Shadowland

by Peter Straub

  'Sure. Look, what day — ?'

  'I want to show you something. Something I want to look at again too.'

  'Oh?'

  'In here.' He pulled open the boathouse door and knelt. 'Push that lever again.' Rose stepped aside and tugged the rod back. The iron plate swung up on its hinge, clicked into place. Tom crawled out on it and peered down at the water.

  'I was going to ask you what day you thought it was.'

  'I don't see it now. What day? I'm not sure anymore. Tuesday or Wednesday.'

  'It's Saturday,'

  'Saturday?' He looked up at her, standing just outside the boathouse on the sand. She looked very tall, very feminine. Though slim, her body curved.

  'What month do you think this is? What week?'

  'I'm trying to find something,' he said. 'Something I saw before.' He looked down at the murky water. 'Oh.'

  'Did you find it?'

  'No.' He scuttled backward.

  'You did.'

  'What week is it, anyhow?' He stood up. 'What month is it?'

  'What do you think it is?'

  'Early June. About the sixth or the seventh. Maybe as late as the tenth.'

  She rubbed her nose. 'So you think it's the tenth of June. Poor Tom.' Rose touched his cheek with the tips of her fingers. Tom felt as though new nerves had grown where her fingers had rested. 'What did you see down there?'

  'Tell me what day it is, Rose.'

  Her brave smile flickered in the moonlight. 'I'm not sure, but it's at least the first of July. Or the second.'

  'It's July? We've been here a month?'

  Rose nodded; her face searched his, sent out such sympathy that he wanted again to embrace her. 'How can he do that?'

  'He just can. One summer he made Del think that six or seven weeks went by in a day. It was the time Del broke his leg.'

  'And Bud Copeland came.'

  Her eyebrows lifted. 'You know about that? Oh . . . Del told you. Yes, that summer. He didn't want Del to . . . I can't say.'

  'What happened?'

  'The iron staircase. It broke away from the cliff.'

  'What can't you say?'

  Now the smile was firmer. 'Ask Del. Maybe he'll be able to remember by now. I can't, Tom.'

  She walked a little way up the beach and turned to him . again. He saw that it was impossible: this was a secret that she would not give up. 'I can't stay much longer, Tom,' she said softly.

  'I want to kiss you,' he said. That she would keep her secret had made her even more desirable. 'I want to hold you.'

  'I told you. It's wrong now. I have something to tell you and I don't want to get all confused, and I don't have much time. He'll want to see me again.'

  'Tonight?' He walked toward her over the gray sand.

  She nodded. At least she did hot walk away.

  'What for?'

  'To talk. He likes to talk to me. He says I help him think out loud.'

  'But that's great. Then you can tell me and Del . . . '

  'Right. That's why I gave you that note. I found out something. But now, after tonight, you probably know it anyhow.'

  'I don't know anything,' Tom complained. And she reached out and took his hand.

  'He wants to give his farewell performance over again. With you and Del in it. If we're going to get out, I think it has to be right before, when all they'll be thinking about is what they have to do.'

  Pleasurable impulses and sensations had been going all the way up his arm, and now she gripped him harder. 'The important thing is that he's planning something big for this performance. Something dangerous. He said you'd have to choose between your wings and your song. Do you know what that means?'

  Tom shook his head. 'He said it to me once before. I don't know what it means.'

  'He said Speckle John chose his song, and he took his song away from him. So he didn't have anything left. I think we have to make sure we're out of here before . . . '

  'Before I find out what it means,' Tom said a little fearfully.

  'That's what I think.' Rose dropped his hand. Tom leaned forward and took hers and raised it to his mouth. He was trembling. He saw a girl in a red cloak carrying a wicker basket up a wooded path.

  Rose said, 'Tom, I feel so terrible-like I'm drawing you in deeper. But I have to do what he says, or he'll know something's wrong. Just trust me.'

  'God, I don't just trust you,' Tom said. 'I — '

  Rose was suddenly upon him. Her face came down over his, blotting out the sky and the brilliant stars. Her mouth swam over his, and her teeth took his lips. Rose's legs nestled his, her breasts plumped against his chest. Tom put his hand in her hair and gave himself over to the kiss. His surprised erection grew straight into the softness of her belly; he groaned into her mouth, smelling a faint perfume and the fragrance of clean hair, tasting what she was. She was the girl in the window: it was knowledge he had not permitted himself before, but now he held two Rose Armstrongs, the girl in the green dress and the unattainable staggering girl who had raised her arms and shown herself to a frightened boy freezing in a wintry sleigh.

