Gathered Dust and Others

by W. H. Pugmire

  She held that hand to the full moon, then offered a ringed finger to the man before her. Tenderly, he moved the scarab ring from her claw and touched it to his lips, then pulled it onto his finger.

  I followed him as he rose and walked away, strolling to an alley between what looked like two abandoned factories. Leaning against the old brick of one building, he looked at his new ring for a little while, then reached into a pocket and produced a cigarette. “You look a bit dashed, dear boy,” he informed me. “You are like so many youngsters I have known, who profess a romantic and aesthetic appreciation of death, but who become depressed at the idea of their own extinction. I am guessing that that is the origin of your long face and sober expression. But look around you, at this man-made world. How wonderful it will be to escape it, to lie undisturbed in our porphyry tombs, couched in quietude.”

  “If death is the absolute end . . .”

  “Is that what’s bothering you? Yes, the idea of life after death is depressing. What could be more damnable than eternal life? But I don’t believe in anything beyond the grave, and that is why death’s imagery and symbolism is of such comfort. Come, let us walk into this alley and escape the moon.”

  I had expected, as we entered the alleyway, to be assaulted by the stench of hobo piss, but the only scent that assailed my nostrils was the odor of my companion’s exotic cigarette. I watched as the smoke he emitted sailed upward, out of semi-darkness and into dim moonlight, as from the area we had but just vacated there came the sound of low and distant singing, a sound that, queerly, did not seem to be for us but rather an offering to unknown gods.

  We slowly walked between what seemed to be very old brick factories, and I was caught by a sense of isolation that I had never known before. The place seemed unwholesomely lonely. Moonlight filtered down to illuminate one slender portion of the alley, shining on a strange lump of what turned out to be discarded clothing. I stepped closer so to examine the bundle of garments and then reached for a shard of shattered wine glass that littered the ground. Rising, I held the shard to moonlight, admiring how its amber surface caught the dead and distant light. And that was when I noticed the writing on the wall.

  “What the devil...?” Phillippe whispered, gazing at the graffiti. “Good Jesu, it looks like some kind of outlandish foreign alphabet, until you make out the figure in the carpet, if I may be allowed a reference to my favorite author. Look, don’t you see it, that circle there, it could be a head heavily bowed with the suffering of the world. And those outstretched squiggles—how similar to that other thing we saw in the gallery tonight. But to find it in this desolate place ...”

  I watched as he walked to it and placed a hand upon its surface. Hypnotically, I moved just behind him, listening to his heavy breathing as he sucked in one final puff on his fag and then flicked the butt away. I felt my face flush with outrage; for this seemed a holy place, a sacred ground, and for him to litter it with such nonchalance filled me with sudden fury.

  “Look,” he whispered, “you can just make it out in this remarkable half-light: a face of some kind, there, hideously stretched and distorted, yet wearing still an expression of bewildered fear and torment. It creeps my flesh, Russell. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Turning to face me, he heavily leaned against the pattern on the wall, raising his face to the iris-blue sky of early twilight, lifting his arms until he looked like some well-fed parody of Crucifixion.

  I leaned toward him and kissed his mouth. “Let me complete the picture,” I whispered, then brought the shard of glass to one of his hands, over which I quickly ran the edge of broken glass. He hissed in surprise and pain, and then he smiled and called me a perverse child, leaning to me so as to touch his lips once more to mine. I evaded his kiss and slowly ran the dirty shard over the back of his other hand. Flesh parted, and his mortal liquid dripped onto the pattern on the wall.

  I knelt before him and brought my prayerful hands together, those hands that were slightly stained by the residue of blood that smeared the shard of glass I held. He foolishly smiled at me, basking in what he took to be my adoration. I could see from his smug smile that to be worshipped was a thing he felt worthy of. But it was not Phillippe Amarinth that I so piously venerated, but rather that pattern on the wall, that outré graffiti that began to subtly ripple and expand. He, the vain fellow, could not see it with his back to the wall, how his blood had not spilled onto the ground but rather was absorbed by the alien substance that hungrily moved behind my companion.

