Sleepside: The Collected Fantasies

by Greg Bear

  I finished the piece of bread and wiped my hands on my crossed legs. “So that’s why you tried to scare me,” I said.

  She shook her head. “No. I never have a reason for telling a story, and neither should you.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to tell stories anymore,” I said. “The folks get too upset.”

  “Philistines,” the old man said, looking off across the fields.

  “Listen, young man. There is nothing finer in the world than the telling of tales. Split atoms if you wish, but splitting an infinitive--and getting away with it--is far nobler. Lance boils if you wish, but pricking pretensions is often cleaner and always more fun.”

  “Then why are Mom and Dad so mad?”

  The old man shook his head. “An eternal mystery.”

  “Well, I’m not so sure,” I said. “I scared my little brother pretty bad, and that’s not nice.”

  “Being scared is nothing,” the old woman said. “Being bored, or ignorant—now that’s a crime.”

  “I still don’t know. My folks say you have to be a hundred years old. You did something to my uncle they didn’t like, and that was a long time ago. What kind of people are you, anyway?”

  The old man smiled. “Old, yes. But not a hundred.”

  “I just came out here to warn you. Mom and Dad are bringing out my great aunt, and she’s no fun for anyone. You better go away.” With that said, I ran back to my bike and rode off, pumping for all I was worth. I was between a rock and a hard place. I loved my folks but I itched to hear more stories. Why wasn’t it easier to make decisions?

  That night I slept restlessly. I didn’t have any dreams, but I kept waking up with something pounding at the back of my head, like it wanted to be let in. I scrunched my face up and pressed it back.

  At Sunday breakfast, Mom looked across the table at me and put on a kind face. “We’re going to pick up Auntie Danser this afternoon, at the airport,” she said.

  My face went like warm butter.

  “You’ll come with us, won’t you?” she asked. “You always did like the airport.”

  “All the way from where she lives?” I asked.

  “From Omaha,” Dad said.

  I didn’t want to go, but it was more a command than a request. I nodded, and Dad smiled at me around his pipe.

  “Don’t eat too many biscuits,” Mom warned him. “You’re putting on weight again.”

  “I’ll wear it off come harvest. You cook as if the whole crew was here, anyway.”

  “Auntie Danser will straighten it all out,” Mom said, her mind elsewhere. I caught the suggestion of a grimace on Dad’s face, and the pipe wriggled as he bit down on it harder.

  The airport was something out of a TV space movie. It went on forever, with stairways going up to restaurants and big smoky windows that looked out on the screaming jets, and crowds of people, all leaving, except for one pear-shaped figure in a cotton print dress with fat ankles and glasses thick as headlamps. I knew her from a hundred yards.

  When we met, she shook hands with Mom, hugged Dad as if she didn’t want to, then bent down and gave me a smile. Her teeth were yellow and even, sound as a horse’s. She was the ugliest woman I’d ever seen. She smelled of lilacs. To this day lilacs take my appetite away.

  She carried a bag. Part of it was filled with knitting, part with books and pamphlets. I always wondered why she never carried a Bible just Billy Grahams and Zondervans. One pamphlet fell out, and Dad bent to pick it up.

  “Keep it, read it,” Auntie Danser instructed him. “Do you good.” She turned to Mom and scrutinized her from the bottom of a swimming pool. “You’re looking good. He must be treating you right.”

  Dad ushered us out the automatic doors into the dry heat. Her one suitcase was light as a mummy and probably just as empty. I carried it, and it didn’t even bring sweat to my brow. Her life was not in clothes and toiletry but in the plastic knitting bag.

  We drove back to the farm in the big white station wagon. I leaned my head against the cool glass of the rear seat window and considered puking. Auntie Danser, I told myself, was like a mental dose of castor oil. Or like a visit to the dentist. Even if nothing was going to happen her smell presaged disaster, and like a horse sniffing a storm, my entrails worried.

  Mom looked across the seat at me—Auntie Danser was riding up front with Dad—and asked, “You feeling okay? Did they give you anything to eat? Anything funny?”

