Rock On

by Howard Waldrop

  “—‘Why trembles my darling? Why shrinks she with fear?’

  —‘Oh father! My father! The Erl-King is near!

  The Erl-King, with his crown and his hands long and white!’

  —‘Thine eyes are deceived by the vapors of night.’ ”

  “That song!” exclaimed Haley. “He was singing it—”

  Aurora nodded without looking at her. “ ‘The Erl-King,’ ” she said. “He recorded it just a few months later . . . ”

  Her gaze dropped abruptly to the book at her knees. She ran her fingers along its edge, then as though with long practice opened it to a page towards the back. “There he is,” she murmured, and traced the outlines of a black-and-white photo, neatly pressed beneath its sheath of yellowing plastic.

  It was Lie Vagal. His hair was longer, and black as a cat’s. He wore high leather boots, and the picture had been posed in a way to make him look taller than he really was. But what made Haley feel sick and frightened was that he was wearing makeup—his face powdered dead white, his eyes livid behind pools of mascara and kohl, his mouth a scarlet blossom. And it wasn’t that it made him look like a woman (though it did).

  It was that he looked exactly like Linette.

  Shaking her head, she turned towards Aurora, talking so fast her teeth chattered. “You—does she—does he—does he know?”

  Aurora stared down at the photograph and shook her head. “I don’t think so. No one does. I mean, people might have suspected, I’m sure they talked, but—it was so long ago, they all forgot. Except for him, of course—”

  In the air between them loomed suddenly the image of the man in black and red and purple, heavy gold rings winking from his ears. Haley’s head pounded and she felt as though the floor reeled beneath her. In the hazy air the shining figure bowed its head, light gleaming from the unbroken ebony line that ran above its eyes. She seemed to hear a voice hissing to her, and feel cold sharp nails pressing tiny half-moons into the flesh of her arm. But before she could cry out the image was gone. There was only the still dank room, and Aurora saying,

  “ . . . for a long time thought he would die, for sure—all those drugs—and then of course he went crazy; but then I realized he wouldn’t have made that kind of deal. Lie was sharp, you see; he did have some talent, he didn’t need this sort of—of thing to make him happen. And Lie sure wasn’t a fool. Even if he thought it was a joke, he was terrified of dying, terrified of losing his mind—he’d already had that incident in Marrakech—and so that left the other option; and since he never knew, I never told him; well it must have seemed a safe deal to make . . . ”

  A deal. Haley’s stomach tumbled as Aurora’s words came back to her—A standard contract—souls, sanity, first-born children. “But how—” she stammered.

  “It’s time.” Aurora’s hollow voice echoed through the chilly room. “It’s time, is all. Whatever it was that Lie wanted, he got; and now it’s time to pay up.”

  Suddenly she stood, her foot knocking the photo album so that it skidded across the flagstones, and tottered back into the kitchen. Haley could hear the clatter of glassware as she poured herself more gin. Silently the girl crept across the floor and stared for another moment at the photo of Lie Vagal. Then she went outside.

  She thought of riding her bike to Kingdom Come, but absurd fears—she had visions of bony hands snaking out of the earth and snatching the wheels as she passed—made her walk instead. She clambered over the stone wall, grimacing at the smell of rotting apples. The unnatural chill of Linette’s house had made her forget the relentless late-August heat and breathless air out here, no cooler for all that the sun had set and left a sky colored like the inside of a mussel shell. From the distant lake came the desultory thump of bullfrogs. When she jumped from the wall to the ground a windfall popped beneath her foot, spattering her with vinegary muck. Haley swore to herself and hurried up the hill.

  Beneath the ultramarine sky the trees stood absolutely still, each moored to its small circle of shadow. Walking between them made Haley’s eyes hurt, going from that eerie dusk to sudden darkness and then back into the twilight. She felt sick, from the heat and from what she had heard. It was crazy, of course, Aurora was always crazy; but Linette hadn’t come back, and it had been such a creepy place, all those pictures, and the old lady, and Lie Vagal himself skittering through the halls and laughing . . .

