Magic Terror

by Peter Straub

  Ask yourself, now. Is anything that simple, even in what you call experience? Are all the criminals in jail? Are all the innocent free? And if the price of misery is misery, what is the price of joy? In what coin do you pay for that, laddy: shekels, sweat, or sleepless nights?

  Though in every moment of my youthful existence I was sustained by a most glorious secret that was mine alone, I, too, was acquainted with shekels, sweat, and what the poets call white nights. No child of luxury, I. Francis Wardwell, Frank to his chums, born to parents on the ragged-most fringe of the lower middle class, was catapulted into corporeality a great distance from the nearest silver spoon. We were urban poor (lower-middle-class poor, that is), not rural poor, and I feel deeply within myself that a country landscape such as that of which I was deprived would have yielded to my infant self a fund of riches sorely needed. (Mark the first sounding of the hunger theme, to which we will return betimes.) Is not Nature a friend and tutor to the observant child? Does it not offer a steady flow of stuff like psychic nutrient to the developing boy? Experts say it does, or so I hear, and also that much do I recall from my reading, which was always far, far in advance of my grade level. (I was reading on the college level before I was out of short pants.) Old-time poets all said Nature is a better teacher than any other. In my case, blocked off by city walls from the wise friend Nature, I was forced to feed my infant mind on the harsher realities of brick, barbed wire, and peacock-feather oil slicks. That I went as far as I did is testimony to my resilient soul-strength. Forbidden was I to wander ’mongst the heather and cowslips, the foxgloves, purple vetch, tiger lilies, loosestrife, and hawkweed on country lanes; no larks or thrushes had I for company, and we never even heard of nightingales where I came from. I wandered, when I had that luxury—that is, when I wasn’t running my guts out to get away from a long-nosed, red-eyed, smirking Boy Teuteburg—through unclean city streets past taverns and boardinghouses, and for streaky gold-red sunsets I had neon signs. The air was not, to put it good and plain, fresh. The animals, when not domestic, were rodentine. And from the seventh grade on, at a time when I suffered under the tyranny of a termaganty black-haired witch-thing named Missus Barksdale, who hated me because I knew more than she did, I was forced to endure the further injustice of after-school employment. Daily had I to trudge from the humiliations delivered upon my head by the witch-thing, Missus Barfsbottom, humiliations earned only through an inability to conceal entirely the mirth her errors caused in me, from sadistic, unwarranted humiliations delivered upon the head of one of the topmost scholars ever seen at that crummy school, then to trudge through sordiosities to the place of my employment, Dockweder’s Hardware, where I took up my broom and swept, swept, swept.

  For shekels! In the sense of measly, greasy coins of low denomination in little number! Earned by my childish sweat, the honest sorrowful perspiration, each salty drop nonaccidentally just exactly like a tear (and that, Miss Doggybreath, is what you call a metaphor, not a methapor, as your warty mustachey cakehole misinformed the massed seventh grade of the Daniel Webster State Graded School in the winter of 1928), of a promising, I mean really and truly promising lad, an intelligent lad, a lad deserving of the finest this world had to offer in the way of breaks and opportunities, what you might want to call and I looking back am virtually forced to call a Shining Boy!

  Who day and night had to check over his shoulder for the approach of, who had to strain his innocent ears in case he could hear the footfalls of, who was made to quench his glorious shining spirit because he had to live in total awful fear of the subhuman, soulless, snakelike figure of Boy Teuteburg. Who would crouch behind garbage cans and conceal himself in doorways, was a lurker in alleys, would drag at his narrow cigarette with his narrow shoulders against the bricks and squint out from under the narrow brim of the cap on his narrow head, was a low being of no conscience or intelligence or any other merits altogether. A Boy Teuteburg is not a fellow for your flowery fields and rending sunsets. And such as this, a lowly brutal creature with no promise to him at all save the promise to wind up in jail, became yet another, perhaps the most severe, bane of the Shining Boy’s existence.

