The Society of S (13 page)

“No, I never have,” she said slowly. “But there might be something in the attic. That’s where they put all her things. When I first started working here, Miss Root and Dennis were gathering them up for storage.”

“What sorts of things?”

“Clothing and books, mostly. Your mother apparently was quite a reader.”

“What sorts of books?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She pushed her chair back away from the table. “You might want to ask your father about that.”

I excused myself and headed upstairs. The staircase to the third story was uncarpeted, and my footsteps sounded loud as I went up. But the attic door was locked.

So I went on up the final set of stairs, the air growing colder with each step. The top of the house was uninviting, always too hot or too cold, but today the cold didn’t bother me.

Inside the cupola, I sat on a tall stool set before the oculus window — my round eye on the world — and looked out, over the rooftops of our neighbors and across the gray sky into the blue beyond. Beyond the houses, beyond the city of Saratoga Springs, lay a vast world, waiting to be explored.

I thought of the great-grandmother in
The Princess and the Goblin
, who lived in a rose-scented, transparent-walled room lit by its own moon, set high above the world. She gave her great-granddaughter, the Princess, a ball of invisible thread that led her out of peril, away from the goblins, back to the rose-scented room.

Like me, the Princess had lost her mother. But she had the thread.

“Do you ever dream crossword puzzles?” I asked my father when we met later that day.

For a second his face froze — the numb expression it normally wore when I tried to talk about my mother.

I answered my own question. “She did, didn’t she? My mother. She dreamed crosswords.”

“She did.” He said such dreams were signs of an “overactive mind.” He advised that I massage my feet lightly before retiring.

And then he launched into another physics lesson.

We were deep in a discussion of electromagnetic radiation phenomena when someone knocked on the door, then opened it slightly. Root’s ugly face appeared in the crack.

“The delivery man needs to talk to you,” she said. She kept her eyes on my father, not even glancing at me.

“Excuse me, Ari.” My father rose and left the room.

When he didn’t return, I went to the window and pushed aside its heavy drapes. A black car was parked in the yard near the house’s rear entrance. On its side were the words “Sullivan Family Funeral Home.”

About ten minutes passed before I heard the door open again. I was standing before a brass-framed oval Victorian shadowbox that hung on the wall. Inside it, encapsulated for eternity, were three brown wrens, a monarch butterfly, and two sheaves of wheat. But I wasn’t looking at them — I was studying my wavy reflection in the convex glass that held them in.

Root’s voice came from behind me. “He says to tell you he won’t be back today,” she said. “He says he’s
sorry.”

As I turned around I thought that I should apologize to her, but her tone of voice was so contemptuous that I knew I never would. “Why can’t he come back?” I asked.

“He’s needed downstairs.” Her breathing made a raspy sound.

“Why? For what?”

Her small black eyes flashed at me. “That’s Seradrone’s business. Why do you ask so many questions? Don’t you realize the trouble you cause?” She moved toward the door, but as she opened it, she turned her head. “And why waste your time looking at your reflection?
You
know who you are.”

She slammed the door as she left. For a moment I fantasized about going after her, yanking her chin hairs, slapping her — or doing something worse.

Instead, I went upstairs and called Kathleen.

“My school has been cancelled today,” I told her.

As I pushed my bicycle along the gravel driveway that led from the garage to the street, I noticed that the car from the funeral home was gone. Perhaps my father was on his way upstairs again. I hesitated, but decided to press on. Kathleen was waiting for me.

It was a dull day in mid-November, the smell of dead leaves in the air. As I rode through the streets, the wind stung my face. Soon we would have snow, and the bicycle would stay in the garage until April, or even May.

As soon as I entered the soda shop I saw her, sitting in a booth. She wore a black sweater and black pants, and she was drinking coffee. I sat down and ordered a cola.

“That’s an interesting necklace,” I said. A round silver pendant hung from a silk cord, next to the flannel bag of herbs.

“It’s a pentacle,” she said. “Ari, I have to tell you. I’ve become a pagan.”

The server brought my soda. I unwrapped the straw slowly, not sure what to say. “That could mean several things,” I said finally.

Kathleen ran her hands through her hair. Her fingernails were painted black, and her hair looked freshly dyed. Next to her, in my fleece jacket and jeans, I felt dull and ordinary.

“We practice spells,” she said. “And we’re into role-playing.”

I had no idea what role-playing meant. “Is that why your mother is worried about you?”

“My mother!” Kathleen shook her head. “She’s impossible lately. She really doesn’t have a clue.” She took a long sip of coffee, which also was black.

I couldn’t drink that stuff, and I watched her with awe.

“She found one of my notebooks and got all alarmed about it.”

