~ * ~
Karen Duffy whispered, "Your poems are not very good, Anne, I’m sorry." But the poems of only a few people were very good, weren’t they?
These poems were simply not enjoyable. Anne Case had been an unhappy woman, that was clear. And these poems were unhappy. Who could genuinely enjoy another person’s unhappiness?
Karen knew that she was weeping. It wasn’t the poems that were making her weep, it was what they told her—along with Christian’s letters—about the man she had spent so much time with.
That he was insane.
~ * ~
"We have no reason to run anymore," the man said to David, and stopped running.
David stopped. For a moment, he could clearly see the man’s face—the wide nose, large eyes, strong jaw, dark brown skin. Then it was lost in shadow again.
David looked behind him where, in the darkness, he had heard the sound of wind or rushing water.
He saw the dirt street, the close buildings—stucco, brick, wood, all with many tall windows—and he saw the moving sky above.
"What was it?" he asked.
"Us," said the thin man. "Darkness." The man had seemed out of breath for a moment, but now did not.
"I mean that sound. Like wind."
"The small creatures of the darkness," the man said. "Us."
"No. Rats," David whispered.
"Rats?" the man asked.
"Were they rats?"
"They were the small creatures of darkness.”
“Were they like rats?"
"What are rats?"
"Have you ever
seen
them?"
"Do you mean have I seen rats?"
"No. These creatures of darkness. Have you ever actually seen them?"
What sounded like a quick chuckle came from the thin man. "How could I have seen them? They only come out in the dark. What can anyone see in the dark? You look and all you see is little moving bits of light, and you know what those are? Spots. Like the things you see when you wake up. Spots. Dust in the eye—"
David sighed. "Then what do they do?"
"What do what do?"
"These small creatures of the darkness. For God’s sake, what have we been talking about?”
“No one knows."
"Then why do you run from them?"
"Because I don’t
know
what they might do.”
“Do you think they’ll hurt you?"
"I don’t know. Everyone has always run toward the light in the darkness. And we have heard the small creatures of the darkness behind us as we ran."
David thought that talking with this man was like talking in code. He asked, "How do you know that they’re small?"
The man answered, "I don’t. I don’t know anything about them. They could easily be very large creatures of the darkness, I suppose; they could easily be the size of refrigerators, or, or . . . stoves and refrigerators, but that’s unlikely isn’t it. I mean, we’d
hear
them—"
"But you said they were us," David cut in. "Did I? I don’t remember."
"And you don’t know what they do?"
"No one does."
"And you’ve never seen them?"
"That’s right."
"Then how do you know they exist at all?"
There was a moment’s silence. Then the man said, "I don’t understand. They exist in the darkness; what is to know or not know?" Again David heard what he thought was a quick chuckle. "Come now," the man said, and the darkness that covered his face nodded toward where they had just come from. "Let’s go back to my apartment. I have a trillion things to show you."
~ * ~
Fred Collins couldn’t feel Anne Case in her house anymore. It saddened him. The house was simply a place where a particularly heinous murder had been committed, and the woman who had lived here, and died here, had been swept away.
And she had been swept from his thoughts and his fantasies, as well. This saddened him, too. Communicating with her ghost—her memory—had been a very pleasant diversion. Now it didn’t work. When he tried to talk with her, she didn’t answer or even turn her head toward him. The house didn’t echo with her footfalls. Her perfume no longer lingered in the air.
It never had, he realized. He had wanted it to, had willed it to, but it never had.
The house was empty of Anne Case.
His brain was empty of her.
It happened.
People and events came and went and intermingled and were gone.
There was nothing anyone had ever been able to do about it.
T
he thin man invited David to sit in a
ladderback
chair near the apartment’s only window, which looked out on the street two stories below. The man asked if David would like some tea.
David sat in the
ladderback
chair. "Tea?" he asked, thinking the offer was very odd. "You drink tea here?"
"We drink tea everywhere," the man answered. He was standing at what looked like a white porcelain stove at the far end of the large room. To David’s left there was a small bed, neatly made with a fluffy pillow and a brightly colored quilt. At the foot of the bed—which was itself made of what looked like tubular black metal—there was a small chest of drawers. A rectangular mirror in a wooden frame stood on top.
The man held up an ornate teakettle that looked like it was made of brass. "Orange pekoe tea," he said.