  I said they’d given me a piece of nut bread. Mom went, “Oh, Lord.”

  “Margie, they don’t work like that. They got other ways.” Auntie Danser leaned over the backseat and goggled at me. “Boy’s just worried. I know all about it. These people and I have had it out before.”

  Through those murky glasses, her flat eyes knew me to my young pithy core. I didn’t like being known so well. I could see that Auntie Danser’s life was firm and predictable, and I made a sudden commitment I liked the man and woman. They caused trouble, but they were the exact opposite of my great aunt. I felt better, and I gave her a reassuring grin. “Boy will be okay,” she said. “Just a colic of the upset mind.”

  Michael and Barbara sat on the front porch as the car drove up. Somehow a visit by Auntie Danser didn’t bother them as much as it did me. They didn’t fawn over her, but they accepted her without complaining—even out of adult earshot. That made me think more carefully about them. I decided I didn’t love them any the less, but I couldn’t trust them, either. The world was taking sides, and so far on my side I was very lonely. I didn’t count the two old people on my side, because I wasn’t sure they were—but they came a lot closer than anybody in my family.

  Auntie Danser wanted to read Billy Graham books to us after dinner, but Dad snuck us out before Mom could gather us together—all but Barbara, who stayed to listen. We watched the sunset from the loft of the old wood barn, then tried to catch the little birds that lived in the rafters. By dark and bedtime I was hungry, but not for food. I asked Dad if he’d tell me a story before bed.

  “You know your mom doesn’t approve of all that fairy-tale stuff,” he said.

  “Then no fairy tales. Just a story.”

  “I’m out of practice, son,” he confided. He looked very sad. “Your mom says we should concentrate on things that are real and not waste our time with make-believe. Life’s hard. I may have to sell the farm, you know, and work for that feed-mixer in Mitchell.”

  I went to bed and felt like crying. A whole lot of my family had died that night, I didn’t know exactly how, or why. But I was mad.

  I didn’t go to school the next day. During the night I’d had a dream, which came so true and whole to me that I had to rush to the stand of cottonwoods and tell the old people. I took my lunch box and walked rapidly down the road.

  They weren’t there. On a piece of wire bradded to the biggest tree they’d left a note on faded brown paper. It was in a strong feminine hand, sepia-inked, delicately scribed with what could have been a goose-quill pen. It said: “We’re at the old Hauskopf farm. Come if you must.”

  Not “Come if you can.” I felt a twinge. The Hauskopf farm, abandoned fifteen years ago and never sold, was three miles farther down the road and left on a deep-rutted fork. It took me an hour to get there.

  The house still looked deserted. All the white paint was flaking, leaving dead gray wood. The windows stared. I walked up the porch steps and knocked on the heavy oak door. For a moment I thought no one was going to answer. Then I heard what sounded like a gust of wind, but inside the house, and the old woman opened the door. “Hello, boy,” she said. “Come for more stories?”

  She invited me in. Wildflowers were growing along the baseboards, and tiny roses peered from the brambles that covered the walls. A quail led her train of inch-and-a-half fluffball chicks from under the stairs, into the living room. The floor was carpeted, but the flowers in the weave seemed more than patterns. I could stare down and keep picking out detail for minutes. “This way, boy,” the woman said. She
took my hand. Hers was smooth and warm, but I had the impression it was also hard as wood.

  A tree stood in the living room, growing out of the floor and sending its branches up to support the ceiling. Rabbits and quail and a lazy-looking brindle cat stared at me from tangles of roots. A wooden bench surrounded the base of the tree. On the side away from us, I heard someone breathing. The old man poked his head around and smiled at me, lifting his long pipe in greeting. “Hello, boy,” he said.

  “The boy looks like he’s ready to tell us a story, this time,” the woman said.

  “Of course, Meg. Have a seat, boy. Cup of cider for you? Tea? Herb biscuit?”

  “Cider, please,” I said.

  The old man stood and went down the hall to the kitchen. He came back with a wooden tray and three steaming cups of mulled cider. The cinnamon tickled my nose as I sipped.

