Totentanz (12 page)

Why wouldn't that pain leave her? She
sometimes saw children who lived in other houses, saw their
perfectly formed bodies, bursting with His life, as they ran past
her. She cried for them because they had no notion of the fullness
of Him, of the life He gave to them and to all things, did not know
of His Book, although they sometimes threw verses of it at her. "He
is the resurrection and the life!" they sometimes sang at her,
mimicking her own pure words, which made her weep all the more for
their ignorance of the precious gift He gave them. Life! They
skipped as they sang or stood with their hands on their knees—some
of the girls with their hands on their bare knees. Filled with
life. They wore skirts, or shorts, or pants, all of the same color,
faded blue, with sneakers and tee shirts. Through the tee shirts
Frances could almost see their forming breasts, nurturing vessels
for future life—all made possible by Him. Him who saves me.

What was that? She doubled over in pain,
straightening slowly. The sidewalk under her seemed covered with
colors, wet to the touch. When she reached down, the colors were
gone, in their place a . . . house. It was like looking into a
clear pool on a day when the bright of the sky made the water
reflect like a mirror. There was the yellow house, with the green
lawn all around it. Painfully she looked away from the vision,
straining her neck up toward the sky. It was not bright and blue;
it was dark and gray and heading for twilight, the kind of
half-light that promised cold thunder to come. Her eye passed down
and rested on the Pole for a moment, and suddenly it became to her
only a white-and-red-striped barber pole bolted to the dull stucco
wall outside a barber shop. Where was she? Where had she been? The
veil was pulled partly away, the sustaining, comforting veil, and
her mind was cleared. She was suddenly afraid. What was she doing
here? Shouldn't she be in—

"Please, no!" she cried, clutching at her
middle and doubling over. Her dropping gaze had passed over her
hand, and the sight of the aging, wrinkled thing where her own
beautiful young hand should be terrified her more than anything.
Could she be this old? Could this much time have passed?

The house. Him I mourn.

Her eyes lowered, more of their own volition
than by an act of will, and the crystal pool on the sidewalk was
still there. It seemed lit from within, throwing out a soft web of
luminescence like a just-abandoned dream. Was that what it was, a
dream?

Cows.

There were cows by the house. Off to the
right there were two—no, three—white-and-black heifers cudding
silently at the green grass. They were fenced in by a thin,
waist-high wire attached to slender poles, looping away from the
house in a lazy circle. Electricity, she knew, ran through the
wire.

How did she know that? Frances tried to pull
her eyes from the pool but was unable to. She heard sounds now, the
faint clucks of chickens in the coop behind the house, the grind of
a tractor off somewhere in the distance, moving steadily against
the earth. The tractor hesitated, and then went on. Another sound
came, louder and clearer and very close. As if she were looking
through the lens of a camera, someone passed into her vision from
the right, nearly blocking out the entire front of the house. The
dark outline of a man crossed her vision and went out of sight to
the left, leaving a thin trail of dark smoke behind. A screen door
creaked open and then whacked shut. Frances saw someone on the
porch of the yellow house.

The figure left the porch, coming toward her.
As it neared, its features became clearer, finally resolving into
those of a young girl: tall, with a boyish haircut but still,
despite this, feminine. She was about fifteen years old, Frances
knew, and there was something wrong with one of her ears—it was
twisted and gnarled out of shape.

Walking hesitantly, the girl neared the huge
barn, one of whose rust-red doors was wide open to reveal a coolly
darkened interior. She paused, looking back pensively, and then
abruptly entered.

In the pool at her feet, Frances followed the
girl's progress. The barn was dark at first, and then the light
adjusted. The floor was covered with sawdust and hay. A few wooden
buckets and a mop were propped against one wall. There were two
stalls against the back wall and a dimly seen and crooked staircase
leading to an upper loft. The girl approached the stalls
cautiously, her feet rustling the dry hay and sawdust. For a moment
her hands groped outward. When she nearly reached the mouth of the
first stall, she stopped, leaving the inside hidden from view. Then
she took a hesitant step forward.

