Ariel Read online

  She closed her own eyes and went on talking. It had always been easy for her to talk to Jeff Channing and it was no harder now. She had the feeling she could tell him absolutely anything, and at the same time she knew he was paying close attention to every word she spoke. Now and then he would ask her to clarify a point, drawing her out on one thing or another, and rather than interrupt her train of thought it seemed to increase the flow of her words.

  Finally she was through. She sat for a moment, waiting to see if there was anything else. Off to the right, two men in bib overalls were fussing over a fire fueled with ruined auto and truck tires. The air reeked of burning rubber and she asked Jeff why they didn’t just throw the tires away.

  He laughed. “Slaughtering time,” he said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You burn tires when you slaughter a hog. You have to scald the hog so the bristles loosen from the skin, and to do that you have to heat a huge iron kettle, and you need a hot fire, and nothing burns hotter than rubber. You thought they were just burning the tires to get rid of them?”

  “Well, I’m a city girl.”

  “Uh-huh. Who do you think that woman was, Bobbie?”

  “In the shawl? I don’t know. I don’t know if she just appeared to me or what. I don’t understand ghosts.”

  “Neither do I. Did she look like anyone?”

  “I think so. But maybe it’s a false memory. I didn’t make the connection at the time.”

  “Who did she look like?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  “Like Ariel?”

  She nodded. “I didn’t want to say it. That pale face and the shape of her head. But I don’t know if I saw her clearly enough for there to be a resemblance. Maybe I don’t even know how her head was shaped. She was wrapped in a shawl, don’t forget.”

  “I’m not likely to forget. I feel as though I could close my eyes and see her myself.”

  “Don’t do that. We’d go off the road.”

  “I;ll try to control myself. What do you think happened to Caleb, Bobbie?”

  “I know what happened to him. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Crib death. It’s even been known to happen to kids three or four years old, although it’s most common in the first year.”

  “I know all that. I’ve done a little studying on the subject, as a matter of fact. But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “Oh?”

  “That’s what you know happened to Caleb. But what do you think happened to him?”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Forget logic and common sense for a few minutes. Forget reality and a sane universe. Talk about what’s inside of you for a change.”

  “All right.”

  “Do you think the woman in the shawl killed him?”

  She worried her forehead with the tips of her fingers. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I feel crazy talking like this, but I see what you mean, and I’m just going to go ahead and feel crazy if I have to. The woman in the shawl—I think the woman in the shawl was some sort of spirit letting me know what was going to happen, that Caleb was going to be taken from me. I think that was her purpose in coming and that’s why I haven’t seen her since. The sense I have of her—well, I don’t know if she’s evil or not, I don’t have a sense of that one way or the other, but I don’t think of her as capable of killing someone.”

  “But you think someone killed Caleb.”

  “Someone or something.”

  “Who?”

  She shook her head.

  “You don’t know what you think or you’re afraid to say it out loud?”

  “Maybe a little of both.”

  “David woke up the third time the ghost appeared, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, but not until she vanished. He didn’t see her.”

  “That’s not what I’m getting at. You sent him down the hall to check on Caleb.”

  “That’s right, and he said he was all right. But he must have been already dead, don’t you think? If I saw the woman taking him away he must have been dead already. Unless that’s not the way ghosts do things.” She laughed dryly. “I should have paid more attention when they told spooky stories around the campfire at Girl Scouts. I never realized all that lore would come in handy someday.”

  “You think he was dead when David checked him?”

  “He must have been, wouldn’t you say? Maybe he was still warm because it had just happened. Or maybe David was just humoring me. He may have opened the door and looked in, and why take a chance on waking the baby? The only reason he went in the first place was to set my mind to rest.”

  “So maybe he just opened the door, assumed the baby was all right, and closed it again.”

  “Right.”

  “Or maybe he went into Caleb’s room, smothered the baby in his crib, and came back and told you everything was fine.”

  “My God.”

  “Don’t tell me the possibility never occurred to you.”

  “Never.” More dry laughter. “That’s a sketch,” she said. “Maybe I’m not as paranoid as I thought. What a crazy idea, Jeff. I wake up screaming and my loyal husband goes to check the baby, and while he’s at it he has a go at infanticide. Why on earth would he do a thing like that?”

  “Did David think Caleb was his son?”

  She waited a moment before answering. Then she said, “People tend to believe what they want to believe.”

  “Caleb was my son, wasn’t he? No question in your mind?”

  “None.”

  “David’s not stupid by nature. Adoption sometimes triggers fertility—you adopt a kid and then have one of your own. But not after twelve years.”

  “No.”

  “Did he know about us?”

  “I don’t think so. But he must have assumed I was having an affair with somebody.”

  “Because of the pregnancy, you mean.”

  “Yes. I don’t think he suspected anything before then. And I don’t think he knows who specifically I had the affair with.”

  “You don’t think he knows it was me?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m not so sure. The look he gave me at the funeral. Of course I may have been projecting, reading things into it. I wasn’t too steady myself that afternoon.”

