Where the Summer Ends

•VI•

Lonzo Pennybacker gave directions to the house of the elderly Baptist preacher. Eventually Gerry found the right dirt road and drove up to a well-kept house at the head of a mountain cove. Flowers bloomed in the yard, and dogs were having a melee with a pack of noisy children. The house presented a clean, honest front—a far cry from the squalor Gerry had expected in a mountain home.

Rev. Billy Banner sat in a porch rocker and rose to meet Gerry.

He was an alert man in his seventies or better, lean and strong without a trace of weakness or senility. His eyes were clear, and his voice still carried the deep intonations that had rained hellfire and damnation on his congregation for decades.

After shaking hands, Banner motioned him to a chair, politely waited for his guest to come to business. This was difficult. Gerry was uncertain what questions to ask, what explanations to offer—or what he really wanted to find out. But Banner sensed his uneasiness and expertly drew from him the reason for his visit. Gerry explained he was staying at the old Reagan cabin, that he was interested in the artist Enser Pittman who had killed himself there.

“Enser Pittman?” The old man nodded. “Yes, I remember him well enough. He paid me a visit once, just like you today. Maybe for the same reason.”

Plunging on, Gerry asked about the history of the cabin and was told little he had not already learned. Rev. Banner spoke with reluctance of the old tragedy, seemed to suspect more than he was willing to put into words.

“Do you have any idea what might have driven Pittman to suicide?” Gerry asked finally.

The preacher kept silent until Gerry wondered if he would ignore the question. “Suicide? That was the verdict, sure enough. They found him mother-naked in bed, his throat tore open and a razor beside him. Been dead a few days—likely it had been done the last of July. No sign of struggle, nothing gone, no enemies. Artists are kind of funny anyway. And some claimed he had cancer. So maybe it was suicide like the coroner said. Maybe not. Wasn’t much blood on the sheets for a man to be cut like that, they tell me. All the same, I hope it was suicide, and not something worse.”

“I thought suicide was the unforgivable sin.”

“There’s things worse.” Banner looked at him shrewdly. “Maybe you know what I mean. The Bible talks about witches and ghosts and a lot of other things we think we’re too wise to believe in today. That Renee Reagan was a daughter of Satan, sure as I’m sitting here remembering her. Well, I’m an old man, but no one’s ever called me an old fool, so I’ll just stop talking.”

Feeling uncomfortable without knowing why, Gerry thanked the preacher and rose to go. Rev. Banner stood up to see him off, then laid a sinewy hand on his shoulder at the edge of the porch.

“I don’t know just what sort of trouble you got that’s bothering you, son,” he began, fixing Gerry with his keen eyes. “But I do know there’s something about the old Reagan place that gets to some kinds of people. If that’s the way it is with you, then you better get back to where it is you come from. And if you do stay on here, then just remember that Evil can’t harm a righteous man so long as he denies its power and holds to the way of Our Lord Jesus Christ and his Gospel. But once you accept Evil—once you let Evil into your life and permit its power to influence your soul—then it’s got you body and soul, and you’re only a plaything for all the devils of Hell!

“You’ve got that lost look about you, son. Maybe you can hear that Hell-bound train a-calling to you. But don’t you listen to its call. Son, don’t you climb on board!”



•VII•

With a strange mixture of dread and anticipation, Gerry broke away from Janet’s mawkish attempts to make conversation and retired to the lower veranda for the evening. All afternoon he had thought about returning to Columbus, forgetting this mystery. Yet he knew he could not. For one thing, he had to stay until he could be certain of his own sanity. Barring madness, this entire uncanny business must be either hoax or genuine. If it were an elaborate hoax, Gerry wanted to know who, how and why. And if the cabin were haunted... He had to know.

But it was deeper than the simple desire to explore an occult phenomenon. Renee—whoever, whatever she might be—held a profound fascination for him. Her image obsessed him. He thought of this passionate, exotic woman of another era; then there was Janet. Bitterness returned, and again the memory of the son and the ordered world her moronic carelessness had torn from him. Right now she was sitting like a mushroom, spellbound by that boob-tube, never a concern for her husband’s misery.

His thoughts were of Renee when sleep overcame him. In dream he saw her drift through the screen door and greet him with redlipped smile. She was so vivacious, so desirable! Pittman’s painting had held only the shadow of her feline beauty.

Gracefully she poured two fingers of Gerry’s Scotch and tossed it down neat, eyes wide with devilish challenge. Bringing the bottle with her, she took the chair beside his own. Her long fingers cozily touched his arm. “Nice of you to offer a lady a drink,” she grinned impishly. “Good Scotch is so hard to get now. Been saving this stuff in your cellar since before Volstead—or is this just off the boat?”

