“Who is he?”
Beatrice shivered. “I don’t know. I think he lives in the cellar.” She hesitated. “You have to get to him through the attic, though. I’d be awfully seared if the little kids weren’t so—so—they don’t seem to mind at all.”
“But, Bee! Who is he?”
Beatrice turned her head and looked at Jane, and it was quite evident then that she could not or would not say. There was a barrier. But because it was important, she tried. She mentioned the Wrong Uncle.
“I think Ruggedo’s the same as him. I know he is, really. Charles and Bobby say so—and they know. They know better than I do. They’re littler . . . It’s hard to explain, but—well, it’s sort of like the Scoodlers. Remember?”
The Scoodlers. That unpleasant race that dwelt in a cavern on the road to Oz and had the convenient ability to detach their heads and hurl them at passers-by. After a moment the parallel became evident. A Scoodler could have his head in one place and his body in another, but both parts would belong to the same Scoodler.
Of course the phantom uncle had a head and a body both. But Jane could understand vaguely the possibility of his double nature, one of him moving deceptively through the house, focus of a strange malaise, and the other nameless, formless, nesting in a cellar and waiting for red meat.
“Charles knows more than any of us about it,” Beatrice said. “He was the one who found out we’d have to feed R—Ruggedo. We tried different things, but it has to be raw meat. And if we stopped—something awful would happen. We kids found that out.”
It was significant that Jane didn’t ask how. Children take their equivalent of telepathy for granted.
“They don’t know,” Beatrice added. “We can’t tell them.”
“No,” Jane said, and the two girls looked at one another, caught in the terrible, helpless problem of immaturity, the knowledge that the mores of the adult world are too complicated to understand, and that children must walk warily. Adults are always right. They are an alien race.
Luckily for the other children, they had come upon the Enemy in a body. One child alone might have had violent hysterics. But Charles, who made the first discoveries, was only six, still young enough so that the process of going insane in that particular way wasn’t possible for him. A six-year-old is in a congenitally psychotic state; it is normal to him.
“And they’ve been sick ever since he came,” Beatrice said.
Jane had already seen that. A wolf may don sheepskin and slide unobserved into a flock, but the sheep are apt to become nervous, though they cannot discover the source of their discomfort.
It was a matter of mood. Even he showed the same mood—uneasiness, waiting, sensing that something was wrong and not knowing what—but with him it was simply a matter of camouflage. Jane could tell he didn’t want to attract attention by varying from the arbitrary norm he had chosen—that of the human form.
Jane accepted it. The uncle who was—empty—the one in the cellar called Ruggedo, who had to be fed regularly on raw meat, so that Something wouldn’t happen . . .
A masquerader, from somewhere. He had power, and he had limitations. The obvious evidences of his power were accepted without question. Children are realists. It was not incredible to them, for this hungry, inhuman stranger to appear among them—for here he was.
He came from somewhere. Out of time, or space, or an inconceivable place. He never had any human feelings; the children sensed that easily. He pretended very cleverly to be human, and he could warp the adult minds to implant artificial memories of his existence. The adults thought they remembered him. An adult will recognize a mirage; a child will be deceived. But conversely, an intellectual mirage will deceive an adult, not a child.
Ruggedo’s power couldn’t warp their minds, for those minds were neither quite human nor quite sane, from the adult standpoint. Beatrice, who was oldest, was afraid. She had the beginnings of empathy and imagination. Little Charlie felt mostly excitement. Bobby, the smallest, had already begun to be bored . . .
Perhaps later Beatrice remembered a little of what Ruggedo looked like, but the others never did. For they reached him by a very strange road, and perhaps they were somewhat altered themselves during the time they were with him. He accepted or rejected food; that was all. Upstairs, the body of the Scoodler pretended to be human, while the Scoodler’s head lay in that little, horrible nest he had made by warping space, so he was invisible and intangible to anyone who didn’t know how to find the Road of Yellow Bricks.
What was he? Without standards of comparison—and there are none, in this world—he cannot be named. The children thought of him as Ruggedo. But he was not the fat, half-comic, inevitably frustrate Gnome King. He was never that.
