Chapter Four

John Tracker’s great grandfather on his father’s mother’s side was named Able Rothstein, an immigrant. Able met Maggie, the illegitimate daughter of the witch Judith, when Maggie was fifteen. Maggie bore Vera who would eventually become John’s grandmother. Rothstein moved his family west.

Rothstein was not a yielder. He had learned nothing about survival from hisJewish heritage. Within a year he was beaten and drowned. His body floated on a pond in Minnesota for several days before it sank and passing neighbors were able to stop averting their eyes. Rothstein’s crime was not recorded, but it was doubtless his religion or his accent. Tracker history does not know, or has conveniently concealed, what eventually happened to Maggie; but Vera stayed with her mother Maggie until age thirteen when she felt old enough to run away. She ran to Chicago, where she lived until the time when she entered the house of the Trackers.

John was sure she was dead. Vera Tracker, a woman who could not possibly be less than eighty, sat with her profile turned to her grandson. She was probably a lot older than eighty. Dead or alive, she still seemed to preside over this ancient house as she sat motionless in the old rocker. She had to be dead, John told himself.

She stared straight ahead. The eyes held the flat, profound and yet expressionless look of a corpse. Her hands and arms extended to the arms of the chair like rigid, brittle sticks. A lap robe of purple and brown velvet fell about ankles that were bone-thin in cracked and faded shoes. There was dust on the shoes.

John nearly stepped backward, and then made himself stand still. Involuntary movement in this house could put you in the mouth of a trap. When he had accepted the fact that he had to come here, he also accepted the possibility of finding the remains of Theophilus or Vera or Justice. He felt he could bear to confront a corpse. He did not expect one that sat and stared at him.

His grandmother’s eyes blinked once, snapping; the snap gaining momentum like an unused camera shutter that almost, but not quite, sticks. Her face was tight and loose at the same time. The flesh hung over cheeks and was pulled smooth like thin wattles about her mouth. Her face was like half a death’s head with the wings of a dying moth in the eye sockets.

He stepped toward her, relieved. He was also strangely angry. Her eyes did not blink again. The room was not as cold as outside, but it was coat-cold, breath-frosting cold. She was dressed in light clothing.

“Vera,” he said. “Old Sis.” That had been the name Theophilus called her, when he was not calling her something worse.

She stared at him.

He walked toward her. Her eyes did not track. The thin clothing and lap robe seemed like wrappings for a mummy. He walked through two conventional rooms, found an afghan lying on an antique loveseat and returned. He placed it around her, and as he tucked in the light shawl he found that she was as bald as he knew she would be. A few strands of hair were yellow with age. There was a mole as big as a thumbprint on her head. He had not known of that mole.

He did not know whether there was more fear than anger hanging just beneath the surface of his mind. The part of him that was Tracker was both unfrightened and angry. She was a double-damned inconvenience. How did you get her out of this place and over that snowy grade? She might die any minute. Part of him wanted to snatch the afghan away and let her freeze, and he had to will himself to be careful when he touched her.

The arms and hands seemed so brittle he feared to move them because they might break. She did not move. The eyes did not blink again. Once more he began to believe she was dead. The veins of her hands were submerged, faint gray lines where there was no flesh to bury them. The hands were skeletal, except for competent nails. She had always been proud of her nails. They were tools that could cut.

He turned to the fireplace. Wood was stacked, but a fire was not laid.

Impossible, he thought, to be unable to tell whether a human being was dead or not. He touched her arm. It was cold, but cold enough?

He felt time shift, and told himself that either time was shifting, or he was separated from his normal senses. If you were in the house of the Trackers, you were, after all, prima facie mad. He made his mind switch to indifference. From the distance came the tinkling notes of a piano, but at the moment his mind sought indifference the sounds started to fade.

“I’ll get you warm.” His voice sounded worse in the silence than the silence itself. The thought crossed his mind that if he thawed her out he was only saving Hell some trouble. Let the Devil thaw her out.

The black, Tracker side of his mind was fighting to gain control. He pressed it downward, back into the depths of his unconscious. He was not going to let this place get him, Vera Tracker, or no.

