Shadowland

by Peter Straub

  'It's okay,' Tom said. Once again he was miraculously beside me. 'I just looked around, and I think everybody's okay. Did you see Skeleton Ridpath?'

  I wiped my eyes. 'I don't think he's here.'

  'Well, I think he is,' Tom said. He turned away and went toward the teachers, who were in a group at the back of the parking lot, clustered around Mr. Broome. The headmaster looked as though he had been in the au­ditorium longer than anyone — his face was nearly black. Ashy smudges blotted his seersucker jacket. He looked straight through Tom and continued to harangue Mr. Thorpe. His Doberman lay beside him, exhausted and also matted with ash. The dog reeked of smoke and burning wood and twisting metal — I caught it from where I stood — and I realized that I probably did too. You can't tell me a boy wasn't smoking,' Mr. Broome was saying. 'It started in one of the turrets. I saw it clearly. What else have we been warning these boys about day after day?' He wobbled a bit, and Mr. Thorpe grabbed his elbow to keep him upright. 'I want a list of every boy in the auditorium. That way we'll find our guilty man. Get a list, tick them off — '

  'Mr. Broome,' Tom said.

  One fireman rushed by, then another.

  'Men are working here,' Mr. Broome said. 'Stay out of their way.'

  'Was Steve Ridpath in school this morning?' Tom asked.

  'Sent him home.'

  'He's at home,' Mr. Ridpath coughed out. 'He took the car. Thank God.'

  'Were you going to kick Del out of school?' Tom asked.

  'Don't be an ass,' Broome said. 'We have work to do. Now, leave us alone.'

  A big man in a suit like a policeman's came across the gravel and stood beside Tom and me. A badge on his shoulder read Chief. 'Who is the principal here?' he asked.

  Mr. Broome stiffened. 'I am the headmaster.'

  'Can I see you for a second?'

  'Any assistance,' Mr. Broome said, and followed the chief out into the center of the lot.

  'Where's Del?' Tom asked. 'Did you see Del?'

  'A deceased?' Broome said loudly, as if he had never heard the word.

  The two firemen who had rushed past us earlier were coming out of the side door carrying a body on a stretcher.

  'The label in his jacket says Flanagan,' the fire chief said.

  'Flanagan is not deceased,' Mr. Broome said airily. 'Flanagan is very much with us. I helped him out of the auditorium myself.'

  'Oh, no,' Tom said, but not in contradiction to the headmaster's lie. Mr. Fitz-Hallan and Mrs. Olinger, closely followed by Mr. Thorpe, were already at the ambulance door. Four boys who had passed out in the smoke groaned from bunk-bed-like stretchers in the white metal interior. I heard a crash as the last of the field house collapsed. The boys watching yelled as they would at fireworks. Mr. Fitz-Hallan leaned over and gently lifted the top of the blanket. I could not hear the two or three soft words he uttered.

  'Let these men get on with their work, Flanagan,' Mr. Broome shouted.

  As they lifted the covered body into the ambulance, the slide rule in its charred leather holster slipped over the edge of the cot and bounced against the white steel.

  Which is the last of the three images that stay with me from the first year at Carson — a composite image, really. Dave Brick's slide rule banging against the bottom of the ambulance doors, the boys cheering at the last gasp of the field house, Mr. Broome yelling impatiently: that was what all the ironic civility had come down to. A dead boy, a few shouts, a madman's yell.

  Tom and I found Del sitting on the lawn at the front of the school. He was guarding the magic equipment, the bass, and Phil Hanna's drums, all of which he had managed to get out while Tom had been saving lives. He had watched the arrival of the fire trucks and the ambulance, but had not come down into the lot himself because he had been afraid that someone might steal Brown's bass. 'It seemed awfully important to him,' he said. 'And anyhow, I could hear everybody coughing and yelling, so I knew they were all right.' He looked at Tom's face, then mine. 'They are all right, aren't they?'

  Tom sat down beside him.

