Rough and fibrous as it was, the paper stood alone, seemingly unsupported. Francis had meant to check round the back to see how the tawdry illusion was achieved, but he... wanted to... there was... he needed to look at it for longer. The piece was theatre – ridiculously amateur theatre – not art. When Francis had first walked in through the gallery doors, he’d guffawed at the over-dramatic spot-lit intensity of the off-white sheet. Then he’d stalked down the hall, peeling off his kidskin gloves, dropping them... away... they went away... he...
Porter walked toward the paper, and Francis found his breath quickening. The man was watching him now, his face a neutral mask. Cheap Greg Porter, in his cheap supermarket jeans and his cheap supermarket shirt and his cheap supermarket shoes. He was no more the ‘new Escher’ than he was the new Pope, whatever that damned old fool Gunnell claimed. Just a scrawled copy of a tired old gimmick. Francis had said as much in last Sunday’s Seven, for the Telegraph. Even now, the artist was toying with a black biro pen – a cheap supermarket black biro pen. The only thing he ever used.
The top flipped off, and fell to the floor with a miniscule clatter.
Porter seemed to hang in the space between Francis and the paper. The sheet was completely filled, edge to tattered edge. It was an impossibly intricate dance of incomplete lines, truncated swirls, broken edges, implied angles, suggested marks, near-circles, almost-squares, aching triangles, exploded curves, all blasphemously separate in their continuous tangle. It was an insult! It offended the eyes. It... it...
“It hurts,” he murmured.
Porter stared at him, eyes as cold as space, seeming to skewer him. The man reached out with his silly, cheap pen. Francis raised his hand slightly, as if commanding the artist to stop. He was appalled to see that he was trembling. The artist’s gaze stayed fixed on him, his face an immobile mask, as the pen made one last stroke.
“I’m not done yet,” Porter repeated. “But this is finished.”
Francis shrieked aloud. All the lines seemed to converge on that last pen stroke, the only fully straight, intact stroke in the whole piece. It rooted the work, gave it a reality. Gave it a bridge... a bridge to... the truth of the work rushed in. Porter’s mask dissolved, and the man deftly threaded off through the weave, returning to that which he spawned even as it spawned him, passing over and away as it coalesced through him.
Lost, Francis fell, as he flew, as he turned, as he stood. He screamed and screamed, the sound sliced to little ribbons of sanity that fluttered around him. Eyes built for simple lies saw truth, witnessed colours beyond physical expression. In turn, he was observed, ignored, passed on. And on. And on. Elegant abysses of infinite chaos yawned before him.
Elsewhere, in an empty hall, a huge, blank piece of paper collapsed in on itself. It swooshed to the ground, crumpling in familiar angles and comfortable shapes. There it lay, and lied anew.
DEMON IN GLASS
by E. Dane Anderson
“It is the cleansing of the body that properly prepares the soul for its ultimate destination.”
– Dr. Rachel Lamarche, ‘Healing the Body Through Carefully Managed Fasting,’ 1893.
Spring-Summer, 1897
No one seemed to know all that much about Dr. Rachel Lamarche before her arrival in Ludenberg. She had built her so-called “health sanitarium” out in the woods near Mansfield some three years earlier. Prior to that, she’d resided in New Orleans, where she had published a book both explaining and praising her unique fasting method as a cure-all for disease. There had been much speculation as to why the State had ever awarded her a license to practice any sort of medicine. It was a common assumption that substantial amounts of money had changed hands in order to help facilitate the paperwork.
I had seen both her and her husband in Ludenberg on several occasions, in town on business purposes. She kept an office in the Terry Building over on Blanchard Street. At a distance, she was a strikingly attractive woman, not least because of the ostentation of her attire. No matter what the season, she was always dressed in bright colors and furs, and usually accompanied by a small dog, dyed to match her outfit. Close up, things were very different. The constantly stern expression on her face made her appear much older than her thirty-two years. Even when she attempted a smile, one could always see the scowl that she was trying to conceal behind it.
Her husband Paul, on the other hand, made absolutely no attempt at visual pretense. He was a large, hulking Creole, and tended to the business side of her operations. His expression was always one of complete indifference, which many found quite disturbing. Even though I had only brief encounters with him, he left me with the impression that he was quite capable of killing a man as easily as shaking hands.
As for her “clinic,” I was lucky enough to have had an intimate conversation with a journalist who had actually been to the property. Jerry Dugan, a young reporter with the Ludenberg City Examiner, described her sanitarium as not much more than a series of shabbily built cabins quietly nestled in the forest. Although everything he had seen appeared to be above board, he could not shake off the unnerving conviction that there was something quite wrong about the place. This impression was probably compounded by his never having actually seen any patients on the premises.
I ran into Dr. Lamarche on the street, just days before the troubles began. She was walking up the hill from the train station. As per usual, her dress was quite lovely, a certain shade of yellow that set her above the shabbier denizens of the city. As we passed each other, she gave me one of her trademark emotionless smiles, and nodded to me as though she knew who I was, even though we had never formally met.
