400 Boys and 50 More

by Marc Laidlaw

  “Where are you taking me? Please tell me something. I’m so tired.”

  “Don’t you remember coming here?” Heather said.

  “I almost never . . . I was afraid of the woods.”

  “That was later. You weren’t when you were younger. The difference between us seemed much greater then. Now you’re practically the older one. So well-traveled, so worldly.”

  “You’ll always be my older sister, Heather.”

  “Believe me, there are times I wish I weren’t.”

  “When my fans come around?”

  “Baby sister, I have fans of my own.”

  Heather edged them around a rhododendron black and huge as a shaggy beast, on a trail she could never have found on her own. On the far side of the huge bush, Heather

  hesitated. Something made a sound inside Holly’s head, a single note that sounded stark and sinister against the general muzziness of her thoughts. It woke her slightly, though she hadn’t realized she was falling asleep.

  “Heather, do you hear music?” she asked.

  “Music? No, Holly. I hear words. You hear music.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Heather raised a hand, indicating the land directly before them, and said, “Don’t you remember?”

  Just ahead was a deepening of darkness, and also of the earth. The ground fell away before their feet, a black incision with the sound of water somewhere down inside it.

  The sides were rock and mud and brambles, but already Heather was moving toward a trail of stepping stones that might have been placed for this purpose. With one hand she helped Holly down, step by step, below the roots of the trees, away from the promise of the sky. It was dark again here, dark as midnight, the dawn negated. Her eyes dilated but there was little to see except the untrimmed, frightening forms of wildness, enormous shapes looming overhead like the shifting shadows of vast birds of prey. She remembered, dimly, a childhood nightmare; and the memory was one with the sensation of that very old dream. In her fatigue, it seemed she had never stopped dreaming it. It had been a dream of strange sounds in darkness, an eerie music that seemed to come simultaneously from far away and from deep within. And Heather had been part of the dream, just as she was part of this waking dream; Heather calling out strange words that seemed like part of the music, words that drew faces out of blackness and shadows and nothing, faces that were not faces at all despite the mouths, despite the fact that they came to look at Holly, thrusting as blindly as the roots of the old pines; and in the dream she had screamed and screamed to get away from them, screamed and twisted and writhed about trying to wake, calling for allies, for friends, for anyone who might hear—but there was nothing, no one came to rescue her, and the dream just went on and on as the music grew, and the blackness grew, until finally, much later, it all receded and she was awake, possibly. Though it seemed that the dream had never really ended, the darkness had never ebbed, she had just grown used to it.

  They stumbled along through weeds and vines, slipping on slick stones. Mud sucked at her shoes. She sensed the walls growing steeper, or else she was shrinking, falling into the ravine. She cried out and grabbed at her sister, who jumped and let out a faint gasp at her touch.

  “Heather, what is this place?”

  Heather silenced her, listening to the darkness. “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “Something following . . . .”

  Holly listened, but there was only the trickling gurgle of the cold stream. No morning birds. The sound of the water was faintly musical; it set off a corresponding harmony in her mind. She fought to silence it, but it seemed to spill out of her now, flooding the dark. She spoke to drown it out.

  “I don’t hear anything!” she cried. “Where are we going?”

  “It’s so dark,” Heather whispered. “It shouldn’t be this dark. I thought we would be safe.”

  “Then go back. Let’s go back.”

  For a moment Heather seemed to consider this, but then they both heard it—a grating sound, rocks rattling, somewhere behind them. Heather instantly turned and fled, abandoning Holly. Ahead lay a greater darkness; Holly felt certain the valley grew deeper and narrower here. But she was afraid to remain here alone—and even more afraid of what might be following them.

  She hurried after Heather, and suddenly the ground dropped away beneath her. Her feet slipped on mossy stones; she landed hard on her back, and went sliding down a wet chute, a waterfall. Her screams and Heather’s were mingled, though she realized that she had shot far ahead of her sister, far deeper. When she landed, sprawled on a bank of what felt like rocks and moss and decayed wood, she heard Heather somewhere above her, calling down:

  “Where are you, Holly?”

  Holly moaned. “Down here.”

  At first she thought Heather answered, “All’s well.”

  Then she said it again, louder: “At the well?”

  Well? Holly thought. What well?

  Her legs were still in the water. Curiously, she kicked them, but couldn’t find the bottom. At the base of the falls was a deep pool. The water felt strangely warm and stagnant. Suddenly afraid, she jerked her limbs out of it and scrambled backward till she came up against a wet wall of stone.

  “Heather?” she called. “You’ve been here before. How do I get back up?”

  “Don’t worry about that. This must be where they wanted you.”

  “Who, Heather?”

  “Don’t you remember? This is where the songs come from. This is where the music began.”

  Holly crouched down in a ball, hoping to shelter in the crannies of the rock. The pool made an evil lapping sound caused by the constant sloshing of the falls. By some trick of exhaustion, her faltering senses, it seemed to splash in time to the music in her head. There were little echoes of more complicated tunes implied in every trickle, melodies she might have worked out eventually, given time.