“Oh, the Prohibition’s been repealed for years now,” Gerry heard himself say dully, as in a dream. It was a dream. Renee cast no reflection in the barroom mirror.

“Sure honey.” She laughed teasingly. “Say, lover—you look all down in the dumps tonight. Care to tell a girl all about it?”

And Gerry began to tell Renee the story of his life. As the night grew deeper, he told her of his struggle to become successful in his work, his efforts to build a position for himself in society, his marriage to a woman who couldn’t understand him, his son for whom he had hoped everything, Janet’s accident and the death of all his aspirations. Quietly she listened to him, eyes intent with sympathy. God! Why couldn’t Janet ever show such feeling, such interest! Always too busy feeling sorry for herself!

When he finished, mechanical sobs shook his angular frame. Renee expressed a wordless cry of concern and laid a white arm around his shoulder. “Hey, c’mon now, Gerry! Get it all out of your system! You’ve really had a tough break or two, but we can work it out now, can’t we? Here now—think about this instead!”

She slithered onto his lap and captured his lips in a long kiss. Somewhere in the kiss Gerry opened his eyes. With a gasp he started from his chair. No one was there, of course.

God! What a dream! His lips felt bruised, unnaturally cold—even her kiss had felt real. Got to go easy on the bottle. Still, if this was DTs, it was pleasant enough. God! Had he ever carried on! That psychiatrist would have had a picnic. He reached for the Scotch. Empty. Had he had that much to drink? No wonder the dream.

Was it a dream? Gerry looked about him suspiciously The chair beside him seemed maybe closer, although he really hadn’t noticed it earlier. An empty glass on the floor—but maybe he’d left it there before. That peculiar scent of jasmine again—wonder what perfume Renee had worn? Absurd—it was mountain flowers. He touched his lips and there was blood on his fingers.



•VIII•

“I’m going out for a walk,” he told Janet after breakfast.

“Can’t you stay around here today for a change?” she asked wistfully. “Or let’s go someplace together. You’ve been off so much lately, I hardly get to see you. And it’s so lonely here without anyone around.”

“Without a phone to gossip with all the bitches in your bridge club,” he snapped. “Well, I’m not sitting on my ass all afternoon watching television. If you want company, then walk along with me!”

“Gerry,” she began shakily. “You know I can’t...”

“No, I don’t know! The doctors say you can walk whenever you want to! You’re just so content playing the invalid, you won’t even try to walk again!”

Her eyes clouded. “Gerry! That was cruel!”

“The truth though, wasn’t it!” he exploded. “Well, damn it, snap out of it! I’m getting disgusted with waiting on you hand and foot—tying myself down to someone who can’t stop feeling sorry for herself long enough to...”

“Gerry!” Janet clenched her fists. “Stop it! What’s happening to us! For the last several days you’ve been getting ever sharper with me! You shun me—avoid my company like you hated me! For God’s sake, Gerry, what is the matter!”

He turned from her in wordless contempt and strode off into the pine forest. She called after him until he was beyond earshot.

The pines! How restful they were after her miserable whimpering! The dense shade, the deep carpet of fallen needles choked out undergrowth. The dark, straight trunks stabbed toward the sunlight above, leaving a rough shaft branchless for dozens of feet. It was so pleasant to walk among them. The needles were a resilient carpet that deadened all sound. The trunks were myriad pillars to support a vaulted ceiling of swaying green boughs.

It was eerie here in the pines. So unlike a hardwood forest, alive with crackling leaves and a wild variety of trees and underbrush. The pines were so awesome, so ancient, so desolate. The incredible loneliness of this twilight wilderness assailed Gerry—and strangely soothed the turmoil of his emotions.

The restless wind moved the branches above him in ceaseless song. Sighing, whispering pines. Here was the very sound of loneliness. Again Gerry recalled the old mountain folk tune:

The longest train I ever saw,

Was a hundred coaches long,

And the only girl I ever loved,

Was on that train and gone.

In the pines, in the pines,

Where the sun never shines,

And I shiver when the wind blows cold.

What was happening to him? A year ago he would have laughed at the absurd idea of ghosts or haunted houses. Had he changed so much since then—since the accident?