  22

  Graduation

  Four teachers, including Mr. Fitz-Hallan and Mr. Thorpe, stayed overnight in the hospital because of smoke inhala­tion; so did twenty-four boys. The morning edition of the city's biggest paper bore the headline 'society school HEADMASTER LEADS 100 BOYS TO SAFETY.' 'Freshman Lost,' was the subhead. Nobody ever mentioned expul­sion or theft again, as if the fire had solved that question. In any case, there was no one to whom to mention it: the rest of the year's classes were canceled, and teachers made up their final grades by averaging all the work up to the day of the fire. Many boys half-believed Laker Broome's story of saving most of the school single-handedly because the newspapers made a chaotic event seem clearer than it had been to any of those involved. But they remembered what Tom Flanagan had done; only the board of directors and most of the parents assumed that the newspapers were absolutely correct. They wanted to believe that the school's administration had behaved in a crisis the way they themselves would like to.

  A news photographer snapped Mr. Broome's picture at the reception on the lawn after commencement. When we looked up the hill toward the Upper School we could see the enormous hole in the landscape where the Field House had been. Parents and students moved around on the grass, taking sandwiches from the long tables attended by the dining-room maids. I had just left my parents, who stood in a little group with Morris and Howie Stern and their parents near the impromptu stage where a member of President Eisenhower's last Cabinet had implored us to work hard and build a better America. I happened to be beside Mr. Broome when the photographer took his picture, and when the man walked off, Broome looked indulgently down at me. 'What do you think of our school?' he asked. 'You'll be a sophomore in a few months. That entails more responsibility.'

  We looked at each other for a moment.

  'You will all be great men. All of you.' Even the long creases in his face were different, less defined. Many years later I realized that he had been heavily tranquilized.

  I said good-bye to him and went back to my friends and parents. Tom and his mother walked past, accompanied by Del and the Hillmans. In the middle of the crowd, even with a parent and godparents beside them, Tom and Del looked alone. Laker Broome stared straight through them and smiled at a tray of sandwiches.

  'Remember?' Tom said in the Zanzibar. 'Of course I remember what we were talking about. We were working out the arrangements for me to go with Del to Shadowland. My mother didn't want me to fly, so we were going to take the train. It sounded like fun — getting on a train in Phoenix and taking it all across the country.'

  'Why did you want to go?' I asked.

  'Only one reason,' Tom said. 'I wanted to protect Del. 1 had to do it.'

  He swiveled around on his bar stool and surveyed the empty room. Light from the windows fell like a spotlight on the stage at the far end. He did not want to look at me while he said the rest of it.

  'I knew I couldn't keep him from going, so I had to go with him.'

  He sighed, still watching the yellow ray of light on the vacant stage as if he expected to see a vision there.

  'There was one thing I really didn't know. But should have. The school was Shadowland too.'

  And for months, for nearly two years, in other bars or in hotel rooms, other cities, other countries, wherever we caught up with each other: Let me tell you what happened then.

  PART TWO

  Shadowland

  We are back at the foot of the great narrative tree, where stories can go . . . anywhere.

  Roger Sale, Fairy Tales and After

  ONE

  The Birds Have Come Home

  Del was quiet the whole first day of the trip. . . .

  1

  Del was quiet for the first day of their journey, and Tom eventually gave up trying to make him talk. Whenever he commented on the vast, empty scenery rolling past the train's windows, Del merely grunted and buried himself deeper in a two-hundred-page mimeograph
ed manuscript which Coleman Collins had mailed him. This was about something called the Triple Transverse Shuffle. Apart from grunts, his only remark about the desert landscape was, 'Looks like a million cowboy hats.'

  During this time Tom read a paperback Rex Stout mystery, walked through the cars looking at the other passengers — a lot of old people and young women with babies around whom buzzed talkative soldiers with drawl­ing, suntanned accents. He inspected the bar and dining car. He sat in the observation bubble. There the desert seemed to engulf everything, changing colors as the day and the train advanced. It moved through yellow and orange to gold and red, and in the instant before twilight threw blue and gray over the long distances, flamed — dyed itself a brilliant rose-pink and burst thunderously into brilliance. This endured only a heart-stopping sec­ond, but it was a second in which the whole world seemed ablaze. When Tom came hungry back to their seats, Del looked up from a page full of diagrams and said, 'Poor Dave Brick.' So he had seen it too.

