by Gene Wolfe
Ty again. At this point in the tape, my knock can be heard quite distinctly, followed by Jack’s footfalls as he went to the door; it would seem that he was too rattled to turn off his tape recorder. (Liquor, as I have observed several times, does not in fact prevent nervousness, merely allowing it to accumulate.) I would be very happy to transcribe his scream here, if only I knew how to express it by means of the twenty-six letters of the Roman alphabet.
You took him, as you promised, whole and entire. I have no grounds for complaint upon that score, or indeed upon any. And I feel certain he met his well-deserved death firmly convinced that he was in the grip of demons, or some such thing, which I find enormously satisfying.
Why, then, do I write? Permit me to be frank now: I am in need of your assistance. I will not pretend that I deserve it (you would quite correctly care nothing for that), or that it is owed me; I carried out my part of the agreement we made at the friendship light, and you carried out yours. But I find myself in difficulties.
Poor Tessie will probably never be discharged. Even the most progressive of our hospitals are now loath to grant release in cases of her type—there were so many unfortunate incidents earlier, and although society really has very little invested in children aged two to four, it overvalues them absurdly.
As her husband, Jack was charged with administration of the estate in which (though it was by right mine) I shared only to a minuscule degree through the perversity of my mother. Were Jack legally dead, I, as Tessie’s brother, would almost certainly be appointed administrator—so my attorney assures me. But as long as Jack is considered by the law a mere fugitive, a suspect in the suspicious death of Nicolette Corso, the entire matter is in abeyance.
True, I have access to the house; but I have been unable to persuade the conservator that I am the obvious person to look after the property. Nor can I vote the stock, complete the sale of the beach acreage, or do any other of many such useful and possibly remunerative things.
Thus I appeal to you. (And to any privileged human being who may read this. Please forward my message to the appropriate recipients.) I urgently require proof of Jack’s demise. The nature of that proof I shall leave entirely at your discretion. I venture to point out, however, that identifications based on dental records are in most cases accepted by our courts without question. If Jack’s skull, for example, were discovered some fifty or more miles from here, there should be little difficulty.
In return, I stand ready to do whatever may be of value to you. Let us discuss this matter, openly and in good faith. I will arrange for this account to be reproduced in a variety of media.
It was I, of course, as even old Jack surmised, whom Jack’s whore saw the first time near the friendship light. To a human being its morose dance appeared quite threatening, a point I had grasped from the beginning.
It was I also who pulled out Jack’s headlight switch and put the black torn—I obtained it from the Humane Society—in his car. And it was I who telephoned; at first I did it merely to annoy him—a symbolic revenge on all those (himself included) who have employed that means to render my existence miserable. Later I permitted him to hear my vehicle start, knowing as I did that his would not. Childish, all of them, to be sure; and yet I dare hope they were of some service to you.
Before I replaced the handle of the valve and extinguished Tessie’s friendship light, I contrived that my Coleman lantern should be made to flicker at the signal frequency. Each evening I hoist it high into the branches of the large maple in front of my home. Consider it, please, a beacon of welcome. I am most anxious to speak with you again.
Slow Children at Play
Possibly I am the only one who understands how they have come to live in our building, Doctor, and it is possible that I am the only one who has ever wondered; certainly they themselves neither wonder nor understand. They are Mark and Joe, and although Mark can be quick at times, both in movement and in apprehension, the two in combination have not infrequently recalled to my mind the admonitory sign outside our building.
For there is always something childlike about them both, something childlike about their fear as the days (I had nearly said the years) dwindle, while the simplest tasks (their none-too-frequent baths, for example, or warming a can of soup) may require whole mornings, whole afternoons. They live by begging.
Ours is a red brick building, in which I live on the seventh floor. They are on the eighth, where the elevator does not run. There are three small apartments on that floor, but they occupy only one; the rest are vacant, I believe. Theirs is kept cleaner than one would expect, though it is not clean. To the west (one of my windows looks west) flows the river, moving as slowly as Joe and almost as placidly. Its silent gray ships have come to it from far away, from Yokohama and Christchurch and Guayaquil, and now that they have reached port at last they are in no hurry to set forth again. Mark and Joe are like them in that.
To the east stand a few more buildings like our own, then silent streets traversed solely by trucks; to the north are many old homes, divided and subdivided; but to the south, ruin. Mark and Joe lived among those ruins (such, at least, is my theory) as many do, perhaps for several years. Slowly—for they do all things very slowly—they must have drifted northward in search of better lodgings, or perhaps only safer ones. Accustomed as they must surely have been to derelict buildings, ours must have appeared derelict, for more than half its apartments are empty, and the rest rented, for the most part, to unproductive scholars like myself, persons cognizant of the latest gossip concerning Pericles or Paracelsus, who neither know nor care which politico may be president or to what General Foods or General Motors will lay siege next.
They would have used the stairs, I think, as they do now; and only on the uppermost floor, their eighth, would they have found a door unbolted. The old man who cared for this building then never bothered much about the eighth floor, seldom showing the apartments there, for he did not like the steps. When they had lived there for a month or more, he encountered them in the lobby and asked them what they wanted. Joe told him, “Nothing,” which made him suspicious, of course. I said, “Don’t be afraid. Tell him about your sink.” After that he left them alone. He died in March.
