Totentanz

by Al Sarrantonio

  "I'm here for you now," Ash said, his voice still soothing but unable to hide a faint trace of amusement. "I'm 'him who saves you.' Will you watch me again, Frances?"

  "Yes," Frances answered in a whisper, her body beginning to quake as a horrible, fearful idea crept over her.

  And then Ash's laughter began, and the change in his voice was complete, and Frances saw the great light behind her, outlining the stark white-and-red barber pole in knifelike edges against the building, and her own shadow beside it, black, and shivering like a leaf against the coldest wind. She turned to see the lights of the town, this town, and fell sobbing to the sidewalk, bathed in Ash's merciless laughter as realization spread over her once again that the veil, His veil, had somehow been pulled aside and that only Ash was with her now.

  TEN

  Reggie heard the calliope start up as night gave way to day. One moment there was light-bulb darkness in the house; the next moment it was blown away, the light bulbs eaten as a new sun dawned. It was a neon sun, fluorescent and bright and stark; it gave no warmth, but rather a cold literalness to all it touched. And it touched all. There was white and there was black; there was no gray or creamy white to give meaning to the shadows.

  Come to me, come to me, the calliope tinkled, growing louder.

  "Mom?" Reggie called. He sounded like a little boy again. He was a baby calling for his mother, asking her with a tremor in his voice to be there and to tell him what was happening. But he feared he already knew. All of it—the change that had come over Montvale since the amusement park had been erected, the fierce sharpness of his recurring dream, the vision of the dark man reaching out to him from the poster over his bed, the warnings of the zombie man outside his window—all of this told him what was happening. But he didn't want to believe it. He wanted it to be only play—play like the monster comics, the models, the horror movies and masks that had been his way of distancing himself from it, of dealing with it—of even appearing serious about it. Jack and Pup had always thought he was too serious about their club activities; they thought this was because he was thoughtful about how he had nearly died once, but Reggie knew that this was his way of not thinking about it, of covering it over with plastic and paint and glow-in-the-dark skeleton masks that could be taken off at any time.

  The only other time he had come face-to-face with the reality of it, had admitted it to himself, was in Social Studies class when they had talked about nuclear war. There were a lot of nuke jokes that week, a lot of giggling about the pictures of the bomb shelters and people with old-fashioned clothes on, stocking concrete bunkers with canned peaches and plastic jugs of water. Reggie had gone on a binge, begging his mother to rent every available video cassette of the monster movies of the fifties. All of them had horrible things escaping from the ice or growing up out of the radioactive sea or in the desert at bomb-test sites after atomic explosions: jellylike creatures or things with too many eyes or arms or legs that either sucked you into themselves or made you burn black when they touched you. Mad scientists got X-ray eyes or atomic brains or turned into pulsating vegetables in these pictures, and Reggie loved every one of them—until he came to one he thought was just another science-fiction movie but proved to be something more. It was a documentary, and it showed what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the atomic bombs had been dropped on them at the end of the Second World War. After that, Reggie didn't want to see any more atomic-monster movies for a while. The skin falling off living Japanese bodies like pats of butter had been too real, the shadows of vaporized human beings on cement block walls too scary. It was easy to like monster movies because they weren't for real—but this was for real.

  And now he had that feeling again, and with it, an awful knowing that something real was going to happen in Montvale. The huge eyes and the other dark thing he had felt touch him, heard whisper in his ear, when he was in the dark tunnel, they were here and he was afraid.

  Come to me, come to me, the calliope insisted. What had the zombie, the old man outside his window, screamed at him? "Flames!"

  "Mom?" he called again, louder. His mother had been running her sewing machine, and now the machine had stopped. There was nothing wrong with the electricity in the house; the TV was still on, and all the lights were on, though they weren't needed anymore against the blinding light from the amusement park.

  "Mom?" he said again, moving off the couch and into the kitchen. The house was like a brightly lit tomb. The television talked hollowly behind him, but outside, of that, the house was dead silent. He could hear his footsteps. Where was his mother? Why was everything so quiet?

  Come to me, the calliope said, and he found himself wanting to go.

