The Visitors, page 1
NATHANIEL BENCHLEY
THE VISITORS
VALANCOURT BOOKS
The Visitors by Nathaniel Benchley
Originally published by McGraw-Hill Book Company in 1965
First Valancourt Books edition 2024
Copyright © 1965 by Nathaniel Benchley
Cover illustration © 1965 Charles Addams. Reprinted by kind permission of the Addams Foundation.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the copying, scanning, uploading, and/or electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitutes unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher.
Published by Valancourt Books, Richmond, Virginia
http://www.valancourtbooks.com
Note
This is a work of fiction, and the people in it are fictitious. The ghosts are real.
N.B.
M. V. Nibble
Harbor House Dock
Nantucket, Mass.
September, 1964
For Peggy Stuart Coolidge, who knows a visitor when she sees one
ONE
The old Twitchell house was built in 1850, by a retired sea captain named Ebenezer Twitchell. Several families with different names have owned it since, but it is known as the Twitchell house because nobody has stayed in it long enough to have their names associated with it. In New England, you have to live in a house at least fifteen years before it stops being called by the name of the previous owner. Like most sea captains, Ebenezer Twitchell disliked the sea but couldn’t be very far from it, so he put his house on the rim of a cliff overlooking a broad stretch of the Atlantic. Winter storms send up sheets of spray that have encrusted the house and turned it a soft, silvery gray, and even on quiet summer evenings the sound of the sea is always present. The house is as much a part of the sea as though it were a ship afloat. It is also generally conceded to be haunted.
On a cold, gusty day in April, when the surf boomed hollowly against the cliffs and the wind carried the smell of rain, an automobile wound its way up the road from the nearby village. As it approached the house the driver glanced at the couple with him, and hesitated a moment before speaking. The woman was good-looking in an unostentatious way, although her clothes very clearly said she came from the city, and the odds were she had never heard the stories about the house. “I tell you, Mrs. Powell,” the driver said at last, “this house ain’t been lived in for a few years, so it’s likely to be a mite dusty. I wouldn’t be showing it to you, only it’s the last one I got. You seen all the others.”
“Well, let’s look at it, anyway,” said Kathryn Powell. “It must have a beautiful view in the summer.”
“What’s the price on it?” asked Stephen, her husband. He was in his mid-forties, and had the pale, slightly haggard look of a man who is slowly losing the fight against city existence.
The real estate agent cleared his throat. “I’ll have to find out,” he said. “Last time, the people didn’t stay the whole summer. And like I said, it’ll need some work, so that’ll come into account.”
Powell settled back and looked dismally out the window, and the agent knew it would take some high-pressure selling before he would agree to a deal. But it was this house or nothing, and the commission if he could rent it would be very welcome. And the commission if he could sell it—well, he wouldn’t let himself think about that.
As a rule, retired sea captains relieved their boredom by doing ornamental work on their houses, and Ebenezer Twitchell was no exception. The shingles had been notched and then set in a diamond pattern, giving an effect of almost Byzantine confusion, and the wide porch that surrounded the house was trimmed with wooden scrollwork that would have gladdened the heart of a scrimshaw artist. The gables above the second-floor windows came up to peaks like minarets, and the windows themselves, although boarded over, could be seen to have been decorated with scrollwork. The northeast corner rose in the form of a square tower with a crenellated top, and the entire house was surmounted by a cupola, in which one unboarded window stared like a blind eye out to sea. The house was silent, cold, and slimy.
The agent stopped the car, and reached for his bundle of keys. “Of course, it’ll look different once it’s opened up,” he said tentatively. “You ain’t seeing it on what you might call the best of circumstances.”
“But think of the view!” Kathryn exclaimed, as she got out of the car and looked at the sea. “The view alone would make it worth having!”
“That’s the way I look at it,” said the agent, as he started up the steps.
Powell got slowly out of the car, and, ignoring the view, examined the house. It’s so bad it’s almost funny, he thought. It might conceivably be fun to spend the summer in a house as horrible as this—provided, of course, the beds are all right. The only thing I’ve got to be careful of is my bed; Gerlock said if my back popped once more he’d have to do a fusion, and I’m damned if I want to go through that. Powell closed the car door carefully, and followed his wife and the agent up the porch steps.
The house had a musty, dank smell like that in the others they’d looked at, but as he glanced around in the semi-darkness at the sheeted furniture and rolled-up rugs, he felt as though a cold wind were blowing on him. He rubbed his neck and shivered, and the feeling subsided. I’ll be glad when we get out of here, he thought. What I need is a good, stiff glass of Scotch to warm me up. I wish to God I’d start feeling better again. I guess maybe it’s my back, but it’s certainly taking its own time. I’ll have to ask Gerlock about it when I see him. A bad back shouldn’t be giving me flashes like this.
