Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury (29 page)

Abbey recalled the way Lowell had walked toward them, his gaze set on Cate.

“And I guess when they called California they found out he’s been in a lot of trouble. He’s not really even a cousin. He was just working for my uncle, and he stole his car. He took things from here, too,” Bobby said, moody, clearly having been told to keep the family troubles private.

“What kind of things?”

“He made me promise not to tell.”

Abbey grabbed Bobby’s arm and he shifted away. “Stupid things. Rope. Packing tape. Blankets. He took my dad’s axe that we used when we went camping.”

“What did he tell you about the future? Are you going to be a millionaire?”

Abbey was sarcastic by nature; her mother often complained about this, as well as her having her head in the clouds. Her mother insisted that Abbey would be beautiful if she stopped chopping her hair short and paid some attention to her appearance instead of wearing shorts and T-shirts and old hooded sweatshirts.

“He told my dad he’d be dead by December,” Bobby Marcus said.

“What does he know?” Abbey snorted. “He’s not a doctor.”

“My dad has leukemia.” Bobby’s voice was solemn. Abbey knew Mr. Marcus had been ill, but people in town didn’t know just how sick he’d been, only that he was once stout and was now painfully thin. “He’s been in remission.”

Until this summer Abbey felt that nothing could touch the people close to her. Then she had started worrying, and once she’d started she found she couldn’t stop. “Don’t worry about any of Lowell’s predictions. He seems like a big liar.”

“I don’t know.” Bobby looked younger than his years. “My father didn’t get out of bed today.”

A
t the pool the next day, Cate kept to herself. A light rain started to fall in the afternoon, and when the swimmers scattered into the locker room Cate just sat there on the concrete, rain streaming down. She looked like a water nymph, a creature who belonged to another element.

“You’re going to get soaked,” Abbey called as she scrambled to find a dry place under the patio awning.

“It’s only rain,” Cate said, as if the world around her didn’t matter, as if she was already in some other, unreachable place, a realm much farther away than California.

Once she was underneath the awning, Abby started reading, and soon she was in another world herself. Then, all at once, she felt someone was drowning, even though there were no swimmers in the pool. When she looked up Cate was gone. There was that chill, right through her sweatshirt. She waited, anxious and ready to bolt, until all of the campers were picked up by their parents, then she took off running. The rain was coming down harder. She climbed the fence, snagging her fingers on the metal, then ran along the creek, now rushing with rising water. She imagined him gone; she willed it with all her might. But his tent was still in the field, and there were wisps of smoke from a bonfire that had been doused by the torrents. She went within feet of the tent and called, “Cate?” in a low, shaky tone, but there was no answer and she couldn’t tell if anyone was in the tent, if what she heard was a girl’s voice or only the sound of the rain.

T
he next morning Cate wasn’t waiting on the corner where they usually met. There were several police cars circling the neighborhood. In a panic Abbey ran all the way to the pool. She had a dark premonition and was quick to berate herself for not warning Cate against Lowell. An angel, a liar, a man with black gloves. But there was Cate, calmly teaching the youngest swim group how to dog-paddle.

“Where were you?” Abbey said as she came up beside her. There was the thrum of panic in her throat as she spoke.

Cate kept her attention focused on the Guppies. “Kick,” she called out to them before she turned to her friend. “We don’t have to do everything together, do we? Anyway, you were the one who was late.”

All that day Cate avoided her, but at their lunch break, Abbey made a point of sitting beside her at the picnic table. “He’s not even Bobby Marcus’s cousin.”

Cate coolly appraised her as she continued eating her lunch. “I know.” Her wet hair streamed down her back.

“And he’s a thief,” Abbey said.

Cate threw her a contemptuous look. “You think you’re so smart.”

“Were you with him when I came looking for you yesterday?” Abbey’s voice sounded broken even to herself.

“He said you’d be jealous.”

“You think I’m jealous?” Abbey stood up, her heart hitting against her chest.

Cate shrugged. “You tell me.”

“Did he tell you Bobby’s father kicked him out? That he stole a car in California?”

“He told me everything,” Cate said calmly. “He told me you can’t be friends with someone who’s filled with envy.”

“Is that what he told you about the future? That we wouldn’t be friends anymore?”

“He said I’d be leaving for California before I knew it.”

