by Gene Wolfe
So that was Polly’s Cove except for the food, which came as a happy shock to all three of us—it was one hell of a lot better than Spice Grove’s. We got lobster that first night, half of a big broiled lobster for each of us. Fish chowder came first; and our lobsters brought along corn on the cob, a baked potato, and a first-rate salad. Salad at Spice Grove had been chopped lettuce splashed with vinegar and oil; in Polly’s Cove it was tender young spinach with chopped red onions, cheddar, and country ham mixed in. Your choice of Thousand Island or ranch. Millie and I chose Thousand Island, and happily. So good food, and good food makes a big difference.
What’s more, I surprised the living hell out of Rose, Millie, and everybody else at the library (very much including me) by getting checked out on the third day.
If I said “girl,” it would sound like nineteen or twenty with curves and makeup, right? So I won’t. Let’s call her a kid. The first time I was with her I figured her for twelve. Later I found out she was almost thirteen, so I had been right but close to wrong. She told me her name was Chandra, but at first I didn’t make the connection.
“I have to bring you home to my mother, Mr. Smithe. I’ll tell you all about that after I check you out, or else my mother will.”
Still looking down at her from my shelf, I shook my head. “You would need to put up a great deal of money to check me out, Chandra. I’m sure you don’t have that much.”
“I’ll talk to them, Mr. Smithe. Come with me.”
“If you want to talk to me, you can do it right here. That way you won’t need any money.”
This time Chandra shook her head, making her brown braids bounce. “I’d have to come back for you, probably with a librarian or you wouldn’t come.”
“That’s right.” I can be as dumb as anybody, but as soon as I said that it soaked through to me that if I jumped off my shelf and went to the desk with this kid it might count as being consulted. Sure, consulted was not nearly as good as being checked out, but it was a lot better than nothing. When the Polly’s Cove Library returned us to Spice Grove, it would report how many checkouts we’d had, and how many consultations. You did not throw away a consultation. Millie Baumgartner might do that, but not Ern A. Smithe.
So off we went to the desk—that’s me and a pretty, brown-haired girl who came up almost to my chin. Charlotte Lang was on the desk. She smiled at both of us and said hello to Chandra.
“I have to check him out,” Chandra explained. “Mother wants to talk to him, so I promised I’d check him out for her.”
Charlotte said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to speak with her.”
Chandra nodded and started giving her mother’s address, but Charlotte said she didn’t need it, and turned to her screen. I would like to have seen the picture when she got her party, but of course I couldn’t. The screen was angled so somebody on the wrong side of the desk couldn’t see it. They always are.
Charlotte said, “Your daughter says you want to check out our new copy of Ern A. Smithe, Mrs. Fevre. Checking out a reclone resource requires a large deposit, returned when you return the reclone on time. I’m sure you know.”
I couldn’t hear the reply.
“When you return it on time and undamaged. In good condition. Otherwise…”
—
“We still have that older copy, you understand. We’re selling it now, and it’s very inexpensive.”
—
“Fine. I’ll send him along with Chandra. They should be with you soon.”
Charlotte Lang touched the sign-off and turned back to us. “Your mother says you’re to come straight home. No side trips and no dawdling.” To me, “I doubt that you know where the house is, Smithe. Do you?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea.”
“Turn left as you go out. Signal Hill Road will be the third street, I believe. Left again on that. It’s a three-story white neo-Goth house all the way up the hill, with a widow’s walk. You can’t miss it.”
Chandra said, “Besides, you’ll have me with you.”
Charlotte nodded. “I certainly hope so.”
There was an old man sitting in the little reception room next to a heap of discards. He was staring at the floor and did not look up as we passed. At the time, I failed to connect him with anything Charlotte had said.
When we had turned onto Signal Hill Road, Charlotte wanted to know if I had money.
“A little,” I told her. “Not very much.”
She nodded thoughtfully.
We walked on in silence for half a block before she asked, “Would you like to get some more?”
“Not if the library is to know I have it.”
Chandra nodded again. “It’s the same way with me sometimes. Will you buy me a steaming creamy?” She pointed. “That’s a candy store up ahead.”
“I take it they sell steaming creamys.” I had no idea what a steaming creamy was.
She nodded solemnly.
“If I buy you one, will your mother approve?”
“That’s the other thing. You mustn’t tell her.”
“Then I won’t.”
“You’ll buy it for me? Please? Just a small one.”
“All right, just a small one. What flavor?”
“Cantaloupe custard.” Chandra took my hand. “That’s my fave.”
“Got it.” I paused, considering. “If I buy you the steaming creamy, will you tell me what your mother wants with me?”
Chandra looked troubled. “I don’t know a lot—not for sure.”
“What you think, in that case.”
She thought that over for three or four steps before saying, “All right. What I think.”
Seeing Chandra, the woman behind the counter in the candy store said, “One cantaloupe custard, coming up!”
