He turned, looking helplessly around the room, which still swam in an evil dimness. The stuffed monster dangling from the ceiling seemed to grin more broadly, and the heavy beams seemed to sag. Outside the window, the night was livid with the fury of the storm. But Linda noticed how gentle his hands were, holding the unwanted bundle of cat. Finally he put it back on the table, with the air of a man who is abandoning lesser niceties, and sat down firmly on his chair. The cat started licking his plate. Michael regarded it curiously.
“The cats are calm enough now,” he said. “They blew their stacks when it was outside.”
Linda dropped back into her chair.
“Cats are traditionally sensitive to influences from the other side,” she said dully.
Michael’s head turned sharply; on the verge of speaking, he caught himself, and she knew that his comment, when he did speak, was not the one he had meant to make.
“It only appears at dusk, or in a dim light?”
“Yes. Michael, I know what you’re trying to do. But it won’t work. The fact that the thing only comes at night is just as much confirmation of my theory as of yours.”
“You think it’s supernatural, then,” he said calmly. “Something from-the dark on the other side.”
“Don’t! Why did you say that?”
“Never mind, I’ll get to that later. All right, so it’s supernatural. The supernatural has many forms. What precisely is this thing? A hound of hell, à la Conan Doyle? A manifestation of hate and ill will? The old Nick in one of his standard transformations? A werewolf, or a…”
His voice trailed off and his eyes widened. Linda nodded. She felt quite numb now that the moment of truth was upon her, but she felt no impulse to conceal that truth. Even if he stood up and walked out of the house, leaving her more alone than she had ever been, she had to be honest with him.
“The word is too simple,” she said. “But-yes. That’s what it is. It’s Gordon.”
II
The lights had returned to normal. The storm muttered more softly, held in abeyance. Linda sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching Michael as he paced up and down. He was followed by an entourage of interested cats; but the sight of Michael as a feline Pied Piper did not seem amusing. His distress was too great.
“I can’t buy it,” he said, swinging around to face her. “I’ve believed in enough mad things in the last few hours so that you’d think a little detail like that wouldn’t stick in my craw. But it does.”
“I didn’t expect you to believe it,” she said.
His face twisted, as if a sudden pain had struck him. She watched the spasm with dull disinterest, wondering why he felt such distress. The lethargy that gripped her was pleasant, compared to what she had endured; she knew how a patient must feel after a critical session with his analyst, or a penitent after a bad session in the confessional-drained, empty, oddly at peace.
“How about settling for an abstract manifestation of evil?” Michael suggested hopefully, and won a wan smile in response. “I’m serious,” he insisted. “Half serious, anyhow…Linda, you’ve been through a terrible strain, it would be a miracle if your nerves were normal. I’m not suggesting that you’re insane, I wouldn’t be talking to you like this if I thought so. But isn’t it possible that you’ve concocted this-this fantastic theory out of a very real, legitimate fear of Gordon?”
She looked up, a faint spark of interest in her face.
“You’re willing to admit that I might have a legitimate fear of a paragon like Gordon?”
“He’s no paragon,” Michael said slowly. “Not of virtue, anyhow. I don’t know what he is. But I’m ready to concede that there’s something seriously amiss with him. I’m all the more willing to admit it because it cost me such a struggle to admit it. Linda, do you remember a boy named Joe Schwartz? He was a student of Gordon’s when you were in that class.”
“Joe? Of course I remember him. He wrote some of the funniest, most scurrilous verses I’ve ever heard.”
“Scurrilous?”
“About the professors, and the other students, and human foibles in general. Some topical, some more basic. He had a gift for hitting people’s weaknesses, but he was never cruel; he could sting, delicately, without really hurting. None of the parties that year were a success unless Joe performed. He’d sit there on the floor whanging out chords on his guitar and bellowing out his infamous comments in a raucous voice, grinning from ear to ear… Why are you looking like that?”
“It doesn’t sound like the Joe Schwartz I know,” Michael said grimly.
“He did get a little peculiar toward the end of the year. People said he’d changed. I’m afraid I wasn’t much aware of others just then. Love’s young dream, you know.”
Michael looked uncomfortable, but he went on doggedly.
“What about Tommy Scarinski?”
“You’ve been busy, haven’t you? Yes, he was one of Gordon’s acolytes. Always unstable, of course…At the time, I thought he was preying on Gordon, instead of…”
“The reverse?”
“You don’t understand a process, sometimes, until it happens to you personally.”
“We’re getting there,” Michael said. He spoke slowly, without looking at her. “We try to talk around it, but we’ll have to discuss it sooner or later. Why, Linda? Why is he doing this?”
“I don’t think I could explain it to you-or to any other man.”
She hadn’t meant it to hurt, but it did; she could tell from the change in his face. She went on quickly,
“You see? I can’t even talk about it without sounding like one of the militant feminists you men despise-like an embittered woman whose marriage has gone sour and who rants about the whole male sex instead of facing facts. But it wasn’t like that. I’m not a romantic adolescent, I know that few relationships, marital or otherwise, are based on true equality and respect. As a rule, one partner dominates the other; and in human society there’s a long tradition of masculine superiority. So-all right. I could have accepted that, I’m conditioned to it. Maybe I even wanted it. But Gordon doesn’t want to dominate people; he wants to absorb them, body and soul and spirit. Living with him was-indescribable. I felt as if he were fastened to me, like a gigantic leech, pulling out every ounce of will, every thought… I can see myself making that speech in a divorce court, can’t you? It might come straight out of some ghastly day-time serial.”
“Why didn’t you leave him?”
“I did leave him. He brought me back.” She laughed bitterly. “That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? In this day and age…But it was so easy, really. I had to get a job, I didn’t have much money. I never did. Credit cards, charge accounts, but no cash. I couldn’t very well go to one of the big hotels and charge my escapade to Gordon’s account. Even if I’d had the gall, I knew it would make it easier for him to find me. So I had to get a job-and quickly; I couldn’t pick and choose. I have a B.A. degree, no special training; you’d be surprised how few jobs there are for women with no special skills and no experience. Even my typing was rusty, after all those years. I turned down a couple of offers because there were special conditions of employment involved, and I was in no mood for another man who wanted to own even that small part of me. I don’t know…I’ve never known…how many jobs I lost because of Gordon’s quiet influence-he must have located me immediately-and how many because of the ordinary handicaps of my situation. There were a few things I didn’t try: washing dishes, ushering at movie theaters… It wasn’t false pride; I was afraid of places like that.”
The look in Michael’s eyes hurt her, and yet she found a perverse pleasure in seeing how deeply she could move him.
“I finally got a job as live-in maid and baby-sitter for a family in the suburbs,” she went on. “I held it for three days before the woman told me she didn’t need me. I’m pretty sure that was Gordon’s pressure; household help is darned hard to get these days. Maybe he told the woman I was mentally disturbed.