by Otto Penzler
“Here,” he said, his voice leaden, and this time she knew that it was not so in a tone of concern. “This should make you feel better.”
He held the glass to her lips, and as the liquid touched her tongue, the emotions that barreled through her grew even more grotesquely twin. Her living self, the one that knew of nothing but the living, and thought the dead were impossibly far away, was relieved to feel George’s left hand at the back of her head, comforting her, urging her to drink deeply. She was loved. She was protected. Her new self, the one with the blinders of life burned away, saw things with sudden clarity as they really were, saw into George, and could see the panic there in him. She knew him then as a wife should never know her husband. He did not want this child, had not even wanted their first child, was not entirely sure that he had ever really wanted her at all. He had always felt himself trapped by his snap decision to stay in Grover’s Corners. It had all become too much for him.
And so with trembling fingers he held the poison to her lips. He planned to tell his family and friends that she had died in childbirth. They would be surprised, but would not disbelieve. After all, such things were not so unusual. It was known to happen from time to time, just as her mother had warned her.
But she’d never figured it would happen to her.
And truth to tell, it hadn’t happened. But only he would ever know. George, and now, most unexpectedly, Emily as well.
She drank deeply, and soon felt the movements of her baby slow, and realized that she had been wrong, that it, too, had died, and as she began to sleep for what was meant to be the final time, she looked into her husband’s eyes and thought, with knowledge of the grave and with complete sincerity, “Poor, poor George.”
And then her husband was gone, her baby was gone, and she was back on the hill under an open sky, where she was meant to be boiled down to her essence in preparation for the world to come.
“I’m going back,” she said, to no one in particular. The stars had no answer, but at least one of her neighbors did.
“Is that you, Emily? Still worrying away at the world, I see. Don’t you remember? You’ve already been back.”
“Not the way I plan to go back now. You don’t know about George, what he’s done. I’ve got to go back for real.”
“You can’t do that, dear.”
“Don’t patronize me, Mrs. Gibbs.”
“I’m not, dear. It’s only that no one has ever gone back that way before.”
“I’ll do it. Just watch me.”
“You know it will only mean more pain. You’ve learned that much already, haven’t you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Emily. “I’ve got to see my George, see him now, see him and say more to him than the shallow things I said before. After what he’s done, I’ve got to tell him something. Live people don’t understand.”
“They never will, dear,” said Mrs. Gibbs.
“I can’t let myself believe that. George will be different. George will understand. I’ll make him understand.”
“You can’t make the living do anything.”
“It doesn’t matter. George will listen to me. I know he will.”
“Oh, my boy will listen all right. But you’re not the pretty girl you once were. If you go before him as you are now, and he sees you again, like this, he’ll have to listen. You’ll certainly get his attention. The true question is, will he hear?”
“I’ll make him hear,” said Emily, with the confidence possessed only by the newly dead. “You watch.”
“I don’t believe I will, dear. It’s terribly tiring staying awake like this for you. I believe I’ll rest for a while. And don’t worry about the likes of us, dear. We’ll still be here when you get back.”
Emily listened for the sound of her mother-in-law sleeping, and the sounds of all the others around her who made up the history of Grover’s Corners, but there was nothing—no breathing, no snoring, no hint that there was any life there. And in truth, there was not. But Emily refused to sleep the sleep of the dead, not when George was out there, his double crime still a fresh wound in her mind.
All of the strength that had been missing before, when George had wailed above her, coursed through her explosively now. Her hands, which had been tied by invisible bonds, now pushed against and through the flimsy wooden roof of her coffin. Carrying her will before her like a torch, she pierced the dirt above like a swimmer surfacing after a dive, and found herself on the hillside, looking down at the few distant lights of the town she so loved. She wished she could feel the wind against her face, but could not. Her torn and leathery skin was beyond that now. She looked down at her headstone, at the dates beneath her name that insulted her with their brevity.
“I was so young,” she said.
“We all were,” said Mrs. Gibbs with a final yawn, before turning back to sleep. “Now go do whatever it is you think you have to do.”
Emily walked down the gravel roadway up which she had been carried. She remembered that now, remembered it all, though when it had occurred she had still been taking her first brief nap. Along the way she passed so many sleepers, and as she saw them, she felt their presence in a way she never had when as a child she played hide-and-seek among the tombstones. How could she have missed them? She wanted to call out to them all to join her, to return to their loved ones as she was doing, but she knew they would not listen. Unlike Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Soames, they were long gone, and would not have responded no matter how loudly Emily called. The part that belonged to the living had been completely burned away, so that all that remained was the eternal.
What she and George had was eternal, too. She would never forget that. And once she reminded George of that fact, he would be unable to forget it either.
She thudded noisily through the home that she and George had once lived in together. Her heart sank to see the clutter that he had allowed to overgrow the place she used to keep so clean. The piles were high and the dust was thick. It was late, and he was surely to bed, and that is where she found him. She sensed no others in the house. Her baby was dead, but where was George, Jr.? Perhaps he was spending the night with a cousin, which was just as well. She wouldn’t have wanted him to hear what was to come.
