The Rest Is Silence Part 4

"You're going to die, you know," Marty said. "But not like that, " and he nodded toward Jollie's body. "It's not the way you want to, is it? Do you like uncle's place, by the way? He used to be an illusionist; that's why the house seems bigger than it really is. He doesn't talk; so don't ask him any questions. The snow's coming down a bit more than earlier. Bad driving, not that you'll care. "

"Okay, pal," I said, tired of his rambling. "Just get to the point and stop this . . . this. . . whatever."

"Why, Eddie, you're frightened."

"No kidding."

At that moment, Dan came out of his stupor, and Wendy began crying. When Marty saw it, he waved a hand at his uncle, who hurried crablike to the Buchwalls and stood over them. Dan scowled, Wendy tried to crawl behind him, but the old man only looked until Dan eased himself to his feet and pulled Wendy up beside him. The former illusionist must have also been a mesmerist because they didn't speak, didn't see us, only followed the old man out of the garden.

"Where are they going?" Val asked, straightening and pulling out of my arms.

"To h.e.l.l," Marty said flatly.

"And what are you, an angel?" I said.

He laughed. "Oh, my G.o.d, no. Is that what you're thinking? That this is the end of the world and I'm Gabriel in drag? Oh, Christ, Eddie, no wonder you've never gotten anywhere."

"Then where are they going?" Val repeated, her matter-of fact tone the only sane thing in the world at the time.

"Nowhere, " Marty said. "Nowhere at all. " And he grinned, and that grin was rapidly fraying my nerves, or what was left of them.

"So what do we do now?"

"Wait. "

That did it. His d.a.m.nable calm and refusal to let us in on his cosmic plans infuriated me to the edge and over. I jumped to my feet before he could raise a hand to stop me. Head down, I struck him dead on the chest, my hands scrabbling for his neck. We fell off the chair and were separated when the ground struck us. Quickly I got to my feet, but not soon enough. Marty was waiting, swinging. There was no pain at first, nor did some magical part of my brain tell me I didn't know how to fight. I just stood there, trying to hit him while he pounded me to my knees. When sensation came, tears carne and I fell to my side, sobbing, aching and utterly humiliated. There was salt in my mouth and one eye was closing. Val cradled my head and murmured nothings until my agony extended beyond the physical. I pressed my face into her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and continued to sob.

"You all played the game, you see," I could hear Marty saying, his disgust no longer hiding. "Too afraid to be even the slightest bit idealistic outside your own private ravings. You rationalized your powerlessness against a single man until you actually believed it. You convinced yourselves that you could do nothing but teach, and marked that d.a.m.ned school as the ends of your lines. Tell me something, Eddie: how many new teachers have you wiped out in the past three years? And how many at the school before that? And the one before that? How many teachers have you murdered?"

"Go to h.e.l.l," Val said. "And leave him alone."

"Oh, I intend to do just that, Miss Stern."

"All right, then, you've made your point, little man. Now how about letting us go?"

"I'll think about it."

"What's to think about? You've murdered a man, and I doubt you'll get away with it. You've destroyed Eddie here, and you've made me harder than I thought I could be. What more do you want?"

Marty righted his chair and sat, crossing his arms over his chest while I rolled over and pushed myself up. I knew I was hurt, but whatever pain there was had dulled to a permanent, background throbbing easy to ignore. And while he was busy tormenting Val, I finally realized what had happened, what was going to happen, and I knew I wasn't man enough to fight it, or even explain it to Val. She was right. I was finished.

Marry, the soothsayer, had taken to himself the standard of the dreamers against the realities of the world. He had ranted more than we had, raged and railed until he had literally acc.u.mulated for himself a ma.s.sive vortex of powered righteous indignation. Gully Jimson, Don Quixote and every dream of perfection and transformation twisted around him until he could, finally, strike back. Once. That was all he needed. And he paid, dearly.

"That man," I finally said, not stronger but more sure. "Nickels to dimes he's not your uncle."

