Ray Bradbury
http://blogs.myspace.com/mysteryal
The Homecoming
1946
"Here they come," said Cecy, lying there flat in her bed.
"Where are they?" cried Timothy from the doorway.
"Some of them are over Europe, some over Asia, some of them over the
Islands, some over South America!" said Cecy, her eyes closed, the lashes long,
brown, and quivering.
Timothy came forward upon the bare plankings of the upstairs room. "Who are
they?"
"Uncle Einar and Uncle Fry, and there's Cousin William, and I see Frulda
and Helgar and Aunt Morgiana and Cousin Vivian, and I see Uncle Johann! They're
all coming fast!"
"Are they up in the sky?" cried Timothy, his little gray eyes flashing.
Standing by the bed, he looked no more than his fourteen years. The wind blew
outside, the house was dark and lit only by starlight.
"They're coming through the air and traveling along the ground, in many
forms," said Cecy, in her sleeping. She did not move on the bed; she thought
inward on herself and told what she saw. "I see a wolflike thing coming over a
dark river - at the shallows - just above a waterfall, the starlight shining up
his pelt. I see a brown oak leaf blowing far up in the sky. I see a small bat
flying. I see many other things, running through the forest trees and slipping
through the highest branches; and they're _all_ coming this way!"
"Will they be here by tomorrow night?" Timothy clutched the bedclothes. The
spider on his lapel swung like a black pendulum, excitedly dancing. He leaned
over his sister. "Will they all be here in time for the Homecoming?"
"Yes, yes, Timothy, yes," sighed Cecy. She stiffened. "Ask no more of me.
Go away now. Let me travel in the places I like best."
"Thanks, Cecy," he said. Out in the hall, he ran to his room. He hurriedly
made his bed. He had just awakened a few minutes ago, at sunset, and as the
first stars had risen, he had gone to let his excitement about the party run
with Cecy. Now she slept so quietly there was not a sound. The spider hung on a
silvery lasso about Timothy's slender neck as he washed his face. "Just think,
Spid, tomorrow night is Allhallows Eve!"
He lifted his face and looked into the mirror. His was the only mirror
allowed in the house. It was his mother's concession to his illness. Oh, if only
he were not so afflicted! He opened his mouth, surveyed the poor, inadequate
teeth nature had given him. No more than so many corn kernels - round, soft and
pale in his jaws. Some of the high spirit died in him.
It was now totally dark and he lit a candle to see by. He felt exhausted.
This past week the whole family had lived in the fashion of the old country.
Sleeping by day, rousing at sunset to move about. There were blue hollows under
his eyes. "Spid, I'm no good," he said, quietly, to the little creature. "I
can't even get used to sleeping days like the others."
He took up the candleholder. Oh, to have strong teeth, with incisors like
steel spikes. Or strong hands, even, or a strong mind. Even to have the power to
send one's mind out, free, as Cecy did. But, no, he was the imperfect one, the
sick one. He was even - he shivered and drew the candle flame closer afraid of
the dark. His brothers snorted at him. Bion and Leonard and Sam. They laughed at
him because he slept in a bed. With Cecy it was different; her bed was part of
her comfort for the composure necessary to send her mind abroad to hunt. But
Timothy, did he sleep in the wonderful polished boxes like the others'? He did
not! Mother let him have his own bed, his own room, his own mirror. No wonder
the family skirted him like a holy man's crucifix. If only the wings would
sprout from his shoulder blades. He bared his back, stared at it. And sighed
again. No chance. Never.
Downstairs were exciting and mysterious sounds, the slithering black crape
going up in all the halls and on the ceilings and doors. The sputter of burning
black tapers in the banistered stair well. Mother's voice, high and firm.
Father's voice, echoing from the damp cellar. Bion walking from outside the old
country house lugging vast two-gallon jugs.
"I've just got to go to the party, Spid," said Timothy. The spider whirled
at the end of its silk, and Timothy felt alone. He would polish cases, fetch
toadstools and spiders, hang crape, but when the party started he'd be ignored.
The less seen or said of the imperfect son the better.
All through the house below, Laura ran.
"The Homecoming!" she shouted gaily. "The Homecoming!" Her footsteps
everywhere at once.
