Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury

CONJURE Alice Hoffman

It was August, when the crickets sang slowly and the past lingered in bright pools of glorious light, even though it would soon be gone, the way summer was all but over, yet the heat was still on the rise. The weather had been extreme that month: days of drenching rain, sudden showers of hail, temperatures passing record highs. Local children whispered that an angel had fallen to earth in a thunderstorm. There were roving groups who swore they had found signs. Footprints in the grass, black feathers, a campfire in the woods behind the high school where there were sparks of shimmering ash. One neighborhood boy vowed that he had seen a man in a black cloak rise above the earth and walk on air, and although no one believed his account, mothers began to keep their children home. They locked the doors, called in the dogs, kept the lights on after dusk.

No one cut through the field anymore, except for Abbey and Cate, best friends, who at age sixteen were too old to be kept home and far too sure of themselves to be afraid of a story. They had jobs at the town pool as swim counselors, and late in the afternoons they walked home together, arms draped over each other’s shoulders, making their way through the pale heat, their long hair scented with chlorine. Usually they stopped at the library, where Cate would wait outside, dreamy-eyed, while Abbey ran in to find a new book, which would get her through the night. She’d had trouble sleeping lately, and books were her antidote to the darkness of these late-August nights. She had the distinct impression that something was beginning and something was ending; there were just so many days like this left to them. Before they knew it, time would speed up and the future would appear on a street corner or in a park, and there they’d be, grown women who’d forgotten how long a summer could last.

The librarian, Mrs. Fanning, often had a stack of books waiting for Abbey, and choosing the right one had become a sacred ritual. On this day Abbey returned Great Expectations and took up Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.

“Excellent choice,” Mrs. Fanning said, pleased. “By the pricking of my thumb, something wicked this way comes. The title comes from Macbeth, Act IV.”

“Do you believe people are wicked?” Abbey asked.

Outside the world was green, shifting in the dappled light. Cate was sitting on the steps, head thrown back, basking in the last of the sun. If Abbey tried to talk about her worries with her friend, Cate would admonish her. “You think too much!”

“Certainly some people are,” Mrs. Fanning said. “But there’d be no interesting novels without them, would there?”

In a fiction it was possible to discern the wicked from the pure of heart. Roses withered when devious individuals passed by; blackthorns grew about them. But such clues were not as evident in real life. “Judge a person the same way you judge a book,” Mrs. Fanning suggested. “A search for beauty and truth, a gut response to what feels a lie. Intuition.” She seemed quite sure of herself. “Imagination.”

Abbey began reading on the way home from the library, acting out all the parts. She concentrated so deeply on the words on the page that she stumbled over shifts in the concrete sidewalk.

“You live in books.” Cate grinned.

“I would if I could,” Abbey admitted.

“What’s the good of that?” Cate sighed, for she yearned for real life. She wanted adventure, one-of-a-kind experiences. She was suddenly beautiful and there were teenage boys who followed her around town, just as suddenly in love with her, though they were still too young to say so. She confided that her plan was to leave town after high school graduation, find her way to California, see every bit of the coast. She’d study butterflies in Monterey, sharks in San Diego. She had a fearless nature, which was why Abbey both admired her and was concerned for her at the same time. They were nearly home, but Cate lagged behind, gazing over at the field, the one wild piece of land left in town.

“What would you do if you saw an angel?” she asked in a low voice.

They stood together on the corner, where they met every morning.

“There’s no such thing,” Abbey said. “Not around here.”

“If there was.” Cate squinted to see into the distance. “Seriously.”

“I’d write about him,” Abbey said.

As for Cate, they both knew she’d fly away, triumphant and distant in the arms of an angel.

It was Cate who insisted they take the shortcut the following afternoon, forsaking the library, so they might walk through the field where the angel was said to be.

“How many times do you get to search for an angel?” she teased, running off before Abbey could say that if there was such a thing, perhaps it wasn’t meant to be a sight for human eyes, that the very brightness of such a creature might burn and blind anyone who gazed upon him. Cate had already climbed the fence that separated the path from the field, and Abbey had no choice but to follow, up and over the fence, leaping clumsily onto the ground. The books she’d meant to return to the library weighed down her backpack. Cate grinned and pointed to a dark splotch on the ground. It was only a single feather in the tall grass beside the creek, but when Cate ran to grab it, Abbey felt a hollow chill. The water in the creek was green, slow-moving, and swirls of insects rose from it. They used to swim here when they were younger, practicing the backstroke and the butterfly.

