The Green Man

by Michael Bedard

  As O was gathering the tea things together, she glanced down at the playbill. It had aged noticeably since she first saw it that morning.

  She told herself to be calm, but still the cups rattled on the tray like chattering teeth as she carried the tea things into the living room. She poured a cup for both of them.

  “Thank you, dear,” said Emily, cradling the cup in her hands as she took a sip. “Do you know what I’d like more than anything in the world right now?”

  “I think so,” said O. “Where are they?”

  “In my jacket pocket.”

  O disappeared down the hall and returned with Emily’s cigarettes and lighter. Emily shook one loose, lit it, and inhaled deeply.

  “That’s better. I promise you, I’ll be good again tomorrow. But, for the moment, I desperately need to be bad.”

  She calmed noticeably as the tea in the cup disappeared and the cigarette was smoked down to a stub. She butted it in the ashtray that had briefly become a candy dish. The candies lay strewn on the table beside it.

  “Now, tell me exactly where you found that playbill.”

  “I was cleaning up the reading room this morning, after last night. Someone had taken a book down from the magic section, and, when I went to return it, the playbill was sitting in the empty spot on the shelf.”

  “So either it had been there between the books all the time, or someone at the meeting put it there.”

  “What is it?”

  “A memory. A memory – and perhaps a warning of things to come. I have something to tell you, O. Something I should have told you some time ago. I warn you, by the end of it you may doubt my sanity – if you don’t already. But I swear every word of it is true.

  “When your father first approached me with the idea of your coming to stay for the summer, I delayed a long time before answering him. I was full of doubts. I was still full of doubts when I finally did agree.

  “You see, this year marks an anniversary of sorts – an anniversary of something that happened long ago. I successfully buried the memory of it for many years. I buried it under a mound of books – under a mound of books and poems. And, over time, I tramped the ground down hard over it. So hard that I hoped it would stay buried.

  “But I can feel it coming all the same. Everything I write these days is about it. I’ve removed every calendar in the place, so I wouldn’t constantly be thinking about it, constantly counting down the days.”

  So that was why all the calendars had suddenly disappeared, thought O, as she watched her aunt pour more tea and reach for another cigarette. Her stomach was in knots – but, this time, it was not the cigarette smoke. It was something in her aunt’s voice – an undertone of muted terror she had never heard before. Emily lit her cigarette.

  “It’s not just houses that can be haunted. People can be haunted too. I am haunted – haunted by something that happened a lifetime ago.”

  25

  “I was fourteen at the time. Already I had dreams of becoming a poet. Already I had felt the wonderful magic of creating something new with words. And by some strange irony, I was introduced to another, darker magic at just that moment. I wonder now whether it was mere coincidence, or whether the very gift that opens one to the light might also attune one to the workings of the dark. That’s why I warned you that poetry can be a dangerous thing.

  “It all unfolded during the long sweltering summer following my graduation from grade school. My teacher that year was Miss Potts. She was a small, strange, slightly bewildered older woman with a passion for poetry, and it proved infectious. She was near retirement. I can see now that the prospect of it must have appalled her. She clung to teaching like I cling to this shop – because she knew nothing could fill the chasm that losing it would leave.

  “In my mind, she’s always dear old Miss Potts, and I’m the age I was when we first met. But, in fact, she’s long gone, and I’m older than she was then. And here I am now, about to tell you the very story she told me.

  “School had been out for less than a month when I received a phone call from Miss Potts. She asked me about something she’d found in my desk while she was cleaning out the classroom for the summer – an old playbill for a magic show. A playbill much like the one you found this morning.

  “As it happened, I had seen it. It appeared on my desk on the last day of class. During all the confusion of that day, it somehow got pushed to the back of the desk, which is where she found it. She was excited – relieved is perhaps a better word – that I’d seen it, and asked if we could meet. She didn’t want to talk about it over the phone.

  “We arranged to meet in a park. I was baby-sitting my little brother Albert, who was just a toddler then. She had the playbill with her. When she showed it to me, I told her it was the one I’d seen. I think she was hoping that meeting with me might somehow shed light on the mystery of its sudden appearance. But I had no more idea where it had come from than she did.

  “For whatever reason – and it may simply have been because she sensed a kindred spirit in me – she sat beside me on the bench and proceeded to tell me the most incredible story I had ever heard.

  “It was about a magic show she had attended as a child and a magician of such incredible power that, even after all those years, it was impossible for her to forget him.

  “The show took place on a hot August night. A boy had pasted a flyer for it to the pole in front of her house. A traveling magician was passing through town and was to give a show at the Caledon depot for one night only. She begged her parents to let her go and, finally, they agreed.

  “Her father accompanied her, as did several other parents. But the magician no sooner appeared onstage than he asked them all to leave. This was to be a children’s show. Well, leave they did, though not without some misgivings. For they must have sensed that this was no ordinary magician.

