Ray Bradbury Stories, Volume 1 (91 page)

‘I don’t know.’

‘I wonder if it’s Mrs Nelson or Mrs Turner or Mrs Bradley. I wonder if she’s pretty. Wonder what color her hair is? Wonder if she’s thirty or ninety or sixty?’

‘Dig!’ I said.

The mound grew high.

‘Wonder if she’ll reward us for digging her up.’

‘Sure.’

‘A quarter, do you think?’

‘More than that. I bet it’s a dollar.’

Dippy remembered as he dug, ‘I read a book once of magic. There was a Hindu with no clothes on who crept down in a grave and slept there sixty days, not eating anything, no malts, no chewing gum or candy, no air, for sixty days.’ His face fell. ‘Say, wouldn’t it be awful if it was only a radio buried here and us working so hard?’

‘A radio’s nice, it’d be all ours.’

Just then a shadow fell across us.

‘Hey, you kids, what you think you’re doing?’

We turned. It was Mr Kelly, the man who owned the empty lot. ‘Oh, hello, Mr Kelly,’ we said.

‘Tell you what I want you to do,’ said Mr Kelly. ‘I want you to take those shovels and take that soil and shovel it right back in that hole you been digging. That’s what I want you to do.’

My heart started beating fast again. I wanted to scream myself.

‘But Mr Kelly, there’s a Screaming Woman and…’

‘I’m not interested. I don’t hear a thing.’

‘Listen!’ I cried.

The scream.

Mr Kelly listened and shook his head. ‘Don’t hear nothing. Go on now, fill it up and get home with you before I give you my foot!’

We filled the hole all back in again. And all the while we filled it in, Mr Kelly stood there, arms folded, and the woman screamed, but Mr Kelly pretended not to hear it.

When we were finished, Mr Kelly stomped off, saying, ‘Go on home now. And if I catch you here again…’

I turned to Dippy. ‘He’s the one,’ I whispered.

‘Huh?’ said Dippy.

‘He
murdered
Mrs Kelly. He buried her here, after he strangled her, in a box, but she came to. Why, he stood right here and she screamed and he wouldn’t pay any attention.’

‘Hey,’ said Dippy. ‘That’s right. He stood right here and lied to us.’

‘There’s only one thing to do.’ I said. ‘Call the police and have them come arrest Mr Kelly.’

We ran for the corner store telephone.

The police knocked on Mr Kelly’s door five minutes later. Dippy and I were hiding in the bushes, listening.

‘Mr Kelly?’ said the police officer.

‘Yes, sir, what can I do for you?’

‘Is Mrs Kelly at home?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘May we see her, sir?’

‘Of course. Hey, Anna!’

Mrs Kelly came to the door and looked out. ‘Yes, sir?’

‘I beg your pardon,’ apologized the officer. ‘We had a report that you were buried out in an empty lot, Mrs Kelly. It sounded like a child made the call, but we had to be certain. Sorry to have troubled you.’

‘It’s those blasted kids,’ cried Mr Kelly, angrily. ‘If I ever catch them, I’ll rip them limb from limb!’

‘Cheezit!’ said Dippy, and we both ran.

‘What’ll we do now?’ I said.

‘I got to go home,’ said Dippy. ‘Boy, we’re really in trouble. We’ll get a licking for this.’

‘But what about the Screaming Woman?’

‘To heck with her,’ said Dippy. ‘We don’t dare go near that empty lot again. Old man Kelly’ll be waiting around with his razor strap and lambast heck out’n us. And I just happened to remember, Maggie. Ain’t old man Kelly sort of deaf, hard-of-hearing?’

‘Oh, my gosh,’ I said. ‘No
wonder
he didn’t hear the screams.’

‘So long,’ said Dippy. ‘We sure got in trouble over your darn old ventriloquist voice. I’ll be seeing you.’

I was left all alone in the world, no one to help me, no one to believe me at all. I just wanted to crawl down in that box with the Screaming Woman and die. The police were after me now, for lying to them, only I
didn’t know it was a lie, and my father was probably looking for me, too, or would be once he found my bed empty. There was only one last thing to do, and I did it.

