by Ray Bradbury
Her arms were raised across the door like a crucifix. He heard her mouth open and her lungs push a warmness upon the air. She was a beautiful dim white moth; with the sharp needle point of terror he had her pinned against the wooden door. He could walk all around the specimen, if he wished, and look at her, look at her.
‘Lavinia,’ he whispered.
He heard her heartbeating. She did not move.
‘It’s me,’ he whispered.
‘Who?’ she said, so faint it was a small pulse-beat in her throat.
‘I won’t tell you,’ he whispered. He stood perfectly straight in the center of the room. God, but he felt tall! Tall and dark and very beautiful to himself, and the way his hands were out before him was as if he might play a piano at any moment, a lovely melody, a waltzing tune. The hands were wet, they felt as if he had dipped them into a bed of mint and cool menthol.
‘If I told you who I am, you might not be afraid,’ he whispered. ‘I want you to be afraid. Are you afraid?’
She said nothing. She breathed out and in, out and in, a small bellows which, pumped steadily, blew upon her fear and kept it going, kept it alight.
‘Why did you go to the show tonight?’ he whispered. ‘Why did you go to the show?’
No answer.
He took a step forward, heard her breath take itself, like a sword hissing in its sheath.
‘Why did you come back through the ravine, alone?’ he whispered. ‘You did come back alone, didn’t you? Did you think you’d meet me in the middle of the bridge? Why did you go to the show tonight? Why did you come back through the ravine, alone?’
‘I—’ she gasped.
‘You,’ he whispered.
‘No—’ she cried, in a whisper.
‘Lavinia,’ he said. He took another step.
‘Please,’ she said.
‘Open the door. Get out. And run,’ he whispered.
She did not move.
‘Lavinia, open the door.’
She began to whimper in her throat.
‘Run,’ he said.
In moving he felt something touch his knee. He pushed, something tilted in space and fell over, a table, a basket, and a half-dozen unseen balls of yarn tumbled like cats in the dark, rolling softly. In the one moonlit space on the floor beneath the window, like a metal sign pointing, lay the sewing shears. They were winter ice in his hand. He held them out to her suddenly, through the still air.
‘Here,’ he whispered.
He touched them to her hand. She snatched her hand back.
‘Here,’ he urged.
‘Take this,’ he said, after a pause.
He opened her fingers that were already dead and cold to the touch, and stiff and strange to manage, and he pressed the scissors into them. ‘Now,’ he said.
He looked out at the moonlit sky for a long moment, and when he glanced back it was some time before he could see her in the dark.
‘I waited,’ he said. ‘But that’s the way it’s always been. I waited for the others, too. But they all came looking for me, finally. It was that easy. Five lovely ladies in the last two years. I waited for them in the ravine, in the country, by the lake, everywhere I waited, and they came out to find me, and found me. It was always nice, the next day, reading the newspapers. And you went looking tonight, I know, or you wouldn’t have come back alone through the ravine. Did you scare yourself there, and run? Did you think I was down there waiting for you? You should have heard yourself running up the walk! Through the door! And locking it! You thought you were safe inside, home at last, safe, safe, safe, didn’t you?’
She held the scissors in one dead hand, and she began to cry. He saw the merest gleam, like water upon the wall of a dim cave. He heard the sounds she made.
‘No,’ he whispered. ‘You have the scissors. Don’t cry.’
She cried. She did not move at all. She stood there, shivering, her head back against the door, beginning to slide down the length of the door toward the floor.
‘Don’t cry,’ he whispered.
‘I don’t like to hear you cry,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand to hear that.’
He held his hands out and moved them through the air until one of them touched her cheek. He felt the wetness of that cheek, he felt her warm breath touch his palm like a summer moth. Then he said only one more thing:
‘Lavinia,’ he said, gently. ‘Lavinia.’
