Chapter 5
After a long, comfortable silence, punctuated by brief flurries of amusement as one or the other of us stirred, Rolf propped himself on one elbow and looked curiously into my eyes.
"Mom? What was that noise I came in here to find out about?"
"I don't know. I wish you hadn't remembered."
"How come?"
I told him about the sobbing and the light in the garden and the scent. We both sniffed the air, but the only odor apart from that characteristic of the room was one of sweat and sex. Rolf studied me quizzically as if half-convinced I was fabricating the whole thing.
"Weren't walking in your sleep, were you?" he asked.
Just like John, I thought. Damn skeptics, both of them! And I told him the ghost legend Maria had told me.
He chuckled with a superior air. "Can't believe that stuff. Ghosts, for gosh sake!"
"Sure. What about that thump? Any idea what it might have been?"
He paused before replying. "No. I guess not. But it was a real thump, not a ghost noise."
"Where did it come from?"
To him, it had sounded like something in my sitting room. It had sounded like a noise coming through the wall, as it had to me. Only he'd been on one side of the wall and I'd been on the other.
And that left only the wall, itself. Or some failure of our directional sense. Rolf was far less concerned by the puzzle than I. He seemed satisfied to accept the idea a noise in the roof or downstairs could have given us the wrong notion of direction.
"Anyhow, who cares?" he asked. "What's a thump or two when a guy gets what I did because of it?"
And when he'd spent a time mulling over that bit of wisdom, he changed the subject. "Funny, Rose was maybe right in the first place."
"About what?"
"You. Said you'd probably dig it if I just threw you on the ground and started ripping off your clothes. In a way that's like you telling me to tie your hands behind you."
"Yes. I'd come closer to turning on that way than if you beat around the bush for an hour."
"She didn't trust her judgment, though. Said forget it; be subtle and take it easy."
I felt a little of my earlier resentment at the woman returning. "She's got an uncanny kind of insight, hon. Maybe that's why her poetry's so powerful. But she doesn't trust it in real life."
"Too bad. She sure below it on that guess."
"And she was so right!" I shook my head. "It isn't that I'd get all excited about being thrown on the ground, you understand. It's just that it nauseates me to see the kind of coy games that get played when two people want to go to bed with each other. It's an insult to a woman's maturity for a man to try to talk her into letting him fuck her without her knowing what's going on."
"You sound like women's lib, Mom."
"It's that kind of farce that makes women think they've got to go that route! A lot of them don't think they can ever convince men they're mature human beings any other way!" I simmered, still irritated at Rose because she hadn't the guts to trust her insight. "I'd rather wake up to find you had me tied spread-eagle on the bed and were raping me than to have you pussyfoot around trying to get into me without my tumbling to what you were doing."
He laughed and shivered. "If I thought you'd sleep until I got you tied, I'd try that!" he exclaimed. "Be fun!" There was a wistful note in his voice and I knew he was slipping into fantasy.
I stirred. "There isn't much night left, hon. You'd better get back to bed." And seeing the expression in his face, I added, "Your own bed, that is."
"Okay. If you say so." Reluctantly, he withdrew his hardening cock out of me and stumbled to his feet. Recovering his shorts, he left me alone.
When I unlocked the library after breakfast a breath of the desert breeze brushed my face. I stopped in my tracks, standing motionless in the arcade before entering. And as the "wrongness" of the breeze penetrated, I stayed outside the door. Fortunately, John was already visible at the other side of the court.
I called to him. "John? John, something's wrong here. I don't want to go in until you get here."
He crossed quickly. "Problem, baby?"
"Something's open. I felt a draft when I opened the door."
He pushed past me. "Hell, the garden window's open! Look at that drape blow!"
I caught a momentary whiff of the strange fragrance I was getting to know so well. Then it was gone.
"Hey!" John yelled. "Look here!" He bent over the case the lantern belonged in.
I ran to his side and stared down at the sturdy little lantern. "John, it's smoky!"
He picked it up and examined it. "Damned if it isn't! Bet this is the first time it's had a flame in it for thirty years!"
After he'd finished examining it and speculating over what had happened to it, he handed it to me. "No use letting that smoke stay on it. Works its way into the horn."
