Fool on the Hill (44 page)

THE DARK RAIN

I.

March fourteenth, Eve of the Ides, the end of the Tale almost close enough to taste. Mr. Sunshine sat on the sill of his Window on the World, sipping retsina and watching yet another squadron of rainclouds gather over Ithaca as evening neared. Such depressing weather . . . but if Mr. Sunshine had been dead set against precipitation, he never would have bothered with The Hill in the first place.

His golden lyre, which he had not played in some time, sat on his knee; at his side was a tightly lidded pot. He had a last bid of Meddling to take care of before the big finish tomorrow. First, however, he indulged himself with a few melodies on the lyre, alternating, as was his habit, between improvisation and the faithful rendition of old themes. Throughout the playing he kept one eye on Ithica, laughing at the frantic antics of Stephen George, poor George with his apple-poisoned Princess lying in enchanted slumber in Tompkins County General.

“We’ll wrap up our business soon enough, George, don’t worry,” Mr. Sunshine said, when his music was done. “There’s only a few more things to be done. Just remember what a virtue patience is supposed to be.”

He set down the lyre, took another swig of retsina, a bite of feta. What he had in mind to do now was, in one sense, extreme overkill, using an artillery barrage for what a few sentences on a Typewriter would just as easily accomplish. But over long centuries as a Storyteller Mr. Sunshine had come to love mayhem even more than he loved the Brothers Grimm, and if a few innocent sparrows happened to drop dead on the sidelines—out of the way of his main Plot—well that just added to the fun, didn’t it?

And so, taking care not to breathe the escaping steam, he lifted the lid from the pot, revealing the noisome stew within: a soup of surplus nightmares, brewed from dark arrowheads Mr. Sunshine had clipped from the quiver of one of the Others, seasoned with still nastier things that he had
scrounged from various corners of the Library. Open to the air it began to bubble furiously, and Mr. Sunshine fanned the resulting cloud, an angry black cumulus, out into the stratosphere, where it found itself a seat among the other rainmakers.

The World turned beneath it like a free-floating globe, targeting.

II.

There are many kinds of rains: cold spring rains, warm rains of summer, rains that bring flood, golden rains that turn into gods, rains of frogs or other odd objects that leave scientists puzzled. But the rain Mr. Sunshine had chosen to advance his Plot was none of these; it was a Dark Rain, the sort of rain that brings madness like the rays of a full moon.

It fell in a wide radius that included the whole of Ithaca and much of the surrounding county. In the main it was quite ordinary, but here and there a drop would fall that was something more. These drops landed on powerlines, causing overloads and fires; wet exposed machinery which then failed, often in some cataclysmic way; splashed into the open eyes or onto the tongues of individuals needing only a push to set them to violence.

On patrol, Nattie Hollister and Sam Doubleday cruised along Tioga Street, listening to a babble of emergency calls on the police band. Like snowflakes in a shaken glass globe, every lunatic in Tompkins County seemed to have picked today to go over the edge. Hollister and Doubleday were on the lookout for a red Ford pickup that had been plowing through mailboxes all over the downtown area. “We’re not sure if it’s got a driver or not,” the dispatcher had quipped; Doubleday, who had spent all of January with his arm in a sling, did not find that in any way funny. He’d read the official report on the “Hilltop Moto-Chase,” as some Dexter at the
Journal
had dubbed it, and several of the details were too familiar for comfort.

“And today,” he said now, while the dispatcher continued to jabber, “today is getting to be as wacked-out psychotic as—”

His sentence was interrupted by a brief explosion, off in the direction of The Commons.

“—as New Year’s,” he finished.

III.

It was raining steadily at twilight, when Ragnarok came home from an early dinner with Jinsei. He walked rather than rode because his motorcycle was still a week or so from being street-ready again. Forced by lack of funds to make his own repairs he had taken his time, enjoying, meanwhile, the leisure
of traveling on foot, over dirt trails and through alleyways too narrow for any large vehicle to follow him.

Soaked but not unhappy about it, he came upon his house and jiggered the front door. The first hint of something wrong was the smell, though that was quickly followed by readily visible damage. A step inside the door Ragnarok could see, without turning on the lights, that someone had been redecorating with a pile-driver while he was out. Holes had been knocked in the walls, white plaster dust streaked the black paint. His few sticks of furniture had met a similar fate, and he guessed easily enough what the smell was.