  “There was something in his voice, she said … something in his eyes – a power. He performed incredible feats with such ease that he seemed more than human. To look in his eyes was to become lost in them, utterly and willingly lost.

  “He seemed to know the secret wish of every child there and to possess the power to grant it. Within the confines of that room, all things seemed possible – to fly, to disappear, to bring things into being with the wave of a hand.

  “His words were sweet as honey, his voice melodious as music. When he spoke, it was as if every word was meant for her alone. But, despite it all, something kept catching in her mind – a doubt that drew her back each time she felt herself about to fall hopelessly under his spell.

  “It was more a feeling than a thought. Like a gust of wind parting the painted backdrop of a play, for a moment the magic would fail and something would show itself behind the smooth allure – something with neither blood nor heart nor human feeling. Something of blind implacable power. For an instant it was there – and then it was gone.

  “His hooded eyes would flare and there would be a momentary ferocity. The winning smile would flicker and there would be a sudden glint of fang. The melodious voice would falter and, in its place, there would be the sharp bark of command.

  “Behind it all, she sensed an insatiable hunger – a desire to possess her wholly, to hollow her out until she was no more than an empty shell. And then it would pass, and again there would be only the wonder.

  “Several times during the performance, the magician asked for a volunteer from the audience to assist in an illusion. Everyone who volunteered received a copy of his little book, which he said contained the secrets of his magic art.

  “The highlight of the show was an illusion called the Decollation of John the Baptist. The magician called for a volunteer, and a boy went up. He had the boy lie down on a table and covered his head with a cloth. Producing a long-bladed knife, he reached under the cloth and, with one quick downward motion, buried the blade in the wood of the table. He picked up the cloth and what it contained and carried it to the foot of the table. With a flick of the
wrist, he whisked the cloth away.

  “There stood the boy’s severed head. Slowly it opened its eyes. The magician asked it questions, and the head answered back. After a while, the magician covered the head with the cloth again and returned it to the body. He spoke some magical words. A tremor went through the boy and he sat up, rubbing his neck. The audience applauded wildly. Clutching his copy of the little book, the boy returned to his seat, apparently none the worse for his experience.

  “However, later that year, the same boy was involved in a fatal accident. He was crossing a railway bridge, when suddenly he looked back and began to run furiously for the other side. He had almost reached safety, when he looked back once more and suddenly leapt from the bridge, plunging into the ravine far below. They found him there later, dead of a broken neck. A group of boys who had witnessed the tragedy said it appeared the boy had spotted an oncoming train as he was crossing the bridge. But there was no train.

  “No one connected the two incidents at the time. But Miss Potts became convinced that, long before the fall, the boy had already died. She believed he had died up there on that stage three months before.

  “As for the magician, he vanished without a trace. The room he had rented above the depot was empty. The food that had been brought to him sat untouched. The bed showed no sign of ever having been slept in.

  “The memory of the magician and that fateful show stayed with her through the years. And the sudden reappearance of the old playbill convinced her that the show was somehow going to return. And that someone else might die.”

  Emily leaned forward and butted out her cigarette, exhaling smoke. She looked over at the pack of cigarettes, then up at O. Taking a sip of her tea, she continued her story. She had repeated it time and again in her mind, as one repeats the lines of an unfinished poem, searching for the elusive words that will bring it to an end.

  “The initial show took place at the Caledon depot on Saturday, August 8. It was a leap year. Miss Potts discovered that August 8 would again fall on a Saturday that very year, another leap year. She was sure that the show would somehow recur on that day.

  “But the depot was no longer in use. My father was busy restoring it that summer with a group of local history buffs. It was to open in the fall as a railway museum.

  “As mad as I thought she was, I found myself swept up in her feeling of foreboding. So on August 8, when my father failed to return home before dark from working in the depot, I went looking for him. I pedaled over there on my bike in the pouring rain. As I crossed the threshold of the darkened building, it was as though I had stepped through the door of a dream. The solid world fell away, and I entered the ghostly magic show Miss Potts had described to me in the park.

  “I no longer knew who I was or how I had come to be there. The scene flickered like the candles that lit the room. A group of children sat spellbound before a makeshift stage, where a magician was spilling roses from a paper cone. The smell of the roses was overwhelming.”

  “The smell of roses?” said O, remembering how several times since arriving at the Green Man, she had noticed the same smell.

  “Yes,” said Emily. “It’s like his calling card.” And she gave her niece a long probing look.

  “The magician saw me standing there and welcomed me to the show. I sat down with the others. The moon was shining in through the open window. Several times, when he asked for a volunteer to assist him onstage, he would fix his gaze on me. It was all I could do not to go, though I could not have said what stopped me. But when it came down to the last illusion, the Decollation of John the Baptist, a memory stirred inside me. When a boy went to walk onto the stage, I stood to stop him and found myself drawn up there in his place. Had it not been for Miss Potts’ sudden arrival on the scene to thwart the magician and shatter the spell, he would surely have claimed another victim.

