I left that house when my radio went. It was too wearing, the slow disappearance of the things I had thought so safely mine, item by item, thing by thing, object by object, word by word.
When I was twelve, I was told a story by an old man that I have never forgotten.
A poor man found himself in a forest as night fell, and he had no prayer book to say his evening prayers. So he said, “God who knows all things, I have no prayer book and I do not know any prayers by heart. But you know all the prayers. You are God. So this is what I am going to do. I am going to say the alphabet, and I will let you put the words together.”
There are things missing from my mind, and it scares me.
Icarus! It’s not as if I have forgotten all names. I remember Icarus. He flew too close to the sun. In the stories, though, it’s worth it. Always worth it to have tried, even if you fail, even if you fall like a meteor forever. Better to have flamed in the darkness, to have inspired others, to have lived, than to have sat in the darkness, cursing the people who borrowed, but did not return, your candle.
I have lost people, though.
It’s strange when it happens. I don’t actually lose them. Not in the way one loses one’s parents, either as a small child, when you think you are holding your mother’s hand in a crowd and then you look up, and it’s not your mother . . . or later. When you have to find the words to describe them at a funeral service or a memorial, or when you are scattering ashes on a garden of flowers or into the sea.
I sometimes imagine I would like my ashes to be scattered in a library. But then the librarians would just have to come in early the next morning to sweep them up again, before the people got there.
I would like my ashes scattered in a library or, possibly, a funfair. A 1930s funfair, where you ride the black . . . the black . . . the . . .
I have lost the word. Carousel? Rollercoaster? The thing you ride, and you become young again. The Ferris wheel. Yes. There is another carnival that comes to town as well, bringing evil. “By the pricking of my thumbs . . .”
Shakespeare.
I remember Shakespeare, and I remember his name, and who he was and what he wrote. He’s safe for now. Perhaps there are people who forget Shakespeare. They would have to talk about “the man who wrote to be or not to be”—not the film, starring Jack Benny, whose real name was Benjamin Kubelsky, who was raised in Waukegan, Illinois, an hour or so outside Chicago. Waukegan, Illinois was later immortalized as Green Town, Illinois, in a series of stories and books by an American author who left Waukegan and went to live in Los Angeles. I mean of course, the man I am thinking of. I can see him in my head when I close my eyes.
I used to look at his photographs on the back of his books. He looked mild and he looked wise, and he looked kind.
He wrote a story about Poe, to stop Poe being forgotten, about a future where they burn books and they forget them, and in the story we are on Mars although we might as well be in Waukegan or Los Angeles, as critics, as those who would repress or forget books, as those who would take the words, all the words, dictionaries and radios full of words, as those people are walked through a house and murdered, one by one: by orang-utan; by pit and pendulum; for the love of God, Montressor . . .
Poe. I know Poe. And Montressor. And Benjamin Kubelsky and his wife, Sadie Marks, who was no relation to the Marx Brothers and who performed as Mary Livingston. All these names in my head.
I was twelve.
I had read the books, I had seen the film, and the burning point of paper was the moment where I knew that I would have to remember this. Because people would have to remember books, if other people burn them or forget them. We will commit them to memory. We will become them. We become authors. We become their books.
I am sorry. I lost something there. Like a path I was walking that dead-ended, and now I am alone and lost in the forest, and I am here and I do not know where here is any more.
You must learn a Shakespeare play: I will think of you as Titus Andronicus. Or you, my friend, you could learn an Agatha Christie novel: you will be Murder on the Orient Express. Someone else can learn the poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and you, whoever you are, reading this, you can learn a Dickens book, and when I want to know what happened to Barnaby Rudge, I will come to you. You can tell me.
And the people who would burn the words, the people who would take the books from the shelves, the firemen and the ignorant, the ones afraid of tales and words and dreams and Hallowe’en and people who have tattooed themselves with stories and Boys! You Can Grow Mushrooms in Your Cellar! and as long as your words which are people which are days which are my life, as long as your words survive, then you lived and you mattered and you changed the world and I cannot remember your name.
