by Robert Bloch
She was growing to resent Paul. All he wanted to do was talk about his books—usually he’d get the most excited over a book she’d never heard of—and he liked to push tomes into her hands, proposing in a most insistent voice that she read them. She knew that if she complied, he would want to talk about them, which meant a discussion afterward. She so hated argumentative people. Paul was very aggressive, a prime example of the type. She blamed her sister for the boy’s poor manners. Worst of all, she had discovered that he was smuggling new books into the house as if he didn’t have enough already. Some of them were those dreadful horror stories.
She got up and entered the kitchen to fix herself a cup of tea. There a moment of courage gripped her. She selected the prize teacup, poured in the hot brew and went back to a rocking chair that protested, squeaking a little, when she sat down—but that was all right because it was her sound. She sipped her tea with a hearty sssssut! Outside, a car passed by and the shifting of the gears grated on her nerves.
A dog barked. How noisy, how messy the world. At least she had her house, her sanctuary, and the world was on the other side of her door. Except for Paul.
Shortly before dusk, a grinning Paul Kraft left the home of Barbara Struthers, and berated himself for having supposed the party would be a bore. He had to face it. He could not deny that he’d had a great time. Barbara proved to be quite a hostess. He hadn’t even known that she liked him before this. But now he could hardly believe the proof of her fondness. In his hands he carried the fruit of that pleasant encounter—a book. Ah, such a book, an old and valuable one. If Barbara Struthers were a bit crazy to give gifts on her birthday, as well as receive them, it was a sweet madness. He would remember and do his best to pay her back. She was like no other girl he knew—most seemed annoying pests to him—and he found her exciting.
He felt very much alive as he walked, ran, skipped his way home over bone-white sidewalks. To his left, the daytime moon peered over an elm tree. It was a friendly orb, good company for his elated mood. The sky was a curious mixture of pink and dark blue. And then. . .3700 Jefferson Lane: the haunted house, so full of mystery, that was his residence. The kitchen drapes were open, allowing twilight into an otherwise gray cave. There was a dying carnation in a vase in the window. He looked at it and thought about how Aunt Rose was fond of telling him to pay attention to worldly things, to come down from his fantasies and acquire some common sense as compensation for the journey. Well, he would make her happy tonight. He’d surprise her by bursting in with the good news.
“Aunt Rose,” he shouted as the door slammed shut. From inside the house came the fragile sound of breaking porcelain. He stopped, pondered. Not her favorite teacup, he prayed.
“Paul.” Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper. He shivered. “Please come into the parlor.”
He came. Sitting still in her Boston rocker, she appraised him. The shards of broken china, white like midget icebergs, were scattered in a sea of purple carpet. “Please clean up your mess,” she said.
“How did it break?” he asked, too bluntly he realized as soon as the words were out of his mouth. One wasn’t blunt with Aunt Rose. “I mean the carpet. . .how?”
She didn’t answer. She was looking away from him, looking at a corner of the room. He tried to follow her gaze, to see the object of her interest, but immediately her eyes darted back, held his gaze in a cobwebby stare. She said, “It broke on the arm of the rocker. You see that the arm is made of wood. Wood is hard. Porcelain is delicate and must be protected from hard things. You startled me.” It was like listening to a list being read by an executioner, a calm, dry tone enumerating your heinous offenses one last time, before the axe descends. Paul looked down at his feet.
“What’s that in your hand?” she asked suddenly. He had forgotten about the book. In his haste, he had neglected to leave it on the living room table or to put it in the bookcase. A fool, he thought, I bring it into the lion’s den. “What are you hiding?” she snapped.
“I’m not hiding anything!”
“Then let me have it.”
“I brought it in for you to see,” he said as he released it to her white hands, which held the book delicately, as if holding old papyrus. She started to look through it. “It’s Dark Carnival!” he said. “By Ray Bradbury!”
“I can read,” she replied.
