Untitled (22 page)

  Understandably, none of them knew how to proceed. Luckily, I was there. They might have been falling into a state of shock, but I knew how to proceed. I knew how to end it.

  I pulled the sharpened length of wood from under my coat and tossed it to the clown. "Stake him! Through the heart!"

  He held the stake loosely in his hand, staring down at it, a look of horror on his face.

  "Now!" I yelled. "It's our only chance!"

  The clown raised his weapon, determination coming over his features, and he plunged forward. The stake met its mark, and a jet of preternatural blood spurted out of the creature's chest.

  Chalk one up for the good guys.

  My work done, I headed down the block before they started to lavish me with gratitude and praise. As an afterthought, I yelled back, "Remember to cut off the head and stuff it with garlic. Then burn it and the body separately!"

  I turned the corner, leaving them to deal with the cleanup and the local authorities. I figured they owed me that much, after all I'd done for them. Besides, the night was still young, there were plenty of other unholy creatures to dispatch and plenty of candy around for the taking.

The light bulb died with a small
pop
that scared Mrs. Ward. She was sixty-seven years old, so it wasn't the first time a light bulb had died in her presence. But it was always an unsettling thing. At first, one was apt to think the pop and the world's sudden dimming were internal, as though a brain cell had overexerted itself and suddenly burst.

  She was delighted to discover that she was not having a stroke, and, dropping her knitting into her lap, she shouted for her husband.

  "What is it Marge?" he asked, coming up from the basement.

  "This lamp blew out," she said.

  Her husband walked over to the lamp, unscrewed the bulb, and walked off into the kitchen without saying a word. He returned with a new bulb. "Now we'll see if this sucker works," he said.

  "Why shouldn't it work?" Marge asked. Her husband was an exasperating man.

  "This is one of those light bulbs you made me buy from that odd fellow come round here yesterday. You remember. He said the money would go to good works and I said, 'What good works?' and he said – and not right away, but like he was making it up – he said, 'The blind.' "

  "I remember that you were rude, Harry Ward, and that's why I had to make you buy a box. Sometimes you act like you were raised by apes."

  "I couldn't help laughing," Harry said. " 'Light bulbs for the blind is kind of like earplugs for the deaf, ain't it?' I says. Now that was damned funny, but he didn't laugh. And I bought his box of light bulbs, didn't I? Two dozen to a box, Marge!" Harry held the light bulb up and regarded it with narrowed eyes. "Looks okay – which is more than you can say for that fellow hawking them. Here it is, maybe ninety degrees in the shade, and he's got on an overcoat, and his face is as white as plaster and his lips are red – that had to be lipstick, Marge – and he's got a scarf pulled up to his chin like he's freezing."

  "The poor man was probably sick, Harry." Marge sighed. Her husband wasn't a sensitive man. He had his good points, of course, but sometimes she was hard pressed to say just what they were. Forty years ago, he had looked good with a mustache, and he had had a kind of haunted, poetic intensity. Now the mustache was gone, and the intensity was a sort of worried, pinched look, like a spinster who's convinced there is a gas leak on the premises.

  "I need to get on with this knitting," Marge said.

  "Okay," Harry said. "You always were an impatient woman."

  Harry leaned over the lamp and screwed the bulb in. The room brightened.

  "Well, it works," Harry said.

  "Of course it works," Marge said.

  Harry went back down into the basement, and Marge returned to her knitting. She dozed off for awhile, waking at around ten that evening when Harry came back upstairs.

  "I'm going to bed," he said.

  "I think I'll read a bit," Marge said. "I'm not the least bit sleepy."

  She watched her husband march upstairs. She waited until the bedroom door closed, and then she went into the kitchen. She found the box of light bulbs in a cupboard. Then she got the stepladder out and placed it in the middle of the floor and climbed up and unscrewed the ceiling light fixture and replaced all three bulbs. She threw the old bulbs in the trash and moved on to the dining room.

  By the time she had carried the stepladder upstairs and was unscrewing the light in the bathroom, she was worn out. You never gave a thought to how many light bulbs a house contained until you replaced the lot of them all at once.

  And why – why do such a thing? If asked, if stopped by a concerned observer placing a hand on her shoulder, Marge would have said, "Why, I don't know. I can't really say just why." But there was no one to tender the question, and Marge's only thought was that it was a tiresome task. And the bedroom itself would have to wait until morning.

The odd fellow who had sold the light bulbs to the Wards was a magician named Ernest Jones. An accident while conjuring up certain demons had placed him in thrall to the Fair Ones, and he was now doing their bidding, distributing the light bulbs that would call them.

  Despite the blazing Florida sun, he was freezing as he worked. He was cold right to the bone, cold clean through.

  He was back at the caravan, packing a last light bulb into the box when his rival, a tall, smooth-talking magician named Blake, came into the trailer.

  "I know what you are up to," Blake said. "You are lighting the world, so that the Fair Ones may find their way."

  "Could be," Jones said. "I would advise you to mind your own business."

  "Your advice comes too late," Blake said. "I followed you yesterday. I know what you are up to, and I'm not letting it happen."

  "Look," Jones said, turning around. "I tell you what. I'll cut you in. You can be a Vanguard too. The Fair Ones can be quite generous to those who aid them."

