Shadowland

by Peter Straub

  A man in black stepped out of the woods. Black cape, black hat shielding his face. He carried a bloodied sword and pointed it across twenty feet of open space at Tom's chest.

  Have you worlds within you?

  'No.' He did not want these worlds.

  Do you want dominion?

  'No.'

  He saw the treasure within you, child.

  'And he hated it.'

  Honor the Book.

  'I don't even know it.'

  You belong to the Order.

  'I don't belong to anything.' Tom feared that the man with the invisible face would run him through, but instead he said, You know what you are, child.

  The sword burst into flame. The man swung it to one side and pointed the way he must go. The way led straight to the sixth light, now extinguished.

  7

  In the dark glade Del lay curled on the ground in his sleeping bag. His hands pillowed his head. When his own sleeping bag was unrolled and he had slipped in, Tom lay on the ground, feeling every hump and depression fail to fit his body. He heard a cricket's chirp-chirp, a sound of mechanical and idiot joy. Tom rolled on his back, adjusting his body to avoid the most prominent bumps, and looked up at a full moon. It looked damaged, a battered old hull. You know what you are. He turned his head, and his eyes found a tree split in half by lightning.

  Del stirred and groaned.

  Help me, Rose. Get me out of this.

  8

  An animal was breathing on him, bathing his face in warm foul air. He shuddered into wakefulness; the animal retreated. Tom could smell its fear of him. Now it was hours later: the moon was gone. He could see only the white oval of Del's face, ten feet away. But though he could see nothing, he felt around him the presence of a hundred alien lives — animal lives. In the invisible trees was a drumfire of wingbeats. 'No,' he whispered. He closed his eyes. 'Go away.' Something rustled toward him. No fear came from it, only a cold self-possession. In the invisible trees, the hundreds of birds moved.

  You know what you are, boy.

  Tom shook his head, clamped his eyes shut.

  There are treasures within you.

  He tried to stop his ears.

  What is the first law of magic?

  The snake waited patiently for him to answer. He would not.

  We have no doubts about you, boy.

  Tom shook his head so hard his neck hurt.

  You will learn everything you need to know.

  Then something else approached, some animal he could not identify. The snake-furled rapidly away, and Tom clamped his eyes shut even more firmly. He did not at all want to see it — the same searching, grasping feeling came from it as from the little figure down on Mesa Lane, back at the start of everything. This animal had about it an air of irredeemable wickedness; not cool and insinuating and impersonal like the snake, it was deeply evil. But it spoke in a thin and graceful voice which hid a hint of a chuckle. It was a mad voice, and the animal was no animal, but whatever the man with the sword had been pretending to be.

  You will betray Del.

  'No.'

  You will stay here forever, and drive Del away.

  'No.'

  You are welcomed, boy.

  At once all the birds left the trees. The noise was huge and rushing, almost oceanic. Tom covered his face: he thought of them falling on him, picking him to ribbons of flesh. Del sobbed in his sleep. Then the birds were gone.

  Tom rocked himself down into his bag.

  9

  When he woke up, it was with a realization. If Rose had been right about the date, his mother must have had his letter for at least a few days. Very soon it would be time to run. He rolled over and saw Del sitting on the grass at the far side of the glade, leaning against a tree. 'Good morning,' Tom said.

  'Morning. Where did you go last night? I want you to tell me.'

  'I just walked around. I got lost for a while.'

  'You didn't see my uncle.'

  'No. I didn't. I told you.'

  Del shifted and rubbed his hand over damp grass. 'I don't suppose anything happened to you last night. I mean . . . anything like he was telling us about?'

  'Did it happen to you? Were you welcomed?'

  'No,' Del said. 'I wasn't.'

  'I wasn't either,' Tom said. 'It was probably the dullest night of my life.'

  'Yeah, me too.' Del beamed back at him. 'But I thought I heard something — really late, it would have been. A big noise, like a billion birds taking off at once.' He looked shyly at Tom. 'So maybe I was welcomed? Maybe that was it?'

  'Let's go brush our teeth,' Tom said. 'There'll be food back at the house.'