He laid the fire and lighted it. As he worked with his back toward her he felt movement. The silence intensified. It was like the silence was turning into a void.

“Tracker walks.” The voice was dry. Her tongue seemed to grate in a mouth that held no spit. “Walks.” The voice was a whisper.

He wheeled and stumbled from his crouch in front of the fire. In spite of his logic, some part of him was still convinced she was dead. He was adding shock on shock. Or she was.

He watched her movement. There was none. Then the fingers of her left hand began to tremble, made feeble, grasping motions. He watched but did not move toward her, and then her words seemed to echo in the vacuum of silence.

“Walks. Who walks?”

He watched her slowly raise her hand, pluck at the robe, apparently trying to pull it closer.

“How long were you without fire?” He knelt to place more kindling under the logs. The wood was dry like old bones. The fire was catching quickly and illuminated the shadowed room. As he worked his hands were red with the glow.

“Good spell.”

He turned back. Color was on her cheeks. It was only a trace, and it might be a reflection from the fire. Reflection or not, she no longer looked dead.

“Been ill?” He felt that he was bustling.

“Fits, I reckon.”

He assumed that meant epileptic, and was glad to discover any weakness.

“A good thing I arrived. The worst winter, ever. It would have gotten colder.”

“Lord save us from a fool.”

Her color was coming back. She looked no more than a worn eighty. She no longer looked like something dragged from a burial cave.

“You haven’t changed.” He almost admired her. Old. Weak. Helpless. Still calling names. Soon she would start cursing. He decided to try for information before she regained full control.

“What do you mean, walks? Who walks? The old man?”

“Which old man?” Her voice was filled with contempt. “Which dangledy old man do you mean?”

“You said Tracker walks. Which Tracker?”

“Theophilus walks. Cellar, subcellar, woodlot, rooms. Hollers silent-like, mouth wide as a cistern, head fulla scream. Comes of tampering things.” She stopped speaking. Her mouth became a rigid line. Her body stiffened. A slight tremble.

“Tampering?”

Her eyes were getting quicker. There was flash in them, movement behind her eyes like sudden awareness. The tremble stopped. Her face went calm. It seemed more fleshy and substantial.

“You knew the old rut. You figger it out.”

“Justice?” He watched to see if there was any reaction. “How did he die?”

There was a reaction. A tight smile.

“He aint walkin’, sonny, and he aint crawling, neither. Your pa aint goin’ nowhere.”

“What?”

“Comes of tampering things.”

She was crazy. Living alone. Imagination. She was always a woman who drove goads into boys, into men. Now her goads must have reached into herself, her mind twisting and building the images of hate that she threw outward. Destruction, he figured, was bent on its final victory. Self-destruction.

“You’re not well. I’m going to get a doctor.”

“You’re gonna build houses outta cow pies. You aint leaving. I aint leavin’. Twenty years gone and you aint leavin’ until this trouble’s laid.”

She stood to pull her chair closer to the fire. She seemed younger every minute, and Tracker could swear that she was adding weight. Vera was not tall, her weight always came from her tongue.

“I told the old scut to follow you. Go to him, I said. Thrash out the difference. Lay the dead.”

“What dead?” He over-reacted.

She saw it and smiled. “You don’t know,” she said, “despite it belongs at your feet. Despite they’re laying all around you. You run away too soon.”

He was amazed to find she still owned her old power to harm. Forgotten feelings of hurt and inferiority were crawling through him like worms.

“I was a kid,” he told her. “Between my mother, who was known as a bitch, and my father, who had at least one shot of sanity, I got sprung from this place—”

“And came back, little man. You came back and then left.”

“I turned my back on this rat’s nest—”

“Run.” Her voice was a wellspring of spite. “Coward. You run from a fortune. You could of had it all.”

“I’ve got it all, anyway,” he lied. “And damn you.”

“To the well, sonny.”

Her eyes told him she was winning. The old pattern was re-established. She hit him bare, naked, and he did not understand how she was hitting. He only understood that he was frozen in place. She was gaining weight by making him hate her. He forced himself to breathe.

“This lousy place,” he said. “You sorry people.” He watched the effect. She was pleased. There was more color in her face.

