Asimov's Science Fiction: October/November 2013 (14 page)

Whatever détente had been arrived at on the porch, it no longer applied.

Mr. Schulde drew back to smile sheepishly at Mother. "Forgive me, dearest," he said, "I didn't mean to startle you. It's just that I... I slammed my hand in the cabinet lid." He took it in his other hand as if only now discovering the injury.

"Oh, let me see," she sympathized, and stepped out of sight into his room, propriety overcome by compassion.

Eustace didn't dare follow, and could only wait in the hall.

A minute or two passed before Mother emerged. She tossed a laugh after her like a girl, saying, "Oh, Franklin, I couldn't possibly. You soak that hand now, and goodnight." His reply slid murmurously through the gap before she closed the door after her.

Mother saw his look. "Why, darling, what's the matter? Mr. Schulde's hand is fine."

"I know."

"Well, then, you'd no cause to wait out here—"

"What did he ask you?"

She blinked at him, blushed. "Oh, it's silly. He offered to record me singing one day—me, can you imagine? He has no idea how awful that would be. Why, I expect his whole contraption would seize up at the sound." She laughed again, a mixture of elation and embarrassment.

"You can't," he said. "Ever."

"Well, my goodness, the least you could do was
pretend
I have a nice voice."

He took her hand—the same one Schulde had held—in both of his. "You have to promise me you won't."

"Eustace, whatever has gotten into you?"

"Promise!"

But Mother refused to be serious. "Well, I don't know—what if he placed me with a twelve-piece band? Maybe I
would
sing."

Eustace sagged with exasperation.

"Really, stop being surly with me. You're the one of us who misbehaved today. In any case, you may stop crushing my hand. I'm not about to put my voice on one of those crazy things for all the world to hear."

He wanted to believe her.

He didn't understand what he knew, but he knew with utter certainty that the man who'd taken Miss Comuzzi's room had also stolen her life. She
was
dead—that was what they had all refused to tell him. But however would he prove what he knew to Mother?

The next day Eustace watched Mr. Schulde as surreptitiously as possible. He tried to seem disinterested. Over the dinner table, his enemy behaved as if Eustace didn't exist, but made a point of sitting at the far end of the table, where he spoke in somber tones to Mr. Righter. He appeared drawn and tired as if he had not slept well. His hair looked more gray.

Eustace kept the door off the latch, too, and when later that evening he overheard Mother in Mr. Schulde's company, he charged out of the room and interrupted them with a request that she look over his arithmetic homework before he went to sleep.

She was terrible at numbers, but she capitulated, giving Schulde an apologetic smile.

"Perhaps I should turn in, too," she said. Mr. Schulde nodded, but his black gaze fell upon Eustace as he passed by, leaving no doubt that he understood the request.

The next night, before Schulde even had a chance to make his overtures, Eustace insisted that Mother stroll with him to the soda fountain at Toliver's Drug Emporium, where they both ordered egg creams the way they had last summer.

It was a pleasant night with a breeze, and they sat outside at a small wire table that trembled if either of them touched it. Mother wore her straw boater and bolero jacket. They discussed the Columbian Exhibition, and when they would go take it in now that it was open. Granted, they had the whole summer, but Mother commented that she would like to see "where Franklin works." She fell silent then. He asked what was wrong, but she waved off the question.

When they returned to the boarding house, Mr. Schulde was absent.

Much later, the snap of a key in a keyhole awoke Eustace. The door across the hall quietly closed and the key turned again.

Mother didn't stir. She could sleep so deeply that even thunderstorms wouldn't wake her.

Eustace arose and sneaked out into the hallway. In the narrow slit beneath the door opposite, light flashed for an instant, followed by a gasp. There wasn't a hint of music, and afterward only silence.

If Mr. Vanderhoff had been there, Eustace would have gotten him to come and see. Instead, he must undertake the investigation alone. Very carefully, he went down the stairs.

Mr. Schulde's room overlooked the side yard, where two sturdy trellises enclosed the end of the porch. Mrs. Claymore was attempting in vain to train vines up the latticework. Eustace carefully climbed the trellis onto the porch roof. The moon shone at the other end of the roof. It cast his shadow down across the yard. He eased himself over the wood shingles and into the darkness beneath Schulde's open window.

