Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley

by Danyl McLauchlan

  ‘Thanks. My IQ is 105. Now will you release me?’ Danyl tried not to sound too pathetic. ‘Please?’

  ‘What will you do when you are free?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose I’ll go after Campbell. Although I’m tired. And hungry. Maybe I’ll eat and sleep first.’

  ‘And then you will resume your quest for the secret wisdom of the ages?’

  ‘I guess. I don’t have a job, or a girlfriend, so—’

  ‘You have nothing better to do,’ said Parsons. ‘Very well. But before I set you free, you must answer a riddle.’

  ‘Is this a joke?’

  ‘No. Listen carefully, thief. I will ask you a riddle and you need to think carefully before you answer. Much depends on this. Do you understand?’

  ‘I get it. Bring on your riddle.’

  ‘My question is simple. Are you ready?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I want you to tell me how magnets work.’

  Danyl squinted up at the block of darkness above him. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘That’s not a riddle.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘A riddle has clues in the question. You unravel the clues to find the answer. This is like a physics quiz.’

  ‘I taught physics.’

  ‘Well, it’s stupid.’

  ‘Answer me, thief.’ All the amusement was gone from Parsons’ voice. He sounded cruel. Distant. Teacher-like.

  ‘Ask me a proper riddle and I will.’

  ‘You are not in a position to negotiate. Magnets. That is your riddle. Answer it or stay in your hole.’

  Danyl made an unseen obscene gesture towards Parsons. ‘Fine.’ He took a moment to compose his reply. ‘A magnet is an object that generates a magnetic field. Happy?’

  ‘No. I asked you to tell me how they work.’

  ‘The atoms in the magnetic object are charged.’ Danyl was pretty sure this was right. Charged particles. Or was that electricity? He frowned and waited for Parsons’ reply.

  ‘Keep going. What is a charged particle?’

  ‘It’s a subatomic, um, particle that generates a field.’

  ‘And a field is?’

  Just indulge him, Danyl reminded himself. If it gets you out of the well it’s worth it. ‘A field?’ Actually, that was pretty tricky. ‘The fundamental forces of the universe . . .’ He trailed off and started again. ‘A field is a collection of points in space-time containing energy.’

  ‘And what is energy?’

  Danyl snorted in disgust. ‘I don’t know. I’m just a writer. You tell me. What is energy? How do magnets work? And what’s your point? That I deserve to stay in this well because I don’t know what energy is?’

  ‘My point is this. We live in a time in which many of the fundamental mysteries of the universe are known and understood, and our knowledge of them grants our civilisation tremendous power. This wisdom—electromagnetism, quantum field theory—isn’t even secret. Anyone can learn it if they are so inclined. But you are not inclined, and even if you were, and you understood electromagnetism, would your life be very different? Would you have a job, or a girlfriend? Could you even get out of this well?’

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘Then why would the secret wisdom of the ages be of any more use to you? Could you even hope to understand it, if you do not understand the science of your own times? If not, then why do you seek whatever ancient wisdom may or may not be hidden in the Priest’s Soul? The real question is not where it is or what it is—but why even seek it in the first place?’

  Danyl replied, ‘I need to keep it out of Campbell’s hands. He’ll use that power and knowledge for evil. And he would be able to comprehend it. He recognised the algorithms Bludkraft carved on the walls of the temple.’

  Parsons laughed again. ‘Algorithms? There are no algorithms in the temple. It was decorated by two artisans in Bludkraft’s Order. They copied images at random out of an occult textbook. I even located the book they used. It was in the box you stole from me. Campbell Walker saw what he wanted to see. The man is a deluded fool.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Danyl replied. ‘Because while you’ve been wasting time asking about magnets and fields, Walker will have opened the sealed container beneath my garden and taken possession of the Priest’s Soul. That’s on your conscience, Satanist.’

  ‘Oh, yes. The sealed chamber. They opened that some time ago.’

  ‘They did?’

  ‘Of course. It happened several hours back. I stayed and watched while Campbell and his men cracked open the side wall with crowbars.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And the chamber was an old septic tank.’

