What the fuck is wrong with you?!
[The image is burned completely white—the last thing remaining a hazy human stain. Not where A. was standing.]
[The tubes go off like gunshots.]
[Light and noise recede, leaving behind a puddle of milk and glass and A. lying on the floor, unconscious.]
05:20:00
[Nothing else happens.]
NOVEMBER 24
LETTER
* * *
Axton House
1 Axton Rd.
Point Bless, VA 26969
Dear Aunt Liza,
[…] The doctor came by at 9am, long after the paramedics left. He remained halfway out thru the exam. Dr checked his eyes, & I hadn’t seen them all this time because he’d hardly opened them, but now they’re completely red, the whole white part bloodied & flowing onto the irises & when he began to speak he choked & spurted blood thru his mouth & nose. & dr said we couldn’t keep him on the sofa so we moved him to his bedroom because dr said he seemed blind & needed to be in a room he was familiar with. So he’s back to the damn bedroom & there the dr checked the glass cuts in his soles & all the while he seemed OK, but then while I spoke to the dr outside we heard him scream “Ah, fuck” & he was up like in a seizure, & I had to soothe him down & put him to bed again. & the dr said he’d give him sleeping drugs because he wouldn’t stop rubbing his eyes & the scarlet rim was turning up again & it looks hot as embers under his eyes, & I asked whether he’d dream with the pills & asked if he could have something to inhibit REM, because I remembered the Prometheus letter where they said there are tablets for that, & he said OK but warned me that those pills will just make him calm, not rested, & gave me a prescription, which I’ll get when I post this if he’s better, & meanwhile he fed him a regular hypnotic. I don’t want to leave him alone but this would take ages to explain to the Brodies & Help is very little help now. & I don’t know what else to do but I’m fucking scared so I’m posting this urgent & hope you get in touch before it gets worse.
BEDROOM FRI NOV-24-1995 11:23:04
The angle is not high as in other rooms, suggesting the camera is resting on a piece of furniture, zoomed on the rumpled bed in the far end. A. and NIAMH seem to slumber on it, she over the quilt, he under it.
HELP is lying down on the carpet. Everything’s quiet.
11:24:04
[A. springs up, silence shattered; everyone jumps out of their sleep.]
[He clutches his chest, mouth closed tight, nostrils wolfing down oxygen. Then he checks under his shirt.]
[All this while, Niamh watches him as though she were scared to touch him. When she reaches for him, he flinches at first, then checks that it’s her, then stands on guard, as if waiting for another blow.]
[She grabs her notepad and pencil.]
NIAMH’S NOTEPAD
* * *
—Can I do something?
(He squints.)
—I can’t read.
—CAN I DO SOMETHING?
—Did you call 911?
(Nod.)
—How the silent fuck did you do that?
VIDEO RECORDING
* * *
MUSIC ROOM FRI NOV-24-1995 06:35:50
Morning creeps into the quiet room through the French door shutters.
06:36:44
[NIAMH storms in, jumping over the piano chair, straight to the phone. She presses three buttons. HELP comes galloping after her, while she waits nervously for an answer. At the pressing of the hands-free button, the calling tone is heard; she releases the phone and starts tampering frantically with the voice recorder she’s carrying, always glimpsing toward the door she just came through.]
[Someone answers the phone.]
OPERATOR: Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?
[Niamh is speed-operating the voice recorder.]
Hello?
[She presses a button and places the device near the phone. A.’s recorded voice sounds, a piece of broken Muzak in the background.]
A. (REC): Help. Help, come here!
[Help, called to attention, barks at the recorder.]
OPERATOR: Sir? Sir, can you tell me what your emergency is?
[Niamh just keyed in some command; she presses play again. Help is still barking.]
A. (REC): [In a completely unconnected tone.] Number one Axton Road, Point Bless, Ponopah, two-six-nine-six-nine.
[Help keeps yapping at the device, frantic.]
OPERATOR: Hello? Sir, do you know that making prank calls to nine-one-one is a federal crime?
[Desperate, she clutches her face, fingernails wishing to tear her eyes out … Then she puts those same fingers in her mouth and whistles loudly, “Help!” while Help continues to yap desperately at the phone. She presses some button on the voice recorder, turns up the volume.]
A. (REC): [Fortissimo.] HELP! HELP, COME HERE!
OPERATOR: Jesus … Okay, I’m contacting your local police; this better not be a joke.
[Niamh falls to her knees, released from pathos. Bewildered, Help clambers onto the table, sniffing for a clue to what just happened.]
[Cont’d.]
Point Bless police know us already; they know I mute, so they took it seriously.
Now it’s 3 pm. He been in & out for the last hours; the dreams do wake him up, but the Starnox gets him again in a few seconds. I’m buying Hypnogog now. I also moved the bathroom camera to the bedroom so I can watch him from downstairs.
Please do something, I beg you.
Love,
Niamh
DREAM JOURNAL
* * *
That woman in the poppy field kissing the disassembling flower she’s a ghost too.7
The Chucks are steadied against the wall at the end of the steep roof, and a dead lightning rod lies down below, in the sandy backyard. The camera dismisses it and pans back up to the maze, whose inner walls describe an inverted labyrinth of elevated paths.
