Elizabeth Hand - Glimmering

Jack shook his head. “It was these damn lights.”

He began the search for lanterns and candles, berating himself for not making a point of retrieving them while the power was on. You couldn’t find candles anymore, anywhere or batteries, or oil lanterns. Occasionally Jack might glimpse a flashlight behind the counter at Delmonico’s, bartered for food; but it would never find its way onto a shelf. The Delmonicos had family all across the city who needed light just like everyone else.

In the linen closet he found an unopened box of white tapers. He tore the cellophane wrapping and removed four, thought for a moment, and replaced one. He could find his way in the dark; someone had better start finding their way in the dark. Wind clawed its way through the narrow back stairwell, brought with it shrieking laughter. He turned and pressed his face against the small oriel window that faced north, to where other mansions had once stood in line with Lazyland gazing down upon the Hudson.

In the last few weeks he had made a deliberate effort not to look out upon them. If he saw Marz there in her customary trance, he would continue quickly up to his own room. So he never knew whether or not electric lights ever brightened the broken windows, and he tried not to think about what kind of people were inside the ruins, starving or fighting or fucking on the floor.

Now he could not turn away.

In the shattered buildings fires leapt, the broken windows gleamed as though they opened onto the inferno. He heard music, cymbals, and drums; someone singing. There was light within, light and music and many moving shadows. He imagined they were dancing amidst the rubble.

It struck him, as though he had been knocked on the head: people were living out there in the ruins. They weren’t holed up like himself or the other scared customers who could barely muster the courage to raid Delmonico’s for food. They weren’t killing themselves with drink and grief like Jule, or pretending nothing had changed, like Emma. Certainly they weren’t bashing their heads against the wall because there were no candles left. If they were bashing their heads it was because they were dancing. They didn’t wear masks or helmets to protect themselves from the world; they scarcely wore clothes. He recalled Marzana’s words, her first night at Lazyland—

They were my family. We were living down by the river and the fucking cops blew us out…

Family. The realization that something like that could be out there, just yards away, made Jack dizzy. He yanked the window open and heard singing, a complicated contrapuntal chant, women and men and children, too.

Even if he didn’t recognize it, it was music, and had been all along. It wasn’t squatters out there in the carnival darkness, crude creatures leering at him from their gutted mansions. It was civilization.

They’re adapting , he thought.

The last scenes of Fantasia flashed before him, lumbering Technicolor giants on their doomed exhausted search for water, heedless of the tiny bright mammalian eyes that watched them from the shadows…

Leaning from his window out into the December air, Jack stared up into the cold whirling sky, and heard lemurs and shrews and megazostrodons rustling in the night.

Christmas Day was muted, as it had been for several years now. Rachel Gardino had been killed by a drunken driver on Christmas Eve, and the holiday had been poisoned by that, for Jack and his family as well as for Jule and Emma. There were a few makeshift presents exchanged: some baby clothes Mrs. Iverson dredged up from the attic and cleaned; gingersnaps hard and aromatic as amber; the copy of The King in Yellow, which Jack presented to his grandmother in its elaborate cloth wrapping. They ate by candlelight, bean soup and flatbread and dried fruit; then sang a few rounds of the more melancholy carols, “O Holy Night” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” and went to bed early.

Four days after this, very early in the morning Jack heard the familiar groaning roar of the Range Rover. He groaned, slid from his bed, and trudged across the hall to look out the window. Down Hudson Terrace crept Jule’s old car, dodging potholes and piles of refuse like a tipsy dowager, a loose strand of barbed wire trailing in its wake.

At the head of the drive it stopped. Jack watched as his friend emerged, an imposingly tall if unsteady figure in navy overcoat and fedora, brandishing a very large black umbrella. Jule walked over to the gate, regarded it balefully before starting to poke at the LED readout with the tip of his umbrella. Jule had always been intimidated by the security system, all the more so since he was one of the few people granted knowledge of the code that granted access (Leonard had paid one of his hacker minions to break it for him). Ever since the glimmering began, when Lazyland’s power came and went as casually as socialites once had, Jule’s anxiety had become outright phobic: he was terrified he would be electrocuted by the gate. Jack sat, elbows propped on the sill, and observed as Jule tried unsuccessfully to gain entry.

After five minutes he couldn’t stand it anymore. He shoved the window open. “For Christ’s sake, Jule! There’s no power! Just get in the car and drive through!”

Jule looked up. “But what if it comes back on?”

“It won’t come back!”

“But what if it does?”

“Just drive through.”

Jule got back into his car. Clouds of blue exhaust engulfed the end of the drive as the car nudged at the gate, until slowly it swung open. A minute later the Range Rover shuddered to a halt in front of the house. Jule got out, removing his fedora and mopping his head with a white handkerchief.

“Now go back up and close the gate,” Jack yelled down. Jule shot him an angry look. He reached back into the car, emerging with his umbrella and a pair of bright yellow electrician’s gloves, and plodded up the drive to shut the gate. When he returned to the house, Jack was on the front porch.

“You know, Jule, very few security gates were originally designed actually to kill people.”

“You’re wrong, Jackie, you’re wrong. Somebody was just telling me about this thing he saw up at Pocantico Hills, this sort of electrified moat—”

Jack ushered Jule toward the front door. “Well, our system hasn’t killed anyone yet. C’mon, it’s freezing—”

“Yeah, but you guys could actually use something like that here.” Jule looked worriedly back at the Range Rover. “My car gonna be safe?”

“Yes, your car is going to be safe. What, you leave Emma at home and fall apart? Jesus, just relax for five minutes, okay? You drive up to Poughkeepsie in your sleep, go into the city, and have a picnic on the fucking Major Deegan Expressway, but every time you come to my house you have a goddamn heart attack.”

“Emma’s not feeling so good these days. And electricity makes me nervous,” Jule said meekly.

“Then you should be very, very happy, because you will find no electricity at Lazyland today.”

Inside there was the flurry of footsteps in the hallway, the scent of Chanel Number 19; and Jule was bending to hug first Keeley and then Mrs. Iverson.

“Jule dear! What a surprise! ”

“I know, Grandmother, I’m sorry. Sort of unexpected, gotta do something in the city…”

“Of course, dear, we’re just so happy to see you! How is Emma?”

“Oh, she’s okay, just great—” He stared over their heads to Jack, who felt a bump of fear at his friend’s haunted expression. “Uh, listen, I can’t stay today, I just needed to, uh—well, I wanted to borrow Jackie.”