Dreamthorp

by Williamson, Chet

  Charlie told Tom he was staying at the Americana Host Farm in Lancaster, and gave him a number where he could be reached in case of an emergency. "Like what?" Tom had asked.

  "A string of murders, the explosion of the town, my house falling down, a hangnail, things like that."

  "You sound chipper again."

  "Amazing what a change of scene from the morgue will do for a person."

  Now it was Sunday morning, hours before dawn, and Tom lay in his bed next to Laura. He had been awakened out of a light sleep to a sound he thought was Josh's footsteps in the hall, a gentle sound that he recalled from years before when Josh was little, the scuffling of a small boy's feet as he made his early morning way to the bathroom.

  But he remembered that Josh was not little anymore, and then he remembered that Josh was not even there anymore, and realized that the sound had been that of his own eyelashes fluttering open against the stiff pillowcase.

  He rolled over and lay on his back for a moment, listening to Laura's soft breathing. The clock radio's numerals read 4:48, and although he closed his eyes and tried to reenter sleep, he could not. So he slipped out of the bed, pulled on a pair of jeans, and went downstairs. He thought about making coffee, but decided not to since the noise of the grinder might wake Laura. Instead, he went down into his workshop.

  Laura Stark awoke at 7:30, and did not move. Her face was at the edge of the bed, and she looked at the graphics on the wall a few feet away. She did not want to turn to Tom yet, and hold him and maybe make love to him. Not yet. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts for a while and concentrated her gaze upon the largest lithograph, a burst of pale blue against an irregular background of black, bordered on the right by an upright rectangle of gray. 4/5 Miller '73, read the limitation at the bottom, and she wondered for a moment where the other four numbers of the edition were, and decided that it really didn't matter.

  What mattered was Tom. Finally, after thirty-four years of Living, she had found someone who loved her the way she had always wanted to be loved, generously and without expectations. In bed and out of it, he was solicitous toward her, making sure that her needs were met before his own. It was not a sexist, demeaning attitude on his part, in the tradition of a superior doling out favors to a menial, but a humane, caring response to a person he loved. It was good, she thought, to be loved at last.

  With that thought in mind, she closed her eyes and rolled over toward where she expected him to be, but her questing arm found only the empty bedclothes. Not even his warmth remained in them. "Tom?" she called tentatively, but no one answered. She listened a bit longer to see if she could hear the shower running or the coffeemaker bubbling downstairs. But no normal morning sound came to her, nor did any scent of coffee or bacon frying.

  She threw back the sheet and climbed off the high bed, tossed the hand towel she'd been lying on into the wicker hamper, and covered her nudity with a short cotton robe she now kept in Tom's closet. She was on the stairs before she began to hear the sounds from the basement, a soft yet insistent noise of something being . . . brushed, was it? But when she arrived on the first floor and realized that the sound was coming from the open cellar door, she knew it had to be Tom sanding wood.

  Laura did not go down the stairs immediately. She had not been in Tom's workshop for several weeks, not because he had expressly asked her not to, but because of his implication that he did not want her to see the work he had in progress.

  "It's something kind of different for me," he had told her when she had remarked, not at all disparagingly, upon the amount of time he had been spending in his workshop. "I'm a little self-conscious about it now. Really rather not have anyone see it until it's finished." He had chuckled. "And maybe not even then, depending on how it comes out. I may just wind up with some interesting firewood."

  But although she did not descend the stairs, she stood at the top of them in the doorway, listening to him work, wanting to be with him. After a few minutes the sound of sanding stopped, and there was only silence. Then she heard him call her name.

  "Laura? Are you up there?" His voice sounded tired and gentle.

  "Yes, Tom." She felt like a child caught listening outside her parents' bedroom door.

  "Come down," he said. "Come on down. I'm finished. The carving is done."

  She swallowed hard and began to walk down the steps, hoping that she would like what he had done, that she could honestly tell him it was his best piece of work that she had seen. She hoped it would be, because she knew she could not lie to him.

