Phantoms

by Jack Cady

  "We are stronger, are we strong enough?"

  "The lion in its cage now mews," Cat said to the company. "Let’s bait the lion." To me she said, "He built his own cage. Let’s see what the fool has done with immortality."

  Steps to fourth floor wound crazily, as if the builder had grown tired of symmetry. They were broad, solid, and burnished with soft light that at other times might have seemed seductive. At the head of the steps a massive door stood open.

  "The play’s the thing," Cat said to the spirits. "Improv emptiness and wind."

  "That," said a cultured male voice, "is a quite well-studied role." The fully manifested speaker stood beside Cat, and he was costumed as a strolling minstrel. His hair curled dark, and his brown eyes flashed. Jerkin in cloth of green.

  We entered and I stood amazed. I looked at a throne room, and two massive thrones. I saw gold roses in the gilded ceiling, and draperies of royal purple. I saw cloth of gold. Tapestry in rich reds ornamented walls, and yellow and violet rugs of Arabian design covered russet floors. Sculptures guarded corners and doors, forms of naked warriors and women; only some of them obscene.

  "Engage him," Cat whispered to me. "We’ll handle the rest." Her confidence served well because I have no great reputation for courage.

  It seemed impossible to talk to the thing before me. Julie sat enthroned, the throne tall and chaotic with color. Paint did not chip or fade. Every color that could come from a pallet twisted and curled; the effect demented.

  I looked upward. Julie’s blue eyes peered peevish through lids heavy with bloat. The once-narrow frame had expanded beyond possibility of fitted clothing. A light and transparent robe covered pendulous breasts, and fingers were so enlarged they seemed all-of-a-piece. Arms looked thick as rolled rugs, and legs were swollen like fleshy balloons. This was not fat, but bloat.

  On the second throne sat a corpse. Gabrielle had mummified and seemed no weightier than tissue paper; her once strong frame dwindled to thin twigs. When she spoke her voice echoed from elsewhere, because her lips did not move. She had been drained of life, but not of speech. "Betrayed." The echo ran the ranges of despair like a chromatic scale. "Betrayed."

  In this high place northwest wind gained strength. It buffeted the walls.

  I heard Cat’s voice. It sounded loud or faint, depending on where she moved in the huge room. "’Tis here, ’tis there, ’tis ever-where; but nowhere do I see it."

  "What seek ye, mistress? Wither we away?" A male voice boomed and I nearly turned from Julie.

  "A sack of moonlight. Possibly a poem." Cat’s voice sounded distant. "A wreath of music and a flight of bird."

  "Peter," Julie said. "You’re looking well." His voice remained the only thin thing about him. The voice issued from swollen lips. The snideness that was always his had increased. It held contempt, but it also held a hint of fear. He turned his massive head as much as he was able. "For that you’d better thank me."

  Cat had skipped beyond his vision. I saw her standing in a far corner, arms akimbo, and her gaze enraptured as she watched a man in green cloth cavort. "Buds of May ‘neath pale winds dance, and on yon hill fair lambkins prance. Hey nonny nonny."

  Wind crashed against Thespia, and now the building trembled. From the forest branches of young trees were cast. They hit with ballistic force.

  "Better explain that," I said to Julie. "Before thanking people, I like to know what the conversation’s about." Oddly enough, my voice remained calm.

  "I’ve stored life in you," Julie said. "You’re nothing but storage, and you, I don’t need." He listened for Cat. "But at least you brought the woman." Julie turned to look at Gabrielle. His lips were too bloated to curl, but scorn filled his voice. "This one has become a burden."

  An ornamental suaveness had always been Julie’s trademark, but now it was replaced by something savage. He sat enthroned, too bloated to walk, and he sat beside a corpse. Color whirled crazily around us, as far across the room Cat and a company of spirits cavorted. The spirits were now as substantial as when they were alive.

  "Betrayed." Gabrielle’ s voice seemed made of dust. It faded, as a last rustle of her being departed.

  "Betrayed." The word dwindled, and the mouth which had, until then, not moved, gaped. If Gabrielle was not free, at least she had been released.

  "You were always a milksop," Julie told me, "thus useful. I control vitality here. I control life. If I invest in you, and keep you vital, I persuade myself that you’re insurance."

