Halfway Down the Stairs

by Gary A Braunbeck

  And toward it he whispered, in a voice so delicate crystal could not compare, “Let me come home from my ghost.”

  And so he did, to treasure her for the rest of their days.

  Part Two:

  WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS

  “I see nobody on the road,” said Alice.

  “I only wish I had such eyes,” the King remarked in a fretful tone. “To see Nobody! And at that distance, too!”

  —Lewis Carroll

  “A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

  —Patti Smith

  “Who’s on First?”

  “Yes.”

  —Abbott & Costello

  I’m not going to say too much here because I have been lucky enough to have numerous other writers offer commentaries on the stories in this section. Every last one of them floored me with their words, and even as I write this I remain unconvinced that much of it is deserved. That isn’t false modesty, either; once a piece is finished and in print, regardless of how many revisions it has gone through before being unleashed upon the world, I tend to see only the weak spots, sections that could have been made better, dialogue that wasn’t quite what it should have been, scenes where the rhythm is still just a bit off … and then I remind myself that most writers tend to be wrong when judging the value and/or success of their own work; we are, all of us, our own harshest critics. Unless you’re Nicholas Sparks, who is a literary genius that gets it right the very first time, every time, because he’s, well, a literary genius. Seriously. Sincerely. Just ask him.

  The Great Pity

  Introduction by Ramsey Campbell

  How can I even begin to sum up “The Great Pity”? It’s a triumphant experiment that manages to announce its narrative radicalism while simultaneously seizing the reader and interrogating the reader’s experience. It’s a meditation not merely on loss and injustice but on the nature of existence, not least our own. Its very form expresses its theme, emerging from abstraction into vividly lived experience like an uncanny birth. It’s an exemplary instance of horror fiction that refuses to relent, confronting us with insights that linger and expand long after the tale is done. If you need evidence that our field is as vital and challenging as ever, just look to Gary Braunbeck.

  The Great Pity

  “…all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world have not any subsistence without a mind—that their being is to be perceived or known.”

  —George Berkeley (1685—1753)

  “The great pity will occur before long,

  Those who gave will be obliged to take:

  Naked, starving, withstanding cold and thirst …”

  —Michel de Nostredame

  Prelude: Chalked Gripped In Each Hand

  Later, of course, no one is watching when the little girl stumbles out of the burning house and toward the middle of the street, a piece of chalk gripped in each hand. One piece is white, the other is red. She finds a section of the asphalt that is without potholes or cracks and kneels down, brushing away some of the dirt and pebbles so that the surface is as smooth and clear as it can possibly be. She looks at the house she has just left but if she is thinking anything, remembering anything, hoping for or regretting anything, it cannot be seen on her face. The flames that were only a second ago causing the house to screech like some prehistoric beast being pulled into a pit of tar freeze in place, so very still, looking almost artificial; even what remains of the roof pauses in the midst of buckling, snapping, and collapsing inward. When the flames resume their feast, less than one-tenth of a second will have passed; but, for now, time, place, here-and-now, back-then, all of them are no longer fixed in place; this is how she wants it, this little girl. For now, at least.

  Leaning forward, she begins drawing a long, unbroken, often-curving line with the white chalk until the basic shape of the fallen body—a woman, in her late twenties; yes, that’s it—is complete. Switching hands, she begins to add the blood; a splash near the stomach, a trickle down one leg, a massive fountain on the left side of the head. Leaning her own head to one side so as to afford a different if not better view, the little girl smiles at the parallax effect achieved by this slight change of vantage point. She scoots to the side, brushes away some more dirt and pebbles, and begins working on the shape of the second body. A young boy, this one, with a clubfoot and a jagged maw where the lower portion of his face used to be. It’s a good thing the sticks of chalk are brand-new; she has so many figures to outline, so much red to splash, spatter, and spray about. It’s nice that no one is watching the house now, not like before. She doesn’t like it when people look, when people watch, when people stare; the lookers, the watchers, the staring ones, they never say anything, but, oh, the things they think; the things they do think.

