Black Mountain

by Venero Armanno

  Venero Armanno is the author of Jumping at the Moon, a short story collection, and many critically acclaimed novels, including The Dirty Beat, Romeo of the Underworld, Firehead, The Volcano and Candle Life. Firehead was shortlisted for the Best Fiction Book Award in the 1999 Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards; The Volcano won the award in 2002. His books have been published in the US, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Holland, Israel and South Korea. Black Mountain is Armanno’s tenth work of fiction. He lives and writes in Brisbane.

  Also by Venero Armanno

  Fiction

  The Dirty Beat

  Candle Life

  The Volcano

  Firehead

  Strange Rain

  My Beautiful Friend

  Romeo of the Underworld

  The Lonely Hunter

  Jumping at the Moon

  Young Adult Fiction

  The Super Adventures of Nic and Naomi

  The Ghost of Deadman’s Beach

  The Ghost of Love Street

  Prologue

  The dream always goes like this: a man in a pale blue shirt and pale blue trousers is standing in a small bare room. A creature with no face is with him. This creature, something like a man, shuffles across the cold hard floor and reaches out to him.

  The way it puts its hand out is clearly not a threat, only a supplication. If the creature had the ability to speak through the small red gash that is its mouth, it looks for all the world as if it would make a plea for help.

  Its palm is unlined and perfectly white. Like its face, it too has no features.

  The creature feels blindly around with its hand until it finds the man’s wrist and pulls it hard to its own throat. The man snatches his hand away, but the thing uses all its strength to press his hand back to its throat, holding the fingers around its delicate windpipe.

  Begging.

  The man’s face is full of horror, which changes to terrible pity as the creature’s eyes fill with tears.

  Then a change comes.

  As the man’s hand is held locked to the creature’s milky throat, human features slowly take shape. A face forms.

  It’s his own. The creature acquires his face.

  And soon the man is looking at himself, is strangling his own image.

  Mark Alter had been having the same dream for as long as he could remember, a scene so vivid and perfectly played out it was as if he was always stumbling into a cinema mid screening, with no information about how he’d got there or what kind of movie was showing. The scene confused him, never failed to wake him with a roaring of blood in his temples, but what was immeasurably worse was that sometimes in his waking hours he would turn a corner and see the creature. Or perhaps out of the corner of his eye, yet in an indefinite space, he’d catch a glimpse of the thing that had been the undercurrent to everything he’d thought or done for more years than he could say.

  He didn’t know what or who it was supposed to be. Mark wondered if it was a monster from deep in his psyche, or – and this was what he’d believed as a child – some brief encounter with a space alien that had seared itself into the depths of his mind and refused to go away. By the age of thirteen that particular idea was pushed aside.

  The creature, however, never was.

  Something started late one evening when he couldn’t sleep and the television reception was particularly poor.

  He’d only just turned twenty-two years of age, a dropout from university with no prospects ahead and no one else to blame for this fact. For the past year he’d been living alone in a rundown rental shack outside a tiny beach town called Prospect Point; the solitude was one of the only things that felt right to him. A very bright student at school, to the pride of the parents who’d adopted him at the age of five, he’d entered law, only to abandon it all just two and a half years later. Study and campus life and other students seemed somehow irrelevant. He moved away, disappointing Joe and Maria Alter, who’d given him their name and hearts. After months of aimless travel and itinerant work, he ended up settling in the quietest and most peaceful area he could imagine.

  In Prospect Point he knew life was passing him by, or had already roared past him, but he also knew that the absence of friends, of a lover, even of a purpose, didn’t seem to mean all that much to him. There were mornings he woke with blank thoughts in his mind; there were other times he opened his eyes thinking, One day I will find myself.

  Find myself?

  It was one of those rare nights when he felt particularly lost, when he wished he had somewhere to go and people to talk to. Outside it was wintry. An ocean storm sent giant waves thundering into shore. Mark could hear the dull reverberations. He wanted to brave the weather, but it was too miserable for him to take one of his long night-time coastline walks. Yet inside the shack every book he had was already digested. The television offered nothing.

  He decided to brave the cold in a different way. He’d ride his bicycle to the local picture house, snuggle up in his heaviest coat, and take in whatever was going.

  It turned out to be a horror movie. A cheap slasher film. The ten or twelve other patrons, all well under the minimum classification age of eighteen years, laughed at the blood and the gore and threw popcorn at the screen whenever young naked bodies were featured. Which was often.

  Mark sat in a back-row corner, alone. Then, unbidden, certainly without any expectation that something like this might happen, a purpose grew in his mind. The idea sharpened. Later, he could hardly sleep for excitement.

  The next day brought sunnier weather. He called in sick at the café where he worked in order to pay his rent, feed himself and buy second-hand books off internet sites, and rode his bicycle to the nearest big town’s library. Even though Edgecliff was thirty kilometres away, the library staff knew him well; he was a regular patron.