I learned your books. Burned them into my mind. In case the fire- men come to town.
But who you are is gone. I wait for it to return to me. Just as I waited for my dictionary or for my radio, or for my boots, and with as meager a result.
All I have left is the space in my mind where you used to be. And I am not so certain about even that.
I was talking to a friend. And I said, “Are these stories familiar to you?” I told him all the words I knew, the ones about the monsters coming home to the house with the human child in it, the ones about the lightning salesman and the wicked carnival that followed him, and the Martians and their fallen glass cities and their perfect canals. I told him all the words, and he said he hadn’t heard of them. That they didn’t exist.
And I worry.
I worry I was keeping them alive. Like the people in the snow at the end of the story, walking backwards and forwards, remembering, repeating the words of the stories, making them real.
I think it’s God’s fault.
I mean, he can’t be expected to remember everything, God can’t. Busy chap. So perhaps he delegates things, sometimes, just goes, “You! I want you to remember the dates of the Hundred Year’s War. And you, you remember Okapi. You, remember Jack Benny who was Benjamin Kubelsky from Waukegan, Illinois.” And then, when you forget the things that God has charged you with remembering, bam. No more okapi. Just an okapi-shaped hole in the world, which is half-way between an antelope and a giraffe. No more Jack Benny. No more Waukegan. Just a hole in your mind where a person or a concept used to be.
I don’t know.
I don’t know where to look. Have I lost an author, just as once I lost a dictionary? Or worse: Did God give me this one small task, and now I have failed Him, and because I have forgotten him he has gone from the shelves, gone from the reference works, and now he only exists in our dreams . . .
My dreams. I do not know your dreams. Perhaps you do not dream of a veldt that is only wallpaper but that eats two children. Perhaps you do not know that Mars is Heaven, where our beloved dead go to wait for us, then consume us in the night. You do not dream of a man arrested for the crime of being a pedestrian.
I dream these things.
If he existed, then I have lost him. Lost his name. Lost his book titles, one by one by one. Lost the stories.
And I fear that I am going mad, for I cannot just be growing old. If I have failed in this one task, oh God, then only let me do this thing, that you may give the stories back to the world.
Because, perhaps, if this works, they will remember him. All of them will remember him. His name will once more become synonymous with small American towns at Hallowe’en, when the leaves skitter across the carpet like frightened birds, or with Mars, or with love. And my name will be forgotten.
I am willing to pay that price, if the empty space in the bookshelf of my mind can be filled again, before I go.
Dear God, hear my prayer.
A . . . B . . . C . . . D . . . E . . . F . . . G . . .
Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling author of novels Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, Anansi Boys, The Graveyard Book, (most recently) The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and (with Terry Pratchett) Good Omens
; the Sandman series of graphic novels; and the story collections Smoke and Mirrors and Fragile Things. He has won numerous literary awards including the Hugo, the Nebula, the World Fantasy, and the Stoker Awards, as well as the Newbery medal.
Witches in books are old and bent over, with ugly warts. The woman on the screen has a smooth, soothing voice, red, red lips, and sparkling eyes . . .
THE EDUCATION OF A WITCH
Ellen Klages
Lizzy is an untidy, intelligent child. Her dark hair resists combs, framing her face like thistles. Her clothes do not stay clean or tucked in or pressed. Some days, they do not stay on. Her arms and face are nut-brown, her bare legs sturdy and grimy.
She intends to be a good girl, but shrubs and sheds and unlocked cupboards beckon. In photographs, her eyes sparkle with unspent mischief; the corner of her mouth quirks in a grin. She is energy that cannot abide fences. When she sleeps, her mother smooths a hand over her cheek, in affection and relief.
Before she met the witch, Lizzy was an only child.
The world outside her bedroom is an ordinary suburb. But the stories in the books her mother reads to her, and the ones she is learning to read herself, are full of fairies and witches and magic.
