“Think of it: wood waking up. I can’t put it any clearer than that. And let’s not forget the paint for the hair and lips, the glass for the eyes. These too are aroused from a sleep that should never have been broken; these too are now part of a tingling network of dummy-nerves, alive and aware in a way we cannot begin to imagine. This is something too painful for tears and so the dummy laughs in your face, trying to give vent to an evil that was no part of his old home of wood and paint and glass. But this evil is now the very essence of its new home—our world, Mr. Veech. This is what is so horrible about the laughing Ticket Man. Go to sleep now, dummy. There, he has his nice silence back. Be glad I didn’t make one that screams, Mr. Veech. And be glad the dummy is, after all, just a device.
“Well, to what do I owe your presence here today. It is day, isn’t it, or very close to it?”
“Yes, it is,” replies Cheev.
“Good, I like to keep abreast of things. What’s your latest?” Voke inquires, proceeding to saunter slowly about and admiring the clutter of his loft.
Cheev leans back against a vague mound of indefinable objects and stares at the floor. He sounds drowsy. “I wouldn’t have come here, but I didn’t know what else to do. How can I tell you? The past days and nights, especially the nights, like icy hells. I suppose I should say that there is someone …”
“Whom you have taken a liking to,” Voke finishes.
“Yes, but then there is someone else …”
“Who is somehow an obstacle, someone whose existence helps to insure that your nights will be frosty ones. This seems very straightforward. Tell me, what is her name, the first someone?”
“Prena,” answers Cheev after some hesitation.
“And his, the second.”
“Lamm, but why do you need their names to help me?”
“Their names, like your name, and mine for that matter, are of no actual importance. I was just maintaining a polite interest in your predicament, nothing more. As for helping you, that assumes I have some control over this situation, which thankfully I don’t.”
“But I thought,” stammers Cheev, “the loft, your devices, you seem to have a certain … knowledge.”
“Like the dummy’s knowledge? You shouldn’t have depended on it. Nowyou just have one more disappointment to contend with. One more pain. But listen, can’t you just stick it out? For one reason or another, you could end up forgetting all about this Prena, this Lamm; you might come to realize that they are merely two shadows sewn together by their own delirium. It’s something to consider.
Anything can happen in this world of ours.”
“I can’t wait anymore, Doctor,” says Cheev in a nervous, shadowy voice.
“Well, you know what they say: Something is no worse than something or other with your own shadow. I forget exactly how it goes.”
“I am my own shadow,” Cheev replies.
“Yes, I can see that. Listen now, let us speak hypothetically for a moment. Are you familiar with the Street of Wavering Peaks? I know it has a more common name, but I like to call it that because of all those tall, slanty houses.”
Cheev nods to indicate that he too knows the street.
“Well—and I promise nothing, remember, I make no pledges or vows—but if you can somehow manage to bring both of your friends through that street tonight, I think there might be a solution to your problem, if you really want one. Do you mind what form the solution takes?”
Cheev timidly turns his head side to side, meaning he does not mind.
“You really are serious, aren’t you?”
Cheev says nothing in reply. Voke shrugs and gradually fades back to his point of origin within the deepest shadows of the room. The red light in the booth of the Ticket Man also fades like a setting sun, until the only color left in the room is the ultramarine of the flames burning on the walls. Cheev continues to gaze into the upper reaches of the loft for a few more moments, as if he can already see the slender rooftops of the houses in the Street of Wavering Peaks.
By night, facades of the houses on either side of this narrow street are fused, as if cut from a single piece of very old cardboard. Bonded by shadows and plastered together by moonlight, one house undulates into the next. Aside from their foundations and a few floors with shuttered windows, they are all roof. Splendidly they rise into the night, often reaching fantastic altitudes. At angles determined by an unknown system of forces and fixed forever on destiny’s tilt, they fall into and across the sky.
