by T E. D Klein
Rosie shook his head. 'I don't want you to. I'm sure it'll fit well enough.' He flashed a sheepish grin. 'Actually, I have to tell you, this dress originally belonged to a friend, but she only had a single opportunity to wear it, and, well' – he shrugged – 'I wanted you to have it. You may find it a trifle large, but I think it will do One. I've taken the liberty of having it altered.'
'I'm sure it'll be perfect,' said Carol.
'What I was hoping was, maybe, if you had some time, you could wear it this Saturday night. We could make an evening together, you and I – unless, of course, you have some nice young man to look after you, someone a bit more handsome than an old thing like me.'
'Why no,' she said, grateful for something to do, 'that would be wonderful. I have no plans at all. Honestly, it's so sweet of you, Rosie, giving me something like this. You know, I've been needing a summer dress; I had absolutely nothing nice to wear.'
He was nodding. 'Good,' he said. 'When I saw that dress I immediately thought of you, because you see' – he smiled – 'it's your natural color.'
On his way home that evening, as he sits on one of the old folks' seats on the northbound bus, blinking at the passing lights and smiling at the occasional passengers who jostle him as they climb aboard, he thinks about the snow-white dress, the woman he's just left… and remembers the first time.
The first woman to wear that dress had been a farmer's daughter. Strong, better muscled than the slips of girls these days. And tediously pious. And trusting.
Like all first times, it hadn't gone very well.
The groundwork had been boring but necessary, exactly the sort of stupid sentimental story she'd been brought up to believe. He had told her he was going to marry her; he'd said he had great plans. He intended, he'd said, to make something of himself in the town. They had gone for long walks together, along country lanes and over the fields and through the woods.
Especially through the woods.
How she had enjoyed it, dreaming of the future with him! She had probably enjoyed it right up till the end.
He had tied the rope too tightly, that was his mistake. She'd been heavier than he'd thought, which had tightened the noose even more. And her struggles, once he'd gotten the dress off her, had made it tighter still, cutting off her wind before he'd gotten more than halfway through the other things he was supposed to do.
Oh, he had chanted the right words, and had drawn the necessary pictures in the earth below her as she struggled, and he'd even anointed her body with the black powder, in the special way the Master had prescribed…
He had tied that rope much too tightly, though. That had been his big mistake. She had died far sooner than he'd intended.
But then, he had just turned twenty-two, and this had only been a dry run, an experiment. He was still young. He would practice.
Next time, he vowed, he would get it right.
July Eighth
Good to get up in the country again: warm breeze, sunshine, sound of birds outside. Lay in bed listening to them late into the morning. Sarr was off clearing brush from the area just beyond the stream, amp; every so often I could hear his scythe ring out as it struck against a particularly thick branch. Deborah was closer by, just behind the house, hanging laundry on the clothesline. (Must remember to give her these pyjamas of mine, maybe also the bedsheets. The dampness around here makes it harder to keep things clean.) Later heard her working in the garden; from time to time she'd call out to one or another of the cats, scolding them for going after birds.
Trouble getting out of bed; actually, slept poorly last night, awakened from time to time by what must be mice running across my ceiling. Hope it's mice, anyway, amp; not rats!)
Don't know exactly what time it was when I finally got up, but I felt famished amp; really had to force myself to do my exercises. Guess it's because I missed another day. Somehow I only managed to do twenty-seven pushups, though I was supposed to do forty. I'm slipping back – better watch that.
Managed all of Le Fanu's 'Carmilla' before lunch. Wonderful allusions to forbidden books: Magia Posthuma, Phlegon de Mira-bilibus, Augustintts de euro, pro Mortuis, and something called Philosophicae el Christianae Cogitationes de Vampiris by John Christofer Harenberg. Oh, for a peek at such stuff!
Eggs for lunch, from our hens. Still can't say I taste any difference, though Deborah seems to take it as an article of faith that country eggs must taste better than week-old city ones; so I humor her amp; smack my lips amp; tell her that there's simply no comparison. I'm beginning to think that country people have to have it confirmed, every so often, that they've made the right choice.
