Bradbury, Ray - SSC 13 (8 page)

 
          
“Well,”
said the boy, “you don’t need lights in the middle of the block, that’s why.”

 
          
“But
it gets rather dark,” said Lantry.

 
          
“So?”
said the boy.

 
          
“Aren’t
you afraid?” asked Lantry.

 
          
“Of
what?” asked the boy.

 
          
“The
dark,” said Lantry.

 
          
“Ho
ho,” said the boy. “Why should I be?”

 
          
“Well,”
said Lantry. “It’s black, it’s dark. And after all, street lights were invented
to take away the dark and take away fear.”

 
          
“That’s
silly. Street lights were made so you could see where you were walking. Outside
of that there’s nothing.”

 
          
“You
miss the whole point—” said Lantry. “Do you mean to say you would sit in the
middle of an empty lot all night and not be afraid?”

 
          
“Of
what?”

 
          
“Of
what, of what, of what, you little ninny! Of the dark!”

 
          
“Ho
ho.”

 
          
“Would
you go out in the hills and stay all night in the dark?”

 
          
“Sure.”

 
          
“Would
you stay in a deserted house alone?”

 
          
“Sure.”

 
          
“And
not be afraid?”

 
          
“Sure.”

 
          
“You’re
a liar!”

 
          
“Don’t
you call me nasty names!” shouted the boy. Liar was the improper noun, indeed.
It seemed to be the worst thing you could call a person.

 
          
Lantry
was completely furious with the little monster. “Look,” he insisted. “Look into
my eyes …”

 
          
The
boy looked.

 
          
Lantry
bared his teeth slightly. He put out his hands, making a clawlike gesture. He
leered and gesticulated and wrinkled his face into a terrible mask of horror.

 
          
“Ho
ho,” said the boy. “You’re funny.”

 
          
“
What
did you say?”

 
          
“You’re
funny. Do it again. Hey, gang, c’mere! This man does funny things!”

 
          
“Never
mind.”

 
          
“Do
it again, sir.”

 
          
“Never
mind, never mind. Good night!” Lantry ran off.

 
          
“Good
night, sir. And mind the dark, sir!” called the little boy.

 
          
Of
all the stupidity, of all the rank, gross, crawling, jelly-mouthed stupidity!
He had never seen the like of it in his life! Bringing the children up without so
much as an
ounce
of imagination!
Where was the fun in being children if you didn’t imagine things?

 
          
He
stopped running. He slowed and for the first time began to appraise himself. He
ran his hand over his face and bit his fingers and found that he himself was
standing midway in the block and he felt uncomfortable. He moved up to the
street corner where there was a glowing lantern. “That’s better,” he said,
holding his hands out like a man to an open warm fire.

 
          
He
listened. There was not a sound except the night breathing of the crickets.
Finally there was a fire-hush as a rocket swept the sky. It was the sound a
torch might make brandished gently on the dark air.

 
          
He
listened to himself and for the first time he realized what there was so
peculiar to himself. There was not a sound in him. The little nostril and lung
noises were absent. His lungs did not take nor give oxygen or carbon dioxide;
they did not move. The hairs in his nostrils did not quiver with warm combing
air. That faint purling whisper of breathing did not sound in his nose.
Strange. Funny. A noise you never heard when you were alive, the breath that
fed your body, and yet, once dead, oh how you missed it!

 
          
The
only other time you ever heard it was on deep dreamless awake nights when you
wakened and listened and heard first your nose taking and gently poking out the
air, and then the dull deep dim red thunder of the blood in your temples, in
your eardrums, in your throat, in your aching wrists, in your warm loins, in
your chest. All of those little rhythms, gone. The wrist beat gone, the throat
pulse gone, the chest vibration gone. The sound of the blood coming up down
around and through, up down around and through. Now it was like listening to a
statue.

 
          
And
yet he
lived
. Or, rather, moved
about. And how was this done, over and above scientific explanations, theories,
doubts?

 
          
By
one thing, and one thing alone.

 
          
Hatred.

