Weird Tales, Volume 325

by Darrell Schweitzer

  The monster approached the wizard cautiously, reminding Sarah that the Wizard had power of his own, though it did not always show itself. The Wizard raised his staff, and the winds picked up, seemed to blow about wildly and then focus in on the monster, buffeting it back. It clawed the air, then leapt forward. Landing unsteadily before the Wizard, it slapped at him, knocking the Wizard from his feet. The Wizard touched the monster’s foot with his staff and there was a flash. Everyone had to look away, blinded.

  The O-boys had begun to shout, calling for blood. And the Elves, who had been grimly silent, began to chant in Elvish, and the tune, sung in high pitched voices, chilled Sarah. She knew they too called for blood, and would not back down.

  When Sarah could see again, the monster and the Wizard were locked together in an embrace, struggling, inside a small maelstrom that surrounded only them, leaves, water, dirt and small rocks circling them in the air, then with a lurch, both of them fell into the railing, then over it, tumbling. They hit the water with a loud splash and the hiss of steam. Again, they were lost from view. The winds calmed. The ruffled waters calmed. The steam cleared. Even the rain became a drizzle, then stopped. Nothing.

  The O-boys stopped shouting first. Then the Elves stopped chanting. A few ducks had returned to the far side of the pond, and they quacked loudly. That was all.

  “What happened?” Amanda asked.

  “They went back through the hole in dreams,” Lady G said, “under the bridge.”

  Lady G called out and the Elves advanced, crossing the bridge to attack the O-boys. The O-boys still outnumbered them, but their hearts weren’t in it anymore. A few had come to the water’s edge to peer in. Some threw stones as the Elves advanced in a tight formation. But most took off running, many leaving their derby jackets behind.

  The Elves chased the O-boys out of the arboretum easily, whacking some with sticks, capturing others. They did not even have to draw their knives. Sarah waited with her sister and grandmother beside Lady G, who ran the Elves in a tight military fashion, barking orders, gathering prisoners. At one point, two Elves came up to Sarah with an O-boy. It was James.

  “He says he’s your friend,” one elf said.

  Sarah looked at him. James had a bloody lip, and he was covered in dust and leaves from being rolled on the ground. And his eyes had dimmed, the red in them losing luster, burning out. He looked almost human again, she thought.

  “Yes,” she said. “Let him go.”

  “We’re even,” James said sullenly, wiping his lip, his eyes darting to the Elves.

  “Yes.” She paused. “James, if you —”

  James turned and stalked away, straight-armed, his hands balled into fists. One of the Elves left to follow and give him safe passage.

  “What will happen to the O-boys,” Sarah asked Lady G.

  “They’re finished. Some will become Elves.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, maybe even your friend.”

  Sarah looked after James.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It may take time.” Lady G shrugged. “That I have plenty of.”

  Sarah’s grandmother squeezed her hand. “It’s over,” she said. “Time to get you two home to bed.”

  Hand in hand, they walked home through the cool San Francisco night, laughing, recounting their adventures.

  “The Wizard,” Sarah asked her grandmother soberly. “What will happen to him?”

  “Did you ever read the book the Elves love so much?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Do you remember what happens to the Wizard in that one?”

  She nodded.

  “I wouldn’t worry about him,” Grandmother Rebecca said. “The story always repeats itself.”

  When they arrived home, the lights were still on, though Sarah’s mother did not hear them come in. They could hear her in the kitchen, rattling jars in the cupboards. The clock in the entryway read four am.

  “I’d better go tell her we’re O.K.” Sarah said.

  “And I’d better go to sleep,” Grandmother Rebecca said. “I don’t think she knew I was gone. I’ll tuck Amanda in to bed.”

  Amanda was almost asleep on her feet, but was happy. She would sleep dreamless tonight. Grandmother Rebecca led her up the stairs by the hand. Sarah took a deep breath and entered the kitchen.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  Sarah’s mother was bent into an emptied cupboard. She stood up.

  “I’m sorry we were out so late. Amanda’s fine.”

