by Peter Straub
She shook her head. 'Nothing like this.' Her face worked: she was going to cry. 'I thought he'd put on a show. And I thought I could get you and Del out in the middle of it.' Now she was crying. 'I'm sorry, Tom.'
'You thought you would get me and Del out? Not yourself too?'
Whitened by the moonlight, her face altered and the tears stopped. She wiped her eyes. 'Of course. Of course myself too.'
'But we have something in common, don't we?'
Rose turned away from him and began to go back toward the hall.
'Why did he say you couldn't leave?'
Rose looked over his shoulder at him, slipped into the blackness beyond the doorway.
'Why does it. . . ?' Why does it hurt you so to walk? He gingerly put his right hand a few inches into his pocket and touched one of the sections of the broken shepherdess. He tweezed it out. The top half of a girl.
The top half of a girl.
Like . . .
Tom went toward the door and out into the corridor, following her. 'Rose?' He threw the broken thing aside.
A thunderous noise from outside — WHAMP! WHAMP! — as if, yes, just as if a gigantic bird, a bird larger than the house, were battering it down with its wings.
'Rose!'
'and now, ladies and gentlemen, the famous window of flame!'
A blast of heat rocked him backward, and he shouted her name again. A second later, the point at which the corridor entered the other wing of the house flared into bright flame. Rose was running back toward him, covering her face with her hands. Inside the solid flame, something was writhing and turning, twisting into itself like a hundred snakes.
Rose ran until she careered into him, and then she put her arms around his chest. Black stains spread along the ceiling; the glass on one. of the framed posters shattered with a loud cracking noise.
'It is snakes,' Tom said, watching the writhing forms within the solid flame.
'No. It's me,' Rose said into his shirt.
He saw. Vines curled and twisted, the heads of roses flailed, impaling themselves on the thorns, stabbing themselves so they bled . . . the glass over another poster exploded.
BANG! Another gigantic wing beat from outside. Inside Tom's shirt, Del quivered and tried to flatten himself into nothing.
The blood was petals, dropping away and being consumed. But the whole flowers would not be consumed, they would twist in agony until the flowers died or disappeared.
'and the window of ice!'
As the heat had preceded fire, an intense chill poured through the corridor a moment before the fire froze into place, turned gray-white and monumental.
The orange light disappeared with the fire, and a single white spot glowed down from the ceiling on a version of Coleman Collins. He was leaning against the glacial wall in an open-collared chambray shirt. 'You could have gone that way, you know, but that would have been too easy — especially since you escaped your drink in the living room. I rather expected you to work your way out of that one, you know. Congratulations!'
'Change Del back,' Tom said.
'For that, you'll have to speak to the original,' the shadow said) 'He's still waiting. He wants to see the end of the performance, too. It's been a long time, you know. Over thirty years.' The shadow smiled. 'In the meantime, did you enjoy the picture of little Rose's plight?'
Behind him, the impaled and twisted blossoms hung half-visible in the ice.
'The rose that wounds itself,' the shadow mused. 'Poignant, isn't it? But not half so poignant if you know she wanted it. Prayed for it. Begged for it. Perhaps not unlike how your old friend Mr. Ridpath begged to be fitted into that contraption.' He nodded at the collapsed and singed Collector, which lay heaped against the wall.
Another gigantic wingbeat pounded at the house, and this one was followed by the unmistakable noise of the glass doors in the living room shattering beneath the blow.
'We are all getting impatient with you, Mr. Flanagan,' the shadow said. 'Why don't you locate the old king and settle the issue?'
'I'm trying to do that,' Tom said. 'Damn you.'
The shadow clapped his hands, and the wall of ice slid out of existence, becoming so transparent that the frozen roses blazed out a moment before they too faded into transparency. 'Your friend should be able to help you distinguish the real from the false. Or don't you remember your old stories?'
Then he too was gone, leaving behind him the impression of a smile and the smells of singed carpet and blistered paint.
'What old stories, Rose?' He turned on her. 'Tell me. What stories did he mean? If you knew all along . . . '
She stepped backward, alarmed. 'Not me,' she said. 'He didn't mean me. He couldn't have.'
