The Broken Hours: A Novel of H. P. Lovecraft (26 page)

What sort of episodes?

Hallucinations. Much as her husband had. Susie was always what one might call a weak sister, of spirit, mind, and body. Dramatic, you know. The least toothache was a tragedy. She was a born sufferer. And a woman of narrow intelligence, limited interests. I first met her as a young woman. She was brought in by Whipple and Robie. She’d been having difficulties, trouble sleeping, terrible headaches, she had become reclusive and, her parents thought, strange. Behaving strangely, is what I mean,
he said, as if that needed clarification.
She was here only a short time, then. I was not her doctor. I had, in fact, only just arrived myself, fresh out of medical school. It seems a lifetime ago now, and I guess it was. But Susie was only very young, perhaps seventeen or eighteen. Pretty, in a way. But silly, also, if you will forgive me, in a rather needful way. Seeking attention, always. She had an inordinately pale complexion, quite the whitest I’d ever seen. Achieved, I am told, by drinking arsenic. At any rate, it soon became clear there was nothing wrong with her, or nothing we could detect at the time. She seemed healthy enough, mentally.

He put inordinate stress upon the final word, and I took that he meant her problems were of a physical nature. I was tempted to inquire, but he pressed on.

After we released her, she spent several months in reclusion, I understand. When she finally emerged, she was deeply changed. Less silly and frivolous. She was, of course, always a bit odd. But after Winfield died, she became a recluse again, this time permanently. People saw her sometimes lurking around her yard, hiding. The hallucinations grew worse. This is how it often goes. She began to see, it seemed, creatures rushing out from behind buildings, from the corners of rooms at dusk. Shadow people, she called them.

Good god.

Mmm.
He folded his fingers beneath his chin and stared at me, waiting.
She grew worse after her admittance; it was quite rapid. It was these creatures, you understand, these shadow people. Monsters.

How terrible
, I said.
It must have been difficult—

On your friend.

My employer, yes.

In fact, it was. Susie had what one might call an unhealthy fixation on her son. She babied him terribly, as an infant. She dressed him in pretty nightgowns, let his hair grow long as a girl’s. He was often mistaken for such, a little girl. It was quite a battle when he got older and was teased by the other children. Finally, when he was already six, she relented and sat next his barber chair, weeping, I am told, while his hair was cut. Even then she wouldn’t let him out of her sight lest something should befall him, the least bump or bruise. Then, all at once, she was repelled by him. She told people in passing he was monstrous, deformed, too terrible to look upon. She could not bear to be touched by him. She wanted him hidden away.

Because he was a monster,
I said.

The doctor eyed me curiously.
He has spoken to you about this?

No
. I looked up at him.
No, we don’t discuss such things. It is just something he said once.

After a moment he nodded.
Well. She believed, yes, that he was deformed. Hideously so.

And?
I said.
Is he?

He eyed me narrowly and leaned back again in his chair.
Might I ask about your … personal interest in the matter.

I wouldn’t say personal
, I said, affronted.

I don’t mean to pry
, the doctor offered.

Of course I’m concerned.

For your employer.

Yes.

He’s had a bad time. More than anyone should have to bear, when you think of it.

But how terrible,
I said.
How terrible for him. His own mother. And his father already insane.

This family history now shed an awful light upon him. I considered speaking to the doctor about it, but something in his mannerisms, in his watchfulness, made me hesitate.

Well
, I said, setting my water glass back on the desk.
Thank you for your time, Doctor.

You’re not in any hurry?

I do have a number of errands to get through before the close of the business day.

Your employer keeps you busy.

Indeed he does, Doctor.
I considered.
One thing more …

Yes?

I mentioned I have a view of Butler, from my room.

The doctor waited.

There is a dormer window, on the upper east corner …

Yes?

I see a light there sometimes—it sounds strange, I know—a light going on and off. As if someone were pressing the button.

Indeed?

Yes.

The doctor stared back at me. I felt he was waiting for more. I knew not what to say.

The light,
I said again,
just flickers on and off. Sometimes for several minutes.

Strange.
The doctor smiled.
Perhaps the cleaners, wiping down the buttons. We have stringent codes of cleanliness here at Butler, you know.

I nodded.
Yes. No doubt you do.
I tapped my fingertips against my knees.
Well,
I said. There was no putting it off any longer. I rose, felt the letters in my pocket.
I appreciate your taking the time
, I said, and pulled out the letters.
If you’ll kindly direct me to the correct room.

He looked up at me a long moment, frowning deeply.

What is it?

He paused, studying me.
Surely Sister Clementine told you?

I felt a sinking at the pit of my stomach, and I sat slowly again in the chair.

I’m sorry,
he said.
I thought you understood. It was a gall bladder operation. She claimed the day before the procedure she had no wish any longer to live.

She is … dead, then?

Buried in the Swan Point Cemetery, out back, along with her husband, Winfield. You can easily find her gravestone there in the Phillips plot.

But
, I said,
so long?

Fifteen years, yes.
He tapped his fingers lightly on the desk, then leaned forward.
These things,
he said,
they are often genetic, you understand. They pass from one generation to the next, as easily as blue eyes or curly hair. You understand?

I understood. I tucked the letters back into my pocket, felt them burn there.

At the door, I turned back.
And did the son,
I asked,
ever visit the mother here?