I wiped it thoroughly. It was a fine piece of craftsmanship. The frame was brass and the windows were horn, scraped thin enough to be translucent. And the back was screened to keep the light out of the user's eyes. It wasn't remarkable, really; I'd seen lanterns that were better crafted. But I'd never seen another so small-designed for a stub of a candle and capable of being carried with so little effort.
I was convinced of one thing; it was this lantern I'd seen in the garden. It wasn't that I could have seen enough detail to be that sure, but that light had been a glow rather than a flame or the glitter of an electric bulb-and this lantern had been used. Since nobody seemed inclined to believe my accounts of strange occurrences anyhow, I didn't have to look for firm proof. I knew what I knew.
I didn't discuss the night's episode with John. But while he was puzzling over the open window and asserting over and over that he'd watched me lock it and then checked it, himself-and that it couldn't be unlocked from the outside-I was remembering it was right here that the mysterious figure with the lantern had vanished.
The day was quiet. We worked at the normal hectic pace and made the normal amount of progress on John's manuscript. And when we quit at three o'clock for the day, Rolf met me in the arcade and went with me to my sitting room for our usual talk.
I'd come to treasure those talks. In Cleveland there had been a growing barrier between us. The concepts of his schoolmates and neighborhood acquaintances had turned him against such communication; adults were "the enemy" and had to be treated with wary aloofness. Here at Casa del Gato negative influences from outside seemed to be nonexistent. Rolf not only had recaptured his little-boy willingness to share ideas and experiences with me; he seemed to store them for the sharing.
On this day, I sensed an awkwardness. We didn't have a barrier, but Rolf appeared to be on guard against going too far. He gulped from time to time, too, and eyed me speculatively when he thought my attention was somewhere else. I decided we had to defuse the issue of the previous night's experience.
"See Rose today?" I asked.
He nodded, then looked into my eyes. "Screwed her again, Mom. Sort of took her by surprise with that clitoris thing. She just about went ape!"
"It certainly couldn't have been new to her. She's not that pure."
He grinned. "Naw. She just didn't expect it from me. And I sort of had her pinned before I started. She couldn't stop me. Boy, did she go to pieces!" In the recollection, his eyes widened and his voice shook. "Honest! I thought she was going to break herself in two!"
"But she didn't."
"Naw."
I'd gotten him loosened up. He'd been put on notice we could talk about sex without evasiveness.
He swallowed. "Mom? Feel like screwing before supper?"
I did. My pussy was writhing with desire for his hard young cock. But he could easily grow to expect an open season on me and I didn't feel that was wise.
I shook my head. "It would be fun, honey. But we're not going to get into that kind of habit. If you made out with Rose you've had enough for today."
"For the whole day?" He sounded incredulous. "Aw, Mom!"
"Sorry. By the way, what did Rose have to say about the fact you got to me so fast?"
"Huh? MOM! I didn't tell her that!"
"And she didn't ask?"
"No."
"That business with the clitoris. Suppose she wondered how you found out about it so soon? I mean, she hadn't shown you, had she?"
"Omigosh! I don't know what she thought! She didn't say anything, though, except how it made her feel." He apparently remembered something he'd forgotten to mention. "Hey! I watched Blaine with his rattlesnakes this morning! He had a new one and I got to watch him taking the fangs out!"
"That seems too cruel to me."
"Not the way he does it." He defended Blaine. "He really is an expert! And that was really a big one, too! Biggest in the compound now!"
"Was Maria there?"
"Sure!" He grinned. "I think she worships snakes. Pretends she's still Indian. She held him for Blaine." Then he shook his head. "She's funny, Mom. Friendly and all, but sort of distant." He sighed.
I knew what he felt for the beautiful, dark girl. The four years that separated them in age had turned her into a woman. A man would have had to be blind or homosexual to escape the excitement her figure and carriage generated. Inexperienced and impressionable, Rolf could no more have escaped her magic than fly. And her charms had nothing of the ascetic in them; she had an earthy, robust look of aliveness about her. I suspected that Rolf must develop a hard-on every time he got near her.
"She wouldn't be as easy as Rose?" I asked with a smile.
"Gosh! Mom, when she does decide to put out, it's going to mean something! It's not going to be a 'poetic exercise' the way Rose lets on it is with her."
As I formed a picture of the sex consciousness my son had developed-of the way he looked at the subject and reacted to it-I found my own resolve weakening. If I couldn't find the brakes for my runaway hunger I'd be letting him make love to me before supper after all! I uncurled from my position at the end of the couch and stood.
