999

by Al Sarrantonio

  And how different, too, the semirural neighborhood in which the McKearnys lived, in a large white clapboard house surrounded by similar woodframe houses where homeowners kept gardens, orchards, livestock. Everywhere, friendly dogs like Rufus ran loose. There were roosters and chickens pecking in the dirt by the roadside. And not a mall for miles—many miles. Stephen tried to recall his old home in the city, where no one knew neighbors and where everyone drove cars, rushing from place to place and back again, traffic in snarls on the expressway. How mad that life seemed now. How aberrant, as if seen through a distorting lens.

  I never want to return, Stephen thought. I won’t!

  He could attend Contracoeur High School with Marlena. And Rosalind, too, could enroll. Their parents had not said a word about school; perhaps Father expected to be returning to his own life by the time school resumed; how utterly unrealistic, how blind and selfish, for of course that wasn’t going to happen; that wasn’t going to happen, Stephen realized, for a very long time.

  Often, alone, thinking dreamily of Marlena McKearny, who was so different from the girls he’d known in the city, his classmates at his private school; Marlena who was short, freckled, pretty but hardly glamorous—hardly “cool.” Her way of hugging Rufus, her sweetly teasing manner of laughing at Stephen as she laughed at her older brother Rick, making both boys blush. Had he fallen in love with Marlena? Stephen wondered. Or with all of the McKearnys. Or with Contracoeur itself.

  Stephen wiped angrily at his eyes. Tears embarrassed him!

  But he’d been missing it so—life.

  Stephen, too, had surreptitiously visited the small Contracoeur library to browse through the local history shelves. He, too, had been shocked and disgusted to read about his great-grandfather Moses Adams Matheson. The “most wealthy mill-owner of the Contracoeur Valley"—the “distinguished philantropist-conservationist who had donated thousands of acres of land in the Chautauqua Mountains for free public use.” But there was the matter of the South Winterthurn “tragic blaze” of February 1911, killing more than thirty persons and injuring many more. There were striking workers locked out of their mills when they attempted to return, and numerous instances of union organizers “dispersed” by Pinkerton’s security police. Stephen read with particular disgust about the construction of “the most ambitious and costly architectural design of the Contrecoeur Valley, Cross Hill.” The massive, pretentious limestone house, in emulation of English country houses of a bygone era, had required eight years to build and had cost millions of dollars. Before it was completed, Moses Matheson’s wife, Sarah (about whom little information was provided in these texts) had died. Moses Matheson was said to be “estranged” from his single heir, a son, as from most of his family; he lived at Cross Hill in “guarded seclusion” for eighteen years, a recluse who died in 1933, at the age of sixty-five, “under suspicious circumstances, the country coroner not having absolutely ruled out the possibility of a ‘self-inflicted fatal injury.’ “ Suicide! Quickly Stephen turned a page in the crumbling History of Contracoeur Valley only to discover that the next several pages had been crudely torn out. Just as well; he didn’t want to read further.

  Another day, Stephen searched through back newspapers from other cities, primarily the state capital, discovering, again to his shock, information about his father he hadn’t known. Beginning in late winter, here were front-page articles with stark, damning headlines: PROMINENT STATE JUDGE NAMED IN BRIBERY-CORRUPTION CONSPIRACY; MATHESON DENIES CHARGES; MATHESON TO TESTIFY BEFORE GRAND JURY; MATHESON, PROSECUTOR WORK OUT IMMUNITY DEAL; MATHESON GRANTED IMMUNITY, GIVES EVIDENCE AGAINST FORMER ASSOCIATES; CONSPIRATORS PLEAD GUILTY IN JUDICIAL CORRUPTION SCANDAL. Stephen was stunned to learn that it hadn’t been at all as we were told, that Father had been an innocent victim of others’ malevolence and manipulation; instead, Father had initially denied his guilt in numerous instances of bribery (one of the cases involved a $5 billion environmental pollution class action suit brought against one of the state’s largest chemical companies), then abruptly admitted it and agreed to inform on his former co-conspirators in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Far from being persecuted by his enemies, as Father had said, he’d been very generously treated. An editorial reeking with sarcasm, in one of the Albany newspapers, put the case succinctly—MATHESON REWARDED FOR RATTING ON HIS FRIENDS.