He looked at me a long time. Finally he said,
He did. They would stroll by the river and sit at length on a little bench there. They were very close, at the end. Yes, he was here often. But …

Yes?

As far as I know, he never once, in all those years, ever came inside.
He seemed to consider. Then he said,
You know—forgive me, I’ve forgotten your name.

Crandle.

Crandle, yes. Forgive me, Mr. Crandle, but may I make an observation?

Certainly.

You seem to have become rather deeply involved, yourself, in the matter.

No
, I said.
I wouldn’t say that. Concerned, yes. But, someone in such close proximity, suffering so, really, how can one not be aware?

Yes,
the doctor said, nodding slowly.
That is often the question.

I stood on the steps of Butler, glad of the cold, the fresh air, and felt I could begin to breathe again, though the weight of the asylum loomed enormous at my back, throwing its shadow over me. I felt a chill and stepped out into the sunlight.

The grounds spread out before me, dull with the last of winter, the sky big and blue above, a full-blown sky. A breeze rustled the browned vines along the wall at my back, sent a clatter of leaves to the ground, and I crushed one with my shoe until it was dust. The doctor’s words weighed heavily. He had managed to shed both light and darkness. No place worth knowing, I thought, yields itself at sight; no person; no thing. And I wondered where the phrase had come from, if it had been something the doctor had said. I could not recall.

Down at the far end of the building, past a pared bed of bloomless rose bushes, I could see the young nurse, Ivy, leading the woman in the knitted hat by the arm in the clear light, as one would a tentative child. As I watched, Ivy stopped and knelt with her white stockings in the damp brown grass to tie the woman’s shoe. I had to turn away at such an intimate, such a humble, motherly gesture.

I descended the steps onto the gravel drive, feeling in my overcoat pocket for the chunk of gravestone. And stopped. All at once I knew exactly where it had—where it must have—come from.

I turned and followed a swept cobbled path briskly along the front of the asylum. The vines up the bricks rattled drily. At the edge of the building, a man in dirty overalls stabbed the dirt with a spade and I was forced to step off the path into the wet grass.

Rounding the corner, I saw the manicured grounds spread out in a long sweep down to a wooded bluff and the river beyond. I walked across the wet lawns and, picking up a path there again at the edge of the woods, followed it through stands of leafless shrubbery and bare, mossy hardwoods to a little fieldstone shelter with a graceful shingled roof. I was astonished to see there, all along the base of the southernmost wall, daffodils, just budding. They were dwarfed, reluctant things, and I marvelled, rubbing my chilled hands together, at the thought of such tender buds braving that frosted air. Above them hung the sign I had been looking for. I opened the low iron gate, which creaked into the still air, and stepped inside, let it swing shut again with a clang.

From that prospect, it appeared to be a park. I followed a groomed path curving between long, glossy walls of holly and came out in a little clearing, with a view of a pond upon which mergansers sailed serenely, cutting the water in long, black Vs. An elderly couple sat on a bench there, mufflered, holding gloved hands, their breath pluming out beautifully in the hard sunlight. There was a smell of new grass and a sweet, pleasant scent which must have come from a big, willowy tree, blooming with stars, which hung over a stone wall near the pond. Life, it seemed, as if conscious of the near proximity of death, burst forth sooner there.

I ascended a series of stone steps, slippery with dew, and then I was in the cemetery proper.

The place was larger than I’d expected. I spent a long hour winding among headstones—some so mossed and weathered as to be illegible—and winged angels and Russian crosses and stone obelisks. There were cracked slabs dating to the late 1700s, crumbling and browned, the earth all around sunken and soft beneath my shoes. Trees dangled their branches protectively round fenced family plots typical of a certain misanthropic New England mentality. The grasses where I’d strayed from the path to examine carvings and inscriptions—
As You Are Now, So Once Was I—
were long and wet, and my shoes were soon soaked through and I was chilled and weary. I sat to rest on a mossy stone wall. Then, as if fate had led me there, I saw it.
Phillips
. I rose again and crossed the grass, circling the family plot:
Robie, Whipple, Winfield, Sarah Susan
.

I felt a thrill: there, round the back of his mother’s gravestone, a piece was missing near the base. I felt of the chunk of stone in my pocket. Of course, it made perfect sense.

But I could not help being saddened, then, at the thought of such a memento, and I wondered if perhaps my employer thought he’d lost it. I made a mental note to return it to him at the earliest possibility. Crouching down, I pulled the chunk from my pocket and held it up to the gravestone.

It did not fit.

No matter which way I turned the piece, I could not make it do so. I turned then upon Winfield’s stone. But his was perfectly intact.

I stood a good while in the cold sunshine, turning the piece of gravestone in my fingers, baffled. A flock of birds lifted from the treetops in absolute silence. I watched them disappear.

Then I propped the letters in their envelopes very carefully against the mother’s grave. The sky was enormous, filled with light, and all around me the gilded branches burst out over the bluffs; beneath, the slow, coldly muscled coursing of the river. A wind had come up off the bay; the sky felt unbearably, icily blue, and though it was the middle of April, it felt for all the world like winter was only just setting in.

3

Flossie seemed to have gone for good. I felt anxious but also angry, somehow, as if she had simply abandoned me to the darkness of Sixty-Six. In truth, I suppose, I had come to hope—hope, yes—that something might grow up between us. Some good thing, some light thing.