"You’re disturbing
me
," he said.
"
I’m
disturbing
you
?"
"And on this, of all days," he said.
"I don’t know what in the
hell
you’re talking about—" She stopped. She peered intently at him for a moment. Her expression of annoyance changed to fear as she looked into Christian’s eyes. The words "Oh, my God!" escaped her in a breathy whisper and she began to furiously roll her window up.
Christian reached out and held the window two-thirds open.
The woman shook her head quickly. She was confused, he knew. And she was afraid.
"I’m sorry," he said to her. "I really am. I’m very, very sorry."
~ * ~
"Is the whole city like this?" David asked the thin man in the gray sports coat and tattered white pants and unruly brown hair. They were walking a narrow street made of bricks; the close-packed two- and three-story houses all were made of wood.
Some of the houses bore the effects of several architectural influences—Victorian, Georgian, Romanesque, Modern—gingerbread and austere lines and flourishes lived together on the same house. The effect was jarring. The only unity was in the narrowness of the street and in the closeness of the houses; beyond that, there were long, rectangular windows and round windows and arched doorways and glass doorways; there were bare octagons on white walls, and fluted columns holding up nothing at all. It was as if a child possessed of too much time, too many different kinds of building blocks, and an anarchic imagination, had put the street together.
There were no people on the street, and no animals, either. David expected one or the other, or both. He expected, dimly, that there would be an open sewer on either side of the brick roadway, and garbage strewn about, flies buzzing in the warm, still air (because, if the street was reminiscent of one period and place more than another, it was of nineteenth-century London).
There were no smells, either. The air was clear and odorless.
"No," answered the thin man. "The whole city isn’t like this. There are many neighborhoods.”
“But where are the people?"
"In their houses, I imagine," the man said. "I think they’re probably in their houses. Making love, playing games. Or they could be picnicking; do you picnic? Don’t answer, let me guess. I’d say you do. Put together a little basketful of goodies and take it out to some green spot and fill up the tummy. People do that quite a lot here—"
"Where are you taking me?" David interrupted.
"To my apartment. It’s not far. Are you getting tired? We can stop. We can sit right here on the street if you’d like."
David thought this was an odd question. Did people actually get tired here? What a ludicrous idea. He answered, "No. I’m not tired." He paused. "My head hurts."
"Hurts?"
"Yes. I have . . . a headache."
"I don’t understand. Headache?"
"You don’t know what pain is?"
The man shrugged. "I’ve seen the word used. I don’t know what it means. No one does."
David stopped walking. "No one here experiences pain?"
The thin man was still walking. He stopped, looked back. David could see nothing beneath the darkness that covered his face. "I don’t know if they do or don’t," the man said. "I don’t know what pain is. I think that I would surely
like
to know what pain is, I think that would be stimulating, and I think I would be enlightened—"
David shook his head quickly, in sudden frustration and anger. "When you fall down . . . when someone falls down and hits his elbow on the street—"
"No one falls down," the man said, and David could hear amusement in his tone.
"Do you mean that everyone is the soul of grace here? No one stumbles? No one has an accident? No one falls off a roof, or cuts his finger, or . . . or falls down?"
"Perhaps they do," the man said. "But if they do, then I haven’t heard of it. And I like to keep track of things, you know. I think that I would have heard if anyone had fallen off a roof. But, of course, no one gets up on roofs to begin with. What reason would there be?" He chuckled. "It’s a silly idea, getting up on a roof—I think I would have heard of
that
too—"
David—his anger and frustration mounting—said nothing as the man continued his monologue. David had merely wanted to know if what he had suspected for so long—that death was the end of pain and suffering—was true. But, ironically, this man, a resident of this place, could tell him almost nothing.
At last, David rushed forward and slapped the man hard across the face. The man stumbled backward a few feet, looked as if he were about to fall, regained his balance. His hand went up. He stood very still; his hand, where it connected to his wrist, lost itself in the darkness that covered his face.
"I’m sorry," David said. "I didn’t want to do that. I had to."
The man said nothing.
David said, "Do you feel anything?" He paused. "
I
do." The palm of his hand ached from the blow.
The darkness that was the man’s face moved up and down once, then again. He was nodding, David realized. But the man said nothing.
"What do you feel?" David coaxed.
The darkness moved left to right, right to left.
The man was shaking his head. "I don’t know how I feel."
"It’s called pain," David said.
"Is it?" The thin man’s interest was piqued. "How very like a dream it is. How very much as if it is something I’ve experienced before. Often. This is very stimulating." He paused. "Can you do that again?"
