And no love at all.
~ * ~
Morning
So, there it is—I have no idea if my friend Sam Feary is actually here. And I have no idea if Phyllis Pellaprat is here, either. Maybe I desperately want both of them to be here. Maybe I need them to be here because they could help me survive this...thing that's happening, because, after all, who in the name of God are these others who have crowded into my little house?
Not too long ago, after I tried, in vain, to enjoy a dinner of seared salmon and brown rice, I called out to them, by name. It was a stupid thing to do, yes—because I know none of their names, and none of their faces (which come and go as fleetingly from my field of view as the waking memory of a dream).
"Timothy!" I called out. "Robert! Joanna! Why are you here? Why have you come to this house?"
No one answered.
I was remembering, I think, two years of utter foolishness from decades ago, before I went to Manhattan to do my book, and, instead, met Phyllis and the others, which changed the course of my life.
~ * ~
Late Morning
That foolishness was a séance in a house that was allegedly haunted, where we—Sam Feary and my beautiful cousin Stacey, Art DeGraff, and several others our age—gathered, laid candles out, drew a pentagram in white chalk on the bare oak floors, set up our Ouija board, and then, after gathering into a ragged circle around it, and interlocking hands, made entreaties to the departed to speak with us.
We had the names of the departed; everyone in Bangor did—their deaths in a drowning accident a year earlier had been well-publicized: they were Reginald Pyle, his wife, Shirley, and their eleven-year-old twin daughters, Erin and Becky. A photograph of this sweet family stood on a Queen Anne table in the room we were using for our séance (the living room), and each of us had taken turns staring at it and muttering inanities about the tragic and untimely loss of such a beautiful family. We all felt (we decided before coming to the house) that we needed to appear sympathetic to them, even empathetic, friendly and caring, and, said Sam Feary, "Like we're there to help them move on."
"Yeah," said my beautiful cousin Stacey, "move on. I mean, it's obvious, right? If they're actually still in that house, then something's keeping them from moving on."
"Moving on?" asked Art DeGraff. "To where?"
"To another realm," I said, as if I actually knew what I was talking about. "Maybe not to heaven, or hell, or whatever. But another place like Earth. You know, another realm, another dimension, where they can all live again."
"Uh-huh," Art said, clearly unconvinced.
So we had our séance, and the curtains fluttered suggestively, the doors throughout the large house grumbled on their hinges, something on the second floor moved "stealthily" (Tom Quivers said), and Janice Redwig proclaimed, "My cheeks are cold! Something's touching my cheeks!" which we thought was very cool, so cool, in fact, that Stacey said something was touching her cheeks, too, and Tom Quivers said, "It's as cold as Pluto in here. Can't you feel it?" to which I and Art DeGraff said, almost in unison, "I think you're right."
And, later that night, someone spoke to us.
He or she said, through the Ouija board (and, thus, through our own forgers), “Be gone! You are not welcome here!"
We left the house five minutes later, at a run.
But we repeated the séance a half dozen times in the next eighteen months, until one of us was killed in a bicycling accident (Tom Quivers, who pulled out in front of a UPS truck in his cherry red Corvair) and another, an always-smiling, and very thin girl named Gwen, went off to live in the Midwest with her boyfriend (she was widely rumored to be pregnant), and another (Janice Redwig), confessed, at the Pyle house, after what turned out to be the final séance, that she had been moving the Ouija Board's pointer all along, for the past eighteen months, and that she and her friends had rigged the house. Then she laughed derisively, started for the door, looked back, and gave us a malodorous grin. "Gullible fools!" she said. "You're all just gullible fools! It was so entertaining to watch you fall for all of our fucking bullshit!"
When she was gone, we talked with great agitation and annoyance about how poorly we actually knew her, that we should have guessed—from rumors we'd heard, but had dismissed because she always seemed so sincere—that she was a liar, and finished with a consensus that even though she'd manufactured a nearly two-year-long hoax we'd all fallen for, it would still not explain some of the creepier goings-on at the Pyle house.
But we were wrong.
~ * ~
8:04 AM
I awoke in the small hours of the morning and saw that the passing misery crowded around my bed, and I watched as they reached for me, cocked their heads at me like small dogs, and I screamed—perhaps a word, perhaps something guttural, unintelligible; I can't remember—and they vanished at once, as if my scream gave them great pain. But I decided, then (and still believe, four or five sleepless hours later), that I had merely awakened from a dream into another dream. Because this, I told myself, is not the way these things behave. I knew it. I know it. I have, after all, experienced them for many months, now. I don't know them, but I know their movements in this house and in the dim woods beyond (though only as well, perhaps, as I can know the movements of underground rivers, or the movements of the atmosphere; I know their breathing, too, and sometimes I know even their dreams; I know their voices; and the detritus of the lives they've left behind.
But here it is: I don't know them.
I live among them. They surround me, suffocate me, bring me nightmares. But I don't know them.