After lunch, hit the books again. Started Tales of Hoffman but put it aside; ugly, disturbing, amp; a hell of a long way from the Nutcracker Suite. Next, prompted by that odd phallic image in Carol's dream amp; by something Sarr mentioned at dinner last night about there being an unusual prevalence of snakes around here this summer (just my luck!), took down Stoker's Lair of the White Worm, about some legendary monster surviving beneath an old Derbyshire castle.
At first it made a welcome change of pace: not too subtle, I suppose, but I liked the references to local history amp; to a place the author called 'Diana's Grove.' (Cf. 'Lucky's Grove' in the Wakefield tale, sacred to the evil god Loki.) After a few chapters, though, my attention began to wander; I got tired of waiting for the goddamned Worm to show up amp; was put off by the uninspired prose. Dutifully the book brought in the whole supernatural grab bag – the Druids, the rites of ancient Rome, even a discussion of African voodoo – but there was somehow no magic in any of it, amp; no real feeling.
So I occupied myself out here till dinnertime with scissors amp; a can of insect spray, cutting away the ivy that's grown across my windows. Those little green shoots fasten themselves onto the screens amp; cling like drowning men, practically ripping out the wire when I pull at them. Something almost frightening about their tenacity – all that mindless, unshakable will. The spiders living among them seem timid in comparison, scrambling frantically for cover in the leaves. I only killed a few that seemed inclined to stand their ground; amp; now, here at this rickety old table, with the windows dark amp; nothing but the screens between me amp; what's alive out there, I'm teasing myself with Hammer Films visions of how the survivors might take their revenge. Wish, now, I hadn't killed any – or else had killed them all
…
Beef with noodles for dinner tonight, praise the Lord, amp; apple pie for dessert. Drifted into the kitchen a bit early; didn't know what time it was, but knew I. was hungry amp; smelled something good. So did the cats. All seven of them were assembled by the back door waiting to be fed, milling back amp; forth with tails swishing, Bwada growling at the others, amp; I had to push my way through them to get inside (stepping over the usual assortment of bloody mice amp; moles which they'd laid out for inspection amp; which I was careful to avoid looking at). Deborah was humming some sort of hymn; she seemed glad to have me around.
Just then there was a chorus of miaows from outside the door, followed by the clank of an overturned garbage can amp; the sound of little claws scrabbling down the back steps. Above all this I could hear Sarr swearing – words I'd never heard him use before – amp; a few moments later he walked into the kitchen clutching his hand to announce, with some amusement, 'I've just been bitten by a corpse!'
At least he'd thought it was a corpse.
He had just come back from the fields, hungry for his dinner and for human company. The cats had been waiting for him there on the porch, purring and rubbing up against his ankles as they displayed their day's catch – all the luckless Utile animals they'd pounced on in the grass.
Listen to them purr! he thought. They're just natural-born killers. Yet the Lord must love them more than He loves a sinner like me… He stooped to pick up the nearest body, a tiny brown field mouse. Good-natured Azariah, striped like a plump tiger, purred and butted his head against Poroth's arm. 'Away with you!' he muttered, cuffing
the cat lightly with the back of his hand. Gingerly he picked the mouse up by the tail and tossed it into the garbage can.
A young goldfinch was next – a good thing Deborah hadn't seen! -and then another mouse. Stooping a fourth time, he paused. The one remaining body looked different from the rest.
At first he'd taken it for the remnant of some larger animal – a fox's paw, perhaps, the stump of a severed limb – until, crouching down to get a closer look, he saw four legs, like little sticks or twigs, and exposed along one end, a row of tiny yellow teeth.
The thing was black, burned-looking, with the texture of dirt and dead leaves; it looked like a child's clumsy attempt to fashion an animal. He realized, quite suddenly, what it must be: the dried and swollen body of a shrew. It appeared to have been dragged across the ground, or even buried; no doubt, too, it had been well mauled by the cats, for the mouth was all askew, nearly vertical, in fact, and there was soil and mold still clinging to its fur. He looked in vain for eyes, and for a tail to lift it by. Grimacing, he was forced to grasp the thing tentatively around the middle. It felt odd to the touch, like picking up a crumbling clod of earth.