She knows they are only stories, but after the lights are out, she lies awake, wondering about the parts that are real. She was named after a princess, Elizabeth, who became the queen of England. Her father has been there, on a plane. He says that a man’s house is his castle, and when he brings her mother flowers, she smiles and proclaims, “You’re a prince, Jack Breyer.” Under the sink—where she is not supposed to look—many of the cans say M-A-G-I-C in big letters. She watches very carefully when her mother sprinkles the powders onto the counter, but has not seen sparkles or a wand. Not yet.
2
Lizzy sits on the grass in the backyard, in the shade of the very big tree. Her arms are all over sweaty and have made damp, soft places on the newsprint page of her coloring book. The burnt umber crayon lies on the asphalt driveway, its point melted to a puddle. It was not her favorite. That is purple, worn down to a little stub, almost too small to hold.
On the patio, a few feet away, her parents sit having drinks. The ice cubes clink like marbles against the glass. Her father has loosened his tie, rolled up the sleeves of his white go-to-the-office shirt. He opens the evening paper with a crackle.
Her mother sighs. “Wish this baby would hurry up. I don’t think I can take another month in this heat. It’s only the end of June.”
“Can’t rush Mother Nature.” More crackle, more clinks. “But I can open the windows upstairs. There’s a Rock Hudson movie at the drive-in. Should be cool enough to sleep when we get back.”
“Oh, that would be lovely! But, what about—” She drops her voice to a whisper. “Iz-ee-lay? It’s too late to call the sitter.”
Lizzy pays more attention. She does not know what language that is, but she knows her name in most of the secret ways her parents talk.
“Put her in her jammies, throw the quilt in the back of the station wagon, and we’ll take her along.”
“I don’t know. Dr. Spock says movies can be very frightening at her age. We know it’s make-believe, but—”
“The first show is just a cartoon, one of those Disney things.” He looks back at the paper. “Sleeping Beauty.”
“Really? Well, in that case . . . She loves fairy tales.”
Jammies are for after dark, and always in the house. It is confusing, but exciting. Lizzy sits on the front seat, between her parents, her legs straight out in front of her. She can feel the warm vinyl through thin cotton. They drive down Main Street, past the Shell station—S-H-E-L-L—past the dry cleaners that gives free cardboard with her father’s shirts, past the Methodist church where she goes to nursery school.
After that, she does not know where they are. Farther than she has ever been on this street. Behind the car, the sun is setting, and even the light looks strange, glowing on the glass and bricks of buildings that have not been in her world before. They drive so far that it is country, flat fields and woods so thick they are all shadow. On either side of her, the windows are rolled down, and the air that moves across her face is soft and smells like grass and barbecue. When they stop at a light, she hears crickets and sees a rising glimmer in the weeds beside the pavement. Lightning bugs.
At the Sky View Drive-In they turn and join a line of cars that creep toward a lighted hut. The wheels bump and clatter over the gravel with each slow rotation. The sky is a pale blue wash now, streaks of red above the dark broccoli of the trees. Beyond the hut where her father pays is a parking lot full of cars and honking and people talking louder than they do indoors.
Her father pulls into a space and turns the engine off. Lizzy wiggles over, ready to get out. Her mother puts a hand on her arm. “We’re going to sit right here in the car and watch the movie.” She points out the windshield to an enormous white wall. “It’ll be dark in just a few minutes, and that’s where they’ll show the pictures.”
“The sound comes out of this.” Her father rolls the window halfway up and hangs a big silver box on the edge of the glass. The box squawks with a sharp, loud sound that makes Lizzy put her hands over her ears. Her father turns a knob, and the squawk turns into a man’s voice that says “ . . . concession stand right now.” Then there is cartoon music.
“Look, Lizzy.” Her mother points again, and where there had been a white wall a minute before is now the biggest Mickey Mouse she has ever seen. A mouse as big as a house. She giggles.
“Can you see okay?” her father asks.
Lizzy nods, then looks again and shakes her head. “Just his head, not his legs.” She smiles. “I could sit on Mommy’s lap.”
