The Green Man (2 page)

That night, as she lay in bed trying to find the magic spell that would send her off to sleep, O thought of what her father had said about everyone being a little crazy in their own way. Some people might think her nightly ritual before bed was a little crazy – the way she had to arrange the things on her desk in a certain order, tuck the sheets in just so, tilt her mirror at exactly the right angle so as not to catch the reflection of the curtains, lock the closet door, and fold the quilt down carefully over the stuffed animals at the foot of the bed, so they wouldn’t sit staring at her in the dark.

One night, simply to prove she wasn’t a prisoner to the ritual, that it was silly and childish and slightly mad, she deliberately didn’t arrange the things on her desk, didn’t fold down the quilt in the proper way or tilt the mirror just so. She left the closet door unlocked and let the stuffed animals stare at her to their heart’s content.

She didn’t sleep a wink. The next night, she went back to doing things the way they were meant to be done.

O glanced at the clock. It was after twelve. She flicked on her light and took down
A Treasury of Great Poems
, hoping a little reading might send her off to sleep. The book was arranged chronologically. There was a brief biographical introduction to each poet, followed by a selection of his or her work. She had started at the beginning with Chaucer and was working her way slowly through. She was up to Andrew Marvell now, and so far there hadn’t been so much as a whisper of madness.

She read until her eyes began to grow heavy. The stuffed monkey had managed to squirm out from under the quilt and was looking at her. She crawled to the foot of the bed and pulled the quilt over him. Before closing her book, she fanned to the front and read her aunt’s cryptic inscription again.

“Begin,” she whispered as she drifted off to sleep. “Begin.”

E
mily paced around the desk that stood in the center of the room. Round and round she went, as was her habit when the words would not come. Over time, her pacing had worn the rug around the desk almost bare. Some magic in the moonlight brought the pattern in the Persian carpet to life, so that as she passed through the band of light, she seemed to tread on a lush bed of luminous flowers and winding vines.

A swing-light with a dim bulb shone down on the typewriter that stood on the desk. Each time the circuit of the desk brought her back before the typewriter, she paused to glance at the sheet of paper it held, hoping to shake loose the next word … the next phrase … the next line in the poem that refused to be finished.

When words came, she sat down and added them to the rest, then began to pace again. Now and then she veered off course and stood by the window, staring into the night. Apart from the occasional car that whispered by, the street slept. There was something peaceful about
the city at night, something calming in standing here surveying her estate.

She turned from the window and began her circuit of the room again. She let her mind prowl, pretending not to pay much attention to it. Her thoughts crept like a cat through the shadows, ready to pounce when the words showed themselves. The better part of writing was waiting.

As she paced, Emily recited the opening lines of the poem aloud:

As she rounded the desk, her eye fell on the corner of the envelope she had tucked under the typewriter. It was a letter from her brother Charles. She and Charles had kept up a correspondence that went back to when she had left home in her late teens and he was barely more than a boy. She had kept it all.

Over time, there had come a change in their relationship. Once, she had been the one offering comfort, especially during the dark months after his wife, Anne, had died, when Ophelia was not yet two. And then as he struggled to raise the child on his own, while establishing himself at the university.

But now, he was the one giving
her
advice. What had happened? Time had happened. And then there was the heart attack – just a minor one, the doctors assured her, but more than enough to send a shiver of mortality through her. Suddenly she was no longer invulnerable. Suddenly her mind was full of memories of her father, who had died of a similar attack while still a young man.

And now Charles was off to Italy for the summer to complete his study of Ezra Pound, and Ophelia was coming to stay with her. Emily suspected Charles had an ulterior motive for sending the girl to her. She suspected he was worried about his older sister and was seeing to it she had someone around to watch over her.

He had included a snapshot in his letter, a recent picture of Ophelia. She picked up the photo and studied it again. The girl, no longer a child, was a radiant young woman who stared boldly back at her. Her fair hair was short, her head cocked slightly to one side. Definitely an Endicott. She reminded Emily of how she herself had looked at that age – about the time when it had all begun.

And now it was poised to begin again. The thought filled her with dread. With the dread came the now-familiar tightening in her chest, the sudden knifepoint of pain, the feeling that she was unable to breathe.

She made her way over to the cot in the corner of the room and lay down. Fear washed over her in chill waves. She had been a strong woman once, but she was as weak as a kitten now. She closed her eyes. Just a few minutes rest and she would be fine. The lines of the poem spun round in her head:

Sleep stole over her like a shadow. With it came the dream – the one that visited her almost nightly now. The dream of the magic show.

T
he furniture in the room had been pushed back against the wall to make room for the evening’s entertainment. It was a rare treat, and there was a thrill of excitement in the air. The children sat on the figured carpet before a makeshift stage that had been set up against one wall of the room. It was a hot August evening, and the tall bay windows had been thrown open. The curtains billowed lightly in the breeze, and the dim flames danced on the gas jets that had been turned down for the show, casting weird shadows on the walls
.

A gilded table sat on the low platform that would serve as a stage. On it was a candelabrum and a box, about a foot square, decorated with Egyptian symbols. A full-length mirror stood to one side of the table and, on the other side, a low long wicker basket with a hinged lid. To the rear, a wrought-iron pedestal supported a brazier of coals that glowed in the shadows like a beating heart
.

Darkness pooled at the fringes of the room, and while some of the children chattered among themselves, others of a more
imaginative bent plumbed that darkness with wide eyes, wondering if something more than the dim shapes of armchairs and tables were gathered there
.

