Gods of Aberdeen

by Micah Nathan

  “Howie?”

  “Yeah. He was absolutely smashed. I saw him at the Cellar about three weeks ago.”

  Howie was at the Cellar often, and as a result, was known by most of Aberdeen’s students. He was like one of those frat brothers, as Art described it, who keep partying at the frat house long after they’ve left school.

  “He got into a fight with one of the bouncers,” she said. “The cops came and everything. Your friend was shouting all this stuff, like how he was going to come back and buy the bar and give everyone free drinks all the time. You should’ve seen him—it was hysterical. The cops had to drag him out. We were all cracking up, really. He said he couldn’t be hurt, that he’s immortal, and he’s all drunk and practically passing out even as he’s screaming this garbage. Oh my God it was so funny.” She giggled.

  It couldn’t have been Howie, I thought. And then I realized it was entirely possible he’d taken a detour during his New Orleans trip, and stopped at the Cellar for one last drink.

  “So when are you coming back? Not that I ever see you anyway. After that one week when we saw each other every night…” She lapsed into silence. We both were thinking the same thing, I knew it. Sex on her carpet. Both of us stoned. It seemed like so long ago.

  “Yeah, well, I’ll come over when I get back,” I said. I dropped my eyes as if she were standing in front of me.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, suddenly flippant. Good old Nicole.

  We said our goodbyes and I hung up and walked into the bathroom. I thought of Howie, the raging bull, the stink of alcohol on his breath, his red hair falling in a belligerent bang over his forehead. What had he possibly gotten into a fight over? An insult? A wrong look? Was he in jail? Had he hurt anyone? What would Dr. Cade think?

  I paid for my coffee and left, raising my collar against the stiffening wind, and headed back to the hotel, back to the pit of obsession.

  I got to the suite around 10 A.M., to find Art still seated at the desk, glasses way down on his nose, eyes heavy-lidded and red. He wore a robe, now, and white slippers with Hotel Mustovich embroidered across the top. The room was stiflingly hot.

  “How was the castle,” he said. His voice was raw with exhaustion.

  “I didn’t go,” I said. I noticed a thermometer lying on the nightstand. “Are you sick?”

  “I’m fine…tired, that’s all. Jet lag probably catching up with me.” Art smiled weakly. He looked bad. “I’ve made some progress,” he said, nodding toward the book on his desk. “Not as much as I hoped. The going is slow.”

  He stood up, shuffled over to the bar, and cracked open a beer. “The Malezel book is remarkable. Like nothing I’ve ever read.” He took a few gulps and rested on a stool. A slipper dangled off the edge of his foot. He looked at me unsteadily. “By the way, did you see the castle?”

  “I already told you no,” I said. I drew closer. His eyes were glassy. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine. Can’t stop now, just a pause to collect my strength.” He inhaled deeply and let his shoulders drop.

  “I called Nicole,” I said. “Remember her, the girl in my dorm?”

  He feigned interest.

  “She said Howie got into a fight at the Cellar,” I said.

  Art refocused on me. “Really.”

  I nodded. “The police were involved—”

  Art shook his head.

  “—and Nicole told me Howie was yelling something about being immortal.”

  Art drank the remainder of the beer. Well, is all he said. Then he got off the stool and walked back to the desk. Something fell out of his pocket, a little rolled plastic bag. I picked it up off the blue carpet.

  “What is this?”

  He looked back. “Belladonna leaves.” His face was red, and I noticed his pupils were dilated. “They help me see things,” he said slowly. “Gregory of Nyssa used it, even though the risk of poisoning is high. He understood the payoff is proportional to the risk. Listen.” He held up his hand. “Do you hear that?”

  I thought it was someone playing music below our room, loud bass thumping through the floor. And then I discovered it was coming from Art. Tha-dump, tha-dump.

  “My God,” I said. “Is that your heart?”

  He smiled blithely. “A symptom of belladonna poisoning.”

  I went to move away but he grabbed my arm. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said sharply. “I’ll be fine. I know the dosage. It’ll wear off in a few hours. Why don’t you have a drink downstairs and come back up around three.”

