Halfway Down the Stairs

by Gary A Braunbeck

  Jackson blinked, shocked. “But … but the lighthouse and the foghorn …”

  Carson threw himself against the sheriff and hugged him tightly, the precious books falling onto the dock as the fog crept in on silent cat paws, curling around the books until they could be seen no more. Carson wept, fighting against a great sorrow heavy and vast as he quoted from memory: “’It’s gone back to the Deeps. It’s learned that you can’t love anything too much in this world… Waiting out there and waiting out there, while man comes and goes on this pitiful little planet. Waiting and waiting.’”

  No light came from the tower. No foghorn sounded. The only noise was that of Carson’s weeping and whispering: “Waiting and waiting and no one ever comes. N-nobody ever tells stories. Nobody ever tells ….”

  Ted Jackson held the tiny, fragile, weeping figure close. He leaned over and picked up the books before the fog took them forever, gently placing them back in Carson’s arms. “You know,” he said, “he wrote other books with lots more stories.”

  Sniffling, Carson turned his face upward. “Y-yeah? He did?”

  “You bet.” Jackson pulled the brown paper bag from behind him and removed its contents, momentarily unnoticing of the folded, stapled sheets of paper that tumbled out.

  Carson’s eyes grew wide, the innocent fire reigniting from within, making his cheeks glow. “A hundred stories?” he cried out in joy as he took the big, new, red-covered book from Jackson.

  “Oh, yeah. And I have more by him, as well. You have hundreds, thousands of new friends waiting for you, Carson. He’s given them to you. They’ve been waiting. You only have to open the book and turn to the first page.”

  “Nobody ever gave me a new book.”

  “Happy birthday, Carson.”

  “… all these new friends, all these n-new stories, all these new places to go ….” He began reading the first story.

  Jackson patted Carson’s shoulder and gave him a small kiss on the top of his head, then reached out and grabbed the papers that he noticed had fallen out. The top of the first page read: Petition for Legal Guardianship.

  “You want to come and stay over at my place tonight, Carson? We got some things to talk about. Maybe we can grab a pizza and—”

  “Shhh,” said Carson, flipping the page with great intensity. “This’s a good one.”

  And so the fog danced around them but did not take them into the winter shadows; a sheriff of fifty-one and an old man of seventy-nine who, because of too many blows to the head with cast-iron skillets, would always be seven years old.

  As Jackson led him to the vehicle Carson read on, finding worlds of new hope filled with new friends, new more wondrous things to imagine, to dream about, and to wish for. The pages turned, the words drunk in like Bacchus’s headiest brew, and a childhood lost, a childhood ruined, and a childhood denied blinked as it woke in the darkness, turned on the lights, and raised its head in glory.

  For Ray Bradbury

  Bargain

  “Then wilt thou not be loth

  To leave this Paradise...”

  —John Milton, Paradise Lost

  The night grew silent, an almost majestic silence, as if every living thing was holding its breath for fear of breaking the purity.

  As the silence became deeper, so did the darkness, allowing a massive shadow to detach itself from a corner of the night and move unnoticed over the city, over every building, every house, every church, past the farmers’ fields and the woodlands, until it reached the north and south forks of the Licking River near Raccoon Creek. Here, the North Fork marked the community’s eastern boundary. In this spot the county began to gradually slope from the Mississippian bedrock it rested on to the much trickier Pennsylvanian bedrock; shale lay under the surface of the topsoil from the west where sandstone began mixing in.

  A small tributary of the Licking River formed in this spot, and it was here that the shadow hovered as still as the point of an ancient divining rod. This sixty-acre plat had always been extremely weak; the ground here was known to often simply collapse without warning, half-swallowing barns, outhouses, even the corpses of abandoned cars rusting in the nearby automobile graveyard.

  This was not a place many visited anymore.

  What better spot, then, for a certain corner of Hell to open one of its back doors?

  Beneath the clear, still surface of the tributary whose surface was made almost turquoise by the moonlight, lay a series of small, evenly-spaced hollowed boulders, each with a translucent sheet of isinglass covering its front. Inside each of the hollowed objects—which, upon closer examination, the shadow saw were not boulders at all but leathery eggs—huddled a clay-like lump; some were shapeless blobs, others vaguely humanoid in shape; some were skeletal, others so corpulent their shapes could barely be contained; still others were mere hand-sized, featureless fetuses. The figures lay with knees pulled up against their chests. Their dark, sunken eyes stared up blankly at the draping algae and bodies of insects floating on the surface.

  The shadowed slumped closer to the surface, whispering Awaken to any of the figures who could hear.

  A set of tiny fingers broke through the gelatinous fronting of one of the eggs and began pulling apart the shell, sections snapping off and flaking away until the featureless fetal face poked through, followed by two pink arms, hands moving slowly through the water as the Unfinished Soul pushed free of its prison and swam through to the surface. It pulled itself onto the ground, crawling toward the tip of the shadow.

