When I had said all that I had to say, Madame leaned towards me. Her voice was harsh and tense, “This child, this Sara, describe her.”
“She’s not a child,” I said, “although, I guess she’s not far from it. She’s small and dark with huge dark eyes and long black hair.”
Madame stood up slowly. She had a strange distant look, as if her eyes were focusing on something far beyond my range of vision. “There is something I must attend to,” she said. “Wait here. I won’t be long.” And she disappeared into the next room.
I waited, wondering uneasily what I’d gotten into. Now that it was done, I wished that I hadn’t said so much about Sara. It seemed to me that Madame Stregovitch wasn’t at all the kind of person who’d tell on anyone, but you never could be sure. And I knew that, more than anything, I didn’t want to be the one to get Sara in trouble. That is, in more trouble than she was already in.
Madame must have been gone for ten or fifteen minutes. When she came back into the room, I hardly knew her. Her face was pale and tired, and her eyes seemed to be set in black holes. She sat down and pulled her chair close to mine.
“Dion,” she said, “you must listen carefully and do exactly as I say. You must not go back to Alcott-Simpson’s again for a while. Most particularly you must not go back again at night. Perhaps in a few days I may need your help there, at the store, and if I do I will let you know. But until that time, you must not go to Alcott-Simpson’s again.”
“Now wait a minute,” I said. “You can’t just tell me to do that without explaining why or anything. I have to go back right away. If there is some kind of danger—”
Madame held up her hand to make me stop. “Yes, you are right. You should be told enough to make you understand the importance of what I ask of you.” She covered her eyes with her hand and sat perfectly still for so long I was beginning to wonder if she’d gone into some kind of trance. When she finally uncovered her face and began to speak, her voice was high and humming, almost as if she were chanting or reciting from memory. “There are times and places when the usual barriers can be overcome and certain individuals are able to experience the overlapping of divergent forms of existence. This overlapping can take place through many different thresholds and can take many forms. One such form—one such overlapping of worlds—takes place only through a particular threshold, the sleeping or unconscious mind of a child. The mind of a child who is himself at a threshold between two forms of his existence, his childhood and his adult life.”
Madame’s voice stopped, and her eyes came back from looking somewhere through and beyond and focused again on me. “Dion,” she said in a more normal tone, “perhaps you have heard that there are persons with unusual psychic powers that enable them to establish contact with beings in other forms of existence. I am such a person, and I am responsible for what has happened at Alcott-Simpson’s. But I want you to understand that I meant no evil. There should be no danger to anyone, and there is no danger to those whose experiences are limited in the usual way by their imperfect senses. But there can be danger to the individual whose experience is broadened too suddenly and too far. The danger is to the one who becomes involved beyond barriers he is not meant to cross. There are thresholds, Dion, that are meant to be crossed by the patient crawl of discipline and dedication, and to cross them by any short cut, even the short cut of love, can bring great danger.” Madame stood up suddenly and motioned for me to do the same. “I know you are greatly confused and you have many questions. But I cannot say more. If you think carefully about what I have said, you will experience the truth more completely than if I tried to make you understand with many narrow words. It is only necessary that you remember that danger exists for you now at Alcott-Simpson’s.”
Chapter 13
I RAN. I RAN ALL the way home and went right to my room. Dad was out somewhere. He’d left some dinner for me on the stove but I didn’t feel much like eating. I must have stayed in my room for about an hour, going over everything in my mind and deciding what to do.
In a way, the things I’d learned at Madame Stregovitch’s hadn’t shocked me as much as you might expect. Perhaps I’d already known some of it before in a wordless part of my mind. And it was almost a relief to have it put into words so that I could take it out and face it.
Part of it was very clear. Madame Stregovitch had made it possible for whomever or whatever it was—the ones Sara called the Others and Myrna called They—to invade Alcott-Simpson’s. Some of the rest of it was harder to understand. Somehow a person in-between was needed to do what Madame had done, a person who was in between childhood and maturity. I was pretty sure that Sara had been that person.
There was one other thing that I didn’t understand completely, though I got it enough to make me feel scared to death every time I thought about it. These invaders—these Others—were not dangerous except to someone who had become too closely involved with them. And that Sara was terribly involved was only too clear.
First, there was the fact that she was almost certainly the inbetween person Madame had used to summon them. And besides, even though I’d tried to fool myself with my “store executive’s daughter” theory, it was pretty plain that without the help of the Others, Sara could not have known all the things she knew or done all the things she did. The Others had been protecting Sara from the guards and dogs, helping her to open doors and unlock locks, and maybe even telling her when I was looking for her. And in exchange what? What kind of hold over Sara’s life had They taken in exchange?
I was sure that the things I had told Madame had made her realize how much danger Sara was in, and I knew that she was going to do whatever she could to help. But it worried me that Madame had said she might need my help at Alcott-Simpson’s in a few days. It sounded as if she wasn’t sure she could help Sara by herself. And I thought perhaps I knew why. It occurred to me that maybe Madame was afraid she was too late. That the Others would not let her find Sara and warn her. The last few times I had looked for Sara, I hadn’t been able to find her. Maybe the Others had already hidden her or taken her away.