  I looked at his hand wrapped around my arm. I pulled my arm away but Art held firm.

  “Promise you won’t say anything,” he said. His black eyes were fixed upon me. And his heart, beating like marching doom.

  “Promise.”

  “Okay, Art. I promise.”

  He dropped his hand and rubbed his eyes. “Look behind you,” he said.

  I turned quickly. The bar, the television cabinet, an empty beer can sitting on the marble countertop.

  “Do you see anything?” he said.

  “Like what?”

  Art stared at the floor for a moment, and then turned back to the desk, Malezel’s book lying open in front of him.

  “I think you better get going,” he said. “And please hang the Do Not Disturb sign outside the door.”

  Two Bloody Marys later, sleep smothered me and I passed out in the lobby on a plush chair, my feet dangling off the side. I drifted in and out of consciousness, lulled by the quiet shuffle of people, the smoothly rolling wheels of their luggage, the din of their conversation. I heard some American businessman complaining about the size of his room, a youngish couple asking one of the bellhops if he knew of any sports bars that would show tonight’s Knicks game, and the breathy voice of an Italian woman speaking with quiet vehemence to the concierge (I forced open my eyes, and only saw the rush of her raven-black hair, the swoop of her black greatcoat, and the daggerlike points of her heels clacking away briskly, toward the elevators).

  I knew I looked terrible—hair messy, clothes wrinkled—but I was so tired I didn’t care. Art, for all I knew, was in our room invoking the spirits of alchemy or whatever the hell they were. I simply wanted to go home. It was crazy that I’d come with him in the first place. He could have gotten to Prague by himself, stolen the Malezel book on his own, and had a nice leisurely stay for a few extra days without me to worry about. But that would have meant him being alone, and Art hated being alone.

  Someone tapped on my shoulder. I expected it to be the concierge, asking me to please go back to my room. I ignored the tapping and fell slack.

  “I know you’re awake.”

  It was Art. I opened my eyes. He was fully dressed and shaven, and he had our bags waiting nearby in a luggage cart. He looked incredibly well rested, considering the condition I had seen him in earlier.

  “It’s time to go.” He looked at his watch. “Our flight leaves in an hour.”

  I sat up and scratched my head. Men and women all around in suits and skirts. To my left, across the room, bar denizens talked to one another, lined up on stools, drinks in hand, the bartender rubbing the copper-top bar with a white shammy. To my right the entrance, rotating doors in constant motion, melting snow in white trails along the carpet, bellhops in their red jackets streaming in and out like bees from a hive.

  “How come no one woke me up?” I said, tucking in my shirt and smoothing back my hair. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirrors lining the far wall to my left. A young kid sitting in a big chair. That’s it—no stubble shadowing my face, no puffiness under my eyes. No crinkled brown paper bag at my feet. I expected to see someone haggard, like a private investigator after an all-night bender at the local tavern, or a cardsharp after a night of high-stakes poker. It was a look I secretly envied—worn, dark, mysterious, aloof.

  “Why would anyone wake you up?” Art said, smiling. “You look like someone’s kid.”

  “But the barte
nder served me…I drank two Bloody Marys.”

  Art raised his eyebrows. “This is Europe, and we’re paying five hundred a night for this place. You think they’re going to say no?”

  We took a cab to the airport. I was half-drunk and staring blankly out the window at the snowbanks, crowded streets, and clanking trams. The sun was a white smear behind a veil of scraggly clouds.

  “What happened up there,” I said. “After I left the room.”

  Art didn’t respond for a few moments. Then, quietly: “I can’t say. I saw…I don’t know. Some of it, most of it, I’m sure, was the belladonna. Dark flickering on the edge of my vision, footsteps in the bathroom. Something knocked my beer can off the counter. And there was a smell.”

  I turned to look at him.

  “Musty, like old wool. Like a wet dog. The way Nilus smells in the summer after a swim in the pond.” He wouldn’t look at me, staring forward instead. “There was something in our room. With me.”