  The shadow reached out and helped the Unfinished Soul to stand.

  I need a guide, little one, whispered the shadow. A debt is being collected tonight.

  Lift me up, said the Unfinished Soul. It will be my pleasure to show you the way.

  The shadow poured over the figure, ink spreading across a sketch, until it vanished completely.

  Do exactly as I say, whispered the Unfinished Soul.

  And the shadow began churning in the air; slowly, at first, curling wisps of smoke from a forgotten cigarette, growing thicker, its speed increasing, soon twisting itself into a funnel and dropping low.

  The ground rippled, then began sinking inward with heavy, dry sounds as the shadow threaded itself into the center of the chasm like string through a needle’s eye. Sections of earth spun outward as the shadow-thread drilled deeper, finally disappearing beneath the surface. The ground shuddered, jumped, then grumbled. The remaining eggs in the tributary swirled like flecks around a drain before vanishing down the chasm.

  In the heart of the shadow, the Unfinished Soul glanced upward, just once, out of curiosity, and saw the moon vanish behind a blue-tinged night-cloud, then re-emerge a few moments later to reveal it was no cloud at all, but something much more solid—a balloon.

  Beneath its death’s-head body and the glowing fire within, his hands gripping the flying wires of the basket, a young man who could no longer remember his name watched as the chasm grew wide, then wider. As he stared into the pit he saw a ring of trees emerge around the perimeter—fingers of the dead pushing upward through forgotten grave-soil—and stood helpless as the balloon moved downward, toward them.

  The trees were well over thirty feet tall, each with a thick trunk resembling that of a cactus, only black. The branches of each tree were obscured by heavy onion layers of bleak blue leaves which collectively blossomed outward to form human faces, each turning upward to stare at him through milky, pupilless eyes, each wearing a tight, pinched expression of concentrated grief. As the wind passed through the trees, the faces opened their mouths and moaned; deeply, steadily, mournfully: the sound of cumulative anguish.

  The young man felt tears welling in his eyes, and wished he could say something to ease their pain.

  After all, he recognized every face.

  A strong gust of wind howled, snatching the balloon from within the ring of keening trees and hurtling it into the gale. It bounced across the night sky, turning, dipping, rising, caught in the thermals. It ebbed
across roads, spun down streets, and arced over buildings, its cast-off rope whipping back and forth as it was tossed into the pocket of a wind that pulled it down until the tip of its rope touched the sidewalk.

  It scooted along until it reached an old but noble-looking house where a single dim light burned in the downstairs window.

  The balloon moved with great care, positioning itself so that the young man was given a clear look inside the window.

  Murky light from a glowing street lamp snaked across the darkness to press against the glass. The light bled into the room, across a kitchen table, and glinted off the rim of a glass held by a man whose once-powerful body had lost its commanding posture under the weight of compiling years; he was now overweight from too many beers, over-tense from too many worries, and overworked far too long without a reprieve. Whenever this man spoke, his eyes never had you; this much the young man watching from the balloon recalled with morbid clarity. His father’s eyes were every lonely journey the young man had ever taken, every unloved place he’d ever visited, every sting of guilt he’d ever felt; he stared into his father’s eyes that never had you, only brushed by once, softly, like a cattail or a ghost, then fell shyly toward the ground in some inner contemplation too sad to be touched by a tender thought or the delicate brush of another’s care. You’d think God had forgotten his name.

  Albert lifted the glass to his mouth. The cool water felt good going down, washing away the remnant of the bad dream. He drained the glass, sighed, then went to the sink and refilled the glass. He was thinking about his days as a child, about the afternoons now forgotten by everyone but him, afternoons when he’d go to the movies for a nickel and popcorn was only a penny. He thought about how he used to take his son to the movies all the time when his son was still a boy, how much fun they always had, and Albert longed for the chance to do something like that again, something that would put a bright smile on his son’s face and make himself feel less of a failure. His son was now a great success, and Albert was still what he’d always been, a factory stooge, a worker on the line. He tried to remember how long it had been since he and his son had last spoken. Seemed a damn shame, it did, the way they never talked anymore, and his son living just the other side of town.

  Why hadn’t the boy called in so long?

  Albert stood at the sink listening to the sounds of his wife sleeping. Janice snored loudly, and though it used to get on Albert’s nerves, he now found the sound comforting. He didn’t know how he’d be able to face the rest of his life if she weren’t by his side. She was a marvel to him. After all the mistakes he’d made—and, God, he’d made a lot, no arguing that—her respect and love for him never lessened.

  Albert raised the glass to his lips and found that he was smiling.

  The balloon rose higher, then, toward a window on the second floor, giving the young man a chance to look in on the sleeping form of his mother, and smile; even from outside, he could hear her snoring. Sawing logs like a lumberjack, his father used to say.

  The keening trees had perfectly captured the faces of his parents, as well as the others.

  The young man reached out his hand but stopped just short of placing it against the glass.

  Would it do any good if you knew how sorry I am?

