Weird Tales #325

by Tanith Lee

  Sarah went back downstairs, picking up her skateboard in the entranceway. She slipped out the door unnoticed. If her mother caught her, there’d be yelling: it’s you sister’s birthday, why don’t you ever do anything for this family, why can’t you think of anyone besides yourself? She was doing this for her sister. But she could never talk to her mother anymore, either.

  * * * *

  Sarah skidded her skateboard to a stop. The Wizard of Ashes and Rain pushed his shopping cart — piled with bundles wrapped in plastic bags, and discarded clothing marked by oil smears, and a grimy sleeping bag, and aluminum cans and plastic bottles — up to the doughnut shop on the streetcorner. The clouds darkened above him, that’s how he had gotten part of his name. The rain seemed to follow him everywhere, a low drizzling starting whenever he stayed in one place too long. The Wizard usually hung out in Golden Gate Park, walking through the arboretum, tending flowers until the gardeners chased him away, or sitting on the steps of the museum panhandling, or checking the garbage cans for deposits, or sleeping on the benches.

  “Hey, Wizard,” she called, putting one hand up. He didn’t turn.

  Sarah slid the headphones — playing loudly the endless guitar solo of “The Daedel Wings of Madness” by Lord Percy — off her ears; the volume dropped to a tinny, insistent whine, the headphones hanging around her neck. It always made her feel self-conscious when she realized that no else heard what had been everything to her, pulsing inside her head, vibrating in her body to the grate of her wheels on the street, absolutely filling the sky; she felt as if suddenly shaken up out of a dream, asking herself, was it real? And realizing, no, what I know, no one else does, so they wouldn’t understand, so I have to act normal, like I didn’t have the dream, like I didn’t hear the music. Sarah wasn’t very good at acting normal. Sometimes that bothered her.

  Two weeks ago Sarah had found the Wizard sitting cross-legged in a cardboard box by the old greenhouse in the park, sickly sweet incense wafting out of a small ceramic bowl beside his ragged backpack. The Wizard had motioned her to kneel down beside him, and in a whiskey-throated whisper had predicted the dream her sister began having three days ago. Sarah hadn’t believed it at the time, but she knew enough about the Wizard to remember what he said. Besides, the Wizard had called Sarah’s sister by name and described the thing that would appear in her dream, right down to the long corkscrew nose and the two eyes facing away on either side of its head, and the two mouths where the eyes should have been. And the way it scratched at the window, and under the floorboards and behind the walls, wanting to be let in. The Wizard had known all about it.

  The Wizard stood in front of the doughnut shop and looked down the cross street at something Sarah couldn’t see. Sarah put her foot down to push toward him when three O-boys came around the corner in black derby jackets, brown Bens and black waffle-stomper boots. One pushed at the Wizard and another pawed into the Wizard’s shopping cart, idly pulling a plastic-wrapped bundle from the Wizard’s junk pile. The Wizard pulled a short oak staff from the bottom rack of the shopping cart. There was a flash.

  Sarah wasn’t worried about the Wizard. The O-boys had made a mistake. But she didn’t want to deal with them herself. She turned around only to see two more O-boys coming up the street behind her. What were they doing here? They hung out by the beach and rarely came this far up the avenues. Now there were five.

  “Hey you,” one of the O-boys said. “C’m’ere.”

  Surprised, she realized she knew him. His name was James. She had gone to seventh grade with him — what? — was it three years ago already? He had been her friend. Things had changed for the worse, obviously. He had red hair and braces, and then the uniform: black jacket, brown work pants, the heavy boots. And now he had the usual O-boy’s red eyes that glowed and shimmered; she didn’t know how they got contacts to burn like that. Sarah had once sat with James in the closet at one of Laura Willard’s parties during a game of truth or dare. They had giggled, and he had been pretty cool about it and not tried anything. Then he had gone to a different High School. And something must have gone terribly wrong. Everything seemed to be going terribly wrong today.

