Séance Infernale

by Jonathan Skariton

  “Has the family been notified?” McBride asked.

  “Parents took a Valium.”

  “Six weeks ago,” she said, mostly to herself. “He likes spending time with them.”

  “At the time of disappearance, she was wearing black jeans, a white silk shirt, white panties. Her body didn’t have any fiber from those clothes, just that from the cotton.”

  “She was naked when he burnt her.”

  “Also her watch, necklace, bracelets: none of these have been found. It’s logical to assume the killer has taken them.”

  “Souvenirs?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Dr. Mareth took off his gloves and rinsed his hands in the vigorous stream of water thundering into the metal sink. He dried them with a towel.

  McBride looked at what remained of little Emma Wallace. Her organs were gone. Her skin was mirrored back from her body and spread out in folds that revealed grooves of dark purple hemorrhages of different shades. Her remaining eye was a void, and behind it lay the interior of the skull.

  “Using an accelerant could mean biology student.”

  “Or biology teacher,” Johnson said.

  “You need confidence to talk in a class full of kids. Pyrophiles are socially incompetent. This guy doesn’t go out. He doesn’t have friends. He doesn’t feel comfortable in front of crowds.”

  “I’d say neither teacher nor student,” the M.E. said. “The results from the gas chromo are back: the accelerant used wasn’t benzene.”

  “What was it?”

  “Nitrocellulose. Gas chromo and the sample was a dead-on match with the traces found on the scene.”

  McBride frowned. “Nitrocellulose? Like gunpowder?”

  “Similar gun chemical propellant; it’s used as a low-order explosive. But the trace we found is single base; it was not mixed with nitroglycerine. This is not surprising: nitrocellulose has numerous other uses. For example, in my lab demos at the medical school, we use it in the sticky membranes in Southern blots—that’s a molecular biology test for checking for the presence of a DNA sequence in a DNA sample.”

  “So we’re looking for a biologist-slash-medic?”

  Mareth shook his head. “Nitrocellulose has so many other uses. You can find it in the lacquer varnish of guitars, in some types of film, or even in the flash papers magicians use.”

  “Musician, filmmaker, illusionist. Sure looks like a big list of possible perps, Erm.”

  McBride stared again at the girl. An emaciated little person sliced in neat straight lines from chin to genitals, from shoulders to hands, from hips to toes, her chest open like a hollowed-out watermelon. The M.E. rolled the zipper back, closing the pouch as he started preparing the body for its return to the freezer. “Last thing,” he said, “and this is where it gets truly bizarre.”

  “It’s not been bizarre enough for you so far?” Johnson said.

  “We got the carbon analysis back from the soil lab.”

  “From the debris on her skin?”

  “Yes. The different combinations of rock, decaying plant and animal material, and the DNA fingerprint of the living things found in soil mean that every soil sample is unique to where it came from. As such, we can sometimes pinpoint the mud on a suspect’s shoe to a particular garden or even a single flower bed. Topography, climate, course of years, botanical and microbiological functions, conditions of watering, and even human activities—all these result in the diversity of soil. Also, there are millions of fossils, external matter, like pollen and spores, and even artificial materials.”

  “So we got something?”

  He nodded. “Preliminary results show the debris from her skin is indigenous to Edinburgh soil.”

  “Nothing weird about that,” Johnson said.

  “Edinburgh soil dating back to the 1700s.”

  They both stared at him, mouths agape.

  “What are you trying to tell us, Erm? That we’re looking for a time traveler?”

  He laughed, rolling away the steel cart bearing the small black body bag. “Not at all. The perpetrator lives and breathes in our own time, Detectives.” The metal wheels clattered on the tile. “The truth is we can’t specify where the site of murder was; this is precisely because we live in a city where every nook and cranny could hark back to the eighteenth century: graveyards, streams, sewers; a whole setup of forgotten locations of the past.”

  As he swung the freezer door open, it made a sucking noise. “Trust me, your perp’s no time traveler,” he said, unmoved by the stench of ice-cold death. A toe tag hung from the bag’s zipper pull, and this would need to be updated; all it said now was “Unidentified,” in black ink, and the date and Mareth’s signature.

