Gothic Lovecraft

by Lynne Jamneck

  No reply from Maria. It would be early in Sydney. Maybe she was asleep.

  As I headed back a figure approached me on the lonely track, strangely stooped and blurred in the gloom. I was almost frightened until I recognised our neighbour: the artist who had a studio and showroom at the dandy, urban end of our lane, where there was a strip of actual grey asphalt instead of ruts and grass.

  “It’s Aiode, isn’t it?” he said, when we came face to face.

  “A-ee-the,” I corrected him uneasily. I couldn’t remember his real name. He hadn’t been friendly, as far as I recalled, and nor had we. We called him “Mr. Raven,” after a large, ugly black metal raven that stood at his gate. It was still there; I’d noticed it as I drove by.

  “I knew you must be back. I saw Mike Renton walking down the lane yesterday.”

  He was never Mike. Always just Renton with us. “I don’t think so!”

  Mr. Raven looked at me oddly, head on one side. “I’m sure I’d know Mike Renton.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t believe he’s even in the country.”

  “Well, my mistake. I hear old Eliud’s finally selling off the ancestral home?”

  “Ancestral—?”

  Mr. Raven gave me the sideways look again. “Lord, yes! He had family here going back to the old Hindey times, and beyond. They only left when the village got razed, before the war. That’s why he bought that little old place you’re in. Didn’t you know?”

  Thankfully Fenris was exploring and didn’t reappear, scrambling from under the hedge, until our nosy neighbour had walked on—saving me the embarrassment of explaining the presence of Renton’s dog: my inheritance from a foundered relationship.

  It was an unsettling conversation. I hadn’t known Eliud was selling up. But why would Mr. Raven say that if it wasn’t true? I was sure he couldn’t have seen Renton, anyway. The last I’d heard my ex-boyfriend was living in Japan. He’d become a bit of a recluse, just firing off the occasional brilliant article or paper to let the avant-garde world know he was still alive.

  In the morning, I set up my work camp. I moved most of the furniture back against one wall, clearing a wide space on the schoolroom floor. I assembled several of the flat packed storage boxes and stacked everything that could be described as “papers” on the long table where we used to eat. The digital stuff—the contents of a desktop PC’s hard drive; a jumble of data sticks, memory cards, and discs— could wait. The vintage electronic instruments, vials of Eliud’s alchemy, might hold buried treasure in their “computer memories,” but I’d leave them alone… Biographical material, catalogue material, discography. Original scores, household accounts. Personal letters, business letters, autographed concert programmes … All I could do was make a start.

  I broke out a new, lined A4 pad. Hopefully a system would take shape as I worked.

  The flatpacks puzzled me, when I came to think about it. It wasn’t like Eliud to be so organised. Had he got himself a new Renton, and I didn’t know? The idea jarred. Renton could be so overbearing, so possessive… Of course Eliud didn’t want me for a biographer, but he’d definitely hinted at something. Maybe a new piece—a renewal of our partnership? It wasn’t so far-fetched. He hadn’t produced a major new work for years. It was about time, if it was ever going to happen. So I’d let my mind run on (why else had I brought the cello? and now I felt ashamed of myself, but still threatened by this imaginary new power-broker—

  I chose the Shock and Awe Fantasia (for prepared piano, cello, and white noise) on the schoolroom’s sound system and set to work, to the raw, sonorous background of Eliud’s elegy for the soul of the U.S. He’d fallen out with Shock and Awe, it was “too emotional,” but I still loved the sound of my own bowing: the inhuman, incredible precision Eliud demanded. I’d left the crazy little world of the avant garde behind, I’d been a pretty-good classical soloist for nearly twenty years, but I missed the master’s intensity so much—

  The first sheet of odd, childish drawings triggered a new category: a heap all on its own. When I’d run into four or five of them I looked more closely.

  The figures were drawn in coloured pencil, scattered at random over different-sized sheets of plain paper. The most common was a triangle, like a child’s first approximation of the human form: two strong lines jutting from the base, one each from the diagonals, and a small circle balanced at the apex. Ovoids and squares, less frequent, followed the same pattern. The circular “heads” had no features. Softer, wavy lines often emanated from the “heads” and “bodies,” like tentacles; or sine waves. Nearly all the figures were carelessly coloured: blue, red, yellow, or dark green. Size and configuration varied. Some figures were isolated, some in rows, some clustered: some were very small, some much larger.

