The Troupe

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  George moaned and turned over. Then he sat up, rubbing his head. “What happened?” he asked.

  Colette simply pointed. George looked behind them and his mouth fell open. “What happened?” he asked again.

  “Someone broke the dam,” she said. “I’m guessing Stanley. It looks like he flooded out the wolves. Can wolves be killed by water?”

  “Sort of, I think … Franny killed one with her bare hands,” said George.

  “Annie,” corrected Colette.

  George did not pay attention. He nervously watched where the flood crept up the side of the hill. For a moment it passed where they’d originally hidden underneath the backdrop, and George was thankful Colette had carried him as far as she did. Then it lessened, and though the river still poured over the broken remains of the dam it was not as violent as it’d initially been.

  “He’s down there,” said George.

  “Who?” Colette asked.

  “My father,” he said.

  She gave him a worried look. “Harry’s dead, George. We saw it happen.”

  “Silenus isn’t my father, Colette,” he said.

  “What? Are you joking?”

  George shook his head. “Then who is?”

  He looked down at the cardboard still clutched in his hand and Stanley’s last message written there. She saw and realized what he was thinking. “Are … are you serious?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Harry and Stanley are related, just like you said, but Harry wasn’t my father. They lied to me, to everyone, right from the start. I don’t know why, not yet. But he’s down there. I can sense it.”

  “How?”

  “Have you ever noticed how things seem calmer around Stanley? How sometimes it’s just nice to sit with him, or how he makes everything make sense?”

  “I … I guess,” she said.

  “It’s the song,” said George. “It’s all the pieces of the First Song inside of him. I was just too ignorant to notice it. But now I know what to look for. I can feel it in him.” He put the piece of cardboard in his pocket. “I was so cruel to him … I never even said thank you for all the little things he did for me. I never even got the chance to tell him that I loved him. Or the chance to love him at all.” Then he stood.

  “What are you going to do, George?” asked Colette.

  “I’m going to find him,” he said. “If there’s even the slightest chance he’s still alive, I’ve got to try.”

  “Still alive?” said Colette. “What do you mean, still alive?”

  George remembered how Stanley had looked at him before he’d handed him the card. It had been the look of a man who was readying to stare into death. Wherever Stanley had been going, he had not expected to return.

  “Stay here,” said George, and started off down the hill.

  The lower woods were a soggy, dripping ruin. It was impossible to walk ten feet without being soaked by the water dripping from overhead. Trees and shrubs had been uprooted or pushed over, and in places the forest was nothing but yards of dark, tangled branches. Bands of washed-up leaves marked the edges of the flow, creating bizarre little pathways on the ground or strange insignias on trees. Besides the distant river there was not a sound.

  Then George heard something: a tinkling, like that of metal. He realized it was coming from the same direction in which he sensed the song, and dodged through the snarls of branches.

  George slowed to a stop when he saw him. He moaned in despair and his hands flew to his brow. Then he walked forward to better see what was hanging from the crushed pine ahead.

  Stanley had chained himself to the trunk, it seemed, and the chain had held on a little too well. His father hung upside down from the pine’s twisted branches, his arms at unfamiliar angles and a dark stripe of blood marking his side where the chain still clutched him. Then George saw that his mouth was moving, and he realized that his father was still alive.

  He cried out and ran to him to untangle him from the pine. His father’s large, dark eyes blindly searched for him, hearing his efforts, and he tried to reach out to his son with one hand. George said, “Don’t move, please don’t move,” and unlooped the chain from the last branch and eased his father down.

  George laid him out on the wet stone beside the riverbank. Now that he held him in his arms George could not help but feel the immense tug from what was trapped within Stanley. He first wondered if perhaps he was becoming more attuned to the song now that he knew where it was, but then he realized it was something else: Stanley was losing control of all the echoes, and they were beginning to leak out of him.

  Stanley’s hand again reached out to him, and George took it and laid its palm along his cheek. “I’m here,” said George. “I’m here. I’m finally here.”

  His father smiled and nodded. Then his pale face wrinkled in concern, and he tried to pull George close.

