As to the next story of mine to appear in Bizarre Tales, I abjure you with all the force that paper and post can transmit, DO NOT take that tale as a veiled instruction to you. It was written some months before I ever received your first letter forwarded by Miles Philo, and it was clattered out for one purpose, and one alone: to receive a check by return mail.
Please consider our correspondence over. Find another object of obsession, preferably one which welcomes the degree of slavish devotion which you proffer.
Hal
***
June 9, 1932
Miles Philo, editor
Bizarre Tales
Dear Miles,
If memory serves, you have scheduled my story entitled “The Lone Sorcerer of Haggard Street” for the next issue of Bizarre Tales to be released. I do not know if you have retitled said manuscript, as you have done not infrequently in the past; it is the story about a lone magical practitioner whose secrets and power are stolen from him by an eager usurper through his torture and eventual dissection.
I understand that the production of the next issue is well underway, and I may already be too late, but if there is any way you can delay the publication of that story, I will be eternally grateful. In fact, I am happy to buy the story back from you to forestall its publication. At the very least, if you could publish it under a pseudonym, I would bless your and your progeny to the utmost generation.
Please reply as soon as possible to tell me what avenues are open to me.
Hal
***
June 13, 1932
Hal Comstock
Providence, Rhode Island
Dear Hal,
Sorry, no can do. The issue’s already at the printers—and far from being anonymous, you’ve got the cover!
Behind schedule, so I’ll get back to you when I can.
Yours,
Miles
***
June 26, 1932
Mrs. Ronald Comstock
Providence, Rhode Island
My Dear Mrs. Comstock,
My deepest and most shocked condolences to you on the violent death of your son Halward. While I never met Hal face to face, our business dealings over the past several years had blossomed into a true friendship, and I am saddened both by your loss and by the suddenness with which he was taken from us. I traffic in imagination as my profession, and yet it beggars even my imagination that such a promising creative life could have been cut short by a madman who can only be described as a deranged vivisectionist. I warrant that the poor wretch will be confined to Cairnford Asylum for the remainder of his days.
We have several of Hal’s stories in inventory, by which I mean that we have accepted them and intend to publish them, but have not yet paid for them. I shall direct that such checks be directed to your attention.
I know that this is a tender and trying time, and I doubt you have given any thought to sorting Hal’s effects. However, if you should discover any finished or semi-finished manuscripts among his papers, please send them to my attention and we will, if possible, publish them as well, with full payment to you. Hal was quickly becoming a favorite of our readership, and his work had drawn a small but devoted following.
Yours in sorrow,
Miles Philo
Bizarre Tales
The Burial of the Dead
Hanover reached under his left arm for the water bottle that hung from the side of his backpack, uncorked it, put it to his lips. A few drops of warm water trickled into his leathery mouth. Always a few drops. Never more, never less. He corked the bottle and replaced it.
Behind him Farris giggled. Hanover glanced back. Farris was grinning, letting his fingers crawl across his bald forehead like a fleshy tarantula. He muttered something, looked at his other hand hanging limp at his side, and giggled again.
Hanover left Farris to his own amusements and focused forward again, where the mountains lay jagged across the horizon. Their stark, fractal peaks, partially silhouetted by the sun, were burned into his retinas, tattooed in negative on the insides of his eyelids. They had never gotten any nearer, not after all his uncountable steps.
He tilted his head back to glance at the sun. Force of habit; the sun never changed position. It just hung there, about forty-five degrees up from the horizon, as if it had stalled and was stuck at that height until it would someday corrode away.
He brought his head down again so the brim of his hat would block the sun from his face. His feet trudged through the ruddy sand. Sand particles eddied around his boots, rebounded from his pant legs and chased each other off across the desert.
He walked. The moving sand made a dull electric moan. Dust collected in his nostrils, clotted at the corners of his mouth, caked his eyelashes.
Farris jogged up beside him, grinning, with his tongue caressing one side of his lower lip. He opened a fist to show Hanover the sand collected in his palm.
“Fear in a handful of dust,” he slurred, and laughed like a whinnying horse as the wind piped up and blew the sand away.
***
It was later. With the sun stuck where it was, the only times were “now” and “later,” and only stopped walking when Farris found food, which hadn’t happened yet. Walking and walking, and suddenly the black woman was almost beside him. Her tracks said she had been walking to intercept him for a long time, but he hadn’t noticed until she was almost close enough to reach out and touch with his left hand. Was that his north side? South? It depended on whether the sun were frozen in the morning or evening sky. It also didn’t matter.
