CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

TWO LARGE SUITCASES AND ONE SMALLER ONE. KRISTY’S TOYBOX. His navy blazer and Chandal’s trench coat. Ron surveyed these belongings which he had placed near the bedroom door. Without turning to look at Chandal, he could feel the air was full of nerve-shearing protest. “Did you check all the drawers?” he asked without looking up.

“Yes.”

“Well, then—” He turned. “I guess we’re all set.” He watched as an indefinable sadness crept over her face.

“Do you want to eat dinner here before we leave?” she said. “Mrs. Taylor has offered—”

“I don’t know.” He glanced at his watch. It was almost eight o’clock. He had been shocked to discover, when he had returned to the house, that the tire on his station wagon was still flat. He had called Matthew Todd twice. First the man had said his helper had gotten drunk, but would be over soon. On the second call, which had been placed around six, Todd had said he would close the station soon and change the tire himself.

In the meantime Ron had taken a shower but had not felt completely clean when he’d stepped out of it. He had put on a pair of khakis, a short-sleeve dress shirt and had begun to pack. Though he’d become aware of massive hunger pangs, the desire to pack had been more pressing.

Now he moved to the window and peered out. The last rays of sun had begun to sink into the west. A single bell sounded a series of low plaintive tolls. Although he could barely see the town from the window, he held in his mind an image. He saw people drifting into the square, speaking rapidly, gesturing, completely absorbed in talk about tonight’s crowning. Some would be carrying baskets of food or sandwich fixings in brown bags. Others would move around freely, hands and arms gesturing, bottles of whiskey sticking from their back pockets.

His eyes moved away from the town and drifted up to the hills. He stared at a landscape as desolate as any he could have invented. Mimi hadn’t returned his call. Even if Mrs. Taylor had lied to him earlier when she had said no calls, the phone still hadn’t rung in the past two hours.

“I don’t understand why Mimi hasn’t called back,” he said, shaking his head in condemnation.

“Maybe she’s busy.”

“I told her it was important.”

“Business matters?”

“What?”

“Is it something to do with business?”

“Yes, business.”

“Something wrong?”

But Ron did not answer, not out of recalcitrance, but because he felt no desire to lie to her.

Listlessly, mindlessly, he leaned against the window frame. Thoughts came and went like someone had tossed a rock into a placid lake, sending ripples fanning out in all directions. Where was Nancy? Was she really sick as Mrs. Taylor had said, or had they done something to her? What actually did she know about the crowning? “I Was Queen. They”—Then again, maybe she hadn’t written the message at all. Was Alister telling the truth when he’d said the carnival had nothing to do with the stone?

An amber light flickered in the hills, then went out. A Corpse Light? He wasn’t sure. The more he thought about it, the more confusing and incoherent it all became; and that in itself frightened him most of all.

All at once he heard the bedroom door slam shut behind him and footsteps in the hallway. “Chandal!” he shouted, “Chandal!” The footsteps stopped. He threw open the door.

“What is it, Ron?” She turned to face him in the hallway.

“Please,” he implored, “don’t act like this.”

“How am I acting?” she asked flatly.

“You seem so damn hostile about all this. As if I’m tearing you away from your home, for God’s sakes.”

“I’m not going to get into an argument with you. You want to leave, fine. You have made your decision. I’ll abide by it. But I don’t want to do any more yammering. I don’t think I can take any more.”

“Please, Del—I do not wish to stand here in the hallway discussing this.”

“Nor do I.”

Her stubbornness angered him, but he said quietly, “Then, please—at least come back into the room and let’s discuss it calmly.”

Chandal had turned pale. In a small voice she murmured, “All right, but I don’t see what good it will do.”

No sooner had she entered the bedroom than she began sobbing. “Okay,” Ron said, “okay... You know I don’t mean to hurt you.” He brushed a few loose strands of hair away from her eyes. “Don’t you?”

She raised her face to him. “Ron, what is wrong with us? Nothing seems right anymore. You and Kristy—that’s all that means anything to me... But we don’t seem to be able to talk to each other anymore. God, I looked at her today and thought—when we first had her all we could do was talk about how wonderful it was all going to be. But it hasn’t turned out that way.”

“That’s not true—”

“Oh, God, Ron,” Chandal said, drawing in a long shaky breath. “Don’t you think I know what’s going on? Practically the whole town knows.”

“Knows what?”

“About you and Cynthia Harris. That you slept with her for Chrissakes!”

He breathed in sharply, on the verge of denying it. Images flooded his brain. Cynthia kneeling over him; murmurs of voices all around. Others had been there. Others had pinned him down. No, he had not slept with her. Not in the normal sense, and that was the issue. That, most of all, was the issue.

“Del, listen to me!” He grabbed hold of her hard. “Don’t you see what’s happening here? They’re getting to you in the simplest possible way. With the simplest of all emotions. Jealousy, distrust. As long as you believe them, you’ll never believe me. You’ll always think I’m saying things to cover that up.”

“Aren’t you? Isn’t that why you’re so damned anxious to leave Brackston?”

Ron glared at her. “No, goddamn it, it isn’t.”

“Are you sure? Are you really sure it isn’t your own guilt that’s behind all this?”

Ron’s reaction was quick and pained.

