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Another day, Stephen searched through back newspapers from other cities, primarily the state capital, discovering, again to his shock, information about his father he hadn’t known. Beginning in late winter, here were front-page articles with stark, damning headlines:
PROMINENT STATE JUDGE NAMED IN BRIBERY-CORRUPTION CONSPIRACY; MATHESON DENIES CHARGES; MATHESON TO TESTIFY BEFORE GRAND JURY; MATHESON, PROSECUTOR WORK OUT IMMUNITY DEAL; MATHESON GRANTED IMMUNITY, GIVES EVIDENCE AGAINST FORMER ASSOCIATES; CONSPIRATORS PLEAD GUILTY IN JUDICIAL CORRUPTION SCANDAL
. Stephen was stunned to learn that it hadn’t been at all as we were told, that Father had been an innocent victim of others’ malevolence and manipulation; instead, Father had initially denied his guilt in numerous instances of bribery (one of the cases involved a $5 billion environmental pollution class action suit brought against one of the state’s largest chemical companies), then abruptly admitted it and agreed to inform on his former co-conspirators in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Far from being persecuted by his enemies, as Father had said, he’d been very generously treated. An editorial reeking with sarcasm, in one of the Albany newspapers, put the case succinctly—
MATHESON REWARDED FOR RATTING ON HIS FRIENDS
.

In a May issue of the newspaper, Stephen read that one of the accomplices named by his father, a high-ranking official in state government who’d been a frequent guest of the Mathesons’, had killed himself with a revolver on the morning he’d been scheduled to begin an eight-year prison sentence at Sing Sing.

This knowledge we’d been forbidden, that the rest of the world knew.

Except I’d been too cowardly—too respectful a son—to find out for myself
.

Stephen contemplated the rapid succession of photographs in the papers of Roderick Matheson. The earliest was the most familiar—depicting a boyishly handsome man, younger-looking than his age, a lock of hair disingenuously fallen onto his forehead, his gaze direct and forthright at the viewer. After Father’s arrest, this image abruptly changed. For here was an angry, resentful, embittered man; once caught in the act of shouting at a television reporter; another time, descending the steps of the state courthouse accompanied by police officers, he was hunched over in guilt and shame, trying to hide his face behind upraised hands, wrists shackled together. Roderick Matheson, in handcuffs! Father, a criminal! For the first time the reality of it swept over Stephen: the enormity of his father’s crimes, the shame that accrued to the name Matheson.

Stephen slumped over the library table, hiding his hot, perspiring face in his hands.
I
can’t believe it! I know it must be true
.

12. The Face

That night returning late to Cross Hill as in one of those dreams of frustrated, impeded progress in which, desperate to move, you seem to be paralyzed; returning far later, past ten o’clock, than he’d ever returned before; for he’d stayed for supper with the McKearnys and lingered at their house as if fearful of leaving until Mrs. McKearny urged him to stay the night and he’d had to stammer that he could not, he had to return home. And Mr. McKearny walked with Stephen outside, and insisted that he take with him a weapon to protect himself, a hunting knife of Mr. McKearny’s, a hunting knife with a razor-sharp ten-inch blade; though Stephen protested he didn’t need such a weapon, he didn’t want such a weapon, Mr. McKearny reminded him of how that evening they’d been talking about the mutilation-murders in the valley, the perpetrator still unknown, a madman, or a maddened bear, and in any case of course Stephen should be armed, and so Stephen agreed, clumsily fitting the knife in its leather sheath into his belt and bicycling off, into the night, a gauzy moonlit night of humidity, droning insects, mosquitoes; and Mr. McKearny called after him, “Good night, Stephen! God be with you!”—so quaint an expression Stephen had to smile, or tried to smile; but he was very nervous.

And so pedaling his bicycle along the streets of Contracoeur, and along the darkened country road that led to Cross Hill, his heartbeat quickening as he left the lights of Contracoeur for the inky featureless night of the country, which was illuminated only dimly, and dreamily, by the moon, through filmy clouds; like the cries of nocturnal insects in his ears
Matheson denies charges! Matheson agrees to testify! Matheson granted immunity! Matheson rewarded for ratting on his friends!
Stephen’s eyes misted and stung; he was trying to ignore certain shadowy, indistinct shapes by the roadside that might have been living creatures; except of course they were bushes, small trees; he was trying to ignore his mounting fear; he was trying to ignore the wavering, wobbling sensation of his bicycle on the potholed road; he’d carefully oiled the bicycle that morning, but that morning was now a very long time ago; that morning might have been days, even weeks ago. And how had he dared to stay away so long; what would happen to him now? A voice lifted faintly, reproachfully in the near distance—
Traitorous son! No longer my son! I can never forgive you!

