Halfway Down the Stairs

by Gary A Braunbeck

  “Thing was … she was awful cold, even though it was only autumn. The small of her back, her hands, her cheeks. Real cold. My wife, she’s kind of cold-blooded—not in that way, she’s a sweetheart, but brother, sometimes her touch is like ice—she says it’s ‘cause of her circulation problems … shit, where was I? Oh, yeah.

  “This gal was real cold, so I offer her my jacket. She thanks me for being such a gentleman, and I drape my jacket over her shoulders. She asks me if I could give her a ride home and I say sure thing. We’re driving along a little ways and she asks me to go down Archer Avenue. I oblige her request and we’re driving along and talking about the weather, the way the Willowbrook has changed over the years, stuff like that, and then we come up on Resurrection Cemetery and she asks me to stop. I think it’s a bit odd but I stop anyway.

  “She gives me back my coat and thanks me for being a gentleman, then she gets out and starts walking toward the cemetery gates. Here it is, ten-thirty at night, and she’s headin’ into the boneyard. I call to her that the cemetery’s closed and that she really ought to get back in the car so I can take her home. That’s when she turns and looks at me and smiles and says, ‘I am home.’ Then she just … faded away into nothing.

  “That’s when I knew who she was, and believe you me, I damn near wet myself. I mean, you hear all the stories about her, but you never expect that you’ll … you know what I mean. Ain’t a day goes by that I don’t think of her. Makes a body wanna cry, it does, thinking about the way she died, out there all alone on that road, middle of winter. Son-of-a-bitch what hit her didn’t even stop. I hope to hell whoever it was, if they’re still alive, I hope to hell they ain’t had a moment’s peace.

  “She was a damned sweet girl, and she deserved better than that, you know?”

  * * *

  The old man impresses himself; he’s only had to stop twice along the ten-plus hour drive to make water. The last time, he went outside, writing his name in the snow like he used to do when he was a child. He even laughed while doing so, the first real laugh he’s had in at least twenty years.

  But he’s made it, despite the damn snow and wind. Three times he’s almost been knocked off the road by the wind. The radio said there were “blizzard-like conditions” coming, but that hasn’t stopped him.

  And now he’s finally back here, after all the years, after all the bad dreams, after a lifetime. Archer Avenue. But this time, this time he drives slowly. This time he’ll see her before it’s too late. This time he’ll stop. This time he’ll make it right and hope that will be enough.

  He turns the radio to a local "beautiful music" station. Truth in advertising, for once. It’s “Big Band” night tonight. Glenn Miller. Stan Kenton. Spike Jones and His City Slickers. This music suits the old man just fine and dandy, yessir. Just as long as they don’t play any Bing Crosby, especially “Black Moonlight.”

  He slowly rounds the bend and hits the straight stretch dense with trees on either side, some of them obscuring the steep incline off to the side of the road. He knows that if he’s not careful, he will drive off and fall a good seven feet where no other passing cars can see him. He has to be careful now. Like he should have been back in ’37.

  A flicker in the headlights as several swirls of snow dance up onto the hood and skitter across until they explode against the windshield. But this time he’s got the defrost on high; this time he’s got the expensive wipers that are going a mile a minute; this time, he’s careful. He drives up and down the road for one hour, two hours, and only notices the gas gauge nearing E halfway through the third hour.

  “Where are you?” he asks the snow and darkness. He wasn't expecting an answer, but, still, he’s heard the stories about this road, about the other people who have seen her, talked with her, given her a ride home.

  “Where are you?” he asks again, this time much louder than before. He pulls over to the side of the road, taking care to stay as far away from the incline as possible. Too much of the car is still jutting out into the passing lane, but he doesn’t care. He presses his forehead against his hands, takes a deep breath, and then turns off the engine.

  For a little while he sits there, staring out into the freezing night as the snow whips about the car. He’s so tired, so very tired. He imagines that he sees two medieval men on horseback in the distance, making their way back to the monastery where the creation of a final masterpiece patiently waits for one of them.

