The Green Man

by Michael Bedard

  “My great-grandfather, the architect Lawrence Linton,” said Miss Linton, when she noticed Emily studying the portrait.

  “Yes. A very important man in the history of this community.”

  Miss Linton nodded, obviously pleased at the compliment. “Would you care to join me over here by the fire?” Four high-backed, red-velvet armchairs huddled around a vast fireplace on the far side of the room. She settled into one of them and motioned Emily and O to sit down opposite her.

  A small oval table stood beside Miss Linton’s chair, with a silver tea service and two cups and saucers. “Would you care for a cup of tea?” she asked.

  “That would be very nice, thank you,” said Emily.

  O found it stifling this close to the fire. As Miss Linton went to get another cup from the sideboard, she shifted her chair a little farther back.

  Miss Linton wore a dark silk dress, trimmed at the wrist and the neck with old lace. Her gray hair was drawn back into a bun. Her ruby earrings hung by her neck like bright drops of blood. She looked like someone who had gone astray in the centuries. In her prime, she would have been a beauty. Even now, something about her commanded attention.

  “You will be wondering why I called you about the collection, rather than a large dealer or an appraiser,” said Miss Linton, pouring the tea.

  “As a matter of fact, I had wondered.”

  “Well, as I said on the phone, you came highly recommended by an old friend.”

  “May I ask who?”

  “You may certainly ask, but I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to tell you. Suffice it to say that your paths have crossed in the past and he was impressed by you.”

  “I see.”

  There was something condescending in the woman’s tone – a quiet but clear reminder that they were not of the same class.

  “I was drawn by the name of your shop. I’ve always had a fascination for the Green Man, as did my great-grandfather. You can see several examples of the figure in the ornamentation on his buildings.”

  O remembered the sculpted figure above the sidelight at the front door.

  “Was it you who named the shop?” asked Miss Linton.

  “No,” said Emily, “it’s been a bookshop for many years. The original owner gave the shop its name.”

  “A very mysterious figure, the Green Man. I often wonder whether he is meant to be a symbol of good or of evil, an image of life or of death. The earliest examples are really quite frightening.”

  “Perhaps a little of both,” said Emily. “He stands at the doorway between worlds. Life springs from him, all green and growing. But that life is rooted in darkness, as all life must be. And I imagine that, sometimes, a bit of the dark world crosses over.”

  19

  The fire crackled in the grate. Emily sipped her tea. She felt hot and ill at ease. It was all she could do to sit quietly and keep up her end of the conversation. She put her cup down before it was finished and folded her hands on her lap. Red welts had risen around the scratches from the rosebush. Her hand throbbed, and she was feeling a little dizzy. The perfume the woman was wearing seemed suddenly overwhelming.

  Finally, the conversation worked its way around to the collection. “It belonged originally to my great-grandfather,” said Miss Linton. “He built this house and lived here until his death. The collection has grown over time. A while back, it outgrew the library where it is housed. I boxed some of the items and had them removed to the carriage house out back. My great-grandfather had rather unusual tastes, and I was happier without them in the house.”

  “I see,” said Emily, sensing disaster. She cast a look at O.

  “I will be moving in a little over a month,” continued Miss Linton. “This place is more than I can manage now. Even at the height of summer, there is a chill about it that seeps into my bones. I keep this fire going year-round – and still I am cold. The house and I are both too old. Our vital fires are burning low.

  “I plan to move south – someplace hot, where I can sit in the sun all day and scorch. I intend to leave all this behind. It’s of no use or interest to me anymore.”

  “What will happen to the house?”

  “The others on the street are being demolished. The ground they are on is unstable. All of us here back onto a ravine, and over the years, erosion has undermined the foundations. I expect this house will suffer the same fate as the others.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The woman dismissed the sentiment with a wave of her hand. The several large jeweled rings she wore hung slack on her thin fingers, sliding to the knuckles as her hands came to rest on the arms of her chair.

  “You are interested in selling the entire collection, then?” said Emily, quietly steering the conversation back to her reason for being there.

  “That is correct.”

  “Including the items in the carriage house?” she asked pointedly.

  “Yes – I suppose so. Though I doubt any of those would be of much value.”

  “And has anyone else been to see the collection?”

  “No, you are the first.” With that, she pushed herself up out of her chair. “Now, if you’re finished your tea, perhaps you would like to have a look at it.”

  Emily was glad to be free of the stifling room. She hooked her arm in O’s as Miss Linton led them up the wide sweeping staircase to the second floor. They passed along a dim corridor, with doors opening on either side. She caught a glimpse into several high-ceilinged, shadow-hung rooms. It was exactly as she’d imagined it would be.

  At the end of the corridor, they stopped at the foot of another staircase, this one steep and narrow. “Watch your step,” said Miss Linton as they started up. When she opened the door at the top, light spilled down the stairs.

  Emily and O followed the older woman into the room, and their mouths fell open.

