Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 104, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 633 & 634, October 1994

Satan and the Printer by Tom Tolnay

Another story in honor of Halloween comes to us from small press publisher and printer Tom Tolnay, who reflects here on a potential hazard of his trade. Letterpress printing has become an art kept alive by only a smattering of publishers in the United States and Europe, but it was of course the primary means of printing in the 1830s, when this story takes place...

The printer arrived at daybreak, lifted the iron door latch, and let himself inside. His face was wan, his eyes shot with red. In the faint, frosted light he hung his jerkin on a wooden peg, then wrapped his apron around him. A tug secured the leather visor over his head, which was covered with wiry, rust-colored hair. Motionless as he estimated the number of rough-edged sheets on the shelf, he became part of the stillness around him, nothing more, it seemed to him, than an inanimate implement of his trade.

Since winter had not fully seized the village, and since he was expecting more manuscript to be brought to him that morning, he decided not to take the time to lay a fire in the stone chimney. He moved sluggishly to the far wall, climbed onto a long-legged stool, and lit the oil lamp. A greenish light hesitated over the work counter before sketching a pale halo, quivering, on the ceiling. He cupped his hands around the glass globe of the lamp. Soon his fingers became warm enough to handle the tiny bits of type without fear of dropping them.

At arm’s length were two galleys of type. Though made up of hundreds of separate elements, they looked like solid rectangles of lead. His hand brushed over the closest galley, pushing down several letters which had worked up higher than the rest. From this evenness he’d often derived a sense of order that helped prepare him for the start of a long workday, but this morning his heart felt as if it were filled with a fistful of the weighty type.

Four months earlier, after a brief courtship, the printer had taken a wife. It was during the time he’d come into his own as a printer, after years of apprenticeship, when he was commissioned to set in type and print stories by a brooding, reclusive author who lived not far from his shop. As soon as the couple had carried their belongings into the white cottage on the leaf-strewn lane, it seemed to the printer that his bride began to behave strangely, often unaware of what went on around her, absorbed in her own thoughts. The groom had become increasingly uneasy, yet he cherished his wife above all else, and desired to reach across the dark gap that seemed to lie between them like a freshly dug grave.

The previous night the printer’s wife had moaned repeatedly in her sleep, and once had even cried out, startling him. A wave of protectiveness had carried over him as he lay beside her under the broad quilt, which had been pieced together as a wedding gift by the patient hands of his mother. But the printer slept very little the rest of the night. His father, with whom he’d served his apprenticeship, slept more peacefully on his hill at the foot of a round-shouldered granite marker.

At dawn, when the printer and his wife arose, he asked her what fearsome dreams had troubled her sleep. Her eyes moistened, but she would give him no answer so, shaking his head, the printer dressed and pulled on his boots. When he had finished a breakfast of tea and fresh-baked bread, he took his wife’s hand and explained that he must go — that the author was coming to his shop with another tale to set in type.

Exhaling puffs of white air, the printer placed the wooden composing stick across the palm of his left hand. Before beginning to set the type he gazed out the window. The low sun was bundled in charred clouds, casting a leaden glare over the commons. Not a soul moved about on the brown turf, not even at the village pump. The trees were still. The meetinghouse, shut tight. Leaning forward, he could see the great gabled house set back off the lane, huddled under a veil of crystallized dew. In the topmost window, a candle flickered: The author was already at work.

The printer suppressed a yawn as he centered himself before the wooden type case. Now he studied the handwritten manuscript, held flat by an iron bar, and began plucking individual letters out of the compartments of the case. His hand moved swiftly, assembling the prose. Line after line stacked up like a wall of miniature bricks. Character and scene and plot took shape, but the printer had to give close attention to the accuracy of spelling and punctuation, and so he often could not follow the intrigues he set in type.