Tonight the sky is a swamp of murky clouds glowing in the false fire of the moon. From the direction of the street’s arched entranceway, three approaching figures are preceded by three elongated shadows. One figure walks ahead, leading the way but lacking the proper gestures of knowledge and authority. Behind are the shapes of a man and a woman, side by side with only a slice of evening’s soft radiance between them.
Toward the end of the street, the leading figure stops and the other two catch up with him. They are now all three standing outside one of the loftiest of the peaked houses. This house appears also to serve as a business of some kind, since a large sign, which swings a little in the wind and is muddled by shadows, displays a painted picture of the goods or services sold there: a pair of tongs, or something similar, laying crosswise upon what is perhaps a poker, or some other lengthy implement. But the business is closed for the night and the shutters are secured. A round attic window high above seems to be no more than an empty socket, though from the street—where the three figures have assumed the tentative postures of somnambulists—it is difficult to tell exactly what things are like up there. And now a fog begins to cut off their gaze from the upper regions of the Street of Wavering Peaks.
Cheev looks vaguely distressed, apparently unsure just how much longer they should loiter in this place. Not being privy to what is supposed to occur, if anything, what action should he take? All he can do at the moment is stall. But everything is soon brought to a conclusion, very quickly yet without a sense of haste or violence.
One moment Cheev is drowsily conversing with his two companions, both of them looking sternly suspicious at this point; the next moment it is as if they are two puppets who have been whisked upwards on invisible strings, into the fog and out of sight. It all happens so suddenly that they do not make a sound, though a little later there are faint, hollow screams from high above. Cheev has fallen to his knees and is covering his face with his bony hands.
Two went up, but only one comes down, suspended a few inches from the ground and swinging a little in the wind. Cheev uncovers his eyes and looks at the thing.
Yes, there is only one, but this one has too many … there is too much of everything on this body. Two faces sharing a single head, two mouths that have fallen silent forever with parted lips. The thing continues to hang in the air even after Cheev has completely collapsed on the Street of Wavering Peaks.
Voke’s next meeting with Cheev is as unexpected as the last one. There is a disturbance in the loft, and the rigid recluse lugs his bones out of the shadows to investigate. What he sees is Cheev and the Ticket Man both screaming with laughter. Their cachinnations stir up the stagnant air of the loft; they are two maniac twins crying and cackling with a single voice.
“What’s going on here, Mr. Veech?” demands Voke.
Cheev ignores him and continues his laughing duet with the dummy. Even after Voke touches the booth and says, “Go to sleep, dummy,” Cheev still laughs all by himself, as if he too is an automaton without control over his actions. Voke knocks Cheev to the floor, which seems to hit the right mechanism to shut off his voice. At least he is quiet for a few moments. Then he raises his eyes from the floor and glares up at Voke.
“Why did you have to do that to them?” he asks with a deeply stricken reproachfulness. His voice is rough from all that laughter; it sounds like grinding machinery.
“I’m hot going to pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have heard about what happened, not that I s
hould care. But you can’t hold me responsible, Mr. Veech. I never leave my loft, you know that. However, you’re perfectly free to go, if you go now. Haven’t you caused me enough trouble!”
“Why did it have to happen like that?” Cheev protests.
“How should I know? You said you didn’t mind what form the solution to your problem took. Besides, I think it all worked out for the best. Those two were making a fool of you, Mr. Veech. They wanted each other and now they have each other, so to speak, while you are free to move on to your next disaster. Wait one moment, I know what’s bothering you,” says Voke with sudden enlightenment.
“You’re distressed because it all ended up with their demise and not yours.
Death is always the best thing, Mr. Veech, but who would have thought you could appreciate such a view? I’ve underestimated you, no doubt about it. My apologies.”
“No,” screams Cheev, quivering like a sick animal. Voke now becomes excited.
“No? Noooo? What is the matter with you, young friend? Why do you set me up for these disappointments? I’ve had quite enough without your adding to the heap.
