Shadowland

by Peter Straub

  'Are we really here?' he asked.

  'Go closer and really look.' His voice made a joke of the word.

  Tom limped toward the edge of the fire. It was no taller than himself. There was Fitz-Hallan's room, there was Thorpe's. Metal beams curled in the midst of the flames. He could hear the glass panels cracking and shattering around the enclosed court. And would there be a dwarf lime tree, shriveling and blackening? The building tight­ened down into itself a notch. Was it just a film — a projection from somewhere? It warmed him like a fire.

  He began to weep.

  'What does it say to you?' Collins asked, and Tom whirled around to see him. He looked like a Russian nobleman in his fur-collared coat.

  'It's too much,' Tom managed to get out, hating himself for crying.

  'Of course it is. That's part of the point. Look again.'

  Tom turned again and looked at the burning school.

  'What does it say to you? Open your mind to it and let it speak.'

  'It says . . . get out of here.'

  'Does it really?' The magician laughed: he knew better.

  'No.'

  'No. It says, Live while you can. Get what you can when you can. You haven't been bad at that, you know.'

  Tom began to shake. His feet were frozen, his face blazed like the fire. Coleman Collins seemed about to see straight inside him, and to cynically dismiss what he saw there. Like any young person, Tom was adept at intuiting other people's attitudes toward him, and for a moment it occurred to him that Coleman Collins hated both Del and himself. The secret lies in hating well. He was trembling so violently that the robe would have slipped from his shoulders if he had not gripped it with both hands. 'Please,' he said, asking for something so large he could not encompass it in words.

  'It is night. You must go to bed.'

  'Please.'

  'This is your kingdom too, child. Insofar as I make it yours. And insofar as you can accept what you find in it.'

  'Please . . . take me back.'

  'Find your own way, little bird.' Collins cracked the whip, and the horse lunged forward. The magician swept past without another glance. Tom flailed out for the bar at the end of the sleigh, missed it, and fell. Cold leaked up his thighs, slithered down his chest. He pulled up his head to find the fire, but it too was gone. Collins' sleigh was just disappearing into the firs.

  Tom got his knees under him and awkwardly stood up, gripping the robe. From the other side of the snowy plain a wind approached, made visible by the swirl of snow it lifted and spun. The trace of the wind arrowed straight toward him; he turned to take it on his back and saw flecks of green just before the wind knocked his legs out from under him and deposited him —

  on nothing, on green air through which he fell without falling, spun without moving. He threw out his arms and caught the padded arm of a chair.

  15

  He was back in Le Grand Theatre des Illusions. One light burned gloomily down at him, revealing in semi-chiaroscuro his strewn clothing. Tom yanked his trousers on and shoved his feet into his shoes; he balled up his socks and underwear and thrust them into a pocket. Then he put on his shirt. All this he did mechanically, numbly, with a numb mind.

  He looked at his watch. Nine o'clock. Nine or ten hours had vanished while Coleman Collins played tricks with him.

  He went down the darkened hall. What had Del been doing all this time? The thought of Del revived him — he wanted to see him, to have his story matched by Del's. That morning, he had been almost joyful, being at Shadowland; now he again felt endangered. Warmth was just beginning to return to bis frozen toes.

  Tom had reached the point in the hallway, just before it turned into the older part of the house, where the short corridor led to the forbidden door. Tom stood at the juncture of the two corridors looking at the cross-beamed door. He remembered Collins' words: This is your king­dom too, child. He thought: Well, let's see the worst.

  And as he had said to Del the first night, wasn't the very commandment not to open it a disguised suggestion that he look behind the door?

  'I'm going to do it,' he said, and realized that he had spoken out loud.

  Before he could argue himself out of his mood of defiance, he moved down the short hallway and put his hand on the doorknob. The brass froze his hand. He thought back to the third thing Collins had shown him, back in the wintry sleigh: a boy opening a door and being engulfed by lyric, singing brightness.

  Your wings, or your song?

  He pulled open the forbidden door.

