Dark Forces

by McCauley, Kirby

  “What’s up?” he said, taking the chair opposite, hoping she wouldn’t want, for the thirty-fifth time, to do something silly and candle-lighted for their anniversary.

  She pointed to the pay phone on the wall by the curtain. “Amos called again.”

  “For God’s sake, now what? Didn’t I pay for that damned parking ticket last Saturday, for crying out loud?”

  Edna’s smile was weakly tolerant, and he scratched a large hand through his still blond hair. Amos Russo might be the best cop in town, he thought, but there were times when he could be too damned efficient. And Barney could not convince him that he was not the father of every stray kid who wandered into the shop.

  “Well, is it the ticket?” he asked again; and when she shook her head, he groaned. “Then who’s in trouble, and why the hell doesn’t he call their parents?”

  “It’s Syd,” she said, lowering her voice and glancing toward the front. “That’s why I called you in here instead of coming out.” Her voice had scaled into a whine, and only by staring at the grease-pocked ceiling could he stop himself from wincing. “It’s Syd. The nice one.”

  “Syd? My God, that kid’s got more brains than any twelve of those kids put together. What could he possibly do to rile Amos?”

  “He’s been prowling around the Yardley place.”

  “So who hasn’t?”

  “And he insists that someone is living in there. Amos wants you to tell him to stop bothering the police.”

  “No,” Barney said, straightening and glaring. “No one lives there.”

  “Now, Barney…”

  He tightened his lips and stared over her head. The last people, he remembered, to ever live in that run-down firetrap was a young couple who moved in about ten years ago. One weekend they and their van showed up, and two months later the windows were blank and no one knew what had happened. It wasn’t the only house in the world like it, he thought, and wouldn’t be the last: a relic from an age when high ceilings and wall-sized fireplaces were considered quite romantic and necessary—but to heat such a place now, to replace the outmoded wiring, the plumbing, put on a new roof and drains… he himself had once considered buying the house when he was younger, but the money had not been there and the dream soon faded.

  Like all the dreams he had had when he was young, of wealth and power and a vast legacy for his children.

  Now, there was only the luncheonette and the apartment above it. And children… none.

  “I’d like to burn the place down,” he said.

  “Barney!”

  He almost laughed at the shock in her face, and the quick resignation that he would never understand. Then, before the fight could begin—as it always did when he tried to explain what reality was—she reached down into her lap, lifted her hands and placed on the table three deep red blossoms wired together. He stared at them, at Edna, and she smiled as she held the flowers to her left shoulder.

  “Pretty?”

  “Where’d you get them?”

  “Dimmesdale’s.”

  “You’re not telling me he gave them to you!”

  Her smile drifted, returned, and faded. “No. I… I took them.”

  “For God’s sake, why?”

  “Because they’re better than plastic, damnit!” she snapped.

  Again he stared, then pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll talk to Syd. He’s as crazy as you are.”

  She doesn’t know what love is, he thought sadly; she reads too many books and sees too many movies.

  He stepped back through the curtain, stopped, and heard the voices.

  Edward, it’s cold!

  It’s only the fog, dear. Nothing to fear, nothing at all. Up from the river. Something to do with temperature change and moisture in the air, things like that.

  I don’t like it. And I’m tired of waiting.

  We won’t have to wait long, I promise you. Besides, it’s peaceful, you have to admit that.

  It is. Yes. It is. Quiet, like just before the sun goes down. Would you light a fire? We can sit while we’re waiting, and look at the flames.

  A click, and the voices changed.

  Andrew, it’s cold.

  Shall I light a fire?

  Yes, and draw the curtains, too. I don’t like the fog.

  Oh, I don’t know. I rather enjoy it. It cuts us off, and it’s as though we had no problems, no one in the world but you and me. I kind of like it.

  It reminds me of graveyards.

  You have no romance in your soul, Eloise.

  Enough to marry you, didn’t I? Kiss me once and light the fire.

  All right. But I still like the fog.

