Chronicles of Ara: Perdition

by Joel Eisenberg

  Mary suffered from crippling bouts of depression, and yet she continued to write. Her career that (arguably, as it is widely theorized the words may have been written by another) began with the adapted poem Mounseer Nongtongpaw in 1807 as published by her father and stepmother’s press, continued with Mathilda, written in 1819 but published posthumously in 1959 (due to themes of incest that William would not accept for publication; also, in the somewhat autobiographical novella, characters based on herself and Mary Jane drove “towards the sea to learn if we were to be for ever doomed to misery,” which she had long considered prescient for reasons we will elucidate in a few moments), Valperga in 1823, The Last Man in 1826, and Ladore in 1835.

  Fanny Godwin died at twenty-three years old of an overdose. Lord Byron passed at age thirty-six from circumstances assumed to relate to a fever of some sort, John William Polidori, author of The Vampyre, popularly considered the first modern (nonfolkloric) vampire story at twenty-six from an assumed suicide by cyanide (though the coroner offered the less troubling “natural causes”).

  Sir Percy Florence Shelley, known as the third baronet of Castle Goring, Sussex, having inherited the title from his grandfather, Timothy, was the Shelleys’ only surviving child. He passed at the age of seventy on December 5, 1889.

  Mary would succumb at age fifty-three to a suspected brain tumor. Uniquely, her work continues to influence both the theologian and scientific communities.

  Harriet Westbrook (Shelley), Percy’s first wife, could not accept the end of her marriage and the many repercussions from there. She drowned herself in the Serpentine River at twenty-one years old in the winter of 1816, months following the writing of Frankenstein.

  Charles Bysshe Shelley, their son, was struck by lightning during a rainstorm and died in 1826 at the age of twelve. Ianthe, their daughter, lived to her sixty-third year.

  As for Percy ...

  On July 8, 1822 in the Gulf of Spezia . . .

  “A storm is near,” says retired naval officer Edward Ellerker Williams, an older, stoic sort.

  “Nonsense,” says Percy, relaxing with a pen and paper. “This is a remarkable, beautiful day.”

  Formerly christened Ariel, the Don Juan, in deference to Byron, is the name painted on the sailing boat that transports Percy from Leghorn to Lerici. He is returning from initiating a new publication, The Liberal, with his partner Leigh Hunt, and the day to now has been sunny and clear.

  A third man travels with them, boat boy Charles Vivien. “Mr. Shelley,” he says with welling panic, “I believe Mr. Williams is correct.”

  “It’s nonsense, I tell you. Non—” As the bleak, gray clouds fast approach to scattered lightning, Percy stands. Panic wells among the three, and it becomes increasingly clear there is scant room to run.

  “Vivien, turn the ship!”

  The boat boy tries to steer away, but his panic is too strong and he pauses.

  “Charles!” yells Percy, through increasing winds. “You’re not turning! Whatever is your reason for not—”

  Water overtakes the ship as the storm hits. However, the custom-built boat does not capsize. It sinks.

  All three men drown. Percy Bysshe Shelley was twenty-nine years old.

  The bodies were all clothed when found ten miles offshore, and the life rafts had not been used.

  The storm hit quickly and without warning.

  Percy’s body was cremated. Legend has it that his heart would not decompose, and Mary elected to keep the organ in her possession until her own passing.

  His gravestone contained a few lines from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, words that referenced Percy’s preferred name of the ship upon which he would lose his life, an excerpt from the section of Ariel’s Song:

  “Nothing of him that doth fade/

  But doth suffer a sea-change/

  into something rich and strange.”

  From here, the meaning of these words will become something far darker, far more demonic, than you can possibly imagine.

  As you continue, I want you to keep in mind the one word that myself and Thomas McFee called special attention to earlier, the one word with which all artists must always identify:

  Connections.

  LAKE GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, SPRING 1831

  Mary, no longer anonymous, but very much alone, revises her preface to Frankenstein. She sits against a tree. Ara also sits against the tree feet away, directly in front of her. Mary attributes her name to a new edition of her most renowned work and writes freely.

  Or so she believes.

  When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision—the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handy-work, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade; that this thing, which had received such imperfect animation, would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes . . .

  To another section . . .

  But it proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house. Some volumes of ghost stories translated from German into French fell into our hands. There was the History of the Inconstant Lover, who, when he thought to clasp the bride to whom he had pledged his vows, found himself in the arms of the pale ghost of her whom he had deserted. There was the tale of the sinful founder of his race whose miserable doom it was to bestow the kiss of death on all the younger sons of his fated house, just when they reached the age of promise. His gigantic, shadowy form, clothed like the ghost in Hamlet, in complete armour, but with the beaver up, was seen at midnight, by the moon’s fitful beams, to advance slowly along the gloomy avenue. The shape was lost beneath the shadow of the castle walls; but soon a gate swung back, a step was heard,, the door of the chamber opened, and he advanced to the couch of the blooming youths, cradled in healthy sleep. Eternal sorrow sat upon his face as he bent down and kissed the forehead of the boys, who from that hour withered like flowers upon the stalk. I have not seen these stories since then, but their incidents are as fresh in my mind as if I had read them yesterday.

