Floating Dragon

by Peter Straub

  “At the end of the night I understood one thing more. Kletzka was half-inclined to believe that I had killed Bates Krell: but he was never going to arrest me for it. In fact he was going to pretend I never came in. He’d tell his department that I was ‘that young would-be writer’; that I had too much imagination. And he was going to wait and see if the disappearances and murders would stop. It was rough justice, but he knew that was better than none. I went home that night with no charge against me, and I burned every note I’d taken. The deaths did stop; and what had happened to me out in the middle of Long Island Sound began to seem more and more a fever-dream, something I’d imagined.

  “I didn’t see Chief Kletzka again until 1952, twenty-eight years later, when I was pretty much a disgraced character. I was riding the bottle pretty hard in those days, and I wasn’t sure of my legal status. Most people here had decided I was a threat to the American Way of Life, if only because Senator Joe McCarthy seemed to think so. Not to mention Martin Dies. I was about to go back to England; I wanted to go while I still had a passport. One man in town stuck up for me. Johnny Sayre. He knew I wasn’t a Communist—Johnny Sayre knew that for me people on the left were better company, better talkers, and hell! just more interesting than your usual fifties Patchin County Republican with his three-piece suits and his recipe for the perfect brandy alexander. So he made sure that he invited me out to dinner with him. At the country club, where everybody would see him with me, and me with him. We were going to get together in London on his actual birthday—he and his wife were going over in a day or two, and I was to follow shortly after—but Johnny wanted Hampstead to see what he thought of me. And at the end of that evening I was having my first conversation with Nails Kletzka in twenty-eight years.

  “So much time had passed that nobody but an old-timer like me called him Nails anymore. He hadn’t done his carpentering since before World War Two. He was just the Chief. By now he had a great big belly and a lot of lines on his face. But he remembered me—I saw in his eyes that he remembered that day in his office, and all those women that had died. And there we were, standing over the body of one of the best men ever to live in this town. What is it with you, anyhow? I could almost hear him ask me. By then I thought I knew, though I couldn’t have told him any more than I could have in 1924.

  “The next day we went in a little party to Johnny’s office—me, John’s widow, Chief Kletzka, and that little red-haired reporter from the Gazette, Sarah Spry. The one who writes that social column. I was just along to hold up Bonnie Sayre, and Nails didn’t much want me there, but he couldn’t refuse the widow’s request, could he? It was Sarah Spry, the woman from the paper, who first saw John’s telephone pad. ‘Anybody know who these men are?’ she asked. Nails and I leaned over to look at the pad and we both saw that name at the same time. Bates Krell. I thought someone had just clubbed me. Nails didn’t say a word. He just walked out. I didn’t even have time to ask him if he knew the other name on the pad. Sarah Spry kept asking ‘Does this mean anything? Does this mean anything?’ and her voice grated like a fingernail on a blackboard. But I didn’t blame her: it was a reporter’s question, and she had been one of the first people to see John’s body. I couldn’t tell her. I went downstairs to talk to Nails, but he was already gone.”

  6

  “After that episode between myself and Mr. Krell I started to look back into this town’s history,” Graham told them. “I didn’t have any idea of what had happened to me—after a couple of weeks I could hardly be sure anymore that anything had really happened. It seemed more and more like a dream. I’d go down to the docks and stare at the Fancy and try to convince myself that I wasn’t as crazy as Nails Kletzka thought I was—if I had any proof of my sanity, it was that Bates Krell had disappeared for good. His boat sat there getting dustier and increasingly battered, and six months later the town of Hampstead sold it to pay off the taxes.

  “There was another factor that gave me the impetus to start investigating local history. When Daisy West had disappeared, I’d overheard my father say something to my mother about a black summer—he clammed up pretty soon when he saw that I was paying attention, but the phrase stuck in my head. Black summer. I’d sort of had my own black summer by then, you know. And then I had a feeling—one of those feelings you can’t ever prove to be true, but which you think is true anyhow. That feeling was that things had always been funny in Hampstead: that Hampstead was a natural place for black summers. So I began to dig around in the old newspapers and in History of Patchin, and from there eventually to Dorothy Bach herself—and to all my researches into what happened during the Black Summer. And I’m still learning about it. An offensive young snob at the Historical Society gave me another clue just this noon.”