Their half-full marriage bed looked bleak, and even though George was in the bed alone, he was curled as far away as possible from the side Emily had once occupied. He teetered at the edge of the mattress. Emily could not help but pause before the site where she had died. George, as if in his sleep sensing her there, turned fitfully. She spoke his name, but words were not enough to wake him. Her lungs did not seem to house the strength of her limbs, and so her words were but a whisper.
She leaned over to touch a shoulder, and his eyes snapped open.
“Emily,” he said. His eyes were still full of fear, but it was not solely of Emily. It was of everything, as if there was no longer a part of the world that did not torment him. And he looked so old! Even older than when she had last seen him. Now his hair was completely white, and his skin was so wrinkled as to match the face she remembered on his grandfather. No wonder George, Jr., was not here; he was long gone to a life of his own.
How much time had passed in slumber? How much life had been lost?
“I’m so sorry, Emily,” he said.
“I know that, George,” she said, leaving her fingers pressed against him. He did not move, just lay there and studied her with eyes near tears.
“I cannot stop dreaming of you,” he said. “Even when I’m awake, I dream of you. How can I ever make you understand, Emily? I can barely understand myself. I was so afraid. I thought I knew how to make my fear go away. But after what I did to you, after what I did to the baby, it only became worse.”
“I know that all already, George. I’ve been given that gift. And that’s why I’m here. That’s why I’ve come back. To tell you that there’s no reason to be afraid. No reason at all.”
He smiled then, and sighed. From the strength of that sigh,
it seemed to have been the first one he had allowed himself in a long while.
“Do you really mean that?” he said.
“Yes. Yes, I do, George. Life is wonderful, you see. I want to make sure you understand that.”
“I do. I know that now, Emily.”
“I’m glad,” she said. “I love you, George.”
“And I love you, too, Emily,” he said, lapsing into sobs. “I’m sorry I never realized that until it was too late.”
“It’s never too late,” said Emily.
And then she killed him.
GEORGE REMEMBERED WHAT it was like to be alive, but the stars above did not surprise him. He was not for a moment fooled that he still remained in such a state. There was no more life in him, and he knew how, and he knew why. He shuddered there in the grave beside his wife.
“It was all so terrible, wasn’t it?” he said. “And silly. And pointless. How did we ever bear it, Emily? Emily?”
She was sleeping more deeply now, having done what she needed to do. There was no George out there whose presence in the world of the living kept calling her back.
His cry beside her woke her from her slumber.
“But it was wonderful, too, at times,” she said, her voice still soft with the dreams of what would come. “Only we hardly ever knew it.”
“If only we could have.”
“I don’t think that’s possible, George, not for live people. That peace and that beauty was beyond us. I love you, George. Now you go back to sleep. Go back to sleep until we are made ready to meet again.”
“I can’t, Emily. There’s something . . . I sense that there’s still something out there.”
“Don’t be silly, George. It’s time to wean yourself of all that.”
“Wait! Listen!”
There was a shuffling on the rough road coming up the hill toward them, the hill beyond which the town of Grover’s Corners had grown nearer to the graveyard. A middle-aged man stood over them, stooped with sorrow, his face achingly familiar to George.
“Why, it’s like looking in a mirror,” said George. “It’s George, Jr., come to visit us. And look at him. How long have I been here?”
“He’s far too old to be called junior any more, George. And he’s not here to visit us, darling. He’s here to visit himself.”
“He seems so sad.”
“That’s because he still thinks of us from time to time. He thinks he lost us both too soon. How sweet.”
George looked up at his son and felt the guilt that only the newly dead know.
“I don’t want anyone to feel such sadness because of me, Emily. It reminds me of the way I couldn’t help but feel about you. Couldn’t we—shouldn’t we—do something?”
“No, George. It’s not the same with children. At least not with our child. His pain is different. It’s not our place.”
“Are you sure?” said George. “I feel it. I feel it right now. I have that choice. I could come back and free him from that burden. I know I could.”
George’s fingers twitched as his son shed tears by the tombstone above them. But before he could lift his arm toward the surface, Emily roused herself from her great slumber and snaked her hand through the mud to lace her fingers through his.
“No, George,” she whispered with a yawn. “Let him be. He may be blind, but soon enough, he’ll see. Soon enough, one by one, all of them will.”
While George was focused on his wife’s eternal touch, he realized that his son had stolen away. He did not know how much time had passed. He realized that he had been sleeping. By now, George might even have joined them through the natural coursing of time, though he did not sense his son in the ground nearby.
He called once more to Emily, but this time she did not answer. She had already been weaned of this world for once and always, as he soon would be, too. He looked forward to that moment.
