Shadowland

by Peter Straub

  His eye caught another surprise just as he heard the clicking of a door behind the velvet curtains: a few seats away from the Collector, a group of men with outdated but elegant clothing and neat beards, cigars stuck in their mouths, a group of raffish bucks out on the town . . . Del jabbed him in the ribs, and he snapped his head back just as Cole Collins parted the curtains and sat in the Shaker chair. His handsome, slightly hooded blue eyes were glazed, but his face was pink. Instead of the suit, the magician wore a dark green pullover from the top of which frothed a green-and-red scarf, beautifully fitted to his neck. He smiled, taking in the whole room, and Tom felt the presence of the painted men behind him. The back of his neck prickled.

  'The magician and his audience,' Del's uncle said with the air of one who opens a treasure chest. 'A subject you should consider. What is their relationship? That of an actor and those he seeks to move, to entertain? That of an athlete and those before whom he demonstrates his skill? Not quite, though it has elements of both.' His smile had never left his face. 'An audience always fights a magician, boys. It is never truly on his side. It feels hostility toward him: because it knows that it is being fooled.'

  No, it can't be, Tom thought. They left the train in New York, they are part of some other story. And that awful joke can't have anything to do with Skeleton.

  'The magician must make them relish it. He is the storyteller whose only story is himself, and every man jack in the audience, every drunk, every dolt, every clever skeptic, every doubter, is looking for the chink in his story that he can use to destroy him.'

  Tom forced himself to look straight ahead: he had to keep his neck rigid by willpower. He felt as though Mr. Peet and the others were moving in their seats.

  'The magician is a general with an army full of deserters and traitors. To keep their loyalty, he must inspire and entertain, frighten and cajole, baffle and command. And when he has done that, he can lead them.'

  In the midst of his tension, Tom felt a growing area of tiredness, and realized that the wine and Collins' tirade were making him sleepy.

  The smile was taut now, and directed straight at Tom. 'I am saying that the practice of magic is the courting of self-destruction — that is one of its great secrets. The closer you allow yourself to come to that truth, the greater you may become. Listen: magic is used only to inspire fear and to grant wishes — even those you do not wish to have. In itself it is not important. Enough.'

  He gave Tom that smile like a glare. 'Do you want to learn to fly? Would you like to leave the earth behind, boy?'

  'You called us birds,' Tom said. And thought for the first time in months of the Ventnor owl. Collins nodded. 'Are you afraid?' 'Yes,' Tom said. He had a terrible urge to yawn, and felt his lips stretching.

  'You don't have the beginning of an idea what magic is,' Collins hissed.

  Tom thought: I can't spend all summer with this crazyman.

  'But you will learn. You are a unique boy, Tom Flanagan. I knew it when I first heard about you. Shadowland will give you every gift it has, because you will be able to accept them. And you are exactly the right age. Exactly!'

  He looked from Tom to Del, back again, his eyes like marbles. 'What experiences you two have before you. I envy, you — I would chop my hands off to have what you take for granted. Now. A few, ah, ground rules. Do you remember everything I have said so far? Do you under­stand what I said?' They nodded simultaneously. 'The magician is a general in charge of what?'

  'Traitors,' Del said.

  His eyes full of triumph and the windy spaces of drunkenness, the magician looked at Tom alone. 'Ground rules. The rules you obey, in this house. Did you see the wooden door set back in a little half-hallway on the way to this theater?'

  Tom nodded.

  'You are forbidden to open that door. You are free to wander where you like, except for that room and my room. Which is in back of the swinging doors at the top of the stairs. Understood?'

  Tom nodded again, felt Del beside him nod his head.

  'That is number one, then. In this theater we practice cards and coins, the close-up work. Tomorrow we will see Le Grand Theatre des Illusions, and that is where you will learn to fly. If, that is, you give yourself entirely to me.' Then, abruptly: 'Your father is dead?'

  'Yes,' Tom whispered.