  Between Daniel Webster State Graded School and Dockweder’s Hardware Emporium would this young terrorist lurk of an afternoon, stealing some worthless titbit there, hawking on the sidewalk there, blowing his nose by pressing two fingers against one nostril, leaning over and firing, then repeating the gesture on the opposite side, all the while skulking along, flicking his puny red eyes over the passing throng (as Dickens had it) in search of children younger than he, any children in actual fact, but in most especial one certain child. This, you may have divined, was yours truly. I knew myself the object of Boy Teuteburg’s special hatred because of what befell the child-me on those occasions when I managed to set sail from one place to another in convoy with other kidlings of my generation—other sparrows of the street (as Blake might put it)—to subsume myself within the shelter of a nattering throng of classmates. We all feared Boy, having suffered under his psychotic despotism through year after year of grade school. Our collective relief at his eventual graduation (he was sixteen!) chilled to dread when we discovered that his release from the eighth grade meant only that Boy had been freed to prowl eternally about Daniel Webster, a shark awaiting shoals of smaller fishes. (A simile, Missus Doggybark, a simile.) There he was, smirking as he tightened his skinny lips to draw on his skinny cigarette—circling. Let us say our convoy of joking lads rounds the corner of Erie Street by the Oliphant Hotel and spreads across the sidewalk as we carry on toward Third Street, home for some, Dockweder’s and the broom for me. Then a stoaty shadow separates from the entrance of Candies & Newsagent, a thrill of fear passes through us, red eyes ignite and blaze, some dreary brat begins to weep, and the rest of us scatter as Boy charges, already raising his sharp and pointy fists. And of all these larking children, which particular boy was his intended target? That child least like himself—the one he hated most—myself—and I knew why. Scatter though I would ’mongst my peers, rushing first to this one then to that, my friends, their morality stunted by the same brutal landscape which had shaped our tormentor, would’st thrust me away, abandon me, sacrifice me for their own ends. It was me, I mean I, he searched out, and we all knew it. Soon the others refused to leave the school in my presence, and I walked alone once more. Oft were the days when the body that wielded the broom ached with bruises, when the eyes within the body were dimmed with tears of pain and sorrow, and the nose of the body contained screws of tissue paper within each nostril, purpose of, to staunch the flow of blood.

  Oft, too, were the nights when from a multiplicity of causes young Frank Wardwell lay sleepless abed. His concave boyish tummy begged for sustenance, for the evening repast may have been but bread and sop, and the day’s beating meant that certain much-favored positions were out of the question. Yet hunger and pain were as nothing when compared to the primary reason sleep refused to grant its healing balm. This was terror. Day came when night bowed out, and day brought Boy Teuteburg. So fearsome was my tormentor that I lay paralyzed ’neath my blankets, hoping without hope that I might the next day evade my nemesis. Desperate hours I spent mapping devious alternate routes from school to store while still knowing well that however mazy the streets I took, they would in the end but deliver me unto Boy. And many times I sensed that he had glided into our yard and stood smoking beneath our tree, staring red-eyed at my unlighted window. Other times, I heard him open our back door and float through the kitchen to hover motionless outside my door. What good now was my intellectual and spiritual superiority to Boy Teuteburg? Of what use my yearnings? Ice-cold fear was all I knew. Mornings, I dragged myself from bed, quaking, opened my door to find Boy of course nowhere in sight, fed my ice-cold stomach a slice of bread and a glass of water, and dragged myself to school, hopeless as the junkman’s nag.

  Had I but known of the thousand eyes upon me . . .

  Why does Ethel Carroway report to her window on
the fourth floor of the Oliphant Hotel at the full of the moon? Guilt? Grief? Remorse?

