Wilde Stories 2018

by Steve Berman

  BARROW: You see, I did all right for myself in the end. Not that I deserved to, but life isn’t fair, is it?

  [Barrow reaches for the door, holding the phone steady in his other hand. A flight of stairs leads down. There’s a rustle from behind the camera, and Rackham, the starling, flies past Barrow’s shoulder, disappearing down the stairs. Barrow stumbles, catching himself against the wall, but doesn’t fall.]

  BARROW: Damn bird will be the death of me.

  [The image is dark as Barrow gropes his way to the bottom of the stairs, and flicks on a light. The camera shows rows of red velvet seats on a raked floor, facing a stage. The curtains are open, the set bare save for a painted screen backdrop, meant to look like a window.]

  BARROW: It’s the Victory Theater. I bought up everything they could salvage after the fire, and had it all restored. What they couldn’t restore, I had rebuilt, exact replicas.

  [The image wavers again as Barrow moves to a row of seats halfway to the stage. He sits, steadying the camera against the back of the chair in front of him.]

  BARROW: I salvaged too much, Will. I was right, all those years ago when I said leading ladies are a disease. I’ve been carrying Clara in my blood for fifty-seven years, and there isn’t any cure. All I ever wanted to do was help her, Will, but I think I know why she chose me. It’s what she said about ghosts, and loss, and sorrow. A man can’t change his own nature, but the world can change it for him if he lets his guard down. I let my guard down. I fell in love with you. I left myself open, and where did it get me?

  [Barrow doesn’t move, but the house lights in theater dim, and the lights begin to rise slowly on the stage. As the lights reach full, they reveal a woman with dark hair, wearing a beaded gown, standing center stage.]

  BARROW: That’s her, Will. It’s Clara.

  [There’s a faint translucence to Clara’s form, but the starling flies from behind the camera and lands on Clara’s shoulder. She smiles.]

  BARROW (softly): That’s what all my love earned me, Will. A ghost, but the wrong one.

  [Clara turns toward the camera, and the man behind it. Her expression is sad, but fond. She smiles, but it’s pained. Clara raises her arms. As they reach their full extension, birds pour forth from the spot where she stands. Her dress falls, crumpled, to the floor. Dozens, hundreds of starlings boil up toward the ceiling like a cloud of smoke. When they reach the ceiling, they spread outward.

  Barrow tilts the camera to show the birds as they pull together into a tight formation and fly toward him. He nearly drops the phone, and the view swings to show him in profile as the birds stream around him. Their wings brush his hair, his skin. His cheeks are wet.

  The murmuration flows through the theater. The birds make no noise in their flight. Barrow steadies the phone, turning the camera to face him again. The birds are gone. He is alone.]

  BARROW: It’s the same thing every night. Every goddamn night for fifty-seven years. I tried to set her free, and she came back. She came back, Will, so why the hell didn’t you?

  [Barrow fumbles with the camera for a moment. The rustle of wings sounds and the starling lands on Barrow’s shoulder. The recording ends.]

  A BOUQUET OF WONDER AND MARVEL

  SEAN EADS

  The Leadville miners, the painted ladies at the bar and even the piano player laughed at Benson, waving the check in the air and begging again for help.

  “We’re all rich here. Metal rich. No one cares about the promises of a slip of paper.”

  “It’s your Christian duty to help a neighbor. Georgetown is in trouble!”

  More sneers showed Benson the futility of his efforts—until the check was pinched out of his grip. He turned to find a man looming over him, regarding the check with heavy-lidded eyes.

  “The amount is blank.”

  “I’m authorized to go as high as need be to get help,” Benson said, sweating. Who was this stranger? He must have stood six-foot-three and wore a suit of purple velvet under a yellow frock coat lined with thick fur.

  “Your accent is charming, and your pleading makes it more so.”

  “I’m from Mississippi and my need is great. Give me back that check so I can hire someone who’ll help me.”

  “Well, I’m from Ireland and my need is also great—for money. I don’t share your fellow Americans’ prejudice against paper, I assure you. My name is Oscar Wilde, I am a visitor and I will be happy to help.”

