He breathed slowly through his mouth; it was marginally less agonizing than breathing through his banged-up nose, but who could really tell? Who was conducting the high-level tests that determined the accuracy of this sort of statement?
"Mr. Courane, after extensive clinical comparisons, we've decided that the mouth-breathing technique costs you in discomfort only about seventy-five to eighty percent of what our nose-breathing patients experience."
Who was Sandor Courane, and why should we care about him? Well, in the first place, he's the representative of the reader, the Everyman who found himself in bizarre circumstances. Courane will soon have to deal with an even more bloodcurdling, life-threatening situation, one which the average person will never have to face unless, God forbid, the reader's as much a schmendrik as Courane.
This way, the reader learns how Courane will react to what he'll walk into, so that in a worst-case scenario—that is, if the reader does find himself in the same unlikely series of events—the reader will know exactly how to respond. This is a very important function of the story, and it could be of vital significance to somebody, someday.
In the second place, Courane was a likable sort of guy, one who'd had quite a few other chance incidents of the kind that never happened to real people. That is, fictional adventures. Mr. Average Person will just have to buy into the fact that crazy things happened to Sandor Courane more frequently than to most other people.
Why was Courane on the median of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, crashed against a maple-beech variety of tree? If he hadn't been so mentally impaired at the moment, he'd have realized that this was just another typical episode. He'd either end up dead or he'd have a revealing, info-packed learning experience.
Courane hated learning experiences. They meant that he'd have to work his way through a state of affairs he'd rather not even know about. The big trouble, at least as far as he was concerned, was that he never, in any of these exploits, had any say in the matter. Whether he dropped dead almost immediately or gained some valuable insight was completely up to the whims of some Higher Power. For that reason, he generally didn't worry overmuch. He knew that things would always turn out the way they were meant to, and all he had to do was hit his marks and speak his lines.
So, poor, perplexed Courane was trapped in his crumpled car. He was trapped more because he was still virtually insensible than because the side panels, front end, and roof had been crushed so badly out of shape that he could barely extricate himself from his ruined vehicle.
As his mind recovered more in the way of reason, he began to feel a little warning tingle of fear. Usually, of course, the right things to say and do inevitably appeared like magic in his mind when he needed them. It was kind of spooky, the way his speeches suddenly sprang forth, fully armed, from his less-than-brilliant mind. He was forgetting about the Higher Power again.
Don't think for a moment that Courane could be so clever and charming all on his own. A top-line performer who can do that eats so far into a short story's total budget that there wouldn't be enough left over for even so much as a Renault Alliance. Some quick calculations indicate that if we'd rejected Courane and signed, oh, somebody out of Flannery O'Connor or Elmore Leonard, all we could've afforded was a '47 Chevy—and no L.A. Sunset Strip lowrider either. Just a '47 Chevy somebody found deep beneath a massive pile of brown leaves, but which nevertheless had been in a state of near-perfect repair since the middle of the Truman administration.
See, all these seemingly unrelated aspects have to add up; it all comes down to the bottom line, where the short-fiction accountants decide if there's enough interest and funding in this emotionally charged story to continue with it.
The Higher Power that watched over Courane liked to let him believe he had control over his own life now and then, but we all know better. At this point, the Power permitted Courane's normal consciousness to return slowly to him. Courane's first responses were reactions to pain. It included, but was not limited to, his whiplashed neck, his cut and bleeding mouth, and various other aches and afflictions caused by the impact with the tree.
Let's not mince words here. Courane felt real, undiminished suffering—and he hadn't even met the antagonist yet. Hang around for the antagonist. She's about a mover, in the unfortunately immortal words of not-so-long-ago.
The adventure was starting off with unrelieved bad news, and Courane had so far been entirely passive. This was not normal. Usually, at least, he had the option to make things worse. This was not the way his typical go-for-the-price enterprises began, and it made him a little bit afraid. It made him not want to get out of his wrecked maroon Renault Alliance.