How clearly he remembered the old nights in the old times, in the times when he was a boy and them all running and running, and hiding and hiding, and playing hide-and-seek. In the first spring nights and in the warm summer nights and in the late summer evenings and in those first sharp autumn nights when doors were shutting early and porches were empty except for blowing leaves. The game of hide-and-seek went on as long as there was sun to see by, or the rising snow-crusted moon. Their feet upon the green lawns were like the scattered throwing of soft peaches and crab apples, and the counting of the Seeker with his arms cradling his buried head, chanting to the night: five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five, fifty.… And the sound of thrown apples fading, the children all safely closeted in tree or bush shade, under the latticed porches with the clever dogs minding not to wag their tails and give their secret away. And the counting done: eighty-five, ninety, ninety-five, a hundred!
Ready or not, here I come!
And the Seeker running out through the town wilderness to find the Hiders, and the Hiders keeping their secret laughter in their mouths, like precious June strawberries, with the help of clasped hands. And the Seeker seeking after the smallest heartbeat in the high elm tree or the glint of a dog’s eye in a bush, or a small water sound of laughter that could not help burst out as the Seeker ran right on by and did not see the shadow within the shadow.…
He moved into the bathroom of the quiet house, thinking all this, enjoying the clear rush, the tumultuous gushing of memories like a waterfalling of the mind over a steep precipice, falling and falling toward the bottom of his head.
God, how secret and tall they had felt, hidden away. God, how the shadows mothered and kept them, sheathed in their own triumph. Glowing with perspiration how they crouched like idols and thought they might hide forever! While the silly Seeker went pelting by on his way to failure and inevitable frustration.
Sometimes the Seeker stopped right at your tree and peered up at you crouched there in your invisible warm wings, in your great colorless windowpane bat wings, and said, ‘I see you there!’ But you said nothing. ‘You’re up there all right.’ But you said nothing. ‘Come on down!’ But not a word, only a victorious Cheshire smile. And doubt coming over the Seeker below. ‘It is you, isn’t it?’ The backing off and away. ‘Aw, I know you’re up there!’ No answer. Only the tree sitting in the night and shaking quietly, leaf upon leaf. And the Seeker, afraid of the dark within darkness, loping away to seek easier game, something to be named and certain of. ‘All right for you!’
He washed his hands in the bathroom, and thought, Why am I washing my hands? And then the grains of time sucked back up the flue of the hour-glass again and it was another year …
He remembered that sometimes when he played hide-and-seek they did not find him at all; he would not let them find him. He said not a word, he stayed so long in the apple tree that he was a white-fleshed apple; he lingered so long in the chestnut tree that he had the hardness and the brown brightness of the autumn nut. And God, how powerful to be undiscovered, how immense it made you, until your arms were branching, growing out in all directions, pulled by the stars and the tidal moon until your secretness enclosed the town and mothered it with your compassion and tolerance. You could do anything in the shadows, anything. If you chose to do it, you could do it. How powerful to sit above the sidewalk and see people pass under, never aware you were there and watching, and might put out an arm to brush their noses with the five-legged spider of your hand and brush their thinking minds with terror.
He finished washing
his hands and wiped them on a towel.
But there was always an end to the game. When the Seeker had found all the other Hiders and these Hiders in turn were Seekers and they were all spreading out, calling your name, looking for you, how much more powerful and important that made you.
‘Hey, hey! Where are you! Come in, the game’s over!’
But you not moving or coming in. Even when they all collected under your tree and saw, or thought they saw you there at the very top, and called up at you. ‘Oh, come down! Stop fooling! Hey! We see you. We know you’re there!’
Not answering even then – not until the final, the fatal thing happened. Far off, a block away, a silver whistle screaming, and the voice of your mother calling your name, and the whistle again. ‘Nine o’clock!’ her voice wailed. ‘Nine o’clock! Home!’