  In a May issue of the newspaper, Stephen read that one of the accomplices named by his father, a high-ranking official in state government who’d been a frequent guest of the Mathesons’, had killed himself with a revolver on the morning he’d been scheduled to begin an eight-year prison sentence at Sing Sing.

  This knowledge we’d been forbidden, that the rest of the world knew.

  Except I’d been too cowardly—too respectful a son—to find out for myself.

  Stephen contemplated the rapid succession of photographs in the papers of Roderick Matheson. The earliest was the most familiar—depicting a boyishly handsome man, younger-looking than his age, a lock of hair disingenuously fallen onto his forehead, his gaze direct and forthright at the viewer. After Father’s arrest, this image abruptly changed. For here was an angry, resentful, embittered man; once caught in the act of shouting at a television reporter; another time, descending the steps of the state courthouse accompanied by police officers, he was hunched over in guilt and shame, trying to hide his face behind upraised hands, wrists shackled together. Roderick Matheson, in handcuffs! Father, a criminal! For the first time the reality of it swept over Stephen: the enormity of his father’s crimes, the shame that accrued to the name Matheson.

  Stephen slumped over the library table, hiding his hot, perspiring face in his hands. I can’t believe it! I know it must be true.

  12. The Face

  That night returning late to Cross Hill as in one of those dreams of frustrated, impeded progress in which, desperate to move, you seem to be paralyzed; returning far later, past ten o’clock, than he’d ever returned before; for he’d stayed for supper with the McKearnys and lingered at their house as if fearful of leaving until Mrs. McKearny urged him to stay the night and he’d had to stammer that he could not, he had to return home. And Mr. McKearny walked with Stephen outside, and insisted that he take with him a weapon to protect himself, a hunting knife of Mr. McKearny’s, a hunting knife with a razor-sharp ten-inch blade; though Stephen protested he didn’t need such a weapon, he didn’t want such a weapon, Mr. McKearny reminded him of how that evening they’d been talking about the mutilation-murders in the valley, the perpetrator still unknown, a madman, or a maddened bear, and in any case of course Stephen should be armed, and so Stephen agreed, clumsily fitting the knife in its leather sheath into his belt and bicycling off, into the night, a gauzy moonlit night of humidity, droning insects, mosquitoes; and Mr. McKearny called after him, “Good night, Stephen! God be with you!”—so quaint an expression Stephen had to smile, or tried to smile; but he was very nervous.

  And so pedaling his bicycle along the streets of Contracoeur, and along the darkened country road that led to Cross Hill, his heartbeat quickening as he left the lights of Contracoeur for the inky featureless night of the country, which was illuminated only dimly, and dreamily, by the moon, through filmy clouds; like the cries of nocturnal insects in his ears Matheson denies charges! Matheson agrees to testify! Matheson granted immunity! Matheson rewarded for ratting on his friends! Stephen’s eyes misted and stung; he was trying to ignore certain shadowy, indistinct shapes by the roadside that might have been living creatures; except of course they were bushes, small trees; he was trying to ignore his mounting fear; he was trying to ignore the wavering, wobbling sensation of his bicycle on the potholed road; he’d carefully oiled the bicycle that morning, but that morning was now a very long time ago; that morning might have been days, even weeks ago. And how had he dared to stay away so long; what would happen to him now? A voice lifted faintly, reproachfully in the near distance—Traitorous son! No longer my son! I can never forgive you!

