Stories (2011) (40 page)

We poured ourselves another and exchanged sloppy grins,
hooked elbows, and tossed it down.

"And another to meet the first," the old man said
and poured. Then: "Here's to company." We tossed it off.

"She taught me the ventriloquism, you know," the
old man said, relighting his pipe.

"Marilyn?"

"Right, Marilyn."

"She seems to have been a rather all-around lady."

"She was at that. And pretty as an Irish morning."

"I thought witches were all old crones, or young
crones. Hook noses, warts . . ."

"Not Marilyn. She was a fine-looking woman. Fine bones,
agate eyes that clouded in mystery, and hair the color of a fresh-robbed
hive."

"Odd she didn't do the magic herself. I mean, if she
was the better magician, why was her husband the star attraction?"

"Oh, but she did do magic. Or rather she helped
McDonald to look better than he was, and he was some good. But Marilyn was
better.

"Those days were different, m'boy. Women weren't the
ones to take the initiative, least not openly. Kept to themselves. Was a sad
thing. Back then it wasn't thought fittin' for a woman to be about such
business. Wasn't ladylike. Oh, she could get sawed in half, or disappear in a
wooden crate, priss and look pretty, but take the lead? Not on your life!"

I fumbled myself another brandy. "A pretty witch,
huh?"

"Ummmm."

"Had the old pointed hat and broom passed down, so to
speak?" My voice was becoming slightly slurred.

"It's not a laughin' matter, m'boy." Machen
clenched the pipe in his teeth.

"I've touched a nerve, have I not? I apologize. Too
much sauce."

Machen smiled. "Not at all. It's a silly thing, you're
right. To hell with it."

"No, no. I'm the one who spoiled the fun. You were
telling me she claimed to be the descendant of a long line of witches."

Machen smiled. It did not remind me of other smiles he had
worn. This one seemed to come from a borrowed collection.

"Just some silly tattle is all. Don't really know much
about it, just worked for her, m'boy." That was the end of that. Standing,
he knocked out his pipe on the concrete floor and went to his cot.

For a moment I sat there, the last breath of Machen's pipe
still in the air, the brandy still warm in my throat and stomach. I looked at
the windows that surrounded the lighthouse, and everywhere I looked was my own
ghostly reflection. It was like looking out through the compound eyes of an
insect, seeing a multiple image.

I turned out the lights, pulled the curtains and drew the
partition between our beds, wrapped myself in my blanket, and soon washed up on
the distant shore of a recurring dream. A dream not quite in grasp, but heard
like the far, fuzzy cry of a gull out from land.

It had been with me almost since moving into the tower. Sounds,
voices . . .

A clunking noise like peg legs on stone . . .

 . . . a voice, fading in, fading out . . . Machen's voice,
the words not quite clear, but soft and coaxing . . . then solid and firm:
"Then be a beast. Have your own way. Look away from me with your mother's
eyes."

". . . your fault," came a child's voice, followed
by other words that were chopped out by the howl of the sea wind, the roar of
the waves.

". . . getting too loud. He'll hear . . ." came
Machen's voice.

"Don't care . . . I . . ." lost voices now.

I tried to stir, but then the tube of sleep, nourished by
the brandy, came unclogged, and I descended down into richer blackness.

* * *

Was a bright morning full of sun, and no fog for a change.
Cool clear out there on the landing, and the sea even seemed to roll in soft
and bounce against the rocks and lighthouse like puffy cotton balls blown on
the wind.

I was out there with my morning coffee, holding the cup in
one hand and grasping the railing with the other. It was a narrow area but safe
enough, provided you didn't lean too far out or run along the walk when it was
slick with rain. Machen told me of a man who had done just that and found
himself plummeting over to be shattered like a dropped melon on the rocks
below.

Machen came out with a cup of coffee in one hand, his unlit
pipe in the other. He looked haggard this morning, as if a bit of old age had
crept upon him in the night, fastened a straw to his face, and sucked out part
of his substance.

"Morning," I said.

"Morning." He emptied his cup in one long draft.
He balanced the cup on the metal railing and began to pack his pipe.

"Sleep bad?" I asked.