Stephen realized he’d been seeing, ahead in the road, what appeared to be a human figure—was it? A man? A tall, stiff-poised man? Or was it an upright beast? Along this desolate stretch of road, no houses near and Cross Hill more than a mile away. Stephen swallowed hard, gripped his handlebars tight, felt a stab of fear as he made a swift decision—not to turn back but to increase his speed and pass the mysterious brooding figure, which stood at the left side of the road; Stephen would pedal past him on the right, head lowered, back curved in the classic cyclist’s posture; he intended simply to ignore the stranger. Even as he saw out of the corner of his eye that this figure, this man, whatever it was, seemed to be acutely aware of Stephen, as if waiting for him; yet there were no eyes visible in its face, no features at all that Stephen could discern.
The thing-without-a-face!
The thing that Graeme had claimed to see, and Stephen had dismissed as a dream. Touched with horror, yet empowered by it, by a rush of adrenaline like flame through his veins, Stephen didn’t slacken his speed, and veered around the thing, which was moving toward him to block his way. But he was past it! He was safe!

Yet somehow falling, a heavy, painful blow catching him on the shoulder, and he was caught beneath the bicycle, the wheels spinning, one of the handgrips in his face; on the ground helpless and flailing as the thing-without-a-face crouched over him, mauling him, striking him, vicious sharp-clawed blows to the chest, the back of the head, his unprotected face. Too terrified to call for help, Stephen rolled from the attack, trying to shield his head and face with his arms; the frenzied creature straddled him; Stephen saw to his horror that it had a face, but without features, smooth-rippled flushed skin like scar tissue, tiny pinpoints for eyes, nostrils, a rudimentary mouth of the kind one might envision in a mollusk, measuring less than an inch. A mouth not for eating but for sucking. Stephen, fighting for his life, had managed to take the hunting knife out of its sheath, somehow the knife was in his hand, tightly gripped in his fingers, he would not be able to recall afterward taking it from its sheath but only the solid weight of it in his fingers, he, Stephen Matheson, a suburban boy who’d never before in his life gripped a knife of this kind, still less in desperation thrusting it at his assailant, driving it up across the creature’s collarbone, a slashing, superficial blow, yet so unexpected that the creature could not defend itself; clearly, it was accustomed to overwhelming unarmed victims, smaller than itself. Taken by surprise, the thing-without-a-face was deflected for a moment from its attack, and Stephen thrust the knifeblade up farther, and deeper, with more strength, into the creature’s throat; stabbing and slashing at its throat where an artery must have been severed, for, at once, hot dark blood sprang out in a rapid stream onto Stephen’s arm, into his face and hair. The creature, so much larger than Stephen, fell to its knees at the roadside as if baffled, uncomprehending; perhaps it felt no pain, but only this profound incomprehension, as of a being who’d imagined itself invulnerable to physical harm, immortal somehow, the delusion now shattered, spiraling away in dark ribbons of blood that could not be stopped. Making a choked, guttural sound, the creature staggered to its feet, hands pressed against the streaming blood, turning away dazed, having forgotten Stephen entirely; at last staggering away, like a drunken man, into the underbrush beside the road. Stephen himself dazed, bleeding, trying to catch his breath, stared after the thing in amazement and elation. He had saved himself! He had cast the thing-without-a-fàce from him and mortally wounded it, and he had saved himself!

