by R. J. Gadney
Arotiki began to whimper.
“Listen to me,” he said.
“Don’t you raise your voice at me. You’ve upset the puppy. You’ve upset both of us.”
“For Christ’s sake go to bed.”
The wine glass in her hand was shaking. “Why—” she said, “why was the phone working?”
They were both staring at the telephone as if it were possessed of a malignant force.
“Why was it working?” he said. “Because your damned poltergeist mended the bloody thing, that’s why. And then he came back and buggered it up again. You ask him what he was doing with the telephone.”
Francesca winced. “It’s busted.”
“Too right it’s busted. And I’m telling you the telephone won’t be the only thing busted around here if you don’t get yourself to bed. And fast. You’re dreaming things, Francesca. Go to bed.”
She stared at him, her eyes narrowed.
“And there are no ghosts here,” he continued. “Understand? No ghosts. No Japanese woman wandering about pulling faces. No ghosts, right? I know. I’ve lived here all my life. Nobody on earth knows The Towers like I do.”
Her mouth began to twitch.
“And don’t pull faces at me. And I do not, I say again, I don’t want rumors flying about that The Towers is haunted. I don’t want stories like that in the papers or busloads of spotty anoraks with pony tails and joints turning up here wandering about stoned in the mud like Glastonbury twats. And stop biting your nails. You’ll bite your fingers off.”
“STOP IT.” She put her hand over her mouth. “You’re frightening me.”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Now—did you remember to turn off the TV?”
“Yes. It made me sad.”
“Well, it wasn’t meant to make you sad. Thanks for the supper. You’re a fine cook.”
Her face seemed to darken. “You’re welcome,” she said tartly.
“And please … wipe that sour look from your face.”
She clutched her elbows. “I thought I could trust you,” she said.
“Takes two.”
“You don’t trust me, d’you?”
“The problem is, Francesca—you don’t trust yourself.”
“Problem,” she yelled. “I haven’t got a problem. You have.”
“I’m sorry, Francesca. Don’t get me wrong. I know what you’re feeling.”
“You don’t,” she shouted. “You don’t know anything about my feelings.” She began to chew her thumbnail. “There’s something I want to say to you.”
She stood very still, her eyes transfixed with a look of fear and anger that said you’re evil.
“What do you want to say to me?” he asked.
She was about to suck the tip of her thumb, then thought better of it. “I dream about you,” she said.
“C’mon. You don’t.”
She shook her head as if to say I-give-up-and-nothing’s-any-use-now.
He looked at her gently. “Don’t dream about me. I’m not worth dreaming about.”
“You don’t know what happens in my head. Who d’you dream about then—that Sumiko?”
“It’s none of your business. I dream about myself.”
“Everyone dreams about themselves. I dream about you.”
“Then try not to.”
“And just you don’t keep on telling me what to do.”
He smiled. “I could say the same to you.”
“You don’t understand, d’you?”
“For God’s sake, Francesca. Understand what?”
“I’m going to visit The Light of the World and then I’m going to bed.”
“Better take a flashlight with you.”
“I can manage,” she said.
“Goodnight then. See you in the morning. When the day is dawning.”
“I hope so, Hal. Ours is a symbol perfected in death. And all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Her eyes drifted away toward the shuttered windows. Then she turned her back on him and left the kitchen to walk into the gloom.
He listened to her steady footfall on the stone floor toward the foot of the balustraded Gothic staircase.
It was as if a cold black mouth had opened to swallow her.
22
He hoped he hadn’t made an enemy of Francesca.
Perhaps it was a slight sense of guilt that persuaded him to feed the puppy, wash the dishes and finish clearing up the kitchen. To put it mildly, winning over the nurses to the idea of Sumiko’s arrival at The Towers looked like being an uphill struggle.
He imagined a scenario in which mother and daughter made their separate Christmas at The Towers while he, Sumiko, Yukio and the pup enjoyed theirs. He was damned if the nurses would make life difficult and began to contrive some plan whereby he would make them a generous gift from the residue of his mother’s estate. He would discuss it with Warren. Such a gift would, he felt, be a pay-off. Something they could take and stay away from The Towers. It was his mother who’d sanctioned their appointment. Now she was gone there was no longer any need for them to assume any further role in his life.
He felt no inclination to watch the TV light entertainment on offer; and instead decided to make a brief investigation of his symptoms, to gain a second opinion, to look up delirium in The Encyclopædia Hippocratica, 1938 Edition, Volume VI, pp. 275–6.
Delirium. This is what Mother suffered. Is delirium in the Stirling genes?
DELIRIUM. Transient disorder of the brain (cerebrum) frequently occurring during acute fever, the result of diseases and injury to the brain, fatigue and toxins; e.g., alcohol, apocynum cannabinum (Indian hemp), belladonna, chloroform, fittonia albivenis (Nerve Plant) and opium. It is characterized by abnormality of expression and incoherence, mania and delusion leading to unconsciousness.
Prior symptoms include insomnia, nightmares, hyper-activity and rage; hyperhidrosis (heavy perspiration), twisted facial expressions, rapidity of heartbeat.