That brief encounter left a slight chill down my spine, but I quickly forgot about it, as I had more pressing matters to attend to. I was walking to my studio, to keep a late morning appointment. Mr. Rufus Wismer, the owner of a large shipbuilding firm, wanted me to photograph his new wife. If memory serves me correctly, she was the third Mrs. Wismer.
Photographic portraiture was the bulk of my work, the so-called bread and butter that kept my business alive. On occasion, my subject happened to no longer be among the living. I did a considerable number of postmortem photographs for the Butterfield and Sons Mortuary. I found the work quite easy, as the subject was naturally adept at holding still. On most occasions, I even aided the chief embalmer, Mr. Clarence Weston, in preparing the subject for the photograph. This typically included posing the deceased, as well as using various tricks to achieve a more lifelike quality for the face.
Then came a day when, for no adequate explanation, established procedure totally changed. The deceased in question was a Miss Gladys Beecham, a middle-aged English woman of considerable means. A portrait was to be made for her grieving relatives back home in the old country. Unlike any previous occasion, when I arrived I had found that the deceased had already been fully prepared and even posed by Mr. Franklin Butterfield, the second son of the firm’s founder. Mr. Weston had not even been permitted to participate in the embalming process. Everything had been done personally by the younger Mr. Butterfield.
Although Mr. Butterfield was behaving quite normally, I sensed a nervous apprehension in the air. There was something definitely amiss. But as it was not my place to do so, I made no inquiries. The mortuary was one of the most reputable firms in the city. I continued with the job at hand, quickly exposing my customary three photographic plates, and then swiftly returned to my studio to process the negatives.
After examining the processed plates, I determined that the first exposure was the best, being the sharpest of the three. The second plate had an unfortunate flaw in the emulsion that revealed itself as a series of irregular, dark patches in the center. Once again, I was glad that I had recently switched over to the relatively new silver bromide process. The materials were much less expensive, allowing me the luxury of exposing multiple glass plates on a single subject.
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After I had completed printing the chosen negative, I decided to print the flawed negative as well, in order to better understand whatever mistake I’d made in applying emulsion to glass. As I watched the silver image forming on the paper in the developing bath, I felt a cold shudder run down my spine, just as though I’d been touched by a piece of ice. I initially assumed that my imagination was getting the best of me. However, after examining the finished print with a magnifying glass and under proper lighting conditions, I wished that I’d just broken the negative and left well enough alone.
What I saw on the image could not have been generated by an improper application of photographic emulsion. Nor could it have come from any sort of flaw in the chemicals themselves. What had appeared as a dark patch on the negative became what I could only describe as some sort of horrifying, luminous, semi-translucent creature. Its dozen or more tendrils were somehow enveloping the body of poor Miss Beecham from behind. Something that could have been a featureless head was peering from over her right shoulder with two menacingly black eyes.
Without thinking, I foolishly moved the magnifying glass over the face of the poor dead woman. What I saw put me in a state of shock, but I found it nearly impossible to look away. Superimposed upon the dead woman was a second face. It was glowing, much like the devilish thing that stood with her. It was clearly the same woman, but instead of the serene calmness exhibited by the corpse, its expression was agonized terror, as though the woman was screaming in torment.
The magnifying glass slipped from my hand and fell to the ground, scattering broken glass all over the floor. I just sat there, trying to comprehend what I had seen. All of my attempts at any sort of rationalization failed utterly. The only remotely reasonable explanation I could find was that I had somehow captured the condemned soul of Miss Beecham being dragged to hell by one of Satan’s demonic minions. I could not imagine what the poor woman might have done in life for her soul to deserve such a fate.
I couldn’t tell anyone what I had found, of course. That would have put me in one of those newly-established wards for the insane over at Eastgrove. So I cleaned the glass plate to be used again, and burned the print. It took a few weeks, but I eventually convinced myself that what I had seen was merely a product of my imagination. My nerves had leant some sort of hellish life to what in the end was nothing more than a freak manifestation of chemistry. With work mounting up, I eventually put the whole incident out of my head. Nothing is more convincing than the lie we tell to ourselves.
♦
Unfortunately, my doubts came flooding back some time later, when the most extraordinary man walked in the front door of my studio. He introduced himself as Simon Homewood, a junior consul from the British Consulate in New York. Naturally, I assumed that he was presenting himself to me as a prospective client. I was terribly mistaken. I again felt that exact same ice-cold chill run down my spine when he told me that he was investigating the death of a Miss Gladys Beecham.
It took me a moment to react. By then, he was already inquiring whether or not I had been the photographer employed by Butterfield and Sons to make the postmortem photograph.
“Indeed I was,” I answered, at first having difficulty forming a complete sentence. “But I’m afraid you would have to inquire at Butterfield and Sons. I am not at liberty to discuss any of the details.”
“I’m afraid, sir, that you may be asked these exact same questions by officers of law,” he said, rather sternly.