  "Just remember," he said to her, and now his tone held a note of joy, "I told you it was different."

  It was different, all right. When she saw it her breath locked in her throat, her eyes widened, and she felt obscenely naked under the light robe. She also felt terrified.

  A dim light, though more haunting, would have been kinder than the stark white, fluorescent lights of the basement, for it would have been far less revealing. As it was, she could see every detail of the figure that faced her, slightly smaller than life-size.

  The shoulders were as humped as those of an ape, the legs were splayed outward at the knee, and the arms were slightly lifted from the body so that the hands were at the level of the groin. It struck Laura as a frighteningly ambivalent gesture. The hands, with fingers like knotted branches, seemed to be in the act of reaching threateningly forward while they also seemed about to grasp the figure's own undelineated genitals, little more than a shadowy but massive bolus of wood.

  Perhaps, she thought with a new rush of terror, the gesture was ambivalent because the creature intended to do both.

  "Gilbert."

  She heard the word in her mind, but did not realize she had spoken it until Tom came to her side, a look of deep concern on his face, and put a protective arm around her. "I'm sorry," he said, "God, Laura, I'm sorry, I had no idea you would see it as that."

  "But it is that, isn't it?" she said weakly.

  "Your story gave me the inspiration, yes. But it isn't meant to be . . . to be him specifically. I mean, the face isn't his. I never saw his face. . . ."

  Laura looked at the ridges of wood that formed lips and cheeks, nose and hollows of the eyes. "It doesn't need a face," she said. "That's how strong it is."

  "You . . . you think it's good?"

  "I think it's the most . . . extraordinary piece of work I've ever seen. I've never been as . . ." She searched for the word. "As moved . . . or as terrified in my life. No!"—she corrected herself immediately—"Once before. You know. Once before. But not before that. Or since. Until now."

  "Then you like it?"

  She shook her head in confusion. "You can't . . . like something like that. But you can admire it . . . be stunned by its power. I don't like it, no. I hate it, Tom. I hate it because of how it makes me feel. But the fact that you have done that to me means that you've created something that no one else can."

  When she looked up into his face, she was unable to read his expression. Either there was nothing at all there, or a great many things, all working together. She thought it was the latter.

  "I'm sorry, Laura," he said finally. "I didn't mean to . . . to use your experience. It was just that hearing about it, along with everything that's happened to me lately and everything in Dreamthorp . . . it was as though it was something inside me, or inside the wood, that needed to come out. Something I had to do." Tom shook his head. "To get out all the rage, maybe, I don't know. But it was there and it was real." He nodded toward the carving. "You can see that it was real. Maybe it still is, but it isn't in me anymore, if it ever was."

  "No," Laura agreed. "It's there now." She squeezed his arm. "What are you going to do with it?"

  "I almost feel like I should destroy it."

  "No, Tom, you don't feel that. And you can't do that. It's too good, too important. You have to show it. But before you do, just promise me one thing."

  "What?"

  Laura licked her lips and glanced at the c
arving. "Don't keep it out. Not where I can see it. Cover it when I'm here. I see too many bad memories in it."

  "All right." Tom nodded. "I promise you'll never have to see it here again."

  Later that morning, on the short walk back to her cottage, Laura thought about what Tom had said about using her experience as a basis for the work. She knew that such things were necessary to produce art, but she couldn't decide if she preferred to have him be guilty and apologetic, as he had been, or for him to have been completely dispassionate about it. If he had acted that way, she thought she might have felt less betrayed.

  He had betrayed her, he thought, as he stood in the cellar, examining the carving from a dozen different angles, and then finding a dozen more. He should not have done it. It was not fair to subject her to those memories all over again.

  Still, he had had no choice, not really. It all seemed predestined somehow—meeting and loving Laura, the tree, her story—all those things had come together to create . . .

  No. That was bullshit. That was rationalization of the most feeble and self-deceptive kind. He had chosen to do what he had done. It had been up to him all the time. He only hoped that she understood enough so that she could forgive him. But she was a wise lady, and he loved her, and he had seen forgiveness in her already, even as she trembled because of what he had done.

