by Peter Straub
He was playing it as cool as he could, and the way he met her eyes when she gave up on Mallon and turned away toward the devastated street—Keith Hayward, actually meeting her eyes!—suggested that the sex pad was in his mind again. So why not? Maybe she’d have a look. Meredith had no doubt that she could control Hayward, no matter what he had in mind, and if she allowed him to think he was taking her out, that they had a “date,” Spencer Mallon would take notice, all right.
She sent Keith Hayward a little smile to cherish and fold up into his pocket, and saw it zing straight to the center of the target.
Mallon made a short speech to them all, asking them to calm down and gather their thoughts and put away all the bad energy (“Even you, Keith,” he said, which make Hayward sulk and Milstrap chortle, causing her to realize that Milstrap liked Hayward’s bad energy, what a creep), and think about the task ahead of them. Out there in the meadow, they had to be straight. Could they do that? Could they put this unfortunate delay behind them? (Total bullshit, of course. He’d already made up his mind.) He looked at Donald and asked, What about it, Dilly-O? Can we get ourselves together? A shock, in a way, because he was showing that he thought Donald, not that “Boats” boy, was the leader of the little group. And Donald said, do you remember, Donald?
“I said, We’re already together,” Don said, looking grim.
That’s right. Donald spoke up, Donald gave him what he wanted. Spencer loved that. It got his juices flowing. He said, Okay, let’s get our wagon train on the trail, all right? He wasn’t looking at Hootie and the Eel, but Meredith was, and she had to say, they seemed to be what people used to call a little peaked. A little drawn. Especially Hootie. All through her life, Meredith seldom had anything like a maternal impulse, she wasn’t built that way, sorry, but something about Hootie made her almost want to pick him up and carry him out to the agronomy meadow. And funny thing, although Meredith knew Hootie was as love-struck with her as those other boys were, from then on right through to the day’s horrible finish, Hootie kept his eyes glued on the Eel. She meant something to him, you could see that.
Along they went through town, and the farther they got from University Avenue the more remote all the excitement back there became. Everything looked so normal, you almost couldn’t believe how savage the world had become. Some residential parts of Madison, you could be in New England or the Bay Area. Great-looking houses on tree-lined streets, places where you think you have a handle on life. Through these kindly, professorial streets they walked, moving deliberately—thanks to their knot-headed leader—toward death and ruin. Then the professor-style streets dropped away, and the houses got smaller and farther apart, and after that they were walking past foundries and machine shops and auto-parts stores and chain-link fences that blocked off filthy windows no one would ever want to look through anyhow, and after that they strode, wandered, or strutted, according to their individual styles, into Glasshouse Road.
Instinctively, they drew closer together. Spencer dropped back to protect them from the rear while issuing remarks such as—Just keep moving forward, me buckos, me hearties, there’s nothing to be afraid of here, unless Eel’s Dad wants to come out for another round of fisticuffs—
Which proved he wasn’t as confident and upbeat as he was pretending to be, didn’t it, because since when did Spencer Mallon ever say cornball junk like me buckos me hearties, right? Hootie whispered something to the Eel, too. No wonder, after that stupid crack. Not that Meredith was feeling especially sympathetic toward the Eel in those days, since she’d gone out with Spencer just a few nights before—did Lee Harwell, supposedly the girl’s twin, know that?
Does that come as a shock? It was a shock to Meredith, you can bet on that—her lover, her Master, her guide betrayed her, in a sense, by taking out this high school girl after they’d had a nasty argument, about guess what, that same high school girl. The rat, her lover, whom Meredith had hoped was going to stay with her or at least take her with him if he actually did take off after the ceremony, as he said he would, had gone out on a date with this girl, this child, who, let’s face it, was pretty cute, kind of an Audrey-Hepburn-in-the-larval-stage thing. Not only that, he took her to the best restaurant in town, the Falls.
Didn’t know that, did you, Harwell? The Falls.
I turned to Donald Olson and saw on his face the answer to the question I had yet to ask. “I didn’t, no. You did, though.”
