Ceremonies

by T E. D Klein

  As she pulled open the elevator's scarred black metal door, the bundle rose and followed her inside.

  She turned, her stupor lifting, to find a gaunt and wrinkled old woman beside her, filthy-looking and impossibly stooped, the back bent almost double. The face, too, was averted, as if in deference or fear, but by the light of the one bare bulb that dangled from the ceiling Rochelle made out a mass of stringy hair, deep creases and discolorations in the skin, and, clenched as if praying, a pair of plump little hands. It was the hands that bothered her most.

  Pressing the button for her floor, she edged away. The metal door slid shut. 'Do you belong here?' she heard herself demand. Her voice was harsh within the little car.

  The figure made no answer. But as the car jerked upward, something stirred beneath its rags.

  'I asked you a question!' snapped Rochelle. 'If you don't belong here-'

  She gasped. The figure had turned toward her and was beginning to straighten up. Overhead, with an almost audible pop, the bulb in the ceiling winked out. There was time for one brief, desperate scream that echoed through the blackness of the car – and then the plump little hands closed over her throat.

  The night was filled with the sound of crickets, a vast and mindless machine grinding without end. Lightning bugs gleamed above the grass. Bats darted under the eaves of the barn. In the light from the kitchen the apple tree's branches were bright against the darkness.

  Freirs looked disconsolately toward the sky, wondering, now that it was too late, if he should have asked Carol to come out for a stroll. But it was not a time for strolling; the night was dark and unpleasant, the moon half concealed behind clouds. And anyway, how obvious it would have been to resort to such a ruse, and how humiliating if she turned him down.

  No, there'd been nothing he could say or do – not in front of the Poroths. There was no way he could have invited her out. It would have seemed too much like pleading.

  Brooding over the patronizing little peck on the cheek she'd given him, he slunk back to his room.

  Somehow I didn't think I'd be writing this tonight. I suppose I had visions of Carol with me, beside me, all night long… Instead she's up there in the farmhouse right now, about to sleep the sleep of the virtuous in that tacky little room, while I'm alone out here, scribbling the night away in this goddamned journal amp; trying to lose myself in the dubious consolations of prose.

  It's probably my own fault. She was probably embarrassed to do anything in front of the Poroths, amp; I didn't encourage her enough And maybe she really was tired…

  If only I'd asserted myself more. If only I hadn't behaved like such a goddamned gentleman, she'd be here beside me now. Wish to hell she didn't have to go back to the city tomorrow.

  And now I've also got a headache, thanks, no doubt, to Rosie's wine.

  Damn.

  He took out his anger on the bugs. He spent half an hour going over his room, spray can in hand, looking for them.

  He found them, too. As many times as he'd gone over the room -the corners by the ceiling, the spaces around the window frames, the cracks beneath the sills – he always found new ones. There was no keeping them out.

  Whenever he saw an insect, he blasted it with the spray. Spiders, doused with it, curled up like men in despair, clutching their knees; he almost could have felt sorry for them, if only their brown legs hadn't been so hairy and their eyes so cruel. He blasted some large beetles that were clinging to the screens, trying to push their way in; they convulsed and dropped away, disappearing. He watched a lot of daddy longlegs curl up and die, and fat, bloated caterpillars wriggle. He tended not to kill the moths out there – they seemed so vulnerable, so hopeful, like humans, striving toward the light beyond the screen, bodies pale against the surrounding darkness -unless their banging annoyed him.

  The ones he really liked, however, were the fireflies; he felt a little sorry when he sprayed a few by mistake as they clung to the wire. When he sprayed them, they'd glow, and that cold light wouldn't wink off, it would just keep glowing, glowing much too long, till at last it faded away.

  Thais the only clue, he decided. The dead ones don't wink.

  At that moment, the singing began. He could hear it from the farmhouse, coming faintly through the night. The Poroths were going through their hymns.

  He had heard them do this before: their evening devotions, they called it. But he'd never heard them singing as late as this, and never with such intensity. They must be atoning for the glass or two of wine, he decided. Big sin!