“It’s something I’ve wanted for a long time. It’s a fine book, his rarest, his first, and the hardest to find.”
She finished thumbing the pages and held the book up to the lamp next to her chair, examining it as if it were a fine crystal, slowly turning it, letting the light play around the brown, worn edges.
“It’s worth a lot of money,” Paul said in a cracking voice, wondering why he was afraid. He was suffocating. “A lot of money,” he repeated, trying to recapture the intensity of his point. One word was shouting in his brain: No!
“Paul, dear, what if I were to damage your book?” she asked. He said nothing as the world collapsed around him. “What if I were to bend it, crease it?” He said nothing. “But no, it wouldn’t really be broken then. What if I were to light a match?” He closed his eyes. “I shouldn’t want to burn it completely. Just partially. We’d put out the fire before it was all gone.” He wanted to cry. But he didn’t cry. Silence was heavy in the room, for at least an eternity.
Finally he asked, “Why do you hate me, Aunt Rose?”
She shrugged and laid his book on the table. “I don’t hate you, child. I love you. But you have to learn a very important lesson or else you’ll be self-centered for the rest of your life. You never think about other people. You never consider other people’s feelings.”
“Are you talking about yourself? No one else has ever told me-—”
“I’m talking about how selfish you are. Oh, I don’t blame you. How could you be otherwise after the way you were raised. But now you must learn to be considerate of others.”
“I was coming home to tell you how much I enjoyed the party, to share with you how—”
“Very well. Tell me about the party. We should change the subject. I hate people who argue.”
He took a deep breath. “It was the best party I’ve ever been to. When Barbara gave me the book—” His throat contracted as Aunt Rose picked up his book, a limited edition, and hurled it against the wall. The binding snapped instantly. The thing was dead before it hit the floor—its neck broken, two halves of a book swinging drunkenly, held together by the slimmest hopes of glue and thread. As it fell to the floor, heretofore undamaged pages crumpled. He was thinking through a haze of panic: the pages can be salvaged, they can be rebound, and it doesn’t really matter what’s happened, not really. But he had heard the book scream.
“I have kept my patience with you,” said Aunt Rose. “I’ve made allowances for your age and haven’t forgotten the tragedy you’ve recently suffered. But now you’re my responsibility and rank insolence I will not abide. You can forget to observe the memory of your parents if you want to, and you can keep me awake all night long with your noise and pages and doors and creeping in and out, if you want to, but you will not deliberately provoke me!”
He was thinking: In time it can be repaired. I’ll have the money as soon as I get a real job, and I’ll fix the book and rent a place to keep the rest of my things in, and I’ll move there. Except it’s so hard to find work. I wish I was older. Surely I can find something.
“Paul! Have you heard what I’ve been saying?”
. . .Who is this woman? Oh yes, Aunt Rose. Yes, he had heard every word although he didn’t understand a thing she had said. “I think so,” he answered, tasting blood in his mouth. It occurred to him that he’d been biting his tongue for over a minute.
“You will not provoke me again,” she went on. “After we had agreed to change the topic, you deliberately mentioned that dirty old book, that silly book. I read a few sentences in it, Paul. Do you know what I found? Fanciful sentences, that’s what. A waste of time, a dust mag
net. . .You were going to tell me what happened at the party; instead you mention that book. Now, what do you have to say for yourself?”
He repeated a sentence several times in his mind and then, sure of the words, said, “Barbara Struthers gave it to me. That’s why I liked the party.”
She rose. She slapped him. She said, “You will not lie!”
He was far away. It took him a moment to notice that his face was hurting. He was still thinking about the blood in his mouth. “What?” he asked quietly, confused.
“I tried to stop you from taking that book along,” said Aunt Rose. “You took it anyway. You had to be punished.”
“But no, no,” he said, starting to laugh. “I had to be punished for breaking the cup. Remember the cup?” He pointed to the pieces on the floor. “It was a paperback book I tried to take with me, much smaller than what I brought back. You’ve mixed them up!” He laughed louder.