  At first glance I’d thought they really were a child’s drawings. There had always been children in Eliud’s life. But each sheet was annotated and dated, in the master’s own handwriting. The dates were years apart, and the drawings seemed less childish, the more I looked. There was decision and purpose in them, sharp as the knife-edge arpeggios of Shock and Awe. They seemed faintly familiar, too. Had I known about these odd geometric fish? Clearly they were part of something, something important gestating over decades, but what did they mean? I pondered over one of Eliud’s annotations. Other dimensions are not spatial but exist at right angles to our own… Was there was some kind of optical illusion involved? Obedient, from long training, to my composer’s weird demands, I held up one of the sheets, edge-on to my nose, and tried to look along it sideways; at right angles.

  I caught a glimpse of something whipping out of sight; or opening and swiftly closing—

  But Fenris was barking and barking. I dropped the paper and rushed around the house: I couldn’t find him. I ran outdoors in a panic, calling “Fenris, Fenris!” I raced around, charging over the swathes of turf, crashing through flower beds to the ancient orchard, but he just went on barking madly, somewhere out of sight. Our summer camp lay derelict under twisted boughs, around the shady lawn where Rikard had pitched his tent. The studio that Renton and I had shared; the cabin; the tenements, the treehouse; the sauna (not a sauna, but another spare bedroom in our day). I didn’t have the keys with me, I couldn’t get in. I could only rub at cobwebs and peer through dusty glass, feeling like a ghost.

  I shouted “Fenris, Fenris!” But the little black dog had stopped barking—

  Then he started up again, much further away. I realised he must have chased something, probably a rabbit, into Eliud’s parcel of trees—a narrow slip of woodland attached to the property, but jutting into the emptiness of the prairies. I stepped over the polished root that made a doorsill, in a gap in the orchard’s hedge, and followed.

  Nothing had changed in here, either. There was the same brooding atmosphere; the same narrow path, straight down the middle, leading the eye to a distant lozenge of colourless daylight. I followed it, still calling “Fenris!” but more calmly. The trees were a mass of shadow. Straggling young oaks competed for light with big old twisted chestnuts, above a dense understorey of holly, bracken, and bramble. Insects buzzed; birds scolded unseen. Once I saw the wings of a big hunting hawk flash between branches… I didn’t like the wood. None of us had ever liked it; but I thought I knew it. About two-thirds of the way through I came across something I’d never seen before.

  Long ago one of the massive chestnuts had fallen. The timber must have been dragged out and taken away. Only the stump remained, tipped on its side, grey starfish roots reaching for the sky; guarding a hollow, open space. We’d tried to enjoy this secret glade in the old days, bringing picnics, rugs, and wine; building midnight bonfires. But not often. The parcel of trees repelled us, literally. It drove us away. It was dark, ugly; everything prickled and there were biting insects.

  I was tired and hot, and Fenris was still barking, but now he was behind me. I realised the stupidity of chasing a little dog who was just running round in circles. I saw pale patches in the leaf litt
er, like splashes of sunlight where there was no sunlight. I stepped onto one of them: and it was a stone. There was a ring of pale stones, set in a circle as wide as the glade. They must have been buried in our day, carried to the surface maybe by last winter’s spectacular rains. There were markings on them—patterns. I hunkered down for a closer look: I saw traces of colour and seemed to hear a kind of chiming, a kind of chattering—

  But Fenris was barking and barking.

  In a panic I ran through the trees and the tearing brambles; I followed his terrified cries to the parking space by the brick terrace, where I’d left my car. Beyond that point, greenery had completely overwhelmed the old drive. I fought my way through the tangle, ambushed by sticky burrs, savaged by nettle stings, and found the little dog. He was crouching on the doorsill of the caravan, which still stood in its old place; immovable now, white flanks devoured by choking weeds. I sighed, picked up the little black dog, and hugged him tight.

  “It’s no use, Fenny, everybody’s gone. Nobody lives there anymore.”