  'Then for the summer I am your father. That is number two. In this house I am the law. When I say you cannot go outside, you stay in. And when I tell you to stay in your rooms, you will obey me. There will always be a reason, I assure you. Okay. Questions?'

  Del sat as silent as a stone; Tom asked, 'Are there any wolves in Vermont? Have you ever seen one?'

  Collins tilted his head. 'Of course not,' and gave an equivocal, playful glance. Then he relaxed back into his chair. 'Did you ever hear the story about how all stories began?'

  Both boys shook their heads. In Tom, there was a sudden, strong resistance to all about him. This man was not his father. His stories would be lies: there was nothing about him that was not dangerous.

  'This story,' Collins said, plucking delicately at a fold of the scarf and exposing another quarter-inch of its pattern above the green velour, 'is — might be, rather — yes, might be about treachery. And it might be about coming close to the destructiveness of magic. You de­cide.'

  4

  'The Box and the Key'

  'A long, long time ago, in a northern country where snow fell eight months of the year, a boy lived alone with his mother in a little wooden house at the foot of a steep hill. There they lived a decent, purposeful, hardworking life. Chores always demanded to be done, provisions to be salted away, cords of wood to be cut and stacked. There was endless work, little of what boys today would call fun, but much joy. The boy's entire world was the snug wooden house with its wood fires and waxed floors, the animals he cared for, his work and his mother and the land they inhabited. The life made a perfect circle, a perfect orb, in which every action and every emotion was useful, in tune with itself and each other action and emotion.

  'One day the boy's mother told him to go out and play in the snow while she did her baking. I imagine that she did not want him dodging around her skirts, pestering her for a taste of what she was mixing. She dressed him warmly, in heavy sweaters and thick socks and boots and a big blue coat and a woolen cap and said, 'Go out now and play for an hour.'

  'The boy asked, 'May I climb the hill?'

  ' 'You may go all the way to the top if you like,' said his mother. 'But give me an hour to do my baking.'

  'So out he went — he loved to climb the hill, though sometimes his mother decided that marauding animals made it dangerous. From the top he could see his little house, its chimney and windows, and the entire little valley where it sat, that cozy little house in a deep northern valley where dark firs grew straight out of the snow.

  'It took him half an hour, but finally he had struggled up to the top of the hill. Looking one way, he could see hill after hill stretching away into a cold northern infinity. And when he looked the other direction, he saw right down into his own valley. There, now looking like a (tollhouse, was his home. Smoke puffed from its chimney, drifted and blew, and his mother crossed and recrossed the kitchen window, carrying mixing bowls and trays for the oven. It looked so warm, that little house with its busy woman and its drifting, blowing column of smoke.

  'The boy alone on the snowy hill decided to dig. Perhaps he thought he would build a fort under the snow. He scooped out a handful of snow, then another, and all the — time he was conscious of what lay down in the valley — the warm house, his mother moving back and forth across the kitchen window.

  'He dug for a time, looking back and forth from his hole in the snow to his house and his mother, and soon realized that he had little time left in which to play. He looked back down at his house and his mother in the window, and dug a few more cold wet handfuls out.

  'It was time to begin going back. He watched a curl of smoke lift from the chimney.

  'Th
en he heard a voice in his mind saying: Dig out another handful.

  'He looked back at his warm house, and he put his hand deep into, the snow.

  'His fingers touched something hard and smooth and colder than ice. He looked'back at the house, where his mother was taking hot cakes from the tray with a long-handled baker's spatula; and then he looked back into the hole he had made, and dug quickly around, feeling for the sides and edges of whatever he had found.

  'It was a box — a silver box, so cold it burned his hands right through his gloves. That voice in his mind, which was his own voice, said: Where there is a box, there is a key.

  'So he looked back at the house and knew its warmth . . . saw the smoke lazing from the chimney . . . saw his mother glance toward the window. And he took one hand and just delicately scraped his fingers across the bottom of the hole.

  'His fingers turned over a little silver key.

  'Where there is a key, there is a lock, his own voice said within its head.

