Ariel

Four

Two of the three stove-top pilot lights were out. Roberta relit them with a wooden kitchen match, then put a copper-bottomed teakettle on to boil. She measured out instant coffee and powdered chickory root and waited impatiently for the teakettle to whistle. Her mind wandered while she waited, and when the kettle whistled the sound startled her.

Nerves, she thought. She was a nervous wreck.

Why did the pilot lights go out all the time? The damp chill air of the kitchen seemed an unsatisfactory explanation. Maybe there were air currents in the room that blew out pilot lights on a whim. Maybe there was something wrong with the old stove itself, some eccentricity in the gas line that would shut off the flow of gas long enough for the flame to die.

The gas company had sent a man to check the stove and its connections. He’d found nothing wrong, assuring Roberta that she had a great old stove. “They made this baby to last,” he told her. “You made a range like this today, nobody could afford to buy it. Your gas line’s sound and all your fittings are tight. There’s no leak anywhere.”

“But the pilot lights—”

“No reason they should be going out.”

He’d said this with a sullen certainty, as if implying that some unmentionable action of hers was responsible for the trouble with the pilot lights, and that was patently absurd Air currents in the kitchen, she told herself, or perhaps an intermittent blockage in the stove’s gas line, or something related to the damp in the kitchen. She didn’t really understand these things, but couldn’t it be that some sort of inert gas rose up from the damp brick floor, hovering in the air long enough to smother the flame of the pilot lights? Maybe such a hypothesis didn’t make hard scientific sense, but wasn’t it possible all the same?

In a house where ghosts walked, where healthy babies died abruptly in their sleep, wasn’t almost anything possible?

She lit a cigarette and sipped her coffee. A couple of nights ago, when all three pilot lights had gone out, she’d asked David about the possibility of having the pilots shut off altogether and lighting the burners with a match. She thought it might be safer that way. The idea of gas escaping silently and invisibly from an extinguished pilot light frightened her.

He had insisted it was nothing to worry about. “There’s not that much gas involved,” he explained. “Just a trickle, just enough to nourish the tiniest possible flame. If it goes out it’s an inconvenience but it’s not a danger. The small amount of gas that escapes gets dispersed right away. It can’t build up enough to cause an explosion, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“But I can smell it. I walk into the room and I can smell it.”

“It’s not even the gas you smell. Natural gas is odorless. The manufacturers are required to add a chemical to it, and that’s what you smell.”

It seemed academic to her whether she smelled the gas or a substance that had been added to the gas. If the gas were such a harmless compound, why would the law require the addition of this chemical? Gas was dangerous. It burned, it exploded, it asphyxiated people.

She drew on her cigarette, blew out a thin column of smoke. She remembered a news story from a few years ago. A town somewhere in the north, Pennsylvania or New Jersey, she couldn’t remember exactly where. They had had trouble with underground gas lines freezing and thawing during the winter. Several homes had exploded, with more than a few deaths resulting.

One incident had made an indelible impression. A woman evacuated her house just minutes before it exploded. She lost all her possessions but escaped with her life. After her house blew up, she took shelter with a neighbor a couple of blocks away. Whereupon the neighbor’s house exploded, killing the woman.

Roberta had thought at the time that the story was enough to make a fatalist out of anyone. If you were destined to die in a gas explosion, one house was as good as the next. God would get you wherever you ran.

It was easy enough to believe that when your involvement was limited to a few lines in the newspaper and a few minutes on the seven o’clock news. But how well did the belief hold up when the smell of gas was present in your own kitchen?

She got up, checked the pilot lights. All three were in good order.

Outside, a stout middle-aged woman in tight corduroy slacks was walking a small terrier. The dog was not on a leash. He raced on ahead of the woman, sniffed at the base of a tree, scampered back behind the woman, barked at a squirrel, then raced to keep up with the woman, who strode on at a steady pace, looking neither left nor right and paying no evident attention to the dog whatsoever.

Roberta watched them until they disappeared from view. Maybe she should get a dog, she thought. But she didn’t want a dog. She’d had the one thing she wanted and it had been taken from her, and its place could not be taken by some yapping little terrier.

She reached for her cigarettes, put them down, then gave up and lit one. She’d been living on coffee and cigarettes ever since Caleb’s death. She didn’t know how much weight she’d lost but she could tell from the fit of her clothes that she was losing flesh.

Upstairs, Ariel sounded a few tentative notes on her tin flute. Roberta winced. There was no escaping the child’s music, she thought. It didn’t help to close doors. The notes slithered through walls and floorboards, penetrating to every corner of the huge old house. And she wouldn’t play a proper song, something with a discernible tune to it. Instead she insisted on making up her own horrible dirges, inventing as she went along.

