Woods

by Finkelstein, Steven

  “Don’t call me that.” He was gritting his teeth. The lights were dimming around him, he could hear them sighing. He swatted at the air and stood up on the balls of his toes. He thought he knew why dogs chased their tails. He’s waking up, said a voice by his ear. He’s looking around, said another. Then they both began to speak at once, repeating the same thing over and over, while soft and low a woman was laughing, laughing, laughing, and another was moaning, uh, uh, becoming more drawn out,uuuhh, uuuuhhhh. What’s happening to me? “Stop that!” he danced around in a circle, flailing his arms, like someone trying to dislodge a bug from their clothes. “Stop talking about me in the third person!” Sorry baby. The woman laughed again.

  “Listen,” Stitch said. “It’s better if you don’t agitate yourself. Stop fighting it. Just relax and let it do what it does. Breathe. Just breathe.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have a whole choir in your head.”

  “Yes,” Stitch said. “I do.” He gestured at the smiling, glassy eyed people cavorting around them. “Everyone does, you see?”

  He could. He could see, now being in the same boat as the rest of them, and he could feel. Without moving he could reach out and touch the people around them, brush against them, and the animals too. There was a calico tom cat strolling by at that moment, and he reached out for it so quickly and suddenly that it whirled and hissed at him. I’m sorry, he thought.

  “You have to learn to control it,” Stitch said. “You are still in control, not it. There are still boundaries. Don’t go where you’re not invited. Focus on yourself and you’ll be able to keep your defenses up. Focus on others and you’re more vulnerable. Hold it close to you. Try not to force it. Respect it as a living entity.”

  Tad tried to do as he was told. He folded his hands in front of him and turned slowly in a circle. The eerie false light of the cave melting continually before his eyes like liquid gold. The pulse of each heartbeat around him a burning firebrand. Looking down at himself he saw that he too was the same now, a hot glad light burning fiercely in his innards. He could see into his chest, see the outline of his organs wrapped inside their muscular sheaths. He thought he could reach into his chest and touch them, caress them. He could hear the constant whisper of the voices in his head, seething and boiling like a kettle, but he found that as he concentrated he could keep them contained. He thought himself aware and akin and in tune to all the life forms around him, and the others in the house he also felt, though fainter and further away. The house was crawling with life. He felt it full, swelled to the gills and more arriving. He heard the echo of their feet. He turned toward Stitch and reached out toward him with that newly realized internal heat. He did not come quite close enough to touch, but close enough to feel the man’s breath as he sucked in oxygen and dispelled it through his mouth. The sound was the crash of waves against a rocky cliff. Stitch smiled. “Yes,” he said. “That’s good. You learn quickly. Now I want you to feel this, and try not to resist. I won’t harm you.” And Tad felt his probe met by another one, emanating from Stitch. It was another heat, similar, but they did not become indivisible, instead remained separate. They differed slightly, and he could tell where one ended and the other began. It’s like the difference between one note on the piano and the next down from it. And he felt, very gently, his probe being repelled. It was being pushed back, slowly but surely, and he allowed it to happen as Stitch had said, but he understood that if he wanted to, he could try to resist. It was pushed back, back, until it was swallowed up again, vanishing in his chest and there it stayed, while he could feel Stitch’s remain outside him, as close as he himself had been. Then he felt Stitch’s leaving, as the other man reeled it in again. He could almost see it, like a force field; almost, but not quite. He thought that if he could see it, it would be the same fiery red that he saw glowing in the chests of those around them.

  “It’s incredible,” he said. “I’ve never felt anything like it.”

  “That’s just a little game,” Stitch said. He walked over and patted Tad on the shoulder. “But there are many more things that one can do, better things. How do you feel?”

  “Calmer now. But the voices in my head are still there.”

  “Yes. And there they will remain.”

  “Forever?” He should have been frightened of the answer, perhaps, but he was too much in awe of the new sensations he was feeling.

  “No, I shouldn’t think so, even for as much as you drank. That was very impulsive... but you seem to be coming through it all right. Just remember for the rest of the night, no matter what you see or hear, no matter what confronts you, that you are in control. Say it.”

  Tad grinned. “I am in control.” It felt good to say, but he wasn’t sure it was the truth. Not sure at all.

  “If you like,” Stitch said, “we can go mingle some more.”

  “I think it’s a capitol idea.” Tad was starting to feel somewhat giddy now. He settled the hat on his head, tilting the brim down over one eye. If there was only a mirror handy and he could have seen the expression on his own face he might have been taken aback, as it was one that had never occupied it before, and it was rather fiendish. It would be difficult, after this night was over, for Tad to remember everything that happened during the next several hours, and to put everything in chronological order. Like the heavy drinker who experiences blackouts, certain events and portions of the evening stood out clearly, while others left only the vaguest of impressions, if any at all. Another aspect of this, besides the disorientation involved with the mysterious new substance that Tad had let loose in his body, was that time itself had gone funny, a phenomenon that he’d already observed as being possible when dealing with Daddy and his constituents, though this time the hours seemed to be expanding, rather than contracting. Though portions of the evening were only dimly remembered, he would have sworn that several days (or nights), could have been fit into the hours between dusk and dawn that collectively went by the name of Decadence. He seemed to have arrived in a place that stood apart and aside from conventional notions of “time,” and should this be so surprising, on a night when he felt that he could reach out and touch not only another body but another soul, without ever lifting a finger? How old must we be, and how experienced in the ways of the world, that we can truly call ourselves unsurprised when the basic tenets of reality that we have always taken for granted begin to unravel before our eyes? Is fourteen too young for such an eventuality? Tad may hardly have been the typical fourteen year old, but for some of the things that he saw that night, he hardly could have been better prepared at a hundred and fourteen. It may have been a mercy that the Essence was in his system, for it alone might have been what allowed his mind to deal with what was taking place.

  He knew that he left the cavern below the house and the shimmering funnel in its center with the greatest of reluctance, taking one of the causeways with Stitch, following the lumbering giant in the chocolate robe while the voices in his head called go back! Go back! He ignored them, but his heart sank to do so. He longed for another taste, but he found he’d had more than enough to sustain and send him on his way. The warmth bubbled in his stomach, sitting heavy and undigested like a hot, thick stew, at times reacting to the Foxlight (or were the lights in the walls reacting to it?), and flaring up to send sizzling jolts to all his extremities, causing him to fidget like a naughty child in church. He was only dimly aware of his leering eyes and upturned mouth, and when he stopped for more than a second, he was also unaware that he was clasping his hands in front of him and rubbing the palms together, as was his nervous habit in social settings, only he was doing it at four or five times the normal speed. The voices in his head and the disembodied ones outside it kept up a constant chatter. He thought that he could have found a secluded niche and had a perfectly entertaining conversation with himself for the remainder of the evening, but the likelihood of that seemed slim. The house was getting fuller.

  He discovered that after a certai
n time he could tell, by virtue of the fire-bright auras that surrounded them, which other guests were drinking the Essence, and these ones he generally found easier to speak to, being, as he felt, on the same level. Essence contains no alcohol, it never has, but like alcohol it lowers inhibitions, and it could be said that most of Tad’s nervousness had evaporated, though the paranoia remained. Those that weren’t drinking the stuff had auras too, and he perceived that the auras were indicative of what substances the person was or wasn’t ingesting. The ones surrounding those that were merely drunk were the least vibrant and the least interesting from a visual standpoint. They did not extend to the upper portion of the body, but dwindled around the torso, fading to nothingness, a kind of murky gray like a billowing cloud of smog, occasionally reaching, if the person was excited, barely perceivable flashes of magenta or turquoise. Those that were sober (and these were few), had a clear, colorless aura, visible only when the person moved, rippling like an oil slick on a highway. Tad was interested to see that these auras could be forced upon by a person who had ingested a substance; for instance, if a drunk approached a sober person and they were close enough that their auras came in contact, that of the sober person could be seen to shrink or wilt as the drunk persons’ invaded it. He wondered if the sober person could feel this invasion, and what it felt like if they could. Was it merely the unsavory alcohol stink to be dealt with, or was there a more personal, intimate intrusion taking place? How much of the interaction on a conscious level, either with the victim or antagonist? Tad had a problem witnessing these pairings. He already had a disapproving view of alcohol, his prior experiences with it being mainly limited to his observation of Walt Surrey and his friends tying one on during the ballgame, a time when he knew to avoid both the living room and his father, who could be expected to verbally berate his younger son on some trivial matter for the amusement of his friends, or Casey if he was there to witness it with the rest of them. Tad avoided the drunks at Decadence, giving them a sneer and a wide berth.

  Then there were other auras more difficult to identify. There were some that were a kind of offensive piss-yellow that buzzed, electric, stinging the eyes. The guests at the center of these had long dirty fingernails, pale skin, sunken cheeks, and broken blood vessels around their irises. They seemed listless, and were disinclined to take place in the merrymaking, staying mainly in groups and restricting their movement to certain rooms. There were others that were surrounded by a pleasant blue-green that was less a cloud and more a sparkling membrane that bobbed up and down like a lure on the water as they moved. These guests were subdued and dreamy, speaking without making eye contact while illustrating and embellishing on their speech with slow and mystifying motions of their hands. It was most thrilling, and more than a little disorienting, to see many of these crammed in together, mixing and mingling with their various shapes and sounds competing for space, like a tangled string of Christmas lights or a bed of multicolored sea anemones waving from the ocean floor while a typhoon raged overhead.

  The later the night grew, and the more crowded things became, the more Tad’s head swam and the louder the voices clamored. He found himself climbing the stairs with Stitch, hanging onto the hem of the large man’s cloak. He had just been in the banquet hall, witnessing a game between two opposing teams, the rules of which he hadn’t ever grasped. There had been two children’s sized swimming pools set up on either side of the hall, and each of them had been filled with live piranhas. Each team had buckets filled with gristly hocks of meat, and members of the teams would take turns flinging them toward the pools from several paces away. The game had become more frenzied as it had gone on, blood and suet splashing as a bucket was overturned, the lights in the walls flashing a murderous red, the auras of the players growing to frightening proportion, flung up against the ceiling like demonic shadow puppets. Everyone had been shouting at once, and in the general upheaval everyone had begun flinging meat at the same time, Tad and Stitch becoming involved in the melee. Tad had slipped in a puddle and gone down on one knee, and now his shirt and pants were covered in swiftly drying gore. It dripped from the brim of his hat. The game could be said to have ended when a participant toppled into one of the pools, and leapt out shrieking to roll along the floor with the ravenous fish clamped onto his arms and legs. Members of both teams responded to the situation by buffeting him with whatever was handy, this mainly being the larger remaining chunks of meat, which only excited the fish more. The business resembled, perhaps, a good size soccer riot breaking out in a crowded butcher shop. Stitch had staggered away roaring with laughter, while Tad had grabbed hold of his cloak for dear life and followed him down a dimly lit hall. Now they had come to a winding stair, twisting sharply upward as it went, the walls so narrow that Stitch’s shoulders could barely negotiate them. The rank stench of blood was heavy in Tad’s nostrils, and it was stiflingly hot. I’m hot, a voice warbled in his ear, anyone else hot? Dissolving into mad laughter. Again and again he mopped at his face, for all the good it did; his shirt was splattered with blood. Voices careening through his head like runaway trains. No matter what you see or hear, no matter what confronts you, you are in control. You are in control. No matter what you see or hear. In what state do you live? To whom do you belong? They’re going to eat you alive in there. What you must understand is that Decadence is not a spectator sport. Not a spectator sport. The dead shall rise, the skies shall fall, there will be symphonies and earthquakes. You are in control. Eat you alive. Symphonies and earthquakes. Eat you alive. How do you think it’s all going to turn out? “Stitch!” he almost yelled. “Tiny!” Dispelling the muttering. Shaking his head.

  “Yes.” Stitch had stopped. They were wedged in a very tight section of stairway. The Foxlight or Wytchlight very low. Tad could hear the man’s heavy breathing. His aura heaving up and down, barely visible, but pressed close against him. Fairly clinging to the man’s back. “What is it?”

  “Would you rather your enemies’ fondest wish be granted or live your true loves’ worst day?”

  Stitch was silent for a time, standing and regaining his breath. There was a muffled shout from somewhere and the stairway shook slightly. “That’s a poser,” he said. “I guess I would have to say I’d rather my enemies’ fondest wish be granted. Why? What does that say about me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What made you think of it?”

  “Do me a favor, would you, and for the rest of tonight don’t ask me questions like why I was thinking of a certain thing, or why things are the way they are. I’m not able to answer right now.” He sensed movement up above him and thought the man was nodding. “Listen. Do you think we won, before, with the meat and the fish?”

  “I think that in a case like that, we’re all winners. Or maybe losers. I’m not sure which.”

  “Where are we?”

  “You’ll see in a minute.” They began to climb again, the stairway twisting ever upward. Tad thought he could feel a draft, welcome in the heat, and then a noise of laughter and voices as they emerged through a doorway, Stitch ducking his head and stepping out, Tad behind. They were outside, having come out through a doorway with no door, and now the cool of the night. They were up, as it seemed, miles high, above the field below, the woods stretching out in all directions, the stars flickering above. They were on the lower of the two wraparound balconies circling one of the upper stories of the house. The balcony was about fifteen feet wide, with a wooden rail along its edge. A few feet from where they stood there was a lattice hanging down, attached to one of the windows below, on which some species of creeping vines clung with a death grip, extending up to the balcony floor and running along in all directions. Some of the tendrils were several inches around. Overhead an uneven row of windows, the Foxlight or Wytchlight flickering, and a crooked spire with a weathervane perched at its peak in the shape of a crow in flight. Higher still, the underside of the second balcony, and only partially seen because of the angle, other spires and gables th
at Tad had seen from the ground below but never this close up. To their left stood a crowd of people, speaking in hushed tones, a fair cross section of party guests, some in costume, others with faces painted or wrapped in cloaks and capes, others wearing little or nothing at all. Tad had reached the point that the nudity no longer surprised him, and the Essence had rid him of the embarrassment, but he still found it difficult, being in such close proximity to it, to be casual and act as though it were nothing out of the ordinary. It was rather like speaking to someone with a lazy eye or a huge blemish on their face. You didn’t want to stare at it, and yet you didn’t want to look away from it so much as to be obvious about it. Luckily, no one was paying attention to him. He and Stitch walked over, placing one foot carefully in front of the other. The balcony seemed to be swaying slightly underfoot, though whether it was a trick of the Essence, a sudden attack of vertigo, or if the upper stories were actually in motion was unclear. It could have been any one of these, or all three.

  “What’s going on?” he asked no one in particular.

  No one answered, but then Stitch spoke, his voice drifting down from overhead. “Duel,” he said. “It’s a duel. Stay well out of the way.” Looking through the thin gap between the shoulders of two taller members of the crowd, Tad could see two men standing, one with his back turned to those assembled. Some twenty paces further along, the balcony began to curve to the left as it made its way around the house, and there stood the second duelist, seen clearly in the steady pulse of the lights from the windows, soft orange gusting now and then the wicked red. A tall, thin man with dark blue or possibly black trousers, and a fine red waistcoat over a loosely fitting white button up shirt, almost a blouse. High cheekbones, a sharp nose, and haughty eyes projected a mirthless and disinterested boredom, if not outright scorn for the proceedings. A thin unlit cigar hung like an afterthought from the corner of his down turned mouth. Around him an aura that Tad hadn’t encountered yet. It was a deep and sumptuous violet. Seeing a flicker of movement above, Tad glanced up and saw that on a gable a few feet above the crowd, a single black vulture was perched, tapping an impatient claw on the molding. An ominous sign if ever there was one. He had the impression of another group of onlookers gathered in the shadows around the bend. He could hear their whispers and every once in a while a flash of color from around the corner, one of their auras readjusting itself. A light breeze blowing, not enough to offset the heat radiating from the building. He could not see the closer combatant, whose back was turned, but he could see that it was a shorter man, shirtless; he was hopping lightly up and down from one foot to the other like an impatient pugilist, and as he did so the muscles of his shoulder blades bunched together, compressing, and released again like a massive fist.