  'You're going to break my back,' Rose said into his mouth.

  He put his hands again in her hair.

  'We can't.'

  'We can't what?' Tom mumbled.

  'We can't make love. Not here.'

  That nearly made him explode. Not here! He groaned again, jerked in an instant from a world in which he had feared he might be frightening or disgusting her with the evidence of his desire into one in which she could casually allude to its fulfillment. 'Where?' he said, his voice out of control.

  'Don't growl, I'm just barely . . . If you knew . . . '

  'Oh, Jesus, I know,' he said, and found her mouth again.

  'It's not fair, is it?' She pulled her face away from his: in compensation, her hips tipped toward him. 'Oh, you're so beautiful.'

  'Where?' he repeated.

  'Nowhere. Not now. I have to go back and see him, Tom. And besides, I . . . '

  She was a virgin. 'I am too,' he said. 'Oh, my God.' He pulled her tighter into him. 'I want you so much.'

  'Pretty Tom.' She'grazed over his cheek, but she already felt distant. So much had happened to Tom, so many milestones had gone by in a blur, that he had no idea of what to do next. Despite what he had hinted to Del, Jenny Oliver and Diane Darling had stopped short even of French kissing. Rose's belly was somehow mirac­ulously accommodating and accepting his erection.

  'Pretty Tom,' she repeated. 'I don't want to be unfair to you. I want you, too.' Her arms went around his neck, and he thought heaven had opened and taken him in. 'I'm just afraid . . . '

  'It's okay,' Tom said. 'Oh, Rose.'

  'The shadow of the boathouse,' Rose said, and pushed him back with her body. They stumbled awkwardly back a few steps.

  'There aren't any shadows, it's night,' Tom said, and it seemed so funny to him that he laughed out loud.

  'Dummy.' She pinned him against the coarse wood and opened him up with her mouth again. She muttered, 'Too bad I didn't drop you in the water, then you'd have to take off your clothes.'

  She was a cloud blessedly made of flesh, softly pillowing every part of him. Sexual urgency blasted him.

  'It's okay, Tom,' she whispered right against his ear. 'I know. It's okav. Go on.'

  One of her hands left his head and lighted on his trousers. 'Oh, no,' he said. And she slipped her hand a layer closer to him. His whole body shook. Rose's fingers twined in, cupped and held — he felt a yard long. She said, 'Oh, Tom,' and he hugged her as close as he could and felt everything in him jump, an explosion seeming to happen in his spine and his head as well as where Rose was, and she pulled, and he thought he was turning inside-out. 'Dear Tom,' she said, and nuzzled his cheek, and he turned inside-out again. 'We really shouldn't have done this,' she said into his cheek, and he laughed until her hand left him. 'Now you're a real mess.'

  'Thank God.'

  'You must think I'm terrible. I just could feel you . .
. and you were moaning like that . . . I don't want you to think I'm . . . '

  'I think you're amazing. Beautiful. Astonishing. In­credible. Fantastic.' His heart was still thrumming. 'You're even generous. I hardly know what happened to me.'

  'Well,' she said, and her expression made him laugh again.

  'How are you?'

  'Fine. I don't know. Fine.'

  'Sometime . . . '

  'Sometime. Yes. But don't start again.' She stepped back on the sand.

  'I love you,' he said. 'I'm just absolutely in love with you.'

  'Beautiful Tom.'

  'Not grumpy Tom.'

  'I hope not.' Rose lifted her hands, bobbed her head self-deprecatingly. 'I have to go. Really. I'm sorry.'

  'So am I. I love you, Rose.' Tom was just beginning to return to earth. She blew him a kiss. Walked away down the beach, stopped to take off the high-heeled shoes, and blew him another kiss before she slipped into the woods bordering the lake.

  'Hey!' he called out. 'We could go back together! I have to . . . ' But she was gone. Tom, still dazed, looked back at the boathouse and then followed her footprints toward the end of the beach. He remembered that he had to sleep in the woods that night, and wondered if he would ever find his way back to Del.