  Haley took a deep breath, balled up her T-shirt to wipe the sweat from between her breasts. It was crazy, that’s all; but still she’d find Linette and bring her home.

  On one side of the narrow bed Linette lay fast asleep, snoring quietly, her hair spun across her cheeks in a shadowy lace. She still wore the pale blue peasant’s dress she’d had on the night before, its hem now spattered with candle wax and wine. Lie leaned over her until he could smell it, the faint unwashed musk of sweat and cotton and some cheap drugstore perfume, and over all of it the scent of marijuana. The sticky end of a joint was on the edge of the bedside table, beside an empty bottle of wine. Lie grinned, remembering the girl’s awkwardness in smoking the joint. She’d had little enough trouble managing the wine. Aurora’s daughter, no doubt about that.

  They’d spent most of the day in bed, stoned and asleep; most of the last evening as well, though there were patches of time he couldn’t recall. He remembered his grandmother’s fury when midnight rolled around and she’d come into the bedroom to discover the girl still with him, and all around them smoke and empty bottles. There’d been some kind of argument then with Gram, Linette shrinking into a corner with her kinkajou; and after that more of their laughing and creeping down hallways. Lie showed her all his paintings. He tried to show her the people, but for some reason they weren’t there, not even the three bears drowsing in the little eyebrow window in the attic half-bath. Finally, long after midnight, they’d fallen asleep, Lie’s fingers tangled in Linette’s long hair, chaste as kittens. His medication had long since leached away most sexual desire. Even before The Crash, he’d always been uncomfortable with the young girls who waited backstage for him after a show, or somehow found their way into the recording studio. That was why Gram’s accusations had infuriated him—

  “She’s a friend, she’s just a friend—can’t I have any friends at all? Can’t I?” he’d raged, but of course Gram hadn’t understood, she never had. Afterwards had come that long silent night, with the lovely flushed girl asleep in his arms, and outside the hot hollow wind beating at the walls.

  Now the girl beside him stirred. Gently Lie ran a finger along her cheekbone and smiled as she frowned in her sleep. She had her mother’s huge eyes, her mother’s fine bones and milky skin, but none of that hardness he associated with Aurora Dawn. It was so strange, to think that a few days ago he had never met this child; might never have raised the courage to meet her, and now he didn’t want to let her go home. Probably it was just his loneliness; that and her beauty, her resemblance to all those shining creatures who had peopled his dreams and visions for so long. He leaned down until his lips grazed hers, then slipped from the bed.

  He crossed the room slowly, reluctant to let himself come fully awake. But in the doorway he started.

  “Shit!”

  Across the walls and ceiling of the hall huge shadows flapped and dove. A buzzing filled the air, the sound of tiny feet pounding against the floor. Something grazed his cheek and he cried out, slapping his face and drawing his hand away sticky and damp. When he gazed at his palm he saw a smear of yellow and the powdery shards of wing.

  The hall was full of insects. June bugs and katydids, beetles and lacewings and a Prometheus moth as big as his two hands, all of them flying crazily around the lights blooming on the ceiling and along the walls. Someone had opened all the windows; he had never bothered to put the screens in. He swatted furiously at the air, wiped his hand against the wall and frowned, trying to remember if he’d opened them; then thought of Gram. The heat bothered her more than it did him—odd, considering her seventy-odd years in Port A
rthur—but she’d refused his offers to have air conditioning installed. He walked down the corridor, batting at clouds of tiny white moths like flies. He wondered idly where Gram had been all day. It was strange that she wouldn’t have looked in on him; but then he couldn’t remember much of their argument. Maybe she’d been so mad she took to her own room out of spite. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  He paused in front of a Kay Nielsen etching from Snow White. Inside its simple white frame the picture showed the wicked queen, her face a crimson O as she staggered across a ballroom floor, her feet encased in red-hot iron slippers. He averted his eyes and stared out the window. The sun had set in a wash of green and deep blue; in the east the sky glowed pale gold where the moon was rising. It was ungodly hot, so hot that on the lawn the crickets and katydids cried out only every minute or so, as though in pain. Sighing, he raised his arms, pulling his long hair back from his bare shoulders so that the breath of breeze from the window might cool his neck.