Once the composing stick was fully loaded, the printer set it on the counter, gripped the four sides of the type with the fingers of both hands, and slid the type onto a galley. Here it was tied together with linen twine and pushed up against another block of letters that had been set the previous evening. Normally he took satisfaction in this physical record of his labors, but this morning his head throbbed with exhaustion.

Nearly a full page of thirty picas had been set when there came a knock on the door. Except for his own tinkering with the metal and wood, there had been no other sound in the vicinity of the shop. The knocking sounded again, more urgent this time. He had not expected the delivery of the manuscript quite so soon, and he glanced out the window toward the gabled house. The candle in the upper window was still lit. Carefully he laid the composing stick down on the counter, moved to the front of the shop, and unlatched the door.

A square-shouldered stranger loomed in the dimness of early morning. He was draped in a black cloak, and wore a broad-brimmed hat which shaded much of his face. In the clawlike hand was a crooked walking staff.

The printer, surprised, stuttered: “What may I... do for you, sir?”

“I have come to do something for thee.”

Dry leaves rattled in a huckleberry bush beside the door.

“I fear I do not understand.”

“Satan walks among us,” the stranger declared, using his staff to make his way past the printer into the shop.

Uncertain whether to be annoyed or interested, the young printer followed him. “If Satan is your business, why not go down among the black pines, where they say he keeps his fire?”

The stranger eyed the printer icily and replied: “His shadows have been witnessed in your window.”

“My window? That is not possible.”

“It has been reported in good faith.”

“By whom, may I ask?”

“Members of your congregation.”

Forcing a laugh through his nostrils, the printer said, “As you can see, there’s no Beelzebub here.”

The stranger’s green eyes hopped like a pair of toads as they examined the darkest corners of the shop.

“Sir, my work cannot be delayed any longer,” said the printer.

The figure in black shook his staff. “I have come to find Satan, and find him I shall!” he exclaimed loudly. The charged voice and wild gesture reminded the printer of the new minister who preached in their meetinghouse with the passion of a sinner. But this man was too tall, and his clothes curiously antiquated.

Moving deeper into the shop, the stranger leaned over the imposition stone and sniffed the dried ink on its surface. Next he confronted the printing press, though not too closely, raising his eyebrows at its oak frame, its iron lever, its stone bed. In particular he seemed wary of the threaded shaft which created the pressure for the impression.

“Who are you?” the printer demanded.

“Guardian of thy soul.”

“With God’s help I shall keep watch over my own soul.”

A cynical laugh croaked deep in the stranger’s throat. “Against the hand of Satan you cannot possibly succeed.”

The printer stepped toward him. “I must ask you to leave.”

Uttering the Lord’s name, the stranger walked heavily to the counter against the wall, v/here the printer had been composing. He bent over the blocks of type.

“Do not disturb anything!” ordered the printer.

A foul sigh escaped from the stranger’s mouth, and before the printer could stop him, he had reached out and overturned a galley of type. The pieces of lead splashed over the timber-planked floor with an explosive clatter.

“Fiend!” shouted the printer, and grabbed his arm.

Puffing up like a crow in the cold, the stranger pulled away and swung his staff, striking the printer on the side of the head. The young man’s knees buckled and he fell onto the planks. Now the stranger overturned the second galley of type.

The printer pressed the palm of his hand against the side of his head, feeling too dazed and weakened by the blow to get up.

“Satan’s work is undone!” roared the stranger as he flapped out the door.

The silence flowed back, pouring over the worn edges of the press, and the sun, a silvery presence against the gray backdrop of sky, polished the scattered pieces of metal. The printer felt helpless — not against the figure in the cloak but against the rubble of disorder: the countless hours of labor strewn around him. From where he sat shivering on the planks, he could see a row of type that was larger than all the rest, missing letters, out of alignment, yet readable:

“Y_ou g G^ood^man ^Brown.”

For a few moments the printer felt confused, uncertain of what to do. He had an impulse to scoop the piles of type onto the galleys, to begin the laborious process of checking the face of each letter and sorting it into the appropriate compartment in the case. Instead, he pulled himself to his feet, tore off his apron and visor, and hurried to the front of the shop. He pulled on his jerkin and strode out the door.

