The Color of Evil - The Dark Descent V1 (1991)

by David G. Hartwell (Ed. )

  Daring in its day (but, to Annabelle’s credit and to everyone

  else’s relief, not quite a Scandal), left her shoulders bare, but

  Annabelle did not seem to feel the cold. Her hair, a soft,

  dark auburn, blew long in the wind. “ Only a little Anther.”

  She took Stella’s other arm and they moved forward again.

  Other figures came out of the snowy night (for it was night

  now). Stella recognized many of them, but not all. Tommy

  Frane had joined Annabelle; Big George Havelock, who had

  died a dog’s death in the woods, walked behind Bill; there

  was the fellow who had kept the lighthouse on the Head for

  most of twenty years and who used to come over to the island

  during the cribbage tournament Freddy Dinsmore held every

  February—Stella could almost but not quite remember his

  name. And there was Freddy himself! Walking off to one side

  of Freddy, by himself and looking bewildered, was Russell

  Bowie.

  “ Look, Stella,” Bill said, and she saw black rising out of

  the gloom like the splintered prows of many ships. It was not

  ships, it was split and fissured rock. They had reached the

  Head. They had crossed the Reach.

  She heard voices, but was not sure they actually spoke:

  Take my hand, Stella—

  (do you)

  Take my hand, Bill—

  (oh do you do you)

  Annabelle . . . Freddy . . . R u sse ll. . . John . . . Ettie

  . . . Frank . . . take my hand, take my hand . . . my

  hand . . .

  (do you love)

  “ Will you take my hand, Stella?” a new voice asked.

  She looked around and there was Bull Symes. He was

  The Reach

  41

  smiling kindly at her and yet she felt a kind of terror in her

  at what was in his eyes and for a moment she drew away,

  clutching Bill’s hand on her other side the tighter.

  “ Is it—”

  “ Time?” Bull asked. “ Oh, ayuh, Stella, I guess so. But

  it don’t hurt. At least, I never heard so. All that’s before.”

  She burst into tears suddenly—all the tears she had never

  wept—and put her hand in Bull’s hand. “ Yes,” she said,

  “ yes I will, yes I did, yes I do.”

  They stood in a circle in the storm, the dead of Goat Island, and the wind screamed around them, driving its packet of snow, and some kind of song burst from her. It went up

  into the wind and the wind carried it away. They all sang

  then, as children will sing in their high, sweet voices as a

  summer evening draws down to summer night. They sang,

  and Stella felt herself going to them and with them, finally

  across the Reach. There was a bit of pain, but not much;

  losing her maidenhead had been worse. They stood in a circle

  in the night. The snow blew around them and they sang. They

  sang, and—

  —and Alden could not tell David and Lois, but in the summer after Stella died, when the children came out fo r their annual two weeks, he told Lona and Hal. He told them that

  during the great storms o f winter the wind seems to sing with

  almost human voices, and that sometimes it seemed to him

  he could almost make out th words: “Praise God from whom

  all blessings flow/Braise Him, ye creatures here below . . . ”

  But he did not tell them (imagine slow, unimaginative A lden Flanders saying such things aloud, even to the children!) that sometimes he would hear that sound and feel cold even

  by the stove; that he would put his whittling aside, or the trap

  he had meant to mend, thinking that the wind sang in all the

  voices o f those who were dead and gone . . . that they stood

  somewhere out on the Reach and sang as children do. He

  seemed to hear their voices and on these nights he sometimes

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  Stephen King

  slept and dreamed that he was singing the doxology, unseen

  and unheard, at his own funeral.

  There are things that can never be told, and there are

  things, not exactly secret, that are not discussed. They had

  found Stella frozen to death on the mainland a day after the

  storm had blown itself out. She was sitting on a natural chair

  o f rock about one hundred yards south o f the Raccoon Head

  town limits, frozen ju st as neat as you please. The doctor

  who owned the Corvette said that he was frankly amazed. It

  would have been a walk o f over fo u r miles, and the autopsy

  required by law in the case o f an unattended, unusual death

  had shown an advanced cancerous condition—in truth, the

  old woman had been riddled with it. Was Alden to tell David

  and Lois that the cap on her head had not been his? Larry

  McKeen had recognized that cap. So had John Bensohn. He

  had seen it in their eyes, and he supposed they had seen it

  in his. He had not lived long enough to forget his dead fa ther’s cap, the look o f its bill or the places where the visor had been broken.

  ‘‘These are things made fo r thinking on slowly, ” he would

  have told the children i f he had known how. ‘ ‘Things to be

  thought on at length, while the hands do their work and the

  coffee sits in a solid china mug nearby. They are questions

  o f Reach, maybe: do the dead sing? And do they love the

  living?

  On the nights after Lona and Hal had gone back with their

  parents to the mainland in A l Curry’s boat, the children

  standing astern and waving good-bye, Alden considered that

  question, and others, and the m atter o f his fa th e r’s cap.

  Do the dead sing? Do they love?

  On those long nights alone, with his mother Stella Flanders

  at long last in her grave, it often seemed to Alden that they

  did both.