Everything considered, sitting under the tree in the car in the shade was nice enough. The immediate vicinity was quiet except for the car's radio, tuned to a station playing Sam Cooke, one of Courane's favorite singers of all time. And Courane told himself that if there were any evil things about, let them find him for a change. Why did he always do all the work?
Typically Courane stood around in a fog-shrouded parking garage because some heavyweight from New York City, some button man with a moronic nickname who spent too much time in clam bars—some guy delighted in watching Courane stew in his own anxiety, just to emphasize their relative positions in society. This was an important feature of the growth industry of the nineties, which was pushing people around.
Courane didn't want to move an inch, at least for a little while. Maybe he'd lay his hands on some good twelve-year-old bonded stuff in the glove compartment that would make things bearable, or else he simply wouldn't move an inch. Soon, at the very worst, nature would force Courane from the car, but that was in the indefinite time to come.
Okay, we fast-forward a little to the moment when Courane couldn't stand it any longer, and had to find out what kind of surreal drama he'd fallen into this time. Knowing full well that almost anything he chose to do would be a mistake, very likely a fatal one, he massaged his lacerated forehead, winced, and forced open the driver's-side door of the Renault. Crickets chirped, leaves rustled, unknown birds out of sight in the deeper woods made soothing, natural sounds.
Courane wasn't deceived for an instant. Calm, placid surroundings often meant that he was only moments away from death. He shrugged resignedly, took a deep breath and let it go, and climbed out onto the very broad median strip of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
I hate these goddamn adventures, Courane thought. It was like running out of gas in the middle of St. Didier Parish, Louisiana, at three o'clock in the morning. He knew at those times that he could take the gas can from the trunk and walk a million miles to a filling station, and that eventually he'd get back to the car, pour the gas into the tank, and the adventure would come to an end.
The aggravating part was that it was always such a dull, meager experience to have to get through. Life was like that, not only for Sandor Courane but for millions of normal people as well. In the dark night of the crummy adventure, it's always three o'clock in the morning.
Well, it wasn't actually three A.M. in Pennsylvania. It was well past noon, and the brassy sunlight slanted in through the boughs of the trees. Courane hadn't walked far before he could almost imagine that he was in some great forest instead of a turnpike median.
He usually went about with some music playing like background underscoring in his mind. Now, for reasons he chose not to examine closely, he realized he was remembering a brief orchestral theme. It didn't take him long to place it. It was an often repeated motif from Wagner's Ring Cycle, deep in the bass section of the score. It occurred throughout the four operas, foreshadowing all sorts of mythical gruesomeness. Courane couldn't remember the actual name of the motif, but it was usually played just before Siegfried ran into a hideous dragon or something. It did not bode well.
Courane's forced stroll through the woods was less interesting than what he eventually discovered, so briefly imagine for yourselves the serene yet oddly threatening surroundings. What grabbed Courane's attentio
n some ten minutes later was a clearing in the trees, one no doubt invisible from either side of the turnpike proper. In the middle of the clearing was a small-to-moderate-sized gingerbread house. It was enough to bring him to a sudden halt. He didn't know quite how to proceed.
This wasn't what he expected. He'd been anticipating Lovecraftian horrors from beyond time and space, not semi-Disney fairy tale props. Now, Courane was experienced enough to realize that although he was confronted with an innocent-seeming gingerbread house, and not some loathsome temple to a vile and nameless god, his life and possibly his very soul were in about the same amount of danger. He didn't need to go through an obligatory discovery scene to know that the gingerbread house was probably tenanted, and very likely occupied by a wicked old witch. In all his varied adventures, Courane had never come up against a wicked old witch. He wasn't absolutely certain of the protocols involved, and so he approached the house cautiously.
