Halfway Down the Stairs

by Gary A Braunbeck

  Wayne walked up behind him and said, "Dan?"

  He turned, startled, eyes wide. "What the fuck do you want?"

  "I need to talk to you."

  Dan reached into his back pocket and pulled out a switchblade, which he quickly and expertly flipped open. "I got nothing to say to anyone at three-thirty in the morning, pal, so get away from me."

  A figure appeared on the landing behind him and said, "Danny?"

  Both men looked up. It was Esmeralda, Wayne's Esmeralda.

  "What happened to your hair?" asked Dan with deep sadness. He lowered the knife.

  Wayne wasted no time. Throwing one arm around Dan's neck, he used his free hand to wrench the knife from Dan's grip and then hit him hard in the center of his face. Dan stumbled backward, tried to regain his balance but his damned foot got in the way again, and he fell to the ground.

  "Jesus, Lori," cried Dan, in more than one kind of pain. "Who is this guy?"

  She started down the stairs, her eyes clear and glistening. "You can't have me anymore, Danny. I'm sorry."

  "I don't...how can you...what's with...I—"

  Her eyes met Wayne's.

  You said you loved me.

  He froze for a moment. This Dan wasn't a bad guy, his sad little fantasies that were almost all he had, and Wayne felt his heart fill with pity for the man who now stood shaking with a knife pressed against his jugular. He thought of loneliness in all its forms of expression: of snipers in towers whose pleas for attention and acceptance were carried on tips of bullets; of plain teenage girls pouring their souls onto paper in the form of poetry that would embarrass them someday; of shabby men wandering into clean, well-lighted places, buying coffee they didn't like, listening to music that was too loud, watching younger men who were too stupid and shallow, all for the sake of not spending another second alone.

  Wayne pulled Dan to his feet, whirled him around, and stared deep into his eyes.

  "Don't take her away...please?" pleaded Dan.

  Wayne looked at Esmeralda, who handed him Dan’s knife, which she had changed; it was now a dagger of crystal and jade.

  "I love only you," she said.

  Wayne looked at Dan's foot. And knew.

  "I'll take it away," he said. "I’ll take it all away."

  And Wayne set about his task.

  * * *

  “It’s odd,” said Wayne to Esmeralda as they drove back to his home.

  “What is?”

  He pointed outside. It was raining. A blinking traffic light scattered rubies across the windshield. “I always used to find the rain so sad. I don’t anymore.”

  “Rain’s very pretty,” she said.

  Wayne looked at her. “I used to imagine that, when I was finally in love, I’d be able to run between the drops and never get wet.”

  She almost smiled at that, but only almost.

  * * *

  The task became easier with each successive person.

  The next was a hair-lipped woman of sixty in Gettysburg who spent her days doing volunteer work for the county children's agency. Having never married because of her sexual preference, she had no grandchildren. Wayne caught her one afternoon as she was making a run to McDonald's for the once-a-week hamburgers she brought to the children. She'd gone to the ladies' room and found Esmeralda on the other side, backed away in fright, and turned to find Wayne pushing her back in. He'd felt a little funny about her; she reminded him of his mother.

  Then came Joe in Brownsville, Texas, a gas station attendant who'd lost one of his legs to a landmine in Vietnam; next was Jerry, a library bookmobile driver in Binghamton, New York, who was lucky to have the job because of having only one good eye, the other having been burned partially closed in a furnace explosion a few years before; after that came Cindy with the facial cleft and Alan in Topeka who was a midget and then that guy in Los Angeles with the shriveled arm that looked more like the flipper on a fish, all of them so full of pain and regret and pleadings, all of them so happy finally to see Esmeralda in the flesh, all of them so easy—

  —well, maybe not that easy, but when Wayne looked into the eyes of his true love, he knew there was no hardship he could not overcome.

  Still, he wondered why she would not smile for him.

  But that was soon forgotten, at least for a while.