I went from house to house, all down the street, near the empty lot. And I rang every bell and when the door opened I said: ‘I beg your pardon, Mrs Griswold, but is anyone missing from your house?’ or ‘Hello, Mrs Pikes, you’re looking fine today. Glad to see you
home
.’ And once I saw that the lady of the house was home I just chatted awhile to be polite, and went on down the street.

The hours were rolling along. It was getting late. I kept thinking, oh, there’s only so much air in that box with that woman under the earth, and if I don’t hurry, she’ll suffocate, and I got to rush! So I rang bells and knocked on doors, and it got later, and I was just about to give up and go home, when I knocked on the
last
door, which was the door of Mr Charlie Nesbitt, who lives next to us. I kept knocking and knocking.

Instead of Mrs Nesbitt, or Helen as my father calls her, coming to the door, why it was Mr Nesbitt. Charlie,
himself
.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘It’s you, Margaret.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Good afternoon.’

‘What can I do for you, kid?’ he said.

‘Well, I thought I’d like to see your wife, Mrs Nesbitt,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘May I?’

‘Well, she’s gone out to the store,’ he said.

‘I’ll wait,’ I said, and slipped in past him.

‘Hey,’ he said.

I sat down in a chair. ‘My, it’s a hot day,’ I said, trying to be calm, thinking about the empty lot and air going out of the box, and the screams getting weaker and weaker.

‘Say, listen, kid,’ said Charlie, coming over to me, ‘I don’t think you better wait.’

‘Oh, sure,’ I said. ‘Why not?’

‘Well, my wife won’t be back,’ he said.

‘Oh?’

‘Not today, that is. She’s gone to the store, like I said, but, but, she’s going on from there to visit her mother. Yeah. She’s going to visit her mother, in Schenectady. She’ll be back, two or three days, maybe a week.’

‘That’s a shame,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘I wanted to tell her something.’

‘What?’

‘I just wanted to tell her there’s a woman buried over in the empty lot, screaming under tons and tons of dirt.’

Mr Nesbitt dropped his cigarette.

‘You dropped your cigarette, Mr Nesbitt.’ I pointed out, with my shoe.

‘Oh, did I? Sure. So I did,’ he mumbled. ‘Well, I’ll tell Helen when she comes home, your story. She’ll be glad to hear it.’

‘Thanks. It’s a real woman.’

‘How do you know it is?’

‘I heard her.’

‘How, how you know it isn’t, well, a
mandrake
root?’

‘What’s that?’

‘You know. A mandrake. It’s a kind of a plant, kid. They scream. I know, I read it once. How you know it ain’t a mandrake?’

‘I never thought of that.’

‘You better start thinking,’ he said, lighting another cigarette. He tried to be casual. ‘Say, kid, you, eh, you
say
anything about this to anyone?’

‘Sure. I told lots of people.’

Mr Nesbitt burned his hand on his match.

‘Anybody doing anything about it?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘They won’t believe me.’

He smiled. ‘Of course. Naturally. You’re nothing but a kid. Why should they listen to you?’

‘I’m going back now and dig her out with a spade,’ I said.

‘Wait.’

‘I got to go,’ I said.

‘Stick around,’ he insisted.

‘Thanks, but no,’ I said, frantically.

He took my arm. ‘Know how to play cards, kid? Black jack?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He took out a deck of cards from a desk. ‘We’ll have a game.’

‘I got to go dig.’

‘Plenty of time for that,’ he said, quiet. ‘Anyway, maybe my wife’ll be home. Sure. That’s it. You wait for her. Wait awhile.’

‘You think she will be?’

‘Sure, kid. Say, about that voice: is it very strong?’

‘It gets weaker all the time.’

Mr Nesbitt sighed and smiled. ‘You and your kid games. Here now, let’s play that game of black jack, it’s more fun than Screaming Women.’

‘I got to go. It’s late.’

‘Stick around, you got nothing to do.’

I knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to keep me in his house until the screaming died down and was gone. He was trying to keep me from helping her. ‘My wife’ll be home in ten minutes,’ he said. ‘Sure. Ten minutes. You wait. You sit right there.’