An image: Ariel as the Pied Piper. Slippers on her feet with turned-up toes. A peaked cap perched on her head. The tin flute at her lips. And an endless parade of rats and assorted vermin following her as she played.

Pied Piper, Act Two: Ariel with her flute, a devilish smile on her lips. Followed now not by rats but by all the town’s children, the innocent children, and all of them looked like Caleb, and—

Roberta sat up straight, gave her head a violent shake to dislodge the images forming within it.

What was the matter with her? Instead of becoming increasingly able to accept Caleb’s death, she remained appalled at the injustice of it. Her mind, evidently requiring someone to focus blame upon, seemed to have settled on Ariel. It didn’t make sense, and she knew it didn’t make sense, but there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about it. There was no way to deal with the thoughts that came to mind. She couldn’t seem to talk to anyone about them. She couldn’t talk to Ariel at all, about anything, and she couldn’t even admit her thoughts to David, and who else was there?

Gintzler? Several times she’d been on the point of calling the psychiatrist, but each time she’d resisted, feeling that she already knew what he would tell her. He’d interpret the woman who’d appeared in her bedroom as something she’d conjured up out of guilt or anxiety, and no doubt he’d come up with some interesting symbolic explanation for the apparition, but his scientific bias was such that he’d never for a moment allow the possibility that the house was somehow haunted, that the woman was a manifestation of some force present within its walls, that she’d either signaled Caleb’s imminent death or actually caused it, taking him away to another plane of existence.

Gintzler would raise an eloquent eyebrow if she even dared to suggest the possibility that the apparition was real. He’d shame her out of it, and she was enough of a people-pleaser to go along with him, pretending that her thoughts were no more than an indication of the instability of her mind. And could she be sure that wasn’t the case?

She couldn’t be sure of anything.

She crushed out her cigarette. Ariel’s flute had gone silent again, she noticed. At least if you heard the flute you knew where the child was. She’d turned into such a sneak lately, slipping around the house like a ghost herself. When she or David climbed the stairs, a board or two invariably groaned underfoot. Similarly, neither of them could walk the length of the second-floor hallway without setting the floorboards to creak. But Ariel padded silently through the house as if her feet never touched the ground. You never heard her in the hallway or on the stairs. She weighed considerably less than they did, certainly, but Roberta was convinced there was more to it than that.

It was spooky.

She’d been more and more aware of this since Caleb’s death. She’d be in one room, any room, and suddenly she’d have the feeling that the child was nearby, watching her, spying on her. She would turn around, suddenly or stealthily, and never managed to catch Ariel in the act. The child seemed to be always hovering just out of sight, like a little speck dancing on the periphery of one’s vision.

Lately the two of them had seemed to be playing some terribly elaborate game without rules. Just this afternoon, for example, it had been obvious to Roberta that Ariel had known she was standing in the doorway. She’d gone on writing in her notebook, pretending to be unaware of Roberta’s presence, and Roberta in turn had pretended to believe Ariel didn’t know she was there. And so Roberta had hesitated only for a moment before withdrawing and returning to the first floor. It had been not unlike a ritual passage in some exceedingly formal Spanish dance, and yet each of them had performed instinctively, without thought.

She was on her way to the kitchen, bearing an empty coffee cup and a full ashtray, when the phone rang. The wall phone — beige, with touchtone dialing — was mounted at eye level just to the right of the kitchen fireplace. She put down the cup and the ashtray, reached to answer the phone.

“Bobbie?”

Her hand shook. She almost dropped the phone.

“Bobbie, are you there? It’s Jeff Channing.”

As if he had to identify himself. As if she couldn’t recognize his voice. As if more than one man had ever called her Bobbie.

“I’m here,” she said.

“How are you, Bobbie?”

“I’m all right.”

“Are you? I’ve been thinking of you ever since the funeral. I almost called several times but I stopped myself.”

“And now?”

“I had to talk to you.”

She stared into the fireplace. When they first looked at the house it had been one of the special touches of charm, a cozy hearth in the brick-floored kitchen. Then, after they’d bought the house and moved in, and after she’d learned that half the damp in Old Charleston seeped up through that authentic brick floor, they’d tried lighting a fire in the cozy hearth. All of the heat had gone straight up the chimney, while the kitchen itself had filled with a sour smell that rapidly permeated the entire house. It was weeks before the smell was entirely gone, and the fireplace had not been put into service since then.

“Bobbie, I want to see you.”