"Had Rose done any more composing today?" I asked.
"I think so." Rolf grinned smugly. "Said something about my screwing up the mood again."
"I'd better find out if she wants me to do up the typing. I didn't do any last night."
"Aw, gee, Mom!"
But I insisted and our private session came to an end. The Casa was really a quadrangle-four wings built around a central courtyard-with the halls being arcades running around the inside. And Rose's study was diagonally across the courtyard from my suite. I passed Maria's apartment on my way to Rose's corner. The massive door stood open and Maria was on her way out. Surprise flashed briefly in her eyes and then something that made me gasp with its virulence. But before I could react her features had smoothed and she smiled blandly.
"Hear any more of the ghost?" she asked.
"Yes. A little, last night. Someone was down in the garden at about two-thirty in the morning, too. Must have had a key to the library. Left one of the windows open."
"Oh, no, Anne! You've got the only other key to that door. John thinks it's simpler if he and his secretary have the only ones."
"But he admits it doesn't really matter who goes in there!"
"Habit. He's right. He's got too much on his mind to have to think about things like locking up. Duane-Duane Worden, the secretary he had before you-Duane made him do it that way. And it worked the last time John had to go somewhere for atmosphere."
I was almost sure I'd caught a tender wistfulness in her tone when she'd mentioned Duane. But she didn't give me a chance to probe.
"Maybe that was the ghost in the garden," she remarked. "Lolita used to do that, they say."
"Are there any secret passages in the house, Maria? Like hidden stairs or anything?"
She shrugged. "Nobody knows. There's stories about the Casa that hint at some, but we've never seen them."
We reached the head of the main stairway and Maria started down. I went past, toward Rose's study. Rose was there, gazing thoughtfully out the west window. She heard me when I went through the arch, for she turned and peered at me.
"Anne! Come on in! I just love the way the country changes colors at this time of day." And she returned to her contemplation of the desert.
I joined her. The harsh brilliance of midday had given way to soft grays and silvers. The natural growth looked like faint smudges of smoke and the tops of the low ridges gleamed with gold tints. It didn't take a poetic nature to make a person feel shivery at the sight. I sighed happily.
"God, I love it here, Rose! It's just fantastic!"
She chuckled softly. "I'm glad you're here, Anne. The Casa feels alive." She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. "I like having that boy of yours here, too. It's good to feel the vibrations of a life that's just opening up."
"Poetic exercise?"
"Good excuse." She giggled. "Those vibes of his get pretty deep into a lady poet. He's the kind who makes a woman glad she is, isn't he?"
"You made quite an impression on him with your advice," I replied dryly.
She faced me frankly. "It would have been a crime for two people as sexy as you and Rolf not ever to try each other." And she smiled. "Wouldn't it?"
"Yes." There was no need to deny it. "What about Rolf and Maria? Talk about sexy!"
"When she's ready...." She paused reflectively. "She's a funny person, Anne. Possessive as hell!"
"And living in the past."
"That's what's funny about her. She's got that thing about the past and yet there's a part of her that's way out ahead of the world." She shrugged. "When she's ready she's going to share John with me. She loves him. I think she's a little afraid of the way you love him, Anne."
I gasped. The way she said it made it sound so normal and right; there wasn't a hint of jealousy, either about Maria or me!
She continued, half-laughing. "Wouldn't put it past her to pull a Lolita on you."
"Rose! Would she?"
She laughed again, quickly. "Oh, no. I shouldn't say a thing like that. I overreact to people, Anne. It's just the feeling she gives. But she wouldn't do a thing like that. Rattlesnakes are so bothersome."
I was relieved at her immediate denial. Being haunted was one thing. Having Maria deliberately attempt that kind of deadly action would have been another. Rose gave me the stanzas she'd completed and I took them back to my sitting room. After supper I'd put them into her manuscript format.
As it turned out, it was quite late before I got to them. The after-dinner drinks in the living room turned into more drinking than I'd seen them do at the Casa. Rolf excused himself early and went to his room and when the talk got around to sex and an undercurrent of personalities that began to expose the intimacy I knew lay between John and Kim, as well as that between Rose and Blaine, Maria left. It dawned on me finally that there was going to be something more than talk before the two couples left the living room and I beat a retreat at a point where it had become apparent I might be the target for the night.
