The Dark on the Other Side

I

SHE MOVED VERY SLOWLY. WHEN SHE REACHED THE couch, she stood motionless for several long moments. He could see the knife distinctly now, it was only inches from his face. It hung from fingers so lax that they seemed about to lose their grip altogether. He could hear her breathing. It was quick and deep, long gasps of effort.

Her fingers tightened and her arm began to move. Up-slowly, in abrupt jerks and starts, as if struggling against a force that tried to hold it. Michael watched in an unholy fascination; the whole bizarre episode might have been happening to someone else, with himself an unwilling and helpless spectator. Now her arm was high above her head. A strained, impractical position for a downward blow…The arm started down.

Michael moved. To his outraged nerves it seemed as if the whole thing were taking place in slow motion: that he had an infinite amount of time in which to act before the knife struck. In an almost leisurely movement his right arm lifted and his fingers clamped around the wrist of the hand that held the knife.

His touch affected her like a jolt of electric current; every muscle in her body stiffened, her wrist twisted frantically in his grasp. She screamed, a thin, high sound that was more like the voice of an animal in agony than anything human. It was the scream as much as anything else that made Michael take more than defensive action. A few more moments of that, and someone would call a cop.

He tried not to hurt her. Rolling sideways off the couch, he pulled her down with him, pinning her kicking legs with his body, his right hand still tight around her wrist, his left fumbling for her mouth. They struggled in darkness; the back of the couch cut off the feeble light from the bedroom. He could feel her struggling, feel the writhing of her lips against his palm. He had half expected the maniacal strength he had read about, but he encountered very little difficulty; she was a small woman, and it took only seconds to immobilize and quiet her. Flaccid and cold under his hands, she lay still. He couldn’t even feel her breathing.

It never occurred to him that her collapse might have been a ruse. He scrambled up. His need for light was more than a need to see, it was a craving for the power that opposed the dark.

She looked like a sick child in a sleep troubled by pain-tumbled hair, pale face, mouth drawn down in a pathetic grimace. She was wearing his old bathrobe, which had helped to hamper her movements; the struggle had torn it open, but she was still wearing her slip and underclothing. Michael revised his comparison. Not a child, no. But she looked pitifully young. The wrist he had twisted seemed too fragile to resist the lightest touch. By her right hand lay his big carving knife.

Michael kicked it out of the way. He knelt down and put his ear to her breast. Faint and abnormally slow, but it was there-the pounding of her heart. He straightened, studying the pale face with a mixture of different terrors. The closed lids veiled the eyes; he wondered what he would see in those eyes when the lids lifted.

After a moment he stood up and went into the bedroom. When he came back, she hadn’t moved. Carefully he wrapped the bathrobe around her; the coldness of her skin and the sluggish pulse suggested shock. Then he set about the rest of the job. His mouth was set in a tight, twisted line as, using the neckties he had brought from the bedroom, he tied her wrists and ankles together.

A pale, ugly dawn was breaking before she came to. Michael had tried everything he could think of to bring her out of her faint-wondering, all the while, whether he really wanted her to wake up. Faces in sleep or unconsciousness were like blank pages; waking intelligence, the expression of eyes and mouth, are what give individuality and character. What would he see when her eyes opened? The face, now familiar and beloved, of the girl he wanted; or the Medea figure who had stood over him with a knife?

He had carried her back into the bedroom and piled every blanket he owned over the waxen body. He had bathed her face and rubbed her wrists. The slow, mechanical breathing did not change; the muscles of face and body remained flaccid. And the night wore on. It seemed to Michael at times as if the sun would never rise, as if some astronomical miscalculation had stopped the earth on its axis. Then the first sullen streaks stained the clouds; and her eyes opened.

Michael saw what he had hoped, but not really expected, to see. His relief was so great that he dropped with a thud onto the edge of the bed. But the realization that dawned in her face, as memory returned, was almost worse than the madness he had feared. Her horror and consternation were genuine; if he had had any lingering doubts of her honesty, they vanished then. Her eyes moved from his face, downward, toward her bound wrists and ankles. They were hidden under the piles of blankets, but he knew she could feel the bonds.

“I’ll take them off,” he said quickly. “I just wasn’t sure…It’s all right now, I’ll get them off…”

He turned the covers back, and she twisted frantically away from his hands.

“No-no! Leave them on, don’t let me-”

“It’s gone,” Michael said, hardly knowing what he was saying. “It’s all right.”

“How do you know?” Her voice was quieter, under a fierce control, but she still held herself away from him. Michael’s hands dropped back onto the blankets.

“Don’t you see,” she went on, “that we can’t take the chance? I can’t take it, even if you will. Call your friend. Call Bellevue, some hospital. And leave me tied until they come for me.”

Michael shook his head dumbly. He was incapable of speech, but she read his face, and her own expression changed. Her eyes flickered and then dropped away from his.