  John Collier

  E v e n i n g P r i m r o s e

  John Collier's characteristic stories of satirical horror (a

  small but distinguished tradition including certain works

  of Saki and Avram Davidson) have fallen out of print in

  recent years. “ Evening Primrose” is a particularly vivid

  example of the subversive little moral tale, so psychologically acute that it leaves us more than a bit uncomfortable about what goes on at night in the most ordinary and seductive of middle-class environments: the department store, the abode of grotesques, human and otherwise.

  In a pad o f Highlife Bond, bought by

  Miss Sadie Brodribb at Bracey's fo r 25C

  MARCH 21

  Today I made my decision. I would turn my back for good

  and all upon the bourgeois world that hates a poet. I

  would leave, get out, break away—

  And I have done it. I am free! Free as the mote that dances

  in the sunbeam! Free as a house-fly crossing first-class in the

  largest of luxury liners! Free as my verse! Free as the food I

  shall eat, the paper I write upon, the lamb’s-wool-lined softly

  slithering slippers I shall wear.

  This morning I had not so much as a car-fare. Now I am

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  44

  John Collier

  here, on velvet. You are itching to leam of this haven; you

  would like to organize trips here, spoil it, send your relations-

  in-law, perhaps even come yourself. After all, this journal

  will hardly fall into your hands till I am
dead. I ’ll tell you.

  I am at Bracey’s Giant Emporium, as happy as a mouse in

  the middle of an immense cheese, and the world shall know

  me no more.

  Merrily, merrily shall I live now, secure behind a towering

  pile of carpets, in a comer-nook which I propose to line with

  eiderdowns, angora vestments, and the Cleopatrean tops in

  pillows. I shall be cosy.

  I nipped into this sanctuary late this afternoon, and soon

  heard the dying footfalls of closing time. From now on, my

  only effort will be to dodge the night-watchman. Poets can

  dodge.

  I have already made my first mouse-like exploration. I tiptoed as far as die stationery department, and, timid, darted back with only these writing materials, the poet’s first need.

  Now I shall lay them aside, and seek other necessities: food,

  wine, the soft furniture of my couch, and a natty smoking-

  jacket. This place stimulates me. I shall write here.

  DAWN, NEXT DAY

  I suppose no one in the world was ever more astonished

  and overwhelmed than I have been tonight. It is unbelievable.

  Yet I believe it. How interesting life is when things get like

  that!

  I crept out, as I said I would, and found the great shop in

  mingled light and gloom. The Central well was half illuminated; the circling galleries towered in a pansy Piranesi of toppling light and shade. The spidery stairways and flying

  bridges had passed from purpose into fantasy. Silks and velvets glimmered like ghosts, a hundred pantie-clad models offered simpers and embraces to the desert air. Rings, clips,

  and bracelets glittered frostily in a desolate absence of Honey

  and Daddy.

  Evening Primrose

  45

  Creeping along the transverse aisles, which were in deeper

  darkness, I felt like a wandering thought in the dreaming

  brain of a chorus girl down on her luck. Only, of course,

  their brains are not as big as Bracey’s Giant Emporium. And

  there was no man there.

  None, that is, except the night-watchman. I had forgotten

  him. As I crossed an open space on the mezzanine floor,

  hugging the lee of a display of sultry shawls, I became aware

  of a regular thudding, which might almost have been that of

  my own heart. Suddenly it burst upon me that it came from

  outside. It was footsteps, and they were only a few paces

  away. Quick as a flash I seized a flamboyant mantilla, whirled

  it about me and stood with one arm outflung, like a Carmen

  petrified in a gesture of disdain.

  I was successful. He passed me, jingling his little machine

  on its chain, humming his little tune, his eyes scaled with

  refractions of the blaring day. “ Go, worldling!’’ I whispered,

  and permitted myself a soundless laugh.

  It froze on my lips. My heart faltered. A new fear seized

  me.

  I was afraid to move. I was afraid to look around. I felt I

  was being watched by something that could see right through

  me. This was a very different feeling from the ordinary emergency caused by the very ordinary night-watchman. My conscious impulse was the obvious one: to glance behind me.

  But my eyes knew better. I remained absolutely petrified,

  staring straight ahead.

  My eyes were trying to tell me something that my brain

  refused to believe. They made their point. I was looking

  straight into another pair of eyes, human eyes, but large, flat,

  luminous. I have seen such eyes among die nocturnal creatures, which creep out under the artificial blue moonlight in the zoo.

  The owner was only a dozen feet away from me. The

  watchman had passed between us, nearer him than me. Yet

  he had not seen him. I must have been looking straight at

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  John Collier

  him for several minutes at a stretch. I had not seen him either.

  He was half reclining against a low dais where, on a floor

  of russet leaves, and flanked by billows of glowing home-

  spun, the fresh-faced waxen girls modeled spectator sports

  suits in herringbones, checks, and plaids. He leaned against

  the skirt of one of these Dianas; its folds concealed perhaps

  his ear, his shoulder, and a little of his right side. He, himself, was clad in dim but large patterned Shetland tweeds of the latest cut, suede shoes, a shirt of a rather broad m otif in

  olive, pink, and grey. He was as pale as a creature found

  under a stone. His long thin arms ended in hands that hung

  floatingly, more like trailing, transparent fins, or wisps of

  chiffon, than ordinary hands.

