Waking the Moon (27 page)

I smiled ruefully and shook my head.
I don’t understand anything!
I wanted to yell, but didn’t.

“You really are my soul mate. You and Oliver.” Very tentatively her fingers brushed against the glimmer of light at her throat. Then she reached to take my hand. “Oh, Sweeney.”

I froze, my mouth suddenly dry as I waited for her to pull me closer. But she didn’t, only looked at me for a long moment with those uncanny green eyes. Finally she dropped my hand and continued down the hillside, picking her way carefully among weeds and brambles and stones.

In front of us the field dipped into a tiny hollow and rose again, ending in a grove of birches and sapling pines. In the moonless night the woods looked ominously black. Behind the timid growth of birches and young oaks, the evergreens formed a solid impenetrable wall, with thatched masses of dead ferns and leaves beneath.

“Maybe we should head on back now.” I was afraid that Angelica wanted to plunge on into those woods, and that as her soul mate I would be expected to follow. “I’m kind of cold.”

“Sure.” But abruptly she drew up short. “Sweeney!” she whispered. “There’s somebody there!”

I peered into the darkness, my heart pounding. I could just make out a pale figure sitting in a patch of dried milkweed. I took a few cautious steps forward, then laughed with relief.

“It’s Oliver!”

The night seemed to fall away. I turned giddily and grabbed Angelica. “Oliver!” I shouted.

“Oliver,” repeated Angelica.

He was all alone at the very edge of the field. He had a guitar in his lap and was holding it awkwardly yet lovingly, as though it were a baby. When he saw us, his mouth crooked into that odd canine grin. But he said nothing; only tipped his head so that his face was hidden.

“Oliver,” Angelica called again in a low voice. Her fingers closed about the lunula, so that its gleam was lost to me. Oliver did not raise his eyes. In the cold breeze his long hair rippled, as though some muscular impatient animal waited beneath. And then suddenly he looked up, not focusing on either of us but on some point far far away, between the ghostly shapes of the trees and the diamond-studded sky. In a thin clear plaintive voice—a boy’s voice, slightly off-key but so sweet and earnest it gave me goose bumps—he began to sing.

Seems like a bell rings, time for déjà vu

Everything is familiar now, being here with you

All you’ve ever had before you had to understand

Now all you have to do is want to have at your command.

I have always been here before …

His guitar playing was like his voice—edgy, a little too fast, his fingers stumbling over the chord changes. But there was something about it all—the moonless sky, the trees bereft of leaves, even the wind stirring the dried stalks of milkweed and Queen Anne’s lace—something that was lovelier and lonelier and more fragile than anything I had ever experienced before. I leaned forward until I stood on the balls of my feet, poised for flight, though I didn’t know that then, and as I listened I felt Angelica’s hand slip into mine.

That that is pleasing; that that is real,

That that is forever keeps filling, never filled.

That that snuck up upon you in the night,

That that you remember in an early childhood light

That that was supposed to have frightened you,

But somehow you never took to fight:

I have always been here before …

I began to cry. You have to remember I was so young, and drunk, as full of raw wet emotion as I was of bad wine; but even so there really was something there, I felt it then and years later I knew that I had been right, there really was something about Oliver, and Angelica, and maybe even me; but mostly it was Oliver. Even after all the rest of it, even now, when I think of Oliver that night is what comes to me first: standing in the cold dying grass, with the faint tang of woodsmoke wind-borne from the Orphic Lodge, the stars like cracks in the sky through which I might have peeked and seen all that was to come, if only I had known to look. And Oliver himself, the shadow of the song, singing as though they were the only words he knew

From the gargoyles to Stonehenge

From the Sphinx to the pyramids

From Lucifer’s temples praising the Devil right,

To the Devil’s clock as it strikes midnight—

 I have always been here before.

He fell silent, strummed the guitar a few more times, and then cocked his head to listen to the sound die into the wind.

“Oh,” whispered Angelica. “That was wonderful—what is it, that’s the most beautiful song …”

“No, it’s not,” cried someone behind us. I whirled and saw a pale face peering from a tangle of seedpods and dead grass: Annie, the front of her holey cardigan covered with burdock. “Who said you could use my guitar?”