We played cards. The clock ticked. The sun went down the sky. It was
getting late. The screaming got fainter and fainter in my mind. ‘I got to go.’ I said.

‘Another game,’ said Mr Nesbitt. ‘Wait another hour, kid. My wife’ll come yet. Wait.’

In another hour he looked at his watch. ‘Well, kid, I guess you can go now.’ And I knew what his plan was. He’d sneak down in the middle of the night and dig up his wife, still alive, and take her somewhere else and bury her, good. ‘So long, kid. So long.’ He let me go, because he thought that by now the air must all be gone from the box.

The door shut in my face.

I went back near the empty lot and hid in some bushes. What could I do? Tell my folks? But they hadn’t believed me. Call the police on Mr Charlie Nesbitt? But he said his wife was away visiting. Nobody would believe me!

I watched Mr Kelly’s house. He wasn’t in sight. I ran over to the place where the screaming had been and just stood there.

The screaming had stopped. It was so quiet I thought I would never hear a scream again. It was all over. I was too late, I thought.

I bent down and put my ear against the ground.

And then I heard it, way down, way deep, and so faint I could hardly hear it.

The woman wasn’t screaming any more. She was singing.

Something about, ‘I loved you fair, I loved you well.’

It was sort of a sad song. Very faint. And sort of broken. All of those hours down under the ground in that box must have sort of made her crazy. All she needed was some air and food and she’d be all right. But she just kept singing, not wanting to scream any more, not caring, just singing.

I listened to the song.

And then I turned and walked straight across the lot and up the steps to my house and I opened the front door.

‘Father,’ I said.

‘So there you are!’ he cried.

‘Father,’ I said.

‘You’re going to get a licking,’ he said.

‘She’s not screaming any more.’

‘Don’t talk about her!’

‘She’s singing now,’ I cried.

‘You’re not telling the truth!’

‘Dad,’ I said. ‘She’s out there and she’ll be dead soon if you don’t listen to me. She’s out there, singing, and this is what she’s singing.’ I hummed the tune. I sang a few of the words. ‘I loved you fair, I loved you well…’

Dad’s face grew pale. He came and took my arm.

‘What did you say?’ he said.

I sang it again: ‘I loved you fair, I loved you well.’

‘Where did you
hear
that song?’ he shouted.

‘Out in the empty lot, just now.’

‘But that’s
Helen’s
song, the one she wrote, years ago, for
me
!’ cried Father. ‘You
can’t
know it.
Nobody
knew it, except Helen and me. I never sang it to anyone, not you or anyone.’

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘Oh, my God!’ cried Father, and ran out the door to get a shovel. The last I saw of him he was in the empty lot, digging, and lots of other people with him, digging.

I felt so happy I wanted to cry.

I dialed a number on the phone and when Dippy answered I said, ‘Hi, Dippy. Everything’s fine. Everything’s worked out keen. The Screaming Woman isn’t screaming any more.’

‘Swell,’ said Dippy.

‘I’ll meet you in the empty lot with a shovel in two minutes,’ I said.

‘Last one there’s a monkey! So long!’ cried Dippy.

‘So long. Dippy!’ I said, and ran.

The men had been hiding down by the gatekeeper’s lodge for half an hour or so, passing a bottle of the best between, and then, the gatekeeper having been carried off to bed, they dodged up the path at six in the evening and looked at the great house with the warm lights lit in each window.

‘That’s the place,’ said Riordan.

‘Hell, what do you mean, “That’s the place”?’ cried Casey, then softly added, ‘We seen it all our lives.’

‘Sure,’ said Kelly, ‘but with the Troubles over and around us, suddenlike a place looks
different
. It’s quite a toy, lying there in the snow.’

And that’s what it seemed to the fourteen of them, a grand playhouse laid out in the softly falling feathers of a spring night.

‘Did you bring the matches?’ asked Kelly.

‘Did I bring the—what do you think I
am
!’

‘Well,
did
you, is all I ask.’

Casey searched himself. When his pockets hung from his suit he swore and said, ‘I did not.’

‘Ah, what the hell,’ said Nolan. ‘They’ll have matches inside. We’ll borrow a few. Come on.’

