I am glad I cannot see your faces.
The New Silence
There is no preparation for it. Even the absence of an expected, a painfully desired, sound is an absence of infinitely grosser dimensions. The telephone—keeping stern vows, its coiled throat in knots—this supremely indifferent device and the sound it doesn't make can merely hint at that higher absence. Of course such hints are restricted to certain peak phases of desolation suffered by certain imaginations, ones without prayer of defense. Remember those rooms so stale, so dim that the dust seems to glitter with a final crackling luminescence precedent to ultimate gloom. Why doesn't that filthy thing ring! What lunatics people sometimes choose for their first serious fall into human affection. Ring, you infernal machine, unspeaking heart of hell.
Then it does. Remember its message: tonight in the park, by the far wall (the one with the stone heads on it that look like dragons), and make it late. So the tones of the tormentor finally get through, with only minor interference from a temperamental receiver. But tonight no spooks within the wire would interfere with their messages. However, the meeting begins strangely. Having apparently arrived first, he huddles in the ample shadows of the wall with the heads of stone. Only his voice seems to have kept the appointment, saying: closer, come closer. He will not comply with even the politest request to move out into the moonlight, no matter how frightened someone is, no matter how much someone needs to be reassured that it's really him crouching there. For by now anyone could tell that the voice is a fantastic imitation, and when the imposter does finally shake off the shadows and steps forth, someone is sorry for ever wanting her poorest secret wish granted. And now every sound seems the maddening drip of oceans of evil, blasphemy cooed near the ear of a blood sacrifice, a roaring sweat that ultimately evaporates into the sweet nothing of the new silence.
For in the new silence no voice deceives you, and in the new silence you cannot hear yourself weep. All voices are one in the new silence. You must know now what it was he did to you and later to himself. You must now speak to each other in the language of the new silence.
So who was he? And who now are you?
I am so glad I cannot hear your answer.
The Old Nonsense and the New
How serious was the old nonsense? How terrible was it? How sad? These seem ridiculous questions now, but at the time never are. For at just the right moment they can seize the brain and squeeze it like something gone soft in the sun. And even when the sun is at its height, night may fall; even when golden light leans over a nice clean city. Indeed, from the lofty vantage of a forty-third floor everything looks especially polished—sterling streets, dazzling semiprecious sidewalks, windows locked diamond-wise into the other big buildings spreading out there for miles. What a promising place this is! Here everything this possible and nothing otherwise. No likelihood not leading to success, no unlikelihood linked to catastrophe, even for the newest comer loitering two score and three stories about Terra Incognitaville.
And though this hallway is long and quiet and empty, there is still no loneliness. There, look behind, a door is opening, the one leading to that supply room. Turn around, the man sneaking out of that room doesn't appear as if he has any business being up here. Then again, maybe he too is simply intent on staring out of the window and dreaming about the future. But he walks right past the window and, in passing, sends someone crashing through it with just one good shove of the shoulder. Forty-three floors is a long way to fall. And in those last screaming moments someone wonders how anyone could be duped by all this ludicrous glitter, how anyone could bear confronting the face of a worls that writhes in darkness without for a moment relaxing its blinding and inexcusable smile. How easily the old nonsense leads us on and, with neither warnings nor answers, delivers us into a nonsense that seems so different, so new.
For the new nonsense promises no punchlines or apologies, and the new nonsense peels itself back to reveal nothing within. No one is even left to know that nothing is there. How did you manage to take leave of that twinkling city without going anyplace? After you finished falling, where did you land?
Where are you now? Where did you go?
I am glad your responses do not make any sense in those dreams I have of you.
Tales of the New Dream
In the new dream the dead may not rest very long. Sometimes their rightful blackness is revoked, deserved silence foreclosed, their blissful sense of nothing cut off at closing time. And now these faithful patrons of annihilation, loyal customers of the abyss, these quiet tenants of paradise are thrown out on their ear like lowlife riffraff booted from a respectable establishment. Back down to earth, you wretches! Having no place else to spend eternity, they try to make the best, in other words the worst, of it.
Even now Mr. Benedict Griggs, founding member of the Congenial Gents, holds the attention of his fellow clubmen, including the Reverend Penny, with a hair-raising anecdote from his visit to America: how he wandered, quite without intention, into that slatternly district of a large New England city where the notorious "sad scientist" murders had occurred; and how this drunkard, a somewhat lengthy knife in hand, weaved up to him to ask assistance and a few helpful directions home. Home, home. Help me home! was all the wobbling souse said. And upon noticind that this weaver and wobbler had, in fact, no eyes in his head, Mr. Griggs credited the specte with thereupon vanishing before his own. The entire episode merely "put quite a scare" into the rather fortunate Griggs. For others, depend on it, will have much more put into them!
Others may not be able to tell their friends, as just have Jamie Lempkovitch and his girl Lisa Ann Neff, that they were only grabbed by a pair of foul maniacs, one male and one female, who emerged from the sod in New Burnstow Park as if from the gentle surface of a pond. Others may have to leave behind more than their shoes and an old blanket when they make a getaway from these ravenous revenants, assuming anyone at all gets away next time the hideous couple appear. Others may not be as lucky!
