Black Light (31 page)

The taiga was gone. In its stead was a softer landscape, hills climbing into mountains, slopes covered with trees, sunrise touching their limbs with gold. Of Ralph there was no sign. But the girl remained, unclothed, her breasts and pale skin and hair turned to copper by the dawn. At her feet poppies rippled in the wind—I could see their papery petals, white and red and pink, the green-furred stems and, on some of them, the swollen seed-calyx where the blossoms had already fallen. Once more she was embracing someone, not the man-woman but someone else, a tall man with hawkish features and dark hair that fell to his shoulders. He was naked, and in one hand held a staff topped with a carven pinecone. As he crushed the girl to his breast, wine streamed down her back, staining her hair reddish-violet.

“No more!”

I was yanked away roughly by the man-woman. In the deepening sunlight his leather robe looked burnished. But as we ran the robe seemed to unfurl like a long ribbon, until I saw it was not a leather robe at all but a gown of dark-green cloth, embroidered with five-petaled flowers. His careful braid unraveled, long hair snaking in the wind. Ahead of us the sunrise grew blinding. I shaded my eyes, found that I could make out an eerie darkness within the brilliance, like spots on the sun’s corona. I staggered after my rescuer, and with each step the darkness grew more palpable and took shape, until I was staring at a rectangular pillar in the air.

But it was not a pillar. It was a door, only a few inches taller than the man who led me and half as wide. A door made of shadow and light, the shadow the utter blackness of a starless night; the light more blinding than the sun, brilliance like a red-gold sea boiling up from the portal’s center.

“Close your eyes!” the man shouted. “Stay beside me!”

His voice was familiar. But I had no time to question him, no time to do anything but race, gasping, until I was beside him.

Before us the portal opened like the world’s molten core. A moment when I felt the ground beneath me drop away; a moment when air and wind and even the flesh upon my face were sucked away, devoured by a ravening heat. A column of flame ripped through me, erupting into pure white light as a voice shrieked deafeningly.

“Jump!
Now
!”

I jumped. There was silence and annihilating darkness, no sense of falling, of being; of anything at all. Then with a roar the world crashed all around me. I was thrown facedown onto a cold floor. The core of light exploded into pain, and for an instant I blacked out.

Then I heard a sound, a soft repetitive thumping, the murmur of voices that were not forming words. When I managed to open my eyes, I found myself lying on the floor of a darkened room, window casements thrown open so that a spatter of icy rain came down, and scattered oak leaves. I was back in Bolerium. On the floor beside me, holding her head and moaning, was Precious Bane.

Well the Cadillac

it pulled out of the

graveyard

pulled up to me

all they said Get in.

Then the Cadillac,

it puttered back into

that graveyard.

Me, I got out again.

—“MARQUEE MOON,” TOM VERLAINE

I
T TOOK ME SEVERAL
minutes to catch my breath. I didn’t just feel winded by falling, or whatever I’d done to return. My heart pounded dangerously fast and my skin burned; whenever I tried to focus on the room around me, streams of cobalt and violet light flared and faded at the borders of my vision. Even my teeth ached.

But gradually all these symptoms faded; gradually the phantom lightning disappeared, and I could see that the casement above me was tall and narrow, with two sets of windows opened outward into the rainy night. Watery blue light filled the room, a long raftered space tucked somewhere under the eaves. The outer walls were granite, the floor unpolished wood and very cold. There were no rugs or furniture; only an odd, propane-blue light whuttering in the distance. I blinked, trying to bring the light into focus; and that’s when I realized there were other people in the room beside myself and Precious Bane. In fact, there were a lot of people, all gathered at the far end of the chamber. Before I could figure out what to do about
that,
Precious Bane sat up with a groan.

“God, I
told
you I hate this place.” She brushed back a tuft of cotton-candy hair. “Every time I come here I tear something.”

She stared ruefully at the band of shiny black polyester that was her miniskirt. It was slashed as though by a razor. “See? You think Axel will pay for this? He won’t. Thank god they’re too busy to notice—”

She inclined her head toward the people at the far end of the room, then got to her feet, long arms and legs unfolding like an accordion doll’s. She reached down to grab my hand. “Upsy-daisy, Miss Charlotte. My, your new party clothes
are
a mess.”