VIDEO RECORDING
* * *
BEDROOM FRI NOV-24-1995 16:32:44
A banker’s lamp in the foreground illuminates the shot, whereas twilight in the window on the right contributes little but a splash of purple. NIAMH sits at the table, directly under the electric light, equipped with set triangle and ruler, busy on a drawing modeled after what she sees on the screen of her handheld camera.
In the background, A. is a mere hill in the stormed bedscape.
[Niamh operates the camera, eyes fixed on the screen. She presses play. The sound track is too low to hear, except for a clank at some point. At which Niamh smiles a private smile.]
16:33:01
[The bedscape quakes. Niamh runs over there and reaches A. as he bursts out of the sheets, holding on to her arm.]
[He stares a paranoid sort of stare. His blind hands spider up Niamh’s arm, reaching her shoulder. There he looks up, meeting her half-haired head.]
(He sounds high. His eyes are beyond crimson, but he sees.)
—Do you know what I’d like to buy?
(Shake.)
—A Rubik’s cube. You ever had one?
(Shake.)
—Don’t you think it’d be fun?
(Nod. He relaxes, lies down again.)
—Do I look bad?
—WHY?
—You look at me like I look bad.
—YOU’VE LOOKED BETTER.
—I’m sorry. I want to look good to you. I always try.
(Falls asleep.)
NIAMH’S WORK
* * *
VIDEO RECORDING
* * *
BEDROOM FRI NOV-24-1995 21:43:20
It’s dark, but the door’s been left open and the hallway lights are on. The bed curtain on that side is pulled closed to shield the sleeper from the yellow glow.
21:43:45
[A. wakes up with a snort, hand snatching at his chest as though trying to pry his own heart out. He stares at his clutching hand, whole body throbbing violently.]
[…]
[Slowl
y, his heartbeat steadies.]
[He looks up. Seems to focus on some point at the right side of the camera, by the door to the dressing room.]
A.: [Impatient.] What?!
[No answer. A. keeps staring.]
Get out.
[…]
I SAID GET THE FUCK OUT! YOU HEAR ME?! OUT!
HANDHELD CAMERA
* * *
The smoking room is all mahogany and green and watched by stuffed animal heads over the glowing hearth behind the pool table, littered with large curling sheets of old tracing paper, onto which the same labyrinth design has been penciled over and over again, just as in the one laid on the foreground over a handwritten copy of the ciphered letter on the bureau à gradin that Niamh has turned into her new workstation, lit by the green-shaded banker’s lamp from the bedroom. Her attention is turned to the four small monitors stacked in twos on the VCR, and more specifically to the one monitor showing a man sitting up on a bed, telling somebody to get the fuck out.
And then Niamh turns a dial and the monitor is muted, but the screaming is still heard in the distance, from another room on another floor, far away. And she buries her face in her hands and a sob shakes her diminutive chest, but no sound comes out of it, and her body and clothes tremble with every aftershock of that big sob, tears streaming down her left cheek, her left profile turned to the camera. The bald one.
* * *
7 This entry appears written in an extremely sloppy hand.
NOVEMBER 25
VIDEO RECORDING
* * *
BEDROOM SAT NOV-25-1995 07:07:52
Dawn is slowly corroding the shutters.
07:08:00
[A violent shock blows away the sheets; NIAMH rises in terror, one hand on her chest, the other on her back, breathing as loudly as anything she’s ever done.]
[A. stirs despondently. He barely sits up. Niamh feels her spine, checks under her football shirt. They exchange looks. Her mouth’s still open.]
A.: [Curious.] Did you feel that?
TELEGRAM
* * *
From: Niamh Connell
Point Bless, Ponopah, VA
NEED HELP NOW STOP LAST NIGHT WAS HORRIBLE STOP I AM LOSING HIM STOP FIND A SOLUTION PLEASE!
DREAM JOURNAL
* * *
I’m beyond return. I know this. I can barely see this page; red stains ebb into my field of view, chasing my writing, closing on the word I’m penning. But I close my eyes and I can see the exact shape of the golden Arab letters on the spine of the book the reader is holding before his brown hand loses its grip and the volume drops onto the carpet as his head gently tilts toward the arched window whence the watery music comes. I can’t read Niamh’s lips anymore, but the moment I lie down I see the woman in lingerie at the wheel, shining a soul-melting smile at me after I solve the Rubik’s cube, and I pride myself on such a goddess showing pride in me. I can’t feel Niamh’s warmth anymore, but I feel the redhead’s breath under the blanket gently drying my ice-cold limbs, her hair caressing me to sleep. And I sleep more than I’m awake. I belong more to her than I belong here. Soon Niamh and Axton House will cease to exist, and there will be the Puma shoes falling toward the speck of sand in the ocean, the snowing cities, the poppy field. I’ll be no longer myself. I’ll be the hobo in the park, the surfer in the tempest, the dying reader, the piano student, the tomboy in the redhead’s bed. I’ll be the skeleton playing poker. I’ll be the monster holding the pitchfork.