Going up the road. Timulty tripped and fell.

‘For God’s sake, Timulty,’ said Nolan, ‘where’s your sense of romance? In the midst of a big Easter Rebellion we want to do everything just so. Years from now we want to go into a pub and tell about the Terrible Conflagration up at the Place, do we not? If it’s all mucked up with the sight of you landing on your ass in the snow, that makes no fit picture of the Rebellion we are now in, does it?’

Timulty, rising, focused the picture and nodded. ‘I’ll mind me manners.’

‘Hist! Here we are!’ cried Riordan.

‘Jesus, stop saying things like “That’s the place” and “Here we are,”’ said Casey. ‘We see the damned house. Now what do we do next?’

‘Destroy it?’ suggested Murphy tentatively.

‘Gah, you’re so dumb you’re hideous,’ said Casey. ‘Of course we destroy it, but first…blueprints and plans.’

‘It seemed simple enough back at Hickey’s Pub,’ said Murphy. ‘We would just come tear the damn place down. Seeing as how my wife outweighs me, I need to tear
something
down.’

‘It seems to me,’ said Timulty, drinking from the bottle, ‘we go rap on the door and ask permission.’

‘Permission!’ said Murphy. ‘I’d hate to have you running hell, the lost souls would never get fried! We—’

But the front door swung wide suddenly, cutting him off.

A man peered out into the night.

‘I say,’ said a gentle and reasonable voice, ‘would you mind keeping your voices down. The lady of the house is sleeping before we drive to Dublin for the evening, and—’

The men, revealed in the hearth-light glow of the door, blinked and stood back, lifting their caps.

‘Is that you, Lord Kilgotten?’

‘It is,’ said the man in the door.

‘We will keep our voices down,’ said Timulty, smiling, all amiability.

‘Beg pardon, your Lordship,’ said Casey.

‘Kind of you,’ said his Lordship. And the door closed gently.

All the men gasped.

‘“Beg pardon, your Lordship,” “We’ll keep our voices down, your Lordship.”’ Casey slapped his head. ‘What were we saying? Why didn’t someone catch the door while he was still there?’

‘We was dumbfounded, that’s why; he took us by surprise, just like them damned high and mighties. I mean, we weren’t
doing
anything out here, were we?’

‘Our voices
were
a bit high,’ admitted Timulty.

‘Voices, hell,’ said Casey. ‘The damn Lord’s come and gone from our fell clutches!’

‘
Shh
, not so loud,’ said Timulty.

Casey lowered his voice. ‘So, let us sneak up on the door, and—’

‘That strikes me as unnecessary,’ said Nolan. ‘He
knows
we’re here now.’

‘Sneak up on the door,’ repeated Casey, grinding his teeth, ‘and batter it down—’

The door opened again.

The Lord, a shadow, peered out at them and the soft, patient, frail old voice inquired, ‘I say, what
are
you doing out there?’

‘Well, it’s this way, your Lordship—’ began Casey, and stopped, paling.

‘We come,’ blurted Murphy, ‘we come…to
burn
the Place!’

His Lordship stood for a moment looking out at the men, watching the snow, his hand on the doorknob. He shut his eyes for a moment, thought,
conquered a tic in both eyelids after a silent struggle, and then said, ‘Hmm, well in that case, you had best come in.’

The men said that was fine, great, good enough, and started off when Casey cried, ‘Wait!’ Then to the old man in the doorway, ‘We’ll come in, when we are good and ready.’

‘Very well,’ said the old man. ‘I shall leave the door ajar and when you have decided the time, enter. I shall be in the library.’

Leaving the door a half inch open, the old man started away when Timulty cried out, ‘When we are
ready
? Jesus, God, when will we ever be readier? Out of the way, Casey!’

And they all ran up on the porch.

Hearing this, his Lordship turned to look at them with his bland and not-unfriendly face, the face of an old hound who has seen many foxes killed and just as many escape, who has run well, and now in late years, paced himself down to a soft, shuffling walk.

‘Scrape your feet, please, gentlemen.’

