Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror

what to say or do. We're sure she'll come back for you, David. Perhaps she started to have dreams, too.'

Aunt Evelyn came into the kitchen.

'Most of us decided to stay,' Grandfather continued, 'to keep watch, and see what happens, though the dreams are strong now.' He smiled grimly. 'It's early, but I'm going to take your grandmother's watch now. Mr. Sorensen will take my place in two hours. We are going to take turns listening in the basement. Our only chance now is to wait for them.'

'Maybe it's just dreams, Grandfather!'

Grandfather eased me off his lap. He bent forward and hugged me with his lumberman's strength.

Then he brushed by Aunt Evelyn and went out through the living room. I started to run after him, but my aunt grabbed me and held onto me.

Grandfather left to go downstairs.

My mind, half numb, groped for whatever reality I could cling to in my now disassembled universe: the horrible creatures, Grandfather's story. Might there not have been some other explanation for the dreams?

I went into the living room and sat on the sofa. Finally I said, 'We have to get help!'

'Yes,' said my aunt, 'when the time comes.' She reached out and gripped me gently by the shoulder.

I got up, broke angrily free of her grip, and ran out of the apartment into the hall. I hurried down the main stairs and to the cellar door.

I went down into the basement. Grandfather rocked peacefully in the chair. He was holding a book, and looked up at me slowly. Grandmother turned to leave, then also saw me.

'David. My God, what are you. down here again! Listen to me! Get upstairs right now!' Her voice echoed among the foundation posts.

'I. can't,' I said. 'Not until you come.'

Grandfather got up from the chair, took me firmly by the hand, and they both led me up the basement stairs.

'Come on, David!' said Grandmother.

'I'd better stay,' said Grandfather.

'No!' I yelled.

'Better help me get him upstairs,' said Grandmother. 'It won't take but a few seconds.'

We three came out of the basement and rounded the landing halfway to the second floor while I slid my hand miserably along the railing.

I was put to bed. The room was black except for a bit of light that shafted under the door, illuminating a few floorboards. I listened intently for my grandparents, wishing the time forward. I fought to keep from calling out, and the window shade next to my bureau seemed to symbolize what had been kept from me. After a time, I fell asleep.

Our ability to confirm the memories of childhood is often based upon cruel or doubtful reconstructions, but it was in the confusion that followed that I learned how tenuous our grip on reality can be.

I was awakened by a frightening noise.

A thunder sound, coming up from far below, tore at my senses. I'd never heard a sound like it — or was I dreaming? — the sound of thick concrete cracking deep down in the basement. The building shook slightly, as if in an earthquake.

I jumped out of bed and rushed into the living room, where my aunt grabbed onto me. Ripping my pajama top, I wrenched free of her and ran out into the upper hall. I had to find Grandfather. I heard his familiar voice coming up from the stairwell.

'Timing!' he yelled angrily, his voice distinguishable amid the noises of people shouting and running in the hallways.

I ran barefoot down the stairs, my aunt yelling after me. I got to the first floor. My grandfather was standing at the entrance to the cellar door. Huge cracking sounds, as of thick concrete snapping, wooden supports breaking, came from below. Mr. Sorensen was handing Grandfather cans of gasoline that he then poured down the cellar stairs. The other people in the entry hall, including my grandmother, began to run back up the stairs or out through the front door. People were yelling 'Fire!' They ran through near or far exits of the building. Mrs. Schulte stayed behind. She was holding two unlit torches. One of these she passed to Grandfather, who tensely lit it with a cigarette lighter and then threw it down into the cellar. Flames quickly roared up through the cellar door as Grandfather and Mrs. Schulte backed away. Grandfather turned, saw me standing there, ran toward me, picked me up in his huge hands, and, without seeming to think, bounded back up the stairs with me in his arms.

He set me down on the second-floor landing.

'Stay here!' he yelled at me. 'I was supposed to be on the first floor!'

I grabbed onto him. 'No!'

He got loose from me and stumbled back down the stairs to the entry hall. The hot flames burst across the downstairs ceiling and licked up into the stairwell. I heard a commotion. I looked up, and there were other tenants, the familiar faces I knew, peering down from the various landings toward Grandfather, who yelled up at them from below. 'Get to the fire escapes!' Then he turned his attention to a red-framed glass box on the wall. I'd seen it many times before. He grabbed the little hammer and smashed the glass. The alarm, which was attached to our apartment house, rang fiendishly in the alley out by the garbage cans. Now Mr. Sorensen, holding two more cans of gasoline, rushed by me on the landing. Grandfather came up the stairs to meet him, and together they poured the gasoline, which sloshed down the stairs, splashing onto the walls and railing.

The cans were almost empty when we heard what sounded like the floor below breaking all along the length of the building. We heard people yelling 'Fire!' and banging on doors in the distance. Mrs. Schulte, from a few steps up, handed Mr. Sorensen the second handmade torch, this time already lit. Grandfather tossed it down onto the stairs where the gasoline pooled and dripped into the soaking carpet. The stairwell exploded in a tempest of heat and flames. The walls, carpet, and woodwork caught fire all at once. While I was dragged up to the fourth floor, I looked down into the roaring conflagration. People die in fires, I thought. Die!

An acrid smell filled the air. In the flames and smoke I saw something alive. Something monstrously white was writhing in or behind the waves of heat, fire, and smoke roaring up the stairwell. A second one appeared. Then up into the mid-air blackness, screaming, I was lifted and carried into our apartment. Grandmother, Grandfather, Aunt Evelyn, and I made our exit through the big double-hung kitchen window and out onto the fire escape. We descended amid the sounds of the fire station alarm and the apartment alarm. Other tenants did the same. A fire engine roared around to the front of the apartment building while we huddled on the lower escape landing. Grandfather lowered a metal ladder — an object I'd always failed to see because it had been part of the metal grid. We climbed down to the pavement.

The old people gathered near the fire station wall. They whispered to each other in the darkness; then, in a group, they moved down the alley and out to the street in front of the old apartment building.

I watched the firemen point their brass-nozzle hoses toward the orange flames that beat out of the second- story windows like tattered rags in a harsh wind. People were talking, shouting, while the alarms continued to sound. I stood on the cool pavement while the fire spread upward.

That building, which on the outside looked like one of Poe's haunted mansions and on the inside like a tomb, was now engulfed in flames. The firefighters had been right next door, but the fire had started so quickly and spread so fast that even the advantage of location was minimized, and in the glow of the fire people were expressing astonishment all around me, now pointing toward the burning roof. The alley was soon blocked by policemen, and I could only stand with my bare feet on the pavement and gaze at the tall brick walls. High up, at the fire escape landing, smoke poured through our broken kitchen window. I heard the sounds of breaking glass and hissing steam; and finally, as the fire was at last extinguished in that huge sooty building, the survivors remained huddled together, the crowd thinned out, and within the hour I could hear the lonely sound of dripping water.

There was the familiar face of John, the fireman, from Station No. 7, standing next to us, looking upward at the black windows, annoyed and bewildered. He looked at the dozen anxious wrinkled faces in the darkness.

When he spoke, some unaccountable fragment of confusion clung to his words. 'How'd it start?' he asked quietly.

Grandfather looked at John for a few seconds, watching his youthful face, seeming to ponder an act of trust that I later realized might have been planned, but in the end he said nothing.

John removed his helmet and ran his hand through a tangle of thick brown hair. He was uneasy, frightened,