by John Farris
UNEARTHLY
Previously published as The Uninvited
By John Farris
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
© 2012 / John Farris
Copy-edited by: Kurt Criscione
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For Ron Preissman,
friend and partner in shadow shows and the magic lantern business
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! In form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Scene ii
What is mind? Doesn't matter. What is matter? Never mind.
—doggerel attributed by the philosopher Bertrand Russell to his parents
NOTE:
Tuatha de Dannan is pronounced Tootha-day-danan, and Daoine Sidh is pronounced Theena-shee.
THE ACCIDENT
Chapter 1
Claude Copperwell owned the antique shop on Main Street in Anatolia, New York. He also did framing for local artists in a back room. When Thomas Brennan finished a panel that was destined for sale—this happened only two or three times a year—either Tom himself or whoever might be driving in from the farm took the new painting to Claude. Greene House was completed shortly after Thanksgiving. Tom ignored it for a while—went bird hunting, shot pool, repaired a tractor. Then he hung around the panel, critically, for another day or two, but was reluctant to pick up a brush and so knew he had done all that was in him. On a day in early December, at about three in the afternoon, Tom's daughter Barry put the tempera painting, wrapped in an old quilt, in the back of the Volvo station wagon and drove eleven miles to Anatolia. The sky was dull silver, and there was a tease of snow in the air.
For almost thirty years Thomas Brennan's paintings had come to Copperwell's for framing. This occasion was no different from the others, but there was a minor ritual to be observed. Barry parked by the back door. Snow was coming harder, stinging her cheeks, swirling on the street. She went in for Claude. He carried the painting, thirty by sixty inches on die board, to his workroom and placed it on an old paint-scabbed easel that had belonged to Rockwell Kent.
"That's Greene's, isn't it?" Tom Brennan had painted the eighteenth-century farmhouse, or parts of it, several times.
"Yes."
"I don't think Tom's ever done one like this. A few things around sundown—that kind of light. This picture's dark."
"It's scary," the girl said.
Claude's wife brought in a tray with wineglasses and a decanter and gave Barry a hug.
"It's been much too long since we've seen you, lovey."
"I haven't been to town for a while. There's a lot to do at the farm."
"Here I was thinking you were away at college like the other girls."
Barry shrugged. "Maybe next year."
"Oh, my, it's a big one," Millicent said, looking at the painting, but quickly and almost shyly, just letting it hit her and not trying to size it up too soon. She poured Dry Sack and they smiled at each other, two gnomes with a tall girl between them. Claude was neckless, without hair except for eyebrows so thick and black they looked tarred; he had a chipped waxen face, large pores in his cheeks like unfinished eyes. She was English, pink and cheery, with an ardor for unpopular causes, the unchampioned: Millicent's friends called her Blighty Mouse.
The three of them sipped their wine and devoted themselves to Tom Brennan's latest work, which Barry already knew by heart. She had viewed Greene House in all of its manifestations, from early summer on, first as notations in a sketchbook done in India ink or pencil, then as a series of small watercolors, some in dry brush—twenty or more renderings culminating in this impressive work. She both admired and felt a need to back away from her father's painting.
At a glance, the painting, like all of his work (aside from portraits), was daringly composed, muted in color, and dealt with the ordinary and homely things of a very small area of rural New York State—all that was within walking distance of his home. The distinction of Greene's house, situated in a cleft of a hill and nearly surrounded by a bleak woodlot, was an out-of-proportion, squarely built, twentieth century addition—a screened front porch. By emphasizing the coldly lighted porch and foreshortening the dark house Tom Brennan had suggested momentum, a voyage; the chalky, brilliant angle of the porch, cutting at a slight diagonal to the left third of the panel, was like the prow of a ship. The moon was down, the hour late, the woodlot raggedly streaked with snow at the turn of a year.
On the porch a woman wearing a cardigan sweater sat erect on the edge of her chair, perhaps caught at the instant of beginning to rise, hands gripping the chair arms. At first she seemed merely tired; her face was turned toward the house, as if she'd made up her mind to go inside. But to Barry the tone of the woman's body, the odd jutting of an elbow, had come to describe fear. What had struck her at this moment? A thought, a sound she'd heard, something physical?
"Why, that's Edie," Millicent said of the woman in the painting. Then she looked at Barry's face, realizing that Barry hadn't guessed. Millicent saw a flash of confusion and, at the same time, Edie's best features, which had survived in her daughter: the high forehead, pale but ravishing lashes, the tip of the nose elevated a bit importantly. Barry's coloring was all her father's.
She was a strawberry blonde, with the high ruddiness of chafing weather, eyes royal blue and so sensitive they turned hazy from any sort of brilliance.
"I dunno," Barry said, looking again. "I guess it looks like her."