He followed Kathryn and the agent through the downstairs rooms, while she peeked under furniture covers and took inventory of the items in the kitchen, and then they went to the second floor for a tour of the bedrooms. The agent used a flashlight, and Powell had the sensation of being in an Egyptian tomb, with the bobbing light illuminating brief patches of wall or floor or furniture as though reading ancient hieroglyphs. In some places the wallpaper was peeling, and in others time-browned pictures hung askew and winked back the light from their glass, and in one corner was a dead bird, dry and dusty and ruffled. Powell pushed one folded mattress, and felt the crackling of straw beneath the cover. His neck felt cold again, and he rubbed it hard.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
Kathryn was surprised. “Why?” she said. “Don’t you like it?”
“The beds are no good.”
“The beds won’t be no problem,” said the agent, quickly. “We’ll fix them up good.”
“And anyway you’ve got your bed-board,” Kathryn said. “Dr. Gerlock said that would help no matter where you slept.” To the agent she said, “Mr. Powell has a bad back, and the doctor has told him to rest it as much as possible.”
The agent nodded wisely, as though everything had been suddenly revealed. “This place gets real pretty when the sun’s out,” he said. “People come up here from all over, just to look at the view. Come to think of it,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “if you was to rent this, the rent’d automatically apply against the sale price if you want to buy it.” He paused, cleared his throat, and said, “Just thought you’d like to know.”
“Thanks,” said Powell shortly.
Something in his voice made Kathryn say, “Do you feel all right?”
“Now that you mention it, no. I keep getting chills.”
“Then let’s get you a drink. I thought you sounded funny.”
“I’m all right. It’s just that the back of my neck is cold.”
She took him by the arm. “Come on,” she said. “We shouldn’t have brought you out today, anyway. You haven’t recovered from the last bout.”
“I just remembered,” the agent said, as he shone the light on the stairs for them. “Last time the place was rented it went for eighteen hundred, but I think you could probably get it for a thousand for the season. That’s five hundred less than any of the others you seen.”
Kathryn stopped. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Can we call that official?”
“Just about. I’d have to double-check, but I seem to remember someone saying something about a thousand if—uh—someone offered.”
“Who owns the house, anyway?” Powell asked, as they emerged into the windy and welcome daylight.
The agent pulled the door shut, struggled briefly with the rusty lock, then put the keys in his pocket. “Right now the bank owns it,” he said. “They’d probably give you a good price if you was to buy it.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Kathryn. She breathed a deep lungful of sea air, smiled, and said, “This must be absolute heaven in the summer.” Then she looked at her husband. “What do you think?” she asked. “If we can get it for a thousand, should we take it?”
Powell hesitated. He felt better now that he was out-of-doors, and the chills were gone. Still, there was something that made him uneasy, and he wished he could put it into words. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we ought to look around some more.”
“You won’t find a bargain like this anywhere I know of,” the agent said. “Most rents are going up this year, not down.”
“Fifteen hundred’s the lowest you’ll get anywhere else,” said the agent. “And that’s for not half the rooms, not to mention the view.”
“You know you’re supposed to take it easy this summer. Where else could you relax the way you could here?”
“Got a TV rental place in town, too. They’ll deliver a set right up here, and you won’t have to get out of your chair from one day to the next.”
“What is it you don’t like about it? I wish I understood.”
Powell sighed. “Nothing, I guess,” he said.
“Then is it settled?”
“I guess so.”
The agent jangled the keys in his pocket. “I got a bottle of whisky down at the office,” he said. “Why don’t we go through the formalities there?”
A half hour later the agent, whose name was Ed Lasker, stared at the fifty-dollar deposit check in his hand and smiled. He was undecided whether to bank it right now or keep it around for a day or so, as proof he’d actually rented the Twitchell house. Nobody would believe him without proof, but since the check didn’t state what it was for it wouldn’t be too convincing. He wished he’d asked Powell to specify when he wrote it out, but Powell had been so reluctant that he’d decided not to press his luck, and took the check as it was. Even if Powell backed out now, fifty dollars was fifty dollars, and Lasker concluded that the best thing was to get it to the bank right away, in case Powell should think of stopping payment. Then an idea came to him, and in the lower left-hand corner, just above the gibberish of the code number, he wrote: “Deposit against season’s rent on Twitchell house.” The fact that it was in his handwriting was in no way illegal, and it would serve at least to convince the people at the bank. And they, he knew, would pass the word around better than he could. Anyone who wanted his business affairs kept secret had two banks, the local one for everyday use and an out-of-town bank for whatever he didn’t want to be common knowledge. He endorsed the check, took it to the bank and deposited it, and then went out for lunch. He had two ryes before lunch, as celebration.