The one thing he did remember from childhood was that it was bad form to start pulling off delectable chunks of house and gorging himself, although it had been quite some time since he'd last eaten and he was feeling just on the near side of voracious. Instead, he went to the front door and looked for a knocker or bell. He saw neither. In for a penny, in for a pound, so he rapped sharply on the door, hoping to be heard by the unknown supernatural dweller within. "The Dweller Within." How apt a title. It's a shame, really, that this account already has a different and less melodramatic one.
Courane discovered immediately that rapping on gingerbread produced very little in the way of sound, so he called out in a quavering voice, "Hello?"
A few moments passed, during which Courane wondered about the wisdom of attracting the attention of a wicked old witch. He decided that the only alternative was to walk back to the useless car, or try to flag down a speeding motorist. The probable result of the latter plan was not pleasant to consider. Courane pictured himself flattened on the road's shoulder like a country possum. Or an armadillo. Every Texas armadillo ever seen has been sighted dead on the side of the road. Armadillos do not exist alive in nature.
"This adventure will go nowhere unless I make the acquaintance of this witch," he muttered to himself. Once again he called, "Hello?"
"Coming, coming," replied a cracked and strident voice from within. "I was in the shower. Gimme a minute."
"No hurry," said Courane. He looked around the clearing and at the gingerbread house. He knew a wiser hero would get the hell out of there while he still could. Siegfried wouldn't, but Courane always thought Siegfried was on the dim side, and look what happened to him.
The gingerbread door creaked open on marzipan hinges. An ancient woman peered out. She was small in stature, but an arcane wisdom of an unwholesome kind glittered in her black eyes. To be honest, Courane knew that he couldn't actually gauge arcane wisdom from a person's eyes, but he merely assumed a frightful knowledge went along with the gingerbread house and all the other trappings. "Yes?" said the wicked old witch.
Courane coughed to clear his throat. "Well, see, I wrecked my car a little way back, and I was wondering if I could use your phone to call AAA."
The old woman laughed. It was a cackle, of course. "Never had a phone. Never had a need for one. You're welcome to come inside and rest a spell, though."
"Thank you," said Courane.
"Haven't been munching on the house, have you?" asked the wicked old witch suspiciously.
"I know better than that."
The old woman nodded. She seemed resigned to his answer. "Expected as much. Don't get many callers these days, and those who do pass by are usually pretty well informed about the dos and don'ts." She stood aside and Courane moved past her into the dark, dangerous, sweet-smelling interior of the gingerbread house. Cottage, really. Think of it as a cottage.
What was a witch, really? wondered Courane. He looked around the dimly lighted gingerbread parlor. A witch was many things, he thought. A witch was a black cape and hood. A witch was a hooked nose with a large mole with bristly hairs sticking out of it. A witch was a multitalented broomstick leaning in a corner. A witch was the speaking partner of some sort of familiar.
Courane glanced about the cottage and saw nothing that answered the description of a familiar, but he suspected that it did not need to be a cat—it could be something as difficult to see in the gloom as an evil, croaking toad full of treachery, or a praying mantis with infernally red eyes burning in the shadows of a dirt-filled corner.
"It's so kind of you to visit me in my loneliness," said the witch in her fingernail-on-the-blackboard voice. There was silence in the gingerbread house, during which Courane realized that the sentiment precisely echoed the words of the Wicked Witch of the West, who survived her sister who'd been killed by Dorothy's falling house.
These witches were not like normal people. They could be almost immortal if they worked things right. Witches lived lives very different from the lives of the general population. There was no television here, no VCR, and Courane held the unsubstantiated belief that the witch didn't get out to a lot of neighborhood movies. That's why it seemed strange to him that the gingerbread lady would quote from The Wizard of Oz. How did she know what the Wicked Witch of the West had said? Unless, he thought suspiciously, unless they used to play two-handed canasta together a lot or something. He would need to tread cautiously here.
"Please make yourself comfortable," said the witch in a distracted voice. "I'm sorry, I'm trying to get my thoughts together. I can hardly remember the social conventions that govern the witch- trespasser relationship. It's been so long, you know."