  The O-boys ran toward her. She flipped her skateboard up into her hands. She stood before a sushi place and a used book store. Neither offered much protection. That left only the Elves. Sarah hated the Elves. A group of street kids who had read too many fantasy trilogies, they lived in an abandoned warehouse across the street. Not directly across the street. But there was a door, one of many around the neighborhood, that led down a narrow passageway, past the businesses up front, and somehow ended up at the abandoned warehouse. She never could make the spaces fit together right in her mind and figure out where the warehouse was exactly, somewhere in the middle of the block somehow, behind everything else.

  The O-boys came upon her sooner than she expected. They spread apart, trying to hem her in before she could run. They had their arms out to catch her; they loomed up close.

  James used a racial epithet for someone Chinese. He didn’t know what he was talking about. Sarah’s great-grandparents on her mother’s side had been Korean, on her father’s side, Irish. She had heard it all before, but it still shocked her, coming from someone she once knew.

  “James, man, it’s me, Sarah,” she said, looking into his burning eyes as if saying: is there anybody still there at all? Anything worth a damn?

  James stopped, confused. He had a mustache of fine dirty blonde hair on his upper lip, pimple scars along his cheeks and greasy hair dropping to his shoulders. He still had a kind face, though he looked hurt somehow, cornered. He dropped his arms to his sides. She hit his friend with her skateboard just below his knee. It was a kindness for an old friend; she could have hit the knee. James’s friend buckled over with a cry, clutched his shin, fell into a parking meter, then straight down. He would have a bad bruise. She dodged between two parked cars and out into the street.

  Someone, an adult, came out of the bookstore, looking to see what the problem was. That would slow them down, she thought. But James was after her sooner than she expected. And the others, the ones on the corner with the Wizard, they were now running down the street toward her, mad and wanting to take it out on someone, the Wizard no where to be seen. A streetcar stopped short, horn blaring, as she ran out in front of it. On the far sidewalk, she pushed past a woman carrying two full shopping bags who cursed at her.

  A peeling, hand-painted sign on the plain white door read simply ELVES. She pushed at the door and it opened into a long dark corridor. She’d never known any of the doors to be locked. But no one ever seemed to notice the sign or bother the Elves. She ducked through the door and ran down the corridor. The door swung closed behind her. Large pipes ran close over her head, puddles splashed under her feet. She tripped in the darkness, landing on concrete, skinning her hands, wetting the knees of her jeans. She heard the O-boys push the door open behind her, saw the light shine in and throw her shadow out before her. She struggled quickly to her feet.

  Up ahead, she knew the passageway would lead to a large open courtyard sunk into the middle of the block, surrounded by high walls, sunlight leaking down from high above, past windows with plants and pigeons perched on their ledges, past the murals painted by the Elves showing their “history,” their arrival at the warehouse, large rainbowed murals of dancing figures and musicians and trees. She could see the dim, filtered light up ahead. A figure stepped into the doorframe at the end of the passage.

  “Who?”

  Her heart caught in her throat. The Elves scared her too, somehow, that’s part of why she avoided them, aside from the fact that they were freaks, quoting long passages of heroic poetry to one another, or dialogue from Monty Python, or acting out whole scenes from Star Wars, or comparing home-made chainmail. Sarah swallowed hard.

  “Damn,” Sarah muttered. She hated this part. “Elf-friend,” she said. This was no time to tease them about their lame need to playact at being something that didn�
�t exist.

  “Orcs?” the voice said,

  “O-boys,” she said in agreement.

  Hands reached out to support her. She struggled at first but saw the Elves around her, coming out of the darkness. They had been in the corridor all along. She let them lead her into the courtyard, where they sat her on a bench beside the door.

  Aladuniel, the Elf who had challenged her, gave orders to the others. Many ran down the passageway. Sarah couldn’t understand anything they said. They spoke their own language, Elvish. They named themselves, airy, overlong names they spoke with fake British accents. They dressed like refugees from a renaissance faire, in loose shirts with billowing sleeves, leather breeches, and high lace-up boots. But their clothes were old, badly patched, and stained. They were skinny like all street kids. But they also had knives at their belts, and she had seen them fight. Better than expected. More than that, really, but she didn’t want to admit it. The O-boys, if they had any sense, would already be running for it. The O-boys weren’t known for sense.