  “We will each write a ghost story,” said Lord Byron, and his proposition was acceded to.

  —Mary Shelly, from Author’s Introduction, “Frankenstein,” London, October 15, 1831.

  Mary closes her notebook, satisfied with her words. She stands, brushes herself off and walks away.

  Ara’s work, for now, is complete.

  Unbeknownst to them both, Brikke has been watching, standing atop a conterminous mountain, his daughter’s preferred point of view when influencing the mortals. Ara has influenced Mary to alter her words, precisely as he has planned.

  MIRKWOOD

  The dragon is led by Ara to the unforgiving mountain range of his darkest dreams and fears. Unforgiving, as the wind and the rain have created an elemental fervor that would kill most in the walking, the mountains surrounding an ocean even more dank than what he sees above.

  Lightning flashes, and Taebal steps onward as though he is being led to slaughter.

  He is correct in his assumption; he knows he is about to die and he does not panic. Not yet. He recalls the t
houghts of S’n Te, and those of his own as the water beckons. If the muse attempts to save him, will he accept her gesture? Or will he allow himself to drown and meet what he hopes is his much-needed peace?

  He considers that his own thoughts of a hell cannot be any worse than his present scenario, and so he will release his fate to the natural order.

  As streaks of red sky fight to break through dark gray clouds, his fall begins. He slips on a muddy incline, and is taken into the sea. He looks for Ara, his panic beginning and welling quickly. He splashes, working every muscle to stay afloat first and then spread his wings to fly away . . . and he sees her. She stands atop the highest mountain, watching passively.

  She will not help him.

  And a dragon meets his destiny . . .

  Taebal drowns in the furious waters. As the muse watches from her mountain top, she senses a presence and turns. No one else is present. Her eyes return to the sea, where she glimpses the last of Taebal sinking below the furious waters.

  Brikke suddenly appears in her sights, as if standing directly in front of her. She is horrified by the vision. Father reaches for his daughter, this much she sees, but before she can react, her world, for the first time . . . goes black.

  SOHO ARTS DISTRICT, NEW YORK CITY

  Somewhere in a Soho apartment a young high school girl named Snow lies on her bed. Two books rest on the nightstand beside her: On top is The Completed Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley; below it is Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.

  She grabs the Bysshe book and flips through it, stopping at Prometheus Unbound. She skims the words . . .

  In orphaned seas, where the haunters of the dark

  Weep in solitary madness

  The poet grieves a dying muse

  “A dying muse?” Snow contemplates, before continuing.

  Flowered in sin, where the smoldering earth bequeaths

  The ashes of sleeping pantheons,

  She lies so majestic

  Her sonorous beauty, inanimate and white

  A silent lyre sings homage to the lovelorn neophyte

  Mordant sinews breathe and entwine

  Vultures feed on the demigod’s shrine

  Preying on the innocence of a yesteryear . . .

  The pages are flipped backward to Percy’s description of Prometheus crying out against the tyrannical Jupiter (Zeus), about the injustices suffered by himself and the mortals while bound to a rock face:

  Monarch of Gods and Daemons, and

  all Spirits

  But One, who throng those bright and

  rolling worlds

  Which Thou and I alone of living things

  Behold with sleepless eyes!

  A few more pages are turned, and Snow skims the section where Prometheus yearns to reunite with his beloved, Asia . . .

  This won’t happen, she thinks.

  Her attention now seized, Snow turns to her back and begins at Page One.

  ALGONQUIN HOTEL, NEW YORK CITY

  Thomas walked a good couple of miles in the rain before arriving at his favorite hotel. His favorite hotel, since Donovan Bradley told him the story of his father, Franklin McFee, and his adventures with J.R.R. Tolkien. On his way, as stores closed their doors in response to the sudden outpour, Thomas managed to grab an umbrella from an outside stand and receive a wave-off from the storeowner. The storeowner didn’t allow him inside—he didn’t want him to soak the place—so the umbrella became a freebie.

  The only good thing that’s happened to me all day today.

  When he remembered the silk black glove, he placed the object over his right hand as he clasped the umbrella’s handle.

