Black Light (19 page)

It was like watching a tree fall. The immense crown of antlers trembled as it twisted its head, vainly seeking its assailant. Then slowly, as though its legs were roots being torn from the earth, the stag tumbled to the ground.

With a shriek, first one and then another of the waiting hunters raced toward it. One plunged a spear into its belly; another clambered onto its side and began hewing its neck. Still another darted toward its face, thrusting a lance into its eye.

I could watch no more. I turned and ran down the mountain, catching myself when I stumbled, not stopping until I once again felt the familiar ruts and furrows of a path underfoot.

I slowed, panting, and looked behind me for signs of pursuit. There were none. I shivered: my dress hung limply, damp with sweat; my arms and legs were scratched and smeared with dirt. Voices drifted down from the hilltop, their somber undercurrent heightened by a single sharp cry of grief, like a blade drawn against a stone. On the summit I could see the thrusting finger of the column; the elk’s curved antlers, like the rib cage of some extinct reptile; the stooped figures of the hunters intent on disemboweling their prey. I was far enough away that I felt safe, but now that I
was
safe I perversely wanted a better look. So I made a half-circuit of the hillside, keeping low until I found a natural hollow that hid me, even as it gave a better vantage point.

Above me the hunters worked without talking. The only sounds were the wind and the measured hack and crunch of bone against bone, bone against rock, stone against skin. In the grass, the slain
megaloceros
loomed like the remains of an ancient fortress. The wind shifted and brought with it the stench of slaughter. Blood and fat, excrement and trampled grass, turned-up earth. I gagged, wiping tears from my eyes and moving uphill slightly to escape the shifting breeze. When I looked up again, the scene had altered.

The great stag was gone. Or rather, it had
diminished.
What I saw now was not the massive creature felled by the hunter’s spear, but something smaller, its curves more graceful—and familiar. Even in the half-light I could make out its color, pale brown darkening to gold, and its antlers, a dozen tines still furred with autumn velvet. A twelve-point buck. Magnificent in its way, but no dream-elk; no enchanted stag.

The figures crouched around it had changed as well. There were still a dozen of them, with one slight man standing apart from the rest. He alone spoke, chanting in a high, almost boyish voice; words that were meaningless to me. The others worked deftly and in silence, slicing chunks of raw meat, tugging strands of sinew and glistening fat from the hide. But the knives glinting in the dimness had metal blades now, not flint or obsidian. Their clothes, too, were less primitive, dun-colored robes or loose trousers of cloth, rather than ill-cured hides and pelts. I thought I could smell smoke and my eyes stung; but when I blinked the scene changed again—

—yet O so slowly this time, so that I could actually
see
it change, centuries passing, millennia perhaps: the figures blurring as though I glimpsed them through a rainy window. Now they stood solemnly in a line, their eyes dark holes and their mouths open, though they made no sound. Only the slight sharp-featured man continued to chant, his arms raised above a figure on the ground before them. At first I could not see it clearly, but then it seemed that this, too, changed, so that I was no longer half-crouched upon the hillside but standing in their midst.

“I so ylikitatos, I so oreos,”
sang the man beside me. The eerie light made him look as though he had been cast in lead. All save for his hair, black and singed with silver like ash, and his eyes. These were deep-set, sea-blue and sorrowing; the most melancholy eyes I had ever seen.

“Dionysos, Zagreus, eho pi i aftos
…” He tilted his head, staring at the slaughtered deer at his feet, then glanced at me and made a graceful, almost welcoming gesture. I looked down and began to shake uncontrollably.

The deer was gone. In its stead was a human corpse. He lay on his side, naked, arms pulled in front of him and bound at the wrists; his legs taut and angling away from his body, ankles tied. His skin was so pale that it seemed to glow, and his dark hair fell in ropy tendrils across his face. Here and there small dark crescents gleamed—beneath his rib cage, above his groin, on his neck and both thighs. At first I thought they had been scored by knives.

They had not. Each little half-moon held even smaller wounds like tiny beads: the imprints of human teeth. Beside one nipple a pistil of torn flesh gleamed, and blood seeped from it like nectar. Ivy twined about his wrists and throat, its tendrils braided into his hair. His eyes had been gouged out, and blossoms forced into the empty sockets, poppies whose white petals Uttered the ground. Poppies filled his mouth as well, cleaving to his tongue and lips. Beside his head two antlers had been set, their upcurved tines like skeletal fingers.

“
…
to maheri,”
sang the slight man. He opened his hands to let more petals fall upon the corpse’s face.
“To maheri is tas hiras o kozmos. Apopse ekaika zontanos, apethanon: i me ta stafilia! i me to meli, i me to krasi
—
”

“I se to krasi,”
the others replied. The wind rose and the petals spun into eddies of light and dark.
“I se to krasi
—
”

“I me to krasi.”
Another voice, so faint it was like the wind in my ears.
“I me to krasi apethanon…”

It was the bound man; the man I thought was dead. With nightmarish slowness his head moved, until it faced me. His mouth opened, lips curving into a smile as ruined petals spilled upon his breast. His teeth were stained black with blood; when his tongue thrust between them shining larvae spun from it like thread.

“Blessed is she among women who is given these rites to know,”
he whispered;
“Blessed are you who comes willingly unto the god
…”

And then, jarringly, the scene changed one last time. Instead of the malign archaic figures upon the hillside, I now looked upon a young man perhaps ten years older than myself. He wore khaki pants and a white shirt rolled up to the elbows, unfashionable black eyeglasses and unfashionably short hair. Behind him the outlines of the hillside blurred. I could just make out the ruins of a building, russet and sepia-toned like an old photograph. The young man was crouched in front of a tumbled arch, its pedestals still bearing great honey-colored blocks of stone. Beside him a wooden box held hammers and a pickax. His hands moved back and forth, back and forth, with dreamlike patience; as though he had been doing this for centuries.

It was a few seconds before I figured out that he was holding some kind of screen, sifting earth and smiling absently as he did so. Now and then he ran a hand across his brow, leaving a smear of dust in its wake, and looked up, grinning at the sky, the shattered arch behind him.

Unlike all that had gone before, there was a palpable sense of
warmth
to this scene. Despite the wind gnawing at my back, despite the rustle of grasses around me, I knew that if I could only touch that fallen arch it would be hot beneath my fingertips, and the young man’s cheek would be slick with sweat. I took a step forward, but before I could do more a second figure appeared behind the first. A slight man in a dark suit, head down so that I could only see a crown of dark hair smooth against his skull.

He stepped from beneath the arch, though I had not seen him there a moment before. As he did so, the first man turned and greeted him, smiling. I could not hear their words, but the young man looked delighted. The other man’s expression was infinitely sad. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he lifted his head, and I covered my mouth to keep from crying out.

It was the same man who had presided over the slaying of the great elk and the human sacrifice I had 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.