“Don’t you dare laugh at me!” she shrieked. “You clean up my teacup! I buy you your clothes and this is how you treat me.” Had she screamed? he marveled. But she never raises her voice. There were things he wanted to say. Arguments, logic, reasons, crowded his brain. Somewhere a mistake had been made. All he had to do was run it back to the beginning, find the error, bring it out. But when he opened his mouth, all that came out was laughter. “I’ll show you!” she screamed again. “You selfish monster!” This time there was no doubt. She had most definitely raised her voice.
He asked himself why she was running upstairs, heading for his bedroom, then he remembered the one important thing about that room—his collection. He stopped laughing and began to throw up on the carpet. She rushed back down with an armful of books. Then she saw what he was doing. “Paul!” she cried out. Three times? But she doesn’t raise her voice. . .“My carpet!” He noticed a yellow stain spreading on what before had been consistent purple. The remains of the teacup were being surrounded by the splotch. She threw down her load, ran back upstairs to get more.
He thought: I really ought to do something. Maybe I can gather the pages of Dark Carnival and leave with that much. I’ll have to do it quickly.
THUMP! She was back and the pile of his books doubled. She tossed his monster mask on top for good measure.
“Shall I tell you what I’m going to do?” she hissed, suddenly standing over him, swaying ominously like a scarecrow about to topple. He looked up, wiped the tears from his eyes and found that he could breathe again. Standing, he faced her.
“What is it, Aunt Rose?”
“Go to the kitchen,” she commanded, “and bring back the matches.”
Something happened inside Paul—the rage and fire and terror were gone. There was nothing left but a quiet, hollow center. “No,” he said.
“I’ve had enough of your defiance.”
“You’re mad,” he answered softly.
With an incredulous expression, she turned from her nephew and hurried away from him. In a moment the sounds of a frantic search came rattling and clanging to Paul’s ear. She was always misplacing those matches. Even as he remembered he had last seen them in the cabinet above the refrigerator, a triumphant cackle stung him as though she had reached out a long, bony arm holding a needle with which to pierce him.
She returned, the box of matches held high in her right hand. “Now!” she gasped.
Looking around him, Paul realized that the picture was ludicrous: it was made up of a carpet fastidiously clean but for the stain Paul had left behind, the lamps that had been dusted so often that the shades seemed to be made of tightly pulled, translucent human skin and the flowery wallpaper that smelled not of gardens but of the crushed, dead flowers you find in old books. He could not believe for a moment that she was going to play with fire in this museum.
Her eyes were staring, first at the pile of books, then at her nephew. He could swear she hadn’t blinked in the past few minutes.
At length she spoke of her plan: “We will take the books to the porch. There is a barbecue grill there.” Paul tried to remember a single time they had cooked dinner outside. The grill was as spotless as if it had just come from the department store. A Christmas gift left over from years past, waiting for one unholy fire, an innocuous device that was to be transformed into a sacrificial altar for Paul’s library.
He still held Dark Carnival. Outside was the sidewalk, winding away into the safety of the night. Paul knew that he could run, hide, escape. . .and never have to come back.
“Damn you,” he muttered in the direction of the wraithlike being bearing matches, dressed in a turquoise dress. She was carrying the books outside, five and six at a time. Her face had the quality of wounded pride—she wouldn’t even grant him the role of victim.
Paul decided he wasn’t leaving, not just yet. “Let me help you,” he called out, his voice a bit shrill, as he headed for the utility room where she kept the one unused can of lighter fluid. By the time he returned, all the books and the mask were in a pile on the grill. She had a match in her hand that she was trying futilely to ignite. Paul waited as the liquid sloshed back and forth in the can.
She heard the sound and asked him, “What are you doing?”
“Helping.” He stepped out onto the porch. There was no turning away from what he would learn now. A small hope wouldn’t let go of his mind: it seemed to promise that she was all bluster and fear, not a monster really.
