The Broken Hours: A Novel of H. P. Lovecraft (33 page)

I waited at the train station for an hour and Jane was not there. I wondered if perhaps there had been an error on her end; perhaps she had miswritten the information, or missed her train in Rochester. I waited until past dinnertime, the ticket seller casting me suspicious glances over his soup.

Finally, I rose and approached him.

Yes?
he said, wiping his chin.

Is there another train from Rochester today?

He pointed at the schedule with a dripping spoon.

Last train from Rochester came in at 6:10.

Yes, I see that. But I’m wondering if maybe there isn’t some other train, perhaps not up there, a late train.

Yeah,
he said,
sure, like, say, a ghost train, maybe?

I was thinking more along the lines of an unscheduled—

No such thing as an unscheduled train.

So there is no other—

Last train from Rochester came in at 6:10. On schedule. Like the sign says.

At a loss, I walked back to the post office and sent Jane a wire asking her to please send word immediately. I waited for a reply and, when none came, I sent a second. But there was nothing. When the clerk indicated he was about to close for the day, I had no choice but to leave.

I stepped out into the darkening street. There, not half a block away, disappearing into a narrow alley between the hedges, was a man I could have sworn was my employer, emaciated, stooped, slowly wheeling, of all things, a red bicycle. I called out as I ran across the grass and into the alley, hollering, yes, like a madman.

The man heard me and looked up, looked to his left and right, and then finally behind him. His whiskers were long and turned up at the corners, like a Civil War general. A bright bow tie sat tight beneath his chin.

I’m sorry
, I said, stopping abruptly.
I thought you were someone else.

Be off with you
, he said.
I’m not in the custom of giving handouts.
He turned, muttered something about vagrants, and was gone.

I returned, slowly, to Sixty-Six. I felt like a man twice my age. And felt, too, there was still some final thing, one last discovery. I stopped, stood in the lane, staring up. Something looked different.

Then it struck me: a light shone clearly from the kitchen window, where I had left no light burning.

She was seated at the kitchen table with her back to me, though she rose slowly, carefully, when I came in, and turned to face me in the doorway. She wore a loose, old-fashioned floral blouse pinned at the collar with a pearl brooch and tucked into the waistband of her skirt. Her hair, an iron gray, was pulled back from a face that had likely never been beautiful and was now further ravaged by age and illness. Her dark eyes, nevertheless, were sharp, took me in at a glance. It could be no one else. My employer’s aunt. Annie Phillips.

Allow me to introduce myself
, I said, stepping forward.

No need
, she said, waving weakly,
no need
. She sat again and gestured to the other chair, and I took it.

Across the table she seemed, upon second glance, younger than I had thought; her illness had taken its toll. She held herself with the bearing of one who has been long ill. When she moved, she winced visibly. Her eyes, though, were remarkable: bright, intelligent.

Can I get you anything?
I offered.
Tea?

She shook her head.

I was not expecting you so soon
, I said.
Not until the end of next week, at the earliest.

I came home early
, she said.
I thought it necessary
.

I hope not on my account.

She looked at me sharply again, seemed about to say something, then changed her mind.

You’ve been feeding the cats
, she said.

I hope that’s all right. I’ve been rather short on instructions here. Your nephew himself has been quite unwell, I’m afraid. I’m sure he’ll be only too glad of your return. I was surprised, yesterday, to find him gone out. I would have thought he was hardly up to it. I confess I’ve been quite worried …

She looked pained again and, lifting a hand to her ribs, looked away.

Are you all right?
I said.
Is there nothing I can get for you?

But she just waved me away and rose slowly, painfully.

I’m very tired
, she said.

In the doorway, she turned and looked at me again with a curious intensity.
Good night, then
, she said.

I tossed and turned and could not get comfortable. It felt strange, knowing the aunt was there in the house too, now, though I don’t know why it should have.

In the morning, I rose bleary and clogged from another night of bad dreams, my body sore and sluggish from the abuse I’d suffered while being propelled by winged creatures out into the soulless atmosphere above the city. I was scarcely awake, and aching, and in need of a drink of water, when I fumbled my way down to the bathroom and pushed open the door.

She was naked from the waist up, a wet cloth in one hand, the other arm raised above her head as if in a balletic pose. Her old woman skin hung loose there, like a slack purse of flesh. And on her withered chest, where her left breast should have been, a long, ugly slash, curved like a sickle, raw and crusted over with dried blood.

She cried out—I may have done so as well—and dropped her arm in pain, and I yanked the door shut, so hard it rattled on its hinges, echoing through the quiet house, ricocheting around in the stairwell. I fled to my room, horrified, horrified at what I should never have seen.

I sometimes wonder where the flesh goes.

Ash does not answer, nor the dust.

We grow old, and the flesh, too, begins to reach earthward, searching or giving up. The soul, for me, is not the question. It is the flesh. All that blood. Our hearts. All the pains and aches and bruises. The feel of one’s own skin. All the tactile memories held fast in the palms.

Where do they go?

She was in the kitchen, wiping the counters slowly. Her pained movements made sense to me now.

Good morning
, she said when I entered. It seemed more of a question. She did not look at me. I felt grateful.

Forgive me
, I began, but she raised a hand.

Please.

I nodded.

After a moment, she said, formally,
I have spoken with Dr. Tinseley.

Tinseley?

From Butler. I understand you’ve been to see him.

I thought I detected a note of anger in her tone.

Yes.

She waited for me to say more. How could I?

Finally she said, tightly,
I’m so glad you’ve spoken with him. He’s very good that way. Very good to speak with.

I agreed that he was. Yet I was puzzled by the odd tone of her voice.

He says you’re welcome anytime. He said you had a very good conversation.

I nodded, considering the matter. It seemed as appropriate a time as any.

As to your sister
, I began.

The aunt looked at me sharply. She waited.

When I said nothing further, she said,
She is dead, yes. Is that what you mean to say?

I nodded. But there was something yet more.

I realize
, I said,
this is none of my concern. That this is terribly personal, but I wondered …
I hesitated.
Did she … had she ever had … other children?

Did Dr. Tinseley tell you this?

Again I hesitated.
Yes,
I finally said.

The aunt turned away again. The cloth moved back and forth across the counters, steadily. I thought she had finished with me. That, surely, I had offended her.

Some things are best left in the past
, she said, without turning around.
She was only a girl herself.

So it’s true.

Then he surely told you it was terribly deformed. She was never the same, afterward. Even after she married. She was never right again.