Call him demon.
As a name-symbol, it implies too much and not enough. But it will have to do. By the standard of maturity he was monster, alien, super-being. But because of what he did, and what he wanted—call him demon.
One afternoon, a few days later, Beatrice hunted up Jane. “How much money have you got, Janie?” she asked.
“Four dollars and thirty-five cents,” Jane said, after investigation. “Dad gave me five dollars at the station. I bought some popcorn and—well—different things.”
“Gee, I’m glad you came when you did.” Beatrice blew out a long breath. Tacitly it was agreed that the prevalent socialism of childhood clubs would apply in this more urgent clubbing together of interests. Jane’s small hoard was available not for any individual among them, but for the good of the group. “We were running out of money,” Beatrice said. “Granny caught us taking meat out of the icebox and we don’t dare any more. But we can get a lot with your money.”
Neither of them thought of the inevitable time when that fund would be exhausted. Four dollars and thirty-five cents seemed fabulous, in that era. And they needn’t buy expensive meat, so long as it was raw and bloody.
They walked together down the acacia-shaded sheet with its occasional leaning palms and drooping pepper trees. They bought two pounds of hamburger and improvidently squandered twenty cents on sodas.
When they got back to the house, Sunday lethargy had set in. Uncles Simon and James had gone out for cigars, and Uncles
Lew and Bert were reading the papers, while Aunt Bessie crocheted. Grandmother Keaton read Youngs Magazine, diligently seeking spicy passages. The two girls paused behind the beaded portieres, looking in.
“Come on, kids,” Lew said in his deep, resonant voice. “Seen the funnies yet? Mutt and Jeff are good. And Spark Plug—”
“Mr. Gibson is good enough for me,” Grandmother Keaton said. “He’s a real artist. His people look like people.”
The door banged open and Uncle James appeared, fat, grinning, obviously happy from several beers. Uncle Sirrjon paced him like a personified conscience.
“At any rate, it’s quiet,” he said, turning a sour glance on Jane and Beatrice. “The children make such a rumpus sometimes I can’t hear myself think.”
“Granny,” Beatrice asked, “where are the kids?”
“In the kitchen, I think, dear. They wanted some water for something.”
“Thanks.” The two girls went out, leaving the room filled with a growing atmosphere of sub-threshold discomfort. The sheep were sensing the wolf among them, but the sheepskin disguise was sufficient. They did not know . . .
The kids were in the kitchen, busily painting one section of the comics with brushes and water. When you did that, pictures emerged. One page of the newspaper had been chemically treated so that moisture would bring out the various colors, dull pastels, but singularly glamorous, in a class with the Japanese flowers that would bloom in water, and the Chinese paper-shelled almonds that held tiny prizes.
From behind her, Beatrice deftly produced the butcher’s package.
“Two pounds,” she said. “Janie had some money, and Merton’s was open this afternoon. I thought we’d better.
Emily kept on painting diligently. Charles
jumped up.
“Are we going up now, huh?”
Jane was uneasy. “I don’t know if I’d better come along. I—”
“I don’t want to either,” Bobby said, but that was treason. Charles said Bobby was scared.
“I’m not. It just isn’t any fun. I want to play something else.”
“Emily,” Beatrice said softly. “You don’t have to go this time.”
“Yes, I do.” Emily looked up at last from her painting. Tm not scared.”
“I want to see the lights,” Charles said. Beatrice whirled on him.
“You tell such lies, Charles! There aren’t any lights.”
“There are so. Sometimes, anyhow.”
“There aren’t.”
“There are so. You’re too dumb to see them. Let’s go and feed him.”
It was understood that Beatrice took command now. She was the oldest. She was also, Jane sensed, more afraid than the others, even Emily.
They went upstairs, Beatrice carrying the parcel of meat. She had already cut the string. In the upper hall they grouped before a door.
“This is the way, Janie,” Charles said rather proudly. “We gotta go up to the attic. There’s a swing-down ladder in the bathroom ceiling. We have to climb up on the tub to reach.”
