Nightmare Alley

by William Lindsay Gresham

  He began to dream. He and Lady Cynthia rode through the forest. Cynthia was Mother’s name, only Lady Cynthia was not like Mother except that she looked like her. She was just a beautiful lady on a white palfrey and the bridle was set with gems and jewels that winked in the dappled light through the branches. Stan was in armor and his hair was long and cut straight across and his face was tanned dark and with no freckles. His horse was a powerful charger as black as midnight. That was its name—Midnight. He and Lady Cynthia had come to the forest to seek an adventure, for in the forest was a powerful old magician.

  Stan came out on a long-disused timber road where he slipped out of the dream, for he remembered that they had been here on the picnic. That was the time they had come out with Mr. and Mrs. Morris and Mark Humphries had driven Mother and Dad and Stan in his car with the top down. They brought the food in baskets.

  Sudden anger rose up in him when he thought how his dad had had to spoil the day by having a fuss with Mother about something. He had spoken in low tones but then Mother had said, “Stan and I are going for a walk all by ourselves, aren’t we, Stan?” She was smiling at the others the way she did when something was wrong. Stan had felt that delicious shudder go up between his shoulders.

  That was the time they found the Glade.

  It was a deep cleft in a ridge and you would never know it was there unless you stumbled on it. He had been back since but on that day Mother had been there and all of a sudden, as if she had felt the magic of the place, she had knelt and kissed him. He remembered the perfume she had on. She had held him off at arm’s length and she was really smiling this time, as if at something deep inside herself, and she said, “Don’t tell anybody. This place is a secret just between us.”

  He had been happy all the way back to the others.

  That night when they were back home and he was in bed, the sound of his father’s voice, rasping and rumbling through the walls, had made him sick with rebellion. What did he have to always be fussing with Mother for? Then the thought of the Glade, and of how she looked when she kissed him, made him wriggle with delight.

  But the next day it was all gone and she spoke sharp to him about everything and kept finding jobs for him to do.

  Stan started down the loggers’ road. In a damp spot he stooped and then knelt like a tracker examining a spoor. The spot was fed by a trickle of spring. Across it were the tracks of auto tires, their clear and sacrilegious imprints just beginning to fill with water.

  Stan hated them—the grownups were everywhere. He hated their voices most of all.

  Cautiously he crossed the road, calling Gyp to him to keep him from rustling through the brush. He held the dog’s collar and went on, taking care not to tread on any dead twigs. The Glade had to be approached with the reverence of silence. He climbed the last bank on his hands and knees and then on looking over the crest he froze.

  Voices were coming from the Glade.

  He peered further over. Two people were lying on an Indian blanket and with a hot rush Stan knew that one was a man and the other was a woman and this was what men and women did secretly together that everybody stopped talking about when he came around, only some grownups never talked about it at all. Curiosity leaped inside of him at the thought of spying on them when they didn’t know he was there. He was seeing it all—all of it—the thing that made babies grow inside of women. He could hardly breathe.

  The woman’s face was hidden by the man’s shoulder, and only her hands could be seen pressing against his back. After a while they were still. Stan wondered if they were dead—if they ever died doing it and if it hurt them but they had to do it even so.

  At last they stirred and the man rolled over on his back. The woman sat up, holding her hands to her hair. Her laughter rang up the side of the Glade, a little harsh but still silvery.

  Stan’s fingers tightened on the grass hummock under his hand. Then he spun around, dragging Gyp by the collar, and stumbled, sliding and bumping, down the slope to the road. He ran with his breath scorching his throat, his eyes burning with tears. He ran all the way back and then went up in the attic and lay on the iron bed and tried to cry, but then he couldn’t.

  He heard Mother come in after a while. The light outside began to darken and shadows got longer.

  Then he heard the car drive up. Dad got out. Stan could tell by the way he slammed the car door that he was mad. Downstairs he heard his father’s voice, rasping through the floors, and his mother’s raised, the way she spoke when she was exasperated.

  Stan came downstairs, one step at a time, listening.