As he felt himself drift back to sleep, maybe for the last time, he studied the swimming stars above. Someone had once told him about stars, how it took the light from them millions of years to get to Earth. It didn’t seem possible, even with the promise of what was to come, that time could stretch on that long.
He could no longer feel Emily’s fingers wrapped in his own, but he knew in his heart that they were still there. Millions of years. They were hurtling towards him. As the light raced above and the living raced below, George was ready to spend that time exactly where he was.
AUGUST (WILLIAM) DERLETH (1909–1971) was born in Sauk City, Wisconsin, where he remained his entire life. He received an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin in 1930, by which time he had already begun to sell horror stories to Weird Tales (the first appearing in 1926) and other pulp magazines. During his lifetime, he wrote more than three thousand stories and articles, and published more than a hundred books, including detective stories (featuring Judge Peck and an American Sherlock Holmes clone, Solar Pons), supernatural stories, and what he regarded as his serious fiction: a very lengthy series of books, stories, poems, journals, etc., about life in his small town, which he renamed Sac Prairie.
Derleth’s boyhood friend and frequent collaborator, Mark Schorer (1908–1977), was born in the same town and attended the same university. He published his first novel, A House Too Old (1935), about Wisconsin life, while still a graduate student. He went on to a distinguished career as a scholar, critic, writer, and educator, holding positions at Dartmouth, Harvard, and the University of California (Berkeley). He won three Guggenheim scholarships and a Fulbright professorship to the University of Pisa. In addition to writing for the pulps, he sold many short stories to such magazines as The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Atlantic Monthly, but his most important work was his biography, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life (1961). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
“The House in the Magnolias” was first published in the June 1932 edition of Strange Tales; it was first collected in Colonel Markesan and Less Pleasant People by August Derleth and Mark Schorer (Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1966).
IF YOU HAD seen the magnolias, you would understand without further explanation from me why I went back to the house. My friends in New Orleans realized that it was just such a place as an artist like myself would light upon for his subject. Their objections to my going there were not based on notions that the house and its surroundings were not fit subjects for really excellent landscape paintings. No, they agreed with me there. Where they disagreed . . . But I had better fill in the background for you before I get too far ahead in my story.
I had been in New Orleans a month, and still had found no subject in that old city that really satisfied me. But, motoring one day out into the country with Sherman Jordan, a young poet with whom I was living during my stay in the city, we found ourselves about four miles out of New Orleans, driving along a little-used road over which the willows leaned low. The road broadened unexpectedly, and the willows gave way to a row of sycamores, and then, in the evening dusk, I saw the house in the magnolias for the first time.
It was not far from the road, and yet not too close. A great veranda with tall pillars stretched its length in front. The house itself was of white wood, built in the typical rambling Southern plantation style. Vines covered great portions of its sides, and the whole building was literally buried in magnolias—magnolias such as I have never seen before, in every shade and hue. They were fully opened, and even from the road I could see the heavy waxen artificiality of those nearest.
“There’s my picture!” I exclaimed eagerly. “Stop the car, old man.”
But Sherman Jordan showed no inclination to stop. He glanced quickly at his watch and said by way of explanation: “It’s almost six; we’ve got to get back for our dinner engagement.” He drove on without a second glance at the house.
I was disappointed. “It would have taken only a minute,” I reproached him.
I must have looked glum, for just as we were driving into New Orleans, he turned and said: “I’m sor
ry; I didn’t think it was so important.” I felt suddenly, inexplicably, that he was not sorry, that he had gone past the house deliberately.
I said: “Oh, it doesn’t make any difference. I can come out tomorrow.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he said: “Do you really think it would be such a good picture?”
“I do,” I said, and at the same instant I thought that he didn’t want me to paint that house. “Will you drive me out tomorrow morning?” I added.
“I can’t,” he said shortly. “I’ve promised Stan Leslie I’d go boating with him. But you can have the car, if you really insist on painting that house.”
I said nothing.
As we left the car he turned and said almost sharply: “Still, I think you might find better subjects if you tried.”
A cutting reply about my wasted month in New Orleans was on the tip of my tongue, but I held it back. I could not understand my friend’s utter lack of enthusiasm. I could not chalk it up to an inartistic eye, for I knew Sherman Jordan could be depended on for good taste. As I went upstairs to dress, there remained in my mind the picture of that lovely old house, surrounded by rich magnolias, marked off by the swaying sycamore trees.
My eagerness had not abated when I stepped from Jordan’s car next morning, opened the gate, and went up the path under the sycamores to the house in the magnolias. As I mounted the steps, walked across the veranda, and lifted the knocker on the closed door, I thought of painting a close-up of magnolias. I was turning this idea over in my mind when the door opened suddenly, noiselessly. And old woman stood there, apparently a Negress, dressed plainly in starched white. Her face held me. It was peculiarly ashy—really gray—unhealthy. I thought: “The woman is ill.” Her eyes stared at me; they were like deep black pools, bottomless, inscrutable, and yet at the same time oddly dull. I felt momentarily uncomfortable.