/>   Stephen realized he’d been seeing, ahead in the road, what appeared to be a human figure—was it? A man? A tall, stiff-poised man? Or was it an upright beast? Along this desolate stretch of road, no houses near and Cross Hill more than a mile away. Stephen swallowed hard, gripped his handlebars tight, felt a stab of fear as he made a swift decision—not to turn back but to increase his speed and pass the mysterious brooding figure, which stood at the left side of the road; Stephen would pedal past him on the right, head lowered, back curved in the classic cyclist’s posture; he intended simply to ignore the stranger. Even as he saw out of the corner of his eye that this figure, this man, whatever it was, seemed to be acutely aware of Stephen, as if waiting for him; yet there were no eyes visible in its face, no features at all that Stephen could discern. The thing-without-a-face! The thing that Graeme had claimed to see, and Stephen had dismissed as a dream. Touched with horror, yet empowered by it, by a rush of adrenaline like flame through his veins, Stephen didn’t slacken his speed, and veered around the thing, which was moving toward him to block his way. But he was past it! He was safe!

  Yet somehow falling, a heavy, painful blow catching him on the shoulder, and he was caught beneath the bicycle, the wheels spinning, one of the handgrips in his face; on the ground helpless and flailing as the thing-without-a-face crouched over him, mauling him, striking him, vicious sharp-clawed blows to the chest, the back of the head, his unprotected face. Too terrified to call for help, Stephen rolled from the attack, trying to shield his head and face with his arms; the frenzied creature straddled him; Stephen saw to his horror that it had a face, but without features, smooth-rippled flushed skin like scar tissue, tiny pinpoints for eyes, nostrils, a rudimentary mouth of the kind one might envision in a mollusk, measuring less than an inch. A mouth not for eating but for sucking. Stephen, fighting for his life, had managed to take the hunting knife out of its sheath, somehow the knife was in his hand, tightly gripped in his fingers, he would not be able to recall afterward taking it from its sheath but only the solid weight of it in his fingers, he, Stephen Matheson, a suburban boy who’d never before in his life gripped a knife of this kind, still less in desperation thrusting it at his assailant, driving it up across the creature’s collarbone, a slashing, superficial blow, yet so unexpected that the creature could not defend itself; clearly, it was accustomed to overwhelming unarmed victims, smaller than itself. Taken by surprise, the thing-without-a-face was deflected for a moment from its attack, and Stephen thrust the knifeblade up farther, and deeper, with more strength, into the creature’s throat; stabbing and slashing at its throat where an artery must have been severed, for, at once, hot dark blood sprang out in a rapid stream onto Stephen’s arm, into his face and hair. The creature, so much larger than Stephen, fell to its knees at the roadside as if baffled, uncomprehending; perhaps it felt no pain, but only this profound incomprehension, as of a being who’d imagined itself invulnerable to physical harm, immortal somehow, the delusion now shattered, spiraling away in dark ribbons of blood that could not be stopped. Making a choked, guttural sound, the creature staggered to its feet, hands pressed against the streaming blood, turning away dazed, having forgotten Stephen entirely; at last staggering away, like a drunken man, into the underbrush beside the road. Stephen himself dazed, bleeding, trying to catch his breath, stared after the thing in amazement and elation. He had saved himself! He had cast the thing-without-a-fàce from him and mortally wounded it, and he had saved himself!

  At the ruin of Cross Hill, where stealthily he climbed the stairs to the second floor where Mother and Father slept; at Cross Hill, his heart pounding violently in his chest not in warning, not in caution but urging him on!—on!—for this must be done, this must be accomplished, he dare not turn back, he must push to the very end. And so opening the door of the master bedroom, and so stepping breathless inside that room it was forbidden to him to enter; the sticky, still-warm blood of the thing-without-a-face smeared on his own face, and in his hair, soaked into his clothes and mixed with his own so Stephen knew he must look savage, a terrifying sight. Yet he dared to switch on a light; a dim, yellowed bulb in a dusty bedside lamp; he stood beside his parents’ enormous canopied bed; yet only Mother lay there, on her back, unnaturally still and her eyes open; in a satin nightgown so faded it had lost all color; Father’s side of the bed was empty, though the bedsheets were rumpled and not very clean. On his pillow was the heavy imprint of his head, a concave shadow. Stephen stared, not certain what he saw. He whispered, “Mother—?” His hand reached out, groping; he dared to touch her—it; pushing gently at the smooth, naked shoulder that, with the attached torso, fell away from the shadowed lower body, and from the neck and head; the head, a mannequin’s bald, blank head, rolled to one side on the pillow; one of the limbs, the shapely left leg, had fallen away from the body, as if its joints had become brittle with time, and lay at a grotesque angle perpendicular to the thigh. Again Stephen whispered “Mother …” even as he saw clearly that the thing wasn’t human and wasn’t alive: an elegant department store mannequin, sleekly constructed, rather flat-bodied, with a porcelain-smooth face, beautiful wide-open eyes with absurdly thick lashes. The mannequin’s wig—Mother’s ashy-blond, now graying and disheveled hair—had been placed, with apparent care, on the bedside table.