“All right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I was upset. Untie me.”

She held her bound wrists toward him. The cloth was soft, and he had not tied the knots tightly; but he saw the red marks on her wrists, and his first impulse was to do as she asked. Yet he hesitated-noting her reluctance to meet his eyes, remembering the quick, cunning expression that had flickered across her face.

“What will you do if I untie you?” he asked.

Her silence was all the answer he needed. The minute his back was turned, she would run, and not stop running until she had found a safe padded cell in which to hide. She might even go back to Gordon, she was desperate enough for that… And through the black despair that enveloped him he felt an incongruous flash of something like triumph. She hadn’t reacted this way after her attempt on Gordon. Rather than risk hurting him, she would run to meet the fate she had been fleeing.

“No,” he said decisively. “Not that way, Linda.”

Her eyes blazed up at him, and she started to speak. The words caught in her throat as they heard the sound of a knock at the front door.

The same idea came to both their minds simultaneously: Gordon. Michael moved just in time to stop the scream that had gathered in her throat. He knew what she meant to do, and he knew what his course of action must be. The struggle was short but ugly, because now he was not fighting some sick manifestation of hate, but Linda herself. When he stood up, he was wet with perspiration. His stomach contracted in a spasm of sickness as he looked down at the writhing figure on the bed-gagged with a towel, its wrists and ankles tied firmly to the bedposts. The knock was repeated. It had come again twice while he was…Whoever it was must know he was there.

Michael turned on his heel and went out, closing the bedroom door tightly behind him. As he reached the front door the knock was repeated. He wrenched the door open with a violence that did little to relieve his fury and frustration. He was almost hoping that his surmise was correct. It would have been a pleasure to get his hands on Randolph.

But it was not Randolph. It was his secretary.

“Good morning,” Briggs said politely.

Michael stared back at him, deflated and uncertain. He was not sure of Briggs’s role. Involved he must be, but perhaps only as one of Gordon’s blinded disciples. If that was the case…Michael’s stomach contracted as he remembered what lay on the bed in the next room. Linda wouldn’t be the only one to be locked up if Briggs happened to see that pretty picture.

“Good morning,” he answered, wondering how his voice could sound so normal. “Looking for something?”

Briggs blinked; a sly, appreciative smile moved his mouth. The expression was so ugly that Michael fell back a step. Briggs took advantage of his movement to enter.

The man was dressed in an imitation of Gordon’s impeccable taste. The suit had been well fitted; but not even Savile Row could have done much with Briggs’s figure. The expensive leather belt had slid down below the equator of his round belly, and the Italian silk tie curved out to follow the hump. In his hand Briggs held a hat. He put it down on a table and glanced around the room.

“Nice place you have here,” he said.

There was no sound from the bedroom. Michael wondered whether Linda had recognized Briggs’s voice and found him too much even for her new resolution. He couldn’t risk it, though. He had to get the man out of here.

“I don’t like to seem inhospitable,” he said, “but I’m just about to go out.”

It was such a glaring lie, considering the hour and the state of Michael’s apparel, that Briggs didn’t bother to comment. But another of those faint, unpleasant smiles touched his pale mouth.

“Oh, I shan’t stay. I just came by at Mr. Randolph’s request. You haven’t seen anything of Mrs. Randolph, I suppose?”

A series of soft thuds came from behind the closed door. Michael glanced at it.

“That damned cat,” he said.

“Your cat? How nice that you have a pet.”

“If you don’t mind…” Michael felt he couldn’t control himself much longer. In about thirty seconds he was going to grab Briggs by the collar of his pretty suit and heave him out the door.

“Yes…You see, there was a sad occurrence last night. You remember our local witch, I’m sure. Apparently she got carried away by one of her experiments and set her house on fire.”

“Really?” His tone didn’t even convince Michael himself, but suddenly he no longer cared. Briggs knew. He knew all about everything.

“Yes,” Briggs cooed. “Very sad. Burned to a crisp, the poor old lady was. Well, naturally Mr. Randolph thought Linda might have been involved.”

“Linda,” Michael repeated.

“I think of her that way,” Briggs said, with an indescribable smirk. “I wish we could find her, helpher… She’s a beautiful young lady. A shameto have all that go to waste in some asylum.”

Two things kept Michael from planting his fist right in the center of Briggs’s leer. One was the thought that it would be like hitting a fat woman. The other was the knowledge that Briggs was trying to anger him into an indiscreet act.

“How is Mr. Randolph?” he asked.

“Not well.” Briggs shook his head sadly. “He’s very upset, naturally. Knowing Linda’s sad history as he does, he wondered about what happened to Andrea. Luckily the evidence was destroyed. The body, I mean.”

“I’m late now,” Michael said.

“How thoughtless of me to keep you, then.” Briggs turned toward the door. Then he made a sudden dart to the side, his pudgy hand shooting out.