Timothy passed Cecy's room again, and she was sleeping quietly. Once a
month she went belowstairs. Always she stayed in bed. Lovely Cecy. He felt like
asking her, "Where are you now, Cecy? And in who? And what's happening? Are you
beyond the hills? And what goes on there?" But he went on to Ellen's room
instead.
Ellen sat at her desk, sorting out many kinds of blond, red and black hair
and little scimitars of fingernail gathered from her manicurist job at the
Mellin Village beauty parlor fifteen miles over. A sturdy mahogany case lay in
one corner with her name on it.
"Go away," she said, not even looking at him. "I can't work with you
gawking."
"Allhallows Eve, Ellen; just think!" he said, trying to be friendly.
"Hunh!" She put some fingernail clippings in a small white sack, labeled
them. "What can it mean to you? What do you know of it? It'll scare the hell out
of you. Go back to bed."
His cheeks burned. "I'm needed to polish and work and help serve."
"If you don't go, you'll find a dozen raw oysters in your bed tomorrow,"
said Ellen, matter-of-factly. "Good-by, Timothy."
In his anger, rushing downstairs, he bumped into Laura.
"Watch where you're going!" she shrieked from clenched teeth.
She swept away. He ran to the open cellar door, smelled the channel of
moist earthy air rising from below. "Father?"
"It's about time," Father shouted up the steps. "Hurry down, or they'll be
here before we're ready!"
Timothy hesitated only long enough to hear the million other sounds in the
house. Brothers came and went like trains in a station, talking and arguing. If
you stood in one spot long enough the entire household passed with their pale
hands full of things. Leonard with his little black medical case, Samuel with
his large, dusty ebony-bound book under his arm, bearing more black crape, and
Bion excursioning to the car outside and bringing in many more gallons of
liquid.
Father stopped polishing to give Timothy a rag and a scowl. He thumped the
huge mahogany box. "Come on, shine this up, so we can start on another. Sleep
your life away."
While waxing the surface. Timothy looked inside.
"Uncle Einar's a big man, isn't he, Papa?"
"Unh."
"How big is he?"
"The size of the box'll tell you."
"I was only asking. Seven feet tall?"
"You talk a lot."
About nine o'clock Timothy went out into the October weather. For two hours
in the now-warm, now-cold wind he walked the meadows collecting toadstools and
spiders. His heart began to beat with anticipation again. How many relatives had
Mother said would come? Seventy? One hundred? He passed a farmhouse. If only you
knew what was happening at our house, he said to the glowing windows. He climbed
a hill and looked at the town, miles away, settling into sleep, the townhall
clock high and round white in the distance. The town did not know, either. He
brought home many jars of toadstools and spiders.
In the little chapel belowstairs a brief ceremony was celebrated. It was
like all the other rituals over the years, with Father chanting the dark lines,
mother's beautiful white ivory hands moving in the reverse blessings, and all
the children gathered except Cecy, who lay upstairs in bed. But Cecy was
present. You saw her peering, .now from Bion's eyes, now Samuel's, now Mother's,
and you felt a movement and now she was in you, fleetingly and gone.
Timothy prayed to the Dark One with a tightened stomach. "Please, please,
help me grow up, help me be like my sisters and brothers. Don't let me be
different. If only I could put the hair in the plastic images as Ellen does, or
make people fall in love with me as Laura does with people, or read strange
books as Sam does, or work in a respected job like Leonard and Bion do. Or even
raise a family one day, as mother and father have done...."
At midnight a storm hammered the house. Lightning struck outside in
amazing, snow-white bolts. There was a sound of an approaching, probing, sucking
tornado, funneling and nuzzling the moist night earth. Then the front door,
blasted half off its hinges, hung stiff and discarded, and in trooped Grandmama
and Grandpapa, all the way from the old country!
From then on people arrived each hour. There was a flutter at the side
window, a rap on the front porch, a knock at the back. There were fey noises
from the cellar, autumn wind piped down the chimney throat, chanting. Mother
filled the large crystal punch bowl with a scarlet fluid poured tram the jugs
Bion had carried home. Father swept from room to room lighting more tapers.
Laura and Ellen hammered up more wolfsbane. And Timothy stood amidst this wild
excitement, no expression to his face, his hands trembling at his sides, gazing
now here, now there. Banging or doors, laughter, the sound of liquid pouring,
darkness, sound or wind, the webbed thunder of wings, the padding of feet, the
welcoming bursts of talk at the entrances, the transparent rattlings of
casements, the shadows passing, coming, going, wavering.
"Well, well, and _this_ must be Timothy!"
"What?"
A chilly hand took his hand. A long hairy face leaned down over him. "A
good lad, a fine lad," said the stranger.
"Timothy," said his mother. "This is Uncle Jason."
"Hello, Uncle Jason."
"And over here -" Mother drifted Uncle Jason away. Uncle Jason peered back
at Timothy over his caped shoulder, and winked.
Timothy stood alone.
From off a thousand miles in the candled darkness, he heard a high fluting
voice, that was Ellen. "And my brothers, they _are_ clever. Can you guess their
occupations, Aunt Morgiana?"
"I have no idea."
"They operate the undertaking establishment in town."
"What!" A gasp.
"Yes!" Shrill laughter. "Isn't that priceless!"
Timothy stood very still.
A pause in the laughter. "They bring home sustenance for Mama, Papa and all
of us," said Laura. "Except, of course, Timothy...."
An uneasy silence. Uncle Jason's voice demanded. "Well? come now. What
about Timothy?"
"Oh, Laura, your tongue," said mother.
Laura went on with it. Timothy shut his eyes. "Timothy doesn't-well-doesn't
_like_ blood. He's delicate."
"He'll learn," said mother. "He'll learn," she said very firmly. "He's my
son, and he'll learn. He's only fourteen."
"But I was raised on the stuff," said Uncle Jason, his voice passing from
one room on into another. The wind played the trees outside like harps. A little
rain spatted on the windows "raised on the stuff," passing away into faintness.
Timothy bit his lips and opened his eyes.
"Well, it was all my fault." Mother was showing them into the kitchen now.
"I tried forcing him. You can't force children, you only make them sick, and
then they never get a taste for things. Look at Bion, now, he was thirteen
before he...."
"I understand," murmured Uncle Jason. "Timothy will come around."
"I'm sure he will," said mother, defiantly.
Candle flames quivered as shadows crossed and recrossed the dozen musty
rooms. Timothy was cold. He smelled the hot tallow in his nostrils and
instinctively he grabbed at a candle and walked with it around and about the
house, pretending to straighten the crape.
"_Timothy_," someone whisped behind a patterned wall, hissing and sizzling
and sighing the words, "_Timothy is afraid of the dark_."
Leonard's voice. Hateful Leonard!
"I like the candle, that's all," said Timothy in a reproachful whisper.
More lightning, more thunder. Cascades of roaring laughter. Bangings and
clickings and shouts and rustles of clothing. Clammy fog swept through the front
door. Out of the fog, settling his wings, stalked a tall man.
"Uncle Einar!"
Timothy propelled himself on his thin legs, straight through the fog, under
the green webbing shadows. He threw himself across Einar's arms. Einar lifted
him.
"You've wings, Timothy!" He tossed the boy light as thistles. "Wings,
Timothy: fly!" Faces wheeled under. Darkness rotated. The house blew away.
Timothy felt breezelike. He flapped his arms. Einar's fingers caught and threw
him once more to the ceiling. The ceiling rushed down like a charred wall. "Fly,
Timothy!" shouted Einar, loud and deep. "Fly with wings! Wings!"
He felt an exquisite ecstasy in his shoulder blades, as if roots grew,
burst to explode and blossom into new, moist membrane. He babbled wild stuff;
again Einar hurled him high.
The autumn wind broke in a tide on the house, rain crashed down, shaking
the beams, causing chandeliers to tilt their enraged candle lights. And the one
hundred relatives peered out from every black, enchanted room, circling inward,
all shapes and sizes, to where Einar balanced the child like a baton in the
roaring spaces.
"Enough!" shouted Einar, at last.
Timothy, deposited on the floor timbers, exaltedly, exhaustedly fell
against Uncle Einar, sobbing happily. "Uncle, uncle, uncle!"
"Was it good, flying? Eh, Timothy?" said Uncle Einar, bending down, patting
Timothy's head. "Good, good."