At the ruin of Cross Hill, where stealthily he climbed the stairs to the second floor where Mother and Father slept; at Cross Hill, his heart pounding violently in his chest not in warning, not in caution but urging him on!—on!—for this must be done, this must be accomplished, he dare not turn back, he must push to the very end. And so opening the door of the master bedroom, and so stepping breathless inside that room it was forbidden to him to enter; the sticky, still-warm blood of the thing-without-a-face smeared on his own face, and in his hair, soaked into his clothes and mixed with his own so Stephen knew he must look savage, a terrifying sight. Yet he dared to switch on a light; a dim, yellowed bulb in a dusty bedside lamp; he stood beside his parents’ enormous canopied bed; yet only Mother lay there, on her back, unnaturally still and her eyes open; in a satin nightgown so faded it had lost all color; Father’s side of the bed was empty, though the bedsheets were rumpled and not very clean. On his pillow was the heavy imprint of his head, a concave shadow. Stephen stared, not certain what he saw. He whispered, “Mother—?” His hand reached out, groping; he dared to touch her—it; pushing gently at the smooth, naked shoulder that, with the attached torso, fell away from the shadowed lower body, and from the neck and head; the head, a mannequin’s bald, blank head, rolled to one side on the pillow; one of the limbs, the shapely left leg, had fallen away from the body, as if its joints had become brittle with time, and lay at a grotesque angle perpendicular to the thigh. Again Stephen whispered “Mother …” even as he saw clearly that the thing wasn’t human and wasn’t alive: an elegant department store mannequin, sleekly constructed, rather flat-bodied, with a porcelain-smooth face, beautiful wide-open eyes with absurdly thick lashes. The mannequin’s wig—Mother’s ashy-blond, now graying and disheveled hair—had been placed, with apparent care, on the bedside table.

Father’s handsome face, a molded mask of some exquisitely thin, rubbery material, an ingenious simulation of human skin, had been placed, with equal care, on the other bedside table; it was a mask so lifelike that Stephen winced to see it. It appeared to have been washed, and oiled with a colorless, subtly fragrant cream, fitted to a plaster-of-paris mold of a man’s face; these eyes too were starkly open, but more liquidy, human-appearing, than the mannequin’s. In horror, and fascination, with the curiosity of a very young child, Stephen reached out to touch the face with his forefinger. How lifelike it felt! How
warm
!

In great urgency then waking Rosalind and the twins, who now slept in her bedroom; though Rosalind, moaning in a nightmare, hardly needed to be wakened, only her name gently spoken—“Rosalind;” and hurrying them out of the ruin of Cross Hill and, on foot, along the road to Contracoeur, only five miles away; there was no time for Stephen to explain to his frightened sisters and brother, and, at this moment, there would have been no words. Rosalind asked in a whisper what had happened to Stephen, had he injured himself, had someone hurt him, where were they going, and what of Father, and what of Mother, but the twins, sleep-dazed, stifling back sobs, each clutching one of Stephen’s hands, did not ask; nor were they ever to ask.

Thomas M. Disch

THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT

I’ve known Tom Disch for twenty-five years; I met him when I was student and he was teacher at the Clarion Science Fiction Writer’s Workshop at Michigan State University in 1974. I’ve been proud to consider him a mentor ever since; his novel
Camp Concentration
should he on the shelf of every intelligent reader of imaginative fiction
.

Though never abandoning the science fiction field, he eventually found his way into the horror field with two highly regarded novels
, The M.D.: A Horror Story
and
The Businessman: A Tale of Terror.
He is also well known as the author of the children’s books
The Brave Little Toaster
and
The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars,
as well as the recent critical (and critically acclaimed) study of the sf field, The
Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of.
He is also a poet and playwright
.

When student humbly asked teacher for a story for this book, student gratefully received this gem
.

So when Christopher Robin goes to the
Z
oo, he goes to where the Polar Bears are, and he whispers something to the third keeper from the left, and doors are unlocked, and we wander through dark passages and up steep stairs, until at last we come to the special cage, and the cage is opened, and out trots something brown and furry, and with a happy cry of “Oh, Bear!” Christopher Robin rushes into its arms
.

T
hey liked the mornings best, when Mr. and Mrs. Fairfield were asleep upstairs and the house was quiet and they could snuggle together on the love seat and wait for the train to come rumbling by on the other side of the river. There were other trains at other times of day, but things could get so hectic later on that you might not even realize a train was going by until the windows were rattling.

Those windows should have been fixed years ago, especially the combinations on either side of the TV set. Dampy became anxious whenever there was a storm alert, certain that sooner or later a gusting wind would just suck those old windows out of their aluminum frames. The upstairs windows were more solid, because they were made the old-fashioned way and would probably outlast the roof. Though that wasn’t saying much. The roof was in sorry shape, too. One of these days, when he had the cash, Mr. Fairfield was going to fix the roof, but that wouldn’t be any day soon, since trying to find a full-time job kept him out of the house so much of the time.

