It began the day Rhonda and I brought her home from the hospital. There is nothing more fragile than a newborn child—something I had never realized till that moment. I admit, being a cost accountant for Proctor & Gamble all my adult life, had perhaps kept me somewhat removed from the mainstream of life. When I brought a new life into the world, it was like getting slapped in the face.
The very first night, Rhonda kept her in a bassinet in our bedroom. I questioned the need for it until darkness fell over everything and the house had shut down to the point of the occasional creak of an old foundation. I could hear my wife’s breathing at my ear, a signature of her exhaustion and a final release of tension, anxiety, and fear.
Little did I realize that mine had just begun.
I never slept that first night. An endless stretch of black time wherein I lay listening to what seemed like breathing of the most labored sort. I had no idea a tiny, living human could make such scary noises and survive till morning. Wheezing, coughing, rattling, mucous throttled sucking were only a few of the horrible sounds through which I suffered that night. It was so intensely awful, I became quite certain we would lose Becky before dawn.
But we didn’t.
The bassinet remained in our bedroom another three or four weeks before I allowed my wife to have the baby sleeping in a crib so far away from us—her own bedroom down the hall. I had grown accustomed to the travail of her breathing, and it measured out the nights as a metronome of life itself.
It was just about that time when I was watching the Game of the Week (the Orioles against the Blue Jays, I think), and I saw the commercial. Actually, it was probably one of those Public Service Announcements, and what it was doing shoe-horned among the endless array of beer and razor commercials I could not imagine.
(Of course, I now know the message was placed there by Divine Intercedence. It was important that I receive the message when I did.)
The message? Oh yes, it was important all right. Have you ever heard of SIDS?
Neither had I! Imagine my shock as I sat there in my La-Z-Boy to see that there is this hideous phenomenon known as Crib Death or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Newborns, up to the age of six months, are suddenly found dead in their cribs, and no one has the foggiest notion as to how or why.
How come I’ve never heard of this? I ask myself. How come I’ve never seen anything about this terrible syndrome until now, until the very moment I have my own little baby who may be victim to this horrible thing?
This was positively incredible to me. But stunned though I may have been, I remained lucid enough to realize I had been given a Sign, a celestial memorandum so to speak, to be ever vigilant.
As the months ticked past, I took it upon myself to nightly approach the crib and listen for Becky’s sweet breath. When my wife discovered my habit, she chided me for being so overprotective, and for a moment, I became suspicious of her. Surely, she could not be in league with any forces that would harm my daughter. In short order, I banished such thoughts from my head.
Well, at least I tried to…
Time continued its work, and Becky not only escaped the critical period of SIDS frequency, but she weathered bouts of commons colds, influenzas, chicken pox, measles, and mumps. It seemed like I blinked my eyes and she was four years old. She had been such a healthy baby and toddler, that I think I became lulled into a false sense of security during those years. We rarely allowed her to leave the house, other than to roam about our fenced-in yard. Whenever other children came over to play with her, I always watched them with a careful eye. I saw this movie once about a six-year-old serial killer…
When it came to protecting your daughter, you couldn’t be too careful.
It wasn’t until Becky started pre-school that I began to realize how foolish, how lax I had actually been. There were so many ways she could be in danger, at first I had a hard time tracking everything—until I took a page from my accountant’s training and logged everything in a wonderful ledger with cross-referencing column and rows. Once I inflicted some order on the situation, I began to feel better about everything.
I didn’t allow her to ride the school bus until I’d completed a dossier on the driver and had the vehicle inspected. The dossier thing worked so well that I used the same P.I. to work up files on everyone at the pre-school, my neighbors, and even Louise Smeak, the Sunday School teacher at St. Albans Episcopal. I wanted to have total control over everyone who would have any contact with my daughter.
You could never be too careful…
I heard his radio talk show where this guy who called in had postulated that many fatal diseases were actually transmitted by those plastic “sporks” they give out at fast-food eateries. I had never thought much about this, but it certainly made sense if you stopped to consider everything.
And then somebody told me that peanut butter is a major killer of small children. People feed it to them on the end of a spoon and it gets lodged at the intersection of the esophagus and the bronchial tubes or something like that. It’s so dangerous that even the Heimlich maneuver doesn’t work and of course there is always the truth that a spoon is pretty damned close to a spork. But can you imagine, that Death hides even in a peanut butter jar?
Well, you can bet that my Becky didn’t eat any more of that stuff.
The years slipped away from me; I had risen through the ranks at P&G until I was the Chief of the entire financial division. Sure, I had plenty of time on my hands, but still not enough to administer to Becky’s needs as well as I would like. Retirement was still many years off and my wife did not seem to share my over-riding concern for my daughter’s welfare.
In fact, I was beginning to realize that perhaps Rhonda was not the ally I’d always supposed.
Becky turned ten, and that meant a whole new ledger, a whole new set of variables that I would have to start tracking. She was a very pretty girl and despite my efforts to discourage contact with other people, lots of the kids in her class wanted to be her friends. More dossiers. More money. But what did I care? I was being a good parent.