  His father’s voice came from the living room. “… I don’t care for any more of your lies. I tell you, Mrs. Carpenter saw the two of you turning up the road into Mills’ Woods. She recognized you and she saw Mark and she recognized the car.”

  Mother’s tone was brittle. “Charles, I should think you would have a little more—pride, shall we say?—than to take the word of anyone as malicious and as common as your friend, Mrs. Carpenter.”

  Dad was hammering on the mantelpiece with his fist; Stan could hear the metal thing that covered the fireplace rattle. “New York hats! A nigger to clean up the house! Washing machines! Music lessons! After all I’ve given you, you turn around and hand me something like this. You! I ought to horsewhip that snake-in-the-grass within an inch of his life!”

  Mother spoke slowly. “I rather think Mark Humphries can take care of himself. In fact, I should dearly love to see you walk right up to him on the street and tell him the things you’ve been saying to me. Because he would tell you that you are a liar. And you would get just what you’re asking for; just what you’re asking for. Besides that, Charles, you have a filthy mind. You mustn’t judge others by yourself, dear. After all, it is quite possible for a person with some breeding to enjoy an hour’s motoring in friendship and nothing more. But I realize that if you and—Clara Carpenter, shall we say? …”

  Dad let out a noise that was something like a roar and something like a sob. “By the Eternal, I’ve sworn never to take the Lord’s name in vain, but you’re enough to try the patience of a saint. God damn you! D’you hear? God damn you and all—”

  Stan had reached the ground floor and stood with his fingers running up and down the newel post of the stairs, looking in through the wide double doors of the living room. Mother was sitting very straight on the sofa without leaning back. Dad was standing by the mantel, one hand in his pocket and the other beating against the wood. When he looked up and saw Stan he stopped short.

  Stan wanted to turn and run out the front door but his father’s eyes kept him fastened to the floor. Mother turned her head and saw him and smiled.

  The telephone rang then.

  Dad started and plunged down the hall to answer it, his savage “Hello!” bursting like a firecracker in the narrow hallway.

  Stan moved painfully, like walking through molasses. He crossed the room and came near his mother whose smile had hardened and grown sick-looking. She whispered, “Stan, Dad is upset because I went riding with Mr. Humphries. We wanted to take you riding with us but Jennie said you weren’t here. But —Stan—let’s make believe you did go with us. You’ll go next time. I think it would make Dad feel better if he thought you were along.”

  From the hall his father’s voice thundered, “By the Eternal, why did the fool have to be told in the first place? I was against telling him. It’s the Council’s business to vote on the committee’s recommendation. We had it in the bag, sewed up tight. Now every idiot in town will know just where the streets will be cut and that property will shoot sky-high by tomorrow morning….”

  As Mother leaned close to Stan he smelled the perfume she had on her hair. She always put it on when she went downtown to take her singing lesson. Stan felt cold inside and empty. Even when she kissed him. “Whose boy are you, Stan? You’re Mother’s boy, aren’t you, dear?”

  He nodded and walked clumsily to the double doors. Dad was coming back. He took Stan
roughly by the shoulder and shoved him toward the front door. “Run along, now. Your mother and I are talking.”

  Mother was beside them. “Let him stay, Charles. Why don’t you ask Stanton what—what he did this afternoon?”

  Dad stood looking at her with his mouth shut tight. He still had Stan by the shoulder. Slowly he turned his head. “Stan, what’s your mother talking about?”

  Stan swallowed. He hated that slack mouth and the stubble of pale yellow on the chin that came out when Dad hadn’t shaved for several hours. Mark Humphries did a trick with four little wads of newspaper and a hat and had showed Stan how to do it. And he used to ask riddles.

  Stan said, “We went riding with Mr. Humphries in his automobile.” Over his father’s arm, still holding him, Stan saw Mother’s face make a little motion at him as if she were kissing the air.

  Dad went on, his voice quiet and dangerous. “Where did you go with Mr. Humphries, son?”