But you waited until all the children were gone. Then, very carefully unfolding yourself and your warmth and secretness, and keeping out of the lantern light at corners, you ran home alone, alone in darkness and shadow, hardly breathing, keeping the sound of your heart quiet and in yourself, so if people heard anything at all they might think it was only the wind blowing a dry leaf by in the night. And your mother standing there, with the screen door wide …
He finished wiping his hands on the towel. He stood a moment thinking of how it had been the last two years here in town. The old game going on, by himself, playing it alone, the children gone, grown into settled middle age, but now, as before, himself the final and last and only Hider, and the whole town seeking and seeing nothing and going on home to lock their doors.
But tonight, out of a time long past, and on many nights now, he had heard that old sound, the sound of the silver whistle, blowing and blowing. It was certainly not a night bird singing, for he knew each sound so well. But the whistle kept calling and calling and a voice said, Home and Nine o’clock, even though it was now long after midnight. He listened. There was the silver whistle. Even though his mother had died many years ago, after having put his father in an early grave with her temper and her tongue. ‘Do this, do that, do this, do that, do this, do that, do this, do that …’ A phonograph record, broken, playing the same cracked turn again, again, again, her voice, her cadence, around, around, around, around, repeat, repeat, repeat.
And the clear silver whistle blowing and the game of hide-and-seek over. No more of walking in the town and standing behind trees and bushes and smiling a smile that burned through the thickest foliage. An automatic thing was happening. His feet were walking and his hands were doing and he knew everything that must be done now.
His hands did not belong to him.
He tore a button off his coat and let it drop into the deep dark well of the room. It never seemed to hit bottom. It floated down. He waited.
It seemed never to stop rolling. Finally, it stopped.
His hands did not belong to him.
He took his pipe and flung that into the depths of the room. Without waiting for it to strike emptiness, he walked quietly back through the kitchen and peered outside the open, blowing, white-curtained window at the footprints he had made there. He was the Seeker, seeking now, instead of the Hider hiding. He was the quiet searcher finding and sifting and putting away clues, and those footprints were now as alien to him as something from a prehistoric age. They had been made a million years ago by some other man on some other business; they were no part of him at all. He marveled at their precision and deepness and form in the moonlight. He put his hand down almost to touch them, like a great and beautiful archaeological discovery! Then he was gone, back through the rooms, ripping a piece of material from his trousers turn-up and blowing it off his open palm like a moth.
His hands were not his hands anymore, or his body his body.
He opened the front door and went out and sat for a moment on the porch rail. He picked up the lemonade glass and drank what was left, made warm by an evening’s waiting, and pressed his fingers tight to the glass, tight, tight, very tight. Then he put the glass down on the railing.
The silver whistle!
Yes, he thought. Coming, coming.
The silver whistle!
Yes, he thought. Nine o’clock. Home, home. Nine o’clock. Studies and milk and graham crackers and white cool bed, home, home; nine o’clock and the silver whistle.
He was off the porch in an instant, running softly, lightly, with hardly a breath or a heartbeat, as one barefooted runs, as one all leaf and green June grass and night can run, all shadow, forever running, away from the silent house and across the street, and down into the ravine …
He pushed the door wide and stepped into the Owl Diner, this long railroad car that, removed from its track, had been put to a solitary unmoving destiny in the center of town. The place was empty. At the far end of the counter, the counterman glanced up as the door shut and the customer walked along the line of empty swivel seats. The counterman took the toothpick from his mouth.
‘Tom Dillon, you old so-and-so! What you doing up this time of night, Tom?’
Tom Dillon ordered without the menu. While the food was being prepared, he dropped a nickel in the wall phone, got his number, and spoke quietly for a time. He hung up, came back, and sat, listening. Sixty seconds later, both he and the counterman heard the police siren wail by at fifty miles an hour. ‘Well – hell!’ said the counterman. ‘Go get ’em, boys!’
He set out a tall glass of milk and a plate of six fresh graham crackers.