The ryes, plus the shot he had had with the Powells, made him sleepy, and after lunch he returned to his office for a nap. He had slept for perhaps an hour when the bell atop his door tinkled, and he woke up to see the lean, gangling form of Doc Mellish, the local veterinarian. Doc Mellish was a building contractor as well as a vet, and he and Lasker often exchanged information for their mutual benefit. It was surprising how many areas were covered by their common interests.
“Hi there, Doc,” Lasker said, tilting his chair forward and taking his feet off the desk. “What can I do for you?”
“Nothing,” said Doc. He hooked the rung of a chair with his foot, pulled it out, and sat down. “Just passing by, and thought I’d drop in.”
Lasker produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes, offered one to Doc, who took it, and they both lit up. There was a short silence. “What’s new?” Lasker said, at last.
“Not much.”
“Well, things should pick up in a month or so.”
“Better had. Can’t make a living worming dogs.”
“I heard someone’s going to take the old Gossett farm and make it into a riding stable. You hear that?”
“I heard, but I’ll believe it when I see the horses. There ain’t that kind of money around here.” He paused, then added, “Least I ain’t seen none.”
“Me neither.”
There was another silence, and then Doc said, “How’re things with you?”
“So-so,” replied Lasker, eyeing the end of his cigarette. “It’s a little early yet.”
“Yeah, I guess it’s early all over.”
“Take May, now. All of a sudden in May everybody wants a house, and May through July I’m busier’n a bitch with one tit. If I could spread that work over a year, I’d have no complaints.”
“Hear you rented the old Twitchell house.”
Lasker smiled to himself. He’d known it was coming, and almost hoped that Doc would fence around a little longer before getting to the point. “The lease ain’t signed yet,” he said.
“A man puts down a deposit, that’s a pretty good sign he’s going to rent.”
“I’m waiting till I see his name on it.”
“How long’s the place been empty?”
Lasker looked at the ceiling. “I don’t quite recall,” he said. “It’s been a while.”
“Who’re you going to get to open it?”
“Hadn’t give it a thought. Like I said, I’m waiting to see the lease.”
“It ain’t going to be easy. Lot of people wouldn’t go within a mile of that house.”
“I know.”
“Last people lived there had a cat. I recall they brought that cat to me one night, and if ever I seen shrieking hysterics in an animal it was that cat. Christ, I couldn’t do nothing to calm it down. Finally got a phenobarb into it, and that helped a little. But soon’s they took it back it ran away, and I don’t think they ever found it.”
“I remember. They left a while later. They’d paid the full rent, though, so it didn’t make no odds.”
“You better collect your rent in advance this time, too, or you may get stuck for the last half.”
Lasker looked out the window, and thought a moment. “That might not be a bad idea,” he said.
Doc stood up. “If you need any help with the house let me know,” he said. “I got a couple of guys in my crew who ain’t afraid of nothing.”
“Thanks,” said Lasker. “I’ll let you know.”
TWO
Stephen Powell’s life had been full of near misses. In college he missed his athletic letter by breaking his ankle the day before the letter game, and missed graduating cum laude by unknowingly offending the man who read his honors thesis; in the Second World War, he missed promotion to lieutenant commander by three days’ date of rank, and missed being among the first to return by exactly two points; and in his business, which was magazine editing, he missed being appointed Managing Editor and had to be content with the vague and noncommittal title of Assistant to the Editor. He had started off with great promise and considerable talent and almost unlimited energy, but his shafts had never quite hit the mark or were blunted by forces beyond his control. Gradually his energy subsided, and when it was suggested he take a leave of absence over the summer “to get his back in shape,” he acquiesced with the knowledge that the job might not be there in the fall. He offered to do some long-range editing if they’d send the material to him, and the Managing Editor said that was a great idea and he’d see what could be done. So far, nothing had arrived. If it had not been for the fact that Kathryn had once inherited money from an aunt the immediate future would have been, to say the least, uncertain. As it was, Powell knew that his family would be fed and housed, and he seemed remarkably cheerful, but there were nights when he lay awake in an anguish of self-recrimination, unable to find out what he was doing wrong. His back didn’t hurt him as much as his conscience.
Now, warmed by the drink in Ed Lasker’s office, he sat beside Kathryn as she drove their car back to the city, and felt almost cheerful about the prospects for the summer. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, and thought how lucky he was to have an understanding wife—one who had, over the years, put up with his various defeats in a calm and sympathetic way. And not only was she understanding, she was also extremely handsome. Her profile was clean and Grecian, and her dark, unswept hair was almost always neat. Although his experience was limited, he felt that she looked better in the morning than any other woman he knew. All in all, he reflected, his luck in being married to Kathryn went a long way toward atoning for his lack of luck in other areas.
“I’m sorry I got so noodgy about that house,” he said. “I guess it was just damp in there, or something.”
