Intermusings Page 7

  Schell cried out. His mind crackled with white-hot energy. Sight and sound were removed in a flash of inhuman brilliance. He saw towers, rising to a scarlet sky. He saw the giant orb of that eye, glaring at him over the peaks of mountains that could not, and did not exist. The sound of his cry faded, echoed, disappeared and the brilliant flash of light faded to black.

  Daniel Schell awoke with beams of brilliant morning sunlight crossing his eyes and pain pounding in his head. He sat up too quickly, and found he couldn’t maintain his balance. When he fell back, he struck his head, and the pain shot through him like a white-hot wave. He lay still, and then, very slowly sat up. He sat on a stone floor. Above him a grated window through what appeared to be a stone foundation directed brilliant sunlight directly into his face.

  His memory leaked back slowly, and he realized that he was in the basement of the old mansion on the hill. He turned and glanced at the floor. There was no sign of the spikes he so clearly remembered driving into the floor. He saw, just for a second, a flicker of strangely colored light. It might have been sunlight on dust motes; it might have been nothing at all, but he didn’t let his hands pass through where the lines of light would have glowed.

  Daniel stood slowly, hesitated until he had his balance, and then made his way to the stairs. He climbed up to the first floor. The lower windows were covered by blinds and thick shades. He stepped to the front door, opened it, and stared out into a beautiful, sunlit morning. The road wound down and away toward where he knew his car was stuck in the ditch, and to the town below. He thought about his apartment, and his desk. He thought about the manuscript lying on his desk and tried to remember why it was important.

  Behind him the stairs stretched up to the library and the labyrinthine halls. He thought about Murgocci. He tried to remember the man’s face, his voice, but the memory wouldn’t come. He saw that last brilliant flash of light, and the dark silhouette, stepping into nothingness. Murgocci had been relegated to a faded memory. Everything had changed.

  Daniel climbed up the stairs and turned toward the rear of the old home. He hadn’t been given a tour, but somehow he knew where he was going. He climbed to the top floor and came to a thick wooden door at the end of a dark hall. The door was polished wood with an antique crystal knob. It was locked by an over-sized skeleton key that protruded on the inside. Daniel turned it without hesitation and opened the door.

  Beyond that portal, a small deck overlooked the crashing waves below. He hadn’t realized until that moment just how close up against the cliff the mansion had been built. Salt spray rose and sprinkled over his face. The sun glittered off the waves. There was no sign of anything odd or out of place, and yet, he felt a tug deep in his chest. He hears whispered voices in the crashing waves. He scanned the blue, cloudless sky, but he didn’t see the seagulls; he tried to pierce it all and find the searching gaze of that huge, all-seeing eye, but there was no trace. It wasn’t time.

  Eventually, he stepped inside and closed the doors. He wondered how long it would take to move his things up the mountain. He wondered if he could get the windows opened up, and the road cleared. He thought of the library below, and wondered what he’d find in all of Murgocci’s books. Even as he wondered all of those things, one overriding thought pulsed just beneath the surface. He wondered when the light would come again…and when it did, he wondered if he’d be ready.

  Moon Like a Gambler's Face

  By Richard Rowand & David Niall Wilson

  "Not me," my Uncle Louis said.

  I remember him saying that. He said, "Not me," as if he were saying it for everyone else in the small bedroom in the apartment on Cherry Lane; but he was the only one who said it out loud. "Not me."

  My Aunt Ada had just pulled the covers back from over Uncle Phil to let us see how thin he had gotten. My mother looked away. My grandmother covered her open mouth. Uncle Louis stared like he was mad—his eyes bulged and his ruddy face got redder. "Not me."

  I just looked, taking it all in with my young eyes. I was the favorite nephew, there so Uncle Phil could see me one last time.

  But Uncle Phil was as good as dead. His strong and full-fleshed body was like a shrink-wrapped skeleton. He was naked except for a very large diaper. A tube came out of the side of the white swaddle, snaked across the starched white sheet and ran over the side of the bed to a plastic bag clipped to the mattress.