  And yet again.

  I love you, Simon.

  It’s a beautiful house.

  Are you sure you had no one else in mind?

  No one, no one at all. It was built just for you.

  Do we have to wait long?

  Charity, I love you, but you have no patience.

  Let’s stand on the porch, then, and look at the fog.

  I’d rather stay inside and look at the fire.

  The four boys had been joined by two girls in cheerleader jackets and short skirts, high white socks and buffed white shoes. They were giggling, and the boys were laughing silently. Barney glared, then rushed around the counter and slammed his hand down on the table, hard enough to jolt the recorder, pop the lid and send the cassette skittering. He snatched it up and jammed it into his pocket, at the same time backing away and ordering the kids out.

  There were protests, though muted, and one of the girls stopped at the door and looked back at him.

  “Mr. Hawkins, you ain’t got no soul,” she said.

  He grinned tightly. “I do. I just know what to do with it.”

  “Well,” she said as Syd returned to tug at her arm, “you won’t have it for long if you don’t loosen up.”

  They vanished, then, into a rusted Pontiac that howled angrily away from the curb toward the football field. He watched a plume of exhaust twist into the rain, blinked, and wondered what in hell had made him react that way.

  “Barney?”

  He felt the bulge of the cassette in his pocket. Edna moved to stand beside him, one hand on his arm, lightly.

  “Syd,” he said, “has a perverted sense of humor. He’s been sneaking around the neighborhood at night, taping people in their houses. People doing… getting ready to do… things. He’s been using the fog for cover.”

  “What fog?”

  He blinked and looked down at her, stepped back suddenly when she shimmered slightly and her hair brightened, her face softened, and her figure lost the pounds it had gained. Quickly, then, he began untying his apron.

  “Why,” he said, “the fog. You know what a fog is, don’t you? Last night, the night before, I don’t know when. Syd’s been—”

  “Barney, there hasn’t been a decent fog around here for… for weeks.” She stepped toward him, her hand outstretched. “Come on, love, we have sandwiches to get ready before the game is over.”

  “I don’t want them back in here.”

  “Barney, you’re being ridiculous.”

  He snatched his arm away and tossed the apron into a booth, snatched down his overcoat from the rack by the register and grabbed the cassette. “I’m going out for a minute,” he said as he left. “I’ll be back in time, don’t worry.”

  “Barney! Please… don’t—”

  He stood outside and saw her through the window, her hands clasped in front of her stomach, and was more than somewhat startled to see the hatred in her face.

  Now, an hour later, he could still imagine the uncharacteristic hardening around her eyes, the tight set of her mouth, and the way she stared when he had walked away.

  He shuddered and pulled at his collar. Only a few degrees cooler and the rain would be snow. The road was slick and black, and there were puddles skimmed with thin ice. He hunched his shoulders and wished he had brought his hat, wiped a hand over his face and l
ooked out over the lawn beyond the fence. To the Yardley house.

  He had only been inside that Victorian mockery of a rich man’s mansion once. And once had been enough, more than enough. It had been with Edna, before they were married and while they still watched sunsets and sunrises and delighted at the way young birds learned to fly. They had crept in through the back door, each carrying a blanket, had made their way to the front of the house and set the blankets atop each other on the floor before the hearth. Edna brought a single candle from which she dripped wax to set it on the mantel. It cast shadows, and as he undressed her, she made stories of them, turning men into knights and women into Guineveres; and when they had done and lay sweated and sated, he tried, tenderly, to tell her what she had done wrong, and they had fought. In the shadows. While the candle burned to the end of its wick.

  In the three and a half decades since that night, neither had mentioned it, and Barney only tried to keep boys like Syd from thinking there was something… special… about a house that overlooked the river.

  Finally, he pushed at the gate in the middle of the fence and walked slowly to the porch. As he expected, the front door was locked, and all the windows were grey with dust. He moved down the side steps and made his way through the sodden weeds to the back. Looking through the rain to the blur of the river and the hillside beyond.