L
ate in the afternoon Abbey told the head counselor that she felt ill and needed to go home. It wasn’t exactly a lie. She packed up her swimsuit and her books and left early, her head throbbing. She walked to the field, then scaled the fence. She stood beside the creek. She wasn’t surprised by what she saw. There was now a car parked under the bushes, hidden by briars and leaves. You had to squint to see it beyond the tree, then it was possible to make out the Marcuses’ old station wagon, which Bobby’s father had reported missing that morning. That was why there were police cars patrolling earlier in the day, looking for signs of the thief.

For a moment Abbey thought she might bolt and run, then keep on running till she reached the far side of the field. Instead, she studied the stolen car, the briars, the field she had come to all her life. She thought about the items he’d taken from the Marcuses’ garage—the tape, the ropes.

He was there, under the tree. He laughed when he saw her, and waved her over. He was graceful and tall and sure of himself. She walked through the high grass, and it stung when it hit against her legs.

“I knew you’d show up,” he said when Abbey reached his campsite. “You and I made a connection. She thinks she’s the one that everyone wants, but it’s you. I can see what’s beautiful about you.” He cupped Abbey’s chin and studied her face. She understood how he could make someone feel special.

Abbey saw then that he was older than they’d first thought, not seventeen or eighteen but in his mid-twenties. There were feathers around the campsite because he was trapping birds for his supper. There were the bones of sparrows and larks, white and stripped bare. She thought about the children who believed an angel had fallen into the field, convinced that a miracle would soon occur. She thought about the volumes in the library that were waiting for her on the shelves, each one beautiful, each one-of-a-kind.

He kissed her and she let him. Soon enough someone would notice the stolen car. He wouldn’t keep himself hidden in this town; he’d have use for the ropes, the tape, the axe, all that he’d need to take someone with him tonight. Maybe he’d stop in a field far from here, in another town, where a girl’s body wouldn’t be identified; maybe he’d keep on driving. He kissed her and she kissed him back. She knew that Cate would follow her into the field, and that she’d spy them together, then turn and run, distraught.

When he grabbed Abbey to pull her toward the car, she slipped out of his grasp, leaving him holding on to nothing but her backpack full of books. She was wearing shorts and a sweatshirt and the sneakers her mother told her were unfashionable. She ran home as if she were the angel with black wings, and she didn’t climb out her window again after that. In fact she kept it locked. She knew that Cate would cry all that night and that she’d never talk to Abbey again, just as she knew that years later, when Cate came home for a visit from California, compelled to stop at the library to confront her old friend, demanding to know how she could have betrayed her so easily, Abbey would simply tell her that the man in the field wasn’t the only one who could see the future.

For Ray Bradbury

About “Conjure”

Ray Bradbury’s masterwork,
Fahrenheit 451
, a hymn to books and to the power of literature, is a classic work of American fiction and one of the most important books of our lifetime. In a series of novels, short stories, and linked short stories, Bradbury has created his own genre, one that has greatly influenced American literature. Due to his work, magic is no longer corralled into genre writing. It is everywhere in American fiction. Critics may call it magic realism, but it’s simply what Ray Bradbury has been doing from the start.

Bradbury’s themes of innocence and experience echo a world made up of equal parts of dark and light, where characters yearn for both the future and the past and where loss is inevitable. Bradbury has given readers a singular vision of small-town American life, one in which a dark thread is pulled through the grass. Bradbury’s blend of suburban magic rejoices in the American dream, but it also presents the twilight world of darker possibilities, the opposing nightmare.

In my story “Conjure,” many of Ray’s themes surface—two friends who must step into the future and leave their childhoods behind, like it or not; a summer that will never be forgotten; a stranger who comes to town with a dark past and perhaps an even darker future; a huge love of the library; and ultimately, personal salvation through books. Of course I’m quite certain that
Something Wicked This Way Comes
saves my characters from a terrible fate, echoing my own life. Had I not discovered Ray Bradbury’s books, I most certainly would not have become the writer I am today.

—Alice Hoffman

MAX

John Maclay

I
first met Max thirty years ago, when I joined a Masonic lodge. Max was the Tiler, spelled that way, the officer who sat outside the closed door during meetings, to make sure non-Masons didn’t enter the room. In keeping with his position, he even had a sword beside his chair.

Masonry is the oldest and largest fraternal organization in the world. Some say it goes all the way back to ancient Egypt, some say it began in the Middle Ages, some say it started as recently as the seventeenth century. In any event, it’s old.

