THE DARK FANTASTIC Stanley Ellin 1983 For Jeanne and Sue and George and Stacey Charles Witter Kirwan SIT BACK, LIGHT UP, THE TEXT IS YET TO COME. A professional joke. A professorial joke. Harmless. Not even worth wincing at. The fact is that I'm not all that easy with this microphone and tape- recorder thing. Dependent on it, so it seems, but made uncomfortable by it. With pen in hand, I can instantly muster my thoughts into neat ranks and march them right along in close order. With microphone or whatever it's called in hand, I find these thoughts as disorderly as a crowd of torch-bearing villagers in a Frankenstein movie. Tumultuous, incendiary, and not quite identifiable. Hard to pick the right one out of the crowd and start it on its way. So my little professorial joke was intended to get the phlegm loosened and the words coming. They appear to be coming now. So. Whoever you are -- curiosity-seeker, sensation-seeker, or seeker after truth -- and that's a rare bird, isn't it? -- what you are now hearing. Correction. What you are now reading. Because hearing will apply only to the police, who will, of course, be holding a private audition of these tapes before they're converted into print. Of course. And having gotten their astounding earful, they will then pass it along to our lord mayor in Gracie Mansion so that he can appear before assembled television cameras to explain and passionately denounce the grand event -- oh, the horror and madness of it! -- while in his palpitating, panicky, white middle-class heart of hearts he revels in it. [1] CHARLES WITTER KIRWAN You doubt that? I mean the secret revelry? But hath not our mayor eyes? Hath he not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? And granting him these attributes, which he shares with you and me, is it possible that never in his troubled mind he happily imagined just such a grand event? Rest assured he did. Only wondering, no doubt, who would emerge from nowhere to finally set it off. Well, he won't have to wonder any longer. Nor will you. Because by my precise instructions -- signed, and in the possession of my attorney -- every one of these tapes is to be transcribed uncensored and in full for the benefit of the public. The paying public. You. I don't even have to ask in communications jargon, "Do you read me?" Obviously you are reading me. Good. Now for a troublesome aspect of this presentation. The grand event I address myself to has not yet taken place -- about three more weeks are needed to lay its entire groundwork -- so I am speaking these words into this machine well before the event, and you are reading them God knows how long after it. As you read, bear in mind that you actually know more about its results than I do -- or ever will -- and that hindsight, despite its favorable press, has a curiously distorting effect on one's view of any great event. Why? Because it so easily confers a sense of omniscience on the otherwise well-balanced mind and thus turns one from human understanding to godlike judgment. Don't play God in my case, friends. Just try as well as you can to play Charles Witter Kirwan. So. A presentation. This is what you're getting. Not a confession. Not at all. There's a sour smell of mea culpa about that word "confession," and believe me there is no mea culpa here. Not in me, not in this marvelous package I'm handing you. A rejoicing, yes. Samson knew that rejoicing when he suddenly found the pillars of the temple yielding to his [2] CHARLES WITTER KIRWAN reborn strength. When, in that instant before the temple crashed down on him and his doomed tormenters, he saw the incredulity and terror in their faces. Let us, as they say, hear it for Samson. But if you want guilt, friends, if you expect any beating of the breast, you'll have to shop elsewhere. Because what you'll find here is no more or less than a setting forth of precise facts. Yes. Adding up to a text which I imagine will be rich in history, anthropology, and tribal lore, sociology and psychology. Oh yes, and sex. A whole colorful, perverted sexual adventure -- already initiated -- to be recounted in detail. And will an account of this adventure have redeeming social value? Will it really be necessary to this presentation? Yes. Since I am moved to set forth the unvarnished truth, it has and does. Incidentally, it's a heterosexual adventure. Sorry to disappoint our ever- increasing faggot populace, but that's the way this twig was early inclined. To those who ask my credentials, I will confide that during my service in the Second World War, during the Anzio campaign, I shared blankets one night with an importunate captain of the artillery, highly symbolic that, and discovered that while he did provide almost instant relief he also provided an embarrassment so intense that it curled the intestines into a deep knot for days and weeks to come, and ever afterward I clearly understood my sexual preferences. But I digress and I must not. There isn't time for it. Or strength. I ride euphoria and must always keep an ear cocked to the sound of air starting to escape from its tires. Better if I move directly to my pedigree and my thesis. Well then. I am Charles Witter Kirwan, age sixty-eight, white, male, retired associate professor of history, and a widower. My address is 407 Witter Street in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn. I was born in this house, have spent my entire life in it, and for the next three weeks will continue to do so. After that, by my instructions, my ashes will be added to my grandfather's already in that bronze urn -- [3] CHARLES WITTER KIRWAN identified by his name -- in this house, and thus I will continue, so to speak, in residence. Here I hasten to clear up a possible confusion. My middle name was not taken from the street on which I was born, as one might suppose. Quite the contrary. When my forebear, Jan Uitter -- that name starts with a proper Dutch U -- carved farmland and an estate out of the Flatbush wilderness some 350 years ago, a wilderness then known as 't Vlackbos, the lane that ran through the property was, of course, Uittersveg, and that, in time, became Witter Street. And because the name Kirwan is an adoptive name, my natural father having been Henry Witter, lineal descendant of Jan, I am, in fact, the last surviving Witter of Witter Street. As for this community, Flatbush Avenue is of course its main thoroughfare, and for landmarks hereabouts it offers the old Dutch Reformed Church and Erasmus Hall High School. The graveyard of the church across from the school is generally open to visitors during daylight hours, and among its most ancient gravemarkers there you will find three bearing the name Uitter with appropriate descriptions in Dutch. Church Avenue, incidentally, was so named after that church. But, as noted, the 400 block of Witter Street, once Uitter farmland, is the setting for this presentation. I am owner and sole resident of Number 407. I am also landlord of Number 409 next door, a four-story walk-up apartment building with twenty-four rental units. The building has a tax valuation of one hundred thousand dollars and an actual cash value of somewhat less than zero. I trust you're put off by these dull facts and figures, but they are vital to an understanding of the grand event. There may be a way of enlivening such details, but, as I've discovered just now, old habits aren't easily changed. I lectured on history for almost thirty years, and as I sit here speaking into this machine I sometimes find myself the lecturer again -- Herr Professor Kirwan? -- rather than the Charles Witter Kirwan that I am. I am also under considerable physical stress at this moment. The familiar recurrent pains. Considerable. However, I'll continue this session a bit longer. No martyrdom involved. This opening up of myself -- this unveiling of the soul -- is as therapeutic in its way as any medication. [4] CHARLES WITTER KIRWAN Well. Not to mince words, I have a terminal cancer of the lungs, a cancer which has already metasticized wildly. For excellent reasons, I have refused surgery or any other futile treatment which might prolong my life even one excruciating day beyond the very few months allotted me by the medical profession. In fact, I am going to reduce those few months to a very few weeks. About three weeks. No question about that. No doubts. Because, as I found, however one may first respond to the announcement of his impending death, it can come to him that this news makes him a totally free man. A miraculous condition. And I am living witness to that miracle. First the shock and fear, then the bitter resentment, then, miraculously, the awareness of freedom. The savoring of it. Therefore Yes. Let's put it this way. Therefore, I, Charles Witter Kirwan, being of sound and disposing mind, am going to blow up that structure -- that apartment building at 409 Witt...
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