  Richard could not hold the question in: “Well, what did happen, Graham? From what you said before, I guess the town was somehow cut off . . .”

  “Gradually but surely,” Graham said. “And because of that, Hampstead almost died altogether—no mail, no coaches stopping, no ships arriving. None of the trade and contact that keeps a town alive. Of course it didn’t start that way. Like this summer, it started with a series of brutal murders. Then the Dragon became more powerful—as he clearly has this summer. There was a terrible fire on Mill Lane. Where that fire this summer killed most of the firemen in three towns. Well, think of that! Just about a hundred years before the Black Summer, General Tryon’s men, aided by one of our local gents, burned down most of Greenbank and Hillhaven. That’s three major fires, roughly a hundred years apart . . . a Williams and a Smyth died in 1779, at least one person from each of our families died in the Black Summer, and serious attempts have been made on our lives this summer. I’m just suggesting to you that the Dragon seems to be strongest and hungriest just about once every hundred years.”

  They were looking at him, but for a moment their eyes were vague: they were remembering what the Dragon had done to them that day. Curiously, Tabby Smithfield, who had been left an orphan by the events of that day, was the most intent. He had finished only half of his bottle of beer and was leaning forward cross-legged, his jaw muscles working.

  “What was on Mill Lane in 1873?” Richard asked. “Houses?”

  “A cotton mill,” Graham said softly. “The Royal Cotton Mill took up that whole peninsula. Royal Cotton wasn’t one of the biggest in the country, and the cotton business was always a little slow in Hampstead, but Royal Cotton was an important part of this town. It employed hundreds of people. And if it had prospered, the entire nature of Hampstead would have changed—its character would be entirely different by now. What are we, really, but an affluent bedroom for New York? We could have been a town that supported itself, that depended upon itself for its destiny . . . do you see what I’m saying? When Royal Cotton burned to the ground in June of 1873, Hampstead lost its significance.”

  He stood up; put his left hand in the small of his back and stretched backward. Graham took a few aimless steps toward his desk, then turned and faced them again. “Nobody ever found out how the fire started. Or how, once it had started, it spread so quickly. This was a genuine mystery, my friends, and it still is. Royal Cotton had no furnaces. It had fireplaces in the managers’ offices, but in June they would have been stone cold. Was it arson? No one knows.”

  He touched the bruised side of his face. Graham looked unnaturally white now, as if the effort of talking had drained him of most of his strength and energy. Even his resonant voice was frayed and tired. “Royal Cotton had been supposed to bring prosperity to Hampstead, but instead it brought ruin. The fire spread across the marshes from the mill, jumped right across that little estuary beside Poor Fox Road, and gobbled up houses all through Greenbank and Hillhaven. The area must have looked much as it did when Tryon’s men fled back toward their ship. And it spread the other way, too, burning the crops and the houses nearly all the way to where the country club is now. The town was ruined. Its throat had been cut. Hundreds were dead.” Graham turned towar
d the window as if he wanted to face down the mocking ghost there. “But that wasn’t the worst thing that was going to happen to Hampstead.”

  He went to the coffee table in front of the other three and picked up a small gray book. “Half of the people in town picked up and left. A lot of them just walked out on everything they owned. I think they felt something—they had the shivers, and they wanted to get out.” Then Graham gave a long, despairing sigh. “They knew worse things were coming.

  “And we know what those worse things are, we’ve seen them now. Richard has seen it—I saw it on the bottom of a ravine. Tabby heard it calling for him. Patsy . . .” His face showed his torment. “Patsy saw it coming for her, and only Tabby could save her.” He shook his head. “Those who left the town—they did the right thing. It was the ones who stayed behind who made the mistake. Let me tell you about this book.”

