Totentanz

by Al Sarrantonio

  "Look at me," Ash commanded, and Jeff Scott looked into his face. The white, pasty mask melted away into a silver disk, a pool of water or a liquid mirror, and Jeff Scott saw his own face as it was now, half-living and half-dead. He felt fire course down his body and saw the flesh and blood stripped away from one side. "Stop!" he screamed, but the pain would not cease. He was half-bone and half-flesh.

  "This is what you are," Ash spat, pointing contemptuously at the skeletal half. "This is what you have been for a hundred and twenty years, since that gallows rope choked your breath way. A dead man." Ash stretched a talon-like hand toward the sky. "All of this is gone for you: all of this is dead to you. You can't touch or feel it. You might as well be maggots and soil for all the difference it makes to you. You're a worm, a pile of filth." He pushed at Jeff Scott, pushed at the bones on the left side of his body, and Jeff Scott felt the hand there, cold against cold bone. He collapsed, and Ash's face hovered over him. "Your hate sealed you long ago," Ash said quietly. "Do you still think I fear you?"

  Jeff Scott looked into that non-face, into the eyes that were puddles of blue emptiness, at that red mouth, and said, "You're afraid of something."

  A crack appeared deep in the mask. There was fear in that blank emptiness, in those ice-blank eyes, and for a hushed tick of time, Jeff Scott saw Ash's face for the mask it really was—the hard, vicious play-face held over something fathomless and cruelly sure, yet deathly frightened.

  Ash's bladelike lips parted, and he screamed into Jeff Scott's face. The cry climbed to an impossible pitch of rage. Jeff saw the face above the mouth contort, the outstretched, arching hand ready to fall upon him. . . .

  A moment of infinity passed.

  "No," Ash said finally. "That's what you want.” He rose, leaving Jeff Scott on the ground before him. "I won't give you that. But I will give you this."

  Ash turned to the gallows and made a curt motion to the man at the top. Poundridge, who had been watching the scene below with fascination, almost forgetting that he was a player in the drama—thinking, with an insubstantial spark of hope, that possibly this was a form of entertainment after all, some part of the amusement park designed to give the customer a real thrill, something to remember for a long time—was abruptly pulled back to his situation. The rope was still around his neck. He still stood on the gallows; the pleading in his defense that had gone on below had not worked to his favor. The fist in his stomach gripped harder. He knew that the moment was upon him, the reprieve past. He saw his chubby ancestor's trembling but ineluctable hands tighten on the lever to the trap door, and he cried out for pardon, to be let free. Like James Cagney, he thought insanely, at the end of that picture where they drag him to the electric chair screaming and pleading. Panic seized him even more fiercely, and he began to wail.

  "Please don't do this! I haven't done anything! Please! Oh, God, please!"

  The fat ancestor's hands trembled like leaves in the wind.

  Jeff Scott tried to raise himself, but failed. As he fell back against the cold ground, Poundridge became hysterical. He felt his bowels empty, and at that moment the trap door pulled open.

  "The sins of the fathers," Ash said, his eyes growing bright.

  Jonathan Poundridge cried out as the earth was pulled away from him. He fell a long way, past row on row of his own face, each growing thinner, each silently turned toward him. He watched the dissipation of a race of men. And then he heard rather than felt a loud snap, and everything in his body was on fire, including his shrieking voice, which he heard no more.

  FOURTEEN

  "I don't want to go in," Jack said. There was a quality in his voice that promised it would take a lot of convincing to change his mind.

  Big black clouds rammed across the sky overhead, and the wind hissed like snakes through the trees. It felt more like October than July. Though the low white churchyard gates were swung open, they formed as much of a barrier in Jack's mind as if there had been solid rock before him.

  "We've got to," Reggie said. "This is where it wanted me to go." As he took a tentative step forward, an animal-like light came into his eyes. And when he said, "Come on, Jack," Jack knew he meant it.

  Jack had heard Reggie talk that way before, in that suddenly serious, non-kid voice that implied, "Don't be a jerk, just do it." Now there was an urgency in the tone that Jack had never heard before. It wasn't fear in Reggie's voice, but a thing much worse, a thing that made Jack even more frightened than he already was: eagerness.

