The House that Jack Built

by Malcolm James

  My heart leapt with joy. Pieces of brown toast cooked to perfection, hash browns with onions, pancakes, and omelettes, yellow but with touches of golden brown on them. White cheese oozed out of the sides and my mouth watered like the Pavlov dog that I was. Jack placed a plate in front of me and deposited several pieces of crispy bacon on it. As I pounced on the casserole and loaded up with plentiful servings of each item, he poured a glass of orange juice, refreshed my coffee and placed a bottle of maple syrup in front of me.

  I devoured my breakfast and revelled as I washed it down with real orange juice and sips of freshly-brewed coffee. I didn’t speak a word the whole time that I ate. Nor did Jack. I consumed and he just watched and hummed. After I finished my second helping, I pushed my plate away and sighed. A warm satisfied sensation caressed my belly.

  As if he read my mind, Jack produced a pack of cigarettes. I lit one and puffed lovingly. I felt almost human again. I smoked two more and drank another cup of coffee before Jack spoke.

  “Better now?” I nodded and smiled as I took the last puff from my smoke before butting it out.

  “Good. Time for the tour.” I peered at him with dismay. This was the moment I’d been dreading. I knew that there was going to be a price to pay for his hospitality. I lamented as I thought about spending the day with Jack, while he explained in exacting detail the circumstances by which he acquired his pieces, and the stories behind them. But I nodded. I had come this far, and to tell him I was tired or just wanted to do something else would have been rude. And it would have undoubtedly put him into a rage. So Jack and I set off on a tour of the house.

  We started in the Blake Solarium. When we entered, I was filled with familiarity. As if I’d been there before.

  It wasn’t really a solarium. The glass walls which reached up to the ceiling and curved into it weren’t the only thing separating this room from the outside. Instead of beautiful natural sunlight pouring in, artificial light shone from a source that separated the glass and the outside walls of the house. It gleamed with a dull blue hue which radiated over the contents of the room with a glowing eeriness that resembled a Halloween Fun House. I raised my eyebrows and pointed at the lighted glass.

  “Electricity?” He nodded and I nodded along with him. Weird.

  But what was even weirder was the room itself. The walls snaked in random patterns and it appeared to have no single shape that I could easily describe. I quickly got over the design of the room however, and instead focused on the décor. Everywhere I looked there were references to William Blake. Several of his paintings adorned the walls. Bloody, dark references to disturbing nightmares which hunted him. And there were roses everywhere: blood-red ones in vases, and loose piles which sat on top of antique dressers. Jack made a point of showing me one of the dressers.

  “That belonged to Blake. It was in the room when he died.” I nodded, and took a deep breath filled with trepidation and concern. In the center of the room – in what seemed to be a shrine of sorts – the bust of William Blake sat atop a pedestal. It was a dark, troubled countenance, and I clenched my jaw as I looked at it.

  Peering around, I noticed several frames hanging on the walls, but they were just pieces of paper. I walked to the nearest one. It was paper, or parchment, framed behind glass. It was covered with a flamboyant scrawl from a powerful hand. Written in a Romantic style that spoke to me and instantly told me who the author was.

  Cruelty has a human heart

  And jealousy a human face,

  Terror the human form divine,

  And secrecy the human dress.

  The human dress is forged iron,

  The human form a fiery forge,

  The human face a furnace seal'd,

  The human heart its hungry gorge.

  I looked at Jack, who smiled with an empowered countenance.

  “Blake?” I pointed toward the frame. I knew the answer. But I began to realize the full scope of what was happening here. It alarmed and caused wonderment at the same time. He smiled and nodded.

  “It is the Blake Solarium. Duh.” I sneered at him and resented myself for asking the question. “They’re all Blakes. His original pennings, that is. There, over there,” he pointed to the one which hung closest to Blake’s head, “that’s the Sick Rose. You like that one, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” I walked over to the frame on the wall and peered at it as a haunting blue light cast its eerie glow. He was right. It was the Sick Rose.