  “I can’t believe he would kill Caleb.”

  “I can’t believe it myself, Bobbie, in the sense of putting any real credence in the notion. But it’s not utterly impossible. I can imagine his resenting raising another man’s child as his own. Then you woke up screaming, and he was half asleep still and half in the bag, too, from what you said—”

  “He always has a lot to drink before he goes to sleep. The way some people take sleeping pills, I suppose. I don’t know that he was drunk.”

  “People who drink heavily in order to sleep do it because it gets them drunk. He’s probably an alcoholic, or close to it.”

  “Oh, I really don’t think so.”

  He shrugged. “It’s academic. Anyway, he’s half asleep and about half lit, and you’ve just put in his head the idea that something might have happened to the baby. And because he’s not entirely conscious a lot of his automatic mental defenses aren’t in place. He goes into Caleb’s room and the kid’s sleeping soundly and the first thing he thinks is that the baby really is dead, and then he touches him and determines that he’s warm and breathing, and then—well, it’s a pretty simple matter to kill a sleeping infant. It’s a lot easier than drowning kittens.”

  “God—”

  His hand covered hers, squeezed. “Easy,” he said soothingly. “I’m not saying it happened that way. I don’t think it did. David never struck me as a particularly homicidal sort. But what’s interesting is that it never occurred to you to suspect him.”

  “Why is that interesting?”

  “Because it did occur to you to suspect someone else.”

  “Oh.”

  “You suspect Ariel, don’t you?”

  She looked
at him, her face drawn. “How could I suspect her?” she demanded. “She’s a child.”

  “Are children capable of evil?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do children kill?”

  “I—?

  “You do suspect her, don’t you, Bobbie?”

  “It’s not a suspicion,” she said doggedly. “It’s a … feeling, I suppose. I’ll tell you something. It’s been driving me crazy—”

  “Because you can’t accept the thought and you can’t get rid of it.”

  “That’s it exactly. What kind of a mother could think such a thing about her child? That’s the tape that keeps running in my head. But I can’t—”

  He held up a hand. “Let’s try something,” he suggested. “You’re the prosecuting attorney and I’m the impartial judge and you’re presenting evidence. Not necessarily hard evidence but whatever comes to mind. Don’t worry about telling me how your feelings are really foolish. Just tell me why you think she killed her brother.”

  “I don’t think she did it. I just—”

  “Don’t split hairs. Let’s just have all the evidence against Ariel.”

  “It’s not evidence, really. It’s just—” His look stopped her in mid-sentence. “All right,” she said. “All right. I think she hated him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I stopped loving her when he was born.”

  “Because she thinks it or because it’s true?”

  “Both. Oh, maybe I stopped loving her earlier, maybe I never loved her. God knows I tried, Jeff. I was the one who really pushed for adoption. David was a little hesitant.” She laughed harshly. “He pointed out that you never know what you’re getting. I didn’t pay any attention. It never seemed possible to me that I could bring up a child as my own and fail to love it.”

  “But that’s what happened?”

  She hesitated, then gave a quick nod. “I tried to fake it,” she said. “I denied my real feelings and played the fulfilled young mother number all the way. But when Caleb came along the old denial mechanism got short-circuited. It was just too obvious to me that what I felt for Caleb was categorically different from anything I ever felt for Ariel.”

  “Obvious to you, maybe. Are you sure it was obvious to her?”

  “I think so. I tried to act the same as always, but—well, she’s not a stupid child. She’s a strange child and I sometimes have the feeling she was born on another planet, that she’s just visiting from outer space. But there’s nothing stupid about her.”

  “How did she act toward Caleb?”

  “Like a loving sister.”

  “Always?”

  “Always.”

  “Then—”

  “That’s how she acted. But maybe that’s what it was. An act.”

  “Any reasons to think it might be?”

  “Nothing solid. Just a vibration she gave off. She used to play her flute for him. Did I tell you about that flute of hers?”

  “Yes. You’ve got me wondering what it sounds like.”

  “You’re better off wondering than listening to it. Trust me. She would stand in Caleb’s room and play for him.” She sighed. “That doesn’t sound particularly malicious, does it?”

  “What else is there about her?”

  “The woman in the shawl looked like her.”

  “That may be more of an indication of where you’re coming from than hard evidence against Ariel.”

  “That’s true. All right, here’s what keeps echoing around in my head and I’ve never mentioned to anyone. When I went into Caleb’s room and found him dead, she was waiting in the hallway when I came out. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t even think straight. And she didn’t have to be told. She knew he was dead—”

  “You sensed this, Bobbie?”

  “The hell I did. I was numb clear through, I couldn’t have sensed a hot coal under my foot. She said, ’Something’s wrong with Caleb, isn’t it? He’s dead, isn’t he?’ ”

  “Of course she could tell something was wrong. She was reading you.”

  “No.”

  “The state you must have been in—”

  She shook her head. “No,” she insisted. “Of course I thought of that. But I swear she already knew. Why on earth would she leap to that particular conclusion? No matter what expression I had on my face, how could she take one look at me and immediately assume her baby brother was dead.”