  'Marvelous grace of our loving Lord,

  Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt,

  Yonder on Calvary's mount outpoured,

  There where the blood of the Lamb was spilt.'

  The rug had been rolled up; Sarr and Deborah were on their knees on the bare plank floor, watched by three of the cats. Their hands were clasped before them; their eyes were shut tight. They seemed to be beseeching something they could see inside their heads.

  'Dark is the stain that we cannot hide,

  What can avail to wash it away?'

  Their voices rose louder and louder as they worked themselves into the song.

  'Look! there is flowing a crimson tide;

  Whiter than snow you may be today.'

  Briefly Sarr thought of Carol in the next room; her crimson hair would be pressed against the whiteness of the pillow.

  'Grace, grace, God's grace,

  Grace that will pardon and cleanse within…'

  He threw himself into the song, singing all the louder to regain the feeling that was gone.

  'Grace, grace, God's grace,

  Grace that is greater than all of our sin.'

  Carol had been almost asleep when the singing started. She roused for a moment, but she was so tired – curious, she couldn't remember the last time she'd been so tired – that moments later she was slipping again into sleep, incorporating the words of the hymn into her dream.

  'There are days so dark that I seek in vain

  For the face of my Friend above…"

  Jeremy's face… Sarr's face, his dark probing eyes… a black thing watching from a tree…

  She started awake, thought briefly of the Dynnod, and drifted back to sleep -

  'But tho' darkness hide,

  He is there to guide

  With the touch of His hand and His love.'

  – back to sleep, with Sarr's hand, Jeremy's hand, the hand of God on hers.

  The room smelled faintly of insecticide. He had put away the can and decided to call it a night. Now he sat morosely on his bed, listening to the voices drift across the lawn to the outbuilding. They made him feel even lonelier. The others were all there, together in the farmhouse, and he was alone out here, exiled till dawn.

  He wondered if Carol was singing with them. He doubted it, though it was hard to make out individual voices; she was probably already in bed. Wonder if she's thinking of me. I'd give anything to be inside there with her…

  Suddenly the singing stopped. He could picture the two of them climbing into bed and envied them, their warm familiar bodies pressed together, the mattress sagging softly beneath them. All was silent now, except for the crickets.

  Unfortunately, he wasn't very tired. In fact, he was still restless and on edge. The sick feeling left by the wine had finally worn off.

  Maybe a dip into someone else's mind would do the trick. He undressed and got into his bathrobe. Glancing around for a book to read, his eye fell on the faded yellow covers of the one Carol had brought him. Seating himself at his desk, he ran through what he knew of its author. Machen had been a Welsh minister's son who went to London and lived alone for many years, nearly starving, haunted by fantasies of weird pagan rites and longing for the green hills he'd left behind. Lovecraft, in a survey of the field, had praised him highly.

  Freirs flipped through the yellowed pages, searching for the story the old man had recommended, 'The White People.' It was near the center; the book fell op
en easily to it. Someone – perhaps old Rosie himself, hadn't he been scribbling something that day? – had written in pencil just above the tide, Only effective if read by moonlight.

  Too bad the moon was blocked by clouds tonight; it might almost have been worth a try. Just for fun, of course. By way of experiment he snapped off the desk lamp. Surprisingly, moonlight was now streaming into the room, falling onto the bed and a strip of the floor with a radiance far brighter than he'd imagined, though the table he was using as his desk was still in shadow. Peering out the window, he saw that the clouds had begun to part; the moon was shining down now unimpeded.

  Leaving his chair, he seated himself on the edge of the bed and laid the book on the windowsill. He discovered that, by squinting, he could just make out the words. It might be amusing, he decided, to try and absorb the story this way. Maybe it would ease him into a dream.

  Holding the book open by the moonlight, he began to read.

  His eyes were moving faster. They felt as if they were darting back and forth as rapidly as insects, yet his vision seemed glazed, as if he were no longer reading the words but was instead being read by them, carried along like the beetle he'd seen kicking in the swiftly flowing stream, borne by the current… toward what rapids?

