by Edward Lee
“If’n yew’re shuh,” he said, “then I’ll have ya back at the cabin in no time.”
Hazel felt cosseted in relief now. But then— “Oh, wait a minute. I’m filthy! I don’t want Sonia to see me like this; she’s pregnant and it would definitely distress her. Is there a motel around? I need a shower really bad.”
“Keziah Mason’s lodge is full up, I’m pretty shuh, but yew’re more’n welcome to get washed up at my trailer.”
“Thank you, Horace. You’re a godsend.”
Only minutes later she was walking awkwardly into a modest mobile home wrung with wind-chimes; her hand kept the blanket wrapped about herself.
Horace carried her things in behind her. “En’t much but it’s home.”
“It’s very well-appointed,” Hazel said of the interior. It didn’t look trailerish at all but cozy. Plush couch and carpet, dark walls, framed pictures.
“Right in heer,” he said and opened a narrow door. He handed her a towel. When she took it, she lost her grasp on the wrap and it fell partway open, revealing her furred pubis, her belly and one breast.
Horace immediately turned away.
“Ooops,” Hazel said.
“I’ll be in heer if’n ya need anything.”
“Thanks.”
The bathroom was a tiny compartment but to Hazel, just then, it couldn’t have been more luxurious. She felt enslimed by filth—indeed, by evil— and she needed desperately to wash off all the unmentionable grime. She imagined that she’d been dragged bare-assed by devils through a shit-trench in Hell. The scalding water in the telephone-booth-sized stall made her bristle; she moaned in delight as the layers of sweat, dirt, and urine were sloughed away. Now that she’d been removed from the danger, she grew more aware of the toll her body had taken, most especially her vagina. It ached from the horrendous insult paid to it, and when Hazel thought most objectively about exactly what had happened, she cringed. A foot. A big dirty redneck FOOT! She lathered her pubis up in a great poof of suds, rinsed it off, then relathered but still felt filthy. She wished for a douche bottle full of Listerine; she wished she could hook a hose to the shower nozzle and flush herself out like a radiator. She had to settle for inserting the bar of soap into her vaginal inlet, popping it out, then working her fingers in.
Once dried off and re-dressed, she limped back to the front room. Now her sex throbbed in a steady ache. She heard a strange swooshing sound that wavered in and out, then found Horace sitting at a potter’s wheel in a smaller room off to the side. His foot pumped a pedal which spun the wheel as his hands expertly molded a curvaceous vase out of wet clay. A kiln sat in the corner. From pegs on the wall hung an array of knives, styluses, and other clay-working tools, while shelves opposite housed multitudes of finished products: bowls, flower pots, tubular wind chimes, paperweights shaped like swans, butterflies, etc.
“You’re quite a craftsman,” Hazel complimented of the wares.
“I’m a potter,” Horace said without looking up. He pumped the pedal. “I make mainly wind-chimes, and regional knickknacks fer tourists. Lotta my stuff’s for sale at the Pickman’s Curiosity Shoppe on Main Street. Yew’n yer friend might wanna stop by’n take a look.”
“We will,” Hazel promised, gazing around at the all the displayed objects. “So this is your main occupation, and you work at the tavern on the side?”
Horace laughed under his breath. “More like the other way ‘raound. But t’ween this’n my job at the tavern I’se can pay the bills a right easy.”
Hazel didn’t hear the last of his words, for something on the top shelf snagged her eye. She reached up, took it down.
It was an intricate and very finely crafted clay box, about five inches long, four wide, and four high. Slightly lop-sided, its angles slightly off, its sides slightly unparallel. Just like the box at the cabin, only clay instead of metal... The same bizarre glyphics adorned its sides and lid: series of v’s,<‘s,^’s, and >’s, interspersed irregularly by ~’s. She felt sure that its dimensions were identical to the box at the cabin. The only difference other than its composition was an absence of the curious bas-reliefs on the sides and center of the lid: the unsettling figures. After a lengthened surveillance, too, the glyphs seemed varied in some way, or perhaps more plentiful than on the body of the cabin box.