Tom could have screamed with frustration. 'There isn't anyone else. He did mean you.'
'I think he meant Del,' Rose said.
26
'Think,' Rose said. 'You know, and he knows you know. Remember it, Tom.'
'Del?' It was an almost fantastically cruel joke. 'It can't be.' He fumbled with two shirt buttons, working them with thumb and index finger until the flat white disks found the holes. Del flopped out onto his palm; the wings feebly stretched. 'Oh, my God. Oh, Del.'
'Think about what he said,' Rose pleaded.
Another pane of the glass door exploded into the living room.
'We read stories in English class,' Tom said, frantically trying to remember . . . a sparrow? 'We read 'The Goose Girl.' We read 'Brother and Sister.' We read . . . shit. It's no use. 'The Fisherman and His Wife.' 'The Two Brothers.' It's no good.' What he remembered was how birds had plagued him: how a robin on the lawn had looked in through a window and drilled him with its eyes; a starling in a Quantum Heights tree quizzing him as the world revolved and witches filled the sky.
'It's no good,' Tom said. 'Our teacher said . . . ah, in 'Cinderella,' he said a bird was the messenger of the spirit. A bird gave her pretty clothes. Another bird took out the stepsisters' eyes. Oh, wait. Wait. It's 'Cinderella.'' He held Del out from his body. 'Birds tell the prince that the stepsisters are not to be his bride. They make him find Cinderella. The birds make him find the right bride.' ,
In the darkness Rose was looking up at him with gleaming eyes. Del stirred on his bandaged palm.
'Find him,' Tom whispered, feeling half-exalted, half-sick with the impossibility of both his task and Del's. 'Find him.'
Del's head lifted; his wings unfurled. And Tom's heart loosened too, and overflowed. On his bloody, aching hands the bird opened its wings and beat them down. Once. Twice. Go, little bird. Go, Del. A third time the wings opened and beat down, and the sparrow lifted off Tom's hands.
The messenger of spirit swooped into the air. Find him. For us, for you. Find him.
The messenger circled in the dark air above them, then settled once on Tom's shoulder — a gesture like a pat on the head, a gesture of love — and took off down the corridor.
27
They followed it, stumbling past the abandoned Collector in the dark, past the entrance to the forbidden room, past the door to the Little Theater. Del flew in rapid, excited circles before the Grand Theatre des Illusions, darting again and again at the door.
Rose reached the door before Tom.
Another gigantic wingbeat rattled the entire back of the house. Tom heard the case in the living room toppling over, breaking the glass doors and splintering the wood. Inside it, the porcelain figures would be smashed and crumbled into each other.
'What is that outside?' Rose asked.
'An owl. Another messenger.'
'It's not him?'
'No. It means someone is going to die,' Tom said. 'It means someone should have died already. The performance was supposed to end a little while after they . . . ' He almost swooned, remembering precisely how Collins had held the glowing nails and used them to rape his hands. 'Stay out here,' he said.
'I'm coming with you,' she said, and pushed open the door. She took two steps in and halted.
The sparrow sailed inside, into light and noise. A crowd filled the seats.
28
'You have front-row seats,' three Herbie Butters said from three owl chairs. 'Please take them.'
Tom looked at them, scarcely bothering with the audience that had transfixed Rose. People from another age stared at the three magicians, peeled oranges, stuffed candies into their mouths, smoked. Unlike their painted images, which were visible at the rear of the Little Theater, they moved in the seats, raised their arms, applauded, and called out inaudible comments in X general din.
'You see, they like my little illusions,' three Herbie Butters said in unison. 'And now my volunteers will attempt to distinguish reality from its shadow. Failure to do so will bring a penalty, ladies and gentlemen.'
Cheers: catcalls.
'Change Del back,' Tom said, pitching his voice to go under the uproar behind him.
'Ah! The boy wants me to work magic on his pet — a sparrow, ladies and gentlemen! Our volunteer is very droll.' He held up his palm. 'But he is more than that, my friends. The young man is an apprentice magician. He thinks he could entertain you as well as I.'
