Steven Millhauser - Voices in the Night - Stories

In the Tower

In the thorn-tower, where Rapunzel lies sleeping, the sorceress sits brushing the hair in her lap. Rapunzel has been tired lately; it is good for her to sleep. A ray of sunlight slants through the space in the thorn-crossed window. It strikes the back of a wooden chair, runs across the stone floor, climbs the bedside, lies across the coverlet. When she is done brushing the hair until it shines, the sorceress will braid it slowly and carefully, feeling the weight of it in her lap. From time to time she looks up at her darling, who sleeps peacefully, safe from harm. Suddenly the sorceress stiffens with alertness. She lays aside the hair, goes to the window, and looks out between branches of thorns. It was only a crow, landing on a pine branch. She returns to the chair and continues brushing. Later she will get up and smooth the coverlet, plump the pillow. When Rapunzel wakes, the sorceress will prepare an herbal drink. She will feel her daughter’s forehead, she will ask if there is any soreness in her throat. But for now she will let her sleep. There’s no hurry. They have all the time in the world.

Rapunzel

Walking beside the Prince along the courtyard, toward the steps leading to the Great Hall, Rapunzel is aware of the glitter of many jewels. The costumes are richly colored and catch the sun. On a gallery above the courtyard, men bearing shields look down. Voices cry out in welcome. She tries to recall her childish fear of these faces, but it is like trying to recall the pictures in an old book. Long ago she lived in a tower, in the middle of a great forest. The sorceress, the high window, her hair falling toward the bottom of the tower, all of it is fading away. In the sunlit courtyard she sees flashes of bright hair, high-arched eyebrows, earlobes with rings. She will study them, she will learn what she needs to learn. The Prince no longer doubts her, as he did in the time before the wilderness. Night after night he came to her in the tower. She can feel his eyes on her face. She turns, sees that he is tired. Soon he can rest. She understands that he is done with trials and challenges, with perilous adventures. She understands one more thing: she is stronger than the Prince. It is good. She will laugh again, she will grow out her hair, she will play. But for the moment, as they approach the steps, she will walk beside her Prince among the courtiers and the ladies, inviting their attention, meeting their glances, looking calmly at them as they observe their Princess.

That summer a restlessness came over our town. You could feel it on Main Street, you could feel it at the beach. In the early mornings we’d step from our front doors and head for the paper wrapped in its rubber band at the end of the walk — and in that warm, inviting air we’d stop suddenly, as if in confusion. At work we stared out of windows. At home we sat down, stood up, walked into other rooms. We planned long weekend excursions that never materialized, flung ourselves into complex diets that we forgot the next day, spoke eagerly of changing our habits, our jobs, our lives. Husbands in baseball caps and cargo shorts, pushing power mowers and dreaming of distant mountains, drifted absentmindedly across driveways into neighboring yards, where they looked around in surprise. On the green lawns of summer, you could see the wives in gardening gloves and wide-brimmed hats, kneeling on cushions beside rows of marigolds and azaleas. As they raised their three-pronged weeders, they would sometimes pause for a moment and glance into the next yard. They would look up at the familiar windows at the back of a neighbor’s house, at the roof shingles trembling with sunlight, over the top of the roof into the startling blue sky, which seemed to be calling them to come away, come away.

Even the young people of our town seemed infected by unease. Home from school, teenagers in T-shirts and ripped jeans threw themselves down on the family couch with an arm over their eyes. Seconds later they sprang up as if in the grip of a violent passion, then fell back with a shuddering yawn. On burning Saturday afternoons at the public beach, you could see the children crouching down on the hard wet sand at the water’s edge. There they began building fanatically detailed castles, with turrets and castellations and arrow slits for crossbows, pausing only to look up as a yellow helicopter flew high above the water. When they looked back down, they had lost interest forever.

In the hot nights we’d sit on our screened back porches, lit by dim lanterns, and listen to the crickets growing louder and louder, as if they were always coming closer, and behind them or through them we could hear a deeper sound, like a distant waterfall: the steady roll of trucks on the thruway, rushing away in opposite directions.

What was it that we wanted? We were doing all right, on the whole, we were happy enough, as things go. Oh, we had our worries, we woke in the dark with thoughts of money and death, but our neighborhoods were safe, no one died of hunger in our town, we counted our blessings and knew we’d been spared the worst. We’d looked forward to summer the way we always did — season of vacations, season of departures from the usual flow of things — but this time there was something left over, as if we’d stretched out our arms wider than the world. Had we expected too much of summer? That blue sky, that yellow sun…Never a blue sun! Nowhere a green sky! Sometimes we had the sense that we were waiting for something, a hint, a sign — waiting for a direction in which we could pour our terrible energy.

The first incident occurred toward the middle of June, at about 10:30 at night, in the home of Amy Banks, a sixteen-year-old high-school junior. Her parents, Dr. Richard Banks, a well-known orthodontist with a flourishing practice on East Broad Street, and Melinda Banks, a social worker at the new community center, were upstairs in their bedroom. Amy had been sitting in the family room, watching TV with the sound off and talking to a girlfriend on her cherry-red cell phone. She said good night, snapped the cell shut, and reached for the remote. At that moment she became aware of a motion in the dark corner of the room between the TV and the window. From the window a pair of light curtains hung down past the sill. Amy thought at first that a breeze might have stirred a curtain, even though the room was warm and the window was closed. As she began to get up from the couch, where she’d been sitting back against two pillows with her legs tucked under her, she was again aware of a motion in the corner, which this time, she said, was a “stirring,” though not of the curtains. She saw nothing distinct, nothing at all.

Now a fear seized her. At the same time she was uncertain what she’d seen and told herself not to cry out and wake her father, who went to bed early. The stirring continued, without a sound. Just as Amy was about to run from the room, everything returned to normal: the corner was still, the TV cord lay against the baseboard, a woman on the screen sat in her car and silently pounded the heels of both hands against the steering wheel, the light from the kitchen reached across the arm of the reading chair and touched the edge of the lamp table. Amy stood up. She took two deep breaths and walked over to the corner. There she examined the floor, the baseboard, and the back of the TV. She pulled aside both curtains. She raised and lowered the window shade, felt the wall, looked all around. She turned off the TV and went up to bed.

The next night, shortly after ten o’clock, something stirred in the first-floor bedroom of Barbara Scirillo, a high school senior who lived three blocks away from Amy Banks and shared a French class with her. Barbara screamed. Her father, James Scirillo, a physics teacher and a member of the school board, called the police. No trace of an intruder was found. Barbara said she’d been changing into her pajamas and watching the computer screen when she felt something or someone move in the room. She saw nothing, no one. She could provide no further details.