At the Twilight's Last Gleaming

by David Bischoff

  The old beaten yellow beast that is the Number 54 school bus chugged up, spouting dingy plumes of exhaust. It lurched to a squealing stop in front of us. I pulled myself up with the handrail and made my way down the aisle.

  When he rode it, Harold Lumpkin always sat at the back of the bus. Being politically involved, he claimed it was in solidarity with Southern Blacks who had been forced to sit in the backs of buses for decades. In fact, I knew there was another reason. He had a fantasy about what he was going to do one day at the back window, which involved partially baring his backside and pressing it against the glass.

  Harold’s parents lived close to the school, but some nights he stayed at his grandparents’ house, which was close to my own house.

  When he took the bus, Harold always saved a seat for me.

  He scooched over to the window, having warmed up the seat I planned to sit in.

  “Hi, Harry,” I said.

  “Wow. Harry today? You’re calling me Harry today? Does that mean I can call you Becky?”

  “No. The name is Rebecca.”

  “Rebecca, not of Sunnybrooke Farm?”

  “That’s me.”

  “So,” said Harold. “You got it?”

  I patted my pack, which was now perched in my lap. “Yes, right in here.”

  “I still can’t believe you bought it.”

  “I do what I need to do, Harry.”

  Harry blinked at me through his thick black glasses.

  Harry Lumpkin was my best friend.

  Well, Harry was my best friend here in Maryland anyway. I had other friends from the past that I wrote to. Girls from various ages of my past. But lately I hadn’t been able to connect much with other girls here, and I didn’t want to get too much into the cliques at Crossland. Harold Lumpkin was the kind of smart nerd that carried a slide-rule around with him, and had pens and pencils neatly tucked into the pocket of his Sears shirt. He was like my brother and I understood him, so he was easy to talk to. I picked him up the third day on the bus into school, when I saw him with the new issue of Analog Science Fiction and Science Fact tucked neatly into the band around his school books. From the first talk I made it very clear to him that it was a no-touch relationship. He was simply a member of my exclusive club. I could cherish him and he could adore me, but only as friends. Anything else, I assured him, would destroy what we had.

  There was a moment of uncomfortable silence between us.

  He knew what I was up to after school.

  More importantly, he knew what I was up to after school and why. It obviously troubled him, but he didn’t want to talk about it.

  Harold scratched his big nose, adjusted his glasses, took a deep breath, and let go a deep sigh flavored with Listerine. (I’d gently informed him the previous week that sometimes in the morning he’d forget to brush his teeth and had dragon breath.)

  He changed the subject.

  “So, you have a paperback today?”

  “Yes. Virginia Coffman.”

  “Ace Books?”

  “Yes.” I pulled the book out of my pack. Virginia Coffman was the author. There was a picture of an old castle on the cover, but it was in the background of the color illustration. Above it, a moon covered with creepy clouds hung in a brooding sky. In the foreground was a beautiful woman running away from the house, hand to her mouth with shock. On a tower of the castle was a shadowy male figure.

  The book was a type that we called a gothic.

  “Great cover,” said Harry. “Can I look at it?”

  “Sure.”

  He opened it up to the first chapter.

  There was a small sketch of a castle on the top of the first chapter.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh. Your favorite artist again?”

  “Yes. Jack Gaughan. He does a lot of work for Ace.”

  “Not Gothics, though.”

  “I don’t think he does the covers, but he does sketches as frontispieces.”

  “Kind of abstract.”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s what he does for the science fiction illustrations. He does a lot of art for Galaxy and Worlds of If.”

  “Our solar systems intersect!”

  He smiled. “Yeah. I read a lot of ACE books too.”

  “So, you want to read this copy of Dark Destiny when I finish?”

  He somehow managed a sly look on his lunky features. “Let me guess. A woman comes to an old country house. There’s a brooding man somewhere about that may or may not have killed his wife. Very handsome.”

  “As a matter of fact, he’s rather ugly!” I said defensively.

  “Hmm. Maybe that’s Mr. Hyde and she’s going to meet Dr. Jekyll soon.”

  I smiled and shrugged. “It’s not top drawer, I concede. But it’s fun.”

  Gothics were a genre of book in the nineteen sixties that had been around for a while, but had gone a bit crazy in the last ten years. Lumpy was right about them being formulaic. They always featured a young woman, a mysterious man, and some kind of old item of architecture, usually a house, castle or manor. There is jeopardy. There is mystery. Folks claim to be able to trace mankind back to Adam and Eve – and folks also claim to be able to trace gothics back to Charlotte and Emily Bronte with their classics Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. In fact, they trace it way back to some 1764 novel called The Castle of Otranto.

  I had my own theories.

  Mostly, though, I had an addiction.

  The school bus lurched down Henderson Road, negotiating Dead Man’s Curve slowly, stopping three times more to pick up students. It puffed phlegmatically up Temple Hills Road, down past the Baptist Church and then up and up some more, to wheeze and tremble up to the cold architecture of my own gothic prison – Crossland Senior High School.

  It was a monster, Crossland Senior High.