After the train went by, and it started to get brighter, the alarm clock in the upstairs bedroom would go off, and then there’d be noises in the bathroom, and after that from the kitchen the smells of breakfast. Breakfast was their favorite meal of the day, because it was always the same. A little glass of apple juice, and then either puffed rice or cornflakes with milk and sugar and then a crisp piece of toast with butter and jam. They would bow their heads along with Mrs. Fairfield, and Mr. Fairfield too if he were up that early, and thank the Lord for his blessings.

Some Sundays there were even pancakes. Dampy had lived at Grand Junction Day Care before he moved in with the Fairfields (at the time of the
first
Mrs. Fairfield), and once a month there had been a special Pancake Breakfast Benefit in the lunchroom of the day care. The first Mrs. Fairfield had helped make the pancakes on the gas grill, as many as twenty at a time. Wonderful pancakes, sometimes with blueberries in them, sometimes with shredded coconut, and you could have all you could eat for just $2 if you were under the age of six. Later on, the benefits were not so well attended, and only the children came, as though it were just another school day, except with pancakes, and that’s when Dampy had the accident that got him called Dampy. The children had a food fight, using the paper plates as Frisbees, even though there was syrup on the plates and Miss Washington said not to. No one paid any attention, they never did with Miss Washington, and one plate hit Dampy and got syrup all over him, so Mrs. Fairfield took him back to the big sink and gave him a sponging off, and when that didn’t get off all the syrup, she gave him a real dousing. And he never got entirely dry again.

He didn’t mind being called Dampy. Sticks and stones, as they say. But then there was the Terrible Accident (that really was no accident at all), but why talk about that. There is no need to dwell on the dark side of things, and anyhow that was a fine example of a silver lining, since if it hadn’t been for the Terrible Accident, Dampy would probably never have come to be adopted by the Fairfields on a permanent basis. And the Fairfields’ house despite the arguments was a better place to live than Grand Junction Day Care. Quite lonely, of course, until Hooter had come to live there too, but Dampy had always tended to keep to himself. The new Mrs. Fairfield was the same way. She preferred her solitude and the TV over a lot of friends.

But special friends are different, of course, and from the very start Hooter was to be Dampy’s
special
friend. He had come to live with Dampy and the Fairfields when Mr. Fairfield had abducted him from his home at the Grand Junction Reformed Church. There he’d been, sitting in his box, listening to the speaker at the Tuesday night AA meeting, but not listening all that closely, and then Mr. Fairfield grabbed hold of him. Mr. Fairfield was there because he’d been arrested for Driving While Intoxicated, and the judge had said he had to go to AA meetings twice a week. So there he was at the Dutch Reformed Church in the folding chair just beside Hooter’s box.

Mr. Fairfield had nervous hands. If he wasn’t fiddling with his cigar, he would be cleaning his fingernails with his Swiss Army pocketknife or tearing a piece of paper into the smallest possible shreds. That night, after he’d turned the two-page list of local AA meetings into confetti he began to play with Hooter, not in a rough way exactly, but certainly with no consideration for Hooter’s feelings. After the people at the meeting had shared their experience, strength, and hope (except for those, like Mr. Fairfield, who had nothing that needed sharing) everyone joined hands and said the Our Father.

That was when Mr. Fairfield had picked up the young owl and whispered into his black felt ear, “Hooter, I am going to
adopt
you.” “Adopt” was what he said, but “abduct” was how it registered on Hooter, who left the church basement concealed beneath Mr. Fairfield’s Carhardt jacket with a feeling that his Higher Power had betrayed him. After all the time he’d lived in the church basement he’d come to assume that he
belonged
there, that no one was ever going to take him away, even if he spent every Saturday in the box that said
FREE
. At first that had been a heartbreaking experience, but the AA meetings had been a consolation in coping with the loneliness and isolation. But Hooter had put his trust in his Higher Power and turned over his will, and he’d learned to
accept
his life as a church owl. And now here he’d been abducted.

Mr. Fairfield pulled open the door of his pickup, and Hooter was astonished to find that someone had been waiting out here in the freezing pickup all through the meeting. Sitting in the dark, wrapped in a blanket, and looking very miffed at having had to spend all this time in the cold.

“Hooter,” said Mr. Fairfield. “I want you to meet Dampy. Dampy, this is Hooter. He’s going to be your new buddy. So say hello.”