"Orange pekoe," David said, still thinking that the whole idea of sharing tea with this faceless man was somehow absurd.
"Yes, orange pekoe," the man said, apparently mistaking David’s remark for a question.
"Thank you, no," David said.
"No tea?" The man sounded put off.
"I’m not thirsty," David said.
"Thirsty?"
"I don’t need any tea right now. Thank you."
"Thank you," the man said, and set the teakettle on the stove. He went wordlessly to a large bookcase standing against the wall not far from the stove. The bookcase was lined, floor to top, with what looked like manuscripts. The man took one of the manuscripts down, held it in his hands for a moment as if he were reading it, then turned his head toward David. "I would like you to read this and tell me what it means." He crossed the room and put the thick manuscript—bound with twine—on David’s lap. The manuscript was untitled and written in longhand, in red ink, on plain yellowish paper. The handwriting was very small. David glanced at the manuscript, then up at the faceless man, who was apparently looking down at him.
David said, "I didn’t come here to read."
The man said nothing for a moment. Then the darkness that was his face turned briefly toward the window, then abruptly back to David, who realized, all at once, that the man was nervous. "Read a little of it," the man pleaded. "A few sentences, a page—I don’t care. Just get the sense of it, give
me
the sense of it, and I’ll be happy, and you’ll be happy—"
David shook his head. "I didn’t come here to read," he repeated. "I came here to find my sister."
A sigh came from the darkness covering the man’s face. "Sister," he said, "mother/father. It’s all in there." He reached, tapped the manuscript with a long, dark finger. "I need to know what they mean. You can
tell
me what they mean."
"Tell you what
what
means? Sister?"
"Sister, mother/father."
"You want to know what sister, mother, and father mean?"
The darkness that was the man’s face bobbed. "Oh, yes. Yes, I do."
He smiled. David could see his smile, could see his large eyes, wide nose, his smiling, full mouth. Then darkness covered the man’s face again.
"I saw you then," he said.
David said, "Saw me?"
"Your face. Very briefly. It may be significant; of what, I don’t know—transition, transmigration, transportation; my God, my God all these words ricocheting about in my head . . . " He rambled on.
David didn’t interrupt him.
As the man talked, David read the first few sentences of the manuscript to himself. They were:
In
enee
timwe
love,
thair
ispast
,
groathand
here we are here we are.
The gray eyes
sweeeepoavar
, caress.
Guodbie
,
thaysae
.
David looked up at the thin man. The man stopped talking at once and apparently looked back. "I don’t know what this means," David said. "It’s gibberish." He looked at the manuscript again. He reread the first two sentences. They made more sense the second time around. In large part, they were phonetically written, he realized. These people obviously came to this place with their language and writing abilities intact, but with limitations. There was probably no formal instruction in language here.
David read the sentences slowly, aloud: "In any time we love, there . . . is past . . . " He stopped, studied the next word hard, then continued, "Growth and here we are, here we are." He looked up at the thin man. "I’m sorry. It’s still gibberish to me." He looked at the second sentence, read aloud: "The gray eyes . . . " He paused, continued. "The gray eyes sweep over. Caress. Goodbye, they say." He sighed. "Yes, I know what this means," he told the faceless man. "The second sentence anyway." He paused. "This talks about someone who has died, apparently—"
"Died?"
"Yes." David paused. How could this man understand what death was? "You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?"
The darkness that covered the man’s face moved slowly from side to side. The man said, "But I want to. I
need
to." He paused. "I think if all of us knew what words like these really meant, we would be . . . " He paused. "
Died
, of course," he went on, as if in sudden revelation, "demised, mortified, denuded, passed on,
bequested
, requested, R-S-V-
P’d
." He paused again. "No," he admitted, "I don’t understand a word of it."
David sighed again. "This is why you asked me here? So I could read this book?"
"All of it. Yes. From cover to cover and from page to page, while we drink our orange pekoe tea, you know, and discuss conundrums aplenty, oh yes—"
"So I can tell you what sisters and mothers and fathers are?"
"Yes. And more. Lots more, tons more—"
"I don’t need to read this book to tell you that.”
“You don’t?"
David stood, manuscript in hand, and took it back to the bookcase. He turned his head, looked at the faceless man. "Do you know where I came from?"
"Came from?"
"Yes. Before I came here."
The faceless man said nothing.
David sighed. "I’m sorry, my friend. I don’t think I can tell you a thing."