  Luckily, for us, she does not choose to look up from her task. Not that she would see us, but, still, it’s best we remain as we are.

  1. And By Extension

  Not just anyone can be one who only looks: if the person being observed looks back, the observer becomes the one who is being looked at, and the guise of safety, of an action unnoticed and therefore secret and therefore somewhat holy, is shattered; the moment is unalterably affected. Still, one cannot help but wonder: if the being at whom one stares is something akin to a ghost, a spirit, or phantom, does the moment—and, by extension, the observer—remain unaffected? It will be important for us to remember this as we turn our attention to the moment at hand, the moment that is being sculpted from nothingness into a life-like shape, the moment that does not know it’s being observed from a safe vantage point; in doing so, like the sculptor confronting the virgin marble or clay or a child who will soon be drawing chalk figures on the street, we will use our words and trust they will speak accurately to who- or whatever is watching and listening. Should we fail in this task, we risk conjuring deaf idols if we take too literally our descriptions of the sculpted scenes, for not just anyone can be one who only looks: if the person being observed looks back, the observer becomes the one who is being looked at.

  2. Geometric Exactness

  It is necessary—insomuch as anything can be said to be necessary—that we establish certain precincts, particular margins, commonplace boundaries before going any further; let us begin with the when of it: right now, in the graceful flow of the present. Now, the where of it: we are hidden here, in the blank spaces between words, paragraphs, pages; we are only now, right now, here in this story, here on this page, here in this sentence. And from this place of safety we watch as a young man (not the little girl with the chalk in her hands, she hasn’t shown herself yet, and with good reason)—a young man in his early twenties, walks down a street that looks like a lot of other streets, passing houses that look very much like all the other houses. We don’t know this young man’s name, no one living on this street knows his name, and so, as we observe from our unnoticed and therefore holy vantage point, his identity is of no consequence. What is of consequence, what we absolutely must concern ourselves with, is the bouquet of flowers he carries in his left hand, the hand that is, at the moment, facing the house he is passing.

  Watch carefully. The young man’s face is tight and red. There are streaks down both of his reddened cheeks, but if there were any tears, they have already dried. Is he angry? Hurt? Broken-hearted, perhaps. It doesn’t matter; what matters is that he is coming to a stop in front of one of the houses, his entire body shuddering from the anger or broken-heartedness. He closes his eyes, pulls in a slow, deep breath that steadies him, and—bringing to bear a surprising amount of force—tosses the bouquet of flowers aside. They land, still neatly wrapped in green tissue paper, on the second of the three stone steps that lead up to the front porch. The young man wipes his eyes, pulls in another deep breath, nods to himself (perhaps having made a decision to which we are not privy), and walks away, his part played, his purpose served, and leaves our sto
ry while we remain here, in front of the house, looking at the bouquet of flowers.

  We sense more than realize there is something odd about this image. We squint, blink, and stare. It takes a few moments but at last it becomes so obvious that we momentarily feel foolish: there is a certain, almost geometric exactness to the position in which the bouquet has landed. Moving closer, we decide that, yes, yes, most definitely, they do look as if they were placed in that position on the second stone step on purpose, don’t they? Absolutely. And with this image of the bouquet firmly set in our memory we can move forward a few hours, unnoticed, undifferentiated, shape- and shadowless, here on this page, at this paragraph, in this book.

  3. The Company and Friendship of Shadows

  The first person to notice the flowers is fifty-eight-year-old Eugene (“Gene to my buddies”) Benson, a man who discovered only this morning that the cancer was not totally removed along with his prostate, that some of it, like an undetected fragrance, has found a new and metastasized home in his liver, his lungs, and—very soon—his brain. Gene—as we now know him, for what person would refuse the company and friendship of shadows at a time such as this?—has been walking for hours, forcing himself to notice all things he’d taken for granted during his thirty-one years working the graveyard shift at Miller Tool & Die, his attention and skill focused not on the world beyond the factory cell but instead on metal forming rolls, lathe bits, milling cutters, and form tools. He wonders why he never married, never raised a family, never did any of the thousands of things, be they special or everyday, that mark the passing moments of one’s life so that some sort of memory will live on.