Olson hesitated, then said, “Yes. Spencer felt close to her.”
“‘Spencer felt close to her,’” Meredith said, mocking the words. “Is that right? He felt closer to me.”
“Hmm,” I said. “He took her to the Falls? She never mentioned that to me.”
Olson’s lips tightened, making him look as though he had just bitten down on a tough little seed and heard a crunch that might have been a tooth.
“All this happened a long, long time ago,” I said, rejecting the sleepless hours of the previous night. “I mean, I guess I’m surprised, but it’s totally meaningless, after all.”
“I’m curious about something,” Meredith said. “Did your girlfriend say anything to you that night after she got home, or maybe the next day? You must have asked her about it.”
“I didn’t even see her that night. In fact, I barely talked to her all day. That night, nobody answered her phone at home. It turned out, she ran out of the meadow with Boats, Jason Boatman, and spent the night on his couch. When I went over there, Boats wouldn’t let me in. He said everything got screwed up, he couldn’t talk about it, and Eel was just conked out and didn’t want to see anybody, not even me.”
“But when you and she were finally together, and you were able to talk to each other in private, what did she tell you?”
“Nothing. She said she couldn’t tell me anything. It was no use, because if she didn’t understand it, I sure wouldn’t be able to, either. Lee was really angry at Mallon, that much was clear. I thought it was because he had taken off and left them all to deal with the mess—and because he more or less stole Don, her best friend, apart from me. Our best friend, come to think of it.”
“That’s nice,” Olson said. “But Meredith, keep going.”
“Yes, please don’t stop,” I said. “I want to hear what happened during the ceremony.”
“Good luck,” Meredith said. “It got completely crazy out in that meadow. People say nutso stuff about piled-up corpses and millions of dogs, and monsters flying out of orange clouds … I didn’t see anything like that. The truth is, I kind of liked what I saw. It didn’t scare me at all. That was where and when I started to figure things out, right there. A queen gave me a gift, and that changed everything.”
Now that they were getting close to the meadow, they were really getting together, too, like Donald said. You could feel something happen, on the way down Glasshouse Road. Hard to say what it was, exactly, but for the first and last time in her life Meredith felt like part of a unit—like a participating member of a group that informed her identity. Like a bee in a beehive, or the shortstop on a good baseball team. Teams had captains, bees had queens, and they had Spencer Mallon. Total trust, total faith. How often do you feel that way? Spencer Mallon collected innocence, all right, but Meredith would never have guessed that hers was part of the package.
What a sap.
Anyhow, there she was, a dewy young thing madly in love with her handsome adventurer/philosopher/magician, moving down Glasshouse Road with these people she suddenly felt tremendously connected to, and there’s this feeling of threat, small at first, barely noticeable, but it got stronger with every foot of ground they cover. Something, maybe a lot of somethings, was watching them. Then subtle noises began to reach them from behind, and these noises got closer and closer while the group, breathing as one, moved forward, Mallon in the lead. Those things that were following them didn’t sound like bikers. Didn’t even sound like anything human. Nobody looked back, not even Hayward, not even Milstrap, who for once seemed to have forgot
ten how to sneer. He glanced over at Meredith to see how she was doing, or maybe just to see if her shorts were riding up, and his face looked as white as cottage cheese.
Eventually someone looked around, she couldn’t remember who, and after that they all did. Except her. Meredith wanted to keep moving, which she gathered was what those things wanted her to do, so everything was cool on that front, no need for anyone to get upset. She was walking along behind Mallon and Don and Eel, and it looked to her like they looked back at pretty much the same moment—the Eel snapped her head forward in less than a second, but Spencer and Don kept looking a while longer, and their faces went as pale as Milstrap’s. Both of them looked her in the eye to check her out …
“I wasn’t checking you out,” Don said. “I needed to see you.”
… or because they needed to see her, whatever that meant. Mallon said, Keep moving, troops, they aren’t really there, and that’s not what they really look like, anyhow.