I knew that Madame meant well in telling me to stay away. I’d been kind of a pet of Madame’s for years and years. It was natural that she wouldn’t want me to get involved, too. What she didn’t know was that in a way I already was involved. She didn’t know how I felt about Sara. And how Sara felt about me, too—I was pretty sure of that. And that was why I felt that if she could still be helped—if she would really try to break away for anyone, maybe it would be for me. That was the reason I decided I couldn’t obey Madame’s warning and stay away.
The next day I didn’t go to school. I went to my morning jobs because I had nothing else to do with the time; but as soon as Alcott-Simpson’s opened for the day, I went inside. I went over the entire store, except for the area near the cosmetic counter. I got close enough once or twice to catch a glimpse of Madame, but I was very careful not to let her see me. It was all wasted effort, though. Sara just wasn’t there.
Everything inside the store was pretty much the way it had been the day before. There were very few customers and fewer clerks than usual. Most of the clerks who were there were new, people I’d never seen before. The only real difference was that the toy department had been roped off, just as Madame had said it would be. After I had looked all the way through the store, I went out and wandered around town. In an hour or so I came back and looked again. And that’s the way I spent the whole day. By closing time I knew what I had to do.
A few minutes after five o’clock, I went up to the sixth floor. I had noticed that there seemed to be only two clerks on the whole huge floor, so what I had in mind would not be hard to do. There was a scattering of customers, and I walked around looking at people as if I were looking for someone. When a clerk came up to me and asked me what I wanted, I said my mother was shopping somewhere in the store and I thought maybe she’d come up there. He left me alone then, and I wandered around until I saw my chance. I slipped
into the same display room I had hidden in before and slid back under the same bed.
I lay there for what seemed a very long time, listening to the distant voices of the clerks and customers. Then the closing bell rang and almost immediately all the voices stopped. The clerks must have gone downstairs almost on the heels of the last customer. Apparently they didn’t want to be left alone way up there on the sixth floor when the elevators stopped running and the lights went down.
I waited, lying there in the dust under the low bed. After a while the big lights went off and the silence widened around me. I waited a while longer to be sure that all the clerks had had time to leave the store. Then, just as the silence seemed complete, the other noises began.
They were the same noises I had heard before. There were faint whispering voices and muffled footsteps, always so soft and indistinct I could never quite rule out the possibility that perhaps I was imagining it all. I had been planning to climb out from under the bed and start looking for Sara as soon as I was sure the clerks had all gone home, but the noises kept me where I was. Somehow I felt I had to stay there until I could decide if I was really hearing something or not, as if deciding what I had to face when I came out would make it easier to face it.
But the noises went on and on, and I went on lying there, getting stiffer and stiffer from fright and from not moving, until I wondered if I would ever be able to get out at all. And then suddenly I heard someone saying my name. “Dion,” the voice said, and there was a pause and everything was very quiet. The noises were all gone. “Dion, I’m here. Please come out.”
It was Sara. I struggled out from under the bed and there she was, standing in the edge of the shadow on the other side of the room. I sat down on the side of the bed because my knees felt unhinged and my voice wouldn’t start working. As soon as I could, I said, “Am I ever glad to see you.”
Sara looked down and away so I couldn’t see her eyes. “I’m glad to see you, too,” she said. She was wearing a long dress again, but this one was pale blue with a scarf that was attached to one shoulder and went up over her head. “You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t have come, but I’m glad you’re here.”
I was so relieved to see her looking just the same as ever, as if nothing was really wrong, that for a second I almost forgot what I’d come to do. But then I remembered. “Sara, I’ve got to tell you something,” I said, “but not here. Could we go somewhere else?”
“Somewhere else?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean outside. Could we get downstairs and outside without—I mean would you come some place outside the store with me?”
She stared at me, and her fantastic eyes seemed to get wider and wider and she made a sound like a gasp. “No, no I can’t.” She stepped back away from me as if she meant to turn and run.
“All right,” I said quickly. “All right. Not outside. But isn’t there a better place we could go—to talk. A better place than this.” I rolled my eyes in a way that I hoped would tell her what I really meant.
“The garden?” Sara asked. “We could go down to the garden.”
I started to say all right, but then I remembered how dark it would be there at night. And I remembered too about the boat that sailed by itself in the fountain. “No,” I said, “not there.”
“Wait, I know,” Sara said. “We could go up on the roof. Have you ever been up on the roof?”
I said I never had, and I thought about it quickly and it seemed like a good idea. At least on the roof it would be wide open and you could know what was around you. It would be almost like being outside Alcott-Simpson’s. Perhaps it would be like being outside Alcott-Simpson’s, I thought—deliberately not thinking that perhaps They couldn’t follow us there, as if I were afraid even to think what I really meant because the feeling was so strong that They were all around us, listening and watching. I nodded, “All right, let’s go up on the roof.”