  “After it was all over, she made me promise that I would continue to believe in the possibility of the impossible, that I would watch and wait and be ready for him when he came around again.

  “I did continue to believe – I became a poet. Every day, poets must believe in the possibility of the impossible. As I guarded the truth of that, so too did I guard the truth of this other, darker thing that had fallen to me.”

  “Twenty-eight years passed. I spent a lot of it away from home, traveling, working at this and that, living out of a car, with the backseat reserved for the other passenger in my life – poetry. Two suitcases full of pieces of paper salvaged from the storm of life – pieces I would from time to time assemble, like a puzzle without a box, putting out little books and sending them into the world.

  “And all the while, in the back of my mind, I could feel the clock ticking away, the months and years slipping by, and the time approaching again when day and date would align as they had then. As that time drew near, I was drawn back here, hoping against hope it was all a madness I had lived through, something that could not possibly happen again.

  “I was forty-two when I returned to Caledon. I stayed with your aunt Elizabeth and her family. This was before they up and moved down South. Her daughter, your cousin Alice, had a job that summer at the local library. The new head librarian was planning to stage a Punch and Judy show with an antique set of puppets he’d discovered among the large collection housed at the library. He asked Alice if she would assist him in mounting the performance.

  “The Caledon depot had been destroyed in a fire years before. I racked my brain, wondering how the magic show could possibly be performed again when the place in which it had occurred was no longer there. The local history material that had been salvaged from the blaze was now being stored at the library. Among the items on display was an old playbill for a magic show.

  “Alice had become suspicious of my behavior, so I took her into my confidence. Of course, she thought I was crazy. Nevertheless, as the date grew ever nearer, I became more desperate. Late one night, I came home and found her waiting up for me. She was clearly afraid. She spoke of the change that had come over Mr. Dwyer, the head librarian, since he had begun to work on the Punch and Judy show. It was as if he was under some sort of spell. She suspected it had something to do with the old set of puppets they were using for the show, in particular the frightening devil figure he would play.

  “Alice felt a terrible foreboding whenever she was in the library now. And then, that day, something had happened. Out of the blue, Mr. Dwyer informed her he was changing the date of the puppet show. It was to be performed on August 8.

  “The blood froze in my veins as I suddenly realized that this puppet show was a manifestation of the same darkness that had informed the magic show Miss Potts and I had seen and that, as the assistant in the show, Alice was in grave danger.

  “I knew I had to prevent it from taking place. On the eve of the performance, with her help, I broke into the library. I could feel the magician’s presence there, and as I felt my way down the dark stairs into the basement, where the puppets were stored, it was as if I was entering his lair. I found the puppet set and destroyed the devil puppet, with its glowing eyes and its evil grin. And the darker magic was defeated again.

  “Afterwards, I decided I’d had enough of moving around, enough of terror. I settled down here in Caledon and put the whole of it out of my mind for a long time. I threw myself into poetry with all my heart. And I threw myself into this shop.

  “For years, I absolutely refused to think about it. It was like something that had happened to someone else, in some other lifetime. But all the while, in some dusty corner of myself, I could feel a presence quietly biding its time. It hung about there in the shadows, just out of sight.

  “And then a year ago, as the time approached again, it suddenly grew bolder. It would stride out of the shadows and show itself without fear. I tried to frighten it back into hiding, but it stood its ground and mocked me with a grin.

  “I began to dream the show again, though it was slightly different now. I saw the magician’s
face whenever I shut my eyes. I heard his voice whenever silence fell. I don’t know how many sleepless nights I must have called your father. I felt that I was going mad, and I’m sure he must have, too.

  “Then, one day last fall, I was sitting in the shop and I heard a noise. This shop is haunted by spirits, as I’m sure you know by now. They are friendly spirits, poets largely, most of them not really aware they are dead. But, this day, I looked up and the magician was standing just the other side of the desk, glaring at me. I screamed – and everything went dark. That was when I had my little ‘incident,’ as they call it. It was Leonard who found me and took me to hospital.

  “And now this mysterious playbill has appeared out of nowhere. And I realize that the dreams I have been dreaming these past months are all drawn from it.

  “I feel the show approaching again – like a storm on the horizon. The magician is a master of illusion. He can assume any shape he pleases to serve his end. And that end is death. I have no idea what shape he will take this time to lure his victim in. Nor do I have any notion where or how the show will take place. I only know it will come from somewhere I least expect.”

  26

  Things were a little strained between them for several days. O had no idea how to take Emily’s story of the magic show. A large part of her wanted to dismiss the whole thing as madness, but another part secretly began counting down the days till August 8.

  She tried to make herself busy to avoid the tension that surfaced whenever the two of them were in the same room. She’d planned to paint the outside of the shop and decided this would be the perfect time. Breaking off a piece of the flaking paint from around the front window, she took it to the paint store down the street, matched it with a chip, and bought a gallon of Forest Green. At the same time, she picked up a paint scraper, a large brush, a roller and tray, and a drop sheet.