by Tim Curran
She shrugged. “First off, the Internet is full of freaks and weirdos.”
“I’ll give you that one,” Chet said.
“Even if he wasn’t just hoaxing you, are you going to hold up a guy who remembers nonsensical assaults as proof that The King in Yellow does not alter perception and recall?”
Chet opened his mouth, closed it, then said, “No, but he might indicate that it’s a bad idea.”
“They’re just words, Chet.”
“So’s Mein Kampf.”
“There’s a difference between mnemonic effects and political incitement,” she said, folding her arms and giving him a stern look. “I do know what I’m doing. I’m taking every possible precaution to limit the alterations to only malignant memories.”
“How does that work?”
“The King in Yellow and some associated materials seem to powerfully disconnect the mind’s ability to keep its memories structured. If you go with the statue metaphor, it takes the clay from being mostly-dry to a... muddier state. Changes become much easier. There was a man named Castaigne, did you come across his name in your research? He was treated for what was probably frontal lobe damage before being accidentally exposed to the book.”
“Did it homeopathically fix him?”
The therapist shrugged. “No way to know. Without it making his personality more labile, he might have just been one of those spaced out, nodding, lost-mind cases, like someone with late stage dementia.”
“What happened instead of that?”
“He fell in with another fellow, a Mr. Wilde. While Wilde isn’t known to have read the play, he was reputedly in possession of, um, ancillary material that had similar effects.”
“Wait, you mean the ‘Yellow Sign’?”
Her eyes flicked to the envelope on her desk.
“Yes, among other things.”
“That’s supposed to be the really fast version, right? You see it once and it gets in your head?”
“It does seem to work much more directly on some people, possibly because it doesn’t have to go through the linguistic centers of the brain,” Constance said.
“Yeah, one guy said that once you see it, you start seeing it over and over again, everywhere.”
“A more rational explanation is that, given its impact on the brain, one begins to hallucinate seeing it everywhere, like when you see faces in clouds. Or that one falsely remembers sightings, when in fact one was only experiencing an emotion associated with it. But that’s really not relevant, Chet! You,” she said, “Are not getting anywhere near the Yellow Sign.”
“Okay.” He sat back. “These symbols and ideas are really that powerful?”
“They seem to have affected Castaigne and Wilde, not to mention the reports about Bundry and Hollis in the 1970s and the New Bristol episode in 1986.”
“What were those?”
“Oh, Bundry and Hollis tried to put on a performance of The King in Yellow at their college but wound up leaving school and kind of disappearing for two years. There was a big media buzz over them vanishing without telling anyone, but they were eventually found in Florida living as ‘Camilla’ and ‘Cassilda,’ their characters from the play.” She shifted her eyes away from him. “Wilde styled himself a ‘repairer of reputations.’ That’s a phrase that’s fascinating to consider...‘re-pair’ suggesting to take things that have been disconnected and join them once more, very reminiscent of the word ‘re-member’. Memory language is full of the idea of return... when we ‘re-call’ we summon ideas together, or ‘re-collect.’ And then we have ‘reputation,’ descended from the Latin ‘putare,’ to know. A reputation is that which is known again. To repair a reputation is to shuffle the connections, knead the clay, and connect old things in a different way.”
“All that from a play?”
“You’re not going to enact the whole thing over and over, like Hollis and Bundry,” she assured him. “You’re only getting a safe, small dose. Just enough to jar some things loose, or soften them up.”
He nodded. “How do we start?”
“We start with the hardest part,” she said. “I need you to remember, and describe to me, everything your father did.”
Nervously, he tapped on the full box of tissues on the table by the sofa. He was quiet for a second. Then he nodded, and began.
He was still when he stopped talking. Unnervingly still, like a clay model himself, heavy and inert.
“Read the book,” Constance said quietly. She handed him a sheaf of photocopied pages, and he listlessly took them.
“This isn’t...” he said.
“Shh. Read.”
With narrowed eyes, he did.
“I don’t feel anything,” he said, when he handed them back.
“It doesn’t work all at once, I’m afraid.”
“Should I read more? I mean, I don’t really get what the big deal is. I don’t care about Cassilda and Camilla and the city under black stars.”
“You’ve only read the first act,” she said.
“Well so what? I mean, what am I supposed to get out of part of it? If I looked at a third of a painting would that be worth, what, three hundred and thirty-three words?” His inertness was wearing off, turning into a truculent anger.
“Are you familiar with what happened after the first performance of The Rite of Spring? Or with the rash of suicides patterned after The Sorrows of Young Werther?”
“No, I’m not and I don’t see why you are,” he said crossly. “Are you a psychologist or an English professor? Or, wait, you’re not either, are you?”
“This anger is good, Chet. It shows that your amygdala is involved.”
“Oh whatever.”
“I’d like to schedule for twice next week.”
“Yeah, since I’m paying out the nose... you want cash or check?”
“We’ll do Act II next time.”
“Oh great. I’ll finally find out what’s up with the Stranger.”
