Devil House(49)

That’s Marc Buckler, for me. I didn’t know him; I’m never going to know him, because he’s dead. I can’t ask Evelyn Gates what it was like to talk to him, either, because she’s dead, too; plenty of people remember her, but there’s nobody up here who knew Marc Buckler. I could call his parents; I’m not going to do that. For them, he is the central figure in this story; from where I sit, he’s collateral damage, and, unless I really wanted to put on a show for them, they’d know that. What’s worse, they’d know that I’m right. Marc Buckler could have been anybody. Somebody was going to call Evelyn Gates at some point and ask what she wanted for the property by the freeway. Somebody, someday, was going to follow up; there’s no surer investment than property. Whoever called Evelyn Gates was going to arrive at the mouth of Devil House and be surprised, and then things were going to unfold as they did, because people, even and maybe especially young people, feel a need to guard the things and places they hold dear from becoming polluted. Buckler, as detectives would have it, was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Nobody really cares about Marc Buckler, including me. I have to breathe a little life into him so that when he dies you’ll care enough to feel bad about it, even if you feel, as you might, sympathy for his killer, who was only protecting his home. Or hers. We don’t really know, and we’re not going to know.

There’s a lot we don’t know.

But I had a dream, anyway, about Marc Buckler’s first trip to Milpitas. We know he came here twice. The details of that first trip are recoverable—I know and have already mentioned some of them; his airline, his rental car, his drinks with Evelyn Gates. I have a few receipts. What I don’t have is the look on his face when he and Gates take the Milpitas exit, and he sees, over there on the other side of the windshield, a smaller town than he’s ever visited in his life. Did he get that half-frightened, half-condescending look cosmopolitans get when they pull over for gas at some last-chance stop? Did he begin spinning fictions about people who’d live in a town so small, imagining them as being like country folk in an episode of The Twilight Zone? I know that when I first got to town, I felt surprised by how modern it seemed, for lack of a better word: there are fewer old buildings here than there are in San Francisco; there’s less of the past angling for room in the frame. But Marc Buckler didn’t come from San Francisco; down where he lived, raze-and-renew had been the rule for as long as anybody could remember. Maybe he didn’t take any note of details like these, thinking instead in spreadsheets, in projections, in the possibility of the easy score.

In my dream, though, he notices something as they ease down the off-ramp. It’s the change in scale, the nearness of things. It’s the feeling that, not so long ago, there were hills and dirt roads here: in Southern California, you have to strain to imagine such days, but up north their aura has a half-life. It’s fading, and it’ll fade even further as the march of progress continues, but in the right light you feel like it’s only receding a little, gathering strength, waiting for its time to return.

It’s a feeling you get sometimes, pulling off the highway once you get away from the city. It seeps in through the windows, even when they’re rolled up and you’ve got the air-conditioning up high.

In my dream, Marc Buckler notices this feeling, and then swats it away like a June bug.

MISE EN ABYME

Now came to this abode while that the days of this compagnye were yet grene, this noble knight ALEX, known to both Sir Derrick and Sir Seth from schole; and the wise in whiche he arrivèd ther, a wonder was for to tell. For inside the howse, on that day, passing their noontide in gode earnest as had been their wyl lo these passing days, stood noone oother thanne Sir Derrick and Sir Seth, busy upon the errands that semed mete to them.

Now Sir Derrick had taken up unto himself in recent days, a quest, to wit, a cote of armes, the which might best bear forth, to the world at large, the good name of the castle in which both he and Sir Seth found themselves ful many an afternoon; and his grete scheme was, to emblazon above the castle door the legend DEVIL HOUSE, and upon the door, its shield, in colors most bold and with symbols to bear forth the soule and character of the compagnye. But, syne that as yet they numbered only two, his effort was somedel slight; and he did question himselfe, how best to assigyne the quadrants of the shield, or if agayn he might survey some noue style with which to say unto the passing throng: We, who do goe through your world somewhat unknown, are within; and behold, we too have a tale.

To this end he hadde placed, in the upper quadrant to one side, a figure in the likeness of a Spirit: so as to say, the ghost within is no dream upon the midnight, but a thing both of your world, and not. All in white, as a laundered cape, stood the figure of the ghost, its eyes pierced black and raggèd, its round mouth in mid-cry; and the field upon which it stood was sky-blue, to say in plain, these are the waking hours in which this vision does walk, and not the night to which he had been formerly consigned.

“Hark ye, Sir Seth,” callèd he from behind the counter where he sat with his boke, “see how liketh you our cote”; and Sir Seth, busy with scissors among the library halls again, arose and considered his goodman’s work.

“Behold, Caspar,” replied Sir Seth, in jape, but continued: “But fine, those thynges of our childhood have grown vast and fearsome while we slept; an fittynge, for will we not defend this castle if need be; and, should fortune find us in defeat, will we not pledge to haunt the dayes of those that laid us low; upon my troth I swear it, I favor no rest in the afterlife unless I am avenged upon those who would oppose this howse!”