“Here it is,” he exclaimed guilelessly, holding up a small black notebook. “Mr. Randolph thought he might have misplaced it here.”

Michael looked at it.

“ Randolph ’s? But it must have been here for days. I never saw it.”

“Somehow it seems to have worked its way under a heap of magazines,” Briggs said blandly. “You busy writers aren’t the neatest housekeepers in the world, are you? He’ll be glad to have this back. And to think this was the reason why he asked me to stop by. I declare I’d have forgotten to ask if I hadn’t seen it, peeping out. Well, then…”

“Wait a minute,” Michael said. An insane suspicion had entered his mind. “Let me see that.”

Briggs surrendered the notebook without comment. Only his raised eyebrows indicated courteous surprise.

Michael flipped through the pages of the notebook. It was an ordinary little loose-leaf pad, except that its cover was of tooled leather instead of plastic. It was certainly not Michael’s property, and the handwriting on the pages resembled what he remembered of Gordon’s script. The entries were cryptic and abbreviated; they might have been written in the sort of personal shorthand a busy man had developed in order to jot down appointments and reminders. A few of the signs reminded Michael of chemical or mathematical symbols.

With some reluctance he returned the notebook to Briggs. He had an odd feeling that if he could study those entries at leisure, he might learn something important. But he couldn’t refuse to let the man have it, and the need to get Briggs out was stronger than any possible gain from the book.

“Well, I must be running along,” Briggs said affably. “I hope you’ll excuse the intrusion, at this hour. I have a busy day ahead of me. Oh, and by the way…”

Already in the doorway, he turned.

“If Linda should turn up, do be kind to the poor girl.”

“Naturally.”

“But don’t forget…”

“Forget what?” Michael snapped.

“She might be dangerous,” Briggs said softly. “Be careful.”

He went out, and just in time; the itching in Michael’s fingers was almost intolerable. He slammed the door and leaned against it, twisting his hands together. When he was able to speak without stammering, he went back to the bedroom.

She lay quiet, staring at him over the gag, her eyes liquid and enormous. Michael took the gag off and untied the cords that held her down. Neither spoke. He sat down on the edge of the bed, knowing he dared not touch her, and watched the tears slide down her cheeks and soak into the pillow on either side of her face.

II

Michael put down the telephone.

“They expect him tonight or early tomorrow,” he said. Sun streamed in the window. It was mid-morning, and a beautiful spring day. Outside. The room had another atmosphere. They had both fought their way back to some kind of calm, but the air was cold with tension.

“Tonight,” Linda repeated thoughtfully.

“Or tomorrow. He never knows till the last minute what plane he’ll be catching. Usually he wires to let them know, but not always; he drives himself, so he doesn’t have to be met.”

Michael knew he must sound like a host trying to entertain an unwanted guest. He couldn’t help it; something had happened to his brain. Up to this point he had been able to consider and discuss everything that had happened; he had even been able to apply logic to a concept that was considered to be beyond logic. But last night…His mind balked at that, he couldn’t even think about it, much less discuss it. He was behaving as if it hadn’t happened. Which was not only stupid; it was potentially dangerous.

He looked at Linda. Sitting upright on the bed, she sipped her coffee. Her hands were free, but her ankles were still bound; at her insistence, he had again fastened them to the footboard of the bed. He had felt sick while doing it, and he felt sick every time he looked. But it was a small price to pay for the composure of her face. She had fought this latest catastrophe, and come through it, as she had come through all the others; but he thought that she must be like someone clinging to a single strand of rope, over an abyss, slipping inexorably down each time her grasp on reality failed. The frantic hands might tighten, temporarily stopping the descent, or even claw their way back up the rope, a few precious inches toward safety. But inevitably the grasp would weaken again, and each time the fall would be arrested a little farther down, toward the end of the rope and the final plunge.

“I left a message,” he said. “Asking him to call the minute he gets in.”

“We’re acting like children,” Linda said. “Waiting for this man as if he were God, or…Why do you think he can help us?”

“I don’t. I just don’t know what else to do.”

“How is your arm?”

“Hurts. It’s not that, nor the fact that I’m bushed. Something’s happened to what passes for my brain. I can’t…I can’t think.”

“Physical exhaustion doesn’t help,” she said, with a briskness that was contradicted by the tenderness of her mouth. They both knew that they could not afford an exchange of sympathies. In a battle, minor wounds must go untended.

“My own brain isn’t working very well either,” she went on. “But one thing is clear, Michael. I can’t spend another night with you.”

“It’s a good thing nobody is listening to this conversation,” Michael said wryly.

She gave him a strained smile.

“I mean it, though.”

“Why is it night you’re afraid of? Isn’t that childish too?”

“Fear of the dark…Maybe. But everything that has happened so far happened at night.”