  Benson laughed, looking the man up and down. “You?”

  If Benson’s response annoyed him, the Irishman didn’t show it. Instead he gestured at the room. No one paid them any mind, conversation and the piano music resuming just as quickly as Benson’s pleadings interrupted them. “You seem to have slim options. But then I find Colorado is a place of immense thinness.”

  “What?”

  “The air—breathless! The clouds—ribbons! The people—wraiths! The wind makes the dust dance in narrow wisps and the plants have spindles for leaves. This check is drawn on the account of a William Bruckner. Who is he?”

  “My employer. I am Mr. Bruckner’s gardener.”

  He found Wilde’s eyes brightening, a strange contrast to the sorrow in his expression. “I fear for the fate of botanists in this land. But here miners are the true gardeners, aren’t they? Their flowers bloom underground. Two days ago I was lowered into darkness to see a cultivation of gold blossoms, each petal glinting by oil lamp. A cold bouquet indeed.”

  “Mr. Bruckner might agree with you. He is a metallurgist and an engineer. Have you heard of the Bruckner Cylinder Furnace?”

  “Should I have?”

  “In Georgetown and beyond, the machine has brought Mr. Bruckner high esteem.”

  “And wealth enough to have a personal gardener in this unpromising climate.”

  Benson squared his shoulders, prepared to detail the pride he took in his work. Then he realized how he was falling under the Irishman’s spell of complacency.

  “Come with me then—if you’ll truly help. I’ll take anyone at this point.”

  He held out his hand for the check, but Wilde only folded it and tucked it into his breast pocket.

  They were in a coach less than an hour later—merely the time it took for Wilde to have his trunk loaded. The Irishman seemed to swell to fill the space of the carriage, so that Benson felt he must draw up his knees up to be accommodating. The fur lining of Wilde’s frock coat settled around the back of his neck like a peacock’s plumage. A cravat of purple silk was knotted and bowed at his Adam’s apple and he wore his hair as long as a woman’s.

  “Would you be so good as to explain what trouble Georgetown is having? Since no one in Leadville seemed to care one way or the other, I didn’t have the opportunity to eavesdrop.”

  “Leadville!” Benson said. “I only came there because they’re the nearest place of any size. I should have known they wouldn’t care.”

  “I take it there’s a rivalry?”

  Benson shook his head. “They mine gold here. In Georgetown it’s silver.”

  “A schism worthy of Catholics and Protestants. But what is troubling Georgetown that you come seeking help with a blank check?”

  “It began when William—”

  Wilde leaned forward. “Who is William?”

  “I meant Mr. Bruckner.”

  “Your employer.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you call him by his Christian name?”

  Benson’s fingers curled against his palms. “I don’t know why I said that. It’s not proper.”

  “That’s what makes it so American. Please continue.”

  “Men came to see Mr. Bruckner. He is older and reclusive now. But they kept insisting he go with them. I know he’d given them an improved version of his furnace, and it seemed they had questions. He relented and went with them, but returned less than an hour later, badly shaken. He took straight to bed and babbled in German.”

  “Is that his native tongue? Was William once Wilhelm?”
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br />   “Yes,” Benson said.

  “And you don’t know German?”

  “Very little. Only mein liebster freund.”

  “My dearest friend,” Wilde said automatically. “I had a German governess as a boy. She taught me her language, and its stories. I’m curious who taught you that phrase.”

  Benson’s cheeks flushed. “There are many Germans in Georgetown. I overheard it.”

  “Eavesdropping is the thrifty man’s college.”

  “Well, the next day, in town, I heard people talking about strange problems in the mines. One old shaft suddenly flooded full of water, drowning several men. Another miner said his bore holes ran red and wet, like the rock walls were bleeding.”

  “Strange occurrences indeed,” Wilde said. “But surely not enough to make you flee in search of help.”