  It was a small circular room, perhaps twelve feet in diameter. Four tall lancet windows pierced the wall at regular intervals and filled the room with light. The walls between the windows were lined from floor to ceiling with books. One glance and Emily knew this was it – the collection she had long dreamt of discovering one day.

  “I’ll leave you to it, then,” said Miss Linton. “You’ll find me down by the fire when you’re done.”

  “Thank you,” said Emily in as even a tone as she could manage. She watched the woman cautiously descend the stairs. Then she closed the door quietly behind her, and they were alone.

  “Do you believe this?” said O, looking around the room. “These books must be worth a fortune!”

  Near the door, a fireplace was set in the wall. A table of the same dark wood as the shelves stood in the center of the room, with a chair drawn up to it. Emily put her bag down on the table and took out a notebook and pen.

  Walking the circuit of the room, she scanned the shelves with increasing wonder, running her fingers along the spines of the books as if to assure herself they were real. It was a remarkable collection, the books as pristine as if they’d hatched there on the shelves. Books in lush Zaehnsdorf and Rivière bindings, the fine colored leathers still supple, the exquisite gilt stamping still radiant. There were rare first-edition, triple-volume novels of some of the brightest literary lights of the nineteenth century, several of them signed. A complete set of Dickens, its mottled boards still gleaming. A scarce copy of Keats’ Endymion.

  Along with these were older books, some dating as far back as the seventeenth century, their vellum bindings still white and supple, the type so crisp that it appeared to leap from the page – remarkably rare items she’d read about but never, in her wildest dreams, imagined she’d see.

  “Well, I guess we should get to work,” she said. “Let’s start here by the window and work our way around. I’m going to need your help with the upper shelves.” There was a ladder attached to a rail that ran around the circumference of the room. It had wheels on the bottom, like the one at the shop, and slid easily from section to section.

  “R
eady?” said Emily.

  “Ready.”

  Beginning with the lower shelves, Emily worked her way methodically through the books, now and then plucking out a title for closer inspection, checking the title page and the verso, making notes in her little book. Occasionally, she set aside an item on the table.

  When it came to the upper shelves, O would read out the titles and pass down items that Emily wanted to examine more closely. An hour and a half went by, and they had made it only a quarter of the way around the room. It was hot dusty work and, before long, they were both coughing like fiends.

  Emily’s hand throbbed. The welts had started to go down a little, but the scratches were red and sore. It reminded her of the time she’d stepped between two cats in a fight and been scratched for her pains. The back of her hand looked as if it been raked by claws. The mere sight of it made her feel queasy.

  “Why don’t you see if you can open a window, O? It’s rather close in here.”

  The window, it seemed, had not been opened in some time and did its best to resist her efforts. Finally, it yielded with a groan, and fresh air rushed into the room. Emily and O stood together at the window, breathing it in.

  The window overlooked the backyard of the house. In the foreground stood an old carriage house, blanketed in vines. The slate tiles on the roof were in disrepair. Several had broken away and lay like shattered teeth on the ground below. The whole scene spoke of ruin. Emily hated to imagine what the condition of the books stored in there would be. Behind the carriage house, the ground dropped away sharply. A tumbledown fence marked the boundary between the property and the wildness of the ravine beyond.

  Turning from the window, Emily went back to work. She moved quickly now, realizing they would never finish otherwise. The highlight of the collection was a section of books on magic. They occupied one full bay, from floor to ceiling. O scrambled up the ladder to reach the higher shelves. Emily could not believe what she was seeing. There were titles here that had eluded her in all her years of collecting in the field.

  Some of the books dated back to the beginning of the modern study of conjuring. There was a copy of Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft, the first edition of 1584.

  Almost all copies of the book had been burned by order of King James I. Yet here sat one that had been miraculously spared. There were mint copies of nineteenth-century conjuring classics: Robert-Houdin’s Secrets of Conjuring and Magic and Professor Hoffman’s Modern Magic, inscribed by the author to Linton. Along with these were a host of minor titles: books and pamphlets, how- to books of parlor magic and sleight of hand, rare ephemera she did not even know existed.

  It was remarkable, like something from a dream. How could she even begin to place a value on such a collection? She wondered if Miss Linton had any idea how priceless it was. She suspected not. The woman seemed eager simply to have it off her hands.

  Time flew by. Now and then as they worked, the stillness was broken by the cooing of pigeons and the restless beating of wings. Emily imagined they must be nesting under the eaves, outside the open window. Or perhaps they had found entrance into the roof above the room.

  The sound grew louder as the light in the room grew dimmer. She took off her glasses. “I think we’d better go,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “It’s getting late, and I’ve got a pounding headache.” There was a pile of perhaps two dozen books on the table in front of her.

  “It’s a truly magnificent collection, better than anything I’ve ever come across. I know a couple of collectors who will be very interested. I wonder exactly what was weeded from it and moved out back,” she said, taking a final look out the window at the carriage house.

  They packed up their things and made their way back through the large silent house to the ground floor. They found Miss Linton seated by the fire. She appeared to be asleep, but as Emily approached, she opened her eyes.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” said Emily.