Masonic rituals, enacted beyond the closed door guarded by the Tiler, deal with the building of King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, symbolizing how everyone should build a spiritual temple within himself. Masons run the gamut, from practicing mystics to those who treat the pursuit as only a charitable and social club. And if anyone thinks we Masons secretly rule the world, well, we’re far too diverse in our personal temple building for that!

Dressed in a tuxedo, as were all the officers, Max was tall, balding, and cadaverous. He was friendly enough but spoke with a quiet, nasal voice and had a withdrawn air about him. No one knew where he worked, or where he lived, but that wasn’t unusual, since Masons don’t often share such details, and don’t ask about them, concentrating instead on who a person is within the lodge.

Nor could I—or anyone else, as I broached the subject to them—make a good estimate as to Max’s age. He certainly looked to be over forty, but beyond that, he could have been anywhere up to ninety. That made him even more of a mystery man.

Another odd thing about Max was that as he sat outside the door, he read newspapers to pass the time. But these newspapers were always from other cities, though they bore recent dates. And Max didn’t look like a man who traveled.

In an uncanny way, Max seemed to know everything. Not only could he always reference the Masonic schedule for the whole state, he made accurate predictions about the weather, and about how the latest world crises would turn out.

One more odd thing: Max wasn’t a “local.” No one had grown up with him or attended school with him. The first anyone could remember seeing Max was when he’d first appeared at a lodge door.

But in any event, as I advanced in Masonry and joined more and more of its many units, I kept encountering Max. It seemed he was the Tiler of practically everything—“Tiler to the World,” as someone put it—which might have been partially explained by the fact that the job paid twenty dollars a meeting. Was he therefore simply a retiree who needed the income?

But I also came to learn that Max had been a past high officer, had held more than a few such positions. Masons are given a special apron and gold breast-pocket badge when they complete their term of office, and Max carried around a leather case that was bulging with them. And he had dozens of pins, also attesting to his service, on the lapels of his worn tux.

Along this line, Max was a great and encyclopedic teacher of Masonic ritual. His quiet voice at times even intoned passages that had long since been removed, as if he’d been on the scene when they were current.

So I kept being with Max, and he with me. And yet the mystery deepened. That was because, as the years wore on, his age—as well as his origin—remained an enigma. He was just “still there,” and everywhere, looking about the same as he always did.

Indeed, had he been around—forever?

I must confess that once, after seeing the classic movie
Nosferatu
for the first time, I wondered if Max was a vampire. After all, he looked much like the character, and he did seem to be ageless. I’d also read the Oscar Wilde novel
The Picture of Dorian Gray
, so I wondered if Max was ageless because he had some dark secret to hide.

But I felt ashamed of those thoughts, since Max was the farthest thing from evil; he was one of the kindest, gentlest men I’d ever met.

However, about five years ago, I did learn more about Max. To make a long story short, whatever his age was, he had several auto accidents on his way to lodge meetings, and he couldn’t drive anymore. So Masonic brothers, myself included, had to pick him up in our cars and bring him to meetings.

That was when, in due course, I first saw Max’s house, where he lived alone. And it was perhaps the strangest house I’d ever seen.

On a cul-de-sac, in an obscure part of town, it was akin to a trailer, though it wasn’t one. Long and low, it had only one window facing the street, and a little porch at one end, from which Max would walk stiffly down to get into my car. Probably needless to say, I never got to go inside. He was always appreciative of the ride, though, and there was an aura about him that made me feel good about my act of charity.

I learned, eventually, that Max had indeed worked for a living. He was retired from the State Bureau of Statistics—which seemed oddly appropriate.

But then, after a time, Max could no longer manage on his own. So he moved to a little room in the Masonic Home, and I’d pick him up there. Now he used a walker, and it took him forever to cover the smallest distances. But he was still on his feet, and even more striking than that, he was still the Tiler.

I also need to mention that Max was in the hospital a number of times, and every time everyone said that surely this time he wouldn’t be back in action. But he always was. And incidentally, the same thing was true of some other Masonic brothers I knew—they might even have lung cancer, yet they were still around. But Max was the model of Impossible Recuperation!

And Max’s acts of charity once he had moved into the home—well beyond what Masons swear to offer one another—became the stuff of legend. He was always seen visiting the rooms of brothers who were even more infirm than himself, and helping them around the halls even though he himself used a walker, and always with a heartwarming smile.

