Familiar Spirit

“Let’s get some dinner,” Pete said. His voice was brisk, on the edge of impatience.

“Food!” Beverly said triumphantly, wagging a finger at Sarah. “You don’t have any food! What are you going to do about breakfast?”

“There’s a twenty-four-hour Safeway a few blocks up Thirty-fifth. I can get whatever I need there.”

“It would be so much easier . . .”

Pete grasped his wife by one arm and pulled her to her feet. “It would be so much easier to argue this over dinner,” he said. “How does Mexican food sound?”

But even after a stupefyingly large meal at El Rancho, Beverly did not give up. As they stood in the parking lot between their two cars, saying goodnight, Beverly launched her final attack.

“Sarah, just follow us home and we’ll have a few more beers and watch Saturday Night Live.”

“Thanks,” Sarah said. “But all I want to do is go to sleep.” Although she had left the heavy work to the men, her muscles ached slightly from the exertions of the day; she was full of food and pleasantly weary.

“But you can sleep at our place.”

“Honey, Sarah knows what she wants to do,” Pete said. He put one arm around Beverly. “We just spent the day helping her move in—and now you won’t let her move in.”

“I have to make the move some time, and it might as well be tonight,” Sarah said. “I’ve slept on the couch before—it’s comfortable enough. And all my things are there—I’d worry about them if I left them. I’ll be very cosy there, surrounded by all my things, in my own house—really.” She smiled.

Pete looked at Sarah intently, his face seeming even more gaunt in the harsh streetlights. “Just as long as you know,” he said quietly. “That you’re always welcome. Always. Even if that means you come knocking on our door in the middle of the night.”

Once again Sarah felt close to tears, but this time for a different reason. She felt their concern, their affection, like a net she could fall into, fearlessly letting go. She struggled a moment and then said lightly, “God forbid I should ever have to. I’ll be all right.”

“I know you will,” said Pete. For a moment Sarah thought he would step forward to embrace her, but the moment passed, and his arm only tightened around his wife. Pete and Sarah had always been awkward with each other physically, touching only through words. Beverly was the conductor between them, able to hug and kiss and freely express her emotions.

Driving home, pleasantly stuffed and a little high on Mexican beer, Sarah felt no regrets. But by the time she had bought a few things at the supermarket, and reached her dark, empty house, she was sober, tired, and feeling the first brush of unease as she remembered that she had no telephone.

Well, I won’t need one, she thought. She was tired enough to sleep soundly through the night, even on the couch and in a new place. She wished, as she walked slowly towards the black house, that she had thought to leave the porch light on. Lightning flickered in the western sky, and Sarah’s spirits rose again at the prospect of a thunderstorm. Nothing could make her feel at home more quickly than to spend a night, cosy and sheltered, while the rain pounded down outside.

Inside with the lights on, reflections in the windows startled her. Curtains, of course. How could she have forgotten about curtains? With the windows set so high, and the house so far from the street, Sarah knew she was safe from any spying eyes, but she didn’t like the flat blackness of the glass; and the dim reflections of herself, moving, which the windows cast back at her, kept tricking her into whirling around in the expectation of discovering she was no longer alone.

Sarah unrolled her sleeping bag across the couch, slipped into the flannel nightgown she usually wore only when she was sick or very cold, and settled down for the night. With the inside lights off, the windows were no longer evil mirrors, but only windows again. There was a streetlight on the corner which faintly illuminated parts of the front room, and every few minutes the lightning flashed. Sarah lay with eyes open for a while, looking at the shapes of leaves and branches outside the window, noticing how the occasional lightning altered them, and waiting for the rain. Sleep arrived before the storm.

Suddenly she woke, feeling that something was wrong. She could hear the gentle sound of rain, but it was not that which had woken her. She had heard something else; a sound from inside the house.

She heard it again: a scuffling, scurrying sound from the floor. Sarah turned her head and saw it.

It was an enormous rat, moving across the floor with a terrible purpose, making straight for her. The small amount of light in the room was enough to show her its large sharp teeth, and the unholy gleam of its tiny eyes.