  There was no fog. There was obviously no one in or near the house. He began to feel foolish, and wondered who Syd had enlisted to make the tape. But since, he thought, he had come this far he might as well lay all the ghosts to rest so the kids could come back, so they could come back to the store and learn what he knew, and what he had lived.

  He tried the back door and, when it opened, hesitated only long enough to pass his fingers over his face before stepping over the threshold and closing the door behind him. The light was dim, and he hurried through the kitchen and down the long narrow corridor to the living room. And it was as he remembered: empty and dusty and more damp than his bones could take. There was a fireplace on the back wall, and he knelt on the hearth and passed his hand over the blackened stone. Cold. And iced.

  He jammed his hands into his coat pockets. The left curled around Syd’s cassette, and there was reluctant admiration for the thought behind the prank. He knew, then, that it had all been planned; that the kids would know he would listen and become angry at the soap-opera dialogue and the shy giggles of the girls. He licked his lips and laughed.

  Stopped.

  His right hand felt velvet.

  He pulled out the roses Edna had taken from the garden, stared, glared, and tossed them angrily into the fireplace, the curse on his lips dying unborn when he looked at the windows.

  And saw the fog.

  Tried the doors, and all of them locked.

  Raced through the house, tripping over dust, throwing his weight against glass and none of it breaking.

  It was cold, and he was sweating.

  He stood in the middle of the living room, shaking his fist at the windows, the fog, the roses in the fireplace, and the single lighted candle that glowed on the mantel.

  Dropped to his knees and opened his hand.

  And the shadows of mournful vengeance pulsed in the corners and sighed.

  3.

  Blossom

  When Syd gave the rose to Ginny, she was obviously unimpressed and perhaps even a little scornful. It would not matter then, explaining to her (and somewhat embellishing) the risks he had taken in sneaking it out of Dimmesdale’s garden. Had he been caught, the police in general and Russo in particular, would have followed tradition and forced him into a public restitution for his stealing; and how, he wondered, do you replace a rose?

  He glanced across the classroom aisle and watched with weary bitterness as Ginny toyed with the petals, poking at them with her pen and jabbing at them once. So far as he could tell, she had not lifted it to enjoy the scent, nor glided a finger over the velvet to close her eyes at the touch. He saw her shrug. And when the last bell rang he sat there until the room had emptied. He, and the rose… lonely on the floor where a half-dozen feet had trampled it to a pulp.

  His first reaction was self-pity: while not exactly homely, neither was he quarterback-handsome. And to get Ginny, in any sense of the word, was apparently and finally impossible. He loved her. And he could not have her.

  Then, as quickly, he became vindictive: he’d pour the blackest ink he could find over her collection of snug cashmere sweaters, tangle for-ever that cloudsoft sable hair, use a razor and define in blood the gentle lines of her face.

  He snorted, knelt on the floor and used his handkerchief to cover the rose and lift it into his hip pocket.

  Another time, another ploy, he thought as he walked home; but Ginny seemed so cold not even the equator could warm her.

  After turning onto Hawthorne Street, he quickened his pace. His mother would be more than annoyed if he were late one more time. It was bad enough that his father had taken a job that required him to travel over two dozen days a month; should he himself now be absent, he knew his mother would cry. Not loudly. Standing in front of the living-room window perhaps, or by the stove, or just in the middle of the upstairs hall… tears, not sobs, and as quickly wiped away as they appeared. And were denied when he asked. When he left for college in the fall, he wondered how she would be able to stand the empty bed in his room.

  Someone called him, then, but he was in too much of a hurry to do more than lift a hand in blind greeting. The only time he stopped was at Dimmesdale’s house, where he stared boldly at the flourishing garden, the Cape Cod, delighting as he did so in the brightness of the afternoon, the shimmering new green of leaves and grass, the fresh cool bite of the early spring breeze. And then he blinked, thinking he saw a figure behind one of the first-floor windows. Certainly a curtain moved, but there was a window opened and he decided it was wishful thinking. Wishful… he gnawed on his lower lip, one hand guiltily at his hip pocket, and he whispered: “Ginny. I want to be like one of her candies.”

