by Ray Bradbury
And the last of the rain gave the charred shell of House a final rinse and ceased and there were only dying smokes and half a House with half a heart and half a lung and Cecy there, a compass to their dreams, forever signaling their rampant destinations.
There went all and everyone in a flow of dreams to faraway hamlets and forests and farms, and Mother and Father with them in a blizzard of whispers and prayers, calling farewell, promising returns in some future year, so to seek and hold once again their abandoned son. Goodbye, goodbye, oh yea, goodbye, their fading voices cried. Then all was silence save for Cecy beckoning more melancholy farewells.
And all this, Timothy perceived and tearfully knew.
From a mile beyond the House, which now glowed with sparks and plumes to darken the sky, to storm-cloud the moon, Timothy stopped under a tree where many of his cousins and perhaps Cecy caught their breath, even as a rickety jalopy braked and a farmer peered out at the distant blaze and the nearby child.
“What’s that?” He pointed his nose at the burning House.
“Wish I knew,” said Timothy.
“What you carrying, boy?”
The man scowled at the long bundle under Timothy’s arm.
“Collect ’em,” said Timothy. “Old newspapers. Comic strips. Old magazines. Headlines, heck, some before the Rough Riders. Some before Bull Run. Trash and junk.” The bundle under his arm rustled in the night wind. “Great junk, swell trash.”
“Just like me, once.” The farmer laughed quietly. “No more. Need a ride?”
Timothy nodded. He looked back at the House, saw sparks like fireflies shooting into the night sky.
“Get in.”
And they drove away.
CHAPTER 22
The One Who Remembers
For a long while, many days and then weeks, the place was empty above the town. On occasion when the rains came and the lightning struck, the merest plume of smoke would arise from the charred timbers sunk inward on the cellar and its broken vintages and from the attic beams fallen in black skeletons on themselves to cover the buried wines. When there was no longer smoke there was dust which lifted in veils and clouds, in which visions, remembrances of the House, flickered and faded like sudden starts of dream, and then these, too, ceased.
And with the passage of time a young man came along the road like one emerging from a dream or stepping forth from the quiet tides along a silent sea to find himself in a strange landscape staring at the abandoned House as if he knew but did not know what it had once contained.
The wind shifted in the empty trees, questioning.
He listened carefully and replied:
“Tom,” he said. “It’s Tom. Do you know me? Do you remember?”
The branches of the tree trembled with remembrance.
“Are you here now?” he said.
Almost, came the whisper of a reply. Yes. No.
The shadows stirred.
The front door of the House squealed and slowly blew open. He moved to the bottom of the steps leading up.
The chimney flue at the center of the House hollowed a breath of temperate weather.
“If I go in and wait, then what?” he said, watching the vast front of the silent House for response.
The front door drifted on its hinges. The few remaining windows shook softly in their frames, reflecting the first twilight stars.
He heard but did not hear the sussurance about his ears.
Go in. Wait.
He put his foot on the bottom step and hesitated.
The timbers of the House leaned away from him as if to draw him near.
He took another step.
“I don’t know. What? Who am I looking for?”
Silence. The House waited. The wind waited in the trees.
“Ann? Is that who? But no. She’s long gone away. But there was another. I almost know her name. What …?”
The House timbers groaned with impatience. He moved up to the third step and then all the way to the top where he stood, imbalanced by the wide open door where the weather drew its breath, as if to waft him in. But he stood very still, eyes shut, trying to see a shadow face behind his eyelids.
I almost know the name, he thought.
In. In.
He stepped in through the door.
Almost instantly the House sank the merest quarter of an inch as if the night had come upon it or a cloud drifted to weight the high attic roof.
In the attic heights there was a dream inside of a slumber inside of a flesh.
“Who’s there?” he called quietly. “Where are you?”
The attic dust rose and sank in a stir of shadow.
“Oh, yes, yes,” he said at last. “I know it now. Your blessed name.”
He moved to the bottom of the stairs leading up through the moonlight to the waiting attic of the House.
He took a breath.
“Cecy,” he said, at last.
The House trembled.
Moonlight shone on the stairs.
He went up.
“Cecy,” he said a final time.
The front door slowly, slowly drifted and then slid and then very quietly shut.
CHAPTER 23
The Gift
There was a tap at the door and Dwight William Alcott looked up from a display of photographs just sent on from some digs outside Karnak. He was feeling especially well fed, visually, or he would not have answered the tap. He nodded, which seemed signal enough, for the door opened immediately and a bald head moved in.
“I know this is curious,” said his assistant, “but there is a child here …”
“That is curious,” said D.W. Alcott. “Children do not usually come here. He has no appointment?”
“No, but he insists that after you see the gift he has for you, you’ll make an appointment, then.”
“An unusual way to make appointments,” mused Alcott. “Should I see this child? A boy, is it?”
“A brilliant boy, so he tells me, bearing an ancient treasure.”
“That’s too much for me!” The curator laughed. “Let him in.”
“I already am.” Timothy, half inside the door, scuttled forward with a great rattling of stuffs under his arm.