  Stan’s tongue felt thick. Mother’s face had gotten white, even her mouth. “We—we went out where we had the picnic that time.”

  Dad’s fingers loosened and Stan turned and ran out into the falling dusk. He heard the front door close behind him.

  Someone switched on the living-room lamp. After a while Dad came out, got in his car and went downtown. Mother had left some cold meat and bread and butter on the kitchen table and Stan ate it alone, reading the catalog. Only it had lost its flavor and there seemed to be something terribly sad about the blue willow-pattern plate and the old knife and fork. Gyp whined under the table. Stan handed him all his own meat and got some jelly and ate it on the bread. Mother was upstairs in the spare bedroom with the door locked.

  The next day Mother got breakfast for him. He said nothing and neither did she. But she wasn’t a grownup any more. Or he wasn’t a kid any more. There were no more grownups. They lied when they got scared, just like anybody. Everybody was alike only some were bigger. He ate very little and wiped his mouth and said, “Excuse me,” politely. Mother didn’t ask him to do any jobs. She didn’t say anything at all.

  He tied Gyp up to the kennel and set out for the woods where the old loggers’ road cut into them. He moved in a dream and the shine of the sun seemed to hold back its warmth. At the top of the Glade he paused and then slid doggedly down its slope. Around him the trees rose straight and innocent in the sun and the sound of a woodpecker came whirring through them. The grass was crushed in one place; close by Stan found a handkerchief with “C” embroidered in a corner.

  He looked at it with a crawling kind of fascination and then scooped out a hole in the earth and buried it.

  When he got back he kept catching himself thinking about things as if nothing had happened, then stopping and the wave of desolation would sweep over him.

  Mother was in her room when he came upstairs.

  But something was lying big and square on his bed. He raced in.

  There it was. The “Number 3” set—Marvello Magic. A full hour’s entertainment, suitable for stage, club, or social gathering, $15.00. Its cover was gay with a picture of Mephistopheles making cards rise from a glass goblet. On the side of the box was a paper sticker which read, “Myers’ Toy and Novelty Mart” and the address downtown. The corners of the box were shiny with imitation metal bindings, printed on the paper.

  Stan knelt beside the bed, gazing at it. Then he threw his arms around it and beat his forehead against one of the sharp corners until the blood came.

  Outside the trolley had approached and slid under the hotel window, groaning its lonely way through the night. Stan was trembling. He threw back the covers, switched on the bed light and stumbled into the bathroom. From his fitted case he took a vial and shook a white tablet into his hand. He found the tooth glass, swallowed the tablet with a gulp of tepid water.

  When he got back in bed it was several minutes before the sedative began to work and he felt the peaceful grogginess stealing up to his brain.

  “Christ, why did I have to go thinking of that?” he said aloud. “After all these years, why did I have to see her? And Christmas only a week off.”

  CARD VII

  The Emperor

  carved on his throne the name of power and on his scepter the sign of power.

  “STAN, honey, I’m scared.”

  He slowed the car and bent to look at the road signs. Sherwood Park—8 miles. “We’re nearly there. What are you scared of? Because these people have a lot of jack? Whistle the eight bars of our opener and you’ll snap out of it.”

  “I’ve tried that, Stan. Only—gosh, it’s silly. But how’ll I know which fork to grab? The way they lay out these fancy dinners looks like Tiffany’s window.”

  The Great Stanton turned off the highway. Late light of summer evening lay over the sky; his headlights threw back the pale undersides of leaves as the roadster sped up the lane. On either side elms stood in columns of dignity.

  “Nothing to it. Watch the old dame at the head of the table. Just stall until she dives in and she’ll cue you on the hardware. My mother’s folks had barrels of jack once. The old lady knew her way around. That’s what she used to tell my old man whenever they went anywhere.”

  The house rose out of the dusk behind a sweep of lawn as big as a golf course. At the door a Negro butler with tiny brass buttons said, “Let me rest your coat and hat, sir.”

  “My name is Stanton. Stanton the Mentalist.”