  "Now I'll finally know," Reggie said. "No more dreams; I'll finally know." He turned. "Don't worry, Jack."

  Jack offered a weak smile. Reggie entered the cemetery, passing the short line of trees that led to the upslope of green grass and gravestones. A neat black road wound like an Alice in Wonderland street, curving in an S up and away from them, around the perfectly sculpted hills.

  "Wow," Reggie said, and Jack, his hands thrust into his pockets against the chill, whipping wind, couldn't help muttering the same word.

  In front of each headstone, each plaque, each featureless slab, they saw a neatly dug hole, six feet by three feet, with a clod of turned earth next to it. It was as if all the grave diggers in the world had convened at once to leave their mark.

  "I don't believe this," Jack said, putting his hands deeper into his pockets.

  Reggie was silent. There was a slightly crooked smile on his lips, as if he had grown older in that moment. "Now I'm sure," he said. "I didn't want to believe it, but now I do. Ever since that amusement park arrived, that shadow man, the eyes. . . ." As he talked, he began to walk up the hill, past the first of the open graves. Jack followed.

  "Can you smell it?" Reggie asked, stopping in front of a deep, dark hole and sniffing at the air. "Can you?"

  "No," Jack started to say, but then there it was, a sickly sweet odor like over-baked bread.

  "Can you taste it?" Reggie asked.

  A taste was there: sharp and bitter on the front of the tongue, hard and stale at the back of the mouth. Cold, like a bad, chill wind that made the teeth ache.

  Jack yelped with fright as Reggie leaped down into the nearest hole and stood there regarding him.

  "It's stronger down here. Can't you feel it?" Reggie asked, and now Jack could feel it, a dull, sodden feeling that mixed with the taste and the smell. "Part of them is here and part of them isn't."

  "I don't like this, Reggie," Jack said, not trying to hide the shakiness in his voice.

  Reggie climbed out of the hole and stood beside him.

  "This is why the eyes wanted me to come here," he said. His face was lit with purpose and inner fire. "Don't you see? I'm finally going to know what's over that ledge. I'm finally going to know what I have to do! Stay with me," he said, putting his hand on his friend's shoulder.

  "I can't," Jack said. His skin was crawling with damp, dark feelings; he wanted to run to a place where it wasn't gray and chilly, where the sun didn't look so lifeless, where the clouds were clouds and not looming dark shapes ready to pounce, where there were no dark holes, no white gates to swing shut and keep you in. From off in the distance, the calliope music came drifting to him, and now it soothed him. His skin was alive with feelings, as if things were crawling and sliding all over it, gray, wet, damp things that wanted to force him to the ground and drag him into the nearest yawning cavity.

  "Let's go to the amusement park," he said, his voice husky and breathless.

  "Not yet," Reggie said.

  "There's light there, everyone else is there." He looked with a vague longing at the soft, glowing lights beyond the trees. "My mother and sister are there."

  Reggie grabbed him by the shoulders. "Fight it, Jack! It's the calliope music. Fight it like you did before! You were the only one in the whole town to find a way to beat that calliope, the only one brave enough to fight it—so keep on doing it!"

  "My mother, my sister—"

  "Your mother and sister are dead! They were in holes in this cemetery two days ago
! Stay with me, Jack!"

  Reggie held Jack's arm and walked on.

  They passed through a universe of open graves, up through time, through the great historic mass of Montvale's dead, and still the feelings, the crawling, slippery feelings over Jack's body and brain, became stronger.

  "No more!" Jack cried, trying to break free from Reggie's grasp.

  Reggie held firm, pointing to the mausoleum, the Tomb of the Unknown Man, a dark-gray box at the top of the "That's where the eyes want me to go," he said. "That's where I have to go."

  "Oh, God. I'm scared!" Jack cried.

  There were trees close by, as manicured as the lawns and roadway were. The entire world was gray. Close together, the two boys climbed the knoll. Even before they reached the mausoleum, Reggie knew the door would be wide open. It made a dark outline against the grayer sky.