He was calm the next time, and apologized, and she said it was fine. She’d brought fresh-baked gingerbread, and a basin in case he threw up.
They talked through the Christmas episode, and then he re-read Act I and read Act II.
“Oh my God,” he said afterwards. He was staring into space, blank.
“Breathe, Chet.”
“What if I forget how? What if I forget I need to? It’s... what happens in Act III?”
“I don’t have Act III.”
“What?” He practically lunged out of the sofa’s corner. “How can you not have it? You mean you haven’t copied it, right?”
“No, the book I got is damaged. Only the first page of Act III is present.”
“Let me read that!”
“Chet.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, settling back. “Wow though. Wow. I mean, I can see now why you thought this would change memories. It feels like reality itself is reshaping.” He gave a slow blink. “It feels like I could remake the whole world.”
The next session, Chet reported feeling more confident, more in control of his life than ever. He’d been sleeping well. His wife, he said, had definitely noticed a difference. Even his kids were treating him more respectfully.
(The insurance still wasn’t covering his treatment, though.)
The appointment after that, Chet showed up with a small Tyvek envelope folded in his jacket pocket. He and Griffin called Allied Health Programs immediately after, and then brought Connie out to explain her process to a man with an accent that was almost perfectly Standard British. While they were distracted, Chet exchanged his envelope for the one in the lock-box.
He didn’t know for sure that it was a copy of the Yellow Sign, but he suspected.
When he got home and finally viewed it, he knew it could be nothing else.
“Thank you for cal
ling Allied Health Services, this is Janet, how may I help you?”
“Hi. My name’s Chet Wegler, and I’ve put in several reimbursement requests for treatments from Stearkwether Therapeutic Associates?”
“Can I get your account number, and the Single-Payment Service Identification Code?”
“Certainly. My account is 33-J-20177. The code is 31-R30-S1, traumatic reality reductive therapy.”
“I’m not seeing it.”
“I remember,” he said patiently, “That the code is on the list for full reimbursement. Please check again.”
“Oh, there it is!”
He made a small noise of satisfaction.
“That’s with Constance Stearkwether?” she asked.
“Dr. Cassilda Stearkwether,” he corrected.
“Of course, of course. Cassilda. How silly of me!”
“It was always Cassilda,” he said.
t was a Friday night in the hottest July in London I could remember, and Carnacki had the windows open to let a breath of air in, although what breeze we got proved to be hot and dry, and tasted of an overly heated city. The heat had drained our appetite, and we had partaken of only a light meal of trout and green vegetables. As a result we were earlier than usual in retiring to the parlor, and had taken our normal seats, with our drinks charged and fresh smokes lit well before eight.
Carnacki wasted no time in getting to his tale.
“It is as well that we have some warmth, old friends, despite the slight discomfort it might bring,” he began. “For my tale tonight is a chilling one indeed, and I fear you will be glad of the heat by the end of it.”
“It started last Monday, with a telegram requesting my attendance at Bethlem Asylum in Southwark. The note intimated that it was a matter of some delicacy that required my particular skills, and that I would, of course, be suitably remunerated for my time. I was intrigued enough by the request to make my way by carriage to a meeting with a Doctor Donaldson, the chief medical officer of the facility.
“We are all aware of the moniker given to the Asylum by the general public—a reminder of its earlier days when the treatment of the mentally ill was not as enlightened as it is today. And like you, I have heard all the tales of mistreatment and torture, chaos and confusion. But despite any qualms I might have had about visiting the place, I was met with a calm, almost serene establishment of quiet, whitewashed corridors and nurses in clean, starched uniforms efficiently going about their business. It is a fine, well-appointed building, and Doctor Donaldson’s oak-lined library and office would not have seemed out of place in any of your town clubs.
“The doctor himself, however, was clearly in some distress, and his reason for contacting me all came out of him in a rush.
“‘It is the top floor, Mr. Carnacki,’ he said. ‘I cannot get the staff to go upstairs, especially after dark, and any patients we leave there for more than a day come away with their mental state even worse than anything they might previously have been suffering. Something strange moves through the corridors up there of an evening. There is talk of it being a haunt—and I can’t say as I disagree with them, for I have even seen something myself, although as a man of science I am loath to give voice to it being anything of a supernatural nature. I have heard that you have experience in such matters, and that you are most discreet—can you help us?’
“You chaps all know that I cannot turn down a genuine request for help—or the chance to pit my wits against a denizen of the Outer Darkness, so I gave the man my word that I would look into the matter. We shook hands on it and that same afternoon I began my investigation.”
“The top floor of Bethlem is a light and airy place by day, with high ceilings and sunlight streaming through skylights that run the whole length of the building. The walls are white and clean—almost sparklingly so, and my footsteps echoed on a polished hardwood floor as I topped the stairs and entered the main corridor. Doctor Donaldson had come up with me, but he stayed at the top of the stairs, not venturing into the hallway.
“‘I can leave you to it then?’ he asked and it was plain that the man was bally terrified, so I took pity on him.