“When the powers of evil walk abroad…”

“You see? It means something to you. What was it you said, last night-about the dark on the other side?”

Michael twitched uncomfortably.

“Kwame-Joe Schwartz-said that. About Gordon. He was talking about the old Platonic image of the shadows on the wall of the cave, but it turned me cold to hear him, I can tell you. Not the shadows, but the Things that cast the shadows, the Things that prowl the dark, on the other side of the fire. Gordon knows about them, he said. It was pretty obvious that he did, too.”

“Poor Joe.”

“He takes dope,” Michael said. “Some kind of hallucinogenic.”

“But you don’t. Why does the phrase make you so uncomfortable?”

“Racial memory?” Michael offered wildly. “Some hairy, beetle-browed ancestor of mine, squatting in his cave, with his puny fire and his club the only defense against the things that prowled outside in the dark. Saber-toothed tigers and mastodons…”

There was no answering spark of amusement in her face.

“Go on,” she said.

“Well…Too many horror stories when I was a kid. The other side of what? Eternity? The threshold of this world? The doorway that separates the living from the dead? Spiritualists talk about ‘the other world,’ don’t they, to describe the region from which they get their communications?” He was getting interested; he went on, catching the impressions as they floated up into consciousness. “When Kwame talked of the dark on the other side of the fire, he was thinking of The Republic, but also of that other image. This world, narrow and circumscribed as opposed to the spiritual reality of the other side. The dark…That idea is not in Plato, damn it, if I remember my classics, which I probably don’t. For him, the non-material, ideal world was one of light, of true consciousness. A spiritualist would see it that way, too. What do the discarnate entities keep mumbling when they are asked about their world?”

“Sunshine, light, flowers, love,” Linda said promptly.

“Right. So why does this world of light and flowers seem to Kwame to be transmuted into darkness-not empty night, but a place where shadows live? Darkness and light, the primeval symbols of evil and good; the notion of a balance of forces, eternally warring, never ending. There are times, for everyone, when he feels himself the plaything of forces from somewhere outside, forces beyond his control, which strike him when he least expects it. ‘Out of the night that covers me…’”

“Imagery, poetic,” Linda said, as his voice trailed away. “It’s frightening, though, isn’t it? ‘Black as the pit from pole to pole…’”

“Poetic imagery is part of the picture I get. Black as the pit…black as Hell…There’s a nice conventional image of fire and darkness for you.”

“The familiar Calvinist Hell.”

“It’s funny,” Michael went on thoughtfully, “how many of the pre-Christian afterworlds were dark. That terrible twilight place the classical poets describe, where the dead speak with faint voices like the piping of birds… Didn’t the Egyptians go down under the earth into darkness where the sun-god never came?”

“You’re out of my field,” Linda said.

“Darkness and light, black and white; even the colors have symbolism. White is the color of purity, the garments of the Virgin and the priest… What’s the matter?”

“Sorry. It reminded me of Briggs, and every time I think of him I get a chill.”

“Why Briggs?” Michael grinned. “Not the color of purity, surely.”

“Didn’t you know? No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Gordon must have told you about Briggs’s being unfairly dismissed from his job, and all that? He never told you what the job was, though… Briggs is an unfrocked priest.”

“What?”

“I guess that sounds melodramatic. Actually, he was a student for the priesthood. They threw him out. Very politely, I imagine. I can also imagine why.”

“My God…Linda, what is Briggs? I mean, what role does he play in relation to Gordon?”

“I’ve wondered so often myself. Sometimes I think he’s just another victim, but a willing one. Sometimes I see him as the éminence grise behind Gordon’s latest activities. They’re hand in glove, anyway, never doubt that.”

Her face was averted, her voice rapid. She could hardly speak of the man, her loathing was so great. Michael realized that the basis for her aversion was more than a spiritual rejection. Perhaps it had not been Briggs’s dabbling in questionable theology that had caused his expulsion, but rather his inability to conform to the basic tenets of the priestly orders. He wondered whether Gordon was aware of his colleague’s attitude toward his wife; and knew that, if Gordon was what they had conjectured him to be, this would only be another weapon in his hands.

In the middle of the afternoon, Napoleon returned.

Michael hadn’t noticed his long absence; he had too many other things to worry about. He was in the kitchen making another pot of coffee when the heavy body thudded down onto the counter; and then he remembered that Napoleon never missed coming home for breakfast.

He reached out for the animal, expecting the usual snarl and rebuff. But Napoleon’s lackluster stare remained fixed on thin air and he did not move. Michael passed his hands over the cat’s body. He found no new wounds. Whatever else he had been doing, Napoleon had not been fighting. Which was in itself a sign of something wrong.

Lifting the unresponsive bulk, he carried it into the bedroom.

“He’s sick,” he said, sounding like a nervous parent.

Linda looked up from the book she was not reading.