Since then we have had a whole chain of people, white and black, both men and women, who were supposed to take care of the building. None have remained more than a few weeks, for the pay is only the ground-floor back. I offered to check his book for one, a sallow man who could scarcely read, and told him it was wrong, that the eighth floor west was occupied, and taking his pencil marked it so. While I had his pencil, I indicated that rent had been paid in advance as well. Since then Mark and Joe have not been troubled, or at least have not been troubled much.
Joe is retarded, I feel sure. It would be conventional to say that he has the mind of a child of ten or some such age; but although I said they were childlike, there is little about him suggestive of a boy of ten, at least to me. He is not inclined to run or shout, and lacks that curiosity which is so marked a trait in most boys. He is silent as a rule, and when he speaks, unwilling to meet any eyes but Mark’s. He considers long before he acts, and then acts slowly; and he has a remarkably retentive memory. All this seems the very opposite of a boy to me, or at least of such boys as I knew long ago.
Mark I am much less sure about. I will hazard a guess—I am no psychologist—and say that he is somewhat insane. As you will see, it may be that I am mistaken or worse.
He is as thin as Joe is thick, and at first glance as swift as Joe is deliberate. Yet it is not really so, for Mark begins everything a score of times before finishing, twists and turns, jerks forward and back like a shuttle, rolls his eyes and wags his head to no purpose, wiggles one foot then the other, then both. His hair, which is long, falls into his eyes fifty times an hour, and must be pushed away.
Some celestial power meditates his death; so Mark believes. I learned this because I was curious about his past, and Joe’s. Had they, I wanted to know,
really lived in ruined buildings for a while? And would they go on living in this building of ours, when it, too, was given over to decay? When old Hearn and I, and all the rest, were gone or dead? Had he and Joe no parents, no sisters or brothers? Where had they come from originally?
“I c-came from the sky,” Mark told me. “J-Joe out of the ground, G-Gene. Yes! F-from the sky! I f-fell, oh, f-fell so many, many. I h-had wings.”
Seated upon my piano bench, he extended not only his arms, but his legs. The effect was shocking, for it made me think not of a bird but of an insect, so many of which have four wings.
This Mark himself reinforced, saying, “He t-tore them off. Ne-ne-nenever! Nevermore. Never more fly! Die, not fly, die now, fly! For bad.”
Joe said, “We have to die, too, Mark,” looking to me for confirmation.
“That’s right,” I told him. “Dust to dust.”
Mark crossed to the window and pointed. “S-see that s-sun? He’ll k-kill you, too, G-Gene?” The sun had set an hour before, behind clouds the color of butchers’ meat; now a crimson beacon, bright but remote, gleamed like a lonely star on the other side of the river. “Today’s his day. He takes your sun away.”
I glanced at the calendar on my desk. “You’re right, Mark. This’s the solstice, the twenty-second of December, the shortest day of all.”
I should not have said that, as I knew the moment the words left my lips. Sheer terror invaded Joe’s normally placid face, and he pointed, trembling, as Mark had a moment before. “It’s going. Flying away.”
To tell the truth I do not like to look out of that window, or even to think about it, because it was from that window that David Arimaspian stepped to his death. And so I remained where I was, studying, or rather, pretending to study, G. T. Griffith’s Mercenaries of the Hellenistic World; though when I thought of David, the nominal “best friend” of my childhood, the author’s name became anathema to me and I covered it (for it appeared at the top of the page) with one hand. I said, “That’s not really the sun, Joe.”
Mark said, “He’ll b-be b-bad tonight.” It was one of those moments in which Mark seems quite sane.
“The sun’s yellow,” I reminded Joe, “or at least it usually is.” I had remembered as I spoke that it would be red-shifted if it were in fact leaving us, but it seemed best to say nothing of that. “Mark, would you shut that window for me and draw the drapes?” It was cold in the apartment, as it had been for some time, and growing ever colder; but as I said, I do not care to approach that window too near.
“C-closed already, G-Gene.” He drew the drapes, as I had asked.
Neither of us, I think, were in the least prepared for what happened next, which was that Joe tried to throw himself through the window. It was Mark who saved him, wrapping his arms around Joe’s waist and heaving him backward with such force that they fell to the carpet.
“N-not the sun, Joe,” Mark said when I had hold of Joe as well. “Really. Really. A light, a red light for st-stop.”
Even if I could, I would not reconstruct that whole session with Joe. Calming him enough for even the simplest arguments to be of service required half an hour at least; but at last he was ready to listen to reason, insofar as he could comprehend it, and Mark promised that they would go across the river and find “the sun.” If it was truly the sun, they would bring it back if they could, and they would at least be warm themselves. If it was not, Joe would know that there was nothing to worry about. Joe agreed that in that case he would return here and go to bed, and never try to jump after the sun again.