“ ’Fraid not, honey. No room for you until the baby comes.” It’s true. Under her sleeveless plaid smock, her mother’s stomach is very big and round and the innie part of her lap is outie. Lizzy doesn’t know how the baby got in there, or how it’s going to come out, but she hopes that it will be soon.
“I thought that might be a problem.” He gets out and opens the back door. “Scoot behind the wheel for a second.”
Lizzy scoots, and her father puts the little chair from her bedroom right on the seat of the car. Its white painted legs and wicker seat look very wrong there. But he holds it steady, and when she climbs up and sits down, it feels right. Her feet touch flat on the vinyl, and she can see all of Mickey Mouse.
“Better?” He gets back in and shuts his door.
“Uh-huh.” She settles in, then remembers. “Thank you, Daddy.”
“What a good girl.” Her mother kisses her cheek. That’s almost as good as a lap.
Sleeping Beauty is Lizzy’s first movie. She is not sure what to expect, but it is a lot like TV, only much bigger, and in color. There is a king and queen and a princess who is going to marry the prince, even though she is just a baby. That happens in fairy tales.
Three fairies come to bring presents for the baby. Not very good ones—just beauty and songs. Lizzy is sure the baby would rather have toys. The fairies are short and fat and wear Easter colors. They have round, smiling faces and look like Mrs. Carmichael, her Sunday School teacher, except with pointy hats.
Suddenly the speaker on the window booms with thunder and roaring winds. Bright lightning makes the color pictures go black-and-white for a minute, and a magnificent figure appears in a whoosh of green flames. She is taller than everyone else, and wears shiny black robes lined with purple.
Lizzy leans forward. “Oooh!
“Don’t be scared.” Her mother puts a hand on Lizzy’s arm. “It’s only a cartoon.”
“I’m not.” She stares at the screen, her mouth open. “She’s beautiful.”
“No, honey. She’s the witch,” her father says.
Lizzy pays no attention. She is enchanted. Witches in books are old and bent over, with ugly warts. The woman on the screen has a smooth, soothing voice, red, red lips, and sparkling eyes, just li
ke Mommy’s, with a curving slender figure, no baby inside.
She watches the story unfold, and clenches her hands in outrage for the Witch, Maleficent. If the whole kingdom was invited to the party, how could they leave her out? That is not fair!
Some of this she says a little too out loud, and gets Shhh! from both her parents. Lizzy does not like being shh’d, and her lower lip juts forward in defense. When Maleficent disappears, with more wind and green flames, she sits back in her chair and watches to see what will happen next.
Not much. It is just the fairies, and if they want the baby princess, they have to give up magic. Lizzy does not think this is a good trade. All they do is have tea, and call each other “dear,” and talk about flowers and cooking and cleaning. Lizzy’s chin drops, her hands lie limp in her lap, her breathing slows.
“She’s out,” her father whispers. “I’ll tuck her into the back.”
“No,” Lizzy says. It is a soft, sleepy no, but Very clear. A few minutes later, she hears the music change from sugar-sweet to pay-attention-now, and she opens her eyes all the way. Maleficent is back. Her long slender fingers are a pale green, like cream of grass, tipped with bright red nails.
“Her hands are pretty, like yours, Mommy,” Lizzy says. It is a nice thing to say, a compliment. She waits for her mother to pat her arm, or kiss her cheek, but hears only a soft pfft of surprise.
For the rest of the movie, Lizzy is wide, wide awake, bouncing in her chair. Maleficent has her own castle, her own mountain! She can turn into a dragon, purple and black, breathing green fire! She fights off the prince, who wants to hurt her. She forces him to the edge of a cliff and then she—
A tear rolls down Lizzy’s cheek, then another, and a loud sniffle that lets all the tears loose.
“Oh, Lizzy-Lou. That was a little too scary, huh?” Her mother wipes her face with a tissue. “But there’s a happy ending.”
The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2013 Edition Page 22