Boundaries

by Wright, T. M.

  The small creatures of darkness.

  Rats. A plague of rats!

  He was convinced.

  He ran faster. He caught up with the man ahead of him and shouted, "Rats?"

  "Darkness!" the man shouted back. "Us."

  "Us?" David shouted.

  "Darkness," the man shouted. "We’re running from the darkness. It’s all right. We run, it follows. Just keep running, one foot in front of the other, arms pumping, air moving in, air moving out . . . ."

  THIRTEEN

  “Have we got far to go?" David shouted.

  "To where?" the man shouted back.

  Together, they turned a corner that led to what appeared, in the darkness, to be a narrower street. Apparently, it was unpaved, because David could feel the earth give a little beneath him as he ran.

  "To your apartment," David shouted.

  "I don’t know," the man shouted.

  "Isn’t that . . . " David was getting short of breath. "Isn’t that where we’re going?"

  "To my apartment?"

  "Yes." David was breathing heavily.

  "We’re running from the darkness," the man called.

  "Shit!" David wheezed.

  "Away from the darkness," the man repeated, and David could hear that he, too, seemed out of breath.

  Far ahead, David saw what looked like daylight illuminating the tops of the city’s taller buildings.

  ~ * ~

  Christian Grieg thought that his life was starting now. For its first forty years, who had he been? A stranger to himself. Someone who had tried to hide in his books. And reveal himself there, too. But doing that was a sign not so much of weakness (though it was that) as of dishonesty. A person must go into the universe knowing himself, and being himself—reacting to the world in the way that the world (nature) intended him to react, not the way society—other people—had programmed him to react. That was dishonest. That was a lie. It was a crime against himself, against nature, against the universe!

  Oh, this was a happy day in a life filled with unhappy days, a life filled with self-deception. A happy day of self-knowledge and fulfillment.

  He was being himself without constraint, acting upon the dictates of his nature without constraint.

  Nature was without. He was without. He was nature.

  He was the world’s first truly natural being since the time of cavemen.

  But he was better. He had intelligence as well as naturalness.

  How very like a God he was. How very like

  he would go into the universe untainted, and the universe would accept him with great happiness, and all the others, so tentatively populating the universe with him, would know him and love him and realize that it was not their place to forgive him because forgiveness could not figure into the scheme of this—one does not forgive the black widow spider, or the cobra, or the lion because it acts naturally

  he did not require forgiveness from the woman with the crown of black hair he did not require forgiveness from Anne Case

  he was a whole, natural being in a world filled with weaklings and dishonesty, and he did not require forgiveness from anyone, save from himself for being at variance with the universe for so long for his whole life practically until

  now

  here

  he was a whole man a whole man a whole man a whole

  man a

  ~ * ~

  David could hear movement from behind him as he ran. He thought that it must be very loud if he could hear it above his breathing and the clop-clop of his feet—and the breathing and the clop-clop of the feet of the man running just ahead of him.

  He was hearing what sounded very much like a steady wind, or rushing water.

  It was clear to him. He was hearing the plague of rats he had conjured up in his imagination. They were behind him, just behind him on that narrow, black street, in the darkness. They were at his heels, and the tap-tap of their millions of tiny feet was what he was hearing above the sound of his breathing and his own feet. The scrabbling of their tiny claws on the earth (or the pavement, or the brick) made a sound like wind or rushing water.

  He did not want to look back. He knew that if he did he would see nothing. Only darkness. The light was ahead. He could see it illuminating the tops of the city’s taller buildings. There were spires, like the tops of churches, there were flat roofs on brick buildings, there were clocks—they seemed to be clocks; perhaps there were no hands, or no numbers, but they were in the shape of clocks—and all of these buildings were illuminated.

  The light was there.

  And that’s why this man was running. This man knew this place and so he was running for the light.

  And behind . . .

  David looked.

  He saw darkness.

  He wanted to scream at the darkness. He didn’t. Instead, he yelled, "Something’s behind us!"

  And the man running ahead of him yelled back, "Us! The darkness!"

  Then there was light again.

  ~ * ~

  Christian Grieg saw the curve of the small lake, three dozen small lake-houses, movement here and there, caused either by the wind, or by animals—chipmunks, muskrats, squirrels finding their way to bird feeders that would, inevitably, be empty, because the summer people had yet to arrive.

  The scene was blue and green and white-blue—the lake, the earth, and the sky—punctuated by the colors of the little lake-houses, square and rectangular shapes of yellow, light blue, brown. The wind moved the lake and gave it life.

  It was a very cheerful scene. Christian enjoyed it. He smiled crookedly.

  ~ * ~

  Karen Duffy whispered, "Your poems are not very good, Anne, I’m sorry." But the poems of only a few people were very good, weren’t they?

  These poems were simply not enjoyable. Anne Case had been an unhappy woman, that was clear. And these poems were unhappy. Who could genuinely enjoy another person’s unhappiness?

  Karen knew that she was weeping. It wasn’t the poems that were making her weep, it was what they told her—along with Christian’s letters—about the man she had spent so much time with.