Take a lesson from the Ticket Man here. Do you see him whining? No, he is silent, he is still. A dummy’s silence is the most soothing silence of all, and his stillness is the perfect stillness of the unborn. He could be making a fuss, but he isn’t. And it is precisely his lack of action, his unfulfilled nature that makes him the ideal companion, my only true friend it seems. Deadwood, I adore you. Look at how his hands rest upon his lap in empty prayer. Look at the noble bearing of his collapsed and powerless limbs. Look at his numb lips muttering nothing, and look at those eyes—how they gaze on and on forever!”
Voke takes a closer look at the dummy’s eyes, and his own begin to lower with dark intentness. He leans against the booth for the closest possible scrutiny, his hands adhering to the glass as if by the force of some powerful suction.
Inside the booth, the dummy’s eyes have changed. They are now dripping little drops of blood, which appear black in the red haze surrounding him.
Voke pulls himself away from the booth and turns to Cheev.
“You’ve been tampering with him!” he bellows as best he can.
Cheev blinks a few leftover tears of false laughter out of his eyes, and his lips form a true smile. “I didn’t do a thing,” he whispers mockingly. “Don’t blame me for your troubles!”
Voke seems to be momentarily paralyzed with outrage, though his face is twisted by a thousand thoughts of action. Cheev apparently is aware of the danger and his eyes search throughout the room, possibly for a means of escape or for a weapon to use against his antagonist. He fixes on something and begins to move toward it in a crouch.
“Where do you think you’re going?” says Voke, now liberated from the disabling effects of his rage.
Cheev is trying to reach something on the floor that is the approximate size and shape of a coffin. Only one corner of the long black box sticks out of the shadows into the bluish green glare of the loft. A thick strip of gleaming silver edges the object and is secured to it with silvery bolts.
“Get away from there,” shouts Voke as Cheev stoops over the box, fingering its lid.
But before he can open it, before he can make another move, Voke makes his.
“I’ve done my best for you, Mr. Veech, and you’ve given me nothing but grief.
I’ve tried to deliver you from the fate of your friends … but now I deliver you to it. Join them, Cheev. “
At these words, Cheev’s body begins to rise in a puppet’s hunch, then soars up into the tenebrous rafters and beyond, transported by unseen wires. His arms and legs twitch uncontrollably during the elevation, and his screams… fade.
But Voke pays no attention to his victim’s progress. His baggy clothes flapping hysterically, he rushes to the object so recently threatened with violation. He drags it toward an open spot on the floor. The light from the walls, ghastly and oceanic, shines on the coffin’s silky black surface. Voke is on his knees before the coffin, tenderly testing its security with his fingertips. As if each accumulated moment of deliberation were a blasphemy, he suddenly lifts back the lid.
Laid out inside is a young woman whose beauty has been unnaturally perpetuated by a fanatic of her form. Voke gazes for some time at the corpse, then finally says: “Always the best thing, my dear. Always the best thing.”
He is still kneeling before the coffin as his features begin to undergo the ravages of various, obviously conflicting, phases of feeling. Eyes, mouth, the whole facial structure is called upon to perform gruesome acrobatics of expression. Ultimately an impossible task is relieved or avoided by laughter: the liberating laughter of an innocent derangement, of a virgin madness. Voke rises to his feet by the powers of his idiotic hilarity. He begins to move about in a weird dance—hopping and bouncing and bobbing. His laughter grows worse as he gyres aimlessly, and his gestures become more convulsive. Through complete lack of attention, or perhaps by momentarily regaining it, Voke makes his way out of the loft and is now laughing into the dark abyss beyond the precarious railing at the top of the crooked stairway. His final laugh seems to stick in his throat; he goes over the railing and falls without a sound, his baggy clothes flapping uselessly.
Thus the screams you now hear are not those of the plummeting Voke. Neither are they the screams of Cheev, who is long gone, nor the supernatural echoes of Prena and Lamm’s cries of horror. These screams, the ones from beyond the door at the top of the stairs, belong only to a dummy who now feels warm drops of blood sliding thickly over his lacquered cheeks, and who has been left—alone and alive— in the shadows of an abandoned loft. And his eyes are rolling like mad marbles.