  Tom put on his shirt, which was wrinkled as a relief map. They rolled up their sleeping bags and left them in the glade.

  'You look different,' Del said.

  'How?'

  'Just different. Older, I guess.'

  'I didn't get much sleep.'

  They were walking through the woods, going beneath big high-crowned trees. In minutes they reached the clearing where the man with the sword had told him that he knew what he was.

  'Maybe we'll see Rose today,' Del said.

  'Maybe.' Tom walked straight through the clearing toward the barely visible path, no more than a few trampled weeds, which led to the rock shelf.

  'Tom, I'm sorry I got so mad at you. I thought you were trying to ruin things — you know. That was nuts. I'm really sorry.'

  'It's okay.' Tom pushed aside ferns and went back into deep woods.

  After a while Del spoke again. 'You know, I think we've been here a lot longer than it seems. He did that once to me before.'

  'Yeah, I think so too.'

  'The sun's in a different position. Isn't that neat? It's like he can move the sun.'

  'Del, I have a headache.'

  'Oh, that's probably why you look different. Look, what did you think of Rose? I know you only met her once, but what did you think? I hope you liked her. I think you did.'

  'I liked her,' Tom said. This was unbearable. He thought of a way to stop Del talking about Rose. He turned around on the narrow indistinct path. Now they were within sight of the rock shelf. Spangled pale light fell on them. Del looked up at him, purged of his doubts and friendly as a puppy. 'I want to ask you something,' Tom said.

  'About Rose? You can be my bes.t man, if that's what you want.'

  'That time you broke your leg. That was the time you were here longer than you thought?' *

  'How did you guess that?' Del looked at him in amazement. 'Yes. You're right.'

  'Can you remember anything about what happened? When Bud came for you?'

  Del's amazement altered to perplexity. 'Well, it's like I

  was asleep for a long time or something. Why do you want

  to know about that? Sometimes I remember little pieces

  of what happened — little things, like you remember

  dreams.'

  Tom waited.

  'Well, like, I remember Bud arguing with Uncle Cole. That's mainly it.'

  'Arguing about you?'

  'Not really. Bud wanted me to come home right away, I remember that. And Bud won. I did go home with him. But I can remember Uncle Cole sort of taunting him. He said he hoped Bud wasn't waiting to be included in my will. I know that was a terrible thing to say, but he was mad, Tom. That's about it. Except . . . well, I can remember Bud sitting on one end of the living room and Uncle Cole sitting on the other end. I must have been lying on my side of the couch. They were just staring at each other. It was like they were fighting without words. Then my uncle said, 'All right. Take him, you old woman. But he'll be back. He loves me.' And Bud went upstairs to get my stuff. When he came back down, we all went out to the car, and Bud said, 'We don't want any repeat performances, Mr. Collins.' My uncle didn't say anything.'

  ''No repeat performances.''

  'Right.' With the light falling on him in disks and shafts, Del seemed a part of the forest, camouflaged to blend in as e
asily as a squirrel. 'But that was silly. I was never going to break my leg again. I guess Bud was being extra careful.'

  'Okay,' Tom said. He began to walk toward the rock ledge.

  'I sure wonder if we'll see Rose today,' Del said behind him.

  You will betray Del: that had already happened. The rest of it, Tom swore, never would.

  TWO

  Flight

  1

  Shadowland's windows reflected the sun. Milky soap bubbles between the flagstones picked up the brilliant light. Del pushed open the sliding windows, and the two boys walked into the living room. Grooves in the carpet were vacuum-cleaner tracks; a smell of air freshener and furniture polish lingered. The ashtrays sparkled. Tom felt immediately that they were alone in the house. It felt empty and up for sale, open for viewing.

  'Isn't this a beautiful place?' Del said as they walked through to the hall. More furniture polish. The banister gleamed. 'I almost think . . . '

  'What?'

  'That I'd be happy here. That I could live here. Like him. And just work on magic. Go into it deeper and deeper. Never perform, just get it perfect. It's really pure.'

  'I see what you mean,' Tom said. 'You think break­fast is in the dining room?'

  'Let's see, master.'

