FSF, September-October 2010

by Spilogale, Inc

  "Left,” said Jasper. “Right."

  Claudia swung open the door upon deepest darkness and they stepped into the hallway and waited. In a moment came the reassuring sound of Uncle Moon's snoring. He sat asleep in the overstuffed chair in the den. He had been posted by Daddy to look after Grammer during her mysterious illness; he was supposed to be wakeful to her midnight needs and wants. But every night Budweiser and TV baseball claimed him and he was as heavy in bed as a fallen timber. They had nothing to fear from Uncle Hobart, Claudia explained in all confidence.

  Only Barb liked her brother Hobart; everyone else thought him unmannerly at the least and sometimes grossly uncouth. Barb insisted that he was a special case, a type of artist not subject to the all-too-ordinary standards of the upscale development, Raintree Hills, where all the males worked in humdrum offices and the wives did charity work and played bridge turn and turn about. What Claudia and Jasper recalled was that Grammer was not ill until Uncle Moon arrived and that her health declined steadily in his company.

  They tiptoed down the hall to where Grammer lay. At the door Claudia gave the silent nod that Jasper knew signified that they had arrived at The Fateful Gateway. Then she turned the knob and they stepped in and she eased the door shut.

  Where Uncle Moon's breathing had been like an unsteady cellist bowing flourishes, Grammer's was light and tired, a breeze of the May night wearied to gentleness under the giant sky. It was as intermittent as breezes, seeming to stop for whole minutes before commencing again with a series of shallow pantings. Something was troubling her sleep, something always was, and it was Jasper's office to name it.

  At this point Claudia always grasped her brother's shoulders from behind and urged him toward the bedside. Every night, just here, Jasper showed reluctance to proceed and only Claudia's firmness prevented him from breaking into sobs and bolting the dark house, laying their scheme open to the inspection of adults. Claudia put her mouth to Jasper's ear and said, “Give me the Net. Say the dreams."

  He handed the nylon to her and moved till he was two feet from the bedside. He licked his lips and closed his eyes, not daring to look at the shadow-shape of Grammer lying there, breathing so fitfully and opening her mouth now and again to make little mewling sounds.

  For a while he said nothing because he saw nothing, but he knew that something must come to him. He would whisper what that was to Claudia, who lacked the talent to see such things. Sometimes he had no words for what he saw in Grammer's dreams, no experiences that could unfold those images for him. They could be too vivid, too puzzling, and when he tried to speak of them he stammered. Claudia would nod knowingly and intone, “The Mystery of Sex."

  But tonight the images behind his eyelids were of a less domestic nature. Horses streamed thundering along under a clamorous brassy sun; a rainbow arched between ice floes; a cat leapt from the mouth of a Pepsi bottle. Jasper saw something he called a “sin-tower,” from the chest upward a splendid archer, but trotting behind this torso, a stallion. There were flowers that possessed elbows, and knees that sported eyeballs. A cloud collided with a mountaintop, spilling coins down those rocky slopes.

  "But now the lake has come again,” he whispered. “All oozy and purple. The lake is drowning the mountain and the sky. All the world is the purple lake and dark. All the light is purple and drowning dark. Everything purple dark."

  "This is where the Raptor Spirit enters,” Claudia said.

  But for Jasper it was dark still and it seemed a long time before the pinkish pearly glow arrived that signaled the approach of the Raptor. The light grew as slowly as a careful sunrise and then there glided into it, arising perhaps from Grammer's inmost, a nearly shapeless form of brighter light. Or maybe it arrived from some other space downward into Grammer. The directions up and down were confusing when applied to her dreaming.

  "I think it is coming now,” Jasper muttered.

  Claudia leaned in upon him from behind. “I am holding the Golden Net,” she said. “Is this the great unholy night of the capture?"

  Jasper stood silent and the both of them listened as Grammer's breath grew more excited.

  "It is almost with her now,” Jasper said. “It is brighter than ever before. Grammer's room smells more like sky now."

  Claudia noticed it too, the diminishment of the smells of sachet and camphor and dried bitter medicine in small glasses and of linen none too fresh. There was an airiness about in the chamber, unmoving but cool.