  The story's prologue, a framing device, had confused him, with all its high-flown talk about the human soul and the Meaning of Sin, and he wasn't even sure exactly where the tale was set – somewhere in the countryside, that's all he could be certain of, with a big house near a forest, and secret places, hills and pools and glades.

  But the main portion of the story, the extract from a young girl’s notebook, was staggering, overwhelming. It was as if it spoke to him aloud.

  ' I looked before me into the secret darkness of the valley, and behind me was the great high wall of grass, and all around me were the hanging woods that made the valley such a secret place…'

  He couldn't read it rapidly enough: the air of pagan ecstasy, the rites one doesn't dare describe, the malevolent little faces peering from the shadows and the leaves. It was, he felt certain, the most persuasive story ever written. He found himself whispering the lines as he read them, the words coming faster and faster -

  ' I knew there was nobody here at all besides myself, and thai no one could see me… Sol said the other words, and made the signs'

  – and by the time he'd finished he was half convinced he heard another voice, one softer and more ancient than his own, whispering an even stranger story in his head, a story in a language he seemed dimly to remember.

  He had no idea how much time had elapsed. It might have been days. His head was still spinning from the rush of words, or maybe it was only from the effort of reading in so faint a light. A pair of flies, trapped in the darkened room, were crashing into the window screens around him; the crickets droned their song; frogs piped madly by the brook, but he no longer heard them. Still in the story's spell, he felt himself slip off the robe and walk slowly across the room, opening the door to the lawn outside and stepping into the darkness.

  But it wasn't dark. It was a different night he stepped into, one almost as bright as a stage. Every rock was visible, every blade of grass; every object cast a shadow. The clouds had rolled back, the sky had opened up, and the full moon now shone forth onto the yard with all its power. Pale light seemed to pour from the sky, revealing things not meant to be seen, the secret night side of the planet. He felt the wet grass beneath his feet, and small wet things that moved, and things both hard and sharp, but he didn't pull away. He felt himself drawn like a dancer across the lawn, past the back of the farmhouse and the line of dark rosebushes standing like sentries along one side, the house itself sleeping in the moonlight, its windows dark. And still he was drawn back, toward where the bubbling stream made sucking noises at him, back toward the massive shape of the barn, the moonlight so strong now he could see his own shadow floating over the grass, floating toward the gnarled old willow that grew against the barn. And his own shadow yearned toward the shadow of the tree, and he watched it and felt himself follow, past the corner of the barn, moving inexorably toward the dark branches. And at last his shadow touched the other, merged with it, was absorbed in it; and still, not knowing what he did, he followed.

  Deborah caught her breath in wonder. Beside her, two of the cats looked up and regarded her curiously, then settled back to sleep.

  She too had been asleep, but she'd been awakened by the shift in the clouds and the bright moonlight which had suddenly flooded the room. There were no curtains on the windows; their people didn't hold with them, feeling it correct to get up with the sun. Unable to go back to sleep, she had been sitting up in bed and gazing absently out the window, head still spinning from the wine and the pictures of the Dynnod, when suddenly Freirs' door had swung open, down there in the yard, and now Freirs himself emerged into the light, his body pale against the lawn.

  Her eyes widened. He was naked.

  His expression was strangely preoccupied as he stepped onto the grass. She felt excited, watching him pad farther from the building, like a child watching something she shouldn't. She hadn't seen a naked man, aside from her husband, in – she couldn't remember how long it had been. But here were Jeremy's smooth white buttocks, his thighs, his sex… She caught her breath.

  Where was he going at this hour? He must be off to have himself a pee, she thought. But why's he heading clear across the lawn?

  At no time did he glance up toward her window (not that he could have seen her in the darkness anyway, she told herself, and he without his glasses); and he couldn't have known, as late as this, that anyone was watching. She wasn't sure of the time – the only clock was downstairs, the big grandfather clock Sarr had inherited; she could hear its regular ticking – but she thought it must be close to midnight.

  He was walking slowly, like a sleepwalker. Maybe he was sleepwalking, she thought; Jeremy wouldn't walk barefoot like that, he was far too squeamish about bugs! worms! night crawlers! Yet there he was, across the lawn and disappearing in the shadow of the barn.