  We had our quick look and Aunt Ada pulled the covers back down, tucking them as though about the child she'd never had.

  White, I remember everything as being white. White sheets, white blankets, white pillows . . . white Uncle Phil all shriveled in the middle of the bed.

  Aunt Ada, with her pursed lips, didn't consider, I think, dignity. She knew that she deserved sympathy, and wanted it. She lived with this tragedy every day, while my Uncle Phil slid slowly, ever so slowly, from his mountain of life to death. Like an avalanche shot by a camera, one frame at a time, my uncle slid down to death. As young as I was, I didn't understand so many things. I saw the horror for a moment, and that's how long it lasted—a moment. I remembered him in his stiff brown hat, returning from the races, green racing form and pencil poking out of the pocket of his jacket. I remembered the silver dollars he pulled from my ear each week, the ones I called big nickels. I remembered the stories of the races and the strange and wonderful names of the horses as he described the thunder of hooves, the jockeys perched on the backs of the mounds of muscle, the roars and cheers and moans of the crowds as Fairy's Tail nosed out Ain't She Grand.

  And I remembered the way Aunt Ada adored him. Oh, you wouldn't maybe know it at first, the way they joshed each other. But when he turned to hang his hat on the coat tree, you could see it in her eyes. When he pursed his mouth around a forkful of mashed potatoes, swallowed and said, "Just the right amount of lumps. Just the way I like 'em," you could see the joy in her eyes at having pleased him.

  When we had our last look at him before he died, I thought of those memories, not the figure on the bed. For me he was either already dead, or somewhere else. I did wonder, though, where Aunt Ada slept at night.

  Two years later my Uncle Louis squeezed his panel truck into the garage next to his curio store. He closed the garage door, got two quarts of warm beer from the box where he kept them hid, and got back in the truck. He kept the motor running, had the radio tuned to a country western station that twanged out nasal tunes about cheating hearts and honky tonks, and took long pulls from both of the bottles in turn as the air in the garage turned on him.

  They said he had just found out that he had cancer.

  "Not me," I bet he said, "No, sir, not me."

  Funny how the mind works. I'd loved both of those old uncles of mine, grand uncles, actually, but I had been young. My mother married again and we moved away, only to return years later. And I saw the old places with different eyes. My Uncle Phil's house had been torn and Aunt Ada had moved to California. Uncle Louis' place was now in what was considered a bad part of town.

  So I never thought too much about them in the thirty years that followed. I saw them again, though, going gently into their good nights when the doctor gave me my own bad news. The pain in my side was more than pain, was to be the death of me.

  From that day on I saw my Uncle Phil's cadaverous face in the mirror each day. I was drawn and pale and thinning as though in training for my own funeral.

  Radiation and the chemo weighted my steps. I found myself more complacent than usual. Ginny had left me before it had all started. Though she felt guilty at not being with me, I won't have to worry about her lifting the covers and showing the tubes. . . when it comes to that. I won't have to worry where she sleeps.

  I think I might take Uncle Louis' route. He drove into death with both hands on the bottles. He didn't lose his dignity, like Uncle Phil. They say that when they found Uncle Louis, he had a smile on his face, as though he'd just won a bet at the track—not the longshot, but enough to know he'd won.

  The docto
rs say I have a fighting chance if I keep up with the treatments. What they may not realize is that I really don't care anymore. Sooner or later I'll end up dead. I wonder why I should fight something that's going to beat me eventually anyway? I don't know.

  So I go in the late afternoon to Garden Memorial Park. It's a sad thing that filled cemeteries have an unkempt look. Perpetual care is a lost cause. Tough weeds have found the nooks where they can grow. The grave stones are weathered and chipped by time and the derelict mowers. The last time I was here I saw a grounds keeper whizzing away behind a granite angel. The angel's expression was of disgust, as if it were trying to fly from the blasphemy—but it was frozen by my look. The grounds keeper ignored me, zipped up and walked off whistling a rock song.

  I should have come earlier, I guess. It was getting dark sooner than I expected. Shadows were edging like stalking rats across the grass. I was winded; traffic sounds faded. I walked among the graves until I reached my Uncles'. I've been here twice since I've started treatment—I don't know why. There's a calmness. . . .

