Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser Read Free Book Online Page B

from the bed and was already standing at the door. I followed him out into the dusk of the hall, past the top of the stairway, to an unpainted door that looked like the door of a linen closet. It opened to reveal a flight of wooden steps. Up we went into that hot attic, where tawny sunlight streamed through a small round window, fell against bare floorboards and splintery rafters, and weakened into a brown darkness. As we passed along, I made out old couches and bureaus and armchairs, as if we’d broken into the furniture department of a big-city store. Then we came to a high old-fashioned record cabinet, which rose up to my chest; Wolf opened the top to reveal a dim turntable, on which lay a ghostly white bear with outstretched arms. He next led me to a wooden wall with a door; it opened onto a short hall, with a door on each side. He stopped at the left-hand one, knocked lightly with a single knuckle, and bent forward as if to listen.
    “My sister’s room,” he then said, and ushered me in.
    When he closed the door behind us I found myself in total darkness. I had the sensation that Wolf was standing close to me, but I could not see him there. Then I felt something on my upper arm and jerked away, but it was only Wolf’s hand, guiding me. Slowly he moved me forward through the blackness, as I held up an arm as if to protect my face from branches in a forest. “Sit here,” he whispered. He placed my hand on what seemed to be the high back of an upholstered chair, with a row of metal buttons running across the top.
    I felt my way around the chair and sat down, while I sensed Wolf settling into another seat nearby. I was sitting in a straight-backed stiff chair with hard, upholstered arms, the sort of chair you might find in the ornate parlor of an aging actress in a black-and-white movie. “Isabel,” he said quietly, “are you awake?” I strained my eyes in that thick darkness, but I could see nothing at all. It struck me that it was all a hoax, an audacious joke meant to ridicule me in some way. At the same time I listened for the slightest sound and narrowed my eyes until they trembled with the effort to see. Anything could have been in that room.
    “She’s asleep,” Wolf said, and I thought: Perfect, a perfect trick. I imagined him looking at me with a superior smile.
    “Wolf?” a voice whispered, but so lightly that I wondered whether I had imagined it.
    “Isabel,” Wolf’s voice said. “Are you up? I brought a visitor.”
    Something stirred. I heard a sound as of bedclothes, and what seemed like a faint sigh, and somewhere in that darkness I heard the word “Hello.”
    “Say hello to Isabel,” Wolf said.
    “Hello,” I said, feeling irritable and absurd.
    “Tell her your name,” Wolf said quietly, as if I were a shy six-year-old child, and I would have said nothing, but who knew what was going on, there in the dark.
    “David,” I said. “Dave.”
    “Two names,” the voice said; there was more rustling. “Two are better than one.” I wondered whether Wolf had learned the trick of throwing his voice.
    “Do you like my name, David Dave?”
    I hesitated. “Yes,” I said. “I do.”
    “Uh-uh-uh,” she said playfully, and I imagined a finger wagging in the dark. “You had to think about it.”
    “But I do,” I said, thinking quickly. “I was listening to the sound of it, in my mind.”
    “Oh, that was a good answer, David Dave, a very good answer. I don’t believe you, not for a second, but I won’t make you pay a penalty, this time. So hey, how do you like my room? No no, don’t worry, just kidding. What’s Wolfie been telling you about me?”
    “Not too much, actually.”
    “Oh good, then you can make me up. Isabel, or The Mystery of the Haunted Chamber. Hoooo, I’m feeling tired. Will you come back and sit with me again, David Dave?”
    “Yes,” I said. “I will. Definitely.”
    I heard a long yawn, and a mumbled phrase that sounded like “See ya later, alligator,” and