And parallel to the small-town fame of the New Burnstow Park haunting are those metropolitan legends currently circulating anent an urban apparition that "flies into its victim's face," though only on the darkest downtown nights. And if this sky-diving shade finds a face it likes, in other words hates, it just may decide NOT TO FLY OUT AGAIN.
For in the new dream such beings—wrenched from eternity and returned to earth—are capable of anything from indiscretion to atrocity. Those who have suffered most know how to inflict it best—it's a law of the universe. The suicides, the murdered... the unfulfilled, the broken-hearted: veterans of extraordinary suffering and mercenaries of its perpetuation.
These are my mind's eyes, I who have no eyes. These are my mind's mind, I who am not mind. I am bereft of traits, bankrupt of of qualities. The riches of the dead are extravagant next to my destitute estate. I have nothing but my immortality; and now, desiring or not, they will have it too.
And I am glad I cannot know them.
But I am even gladder they cannot know me.
The Frolic (1982)
First published in Fantasy Tales #9, 1982.
Also appears in: Songs Of A Dead Dreamer.
This version taken from: Songs Of A Dead Dreamer.
In a beautiful home in a beautiful part of town—the town of Nolgate, site of the state prison—Dr. Munck examined the evening newspaper while his young wife lounged on a sofa nearby, lazily flipping through the colorful parade of a fashion magazine. Their daughter Norleen was upstairs asleep, or perhaps she was illicitly enjoying an after-hours session with the new color television she'd received on her birthday the week before. If so, her violation of the bedtime rule went undetected due to the affluent expanse between bedroom and living room, where her parents heard no sounds of disobedience. The house was quiet. The neighborhood and the rest of the town were also quiet in various ways, all of them slightly distracting to the doctor's wife. But so far Leslie had only dared complain of the town's social lethargy in the
most joking fashion ("Another exciting evening at the Munck's monastic hideaway"). She knew her husband was quite dedicated to this new position of his in this new place. Perhaps tonight, though, he would exhibit some encouraging symptoms of disenchantment with his work.
"How did it go today, David?" she asked, her radiant eyes peeking over the magazine cover, where another pair of eyes radiated a glossy gaze. "You were pretty quiet at dinner."
"It went about the same," said David, without lowering the small-town newspaper to look at his wife.
"Does that mean you don't want to talk about it?"
He folded the newspaper backwards and his upper body appeared. "That's how it sounded, didn't it?"
"Yes, it certainly did. Are you okay today?" she asked, laying aside the magazine on the coffee table and offering her complete attention.
"Severely doubting, that's how I am." He said this with a kind of far-off reflectiveness.
"Anything particularly doubtful, Dr. Munck?"
"Only everything," he answered.
"Shall I make us drinks?"
"That would be much appreciated."
Leslie walked to another part of the living room and from a large cabinet pulled out some bottles and some glasses. From the kitchen she brought out a supply of ice cubes in a brown plastic bucket. The sounds of drink-making were unusually audible in the living room's plush quiet. The drapes were drawn on all windows except the one in the corner where an Aphrodite sculpture posed. Beyond that window was a deserted street-lighted street and a piece of moon above the opulent leafage of spring trees.
"There you go, doctor," she said, handing him a glass that was very thick at its base and tapered almost undetectable towards its rim.
"Thanks, I really need one of these."
"Why? Aren't things going well with your work?"
"You mean my work at the prison?"
"Yes, of course."
"You could say at the prison once in a while. Not always talk in the abstract. Overtly recognize my chosen professional environment, my—"
"All right, all right. How's things at the wonderful prison, dear? Is that better?" She paused and took a deep gulp from her glass, then calmed a little. "I'm sorry about the snideness, David."
"No, I deserved it. I'm blaming you for long realizing something I can't bring myself to admit."
"Which is?" she prompted.
"Which is that maybe it was not the wisest decision to move here and take this saintly mission upon my psychologist's shoulders."
This remark was an indication of even deeper disenchantment than Leslie had hoped for. But somehow these words did not cheer her the way she thought they would. She could distantly hear the moving vans pulling up to the house, but the sound was no longer as pleasing as it once was.
"You said you wanted to do something more than treat urban neuroses. Something more meaningful, more challenging."
"What I wanted, masochistically, was a thankless job, an impossible one. And I got it."
"Is it really that bad?" Leslie inquired, not quite believing she asked the question with such encouraging skepticism about the actual severity of the situation. She congratulated herself for placing David's self-esteem above her own desire for a change of venue, important as she felt this was.
"I'm afraid it is that bad. When I first visited the prison's psychiatric section and met the other doctors, I swore I wouldn't become as hopeless and cruelly cynical as they were. Things would be different with me. I overestimated myself by a wide margin, though. Today one of the orderlies was beaten up again by two of the prisoners, excuse me, 'patients'. Last week it was Dr. Valdman, that's why I was so moody on Norleen's birthday. So far I've been lucky. All they do is spit on me. Well, they can all rot in that hellhole as far as I'm concerned."
