Elizabeth Hand - Black Light

Panting, I stared at the portal—the prison—I had made. Then I turned and crossed to where Axel Kern lay upon the bed. He was motionless save for his shallow breathing, a trickle of blood down his breast. On his brow the crown of ivy and grape-leaves trembled, as though stirred by the wind. Slowly I knelt beside him, lowered my head until my lips brushed his; then stretched so that my body covered him. For a long time I lay like that, listening to the faint shushing of his heart, the rustle of wind in the leaves. Finally I drew back, my hand lingering upon his cheek; stood and for one last time looked down upon him.

He did not look peaceful, or asleep. He did not look like anything I had ever seen, except perhaps for the body of my friend lying blue beneath black light in another upstairs room. I stared at the bound man, his arms bruised and chained with ivy, the pulpy shapes of crushed grapes and figs beneath his cheek, the smear of honey on his thigh.

And as I looked it was like before, when his figure had appeared to blur and burn before me. Once more I felt that shiver of apprehension, a prickling along my arms and neck and it seemed that something would break through. There was a mystery there, a secret bound like the man in vines and blood, fire and seed.

But it was not my mystery. Not now, anyhow; not yet. As Precious Bane had done to me, I blew a kiss at the bed. Then I gathered my clothes and dressed.

“Very nice,” someone murmured. “Your portal. The irony will be lost on Ralph, of course, but not on me.”

I turned, pulling on my boot, and saw Balthazar Warnick standing in front of the door. A real door, an ordinary door, that opened onto a hall where wind sent rainy gusts of brown leaves spiraling into the night.

“You—you saw—” I stammered.

He smiled, a small rueful small, and stepped toward me. Then he stopped, frowning, and bent to pick up something.

It was the bone knife. He turned it over in his hands, carefully slipped it into the inside pocket of his wool greatcoat. “I’ll take this,” he said. “For safekeeping.” He looked at the man on the bed. “And I will take care of that as well.”

He glanced at the bottles strewn everywhere, the scattered opium cakes and bloodstained ropes. After a minute he turned back to me. In a low voice he asked, “Lit—will you change your mind? Will you come with us? Now, or—well, soon?”

I shook my head. “No.” Then, trying not to sound so harsh, “No, thank you.”

“Then go,” he commanded. “Now.”

But as I hurried toward the door he stopped me. “Wait. Take this—”

He took my right hand and prised it open, slid something onto the middle finger. I blinked. It was a ring, shaped precisely like the grotesque image of Ralph Casson’s face that now served as a portal.

“So you’ll always have a way out,” said Balthazar Warnick softly. “Or back.”

For a long moment his sea-blue eyes held mine. Finally I pulled away.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “G’bye—”

I walked like a seasick passenger into the hall. It was dark, but through the windows a chilly light gleamed. Behind the watchful shadow that was Muscanth Mountain, dawn was gathering. I staggered down the corridor, found a stairwell and nearly fell down it, my boots sliding on the runners. When I reached the bottom I lurched into another corridor, and another, until at last I made my way to the great hall. There were bottles and ashtrays everywhere, candle stubs and light bulbs, torn clothing and record albums, the detritus of a dozen parties; but no people. I walked through the room and went onto the patio.

“Oh, man…”

It was covered with terra-cotta masks. All broken, so that as I crossed to the lawn I stepped through a wasteland of crushed mouths and hollow cheeks, beatific smiles turned to death’s-heads where they had been trodden into the flagstones. At the very edge of the patio one lay, more intact than the others, eyes slanted beneath a crown of grapes. It shattered beneath my boot as I left the patio and walked downhill. It was still raining, fine icy needles that made my skin feel numb, but that was okay. Numb was okay. Numb was good.

I reached the drive and started down. I shoved my hands into my pockets and something pricked my thumb. I swore, fumbled in the pocket until I found something sharp.

I pulled it out—the baggie full of pot seeds and manicure scissors I’d discovered in the bathroom, right before Jamie found me and gave me his clothes. I held the scissors up, wiping rain from my eyes; then tugged thoughtfully at my hair.

“Huh,” I said. “Well, nothing makes a girl feel better than a new ’do.”

I began cutting. It didn’t take long, once I’d figured out how to position the scissors and pull my wet hair taut so I could shear it off right at the roots. When I was finished, the sky had turned from charcoal to the color of tarnished tin. Wet curls stuck to my boots; I kicked them away, reached down to wipe my boots clean with a leaf. When I ran my hand across my skull it felt bristly, the hair spiky and ragged.

“Fuckin’ A,” I said. For the first time in what felt like days, I laughed.

Precious Bane was right. I felt great.

From the black ridge of western mountains came a long low wail: the four-thirty-five train coming down from Beacon on its way south to the city. I brushed myself off quickly, shoved the scissors back into my pocket, and began to run. I passed parked cars along the way, the same Karmann Ghias and BMWs and fake woodie station wagons that I’d passed on my way up.

And, past the curve where the road forked to go to Jamie Casson’s house, an old blue Dodge Dart, two figures perched ghostlike on its hood.

“Lit! Jesus freaking Christ, Lit, where the fuck have you been —”

Hillary jumped down and ran to me. For an instant Jamie remained where he was, and in that instant I had a flash of when I’d first seen him scarcely twenty-four hours before, frozen in the jukebox’s glow like a dragonfly in amber, all the promise and beauty of flight and none of the risk. Then he, too, was alongside me, rubbing his hand across my skull and whistling.

“Whoa! Nice job!”

“What the hell did you do to your hair?”

“Where’s Ali?”

“Where’s your clothes?”

“Where’s—”

From the southernmost slope of the mountain came another wail—the firehouse siren—then another.

Hillary frowned. “That’s the ambulance.”

I took a deep breath. I pulled away from them, and nodded. “We gotta get out of here.”

“But Ali—”

“Ali’s dead.” I pressed my hand against Hillary’s mouth, squeezed my eyes shut. After a moment I opened them. “She OD’d on heroin. Or opium, or some kind of shit. But she’s dead, and if we stick around here we’re going to be fucked.”

“But—” Hillary looked at me, dazed. “She can’t be dead,” he whispered.

“Hillary. We have to go. I’m sorry—I know it sounds horrible, you have to believe me because I feel horrible—but we can’t stay. At least, I can’t stay.”

I started for the front of the car. Jamie stared at me. I couldn’t tell if he was stunned or just stoned. When I reached the door I stopped and looked at him.

“You said you had friends in the city. You said we could crash there and we wouldn’t need money. At least not right away—”

He nodded. “Right.”

“Do you have money now? Enough for the train?”

He swallowed, then patted the front of his black jeans. “Yeah. About a hundred bucks. Kern paid me in cash for the parking job.”

“Okay.” I let my breath out, opened the door and slid across to open the other door for Hillary. “Hillary—can you drive us to the station?”