  “It’s O.K.”

  Sarah blinked.

  “It’s O.K.?”

  “Your grandma explained what was happening. I know you had to go.”

  Sarah stared, dumbfounded.

  “I cleaned out all the cupboards, put down new contact paper, and labeled all the jars.”

  “Mom, it’s four am.”

  “I’m a little nervous, all right? I’m — I’m — I’m so happy you are all all right.”

  Her mother fidgeted, rubbed her hands together compulsively.

  “I wish you could have told me,” her mother said. “I really do.”

  “Mom, you don’t make it easy.”

  “I do everything I can for this fam—-” She stopped, clasped her hands together to stop them from moving, pursued her lips. “O.K., O.K., I know it’s not easy, but could you try?”

  Sarah saw her mother was trying so hard.

  “Yes,” Sarah said. “I will. I promise.”

  “Your grandmother’s moving in.”

  “Really?” Sarah glanced over her shoulder. Her grandmother was long gone upstairs.

  “For a little while, yes. Just a short time.”

  “O.K.,” Sarah said.

  “You know I’m just — just doing the best I can.”

  “Sure,” Sarah said. “I just wish you could see that everyone else is, too.”

  “O.K,” her mother said. She bit her lip. “I’m proud of you, do you know that? You are becoming a fine young woman.”

  Sarah smiled. “Thanks.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have a fine adventure to tell me about, tomorrow, after you’ve rested.”

  Sarah stepped forward, picking up one of the jars scattered about the kitchen counters.

  “I should finish this,” Sarah’s mother said.

  “Mom, it’s late. Go to bed.”

  “I’m too nervous.”

  “Well,” Sarah said, “let me help you.”

  “Oh, O.K., good, you can tell me about what happened tonight.”

  “O.K.,” Sarah said, “but you surprise me, Mom. How come you know about this stuff?”

  “Sarah,” her mother looked at her, smiling. “I’m the one who said no. The only one, I think the Wizard said.”

  My mother, the dreamer, Sarah realized, who would have thought it? They talked all night, even after finishing up with the kitchen chores.

  * * * *

  And in the morning they made a large breakfast for everyone.

  WHERE ALL THINGS PERISH, by Tanith Lee

  From a Tailored Concept by John Kaiine

  I.

  It was glimpsing Polleto again, between trains, at that hotel in Vymart, which made me remember. Which, in its way, is quite curious, for how ever could I have forgotten such a thing? So impossible and terrible a thing. And yet, the human mind is a strange mechanism, and the human heart far stranger. Sometimes the most trivial events haunt our waking hours, even our dreams, for years after they have happened. While episodes of incredible moment, perhaps only because they have been marked indelibly upon us, stand back in the shadows, mute and motionless, until some chance ray of mental light discovers them. And then they are there, burning bright, towering and undismissable once more. At such times one knows they are more than memories, more than the mere furniture of the brain. Rather, they have become part of it, a part of oneself.

  * * * *

  “What is it, Frederick, that you are staring at?”

  “That l
ittle man at the table over there.”

  “What, that little clerkish chap in the dusty overcoat? He hardly looks worthy of your curiosity. Of anyone’s, come to that,” added Jeffers.

  “No, he probably isn’t. A very ordinary fellow, the sort you wouldn’t recall, I suppose, in the normal way of things.”

  “I should think not. But you do?”

  “Well, as it happens, he was resident in a place where something very odd once happened to me. And not to myself alone.”

  “He was involved in this odd thing? He looks blameless to the point of criminality.”

  “I imagine that he is. No, he was simply living there at the time, had been there two or three years, if I remember correctly. I met him once, in the street, and my aunt introduced him as a Mr Polleto. We exchanged civilities, that was all. He had the faintest trace of a foreign accent, but otherwise seemed a nonentity. My aunt confessed they had all been very disappointed in him because, learning his name before his arrival, they’d hoped for some sort of flamboyant Italian theatrical gentleman, or something of the sort.”

  “He looks more like a grocer.”