I stood groggily and looked down at myself. My dress was ragged and filthy, stuck with twigs and leaves; my Frye boots caked with mud. I touched my hair. It felt like the reindeer moss, brittle and damp. Precious Bane gave me a sympathetic look.

“Aw, don’t worry, honey. A little Prell, you’ll look super. Come here and let’s see what we can do to shine you up—”

“Wait—hang on a second…”

I slipped from her and darted to the window. It was set halfway up the wall, so that the bottom sill was level with my chin. If I slitted my eyes, the out-of-focus image was the exact inverse of that I had seen with the portal, its perimeter etched with light and the center a seething darkness. Very carefully I extended my hands, until my fingertips brushed the edge of the sill.

“Charlotte!”

“No. Wait—”

It was like being too close to an incredibly powerful electrical appliance. The air felt warm, almost furry; the hair on my arms stood on end. When I moved my fingers, threads of blue-violet light streaked between them, like paramecia swimming through the darkness. Out of nowhere words echoed around me, faint but clear, as though broadcast from a radio in an adjoining room. There was the smell of upturned earth, and my mother’s clear voice reciting—

“Down with the bodie and its woe,

Down with the Mistletoe;

Instead of Earth, now up-raise

The green Ivy for show.

The Earth hitherto did sway;

Let Green now domineer

Until the dancing Sonbuck’s Day

When black light do appeare.”

“That’s what it is,” I whispered. “Black light…”

I took a deep breath, opened my eyes and firmly grasped the sill. As though I’d rammed my hands against a stone wall, a shock raced through me, from fingers to elbow and on to my shoulder. The pain made me shout, but I kept my hold tight on the window. The violet threads thickened, became ropes of light that encircled my wrists and arms, twisting about my shoulders until I could feel their pressure at my throat. Then suddenly the luminous bonds fell away. There was the summer-charged smell of ozone, a sound like the sea. With a gasp I let go of the sill and staggered backward.

Above me the window glowed like stained glass at dawn. Only it was not a window anymore. It was a portal. Flame runneled along its edges, blue-white deepening to indigo, feathered off into a desultory darkness that I knew was the room surrounding me.

But I could no longer
see
the room. My sense of it came only from knowing that it was not the incandescent threshold, a threshold that made everything else seem bleak and inconsequential. It was not a room there behind me, or even a world, but a prison. Ralph’s despairing voice came back to me—

More than anything
—
more than I have ever wanted anything on this earth, love or money or children, I’ve wished to be one of them
—

—and I thought of who they were and what they might become, those Chosen Ones who could pass through such a door.

“Charlotte.”

I stiffened, refused to turn.

“Charlotte. Come back. Come back
now
.”

I shook my head, then felt Precious Bane’s strong hand on my shoulder, pulling me away.

“You just got back here, honey,” she said softly. “Don’t be in such a hurry to leave. Not yet, anyway.”

The portal was gone. Rain slashed through the open window. From behind us came a faint echo of laughter. Precious Bane put a finger to her lips, indicating the far end of the room.

“Remember: we are not alone,” she said sotto voce. “Com-pa-nee!”

“Right.” I sighed, looked over and saw who the company was—eight or ten people thrashing naked on the floor, bathed in the leaden light spilling from a single glaring bulb on a pole. I gulped and looked away.

But there was Precious Bane staring at me, so I had no choice but to watch.

“Oh,” I said.

“Why look, Charlotte,” she said. “They’re making a movie.”

Above the heaving group Page Franchini stood impassively, filming it all with a Super 8 camera. The blue light gave everyone’s skin a wet, glassy sheen. It was less like an orgy than a school of dolphins arcing up through the floorboards, with only an occasional flash of a mouth or eyes to betray anyone as human. I stared, fascinated, until Page Franchini lifted his head from the camera and saw me.

“Hey,” he called. He set the camera on its tripod, still whirring, and waved at us. Behind him I glimpsed an open door, jeans and T-shirts flung over it. “You! C’mere, we could use some girl action—Precious, bring her over—”

“No way.” I spun around, and Precious Bane draped her arm around me protectively.