  Del chirpily crossed the hall and opened the door to the dining room. Two places had been laid on a vast ma­hogany table. A senes of covered serving dishes sat on a sideboard. There and on the table, brilliant freesias lolled in vases.

  'It sure is,' Del said. 'Wow. Let's see what we have here.' He raised one cover after another. 'Ah, eggs. Bacon and sausages. Toast in the toast rack. Kidneys. Chicken livers. Hash-browns. I guess you could call that breakfast.'

  'I guess you could call it six breakfasts.'

  They piled food on their plates and sat, on Tom's part a little self-consciously, at the immense table. 'This is wonderful,' Del said, beginning to attack his food. 'Some coffee?'

  'No, thanks.'

  'It's like being a king, but better. You don't have to go out and tax the masses, or whatever kings do. But I guess he is a king, isn't he — from what he was saying yester­day?'

  'Yeah.'

  'You really don't want it, do you?' Del asked shyly.

  'No, I don't. You're welcome to it.'

  'And I wouldn't be alone, like he is. I mean, I wouldn't have to be alone.'

  'I have a headache,' Tom interrupted. 'The kidneys seem to be making it worse.'

  'Oh, I'm sorry,' Del blurted. 'Tom, I feel like I have so much to apologize for. I guess I got a little crazy. I know there was no reason to be jealous, but he was spending so much time with you. But that just means that you'll be a fantastic magician, doesn't it? I'll always want your help, Tom. I know he chose me, and all that, but . . . well, I was thinking you could have a wing of this house all your own, and we could do tours together, just like he did with Speckle John.'

  'That would be good,' Tom said. He pushed his plate away. 'Del, just be careful. Everything isn't settled yet.' He could not talk to Del about escape while Del was mentally crowning him kinglet.

  'We'll have to pick new names. Have you thought about that yet?'

  'Del, we don't know what's going to happen yet.' Del looked sulky for a moment. 'All I'm saying is, take it slow. There's a lot we have to find out yet.'

  'Well, that's true,' Del said, and went back to work on his eggs.

  Tom plunged in deeper. 'I never asked you this before. How did your parents die?'

  Del looked up, startled. 'How? Plane crash. It was a company plane. My father was flying it — he had a pilot's license. Something happened.' Del set down his fork. 'They couldn't even have a funeral because the crash was a kind of explosion — there wasn't anything left. Just some burned — up parts of the plane. And my father put in his will that there wasn't to be any kind of memorial service. They were just. . . gone. Just gone.' He rattled the fork against his plate.

  'Where were you? How old were you?'

  'I was nine. I was here. It was during the summer. I was in a boarding school in New Hampshire then, and it was a rotten hole. I knew I was going to flunk out after that. And I did. If Uncle Cole hadn't been so good to me, I probably would have . . . dropped dead. I don't know.' He looked uncertainly up at Tom, who had his chin propped in his hands. 'Uncle Cole kept me together that summer.'

  'Why didn't you live with him after that?'

  'I wanted to, but my father's will said I had to live with the Hillmans. My father didn't know Uncle Cole very well. I guess he didn't trust him. You can imagine what bankers think about magicians. Sometimes I had to really beg my father to let me come here in the summer. In the end, he always let me, though. He always gave me what I wanted.'

  'Yeah,' Tom said. 'Mine did too.'

  After a time Tom said, 'I think I'll go lie down or something. Or take a walk by myself.' 'I'm really tired too. And I want to take a bath.' 'Good idea,' Tom said, and both boys left the table.

  Del went upstairs, and Tom went back into the living room. He sat on the couch; then he lay down and deliberately put his feet on it. A water pipe rattled in the wall. The big house, so flawlessly cleaned and polished, seemed vacated; waiting. If he dropped a match and burned the carpet, would the carpet instantly restore itself? It felt like that — alive. His feet would never dirty the fabric of the couch. And Del wanted to live here; in his imagination, he already ruled Shadowland.

  Tom jumped off the couch and ran up the stairs. The bed had been folded down for a nap. He threw his clothes on it and went into the bathroom to shower.

  The cold sparkling tub said: You can't.