Mental confusion surrounds the patient, who may talk incessantly, grow distressed and see visions particularly imagining he is pursued by daemons, plagued by ghosts and spirits who will injure or destroy him. The delusions are often temporary. Yet the patient’s visual hallucinations are real. Though frequently experienced in quietude, the visions and his fear are real to the patient. He sees them. They invariably produce phobias.
In most cases the symptoms lessen within a week. The patient may then have periods of sleep and awaken with his mind seemingly restored. He may be unaware of his sickness and strongly deny its existence.
Treatment.—Withdraw medication, follow a healthy diet. Tranquility and sympathetic nursing will be required. Strict medical supervision of the administration of drugs is mandatory. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is recommended for patients who have developed intolerance to anti-depressant medicines.
Leafed into the next page he found a carbon copy of a letter. It was undated. Headed THE DARK HEART OF DELIRIUM & MADNESS it began: “To the Light of the World My Beloved Priscilla.”
23
THE DARK HEART OF DELIRIUM & MADNESS
To the Light of the World My Beloved Priscilla.
The Towers is the Dark Heart of Madness. The Dwelling Place of the Possessed and Dispossessed.
Beyond the bounds of consciousness; its madness is contagious. You must always remain here.
The routines of community established by my family had once been smooth and regular; the Stirlings presided over a community of souls in which the gulf between staff and inmates was unbridgeable.
Sympathy and friendship between these two classes was non-existent, The Towers occupied by Them and Us or Us and Them, depending on which side of the gulf you stood.
This is our world.
In the early years of its existence The Towers, stolid in spirit, exclusive and gloomy as any British isolated country house, confined the wilder shores of insanity within its walls.
The Stirlings prayed to the
Almighty to forgive us our trespasses but they were disingenuous when they added as we forgive those who trespass against us.
KEEP OUT, said the notices on the boundary walls: TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. BY ORDER.
The Almighty heard them ask: lead us not into temptation ignoring the quid pro quo when they asked Him to deliver us from evil. Enemy forces delivered it in spades.
Year in, year out, The Towers’ platoons of kitchen gardeners grew abundant healthy produce; butlers and housekeepers saw to it that the cellars stocked ample quantities of the greatest wines Europe had to offer. Laundry maids kept everyone spick and span, shipshape and Bristol fashion. The cooks saw to it that good food was enjoyed in the both the family and servants’ dining rooms.
During the appropriate seasons, Stirlings rode to hounds, and shot and fished; attended concerts and recitals in the Music Room; played billiards in the Billiard Salon; tennis, croquet, even clock golf on the lawns. The servant class remained and buried its discontents; the Stirlings enjoyed the fruits of the family’s fortunes.
When signs of mania, psychotic obsession, solipsism and hallucination revealed themselves, they were swept beneath the carpet. Within the sanctuary provided by The Towers, Us could be as mad as Us liked so long as Them didn’t report things to the Cumberland and Westmorland Constabulary.
It is not surprising that, like its sisters, the lunatic asylums, The Towers boasts its own Chapel and Crypt. Stirlings know where their earthly remains end up.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, indeed for years into the twentieth, The Towers, this asylum for the sane and not so sane, fell into disrepair and neglect. The rot set in. Paralleled by the gradual deterioration of its fabric, this asylum for the sane sank gradually into its present lonely wretchedness, country house squalor, and has latterly evinced its own peculiar degree of sadism.
Sunk in the caverns of insanity and pain
You howling creatures lay;
Sans sense to smile again,
Condemned to Satan’s prey.
Fair Treatment for the Mad has rarely if ever been an efficacious political slogan. Fair Treatment for The Towers has never even been one. Remember Arcus.
Breathe in the breath of the Dead.
Taste the juice of love.
We are kindred.
It is written in the Infinity above.
Remember Browning. “Love Among the Ruins.”
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand, Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech Each on each.
The Towers is the Dark Heart of Madness. Dwelling place of the Possessed and Dispossessed. It’s beyond the control of consciousness; its delirium contagious.
WE MUST FIGHT ON, BELOVED. DO WHAT THY WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW. UNTIL HELL FREEZES.
24
There was neither sound nor sight of Francesca. She must have paid her visit to The Light of the World and gone upstairs to her room. He sought better news on the TV.
The newsman was reporting the death of a thirty-three-year-old Royal Engineers Lieutenant. Serving with the Counter-Improvised Explosive Device Task Force, he’d died from his wounds: “… the victim of a roadside Improvised Explosive Device at Nahr-e Saraj in the north of Helmand.”
He saw the face of the smiling young officer in a still portrait photograph on the TV screen. The newsman said the dead man had been in Helmand for two months. Hal hadn’t known him.
The dead man’s Commanding Officer spoke of “… a confident enthusiastic officer held in the highest affection and respect by all ranks … The regiment is profoundly saddened …”
The newsman continued:
“Speaking from his constituency this afternoon …”
The Secretary of State was droning: “I offer my deepest sympathy to his family and loved ones.”
Hal leaned back in the deep armchair, resting his head against the cracked leather.