  “Nonsense. I was expecting you.”

  “We’ve gone through the collection quickly and singled out a few titles of special interest. I’d like to return and have a look at the items in the carriage house before I make an offer. I was wondering if I could drop by sometime tomorrow?”

  Miss Linton assured her that there would be nothing worth her while in the carriage house, but agreed to let her have a look. She fetched Emily the key and asked her to return it through the mail slot when she was done.

  By the time Emily and O had made the long trek back to the shop, they were both bone tired. O thoroughly washed the scratches on Emily’s hand, spread antibiotic cream on them, and wrapped the hand in a gauze bandage. Emily spent the better part of the next hour down in the shop, researching some of the items she’d seen that day, confirming all that she’d suspected about their rarity and value. Meanwhile, O prepared them something to eat.

  Shortly after they finished, Emily said she was going to lie down for a bit. She dragged herself off to her room, lay down on the bed, and almost instantly fell asleep.

  In the middle of the night, she woke with a start, utterly disoriented and bathed in sweat. She shed her clothes, pulled on her nightgown, and crawled back under the covers. As she was about to drift off, she noted in some dim corner of consciousness a smell of roses in the room.

  Sleep brought with it the dream of the magic show.

  20

  All the time the magician had been performing, the mysterious box sat on the table at the center of the stage, commanding the attention of everyone in the room. Now he walked over to it and turned it slowly, so that they could see it on all sides.

  “The curious symbols that cover the outside of this box are known as hieroglyphs,” he said. “They are a form of writing used by the ancient Egyptians. The symbols were believed to possess magical powers. To safeguard that power, their meaning was kept hidden from all but a select few. So successfully was it hidden that their meaning has remained a mystery to this day.

  “But why do these symbols appear on this box? What power might they impart to what lies within it? With the aid of a volunteer, Professor Mephisto will now share with you the secret of the Sphinx.”

  Child turned to child as the magician looked around the room, but none dared raise their hand. Finally his eyes fell on a girl sitting in the front row. He leaned over the edge of the stage and extended his hand to her.

  “Come along now, my dear. I promise the professor won’t bite.”

  At the urging of her friends, the girl put her hand in his and allowed herself to be led up onto the stage.

  “Let’s have a round of applause for the professor’s assistant,” he said as he guided the girl over to the table. “What is your name, my dear?”

  “Ruby,” she said.

  “A lovely name. Now, Ruby, you will observe that the box is hinged at the front. I would like you to release the little catch you see there on the side and show our friends what the box contains.” And he stepped aside.

  As the girl released the catch, the front panel of the box swung open. A gasp went up from the crowd – for the box contained a woman’s head.

  She was wearing an Egyptian headdress, and her eyes were closed. Though it was certainly only a sculpted head, it was startlingly realistic, down to the delicate lashes on its eyelids and the faint flush on its cheeks. The sight of it struck fear in the hearts of the children, and a hush fell over the room.

  “Now,” said the magician to his assistant, “I would like you to walk all around the table. Look at it carefully from all sides. Pass your hand underneath it to assure our audience that there are no hidden panels, no cunningly angled mirrors, no deception of any kind.”

  The girl did as he asked, and, by the time she was done, it was clear to all that the little table concealed nothing.

  “Now, Ruby, I want you to take this wand and, when I give you the signal, I would like you to tap it twice on the top of the box and say these words.” And he bent down and whispered something in her e
ar. Then, handing her the wand, he retreated to the far side of the stage. He nodded to her, and she approached the box and tapped it twice.

  “Sphinx, awake,” she said in a trembling voice.

  A tremor went through the head. Like someone waking from a long sleep, it slowly opened its eyes and moved them from side to side, surveying its surroundings.

  On the magician’s instructions, the girl asked the head to smile. It turned up the corners of its mouth in a grin that sent a shudder through the crowd. They knew this could not be a real head, but by what strange power was it able to look at them so and to smile in such a way?

  From his post at the side of the stage, the magician also smiled. “Now, Ruby, why don’t you ask our visitor some questions?” he said.

  The girl was clearly frightened. It was all she could do to remain standing near the unnatural thing in the box. “I don’t know what to ask it,” she said nervously.

  “Begin by asking its name.”

  She turned to the head in the box. “What is your name?”

  Immediately, the head fastened its eyes on the girl, as though some dim flicker of life within it caught flame. Its eyes widened. Its mouth opened, and a voice issued from those parted lips, a voice unlike anything those in the room had ever heard before. It was deep and hollow – like something from beyond the grave.

  “I am the Sphinx,” it said.

  “How old are you?” asked the girl at the magician’s direction, for he now stood smiling by her side.

  “Before your father’s father and his father’s father and his father’s father were, I was,” said the Sphinx.

  The silence that had fallen over the room was broken by several older boys who sat together at the back, quietly snickering among themselves. They were old enough to know that a head in a box could not possibly talk. They were wise enough to know that the magician was throwing his voice to give the Sphinx the illusion of speech.