  My uncles are buried back to back near a locust tree in the very southernmost part of the cemetery. It stands above their gravestones like a skeletal sentinel, shadows like groping fingers sliding into other shadows. I can feel the chill of the evening breeze drying the sweat on my back and tickling at what's left of my hair. I shiver. It didn't seem so cold when I first arrived. The sun, as if in salute to death's slow possession of my body, was being swallowed by the earth—was almost gone.

  Leaves rustle all about me, scuttling in haste from relentless talons of air. They almost sound like the footsteps of the dead. For a moment my heartbeat speeds. It is not until the whispering voices begin to break loose from the whistling breeze, catching at me with broken sentences and half-discernible phrases, that I realize I am no longer alone. The sun is gone. The wind is cold, I'm dying, and I can't even find solitude in a graveyard at night. I turn to scan the area, searching for the source of the voices, preparing to avoid them if possible. But I see no one . . . only graves, clumps of wild weeds, and the dark shapes of trees and large shrubs. With a shrug that does nothing to shake the chill from my heart, I turn back to the my uncles' graves, to two sets of eyes. Gasping in fear, I feel myself beginning to shake.

  They are as I remember them . . . not decayed, but misty white and poorly coalesced. Their eyes are the brightest, clearest points. As I stare first at one, then the other, they seem to solidify, stepping from fog and memory to stand beneath the locust tree regarding me in silence.

  My throat constricts, not allowing passage to the scream that wells from my chest. I stagger back a step, raising my hand in a quick, warding gesture, but I can’t make a sound. I know that I should be running, tearing out as fast as I can. My legs disagree. As the blood begins to rush through me, released from its shock, Uncle Phil speaks, and I am caught in a waking nightmare.

  "Hello, Sammy," he says, eyes gleaming.

  He is still wearing his sheet, and I am glad that Aunt Ada is not here to lift it. I remember only too well "how thin he'd gotten." He follows my eyes and a crooked grin splits his face. I wish for him to have his hat, at least, but the wish causes no change.

  "Uncle Phil?" I ask stupidly. Perhaps I am dead too. No, I'm alive, but a type of deadness has fallen over me. . . I find their presence, at first so chilling, makes me more uneasy than afraid. What have I to fear—Death? He will have me soon enough.

  My Uncle Phil turns to Uncle Louis, still grinning, and the flushed face of Uncle Louis grins back.

  "He always was a smart one," Uncle Louis says, ignoring me completely. "Not a fool, like others I've known." His glare is pointed and sharp, aimed at Uncle Phil. "I bet he's only thinking of how, by now, wondering which way is best to go."

  He turns his eyes to me, his grin that of a jackal. "The truck was a good idea," he says, eyes hollow and deep. "There was no pain."

  "Not a future, either," Uncle Phil pipes in quietly. His voice is not as forceful . . . not as sure. He sounds as though he is defending something. "Surely a chance at life is worth some pain?"

  "Is it?" Louis' voice is biting and cold. "Was it, I should say?"

  Uncle Phil gives no answer, but the struggle continues silently behind his eyes.

  Uncle Louis' presence is as striking in comparison to that of Uncle Phil as are his words. He stands, hands in his pockets, flannel shirt rumpled and bib overalls faded. He left life in better form, stronger. But he'd left so soon . . .

  "Your choice, Sammy," Uncle Phil says, face serious. "Your life. We made our own choices, good or ill."

  "And you chose ill," Uncle Louis chimes in, "very ill, for a very long time, and for the same prize I won with a gallon of gas and two quarts of luke-warm beer. Some choice."

  "Radiation treatments were new then, chancy things," Uncle Phil replies, an old familiar light returning to his eyes. "I've always been one to take chances, Louis. I bet on life. You might have been stronger—might have lived to your eighties. No way to know, now. You took a sure thing—no odds."