  It was too hot to do anything; too hot even to lie in bed, unless sleep had claimed you. For the first time he wished the estate had a pool; then remembered the Jacuzzi. He’d never used it, but there was a skylight in there where he’d once glimpsed a horse like a meteor skimming across the midnight sky. They could take a cool bath, fill the tub with ice cubes. Maybe Gram could be prevailed upon to make some lemonade, or he thought there was still a bottle of champagne in the fridge, a housewarming gift from the realtor. Grinning, he turned and paced back down the hall, lacewings forming an iridescent halo about his head. He didn’t turn to see the small figure framed within one of the windows, a fair-haired girl in jeans and T-shirt scuffing determinedly up the hill towards his home; nor did he notice the shadow that darkened another casement, as though someone had hung a heavy curtain there to blot out the sight of the moon.

  Outside the evening had deepened. The first stars appeared, not shining so much as glowing through the hazy air, tiny buds of silver showing between the unmoving branches above Haley’s head. Where the trees ended Haley hesitated, her hand upon the smooth trunk of a young birch. She felt suddenly and strangely reluctant to go further. Before her, atop its sweep of deep green, Kingdom Come glittered like some spectral toy: spotlights streaming onto the patio, orange and yellow and white gleaming from the window casements, spangled nets of silver and gold spilling from some of the upstairs windows, where presumably Lie Vagal had strung more of his Christmas lights. On the patio the French doors had been flung open. The white curtains hung like loose rope to the ground. In spite of her fears Haley’s neck prickled at the sight: it needed only people there moving in the golden light, people and music . . .

  As though in answer to her thought a sudden shriek echoed down the hill, so loud and sudden in the twilight that she started and turned to bolt. But almost immediately the shriek grew softer, resolved itself into music—someone had turned on a stereo too loudly and then adjusted the volume. Haley slapped the birch tree, embarrassed at her reaction, and started across the lawn.

  As she walked slowly up the hill she recognized the music. Of course, that song again, the one Aurora had been singing a little earlier. She couldn’t make out any words, only the wail of synthesizers and a man’s voice, surprisingly deep. Beneath her feet the lawn felt brittle, the grass breaking at her steps and releasing an acrid dusty smell. For some reason it felt cooler here away from the trees. Her T-shirt hung heavy and damp against her skin, her jeans chafed against her bare ankles. Once she stopped and looked back, to see if she could make out Linette’s cottage behind its scrim of greenery; but it was gone. There were only the trees, still and ominous beneath a sky blurred with stars.

  She turned and went on up the hill. She was close enough now that she could smell that odd odor that pervaded Kingdom Come, oranges and freshly turned earth. The music pealed clear and sweet, an insidious melody that ran counterpoint to the singer’s ominous phrasing. She could hear the words now, although the singer’s voice had dropped to a childish whisper—

  “—‘Oh Father! My father! And dost thou not hear

  What words the Erl-King whispers low in mine ear?’

  —‘Now hush thee, my darling, thy terrors appease.

  Thou hearest the branches where murmurs the breeze.’ ”

  A few yards in front of her the patio began. She was hurrying across this last stretch of lawn when something made her stop. She waited, trying to figure out if she’d heard some warning sound—a cry from Linette, Aurora shrieking for more ice. Then very slowly she raised her head and gazed up at the house.

  There was someone there. In one of the upstairs windows, gazing down upon the lawn and watching her. He was absolutely unmoving, like a cardboard dummy propped against the sill. It looked like he had been watching her forever. With a dull sense of dread she wondered why she hadn’t noticed him before. It wasn’t Lie Vagal, she knew that; nor could it have been Linette or Gram. So tall it seemed that he must stoop to gaze out at her, his face enormous, perhaps twice the size of a normal man’s and a deathly yellow color. Two huge pale eyes stared fixedly at her. His mouth was slightly ajar. That face hung as though in a fog of black, and drawn up against his breast were his hands, knotted together like an old man’s—huge hands like a clutch of parsnips, waxy and swollen. Even from here she could see the soft glint of the spangled lights upon his fingernails, and the triangular point of his tongue like an adder’s head darting between his lips.