  "We've got to go in there," Reggie said, drawing his flashlight from his pack. After a moment, shaking, Jack followed suit. The twin beams laced through each other, then settled on the gaping black cavity of the vault's door.

  "Remember all those nights we sat out here, you and Pup and me, alone in the dark, telling stories?" Reggie asked. "Remember how hard we tried to scare ourselves? It was all phony, and I knew it. We were playing games. All the time we were pretending to be scared, we were laughing because we weren't scared at all. But this is real, Jack." His voice changed, became lower, filled with awe. "Can't you feel it, Jack? Can't you feel what's coming out of that room? It's something you could catch in a box and listen to. It's real. Not lights out with rubber spiders in the dark. That's the real thing in there, what I've been looking for." He stared at his friend, his eyes wide with wonder. "Can't you feel it, Jack? That's it."

  Jack felt it, and he froze like a rabbit in a headlight. It would come out and get him; it would hit him on the head and splash his brains all over the pavement in front of this crypt; it would—

  "I'm going," he said.

  "Jack. . . ."

  "I have to go."

  "Jack, we have to go in there, we have to know—"

  "I don't want to know!"

  Reggie's grip tightened on Jack's arm, trying to pull him through the door into the vault. With each forced step, Jack's terror grew. Suddenly he lashed out in panic, striking Reggie in the face with the flat of his hand. Reggie held on.

  Shouting with rage, Jack hit Reggie with his fist. The two boys went down, rolling like wrestlers on the perfect lawn in front of the crypt. Reggie was losing, and then he abruptly rolled on top of his friend and pinned him down by sitting on his chest, his knees pinning down Jack's arms and flailing hands.

  "Let me go!" Jack screamed, his voice filled with panic.

  "Jack! Listen to me!"

  "Oh, God, let me go!" He bucked upward, trying to throw Reggie off.

  "Listen to me!" Reggie shouted into Jack's face.

  "No!" Jack screamed back. "Let me go! Let me go”

  Jack lurched upward, throwing Reggie to one side. He grabbed at Reggie's arms and pulled them away, hurling Reggie to the ground as he got to his feet. His face was wild; his pack had come undone, spilling its contents halfway out onto the ground. He stood over Reggie for a moment, trying to decide whether or not to jump on him and pummel him. He was crying. He took a few steps backward, his flashlight showing a long, monstrous shadow behind him.

  "I . . . told . . . you." Jack gasped, "to leave me . . . alone.”

  Reggie made no move but asked desperately, "Please listen—"

  "No!" Jack was breathing in long, sobbing gasps, looking wildly around as though he expected something to jump out of the shadows. "You've been there, Reggie! You know what it's like. I don't. I'm scared!" He looked at the soft light of the amusement park over the trees. "I want my mother and sister!"

  Reggie got to his feet, but Jack was already a good twenty yards away, looking behind him as he stumbled backward. It seemed as though at any moment he might break into a run.

  "Don't," Reggie pleaded, but Jack said. "Too late," and then he lurched around and began to run down the winding, perfect pavement toward the front gates.

  "Jack!" Reggie shouted, running after him, but it was no use. With long strides, Jack widened the distance between them. At the bottom of the hill, Reggie slowed to a panting halt.

  "Momma! Amy . . ." Jack's plaintive voice reached him, and a chill went up Reggie's back.

  Something close by shifted, a shadow or the branch of a tree. He spun around to see a looming shape towering above him before it resolved itself into the trunk of a leafless maple. For a moment he thought he saw the two immense eyes that had left him at the gate of the cemetery; they seemed to fly up and pause over the mausoleum before fading into nothingness—but it was only two faint stars pushing their way through the bright sky of the amusement park. I am with you, the eyes had promised, but now they were gone.

  A shiver passed over him, and, feeling very alone, he walked back up the hill to stand once more before the cavernous door of the vault.

  Within, something heavy crashed to the floor.

  He heard soft, cold laughter nearby, through the trees. As though in answer to it, the calliope music grew louder. He did not listen; whatever it called to he had already seen.

  There was another crash, metal against concrete, from within the crypt, and the moan of a hurt, despairing animal calling to its maker.

