Thirteen Phantasms

by James P. Blaylock

  It was an old LP record on the turntable, one from the days when the real hi-fi enthusiasts cared more about sound quality than any kind of actual music. This one was two whole sides of locomotive racket, booming out through his monaural Klipshorn speaker. He also had old disks that were of downtown traffic, ocean waves, birds shouting in tropical forests. …

  Better a train. Booming across those nighttime miles.

  He was just getting well relaxed when he began to hear faint music behind the barreling train. It was a Christmas song, and before he could stop himself he recognized it—Bing Crosby singing “We Three Kings,” one of her favorites.

  He’d been ready for it. He pulled two balls of cotton out of the plastic bag beside the vodka bottle and twisted them into his ears. That made it better—all he could hear now was a distant hiss that might have been rain against the windows.

  Ghost rain, he thought. I should have put out a ghost gauge.

  As if in response to his thought, the next sip of vodka had a taste—the full-orchestra, peaches-and-bourbon chord of Southern Comfort. He tilted his head forward and let the liquor run out of his mouth back into the glass, and then he stood up and crossed to the phonograph, lifted the arm off the record and laid it in its rest, off to the side.

  When he pulled the cotton out of his ears, the house was silent. There was no creaking of floorboards, no sound of breathing or rustling. He was staring at the empty fireplace, pretty sure that if he looked around he would see that flickering rainbow glow from the dining room; the glow of lights, and the star on the top of the tree, and those weird little glass columns with bubbles wobbling up through the liquid inside. Somehow the stuff never boiled away. Some kind of perpetual motion, like those glass birds with the top hats, that bobbed back and forth, dipping their beaks into a glass of water, forever. At least with the Vick’s he wouldn’t smell pine sap.

  The pages of the wall calendar had been rearranged sometime last night. He’d noticed it right away this morning when he’d come out of what used to be the guest bedroom, where he slept now on the single bed. The pink cloud of tuberous begonias above the thirty-one empty days of March was gone, replaced by the blooming poinsettia of the December page. Had he done it himself, shifted the calendar while walking in his sleep? He wasn’t normally a sleepwalker. And sometime during the night, around midnight probably, he’d thought he heard a stirring in the closed-up bedroom across the hall, the door whispering open, what sounded like bedroom slippers shuffling on the living room carpet.

  Before even making coffee he had folded the calendar back to March. She’d died on St. Patrick’s Day evening, and in fact the green dress she’d laid out on the queen-size bed still lay there, gathering whatever kind of dust inhabited a closed-up room. Around the dress, on the bedspread, were still scattered the green felt shamrocks she had intended to sew onto it. She’d never even had a chance to iron the dress, and, after the paramedics had taken her away on that long-ago evening, he’d had to unplug the iron himself, at the same time that he unplugged the bedside clock.

  The following day, after moving out most of his clothes, he had shut the bedroom door for the last time. This business with the calendar made him wonder if maybe the clock was plugged in again, too, but he was not going to venture in there to find out.

  Through the back door, from across the yard, he heard the familiar scrape of the widow’s screen door opening, and then the sound of it slapping shut. Quickly he reached up and flipped off the lamp, then sat still in the darkened living room. Maybe she wasn’t paying him another visit, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

  In a couple of minutes there came the clumping of her shoes on the front steps, and he hunkered down in the chair, glad that he’d turned off the train noise.

  He watched her shadow in the porch light. He shouldn’t leave it on all the time. It probably looked like an invitation, especially at this time of year. She knocked at the door, waited a moment and then knocked again. She couldn’t take a hint if it stepped out of the bushes and bit her on the leg.

  Abruptly he felt sheepish, hiding out like this, like a kid. But he was a married man, for God’s sake. He’d taken a vow. And a vow wasn’t worth taking if it wasn’t binding. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life, said Proverbs 31 about a good wife; her lamp does not go out at night.

  Does not go out.