“Sit down,” said D.W. Alcott.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll stand. She might want two chairs, sir, however.”
“Two chairs?”
“If you don’t mind, sir.”
“Bring an extra chair, Smith.”
“Yes, sir.”
And two chairs were brought and Timothy lifted the long balsa-light gift and placed it on both chairs where the bundled stuffs shown in a good light.
“Now, young man—”
“Timothy,” supplied the boy.
“Timothy, I’m busy. State your business, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well?”
“Four thousand four hundred years and nine hundred million deaths, sir …”
“My God, that’s quite a mouthful.” D.W. Alcott waved at Smith. “Another chair.” The chair was brought. “Now you really must sit down, son.” Timothy sat. “Say that again.”
“I’d rather not, sir. It sounds like a lie.”
“And yet,” said D.W. Alcott, slowly, “why do I believe you?”
“I have that kind of face, sir.”
The curator of the museum leaned forward to study the pale and intense face of the boy.
“By God,” he murmured, “you do.”
“And what have we here?” he went on, nodding to what appeared to be a catafalque. “You know the name papyrus?”
“Everyone knows that.”
“Boys, I suppose. Having to do with robbed tombs and Tut. Boys know papyrus.”
“Yes, sir. Come look, if you want.”
The curator wanted, for he was already on his feet.
He arrived to look down and probe as through a filing cabinet, leaf by leaf of cured tobacco, it almost seemed, with here and there the head of
a lion or the body of a hawk. Then his fingers riffled faster and faster and he gasped as if struck in the chest.
“Child,” he said and let out another breath. “Where did you find these?”
“This, not these, sir. And I didn’t find it, it found me. Hide and seek in a way, it said. I heard. Then it wasn’t hidden anymore.”
“My God,” gasped D. W. Alcott, using both hands now to open “wounds” of brittle stuff. “Does this belong to you?”
“It works both ways, sir. It owns me, I own it. We’re family.”
The curator glanced over at the boy’s eyes. “Again,” he said, “I do believe.”
“Thank God.”
“Why do you thank God?”
“Because if you didn’t believe me, I’d have to leave.” The boy edged away.
“No, no,” cried the curator. “No need. But why do you speak as if this, it, owned you, as if you are related?”
“Because,” said Timothy. “It’s Nef, sir.”
“Nef?”
Timothy reached over and folded back a tissue of bandage.
From deep under the openings of papyrus, the sewn-shut eyes of the old, old woman could be seen, with a hidden creek of vision between the lids. Dust filtered from her lips.
“Nef, sir,” said the boy. “Mother of Nefertiti.”
The curator wandered back to his chair and reached for a crystal decanter.
“Do you drink wine, boy?”
“Not until today, sir.”
Timothy sat for a long moment, waiting, until Mr. D.W. Alcott handed him a small glass of wine. They drank together and at last Mr. D. W. Alcott said:
“Why have you brought this—it—her here?”
“It’s the only safe place in the world.”
The curator nodded. “True. Are you offering,” he paused. “Nef? For sale?”
“No, sir.”
“What do you want, then?”
“Just that if she stays here, sir, that once a day, you talk to her.” Embarrassed, Timothy looked at his shoes.
“Would you trust me to do that, Timothy?”
Timothy looked up. “Oh, yes, sir. If you promised.”
Then he went on, raising his gaze to fix on the curator.
“More than that, listen to her.”
“She talks, does she?”
“A lot, sir.”
“Is she talking, now?”
“Yes, but you have to bend close. I’m used to it, now. After a while, you will be, too.”
The curator shut his eyes and listened. There was a rustle of ancient paper, somewhere, which wrinkled his face, listening. “What?” he asked. “What is it she, mainly, says?”
“Everything there is to say about death, sir.”
“Everything?”
“Four thousand four hundred years, like I said, sir. And nine hundred million people who had to die so we can live.”
“That’s a lot of dying.”
“Yes, sir. But I’m glad.”
“What a terrible thing to say!”
“No, sir. Because if they were alive, we wouldn’t be able to move. Or breathe.”
“I see what you mean. She knows all that, does she?”
“Yes, sir. Her daughter was the Beautiful One Who Was There. So she is the One Who Remembers.”
“The ghost that tells a flesh and soul complete history of the Book of the Dead?”
“I think so, sir. And one other thing,” added Timothy.
“And?”
“If you don’t mind, anytime I want, a visitor’s card.”
“So you can come visit anytime?”
“After hours, even.”
“I think that can be arranged, son. There will be papers to be signed, of course, and authentication carried out.”
The boy nodded.
The man rose.
“Silly of me to ask. Is she still talking?”
“Yes, sir. Come close. No, closer.”
The boy nudged the man’s elbow, gently.
Far off, near the temple of Karnak, the desert winds sighed. Far off, between the paws of a great lion, the dust settled.
“Listen,” said Timothy.
AFTERWORD
How the Family Gathered
Where do I get my ideas and how long does it take to write an idea once I get it? Fifty-five years or nine days.
In the case of From the Dust Returned, the material started in 1945 and was only finished after a period stretching until 2000.