Tom Dillon sat there for a long while, looking secretly down at his ripped trousers turn-up and muddied shoes. The light in the diner was raw and bright, and he felt as if he were on a stage. He held the tall cool glass of milk in his hand, sipping it, eyes shut, chewing the good texture of the graham crackers, feeling it all through his mouth, coating his tongue.
‘Would or would you not,’ he asked, quietly, ‘call this a hearty meal?’
‘I’d call that very hearty indeed,’ said the counterman, smiling.
Tom Dillon chewed another graham cracker with great concentration, feeling all of it in his mouth. It’s just a matter of time, he thought, waiting.
‘More milk?’
‘Yes,’ said Tom.
And he watched with steady interest, with the purest and most alert concentration in all of his life, as the white carton tilted and gleamed, and the snowy milk poured out, cool and quiet, like the sound of a running spring at night, and filled the glass up all the way, to the very brim, to the very brim, and over …
The Witch Door
It was a pounding on a door, a furious, frantic, insistent pounding, born of hysteria and fear and a great desire to be heard, to be freed, to be let loose, to escape. It was a wrenching at hidden paneling, it was a hollow knocking, a rapping, a testing, a clawing! It was a scratching at hollow boards, a ripping at bedded nails; it was a muffled closet shouting and demanding, far away, and a call to be noticed, followed by a silence.
The silence was the most empty and terrible of all.
Robert and Martha Webb sat up in bed.
‘Did you hear it?’
‘Yes, again.’
‘Downstairs.’
Now whoever it was who had pounded and rapped and made his fingers raw, drawn blood with his fever and quest to be free, had drawn into silence, listening himself to see if his terror and drumming had summoned any help.
The winter night lay through the house with a falling-snow silence, silence snowing into every room, drifting over tables and floors, and banking up the stairwell.
Then the pounding started again. And then:
A sound of soft crying.
‘Downstairs.’
‘Someone in the house.’
‘Lotte, do you think? The front door’s unlocked.’
‘She’d have knocked. Can’t be Lotte.’
‘She’s the only one it could be. She phoned.’
They both glanced at the phone. If you lifted the receiver, you heard a winter stillness. The phones were dead. They
had died days ago with the riots in the nearest towns and cities. Now, in the receiver, you heard only your own heartbeat. ‘Can you put me up?’ Lotte had cried from six hundred miles away. ‘Just overnight?’
But before they could answer her, the phone had filled itself with long miles of silence.
‘Lotte is coming. She sounded hysterical. That might be her,’ said Martha Webb.
‘No,’ said Robert. ‘I heard that crying other nights, too. Dear God.’
They lay in the cold room in this farmhouse back in the Massachusetts wilderness, back from the main roads, away from the towns, near a bleak river and a black forest. It was the frozen middle of December. The white smell of snow cut the air.
They arose. With an oil lamp lit, they sat on the edge of the bed as if dangling their legs over a precipice.
‘There’s no one downstairs, there can’t be.’
‘Whoever it is sounds frightened.’
‘We’re all frightened, damn it. That’s why we came out here, to be away from cities, riots, all that damned foolishness. No more wiretaps, arrests, taxes, neurotics. Now when we find it at last, people call and upset us. And tonight this, Christ!’ He glanced at his wife. ‘You afraid?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t believe in ghosts. This is 1999; I’m sane. Or like to think I am. Where’s your gun?’
‘We won’t need it. Don’t ask me why, but we won’t.’
They picked up their oil lamps. In another month the small power plant would be finished in the white barns behind the house and there’d be power to spare, but now they haunted the farm, coming and going with dim lamps or candles.
They stood at the stairwell, both thirty-three, both immensely practical.
The crying, the sadness, and the plea came from below in the winter rooms.
‘She sounds so damned sad,’ said Robert. ‘God, I’m sorry for her, but don’t even know who it is. Come on.’
They went downstairs.
As if hearing their footsteps, the crying grew louder. There was a dull thudding against a hidden panel somewhere.
‘The Witch Door!’ said Martha Webb at last.