  He spoke. His voice was not a voice; it was a mere whistling under the tongue. “ Not bad, for a beginner!”

  I grasped that he was complimenting me, rather satirically,

  on my own, more amateurish, feat of camouflage. I stuttered.

  I said, “ I ’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone else lived here.” I

  noticed, even as I spoke, that I was imitating his own whistling sibilant utterance.

  “ Oh, yes,” he said. “ We live here. It’s delightful.”

  “ We?”

  “ Yes, all of us. Look!”

  We were near the edge of the first gallery. He swept his

  long hand round, indicating the whole well of the shop. I

  looked. I saw nothing. I could hear nothing, except the

  watchman’s thudding step receding infinitely far along some

  basement aisle.

  “ Don’t you see?”

  You know the sensation one has, peering into the half-light

  of a vivarium? One sees bark, pebbles, a few leaves, nothing

  more. And then, suddenly, a stone breathes—it is a toad; there

  is a chameleon, another, a coiled adder, a mantis among the

  leaves. The whole case seems crepitant with life. Perhaps the

  whole world is. One glances at one’s sleeve, one’s feet.

  So it was with the shop. I looked, and it was empty. I

  Evening Primrose

  47

  looked, and there was an old lady, clambering out from behind the monstrous clock. There were three girls, elderly ingenues, incredibly emaciated, simpering at the entrance of

  the perfumery. Their hair was a fine floss, pale as gossamer.

  Equally brittle and colourless was a man with the appearance

  of a colonel of southern extraction, who stood regarding me

  while he caressed mustachios that would have done credit to

  a crystal shrimp. A chintzy woman, possibly of literary tastes,

  swam forward from the curtains and drapes.

  They came thick about me, fluttering, whistling, like a

  waving of gauze in the wind. Their eyes were wide and flatly

  bright. I saw there was no colour to the iris.

  “ How raw he looks!”

  “ A detective! Send for the Dark Men!”

  “ I ’m not a detective. I am a poet. I have renounced the

  world.”

  “ He is a poet. He has come over to us. Mr. Roscoe found

  him.”

  “ He admires us.”

  “ He must meet Mrs. Vanderpant.”

  I was taken to meet Mrs. Vanderpant. She proved to be

  the Grand Old Lady of the store, almost entirely transparent.

  “ So you are a poet, Mr. Snell? You will find inspiration

  here. I am quite the oldest inhabitant. Three mergers and a

  complete rebuilding, but they didn’t get rid of me!”
>
  “ Tell how you went out by daylight, dear Mrs. Vanderpant, and nearly got bought for Whistler’s M other.”

  “ That was in pre-war days. I was more robust then. But

  at the cash desk they suddenly remembered there was no

  frame. And when they came back to look at me—”

  “ —She was gone.”

  Their laughter was like the stridulation of the ghosts of

  grasshoppers.

  “ Where is Ella? Where is my broth?”

  “ She is bringing it, Mrs. Vanderpant. It will come.”

  “ Tiresome little creature! She is our foundling, Mr. Snell.

  She is not quite our sort.”

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  John Collier

  “ Is that so, Mrs. Vanderpant? Dear, dear!”

  “ I lived alone here, Mr. Snell, for many years. I took

  refuge here in the terrible tunes in the eighties. I was a young

  girl then, a beauty, people were kind enough to say, but poor

  Papa lost his money. Bracey’s meant a lot to a young girl, in

  the New York of those days, Mr. Snell. It seemed to me

  terrible that I should not be able to come here in the ordinary

  way. So I came here for good. I was quite alarmed when

  others began to come in, after the crash of 1907. But it was

  the dear Judge, the Colonel, Mrs. Bilbee—”

  I bowed. I was being introduced.

  “ Mrs. Bilbee writes plays. A nd of a very old Philadelphia

  family. You will find us quite nice here, Mr. Snell.’’

  “ I feel it a great privilege, Mrs. Vanderpant.’’

  “ And of course, all our dear young people came in ’29.

  Their poor papas jumped from skyscrapers.”

  I did a great deal of bowing and whistling. The introductions took a long time. Who would have thought so many people lived in Bracey’s?

  “ And here at last is Ella with my broth.”

  It was then I noticed that the young people were not so

  young after all, in spite of their smiles, their little ways, their

  inginue dress. Ella was in her teens. Clad only in something

  from the shop-soiled counter, she nevertheless had the appearance of a living flower in a French cemetery, or a mermaid among polyps.

  “ Come, you stupid thing!”

  “ Mrs. Vanderpant is waiting.”

  Her pallor was not like theirs; not like the pallor of something that glistens or scuttles when you turn over a stone.

  Hers was that of a pearl.

  Ella! Pearl of this remotest, most fantastic cave! Little