There might have been even more to Max, than all I’ve previously mentioned. Perhaps I didn’t want to share all of my observations with other Masons, because we might have come to, let’s say, “improbable conclusions.”

But truth be told, I had noticed a certain light in a few other Masons’ eyes. Like in those of a Grand High Priest, and in those of a lesser brother who was a student of the occult. And I must confess, even if it might be unbelievable, that one night, as I was sitting in lodge, I saw that same light and it was in Max’s eyes.

It was the night of elections of officers, and he was called in to vote, with someone who’d voted being given the sword to sit in Max’s place outside the door.

And it then happened to be announced that a brother, who was present, had just been diagnosed with a serious disease.

And damned if Max, in his usual unassuming way, didn’t suddenly rise, shamble over to that brother, and place his hands on his head.

Everyone sat there in wonderment while an absolutely unearthly light momentarily filled the room.

But, even despite that occurrence, since I try to be a rational man, I must confess that my curiosity, or hopefully, caring, about Max finally led me to break Masonic protocol and seek some answers to the riddle of Max that I still sorely required.

Masonry isn’t a secret society, but it does have an initiatory path in which private things, over the years, and as earned by years of service, are revealed. And by this time I myself had advanced far enough that I felt I could ask someone very high up about Max.

So I went privately to another old man—that is, if Max was indeed old—to a brother who was among only three in my state who’d been at the top of everything.

I must mention that this old man was a “normal old man”; he’d aged logically, my having seen pictures of him at various points of his advancement, which incidentally had been far higher than Max’s. So I felt I might trust his judgment.

And this brother, after I’d made my appeal, looked at me a long time before answering. But in the end, probably feeling he had to adhere to the Masonic belief that one only needs to ask to be given, he revealed, as I sat in shock—but also deep and marvelous gratification—the truth about Max.

“They’re set down here, from time to time, from—somewhere,” he simply said. “The Tilers, the ones who, even despite all my gold badges, are the most important, who are sent to guard us and everything we do. They seem to be over forty, at least, when they first come to us. But the crucial thing about them, as you’ve been smart enough to guess, is that they’re somehow ageless. Nor indeed do we really know who they are, or much of what their worldly position, in other respects, may be.”

He paused, then concluded. “I must modestly submit something to you,” he said with a sweet, mystical smile. “Though some people may say we are, we’re not a religion. But can’t there still be something like a Masonic saint?”

And so I believe it was, and is. That’s because I attended Max’s funeral the other day, along with practically every other Mason in the state.

So he was apparently human—as to age and death—after all. But the curious and wonderful thing about it was that even though Max’s casket was open, he didn’t seem to be there, and perhaps never had been. I had a vision of him as just having always been where he’d come from, and where he now, fully, was again—a Tiler, for eternity.

So was Max a saint—or even an angel, a guardian one? After all, the wise old brother to whom I’d gone for an answer had said, “set down, from somewhere,” and wasn’t that the province of angels, not saints? I thought of the cherubim who guard the Ark of the Covenant in a higher Masonic degree, and I wondered.

But one thing more. At the funeral, on the edge of the crowd, was a brother I’d never noticed before. He was very unlike Max: as if to keep us on our toes as to celestial expectations, he was short and fat.

“That’s the guy who’s going to tile the lodges now,” someone said quietly, nudging me, after noticing my glance. “Just joined. Don’t know anything about him.”

But something I’m wondering.

“How old is he, do you think?”

About “Max”

When I was in high school in the early 1960s, I spent my summer vacations working at a grocery store, dating girls, and devouring science fiction. I’d go to the local library and take out armfuls of those old book-club editions, reading through the entire works to date of practically everybody in the field. And of course, a prime one of these was Ray Bradbury.

But amid my later-life pursuits, I forgot about all this—until I myself entered the science-fiction/fantasy/horror field in the early 1980s, as a publisher and a writer. Indeed, I then published Bradbury himself, and I appeared with a short story in an anthology in tribute to him.

But even given this, I don’t think I realized the full extent of my debt to Ray Bradbury until recently, when Mort Castle and Sam Weller asked me for a story for this volume. They wanted “Bradburyesque” or “Bradbury-informed”—and as I happened, then, to look over my many published stories, I saw how many of them already
were
.

So it was an easy and a happy task for me to write the story you’ve just read—and I hope you’ll have seen in it the inestimable gift I received, in those long-ago summers, from Ray. And if I were asked to put it in just a few words, I’d say,
a sense of wonder
.

—John Maclay