Woods

by Finkelstein, Steven

  Such a unique and wonderful cast of characters that was! Such intellect and talent on display, collected together, such that I had never dreamed possible! Such thinkers! The life of the mind and body that I was living was one that I’d never dared hope for. But much as I cared for the other members of our little group, the relationship I shared with Madeline was something special, a once in a lifetime friendship, or once in many lifetimes. For so much of my early life, I had been in such pain. Such torment. My opinion of myself was so low. My self esteem was just what you would expect of someone who had learned, time and again, that he is completely unwanted and alone in the world. It was Madeline that changed all that. It was she that healed me. May the Gods bless that woman! The process did not come about overnight. Even as open as one could not help but feel when they were with her, my demons were such that it took years to dredge up and denounce each of them for the blight on my soul that they were. But she was infinitely patient, and she was always there to listen, and she always had something to say that put it all in perspective. When I was with her, I truly felt that everything would be alright, and my fears were banished, and I could not help but be glad. Her lust for living was contagious. It touched everything and everyone. She was the matriarch of the family, and she owned my heart, always. It was she who taught me how to sew. She was a marvelous seamstress, and she showed me how because she said it would relax me. When the hands are busy, she would say, the mind is clear. And it was true. Whenever I found the shadows close at hand, I would pick up the needles and they would be dispelled. Like those stress balls, I guess you would say. He half chuckled, but his face was sad.

  He was silent, then, and the only sounds were of the knitting needles and the birds outside, or possibly further within the house, Tad thought. It was entirely possible, here. He sat still, making no noise, trusting that the story would continue, and after a time, Stitch went on. Then, things changed. It happened with the arrival of a new addition to out little family. It was Madeline who first introduced him to the rest of us. They met through a mutual acquaintance, someone on the fringe, I think, at one of our performances, but their meeting was no accident. We had built up quite a reputation, at this point. There was no one who could do what it was we did. We were providing a one of a kind product and service that no one else could duplicate, and word of us had spread. He revealed himself to her, but it is my feeling that he had been watching us for some time. Him. Stitch’s face darkened, and the speed of his hands quickened slightly. Click-clack. Click-clack. Remy was his name. Remy Beauchamp. A French national, but he’d traveled and lived all over the globe. He seemed like trouble to me from the first time I met him, but I couldn’t have said how, exactly. He was exceptionally handsome and charming, and his manners and appearance were impeccable. But he was very haughty. Imperious. He was, without a doubt, well educated. He was knowledgeable in any area you’d care to name, even when it came to the most arcane of subjects. It seemed that he had the knowledge of not one but several lifetimes at his disposal. Madeline was obviously smitten with him in a way that she’d never been with anyone else before. It was strange. It seemed that he had a power over her, much the same as the one she held over everyone else, and within weeks of their meeting, the two of them were married. That in and of itself was strange to me, as prior to that, Madeline had expressed to me that she thought of marriage as a decidedly foolish and pointless endeavor. But he wished it, and so it came to be. She could not refuse him anything.

  He became a member of our collective, and things began to change. Gradually, the dynamic was altered. I was suspicious of him, and extremely jealous, I admit, but for Madeline’s sake, I kept the peace. We still performed, and I still held my position, providing security and peace of mind for the group when we traveled, but now Remy came along with us. At first, he was content to merely observe. When we discussed our projects, developing new ideas, he took part in the process enthusiastically. But his suggestions, when they came, were not to my liking. They made me nervous. It became clear he thought that what we had accomplished was quaint, charming enough in its own way, but amateurish. There were other elements that he wanted to add. Not just to the performances, but to our daily lives. And he was incredibly persuasive. It was partially his way of speaking; he had a silver tongue, and to say that his powers of persuasion were adept would be an understatement. But it was more than that; it almost seemed as though, by doing what he said, you felt somehow better about yourself. You felt that you were doing the right thing. Conversely, if you disobeyed him, not only did you run the risk of making him cross, and aggravating his temper, which was unusually sharp, always lurking, as it were, just below the surface, but it also felt like you were being neglectful of some dutythat you had. It was almost unthinkable. The very idea of not doing what he asked seemed ludicrous, even if you were radically opposed to it. It made talking to him incredibly difficult. You had to go into every conversation mentally ready, if it was your intention to oppose him. Otherwise you would find him getting his own way before you had even realized what was happening.

  As for the nature of the things he wanted to incorporate, I will attempt to explain them as best I can, but it isn’t easy. There are certain things you have already seen, and experienced, at Decadence. Were that not the case, I wouldn’t even tell you what I’m about to. But you’ve already seen much, and if you’re to understand everything, this is a part of the story that I can’t rightly omit. I’ve never been fond of the term magic. It brings about the wrong connotations, especially in this day and age. I don’t think that accurately describes the elements that Remy was in touch with, that, indeed, he was in league with. I do not, nor did I ever think of them as being wrong, or unclean, and certainly not unholy, or anything as foolish as that. That sort of idea is just closed minded ignorance talking, and at that point in my life I had long since reached a point of open-mindedness when it came to nearly everything, or so I thought. After all, look at the profession that I was in! But still, I had never experienced anything like the world that Remy revealed, and neither had any of the rest of us.

