Sympathy for the Devil

by Tim Pratt

  "There's a way of looking that lets you read things. If you look at a pattern of tar on a wall, or a crumbling mound of brick or somesuch... there's a way of unpicking it. And if you know how, you can trace it and read it out and see the things hidden right there in front of you, the things you've been seeing but not noticing, all along. But you have to learn how." She laughed. It was a high-pitched, unpleasant sound. "Someone has to teach you. So you have to make certain friends.

  "But you can't make friends without making enemies.

  "You have to open it all up for you to see inside. You have to make what you see into a window, and you see what you want through it. You make what you see a sort of door."

  She was silent for a long time. Then: "Is it cloudy again?" she asked suddenly. She went on before I answered.

  "If you look up, you look into the clouds for long enough and you'll see a face. Or in a tree. Look in a tree, look in the branches and soon you'll see them just so, and there's a face or a running man, or a bat or whatever. You'll see it all suddenly, a picture in the pattern of the branches, and you won't have chosen to see it. And you can't unsee it.

  "That's what you have to learn to do, to read the details like that and see what's what and learn things. But you've to be damn careful. You've to be careful not to disturb anything." Her voice was absolutely cold, and I was suddenly very frightened.

  "Open up that window, you'd better be damn careful that what's in the details doesn't look back and see you."

  The next time I went, the maudlin drunk was there again wailing obscenities at her through the door. She shouted at me to come back later, that she didn't need her food right now. She sounded resigned and irritated, and she went back to scolding her visitor before I had backed out of earshot.

  He was screaming at her that she'd gone too far, that she'd pissed about too long, that things were coming to a head, that there was going to be hell to pay, that she couldn't avoid it forever, that it was her own fault.

  When I came back he was asleep, snoring loudly, curled up a few feet into the mildewing passage. Mrs. Miller took her food and ate it quickly, returned it without speaking.

  When I returned the following week, she began to whisper to me as soon as I knocked on the door, hissing urgently as she opened it briefly and grabbed the bowl.

  "It was an accident, you know," she said, as if responding to something I'd said. "I mean of course you know in theory that anything might happen, you get warned, don't you? But oh my... oh my God it took the breath out of me and made me cold to realize what had happened."

  I waited. I could not leave, because she had not returned the bowl. She had not said I could go. She spoke again, very slowly.

  "It was a new day." Her voice was distant and breathy. "Can you even imagine? Can you see what I was ready to do? I was poised... to change... to see everything that's hidden. The best place to hide a book is in a library. The best place to hide secret things is there, in the visible angles, in our view, in plain sight.

  "I had studied and sought, and learnt, finally, to see. It was time to learn truths.

  "I opened my eyes fully, for the first time.

  "I had chosen an old wall. I was looking for the answer to some question that I told you I can't even remember now, but the question wasn't the main thing. That was the opening of my eyes.

  "I stared at the whole mass of the bricks. I took another glance, relaxed my sight. At first I couldn't stop seeing the bricks as bricks, the divisions as layers of cement, but after a time they became pure vision. And as the whole broke down into lines and shapes and shades, I held my breath as I began to see.

  "Alternatives appeared to me. Messages written in the pockmarks. Insinuations in the forms. Secrets unraveling. It was bliss.

  "And then without warning my heart went tight, as I saw something. I made sense of the pattern.

  "It was a mess of cracks and lines and crumbling cement, and as I looked at it, I saw a pattern in the wall.

  "I saw a clutch of lines that looked just like something... terrible... something old and predatory and utterly terrible... staring right back at me.

  "And then I saw it move."

  "You have to understand me," she said. "Nothing changed. See? All the time I was looking I saw the wall. But that first moment, it was like when you see a face in the cloud. I just noticed in the pattern in the brick, I just noticed something, looking at me. Something angry.

  "And then in the very next moment, I just... I just noticed another load of lines--cracks that had always been there, you understand? Patterns in broken brick that I'd seen only a second before--that looked exactly like that same thing, a little closer to me. And in the next moment a third picture in the brick, a picture of the thing closer still.

