And to See him smile...
by Nekio-chan
All the old-timers knew the legend and the song. That Victoria Lee came to know, but not until she had lived in the building for a while. Most of the people in the other apartments, she found, were pretty much inclined to keep to themselves. It wasn't just that they didn't talk much to him, the new tenant; they really didn't talk much to one another either, so far as she could tell. People drifted down the dreary hallways, nodded to you perhaps, went behind doors, and were gone. It was a lonely place, all in all, if you were use to a more outgoing life; but in her current economic doldrums she guessed she was lucky to have anywhere to live at all.
She had been in the building the last stale and sultry weeks and the first few slate-gray days of autumn when she first heard the song, heard it from the lizard-visaged lips of an oat on the crumbling front steps. Squatting there like gargoyle, she was crooning to a pack of ragamuffin children gathered on the dirty sidewalk:
"He comes in the night in the pale moonlight, he comes cold winds sigh; he comes from the gloom of his terrified tomb, and to see him smile is to die."
Sure a fine thing to be singing to impressionable children Victoria thought, annoyed. The kids merely jeered at the old women and scattered, but he thought he detected, on their grimy faces, a certain furtive apprehension mingled with their defiance. As they dispersed, there might have been a ghost of a smile on the woman's ancient face, or there might not; it was hard to tell. But if there was, it was a smile that carried with it not the faintest trace of humor.
Victoria spent the rest of that day, as she had so many others, in fruitless job hunting, returning to the bleak old building on the corner of Ipswich Avenue and Twelfth Street only late in the day and with only minimal enthusiasm for coming home. It was hard to feel at home in a place to which you had come down in life, aplace in which you had no roots and no real friends. And as the mid-October sun had set by the time she climbed the stairs to her third-floor apartment, she thought anew about something that had crossed her mind a number of times before.
With rare exception, no one ever seemed to be out and about in the hallways or on the stairs after dark. Even outside, on the infrequent occasions when she went for a stroll and a smoke, the sidewalks were generally deserted, at least near the building. If you walked far enough down Ipswich Avenue or far enough up Twelfth, away from this corner, you would eventually meet up with the usual scowling little knots of sullen teenagers or the quiet older couples walking dogs but around the building where she lived, the sidewalks were peopled only by rows of wanly lit windows where unseen hands drew dingy blinds down the shut out the night. On there occasions, Victoria found her loneliness giving way to another, less comprehensible feeling, a vague nervousness that made hwe wish to be off the streets as well. Increasingly, she found herself spending whole evenings indoors.
Among the other tenants there seemed to be only one who, in time, proved to be a little given to conversation. This was a retirement-age chap who had introduced himself simply as Jack, and Victoria ran into him in Phillips Park over on Thirteenth Street one crisp Saturday morning; they sat on a bench drawing their collars tight to their throats, talking quietly and smoking. Victoria brought up that troubling memory of the old woman and the song, and Jack arched an eyebrow.
"So you heard the song? Well, you'd have to, sooner or later. I'm not surprised you heard it from her. Old Mrs. Day. She's been in the building longer than most anybody can even remember, I guess, and her family before her. Some of those families have lived there for generations. Place was built in the 1830s, you know. Mrs. Day's father and my grandfather were playmates in the building when they were kids if you can believe that. Mrs. Day has seen everything that ever happened around the place. She could tell some stories, I imagine, but she don't talk much."
"Huh," Victoria said. "Just sings creepy songs to the kids."
Jack shook his head. "Not Songs. One song. And it ain't hers. My grandfather taught me that song when I was a kid, and he knowed it when he was a kid"
"I don't understand," Victoria said. "Why-"
"Nobody's told you about- him."
"Who?"
"Him. The one the song's about. There's a whole legend about him"
"Go on," Victoria said intrigued.
"Well, he's suppose to be around the place sometimes. Outside, or in the halls or in the stairwells. At night. His kind can only be out after dark."
Victoria laughed. "On, come on. Gimme a break. A vampire?"
Jack shrugged, and did not looked amused. "Call him what you want, don't make no difference what you cal him. My mother seen him. I seen him once myself, from a ways off. Half the folks in the building have probably seen him, if you could get them to talk about it. And other folks have disappeared, from time to time. Like the little Jameson girl last summer. They say her probably got her. And maybe he did."