The toilet. The son of a bitch must have taken the plumbing apart.

He didn’t look in the bathroom just yet, for another thought struck him—the shed . . . —and he stepped back outside, his temper surprisingly even, at least for the next few seconds.

He went to the parking shed where his motorcycle was convalescing. The shed’s padlock lay twisted and bent on the ground; the door hung ajar. Ragnarok reached out to swing it wide, and that was when the raindrop slipped under his shades and entered his eye, stinging, burning. The world went away for a minute and when it came back he was inside the shed, fists clenched, staring at the scrap metal that had once been his bike. It had been battered into its basic components and then battered some more, until only memory made it recognizable for what it once was.

Ragnarok shook with fury, wanting to lash out but impotent, as with the driverless truck, for lack of a target. He might simply have pounded the sides of the shed in anger, but then his gaze lighted on the one thing the vandal had missed: his mace, lying dark and unbroken beside a shattering of glass from the headlight.

It was his own weapon, not a tool or clue left behind carelessly, yet seeing it was like a revelation. All at once Ragnarok knew, he
knew
who had been there.

“Of course,” he said, bending down to trip the mace in a gloved fist. “Of course. Jack, partner,
Jack Baron
. I
warned
you not to cross me again.”

He extended his arm, spinning in place, once, twice, three times, swinging the mace. It connected with the wall of the shed, with a loud
crack!
sending a broken piece of siding spinning to the ground outside. Rain pattered down, wetting it.

“Here I come, Jack,” Ragnarok said.

IV.

“There you go,” Mr. Sunshine agreed, sitting back at his Desk to Watch.

“But not as fast as you think.” He sipped his retsina. “Patience, boys . . . patience.”

THE PAINFUL VIRTUE OF PATIENCE

I.

It would be wrong to say that Aurora’s descent into coma following her eating of the Apple had in any way broken George; his near freezing-to-death after Calliope’s exit had taught him his lesson, and he would not fall into the trap of despair again. Still, it would also be wrong to say that the loss of Aurora was anything less than hell.

The doctors at Tompkins County General could find nothing wrong with her, no physical reason for her slumber; under lab analysis the apple she had bitten proved to be quite ordinary, completely non-toxic. Despite this the Princess slept on, as Monday became Tuesday became Wednesday became the Eve of the March Ides, and if the physicians had no clue to the cause, they had even less notion of a cure.

George had a few ideas on the matter. He might occasionally be foolish, but he wasn’t stupid, and he would have been a bad storyteller indeed not to recognize a fairy tale when he saw one. But even if he chose to believe what the sheer madness of this past year made it possible to believe, that someone in Power was recreating a Brothers Grimm fantasy, what could he do about it?

Tuesday and Wednesday were passed in the stacks of Uris and Olin Libraries on the campus, searching for an answer to that question. Olin was one of the most comprehensive book repositories in the country, but not even the self-help craze of the Eighties had produced so much as a single pamphlet on how to escape from someone else’s daydream. George buried himself in the literature of Malory, Chaucer, and even, God help him, Edmund Spenser. In an ancient edition of
The Catholic Encyclopedia
he read about St. George, who three times had been put to death only to be resurrected, and who had bled milk instead of blood when a beheading finally finished him. None of this was remotely inspiring, or very cheerful, either, and when George returned to Aurora’s hospital bed Wednesday evening he acted on instinct
rather than learning, trying the most classic cure for enchanted sleep: The Kiss.

It didn’t work. The critics might call him a Saint, but no one had ever accused George of being a Prince, and Aurora slept on. Feeling that he had failed her in some fundamental way, he went home fuming at himself, ate a disgusting amount of take-out pizza, and slept fitfully for six hours.

It wasn’t fair; it was like Writer’s Block, that most horrible point in the telling of a story when you had no clue what was supposed to happen next and the mere sweep of the second hand on your watch was enough to scatter your thoughts, foil your attempts at concentration. And George wasn’t even in charge of this Story, that was the worst part.