Oliver stood. He brushed himself off and extended the instrument to her. “I’m sorry, Annie. I didn’t think you’d mind.” Glaring, she took the guitar from him and hugged it to her chest. After a moment she plucked at it tentatively.

“Huh,” she said, wincing as the strings jangled. She looked up and for the first time seemed to notice Angelica and me.
“There
you are. They’re asking for you up at the council fire.”

“I thought you were with Hasel.”

Annie yawned. “I was. But we went down to get something to eat and got caught up in this other stuff. You should come back in, it’s kind of fun.”

“We will—” I started to say, but then saw that Angelica had stepped over to join Oliver. The loose folds of her dress hiked up on a patch of burdock, but she didn’t notice. She had her arms around Oliver and was pulling him to her and he was kissing her, his hands sliding down her back slowly at first, then tugging at the thin folds of cotton until I could hear a faint
shirring
noise as the fabric pulled from the weeds and tore.

“Hey.” Annie nudged me with the neck of her guitar. “Come on, Sweeney,” she said softly but kindly. “Let’s go inside.”

I stood for another moment, staring, then quickly followed her up the hill. When we reached the Orphic Lodge I turned to look back, but everything behind us had been swallowed by the night.

I woke very early the next morning. It was still dark outside, the windows pewter-colored and edged with a tracery of frost. In her narrow camp bed Annie was a small snoring mound of blankets. Angelica’s bed was empty I lay on my side and stared at the neatly made rectangle with its quilt and cotton comforter and pillow, Angelica’s blue silk makeup case, and the little black box that held all her contact lens equipment. At last I got up. I dressed in the dark and ducked into the bathroom.

Even without the black eye makeup, the face staring at me from the mirror didn’t look sensible at all. At night, dancing in a dark club with gaudy lights arcing through the smoke, I could pass for androgynous and sinister: cropped black hair, gashed mouth, bruised eyes. But the act didn’t play well by daylight. I looked burned out and exhausted and younger than I liked to admit. I threw some water on my face, trying to pretend that made me feel better. I decided to forgo a shower because I didn’t want to wake Annie, and went downstairs.

The lodge was silent and cold and dark. I tiptoed into the kitchen, found some instant coffee and boiled water and drank the awful stuff black. Then I went outside for a long walk, down the hillside and to the edge of the woods where we’d been the night before. I smoked most of a pack of cigarettes and looked for signs of Angelica and Oliver’s passing. Crushed bracken, stray bits of clothing, the lingering smells of sandalwood and smoke. But, of course, I found nothing. Whatever the night might have known of them, the day held nothing—nothing, at least, that it would share with me. Where the overgrown meadow ended I slumped against a birch tree with my head bowed and eyes closed, the cold wind gnawing at my back and the empty windows of the Orphic Lodge gazing down upon me, and smoked my last cigarette.

I spent the rest of the day alone. The whole morning and most of the afternoon skidded by, and I never saw Angelica or Oliver. As dusk fell, I went down to a cheerfully airheaded ecumenical service in the living room, in front of the empty ash-streaked fireplace. The dreaded acoustic guitars were brought out, and a boy played “Embryonic Journey.” Two grad students sang an Elton John song that I hated. Everyone clapped politely, and then to my surprise, Annie Harmon rose and carried her guitar to the front of the room, climbing atop a wooden stool and perching her slender frame there. She fiddled with her guitar until she got the tuning right, pushed up the sleeves of her plaid shirt, and nodded.

“Okay,” she said. She gave a quick nervous laugh, and then began to sing.

She did “Chelsea Morning” and “Been Too Long at the Fair” and “Afterhours”—

If you close the door, the night could last forever

—tapping the sounding board of her guitar so that it boomed as she sang in a deep scary voice scarcely above a whisper.

Remember hallways, you’re seeking always

To see behind the door

You’ve never seen her, you want to meet her

The first time’s so unsure …

Her voice filled the room like smoke and we breathed it in, its rich dark menace, the simple words suddenly becoming a warning.

Oh, she is still a mystery to me …

All too soon her voice died away. There was an instant of silence in which I could feel the last cold notes dissolving on my skin; then everyone began yelping and cheering.

“Whoa, Harmon!”

“Bravo!”

“Brava, bella!”