  What could he say to Del? What Rose had done for him seemed an act of almost godlike charity.

  When he reached the end of the beach, he took off his clothes and stepped into the cool water. 'I love Rose Armstrong,' he said to himself, and went in up to his neck. The moonlight made a path straight toward him, rippling when he moved. When he put his face in the water, he remembered what he had seen at the bottom of the boathouse, the severed head of a horse, tipping over slowly in murk.

  Tom got out of the lake and dried himself hurriedly on his shirt. Then he brushed sand from his feet, got back into his trousers, pushed his feet into his loafers, and walked back into the woods, carrying his damp shirt under his arm.

  6

  Six lights: and there was the first, just ahead, near the place where Rose had enacted the scene from 'The Goose Girl.' After that Collins had simply dumped the horse's head into the water to rot. The magician would treat Del and Rose and himself the same way, Tom knew, if he had to. Now, if only he could make Del see that they had to escape before the climax Collins was planning for them. Tom knew in his bones that no matter what Collins said, he would not surrender his place in the magicians' world, whatever that was, to a fifteen-year-old boy. He would be more likely to do whatever he had done to Speckle John — and that, Tom knew in the same in­stinctive fashion, would not be told until the day of the performance.

  Two. The second light, piercing a curtain of leaves. Daydreaming about Rose Armstrong, Tom parted the branches, stepped over a mulchy, rotting log; stopped. In the middle of the lighted clearing stood a huge man covered with fur. Oh his shoulders sat the giant head of a wolf. Tom stared at this hieratic figure in pure shock. He was not hypnotized, he was awake and his senses were all functioning. The man-wolf, more than anything else he had witnessed, seemed the embodiment of magic-magic personified, a guardian. Tom saw that the fur was sewn — together pelts. The man-wolf raised an arm and pointed deeper into the woods. Tom ran, plunging sideways into the trees until the man-wolf could not see him, and then slowly worked forward.

  Three. Tom crept from tree to tree, trying to be noiseless. When he was close enough, he peered around a gigantic oak and looked over the marshy platform of earth beneath the light. Cautiously he stepped onto the spongy ground. The forest around him began to melt. 'No!' he shouted. And tried to jerk himself backward to escape the transformation. His back struck something metal. In an instant the air cleared: he was in a parking lot. A wide, low city lay around him in early morning, with soft humid air and a rising sun beginning to tint the buildings to his left. Was this where he was to be welcomed? None of the few cars in the lot looked familiar — though not new, they were newer than any cars he had ever seen.

  'Where?' he said aloud — there were no landmarks. Then through the sun-tipped buildings to his right he saw a line of pale blue. An ocean. California? Florida?

  He stepped up on one of the concrete dividers. The metal thing he had banged into was a parking meter. What could come to him here, in a city?

  Then he noticed the battered green car before him. A series of drops hung at the bottom of the doorframe, filled, and splashed on the concrete. The drops were red. Tom looked at the driver's window, and saw a man's head propped against the glass. Curling blond hair flattened against the window. The red drops were the man's blood. Tom nearly threw up. He could not look at those drops gathering and falling. He jumped off the divider and walked fearfully around to face the front of the car. Florida plates. Was he supposed to see the man's face? Through the windshield he saw broad unknown features. It was the face of a man in middle age. Some stranger, some visitor. Where his parting should have been, his head was horrible. Then for an instant he thought lie knew the face — he felt small and helpless, turned away in moral anguish, rejecting the terrible half-familiarity of the dead man's features.

  An old man in a Harry Truman shirt and a baseball cap was at the far end of the lot, walking toward him and the green car. 'Mister!' Tom shouted, and the old man peered up at him in fright. 'Hey . . . I need . . . '

  The old man was waving his fists at him, and the revulsion and disgust and fear on the old man's face made Tom step backward. The old man screamed something at him, and Tom turned around and ran.

  When he reached the end of the lot and was just about to pound along the sidewalk, he felt like he had fallen over a cliff: his legs went out from under him, the city whisked away, and he rolled over onto wet leaves. It was night again, and the air smelled different. He was back in the woods. When he picked himself up he saw that he was on the other side of the marshy clearing. He had to go on.