  "Reaching for me."

  "I broke free then," she whispered. "I ran away from there in terror, with my hands in front of my eyes and I was screaming. I ran and ran.

  "And when I stopped and opened my eyes again, I had to run to the edges of a park, and I took my hands slowly down and dared to look behind me, and saw that there was nothing coming from the alley where I'd been. So I turned to the little snatch of scrub grass and trees.

  "And I saw the thing again."

  Mrs. Miller's voice was stretched out as if she was dreaming. My mouth was open and I huddled closer to the door.

  "I saw it in the leaves," she said forlornly. "As I turned I saw the leaves in such a way... just a chance conjuncture, you understand? I noticed a pattern. I couldn't not. You don't choose whether to see faces in the clouds. I saw the monstrous thing again and it still reached for me, and I shrieked and all the mothers and children and fathers and children in the park turned and gazed at me, and I turned my eyes from that tree and whirled on my feet to face a little family in my way.

  "And the thing was there in the same pose," she whispered in misery. "I saw it in the outlines of the father's coat and the spokes of the baby's pushchair, and the tangles of the mother's hair. It was just another mess of lines, you see? But you don't choose what you notice. And I couldn't help but notice just the right lines out of the whole, just the lines out of all the lines there, just the ones to see the thing again, a little closer, looking at me.

  "And I turned and saw it closer still in the clouds, and I turned again and it was clutching for me in the rippling weeds in the pond, and as I closed my eyes I swear I felt something touch my dress.

  "You understand me? You understand?"

  I didn't know if I understood or not. Of course now I know that I did not.

  "It lives in the details," she said bleakly. "It travels in that... in that perception. It moves through those chance meetings of lines. Maybe you glimpse it sometimes when you stare at clouds, and then maybe it might catch a glimpse of you, too.

  "But it saw me full on. It's jealous of... of its place, and there I was peering through without permission, like a nosy neighbor through a hole in the fence. I know what it is. I know what happened.

  "It lurks before us, in the everyday. It's the boss of all the things hidden in plain sight. Terrible things, they are. Appalling things. Just almost in reach. Brazen and invisible.

  "It caught my glances. It can move through whatever I see.

  "For most people it's just chance, isn't it? What shapes they see in a tangle of wire. There's a thousand pictures there, and when you look, some of them just appear. But now... the thing in the lines chooses the pictures for me. It can thrust itself forward. It makes me see it. It's found its way through. To me. Through what I see. I opened a door into my perception."

  She sounded frozen with terror. I was not equipped for that kind of adult fear, and my mouth worked silently for something to say.

  "That was a long, long journey home. Every time I peeked through the cracks in my fingers, I saw that thing crawling for me.

  "It waited ready to pounce, and when I opened my eyes even a crack I opened the door again. I saw the back of a woman's jumper and in the detail of the fab
ric the thing leapt for me. I glimpsed a yard of broken paving and I noticed just the lines that showed me the thing... baying.

  "I had to shut my eyes quick.

  "I groped my way home.

  "And then I taped my eyes shut and I tried to think about things."

  There was silence for a time.

  "See, there was always the easy way, that scared me rotten, because I was never one for blood and pain," she said suddenly, and her voice was harder. "I held the scissors in front of my eyes a couple of times, but even bandaged blind as I was I couldn't bear it. I suppose I could've gone to a doctor. I can pull strings, I could pull in a few favors, have them do the job without pain.

  "But you know I never... really... reckoned... that's what I'd do," she said thoughtfully. "What if you found a way to close the door? Eh? And you'd already put out your eyes? You'd feel such a fool, wouldn't you?

  "And as you know it wouldn't be good enough to wear pads and eyepatches and all. I tried. You catch glimpses. You see the glimmers of light and maybe a few of your own hairs, and that's the doorway right there, when the hairs cross in the corner of your eye so that if you notice just a few of them in just the right way... they look like something coming for you. That's a doorway.