  “Unless she killed him.”

  “I don’t like to think that. But I can’t help it.”

  He drove for a mile or two in silence. Then he said, “There are all sorts of explanations, you know.”

  “Oh?”

  “Maybe Ariel went into his room earlier. Not to kill him but just to see if he was awake or to play her flute or God knows why. Maybe she touched him and he was cold and wouldn’t wake up and she didn’t know what to do so she went back to her room. Then you discovered him for yourself and that made the whole experience real for her, and of course she knew he was dead, and that’s why she reacted as she did.”

  “You’d make a good defense lawyer.”

  “It’s possible, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so. And it never occurred to me.”

  “It’s not the only possibility. You woke up and saw a ghost, or whatever the hell it was that you saw. The woman in the shawl. The first two nights you didn’t know what significance to attach to the sight, but the third time it happened you saw it as a threat to your son.”

  “Because she was holding a baby in her arms. Carrying him away with her.”

  “Right. What makes you think you were the only person in the house who had an experience along those lines? You’ve described Ariel as a spooky kind of a kid, almost of another world. From the description, she sounds as though she’d be far more likely to have an occult experience than you would. Maybe she’s a little fey. Maybe she has some psychic ability. And maybe she had some sort of experience during the night, an apparition or a nightmare or God knows what, which she interpreted as a threat to her brother. Then, when she saw you come out of his room and got a look at the expression on your face, she made what wasn’t such a great leap after all. If she was already worried about Caleb, it wasn’t terribly farfetched for her to intuit that he was dead.”

  She lit a cigarette and smoked half of it without saying anything, thinking over what he had said. Sitting beside him and looking out the window at the autumn countryside, it was easy to accept the arguments he had advanced, easy to dismiss the feelings that had lately haunted her.

  “Then you think I’ve been making something out of nothing,” she said at length.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But—”

  “It wasn’t conviction that had me point out to you how David could have killed Caleb, and it wasn’t conviction that led me to defend Ariel. I just thought it might help to take your arguments and ideas and turn them around. I don’t know what happened to Caleb, Bobbie. There’s a principle of logic that holds that, until you specifically disprove it, the most probable explanation is likely to be true. When a baby dies of crib death, the logical thing to believe is that he died of crib death—that the appearance and the reality are identical.”

  “And the woman with the shawl—”

  “All kinds of possible explanations. Maybe you’ve got some psychic ability yourself.”

  “It never showed up before.”

  “Well, maybe you’ve got late-blooming ESP. Maybe you sensed Caleb was in danger, and maybe this intuition manifested itself by your waking from a dream and seeing things in the corners of the bedroom. Or, for the sake of argument, maybe there really was a ghost and she shows up three nights before somebody in the house dies. I remember reading a lot of English novels set in lonely houses on the moors where the family dogs all howl when someone in the family’s about to expire. I know it’s a cliché, but it probably got to be one because it occasionally happened.”

  “Then you think Caleb died of natural caus
es.”

  “I think it makes a good working assumption. I think it’s also possible that David killed him, or that Ariel killed him, or that some malignant force in the house itself killed him. I think all sorts of things are theoretically possible. Hell, they’re possible in more than a theoretical way. The point is that it’s impossible to know what’s true and what isn’t, at least for the time being.”

  “Where does that leave us?”

  “On a county road eight or ten miles west of the Ashley River.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Of course I do. We haven’t cleared up any mysteries, have we? Maybe I just wanted to have this conversation so I’d have a sense of doing something. But there’s not really very much I can do, is there?”

  “There’s nothing anybody can do.”

  “Not to raise Caleb from the dead, no. You still have your own life to live, Bobbie.”

  She nodded. “This is the first day I’ve felt half-alive since he died.”

  “It’s the country air.”

  “That’s not all it is.”

  He had his eyes on the road. The sun was behind them. He was driving east now, and in another ten minutes they’d be crossing the bridge into Charleston. He’d drop her off. She’d be back in her own house, back in her own life.

  No, she thought. No, she did not want to let go of him. Not just yet, thanks all the same.

  She put her hand on his leg, just above the knee. He turned his eyes from the road, and sexual tension sprang between them like an electrical current jumping a gap.

  His response gave her a sense of power, of confidence. She moved her hand deliberately along his thigh, thrilling at his sharp intake of breath. By the time her fingers rested upon his groin, her own heart was pounding and her underarms were damp with perspiration. She rubbed him urgently, rhythmically, and felt a rush of warmth in her own loins.

  “Bobbie—”

  “Can you find a motel?”

  “Do you think it’s a good idea?”

  Her fingers worked his zipper. She felt wonderfully in control, and at the same time felt herself surrendering to something more powerful than herself.

  “God, Bobbie!”

  She lowered her head to his lap, closed her eyes. Her mind was awash with images and fragments of sound, and for an instant all she could think of was Ariel, pale-faced Ariel, playing her magic flute.