More cheers; derisory shouts. Tom looked over his shoulder, saw Rose just turning away from the audience with a stricken, horrified expression. In her face was the conviction that they could not win. Up in the middle of the twentieth row, Del's parents, with their smashed heads and burning clothes, were politely applauding. Around them, visible behind Rose, men and women with animal faces screamed down at them and the stage.
'You see what audiences are, my little volunteer,' said the three Herbie Butters in unison. 'All audiences are the same. They want symbolic blood — they want results. You cannot trifle with an audience. Are you ready to make your choice?'
Zoo noises erupted from the thrashing audience. Tom glanced back and saw that everyone, even Del's parents, wore the heads of beasts. Dave Brick writhed there too, stuffed into Tom's old jacket, with a sheep's head on his shoulders.
'You see, you must never . . . ' said the Herbie Butter on the left.
' . . . make the fatal mistake of thinking . . . ' said the Herbie Butter in the center.
' . . . that any audience is friendly,' said the Herbie Butter on the right. 'Are you ready to make your choice? You will be severely penalized if you choose wrong. I promise you that!' he shouted to the audience, who screamed back in a thousand animal voices.
Tom looked up. Their messenger of spirit was circling in the vastness overhead, frantically trying to find its way out, like any bird.
Is there any Del left in you? Tom thought: his mind was fraying apart, shredding under the onslaught of noise from the audience of beasts. Or are you lost, just a sparrow now?
The sparrow came to rest on a pipe and was almost invisible, far up above him. He saw its head twitching from side to side.
'We're waiting,' said three voices.
Find him, Tom thought. Find Collins.
'If you do not make your choice, you will be sent back,' said three voices. 'You will be part of the audience forever. For they are each important, and each adds to the whole.'
Find Collins.
'Your pet is not a bird in a story,' said the Herbie Butter on the left.
'He is only a pestilential sparrow,' said the Herbie Butter in the middle.
And that would be right, Tom knew. No angels were looking after him and Del. The messenger of spirit was no longer a messenger of anything. Del's mind had guttered out in the frantic, restless little body.
'Del!' he shouted.
'One of a hundred lost pets,' said one of the magicians.
The sparrow left the pipe and swooped down over the audience, causing an uproar of shouts and curses.
Find him. Find him. Whatever you are now.
The sparrow curved in flight, and went for the stage. Tom's heart paused: his blood slowed in his veins. The sparrow flew in a straight line over the three figures on the stage, circled back and flew over them again. It came down suddenly, and as it went toward the lap of the magician on the left, Tom screamed, 'That's enough! Leave him! He's going to — '
The sparrow came to rest on the knee of the magician on the left.
'The young man is a magician, ladies and gentlemen,' Collins said through the mask of Herbie Butter. 'This part of the performance is concluded.' He tenderly reached forward and closed his fingers about.the sparrow's body, and his companions faded into dark pools cast on the stage by opposed spotlights. 'My friends in the audience, this young man's pet has given his life so that his master may advance another stage.'
He's what you call a stooge, someone whispered behind Tom. You'll see. It's all part of the act.
Collins stood up from the owl chair, gripping the sparrow in his right hand and holding it out, brandishing it. 'You see before you a real bird,' he caressingly intoned. 'You have seen it fly. What is it? A boy's pet, a winged rodent, or a messenger of spirit? You have heard how magical birds aid their masters in quests and divinations, you know how they roam widely and freely in the world, bringing rumors of goodness here and there, soaring above what holds us to our earthly existences — ladies and gentlemen, aren't birds our very image of the magical?' He thrust forward the bird, and it — Del — poured out a cascade of melody unknown to any sparrow, as though its whole body had been filled with leaping song.
Oh, Del. That's you. And you're not afraid.
'You see — a special bird. Does it not deserve a place in the eternal?'
Still the heartbreaking cascade of melody erupted from the captured sparrow.
'Do I need my fiddlers three?'