  I watched, entranced, as Phillippe suddenly frowned, as he finally turned to look at his hand, that pale white glove of flesh that withered and grew flat, that conjoined with the moving pattern it had pressed against. I watched as the scarab ring fell from the changing flesh, landing with a dull thud onto the bundle of discarded clothing. I watched his wonderful expression of bewildered fear as a cloud of mauve mist began to issue from the moving thing, that thing that sucked the fellow’s flesh inexorably into it. I watched as they rose together along the wall, flowed along the wall so as to reach a place of bright moonlight, and I smiled at the almost clownish way that Phillippe’s clothing fell as a heap onto the alleyway.

  They moved, the alien thing and its new victim, and still I could see a semblance of my friend’s face, flattened and stretched, with lunar beams burning in what remained of eyes. Finally, I lowered my gaze, reached for the scarab ring, and slipped it onto a bloodstained hand.

  From somewhere in the distance, a madwoman raised her voice in eerie song.

  Depths of Dreams and Madness

  I.

  “Open your eyes, Simon. I need to capture their allure.”

  Simon Gregory Williams stirred in his chair, opened his eyes and frowned at the fellow who sat before him. The artist gazed with keen interest at Simon’s face, and then he touched brush to canvas and continued working his exceptional art. Simon, a little bored, pressed his lips together and sighed a strange melody that stirred the particles that drifted, barely discernable, in the candlelit air. The artist stopped working for a moment so as to watch those minute specs that floated all around them and saw how they caught the candlelight and shimmered with curious shades of green and gold and violet; and this reminded him of similar flecks of color that shimmered in the silver eyes of his host.

  “Why have you stopped working?” The beast’s frown had deepened. “Do you grow fatigued? Have you need to stretch your human limbs?”

  “I was merely listening to your tune.”

  Simon smiled. “A curious little ditty, is it not? I like the way it stirs the chemistry of earthly elements. Observe.” Reaching into an inside pocket of his jacket, he produced a thin black flute, which he pressed to his lips and began to play, performing once more the air he had whistled. Now the sound was bold and wove around them, and the artist shivered as he watched the way the candle’s flame darkened and expanded, at the way the shadows in the room began to merge and bend. He watched one rising patch of shadow that shaped itself before him as a bestial thing that opened wide its jaws, and he dropped his brush as that shadow-snout heaved a spectral howl. “Amusing, isn’t it?”

  The mortal bent to retrieve his brush. “It’s a curious art, certainly.”

  Simon shrugged. “An art nonetheless. I summon shadows, as you do with you palette.”

  “I summon actuality, Simon – without its mask. I’m a realist. I summon up the past, a thing that the present folk of 1926 don’t want to think about. They’re all afraid of the past, yet they don’t know why.”

  “They love the sparkle of their neoteric toys. Just as you love what you fancy are the shadows of the past; but yours is merely the paltry human past, a negligible thing. There are far elder things than the ghouls you bring to life, again and again. What a curious idée fixe, and how it dominates your vision.”

  “I have no vision or philosophy as an artist. As I just told you, I’m a realist – I paint what I see, the things I locate.”

  “And give to them your quee
r interpretation. That is the secret of your art.”

  “It’s a queer old world, Simon. My secret, as you call it, comes from knowing where to look for inspiration. I dig into the depths of nature and find her hidden gems of horror. I capture the potency of unclean things unearthed, but I allow them to keep much of their mystique. I show a little, and suggest a lot.”

  “Nonsense, there is far more than suggestion in that delightful painting you’ve named ‘The Lesson,’ wherein a child is taught to feast with fiends. It’s remarkably blunt, that one. And it shews another of your manias – the idea of the changeling.”

