Люциус Шепард - The Best of Lucius Shepard

The Guardia—with their comic-opera uniforms, their machine guns, their funny patent-leather hats that from a distance looked like Mickey Mouse ears—were a legitimate menace. They had a long-standing reputation for murder and corruption, and were particularly fond of harassing foreigners. Therefore I was not surprised when a committee led by Shockley asked me to keep an eye on my new neighbors, the idea being that we should close ranks against them, even to the point of reporting any illegalities. Despite knowing that refusal would consolidate my status as a young nothing, I told Shockley and his pals to screw off. I’m not able to take pride in this—had they been friendlier to me in the past, I might have gone along with the scheme; but as it was, I was happy to reject them. And further, in the spirit of revenge, I went next door to warn Tom and Alise.

My knock roused a stirring inside the house, whispers, and at last the door was cracked and an eye peeped forth. “Yes?” said Alise.

“Uh,” I said, taken aback by this suspicious response. “My name’s Lucius. From next door. I’ve got something to tell you about the people around here.” Silence. “They’re afraid of you,” I went on. “They’re nervous because they’ve got dope and stuff, and they think you’re going to bring the cops down on them.”

Alise glanced behind her, more whispers, and then she said, “Why would we do that?”

“It’s not that you’d do it on purpose,” I said. “It’s just that you’re… different. You’re attracting a lot of attention, and everyone’s afraid that the cops will investigate you and then decide to bust the whole beach.”

“Oh.” Another conference, and finally she said, “Would you please come in?”

The door swung open, creaking like a coffin lid centuries closed, and I crossed the threshold. Tom was behind the door, and after shutting it, Alise ranged herself beside him. Her chest was so flat, their features so alike, it was only the length of her hair that allowed me to tell them apart. She gestured at a table-and-chairs set in the far corner, and, feeling a prickle of nervousness, I took a seat there. The room was similar to the living room of my house: whitewashed walls, unadorned and flaking; cheap production-line furniture (the signal difference being that they had two beds instead of one); a gas stove in a niche to the left of the door. Mounted just above the light switch was a plastic crucifix; a frayed cord ran up behind the cross to the fixture on the ceiling, giving the impression that Christ had some role to play in the transmission of the current.

They had kept the place scrupulously neat; the one sign of occupancy was a pile of notebooks and a sketchpad lying on the table. The pad was open to what appeared to be a rendering of complex circuitry. Before I could get a better look at it, Tom picked up the pad and tossed it onto the stove. Then they sat across from me, hands in their laps, as meek and quiet as two white mice. It was dark in the room, knife-edges of golden sunlight slanting through gaps in the shutter boards, and the twins’ eyes were like dirty smudges on their pale skins.

“I don’t know what more to tell you,” I said. “And I don’t have any idea what you should do. But I’d watch myself.” They did not exchange glances or in any way visibly communicate, yet there was a peculiar tension to their silence, and I had the notion that they were again conferring: this increased my nervousness.

“We realize we’re different,” said Tom at length; his voice had the exact pitch and timbre of Alise’s, soft and faintly blurred. “We don’t want to cause harm, but there’s something we have to do here. It’s dangerous, but we have to do it. We can’t leave until it’s done.”

“We think you’re a good boy,” chimed in Alise, rankling me with this characterization. “We wonder if you would help us?”

I was perplexed. “What can I do?”

“The problem is one of appearances,” said Tom. “We can’t change the way we look, but perhaps we can change the way others perceive us. If we were to become more a part of the community, we might not be so noticeable.”

“They won’t have anything to do with you,” I told him. “They’re too…”

“We have an idea,” Alise cut in.

“Yes,” said Tom. “We thought if there was the appearance of a romantic involvement between you and Alise, people might take us more for granted. We hoped you would be agreeable to having Alise move in with you.”

“Now wait!” I said, startled. “I don’t mind helping you, but I…”

“It would only be for appearance’ sake,” said Alise, deadpan. “There’d be no need for physical contact, and I would try not to be an imposition. I could clean for you and do the shopping.”

Perhaps it was something in Alise’s voice or a subtle shift in attitude, but for whatever reason, it was then that I sensed their desperation. They were very, very afraid…of what, I had no inkling. But fear was palpable, a thready pulse in the air. It was a symptom of my youth that I did not associate their fear with any potential threat to myself; I was merely made the more curious. “What sort of danger are you in?” I asked.

Once again there was that peculiar nervy silence, at the end of which Tom said, “We ask that you treat this as a confidence.”

“Sure,” I said casually. “Who am I gonna tell?”

The story Tom told was plausible; in fact, considering my own history—a repressive, intellectual father who considered me a major disappointment, who had characterized my dropping out as “the irresponsible actions of a glandular case”—it seemed programmed to enlist my sympathy. He said that they were not Canadian but German, and had been raised by a dictatorial stepfather after their mother’s death. They had been beaten, locked in closets, and fed so poorly that their growth had been affected. Several months before, after almost twenty years of virtual confinement, they had managed to escape, and since then they had kept one step ahead of detectives hired by the stepfather. Now, penniless, they were trying to sell some antiquities that they had stolen from their home; and once they succeeded in this, they planned to travel east, perhaps to India, where they would be beyond detection. But they were afraid that they would be caught while waiting for the sale to go through; they had had too little practice with the world to be able to pass as ordinary citizens.

“Well,” I said when he had finished. “If you want to move in”—I nodded at Alise—“I guess it’s all right. I’ll do what I can to help you. But first thing you should do is quit leaving lanterns in your window all night. That’s what really weirds the fishermen out. They think you’re doing some kind of magic or something:” I glanced back and forth between them. “What are you doing?”

“It’s just a habit,” said Alise. “Our stepfather made us sleep with the lights on.”

“You’d better stop it,” I said firmly; I suddenly saw myself playing Anne Sullivan to their Helen Keller, paving their way to a full and happy life, and this noble self-image caused me to wax enthusiastic. “Don’t worry,” I told them. “Before I’m through, you people are going to pass for genuine All-American freaks. I guarantee it!”

If I had expected thanks, I would have been disappointed. Alise stood, saying that she’d be right back, she was going to pack her things, and Tom stared at me with an expression that—had I not been so pleased with myself—I might have recognized for pained distaste.

The beach at Pedregalejo inscribed a grayish white crescent for about a hundred yards along the Mediterranean, bounded on the west by a rocky point and on the east by a condominium under construction, among the first of many that were gradually to obliterate the beauty of the coast. Beyond the beachfront houses occupied by the expatriates were several dusty streets lined with similar houses, and beyond them rose a cliff of ocher rock surmounted by a number of villas, one of which had been rented by an English actor who was in the area shooting a bullfighting movie: I had been earning my living of late as an extra on the film, receiving the equivalent of five dollars a day and lunch (also an equivalent value, consisting of a greasy sandwich and soda pop).