Edith Brennan had died in an automobile accident when Barry was nine, so Barry's memories lacked depth and precision. There was a good store of family photographs that she sometimes consulted when, caught out in the lonely drift of being eighteen and motherless, she needed to get her bearings. Also, she had seen countless impressions of a younger Edie in the pages of the artist's notebooks—skinny, unpretentious, dun-colored Irish, but with that native cheekiness, a sly wit, and a good-humored indulgent smile any sensible man would have killed for. And Edie was fey, which came of possessing too much knowledge of the world both here and gone. She was always on edge from intuition, using herself unsparingly for the sake of others, burning to excess the pale marrows of her body.
Barry's eyes smarted; like all of her family she was too quickly in the full flood of her emotions. She drank her remaining sherry, accepted more, and quelled the self-pity. But drinking softened her focus and momentarily dizzied her; it left her with an uncertain disposition. She turned her back on her father's painting and drifted toward the door that, half opened
, revealed a gleam of old mirrors and dark furniture chockablock in the shop beyond. She heard voices, a man and a woman exclaiming over objets d'art.
"I suppose this one's sold already," Claude said, his eyes still on the new painting.
"There are a lot of buyers," Millicent said, "but not nearly enough Brennans."
Claude turned, looking at Barry. "Tell the gallery they can come up and get this one a week from Saturday."
Barry didn't reply. She had glimpsed a young man in the shop, bending over a Shaker rocking chair. He had sandy long hair and was wearing an orange-and-black plaid wool jacket. Barry's heart lurched and her right arm jumped in reflex; wine spilled from the glass she was holding, but she was oblivious. The young man in the shop was joined by his wife, or girl friend. The woman murmured to him, pointing out something of interest. Still he hadn't turned his head so that Barry could see his face.
"Barry?" Millicent said.
She heard her name through the singing of blood in her ears. She turned and almost stumbled, catching the door frame with her free hand, sloshing a little more of the wine.
Millicent looked from Barry's face to the couple in the shop.
"Ned had a jacket like that one," Barry explained in a small neutral voice.
"Oh, lovey."
"Nobody could ever mistake him for a deer. That's what he said." Her shoulders lifted slightly. She smiled, but sadly; her cheeks burned. She stared at Millicent and bit off a stammer. "So w-what did they think he was, when they shot him?"
Millicent went to her without seeming to move very quickly, deftly closed the door, and put an arm around her waist. Barry was downcast. The cuff of her parka was stained.
"I spilled my wine. I'm sorry."
"You've got to put it behind you. Honestly."
Barry nodded. "I know. It was just the jacket—and for a couple of seconds he looked like Ned. That's all." Millicent and Claude went outside with her to the Volvo. In a half hour's time the village had begun to turn white, except for the draped muzzy tinsel and gilt-edged stars on the lampposts, the Salvation Army's sentry box and red kettle in front of the bus depot. Thoughts of Ned had plunged Barry into the deep backwater of her recent sorrow. She fumbled for her keys, dropped them in the cold carpet of white at her feet.
Claude retrieved the keys for her. "You be careful driving back; we're supposed to get six or eight inches by midnight."
"Give Tom our love," Millicent said. "You two are going to have to stop acting like recluses and come to see us."
"We will. I promise."
"Everyone at the hospital's been asking. When is Barry going to put on another show for us?"
Barry forced a smile. "Oh, I don't know. Soon."
She drove away, not too cautiously, fleeing the town. The Copperwells waited in the snow until she was out of sight.
"She still has all that grief bottled up inside," Millicent said. "That's more of a tragedy than Ned's death. I don't know why. Tom can't do something to help her."
"All artists are alike. Tom's in his own world."
"Perhaps I shall just drop by one afternoon soon and have a heart-to-heart with Barry."
"Let's go in. My feet are freezing."
Barry, aching for the seclusion of the farm, her lamp lit room, drove too fast, depending on the snow tires of the wagon to keep her out of trouble.
Trees that an hour ago had been skeletal along the road now were shapely from snow that came thick and wild from the northwest. The snow was piled up in translucent slabs at the edges of the Volvo's windshield by the action of the wipers.
The two-lane country road from Anatolia to the farm seldom ran straight for more than a hundred yards. There were hills and more hills, no settlements of any size along the route. A few miles from town the road bisected a state park with a small pretty lake, a century-old spillway and a covered bridge in the cove below it. Here there was a hairpin turn, down to the bridge and sharply up again, through crags and tall trees.
Barry knew the way by heart and had driven the road in all kinds of weather. By the time she reached the bridge she had met only two other cars. The headlights of the Volvo were on. She had a slight tension headache; she felt famished, dispirited, quarrelsome, with no one to talk to, to object to—how meaningless Ned's death was, such point-blank cruelty and absurdity. Had everyone else forgotten? She could still blow herself away with just a twist of memory—but her mind was definitely on her driving. She was not, as Mrs. Prye frequently—and maliciously—observed, carrying her head around under one arm.
Later Barry was asked what she thought the young man had been doing on the road when it would have been sensible (no, instinctive) to seek the shelter of the bridge and wait, out of the blowing snow, until someone came to his rescue. But of course nothing about the advent of Draven made the least sense, and afterward he was unable to provide an explanation of his actions up to the moment Barry ran into him.
