Elizabeth Hand - Black Light

And then, in one awful flash, it did. The thing in the corner was a man. Not a man, but half a man, bisected down the middle so that I saw one side of its head, one arm hanging loosely beside its truncated torso and worst of all, one long pale leg hopping like a pogo stick. The jots of black I had discerned were its eye, its rib cage, the broken crescent of its mouth. There was no hint of carnage. No bloody shreds of flesh, no shattered bones.

And somehow that was worst of all. That this cloven thing should be within a few feet of me, jigging mindlessly as a scarecrow in the wind, for no reason whatsoever.

But it was not mindless. Because now the asymmetrical features of that face began to come into focus. A swollen scar of an eye like a bullet wound; the white triangle of its bifurcated chin; a lopsided mouth curving into a leer: all cohered into the dark reflection of a face I knew. The eye blinked; the mouth grinned. The rhythm of its movement grew suddenly, obscenely clear as I recoiled on the bed.

“No—”

It was Axel Kern. His grin widened, a poisonous quarter-moon. I thrashed across the bed until my back jammed against the wall. The black shape bobbed up and down, up and down. With each moment it drew closer to me, until I could smell it, animal musk and the odor of charred leaves. It was close enough now that it could touch me: its single arm lifted, fingers knotted and dark as it reached through the darkness.

“Lit…”

I screamed and kicked out. A hand tightened around my ankle, nail and bone biting into bare flesh. With a shriek I tried to fling myself from the bed. Then there was light everywhere, and someone shaking my shoulder.

“Lit! Lit, wake up!”

“No—god, let go —!”

“Lit!”

I looked up to see my father in his pajamas, hair awry, eyes wide but bleary with sleep. “Lit—are you all right?”

“No! No, there’s—”

But of course the room was empty. My India print spread lay where I had dropped it. Beside it Greek Plays for the Drama crowned a heap of dirty clothes and record sleeves. My father stared down at me, his face torn between concern and annoyance. “Charlotte. I think you had a nightmare.”

“Yeah…” I took a deep breath. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

He glanced pointedly at the clock. It read three-twenty. “Well, your mother has a six o’clock call. I’m going back to bed.”

“Right. Sorry, Dad, sorry…”

He stumped back to his room, switching off the light as he left. I watched him go, then sat up in bed watching the numbers flip over on my digital clock while the window went from black to violet to gray. When I woke, the room was filled with light, and my father was pounding on the door, shouting that I was going to be late for school again.

“Oh, fuck,” I groaned. I started from my bed, and stopped.

Something was strewn across the bedroom floor. At first I thought they were leaves, but no—they were the pages of a book, torn and scattered everywhere. Between them were heaps of seed-pods, round and dull brown, almost black, with a tiny raised ridge around the flattened top. I scuffed across the floor, pods rolling beneath the bed. At the window I stopped.

There were more pages here than elsewhere, more dry husks. I crouched, sifting through the mess until I found the book’s cardboard jacket. Its spine was split, the cover scorched so that the twin faces of Comedy and Tragedy were almost unrecognizable.

Greek Plays for the Theater

“Damn it,” I whispered.

I stood and kicked angrily at the pages, snatched one as it came fluttering back down. It was blackened from top to bottom. As I held it, the paper shivered between my fingers, then crumbled into ash. Only a fragment remained, like the damp impression of a leaf, the letters jagged and black as though stamped upon my hand—

Join us .

AT BREAKFAST THAT MORNING I couldn’t eat; only sipped at some orange juice while my father read the Times.

“You’ll miss the bus,” he said, reaching for his coffee.

I nodded and stared into my glass. I’d made a quick job of cleaning my room, shoving the torn pages into the wastebasket and sweeping most of the seedpods under the bed. Now I felt exhausted and depressed. I’d never been very good at shaking off bad dreams, and last night’s clung to me like a fever. I considered pleading sick and going back to bed, but the thought of being alone in my room was worse than almost anything else I could imagine—except, perhaps, seeing Axel Kern that night at his party.

“Lit?” My father frowned over the top of the Arts and Leisure section.

“Okay, I’m off,” I sighed. “Don’t worry, Hillary’ll drive me—” I kissed him, grabbed the canvas bag that held my schoolbooks and started for the door.

“Your mother won’t be home this afternoon.” My father put down the paper and looked after me, his mournful face unusually pensive. “I have to go down to the city to see a casting agent. Then we’re going to meet your mother for dinner with the Kingsleys in New Canaan, and then we’ll all go over to Axel’s for this party. What are your plans, Lit?”

“I dunno.” I hesitated. I would never admit it, but the thought of going to Axel’s party without my parents now frightened me. “Actually, I’m not feeling so hot. I was thinking that maybe—”

My father gave me Unk’s best bone-freezing stare. “I want you there tonight, Lit.”

“But—”

“No ‘buts.’ Be there.”

“Right.” I nodded, defeated. “I’ll just go to Ali’s after school, I guess. Or Hillary’s—”

“Not with his parents gone; not if we’re not here. Call us from Ali’s house if you need a ride up to Bolerium. We expect to see you there this evening, Lit.”

“Yeah.”

I shouldered my bag and headed outside. It was a chill morning. The sky was dark and forbidding; to the east a thin line of blue was eroded by swiftly moving clouds. Alongside the road the trees were bare, save for a few oaks clinging to tatterdemalion crowns. I went next door, slowing to walk through the leaves in front of Hillary’s house. My unease was now fullblown dread: worse than when I listened to one of Ali’s ghost stories, worse than when I took the SATs, worse than anything I could remember. I knew this was ridiculous, but I couldn’t shake it. I stopped and stared down at the leaves, nudging them around to see if I could find the mask Hillary had tossed there the night before. There was no sign of it, and finally I gave up. I let myself in the front door and found Hillary in the kitchen beside the stove.

He raised a spatula in greeting. “Hey, Lit. French toast?”

“Yeah.” I poured some coffee and peeked through the window at my house.

“What’s going on?” Hillary dropped a chunk of butter into a skillet. “Is he, like, watching?”

“I don’t know. Wait—”

I pointed at my father striding out the side door of our house. He wore a long black greatcoat that flapped behind him in the wind, and even from this distance I could see his saturnine face scowling furiously as he swiped leaves and fallen twigs from the car windshield. Against the backdrop of stark trees and lowering sky he looked faintly threatening, like a wicked parson.

“He’s going now,” I whispered, as though my father could hear me. He clambered into the old VW squareback and backed it out into the road. I held my breath, fearful that he’d see Hillary’s car still in the drive and realize I hadn’t left. But he didn’t; only turned and headed off for the village train station. “He’s— gone .”