Elizabeth Hand - Black Light

“Thanks, Mr. Fox,” I said.

“Hmm? Oh, Lit—sure, sure.” He smiled and got out of the car, pausing to pat my shoulder. “You girls behave, now.”

I watched him walk unsteadily toward the others, who greeted him with more laughter and raucous cheers. In the darkness I could just make out Ali’s white face as she rushed to hug Duncan Forrester. I was heading toward her when a voice rang out.

“You left the door open. Hey! You left your door —”

Someone grabbed my arm—the formally dressed guy who’d been directing traffic. I stared at him blankly, then said, “Jamie.”

He nodded wearily. “Your car—”

“It’s not my car.”

“Whoever—that drunk left his front door open.” He turned to motion at a Mercedes barreling toward us. “Fucking assholes,” he muttered, then shouted, “Over here! Sir—over here, please—”

I walked to the Triumph, closed the door, and returned to Jamie. “You’re working here?”

He gritted his teeth in a fake smile and beckoned another car. “You got it. Part of the deal my old man made with Asshole Kern. What a goddam cheapskate, like he couldn’t hire someone to do this? Yes, ma’am, right there! Thank you, sir! Hey, Lit—look out, will you? You’re gonna get killed”— He grabbed my arm, pulling me to the side of the road. —“and then I’d lose this nice job.”

I frowned, trying desperately to think of something to say. But Jamie just went on, “God, this bites. It’s only till nine, though.” He lit a cigarette and eyed the line of cars with revulsion. “But I don’t know who the hell’s gonna get all these drunks home.”

For a few minutes no new cars appeared. Jamie smoked silently and stared down the road, and I stared at Jamie. Finally he glanced at me sideways, eyes narrowing.

“Hey, you got a joint? No? What about Ali? She around?”

I gestured at the enormous stone gates flanking the estate’s entrance. “Yeah. I came with her. She was just here, I don’t know where she—”

“Shit—” Jamie tossed his cigarette and strode away from me as more cars hove into sight. “Back to work. Hey— hey ! You can’t go in there—”

He shouted at a Karmann Ghia, then spun on his heel to wave at me. “See ya, huh?”

“Sure. Later.”

The knot of waiting guests had disappeared, and except for the occasional roar of a car mounting the hill, the night was quiet. I hugged myself against the chill and headed toward the gate. Seeing Jamie had given me a sharp burst of elation, but now that was fading into anxiety. Where the hell had Ali gone? I thought of Jamie sitting on the jukebox, fixing me with his prescient gaze; I thought of the antlered man moving with slow and dreadful purpose through the trees.

Blessed is she among women who is given these rites to know…

The wind came rushing up the mountainside, cold and smelling of woodsmoke. For one last moment I stopped to look at Jamie in the distance, his sullen swaying dance as he beckoned a car closer and then sidestepped out of its way, dust staining his trouser cuffs and his bow tie coming loose to flop around his neck. Then I hurried on.

I kept to the left of the dirt road, past parked cars, smoldering cigarette butts, an empty bottle of imported beer. Ahead of me Bolerium’s gates arched like a smaller study of the mountain itself, black and threatening. It made me feel faint and muzzy-headed, already drunk. I looked up guiltily when I heard voices.

“…don’t know what he’s thinking, it’ll be frost by the time they open…”

In the shadow of the gates people stood talking. Friends of my parents, men and women in late middle age, faces sun-creased, their voices brittle with drink. The women wore designer minidresses or ankle-length Halstons in harsh colors—bronze and silver, gunmetal blue—beneath furs still smelling of storage. The men were dressed like Ali’s father, in navy blue or tweed; a few wore tuxedos. I tried to will myself invisible to them, but it was no good.

“Charlotte Moylan ! I didn’t recognize you—” The casting agent Amanda Joy, a plump woman resplendent in velvet cossack pants and gold brocade, raised her wineglass to me and grinned archly. “So this is what it takes to get you into a dress.”

“Hi, Mrs. Joy.” I gave her a limp wave as the others turned. “Hi, hi, hi…”

“Where’s your mother, Charlotte?”

“Unk going to make an appearance tonight?”

“Your dad here?”

I shook my head. A lock of hair fell across my face, vivid as a pheasant’s wing, and I felt myself blushing. “Uh, not yet.” I forced myself to nod pleasantly as I passed. Behind me their voices faded into laughter and affectionate mockery, the familiar rhythms of people who measured their acquaintance by the titles of shows forgotten by anyone but themselves—

“…when he was doing Volpone, that dreadful musical—”

“Not him, darling, that was Michael Rothman and you’re thinking of Antigone —”

A minute later I was safe beneath the gate—a monumental stone arch, elaborately carved, its threshold consisting of the same coarse-grained granite that formed Bolerium itself. I leaned against the wall and stared at it hopelessly. “God damn you, Ali,” I whispered.

I loathed going into parties by myself. And how could I skulk into Bolerium unnoticed, with my orange dress and flaming hair? I decided to wait beneath the arch until someone I knew arrived. Even entering with my parents would be preferable to entering alone. I tried to remember when I’d last visited Bolerium—five years ago? seven? We had always driven up to the main house, and so I’d only glimpsed the strange figures carved into the stone, like graffiti on a tunnel wall.

Now I saw that there were hundreds of fantastical creatures, so many that they seemed to be giving birth to each other. Birds with the heads of men; cats whose forked tongues unfurled into flowering vines; leaping stags with multifaceted eyes like those of dragonflies or bees.

But then my gaze was drawn to a single figure, carved amidst a thicket of coils and chevrons that seemed now to be eyes, now breasts, now huge-eyed owls with triangular wings. The figure sat cross-legged, its back very straight, its eyes wide and expressionless. From its brow rose two horns, stiffly divaricated as a child’s drawing of antlers. One hand was raised, palm out; the other rested in its lap. When I looked more closely I saw that it clasped a penis, thick as a cudgel and circled by what appeared to be a grinning snake. I grimaced, then very tentatively touched the carving. For an instant I felt a sort of motion there, a faint vibration, as though the ground beneath me sent a warning tremor through the arch.

“ Hey —!” I reared back against the far wall. “What the…?”

The grotesque figure was gone. I squinted, trying to find it among the crude representations of birds and eyes. I ran my fingers over the carvings, stood on tiptoe as I searched: all in vain. Where it had been there was only an ornate mob of attacking owls and arabesques.

My fear returned in a slow, steady pulse. I had seen no one else since I walked beneath the arch. The trees blended into a darkness impenetrable as stone. I took a deep breath, fighting panic, and stepped back into the road.

It was empty. My parents’ friends had disappeared. So had Jamie, though the parked cars remained and I could see footprints in the dust. But not only was I alone. I could hear nothing. No cars, no echo from the village; no faraway wail of trains. There were no crickets, no night-birds, no music.

Nothing.

The silence was a horror. Before I could lose my nerve I turned and walked quickly back beneath the arch, into the domain of Bolerium.