by Peter Straub
At ten-thirty Del said his eyes hurt and closed his books and flopped down onto the guest bed.
'You're going to flunk, math.'
'I don't care.' He burrowed deeper into the white pillowcase. 'I'm not like Dave Brick.'
'Well, if you don't care, then I don't either. But the exams start on Wednesday.' Tom looked interrogatively over his shoulder, but his friend's small form still lay face down on the guest bed. Suffering seemed to come from him in waves; for a second this emotion pouring from his friend confused itself in Tom's mind with bereavement, and he thought that he would be unable to keep from crying. Hartley Flanagan had gone through dinner like a man concentrating on a mountain several miles off. There had been another long session with his doctor that afternoon. All Tom's instincts told him that soon his mother or his father would say that they had to have a long talk: after the talk, nothing would remain unchanged. Tom stared at the wall before him, almost seeing his own face looking back from the cream-painted plaster, a face about to record an alteration, a shock; he saw himself ten, twenty years hence, as isolated as Skeleton Ridpath.
As isolated as Del — that suddenly came to him.
He turned around, pushing his books back with his elbows. 'Don't you think you ought to talk about it?'
Del relaxed slightly. 'I don't know.'
'I damn near bit my tongue in half on the bus, but I knew you wouldn't want to talk there.'
Del shook his head.
'And we couldn't talk during dinner.'
'No.' He rolled over and looked up at Tom.
'Well, we've been sitting in here for three hours. You read some of those pages four times. You look terrible. I'm so tired I could drop off right here. Isn't it about time?'
'Time for what?'
'For you to tell me about that guy.'
'I don't know anything about him, so I can't.'
'Come off it. That can't be true.'
'It is true. Why do you think I'd know anything about him?' Del brought up his knees and dropped his head onto them. To Tom he looked as though he were decreasing in size, knotting himself up into a disappearing bundle.
'Because . . . ' Tom plunged on, now unsure of himself. 'Because I think it was that guy you talk about all the time. Your uncle.'
'Can't be.' Del was still huddling into himself.
'You say.'
Del looked up. 'You want to talk about my Uncle Cole? Okay. He's in New England. I know he's in New England. He's studying.'
'Studying magic?'
'Sure. Why not? That's what he does. And that's where he is. Why didn't you know? Because you never asked. Because you never seemed that interested before.' His face trembled.
'Hey, Del . . . ' Now Tom was in a morass. 'I didn't . . . I didn't know what . . . ' I didn't know what you would tell me. And from that first day, heard Bud Copeland's warning: Take care, Red. 'Well, sure, I was interested,' he lamely said.
'Yeah, you and Skeleton.' Del dropped his head onto his knees again. 'Everything's changing,' he said in a muffled voice.
'Well. . . ?'
'Just changing. I think everything should always be the same. Then you'd always know . . . '
Where you were. What was going to happen.
Del lowered his legs and sat absolutely upright on the bed. 'I get this feeling,' he said. He was as rigid as an Indian on a bed of nails. 'Did you ever read Frankenstein or The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym? No? I get this feeling I'm headed toward something like the end of those books — ice all around, everything all white, freezing or boiling, it doesn't matter, no . . . towers of ice. No way out — nothing. Just towers of ice. And something real bad coming. . . . '
'Sure,' Tom said. 'And then a prince will come along and say the magic words and three ravens will give you the magic tokens and a fish will carry you on his back.' He tried to smile.
'No. Like what Mr. Thorpe says if someone can't answer a question. Hic vigilans somniat. He dreams awake. That's how I am. Like I'm dreaming, not living. I don't believe anything that's happening to me. How would you like to try living with Tim and Valerie Hillman?'
'I didn't think . . . '
'You're right. That's not what we were talking about.'
'Okay. So let's go back to the towers of ice and the prince and the three ravens and the magic fish.'
'By all means, let us leave the Hillmans behind. I have an idea.'
'It's about time.'
'You were talking about rescue. Prince — ravens — that stuff.'
'I guess. Sure. I guess.'
'Why don't you come to visit Cole Collins with me over Christmas? I'm supposed to go see him. Come with me. Then you could meet him.'
