I remembered peaks and gables rising above the trees.
"Not very fond of old houses in the woods, are we?"
"You're not scaring me."
"Ding-dong,ding-dong! The last time, you were looking in the wrong place. If ever you come upon the right one, you'll be in danger of finding out who you are."
I fell back on an old conviction. "There is no right place."
"The right place is where you least want to go. When you get there, it's where you least want to be. If you answer a question of mine, I'll answer one of yours."
"Go ahead."
"All your life, you have felt the loss of something extraordinarily important. If you found it, could you live with the consequences?"
No one with half a brain would answer a question like that. Cracker-barrel mottoes about wooden nickels and pigs in pokes suggested themselves. Yet what came out was "Yes," and it was too late to say,Ask me another.
"Now it's my turn," I said.
“I changed my mind," the shadow said. "You don't get a turn, sorry." It flew on ahead.
• As if I were twenty again, I followed the shadow through a deep wood. The insolent shadow floated above the ground, and we had theding-dongs, the hit about surrealism, the allusions to houses in wooded areas, the paradoxes about real right places, the question, the shadow's flight. Like a dope, I wondered: So isthat all? There isn't any more?
I took two or three steps deeper into the forest and froze in my tracks, stunned by vivid sensory reality.
Sunlight filtered through the canopy swishing in a mild breeze and printed glowing coins on the spongy floor. Spicy, process-laden fragrances sifted in the warm air. I could not be asleep, because I was not dreaming. The air darkened to silver-gray. I glimpsed muddy clouds sliding across the open spaces between treetops.
A sparse rain patted onto the leaves overhead, and I took shelter beneath a big maple. Twenty or thirty yards away, the woods ended in a wall of thick oaks marking the boundary of a meadow. A thunderclap boomed, then another, and the air filled with the sound of wing-beats. Half the distance to the edge of the forest stood an enormous oak. Vertical sheets of water hurtled out of the sky. I took off and scrambled into the shelter of the oak. A drift of wind precise as an atomizer coated me with a film of mist.
A jagged branch of lightning tore through the sky and illuminated the landscape. In the few seconds of brightness, I saw that I had come nearer the border of the woods than I had imagined. Twenty feet of woodland and half as many trees stood between me and a broad field ending at a road. Something tucked into a bend in the woods registered in the corner of my eye, then disappeared back into streaming darkness. The road on the other side of the field would get me back to Edgerton, but I was worried about Star, and the storm was going to delay my return to the hospital. I wondered if what I had seen was a house. A house was exactly what I needed. If its owners let me in, I could telephone Clark and ask him to pick me up before he drove Nettie and May to St. Ann's.
Another lightning bolt shattered the sky and divided into sections that turned the air white as they sizzled toward the woods. I leaned forward and made out a tall portico and a stone facade with shuttered windows. About a hundred feet behind me, a glowing electric arrow shot into the forest. I heard a series of loud cracks, like the breaking of giant bones.
Then another sizzle, another stupendous crack. Rays of lightning darted across the sky, cutting off from a central bolt that executed a left-face over the meadow, stretched out, and angled for the woods. I smelled ozone even before the shaft came slicing down over the topof the oak and hammered into my old friend the maple. It split apart and burst into flame.
A vertical column of lightning erased the darkness. It sped in the direction of the house, executed a right-hand turn, and began working back toward my part of the woods. For lightning, it moved slowly, almost deliberately, and the entire fork remained in place as its business end winged down, carving Z-shapes in the air. I jumped away from the oak and tore through the tail end of the woods. A missile the size of a freight train brushed close enough to heat up my back. All the oxygen was sucked out of the air. I charged onto open ground, and a wall of water sent me stumbling for balance as the missile exploded against the oak tree. I kept running until I reached the stone slab beneath the portico.
Rainwater streamed from my ruined clothes and puddled on the stone. I wrapped my hand around the metal knocker and slammed it down. I waited; I raised the knocker for another blow.
A lock clicked; a bolt slid into a casing. Soft light spilled out.
“I'm sorry to bother you," I said to the person invisible behind the door. “I was caught in the rain, and I wondered . . ."
Behind the figure who held one hand against the door lay a gallery lined with glowing porcelain vases on delicate side tables. In the middle distance, a chandelier like a great ship made of light cast brilliant illumination that turned the man in front of me into a silhouette. A white cuff fastened with a golden link protruded from the sleeve of his gray suit. His fingernails gleamed.
". . . if I could use your telephone."
He leaned into the darkness to hold the door, and I stepped across the threshold. As soon as I entered, I experienced a recurrence of the sense of familiarity that had always shocked me out of my nightmares. The door slammed shut. A lock resoundingly clicked.
My host's almost entirely familiar eyes shone in triumph; his almost entirely familiar mouth opened in a smile. He offered an ironic bow. Although the utterly striking handsomeness of the man before me in no way resembled the way I looked, his individual features, taken one by one, mysteriously replicated my own. In combination, all resemblance vanished. His forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nose, and mouth fused with the modeling of his jaw and cheekbones to create an extraordinary physical beauty. It was like seeing what I might have looked like if I had hit the genetic jackpot. But more than his good fortune separated this man from me—thousands of miles of experiencelay between us. He had gone further, survived more, risked more, won more—simply, nakedly, taken more, and done so with an instinctive, passionate rage beyond any emotion I had ever known.
Surrounded by the vulgar splendor of his domain, odious to the core, the shadow stood before me and laughed at my helplessness. I cried out and shuddered awake.
26 • Mr. X
• Listen to me, You Star-Flung Entities, this isn't easy. It never has been, if you want to know the truth.
No one not born into my condition, in other words no one, except He of whom it now occurs to me You may have never heard, can understand the agonies of uncertainty I have endured. Great Ones, should You exist at all, I hereby request a degree of Recognition commensurate to my Service. Unless my life has been wasted, I deserve an honored Immortality. This Account of my Travails should be displayed in aGreatMuseum of the Elder Gods. Call it, say, the Patriot's Museum, or the Museum of Triumphs. I ought to have, if I may make a suggestion, a diorama reconstructing these humble chambers. The present Journal would be installed upon a replica of my desk. I also see a model of myself, animated if possible, now deep in thought over the page, now standing in a contemplative pose by the sink. A descriptive plaque or framed text of not less than eight hundred words would fill the bill. I am being modest. Remember, if You will, that the Nazarene has been represented in works of art all over the world, and his Image hangs in every Christian house of worship.