Little Doors (9 page)

“Why didn’t you ever speak to me then, till I come to this mill?”

“You were not ready. And there were barriers. Even now, I find it hard sometimes to talk to you.”

“How come?”

“The medicine you take.”

Andy let the conversation drop then. He was afraid that Moloch

would order him to abandon his pills, and he did not know how to refuse.

Another time, Andy was telling Moloch about the day he and Dawn had outraced hell.

“How do you know you truly succeeded?” asked Moloch.

“Cuz the sky. It changed—”

“Did it, though? Your wife said it did not.”

Andy had not told Moloch anything about that comment of Dawn’s. Yet he knew, just as he had known Mister Ptakcek’s name.…

“You’re telling me I might still be in hell then? How can I be sure I’m not? How can a man be sure of anything in this world?”

“There is one way to determine if this is hell or not.”

“What is it?” asked Andy suspiciously.

“In hell, no one has free will. They must do what they are told. If you exercise your birthright as a being made in My image, if you show initiative, do something unexpected—only then will you be sure this is not hell.”

“What could I do? What would be enough to prove it?”

“Do not look to Me for orders,” said Moloch sternly. “Simply following My commands would prove nothing. I could be Satan in disguise.”

“I don’t want no orders. Just gimme some suggestions.”

“All right. If you sincerely wish Me to.”

“I do.”

“Do not listen to your wife or Mister Ptakcek.”

“Okay.”

“Do not take your pills.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Moloch, I don’t—”

“Do you wish to live in hell?”

“All right, ‘don’t take my pills.’ What else?”

“Bring Me your sons.”

6

The car was a ’78 Thunderbird, in fair shape. Andy and Dawn had come up in the world since he got the job at the mill.

It was a Sunday. The car was alone on the road. The sky overhead was a seamless, variegated grey, like felted lint from a dryer vent.

The car passed through the center of town, heading west on Highway 61, away from the mill. About a mile beyond the last house, it made a U-turn and headed back. It detoured through the hollow where the Reverend Wade Demure kept church. Sounds of ragged singing issued from within the asphalt-clad tenement, a dismally joyful noise that sought to rise heavenward but only filled the hollow like clammy fog. The woman with the disease-wracked face contributed a recognizable gargle.

The car navigated through residential streets, uphill and down, wandering aimlessly. Like a dog chained to a stake, however, its movements were bounded by a central pull, an almost gravitational force at the heart of its existence: the mill.

Simon and Peter were in the back seat. Peter sat on a little bolster apparatus of molded plastic. Simon still used the infant carrier that had once been his brother’s. The passage of time, the friction of its two passengers, had worn the smiling faces off the multiple suns, restoring them once more to a frightful primeval obscurity. Both boys were carefully belted to keep them safe from accidental injury.

Dawn said, “Let’s be getting home, Andy. It’s almost lunchtime, and the boys must be hungry. We had enough of a holiday drive.” Dawn turned and hung one arm over the seat. “Ain’t that so, boys?”

The boys said nothing. They seemed stupefied, bemused, almost drugged.

Andy’s grip on the wheel was tetanus-tight. “Just one more stop, Dawn. I want to show the boys where their daddy works.”

“Aw, honey, they ain’t old enough to appreciate the mill. ’Specially little Simon.” Dawn reached over the seat to adjust Simon in the carrier. Her position was awkward, and she succeeded only in pushing Simon’s bonnet down over his eyes, so that his backward view of the objects they flew from—the landscape which seemed almost to push them away, to hurl itself in retreat from the car—was cut off.

Andy did not reply, but simply drove on.

The vast parking lot of the mill was empty, save for the lone car of the security guard, who, sitting bored in his gateside booth, waved the Stiles family through when Andy explained what he was about.

Andy parked the Thunderbird near the main door of the mill.

Dawn said, “Aw, Andy, why you stopping? The boys can see the mill good enough from here. Can’t you, boys?”

Andy did not reply to Dawn because he did not hear her. Moloch was speaking to him. This was unique. Moloch had never spoken to him outside the mill before. It must be because he had stopped taking his pills.

“You have brought your sons to Me, Andrew. This is good. You exhibit strength of will. You are almost assured of learning a very important truth: your whereabouts. But you are not quite done. You must bring the boys inside, to see Me.”

“What about Dawn?”

“She cannot come.”

“What’ll I tell her?”

“You must decide.”

Andy levered open his door. He stepped out and opened the rear door on his side. He unbuckled Peter and pulled him out. Then, leaning in, he removed Simon from his carrier.

“Andy,” said Dawn, “what’s going on?”

“I got to take the boys inside for just a minute.”

“I don’t know, Andy. Is that smart? It could be dangerous in there for a child …”

“Everything’s shut down. Ain’t nothing that can hurt them.”

“Oh, all right,” said Dawn. “One minute.” She moved to get out.

“No, honey, just me and the boys. It’s—it’s personal. Man to man. I want to show them what they got to look forward to when they grow up.”

Dawn settled back into her seat. “Of all the silly notions,” she said, although she seemed rather pleased. “I hope our boys’ll be doing better than working in a mill.”

Carrying Simon, holding Peter’s hand, Andy walked to the main door of the mill. It was locked.

“The side entrance is unsecured,” said Moloch.

Andy went to it. Moloch had spoken true.

Once inside, Andy locked the door. He walked to the basic oxygen furnace where Moloch had first spoken to him. It was cold.

“You are a good and loyal listener,” said Moloch. “Give Me the boys.”

Andy knew it was much too late to argue. He activated the motors of the cold furnace, which whined like animals whose legs were pinioned in traps. The pear-shaped vessel tilted to a point where Andy could just reach its lip.