  ‘Can you say those last two words again please?’

  ‘Septic tank.’

  Danyl had never heard two more beautiful words. He smiled in the darkness.

  ‘Old, but not empty. No, far from it. Quite a mess. As I said before, you don’t see such things during the daytime. After he had picked himself up and wiped the bulk of it off his face, Campbell ordered his men to search the tank. The contents were . . . substantive. They refused. Angry words were exchanged. There was a mutiny. Desertion. When I left Campbell was attempting to excavate it by himself.’

  Danyl stopped hugging himself with joy and took time to digest this information. ‘The Order of Thrice-Wise Hermes revered the Priest’s Soul,’ he said. ‘They’d never hide it in a septic tank.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘So it’s still out there somewhere.’ Danyl leaped up and slapped the stone shaft. ‘If you free me I can still find it.’

  ‘Have you listened to anything I said?’ Parsons sounded exasperated. ‘Forget the Priest’s Soul. It is worthless to you. Give up the search. Live your life. Put your energy into the pursuit of something meaningful. Do not look for ancient wisdom to solve your problems.’

  Danyl considered this. Parsons may have been a Satanist, a sex criminal and a science teacher but he also made a lot of sense. Danyl had much to think about.

  But first he had one final question. He asked Parsons, ‘Who was the girl? The student you assaulted. Who was she? What happened to her?’ He waited for an answer, peering up into the darkness.

  No reply. Was Parsons still there? Had Danyl offended him? Maybe he’d succumbed to cancer. Wouldn’t that just be Danyl’s luck, he reflected bitterly, if his saviour died before releasing him. Typical.

  Then something landed on Danyl’s face. He screamed and slapped it off, flailing and thrashing in the darkness, before he realised it was a rope. He pulled on it and it went taut. ‘Parsons?’

  No answer. Danyl removed his kimono, wrapped it around the rope to protect his hands in the event of an uncontrolled slide, and gripped tightly. He pressed one foot against the side of the well and pulled himself up towards the field of stars.

  The rope was tethered to a nearby kowhai tree. Dawn was in the sky to the east. Sutcliffe Parsons was nowhere to be seen.

  Danyl followed the path back to Epuni Street. He was bone weary. He had spent the whole night in the well and the night before that storming Campbell’s tower. His back hurt. His feet were caked in mud, and his kimono was ruined. This was no life for a writer.

  He reached the cul-de-sac at the top of Epuni Street and stopped to take in the view. This side of the valley was still in shadow: the houses were blocks of darkness broken by the windows of warmly lit kitchens through which Danyl could see people fixing breakfast, talking to their families, beginning their days.

  He thought of his own empty, very messy house. The thought of going back to it, walking through the silent, unoccupied rooms and eating breakfast alone in the empty kitchen was terribly painful to him. He felt a great, sudden yearning for a normal life: stability, routine, companionship. Maybe even a job. He remembered P
arsons’ parting words: Forget the Priest’s Soul. It is worthless to you.

  Parsons was right, Danyl decided. He should spend his nights asleep in someone’s arms, waking and laughing with them—not answering riddles for a Satanist while languishing in the slime at the bottom of a well. He wanted normality. Calm.

  He wanted Verity.

  Everything that had happened in the past week—his lust for Stasia, his war against the Campbell Walker, the quest for the Priest’s Soul—those were fantasies, distractions from his bleak, Verity-less existence. He finally understood this. He drove her away and now he was lost without her. He needed her back. All else was meaningless.

  ‘I have not found the Priest’s Soul,’ he said aloud into the cool air of the late summer dawn. ‘But sometimes, if we search long enough we find something better than the thing we sought.’

  The sun breached the ridgeline. He smoothed the folds of his kimono and set off down the hill.

  34

  Ah ha!

  Verity screamed.

  Danyl jolted awake, hitting the back of his head against the door. He cried out in pain and Verity stopped screaming and gasped, ‘Danyl?’

