Driving Blind

“Evelyn?”

House Divided (#ulink_79633ea8-4f4d-5600-8687-bbc0eeae00bb)

Small fifteen-year-old fingers plucked at the buttons on Chris’ trousers like a moth drawn to a flame. He heard whispered words in the dark room that meant nothing, and could not be remembered a moment after they were spoken.

Vivian’s lips were so fresh that it was unbelievable. Chris had the feeling that this was a dream. This was a pantomime carried out in the dark, which he could not see. Vivian herself had switched out every light. It had started as every evening like it had started. With Chris and his brother Leo climbing upstairs with Vivian and Shirley, their girl cousins. The girls were both blonde and smiling. Leo was sixteen and clumsy. Chris was twelve and knew nothing of such moths darting in the warm pantomime, or that there was a light shining in him he had never known about, that some girl might want. Shirley was ten, going on eleven, but very curious. Vivian was the ringleader; she was fifteen and beginning to see the world’s people.

Chris and Leo had arrived in the family car, acting properly grave, since it was such a grave situation. They walked silently behind Mother and Dad into the Johnsons’ house on Buttrick Street, where all the other relatives were gathered in a hushed spell of waiting. Uncle Inar sat by the phone, looking at it, his big hands twitching all by themselves, uneasy animals in his lap.

It was like walking into the hospital itself. Uncle Lester was very badly off. They were waiting for news now from the hospital. Lester had been shot in the stomach on a hunting trip and had lingered half-alive for three days now. So they had come tonight to be together, just in case they received the news of their Uncle Lester’s passing. All three sisters and Lester’s two brothers were there, with their wives and husbands and children.

After a proper interval of hushed speaking, Vivian had very carefully suggested, “Mama, we’ll go upstairs and tell ghost stories, so you grown-ups can talk.”

“Ghost stories,” said Uncle Inar vaguely. “What a thing to tell tonight. Ghost stories.”

Vivian’s mama agreed. “You can go upstairs if you’re quiet. We don’t want any racket.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Chris and Leo.

They left the room, walking slowly on the edge of their shoes. Nobody noticed their going. They could have been several phantoms passing for all the attention they got.

Upstairs, Vivian’s room had a low couch against one wall, a dressing table with pink-folded silk for a skirt, and flower pictures. There was a green leather diary, fabulously inscribed but securely padlocked on the table, freckles of powder on it. The room smelled sweetly soft and nice.

They sat upon the couch, backs lined neatly against the wall, a row of solemn ramrods, and Vivian, like always, told the first ghost story. They turned out all but one lamp, which was very feeble, and she put her voice low in her rounded breasts and whispered it out.

It was that ancient tale about lying abed late one night, with stars cold in the sky, al alone in a big old house when some thing starts creeping slowly up the stairs to your room. Some strange and awful visitor from some other world. And as the story advanced, slowly step by step, step by step, your voice got more tense and more whispery and you kept waiting and waiting for that shocking finale.

“It crept up to the second step, it stepped up to the third step, it came to the fourth step …”

All four of their hearts had churned to this story a thousand times. Now, again, a cold sweat formed on four anticipatory brows. Chris listened, holding Vivian’s hand.

“The strange sounds came on to the sixth step, and rustled to the seventh step, and then to the eighth step …”

Chris had memorized the story, often, and told it often, but no one could tell it quite like Vivian. She was husking it now, like a witch, eyes half shut, body tensed against the wall.

Chris went over the story in his mind, ahead of her. “Ninth, tenth, and eleventh steps. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen steps. It came to the top of the stairs …”

Vivian went on. “Now it’s in the hall at the top of the stairs. Outside the door. Now it’s coming inside. Now it’s closing the door.” A pause. “Now it’s walking across your room. Now it’s passing the bureau. Now it’s over your bed. Now it’s standing right over you, right over your head …”

A long pause, during which the darkness of the room got darker. Everybody drew in their breath, waiting, waiting.

“I GOTCHA!”

Screaming, then giggling, you burst out! You let the black bat crash into the web. You had built the web of tension and horror so completely inside, minute by minute, step by step, around and around, like a very dainty horrible spider weaving, and in that tumultuous climax when I GOTCHA! flew out at you, like a sickening bat, it shattered the web down in trembling apprehension and laughter. You had to laugh to cover up your old old fear. You shrieked and giggled, all four of you. You hollered and shook the couch and held onto each other. Oh that familiar old story! You rocked back and forth, shivering, breathing fast. Funny how it still scared you after the hundredth telling.

The giggling subsided quickly. Footsteps, real ones, were hurrying up the steps to Vivian’s room. By the sound of them Chris knew it was Auntie. The door opened.

“Vivian,” cried Auntie. “I told you about noise! Don’t you have any respect!”

“All right, Mama. We’re sorry.”

“I’m sorry, Auntie,” said Chris, meaning it. “We just forgot ourselves. We got scared.”

“Vivian, you keep them quiet,” directed Auntie, her scowl softening. “And if I hear you again you’ll all come downstairs.”

“We’ll be good,” said Leo, quietly, earnestly.

“Well, all right, then.”

“Has the hospital called?” asked Shirley.

“No,” said Auntie, her face changing, remembering. “We expect to hear soon.”

Auntie went downstairs. It took another five minutes to get back into the spell of storytelling.

“Who’ll tell a story now?” asked Shirley.

“Tell another one, Vivian,” said Leo. “Tell the one about the butter with the evil fungus in it.”

“Oh, I tell that every time,” said Vivian.

“I’ll tell one,” said Chris. “A new one.”

“Swell,” said Vivian. “But let’s turn out the other light first. It’s too light in here.”

She bounced up, switched out the last light. She came back through the utter dark and you could smell her coming and feel her beside you, Chris realized. Her hand grabbed his, tightly. “Go on,” she said.

“Well …” Chris wound his story up on a spool, getting it ready in his mind. “Well, once upon a time—”

“Oh, we heard that one before!” they all laughed. The laughter came back from the unseen wall of the room. Chris cleared his throat and started again.

“Well, once upon a time there was a black castle in the woods—”

He had his audience immediately. A castle was a darn nice thing to start with. It wasn’t a bad story he had in mind, and he would have told it all the way through, taking fifteen minutes or more to hang it out on a line in the dark bedroom air. But Vivian’s fingers were like an impatient spider inside his palm, and as the story progressed he became more aware of her than of the story people.

“—an old witch lived in this black castle—”

Vivian’s lips kissed him on the cheek. It was like all her kisses. It was like kisses before bodies were invented. Bodies are invented around about the age of twelve or thirteen. Before that there are only sweet lips and sweet kisses. There is a sweet something about such kisses you never find again after someone puts a body under your head.

Chris didn’t have a body yet. Just his face. And, like every time Vivian had ever kissed him, he responded. After all, it was fun and it was as good as eating and sleeping and playing all kinds of games. Her lips were like a subtle sugar, and nothing else. For the past four years since he was eight, every time he met Vivian and that was usually once every month, because she lived on the far side of town, there would be ghost stories and kisses and subtle sugar.

“—well, this witch in this castle—”

She kissed him on the lips, momentarily crumbling the castle. About ten seconds later he had to build it up again.

“—this witch in this castle had a beautiful young daughter named Helga. Helga lived in a dungeon and was treated very poorly by her evil old mother. She was very pretty and—”

The lips returned. This time for a longer stay.