  He stopped barking and lay quiet in my arms. I carried him back to the schoolroom; his warm, compact, muscular little body snuggled close. As we walked in, I saw something—something I could not describe, could not imagine. An awful terror shook me, a sick abyss deeper than the worst nightmare I’d ever had… And then I was kneeling on the floor, a sheet of coloured doodles in my hand. Shock and Awe was on the sound system; and there was Fenris, curled up on an armchair, nose to tail, where he’d been since breakfast.

  It was the strangest feeling. I touched my cheeks; my bare arms. Not a scratch, and I was perfectly cool. I even looked at the soles of my shoes. Not a trace of dark leaf litter. It was almost dark. I hadn’t eaten since morning. A dizzy spell… I decided it was time to quit.

  The weather stayed dull and warm. I ate my meals outdoors, at our old breakfast table outside the kitchen. Yogurt and honey, oatcakes and coffee in the morning; a bowl of soup and maybe some fruit in the evening. In the calm stillness of the fading light, Fenris laid a small furry animal at my feet and looked up at me hopefully, ears cocked. I could see that he’d broken its back. Its front legs moved; little paws groping. Blood trickled from its mouth.

  I sipped coffee. “You want me to mend your toy? Sorry, no can do. You should have been more careful.”

  I would have liked to put the creature out of its misery, but I knew it’s not that simple to kill anything cleanly, so I didn’t try. When it had breathed its last and its eyes dimmed, I thought of burying it, wrapped in soft leaves. But a dead animal wants no covering but time; no shroud but the air. So I just tossed it into the long grass.

  There had been no recent papers in Eliud’s desk. I found no evidence that he was “selling up,” but I soon found the “Hindey” folder. I shook out the contents of the battered foolscap envelope and studied Eliud’s treasured photographs. The old church, St. Iaad’s, with a squat, square tower, at one end of a straggle of hovels, bordering what was now our lane; a familiar bulk at the other end. The schoolhouse itself in close-up, with its last generation of pupils. Girls in pinafores, boys in breeches, some barefoot, some in enormous boots; their shrunken little faces pinched with malice or hunger, or maybe just boredom. A page from St. Iaad’s parish register, photographed a little more recently: the entry for the birth of a boy circled in red. Another “Eliud Tince”: I couldn’t remember if that was supposed to be Eliud’s grandfather or great-grandfather. The date was too faded to be made out. A plan of the schoolhouse property. The parcel of trees was labelled, in spidery copperplate: Hindey Playground… We used to say we betted it had been a miserable “playground” even then, and Eliud would get insulted: he was proud of his tiny wood—

  The ancient, crackle-surfaced sepia photographs made my skin creep. Why had I been so astonished when Mr. Raven called the schoolhouse Eliud’s “ancestral home”? I’d always known this history. How could I have forgotten?

  In a different folder I found a modern studio colour print: Eliud and his children. It seemed to be his birthday, but the cake (of course!) had no revealing forest of candles. They’d signed their names in the margin: Bich, the Vietnamese baby he’d adopted with his first wife, already in her sixties in this picture; Gogo and Siaka, daughter and son of the dancer Djènèba Khady, the great love of Eliud’s life; Maria and Judit; Martίn Ventto, and of course Perseis, the baby of the gang… How happy Eliud looked! How proud he’d been of them all. And yet none of them was his biological child.

  Renton, who could be cruel, used to say the master had “a touch of the tar brush” and was afraid of passing the taint on. It was true the old man had strange ideas and could get himself into trouble. He’d once startled a famous musician by congratulating him on his “pure Mandingo bloodline”… Yet how could anyone call him a racist, looking at that United Nations of happy smiles? Really (it came back to me …) the problem was a horrible cancer that ran in his family. He’d escaped, but he was afraid his biological offspring wouldn’t— Everyone forgets. Of course I had forgotten things.

  But the lapses in my memory, Eliud’s ancestral past, the name of that dark little wood, even that “touch of the tarbush” jibe, started to bother me, like a fog in my skull that could be hiding monsters. What else had I forgotten? What bitter words, what angry scenes I would never want to recall—?