  Not Marcus — that was not lazy, cheerful Marcus slumped in the green car. That man was too fat, too old. He shook his head, not believing it but knowing that the man had been Marcus. A moment later he turned away from the empty clearing.

  A worn little path ted toward the fourth light; roots stubbed his feet, black arms reached toward him. The woods now were filled with gibbering and leering faces. A branch rustled, and an eye winked at him — Then fireflies, a series of little eyes, danced up and whirled around. Between these flickerings, darting observations, he saw the next light.

  Four. Only two more to go.

  Tom approached the light nearly on tiptoe. He remem­bered: The torch was hung over a wide fiat shelf of rock, the most stagelike of all the little arenas in the woods. Here it was where Rose had enacted the fable about the beginning of all stories on their first night in Shadowland.

  Here too something waited for him.

  He crept toward the rock shelf. Yes, someone waited for him — he caught a glimpse through the branches of a cannonball head. Snail; or Thorn, with his Halloween face. Tom edged sideways, trying to see the face. A red ear came into sight, pink flesh under a stubbly haircut. At last he saw the rest of the ponderous, studying face.

  Oh, God.

  He stepped on a stick, and it snapped as loudly as a bone. Dave Brick lifted his head and uncrossed his legs. He was sitting on a metal school chair. 'Tommy?' he said; his voice was plaintive and lost. 'Please, Tommy.'

  Tom stepped out onto the rock. Brick sat facing him twelve feet away, wearing the old tweed jacket Tom had lent him. 'You left me, Tommy,' Dave Brick com­plained. 'You chose flight. You should go back and find me.'

  'I wish,' Tom said. 'But it's too late now.'

  'I'm still there, Tommy. I'm waiting. But you chose wings. Go back and find me. You saved a bass fiddle and some magic tricks. Now it's my turn.' Brick sounded forlorn and slightly peevish.

  'It's too late,' Tom said. He thought he might be losing his mind; thought of his mind giving up and walking away.

  'You can do magic. Save me. I want to be saved, Tommy. Something fell on
me . . . and somebody hit me . . . and Mr. Broome told me not to move . . . ' Brick looked ready to cry; then he was crying.

  'Oh, don't,' Tom said, 'I can't take it. I can't handle it. It's too much.'

  'Del took the owl,' Brick said through his tears. 'I saw. He made everything happen. Ask him. After you go back and save me, Tommy. It's all his fault, Tommy. Because you're supposed to get the owl chair. Ask him.'

  'You're not Dave Brick,' Tom said. There were wrinkles in the face; the hands were huge and powerful. He ran across the edge of the slab, and the thing in the chair began to howl. 'You can be saved, Tommy! He can save you! Like you can save me!'

  Tom ran from the voice deep into the forest. He was crying himself now, whether from shock or outrage or horror he did not know. Was Coleman Collins telling Rose about this right now, chortling? Or had she known it was going to happen when she blew him a kiss? No — that could not be true. Running, he grazed a tree, staggered and stopped. Where was he? Dave Brick's look-alike howled far off to his left.

  Tom struck out blindly through the moonlit forest, going in the direction where the trees were least dense. He still saw faces in the patterns of the branches, but now they looked at him in horror. Leaving Dave Brick behind, he had become a monster.

  Five. There it was, just as he had known it would be. A flaring torch, not an electric light; not the same fifth light, but the one he was supposed to find. He felt like crying again. Then he had a premonition. He would see Rose standing on the dark grass, petting a wolf . . . Rose with her teeth sharpened . . .

  All those nightmares, back at school, all those dreadful visions: they had come from him. Beginning in him, born in him, they had spread out to infect everyone he knew. Even back then, when he had thought magic was a few deft card tricks, he had been on his way here. The torch flared, visible between giant black growths. Tom shud­dered and stepped forward.

  First he saw the dead wolf. The sword wound in its belly gaped. Tom suddenly smelled mustard flowers, smelled Rose's faint perfume lacing delicately through. The wound in the wolfs belly gaped because the wolf had been nailed to the tree by its paws, and gravity was trying to haul it earthward. It hung just below the torch. 'Rose . . . ' he said. 'Please . . . '