It was also around this time that Rhonda actually turned against me. It started slowly and with much subtlety, but I recognized it early on because I’d sensed it coming. She told her sister I had too much pressure at my job, that I was not adjusting well to Becky’s pre-teen years, and worst of all, that I needed a hobby. Can you imagine such foolishness? I could have gotten very angry, but I knew how outward displays of domestic unrest can be harmful to children. An article in the International Enquirer said depression and teen-suicides tended to be caused by bad parenting, so by remaining tranquil, I was being a wise and caring father.
I knew that I would eventually discover a solution to the problem Rhonda was becoming. If I remained patient and vigilant, I would be given a sign, an answer. And it came to me the day I realized that Mr. Death had changed his tactics. I mean, it was no secret he’d been after Becky since we’d brought her home from Cook Memorial Hospital. It was only through my stalwart efforts she’d remained as safe as she had.
But Mr. Death is slick and he took to impersonating regular people that might come in contact with Becky. That’s why I had to cancel all her dental visits, and of course there would be no more examinations by Doc Wilson. The biggest problem were those unexpected situations that could not be planned. For example, when Becky answered the door one after-school day to admit the meter reader for the local gas and electric company, I almost lost my usual composure.
(Where was her mother? you might ask—as I certainly did. How could she allow the child to do something so dangerous as answer the door? The answer lay ahead, as you shall see.)
You can already imagine how horrible it could have been if the gas-man had actually been The Gas-Man—if you get my meaning…
Yes, I realized I must learn from this experience. And learn I did indeed. After pulling Becky from her school, I arranged to have her education continued at home under the care of a carefully checked-out tutor. The you
ng boys who had already begun sniffing around the hems of my daughter’s skirts received stern warnings from me to simply Stay Away. I reinforced my messages with letters to all the boys’ parents.
That seemed to help matters very much until a man in a charcoal suit with a red tie knocked on the door. He said he was from the State Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and that he wanted to ask me a few questions. He also said he had a warrant to inspect my premises. He showed me some ID that said his name was Silverstein and some papers with official seals and notary stamps on them. He didn’t know I recognized his true identity, and therefore misinterpreted my smile as I led him into the kitchen. I directed him to a chair at the dinette where I offered him a cup of coffee. He said yes and I asked him what kind of questions he had for me. I was going to grab my aluminum baseball bat right away, but I was curious as to what Mr. Death would want to ask me. Didn’t he already Know Everything? And so I poured two cups of Maxwell House and sat down to listen.
He said a few things right up front about Becky that made me very angry. I almost reached for the baseball bat twice, and both times, I thought maybe I should listen a little longer, even though it was making me very angry.
“After reading copies of the letters you sent the Wizniewski and Harrison boys, I decided to contact you directly,” said Mr. Death. “Initially, I spoke to your wife, and she told me about your…tendency to…ah, go on at length about your daughter.”
I asked him what exactly Rhonda had said.
“Exactly? Well, sir, she said that she is very much afraid of you. Did you know that?”
I told him no. Anything else, I asked.
“She said that she had decided a long time ago she would tolerate your behavior—”
Tolerate?
“Yes, as long as it remained within the family, she figured it was safer, better for everyone involved.”
Safer…yes, I see, I told him. But then, why are you here, Mr. Silverstein? (I needed to allay any suspicions he might have that I knew his true identity.)
“Well, it’s hard to explain, but we’ve received a petition to have your case examined by a state psychiatrist,” he said. “We have statements by neighbors and relatives and parents at Holbrook Elementary, plus an interesting letter from a private investigator, Lucius Mallory. It was forwarded to us from Lieutenant Karsay at the 3rd Precinct.”
I moved away from the table, close to the pantry door where my aluminum buddy awaited my touch. “And what do these statements and letters have to do with me?”
Mr. Death almost chuckled. Can you imagine his audacity? “I think you know what this is all about. Your daughter, Rebecca, is dead, sir. She died when she was three months old from SIDS. More than nine years ago.”
I think that’s when I lost it—when he mouthed such a cruel lie, a heinous blasphemy in my house. I screamed something about what a liar he was and how I knew his true identity and how I would stop him from taking my daughter away from me.
He went down like a clumsy palooka from the first impact to the base of his skull. As his life fluids seeped across the tiles of the kitchen floor, I realized I’d made a mistake. This man, Silverstein, was a mere mortal. Another of Death’s clever tricks, no doubt. I checked my watch, and knew I had little time. Rhonda would be due home from her part-time job at the neighborhood library at any moment.
There was no need to clean up the mess, however. None at all.
It has been a long weekend. The scent of death I mentioned earlier is getting heavy in here. The crowds of neighbors and police cars that have surrounded my little bungalow have been a terrible distraction, and I fear that Mr. Death will get in while I am forced to deal with the foolish meddling of those outside. The television says there is a dangerous hostage situation here. I think it is a good thing they don’t know about Silverstein and Rhonda. They probably think I might do harm to Rebecca, which reveals them to be the fools they are.
Don’t they know I’m her father?