Suddenly it moved. He felt it twist in his hand and bite him on the thumb. With a yell he dropped it and watched it patter off into the grass, with Bwada and the rest in frantic pursuit.
'Come back here!' he called, but the cats paid no heed. It was nearly the end of dinner before they returned, with nothing to show for their chase.
' 'Twasn't dead at all, you see.' He scooped himself a final helping of salad. 'Must have been just feigning, like a 'possum.'
'Well, I just hope you don't go getting rabies,' said Deborah. 'You never know in the summertime, and it's a death I wouldn't wish on Lucifer himself.'
'I'm not dead yet,' said Sarr, extending his hand. 'See? It didn't even pierce the skin.'
'Looks okay to me,' agreed Freirs. 'I hope you're not going to start foaming at the mouth right here at the dinner table!'
Deborah shook her head. 'I don't know,' she said. 'I hear flitter-mice in these parts carry rabies-'
'Bats,' explained Sarr, to Freirs' puzzled look.
'-and who knows what other things might be infected. This is one time I'd feel safer if a doctor were around.' She was still fretful as she began clearing away the plates.
'Hey,' said Freirs, 'do you suppose house mice can get rabies?'
'Why?' Sarr was absently examining his thumb.
'Because I think I've got mice living up in my attic back there.'
'You too?' said Deborah, from the sink. 'This sure seems to be the season for them.'
Sarr nodded. 'Yes,' he said, 'we've been hearing them too.' He glanced at Deborah, then dropped his voice. 'Want me to let the cats up there?'
'I heard that,' said Deborah, 'and the answer's no! Jeremy will just have to learn to make friends with them.'
Freirs smiled. 'Sure,' he said, 'I'll fit 'em out with little sneakers.' He turned to Deborah. 'But I hope they're not going to keep it up all summer. It's going to make it hard to get to sleep.'
Sarr was regarding him somberly. 'Just make sure you don't sleep on your back. And if you do, make sure you don't snore.'
'Why's that?'
'So if one of them gnaws through the ceiling, he won't fall in your mouth.'
Freirs laughed, until he saw that the other wasn't smiling. 'I think that'd be a lot worse for the mouse. than for me.'
'Don't be too sure,' said Sarr. 'I once read about a man who was killed by a mouse that ran right up his arm and jumped into his mouth. Somehow it got wedged in the man's throat and almost bit its way right through.'
From the sink came an exasperated 'Honey!'
'What happened?' asked Freirs.
'Both of them suffocated, man and mouse.' Sarr saw the expression of disbelief on Freirs' face. 'It's a true story,' he said. 'There was even a picture. I'll never forget it.' He could still see, in the crude Victorian illustration, the terrified face of the man's wife, and the man's wide-open mouth and staring eyes as the small dark thing leaped toward him.
'I think it served him right,' said Deborah, returning to the table with a bowl of fresh fruit. 'He was probably trying to kill the mouse, when he could have just turned it out of doors.' She nudged Freirs with her elbow. 'Bet you didn't know he was such a one for tall tales, did you?'
'Say what you like,' said Sarr. 'You believe me, don't you, Jeremy?'
Freirs laughed. 'Well, frankly, no. But just the same, I think I'll sleep with my mouth shut tonight.'
There's one of the little bastards right now!
Lying here in bed, listening to sounds above my head. A moment ago it was one of my little friends in the attic; just before that was an airplane, the first I've heard all week. It seemed to pass directly over the farm; I can still hear the roar of its engines receding in the distance. Such a familiar sound, once upon a time – amp; now it seems like something from another world!
Sounds in the, woods, too. The trees really come close to my windows on one side, amp; there's always some kind of stirring coming from the underbrush, below the everpresent tapping on the screens.
A million creatures out there, probably. Most of them insects amp; spiders, I guess, plus a colony of frogs in the swampy part of the woods, amp; maybe even skunks and raccoons. Depending on your mood, you can either ignore the sounds amp; just go to sleep or – as I'm doing now – remain awake listening to them.