Amazing, Victoria thought, the bizarre folklore that could grow up around a place. "Well, what's he supposed to look like?"
"Just a middle aged mad," Jack said, lighting another cigarette and looking thoughtful. "And an middle aged man in use to probably be expensive clothes, now there ragged clothes and a big heavy overcoat thrown around his shoulders like a cape, you know, kind of the way a wino might look. And always has a hat with big edges, a scarf, or something to cover up his face"
Victoria thought out loud about the song. " 'And to see him smile is to die.' "
"You got it," Jack said. "That's the story they tell. If you ever run across him and he drops that scarf or whatever it is and you see his mouth—well." the man fished something up from beneath him jacket; it turned out to be a little silver cross on a chain around his neck. "Ain't never been all that religious, but I wear this. All the time. You'll say it's silly, I suppose."
"No, no," Victoria protested, "not if you're really afraid. It's just that—well, I mean, after all those old stories and movies about—and here you tell me there's really a—is that cross really supposed to protect you?"
"That's the worst part of it," Jack said. "The old folks all say don't ever be without one, not if you want to have a chance. But they say something else too: They say if it ever comes down to running right smack into him, and he smiles at you, why, then that cross ain't going to be enough."
It was ridiculous, of course, but the man's face was dead serious. Victoria , that afternoon, feeling a little foolish, walked up Twelfth Street to a shop she knew and bought herself a silver cross and a chain. She hadn't worn one since she was a kid, and she wasn't wearing one now because of Jack's wild story; she just felt like wearing it, and she didn't have to have a reason. Not as a free person living in a rational age.
Or so she preferred to think.
It was near the middle of November, with the sky turning blustery and the nights bitter cold, that she first saw something herself.
Even though her unemployment benefits and her savings were running dangerously low, she had walked uptown and treated herself to a movie, which had let out rather late. She was coming along Ipswich Avenue and nearly home when, walking past the entrance to an alleyway between her building and the adjacent one, she glanced down the dark crevice between buildings and thought she glimpsed a suggestion of movement somewhere in there.
He quickened his pace, but not before someone leaned close to him out of the shadows. It was all over in a moment, but in that moment she had the crazy impression that she was looking into a veiled face, though the face itself, or what was visible of it, was apparently a man's. The eyes, were bright and transfixing, almost feverishly so, and Victoria had to will herself to snap her own gaze away from the strange half-face, noting, nevertheless, that the was covered by what looked like a scarf. Dashing up the steps into her building, Victoria didn't realize until she was halfway up the stairwell that her hand, back there, had unconsciously gone to her pendant cross, which she was still clutching when she locked herself in her room.
She didn't sleep much that night, but it was just as well, because she didn't think that she would have liked her dreams.
The day after that encounter, she had tried to tell Jack about it, but Jack seemed either not to want to hear it or to know already what Victoria was going to say, or both. Victoria found this disappointing, because she needed to talk about it. Also about this time it began to happen that when she passed other tenants on the stairs or in the hallways, their curt nods seemed to contain something more, about the eyes, than they had contained before, a subtle little expression that might have said: You know now don't you You've seen. Old Mrs. Day in particular fixed her with a look that she found somehow intolerable. Had gossip gone around—or could they tell just from looking at her? If they could, her nerves must really have begun to suffer more that she knew.
She resolved to keep her mind on healthy subjects, and indeed largely succeeded in doing this, mostly by stepping up to her job search, which was, for a while longer, still unfruitful, but which served to direct her mind away from unpleasant thoughts. In the end she did find a job working as a waitress in a diner over on Fifteenth Street, replacing a guy who had suddenly stopped reporting to work. It wasn't the greatest job, but Victoria was glad to have it.
The only thing was, it was always dark by the time her shift was over.
But despite the disturbing memory of the encounter at the entrance to the alleyway, she made up her mind to brook no more nonsense—this wasn't the Middle Ages, or the mountains passes of Transylvania, and she was not going to be afraid, to walk home in the dark. Now that she had at least some income, she realized, upon reflection, that a person unemployed and depressed and insecure could all too readily become credulous, foolishly imaginative, even downright gullible. She felt like telling that character Jack what she thought of his idiotic folktales, except that she hadn't seen Jack around for a while. Anyway, just because the old-timers were uptight about some loony derelict haunting the building, there was no reason to imagine crazy things. In short, it was good to get her composure back.