“British troops,” the Secretary of State maundered on, “are in Afghanistan with those of more than forty-five other nations. And let me remind you, when it comes to our Armed Forces, we don’t want them in Afghanistan for a minute longer than is vital to our purpose.”
The fire had burned down to a mound of light grayish ash and flickering glows peered out of it like watchful pink albino eyes.
The silence offered him its eldritch warnings. “Seek your father and your mother, only son,” he heard them say. “We invite you to join us among the dead. How long will you keep your silence?”
“As long as I wish,” he said aloud.
“Wissssh,” echoed back. “Weer-issh …” and became an irregular whining.
A rat?
The puppy far off in the kitchen?
He fiddled with the flashlight. Its light probed the dusty air sending long and shaking diagonal beams like continuous tracer shells into the towering bookshelves. Twisting the flashlight so it shone upward across the ceiling, the tip of the beam became invisible as if its power had exhausted itself in infinity.
He heard his voice say: “I am coming to you, Father, into the workshop of the spirit.”
—spirittt
“Is that you, Hal?”
—lllll
“That you, Francesca?”
—ttttyyy?
He heaved himself out of the leather chair, his movement stirring the old springs. Twang.
—twaaaaanger
and marched toward the door to the workshop of the spirit.
It was unlocked. When he flicked the switch one solitary light came on: a dim light bulb at the end of a cord of fabric-covered wire hanging above his father’s Edwardian mahogany partners’ desk.
There was enough light to see what was there in the secret sanctum but he was gripped by what wasn’t there. The sixteenth-century carved wooden succubus no longer looked down at the Turkish rugs spread across the parquet floor.
Gone also were the yellowed elephant tusks from either side of the fireplace. But the early Winterhalder & Hofmeier UhrenFabrik chiming clock remained and to his delight the mechanism still functioned. He wound it, set the chimes and let it play Westminster on its four deep gongs.
Near the fireplace a white dust sheet covered the Victorian walnut upholstered daybed or chaise longue with a scrolled arm. The centerpiece of the room remained: his father’s imposing desk with its worn red leather surface, and, still in front of it, the matching leather swivel chair. There was something else that had drawn him here again.
The pair of large faded black-and-white photographs that years ago had been displayed on the artist’s easel. The dusty wooden easel was still there.
There was no sign of the pretty smiling oriental woman in the V-necked kimono surrounded by the four men one of whom had seemed to be wearing a military or police uniform.
Gone too were those ledgers, innumerable piles of manuscripts, reports, scattered index cards, sheaves and scraps of paper covered with his father’s notes in the familiar permanent red ink and emerald-green ink underlining. All gone. Presumably dead and buried along with SKOPTSY [скопцы] Christian sect et cetera.
Might they conceivably have been removed and stored in the basement?
He remembered—Second Levels, Rack 5 and that sign or ideogram —the sign that had revealed the file held the key to Sada Abe’s identity and again he felt that fierce attraction to it. Beckoning. Open me. The pleasure he didn’t recognize.
Let me tell you my story. You’ll never forget it. Be my friend. Touch me. Open me. That you may follow my way. Do what I do.
He stood there thinking of his father, mother and Crabtree—knowing he wasn’t supposed to be here.
He heard his voice saying louder: I’ve read your secret in this file before. One day I will marry a woman like you in your kimono.
He remembered the first time he’d set eyes on Sumiko: how intensely he had wanted her. Certain they would be lovers.
Another image like a slide beamed from an old-fashioned projector. Here was the copy of John Collier’s Lilith, and the black eyepiece at the front of the cabinet, now gone. The miniature stage and above it a banner, now no more than an ivory strip engraved: L’INFERNO DI GIOTTO DI BONDONE. The narrow watery bloodshot rats’ eyes, long gone.
He walked to the window and parted the shutters. The snow had turned into a fine misty rain. Good. Tomorrow surely the roads would be opened. Sumiko and Yukio would get through as the thaw set in.
A low whoosh over the lintel of the alcove alerted him. The noise of dripping water followed it, a dull pulsing plink from across the room and he saw water dripping from the light fixture above his father’s desk.
He turned off the light and went out into the hall. Here there were noises of water hitting the floor and a small continuous stream of water was striking the stone staircase.
More of it dribbled from the balustrades of scrolling acanthus.
The leak seemed to be coming from the high ceiling designed to give the impression of a dome.
Approaching the foot of the staircase, his head tilted, he fixed his stare on the dome imagining it might imminently cave in. He had a vision of the ceiling trapping him beneath the rubble.
There was a faint strip of light beyond the top of the staircase. He heard the plinking of the water leak and a noise, the squeak of a rubber sole on stone coming from the direction of the first floor gallery and he heard a low voice: “Let the Light of Your Presence guide us—”
“Francesca?”
“—for in Your Light do we see light.” It wasn’t Francesca’s voice.
Steadying his balance on the handrail, he began to climb the staircase, lowering a foot squarely on each step, waiting in case it squeaked before setting his full weight on it.
At the top of the stairs he paused to stare at the source of the narrow ray of light from the gallery slanting across the floor to his feet.