  “Do you remember, Holly? I brought you here a long time ago. It was a special day for both of us. I knew we’d have to come here again someday. And they’ve been calling— wanting you. I had to get you to come back. I didn’t mean for it to happen now, this morning—but I guess they couldn’t wait. It’s been too long already.”

  Holly suddenly felt that it was critical that she not answer. A single sound would betray her position. She tried to stifle even the sounds in her head, the dark music, fearing that there might be something nearby that could hear even that.

  Had she been here before, as Heather swore? She had no conscious memory of the place, though there was something like it in her thoughts—a place she’d thought her own nightmarish invention. No . . . in fact it was Heather’s creation. Heather had planted the scene in her mind: this very place.

  “How Black Was My Valley,” she whispered.

  And suddenly the music in her head died out completely. Silence filled the darkness, blotting out even the sound of the falls.

  Silence, until Heather began to sing.

  The words came irregularly at first, as if wrenched from her. Then Heather broke off to query her sister:

  “Do you hear them, Holly? Words and music this time? They ought to allow it. You’ve served them so well. We both have.”

  She commenced singing again, her voice rough and quavering, picking out words. Holly realized with a chill what her sister was doing. She was not inventing the words, not making them up as she went along—she was transcribing them, seizing on the odd echoing patterns of sound that seemed to float through this place, rendering them in human speech though they were anything but human. They were emanations of rock and water, of the trees and the air; and it was not a healthy conjunction of elements that operated here. This pool lay at the bottom of some of process she did not grasp; it was a receptacle for certain evils that trickled down from the world above, things that could not nourish the roots of trees, things the earth could not absorb. Listening to Heather, she began to perceive the untranslated meanings of the soun
ds, deeper than words. No wonder the songs had filled her with fear—they were pulled from this well of darkness, this catch-all for the fallen and decayed. And no wonder that her music had suited the words so well, for it was woven of the same substance. She had heard it, long ago; it had never left her for a moment since the time Heather brought her here; this dark place had always been part of her, its sounds directly inspiring her music.

  Yet she felt no sense of reunion, of coming home. There was no welcome, though she did sense a sort of recognition, a quickening in the dark around her.

  “They could have taken us then, Holly,” Heather called from above. “They let us have a good long time, but I always knew they’d want us back. Well, you were too young to realize what the bargain was; you might not think it’s fair, but really, you got the most out of it. Music runs so much deeper than words.”

  Holly shook herself, as if trying to throw off a thickening spell. “You’re insane!” she called. “You’re saying you . . . you sold your soul to write those songs?”

  Heather laughed, and the last traces of warmth were sucked from Holly’s body. The darkness seemed to thrust its faces at her, and something rattled on the shore of the deep pool.

  “No, little sister,” Heather called. “Not my soul.”

  * * *

  Runick knew the way by heart, but he had never had to travel it encumbered by a body as clumsy as his own. Where previously he had always glided down cleanly on a wind of music’s making, now he scrambled and stumbled, gouged by- thorns, and was soon coated in slippery mire, his fingers webbed with the scum and algae that grew between the rocks. The valley had reguired the sacrifice of his invulnerability, but it was worth it. Perhaps in the act of submitting to the place, it would raise him to those black heights he had long ago been promised. He had no doubt that he was crawling still among the lobes of his dreaming brain; that he had found some part of the world that expressed what was deepest and truest in himself, where for the first time he truly belonged and need no longer shut out the rest of creation.

  He was coming home to the bottom of the world, and as he advanced a muted, maddening music began to play around him, stirred up by the rattle of stones underfoot, the swirling of water around his ankles.

  A voice sounded just ahead, an intruder on the dark fantasy, and suddenly remembered that he was not indeed alone here. He had almost forgotten Holly Terror—that it was she who had brought him here in the first place, she who had introduced him to this portion of himself.

  He advanced more cautiously now, forever suspicious of the tricks reality played. In his visions this moment had always been accompanied by a spark of light, but in the actual valley there was no light; he might as well have been born sightless for all the good his eyes did him now. He carefully gauged the location of the voice, decided that it lay just ahead of him, inevitably blocking his way.

  Suddenly the voice broke into song, to match the music that curled around him, but it was an ill voice. If this were Holly, then the valley had robbed her of beauty; her voice was sick as death. It sounded as if she were dying, wasting her last bit of life on this awful moaning that hadn’t quite found a form in words.

  The reflex of the dream came back to him then. There was no light to pollute the perfect dark sanctity of this place, but the song was even worse than light. The sound drew something terrible out of him; it brought forth the strength of the guardian who had been born to protect the perfect peace and silence of the valley.

  Reaching for the horrible shrieking noise, determined to put an end to it, he stumbled forward with all the power of darkness rising in his heart. He could feel his nails growing longer, sharper, his wings spreading wide. He was almost himself again.

  * * *

  They were the words to “How Black Was My Valley.” Holly had sung them herself thousands of times, but never with such meaning, never to such a response. Her sister’s voice seemed to whirl and echo around her, stirring life in the still pool. The pebbles shifted under her, as if the shore were being scooped away from underneath. The grating rocks made a chuckling sound.