  He opens the car door, climbs out, and begins walking up the road toward Resurrection Cemetery. His knees ache and his legs are weak, but at least he’s wearing his good winter coat, his good winter gloves, and the heavenly wool cap Henrietta had given him on the last Christmas she was alive.

  He’s only a few hundred yards from the cemetery gates when he can’t walk any farther. He stops, kneels down, and makes a snowball. The snow is thick and heavy enough to pack well, and with a laugh he sets about making a snowwoman, forgetting that he’s now in the middle of the road. It takes him nearly forty minutes to fashion her, and by the time he’s finished his hands are nearly frozen, even with the gloves. There is no time for her face, but that’s fine because he remembers that face with startling clarity. He’s never forgotten even a single detail.

  He steps back and smiles at her, then holds out his arms.

  “May I have this dance?” he asks his creation.

  And there he stands, arms extended, eyes blinking against the wind and snow, until at last he hears the roar and the collision and the metallic scrape and the shattering of glass. He moves closer to her, touching her cold skin—didn’t everyone always say that her touch was cold? Poor girl. Poor little thing.

  He stands there, smiling, as the lights and roar and sparks screaming down on them form a marvelous winter aura around her. He closes his eyes. There you are, he thinks. He does not tremble. I see you at night. He holds his breath. He holds his breath. He holds his breath. He holds

  Cyrano

  “I am going to seek a great Perhaps”

  —Rabelais on his deathbed

  ...now that virtue has become to me a shadow, and happiness and affection are turned into bitter loathing and despair, in what should I seek sympathy? asked the knife-edge of his conscience as he lay alone fighting wakefulness. Slumber, even brief and uneasy, granted him stay from the innate afflictions of his wretched heart, and for that he was thankful; though toward what or whom this gratitude was or should be directed he dared not imagine.

  The sea-roar gave way to the memory of the words he had screamed at R. Walton before springing from the cabin window of the ship and landing upon the ice-raft which was borne away on hyperborean waves. Time thereafter was measured by the anguish which, meeting no resistance, continued to poison the vestiges of the “soul” he was still foolish enough to believe within his attain.

  I was, then, a monster, a blot upon the Earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned.

  His unmerciful nightmare continued with the Siberian village of hovels where, despite the villagers’ screams and the stones with which they bruised him, he assembled the materials for the funeral pyre he later constructed on a larger, thicker ice-raft, one that could endure the heat of conflagration without collapsing into the sea.

  The flames crackled and hissed, consuming his filthy rags and blackening his charnel-house skin, the stench filling him with the writhing pain of a Death beyond the death he sadly called existence.

  Oh, earth, how often did I imprecate curses on the cause of my being! Even Satan had his companions, fellow devils to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.

  His flame-charred flesh slithered from bone, drooping like the sleeves of a dark cloak, when suddenly he beheld near him a hunched and shivering figure wearing only a dressing-gown, slippers, and nightcap. He pointed at the figure and perceived with a start that he was, indeed, wearing a great black cloak whose hood concealed his hideous countenance. No cursed flesh covered his skeletal hand.

&nbs
p; The cowering figure raised its head and cried, “Ghost of the Future! I fear you more than any specter I have seen. But as I know your purpose...”

  He cringed.

  The dressing-gowned man uttering those words was Victor Frankenstein.

  The creature gave a loud gasp and lurched forward, wrenching himself from sleep, momentarily disoriented until he caught a glimpse of the life preserver marked SS Catapaxi hanging on a nearby pillar.

  A book tumbled from his lap and onto the ship’s deck, falling open to the title page: The Reclamation of My Honor: a journal by Ebenezer Scrooge.

  “A splendid work,” said a voice behind him. “It is one of my wife’s favorites.”

  The creature turned in the deck chair to see the ship’s captain standing beside him. “I apologize, sir, but my dream was of a rather unsettling nature and I fear I have awakened less than rested, so forgive me if I seem ill-at-ease with your unexpected presence.”