She again broke away from her narrative. “But what did they look like, Don? I never knew.”
“Biker dogs, like dogs in biker jackets,” he said, almost chuckling at the combination of threat and absurdity in this image. “Big, savage-looking, snarling dogs, standing up. Walking on their hind legs. I was too scared to look at them for very long, but I thought they had feet instead of paws. They were wearing motorcycle boots.”
“Mallon kept going,” she said. “I can’t believe it. Wouldn’t you think that would be enough to tell him to stop? But no, he thought he was going to change the world, he thought he was going to see what was on the other side.”
“They wanted him to keep going, and you know why? I finally figured this out. They had no more idea what was going to happen than he did.”
Mallon held them together, he got them to do what he wanted, which was to reach the end of that street, slide over the concrete barrier, and walk into the meadow. Never thinking that he was being pushed by forces he did not understand and could not control—not Spencer! He thought he was one of the lords of creation, and everything he did was going to turn out well, especially that night. Because it was almost night now; it was dark and getting darker. Meredith wouldn’t have been able to find the spot they had picked out, but Donald seemed to have a good memory of where it was, and Mallon went right alongside him. He looked back just once, and his face relaxed, so Meredith could look back, too. One lonely drunk wandered out of the House of Ko-Reck-Shun and went staggering down the middle of now-empty Glasshouse Road. That’s the old world, Meredith said to herself, the one we’re leaving behind—so sad and lost. What will the new world be like?
Mallon said, This is it, guys, you have to concentrate and do your part. In the meantime, let’s find our spot.
And Donald led us right to it. You knew where it was, didn’t you? Right there, and your voice was full of triumph when you said, It’s here, right here, down this swale or dell kind of thing. You were so proud of yourself! I’m not picking on you, it’s just worth saying, that’s all. They had this little moment of vanity, of egotism, and it was all his—Mallon’s. Anyhow, Donald was right, of course, they were standing at the edge of this fold that went down into the meadow, and even in the bad light and everything, they could see that white circle Donald and his friend had painted, well, poured onto the ground on the right side, where it went up.
And you know what? It looked pretty good, that circle! Shining, actually shining! What was that, do you think, the reflection of the moon? Reflections of the stars? Whatever the hell that was, it worked, it made them feel like they were in the presence of something, like they were ordained, and right where they were supposed to be. Come down, come on in, that gleaming white circle was saying, let’s get started. Up until then, Meredith had not even noticed that Mallon was carrying this big briefcase with him. Up until then, she hadn’t even known he owned a briefcase.
“He didn’t,” Don said. “Later on, he told me he ‘borrowed’ it from that kid with the red beard. ‘Everything is everything,’ remember?”
“As if I could forget,” she said.
That group feeling, the interconnected thing, got stronger, and it was really magical, the way things felt there for about fifteen minutes or so before everybody started freaking out.
We’re on the verge of something here, Mallon said. I can sense it. Nobody say any more about that because we might jinx it.
Just before they went down into the fold in the earth, everything, everything around them, especially the moon and the millions of stars, looked absolutely gorgeous. Even the headlights of the cars moving down the highway off in the distance, like jewels but alive! Meredith hardly wanted to move along with the others, but Brett and Keith were giving her that hungry, besotted look again, the one that suggested they were hoping a runaway horse would come galloping along so they could wrestle it to the ground before it disturbed a honey-colored strand of her hair. Eel and the high-school boys, they had eyes for no one but Mallon, and Hootie, he caught Meredith’s eye once and went back to studying the Eel like before long he was going to be tested about her.
They went down in there and stood around Mallon while he got down on his knees, opened the briefcase, and passed out the candles and the matches. Then they did the thing with the ropes, looping them in front of the circle in case something happened along and they weren’t able to just jump onto its neck.
You know how you can suddenly feel that things just got kicked up a notch? That’s how it was after the ropes went down. Like the air got tighter, and the moon and stars got brighter. Like the spaces between all of them standing there shrank. Meredith’s breathing got tighter, too, as if her lungs were being squeezed.
