«No place to hide me?»
«Yes,» he said. «We've a place.»
«Well?»
«Here.» He turned slowly away, stunned.
They walked down the hall to the half-open paneling.
«This?» Lotte said. «Secret? Did you-7»
«No' it's been here since the house was built long ago.» Lotte touched and moved the door on its hinges. «Does it work? Will they know where to look and find it?»
«No. It's beautifully made. Shut, you can't tell it's there.» Outside in the winter night, cars rushed, their beams flashing up the road, across the house windows.
Lotte peered into the Witch Door as one peers down a deep, lonely well.
A filtering of dust moved about her. The small rocking chair trembled.
Moving in silently, Lotte touched the half-burned candle.
«Why, it's still warm!»
Martha and Robert said nothing. They held to the Witch Door, smelling the odor of warm tallow.
Lotte stood rigidly in the little space, bowing her head beneath the beamed ceiling.
A horn blew in the snowing night. Lotte took a deep breath and said, «Shut the door.»
They shut the Witch Door. There was no way to tell that a door was there.
They blew out the lamp and stood in the cold, dark house, waiting.
The cars rushed down the road, their noise loud, and their yellow headlights bright in the falling snow. The wind stirred the footprints in the yard, one pair going out, another coming in, and the tracks of Lotte's car fast vanishing, and at last gone.
«Thank God,» whispered Martha.
The cars, honking, whipped around the last bend and down the hill and stopped, waiting, looking in at the dark house. Then, at last, they started up away into the snow and the hills.
Soon their lights were gone and their sound gone with them.
«We were lucky,» said Robert Webb.
«But she's not.»
«She?''
«That woman, whoever she was, ran out of here. They'll find here. Some body'll find her.»
«Christ, that's right.»
«And she has no I.D., no proof of herself. And she doesn't know what's happened to her. And when she tells them who she is and where she came from!»
«Yes, yes.»
«God help her.»
They looked into the snowing night but saw nothing. Everything was still. «You can't escape,» she said. «No matter what you do, no one can escape.»
They moved away from the window and down the hall to the Witch Door and touched it.
«Lotte,» they called.
The Witch Door did not tremble or move. «Lotte, you can come out now.» There was no answer; not a breath or a whisper. Robert tapped the door. «Hey in there.» «Lotte!»
He knocked at the paneling, his mouth agitated. «Lotte!»
«Open it!»
«I'm trying, damn it!»
«Lotte, we'll get you out, wait! Everything's all right!»
He beat with both fists, cursing. Then he said, «Watch
out!» took a step back, raised his leg, kicked once, twice, three times; vicious kicks at the paneling that crunched holes and crumbled wood into kindling. He reached in and yanked the entire paneling free. «Lotte!»
They leaned together into the small place under the stairs. The candle flickered on the small table. The Bible was
gone. The small rocking chair moved quietly back and forth, in little arcs, and then stood still.
«Lotte!»
They stared at the empty room. The candle flickered.
«Lotte,» they said.
«You don't believe .
«I don't know. Old houses are old… old..
«You think Lotte… she…?»
«I don't know, I don't know.»
«Then she's safe at least, safe! Thank God!»
«Safe? Where's she gone? You really think that? A woman in new clothes, red lipstick, high heels, short skirt, perfume, plucked brows, diamond rings, silk stockings, safe? Safe!» he said, staring deep into the open frame of the Witch Door.
«Yes, safe. Why not?»
He drew a deep breath.
«A woman of that description, lost in a town called Salem in the year 1680?»
He reached over and shut the Witch Door.
They sat waiting by it for the rest of the long, cold night.
The Ghost in the Machine
1996 год
The talk in the village in the year 1853 was, of course, about the madman above, in his sod-and-brick hut, with an untended garden and a wife who had fled, silent about his madness, never to return.
The people of the village had never drunk enough courage to go see what the special madness was or why the wife had vanished, tear-stained, leaving a vacuum into which atmospheres had rushed to thunder-clap.
And yet…
On a sweltering hot day with no cloud to offer shadow comfort and no threat of rain to cool man or beast, the Searcher arrived. Which is to say, Dr. Mortimer Goff, a man of many parts, most of them curious and self-serving, but also traveling the world for some baroque event, or miraculous revelation.
The good doctor came tramping up the hill, stumbling over cobbles that were more stone than paving, having abandoned his coach-and-horses, fearful of crippling them with such a climb.
Dr. Goff it turned out, had come from London, inhaling fogs, bombarded by storms, and now, stunned by too much light and heat, this good if curious physician stopped, exhausted, to lean against a fence, sight further up the hill, and ask:
«Is this the way to the lunatic?»
A farmer who was more scarecrow than human raised his eyebrows and snorted, «That would be Elijah Wetherby.»
''If lunatics have names, yes.»
«We call him crazed or mad, but lunatic will do. It sounds like book learning. Are you one of those?»
«I own books, yes, and chemical retorts and a skeleton that was once a man, and a permanent pass to the London Historical and Scientific Museum-«
«All well and good,» the farmer interrupted, «but of no use for failed crops and a dead wife. Follow your nose. And when you find the fool or whatever you name him, take him with you. We're tired of his shouts and commotions late nights in his iron foundry and anvil menagerie. Rumor says he will soon finish some monster that will run to kill us all.»
«Is that true?» asked Dr. Goff.
«No, it lies easy on my tongue. Good day, Doctor, and God deliver you from the lightning bolts that wait for you above.»
With this the farmer spaded the earth to bury the conversation.
So the curious doctor, threatened, climbed on, under a dark cloud which did not stop the sun.
And at last arrived at a hut that seemed more tomb than home, surrounded by land more graveyard than garden.
Outside the ramshackle sod-and-brick dwelling a shadow stepped forth, as if waiting, and became an old, very old, man.
«Well, there you are at last!» it cried.
Dr. Goff reared back at this. «You sound, sir, as if you expected me!»
«I did,» said the old man, «some years ago! What took you so long?»
«You are not exactly cheek by jowl with London, sir.»
«I am not,» the old man agreed and added, «The name is Wetherby. The Inventor»
«Mr. Wetherby, the Inventor. I am Dr. Goff, the so-called Searcher, for I move in behalf of our good Queen, turning rocks, digging truffles, curious for stuffs that might delight her Majesty or fill her museums, shops, and streets in the greatest city in the world. Have I reached the right place?»
«And just in time, for I am now in my eightieth year and of inconsequential vigor. If you had arrived next year, you might have found me in the churchyard. Do come in!»
At this moment, Dr. Goff heard a gathering of people behind him, all with a most unpleasant muttering, so at Mr. Wetherby's beckoning, he was glad to enter, sit, and watch an almost rare whiskey being poured without invitation. When he had quaffed the glass, Dr. Goff swiveled his gaze about the room.