“Oh.”

“I think it’s important.”

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea, Jeff.”

“Why not?”

“I—”

“We have to talk.”

“About what?”

“About Caleb.”

“Caleb,” she said, and drew a breath and steadied herself. “Caleb is dead.”

“How did he die?”

“He died in his crib. He just died, Jeff. Are you trying to torture me?”

“He was my son, wasn’t he?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Don’t play games with me, Bobbie.”

“We never played games with each other. Did we?”

“No.”

“So let’s not start now.”

“All right.”

“Caleb was my son.”

Was the phone tapped? Was she being tricked into admitting something? She felt drawn, exhausted.

“If you say so,” she said.

“Bobbie—”

“Whatever you say, Jeff.”

“I have to talk to you.”

“That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it? Talking?”

“I have to see you.”

“David will be home soon. Or did you want to see both of us?”

“You know I didn’t.”

She wished she had a cigarette. She wished she’d thought to put her shoes on before coming into the kitchen. The floor, as always, was cold underfoot. But she hadn’t planned on spending any time in this room. She’d just intended on putting a fire under the kettle and dumping the ashtray. She stood on one foot now, rubbing the sole of the other foot against her pants leg for warmth.

“Tomorrow,” he was saying. “You’ll be home tomorrow?”

“I suppose so.”

“You don’t sound good, Bobbie. There’s no life in your voice.”

“Oh. I can’t help that.”

“I’ll come tomorrow.”

“Ariel comes home after school.”

“I’ll come a little after noon.”

“All right.”

“I want to talk to you for my own sake, Bobbie, but I have the feeling you need someone to talk to yourself.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“I’ll be there around twelve-thirty or so.”

She started to speak, then stopped herself. At that moment, standing on one foot like a flamingo, the receiver pressed tightly against her ear, she felt a sudden touch of cold air on the nape of her neck.

A shiver went through her.

She was certain, absolutely certain, that Ariel was standing behind her. She had not heard her approach. But she could feel the child’s tiny eyes upon her now, pawing at her like cold damp hands. She wanted to turn around but could not will herself to move.

“Bobbie?”

She could not answer him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

The phone clicked in her ear. Still she stood there, aware of everything that was touching her — the cold brick floor beneath her left foot, the pressure of the receiver against her ear, the chill gaze of the child on the back of her neck. “Yes,” she said aloud to no one at all. “Yes, that’s a good idea. Certainly.” And she continued in that vein, muttering something noncommittal from time to time, as if it would be somehow dangerous to let the child know that the telephone conversation had ended.

She felt like a character in a play, acting out a meaningless part in simple obedience to the author who had written it for her. Her body was frozen in position. A cramp was building in the calf muscle of her bent right leg. Her left hand was braced against the fireplace mantel, helping to support her weight, while her right hand clutched the dead telephone receiver to her ear.

“Yes, I certainly agree with you,” she said crisply. “Well, goodbye, then. And I’m so glad you called.”

She hung up the phone. And stood now with both feet on the floor, breathing slowly and deeply.

And turned around.

She was quite alone in the kitchen.

She sighed heavily, feeling the tension drain from her body. It was all her imagination, she told herself, all an indication of the state of her nerves. Or was it? Had the child been in the room? It was certainly not impossible. She might have stolen away as silently as she had approached, or she might not have been there at all.

Maybe it was just her mood, or the particular atmosphere of the kitchen. Maybe some guilt or anxiety over her conversation with Jeff had caused her to imagine that she was being observed and her conversation overheard.

But that sudden touch of cold air on the nape of her neck? Air currents in a drafty old house? Was that sufficient? Could that account for the tangible presence she’d felt behind her?

She checked the pilot lights. All three were lit. She heated water for coffee, dumped the ashtray, returned to the living room. There she dropped to the couch and lit another cigarette.

From somewhere overhead she heard the reedy piping of the child’s tin flute.

She dreamed a good deal that night, and once a dream woke her, fading out of memory even as she sat up in her bed. She stared over at the corner of the room, squinting, trying to discern the woman in the shawl. But there was nothing there. David lay on his back in the other bed, breathing heavily, and as she listened to his breathing and waited for her own to regulate itself, he moaned softly and rolled over onto his side.

Roberta lay down, closed her eyes. When sleep did not come swiftly she got out of bed and put on slippers and a robe. She left the bathroom and walked on tiptoe in the hallway. Nevertheless, certain floorboards creaked when she trod on them.