  Mark found and withdrew all the ‘How To’ texts they held on screenwriting. There were six. In the following days he absorbed each book as carefully as he could, returning again and again to that small theatre in order to watch whatever movie was showing, and to test out the sorts of things he was learning. He didn’t mind if he saw the same film two or three times; in fact he preferred it.

  Plot, structure, character and theme.

  Dialogue, setting, turning points, climax.

  Mark Alter absorbed those books, all those second- and third-rate films, then on his creaking computer, purchased two years back at a day market for seventy-three dollars, he opened a new document and finally typed his title. The title was the easiest thing of all because it had been with him all his life.

  ‘No-Face.’

  This thing, No-Face, is hidden away in a foetid cell somewhere. It has one hairless arm, a bald and pallid head with tiny tributaries of blue veins tracing beneath the raw scalp, and no facial features at all, except for what could be its mouth. There’s no real possibility of expression in that bland white absence.

  It is dressed in what could have once been a hospital gown. Soiled bandages reveal a stump where the left arm should be; for some reason it’s been hewn away.

  Who would have done this? Why? The dream never supplied the information.

  The man standing alone in the room with the creature is not a friend. Not someone to offer succour. Maybe he’s a trainee doctor of some sort, a novitiate to the sciences. What do his pale blue clothes signify?

  And the story from Mark’s dream, of the white, slim and milky creature dressed in rags, pours out onto his screenplay’s pages.

  The telephone was ringing, a dull burr on the landline he kept only by need o
f his work at the café. He’d never had a mobile telephone, barely used email, and didn’t actually like the computer on his kitchen table. A young woman who’d spent a rare three nights in his bed had called him a luddite on her permanent way out. She’d been right.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘This is Justin Blackmore.’

  Mark Alter’s heart actually skipped a beat. Justin Blackmore was a perennial of film and television, a man who’d directed and produced small screen series and big screen movies over an almost fifty-year career. When Mark had completed the fifth and final draft of his screenplay, ‘No-Face’, a slasher movie about a shape-shifting demon from the Id, set in a small beachside town resembling a cross between Prospect Point and Edgecliff, he’d looked up all the film directories he could find. Discovering a listing for the famous Justin Blackmore and his production company, Blackbird Films, Mark had packaged up his best draft and mailed it to the post box address with a small note: I hope you like my movie. He remembered to include his contact details.

  ‘Is this Mark Alter?’

  ‘Yes it is.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hi . . . Well, uhm, hello, Mr Blackmore.’

  There was no immediate reply. Mark wasn’t sure if he should say something to break the ice. He was wearing a pair of pyjama bottoms and nothing else. His shack was cold but the winter’s day outside was bright and blue. He stood at a dirty, sea- and sand-smudged windowpane and looked at a crooked dead tree, once a flourishing palm, in the backyard.

  ‘You received my script?’ Mark ventured.

  ‘I did,’ the voice replied. There seemed to be an edge to it. ‘And I read your script. That’s why I’m calling.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Tell me something.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How old are you?’

  It was a strange question and Mark couldn’t imagine what it could mean.

  ‘I’m twenty-two.’

  ‘Twenty-two. A youngster. And you’re educated. I can tell that from your writing.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have some sophisticated ideas and quite a sophisticated way of getting them across. Even for a little horror film.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mark repeated, not knowing what else to say.

  ‘Well, I’ve got bad news for you, and an educated young man like yourself should have seen it coming. I’ll allow you a free pass on account of your relatively tender years, and that’s the only reason I’m taking the time to call you. I think one serious and tough warning early in your career might scare you straight. Do you understand?’

  ‘Ye-es,’ Mark said yet again, though now he really had no idea what the man was talking about.

  ‘You mustn’t plagiarise. Ever. Never help yourself to other people’s ideas. It is stealing. There is no lower or more contemptible act in the mind of creative people. I can see that you haven’t completely stolen all his ideas, but this “No-Face” creature, that’s not yours to play with. It has no right to be in this film you’ve put your name to. Disgusting. A disgusting act of thievery. Do you hear me?’

  ‘I think . . . I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding.’

  ‘Really? Cesare Montenero gave you free access to his work?’

  ‘I don’t know who Cesare —’

  ‘And if he did, where is the copyright notice? There isn’t one. There is no agreement, is there?’

  ‘But I want to say—’

  ‘Let me tell you this, young Mark Alter,’ Justin Blackmore spoke, his voice nakedly contemptuous, ‘do not try to squirm your way out of the hole you’ve put yourself in. Do not try to fast talk me. I’ve been around too long and I’ve seen your type come and go. You’re a thief and that’s flat. Now I’m here to tell you that I’ll give you a let-off because it’s early in your career. No other reason. This is a first screenplay I take it? Well, here is your one chance to learn and move on. Hear me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do not do it again. Do not even try to finesse your way out of having been discovered. Consider it a blessing that you were caught by me and not by someone who might have decided to take more punitive action.’

  Mark swallowed hard. He knew there was no way to make this Justin Blackmore believe he was innocent of whatever crime he was supposed to be guilty of.