  “Holy.” I watched the flickering light and the mysterious objects which adorned the room. There was a pile of roses laid out on the table beside me. I stroked the petals of one of the roses, only then realizing how fresh and vibrant they were. I scratched my head and looked back at Jack. He just smirked. Illuminated in soft blue light, his head appeared to bob up and down in mid-air. The blackness of his clothes was all but erased from visibility.

  “C’mon, I have so much more to show you.” He gestured toward the door and I slowly followed him, peering behind me at the haunting blue light that permeated the room.

  Jack led me from room to room. Each one was more unique than the last. I saw original manuscripts, forgotten original paintings, obscure personal effects of artists and writers. In one instance, Jack stopped to point out a quill pen that belonged to Shakespeare when he penned the Tempest. He explained that he had purchased it from a private collector in Liverpool for nearly twenty million dollars. Room after room, hallway upon hallway, I saw the works of the greatest artisans, poets, painters, sculptors and thinkers in history.

  But what was most interesting was that, as much as there was an inordinate amount of work by the greatest names known to man, there was even more that had been dead and buried under the obscurity of time. In many cases, he couldn’t even tell me the names of artists. Just the story behind the art. Sometimes it was how the piece was created or discovered. But most of the time it was directly linked to the manner in which he had acquired it.

  For instance, one piece was a vase that had strange carvings in it and frankly, looked quite worthless. Actually, to call it a vase is a deception. It was a tattered old piece of clay pottery that was peppered with chips and cracks. Personally, I thought it was quite ugly. But Jack told me that it was a piece that had been discovered in the ruins of Mesopotamia. Found in the cradle of civilization, this piece had been dated back to 7,000 BC. He was assured by experts that there were few pieces in modern existence that could have been older. It was enough for him to desire it. As I listened, I smiled. He was so animated and passionate about this, and I couldn’t help but be amused. Besides, it kept my mind off Elizabeth.

  “I learned of its existence, and so I worked with the seller for eight months to negotiate a price. Finally, we fixed on one. The fucking prick was an incredible negotiator. God!” Jack became frustrated and irritated while he told me the story of the negotiation. I surmised that he hadn’t gotten the price that he wanted.

  “We finally he closed the deal, but get this. One of the conditions of the sale was that I close the purchase in person, at the seller’s shop in Baghdad. Fuck! Like I have time to fly all over Hell and creation closing purchases. But,” he stroked the item gently as he spoke, “I really wanted it. So I finally agreed to the condition and flew to Baghdad. Actually, it was after we met in Manhattan. You remember Manhattan, don’t you?” I nodded. I would never forget Manhattan.

  “So when I arrived in Baghdad, I checked into the hotel. God, it’s an amazing place, Mal: Baghdad. The history…it goes way beyond anything we’re accustomed to. I mean, here we are, we’ve been here for what? A few hundred years? But they’ve been around for almost 10,000 years! God, it’s incredible.” He must have noticed the irritation which flowed onto my face, for he stopped his wild tangent and continued his story.

  “So I made my way to the seller’s shop. It was a small place in the southern part of the city. But when I got there, holy shit! The place was in total disarray. The door was broken open and everything was turn
ed upside down. Artefacts thrown on the floor, statues were smashed, and carpets were torn and strewn all over the place. It was a mess. I’m standing there in the middle of all this and wondering ‘what the Hell is going on?’” He gestured emphatically with his hands. “I knew that something weird was happening, but I just wanted the vase. I looked for the guy, but no one was there. So I returned to the hotel.” I waited for him to get to the point.

  “Anyway, I get back to the hotel and there are two guys wearing black suits waiting in my room. Iraqi Secret Police. They questioned me for awhile about this guy and got pretty intense with me at one point. Told me that I was trying to acquire a national treasure and that the sentence for trying to remove it from the country was death by beheading.

  “I just smiled and told them I didn’t know what the Hell they were talking about. Pricks. They tossed my room too, but of course they didn’t find anything.” I nodded and felt a chill when he mentioned death by beheading. It hadn’t occurred to me that his obsession could have such dangerous implications. But more importantly, an unwelcome memory of Elizabeth flooded my heart.