  Wayne had begun to taste Purpose. Yes, it was terrible that he had to take her away from all of them—there was always that moment where they would plead with him—but Esmeralda had chosen him, the only woman ever in his life to choose him, and so he never hesitated to use her magic dagger.

  He was taking away their suffering.

  He was making Things Better.

  He was destroying their pain.

  And there were moments when it didn’t really matter that she wouldn’t smile for him, because Wayne felt a sense of power that he’d never known before.

  To take away pain and suffering, to destroy loneliness.

  God must feel a little like this.

  They traveled many places on the lonely road toward True Love; saw many sights, made love as often as possible, whispering of their plans.

  All things considered, it was as close to heaven as Wayne had ever come.

  Or as close as it had come to him.

  Now his heaven was on Earth, and he was its ruler, the Remover of Pain, the Destroyer of Loneliness, the Taker-Away of Affliction.

  This holy knowledge made the physical aspect of what was happening to him easier to accept.

  Her love grew more intense with every minute of every day. She had no regrets, she said. It really didn’t matter what Wayne looked like.

  It didn’t matter.

  Appearances weren’t important.

  The physical was illusion.

  Come, and I will you teach you the disillusionment of the body...

  Then came the day, finally, that the last of them was found. Wayne claimed what was rightfully his. At that moment, his true love seemed to shimmer, whole and clean and alive, no longer the particles of a diamond but the jewel itself, one that Wayne felt himself melt into until they were one.

  Peace. Clarity. Fulfillment.

  Everything had been worth it. He was no longer average, no longer a man who'd been denied his golden moment, his grand accomplishment

  Hand in hand, in the rain, they went home. Their home.

  Between the drops, all the way.

  * * *

  He awoke in the middle of the night and found her gone. He sat up and saw her silhouette by the window.

  He reached over to turn on the light.

  "Don’t," she said.

  "What's the matter?'

  "Please come to me."

  He rose to go to her and felt his center of balance shift drastically, throwing him to the floor. He tried to break his fall with both arms but only one of them worked. He struggled to his feet, only to find one of them had—

  —he pressed his weight against the side of the bed and reached out for the light.

  "No!" she cried.

  He knew, of course, what he would see even before light flooded the room.

  Still...

  He spoke as clearly as he could, the words coming out slowly because of the facial cleft and hair lip. "I knew it would have to be soon."

  She stared at him. "I knew it that night you met Danny."

  He looked down at his deformed leg and its clubfoot. "Do you suppose he's happier now?"

  She looked out the window. "I know he is. You took away the thing that drove him to search for me in the first place. Don’t you remember the newspaper clipping I showed you a few days ago? Dan and Lori got married. Because of what you did for him, because you assumed his affliction, he found the strength to pursue happiness. With no afflictions, how could he fail? How could any of them?"

  He smiled. "But we have each other. And I love you so very, very much."

  "And I love you, my dear Wayne."

  "Then would you smile for me? That's all I need
now, just a smile."

  "I can't," she said.

  “Why?" She seemed to be thinner to him, but it was probably the bad eye playing tricks. He shuffled slowly to her side and took her hand, looked up into her eyes. "Aren't you happy?"

  She bent low and kissed him gently on the lips. "Do you remember when I told you that I didn't care about physical beauty?"

  "Yes."

  Tears crept to the surface of her eyes. "I lied." She broke away and crossed to the other side of the room, hugging herself and shuddering. “I don't know what happened, Wayne, but knowing that you would become...like you are, the thought began to needle at me, exasperate me, sicken me.” She faced her own reflection in the mirror. "When I think of all the pain you took away from the others, all the happiness you gave them a chance to obtain after such lonely lives, I can’t help but love you with all my heart and soul. And when I look at myself, and see how alive I am, when I touch my flesh and feel it and know that, because of you, I have an existence that I can at last call my own, I feel such tenderness toward you I could just...