  Then he was running through the kitchen, bumping into a chair, and dashing to the back sewing room. "Mom?"

  The room was empty. The cord was yanked out of the wall socket, as if her foot had pulled it out as she rose, unheedful. The laundry room was beyond, and as Reggie walked quickly to the door, he glanced at a picture on the wall—a photograph of his father, smiling proudly in his Navy flyer's uniform, his helmet in his hands. At the bottom of the glass over the photograph there was a strip of masking tape that read: "Black and Proud."

  The laundry room was empty. Reggie saw that the door leading to the backyard was wide open.

  "Mom?" he called fearfully. As he stepped out into the yard, he saw her. It was as though she were made of stone. The whole sky toward the amusement park was lit up like a white dome. The light arced upward and out, illuminating the town like a full moon. Where the light was brightest, the Ferris wheel glowed like a circular neon kitchen lamp, with strings of flashing red and green bulbs around its rim. It was spinning too fast.

  Come to me, come to me, it seemed to call, and as if in agreement, the sound of the calliope grew even louder and more hypnotic.

  "Mom?" Reggie said once more, moving up beside his mother. There was a tremulous smile on her lips, and her eyes were wet.

  "He's come back, Reggie," she said, her voice a whispered, happy sob.

  "Mom—"

  "Your father's come back. I know it." She knelt beside him, resting on one knee and taking his shoulders in her hands. A single tear tracked its way down one smooth cheek. She's so beautiful, Reggie thought. "After all this time," she said, "he's come home to us.''

  "Mom, it's not true. He's dead. He has to be dead."

  She shook her head and smiled, and Reggie could feel the tension of anticipation through her fingers.

  She let go of him and stood up. The calliope music had grown louder, and it was working a spell on her. Reggie saw other people standing in other backyards, staring up at the sky or directly at the amusement park.

  "I have to go to him," she said.

  She stepped away from him, brushing his hands away. She moved as if under water. Reggie could not think straight; the music was so loud and yet so soothing that it wrapped him like a winter blanket.

  Come to me now.

  His mother went through the back gate to the street. Reggie shouted to her to stop, but she did not hear him; she was listening only to the calliope and to the inner music of her conviction that her dead pilot husband was home.

  There came a roar above the calliope now, a sharp, piercing whine that sounded like a screaming engine. His mother stopped and looked up. "See!" she cried. "See!" Reggie followed her gaze to a sleek Navy plane. It looked silver in the harsh light, and behind the cockpit window a figure could be faintly seen. The plane swooped low over the house, dipping its wings from side to side and then veering off sharply toward the amusement park.

  "Don't you see, he's home!"

  "Oh, Mom," Reggie said. She was going down the street. There were others there, moving like dream figures, some pointing ahead, exclaiming, "Look! Look!" Children danced beside them, sharing in their excitement.

  "Mom, no!" Reggie ran after her and pulled her arm, but she would not be stopped.

  "He's waiting for me, Reggie," she said quietly.r />
  She walked off down the street, joining the others already turning the corner to the edge of town.

  Jack, Reggie thought.

  He ran back to the house and the telephone. He had to get the Three Musketeers together. The phone rang and rang, but there was no answer. With a cry, Reggie threw it down and raced from the house. His mother had vanished around the corner. Every moment others were joining the procession.

  Reggie ran as fast as his feet would carry him. One block, two blocks, and on each the eerie story was the same: line on line of people leaving their homes and moving toward the amusement park. Reggie passed his science teacher, Mr. Weiss, who was shouting "Cynthia!" at the top of his lungs and nearly dancing. He passed a hundred others whom he knew at least by sight, each lost in his own mad skipping movements and mutterings. And then he was at Jack's house.

  "Jack!"

  Jack was curled up on the front stoop, his hands pressed to his ears. His eyes were closed, and he had a rifle cradled loosely in his arms. The front door was open behind him, letting a spill of warm indoor light out to be swallowed by the white sunlight from the park. Inside, the television was on. So was the stereo. Jack was yelling to himself, "One, two, three, four!" over and over again, and as Reggie put his hand on his friend's shoulder, Jack nearly jumped.

