Totentanz

by Al Sarrantonio

  "Come on, Reg!"

  He turned and blinked out of his daze. Jack and Pup were staring at him, their hands filled with empty soda cans, bottles and candy wrappers. Down the hill below them, Emma Poundridge's small white face regarded them through the car window.

  "Reg, come on!" Jack said.

  "I'm coming."

  He felt the thinnest of touches on his shoulder, the caress of misty fingers. He knew that if he turned, the hands would be there, guiding him, and that the door would be open. Those hands would take him, caress him, pull him toward the doorway and then into the darkness

  For a moment the gentle grip on his shoulder tightened. He almost let it turn him around. But then he took a step forward, following his friends down the hill, and the hands fell away into nothingness.

  Two

  They say that if you die in your dream, you die for real.

  Reggie knew he was in the dream. He always knew. And in the middle of this dream, he thought of another dream he had once had that had let him know he was in it. He was in a long foxhole that wound away to the horizon in both directions. He had a dark-olive uniform on; there were soldiers all around him. It was very quiet, just before dawn, and a pale, orange glow was spreading on the eastern horizon. He could hear the shallow breathing of the men to either side of him. His heart was pounding. He looked over the lip of the foxhole and saw nothing but a long dirt runway. There were pockmarks and a few clumps of close-cropped brush that stood out like crew cuts in the grayish light. Out beyond, at about a hundred yards' distance, there was another long ditch. They all knew what was in there—and they all knew it was going to rise up and attack them at any time. Reggie held a rifle, his hands clammy on the wooden stock. He reached up to the barrel. The metal was cool and damp. The man to his right held a bazooka.

  They waited.

  The round edge of the sun rose, and in its shadow they saw the thing rise. Its long cylindrical body, almost too burdensome in Earth's gravity, was slowly hauled out of the ditch by tentacles that reached and curled tens of yards in every direction. As it advanced, it yowled like a cat in heat—a long, ponderous, terrifying sound.

  "Hold your fire!" someone said close by. Someone else began to whimper. The thing half-crawled, half-rolled toward them, and suddenly someone broke, crying out and climbing backward out of the ditch and making a run for it. An officer scrambled out to block his way and hit the man square in the face. The man went down. "Nowhere to run to, soldier," the sergeant said and carried the man back to the ditch and threw him in.

  "Hold your fire!" the captain said again, and this time he could not hide the tremor in his voice. The creature was fifty yards from them, sliding over the ground, throwing up great clumps of mud and dirt in its wake and twirling its tentacles in the air.

  Thirty yards. Abruptly it rolled toward them, tucking in its long arms and turning over three or four times, closing the gap to ten yards. They could see the great oily mass of its body. The sun looked like a huge orange wart on its back.

  "Hold," the captain repeated, his voice not believing what it was saying. Suddenly the knot in Reggie's stomach loosened and he stood up in the ditch, directly in the path of the thing that bore down on them.

  "Don't worry!" he shouted, holding his hands up for attention. "This is only a dream! Nothing can happen to you. This is only a dream!"

  And then the thing rolled straight at him, and he screamed, and he had suddenly awakened.

  They say that if you die in your dream, you die for real.

  Here, in this dream, he heard his mother say goodbye. Her voice was muffled, as from far away, and then he heard the front door slam, and the screen door behind it.

  When he tried to get out of bed, the sheet pressed him down. He fought against it. It was as if the cloth was a sheet of metal held down by weights, but finally he threw it off. It clanged to the floor behind him as he rushed to the window.

  The door of the red car was just slamming shut. He tried to open the window, but it would not lift. He pounded on it and shouted while the engine gunned into life and the car slid backward out of the driveway. Try as he might, he could not move the window.

  The scene blurred and shifted. He held a sneaker in his hand, fumbling with the laces, and then suddenly it was on his foot. Somehow, he was outside now. His feet were pumping up and down, up and down, as if he were running. He looked down and saw that he was on a bicycle. It was his own bike, he knew. But it was trying to throw him as if it were a bucking horse. He held the handle grips tight: the back wheel kept bouncing into the air. "Whoa, boy," he said, and abruptly the bicycle was still. He looked up and saw his house receding behind him.