“Let me see.”

Michael dumped the cat onto her lap and Linda investigated.

“I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “He’s a mess-why don’t you chaperon him better?-but what’s left of his fur feels sleek enough. And his eyes look okay…”

Returning her look owlishly, Napoleon made the rusty grinding noise that passed for a purr. When Michael reached out for him, he eluded his master’s hand with the old agility, and leaped down off the bed. Michael trailed along after him while Napoleon made a thorough inspection of the apartment, from bathroom to kitchen. Having arrived at his food dish, he squatted down in front of it and began to gulp with a ravenous intensity that relieved much of Michael’s worry.

He wandered back into the bedroom.

“He’s eating.”

“I expect he’s all right, then. Michael…Would you think me ridiculous if I found his return reassuring?”

“I never thought of that. Hell, honey, it’s illogical. Cats are supposed to fawn on demons.”

She didn’t answer. Michael sat down wearily on the edge of the bed and put his hand on her ankles. He ran his finger under the thick silk, making sure it was not too tight.

“Don’t,” she said.

“It’s stupid,” Michael burst out. “You can untie it yourself any time you want to.”

“But it would take time. You’d have some warning.”

“For God’s sake-”

“What time is it?’”

“About two.”

“Don’t lie.”

“All right! Three. Well, maybe three thirty…”

“Another hour,” she said. “We must leave a wide margin.”

“I’ll call Galen again.”

“You’ve called twice in the last hour. They’ll give him your message.”

“And if he doesn’t come by the time your deadline is up?”

“I won’t stay here tonight.”

“A hotel room won’t be any safer,” Michael said, deliberately misunderstanding her.

“It’s not a hotel room I’m contemplating.”

“Linda, you can’t do that! If you get yourself committed to some hospital, the only one who could possibly get you out is Gordon himself. I don’t even have the legal right to ask questions. You can’t lock yourself into a room and throw away the key.”

“I will not stay here tonight.”

“You’ll have to,” Michael said. “I won’t let you go.”

She looked up at him, a pale ghost of humor in her face.

“Funny. You’re driven to the same extremity I tried to force you to earlier. Yes, you can keep me here. Bound and gagged…Have you thought about how it would look, if someone forced his way in and found me like that?”

“Constantly,” Michael said with a groan.

“And you’d risk that?”

Michael reached out for her, compulsively, but she fended him off with a strength that had panic behind it.

“Don’t, don’t ever do that! You kissed me last night, before-”

“You don’t mean…” Michael hesitated. He was surprised, and disgusted, to realize that his predominant emotion was jealousy.

“There may be a connection,” she said. Her eyes refused to meet his. “I won’t…go into details. But there may be.”

“I see.”

“That would have to be one of the conditions we must agree to, if I do stay.”

“I’m not that big a fool,” Michael said roughly. “Even if I do act like it most of the time. What other conditions?”

“Have you got any sleeping pills?”

“Never use the things. What makes you think they would help? I’d be inclined to suspect the reverse. The less control you have over your conscious mind…”

“Since you don’t have any, there’s not much point in debating that.”

“How true. Anything else?”

“Find a key for that door. And barricade it.”

“Honey, for the love of Mike-what if there’s a fire, or a burglar, or-something else? We can’t anticipate his moves; he might do anything. If I couldn’t get to you-”

“It’s a risk we must take.” Her eyes were hard as stone; the eyes of a fanatic. “Another thing. I want you to search this place from top to bottom. Make sure Gordon hasn’t left any other little souvenirs, like the notebook.”

“You think…?”Michael cogitated. “I wonder.”

“I’m not thinking, I’m just grasping at straws. But according to some occult theories, there must be a physical connection between the spell and the person whom it is meant to affect-like the doll, which uses the victim’s own hair or nail clippings. Why not a physical connection, a focus, for the warlock’s spells? Gordon isn’t careless about his belongings. That notebook was left here deliberately.”

“I agree. I’m sloppy, but not unconscious; the book was planted under a pile of material I wouldn’t ordinarily refer to. Wait a minute. If your theory is right, he must have planted something at Andrea’s house.”

“He’s been there any number of times.”

“He went there looking for you, before you came here the first time,” Michael said. “He admitted entering the house.”

“So it’s possible. I’m not sure of this, Michael. I think it’s worth checking, though.”

“I’m trying to figure out when he could have hidden the notebook.”

“Hiding it wouldn’t take more than a few seconds. It must have been here for several days, Michael. Because the summoning that brought you to Andrea’s didn’t come from me. There’s only one person who could have sent it.”

“The idea had occurred to me. But I can’t think of any reason why he should do such a thing.”

“His reasons aren’t comprehensible to normal people. I can think of an analogy, though: the pathologically jealous husband who keeps accusing his wife of infidelity until finally, in sheer desperation, she goes out and acquires a lover.”