  "The Raptor is trying to get Grammer to come out. She knows where he is and wants to meet him. But it is hard and she also doesn't want to."

  "Is she trying as hard as she can?"

  "She is trying awfully."

  "This is the night. I am sure it is."

  "She has come partway, but she is scared."

  "This is the night,” Claudia said, “and I hold the Net ready. I can almost see her dream. I can almost see the Raptor Spirit."

  "What is it, then?"

  "I think it was in a man. Inside. Is in a man one time. Maybe Grammer knew who."

  Claudia was ready for it—or him. Jasper and Claudia were prepared to trap this Raptor who had been approaching for thirteen nights, coming to woo Grammer out of her weary body, out of this weary world, to set her soul spinning in a blackness that possessed no stars, no sun, no breath. The Golden Net was waiting, with Claudia's magic all imbued. They were to capture the seductive Raptor and imprison it and it could never again come to steal away Grammer. It would be their captive and she would be safe. And always their secret would be that she would never know she owed her life and very soul to her grandchildren and the Golden Net.

  "Here it is,” Jasper said. “Right above the bed."

  "I'll go to the other side,” Claudia said. “You must be ready to help the Princess of Thieves when she calls on you. We will steal it away on this sacred night."

  She went around the foot of the four-poster and squeezed against the wall on that side and came even with Grammer's head and unfolded the Net. Grammer's mouth was open in her uneasy sleep and that was where the Raptor would enter to snatch Grammer's soul as it rose to meet it. The Raptor would be a smooth, sweet thing, Claudia thought, though she had never seen it. Jasper saw it in the way he saw all the dreams of others and their spirits inside them like flames in lanterns, and saw the swift, smoky entities that swarmed the night winds and the dark corners of attics and the gaped sleeves of dark overcoats that hung musty in closets. She had not seen but she had visualized from Jasper's descriptions. So she knew what the Raptor would look like when they held it captive.

  "Now it has slipped into her mouth. She is coming up to meet it to fly away together,” Jasper said.

  "Now then,” Claudia announced and flung the net that had been folded once and three times and seven times again over Grammer's mouth. “Take the end of it. Hold the Golden Net down tight."

  When they tightened the net across and bore down on the ends with full strength Grammer's eyelids flew open and her eyes enlarged. She looked straight into the darkness above her, not seeing her grandchildren, and the sounds she made were only noises. She tried to struggle, but she was old and weak and tired and did not know that Claudia and Jasper were there to aid her.

  Grammer was tired and feeble and very old indeed and went limp except for her eyelids which still strained open. For a year now she had battled her illness and all her nerve was spent. Her grandchildren had netted the Raptor at great peril to themselves. Grammer could sleep in peace now through all this night because Claudia was refolding the Golden Net according to ritual, once and thrice and seven times, and the Raptor was so enmeshed in its toils and so benumbed by the wizard words painted into it that it had ceased to struggle and was quiet finally as if asleep.

  "We must let her rest,” Claudia said. “We will go home."

  Jasper was too frightened even to nod. He stood stock still till Claudia came from the other side and hugged his waist and poked her head under the big hat till it covered both thei
r faces and said, “Sturdy Helper of the Princess, you have proved your mettle."

  They slipped into the hallway and the Drunken Moon-Sentry did not stir. He must have slumped asleep, for they could not see the top of his bald pinkish head over the chair back. Before his chair the seventh inning droned on and on, flickering. Uncle Moon must never know of the momentous victory that had been achieved while he snored.

  They returned home the way they had come. Claudia led the way; Jasper trailed, now draped completely, as the moon had climbed, in the shadow of his black hat. He was overtired from the excitement and sleepy and would respond crossly if Claudia scolded his slow pace. But she showed wisdom for once and marched more slowly, careful not to leave him too far behind, all frightened. Truth was, she needed his company.