“And why is that exactly, if I may ask?”
“Because it is my belief that the late Miss Beecham was murdered – deliberately starved to death at the Lamarche Clinic – and that Butterfield and Sons are complicit in a cover-up!”
“Are you implying that I had something to do with this cover-up?” My voice was stronger this time, as I had partially regained my composure.
“I only have one question to put to you, sir. Did you notice any irregularities with either the embalming procedure or the body of the late Miss Beecham?”
“Mr. Homewood, I have a professional relationship with Butterfield and Sons. I’m not at liberty to discuss such details.”
“Then it is my dear hope, sir, that this same question will not be put to you in a court of law!” With that, he abruptly left.
I was quite perplexed on how to react to his assertion. I kept telling myself that whatever he was investigating could have nothing to do with that terrible image I thought I had seen, at least from his perspective. There was no way he could have known anything of it. Yet the connection was far too strong to be passed off as mere coincidence. It was well-known that Dr. Lamarche’s “cure” was based on a cycle of fasting, but it was difficult to believe that she was intentionally starving her clients to death.
A few days later, Mr. Homewood made his assertions much more public in an editorial published in the Ludenberg City Examiner. It was his contention that Miss Beecham had, shortly before her death, transferred a considerable amount of her assets to Dr. Lamarche. Again, he alleged that the woman had been murdered, and that the motive was obvious.
It did not take long before Dr. Lamarche’s response appeared in the Daily Star. Naturally, she denied all of Mr. Homewood’s charges. As she had done on many occasions, she proclaimed that her fasting “cure” would revolutionize medicine, and that any criticism was simply rooted in jealousy from the world’s medical establishment.
♦
Less than a fortnight later, I received a message asking me to come down to the Butterfield Mortuary to make a postmortem photographic portrait. I found nothing out of the ordinary with such a request, as I was typically called to the establishment weekly. But when I saw Dr. Lamarche leaving the mortuary with her hulk of a husband, I knew that something was definitely wrong.
I was across the street when I spotted the two of them. I tried slowing my gait in a hapless attempt at avoidance. Even from that distance she saw me, lifting a hand to wave at me with that same devilish smile. I knew exactly what awaited me inside.
The situation was much the same as when I photographed Miss Beecham. All the preparations had been made by Mr. Franklin Butterfield, including the posing of the deceased. Even from my customary four feet away, I could tell there was something quite wrong with the poor woman’s face. It appeared a bit puffy in places that seemed unnatural, and the color seemed a bit off, even for a corpse. As often happened, the deceased’s eyes had been sewn shut and false eyes painted on the eyelids for the purposes of the photograph. This time they seemed a little hastily drawn, as though someone had been in a bit of a hurry.
I concealed my concern over the apparent irregularities, and placed the focusing cloth over my head. As I began to make my adjustments, the image of the dead woman became crystal clear on the ground glass in front of me. I typically used a magnifying glass in order to create the best-focused image possible. Then, in the glass, I noticed something that could not have been seen from any other angle.
Although she was completely dressed from head to toe, including a high collar that concealed most of her neck, I could see a small portion of her bare left wrist. Under the magnifying glass, the small patch of skin looked abnormally yellowish, and nearly paper thin. This was something that I had never seen before, not even in a partly decomposed corpse.
I wanted to ask whether she had been a patient of Dr. Lamarche’s, but kept my silence, and made my three exposures. Perhaps Mr. Homewood’s assertions were true, and the good doctor was indeed starving her patients to death. I was beyond terrified as I contemplated what horrible vision I might have just captured.
It turned out that my fears were justified. Just as before, a series of dark patches appeared on the second of my three negatives. I made only a cursory examination of the image before concluding that it too contained a hellish apparition and an unfortunate tormented soul. I didn’t have the courage to print t
he negative. Instead, I immediately destroyed the glass plate.
♦
Over the following days, I alternated between brandy and laudanum in order to both sleep and keep the terrible nightmares at bay. It was on the fourth morning, I believe, that an aggressive pounding at my front door awakened me from my medicated slumbers.
Two visibly shaken sheriff’s deputies had come in need of my services. It seemed that a terrible crime had occurred just outside the village of Mansfield, and a photographer was required immediately. On the face of it, this was not an unusual situation. I had been hired to photograph several crime scenes for both the municipal and county authorities. It was the location that alarmed me, however. Knowing immediately where we were going, I only asked one question. “How many photographic plates do you think I will need?”
“All of them,” the deputy replied.
When I finally arrived at the Lamarche place, the situation was far more hellish than I ever could have imagined. Every building on the site had been burned to the ground. The smell of charred flesh permeated the air. At least a dozen sheriff’s deputies wandered the area looking for elusive answers. The late summer heat was only making things worse for everyone involved. In the basement of the main house, they found what was left of Paul Lamarche. Even with his corpse in the state that it was in, it was obvious that he had been shot in the face with a large-caliber weapon.
Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft Page 12