  “My aunt’s words exactly. Those were the probable facts, too, I believe. He’d been a shopkeeper, but had come into some funds through a legacy. He bought a house in Steepleford, which was where I was visiting my aunt.”

  “This is a remarkably dull story, Frederick.”

  “Yes.” I hesitated then. I added, “The other story isn’t, I can assure you.”

  “The story which you recollect only since you caught sight of your Mr Polleto? Well, are you going to blab? We have four long hours before the Wassenhaur train. Let’s refresh our glasses, and then you can tell me your tale.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “Oh, come, this is too flirtatious. What have you been doing all this while but trying to engage my attention in it?”

  “I protest.”

  But the brandy bottle intervened. And presently, sitting on that sunny terrace of the Hotel Alpius, I recounted to Jeffers, my friend and travelling companion, the story which I will now relate. That was the first time I ever told it to anyone. And this, now, I trust, will be the last.

  II.

  The modest town of Steepleford had some slight notoriety in the eighteenth century, when it was one of the centres of a cult known as the Lilyites. These people believed so absolutely in the teachings of Christ, and acted upon them so unswervingly, that they soon turned the entire Christian church against them. There were a few hangings and some riots, as is often the way in these cases, until at last the cult lost both dedication and adherents, and ebbed away. Even so, through the succeeding years (from about 1750 to 1783), now and then some murmur might be heard of the Lilyites. Being however still generally feared and loathed for their extreme habits, they were soon rooted out and disposed of, one way or another. The last hint of the cult seemed to surface, nevertheless, in sleepy Steepleford. During the July of 1783, one Josebaar Hawkins, was harangued in Market Square for holding a secret meeting of seventeen persons, at which they had, allegedly, sworn to slough their worldly goods and to love all men as themselves, in the celebrated Lilyite manner.

  At his impromptu trial, Hawkins either denied all this, or ably recanted. He was said to have laughed heartily at the notion of giving up his fine house, which was the product of successful dealings in the textile industry, and stood to the side of Salter’s Lane, in its own grounds. He asked, it seems, if the worthies now questioning him thought he would also abandon his new and beautiful young wife, who went by the unusual name of Amber Maria, or drag her with him in the Lilyite fashion, shoeless and penniless, about the countryside.

  Hawkins was presently acquitted of belonging to the sect. No others were even interviewed upon the matter. Thereafter no more is heard in the annals of Steepleford of the Lilyites, but there is one more mention of Hawkins and his wife. This record states that in 1788, Amber Maria, being then twenty years of age (which must have made her fifteen or less at her wedding), was taken ill and died within a month. Hawkins, not wishing to part from her even dead, obtained sanction for her burial in the grounds of his house.

  All this, though possibly of local interest in Steepleford, where as a rule a horse casting its shoe in the street might cause great excitement, is of small apparent value on the slate of the world. Yet I must myself now add that, even in my own short and irregular visits to the town, I had been, perhaps inattentively, aware of a strangeness that somehow attached itself to the Hawkins house, which still stood to the side of Salter’s Lane.

  The Lane ran up from Market Gate Street. It was a long and winding track, with fields at first on both sides, leading in turn to thick woodland, that in places was ancient, great green oaks and mighty chestnuts and beeches, some over two hundred years of age. I can confirm from walks I have taken, that there exist, or existed, areas in these woods which seemed nearly as old as civilisation; and when an elderly country fellow once pointed out to me a group of trees which had, he said, stood as saplings in the reign of King John, I more than half believed him. But this, of course, may be attributable merely to an imaginative man’s fancy.

  Some two miles up its length, Salter’s Lane takes a sharp turn towards the London Road. At this juncture stands the house of Josebaar Hawkins.

  It was built in the flat-faced style of those times, with tall, comfit-box-framed windows and a couple of impressive chimneys, like towers, behind a high brick wall. Although lavish enough for a cloth merchant and his wife, the ‘grounds’ were not vast, more gardens; and by the time I first happened on the place, these had become overgrown to a wilderness. Even so, one might make out sections of brick-work, and the chimney tops, above the trees.