"Hit you again?"
"Yes. I want you to. Hit me again."
"I can’t. I was provoked before. I can’t hit you again. I haven’t got any reason to hit you again. It’s not why I came here."
The man said nothing for a moment. Then he turned his body toward the wooden wall of the building near him and, without preamble, threw himself hard against it, so he hit it with his chest and his face. He bounced off the building and then onto his backside on the brick street. He sat very still. He said nothing.
David walked over to him and tried hard to peer into the darkness around his face. He saw, once more, the suggestion of large eyes and a wide nose, but this was a suggestion only, as if, again, these were features that David
expected
to see.
"Are you all right?" David asked.
The man said nothing.
"Are you hurt?" David asked.
"Hurt?" the man said. "I can’t say. I don’t know." He was clearly puzzled.
David reached for the man’s hand to help him up.
"Volvo wagon," the man said.
David didn’t understand. "Sorry?"
The man screamed the words, "Volvo wagon!" He screamed them again; there was anguish in his tone, now. "Volvo wagon! Volvo wagon!"
David backed away.
The man continued screaming the words "Volvo wagon!"
Some people appeared from the quirky houses that lined the street. They stood in their doorways, or stuck their heads out of windows and watched the man screaming "Volvo wagon!"
Eventually, all at once, the man stopped screaming and fell silent.
The people went back into their houses, or pulled their heads back into windows.
The man stood. "It’s not far," he said. "But I think that the darkness will be coming soon, so we must hurry."
"Why were you yelling ‘Volvo wagon’?" David asked.
The man answered, "I don’t know."
"Do you know what it is?"
"What what is?"
"A Volvo wagon."
"No. What is it?"
"It’s a kind of car."
"A car? I don’t know what a car is."
"It’s a means of transportation. Like a plane or a boat. Do you know what they are?"
"No. And I don’t know what
transportation
is.”
“Your feet are a means transportation."
"My feet? Is that what a Volvo wagon is? My feet?"
"No. A Volvo wagon is a kind of car. A means of transportation."
"Like my feet?"
"Yes."
"Then I don’t know why I would be yelling ‘Volvo wagon.’ I know what my feet are. I should have been yelling ‘My feet!’"
David sighed.
The sky was darkening quickly.
David said, "You don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you?"
"No," the thin man said. "But I want to." He paused. "We have to hurry."
"Why?" David asked.
"Because if we don’t, then we will surely be swallowed up by the darkness."
~ * ~
It’s ten years later, and Peter, the man who has moved into the house that once belonged to Anne Case, says to his wife, Maude, "Have you seen any more of our friend with the big head and bulbous eyes?" Peter is smiling as he says it, but he supposes that Maude can’t see him smile because they’re lying in bed and the light is off.
There’s a moment’s silence, then Maude says, "No." A short pause. "I’ve decided that I really didn’t see anything."
"Oh?"
"Or perhaps if I did see something . . ." A pause. A sigh. "I’ve given this a lot of thought, Peter, and I’ve decided that if I
did
see something then it was probably not a man at all. I think it would have to have been a woman." A pause, "The woman who lived here. Anne Case." Another pause. She had been on her side, facing away from her husband. She rolled to her back. "And because she was murdered . . . I mean, that’s quite traumatic, isn’t it?"
"Quite."
"So, as traumatic as it was, her spirit is forever earthbound. Tied for an eternity to this house, to the place where she was murdered. Unable to find peace. It’s very sad, Peter, but it’s probably happened a million times. Someone dies violently and their soul simply can’t . . . pass over. To the other side, I mean."
"Why?"
"Why? It’s obvious, isn’t it? I shouldn’t have to tell you why." A short pause. "And when I saw her, I simply . . . misinterpreted what I was seeing. It’s not every day you see a ghost, so I guess I was a little shaken by it. The whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than two or three seconds, anyway. One moment he was there and the next moment he . . . she . . . whatever, was gone."
"Poof!"
"Yes. Poof!"
T
he elderly man—a widower—lived by himself on Sylvan Beach, in a three-bedroom cottage that he and his late wife had shared for twenty years, ever since their retirement from the motel business.
The car that was stopped ahead of him on the narrow dirt road looked familiar. He thought he remembered seeing it a couple of times in the past few weeks; it wasn’t easy to miss. Most people in the area drove big American cars. This was a Toyota. Blue. Sparkling in the late afternoon sun.