Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Finding himself outside the room that was, or had been, his parents’ room. There, his feet paused.

  His mother no longer slept in this room. She had not slept in what was called the “master bed” since the day of the father’s death and on the day following the father’s funeral she’d directed the servants to move her things into another room, elsewhere in the house, leaving most of the furniture behind and the father’s closet untouched. Horace, Jr. had somehow assumed that the door to the room was locked for (he reasoned) in his mother’s place he would certainly have locked it.

  Should anyone happen to notice him, Horace, Jr. was carrying a book. Rare was Horace, Jr. not glimpsed carrying a book, like a shield.

  It was not a book from his grandfather’s library of course, but rather an innocuous textbook (geometry, Latin) or a boy’s adventure book of the sort his mother and relatives often gave him for birthdays and Christmas, having not the slightest idea what the precocious boy’s (secret) interests were. With a forced smile he thanked them. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Penrod Jasper—just what he’d wanted, he assured them. (What a charade! He was not a child.)

  Exciting to Horace, Jr., and intimidating, to see that he stood outside the master bedroom. Of course, he would not open the door, for that was forbidden.

  Yet: No one was near. No one would witness.

  How long since his father had passed away by this time, he could not easily recall. Four years? Five? It did not seem that long but rather, in weak moments, scarcely a year.

  You know that I have not gone anywhere, you little freak. You know that I am on the other side of this door.

  The passing of time was like water dripping into water, deep in a well or cistern. Horace, Jr. had not glimpsed his father for many months before the father’s death and during that time, his mother had assured him that his father would be home again “soon”—always it was “soon, just not now.” Horace had never dared ask what sort of illness his father had, and his mother had never told him; he’d heard relatives whispering, sighing and shaking their heads, but—what did they know? Tuberculosis had been mentioned: did that mean lungs? Or—some sort of paralysis, like polio? No one spoke of alcohol. No doubt, the adults were as ignorant as the child.

  Chronological time had come to be confusing to Horace, Jr. For while his father was hospitalized he’d had difficulty remembering the person his father had once been before the hospitalization, when he’d been “well.” The nature of the father’s illness (if indeed it was a single illness) had been gradual, and erratic, in this way particularly insidious, for no one could have told when the father began to be seriously and irrevocably ill, and not just “unwell.” The father himself had no idea—often, he’d denied that he was “unwell”—entirely. For the child it was like peering into a mirror facing another mirror—a terrifying vertigo of mirrors disappearing into infinity.

  There had been that time, unreachable now as a place in a forest that has reverted to wilderness, when his mother might have casually said to him Your father—. Your father is—. For Horace, Sr. had existed in the world at that time, as fathers normally “exist”; it was only afterward that a shadow fell upon that time as well, like the shadow of a thundercloud, threatening to obliterate it.

  Butler Hope Hospital. Was that the name?

  He’d forgotten the name until now. The shock of his father’s death had clotted the words in his brain.

  Butler Hope Psychiatric Hospital. That was the full, shameful name.

  When first he’d heard of the hospital he’d smiled inanely. His mother, seeing, had been upset with him—Oh, Horace! Why are you smiling? That is where your poor father is.

  He had not meant to smile. Such a smile was a betrayal, like a hiccup at the wrong time, a fit of sneezing or coughing.

  He could not tell his dear mother, that was why he was smiling. For it suffused his heart with relief, to know that there was somewhere his father was that was not here.

  We will take you to see Father, soon. He has been asking for you, he misses you. Oh, you know—he loves you …

  In a paroxysm of fear the child held himself very still until the mother released him. Not daring to speak, nor to attempt any sort of smile of acquiescence.

  Now, in the corridor outside the master bedroom, Horace, Jr. saw with alarm that his (chilled, wary) fingers were daring to turn the doorknob. How had this happened?—he had not the slightest desire to open the door.

  Still, he could not imagine that the door was not locked: he was sure that his mother would keep it locked for what danger, if it were not!

  Keeping you out.

  Keeping whatever is inside, in.

  His heart was beating so quickly, he feared he would begin to hyperventilate and lose consciousness …

  Yet, the door was opening. The door was opening easily.