  16

  The Brothers

  'Look, Jakob,' a man said, looking up from a desk. He smiled at Tom, and the man who sat at another desk facing him lifted his head from the papers before him and gave a similar quizzical, inviting smile. 'Do you see? A visitor. A young visitor.' His accent was German.

  'I have eyes. I see,' said the other man.

  Both were in late middle age, clean-shaven; glasses as old-fashioned and foreign as their dress modified their sturdy faces, made them scholarly. They sat at their desks in a little pool of light cast by candles; high bookshelves loomed behind them.

  'Should we invite him in?' said the second man.

  'I think we ought. Won't you come in, boy? Please do. Come in, child. That's the way. After all, we are working for you as much as for anyone else.'

  'Our audience, Wilhelm,' said the second man, and beamed at Tom. He was stockier, deeper in the chest than the man with the kindly face. He stood and came forward, and Tom saw muddy boots and smelled a drifting curl of cigar smoke. 'Please sit. There will do.' He indicated a chesterfield sofa to the right of the desk.

  As Tom advanced into the dark room, the crowded detail came clear: the walls covered with dim pictures and framed papers, a stuffed bird high up on a shelf, a glass bell protecting dried flowers.

  'I know who you are. Who you're supposed to be,' he said. He sat on the springy chesterfield.

  'We are what we are supposed to be,' said the one called Wilhelm. 'That is one of the great joys of our life. How many can claim such a thing? We discovered what we were supposed to be young, and have pursued it ever since.'

  'We shared the same joy in collecting things,' said Jakob. 'Even as children. Our whole life has been an extension of that early joy.'

  'Without my brother, I should have been lost,' said Wilhelm. 'If is a great thing, to have a brother. Do you have one, child?'

  'In a way,' Tom said.

  Both brothers laughed, so innocently and cheerfully that Tom joined them.

  'And what are you doing here?' Tom asked.

  They looked at each other, full of amusement which somehow embraced and included Tom.

  'Why, we are writing down stories,' Jakob said.

  'What for?'

  'To amaze. To terrify. To delight.' .

  'Why?'

  'For the sake of the stories,' Jakob said. 'That must be clear. Why, our very lives have been storylike. Even the mistakes have been happy. Boy, did you know that in our original story it was a fur slipper which the poor orphan girl wore to the ball? What an inspired mistransla­tion made it glass!'

  'Yes, yes. And you remember the strange dream I had about you, my brother: I stood in front of a cage, on top of a mountain . . . it snowed . . . you were in the cage, frozen . . . I had to peer through the bars of the cage — so much like one of our treasures . . . '

  'Which we were determined to show the world the wonder we felt in discovering, yes. You were terrified — but it was a terror full of wonder.'

  'These stories are not for every child — they do not suit every child. The terror is there, and it is real. But our best defense is nature, is it not?'

  Tom said 'Yes' because he felt them waiting for an answer.

  'So you see. You learn well, child.' Jakob set down the quill pen with which he had been toying. 'Wilhelm's dream — do you know that when Wilhelm was dying, he spoke quietly and cheerfully about his life?'

  'You see, we embraced our treasures, a
nd they gave us treasure back a thousandfold,' Wilhelm said. 'They were the country in which we lived best. If our father had not died so young — if our childhood had been allowed its normal span — perhaps we could never have found what it is to live in that country.'

  'Do you hear what we are saying to you, boy?' Jakob asked. 'Do you understand Wilhelm?'

  'I think so,' Tom said.

  'The stories, our treasures, are for children, among others. But . . . '

  Tom nodded: he saw. It was not the personal point.

  'No child can go the whole way with them,' Wilhelm said.

  'We gave our wings,' Jakob said. 'For our song was our life. But as for you . . . '

  Both brothers looked at him indulgently.

  'Do not idly throw away any of your gifts,' said Jakob. 'But when you are called . . . '

  'We answered. We all must answer,' Wilhelm said. 'Oh, my, what are we saying to this boy? It is late. Do you mind stopping work until tomorrow, brother? It is time to join our wives.'

  They turned large brown eyes toward him, clearly expecting him to leave.

