999 (79 page)
Authors: Al Sarrantonio
DOMINIC
Yes, and I don’t have to strain to recall how that felt. It’s carved right into my heart. The whole goddamned scene.
FATHER
So who ever heard of anybody teachin’ themselves to play music? It’s crazy!
DOMINIC
Yeah, maybe … but I did teach myself, didn’t I? And I played in a band until that night I came home late from a dance and you were waiting for me behind the door—Remember that, Dad? The night you smashed my guitar over the sink?
That’s what my life’s been like, Dad; me doing interesting things
despite
what I got from you. Or maybe I should say what I didn’t get from you!
His father looked away from him. He seemed truly embarrassed now.
FATHER
That’s horsehshit.
DOMINIC
(shaking his head)
I wish it was. I really do. But it’s all true, Dad. All true.
FATHER
Why don’t you Just shut up!
DOMINIC
Because I’m not finished yet. What’s the matter, am I threatening you? I think that’s what the problem has always been—you never liked the way your wide-eyed kid had some natural curiosity about the world, did you?
FATHER
(sounding tired now)
You’re not making any sense.
DOMINIC
Well, try this one: you weren’t only threatened by your son, but just about
everybody
. Anybody you thought was more intelligent than you, or more educated, or had more money … you always had something shitty to say about all of them, didn’t you?
FATHER
Now, it ain’t like that!
DOMINIC
Wait! Let me finish. So then you wake up one morning and you realize that your own weirdo kid was not going to grow up to be a beer-drinking macho man, you Just gave up, didn’t you?
FATHER
What do you mean?
DOMINIC
I mean that when you saw that your own kid was turning out to be a hell of a lot different from you—but very much like all those kinds of people you feared and therefore despised—then you stopped being a father to that strange son.
FATHER
I what?
DOMINIC
Didn’t you know that all I wanted was a little approval? A little love?
FATHER
You talk like you got It all figured out … what do you think you are—a doctor or something?
DOMINIC
(grinning)
No. No “doctor” … Just a son. And if I haven’t “figured it all out,” at least I’m trying. You never even tried!
His father stared at him and tried to speak, but no words would come. His lower Up trembled slightly from the effort.
DOMINIC
Don’t you understand why I’m telling you all this? Don’t you understand what I’ve been trying to say?
His father shook his head quickly, uttered a single word.
FATHER
No. …
DOMINIC
I can’t think of anything else to say. No other way to make you understand … except to just tell you, Dad. I don’t know why, but after all the years, and after all the pain, I know that I still love you, that I have to love you.
I love you, Dad.
(pause)
And I need to hear the same thing from you.
He walked closer to his father and stared into his eyes, searching for some glimmer of understanding.
There was a long silence as father and son regarded each other. Dominic could feel the presence of some great force gathering over the stage. Then he saw the tears forming in his father’s eyes.
FATHER
(stepping forward)
Oh, Dominic. …
His father grabbed him up in his arms and pulled him close. For an instant, Dominic resisted, but then relaxed, falling into the embrace with his father.
FATHER
My son … what happened to us?
(pause)
I … love you!
I do love you!
Dominic felt the barrel chest of his father close against his own and he was very conscious of how strange a sensation it was. Suddenly there was a great roaring in his ears and he was instantly terrified, disoriented. His father had relaxed his emotional embrace and Dominic pulled back and looked into the man’s face.
He was only vaguely aware of the stage lights quickly fading to black, but in the last instant of illumination he saw that his father no longer stood before him. He now stared into the face of a stranger.
An actor.
The roaring sound had coalesced into something recognizable, and Dominic turned to look out into the brimming audience—a sea of people who were on their feet, clamoring, applauding wildly.
Then the curtain closed, sealing him off from them, from the torrent of appreciation.
He was only half aware of his two fellow actors—the ones who had portrayed his father and mother—as they moved to each side of him, joining their hands in his.
The lights came up as the curtain reopened. The audience renewed its furious applause, and suddenly he understood.
Feeling a flood of warmth and a special sense of gratitude, Dominic Kazan stepped forward to take his bow.
finale
I knew Dennis McKiernan before he was a published writer. In fact, though it’s not polite to brag, I can claim that I discovered him, a fact of which I’m very proud
.
What I can’t claim to have had any part in is his talent, which blossomed through the eighties and into the nineties, mostly in the fantasy field, where he has distinguished himself mightily. His heroic tales are in the tradition of J. R. R. Tolkien, but he has made the genre his own, with such books as
Dragon Doom, The Iron Tower Trilogy
(consisting oddly enough, of three volumes), and
The Silver Call Duology
(consisting of, you guessed it, two)
.
For this book he has produced a singular tale; of Tom Monteleone’s is a
Twilight Zone
piece then this is a
Night Gallery
one—a Serling-like tale with a dash of color, though it concerns the opposites of light and dark
.
