Shadowland

by Peter Straub

  'Well, I didn't get it all at once,' Del said. 'Some of this stuff has been around for years — since I was about ten. That's when I got involved. Now I'm really involved. I think it's what I want to be.'

  'A magician?' Tom asked, surprised.

  'Yeah. Do you too?'

  'I never thought about that. But I'll tell you one thing I just thought right now.'

  Del lifted his head like a frightened doe.

  'I think school is going to be a lot more interesting this year.'

  Del beamed at him.

  Bud Copeland brought them Cokes in tall frosted glasses with a lemon slice bumping the ice cubes, and for an hour the two boys prowled through Del's collection. In his eager, piping voice, the smaller boy explained to Tom the inner workings of tricks which had puzzled him for as long as he had been interested in magic. 'All these illusions are the flashy stuff, and no one will ever see how they work, but I really prefer close-up magic,' Del said. 'If you can do close-up card work, you can do anything. That's what my Uncle Cole says.' Del held up a finger, still in the dramatic persona he had put on with his top hat at the beginning of the tour. 'No. Not quite. He said you could do almost everything. He can do things you wouldn't believe, and he won't explain them to me. He says certain things are art, not just illusion, and because they're art they're real magic. And you can't explain them.' Del brought his finger down, having caught himself in a public mood at a private moment. 'Well, that's what he says, anyway. It's like he's full of secrets and information no one else knows about. He's kind of funny, and sometimes he can scare the crap out of you, but he's the best there is. Or I think so, anyway.' His face was that of a dark little dervish.

  'Is he a magician?'

  'The best. But he doesn't work like the others — in clubs and theaters and that.'

  'Then where does he work?'

  'At home. He does private shows. Well, they're not really shows. They're mainly for himself. It's hard to explain. Maybe someday you could meet him. Then you'd see.' Del sat on his bed, looking to Tom as if he were almost sorry he had said so much. Pride in his uncle seemed to be battling with other forces.

  Then Tom had it. The insight which had given him knowledge of the other boy's loneliness now sent him a fact so positive that it demanded to be spoken. 'He doesn't want you to talk about him. About what he does.'

  Del nodded slowly. 'Yeah. Because of Tim and Valerie.'

  'Your godparents?'

  'Yeah. They don't understand him. They couldn't. And to tell you the truth, he really is sort of half-crazy.' Del leaned back on stiffened arms and said, 'Let's see what you can do. Do you have any cards, or should we use mine?'

  Years later, Tom Flanagan described to me how Del had then quietly, modestly, almost graciously humiliated him. 'I thought I was pretty good with cards when I was fourteen. After my father got sick, I sort of more or less threw myself into the work. I wanted to get my mind off what was happening. I had my card books damn near memorized after a month.' We were in the Red Hat Lounge, where Sherman had told me Tom was working — it was not the 'toilet' Sherman had called it, but it was only a step above that. 'I knew that Del was very accomplished after he had shown me all of the stuff in his room. He had the basis of a professional kit, and he knew it. But I thought I could hold my own in card tricks — the close-up work he especially liked. I found out I couldn't get a thing by him. He knew what I was going to do before I did it, and he could do it better. He didn't like any of the obvious stuff, either — misdirection and forcing. Del had a fantastic memory and great observation, and those fac­ulties have more to do with great card work than you'd believe. He wiped me off the board . . . he blew me away. He must have been the slickest thing.I'd ever seen.' Tom laughed. 'Of course he was the slickest thing I'd ever seen. I hadn't seen much before I met Del.'

  Del revolved the head of the dim light so that it faced the wall, and darkened the room. Now, with the big tank blocking most of the light from outside, his bedroom was the same tenebrous cloudy gray that the library had been that noon.

  'I ought to call my mother,' Tom said. 'She'll be wondering what happened to me.'

  'Do you have to leave right away?' Del asked.

  'I could tell her to come over in an hour or so.'

  'If you'd like. I mean, I'd like that.'

  'Me too,'

  'Great. There's a phone in the next bedroom. You could use that.'