"Jeb?" she whispered, stepping back before
any answer could come.

There was none.

"Jeb'!" she said again, and then, boldened by
silence, she moved a little closer. "Jeb, you there?" Still there
was no answer.

She took a long step closer and called out
again, a little louder.

Another long step and she was standing at the
opening to the stall.

A horse had been kept here at one time. As
Frances watched, she could even smell the old horse smell that
emanated from the cubicle. The hay was thicker here, padded up in
one corner into a rough bed with a blanket to one side. The blanket
gave off a musty odor. A roughly fashioned crucifix was nailed to
the back wall, and a few books had been piled carefully in one
corner. They were big art volumes. El Greco. Degas. Mondrian. There
was an easel with a half-formed canvas on it, painted in wild
colors. Other canvases leaned their faces to the wall. Frances knew
what was on them: featureless shapes and lines in black and bright
yellow and red. From a small hexagonal window high up at the other
end of the barn, a sour yellow light bled into the stall.

The girl went toward the adjacent cubicle,
moving as if walking on eggs. She put her head around the corner
and looked in.

"Empty." she whispered to herself.

There came a rustle from the hayloft above
her. "Come up here," a voice commanded.

The voice had her trapped. The front door of
the barn was too far away to make a run for, there was nowhere to
hide in the back stalls, and there was no other way out. She felt
Jeb staring at her; it was as if his eyes gave out heat rays and
were focusing tight beams down at her. He was in that kind of mood.
But when the girl looked up, clutching her plaid dress tight with
one hand, Jeb was not there.

"Come up here," Jeb's voice repeated. There
was no hint of discussion in its firm, rasp-edged tone.

The girl went.

She rose into an oppressive atmosphere. It
wasn't only the air, which was close and thick with heavy, choking
smells: the odor of urine, a human body long unbathed, decaying
food and damp clothing. There was something else above this,
something she was moving into. It felt as though the area did not
belong where it was, as though it had been wrenched from some other
dimension and thrust into a place where it would not fit. The girl
knew this feeling well; it was what she always felt when she was
around Jeb. Wherever he was, he brought this feeling of
dislocation with him. It was said in town, in whispered
conferences, that bad luck, or something worse, followed Jeb like
a canal barge in tow to a weighted pack horse. Most people crossed
the street against his coming; the girl knew in her heart that she
would do the same thing if the guilt-ridden bond of family did not
attach her to him.

"Pull your carcass up here," Jeb said from
over the lip of the steps. It sounded as though he were way off in
the corner. His voice was oddly subdued.

The girl reached a tentative hand up over the
top, then cried out as she was yanked upward into the loft. She
tried to back down the ladder, but a cold hand clamped down on her
head, resting there a moment before it groped farther to lift her
under her armpit and haul her all the way up.

"I said come up, didn't I'?" Jeb said. She
was thrown down at the back wall of the loft.

She could not see Jeb's face. The feeling of
oppression was horrible up here, more horrible than it had ever
been before. She knew something bad was about to happen. She could
almost taste it, like iron filings in her mouth.

"What did I say about her?" Jeb asked. The
girl was confused—and then she realized he wasn't speaking to her.
His head was cocked to one side, he had lowered his voice, sounding
as he never had before: respectful, almost. The girl turned to
follow his gaze. She saw nothing. There seemed to be nothing there
but a pile of darkness. And then the darkness gave a rattling cough
that ended, after a hawking spit, in a low, rumbling laugh.

You told me just what you wanted," the
unknown form said. There was a flash of what should have been fire,
and was, but without brightness. A thin plume of smoke rose beside
the strange shadow to snake darkly against the light from the
hexagonal window.

"You never were one for saying what you
meant," the form said.

Jeb did not respond. He stood unmoving; and
then he stepped forward, grabbing the girl by the chin in a way
that was oddly caressing.

"When?" he said to the shadow in a
desperately angry voice.

