Lullaby for the Rain Girl
A Novel by Christopher Conlon
Color artwork from Bram Stoker Award winning artist Vincent Chong
Lullaby for the Rain Girl
A Novel by Christopher Conlon
Color artwork from Bram Stoker Award winning artist Vincent Chong
This eBook edition published 2012 by Dark Regions Press as part of Dark Regions Digital.
www.darkregions.com
Dark Regions Press
300 E. Hersey St.
Suite 10A
Ashland, OR, 97520
© 2012 Christopher Conlon
Premium signed hardcover editions with full color artwork from Bram Stoker Award winning artist Vincent Chong available at:
www.darkregions.com/books/lullaby-for-the-rain-girl-by-christopher-conlon
Acknowledgments
Most of the stories and poems included within the text of this novel have been previously published, some in different form, as follows.
“The Girl That Nobody Liked”: Dark Discoveries Magazine
“Shadows”: Pembroke Magazine
“Perfume, and Silence”: Santa Barbara Review
“What There Is”: Poet Lore
“A Certain Slant of Light”: Apparitions, ed. Michael Kelly (Undertow Books, 2009)
At a loss, you examine the mirror. There you are, you are not there.
—Mark Strand, “In the Privacy of the Home”
Me. And me now.
—James Joyce, Ulysses
Table of Contents
Part One - This Habit of Melancholy
Part Two - Heart, Heart
Part Three - The Carved Names
About the Author
The buckets and pans are still catching the rain that drips and trickles around us, but if the storm keeps up like this much longer I don’t know.
The power has been out for hours. Yet I know this building has backup generators. By candlelight I telephone downstairs to the lobby again and again. No answer. Thunder, fierce and sudden, roils around us, shaking the walls and rattling the pictures in their frames.
Finally I get up and move to the window, look the eight floors below at a street dotted sparsely with headlights that float like spirits in the rainbroken dark.
Such a long, long drop. So lonely a fall...
“Ben?”
I go to her, touch her hair. Seated, she pushes her face into the belly of my shirt. Lightning flashes: the room glows blue-white.
“I’m scared, Ben.”
“Don’t be. The building won’t collapse.”
“It feels like it will.”
“It’s all right.” I tousle her hair and step away again.
“Don’t leave me. Please.”
“I’m right here.”
“I can hardly see you.”
I sit next to her again with a sigh and touch her hand on the tabletop. She grabs my fingers and clings to them.
“Ben, there are so many things I don’t understand.”
“Do you think that I do?”
“Yes,” she says. “No. I don’t know.”
“I don’t understand anything. Not a thing.”
“Do you think the morning will ever come?”
“Yes.”
“Will it be sunny? And nice?”
“Maybe. It’ll be morning, anyway.”
“Please don’t let go of my hand.”
“I won’t.”
We listen to the rain spray the window, drip into the buckets.
“I wish we could go somewhere else,” she says.
“Where?”
“Anywhere. Anywhere but here.”
“We can’t.”
“I know. But—we can’t be here forever. We’ll get out somehow. Won’t we?”
“If we don’t, someone is bound to come get us. After the storm has passed.”
Lightning sparks the sky once more. In that instant my eyes happen to be on the window and—ah—I see the girl suspended there, hovering outside, staring into the apartment. Her dark eyes are enormous, glistening. Hungry.
But before the lightning has gone black, before I can stand or cry out, she’s vanished again.
Impossible, of course. She wasn’t there. She couldn’t have been there.
“We’re okay here,” I say at last, trying to convince myself. “We’re safe. We’ll be all right here ’til morning.”
“Morning,” she whispers intensely. “Yes, morning. Until morning.”
I feel her warm hand around mine and clasp it tight.
After a while I hear the quiet sound of weeping in the room. For some time I fail to comprehend that the sound is coming from me.
PART ONE
This Habit of Melancholy
This Melancholy of which we are to treat, is a habit, a serious ailment, a settled humour, as Aurelianus and others call it, not errant, but fixed: and as it was long increasing, so, now being (pleasant or painful) grown to a habit, it will hardly be removed.
—Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
1
It was raining the day I met her—the Rain Girl. It had to be; otherwise it would never have occurred to me to think of her by that name. Yet she had no other. At least not then. Not yet.
I was sitting at my desk, rather glumly looking over some of my students’ grammar exercises, aware of the sound of the downburst outside but much more of my throbbing headache—a perpetual problem for me at the end of the school day—when I realized that someone was in the classroom with me. I had that odd sense people describe of another’s eyes on them. I glanced up.
A young girl was sitting at one of the desks in the back row, slightly hunched over. She wore a plain brown coat, too light for winter. Her hair, straight and reaching to her shoulders, was dark brown, and her eyes, too—which were strikingly large but empty of expression. She was staring at me.
“Hi,” I said, teacher-friendly.
She didn’t respond.
“Staying out of the rain?”
Nothing.
“Well, you can sit there if you want,” I said. “I’ve got some grading to do. But wouldn’t you be more comfortable in the library?”
