Continued from Part II:
“Poor guy,” she said, and the corner of her mouth spasmed.
“Poor guy?” I repeated.
For a long while she said nothing, til I was almost going to repeat myself, thinking her age had effected her hearing—but at last she said, “Went crazy. Shut up in this place all by himself, it’s no wonder. He was always a little off—but at the end, he really lost it. Ended up in a home—well, where else was he going to end up? No family, no friends. For all I know he wasn’t ever born. For all I know he just popped up out of the ground one day, on this very spot, already withered up like a walnut.” She chuckled again; but I was in no mood to laugh.
“When you say, ‘really lost it’—how do you mean?”
Candice glanced at me and narrowed her eyes; I tried to look careless.
“Oh, how else do I mean?” She said. “Seeing things. Hearing things. Is there another way to lose it?”
I felt her looking at me with more curiosity than I liked; to escape, I got up and revisited Robert’s photograph in the front hall. It was, if anything, less friendly a portrait than I had remembered. His gaze, far from inviting speculation of the depths of his character, functioned much like the sign ubiquitous in these parts, “Beware of Dog”—behind his eyes there seemed to lurk as intimidating a creature as a Rottweiler, ready to spring out at the unlucky or unscrupulous body who ventured too close for his comfort.
Had this man shared my nightmare? That was what I wanted to know—what I hunted for in the shadow of his gaze. But it was too forbidding to hunt there long; against my will, my own gaze slid and fell from his, and began to dart over the other photographs on the wall. Something caught my eye, and before I could filter the anxiety from my tone, I cried out,
“Who is that?”