Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 1. Ray Bradbury
Skipper!’
Suddenly, both of you realize there is something wrong. Something very wrong. You listen intently and realize what it is.
The crickets have stopped chirping.
Silence is complete.
Never in your life a silence like this one. One so utterly complete. Why should the crickets cease? Why? What reason? They have never stopped ever before. Not ever.
Unless, Unless—
Something is going to happen.
It is as if the whole ravine is tensing, bunching together its black fibers, drawing in power from all about sleeping countrysides, for miles and miles. From dew-sodden forests and dells and rolling hills where dogs tilt heads to moons, from all around the great silence is sucked into one center, and you at the core of it. In ten seconds now, something will happen, something will happen. The crickets keep their truce, the stars are so low you can almost brush the tinsel. There are swarms of them, hot and sharp.
Growing, growing, the silence. Growing, growing, the tenseness. Oh it’s so dark, so far away from everything. Oh God!
And then, way way off across the ravine:
‘Okay, Mom! Coming, Mother!’
And again:
‘Hi, Mom! Coming, Mom!’
And then the quick scuttering of tennis shoes padding down through the pit of the ravine as three kids come dashing, giggling. Your brother Skipper, Chuck Redman, and Augie Bartz. Running, giggling.
The stars suck up like the stung antennae of ten million snails.
The crickets sing!
The darkness pulls back, startled, shocked, angry. Pulls back, losing its appetite at being so rudely interrupted as it prepared to feed. As the dark retreats like a wave on a shore, three kids pile out of it, laughing.
‘Hi, Mom! Hi, Shorts! Hey!’
It smells like Skipper all right. Sweat and grass and his oiled leather baseball glove.
‘Young man, you’re going to get a licking,’ declares Mother. She puts away her fear instantly. You know she will never tell anybody of it, ever. It will be in her heart though, for all time, as it is in your heart, for all time.
You walk home to bed in the late summer night. You are glad Skipper is alive. Very glad. For a moment there you thought—
Far off in the dim moonlit country, over a viaduct and down a valley, a train goes rushing along and it whistles like a lost metal thing, nameless and running. You go to bed, shivering, beside your brother, listening to that train whistle, and thinking of a cousin who lived way out in the country where that train is now; a cousin who died of pneumonia late at night years and years ago … You smell the sweat of Skip beside you. It is magic. You stop trembling. You hear footsteps outside the house on the sidewalk, as Mother is turning out the lights. A man clears his throat in a way you recognize.
Mom says, ‘That’s your father.’
It is.
‘Here they come,’ said Cecy, lying there flat in her bed.
‘Where are they?’ cried Timothy from the doorway.
‘Some of them are over Europe, some over Asia, some of them over the Islands, some over South America!’ said Cecy, her eyes closed, the lashes long, brown, and quivering.
Timothy came forward upon the bare plankings of the upstairs room. ‘Who are they?’
‘Uncle Einar and Uncle Fry, and there’s Cousin William, and I see Frulda and Helgar and Aunt Morgiana and Cousin Vivian, and I see Uncle Johann! They’re all coming fast!’
‘Are they up in the sky?’ cried Timothy, his little gray eyes flashing. Standing by the bed, he looked no more than his fourteen years. The wind blew outside, the house was dark and lit only by starlight.
‘They’re coming through the air and traveling along the ground, in many forms,’ said Cecy, in her sleeping. She did not move on the bed: she thought inward on herself and told what she saw. ‘I see a wolflike thing coming over a dark river – at the shallows – just above a waterfall, the starlight shining up his pelt. I see a brown oak leaf blowing far up in the sky. I see a small bat flying. I see many other things, running through the forest trees and slipping through the highest branches: and they’re all coming this way!’
‘Will they be here by tomorrow night?’ Timothy clutched the bedclothes. The spider on his lapel swung like a black pendulum, excitedly dancing. He leaned over his sister. ‘Will they all be here in time for the Homecoming?’
‘Yes, yes, Timothy, yes,’ sighed Cecy. She stiffened. ‘Ask no more of me. Go away now. Let me travel in the places I like best.’
‘Thanks, Cecy,’ he said. Out in the hall, he ran to his room. He hurriedly made his bed. He had just awakened a few minutes ago, at sunset, and as the first stars had risen, he had gone to let his excitement about the party run with Cecy. Now she slept so quietly there was not a sound. The spider hung on a silvery lasso about Timothy’s slender neck as he washed his face. ‘Just think. Spid, tomorrow night is Allhallows Eve!’
He lifted his face and looked into the mirror. His was the only mirror allowed in the house. It was his mother’s concession to his illness. Oh, if only he were not so afflicted! He opened his mouth, surveyed the poor, inadequate teeth nature had given him. No more than so many corn kernels – round, soft and pale in his jaws. Some of the high spirit died in him.
It was now totally dark and he lit a candle to see by. He felt exhausted. This past week the whole family had lived in the fashion of the old country. Sleeping by day, rousing at sunset to move about. There were blue hollows under his eyes. ‘Spid. I’m no good,’ he said, quietly, to the little creature. ‘I can’t even get used to sleeping days like the others.’
He took up the candleholder. Oh, to have strong teeth, with incisors like steel spikes. Or strong hands, even, or a strong mind. Even to have the power to send one’s mind out, free, as Cecy did. But, no, he was the imperfect one, the sick one. He was even – he shivered and drew the candle flame closer – afraid of the dark. His brothers snorted at him. Bion and Leonard and Sam. They laughed at him because he slept in a bed. With Cecy it was different; her bed was part of her comfort for the composure necessary to send her mind abroad to hunt. But Timothy, did he sleep in the wonderful polished boxes like the others? He did not! Mother let him have his own bed, his own room, his own mirror. No wonder the family skirted him like a holy man’s crucifix. If only the wings would sprout from his shoulder blades. He bared his back, stared at it. And sighed again. No chance. Never.
Downstairs were exciting and mysterious sounds, the slithering black crape going up in all the halls and on the ceilings and doors. The sputter of burning black tapers in the banistered stairwell. Mother’s voice, high and firm. Father’s voice, echoing from the damp cellar. Bion walking from outside the old country house lugging vast two-gallon jugs.
‘I’ve just got to go to the party, Spid,’ said Timothy. The spider whirled at the end of its silk, and Timothy felt alone. He would polish cases, fetch toadstools and spiders, hang crape, but when the party started he’d be ignored. The less seen or said of the imperfect son the better.
All through the house below, Laura ran.
‘The Homecoming!’ she shouted gaily. ‘The Homecoming!’ Her footsteps everywhere at once.
Timothy passed Cecy’s room again, and she was sleeping quietly. Once a month she went belowstairs. Always she stayed in bed. Lovely Cecy. He felt like asking her, ‘Where are you now, Cecy? And in who? And what’s happening? Are you beyond the hills? And what goes on there?’ But