“Nothin’ you say makes a difference,” she said. “You run to new things, new people, big ideas…but none of ’em are. Just the same old buggers with nary-a-nothing in their heads. I know you.” She spat into the fire. Impressive. Now she even had spit.

“I’m hungry.” Her voice changed. It was whining.

“So go to the kitchens.”

“I et everything there.”

“All right. Where is it?”

“Where would it be?”

He was turning to go and stopped. “How should I know? I’m in the middle of a madhouse.”

“Lower pantry on the south side. There’s cans.”

“Any changes before I get there?”

“Don’t take nothin’ from in front. The old bastard stuffed them with poison.”

“Any changes? Tell me or I won’t go.”

“In twenty years?” She sat thinking. “Nothin’ bad. He did most of his tinkering on fourth floor.”

Tracker turned and left. Outside, he told himself, the wind was blowing across the snow-filled sky and there were automobiles skidding back and forth. Where it wasn’t snowing, like maybe in Bermuda, buildings were being built. There were hospitals, and whorehouses, and banks. There were churches. Women were buying dresses, and men were looking at the legs of women who were wearing their new dresses. There were land deals. There were people cheating each other. There were oceans and forests and bulldozers, and in this house none of it made the least difference.

“You haven’t changed.” He yelled it at the top of his voice, tasting his own hatred, taking an exact pleasure in breaking the silence of the endless rooms.

The answer came back needle-tongued, mocking. “I kin take care.”

He slammed doors to violate the silence, knowing that there was not a door in the house that could be broken unless you used a sledge hammer. Then he remembered his forgotten crowbar and turned back.

The fire brightened as he reentered the room. The woman cast a heavier shadow from its light. She said nothing. Tracker picked up the crowbar, turned, turned back. “What’s that? What are you doing?”

She was casting a double shadow.

“Doin’ nothing.” Her voice was low, unafraid, but the mocking tone was gone. The second shadow lay like light smoke beside the heavier, actual shadow. He did not see how it could be a trick of the light. As he directed the beam of the flashlight the shadow faded, and he could no longer tell if it was real or only illusion. He could almost swear, though, that it was the shadow of a younger woman, and the hair was piled high.

“Who?” The fear was back like frost along the edges of his teeth.

“I’m hungry.” She turned. The real shadow turned with her. “Hungry, hungry.” The whine was coming back. “I kin take keer.”

“Witch yourself something to eat.” He headed for the doorway, turned the knob, found it locked.

“Open it.”

“No.” She stood. The lap robe fell. She threw away the covering afghan. “They’s nothin’ wrong. It’s you. You’re as full of beans as the old one ever was.” She trembled, moved one faltering pace, then sat back down in the chair. “I’m hungry.” She reached to press a lever by the fireplace. The door clicked. He turned the knob, found it open, came back. She looked colder. Her trembling hands were in her lap. She was weak, pathetic. His logic told him he was a fool. His hysteria was hitting him with shadows that ought to be easy to explain. Illusion, delusion…still, his rational mind also told him to be careful.

“I’ll get you something,” he said, acting it out.

He followed a passageway that ran off on a forty-five-degree angle from the third room back. The passage began halfway up the wall. When the steps were folded up, the wall looked like any other wall. Tracker began unwinding twenty years of forgetfulness. His life depended on remembering. As a child he did not think of this as a concealed passage. It was only a hall that you climbed steps to reach.

The passageway was dark. He used the flash and allowed memory to guide him. If he trusted automatic recollection, he told himself, it would be safe; if he tried to plan he would make a wrong turn. The flashlight showed the beginning steps and he switched it off. The steps must be climbed in darkness. In light they would so confuse that he would surely fall.

He began climbing and was startled that the machinery was well-oiled and quiet. The steps wound off-center, rising and falling, twisting and occasionally on a tilt. He had to remember to always keep to the right. As he climbed he felt he was going down. The slight movement of the steps, their great number, and the twisting, alley-like corridor gave him an antique feeling of timelessness. Impossible to climb out this way. He climbed the steps down half a floor. At the bottom was a small room. He flicked the flashlight. There were stacks of canned and dry food, and he filled his jacket pockets from the back of the stacks. Then he turned to a blank wall.

