Ray Bradbury Stories, Volume 1 (3 page)

And then the quick scuttering of tennis shoes padding down through the pit of the ravine as three kids come dashing, giggling. Your brother Skipper, Chuck Redman, and Augie Bartz. Running, giggling.

The stars suck up like the stung antennae of ten million snails.

The crickets sing!

The darkness pulls back, startled, shocked, angry. Pulls back, losing its appetite at being so rudely interrupted as it prepared to feed. As the dark retreats like a wave on a shore, three kids pile out of it, laughing.

‘Hi, Mom! Hi, Shorts! Hey!’

It smells like Skipper all right. Sweat and grass and his oiled leather baseball glove.

‘Young man, you’re going to get a licking,’,declares Mother. She puts away her fear instantly. You know she will never tell anybody of it, ever. It will be in her heart though, for all time, as it is in your heart, for all time.

You walk home to bed in the late summer night. You are glad Skipper is alive. Very glad. For a moment there you thought—

Far off in the dim moonlit country, over a viaduct and down a valley, a train goes rushing along and it whistles like a lost metal thing, nameless and running. You go to bed, shivering, beside your brother, listening to that train whistle, and thinking of a cousin who lived way out in the country where that train is now; a cousin who died of pneumonia late at night years and years ago…You smell the sweat of Skip beside you. It is magic. You stop trembling. You hear footsteps outside the house on the sidewalk, as Mother is turning out the lights. A man clears his throat in a way you recognize.

Mom says, ‘That’s your father.’

It is.

‘Here they come,’ said Cecy, lying there flat in her bed.

‘Where are they?’ cried Timothy from the doorway.

‘Some of them are over Europe, some over Asia, some of them over the Islands, some over South America!’ said Cecy, her eyes closed, the lashes long, brown, and quivering.

Timothy came forward upon the bare plankings of the upstairs room. ‘Who are they?’

‘Uncle Einar and Uncle Fry, and there’s Cousin William, and I see Frulda and Helgar and Aunt Morgiana and Cousin Vivian, and I see Uncle Johann! They’re all coming fast!’

‘Are they up in the sky?’ cried Timothy, his little gray eyes flashing. Standing by the bed, he looked no more than his fourteen years. The wind blew outside, the house was dark and lit only by starlight.

‘They’re coming through the air and traveling along the ground, in many forms,’ said Cecy, in her sleeping. She did not move on the bed: she thought inward on herself and told what she saw. ‘I see a wolflike thing coming over a dark river—at the shallows—just above a waterfall, the starlight shining up his pelt. I see a brown oak leaf blowing far up in the sky. I see a small bat flying. I see many other things, running through the forest trees and slipping through the highest branches: and they’re
all
coming this way!’

‘Will they be here by tomorrow night?’ Timothy clutched the bedclothes. The spider on his lapel swung like a black pendulum, excitedly dancing. He leaned over his sister. ‘Will they all be here in time for the Homecoming?’

‘Yes, yes, Timothy, yes,’ sighed Cecy. She stiffened. ‘Ask no more of me. Go away now. Let me travel in the places I like best.’

‘Thanks, Cecy,’ he said. Out in the hall, he ran to his room. He hurriedly made his bed. He had just awakened a few minutes ago, at sunset, and as the first stars had risen, he had gone to let his excitement about the
party run with Cecy. Now she slept so quietly there was not a sound. The spider hung on a silvery lasso about Timothy’s slender neck as he washed his face. ‘Just think. Spid, tomorrow night is Allhallows Eve!’

He lifted his face and looked into the mirror. His was the only mirror allowed in the house. It was his mother’s concession to his illness. Oh, if only he were not so afflicted! He opened his mouth, surveyed the poor, inadequate teeth nature had given him. No more than so many corn kernels—round, soft and pale in his jaws. Some of the high spirit died in him.

It was now totally dark and he lit a candle to see by. He felt exhausted. This past week the whole family had lived in the fashion of the old country. Sleeping by day, rousing at sunset to move about. There were blue hollows under his eyes. ‘Spid. I’m no good,’ he said, quietly, to the little creature. ‘I can’t even get used to sleeping days like the others.’

He took up the candleholder. Oh, to have strong teeth, with incisors like steel spikes. Or strong hands, even, or a strong mind. Even to have the power to send one’s mind out, free, as Cecy did. But, no, he was the imperfect one, the sick one. He was even—he shivered and drew the candle flame closer—afraid of the dark. His brothers snorted at him. Bion and Leonard and Sam. They laughed at him because he slept in a bed. With Cecy it was different; her bed was part of her comfort for the composure necessary to send her mind abroad to hunt. But Timothy, did he sleep in the wonderful polished boxes like the others? He did not! Mother let him have his own bed, his own room, his own mirror. No wonder the family skirted him like a holy man’s crucifix. If only the wings would sprout from his shoulder blades. He bared his back, stared at it. And sighed again. No chance. Never.