And the sad truth is, I want to be all those people. I’d sooner die forked a thousand times in that house than wake up to a world without monsters or goddesses. I’d rather play the monster myself.
VIDEO RECORDING
* * *
BEDROOM SAT NOV-25-1995 11:21:58
The bedroom is in twilight. A gleam of sun slips between the shutters. HELP lies at the bed’s foot.
[An ear on Help’s head rises. Then his whole head, turning to the twitching bulk under the sheets.]
TELEGRAM
* * *
From: Aunt Liza
London, United Kingdom
WHAT IS THE CANOPY MADE OF?
VIDEO RECORDING
* * *
BEDROOM SAT NOV-25-1995 11:22:10
[A shock wave sweeps away the bedclothes. HELP sets off, barking away. A. convulses in bed; a powerful, rasping, bleeding scream finally breaks through the block in his throat.]
TELEGRAM
* * *
From: Niamh Connell
Point Bless, Ponopah, VA
BRASS!
VIDEO RECORDING
* * *
BEDROOM SAT NOV-25-1995 11:22:17
[HELP barks frantically, watching A. sit up in a spasm and strive against the elastic band that ties him onto the bed.]
TELEGRAM
* * *
From: Aunt Liza
London, United Kingdom
DESTROY IT NOW.
VIDEO RECORDING
* * *
BEDROOM SAT NOV-25-1995 11:22:24
[The canopy and the whole bed tremble under the last flash inside A.’s brain, the one that makes the elastic band finally snap. Shouting for life, HELP crying for help, A. rolls off the bed, bounces onto his feet, and crashes through the window.]
LETTER
* * *
[…] It was Help who gave the alarm: The fall was too soft. The rainwater closed over me as soon as I crashed through, waking up. Before I could even guess where I was, icy tentacles were clinging to my limbs, injecting lead into my muscles, forbidding any attempt for a stroke.
It took just ten seconds for Niamh to sprint outside, climb over the plastic pool, plunge inside fully clothed, grab my body, and pull my head out of the water. And when she did, the immersion must have washed most of the blood off my eyes, because I could see distinctly the blue walls of the pool and the stone north flank of Axton House and Niamh’s face, atoms away from mine, eyelashes beaded with dew, eyelids in ultrahigh resolution over her closed eyes as we clinched and her frozen purple lips kissed mine out of pure exhaustion.
And then the barking stopped because Help jumped or fell (most likely fell) from the bedroom windowsill. And we had to fish him out.
We ran inside, all soaked, teeth chattering (I didn’t know dogs could chatter their teeth), leaving a trail of swollen floorboards from the foyer to the music room, where we lit a fire, dropped our clothes, and Niamh changed into new ones before popping upstairs for some of mine. (See the advantages of littering a three-story house with random pieces of clothing.)
NIAMH’S NOTEPAD
* * *
(By the fire.)
—Good job, Niamh. Brilliant fucking job.
(Hug.)
—How your eyes?
—I see quite well. How do they look?
—Better than an hour ago.
—Good.
—I telegrammed Aunt Liza—told me to destroy the bed.
—The bed’s not wrong. It’s not meant to be wrong. So what’s up with it?
We inspected the bed closely. We described it to you already: It’s made of carved wood with a brass canopy dressed in salmon silk, big enough to have its own zip code. It took four arms to pull it a few inches off the wall. We removed the sheets, checked the mattress, crawled beneath with a flashlight. There’s nothing wrong with it. Yes, I know you’re skipping forward to the paragraph introduced by an adversative conjunction, so here it goes.
But. Niamh had a second flash of brilliance for the day and brought up the voltmeter the electrician left behind two weeks ago. She scanned the canopy. On touching the brass frame, there was a distinct crackle. We moved the bed, which required titanic strength, and checked the wall behind it. There are no wires visible, but on the left corner we found a disused outlet of sorts, a copper pipe. I think it’s a gas conduit; the house has run on electricity for decades, but the electrician said the plumbing had never been replaced; I guess the gas line wasn’t either. Niamh read the exposed
section of the pipe; it was four or five volts above a hundred and twenty.
—What is right below this room?
—Library?
—But the library has no windows. What’s the window beneath this one?
—Playroom?
The north wing on the second floor is mostly terra incognita. As I said, the library takes up most of this floor and we cut through it to connect the hall stairs in the west with the gallery in the east. The south side is an updated complex of two bedrooms and a bathroom (one of the rooms was Strückner’s). The north side comprises, from the stairs, the smoking room where we keep the CCTV monitors, a nursery or playroom, a small bedroom meant for a nanny, a bigger bedroom for a child or a teenager, and the east gallery again.
Our bedroom must lie above both the nursery and the library. We counted steps to the windows on the third and the second floor to find out. We found some measuring tape and wrote down the distances. We started knocking on the walls, Niamh in the nursery, me in the library, pulling out the scores of books from the immovable shelves that make the perimeter of the room.
The Supernatural Enhancements Page 13