Tom felt an extraordinary mix of emotions, fear and pleasure and dread and anticipation, protectiveness and weakness: He looked at Del, and wanted to embrace him. He saw Del all alone in an Arctic landscape. Then he thought of his father and said, 'I can't. I just can't. I'm sorry.'
It took him a second to realize that Del was crying.
'Sometime I will. I will, Del. Jesus, stop that. Let's do some card tricks or something — that shuffle you were showing me.'
'I don't have to be awake to shuffle cards,' Del said. 'Whatever you want, Master.'
TWO
The Magic Show
1
On the Monday before the nine-week exams, Laker Broome announced frigidly in chapel that an eighteenth-century glass owl had been stolen from the refectory room at Ventnor School, and that the Ventnor headmaster had told him that the theft must have occurred during the afternoon of our football game. 'Mr. Dunmoore is a tactful man, and he did riot directly accuse our school of harboring the thief, but there are certain inescapable facts. The Ventnor collection is regularly dusted. Last Saturday the pieces on open shelves were dusted by the school housekeeper at eleven-fifteen, shortly before our arrival at the school. They were doing their best to give us a good impression of Ventnor, gentlemen. After our departure it was noticed that the piece was missing, and the matter was immediately reported to Mr. Dunmoore. It represents a serious loss, not only because the piece in question is valued at something like twelve hundred dollars, but because its theft renders the collection incomplete. Therefore, the value of the entire Ventnor collection is affected. And that is a matter of several hundred thousand dollars.'
Mr. Broome whipped his glasses from his head and took a step back from the lectern. 'It is also a matter of the honor of this school, which is beyond any value. I do not wish to believe that any of our boys would do anything so disgraceful, but I am forced to believe it. It is abhorrent to me, but I must accept that looking at me this moment is the boy who stole that owl. Ventnor is a boarding school. Over the weekend, extensive searches were undertaken in the quarters of both students and staff — not a single person at the school failed to cooperate. So you see where that puts us, gentlemen.'
The glasses went back on the taut face. 'We have only a few boys at this school capable of such a disgusting act, , and we know who they are. We believe we know the identity of the thief. I want him to come forward. I want the boy to identify himself to me personally sometime during the school day. Things will go much easier for him if he voluntarily accepts the responsibilities for his actions. If the boy has the courage to confess his deed, we will be able to limit his punishment to expulsion. Otherwise, more serious measures will be called for.'
Mr. Broome inclined his head to look directly at us in the first two rows. He stared almost pugnaciously at Dave Brick, then at Bob Sherman, then at Del Nightingale. 'I promise you,' he said, 'that the culprit will be found out. Dismissed.'
As we filed out, Dave Brick bulked up beside me. He grabbed my elbow. 'He thinks I did it!'
'Quiet,' I said.
'What do we do?'
I knew what he meant. We both turned to look for Skeleton Ridpath, and saw him slouching out of the seniors' row, hands in pockets, smiling faintly. We were both too afraid of him to report what we had seen. We went up
the stairs in silence.
'But they must know,' Dave moaned. 'He's the only one who . . . '
We had reached the door of Thorpe's classroom, and Dave Brick exhaled loudly, a sound of pure despair. His skin had suddenly gone white and oily — terror made him look like a thief.
Inside, Mr. Thorpe began to shout almost at once. Of the tirade I can remember only a few words, one of the Latin tags which peppered his classroom rejoinders. Mala causa est quae requirit misercordiam. It is a bad cause which asks for mercy. Ostensibly he was speaking of the exams in two days, but all of us knew that he meant the theft as well. Several times he used the word 'vermin.' It was a harrowing session, and it left all of us shaken.
As we left Thorpe's classroom to go to our lockers, I looked down across the glassed-in court and saw Skeleton sneaking out through the big doors at the back of the stage. Damn you, I thought, damn you, damn you, damn you. Do us all a favor and flunk out.
2
One the Monday the exam grades were posted outside the library, I shoved my way up to the board with the freshman list. I read down it to find my name, and saw that I had more or less the same grades as my rivals. We could hear the seniors shouting and groaning before their own board.