“My dress,” Jane said doubtfully.
“You won’t get dirty. Come on.”
Charles wanted to be first, but he was too short. Beatrice climbed to the rim of the tub and tugged at a ring in the ceiling. The trapdoor creaked and the stairs descended slowly, with a certain majesty, beside the tub. It wasn’t dark up there. Light came vaguely through the attic windows.
“Come on, Janie,” Beatrice said, with a queer breathlessness, and they all scrambled up somehow, by dint of violent acrobatics.
The attic was warm, quiet and dusty. Planks were laid across the beams. Cartons and trunks were here and there.
Beatrice was already walking along one of the beams. Jane watched her.
Beatrice didn’t look back; she didn’t say anything. Once her hand groped out behind her; Charles, who was nearest, took it. Then Beatrice reached a plank laid across to another rafter. She crossed it. She went on—stopped—and came back, with Charles.
“You weren’t doing it right,” Charles said disappointedly. “You were thinking of the wrong thing.”
Beatrice’s face looked oddly white in the golden, faint light.
Jane met her cousin’s eyes. “Bea—”
“You have to think of something else,” Beatrice said quickly. “It’s all right. Come on.”
Charles at her heels, she started again across the plank. Charles was saying something, in a rhythmic, mechanical monotone:
“One, two, buckle my shoe,
Three, four knock at the door,
Five, six, pick up sticks—”
Beatrice disappeared.
“Seven, eight, lay them—”
Charles disappeared.
Bobby, his shoulders expressing rebelliousness, followed. And vanished.
Emily made a small sound.
“Oh—Emily!” Jane said.
But her youngest cousin only said, “I don’t want to go down there, Janie!”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do,” Emily said. “I’ll tell you what. I won’t be afraid if you come right after me. I always think there’s something coming up behind me to grab—but if you promise to come right after, it’ll be all right.”
“I promise,” Jane said.
Reassured, Emily walked across the bridge. Jane was watching closely this time. Yet she did not see Emily disappear. She was suddenly—gone. Jane stepped forward, and stopped as a sound came from downstairs.
“Jane!” Aunt Bessie’s voice. “Jane!” It was louder and more peremptory now. “Jane, where are you? Come here to me!”
Jane stood motionless, looking across the plank bridge. It was quite empty, and there was no trace of Emily or the other children. The attic was suddenly full of invisible menace. Yet she would have gone on, because of her promise, if—
“Jane!”
Jane reluctantly descended and followed the summons to Aunt Bessie’s bedroom. That prim-mouthed woman was pinning fabric and moving her lips impatiently.
“Where on earth have you been, Jane? I’ve been calling and calling.”
“We were playing,” Jane said. “Did you want me, Aunt Bessie?”
“I should say I did,” Aunt Bessie said. “This collar I’ve been crocheting. It’s for a dress for you. Come here and let me try it on. How you grow, child!”
And after that there was an eternity of pinning and wriggling, while Jane kept thinking of Emily, alone and afraid somewhere in the attic. She began to hate Aunt Bessie. Yet the thought of rebellion or escape never crossed her mind. The adults were absolute monarchs. As far as relative values went, trying on the collar was more important, at this moment, than anything else in the world. At least, to the adults who administered the world.
While Emily, alone and afraid on the bridge that led to—elsewhere.
The uncles were playing poker. Aunt Gertrude, the vaudeville actress, had unexpectedly arrived for a few days and was talking with Grandmother Keaton and Aunt Bessie in the living-room. Aunt Gertrude was small and pretty, very charming, with a bisque delicacy and a gusto for life that filled Jane with admiration. But she was subdued now.
“This place gives me the creeps,” she said, making a dart with her folded fan at Jane’s nose. “Hello, funny-face. Why aren’t you playing with the other kids?”
“Oh, I’m tired,” Jane said, wondering about Emily. It had been nearly an hour since—
“At your age I was never tired,” Aunt Gertrude said. “Now look at me. Three a day and that awful straight man I’ve got—Ma, did I tell you—” The voices pitched lower.