  "I won't!" he cried, eyes screwed shut.

  "Jack!" Reggie screamed. "Open your eyes!"

  Jack opened one eye, then the other.

  "Reggie. . . ."

  Jack brought his hands away from his ears. Instantly he became another person, eyes misting over, head turning toward the bright lights at the edge of town. He clamped his hands back over his ears and rose, stumbling through the doorway and into the riotous noise inside.

  "Close the door!" he shouted.

  When they were in the living room, he turned the stereo up all the way and then took his hands from his ears. He counted slowly, "One, two, three . . ." and, waiting, nothing happened. Only then did he look at Reggie.

  "Doesn't it bother you?" he asked over the din of the electronic equipment, the blare of television commercials. "My father is gone. He saw a bunch of his buddies who got killed in Vietnam. He was a crazy person. I couldn't stop him." He stumbled to the television and turned it up all the way.

  “It's the calliope music!" he yelled.

  "We have to get Pup."

  "I tried to call him when all this started,” Jack shouted. "His mother said he had been gone all day. She sounded nervous, said she was afraid he'd sneaked off to the amusement park alone. Then she dropped the phone. I could hear her shrieking and crying, but it was the happy kind of shrieking." He grabbed Reggie by the arm. "I've got an idea.”

  They went to the cellar steps and down to the basement. There was an old television at the bottom, covered thickly with dust. Jack unwound the frayed cord, plugged it into the overhead socket and turned the set on. It began to whine like a stepped-on cat. Reggie had to cover his ears to keep out the sound.

  Jack went to one corner and rummaged through a cardboard box. Most of it was filled with war mementos, dummy hand grenades and copies of Soldier of Fortune magazine. He held up a pair of blue earmuffs, pulling the curl out of them and putting them on his head. "This won't be enough," he said, and he motioned Reggie back upstairs, taking the steps two at a time. In a hall closet he yanked out a wad of medicinal cotton and tore off two great fistfuls, molding them deftly and placing them over his ears before mounting the earmuffs over them. "Get something you can tie around the muffs to keep them on me," he said. Reggie looked around the floor, finally pulling a length of gray twine from under a full bag of unloaded canned goods. But as he began to wrap it around Jack's head, Jack suddenly pushed his hand away.

  "Don't bother," he said.

  He pulled the earmuffs from his head and dropped them. As they stepped out onto the porch, the stereo and television were still blaring inside the house.

  "You hear it?" Jack asked.

  "What?"

  "That's just it—nothing. The calliope is gone." He turned back into the house; in a moment the blare inside had ceased and he returned to stand silently by Reggie.

  "Wow," Jack said.

  They stared over a ghost town. Up and down the block doors yawned open, deck chairs set out on front porches stood empty, cigarettes still smoldering in ashtrays beside them. On one porch a black-and-white TV winked, a barely heard baseball announcer droning high and low with each pitch, his voice rising in sudden agitation, only to drop once more. A dog trotted by, looked nervously from side to side, and crossed the street away from the two boys.

  The sky, sustained in its bright light, became momentarily brighter, and then the tinkling sound of the calliope returned. Its volume was normal now, and Jack did not cover his ears. They saw the Ferris wheel whirr in circular operation, and just barely they heard the creak of other rides grinding into life.

  "What do we do now?" Jack said, trying to keep the uneasiness out of his voice.

  Reggie was silent, weighing the hard knot in his stomach.

  "I don't know."

  "I wish we had the other Musketeer with us," Jack said. "If Pup was here, we'd feel better."

  Reggie said nothing. He was looking at the Ferris wheel, listening to the distant whoosh of its heavy mechanism rising against the artificial neon day. The wheel turned and turned. . . . And there in the center of it was an eye, splitting to two eyes and then coming toward him, hovering over him, unblinking. Once again that feeling of dissociation washed over him.

  "Why didn't you help me then?" Reggie shouted. "Why don't you help me now?"