“‘I will call into your office before I leave,’ I replied, and he was off and away down the stairs almost before I had finished speaking.
“I was left alone in the corridor, and as the sound of Donaldson’s footsteps descended away from me leaving silence behind, I became aware that there was definitely something strange in the air. I have developed a sense for these things, as you know, and I felt it straight away—a thick cloying miasma despite the sunlight, a tingling at the nape of my neck and a throbbing in my guts that all told me there was a presence here.
“I walked along the corridor, slowly, trying to intuit what it was that was affecting me so. As I reached the farthest room from the stairwell, I heard a soft voice, little more than a whisper, reciting a passage I did not recognize but which chilled my blood.
“‘Strange is the night where black stars rise,’
“‘And strange moons circle through the skies.’
“They were only words, but spoken as they were in a stilted cadence, and in a whisper that still managed to echo and ring around me, they gave me pause in my exploration. The voice came again, and I pinpointed a source, a room on my right. I stepped forward and looked though a small eye-level window. A thin, almost skeletal, chap sat curled in the far corner, wrapped tight in a stitched canvas jacket bound such that his arms were hugged close to his chest. He stared upward, to the corner of the room, as if watching something only he could see. He was still reciting.
“‘Song of my soul, my voice is dead,’
“‘Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed.’
“Despite it being full daylight, with sun still streaming in from above through the skylight, it was as if the room beyond the small window lay in dim twilight, with the shadows hanging particularly darkly around the hunched figure in the corner. I must have moved, or made a sound, for the occupant stopped in his recital and looked straight at me. I looked into the flat empty eyes of a mind gone elsewhere. The dark around him seemed to swirl and thicken.
“‘The shadows lengthen in Carcosa,’ he said, looking straight at me.”
“Five minutes later I was back downstairs in Doctor Donaldson’s office. He took one look at me and poured snifters of brandy for both of us. He smiled thinly as he passed me the glass.
“‘It seems you will need little convincing,’ he said.
I took a stiff drink before replying.
“‘The man at the end of the corridor—he is at the heart of the matter?’
“The doctor nodded. ‘So it would seem. His name is Jephson, and he is—or was—an actor of some note before coming to us. He has been here for a month now—as have the nightly disturbances on the top floor. Can you help us?’
“I said yes, although in truth I was as yet unsure as to how to proceed.
“‘Can I talk to the chap?’ I asked.
“Donaldson downed his own brandy in one gulp, like a man well practiced in the procedure.
“‘If you must,’ he replied. ‘You will get little out of him but that doggerel he spouts. And we cannot unbind him, for he is a danger to himself if his hands are freed—he has made several suicide attempts.’
“We reached an agreement that I could interview the man on the Tuesday afternoon, and I returned here to Chelsea, hoping that my library might provide me with a starting place in my investigation.
“I was to have little luck. I could find no reference in any of my books to a place called Carcosa. The mention of ‘black stars’ had struck a chord, mirroring as it did some of the descriptions of the outmost realms of the Outer Darkness, but I was still little the wiser by late afternoon. I decided to try a different tack, and headed for the West End, and The George bar in the Strand.
“I was in searc
h of actors, and as you know, The George is one of their favorite watering holes. By admitting I was willing to buy ale in exchange for information, it did not take me long to find someone who knew someone who might be able to help me. Sometimes this little dance leads nowhere, but on Monday night I was lucky, and an hour after entering the bar found myself in a quiet corner with a rather voluble Irishman who not only knew Jephson, but had worked with him in the recent past.
“‘It was that damnable play,’ the big man said, wiping ale foam from his whiskers, and off we went on a long involved story that I will not bore you chaps with, for it would take too long in the telling. There are only a few pertinent facts in any case, for the big man was most adept at elaborating his tale, spinning it out in order to receive more ale for his trouble. The facts, as I saw them, are these: Jephson had been commissioned to work on a play, and he was the first of the actors to receive the script. The Irishman had got a glimpse of it—a leather-bound volume that was purported to be the only copy and which Jephson was under instruction to keep secret and close to his person. Jephson had read the play—and had almost immediately been driven quite mad. As for the book itself, the Irishman did not know what had become of it—indeed he knew nothing of it beyond the title
‘The King in Yellow.’”
“I did not see how this new information would help me, and a further search of my library that night for anything about the play proved fruitless. I was rather disgruntled, and somewhat bemused, when I returned to Southwark on Tuesday for my meeting with Jephson himself.
“You will remember that it was a scorcher of a day, and the ground floor of Bethlem was indeed as hot and muggy as the rest of the city. The top floor, despite the preponderance of windows being bathed in full sunlight, still felt like walking past the door to an icehouse.
“Jephson had been raised from his place in the corner and sat on a chair in the center of the room, although he was still tightly bound, and he still stared, flat-eyed at a point in the upper left corner. He muttered continually under his breath, although I could, as yet, make out no words. A nurse put a chair inside the door for me, refusing to enter and backing away as soon as I thanked her. The door shut behind me with a clang and I was left alone in the room with a madman.
