Authors: Peter Straub
A theological college? A Kentucky Bible school?
It seemed impossible, but it was true — the Headley Theological Institute in Frankfort told me that Mr. Ridpath had attended from 1963 to 1964, when he hadconverted to Catholicism and left them for a seminary in Lexington. The Lexington seminary, run by an order of monks, eventually wrote me that Steven Ridpath had become Brother Robert, and had been placed in a monastery near Coalville, Kentucky.
I drove from Connecticut down to Coalville to see if he would talk to me.
Coalville was a run — down hamlet — no other word would fit — of three hundred people. Unhappy buildings sat in an unhappier landscape. Wherever a stand of trees grew, behind it was a wasteland of slag heaps and abandoned mining buildings. There was a motel, but I was the only guest. I sent a note to the monastery. Would Brother Robert agree to discuss with me whatever had led him to this unlikely destination? I let the assumption stand that I was doing an article or a book about the decision to enter the church.
Come if you must,
came a note by return mail.
Iexpect you have made a useless journey.
I appeared at the monastery gates at the time he had named. It was still early enough for roosters to be crowing within the grounds — there was a farm there, and the brothers raised their own food. I swung the clapper in the big bell and waited and shivered in the early chill.
Eventually a monk pulled open the gates. He wore a coarse brown robe and the hood shaded his face. 'Brother Robert?' I said, startled by this apparition.
'Brother Theo,' he said. 'Brother Robert is waiting for you in the garden.' He turned about without another word and preceded me up a stony path.
We went around the side of a red brick dormitory. 'Our farm,' Brother Theo said, and gestured with a flap of his sleeves. I looked to the left and saw a red barn disgorging cows after their morning milking. It still seemed impossible that Skeleton Ridpath was in such a place. 'The chicken coop,' said Brother Theo. 'We have sixty-eight hens! Good sound layers.'
At last we came to another gate. Over a brick fence I could see massed rosebushes. The brothers would soon have to begin pruning, for the roses were crowded together, fulsome and blowsy. My guide opened the gate. A gravel path led between banks of roses. 'Follow thepath,' he said. 'In fifteen minutes I shall see you out.'
'Fifteen minutes?' I asked. 'Can't I have a little more time?'
'The time was specified by Brother Robert.' He turned away.
I set off down the path. It led me around a comer, and when I turned into the garden proper, I nearly gasped. It was set out like a medieval garden, parceled into small plots where varying herbs and flowers grew, and it was a place of great order and serenity, much larger than I had expected. A monk sat on an iron bench before another bank of the overgrown roses. Beside him on the bench something glinted in the early sun: secateurs. When he heard my footsteps on the gravel, he looked up and swept the hood off his head.
It was Skeleton: no one could have mistaken him for anyone else. His hair had been cropped down to graying bristle, and a little wire-brush beard filled out his cheeks, but he still was Skeleton Ridpath. 'Do you like our garden?' he asked.
'Very much,' I said. 'It's beautiful, in fact. Do you tend it?'
He ignored the question. 'I must get occupied with the roses. They are in a sorry state.' He picked up the secateurs and nodded gloomily, indicated that I could be seated. 'I can give you fifteen minutes,' he said, 'but I must tell you now that you are wasting your time.'
'I'd better decide that,' I said, 'but in any case, I'd better also plunge right in, if you don't mind. Why did you decide to attend Headley Theological Institute after Clemson? It can hardly be what you had in mind when you started college.' I took out a pen and notebook.
'You would not understand,' he said, and clicked the secateurs shut.
'Since you've given me fifteen minutes, why not test me?' I asked. 'Otherwise your time is wasted too. I understand at least that you are a talented gardener.'
He scowled at me, refusing the compliment.
'Was there a crisis — a spiritual crisis of some kind?'
'There was a crisis,' he said. 'You might call it spiritual.'
'Could you describe it in any way?'
He sighed: he was really itching to get back at the roses.
'You could do some of your work while you talk to me,' I said.
He promptly left the bench, mumbling 'Thank you,' and began on the roses.
Snick-snick:
a thick brown rope laden with heavy blossoms collapsed, and petals showered on the bench.
'In my second year at college,' he said, and for some reason my chest tightened, 'I nearly dropped out. I had a disturbing vision. One that subsequently was shown to be prophetic.'
'And what was that?' I asked.
'The vision was of one of our classmates.' He turned to glare at me. 'I had a vision of Marcus Reilly. I saw his death. Not once, but many times.' I think I stopped breathing. 'He was in his car. He removed a pistol from his pocket. He placed the pistol beside his ear. Do I have to go on?'