No, this couldn’t actually be happening to him. He must try to examine all the facts with the same clear, down-to-earth attitude he formerly would have taken. He had come here with his nerves in bad shape—on the verge of a breakdown, the doctors had implied. Then he’d found an unusual painting and read through the diary of a deranged artist. Nerves and too much Scotch had got the best of his disordered imagination, and he had assumed the same delusions as poor Pittman. Add to that the stories of the place he had gleaned from the locals, and his newborn romantic streak had run wild—to the point he was sharing Pittman’s own mad hallucinations. Similarities were not surprising; the circumstances that induced the delusions were the same, and he had Pittman’s notes to direct him.

Besides, if the Reagan place were haunted, why had no one else seen anything out of the ordinary? Pittman in his egotism had claimed his artistic soul made it possible for him to perceive what lesser minds had missed. But Gerry had no artistic pretensions or illusions of paranormal talents.

Pittman had suggested that someone might become susceptible to the spirit world if he had somehow become alienated from his normal plane of existence. Gerry shrugged mentally. Perhaps then he had become receptive to the other world when the protection of his safe middle-class existence had collapsed about him. But now he was accepting the logic of a suicide.

He paused in bewilderment. The pine forest had suddenly assumed a sense of familiarity. Curiously Gerry studied his surroundings—then it occurred to him. Granted the passage of time, this section of the forest resembled the background in the painting of Renee. He had half assumed Pittman had done a stylized portrayal, rather than an actual landscape. How odd to happen upon the same grove of pines and then to recognize it from the painting.

Why had Pittman chosen this particular section of the pines? Probably he had simply wandered to this spot just as Gerry had done. Still, perhaps there was something that made this spot especially attractive to the artist.

Gerry stood in silence. Was it imagination again? Did the sun seem to shine less brightly here? Did the pines seem to loom darker, with a shadow of menace? Was the whisper of the pines louder here, and was there a note of depravity in the loneliness of the sound? Why were there no cries of birds, no sounds of life, other than the incessant murmur of the brooding pines? And why was there a bare circle of earth where not even the pines grew?

Gerry shivered. He hurried from the spot, no longer so certain of his logic.



•IX•

Janet was sulking when Gerry returned, and they studiously avoided each other for the remainder of the day. Monosyllables were exchanged when conversation was unavoidable, and whatever went through the mind of either was left to fester unexpressed. Mechanically Janet prepared dinner, although neither felt like eating.

“I can’t take this!” Janet finally blurted. “I don’t know what’s happened to us since we got here, but we’re tearing ourselves apart. This just hasn’t worked for us, Gerry. Tomorrow I want to go home.” Gerry sighed ponderously. “Now look. We came here so you could rest. And now already you want to go back.”

“Gerry, I can’t stand it here! Every day I’ve felt you grow farther away from me! I don’t know if it’s just this place, or if it’s us—but I do know we’ve got to leave!”

“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” he said wearily, and stood up. Janet’s lips were set. “Right! Now go on downstairs and drink yourself to sleep! That’s the pattern, isn’t it? You can’t bear to be around me, so you get as far away as you can! And you stumble around all day either drunk or hungover! Always bleary-eyed, paunchy and surly! Gerry, I can’t take this any longer!”

He retreated stolidly. “Go to bed, Janet. We’ll talk this over in the morning.”

“Damn it, Gerry! I’ve tried to be patient. The doctors warned me you’d made an unhealthy adjustment to the accident—just because you came out no worse than hungover! But if this doesn’t stop, I’m going to ask for a separation!”

Gerry halted, angry retorts poised on his tongue. No, let her yell. Ignore her. “Good night, Janet,” he grated and fled downstairs.

Angrily he gulped down half a glass of straight Scotch. God! This Scotch was the only thing that held their marriage together—made this situation tolerable. And, he noticed, his stock of Scotch was just about gone.

Divorce! Well, why not! Let the leech live off alimony for the rest of her years. It was almost worth paying to be rid of her! Let her divorce him then! She’d made a ruin of everything else in his life—might as well finish the job right!

Once again he thought of Renee. There was a woman to love, to desire—a woman who could stand on her own two feet, who could return his love with fall passion of her own! She and Janet shared their sex with no more in common than a leopardess and a cow. No wonder Pittman had fallen in love with his phantasy of Renee!

Damn Janet! Damn the doctors! Bitching him about his emotional stability. So he drank more than he used to! So he maybe threw a scene or two, maybe felt a little differently about things now! Well, it was a different world! A man was entitled to make adjustments. Maybe he needed a little more time...

No! It wasn’t his fault!

The glass slipped from his shaking fist, smashed on the floor. Gerry pawned at it clumsily, cursing the spilled liquor. He’d fix another and clean up tomorrow. Dully he noticed another broken glass. When had he...?

It was late when Gerry finally drifted off to sleep, as had become his habit. Smiling, he welcomed Renee when she came to him. How strange to be dreaming, he mused, and yet know that it’s a dream.