Wasn’t there a way to stop floorboards from doing that? You couldn’t oil them, she didn’t suppose, but couldn’t you sink a nail in a strategic place to eliminate a squeak? You really had to know how to do things like that when you owned an older home. There were always little things to be seen to. But she didn’t know much about such matters and David was next to useless around the house.

You could be like the child, she thought, and glide soundlessly over the floors and stairs like a small pale ghost.

Ariel’s door was closed, and no light was visible beneath it. That didn’t mean the child was asleep. She could be reading under the covers with a flashlight, the way all children did at one time or another. Or she could be sitting up in the dark.

The brass doorknob was cool to the touch. Roberta’s hand fastened upon it. After a moment she released the knob without turning it.

She walked almost the entire length of the hallway to her bedroom. Then something made her turn, and she covered half the distance again and took hold of another brass doorknob, this one on the closed door to Caleb’s room. She shut her eyes in the darkened hallway and concentrated on the silence. No boards creaked now, no windowpanes rattled, no eerie flute music wailed through the walls.

A fantasy, an irresistibly tempting one, flooded over her. It was a dream, it was all a dream, the whole past two weeks had never happened, and if she turned the doorknob and entered the little room Caleb would be sleeping in his crib, and if she picked him up he would squirm and giggle and coo, and—

She knew better. But all the same she turned the knob and pushed the door inward. Her hand found the switch on the wall and flicked on the overhead fixture.

She blinked at the glare. For a moment her fantasy was reinforced by what she saw. Caleb’s room was as it had been. Nothing had been changed or removed. The fish mobile still swayed over his crib. The same stuffed animals kept their stations on top of the bathinet.

But the crib was empty.

You fool, she thought. Why do you punish yourself?

She sighed, turned, slapped the switch and extinguished the overhead light. She stepped out into the hallway and drew the door shut.

Should she go downstairs? Check the windows and doors? Check the pilot lights?

She went straight to bed, and sleep was not long in coming. In the morning, when she went downstairs, there was a slight but undeniable smell of gas in the dank kitchen, and one of the pilots was out.

By mid-morning she was in a good mood.

This surprised her. She’d had a bad night and awakened from it expecting to drag herself through the day a minute at a time. Instead the morning flew by. She did the breakfast dishes, straightened the downstairs, made the beds, and observed her own spirits rising as she went along.

Around eleven she bathed and got dressed. Sitting in front of her mirror, she realized for the first time that what she felt was excitement, anticipation.

She hadn’t felt this way in a long time.

The doorbell sounded at ten minutes after twelve. She hadn’t heard him drive up. She felt a little anxiety on her way to the door, but by the time she opened it she was calm and collected.

He looked wonderful, she thought. Was his suit the same one he’d worn to the funeral? It might have been, but there was certainly nothing funereal about his appearance. His shirt was cream-colored broadcloth with a rounded collar, his tie a bold affair of cream and burgundy stripes.

Their eyes met and the silence stretched until he broke it. “Bobbie,” he began.

“Come inside,” she said. And, leading him into the living room, she said, “My happy home. A prime example of the gracious mode of living characteristic of antebellum Charleston. All the charm and refinement of the Old South is reflected in these warm and decorously appointed rooms.”

He chuckled, took the chair she indicated. “It is a beautiful house,” he said.

“Make me an offer and it’s yours.”

“You’re not happy here? I’m sorry, that was a stupid question. Of course you’re not happy, not after what’s happened. But you’re not really thinking of selling because of—”

“Because Caleb died? No, we’re not thinking of selling. At least we haven’t talked about it. David doesn’t even know I hate it here.”

“Because of what happened?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” She shrugged, reached for a cigarette. He offered a light and she leaned forward to accept it. Blowing out smoke she said, “I’m not sure what it is. This place is a mausoleum. You remember those comic books? This place is like living in the pages of Tales From The Crypt. Do you believe in ghosts, Jeff?”

“I never gave them much thought.”

“Neither did I. I never had to before I set up housekeeping in beautiful downtown Charleston.”

“Is this a haunted house? I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be flip—”

“I don’t know, but something’s driving me slightly batty. Would you consider me a flighty woman?”

“Not you, Bobbie.”

“Because I always thought of myself as Stella Stable. A sort of second cousin to the Rock of Gibraltar. Now I hear things in the middle of the night, and I’ve got a personal grudge fight going with a gas stove, and I’m constantly being spooked by my own kid.”

“Are you talking about Caleb?”

She shook her head. “Ariel. Granted, she’s an intrinsically spooky kid, but I think I’ve been overreacting. I hope I’ve been overreacting.”

“You lost a son, Bobbie. It’s only natural for you to be affected by it.”