  Benson stared out the coach window and shivered. “When I went back to gardening, I was on my hands and knees, pulling at a weed. The root was excessively long. I pulled and pulled. Then—suddenly—something pulled back. A force yanked so hard I was thrown face down into the dirt. I swear I heard a whisper coming up through the earth, and that made me run inside.”

  Wilde drew his coat around him. “This is truly wonderful and unexpected. It’s been a long time since we lived in an age of wonder. Instead we live in an age of marvels, which is not the same thing at all.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Marvels are constructed—engineered—while wonders happen naturally. Or perhaps I should say they are engineered by…a different power, one the mind of man at present has little consideration for. Wonders are often very small, I think, like a moment of fidelity in marriage. Marvels are always large. Mr. Bruckner’s furnace strikes me as a great marvel. It conjures visions of enormity.”

  “It is large. A man could sit upon another man’s shoulders and still not see over the central chamber.”

  “And what does it do?”

  “Removes sulfur from ore.”

  “Sulfur?”

  “I couldn’t tell you how it’s done. But with the sulfur removed, the ore becomes far more valuable. His new enhancements have increased the furnace’s speed and power. The smell of sulfur is particularly strong when the cylinders stop. That means more has been extracted from the ore.”

  Wilde sat back, a bemused smiled on his face. He began to laugh.

  “What is it?” Benson said.

  “I think I’ve deduced the problem.”

  Benson leaned forward. “What is it, Wilde?”

  “Quite simply, I think the Devil has come to Georgetown.”

  “Odd the station’s so empty,” Wilde said, emerging from the coach when they arrived the next day. Benson was already out and looking around, and seeing Wilde squeeze his body from the narrow confines reminded him of a caterpillar emerging from its cocoon as simply a larger caterpillar, no butterfly transformation in evidence.

  “It’s still in the early morning.”

  “If the people of Georgetown don’t agree with the sunrise, I shall find myself most happy here. Dawn is best experienced at noon.”

  Benson walked around the coach. They were by the train station, at the edge of town, and even in the early morning one normally found people milling here and there, along with several dogs looking for a handout. He turned his gaze to the mountains whose slopes created the valley where Georgetown nestled. The fresh morning light did nothing to change his first impression from over a year ago. They were piteously ugly from aggressive logging, leaving stumps and sickly underbrush most prominent to observation.

  He became aware of an unearthly silence. Normally the mountains hummed with the sound of equipment, the steam engines and oar carts that put the hillsides under siege. Even at night, when the miners turned their attention to drink and the streets echoed with rowdy intrigues, one heard above it all the massive waterwheels cranking as water from the Georgetown reservoir sluiced down through the Guanella Pass over a mile away and dropped down upon them some seven hundred feet.

  Even they were silent.

  Benson returned to find Wilde staring at the blank check. He scowled. “You seem incredibly unconcerned about this. Yesterday you thought we were dealing with nothing short of Satan.”

  “Merely a quip. But the Devil is rather impractical as an explanation for Georgetown’s troubles. If the coachman will be so good as to take my trunk down, we’ll then go and see your William—excuse me, your Mr. Bruckner.”

  Benson turned to the coach. The driver wasn’t there. He regarded Wilde, who’d noticed the absence too. “He must have gone inside the station manager’s office,” Benson said, and went over to see. The door was locked. He peered inside the dusty window.

  Empty.

  He returned to Wilde with his hands up and open. The Irishman laughed. “Our coach was driverless? Perhaps the Devil deserves more credence.”

  “We must find Mr. Bruckner right away,” Benson said, pivoting to head into town. But Wilde grabbed his shoulder.

  “My trunk,” he said.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Not usually, but I’m afraid I insist on my luggage. And as you’re the only manual laborer in an area where things seem to disappear rather quickly, I’d like my trunk removed before the carriage itself becomes…immaterial.”

  Benson cursed in disbelief, but he climbed up and unstrapped the box, lugging it down with a thud. “Here are your damn clothes!”

  Wilde bent to unlatch the lid. “It’s the accessories that make the outfit.” Benson watched him sift through layer upon layer of fabric until, after a minute of digging, Wilde held up a silver pistol for the sunlight’s worship.