‘Scraped they are.’ And everyone carefully got the snow and mud off his shoes.

‘This way,’ said his Lordship, going off, his clear, pale eyes set in lines and bags and creases from too many years of drinking brandy, his cheeks bright as cherry wine. ‘I will get you all a drink, and we shall see what we can do about your…how did you put it…burning the Place?’

‘You’re Sweet Reason itself,’ admitted Timulty, following as Lord Kilgotten led them into the library, where he poured whiskey all around.

‘Gentlemen.’ He let his bones sink into a wing-backed chair. ‘Drink.’

‘We decline,’ said Casey.

‘Decline?’ gasped everyone, the drinks almost in their hands.

‘This is a sober thing we are doing and we must be sober for it,’ said Casey, flinching from their gaze.

‘Who do we listen to?’ asked Riordan. ‘His Lordship or Casey?’

For answer all the men downed their drinks and fell to coughing and gasping. Courage showed immediately in a red color through their faces, which they turned so that Casey could see the difference. Casey drank his, to catch up.

Meanwhile, the old man sipped his whiskey, and something about his calm and easy way of drinking put them far out in Dublin Bay and sank them again. Until Casey said, ‘Your Honor, you’ve heard of the Troubles? I mean not just the Kaiser’s war going on across the sea, but our own very great Troubles and the Rebellion that has reached even this far, to our town, our pub, and now, your Place?’

‘An alarming amount of evidence convinces me this is an unhappy time,’ said his Lordship. ‘I suppose what must be must be. I know you
all. You have worked for me. I think I have paid you rather well on occasion.’

‘There’s no doubt of that, your Lordship.’ Casey took a step forward. ‘It’s just, “The old order changeth,” and we have heard of the great houses out near Tara and the great manors beyond Killashandra going up in flames to celebrate freedom and—’

‘Whose freedom?’ asked the old man, mildly. ‘Mine? From the burden of caring for this house which my wife and I rattle around in like dice in a cup or—well, get on.
When
would you like to burn the Place?’

‘If it isn’t too much trouble, sir,’ said Timulty, ‘now.’

The old man seemed to sink deeper into his chair.

‘Oh, dear,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ said Nolan quickly, ‘if it’s inconvenient, we could come back later—’

‘Later! What kind of talk is
that
?’ asked Casey.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said the old man. ‘Please allow me to explain. Lady Kilgotten is asleep now, we are going into Dublin for the opening of a play by Synge—’

‘That’s a damn fine writer,’ said Riordan.

‘Saw one of his plays a year ago,’ said Nolan, ‘and—’

‘Stand off!’ said Casey.

The men stood back. His Lordship went on with his frail moth voice. ‘We have a dinner planned back here at midnight for ten people. I don’t suppose—you could give us until tomorrow night to get ready?’

‘No,’ said Casey.

‘Hold on,’ said everyone else.

‘Burning,’ said Timulty, ‘is one thing, but tickets is another. I mean, the theater is
there
, and a dire waste not to see the play, and all that food set up, it might as well be eaten. And all the guests coming. It would be hard to notify them ahead.’

‘Exactly what
I
was thinking,’ said his Lordship.

‘Yes, I know!’ shouted Casey, shutting his eyes, running his hands over his cheeks and jaw and mouth and clenching his fists and turning around in frustration. ‘But you
don’t
put off burnings, you
don’t
reschedule them like tea parties, dammit, you
do
them!’

‘You do if you remember to bring the matches,’ said Riordan under his breath.

Casey whirled and looked as if he might hit Riordan, but the impact of the truth slowed him down.

‘On top of which,’ said Nolan, ‘the missus above is a fine lady and needs a last night of entertainment and rest.’

‘Very kind of you.’ His Lordship refilled the man’s glass.

‘Let’s take a vote,’ said Nolan.

‘Hell.’ Casey scowled around. ‘I see the vote counted already. Tomorrow night will do, dammit.’

‘Bless you,’ said old Lord Kilgotten. ‘There will be cold cuts laid out in the kitchen, you might check in there first, you shall probably be hungry, for it will be heavy work. Shall we say eight o’clock tomorrow night? By then I shall have Lady Kilgotten safely to a hotel in Dublin. I should not want her knowing until later that her home no longer exists.’

