Shadowland

by Peter Straub

  You will be at home in Shadowland, Tom. I am your father and mother now.

  'Just come on,' he said, and dragged her down the hall. She had begun to cry: not from fear, he knew. From pain. 'Hurry,' he commanded.

  They had exactly one chance, Tom thought. An impos­sible chance, but their only one. If Collins could send a fishing line into his mind, he could send one back. Burn that ball back — Skeleton had said it, dredging up what must have been some miserable childhood memory. Okay, I'll burn that ball back. I'll take off his head with it.

  Rose sobbed with every step.

  'Only a little more. Only a few more feet.' He felt for the light switch on the wall outside the kitchen, and his fingers ran over ribbed plastic. 'There.' Yellow light fell on them. '

  The curled posters, the shattered glass. The carpet had been singed into black popcorn. Big oval blisters bulged from the walls, surrounded by meteor showers of smaller, round blisters.

  No need for shadows now.

  Rose jerked in pain or surprise beside him, and he thought it was because of Collins. But she was looking in the wrong direction for that — behind him, in the direction of the living room and front door.

  'You're going to need a little help, Red,' came a velvety voice. In the same moment, Tom whirled around and the scarred receptacle from which he had pulled Skeleton Ridpath shuddered to its feet.

  Climb in, boy? Or do I have to push you?

  'Just remember you got a great big battery,' Bud Copeland said. 'You found out a lot of things about yourself today, but you got to forget about that now. You have to think about the job, son.'

  The Collector dangled, in the hall, knocking itself against the blistered and discolored walls. Its empty head swiveled toward Tom; toward Rose; back to Tom.

  Bud moved up beside them, and there was the shock of seeing right through him again, to the blisters on the wall. They looked like stains on the fabric of his suit.

  'I'll give you a big, big shove. You'll have a real good time. Way way way way down in the dump.'

  Tom's mind felt a sudden wrench, followed by an enormous flaring pain.

  'Remember what you heard, Red. Anybody can be collected at any time.'

  Collins went fishing in his mind again, and the hook snagged on the picture he had of himself and Skeleton down in there, trapped inside the Collector. He stepped back, more afraid of that picture than he'd been of anything at Shadowland; more afraid of that than death.

  'You don't want to run, do you, Red? You want to stay near where you got to stay.'

  Yes, he thought. Where I got to stay. He felt Collins jerking him like a fish, and he blasted, Out!

  'I'm what you know, Red,' Bud told him. 'That's all I am now. You brought me here — so I could tell you. I'm just your shadow. That's your battery working, Red. Crank it up as high as it can get.'

  But I don't know how to crank it up, Tom thought despairingly: sometimes things just come.

  'Like you did on the wall with nails through your hands,' Bud's voice whispered. Or was that his own voice? 'It's not going to be any easier than that. But I helped him long enough — now I'm going to help you.' He vanished, and Tom felt suddenly abandoned.

  Collins appeared at the corner of the hallway, sur­rounded by a prismatic light.

  If I made you come, Tom said inside himself, then come back. I need you. Now.

  'Now,' Collins echoed, and the force of his mind jerked Tom forward to him. 'Now, little bird.'

  31

  It was like being caught in a typhoon. Invisible wind pushed him, tore all but his helplessness from his thoughts — he forgot Bud and Rose as he struggled to stay on his feet. He fought to stay away from Collins and the Collector, but the typhoon swung him irresistibly forward. The wind whipped him sideways, and his head cracked against the wall. Smell of burning: the smell of Carson warping toward destruction. Strong hands were inside his head, a hook was in his brain, tugging and tugging.

  Strong little bird, aren't you?

  The glass sparrow in his hand turned glowing red. No! his mind shouted, and the pull of the hands weakened. The typhoon dropped him.

  Collins' face hovered a foot from his own — the sneering mouth, the powerful nose. The Herbie Butter makeup was dripping down his cheeks, streaking away, as if being burned off from within.

  It's work for him too, Tom realized.

  He shot an impulse from his own mind straight into Collins' eyes, aware of Rose screaming back there by the living room — she had been screaming since he had been torn away from her. Collins reared back, and he tried to follow his impulse into the magician's head.