  'He revolved the cold silver box in his hands and saw how the lock was set into a complicated pattern of scrollwork just before the lip of the top. He looked back once more at the warm house, his mother wiping her hands on her apron before the window. And he put the little key into the lock.

  'The box clicked.

  'Then for the last time he looked back at his warm house and his mother, at all he had known, and he raised the lid of the box.'

  Coleman Collins lifted his hands, palms facing about a foot apart, and suddenly swooped them upward. 'Every story in the world, every story ever told, blew up out of the box. Princes and princesses, wizards, foxes and trolls and witches and wolves and woodsmen and kings and elves and dwarves and a beautiful girl in a red cape, and for a second the boy saw them all perfectly, spinning silently in the air. Then the wind caught them and sent them blowing away, some this way and some that.'

  He put his hands back on the table, smiling; he looked drunk as an owl to Tom, but the resonant voice coiled in the sleepy spaces of his mind, echoing even when Collins was not talking. 'But I wonder if some of those stories might not have blown into other stories. Maybe the wind tumbled those stories all together, and switched the trolls with the kings and put foxes' heads on the princes and mixed up the witch with the beautiful girl in the red cape. I often wonder if that happened.'

  He pushed himself away from the table and stood up. 'That was your bedtime story. Go up to your rooms and go to bed. I don't want you to leave your rooms until tomorrow morning. Run along.' He winked, and disap­peared through the curtains, leaving them momentarily alone in the empty theater.

  Then he poked his disembodied — looking head through the join of the curtains. 'I mean now. Upstairs. Lead the way, Mr. Nightingale.' The head jerked back through the curtains.

  A moment later it reappeared, thrust forward like a jack-in-the-box. 'Wolves, and those who see them, are shot on sight. Unless it is a lupus in fabula, who appears when spoken of.' The head opened its mouth in a soundless laugh, showing two rows of slightly stained and irregular teeth, and popped back through the curtain.

  'Lupus in fabula?' Del said, turning to Tom.

  'Mr. Thorpe used to say it sometimes. The wolf in the story.'

  'Who appears when . . . '

  'Spoken of,' Tom said miserably. 'It doesn't mean real wolves, it means . . . Oh, forget it.'

  5

  The Wolf in the Story

  'This isn't like any other summer,' Del said as they passed the short hall which ended at the crossbarred door. 'He never told me a story before. I liked it. Didn't you?'

  'Sure, I guess,' Tom said, pausing. 'Weren't you ever curious about what was behind that thing?'

  Del shrugged, looked uneasy. 'You mean, I should have looked just because he told me not to?'

  'Not exactly. But what's so important that we aren't even allowed to see it? I just wondered if you were curious.'

  'I never had time to be curious,' Del said. 'He said upstairs. We're supposed to stay in our rooms.'

  'Does he do that a lot, order you to stay in your room all night?'

  'Sometimes.' Del firmly pushed open the door to the older part of the house and began to march past the kitchen and living room.

  'But wouldn't you anyway? I mean, why make it an order? Why would we get out of bed in the middle of the night, go wandering in the dark? . . . If he makes it an order, he's just making us think about doing it. See what I mean?'

  'Well, I'm going to sleep,' Del said, going up the stairs.

  'And what if you want a glass of water? What if you have to take a leak?'

  'There's a bathroom attached to your room.'

  'What if you want to look outside? We don't have any windows?'

  'Look, aren't you tired?' Del said furiously. 'I'm going to sleep. I'm not going to parade around and look at stuff I'm not supposed to see, I'm not going to look at the stars, I'm just going to bed. You do what you want to.'

  'Don't get so angry.'

  'I am angry, damn you,' Del said, and moved away from Tom to open his door and disappear inside.

  Tom went to his door. Del was tearing his shirt off over his head, not bothering to unbutton it. Their beds had been turned down. 'So why are you so all — fired hot all of a sudden?'

  'I'm going to bed.'

  'Del.'

