Fade

by Robert Cormier

  He finally spotted the stranger at four o'clock, saw him crossing the street in front of Dempsey's, head tilted to one side as if listening to something in the air—music, voices, something— nobody else could hear. How did he know this was his stranger? He knew, he knew.

  The stranger was not tall and not short, not fat and not thin. Squinting, Ozzie studied his face. A face not handsome and not ugly. But something familiar about him. Where had he seen that face before? In his dreams, maybe? And suddenly, like lightning striking a tree and splitting it in two, the knowledge of the stranger's identity struck his brain and it seemed to crack his head in half, the pain so intense, Ozzie gasped aloud.

  And the stranger was not a stranger anymore.

  Ozzie knew who he was.

  I could tell he was there. That vibrancy in the air again, that distant note like music out of tune, discordant, jangled. His presence, nearby, not quite certain where, across the street somewhere. But there, no doubt at all.

  All day long I had awaited his arrival, had kept myself alert for him to make himself known. I could not account for this anticipation of mine. It was possible that the old man had warned him and the fader was looking for me. I had not seen the old man during my travels that day. I had not seen any thirteen-year-old boy, either, who might have been Oz-zie Slater. I realized that subconsciously I had a mental picture of him. Rose's son with her dark loveliness echoing somehow in him, in his eyes, perhaps. Despite what the old man had said, the boy was my nephew, my blood running in his veins. Before he was the monster the old man had described, he was Rose's son. And a fader, probably against his will, like myself, like Adelard. The boy who had ravaged this town was perhaps a victim of the fade, performing acts he would not otherwise contemplate.

  I ate another meal at the Ramsey Diner and was returning to my hotel room when I was halted in my tracks by the certain knowledge that Ozzie Slater was nearby, his presence blazing in the air.

  My eyes were drawn across the street. People walking lazily along on the wooden sidewalks. A clerk washing the window at the liquor store. All seemed normal. Yet I knew he was here, somewhere close by. Watching me. His eyes upon me.

  Then I saw him. A hint of him, that is. In the full sunlight near an alley across the street, next to the five-and-ten, I saw the vague outline of a figure.

  I waved at the dim figure, then beckoned with my hand: Come here, across the street, follow me. As I waved, the figure disappeared and I felt ridiculous, beckoning to empty air. Had my eyes deceived me and made me see what I wanted to see?

  After waiting a few minutes, I stepped into the dismal lobby, deserted as usual, and waited there in the silence, waited for a door to open, for footsteps to follow.

  A few minutes passed. Nothing. The lobby with its cracked tile floor echoed no footsteps. I went to the doorway, looked out through the dirty window, saw nothing unusual.

  As I walked across the lobby, there was a rush of footsteps behind me. Turning, I reeled from a blow to my face, staggered backward as much from surprise as from the blow itself. My cheek stung with pain. I lifted my hands to defend myself and was staggered by another blow, this time to my shoulder. I fell back against the wall, gasping, and felt the overpowering presence of him there, close to me. I heard a chuckle, low and gurgling, and footsteps moving away.

  “Wait,” I cried. “Don't go.” Desperate to detain him, I called: “Let me help you….”

  The footsteps stopped, then came closer.

  His voice came eerily out of nowhere.

  “How can you help me?” Contempt in the voice, a snarl.

  I was desperate to say the right thing and yet did not know what to say. And then decided on the truth, directness, not willing to gamble, to take chances.

  “Because I'm like you….”

  And waited.

  “Nobody's like me….”

  The voice, harsh and bitter, roared in my ears. And I felt his breath on my face.

  “I am like you. I can do what you do—fade.” Instantly, I knew that fade was my word, Adelard's word, a word that was probably unfamiliar to him. I quickly amended it. “Disappear. Make myself invisible. Like you …”

  Silence again. Deep and stunning. Then:

  “Who are you?” From the other side of the lobby.