I looked over my shoulder and saw Angelica and Oliver leaning against the wall. Oliver was wearing the same clothes he wore last night, and Angelica had on her same dress, with a faded maroon sweatshirt that read
Northeast Kingdom Abbey
pulled on over it. She was red-cheeked and smiling, applauding wildly. She looked younger than I had ever seen her, more like a freshman college student and less the mysterious
femme fatale.
Her hair was loose and uncombed and, without its exquisite
maquillage,
her face was sweet and girlish.

But Oliver: Oliver looked awful. Chalk white, his blue eyes shadowed and so dark they looked like raw holes. His hair hung lank about his cheeks and he stared fixedly at his hands, flexing and unflexing his fingers. Every now and then his mouth twitched, as though he were trying to keep from laughing or crying aloud.

If I were you, I’d be worried about Oliver …

I stared at him, as drawn as I had been by my first vision of his fey prep school beauty. But now something truly terrible hung about Oliver: no more that casual aura of adolescent abandon, but a palpable air of ravagement and decay. His expression was vacant yet at the same time almost demonically intense. He rocked back and forth, back and forth, shifting his weight as though it hurt him to rest too long on one foot. Abruptly he moved away from Angelica with a queer shambling gait, more like a wounded animal than a person.

“Oliver—” Angelica called after him. But instead of turning to her, Oliver stopped and looked at me.

I froze. I was overwhelmed by dread—that he would say something to me, that he would call my name, and so doom me to whatever horror had consumed him.

Instead Oliver only smiled, his own sweet crooked smile. He shook his head, as though seeing me had awakened him from his stupor, and looked down at his feet. He was wearing his customary black wing tips without any socks, but there was a nasty gash on one ankle, the wound black and the flesh around it grossly swollen. I cried out and started toward him, but someone grabbed my arm.

“Sweeney!—” Annie popped up beside me, grinning. “What’d you think?”

“Hmm?”

“My singing. Didn’t you like it?”

“Huh? Oh sure, Annie—sure,” I said absently, then turned to see Oliver and Angelica near the door. She was holding his hand, talking and gazing at him with worried eyes; but Oliver ignored her. He was staring straight ahead, his eyes fixed on something I couldn’t see. Angelica lifted his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles—they were scraped raw and black with dirt—but he never looked up. I tried to catch his eyes, willing him to notice me, but Oliver’s gaze never wavered from whatever dreamscape had captivated him. “Annie, look at Oliver—do you think he’s okay?”

Annie shook her head, her dark eyes troubled. “I don’t know.” She shifted her guitar case and shrugged. “But those Molyneux scholars—somebody always keeps ’em from falling. Come on—”

We walked in silence to our room. Once again, Angelica had somehow gotten there first.

“Sweeney! Annie! What’s up?” She still had on Oliver’s sweatshirt, and there were burrs in her softly curling hair. “You know, I think I
will
go to that thing tonight in Hasel’s room. You guys up for it?”

“Sure.” I glanced at Annie, cleared my throat, and asked awkwardly, “Is—what’s Oliver up to?”

For a moment Angelica’s smile looked strained. Then, “Oliver will be there. Don’t you worry.
Ciao,
Sweeney—”

She slipped into the bathroom. I sat on my bed and turned to Annie. She pursed her lips, wriggling her fingers as she blew a kiss at me.

“Ciao,
Sweeney,” she said.

When we got to Hasel’s room, things seemed ominously silent.

“Hey! The girls are here!” Annie yelled. She frowned, kicking aside an empty beer bottle. “What’s going on, Hasel? Is this a wake, or what?”

“Warnick gave me a hard time about all the noise last night,” explained Hasel. “So we figure we’ll just go outside. You guys have warm clothes on?”

“Angie doesn’t,” Annie said.

“That’s okay,” murmured Baby Joe. “She’s got her
love
to keep her warm.” He giggled soundlessly and tossed me a beer.

For a few minutes we sat around and made desultory conversation. I sipped my beer, Annie swung her feet restlessly and kicked at the rungs of her chair, Hasel and Baby Joe smoked in near-silence. Angelica stood by the window and gazed out at the night. The spectacular sunset had faded to a tattered fringe of black and red above the mountains. Elsewhere the sky was already black, save where the first stars clove through the darkness. Hasel finished his beer and stared at Angelica, after a moment said softly, “You sure look beautiful tonight, Angelica.”