Familiar Spirit

They went out the door together. “I doubt it,” Sarah said. “She struck me as a more solitary type of loon.”

Outside it was beautiful. The sky was a hard, bright blue and despite the heat of the sun there was a welcome crispness in the air, the faintest smell of autumn. Sarah breathed in deeply, feeling revived. She thought with pleasure of the trees around her house—soon the leaves would be turning brown and falling, and she could rake them into big piles and set them alight.

“I just hope she sent back whatever she conjured up,” Beverly said as they walked across the parking lot together. “Let’s hope there aren’t any leftover spirits hanging around your house.”

Her stomach lurched; fragments of nearly forgotten nightmare scratched at the back of her throat. Sarah opened her mouth, meaning to tell Beverly that she had changed her mind, that she couldn’t, mustn’t, go back to that house.

But Beverly, unaware, had already changed the subject. “That wasn’t much of a norther we had the other night, but I guess summer’s gone for good. I guess we won’t get out to the lake again this year.”

The moment passed, leaving Sarah feeling slightly dis­oriented. She grasped at Beverly’s words to anchor herself. “The lake . . . yes . . . I told you about my dream?”

They had reached the car. Pausing before unlocking the door, Beverly turned to Sarah with a slightly puzzled smile. “Yes, you did—about an underwater tunnel at Lake Travis? You’d better not tell Pete—I’m sure there’s probably something embarrassingly Freudian in that.”

Sarah nodded and smiled mechanically. There was some other dream, she thought, confused. Some other dream she should be remembering . . . She was silent as Beverly drove, but after a few moments she stopped trying to puzzle out the lost memory and simply enjoyed the familiar sights of this east-west drive through Austin: the students and street-people and corner flower-sellers; the rows of ugly, functional apartment complexes alternating with gracefully aging, tree-shaded frame houses; the rolling green lawn behind the chain-link fence of the state hospital.

And then, her favorite sight, the one she never tired of, as they rose up the overpass over the expressway: the hills. Just a glimpse, the gentle curve of green on the horizon, but it never failed to make her heart lift. The hills to the west of town where the Colorado River wound. They were a symbol of freedom to her. Sarah would never forget her first astonished, joyful discovery of them her first day in Austin six years before. After a lifetime spent on the flat Texas coast the hills of Austin were like a sight of heaven, as exciting and important to her as the facts of being away from home, on her own and enrolled at the university.

“This is it, isn’t it?” Beverly asked.

“Yes, turn off here. It’s not much of a driveway, I know . . .”

“Oh, this old car doesn’t mind.” Beverly steered skillfully off the street and behind Sarah’s car. She shifted into park and turned to give Sarah a long, measuring look. “Promise me,” she said. “If you start feeling the least bit sick, or tired, or even doubtful, you will either call me or come over.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ve got a bed now, and I’ll pick up a phone today.”

“But it won’t be connected right away. Maybe you’d better stay with us until—”

“Bev, I’m fine. I’ve got tons of stuff to do, and I don’t feel sick at all, really.”

Beverly looked doubtful. “You’re so isolated out here—”

“Okay,” Sarah said hastily, feeling the morning slipping away from her. “If anything happens, if I get sick or have a bad dream, I’ll come to you to make it better. You’d better go now, or you’ll be late for class.” She got out of the car as she was speaking, and closed the door firmly.

Beverly hesitated, as if she still had more advice to give, or another promise she wanted to extract, but finally she mimed a kiss and drove away.

Sarah turned towards the house and stopped short in surprise at the sight of a cat on the back steps. It was a nice-looking animal, a sleek calico, body curved gracefully as it washed one white paw. Sarah smiled at the picture it made: cat on wooden steps. It looked very much at home. She wondered if it planned to stay. She had never had a pet before. She continued to watch it as she approached the house, but it was utterly self-absorbed and did not look up from its grooming.

At the foot of the steps Sarah stopped again, and her breath caught in her throat with surprise. A small body lay on the ground a few inches from the bottom step: a dead rat. The fur at the throat was matted with dried blood, and the small, nasty teeth were revealed in a final snarl.

She let out her breath in a long, slow sigh. It was dead. No more knockings within the walls, or beneath the bathtub; no more mocking scurrying sounds. She looked from the tiny corpse to the cat. “Good work!” she said, pleased. “Maybe I should keep you around, if you’re looking for a new home.”