‘God, you’re a Christian,’ muttered Riordan.

‘Well, let us not brood on it,’ said the old man. ‘I consider it past already, and I never think of the past. Gentlemen.’

He arose. And, like a blind old sheepherder-saint, he wandered out into the hall with the flock straying and ambling and softly colliding after.

Half down the hall, almost to the door, Lord Kilgotten saw something from the corner of his blear eye and stopped. He turned back and stood brooding before a large portrait of an Italian nobleman.

The more he looked the more his eyes began to tic and his mouth to work over a nameless thing.

Finally Nolan said. ‘Your Lordship, what is it?’

‘I was just thinking,’ said the Lord, at last, ‘you love Ireland, do you not?’

My God, yes! said everyone. Need he ask?

‘Even as do I,’ said the old man gently. ‘And do you love all that is in it, in the land, in her heritage?’

That too, said all, went without saying!

‘I worry then,’ said the Lord, ‘about things like this. This portrait is by Van Dyck. It is very old and very fine and very important and very expensive. It is, gentlemen, a National Art Treasure.’

‘Is
that
what it is!’ said everyone, more or less, and crowded around for a sight.

‘Ah, God, it’s fine work,’ said Timulty.

‘The flesh itself,’ said Nolan.

‘Notice,’ said Riordan, ‘the way his little eyes seem to follow you?’

Uncanny, everyone said.

And were about to move on, when his Lordship said, ‘Do you realize this Treasure, which does not truly belong to me, nor you, but to all the people as precious heritage, this picture will be lost forever tomorrow night?’

Everyone gasped. They had
not
realized.

‘God save us,’ said Timulty, ‘we can’t have that!’

‘We’ll move it out of the house, first,’ said Riordan.

‘Hold on!’ cried Casey.

‘Thank you,’ said his Lordship, ‘but where would you put it? Out in the weather it would soon be torn to shreds by wind, dampened by rain, flaked by hail; no, no, perhaps it is best it burns quickly—’

‘None of that!’ said Timulty. ‘I’ll take it home, myself.’

‘And when the great strife is over,’ said his Lordship, ‘you will then deliver into the hands of the new government this precious gift of Art and Beauty from the past?’

‘Er…every single one of those things, I’ll do,’ said Timulty.

But Casey was eying the immense canvas, and said, ‘How much does the monster weigh?’

‘I would imagine,’ said the old man, faintly, ‘seventy to one hundred pounds, within that range.’

‘Then how in hell do we get it to Timulty’s house?’ asked Casey.

‘Me and Brannahan will carry the damn treasure,’ said Timulty, ‘and if need be, Nolan,
you
lend a hand.’

‘Posterity will thank you,’ said his Lordship.

They moved on along the hall, and again his Lordship stopped, before yet two more paintings.

‘These are two nudes—’

They
are
that! said everyone.

‘By Renoir,’ finished the old man.

‘That’s the French gent who made them?’ asked Rooney. ‘If you’ll excuse the expression?’

It looks French all right, said everyone.

And a lot of ribs received a lot of knocking elbows.

‘These are worth several thousand pounds,’ said the old man.

‘You’ll get no argument from me,’ said Nolan, putting out his finger, which was slapped down by Casey.

‘I—’ said Blinky Watts, whose fish eyes swam about continuously in tears behind his thick glasses. ‘I would like to volunteer a home for the two French ladies. I thought I might tuck those two Art Treasures one under each arm and hoist them to the wee cot.’

‘Accepted,’ said the Lord with gratitude.

Along the hall they came to another, vaster landscape with all sorts of monster beast-men cavorting about treading fruit and squeezing summermelon women. Everyone craned forward to read the brass plate under it:
Twilight of the Gods
.

‘Twilight, hell,’ said Rooney, ‘it looks more like the start of a great afternoon!’

‘I believe,’ said the gentle old man, ‘there is irony intended both in title and subject. Note the glowering sky, the hideous figures hidden in the clouds. The gods are unaware, in the midst of their bacchanal, that Doom is about to descend.’