  And finally, after nearly ninety years of life, I began to catch on.

  I made connections. Vitality was stored with us for use in keeping Julie alive. That was the reason for the Barrister’ s decline. Julie was feeding on his capital.

  Poor fool. I finally understood, then understood something more. Cat was not scandalous. I was, or had been. I had played it safe, not knowing that poverty of spirit is defensive, but life isn’t. Poverty of spirit only shapes more poverty. Creation shapes the world.

  "I believe," I told Julie, "that your policy just lapsed." Beyond the mummified figure of Gabrielle, a ring of dancers circled a Maypole. Cat skipped nimble as a child.

  "Give way," I told him. "The woman behind you has lived more, in any five minutes of her life, then you have in a hundred-and-forty years."

  A sneer. And yet, the bloated figure above me moved uneasily. "Behind me?"

  "My mistake," I told him. "You’re way behind. She does not give two snips about you."

  "Soupçon of breeze, a stir of air, and rises lordly wind." Cat’s voice sounded like a child at play. Dancers began to flow around the room, and from the first crack in the walls of Julie’s bastion entered a movement of air. It was but a breath at first, but definitely a breach. Dancers pantomimed the wind, swooping, eddying, while laughter deepened.

  "She’ll care soon enough. What I can give, I can take away." Julie watched the actors as they danced. "I took what I needed from them once, I’ll take again. You idiots have done a favor."

  "Release the Barrister."

  "Already done," Julie told me. "There’s fatter game here."

  "And a fatter hunter." I thought myself mad to bait him.

  Then I thought that he was the one who was mad. For a century he had run roughshod. Now, with a breeze ruffling that tent-like and transparent robe, he could not imagine his hazard.

  He was like a man trying to pick up a stone that he thought was a prop, an imitation made of paper; but instead had turned out to be a real stone. He paused, perplexed. He concentrated, strained, and his eyes were portraits of fear.

  "What cruel revenge they are taking," I said about Cat and her company. "It is the revenge of unimportance. They tell you that you were, and are, king of nothing, nothing more." In defiance, I wet my finger and held it aloft to determine the direction of the breeze. "Observe as they create the wind, because you look your last."

  I thought I could not care about Julie, and yet as his struggle began I felt small sadness. "If you were truly evil I would rejoice," I told him. "But you’re only arrogant. What you do is evil, but to be truly evil . . . you’re not man enough."

  Now the actors formed a cortege behind a casket borne on a donkey cart. They were costumed as clowns, and they cast flowers in the air; and flowers threw petals into the wind. A shower of petals blew toward us. Actors near the coffin sang a funereal song, although they smiled and their clown shoes flippity-flopped. At the end of the procession, like mischievous children, actors pranced.

  "The king is dead," I told Julie, "and he was only king of a room that is about to disappear."

  Fear, like none I have ever known, now lived on Julie’s face. I doubted not that fear lived more vibrantly than any other emotion Julie had ever felt. At first I thought he was trying to steal life, then realized he was in struggle to hold onto what he had already stolen. "You could offer help," he choked. "You owe."

  "Nothing I can do." I thought of a hundred years of theft and exploitation. I thought of our dying t
own and the murder of people, and the murder of dreams. "Nothing I want to do. No one owes anything, even simple courtesy."

  "I’ll pay. I offer life."

  I think he believed he spoke the truth. For all his many years he had fed, and fed. He had controlled. He could not then grasp that his control was gone.

  He began to wither. At first, he only seemed to shrink, and for a moment I did not understand that the lives and colors he had hoarded were escaping. The bloat decreased. In the distance actors postured, declaimed, and their play was grimly comic.

  "A little life. Save a little." The plea was to me, or to fate, or to some god unknown; and it was frantic.

  It was then I became cruel. "None," I told him. "You’re not important enough for Hell, and so you simply disappear. You will not even be a bug, a mote, or any incarnation. Neither earth nor heaven will know you more." I had no notion whether I spoke true, but it seemed true. Mine were the last words Julie heard before succumbing to fear.