Downstairs were exciting and mysterious sounds, the slithering black crape going up in all the halls and on the ceilings and doors. The sputter of burning black tapers in the banistered stairwell. Mother’s voice, high and firm. Father’s voice, echoing from the damp cellar. Bion walking from outside the old country house lugging vast two-gallon jugs.

‘I’ve just got to go to the party, Spid,’ said Timothy. The spider whirled at the end of its silk, and Timothy felt alone. He would polish cases, fetch toadstools and spiders, hang crape, but when the party started he’d be ignored. The less seen or said of the imperfect son the better.

All through the house below, Laura ran.

‘The Homecoming!’ she shouted gaily. ‘The Homecoming!’ Her footsteps everywhere at once.

Timothy passed Cecy’s room again, and she was sleeping quietly. Once a month she went belowstairs. Always she stayed in bed. Lovely Cecy. He felt like asking her, ‘Where are you now, Cecy? And
in
who? And what’s
happening? Are you beyond the hills? And what goes on there?’ But he went on to Ellen’s room instead.

Ellen sat at her desk, sorting out many kinds of blonde, red and black hair and little scimitars of fingernails gathered from her manicurist job at the Mellin Village beauty parlor fifteen miles over. A sturdy mahogany case lay in one corner with her name on it.

‘Go away,’ she said, not even looking at him. ‘I can’t work with you gawking.’

‘Allhallows Eve, Ellen: just think!’ he said, trying to be friendly.

‘Hunh!’ She put some fingernail clippings in a small white sack, labeled them. ‘What can it mean to you? What do you know of it? It’ll scare hell out of you. Go back to bed.’

His cheeks burned. ‘I’m needed to polish and work and help serve.’

‘If you don’t go, you’ll find a dozen raw oysters in your bed tomorrow,’ said Ellen, matter-of-factly. ‘Good-by, Timothy.’

In his anger, rushing downstairs, he bumped into Laura.

‘Watch where you’re going!’ she shrieked from clenched teeth.

She swept away. He ran to the open cellar door, smelled the channel of moist earthy air rising from below. ‘Father?’

‘It’s about time,’ Father shouted up the steps. ‘Hurry down, or they’ll he here before we’re ready!’

Timothy hesitated only long enough to hear the million other sounds in the house. Brothers came and went like trains in a station, talking and arguing. If you stood in one spot long enough the entire household passed with their pale hands full of things. Leonard with his little black medical case. Samuel with his large, dusty ebon-bound book under his arm, bearing more black crape, and Bion excursioning to the car outside and bringing in many more gallons of liquid.

Father stopped polishing to give Timothy a rag and a scowl. He thumped the huge mahogany box. ‘Come on, shine this up, so we can start on another. Sleep your life away.’

While waxing the surface, Timothy looked inside.

‘Uncle Einar’s a big man, isn’t he, Papa?’

‘Unh.’

‘How big is he?’

‘The size of the box’ll tell you.’

‘I was only asking. Seven feet tall?’

‘You talk a lot?’

About nine o’clock Timothy went out into the October weather. For two hours in the now-warm, now-cold wind he walked the meadows collecting toadstools and spiders. His heart began to beat with anticipation again. How many relatives had Mother said would come? Seventy? One hundred?
He passed a farmhouse. If only you knew what was happening at our house, he said to the glowing windows. He climbed a hill and looked at the town, miles away, settling into sleep, the town-hall clock, high and round, white in the distance. The town did not know, either. He brought home many jars of toadstools and spiders.

In the little chapel belowstairs a brief ceremony was celebrated. It was like all the other rituals over the years, with Father chanting the dark lines, Mother’s beautiful white ivory hands moving in the reverse blessings, and all the children gathered except Cecy, who lay upstairs in bed. But Cecy was present. You saw her peering, now from Bion’s eyes, now Samuel’s, now Mother’s, and you felt a movement and now she was in you, fleetingly, and gone.

Timothy prayed to the Dark One with a tightened stomach. ‘Please, please, help me grow up, help me be like my sisters and brothers. Don’t let me be different. If only I could put the hair in the plastic images as Ellen does, or make people fall in love with me as Laura does with people, or read strange books as Sam does, or work in a respected job like Leonard and Bion do. Or even raise a family one day, as Mother and Father have done…’

At midnight a storm hammered the house. Lightning struck outside in amazing, snow-white bolts. There was a sound of an approaching, probing, sucking tornado, funneling and nuzzling the moist night earth. Then the front door, blasted half off its hinges, hung stiff and discarded, and in trooped Grandmama and Grandpapa, all the way from the old country!

From then on people arrived each hour. There was a flutter at the side window, a rap on the front porch, a knock at the back. There were fey noises from the cellar; autumn wind piped down the chimney throat, chanting. Mother filled the large crystal punch bowl with a scarlet fluid poured from the jugs Bion had carried home. Father swept from room to room lighting more tapers. Laura and Ellen hammered up more wolfsbane. And Timothy stood amidst this wild excitement, no expression to his face, his hands trembling at his sides, gazing now here, now there. Banging of doors, laughter, the sound of liquid pouring, darkness, sound of wind, the webbed thunder of wings, the padding of feet, the welcoming bursts of talk at the entrances, the transparent rattlings of casements, the shadows passing, coming, going, wavering.