She looked at him.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No. You’re the only person who ever calls me Bobbie, did you know that?”

“If you’d rather I didn’t—”

“I didn’t say that.” She held his eyes for a moment, then lowered her own and took a quick puff on her cigarette. “I’ve been going nuts,” she said. “But I said that before, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“I think it started before Caleb died. I don’t know when it started. Maybe it was moving here that did it. This house. Maybe it’s not the house. Maybe — hell, Jeff, I don’t know what it is.”

“You’re just upset—”

“I’m more myself today than I’ve been in a long time. At least I can talk for a change. I can’t remember the last time I was able to talk to my husband, and I haven’t got anybody else in my life. I don’t even know the neighbors. They all stay in their own houses playing solitaire and passing the time of day with their own ghosts, I suppose. So I’m afraid you’re getting more than you bargained for.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Just what did you bargain for, come to think of it? A quick jump in the feathers for old time’s sake?”

He colored.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m a bitch.”

“It’s part of your charm.”

“Is that what it is? Gintzler would tell me it’s part of the wall I build to keep other people out. Thirty bucks an hour and that was the best he could manage. Seriously, why did you come?”

“To talk about Caleb. I never even managed to see him and all of a sudden he was dead.”

“All of a sudden,” she said, and the next thing she knew she was sobbing fitfully and he was on the couch beside her, holding her, stroking her hair.

“Go ahead,” he urged her. “Go ahead and let go.”

But she couldn’t. She drew away, pulled herself together, crushed out her cigarette and lit a fresh one. He returned to his chair and she smoked for a moment or two in silence.

“Coffee,” she said. “I didn’t even offer you a cup of coffee. The ultimate hostess.”

“That’s all right.”

“Would you like a cup?”

“I’ve had half a dozen cups already this morning.”

“Or a drink. Would you like a drink?”

“No thanks.”

“I wish I knew what to offer you.”

“That’s something you’ve always known, Bobbie.”

Their eyes met. There was a dryness in the back of her throat, a pulse hammering in her right temple. She drew on her cigarette, blew out a cloud of smoke.

“I think I want to talk,” she said crisply. “Could you stand that?”

“Of course. It’s what I came for.”

“You may get much more than you bargained for. The ravings of a female hysteric, replete with ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties.”

“And things that go bump in the night?”

“Oh, no end of things that go bump in the night. I don’t think I want to stay here. Ariel will be coming home sooner or later.”

“Would it matter if she saw me?”

“Probably not. David could turn up, as far as that goes. Oh, neither one’ll be here for a couple of hours, but could we just go for a drive anyway? I want to get out of this house.”

“Of course, Bobbie.”

Outside she said, “Where’s your car? I didn’t hear you drive up.”

“I parked on the next block.”

“There’s plenty of room in front. Or were you concerned about my good name?”

“I thought it would be just as easy to park down the street.”

She nodded. “Well, let’s take your car, okay?”

“Fine.”

“Because I don’t want to have to concentrate on driving. I just want to put my head back and talk a blue streak.”

She talked for a long time. He drove through town, then hooked up with the Interstate and stayed on it to the second interchange. Then they were driving in the country, taking a series of back roads, passing small subsistence farms with their little plots of corn and tobacco and tomatoes and okra, some flanked by immobile house trailers, others by tarpaper shacks straight out of Tobacco Road.

Were there ghosts that walked by night in tarpaper shacks? Babies out here didn’t sleep in cribs. They generally made do with a bureau drawer. Did they ever die in their sleep, just close their eyes and never wake up?

She closed her own eyes and went on talking. It had always been easy for her to talk to Jeff Channing and it was no harder now. She had the feeling she could tell him absolutely anything, and at the same time she knew he was paying close attention to every word she spoke. Now and then he would ask her to clarify a point, drawing her out on one thing or another, and rather than interrupt her train of thought it seemed to increase the flow of her words.

Finally she was through. She sat for a moment, waiting to see if there was anything else. Off to the right, two men in bib overalls were fussing over a fire fueled with ruined auto and truck tires. The air reeked of burning rubber and she asked Jeff why they didn’t just throw the tires away.

He laughed. “Slaughtering time,” he said.

“I don’t understand.”

“You burn tires when you slaughter a hog. You have to scald the hog so the bristles loosen from the skin, and to do that you have to heat a huge iron kettle, and you need a hot fire, and nothing burns hotter than rubber. You thought they were just burning the tires to get rid of them?”

“Well, I’m a city girl.”

“Uh-huh. Who do you think that woman was, Bobbie?”