  He did not shrink, but like Forte folded in on himself. As the bloat disappeared, and as blue eyes grew wild with insanity, Julie appeared as he had once been. His thin-legged, high-rumped form writhed on a throne now devoid of color; and as color departed he screamed. He was momentarily young, and in torment.

  As he departed he aged. Faded hair, faded but tortured eyes, creases beginning, then deepening. His fingers grasped uncontrolled as he screamed. When dismemberment started its slow and bloody progress I had seen enough.

  Cat took me by the arm. "At the very outside," she told me, "We have ten minutes." She tugged, and I was not loath to follow. My last memory of the place is of screams and the stench of decay.

  We moved quickly and without speaking. Cat’s band of actors accompanied us, and I could not for the moment believe that they were spirits. They trod the stairs, and the stairs drummed beneath their feet.

  Past dusty rooms, past fragile bones, while we were chased by wind that scoured hallways. We moved quickly, but slowed as we left the building and stepped into young forest that danced in the wind. I felt age begin to creep upon me. Life was not stolen, but the vitality Julie had invested was now leaving. Soon I would be weak and tottering.

  Cat stood beside me, sisterly and protective. Actors gathered about as we watched a consummation.

  Fire started in a hundred or a thousand places from small torches of light. Wind wrapped around the building. An actor’s voice muttered. "‘Blow winds, blow and crack your cheeks.’"

  "I mourn its passing," Cat murmured to the actors, or possibly to me. "The theater couldn’t help who owned it." Then she brightened. "But then, one does not need a building. The street is a stage."

  It is a formidable sight to watch any large building burn.

  When the building is nigh the size of a castle, the sight inspires awe. The small torches of light appeared when lives trapped in that building flared in their escapes. Wind fanned the tiny fires, so that in only moments the entire mansion alighted with fire. Wind flared around fourth floor where, if Julie still existed, he lay in an immense crematory. Fire illumed clouds and mist flowing from the forest. Wind searched, expanded, and the burning of Thespia was like a dry stick dropped into a blast furnace.

  "Time to leave," Cat whispered to me. "Good job you did in there."

  I turned to her. In the fire-glow her face seemed young as a girl, although age crept across her body. Her hands trembled. She smiled, happy as an excited child, and reached to touch my cheek. Beside her, spirits faded as they began to move into the forest. "I leave with them," Cat said. "It’s where I belong. But you, I’ll miss." And then she turned, walking slowly, and disappeared into the forest.

  There is little more to tell. I had enough remaining strength to leave the forest. Our town’s policeman found me trudging the road to town, and took me home. It was a week before I ventured out.

  It seemed that with the passing of Forte and Thespia any fear that locals owned was gone. When I stepped back into our streets the remaining mansions had been raided, with little of value recovered. The buildings stood stripped and bare. A constant wind guaranteed their passing. The story was over, but the record still needed to be made.

  The library is a cool, sometimes cold place, but I must close the record here. I want nothing of Julie, not even a notation, to enter my own rooms.

  I note the passing of the Barrister. He died in peace, and in a hospital bed. He was conscious and only a little ill, but his illness was not Julie. He was his own man.

  And I proudly note that I am mine. In nigh ninety years I learned trade, and craft, and even artfulness; but never art. It took Cat to teach me. One need not regret lost years when one has learned great things.

  The Twenty-Pound Canary

  In memory of Damon Runyon

  [Two sentences in this story were adapted from The Mauve Decade, by Thomas Beer, Alfred A. Knopf, 1937: a book that English teachers do not read, but should.]

  If cousin Murph had not expanded his lab, and if Canary Clarence had not developed a glandular condition, then Miss Janice would not have scored a husband. Uncle Willie would not be muttering confused rhymes in his sleep and writing poetry in the attic. Aunt Easy would still be a member of the Temperance Union, and forty duck hunters (more or less) would not have thrown down shotguns to take up crappie fishing.

  The unhappy mess started on a winter morning when Aunt Easy wakened in her front bedroom, from which she could see neighbors scooping snow from their walks, and four-wheel drives making doughnuts in Wisconsin streets. The house was still warm from wood stoves in living room and kitchen. Aunt Easy shuffled along with her usual, early morning cheerfulness. Until she hit the kitchen.