“Yeah, I knew a guy like that. His wife finally left him, and he took it as proof that he’d been right about her all along. All right.” Michael stood up. “I’ll search the place. The fact that Briggs was so ostentatious about removing the notebook might have been a bluff, to conceal the existence of something else.”

He was not willing to admit, even to himself, the flaw in his reasoning: that if Briggs had removed the notebook, it might be because Gordon no longer needed it. Once the link was established…

When he had finished his search, the apartment was neater than it had been for months. He found nothing, but he was aware that the negative results were not conclusive. Unless he tore furniture and walls to pieces, he could not be sure that some small object was not still concealed.

He searched the bedroom last, at Linda’s request; he knew that, as twilight closed in, she wanted him near by, where he could watch her. She seemed convinced of her theory of a physical link; Michael found it weaker and less convincing the longer he thought about it.

Napoleon, fully restored to health and malevolence, was still with them. Curled up on the foot of the bed, he watched Michael suspiciously.

Michael backed out of the interior of the wardrobe, carrying the pile of dirty shirts he had inspected several times before. He shook each one out, feeling in the pockets, and dropping them one by one to the floor as he finished. He viewed the untidy pile indecisively, and then shrugged and left it there.

“Can you think of any place I missed?” he asked.

“No.” Linda’s voice was strained. “Michael, it’s almost dark.”

“Not yet.”

“Yes. Now.” She held out her hands.

When he had done it, Michael was shaking. It got worse every time he did it. Napoleon’s disapproval didn’t help matters. The cat protested so violently that Michael finally had to shut him in the bathroom.

“All right,” he said, straightening up after he had tied the final knot. “That’s it. I’m not going to gag you, I don’t see the need for it; and anyhow, it is simply too goddamn much for me to stomach.”

“Okay,” she said submissively.

Michael had turned on the lights; the darkness outside was complete. The lamp by the bed cast a warm glow on Linda’s face, and he was outraged to see that she was smiling. Maybe she felt better this way. He sure as hell didn’t.

He couldn’t look at her any longer. He couldn’t stand the thoughts that kept worming into his mind. Abruptly, he turned and blundered out of the room; when he was out of her sight he leaned up against the wall, his head resting on his arm. It was barely seven o’clock. How in the name of God was he going to get through the rest of the night?

It was the hour of midnight he dreaded most. Superstition…but no more mad than any of the other things that had happened. He forced himself back to Linda and found, as people usually do, that he could stand it, and would stand it, because he had to.

They talked, but no longer of theories and interpretations. They spoke of defense, like the decimated garrison of a beleaguered fortress. But the weapons they discussed were not in any modern arsenal.

“I don’t happen to have any holy water on hand,” Michael said, driven to a fruitless sarcasm. “Ran out last week…It didn’t help Andrea, remember?”

“Could you-could you pray?” she asked diffidently.

“No.” Michael looked at her. “Yes. I could pray. If I knew What to pray to.”

The idea came into both their minds at the same moment, or else she read his face with uncanny quickness.

“You can’t do that,” she said.

“Why not? If we’re right-or even if we’re wrong. Any kind of mental assurance, confidence-”

“Not that kind, no-there’s a limit, Michael. It would be spiritual prostitution, unimaginably worse than any physical contamination. You couldn’t do it-not if you really believed. And if you didn’t, it would just be a dirty game.”

Again Michael was reminded of the gulf between their minds. His idea of trying to fight Gordon on his own ground had been partly a counsel of desperation, partly an academic theory. There was nothing academic about Linda’s attitude; she looked sick with disgust.

“Besides,” she went on; her voice was shaking. “Besides, you’d be a novice, a probationer. He’s studied these things for years. All you would do is weaken yourself, don’t you see? He could walk right into your mind and destroy it.”

“Okay, okay. It was just an idea. Then what can we do?”

Linda relaxed.

“Do you love me?” she asked.

The question was so unexpected that it caught Michael off guard.

“Someone asked me that, once,” he said slowly.

“Well?”

“I said I didn’t know what the word meant. I still don’t. But I love you.”

“Then love me. No-” His hand came toward her and she shook her head. “Don’t touch me, don’t think of touching me. Think of love. Not of desire; they aren’t the same. I don’t know what love means either. But most people confuse loving with being loved. Love isn’t reciprocal. It doesn’t ask, or expect, or demand. It isn’t an emotion, it’s a state of being. Love me, Michael.”

“It sounds rather one-sided to me,” Michael said; for the life of him, he could not have kept the bitterness out of his voice. “And also rather esoteric. You aren’t talking to Saint Francis, you know.”