  His thoughts trailed off into nothing when he realized that the woman outside was leaving, shuffling back down the steps. He caught himself wondering if she’d brought him something else to eat, maybe left a casserole outside the door. Once she’d brought around half a corned beef and a mess of potatoes and cabbage, and like the Christmas cookies, all of it had gone straight into the garbage. But the canned chili he’d microwaved earlier this evening wasn’t sitting too well with him, and the thought of corned beef …

  He could definitely hear something now from the closed-up bedroom—a low whirring noise like bees in a hive—the sewing machine? He couldn’t recall if he had unplugged it too, that night. Still, it had no excuse. …

  He grabbed the cotton balls, twisting them up tight and jamming them into his ears again. Had the bedroom door moved? He groped wildly for the lamp, switched it on, and with one last backward glance he went out the front door, nearly slamming it behind him in his haste.

  Shakily, he sat down in one of the white plastic chairs on the porch and buttoned up his cardigan sweater. If the widow returned, she’d find him, and there was damn-all he could do about it. He looked around in case she might have left him something, but apparently she hadn’t. The chilly night air calmed him down a little bit, and he listened for a moment to the sound of crickets, wondering what he would do now. Sooner or later he’d have to go back inside. He hadn’t even brought out the vodka bottle.

  Tomorrow, Christmas day, would be worse.

  What would he say to her if the bedroom door should open, and she were to step out? If he were actually to confront her. … A good marriage was made in heaven, as the scriptures said, and you didn’t let a thing like that go. No matter what. Hang on with chains.

  After a while he became aware that someone up the street was yelling about something, and he stood up in relief, grateful for an excuse to get off the porch, away from the house. He shuffled down the two concrete steps, breathing the cold air that was scented with jasmine even in December.

  Some distance up the block, half a dozen people in robes were walking down the sidewalk toward his house, carrying one of those real estate signs that looked like a miniature hangman’s gallows. No, only one of them was carrying it, and at the bottom end of it was a metal wheel that was skirling along the dry pavement.

  Then he saw that it wasn’t a real estate sign, but a cross. The guy carrying it was apparently supposed to be Jesus, and two of the men behind him wore slatted skirts like Roman soldiers, and they had rope whips that they were snapping in the chilly air.

  “Get along, King of the Jews!” one of the soldiers called, obviously not for the first time, and not very angrily. Behind the soldiers three women in togas trotted along, shaking their heads and waving their hands. Harrison supposed they must be Mary or somebody. The wheel at the bottom of the cross definitely needed a squirt of oil.

  Harrison took a deep breath, and then forced jocularity into his voice as he called, “You guys missed the Golgotha off-ramp. Only thing south of here is the YMCA.”

  A black couple was pushing a shopping cart up the sidewalk from the opposite direction, their shadows stark under the streetlight. They were slowing down to watch Jesus. All kinds of unoiled wheels were turning tonight.

  The biblical procession stopped in front of his house, and Harrison walked down the path to the sidewalk. Jesus grinned at him, clearly glad for the chance to pause amid his travail and catch his breath.

  One of the women handed Harrison a folded flier. “I’m Mary Magdalene,” she told him. “This is about a meeting we’re having at our church next week. We’re on Sev
enteenth, just past the 5 Freeway.”

  The shopping cart had stopped too, and Harrison carried the flier over to the black man and woman. “Here,” he said, holding out the piece of paper. “Mary Magdalene wants you to check out her church. Take a right at the light, it’s just past the freeway.”

  The black man had a bushy beard but didn’t seem to be older than thirty, and the woman was fairly fat, wearing a sweatsuit. The shopping cart was full of empty bottles and cans sitting on top of a trash bag half full of clothes.

  The black man grinned. “We’re homeless, and we’d sure like to get the dollar-ninety-nine breakfast at Norm’s. Could you help us out? We only need a little more.”

  “Ask Jesus,” said Harrison nervously, waving at the robed people. “Hey Jesus, here’s a chance to do some actual thing tonight, not just march around the streets. This here is a genuine homeless couple, give ‘em a couple of bucks.”

  Jesus patted his robes with the hand that wasn’t holding the cross. “I don’t have anything on me,” he said apologetically.

  Harrison turned to the Roman soldiers. “You guys got any money?”

  “Just change would do,” put in the black man.

  “Nah,” said one of the soldiers, “I left my money in my pants.”

  “Girls?” said Harrison.

  Mary Magdalene glanced at her companions, then turned back to Harrison and shook her head.

  “Really?” said Harrison. “Out in this kind of neighborhood at night, and you don’t even have quarters for phone calls?”