  ‘What should I do, Mr Blackmore?’

  ‘Good. Good question. Now you’re thinking. The answer is simple. Start afresh. Burn this garbage you’ve written. Delete it from your computer and apply your talent to a worthier project.’

  ‘It’s that bad?’

  ‘Bury it.’

  Mark had to breathe hard. Had to remind himself to breathe.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Or . . . if you sincerely love the source material so much, do the right thing. Go through the right channels. Organise yourself to work on a proper adaptation of the book. Though I’d wager you’d never get permission or the rights. Not an inexperienced kid like you.’

  ‘Rights?’

  ‘Of course. The writer Montenero, or his estate if he’s already dead, would have to sign proper contracts on Black Mountain. Even a novice like you ought to be able to figure that out.’

  His screenplay was delivered back to him in a brown envelope several days later. It had clearly been read. Pages were crumpled, some were torn, and a blue pen slashed innumerable sections in angry strokes. Mark felt ashamed without understanding why he ought to feel ashamed. Plagiarism? When ‘No-Face’ was all about the no-face creature he’d been seeing in his dreams and nightmares, and out of the corner of his own eye?

  As it turned out, the Edgecliff library needed eleven weeks to source a copy of the novel Black Mountain by one Cesare Montenero. The length of the delay was due to the fact that the book had been published five years previously and was now out of print. Second-hand copies were difficult to source; none were for sale through the usual online sites Mark used. He had almost toyed with the idea of contacting Mr Blackmore for his copy.

  In the meantime, Mark did some research. He would have liked to have done more, but very little information seemed to be available. Despite innumerable library and internet searches, Mark Alter could only glean the following information about a writer named Montenero.

  He was Italian, from the region of Sicily.

  He’d published two notable novels in the pre-Second World War period. These were in Italian, of course, and there was no record that they’d ever been translated. From one of the Italian cooks at the café, Mark was able to learn that Montenero’s titles in English would have gone something like God is a Young Man and A Life of Disappearances.

  Two prestigious awards for the first book, nothing for the second. Then zero information after that.

  No more books were listed, no writings of any sort, no details about the writer himself. It was as if the man had looked at the title of his second novel and taken it literally: he’d disappeared from the face of the earth.

  Then, out of nowhere, Black Mountain. Published in English.

  ‘Cesare Montenero’s first novel in more than fifty years,’ announced the publisher’s web page, which had been archived and was no longer active.

  ‘A sensation,’ went their old marketing blurb.

  No sensation at all.

  The book seemed to have garnered few, if any reviews, and sales-wise had sunk like a stone. The publishing house in question, a private company called ‘The Living Press’, had gone out of the business of fiction and non-fiction, and now produced only glossy cookbooks and maps, and the odd large-format coffee table tome about fabulous cities and extraordinary holiday locations.

  It would take Mark Alter some time to understand what he had done that was so wrong.

  And so right.

  He felt a twin burst of drea
d and excitement when the librarian crooked her finger at him and called him over. The book that had ruined his screenplay’s chances, and that had impelled as legendary a figure as Justin Blackmore to call him and accuse him of being a cheat, was held shut with elastic bands. The library call note was still attached. If Mark hadn’t been perspiring from the long bicycle ride he would have now from the sight of the book.

  He forced himself not to look at it until he was home again. He rode fast, his treasure safely held in his backpack, then he showered, dressed in fresh clothes, pulled all the blinds down over the windows, lay in his bed propped up with pillows, and nervously snapped off the elastic bands.

  Maybe Blackmore was wrong. He had to be a man in his seventies, at the very least. Maybe he’d gone soft in the head and was inclined to read things into a novel and a screenplay that simply didn’t exist. Mark’s palms had dampened. He found it hard to understand the line between his own trepidation and anticipation.

  He hoped, really, that this Black Mountain might speak for itself.

  At first glance the book’s cover was a pure, plain black, but turning it in his hands he felt its texturing and looked again. Etched into the dark gloss was the outline of a mountain exhaling a line of smoke. A volcano. For some reason that touched him, touched him somewhere deep. Mark thought about that but couldn’t draw any conclusions. There was only this: he knew Cesare Montenero was an Italian writer, in fact a Sicilian writer, so the volcano was most probably the island of Sicily’s famous Mount Etna.

  How could Justin Blackmore see a connection between that and his screenplay?

  And why did Mark already feel a sort of affinity for the slim volume in his hands?

  He soon learned.

  Black Mountain was a short novel about rebirth. A little fantasy about growing young. It turned on the hope of a second chance. Even, it seemed, of a chance at eternal life.

  In it, an octogenarian living alone in a mansion at the top of a secluded hill is haunted by a figure, a no-face figure. This thing, so spooky and terrifying, also holds a sort of promise: to transform into the old man, to be him, fresh and new. Circumstances, however, take a turn. The creature becomes sick even as the old man himself withers; the disease of one is reflected in the other. All hope seems to fade.