by Martha Faë
Finally the first streetlamp appears, its weak light struggling against the thick fog. There’s a rugby field to my left; my internal compass has been working. The ocean must be a little farther that way. I have to keep walking. I’m in the west part of St Andrews, and I need to head east. I’ve got a long walk ahead of me, but at least I know I can get back to our rental house. Little by little the repellent image of Carl fades from my memory.
I can see the harbor now. I’m nearly home. In no time I’ll reach the little stream that runs parallel to the street. Here it is, and there’s my family. That’s where they should be... Okay, this is the stream, here’s the little bridge... Where’s my house? I lean against the stone wall of the bridge, my hands trembling, my whole body beginning to shake.
St Andrews ends here.
There aren’t any buildings beyond the bridge. Only trees and tall grass where my house ought to be.
I look down. The water in the stream sketches gray waves, but there isn’t any sound. I must have lost my hearing temporarily. I must be disoriented, that’s all. I have to calm down. I slap myself, stopping the angry tears that are threatening to spill over.
I stand perfectly still, a pillar of salt. As if the solidity of my own body could crumble away as easily as the physical reality that I seem to have lost.
I’m not disoriented. This is St Andrews, and this is the place where the summer house my parents rented should be.
I refuse to fall for all this nonsense. I’ll go to sleep, this nightmare of a night will pass, and everything will go back to normal. I turn toward the western part of St Andrews and make up my mind to go to the Old Course. Just out front is the luxury hotel where my aunt and uncle are staying. I don’t even have to spend the night; there’s no need to put up with my cousins. I just have to get them to call my parents so they can come get me. That’s it. They’ll call, my parents will come, I’ll put up with it when they chew me out, and tomorrow it will all be over. When I wake up I’ll be able to hear again, and all this nonsense will be nothing but a bad memory.
I walk along Market Street and stop dead in front of the supermarket. Where is it? It simply isn’t there. In its place are two small houses. I walk for a little longer: maybe it’s just a bit farther on. I’m tired. I might be confused about the street... No, the supermarket isn’t here, either. I’m really starting to feel ill. I backtrack and stop to look at the houses I’ve never seen before. I look to one side, then I look behind me. On the far side of the street, where there’s usually a cellphone store, there’s now an old-fashioned hat shop. I cross over to it and my stomach tightens. Through the darkened glass of the window I can make out feathers and felt flowers adorning women’s hats.
Everything is spinning. I’ve got to sit down, or at least lean against something. I throw my hands back and that’s when I realize there isn’t a single car in the street. Not even the lines painted on the cobblestones to mark off parking spaces. A gust of cold wind brushes against my neck, the whisper of a bad omen. I turn my head. Next to the old stone fountain is an enormous circus tent. Threadbare, falling to pieces, as if the sun and rain have been tearing at the cloth for years and years. The sight makes me shiver.
“But... I walked past a second ago and there was nothing there!”
My mouth opens and closes like a fish, without making any sound. I could think a whole lot of things but I refuse to let fear get the best of me. This can’t be happening. It can’t. I won’t let it happen.
I start walking up Market Street again. I bring my feet down firmly on the cobblestones and imagine myself leaving footprints in the rock. I’ll show everyone that this can’t be happening. There is no way I’ve lost touch with reality. I turn right into the little alley that cuts through to North Street. The space is so narrow that suddenly I can’t get enough air, and it feels like the walls are crashing down on me. I look up. The streetlamp is giving off a sickly light that somehow looks like a pencil drawing.
What’s going on?
I can hear the words in my head, as if my thoughts had their own voice. My breath comes faster and faster until I have to open my mouth, I can’t breathe properly through my nose. I sit down on the ground in the alley and try to calm down. I can’t breathe. My chest hurts. I cross my arms and drop my head between my knees. For the first time in my life I need people: I need to talk to someone, anyone, I just need a little human contact to bring me back to reality.