  "But I have my own mind now, and something has awakened there, something that sees and acknowledges my own beauty yet at the same time is repulsed by the sight of you. And I hate it, Wayne. I hate it so much because it will only get worse. I can see a morning very soon where I won't even be able to look at you and that's the last thing I want."

  "This is all new to you," he said, feeling his heart lodge in his throat. "So many feelings denied you for so long, so many thoughts you've never experienced—"

  "No, it's more than that. Don't you see? Is your soul so naive that you can't understand that this woman, this thing that I now am because of you, me ... l love you so very much, but I … I don't want you."

  He remembered the lyrics to some stupid song from the 1970's, something about how imaginary lovers never turn you down, and laughed at himself and his reflection, imagining how he was going to explain his condition to the people he worked with. He touched the hideous mound of flesh that he called a face and said, "So what do we do now?"

  She came toward him. "Dream me away."

  "I can't. You're all I've got."

  She took a deep breath. "Then I have to leave." She dressed and stared toward the door.

  "Don't I at least get a smile?" asked Wayne.

  She paused by the door, her shoulders tensing as if she were making an unpleasant decision, then turned to him with contempt in her eyes and said, "I don't waste my smiles on freaks, Wayne, and that's what you are, it's what you've always been and always will be. You were beyond saving the day I came to you at lunch. You were worse than those zombies I pointed out to you; at least they had something to strive for in life."

  He knew what she was doing, that she was trying to make him angry enough to tell her to leave—the noble lover sparing the other’s feelings—but even though he knew it was simply a ploy, it nonetheless struck at something in his core, breaking apart his feelings of godliness and purpose, and despite his best efforts to dismiss her words and actions, his chest tightened in fury. "You were what my life was for, you were always the thing I most wanted to achieve."

  "Not only a freak but a fool as well. God, how you disgust me."

  "Don't say that, please."

  "Freak."

  "Don't."

  "Monstrosity."

  "...please..."

  "You're nothing more than a hideous malignancy, Wayne, and I curse the day you found me."

  He felt his hand wrap tightly around the lamp. "Don’t."

  "I hope you die of loneliness. I hope they find you in a heap on the floor, wallowing in your own filth and beyond help. Then maybe they'll shoot you and put you out of misery."

  He pulled the lamp off the table and rushed at her, swinging it with all his strength and caving in half her skull. She crumpled to the floor, bleeding and whimpering. Wayne dropped the lamp and fell to his knees, cradling her in his arms as best he could.

  "I'm so sorry," he pleaded. "I just couldn't live without you."

  She reached up and touched him, her eyes fading. "Isn't this how your dreams always end? In longing and grand, romantic tragedy?"

  “...yes...”

  "Well, then....”

  He held her until the life faded from her eyes and her limbs went stiff and cold. He held her until her flesh became dried and rotted and gray and began to flake off. He held her until his own strength began to dissolve, and then he kept her close to him, pressing her against his chest until she was little more than hones and at long last—he had no idea how long they had lain together this way—she became nothing more than particles of a diamond that swirled into the air, becoming dust and then nothing, nothing at all. He lay there in silence and loneliness, the cramps in his stomach worsening, his body dwindling away. The sun seemed to rise and fall within seconds, entire years passing in the space of an hour.

  Come, and I will you teach you the disillusionment of the body as it perishes in the rain of grief.

  He gathered the dust that once was her close to him.

  Come, and I will teach you the death in fading roses never sent to one you admire from afar.

  He gathered her dust into his hands and pressed them against his face.

  Come, and I will teach you the emptiness of lonely orgasms in night-flooded, loveless rooms.

  He lay very, very still, his heart breaking as he willed his body to become dust so they could be as one.

  Come...

  It was weeks before they found him.

  No one ever figured out why he’d been smiling.

  Had he been capable of speech, he could have told them, could have shared the knowledge, the magic, the great and terrible secret at the core of it all:

  True Love never dies ….