  “That’s beautiful,” Benson said.

  “A Webley Bull Dog. At the moment, the United Kingdom’s second most popular export to America—after myself. I received it as a gift in Leadville the day before meeting you. Funny how the best souvenirs of home are those you travel thousands of miles to obtain. Nevertheless, it’s fully loaded and I believe in excellent working order. The Devil, dear Benson, doesn’t stand a chance.”

  They had only taken a few steps toward town when the station manager’s door opened and a horribly aged dwarf stepped out, shrunken and stooped, his shoulders dominated by a hump. The air turned solid in Benson’s lungs as he saw the man’s shriveled face. A decrepit, clawed finger rose in caution against grinning lips.

  This was not a human being.

  “Fire, Wilde,” Benson managed.

  The Irishman raised the gun and but didn’t shoot.

  “Finde mich—finde sie—wo meine Blumen wachsen.”

  The thing laughed and raised its hands. The earth trembled at once, throwing Benson and Wilde off their feet. A sinkhole opened up beneath the creature’s feet and it slipped out of sight as surely as a ship caught in a whirlpool. Wilde scrambled up, pulling Benson with him and they stared down a perfectly round chasm no wider than a person.

  “How far down do you think it goes?”

  “Deeper than even the bravest Alice would dare.”

  “That thing spoke to us.”

  “In German—curiously enough.”

  “What did it say, Wilde?”

  “The creature told us to find it—and them—in the place where its flowers grow. It seems you’re not the only cultivator in the area, Benson. Though I fear for the lover who receives a bouquet from its garden.”

  “Let’s find Mr. Bruckner.”

  “Indeed,” Wilde said. “Let’s find anyone.”

  The streets were as empty as the station. Benson rushed up to the door of D.H. Miller’s barbershop and barged through. All he found were quantities of hair all over the floor. A queer sensation overtook Benson. He imagined several people simply vanishing out from underneath their scalps, leaving the hair to fall like tufts of feathers in their wake.

  Wilde waited for him outside. “I tried the office of your town newspaper. There were no reporters, no editors, not even a telegraph operator.�
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  “This can’t be,” Benson said. “Where did everyone go? Ten thousand people live here!”

  They reached the McClellan Opera House on the corner of 6th and Taos. A placard outside read—

  One Night Only

  Callender’s Minstrels!

  A Colossal Congress of Colored Celebrities!

  Beautiful Scenery

  Life-Like Pictures

  Old-Time Songs

  The Steamboat Race

  The Levee Roustabouts

  “One night? This sign looks more weathered than that.”

  “It went up just before I left for Leadville.”

  “Then the town must have emptied very quickly thereafter.”

  Benson reared back and kicked the placard onto its side and stomped it.

  “Appropriately theatrical,” Wilde said.

  A slow, squealing sound drew their attention. The opera house door opened, and three more creatures like the dwarf from the station office stepped out. They looked identical and carried pickaxes. The trio gave a disagreeable sneer and twisted away from the sunlight.

  Wilde grabbed Benson’s elbow. “They’re blinded—seize our chance.” They started running with the quietest footfalls they could manage, a tiptoed dash up the block to the corner of the bank. Benson pressed his back flat to the brick and panted. After a year in Georgetown, he thought he’d gotten used to the thin air. Panic had reverted him back to his first day.

  Wilde risked a glance. “I see them. They’re going in the opposite direction.”

  Benson looked too and thought back to his childhood. After the war, when he was only five, Union troops were stationed in his town and they made regular harassing patrols in the streets, knocking on doors at all hours of the day and night. They had made his mother cry. Remembering her tears, Benson’s loathing rose. The creatures moved from building to building, dragging the heads of their pickaxes behind them, generating small clouds of dirt in their wake.

  There was a scream.

  “My God,” Benson said as a boy came running from one of the buildings. The creatures raised their pickaxes and pursued. Their gait reminded Benson of a goose, but their swiftness was more like geese in flight. They fell upon the boy. Benson felt a burst of heat from Wilde’s body and saw his right hand gripping the Webley very tight.