One after another, they lit the candles and held them up. You know how they were standing, don’t you? Mallon at the center, facing the white circle. Boats and Donald stood on each side, maybe six feet from him—closer than before. To the left of Boats, Hootie, Eel, and Meredith stood together, with Hootie in the middle. Eel and Meredith didn’t want to stand side by side—when you get right down to it, they didn’t like or trust each other at all. They wound up in the same group because they didn’t want to get close to Hayward. He and his roommate were off to Donald’s right. The two of them looked more relaxed than the others.
Boats, he broke Meredith’s heart, the way he wanted so much to be Mallon’s favorite, the one to be with him when the tide rose. He would have stolen the dome from the state capitol if he thought Mallon would have applauded. Hayward, though, that boy was thinking about something else. He kept sneaking glances at Meredith.
When Mallon called for silence, even Hayward settled down. Raise your candles in your right hands, Mallon said. Concentrate on your breathing. Keep your mind empty. We will spend a lot of time emptying our minds and watching our white circle. Then I will begin to speak the words that will come into my mind. They will be in Latin, and I think, I pray they will be the right words. Those words, and what we bring, all of what all of us, bring to the meadow, this moment, will determine what happens here.
Off to his side, Hootie mumbled, They’re here again. I don’t like ’em, I don’t want ’em here.
Mallon said, Nothing is with us yet, Hootie, please hold your silence.
That crazy little Hootie, he said, Must I sink down there, and die at once? If memory serves.
Silence, Mallon said.
Little Hawthorne, said Hayward.
Shut up, Mallon said. Please.
You may close your eyes, Mallon said.
Meredith did as he said. The silence went on a long, long time. Funny thing, after a minute or two, inside her head Meredith could see them all with total clarity. But the way she saw them, they were all, all, close together, and she could hear their breathing, and there was this rank, terrible smell that was Keith Hayward’s skunky breath. In her head, she could see Hootie clamping shut his beautiful little rosebud mouth and forcing himself to stare at the gleaming circle; and she saw the Eel open wide her eyes and ope
n wide her mouth and tilt her head back and bend her spine so that she was gazing not at the white circle but the blazing stars above, the Eel watching, and Meredith thought, What’s that brat watching, and why can’t I watch it, too?; and inside her head, where her vision was true, she saw the Eel gradually straighten up and stare forward, not at the white circle but about nine, ten feet to the right of it, at some nondescript part of the rise that was half dirt, half grass all baked and brown, and even that getting harder to see as the light faded and dimmed; and Hayward, breathing fumes as he stood with his candle jumping and his eyes gently shut upon some spectacle that made his mouth flicker into a smile; beside him Milstrap, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes as if contemplating some curious phenomenon that had just appeared before him; and Mallon, precious, treacherous, Mallon with his candle aloft and tears rising in his amazing eyes, his total handsomeness like a charged field around him, lifting his beautiful magician’s head and preparing to speak or sing.
The world changed in that endless moment before Spencer Mallon began to chant in Latin, that time during which the glowing words embedded in the unreeling chant hovered near as pure possibility, spoken though as yet unspoken, present nonetheless. In the suspended silence, Meredith could feel the change in every element of the world present to her: the simultaneous tightening and relaxation of the air, now revealed for the first time as an actual membrane wrapped about them all, here loose and yielding, there firm and ungiving. In the long, long moment when Mallon hung fire and waited for his deepest self to give him words, Meredith felt the ground quiver under her feet, then immediately began to smell the fragrance trails of something raw, hot, sweet, and sexual. Crushed mandarin oranges, cane sugar, sliced habañero peppers sizzling in a pan, the flesh inside the juicy lower lip of Bobby Flynn, her first serious boyfriend, new blood spurting from a wound, sweat, thick white lilies, semen, a freshly sliced fig, all these odors and fragrances and stinks coiled around each other, rubbed flanks and floated toward them from the expansive, greedy world Meredith sensed behind the membrane of the air itself, a world she wished both to flee and to embrace.