Dampy did not respond at once, but at last he breathed out a long, aggrieved sigh. “Hello,” he said, and moved sideways to make room for Hooter under the blanket. When they were touching, Dampy whispered into Hooter’s ear, “Don’t say anything in front of
him.”
With a meaningful look in the direction of Mr. Fairfield, who had taken out a brown paper bag from the glove compartment of the pickup.

Hooter knew from his first whiff of the opened bottle that Mr. Fairfield was another secret drinker, like Reverend Drury, the pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church. Hooter had often been the companion of the Reverend’s secret libations in the church basement, and when he didn’t polish off his half-pint of peppermint schnapps at one go he would often leave it in Hooter’s keeping, in the
FREE
box of broken toys and stained toddler clothes. Now here Hooter was in the same situation again, an enabler.

“Here’s to the two of you!” said Mr. Fairfield, starting up the engine of the pickup and lifting the bottle of alcohol towards Dampy and Hooter. They looked at each other with a sense of shame and complicity, and then the pickup moved out onto Route
97
.

“I seen you before, you know that,” Mr. Fairfield said. “At the Saturday garage sale. I noticed you there on the
FREE
table. For weeks. They can’t give away that ugly little fucker, I thought. So, when I saw you again tonight I thought—I’ve got just the place for him. The perfect little dork of a buddy. Right, Dampy?”

Dampy was mum. It was a cruel and provoking thing to have said to the poor little owl, who
was
a homely bedraggled creature, to be sure. Dampy was used to having
his
feelings hurt. He was numb to such abuse. But poor Hooter must have been close to tears.

Mr. Fairfield seemed to pick up on that thought. “Hey, I guess I’m no looker myself. You got that beak, I got this gut, and Dampy there is a goddamn basket case. Dampy has got more problems than Dear Abby. But Dampy don’t talk about his problems. Not to his family anyhow. But maybe he will to you. What do you say, little fella?”

Neither Dampy nor Hooter said a word.

Mr. Fairfield took another hit from the bottle and they continued the rest of the way in silence.

When they arrived home, it was Mr. Fairfield who introduced Hooter to the new Mrs. Fairfield. “Look, honey, we got another member of the family.” He dropped Hooter into Mrs. Fairfield’s lap with a loud but not very owlish
Whoo! Whoo!

“Isn’t he a darling?” said Mrs. Fairfield without much conviction. “Isn’t he just the sweetest thing?” She took a puff on her cigarette and asked, “But what
is
he, anyhow?”

“What bird goes
Whoo! Whoo!
He’s an owl. Look at him. He’s got a beak like an owl, and those big eyes. Got to be an owl. So we called him Hooter.”

“But he’s got teddy-bear-type ears,” Mrs. Fairfield objected.

“So? No one’s perfect. He’s a fuckin’ owl. Give him a kiss. Go ahead.”

Mrs. Fairfield put her cigarette in the ashtray, and sighed, and smiled, and planted a delicate kiss on Hooter’s beak. Hooter could tell it was a real kiss, with feelings behind it, and so he knew he was a member of the Fairfield family from that point on. He, who’d thought he’d never belong to
any
family but just spend the rest of his life in a box in the basement of the Dutch Reformed Church.

“Okay?” said Mrs. Fairfield, turning to her husband.

“Now tell him you love him.”

“I love you,” said
MR
. Fairfield, still looking at Mr. Fairfield in an anxious way.

“Okay then,” said Mr. Fairfield, rubbing his hand across the fur on his own head, which was the same color brown as Hooter’s but much longer. “We got that settled. Now you all better hit the sack. I’m outa here.”

Mrs. Fairfield looked disappointed, but she didn’t ask where he was off to or whether she could come along.

Mrs. Fairfield was basically a stay-at-home type, and Dampy and Hooter took after her in that respect. They might spend hours at a time on the love seat watching TV with Mrs. Fairfield, or playing Parcheesi by themselves under the dining room table with its great mounds of folded clothes waiting to be ironed. Rarely did they go out of the house, for they knew there was good reason not to. The woods were just behind the house, and Mr. Fairfield told fearful tales about the woods. Most animals that did not have human families to live with had no home but the woods, which could be a dangerous place, even for owls. Owls are predators themselves, and hunt for mice and smaller birds, but they are preyed upon in turn by wolves and bears and snakes. As for young pussycats, Mr. Fairfield said, the woods meant certain death. Dampy must never, never go into the woods by himself, not even with Hooter, or they would certainly be eaten alive by the predators out there.