  Revulsion checked him: not the blind, lost feeling when he had probed Rose's mind, but the instinctive holding back of touching something repugnant, a cancer. . . . Collins' mind slammed against his like a crossed sword.

  Not that way, brat. It's your bedtime.

  Collins pushed into his mind with terrific force, and he reeled among images of lacquered birds, steaming bodies, one great bird swooping down to carry him off. Circuits in his brain smoked and flamed . . . locked in that room for good, boy, that's where you'll be. . . .

  In his hands, the glass sparrow turned black.

  Hands, fishhooks, metal clamps like those that had held the squalling badger — all this poured into Tom and grasped something that seemed like a white bird.

  Bedtime, child.

  Collins started to haul him out. The whites of the magician's eyes burned red.

  Tom summoned up Bud Copeland with the last of his nickering energy. Come back, Bud, now . . . now . . .

  'You again,' he heard Collins say, and the cruel machinery opened and loosened within him; and for Tom there was a drift of a thought — You betrayed me, bird . . .

  'You are the traitor,' he heard Bud say. 'Not the boy. Let him go, Doctor.'

  'You lost! Leave me!' Collins shouted. 'I sent you into insignificance!'

  Tom looked sideways, falling back out of Collins' grasp. The glass sparrow flashed yellow light, and the warmth of it went through his hand, burning a little on the fresh scar tissue.

  'You told the boy everything here came from the meeting of your mind with his,' Bud said. 'And that's all I am. Guess you gave him a weapon, Doctor, without knowing you were doing it.'

  And then a sidling, sly, sidestepping voice in his own mind and nowhere else: a voice he knew was his own, though it came wrapped in Bud's gorgeous rumble. You waitin' for the next train, child?

  'NO!' Collins screamed. 'You helped him! Traitor!'

  The wings shook the entire house, reminding Tom of the vastness of the powers just under his tongue and just behind his eyes. 'Look at me, killer,' he said. 'I'm going to feed the owl.'

  He knew the glass bird was gold and red, knew that he was broadcasting an aura to fill the entire house.

  'TRAITOR!' Collins screamed, and his eyes locked into Tom's: but Tom was already pouring in, grasping Collins as he had grasped Skeleton Ridpath, going past pictures of dead men with their faces ripped apart and exploding airplanes, going into the swamp of Collins' being, where nothing could hold him now, going as invincibly as if he wore white armor and feeling Collins melt beneath him. A bolt like lightning shivered him, but he grabbed and held, gripped the stuff of Collins' being and ripped backward. Get those fingers back. The secret did lie in hating well.

  'The pain won't be as bad as you anticipate,' he whispered. He pulled with everything in him, feeling the power blossom out and engulf Collins, feeling it wrapping about a squirming, wriggling, finally helpless force; and broke it; broke free.

  Something invisible and screaming was held suspended in the air: something treacherous and furious, something that would have been pure if it had not been so fouled by misuse.

  Tom groaned, and stuffed it deep down inside the Collector. 'Slam dunk,' he muttered.

  Rose tottered back, mumbling in fright, not knowing what had happened. In front of Tom, Collins' body lay in the corridor in what appeared to be deep c
oma. Beside it, the Collector, a threat again, whirled toward him with its unappeasable hunger.

  'This time I can remember how to finish it,' he said. Tom stepped to his side, the Collector tracking him brightly, and reached inside the bathroom and slammed the button home.

  32

  The whole purple body, damaged by the earlier flames, flowed past Tom, howling wordless sounds of disbelieving shock, and was pulled through the door. It grasped the frame with its fingers. The melted eyes found Tom, and the boy saw what he had not wanted to see: Collins far down inside, scrambling for release, still enough himself to think he could escape and trying to fight his way out of that awful room with its pressing horrors, the very grease of human misery. You made it, Tom thought. It's yours. The fingers weakened, and the Collector flowed out of sight.

  Tom stepped into the bathroom. He turned on the light. The mirror showed a roiling, smoky confusion. He switched the light off and tottered out.