  The artist’s expression altered as his eyes seemed to look inward, and Simon noticed how both face and eyes had darkened. “It’s an interesting idea, the notion of secret exchange, of a thing not quite human being raised among common folk. When would such a child begin to suspect her alien nature, and what would trigger such suspicion? It might be dreams of sunken things, or memories of unnatural hungers. It might be something secretly revealed in the reflection on a mirror. There would be weird instincts that guide the misfit to the hidden spaces of the world, the realms of shadow that may prove illuminating. There may be talents that are expressed in such a manner that, in time, those who were comrades fade away in fear. For it wouldn’t be a quality that one can hide forever from the world. People would begin to suspect. There must be a kind of ancestral connection between the human and the Other, an aspect that eventually arouses suspicion.”

  “Yes,” Simon responded. “And such mistrust can lead to crimes against the Other, as your Salem ancestor discovered when they swung her on Gallows Hill with Cotton Mather looking on. They murdered her because of her books, you told me.”

  “Most of which they burned. But some few were hidden well, and they were not destroyed. I’ve brought one of them with me, to give you as a gift.”

  The beast’s eyes sparkled. “Indeed?” He watched as the artist reached down to the satchel on the floor next to his chair, out of which he pulled an oblong object that was wrapped in purple silk. Simon’s nostrils quivered at the scent of ancient alchemy. He watched as the silk was removed, and then he knew instantly what the other held. “Ah yes, the thing of legend. I knew of the vague rumor that credited the preservation of a sixteenth-century Greek text to a clan of Salem witches. ‘Tis well preserved. Have you read it?”

  “I’ve looked it over. I haven’t inherited an interest in magick. Knowing of your obsession, I thought to give you this so that you can add it to your pile in the tower. You look satisfied.”

  “I am more than satisfied, dear Pickman. I didn’t hope that it had survived. There was a curious burning of a certain Salem man’s library, one that contained the Greek translation of Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople. There are far more translations of Al Azif than has been alleged by so-called experts, but they are often incomplete or incompetent. The original Arabic text has been forever lost, alas. I’ve tried to commune with the shade of its author, but every trace of his psyche has been sipped into the void by the devils he raised up. This is a wonderful gift, and I thank you. Are we finished for the night?”

  The artist grinned – his friend was anxious to investigate his treasure. “I suppose so,” he replied as he stood and stretched. “It’s nearly done.”

  Simon rose, book in hand, and went to look at the painted image. “Ah, excellent. Faces are your forte, absolutely. You have captured to perfection my diabolic nature.”

  “It’s not difficult to depict something so evident,” the artist chuckled. “You interest me greatly, you know – I find your nature intriguing.”

  At this the beast laughed outloud. “I sensed your fascination when I attended your last show in Boston. What a spectacle that was! How your canvases outraged the unimaginative rabble. I think you lost your final patron because of that exhibition – although you still receive a trivial imbursement from your poor father. Or do you? How stalwart he stood, at that shocking presentation of some of your most powerful work, knowing full well the scandal you had scored. That show was a kind of suicide, and I greatly admired your grim audacity. I knew at once that you would be the ideal artist to paint my portrait, and thus I offered you that outlandish sum and brought you here. But it was not simply the smell of capital that caught your interest – you were immediately captivated by my face. Unlike others of my kind, I do not deign to disguise my nature while traversing outside Sesqua Valley. I delight in the displeasure that my features arouse. They certainly stimulated you, and I know why – you think that I fit in with your idea of the changeling, your rich obsession. You are awestruck by the link between that which is human and that which is Other. This link is your continual artistic motif. I recognized it at once when first I beheld one of your canvases. I was certain that in finding you I had found the fellow who could paint me as I am. This canvas proves me correct. It’s absolutely accurate.”