I went back to the grammar exercises. Kids wandering into the room was not an unusual phenomenon after school, though I was surprised I didn’t recognize this girl—if for no other reason than she was white. Well over eighty percent of our student population is African-American, and much of the remainder is Latino; naturally I tended to notice the occasional stray student who happened to look like me. Human nature.
I graded a paper or two, but with the nagging sense that she was still staring at me. Finally I looked up. She was.
“What’s your name?” I asked. “You’re not one of my students, are you?” I knew full well that she wasn’t.
“No,” she said at last, her voice small in the high-ceilinged old room.
The building was very quiet; I could hear only the sound of the rain spattering the windows. My classroom’s acoustics are such that when the room is mostly empty the sound bounces everywhere, creating a slight echo effect. Someone talking to me from the back of the room can seem very far away, much farther than they really are. It was like that now. She seemed small, smaller than it was possible for her to be.
“Who do you take for English?” I asked, making conversation.
“I—” She stopped talking. Either that, or I didn’t hear her words.
“What? I’m sorry, who did you say?”
“I—I don’t remember his name.”
“Mm. Probably Mr. Brandenburg. Does that sound familiar?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“Big fellow, blonde hair,
moustache?”
“I’m not sure.”
I left it. I tried to grade more papers, but after a few minutes I knew that between my headache and this odd girl—who was, yes, still staring at me—I might as well go home. Sighing, I slipped the exercises into my grade book, took my briefcase from under the desk and pushed all my papers into it. Latching the case again, I stood and slipped into my coat.
“Time to head out,” I told her.
She continued to stare at me.
“I have to go home,” I said, feeling slightly uncomfortable somehow. “Will you be all right here?”
No response.
“Look…” I stepped closer to her, moving between the desks. Again I had the strange feeling that she was farther away than she was, than she could be. I stopped a couple of desks from her. “Are you waiting for someone? A friend? Your mom?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not waiting for anybody.”
Her voice was tiny, soft, a light sound I could hardly hear, a sound that blended with the rain, as if they were part of each other, inseparable. She was very thin, very frail in appearance. She looked, it seemed to me, as if a stray wind might cause her to crumple up and blow away.
Not knowing quite why, I turned a chair from one of the desks perhaps six feet from her and sat down.
“I don’t remember seeing you around,” I said gently.
“I’m new.”
“Oh.” I nodded. That, at least, made some sense. I looked at her. Her face was nondescript. A plain flat nose, thin colorless lips, pale and hollow cheeks. Neither attractive nor unattractive. A girl who would never be popular or unpopular, exactly. Just there. The kind of girl who would channel through her classes without being noticed more than absolutely necessary. Her schoolwork would be graded and returned to her; she would answer adequately if called on in class; her parents, whoever they were, would never come to school conferences. Here for a while, then gone and forgotten. Like so many of them.
For some reason the thought made me sad. I had a sudden impulse not to let it happen with this child: not to let her disappear into the cracks just because she was—well—bland. Bland in appearance, bland in manner. Unmemorable. Even her sole distinguishing feature, her eyes, were flat and dull; they weren’t eyes any boy would ever seek to lose himself in. They were just big, that’s all. Big, brown, uninteresting eyes.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Sixteen.”
I did a double take. “Sixteen?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“I know. I look younger.”
She looked much younger. In fact, I’d begun to think she couldn’t be a high school student at all. She looked more like twelve.
“I—no, you look fine,” I said. “I didn’t mean anything.”
“It’s because I’m small,” she said.
“Um…” My head could not summon up an appropriate response. I found myself wishing I could have a cigarette. It would help with the headache, and with the weird nervousness I was feeling, too. Then I remembered that I’d stopped a week ago, for the twentieth or thirtieth time. A moment after that I also remembered that I still had a pack in my briefcase, a pack with exactly one cigarette in it—in case of emergency, I’d reasoned. I suspected that such an emergency was going to occur in a few minutes, the second I stepped out of this building.
“Well,” I said falteringly, “how—how do you like the school so far?”
She shrugged.
“Do you like your classes?”
She shrugged.
“Well, you know—you can always come in here after school if you want to. It’s usually quiet in here in the afternoons.”
“Okay.”
“It can be a good place to study. Better than the library, sometimes. Quieter.”
“Okay.”
“So…” But I couldn’t keep it going. I didn’t know her at all, didn’t even know her name. I’d gone as far as a friendly, supportive teacher could go with an unknown quantity like this girl. “So…feel free to stop by, okay?” I stood.
“Okay.”
“Right.”
Then, a bit to my surprise, she said: “What’s your name?”
“Me? I’m Mr. Fall.”
“What’s your first name?”
“My first name is Ben.”
“Ben…Fall. Ben Fall.” She seemed to be trying out the sound of it.
“Benjamin, actually.”
“Benjamin Fall.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s a good name. It sounds like the name of somebody who would write books or something.”
I looked at her. “Actually, I used to.”