  That he was insane.

  ~ * ~

  "We have no reason to run anymore," the man said to David, and stopped running.

  David stopped. For a moment, he could clearly see the man’s face—the wide nose, large eyes, strong jaw, dark brown skin. Then it was lost in shadow again.

  David looked behind him where, in the darkness, he had heard the sound of wind or rushing water.

  He saw the dirt street, the close buildings—stucco, brick, wood, all with many tall windows—and he saw the moving sky above.

  "What was it?" he asked.

  "Us," said the thin man. "Darkness." The man had seemed out of breath for a moment, but now did not.

  "I mean that sound. Like wind."

  "The small creatures of the darkness," the man said. "Us."

  "No. Rats," David whispered.

  "Rats?" the man asked.

  "Were they rats?"

  "They were the small creatures of darkness.”

  “Were they like rats?"

  "What are rats?"

  "Have you ever seen them?"

  "Do you mean have I seen rats?"

  "No. These creatures of darkness. Have you ever actually seen them?"

  What sounded like a quick chuckle came from the thin man. "How could I have seen them? They only come out in the dark. What can anyone see in the dark? You look and all you see is little moving bits of light, and you know what those are? Spots. Like the things you see when you wake up. Spots. Dust in the eye—"

  David sighed. "Then what do they do?"

  "What do what do?"

  "These small creatures of the darkness. For God’s sake, what have we been talking about?”

  “No one knows."

  "Then why do you run from them?"

  "Because I don’t know what they might do.”

  “Do you think they’ll hurt you?
"

  "I don’t know. Everyone has always run toward the light in the darkness. And we have heard the small creatures of the darkness behind us as we ran."

  David thought that talking with this man was like talking in code. He asked, "How do you know that they’re small?"

  The man answered, "I don’t. I don’t know anything about them. They could easily be very large creatures of the darkness, I suppose; they could easily be the size of refrigerators, or, or . . . stoves and refrigerators, but that’s unlikely isn’t it. I mean, we’d hear them—"

  "But you said they were us," David cut in. "Did I? I don’t remember."

  "And you don’t know what they do?"

  "No one does."

  "And you’ve never seen them?"

  "That’s right."

  "Then how do you know they exist at all?"

  There was a moment’s silence. Then the man said, "I don’t understand. They exist in the darkness; what is to know or not know?" Again David heard what he thought was a quick chuckle. "Come now," the man said, and the darkness that covered his face nodded toward where they had just come from. "Let’s go back to my apartment. I have a trillion things to show you."

  ~ * ~

  Fred Collins couldn’t feel Anne Case in her house anymore. It saddened him. The house was simply a place where a particularly heinous murder had been committed, and the woman who had lived here, and died here, had been swept away.

  And she had been swept from his thoughts and his fantasies, as well. This saddened him, too. Communicating with her ghost—her memory—had been a very pleasant diversion. Now it didn’t work. When he tried to talk with her, she didn’t answer or even turn her head toward him. The house didn’t echo with her footfalls. Her perfume no longer lingered in the air.

  It never had, he realized. He had wanted it to, had willed it to, but it never had.

  The house was empty of Anne Case.

  His brain was empty of her.

  It happened.

  People and events came and went and intermingled and were gone.

  There was nothing anyone had ever been able to do about it.

  FOURTEEN

  The thin man invited David to sit in a ladderback chair near the apartment’s only window, which looked out on the street two stories below. The man asked if David would like some tea.

  David sat in the ladderback chair. "Tea?" he asked, thinking the offer was very odd. "You drink tea here?"

  "We drink tea everywhere," the man answered. He was standing at what looked like a white porcelain stove at the far end of the large room. To David’s left there was a small bed, neatly made with a fluffy pillow and a brightly colored quilt. At the foot of the bed—which was itself made of what looked like tubular black metal—there was a small chest of drawers. A rectangular mirror in a wooden frame stood on top.

  The man held up an ornate teakettle that looked like it was made of brass. "Orange pekoe tea," he said.

  "Orange pekoe," David said, still thinking that the whole idea of sharing tea with this faceless man was somehow absurd.

  "Yes, orange pekoe," the man said, apparently mistaking David’s remark for a question.

  "Thank you, no," David said.

  "No tea?" The man sounded put off.

  "I’m not thirsty," David said.

  "Thirsty?"

  "I don’t need any tea right now. Thank you."

  "Thank you," the man said, and set the teakettle on the stove. He went wordlessly to a large bookcase standing against the wall not far from the stove. The bookcase was lined, floor to top, with what looked like manuscripts. The man took one of the manuscripts down, held it in his hands for a moment as if he were reading it, then turned his head toward David. "I would like you to read this and tell me what it means." He crossed the room and put the thick manuscript—bound with twine—on David’s lap. The manuscript was untitled and written in longhand, in red ink, on plain yellowish paper. The handwriting was very small. David glanced at the manuscript, then up at the faceless man, who was apparently looking down at him.

  David said, "I didn’t come here to read."