  The bike made a turn, and he was on Independence Street, heading toward Main. He was picking up speed. It was early morning; the air smelled like fresh coffee and wet grass. The bicycle moved like the wind. When he lifted his feet from the pedals, the pedals kept turning. He put his feet back, on them and they turned even faster, making his feet and legs ache.

  The bike banked sharply, making the air rush by his head, and he was on Main Street. Up ahead he could make out shops: a gas station, the newspaper store, a doughnut shop. In front of the doughnut shop, parked at a careless angle, was a red-and-white car with round red lights at the back and worn blackwalls. There was a dent from a parking accident on the driver's side. He knew for sure that it was the right car.

  "Dad!" he called out, but his voice seemed swallowed by the wind as the bike hurtled along. He saw the glass door to the doughnut shop open and his father walk out. There was a paper under his arm. "Dad!" Reggie called again, but his father did not hear him; instead, he walked to the dented car door and put his hand on the handle to open it.

  Reggie called out once more, and now his father turned. Reggie saw that it was not his voice that had made him turn, but another sound. The bicycle swerved into the left lane in front of the doughnut shop. There was the desperate sound of hard-hit brakes. Reggie looked up to see, looming over him, the square white front of a milk truck. The driver's mouth was open, his body arched back as his foot jammed on the brake pedal. Reggie saw each tiny detail on the front of the truck: the yellow inspection sticker in the corner of the window, the long tarnished grill, the oval headlights—

  The headlights went away. The morning, his father, the red-and-white car, the doughnut shop, the milk truck—everything went away. It was as if some gigantic unseen hands had painted them on a rubber canvas and then pulled the canvas to one side. In their place, behind the canvas, was only whiteness.

  This happened. I'm dying, Reggie thought. He knew it was a dream; he knew he could stand up and say, "Don't worry, this is only a dream!" but he knew that this time it would make no difference. It was a dream, but it was really happening. If you die in your dream, you die for real. He knew that he was reliving it again, and he knew that if they did not get to him this time, didn't pull him back—

  The world was made of rubber and was being pulled aside, and behind it, behind the world, there was nothing but whiteness. Above it there was a round, black canopy. The canopy dropped toward him, curving down over him, forming a tunnel. He had a last glimpse of his father, pulling off overhead, behind the forming tunnel, his face and body thin-stretched rubber. Reggie tried to say good-bye; all he wanted to do was to say good-bye. But he could say nothing, he could only watch. His father's face was shouting something, his long rubber arms reaching, but then he was gone. The whiteness was gone then too, and Reggie was in the dark tunnel, and alone.

  There was a whooshing sound around him. The tunnel was like an air shaft. He stabilized, coming erect, and the tunnel was solid now. There was silence. He turned to look behind him, his body floating like the pictures he'd seen of astronauts in free fall. He was able to turn with ease. Behind him the tunnel stretched cavernously; at its end there was a dim gray light. Someone was standing in the light, but Reggie could not make out who it was. The figure was too far away, and too small.

  He turne
d round again and saw that the other end of the tunnel was closer. There was a bright light at this end, and he was slowly drifting toward it. The light was almost blinding. It reached out and bathed him; although it was bright, it did not hurt his eyes but, rather, soothed them. Something marred the brightness of the light at its center, and now, as he drifted closer, he saw that there was a figure standing here, too. The light surrounded it completely. Reggie shielded his eyes, but he could not see who the figure was. It stood there silently, and Reggie could feel the weight of its vision on him. He drifted nearer. He could see nothing of its body, but now two eyes in its face, two enormous eyes, became apparent. They were as big as small plates, and they were snaring Reggie like a docking ship. He was becoming lost in those huge orbs, in the bright, beautiful light around them. He felt himself flowing into them, becoming part of them

  There was a cold breath behind Reggie's ear. Sudden fear bolted through him. He turned to see that the other end of the tunnel had collapsed toward him. The gray light was right behind him and something filled it, something huge and dark, bending down over him, opening its mouth, beginning to speak

  I'm dying!