  Remy never described what he did as magic. That word never touched his lips. He spoke of it as “connecting with and delighting in the natural,” and for him, it was a joyous act. It all began in ritual and rite. He was an herbalist, and he was adamant about the power of leaves, flowers, and other naturally occurring flora for the opening of doors and the touching of other places; also by sacrifices and offerings, many of which, to be effective, had to be enacted according to the changing of the seasons and the phases of the moon. Other realms existed, he said, and they were always close at hand. If you knew how, you could draw on them, and they could grant you powers that could not be gained by any other means. What I always wondered, of course, was why these powers were needed. Of what use were they for us? His answer was that things that could not otherwise be explained, the questions of our own creation, and the forms we take before we exist as we are, and what happens to us after we die, can all be answered in such a way. I suppose there was a certain kind of sense in it, if you were a person who was curious about such things. But personally, those weren’t questions that I was so keen on having answered. I was content with who I was and where I was. I had found all the answers that I needed. But I was in the minority. Many of the others were fascinated by the rewards that were offered by subscribing to Remy’s philosophy. And so they were willing to go along with him, and against my better judgment, and most especially for Madeline’s sake, so was I.

  You could safely say that Remy’s way of life was all encompassing. We took part in rituals at the opening and closing of every day, imbibed concoctions that he produced, and took part in complicated guided meditation exercises while under their influence. I was skeptical of his claims, at first. Even with all that I had seen in my life, it seemed too outlandish. But soon enough I came to believe. Remy’s knowledge of the occult was just as vast as in all other matters, for he had traveled tirelessly for many years,
spending time in some of the most remote and dangerous parts of the world. He’d gone abroad as a young man with the expressed purpose of seeking out the greatest shamans, mystics, and witchdoctors and studying under them. He had separated fact from fiction, adding to his skills, and he had come up with his own ideology at last. We were to be his disciples. And with Madeline in his thrall, it would all come to be as he desired.

  Despite my misgivings, there was much that I learned from him. There was a fascination that all the others felt that even I was not wholly immune to. Not only with Remy himself, as charismatic and enigmatic as he was, but also with what we were being taught. It was a sort of modified witchcraft, employing select elements of many cultures’ sacred teachings. It was yet another taboo that we were breaking, very much against the ways of popularly accepted societal practices, and that was something that, as I’ve explained, I always felt good about and was inclined to take part in and promote. The rituals were sexual in nature too, not so far removed from our previous way of doing things, and like our old ways, it all seemed celebratory, so it struck me as harmless enough, for a time. Under Remy’s tutelage, I did indeed see things that I had never thought to see, and I came to believe in the existence of the other realms that he had touted. It was, indeed, possible to touch them, and I felt privileged to do so. It felt like I was a member of a special club, much like it had been when I’d been inducted into the life of the sexual performance artist by Madeline. But this was something rarer than that, because no one else was even aware of the presence of these other worlds that existed apart from our own, though they were always so close by. To have that knowledge was enough to make one giddy. I could even begin to understand a little of Remy’s superior attitude. He had grown beyond what many believed possible. But what I didn’t realize at first, and what became frighteningly evident afterward, was that Remy’s ultimate goal was not exploration, but domination.

  There were still details of the whole business that bothered me, not the least of which was his treatment of Madeline. With him, she was less than what she had been. No longer when I looked at her did I see the freedom that I once had. She only had eyes for him, and she was subdued, subservient. She was like the flame of a candle placed behind a screen. You can see it burning, but it is not as bright as it was. And besides that, I knew that as much as Remy was teaching the group, there was much that he held back. I wasn’t sure entirely what he was capable of. I didn’t know the limits of his powers. I worried sometimes that maybe there wereno limits. What else was in his back of tricks? What else did he keep concealed?

  Soon enough, I found out. He gradually began to introduce new elements to our performances. He wanted them to have a darker, more sinister edge to them. They had never been about that, before. Countercultural and as far removed from accepted societal practice as they had been, there had always been a lighthearted edge to them. They had been, first and foremost, entertainment, designed to enlighten, to titillate and amuse, to open the eyes. To stimulate. Now they became about something else. He wanted to incorporate what I think had been his primary motivations all along. For this was a man who wanted power; that was what he’d been after from the beginning. It was what had led him to travel and search, to pick over the religions and the cultures of the world, to take the knowledge and add it to his collection. He feigned being humble, a student trying to reach enlightenment, when he had evil intentions in his mind the while time.