The queer copper-tubed backside of the cabinet faced the window. On the chair beside it, a kerosene lamp burned, the wick high and smoking.

One of the red cylinders had been fitted onto the mandrel of the phonograph. Eustace knew which it must be.

Schulde was rotating the mandrel by hand, slowly, while he squinted at the stylus of the reproducer and with great care pressed one finger against it for a moment with each turn. He was sweating, his face drawn tight. The stylus tracked around and then, where he pressed, recut the groove across the gouge. Even from the window, Eustace could make out the scar in the cylinder.

Then Schulde leaned back, and wiped a hand over his face. He tilted the reproducer up and away, flicked the glass tip clean, and pushed the knob that started the mandrel spinning. With teeth gritted fearfully, he lowered the reproducer to the cylinder, then reached and turned the lamp down to a low glow.

The sound crackled. Schulde stood up and spread his arms as if for an embrace. His smile was expectant and terrible. Light flickered around him, flashes like dandelion puffs. Eustace wondered if the air had looked like that as he'd stood upon the chair and absorbed Miss Comuzzi. In the flutter of lights, Schulde's body seemed to contract and expand. One second he was strong and sleek. The next he looked ancient and bloodless.

All at once the sparkling air around him snapped and sizzled. A thread of blue lightning leapt from the reproducer and struck him. His arms wrapped tight around his vest and he bent double. He collapsed onto his knees.

When he raised his head next, he looked as if he'd aged another twenty years. His hands, balled into fists, pressed to his eyes and a sob escaped him. He writhed from side to side like some enormous snake and at last slumped to the floor.

Two minutes he just lay there. The crackling continued. Another thread of blue electricity jumped from the machine to him, but he might have been dead for all the effect it had. Sparks danced like motes upon the air, but there was no hiss of breath, nothing like what Eustace had experienced. She wasn't there anymore.

Finally, the stylus circled the end of the cylinder, and Schulde climbed wearily to his feet.

He lurched to the player, tore the cylinder from the mandrel and crushed it in his trembling fist. Eustace gasped.

Schulde stiffened, stared straight at the window. He snatched the lamp and thrust it out.

Desperately, Eustace scrabbled backward down the shingles. Splinters stabbed his arms and knees but he ignored them. The lamp flared in the window above him. His toes poked the trellis holes for purchase as he heard the window open wide and a footstep thump on the roof. He slid over the edge, then hung by his fingers.

The roof creaked.

Eustace dropped the rest of the way to the lawn and rolled beneath the porch. He stared out at the porch roof shadow stretched across the lawn as another shadow grew upon it, tall and spindly as bones.

A scratchy whisper reached him, like from an Edison cylinder: "Eustace. I know you're out there in the dark. Where
are
you, Eustace?"

He didn't dare breathe.

After a minute, the shadow withdrew back up the roof, and the window rumbled shut.

Eustace put his head down and whimpered.

An hour must have passed before he dared to crab his way out from beneath the porch and steal back up the stairs. His pajamas were smudged with dirt. As he climbed he placed his feet close to the wall to keep the treads from creaking, painstakingly managed to turn the knob of the door and slip back into his room without a sound, but though he turned the key gingerly, the noise of the lock catching seemed as loud as an explosion.

He hid in his bed until he fell asleep.

A new tenant moved in the next day, a small, dark-haired woman older than Mother who called herself Miss Mary Owens. She said she worked at the Marshall Fields Wholesale store. Mr. Schulde barely acknowledged her. She was friendly to Eustace, and even to Schulde despite his rudeness.

When that evening Mr. Schulde didn't show up for the meal, Mr. Righter commented that "something seems to be wearing the poor fella down." Miss Owens asked him what was wrong, but Mr. Righter only shrugged.

After the meal, Mrs. Claymore and Mother prepared a plate of food that Mother carried upstairs. Eustace wanted to follow but Mrs. Claymore held him back. He sat unhappily, listening to Miss Owens and Mr. Righter discussing Mr. Vanderhoff, who was still on the road. "Indiana, I think," Mr. Righter told her. She wanted to know about everyone.