“In the shawl? I don’t know. I don’t know if she just appeared to me or what. I don’t understand ghosts.”

“Neither do I. Did she look like anyone?”

“I think so. But maybe it’s a false memory. I didn’t make the connection at the time.”

“Who did she look like?”

“Can’t you guess?”

“Like Ariel?”

She nodded. “I didn’t want to say it. That pale face and the shape of her head. But I don’t know if I saw her clearly enough for there to be a resemblance. Maybe I don’t even know how her head was shaped. She was wrapped in a shawl, don’t forget.”

“I’m not likely to forget. I feel as though I could close my eyes and see her myself.”

“Don’t do that. We’d go off the road.”

“I’ll try to control myself. What do you think happened to Caleb, Bobbie?”

“I know what happened to him. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Crib death. It’s even been known to happen to kids three or four years old, although it’s most common in the first year.”

“I know all that. I’ve done a little studying on the subject, as a matter of fact. But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Oh?”

“That’s what you know happened to Caleb. But what do you think happened to him?”

“Oh,” she said.

“Forget logic and common sense for a few minutes. Forget reality and a sane universe. Talk about what’s inside of you for a change.”

“All right.”

“Do you think the woman in the shawl killed him?”

She worried her forehead with the tips of her fingers. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I feel crazy talking like this, but I see what you mean, and I’m just going to go ahead and feel crazy if I have to. The woman in the shawl — I think the woman in the shawl was some sort of spirit letting me know what was going to happen, that Caleb was going to be taken from me. I think that was her purpose in coming and that’s why I haven’t seen her since. The sense I have of her — well, I don’t know if she’s evil or not, I don’t have a sense of that one way or the other, but I don’t think of her as capable of killing someone.”

“But you think someone killed Caleb.”

“Someone or something.”

“Who?”

She shook her head.

“You don’t know what you think or you’re afraid to say it out loud?”

“Maybe a little of both.”

“David woke up the third time the ghost appeared, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but not until she vanished. He didn’t see her.”

“That’s not what I’m getting at. You sent him down the hall to check on Caleb.”

“That’s right, and he said he was all right. But he must have been already dead, don’t you think? If I saw the woman taking him away he must have been dead already. Unless that’s not the way ghosts do things.” She laughed dryly. “I should have paid more attention when they told spooky stories around the campfire at Girl Scouts. I never realized all that lore would come in handy someday.”

“You think he was dead when David checked him?”

“He must have been, wouldn’t you say? Maybe he was still warm because it had just happened. Or maybe David was just humoring me. He may have opened the door and looked in, and why take a chance on waking the baby? The only reason he went in the first place was to set my mind to rest.”

“So maybe he just opened the door, assumed the baby was all right, and closed it again.”

“Right.”

“Or maybe he went into Caleb’s room, smothered the baby in his crib, and came back and told you everything was fine.”

“My God.”

“Don’t tell me the possibility never occurred to you.”

“Never.” More dry laughter. “That’s a sketch,” she said. “Maybe I’m not as paranoid as I thought. What a crazy idea, Jeff. I wake up screaming and my loyal husband goes to check the baby, and while he’s at it he has a go at infanticide. Why on earth would he do a thing like that?”

“Did David think Caleb was his son?”

She waited a moment before answering. Then she said, “People tend to believe what they want to believe.”

“Caleb was my son, wasn’t he? No question in your mind?”

“None.”

“David’s not stupid by nature. Adoption sometimes triggers fertility — you adopt a kid and then have one of your own. But not after twelve years.”

“No.”

“Did he know about us?”

“I don’t think so. But he must have assumed I was having an affair with somebody.”

“Because of the pregnancy, you mean.”

“Yes. I don’t think he suspected anything before then. And I don’t think he knows who specifically I had the affair with.”

“You don’t think he knows it was me?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m not so sure. The look he gave me at the funeral. Of course I may have been projecting, reading things into it. I wasn’t too steady myself that afternoon.”

“I can’t believe he would kill Caleb.”

“I can’t believe it myself, Bobbie, in the sense of putting any real credence in the notion. But it’s not utterly impossible. I can imagine his resenting raising another man’s child as his own. Then you woke up screaming, and he was half asleep still and half in the bag, too, from what you said—”

“He always has a lot to drink before he goes to sleep. The way some people take sleeping pills, I suppose. I don’t know that he was drunk.”

“People who drink heavily in order to sleep do it because it gets them drunk. He’s probably an alcoholic, or close to it.”

“Oh, I really don’t think so.”