  I feel other eyes around me, but the shadows seem solid. The glow of the rising moon creeps into corners and around gravestones, furtively chasing the darkness. There is no glimmer of eyes or rustle of feet betraying any presence beyond that already manifested, but my shoulders cramp with a cold beyond cold. A shiver transits my spine and lodges at the nape of my neck. As my eyes return to my Uncles, I find that they are both staring at me.

  "Sammy," Uncle Phil speaks again, "we want your help."

  There is no help for dead men. The thought flashes through my mind, but his voice goes on.

  "We have made our choices. Death, in both cases, was the winner . . . but who can say which of us did better?"

  "My choice won't solve that for you," I answer, wondering if I'm insane and babbling to silent graves. "Death will get me, as he got you both, regardless of what I choose."

  "True," Louis agrees, "but we have something a bit different in mind."

  I see that Uncle Phil holds a yellow sheet of paper in his gnarled, bony hand. It flaps like a thing alive in the passing of the breeze. My memory is sharper than I thought—it is a racing sheet.

  The wind has risen—clouds of dust swirl and whip about my feet, dancing into the air and obscuring even the pale illumination of the moon. My mind rebels, trying to put my feet in motion, to back away—or to run. I cannot. Gritty whirlwinds seem to surround me—my movements are slow, as though through molasses. I want very much to cry out —

  I hear sounds . . . odd, detached sounds. They are not the sounds of a cemetery. I hear heavy, shuffling steps. The dust begins to clear, and ice coats my veins. Dark, looming shapes rise to my right and left, massive structures that . . . bleachers. They are like bleachers, and they are full.

  Rustling skeletons in each and every seat with wisps of hair on skulls; tattered, rotted clothes hanging and moving in the wind; pieces of dried flesh mottling yellowed bone—some lean forward and I see that the seat backs are tombstones—all waiting, expectant.

  This, then, is madness. I am going mad.

  A whinny, a snort—I'm sure that's what I hear, sounds at my shoulder. I spin, looking up into bottomless, soulless eyes. They spiral to darkness, grabbing at me, tugging at my heart. Then he turns away, reluctantly, I think, and I stagger back, released for the moment.

  "Sammy," Uncle Phil's voice comes from my left, and I turn again. He is sitting atop a huge gray stallion, his white sheet blending into the silver mane. Beside him, on a magnificent roan mount, Uncle Louis smiles down at me sardonically.

  "Phil's idea," he says. "Climb aboard."

  There are two other horses there now, or were they there all along? A moaning sigh of anticipation seems to ripple through the stillness of the stands. Eyes again attack my back. The shivering in my bones is nearly uncontrollable. One of the horses is pure white—almost ethereal. I feel myself drawn to it, though I've never been near such a gigantic frightening animal before.
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  Oh, God, what is happening here? What is going on? I'm dreaming. I'm already dead, and this is my first stop in Hell. No . . . it's real enough, I think.

  The stirrup is too high, but my white horse is close to a slab of granite that I can step on. I do, and swing my leg over. I'm on. The white prances in anticipation.

  "Uncle Louis," I say, holding the horse's mane and trying to stay on, "I don't understand what's happening. I'm dreaming, right? I don't understand."

  The black horse snorts. Its rider is ready. He sits, hunched in his black-on-black silks, elbows and knees tucked in. My white rocks back and forth, stamping the ground. The rider on the black glances over at me and nods, smiling. I think of Robert Redford's smile when Butch tells him to kill the big guy if he loses the fight. A mock salute, a nod and a smile.

  "Phil's always been a gambling man," says Uncle Louis. "He made a bet."

  "What kind of bet?"

  "Well, if Phil wins, you get to go and try all those new therapies—the chemo, the radiation and such. No sure thing, but a chance. If I win, you have to find your own way to join us. You know, like I did in the truck."

  He stops talking and takes a long pull from the quart in his left hand.

  I feel a pain lance through my side, just under the ribs. I wince.

  "Go on," I say.

  Uncle Phil is carefully tucking his sheets around himself. His bony white arms almost glow in the moonlight. His lips are thin and drawn across his teeth. Uncle Louis' horse shifts weight from one front leg to the other.