  Inside, the room was cloaked in shadow. A large room, with a separate sitting area, several closets, windows with drawn drapes. All was shadowy except for a single thin swordlike beam of light from a window, that penetrated the gloom and illuminated, atop the canopied bed, a figure in repose like a figure on a tombstone, too large to be a night-gaunt but suggesting the shimmering and insubstantial property of a night-gaunt, at the very edge of the spectrum of visibility.

  Quickly Horace, Jr. moved to shut the door but it was too late.

  Son! Come here at once! You know that I have been waiting.

  It had happened so long ago, the child’s tears had long dried and turned to salt.

  Slowly, with deliberation, as one might slip a serpent through rungs, Father removed his leather belt. The waistband of his trousers looked unnatural and lax without a belt to secure the trousers on his hips.

  This disheveled appearance in the father was disorienting to the child whose temperament, at even so young an age, required orderliness, neatness, coherence and civility.

  “I said, son—come here.”

  A rough hand at the nape of the neck. The child is plunged forward blindly.

  Horace, on your knees.

  Pray for the repose of your damned father’s soul.

  “Diseases are spread when the races promiscuously mingle”—so the child overheard.

  First, a tremor in the father’s hand. Then, tremors in both hands.

  No, first was the anger: in the father’s face, and then in the hand. Both hands.

  Spittle-flecked lips. A line of greenish drool like pus on the chin.

  Inflamed birthmark. Sometimes so violently scratched by the father, it oozed blood.

  He’d been crouching at the foot of the stairs. As a child might crouch in play. But this was wrong, this was not play.

  Smelling of whiskey, overcome by vertigo. Moaning, whimpering. Son! Help me.

  In terror of Father yet he had no choice, he must come near Father as bidden. And Father’s heavy grip on his arm pulling him off-balance, pulling him down.

  God damn! God damn you.

  A doctor was summoned. Not the doctor who’d been treating Horace Love for that doctor had been dismissed but another who was willing to come to the house on Charity Street like a servant, confer with the wife of the house, hurry up the stairs to the shouting man in the master bedroom; a younger doctor carrying his black valise, grim-faced, but resolute, with but a pitying glance at the child cowering in the hall.

  In the bedroom, raised voices. The father’s cries. A sound of struggle, a chair or a table knocked over.

  The mother had not dared enter the bedroom with the doctor. How many times, the mother had been banished from the bedroom by the furious father.

  Surprisingly then, or perhaps not so surprisingly, the doctor slammed out of the room, headed for the stairs. Close behind him the mother followed pleading, “Doctor—can’t you help him?”

  At the door trying to prevent the harried doctor from leaving—“But what about me? What about the boy? What will happen to us? Is Horace—dangerous?”

  Stiffly the doctor said, “Mrs. Love
, he is your husband. He is your charge. It is not for me to say if he is ‘dangerous’ or not. Good night!”

  “But—Doctor—is he—his condition—infectious?”

  Infectious! The word was so startling to the doctor, so obscene, he could not bear to acknowledge it. Stiffly he said, “Mrs. Love, please do not call me again. There are many other doctors in Providence whom you might summon for your husband’s care.”

  In a state of anguish the mother followed the doctor outside, onto the front stoop of the house, but dared follow him no farther as he fled into the night without a backward glance.

  In her small stubborn voice which was like the bleating of a sheep in reproach—No thank you. I think not.

  Or sometimes gripping the phone receiver tight against her ear she would drawl—No-ooo.

  That is not possible. We rarely dine out.

  And the child—Horace, Jr.—he is nervous and not so fit for company.

  After the father’s death Horace’s mother began to withdraw from even the limited society of her previous spinster-life. First, she ceased bringing Horace to the homes of Cornish relatives for somber, protracted holiday meals—Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter—(“holiday” being a word baffling to the child as it was supposed to mean festivity, joy); then, she ceased attending church-related activities like the St. John’s Ladies Altar Society and Providence Episcopal Charities, and did not insist upon Horace, Jr. attending Sunday school classes. Yet, she continued to attend Sunday morning church services as devoutly as ever, bringing Horace with her as if their lives depended upon it.