  In life, this was a thoughtless girl, vibrant but shallow, the epitome of a Visible, who felt no more of guilt than does a cast-iron pump. For months, Ethel had gone about her duties in loose overblouses to conceal her condition, of which even her slatternly friends were ignorant. The infant signified no more than a threat to her employment. She never gave it a name or fantasized about it or thought of it with aught but distaste. Captain Starbuck had departed the day following conception, in any case a hasty, rather scuffling matter, no doubt to sow his seed in foreign ports. Delivery took place behind the locked door of Ethel’s basement room and lasted approximately twelve hours, during which she had twice to shout from her bed that she was violently ill and could not work. During the process, she consumed much of a bottle of bourbon whiskey given her by another priapic guest of the Oliphant. When at last the child bullied its way out between her legs, Ethel bit the umbilicus in two and observed that she had delivered a boy. Its swollen purple genitals were a vivid reminder of Captain Starbuck. Then she passed out. An hour later, consciousness returned on a tide of pain. Despite all, Ethel felt a curious new pride in herself—in what she had done. Her baby lay on her chest, uttering little kittenish mewls. It resembled a monkey, or a bald old man. She found herself regretting that she had to dispose of this creature who had brought her so much pain. They had shared an experience that now seemed almost hallucinatory in its intensity. She wished the baby were the kitten it sounded like, that she might keep it. She and the baby were companions of a sort. And she realized that it was hers—she had made this little being.

  Yet her unanticipated affection for the infant did not alter the facts. Ethel needed her job, and that was that. The baby had to die. She moved her legs to the side of the bed, and a fresh wave of pain made her gasp. Her legs, her middle, the bed, all were soaked in blood. The baby mewed again, and more to comfort herself than it, she slid the squeaking child upward toward her right breast and bumped the nipple against his lips until he opened his mouth and tried to suck. Like Ethel, the baby was covered with blood, as well as with something that resembled grease. At that moment she wanted more than anything else to wash herself off—she wanted to wash the baby, too. At least he could die clean. She transferred him to her other breast, which gave no more milk than the first. When she stroked his body, some of the blood and grease came off on her hand, and she wiped his back with a clean part of the sheet.

  Some time later, Ethel swung her feet off the bed, ignored the bolts of pain, and stood up with the baby clamped to her bosom. Grimacing, she limped to the sink and filled it with tepid water. Then she lowered the baby into the sink. As soon as his skin met the water, his eyes flew open and appeared to search her face. For the first time, she noticed that their color was a violent purple-blue, like no other eyes she had ever seen. The infant was frowning magisterially. His legs contracted under him like a frog’s. His violent eyes glowered up at her, as if he knew what she was ultimately going to do, did not at all like what she was going to do, but accepted it. As she swabbed him with the washcloth, he kept frowning up at her, scanning her face with his astonishing eyes.

  Ethel considered drowning him, but if she did so, she would have to carry his body out of the hotel, and she didn’t even have a suitcase. Besides, she did not enjoy the idea of holding him under the water while he looked up at her with that funny old-king frown. She let the water drain from the sink, wrapped the baby in a towel, and gave herself a rudimentary sponge bath. When she picked the baby off the floor, his eyes flew open again, then closed as his mouth gaped in an enormous yawn. She limped back to bed, tore the sheets off one-handed, cast a blanket over the mattress, and fell asleep with the baby limp on her chest.

  It was still dark when Ethel awakened, but the quality of the darkness told her that it would soon be morning. The baby stirred. Its arms, which had worked free of the towel, jerked upward, paused in the air, and drifted down again. This was the hour when the hotel was still, but for the furnaceman. The hallways were empty; a single sleepy clerk manned the desk. In another hour, the bootboys would be setting out the night’s polished shoes, and a few early-bird guests would be calling down their room-service orders. In two hours, a uniformed Ethel Carroway was supposed to report for duty. She intended to do this. When it became noticed that she was in pain, she would be allowed another day’s sick leave, but report she must. She had approximately forty-five minutes in which to determine what to do with the baby and then to do it.

  A flawless plan came to her. If she carried the baby to the service stairs, she would avoid the furnaceman’s realm, and once on the service stairs, she could go anywhere without being seen. The hallways would remain empty. She could reach one of the upper floors, open a window, and—let the baby fall. Her part in his death would be over in an instant, and the death itself would be a matter of a second, less than a second, a moment too brief for pain. Afterward, no one would be able to connect Ethel Carroway with the little corpse on the Erie Street pavement. It would seem as though a guest had dropped the baby, or as though an outsider had entered the hotel to rid herself of an unwanted child. It would be a mystery: a baby from nowhere, fallen from the Oliphant Hotel. Police Are Baffled.