'NO!' bellowed the audience of beasts.
'Do I need my pipe and my bowl?'
'NO!'
'No. You have it, ladies and gentlemen. You comprehend. The singing bird is magic itself. It is indeed the messenger of spirit. And it could sing, I assure you, any melody you called out — but it has already surpassed such vulgar tricks. So I propose to give this living spirit messenger, with your permission, ladies and gentlemen of the perfect audience, its final form. Its ultimate form.'
'No!' Tom shouted, echoing the roars of the audience.
'Yes.' Collins smiled down at him and released the bird. The song cascaded fully out, spearing Tom with what Del was bringing forth from his trapped soul, the liquid and overflowing song which was Del's only speech. Del ascended an inch above the magician's hand and
no no no no-please —
froze, shooting out a spray of refracted colors, was silent, the miraculous song cut off in the middle of an ascending note; the ghost of the note sailed into the ceiling; and a glass bird fell back into the magician's hands.
Del.
'You are in Shadowland, boy,' Collins said. 'You are part of the performance. You cannot leave.' He bent forward, and Tom stepped up to stand before him, afraid that he would drop what Del had become as Del had deliberately shattered the Ventnor owl. The audience ceased its roaring. Tom vaguely saw Rose coming toward him with an expression of total dismay — We can't do it, Tom, I thought we could but I was wrong, we'll always be here — and tremblingly took the glass sparrow from Collins' hands.
'Now for your own conclusion,' Collins said. 'You know it's over, don't you? Look. Our audience has gone home.'
Tom did not have to look. He knew the seats were empty now, waiting for the next repeat performance and the next after that.
'Rose is already mine,' Collins said. 'And so are you, but you don't know it yet.'
The lights snapped off. Collins' fingers brushed his own, and the glass sparrow was filled with glowing many-colored light.
29
Tom stepped backward in the punctured darkness, aware after a moment of blinding pain that the magician had healed his wounds. In the moment of pain, the glass sparrow had jumped out of his hand and landed safely on the carpet before the stage, where its inner light darkened and died.
The handkerchieves fell from his hands.
'Wait,' he said, and picked up the glass sparrow. No light was left in it.
'Now it is your time, apprentice,' Collins whispered.
'Why did you heal me?' Rose found his waist, her arm circled him, and they both backed in lockstep into the first row of seats.
'I want you as you came,' Collins said. 'Aura. I don't want you to have the aura of a wounded fawn. I want the original Tom Flanagan, complete in every aspect — the shining boy.'
Tom pushed Rose sideways, toward where he remembered the door was placed.
'You can see me, can't you?' Collins whispered. 'Even in the dark, boy? I can see you perfectly well.'
And he could see the magician, for he was wrapped in a dazzling, rippling band of color.
'Del was not enough. The other messenger demands you.'
'Or you,' Tom said. He held up his right hand. It was in darkness, but ribbons of light ran about it. Rose sucked in her breath, terrified.
'You've frightened our dear little Rose. She's never seen you in full dress before. Never seen your choir robes. But then, you haven't either, have you?'
'I'm as good as you are,' Tom said, knowing he was not.
The magician ripped off the wig and sent it sailing toward the stage, where first it glimmered and then dimmed like a cheap lightbulb.
'Speckle John thought so too.'
CRASH! Another deafening, destroying wingbeat.
'The owl wants to be fed.'
Tom made sure of his grip on the glass sparrow with one hand; clamped Rose's wrist with the other and gave a signaling tug; and ran.
30
Behind him in the empty theater Collins started to laugh, and Rose went only a few steps before she said, 'I can't. I can't run. You go. I'm his anyway.'
'You won't stay.' He yanked her along behind him and pulled her through the open door.
'We can't get away.'
He looked past Rose and saw a flickering outline coming calmly, inexorably toward the door.
My little girl is right. Collins was feeling inside his mind as he had felt inside Skeleton's. You cannot. Look at me.
The outline blazed like a tightningbolt, so strongly that purple and red. radiance flashed through the door and made the wall opposite momentarily gleam like a neon sign.