“Put the boys in.”

Andy lifted first Peter, then Simon, dropping them both in, where they rolled to the canted bottom. They were curiously mute, almost sedated.

“Leave the vessel in the charging position, and go to the blast furnace.”

Andy did as he was told.

“Melt some ore.”

Andy moved quickly and efficiently. He knew that once he started the blast furnace, people would soon become alerted to the unwonted activity at the mill. Luckily the furnace caught easily, almost unnaturally so. Cans on a conveyor carried the raw ore to the top of the furnace. Soon Andy had tapped molten metal. This metal was a substance at 2,370 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1,300 degrees Centigrade. In the basic oxygen furnace, under the inrush of that life-sustaining gas, it would soar to 3,000° F, or 1,725° C.

There came a banging on the main door. Andy wondered why the watchman didn’t just use his keys. Possibly in the confusion no one remembered. Such things happened. Possibly Moloch was preventing them.

At the receptacle that held the boys, Andy stopped with the charge of molten iron.

“Now?” he asked, already knowing what Moloch would say.

“Yes.”

Luckily it normally took less than five minutes to charge the furnace, and that was with a much larger draught.

There was no noise from inside the kettle as Andy worked. Only a titanic inrush as of breath when the vessel was full, which Andy knew came from Moloch.

Andy righted the vessel and lowered the oxygen lance. This was a steel tube fifty feet long and ten inches in diameter. It descended like the finger of God.

Andy stood watching, listening to the flow of oxygen and to Moloch’s keening exaltations. Then Andy felt hands grabbing him. “Moloch,” he called aloud, “Moloch, now I know!”

But Moloch did not answer.

THE GRANGE

“Look,” said Lucy, “the moon—”

Edward laid down his newspaper and looked up in the sky, where his wife was pointing. A waxing crescent moon, pale as a mermaid’s face, thin as a willow whip, was visible in the translucent blue heavens, trailing the noontime sun by some twenty-five degrees.

“Pretty,” said Edward, making to lift up his paper again.

“Pretty?” Lucy demanded. “Is that all you have to say?”

“What else should I say?”

“Well, what’s it doing up there now? Isn’t that weird? I mean, look, the sun’s still up. It’s only lunchtime.”

Edward slowly folded his newspaper into quarters, stalling for a few seconds. His mind was disordered; his fine intellect, complex as a cat’s cradle, had come completely unknotted in an instant. Lucy did this to him. Even after fifteen years of marriage, she still did this to him. All it took most times was a single utterance winging unexpectedly out of the conversational blue, or an idiosyncratic action. The day she had asked him what ocean Atlantic City fronted on.… Her puzzlement about why one had to apply the brakes when going into a curve.… The hurt incomprehension she had exhibited when she destroyed the microwave oven by trying to warm up a can of soup.…

It was at such times that Edward found himself utterly speechless, baffled by the unfathomable workings of Lucy’s mind. She was quite clever in many ways. That much must be granted. And it wasn’t a lack of logic she exhibited. Far from it. It was a kind of otherworldly, Carrollian logic she possessed, something utterly alien to his rational method of thinking.

He had believed he understood her before their wedding. They had, after all, known each other for most of their lives. Had been the traditional high school sweethearts, in fact. Surely such a long intimacy should have bred comprehension.

What a naive and pompous young idiot he had been! He realized quite fully now that he did not understand her at all, not in the slightest. Would never understand her. But he loved her, and that, he supposed, would have to suffice.

Trying to come up with a rational response to Lucy’s objections to the moon’s sharing of the sun’s domain, Edward studied her where she lay. Reclining on a folding, towel-padded aluminum lawn chair, she wore the smallest of two-piece swimsuits. Her graceful limbs and slim torso were thoroughly oiled and buttered. Her small tummy resembled a shining golden hill, her sweat-filled navel a mysterious well or spring atop it. She was levered partway up on her right elbow and forearm, her eyes shaded with her left hand, facing Edward expectantly.

Knowing full well that it was all in vain, Edward tried to explain.

“There is no reason why the moon cannot be up at the same time as the sun. Because of the special way the sun and the moon and the earth spin around each other, the moon rises at a different time each day—”

“The moon rises?”

“Yes.”

“It isn’t just always there, but you see it only when the sun goes down?”

Edward sighed deeply. “No. Now pay attention. If, one night, it rises at, say 11:00 p.m., the next night it will rise later. Pretty soon it will be rising during the day, like now. Eventually it will go back to rising at night.”

“Why should it work in such a complicated way?”

“Gravity—”

“Stop right there. You know I don’t understand that word.”

“Well, then, you’ll never understand why the moon can be up during the day.”

Lucy flopped back onto the lawn chair. “Maybe I don’t want to understand. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe this is a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, and you just think you’ve seen the moon in the daytime before.”

Edward started to get irritated. “Listen, I know what I know. The moon is often up during the daytime. I’ve seen it a hundred times, if I’ve seen it once.”

“You’re pulling my leg.”

“No, honest, I’m not.”

“Well, I’ve never seen it before.”

“You’ve seen it now.”

“Now is not always. Like you keep saying, ‘One item does not make a series.’”

“Look for it tomorrow, then, if you don’t believe me.”

“Just forget it, then.”

“Maybe I’ll do just that.”

Edward tried to resume reading his paper. For some reason he had lost all relish for it. In the back of his mind was a nagging uncertainty. Had he ever seen the moon by day before …?

Lucy spoke sleepily. “Why don’t you take off that silly hat and get some sun?”