'No,' I breathed. 'I know how Marcus died.'
Snick:
another cluster of roses flopped. More petals drifted to the bench.
'That is what I have to tell you. You would not understand the rest. I'm sure the rest was all conventional anyhow. I accepted Christ first, and later I accepted the Church. It is unusual only in that I am a converted Catholic.'
'You gave up your wings, didn't you?' I asked. 'I will never leave this place. And I will never want to. If that is what you mean.'
He suddenly seemed very agitated.
'Brother Robert, what happened in Vermont?' I dared to ask; unwisely.
'I'm sure our time is up,' he said, not looking at me. 'I am sorry lever agreed to speak to you.' Now the roses were tumbling all over the bench, lolling over and rolling onto the path.
'If I brought Tom Flanagan here, would you agree to meet him?' That suddenly seemed to me a brilliant solution.
Brother Robert stopped pruning the roses. He stood stock-still for a second', with his arm frozen where it had been when I had uttered Tom's name. 'Under nocircumstances whatsoever. Also, I will never see you again, under any circumstances whatsoever. Is that clear?' He lopped off another tangle of roses, and our interview was ended. He would not let me see his face.
'Thank you for what you've told me,' I said, and went back to the gate, where Brother Theo waited. He had the air of a man who wished he had been eavesdropping; he asked me if I had enjoyed my visit.
Later that year I visited friends in Putney, Vermont, and before I left them I looked up Hilly Vale on an old Sunoco map and made a hundred-and-ten-mile detour on my way home.
The town was much as Tom had described it. Few changes had happened to Hilly Vale in twenty years. I parked on Main Street and went into a health-food shop — it must have been one of the changes. A young man with shoulder-length hair and a striped apron stood behind the counter eating a carob bar. He put the final touches to my theory about change in Hilly Vale. 'I'm looking for the site of the old Collins place,' I said. 'Can you help me?'
He grinned at me. 'Been here only a year and a half,' he said. 'Maybe Mrs. Brewster knows it.' He nodded to a fiftyish woman in a down jacket lingering over a display of purses in plastic bags.
'Mrs. Brewster!' he called. 'This guy here wants. . . ?' he raised his eyebrows at me.
'The old Collins place, Mrs. Brewster,' I said. 'Where they had the big fire. In 1959, it would have been. At the end of the summer.'
'Why, sure,' she said, and again I felt that tightening of the chest. 'Nobody even knew about it until the whole place was gone. We didn't even know for weeks after. Terrible thing. Mr. Collins died there. He was a famous magician once, you know.' She gave me a sly look. 'You wouldn't be Mr. Flanagan, now, would you?'
'Why, no,' I said, startled. 'Why do you ask?'
'Thought you'd know. That's the Flanagan place now. 'Course, it isn't a
place,
not that way. And that's a shame, too. Valuable land sitting like that — some folks here would like to buy some of that land. You're not from the real-estate people, are you?'
'No,' I said. 'I'm just a friend of Mr. Flanagan's. But I didn't know he owned it.'
'All of it,' she said. 'Right clear around the lake. He never comes here. Probably thinks he's too good for the likes of us. He's a magician too — oh, you know that. But he's not the equal of Mr. Collins. He's not like Mr. Collins. Lived here from 1925 on,'Mr. Collins did. And he kept to himself.' She nodded firmly.
'No, I gather he's not like Mr. Collins,' I said.
'Couldn't hold a candle to him, in my opinion.'
'Did you actually see Collins perform?' I asked her, barely able to credit it.
'Never even met him,' she said. 'But I can tell you how to get to the place, since you're so curious.'
I followed her directions out of town, and soon found myself in the peculiar position of being in a landscape I had written about without ever having seen. Here was the fork in the road; here was the ascending unpaved track through the trees; and here was the pasture where Tom had seen the horses. It was overgrown with chicory and burdock: it needed Brother Robert's talents.
And here, finally, was the loop of a drive.
I parked my car and walked down. It had once been paved. Now weeds and grass had pushed aside and broken the asphalt all the way to the gates. Someone, probably a party of teenagers, had broken them open, and they had rusted over the years. Vines trailed through the bars. The wall around Shadowland still stood, though, and other vines twisted happily through the brick, clumping and blossoming where the top layer had broken off. The barbed wire was long gone — I supposed some thrifty fanner had rolled it up and trucked it off.
I walked down the broken drive, slipping a little on the loose stones, wondering when I would see the house. I left the treacherous drive and walked into tall grass. It was a lie, I saw — all of it a beautiful and whopping lie. There was no house. There never had been.