She watched Farris, who was walking backwards, windmilling his arms, then she fell into step beside Hanover. He kept watch on her out of the corner of his eye. She walked. He walked. Just two people—three, if Farris counted—going the same direction.
They passed a curled corner of metal sticking out of the sand. White paint had flaked off where it was bent, and rust striped the creases like a deeper shade of sand. The black woman stepped a few feet out of her path to kick at it. Drifted sand around it loosened enough for them to make out writing. 60 MILES/HOUR. The sign shuddered from her kicks, and the tip of the corner broke off and flipped over to embed itself straight up in the sand. Hanover watched without stopping. The woman caught up to him and matched his stride again.
Behind him, Hanover could hear Farris kicking at the sign and laughing.
***
Finally Farris started to hoot and caper in earnest. He jumped up and down, pointing at a spot in the sand that looked like every other spot they had passed all day. For the first time since the woman had joined them, Hanover stopped walking, and he touched her arm for her to stop, too. Farris got down on his hands and knees and began scooping away the sand. After digging down about a foot, he pulled up two tin cans. Small spots of rust blemished the metal, but they were still sealed. The labels, if there had ever been any, were long gone.
Hanover shrugged off his backpack and sat on the ground. The woman sat beside him. Hanover took his pocketknife from his pack and opened the first can that Farris threw to him. Baked beans, with a lump of fat that was supposed to be pork suspended in the gravy. He put it to his lips and swallowed a mouthful, then handed the can to the woman.
She took it. “I don’t remember being hungry before,” she said.
“You probably will be,” he answered. “Because there’s food.”
He let her eat more from the first can as he opened the second one for Farris. Asparagus. Farris grabbed the can greedily and put it to his face. Green juice ran over his cheeks and down his neck, down past the collar of his shirt. When the juice had stopped running, he let the can down and looked into it. He smacked green lips.
“My, my, my,” he said to the can.
Then he began digging out the mushy stalks with his fingers and stuffing them in his mouth.
Hanover turned to the woman. She handed back the bean can, now half-empty.
“My name’s Celia,” she said.
“I’m H
anover,” he said. “This is Farris. He’s crazy.”
Farris giggled and saluted smartly to Celia; his fingers left a sticky green smudge on his brow.
***
After the food was finished and the cans reburied, Hanover undid the straps on his backpack. Farris wriggled his own bundle off his back, a folded dome tent. Hanover pulled a set of collapsible aluminum rods from his pack. Celia stood by as Hanover and Farris set up the tent.
“Where did you get the tent?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Hanover said. He motioned her inside. She ducked through the flap. Farris followed her. Hanover paused, glancing at the sun. It was at about forty-five degrees, right where it had been at dinner, right where it had been when the girl had joined them, right where it had been as far back as he could remember.
***
Hanover and Farris stripped to the skin and lay on their clothes. Celia watched them, then did likewise.
Hanover slept. When he awoke, Celia was dressed again, sitting cross-legged, watching him. Farris was gone.
“Did you dream?” Celia asked.
It wasn’t a question he would have thought to ask. He paused. “No,” he said. “I don’t think I ever do.”
Celia shuddered. “For the longest time, I wondered if maybe this were all a dream. That I dreamed all of this whenever I slept, but while I was dreaming I couldn’t remember the real world.” She had been looking at the small drifts of sand that had come in through the leaking canvas while they slept, but now she looked at him.
“There is a real world, isn’t there?” she asked.
He had no answer. Silently he stood up, shook the sand out of his clothes and started dressing. As he buttoned his shirt, Farris came in and extended his clenched fist. He opened it to reveal a lump of sand, molded by the moisture of his skin to the shape of his clenched palm. As Farris peered at it, the lump disintegrated until it was just a pile of sand in his hand.
“Fear in a handful of dust!” he cried triumphantly. Celia shuddered. Farris wagged a finger at her, grinning, then took his sand to the flap of the tent and blew it outside as if he were blowing the desert a kiss.
***
They packed away the tent into its two bundles. Celia and Hanover voided their bladders; Farris had simply wet his pants, and the blowing sand crusted his groin as they started walking toward the mountains, under the motionless sun.
“I’m hungry,” Celia said as they walked.
Hanover nodded.
“I never remember being hungry before,” she said. “I knew what hungry was, I think, but I didn’t know that I had ever been hungry. Then I ate last night, for the first time that I can remember, and now I’m hungry again.”
Hanover nodded again.
“How does Farris know where to find food?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long have you been together?”
“I don’t know,” Hanover answered patiently.
Celia shook her head. “I guess that was a stupid question. How could you know?” She was silent a moment. “Has Farris always been with you?”
Hanover walked a few more paces as he thought. “I don’t think so,” he said finally.