  His friend softened. 'Look. I'm tired enough to drop. It's our first night.' Del sat on his bed and kicked off his shoes. He undid his belt, stood up, and pushed his pants down. 'And I'm going to close these doors so I don't have to know if you're going to get into trouble.'

  'But Del, he wants us to think about — '

  'You're tired, aren't you?' Del said, tugging one of the pocket doors out of the stub wall.

  'Yes.'

  'Then go to bed and forget it.' He went to the other stub wall and pushed its door across, cutting off his room from Tom's.

  'Del?' Tom said to the door.

  'I'll see you in the morning. I'm too tired to think about anything.'

  Tom turned away. His own room glowed: bed so neat it appeared to have been opened by can opener, soft lights. The second Rex Stout book he had brought in his suitcase lay on the bedside table. He touched the switch beside the door, and the overhead lights darkened. The light beside the book made that end of the room, the book and the bed and the lamp, as inviting as a cave. He undressed quickly to his underpants and slipped into bed. Tom picked up the Rex Stout book and turned to the first page. After a few minutes the print swam, and then seemed to make unrelated but pointed comments about some other story. He realized that he was dreaming about reading. Tom turned off the light and rolled into his cool pillow.

  An indeterminate length of time later the barking of dogs brought him back up to consciousness. First one dog, then two. Sounds of a fight followed. A door slammed somewhere, men cursed, one dog screamed in rage or pain. A man shouted 'Bastard!' and the dog's sound of agony turned into a yelp. Tom sat up in bed. His hand was asleep, and he rubbed it until it throbbed. Downstairs, men were moving with heavy footsteps across the floor, going in and out. A glass broke, the other dog began to growl. 'Del?' Tom said. Several loud male voices raised at once.

  Tom went to the pocket doors and pushed one a few inches back into the wall. Del lay face down in the dark, breathing deeply. Tom slid the door to again and groped across the room to the hall door, expecting that it would be locked.

  But it was not: he opened it a crack. The lights in the hall dimly glowed. Now he could hear the voices and the dogs more clearly. The men sounded as brutish as the animals. Tom opened the door wide and saw himself reflected in the big window opposite. The lights in the woods shone through his body. He stepped out into the hall. Downstairs, at the back of the house, a man shouted, 'Get that mutt over — god damn — shake that damn . . . ' It was not the voice of Coleman Collins.

  A pool of light suddenly appeared on the flagstone terrace beneath his window, outlining a man's tall shadow. Tom stepped back from the window
. A burly man in an army jacket stepped into view, hauling a large black dog on a chain. The dog turned to snarl at him and the man jumped forward and cuffed its mouth. 'Jesus!' the man bawled. Protruding from one of the pockets of the green army jacket was the neck of a bottle. He dropped the chain, vanished back under the window for a moment, and reappeared with a shovel. He feinted at the dog with it, set it down, and vanished into the house again. When he came back he carried a set of long-handled tongs with metal-banded clamps at the end. This too clattered down onto the flagstones, and the man swaggered back toward the house, shouting something. He had a short bristly brown beard. One of the men from the train: Tom's heart nearly stopped, and his eyes jumped up to the illuminated woods.

  Oh, no.

  On a flat boulder directly under a light, so far away Tom could not see details of face or clothing, a slight figure in a long blue wrap and red cap set on blond hair was holding up a small glittering box. The little figure wonderingly turned the box over in its hands. Then the head turned and looked directly at him. He backed away in panic, and the boy's head looked aimlessly away, first to one side, then to the other. 'Del,' Tom whispered. He looked back at the boy on the rock. 'Del!' The boy was still turning the box over and over in his hands. Tom sidled over to Del's door and rapped his knuckles against it twice. 'Get out here,' he said, only just not whisper­ing. He knocked again — the noise downstairs was so loud they would not hear him if he took a hammer to the door. The blond boy set the box down on the slab and dreamily brushed his fingers along the rock. 'You have to see this,' Tom said, speaking almost normally.

  The door opened a crack. 'Go away. Go in your room.'

  'Look,' Tom said.