  “We weren’t going to go far,” explained Jesus.

  “Weren’t going to go far.” Harrison nodded, then looked back to Mary Magdalene. “Can your church help these people out? Food, shelter, that kind of thing?”

  The black woman had walked over to Jesus and was admiring his cross. She liked the wheel.

  “They’d have to be married,” Mary Magdalene told Harrison. “In the church. If they’re just. … living together, we can’t do anything for them.”

  That’s great, thought Harrison, coming from Mary Magdalene. “So that’s it, I guess, huh?”

  Apparently it was. “Drop by the church!” said Jesus cheerfully, resuming his burden and starting forward again.

  “Get along, King of the Jews!” called one of the soldiers, snapping his length of rope in the air. The procession moved on down the sidewalk, the wheel at the bottom of the cross squeaking.

  The black man looked at Harrison. “Sir, could we borrow a couple of bucks? You live here? We’ll pay you back.”

  Harrison was staring after the robed procession. “Oh,” he said absently, “sure. Here.” He dug a wad of bills out of his pants pocket and peeled two ones away from the five and held them out.

  The man took the bills. “God bless you. Could we have the five too? It’s Christmas Eve.”

  Harrison found that he was insulted by the God bless you. The implication was that these two were devout Christians, and would assuredly spend the money on wholesome food, or medicine, and not go buy dope or wine.

  “No,” he said sharply. “And I don’t care what you buy with the two bucks.” Once I’ve given it away, he thought, it shouldn’t be my business. Gone is gone.

  The black man scowled at him and muttered something obviously offensive under his breath as the two of them turned away, not toward Norm’s and the dollar-ninety-nine breakfast, but down a side street toward the mini-mart.

  Obscurely defeated, Harrison trudged back up to his porch and collapsed back into the chair.

  He wished the train record was still playing inside—but even if it had been, it would still be a train that, realistically, had probably stopped rolling a long time ago. Listening to it over and over again wouldn’t make it move again.

  He opened the door and walked back into the dim living room. Just as he closed the door he heard thunder boom across the night sky, and then he heard the hiss of sudden rain on the pavement outside. In a moment it was tapping at the windows.

  He wondered if the rain gauge was still on the roof, maybe measuring what was happening to Jesus and the black couple out there. And he was glad that he had had the roof redone a year ago. He was okay in here—no wet carpets in store for him.

  The vodka bottle was still on the table, but he could see tiny reflected flickers of light in the glassy depths of it—red and green and yellow and blue; and, though he knew that the arm of the phonograph was lifted and in its holder, he heard again, clearly now, Bing Crosby singing “We Three Kings.”

  To hell with the vodka. He sat down in the leather chair and picked up the snow globe with trembling fingers. “What,” he said softly, “too far? Too long? I thought it was supposed to be forever.”

  But rainy gusts boomed at the windows, and he realized that he had stood up. He pried at the base of the snow globe, and managed to free the plug.

  Water and white plastic flecks bubbled and trickled out of it, onto the floor. In only a minute the globe had emptied out, and the two figures in the sleigh were exposed to the air of tonight, stopped. Without the refraction of the surrounding water the man and the woman looked smaller, and lifeless.

  “Field and fountain, moor and mountain,” he whispered. “Journey’s done—finally. Sorry”

  He was alone in the dark living room. No lights gleamed in the vodka bottle, and there was no sound but his own breath and heartbeat.

  Tomorrow he would open the door to anyone who might knock.

  The Shadow on the Doorstep

  It was several months after I had dismantled my aquaria that I heard a rustling in the darkness, a scraping of what sounded like footsteps on the front porch of my house. It startled me out of a literary lethargy built partly of three hours of Jules Verne, partly of a nodding acquaintance with a bottle of single malt scotch. In the yellow glow of the porch lamp, through the tiny, distorting panes of the mullioned upper half of the oaken door, I saw only a shadow, a face perhaps, half turned away. The dark outline of it was lost in the shaded confusion of an unpruned hibiscus.