I nodded and added, “A small one. Chocolate for me, a small one.”
Chandra looked slightly alarmed. “Don’t get it on your shirt.”
I said, “This shirt has bloodstains on it already. What’s a little chocolate compared to that?”
“Mother will know.”
“I’ll tell her I was going to buy you a steaming creamy too, but you said you weren’t permitted to accept it.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “Yes. Really.”
Chandra accepted her cup. “You know, I like you.”
I accepted my chocolate one. “Then you’ll tell me what you think, just as you promised.”
She nodded and started for the door.
I paid and sipped before following her.
“You won’t tell anybody what I told you?”
“No, since you don’t want me to.”
“All right. Mother thinks somebody’s trying to kill her. Mostly it’s with magic, but sometimes it’s with other things, too. There’s a black thing—”
“Wait up. Why would anyone want to kill her?”
“I think it’s something about the accident.” Chandra seemed plainly troubled. “Mother was in an accident when I was real young. Some kind of accident or something on a boat. It’s why she hardly ever gets out of bed.”
That sounded like paranoia and set me wondering.
“There’s things hiding in the house, too. That’s why she keeps the lights on all night.”
“I see.”
“I’ve got a room of my own, but I’ve got to sleep with Mother, so there’s somebody else there.”
“And the lights must make it hard to sleep.”
“Not really. You just shut your eyes and keep them shut. Sometimes the electricity goes off, but we have lanterns, too. I get up and light two for us.”
“Do you think there are really things hiding in your house?”
Chandra nodded solemnly.
“What makes you think that?”
“One comes into the bedroom sometimes, late at night. It creeps in, flat on the floor.” She paused. “Sometimes it cries. It says, ‘No bite.’”
“Really?” I had almost forgotten my chocolate steam
ing creamy; now I gave it a well-deserved sip, wondering whether there was a word of truth in anything Chandra had said. Was this nice kid stringing me? Or stringing herself?
“You’ve seen it?” I was trying to sound skeptical; it didn’t take a lot of effort.
“Kind of. It’s big and black and makes scratchy noises and lies really flat against the floor. That makes it hard to see when it’s dark in there.”
“But it talks and cries. You said that.”
“Uh-huh. Little words and little crying noises.” Chandra paused, giving her attention to her steaming creamy. “This is really good.”
I nodded. “And this is a really good story you’re telling me; the question is whether it’s a really true story.”
“You didn’t say true, you said what I think.”
“You think a black thing crawls into your mother’s room late at night.”
Looking very serious, she nodded. “I’ve seen it.”
“What do you do when that happens?”
“I yell at it to get out. Sometimes I throw shoes or bottles. Whatever’s handy.”
“Yelling must wake up your mother.”
Chandra nodded. “It does. She screams and screams. Then the black thing runs away.”
“Out the door?”
That took thought. “Sort of out the door or something. It goes away.”
“Sort of out the door?”
“It can be hard to tell. It could be out the other door or out a window. Maybe into the closet.”
When I said nothing she added, “Will you sleep with my mother tonight instead of me? Maybe you can see it.”
I considered that one. “You sleep in her bed, in bed with her?”
Chandra nodded.
“I can’t do that, it’s against the rules. I have to sleep on the floor next to her bed.”
“I’d like to sleep in my own room sometimes.”
“I understand, and I will be proud to sleep on the floor beside a fully human’s bed.”
About that time I spotted the three-story white house with the widow’s walk. “I’d like to propose a theory for your consideration. It seems to me that your mother may suffer from paranoid schizophrenia. It’s not uncommon for schizophrenics—paranoid schizophrenics, particularly—to infect other members of their immediate family. Those so infected are not actually schizophrenic and often recover quickly when separated from the true paranoid schizophrenic. But they come to believe the schizophrenic’s delusions until such separation occurs.”
“You think my mother’s crazy, and she’s made me crazy, too.”
“I’m asking you if it isn’t possible.” I shivered, wishing that gloves and a heated cap had come with my new jacket.
“The black thing’s really there. I see it almost every night.” Chandra sounded sure of her ground.
“Really there, but you can’t see how it gets in?”
Chandra shook her head.
“Surely you must see how it gets out.”
“It just goes away. It isn’t there anymore.” Chandra paused, and audibly swallowed. “It sort of fades into the dark.”
Like a dream, I thought. It seemed impolite to say it aloud, so I didn’t.
Chandra’s mother’s bedroom was on the ground floor, with two narrow, snow-dotted windows looking out and down the other side of the long slope that Chandra and I had just climbed. “Please take a chair, Mr. Smithe.” There was a spindly, armless chair near the bed. I sat down on it gingerly, trying to keep from staring at the big, dark eyes and high cheekbones of the white-faced woman between the sheets.
“You are newly come to our village library, Mr. Smithe? That’s what Chandra tells me.”