Mrs. Tute struggled through us to get to the library door, muttering, 'Heavens! Heavens!' Her palsied head looked pained and angry — all of the staff had looked irritated since the theft at Ventnor.
Back at the Upper School after lunch, I saw that only Hollis Wax was standing before the seniors' grade list, and I crossed the hall and stood beside him. 'You never gave me those gin-and-tonics,' he said. 'Freshman labor is unreliable this year.' 'Yes, sir,' I answered, and searched out Ridpath, S., hoping for a row of F's. When I found his name I was amazed to see that he had three A's and two B's. Hollis Wax had nothing better than a C. 'Nosy maggot,' he said, and dropped his books on the floor. I picked them up and did ten push-ups and tied his shoes.
3
Dave Brick had been summoned to Laker Broome's office. The note was delivered to Mr. Thorpe's class in the hands of Mrs. Olinger, who looked as bruising and chill as an iceberg: even Mr. Thorpe submitted quietly to her presence. He unfolded the note, looked both stern and pleased, and said, 'Brick, see the headmaster.' Poor Brick the Prick shuffled his books into his briefcase and trembled toward the door. He'd had a particularly brutal haircut just before the exams, and on his cannonball head all the visible flesh turned bright pink. After that he was not seen for the rest of the morning. His frightened ghost seemed to wail from his empty desks during the two remaining classes before lunch.
'Actually, it's neat,' Sherman told me. 'This way, Snake proves that he runs a taut ship, and everybody else is off the hook.'
Brick's absence from classes and later from his table at lunch affected the teachers much as it did Sherman. They were more relaxed; and most of us, seeing their new ease, realized with a little shock that the staff had also decided that Brick was the thief. I decided that if Brick had been expelled, I would see Mr. Fitz-Hallan privately and tell him what I knew.
But Brick was sitting on the stone back steps of the Upper School as we came up from lunch, and he saw us and stopped tapping his slide-rule case against the concrete. The five or six of us walking together stalled for a moment, unsure of how to treat him. But then we realized that he would not still be at the school if Broome had expelled him during the first period, and we surged forward, full of questions.
He did not want to answer most of them. 'Hey, guys, all he wanted was just to talk to me — honest. That's all he wanted.' Close up, it was obvious that he had been crying, but he said nothing about it and we were too embarrassed to ask; though I saw Bobby Hollingsworth revving himself up to say something truly vile, he had the sense to check it before someone punched him. Dave Brick had been given the complete Lake-the-Snake treatment, and he had not deserved it and he had come through it well; at that moment he had more goodwill than he'd ever known at Carson.
4
After the next class we had a free period, and Brick sat next to me in the library. 'Let's go down to the stage,' he whispered. 'Too many people here.' We got permission to leave from Mrs. Tute, picked up our books and walked around the perimeter of the school, down the wide stairs, and went through the big doors to the shadowy cavern behind the dark curtains.
Morris Fielding was working something out on the piano, but he was concentrating so hard that he scarcely nodded at us. Brick drew me over to the other side, where it was even darker.
I could hear the clip on his slide-rule case rattling against the metal ring. 'I didn't tell him anything. Honest. I didn't. He kept at me and at me — he's so scary, I thought . . . ' He began to snuffle, but cut it off, afraid that Morris would hear. Big and pudgy, with his Hollywood hairdo shorn down to a black fuzz, he looked like an enormous infant, and I realized how brave he must have been not to tell everything to Broome. 'I just kept telling myself that I didn't do it, I didn't do it — and I couldn't tell him about Skeleton, could I?'
'So he just let you go?' I asked.
'Finally. He said he believed me. He said he hoped I knew how necessary it was to find whoever was guilty. Then he gave me something to give to Mrs. Olinger and Mr. Weatherbee.' He took two identical papers from his jacket pocket. His fingers had left damp stains on them. 'It's some kind of announcement.'
'Well, you have to hand it to that guy,' I said. 'At least he apologizes.'
But when we looked at the papers, we saw that Mr. Broome was simply using Dave Brick to pass out an announcement that students would be able to form clubs in the second semester. 'That's all?' Brick said. 'That's it?' His legs wobbled, and he sat down heavily on a heap of curtain material, relief and disappointment clanging together violently in him. After what he had been through, I think he could not believe that Broome had simply dispatched him as an errand boy.