“Do you remember any time that he wasn’t with you?”
“No.”
Hanover and Celia walked slowly with measured paces. Farris ran in front of them a few feet, long hairs trailing gracefully off his head around his bald spot. He did an abortive somersault and landed flat on his back. He laughed, coughed, and spit through tight lips, spraying saliva back toward the other two as they approached.
“He’s crazy,” Hanover said.
“Why do you keep him with you?”
“I don’t ‘keep’ him, any more than I keep you. He just comes. What should I do, hamstring him and leave him in the desert?” There was no anger in Hanover’s voice, only tired patience; he had thought the same thing before, he was sure—at least, it sounded familiar.
They walked past Farris, still spraying into the air like a beached whale.
“If it weren’t for him,” Celia said, “you wouldn’t be hungry.”
“I don’t know that. What if I get rid of him, and then find out that I still get hungry, but there’s no one to find food?”
She stayed quiet a long time after that.
***
Celia had no water bottle. Hanover offered his to her, but she refused it. “Not thirsty,” she said. “Don’t want to be.”
After a forever of walking, Farris discovered food in his usual way. Four cans this time—two tuna, one tomato paste, one pineapple chunks. Farris ate the tomato paste; Hanover and Celia shared the rest.
“Do you ever save extra food?” Celia asked.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I never have,” said Hanover.
***
After undressing for sleep, Celia said, “Do you remember anything that isn’t this?”
Hanover paused a long time before answering. He glanced at Farris, asleep with a vacant grin on his face. Was there anything else? Some part of him knew, or hoped, that there must have been something before this—but if so, the memory of it danced just beyond his recall, like the whispering sand skirting the edges of the tent.
By the time he finally answered, “No,” Celia had already fallen asleep.
He watched her. She was fairly young—younger than old balding Farris was, that was sure. Younger than Hanover himself? He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember ever seeing his own face, and did that make any difference? He had been here forever; he was as old as the ever-distant mountains, as old as the static sun.
***
They woke, dressed, took down the tent and started walking.
Farris trotted up to Celia once they were underway and let a handful of sand trickle from one palm to the other.
“Fear in a handful of dust,” he said. Celia immediately moved to the other side of Hanover, keeping him between Farris and herself. Farris didn’t seem to mind; he hooted to himself and farted.
“Does he say that often?” Celia asked. “‘Fear in a handful of dust’?”
Hanover shrugged. “Pretty often.”
“It scares me,” she said. “No, it doesn’t—but it unsettles me. It’s a line from a poem. But if can I remember it, it means I must have heard the poem somewhere, and I don’t think it was here.” Her brow furrowed in concentration. “It means something—the poem does. It’s... The harder I try to remember, the more there’s nothing in my memory to be remembered. It means... damn it, it—”
“It doesn’t mean anything.” For the first time since Celia had shown up, Hanover felt impatient—with her questions, with her questioning. From the reaction on her face, he knew his voice had carried his sharpness. “Nothing means anything. There’s only the desert and the sun and a crazy drooling man who finds food. None of it means anything. It just is.”
They walked in silence. The sun hung in the sky; the mountains fringed the horizon.
Under her breath, no louder than the whispering sand, Celia said, “I’m hungry. Again. Still. Damn it.”
***
Later. Step after step after step, because there was nothing else to do. Toward the mountains, because it was as good as any other direction.
They came across a few loops of rusting barbed wire in the sand. Celia came across it, really—tripped on it and almost landed face down on it. Hanover caught her.
“Thanks,” she said. He nodded and helped her extricate her ankle from it.
Farris knelt beside it, rubbing his chin in wonder. He gripped it between the barbs and gave it an experimental yank. It came up easily. He followed it a few yards, pulling it up through a few inches of sand. Then he dropped it, distracted by something interesting up his nose.
They started walking again.
Celia said, “Do you remember ever meeting anyone else, aside from Farris?”
“No,” Hanover said impassively. All trace of his form
er outburst had vanished, buried in patience learned from the sands around him.
There was humor in Celia’s voice as she spoke again. “Then you could say I’m the only woman in your life.”
And for the first time since Celia had joined them, for the first time that he could remember, he smiled. “Yeah,” he said, looking at her. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
***
After supper, in the tent, as Hanover lay naked on top of his clothing and waited for sleep to slowly numb him, he noticed Celia watching him. She was lying on her side, her head resting on her arm, and as he looked at her dark naked body Hanover felt something he didn’t remember ever feeling, but which he recognized as soon as it started to coalesce: desire.
Levels: Fantastic and Macabre Stories Page 4