  Tom let himself out into the hall and went into the next bedroom. It was obviously the bedroom used by Del's godparents; expensive leather suitcases, laden with loose and tumbled clothes lay open on the unmade bed, labeled boxes were stacked on a chair. The phone was on one of the bedside tables. Ths telephone book sat beside it, its green cover bearing the graffiti of real-estate agents' names and telephone numbers.

  Tom dialed his own number, spoke to his mother, and hung up just as he heard a car coming into the driveway. He walked over to the window and saw a boatlike gray Jaguar stopping before the garage doors.

  Two people in bad humor got out of the car. Either they had just been quarreling or their bad temper was a moment's paring from a lifelong and steady quarrel. The man was large, blond, and florid; he wore a vibrant madras jacket the gaiety of which was out of key with the petulance and irritation suffused through his neat, puggish features. The woman, also blond, wore a filmy blue dress; as her husband's features had blurred, hers had hardened. Her face, as irritated as his, could never be petulant.

  In the hall, their voices rose. Bud Copeland's last name was uttered in a flat Boston accent. In anyone else's house, Morris Fielding's or Howie Stern's, this would be the time for Tom to go to the staircase, announce himself, and speak a couple of sentences about who he was and what he was doing. But Del would never take him down to meet those two irritated people; and the two irritated people would be surprised if he did. Instead Tom went to the door of Del's room — Del's 'universe' — and slipped around it, and doing so, helped to shape the character of his own universe.

  When his mother arrived, Tom followed Bud Copeland down the stairs to the front door. Tim and Valerie Hillman were standing with drinks in their hands in the box-filled living room, but they did not even turn their heads to watch him leave. Bud Copeland opened the door and leaned out after him. 'Be a good friend to our Del, now,' he said softly. Tom nodded, then by reflex held out his hand. Bud Copeland shook it warmly, smiling down. An odd look of recognition, disturbing to Tom, momen­tarily passed over the butler's face. 'I see the Arizona Flanagans are gentlemen,' he said, gripping the boy's hand. 'Take care, Red.'

  In the car, his mother said, 'I didn't know that the house had been sold to a Negro family.'

  Take care, Red.

  9

  Tom by Night

  In his dream, which was somehow connected to Bud Copeland, he was being looked at by a vulture, not looking himself, but averting his eyes to the scrubby sandy ground — he had seen vultures from time to time, gro­tesque birds, on the roofs of desert towns on trips with his parents. The vulture was gazing at him with a horrid patient acceptance, knowing all about him. Nothing surprised the vulture, neither heat nor cold, not life or death. The vulture accepted all as it accepted him. It waited for the world to roll its way, and the world always did.

  This was a vulture in vulture middle age. Its feathers were greasy, its bill darkened.

  First it had eaten his father, and now it would devour him. Nothing could stop it. The world rolled its way, and then it ate what it was given. The vulture was a lesson in economics.

  So was his father, for his father was dead — that was real economics. His father was a skeleton hanging from a tree, having been converted into vulture fuel. The loathsome bird hopped forward on its claws and scrutinized him. Yes, it accepted what it saw.

  And accepting, spoke to him: as would a snake or a weasel or a bat, in tones too fast and subtle for his understanding. It was crucial that he know what the vulture was saying, but he would have to hear the fast voicel
ess voice many times before he could begin to decipher its message. He hoped he would never hear it again.

  Uncaring, as if Tom were now no more significant than sagebrush or a yucca tree, the vulture craned its neck and turned around and began to walk away into the desert.

  Heat shimmered around him.

  Then, with the suddenness of dreams, he was no longer in the desert but in a lush green valley. The air was gray and full of moisture, the valley crowded with ferns and rocks and fallen trees. Far below him a man in a long coat continued the vulture's measured indifferent walk. He went away from the boy, indifferent to him. He became vague in the gray air. The man disappeared behind a boulder, emerged again, and vanished.

  Where he had been, a large colorless bird flapped noiselessly away into the dark air.