  After McBride and Johnson had thanked him and left, Ermis Mareth shut the freezer’s steel door and walked out into the room proper, his disposable shoe covers making brief whishing sounds on the tile floor. He untied his blue surgical gown and closed his eyes.

  He had preserved parts of her organs in canopic jars; he had arranged for specimens of her brain and eye to undergo post hoc analyses. Mareth would not be able to do anything more for the child. Until they came to take her, she would stay with him, lying in her galvanized steel chamber, where time stood still. If necessary, she could stay there forever.

  Screaming.

  Part III

  December 4

  13

  It was a beautiful, two-storied Scottish baronial mansion on the edge of Holyrood Park, southeast of central Edinburgh. And it was designed to dazzle.

  To anyone who claimed the Scottish film industry was a jerry-built business of shabby character and negligible influence, the edifice was a calculated argument to the contrary. It was designed to resemble a sixteenth-century stately home, even though it had been built three hundred years later. It was embellished with pepper-pot turrets and a tower with eyelets and corbeled bartizans, as well as a cap-house with small arch-pointed windows, reminiscent of a Highland croft house. Tall bushes and vegetation fenced the paved courtyard from the street.

  The building had served briefly as a school for girls called St. Trinnean’s, and its use had been the inspiration for Ronald Searle’s books of the same name; notably, the author’s niece had attended it.

  Housed within the greater area of the University of Edinburgh halls of residence, the imposing St. Leonard’s now accommodated conferences, dinners, and film-related events. Restored to its former glory, it was the headquarters of the Archive, or the Arch, a prestigious Edinburgh film society. Joining the ranks of the Archive could be achieved by member invitation only, and this was notoriously difficult to obtain. This state of things had endowed it with an air not so much of mystique but of privilege and awe.

  “I found myself at the Arch yesterday,” one person would say.

  “Well?”

  “Lobbied around with the members and enjoyed a special screening of The Last Laugh.”

  Whitman and Charlie breezed through the glass doors facing the reception desk. The effect of the sixteenth-century façade was carried inside, where dark-wood-paneled walls, painted ceilings, and great sweeping spaces gave the effect of a grand hunting lodge. Chandeliers hung from the ornate Neo-Jacobean ceilings. There were lovely Arts and Crafts painted panels, emblazoned with medallions depicting the likenesses of the Duke of Argyll and John Knox. The hallway was lined with a notice board full of advertisements, followed by the photographs of every individual society member, strung up along the walls of the grand, ornate wooden staircase leading to the first floor. Whitman eyed the message boards: film seminars, screenings, events.

  They spoke to the old lady at reception and, after a phone call, were granted temporary clearance. They registered in a thick volume filled with pen scribbles of names, and then were instructed to sit on one of the couches in a waiting area called the “Sea of Tranquillity.”

  At the far end of the corridor, the door had been left open, as if to entice prospective passersby with visual access to the St. Trinn
ean’s Room. There was sound coming from a PA system; a seminar was taking place. Whitman sneaked a peek through the opening. The room was set up in a theater configuration with seating for approximately sixty people. A beautifully fitted projection screen loomed at the far end. A large loudspeaker graced each side of a big perforated canvas screen. A mustached man in a tuxedo stood on the podium, rambling about The Joyless Street and the New Objectivity movement. He was crouching in an effort to hide his height, as if its very sight would impede the spectators’ attention. Whitman had hardly managed to take in any other details when the receptionist appeared from behind him and whispered that they would be admitted upstairs.

  They passed the winged Pan (or perhaps it was Mephistopheles—Whitman couldn’t make up his mind) on the base of the steps, along with gargoyles, demons, hawks, and other evil creatures, and depictions of family arms and emblems, culminating in a shield showing a lion with the words VIRTUTE ET VORTIS inscribed over it. Charlie gave him a look and said, “Puritans, those original owners, huh?” They followed the erratic twists of the staircase.