  'You did it,' Rose breathed. 'I was hardly . . . I didn't think that anybody . . . '

  'Yeah,' Tom said. He sat down. Bud was gone; but Bud had never been there. 'Fine. Got one more thing to do.'

  Rose hovered in the dim light. 'One more. . . ?'

  'Ladies and gentlemen,' he pronounced, almost enjoy­ing the sight of Rose's tremulous uncertainty. 'Come over this way, Rose. I don't want you to get hurt. Ladies and gentlemen . . . the amazing Wall of Fire.'

  He had strength enough to reach down inside himself and find the key that had to be there. Fire, he thought, and a feeble little row of flames sprang up along the carpet directly before him. Rose stepped nearer to him. 'Not much of a wall,' he said, and giggled with exhaustion. 'More of a picket fence. Let's improve it.'

  And through his headache thought it into being. The row of flames mounted the wall and began to lick at the ceiling. Tom sat slumped in the hall and watched the fire grow. It ate the frame of the bathroom door, and looked as beautiful as a rose garden to him. He heard it spreading down the hall, feeding on the carpet, going toward the living room. It would love the staircase. Get it all, he thought, swallow every inch of it, and did not have to reach for more of his strength because the fire would swallow everything anyhow.

  He dully watched it spring up along the frames of the posters. Through the opening between the burning carpet and the fire spreading across the ceiling, he saw the flames speed into the living room.

  He giggled again. 'Forgot to think about a way out, Rose. Sit down and enjoy the pretty fire.' He picked up the glass sparrow and cradled it on his lap. 'Did you hear him singing, Rose? Did you hear that? That was the most beautiful thing . . . it sounded like he was so happy. It sounded better than that.' The fire moved toward his shoes. 'I'm sorry there isn't a way to get out, Rose.'

  'Of course there's a way to get out,' she said.

  'As a barbecue. Sit down and let's be barbecued together. I don't know what you are, but I love you anyhow.'

  She reached for him, and he raised his hand. The heat was starting to cook him now, and he imagined that there might be a minute or two of pain, only a little worse than the pain he had already suffered. But instead of sitting beside him and holding his hand, she pulled. 'I can't,' he said, and she pulled again, and he staggered up.

  'The tunnels, you dummy,' she said. 'We can go back under the lake.'

  She pulled up the trapdoor, and he looked around for a last time at the forbidden room. 'You know,' he said, 'he really was a great magician. Del was right about that. And at the beginning, it's hard to believe now, but at the beginning it was even fun in a way. I kept trying to figure out what it was all about.'

  Rose looked at him with cautious but ahnost maternal curiosity.

  'There's something in this room,' he remembered. 'Rose, I can't leave until I find it.'

  'There's nothing here,' she said. And that seemed true.

  'Something he said he was going to leave here for me — when he thought I might stay with him. I have to find it.'

  'We don't have any time.'

  'I don't think it'll take any time.'

  He woozily looked over the silvery gray walls. There had been a moment, the day after his 'welcome,' when he had paused at the door and sensed the presence in here of some invisible scene: Shadowland had wanted him to read the Book.

  'Hurry!' Rose said. The noises of the fire were advancing down the hall.

  'It's here,' he said dreamily. He turned about, still amazed that he could stand. He was looking at the wall opposite the door. Tom walked past the entrance to the tunnels and ran his hands over the wall. It was already warm. He gently moved his hand over the silvery paint.

  A panel swung open onto a little recess. The Book lay on a wooden stand, opened in the middle and surrounded by plush. If he had perverted the Book, Collins had at least kept it reverentially. Tom reached in and took the leather-bound volume off the stand. He reached behind his back and slid it under his belt where he had kept the old pistol. 'All right,' he said. 'I'm ready now.'

  Rose led the way down into the tunnel.

  33

  The way back, as it always is, was easier than the way forward. Tom heard no voices, no Twenties Nick sang 'Sweet Sue' and wafted himself another pull of prewar gin; the only noise they heard, and it followed them for half an hour, was the whooshing of the fire that consumed Shadowland: as if that were all Twenties Nick needed to hear before he could go back to his long sleep. The owl had been fed.

  'I'm so tired,' Tom said. Rose moved steadily on before him, playing the flashlight on the wooden supports and flaking walls.