He shrugged. “It’s academic. Anyway, he’s half asleep and about half lit, and you’ve just put in his head the idea that something might have happened to the baby. And because he’s not entirely conscious a lot of his automatic mental defenses aren’t in place. He goes into Caleb’s room and the kid’s sleeping soundly and the first thing he thinks is that the baby really is dead, and then he touches him and determines that he’s warm and breathing, and then — well, it’s a pretty simple matter to kill a sleeping infant. It’s a lot easier than drowning kittens.”

“God—”

His hand covered hers, squeezed. “Easy,” he said soothingly. “I’m not saying it happened that way. I don’t think it did. David never struck me as a particularly homicidal sort. But what’s interesting is that it never occurred to you to suspect him.”

“Why is that interesting?”

“Because it did occur to you to suspect someone else.”

“Oh.”

“You suspect Ariel, don’t you?”

She looked at him, her face drawn. “How could I suspect her?” she demanded. “She’s a child.”

“Are children capable of evil?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do children kill?”

“I—?

“You do suspect her, don’t you, Bobbie?”

“It’s not a suspicion,” she said doggedly. “It’s a... feeling, I suppose. I’ll tell you something. It’s been driving me crazy—”

“Because you can’t accept the thought and you can’t get rid of it.”

“That’s it exactly. What kind of a mother could think such a thing about her child? That’s the tape that keeps running in my head. But I can’t—”

He held up a hand. “Let’s try something,” he suggested. “You’re the prosecuting attorney and I’m the impartial judge and you’re presenting evidence. Not necessarily hard evidence but whatever comes to mind. Don’t worry about telling me how your feelings are really foolish. Just tell me why you think she killed her brother.”

“I don’t think she did it. I just—”

“Don’t split hairs. Let’s just have all the evidence against Ariel.”

“It’s not evidence, really. It’s just—” His look stopped her in mid-sentence. “All right,” she said. “All right. I think she hated him.”

“Why?”

“Because I stopped loving her when he was born.”

“Because she thinks it or because it’s true?”

“Both. Oh, maybe I stopped loving her earlier, maybe I never loved her. God knows I tried, Jeff. I was the one who really pushed for adoption. David was a little hesitant.” She laughed harshly. “He pointed out that you never know what you’re getting. I didn’t pay any attention. It never seemed possible to me that I could bring up a child as my own and fail to love it.”

“But that’s what happened?”

She hesitated, then gave a quick nod. “I tried to fake it,” she said. “I denied my real feelings and played the fulfilled young mother number all the way. But when Caleb came along the old denial mechanism got short-circuited. It was just too obvious to me that what I felt for Caleb was categorically different from anything I ever felt for Ariel.”

“Obvious to you, maybe. Are you sure it was obvious to her?”

“I think so. I tried to act the same as always, but — well, she’s not a stupid child. She’s a strange child and I sometimes have the feeling she was born on another planet, that she’s just visiting from outer space. But there’s nothing stupid about her.”

“How did she act toward Caleb?”

“Like a loving sister.”

“Always?”

“Always.”

“Then—”

“That’s how she acted. But maybe that’s what it was. An act.”

“Any reasons to think it might be?”

“Nothing solid. Just a vibration she gave off. She used to play her flute for him. Did I tell you about that flute of hers?”

“Yes. You’ve got me wondering what it sounds like.”

“You’re better off wondering than listening to it. Trust me. She would stand in Caleb’s room and play for him.” She sighed. “That doesn’t sound particularly malicious, does it?”

“What else is there about her?”

“The woman in the shawl looked like her.”

“That may be more of an indication of where you’re coming from than hard evidence against Ariel.”

“That’s true. All right, here’s what keeps echoing around in my head and I’ve never mentioned to anyone. When I went into Caleb’s room and found him dead, she was waiting in the hallway when I came out. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t even think straight. And she didn’t have to be told. She knew he was dead—”

“You sensed this, Bobbie?”

“The hell I did. I was numb clear through, I couldn’t have sensed a hot coal under my foot. She said, ’Something’s wrong with Caleb, isn’t it? He’s dead, isn’t he?’ ”

“Of course she could tell something was wrong. She was reading you.”

“No.”

“The state you must have been in—”

She shook her head. “No,” she insisted. “Of course I thought of that. But I swear she already knew. Why on earth would she leap to that particular conclusion? No matter what expression I had on my face, how could she take one look at me and immediately assume her baby brother was dead.”

“Unless she killed him.”

“I don’t like to think that. But I can’t help it.”

He drove for a mile or two in silence. Then he said, “There are all sorts of explanations, you know.”

“Oh?”