  “What?” said George. “What can I do?”

  And then, for the first time in what had to be many, many years, his father spoke: “George,” he said, and the word was overlaid with the many tones of the First Song. “It’s coming.”

  “What is?” said George.

  Stanley raised a hand and pointed to the river. George looked and at first saw nothing, but then he noticed there was a curiously dense shadow in the center of the water, denser than even the blackest night, and he suddenly felt as if there were two eyes behind that crack, watching him and trying to push through with all its strength.

  Ice began to creep across the river. Soon the sound of babbling water had faded entirely, and it felt as if all light was hurriedly fleeing the valley. There was a groan from down in the shadow under the ice, so deep and low it was nearly impossible to hear, and in his heart George realized it was the sound of the bones of Creation itself being pushed aside to make room for something’s passage.

  They had started, he realized. Just before Stanley had flooded the valley they must have started to bring their own creator through, the First Darkness. It would not tolerate being robbed of its prize when it had come so close, and was, perhaps for the very first time, about to make an appearance in Creation itself.

  “Oh, no,” said George. “No, no. What can we do?”

  Stanley laid a hand on his arm.

  “What?” George said.

  His father crooked his finger. George bent closer.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Stanley clapped one hand on the back of George’s neck, holding him there, and opened his mouth and began to breathe out. As he did a thousand little veins of light came fluttering out, caught on the breeze of his last exhalation, and rushed into George’s open mouth. George’s eyes went wide and he struggled to pull back, but Stanley’s grasp held fast.

  It was the same as when George had first found the song outside of Rinton, but magnified a thousand times. Again, it was like the sky opened up and something unimaginably vast was poured into him, but this time it simply kept going, an unending rush of voices and pitches filling up every space within his head.

  Some of the echoes leaped out, and George realized Stanley was showing them to him with his last moments. One flashed bright, and he saw …

  . . . Silenus stands at the door of his office, and Stanley sits below the bay window. A cup of tea is cooling beside the chair in front of the desk. A boy has just been sitting in that chair, but Silenus has just thrown him out and is still breathing hard from the effort. For a moment there is silence as the two men consider what the boy has just said.

  “He thinks he is my son,” says Silenus. “He really believes it.” He looks at Stanley, furious. “But he isn’t, is he? Is he, Stan?”

  Stanley, white and quaking with disbelief, stands up and tries to walk forward, but falls to his knees. Tears spring to his eyes and he struggles for a moment, and he opens his mouth.

  “No, no!” cries Silenus. He rushes over and claps a hand across Stanley’s mouth. “I know it’s hard, but you can’t lose focus! Not now!”

>   Stanley’s hands search for his blackboard. At first he is so agitated he cannot do much more than scribble, but then he writes: MY SON MY SON MY SON

  “Yes, yes,” says Silenus, annoyed, and he releases him. “He is your son, it seems. And he’s a problem. A problem we could’ve avoided if you’d just kept your dick in your pants—”

  Stanley throws off Silenus’s grasp and whirls around and strikes him across the face. Silenus falls backward, arms pinwheeling, and lands on his back on the floor. He groans and glares up at Stanley. “Christ, Stan? What the hell?”

  Stanley gives him a cold look and begins to walk out of the office to finally greet his son, but Silenus sits up and grabs his wrist and holds him back. “Don’t,” he says.

  Stanley tries to shake him off, but Silenus will not let go. “Didn’t you hear what I said?” he asks. “That boy is a problem!”

  Stanley stoops and picks up the blackboard and writes: WHAT KIND OF PROBLEM

  “You know what kind of problem,” says Silenus. “We’ve worked for years to keep our enemies distracted from you. Everything I do is meant to remove their attention from you and focus it all on me. We’ve worked so hard to conceal that you’re even related to me. They think you’re just some fucking cellist! So if we suddenly start traveling with this kid who has a hell of a lot of the Silenus family resemblance, and it becomes apparent that he’s your son, then what is that going to do? They’ll know you’re my blood relation, and then they’ll know we’ve been hiding something. This kid could be nothing but a big red arrow pointing straight to you, Stan! Think!”