  And Jesus, what he had done was impressive. It was powerful and strong and transcendent. It held him as though under a spell, and he had to look away from it for a long time before he was able to go outside and get a small tarpaulin out of the woodshed, bring it back down to the workshop, cover up the carving, and move it into the corner. Even after he did, its presence remained overwhelming, the disguised bulk of it possessing the realm of the cellar like a genius loci.

  Tom went upstairs, showered, and dressed. He was to pick up Laura at twelve-thirty and it was now only eleven. For a few minutes, he sat down with the newspaper, but found nothing to hold his interest. At last he got up and with all the hesitance, guilt, and excitement of a man in the grip of a loved and hated secret vice, went down into the cellar, removed the tarpaulin, and watched his creation for signs of life until he heard the knock on his cottage door and went up to Laura, whom he loved but had for a time forgotten.

  Unseen by us, the ore has been dug, and smelted in secret furnaces. . . .

  —Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp

  Charlie Lewis returned to Dreamthorp two days later, on Tuesday morning. Tom Brewer was sitting on his porch whittling a ball in a box when Charlie came up to his cottage.

  "You're back," Tom said, smiling. "Get your head cleared?"

  Charlie nodded. "I got it cleared all right. So cleared that I'm almost sorry I did. But I know what I think now." He took a wicker chair next to Tom and looked out at the trees as he talked. "I'm scared, Tom. I told you that already. The only reason I don't get out of this place and stay out is because I love it so goddam much. I mean, look at the damn place . . . Dreamthorp. . . ."

  He gestured expansively with his right arm to indicate the legions of tall pines and oaks, the crushed carpet of needles, and the little houses, close as brothers, white and green and brown and dusty red, embellished with lattice and delicate trim, row on sloping row.

  "There's no place like it. And I'm not going to be chased away from it because of something I can't even see. I won't." He turned to Tom and looked at him squarely. "Kraybill was right. I've thought about it over and over in the days I've been away, and there's no getting around it. He was right. It's something supernatural. Something that police and investigations can't fight."

  Tom sighed. "Charlie, that's just . . . not logical."

  "No, Tom, it's logical. But it's got its own logic, you see? No matter how strong it is or what it is, it can be dealt with." He looked out at the trees again. "Kraybill was overconfident. He didn't know how damn strong this thing was. I should say is. So I followed his lead. I didn't just sit around the cocktail lounge for five days. I went in to the college in Lancaster—Franklin and Marshall—and went through The Golden Bough. Now Frazer doesn't believe in magic, but he shows it evolved logically. And he gives enough examples of it that it's almost impossible to read the damn thing and not come away with the idea that maybe, from time to time and for reasons nobody knows, the damn stuff works."

  Charlie sat back and spoke more quietly. "And I think I know how."

  "I even think that I may know what to do about it. But I need your help. I don't want to go alone."

  "Go . . . to the clearing, you mean. The old grove," Tom said.

  "You know," Charlie answered. "You know that's where it all is, don't you?"

  "I've suspected."

  "And you're starting to believe it too, aren't you?"

  Tom's mouth twisted. "Don't tell my friends, all right? They'll put me in the loony bin with you." Then he remembered his mother, and wanted not to have spoken those words.

  Charlie seemed to understand, and laid a hand on Tom's shoulder. "Will you come with me?"

  "Come and do what?"

  "Come and dig. Right where Sam Hershey was digging. Where he found that quartz carving."

  "How do you know that whatever did in Hershey and Kraybill won't do us?"

  "We can watch out for each other."

  "Oh, goodie. That should be sufficient. And I suppose our strength is as the strength of ten—"

  "Because our hearts are pure. You bet." Charlie smiled. "I'm serious, Charlie. Isn't it pretty stupid to mess around there if you think it's dangerous?"

  "Kraybill and Hershey were alone when . . . when things happened. We won't be. Besides, I've decided that I'm going to die in this damn town anyway, so—"

  "So you don't mind if you take a friend along. Thanks a lot."