  They climbed the trellis and over the roof and finally through their narrow bedroom window. They loosened the curtain that had been tied back and drew it and the moon's force weakened considerably. After changing into their pajamas they tiptoed down the hall to pee. In the bathroom, Claudia knotted the Golden Net into a ball. “It goes in our closet for tonight,” she said. “Tomorrow we will smuggle it down to the basement and put it in the Secret Keep."

  Jasper nodded sleepily.

  "Do you want to see what the Raptor looks like in the light? Shall I unfold the Golden Net?"

  Jasper shook his head. He was too tired to be frightened, but he didn't want to see it tonight. Too much had happened to try to take in more.

  "Me neither. Tomorrow we'll smuggle it down and soon we'll look at it and nobody will know."

  He nodded, but the gesture meant nothing. He was tired past caring.

  * * * *

  2

  There was no way it could have gone wrong, but it had gone all wrong.

  Grammer had died and then there was great confusion, the house full of strangers fussing over Claudia and Jasper and, after all that, the funeral with itchy clothes and stiff shoes and the stuffy church, then the graveyard where they lowered her box and pitched dirt on it with a dreadful knocking sound. The children withstood the ordeals, as silent and white-faced as gravestones in moonlight, their eyes wide. They did not look into the faces of the adults who tried to draw them out and they most particularly did not look at each other.

  How could it have gone wrong, the capture having proceeded precisely according to plan? The Golden Net had been applied as it should have been; Jasper had visioned the progress of the Raptor in the soul of Grammer, telling its every motion; they had trekked back and forth without being seen and climbed over the nighttime roof without falling to their dooms. But Grammer was no longer among the living and all the rooms in the house were filled with sobbing and tears, though Barb did not weep and was not expected to.

  Daddy was inconsolable. Hours of hard mourning passed before he sought out the company of his children and hugged them and told them that Grammer had gone to inhabit a better place. Breathy and red-eyed, he said that there is a time for everyone and this was the time for Grammer.

  They nestled to him, crying as much for his grief as for the loss of Grammer, which Claudia simply could not comprehend. Grown-ups came to murmur to them and this solicitude made them restless.

  Uncle Moon did not come to them, but they felt his presence. From a distance he followed them with his bland, uninformative gaze, surveying them as if they were offerings in pet-store windows. Once in a while he would grin the horrible grin that spread from ear to ear almost and exposed his little reddish-yellow teeth, looking more than ever like the moon in Jasper's storybook, the one pictured peering down sardonically upon two silhouetted thieves making their way over a round, treeless hill. The thieves wore big floppy black hats and carried heavy-laden sacks slung over their shoulders. The round-faced yellow moon eyed them with baleful skepticism.

  His real name was Hobart, but Jaz and Claudia called him Uncle Moon because of the picture and the memorable story. And while he hung back from the children, as if to observe them more coolly, so the other adults hung back from Uncle Hobart. Grammer had died on his watch and he had only discovered her the next morning as he rose from his TV chair to go pee.

  "Hobart must bear his share of this,” one of his cousins said, but Uncle Moon replied that there was more to it than met the eye and that he had his own notions about what had happened and why, though he would say nothing now. Aunt Irene and Uncle Donald tried to pursue his curious suggestion, but he only winked at them and wagged his big, pumpkin-like head. He was a confirmed drunkard; they would not take him seriously and yet his manner implied that he was privy to facts otherwise unknown.

  But the children knew that the murderer was the Raptor, which had got away clean. The plan had been to capture it in the Golden Net and sneak it down into the basement and imprison it inside the big tobacco-colored stoneware jug that sat in the corner by the shelves of canned tomatoes. This was their Secret Keep, Claudia said, from which the Raptor could not escape. Here they would hold it and train it to their will. They would find a way to force it to return Grammer to the world of the living.

  Yet when they undid the Net, unfolding it seven times, then three times, then once more, they found it empty. The Raptor had eluded them. They did not know what it would look like in the shadowy light down here, but they were certain to recognize it. The Net, though, held nothing but a smear of Grammer's dying spittle and traces of her face powder and something of her smell, hard to detect.

  Jasper gave his sister a long stare, burning with accusation.

  "I don't know, Jaz,” she said. “We did everything right, didn't we?"

