Shadowland

    He looked like a minor devil, a devil consumed by the horror of his ambition — the shadowy light hollowed his cheeks, somehow made his lips disappear. His hair and his skin seemed the same dull color. He might have been a hundred years old, a skull floating above an empty suit. In the monochrome face, his eyes smoked. They were screaming before he did, so loudly and with such pain that I was silenced.

    'Another one? Another one?' he yelled, and jerked himself forward toward me. The light shifted, and his face returned to normal. The purple badges below his eyes looked as though they itched. 'Damn you,' he said, and his eyes never altered, and before he hit me I had time to think that I had seen the real Steve Ridpath, the one his face and nickname concealed. He flailed out and clouted me in the ribs, and dreamily grabbed my lapels and twisted us both about and pushed me back between Del and Morris.

    The blood pounded in my ears. I faintly heard the sound of wood on wood — Morris quietly closing the lid of the Baldwin. 'Now, wait a second,' came Fielding's voice.

    'Wait? Wait? What the hell else have I . . . ' Skeleton raised his bony fists up to his head. 'Don't you tell me to wait,' he hissed. 'You don't belong here.' He was speaking to Morris, but looking at Del Nightingale. 'I warned you,' he said.

    Then he swiveled his head toward Morris. 'Get away from that fucking piano.' He began to move spastically toward Morris, and Morris smartly separated himself from the bench. Nearly sobbing, Skeleton said, 'God­dammit, why can't you listen to me? Why can't you pay attention to what I say? Now, stay away from . . . Christ!' He pushed his fists into his eyes, and I thought perhaps that in fact he was sobbing. 'It's too late for that. Oh, Jesus. You crappy freshmen. Why do you have to hang around here?'

    'To practice, you dope,' Morris said. 'What does it look like?'

    'I'm not talking to you,' Skeleton said, and took his hands away from his eyes. His face was wet and gray.

    Morris' mouth opened.

    'You think you know everything,' Skeleton said quietly to Del.

    'No,' Del said.

    'You think you own him. You'd be surprised.'

    'Nobody owns anybody,' Del said, rather startling me.

    'You shitty little bastard,' Skeleton erupted. 'You don't even know what you're talking about. And you're the one who thinks I should wait. Damn. I know as much as you do, Florence. He helps me. He wants to know me.'

    By now Morris and I were sure that Ridpath was literally insane, and what happened next only confirmed it.

    As scared as he was, Del had the courage to shake his head.

    This enraged Skeleton. He began to tremble even more than Laker Broome during the chapel interrogations the day before. 'I'll show you,' he shouted, and went for Del.

    Skeleton slapped him twice, hard, and said, 'Take off your jacket and your shirt, goddamn you, I want to see some skin.'

    'Hey, come on,' Morris said.

    Skeleton whirled on us and froze us to the boards with his face. 'You're not in it anymore. Stay put. Or you're next.'

    Then he jerked at the back of Del's dark jacket and pulled it off. Del hurriedly began to unbutton his shirt, which glimmered in the dim light. As if having something to do helped his fear, he seemed calm, despite his haste. His cheeks burned where Skeleton had slapped him.

    Morris said, 'Don't do it, Del.'

    Skeleton twisted toward us again. 'If you dare to say one more thing, either of you, I'll kill you, so help me God.'

    We believed him. He was bigger and stronger, and he was crazy. I glanced at Morris and saw that he was as terrified, as incapable of helping Del, as I was.

    'You fucking Florence,' Skeleton moaned. 'Why did you have to be here? I'm going to initiate you, all right.' His face constricted and blanched, then went a dull shade of red. 'With my belt. Bend over that piano bench.'

    Morris groaned and looked as if he might faint or vomit.

    Del dropped his glimmering shirt — it was silk, I real­ized — on the dusty floor and went to the piano bench. He knelt before it and leaned over, exposing his pale boy's back. Skeleton was already breathing oddly. He un­fastened his belt, drew it out through the loops, and doubled it.

    For a moment he simply looked at Del, and I saw on his face that expression I had seen before, of a devil's desperation and need and distrust, of a hungry certainty all mixed up with fear. I too groaned then. Skeleton never paused. He moved slightly behind Del, to one side, and raised the doubled belt and sliced it down on Del's back.

    'Oh, Jesus,' he said, but Del said nothing. An instant later, a red line appeared where the belt had struck.

    Skeleton raised his belt again, tightening his face with effort.

    'No!' Morris shouted.

    The belt came whistling down and cracked against Del's skin. Del jerked backward a bit and closed his eyes. He was silently crying.

    Skeleton repeated his odd, painful prayer — 'Oh, Jeesus' — and raised the belt and cut down with it again. Del gripped the legs of the piano bench. I saw tears dripping off his chin and breaking on the floor.

And that is the second 'image which stays with me most strongly from Carson. The three lines blistering in Del Nightingale's white back, Skeleton twisting over him in his agony, his face twisted too, the belt dangling from his hand. The first image, of Mr. Fitz-Hallan ironically proffering a ball-point pen to Dave Brick — that picture of the school's health — jumped alive in my mind, and I thought without thinking that the two were connected as two points on a single graph.

'You rich little freak,' Skeleton wailed. 'You have everything.' He broke away from Del, looked wildly at Fielding and me from out of his tortured face, broke toward us and we scrabbled backward toward the heavy curtains. Skeleton uttered a word, 'bird,' as one speaks without realizing it, broke direction again, and threw the belt at the curtains and began to lunge toward the door. We heard it slam; then heard a loud silence.

12

It felt as though a cymbal had been struck in that cavernous dark space, the shattering sound cutting us free from whatever had held us up, held us in place. Morris and I, already sitting, collapsed onto the boards. Del slipped off the piano bench and lay beside it.

    I began to go toward him on all fours. Morris followed. Del's face was streaked with what looked like mud; finally I saw that it was the dust melting on his wet face. 'It doesn't matter,' Del said. 'Get my shirt.'

    'Doesn't matter?' Morris said as he stood up and went for the discarded shirt. 'We can get him expelled now. He's done. And he hurt you. Look at your back.'

    'I can't look at my back,' Del said. He raised himself up on his knees and put one hand on the piano bench. 'May I please have my shirt?'

    Morris came up white-faced and handed it over. Del's face was red, but composed. The wet dust looked like thick warpaint. 'Do you need help standing up?' Morris asked.

    'No.'

    All three of us heard the door opening again, and Morris hissingly drew in his breath; Del and I probably did the same.

    'You in here?' came a familiar voice. 'Hey, I can't find you.' Expecting Skeleton's return, none of us could identify the speaker.

    'Hey, I was looking all over for you,' Dave Brick said, walking slowly toward us out of the gloom. 'You get that book? Holy cow.' This last because now he could see the way we were staring at him, Morris and I fearfully, Del with the warpaint on his face.

    'Holy cow,' Brick repeated when he was close enough to see Del's back just