“But, Mom—”
“It’s that Ginny girl, isn’t it? You want to run away and marry her or something. Always going out with her four or five times a week, coming home late at night even though you know you have school the next day, sneaking in and thinking I’m asleep so I don’t know how late. How stupid do you think I am, Sydney?”
He saw the tears brimming in rage and shook his head, in slow defeat. “All right,” he said sullenly. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to save you and Dad some money, that’s all.”
“No,” she said, anger fled and her voice suddenly soft. “You just don’t want to leave me alone.”
He allowed her to hug him tightly as he sat there, his head pushed into her small breasts; and he was ashamed and annoyed that an image of Ginny sprang instantly into his mind, chewing thoughtfully on her precious chocolates and smiling at… someone else. His mother began rocking him, crooning wordlessly, and he wondered if she suspected how much he loved her, and how much he needed someone else to love, suspected that his dates with Ginny were solitary walks in the park, along the back streets, along the river. He wondered, and suddenly cared that she did not know.
Later that night, when supper was done and the dishes washed and his mother was working her needlepoint in front of the television, he walked down to the luncheonette to see what was happening, and on the way home a few minutes later plucked four huge golden mums from Dimmesdale’s garden, saluted Flo’s house as he passed it on the run, and gave the flowers to his mother. As she cried. And he stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, waiting, then mumbling something about his homework and retreating to his room.
The following afternoon he saw his father’s car in the driveway. Their reunion was, as always, noisy and emotional, and he whooped through an improvised dance when he learned that his dad had been transferred to the home office and would no longer travel. His mother grinned, he grinned, and for the first time that year they went out to dinner.
And in the restaurant he saw Ginny sitting with her parents. When she spotted his staring, she smiled and held it. He choked and dared a smile back.
In school the next day she passed him a note. He did not read it, did not want to—the last time she had done it was to beg him for an introduction to his ex-best friend. He stood in the hall after class and held the folded paper dumbly in his hand, and didn’t even notice when Flo asked him a question, saw the note and took it, opened it and read it with one eye closed. When she had done, her lips were tight and, he thought, she looked rather saddened. She handed it back to him and left without speaking. He knew why when he followed, unbelieving, the words that directed him to meet Ginny after supper, in the park, and alone.
No, he thought; not me, it’s a mistake.
But he showered twice when he finally made it home, tried on four pairs of jeans and three shirts before he achieved the effect he thought she would like.
When he left, his mother and father were sitting in the living room, holding hands on the sofa and watching a blank-screened television. Hot damn, he thought, and smiled.
The park was small, scarcely two blocks long and three blocks deep, but once inside he walked hurriedly through the trees and across a small baseball field, around an even smaller pond and back into the trees again. The wind had picked up somewhat, and the leaves and brush whispered at him as he passed, stroked at his arms and face, scuttled underfoot like small furless animals. Here the sounds of the street were smothered in shadows, and the shadows themselves were tantalizing and deep. Yet he refused to allow himself to fantasize. Whatever Ginny wanted to do was all right with him. Just talking with her would be the improvement he had searched for, prayed for, wished… his hand slapped at his hip pocket. The handkerchief with the rose was still at the window, but he grinned when he realized he would need no talisman this time. Be yourself, his mother had told him often enough; and so he would be, if that’s what Ginny wanted.
She was standing when he found her, almost despairing that he wouldn’t, leaning against the curved trunk of a birch, dressed in powder-blue cardigan and tartan skirt, her hair feathered down over her shoulders. He stopped until she noticed him and nodded, and held out her hand. He took it, felt its cool, its soft, felt her press against him and lift her head, her face, her lips to his.
Lord, he thought; and thought no more until they were sitting side by side against the tree, staring through the foliage at the first glare of stars.
“I’ve wanted you for a long time,” she said finally, quietly, almost shyly.
“Me, too,” he said, grimacing at the brilliance of his response.
“I thought you were the one who was sending me all those chocolates.”