  Soon he saw then' sleeping bags unrolled in the vaulted cavern. 'Please. I'm going to fall down.'

  'The house is only about ten minutes away,' Rose said. 'I have a better idea. You can sleep on the beach. In fresh air.' He followed her back to the summer house.

  34

  Rubbing his eyes, he came up into the dark living room. The sparrow weighed like a heavy suitcase in his right hand. Rose glimmered before him in the green dress: he realized that she had come barefoot all the way from the house. 'You must want to lie down too,' he said. 'Aren't there beds here? I just have to . . . I could take a nap.' His eyes were burning.

  'Whose bed do you want,' Rose said. 'Thorn's or Snail's?'

  'Oh, my God.' He could not sleep in those beds. 'But why the beach?'

  She put her arm around him. 'It's so close, darling Tom. Just a few steps more.'

  She took him out of the room and onto the porch. The moon made all bright with a magical silvery light which transformed all it touched. The world was a place of wonders. The edge of the sky before them burned a faint orange-red.

  'I like that little beach,' Tom said. 'I used to look for you there sometimes. The week before I got sick.'

  'I was always looking for you,' Rose told him. 'I was looking for you long before you came here.'

  'Come back to Arizona with me. Could you do that, Rose?' She was leading him down the steps. The grass was that leaning ocean, breathed upon by moonlight, he had seen once before. 'Del wanted that. He said it to me. once. We could find you somewhere to live. I guess we could.'

  'Of course we could,' she said.

  'We could get married when I'm eighteen. I'll work. I could always work, Rose.'

  'Of course you could,' she said.

  They were walking down the overgrown roadway. Each leaf on the trees about him shone with silvery light. The trunks were made of silver and pitchy onyx. 'So you'll marry me?' he said.

  'In eternity we are married.'

  'In eternity we're married now,' Tom said! That seemed overwhelmingly delightful and overwhelmingly true. 'It's just a little way now, isn't it?'

  'Just a little way.'

  They came through delicate brush onto the beach, also silvered by kindly moonlight. Across the water Shadowland gouted flame. The smoke pouring from the burning roof was darker than the sky. They stood on the sand a moment, watching it engulf itself. Tom saw flames moving behind the upper win
dows where Collins' temptations had been arrayed before him. 'The funny thing is, he was great,' Tom said. 'He was just what he said he was.'

  'Lie down,' Rose said. 'I don't want to look at that anymore. You need to sleep.' She stretched out on the pewter sand. 'Please lie down next to me.'

  'Hey . . . how do we get out? The wall. . . the barbed wire . . . we'll have to go back — '

  'No, you won't. Follow a path behind the summer house. It leads to a wooden gate.'

  'Clever Rose.' He lay down beside her on the sand, put the book beside him, and set the glass bird on top of it. Then he turned to Rose and took the perfect girl, the magic that seemed no magic but earthly bounty, in his arms.

  35

  They did not make love. Tom was content to hold her, to feel the petal skin of her shoulders, the curve of her skull beneath his hands. He could have sung like Del, in his friend's last moments, of the perfection of such things. Radiant moonlight, warm sand along his side, Rose's quiet breathing swinging him toward sleep.

  In eternity they were married.

  'Rose?' he muttered, and she made an interrogatory mmm? 'He told me a story — he told a story he said was about you.'

  'Shhh,' she breathed, and put her fingers on his mouth, and he swung all the way into oblivion.

  36

  Did she say anything before she left? We do not know. She would have spoken to him, I think, whispered a message into his sleeper's ear, but that message would have joined his bloodstream like Del's final song and would have been impossible to reconstruct into ordinary flawed human speech. And again like Del's song, which was an expression of completion and the end of change, it would have spoken of, would have hymned a further and necessary and unforeseen transformation: it is like saying that the message would have been the heartbeat of magic. In his sleep, he heard her go; and heard the rippling of the water.

  When he awakened it was to warm cloudless day, the sun already high. He saw that she was gone, and called her name. He called it again.

  Across the lake Shadowland, a smoking hole hi the landscape, fumed like an old pipe.