Killer, Come Back to Me

They played chess until twilight. Then the house got dark again too quickly, everybody hurried through supper, and it seemed that everybody went to bed early too.

Johnny listened to the hours chiming out one by one. Someone rapped on the door. Johnny said, “Who is it?”

“Uncle Flinny.”

“What do you want, Uncle Flinny!”

“Time for your bedtime story, Johnny.”

“Oh, well—not tonight, please, Uncle Flinny.”

“Yes. Please. This is a very special story. A very extra special bedtime story.”

Johnny waited. Then: “I’m tired, Uncle Flinny. Some other time, huh? Not tonight, please.”

Uncle Flinny went away and after a while the clock chimed again. It was after ten. More time. After eleven. More time. Almost twelve.

Johnny opened the door.

The house was completely asleep. You could tell by the quiet, untouched gleam on the long hall stairs, clear moonlight pouring through great areas of glass, and no shadow moving.

Johnny closed the door behind him. From off somewhere in a quiet land, Grandma breathed heavily in her great four-postered bed. There was a tinkling noise, very faintly, as if bottles were being cautiously rattled behind Cousin William’s door.

Johnny paused at the staircase. All he had to do would be return to bed and forget about it, believe that it was all a mistake, and there would be no trouble. It would be forgotten and things would take up where they’d been a few days ago.

Mother would laugh at her parties. Dad would drive back and forth to the office with his thick briefcase. Grandma would sneak her brandy on the side. Cousin William would insert needles into mannequin flesh, and Uncle Flinny would go on forever telling his feverish bedtime stories that meant nothing.

Yet it was not so easy as that. Things could not go back now. Only ahead. You can’t forget. Dad, his only friend, was a stranger now, since the—incident. Mother was worse than ever. Her eyes looked like they cried at night. Down under the glitter she had to live too. And Grandma, she’d drink two bottles instead of one bottle of brandy a week. And Cousin William, every time he stuck a pin into a mannequin he’d think of the Trunk Lady, blanch, cringe, and start whimpering over his cognac.

And she—the lovely dark-haired stranger in the musty trunk —had looked so lonely up there where he’d found her. So apart. There was a bond between them. She was a stranger to the house—and was killed for it. Johnny was a stranger in the house now too. He wanted to find her again, because of that. They were almost brother and sister. She needed finding. She needed to be remembered, not to be forgotten.

Johnny went down each step with careful footing. He clung to the banister, sliding his fingers. She would not be in the attic now, nor would she be in any of the upstairs rooms. How could they sleep with her so near them?…Downstairs perhaps. Somewhere in the accumulated night of the house. Not in the servants’ quarters.

He had just reached the stair bottom when he heard one of the upstairs doors open very slowly and close. After that there was not a sound, but quite calmly, quietly, someone came and stood at the top of the stairs, looking down.

Johnny froze. He leaned against the wall like a shadow. Sweat came out on his face and trickled in the small palms of his hands. He could not see who it was. They just stood there, watching, looking down, silent and waiting.

Things had to go on. You can’t lie in bed and forget. Johnny couldn’t just forget the stranger, the Trunk Lady, in her lonely attitude of death. The murderer, too, could not forget easily— nor that there was a small boy in the house who was too curious, too incautious.

Johnny breathed very slowly. He waited a moment. Then, when he saw that the person at the top of the stairs was not coming down, he moved quickly down the hall, into the kitchen, and out the back door into the moonlit veldt of the garden.

The swimming pool lay flat and shining square, with a fringe of trees beyond it, stars over it, the bathhouse near it, the low garden rows to left and right. Farther down was the greenhouse and the garden toolshed. Johnny ran.

The shadows of the toolshed offered temporary haven. Looking back, he detected no movement in the house, no light. The body would most probably be in one of these outlying houses.

His bed would feel nice now. The lock on the door would be nice. Johnny trembled like the water in the pool. Suddenly he saw someone standing in the upstairs hall window. There was just a hint of a standing figure there. Looking down, as it had looked from the top of the stairs.…Then—it was gone.

Now, down the gravel drive on the side of the house, footsteps sounded. Someone was coming from the front of the house, around under the sycamores. Someone moving in sycamore shadows, stealthily and unseen.

Then, very suddenly, breaking into half-light, she was there. She! Not Mother, nor Grandmother. But emerging half into moonlight, half in flecked shadow—was the Trunk Lady.

* * *

She looked at Johnny, far across the garden, and said nothing.

Johnny swallowed tightly and blinked. He held onto himself, his thighs, his knees, with clenched fingers. He crouched and squinted and stared in raw disbelief. A night wind set the sycamore leaves to shivering. From a way off an auto horn hooted like a lonely owl.

She was not dead after all. The whole house had tried to fool him. This was some fantastic jest he could not understand. They were all against him. His teacher was alive! There was no murder, no death! She was here, for him alone! In his hour of loneliness, she was here!