  It was the biggest and the newest high school in Prince Georges County. It was a lumbering Pentagon of ugly flat squarish buildings that sprawled rather than rose, surrounded by sports fields and parking lots.

  I loathed it.

  Cold and modern in the worst sense, its biggest sin to me was that it was just plain boring. It looked like something the military would design. It was functional but unimaginative, without the faintest suggestion that humans might want to look at it and feel something.

  Half of it wasn’t quite finished – the Vocational Wing. High school had become less of an end point in education, and more of a transition to college. However, for those students who didn’t want to go to college but wanted to move along into the real world as soon as possible, “vocational” aspects of high school were being featured, to get them launched into a good career.

  Or so the theory went.

  It was all part of the Great Society concept, I guess. Rumor had it that the architect of the Great Society, President Lyndon Johnson, was going to helicopter out from the White House for the dedication ceremony when it was finished. It was one of his bills he’d rammed through Congress, after all, that had built it.

  The school bus coughed to a stop. It disgorged us back into the cold. Trailing scarves and plumes of breath, we hunched against the cold and made our way to the next Station of the Crossland, the assembly room. Here, tables were set out in preparation for lunch period. Here we parked our cold butts until the first bell rang and we were permitted to the next Station of the Crossland. Home room.

  And there, in that assembly room, were many of the principal characters that Fate had selected to mix into the events of the next few weeks.

  Events that would change my life forever.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE CROSSLAND MULTIPURPOSE room was a huge expanse of high ceilings and a few narrow windows. Opposite the entry doors was the kitchen area, which opened up to create the school cafeteria. Today I coul
d see food workers scurrying behind the steamed windows to prepare the daily gruel.

  In the front of the room was a large heavy black curtain, which was ominously closed. Today a podium stood on the lip of the proscenium, armed with a mike. Last night there must have been a PTA meeting.

  The multipurpose room always felt stark and unfriendly and more than a little nasty, but it was warmer than outdoors. Most of the students hurried in and gathered into groups of friends. There was a good deal of yawning. Many students used the opportunity to lay their heads on the table to catch a few more winks. I never found this possible, since the din of chatter was enormous.

  After we said hello to Mr. Hendricks, the night custodian who was just finishing up some floor mopping, Harold and I found a quieter place at the end of the table, near the stage, and we sat down at the end, huddled together companionably, watching the mob.

  Harold looked back at the heavy curtain with misgivings. “One of these days I expect to see that curtain open. We’ll see King Kong, chained up. Flashbulbs will go off. He’ll roar and thrash. And then he’ll pull off his chains, grab you, and head for the Empire State Building.”

  “Me?” I said. “I’m no svelte beauty. Why not one of the cheerleaders, the ones who spend a half hour on their hair before they come to school?”

  “He’s my King Kong, that’s why,” said Harold Lumpkin.

  I would have pursued the issue further, but it was then that the reason I had the thing in my bag came into the room.

  He arrived with style. The way he moved never failed to fascinate me. He took dancing lessons, sure, but he’d also told me that he liked to watch Fred Astaire movies. Even though he was a bigger guy, he walked like Fred Astaire. He had a flowing grace to him.

  I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed Harold’s arm and squeezed emphatically. “Oh my god,” I said. “He’s here.”

  He leaned over a nearby table and chatted for a moment with the occupants, then he smiled, turned, and looked for someone. That dazzling smile again, and he pointed. Laughing, showing a set of white, flashing teeth, he waved, called, and then started that graceful walk again...

  Toward our table.

  “Ouch! Your fingernails are digging into my arm!” said Harold, obviously irked for other reasons as well.

  “Harold. Harold – he’s coming to our table!” I said through clenched teeth.

  Sure enough, the object of my attention moved blithely down the aisle. The din of the room seemed to die down, and my attention focused into a narrow tunnel, fixed on this young man.

  Peter. Peter Harrigan.

  He was, quite simply, beautiful.

  He was tall with broad shoulders. He had piercing dark eyes that sparkled below dark brows. His chin had a dimple and his cheeks, in fact his whole face, worked together as a team in quest of perfect symmetry. His body had an agile strength to it. You could see that strength in the way he moved.

  I was never much for boys.

  Boys being boys, when I started getting a figure, I got attention.

  But it was like being the only human in a monkey house. I just didn’t get it. I didn’t care. There were too many other important things in life to bother with adolescent males.

  When I saw Peter Harrigan, though, I understand the whole female-male attraction thing.

  “Hey,” said Harold. “Your fingernails are really hurting. I mean it!”

  “Sorry,” I said, easing my grip.

  I felt giddy and excited. The slight trembles of feeling started awakening the wells of deeper emotions that I had for this handsome, charming and sweet young man.

  Sometimes lately I would wake up in the middle of the night and I’d be thinking about Peter. It was as though I’d started some sentence about him while I was sleeping, but could only finish it awake. I would just lie there, clutching my pillow, thinking about the few conversations we’d had, thinking about his kind smile, thinking about the twinkle in his eyes...thinking about having those strong arms around me....

  ....and his hot breath on my neck.

  I kept on telling myself, you’ve just got a crush. A crush!