“Wheeeee! Here we go!”
I jerk my head up and tuck my feet in just in time to keep from being run over. Two dwarfs in ridiculous costumes are tearing down the alley at top speed on tricycles. When they reach the end one of them brakes, dragging his heels on the ground, and turns around to face me.
“Are you coming to tonight’s show?”
“What show?” I ask innocently.
I jump back, startled. I heard the dwarf. I heard my own voice.
“Bah—please! What show? You’re asking me what show?”
“She asked me! Me!” says the other dwarf, peeking over the front of his tricycle at the far end of the alley. They look blurry to me, like ghosts.
The consumptive light from the streetlamp makes it hard for me to see their faces. I can make out their stumpy legs and the shape of the fronts of the tricycles, and I can guess at their waistcoats, but I can’t see anything else.
“Let me tell you, you don’t want to miss tonight’s performance... this guy’s going to throw himself into the griffin cage. It’ll be spectacular!”
“Yes, because they’re untamed griffins!”
I don’t say anything. What can I say? Besides, I don’t have any idea what a griffin is.
“Maybe she doesn’t like the circus,” the first dwarf says, in a voice heavy with sorrow.
“How could she not like it?” replies the other.
“I’m just saying—could be she’s one of those. That don’t like it.”
“One of who?”
“Of those,” answers the first dwarf.
“Of who?” asks the second.
“Of those... you know.”
“Of those?”
“No, these,” says the first dwarf, bringing his hand across the other dwarf’s face with an echoing slap.
All at once their conversation turns into a brawl, a jumble of slaps and “of these!” “of those!” and screeching tricycle wheels. I don’t have the strength to get involved.
“Who is in my little bed?” says a deep and echoing voice right behind me.
I jump up, ready to escape.
“Hey, you. Circus-hater,” whispers one of the dwarfs. “Come here, move. This alley is his little bed.”
“I don’t know if she is one or not,” murmurs the other dwarf, and gets a slap for an answer.
“It’s time for me to lie down in my little bed,” insists the sonorous voice, “soon the lullaby will start.”
A mat of grayish hair moves into the open space between the street and the house on the other side. Then I see the thick neck, big as a tree-trunk, the shoulders, and the top part of the back. The owner of the little bed is wearing a waistcoat just like the dwarfs’. He is so unbelievably tall that he has to fold himself in half just to get in. I move slowly back toward the dwarfs, keeping my back pressed against the wall.
“Not like that, Guli, no,” hisses the deep voice, “It’s the other side, remember, always the other side.” His words are heavy and awkward.
I see the head disappear again. I know I should run, but my body won’t obey me. A pair of enormous clown shoes followed by long legs in striped pants enter the alley. This creature is as thin as the dwarfs are fat. The calves of the huge legs come closer to me.
“There,” says the owner of the infinite legs, sounding relieved, “Now the rest.”
The hands grasp the ankles, and I catch my breath at the sight of fingers so skinny and knobbed that they look like branches with knuckles. With a crunch the hands pull on the ankles, and finally the rest of the body comes in.
It’s an enormous clown. He sits down very close to me, with his knees tucked up to his chest. His back touches the ceiling of the passageway, forcing him to bend his head.
“Are you coming to the show?” one of the dwarfs asks again.
“Good question,” says the clown. “Are you coming to our new circus?”
New? They can’t be talking about the threadbare tent I saw on Market Street. The clown turns his head to me and my stomach drops. He has no eyeballs. He blinks, and heavy eyelashes thick with spider webs close over his empty sockets. Terror floods my body and I’m shocked into movement. I run toward the dwarfs only to see that they don’t have eyes, either. I keep running on North Street until I’m out of breath. My heart is about to explode but I won’t stop. I look behind me: there’s no one there. I lean against the damp stone wall of a building as a merciless coughing fit shakes me. I wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt, then wipe them again. I’ve never seen a night as dark as this one. There’s a full moon, but it’s like it was drawn with charcoal. Its glow is as strange as the light of the sickly streetlamp in the alley. I can barely make out the shapes of things; everything is heavier and grayer than it should be.