  The Elves left her alone for a while, until Aladuniel emerged from the corridor and handed her back her baseball cap, which must have fallen off when she had tripped. It was wet. She looked down at herself. She wore an overlarge army surplus jacket with the sleeves rolled up. The left knee of her jeans hung open; it must have ripped when she fell. She wore black hightop sneakers, now soaked through, and held her skateboard across her lap. She clutched the cap tightly in her hands. Her hands shook. Had it been that close? She supposed it had. She wrung her cap out and stuck it in her pocket.

  “Thanks, Al,” she said.

  Aladuniel had long hair feathered to his shoulders. He had a red sash across his chest and had a drinking horn on his belt beside his knife. He had red cheeks dotted white and black with pimples and a large nose. His body was long and bony, awkward even at rest.

  “The Lady has been expecting you.”

  He took her hand and led her past the murals and into the warehouse, then up a long staircase and through a large open storage area littered with piles of old TVs and computers, broken glass and cables on the floor, all covered over with dust; finally, he led her to a small, neat room at the back, the floor painted bright red with neon trees on the walls reaching into a psychedelic sky; Lady G, the matriarch of the Elves, waited there for her.

  Lady G was an obese woman, older than any of the other Elves, her black wispy hair streaked premature grey. She sat in a chair before a computer set up on a work table. The chair squeaked loudly as she pushed herself away from the table. Rolls of fat lay over the arms of the chair, hung from her arms and pushed up under her large, wide-set breasts. She had a flat face and nose, loose cheeks and jowls and overlarge black eyes that seemed to look in two directions. She radiated enormous calm and power.

  Before he left, Aladuniel knelt beside Sarah, still holding her hand.

  “You are a true Elf-friend,” Aladuniel said.

  Sarah shook her head. “Thanks.” What could she say?

  Aladuniel bowed his head solemnly to her, putting his hand on his heart, and she couldn’t help but smile. Who were they kidding? Didn’t they give a damn about what everyone else thought of them? She thought that at least she tried not to be lame, whatever everyone in school thought of her anyway. But of course they didn’t go to school, the Elves. They didn’t have homes either. As bad as things were with her mother, she always had a place to go back to, a home. This was their home, this old, drafty warehouse with its fading murals. She tried to remember that and not laugh. Aladuniel stood and quietly departed.

  “The Wizard was just here,” Lady G said. “He wanted me to tell you that he’s leaving. He wasn’t sure he’d have a chance to see you.”

  “When’s he coming back?”

  “We’ll have to get along without him for awhile. He’s going home.”

  “Where to?”

  “Under the sea.”

  Sarah stared, uncomprehending.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s tired, and he wants to go home.”

  The screensaver on the computer came on, slowly filling in a red lidless eye dot by dot. She shook her head, thinking, all right, let me try this again.

  “How’s he going to go home?”

  “He’s just going to wade into the sea.”

  “He’s going to kill himself?”

  “No, not at all. Or, well, not exactly.”

  Sarah stared again. She couldn’t seem to find anyone who would have a straight conversation with her, not her sister, not Al, not Lady G, and she couldn’t even find the Wizard at all.

  “I needed to talk to him.” Sarah looked down at her hands, uncertain where to put them, absently rolling the wheels of her skateboard. Lady G made her feel too young.

  “Maybe I can help.” Lady G waved to another chair, inviting Sarah to sit down. She remained standing.

  “My sister had a dream. The Wizard predicted it.”

  “What kind of dream?”

  “She saw a monster.” Sarah described it: tall, maybe ten feet tall, gaunt, stick-thin, the long corkscrew nose, almost a foot long, the fish eyes on either side of its head, the mouths where the eyes should have been, the scratching to be let in.

