William Gay - Twilight

He couldn’t have known from above but the bluff fell away under the ledge convex for fifteen or twenty feet then dropped vertically to the riverbank and below him were still the tops of trees. He looked down the front side into windy space and the yellow river was clocking along far enough below him that he didn’t want to think about it. He couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid: he’d taken the chance of falling to his death to get to a place completely bare of cover that he couldn’t get away from.

All he had to do was wait until Sutter appeared on the rim and shoot him. He sat hunkered with the gun in his lap while the day waned. Light gathered in the west above the timbered hills and the sky went red and gold as the rest of the world darkened incrementally as if all the light there was were gathering there and draining off the rim of the world.

He was watching the rim when Sutter appeared: first his hat, then his head and arm and the rifle barrel so quick he wasn’t prepared for it, and a bullet rang on stone so near that splintered rock showered his cheek and he could feel blood. He backpedaled wildly away when Sutter fired again and threw up the rifle toward Sutter and when he tried to squeeze the trigger he could not. The trigger was locked in some manner and he stood staring at it as if it had turned in his hands like a serpent. He looked about in horror: there was nowhere at all to hide. He backed against the bluff for a running start and ran to the ledge and kept running, leaping as far as he could into space, brandishing the impotent rifle aloft, and above him he could hear Sutter’s wild cry elongated anddistorted like a garbled electronic shriek. He turned in midair and there was a graybrown frieze of stone and trees rushing dizzily upward and stark black cedars going shapeless with speed. He hit the water feet first and shot all the way under, turning in the swift current and immediately fighting for the surface. He felt the branches of a submerged tree rake across him and for a moment snare him, then the yellow current sucked him downstream. He was aware of the hot aching in his lungs. He surfaced in an explosion of spray, gasping for air. He was on his back bearing downstream and when he’d wiped the water from his eyes the first thing he saw was the bluff. It was diminishing rapidly but Sutter was silhouetted against the pale sky, fist aloft and dark and motionless as crude sculpture from obsidian. Or yet some baleful god remonstrating with a world he’d created that would not do his bidding.

He drifted downstream as far as he could stand the cold water and where the river shoaled and grew shallow enough he waded out. Like a beast driven to earth by the dogs of hunters he sought deeper woods. From old leached stumps he kicked out of the earth he built an enormous fire and hunkered before it shivering. The fire roared and great showers of sparks went cascading upward but he just piled on more wood. There was a cold measure of comfort in knowing where Sutter was tonight, and unless he was taking the express as Tyler had there was no way he was getting here. Wherever here was. He didn’t even suspect where he was. He was deep in the heart of the Harrikin and he was hopelessly and desperately lost and the walls of the night were drawing in about him.

It is true this world holds mysteries you do not want to know. Visions that would steal the very light from your eyes and leave them sightless. The drawer opened on its oiled rollers without a sound. She lay quite composed with her arms at her side. Legs together, eyes open. Breece’d combed and curled her hair in a becoming way she hadn’t worn it in life and at her left temple he’d placed a white gardenia. There was another woven into the darker triangle of her maidenhair, and he studied it critically with the eye of an artist and made some small adjustment. Her mouth was slightly open, and he could see the white line of her teeth. Her pale breasts pooled like flowers of melting wax in the cool blue fluorescence. Sweet gutter angel, just far enough past redemption to make it worth his while.

There had been cuts on her forehead and cheek he’d worked on earlier and now he leant and touched them delicately with a forefinger. He unpocketed from the limegreen smock he wore a tube of tinted cream and carefully daubed the wounds. Studied the effect and wiped away a minuscule amount with a tissue and seemed satisfied.

Within a few minutes he had her dressed in black underwear and a pink evening gown, and he caught her up in his arms and went with her to another room. A great amphitheater of a room with sloping ceilings and dark wooden beams and a hardwood floor of oak pegged with cherry. An orchestra played softly from concealed speakers.

He placed her on the divan with a grunt and stood for a moment breathing hard. He watched her. Her head stayed erect for a moment, held by the divan at the back; then it tiltedforward and lolled loosely sideways. He leant and straightened it, and it lolled the other way, and he stayed it with a pillow.

He seated himself beside her and clasped her hand. For a time they just sat there listening to the music. He chatted away at her, and her face wore a slightly quizzical look, as if she couldn’t quite fathom what he was talking about.

Brandy? he asked her. He got up and from a sideboard brought a bottle of brandy and two snifters. He moved a small table near her knees and set her snifter atop it and sat with his own cupped in his small white hands. After a time he drank it, and then he drank hers as well.

The sourceless music wafted about the room. That’s Mahler, he told her. I don’t suppose you’re familiar with Mahler. His voice gently chided her lack of erudition.

Gustav Mahler was an Austrian composer from around the turn of the century. This is a cycle of songs called the Kindertotenlieder. Translated, that means ‘Songs of Dead Children.’ Don’t you think that’s a nice touch of irony?

He went on lecturing the dead girl for some time about classical music and various composers and then he seemed stricken by some emotion. Overcome perhaps by the music or the brandy or her perfumed presence. The room swam, veered like a warping world with its supports suddenly jerked away. He placed her hand on his thigh and when it slid away replaced it. He already had an arm about her shoulders, and now he dropped a hand to cup her breast. He drew her to him with a stricken urgency and buried his face in the soft white curve of her throat. Across his shoulder the dead girl with her unfocused eyes stared out across the great empty room as if she watched something from across a vast gulf of distance orwas straining to hear some faint and faroff sound.

The clapboard house sat in a clearing surrounded by dense trees. Unlit, silent. A pale moon clocking through ragged clouds wrought his shadow a twisted dwarf beckoning Tyler on. He didn’t know to where. When he came into the yard, the first thing he saw was a German shepherd watchdog chained to a clothesline. The dog was lying at the farthest reach of its tether. Tyler stopped. He stared at the dog in bemused wonder. It was lying in a pool of blood that looked black in the moonlight and its eyes were open and its lips drawn back over its teeth in a perpetual snarl. He stood hesitantly, then glanced toward the dark house and stepped around the dog and up a stoop of stacked rocks and hammered at the door.

Just silence answered him.

I need help, Tyler called.

The voice, when it came, came instantly, muffled but alert. You’ll by God need some shortly if you don’t get off my porch. Get away from that door.

I’m lost. I just need to talk to you a minute.

I was just sittin here thinkin about blowin a hole in my front door with this shotgun. You standin on the steps there, you liable to get hit.