David felt his own words lingering atmospherically in the room, tainting the serenity of the house. Until then their home had been an insular haven beyond the contamination of the prison, an imposing structure outside the town limits. Now its psychic imposition transcended the limits of physical distance. Inner distance constricted, and David sensed the massive prison walls shadowing the cozy neighborhood outside.
"Do you know why I was late tonight?" he asked his wife.
"No, why?"
"Because I had an overlong chat with a fellow who hasn't got a name yet."
"The one you told me about who won't tell anyone where he's from or what his real name is?"
"That's him. He's just an example of the pernicious monstrosity of the place. Worse than a beast, a rabid animal. Demented blind aggression… and clever. Because of this cute name game of his, he was classified as unsuitable for the regular prison population and thus we in the psychiatric section ended up with him. According to him, though, he has plenty of names, no less than a thousand, none of which he's condescended to speak in anyone's presence. From my point of view, he doesn't really have use for any human name. But we're stuck with him, no name and all."
"Do you call him that, 'no name'?"
"Maybe we should, but no, we don't."
"So what do you call him, then?"
"Well, he was convicted as John Doe, and since then everyone refers to him by that name. They've yet to uncover any official documentation on him. Neither his fingerprints nor photograph correspond to any record of precious convictions. I understand he was picked up in a stolen car parked in front of an elementary school. An observant neighbor reported him as a suspicious character frequently seen in the area. Everyone was on the alert, I guess, after the first few disappearances from the school, and the police were watching him just as he was walking a new victim to his car. That's when they made the arrest. But his version of the story is a little different. He says he was fully aware of his pursuers and expected, even wanted, to be caught, convicted, and exiled to the penitentiary."
"Why?"
"Why? Why ask why? Why ask a psychotic to explain his own motivation, it only becomes more confusing. And John Doe is even less scrutable than most."
"What do you mean?"
"I can tell you by narrating a little scene from the interview I had with him today. I asked him if he knew why he was in prison.
"'For frolicking,' he said.
"'What does that mean?' I asked.
"His reply was: 'Mean, mean, mean. You're a meany.'
"That childish ranting somehow sounded to me as if he were mimicking his victims. I'd really had enough right then but foolishly continued the interview.
"'Do you know why you can't leave here?' I calmly asked with a poor variant of my original inquiry.
"'Who says I can't? I'll just go when I want to. But I don't want to yet.'
"'Why not?' I naturally questioned.
"'I just got here,' he said. 'Thought I'd take a rest after frolicking so hard. But I want to be in with all the others. Unquestionably stimulating atmosphere. When can I go with them, when can I?'
"Can you believe that? It would be cruel, though, to put him in the regular prison population, not to say he doesn't deserve this cruelty. The average inmate despises Doe's kind of crime, and there's really no predicting what would happen if we put him in there and the others found out what he was convicted for."
"So he has to say in the psychiatric section for the rest of his term?" asked Leslie.
"He doesn't think so. He thinks he can leave whenever he wants."
"And can he?" questioned Leslie with a firm absence of facetiousness in her voice. This had always been one of her weightiest fears about living in this prison town, that every moment of the day and night there were horrible fiends plotting to escape through what she envisioned as rather papery walls. To raise a child in such surroundings was another of her objections to her husband's work.
"I told you before, Leslie, there have been very few successful escapes from that prison. If an inmate does get beyond the walls, his first impulse is usually one of practical self-preservation, and he tries to get as far away as possible from this town, whic
h is probably the safest place to be in the event of an escape. Anyway, most escapees are apprehended within hours after they've gotten out."
"What about a prisoner like John Doe? Does he have this sense of 'practical self-preservation,' or would he rather just hang around and do damage to someone?"
"Prisoners like that don't escape in the normal course of things. They just bounce off the walls but not over them. You know what I mean?"
Leslie said she understood, but this did not in the least lessen the potency of her fears, which found their source in an imaginary prison in an imaginary town, one where anything could happen as long as it approached the hideous. Morbidity had never been among her strong points, and she loathed its intrusion of her character. And for all this ready reassurance about the able security of the prison, David also seemed profoundly uneasy. He was sitting very still now, holding his drink between his knees and appearing to listen for something.
"What's wrong, David?" asked Leslie.
"I thought I heard… a sound."
"A sound like what?"
"Can't describe it exactly. A faraway noise."
He stood up and looked around, as if to see whether the sound had left some tell-tale clue in the surrounding stillness of the house, perhaps a smeary sonic print somewhere.
"I'm going to check on Norleen," he said, setting his glass down rather abruptly on the table beside his chair and splashing the drink around. He walked across the living room, down the front hallway, up the three segments of the stairway, and then down the upstairs hall. Peeking into his daughter's room he saw her tiny figure resting comfortable, a sleepy embrace wrapped about the form of a stuffed Bambi. She still occasionally slept with an inanimate companion, even though she was getting a little old for this. But her psychologist father was careful not to question her right to childish comfort. Before leaving the room Dr. Munck lowered the window which was partially open on that warm spring evening.
When he returned to the living room he delivered the wonderfully routine message that Norleen was peacefully asleep. In a gesture containing faint overtones of celebratory relief, Leslie made them two fresh drinks, after which she said:
The Collected Short Fiction Page 8