Cate ran back, her hair flying out behind her. She held up the feather. “We’re definitely on the right path.” She elbowed Abbey, then nodded to a willow tree. A young man in a black coat was gazing at them. Abbey took a step back. He was wearing leather gloves though the weather was fine.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid?” Cate teased. “He’s probably Bobby Marcus’s cousin.”

Bobby Marcus was their twelve-year-old neighbor who’d told everyone that his cousin from Los Angeles was spending a few weeks with them, and that he slept all day and was out all night. Not that there was anywhere to go in their town in the evenings, only the Blue Note Bar and Grill, where some of their fathers stopped on the way home from work.

Dusk was falling down among the trees. The swirls of insects above the creek turned blue in the murky air. The young man had long dark hair and an easy gait. He had dramatic features, gray, light-filled eyes. He looked a few years older than the girls, perhaps nineteen. He was making his way through the tall grass, approaching as if he knew them and was meant to speak to them, as if he’d been sent to them on this evening in August. Most people were now at home, sitting down to dinner, and Abbey’s mother would be watching from the door. She worried about her daughter, who spent so much time alone. She’d be even more concerned if she knew that there were nights when Abbey climbed out her bedroom window so that she could amble through town in the dark. Abbey had never even told Cate that she climbed out her window on restless nights, her feet landing in the ivy. Sometimes she went to sit on the stone steps of the library, wondering about the world beyond their town; other times she came to this very field and read by moonlight, savoring her aloneness. Now she wasn’t certain she’d come back here again. The edges of the grass were sullen and plumy in the shifting light.

Cate went forward. The young man in the black coat had clearly been drawn to her luminous beauty. He had a slow, winning smile, which he aimed at her. Abbey saw that his boots were covered with a layer of gray ash and that the fabric of his coat was frayed.

“I’ll bet you’re Bobby Marcus’s cousin,” Cate said as they approached each other. If Abbey didn’t know any better, she’d think her friend was flirting.

“That’s me.” He said his name was Lowell. He grinned broadly when Abbey gazed at his gloves. “I’ve been chopping wood,” he explained. “I’ve been camping here all summer. I can’t bring myself to sleep under a roof. “

Abbey had never seen him here on the nights when she’d come to read in the grass. She wondered if angels lied, or if that was only the territory of men.

Lowell offered them a drink. “I’m being sociable and you should be too. Whatever your parents say, you’re old enough for a beer.”

His invitation seemed more like a challenge. All the same they followed him through the grass to his campsite. “We’re only being polite,” Cate assured Abbey when she hesitated. “He’s right—we’re old enough.”

There was a pot for boiling water, a sleeping bag, a small canvas tent, a small axe.

“For chopping wood,” he said to Abbey, throwing down his gloves.

There was no stack of firewood, only some boughs from a twisted bramble tree. Abbey imagined he wasn’t a practiced camper, that he was a city boy who couldn’t even read a map of the stars. When Lowell reached out to get them some beers that he kept cooling in a fishing net in the creek, Abbey spied a black dog tattooed on his wrist. She felt a tightness in her throat, but she sipped at the cold beer, sharing a bottle with Cate. The girls sat close together on a log, and Abbey thought she could feel her friend’s heart beating alongside her own. The more beer the girls drank, the more Lowell talked. He told them about California, how beautiful it was, how the sky stretched on forever, how the night smelled of gardenias. He was a handsome young man, with a graceful way of speaking, and by the time he was done, California seemed like the promised land, a heaven all its own.

“That’s where I’m going,” Cate said.

“I knew that was what you wanted.” Lowell laughed. Abbey noticed that he seemed impressed by his own observations, the sort of man who had learned a lot about women in his lifetime and was quick to put these lessons to use. “I could see it in your future.”

Cate laughed, flattered, lowering her eyes. She was demure in a way Abbey had never known her to be. “You don’t even know me,” she said to Lowell, as if she wanted him to.

“You don’t believe me?” Lowell shifted over to sit beside Cate, his leg against hers. “I know you real well. I can see everything that’s going to happen to you.”

Abbey tugged on Cate’s sleeve. The intuition Mrs. Fanning had referred to felt slick, as if oil was pooling around them, dark and unstoppable. This late in August, time was already shifting, the light disappearing before anyone expected it to. “We have to go,” she urged.

“Keep me a secret,” Lowell said. He leaned close to Cate when he spoke, his breath moving the strands of her hair. His gray eyes were half closed, as if he was in the middle of a dream and that dream included Cate and her future. “I’d hate to be chased out and forced to sleep under a roof.”

Cate promised they would make up a story; they’d say they’d stayed late to practice their lifesaving techniques at the pool. In the darkening light, the ends of Cate’s hair looked faintly green, tinted by chlorine; perhaps the lie she intended to tell had turned her hair this color, or perhaps it was only the fading of the day that made it seem so.