  Once in the hotel, Thomas walks downstairs and dries himself off in the men’s room. His clothing is soaked; he will not be able to sit for minutes. The hat will stay on, so no one will recognize him, the glove will as well, and he’ll still hold the umbrella . . . and he’ll stand in the lobby with others, waiting out the new calamity.

  ~~~

  Lobby. A middle-aged man, also standing, has been quietly admiring Thomas’ glove.

  “Mr. McFee?”

  Thomas has not heard the voice before. A fan. How could he possibly recognize m—

  “Are you Thomas McFee?”

  “No, I’m sorry,” Thomas responds. “Wrong guy.”

  The person who asks is late fifties to early sixties. “Oh,” he says, surprised. “My apologies.”

  “Nothing to apologize for—”

  “No, I guess not . . . I understand someone who I thought was you had been searching for me. I’ve had quite the day myself, stopped by for a memorial for an old friend. Did you know Matthius?”

  Thomas, most curious, plays discreet. “No, sorry.”

  The man offers his hand to shake. “Don. Don Bradley.”

  “Really?” Thomas asks. Don looks at him, not understanding. “I’m so sorry,” Thomas laughs. “Don’t mind me. I know someone with a similar name, is all. A good man.” He is about to shake Don’s hand when he realizes he still wears the glove, which he removes. Don’s eyes dart downward to Thomas’ hand. “Don’t know where my head is today—”

  “Your friend. First name, or—”

  “Last.”

  “Bradley’s not the most uncommon, I’m afraid. What’s yours?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Your name,” Don says.

  “Oh . . . lost my mind first, it seems. I’m . . .” He hasn’t thought of a formal moniker. For now, spontaneity works. “Ted. Ted Michaels.”

  They finally shake. Don looks outside, to a car that pulls up front. “My ride,’ he says. He buttons up and hands Thomas a card.

  “Do you have one?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Be careful out there,” Don says. He runs outside.

  Thomas looks at the bold print of Don’s card once he’s away.

  Don Bradley, Jr.

  Antiques

  He cannot believe the remarkable coincidence. He is about to run out, to follow Don and ask him if he is any relation to Donovan; he does have his moment, but he stays put. Now is not the time to expose his whereabouts. Or his vulnerabilities.

  I never believed his story about the fire . . . he thinks, instantly suspicious. But then he second guesses himself. No, this can’t be Bradley’s kid. Too obvious. Someone is trying to set me up . . . but why?

  Instinctively, Thomas looks down upon the glove that he holds in his hand.

  Time to wrap for a bit. Again, don’t ever forget . . . connections.

  We have a ways to go yet, but I’m going to take a little break.

  Until we meet again, shortly, I remain your humble troublemaker.

  BOOK FOUR

  ON THE FOURTH MEASURE OF CREATION

  CARLO COLLODI

  THE WOODCARVER’S GIFT

  AN UPRISING FROM THE DEPTHS

  “We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have.

  Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task.

  The rest is the madness of art.”

  ~ Henry James

  “The Middle Years”

  HERESY

  An Open Letter to the Media

  And so . . .

  We live in a world of puppets and puppet masters. The puppets, most of us, are idle and ineffectual. Those in power pull the strings, because most of us need and allow it. Simple, really.

  There was a boy who was a puppet once. Pinocchio. Remember him?

  Really, has Taebal been any different, based on his portrayal experiences? I think not. Not that it matters. (Is there any sort of double negative there at all? I’m not sure.)

  Let’s talk pop culture for a minute. At the end of the film Bride of Frankenstein, the good doctor’s laboratory was blown up and all remnants of his records and work were gone. Of course, Son of Frankenstein, Ghost of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, House of Frankenstein . . . Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein all followed, and through the magic of movies Frankenstein would li
ve to see another day. And then there were all those remakes, reinventions and the like, one even featuring Harry Potter, but my point is valid:

  Nothing remains dead forever. Not in fiction, not in life. Does it really matter? I mean, really? Like my own work, which never died either, just because someone by the name of Esme Chaconte took it upon herself to rob me and destroy my efforts. But how was she to know, like the Library of Alexandria, that there were two copies of everything? Hence Samantha McFee and her trustee computer, her hubby Daniel, and all that shiz. Sam still doesn’t know she has me to thank for her job. I expect her to be imprisoned sooner or later, assuming the red clouds don’t overtake the world first.

  Fire in fire, but the skies are not, technically, the first sign.

  The red dragon was first.

  Samantha will become known as the terrorist, not the poor black kid. People will eventually radicalize to my side, because I radicalize to no one. Why? Cause I ain’t no puppet.

  It’ll be too late by then, but I’ll be exonerated of all ill will, I promise you.

  Now back to our regularly scheduled pop-culture meta-phors:

  Disney. Walt F’n Disney. No, really. Nothing negative, just factual. Few creative individuals, or companies, have had a greater impact on our culture than the legendary Mr. Disney. Many a time have I dreamt of sneaking into Disney World, maybe sleeping atop the globe at Epcot, and writing from there.

  A closer view of the stars from “the most magical place on earth.” Or so they say. Maybe a better perspective of Ara’s imminently expiring star by sitting atop the most accessible globe I can figure, but I can’t afford the trip, so who am I kidding.