  The man said nothing for a moment. Then the darkness that was his face turned briefly toward the window, then abruptly back to David, who realized, all at once, that the man was nervous. "Read a little of it," the man pleaded. "A few sentences, a page—I don’t care. Just get the sense of it, give me the sense of it, and I’ll be happy, and you’ll be happy—"

  David shook his head. "I didn’t come here to read," he repeated. "I came here to find my sister."

  A sigh came from the darkness covering the man’s face. "Sister," he said, "mother/father. It’s all in there." He reached, tapped the manuscript with a long, dark finger. "I need to know what they mean. You can tell me what they mean."

  "Tell you what what means? Sister?"

  "Sister, mother/father."

  "You want to know what sister, mother, and father mean?"

  The darkness that was the man’s face bobbed. "Oh, yes. Yes, I do."

  He smiled. David could see his smile, could see his large eyes, wide nose, his smiling, full mouth. Then darkness covered the man’s face again.

  "I saw you then," he said.

  David said, "Saw me?"

  "Your face. Very briefly. It may be significant; of what, I don’t know—transition, transmigration, transportation; my God, my God all these words ricocheting about in my head . . . " He rambled on.

  David didn’t interrupt him.

  As the man talked, David read the first few sentences of the manuscript to himself. They were:

  In enee timwe love, thair ispast, groathand here we are here we are.

  The gray eyes sweeeepoavar, caress. Guodbie, thaysae.

  David looked up at the thin man. The man stopped talking at once and apparently looked back. "I don’t know what this means," David said. "It’s gibberish." He looked at the manuscript again. He reread the first two sentences. They made more sense the second time around. In large part, they were phonetically written, he realized. These people obviously came to this place with their language and writing abilities intact, but with limitations. There was probably no formal instruction in language here.

  David read the sentences slowly, aloud: "In any time we love, there . . . is past . . . " He stopped, studied the next word hard, then continued, "Growth and here we are, here we are." He looked up at the thin man. "I’m sorry. It’s still gibberish to me." He looked at the second sentence, read aloud: "The gray eyes . . . " He paused, continued. "The gray eyes sweep over. Caress. Goodbye, they say." He sighed. "Yes, I know what this means," he told the faceless man. "The second sentence anyway." He paused. "This talks about someone who has died, apparently—"

  "Died?"

  "Yes." David paused. How could this man understand what death was? "You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?"

  The darkness that covered the man’s face moved slowly from side to side. The man said, "But I want to. I need to." He paused. "I think if all of us knew what words like these really meant, we would be . . . " He paused. "Died, of course," he went on, as if in sudden revelation, "demised, mortified, denuded, passed on, bequested, requested, R-S-V-P’d." He paused again. "No," he admitted, "I don’t understand a word of it."

  David sighed again. "This is why you asked me here? So I could read this book?"

  "All of it. Yes. From cover to cover and from page to page, while we drink our orange pekoe tea, you know, and discuss conundrums aplenty, oh yes—"

  "So I can tell you what sisters and mothers and fathers are?"

  "Yes. And more. Lots more, tons more—"

  "I don’t need to read this book to tell you that.”

  “You don’t?"

  David stood, manuscript in hand, and took it back to the bookcase. He turned his head, looked at the faceless man. "Do you know where I came from?"

  "Came from?"

  "Yes. Before I came here."

  The faceless man said nothing. />
  David sighed. "I’m sorry, my friend. I don’t think I can tell you a thing."

  ~ * ~

  Green with white shutters. Christian remembered, now. Green. White shutters.

  White shutters.

  Green.

  Green.

  Walls.

  Green walls and white shutters would certainly be easy to spot along this shoreline, as easy as spotting flies on a cake, on a pig, flies flying circus

  clouds

  cloudless day this day of salvation my salvation my salvation my salvation my salvation my salvation flies green shutters white

  shutters green walls

  Christian remembered now.

  But there was no house with white shutters and green walls. There were brown houses, blue houses, yellow houses with green shutters, green shutters and white walls. He could see them all laid out along the shoreline, like Monopoly houses, to infinity.

  He decided that he would walk the shoreline.

  He knew that before long he would find David that way.

  ~ * ~

  The faceless man asked, "Why can you tell me nothing?"

  "Because," David answered, "very simply, we don’t speak the same language."

  "But we do. It’s obvious. I speak, you hear, you respond; you talk, I listen, I respond; vice versa and over and over again—"

  "We use the same words," David broke in. "Approximately." He paused, then went on, "If I were to tell you that I was dying, right now, as we speak, would you know what the hell I was talking about?"

  The faceless man didn’t answer for a moment. Then the darkness covering his face moved from side to side. "No," he admitted.

  "And if I told you that where I come from, people are born, and they die, and when they die, they’re buried, and their souls—"

  "People are born here, too," the man cut in. "It happens all the time."

  "And what do you mean by that? What does the word born mean to you?"

  "It means what it means. It means they . . . arrive, they’re here—"

  "And where," David asked, "have they come from?"

  Again the man didn’t answer at once. He crossed the room, went to the bookcase, withdrew a particularly thick manuscript, opened it, and read: