The What-If? game
Klein's most poignant scenes also delight in subtextual revelation and misdirection.
By the last hundred pages, in Book Nine: McKinney's Neck, friendships, relationships, and marriages are corrupting quickly under the weight of plans the Old One is speeding to their climax.
These pages, in my estimation, work beautifully, as they originally did in "The Events at Poroth Farm."
....Deborah looked much better at dinner. Though she still did little talking, her features were more animated, she had good color - she's been spending time berry-picking in the woods, she says - & she seemed energetic & cheerful. Sarr, by contrast, was moody again. He picked at his food (beef stew, & like the pork at lunch, actually quite poor, though I was too polite to say anything) & kept asking her why she didn't eat more. When she brought out the blueberry pie he flatly declined to have any. 'How do I know the berries aren't poison?' he demanded. Both Deborah & I were scandalized that he'd even think such a thing, & I could see that, after all her work, the poor girl was very upset, so I had a huge extra slice. Deborah ate a lot too, no doubt just to show Sarr up.
Sometimes I stay with them & talk, but didn't want to hang around tonight; can't get used to the changes in Sarr. He barely said a civil thing all evening. One exception, though: he told me he'd found out, in answer to my question, that there never were any McKinneys. Seems McKinney's Neck is actually taken from some old Indian word.
Felt like rain when I came back out here; clouds massing in the night sky & the woods echoing with thunder. Little Absolom Troet seemed to smile at me from his photo when I turned on the light, as if glad to have me back.
Still no rain. Read most of John Christopher's The Possessors. Pretty effective, drawing horror from the most fundamental question of human relations: How can we know that the person next to us is as human as we are? Then played a little game with myself for most of the evening, until I—
Jesus! I just had one hell of a shock. While writing the above I heard a soft tapping, like nervous fingers drumming on a table, & discovered an enormous spider, biggest of the summer, crawling only a few inches from my ankle. It must have been living behind the bureau next to this table.
When you can hear a spider walk across the floor, you know it's time to keep your socks on! If only I could find the damned bug spray. Had to kill the thing by swatting it with my shoe, & think I'll just leave the shoe there on the floor until tomorrow morning, covering the grisly crushed remains. Don't feel like seeing what's underneath tonight, or checking to see if the shoe's still moving . . . Must get more insecticide.
Oh, yeah, that game - the What if Game. The one Carol says Rosie taught her. For some reason I've been playing it ever since I got her letter. It's catching. (Vain attempt to enlarge the realm of the possible? Heighten my own sensitivity? Or merely work myself into an icy sweat?) I invent the most unlikely situations, then try to think of them as real. Really real. E.g., what if this glorified chicken coop I live in is sinking into quicksand? (Maybe not so unlikely.) What if the Poroths are getting tired of me? What if, as Poe was said to fear, I woke up inside my own coffin?
What if Carol, right this minute, is falling in love with another man? What if her visit here this weekend proves an unmitigated disaster?
What if I never see New York again?
What if some stories in the horror books aren't fiction? If Machen told the truth? If there are White People out there, malevolent little faces grinning in the moonlight? Whispers in the grass? Poisonous things in the woods? Unsuspected evil in the world?
Enough of this foolishness. Time for bed.
Jay
14 July 2020
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