On Monday, she found out.
She paused by the student union to pick up a newspaper on her way to class, and noticed that the lead story was about a student who had committed suicide. It was not the student’s name, but her own address that leaped out at Corey as she scanned the article – 501 Comstock. That was the house she lived in, and it was where the student, Harold Walker, had been found early on Sunday morning, dead of self-inflicted wounds. Shocked, she glanced at the accompanying photograph and recognised Harold Walker as the boy from the cemetery.
He must have spent his last hours of life waiting for her in the cemetery. And then he had come looking for her, needing her. And this time he had needed her in vain. She hadn’t been home. And so he had killed himself outside her door.
‘Oh, God,’ she said. Heavy with guilt, she sat down on the steps of the Union. He had needed her, and she had failed him – betrayed him – and now he was dead. She began to cry. Other students, passing by on the steps, looked at her and then looked away. No one stopped to talk to her; no one knew her.
During the next few days Corey thought a lot about Harold Walker as she walked dazedly through her life. She saw his body interred in the family plot he had told her about; saw, but did not approach, his quiet, bewildered-looking parents. After the funeral she went to the place where they had first met, and sat alone on the bench where they had once sat together.
What horrified her most of all was the realisation that she could never atone. She had never before seen anything in her life as irrevocable. But Harold Walker was dead, and if she had not failed him when he needed her, he might now be alive. Beside his death, the loss of Philip faded into triviality. She scarcely thought of Philip now; it was Harold she dreamed of, mourned, and longed to see again.
Because she could not spend all her time in the cemetery, Corey continued to wander through her daily routine, but her mind was elsewhere. Gradually she accustomed herself to the idea of Harold’s death – perhaps he was better off, he had escaped the life that had made him so unhappy. She mourned for herself, now, for her own loneliness.
On the last night of October, sitting alone in her small apartment, a bowl of soup rapidly cooling in front of her, Corey felt her grief turning to anger. The resentment must have been smouldering beneath the sorrow all along.
How could he kill himself like that? With all his talk of need, he must have known how she needed him, and realised what he would be doing to her by killing himself. If she had betrayed him, his betrayal of her had been far greater, because it was forever. It could not be recalled or apologised for. He had taken himself out of life, and out of her life, for all time.
‘What about me?’ she said aloud. The tears rolled slowly down her face.
It was Halloween night. People were out having a good time with their friends, attending parties all over campus. And Corey sat alone, talking to a dead man.
‘I needed you,’ she said. ‘Did you think about that? Couldn’t you have waited a little longer? Or weren’t my needs as important as yours? All right; I wasn’t there for you on Saturday, but I would have come back. You should have known that. But you can’t come back – no matter how much I need you, you’ll never come to me again.’
She went to bed early because there was nothing else to do, but she lay awake a long time. And when she did finally fall asleep, it seemed only a few minutes before something woke her.
She lay in the dark and listened. She could hear someone moving about downstairs, and thought now that the sound which had wakened her had been the slamming of the front door. Probably one of her neighbours coming home drunk from a party. Whoever it was was making a very noisy job of climbing the stairs; in addition to the slow, heavy footfalls, Corey could hear a soft, erratic thump-and-slide sound, as if the climber had to support himself against the wall as he climbed.
There was something oddly disturbing about the sound. She was wide awake now, and she lay stiffly waiting for the noisy intruder to reach his journey’s end.
Silence – the top of the stairs reached at last. Then more dragging footsteps. Then a thumping at her door.
She sat up in bed, clutching the covers. The pounding continued.
‘No!’ she cried. Then, feeling nervous and embarrassed (it was probably only a drunk who had made a mistake), she got out of bed and walked through the dark into the living room and called, ‘You’ve got the wrong apartment; you’re across the hall. Try the other door!’
She waited for the sounds of departure, but when the pounding stopped there was nothing, and the silence ate at her nerves.
Then the pounding began again, still at her door. It was not forceful at all, but neither was it controlled enough to be called knocking. It was heavy but unfocused, a loose, meaty slapping against the wood.
She shuddered. Remembering the downstairs door, and how it was often left unlocked, she realised that anyone might have got in.
‘Who is that?’ Corey called.
The pounding stopped. Silence again. Corey stared at the door, wondering who waited on the other side. Suddenly she had a vivid image of Harold Walker crouching outside her door on the night he died. Had he pounded and begged to be let in, imagining her hiding inside?
The pounding began again, making her jump. She bit her lip and tried to keep from crying. It wouldn’t do to lose control. It was probably just some old drunk, or some kid trying to frighten her. But now that she had thought of Harold, she couldn’t seem to get the thought of him out of her mind. It was absurd and impossible, but it seemed to her that Harold was on the other side of the door, making that terrible slapping sound with his weak, dead hands.
‘Go away,’ she cried, her voice high and shrill with fear. ‘Go away, or I’ll call the police!’
Silence again. A waiting silence. Whoever was there did not leave.
Harold, she thought. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you came looking for me. She walked closer to the door. Cautiously, trying not to make a sound, Corey leaned against it, pressing her ear to the wood. She heard nothing, not even breathing, from the other side.
But as soon as she stepped back, the pounding began again.
She stared at the door, remembering something Harold had said: ‘All you have to do is ask me, and I’ll come.’
‘But you’re dead,’ she said. It was barely a whisper, but again it stopped the pounding, as if whoever was in the hall was eager to hear anything she had to say.
‘Go away,’ she said more loudly. ‘Go away, do you hear me? Go back to where you came from! Do you hear me? I don’t need you! Go away!’
There was no more pounding after that. There was no sound of any kind. Corey slumped to the floor, facing the door, no more able to walk away from it than she was to open it. She was shivering and felt slightly sick.
If it was Harold, she thought, someone would find the body out there, sooner or later. And if it wasn’t, if it had been only her imagination, her need, someone would find her and let her know; someone would call or someone would come. Sooner or later.
And so she sat, all through the night, waiting and listening for the sounds of the dead.
THE MEMORY OF WOOD
It was a beautiful chest. The hard, dark old wood gleamed in the sunlight, looking rich and exotic against the bright green grass.
Helen and Rob saw it at the same time and glanced at each other swiftly, smiling in shared delight. Helen shifted the baby in her arms, looked down to see that Julian had not strayed, and followed her husband. They made their way among the furniture, the bits and pieces of a life scattered on the big front lawn, towards the thing they had, in that instant, made up their minds to buy.