 
          
Hatred
was a blood in him, it went up down around and through, up down around and
through. It was a heart in him, not beating, true, but warm. He was—what?
Resentment. Envy. They said he could not lie any longer in his coffin in the
cemetery. He had
wanted
to. He had
never had any particular desire to get up and walk around. It had been enough,
all these centuries, to lie in the deep box and feel but
not feel
the ticking of the million insect watches in the earth
around, the moves of worms like so many deep thoughts in the soil.

 
          
But
then they had come and said, “Out you go and into the furnace!” And that is the
worst thing you can say to any man. You cannot tell him what to do. If you say
you are dead, he will want not to be dead. If you say there are no such things
as vampires, by God, that man will try to
be
one just for spite. If you say a dead man cannot walk, he will test his limbs.
If you say murder is no longer occurring, he will make it occur. He was,
in toto
, all the impossible things. They
had given birth to him with their practices and ignorances. Oh, how wrong they
were. They needed to be shown. He would
show
them! Sun is
good
, so is
night
, there is nothing wrong with dark,
they
said.

 
          
Dark
is horror, he shouted, silently, facing the little houses. It is
meant
for contrast. You must fear, you
hear! That has always been the way of this world. You destroyers of Edgar Allan
Poe and fine big-worded Lovecraft, you burner of Halloween masks and destroyer
of pumpkin jack-o-lanterns! I will make night what it
once
was, the thing against which man built all his lanterned
cities and his many children!

 
          
As
if in answer to this, a rocket, flying low, trailing a long rakish feather of
flame. It made Lantry flinch and draw back.

 
          
IV

 
          
It
was but ten miles to the little town of Science Port. He made it by dawn,
walking. But even this was not good. At four in the morning a silver beetle
pulled up on the road beside him.

 
          
“Hello,”
called the man inside.

 
          
“Hello,”
said Lantry, wearily.

 
          
“Why
are you walking?” asked the man.

 
          
“I’m
going to Science Port.”

 
          
“Why
don’t you ride?”

 
          
“I
like
to walk.”

 
          
“
Nobody
likes to walk. Are you sick? May
I give you a ride?”

 
          
“Thanks,
but I like to walk.”

 
          
The
man hesitated, then closed the beetle door. “Good night.”

 
          
When
the beetle was gone over the hill, Lantry retreated into a nearby forest. A
world full of bungling, helping people. By God, you couldn’t even
walk
without being accused of sickness.
That meant only one thing. He must not walk any longer, he had to ride. He
should have accepted that fellow’s offer.

 
          
The
rest of the night he walked far enough off the highway so that if a beetle
rushed by he had time to vanish in the underbrush. At dawn he crept into an
empty dry water drain and closed his eyes.

 
          
The dream was as perfect as a rimed
snowflake.

 
          
He saw the graveyard where he had lain deep
and ripe over the centuries. He heard the early morning footsteps of the
laborers returning to finish their work.

 
          
“Would you mind passing me the shovel, Jim?”

 
          
“Here you go.”

 
          
“Wait a minute, wait a minute!”

 
          
“What’s up?”

 
          
“Look here. We didn’t finish last night, did
we?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
There was one more coffin, wasn’t there?”

 
          
“Yes.”

 
          
“Well, here it is, and open!”

 
          
“You’ve got the wrong hole.”

 
          
“What’s the name say on the gravestone?”

 
          
“Lantry. William Lantry.”

 
          
“That’s him, that’s the one! Gone!”

 
          
“What could have happened to it?”

 
          
“How do I know. The body was here last
night.”

 
          
“We can’t be sure, we didn’t look.”

 
          
“God man, people don’t bury empty coffins.
He was in his box. Now he isn’t.”

 
          
“Maybe this box was empty.”

 
          
“Nonsense. Smell that smell? He was here all
right.”

 
          
A pause.

 
          
“Nobody would have taken the body, would
they?”

 
          
“What for?”

 
          
“A curiosity, perhaps.”

 
          
“Don’t be ridiculous. People just don’t
steal. Nobody steals.”

 
          
“Well, then, there’s only one solution.”

 
          
“And?”

 
          
“He got up and walked away.”

 
          
A pause. In the dark dream, Lantry expected
to hear laughter. There was none. Instead, the voice of the grave-digger, after
a thoughtful pause, said, “Yes. That’s it, indeed. He got up and walked away.”

 
          
“That’s interesting to think about,” said
the other
.