  “A cleaning person,” I said.

  Art shook his head. “I read about this a while back but thought it was nonsense. Spirits and garbage like that. Do you know when Paracelsus discovered the secret to transmutation, it came to him in a vision? A beast carrying a golden vial in its mouth. He gave the beast a name—Berith. Said it was a large black dog. Jung called it an archetype for forbidden knowledge. The vial represents knowledge, held in the jaws of a dangerous beast.”

  “You don’t really believe there was a giant black dog in our hotel suite,” I said. The cab slowed as we approached the airport. “You said yourself that belladonna causes hallucinations.”

  Art shrugged and pulled out his pipe. He struck a match and pulled slowly, letting the smoke waft from his mouth and crawl up his face.

  Part II

  Aberdeen, Revisited

  All things truly wicked start from an innocence.

  —ERNEST HEMINGWAY

  Chapter 1

  I had been in Europe two days. During that time, we learned, the entire Eastern Seaboard had been hit with two ice storms as well as a blizzard that dumped more than three feet of snow in metro New York City. Now Connecticut was under siege by subzero winds, downed power lines, and bursting water pipes. The National Guard had been called into New Haven to clear two feet of snow and ice from the roads, and from Canaan to Middletown all travel was banned until further notice. Our bus ride from New York to Fairwich was slow and careful, taking us five hours, and the entire time I slept.

  In Prague my eyes had been given a feast, and yet as the bus turned down Ash Street and into the village of Fairwich, rolling past Edna’s Coffee Shop and the Sans Facon Tobacconist, past the Cellar and the Governor Lane intersection, I kept looking up, expecting to see graceful spires and towering steeples. But they weren’t there, of course. Just the quaint simplicity of 19th-century red-brick store-fronts, shoveled sidewalks, and small homes with clapboard shutters and tiny chimneys jutting from their roofs. The streets were quiet, dotted with snowed-in cars and knots of students back from break, their faces tanned and relaxed. I looked at myself in the reflection of the window. My eyes were sunken and wan and my hair was a matted tangle, pressed flat like a bad toupee.

  Art and I waited for our taxi on the same bench I had sat upon my first day at Aberdeen. The sky was a brooding dark gray smothering the hills to the west, and snow skittered and shifted across the street, swept by the wind.

  “It’s nice to be back,” Art said, narrowing his eyes against the cold. “I missed it here.”

  It was almost funny to hear him say that, especially with bitter wind whipping all around, but I felt the same way.

  “I’ll meet you back at the house,” I said, just as the taxi pulled up to the curb. Art stood up and looked at me quizzically.

  “I’m going to campus…I want to check my mail, maybe see if Nicole’s around,” I said. The truth was I needed some time away from Art. I think he felt the same because he simply nodded and got into the cab, and they drove away as I began my trek to school.

  I’m not sure why I thought I could walk there—Aberdeen was a solid three miles from the Fairwich bus terminal, and the only way to school was via a long stretch of country road with a thin strip of shoulder on the right side and a snow-filled ditch on the other. I put my head down and counted my steps, tips of my shoes soaked with roadside slush, gravel pellets grinding beneath my soles. A jet roared faintly overhead, and I looked up to see the remnants of white exhaust trails in dissipating crisscrosses. I looked at the hills in the distance. We had driven into those hills, I thought, Dan and I, months ago.

  I made it to campus just as the sky darkened into a sooty gray and snowflakes began to waft down like white ash. I headed toward Paderborne, where a few students stood on its steps, smoking and talking. One of them I recognized as Jacob Blum, a gangly New Yorker known for supplying very good weed. He had also supposedly slept with Nicole. Jacob nodded at me, flicked his cigarette away, and then launched into one of his diatribes about how amazing New York was during the holidays (he was one of those people who constantly remind you they’re from New York, though I’d heard he actually lived on Long Island, in a quiet little suburb). I brushed by him and marched through the lobby.