They're strangers to me, and, perhaps, I am a stranger to them. My fear is that I'm not. My fear is that they know me very well.
~ * ~
11:03 AM
They are not merely what they appear to be. They're made of stone, shadow, sunlight. They lie and beguile, whisper, scream, chat, cajole, grin, persuade.
Wimbly go the dire jibble, into each minipont a little bare must fall.
And:
I see them pass within the crowds who pass we where I sit among the others all around me selling their precious pink collectibles, their comic books and flatulent toaster ovens, distressed gold and yellow furniture, their wildly curvaceous Barbie dolls old enough to vote, and I scream to them, "Oh look, please, at me! Oh look, please at ME!" And they look and see the chair I sit in. They look and see the grass the chair sits on. They look and see my startlingly rusted Desoto behind the chair, and the other cars, too, whose paint and metal, unlike my Desoto's, are thick enough to withstand a stiff breeze.
“Buy my soaps," I shout at them. Please look at me and buy my soaps!" And they dig into their pockets, come up with nothing, trudge forward, into the gathering heat, the sun—using the strength gained from repetition—and rise into the softy swaying honey locusts.
"Sniff them, then," I shout. “Sniff my soaps and buy them. Then look at ME, oh look at ME!"
But they merely trudge forward, some east, some west, some in other directions, all in their rural finery, breasts and bellies flopping, mouths agape, mouths closed softly, eyes caught by bright colors and bouncy doo dads.
“Buy my soaps!" I shout at them.
I hear a door slam, the rasping noise of old hinges, a door slam, the rasping noise of old hinges.
I bend way over and sniff my soaps.
They smell of stagnant water and old pipes
It’s a smell I've grown to adore.
~ * ~
12:07 PM
I try to estimate them because I need to. Wouldn't you? If you lived here. If you lived in this place, if you lived among them. Wouldn't you?
Dammit! Wouldn't you?
~ * ~
1:13 AM
Darker than the space between stars tonight.
I was awakened minutes ago by this:
"AAABBBNNNEEERRRR!"
I opened my eyes, looked quickly right, left, thought I'd gone blind—there was no light anywhere and, so, no sh
adows. I sensed no presence nearby, either, something that might have said, "AAABBBNNNEEERRRR!"— nothing beyond the murky and intrusive presences in my little house, but these presences seemed, at any rate, to have retreated to some other place.
"AAABBBNNNEEERRRR!" I heard again, and I said, "Phyllis?" though the voice was neither male nor female. "Phyllis?" I said again, and glanced about desperately, and in vain, for some point of light. "Am I blind?" I said. "Have I gone blind?"
"AAABBBNNNEEERRRR!" the voice said again, and I tried to gauge the proximity of whatever was speaking—was it above me, was it to my right or left, at the foot of the bed, on the bed itself?
"AAABBBNNNEEERRRR!"
"For Christ's sake, who are you?" I screamed.
"AAABBBNNNEEERRRR!" the voice repeated.
"Who in the name of heaven are you?" I screamed.
"AAABBBNNNEEERRRR!" it repeated, but with greater insistence and urgency, as if making some point, though I had no idea what point it could be.
"Tell me your goddamned name!" I screamed.
"AAABBBNNNEEERRRR!" the voice repeated.
Silence followed.
And I became aware, once more, of the murky and intrusive presences, the shadows that exist with me in my little house in the dim woods.
~ * ~
Mid-morning
If you ask me about "evil," I'll tell you I don't know anything about it. I'll tell you, also, that I don't believe in it as a force in the universe (like gravity, or solar radiation).
But they talk about it sometimes, though they string their words together as if the links between their brains and tongues disintegrate and reintegrate second by second:
For instance:
He is an evil man, dunce at a word, completely unknown to his particulars and their benefactors, living that way by no one.
And:
Murdered therefore I was, brought up in grime and no matter, lies and resurrections gathered about me, evil creatures unadorned by sensitivities, slouching about from everywhere to everywhere, hands lowered.
And:
He, named Baldhawlin, big man, like his name, coming out that door as a bear would, impossible and tall and full of power, mouthing large annoyances and transgressions much as the small and weeping dead do.
You cannot tell them to be quiet. I've tried. They either don't hear, or they don't care (it can't be both; how could it be both?).
~ * ~
8:19
I awoke very early this morning from a dream of Phyllis, resplendent in blue chenille, and I knew at once that I had to leave my little house. I didn't want to leave it at night—the woods aren't beautiful at night, they're dense and unknowable.
But I had a great hunger for other places, some place other than this place, the quiet village, for instance, where I buy my food and have meaningless conversations with the tall bald man whose name, for the moment, I forget.
”I really like a clear blue sky, don't you, Mr. Cray? No clouds at all. Not even the hint of clouds."
"Yes, I like that, too, though I have no problem with an overcast sky."
"Overcast makes me sad. I think it makes everyone sad, don't you?"