  He held it up. “Curious Voyages, by Stephen Pollock. If he’s remembered today, as I have just learned, it’s for only one story. ‘Dread.’ It pops up in anthologies every now and then. But Washington Irving met Pollock and wrote ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ after Pollock had talked to him. The real setting for ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ isn’t Tarrytown, New York, or the other villages that are sometimes mentioned—the real setting is Connecticut. Where Ichabod Crane, according to Irving, was born and raised.”

  Richard Allbee raised his eyebrows. For a moment he almost seemed to smile.

  “Yes, Richard. Ichabod Crane. One of the visions from Mount Avenue. Shown to you because you were the only one of us who would recognize him. The Dragon was having fun.”

  Graham turned his chair around and sat. “In one of the chapters in this book, Pollock describes a journey he took by coach from New York to New Haven during the summer of 1873. I want to read you a couple of paragraphs. It won’t take long.”

  He opened the book and began to read. “My companions in the coach began to manifest all the signs of nervous discomfort as we drew nearer to Hampstead. This was latterly a village of some charm situated most pleasingly on the coastline of Connecticut, but some months previous laid waste by fires.

  “These poor beleaguered citizens of America, each the girth of a hogshead of ale and blessed with excellent health, functional teeth, and the Republican absence of excessive humility, found that they could not bear the mention of Hampstead—far less the spectacle! Nothing would do but that the coach’s curtains be drawn, and as tightly as possible.

  “Soon we had reached the place itself, unfortunate Hampstead. The others in the coach ceased their conversations; the two women closed their eyes with what looked to be painful severity, and their husbands fixed their eyes firmly upon nonexistent horizons. They had paled, all four. Gradually it came home to me that my companions were one and all fairly paralyzed with fear.

  “As their terror grew, my curiosity imitated it. What on earth could have inspired this superstitious dread of an obscure coastal village? I was determined to peek through the curtains and see the place for myself. The coach was rattling along at twice its normal speed, and the five of us were consequently thrown about within the interior. As soon as I was pressed against the window beside me, I snatched at the curtain and looked without. One of the women screamed, and her husband made to sever the offending hand from its wrist. I dropped the curtain and pacified him. I hoped the speed of our carriage would double, then double again. None of us breathed properly again until we had crossed over the border into Patchin.

  “Two nights later, at my temporary lodgings in the university town of New Haven, I wrote to postpone the appointments I had made and devoted myself to the telling of a tale. Within the passage of a few fevered hours I set down my story ‘Dread’”

  Graham closed the book. “He took a look at Hampstead, and two nights later he wrote ‘Dread.’ Do you know the story?”

  “I do,” Richard said. “I read it in high school. It’s about a man who fears that he is living in a city populated only by the dead. In college one of my teachers said that it was supposed to have had some influence on James Joyce.”

  “What did Pollock see in those few seconds? I think I know—and I think you do too.” Graham looked at them each directly, unsparingly. “I think he saw, or thought he saw, corpses moving through the street. Because I think that’s what happened to Hampstead. And I think that’s what is happening now. Do you doubt me, Richard?”

  Richard shook his head. “I can’t, after tonight.”

  “And you, Patsy? You, Tabby?”

  Patsy said, “I don’t . . . I don’t think I doubt you.” And Tabby merely nodded his agreement with Patsy and Richard.

  “That’s the Dragon at his most powerful,” Graham said, standing again. “What the devil time is it, anyhow? Four-thirty. Too late for an old man like me to still be making sense. You people are going to have to let me go to bed pretty soon. Though as soon as we can, I think we ought to talk about changing our living arrangements. We can’t afford to be so scattered anymore. We’ll have to work something out.”

  “I want to ask you a question,” Tabby said.

  Graham nodded at him.

  “What makes the Dragon be more powerful in some years? Like he is now.”