  Once they reached the upper floor, they found what they were looking for past a portrait of Sir David Brewster and a small library. The door before them was shut, and bore a sign with TO PRESERVE AND PROTECT written across it in bold letters. Whitman made a blowing sound and scowled at its sight. Charlie had hardly knocked on the door before Whitman pushed it open. They found themselves in a well-appointed room, which they had overheard the receptionist refer to as the “Pollock.”

  It wasn’t its spaciousness so much as the manner in which the space had been used. The floor was divided so that hardly an inch was wasted. The room was at once a factory, a studio, and an office. The office part occupied one corner with two desks, on top of which rested two computers and four monitors. There was another desk on the other side, but it was obscured by a record player, a bunch of splicers and a rewind, a DVD player, and a Hi8 video player. The rest of the room was in studio anarchy. Everywhere one looked there were projectors: slide projectors, filmstrip projectors, overhead projectors, opaque projectors. A single projector screen took up half of the west-facing wall, flanked by loudspeakers. Cables abounded upon the floor, snaking around C-stands, Super 8 equipment, and sandbags.

  “I’ll be right with you,” a voice called from between four man-size cardboard boxes stacked in the middle of the room. The boxes were filled with carefully sorted tidbits: lithium batteries, RF connectors, wires, cables. The man wading through them had his back turned to Whitman and Charlie. He was bent on finding whatever it was he was searching for, and he had spilled some of the contents on the floor.

  “There you are, you little…” he said, emerging from the chaos with a VGA cable in hand. Then he saw Charlie and he became conscious that there were other people in the room. The Catalan was short and slight, with a long, acne-ridden face and a snub nose. Although his long, stringy brown hair—graying at the temples and sticking out at odd angles around his ears—was tied, it still hung down almost to the waist. Enquiring cobalt eyes peered behind glasses with a thick black frame. He was dressed in a scruffy shirt and flannel attire.

  “Hi, Nestor,” Charlie said.

  “Charlie Carmichael!” the man said almost simultaneously, and opened his arms in greeting. But halfway there, he saw Whitman and dropped his hands to his sides. His eyes suddenly hardened.

  “What the fuck is he doing here?”

  “You two know each other?” Charlie said. But he knew the answer, and he could imagine how.

  Nestor pointed an accusing finger at Whitman. “Fifteen years ago, this prick broke into the vaults at USC and stole the only copy of Alice in Wonderland we had.”

  “Allegedly,” Whitman said to Charlie, grinning triumphantly. “It was never proved.”

  “Yeah, because someone messed with the security cameras.”

  Charlie turned to Whitman, who was still grinning. “I should have known,” Charlie said, shaking his head.

  Nestor paced the room in a fit, red with anger.

  Charlie whispered to Whitman, “Is there a single person who you haven’t screwed over in this business?”

  Whitman didn’t answer.

  “It’s not a rhetorical question, Alex. I mean, really, is there?”

  “I know you meant it seriously. I’m still thinking. Do you count?”

  “Nestor,” Charlie said, reaching for the man with the VGA cable, “calm down.”

  “I am calm, man! If I knew you’d be bringing this snake to my workplace, I would have brought a knife with me today.”

  Charlie turned to Whitman. “Give us a second.”

  Once outside, Whitman dug into his coat pocket and fished out a rolled, crumpled cigarette. He plopped it between his lips and gazed at the busy, active freshmen strolling the university area. The minutes passed, and he had another cigarette. When he climbed the stairs back up, he could still hear Nestor shouting from behind the door. Charlie’s voice was tranquil, trying to reassure the man with the VGA cable and the memory of an elephant. Whitman didn’t knock, just went in anyway.

  “…as a favor to me. Please,” he heard Charlie saying.

  Nestor nodded, avoiding eye contact with Whitman. “I’ll listen to what you have to say. Only as a favor to you.” Then he pointed at Whitman. “And he better keep his mouth shut or I’ll have security remove you both, you hear?”

  “Loud and clear, Nestor.”

