Elizabeth Hand - Black Light

I glanced uneasily over my shoulder. Mrs. Langford seldom navigated the steps, but I had a sudden irrational fear that someone else might. Around me the room had fallen almost completely into shadow. A single shaft of pale light streaked a windowpane curtained with cobwebs and insect husks. I thought of what I had seen in my room last night, and decided I didn’t want my back to any more windows, no matter how empty they seemed. I crept behind the glass case, leaned against the chill bare wall and flipped through the book.

“Waitstill Finch, or A Tragic Romance.” “The Tolling of The Muscounth Bell.” “A Tragic Tale of Olden Times.”

Page after page of thick brown-edged paper, interspersed with more gory drawings and the occasional engraving. “Heathen Customes in Modern Dress.” “A Savage Lover.” “The Infernal Hind.”

But then I turned to a plate that made the breath rasp in my throat.

“That’s it …”

A crude black-and-white print showed a maniacally smiling figure, a man with the lurid grimace and goatish expression of a Restoration devil. He was naked, save for a swag of furs and bones around his waist, and capered wildly in front of a bonfire where several dithery-looking captives ineffectually waved their hands as they burned. The demon’s feet were clad in high laced boots, and from his head sprang two branched horns.

“The Wae-Be-No, A Savage Relict,” I read on the facing page.

There is amongst those austere men who have made their dwellings here long centuries before the advent of the European race, a tale that is repeated—nay, not a tale, but a most severe admonition; for such is their belief that they will plead most piteously with any White Man who seeks to ignore their warning, and have been known to slay innocent trespassers, not for malevolent purpose but to spare these unknowing interlopers a fate which the Tankiteke abhor unto death. It is thus that they speak of a devil they call the Wae-Be-No, which takes the form of a horned man dancing in flame. Human flesh is what the devil consumes, preferring it above all other sustenance…

“Charlotte?”

I gasped and looked up to see Mrs. Langford peering at me from the shadows.

“Oh! Jeez, you scared me!” I stumbled to my feet, trying to hide the book under my arm.

“I didn’t know where you were.” She glanced around, frowning at the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, the pallid light that fell through dingy windows. “Good lord, this place is filthy. Hasn’t that girl come to clean?”

She took off her tam and swiped at the thick veneer of dust on a caseful of arrowheads. Then, as though she’d just remembered me, she turned and said, “We’re closing, dear—a little early, but there’s the party…” She stared pointedly at the volume under my arm.

“Right. I—I was just looking at this. I’m sorry. I’ll put it back—”

“Which one is that?”

She flapped the dust from her tam o’shanter and put it back on her head; then crossed to me, her cane thumping loudly. “Oh, yes, the Fireside Tales. That’s a very valuable book—”

I handed it to her, shamefaced. “I know—I was just, there was something—”

Mrs. Langford held the volume in one unsteady hand, straightening her glasses as she peered at the illustration of the horned man. “Well!” she murmured. She studied the picture as though she’d never seen it before. At last she gave it back to me and said, “Better put that back where you found it. Thank you, dear. Now, if you don’t mind waiting for me to close up, you can walk me home…”

I replaced the book, making a great show of closing the case. Then I escorted Mrs. Langford downstairs.

“There!” she exclaimed breathlessly when we reached the bottom. “Thank you, dear—”

I followed her to the judge’s dock. It was almost five, already so dim that the shapes of benches and chairs could only be guessed at. I turned on the electric lamp, and sank onto a bench to wait for Mrs. Langford to gather her things.

“I’m just going to finish my tea, dear.” She poured what remained and sipped it noisily.

I watched her, then finally blurted, “What was that a picture of?”

“What picture, dear?”

“In that book. The thing in the Indian legend.” I thought of sneaking in to watch The Exorcist a year before with Hillary. “Is it—is it like the Devil or something?”

Mrs. Langford put down her tea and stared at me, her green eyes wide. “The Devil ?” She laughed, costume jewelry rattling. “I don’t think the Indians thought it was the Devil. Have you read the story?”

“No.”

“Well, Acherley Darnell says it was a god.”

“An Indian god?”

“Oh, no. Or, well, not just their god. The god of this place .” Her fingers fluttered and she stared thoughtfully at the ceiling as she went on, “He says it came over with the stones—but you should read the story.”

“Well, could I borrow it?”

“Lord, no!” Mrs. Langford looked affronted, then hiccuped loudly. “Pardonnez- moi . No, no, Charlotte—that book is worth a fortune, it never leaves here. You can find a copy in the library, I imagine…”

With a sigh she screwed the cap back onto her thermos, dropped it into her carpetbag and gave me an odd, almost avid, look. “Why are you asking about the book, Charlotte?”

I hesitated. If anyone in Kamensic might know about what I had seen, it would be Mrs. Langford. But the hungry expression on her mottled face and the way she continued to stare at me changed my mind. “No reason. I was just curious, that’s all.”

“Were you, Charlotte.” Her green eyes glittered: it was not a question. “Well, well.”

She tilted her head, the light from the single lamp igniting her features so that it was as though I gazed upon one of those terra-cotta masks, all empty eyes and gaping mouth. Then she lifted her hand and in a tremulous voice recited,

As she spoke the memory of the gruesome apparition came to me, its horrible humping motion and lunatic tapping at the floor of my room. Then it was gone. But for an instant there lingered in the darkness before me the ghostly afterimage of a face, swollen and pale as the egg sac of a spider. This faded into the wide fervid eyes of Mrs. Langford. I stared back at her, repulsed. My mouth tasted sour; there was a heavy pressure at my temples, as though someone sought to drive their fingers into my skull.

And still Mrs. Langford gazed at me. I shook my head, wanting to yell, to gouge at those glittering eyes; but then she was laughing, her dime-store bangles clanking as she stood and struggled into her moth-eaten wool coat.

“But I have to hurry if I’m going to get dressed!” she exclaimed. “Lila Moncrieff is supposed to pick me up at seven—”

I remained on the bench, my heart thudding. When I touched my cheeks they felt like scorched paper.

“Charlotte?”

I looked up. There was Mrs. Langford gazing at me with grandmotherly concern. Gone was the frightening intensity of a few minutes before. Her coat hung askew from her bent shoulders and her tam was plopped crookedly on draggled white hair, like a crow on a woebegone nest. I nodded and automatically started to my feet, crossed to the judge’s dock, and let her take my arm.

“Thank you, darling. Here, make sure that light’s turned off—”

We made our way slowly to the front door and then out onto the sidewalk, where I waited as she locked up. Above us bare-limbed trees scratched at a sky marbled black and purple. To the west heavy clouds massed like the shadow of Muscanth Mountain, their edges tinged scarlet. The wind had risen and sent leaves pinwheeling across the lawn. I walked Mrs. Langford to her little clapboard cottage nestled behind its paired holly trees. As she searched for her keys I stared at the mask that hung from her door, Bacchus leering from within a starburst of orange bittersweet.