Lowell walked them to the edge of the field. Abbey went first because she knew where the briars were; Cate came next, with Lowell following. Right before they stepped out of the tall grass, Abbey turned to see him kiss her friend. By then, it was dark.

That night Abbey climbed out her window. She kept her shoes under the porch steps, but tonight she went barefoot. She made her way through town, as she always did. Usually the darkened houses brought her a sort of comfort, but tonight the silence rattled her; she could feel it hitting against her bones. She stopped at the edge of the field. She thought she saw him beneath the tree, wearing his black coat and his gloves. She didn’t see an angel but a man, waiting for something, twisting the future into rope of his own devising. Abbey had that same chilled feeling she’d had when she’d first spied him. She turned and ran, feeling the threat he cast until she reached her corner. She went past her own house and sneaked into the Marcuses’ yard. She threw a pebble at the window. She threw another and another, and finally Bobby appeared.

He opened the window and leaned out, confused. “Are you crazy?” he whispered, waving his arms at her. “Go away.”

“Where’s your cousin?” Abbey wanted to know.

“He went back to California,” Bobby said. “My parents kicked him out.”

He shut his window, not wanting to say more, but Abbey sat down at the Marcuses’ picnic table to wait. After a while Bobby came out. He was only twelve, and Abbey had babysat for him once or twice, a fact he hated to be reminded of whenever she teased him, recalling how he used to cry to get his way. He was wearing a raincoat over his pajamas.

“Why’d they kick him out?” Abbey asked.

Bobby shrugged.

“There must have been a reason.”

Bobby’s parents were both teachers at the high school, warm-hearted, reasonable people.

“He was inappropriate,” Bobby said.

Abbey felt that chill. “Meaning?”

When Bobby clammed up, Abbey grabbed his arm and twisted. She was stronger than she appeared, perhaps from carrying stacks of books home from the library.

“Hey!” Bobby pulled away. “Okay. Fine. He said he could see the future.”

“They kicked him out for that?”

“Well, they thought he was crazy. I mean he went on and on about it, like he was cursing us or something. He wasn’t like that when he first came here. He sat with my mother for hours in the kitchen; he cut the lawn. Then he snapped and started saying he knew our fate and that we deserved everything we got.”

Abbey recalled the way Lowell had walked toward them, his gaze set on Cate.

“And I guess when they called California they found out he’s been in a lot of trouble. He’s not really even a cousin. He was just working for my uncle, and he stole his car. He took things from here, too,” Bobby said, moody, clearly having been told to keep the family troubles private.

“What kind of things?”

“He made me promise not to tell.”

Abbey grabbed Bobby’s arm and he shifted away. “Stupid things. Rope. Packing tape. Blankets. He took my dad’s axe that we used when we went camping.”

“What did he tell you about the future? Are you going to be a millionaire?”

Abbey was sarcastic by nature; her mother often complained about this, as well as her having her head in the clouds. Her mother insisted that Abbey would be beautiful if she stopped chopping her hair short and paid some attention to her appearance instead of wearing shorts and T-shirts and old hooded sweatshirts.

“He told my dad he’d be dead by December,” Bobby Marcus said.

“What does he know?” Abbey snorted. “He’s not a doctor.”

“My dad has leukemia.” Bobby’s voice was solemn. Abbey knew Mr. Marcus had been ill, but people in town didn’t know just how sick he’d been, only that he was once stout and was now painfully thin. “He’s been in remission.”

Until this summer Abbey felt that nothing could touch the people close to her. Then she had started worrying, and once she’d started she found she couldn’t stop. “Don’t worry about any of Lowell’s predictions. He seems like a big liar.”

“I don’t know.” Bobby looked younger than his years. “My father didn’t get out of bed today.”

At the pool the next day, Cate kept to herself. A light rain started to fall in the afternoon, and when the swimmers scattered into the locker room Cate just sat there on the concrete, rain streaming down. She looked like a water nymph, a creature who belonged to another element.

“You’re going to get soaked,” Abbey called as she scrambled to find a dry place under the patio awning.

“It’s only rain,” Cate said, as if the world around her didn’t matter, as if she was already in some other, unreachable place, a realm much farther away than California.