  She drew herself to her feet, scrabbling at the stone wall, trying not to let her teeth chatter. Numb fingers grasped a small knob of rock, her foot found a narrow ledge, and she dragged herself up several inches as the scraping sound grew louder beneath her. Water sprayed in her face as she moved straight into the flood. It poured over her head, filled her ears, deafening her for a moment. She pulled herself up another foot.

  From far away, in a distant echoing chamber, she heard a scream. She shook the water from her ears, and it was suddenly nearer. Heather’s voice became a harsh coughing, then nothing more than a rattle. She pressed close to the rock, waiting for the next sound, peering desperately upward through the spray.

  Dimly, above her, she saw two shapes struggling. One was Heather; she knew the pale flag of hair that lashed the dark. But it seemed as if the other figure was the one that frantically whipped the flag. All she could see of it was its blackness, even darker than the rest of the valley; there was something bird- or batlike about it, a sense of huge wings spreading as the two figures coiled close together and sprang into flight above her.

  They soared for only a moment, and then their plunge carried them past her. They hit the surface of the pool with a hollow sound, as if penetrating a drum. Water exploded over Holly, nearly sweeping her from the rock; in its aftermath she heard a rush of loose pebbles, as in an avalanche.

  And then silence.

  The music was gone from her head; her sister’s song, as well as the source, were gone.

  From the top of the slope, she looked back once and found that morning light had finally begun to penetrate the place. Below her—not nearly as far as she had imagined— was a deep still pool, a sheltered well. Water ran out through a narrow cleft in the far wall, a tumble of broken stone where the current became subterranean. Nothing but water could have passed through the crack.

  She tried to tear herself away, to hurry for help, but the surface of the pool captured her eye, like a lens into another world. The pool looked bottomless. The falls continued to patter down upon it, agitating the smoothness only slightly; it shook with a steady rippling, crystalline, pure.

  And then a face appeared just beneath the surface—not her sister, but a young man’s face that might have been familiar if it hadn’t looked so distorted by the liguid. His eyes were enormous, staring straight up at her, and filled inexplicably with adoration, blazing with love, as if in death she had brought him unspeakable fulfillment. It was that which sent her running, back up the valley- through the brightening day.

  * * *

  Later, after the police had tied up the obvious loose ends, after the pool had been plumbed and found bottomless, dredged and scoured by divers and yielded up nothing, after Holly Terror had fled Spencer vowing never to return,

  Runick’s family came to gather his things. Nevis stayed out of the room for the hour it took to pack a few sad boxes; avoiding their eyes, he didn’t speak of that night, or say anything more than he had told the police. He couldn’t help feeling guilty, somehow responsible. Runick’s parents didn’t say one word to him; dour folks, even when their son had been alive, and no wonder he had sought escape wherever he could find it, but mainly in music and the adoration of a beautiful rock musician. He hadn’t been the first.

  When they were gone, Runick went back into the room and found that they had stuffed the trashcan full of tapes and records. Holly Terror, all of them.

  Nevis liked her well enough, though not with Runick’s passion—thank God for that. He had other interests. Still, he couldn’t look at the covers without thinking of his roommate. Never quite a friend, but still—there had been something about him Nevis liked. He’d felt a strange affection. He couldn’t help but think that Runick should be remembered in a way he would appreciate.

  So Nevis rescued Runick’s favorite album, the one he played several times a day and treated so reverently
that there was scarcely a scratch upon it after a thousand playings. He didn’t bother with headphones, because there was no one he might disturb. He shut the door, closed the curtains, turned up the volume, and let the needle fall … And he was walking in darkness. In pine woods.

  In a dark place, a deep place.

  Before the first note finished, he bolted upright, screaming, searching for the light switch though he hadn’t turned it out, fighting his way back toward brightness and waking, though he hadn’t remembered falling asleep. He shoved the needle screeching over the platter, yanked the album off the turntable and sent it crashing against the wall.

  He could never listen to that cut again; could hardly stand to hear another Holly Terror song, no matter how much her style changed with her next band. He couldn’t say exactly why, for he retained only a faint memory of what he’d seen in that moment when the music began. He had a faint, unwelcome memory of blazing eyes, a woman white and weeping, black sweeping wings, and Runick.

  Runick had been there to turn him back, and he counted himself grateful for the warning.

  * * *

  She was Holly Terra now. She had a new band, she and Kelly. They sang of the earth and its mysteries, while avoiding outright horror; there was enough of that in her nightmares. She lost most of her original audience, who considered her too soft, and started to gather another which appreciated the subtler edge. She could look out from the stage and see the appreciation of a milder crowd, older, not so obsessive.

  But sometimes, still, a younger face would surface there, eyes wide and drinking in every note, every word— thirsty for things she and Kelly had not put into these songs. Eyes like bottomless wells . . ..

  And then she would remember the black pool, and those other eyes. She would recoil and lose a beat, fearing to look into the crowd again for the rest of the concert.

  Before such eyes she always felt like prey.

  The eyes in the pool had been gorged and satiated, at peace, but what it had taken to satisfy them had been beyond price.