Lineage(93)

The door banged loudly off of the edge of the tub and rebounded, almost closing again. Lance blocked it open with a closed fist and flipped on the light with his other hand.

The room was empty.

He stepped farther in, pulling the door nearly closed and looking behind it. His eyes slid to the drawn shower curtain. Without hesitating, he ripped it open, revealing nothing but empty air and a solitary spider scurrying along the rim of the shower. His breath hissed out from between his teeth. He turned and looked at his reflection. His hair stuck up at odd angles from the wind outside and his fists were still clenched at his sides. He looked crazed.

“You’re a lunatic, you know that?” he said to the mirror as he closed his eyes in exasperation. “Seeing shit. Should call up the doc right now and get something—”

A sharp rapping from downstairs jerked his eyelids open, and he saw that his father stood behind him in the tub.

Lance cried out and turned, throwing a fist that connected with thin air. Nothing was there. No grinning face greeted him as he sunk back onto the counter and stared at the space where moments before something had been.

The knocking came again from below, and Lance forced himself out of the bathroom like a man on a narrow ledge, never turning his back on the tub. His breath stuttered as he made his way down the stairs on legs that felt like taffy. He could see a figure in the window of the front door as he entered the foyer, and tried to compose himself the best he could as his heart beat against his ribs.

Mary smiled at him as he opened the door. The rain poured from the sky behind her, and her hair hung limp about her pretty face.

“Hi. What’s wrong?” she said, as she took in his pallid features and shaking hands.

Lance tried to breathe normally and felt a grimace pull at his mouth, as panic clung to his back and sunk its talons into his lungs.

Mary blinked a few times, and then motioned him inside. “Let’s sit down.”

She led him to the kitchen and sat him in a chair near the counter. He fell into it, no longer able to stand, as she found a glass in the cupboard nearby and began to fill it with cold water. She handed it to him, and sat down across from him, worry etching lines in her brow. He drank and finished the water off in a few gulps. The rain drummed on the roof and distant thunder reverberated somewhere to the west.

“Tell me,” she said. The tone of her voice left no room for argument.

He slowly told her of his visit to John’s the night before after bolting in the middle of their date. The details came out in rough fashion, some of them getting jumbled along the way as he tried to recall everything the caretaker had told him about his grandparents and the subsequent guilt that the old man carried each day. He spoke of his visit to Riverside and the hollow woman who sat like a statue in her chair, only to move when she seemed sure that no one could hear her writing. He watched Mary’s eyes as he spoke the names. The wrinkling of her forehead told him all he needed to know. He ended with what he had seen in the upstairs bathroom, feeling with all his instincts that now she would leave. Any minute she would stand from her chair and tell him to stay away from her. But instead, she merely leaned back and threw a glance at the upstairs, as if trying to catch a glimpse of something that might have been eavesdropping. When she looked back at him, her eyes appraised him.

“You think I’m nuts,” he said, trying to read her expression.

A smile broke at the corners of her mouth. “Most definitely. We all are to some extent. I don’t think you’re any worse off than the rest of us.”

Lance frowned. “I see my dead father—twice, mind you—proceed to tell you about my screwed-up childhood, and then reveal the fact that I’m living, without knowing it, in the house my grandfather built, and you don’t think I’m crazier than a shithouse mouse?”

Mary just shook her head, looking at him. Lance leaned back in his chair.

“Maybe you’re the crazy one,” he said. Mary burst out laughing and playfully swatted at him from across the counter. Lance just rubbed his eyes in disbelief.

Mary reached across the distance between them and put a warm hand on his forearm. “Look, there’s obviously something going on here. You were just drawn to this place by chance? I don’t think so.” He remained silent, weighing whether he should tell her about his writer’s block or not. “Furthermore,” she continued, “you’re too logical and even-keeled to be crazy. I’ve seen insanity before, and you aren’t it.”