“I was,” he admitted, looking away and smiling. “I knew you liked them.”
“You’ll get me fat.”
“Never,” he said seriously. “Ginny, you’ll never get fat.” In silence they listened to a mockingbird’s sigh.
“Ginny… why did you send me that note?”
“I don’t know. Suddenly, I just felt like it.”
She took his hand and nuzzled it. Her lips were soft, moist, and he thought of the rose.
“I’m glad you liked the candy.”
She laughed and lay her head on his arm. “I couldn’t live without them.”
He grinned as she kissed his palm, and wondered how long she would keep him there, in the park, beneath the trees, on the grass.
“Ginny, do you… this is dumb, but do you believe in wishes?”
“You’re right, that’s dumb. You’re the smartest kid in the class. You should know better.”
“No, I mean it.” He felt his face grow warm as she stared at him, her eyes moist, her lips gleaming darkly. “You know, the other day I was so mad when you… well, I wanted you so much I even wished I could have been one of the chocolates or something.”
“Now that,” she said, “is not so dumb. It’s not. It’s beautiful.” Her tongue flicked over his thumb. Kissed it. Moved to his lips and he drew her down on top of him.
A rustling in the branches above them. The feel of grass on the back of his neck. And suddenly, as she wriggled over his chest, he thought of poor Flo and the sad look on her face.
Something drifted down to his cheek, and he thought of the mums he had given his mother… and his father’s car parked in the drive. The Joiners’ luck.
The blackred rose. In his handkerchief on the windowsill. Crushed. Dead.
“You’re sweet,” she whispered as she took the first bite.
4.
Thorn
The window. Framed on the inside by pale white curtains. Framed on the outside by two spikes of juniper.
The cobbler’s bench. Roughly hewn and edged with splinters.
The man on the bench seated before the window. Dressed in a preacher’s black jacket, black trousers, black shoes. His hair a trapped cloud of angry grey. His eyes only shadows. His mouth just air.
Watching: the eldest and the youngest pass to the opposite side of the street, while those in between quickened their pace but kept to the sidewalk; the traffic pass in pendulum waves; the wind, the rain, the sun light to dark.
Listening: the laughter stifled, giggling bitten back, footfalls and running and not a few dares; the snarl of dogs, the spitting of cats, the wingbeats of birds that deserted his trees; and the wind, and the rain, and the sun light to dark.
And when the moon had gone and the street was a grave, he stood and stretched and moved out to his garden where he grabbed with powerful hands what remained of the flowers stolen during the day. He carried the debris into the kitchen, down the cellar stairs, and dumped it all on a pile in the corner.
Then he turned to the center of the floor where strings of artificial suns glared brightly over beds of new-growing flowers. Violets, pansies, mums, and lilies. He considered them carefully, and the promises they would bring.
But sooner or later someone would come inside. A young boy on a lark, a man simply cu
rious. Perhaps even a girl who was braver than most.
No, he thought; there was still too much laughter.
Around the furnace, then, and into the corner where the lights did not reach and the warmth would not spread. He blinked slowly, forcing his eyes to adjust until they could barely discern a row of low bushes like miniature Gorgons, with twigs instead of snakes and buds instead of fangs. He took a deep breath of the swirling dark air, released it slowly and dropped to his knees.
His fingers moved with ritual slowness over the buttons of his shirt and parted the edges to expose his chest. He leaned over, and touched a forefinger to his skin, probing, tracing, then taking his nail and digging into the flesh that would never form scars. There was no pain. Only the practiced identification of smooth sticky wetness. With the fingertip, then, he touched at his chest, at the letter drawn there, and on each waiting bud (with the sigh of a name) he placed one shimmering drop (with the remembrance of a name), and sat back and watched as the buds drank in the blood… and the dark… and the air never warm.
Were roses.
Blackred.
Blackred… and waiting.