  “Not long after they left, I got a call from the seller. He’d been tipped off that the Police were on to him, so he got out of the country. He was in Kuwait. Damn, the trouble I went through to get this.” He patted the artefact and shook his head. Then he snapped back into reality as quickly as he lost it, and we continued the tour.

  Jack showed me much that day. As Four O’clock neared, I was ready for a break. Fortunately, he advised me that he had some business to conduct. He gave me the option of retiring to the study for a drink or getting something to eat in the kitchen. Both options appealed to me, but I hadn’t had lunch, so I told him that I’d start in the kitchen. He nodded and pointed the way for me.

  His directions were complicated. What should have been ‘left, right, left, left’ became ‘veer around this corner and take the branch that bears to the right.’ Finally, I gave up and hoped that my sense of direction would lead me back. He told me that he’d catch up with me later, and I began my trek through the hallways.

  I veered and branched for fifteen minutes. Nothing looked familiar. But then, the house was so unfamiliar, so why would it have? Regardless, I crept along in half-darkness while an unsettling feeling followed me like a faithful puppy. Around every bend there was a new panoply of forbidding shadows and art. I felt like I was being watched, and I wondered what would happen if I got lost. Would Jack find me before I starved to death? Anything was possible in that mausoleum. It was that big.

  I slowed my pace and listened to nothing. There wasn’t a single sound that I could focus on. Even the torches seemed to burn in muted stoicism, and I found myself looking over my shoulder on a frequent basis. Paintings eyed me and statues peered accusingly and I regretted that I hadn’t written down Jack’s directions. There weren’t even any rooms that might have provided temporary sanctuary from those hellish hallways.

  But as I rounded a passage in search of another, the dull gleam of a doorway shot out of the gloom like a stationary beacon in the night.

  When I entered the room, I was greeted by shelves upon shelves of books. They covered every inch of wall space. And it was a big room. It was dimly lit, and when I entered the atmosphere changed. While I hadn’t necessarily noted the temperature in the hallways, I did notice that the air in that room seemed dry and cool. As if it was climate-controlled. That was odd, since there was no door attached to the entrance of the room.

  There were books everywhere, even books under glass in cases on pedestals. The room was bare of furniture, save for an ornate easy chair and a small reading table.

  I walked to one of the display cases and peered into it. The book which sat under glass appeared to be illuminated somehow, but I couldn’t see from where. There were no lights, and while I thought it terribly irresponsible of Jack, the lone light source in the room came from torches adorning the walls. Not a good idea to put fire and so much paper together in the same place.

  It was weathered. Yellowing parchment flaked at the edges and I tried to decipher the ancient writing. It was English, but very old English. Obviously hand-written in a fine script. I couldn’t make out much of what was written in fading ink, but I was able to decipher the flowing signature of Geoffrey Chaucer.

  “My God,” I peered around the room and spoke in a whisper, as if in fear of being heard, “there’s a fortune in this room.” I looked at the torches with trepidation and my eyes traced a path along bookshelves which contained the works of More, Jonson, Shakespeare, Dickens, Shelley, Byron and Scott. And so-on. I rubbed my chin and squinted in the faded light. Where or how he had acquired these books – and how much he paid for them – was anybody’s guess. It was then, as I pondered, that I noticed a newspaper lying on the reading table next to the chair. I walked toward it and sat down.

  It was a copy of the Montreal Gazette. The same edition that still sat on my coffee table in Montreal.

  Trembling, I picked it up and opened it to page three. I was afraid to even look at it again. But what I didn’t see was far more disturbing.

  The article was missing.

  It had been cleanly snipped from the page. Leaving a gaping empty hole where the announcement of her death had been. I peered through the hole and saw flickering light and rows of books behind it.

  I dropped the paper on the floor and shivered, as a cool, dry gust of breath from centuries of great thinkers blew across my face.

  Chapter 58

  This is cat,

  that killed the rat

  I finally found the kitchen, but not without help.