When I he here thinking about what's out there, amp; how easily I can be seen, I feel vulnerable, unprotected, like I'm in a display case. So guess I'll put away this writing amp; turn off the light.
Darkness fills the apartment – darkness and the weary droning of an air conditioner, as if the two were coterminous, the droning the sound of the darkness itself as it settles like a veil over floors and furniture, stretching across doorways, masking books on shelves and pictures on the wall. The droning muffles other sounds; the apartment is an isolated cavern, cut off from the world and beyond the reach of time.
Outside, twelve floors down, the weekend has begun. Friday night has reached its zenith, dawn is still five hours away, and the streets are filled with noise: music, voices, distant sirens. The planet rolls serenely into blackness, the stars hidden by haze. Overhead a yellow gibbous moon, one day wide of half, glares down upon the city like a cat's eye.
Within the apartment an occasional band of light reflected from the headlights of some passing car sweeps the high ceiling and slides down a wall, picking out a small framed picture, crude as a child's, done on yellowed paper cracked with age – the picture of a naked girl standing side by side with some tiny black animal. Below it an older hand has written simply, Marriage.
Otherwise the darkness is unbroken, save for a single cone of yellow light, a candle flame within it, falling from the gooseneck lamp upon the table where the old man sits working.
He sits crouched forward, staring intently at the instruments before him on the table: the straw mat, the bone needle, the pliers, the little bowl of amber fluid, the guttering candle in its brass candlestick, the shard of metal. His own face is painted like a savage's, streaks of color emanating from his eyes and mouth and a heavy black line down the center of his forehead where he's rubbed the holy powder. He looks like a lion, a sunburst, a flower as big as a man. Around his neck, on a knotted leather thong, he wears some- thing resembling a pendant, something curved and yellowing and hard: an index finger-human, female-that, one short week before, pressed the buttons of an elevator downtown.
He picks up the metal shard in the pliers and holds it in the flame. His old-man's breath is audible as he waits for the metal to grow hot, smoke, turn red… When it is glowing he places it upon the straw mat before him and, with the bone needle, scratches the first sign into its surface. Picking the shard up once more with the pliers, he dips it in the bowl of amber liquid. The liquid bubbles and hisses; a little puff of foul-smelling steam rises up the cone of light. The old man croons a certain wo
rd and smiles.
He smiles because the sign has taken; the ceremony will not be in vain. Counting to himself, he turns toward the window beside him in time to see a single star glimmer in the night sky. He watches it floating just beyond the window, centered in the topmost pane. Then, as the count is repeated, it dims and disappears behind a wave of mist. The old man expels his breath and turns back to his work.
The visitor is out there now, somewhere in the Jersey hills – he can feel it. All week long he has seen the evidence of its arrival, felt the changes, read the signs. Now he can be sure. It has come.
Once more he holds the metal shard within the cat's-eye of flame that sputters atop the candle; once more the shard grows smoky, blackened, and turns red. He lays it on the straw and scratches another sign.
Another step. There are always steps to follow, rules to be observed. Funny, that he of all people should have to play by the rules. The visitor must find it funny too. The Old One has not seen the visitor, not for more than a century, but he knows what must be happening: somewhere in the Jersey hills the process has begun. It will continue now, advancing ever more quickly, ravenous as a flame.
The flame spreads outward and licks against the metal. He holds it forth again. The signs he's scratched so far are intricate and tiny – tiny like the visitor, seemingly insignificant, easy to overlook.
But tomorrow at this time, once he's gotten the woman to perform the Ghavoola, the White Ceremony – why, then the thing will be free to advance a step up the ladder…
He places the metal shard back on the mat, whispering another word as he scratches the third and final sign. It is hard to repress a smile. Even though he knows how it all must end, he feels a certain excitement at what is to happen now. Already the woman has performed a useful service; she has played the proper messenger. But now it it time for her to garb herself in white, step forward, and assume her rightful role.
The metal is still hot, still glowing. Smiling, the pain streaks curving on his cheeks, he picks it up with the pliers and touches it to the tip of the severed finger hanging around his neck.