I should have said nothing, of course, but the thought of someone else going to his death through that window had shaken me to my core. Ever since David’s death two years ago, I have felt that it was tugging at me; and I knew that if Joe had died as well, its pull would have been doubled. “I’ll drive you,” I told them. “If you have to walk, it’ll take you all night.” To test myself, I went to the window and parted the drapes. “Look carefully, Joe, and you’ll see it’s just above that second oil-storage tank. We’ll go there and take another sighting.”
And so we did, in my rusty station wagon, crossing the toll bridge and halting on the far side of the refinery. The crimson beacon shone high upon a hill, or so it seemed; and it was still some considerable distance away.
Slowly the industrial district through which I drove faded to shabby stores. In time—I am not sure how much time—these grew sleeker, and gave way to houses, and they to larger houses, ever more widely separated, until we sped along a straight road that climbed and climbed through mere darkness, with the beacon to our right at times and to our left at others. I thought then (for I could not resist the association) of the Magi, wise men who were in fact members of a certain Median tribe, who followed a star to Bethlehem. We three comprised a half-wit, a madman, and a fool. But perhaps those “three kings” had thought hardly better of themselves.
It was about then, I think, that I first saw the man in the fire—for a fire it was, and not an electric light of some sort, as I had been assuming. When I write “the man in the fire,” I mean it only as one speaks of the Man in the Moon; for surely he was not actually standing among the flames, although he appeared to be. When I stopped the car and we got out, he was (this I am certain of) standing before it with his back toward it, as a man will, and his arms extended behind him as though his fingers were cold.
“It’s not the sun!” Joe exclaimed happily.
“It is the sun,” the man before the fire said.
He was much taller than I, though I am taller than Joe and much taller than Mark. Although his face was in shadow, framed as it was by leaping flames, it appeared noble and impressive; and so I said, “You don’t understand—Joe takes people seriously when they say things like that.”
As if to confirm it, Joe pleaded, “Don’t take it away now! Bring it back.”
“It has never gone,” the man said, “but I will bring all of you again to it. Not for your sake.” (His eyes had never left mine.) “And certainly not for yours,” he looked disdainfully at Mark, “and not even for yours,” he told Joe more kindly, “but because the time is not yet.”
“It doesn’t have to be for me,” Joe said humbly, “if you’ll just do it.”
“I will. Now, for this is the hour.” And with that he spun about.
It was here that my psychotic episode (if that was what it was) began. For in turning thus it seemed that he revealed, not his back, but an entire new being: a live griffin, eagle-clawed and many-winged. Its eagle’s head screamed at me, a shriek that seemed to fill that whole chill night, and its golden eyes shone brighter than its fire.
I staggered backward. I do not remember how I reached the car; but I was driving again, backing it and twisting the wheel. Once I glanced behind us, because I had already begun to doubt what I had seen. The lofty figure we had first glimpsed still stood like a sentry before its fire, which appeared to revolve majestically now, grown even larger and more brilliant.
And that figure was horned like a Viking or a devil; and as I looked, it roared like a lion.
Joe came to see me this morning, which is why I am writing this for you, Doctor. Because of what he said, I am no longer certain I lost my reason for a time. I tried to explain to him that I had been ill last night. “We’re all sick at one time or another, Joe,” I tried to explain. “I’m sorry, really sorry, if I acted, well, oddly. But I couldn’t help it.”
Joe nodded, not meeting my eyes.
“You’ve been ill yourself a time or two, I imagine.”
He nodded again, slowly. “From eating out of the Dumpster. Because they spray for flies.”
I did not remember then that the devil was called the Baal of Flies by someone in a position to know. I have thought of it only now, but it may be significant.
“I’m going to see a doctor, a specialist.” I felt sure Joe would not know what a clinical psychologist is. “He’s a friend of a friend, and so he agreed to work me in this after
noon.” My agony cried out: “I never thought this would happen to me.”
“We were just playing,” Joe told me very seriously. “You played, too.”
“No! I really thought I saw it, Joe. I believed that it was real.”
Joe shook his head stubbornly. “Mark plays, Gene. Shows me, and I play, too, because I’m there. Last night you played with us.”
I could only gape at him.
“We were just playing.” Joe nodded a solemn confirmation. “We don’t get hurt, because we take care of each other.” He went to the window and stood looking out, smiling his shy smile at the sunlit river.
They, all together, singing
in harmony and moving round
the heaven in their measured dance,
unite in one harmony whose cause is one,
and whose end is one.
It is this harmony which entitles the All
to be called Order, and not disorder.
—DE MUNDO
Under Hill
Sir Bradwen, that famous paladin, had heard stories of the Hill of Glass in far-off Camelot. With Arthur’s leave, he had ridden far and sailed perilous seas. For seventy days thereafter it seemed the tale fled even as he approached it, for at every village men pointed to the place where rose the sun, and swore it was but two days’ journey more—or three. Or a fortnight.
And yet …
The tale gained substance at each new place. The size of the hill diminished. Likewise the difficulty of the lower slopes. It was not merely of glass, but of green glass of about the color of this leaf, sir. The princess, once only a beautiful lady from a remote country, gained a name: Apple Blossom. And when Sir Bradwen protested that neither he nor any other man in Christendom had heard of a lady so named, his informants merely shrugged, and declared that she ought to know—an argument he found difficult to refute.