“I noticed that… Oh, Michael, I’m sorry! I’m sorry you’re involved in this, I’m sorry for talking to you like a third-rate mystic, I’m sorriest of all for asking, demanding, and not offering you anything in return. I haven’t anything to give, not any longer. I did once; I think I did… But I lost it, somewhere along the way, when Gordon taught me his way of loving. He does love me, you know. He calls it that. And I’m almost as bad as he is now; the only difference is that I know that that insatiable demand is not love, but a perversion of it. That’s why I can’t fight him. But you can.”

Without answering, Michael stood up and walked across the room. From Linda’s earnest confusion of half-digested philosophy he derived only despair. Even if they fought their way out of the present crisis, there was no future for him with a woman who was literally frightened to death of loving. She was sick, incurably sick, if she could believe what she said she believed. Like most theories, hers sounded fine on the surface; but if love was not reciprocal, only the saints could derive much satisfaction from it. A normal human being had only so much to give without getting something in return. Depletion was inevitable.

And this present situation, which she had talked him into, was impossible. Linda was immobilized, defenseless. If she was wrong-and she had to be wrong!-about her idea of vulnerability through the lack of love, then he was as susceptible to mental invasion as she was. The logic of Gordon’s next move came to him so strongly that it was as if he had read the other’s mind. Even if Linda had not been bound, she would be no match for him; he was stronger and heavier. She could scream; and she would, as long as she had breath left with which to scream, long enough for the neighbors to call the police, who would not arrive in time… They would find him standing there, over the bloody thing on the bed. Gordon would keep control over him that long. Just that long. He would release the mental bonds in time for Michael to see, and comprehend, what he had done…

Just in time, Michael realized what was happening. He flung himself around, grasping blindly at the first solid object that came within reach. Something rocked under the thrust of his body, something fell and crashed; and he found himself leaning against the big dresser, his arms grasping it as a drowning man would clutch an oar. A broken ashtray lay on the floor. His face was streaming with perspiration, and his heart pounded as if he had been running a race. Something else was pounding-an irate neighbor, from the floor below. The howls of Napoleon, imprisoned in the bathroom, were loud enough to wake the dead.

“Michael! Michael-is something wrong?”

How long had she been calling him? With an enormous effort, Michael removed his hands from the dresser and turned around.

“It’s all right,” he said thickly; and then said it again, because his voice had been almost inaudible.

He saw Linda staring at him. There was concern in her face, but no fear; apparently the meaning of his sudden movement had escaped her.

“What is it?” she repeated.

“Liver, or something,” Michael said promptly. His voice and body were once again under his control. The mental grasp had left his mind, but he derived no comfort from his victory. This might have been only a preliminary, testing thrust. He knew that he did not dare tell Linda what had happened.

“Hadn’t you better let Napoleon out?” she asked. “He’s beside himself.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.”

Michael opened the door warily, putting himself into a posture of defense. Napoleon’s shrieks stopped abruptly, but he did not appear; looking around the corner of the door, Michael saw him crouched in the farthest corner, behind the hamper.

“It’s all right,” he said. “You can come out now.”

The cat refused to move until Linda called him. He curled up on the foot of the bed.

“I’ll make some coffee,” Michael mumbled, and fled without waiting for an answer.

He got to the kitchen before his legs gave way, and collapsed into a chair, letting his head drop down onto the table. For a long time he sat and shook, while his mind raced desperately from one blank wall to another. He had thought, when he fought Linda for his life, that that was the worst thing that could happen. He knew now that he had yet to experience the worst. If he hurt Linda, Gordon wouldn’t have to take any further steps; he would sit screaming in a cell for the rest of his life, until he found some means of ending it. And even this might not be the ultimate disaster. Gordon had a fertility of imagination that was far beyond his own feeble concepts of evil…

And the end of it all was that there was nothing he could do. He was boxed into a corner. Whatever he did now would be dangerous. He could lock himself in one room and Linda in another; but his controlled mind would find some means of breaking through any barricade he could construct. He could go out, and smash a window, or insult a cop, and maybe get thrown in jail-if he could find a cop willing to arrest him. That would leave Linda alone, at the mercy of whatever attack Gordon planned next. He could let the police take Linda-which would be just what Gordon wanted. If he untied her, and begged her to immobilize him, she would know what had happened, and with her susceptibility to suggestion-or mental control, call it what you liked-she would then become his Nemesis, instead of the reverse. There was no way out.

The sound of knocking roused him, after a timeless interval of sheer despair; and he was, somehow, not surprised to realize that his lips were moving soundlessly in words he hadn’t used since childhood. He moved like a machine to answer the door. Neither hope nor fear drove him; he was simply geared to accept, and deal with, whatever was there.

For a few seconds after he had opened the door he stood with his mouth slightly ajar, assessing the man on the threshold as he might have studied a perfect stranger. The tall, spare figure and unlined face; the odd, silvery-gray eyes and the close-cropped hair that was a matching silver…Galen had been gray ever since Michael had known him. He carried a light suitcase and a top-coat. No hat. Galen never wore a hat.