  To his great surprise, the captain—a tall, healthy-looking muscular man—did not turn away in revulsion. “I am Roderick Usher, captain of this vessel. It pleases me to tell you that, despite the rough weather encountered two days ago, we will arrive in Italy on schedule.” He lowered his voice, as if taking the creature into his confidence. “I must confess this is a great relief to me. Many of our guests are ambassadors and other assorted government officials, and must be in Padua in time for the world conference.”

  “A world conference? Toward what purpose?”

  Captain Usher smiled, displaying a mouth full of dazzlingly bright teeth. “My good sir, have you not heard? The conference is to commemorate the signing of the Russo-Japanese Pact five days hence by Nicholas II and Emperor Meiji. Such a covenant not only ensures peace between their warring nations, but crushes the budding revolution in Russia as well. I understand the pact has prompted several like agreements among smaller allying countries.”

  “Ah,” said the creature. “I seem to recall an article of news which concerned a similar pact between Reza Shah Pahlavi of Persia and President John Brown of Mexico.”

  “Indeed,” said Usher. “Even now, Brown’s esteemed Vice-President, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, journeys to Italy on this very ship. But enough talk of politics.” Usher’s face grew pensive. “Since you were afflicted with fever when brought aboard, I found it necessary to isolate you from the other passengers. The medical officer informs me that your crisis is now past. I wish you to know that, having been made aware of your tragic circumstances, I will do everything in my power to ensure that you arrive safely to your beloved.”

  “My beloved,” whispered the creature, placing one of his gigantic hands against his breast and feeling the bulk of the letters within his pocket, letters he had read countless times before this day and would read countless times again before reaching his destination.

  “Have you the time, Captain, to indulge me with some answers?”

  “If they are mine to offer.”

  “There are certain...inconsistencies in my memory of the last several months, caused by the post-surgical fever of which you spoke. The man who purchased my passage, did he offer a name?”

  “Yes. And what a splendid, amiable fellow he was, of a decidedly distinguished background. Dr. Jonathan Merrick of the Treeves Institute in Dublin.”

  “I never knew his name,” whispered the creature, “only his charity, and the goodness of his soul.”

  “He seemed to hold you in great esteem. When I pressed him for details, he informed me that he had been giving a series of lectures at the University of Krasnoyarsk when a commercial fishing vessel beheld a fire on a nearby ice-isle and discovered you among the wreckage. As he is considered a maverick in the field of treatment for burn victims, and was only a few days’ journey away, he was sent for at once.”

  The creature looked at his hands, still overcome by their power and beauty. How truly miraculous were the skills of Merrick!

  Why could you have not been my creator? he thought.

  A flash of memory, then: Merrick’s sad expression as he said, “The damage was restricted to your torso and legs. As much as I wanted to give you the new face you so desperately wished for, it was unravaged by the flames. I had no choice but to leave it as it was. Please understand that it was only through the grace of Providence that we were able to obtain enough tissue to restore those areas destroyed by fire. To have constructed a new face for you under such circumstances would have been perceived as a vain cosmetic indulgence and thus trivialized everything I as a physician believe in. I hope someday you will find it in your heart to forgive me.”

  From the lower deck a sultry female voice chimed into the air, announcing that breakfast was now being served.

  “Such a sweet voice,” said the creature. “One cannot help but wonder if—”

  “The sweetness of her voice withers against the truth of her delicate beauty,” said the captain. “That is my wife, Madeline. Both she and my sister Camille work the ship alongside the crew. You must dine with us this evening. I insist.”

  The creature rose from the deck chair and approached the safety rail, his massive body, well over eight feet in height, dwarfing the formidable figure of Captain Usher. Leaning forward to allow a burst of sea spray to bathe his face, he said, “Thank you for your proposed kindness, but I have never been afforded the luxury of knives, forks, spoons and plates, so my manners would be...questionable at the very least, and undoubtedly offensive to your wife and sister.”