“Really? I thought so. Are you famous?”
“No.”
“I’ve heard of you, though. I’m sure I have.”
“Probably,” I explained, “you saw my book in the school library. They have it there. A novel.”
“Oh.” She nodded. “That must be it.”
“I’m sure it is.” I smiled. “Maybe you’ll read it sometime.”
“Maybe.”
“Now, I have a question for you.”
“Yeah?”
“What’s your name?”
“My name?”
Just then there was a sound behind us. Looking around I saw Barb Seymour standing in my doorway, looking, as always, disheveled and rushed. Barb would be an attractive woman if she took care of herself; as it is, with her big unkempt mane of yellow-and-gray hair, her gigantic old-lady-style glasses, and her perpetually rumpled pants suits, she looks like exactly what she is: an overworked, middle-aged high-school teacher. She had a couple of boxes of chalk in her hand. I knew what that meant. Barter time.
“Ben,” she said in her typically hurried tone, “so glad I caught you before you left. Do you have any goddamn Xerox paper? I have to give an exam tomorrow and I’m completely out. Trade you this chalk.”
I smiled. “Anything for you, Barbie.” I moved to my desk drawer for the paper, of which I had an excess this week. Such supplies were not easy to come by in the D.C. Public School system; things like paper, chalk, pencils, and markers were exchanged privately among teachers like samizdat literature in the old Soviet Union. “But how did you get the extra chalk?”
“Ha!” She moved toward me. “When they opened the supply office on Monday, I was there for some pens. While the old man was turned around getting them, I reached over the counter and swiped a few boxes and stuffed them into my bag. I didn’t even need them. But my chalk allotment was filled for the month, so I figured what the hell. They’d come in handy somehow.”
“You’re pure evil.”
“Indeed I am. I know we’ll hear about it at the next staff meeting. We’ll probably spend half an hour on the case of the missing boxes of chalk.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” I chuckled, handing her the paper. She put the chalk on my desk.
“This is a lifesaver, Ben, really,” she said, brushing an unruly lock of hair from her eyes. “Thanks.”
“No problem. What are you doing this weekend?”
“Me? Same ol’, same ol’. Grading exams. Waiting for the world to end.”
“Oh, come on.” Barb loved to tease me about my Y2K worries. My logical mind told me it was all nonsense: that it simply could not be possible that every computerized system in the country, perhaps the world, would seize up with the new year, become inoperable, plunge us into everlasting night—a new Dark Age. And yet there were serious articles in major publications highlighting what experts felt might be very real dangers on that night. Stay out of elevators, they warned. Try not to be having surgery. And for God’s sake, do not board an airplane. It was madness—I knew it was madness, it had to be madness—but there was an awful feeling deep inside me that it might just be true. At night I found myself picturing elevators in freefall, patients on operating tables suddenly flatlining, airplanes careening out of control, spiraling down down down. I’d not ad
mitted to Barb just how much fear I was feeling, of course; simply acknowledging a bit of concern was enough for her to turn it into a running gag. She’s a science teacher, after all.
“Really, Ben, you ought to take a risk. Be using your VCR just when it hits midnight. See if it explodes or something.”
“I don’t notice you booking a plane to anywhere that night.”
“Me? I’ve got no place to go. Hey, Ben, though, I have to get my test together, I really do. Thanks for the paper, okay? And Merry Chr—I mean, happy holidays. That’s what we’re supposed to say now, right?” And, smiling, she rushed out, never not in a hurry.
“Well,” I said, turning back toward the girl, “anyway, now that you know my name, I’d like—”
It didn’t surprise me when I saw that she wasn’t there. Somehow, on some level, I think I’d expected it. Anyway, she was gone. Maybe she’d headed to the library downstairs—it would still be open for a few more minutes—to find my book. Students occasionally expressed curiosity about it. A few went so far as to find the school’s copy and glance through it, though nobody, so far as I knew, had ever actually read it.
Sighing again, short on Xerox paper for tomorrow but long on highly tradable chalk, I made my way downstairs and out the door. The winter cold slapped me in the face and my breath steamed the air. By the time I’d gone halfway down the front steps and unfolded my umbrella—the rain was light now but still steady—I’d more or less forgotten about the girl.
But then I realized that I’d forgotten too about my appointment with Vincent. I glanced at my watch: three forty-five. I was just in time; the little café was only across the street, catty-corner from the school. In fact, as I looked, I realized that I could see Vincent sitting there at one of the little wire-mesh tables, his dark business suit, as always, impeccable. My sole cigarette—a svelte and alluring Camel Filter—was ensconced impatiently in its pack inside my briefcase, beckoning me with its siren song. (Take me, Ben, take me! Smoke me! Smoke me now!) I would have dug it out right then except that I wasn’t sure if Vincent could see me from where he sat; I could hardly leave him waiting there, watching me light up and puff away. Reluctantly I made a deal with the cigarette: Give me half an hour with Vincent and then I’m yours, baby. All yours.
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