  'But what happens next?' Tom asked, almost believing that they were who they appeared to be and could tell him.

  'All stories unfold,' Jakob said. 'But they take many turns before they reach their ends. Embrace the treasure, child. It is our best advice. Now we must depart.'

  Tom stood up from the chesterfield, confused: so much of what happened here ended with a sudden departure! 'Where do you go? According to you, where are we?'

  Wilhelm laughed. 'Why, Shadowland, boy. Shadowland is everything to us, as it may be to you. Shadowland is where we spent our busy lives. You may be within a wood . . . within a storied wood . . . '

  'Or fur-wrapped in a sleigh in deep snow . . . '

  'Or dying for love of a sleeping princess . . . '

  'Or before a dwindling fire with your head full of pictures . . . '

  'Or even asleep with a head full of cobwebs and dreams . . . '

  'And still you will be in Shadowland.'

  Both brothers laughed, and blew out the candles on their desks.

  'I have another question,' Tom said into the lively blackness.

  'Ask the stories, child,' said a departing voice.

  A flurry of quiet rustling, then silence: Tom knew they were gone. 'But they never give the same answers,' he said to the black room.

  He felt his way to the door.

  17

  When he turned the corner back into the main hallway, Coleman Collins was standing before him in the semi-darkness, blocking his way. Tom felt an instant ungovern­able surge of fright — he had broken one of the rules, and the magician knew it. He must have seen him turn out of the short corridor.

  Collins' posture gave him no clues; he could not see his face, which was shadowed. The magician's hands were in his pockets. His shoulders slouched. The entire front of his body was a dark featureless pane in which a few vest burtons shone darkly: tiger's eyes.

  'I went in that room,' Tom said.

  Collins nodded. Still he kept his hands in his pockets and slouched.

  'You knew I would.'

  Collins nodded again.

  Tom edged closer to the wall. But Collins was deliber­ately blocking his way. 'You knew I would, and you wanted me to.' He bravely moved a few inches nearer, but Collins made no movement. 'I can accept what I saw,' Tom said. He heard the note of insistence, of fear, in his voice.

  Collins dropped his head. He drew one heel toward him along the carpet. Now Tom could see his face: pensive, withdrawn. The magician tilted his head and shot a cold glance directly into Tom's eyes.

  There might have been some playacting in it; Tom could not tell. All he knew was that Collins was frighten­ing him. Alone in the hallway, he was scarier than in the freezing sleigh. Collins was more authoritative than a dozen Mr. Thorpes. The expression which had jumped out of his eyes had nailed Tom to the wall.

  'Isn't that what you said? Isn't that what you wanted?'

  Collins exhaled, pursed his lips. Finally he spoke. 'Arrogant midget. Do you really think you know what I want?'

  Tom's tongue froze in his mouth. Collins reared back and propped his head against the wall. Tom caught the sudden clear odor of alcohol. 'In two days you have betrayed me twice. I will not forget this.'

  'But I thought — '

  The magician's head snapped forward. Tom flinched, feared that Collins would strike him.

  'You thought. You disobeyed me twice. That is what I think.' His eyes augered into Tom. 'Will you wander into my room next? Ransack my desk? I think that you need more than cartoons and amusements, little boy.'

  'But you told me I could — '

  'I told you you could not.'

  Tom swallowed. 'Didn't you want me to see them?'

  'See whom, traitor?'

  'The two in there. Jakob and Wilhelm. Whoever they were.'

  'That room is empty. For now. Get on your way, boy. I was going to give your friend a word of warning. You can do it for me. Scat. Get out of here. Now!'

  'A warning about what?'

  'He'll know. Didn't you hear me? Get out of here.' He stepped aside, and Tom slipped by him. 'I'm going to have fun with you,' the magician said to his back.

  Tom went as quickly as he could to the front of the stairs without actually running. He realized that he was dripping with sweat — even his legs felt sweaty. He could hear Collins limping away down the hall in the direction of the theaters.

  The next second brought a new astonishment.

  When he looked up the stairs, he saw a nut-faced old woman in a black dress at their top, looking down at him in horror. She lifted her hands sharply and scurried away out of sight.