“It doesn't make me sad"
“Perhaps, Mr. Cray, but you may not even realize your sadness."
“I doubt that."
"You prefer the extra large eggs, am I right, Mr. Cray?"
But how I could walk there at night? I don't even have a flashlight: I bought three of those large, gray ugly things that take huge batteries and cast copious amounts of light, but they disappeared one by one, and I know that these departed hid them somewhere.
I do have candles. I love candles. They cast a comforting glow. My grandmother used them instead of light bulbs because, she said, "They're so very comforting. A small flickering glow that shows us only what we need to see, so we can make our way in the darkness and know we're in darkness." But I have no matches. I could get them at the country store in the village, but these departed would simply hide them, too, just as they've hidden the luggable flashlights (they don't hide the candles. I know precisely where they are. They're in the second drawer in the kitchen, next to the sink. Tall blue candles that smell of raspberries).
But, minus candles or a flashlight, I left the house early this morning, well before the sunrise, made my way through the woods I could not see, and came upon a clearing I did not recall. I knew it was a clearing because, when I looked up, I found a spray of faint stars—the Milky Way.
The passing misery stood by in this clearing in great numbers, arms at their sides, mouths agape, eyes—mere dark ovals—open wide.
They spoke to me: "AAHHHHHBBBBNNNNEERRRR!" they said, as one. "AAHHHHHBBBBNNNNEERRRR!"
I said nothing to them.
I came back here at once, to my little house, climbed into my comfortable bed, and dreamt of Phyllis in blue chenille.
~ * ~
7:02
After Phyllis's departure in Manhattan, long ago, I took an apartment in Soho (this is history, so it exists). It was early autumn when I moved to the apartment, but the weather was still unbearably hot, so I set up a couple of fans around the place to cool it off.
One of those fans stood in the apartment's small living room, close to the chair I sat in to watch my 19" Sony television ("Murder, She Wrote," "Newhart," "Highway to Heaven" were my favorites): it was a floor-standing fan with large blades, and, because of the room's size, its upper right corner blocked my view of the TV screen by an inch or so. That was all right. Nothing much happens in that area of a screen anyway. Sky appears there, or clouds, or hair, but never anything important. So I kept the fan where it was.
One evening in late September, I was watching something like Benny Hill, I think (I remember there were lots of scantily clad, nicely built women running around with baseball bats and badminton rackets), and I saw that the small, upper section of the fan blades blocking the TV picture seemed to be moving at a snail's pace, while the rest of the blades—the parts not blocking the television screen—were simply a blur.
I was riveted by this: it seemed to be a physical parallel to my truly awful ability to see the dead (an ability I was certain had been bestowed upon me by the woman on the train, Barbara W. Barber), and I sought to explain it.
This was, of course, before the days of the Internet and long before personal computers had become an integral part of most households; there were no books in the apartment—other than novels by dead existentialists, volumes of poetry by Whitman, Eliot, Plath, Galway Kinnell, and a few others—and the library wasn't open (I remembered a sign in the public library in Bangor: "Ask a librarian."), so I was baffled as to how to immediately address the phenomenon of the television and the slowly moving fan blades (and, in those years, I needed an immediate response to everything).
Then I thought of my friend, Beverly, from high school, whose ambition was to grow up and "be a scientist, someone who makes a difference." Christ, she could explain every phenomenon of the natural world, from why the sky was blue, to why eggs were almost impossible to break if held lengthwise in the hand, to sonic booms. I thought she was terrific, and we hung around together throughout high school. (There was never a romance. She wasn't my romantic ideal, and I wasn't hers. [She told me once: "Abner, I love the way you think, but if you believe this friendship is going anywhere beyond the dining room table, you're mistaken. Tall, gawky boys with large hands simply don't turn me on. You know this, Abner—my brothers are tall and have large hands. It would be too much like incest.] She went out with Sam Feary for a while, until he told her he planned on joining the army, and she told him it was a "shitass thing to do. Those assholes in Washington will simply send you to 'Nam and you'll die. Where's the future in that?" He didn't die there. He died somewhere else. I don't know where. But I know it wasn't 'Nam.)
Here's the thing: as stupid as it sounds—because, after all, we hung out together for nearly four years—I couldn't remember her last name. So if I wanted to telephone h
er and talk about the slowly- moving-fan-blades-against-the-TV-screen phenomenon, I couldn't. Also, it was very unlikely she'd still be in Bangor. The last time I'd heard from her, she was about to head off to college somewhere in downstate New York. But, shit, if I could telephone, I'd get one of her parents, or her younger brother, Marvin, and they'd tell me where she was, I'd call her directly, and the mystery of the fan blades would be solved.
But, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember her last name. I felt like an idiot.
I looked at the slowly spinning fan blades.
I looked at the TV.
The fan blades again.
The TV.
Her phone number, from years earlier, came back to me all at once, like someone knocking at the door.
Spider on My Tongue Page 5