And where I am must be
the netherworld.
Yes. Drifting—spirit drifting. I am spirit.
The blackness is beginning to lighten, to become a soft gray; and as it does
my awareness increases and I realize with sudden joy that soon I will be capable of vision, corporeality, mobility through time and space. I will be able to return to the mortal world, to Judith. I will be able to
bring my love to my love in the warm silent hours of a night when she is alone . . .
. . . and all at once—there is no temporality where I exist—I find myself standing in her bedroom, that place where I longed so often and so desperately to be. She is there wearing a pale blue dressing gown sitting before her vanity mirror while she brushes her hair. Her face is radiant, smiling, and I know it is a Friday night and she is waiting for McAnally. I accept this, it does not disturb me. Nothing can disturb me now that I am in the presence of my love.
Her voice whispers in the quiet, counting each brush stroke. "Eighty-nine, ninety, ninety-one . . ." But she might be counting the minutes until we are together at last, and that is how I choose to hear her words. "Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred . . ."
Reflected in the mirror, her beauty is so flawless that it is as if I am looking at a priceless painting that must not be seen by anyone else, must belong to no one else but me. I no longer have a heart, but if I did it would be hammering like the beat of drums. I no longer have loins, but if I did they would be aflame with the purity of my desire.
"One hundred nineteen, one hundred twenty . . ."
The need to go to her, touch her, is exquisite. But how will she react when she sees me? I mustn't frighten her.
Slowly I cross the room. Yet as I draw near, the image of myself that I expect to see behind hers does not materialize. Then I am standing close to her, closer than ever before—and still she is alone in the glass.
"One hundred forty-eight, one hundred forty—"
Abruptly she stops counting, holding the brush against the silkiness of her hair. Her smile fades; small ridge lines appear on her forehead.
"Judith," I whisper. "Judith, my love."
She frowns at the mirror, puts down the brush.
"I'm here, darling."
And I reach out with trembling fingers, touch the softness of her shoulder.
She shivers, as though it were not I but a sudden chill draft that caressed her. She turns, looks around the bedroom—and it is then I accept the truth. She can't see me, or hear me, or feel the gentle pressure of my hand. Perhaps it is because I am not strong enough yet. And perhaps
it is McAnally.
I know then that this is so. He is still alive, he still stands between us—now like a wall between our two worlds.
Always, always, that bastard McAnally!
Judith rises from her chair, crosses to the window, secures the lock. Then she sheds her dressing gown, and the silhouette of her body beneath her thin nightdress fills me with rapture. I watch her put out the lights, get into bed, and lie with the coverlet drawn up to her chin.
After a time, the rhythm of her breathing grows regular. When I am certain she is asleep I walk to the bed and sit down beside her.
She stirs but does not open her eyes.
With great care I lift the coverlet. This is the moment I have ached for most of all, the moment that makes even my death inconsequential.
I take her in my arms.
She moans softly, shivers, tries to turn away in her sleep. I continue to hold her in a tender embrace. "Judith," I whisper in her ear, "it's all right. I'm growing stronger, and when I'm strong enough I'll find another way to kill Fred. A push down the basement steps, a falling object from the platform in the garage—I'll find a way."
More moans come from her, but I hear them now as murmurs of love. I kiss the warm hollow of her throat, and my hand finds her breast, and in ecstasy I lie there with her, waiting.
Waiting.
First, for McAnally.
But most of all for that time when my love will come awake and see and hear and feel me at last, lying beside her in the warm silent hours of the night . . .
The simplest ideas are often the best ones, a truism I think is demonstrated by several stories in this collection. "Black Wind," like the others, therefore depends for its effects on mood and character. And thus another truism: It's all in the handling. The story, incidentally, was the basis for a pretty good short-subject film several years ago. As far as I know, my luck and the movie industry being what they are, the only people who ever saw it, besides members of the production company, were me and my immediate family.
Black Wind
It was one of those freezing, late-November nights, just before the winter snows, when a funny east wind comes howling down out of the mountains and across Woodbine Lake a quarter mile from the village. The sound that wind makes is something hellish, full of screams and wailings that can raise the hackles on your neck if you're not used to it. In the old days the Indians who used to live around here called it a "black wind"; they believed that it carried the voices of evil spirits, and that if you listened to it long enough, it could drive you mad.
Well, there are a lot of superstitions in our part of upstate New York; nobody pays much mind to them in this modern age. Or if they do, they won't admit it even to themselves. The fact is, though, that when the black wind blows, the local folks stay pretty close to home, and the village, like as not, is deserted after dusk.
That was the way it was on this night. I hadn't had a customer in my diner in more than an hour, since just before seven o'clock, and I had about decided to close up early and go on home. To a glass of brandy and a good hot fire.
I was pouring myself a last cup of coffee when the headlights swung into the diner's parking lot.
They whipped in fast, off the county highway, and I heard the squeal of brakes on the gravel just out front. Kids, I thought, because that was the way a lot of them drove, even around here—fast and a little reckless. But it wasn't kids. It turned out instead to be a man and a woman in their late thirties, strangers, both of them bundled up in winter coats and mufflers, the woman carrying a big, fancy alligator purse.
The wind came in with them, shrieking and swirling. I could feel the numbing chill of it even in the few seconds the door was open; it cuts through you like the blade of a knife, that wind, right straight to the bone.
The man clumped immediately to where I was standing behind the counter, letting the woman close the door. He was handsome in a suave, barbered city way; but his face was closed up into a mask of controlled rage.
"Coffee," he said. The word came out in a voice that matched his expression—hard and angry, like a threat.
"Sure thing. Two coffees."
"One coffee," he said. "Let her order her own."
The woman had come up on his left, but not close to him—one stool between them. She was nice-looking in the same kind of made-up, city way. Or she would have been if her face wasn't pinched up worse than his; the skin across her cheekbones was stretched so tight it seemed ready to split. Her eyes glistened like a pair of wet stones and didn't blink at all.
"Black coffee," she said to me.