“Look,” cried one of the children, pointing to the shadows behind the stage. As all eyes turned that way, the darkness took shape and a tall lean figure strode forward onto the stage. As he approached the table, he snapped his fingers in the direction of the candelabrum. Instantly, the wicks atop the dozen candles danced with flame
.

He stood silently in the candlelight and ran his eyes over the group of children seated on the carpet. Half a dozen parents and a serving maid stood uneasily by the door as his eyes drifted over them. He wore a black swallowtail coat over a stiff white shirt with a turndown collar, and a white cravat with a gleaming silver pin
.

“Good evening,” he said, as he slowly began to remove the white gloves he wore. “I am Professor Mephisto. And you are about to witness an evening of wonders such as you have never seen.”

His voice was deep and melodious, and though he spoke quietly, the words reverberated off the walls like something echoing from the bottom of a well. His eyes glowed with a strange intensity and fixed on those who met them with such force that it was as if he could see into their very souls
.

The children sat transfixed as he worked the gloves off his hands, one finger at a time. In the candlelight, his face appeared
as pale as chalk, his lips as red as blood, his hair as dark as a raven’s wing. He looked every bit a gentleman, yet there was something about him that sent a shiver down the spine
.

The gloves removed, he tossed them into the air. And they were miraculously transformed into a pair of white doves. They swooped and circled the room, while the children craned their necks to follow their flight. Finally, they settled in the shadows at the rear of the stage
.

“Now,” said the magician, his eyes coming to rest on the parents gathered at the door, “it seems we have some very large children back there.”

The children laughed as they turned to look. “Those aren’t children!” one of them shouted. “They’re parents.”

“Parents? Really?” said the magician. “Well, that’s very strange. I thought this was to be a children’s show, was it not?”

“Yes!” shouted the children delightedly
.

“Well, then, it seems we have two choices. Either we can ask the parents politely to leave, or, for my next trick, I could transform them all into children. Wouldn’t that be a treat?”

“Yes!” shouted the children again, while the parents hung sheepishly by the door
.

The magician lightly clapped his hands, and out from the shadows where the doves had disappeared flew two large black birds. They swooped menacingly low over the parents’ heads. Finally, one of the adults opened the door and they filed out, glancing back nervously at the smiling figure onstage
.

Then, with another light clap of his hands, the door shut with a resounding thud, the birds settled to either side of the stage, and, in the silence that followed, the show began.…

O
found herself walking through a deep ravine. It was unlike any place she’d ever been, the vegetation so thick it was junglelike, the dense green canopy of trees all but shutting out the sun. She picked her way along the bank of a stream, scanning the shadows on either side for the presence she could feel lurking there.

“Caledon. Next stop, Caledon.”

The voice came from a long way off, woven in with the distant drone of traffic in the dream. Someone touched her lightly on the arm, jolting her awake.

“Excuse me, Miss. I believe this is your stop.” Opening her eyes, she saw the cute young steward with the French accent smiling down at her.

“Thanks,” she said, quickly wiping away a trail of drool that had trickled down her chin and plucking the inflatable pillow from around her neck.

The traveler’s pillow had been a going-away present from her father. It was designed to keep your head
immobile while you slept sitting up. It came folded in its own little matching pouch. When you needed it, you simply blew it up like a beach toy until it took the shape of a giant donut with a big bite out of it. There was just one little drawback: you looked like a total idiot with it wrapped around your neck.

The first night on the train she’d resisted using it, but every time she drifted off, her head would snap forward and jolt her awake. By the time the second night rolled around, the trip had taken on a surreal quality, and she was more than ready for the traveler’s pillow. She waited until everyone around her had passed out, then she took it out of its pouch and blew it up. Slipping it around her neck, she sat there feeling like a complete fool. But her head didn’t bob as she began to drift off, and she dropped into an exhausted sleep that brought with it the strange dream of the ravine.

Now, half-awake, she fumbled her bag down from the rack above the seat. It was still dark outside, and everyone in the coach was sound asleep. She squeezed past stray limbs dangling into the aisle and retrieved her suitcase from the storage area at the rear of the car.

Caledon was definitely not a major tourist destination. No one else was getting off but her. The train screeched slowly to a halt. The sleepy-eyed conductor, his hat slightly askew, opened the door and put down the step.
As he was helping her down with her luggage, a voice called out behind her, “Excuse me, Miss.” It was the cute young French steward, no doubt come to wish her a passionate good-bye. “You forgot this,” he said and handed her the traveler’s pillow she’d left on the seat.

“Thanks,” she muttered, taking it from him and stepping down onto the deserted platform.

Twenty minutes dragged by. A halfhearted drizzle started up. She shuffled her suitcase and bag over to a bench under the wide overhang of the station roof, flipped open the valve on the traveler’s pillow, and sat down on it to squeeze out the air. It made a sad whooshing sound that perfectly mirrored her mood. Clearly, Aunt Emily had forgotten she was coming, or Father had told her the wrong arrival time. Whatever the explanation, she had definitely been abandoned.

After walking the length of the wet platform, she made a quick circuit of the station building, just in case Aunt Emily might be waiting there. No sign of a living soul. The place had all the grim desolation of one of those
film noir
movies her father adored. It would have made a great place for a murder.

Soon the first rays of dawn began to brighten the sky. It didn’t do the station any favors. As the darkness lifted, she saw weeds growing waist-high between the ties of a
second set of tracks, on the far side of the platform. A rusty old luggage cart languished in the shadows at one end of the station building beside a broken vending machine. What had once been the waiting room was now a storage area, chock-full of railroad junk. The door was chained and padlocked, just in case rusty railroad junk was your thing.