“There’s a box very similar to this at the cabin.”
“Metal, goldish color, right?” Horace asked.
“Why, yes.”
“That was the model I used to make the template for this.” Horace pointed to the box in her hand. “See, a while back, Professor Wilmarth brought that gold box over. He said it was very old, from Egypt’re some sech place. And he wanted me to duplicate it, said the angles hadda be exact, and said he’d pay me five hunnert dollars for a prototype. Said if I did a good job he’d pay a tidy sum more for a whole bunch of ‘em—thirty-two more, he said.”
Hazel stared at the recital. “So Henry Wilmarth paid you to make this box?”
“Ee-yuh, he did. Cash money, too. Felt bad takin’ that much but he said skills like mine was wuth a respectable wage.”
“When was this, Horace?”
“Oh, last spring, I s’pose.”
“Before the Mother’s Day Storm in St. Petersburg?”
“Oh, ee-yuh. Was like in March, I think.”
She tried to get the story straight. “And he said he wanted to buy more of these from you?”
“If’n I did the job right. Said the angles hadda be exact, and, well, I’ll stake my repper-tayshun that the angles is exact”—he pointed to an array of protractors, compasses, and polycarbonate angle-stencils hanging on the wall. “They’se exact, all right. Said it didn’t need to be metal, though, clay was fine, and he said it didn’t need the same drawings on it. The metal box had these creepy drawings that looked sort’a like monsters.”
Hazel felt a modest chill when she recalled the bas-relief figures. Had the figures seemed hostile and tentacled? She shivered.
Horace pointed to a sheet of graph paper tacked to the wall. “Just the dimensions’a the box hadda be the same. But the engravings—the little and V’s and sech–hadda be different. ”
Hazel examined the graph paper, and on it noticed an off-angled exploded diagram depicting the box’s four sides and the lid. “Different,” she muttered.
“Ee-yuh. See, I even made these templates for each side and the lid”—next, he held up plastic sheets into which the glyphs had been copied and cut out.
“But he never contracted you to make the rest of the boxes?”
“New. Never heard from him directly again.” Horace set the vase aside and washed his hands in a small sink. “Kind’a weird. He was always in and aout’a taown’s what I heerd. So’s when I finished the first box I left a letter under his door, tolt him it was ready for him ta take a look at. A while later I get a letter back thankin’ me for my trouble but sayin’ he didn’t need any more of the boxes. Plus a check fer another five hunnert.”
“And when was that? ” Hazel felt driven to ask. “Was it before or after the—”
“It were after that big storm he survived in Florida, ee-yuh. Like end’a May or early June.”
Hazel gazed perplexed at the box. When she opened it she found a similar interior: seven struts supporting an egg-shaped metal band. “Did Professor Wilmarth ever say what the box was for?”
Horace dried his big, beefy hands with paper towels. Hazel stared at them, imagining one clamped to her throat and the other rockering her sex...
“I seem ta recall him saying it was a crystal box. S’posed to hold some sort’a crystal. Said he hadda bunch’a friends who wanted ‘em. What’s the word he used?” Horace squinted. “Gemologists, I’se think.”
Hazel blinked. A crystal. A gemstone? Didn’t Henry’s letter mention a STONE, that he also referred to as the “ST”?
“It’s full dark naow. I best get yew back.”
Hazel limped after him out to the truck. Storm clouds rove
d overhead, consuming a beautiful moon. Looks like rain tonight. She idled her thoughts as Horace drove the bulky truck out of the boondock cranny and pulled back onto the main road.
What a day... She felt strangely at ease and very definitely un traumatized in spite of the horrific scene earlier. Worse was she felt an inkling of arousal, no doubt ignited by her proximity to this handsome, strong-as-an-ox bumpkin who’d saved her.
“You’re very modest, Horace, but you know, I think those men really were going to kill me.”