  Tom woke up, sure that his father was dead. His father was lying beside his mother in their bedroom, dead.

  Tom's heart urged him forward, beat in pain and desola­tion against his ribs, his throat, made him throw off the sheet and walk across his dark room to the door. He groaned, felt that he was doomed to cry or scream. The darkness was hostile, enveloping. He slipped out of his room and went down the hall to his parents' room.

  Trembling, he touched the knob. The scream lodged behind his tongue and tried to escape. Tom closed his eyes and gently pushed the door open. Then he opened his eyes and stepped into his parents' room.

  He gasped, loudly enough to wake his mother. She was alone in the big double bed. On his father's side, the sheet lay as smoothly on the bed as upon an amputation.

  'Tom?' she said.

  'Dad.'

  'Oh, Tommy, he's in the hospital. For tests. Don't you remember? He'll be back tomorrow. Don't worry, Tommy. It'll be all right.'

  'Had a nightmare,' he said thickly, excused himself, and stumbled back to his own bed.

  10

  Poetry

  Before lunch the next day, while Rachel Flanagan drove to St? Mary's to pick up Hartley, Tom sat at his desk and wrote the first and last poem of his life. He did not know why he suddenly wanted to write poetry — he never read it, barely knew what it looked like, thought of it as the sententious verse he had been made to learn in the Junior School. 'Breathes there the man, with soul so dead/Who never to himself hath said,/This is mine own, my native land!' His own little terrace of lines seemed so unlike real poetry to him that he did not bother to title it. This is what he wrote:

  Man in the air, do you fly by your own wings?

  Animals and birds speak to you

  and you in the air understand them,

  Football, magic, dreams trouble

  my mind, cards tackle other cards

  and scatter in a valley.

  Man in the air, were you that bird?

  Who magicked himself away in dark?

  Man in the air, father me back. Now,

  while you and I and he have time.

  Two years later, when he struggled to produce an as­signed poem for Mr. Fitz-Hallan's junior English class, he found that he was unable, even if he tried to follow Fitz-Hallan's advice. ('You could begin every line with the same word. Or name a color in every line. Or end every line with the name of a different country.') He pulled the old poem from his desk and in despair handed it in. The poem came back with an A and the comment in Fitz-Hallan's cursive hand that This poem is sensitive and mature, and must have been difficult for you to write. Don't you have a title? I'd like to put it in the school magazine, with your permission.

  Under the title 'When We All Lived in the Forest,' it appeared in the winter issue of the school magazine for that year.

  11

  Frosty the Snowman

  In the big auditorium down the hall from our homeroom, we filed into the first two rows of seats for our first chapel. Mr. Broome, Mrs. Olinger, and a tall gray-haired man with a long severe face who looked like a bank president were seated on fan-back wooden chairs before us. To the right of them stood a lectern made of champagne-colored wood.

  When I looked around I saw Mr. Weatherbee join the rank of teachers leaning against the rear wall. Between the lounging teachers and ourselves the rest of the school was taking its seats: sophomores directly behind us, then the juniors, and the seniors in the last rows. Nearly every boy, I noticed, wore a blue button-down shirt and neatly striped tie under his jacket; many of the boys were wearing suits. Collectively, the juniors and seniors had a raffish look. Privilege encased them, surrounded them like armor. In the cast of their faces was the assumption that they would never have to take anything very se­riously. For the first time in my life I saw the truth in the old proposition that the rich were better-looking.

  Mr. Broome stood up and went to the lectern. He raked us in the first rows with his eyes, and then his face adjusted to a brisk, dry administrative mask. 'Boys. Let us begin with a prayer.'

  A noise of shuffling, of activity, as a hundred boys bent over their knees.

  'Give us the wisdom to know what is right, and the understanding to know what is good. Let us partake of knowledge, and use it to become better men. Let us all spend this new school year with hope, with diligence and discipline, and with ever-renewed application. Amen.'