  For an instant she fell into a crouch, thinking to flee to the cottage. But the thought of turning her back upon that figure was too much for her. Instead Haley began to run towards the patio. Once she glanced up: and yes, it was still there, it had not moved, its eyes had not wavered from watching her; only it seemed its mouth might have opened a little more, as though it was panting.

  Gasping, she nearly fell onto the flagstone patio. On the glass tables the remains of this morning’s breakfast sat in congealed pools on bright blue plates. A skein of insects rose and trailed her as she ran through the doors.

  “Linette!”

  She clapped her hand to her mouth. Of course it would have seen where she entered; but this place was enormous, surely she could find Linette and they could run, or hide—

  But the room was so full of the echo of that insistent music that no one could have heard her call out. She waited for several heartbeats, then went on.

  She passed all the rooms they had toured just days before. In the corridors the incense burners were dead and cold. The piranhas roiled frantically in their tank, and the neon sculptures hissed like something burning. In one room hung dozens of framed covers of Interview magazine, empty-eyed faces staring down at her. It seemed now that she recognized them, could almost have named them if Aurora had been there to prompt her—

  Fairy Pagan, Dianthus Queen, Markey French . . .

  As her feet whispered across the heavy carpet she could hear them breathing behind her, dead, dead, dead.

  She ended up in the kitchen. On the wall the cat-clock ticked loudly. There was a smell of scorched coffee. Without thinking she crossed the room and switched off the automatic coffee maker, its glass carafe burned black and empty. A loaf of bread lay open on a counter, and a half-empty bottle of wine. Haley swallowed: her mouth tasted foul. She grabbed the wine bottle and gulped a mouthful, warm and sour; then coughing, found the way upstairs.

  Lie pranced back to the bedroom, singing to himself. He felt giddy, the way he did sometimes after a long while without his medication. By the door he turned and flicked at several buttons on the stereo, grimacing when the music howled and quickly turning the levels down. No way she could have slept through that. He pulled his hair back and did a few little dance steps, the rush of pure feeling coming over him like speed.

  “ ‘If you will, oh my darling, then with me go away,

  My daughter shall tend you so fair and so gay . . . ’ ”

  He twirled so that the cuffs of his loose trousers ballooned about his ankles. “Come, darling,
rise and shine, time for little kinkajous to have their milk and honey—” he sang. And stopped.

  The bed was empty. On the side table a cigarette—she had taken to cadging cigarettes from him—burned in a little brass tray, a scant half-inch of ash at its head.

  “Linette?”

  He whirled and went to the door, looked up and down the hall. He would have seen her if she’d gone out, but where could she have gone? Quickly he paced to the bathroom, pushing the door open as he called her name. She would have had to pass him to get there; but the room was empty.

  “Linette!”

  He hurried back to the room, this time flinging the door wide as he entered. Nothing. The room was too small to hide anyone. There wasn’t even a closet. He walked inside, kicking at empty cigarette packs and clothes, one of Linette’s sandals, a dangling silver earring. “Linette! Come on, let’s go downstairs—”

  At the far wall he stopped, staring at the huge canvas that hung there. From the speakers behind him the music swelled, his own voice echoing his shouts.

  “ ‘My father! My father! Oh hold me now fast!

  He pulls me, he hurts, and will have me at last—’ ”

  Lie’s hands began to shake. He swayed a little to one side, swiping at the air as though something had brushed his cheek.

  The Erl-King was gone. The painting still hung in its accustomed place in its heavy gilt frame. But instead of the menacing figure in the foreground and the tiny fleeing horse behind it, there was nothing. The yellow lights within the darkly silhouetted house had been extinguished. And where the hooded figure had reared with its extended claws, the canvas was blackened and charred. A hawkmoth was trapped there, its furled antennae broken, its wings shivered to fragments of mica and dust.