It was coming toward dawn. Most had arrived and were ready to bed down for
the daylight, sleep motionlessly with no sound until the following sunset, when
they would shout out of their mahogany boxes for the revelry.
Uncle Einar, followed by dozens of others, moved toward the cellar. Mother
directed them downward to the crowded row on row of highly polished boxes.
Einar, his wings like sea-green tarpaulins tented behind him, moved with a
curious whistling down the passageway, where his wings touched they made a sound
of drumheads gently beaten.
Upstairs, Timothy lay wearily thinking, trying to like the darkness. There
was so much you could do in darkness that people couldn't criticize you for,
because they never saw you. He _did_ like the night, but it was a qualified
liking: sometimes there was so much night he cried out in rebellion.
In the cellar, mahogany doors sealed downward, drawn in by pale hands. In
corners, certain relatives circled three times to lie, heads on paws, eyelids
shut. The sun rose. There was a sleeping.
Sunset. The revel exploded like a bat nest struck full, shrieking out,
fluttering, spreading. Box doors banged wide. Steps rushed up from cellar damp.
More late guests, kicking on front and back portals, were admitted.
It rained, and sodden visitors laid their capes, their waterpelleted hats,
their sprinkled veils upon Timothy who bore them to a closet. The rooms were
crowd-packed. The laughter of one cousin, shot from one room, angled off the
wall of another, ricocheted, banked and returned to Timothy's ears from a fourth
room, accurate and cynical.
A mouse ran across the floor.
"I know you, Niece Liebersrouter!" exclaimed father around him but not to
him. The dozens of towering people pressed in against him, elbowed him, ignored
him.
Finally, he turned and slipped away up the stairs.
He called softly. "Cecy. Where are you now, Cecy?"
She waited a long while before answering. "In the Imperial Valley," she
murmured faintly. "Beside the Salton Sea, near the mud pots and the steam and
the quiet. I'm inside a farmer's wife. I'm sitting on a front porch. I can make
her move if I want, or do anything or think anything. The sun's going down."
"What's it like, Cecy?"
"You can hear the mud pots hissing," she said, slowly, as if speaking in a
church. "Little gray heads of steam push up the mud like bald men rising in the
thick syrup, head first, out in the broiling channels. The gray heads rip like
rubber fabric, collapse with noises like wet lips moving. And feathery plumes of
steam escape from the ripped tissue. And there is a smell of deep sulphurous
burning and old time. The dinosaur has been abroiling here ten million years."
"Is he done yet, Cecy?"
The mouse spiraled three women's feet and vanished into a corner. Moments
later a beautiful woman rose up out of nothing and stood in the corner, smiling
her white smile at them all.
Something huddled against the flooded pane of the kitchen window. It sighed
and wept and tapped continually, pressed against the glass, but Timothy could
make nothing of it, he saw nothing. In imagination he was outside staring in.
The rain was on him, the wind at him, and the taper-dotted darkness inside was
inviting. Waltzes were being danced; tall thin figures pirouetted to outlandish
music. Stars of light flickered off lifted bottles; small clods of earth
crumbled from casques, and a spider fell and went silently legging over the
floor.
Timothy shivered. He was inside the house again. Mother was calling him to
run here, run there, help, serve, out to the kitchen now, fetch this, retch
that, bring the plates, heap the food - on and on - the party happened.
"Yes, he's done. Quite done." Cecy's calm sleeper's lips turned up. The
languid words fell slowly from her shaping mouth. "Inside this woman's skull I
am, looking out, watching the sea that does not move, and is so quiet it makes
you afraid. I sit on the porch and wait for my husband to come home.
Occasionally, a fish leaps, falls back, starlight edging it. The valley, the
sea, the few cars, the wooden porch, my rocking chair, myself, the silence."
"What now, Cecy?"
"I'm getting up from my rocking chair," she said.
"Yes?"
"I'm walking off the porch, toward the mud pots. Planes fly over, like
primordial birds. Then it is quiet, so quiet."
"How long will you stay inside her, Cecy?"
"Until I've listened and looked and felt enough: until I've changed her
life some way. I'm walking off the porch and along the wooden boards. My feet
knock on the planks, tiredly, slowly."
"And now?"