  “Oh. Mis’ Harrington say to show you right upstairs. She say you be wanting to have dinner upstairs, sir.”

  Stan and Molly followed him. Through an archway they could see women in evening dresses. A man in a dinner jacket stood with his back to a dark, enormous fireplace. He held a cocktail glass, gripping it by the foot instead of the stem.

  The room was on the top floor, rear; the ceiling slanted.

  “Dinner’ll be served right soon, sir. Anything you want, just pick up that phone and push button eight on the box. That’s butler’s pantry.”

  When he had closed the door Stan locked it. “Relax, kid,” he said wryly, “we’re eating private. Let’s get loaded first and try out the batteries.”

  He opened their traveling bags; Molly drew her dress over her head and hung it in a closet. From one of the bags she shook out a black net evening gown laden with sequins. “Hold the wires, honey, so they won’t catch in my hair.”

  Expertly Stan eased the dress over her head. It was high-cut in the back with a ruff. He took a curved metal band attached to a flat earphone and slipped it over her head while the girl held her hair forward. When she threw it back the hair covered her ears so that the compact headset was completely hidden. Stan reached into the low V of the neck, found a miniature plug, and connected the headset. From his own suitcase he took his tails and began to stud a dress shirt.

  “Go slow on that makeup, kid. Remember—you’re not working behind foots now. And don’t do any bumps or grinds while you’re supposed to be hypnotized.”

  Standing in his underwear, he put on a linen vest with pockets like a hunting jacket’s. They bulged with flat flashlight batteries. A wire dangled; strapping it to his leg in three places, he carried it down and drew on a black silk sock, feeding the wire through a tiny hole. His shoe followed, then the wire plugged into a socket at the side of the shoe. Finally he put on his shirt. Moistening his fingers, he rubbed them on a handkerchief, took from a wax paper envelope a spotless white tie, and tied it, frowning in the mirror of the dresser. In his coat a spider web of fine wire was sewed into the lining as an aerial; another plug connected it with the hidden vest which held the transmitter.

  The Great Stanton adjusted his suspenders, then buttoned his waistcoat; he gave his hair a touch with the brushes and handed Molly a whiskbroom so that she could dust his shoulders for him.

  “Gee, honey, you look handsome.”

  “Consider yourself kissed good and hard. I don’t want to get smeared up. For God’s sake take some of that lipstick off.”

  Under the toes
of his left foot was the reassuring bulge of the contact key. Stan reached under his white vest and threw an invisible switch. He walked across the floor. “Get any buzz?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Now.” He pressed hard with his toes inside his shoe; but Molly made no sign. “God damn! If I’d been able to get a line on who was going to be at this shindig I’d have worked a straight crystal routine. There’s too many things to come loose in this damn wireless gimmick.” He ran his hands over the girl’s dress, checking. Then he said, “Hold up your hair.” The headset plug had slipped out. Stan spread its minute prongs with the point of a nail file and rasped them bright with irritable strokes. He connected it and Molly rearranged her hair.

  On the other side of the room he again pressed with his left toes.

  “I’ve got it, honey. Nice and clear. Now walk and see if it buzzes when you don’t want it to.”

  Stan paced back and forth, keeping his weight off his toes, and Molly said she couldn’t hear a thing, only when he wiggled his toes and made the contact.

  “Okay. Now I’m in another room. What are the tests?”

  “A card, a color, and a state.”

  “Right. What’s this?”

  Molly closed her eyes. From the earphone came a faint buzz three times—spades. Then a long buzz and three short ones—five plus three is eight. “Eight of spades.”

  “Right.”

  A tap from the door made Stan hiss for her to keep quiet.

  “Dinner is served, sir. Mis’ Harrington send her respects. She’ll let you know on the phone when it’s time for you all to come down. Better let me open up this bottle now, sir; we’s powerful busy downstairs.” He eased the cork out, his polished fingers dark against the napkin.

  Stan felt in his pocket for a quarter and caught himself just in time. The butler bowed out.

  “Gee, lookit, Stan! Champagne!”