  The fresh towel said: We will beat you.

  A new tube of toothpaste on the sink said: You will be ours:

  After he dressed in fresh clothes, Tom dropped his stiff underpants into the wastebasket and covered them with balled-up sheets of paper from the desk. This minimal act of defiance cheered him. At least a few inches of the house were less immaculate. He left the room. Through the big windows in the hall he looked down at the boat house: Rose in her green dress and high heels. If he looked different, it was because of the astonishing thing that had happened there, not because of the magical hoops he had been put through on his way back to the clearing.

  He could feel the house around him like a skin. Without hearing a single noise, he knew that Del was already in his bed, nearly asleep, a dot of warmth in the cold polished perfection. If Rose Armstrong were in the house, he would feel her like a fire.

  Tom left the window and went downstairs. It seemed to him that he could visualize every inch of the house, every curve of the stair posts, every watermark in the kitchen sink.

  He would not stay in this house a day longer than he had to.

  He could see it bare of furniture, stripped to walls and floors, gleaming with new paint: awaiting its new owner. And he thought that Shadowland, an ugly name for a house, was anywhere secretive and mean, anywhere that deserved shadows because the people there hated light. Shadowland implied dispossession. And Coleman CoUins seemed a man lost within his own powers, a shadow in a shadow world, insubstantial. An old king who knew he would have to suffer at the hands of his successor.

  2

  At least that is what the thirty-six-year-old Tom Flanagan told me — he would not have used those phrases at fifteen, and I am more or less improvising on his words as it is, but the fifteen-year-old boy who stood at the bottom of the staircase and felt the house claiming him experienced the despair and pity that the adult man described to me. For he knew that he had been elected, though he had refused it; he knew that he was to be the new King of the Cats, though he would refuse that too, if he were able. And the adult Tom told me that at fifteen he had known that the Florida parking lot in which he had seen a battered car containing a dead man was the truest image of Shadowland. He could not get that picture out of his head.

  3

  So he left the bottom of the stairs and aimlessly went down the hall toward the fr
ont door. It was not locked. In a dazzle of sunlight, Tom let himself out onto the top step. The bricks shone like freshly polished cordovans. Squinting, Tom went down to the asphalt. Water lay in slanting streaks on the drive.

  What would happen if he were to walk up the drive and take a look at the gate? A grown man couldn't get through the bars, but he and Del and Rose could do it easily. From there they could walk to Hilly Vale in less than an hour, through the woods and fields if they had to. Maybe the physical act of leaving Shadowland would be the simplest aspect of their escape; persuading Del would be the hardest. But Rose could do that, he realized. Hot sun warmed his shoulders, the top of his head. Del would listen to Rose.

  The drive curved up around the bank of the hill. Halfway up, he could see the tops of the gateposts.

  Why do you light up the forest like that?

  So I can see what's coming and what's going. And what big eyes you have, Grandmother.

  Through trees he could see the brick wall fanning out from the gateposts. They might even be able to get over that, if he hoisted Del on his shoulders. He walked closer, and saw that the bars in the gate were about nine inches apart. It would be easy to squeeze through an opening like that. And if men were chasing them, they would have to stop to punch the code to open the gates.

  He went up to the gates. The spikes on top of each bar looked more than ornamental. And the brick wall, he could now see, was topped with thick jagged pieces of glass embedded in concrete. Barbed wire snaked over the glass. So it had to be the gate. He looked through it at the narrow brown dirt road which would lead them down to Hilly Vale.

  Whenever you're ready, Rose, he thought, and put his arm experimentally through the bars.

  'What do you think you're doing?' a thick voice shouted behind him.

  Tom jumped — he thought he must have gone a foot into the air — and turned around, unsuccessfully trying not to look scared. Thorn and Snail came lounging out of the trees. They looked more than ever like dwarfs. Thorn wore a dark blue hooded sweatshirt covered with stains. He drained the last of a beer bottle and tossed it into the woods behind. Snail wore an ordinary gray sweatshirt. The sleeves had been cut off, and his tattoos showed on the thick pasty arms like brilliant medals.