"Now the sulphur fumes are all around me. I stare at the bubbles as they
break and smooth. A bird darts by my temple, shrieking. Suddenly I am in the
bird and fly away! And as I fly, inside my new small glass-bead eyes I see a
woman below me, on a boardwalk, take one, two, three steps forward into the mud
pots. I hear a sound as of a boulder plunged into molten depths. I keep flying,
circle back. I see a white hand, like a spider, wriggle and disappear into the
gray lava pool. The lava seals over. Now I'm flying home, swift, swift, swift!"
Something clapped hard against the window. Timothy started.
Cecy flicked her eyes wide, bright, full, happy, exhilarated. "Now I'm
_home_!" she said.
After a pause, Timothy ventured, "The Homecoming's on. And everybody's
here."
"Then why are you upstairs?" She took his hand. "Well, ask me." She smiled
slyly. "Ask me what you came to ask."
"I didn't come to ask anything," he said. "Well, almost nothing. Well - oh,
Cecy!" It came from him in one long rapid flow. "I want to do something at the
party to make them look at me, something to make me good as them, something to
make me belong, but there's nothing I can do and I feel funny and, well, I
thought you might..."
"I might," she said, closing her eyes, smiling inwardly. "Stand up
straight. Stand very still." He obeyed. "Now, shut your eyes and blank out your
thought."
He stood very straight and thought of nothing, or at least thought of
thinking nothing.
She sighed. "Shall we go downstairs now, Timothy?" Like a hand into a
glove, Cecy was within him.
"Look everybody!" Timothy held the glass of warm red liquid. He held up the
glass so that the whole house turned to watch him. Aunts, uncles, cousins,
brothers, sisters!
He drank it straight down.
He jerked a hand at his sister Laura. He held her gaze, whispering to her
in a subtle voice that kept her silent, frozen. He felt tall as the trees as he
walked to her. The party now slowed. It waited on all sides of him, watching.
From all the room doors the faces peered. They were not laughing. Mother's face
was astonished. Dad looked bewildered, but pleased and getting prouder every
instant.
He nipped Laura, gently, over the neck vein. The candle flames swayed
drunkenly. The wind climbed around on the roof outside. The relatives stared
from all the doors. He popped toadstools into his mouth, swallowed, then beat
his arms against his flanks and circled. "Look, Uncle Einar! I can fly, at
last!" Beat went his hands. Up and down pumped his feet. The faces flashed past
him.
At the top of the stairs flapping, he heard his mother cry, "Stop,
Timothy!" far below. "Hey!" shouted Timothy, and leaped off the top of the well,
thrashing.
Halfway down, the wings he thought he owned dissolved. He screamed. Uncle
Einar caught him.
Timothy flailed whitely in the receiving arms. A voice burst out of his
lips, unbidden. "This is Cecy! This is Cecy! Come see me, all of you, upstairs,
first room on the left!" Followed by a long trill of high laughter Timothy tried
to cut it off with his tongue.
Everybody was laughing. Einar set him down. Running through the crowding
blackness as the relatives flowed upstairs toward Cecy's room to congratulate
her, Timothy banged the front door open.
"Cecy, I hate you, I hate you!"
By the sycamore tree, in deep shadow, Timothy spewed out his dinner, sobbed
bitterly and threshed in a pile of autumn leaves. Then he lay still. From his
blouse pocket, from the protection of the matchbox he used for his retreat, the
spider crawled forth. Spid walked along Timothy's arm. Spid explored up his neck
to his ear and climbed in the ear to tickle it. Timothy shook his head. "Don't,
Spid. Don't."
The feathery touch of a tentative feeler probing his eardrum set Timothy
shivering. "Don't Spid!" He sobbed somewhat less.
The spider traveled down his cheek, took a station under the boy's nose,
looked up into the nostrils as if to seek the brain, and then clambered softly
up over the rim of the nose to sit, to squat there peering at Timothy with green
gem eyes until Timothy filled with ridiculous laughter. "Go away, Spid!"
Timothy sat up, rustling the leaves. The land was very bright with the
moon. In the house he could hear the faint ribaldry as Mirror, Mirror was
played. Celebrants shouted dimly muffled, as they tried to identify those of
themselves whose reflections did not, had not ever appeared in a glass.
