Let’s All Kill Constance. Ray Bradbury
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no rains and no storms.
I searched Constance’s suntanned face, with the white skull lost under her summer flesh.
“No one,” I said.
And it was almost true.
At six in the morning dawn was out there somewhere, but you couldn’t see it for the rain. Lightning still flashed and took pictures of the tide slamming the shore.
An incredibly big lightning bolt struck out in the street and I knew if I reached across the bed, the other side would be empty.
“Constance!”
The front door stood wide like a stage exit, with rain drumming the carpet, and the two phone books, large and small, dropped for me to find.
“Constance,” I said in dismay, and looked around.
At least she put on her dress, I thought.
I telephoned her number. Silence.
I shrugged on my raincoat and trudged up the shoreline, blinded by rain, and stood in front of her Arabian-fortress house, which was brightly lit inside and out.
But no shadows moved anywhere.
“Constance!” I yelled.
The lights stayed on and the silence with it.
A monstrous wave slammed the shore.
I looked for her footprints going out to the tide.
None.
Thank God, I thought. But then, the rain would have erased them.
“All right for you!” I yelled.
And went away.
Later I moved along the dusty path through the jungle trees and the wild azalea bushes carrying two six-packs. I knocked on Crumley’s carved African front door and waited. I knocked again. Silence. I set one six-pack of beer against the door and backed off.
After eight or nine long breaths, the door opened just enough to let a nicotine-stained hand grab the beer and pull it in. The door shut.
“Crumley,” I yelled. I ran up to the door.
“Go away,” said a voice from inside.
“Crumley, it’s the Crazy. Let me in!”
“No way,” said Crumley’s voice, liquid now, for he had opened the first beer. “Your wife called.”
“Damn!” I whispered.
Crumley swallowed. “She said that every time she leaves town, you fall off the pier in deep guano, or karate-chop a team of lesbian midgets.”
“She didn’t say that!”
“Look, Willie”—for Shakespeare—“I’m an old man and can’t take those graveyard carousels and crocodile men snorkeling the canals at midnight. Drop that other six-pack. Thank God for your wife.”
“Damn,” I murmured.
“She said she’ll come home early if you don’t cease and desist.”
“She would, too,” I muttered.
“Nothing like a wife coming home early to spoil the chaos. Wait.” He took a swallow. “You’re okay, William, but no thanks.”
I set the other six-pack down and put the 1900 telephone book and Rattigan’s private phone book on top, and backed off.
After a long while that hand emerged again, touched Braille-wise over the books, knocked them off, and grabbed the beer. I waited. Finally the door reopened. The hand, curious, fumbled the books and snatched them in.
“Good!” I cried.
Good! I thought. In one hour, by God … he’ll call!
In one hour, Crumley called.
But didn’t call me William.
He said, “Crud, crap, crapola. You really know how to hook a guy. What is it with these goddamn Books of the Dead?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Hell, I was born in a mortuary, raised in a graveyard, matriculated in the Valley of the Kings outside Karnak in upper, or was it lower, Egypt? Some nights I dream I’m wrapped in creosote. Who wouldn’t know a book that’s dead when it’s served with his beer?”
“Same old Crumley,” I said.
“I wish it wasn’t. When I hang up I’m calling your wife!”
“Don’t!”
“Why not?”
“Because—” I stopped, gasped, and then blurted out, “I need you!”
“Crud.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“I heard,” he muttered. “Christ.”
And at last, “Meet you down by Rattigan’s. Around sunset. When things come out of the surf to get you.”
“Rattigan’s.”
He hung up before I could.
Everything by night, that’s the ticket. Nothing at noon; the sun is too bright, the shadows wait. The sky burns so nothing dares move. There is no fun in sunlit exposure. Midnight brings fun when the shadows under trees lift their skirts and glide. Wind arrives. Leaves fall. Footsteps echo. Beams and floorboards creak. Dust sifts from tombstone angel wings. Shadows soar like ravens. Before dawn, the streetlights die, the town goes briefly blind.
It is then that all good mysteries start, all adventures linger. Dawn never was. Everyone holds their breath to bind the darkness, save the terror, nail the shadows.
So it was only proper that as dark waves were striking a darker shore, I met Crumley on the sand, out front of her big white Arabian-fortress beach house. We walked up and looked in.
All the doors still stood wide, bright lights burned inside while Gershwin punched holes in a player-piano roll in 1928 to be played again and again, triple time, with no one listening except me and Crumley walking through lots of music, but no Constance.
I opened my mouth to apologize for calling Crumley.
“Drink your gin and shut up.” Crumley thrust a beer at me.
“Now,” he went on, “what the hell does all this mean?” He thumbed the pages of Rattigan’s personal Book of the Dead. “Here, here, and over here.”
There were red ink marks circling a half-dozen names, with deeply indented crucifixes freshly inscribed.
“Constance guessed, and so did I, that those marks meant the owners of those names were still alive, but maybe not for long. What do you think?”
“I don’t,” said Crumley. “This is your picnic. I was all set to head for Yosemite this weekend, and you show up like a film producer who improves the flavor of screenplays by peeing on every other scene. I’d better run for Yosemite right now; you got that look of a wild rabbit with intuitions.”
“Hold on.” For he was starting to move. “Don’t you want to prove or disprove which of these names are still kicking or which dropped dead?”
I grabbed the book, then