He looked at me, then at his pipe, finished his packing, and
put the pouch away in his coat pocket. He took a long match from the same
pocket, gave it fire with his thumbnail, lit the pipe. He puffed quite a while
before he answered me. "Not too well. Not too well."

"We drank too much."

"We did at that."

I sipped my coffee and looked at the sky, watched a snowy
gull dive down and peck at the foam, rise up with a wriggling fish in its beak.
It climbed high in the sky, became a speck of froth on the crystal blue.

"I had funny dreams," I said. "I think I've
had them all along, since I came here. But last night they were stronger than ever."

"Oh?"

"Thought I heard your voice speaking to someone.
Thought I heard steps on the stairs, or more like the plunking of peg legs,
like those old sea captains have."

"You don't say?"

"And another voice, a child's."

"That right? Well . . . maybe you did hear me speakin'.
I wasn't entirely straight with you last night. I do have quite an interest in
the voice throwing, and I practice it from time to time on my dummy. Last night
must have been louder than usual, being drunk and all."

"Dummy?"

"My old dummy from the act. Keep it in the room
below."

"Could I see it?"

He grimaced. "Maybe another time. It's kind of a
private thing with me. Only bring her out when we're alone."

"Her?"

"Right. Name's Caroline, a right smart-looking girl
dummy, rosy-cheeked with blonde pigtails."

"Well, maybe someday I can look at her."

"Maybe someday." He stood up, popped the contents
of the pipe out over the railing, and started inside. Then he turned: "I
talk too much. Pay no mind to an old, crazy man."

Then he was gone, and I was there with a hot cup of coffee,
a bright, warm day, and an odd, unexplained chill at the base of my bones.

* * *

Two days later we got on witches again, and I guess it was
my fault. We hit the brandy hard that night. I had sold a short story for a goodly
sum -- my largest check to date -- and we were celebrating and talking and
saying how my fame would be as high as the stars. We got pretty sicky there,
and to hear Machen tell it, and to hear me agree -- no matter he hadn't read
the story -- I was another Hemingway, Wolfe, and Fitzgerald all balled into
one.

"If Marilyn were here," I said thoughtlessly,
drunk, "why we could get her to consult her crystal and tell us my
literary future."

"Why that's nonsense, she used no crystal."

"No crystal, broom, or pointed hat? No eerie evil deeds
for her? A white magician no doubt?"

"Magic is magic, m'boy. And even good intentions can
backfire."

"Whatever happened to her, Marilyn I mean?"

"Dead."

"Old age?"

"Died young and beautiful, m'boy. Grief killed
her."

"I see," I said, as you'll do to show
attentiveness.

Suddenly, it was if the memories were a balloon overloaded
with air, about to burst if pressure was not taken off. So, he let loose the
pressure and began to talk.

"She took her a lover, Marilyn did. Taught him many a
thing, about love, magic, what have you. Lost her husband on account of it, the
magician, I mean. Lost respect for herself in time.

"You see, there was this little girl she had, by her
lover. A fine-looking sprite, lived until she was three. Had no proper father.
He had taken to the sea and had never much entertained the idea of marryin'
Marilyn. Keep them stringing was his motto then, damn his eyes. So he left them
to fend for themselves."

"What happened to the child?"

"She died. Some childhood disease."

"That's sad," I said, "a little girl gone and
having only sipped at life."

"Gone? Oh, no. There's the soul, you know."

I wasn't much of a believer in the soul and I said so.

"Oh, but there is a soul. The body perishes but the
soul lives on."

"I've seen no evidence of it."

"But I have," Machen said solemnly. "Marilyn
was determined that the girl would live on, if not in her own form, then in
another."

"Hogwash!"

Machen looked at me sternly. "Maybe. You see, there is
a part of witchcraft that deals with the soul, a part that believes the soul
can be trapped and held, kept from escaping this earth and into the beyond.
That's why a lot of natives are superstitious about having their picture taken.
They believe once their image is captured, through magic, their soul can be
contained.

"Voodoo works much the same. It's nothing but another
form of witchcraft. Practitioners of that art believe their souls can be held
to this earth by means of someone collecting nail parin's or hair from them
while they're still alive.