Owls Hoot in
the Daytime
Manly Wade Wellman
That time back yonder, I found the place myself, the way folks in those mountains allowed I had to. I was rough hours on the way, high up and then down, over ridges and across bottoms, where once there’d been a road. I found a bridge across a creek, but it was busted down in the middle, like a warning not to use it. I splashed across there. It got late when I reached a cove pushed in amongst close-grown trees on a climbing slope.
An owl hooted toward where the sun sank, so maybe I was on the right track, a path faint through the woods. I found where a gate had been, a rotted post with rusty hinges on it. The trees beyond looked dark as the way to hell, but I headed along that snaky-winding path till I saw the housefront. The owl hooted again, off where the gloom grayed off for the last of daylight.
That house was half logs, half ancient whipsawed planks, weathered to dust color. Trees crowded the sides, branches crossed above the shake roof. The front-sill timber squatted on pale rocks. The door had come down off its old leather hinges. Darkness inside. Two windows stared, with flowered bushes beneath them. The grassy yard space wasn’t a great much bigger than a parlor floor.
“What ye wish, young sir?” a scrapy voice inquired me, and I saw somebody a-sitting on a slaty rock at the house’s left corner.
“I didn’t know anybody was here,” I said, and looked at him and he looked at me.
I saw a gnarly old man, his ruined face half-hid in a blizzardy white beard, his body wrapped in a brown robe. Beside him hunkered down what looked like a dark-haired dog. Both of them looked with bright, squinty eyes, a-making me recollect that my shirt was rumpled, that I sweated under my pack straps, that I had mud on my boots and my dungaree pant cuffs.
“If ye nair knowed nobody was here, why’d ye come?” scraped his voice.
“It might could be hard to explain.”
“I got a lavish of time to hark at yore explanation.”
I grinned at him. “I go up and down, a-viewing the country over. I’ve heard time and again about a place so far off of the beaten way that owls hoot in the daytime and they have possums for yard dogs.”
An owl hooted somewhere.
“That’s a saying amongst folks here and yonder,” said the old man, his broad brown hand a-stroking his beard.
“Yes, sir,” I agreed him, “but I heard tell it was in this part of the country, so I thought I’d find out.”
The beard stirred as he clamped his mouth. “Is that all ye got to do with yore young life?”
“Mostly so,” I told him the truth. “I find out things.”
The animal alongside him hiked up its long snout.
It was the almightiest big possum I’d ever seen, big as a middling-sized dog. Likely it weighed more than fifty pounds. Its eyes dug at me.
“Folks at the county seat just gave me general directions,” I went on. “I found an old road in the woods. Then I heard the owl hoot and it was still daytime, so I followed the sound here.”
I felt funny, a-standing with my pack straps galled into me, to say all that.
“I’ve heard tell an owl hoot by daytime is bad luck,” scraped the voice in the beard. “Heap of that a-going, if it’s so.”
“Over in Wales, they say an owl hooting means that a girl’s a-losing her virginity,” I tried to make a joke.
“Hum.” Not exactly a laugh. “Owls must be kept busy a-hooting for that, too.” He and the possum looked me up and down. “Well, since ye come from so far off, why don’t me bid ye set and rest?”
“Thank you, sir.” I unslung my pack and put it down and laid my guitar on it. Then I stepped toward the dark door hole.
“Stay out of yonder,” came quick warning words. “What’s inside is one reason why nobody comes here but me. Set down on that stump acrost from me. What might I call ye?”
I dropped down on the stump. “My name’s John. And I wish you’d tell me more about how is it folks don’t come here.”
“I’m Maltby Sanger, and this here good friend I got with me is named Ung. The rest of the saying’s fact, too. I keep him for a yard dog.”
Ung kept his black eyes on me. His coarse fur was grizzled gray. His forepaws clasped like hands under his shallow chin.
“Maybe I’d ought to fix us some supper while we talk,” said Maltby Sanger.
“Don’t bother,” I said. “I’ll be a-heading back directly.”
“Hark at me,” he said, scrapier than ever. “There ain’t no luck a-walking these here woods by night.”