It makes a very nice “duology” with Monteleone’s story
.
It is always Dark
.
Light only hides the Darkness
.
—DANIEL KIAN MC KIERNAN
T
he taxi pulled in through the open, wrought iron gates and up a long, sweeping driveway with weeping willows looming in the chill darkness to either side. In the backseat, Harlow leaned forward to get a better look.
Wow …!
The moonlight glanced across the snow and highlighted white-laden topiary here and there as well as glimmered on the ice of a landscaped pond. A gazebo sat on the shore of the lakelet, snow on its octagonal roof. Ahead sat the house, the manse: white and two stories and elegant.
Twenty, twenty-five rooms, at least. Perhaps one for each year of my age
.
As the cab pulled into a circular turnaround and stopped, Harlow could see a man standing at the front door and shielding his eyes from the headlights, a glitter of keys in his gloved hand.
Harlow got out. “Mr. Maxon?”
Tall and silver-haired, the man moved forward on the broad single step before the door and removed a glove and extended his open hand, his smile revealing angular teeth, and he said, “Mr. Winton, I presume.” The two men shook hands, Maxon’s grip cold.
The taxi driver hefted a cheap suitcase out from the trunk and set it to the wide stoop. “That’ll be sixteen dollars.”
“Just charge it to my account, Roddy,” said Maxon.
The driver touched the bill of his cap and stepped back to his cab.
As the taxi pulled away, Maxon jingled the keys and softly said, “Well, let’s get to it,” and turned toward the door.
Picking up his imitation-leather luggage, Harlow followed, stepping through the doorway just as Maxon flipped a switch, and with a faint clicking throughout the house, light flooded the foyer and the rooms beyond, both upstairs and down. “Holy … !” Harlow set his suitcase down and squinted against the brightness and glanced at Maxon, the lawyer pale and pasty, almost cadaverous in this glare.
“Your great-uncle was a most peculiar man, Harlow, and you are the last in his line.”
“Yeah, but all this light. His electric bill must have been enormous.”
“He can afford it, or rather, could.” Maxon closed the door and shed his overcoat. “And you can afford it as well, if you care to keep it this way. Personally, if it were mine to do, I’d get rid of the lights and turn this house back into a place of elegant comfort, which you can afford as well. In fact, there’s not much you can’t afford, within reason. There is but a single hindrance in your uncle’s will, the stipulation being that the relative who inherits must live in this place or lose it all: fortune, house, everything.”
Harlow grinned. “No trouble there. But, lord, all these lights. Can’t we turn some off?”
Maxon shook his head. “I’m afraid not. They are either all on or all off.”
Harlow cocked an eyebrow. “And this one switch, it controls them all?”
“Actually, every switch in the house does. As I understand it, each one feeds into a master control box, and the lights all go on and off together. Relay driven, I believe. There’s a remote somewhere that will do the same, control the lights, that is.”
“Like a TV remote?”
Maxon nodded. “Here, give me your parka and we’ll take a tour.”
Harlow peeled out of his coat and handed it to Maxon, the lawyer opening the door to a brightly lit foyer closet.
Harlow’s eyes widened. “Even the closets?”
“Even those,” replied Maxon, hanging both garments inside. He started to reach for the suitcase, but Harlow said, “No, no. Let me,” and set it in the closet himself. Maxon grinned at the vigorous young man and said, “Now for the tour.”
Every room, every chamber inside the house was illuminated by panels of light mounted on walls and ceilings. Each of the rooms was sparsely furnished, and of what furniture there was, much was made of molded glass or clear plastic or Lucite or some such, Harlow couldn’t tell which. And wherever furniture of a different sort sat, floor panels cast light in the space below. Even the tall, king-sized four-poster had light panels underneath. “No place for monsters,” said Harlow upon seeing this last. “Monsterless closets, too.”
As they walked down to the first floor Harlow asked, “Is the whole house this way?”
Maxon nodded and led him to the kitchen, where luminous panels lit the interiors of cabinets, even though the shelves and doors were made of clear glass, as were the dishes within. Many utensils were transparent, sitting in their illumined drawers. And all appliances were lighted inside and out.
“My, my,” said Harlow.
“Indeed,” replied Maxon, and opened the door to the brightly lit garage. Inside sat a large gasoline-powered, motor-driven generator—a Honda—its exhaust feeding through a clear plastic pipe vented to the outside, the machine sitting silent but ready. Inside as well sat a BMW, a heavy-duty power cord running to it from the wall, its interior glowing with light.
“Even the car?”
Again Maxon nodded. “In the trunk are a number of batteries—on a charger—to power the light panels within.”
Glove compartment, trunk, under the seats, inside the dash, under the hood: all were blazing.
Harlow frowned. “With all that light in the car, how did he see to drive at night?”