  I asked my aunt about the house, having found it, idly enough I am sure. She replied, also idly, that it was some architectural monstrosity a century out of date, standing always shut up and empty, since no one would either buy it or pull it down. Perhaps I asked her even then why no one lived there. I know I did ask at some adjacent point, for I retain her answer. She replied, “Oh, there’s some story, dear boy, that a man bricked up his wife alive in a room there. She belonged to some wild sect or other, with which he lost patience. But she had, I think, an interesting name … now what can that have been?” My aunt then seemed to mislay the topic. However, a few hours, or it may have been days, later, she presented me, after dinner one night, with a musty thick volume from her library. “I have marked the place.”

  “The place of what, pray?” I inquired.

  “The section which concerns the house of Josebaar Hawkins.”

  I was baffled enough, not then knowing the name, to sit down at once in the smoking-room, and read the passage indicated. So it was I learned of the Lilyites, of whom neither had I ever heard anything until then, and of Hawkins and his house off Salter’s Lane. Included in the piece was the account from which I have excerpted my own note above on Hawkins’ impromptu ‘trial.’ It also contained a portion quoted from Steepleford’s parish register, with record of both the marriage and the death of Amber Maria Hawkins. This was followed by the notice of her burial in the grounds of the house, which had been overseen both by the priest and certain officers of the town. Then my aunt’s book, having set history fair and straight, proceeded, in the way of such tomes, to undermine it.

  According to this treatise, Hawkins, first an enraptured husband, had come suddenly and utterly to think his wife an evil witch, and growing afraid of her, he tricked her to an attic room of the house, and here succeeded in locking her in. Thereafter he had both the door and the window bricked up, by men who, being sworn in on the scheme with him, turned blind and deaf eyes and ears to her screams and cries for pity. My aunt’s book was in small doubt that both the priest, and the officers who later pretended to Amber Maria’s death and burial, were accomplices in this hideous and extraordinary act. (I have to say that, perusing this, some memory did vaguely stir in me, but it was of so incoherent, slight, and indeed
uncheerful a nature, having to do, I thought, with a children’s rhyme of the locale, that I did not search after it at all diligently.)

  As I have already remarked, I seldom then visited Steepleford. On that visit I may have offered some comment on my reading, or my aunt may have done. I fail to recollect. Certainly the rest of my visit was soon over, nor, having gone away, did I return there for more than a year And during my next dutiful brief holiday, I remember nothing seen or said of the house in Salter’s Lane.

  * * * *

  But now I come to my next relevant visit, which occurred almost three years after those I have just described.

  I had been in Greece for ten months, and come back full of the spirit of that place, thinking to find England dull and drab. But it was May, and a nice May, too; and by the time the train stopped at the Halt, I had decided to walk the rest of the way to the town through the woods and fields. So, inevitably, I found myself, just past midday, on the winding path of Salter’s Lane. It was the most perfect of afternoons. The sky was that clear milky blue which certain poets compare (quite wrongly, to my mind) with the eyes of children. Among the oaks which clasped the track, green piled on green, wild flowers had set fire to the hedges and the grass, and sunlight festooned everything with shining jewels. Birds sang in a storm, and my heart lifted high. What is Greece to this? thought I, staring off between breaks in the trees at luminous glades, steeped in the most elder shadows. Why, this might be Greece, in her morning.

  And then, between one step and another, there fell the strangest thing, which I could and can only describe as a sudden quietness; less silence than absence. I stopped, and looked about, still smiling, thinking the world of nature had fallen prone, as is its wont, to some threat or fascination too small or obscure for human eye or mind to note. I waited patiently too, for the lovely rain of birdsong to scatter down on me once more. It did not come.

  Then, and how curious it sounded to me, as if I had never before heard such a thing, I picked up the song of a blackbird — but it seemed miles off up the Lane, the way I had come. And precisely at that moment, turning again, I saw something of a dull, dry red, that thrust between the leaves. At once I knew it for a chimney of the Hawkins house.