Doctor Sax - Jack Kerouac [50]
They all thought Polly had taken a fit of some sort (she was apoplectic, you know); they carried her to the divan and brought water. Boaz yawned involuntarily and went to the door, his long black shoes creaking along the gloomy carpeted hall. He opened the door with a careful flunkey’s flourish.
A foul wind, abreath with the rank mud of the marshes, poured into the musty hallway. The caped figure stood.
Boaz screamed like a woman. Doctor Sax entered snarling.
“I am Doctor Sax!” he howled at the butler. “I shall announce myself!”
Doctor Sax swept into the salon, his cape flowing and looping, his slouch hat half concealing a secret, malevolent leer. His countenance was publish, he had red hair and red eyebrows, his eyes were fierce green and they flashed with joy. He was very tall. He swept his black cane at all of them and emitted a happy growl. “Greetings!” he howled. “Greetings to one and all! May I join your charming company, eh? May I join you all?”
Transcendenta! Transcendenta!
We shall dance a mad cadenza!
Screams! Screams! Screaming, the women fell, one by one! Ha ha! They fell, they fell! The men paled, some of them buckled to the floor, some stood transfixed with horrors. Emilia St. Claire swooned upon the divan! Hee hee hee! Hee hee hee hee hee!
Doctor Sax swept to the decanter and poured himself a drink of Napoleon brandy. He whirled and faced them all; only a few men stood trembling.
“What ails thee, my spright?” demanded Sax approaching one of the more stalwart survivors. The latter toppled over and swooned with a groan. Doctor Sax looked around, his green eyes flashing beams of venomous light.
He was amused, nay delighted!
“Interesting ye be, pale neighbors, so surely can’st begrudge me wee hospitality!” No answer. “Eh?” he demanded. “EH?” he howled, turning to the young butler Boaz who had staggered after him down the hall and was clutching to shrouded curtains. But a malignant smile from Doctor Sax sent this young man fleeing up the hallway and out into the insane March night with his long black shoes flapping.
Doctor Sax ran after him to the door, flying and beating his swirling robed shadow:
“He flees! He flees! Heh heh heh! To the vampire mists imbecilic flees! Heh heh heh!”
Doctor Sax paused for an instant at the entrance and surveyed the havoc in the salon with immense delight. Only one young man stood stalwartly swaying, the young student from Boston College. Gleefully, Sax rubbed his cane against a purple jowl; his fire-brows contracted together over a hawkish nose. Tremendously, he began to laugh; there was no end to his joy; his private knowledge of the world pealed forth from purple lips, publishing to all who were aware the secret wisdom, the huge malevolent humour, the undreamed information that crouched concealed in that unholy head beneath that black slouch hat. Then, with a final chortle of glee (and here now, for the first time, one could detect a touch of loneliness in his tone), he spun on his heel and glided forth from Transcendenta merging with the night like night, disappearing in the weird gloom of the thicket, pausing, for just a moment, to laugh once more a great peal of mockery to the world. And he was gone.
Doctor Sax had paid his compliments to Emilia St. Claire and her guests, and, as he had come, so had he left, secretly, with a huge delight that confounded all of the knowledge, reason, and purpose that man had gathered about his life. He knew something that no other man knew; a something reptilian; pray, was he a man?
Through the open door poured a foul moist breeze of fecund, muddy swamps. The moon stared insanely, for an instant, through a cleavage in the March skies. All was silent, save for a few groans from the stricken mortals.
Hee hee hee hee hee!
Doctor Sax had paid his compliments.
Hee hee hee hee hee!
Now they begin to regain consciousness, there is a stirring of stunned minds.
Let us all laugh.
Hee hee hee hee hee!
(finis)
Another strange event and tied up with this, after Emilia St. Claire moved out of Reeves Castle, March (1932), about seven,