“He didn’t,” replied Maxon. “He didn’t go out at night; but he wanted to be ready, just in case.”
“In case of what?”
Maxon shrugged. “In case he had to, I suppose.”
“Was he always this way? I mean, I didn’t know anything about him—didn’t even know I had a great-uncle until you contacted me.”
“A good thing, that,” said Maxon. “Else Massachusetts would have gotten it all—but for me running you down.”
“Well, I’m glad you did. But again I ask: was he always this way?”
“No. When he was younger, much like your age, he traveled the world: Africa, India, Tibet, the Orient, the Outback, the Pampas, wherever: he saw them all. But rather suddenly, it seems, he stopped. Holed up in this house. Hired workers to make the changes to put light everywhere. A beacon in the dark, so to speak. The neighbors call this ‘the lighthouse.’ ”
As they stepped back into the kitchen, Harlow sighed. “Lighthouse it is; there’s not a shadow in this place. Was he afraid of the dark?”
“Perhaps,” replied Maxon, now walking down the hall to the foyer. “As I said, he never went out at night.”
Harlow looked about. “I wonder what he would have done in a blackout?”
As Maxon opened the closet and slipped into his overcoat he said, “Why, nothing. Should the power fail, the lights switch over to backup batteries; then the generator in the garage takes over.”
“Oh.” Harlow saw Maxon to the door. As the lawyer stepped outside and into the snowy November night, Harlow asked, “By the way, how did he die?”
“His heart gave out. The housekeeper, she found him in the recreation room; he’d been watching TV, it seems.”
Harlow jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “In that glare?”
Maxon turned up a hand.
“Hmm,” mused Harlow. “Regardless. Too bad I didn’t know him. Perhaps I would have liked him.”
“Perhaps you would have at that. He’s buried out back in the family plot.” Maxon looked at his watch. “Well, I’m due elsewhere. I’ll drop in tomorrow night and we’ll go over the assets and set up your bank and brokerage accounts, among other things.”
“Uhh, can’t we take care of it in the daylight, rather than in this glare?”
“I’m sorry, Harlow, I’m simply not available until tomorrow evening.”
“Oh, I didn’t know. Then tomorrow night it is. Any special time?”
“Shall we say eight?”
“Fine by me.”
“Oh,” said Maxon, fishing about under his coat, “these are yours.” He handed the keys to Harlow. Then: “Well, I’m gone. Have a nice night.”
“But wait, how will you get to wherever you’re going?”
“It isn’t far, and I need the exercise,” replied Maxon.
Harlow watched as the lawyer trudged down the drive, and in spite of the moonlight, the man seemed to fade into the shadows. When he could see him no more, Harlow closed the door and stepped into well-lighted rooms.
Over the next three days, Harlow explored the house and property—fifty-four acres in all—discovering the family graveyard, finding the remains of an old cabin in a grove of trees to the north, briefly sitting in the snow-laden gazebo and surveying his new world. During it all he pondered his future. For the first time in his life, Harlow had money. Oh, not that he had been a vagrant before, but instead he had been a man with little to his name, not even relatives—no mother, no father, no foster parents—rather he had been raised, if you could call it that, in an orphanage. Yet now all that was changed: he
had
had kinfolk, kinfolk he never knew yet kinfolk nevertheless, kindred buried on these very grounds in a rather large family plot, many of the gravestones undated and without names. Regardless, thanks to one of these kindred, a heretofore unknown great-uncle, now he had money to spend. He was twenty-five and fairly rich and all he had to do was live in this splendid house … or it would be splendid as soon as he got rid of the glare, for he had decided that he would take up Maxon’s suggestion and turn this house back into a place of elegant comfort. After that was done, he would then consider taking on a job, or perhaps a career, though Maxon had said he would never have to work again.
He hired a housekeeper and a cook, but they refused to stay in the place at night, saying that there was too much light. But Harlow suspected there was more to it than that, for often he saw the two women whispering together, and the cook, a Hispanic lady, repeatedly crossed herself.
Employing electricians and cabinetmakers and a decorator full-time, it took nearly three months for Harlow to turn the house into a normal one: the light panels were eliminated, walls and ceilings repaired and painted, normal switches and wall sockets installed, the harsh light replaced by elegant soft-glowing lamps; glass cabinetry was replaced by oak; the dreadful clear plastic furniture and utensils and dishes and other such, Harlow gave to Goodwill, items of good taste and comfort taking their place; too, he had the car restored to a normal vehicle: the glaring interior lights were removed, and the batteries and their charger were taken from the trunk. The only holdover Harlow kept was the Honda generator, for one never knew when the power might fail.
It was during this remodeling that Henry, one of the electricians, said as he reconfigured the relay control panel, “You know, this is the old x-thirty model. Had a bug.”
“Bug?”
“A flaw. A design flaw.”
“How so?”