  Stanley tries not to see the sense in this, shaking his head.

  “You know I’m right,” said Silenus. “We’ve got to take care of this. Send him away somewhere, keep him safe. I know it’s got to tear you up, Stan, but we’ve got to.”

  Stanley writes: WE CAN TELL HIM. KEEP HIM SAFE WITH US. WILL KEEP OUR SECRETS.

  “We can’t tell him, Stan. That boy is sixteen years old, and I know you might not want to hear this, but he is reckless and arrogant as all hell. We can’t trust him with something so important. Maybe one day we can tell him. But not now. For now, we’ve got to send him somewhere far, far away.”

  Then Stanley’s eyes light up. He looks at Silenus, and his excitement quickly fades. He writes: HE CA N STAY.

  “I told you, we can’t—”

  But Stanley is already writing again: DO NOT HAVE TO BRING ANY AT TENTION TO ME.

  “And how would you do that?” asks Silenus.

  THE BOY BELIEVES YOU ARE HIS FATHER.

  “So?”

  Stanley writes the next words slowly, as if signing a contract he is already regretting: WHAT IS WRONG WITH LETTING HIM BELIEVE THAT?

  Silenus frowns as he reads this message. He looks at Stanley, astonished, and asks, “What, me? Act like his father? Oh, no. No, no, no.”

  Stanley sits down next to Silenus on the floor. Silenus keeps shaking his head. “I couldn’t do something like that, Stan,” he says. “Look at me. I’m not cut out for that kind of schtick at all. It would be terrible.”

  Stanley writes: SAFEST AND EASIEST WAY. YOU KNOW THAT.

  Silenus looks at him suspiciously. “You would really do that? Let your son think someone else is his father?”

  Stanley sighs. He writes: ANY THING TO KEEP HIM CLOSE.

  The echo faded, and was gone. More kept flooding into George, one after the other. Another flashed bright, and he saw …

  . . . Stanley is standing in a general store. In one hand is a bag holding two tailored suits and a packet of toffees. In the other hand is a second bag, and in this are combs, razors, shoes, some aftershave, and several books.

  “That’s quite the haul you have there,” says the clerk. “Someone’s birthday?”

  Stanley writes: YES. MAKING UP FOR A LOT OF BIRTHDAYS.

  “I can understand that,” said the clerk. “I have two boys of my own. I traveled a lot in my old job, and never got to see them. But I’m glad to be home now.”

  Stanley nods, but then he frowns and glances at his bag of small trinkets. They seem even smaller now. At most they are cheap toys.

  “What’s wrong?” asks the clerk. “Not what you wanted?”

  Stanley sighs, and writes: NO. BUT IT IS ALL I CAN GET.

  … More echoes, more and more, containing countless years and vistas and lives, and another one swam out to George, and inside it was …

  . . . It is very cold outside, but Stanley stands on the train platform and refuses to leave. He watches the train fade away, his son and his greatuncle on board, and he continues wiping his tears with his handkerchief. In his other hand he holds a gold pocket watch.

  He puts away the handkerchief and stares at the watch in his hand. He frowns at it, tilting it back and forth, taking in its many imperfections: its scuffed glass, its chipped case, the way the knob at the top has come loose and sits askew on the top. His face twists into disgust at his paltry gift, and he stuffs it into his pocket and walks away from the platform.

  He is in the middle of the street when he stops, shaking his head and moaning. He looks back at the train, but it is gone. He takes one clenched fist out of his pocket and pounds the side of his head with it, moaning a little with each strike. Then he reaches up to the sky with both hands, as if drawing in the breath to scream.

  The air around him trembles. From somewhere within him there comes the sound of many voices, singing and chanting softly. And Stanley, who has borne all these echoes for so, so long, wants nothing more than to throw them to the sky and crawl out from under the burden that has defined his entire life.

  He almost does it. Yet at the last moment his arms drop, and he stands with his head bowed, defeated. He reaches into his pocket and takes out the watch again. He stares at it, and slowly his face fills with loathing. Then he flings the watch down and stomps on it with one foot.