  ‘Hi, sweetheart.’ He sat up, rubbing his skull. He had been waiting for her to arrive and open the gallery, and while waiting he sat in the doorway and rehearsed a moving speech that would win her back forever. Then he fell asleep, and now he couldn’t think through the pain in his head. So he abandoned the speech, grabbed her hand and said, blearily, ‘Verity! I love you.’

  ‘You what?’ Verity looked annoyed, and now Danyl remembered their terse phone conversation in the well. He had said, ‘The hell with you, Verity,’ and hung up on her, which she had probably taken personally. He really should have factored that into his speech, but so much had happened to him since then—his hours of imprisonment and dramatic confrontations with Campbell and Sutcliffe Parsons—that he forgot about it. He opened his mouth, closed it again and then said, ‘I said, I love you.’

  Verity looked wary and confused. She stared at him, blinking, then burst into tears and wailed, ‘I love you too!’ Then she was upon him, hugging him, kissing him and he felt himself tearing up as well.

  Verity pulled back and said, ‘Darling, what’s happened to you? You smell terrible. Wait. Is that my old kimono?’

  ‘I spent the night in a well,’ he replied. ‘A Satanist let me out.’

  ‘God, you’re delirious.’ She stood, unlocked the door to the gallery and helped him to his feet.

  ‘The Satanist told me to find what was meaningful in my life,’ Danyl insisted. ‘So I found you.’

  ‘There’s a couch in the workshop. You can rest there.’ She led him past the pictures and around the sales desk, through the door to the workshop and flicked on the lights. They illuminated the cracked brown leather couch, the wooden benches, the dozens of paintings and frames. Verity laid him down on the couch, pressed her hand against his forehead and said, ‘You’re so cold. What happened to your clothes? Where did you find my kimono?’

  ‘I can explain.’ Danyl thought for a few seconds. ‘Actually, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I want to be with you. I know things haven’t been right between us, and I know it was mostly my fault.’

  ‘Mostly?’ She stopped stroking his brow.

  ‘Well, when a relationship fails there are always errors on both— But I’m babbling,’ he said quickly. ‘Fatigue. Hunger. All that matters is that I love you. I want you to live with me again. I’ll stop sleeping all the time. I could even think about getting a job.’ He looked up at her pretty, clever face, his eyes brimming with tears. ‘What do you say? Can we try again?’

  ‘A job?’ She smiled sadly. ‘You really are sick. Poor little Danyl.’

  ‘Please don’t call me that.’

  She knelt down and hugged him and patted his back, while he nuzzled his head between her small—but in the final analysis, satisfactory—breasts. ‘Let’s get you home and put you to bed. We do have to talk. There are things I should have told you.’ She paused and looked uncomfortable, then waved her thoughts away. ‘But we’ll talk about the future later. And the past. Now let’s go get you some breakfast.’

  ‘I don’t have any food at home.’

  ‘Then I’ll get you a Danish to eat on the way. How does that sound?’

  He said, in a quiet voice, ‘That sounds OK.’

  Verity patted his cheek and crossed the room to the workbench. She picked up a paint-stained pair of overalls and tossed them over to him. ‘Put these on. I’ll run over to the bakery.’

  She left the door to the gallery ajar and her heels clicked across the wooden floor. The front door creaked and slammed behind her.

  Danyl took a deep breath. He stood up, peeled himself out of the filth-drenched kimono and stepped into the overalls, stretched his arms and grinned. Mission accomplished. He hadn’t needed his finely crafted speech—just a raw, emotional declaration of love to overwhelm Verity’s common sense.

  He zipped up the overalls. It felt good to be dressed again. He hadn’t worn trousers for several days. It was a turning point, he decided. His new life began here. It would be like his old life in all the best ways, but the bad things from his old life would be replaced by something new and good. He’d be nicer to Verity. He’d exercise. He would wear trousers. He’d start writing, something fresh, something totally new, and he’d work without Campbell’s dread shadow falling over his art.

