Lawrence Block
Ariel
For Patrick Farrelly
One
Was there a noise that woke her? Roberta was never sure. The old house was full of night sounds. Floorboards creaked. Curtains rustled. Windowpanes, loose in their frames, rattled at the least touch of a breeze. She had been a light sleeper all her life. Caleb had just recently taken to sleeping through the night, and she had not yet entirely adjusted to his new schedule. The slightest sound could rouse her.
Or had she dreamed a sound? There might have been music, that thin reedy music Ariel made on her flute. Roberta sat up in bed, curiously troubled, straining to hear something in the silence.
Then she saw the woman.
A dark shape hovered in the far corner of the room near the window. A woman, wrapped in a shawl, her face averted.
Roberta pressed one hand to her breast. Her heart was fluttering, her mouth dry. She thought David, and her other hand reached out to her side, patting at empty air.
In the other house they had shared a bed, and she had always been able to reach out and touch him in the night. Now they slept in twin beds separated by the width of a night table. She had selected the bedroom furniture and donated the old double bed to Goodwill Industries. And she had been the one who picked this house. And now David slept, his breathing audible now in the room’s stillness, while this woman lurked in the corner of their bedroom.
There was a lamp on the night table. Roberta’s hand left off patting the air between the two beds and groped tentatively for the lamp. Her fingers found the switch, then hesitated. She was afraid to turn the light on even as she was afraid to remain in the dark.
She closed her eyes, opened them. The woman was still there.
Then a windowpane shook in its mullions and suddenly the woman was gone. It was as if she were a creature of smoke, and as if the wind that rattled the pane had slipped into the room and dispersed her. Roberta stared, blinked her eyes.
There was no woman in the room.
But she had seen—
An illusion, of course. Some trick of lighting, some shadow cast by moonlight through the old handmade windowpanes. But how extraordinarily real it had appeared to her! And what menace the shape had seemed to hold!
Unafraid now, she switched on the bedside lamp, then flicked it off again. There had been nothing and no one in the bedroom. Some forgotten dream must have awakened her, an unpleasant dream that left her anxious and suggestible. And so she’d seen a shape where there was no shape, and her imagination had cloaked that shape in a woman’s shawl and touched her with a sense of evil.
Roberta lay down, closed her eyes. After a few moments she opened them again and stared at the corner of the room where she had seen the woman.
Nothing.
She closed her eyes again and tried to summon sleep. But it wouldn’t come. Her mind was racing, and every stray thought that came to her seemed to increase her anxiety and focus it upon the baby. She had seen a woman who wasn’t there, and now she was worried about her son.
It was ridiculous, and she knew it was ridiculous, but she also knew that she would not be able to sleep until she had checked Caleb. And wasn’t it even more ridiculous to lie awake until daybreak? She sighed, then slipped out of bed and padded barefoot across the bedroom floor. David had wanted to carpet the whole upstairs, even as the other house had been carpeted wall to wall. She’d explained as patiently as possible that you didn’t buy a house almost two hundred years old and cover its random-width pine floor with Acrilan broadloom. Now, though, she could almost sympathize with his position. The floorboards were cold underfoot and she found herself setting her feet down on them with exaggerated care to lessen their creaking.
Halfway down the hall, she hesitated at the open door to Caleb’s room, then entered and approached his crib. There was enough light so that she could easily see his face. He was sleeping soundly. She stood there for a long moment, listening to the night sounds and gazing down on her son.
Before returning to her own room, Roberta walked the length of the hallway and stood outside Ariel’s door with her hand on the knob. Then, without turning the knob, she went back to her bedroom.
Of course there was no dark shape in the corner. She shook her head, amused at her own fear, reassured now by the sight of her sleeping infant son.
Funny what tricks the mind played...
David stirred in his sleep and she looked down at him. The smell of alcoholic perspiration touched her nostrils. It was a sour smell and she wrinkled her nose at it.
Odd, she thought. He was never drunk, not as far as she could tell, but after dinner he would sit reading in his ground-floor study and during those hours he always had a glass in his hand. It didn’t seem to change him — as far as she could tell it didn’t do anything to or for him — but while he slept his body eliminated some of the alcohol through the pores, and in the morning his sheets were often damp with it. But he never staggered and he never slurred his words, and if he had hangovers in the morning he never mentioned them.
She got into bed, settled her head on the pillow, let her thoughts drift where they wanted. Now the night sounds comforted her — the wind in the branches of the live oak outside her window, the loose windowpanes, the occasional creak of a floorboard, the inexplicable sounds that come from within the walls of an old house, as if the house itself were breathing.
Once she thought she heard the piping of Ariel’s flute. But perhaps she was already asleep by then, already dreaming.
She was up later than usual the next night. She often went to bed right after the eleven o’clock news, occasionally hanging on for the first half hour of the Tonight show. But something kept her in front of the television set. She watched Johnny Carson through to the end. Even then she was faintly reluctant to go upstairs, and she dawdled on the ground floor, rinsing out a couple of cups and glasses she’d have ordinarily left for morning. She checked the pilot lights of the large old six-burner gas range. There were three pilots, one for each pair of burners, and they were forever going out in the damp brick-floored kitchen. One was out now, and she took a moment to light it.
She checked both outside doors, making sure they were locked and bolted, and she found herself testing the window locks and became impatient with herself. She felt like an old maid checking under the bed for burglars. What on earth was she afraid of?
She checked the children. Ariel was asleep, or pretending to be asleep. She lay on her back, her arms at her sides under the covers, her breathing deep and regular. Caleb, too, was asleep, and while Roberta stood beside his crib he stretched and made a sweet gurgling sound. Air currents in the room shook the mobile suspended over his crib, an arrangement of gaily-colored wooden fish equipped with tiny bells that sounded when the air moved them. Caleb made his gurgling sound again, as if in response to the light tinkling of the bells, and Roberta felt a rush of love in her breast. She lowered the side of the crib, bent over and kissed Caleb’s forehead.
How sweet he smelled. Babies had the most delicious scent...
In her room, David was already sound asleep. Maybe that was what the drinking did for him, maybe it enabled him to get to sleep and sleep soundly. Maybe she should have had something herself. But that was silly — she was tired, she would sleep with no trouble, she had never needed help getting to sleep.
And indeed it wasn’t that long before she slept. Nor was it too long after sleep came that she was suddenly wide awake, fearfully awake, with her heart hammering against her ribs and a pulse working in her temple.
Her eyes were open and the woman, wrapped in her shawl, was standing by the bedroom window.