“Here again, darling?” There was secret humor in her grave smile. “And looking so sad again. What are we to do with you, Gerry? I so hate to see you all alone in a blue funk every night! The wife?”

“Janet. The bitch!” he mumbled thickly. “She wants me to leave you!

Renee was dismayed. “Leave? When I’m just getting so fond of you? Hey, lover, that sounds pretty grim!”

Brokenly, Gerry blurted out his anger, his pain. Told her of the lies and insinuations. Told her how hard it was to get through each day, how only a stiff drink and the memory of her smile could calm his nerves each night.

Renee listened in silence, only nodding to show she understood, until he finished and sat quivering with anger. “It sounds to me like you’ve finally realized Janet has only been a nagging obstruction in your life,” she observed. “Surely you’ve never loved her.”

Gerry nodded vehemently. “I hate her!”

She smiled lazily and snuggled closer, her lips only inches from his own. “What about me, Gerry? Do you love your Renee?”

His Renee! “With all my soul!” he whispered huskily.

“Mmmmm. That’s sweet.” Renee held him with her glowing eyes. “So you love Renee more than Janet?”

“Yes! Of course I do!”

“And would you like to be rid of Janet so you could be with me?”

“God, how I wish that!”

Her smile burned more confident. “What if she died? Would you want Janet dead?”

Bitterness poisoned his spirit. “Janet dead? Yes! That would be perfect! I wish she were dead so we could be together!”

“Oh, sweetheart!” Renee squeezed him delightedly. “You really do love me, don’t you! Let’s kiss on our bargain!”

Somewhere in her kiss the dream dissolved to blackness.

From upstairs a shriek of black terror shattered the stillness of the night.

He started awake sometime later, groggily rubbed his head while trying to collect his thoughts. What had happened? The dream... He remembered... And suddenly he had the feeling that something was wrong, dreadfully wrong. Strangely frightened, he staggered up the stairs. “Janet?” he called, his voice unnatural.

Moonlight spilled through the rusty screen and highlighted the crumpled figure who lay in one corner of the room. A small patch of darkness glistened on the wood. Strange how small that pool of blood.

“Janet!” he groaned in disbelieving horror. “Oh, my God!”

Her eyes were wide and staring; her face set in a death grimace of utmost loathing, insane dread. Whatever had killed Janet had first driven her mad with terror.

It had not been an easy death. Her throat was a jagged gash—too ragged a tear for the knife that lay beside her. A Barlow knife. His.

“Janet!” he sobbed, grief slamming him like a sledge. “Who could have done this thing!”

“Don’t you know, lover?”

Gerry whirled, cried out in fear. “Renee. You’re alive!”

She laughed at him from the shadow, triumph alight in her eyes. She was just as he had seen her in the painting, in the dreams. Green silk frock, bobbed auburn hair, eyes that held dark secrets. Only now her lips were far more crimson, and scarlet trickled across her chin.

“Yes, Gerry. I’m alive and Janet is dead. Just the way you wished. Or have you forgotten? ” Mockery was harsh in her voice.

“Impossible!” he moaned. “You’ve been dead for years! Ghosts can’t exist! Not here! Not today!”

But Renee stepped forward, gripped his hand with fingers like frozen steel. Her nails stabbed his wrist. “You know better.”

Gerry stared at her in revulsion. “I don’t believe in you! You have no power over me!”

“But you do believe in me.”

“God, help me! Help me!” he sobbed, mind reeling with nightmare.

Contempt lined her face. “Too late for that.”

She pulled his arm, drew him to the door. “Come now, lover! We have a sealed bargain!”

He protested—willed himself not to follow. Struggled to awaken from the nightmare. In vain. Helplessly he followed the creature he himself had given substance.

Out into the pines Renee led him. The pines whose incessant whisper told of black knowledge and secret loneliness. Through the desolate pines they walked into the night. Past endless columns of dark sentinel trunks. Swaying, whispering an ancient rhythm with the night wind.

Until they came to a grove Gerard Randall now found familiar. Where the darkness was deeper. Where the whisper was louder and resonant with doom. Where the pines drew back about a circle of earth in which nothing grew.

Where tonight yawned a pit, and he knew where Renee’s unhallowed grave lay hidden.

“Is this madness?” he asked with sudden hope.

“No. This is death.”

And the illusion of beauty slipped from Renee, revealed the cavern-eyed lich in rotting silk, who pulled him down into the grave like a bride enticing a bashful groom. And in that final moment Gerard Randall understood the whispered litany of the merciless pines.