Past the meetinghouse he saw a figure in black moving down the path that led into the woods. The printer began running after him. By the time he reached the edge of the woods, the cloak had disappeared, and so he stopped beneath a spread of bare, twisted branches to rest and gather his thoughts. Remembering the tremor in his wife’s voice that morning, the tears in her eyes, he looked back down the dirt road. But his cottage was too far off to be seen.

When his breathing was normal again, the printer followed the path into the woods. Under the shield of wilderness the sky grew darker, the air cooler. As the bushes crowded closer to him, the path faded under his steps. In his confusion, he thought he was passing a rock or a stump that he had passed minutes earlier. Silken white flowers clustered at the edge of the marsh, though it was the wrong season for bloom. A heavy branch let go and crashed on the bed of the woods. A jay cackled insanely. The printer’s head throbbed, and he could not get his last glimpse of his wife’s fair hair from his mind.

Sunk in a gloomy hollow, through a ring of dense, black-needled cedars that turned morning into evening, he caught sight of the glimmer of a fire, and he could hear voices. At first he thought they were singing a hymn, but as he drew near it sounded more like a chant. He entered the circle of light and saw the stranger in the cloak, both arms raised: the scarf no longer covered his face, and the fire in the pit revealed a dark stain across his left cheek. Behind him was a semicircle of men, women, and children, but they stood far back, their faces hidden in the shadows. The chanting stopped.

“Come,” the stranger called across the clearing, waving the printer towards them. “Come and join your neighbors, your friends, your family.”

“Nay, my people would never be part of such an unholy gathering,” spat the printer.

“Approach the fire and you shall see them better.”

The printer held his ground, but then the flames leaped red and yellow out of the pit and he saw the faces of members of his congregation, including the pious old woman who had taught him his psalms. And the lad, son of a neighbor, who sometimes helped him gather firewood. The bony-faced deacon stood among them, too, in his familiar, worn gray coat, head slightly bowed.

“What say you now?” the stranger demanded.

“I do not believe any of this!”

“Ah, then look closer still.”

Now the printer saw his mother among them, wrapped in her knitted brown shawl, her face withered by years of sacrifice; in a moment his father, wearing his ink-stained leather apron, stepped out of a group of sullen figures.

“Father, Mother! — how come you from both sides of the grave to be in this fiendish place?”

Neither of them replied.

“Come and enter our circle,” the stranger bade.

“It is all a terrible dream,” said the printer, backing up.

The stranger laughed, a gurgle that seemed to boil up out of his intestines, and then the printer saw her — his kind and loving and bewitched wife.

“Constance!” he shouted, but she did not seem to hear him.

Leering at her with sharp crow’s eyes, the stranger raised his hooked fingers and beckoned, and the printer’s wife obediently stepped out of the coven. When she stopped beside him, the stranger lifted his shaggy arm like a huge black wing and unfurled it across her shoulders. The fair young bride seemed to shudder under its spread, but did not move away.

The printer’s face filled with blood, and he began to stride across the fire-lit clearing. Noticing his approach, his wife let out a faint shriek and retreated, becoming a shadow among the dark configuration of sinners. Now the stranger flung the cloak off his back, and in a flash there stood in his place a chalky-faced, dark-haired woman in a burial winding-sheet.

Though he was amazed by the transformation, the printer continued to move toward the figure in the burial wrappings. The woman began to unwind her sheet, baring a dry shoulder and blue breasts, but in the blink of an eye the printer saw a bent, white-haired man standing in the spot where the dead woman had been. The old man was holding a vase filled with clear, sparkling fluid, and he peered at the printer.

Shivering more from confusion than from the cool morning air, the printer paused in mid-stride. But now the old man stepped close to him and extended the vase with both hands: “Take a drink of sweet sin,” he rasped, “and you shall never grow old.”