And a father can’t ever be too careful…
I know I’ve already said I try to avoid writing stories which travel paths worn smooth by uncounted years of literary traffic. And one of the most rutted passages must surely be the tale of the vampire, right? But for whatever reasons, vampire novels and stories have enjoyed an enduring popularity, and anthologies about them also seem to spring forth with regularity. I’ve been asked to contribute to them over the years and have always begged off but when Poppy Brite asked me if I had any fresh takes on the topic for her Love in Vein project, I thought I might have something that would work—something I had begun writing years previous and had never sold in the short fiction format.
You see, having enjoyed a traditional education in which Latin, Greek, and the literary classics were all part of a rigorous high school curriculum, I was shot through with plenty of material from mythologies both familiar and esoteric. I had remembered reading of the strange beings called lamiae, and was surprised to see so very little about it surviving in contemporary fiction1
I’m glad she finally provided me with the impetus I needed to pull the whole thing together as I had originally imagined it many years earlier. What about you?
Whatever the textbook/blueprint specifications might be for a lamia were clearly not well-known or established, so I figured I could pretty much fly this one by the seat of my pants. I could write my own manual for a lamia and no one could make much of an argument because I was dealing with what I like best—original material.
So I started writing a novelette which encompassed some of my ideas that a lamia would not feed off anything so mundane as blood, but would require a more heady mixture of inspiration, imagination, obsession, and the purest essence of creativity. I knocked it around, on and off and eventually used some of the scenes in a novel called Lyrica, but I never put all the pieces together for the intended novelette until Poppy asked me for a story.
1 Oddly enough, while I was working on the pages that would become both a part of a novel and eventually the following story, I discovered a book by Whitley Strieber entitled The Hunger, which I suspected might be investigating similar territory. That being the case, I decided I shouldn’t read it until I finished my own work along those lines. Later I found another book by Tristan Travis called simply Lamia, and I have yet to read it. It appeared that at least two other imaginations, possibly the equal in brilliance to my own, had settled on the same mythic icon as I.
Vienna, 1791
One of his earliest memories was of his father, Papa Leopold, touching the keys of a harpsichord or a piano and demanding the instrument’s pitch to within an eighth of a tone. Before he had learned to read German, he was reading music in his mind. Little Wolfgang’s ears had been magically sensitive, his fingers lithe and almost supernaturally quick. Crystalline memories of being in the circle of astounded adults as he played, while his father beamed with pride.
But memories seemed to be all he had lately. If only he were not such a goddamnably bad businessman! If only his Konstanze were not so sickly all the time! If only there were ways to protect and warrant the music he’d created!
If only the world were fair…
Mozart laughed at this crazy little wish as he sat on the outdoor table of his favorite konditore, a pastry shop on the Domgasse near his previous home. He had lived in the Figarohaus for three years, until it became too expensive for him and his fragile wife. How he had loved that woman, and now…how he sometimes despised her!
She was as devoted to him as a house pet, as helpless as a child, and less passionate than either. What with his home life being so miserable, his financial situation taking him to the edge of poverty itself, and a new emperor ascending to the throne, it was incredible, even to Mozart, that he could still continue to produce musical masterpieces with the precision and punctuality of a Swiss clock.
The war with the Turks had finally ended and the Viennese court was starting to pay more attention to frivolity and the arts again. The ten-year reig
n of Joseph II had just ended and Leopold II was now in the palace, but Wolfgang hated the man. He seemed to have no soul for music, and even less understanding of what it meant to create anything. Leopold II, despite being told by many esteemed men (even Haydn himself) that Mozart was a “national treasure,” refused to issue him a royal stipend. Even though Don Giovanni, proved to be the most popular opera in the history of the city, Mozart remained estranged from any of its profits—such had been the nature of his original agreement with the theater owners.
Almost destitute, Wolfgang had appealed to the Vienna magistrates, asking that he might be appointed as “humble assistant” to Kapellmeister Hoffman at Saint Stephen’s Church. It was a grand ploy, except that the magistrates were so overwhelmed with such a modest petition, that Mozart was appointed to the post as an honorary employee without a salary.
Fuck them all! he thought viciously as he finished his pastry and coffee. It did not seem to matter anymore what happened to him. He had just nursed Konstanze back to a fair simulation of good health, and perhaps she would have to take in sewing or laundry to pick up a few extra ducats.
And I will continue to give music lessons to the few in this city who can afford me, he thought as he downed the last of his linzertorte. Picking up his coffee cup, he drank down the final swallow, the rim almost touching his forehead, obscuring his vision.
He didn’t see her until he put the cup down.
Then, he could not stop looking.
Shining blond hair enveloped her head like spun gold, and her long, aquiline face seemed like a piece of Greek sculpture, so perfect were its lines. She had eyes of the most penetrating green he had ever seen, and their gaze had him fixed like a butterfly under a pin. If she’d told him her name was Helen of Troy, he would have only smiled.
Suddenly she was sitting at his small table, having somehow slipped down in front of him, during the instant that he sipped the last of his coffee.
Fearful Symmetries Page 28