"When I say," the other answered, and the way
he said it made Jeb instantly release the girl and step back into
his corner.

The shadow seemed to rise out of the floor
like an apparition. The girl saw that he had been sitting on a
milking stool. He was wrapped in some sort of short coat, the front
of which swirled as he rose as though wind were passing through it.
"I'm interested in this one," the form said, moving closer and into
the light, where he could be seen.

The girl gasped. So did Frances, watching in
the pool of visions. For a long moment Frances closed her eyes
tight, trembling. She knew that face. For an instant, like a
dreamer who awakens and just misses the essence of his dream, she
knew the veil was lifted farther, and she almost grasped the whole.
But then it moved back into place and complete understanding eluded
her. She breathed deeply, her shivering diminished, and she was
able to move her head away from the pool, which seemed frozen where
she had left it, to look at the barber pole above her. It was just
a barber pole. Had it been something else? She knew it had, but she
didn't know what. Maybe she would never know. Her mind was in
turmoil, half clear water and half mud, where before all had been
mud. Night, she saw, had almost fallen; the sky was purple. When
had she last seen a twilight? She could not answer the question.
But there was no solace in this coming night. A greater cold and
trembling waited for her in the real night than in the pool.

Knowing she must, she turned back to the
pool.

The shadow man lifted his black cigarette to
his mouth and stood regarding the girl with something that passed
for mirth. At his approach, the girl cried out. Then she was
silent. This thing was like a hundred Jebs. But she might yet
escape. If she could not catch Jeb by surprise and bolt past him
for the ladder, at least she might go straight over the side. It
was a good fifteen-foot drop, but she had handled such a drop
plenty of times—though into a good pile of hay. There might be
enough sawdust and hay droppings at the bottom to break her
fall.

The shadow spoke, and in spite of her
resolution to run, she listened to him.

"Who is Jeb?" the creature asked, and she
didn't know what he meant. He pointed a lazy, pale finger in Jeb's
direction. Jeb started to say something, but a glance from the
speaker quieted him.

"He's kin," the girl said.

The shadow laughed, throwing back his head
languorously.

"That's true," he said. "What sort of
kin?"

"He's my brother—sort of."

"Sort of?" The shadow produced another
ghastly cigarette and lit it.

The girl was frightened. She didn't want to
speak again, but as with climbing the ladder, she knew she would
have to.

"Half-broth—"

The shadow reached out in a movement similar
to that of a quick-tongued snake catching a fly and took the girl
by her bad ear.

"What is this?" he said, amused.

The girl cried out. The creature's touch made
darkness burst into her eyes, and there was a freezing bolt of
pain at the side of her head. At a gesture from the shadow, her
legs collapsed and she fell to the floor.

"Who is Jeb?" the shadow asked again.

"Lay off, Ash," Jeb said. But there was no
real power behind his words.

"Who told you Jeb was your brother?" Ash
persisted.

The girl tried to get to her feet and fell
again, legs cramped painfully.

"Jeb did," she gasped. "Jeb told me
that."

"Jeb, are you brother to this kin of yours'?"
Jeb was silent.

"Don't you know what the word abomination
means?" Ash said to the girl with relish. "Hasn't anyone ever
called you an abomination to your face'?" He threw her down,
watching her roll from side to side, holding her head.

"Yes," the girl said.

"Don't you know what it means?" He motioned
lightly at Jeb. "You tell her what it means." Jeb said nothing.

"It means . . . unclean in the sight of the
Lord," the girl said haltingly.

Ash smiled. "And haven't you felt like an
abomination? Haven't you been cast out from the realm of your
fellows? Aren't you shunned on the streets when you walk?"

"No," the girl replied.

"What?" Ash said in mock surprise. "Is this
true, Jeb?"

"There was no reason—" Jeb began.

"But, oh, there was," Ash said. "There was
all the reason in the world. I thought you wanted her to share in
this with you. I thought you wanted it to be hers as well.–

"I changed my mind," Jeb answered, still
avoiding the dark man's eyes.