Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 2

This time, outside the great old house, there was the merest thread of sound, like someone running a fingernail over the paint, or someone sliding down out of the dry reach of a tree. Then there was the softest exhalation of a moan, followed by something like a sob.

John leaned in a starkly dramatic pose, like a statue in a stage pantomime, his mouth wide, as if to allow sounds entry to the inner ear. His eyes now unlocked to become as huge as hen’s eggs with pretended alarm.

‘Shall I tell you what that sound is, kid? A banshee!’

‘A what?’ I cried.

‘Banshee!’ he intoned. ‘The ghosts of old women who haunt the roads an hour before someone dies. That’s what that sound was!’ He stepped to the window, raised the shade, and peered out. ‘Sh! Maybe it means – us!’

‘Cut it out, John!’ I laughed, quietly.

‘No, kid, no.’ He fixed his gaze far into the darkness, savoring his melodrama. ‘I lived here ten years. Death’s out there. The banshee always knows! Where were we?’

He broke the spell as simply as that, strode back to the hearth and blinked at my script as if it were a brand new puzzle.

‘You ever figure, Doug, how much The Beast is like me? The hero plowing the seas, plowing women left and right, off round the world and no stops? Maybe that’s why I’m doing it. You ever wonder how many women I’ve had? Hundreds! I—’

He stopped, for my lines on the pagehad shut him again. His face took fire as my words sank in.

‘Brilliant!’

I waited, uncertainly.

‘No, not that!’ He threw my script aside to seize a copy of the London Times off the mantel. ‘This! A brilliant review of your new book of stories!’

‘What?’ I jumped.

‘Easy, kid. I’ll read this grand review to you! You’ll love it. Terrific!’

My heart took water and sank. I could see another joke coming on or, worse, the truth disguised as a joke.

‘Listen!’

John lifted the Times and read, like Ahab, from the holy text.

‘“Douglas Rogers’s stories may well be the huge success of American literature—”’ John stopped and gave me an innocent blink. ‘How you like it so far, kid?’

‘Continue, John,’ I mourned. I slugged my sherry back. It was a toss of doom that slid down to meet a collapse of will.

‘“—but here in London,”’ John intoned, “‘we ask more from our tellers of tales. Attempting to emulate the ideas of Kipling, the style of Maugham, the wit of Waugh, Rogers drowns somewhere in mid-Atlantic. This is ramshackle stuff, mostly bad shades of superior scribes. Douglas Rogers, go home!”’

I leaped up and ran, but John with a lazy flip of his underhand, tossed the Times into the fire where it flapped like a dying bird and swiftly died in flame and roaring sparks.

Imbalanced, staring down, I was wild to grab that damned paper out, but finally glad the thing was lost.

John studied my face, happily. My face boiled, my teeth ground shut. My hand, stuck to the mantel, was a cold rock fist.

Tears burst from my eyes, since words could not burst from my aching mouth.

‘What’s wrong, kid?’ John peered at me with true curiosity, like a monkey edging up to another sick beast in its cage. ‘You feeling poorly?’

‘John, for Christ’s sake!’ I burst out. ‘Did you have to do that!’

I kicked at the fire, making the logs tumble and a great firefly wheel of sparks gush up the flue.

‘Why, Doug, I didn’t think—’

‘Like hell you didn’t!’ I blazed, turning to glare at him with tear-splintered eyes. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘Hell, nothing, Doug. It was a fine review, great! I just added a few lines, to get your goat!’

‘I’ll never know now!’ I cried. ‘Look!’

I gave the ashes a final, scattering kick.

‘You can buy a copy in Dublin tomorrow, Doug. You’ll see. They love you. God, I just didn’t want you to get a big head, right. The joke’s over. Isn’t it enough, dear son, that you have just written the finest scenes you ever wrote in your life for your truly great screenplay?’ John put his arm around my shoulder.

That was John: kick you in the tripes, then pour on the wild sweet honey by the larder ton.

‘Know what your problem is, Doug?’ He shoved yet another sherry in my trembling fingers. ‘Eh?’

‘What?’ I gasped, like a sniveling kid, revived and wanting to laugh again. ‘What?’

‘The thing is, Doug—’ John made his face radiant. His eyes fastened to mine like Svengali’s. ‘You don’t love me half as much as I love you!’

‘Come on, John—’

‘No, kid, I mean it. God, son, I’d kill for you. You’re the greatest living writer in the world, and I love you, heart and soul. Because of that, I thought you could take a little leg-pull. I see that I was wrong—’

‘No, John,’ I protested, hating myself, for now he was making me apologize. ‘It’s all right.’

‘I’m sorry, kid, truly sorry—’

‘Shut up!’ I gasped a laugh. ‘I still love you. I—’

‘That’s a boy! Now—’ John spun about, brisked his palms together, and shuffled and reshuffled the script pages like a cardsharp. ‘Let’s spend an hour cutting this brilliant, superb scene of yours and—’

For the third time that night, the tone and color of his mood changed.

‘Hist!’ he cried. Eyes squinted, he swayed in the middle of the room, like a dead man underwater. ‘Doug, you hear?’

The wind trembled the house. A long fingernail scraped an attic pane. A mourning whisper of cloud washed the moon.

‘Banshees.’ John nodded, head bent, waiting. He glanced up, abruptly. ‘Doug? Run out and see.’

‘Like hell I will.’

‘No, go on out,’ John urged. ‘This has been a night of misconceptions, kid. You doubt me, you doubt it. Get my overcoat, in the hall. Jump!’