He kicked a baseboard. A small trap door fell open. He reached into the dead space in the wall and found three levers. When they were moved to form a Y, he reached further into the dead space and found a knob. A door fell open at his feet.

He climbed down to a passageway that slanted upward, jogged off to the right, reversed, and at the top entered through a wall panel into a hall on the south side. He looked through a window at another part of the house. From the time of entering the first stairs until the time of entering the hall he had covered a lateral distance of less than a hundred feet. Yet he had been walking, walking.

“Tracker walks…” Her voice came back to him. He looked down the empty hallway and cursed because he was afraid. He had forgotten to control his imagination because of his concentration on traps.

“Get back under the grade,” he said to the empty hall.

Vera Tracker was the source of some of his worst misery. She was a cut across consciousness. But she represented reasonable movement in this unreasonable and silent house. And for that reason he wanted to get back.

The conventional hall led to a main hall in the south wing that connected with the rest of the house through the kitchens. He started that direction, saw two off-colored boards in the floor, and stopped. Something was different. He turned and walked back in the other direction.

He passed a door. He remembered that if he turned the knob and pushed the right side he would be in trouble. If he pushed the left side he would enter a conventional room. The right side went into a sealed passage that made two wide circles crossing each other. With no light a person would move until he dropped.

Further down the hall. Press in two places with evenly spaced feet and you dropped quickly but safely below the floor into another hall that was harmless if you went left. Go right and it automatically sealed, to force a man into a passage that apparently went nowhere. Worse, it started wide and narrowed to a point. A triangular tomb if a person stumbled in and did not know that three paces from the beginning of the point a panel could be slid in a zig-zag. Both hands had to press the panel and describe a streak of lightning. That panel opened a door into a conventional staircase, except for the third and fourth step which had to be jumped; otherwise the steps would collapse the unlucky body into a forty-foot drop ending in the subcellar. Except for that the stairs were safe, and led a winding circuit to the third floor greenhouse, the one decent thing in this place.

John was remembering more than he believed he knew. The house seemed a monstrosity, but at least now it did not seem senseless. It was fantastic, like the tortured shifts and balances of an otherwise well-run, self-determined mind. The obscure routes were clean and sane and purposeful. The designer’s mind was sound, granted that his premises were crazy. He felt that the house was a masterwork. Genius designed and built this place. It was only necessary to remember that it was a demonic, bedlam kind of genius.

It was too bad the house could not be defanged and saved. A gigantic museum. A Golgotha of sought-after torment, not hell but purgatory.

John shook his head, feeling the weight of the past.

“You’re young, try to remember this, later you’ll under­stand…” His father’s voice sounded in his memory.

He did not remember his father well. Still, some part of his mind must remember. Golgotha. Purgatory. Those were not his words. He looked down the hallway, heard a sound, turned, looked the other way and nearly screamed.

At the far end of the hall a door swung open, paused in the apparent grip of an invisible hand, and then slammed again. If something moved through the doorway it was in the hall with him.

He could not go forward. To run away in this house was certain destruction. He gripped the crowbar. It might have no value for defense, but at least it was hard and heavy and real.

Down the hall and to the left another door opened, was held, slammed. Something or somebody was passing from one room to another, and they or it ignored him.

Either that or it was another trick. A Tracker trick. He eased off. His relief was as shocking as his fear. A trick. John Tracker congratulated himself on a lesson well-learned but for a time forgotten. His grandfather could be trusted to return all acts, all intentions, with a trick. There was a new technology, this trick must be part of it. Heat switches, electric eyes, solenoids activated by the slightest pressure. He remembered the old-fashioned chemical activators on part of the second floor.

He was no longer afraid as he searched for the loose board or the silent beam that his foot touched to activate the doors. Even when he didn’t find it he was not worried. It would be there if he looked long enough.

Ahead of him was tampering. Behind him was tampering. He was in a trap. It did not worry him. What Theophilus could build, his grandson John could unravel.