“Maybe Ariel went into his room earlier. Not to kill him but just to see if he was awake or to play her flute or God knows why. Maybe she touched him and he was cold and wouldn’t wake up and she didn’t know what to do so she went back to her room. Then you discovered him for yourself and that made the whole experience real for her, and of course she knew he was dead, and that’s why she reacted as she did.”

“You’d make a good defense lawyer.”

“It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so. And it never occurred to me.”

“It’s not the only possibility. You woke up and saw a ghost, or whatever the hell it was that you saw. The woman in the shawl. The first two nights you didn’t know what significance to attach to the sight, but the third time it happened you saw it as a threat to your son.”

“Because she was holding a baby in her arms. Carrying him away with her.”

“Right. What makes you think you were the only person in the house who had an experience along those lines? You’ve described Ariel as a spooky kind of a kid, almost of another world. From the description, she sounds as though she’d be far more likely to have an occult experience than you would. Maybe she’s a little fey. Maybe she has some psychic ability. And maybe she had some sort of experience during the night, an apparition or a nightmare or God knows what, which she interpreted as a threat to her brother. Then, when she saw you come out of his room and got a look at the expression on your face, she made what wasn’t such a great leap after all. If she was already worried about Caleb, it wasn’t terribly farfetched for her to intuit that he was dead.”

She lit a cigarette and smoked half of it without saying anything, thinking over what he had said. Sitting beside him and looking out the window at the autumn countryside, it was easy to accept the arguments he had advanced, easy to dismiss the feelings that had lately haunted her.

“Then you think I’ve been making something out of nothing,” she said at length.

“I didn’t say that.”

“But—”

“It wasn’t conviction that had me point out to you how David could have killed Caleb, and it wasn’t conviction that led me to defend Ariel. I just thought it might help to take your arguments and ideas and turn them around. I don’t know what happened to Caleb, Bobbie. There’s a principle of logic that holds that, until you specifically disprove it, the most probable explanation is likely to be true. When a baby dies of crib death, the logical thing to believe is that he died of crib death — that the appearance and the reality are identical.”

“And the woman with the shawl—”

“All kinds of possible explanations. Maybe you’ve got some psychic ability yourself.”

“It never showed up before.”

“Well, maybe you’ve got late-blooming ESP. Maybe you sensed Caleb was in danger, and maybe this intuition manifested itself by your waking from a dream and seeing things in the corners of the bedroom. Or, for the sake of argument, maybe there really was a ghost and she shows up three nights before somebody in the house dies. I remember reading a lot of English novels set in lonely houses on the moors where the family dogs all howl when someone in the family’s about to expire. I know it’s a cliché, but it probably got to be one because it occasionally happened.”

“Then you think Caleb died of natural causes.”

“I think it makes a good working assumption. I think it’s also possible that David killed him, or that Ariel killed him, or that some malignant force in the house itself killed him. I think all sorts of things are theoretically possible. Hell, they’re possible in more than a theoretical way. The point is that it’s impossible to know what’s true and what isn’t, at least for the time being.”

“Where does that leave us?”

“On a county road eight or ten miles west of the Ashley River.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Of course I do. We haven’t cleared up any mysteries, have we? Maybe I just wanted to have this conversation so I’d have a sense of doing something. But there’s not really very much I can do, is there?”

“There’s nothing anybody can do.”

“Not to raise Caleb from the dead, no. You still have your own life to live, Bobbie.”

She nodded. “This is the first day I’ve felt half-alive since he died.”

“It’s the country air.”

“That’s not all it is.”

He had his eyes on the road. The sun was behind them. He was driving east now, and in another ten minutes they’d be crossing the bridge into Charleston. He’d drop her off. She’d be back in her own house, back in her own life.

No, she thought. No, she did not want to let go of him. Not just yet, thanks all the same.

She put her hand on his leg, just above the knee. He turned his eyes from the road, and sexual tension sprang between them like an electrical current jumping a gap.

His response gave her a sense of power, of confidence. She moved her hand deliberately along his thigh, thrilling at his sharp intake of breath. By the time her fingers rested upon his groin, her own heart was pounding and her underarms were damp with perspiration. She rubbed him urgently, rhythmically, and felt a rush of warmth in her own loins.

“Bobbie—”

“Can you find a motel?”

“Do you think it’s a good idea?”

Her fingers worked his zipper. She felt wonderfully in control, and at the same time felt herself surrendering to something more powerful than herself.

“God, Bobbie!”

She lowered her head to his lap, closed her eyes. Her mind was awash with images and fragments of sound, and for an instant all she could think of was Ariel, pale-faced Ariel, playing her magic flute.