“Correct. We got here yesterday, Millie Baumgartner”—the pale woman in the big bed tried to wave the name away—“Rose Romain, and I,” I finished.
“You know nothing of Polly’s Cove?”
“Correct. I have never been here before, and I had never heard of it.”
“That’s unfortunate. On the other hand, a new man, a younger man…”
“As is often the case. I take it you didn’t check me out in order to quiz me about my books.”
The pale woman spoke to Chandra. “Please leave us, darling. Ask Mrs. Heuse to make you something for lunch.”
When the door had shut behind Chandra, her mother said, “I would prefer to question you about a book of mine.” She indicated a large leather-bound volume on her bedside table. “Look inside the back cover, please.”
It was a map, dotted with symbols I did not recognize.
I said, “May I carry this to the window?”
She nodded. “As long as you don’t leave it there.”
“I won’t.”
The big book was even heavier than I had expected, but I rested the top on the windowsill. When I had finished looking, I closed its faded black leather cover and brought it back to the little bedside table.
The pale woman opened her eyes. “You were thorough, Mr. Smithe. I like that.”
“Not really. You know my name and I ought to have learned yours from Chandra, but I didn’t. May I ask it now?”
For the first time, she smiled.
“You looked at the bookplate in front. I saw that.”
“I did, and I felt certain it wasn’t yours. Was I mistaken?”
“No. Someday I must remember to ask you what made you so confident. My name is Adah Fevre.”
I nodded and thanked her.
“What did you think of the map?”
“It may be old, though clearly not as old as the paper it’s drawn on.” I paused. “Do you want a lecture on papers?”
Mrs. Fevre nodded, smiling. “I have nothing but time, Mr. Smithe. Time, and you. Please go ahead.”
“Very well.” I drew a long breath. “Modern papers are made of ponticwood fibers. Ponticwood is grown for various purposes, then sawed or split, turned on a lathe or machined by a router, drilled perhaps, sanded, and so forth. The sawdust, chips, and discarded bits used to be burned to generate steam. Now they’re salvaged and pulped. Additives depend on the use to which the paper is to be put. When the proper ones have been mixed in, the pulp slurry is rolled into sheets and the sheets dried on heated rollers. Dry, they may or may not be coated; the coating (if any) depends upon the use for which the paper is intended.”
“Continue, please. I’ll interrupt when I have a question.”
“The map paper is not that kind. It contains fibers from some fabric, probably nylon. Presumably, rags were cut up and mixed with the ponticwood stock. It would be both possible and fairly easy to make paper like that today, but there’s no reason to do it. Such paper is durable, but some modern papers are even more durable. Given cool, dark, dry storage, their lives are estimated in tens of thousands of years. So why bother?”
“I understand,” Mrs. Fevre said. “Please continue.”
“As you wish. The map is yellowed along three edges. Only three, not four. The unyellowed edge is farthest from the spine of the book.”
“I don’t understand that at all.”
“Yellowing results from exposure to sunlight. When a piece of paper forms a page in a book, it may yellow on three sides, the top, the bottom, and one long edge. Those three edges may see the sun. The edge bound into the spine never does.”
“You think this sheet was formerly a page in a book.”
“I do. Not a page of the book in which it is glued now, however; it’s thicker stock, just to begin with. It would be interesting to pull it loose and see what’s printed on the other side, if anything. I would not attempt that without your permission, however.”
“Since the paper might tear, I withhold it. What about the map itself? Is that printed? I’ve wondered about it.”
“No. Or at least I don’t think so. It was skillfully drawn by a right-handed person, probably a man, using a pen charged with permanent ink and a straightedge—or at least it looks that way. He was skilled and careful but not a cartographer. T
hey normally put north at the top of their maps. That may or may not be the case here.”
Mrs. Fevre asked, “No misspellings?”
“I noticed none. Did you see any?”
She shook her head, a slow, sad, gentle motion. “No, but you had a better light, and no doubt a more active mind. Mine must be flogged like a donkey until it begins to function. That map was drawn to show the reader where, and how, to find something. What does the green rectangle mean? Could it be a grave? Or a building? Something of that kind?”
I nodded. “That was my first thought, too. A grave, or perhaps a temple. A chapel, a shrine, or something of the sort. Something magical or holy.”
My final remark brought a faint smile. “I take it you touched it.”
That baffled me. I said, “No, I don’t believe I did.”
“Could there be drugs in the ink?”
“Are you saying…?”
“I have touched it. Perhaps you should, too.”
When I did, paper and ink slipped into my fingertips and reality slid away. I stood among a dark throng of phantom figures: a half-starved girl whose lips could not quite conceal her teeth, a leering potbellied old man, a hairy dwarf who shook three spiked balls at the end of a staff, and many more. Shadowy figures I could not see clearly and cannot quite recall.
I jerked my hand away.
“There is very little religion these days, Mr. Smithe.”