Rising before dawn Thursday morning, determined to do
something
, George burst from his house with a fiercely hopeful look on his face that scared hell out of a passing jogger. The only plan of action that had occurred to him—and a sketchy one at that—was that he must somehow prove himself, like a true knight of old, through brave: or charitable deeds.
Then
his Kiss would have the potency it now lacked.

Only trouble was, bravery and charity didn’t seem to want to have a thing to do with him that day. Strolling along the edge of Cascadilla Gorge while darkness still lay on the land, George heard what sounded like desperate cries from below; but after nearly killing himself trying to reach the Gorge bottom, he found a contented—though chilly—couple who needed nothing except, perhaps, a thicker sleeping bag Embarrassed, George followed a path down into town, where he attempted to offer his protective services to children on their way to school, but they all ran away from him, terrified by the look on his face; a dowdy old matron he tried to help across a busy street left him choking on a breath of Mace.

This sort of thing went on, literally, until well into afternoon, by which time he had ranged back up and around far north of The Hill, beyond Cayuga Heights. The rain caught him in open country, out of sight of any shelter, and while it brought chaos to Ithaca it brought nothing to George other than a good soaking. Worn out, his desperation to revive Aurora changing to anger at the still-unseen Author of his miseries, he plodded the back roads shouting dire threats at the clouds, from which he imagined he could hear the faintest echoing of laughter.

“What are you waiting for?” he bellowed. “I’m ready to take whatever you’ve got, so let’s bring it on already!”

A new sound: a siren, approaching from behind him. George turned expectantly, feeling incredible release, the moment come at last, a task to perform for the glory of his Princess. But he was wrong; the red pick-up truck that came flying down the road, a police car close on its tail, was not the test of chivalry he’d been searching for. There was nothing he could do but jump back out of the way, stumbling blindly under the spray of mud the two vehicles kicked up as they roared past. They were gone as quickly as they had
appeared, Sam Doubleday’s cries to “Pull over, you fuck!” lingering longest in their wake. Then no sound but the pattering of the rain, George’s angry exhale, and the faint heavenly laughter.

“All right,” George said, furious. “All right, that’s the way you want to play.”

Freshly determined, he set off in the direction the truck and cop car had gone. But it was past dark by the time he finally found someone in need of his help, and by that point, he almost wasn’t paying attention.

II.

If George was nearly untouched by the madness raining down on Ithaca, Ragnarok found himself practically swimming in it as he raced up University Avenue toward Fraternity Row, eager to do to Jack Baron what Jack had done to his bike. The mayhem seemed to have concentrated itself along his chosen route, like a Dali painting brought to life and scattered in a line along the Hillside. In one house he passed someone with a lunatic’s cackle was hurling model trains through the individual squares of a many-paned living room window; twenty yards beyond that, another someone had decided to toss their furniture into the middle of the Avenue: a warped highboy, a rain-soaked divan, a shattered standing mirror.

Not far beyond that, as he was cursing the slowness of his legs, Ragnarok came upon another Daliesque apparition: a purple-maned horse, led by a hairy man in leather with a six-pack clipped to his belt. Z.Z. Top had been on West Campus when the Dark Rain began and things got decidedly weird. A polite argument between two passing Cornellians had metamorphosed without warning into a rib-smashing brawl that took the efforts of six other bystanders to break up.

“Got the hell away from that scene,” Z.Z. Top would have explained, if Ragnarok had given him time, “and then I saw Lion-Heart’s horse zipping down the road with no rider. Took me half of forever to catch up and calm him down.”

But Ragnarok did not stop to chat. As it was the Top barely had time to recognize him before the stallion’s reins were torn out of his grasp and he was roughly shoved aside.

“Hey!” the Top shouted, as Ragnarok slipped one foot inexpertly into a stirrup and tried to lift himself into the saddle. “Rag, what do you think you’re d—”

“Need the speed,” Ragnarok barked at him, and with a determined lunge managed to get himself astride the stallion. Still clutching his mace in one hand he gave the reins a vicious yank to turn the horse, which neighed in protest.

“Ragnarok,” the Top began. “Ragnarok, wait, you don’t know how—”

Too late. A stout kick, a cry of “Giddap!” and stallion and rider were off at a suicidally fast gallop.

“ . . . don’t know how to ride a horse,” Z.Z. finished. And watched them vanish into the rain.

III.