  Perhaps she should stop him. If he was sleepwalking, could there be any danger? She dismissed the thought as soon as it occurred. Why embarrass him? If he wandered off into the long grass or the forest – well, he wouldn't be hurt, the Lord watched over sleepers; and if he found himself on rough ground, why, he'd simply wake up. She thought of calling to him through the open window, but she was already too excited. She could feel herself breathe faster now and was suddenly aware of her hand beneath her unbuttoned nightgown, cradling and squeezing her breast.

  With a little sigh she lay back, deliberately jarring the bed, hoping to awaken Sarr, his face pressed to the crumpled pillow. He stirred, clutched the pillow tighter, and slept on.

  She shifted closer to him, so close that she could feel the warmth of his body. He, too, wore the traditional nightgown, but as her hand explored beneath the sheet, she could feel that it had worked its way above his waist. Her fingers caressed the familiar contours of his hips and slid into the soft, girlish hair. Gently yet urgently they closed over his penis.

  He groaned softly, still asleep, and turned toward her, eyes closed. She tugged more insistently, and in reflex he twisted his hips to be nearer her, snaking his arms along her body, at last finding her breast. Carefully keeping her breath slow and silent, she rolled herself on top of him.

  In the smaller room, Carol slept on, outlined in the moonlight, her arm thrown over her eyes. Her regular breathing grew faster; suddenly her hand clutched the edge of the sheet, her other hand formed a fist, and a tremble shook her body like a fever. Her leg straightened, then pulled back; her form seemed to grow heavier, pushing into the mattress, as if she were retreating, in her dream, from some unwanted approach. Soundlessly her mouth formed words. Above her, in the pale light, the cardboard nursery shapes stared indifferently down.

  He felt the rough bark against the soles of his bare feet and sensed dimly that he was climbing the gnarled
old black willow that grew beside the barn. The branches bent beneath his weight but did not snap. He felt himself climb upward, unerringly as a squirrel, as if he had done it many times before and knew exactly where to place his hands and feet.

  Attaining the upper branches, he made his way out onto one of the thicker limbs, let go with both hands, and, precariously balanced, stepped lightly onto the barn roof just before the limb began to give way, the old wooden shingles curling wet beneath his toes. He continued climbing, bathed in moonlight now, the moon's face just above him, whispering him on.

  At the apex of the roof he unbent and slowly stood upright, one leg on each sloping side, one foot planted east and one foot west, straddling the center line. The moon, gazing down at him, was close enough to touch. He raised his hands to it.

  Deborah eased the sleeping Sarr onto his back, rose on her knees, and straddled him. Reaching down, she grasped him and put him inside her. He slid in easily.

  Hands raised as if in supplication, Freirs felt himself make overtures to the moon, gestures and faces that no one could see, no one would ever see, no one had ever seen before. Perhaps some ancient force was in control, but there was no thought of explaining what he did, or why. Past and future did not exist. There was nothing real but his own movements. The shingles, he sensed idly, were rough against his feet. The ground seemed far away, but he had no fear of falling. From this height the land below him, the distant farmhouse with its little black windows like eyes, its outbuildings and its garden, seemed almost luminescent in the moonlight, with the trees a dark ocean around it.

  Sarr awakened and looked sleepily up at Deborah, her face pale above him, eyes half shut. He reached out and caressed it, then slipped the nightgown up and off her shoulders so that her breasts hung down heavy and full upon him. Briefly he tasted a dark nipple. Slowly, then faster, lifting and lowering her body, she began to pump.

  Freirs tried to touch the full moon's face, and shaped his lips toward it, and heard someone whisper to it, words he'd never heard before and didn't know the meaning of and instantly forgot. Beneath his feet the fireflies were like shooting stars, and a silver mist was rising off the field. He smelled roses; he could taste them on his tongue. Listening to the chanting in his ear, he waved his arms and made the faces and did the gestures with his fingers, looking like a madman's shadow as he signaled to the moon and to the dark woods spread below.