  Pearly curtains with blue duckies hung straight. A clean and greenish tablecloth covered the round oak table where Aunt Easy did crossword puzzles and Uncle Willie read dusty books with yellowing pages. A patchwork cover over the birdcage shielded Parakeet-in-residence Harold from prowling night breezes.

  Aunt Easy stoked the kitchen stove, made a cup of tea, and lifted the patchwork cover. She found Parakeet-in-residence Harold flat on his back, toes pointed heavenward. Her wrinkled but pretty face went blank. Her shoulders raised as she gave a light sob, and brushed curly gray hair from her forehead. Her worn bathrobe, once purple, now glowed faded pink.

  Movement behind her. Uncle Willie, silver-haired, yawned into the room, took one look, paused. Whispered. "Gone to a better place I expect." Uncle Willie is a Rosicrucian and didn’t believe a word of it.

  "What was wrong with the place he had?" Aunt Easy was not going to be consoled. At least, not by a Rosicrucian.

  She had a point. No other place in the world was as nice as that kitchen. Compared to that kitchen, Versailles was drafty, Monaco was loud, the British Museum was stuffy, and Disneyland was a laugh. Nothing, nowhere, was as warm and friendly as that kitchen. Compared to that kitchen, Harvard U was a muddle and the White House was a mess.

  Then Cousin Murph showed up. He came fumbling out of the basement where he lived among cages of rodents, antiquated computers, Bunsen burners, test tubes, and flowery little notes from lonely spinsters. Cousin Murph is moderately red haired, thirty, lean and lank, works at the bank, and is about the only bachelor left here in Chedderburg.

  Come to think of it, he’s also the only redhead, the only mad scientist, and, until he got kicked out of the league, the only guy who owns a radio-guided bowling ball.

  "Hummm-m-m," said Murph. He walked to the cage and got his hand smacked as he reached. Aunt Easy could see autopsy in Murph’s eyes. She could sense dissection.

  "Sorry," said Murph. "I’ll build the coffin."

  Parakeet-in-residence Harold was laid to rest in an intricately decorated box lined with velvet. I had to chip ice and frozen dirt for an hour to make a foot-deep grave beside the garden. I’m Kissing Cousin Effie, sweet sixteen, and extra smart. Smart enough not to fall in love with Murph, which is more than I can say for some.

  Of course, being extra
smart, I hang around Murph’s lab from time to time. When the late Parakeet Harold went to his rest, one of those times happened. I’d bail from school, do homework early, and be at the lab when Murph came home from the bank. He almost always brought a plate of cookies with him; gifts from local trollops looking for a husband.

  The problem, as I explained it to myself, is that Murph is just too nice. He tries to fix things that won’t fix . . . like build a designer bird, the kind that cheeps and doesn’t die.

  The problem, as Murph explained it, is, "We gotta have birds. You can’t breed birds if you don’t have birds. Where do you get birds in Wisconsin in the middle of January?" He cleaned an empty cage while all around us stood cages filled with mice, white rats, voles, and something outstandingly huge. It looked like a hamster on growth hormones. "Name of Janders," Murph explained, and his voice held apology. "Sort of a mistake." Janders twitched a nose bigger than a pig snoot. He looked sarcastic, like maybe Murph, not hamster, was the mistake.

  "Dime store in Wausau, pet store in Oshkosh, where else?" I told him. It’s a good thing Murph has me, because he can’t solve the least practical problem. Just the experimental stuff.

  "Saturday," he said. "Assuming snow’s not tail-high to a Hereford." He turned back to work on the cage. His lab is helter-skelter, but clean. Shiny counts, neatness don’t.

  The trip fell flat because it turned into a family occasion. Murph drove his ratty old station wagon which might have once been manufactured by a car company, but which had been improved. It now sported four-wheel drive, and all identifying marks had been removed. From a junk pile somewhere Murph had found a nameplate he’d proudly soldered to the front of the hood—Maytag.

  Uncle Willie sat in front with Murph. Aunt Easy and I sat in back. Most cars can’t dawdle, but we did. As we passed through town Murph slowed from ten mph to five. He watched Miss Janice clump along the sidewalk on her way to work at the library (hours 10-3 M-F, 11-2 Sat). Miss Janice dressed for the weather and did not look slim.