"Well, I should apologize for this intrusion," said Courane.
"Oh, no, not at all. In itself, it's an essential factor leading to the union-mandated wickedness."
"Union? Witches have a union?"
The witch scowled. "We're supposed to. I pay my dues every year. They promised all kinds of benefits, but I never seen 'em. Still, it's an organization that allows for a certain amount of communication among the member witches, communication that wouldn't happen otherwise. I just wish the officers would worry more about what unions in other trades have fought for and won, instead of trivial matters like 'Who is rightwise a witch and who deserves to belong to the WSFA?' "
"It's the same all over," contributed Courane sagely.
"First you get the old, hard-line witches. They're annoyed by the young, disrespectful newcomers who want to change everything. I can understand the point of view of the longtime members. Na'theless, listening to the kids' arguments, sometimes I can sympathize with their feelings, too. Especially when they say the hardliners no longer represent what is meant today by 'witch' and 'witchcraft.' "
"Times change," offered Courane wisely.
The wicked old witch shrugged. "I'm seasoned enough myself to wish that they didn't. Change, I mean. Still, you can't hold back progress, however so much you disapprove of what you see going on. It's the same in music and literature, to take two examples, as it is in the clothes people wear or the school of witchcraft they subscribe to."
Courane's expression was less than a grimace, more than a frown. "I think maturing is a constant process of waiting for one dumb fashion after another to go away."
The witch very nearly smiled. "As you said, things change. If we don't change with them, we're left behind by the times. We become foolish relics, or else we drop out of society completely, as I have, and end up someplace like this. You've got to admit that the median strip of the Pennsylvania Turnpike is what you might call out of the cultural mainstream."
Courane coughed nervously into his hand. "I'll go so far as to say I never expected to find a gingerbread house and an orthodox witch of the old school here, with cars and trucks zooming by on either side. In the depths of some glowering, primeval forest, maybe, but not here, along a major state thoroughfare."
Courane sat on a small davenport not much larger than a love seat, really. The witch had long ago placed a large knitted doily on
the back, but Courane leaned forward, perched on the front two or three inches of the cushions. He was still agitated despite the witch's sentiments, and he could not relax.
Perhaps at this moment the average reader is thinking, Worry and timorousness will not improve Courane's circumstances. It would certainly be better for him to sit back comfortably, get a good grip on his nerves, and be open and receptive to whatever happens.
Perhaps so. However, that was not Courane's way. He was by nature a man frequently on the edge of nervous collapse. Sometimes he panicked nearly to the same degree during the Chicago Cubs's pregame interviews he watched on cable television. Telling him to chill out had no noticeable beneficial effect. And this time, in the wicked old witch's gingerbread house, he had a valid, legitimate cause for his barely suppressed terror.
Creeping into his conscious mind was the thought that he still needed to relieve himself. That presented a frightening etiquette problem, too. He wished he'd made more effective use of the ten-minute walk through the woods; but no, that would have been the smart thing to do. If there was a way to make an adventure more desperate, Courane could be counted on to find it.
Moments of tense silence passed, as both the witch and Courane tried to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Courane took note of the objects on the Eisenhower-era blond wood coffee table. There was a stack of magazines—The New Yorker, Life, and Vanity Fair—all yellowed, from the 1930s. To Courane's left was a chrome-plated, Art Deco nude woman holding up a shallow, chrome-plated bowl. In the bowl was an amethyst glass insert containing dusty, cellophane-wrapped cubes of caramel. To Courane's right was a milk-glass chicken sitting on a nest. The chicken separated from the nest about halfway down. Courane lifted the chicken to reveal a double handful of rock-hard, ruined spearmint leaves and petrified candy gumdrops of many flavors and ancient of age. Courane replaced the top of the glass chicken carefully, trying to make not even the smallest sound.
A Thousand Deaths Page 33