Kathleen reached into a battered backpack on the seat next to her, and pulled out a spiral notebook with a black cover. She opened it, and slid it across the table to me.

Under the heading
Magick Chants
was written what looked like poetry.

Oh, do not tell the Priest of our Art,

Or he would call it sin;

But we shall be out in the woods all night,

A conjuring summer in!

And on the next page:

When Misfortune is enow, wear the Blue Star on thy brow
.

True in Love ever be, Unless thy Lover be false to thee
.

I knew better than to ask what it meant. My father had taught me that one never asks what poetry means.

“I don’t see anything so worrisome in that,” I said.

“Of course not.” Kathleen gave a withering look at the seat next to me, apparently imagining her mother sitting there. “It’s really cool stuff. You’ll see. We’re going over to Ryan’s house to do some role-playing.”

“We are?” I said. “When?”

“Now,” she said.

We left our bikes in the rack outside the soda shop and walked to Ryan’s house, a few blocks away. It was a small shabby house, very like the McGarritts’ place, but a new-looking greenhouse had been attached to one side. We paused for a moment to peer through the steamed-up glass walls, but saw only vague green shapes and purplish overhead lights through the condensation-beaded panes.

“Ryan’s dad’s hobby is growing orchids,” Kathleen said. “He sells them to those rich old women on the other side of town. They even have an orchid club.”

Ryan answered the doorbell. His short blond hair had been spiked with some sort of hair gel. Like Kathleen, he wore black. “Merry meet,” he said.

“Merry meet,” Kathleen said.

I said, “Hello.”

Inside, all the lights were off, and candles burned on every available surface. Four people reclined on floor cushions; I recognized two from the dance. Michael was not among them.

“Who did you bring?” someone asked Kathleen.

“This is Ari,” she said. “I thought the game needed some fresh blood.”

The next hour seemed interminable to me, thanks to an interminable amount of dice-rolling, paced movements around the room, and shouts: “Vanquish!” or “My invisibility is almost depleted!” or “Regenerate!” or “My rage is empty!” Two of the boys played werewolves (they had the letter
W
taped to their shirts), and the rest were vampires (wearing black t-shirts and rubber fangs). I was the only “mortal” in the room. Because it was my first time, they advised me to watch rather than play — and I sensed that they liked having an audience.

Nearly everything they said and pretended to do was consistent with what the Internet said about vampires. They shuddered at the sight of a crucifix; they turned into imaginary bats at will; they “flew”; and they used their virtual powers of agility and strength to scale imaginary walls and jump imaginary rooftops — all within a fifteen-by-twenty-foot living room.

They moved through the alleyways of an imaginary city, picking up cards representing coins and special tools and weapons, feigning at fighting and biting while barely touching. In fact, all five of the boys struck me as shy by nature, overacting in their attempts to socialize. Besides me, Kathleen was the only other woman present, and she moved around the room aggressively, as if she owned it. At times the others tried to gang up on her, and she fended them off almost effortlessly. She knew the most spells, and apparently she had the most detailed notebook.

Occasionally the players robbed one another and deposited their stolen coins in imaginary banks — ever the good capitalists, I thought. The game centered less on fantasy than on greed and domination.

The room’s air grew stale with the intensity of their efforts and with the noxious smells of their orange-colored snack foods. I stood it as long as I could. Finally, claustrophobia and boredom drove me out of the room. I went through the kitchen, visited the bathroom, then followed a corridor that ended at a thick door with a glass window: the entrance to the greenhouse.

Once I opened the door, humid air washed over me, carrying a lush scent of vegetation. On table after table, potted orchids seemed to nod slightly in breezes generated by the slow revolutions of ceiling fans. The violet-tinged overhead lights made me a little dizzy, so I made sure not to stand directly beneath them. They turned the colors of the blooms luminous: deep violets and magentas, ivories veined in palest pink, yellows spotted with amber — all vivid against deep green foliage. Some orchids looked like tiny faces, with eyes and mouths, and I walked down the aisles, greeting them: “Hello, Ultraviolet. Bon soir, Banana.”

At last
, I thought,
an escape from the gray winter of Saratoga Springs. Ryan’s father should charge admission
. As I breathed, the humid air circulated through my body, making me relaxed, almost drowsy.

Then the door swung open. A heavyset, freckled boy in black strode in. “Mortal, I am here to sire you,” he said, his voice quavering. He opened his mouth to reveal fake fangs.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

I stared into his eyes — small and dark, but somewhat magnified by his eyeglasses — and held them steady.

He stared back. He didn’t move. For a while I looked at him, at his reddened face, at the two nascent pimples eager to erupt on his chin. Nothing about him moved, and I wondered if I’d hypnotized him. “Get me a glass of water,” I said.