Elizabeth Hand - Black Light

The scrubbed pine floors and rows of wooden benches gave the place an air of prim sanctity, as did the portraits of gimlet-eyed magistrates on the whitewashed walls. This was offset somewhat by the very elderly woman in black velvet tam o’shanter and lime-green houndstooth tweeds who sat in the judge’s dock, peering through heavily bandaged spectacles at a newspaper. Beside her perched a voluminous carpetbag that in happier days had carried Mrs. Langford’s beloved toy poodle, Tinker. At her elbow a transistor radio leaned against a thermos. I could just make out the carnival strains of “C’mona My House” segueing into the Bossanova.

“Hello, Mrs. Langford? It’s Lit—”

“Is that Charlotte?” Mrs. Langford lifted her head, blinking. “Hello, hello…” She waved vaguely in my direction, then swatted at the radio, which gave a faint shriek and fell over. “I hate this music, it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever…”

I picked up the radio—like her glasses, thickly swathed with masking tape—and switched it off. “How are you today, Mrs. Langford? Any customers?”

“Oh, fine, I’m just fine. I don’t think we’ll see anyone today. Didn’t you hear? Axel Kern is coming back tonight—” Her vibrato rose thrillingly and she gave me a look of utmost rapture; then slumped back into her seat, shaking her head. “I just don’t know what will come of it, after all this time.”

“What do you mean?”

She gave me an inscrutable look, lifted a hand clattering with costume jewelry and draped it suggestively upon a cashbox with a neatly-lettered index card taped to its lid.

“I think you’re over twelve now?” she said hopefully.

I laughed. “I’ll be eighteen in March—” and put a dollar into her palm. Her hands shook slightly, and I had to stop myself from helping her as she fumbled with the cashbox.

“Eighteen.” Mrs. Langford was eighty-six. “When I was eighteen I was playing Maria in Twelfth Night. It was a small part but I stood out. That’s how Larry noticed me, you know—I stood out .” She lifted her trembling hand in the gesture I recognized from her old publicity stills. These invariably showed the Amazonian Theda Austin cowering unconvincingly before the menacing villains played by her slight husband. Now her face was creased as crumpled paper and blotched from sun and drink. Her kohled eyes rolled skyward as she cried, “ Never be afraid to stand out, Charlotte.”

With a sigh she shut the cashbox, and tapped her thermos with a gnarled finger.

“Darling, would you mind opening that for me? My hands are bad today, the arthritis you know, I think I need to take a little something hot—”

“Sure.” I unscrewed the thermos. A wisp of steam emerged, fragrant with the scent of black-currant tea and sloe gin. I watched as she poured a hefty shot into the plastic lid.

“Thank you, darling—”

She sipped, eyes closed so that I could see where the kohl bled into the violet labyrinth of broken capillaries. Then they opened once more: brilliant green eyes, the whites unclouded, lashes still thick and black as a girl’s.

“Now. What brings you here? How is your mother?”

“She’s fine. I guess she’ll be there tonight. I—I just wanted to check something, that’s all.”

Mrs. Langford nodded and took another sip from her thermos. “Good, good. You go ahead and walk around, take your time, it’s not going to get very busy…”

She clicked the radio back on. I went upstairs, trying to keep from breaking into a run. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, and there didn’t seem much chance I’d find it even if I did. The second floor was even colder and darker than downstairs. I felt a surge of genuine fear, stepping between unlit curiosity cases and assiduously avoiding corners, and hoped Mrs. Langford was right about there not being any other visitors.

The museum’s collection was an ill-sorted mass of Tankiteke Indian amulets, woven oyster baskets, old shoes, and arrowheads, as well as hundreds of tattered books and scripts used by actors renowned in their times and now utterly forgotten. The Devil to Pay, The Iron Chest, a version of Romeo and Juliet where the lovers were miraculously revived at the final curtain. Beneath me the floorboards creaked. The slanting light darkened from steel-gray to lead. From downstairs I could hear Mrs. Langford’s radio announcing the three o’clock news. My head ached from trying to see anything in the early darkness; I wished I’d asked Hillary to come with me, or even Mrs. Langford. I was ready to give up when I bumped into a small case in the corner.

“Right,” I whispered nervously, and stooped beside it. A wooden square raised on four spindly legs, its glass top filthy with dust and dead flies. I blew on it, sending up a gray plume, then did my best to clean the glass with my sleeve. Set into one side was a small brass tag that read DONATED BY THE HONORABLE EDWARD P. FOOTE, 1964. IN MEMORY OF A FELLOW PLAYER. Inside, upon a bed of ragged velvet, was a frayed, leather-bound copy of Acherley Darnell’s collection of supernatural tales, Northern Sketches and Fireside Tales.

I had seen the book before, of course, here and in countless reprints, and like everyone else I had watched the Disney cartoon version of Darnell’s most famous story, “The Dancer at the Burial Ground.” But I had never actually read anything else by Darnell. I sat back on my heels and eyed the case warily, as though it might know what I had in mind. I took a deep breath and began to prise it open. There was no lock, but the hinges were so rusty that for a moment I was afraid I’d have to give up. I could hear a few mothballs rolling around inside it, and I tugged harder. There was a puff of mold and the smell of camphor. The wood strained and creaked, until with a final groan it gave way.

“Okay.” I bit my lip, tasted blood and dust. “Let’s get a look at you—”

I picked up the book, nearly dropping it in my urgency. It was heavy, bound in leather and brown cloth and with the title picked out in gilt letters. When I opened it a pressed leaf wafted from between the pages, tissue-thin, brittle as lichen. I tried to catch it, but as it fell the leaf disintegrated, melting into the air as though it had been made of snow. I sank to the floor and opened to the title page.

The frontispiece showed the author himself, with the legend DARNELL AS PROSPERO. A lean, dark man in a black cape, not at all the avuncular white-haired patroon I had imagined. Old theatrical engravings usually made me laugh, those pursey-lipped images of plump men in wigs as Hamlet, or fat-cheeked matrons playing unlikely Rosalinds.

But there was an unpleasant intensity to Darnell, with his thin, upcurved mouth and piercing eyes, long black hair falling disheveled about his gaunt face. He looked less like Prospero than Caliban. I tried to turn to the first tale, but the pages stuck together, and the book fell open at random to a page illustrated with a drawing of a shrieking man pursued by black shapes with huge glowing eyes.

I do not think that Menheer Vanderbiin ever believed that he would meet his end with his throat torn out within sight of his own doorstep, nor that his wife e’er thought that their children would come to their majority fatherless. I do know that Vanderbiin scoffed at local superstitions, and most especially at those rumors which circulate within the foothills of the Siwanoy Range; namely that the Devil’s own hounds hunt upon those desolate slopes…