  Simon squinted his eyes as he continued. “But you have captivated as well. You are so interesting. I’ve seen photos of you, from earlier exhibitions, in newspapers and such, and I find it intriguing how you have altered. How full of hint, the way you’re beginning to resemble your work, like an interesting ‘take’ on Wilde’s witticism about nature aping art. Your flesh has darkened, and its very texture has altered so as to bear a resemblance to the hide of your ghouls. Your features have transformed – your mouth is wider than is natural, your teeth more square. Your nose has flattened and expanded. And your jade eyes – were they not brown for most of your life? And your odor. . .” Simon’s nostrils flared as he tilted nearer to the artist and inhaled. “You reek of the debris of tombs, of cemetery sod. And not only this – your dreams have been infected, as I discovered when you took your little nap. A detritus of nightmare clings to your psyche, and tatters of lurid visions cling to your little brain. You have wallowed in pits of airy sewage and brought its offal with you to this mortal clime. I smell it absolutely, this rot of dreaming. It is an art some of us possess, to enter human dreaming and coax its course. In dream you have tried to ascertain your secrecy of origin. You try to stir memory, but all you really rouse are nebulous shadows that may have linkage to your past.”

  “You may be right,” the artist whispered. “My favorite place on earth is Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, in Boston. There are shadows in the North End that are like none others – an elder darkness. I have a private studio there, where I keep the canvases on which I’ve set my fancy free.” Grimly, he laughed. “God, if those fools thought my last show was scandalous – they’ve no idea! It is there, in that sequestered studio, where I feel most at home. It’s there that I smell most forcibly the past, in all its peculiar splendor. I let the shadow of old time coat my eyes and churn my brain. I let it influence my work, yet subtly. People rarely notice those little touches, they’re too fixated on the faces of my fiends and the ancestral recall thus aroused. But they’re there – behind the devilish portraits: the spectres of a dead and buried age, revealed in blurred images of brick edifices, old stone, decayed woodwork, another era that I artistically evoke. A potent past. The past, the past – it’s all there is!”

  “There are, however, other evocations – beyond dimensional time. And there are a myriad of dreams. I sensed other visions churning in your skull – dreams of alien landscape and one who awaits you within strange shadow.” He looked lovingly at the book he held. “This book is a connotation of the potency of dreaming.”

  “And to such things I now leave you, Simon. My work here is finished for the nonce. Sweet dreams, sir.”

  Simon opened the book and ran tapered fingers across one page. “No, no,” he whispered, “I never dream.” But his words went unheeded, for he was alone in his little room.

  II.

  (From the Journal of Richard Upton Pickman)

  I returned to my spacious room above the curio shop and sat in fabulous darkness where I brooded on my plight. The situation at home had become precarious, with even my father refusing to see me in t
he end. I suppose he fancied that I had become enslaved by narcotics and that they had altered my very being. He was a fool not to realize the facts – for he had always treated me like I was something strange and unwanted, and this suggested that he knew or suspected something about my origin, my smuggle into his household. We had had one final fight about my mother – I demanded to be told about her, about why she had vanished when I was a boy. I knew instinctively that she had held the key to my mystery of hatching into this hateful world. She has visited me, often, in my queerest dreams, and with each visit she looked a little altered. Often she was accompanied by two silent creatures, winged things with flesh as black as midnight, fiends without faces. The curious thing was that when I looked into the mirror upon awakening, I saw that my mug was changing in a way that matched my mother’s alteration in my dreams. I am now much distorted. Just now, returning from Simon’s hovel in the woods, I noticed that I can no long walk like I used to, and I can’t stand erect. I slump forward, and something about my pelvis has so altered that I lope in a way that isn’t natural. Lately I’ve noticed the alteration of my hands, and this has really displeased me, because I’m afraid it will affect the way I paint; for my mitts have enlarged, and my nails are strong and square. No matter, I can still hold a brush as well as ever, and my work on Simon’s portrait is nearly done. As is this final work that I am completing in this room – this portrait of the artist as a fiend, this artistic investigation of what has become my countenance. This place is cozy, and I like that it still has an acetylene gas outfit as its light source rather than modern electricity – just like my studio in the North End. I brought one of my own lanterns from the studio, so I am with familiar things that help give me a sense of being home.