"That's what Marilyn had in mind. When she saw the girl
was fadin', she snipped one of the girl's long pigtails and kept it to herself.
Cast spells on it while the child lay dyin', and again after life had left the
child."

"The soul was supposed to be contained within the
hair?"

"That's right. It can be restored, in a sense, to some
other object through the hair. It's like those voodoo dolls. A bit of hair or
nail parin' is collected from the person you want to control, or if not
control, maintain the presence of their soul, and it's sewn into those dolls.
That way, when the pins are stuck into the doll, the living suffer, and when
they die their soul is trapped in the doll for all eternity, or rather as long
as the doll with its hair or nail parin's exists."

"So she preserved the hair so she could make a doll and
have the little girl live on, in a sense?"

"Something like that."

"Sounds crazy."

"I suppose."

"And what of the little girl's father?"

"Ah, that sonofabitch! He came home to find the little
girl dead and buried and the mother mad. But there was that little gold lock of
hair, and knowing Marilyn, he figured her intentions."

"Machen," I said slowly. "It was you, was it
not? You were the father?"

"I was."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. We were both foolish. I was the more
foolish. She left her husband for me and I cast her aside. Ignored my own
child. I was the fool, a great fool."

"Do you really believe in that stuff about the soul?
About the hair and what Marilyn was doing?"

"Better I didn't. A soul once lost from the body would
best prefer to be departed I think . . . but love is some times a brutal
thing."

We just sat there after that. We drank more. Machen smoked
his pipe, and about an hour later we went to bed.

* * *

There were sounds again, gnawing at the edge of my sleep.
The sounds that had always been there, but now, since we had talked of Marilyn,
I was less able to drift off into blissful slumber. I kept thinking of those
crazy things Machen had said. I remembered, too, those voices I had heard, and
the fact that Machen was a ventriloquist, and perhaps, not altogether stable.

But those sounds.

I sat up and opened my eyes. They were coming from below.
Voices. Machen's first. ". . . not be the death of you, girl, not at all .
. . my only reminder of Marilyn . . ."

And then to my horror. "Let me be, Papa. Let it
end." The last had been a little girl's voice, but the words had been
bitter and wise beyond the youngness of the tone.

I stepped out of bed and into my trousers, crept to the
curtain, and loo'ked on Machen's side.

Nothing, just a lonely cot. I wasn't dreaming. I had heard
him all right, and the other voice . . . it had to be that Machen, grieved over
what he had done in the past, over Marilyn's death, had taken to speaking to
himself in the little girl's voice. All that stuff Marilyn had told him about
the soul, it had gotten to him, cracked his stability.

I climbed down the cold metal stairs, listening. Below I
heard the old, weathered door that led outside slam. Heard the thud of boots
going down the outside steps.

I went back up, went to the windows, and pulling back the
curtains section by section, finally saw the old man. He was carrying something
wrapped in a black cloth and he had a shovel in his hand. I watched as, out
there by the shore, he dug a shallow grave and placed the cloth-wrapped object
within, placed a rock over it, and left it to the night and the incoming tide.

I pretended to be asleep when he returned, and later, when I
felt certain he was well visited by Morpheus, I went downstairs and retrieved
the shovel from the tool room. I went out to where I had seen him dig and went
to work, first turning over the large stone and shoveling down into the pebbly
dirt. Due to the freshness of the hole, it was easy digging.

I found the cloth and what was inside. It made me flinch at
first, it looked so real. I thought it was a little rosy-cheeked girl buried
alive, for it looked alive . . . but it was a dummy. A ventriloquist's dummy.
It had aged badly, as if water had gotten to it. In some ways it looked as if
it were rotting from the inside out. My finger went easily and deeply into the
wood of one of the legs.

Out of some odd curiosity, I reached up and pushed back the
wooden eyelids. There were no wooden painted eyes, just darkness, empty sockets
that uncomfortably reminded me of looking down into the black hollows of a
human skull. And the hair. On one side of the head was a yellow pigtail, but
where the other should have been was a bare spot, as if the hair had been
ripped away from the wooden skull.