  'Hey!' Tom said. He ran after her up the stairs. He could hear her moving frantically as a squirrel, trying to escape bun. When he reached the head of the stairs, he ran past the bedrooms and saw the hem of a black dress just vanishing around a corner at the end of the hall. To his side, through the glass and far away, lights burned deep in the forest and sent their reflections across the black lake.

  He reached the far end of the hall and realized that he had never been there before. The old woman had opened an outside door, one Tom had never seen, and was starting to descend an exterior staircase that curved back in toward the patio and the house. Tom got through the door before it closed and clapped a hand on the old woman's shoulder.

  She stopped as suddenly as a paralyzed hare. Then she looked up into his face with a compressed, dense mixture of expressions on her dry old face. A few white hairs grew from her upper lip. Her eyes were so brown as to look black, and her eyebrows were strongly, starkly black. He understood two things at once: she was foreign, and she was deeply ashamed that he had seen her.

  'I'm sorry,' he said.

  She jerked her shoulder away from his hand.

  'I just wanted to talk to you.'

  She shook her head. Her eyes were cold flat stones embedded in deep wrinkles.

  'Do you work here?'

  She made no movement at all, waiting for him to allow her to go.

  'Why weren't we supposed to see you?' Nothing. 'Do you know Del?' He caught a glimmer of recognition at the name. 'What's going on around here? I mean, how does all this stuff work? Why aren't we supposed to know you're here? Do you do the cooking? Do you make the beds?'

  No sign of anything but impatience to get away from him. He pantomimed breaking an egg into a pan, frying the egg. She nodded curtly. Inspired, he asked, 'Do you speak English?'

  No: a flat, denying movement of the head. She stabbed him with another black glance, and turned abruptly away and flew down the stairs.

  Tom lingered on the little balcony for a moment. From the bottom of the long hill, girdled by woods, the lake shone enigmatically up at him. He tried to find the spot where Coleman Collins had taken him in the sleigh, but could find no peak high enough — had all that really taken place only in his head? Far off in the distance he heard a m
an crying out in the woods.

  His room had been prepared for the night. The bed was turned down, the bedside lamp shone on the Rex Stout paperback. That, and the clear-cut puzzles it contained, seemed very remote to him — he could not remember anything he had read the night before. The sliding doors between his room and Del's were shut.

  He went to the doors and gently knocked; no response. Where was Del? Probably he was out exploring — imitat­ing Tom's actions of the night before. Probably that was what the 'warning' was about. Tom sighed. For the first time since getting on the train with Del, he thought of Jenny Oliver and Diane Darling, the two girls from the neighboring school; maybe it was Archie Goodwin and his strings of women that brought them to mind, but he wished he could talk to them, either of them. It had been a long time since he had talked to a girl: he remembered the girl in the window the magician had shown him — shown him as coolly as a grocer displays a shelf of canned beans.

  His room was barren and lonely. Its cleanliness, its straight angles and simple colors, excluded him. He hated being alone in it, he realized; but now he did not feel that he could go anywhere else. Loneliness assailed him. He missed Arizona and his mother. For a moment Tom felt utterly bereft: orphaned. He sat on the hard bed.and thought he was in jail. All of Vermont felt like a prison.

  Tom stood up and began to pace the room. Because he was fifteen and healthy, simple movement made him feel better. At that moment, in one of those peculiarly adult mental gestures which 1 see as characteristic of the young Tom Flanagan, he arrived at both a recognition and a decision. Shadowland, as much as he knew of it, was a test harder and more important than any he had ever taken at Carson; and he could not let Shadowland defeat him. He would use Collins' own maxim against him, if he had to, and discover how to do the impossible.

  He nodded, knowing that he was arming for a fight, and realized that he had lost the desire to cry which had come over him a moment before. Then he heard a noise from behind the sliding doors. It was a light, bubbling sound of laughter, muted, as if hidden behind a hand. Tom knocked again on the doors.

  The sound came again, even more clearly.

  'Del. . . you there?'