Alice’s Last Adventure
Preston, stop laughing. They ate the whole backyard. They ate your mother’s favorite flowers! It’s not funny, Preston.” “Aaaaa ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Aaaaa ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”
—PRESTON AND THE STARVING SHADOWS
A long time ago, Preston Penn made up his mind to ignore the passing years and join the ranks of those who remain forever in a kind of half-world between childhood and adolescence. He would not give up the bold satisfaction of eating insects (cripsy flies and crunchy beetles are his favorites), nor that peculiar drunkenness of a child’s brain, induplicable once grown-up sobriety has set perniciously in. The result was that Preston successfully negotiated several decades without ever coming within hailing distance of puberty; he lived unchanged throughout many a perverse adventure in the forties and fifties and even into the sixties. He lived long after I ceased writing about him.
Did he have a prototype? I should say so. One doesn’t just invent a character like Preston using only the pitiful powers of imagination. He was very much a concoction of reality, later adapted for my popular series of children’s books.
Preston’s status in both reality and imagination has always had a great fascination for me. In the past year, however, this issue has especially demanded my attention, not without some personal annoyance and even anxiety.
Then again, perhaps I’m just getting senile.
My age is no secret, since it can be looked up in a number of literary reference sources (see Children’s Authors of Today) whose information is only a few years off—I won’t tell you in which direction. Over two decades ago, when the last Preston book appeared
(Preston and the Upside-Down Face), one reviewer rather snootily referred to me as the “‘Grande Damned’ of a particular sort of children’s literature.” What sort you can imagine if you don’t otherwise know, if you didn’t grow up—or not grow up, as it were—reading Preston’s adventures with the Dead Mask, the Starving Shadows, or the Lonely Mirror.
Even as a little girl, I knew I wanted to be an author; and I also knew just the kinds of things I would write. Let someone else give the preadolescents their literary introductions to life and love, guiding them through those volatile years when anything might go wrong, and landing them safely on the shores o
f incipient maturity. That was never my destiny. I would write about my adventures with Preston— my real-life childhood playmate, as everybody knew. Preston would then initiate others into the mysteries of an upside-down, inside-out, sinistral, always faintly askew (if not entirely reversed) universe. A true avatar of topsy-turveydom, Preston gave himself body and soul to the search—in common places such as pools of rainwater, tarnished ornaments, November afternoons—for zones of fractured numinosity, usually with the purpose of fracturing in turn the bizarre icons of his foul and bloated twin, the adult world. He became a conjurer of stylish nightmares, and what he could do with mirrors gave the grown-ups fits and sleepless nights. No dilettante of the extraordinary, but its embodiment. Such is the spiritual biography of Preston Penn.
But I suppose it was my father, as much as Preston’s original, who inspired the stories I’ve written. To put it briefly, Father had the blood of a child coursing through his big adult body, nourishing the over-sophisticated brain of Foxborough College’s associate professor of philosophy. Typical of his character was a love for the books of Lewis Carroll, and thus the genesis of my name, if not my subsequent career. (My mother told me that while she was pregnant, Father willed me into a little Alice.) Father thought of Carroll not merely as a clever storyteller but more as an inhumanly jaded aesthete of the imagination, no doubt projecting some of his own private values onto poor Mr. Dodgson. To him the author of the Alice books was, I think, a personal symbol of power, the strange ideal of an unstrictured mind manipulating reality to its whim and gaining a kind of objective force through the minds of others.
It was very important that I share these books, and many other things, in the same spirit. “See, honey,” he would say while rereading Through the Looking Glass to me, “see how smart little Alice right away notices that the room on the other side of the mirror is not as ‘tidy as the one she just came from. Not as tidy? he repeated with professorial emphasis but chuckling like a child, a strange little laugh that I inherited from him. “Not tidy. We knowwhat that means, don’t we?” I would look up at him and nod with all the solemnity that my six, seven, eight years could muster.
The Shadow at the Bottom of the World Page 7