  “My name is Paul Moreaux. I'm a writer. I come from Massachusetts. A small town, like Ramsey, named Monument.” I spoke urgently, not wanting to lose him, needing to keep his attention. “This thing, being invisible, I call it the fade. What do you call it?” Playing for time, hoping to get him talking.

  “Gone, unseen,” he said, a sudden lilt in his voice, as if he were singing the words. “That's what I call it. Disappeared.” The voice of a boy, bright and interested.

  “What we call it doesn't matter. But it's something we share, you and me. In our blood. It makes us the same….”

  “If you share it, then do it.”

  “What?”

  “Do it.”

  His voice like the snapping of a whip, a command that could not be ignored. But I could not possibly fade. I had vows to maintain. From years ago. From the time Bernard had died. Too many terrible things happened when I faded.

  “Show me.” The voice again, challenging, determined, evidently sensing my hesitancy. “Make yourself disappear. If you're telling me the truth.”

  I saw the trap I had sprung on myself.

  And knew that I had to play for time, stall him, keep him here.

  “I can't do it that easily,” I said. “I need a bit of time….”

  “How much time?”

  “How long does it take you to disappear?”

  “Like this,” he said. And I heard the snap of his fingers, a bit close to me, as if he had advanced a foot or two.

  “Doesn't it hurt?” I asked.

  A long pause and I waited, wondered whether my face was betraying me, whether he could read in my eyes the ploy I was using to stall him.

  “It comes fast and goes fast—you get used to it,” he said.

  “It feels like dying,” I said. “My breath goes away and then the pain comes.” Keeping my voice conversational. Realizing that perhaps he wanted to talk about his strange power, the way I had wanted to talk to my uncle Adelard. “Then there's the cold.”

  Silence. Prolonged this time.

  “Are you still here?” I asked. Dust motes danced in the air as sunlight slanted into the room, diluted by the dirty window. My shirt felt damp on my back, my armpits wet. I sensed that he was still here, but the absence of a response was ominous.

  A blow took me by surprise again. This time to my jaw, snapping my head back. “Why did you do that?” I asked. “I'm trying to help …”

  The sense of his nearness was powerful. I knew he was only a foot or two away. In the silence of the lobby, his breath was audible. Quick short breaths. Was he nervous, fearful?

  “Listen,” I said. “I'm not just a writer from Massachusetts. I'm more than that. I'm—”

  Another blow, to my cheek.

  “I know who you are,” he said, his voice harsh and bitter. “That's why I should kill you …”

  The outside door opened and I turned to see a gray-haired woman clutching a grocery bag to her chest enter the lobby, letting the door slam behind her.

  Movements in the air nearby, scatterings, the patter of feet receding across the floor. His presence no longer there. An emptiness in the air, a sense of loss. He was gone.

  You should have killed him. There. On the spot.

  I know.

  You had your chance and you blew it.

  I had to find out more about him.

  He was bluffing. He can ‘t do it, be gone and unseen.

  The old lady came in. He might have done it.

  He was trying to trick you.

  Maybe he wasn't.

  Maybe he was.

  And anyway—

  Anyway what?

  He's my Pa. My real Pa. I killed the fraud and the fake who beat
me up, who beat up my Ma too. But this one's my real Pa. I wanted to see him for a minute or two. Talk to him a bit.

  He left you behind. Deserted you. Didn ‘t care enough about you to be a Pa to you.

  Why is he back, then? He said he wants to help me. He says he's like me.

  Says, says. He says. But did he do what you asked? No. He's a fake. He wants to use you, that's why he's back.

  How can he use me?

  Because he knows. About the power. What you can do about it. Once you leave this place and go into the world. All the big cities. You can come and go without being seen. Think what you can do without being seen. He knows this. That's why he came. That's why you have to kill him.

  Ozzie ran. Ran from the voice. Ran blindly through the streets, not caring whether his footsteps could be heard or the breeze of his passing felt by people coming and going. Ran until his lungs burned and his legs sang with pain. The bright sun hurt his eyes. He wiped his nose he could not see with his sleeve he could not see. He slumped to the ground, rested awhile.