  “Now. What’s your story?”

  “It’s about two hawks,” I said, and then hesitated.

  “Go on.”

  “Brother hawks. Never did like each other. Fought for a strip of land where they could hunt.”

  “Yes?”

  “Finally, one hawk met an old crippled bobcat that had set up a place for itself in a rockpile. The bobcat was learning itself magic so it wouldn’t have to go out and catch dinner, which was awful hard for it now. The hawk landed near the bobcat and told it about his brother, and how cruel he was. So the bobcat said, ‘Why not give him the land for the day? Here’s what you can do.’ The bobcat told him how he could turn into a rabbit, but a very strong rabbit no hawk could hurt.”

  “Wily bobcat,” the old man said, smiling.

  “‘You mean, my brother wouldn’t be able to catch me?’ the hawk asked. ‘Course not,’ the bobcat said. ‘And you can teach him a lesson. You’ll tussle with him, scare him real bad—show him what tough animals there are on the land he wants. Then he’ll go away and hunt somewheres else.’ The hawk thought that sounded like a fine idea. So he let the bobcat turn him into a rabbit, and he hopped back to the land and waited in a patch of grass. Sure enough, his brother’s shadow passed by soon, and then he heard a swoop and saw the claws held out. So he filled himself with being mad and jumped up and practically bit all the tail feathers off his brother. The hawk just flapped up and rolled over on the ground, blinking and gawking with his beak wide. ‘Rabbit,’ he said, ‘that’s not natural. Rabbits don’t act that way.’

  “‘Round here they do,’ the hawk-rabbit said. ‘This is a tough old land, and all the animals here know the tricks of escaping from bad birds like you.’ This scared the brother hawk, and he flew away as best he could and never came back again. The hawk-rabbit hopped to the rockpile and stood up before the bobcat, saying, ‘It worked real fine. I thank you. Now turn me back, and I’ll go hunt my land.’ But the bobcat only grinned and reached out with a paw and broke the rabbit’s neck. Then he ate him, and said, ‘Now the land’s mine and no hawks can take away the easy game.’ And that’s how the greed of two hawks turned their land over to a bobcat.”

  The old woman looked at me with wide baked-chestnut eyes and smiled. “You’ve got it,” she said. “Just like your uncle. Hasn’t he got it Jack?” The old man nodded and took his pipe from his mouth. “He’s got it fine. He’ll make a good one.”

  “Now, boy, why did you make up that story?”

  I thought for a moment, then shook my head. “i don’t know,” I said. “It just came up.”

  “What are you going to do with the story?”

  I didn’t have an answer for that question, either.

  “Got any other stories in you?”

  I considered, then said, “Think so.”

  A car drove up outside, and Mom called my name. The old woman stood and straightened her dress. “Follow me,” she said. “Go out the back door, walk around the house. Return home with them. Tomorrow, go to school like you’re supposed to do. Next Saturday, come back, and we’ll talk some more.”

  “Son? You in there?”

  I walked out the back and came around to the front of the house. Mom and Auntie Danser waited in the station wagon. “You aren’t allowed out here. Were you in that house?” Mom asked. I shook my head.

  My great aunt looked at me with her glassed-in flat eyes and lifted the corners of her lips a little. “Margie,” she said, “go have a look in the windows.”

  Mom got out of the car and walked up the porch to peer through the dusty panes. “It’s empty, Sybil.”

  “Empty, boy, right?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I wasn’t inside.”

  “I could hear you, boy,” she said. “Last night. Talking in your sleep. Rabbits and hawks don’t behave that way. You know it, and I know it. So it ain’t no good thinking about them that way, is it?”

  “I don’t remember talking in my sleep,” I said.

  “Margie, let’s go home. This boy needs some pamphlets read into him.”

  Mom got into the car and looked back at me before starting the engine. “You ever skip school again, I’ll strap you black and blue. It’s real embarrassing having the school call, and not knowing where you are. Hear me?”

  I nodded.