  After several unsuccessful minutes of trying to figure out why Jack had a copy of the Gazette and why the article had been clipped, I realized that I needed food. I stumbled out of the room in a confused state and wandered for another ten minutes before I heard cheerful whistling that seemed to appear out of nowhere.

  There was no Doppler effect. It didn’t fade in from the darkness. It was just suddenly there. And so was Jack. He came out of a passageway and greeted me while I took slow, deliberate breaths. He laughed and patted me on the back, jokingly admonishing me for getting lost. He began to walk again, and I followed him without saying a word. In five minutes we were in the kitchen and I sat on a stool while he procured ready-made sandwiches out of the fridge.

  “Here you go.” I eyed the sandwiches, but I had lost my appetite. I folded my arms and stared at them, craving a cigarette and a drink. Jack cracked open two Mooseheads and placed one in front of me. I peered at the frosty green bottle and decided that I wasn’t doing the beer any good by staring at it. So I picked it up and put the chilled mouth to mine. I took a long drink and swallowed as I plunked the bottle on the counter with a deliberate clink. Jack was in half-sip when he noticed my demeanor.

  “Something wrong?” I didn’t look at him. I just scowled and took another drink.

  “What is it? Jesus. Sometimes you can be such a Mary.” I shot him a look.

  “Where did you get a copy of the Montreal Gazette, Jack?” He sighed and took a sip of beer. He pursed his lips and put one hand in his pocket, as if he were thinking about his answer.

  “When you have as much money as I do, you can get whatever you want.” His words were steady and forceful, but they were carried on a threatening, almost warning tone.

  “BULLSHIT! Stop lying to me! Why did you cut out the article?” He peered down his nose at me and I didn’t like what I saw. Easy, mate. This can only be touched by me. He placed a half-empty beer bottle on the counter beside him and placed both hands in his pockets.

  “You’re not being rational, and I don’t appreciate your tone. Or the implication. Now, are you going to play nice, or is this going to get ugly?” His tone, his manner, his face, his eyes: they all got behind him and stood like henchmen as he looked down at me.

  My heart thumped. I had seen him in a variety of states, most of them unpleasant. But I was alone in a house that was mil
es away from the nearest humanity – at least it felt that way. I hadn’t seen his manservant. And he was more serious than I’d ever seen him before. Dead serious.

  He pursed his lips and cocked his head. As if he was trying to decide how to best approach the situation. Finally, he gave a long sigh, picked his beer up off the counter and walked toward me. He stopped when he stood over me, a mere foot from my face.

  “Look. I know you’ve been through a lot, what with Elizabeth’s death and all. But I’m not your enemy here. And I don’t appreciate the accusations.” I gritted my teeth and grasped my beer bottle with clenching fingers. If I had to, I could use it as a weapon. I looked at him, my glare fading to a sullen gaze.

  “I collect things, Mal. You know that.” He sighed and sat down on the stool next to me.

  “Look, I’d never admit this to anyone, not even you. But you’re not giving me much of a choice. So here it is. I keep a scrapbook.” He took a sip of beer and rolled his eyes in embarrassment. With a confused look, I shook my head from side to side and hunched my shoulders.

  “What?” He nodded.

  “A scrapbook. I’ve been keeping it since Eighth Grade. I think. Look, it’s a journal of sorts. I didn’t want anyone to know because frankly, I prefer not to be thought of as the sentimental type.” I loosened my grip on the bottle and took a drink. The only problem: the bottle was empty. Jack noticed and angled his head toward the fridge. Help yourself.

  I got up slowly, set the bottle on the counter and got myself another. I sipped it and adopted the posture he’d taken moments before. Leaning against the counter with a hand in one pocket. I looked at him but there was no expression on my face. Go on.

  “Anyway. Look, whether you believe it or not, Elizabeth meant something to me once.” I snorted and beer nearly came out of my nose. Fucking liar!

  “You expect me to believe that?” I wiped beer away from my mouth and daubed my hand on my sweater, now soaked with frothing spots. Jack nodded.