He returned to the far end of the hall to inch past the new boards. The doorknob was new. He examined the boards and door, then backed away and reached forward with the crowbar to hit the boards. The boards gave a little, then returned to their former position. Whatever happened would happen when the door was opened. He stood to one side, turned the knob and shoved the door.

A silver-bladed sword snapped from the floor on a sixty-degree angle at the right height to catch a man between the shoulders. The point and about six inches of the blade were gone. The metal was shaved, a clean cut.

In the entry, about seven feet high and four feet away, was a rack of flashbulbs. They were already burned out. The trap was simple. A man walked through the doorway, was blinded by the bulbs, jumped back onto the blade. The blade was useless and the bulbs were shot. Why mount a sheared-off sword?

He walked to the kitchens, where it was warm, and he wanted to linger there after being so long in the cold house. Well, at least part of the heating system was working.

He leaned against a counter and thought of what he knew about the logistics of the house. He tested a faucet. Water splashed. Then outside services were still connected, someone was paying utility bills.

There was a generator somewhere. There were wells. He shuddered, looked around, felt a rush of fear. The generator was in the subcellar. At least he seemed to remember it that way. He had never seen the generator, but Theophilus talked about it at times. If there were huge tanks of fuel, then outside services might not be getting into the house.

On the other hand, someone would have to maintain the generators. Tracker was annoyed. Shutting down services was one more problem to be taken care of before wrecking this place.

He passed through the warm kitchens knowing that in this territory everything would be safe, and he wondered why his grandmother did not stay in the kitchens, where at least it was warm. Had she been walking and been caught in that cold room by a fit, or stroke?

The woman seemed pathetic. Old, violent and ended in this house of decay. He opened a food cabinet and found it full. He opened others. They held a great variety of canned and dried foods. It was enough to last an old woman for a long time.

His trip through twenty years of memory had come to nothing. His grandmother had not told him of those new traps. She was not in the room when he returned. He looked around. The house was like tinder, the wallpaper dry and faded, crisped at the edges. Here and there were small droppings of plaster dried to powder. He could hear no footsteps.

It was a clear win for Vera unless she could be found. He checked his watch and felt an urge to spread the still burning fire from the fireplace onto the floor. But that would be murder, and he shook his head to push away the thought.

She could not have gotten far in the shape she was in. Tracker started to check rooms.

Pine floors, hardwood floors, parquet floors. The switching beam of the flashlight pierced the darkness as he moved toward the interior. In one location was a maze. He did not even bother to go there. If Vera was in the maze no one could find her.

In the interior of the house, halls wound and disappeared in darkness. When he found light switches he turned them on. Between patches of darkness the bulbs burned like feeble streetlights in a fog, small night-sleeping bulbs that seemed to gather the darkness around them.

He was headed north. Conventional traps lay all around him. He recalled them at the last moment, like the hunchy feeling before the recollection of a dream. Or like, he thought, a part of time slid sideways to let him see what forgetfulness long ago had shunted away.

His flashlight beam searched one room, then another, danced across mohair and carpet and dusty drapes that gave an illusion of windows. A fanciful house. A house of mad fancy. He turned a corner and blue light glowed from an open doorway fifty feet down the hall. He walked, expecting a trick, opening his mind to memory so that no trap would touch him. He reached the open doorway through which the light shone, looked inside the room, was stunned.

Theophilus Tracker stood in a cloud of steam and smoke, open-mouthed, screaming in total silence. An apparition which carried in its hands the full rack of horns from a deer, an apparition that was steady in the rigid beam of the flashlight. Steam rose. The blue, sketchy light began fading to black.

John Tracker, grandson of Theophilus, grandson of a spectre, ran. He was too frightened to scream.

Past rudimentary traps that failed when he tripped them, if he tripped them. Past the picture of his father, Justice. Past the ornate coffin, to leap the trap at the front door and fall into the snow. He ran to the grade and climbed frantically, floundered over the grade and slid to his car. As he disappeared, lights burned on the fourth floor, the angel took another walk past the seven doors in the front of the house. This time its stern injunction was confused. It presented the cross, but the cross was changed in the angel’s wooden hands. It challenged the grade, but it was held upside down.

The snow and wind murmured, like the questioning voices of generations of the dead.