Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

Craziness. From Greek, Latin. From Latin, French Spanish English and the rest. From the top vertebrae of some ancient beast, the grossly enlarged, holed bone that made the human head.

It had to do with the house. It had been, once long ago, something else, perhaps just a saltbox—the room he meant to make into a dining-room and the dark, ravaged attic above it. Should he make it what it was—tear off the whole immense addition, spacious rooms, spreading porches? By some act of not quite unthinkable magic bring back the world as it had once been?

Dream thoughts. Foolishness. Cunning evasion of present grief. How pleasant it would be to call Ellen on the phone, talk to her awhile as if nothing had changed.

He seated himself in a chair beside the acrid-smelling woodstove in the livingroom and stared at the Dutch door leading to the kitchen. All at once in his drunkenness, as it would seem to him later, all he could see was that large, neatly painted hex sign: tulips and oakleaves and birds not found in nature, around them a black band harshly unornamental. Was it meant to keep out evil, he wondered, or to lure it in?

He listened, for some reason, as if he’d let some sound pass unregistered. But there was nothing, inside or out. Unsteadily, he rose and made his way to the hex to study it. One eye on each of the two birds looked out at him, vaguely hypnotic. When he squinted he discovered that the design made a blurry, disturbing face. He thought about that. Was it simply his drunkenness, or was it possible that the face was meant to be there, perhaps had some occult use? He squinted again. It did seem to have a hypnotic quality. Was that possible? He’d read something somewhere about the cobra’s gaze, some disorienting effect on the balance of the brain’s two lobes. He had no faith or particular interest in witchcraft, but by all accounts something went on in these mountains, presumably something one could identify with physical causes, once one figured out the tricks. Was the shadowy face intended to, in some way, give special powers to occupants of the house? Or on the other hand to harm them? He thought of the gray cast to Dr. Bauer’s skin.

It made sense, he thought, feeling a stir of excitement. The dark reputation of the Sprague place was solid; everyone around seemed to have heard of it. And no theme in folklore was older than the notion of the deadly sign or magic writing, bearer of some curse. Perhaps the whole secret of the Sprague place was right here on this door!

He was no doubt thinking foolishly, melodramatically, but he groped his way to the kitchen, where in increasing excitement, as if rising to some formidable challenge, he sharpened a butcher knife. The image he’d seen through half-closed eyes was fixed in his head, reminding him of something, nothing he could put his finger on, but unpleasant. He tested the blade against the palp of his thumb, then returned to the livingroom and decisively, scrape by scrape, cut away the hex sign, leaving a halo of ragged wood. When he was finished, he carefully cleaned off the knife, using soap and water, as if even the wood and paint shavings might be dangerous, put the shavings in the garbage, then put the knife back in its drawer, neatly aligning it with the other knives, all good cutlery, sharp. These too, for some reason now obscure, he’d bought almost immediately after leaving his wife. He found that his glass of whiskey had disappeared, no doubt set down someplace. He was in no condition (turning slowly around, looking in all directions) to think out where he’d left it. He fixed himself another, definitely the last. The image of the face was still clear in his mind, still proffering its challenge. Now it reminded him of Tillson.

He stood wide awake, still looking around, grave, firmly planted. He was aware of the emptiness of the house, and its foreignness. He found himself moving again from room to room, bare dry walls, bare dry floors, most of the house devoid of furniture, stark. His shadow moved beside him, head lowered, large back round. Because the light fixtures had offended him—cheap, machine-etched fleurs-de-lis, a fake antique wooden-wheel chandelier, machine-painted globes hung from phoney brass—he’d removed the fixtures, leaving bare bulbs. Every stipple and crack in the ceilings called attention to itself. His footsteps, however carefully he walked, resounded. When he leaned close to one of the curtainless windows, cupping his hands against the light of the room, looking out, he saw nothing, just the dark, low curve of mountains. There was no evidence that anyone was alive but himself.

In the workroom, prospective diningroom, he absent-mindedly made an incision with his thumbnail, then pulled off a small swatch of wallpaper. Once he’d pulled it from the wall, the wallpaper divided magically into separate layers, dusty-backed, light, as if they’d never been glued. He held in his hand nine separate dry pieces, all queer to the touch as dead moth-wings. He drew them nearer, to look at them more closely. The first one was gray with a faded pink flower design, more like stitches than like paint, the whole thing so carefully made to look like cloth that it struck him now for the first time that in the old days, maybe the eighteenth century, it must indeed have been cloth, not paper, that people put on walls. He was vividly aware all at once of not just the age of the house but the time it contained: generations of people who had made lives in it, had periodically pored over samples of wallpaper, debating, arguing, finally choosing; and then new people coming in, as he had done now, people who had perhaps laughed scornfully at the wallpaper they found there, or had touched it wistfully, regretting