  He stops when he sees the bouquet on the second step of the house he was about to pass, and for a minute he simply stares, wondering who would leave such a thing, and why; then remembers stories he’s heard on the radio or read about in the paper or seen on the evening news, stories about people—family, friends, even strangers—who assemble at the site of some domestic tragedy to leave gifts, cards, pictures drawn in crayon by children, toys, flowers, trinkets, handwritten notes, photos that mean nothing to anyone except the one who kneels down, makes the Sign of the Cross, and tearfully places it beside any of the dozens of motif candles arranged in odd, geometrically exact rows (as if the positioning somehow ensures that the iridescent light will continue to burn, as if the act of placing these things at the site of a domestic tragedy somehow lifts the burden of accountability from the shoulders of the neighbors and friends who gather to sing church hymns, weep openly, and crane their necks to offer prayers both silent and shrill to a sky where no one looks down, all the time trying to convince themselves and others that they didn’t know or didn’t want to interfere with other peoples’ business).

  Gene has always been secretly sickened by such stories. What the hell good does any physical item do for the person who’s now dead? Why amplify the suffering of that person—unless it’s simply a way to draw attention to yourself? It makes no sense to him. But now, for some reason, he finds himself unable to look or walk away from the flowers. He feels something on his face and reaches up to discover that he’s begun to weep—but whether it’s for the person who’s died or for himself, he can’t decide.

  Then he does something that surprises even him; he reaches into his back pocket and removes his wallet, flipping through the credit cards in their clear plastic compartments (cards he doesn’t have to worry about paying off now) until he comes to the single photograph he’s carried with him for God-only-knows how many years: the photo that came with the wallet. It’s of a little girl, maybe six years old. She smiles at the camera that has captured her image on a perfect autumn day. She is the little girl every married couple wants. (Had the photo been of a little boy, he would have been the little boy every married couple wants.)

  With his thumb Gene touches the cheek of the little girl, realizing that her face has faded over the years. He can make out her strawberry-blonde hair, her light windbreaker, part of her smile, and her left eye. He tries to remember what she looked like when she was new; he tries to remember why he purchased this particular wallet; and, lastly, he wonders why he did not remove this photo of the little girl who never was. Slipping it from its protective sleeve, he stares at her discolored and washed-out face, feeling a rush of grief he’s not experienced since the death of his parents. He pulls in a slow, deep breath that steadies him (not unlike the nameless young man in the moment before he tossed the bouquet), and walks over to the house, kneels before the second step, and gently places the picture of the little girl among the roses and baby’s-breath, taking a moment to make certain that she’s looking out at those who may pass by once Gene himself has left.

  We float, first this way, then that, whispering around him, pondering the anomalous tableau. Why is he doing this, making a gesture that he’s always thought to be ineffectual, offensive, and hypocritical? For a moment we consider entering Eugene Benson’s mind to find the answer, but then he speaks, something in the back of his voice sounding of corroded nails being wrenched from rotted wood:

  “May as well give you a name while I’m at it, huh? I always kinda thought that Leigh was a really pretty name. L-e-i-g-h, not L-e-e. So why don’t we call you ‘Leigh,’ then? I’ll bet whatever your real name is, you’re probably all grown up now with a family of your own, but maybe you still model for photos that’ll go inside of wallets and picture frames and … whatever else it is they put them kinds of pictures in these days.