  She pulled on a nightdress and wrapped herself in an old hotel bathrobe. Then she swaddled her child in the towel and silently left her room. On the other side of the basement, the furnaceman snored on his pallet. Gritting her teeth, Ethel limped to the stairs.

  The second floor was too low, and the third seemed uncertain. To be safe, she would have to get to the fourth floor. Her legs trembled, and spears of pain shot through the center of her body. She was weeping and groaning when she reached the third floor, but for the sake of the baby forced herself to keep mounting the stairs. At the fourth floor, she opened the door to the empty, gas-lit hallway and leaned panting against the frame. Sweat stung her eyes. Ethel staggered into the corridor and moved past numbered doors until she reached the elevator alcove. Opposite the closed bronze doors, two large casement windows looked out onto Erie Street. She hugged the baby to her chest, struggled with a catch, and pushed the window open.

  Cold air streamed in, and the baby tugged his brows together and scowled. Impulsively, Ethel kissed the top of his lolling head, then settled her waist against the ridge at the bottom of the casement. She gripped the baby beneath his armpits, and the towel dropped onto her feet. The baby drew up his legs and kicked, as if rejecting the cold. A bright, mottled pink covered his face like a rash. His mouth was a tiny red beak. One of his eyes squeezed shut. The other slid sideways in a gaze of unfocused reproach.

  Gripping his sides, Ethel extended her arms and moved his kicking body through the casement. She could feel the ribs beneath his skin. The bottom of the frame dug into her belly. Ethel took a sharp inhalation and prepared to let go by loosening her grip. Instantly, unexpectedly, he slipped through her hands and dropped into the darkness. For a moment briefer than a second, she leaned forward, open-mouthed.

  What happened to her in the moment she watched her baby fall away toward the Erie Street sidewalk is the reason Ethel Carroway returns to the window on the fourth floor of the Oliphant Hotel.

  A doorman found the dead infant half an hour later. By the start of the morning shift, the entire staff knew that someone had thrown a baby from an upper window. Policemen went from room to room and in a maid’s basement chamber came upon an exhausted young woman stuffing bloody sheets into a pillowcase. Despite her denials of having recently given birth, she was arrested and given a medical examination. At her trial, she was condemned to death, and in April 1893, Ethel Carroway departed from her earthly state at the end of a hangman’s rope. During the next two decades, several fourth-floor guests at the Oliphant remarked a peculiar atmosphere in the area of the elevators: some found it unpleasantly chilly even in the dog days, others said it was overheated in winter, and Nelly Tetrazelli, the “Golden Thrush,” a
n Italian mezzo-soprano touring the northern states with a program of songs related to faerie legend, complained that a “nasty, nasty porridge” in the elevator alcove had constricted her voice. In 1916, the Oliphant went out of business. For three years, the hotel steadily deteriorated, until new owners took it over; they ran it until 1930, when they went broke and sold the building for use as a boarding school for young women. The first sightings of a ghostly figure on the fourth floor were made by students of the Erie Academy for Girls; by 1948, when the academy closed its doors, local lore had supplied the name of the spectral figure, and a year later, when the Oliphant opened yet again, Ethel Carroway began putting in regular appearances, not unlike Nelly Tetrazelli, the “Golden Thrush.” Over the decades, Ethel acquired a modest notoriety. The Oliphant devotes a long paragraph of its brochure to the legend, an undoubtedly idealized portrait of the revenant hangs above the lobby fireplace, and a bronze plaque memorializes the site of the crime. Guests with amateur or professional interests in the paranormal have often spent weeks in residence, hoping for a glimpse, a blurry photograph, a sonic, tape-recorded rustle. (None have ever been granted their wish.)

  Ethel Carroway does not reappear before her window to increase her fame. She does it for another reason altogether. She’s hungry.

  I have told you of bad Boy and the thousand eyes fixed upon the Shining Boy, and alluded to a secret. In the same forthright manner with which I introduced myself, I shall now introduce the matter of the wondrous secret, by laying it out upon the methaporical table. All throughout my life I possessed a crystalline but painful awareness of my superiority to the common man. To put it squarely: I understood that I was better than the others. Just about all the others.