"You know," he said, and I nodded. "This battle is very tiring, you see. He tried it when he was twenty-six. You'd never believe it, but he's thirty-four now. I met him last summer and thought he was crazy until he explained how it could be done and showed me a newspaper clipping of an unsolved disappearance. When that department meeting was over, I knew I could do it but was undecided until just before you came over to pick up my resignation. I wasn't mad enough until I saw you. He won't live much longer, though. It takes a lot out of you."

"Then why bother?"

"Because sooner or later-"

"What are you two talking about?" Val demanded.

She was frightened now, her sh.e.l.l pierced and peeling. Marty reached for her shoulder to comfort her, but she twisted away, shuddering.

"Sooner or later what?" I pursued. "All us cynics and realists will be gone, and the world will become a better place to live? The dreamers will march, the sunrise will come, and all G.o.d's children will be free at last to roam among the flowers?" I trembled, wanting to yell, feeling more like weeping. "When this is over, you'll be as aged as your friend, and just as useless.

Don't you think you'll do more good by inculcating your students than destroying your so-called enemies?"

"What enemies?" Val said. "Eddie, this isn't funny at all. Please help me."

I reached out and took her hand, softly, and fumed back to Marty. "I'm sorry to say there are more of us than there are of you."

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d," he said.

At that, Val leaped to her feet, her face streaked and s.h.i.+ning. She was naked now, and her exposure belied the clothes that covered her. "I want to go home, and d.a.m.n both of you," she said. "Many, d.a.m.n you, let me out of here."

Marty looked at me, then behind me. The old-young man shuffled in, stood silently by the door while I wondered how many he had banished in his pitiful moment of glory.

"Take her out," Marty said.

The old man nodded, and Val, after a wild, almost feral stare at me, hurried after him. I made no move to stop her, called no rea.s.suring words after her. I had been vampirized, and could only wait.

Many stood, then, and slowly followed them. I turned on the ground. I thought of jumping and killing him, but dismissed it. Many would die sooner than he thought, and would live to regret it. His friend must have learned how to harness and focus that rage/power from others before him; Many had obviously learned it from him, and I suppose now that it must take a special kind of fury that only dreamers can muster. But why he didn't learn, why he didn't take the warning of the after effects, I still don't know. I don't even know if that other man had been a teacher, a preacher or a young-and-coming politician. Not that it matters.

And I have to admit he did try to warn us with those Shakespearean omens, to remind us of the Prince's caution not to take lightly that which we do not know.

"The house is yours," Many said. "Take care of it, while it lasts. "

"Hey, mind if I ask you something? How many places like this one are there?"

"As many as there are people like me. And him."

"Do we all get a house?"

"No. Some just walls. Others float. One or two fly. It's all the same, Eddie. It's all the same."

And he left, and I rose to my feet and staggered around until my legs decided they'd work for a while longer. I explored and found food, though I didn't think I'd need it. I decided this must be a thing . . . a something about time and s.p.a.ce displacement, a nondimensional locus of a dreamer's rage. There's probably an empty field now where the house was. And as long as Many lived, I knew I'd be here. And when he died, the hold on the house and me, and all the others, would be gone; and thus would I die.

I did wonder, though, who had the worst of this nightmare Marty, I often thought, because he could only call upon this power once and is even now trapped in the world of the living to watch his dreams shred like so much yellowing cloth. Of course, I've also collapsed in self-pity, repenting my cynicism and worldliness to all the walls of his house, promising the sky and apple pie. But never for long.

If I am doomed to be a cynic, then he is doomed to be a romantic. What comes after, I don't like to consider. If it's more of the same . . .

And the end cometh. Many is dying. The lights begin to fail room by room, and there is cold. Outside, where there is nothing but fog, the light turns black. 1 have a radio that had somehow

thanks, Marty, for that anyway-kept me in touch with the musical world, but the bands fade one by one. l can find only a single station now, and 1 wonder if Val can hear it, floating, walking, encased in her own fog, and dying. 1 still twiddle around until 1 can finally catch it, then hold the radio close to my ear and listen as if it were the laugh of little children. But all 1 can hear is ' After the Ball. "

The rest, dear Hamlet, is silence.