Rain pounded against the walls of Rho Alpha Tau, but the Brothers paid little attention to it, or to the chaos going on outside. A party of five—Bill Chaney, Bobby Shelton, and three others—had gathered in the House game room for a game of True Stud Poker, a special variant utilizing nude playing cards. Even as Ragnarok was taking the horse from Z.Z. Top, Chaney took Shelton for a twenty-five-dollar pot.

“Two pair, Linda Lovelace high,” he announced, to which Norris Mailer, another Brother, could not resist adding: “Looks like
four
pair to me, Bill.”

Bobby Shelton gave him a black look. “You know any jokes that
aren’t
as old as Martha Washington’s underwear, Norris?”

Chaney took the pot; Mailer, chastened, gathered in the cards and took his turn as dealer. They were in the middle of the next hand when Jack Baron came in. His step was almost silent and at first only Bobby Shelton noticed him, but soon they had all turned around to look. Norris Mailer goggled openly.

The House President was still damp from his early sojourn in the rain. His hair lay close to his skull, and his eyes were wide, searching. One fist was curled tightly around the sledgehammer he had used to demolish Ragnarok’s motorcycle and house; at the moment he looked very anxious to try his hand at demolishing a skull or two. This look was not deceiving.

“Doing some yardwork, Jack?” Shelton asked, eyeing the sledgehammer. “Putting up a tent, maybe?”

“Where is he?” Jack studied each of them with extreme suspicion. “He ought to be here by now. Who’s seen him?”

“Seen who?” said Bill Chaney.
He
was studying the door, wondering how quickly he could get through it in a pinch.

“
Ragnarok
, of course! Son of a bitch should have been here a long time ago!”

“Why would he be here, Jack?” asked Shelton. Jack made no answer to this question, turning his attention instead to the grandfather clock that dominated one end of the room. Its ticking was slow and not particularly loud, but to the Rho Alpha President, who had heard it from three rooms away, it sounded almost mocking. When it began suddenly to chime the hour he stepped up to it and planted the sledgehammer in its face.

“Hey!” Norris Mailer cried, definitively demonstrating his stupidity by getting up to interfere. “Hey, hey, my old man
paid
for that cl—”

Jack whirled on him, felling him with one stroke of the hammer; with equal swiftness, Bill Chaney bolted from his chair.

“Where is he?”
Jack roared at the three remaining poker players,
“I want him here now! I WANT HIM HERE NOW!"

On the floor, Mailer clutched at what was left of his nose and screamed through broken teeth.

IV.

Ragnarok would have been more than happy to oblige Jack, but his cavalry charge on Rho Alpha Tau was destined for a premature end. He got as far as the Cayuga Heights Bridge before his luck, and the stallion’s tolerance for abuse, ran out. He had driven the horse as he would have driven his bike, to break all speed records, and despite his lack of riding experience he thought he had everything under control right up until the moment the animal threw him. They were halfway across the bridge, Gorge roaring below, when all at once the stallion seemed to skid. Its shoulders dropped; its hindquarters came up, catapulting him into the air.

With perfect detachment he watched the world turn over. He fully expected to go flying over the side, and somehow it was not important that this would keep him from reaching Jack. His last thought before crashing bodily into the guardrails was that the rain seemed to be slacking off.

The shock of impact rang in his head; his sunglasses broke in half, falling into the Gorge while he himself dropped back onto the cold metal of the bridge, blood running from a cut above his eye, pupils wide to the thinning rain. The stallion seemed to study him for a moment, then snorted and moved on across the bridge, where it began cropping the dead grass by the entrance to Carl Sagan’s house.

A half hour passed while Ragnarok lay unconscious on the bridge. During that time the rain stopped completely, and Stephen George found his way back to The Hill, wet, muddy, exhausted. After a brief and fruitless march down Fraternity Row during which, still, no damsel in distress or other potential good deed showed itself, the storyteller decided to return home and reconsider his strategy. It was about two minutes after making this decision that he came upon the fallen Bohemian . . . whom he very nearly walked past without noticing.

This time George felt no surge of victory, no release. He simply checked to make sure that Ragnarok was still breathing and then hurried to call an ambulance.

Naturally, it did not occur to him that he had finally found what he had been yelling for all afternoon.