William Gresham - Nightmare Alley

Zeena filled an armchair beside the window, fanning herself gently with a copy of Variety . She had slipped off her girdle and was wearing an old kimono of Molly’s, which hardly met in the middle. “Whew! Ain’t it a scorcher? You know, this is the first summer I’ve ever been in New York. I don’t envy you all here. It ain’t quite this bad in Indiana. Say, Molly”-she finished the last swallow of beer and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand-“if they ever get this mess straightened out, why don’t you come out with us and finish the season? You say Stan is working this new act of his solo.”

Molly sat down next to Joe and stretched out her long legs; then she curled them under her and lit a cigarette, the match shaking just a little. She was wearing an old pair of rehearsal rompers; she still looked like a kid in them, Zeena noticed a little sadly.

Molly said, “Stan’s awfully busy at the church. The folks are crazy about him. He gives reading services every night. I used to help him with those but he says a straight one-ahead routine is good enough. Then he has development classes every afternoon. I-I just take it easy.”

Zeena set down the empty can on the floor and took the full one which Molly had put on the window sill. “Lambie-pie, you need a good time. Why don’t you get yourself slicked up and come out with us? We’ll get you a date. Say, I know a swell boy with Hobart Shows this season-an inside talker. Let’s hire a car and get him and have dinner up the line somewheres. He’s a swell dancer and Joe don’t mind sitting out a couple, do you, snooks?”

Joe Plasky’s smile, turned on Zeena, deepened; his eyes grew softer. “Swell idea. I’ll call him now.”

Molly said quickly, “No, please don’t bother. I’m really fine. I don’t feel like going anywhere in this heat. Really, I’m okay.” She looked at the little leather traveling clock on the mantel, which Addie Peabody had given her. Then she switched on the radío. As the tubes warmed, the voice came through clearer. It was a familiar voice but richer and deeper than Zeena had ever heard it before.

“… therefore, my beloved friends, you can see that our claims for evidence of survival are attested to and are based on proof. Men of the caliber of Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Camille Flammarion, and Sir William Crookes did not give their lives to a dream, to a chimera, to a delusion. No, my unseen friends of the radio audience, the glorious proofs of survival lie about us on every hand.

“We at the Church of the Heavenly Message rest content and secure in our faith. And it is with the deepest gratitude that I thank them, the splendid men and women of our congregation, for their generosity, which has enabled me to bring you this Sunday afternoon message for so many weeks.

“Some persons think of the ‘new religion of Spiritualism’ as a closed sect. They ask me, ‘Can I believe in the power of our dear ones to return and still not be untrue to the faith of my fathers?’ My dearly beloved, the doors of Spiritual Truth are open to all-it is something to cherish close to your heart within the church, of your own faith. Whatever your creed it will serve simply to strengthen it, whether you are accustomed to worship God in meeting house, cathedral, or synagogue. Or whether you are one of the many who say ‘I do not know’ and then proceed to worship unconsciously under the leafy arches of the Creator’s great Church of the Out of Doors, with, for your choir, only the clear, sweet notes of the song sparrow, the whirr of the locust among the boughs.

“No, my dear friends, the truth of survival is open to all. It is cool, pure water which will gush from the forbidding rock of reality at the touch of a staff-your own willingness to believe the evidence of your own eyes, of your own God-given senses. It is we, of the faith of survival, who can say with joy and certainty in our heart of hearts, ‘O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”’

Joe Plasky’s smile was now a faint, muscular imprint on his face; nothing more. He leaned across Molly and gently switched off the radio. “Got a deck of cards, kid?” he asked her, his face lighting up again. “I mean a deck of your own cards-the kind your dad would have played with. The kind that read from only one side.”

Beneath her cold light howl the dog and the wolf. And creeping things crawl out of slime .

IN THE black alley with a light at the end, the footsteps followed, drawing closer; they followed, and then the heart-stopping panic as something gripped his shoulder.

“… in about another fifteen minutes. You asked me to wake you, sir.” It was the porter shaking him.

Stan sat up as though a rope had jerked him, his pulse still hammering. In the early light he sat watching the fields whip by, trying to catch his breath, to shake off the nightmare.

The town looked smaller, the streets narrower and cheaper, the buildings dingier. There were new electric signs, dark now in the growing dawn, but the horse chestnuts in the square looked just the same. The earth doesn’t age as fast as the things man makes. The courthouse cupola was greener with time and the walls were darker gray.

Stanton Carlisle walked slowly across the square and into the Mansion House, where Old Man Woods was asleep on the leather couch behind the key rack. Knocking on the counter brought him out, blinking. He didn’t recognize the man with the arrogant shoulders, the cold blue eyes; as the Rev. Carlisle signed the register he wondered if anyone at all would recognize him. It was nearly seventeen years.

From the best room, looking out on Courthouse Square, Stan watched the town wake up. He had the bellboy bring up a tray of bacon and eggs, and he ate slowly, looking out on the square.

Marston’s Drug Store was open; a boy came out and emptied a pail of gray water into the gutter. Stan wondered if it was the same pail after all these years-his first job, during high school vacation. This kid hadn’t been born then.

He had come back, after all. He could spend the day loafing around town, looking at the old places, and catch the night train out and never go near the old man at all.

Pouring himself a second cup of coffee, the Rev. Carlisle looked at his face in the polished surface of the silver pot. Hair thinner at the temples, giving him a “widow’s peak” that everyone said made him look distinguished. Face fuller around the jaw. Broader shoulders, with imported tweed to cover them. Pink shirt, with cuff links made from old opal earrings. Black knitted tie. All they could remember would be a kid in khaki pants and leather jacket who had waited behind the water tank for an open freight-car door.

Seventeen years. Stan had come a long way without looking back.

What difference did it make to him whether the old man lived or died, married or suffered or burst a blood vessel? Why was he here at all?

“I’ll give it the once over and then highball out of here tonight,” he said, drawing on his topcoat. Picking up his hat and gloves he took the stairs, ancient black woodwork with hollows worn in the marble steps. On the porch of the Mansion House he paused to take a cigarette from his case, cupping the flame of his lighter against the October wind.

Horse-chestnut leaves were a golden rain in the early sun, falling on the turf of the park where the fountain had been turned off for the winter. In its center a stained bronze boy smiled up under his bronze umbrella at the shower which wasn’t falling.