  "It's... unbearable... having sight, but trapping it like that.

  "I'm not giving up. See..." Her voice lowered, and she spoke conspiratorially. "I still think I can close the door. I learnt to see. I can unlearn. I'm looking for ways. I want to see a wall as... as bricks again. Nothing more. That's why you read for me," she said. "Research. Can't look at it myself of course, too many edges and lines and so on on a printed page, so you do it for me. And you're a good boy to do it."

  I've thought about what she said many times, and still it makes no sense to me. The books I read to Mrs. Miller were school textbooks, old and dull village histories, the occasional romantic novel. I think that she must have been talking of some of her other visitors, who perhaps read her more esoteric stuff than I did. Either that, or the information she sought was buried very cleverly in the banal prose I faltered through.

  "In the meantime, there's another way of surviving," she said slyly. "Leave the eyes where they are, but don't give them any details.

  "That... thing can force me to notice its shape, but only in what's there. That's how it travels. You imagine if I saw a field of wheat. Doesn't even bear thinking about! A million million little bloody edges, a million lines. You could make pictures of damn anything out of them, couldn't you? It wouldn't take any effort at all for the thing to make me notice it. The damn lurker. Or in a gravel drive or, or a building site, or a lawn...

  "But I can outsmart it." The note of cunning in her voice made her sound deranged. "Keep it away till I work out how to close it off.

  "I had to prepare this blind, with the wrappings around my head. Took me a while, but here I am now. Safe. I'm safe in my little cold room. I keep the walls flat white. I covered the windows and painted them, too. I made my cloak out of plastic, so's I can't catch a glimpse of cotton weave or anything when I wake up.

  "I keep my place nice and... simple. When it was all done, I unwrapped the bandages from my head, and I blinked slowly... and I was alright. Clean walls, no cracks, no features. I don't look at my hands often or for long. Too many creases. Your mother makes me a good healthy soup looks like cream, so if I accidentally look in the bowl, there's no broccoli or rice or tangled up spaghetti to make lines and edges.

  "I open and shut the door so damned quick because I can only afford a moment. That thing is ready to pounce. It wouldn't take a second for it to leap up at me out of the sight of your hair or your books or whatever."

  Her voice ebbed out. I waited a minute for her to resume, but she did not do so. Eventually I knocked nervously on the door and called her name. There was no answer. I put my ear to the door. I could hear her crying, quietly.

  I went home without the bowl. My mother pursed her lips a little but said nothing. I didn't tell her any of what Mrs. Miller had said. I was troubled and totally confused.

  The next time I delivered Mrs. Miller's food, in a new container, she whispered harshly to me: "It preys on my eyes, all the white. Nothing to see. Can't look out the window, can't read, can't gaze at my nails. Preys on my mind.

  "Not even my memories are left," she said in misery. "It's colonizing them. I remember things... happy times... and the thing's waiting in the texture of my dress, or in the crumbs of my birthday cake. I didn't notice it then. But I can see it now. My memories aren't mine anymore. Not even my imaginings. Last night I thought about going to the seaside, and then the thing was there in the foam on the waves."

  She spoke very little the next few times I visited her. I read the chapters she demanded and she grunted curtly in her response. She ate quickly.

  Her other visitors were there more often now, as the spring came in. I saw them in new combinations and situations: the glamorous young woman arguing with the friendly drunk; the old man sobbing at the far end of the hall. The aggressive man was often there, cajoling and moaning, and occasionally talking conversationally through the door, being answered like an equal. Other times he screamed at her as usual.

  I arrived on a chilly day to find the drunken cockney man sleeping a few feet from the door, snoring gutturally. I gave Mrs. Miller her food and then sat on my coat and read to her from a women's magazine as she ate.

