College teachers -- Fiction; Fantasy fiction; Horror tales; Spouses -- Fiction; Witches -- Fiction
Just what you might expect. The usual repertorial inaccuracies. It
wasn't a gargoyle; gargoyles are ornamental rainspouts. And the
reporter had not used the lightning angle in his story. Probably
thought it would sound too fishy.
Finally, the familiar touch of turning the item into an advertisement
for the physical-education department. You had to admit that the
Hempnell publicity office had a kind of efficiency.
Tansy swept the paper out of his hands.
"The world can wait," she said. "Here, have a bite of my sandwich."
VIII.
It was quite dark when they started for the Hill. He drove carefully,
taking his time at intersections. Tansy's gaiety still did no more than
hold in check the other half of his thoughts.
"I might be a witch," she said, "taking you to a hilltop rendezvous.
Our own private Sabbat."
She was smiling impishly. She had changed to a light white sports
dress. She looked like one of his students.
Again he felt the craziness of the situation. The line between
reality and pretense was become harder to distinguish. He must keep
carefully in mind that when she said things like that, she was making a
courageous mockery of her previous behavior. He must on no account let
her see the other half of his thoughts. Or was that what she wanted?
The lights of the town dropped behind. Half a mile out, he turned off
sharply onto the road that wound up the hill. It was bumpier than he
remembered from the last time--was it as much as ten years ago? And the
trees were thicker, brushing the windshield.
When they emerged into the half acre of clearing on the top, the moon,
two days after full, was rising redly.
Tansy pointed to it and said, "Check! I timed it perfectly. But where
are the others? There always used to be two or three cars up here. And
on a night like this!"
He stopped the car close to the edge. "Fashions in lovers' lanes change
like anything else," he told her. "We're traveling a disused folkway."
"Always the sociologist!"
"I guess so. Maybe Mrs. Carr found out about this place. And I suppose
the students range farther afield nowadays, or did until this year."
She rested her head on his shoulder. He switched off the headlights,
and the moon cast soft shadows.
"We used to do this at Gorham," she murmured. "When I was taking your
classes, and you were the serious young instructor. Until I found out
you weren't any different from the college boys--only better. Remember?"
He nodded and took her hand. He looked down at the town, made out the
campus, with its prominent floodlights designed to chase couples out
of dark corners. Those garishly floodlighted Gothic buildings seemed
for the moment to symbolize a whole world of barren intellectual
competition and jealous traditionalism, a world toward which at the
moment he felt as alien as if he were still twenty-six instead of
forty-one and Tansy twenty-one instead of thirty-six.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account