Michael stepped back, throwing the door wide.

“How did you know I wanted you?” he asked.

“I called from the airport,” Galen said prosaically. He threw his coat onto a chair and put his case down on the floor beside it. “Henry said you’d been phoning all day.”

His gaze swept the room and returned to Michael; and the latter was conscious of his appearance, which was both haggard and unkempt. He ran his hand self-conciously over the stubble of beard on his jaw and glanced down at his unspeakable shirt-rumpled, sweat-stained, dirty-before meeting Galen’s eyes.

“I’m glad you’re back,” he said inadequately.

“Why?”

Michael opened his mouth, and closed it again. Coherent explanation was beyond him.

“You might as well see the worst,” he said. “Come into the bedroom.”

He had always admired Galen’s phlegm, and wondered what degree of shock it would take to startle him out of it. He found out. Galen paled visibly at the sight that met his eyes.

Flat on the bed, arms outstretched and bound, ankles tied to the footboard, Linda looked like a character out of one of the books Michael never read, much less wrote. Apparently she had recognized Galen’s voice; she was not surprised to see him, but she blushed slightly as the incredulous gray eyes swept over her.

“It isn’t what you think,” she said.

“I’m not sure what I think.” Galen sat down in the nearest chair. “Give me a minute to catch my breath. Michael…”

Michael talked. It was an unspeakable relief; he knew how Linda had felt all those months, bottling up her fears. He talked without critical intent or editing, mixing theory and fact, interpretation and actuality. And Galen listened. He blinked, a little more often than was normal, but his face had smoothed out into its professional mask. Michael finished with an account of the mental attack he had just experienced. Linda, who was hearing this for the first time, gasped audibly, but Galen went on nodding.

“Well, well,” he said, after Michael’s voice had stopped. “No wonder you look like hell.”

“Is that all you can say?”

“What do you want me to say?” He glanced from one of them to the other, and smiled faintly. “If it comes to that-what do you want me to do? Put on my wizard’s robes and exorcise the devil?”

Michael sat down on the bed. He grinned.

“I rather expected you to put in a call for the men in the white coats, and order rooms for two.”

“I may yet,” Galen said coolly. “You realize-neither of you is unintelligent-that everything you’ve told me can be explained in terms of pathological mental conditions?”

Michael glanced apprehensively at Linda and was reassured by what he saw. The strain, the underlying fear were still there, but Galen’s comment had not shaken her. She had anticipated it. Perversely, he was moved to marshal the very arguments he had once demolished himself.

“Andrea’s death?”

Galen shrugged.

“The phenomenon is sometimes called thanatomania. With the heart condition you mentioned, the result was virtually a foregone conclusion. I’ve seen several cases myself where there was no diagnosable organic weakness. You must have read the newspaper accounts, a few years ago, of an excellent example of thanatomania. The woman had been told, by a soothsayer, that she would die on a certain date. She died. In a modern hospital, under professional care.”

“I read about it,” Michael admitted unwillingly. “What about the dog, then? I saw it too.”

“Then the dog is a collective hallucination, or a real dog.”

“Hallucinations don’t bite,” Michael said.

Galen glanced at the dirty bandage on his arm.

“I’ll have a look at that later,” he said calmly. “Aside from my concern, personal and professional, for your physical health, I’d like to examine the marks.”

Bemused by fatigue and relief, Michael grappled with that one for several seconds before he understood enough to get angry.

“Another example of thanatomania?” he said sarcastically.

Galen’s tone of annoyance was indicative; he usually had better control of himself.

“Good God Almighty, Michael, do I have to synopsize the professional journals? You’ve read enough of the popular literature to know that patients have inflicted everything from fake stigmata to signs of rape on themselves, in order to prove whatever point they feel they must make. And don’t try to tell me you aren’t deeply enough involved, emotionally, with Mrs. Randolph, to be suggestible.”

Linda spoke for the first time.

“So involved that he would be forced to concoct a crazy theory in order to excuse my attempt to kill him.” It was a statement, not a question. Galen nodded, watching her. She went on calmly, “Yes, I can understand that kind of reasoning. But I do have one question, Doctor. Why did you give Michael his father’s letters?”

Galen’s slow, close-lipped smile spread across his face.

“The first sensible question anyone has asked yet,” he said. “The answer is complex, however. I suggest we adjourn.”

“Where?” Michael asked.

“My house, naturally. I want to have a look at that arm. And I agree that, for whatever reason, this atmosphere is unhealthy for both of you. Pack a bag, Michael, while I untie Mrs. Randolph.”

Michael turned to obey, but he was diverted by the spectacle of Galen, every professional hair in place, calmly untying the knots that bound Linda to the bed. Glancing up, Galen met his eyes and smiled affably.

“This is not, by any means, my most unusual experience,” he said, and turned his attention back to his work.