  Later, he patrolled the streets and the stores, looking for the old man, wondering if he had more to tell him about the stranger. Again and again, he checked out the old man's hiding places—the gazebo on the common, the alley, the empty crates behind the Ramsey Diner. No old man. Where the hell was he?

  He found him at nightfall.

  Emerging from the doorway of the Glenwood, reeling a bit, drunk, of course, looking foolishly around as he always did when gone on the drink and the booze, a silly look on his face.

  No doubt the old man had been visiting the stranger who was his Pa, that Pa who had deserted him all those years ago. The stranger had given more booze to the old man to learn all he could about his friend, Ozzie Slater.

  Oh, old man, Ozzie thought, sadly. It was possible, just possible, that he might have spared him, after all. Just might. Even now, standing across the street, watching the old man struggling as he tried to walk, as if seeking to balance himself on a high wire nobody else could see and was in danger of falling off, he almost pitied him. But he could not afford pity. Old man Pinder was a traitor and he had to die.

  He killed him quickly, did not linger at the job the way he did when he killed the old fraud who was not his Pa. He struck him once with a rock to end his miserable drunken life. Funny thing, he felt sad at the end. The old man surprised him by being so tough. He did not think the old man could have survived the first blow, the whole right side of his face collapsing as he struck.

  Then as he raised the stone again, the old man opened his eyes, terrible bloodshot eyes filled with tears that spilled on his cheeks and he looked right at Ozzie.

  “You made me do this, old man,” Ozzie said, looking down at him.

  He struck him again, but this time, this time, holding back a bit with the blow, sorry as he hit the old man.

  Now the stranger. He's up in his room. Knock at the door. And when he opens the door, do it.

  He didn't want to kill the stranger. The stranger might be his Pa, his real Pa. Maybe the stranger really wanted to help him.

  Kill him.

  He did not answer the voice.

  What are you waiting for? This is the night to get rid of them all.

  He lingered at the entrance to the alley, nobody on the street, all the windows dark. The windows of the Glenwood were dark too.

  Okay, kill the nun, then.

  He drifted back into the alley, stalling, needing time to think, had to stay one step ahead of the voice.

  The nun will betray you. To the cops. You can never trust the nun.

  All right. He was tired of the voice, tired of arguing with the voice.

  Do it, then. At the convent. Now.

  Yes, yes, I'll do it. I'll kill the nun.

  Nice, nice.

  rembling with the cold, in the fade, I heard a fugitive nighttime noise that beckoned me from my thoughts of Ro-sanna. Often, when the fade overcame me, as it did now in that forlorn hotel room in Ramsey, Maine, my thoughts turned to her and the old anguish came back.

  Years had passed and I hadn't seen her or heard from her and didn't expect to anymore. She had faded from my life just as I had faded from the lives of others. The fade had not only made me invisible but had caused me to retreat from other people, even my family, in another kind of fading.

  But then, isn't all of life a kind of fading? Love diminishes, memory dims, desire pales. Why don V you get married, Uncle Paul? my nieces (who are more romantic than my nephews) ask, teasingly. I always shrug and make jokes. Vm saving myself for one of you girls. For years I had tricked myself into believing that I was being faithful to that lovely ghost, Ro-sanna, but knew in my heart that the fade kept me solitary and remote. Or had I always used the fade as a crutch, an excuse to keep me separate from people, free to devote myself to my writing? In that hotel bed, I tried to outrun my thoughts, my guilts, realizing that life does not provide answers, only questions.

  That small animal-like noise, a scratching at the dark, reached me again and I sat up in bed. At the same time, the pause, the breathlessness, announced the departure of the fade and I braced myself as the pain scalded my bones and flesh and the cold evaporated.

  That sound again, which I now identified as a scratching at the door.

  Slipping out of bed, I padded tentatively across the floor in the darkness, guided by instinct. Placing my ear against the door, I heard a quavering voice:

  “Please … open up …”

  I slowly swung the door open and saw old Mr. Pinder on the floor, bruised and battered, grotesquely perched on one elbow. One eye stared balefully at me, the other had disappeared in a tangle of flesh and blood. His mouth worked fishlike, opening and closing, but no sound came forth.