Eustace couldn't stand it. He got up, but as if hearing him Mrs. Claymore stuck her head out of the kitchen and called, "Eustace, don't interfere." Wiping her hands on her apron, she herded him up the stairs and into his own room. Across the hall, the door was closed.

Mrs. Claymore had just gone back down the stairs when Mother burst into their room, sobbing and clutching at her handkerchief.

"Franklin," she said, sinking down beside Eustace, "is gravely ill. He's seeking treatment, but refuses to allow me to help. It's all so terrible. Oh, Eustace, the
change
in him. He's withering away."

Eustace said nothing but stroked her hair.

The next morning, Eustace noticed that Mr. Schulde had bruised pouches beneath his eyes, crow's-feet and lines in his face. He'd brilliantined his hair, but looked almost as old as Mr. Righter for all that. He was gone before the other boarders had sat down to breakfast. He didn't seem able to spare enough energy even to glower at Eustace. Eustace smirked at his bowl of oatmeal. Mother was safe. His enemy was dying.

That afternoon, walking home from his last week of school, Eustace decided to detour to the music store. He hadn't visited it since Miss Comuzzi's disappearance. He wondered if someone else played the piano for them now.

He was still a few blocks from the store when, just ahead, Mr. Schulde walked straight across his path.

Eustace stopped dead. Mr. Schulde didn't see him because he had his arm linked with that of a woman younger than Mother, with golden hair. On her shoulder, above the big leg-of-mutton sleeve of her dress, rested a lavender parasol that she twirled as they strolled. Mr. Schulde looked like her weary uncle, he'd aged so.

They crossed the street. Eustace followed them. He kept behind others, but Mr. Schulde didn't look around even once. It soon became clear that they were headed for the boarding house.

Eustace worked his way nearer, and strained to hear them. Mr. Schulde said, "I'm sure your voice is as lovely as the rest of you," and the woman tittered. She squeezed his arm with hers and said, "Don't you worry; I'll do whatever makes you happy, Harry."

That was strange enough that Eustace slowed down. Then, all at once the people in front of him were stepping aside and Mr. Schulde and the woman had stopped. Eustace hastily scurried into a shop doorway and sat on the step. He kept his head bowed as he looked up the street at the couple.

A police officer had stepped in front of them. It was Gallagher, the policeman who'd found him at the lake. Gallagher's arms were crossed and he held a nightstick in one hand. He tapped it rhythmically against his upper arm. From that far away, whatever he said wasn't audible, but all of a sudden, Mr. Schulde took a step back as if slapped. The woman stared at him like he was a troll that had crawled out from under a bridge. She sidled away, unfolded her parasol, and then hurried back past Eustace, hiding her face as much as possible from passers-by.

Mr. Schulde glared miserably at Gallagher, who now prodded the nightstick at him and said, "Sooner or later, you understand?"

Mr. Schulde backed up. He looked around as if to see where the woman had gone and his eyes fell on Eustace. For that instant they were locked, neither one able to break away. Then Gallagher came toward him and Schulde fled into the street.

Eustace didn't go to the music store. He went home, comforted in the knowledge that he might have an ally in his war against Mr. Schulde.

The next morning Mr. Schulde remained in his room, which was just fine by Eustace. His place was set at the table, but he hadn't come down by the time Eustace left.

After school he went straight home, where he found Mrs. Claymore descending the stairs. She held a tray with a plate and utensils. "The poor man," she said as if he'd asked. "It's all he can do to sit up and listen to his music." And indeed, when Eustace got to the top of the stairs, a song was playing behind the door opposite. He listened to its refrain: "Every little bit added to what you've got makes just a little bit more." It sounded cheery. After a minute the same song started over again.

About an hour later Mother arrived. She didn't come up the stairs, but he heard her voice and he crept down a few stairs to peer through the balusters. She stood in the dining room speaking to Mrs. Claymore. She was still wearing her straw boater. Mother had two fingers pressed to her lips and her eyes were wide and worried. He heard the landlady say, "Give you a little time together." Mother nodded.

Eustace made his entrance then, thumping down the stairs. Mother came up to him, ruffled his hair. She unpinned her hat, revealing the curled fringe of hair over her forehead. She linked arms with him and they went up the stairs again to their room. More music was coming from behind the closed door across the hall, a tinkling banjo version of "Alexander's Ragtime Band."