Jane watched Aunt Bessie’s skinny fingers move monotonously as she darted her crochet hook through the silk.
“This place is a morgue,” Aunt Gertrude said suddenly. “What’s wrong with everybody? Who’s dead?”
“It’s the air,” Aunt Bessie said. “Too hot the year round.”
“You play Rochester in winter, Bessie my girl, and you’ll be glad of a warm climate. It isn’t that, anyway. I feel—mm-n—it’s like being on stage after the curtain’s gone up.”
“It’s your fancy,” her mother said.
“Ghosts,” Aunt Gertrude said, and was silent. Grandmother Keaton looked sharply at Jane.
“Come over here, child,” she said.
Room was made on the soft, capacious lap that had held so many youngsters.
Jane snuggled against that reassuring warmth and tried to let her mind go blank, transferring all sense of responsibility to Grandmother Keaton. But it wouldn’t work. There was something wrong in the house, and the heavy waves of it beat out from a center very near them.
The Wrong Uncle. Hunger and the avidity to be fed. The nearness of bloody meat tantalizing him as he lay hidden in his strange, unguessable nest elsewhere—otherwhere—in that strange place where the children had vanished.
He was down there, slavering for the food; he was up here, empty, avid, a vortex of hunger very near by.
He was double, a double uncle, masked but terrifyingly clear.
Jane closed her eyes and dug her head deeper into Grandmother Keaton’s shoulder.
Aunt Gertrude gossiped in an oddly tense voice, as if she sensed wrongness under the surface and was frightened subtly.
“I’m opening at Santa Barbara in a couple of days, Ma,” she said. “I—what’s wrong with this house, anyhow? I’m as jumpy as a cat today!—and I want you all to come down and catch the first show. It’s a musical comedy. I’ve been promoted.”
“I’ve seen the Prince of Pilsen before.”
“Not with me in it. It’s my treat. I’ve engaged rooms at the hotel already. The kids have to come too. Want to see your auntie act, Jane?”
Jane nodded against her grand
mother’s shoulder.
“Auntie,” Jane said suddenly. “Did you see all the uncles?”
“Certainly I did.”
“All of them? Uncle James and Uncle Bert and Uncle Simon and Uncle Lew?”
“The whole kaboodle. Why?”
“I just wondered.”
So Aunt Gertrude hadn’t noticed the Wrong Uncle either. She wasn’t truly observant, Jane thought.
“I haven’t seen the kids, though. If they don’t hurry up, they won’t get any of the presents I’ve brought. You’d never guess what I have for you, Janie.”
But Jane scarcely heard even that exciting promise. For suddenly the tension in the air gave way. The Wrong Uncle who had been a vortex of hunger a moment before was a vortex of ecstasy now. Somewhere, somehow, at last Ruggedo was being fed. Somewhere, somehow, that other half of the double uncle was devouring his bloody fare.
Janie was not in Grandmother Keaton’s lap any more. The room was not around her. The room was a spinning darkness that winked with tiny lights—Christmas tree lights, Charles had called them—and there was a core of terror in the center of the whirl. Here in the vanished room the Wrong Uncle was a funnel leading from that unimaginable nest where the other half of him dwelt, and through the funnel, into the room, poured the full ecstatic tide of his satiety.
Somehow in this instant Jane was very near the other children who must stand beside that spinning focus of darkness. She could almost sense their presence, almost put out her hand to touch theirs.
Now the darkness shivered and the bright, tiny lights drew together, and into her mind came a gush of impossible memories. She was too near him. And he was careless as he fed. He was not guarding his thoughts. They poured out, formless as an animal’s, filling the dark. Thoughts of red food, and of other times and places where that same red food had been brought him by other hands.
It was incredible. The memories were not of earth, not of this time or place. He had traveled far, Ruggedo. In many guises. He remembered now, in a flow of shapeless visions, he remembered tearing through furred sides that squirmed away from his hunger, remembered the gush of hot sweet redness through the fur.
Strange Ports of Call Page 28