  Night came down around them, and the windows gave them back their faces, blurred into generalities.

  'Booger,' Tom muttered, almost in tears: the complex of feelings lodged in his chest was too dense to sort out. He had somehow missed Dave Brick in the smoky pandemonium of the auditorium, must have gone right past him half a dozen times and left him back there, behind them, in the country they were leaving a little more with each click of the wheels. The sensation of moving forward, of being propelled onward, was as strong as the sense of threat outside Del's house that noon before Del had risen into the air — it was the sense of being mailed like a parcel to a destination utterly un­known. He met his mild blurred eyes in the dirty window and saw darkness rocking past him in the form of a telegraph pole's gloomy exclamation point.

  'You did a lot,' Del said.

  'Sure,' Tom growled, and Del went back to his pages of diagrams.

  After twenty more minutes in which Del fondled cards and Tom held tightly to his feelings, fearing that they would break and spill, Del looked up and said, 'Hey, it must be way past dinnertime. Is there anywhere to eat on this train?'

  'There's a dining car up ahead,' Tom said. He looked at his watch and was startled to see that it was nine o'clock: they had been rocked past time, while they had been busy leaving behind and back there.

  'Great,' Del said, and stood up. 'I want to show you something. You can read it when we're eating.'

  'I don't get any of that stuff you're looking at,' Tom said as they started walking down the aisle toward the front of the car.

  Del grinned at him over his shoulder. 'Well, you might not get this either. It's something else,' leaving Tom to wonder.

  Any stranger looking at them would have known that they went to the same school. They must have looked touchingly young, in their blue Gant shirts and fresh haircuts; they were unlike anyone else on the train. Cowboys with dusty clothes and broken hats and cardboard suitcases had climbed on at every stop. With names like Gila Bend and Edgar and Redemption, these were just brown-board shacks in the desert.

  In the dining car Tom first realized how odd he and Del appeared, here on this train. As soon as they walked in, he felt exposed. The women with their children, the soldiers, the cowboys, stared at them. Tom wished for a uniform, for ten more years on his body. A few people smiled: being cute was hateful. He promised himself that for the rest of the trip he would at least wear a shirt a different color from Del's.

  Del commandeered a small side table, snapped the napkin off his plate, and accepted the menu without looking at the waiter. Intent on some private matter, he had never noticed the stares. 'Ah, eggs Benedict,' he said. 'Wonderful. Will you have them too?'

  'I don't even know what they are,' Tom said.

  'Then try them. They're great. Practically my favorite meal.'

  When the waiter returned, they both ordered eggs Benedict. 'And coffee,' Del said, negligently proffering the menu to the waiter, who was a glum elderly black man.

  'You want milk,' the waiter said. 'Coffee stunt your growth.'

  'Coffee. Black.' He was looking Tom straight in the eye.

  'You, son?' The waiter turned his tired face to Tom.

  'Milk, I guess.' Del rolled his eyes. Tom asked, 'Do you drink coffee?'

  'In Vermont, I do.'

  'And the princes and the ravens bring it in gold cups every morning.'

  'Sometimes. Sometimes Rose Armstrong brings it,' Del smiled.

  'Rose Armstrong?'

  'The Rose Armstrong. Just wait. Maybe she'll be there, maybe she won't. I hope she is.'

  'Yeah?' Now it was Tom who smiled.

  'Yeah. If you're lucky, you'll see what I mean.' Del adjusted the cloth on his lap, looked around as if to make sure no one was eavesdropping, and then looked across the table and said, 'Before you get your first taste of paradise, maybe you ought to see what he sent me.'

  'If you think I'm old enough.'

  Del plucked a folded sheet of typing paper from his shirt pocket and passed it to Tom. He was positively smirking.

  Tom unfolded the sheet.

  'Don't ask any questions until you read all of it,' Del said.

  Typed on the sheet was:

  SPELLS, IMAGES & ILLUSIONS

  (For the Perusal of My Two Apprentices)

  Know What You Are Getting Into!

