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A single, hard, u
“‘To take into the air my quiet breath . . .’” he whispered. “‘To cease upon the midnight with no pain . . . .’”
Above all these face was an agate sky that warned of the coming storm; a cold veil of rain approached from the upper right side, a sprinkle becoming mist becoming a terrible cloud formation that erupted across the top of the scene to cover nearly one-fifth of the entire painting: swirling black tinged with grey and purple, its mass thi
Martin shook himself from a sudden chill, stepped back once more, then gave the painting one last look.
“Okay,” he whispered to the emptiness. “I found the painting. Now where’s the goddamn key?”
A voice behind him said, “‘The world is a stone, soldier . . .’”
Martin whirled around to find himself once again face to face with the six-year-old boy he’d once been. “Jesus Christ, scare me to death, why don’t you?”
“Sorry.”
“What are you doing here, any—?”
You’ll know the key when you find it—or when it finds you.
Martin smiled. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the key!”
The little boy shook his head.
Martin’s heart sank. “Then why are you here?”
“‘The world is a stone, soldier . . .’” “You already said that; repeating it doesn’t help me.” “You have to remember.” “Remember what?”
The little boy shook his head and released one those deeply dramatic sighs of which only children are capable, then said: “When you bought him that hot dog and soda that day, you said that you’d once been a writer. He asked what kind of stuff you wrote and you told him stories and books and a few—”
“. . . a few lousy poems,” said Martin. “Yeah . . . I think I remember saying something like that.”
“He said that there was no such thing as a lousy poem, only lousy poets.”
Martin laughed. “That’s right! I remember really liking that line.”
The little boy nodded. “You said you might use that sometime, and he said you could have it . . . for the price of a poem.”
Something in the back of Martin’s mind was stirring beneath its covers. “Yeah . . . that’s right . . . that’s what he said.”
“And you recited one for him, and he loved it. He loved it so much that it gave him an idea.” The boy nodded toward the painting. “He painted that because of you, because of the poem you recited to him. You were the inspiration.
“You’ve forgotten too many of the good things, Martin. You only see your mistakes.
“The admission to the Midnight Museum is that poem. That’s the key. It was one of the many good things about yourself that you’ve forgotten.”
Martin knelt down in front of the boy. “Where did you come from? Did Bob or Jerry send you?”
The little boy shook his head.
“Then how did you get here?”
“With you. I’ve always been with you. You just forgot about me. I got out the other night, after you took the first bunch of pills. I didn’t want to die just because you did. Dumb bu
“I’m . . . I’m sorry.”
The little boy reached out and put his hand on Martin’s shoulder. “You don’t have to be sorry about anything, not anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because Mom and Dad still love you, they always did and always will, and because . . .‘The world is a stone, soldier . . .’”
The thing stirring in Martin’s brain threw back the covers, reached out, and turned on the light.
Martin rose slowly to his feet and turned to face the painting.
“‘The world is a stone, soldier,’” he said. “‘It holds no thought of long brown girls, dead gulls, vanishing town. The great clock with its golden face, face-down; Beneath these cloud-ribbed skies where stars would rot
if stars were men. No alien gods remain along the
boulevards . . .’”
In the painting, the sky began to brighten ever so slowly, allowing beams of broken sunlight to pierce the clouds and fall on the faces of the people gathered below, the faces, Martin now realized, of other Substruo.
He moved a little closer as the light glided across more faces, and a few of those faces closed their eyes and turned up toward the glow.
Martin continued reciting the next stanza, amazed that he was remembering any of this slight, forgettable bit of verse that he’d written a full decade before meeting Bob that day: “‘In this bleak land Civic ghosts dissemble. The street lamps stand, delinquent angels weeping in the rain.’”
The people in the painting began to move; some toward the back, some to the side, others merely turning to the left or right where they stood, creating an opening, revealing a path.
“‘There are countries untroubled by the seas,’” whispered Martin.
The path was wider, clearer now. A few of the people were looking right at him, smiling; the man with the shepherd’s cap even lifted his hand to wave Martin closer.
“‘There are greener worlds, soldier, and other skies; music in the square, women under flowered trees, and summer slides into soft decay, leaf unto leaf . . .’” The woman in the golden dress, who before had stood in profile, now directly faced Martin, and began to offer her hand. Martin reached out and took hold; it was a delicate hand, satin-gloved, exquisitely feminine, and flooded his arm with warmth.
“‘There are always tomorrows, soldier, and other battles done; this music in the square, these women under flowered trees, as summer slides into soft decay, leaf unto leaf; And larks into falcons rise from the yellow sleeves of eternal day.’” Her sudden soft smile was a song his heart had forgotten, and now remembered, could no longer contain. He stepped in among them.
The shepherd laughed; the girls smiled; the older ones, hunched and slow but not beaten, never beaten, grasped his arm and bid him welcome, bade him thanks.
“I would walk with you a ways,” said the woman whose hand held his, “if you would like.”
Martin could barely find his voice. “Yes . . . I’d like that very much.”
He turned and looked down the path, back out into the cold ruined room where his six-year-old self was still standing.
The little boy lifted his hand and waved.
Martin said: “You’re a fine little fellow.”
“And you are a good and decent man,” replied the boy. “Someday you’ll know that. I’ll keep the door open for you as long as I can.
“Now go stop that miserable fucker in his tracks.”
The woman laughed and pulled Martin away, leading him into a field of trees whose bright blue leaves formed upturned faces, and beneath whose shade deeper shadows danced.
Coming to a stop, the woman turned Martin to face her and kissed him firmly on the lips. “Just so you know, his favorite book was Alice in Wonderland.” Martin looked at the dancing shadows, that had now stopped, forming a deep, dark circle beneath the trees. “Have you your weapon, still?” asked the woman. Martin shook the crowbar from his sleeve and held it up.
“‘There are always tomorrows, soldier, and other battles done,’” said the woman, kissing Martin once again. “Might I suggest you remember the old rule of tuck-and-roll?”
“What are—?”
He never finished the question, because Gold Dress gave him a playful push backward, and before he could regain his balance to stop it, he spun around and was falling down the hole made by the stilled dancing shadows.
I’m finally flying, he thought as he dropped downward, arms out at his sides, legs behind him.
It took perhaps fifteen seconds for him to reach the floor, and by then he had pulled himself into a ball, legs bent to lessen the severity of the landing, and when he hit, he hit hard, but he remembered to tuck-and-roll, and when he came up again, when he stood, his entire body still thrumming with the echoed impact of the landing (pain, yes, no doubt about that, but muffled, waning), he took only three seconds to steady himself and pull in a deep breath before ru