“Not today, Page,” she said, drawing a hand across her brow. “Our aura is very weak today—”

She tossed her head, cherry hair cascading down her back, and escorted me to the door. We had to step over several men, none of whom took the slightest notice. Page Franchini shrugged, lit a cigarette and tossed the match onto somebody’s bare ass.

“Well,” sniffed Precious Bane. “Now we know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.”

I laughed and squeezed through the door beside her. She kicked at a heap of clothes, then glanced back at Page Franchini angling in for a close-up. “Well, Charlotte.
That’s
what comes of wearing white shoes after Labor Day.”

“Was that, like, an orgy?”

“Very, very like.”

We were in the corridor, back on the main floor. There were people here, certainly more than I expected to be wandering the halls a few yards away from an orgy. An extremely pregnant woman in a dashiki dress, holding a wine glass and looking very drunk; a naked man in a wig. Music ricocheted from an upstairs room—

I hear you knockin’

but you can’t come in…

Just a few doors down, the corridor opened onto the music room. It seemed almost incongruously bright in there, all the lamps turned on and the candelabra alight atop the piano. Someone was hunched over the keys and a few people were gathered around, their backs to us. It took me a minute to disentangle their singing from the stereo upstairs and the resonant thump of dancing in the main hall.

But when we entered the room I saw it was Duncan at the piano, shirtless, his back slick with sweat and dusted with silver glitter, lank hair hanging around his face. He was banging out a ragged barrel-house version of “Moondance” and singing in his rich baritone, accompanied by a blonde high school chorus—Christie Smith, Alysa Redmond, Leenie Wasserman, all warbling cheerfully out-of-tune—and two predatory-looking women in tuxedos and stiletto heels.

“It doesn’t look good for Marsha and Jan and Cindi,” said Precious Bane. “I think I’ll leave you here with the cheerleading squad for a few minutes. Just don’t get lost. The party’s not over yet.”

She blew me a kiss and strode off. I nodded but forgot to thank her—I was too relieved to finally see my friends again, and something that looked like normal life. I hurried over to the piano. With a flourish Duncan finished the song. His face was glistening, his makeup smudged. But he looked astonishingly happy, and for a moment I almost forgot who I was looking at, Precious Bane or Dunc or the statuesque creature who had pulled me through the portal. The girls applauded, the tuxedo-clad women moved to touch their shoulders. Duncan looked over his shoulder at me.

“I wish my brother George were here,” he said.

Leenie and the other girls gave me stoned, slightly damaged smiles, brightening when one of the women dangled a small brown vial in front of them.

“Wanna come with us, Lit?” Leenie called as Christie and Alysa followed the older women across the room.

“No thanks.”

“Sure? Well, see you later—”

I watched them disappear into a corner, cheeping like goslings, then turned back to Duncan. “Hi, Dunc—”

He ran a hand across his face, leaving a smear of blue eye shadow. “Lit. Christ, what happened? You in a car wreck or something?”

“Or something.” I angled onto the piano bench and lay my head on his shoulder. “Oh, Dunc, am I glad to see you.”

“Yeah? How come? Aren’t you having a good time?”

“No.”

“Really?” He looked shocked. “Well—why not? I mean, who’ve you been hanging out with? Your parents?”

“Where
are
my parents? Are they still around?”

“Uh-uh. Nobody is—I mean, nobody from town. They all split around the same time, about an hour ago. Everyone but us, I mean. You know”— He flapped his hand, indicating the corner where Leenie and her friends appeared to be exchanging articles of clothing while singing “American Pie” —“the usual suspects. All our Kamensic heroes,” Dunc finished.

I stared bleakly at the piano.

“Well, jeez, Lit, it can’t be
that
bad
—
”

He struck a pose, head held high and candlelight glinting from a sequin stuck to his nose, then let his hands fall to the keys and began tinking out a few notes.

“I’ve BEEN to the most MARVELOUS—PARTY—

I COULDN’T have—LIKED it—MORE.”

I shook my head. “Duncan, I don’t think Noel Coward would have liked this party very much.”