  Reggie stepped into the darkness.

  A sudden clamp of dread took hold of him, but he shook it off and took another step forward.

  "I know you," he said, but even as he said it, that dread overtook him again. His voice sounded weak in the darkness. His resolve had lessened a fraction; a memory barely hidden in cloud was gnawing at him, forming a small kernel of fear that began to grow. "1 know you," he repeated, but now his voice sounded like that of a hollow man, and for the first time, he was not sure that he knew to whom he spoke.

  The walls of the tomb were smooth, as he had imagined they would be; only now they dripped with a sticky substance that smelled like blood, like death-juice. It pumped out of the walls and onto the floor, a flowing mass drawn from some hidden, failing heart. The pools began to merge, covering the floor and washing toward Reggie in a gently rising wave, pool meeting pool to converge on the spot where he stood rooted. Warm blood ran over his shoes, wetting the bottoms of his jeans, lapping warmly at his ankles.

  Do you know me? someone—the eyes?—said close by, viciously.

  The kernel of fright sought to explode within him. He fought it valiantly, forcing it back to seed. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, the blood was gone. Hallucination, he thought. After a blinking moment of confusion, he took another step, and something sounded from behind him; he looked back to see the dim shape of a huge and bloated thing lowering itself to the floor in the doorway of the vault. Long, tapering legs, many of them, preceded a fat, bulbous body covered with faintly glistening hair: he could almost hear a puff of expelled breath as the huge spider found the floor and began to scuttle toward him. The hairs on Reggie's body stood on end. With a gigantic effort, he closed his eyes for the briefest moment, remembering the dream he had had where he stood in the trench to warn the soldiers that the monstrous, greasy worm advancing on them could not hurt them: "It's only a dream!" When he opened his eyes, the spider, too, was gone.

  Bullshit, he thought, all hallucination.

  He turned to the inner sanctum again. Two heavy stained-glass doors were ajar before him. Over the ledge, he thought. Now I'll know what's over the ledge.

  "I'm not afraid of you," he said, and this time the fear was gone and he believed himself.

  He put his hands on the double doors, drawing them back, and suddenly it was there. He was there in the tunnel, with the bright warm light in front of him; he was drifting slowly toward it, toward the figure with the two huge eyes. He could almost see the face, could almost feel himself drawn into those eyes, when he felt the cold clamp of hands on him from behind and he looked b
ack to see the other end of the tunnel, filled with the dark shadow, close behind him, and there was the grip of cold, spidery hands and a beginning whisper that was suspended on the edge of time

  And this time no doctor's hands reached in to pull him back to the world. A merciless fear gripped him as the specter spoke; a pure, unsifted terror filled him, sinking into him like cement.

  "Why don't you help me?" he screamed at the huge eyes, but they only regarded him with unblinking calm. "You said you would be with me!"

  "Kiss me," the dark serpent's whisper came into his ear.

  Death. Here it was at last. Here was the icy, bleak madness, the skin-ripping coldness of it, the bleached-bone, screaming thing itself. Death. Here it was, as thick as molasses; it would reach out at him, an octopus, a thing with grasping hands and claws, with suckers to suck the life from him, to draw him to its breast and squeeze the life from the cells of his body and mind. Here it was, sickly sweet and fetid, damper than mold, wetter than thunderous rains: Death. It gripped and twisted and bit; it pierced him through the middle, searing him with heat and unbearable sharp burning light.

  Death.

  "Kiss me," the shadow breathed with rotted breath, bringing its lips to his.

  He fell to the floor of the crypt and screamed, throwing his hands over his face. This was what lay beyond that tick of time. The black pit. Nothing. The eyes were not here to help him because they could not. You moved toward the light, and then the blackness caught you from behind, crooning into your ear and biting your body in two. Over the ledge there was a dark, deep hole, infinity in length; the thing kissed you, and down you went. A fear quaked through him greater than any he had ever known or imagined. So it had all been games, all of it: the dreams and the longing to know what lay just beyond. The warmth of those enormous eyes was a false, suckling heat, a diversion, while the real work went on behind, shooting you in the back. . . .