Screwing off the cap, he held the can above the books. And waited. Aunt Rose said nothing. Slowly, carefully, he placed the can on the floor. They could hear each other’s breathing.
“Well?” she said.
“You do it,” he answered.
She did. The fluid splashed on the floor and the thick odor was suddenly everywhere. She started striking the match, standing right over the pyre. “Christ,” whispered Paul. Shik, shik, went the match. The fumes reached up, encircled the clawlike hand. Paul began trembling. He grabbed the can and shook it in her face. “Do you want to die?” he yelled. She didn’t seem to see him. Shik, shik, shik. . .
Paul dropped the can, grabbed Dark Carnival and ran. He was halfway through the living room when he heard the sound, like the rush of air when a match is put over a pilot light that has gone out in a gas oven. Turning around, he saw Aunt Rose caressed by a long tongue of flame. She raised her hand, dropping the box of matches that flared and fell from her like a lonely comet. The suddenly-old woman’s head was crowned in fire and her hand pointed at him in a last gesture of disapproval. The dried flesh was eaten up with a snapping and popping. The body collapsed as flame tentatively reached out for the rest of the house. . .then spread in triumphantly.
With a slam, Paul was out the front door. Lights were on in nearby houses—neighbors opening their eyes to accuse. He could feel the heat of the inferno on the back of his neck. And so he walked faster. Then started running. By the time he heard the sirens, he couldn’t see, smell or hear the fire anymore.
Hurrying on into the enveloping arms of night: in its darkness he did not imagine the myriad monsters of his books, the fiends his aunt had insisted populated his deepest dreams. The real monster was gone, behind him in a blaze of light. Ahead in the shadows waited the freedom of a quiet privacy, where light was used for reading instead of burning.
Dreaming in Black and White
Susan Shwartz
Crossing Water Street, downtown flows like a great brown river choked with battered cars that wash up on Confucius Place. Traffic lights flicker red and green, but no one obeys them. Dodging a stripped-down car, Stephanie thrust past a side road and into the main street just as the light turned. Brakes and car horns shrieked, followed by gabble she heard only as oaths. A Hyundai lunged forward, and she leapt like a bullfighter for the sanctuary of the curb.
“Damned fool! You want to be road kill?” she scolded herself, and leaned against the fast-food turned family dentist (advertising in English and Chinese). You’d do anything to miss this lunch, right, Steff? Sheldon’s carefully modulated, reaso
nable tones whispered in her mind. But I wouldn’t like that at all.
She glanced into the streaked windows where a miniature TV’s coarse screen flickered with the image of a gray-haired woman in a violet sweater. The woman had the face of a boxer—puffed lips, drawn down a little, a flattened nose, and ancient, empty eyes. She dabbed them with a wad of tissue, but never stopped dripping tears. The Joel and Hedda show was on again. What had started as his trial for killing his illegally adopted child and beating Hedda had become hers—days of testimony that exposed her life and her weakness. Day after day, professionally compassionate people drove her in from that Westchester psychiatric hospital with the name Stephanie liked—Four Winds—to witness against the man who had killed. . .Stephanie’s eyes filled. She could never watch such things for long; the pictures of the little girl, now dead, had driven her from Sheldon’s living room in tears.
I could have done a better job, she told herself. Why couldn’t they have given her to me?
You can barely take care of yourself, Sheldon had declared when Stephanie had protested that Hedda Nussbaum had been so badgered and battered that she had no will or self-respect left. She asked for it. Too bad it cost the child’s life, too. Sheldon was big on free choice, bigger on using a soft reasoned tone for questions that all started with “isn’t it true that.” Stephanie’s tears and bewilderment never stood up well against that kind of cross-examination.
You could get worn down, she’d tried to say. You could get scared. You could even escape, yet be too scared to keep on running. There but for the grace of God. . .Sheldon had sworn that he never wanted to hurt her. She had believed him. If that was true, why did she feel so bad?