  How many boxes had he sent her over the past four months? Anonymously. Painfully. Watching her share the chocolates and the creams with everyone. Or nearly so.

  “A wishbone would be better,” a voice said behind him, and he spun around, angered and embarrassed. Flo Joiner stood looking at him through green-tinted glasses and ruffled black bangs, her lips in a slight smile, her arms folded around books held protectively in front of her breasts.

  “I don’t like people who do that,” he said, walking again, and cursing silently when she kept his pace.

  “Sorry,” she said, “but when you waved at me, I thought you wanted to walk me home. I didn’t know you were going to have a séance.”

  “A what?” The sun was in his eyes and he squinted as he stared down at her.

  “A seance. You know. Disembodied heads and tambourines and stuff like that. I thought you were holding a private seance at the creep’s house.”

  “How do you know he’s a creep?”

  She laughed and blew at her bangs to drive them up and away from her glasses. The habit annoyed him; Flo thought it made her look cute. “Anyone who lives the way that old man does has got to be a creep. But… sometimes wishing works, I guess. Right?”

  “No,” he said, stopping as she did in front of a low white ranch house. She took a step up the walk, turned, and asked if he would like something to eat, cake or whatever. “Never say whatever,” he said with a grin that apologized for his brusqueness. “It puts evil thoughts in a senior’s head.”

  “Oh, really?” she said with a smile he couldn’t quite read. “And yes, wishing does too sometimes work. My dad said he wished for a new car and got it. My brother wanted a new glove and he got it, too. I’m not telling you what I’m going to wish for.”

  “You guys are just lucky, that’s all. I never saw so much luck in one place in my life.”

  Flo shrugged as though she weren’t interested. “Probably. Besides, my stupid brother says you got
to have a flower first. Something from the creep’s garden.” She lowered voice and head, then, and stared at him over her glasses. “But not the roses, Sydney, definitely not the roses.”

  “Are you trying to imitate someone?”

  “You’ll never know, Sydney, you’ll never know.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Flo!”

  Once again, irritatingly, she laughed, and Syd waved her a curt good-bye.

  Once in the house, he yelled for his mother, raced up the stairs, and dumped his books on the bed before changing his clothes. The handkerchief he set very carefully on the windowsill and gazed at it a moment, scratching thoughtfully at his waist, his jaw, the back of his neck. Then he was downstairs again and in the kitchen, kissing his mother quickly on the cheek while he looked over her shoulder at the pot of split-pea soup simmering under steam on the stove.

  “Ugh,” he said.

  “You know you love it,” she laughed and aimed a slap at his rump.

  He sprawled on one of the kitchen chairs and nodded when she lifted a bottle of ginger ale, watched as the carbonation gathered and leaped, foamed and dripped over the side of the glass. His mother moved back to her cooking, and for a long and peaceful while they listened to the sounds of the neighborhood winding down toward supper.

  “Do you have any homework?”

  He grunted.

  There was a card from his father propped against a saltshaker in the middle of the table. He turned it around and stared at the picture: a Hopi Indian summoning spirits for the tourists. He thought it disgusting and turned it back, not bothering to read the message done in red ink.

  “He’ll be home on Saturday.”

  Syd grunted.

  In spite of the bubbles, his soda tasted flat.

  “Mom, I’m wondering… I’ve been thinking for a long time that maybe… well, maybe I shouldn’t go to college this fall. I mean, what with Dad—”

  “Don’t,” she said, turning from the stove, her face pale with anger. “Don’t ever say that! Never say that in this house again.”

  “But, Mom—”

  “It’s that Ginny girl, isn’t it? You want to run away and marry her or something. Always going out with her four or five times a week, coming home late at night even though you know you have school the next day, sneaking in and thinking I’m asleep so I don’t know how late. How stupid do you think I am, Sydney?”