  Lady G nodded. “She saw Old Shadow. He’s come back.” She motioned toward the computer screen. “Always he watches and waits for his chance.”

  “What is it?”

  “Always, we must be ready for it. Though we are weaker than we were the last time, perhaps than we have ever been. And no wizard this time. We have stories going back a long way, telling us to be ready, to look for the signs. Again, there will be the story to be told, and all must play their parts.”

  This was too fast. Sarah didn’t understand.

  “Why does he come to my sister?” Sarah’s heart was in her throat again. She didn’t exactly believe Lady G. She didn’t disbelieve her either.

  “She’s the dreamer. The one who is strong enough to open a way between place and place, between This and The Other. She will dream him into being, unless she resists. You must bring her to me. We will explain it to her, help her resist it.”

  “Yes,” Sarah said, daring to look into Lady G’s wide eyes. Why not believe her? She had come to believe in the Wizard. “Yes,” she said more decisively. “I’ll bring her here to you.”

  Only after she left did she realize she had forgotten to mention that her sister had seen herself, out the window, in the street, beckoning herself to come down. What did that mean?

  * * * *

  When Sarah came through the door, her mother was in the front hallway on the phone. Her mother put her hand up flat to stop her. Sarah could hear Amanda’s party out in the backyard past the kitchen door, laughter and shouts.

  “What do you mean you don’t want to live there anymore, mother?” Sarah’s mother was talking to Sarah’s grandmother. Sarah’s mother sounded shrill, exasperated, worried. She put her hand over the phone. “Where’s Amanda? I thought she was with you,” she said to Sarah.

  “She’s not here?”

  “What’s that, mother? What do you mean you’re going to live in the park? What are you talking about. It’s ridiculous.”

  “What’s going on?” Sarah asked.

  “Grandma Rebecca doesn’t want to live in the house she’s lived in with Grandpa George for the last twenty years. She says now that he’s dead, the house doesn’t feel like hers anymore. Look, mother, you’re just trying to get me to ask you to live here. Yes, you are. You know I can’t. This is emotional blackmail. Mother, you can’t do this.”

  “And Amanda’s gone?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes. I thought I asked you to get her ready this morning? Hello? The line’s dead.”

  “I’ll find them,” Sarah said, opening the front door again. “I’ll find them both.”

  “Wait, where are you going. I can’t go with all these kids in the yard. I need you to watch them. Sarah. SARAH!”

  Sarah took the front st
eps two at a time, dropped her skateboard and jumped on, already rolling downhill.

  * * * *

  Two years ago, Sarah had run away from home. She had slept for two nights in the park under a bush beside a chainlink fence. The third day, cold, hungry, she walked down to the beach, rummaging through garbage cans along the way. She had woken up that morning shivering, and it hadn’t stopped the whole day. As evening dimmed in the sky and on the water, the glistening spray of the waves becoming shadows thrown up against the sky, Sarah saw the Wizard of Ashes and Rain. She walked to him where he sat cross-legged before a small fire, looking out to the sea. He wore three ragged sweaters and a heavy black skirt over grey sweatpants, no shoes.

  She knew who he was, but at the time she didn’t know him very well. He was another crazy street person, nice enough, harmless, who sometimes hung around the Elves. Still, she felt so alone, and so cold. She no longer cared, felt she might never care again and that scared her. She looked down at him, shivering, not knowing what to say. Wanting desperately for him to say something to make it all better. It started drizzling, of course. The clouds darkened as she waited.

  “You need a reading,” he said.

  “I ran away from home.” She hugged herself tight.

  He reached into his pack and handed her a plastic bag filled with trail mix. She sat down and ate it hungrily. He handed her a thick plastic bottle with water inside.

  “My mother has rules for everything. Not just about studying, but what I can wear. What I can say.”

  She had to keep the reasons before her because they didn’t seem convincing anymore even to her.

  The Wizard removed a small bronze plate from his pack. The plate had unfamiliar symbols carved around an elaborately ornamented border.