  "I need you, Tom." There was no humor on Charlie's face now, only a pleading that Tom could not ignore.

  "All right, Charlie," he said. "But at the first sign of anything strange happening—a storm, the leaves blowing on the trees, anything—we leave. Right away. That's the only way I go."

  "Son of a bitch," Charlie breathed. "You do believe it, don't you?"

  Tom didn't answer. He only got up and went behind the cottage to the woodshed from which he took a shovel and a digging iron. Then, together, he and Charlie Lewis walked down Emerson, up Pine, and into the forest.

  When they arrived at the clearing, the sun was nearly overhead, its harsh light leaching what little life remained in the yellow grass and dry brush. The stump upon which Grover Kraybill had died bore wide patches of a chestnut brown color, and when he saw it, Tom shook his head. "Never get that out," he said. "Even if we had a rain that lasted days. It gets in that porous wood, it's there forever. Poor bastard." He turned to Charlie. "Where do we dig?"

  "Over there," Charlie said, pointing to a spot a few yards north of the stump. His face was pale, and Tom was sure he was remembering the day last week when they had found Kraybill. Tom didn't look too closely at the grass. There had been no rain to wash any debris away, and he was afraid of what else he might see beside the blood on the stump.

  They dug nervously, looking around constantly for any evidence of motion. But there was none except for their own constant digging, and in less than twenty minutes Tom's shovel scraped on something that was too smooth to be rock.

  "What is it?" Charlie asked. Tom could see that his knuckles were white around the digging iron.

  "I don't know . . . just a minute . . ." Tom knelt by the side of the foot-deep hole and began to remove the earth with his hands. After several handfuls, just as he was reaching back in, something pushed itself from the soil only an inch from his dirt-caked fingertips, and he jumped back with a gasp.

  "What is it!" Charlie cried, but Tom only chuckled self-consciously.

  "A worm," he said, watching the creature pivot its cylindrical head, trying to sense what had violated its dark home. Tom picked it up gently and set it in the grass several feet away. "Just a fucking worm." He once more began t
o remove the dirt.

  At last his fingers touched something cool and smooth, and wandered over it until he felt a rough edge. Then he dug in with both hands, and brought up to the sunlight a skull, its jawbone missing. "Holy shit," he whispered to Charlie, who nodded thoughtfully.

  "Yes indeed," said Charlie. "Holy shit is just about right. And so was Kraybill. Can you keep digging?"

  It took two hours until they were sure they had found all the bones. There were eight complete skulls, and many more fragments, as well as a large number of other bones in various stages of decay. Many crumbled into a gray powder when Tom tried to extricate them from the mass in which they were entangled.

  He and Charlie said little during the disinterment. Tom would hold up a splintered femur or a skull with a shattered crown, and Charlie would nod at the evidence of violent death. But at last the butchered pile was complete, and the two living men stood together, looking at it.

  "You want me to tell you?" Charlie asked. "Or do you know?"

  "Tell me anyway."

  "All right. These are Indians, God only knows what tribe. They were murdered or maybe they were killed in battle, I guess we'll never know. But they died violently, and whoever killed them buried them here."

  "How do you know that?" Tom asked. "How do you know they weren't buried by their families?"

  "I don't know much about local Indians, but I do know from talking to Pete Zerphey that they didn't go in for mass burials. Everyone had his own grave. So my guess is that they were dumped here, and the quartz carving that Sam Hershey found was intended to keep their spirits quiet. Only Sam Hershey found it."

  "And took it away," Tom finished.

  "Yes. He took it away. And freed their spirits. And I would guess, from the way that they died, that their spirits would have been righteously pissed off."

  Tom nodded. "Extremely." He choked back a laugh.

  Charlie's eyes widened. "You find this amusing?"

  "Well. Maybe a little. See, the weird fucking thing is that I think I believe it. Maybe I'm laughing at that. Or maybe I'm laughing because I'm a little nervous about what comes next. Like, if their spirits were freed, why did they go into wood?"