She came out of the full downfall of the storm into the rumbling dark of the one-lane bridge, where the snow was limited to a delicate drift through the chinks and spaces of the sideboards. She slowed, as it was prudent to do, then pressed the accelerator again on the other side, needing momentum to make the upcoming turn and hill.
As the Volvo exited the bridge she had an eerie glimpse of him through the speed of the snow, in the headlight beams, raising his hands by the side of the road. It was either a gesture of pitiful defense, or surprise, but his face—what she saw of it in a split second—showed no emotion: if he hadn't moved she would have thought he was a piece of marble statuary, some misplaced Greek, blurred and crumbling, wells of blankness where the eyes should be. But he was human. And he wasn't wearing any clothes.
Barry turned the wheel sharply, hitting the brake pedal for an instant, then skidded sideways. She felt the impact of the right rear bumper guard against the man—there never was a chance of avoiding him, only a possibility of not, killing him—and steered in the direction of the skid to try to bring the Volvo under control. She was too intent on avoiding a bad smashup to be shocked by the accident.
The Volvo came to a slant stop a couple of hundred feet uphill from the bridge with the front bumper nudging the protective cable that separated the road from a precipitous drop to the watercourse below. There was a red warning flasher in the station wagon that plugged into the cigarette lighter. Barry got it out and placed it on the roof of the wagon to alert anyone coming down the hill.
Before she was finished her hands began to shake. The blood drained from her head and her knees wouldn't support her. She had to sit down again, numbly, her head almost on her knees, the door open, snow flying in. The thought of what she had done, even though she was sure it hadn't been all her fault, dismayed her.
But he was down there somewhere in the snow, undoubtedly with broken bones. He wouldn't stand a chance if she didn't help him quickly.
Barry reached for the microphone of the radio that her brother Dal had installed in the wagon at the height of the CB craze. She knew, just barely, how to operate it.
"Breaker breaker—this is, uh, Barry. Barry. Does anyone copy? I'm by the covered bridge in Tremont Park and I've—I've had an accident. Uh, there's someone hurt. Need help. Please copy!"
Holding the microphone, she looked down the hill, trying to make him out by the side of the road, but she couldn't see much. The swaths she had carved on the blacktop already were whiting out. Tears scalded her frigid cheeks. It was almost as if the man had never been there—but she knew she hadn't imagined the solid thump of the skidding Volvo against his body.
A voice, indistinct, squawked at her. Barry made some frantic adjustments on the tuner, spoke again into the microphone.
"Would you repeat that? I d-didn't—"
The voice this time was clearer, but still faint.
''Uh, Barry Barry, this's that Tidewater Lefty, westbound on eight-four, about three miles from that Brewster town. Want to give me your ten-twenty and I'll notify the state police."
Barry guessed that he had asked for her location and repeated it.
"Uh, ten-four, Barry Barry. Just hold on and I'll get some help there right away."
"Have them call my father!" Barry yelled, but there was no reply. She replaced the microphone. Her fingers were tingling inside her driving gloves; she no longer felt as if her head might nod off her shoulders. Adrenaline had reawakened her.
Barry snatched the old quilt from the back of the wagon and went downhill, slipping, falling, sliding on her rump part of the way to where the Volvo had struck the man. How could he have been out in this weather without, apparently, having a stitch on? Some sort of lunatic, she thought, and was alarmed. But after being hit and nearly run over he couldn't be a danger to her.
He was a long way from the edge of the road, the tone of his skin so chalky he nearly blended with the snow halfway down the embankment. He was lying on his face; his tumbling fall had been arrested by a small hawthorne tree, and one arm hung limply in the low tangle of branches. He looked, from her vantage point, washed up, homeless as a fish on a beach.
Barry went down backwards, dragging the rolled-up quilt, grasping at small bushes and ledges of rock for purchase. Just above him she slipped, and her momentum carried her jarringly against his body. She heard a faint groan, but he didn't move of his own volition. At least he was alive. She looked at his partly obscured face, at the smooth, well-muscled, youthful body, and realized with a pinch of the heart that he was about her age.
His hair was glossy black, thick over the ears and at the nape. He hadn't appeared to have so much hair, or hair at all, when she'd first sighted him. There was no hair on his forearms or legs. The soles of his feet had a faint purple blush. He couldn't have walked far—there wasn't a trace of grime, although the snow might have rinsed his feet. Barry saw no blood, no obvious deformity resulting from a broken bone. She took off one glove and felt his neck gently, then the small of his back. She was distressed by a lack of heat, an extraordinary quality of bloodlessness. His skin, this close, was turning blue. Barry remembered a little first aid from her high school physical education courses. Was he in shock or suffering from hypothermia? The important thing was to make him warm without delay. Barry realized it would be hopeless, even if it was safe to move him, to try to get him to the Volvo by herself. He was about six feet tall and weighed, judging from his solid build, at least a hundred and seventy-five pounds.
