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“The strange sounds came on to the sixth step, and rustled to the seventh step, and then to the eighth step …”
Chris had memorized the story, often, and told it often, but no one could tell it quite like Vivian. She was husking it now, like a witch, eyes half shut, body tensed against the wall.
Chris went over the story in his mind, ahead of her. “Ninth, tenth, and eleventh steps. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen steps. It came to the top of the stairs …”
Vivian went on. “Now it’s in the hall at the top of the stairs. Outside the door. Now it’s coming inside. Now it’s closing the door.” A pause. “Now it’s walking across your room. Now it’s passing the bureau. Now it’s over your bed. Now it’s standing right over you, right over your head …”
A long pause, during which the darkness of the room got darker. Everybody drew in their breath, waiting, waiting.
“I GOTCHA!”
Screaming, then giggling, you burst out! You let the black bat crash into the web. You had built the web of tension and horror so completely inside, minute by minute, step by step, around and around, like a very dainty horrible spider weaving, and in that tumultuous climax when I GOTCHA! flew out at you, like a sickening bat, it shattered the web down in trembling apprehension and laughter. You had to laugh to cover up your old old fear. You shrieked and giggled, all four of you. You hollered and shook the couch and held onto each other. Oh that familiar old story! You rocked back and forth, shivering, breathing fast. Funny how it still scared you after the hundredth telling.
The giggling subsided quickly. Footsteps, real ones, were hurrying up the steps to Vivian’s room. By the sound of them Chris knew it was Auntie. The door opened.
“Vivian,” cried Auntie. “I told you about noise! Don’t you have any respect!”
“All right, Mama. We’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry, Auntie,” said Chris, meaning it. “We just forgot ourselves. We got scared.”
“Vivian, you keep them quiet,” directed Auntie, her scowl softening. “And if I hear you again you’ll all come downstairs.”
“We’ll be good,” said Leo, quietly, earnestly.
“Well, all right, then.”
“Has the hospital called?” asked Shirley.
“No,” said Auntie, her face changing, remembering. “We expect to hear soon.”
Auntie went downstairs. It took another five minutes to get back into the spell of storytelling.
“Who’ll tell a story now?” asked Shirley.
“Tell another one, Vivian,” said Leo. “Tell the one about the butter with the evil fungus in it.”
“Oh, I tell that every time,” said Vivian.
“I’ll tell one,” said Chris. “A new one.”
“Swell,” said Vivian. “But let’s turn out the other light first. It’s too light in here.”
She bounced up, switched out the last light. She came back through the utter dark and you could smell her coming and feel her beside you, Chris realized. Her hand grabbed his, tightly. “Go on,” she said.
“Well …” Chris wound his story up on a spool, getting it ready in his mind. “Well, once upon a time—”
“Oh, we heard that one before!” they all laughed. The laughter came back from the unseen wall of the room. Chris cleared his throat and started again.
“Well, once upon a time there was a black castle in the woods—”
He had his audience immediately. A castle was a darn nice thing to start with. It wasn’t a bad story he had in mind, and he would have told it all the way through, taking fifteen minutes or more to hang it out on a line in the dark bedroom air. But Vivian’s fingers were like an impatient spider inside his palm, and as the story progressed he became more aware of her than of the story people.
“—an old witch lived in this black castle—”
Vivian’s lips kissed him on the cheek. It was like all her kisses. It was like kisses before bodies
were invented. Bodies are invented around about the age of twelve or thirteen. Before that there are only sweet lips and sweet kisses. There is a sweet something about such kisses you never find again after someone puts a body under your head.