  Hiding her face in her hands, murmuring Our Father who art in …

  Kneeling in the Cornish family pew, pleading as once she’d pleaded with the father … thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Forgive …

  It was believed that the Episcopal church was (in the mother’s words) the highest church to Heaven, of all the churches; superior to the Presbyterian church, the Lutheran church, the Baptist church, and, of course, the Catholic church. If there were other religions—(Jews? Muslims?)—they did not count at all. Yet St. John’s Episcopal Church was a weak place, the boy sensed. The white-haired priest could not have defended the altar against an assault of night-gaunts if the malevolent creatures went on the attack and swarmed over it and for this reason Horace did not bow his head, did not shut his eyes to pray, for shutting his eyes could be a mistake, like reaching your hand into a pool of dark water in which (it was given to you to know) water-serpents might be waiting.

  Little freak! Come.

  By the age of ten Horace, Jr. had come to certain conclusions about religion—that is, Christianity. He saw that it was an adult preoccupation, not taken very seriously by most (male) adults, like his father; a habituated and uncritical way of not-thinking, cherished by women. He did not personally believe in a savior, for it seemed just silly that any god would care enough to save him; nor did he believe in the Christian devil who had become a cartoon. He felt a benevolent sort of pity for the pious Christian women who surrounded him—grandmother, aunts, great-aunts, cousins of his mother—inheritors of an attenuated, etiolated Protestantism, lacking passion and conviction. The father had more clearly held the religion in contempt—such admonitions to Christians as “loving one’s neighbor as oneself”—“turning the other cheek” when struck. Once, the child had overheard the father declaiming to a visitor, each man with a shot glass in hand, that “survival of the fittest” was the “unwritten law of humankind.”

  “‘Do it to him before he does it to you’—eh?”

  Laughing together, the men lifted their shot glasses to the gaping holes of their mouths, and drank.

  Drawing back the bedclothes as he should not have done. And yet, it was done.

  Fishy and glassy, semi-putrid congealed jelly with suggestions of translucency. Quite large, measuring perhaps two feet in radius, roughly cylindrical, vile-smelling, covered in greenish froth. Not immediately but after a few seconds the face—the features—defined themselves on the flattened surface, and became recognizable, irresistibly.

  Fainting spells, mild convulsions. It was the Scots nanny who found him again collapsed on the carpeted floor, outside the master bedroom, eyes rolled back in his head and a fine froth at his mouth. In an era before fMRI scans the medical diagnosis was possible/probable epilepsy.

  3. The Ebony Pen

  And then, on the eve of his twelfth birthday, in a time of great anxiety and dread of the future, something happened that Horace Love, Jr. could not have foreseen.

  In a drawer of his grandfather’s desk which he had never dared to fully explore he discovered an Endura fountain pen in ebony black with gold titanium trim and stylus nib—a beautiful instrument that fitted his hand as if it had been custom-made for him.

  Deeper in the drawer there was even an unopened bottle of black India ink. Just for him!

  As a schoolboy Horace used a Waterman pen with a smaller nib, which his mother had given him; it was a serviceable pen, not very different from the pens other boys at the Academy used. And often they used lead pencils, as well. The eraser was a talismanic instrument, for it could be used to vigorously erase an error in pencil, as you could not hope to erase an error in ink.

  All of Horace’s schoolwork was executed with the Waterman pen and a variety of lead pencils. Along with being an exceptional student at the Academy, Horace Love, Jr. was praised by his instructors for the clarity and beauty of his penmanship. (Though Horace winced at such praise for if his classmates happened to overhear, their scorn would be merciless.)

  But his grandfather’s Endura pen was very special, obviously very expensive, and not to be glimpsed by others’ eyes. It would remain Horace, Jr.’s secret, even from his mother.