  Not that he told me any of this, of course. I was able to perceive what the other members of the group no longer wanted to, and through his boasting I was gradually able to piece together some of his past. I knew that things were going wrong, definitely wrong, because the love in the group, the genuine compassion among us that I had so cherished, had begun to spoil. Like a piece of fruit left out in the sun, it had started to fester. Different contingents began to form, where before, unity had been our strongest feature. Everyone was trying to curry favor with him, because they realized, like I had, that there was much he wasn’t teaching, that he retained for himself, and once he’d started us on the path, they all wanted more. Priorities had changed. There was a mean spiritedness among us that had never existed before. That was how it was that after a time he was able to make us do things that at first we would have denounced, had he even suggested them. He’d waited until his spell was cast, and by then it was too late.

  The rituals became focused on darkness, on pain and death. He said that we were moving into new territory where new truths would be revealed. He claimed that in order to progress further, we would have to be willing to make sacrifices, literally. At pivotal points in the ceremonies the lives of animals would be taken, sometimes in slow, obviously excruciating ways. For other rituals bloodletting was required by the participants, and torture, physical torture, that he referred to as “mortification of the flesh.” He said that the doors that could be opened and what could be accomplished through physical suffering could not be attained any other way. He said that only through pain and humiliation could the level of mental clarity be reached that was required to reach the loftier plateaus that were to come.

  I didn’t want to know what it was all leading to. Whatever new “levels” or “truths” could be revealed by what we were doing, I wanted no part of it. Of that much I was certain. I had gone along up to a certain point because I had sensed, deep down, that there was no harm in what we were doing. But we came to a critical juncture, where I sensed, intuitively, that no more good could come of going further, but only evil. And I was sure that Remy knew that, and the fact that he was still going forward convinced me, beyond any further doubt, of just the sort of person he was. He enjoyed inflicting pain, and killing for its own sake. The joy that he got from it was unmistakable. He was a true sadist, and it seemed that nothing pleased him more than the idea of inflicting pain for what he perceived to be a higher cause. It is often the case with such people. They like to believe that there is some high and lofty purpose to what they are doing. It gives then carte blanche to do as they will.

  I stopped participating in his daily exercises that were becoming rapidly more horrific, and I begged others in the group to do the same. I appealed to the members that had been the most objective in the beginning, and the ones with whom I had shared the deepest bonds of mutual respect, love, and friendship. But talking to them was useless. Those that took part in the new practices that Remy was introducing were becoming swiftly changed. Like him, they were also growing cruel and sadistic. I think it is one of the most sickening aspects of human nature that when a process like this starts, it is not long before we have begun to delight in it. Think of the Crusades, and the tortures that were there inflicted in the name of religious conversion, or the Salem witch trials. They were convenient excuses, and this was the same.

  Things went on like this for some time. My protests were largely ignored; in truth, I was largely ignored. The atmosphere that I had come to love had disappeared, replaced by a constant state of worry and apprehension. I was miserable and frightened. All the good that Madeline had done for me, being my source of comfort and delight, a focal point where there had never been one before, that was being unraveled. I began to revert to what I’d been before, a creature without hope or purpose. But this was worse, because before I’d had no one, so I had no memory of better times, whereas now the very people with whom I had shared the happiest times of my life were still around me, but were becoming more and more terribly twisted and changed.

  Worst of all were the changes in my beloved Madeline, for she had become Remy’s special project. As his wife, I had a sense that he was teaching her his most closely guarded secrets. The spells that the others most coveted he was showing to her alone, and she was changed most of all. Where before, she had been the light that others longed to be near, now she burned all the brighter, but it was with a devilish and diabolical flame. It broke my heart to see what she was becoming. She had grown far lovelier than she’d ever been before. Her smile spoke of the many
new secrets she possessed, that, despite how repulsed it made me feel, I could not help but want to share when I looked at her, for my love was just as great as it had ever been.

  Stitch’s voice was changed, when he spoke again, and Tad could hear all the bitterness that the long years had not assuaged. I am ashamed of what happened then, and I will always be ashamed. It was because of that love for her that I was at last brought back into the fold, shall we say. Where the others took no notice of me anymore, leaving me to my fevered sewing in dark corners, she sought me out and caressed me and whispered to me tender words that I longed to hear, and I could not resist her. Or perhaps I simply didn’t want to. I would have done anything for her love. I began to take part again, and I was welcomed back. I will not speak of all that we did. I now knew perversion, and I am yet more shamed to say that I began to enjoy it. The bitterness and anger that had once existed in me, when I had roamed the streets alone and uncared for, and the feeling that what we did in this life didn’t matter, translated over to a savage joy at the atrocities that we committed. He looked up from his work. The birds had gone silent outside, and when he spoke, his voice trembled. There are some things in this world that are wrong, my lad. No matter how you dress them up, and no matter how much you try to sweeten or sanitize them, when they are happening, you will know them in your heart for what they are. There is no mistaking them. And perhaps, though this was many years ago, and I like to think I have done penance enough for what took place, there will be no forgiveness for me, or for any of the others that still live. He gave a long, shuddering sigh, and after a time, he went on.