  Joining him at the rail, Usher placed his hand on the creature’s immense forearm and said, “It seems to me that unrefined table manners are not what keeps you a solitary soul. I would not be so insistent, but the well-being and contentment of all my passengers is of the utmost importance to me. I suspect that your hesitancy to imbibe of the joy with marks this voyage is a symptom of deeper distress.”

  “Though your suspicion is correct—and a testament to your perceptiveness and leadership—I can only respond by again thanking you for the invitation which I cannot accept.”

  Usher, whose outward composure failed to mask his feelings of insult, said, “You disdain the companionship?”

  “On the contrary. Nothing would please me more than to sit at a clean table with fresh linen and partake of an agreeable meal in the company of friends. For so long, I have fantasized of such an occasion—the aroma of the food, the bouquet of the wine, the pleasant murmur of surrounding voices engaged in conversation, the ghostly wisps of pipe and cigar smoke filling the air afterward.”

  “The pleasantries of such an evening await. Why do you deny them to yourself?”

  “Because that is only part of the fantasy I have constructed from the fragments of my hope. Shall I tell you the rest?”

  Usher, whose expression compassionated the creature, gave a silent nod of his head.

  “Very well. The scene goes like this: I put down my emptied brandy snifter and turn to the woman seated next to me. How to describe her beauty to you? It is not so much a physical loveliness, though she us undeniably pleasing to the eye, as a bloom that bespeaks the humble-mindedness at the core of her nature. She possesses time’s gift of perfect humility, and it is that gift which makes her so alluring. I ask her to join me for a dance and she rises gracefully, not at all repulsed by my countenance. I fill myself with the fragrance of her perfume and, as her eyes meet mine, I feel as if I am Da Vinci, staring through the face of one of his exquisite madonnas, staring past the layers of marble and dust into the burning heart of some godly truth I have always been seeking. My senses heighten with the satin touch of her hand in mine. I revel in the sparkle of her laughter as it mingles with my own to become a singing our hearts cannot contain. I pull her closer to me, and she does not resist, for I know this time, this breath, this moment is filled with the heat of a thousand secret flames. Then, at the last, after the euphoria of her gentle velvet lips brushing moistly against my cheek and whispers, in a voice so delicate that crystal cannot compare, ‘Now you can come
home from your ghost so that I may cherish for the rest of our days.’

  “Do I disdain companionship? you ask. No, good captain, not at all. This scene of ridiculous fantasy has been my only sanctuary from the loathsome truth of my being for so long that I cannot afford to have it tainted by the brutal truth of reality. Do you not understand? Look at me, Roderick Usher, and tell me truthfully that you do not believe your Madeline and Camille would be overcome with horror at the sight of me! The grave-pallor of my face, the dull pustule-yellow of my eyes. Could any woman not born of fantasy look upon such an obscenity as me and feel tenderness?” He reached into his breast pocket and snatched out the letters, thrusting them toward the captain’s face.

  “Upon waking in your infirmary I discovered these in my pocket. Written by the hand of a young woman of such refiner and exquisiteness my heart bursts at the thought of her beaux yeux, they tell the tale of her painful solitude which was relieved by the first of many missives delivered to her from the northern extremities of the Earth. This tender courtship through words has continued over these past three years, filling her heart with such hope and love I found myself weeping at the yearning which guided her hand as she scrawled her fragile dreams upon the page. She claims to love with a depth and passion usually attributed to poets and gods—and I know it is me she loves, for her narrative betrays she has been made aware of the circumstances under which my grisly and wretched birth was induced.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Usher, his eyes glistening with sympathy. “If she knows of your history and claims to love you in spite of it, why are your feelings in such chaos?”

  “Because I did not write to her! The missives she speaks of were composed by another.”

  The captain blinked, then turned away for a moment, his demeanor growing deeply thoughtful. Momentarily, he turned to face the creature. “My dear, dear fellow, I think the answer to this conundrum is within your grasp. Dr. Merrick gave a letter to the ship’s chaplain, with instructions it be delivered to you upon your recovery. You will find the chaplain’s office on this very deck. I will take you.”