  He filled his lungs with the heady air of the workshop, savouring its scents of wood, varnish, turpentine. He ran his hands over the pictures prepped for framing or repair, and flipped through a series of tastefully pornographic nudes. He wondered if Verity could be persuaded in that direction. Too soon? It was worth an attempt, he decided, and he lowered the zip on his overalls revealing his chest, and considered various seduction techniques as he circled the room and sang ‘The Danyl Song’ under his breath. ‘Danyl Danyl Danyldanyldanyldanyl! Danyl Danyl Danyldanyldanyldanyl! Danyldanyl Danyldanyl Danyldanyl!’

  He stopped when his gaze fell upon a painting partly wrapped in packing paper. It was an oil work depicting a woodland landscape: dark, troubled; a group of figures gathered in a forest glade. He had seen it before, several days ago on display in the gallery. Verity must have sold it.

  Something about the painting unsettled him. He looked closer. There was something in the centre of the painting, in the middle of the group of figures, partly obscured by the tall grass: an object.

  He looked closer still. It was small, but unmistakable. In the middle of the painting was a low, stone well.

  It was a well Danyl knew well, a well he’d escaped from only a few hours ago.

  ‘Well,’ he hissed.

  The front door opened and the bell chimed. Verity heard him muttering and called out, ‘Well what?’

  Danyl didn’t reply. He peered over the top of the painting and checked the slip taped to the back:

  Title: Obshchina

  Artist: Sylvia Gold

  Date: 1974

  Verity entered the room. She said, ‘Ready to go, little Danyl?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t call me that.’

  She placed a pastry in his hand and, taking his arm, led him towards the back door. He bit into the Danish and glanced back at the painting.

  One of the figures had a hat and beard, and a small box tucked under his arm. It was Wolfgang Bludkraft.

  Verity opened the back door. Sunlight and traffic noise entered the room.

  Danyl stepped towards the door. She smiled at him. He smiled back and took another step. He thought about the well and the temple. The photos. The secret letters. He thought about the empty campervan beneath Campbell’s tower; the fragment of window-glass with words and pictures painted on it. He thought about the box and Sutcliffe Parsons, and the figure watching him from the high window of the house on Holl
oway Road. He thought about Verity and their new life together. A life without horrible secrets, mystical artefacts and sinister though sexually desirable faith healers. A life they would begin as soon as they walked through that door.

  ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘Yes.’ He took another step and then said, ‘Wait.’ He broke away from her and walked over to the painting. ‘Tell me about this piece.’

  ‘We should get you home.’

  ‘In a minute.’ He tapped the frame. ‘I want you to explain this painting to me.’

  Verity hesitated, then closed the door and crossed the room, smiling sweetly. ‘It’s the last of our Sylvia Gold oils,’ she said. ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘What does the title mean?’

  Verity glanced at the slip on the back. ‘Sylvia titled all of her paintings in Russian. Her family were from there, originally. Obshchina means group, or society.’

  ‘Or possibly Order?’ The Order meets at the well . . .

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘You sound upset. What’s wrong?’

  He hesitated. Should he tell her the truth? No, don’t be absurd. He said, ‘I’m just excited by this picture. It speaks to me.’

  Verity smiled. So trusting. ‘It’s a mid-period Sylvia Gold. The subject is a clearing in the trees above Epuni Street, on the south side of the valley. But it’s also autobiographical.’ She pointed at the right-hand side of the group. ‘These figures here are portraits of Sylvia’s parents, drawn from memory. They both died young, carried off in the 1918 influenza epidemic. They were artists too. Sculptors.’

  Danyl leaned closer. A man and a woman dressed in simple clothes stood opposite Bludkraft, holding hands.

  ‘Sylvia’s life would make a wonderful story. It’s terribly sad. She was just a young girl when her parents died, but she lived alone in their hut at the top of Epuni street, very near to the setting of this picture. She stayed there for decades until it was too decrepit to stand, so she knocked it down and lived in an old campervan she parked near its ruins.’

  ‘Campervan?’ Danyl wiped his suddenly sweaty palms on his overalls.