  As the crunch of the glass echoes across the street, all the fury leaves his face. He does not breathe, shocked at what he has done. He removes his foot and stares down at the broken glass and the tiny, gossamer-thin gears lying mangled on the stone. An heirloom ruined in a second’s rage. He moans a little again, already regretting his decision, and he stoops and picks up some of the watch’s innards and cradles them in his palm.

  He sits down and picks up more of the watch, and as he does he begins weeping again. He looks to the sky and holds out the handful of broken gears as if begging some unseen force to take back his rash action, or perhaps to come down and repair what he has done. But nothing happens, and he sighs and bows his head again.

  Eventually he collects the pieces of the watch and wraps them up in his tearstained handkerchief. Then he stands up, looks back in the direction of the train again, and with another sigh he walks back to the hotel to await the return of his great-uncle, and the one thing he still treasures in this world: his only child.

  … And when this one faded even more echoes came charging into George. The knowledge of these moments was so much that he wanted to tear his face away, but still Stanley held fast as he surrendered all the echoes all the troupes had fought for and collected, eons worth of effort, impossibly vast amounts of information and history. And even though this sensation was nearly enough to cripple him, George could still sense that these echoes were happy: they had finally, after ages of waiting and being borne throughout the world, been reunited with their missing sibling, the one huge piece that George had been carrying since he was a child.

  George could not see it, but the branches of all the surrounding trees, fallen or upright, began to bend toward him, as if drawn in by a hidden weight. Stones nearby twisted on the ground to point toward him. And up the hill the thousand little trickling streams suddenly changed direction to run down and pass below his feet.

  The flow of echoes stopped and Stanley’s hand fell. George sat back, stupefied. Then he breathed out, and blinked.

  In the surrounding towns of upper New York, just a ways from where
George now sat, many people who otherwise would have been sleeping soundly instead stirred and sat up, frowning. If asked they would not have been able to say why they’d awoken; they might have said something about hearing a noise, or experiencing the strangest sensation of their beds tipping underneath them, but none would have been entirely sure. Yet of these sudden insomniacs several awoke to find their property or surroundings in very strange shape.

  For example, an elderly woman in Keesville awoke in her home and went downstairs, suspecting a prowler. She found no trespasser, nor any missing valuables, but on entering her kitchen she struck her head on something very hard that should not have been there. After she recovered she looked up to find all her pots and pans were still hanging above her stove, but now they were hanging at a sharp angle, and she’d popped her head on the largest skillet. She felt the air around them, but found no strings; it was as if they were being magnetically pulled toward the southwestern wall of her home. She called upon her neighbor to have her witness this phenomenon, but her neighbor was in a similar state of distress: her dining room chairs had all slid away from the table to crash against the southwestern corner of her own home. On being pulled away the chairs slid promptly back, and both women puzzled over this until they noticed the sofa and dressers slowly sliding toward them. They stared as the rest of the furniture inched across the floor to gather on the wall. Neither of them was able to explain what was happening, but they did nervously admit that they felt as if the ground were shifting beneath them, and they kept looking out the window at the southwestern horizon, as if subconsciously anticipating the rise of a new sun.

  On the outskirts of Lake Placid an old gentleman attempted to return to sleep by indulging in a puff of tobacco with his favorite pipe. At first his habit comforted him, but then he noticed the pipe smoke was behaving very oddly: it seemed to be gathering in the top corner of his parlor, rather than dispersing as usual. The smoke kept building and condensing until it took on the appearance of an extremely large cocoon lodged up under the ceiling. This greatly perturbed the old gentleman, and nothing he did, from blowing at it to poking it with a broom, managed to break up the ball of smoke. He ventured outside, thinking there must be some crack in the wall, and found that the wall was as firm and smooth as it’d always been. Yet it was there that he noticed the smoke from his still-lit pipe was moving away in a very solid, thin line, as if it was being invisibly tugged toward the woods. It appeared to align with the course of the smoke in his parlor room, but outside there was nothing to block its way. He frowned at this, but became much more disturbed when he looked up and saw the clouds overhead were doing the very same thing as his pipe smoke.