  You’ve heard about crushes. They’re a dime a dozen at high school.

  But these feelings – they felt just overwhelming. Moving inside me like a tsunami, they felt like the Dark Tides of Fate being pulled by the Moon. Or something like that.

  “You don’t have to take a deep breath or anything,” said Harry, “but breathing would be a good idea.”

  I gasped. “Oh, God, I’m holding my breath again. Not good, not good.”

  I took in a deep, deep breath and closed my eyes. I guess the theory was, with boys, you get into the shallow end of the pool first. You dance, you hang out, you flirt – maybe a kiss here, a make-out session there. Some long phone calls. And then, of course, lots and lots of dramatic conversations with your girlfriends.

  But not me.

  No, I didn’t do that. My nose was in books and I was busy moving between Air Force bases.

  No, for me it was a dive right into the deep end. And a belly-flop dive at that!

  “Maybe you’d better open your eyes,” said Harry. “He’s coming this way.”

  “Coming this...”

  My eyes shot open. Sure enough, Peter was wending his way along the side aisle, headed toward the sparsely populated tables by the stage.

  “Coming this way. Harold -- he’s going to sit by us!”

  Harold got a pained look on his face. Pained but patient. He knew what would have to happen then.

  “Look, if you are going to get to know this guy, you’re going to have to start talking to him.”

  “I will. But if I’ve got an icebreaker around, why not avail myself?”

  “Oh, I feel so used,” Harry said, mock dramatically. “I’m not exactly the social butterfly.”

  “But I freeze up!” I said. “I just totally can’t talk to him right away. You know that. So, just start talking.”

  I was getting desperate, since I could see that Peter had broken off from a conversation. His head was down. He was alone. He was coming toward us!

  “Oh my god, is he going to talk to me?” I muttered. “Why would Peter want to talk to me?”

  “Maybe he knows about what’s in the bag,” said Harold. “And what your afternoon plans are.”

  “Nobody knows that. Nobody knows but you and me, Harold.”

  Peter Harrigan moved was about halfway down the table from us. He looked directly at us. When he saw me, he smiled and gave a nice, gentle wave. Then he sat down. Immediately, he opened a book.

  With extreme delicacy, he drew out a pair of reading glasses from a sleek black case, put them on, and absorbed himself in a history book.

  He recognized me!

  We had no classes together. Peter was a senior, and I was a junior. I saw him only when he came into the library while I was manning the front desk during my library period.

  As far as he knew, my vocabulary was limited to “Hi,” and “I’m afraid this book is overdue.”

  “Harold,” I said, kicking his leg.

  “Oh, hi,” said Harold. “Got a history test today, Peter?”

  “Yes,” said Peter. “Well, actually just a quiz.”

  “Uhm – I’m not really much at history but my friend here.... is just the best history scholar you’ve ever seen!”

  “Oh, yes,” said Peter. “You work at the library, don’t you? I’ve seen you.”

  I nodded. It wasn’t one of my more articulate moments.

  “I’m pretty good at American History,” continued Peter. “But this is World History and the teacher, I believe, is a frustrated English scholar with his head in the clouds. All kinds of strange theories. We’re studying the Victorian period now, and I’m at a bit of a los
s.”

  The Victorian period!

  I lived in the 19th Century!

  “Well, as a matter of fact!” I said, suddenly finding my voice.

  It was then that disaster struck.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IN MY VICTORIAN World, the sun had been coming up and shining on me through the smile of my beloved!

  Suddenly, it was a dark and stormy night.

  Disaster! Unmitigated disaster!

  Two dark forms moved like shadows, settling down into seats, separating Peter’s bright eyes from my hopeful smile. One shadow was tall, yet stooped. The other was short and squat. One was male and one was female.

  They looked like cut-outs from a particularly creepy Charles Addams cartoon. They were talking to each other in a kind of loud mumble I could not decipher and didn’t care to at the time.

  Peter, of course, used the opportunity to shrug, wave a kind of sweet toodle-loo, and immerse himself back in his books.

  “Do you two mind!” I said, losing control. “We were just having a conversation here!”

  “Pardon?” said the guy.

  His head was covered in long, limp hair that didn’t look recently washed. He had a long high forehead, and deep set eyes. He had high cheekbones and a sharp regular chin, but any good looks were diminished by the extreme pallor of skin. He had the paleness of a dead earthworm you find washed up on your sidewalk after a storm.

  His companion was a short lump of a girl, dressed in black, with limp black hair too, but with a doughy face too, pale and not much character. Only her eyes showed any life about her. They had a kind of dim, almost interesting glow.

  “Good morning, Rebecca,” said the guy.

  “Good morning,” I said, with cutting politeness. “You kind of interrupted us.” I whispered pleadingly.: “Could you move?”

  “Move?” said the girl. The glow in her eyes turned a bit crimson, almost baleful.

  “Ummm.. .or how about this,” said Harold. “We trade places, okay. Only six minutes till the bell. What’s the harm?”

  The guy’s eyebrow furrowed. He got a look of righteous indignation on his face, flavored with a bit of hurt.