  Kneeling down, I reached out to touch him but he shook his head in small desperate movements. “No …” he gasped. “Hurts … too … much …”

  One side of his head was crushed, the way a melon would be crushed if dropped to the ground from a height.

  “Who did this?” I asked. But did not require an answer. “We've got to get you to a hospital, a doctor …”

  He shook his head, blood on his lips, that one eye piercing me with its intensity, while his hand clawed at the air, beckoning me to come closer. I lowered my head, placed my ear within an inch or two of his mouth.

  His voice was like a whisper in a cave, echoing and hoarse and raspy, filled with a terrible urgency. “The boy … said … the nun … is next. …” His body quivered and his foul breath assailed me, the stench of death coming out of him.

  His arms convulsed as he tried to grasp me. “Go,” the old man commanded, blood spilling out of his mouth, as if he had brought the word up from the dark, bloody cellar of his soul.

  He went limp, collapsing in my arms, slipping from my grasp, his head coming to rest gently against his elbow, the eye still open and staring but the rest of him closed, all pain and urgency over and done with.

  I felt for a pulse, found none, cradled him for a moment in my arms, then closed that terrible eye.

  The convent loomed in the night like a dinosaur at rest, silhouetted against a sky bright with summer moonlight. I stood in the courtyard hugging the shadows of the brick wall, blinking into the moonlight, as bright as noon in contrast to the shadows. Searching the convent for signs of light, I saw only a flickering in one of the tall, narrow windows near the center of the building: the chapel, no doubt, where nuns prayed incessantly, day and night.

  I pondered my next move, whether I should ring the bell and sound the alarm, wondering also whether I might be too late. Had I done the wrong thing coming here, like this? I had telephoned the police department without identifying myself, and told them of the body in the hallway of the Glen-wood. Then made my way here along the highway, keeping out of sight when occasional cars passed, knowing that I was taking a desperate, foolish chance coming alone. Yet, I felt a need to deal with the boy myself. Who else could understand him, who else could cope
with the fade?

  “You!”

  I leapt with surprise as the voice reached me out of the darkness.

  “Where are you?” I asked, looking frantically around.

  “Are you my father?” The lilt still in his voice and a trembling, too.

  “No, Fm not your father. Tell me where you are.”

  “Here,” he said, his voice coming from another direction. “Who are you, if you're not my father?”

  “Your uncle. Your mother is my sister. You're my nephew. …”

  He stepped into view then, caught in the moonlight, not in the fade but visible, his figure slight, a lock of dark hair tumbling over his forehead. He drew his hand across his nose and sniffled. His eyes darted here and there and everywhere. He dropped his hand to his side and I saw his nose. Hideous and swollen, out of context with the rest of his face. I searched him for signs of Rose or Adelard or even myself. But found no resemblance and thought for one wild moment that it was all a mistake: I did not belong here, this was none of my business and I should go my way, return to Monument, turn my back on this nightmare. He moved slightly, and the light caught him differently now and, yes, I saw an echo of the Moreauxs in his stance, the slightness of his body like my cousin Jules and an expression in his eyes—soft, melting eyes like Rose's—that could not be denied.

  “I have to kill you,” he said.

  The voice was his voice and yet it wasn't. It was higher-pitched and distorted, ugly, distant, as if coming from crevices deep inside him.

  “You don't have to kill me,” I said. “You don't have to do anything you don't want to do.”

  “I know … I know …” His voice was his own again. He was a lost, bewildered boy and I saw the fragile chin trembling.

  His nose began to run. He wiped it with the back of his hand.

  “But Vm going to kill you all the same,” he said in that other voice, sharp, piercing. “Then the nun …”

  “And then what?” I asked, masking my relief at the knowledge that the nun was safe. But what about that other voice? “Are you going to kill everybody in the world?”