  “I think I know the answer to that,” Graham said. He went to his desk and switched off the lamp that had been burning there. Instantly his living room filled with shadows and looming spaces. “Our families each had at least one person employed at Royal Cotton. And I think people from our families, at least one person from each of the four families, stayed in Hampstead during the Black Summer. Stayed to fight the Dragon. And I think they eventually located him and killed him.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “But he has never been as strong as he is now. I hate to say it but I think we make him stronger.”

  Patsy asked, “Is the Dragon always a man?”

  “In Dorothy Bach’s book, there is a reference to a woman named Hester Poole, who was interred on Kendall Point in 1812. ‘For having grievously transgressed,’ was the explanation. No, I don’t think the Dragon is always a man. I just think it feeds on us for as long as we let it.” He threw up his hands in a gesture almost despairing.

  The others stood up and began to move awkwardly apart. Tabby went to Richard’s side; Patsy hovered alone by Graham’s typing table.

  Graham opened the door and let Richard and Tabby out; for a moment he stood in his door and watched them go across the street in the dark. Then he turned to Patsy.

  “I don’t want you to think I’m forward,” she said. “But I’d like to stay here tonight.” She smiled at him, and exhaustion showed starkly on her face. “Do you have a spare bed somewhere in this library?”

  Graham smiled back. “There’s one buried under a mound of books—across the hall from me. You even have your own bathroom. I’ll get you some sheets and a pillowcase. You beat me to it, you know. I was going to ask you.”

  “I don’t think I could stand being alone in my house,” Patsy said. “Not after today.”

  “You shouldn’t be alone anywhere,” Graham said. “None of us should, really. It’s too dangerous. I should have known all this was coming, that first night—when we went to the marker stone. In fact, I did know. I just didn’t believe it.”

  Patsy suddenly yawned.

  “Oh my, let’s get you upstairs,” Graham said. “I just want to give you one more bit of advice. Okay?”

  She tilted her head. “Shoot.”

  “If you hear somebody rapping on your door tonight, don’t let him in.”

  Patsy laughed out loud and put her arms around Graham’s neck.

  4

  The Bottom of the Mirror

  1

  In the second week of August, while Tabby Smithfield readied himself to imitate Graham Williams and attack the Dragon single-handedly, two seemingly unrelated events occurred which might have been supposed to affect the life of every human being in Hampstead, Hillhaven, and Patchin. But of course nothing was what it seem
ed and the two events—Dr. Chaney’s first announcement of “Dobbin’s Syndrome” and the press conference conducted by Dr. Theodore Wise and Dr. William Pierce in a Butte City motel—were intimately connected; and Hampstead and the other towns rolled on as though nothing had happened. That was confirmation of their madness, if any was needed; after the press conference, none was.

  The dozen or so surviving “leakers,” in fear of their lives and tired of hiding in abandoned houses, had found their way to the safety of the Yale Medical Center. There Dr. Chaney supervised their cases and worked out an increasingly brilliant series of life-support systems for them. Chaney finally designed a foam-and-fiberglass structure that could be molded to the patient’s changing requirements—when the patients were in the final stages of the disease, they were surrounded by a kind of exoskeleton, a dish of a firm but pliable rubbery substance with a strong resemblance to an egg coddler. Dr. Chaney thought he was ready to announce the appearance in Patchin County of “Dobbin’s Syndrome” in a splashier forum than The Lancet, which had been sitting on his article for more than a month—“Dobbin’s Syndrome,” if not Dobbin himself, had become his cause. He invited a medical reporter from the New York Times to New Haven and drove to the train station himself to pick the man up. In the black leather folder clamped under his arm as he waited at the top of the ramp were twelve eight-by-ten color photographs that would help prepare the young reporter for what he would see at the medical center. The reporter, it is safe to say, had never seen anything like Chaney’s photographs; nor had he ever seen anything in the line of his work that affected him like the sight of what remained of Pat Dobbin—at that point the illustrator was suspended in a container like a small pink bathtub.