  The porch itself was a rectangular island of hooded light, cut with drooping shadows of potted plants and the rectilinear darkness of a pair of weather-stained mission chairs. Encircling it was a tumult of shrubbery. Beyond lay the street and the feeble glow of globed lamps, all of it washed in pale moonlight that served only to darken that wall of shrubbery, so that the porch with its yellow buglight and foliage seemed a self-contained world of dwindling enchantment.

  I couldn’t say with any confidence, as I sat staring in sudden, unexplained horror at the start this late visitor had given me, that the leafy appendages thrusting away on either side of him weren’t arms or some strange mélange of limbs and fins. With the weak light at his back he was a fishy shadow suffused in the amber aura of porchlight, something which had crawled dripping out of a late Devonian sea.

  In the interests of objectivity, I’ll say again that I had been reading Jules Verne. And it’s altogether reasonable that a mixture of the, book, the shadows, the embers aglow in the fireplace, the late hour, and a morbid suspicion that nothing but trouble travels in the suburbs after dark combined to enchant into existence this troublesome shade that was nothing, in fact, but the scraping of a branch of hibiscus against the windowpane. But you can understand that I wasn’t anxious to open the door.

  I put the book down silently, the afterimage of the interior of the Nautilus slanting across my consciousness and then submerging, and I remember wondering at the appropriateness of the scene in the novel: the crystal panels bound in copper beyond which floated transparent sheets of water illuminated by sunlight; the lazy undulations of eels and fishes, of lampreys and Japanese salamanders and blue and silver clouds of schooling mackerel. Slipping into the shadows beyond the couch, I pressed myself against the wall and crept into the darkened study where a window would afford me a view of most of the porch.

  My aquaria, as I’ve said, were dismantled some months earlier, six, I believe—the water siphon
ed out a window and into a flower bed, the waterweeds collapsed in a soggy heap, the fish astonished to find themselves imprisoned in a three gallon bucket. These last I gave to a nearby tropical fish store; the empty aquaria with its gravel and lumps of petrified stone I stored beneath a bench in the shed under my avocado tree. It was a sad undertaking, all in all, like bundling up pieces of my boyhood and packing them away in a crate. I sometimes have the notion that opening the crate would restore them wholesale, that the re-creation of years gone by could be effected by dragging in a hose and filling the tanks with clear water, by banking the gravel around rocks heaped to form dark caverns, the entrances of which are shadowed by the reaching tendrils of waterweeds through which glow watery rays of reflected light. But the visitor on the porch that night dissuaded me.

  Three aquarium shops sit neatly in my memory by day and are confused and shuffled by night, giddily trading fishes and facades, all of them alive with the hum and bubble of pumps and filters and the damp, musty smell of fishtanks drip dripping tropical water onto concrete floors. One I discovered by bicycle when I was thirteen. It was a clapboard house on a frontage road along a freeway, the exhaust of countless roaring trucks and automobiles having dusted the peeling white paint with black grime. Inside sat dozens of ten-gallon tanks, poorly lit, the water within them half evaporated. There wasn’t much to recommend it, even to a thirteen-year-old, aside from a door in the back—what used to be a kitchen door, I suppose—that led along a gravel path to what had been a garage. These thirty years later I can recall the very day I discovered it, the gravel path that is, easily a year after my first bicycle journey to the shop. I’d wandered around inside, shaking my head at the condition of the aquaria, despising the guppies and goldfish and tetras that swam sluggishly past their scattered dead companions. My father waited in a Studebaker at the curb outside, drumming his fingers along the top of the passenger seat. A sign in pencil scrawl attracted my eye, advertising another room of fish “outside.” And so out I stepped along that gravel path, shoving into the darkened back half of the garage, which was unlit save for the incandescent bulbs in aquarium reflectors. I shut the door behind me for no other reason than to keep out sunlight. Banks of aquaria lined three walls, all of them a deep greenish-black, the water within lit against a backdrop of elodea and Amazon swordplant and the waving, lacey branches of ambulia and sagitarius. There was the faint bursting of fine bubbles that danced toward the surface from aerators trapped beneath mossy stones. On the sandy floor of one aquarium lay a half dozen mottled freshwater rays from the Amazon, their poisonous tails almost indistinguishable from the gravel they rested on. A half score of buffalo-head cichlids hovered in the shelter of an arched heap of waterfall rock, under which was coiled the long, finny serpent’s tail of a reedfish.