‘Well, well, and
this
must be Timothy!’

‘What?’

A chilly hand took his hand. A long hairy face leaned down over him. ‘A good lad, a fine lad,’ said the stranger.

‘Timothy,’ said his mother. ‘This is Uncle Jason.’

‘Hello, Uncle Jason.’

‘And over here—’ Mother drifted Uncle Jason away. Uncle Jason peered back at Timothy over his caped shoulder, and winked.

Timothy stood alone.

From off a thousand miles in the candled darkness, he heard a high fluting voice; that was Ellen. ‘And my brothers, they
are
clever. Can you guess their occupations, Aunt Morgiana?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘They operate the undertaking establishment in town.’

‘What!’ A gasp.

‘Yes!’ Shrill laughter. ‘Isn’t that priceless!’

Timothy stood very still.

A pause in the laughter. ‘They bring home sustenance for Mama, Papa and all of us,’ said Laura. ‘Except, of course, Timothy…’

An uneasy silence. Uncle Jason’s voice demanded. ‘Well? Come now. What about Timothy?’

‘Oh, Laura, your tongue,’ said Mother.

Laura went on with it, Timothy shut his eyes. ‘Timothy doesn’t—well—doesn’t
like
blood. He’s delicate.’

‘He’ll learn,’ said Mother. ‘He’ll learn,’ she said very firmly. ‘He’s my son, and he’ll learn. He’s only fourteen.’

‘But I was raised on the stuff,’ said Uncle Jason, his voice passing from one room on into another. The wind played the trees outside like harps. A little rain spatted on the windows—‘raised on the stuff,’ passing away into faintness.

Timothy bit his lips and opened his eyes.

‘Well, it was all my fault.’ Mother was showing them into the kitchen now. ‘I tried forcing him. You can’t force children, you only make them sick, and then they never get a taste for things. Look at Bion, now, he was thirteen before he…’

‘I understand,’ murmured Uncle Jason. ‘Timothy will come around.’

‘I’m sure he will,’ said Mother, defiantly.

Candle flames quivered as shadows crossed and recrossed the dozen musty rooms. Timothy was cold. He smelled the hot tallow in his nostrils and instinctively he grabbed at a candle and walked with it around and about the house, pretending to straighten the crape.

‘
Timothy
,’ someone whispered behind a patterned wall, hissing and sizzling and sighing the words, ‘
Timothy is afraid of the dark
.’

Leonard’s voice. Hateful Leonard!

‘I like the candle, that’s all,’ said Timothy in a reproachful whisper.

More lightning, more thunder. Cascades of roaring laughter. Bangings and clickings and shouts and rustles of clothing. Clammy fog swept through the front door. Out of the fog, settling his wings, stalked a tall man.

‘Uncle Einar!’

Timothy propelled himself on his thin legs, straight through the fog, under the green webbing shadows. He threw himself across Einar’s arms. Einar lifted him.

‘You’ve wings, Timothy!’ He tossed the boy light as thistles. ‘Wings, Timothy: fly!’ Faces wheeled under. Darkness rotated. The house blew away. Timothy felt breezelike. He flapped his arms. Einar’s fingers caught and threw him once more to the ceiling. The ceiling rushed down like a charred wall. ‘Fly, Timothy!’ shouted Einar, loud and deep. ‘Fly with wings! Wings!’

He felt an exquisite ecstasy in his shoulder blades, as if roots grew, burst to explode and blossom into new, moist membrane. He babbled wild stuff; again Einar hurled him high.

The autumn wind broke in a tide on the house, rain crashed down, shaking the beams, causing chandeliers to tilt their enraged candle lights. And the one hundred relatives peered out from every black, enchanted room, circling inward, all shapes and sizes, to where Einar balanced the child like a baton in the roaring spaces.

‘Enough!’ shouted Einar, at last.

Timothy, deposited on the floor timbers, exaltedly, exhaustedly fell against Uncle Einar, sobbing happily. ‘Uncle, uncle, uncle!’

‘Was it good, flying? Eh, Timothy?’ said Uncle Einar, bending down, patting Timothy’s head. ‘Good, good.’

It was coming toward dawn. Most had arrived and were ready to bed down for the daylight, sleep motionlessly with no sound until the following sunset, when they would shout out of their mahogany boxes for the revelry.

Uncle Einar, followed by dozens of others, moved toward the cellar. Mother directed them downward to the crowded row on row of highly polished boxes. Einar, his wings like sea-green tarpaulins tented behind him, moved with a curious whistling down the passageway: where his wings touched they made a sound of drumheads gently beaten.

Upstairs, Timothy lay wearily thinking, trying to like the darkness. There was so much you could do in darkness that people couldn’t criticize you for, because they never saw you. He
did
like the night, but it was a qualified liking: sometimes there was so much night he cried out in rebellion.