He felt, rather than saw, her hands move toward the light switch.
He cleared his throat.
SHE STOOD against the door in the dark. If moonlight could have struck in upon her, she would have shimmered like a small pool of water on a windy night. He felt the fine sapphire jewels come out upon her face, and her face all glittering with brine.
“Lavinia,” he whispered.
Her arms were raised across the door like a crucifix. He heard her mouth open and her lungs push a warmness upon the air. She was a beautiful dim white moth; with the sharp needle point of terror he had her pinned against the wooden door. He could walk all around the specimen if he wished, and look at her, look at her.
“Lavinia,” he whispered.
He heard her heart beating. She did not move.
“It’s me,” he whispered.
“Who?” she said, so faint it was a small pulse-beat in her throat.
“I won’t tell you,” he whispered. He stood perfectly straight in the center of the room. God, but he felt tall! Tall and dark and very beautiful to himself, and the way his hands were out before him was as if he might play a piano at any moment, a lovely melody, a waltzing tune.
The hands were wet, they felt as if he had dipped them into a bed of mint and cool menthol.
“If I told you who I am, you might not be afraid,” he whispered. “I want you to be afraid. Are you afraid?”
She said nothing. She breathed out and in, out and in, a small bellows which, pumped steadily, blew upon her fear and kept it going, kept it alight.
“Why did you go to the show tonight?” he whispered. “Why did you go to the show?”
No answer.
He took a step forward, heard her breath take itself, like a sword hissing in its sheath.
“Why did you come back through the ravine alone?” he whispered. “You did come back alone, didn’t you? Did you think you’d meet me in the middle of the bridge? Why did you go to the show tonight? Why did you come back through the ravine, alone?”
“I—” she gasped.
“You,” he whispered.
“No—” she cried, in a whisper.
“Lavinia,” he said. He took another step.
“Please,” she said.
“Open the door. Get out. And run,” he whispered.
She did not move.
“Lavinia, open the door.”
She began to whimper in her throat.
“Run,” he said.
In moving, he felt something touch his knee. He pushed, something tilted in space and fell over, a table, a basket, and a half-dozen unseen balls of yarn tumbled like cats in the dark, rolling softly. In the one moonlit space on the floor beneath the window, like a metal sign pointing, lay the sewing shears. They were winter ice in his hand. He held them out to her suddenly, through the still air.
“Here,” he whispered.
He touched them to her hand. She snatched her hand back.
“Here,” he urged.
“Take this,” he said, after a pause.
He opened her fingers that were already dead and cold to the touch, and stiff and strange to manage, and he pressed the scissors into them. “Now,” he said.
He looked out at the moonlit sky for a long moment, and when he glanced back it was some time before he could see her in the dark.
“I waited,” he said. “But that’s the way it’s always been. I waited for the others, too. But they all came looking for me, finally. It was that easy. Five lovely ladies in the last two years.
I waited for them in the ravine, in the country, by the lake, everywhere I waited, and they came out to find me, and found me. It was always nice, the next day, reading the newspapers.
And you went looking tonight, I know, or you wouldn’t have come back alone through the ravine. Did you scare yourself there, and run? Did you think I was down there waiting for you? You should have heard yourself running up the walk! Through the door! And locking it! You thought you were safe inside, home at last, safe, safe, safe, didn’t you?”
She held the scissors in one dead hand, and she began to cry. He saw the merest gleam, like water upon the wall of a dim cave. He heard the sounds she made.
“No,” he whispered. “You have the scissors. Don’t cry.”
She cried. She did not move at all. She stood there, shivering, her head back against the door, beginning to slide down the length of the door toward the floor.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered.
“I don’t like to hear you cry,” he said. “I can’t stand to hear that.”
He held his hands out and moved them through the air until one of them touched her cheek. He felt the wetness of that cheek, he felt her warm breath touch his palm like a summer moth. Then he said only one more thing:
“Lavinia,” he said, gently, “Lavinia.”
HOW CLEARLY he remembered the old nights in the old times, in the times when he was a boy and them all running, and running, and hiding and hiding, and playing hide-and-seek. In the first spring nights and in the warm summer nights and in the late summer evenings and in those first sharp autumn nights when doors were shutting early and porches were empty except for blowing leaves.
The game of hide-and-seek went on as long as there was sun to see by, or the rising snow-crusted moon. Their feet upon the green lawns were like the scattered throwing of soft peaches and crabapples, and the counting of the Seeker with his arms cradling his buried head, chanting to the night: five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five, fifty…And the sound of thrown apples fading, the children all safely closeted in tree or bush-shade, under the latticed porches with the clever dogs minding not to wag their tails and give their secret away. And the counting done: eighty-five, ninety, ninety- five, a hundred!
Ready or not, here I come!
And the Seeker running out through the town wilderness to find the Hiders, and the Hiders keeping their secret laughter in their mouths, like precious June strawberries, with the help of clasped hands. And the Seeker seeking after the smallest heartbeat in the high elm tree or the glint of a dog’s eye in a bush, or a small water sound of laughter which could not help but burst out as the Seeker ran right on by and did not see the shadow within the shadow…
He moved into the bathroom of the quiet house, thinking all this, enjoying the clear rush, the tumultuous gushing of memories like a water falling of the mind over a steep precipice, falling and falling toward the bottom of his head.
God, how secret and tall they had felt, hidden away. God, how the shadows mothered and kept them, sheathed in their own triumph. Glowing with perspiration how they crouched like idols and thought they might hide forever! While the silly Seeker went pelting by on his way to failure and inevitable frustration.
Sometimes the Seeker stopped right at your tree and peered up at you crouched there in your invisible warm wings, in your great colorless windowpane bat wings, and said “I see you there!” But you said nothing. “You’re up there all right.” But you said nothing. “Come on down!” But not a word, only a victorious Cheshire smile.
And doubt coming over the Seeker below. “It is you, isn’t it?” The backing off and away, “Aw, I know you’re up there!” No answer. Only the tree sitting in the night and shaking quietly, leaf upon leaf. And the Seeker, afraid of the dark within darkness, loping away to seek easier game, something to be named and certain of. “All right for you!”
He washed his hands in the bathroom, and thought, Why am I washing my hands?
And then the grains of time sucked back up the flue of the hour-glass again and it was another year…
He remembered that sometimes when he played hide-and-seek they did not find him at all; he would not let them find him. He said not a word, he stayed so long in the apple tree that he was a white-fleshed apple; he lingered so long in the chestnut tree that he had the hardness and the brown brightness of the autumn nut.
And God, how powerful to be undiscovered, how immense it made you, until your arms were branching, growing out in all directions, pulled by the stars and the tidal moon until your secretness enclosed the town and mothered it with your compassion and tolerance.
You could do anything in the shadows, anything. If you chose to do it, you could do it. How powerful to sit above the sidewalk and see people pass under, never aware you were there and watching, and might put out an arm to brush their noses with the five-legged spider of your hand and brush their thinking minds with terror.
He finished washing his hands and wiped them on a towel. But there was always an end to the game. When the Seeker had found all the other Hiders and these Hiders in turn were Seekers and they were all spreading out, calling your name, looking for you, how much more powerful and important that made you.
“Hey, hey! Where are you! Come in, the game’s over!”
But you