  From the darkness by the dusty furnace came a gruff and grainy whisper: “Just right, down to the last detail. You didn't miss a step, not a step."

  "Uncle Hobart?” Claudia said. “Is that you?"

  "Uncle Hobart, is it?” asked the whisper. “Why don't you say Uncle Moon? That's what you really call me, ain't it? Uncle Moon this, Uncle Moon that, Uncle Moon here, Uncle Moon there."

  Jasper began to sniffle. His fear was great.

  "It was just a play name,” Claudia said. “We were not saying bad about you. We saw it in a book, sort of."

  "Was it a story about two thieves stealing two sacks of gold and sneaking away while the moon kept watch on ‘em?"

  "The Moonlight Robbers,” Claudia said. “They were robbing the gold to take it back to the king's palace where it belonged truly. They were good robbers."

  "Good, were they? I ain't so sure. I think I know that story."

  Her voice was firm. “Yes, they were. They were good, only people didn't understand."

  "I know a little song,” the whisper said. “It's kind of a funny song. You see the moon, the moon sees you. That's how it goes."

  "That's not a real song."

  "It tells the tale, though, don't it? It suits real well. You see the moon, he sees you too."

  "You are trying to scare us down here,” Claudia said. “We will go upstairs and leave you in this nasty old basement."

  "Don't forget your Golden Net. You might need it again, you never know."

  "Well, don't you forget either,” she said, though Claudia had no idea what she might mean.

  * * * *

  Jasper rarely spoke more than a few words to his sister. His stark, dark stare and pallid face expressed most of what he felt and sometimes thought.

  Claudia took him in with a scornful look. She sat on her bed and Jasper squatted on the ragged rug beside it, regarding her closely.

  "He is only trying to frighten us,” she explained. “He has scared you, but I will be courageous and teach you to be courageous."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know why. He might've been not asleep in front of the baseball TV and sneaked like a wily savage and saw us trying to trap the Raptor Spirit. Then he might've thought we were hurting her. But we would never hurt our Grammer."

  He looked away and began to snuffle. Tears shone yellow in the light from her bedside lamp.

 
"Don't cry. Remember how Daddy says she has gone to a better place. I bet it is like the farm where she grew up on, the one she told about so much, how happy she was with her dog Ajax and the cows and the big pasture to roam in. That is her better place. Maybe we can go visit sometime."

  Jasper shook his head. He did not want to die and lie down in a coffin and have sad people pitch clods on him. That was the only way anybody could visit Grammer now.

  "Uncle Moon lives alone in Grammer's house. I heard Daddy tell Barb that Hobart acts like the house belongs to him but it doesn't. Barb said Hobie was still her brother for all his faults and had looked after Grammer for a long time and deserved a little consideration. So that means he is over there all the time, thinking about me and you and plotting a dirty mischief, I expect."

  Jasper's solemn stare was unwavering and Claudia could not tell if he believed or disbelieved.

  * * * *

  Yet it was not the case that Uncle Moon was holed up in Grammer's house like a sorcerer in a secret cave, for he was here and there, and there, and over there, wherever the children played in their house or yard. Summer was shortening and nights were lengthening and Jasper and Claudia would go over when the first stars were visible and watch Grammer's house until well after dark.

  What was happening inside? The light in Grammer's bedroom would flick on then off, and then the light from the living room would come on, then go off, leaving only the colorful, rippling glow of television. The upstairs bedroom light would go on and off and on and off, as if Uncle Moon were sending signals. No one lived there but Uncle—so why?

  Once they thought they saw him up in the maple beside Grammer's garage. The leaves were turning red and orange and they saw his round red-orange face among them, nodding and bobbling, and they supposed he must have climbed into the tree to spy on them, but then how could he know they would be there? Step by anxious step, they stole through the shadows until they saw it was not Uncle Moon's head among the limbs but an orange balloon the same exact size, tied there with a narrow, white birthday-present ribbon. It was only a balloon, but it was still scary because a face had been painted on it with black ink, the face with the sneaky, knowing grin that surveyed with icy humor the two thieves with their slung sacks, The Moonlight Robbers.