was missing its occupant.
“Okay, kids,” said the big witch after some minor applause for Preston, “everyone move their chairs back to the walls and make room for the games and stuff.”
The games and stuff had the room in a low-grade uproar. Masked and costumed children ruled the night, indulging their appetite for movement, sweet things to eat and drink, and noise. I stood at the periphery of the commotion and chatted with Mr. Grosz.
“What exactly was the disturbance all about?” I asked him.
He took a sip from a plastic cup of cider and smacked his lips offensively. “Oh, nothing, really. You see that child there with the black-cat outfit? She seemed to have fainted. Not entirely, of course. Once we got her outside, she was all right. She was wearing her kitty mask all through your reading, and I think the poor thing hyperventilated or something like that. Complained that she saw something horrible in her mask and was very frightened for a while. At any rate, you can see she’s fine now, and she’s even wearing her mask again. Amazing how children can put things right out of their minds and recover so quickly.”
I agreed that it was amazing, and then asked precisely what it was the child thought she saw in her mask. I couldn’t help being reminded of another cat earlier in the day who also saw something that gave her a fright.
“She couldn’t really explain it,” replied Mr. Grosz. “You know how it is with children. Yes, I daresay you do know how it is with them, considering you’ve spent your life exploring the subject.”
I took credit for knowing how it is with children, knowing instead that Mr.
Grosz was really talking about someone else, about her. Not to overdo this quaint notion of a split between my professional and my private personas, but at the time I was already quite self-conscious about the matter. While I was reading the Preston book to the kids, I had suffered the uncanny experience of having almost no recognition of my own words. Of course, this is rather a cliche with writers, and it has happened to me many times throughout my long career.
But never so completely. They were the words of a mind (I stop just short of writing soul) entirely alien to me. This much I would like to note in passing, never to be mentioned again.
“I do hope,” I said to Mr. Grosz, “that it wasn’t the story that scared the child. I have enough angry parents on my hands as it is.”
“Oh, I’m sure it wasn’t. Not that it wasn’t a good scary children’s story. I didn’t mean to imply that, of course. But you know, it’s that time of year. Imaginary things are supposed to seem more real. Like your Preston. He was always a big one for Hallowe’en, am I right?”
I said he was quite right and hoped he would not pursue the subject. The reality of fictional characters was not at all what I wanted to talk about just then. I tried to laugh it away. And you know, Father, for a moment it was exactly like your own laugh, and not my usual hereditary impersonation of it.
Much to everyone’s regret, I did not stay very long at the party. The reading had largely sobered me up, and my tolerance level was running quite low. Yes, Mr. Grosz, I promise to do it again next year, anything you say; just let me get back to my car and my bar.
The drive home through the suburban streets was something of an ordeal, made hazardous by pedestrian trick-or-treaters. The costumes did me no good. (The same ghost was everywhere.) The masks did me no good. And those Prestonian shadows fluttering against two-story facades (why did I have to choose that book?) certainly did me no good at all. This was not my place anymore. Not my style. Dr. Guardsman, administer your medicine in tall glasses… but please not looking-ones.
And now I’m safe at home with one of the tallest of those glasses resting full and faithful on my desk as I write. A lamp with a shade of Tiffany glass (circa 1922) casts its amiable glow on the many pages I’ve filled over the past few hours. (Although the hands of the clock seem locked in the same V position as when I started writing.) The lamplight shines upon the window directly in front of my desk, allowing me to see a relatively flattering reflection of myself in the black mirror of the glass. The house is soundless, and I’m a rich, retired authoress- widow.
Is there still a problem? I’m really not sure.
I remind you that I’ve been drinking steadily since early this afternoon. I remind you that I’m old and no stranger to the mysteries of geriatric neuroticism. I remind you that some part of me has written a series of children’s books whose hero is a disciple of the bizarre. I remind you of what night this is and to what zone the imagination can fly on this particular eve.
(But we can discount this last one, owing to my status as an elderly cynic and disbeliever.) I need not, however, remind you that this world is stranger than we know, or at least mine seems to be, especially this past year. And I now notice that it’s very strange—and, once again, untidy.
Exhibit One. Outside my window is an autumn moon hanging in the blackness. Now, I have to confess that I’m not up on the lunar phases (“loony faces,” as Preston might say), but there seems to have been a switch since I last peeked out the window—the thing looks reversed. Where it used to be concaving to the right, it’s now comparing in that direction, last quarter changed to first quarter, or something of that nature. But I doubt Nature has anything to do with it; more likely the explanation lies with Memory. And there’s really not much troubling me about the moon, which, even if reversed, would still look as neat as a storybook illustration. The trouble is with everything else below, or at least what I can see of the suburbanscape in the darkness. Like writing that can only be read in a mirror, the shapes outside my window—trees, houses, but thank goodness no people—now look awkward and wrong.
Exhibit Two. To the earlier list of reasons for my diminished competence, I would like to add an upcoming alcohol withdrawal. The last sip I took out of that glass on my desk tasted indescribably strange, to the point where I doubt I’ll be having any more. I almost wrote, and now will, that the booze tasted inside out. Of course, there are certain diseases with the power to turn the flavor of one’s favorite drink into that of a hellbroth. So perhaps I’ve fallen victim to such a malady. But I remind you that although my mind may be terminally soused, it has always resided in corpore sano.
Exhibit Three (the last). My reflection in the window before me. Perhaps something unusual in the melt of the glass. My face. The surrounding shadows seem to be overlapping it a little at a time, like bugs attracted to something sweet. But the only thing sweet about Alice is her blood, highly sugared over the years from her drinking habit. So what is it, then? Shadows of senility? Or those starving things I read about earlier this evening come back for a repeat performance, another in a yearlong series of echoes? But whenever that happens, it’s always the reflection, the warped or imaginary image first… and then the real-life echo. Since when does reading a story constitute an incantation calling up its imagery before the body’s eyes and not the mind’s?
Something’s backward here. Backward into a corner: checkmate.
Now, perhaps this seems like merely another cry of wolf, the most elaborate one so far. I can’t actually say that it isn’t. I can’t say that what I’m hearing right now isn’t some Hallowe’en trick of my besotted brain.
The laughing out in the hallway, I mean. That childish chuckling. Even when I concentrate, I’m still not able to tell if the sound is inside or outside my head. It’s like looking at one of those toy pictures that yield two distinct scenes when tilted this way or that, but, at a certain angle, form only a merging blur of them both. Nonetheless, the laughing is there, somewhere. And the voice is extremely familiar. Of course, it is. No, it isn’t. Yes, it is, it is!
Aaaaa ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
Ex. 4 (the shadows again). They’re all over my face in the window. Stripping away, as in the story. But there’s nothing under that old mask; no child’s face there, Preston. It’s you, isn’t it? I’ve never heard your laughter, except in my imagination, but that’s exactly how I imagined it sounds. Or has my imagination given you, too, a hand-me-down, inherited laugh?
My only fear is that it isn’t you but some impostor. The moon, the clock, the drink, the window. This is all very much your style, only it’s not being done in fun, is it? It’s not funny. Too horrible for me, Preston, or whoever you are.
And who is it? Who could be doing this to a harmless old lady? Too horrible. The shadows in the window. No, not my face.
I cant see anymore
Help me Father cant see