  Reggie tried to scream. The enormous eyes were still there in front of him, but they made no move to help him. Why didn't they save him from this dark, cold thing'? Time was suspended. He knew that if another tick of the clock passed, the dark shape looming over him would speak its words. He was tottering on a ledge, and he would fall over it. Why couldn't the eyes help him?

  If you die in your dream, you die for real.

  He felt the tick of time. The dark mouth began to speak: "K—"

  There was a blankness, and then hands were on him, human hands, and he looked up to see the tunnel peeling back, disintegrating around him. The dark shape disappeared, the eyes faded away, but he felt that something, something he couldn't remember, had passed between them and through him—some bond of that ticking moment of time that had begun—and then they were gone and the white-rubber canvas was there, wrapping down around him as the hands pulled him up, and he cried out.

  He was on his stomach in his bed, his hands clutching the sides of the mattress. For a moment he could not move. The dream had come again—the dream that repeated what had really happened to him. And once again he had almost come too close to return. Once again that tick of time had almost lengthened to eternity.

  From the brink of death, they had said. Reggie knew it was true. Those eyes and that light and the tunnel had been real, and then he had been yanked back. He had been dead, and then he had been alive again. He had been there on the very edge, on the lip of some other place; the eyes had been drawing him into it, and then the doctors had reached into the tunnel and put their cold gloved hands on him and pulled him back. Each time the dream repeated exactly what had happened, and each time he came to the very moment of knowing who and what.

  They say that if you die in your dream—

  But he always came back.

  He turned over slowly and sat up. The front of his pajamas was soaked in chilled sweat. He sat still for a moment, head down and eyes closed. What was there? What happened when you fell over that ledge? The fear of that huge dark shadow and the warmth of those enormous eyes haunted him.

  What was beyond that moment of time?

  His mother eased the door open and stuck her head into the room. "Reggie?" she called sleepily. "You okay?"

  He opened his eyes and looked at her, and she came into the room and sat down on the bed. "Reggie, are you ever going to stop having that dream?" she asked softly.

  "I don't know, Mom."

  His mother was silent. Reggie studied her face: almost old at thirty-nine, the creamy black features beginning to wrinkle slightly, the soft brown eyes beginning to tire just a bit. His mother was a beautiful woman.

  "Reggie," she began, and then hesitated, slapping one hand on the other in frustration. "Reggie, it's been six years. Don't you think it's time to forget?" Again she slapped her hand, and her voice became almost angry. "You're thirteen years old."

  She rose, walked a few steps and then turned. "All these things you've got. All these things that have to do with death." She pointed to a poster over Reggie's bed, a faded reproduction of Breughel's "The Triumph of Death," and waved a hand at the death totems scattered around the room: monster heads that glowed in the dark; a grinning-skull mask made of rubber, hanging on one post of the bed; rows of wax fangs and claws on the bookshelves; a plastic model of a working guillotine, its basket containing a small, chopped-off head that looked up with a startled, open-mouthed expression, the eyes wide. The only other object in the room was a framed photograph of a handsome young man in a uniform, smiling. "And the rest of it—all over the house. The horror-movie cassettes, the handmade mummy in the cellar, the rubber spiders and bats hanging in the bathroom. Skulls everywhere—not to mention all the other things you have in that clubhouse you keep with your friends. Don't you think you've gone far enough with this stuff?"

  "It's just what I'm interested in," he said slowly.

  "I worry about you," his mother said, coming to the bed and pulling him to her. "I really do worry."

  "There's nothing to worry about," Reggie said. "It's . . . just something I'm interested in."

  She held him closer. "If I ever lost you, I don't know what I'd do. I just don't know."

  She began to tremble, and then she was sobbing. Reggie didn't know what to say. "Nothing's going to happen to me, Mom," he muttered.