  Father’s handsome face, a molded mask of some exquisitely thin, rubbery material, an ingenious simulation of human skin, had been placed, with equal care, on the other bedside table; it was a mask so lifelike that Stephen winced to see it. It appeared to have been washed, and oiled with a colorless, subtly fragrant cream, fitted to a plaster-of-paris mold of a man’s face; these eyes too were starkly open, but more liquidy, human-appearing, than the mannequin’s. In horror, and fascination, with the curiosity of a very young child, Stephen reached out to touch the face with his forefinger. How lifelike it felt! How warm!

  In great urgency then waking Rosalind and the twins, who now slept in her bedroom; though Rosalind, moaning in a nightmare, hardly needed to be wakened, only her name gently spoken—“Rosalind;” and hurrying them out of the ruin of Cross Hill and, on foot, along the road to Contracoeur, only five miles away; there was no time for Stephen to explain to his frightened sisters and brother, and, at this moment, there would have been no words. Rosalind asked in a whisper what had happened to Stephen, had he injured himself, had someone hurt him, where were they going, and what of Father, and what of Mother, but the twins, sleep-dazed, stifling back sobs, each clutching one of Stephen’s hands, did not ask; nor were they ever to ask.

  Thomas M. Disch

  THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT

  I’ve known Tom Disch for twenty-five years; I met him when I was student and he was teacher at the Clarion Science Fiction Writer’s Workshop at Michigan State University in 1974. I’ve been proud to consider him a mentor ever since; his novel Camp Concentration should he on the shelf of every intelligent reader of imaginative fiction.

  Though never abandoning the science fiction field, he eventually found his way into the horror field with two highly regarded novels, The M.D.: A Horror Story and The Businessman: A Tale of Terror. He is also well known as the author of the children’s books The Brave Little Toaster and The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars, as well as the recent critical (and critically acclaimed) study of the sf field, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of. He is also a poet and playwright.

  When student humbly asked teacher for a story for this book, student gratefully received this gem.

  So when Christopher Robin goes to the Zoo, he goes to where the Polar Bears are, and he whispers something to the third keeper from the left, and doors are unlocked, and we wander through dark passages and up steep stairs, until at last we come to the special cage, and the cage is opened, and out trots something brown and furry, and with a happy cry of “Oh, Bear!” Christopher Robin rushes into its arms.

  They liked the mornings best, when Mr. and Mrs. Fairfield were asleep upstairs and the house was quiet and they could snuggle tog
ether on the love seat and wait for the train to come rumbling by on the other side of the river. There were other trains at other times of day, but things could get so hectic later on that you might not even realize a train was going by until the windows were rattling.

  Those windows should have been fixed years ago, especially the combinations on either side of the TV set. Dampy became anxious whenever there was a storm alert, certain that sooner or later a gusting wind would just suck those old windows out of their aluminum frames. The upstairs windows were more solid, because they were made the old-fashioned way and would probably outlast the roof. Though that wasn’t saying much. The roof was in sorry shape, too. One of these days, when he had the cash, Mr. Fairfield was going to fix the roof, but that wouldn’t be any day soon, since trying to find a full-time job kept him out of the house so much of the time.