I walk with quick steps, hunched over, deafened by the furious pounding of my heart. In the distance I can see the Old Course. I’ve never been this happy to see a golf course in my life. The hotel where my aunt and uncle are staying looms out of the dark next to a landscape I can hardly recognize. It looks like things have changed here, too. As I come closer I let my arms fall to my sides. The hotel is in ruins! Planks are nailed over the windows and the entrance sign hangs from a single screw, rocking rhythmically, almost alive.
I stare at the building, incredulous.
“You oughtta see the way the filthy rich folks come and live it up...”
I hear a feminine voice behind me. I turn around to see a plump gypsy woman wearing a scarf edged with coins on her head. I creep backwards slowly, instinctively. She has no eyes.
“Always out on the town,” continues the woman, “they got money to burn and they come here to do it... But in the end, there’s plenty of dough to throw around. I don’t give a damn!” she cackles. The sound of her laughter isn’t human. It makes my skin crawl.
“We don’t give a damn. We don’t envy them even this much—” She brings her thumb and finger close together. “Our little soiree’s a thousand times better. No colored lights, no stuck-up waiters, none of what they have... Bah!”
The gypsy waves her hand scornfully in the air and bursts out laughing again. I can’t look away from her. She comes closer. My breath pushes my chest violently up and down. She embraces me. It feels like her arm is made of wood. She squeezes me tightly and all my ridiculous brain can do is wonder how it’s possible to use a prosthesis like that. I drag my feet as the gypsy forces me along to the bandstand next to the green.
“Why are you so stiff, girlie? Did they tell you to move like that? Poor thing, they’ve got you playing somebody stiff-necked. Cheer up! Let your body move! We know how to give a proper welcome to the newly published.”
There are more gypsies in the bandstand. Some are playing cards and others are moving musical instruments, but no sound comes out. The woman offers me a rickety chair. I look at it for a few moments: it doesn’t look like it could support my weight, but the truth is I really need to sit down. I feel lost, helpless.
“Eh!”
The gypsy snaps her fingers right in front of my face. They are made of wood; I saw it clearly. When I take a closer look at her I can see that she’s made entirely of wood, if that’s even possible. She claps and music starts to spill out of the mute instruments.
“What’s wrong with you? You’re a million miles away. Sure you just got here, but look alive!”
“The hotel... the music... aunt and uncle...” I can’t get a sentence out.
“The hotel music bothers you?”
I don’t understand what music she’s talking about—all I can hear is the gypsy music. Before I have time to answer the woman hollers at her companions:
“Hey! New girl’s right, the orchestra’s drowning you out. Are you musicians or what?”
The music in the bandstand grows more frenzied. Now it’s nearly deafening.
“Come on, time to dance!” says a tall, thin man whose toothless grin matches his empty eye sockets.
He takes me by the hand and pulls me to my feet like a ragdoll. Before I know it, he’s clasped me tight and started dancing me around in circles. His wooden arm holds me close to his knotty body and it feels like I’m whirling around with a tree. I can’t tell if I’m flying; everyone rushes past me at a mind-boggling speed. During one twirl I see the gypsy woman sitting down on the rickety chair. Her stomach sticks out so far that she has to sit with her legs apart. Twirl, dance, twirl, dance. The legs of the chair tremble from her weight and I’m afraid it’s going to snap at any second, but the woman doesn’t notice the danger; she just goes on keeping time with her bare feet. The click-clack of her feet tapping on the floor sounds like two boards clapping together. Twirl, dance, twirl. I see the planks nailed over the windows of the big hotel, and the image of the ruined building fuses with the musicians and the seated gypsy woman. The gray figures swirl so quickly past my eyes that it looks like a smudged pencil drawing.