  Blake, a thin, haughty young man with an imperious air, chuckled. "I am afraid I have already negotiated a different contract. I have made a deal with the Immutable Abyss."

  Blake produced a light bulb from his ample magician's pockets. "I have my own beacons," he said.

  Jones growled low in his throat and rushed the taller man, who stumbled. The light bulb fell, smashing on the floor. A black, metallic lizardlike creature darted across the linoleum floor, barking sharply.

  Jones and Blake wrestled on the floor. Blake suddenly went limp, and Jones stood up.

  "You sonofabitch," Jones muttered. He began to intone the words that would summon the scavenger demons.

  Blake, still lying on the floor, opened his eyes. He produced a small silver revolver and shot Jones in mid-incantation.

  Blake summoned his own unholy crew to clean up the corpse. While they were munching on the mortal remains of his rival, Blake methodically destroyed the boxed light bulbs, crushing each spiderlike creature as it emerged from its shattered casing. Repacking the box with his Master's own beacons, he sang softly to himself. "That old black magic got me in its spell . . ."

Louise was new to country living, and she hated it. She was a young woman, twenty-two, in the prime of her life; she wasn't ready to retire to a screened-in porch, a rocking chair, and the conversation of about a jillion insects. Johnny had talked her into moving out here, saying, "I'll be the one who will have to drive fifty miles to work each day. All I'm asking is that you give it a try."

  Where had her mind been? she wondered. "Louise Rivers," she said to the empty room, "a siren should go off in your mind when Johnny starts off, 'All I'm asking.' "
All I'm asking is you go to
one movie with me. All I'm asking is one kiss. All I'm asking is
you take off your pantyhose so I can admire your knees. Y
eah, sure.

  So here she was stuck in the country and it was five miles to the miserable little fly-blown grocery store, and no car, and hot enough outside to melt the sunglasses she'd left on the lawn chair.

  Louise walked up the dirt road to the Wards, feeling the midday sun breathing on the back of her neck like a rabid dog. The Wards lived in an old farmhouse squatting low in the Florida dust, palmettos flanking the door, a pickup truck under the single live oak tree.

  Louise had the grocery list in her hand and the words in her mind:
If you are going to the store, I wonder could you pick up a
few things for me.

  The Wards seemed nice enough, an old couple who had been married forever and even looked a bit alike, the way long-married couples will.

  Louise knocked on the door. No one answered.

  "Hello," Louise called. Maybe they were napping. The country inspired sleep.

  Louise knocked louder. She turned the doorknob and pushed. The door swung inward, and an intense flickering light greeted her.

  "Mrs. Ward?" Louise shouted. The living room was bathed in silver light that leeched color from the walls, the sofa, the patterned chairs. Mrs. Ward rose from the sofa. The strobelike flashes made her movements jerky, image superimposed on image.

  "Come in, my dear," Mrs. Ward said.

  Mrs. Ward took Louise's arm and led her to the sofa.

  The room was cold, like being inside a meat freezer. Mrs. Ward was wearing several sweaters, and a woolen cap was pulled down over her head, hiding her hair.

  Mrs. Ward turned and shouted. "Harry, look who's here. It's our neighbor."

  Louise looked to the top of the stairs where Mr. Ward stood. He began to move down the stairs, somewhat awkwardly for he was clasping a large box in his arms.

  "Hello, hello!" Mr. Ward shouted. He was smiling and, like his wife, he was bundled up against the cold.

  Louise had grown accustomed to the light. The brief moment of terror and dread had passed, and now the light seemed sweetly inquisitive, like the hands of children, shyly touching her face, sliding over her arms, gently stroking her mind.

  "It's very bright," Louise said. She had forgotten why she had come.

  Mrs. Ward leaned forward and patted Louise's blue-jeaned knee. "Not nearly enough," Mrs. Ward said. "There's not nearly enough light yet. It's still black as night as far as the Fair Ones are concerned. Harry and I do what we can, but we are only two people. You'll help, won't you?"

  "Well, of course," said Louise.

  Harry shuffled up to them and put the box on the floor. He reached into the box and pulled out a light bulb.

  "My dear," Harry said, and he handed it to Louise with a courtly flourish as though presenting a rose.

  Louise was charmed. "Why thank you," said Louise. The light bulb was cold and seemed to vibrate when she held it against her cheek.

  "Please take a box with you when you go," Mrs. Ward said. "We've plenty."

  
Country people
, thought Louise,
are so generous.

It was already dark when Johnny took the exit to Polk Hill. He had had to stop once because love bugs had squashed up on the windshield in such numbers that he couldn't see. The Florida travel brochures were curiously silent on these little bastards, who haunted the highways in black clouds, always mating (hence, their name). The rotten insects had created an industry: love bug radiator grill guards, love bug solvent for the windshields, love bug joke bumper stickers.

  Still, Johnny loved Florida, the way only a kid from Minnesota can love it. If he never saw another snowfall, another ice-laden tree, it would be okay. Louise had felt the same way. At first they had lived in Tampa but it was too big a city so he had talked Louise into moving out to Polk Hill, which was real country, filled with cows and cattle egrets and rednecks with dogs.