  She finally let him go and wiped her eyes. For a moment there was silence, and when she spoke, her voice was low.

  "Reggie, I'm going to tell you something I've never told you before. I was with you in the hospital, holding your hand, when you went away. I felt you leave. Right at that moment, I felt it. Your hand was warm, and then it got so cold for a second that I thought I was imagining it. That's when the doctors started to yell. They pushed me out of the way. One of them said, `He's gone,' but I already knew you were dead." She paused, and then went on with difficulty. “At that moment I promised that if you came back, I'd give up anything in the world." She looked deep into his eyes. "Anything, Reggie. And you came back. They brought you back. And then . . . . Her eyes filled with tears; she covered her face with her hands. "And then when your father died in Lebanon, when he never came home again, I felt so guilty." She was unable to go on for a moment. "I loved your father so much. But I promised to give up anything!"

  "Mom."

  She held him again, and quickly composed herself.

  "I just don't want to ever lose you," she said. "I don't want anything bad to ever happen to you."

  "I know, Mom."

  She hugged him and then let him go, easing him back against his pillow. "You sleep well now," she said, straightening up. "No more dreams, okay?"

  She left, turning the silent switch to darken the room again. Reggie stared at the closed door. He thought about her and his father together, remembering fragments: the three of them at a pond feeding the ducks, the ripples of the warm water lapping toward them; a Christmas tree, his father laughing as it lay in the stand at a crooked angle, his mother coming into the room and her eyes lighting up like the Christmas lights; his father mowing the lawn, stopping as Reggie went by, letting the lawnmower idle while he picked Reggie up, throwing him high into the air and catching him tight as he fell. "Sky boy!" he shouted, tossing him up again. And he remembered one more thing: a birthday. He remembered hearing his father in the garage below his bedroom the night before. The July heat had bathed him as he lay comfortably in bed listening to his father labor away at the bicycle he had asked for, singing while he put it together, the bicycle he had found in the garage, complete, early the next morning as his father was called away to his base to leave for Lebanon, even before he had eaten breakfast, the bicycle Reggie had tried to catch up with him on, seeing the car where his father had stopped to grab a cup of coffee, only wanting to say thanks and good-bye, and then the milk truck—


  He turned over in bed, knelt by the headboard, and switched on the reading light to study the poster of "The Triumph of Death." It was a huge canvas, a vast panorama with a thousand bony skeletons and screaming bodies. There was nowhere those people could run; the skeletons formed phalanxes and patrols and were hunting them down. Only one figure in the entire picture seemed to be resisting: A foot soldier in the lower right-hand corner was drawing his sword against the advancing bone men. Reggie's gaze roamed over the field of bodies. Is this what death is? To him it had been a shocked thud, blackness, and the mystery of the tunnel.

  What was over that ledge?

  He was growing tired. His lids began to get heavy. For a moment the poster became like that white elastic canvas he had seen after the truck hit him. And there, superimposed on it, was another vision: all of Montvale turned into a vast landscape of death. Across it strode a tall figure, a man and yet not a man, his face so white as to be no color at all, his tall, sharp frame moving like a sickle through the world. His eyes were the absence of eyes, his mouth a cruel, thin, red slit, his black suit a form of nothingness. He looked to the left and right, and then his eyes turned to Reggie with horrible power—and suddenly Reggie was in the poster, in the lower right-hand corner, the lone soldier drawing a weak blade made merely of metal. . . .

  Reggie blinked awake. His hands were resting on the headboard, his body hunched up in a half-kneel. The poster over the bed was the same as always. Slowly, almost too tired to move, he slipped down and turned over, sliding under the covers. The bed was warm. He tried to open his eyes, to stare at the ceiling, to think. His lids closed.

  He dreamed again that he heard his mother say good-bye. . . .

  THREE

  In another place, someone else dreamed.

  It wasn't dreaming, exactly. He did not close his eyes because when he did, there was nothing but silence. When he closed his eyes he went away somewhere, and when he opened them he came back to this place. He never remembered what happened in between.