“The hotel!”
I point with my right hand, craning my neck as far as I can to keep it in view.
“There, the hotel!”
I don’t know if it’s my words or my gestures that have upset the gypsies. One of them stops playing and gets up, clearly agitated. He drinks down the rest of a bottle he has in one hand, then leans over the railing of the bandstand and chucks the bottle lazily in the direction of the hotel.
Everyone claps, whistles, roars with laughter; some of them make fun of his terrible aim. The bandstand is so far from the hotel that the bottle falls, defeated, on the grass.
“My aunt and uncle...”
I can’t shake off my bewilderment. I don’t even try to figure out who these strange people are. I’d give anything to be able to sleep, to go to sleep and finally forget all this craziness.
“The hotel is closed,” I whisper.
“Of course,” says the man dancing with me. Only then do I realize that although the music has stopped he hasn’t let go of me. “For us it’s closed, but if you came all dolled up like them, they’d let you in.”
I look at him, utterly lost.
“If you ask me, you’re the prettiest. I mean it from the bottom of my heart. If it was my hotel I’d let you in.”
His toothless smile makes me grimace, which he evidently interprets as pleasure, since he squeezes me even more tightly.
“Here’s what I think of all your swanky stuff!” shouts the man who was playing the accordion.
He goes over to the railing of the bandstand and throws an arm around the guy who threw the bottle. Then comes a sort of long inhaled groan, and a huge gob of spit takes flight.
“You’re too far away!” yells the one with the guitar. “You gotta get closer.”
The one who just spat leans halfway out of the bandstand.
“I’ll land one right on that high-falutin’ doorman’s lapel!” he shouts, triumphant.
The others laugh wildly as he prepares for a second try.
“What doorman?” I ask in exasperation, still trying to get away from my dance partner.
“The one on the right, with his hair all slicked back,” yells the guitarist, without leaving his post.
I still haven’t managed to get free. A shout comes bursting out from deep within me. “Are you all crazy? It’s abandoned! The hotel’s abandoned! Are you blind, or what? Can’t you see the boards over the windows?”
As soon as the last word leaves my lips I realize my mistake. All the empty-socket faces swivel towards me. I look frantically around for an escape and my heart starts racing. I’m right in the middle of the bandstand, and if I try to make a run for it someone
will stop me. Plus I’m still trapped in the wooden embrace of my dance partner.
He lets me go. He clutches his head and walks away, dragging his feet. They all put their instruments down and go into a kind of sorrowful trance. It seems like what I said didn’t make them angry, only deeply sad. The gypsy woman shakes her head in disapproval.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to... I didn’t want... The last few hours have just been horrible.”
The gypsy goes on shaking her head. I go to leave, but she takes me by the hand and leads me over to a little table with two chairs. I try to resist but she pulls insistently until I sit down.
“Poor thing! You just got here, that’s why you’re confused.”
“No, no, that’s not it. I know St Andrews. We’ve been here a few days already.”
The woman’s plump face tilts to one side, like a dog when it hears a strange noise.
“The hotel was open this morning, there were people there,” I insist. “A whole lot of things were different. I mean—everything was different.”
I bury my face in my hands, dejected. I wonder if my sanity is gone forever.
“Very strange things are happening, yes,” says the woman softly, so that the others can’t hear her.
My head pops back up like it’s on a spring. Maybe—strange as it all seems—there’s some explanation for this.
“So you don’t think I’m crazy? You believe me?”
The gypsy nods almost imperceptibly.
“Do you know what happened? Can you explain it to me?” My questions flicker across my face. “My family disappeared.”
“The shadow,” murmurs the gypsy. “Dark times are coming...” she lifts a finger to her lips, telling me to keep all of this secret. “Cruelty like the Sphere has never known. The shadow... Only a few of us have seen it, and I’m afraid you’ve got the bad luck to be among us.”
“Us?”