“There’ll be a good moon.”
“That there’s the worst part. The moon shows ye to what’s afoot in the woods. Eat here tonight and then sleep here.”
“Well, all right.” I leaned down and unbuckled my pack. “But let me fix the supper, since I came without bidding.” I fetched out a little poke of meal, a big old can of sardines in tomatoes. “If I could have some water, Mr. Sanger.”
“’Round here, there’s water where I stay at.”
He got off his rock, and I saw that he was dwarfed. His legs under that robe couldn’t be much more than knees and feet. He wouldn’t stand higher than my elbow.
“Come on, John,” he said, and I picked up a tin pan and followed him round the house corner.
Betwixt two trees was built a little shackly hut, poles up and down and clay-daubed for walls, other poles laid up top and covered with twigs and grass for a roof. In front of it, in what light was left, flowed a spring. I filled my pan and started back.
“Is that all the water ye want?” he asked after me.
“Just to make us some pone. I’ve got two bottles of beer to drink.”
“Beer,” he said, like as if he loved the word.
He waddled back, a-picking up wood as he came. We piled twigs for me to light with a match, then put bigger pieces on top. I poured meal into the water in the pan and worked up a batter. Then I found a flat rock and rubbed it with ham rind and propped it close to the fire to pour the batter on. Afterward I opened the sardines and got my fork for Maltby Sanger and took my spoon for myself. When the top of the pone looked brown enough, I turned it over with my spoon and knife, and I dug out those bottles of beer and twisted off the caps.
We ate, squatted on two sides of the fire. Maltby Sanger appeared to enjoy the sardines and pone, and he gave some to Ung, who held chunks in his paws to eat. When we’d done, not a crumb was left. “I relished that,” allowed Maltby Sanger.
It had turned full dark, and I was glad for the fire.
“Ye pick that guitar, John?” he inquired. “Why not pick it some right now?”
I tuned my silver strings and struck chords for an old song I recollected. One verse went like this:
“We sang good songs that came out new,
But now they’re old amongst the young,
/>
And when we’re gone, it’s just a few
Will know the songs that we have sung.”
“I God and that’s a true word,” said Maltby Sanger when I finished. “Them old songs is a-dying like flies.”
I hushed the silver strings with my palm. “I don’t hear that owl hoot,” I said.
“It ain’t daytime no more,” said Maltby Sanger.
“Hark at me, sir,” I spoke up. “Why don’t you tell me just what’s a-happening here, or anyway a-trying to happen?”
He gave me one of his beady looks and sighed a tired-out sigh. “How’ll I start in to tell ye?”
“Start in at the beginning.”
“Ain’t no beginning I know of. The business is as old as this here mountain itself.”
“Then it’s right old, Mr. Sanger,” I said. “I’ve heard say these are the oldest mountains on all this earth. They go back before Adam and Eve, before the first of living things. But here we’ve got a house, made with hands.” I looked at the logs, the planks. “Some man’s hands.”
“John,” he said, “that there’s just a housefront, built up against the rock, and maybe not by no man’s hands, no such thing. I reckon it was put there to tole folks in. But I been here all these years to warn folks off, the way I tried to warn ye.” He looked at me, and so did Ung, next to him. “Till I seen ye was set in yore mind to stay, so I let ye.”
I studied the open door hole, so dark inside. “Why should folks be toled in, Mr. Sanger?”
“I’ve thought on that, and come to reckon the mountain wants folks right into its heart or its belly.” He sort of stared his words into me. “Science allows this here whole earth started out just a ball of fire. The outside cooled down. Water come in for the sea, and trees and living things got born onto the land. But they say the fire’s still inside. And fire’s got to have something to feed on.”
I looked at our own fire. It was burning small and hot, but if it got loose it could eat up that whole woods. “You remind me of old history things,” I said, “when gods had furnaces inside them and sacrifices were flung into them.”
Dark Forces: The 25th Anniversary Edition Page 43
