the call, she thinks about the man—the thing—she and Ralph confronted in the cave, and she shivers. She can barely stand to think of that creature, and if there’s another, how can she possibly face it alone?
9
Certainly Holly won’t be facing it with Dan Bell, who’s all of eighty pounds and sitting in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank clipped to the side. He’s a shadow-man, with a mostly bald skull and dark purple patches under his bright but exhausted eyes. He and his grandson live in a fine old brownstone full of fine old furniture. The living room is airy; the drapes are pulled back to allow in floods of cold December sunlight. Yet the smells under the air freshener (Glade Clean Linen, if she’s not mistaken) remind her inevitably of the smells, stubborn and not to be denied, that she detected wafting into the lobby of the Rolling Hills Elder Care Center: Musterole, Bengay, talcum powder, pee, the approaching end of life.
She’s shown into Bell’s presence by the grandson, a man of about forty whose dress and mannerisms seem curiously old-fashioned, almost courtly. The hall is lined with half a dozen framed pencil drawings, full-face portraits of four men and two women, all good and all surely done by the same hand. They strike her as an odd introduction to the house; most of the subjects look rather skeevy. There’s a much larger picture over the fireplace in the living room, where a small and cozy fire has been kindled. This one, an oil painting, shows a beautiful young woman with black, merry eyes.
“My wife,” Bell says in his cracked voice. “Dead these many years, and how I miss her. Welcome to our home, Ms. Gibney.”
He rolls his chair toward her, wheezing with the effort it takes, but when the grandson moves forward to help, Bell waves him off. He holds out a hand which arthritis has turned into a driftwood sculpture. She shakes it with care.
“Have you had lunch?” Brad Bell asks.
“Yes,” Holly says. A hastily gobbled chicken salad sandwich on the short ride from her hotel to this fashionable neighborhood.
“Would you like tea or coffee? Oh, and we have pastries from Two Fat Cats. They are excellent.”
“Tea would be wonderful,” Holly says. “Decaf, if you have it. And I’d love a pastry.”
“I want tea and a turnover,” the old man says. “Apple or blueberry, doesn’t matter which. And I want real tea.”
“Coming right up,” Brad says, and leaves them.
Dan Bell immediately leans forward, eyes fixed on Holly’s, and says in a low conspiratorial voice, “Brad’s terribly gay, you know.”
“Oh,” Holly says. She can think of nothing else to say except I was pretty sure he was, and that seems rude.
“Terribly gay. But he’s a genius. He’s helped me with my researches. I can be sure—I have been sure—but Brad’s the one who provided the proof.” He wags a finger at her, marking off each syllable. “In… contro… vertible!”
Holly nods and sits in a wing chair, knees together and purse on her lap. She’s starting to think that Bell actually is in the grip of a neurotic fantasy and she’s running up a blind alley. This doesn’t irritate or exasperate her; on the contrary, it fills her with relief. Because if he is, she probably is, too.
“Tell me about your creature,” Dan says, leaning even further forward. “In his article, Dr. Morton says you call it an outsider.” Those bright, exhausted eyes are still fixed on hers. Holly thinks of a cartoon vulture sitting on a tree branch.
Although it once would have been difficult for Holly not to do what people asked her to do—almost impossible—she shakes her head.
He sits back in his wheelchair, disappointed. “No?”
“You already have most of my story from the article Dr. Morton published in Psychiatric Quarterly, and from videos you may have seen on the Internet. I came to hear your story. You called Ondowsky a thing, an it. I want to know how you can be so sure he’s an outsider.”
“Outsider is a good name for him. Very good.” Bell straightens his cannula, which has come askew. “A very good name. I’ll tell you over our tea and pastries. We’ll have them upstairs, in Brad’s workroom. I’ll tell you everything. You’ll be convinced. Oh yes.”
“Brad—”
“Brad knows everything,” Dan says, waving that driftwood hand dismissively. “A good boy, gay or not.” Holly has time to muse that when you’re in your nineties, even men twenty years older than Brad Bell must seem