  As if in answer, the wind kicked up once again and the balloon was swept away, up and over the house.

  It rode the breeze above the roofs of the town until its nearly-imperceptible shadow fell across the head of a couple climbing out of a car and running toward another house, one the young man recognized all too well.

  As he did the couple; their faces, too, had been perfectly reproduced by the keening trees.

  The balloon hovered, unseen by Patricia and her husband, Richard, as they rushed toward the front porch of the house. Patricia had been trying to get in touch with her brother for the last week and had finally given over to panic when she’d called Mom and Dad to find they hadn’t heard from him for a long while, either.

  “He’s probably out of town or something,” Albert had said to her. “He’s been real…busy lately, what with the company taking off like it has.”

  The explanation wasn’t enough for Patricia, who insisted that Richard and she make the one-hour drive from Columbus to Cedar Hill.

  Patricia pounded on the front door, calling out her brother’s name.

  No response.

  She began flipping through her keys until she found the spare door key her brother had given her last year when he’d bought the house.

  “I don’t know if just barging in like this is such a good idea,” said Richard.

  “Don’t start with me again,” said Patricia, slipping the key into the lock. “I don’t care how great things are going for his company, you know how bad his depression can get when he doesn’t take his meds. He pulled this disappearing act the last time he went off them, and it damn near killed him.”

  “I still think you’re panicking over nothing.”

  “I hope so, Richard. I truly hope you’ll be saying ‘I told you so’ to me in a few minutes.”

  She got the door opened but Richard stepped in front of her.

  “Let me go in first, Pat, okay? He might…y’know…have company or something.”

  “Goddammit, Richard, I’m not going to worry about—”

  “Just humor me, all right?”

  Patricia exhaled, then nodded her head. “I’ll wait here. But not for long.”

  Richard went inside, leaving the door half-opened.

  The young man in the balloon wanted to close his eyes, wanted to cover his ears with his hands, wanted the balloon to leave here right this second because he didn’t want to see or hear what was about to happen when—

  “Jesus!” shouted Richard from inside. “Oh, good Christ—PAT!”

  As if propelled by the volume of Richard‘s shouts, the balloon caught a thermal and glided farther on, reaching the banks of the Licking River. The thermal expanded and the balloon lowered its basket and passenger into the waters, the currents carrying it to the junction of the north and south forks.

  It bounced off a section of jutting rocks and spiraled upward, pulled into a pocket of churning wind being sucked into the deep chasm in the center of the field.

  The keening trees blinked their pupilless eyes and cried out again; louder, this time, and with a deeper anguish.

  The young man felt their cries chew through him as the balloon hung suspended over the chasm of collapsed earth.

  The balloon’s tie-off rope began to unroll and lower itself. The rumbling from deep inside the chasm became a whistle. Small sections of hillside crumbled away, giving way to increasingly larger sections sliding toward the chasm and pouring over its edge.

  The chasm grew wider. More ground collapsed.

  The whistling was replaced by the sound of a million rocks cracking apart from the center.

  The tie-off line pulled taut, a fisherman’s line at last making the catch of the day.

  The balloon began rising.

  An ornate kiosk that might have been a belfry poked up, followed by curling arches that formed the overhang of stained-glass windows where stone gargoyles sat underneath.

  A tug, another gust of wind, and the tie-off line snapped tighter, pulling with all its might.

  The bulk of the rising church was pulled free of the membranous sac of soil.

  The young man looked down and saw the world he’d known—as well as those he’d never know—unfurl before him like wings of a merciless predator.

  He saw mountains crumble, the sky change color, and the seas give up their dead.

  He saw himself watching a television screen that showed him watching a television screen of himself watching another screen where film of a funeral was shown to him as he watched.

  He watched his soul grow wings and take flight.

  He watched himself grow older.

  He watched himself become a baby once again.

  He watched himself never being
born.

  He watched himself being born a thousand times in a thousand different places.

  He watched his soul’s wings catch fire and plummet downward into the Pit.

  He watched as everything shifted and changed and faded into shadows, only to be replaced by other, firmer worlds; there were skies filled with fire and songs to be sung; there were ships and seas and fields of green; there were races being born, becoming children at play, growing up, growing old, dying, becoming ashes, blowing away; he saw a ghost of himself walk through these ashes and stand over the bones of a child who had once been him, and he wept at the sight, at the wasted potential; he saw the bones rise up and grow skin, replacing the ghost of himself, growing up to become young and reckless, grow strong and virile, healthy and pink-cheeked, suddenly a child, a baby once more, a seed in the womb of its mother who snored too loudly, spinning back in time before starting over once again, clicking off the television remote of the funeral scene and struggle to his feet, old, ancient, his grey hair thinning, back bent, legs thin and weak and unstable, wishing for one last kiss from the wife he never had, then hobbling off to a lonely deathbed to lay down, close his eyes, and become ashes that blew away to land in a field of ashes where the next ghost of himself stood weeping over the bones of a child….