  When she had finished her food I waited with my arms outstretched, ready to snatch the bowl from her. I remember that I was very uneasy, that I sensed something wrong. I was looking around me anxiously, but everything seemed normal. I looked down at my coat and the crumpled magazine, at the man who still sprawled comatose in the hall.

  As I heard Mrs. Miller's hands on the door, I realized what had changed. The drunken man was not snoring. He was holding his breath.

  For a tiny moment I thought he had died, but I could see his body trembling, and my eyes began to open wide and I stretched my mouth to scream a warning, but the door had already begun to swing in its tight, quick arc, and before I could even exhale the stinking man pushed himself up faster than I would have thought him capable and bore down on me with bloodshot eyes.

  I managed to keep as he reached me, and the door faltered for an instant, as Mrs. Miller heard my voice. But the man grabbed hold of me in a terrifying, heavy fug of alcohol. He reached down and snatched my coat from the floor, tugged at the jumper I had tied around my waist with his other hand, and hurled me hard at the door.

  It flew open, smacking Mrs. Miller aside. I was screaming and crying. My eyes hurt at the sudden burst of cold white light from all the walls. I saw Mrs. Miller rubbing her head in the corner, struggling to her senses. The staggering, drunken man hurled my checked coat and my patterned jumper in front of her, reached down and snatched my feet, tugged me out of the room in an agony of splinters. I wailed snottily with fear.

  Behind me, Mrs. Miller began to scream and curse, but I could not hear her well because the man had clutched me to him and pulled my head to his chest. I fought and cried and felt myself lurch as he leaned forward and slammed the door closed.

  He held it shut.

  When I fought myself free of him I heard him shouting.

  "I told you, you slapper," he wailed unhappily. "I bloody told you, you silly old whore. I warned you it was time..." Behind his voice I could hear shrieks of misery and terror from the room. Both of them kept shouting and crying and screaming, and the floorboards pounded, and the door shook, and I heard something else as well.

  As if the notes of all the different noises in the house fell into a chance meeting, and sounded like more than dissonance. The shouts and bangs and cries of fear combined in a sudden audible illusion like another presence.

  Like a snarling voice. A lingering, hungry exhalation.

  I ran then, screaming and terrified, my skin freezing in my T-shirt. I was sobbing and retching with fear, little bleats bursting from me. I stumbled home and was si
ck in my mother's room, and kept crying and crying as she grabbed hold of me and I tried to tell her what had happened, until I was drowsy and confused and I fell into silence.

  My mother said nothing about Mrs. Miller. The next Wednesday we got up early and went to the zoo, the two of us, and at the time I would usually be knocking on Mrs. Miller's door I was laughing at camels. The Wednesday after that I was taken to see a film, and the one after that my mother stayed in bed and sent me to fetch cigarettes and bread from the local shop, and I made our breakfast and ate it in her room.

  My friends could tell that something had changed in the yellow house, but they did not speak to me about it, and it quickly became uninteresting to them.

  I saw the Asian woman once more, smoking with her friends in the park several weeks later, and to my amazement she nodded to me and came over, interrupted her companions' conversation.

  "Are you alright?" she asked me peremptorily. "How are you doing?"

  I nodded shyly back and told her that I was fine, thank you, and how was she?

  She nodded and walked away.

  I never saw the drunken, violent man again.

  There were people I could probably have gone to to understand more about what had happened to Mrs. Miller. There was a story that I could chase, if I wanted to. People I had never seen before came to my house and spoke quietly to my mother, and looked at me with what I suppose was pity or concern. I could have asked them. But I was thinking more and more about my own life. I didn't want to know Mrs. Miller's details.

  I went back to the yellow house once, nearly a year after that awful morning. It was winter. I remembered the last time I spoke to Mrs. Miller and I felt so much older it was almost giddying. It seemed such a vastly long time ago.

  I crept up to the house one evening, trying the keys I still had, which to my surprise worked. The hallway was freezing, dark, and stinking more strongly than ever. I hesitated, then pushed open Mrs. Miller's door.