Where the Summer Ends - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,13
ghost? Had they started bottling LSD with Scotch? He laughed shakily. An after-image, of course. He’d been staring at the painting for an hour. When he had abruptly looked away against the darkened doorway, the image of the painting had superimposed on his retina. Certainly! They’d done experiments like that in college science.
It had been unnerving for a second. So that was how haunted houses got their reputation. He glanced about him. The porch was deserted, of course. The wind still whispered its cold breath through the rhythmically swaying pines. Again came a faint scent of jasmine on the night wind. God! It was so peaceful here! So cold and lonely! He closed his eyes and shivered, unreasonably content for the moment. Like being alone with someone you love very much. Just the two of you and the night.
“Gerry! For God’s sake, are you all right?”
He catapulted out of the rocker. “What! What? Of course I am! Damn it all, stop screaming! What’s wrong with you?” Janet was at the top of the staircase. She called down half in relief, half in alarm. “Well, I heard a glass smash, and you didn’t answer when I called you at first. I was afraid you’d fallen or something and were maybe hurt. I was about to start down these steps, if you hadn’t answered.” Gerry groaned and said with ponderous patience, “Well, I’m all right, thank you. Just dropped a glass. Turn down the television next time, and maybe I’ll hear you.”
“The TV’s off.” (So that was why she took time to think of him.) “It’s started acting crazy again like last night. Can you take a look at it now? It always seems to work okay in the daytime.”
She paused and sniffed loudly. “Gerry, do you smell something? ”
“Just mountain flowers. Why?”
“No, I mean do you smell something rotten? Can’t you smell it? I’ve noticed it several times at night. It smells like something dead is in the cabin.”
•V•
Gerry had been trying to move an old trunk when he found the diary. The rusty footlocker had been shoved into one of the closets upstairs, and Janet insisted that he lug the battered eyesore downstairs. Gerry grumbled while dragging the heavy locker to the stairs, but its lock was rusted tight, and he was not able to remove the junk inside first. So it was with grim amusement that he watched the trunk slip from his grasp and careen down the narrow stairs. At the bottom it burst open like a rotten melon and dumped its musty contents across the floor.
Clothes and books mostly A squirrel had chewed entrance at one point and shredded most of it, while mildew had ruined the remainder. Gerry righted the broken trunk and carelessly tossed the scattered trash back inside. Let someone else decide what to do with it.
There was a leather-bound notebook. Its cover was thrown back, and he noted the title page: Diary. Enser Pittman. June-December, 1951. Gerry looked at the footlocker in alarm. Were these the possessions of that artist, left unclaimed after his suicide?
He set the diary aside until he had cleared away the rest of the debris. Then he succumbed to morbid curiosity and sat down to thumb through the artist’s journal. Some of the pages had been chewed away, others were welded together with mould and crumbled as he tried to separate them. But he could read enough to fasten his attention to the tattered diary.
The first few entries were not especially interesting—mostly gloomy comments on the war in Korea and the witch hunts at home, the stupidity of his agent, and what a bitch Arlene was. On June 27, Pittman had arrived at The Crow’s Nest for a rest and to try his hand at mountain-scapes. From that point, certain passages of the diary assumed a chilling fascination for Gerry.
June 28. Went out for a stroll through the woods today, surprisingly without getting lost or eaten by bears. Splendid pine forest! After N.Y.’s hollow sterile canyons, this is fantastic! God! How strange to be alone! I walked for hours without seeing a soul—or a human. And the carpet of pine needles—so unlike that interminable asphalt-concrete desert! Pure desolation! I feel reborn! Extraordinary those pines. Can’t recall any sound so lonely as the wind whispering through their branches. Weird! After N.Y.’s incessant mind-rotting clamor. If I can only express this solitude, this unearthly loneliness on canvas! Fahler is an odious cretin! Landscapes are not trite—rather, the expression has cloyed...