  "Who are you talking to?" Jack asked. Reggie saw that his friend was terrified; he had the same look on his face as the dog that had just passed.

  I'm here. Follow.

  The eyes moved. Out over the street now, more like twin balls of starlight than material objects, they moved away from the amusement park.

  "Will you help me?" Reggie said.

  Follow.

  "Where are you going?" Jack cried fearfully. "Who are you talking to?"

  Reggie was in the center of the street now, walking away from him. Jack looked at the open, silent door behind him, heard the tomblike silence of the houses around him, saw the breathless trees, the sidewalks as bright as day and as still as night, and hurried to catch up.

  ELEVEN

  Jeff Scott opened his eyes.

  For a moment there was disorientation. Where am I? Instantly he knew the answer. I'm back. There had been the long, cold darkness, sleep without sleep, slumber without rest or real dreams. Where did he go at those times? He didn't know. Did he go nowhere? Was that what being dead was—not going anywhere? He remembered dying well enough: the vain fight for breath, his eyes so full of pressure he thought they would burst out of his head, the sickening wetness in his crotch and then the explosion in his mind, his eyes, his lungs. And the hate—he remembered the hate well enough too. But what had happened after that? He recalled only snatches of it, bits of vision, but mostly nothing. He had gone . . . somewhere else. The next thing he remembered for sure was a damp, dark place, with the smell of rotting wood filling his nostrils. He had reached out and felt wet, decaying wood and wet soil. He had brought his hand over his body to feel his other hand, and it had felt the same as the wood and the earth: damp and soft. Then there was a great weight lifted from him, and he was in his clothes on a footpath under real moonlight, next to an open, unmarked grave above Montvale. Ash appeared soon after that, and no matter where he went, Ash seemed always to be there sooner or later. And he had known he would return to Montvale sooner or later. And later had come.

  But where had he been before he had been lifted from the ground? He didn't know.

  So now he was awake, or what passed for wakeful-ness. He wondered why he had to pass through these periods of rest. It wasn't like being a vampire; he laughed at the thought of vampires now. At least they could drink, even if it was blood. The truth was that he felt the
urge to rest at the same times he always had; at night, and sometimes during the day. The only consolation now was that he never got insomnia. It was easy to sleep; he just lay down and one moment he was there, the next moment he wasn't.

  Frankenstein. That was how, when he got into wry moods, he thought of himself. The unliving made alive. The word "zombie" made him uncomfortable—and anyway, he told himself, he wasn't a true zombie because zombies were merely the reanimated dead. They had no will of their own; they were corpses that walked and moved as if under radio control. Zombies made him laugh now, too. Everything made him laugh without laughing, even Frankenstein—but at least Frankenstein, the way he had seen him on television once, was more to his liking. The unliving made alive and whole. Frankenstein had feelings; he thought about things. The only trouble he had was that in the movie some fool had put a deviate's brain in his skull, and you could hardly blame that on him. You had the feeling that if he had had the brain he was supposed to have had, he would not have been a monster at all—would, in fact, have been more intelligent than the cretin who created him.

  But that—a suave monster in a smoking jacket, talking about physics and Mozart—wouldn't have been half dramatic enough for the movies. Nobody ever seemed to notice that it wasn't the process itself that made the movie horrifying, only that some jackass human had fucked up and switched brains.

  He tried not to think about it too much. There were a lot of things he tried not to think about too much.

  He rose and cracked his bones. That couldn't be helped. In the Union Army he had bunked with a fellow for a time who had jumped out of bed each morning and cracked, it seemed, each bone in his body, relishing the task. He started with the knuckles in his hands and toes and then worked his way through every joint in his arms and legs, finishing with his neck. Jeff had begged him not to do it, but he had just laughed. It got so bad that Jeff thought he would have to kill him to make him stop, but a rebel soldier had done the job for him in Fredericksburg. What his own body did to him now was something like that; no matter how gently he rose, each bone in his body cried out at the same time, begging not to be stood up. It sometimes took ten minutes for all his bones to settle into place. The first time it had happened, it had scared the hell out of him, but now he looked on it as his old army bunkmate's revenge.