Elizabeth Hand - Black Light

“Oh, he came.” Ali was sitting up now on her knees, hands flat upon her thighs so that she looked like a sphinx. “After they left the field, after they all went home, he came…

“Her lover woke—they had brought him to the back room of the village church—and that evening as the sun was setting he returned to the field. There he found the ruins of the fire, and what remained of his beloved. They had not even bothered to take her remains for burial, when they learned of her execution not even her parents or her brother or any of the other men of the village had come to claim her. Only the priest was there, alone. He found her bones in the embers, bones and grease, that was all that remained of her. And he did go mad, then—

“And that was when the god came.

“He thought it was the Devil, because of his horns. He walked down from the mountain, through the trees at the edge of the field, and when he got to where the priest lay upon the ground the Devil spoke to him.

“He said, ‘Go to the top of the mountain and remain there; otherwise you will die.’

“And the priest said, ‘Without her I want to die.’

“But the Devil shook his head and said, ‘No.’ He bent and picked up a fragment of her rib, and in his hands it became white and not black, and when he raised it to his lips it was no longer a bone but a bone flute. ‘Because of you my beloved Giulietta is dead,’ he said to the priest. ‘It will be your punishment to live with that always. And because you have named me your enemy and are among those who seek to destroy me, you yourself will never die; but it will be no joy to you but torment everlasting.’

“And then the Devil began to play upon his flute. And the song that he played was so full of grief that the mountain wept, and as it wept it became a torrent, and the tears of the Devil and the tears of the mountain swept down and became a flood that overtook the village. And it was drowned, and all who lived there died; all except for the priest who had been Giulietta’s lover.

“When the waters receded, people from the towns and neighboring farms came. Where the village had been they found a lake of black water that seemed to glow blue-black from somewhere deep within its depths, and which reflected the face of the mountain that rose above it. And it was upon the mountaintop that they found the priest who had betrayed Giulietta and brought about the destruction of the town. He had been bound with strands of ivy to a tree there; it had kept him from escaping, it had kept him alive. When they freed him he said not a word but returned to the city and his masters there.

“The village itself remained within the lake. Over the centuries people would try to dive and bring up the treasures that were rumored to be there, but no one ever succeeded. The lake was cursed. No one who ever went beneath its surface returned. Sometimes late at night, people in the neighboring countryside say that they can hear the sound of bells ringing, a tocsin warning the villagers of the flood that would engulf them; but other people who have heard it say that it is the sound of a bone flute.”

All this time the album had been playing, a steady sonic tide of feedback and guitars. Now, as though on cue, it ended. The room was silent except for the metallic scrape of crickets and the ceaseless background din of the party roaring on behind Bolerium’s walls. Ali bowed her head, smiling slightly, like a child waiting to be rewarded. Beside her Jamie lay on his back, one hand across his eyes and the other on Ali’s shoulder. I couldn’t tell if he had nodded out or was still listening. His mouth was parted in a half-smile, his chest moving slowly up and down as he breathed.

“Nice, Ali,” Hillary sneered. He still stood a little apart from the rest of us, but despite his tone he seemed to have relaxed somewhat; at least he no longer looked as though he intended to strangle Jamie. “What, you get that from Night Gallery ?”

Ali just smiled and shook her head. I took a deep breath, trying to make myself look and sound less frightened than I was. “Ali. Where did you hear that?”

“Axel told me.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I can’t remember—a long time ago, maybe?”

Like someone roused from deep slumber Jamie suddenly groaned and turned, so that he was almost straddling Ali. “Nice bedtime story. I told you, this place is fucking weird. The whole town is nuts. Your buddy Kern is running around giving out shit like it’s candy—not that I’m complaining, don’t get me wrong—”

“Forget it,” Hillary said. “God, I can’t take this. I’m not going to stand here and watch this…”

He stooped and ran his hand across the floor, stood and opened his palm to display broken poppy calyxes, the cracked plastic casing of a hypodermic needle. He looked at me, his face rigid. “Lit. I gotta go. I—”

He turned, throwing the needle and crushed seed-heads onto the mattress. Ali squealed, Jamie swore and ducked. A moment later the door slammed.

“What’s his fucking problem?” Jamie sat up, fumbling with the bedspread until he found the needle; then leaned over and picked up an ashtray filled with spent matches and a blackened spoon. “C’mon, Lit…”

I shook my head. Ali peeked up at me, brow furrowed. “You do opium, Lit. All that stuff. It’s the same thing.”

I thought of smoking opium in Ali’s room, the little smoldering bit of resin impaled on a needle with a glass cupped over it to capture the smoke; then looked down at Jamie carefully opening one of the little envelopes. It was empty. He licked the paper and tossed it aside, probed under the mattress and withdrew another packet.

“No,” I said. “I—I’m going to go talk to Hillary.”

Ali nodded. “Tell him not to be pissed off, okay?”

“Yeah,” said Jamie. “Don’t go away mad. Just go away.”

Outside the hall was empty. “Hillary?” I called softly, then louder. “Hillary—”

There was no sign of him. I retraced our steps, returning to peer down the narrow stairwell, its risers filthy with dead leaves and twigs. It was too dark to see anything there, and behind me only a thin glowing band of ultraviolet showed where I’d left Ali and Jamie. Rain beat relentlessly at the eaves, a moth battered at a windowpane. From downstairs echoed the faint wail of “Stairway to Heaven.”

Well, Hillary hated that: he wouldn’t have gone that way. I went back across the landing, shivering, my stomach knotted.

“Hillary?”

The hall continued, up a few rickety steps that threatened to give way when I walked on them. It smelled dank. Not the closed-up, mildewy odor of an old house, but wet and somehow alive, the scent of a marsh or rotting stump. To my left was an exterior wall, crosshatched with small windows through which lavender-tinged light seeped into the corridor. To my right was the other wall, barren of anything—no doors, no lights, no paintings. I walked very slowly, scuffing the toe of my boot on the floor to make sure I wouldn’t trip on a sudden loose board or step. After a minute or two I reached to touch the outer wall, for balance; and was surprised to feel not paneling or plaster but stone. It was cold and damp, the surface rough. When I flattened my palm against it I could feel lichen, so brittle it crumbled at my touch.

“Damn it, Hillary, where’d you go?”

My voice echoed back at me, too high and shaky to fool anyone into thinking I wasn’t scared. The passage took a dogleg to the right. I turned the corner, saw a window that took up most of the outer wall, and through this I could glimpse what seemed to be a dormer, thrusting outward high above the hillside. Sure enough, when I passed the window I found a door, the first I’d seen since leaving Ali and Jamie Casson. The corridor wound on. Chunks of stone littered the floor, and shards of broken glass. The air above me was crisscrossed with rafters formed of immense logs. Even in the darkness I could see pale hanks of cobwebs strung between them, patterned with the ghostly remains of insects. Rain lashed the dormer windows, finding its way through cracks to spatter me. Still I stubbornly kept on, head bowed against the rain; when behind me echoed a deafening crash.