Once she was underneath the awning, Abby started reading, and soon she was in another world herself. Then, all at once, she felt someone was drowning, even though there were no swimmers in the pool. When she looked up Cate was gone. There was that chill, right through her sweatshirt. She waited, anxious and ready to bolt, until all of the campers were picked up by their parents, then she took off running. The rain was coming down harder. She climbed the fence, snagging her fingers on the metal, then ran along the creek, now rushing with rising water. She imagined him gone; she willed it with all her might. But his tent was still in the field, and there were wisps of smoke from a bonfire that had been doused by the torrents. She went within feet of the tent and called, “Cate?” in a low, shaky tone, but there was no answer and she couldn’t tell if anyone was in the tent, if what she heard was a girl’s voice or only the sound of the rain.

The next morning Cate wasn’t waiting on the corner where they usually met. There were several police cars circling the neighborhood. In a panic Abbey ran all the way to the pool. She had a dark premonition and was quick to berate herself for not warning Cate against Lowell. An angel, a liar, a man with black gloves. But there was Cate, calmly teaching the youngest swim group how to dog-paddle.

“Where were you?” Abbey said as she came up beside her. There was the thrum of panic in her throat as she spoke.

Cate kept her attention focused on the Guppies. “Kick,” she called out to them before she turned to her friend. “We don’t have to do everything together, do we? Anyway, you were the one who was late.”

All that day Cate avoided her, but at their lunch break, Abbey made a point of sitting beside her at the picnic table. “He’s not even Bobby Marcus’s cousin.”

Cate coolly appraised her as she continued eating her lunch. “I know.” Her wet hair streamed down her back.

“And he’s a thief,” Abbey said.

Cate threw her a contemptuous look. “You think you’re so smart.”

“Were you with him when I came looking for you yesterday?” Abbey’s voice sounded broken even to herself.

“He said you’d be jealous.”

“You think I’m jealous?” Abbey stood up, her heart hitting against her chest.

Cate shrugged. “You tell me.”

“Did he tell you Bobby’s father kicked him out? That he stole a car in California?”

“He told me everything,” Cate said calmly. “He told me you can’t be friends with someone who’s filled with envy.”

“Is that what he told you about the future? That we wouldn’t be friends anymore?”

“He said I’d be leaving for California before I knew it.”

Late in the afternoon Abbey told the head counselor that she felt ill and needed to go home. It wasn’t exactly a lie. She packed up her swimsuit and her books and left early, her head throbbing. She walked to the field, then scaled the fence. She stood beside the creek. She wasn’t surprised by what she saw. There was now a car parked under the bushes, hidden by briars and leaves. You had to squint to see it beyond the tree, then it was possible to make out the Marcuses’ old station wagon, which Bobby’s father had reported missing that morning. That was why there were police cars patrolling earlier in the day, looking for signs of the thief.

For a moment Abbey thought she might bolt and run, then keep on running till she reached the far side of the field. Instead, she studied the stolen car, the briars, the field she had come to all her life. She thought about the items he’d taken from the Marcuses’ garage—the tape, the ropes.

He was there, under the tree. He laughed when he saw her, and waved her over. He was graceful and tall and sure of himself. She walked through the high grass, and it stung when it hit against her legs.

“I knew you’d show up,” he said when Abbey reached his campsite. “You and I made a connection. She thinks she’s the one that everyone wants, but it’s you. I can see what’s beautiful about you.” He cupped Abbey’s chin and studied her face. She understood how he could make someone feel special.

Abbey saw then that he was older than they’d first thought, not seventeen or eighteen but in his mid-twenties. There were feathers around the campsite because he was trapping birds for his supper. There were the bones of sparrows and larks, white and stripped bare. She thought about the children who believed an angel had fallen into the field, convinced that a miracle would soon occur. She thought about the volumes in the library that were waiting for her on the shelves, each one beautiful, each one-of-a-kind.

He kissed her and she let him. Soon enough someone would notice the stolen car. He wouldn’t keep himself hidden in this town; he’d have use for the ropes, the tape, the axe, all that he’d need to take someone with him tonight. Maybe he’d stop in a field far from here, in another town, where a girl’s body wouldn’t be identified; maybe he’d keep on driving. He kissed her and she kissed him back. She knew that Cate would follow her into the field, and that she’d spy them together, then turn and run, distraught.

When he grabbed Abbey to pull her toward the car, she slipped out of his grasp, leaving him holding on to nothing but her backpack full of books. She was wearing shorts and a sweatshirt and the sneakers her mother told her were unfashionable. She ran home as if she were the angel with black wings, and she didn’t climb out her window again after that. In fact she kept it locked. She knew that Cate would cry all that night and that she’d never talk to Abbey again, just as she knew that years later, when Cate came home for a visit from California, compelled to stop at the library to confront her old friend, demanding to know how she could have betrayed her so easily, Abbey would simply tell her that the man in the field wasn’t the only one who could see the future.