  Soon then, on the unhappiest of days Horace sought refuge in the exacting pleasures of copying the simpler of the illustrations in the antiquarian books, as well as copying passages of poetry and prose in the most gothic calligraphic penmanship—

  First of all

  The Killer fastens on him, then the Grabber,

  Then Mountaineer gets hold of him by a shoulder … as the doomed hunter Actaeon, transformed into a stag by the furious goddess Diana, is attacked, mangled, torn to pieces by his own hounds who have no idea that the wounded creature is their master. How hideous! The stricken Actaeon makes a sound not human, but a sound no stag could utter either. There was something particularly horrifying about this metamorphosis so matter-of-factly described by Ovid and yet copying the lines with the gleaming black Endura pen provided a kind of comfort. As if, within the safety of a dream, he was calmly tracing the lineaments of a night-gaunt through tissue paper.

  Calligraphy is a measured art, as much for the eye as for the brain. It was a revelation to the boy that, as soon as he took up the pen, he began to feel hopeful, no matter the grotesquerie of the subject; and it seemed to be a fact that, so long as he gripped the pen, and guided it carefully across the stiff paper, there was no risk of a night-gaunt distracting him.

  Soon, he was to discover that he had no need to laboriously copy Ovid, or Dante, or Homer for he could invent lines of his own. He began to write more rapidly, smiling as he composed, sketching demonic figures that, in actual life, would have terrified him, but gave him a curious pleasure springing from his pen. And soon, he had no need to commemorate the night-gaunts that haunted him, but could create his own.

  Now there came a fever into the boy’s blood, to create his own tales of monstrous metamorphoses. Page after page, notebook after notebook he filled with such tales, in which the logic of daylight was overcome by painstaking degrees by the barbaric madness of night; the narrator was frequently an individual of reason, civil, decent, often a scientist or a historian, committed to rationality even as waves of madness lapped at his ankles. For had not Horace witnessed his own father transformed over time from a handsome, fit, normal-seeming man to a furious ravaged creature with a lurid birthmark on his cheek, spittle gleaming on his chin … The boy
’s pen raced, to keep abreast of the voices in his head, and the clamor of his heart.

  His schoolwork became of lesser interest. Other people, including even his mother, began to fade from consciousness; the Scots nanny had less power over him as he grew taller and more self-reliant, sullenly courteous to her, never rude, instinctively resistant to the female. He could no longer bear to be touched—as he could not bear to be interrogated. After school and on Saturdays he began to visit the beautiful old Greek Revival Athenaeum on Benefit Street with its gray granite façade and stately Doric columns, where patrons spoke in reverential whispers, like shades, and a sympathetic librarian allowed the tall grave-faced seeming-shy boy (whom the librarian may have known to be the grandchild of the late Obadiah Cornish, one of Providence’s revered citizens and a most generous Athenaeum donor) to peruse books usually reserved for adults. And what seductive books these were!—first editions of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, and Eureka; Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary and An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and Other Stories; Bram Stoker’s Dracula and The Lair of the White Worm; Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. Many a dreamy hour the boy spent in the high-vaulted reading room of the Athenaeum, scarcely aware of a scrim of golden late-afternoon sunlight that fell like a caress on the wall beside him.

  In this place, no night-gaunt could approach him. In his hand the elegant Endura pen, moving rapidly across the lined pages of his notebook, a continual surprise, like a spring gushing out of muddied earth.

  Ever longer and more ambitious, with tangled plots, arcane mythologies and vivid “poetic” prose, were Horace, Jr.’s earliest works of fiction. The Celtic ancestors of his mother’s family whose portraits hung on the walls of the family house were transformed to Titans; his father Horace Love, Sr. was a lesser god, though handsome as a devil, dark-haired and dark-eyed and with a thin mustache on his upper lip, and a birthmark of the hue of dried blood and the size of a penny on his right cheek …

  The boy’s head clamored with such beings, that were both ghostly apparitions and more vivid to him as the persons he encountered. Often he would find himself struck by certain formations in the sky, in which deities might be observing him with sympathy, or with derision; it was not always clear if the Titans were in fact his ancestors, or the ancestors of his enemies. Nor was it clear that the dark-haired night-gaunt was a devil who meant him harm, or a devil who meant to empower him.