'It's okay,' I yelled. 'He's just relieved.'
'So he's relieved,' someone purred from the dark area inside the door, and all three of us snapped our heads around to see who it was.
Skeleton Ridpath walked forward into the dim light: he had come around the door so softly he might as well have come through the keyhole, like a ghost or a wisp of smoke.
'So Brick the Prick is relieved, huh? Get out of here, you freshman creeps. Don't ever come back here again.' He swiveled on one hip and bent toward Morris. 'Fielding. You leave that goddamned piano alone.'
'I have a right to play it,' Morris said quietly.
'A right? You have a right? Shit.' Skeleton shook himself like a wet dog, sudden rage making his nerves twitch, and darted across the stage to the piano. He closed his bony hands around Morris' neck and started to pull him off the bench. 'What I say, you do, you hear that, you twerp? Keep your filthy hands off that piano.' Morris resisted at first, but then decided that broken pride was better than a broken neck. Skeleton heaved him off the bench and onto the floor. 'None of you little shits come back here in the future, hear me? Keep off. Stay away. This is out of bounds.' He rubbed a long hand over his hideous face. 'What are you gawping at?' he asked Brick.
Brick was still clumsily seated on the pile of curtain material. 'Gah,' he said.
'I said, what are you gawping at?'
'I hate you,' Brick said. 'And you . . . ' The first sentence had come out in one thoughtless passionate rush; the second expired.
'And I what?' Skeleton floated up toward us again.
'Nothing.'
'Nothing.' Skeleton looked around, appealing to an invisible audience. His arm went out like a striking snake, and he drove his fingers into Brick's neck. 'You get out now,' he ordered. 'Right fast. And stay out.'
We left. Dave Brick rubbed his neck; he croaked rather than talked during the next two lessons, but his voice was nearly back to normal by the time we went home after practice. 'If he does that once more, I'll tell on him,' he swore to me as we went toward the locker room. 'Then he can kill me. I don't care.'
5<
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During the weeks leading up to Christmas break and the semester examinations which shortly followed it, two minor, almost secretive currents ran through the school — certainly through the freshman class. The first of these was Laker Broome's private search for the thief of the glass owl. The week after Dave Brick had been interrogated for three hours, Bob Sherman was summoned away from Latin class just as Brick had been. This time there were none of the immediate assumptions that had been made about the unfortunate Brick; only a few boys, Pete Bayliss and Tom Pinfold and Marcus Reilly among them, assumed that now the theft had been cleared up and could be forgotten. They were athletes and could not stand Sherman, who did not even pretend to respect Paul Hornung and Johnny Unitas.
As Brick had been, Bob was sitting in the cold outside the rear entrance to the Upper School when the rest of us came back from lunch. He looked tough and cynical and tired, and a little abashed to play the role of celebrity.
'Congratulations,' I said.
'He needs his head examined,' Bob said. 'If I wanted to grab something valuable, I'd kidnap Florence and never have to think about money again.'
Two days before Del was called into Broome's office for his own three-hour session, the applications were due for club proposals. That was the second underground stream which went through our class in the weeks before Christmas break. Most of the school treated the idea of clubs as a joke, and proposed a Gourmet Club (which would eat in restaurants instead of the dining room), a Loafers' Club, a Playboy Club, a Hardy Boys Club (devoted to discussion of the works of F. W. Dixon), an Elvis Presley Club (more or less the same thing). The frivolous applications were weeded out by Mr. Weatherbee and the other form advisers, and I think only a handful reached Mr. Broome. He gave his approval to three, and one of these, a J. D. Salinger Society, never met — the two seniors who proposed it identified too closely with Holden Caulfield to submit to meetings. Morris Fielding's Jazz Society was passed, and in time a drummer and a bassist with more enthusiasm than skill were discovered in the sophomore class. Broome undoubtedly saw in the club a cheap source of entertainment for school dances. Tom thought that Broome approved the Magic Circle because it sounded like a harmless diversion, even after Del told him about his interrogation in Broome's office.