  He looked up. 'Now. We begin a new year. What does this mean? It means that you boys will be asked to do some demanding things. You will be asked to work as hard as you ever have, and to stretch your minds. College is a bit closer for all of you, and college is not for loafers. Therefore, we do not permit slackers and loafers here. Pay attention to this especially, seniors — you have many hurdles to get over this year. But our school does not attempt to educate the intellect at the expense of the spirit. And I am certain that spirit is shown first and foremost in school spirit. Some of you will not last out the year, and that will not always be due to stupidity. You can, indeed you must, demonstrate your school spirit in your bearing, in your classroom and athletic work, in your relations with one another. In honesty. In dedication. We will test all of these. I assure you, freshmen and seniors and all in between, that we do not hesitate to weed out our failures. Other schools have plenty of room for them. But we will not tolerate them. For it is the boy who fails, not the school. We give you the world, gentlemen, but you must show yourselves worthy of it. That is all. Seniors first, please, on the way out.'

  'Frosty the Snowman,' Sherman muttered to me as we stood. 'Wait till you hear the one about the dogs.'

  12

  The tall gray-haired bankerlike man beside Mr. Broome was Mr. Thorpe, and he was already at his desk when we entered his room. This was one of the tiny paneled rooms in the old part of the school, so laden with atmospherics that it seemed to crowd in all around us. A boy with very thick blond hair and black glasses stood beside the teacher. They had obviously been talking, and fell silent as we took our seats.

  Mr. Thorpe said, 'This is Miles Teagarden, a senior. He will take a few minutes of our time to explain freshman initiation. Listen to him. He is a prefect, one of the leaders of this school. Begin, Mr. Teagarden.' Thorpe leaned back in his chair and gazed benignly out at us.

  'Thank you, Mr. Thorpe,' the senior said. 'Freshman initiation is nothing to be afraid of. If you know your stuff and learn the ropes, you'll do fine. You have your beanies and your lists. Wear your beanies at all times when not in class and between school and home. Wear the beanie at all athletic functions and all social functions. Address all seniors as Mister. Learn our names. That is essential. And so is learning the songs and the other information on the sheets. If a senior drops his books on the floor, pick them up for him. Carry them where he tells you to carry them. If a senior is standing in front of a door, address him by his name and open the door. If a senior tells you to tie his shoelaces, tie his shoelaces and thank him. Do anything a senior tells you to do. On the spot. Even if you think it's ridiculous. Got that? And if a senior asks you a question, address him by name and answer him. Follow the rules and you'll get off to a good start.'

  'Is that all?' asked Mr. Thor
pe. 'If so, you may go.'

  Teagarden picked up a pile of books from Thorpe's desk and hurriedly left the little classroom. Thorpe continued to gaze at us, but the benignity had left him.

  'Why is all of this important?' He paused, but no one tried to answer. 'What did Mr. Broome particularly stress in chapel this morning? Well?'

  A boy I did not know raised his hand and said, 'School spirit, sir.'

  'Good. You are . . . Hollingsworth? — Good, Hollingsworth. You listened. Your ears were open. The rest of you must have been asleep. And what is school spirit? It is putting the school first. Putting yourself second to the school. You don't know how to do that yet. Miles Teagarden does know how to do that. That is why he is a prefect.'

  He stood up and leaned against the chalk tray behind him. He looked immensely tall. 'But now we come to your own unfortunate case. Just look at you. Just . . . look . . . at . . . you. Most of you look as though you couldn't find your way home at night. Some of you probably can't even see through the filthy hair on your foreheads. You look slack, boys. Slack. That is offensive. It is an insult. If you insult the seniors by looking slack in front of them, I assure you that they will let you know. This is not an easy school. Not!' He positively shouted the last word, jolting us upright in our seats. 'Not! Not an easy school. We have to reshape you boys, mold you. Turn you into our kind of boy. Or you will be doomed, boys, doomed, an adjective meaning consigned to misfor­tune or destruction. Destruction, a noun meaning that which pulls down, demolishes, undoes, kills, annihilates. You will be doomed to destruction, doomed to destruc­tion, if you do not learn the moral lessons of this school.'