  The usual litter of flyers and brochures was missing from the corkboards. I went up the stairs (empty Styrofoam coffee cup sitting forlornly on the edge of a step, flattened cigarette butts, a few pennies) and stopped at Nicole’s door. Complete silence. I knocked twice, waited, then knocked again. A radiator creaked and moaned. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, flickering at the end of the hall. I waited for another minute, and then walked down the hall to my room.

  It was shockingly cold—I had left the window open a crack, and the white drapes fluttered weakly. Everything was frozen in stasis as if I’d never left: my unmade bed, an open notebook atop the dresser, an uncapped pen on the floor lying next to a balled-up sock. It reminded me of a story in the Unexplained Creatures, Beasts, and Phenomena book: the tale of the ghost ship Mary Celeste found sailing aimlessly in the Atlantic, with no one aboard, meals prepared and left uneaten on tables. The crew had disappeared without a trace, leaving everything behind.

  I went to Campus Bean and found it busier than expected, as students talked about their holidays and their vacations and what their upcoming class schedules were like. I wanted to tell someone about my trip but realized there was too much to say, and none of it was believable. What had I done? I’d taken a train ride from Paris to Prague, found a room full of preserved body parts, helped Art steal an ancient manuscript from Benedictine monks, and then I drank and passed out in the lobby of a five-star hotel while Art took belladonna and hallucinated about a giant black dog roaming around our suite.

  Great stuff. Wish you were here.

  I sat in the corner and drank hot chocolate and read the Quill, a literary magazine published by the English honors students. I thumbed through it, became bored, and sat back and wondered what I was going to do for the next few hours. I still didn’t feel like going to the house. Maybe I should take a cab back into town and do some window-shopping, I thought. Fiddle around in an antique store, or go to Edna’s and see if anyone still recognized me.

  And then I looked up and saw her: Ellen. She was stepping away from the cash register. The boy who just took her money watched her walk away, transfixed (yes, I know, I thought), and with a panicky mixture of terror and painful longing I realized she was smiling and coming toward me. I wanted to leave, maybe even bolt out the back door.

  “What are you doing here?” she said, stopping at my table. I felt as if I hadn’t seen her in years. She looked exquisite—a shorter haircut, colored a darker shade of honey, with a sky-blue turtleneck that curled up and under her chin. She wore slim black pants and a long navy wool coat, with a small red handbag clutched in a black-gloved hand. I was at once reminded of why I loved her: the reservedness of her beauty. It demanded your attention, but showed itself in glimmers and flashes. Ellen revealed one
delicate piece at a time, and let you put them together yourself.

  She had a cup of coffee in her other hand, red stirrer jutting out. “I thought you were in Prague, with Art,” she said, peeling the top of the cup off. Steam plumed. “Did you end up going?”

  I motioned for her to sit. I was still stunned by her appearance. “Yeah…” I said, without much conviction. “He came to get me and then we flew the next day.”

  “I suppose he told you about our argument.” She sat down and didn’t sound at all upset, maybe a little embarrassed but not angry like I expected. “We don’t travel well together. After our argument in London he told me he was going home to get you. I told him I thought it was a terrific idea.” She forced a smile. “But enough about that. Tell me what you thought of Europe.”

  I gave her the usual—birthplace of history, the wine, the food, the architecture.

  “And how was Prague?” she asked. “Did you see the Hradcany?”

  “No,” I said. “I almost got my fortune read. Tarot cards.” It was the most glamorous thing I could think to tell her.

  She sipped her coffee. “Ooh. Sounds exciting. What else did you do?”

  I shrugged. “That’s it.” I didn’t know if Art had told her about the Malezel book.

  She pulled back. “That’s it? No tours? Did you at least go to Reduta?”

  “We stayed at the hotel, mostly,” I said. “We were really only there for a day.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “How strange. Art usually likes to explore.” She looked down at the table. Her lips were parted slightly. “Did Art conduct any business while you two were in Prague?”

  I paused. A brief mental skirmish between loyalties, and then: “No.”

  “He didn’t mention anything about a book?”

  “No.”