Elizabeth Hand - Black Light

“Oh god, Mom,” Hillary moaned. “Look, you don’t have to—”

“Hush,” commanded Natty. She began squinting at titles. “Where is it…?”

I wandered to one corner and picked up an ancient publicity photo of Hillary’s father, playing the lead in a Manchester production of Charlie’s Aunt. I was always torn between embarrassment and sentiment by this old stuff, as though it had been our parents’ baby shoes. I stared at the photo, trying to find some resemblance to Hillary in the white-faced, pie-eyed performer wearing full matronly drag.

“You know,” I began thoughtfully, “you really do sort of look like—”

“Lit! Cut it out—”

“Here it is!” Natty crowed, and held up a book. “ The Mask of Apollo. Your father gave me this for our anniversary, oh, almost ten years ago…”

She thumbed through it, raised an admonitory finger and began to read.

“‘ It is hard to make actors’ children take masks seriously, even the most dreadful; they see them too soon, too near. My mother used to say that at two weeks old, to keep me from the draught, she tucked me inside an old gorgon, and found me sucking the snakes.’”

She finished triumphantly. Hillary and I looked at each other, then burst out laughing.

“Oh, right, Mom! So where’re the snakes?”

Natty frowned, with a sniff replaced the book on its shelf. “Obviously you two are not old enough yet to appreciate the subtleties of our profession,” she said, and headed for the door. “Tell your father I’m going up to the market for some more milk.”

Now, as Hillary drove past our house I could see this year’s mask, a bland face with two small eyes poked above puffy cheeks and a surprised O of a mouth. My mother had draped ivy around it, carefully clipped from the back wall.

“Doesn’t it make you feel weird?” asked Jamie Casson.

“Huh?” I started. “What?”

“All this bizarre stuff…” In the front seat Hillary and Ali ignored us, continuing a longtime debate about David Bowie. “I mean; what the hell are those ?”

Jamie pointed as we passed the cemetery. Strange stone animals stood guard over the oldest graves, their features worn away so that one could only guess their species: insect? bird? wolf? Clay masks leaned upon some of the mounds; others were extravagantly draped with wreaths of ivy. “It’s like The Exorcist around here…”

“I know what you mean.” I glanced at Ali, willfully oblivious to us, then leaned toward Jamie. “About Kamensic—”

I wondered if I could tell him what I was thinking. That the town frightened me, too, even though I’d grown up there; that sometimes when I drank I could see things in the faces of my friends, and hear the echo of something like distant music, the dying notes of a bell.

“It—it feels dark,” I said. “Even in the morning, it feels dark—”

Jamie stared at me, his pale eyes luminous, and slowly nodded. “ Right. And the roads…”

He gestured at a dirt track snaking off behind the cemetery. It was marked as were all the streets in Kamensic, by a wooden fencepost topped with a long, arm-shaped signboard that ended in a pointing finger. “We came into town that way, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And from Kern’s place, you can see that road coming down the mountain.”

“Right…”

“But you don’t see this road—the one we’re on now. And this is a much bigger road.”

I shrugged. “Maybe the trees block it or something?”

Jamie shook his head. “No way. It’s weird. Like at Grand Central, you go to check out the stops up on the boards, and Kamensic isn’t even there. It’s not listed anywhere. Same thing with the train schedule— nada. ”

In the front seat, Hillary glanced over his shoulder at us. “So?”

“So how the hell do people get here? I mean the train stops in town, right? There’s a train station, the conductor calls out the name—but if it isn’t even on the schedule, how do people know to come here?”

Ali rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Anyone who needs to get here, gets here. It’s not like it’s fucking Brigadoon.”

“No! I’m right, I know I’m right!” Jamie jabbed at the window with one nicotine-stained finger. “Every time we come down that mountain it’s like a different road. Like when Hillary drove up before, we passed this cliff looking down on the lake. How come we’re not going that way now?”

“Because we’re going to murder you and dump your body in the reservoir,” said Ali. “Christ, where’d you move from, the South Bronx? Relax, will you? Enjoy the ride—”

Jamie sighed and leaned against the door. For a moment he looked very young: I could see where his chin had broken out, and how his fingernails were bitten down to the quick. “This is just a weird fucking place. You hear all kinds of stuff at night—”

Hillary laughed. “Those are called animals, Jamie.” He turned the car up the narrow switchback that ran along Muscanth’s southern face. “Like deer and things like that. Foxes.”

“Nothing dangerous,” said Ali. “No grizzly bears. No wolves.”

“Someone was killed here by a mountain lion,” I said.

“That was two hundred years ago, Lit.” Hillary made a face, then yelled, “Oops, there’s one now!” He swerved to avoid a chipmunk in the road.

“It’s still creepy,” said Jamie obstinately. “Plus it’s like Hollywood Squares, all these old actors. That weirdo lives here, the guy who’s Uncle Cosmo on Bar Sinister —”

Ali whooped. “Oooh, scary Unk!”

“That’s my father,” I said.

“Damn straight,” Hillary agreed heartily. “Her damn Dad. Never say a word agin’ him, Jamie—”

Jamie slumped down, defeated. “Oh, forget it. Anybody got a joint?”

“Nope,” said Ali. “Sorry.”

“Plus we’re almost at your place. There’s Bolerium—” Hillary tipped his head, indicating where the mansion’s gray walls gleamed faintly through the trees. “But I don’t remember where your driveway is, so tell me when we’re coming up to it—”

Jamie pointed behind us, at a road nearly hidden by the ruins of a stone wall. “That was it.”

“Whoa!” Hillary yanked at the wheel, frantically steering the car away from a pile of rocks. Jamie laughed.

“Hey, man, sorry. Watch that ditch there—”

The driveway was so narrow only one car could pass at a time. In places the dirt and gravel had been completely washed away, so that we drove on sheer bedrock. Hillary swore as the Dodge Dart scraped against stone and fallen branches.

“God damn, the muffler’s going to go—”

I squinted out the window. Twilight was falling quickly now, the autumn haze fading into a fine clear evening. To either side of the road a hedge reared, easily eight or ten feet high, a brambly mass of quince and dog roses and the tangled creepers of fox grapes. Birds darted in and out through gaps in the hedge. Winter birds: chickadees, blue jays, a raven carrying a dead vole.

“Wow,” I said. “Look—” But already it was gone.

“How much farther?” asked Hillary. “’Cause this car ain’t gonna make it…”

“Just up here.” Jamie frowned. “I think. Soon, anyway.”

He stuck his hand out the window and tugged at a grapevine. “Hey, check this out—”

A small explosion of leaves as the vine snapped. Jamie held up something like a plant from a Dr. Seuss book, all spiraling corkscrews and bright purple clusters.

“Cool!” said Ali. “Grapes!”

“Sour grapes, I bet.” Jamie pinched a violet bead, popped it into his mouth and grimaced. “Yech —”