Black Light

witnessed minutes earlier. Now he wore modern dress, but his gestures had the same mannered grace as before. He walked until he stood beside the young man, who was motioning at the sieve in front of him. The older man nodded and lifted his hand. Behind him, upon the arch’s twin columns, a stone began to move. The young man continued to speak. The second man stepped backward, his hands held in front of him as though in supplication. Above them, the stone inched forward, until it perched at the very edge of the arch. The young man’s mouth moved, his brow furrowed. He turned, glanced up and saw the stone. For one terrible instant they all were there before me, stone boy man. Then in utter silence the stone plunged from the column, toppling until it landed upon the young man and crushed him.

Overhead the sky was blue-white. Eddies of dust rippled like miniature dunes swept by the wind. A huge block of stone lay near enough for me to touch. As I stared something moved from beneath it, the glistening head and eyes of a crimson serpent that turned into a skein of blood unraveling at my feet, and the white tip of a finger that twitched and then was still.

I did not see what happened next. I was already gone, running blindly down the hillside with the wind roaring around me and my own voice burning in my throat. I ran and ran and ran, finally collapsing at the edge of the drive. There were trees here strung with Chinese lanterns, and tiki lights on poles. In the near distance shadowy figures passed in and out of the golden portal that was Bolerium’s massive, open front door. I was on my hands and knees, my bare legs scraped and raw, my hair tangled with dead grass and falling into my eyes. At the sound of footsteps I tensed and closed my hand around a rock.

“Lit?”

Someone touched me on the shoulder.

“Get the fuck away from me!” I shrieked and threw the rock so that it careered wildly into the darkness, stumbled to my feet and began to run. I only got a few steps before strong hands grabbed me.

“Lit! Lit, for chrissakes—calm down—”

I shook my head. “No—get away!” I gasped. “Get the—”

“Lit—come on, come on, sweetie—look at me!”

I looked.

“Ralph Casson—remember? We met yesterday, my son Jamie—”

“Ralph!” I began to cry with relief. “Oh, my god, you have to get the police, you have to get somebody—”

“Hey—sit down over here for a sec. Okay?” He put his arm around me, hugging me to him, and for just an instant let his palm rest against my forehead. “Oh, dear—you’re burning up. Come on, this way—”

He led me away from the drive and onto the overgrown lawn. I wiped my cheeks and looked up at him gratefully. “I—I was—”

“Shhh.” He squeezed my arm. “Let’s go over here where it’s quiet, and you can mellow out for a few minutes…”

I nodded. He stared down at me, unsmiling, his pale eyes wide with concern. Instead of faded coveralls and carpenter’s belt he wore a shiny ultramarine jacket, and his gray-blonde hair hung loosely to his shoulders.

“…mellow out,” he went on. “Right? And tell me what happened…”

My terror faded. I felt disoriented, slightly dizzy; as though I’d been yanked from deep sleep into daylight. And seeing Ralph Casson there unsettled me, even more so than when I’d watched him rolling a joint in his kitchen. I fidgeted, but Ralph only held me tighter, so that I could feel his heartbeat, and smell the too-sweet scent of jasmine oil.

“Let’s go,” he said.

We headed toward the back of the mansion. Above us, Bolerium’s chimneys and crumbling turrets rose like the skyline of some fantastic city. The north tower’s famous stained-glass windows had an infernal glow; figures could be seen moving behind them, small and serenely intent as spirit puppets in a shadow play. On the lower stories, the casements of all the arched gothic windows had been flung wide, voices and music drowning out the wind. Laughter, a man’s falsetto shriek; the mingled strains of Telemann and “Rebel Rebel” and an old song by the Nursery’s house band. I was so conscious of Ralph Casson’s arm around me that I thought I might pass out. I swallowed, my mouth dry, and pointed at the base of the house, where a broad flagstoned patio extended out onto the lawn.

“What’s—what’s that?”

Along the border of the patio, all the French doors were open. A strange velvety light poured out onto the flagstones, so rich and deep a blue it was like spilled paint. I blinked: the light made the edges of things appear soft, as though grass and trees and wrought-iron furniture had all grown cobalt fur.

Ralph shrugged. “Black light. Axel’s doing the whole light-show trip, hired some company from Far Rockaway—”

As he spoke, a woman in a gypsyish dress with absurdly long sleeves stepped outside and began dancing by herself, eyes closed, hands drawing imaginary pentagrams in the air.

“Oh, goody,” said Ralph. “I was so afraid Isadora wouldn’t be able to make it.” He gestured at a stone bench overlooking the patio. “Your chaise awaits, ma princesse tenebreux. Sit.”

I slipped away from him, sat down too hard on the bench. It was cold, the surface crinkly with lichen. “Ouch,” I said, moving as far from Ralph as I could. He just fixed me with that brazen stare.

“So. Speak.”

“Do I have to play dead, too?”

He laughed and settled himself beside me. I looked away, at the baroquely weird scene in front of us. The Stooges had edged out Telemann and David Bowie in the Background Music Sweepstakes. In some of the downstairs windows banks of candles had appeared, silvery sparks flickering against a lurid blue cyclorama. The wind shifted; instead of woodsmoke, it carried the headier fragrance of marijuana and roasting meat.

And the woman on the patio had stopped dancing. She stood with her head slumped, arms hanging limply in front of her. After a minute or so she began to lift them. She swayed back and forth, eyes still shut tight and mouth slack. Her long skirt was hitched up so that I could see she was wearing only one desert boot; her other, bare, foot was black with grime. Watching her I felt the return of that horror and strangeness I had felt on the mountaintop; a growing fear that it might break through here. When Ralph touched my knee I jumped.

“I actually would like to hear what spooked you up there,” he said. “You looked pretty freaked out.”

I bit my lip. “I can’t,” I said at last, hopelessly. Because how could I ever explain anything about Kamensic to someone who hadn’t lived there all his life? Especially a grownup; especially Jamie Casson’s father. “It’s—it’s just so…”

“Listen. Lit.” Ralph lowered his voice and let his hand rest upon my knee. “Is this some kind of—drug thing? Because if it is, I won’t tell your parents—I can help you, but you’ll have to tell me what it was you—”

“No! I mean, I wish it was—but it wasn’t, I wasn’t—I’m not on anything.”

“So…?” He turned and took my chin in his hand. His fingers were rough and calloused and smelled of jasmine. “Hey, come on—you know you’ll feel better if you talk about it.”

So I talked about it. Somehow the angry music and marijuana smoke and velvety light made it seem not so strange to be telling an adult I barely knew about something I wasn’t sure I had seen.

“…was like I went the wrong way up to the house, but there’s only one road, and anyway the road was gone…”

As I spoke Ralph Casson nodded and his eyes widened, not with disbelief but as though I were confirming something he already knew. When I faltered, trying to think of a way to describe the stone column I had seen, or the terrible sound the stag had made when it was wounded, Ralph didn’t interrupt, or question me. He said nothing at all; only let his gaze lift from my face to rest upon the black hillside behind us. All the while he continued to hold my chin in his hand, and gradually he let his fingers creep upward until they splayed across my cheek, stroking it.

I didn’t pull away. His touch was hypnotic, it made me feel as though he were gently pulling the story from me, as one carefully plays out the string of a kite against a steady wind. He didn’t say a word, until I mentioned the slight sharp-featured man who had chanted over the slaughtered deer and a living corpse bound with ivy.