"Timothy." Uncle Einar's wings spread and twitched and came in with a sound
like kettledrums. Timothy felt himself plucked up like a thimble and set upon
Einar's shoulder. "Don't feel badly? Nephew Timothy. Each to his own, each in
his own way. How much better things are for you. How rich. The world's dead for
us. We've seen so much of it, believe me. Life's best to those who live the
least of it. It's worth more per ounce, Timothy, remember that."
The rest of the black morning, from midnight on. Uncle Einar led him about
the house, from room to room, weaving and singing. A horde of late arrivals set
the entire hilarity off afresh. Great-great-great-great and a thousand more
great-greats Grandmother was there, wrapped in Egyptian cerements. She said not
a word, but lay straight as a burnt ironing board against the wall, her eye
hollows cupping a distant, wise, silent glimmering. At the breakfast, at four in
the morning, one-thousand-odd-greats Grandmama was stiffly seated at the head of
the longest table.
The numerous young cousins caroused at the crystal punch bowl. Their shiny
olive-pit eyes, their conical, devilish faces and curly bronze hair hovered over
the drinking table, their hard-soft, half-girl half-boy bodies wrestling against
each other as they got unpleasantly, sullenly drunk. The wind got higher, the
stars burned with fiery intensity, the noises redoubled, the dances quickened,
the drinking became more positive. To Timothy there were thousands of things to
hear and watch. The many darknesses roiled, bubbled, the many faces passed and
repassed....
"Listen!"
The party held its breath, far away the town clock struck its chimes,
saying six o'clock. The party was ending. In time to the rhythm of the striking
clock, their one hundred voices began to sing songs that were four hundred years
old, songs Timothy could not know. Arms twined, circling slowly, they sang, and
somewhere in the cold distance of morning the town clock finished out its chimes
and quieted.
Timothy sang. He knew no words, no tune, yet the words and tune came round
and high and good. And he gazed at the closed door at the top of the stairs.
"Thanks Cecy," he whispered. "You're forgiven. Thanks."
Then he just relaxed and let the words move, with Cecy's voice, free from
his lips.
Good-bys were said, there was a great rustling. Mother and Father stood at
the door to shake hands and kiss each departing relative in turn. The sky beyond
the open door colored in the east. A cold wind entered. And Timothy felt himself
seized and settled in one body after another, felt Cecy press him into Uncle
Fry's head so he stared from the wrinkled leather face, then leaped in a flurry
of leaves up over the house and awakening hills....
Then, loping down a dirt path, he felt his red eyes burning, his fur pelt
rimed with morning, as inside Cousin William he panted through a hollow and
dissolved away....
Like a pebble in Uncle Einar's mouth. Timothy flew in a webbed thunder,
filling the sky. And then he was back, for all time, in his own body.
In the growing dawn, the last few were embracing and crying and thinking
how the world was becoming less a place for them. There had been a time when
they had met every year, but now decades passed with no reconciliation. "Don't
forget," someone cried, "we meet in Salem in 1970!"
Salem. Timothy's numbed mind turned the words over. Salem, 1970. And there
would be Uncle Fry and a thousand-times-great Grandmother in her withered
cerements, and Mother and Father and Ellen and Laura and Cecy and all the rest.
But would he be there? Could he be certain of staying alive until then?
With one last withering blast, away they all went, so many scarves, so many
fluttery mammals, so many sere leaves, so many whining and clustering noises, so
many midnights and insanities and dreams.
Mother shut the door. Laura picked up a broom. "No," said Mother. "We'll
clean tonight. Now we need sleep." And the Family vanished down cellar and
upstairs. And Timothy moved in the crape-littered hall, his head down. Passing a
party mirror, he saw the pale mortality of his face all cold and trembling.
"Timothy," said Mother.
She came to touch her hand on his face. "Son," she said, "We love you.
Remember that. We all love you. No matter how different you are, no matter if
you leave us one day." She kissed his cheek. "And if and when you die, your
bones will lie undisturbed, we'll see to that. You'll lie at ease forever, and
I'll come visit every Allhallows Eve and tuck you in the more secure."
The house was silent. Far away the wind went over a hill with its last
cargo of dark bats, echoing, chittering.
Timothy walked up the steps, one by one, crying to himself all the way.