Sara led the way to the emergency staircase, and we took the upward flight, up past the seventh floor where all the big offices were, to a little room that opened out onto the huge dark stretch of the open roof. To the West the horizon still glowed with sunset, and far to the East the sky was a clear blue-black, sparkling with stars, but the fog had settled again on the center of town and it was very dark. All around us the fog blotted out the edges of the roof so that it seemed endless, as if we were walking through dark clouds on a tar-paper and gravel infinity.
We walked for a way without talking. A slow damp wind lifted Sara’s hair and the pale blue scarf, and mixed them with the mist that closed in like a wave behind our backs. Finally a low wall with a wide ledge took shape just ahead. We came to an edge of the roof and looked over. The lights of Palm Ave, blurred and hazy, shone up from what seemed much more than seven stories down below. We leaned on the ledge and looked down into the fog flooded canyon.
“Sara,” I began, “since I saw you last, I’ve found out some very important things.”
Sara turned towards me, and the scarf fell across her face leaving only her eyes unveiled. “Yes,” she agreed, “I thought you had.”
“I found out all about the ones you call the Others,” I said. “I know all about it now—who They are and how They came here to Alcott-Simpson’s.”
She nodded sadly. “I didn’t want you to find out,” she said. “I tried to make them stay away from you. I was afraid you wouldn’t like me any more if you found out. But They wouldn’t remember.”
“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change how I feel about you,” I said. “It’s not your fault.”
“Yes, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t ever have come here. It wasn’t right for me. And it isn’t right for you.”
“Well, maybe,” I said, “but anyway—” I stopped and looked around, but nothing moved except the fog and there was no sound except the distant fog-muffled drone of the city. “Anyway it will all be over soon. They, the Others, are going to have to go away soon.”
“I know,” Sara said, “I am going to have to go away, too. I’ll have to go with Them—”
“No!” I said, and it came out almost a shout. “You mustn’t let Them make you think that. You don’t belong with Them. They only want to make you think you do. You’re going to come away right now with me. You just have to make up your mind that you are going with me no matter what. We’ll go down the stairs very quickly, and if They lock the doors, we’ll go down the escalator; and if you see Them or hear Them don’t slow down, and we’ll—”
I stopped. The wind had come up suddenly, and the air swirling around us was so heavy with white mist that Sara’s dress and hair blended into the twisting fingers of fog. But I could still see her face clearly. She moved closer to me, and her eyes were shining with a kind of wild excitement. “Do you want to come with me, Dion?” she said, and her voice was strange, too high and light.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes,” and suddenly a wave of terrible excitement broke inside my mind. A part of me struggled and then drowned, and then the fog was full of small soft hands pushing me, and I moved with them willingly towards the edge. But when I looked down, far down to the dark street, a last stab of fear broke through the numb willingness. The fear of falling was a sharp pain in the backs of my legs, and I felt my face twist with terror.
“No,” Sara said, and suddenly she was between me and the edge of the roof. The wild brightness was gone from her face, and her eyes were soft and steady and very sad. “I’m sorry,” she said, but I only stared at her without saying anything, because suddenly I knew—and there was nothing to say.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let you come here. I shouldn’t ever have let you see me.” She was moving back, away from me into the fog. “I should never have come here at all. Only the very little ones were sent for, but some of them were my brothers and sisters and so I came, too. But I was too old just to play—and then I saw you—”
The fog came down then and closed in between us, but
in a moment I heard her voice calling, “Dion, Dion, this way.” I followed the sound, and it led to the little shed where the emergency stairway came out onto the roof. Sara was not there. I wound my way down the stairs for what seemed like miles and miles. My mind felt numb, and my legs were so weak and shaky that sometimes I thought I would have to stop. When I finally got to the ground floor and started down the Mall to the east entrance, the numbness had gotten worse so that I felt I was fighting to stay conscious. I wasn’t sure I could make it through the doors to the outside. Then, just as I was almost there, I heard someone call my name. It was Madame Stregovitch, coming towards me down the Mall. I didn’t even wonder why she was there. I only remember her catching me by the arms and the fierce burning of her eyes. Then I began to slip down and down into a soft and sleepy darkness.
When I woke up, I was lying on the bench in the alcove behind Ladies Gloves. No one else was there. If Madame Stregovitch had really been in Alcott-Simpson’s, she had gone off and left me there alone. I rushed to the east entrance in a panic. The door was unlocked, and I burst out into a clear, dark night.
Chapter 14
THE NEXT FEW DAYS have faded in my mind. It’s strange because I’ve always had such a good memory. But those days, right after that last night at Alcott-Simpson’s, are all jumbled up in a haze of events and feelings and fears. There are a few things that stand out clear and sharp, but I’m not sure about sequence and things like that.
I know I stayed out of school two more days that week. I hardly ever miss school so of course Dad wanted to know what the matter was. I guess it was the first day I stayed home that I ran into Dad in the kitchen about nine o’clock.
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