“No, Del, it isn’t.” She looked at him quietly, as if she were expecting him to continue. When no more was forthcoming, she shook her head. “Ron, I spoke with Cynthia Harris today. I talked with her in Denver.”

Her words stunned him. “That’s—that’s impossible.”

“Why, because you want it to be impossible? I wanted to hear it for myself. Cynthia Harris isn’t dead, Ron. I spoke with her today.”

“How? I mean...”

“I overheard the women talking today at Mrs. Wheatley’s house. After everyone left, I had a talk with Beatrice. I told her what you told me. That Cynthia was dead. She laughed, Ron. Laughed.” Speaking quietly, she kept her gaze on Ron’s face. “One thing led to another. The next thing I knew she had dialed Cynthia in Denver.”

Ron dropped wearily onto the bed. His entrapment was so clear and final that he moaned, “Oh, Del, Del...” He found it difficult to concentrate, and presently it became even harder, for he heard Chandal’s voice saying: “I don’t care about it, Ron. What’s done is done. But to run away in the middle of the night only makes matters worse.”

She slipped quietly to him, murmuring something he could not understand. Closer now, she whispered in an almost broken voice, “You still love me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said softly.

“Then it’s enough. For me, it’s enough. But we can’t just sneak out of town like this. Let’s show them we don’t care what they think.” She moved still closer and bent slightly from the waist. “I want to go to the crowning tonight,” she said. “As if none of this has happened.”

“No, Del—”

“Ron, we must. We must not run away.” She kissed him lightly on the forehead. “I love you, Ron. You’ll see. Everything will be all right between us now that this thing is out in the open. Everything. Years from now we’ll laugh about all this. I know,” she went on, “what you’ve been through. I know where I’ve failed you. Believe me, I know.” Chandal’s voice had changed. She was speaking to him from a reserve of tenderness and affection born of earlier years. And as he drifted with her soothing words, his body cooled and became numb, inert; and he was moved as deeply as he had been shocked just a moment previously.

Her voice trailed off as she moved to the door. She paused to smile at him, then left the room, the door closing softly behind her. Soon Ron could hear low voices filtering up from the kitchen and talking, amid the rattling of silverware and the clinking of china.

He touched the tips of his fingers to the corners of his eyes and noticed they were filled with tears. And he was ashamed. Even in the solitude of the bedroom he was ashamed. He began to talk inwardly to himself as though he were someone else, a friend trying to comfort him. Stop it, for Chrissakes. You’re going to be fine. Just fine, and again he was ashamed, talking to himself that way.

The terrible silence of the world made his heart beat faster, and soon he saw, on the horizon, the blur of the moon. Not a moon, actually, but rather a bright smudge in an otherwise darkened sky.

Though the room was now dark, he could see the strange pattern of the wallpaper, and the glint of his reflection in the mirror. In the distance he heard the low hum of voices and laughter.

The night air was laden with other sounds; a faraway barking of a dog, the murmur of voices in the dining room below; a wail from Kristy as keenly heard as the ringing in his ears.

He rose slowly; though his head was light, he felt intensely sure of all his physical movements. There was no question in his mind about what he had to do. He must not wait until morning to leave Brackston; he had to leave tonight. But how? He glanced at his watch. It was twenty minutes to nine. He lifted his watch to his ear; its tick was rhythmic and soft. The numerals of the watch face glowed like tiny blue specks of dry ice. His chest began to tighten; he flicked on lights on either side of the bed. His eyes flickered at each burst of sudden light.

Unexpectedly there also came a sadness he could not overcome. He no longer felt any confidence in himself or in anything he thought. For it all seemed to be reduced to a situation without meaning, a pattern without sense, a game without rules that he could neither control nor comprehend. He was helpless.

Chandal is a person with a disturbed personality. Her actions last night speak for themselves. She is almost completely shattered now. Her ability to function is becoming more fitful. She has to work too hard to survive. We must... alleviate the pressure.

Ron tensed as he realized what it was he had just heard inside his head, and who had said those words. Dr. I. Luther, Chandal’s former psychiatrist. Funny how when you remember you can’t choose what it is you remember. Nowadays he forgot things from one day to the next. He even forgot people’s names; yet he remembered some things... things that had happened years ago. Things that had been said. And he knew Brackston was a continuation of that past. Only now he wondered if it wasn’t he who was going crazy.

He considered what the world looked like from inside a straitjacket. Not much different than it looked inside this room, he guessed. Just not as much furniture. His mind was wandering. He had to get hold of himself. After a breakdown comes the institutions, sometimes, not always. He remembered Chandal mentioning Lakewood Sanitarium once. Clean white sheets, clean white pillowcase, white-washed walls, Moorish style. And inside, light, bright, burning day and night, so that the attendants could see any change of expression...

Where was Dr. Luther, he wondered. What was he doing at that precise moment? I must write him when this is all over. Tell him what he probably already knows. That the first man who went crazy was Cain, and like all those who followed, he had good cause.

Laughter now in the hallway. The front door closed. The house fell silent. Stop them, he thought. Don’t let them go to the carnival tonight. He remained frozen, isolated from all he ever was and all he ever hoped to be. He waited. Waited for Mimi to call. Waited for Matthew Todd to put the tire on the car. He waited, expecting, always listening.

His mind clouded.

The only thing he could do was to wait, to be made to wait, for something to happen.