With Fahrenheit 451, I got the idea on a Monday and finished writing the first short version nine days later.
So you see, it all depends on the immediate passion. Fahrenheit 451 was unusual and written during unusual times: that period of witch-hunting that ended with Joseph McCarthy in the fifties.
The Elliott family in From the Dust Returned began living in my childhood when I was seven years old. When Halloween came each year my Aunt Neva piled me and my brother into her old tin lizzie to motor out into October Country to gather cornstalks and field pumpkins. We brought them to my grandparents’ home and stocked pumpkins in every corner, put cornstalks on the porch, and placed the leaves from the dining room table on the staircases so that you had to slide instead of stepping down.
She stashed me in the attic clad as a witch with a wax nose, hid my brother at the bottom of a ladder leading up to the attic, and invited her Halloween celebrants to climb up through the night to enter our house. The atmosphere was rampant and hilarious. Some of my finest memories are of this magical aunt, only ten years older than myself.
Out of this background of uncles and aunts and my grandmother, I began to see that some of it should be caught on paper to be kept forever. So in my early twenties I began to jigger the idea of this Family who were most strange, outré, rococo—who could be, but maybe were not, vampires.
At the time I finished the first story about this remarkable household, in my early twenties, I was writing for Weird Tales magazine for the magnificent sum of a half-cent a word. I published many of my early stories there, not realizing that I was turning out tales that would outlast the magazine, far into today.
When I got a raise to a penny a word I thought I was rich. So my stories appeared, one by one, and I sold them for fifteen dollars, twenty dollars, sometimes twenty-five dollars apiece.
When I finished “Homecoming,” the first story about my Family, Weird Tales promptly rejected it. I had been having trouble with them all along because they complained that my stories were not about traditional ghosts. They wanted graveyards, late nights, strange walkers, and amazing murders.
I could not raise Marley’s ghost again and again, as much as I loved him and all the ghosts that haunted Scrooge. Weird Tales desired first cousins to Edgar Allan Poe’s Amontillado or Washington Irving’s thrown pumpkin head.
I simply couldn’t do that; I tried again and again but along the way my stories turned into tales of men who discovered the skeleton inside themselves and were terrified of that skeleton. Or stories about jars full of strange unguessed creatures. Weird Tales accepted some of these stories, reluctantly, with complaints. So when “Home-coming” arrived at their offices they cried “Enough!” and the story came back. I didn’t know what to do with it at that time because there were very few markets in the United States for such tale telling. On a hunch I sent it to Mademoiselle magazine, where I’d had luck the year before selling a short story that I had submitted on impulse. Many months passed. I thought, well, perhaps the story had got lost. Finally I received a telegram from the editors, who said they had debated changing the story to fit the magazine, but instead they were going to change the magazine to fit the story!
They put together an entire October issue built around my “Homecoming” and got Kay Boyle and others to write October essays to round out the magazine. They hired the talents of Charles Addams, who was then an offbeat cartoonist for The New Yorker, and beginning to draw his own strange and wonderful “Addams Family.” He created a remarkab
le two-page spread of my October House and my Family streaming through the autumn air and loping along the ground.
When the story finally appeared, I had grand meetings with Charles Addams in New York. We planned a collaboration: Over a period of years I would write more stories and Addams would illustrate them. Ultimately, we would gather them all, stories and drawings, into a book. The years passed, some stories were written, we stayed in touch but went our separate ways. My plans for a possible book were delayed by my good fortune in landing the job of writing the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick. But over the years, I kept revisiting my beloved Elliotts. That once-discrete tale, “Homecoming,” became the cornerstone, a building block for the Life Story of the Elliott Family: their genesis and demise, their adventures and mishaps, their loves and their sorrows. By the time the last of these stories was written, dear Charles Addams had passed into that Eternity inhabited by the creatures of his and my world.
That, briefly, is the history of From the Dust Returned. Beyond this I might add that all my characters are based on the relatives who wandered through my grandmother’s house on those October evenings when I was a child. My Uncle Einar was real, and the names of all the others in the book were once similarly attached to cousins or uncles or aunts. Though long dead, they live again and waft in the chimney flues, stairwells, and attics of my imagination, kept there with great love by this chap who was once fantastically young and incredibly impressed with the wonder of Halloween.
Recently, the nice folks at the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation sent me a copy of a letter I wrote to Charlie Addams in 1948—all about his wonderful painting of the “Homecoming” house, and the nascent plans we had to collaborate on an illustrated book. Dated February 11,1948, the letter (written on my long-gone manual typewriter) reads, in part: “… let me say that I can’t imagine putting out the book without you.... It will become a sort of Christmas Carol idea, Halloween after Halloween people will buy the book, just as they buy the Carol, to read at the fireplace, with lights low. Halloween is the time of year for storytelling …. I believe in this more than I have believed in anything in my writing career. I want you to be in it with me.” Interestingly, my agent had been talking to William Morrow about the possibility of doing such a book, and so it is rather poetic, I think, that Morrow is publishing this book today, with Charlie’s superb illustration on the cover. How I wish he were here to see this project come to fruition!