  Later than time lag demanded, because I didn’t want to meet Mr. Raven, I walked up to the Flint Barn and talked to Maria. “It’s a good atmosphere,” she said gallantly. “We’re looking out for each other.” She was no longer at the airport. She was back at her gorgeous waterfront house with a couple from Singapore, whose son and little granddaughter had been on the flight, and a young New Zealand woman who had lost her mother. There was still no news. Nothing had been found, not a clue, not a scrap of debris.

  “It’s so hot,” said Maria. “More like Christmas than August… They’re saying weird atmospheric pressure might have screwed up the plane’s instruments. Might be screwing up the search data… There are empty islands, far south. The pilot could have made a safe ocean landing. Some of them could be safe, at least: but unable to make contact—?”

  I hesitated too long. “I saw that story. Yeah, it sounded hopeful.”

  Maria sighed. “How are you doing? Have you found a will?”

  “It’ll be with his lawyers,” I said. “It’s not like that. Eliud had kept the house up, but he hasn’t lived here for years. What I’m sorting is archive stuff, nothing vital.”

  “Oh. I see. I didn’t realise—”

  I heard her unspoken question: So why are you doing this?

  Maria had her imaginary island, I had Eliud’s papers. I could tell from her voice that she’d accepted the loss of the old man; but irrationally, she was trying to hang onto the others, her family and friends. I was the other way round. I just couldn’t let go of Eliud.

  In the jumble of documents and souvenirs from the desk drawers, I ran into a CD of NASA’s Music of the Planets: radio emissions from space probe flybys, converted into sound. I put it on. I hadn’t forgotten this. Eliud had called NASA’s confection “poppycock” and “fake,” but he’d been fascinated. He’d quoted from this CD shamelessly in the Dark Matter Suite… The sighs of Jupiter did nothing much for me. Mercury’s eerie crackles conjured pictures in my mind, evil little crustaceans that crept over blood-red rocks. I suddenly wondered if there was a connection with the drawings. Weren’t Eliud’s annotations littered with references to “aliens” and “other worlds”? I looked back over my notes.

  Alien intelligence can be perceived in certain conditions without resorting to data from so-called outer space, AND THEY ARE LISTENING!

  Our universe is an illusion. Worlds on worlds interpenetrate ours.

  There is no “out there”… Everything is in reach; time is not an object. Auditory and Visual Alternatives occupy “space” in superposition… precisely interleaved layers…

  But I felt no curiosity this time, just an immense nosta
lgia for the days when I used to take Eliud’s bizarre, semi-scientific pronouncements absolutely seriously. And a great sadness: the knowledge sinking in at last that I would never see the old man again.

  I worked all night, forgetting to eat but finishing a bottle of wine. At dawn I woke from a catnap, curled on the rug in the midst of my boxes. I took a quick shower and whistled for Fenris, and we walked out into the cool bright day: up the lane, over a stile and around the outer margin of Eliud’s parcel of trees. The little black dog scampered ahead, burrowing under the fence and popping out again joyously at my feet. I watched a pair of goshawks, hunting the trees’ high margin: scissoring the pale sky with their razor cuts until it seemed as if Eliud’s other worlds might come falling through. A roebuck leapt from a hollow in the stubble and rocketed away… When we reached the far end of the path through the wood, Fenris naturally vanished into the thickets. I was left behind, struggling with a gate that had been (for some stupid reason) lashed shut with sheaves of barbed wire.

  I caught up with him, having lost a little fabric and gained some painful scratches, in the bonfire glade. I saw the ring of pale stones at once and stared at them, bewildered. So my dizzy spell didn’t happen? So that sinister Alice through the Looking-Glass moment: when I came in from the wood and saw myself inside out was real?

  I picked up the little dog and hugged him. “Why were you barking like that?” I asked him. “Why did you drag me out here? They’re only stones.” Fenris licked my nose.

  This time I noticed that the circle had a centre. I put Fenris down and kicked at the leaf litter until I’d uncovered the whole of a larger plaque. What did it all mean? A radiating star, a sun surrounded by planets? A playground game… The sky above the glade was bright today; the markings were much easier to make out. I saw the faded figures and knew I’d found the originals of Eliud’s drawings. Suddenly I had the glimmering of an amazing idea.