  Everything was quiet that week. I went to school and tried not to dream at night and did everything boys are supposed to do. But I didn’t feel like a boy. I felt something big inside, and no amount of Billy Grahams and Zondervans read at me could change that feeling.

  I made one mistake, though. I asked Auntie Danser why she never read the Bible. This was in the parlor one evening after dinner and cleaning up the dishes. “Why do you want to know, boy?” she asked.

  “Well, the Bible seems to be full of fine stories, but you don’t carry it around with you. I just wondered why.”

  “Bible is a good book,” she said. “The only good book. But it’s difficult. It has lots of camouflage. Sometimes—” She stopped. “Who put you up to asking that question?”

  “Nobody,” I said.

  “I heard that question before, you know,” she said. “Ain’t the first time I been asked. Somebody else asked me, once.”

  I sat in my chair, stiff as a ham.

  “Your father’s brother asked me that once. But we won’t talk about him, will we?”

  I shook my head.

  Next Saturday I waited until it was dark and everyone was in bed. The night air was warm, but I was sweating more than the warm could cause as I rode my bike down the dirt road, lamp beam swinging back and forth. The sky was crawling with stars, all of them looking at me. The Milky Way seemed to touch down just beyond the road, like I might ride straight up it if I went far enough.

  I knocked on the heavy door. There were no lights in the windows and it was late for old folks to be up, but I knew these two didn’t behave like normal people. And I knew that just because the house looked empty from the outside didn’t mean it was empty within. The wind rose up and beat against the door, making me shiver. Then it opened. It was dark for a moment, and the breath went out of me. Two pairs of eyes stared from the black. They seemed a lot taller this time. “Come in, boy,” Jack whispered.

  Fireflies lit up the tree in the living room. The brambles and wildflowers glowed like weeds on a sea floor. The carpet crawled, but not to my feet. I was shivering in earnest now, and my teeth chattered .

  I only saw their shadows as they sat on the bench in front of me. “Sit,” Meg said. “Listen close. You’ve taken the fire, and it glows bright. You’re only a boy, but you’re just like a pregnant woman now. For the rest of your life you’ll be cursed with the worst affliction known to humans. Your skin will twitch at night. Your eyes will see things in the dark. Beasts will come to you and beg to be ridden. You’ll never know one truth from another. You might starve, because few will want to encourage you. And if you do make good in this world, you might lose the gift and search forever after, in vain. Some will say the gift isn’t special. Beware them. Some will say it is special, and beware them, too. And some—”

&n
bsp; There was a scratching at the door. I thought it was an animal for a moment. Then it cleared its throat. It was my great aunt.

  “Some will say you’re damned. Perhaps they’re right. But you’re also enthused. Carry it lightly and responsibly.”

  “Listen in there. This is Sybil Danser. You know me. Open up.”

  “Now stand by the stairs, in the dark where she can’t see,” Jack said. I did as I was told. One of them—I couldn’t tell which—opened the door, and the lights went out in the tree, the carpet stilled, and the brambles were snuffed. Auntie Danser stood in the doorway, outlined by star glow, carrying her knitting bag. “Boy?” she asked. I held my breath.

  “And you others, too.”

  The wind in the house seemed to answer. “I’m not too late,” she said. “Damn you, in truth, damn you to hell! You come to our towns, and you plague us with thoughts no decent person wants to think. Not just fairy stories, but telling the way people live and why they shouldn’t live that way! Your very breath is tainted! Hear me?” She walked slowly into the empty living room, feet clonking on the wooden floor. “You make them write about us and make others laugh at us. Question the way we think. Condemn our deepest prides. Pull out our mistakes and amplify them beyond all truth. What right do you have to take young children and twist their minds?”

  The wind sang through the cracks in the walls. I tried to see if Jack or Meg was there, but only shadows remained.

  “I know where you come from, don’t forget that! Out of the ground! Out of the bones of old wicked Indians! Shamans and pagan dances and worshiping dirt and filth! I heard about you from the old squaws on the reservation. Frost and Spring, they called you, signs of the turning year. Well, now you got a different name! Death and demons, I call you, hear me?”