Instinctively the printer reached out to receive the sparkling fluid, but the clawlike hands reminded him that the old man with the vase and the woman in the burial sheet had been conjured by the stranger in the dark cloak — miserable magic, evil tricks to cloud his mind. Determined not to be fooled by dark spells, he slapped the vase out of the old hands, spilling the fluid and leaving a black stain on the dusty earth.

The old man let out a long, low wail, as if the air had been let out of him, and shrank down until all that was left on the place where he’d stood was a writhing fat green snake.

The printer backed off, frightened, and searched for his family beyond the fire. But his wife, father, and mother were not among the villagers. Then he noticed the stranger’s walking stick lying beside the fire. Quickly kneeling, he grasped the crooked stick and slid it rapidly across the ground, catching the snake and sweeping it into the pit: The serpent hissed as it sprawled across the tongues of fire, which flared up in thick sulfurous flames.

A cry of horror rose from the villagers, and when the billowing smoke disappeared, the printer was alone in the clearing.

It took a long while to find his way back through the wilderness, and by the time he reached the main street of the village, his lungs were pained by rapid intakes of cold air. But his head no longer throbbed from the blow of the stranger’s walking stick. The sun had untangled itself from the clouds, melting the frost. Now there were a few people out on the commons gathering kindling for their morning fires, filling buckets with water at the pump. On the steps of the meetinghouse the deacon, in gray coat and cap, was wielding a straw broom briskly. With no letup in his stride, the printer watched him intently.

At the schoolhouse he turned down the lane, crunching dry leaves and twigs like the wings of birds underfoot. He arrived at his cottage in a few minutes. Opening the door, he found Constance seated in a straight-backed chair beside the fire in the hearth. She was mending a pair of his trousers.

She looked up in surprise and said, “You are home early, John.”

“Did you go out this morning, Constance?”

“Where might I be going in such a cold mist?”

“To meet someone in the woods.”

“No,” she protested, “I have not done so,” and setting her sewing aside, she rose from her chair.

“Yea, I saw you with my own eyes,” he said sternly. “You have been behaving... oddly... these many weeks.”

“Impossible!” she cried. “I have not stepped outside the door. It is you who have not been yourself, John. I have not slept easy since you took this new work.”

The distress in her voice and the honest glimmer in her eyes suddenly softened the young husband and he moved to embrace her. “Forgive me,” he mumbled into her hair, but he decided to tell her nothing of the stranger’s visit.

At the rough but sturdy structure that housed his shop, the printer came to a halt, released the door latch slowly, and entered cautiously, surveying the efficient space before closing himself inside. No type was scattered across the floor, and his apron and visor were on pegs, not lying where he remembered dropping them earlier in his haste. But the tall stool was over on its side. Gingerly he pressed the side of his head, and winced from the pain. On the counter he saw the oil lamp flickering over the new type, which was tied with twine in the galley trays, a full page completed, just as he’d remembered.

Lifting the stool upright, the printer climbed up on its seat. He scratched his wiry head in bewilderment, then leaned forward and looked out the window across the lane. The candle in the window of the gabled house was out.

For a long while the printer stared out at the irregular roofs and windows of Salem, which shimmered in the glow of morning, and there appeared in the distance a man with receding hair the color of oak leaves in winter, a thick moustache, and dense, moody eyebrows. He was carrying a leather pouch under his arm. Disturbed by the approach of the author, the printer glanced toward the bolt on his door. But his eyes came to rest on the printing press, and in the stillness of his workplace, in the soft golden light of morning, the firm footing of its frame and the harmonious balance of its oak, iron, and stone struck him all at once as beautiful...

Centering himself on the stool, he began to pluck letters out of the type case, sliding them left on the composing stick to form words and sentences. And ideas. His hand moved quickly, accurately, and his fingers did not stop until he heard the knocking on his door.

The printer turned and called, “Come right in, Mr. Hawthorne.”