She kept it for nearly a week.
The first few walks home, past the alley opening, were uneventful. Fleeting impressions of movement within the maw of darkness between the buildings were surely nothing more than the late-autumn wind twirling bits of paper rubbish; with the nearest street lamp half a block away the light here was uncertain, but at least no febrile-eyed wraith leaned to her out of the shadows.
On the night after the first light snowfall, in fact, the walk home along Ipswich Avenue was quite pleasant, with the clouds clearing away to unveil a gibbous moon that made the snow sparkle on the sidewalks and in the doorways where the rising wind silted it in gossamer drifts. And strolling past the alley she felt emboldened even to go back and explore a bit. There was about an inch of snow on the ground, and even the fact that there were vague footprints in the snow around the alley entrance didn't particularly bother her. She followed them back some distance into the alley, where the moon rode just high enough over the brick walls to show her that the prints angled rightward to approach the shattered remains of a basement window dimly outlined in the shadows. She was sure that this was the sheltering place of some poor homeless wretch who might well have been living in the building's basement for years.
Or she would have been sure of it, had the two blood red eyes that smoldered there looked more nearly human.
Victoria was back out at the alley entrance, down the sidewalk, and halfway up the steps to her building before she realized that she was running. He comes in the night in the pale moonlight, some corner of her mind intoned as she flung open the door and bolted inside and up the stairs. She was on the second-floor landing before she looked back down the dusky throat of the stairwell. Was something moving down there? He comes when the cold winds sigh. Victoria was bounding up the next flight of stairs, sprinting down the dimly lit hallway, and fumbling with her key in her door. He comes from the gloom of his terrible tomb. The key turned in the lock, thank God, and she was inside, slamming the door shut and locking it. Her heart pounding, she leaned on the inside of the door and tried to get her wind back. When her breathing calmed she listened with an ear against the door, outside in the hall everything was quiet.
And then the singing began.
As if in uncanny response to her own troubled thoughts, a chorus of lilting, mocking voices seemed to be crooning from somewhere down the hall, possibly from down in the stairwell. "He comes," they sang; "comes in the; comes in the night; night inthe; in the pale moonlight; moonlight." The voices were deranged-sounding, out of agreement with each other. "Comes when,- when the; comes when the cold; when the cold winds sigh." It was whiningly high-pitched and ragged, like a gaggle of children trying unsuccessfully to sing together and occasionally, Victoria heard something akin to growling. It was mingled with the singing. But whatever was going on, at least this was something one could confront, Victoria reflected, somewhat relieved; it was a group of people, even if they were drunk or crazy. She unlocked her door and stepped out into the hall.
"Winds sigh. He comes from; comes from the; from the gloom." The voices were emanating from somewhere down the stairs. "Gloom of his; of his terrible tomb; tomb." Victoria snorted; she'd see about this. Stepping smartly back down the hall, she felt her annoyance grow; hadn't she been through enough? She started down the stairs.
And stopped halfway down, between floors.
The voices were here, all right. But only one figure stood on the shadowy stairs below her.
Victoria hand went to her throat, fished under her collar, found the chain, the cross.
For the figure standing below him was familiar. It had a heavy overcoat draped over its shoulders, and a swatch of cloth covered its face. The figure lifted his head a little, showing only his eyes. "Terrible tomb," the voices sang. How could there be so many of them? "And to see; to see him; and to see him smile," they sang. The eyes appeared to wince slightly at the sight of the cross, but held their gaze upon him. And the gnarled hands went up and grasped the cloth and pulled it down and off.
Victoria's earlier impression had been right. The "hat and scarf" was only the broad fringe of a kind of mantle or shroud that had covered most of the creature's front like some grotesque bib.
The thing was face all the way down. And all the mouths were like dog jaws, singing.
"Him smile,- see him smile."
One puny silver cross certainly wasn't enough—maybe it would have taken dozens of crosses, one for each needle-fanged mouth. "And to see him smile is to die." Victoria tried to back away, but it would have taken running up the stairs backwards. The handsomely nightmarish face lurched upward, and some of the mouths were still singing when they reached her.