  Nestor turned his back to them—presumably so he wouldn’t have to look at Whitman. Whitman realized the Catalan wasn’t wearing any shoes and his socks didn’t match. At first he thought Nestor was staring at the wall; even after he saw him raising his hand, caressing something, it still didn’t make sense. Nestor was looking at a whiteboard.

  Half the board was taken up by a screenshot of “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat,” a fifty-second silent documentary shot by the Lumière brothers in 1895. In the classical footage, a railway train appeared on the screen, darting like an arrow straight toward the audience, seemingly ready to rush into wherever they were sitting and reduce them to a mangled sack of shattered bones. The effect was, of course, accidental, but what a magnificent effect it was; using the train as a subject, it would grant a glimpse of that platform to the world even more than a century after it was filmed.

  The other half of the board was occupied by a film poster. A Scotland Yard inspector with a talent for hypnosis and disguise stared through wire-looped eyes. He was dressed in a heavy black coat and immense top hat, sallow makeup and eerily symmetrical pointed teeth set in a fixed grin, perhaps hoping to hypnotize and frighten his prey into revealing the secrets of the crime with his terrifying smile. London After Midnight, the letters on the top said in deep black.

  Nestor kept running his fingers up and down the poster, eyelids half-closed.

  “What is he doing?” Whitman whispered to Charlie.

  “No clue.”

  “This is like a Gary Oldman scene from The Professional,” he whispered, and made a movement of tearing up imaginary paper.

  Nestor sighed. “Shut up, Whitman.” He took a sharp intake of breath between his teeth. “Whenever I get stressed, I need to feel something pure, just so I know that some things are worth living for. That’s what this wall is: the polarity of the train that was there and the Chaney film that is lost.”

  “The man of a thousand faces,” Charlie said. It was more of a statement than an observation, a carefully placed whisper of conversation among lovers of the same art form, stimulated by the eerie, lugubrious vibe of staring at a long-lost love. Revered as one of the silent screen’s most versatile and gifted actors, and the patron saint of art and movie makeup, Lon Chaney specialized in roles that required him to disguise his features and contort his appearance.

  “What a pity.”

  “You know, he wore a set of false animal teeth, which caused him quite a bit of pain, for that role. They were made of gutta-percha, a hard rubber-like material,” Nestor said.r />
  The three of them looked at the man with the top hat; they were transfixed by his vampire getup, with the cape, the razor teeth, and the bulging eyes.

  “The man in the beaver hat,” Charlie whispered to himself.

  “I’ve been trying to find it for the last twenty-odd years,” Nestor said. “All trails vanish after 1967; inventory records from MGM’s vault number 7 indicate they had it until a fire broke out. A couple of times I came close. There were rumors that a print had survived somehow: a sixteen-millimeter copy was going around, word was, or some collector was sitting on it, afraid to say anything for fear of losing it to MGM, who holds the rights until 2022. Someone told me once that MGM have the surviving material themselves and for some reason they’ve chosen to keep it secret; another guy said that they were unaware they had it, that it was lying somewhere, forgotten.”

  Nestor turned and faced them. He seemed to come around. Whitman and Charlie were still staring at Chaney’s eyes.

  “You remember what I said on the phone?” Charlie said.

  Nestor felt his forehead. He looked like he was having a migraine. “Right. The Eastman paper film?”

  “Yes. We need to transfer it to a projectable format: sixteen millimeter, thirty-five millimeter, or even digital. Can you help us?”

  “I need to see it first,” Nestor said, eyes dimming with fatigue behind his glasses.

  “First you tell us what you’re going to do with it,” Whitman said.

  Nestor pretended he hadn’t heard him. Charlie gave Whitman a look. That was his call to shut up, take the film out of the bag, and hand it to Nestor.

  Nestor handled the film with the same care he would show a newborn. He gently placed it on his desk, like a laboratory specimen of immense cultural value. He switched on a halogen lamp and adjusted its spring-balanced steel arm over the film, shining the light over the glossy unglazed surface, whispering to himself. “Positive opaque copy of a negative…the bromide photographic paper, the conventional double-weight fiber base, the neutral-tone bromide emulsion…It’s paper film, all right.”