  Level 1 Level 2 Level 3

  Trance Theatrics Flight

  Voice Rise Transparence

  Silence Altered Landscape

  Level 4 Level 5 Level 6

  Window of Flame Collector Ghostly Presence

  Window of Ice Mind Over Matter Living Statue

  Tree Lift Mind Control Fish Breathing

  Level 7 Level 8 Level 9

  Altered Time Put A Hurting Wood Green Empire

  Created Landscape Conjure Minor Devils

  Desired Fireworks

  Tom looked up when he had read it.

  'Read it again.'

  Tom glanced down the lists again. 'I don't get it.'

  'Sure you do.' Del's whole being was alight.

  'Do you get one of these every summer?'

  Del shook his head. 'This is the first time. But when I saw him at Christmas, he said that if I came back with you, he'd send me a description.'

  'Of what? Everything he can do?'

  'He can do a lot more than that. But I guess what he means is a description of what a magician ought to be able to do.'

  'He can turn statues into people? He can . . . ?' Tom searched the list. 'Alter the landscape?'

  'I guess so.' Del laughed. 'I've seen a lot of that stuff. Not all of it, but a lot.'

  'So if Rose Armstrong brings you coffee, she might come in upside down? With upside-down coffee in an upside-down cup?'

  Del shook his head, still laughing.

  'I don't like that business about 'Know What You Are Getting Into.''

  'I told you he was scary sometimes.'

  'But it's like a threat.' And then his mind gave him an image he had a month ago decided was false: that of Skeleton Ridpath hovering two inches below the ceiling of the auditorium, hanging like a spider, exulting in the coming destruction.

  'It's not really a threat,' Del explained. 'Sometimes up there, everything is normal, and at other times . . . ' He waved at the paper. 'Other times, you learn things. Oh, great, here comes dinner.'

  Tom gingerly cut into one of the eggs on his plate, saw yolk flood out into the paler yellow of the sauce, and lifted a dripping fork to his mouth. 'Wow,' he said, when he swallowed. 'How long has this been going on?'

  'The hollandaise comes out of a bottle,' Del said. 'But you get the general idea.'

  2

  As they ate, the train slowed into a station — Tom could see only a metal water tower and a peeling shed. The usual men in curling hats waited to get on.

  Del said, 'With these levels, I guess you can sometimes do something on a higher one without being able to do everything on the lower ones. Like I can rise, you know, but Uncle C
ole says everybody can learn to do that, if they concentrate the right way. But I'm really Level One — I can't even do voice, throw my voice yet. I'm still trying to learn. 'Trance' is just like hypnotism. An idiot can do it. Theatrics, now . . . '

  Tom watched the lonely cowboys filing past. They looked thirsty. Nobody ever saw cowboys off, nobody ever greeted them.

  ' . . . it's just the ordinary stage stuff, all you have to know is how to do it, how the mechanics work . . . '

  They were like spacemen, so loosely tied to earth, but where they orbited was towns like this, the name of which was Lone Birch.

  Then he saw a face that violently took his mind off cowboys. All the pleasure in him went black and cold.

  'Theatrics, see, he thinks it's all junk, just the word shows it.' Del looked at him curiously. 'You lose your appetite all of a sudden?'

  'Don't know,' Tom said. He craned over the table, trying desperately to see the bruised face among the half-dozen men waiting outside.

  'You think you saw a friend? In Lone Birch?'

  'Not a friend. I thought I saw Skeleton out there. Waiting to get on the train.'

  Del laid down his knife and fork. 'Oh. I just lost my appetite too.' He looked perfectly composed. 'What do we do?'

  'I don't want to do anything.'

  'I think we ought to take a look. That way we'll know. How sure are you?'

  'Pretty sure. But I just saw him for a second — just a glimpse.'

  The train began to snick-snick out of the station.

  'But a face like that . . . '

  'It's pretty hard to miss,' Tom said. 'Yeah.'

  'Let's go.' Del pushed himself away from the table. 'I'll pay the waiter. I'll go forward, and you go back. We're about halfway in the train.' Del took a deep breath and swayed a little with the tram's motion. 'If it's him . . . I don't mean to give you orders — and he could be sitting facing the way you come in — but maybe he's just traveling . . . '