I wouldn't have moved-I'd have waited eagerly-if it hadn't been for Blaine. But the way he eyed me made cold chills run up and down my spine and I couldn't face the thought of making love in front of him. Or with him!
It was past midnight before I got my typewriter into operation. Margarita, the cat, lay curled in feline majesty on the rug in front of the cold fireplace. Rolf was asleep-I'd checked cautiously when I'd come upstairs. And I supposed Maria must also be sleeping. Her door was open and her apartment was dark.
Halfway through the second page of typing I stiffened. My fingers lay motionless on the keyboard and the paper blurred in my vision. The ghostly fragrance was all about me, stealing in and out of my consciousness. I" held my breath and listened.
The house was silent and the only sound from outside was the distant wail of a coyote. Imagination and nerves were getting to me, I decided. But I felt a chill and the back of my neck prickled. With that childish terror of the previous night welling in my throat I forced myself to turn in my chair. Margarita had risen to her feet. She stood with her hair stiff and bristling and her tail straight in the air. Her back was arched and her side was toward the center of the room, which she stared at with narrowed eyes. Her ears lay close to her head. From her open mouth came a low, defiant squall. While I watched her, horribly frightened by her agitation and the fact she seemed to be staring at thin air, she spit loudly, emitted a chilling yowl and leaped wildly past the couch and out of the room. I heard one more angry squall as she fled along the arcade and the scrambling of her claws on the flagstones. Then I was alone.
But the scent had grown more pronounced. A faint, metallic rustling caught my attention. I concentrated on it, trying desperately to identify it. Metal rustling over metal, I thought, and a soft "clink" punctuated it. My body was bathed with perspiration but I shivered with a violent chill. Somebody was walking! There was a step, a dragging sound, another step, another dragging. It was someone who had to drag one foot, I told myself hysterically. Someone with a bad leg. And the metallic rustle was a chain wound twice around a slim waist-and there had to be a golden key hanging from the chain and clinking against a loose link!
I knew nobody was in the arcade, though. The sounds weren't coming to me through the door. They were, somehow, right there in the sitting room with me! Everything but the desk looked menacing. The couch, angled across one corner so it faced the fireplace, was hiding demons in the dark behind it. The armchair, crouching at the other end of the far wall, threatened me dourly.
The dragging footsteps faded and I couldn't hear the rustle of the chain. I trembled, clinging to the seat of my chair and jerking my glance from one shadow to another with my head rigidly held in one position. I was hovering on the edge of sheer panic and the strange scent was getting no weaker. For a long time I heard nothing but the lonely coyote and then the dismal sobbing began.
I shuddered and my shoulders drooped. Of all the evidences of the ghost, this one moved me the most and frightened me the least. Somehow it wasn't possible to believe the sobs could be disembodied; they had to be coming from a troubled human throat. But they had another, eerie quality about them tonight and the sadness they brought me was tinged with an unaccountable sense of loss.
There was a sudden, startled sounding, breathy wail-low and querulous-from the window, followed by a muffled clapping and a weird whistle. My nerves broke. With a wild leap, I overturned my chair, sprawled over it and scrambled on all fours toward the door.
I wept with terror. "You stupid goddamn broad!" I hissed at myself. "Should have taken off with the cat, for Christ's sake!"
I sprawled again, bringing up in a heap at the rail overlooking the inner courtyard, and dragged myself to my feet. My knees threatened to dump me on my face, but I got them under a doubtful sort of control and clawed my way along the rail away from the horror of my sitting room. I threw a fearful glance backward and saw nothing, then hurried my steps and ran toward the stairway.
A shadow detached itself from one of the inner columns arid moved toward me. My throat swelling with a strangled scream, I stopped in my tracks and pressed against the rail. As the shadow came closer, making no sound and seeming to float along the flagstones, my accumulated fright burst from me in a wild shriek.
And even as the shriek reverberated in the courtyard, the shadow turned into John, his arms out to me and his voice soft and coaxing.
"Anne! Anne! There, there, Anne! It's okay! Everything's all right!"
I flung myself into his arms and sobbed on his chest. My legs collapsed and he swept me off my feet, cuddling me like a helpless child.
"It's okay, baby! It's okay-easy, sweet-take it easy."