  Curtain Call

  Introduction by Christopher Golden

  Spoiler warning: You might want to read this after you’ve read the story.

  * * *

  If you want to understand the gifts that Gary A. Braunbeck brings to the table every time he sits down to write, “Curtain Call” is a great place to begin. Like every other tale in this collection, it is—of course—beautifully written, but let’s take that as a given for any story bearing his byline. The beauty of “Curtain Call” is the way that it incorporates the real life Charles Fort and Bram Stoker with both Fort’s actual endeavors and Stoker’s fictional creations. For a lesser writer, the clever ideas and elegant execution herein would be enough—their own reward. But what makes Braunbeck one of the best in the genre is the painful humanity he brings to everything he writes. Many writers are clever, but few have the talent and heart to expose the weary sorrow that we all feel at times, and that we all fear is lying in wait for us around the next corner of our lives. We may never thank him for it, but connecting us with that sorrow is Braunbeck’s greatest gift, for in its shadow we are always reminded to reach for the light.

  Curtain Call

  (From the unpublished papers of Charles Fort)

  I have been, for most of my life, a collector of notes on subjects of great diversity—such as deviations from concentricity in the lunar crater Copernicus, to the great creature Melanicus and the super-bat upon whose wings it broods over the affairs of Man, as well as stationary meteor-radiants, the reported growth of hair on the bald head of a mummy, the appearance of purple Englishmen, instances of amphibians and blood raining down from the heavens, apparitions, phantoms, the damned, the excluded, wild talents, new lands, and “Did the girl swallow the octopus?”

  But my liveliest interest is not so much in things as in the relations of things. I find now, in the twilight of my life, as I pour over the endless data that I have assembled throughout my days, that I think more and more about the alleged pseudo-relations we call “coincidences.” What if these events, rather than being happenstance, are the final result of great, secret, dark machinations of the Universe interacting with the subconscious to produce an event or events which guide humanity do
wn certain roads certain of its members were destined to take?

  I am writing now of a brief period I spent in London when I was thirty-six, in the early months of 1912 (nearly ten years before I decided to move there), and of a most singularly peculiar bookshop, its even more peculiar proprietor, and a bit of London Theatre history which none before me has ever recorded.

  I was staying at a very comfortable rooming house in Bedford Place, just around the corner from the British Museum in Great Russell Street (since my visit to London was solely to search through the Museum’s vast archives of manuscripts, the location of my rooms could not have been more advantageous for my purposes). On this particular day—kept from my research at the Museum by a cryptic note delivered to my room early that morning—I was exploring the narrower, less often traveled streets of the vicinity, in search of an address which seemed more and more to me a flight of fancy in the mind of whomever had composed the note, when the heavens opened wide and within moments the rain was pounding down violently. I was in Little Russell Street, just behind the church that fronts on Bloomsbury Way, and there was no way for me to find immediate shelter from the storm. The address written on the note was obviously someone’s idea of a joke, for I had been up and down this street no less than three times.

  So why had I not noticed the little bookshop before?

  It seemed that as soon as the sun was obscured by the rain clouds, the tiny edifice simply appeared out of the rain, set between a baker’s and a haberdashery where before there had been only, I am certain, a cramped alleyway.

  I shall state here that, despite the path of research my life has been dedicated to, I am not a man who is given to either hallucination or flights of fancy. I neither believe nor disbelieve anything. I have shut myself away from the rocks and wisdom of ages, as well as the so-called great teachers of all time.

  I close the front door to Christ and Einstein and at the back door hold out a welcoming hand to rains of frogs and lands hidden above the clouds and the paths of lost spirits. “Come this way, let’s see if you can explain yourselves,” I say unto these phenomena, always taking care to look upon them with a cold clinician’s eye. I cannot accept that the products of minds are subject-matter for belief systems. I neither saw nor did not see a bookshop hidden away on this street. It simply was, at that moment, where the moment before it was not.