  “Oh, hon, you ought to see some of the things people have come up with. They got these picture frames now, they’re electronic, and you can hook ‘em up to a computer and load it with hundreds of pictures, then you turn it on and it’ll change pictures every five minutes or so. I guess how long it shows any one picture is something that you have to decide for yourself. I wish I’d known how to use a computer, maybe I could’ve got on the Internet and found more pictures of you and …” The words trail off, lay fallen at his feet. We drift nearer, closer now than the space between his breaths, and murmur: and what? Create a daughter who never existed, not in the same sense that—

  “—I exist,” says Gene. “I mean, I know that you exist, you’re right here in the picture, but that’s where it sort of ends between you and me, isn’t it? You look like the daughter I wish I’d had but never did, so what’s wrong with wanting to watch her grow up, even if it’s just in pictures that I’d find out there in other wallets, other frames? Maybe that’s how she stays in touch with me, popping up in them places like that so that I can see that she still has that great smile and her hair still has that terrific shine and her skin still has that … that bloom, just like her mother’s, and …” The words do not fall at his feet this time; instead, his left hand snaps up to cover his mouth and trap the rest of them within as he turns quickly away from the picture and the flowers; whatever he was about to say will remain unspoken: we can see as much in his eyes, eyes no longer narrowed against the sight of the surrounding world, eyes that are now wide and glistening at the corners and staring at something we are forbidden to look at from the place where we hide, something only he can see, perhaps a thing of heartbreak or madness, quiet fury or ravenous regret, born from a loneliness that whispers of a life misspent, that any and all chances to find something of joy or meaning or permanence have long since passed by, unrecognized, untaken, now unattainable; and as we try to imagine what physical shape this thing only Gene can see might assume—that is, if it were sentient enough to give itself form—questions must be posed;

  have you ever:

  passed by an ill-kept house where those inside are screeching profanities at one another and notice there is no fence to block your view of the backyard; and did you, despite yourself, look to see brown, brittle grass covered in many places by broken toys and empty beer cans; looking a bit longer, did you catch sight of the crumbling doghouse back there, and did you observe the dog itself: a too-thin, shuddering, frightened, whimpering vaudeville of what it should b
e, rheumy eyes focusing on you, pleading for a few moments of kindness because kindness does not gift with scabs and scars crisscrossing the body; kindness does not leave the unwashed bowls empty for days on end, until you are so hungry and so thirsty it takes all of your strength to simply lift up your head and lap at the tepid, dirty liquid or nibble at the mashed and moldy heap; it does not rip away chunks of fur, leaving these raw, glistening, red patches of slowly-healing flesh; it does not swing the belt that leaves one eye forever blinded; kindness does not kick the frail bones and laugh at the sound of their breaking; does not allow those broken bones to remain un-mended; it does not laugh at you when you try to fetch the toy but cannot—the deformities left by the broken bones have shortened one leg and rendered useless another; kindness does none of these; and kindness, even a moment’s kindness, is all it asks of you, but as you begin to step closer you see that the dog is not chained to a pole or the front of the doghouse, there is nothing weighing it down or forcing it to stay put; and at that moment, safe and unobserved by the screeching people in the ill-kept house, did you wonder why the dog, seemingly of its own free will, remains there, where all it knows or will ever know is mockery, starvation, abuse, and loneliness;

  have you ever:

  watched the shabby vagrants who gather outside the bus station on Friday night, the way each one tries to make him- or herself a bit more presentable before approaching the sore and weary travelers; have you watched as they put on their best smile, the only one they possess, the one that is kept in cold storage and taken out only to ask for a bit of kindness, a little spare change, have you noticed how these smiles—some straight and bright, others displaying teeth that are crooked and broken and yellowed, jutting up from blackened gums—always show for an instant, just a flash, blink and you’ll miss it, an echo of the person they used to be; and, in taking note of this, have you ever wanted to approach one of them (especially the worn-out women with bruised faces who hold the hands of small, shivering children), have you ever wanted to touch their cheek and whisper something of genuine comfort, words that will still have value long after the pocket change you drop into their grateful hands has been spent on liquor or drugs or food for the little ones, something like anytime you feel lost, call my name and I will carry you back across to the place where you can remember what it felt like to still have human dignity;