately offered. “Let’s meet someplace away from the coast. It’s raining in the wine country but probably not as hard.”

  He was all for it.

  It was noon when he reached the plaza in Sonoma, and he saw Laura’s Jeep outside the café. The sun was out, though the pavements were wet, and the center of town was busy as always in spite of the damp chill in the air. He loved Sonoma, and he loved its town plaza. It seemed to him that nothing bad could ever happen in such a gentle, pleasant little California town, and he hoped for a few minutes to browse the shops after lunch.

  As soon as he saw Laura waiting for him at the table, he was struck again by the changes in her. Yes, the darkening blue eyes, and the luxuriant blond hair, and something beyond that, a kind of secretive vitality that seemed to infect her expression and even her smile.

  After he’d ordered the largest sandwich the place had to offer, along with soup and salad, he began to talk.

  Slowly, he poured out the story of the haunting, lingering on every single detail. He wanted Laura to have the entire picture, the sense of the house in its stillness and above all, the vivid intensity of Marchent’s appearance, and the eloquence of Marchent’s gestures and troubled face.

  The crowded café was noisy around them but not so that he had to talk in anything but a confidential voice. Finally he’d reported everything, including his conversation with Felix, and he fell on his soup in his usual wolfish fashion, forgetting manners entirely and drinking all of it straight out of the bowl. Sweet fresh vegetables, thick broth.

  “Well, do you believe me?” he asked. “Do you believe that I actually saw this thing?” He wiped his mouth with the napkin and started in on the salad. “I’m telling you, this was no dream.”

  “Yes, I think
you saw her,” she said. “And obviously Felix didn’t think you imagined this either. I guess what frightens me is you might see her again.”

  He nodded. “But do you believe she’s existing somewhere, I mean the real and true Marchent. Do you believe she’s in some sort of purgatorial state?”

  “I don’t know,” she said frankly. “You’ve heard the word ‘earthbound,’ haven’t you? You know the theories, don’t you, that some ghosts are earthbound spirits, people who have died and simply cannot move on. I don’t know if any of it’s true. I’ve never believed in it much. But the dead person remains out of confusion or some emotional attachment when it should be moving into the light.”

  He shuddered. He had heard those theories. He had heard his father talking of “the earthbound dead.” Phil spoke of the earthbound dead as suffering in a kind of purgatory created for themselves.

  Vague thoughts came back to him of Hamlet’s ghost and its horrifying descriptions of the fires of torment in which it existed. There were literary critics who thought the ghost of Hamlet’s father was actually from hell. But these thoughts were absurd. Reuben didn’t believe in purgatory. He didn’t believe in hell. Actually, he had always found talk of hell highly offensive. He’d always sensed that those who did believe in hell had little or no empathy for those they assumed to be suffering there. Indeed, quite the opposite. Hellfire believers seem to delight in the idea that most of the human race would end up in just such a horrible place.

  “But what does earthbound mean, exactly?” he asked. “Where is Marchent now at this very moment? What is she feeling?” To his mild amazement, Laura was actually eating her food. Quickly cutting several pieces of veal European style, she devoured them and moved on through the plate of scaloppine without stopping for breath. When the waitress set down the roast beef sandwich, naturally he snapped back to the task at hand.

  “I don’t know,” said Laura. “These souls, assuming they exist at all, are trapped, clinging to what they can see and hear of us and our world.”