“Mebbe but, new, I don’t think so. I hadda hankerin’ it was the Fish Boys, just a gut feelin’ but, shoot, I curn’t prove it.”
“The Fish Boys?”
“Couple local fellas, en’t good fer much. Rumor is they both done time fer small stuff, but even them fellas en’t got the belly fer killin’. Were probably just a couple poachers passin’ through. Lots’a poachers out, all the time hot for whitetail deer, moose’n beaver. ‘S’illegal to hunt moose’n beaver, ya know.”
Hazel sighed. “Horace, that’s not what I meant.” Her hand drifted to the marble-firm thigh filling the denim. “I meant that whether you saved my life or you didn’t, I’m still indebted to you. The only way I can think to thank you is...”
Her hand slid over a crotch that felt packed. Feels like this hayseed’s got a pound of ground beef stuffed in there. Her finger slid greedily up and down the zipper...
“Horace, pull over,” she whispered in his ear.
“Aw, well, I dun’t know, Hazel...”
“Pull over, pull over...”
Horace groaned, then pulled the clattering truck onto the shoulder.
At once she felt feverish. She unfastened his belt, opened his pants, and pulled down his fly all in a series of movements that seemed synchronized. He wore no briefs. The musky scent of a day’s work wafted up when her hand ladled out all that warm, soft meat. My God, she thought, dizzy, gently squeezing the mass of scrotum and coiled cock.
“Aw,” he muttered.
The mass came alive, an erection quickly lengthening. Hazel ringed her thumb and forefinger about the shaft to help it along and in doing so felt it swell to a column so hard it barely yielded to her pressure. A swatch of foreskin bunched at the top; she delighted in gently pulling it down and feeling all that delicate skin slide silkily up and down over the hot pillar. In the dashlight she noted veins fat and long as earthworms. Horace fidgeted in his seat as she continued to slowly stroke. Once fully hard, it began to beat; Hazel was almost flabbergasted by its size: the girth of a Red Bull can but inches longer. She wanted to suck it all down. She wanted to sit on it and let it all burrow into her. I just got raped to within an inch of my life by two guys sicker than Richard Speck, and NOW look what I’m doing...Why should she even try to understand herself?
This cock is gorgeous, she thought, stupefi ed. It’s a fucking work of art... Next, she scooped up the scrotum which filled her entire hand, was almost giddy as her fingers explored each testicle, each almost the size and weight of a hen’s egg. The excitement she induced made the balls start to draw upward on their intricate tethers, then she grabbed the shaft again and slid the foreskin all the way down, baring a plump, fat-slitted corona. Drool filled the considerable piss-slit. Even this minutia of sexual anatomy fascinated her, and due to the organ’s atypical size, she wondered if it were possible to...
Hazel held the column close with one hand, while the thumb and forefinger of the other opened the delicate slit. Horace flinched, while Hazel delighted in being able to admit the end of her pinky finger fully into the egress of Horace’s urethra, something she’d never been able to do before.
But what now?
I’ve got to suck it, I’ve just GOT to...
She leaned over to fellate him but just as her lips would meet the glans...
“Aw, ya know,” Horace pushed her away, “this en’t settin’ right with me, Hazel. En’t nothin’ ‘baout yew, it’s just...”
Hazel stared at him.
“I just curn’t let’cha dew this, much as I’d wanna.” It was with difficulty that he managed to stuff those marvelous balls and beating cock back into his trousers. “See, I got me a honey–Lillian’s her name–and, see, she’s over in the Iraq right naow. She’s in the signal corp. I’d be a low-daown dag dirty dog to fool ‘raound with another gal while my baby’s over there fightin’ fer my freedom. New sir, a fella couldn’t get no lower.”
Oh, for God’s sake! An ethical redneck!
“So I just hope yew understand and durn’t take it personal,” he said and got back on the road.
Hazel put her face in her hands and laughed. “You’re a good man, Horace, and you have no idea how lucky your girlfriend is. They sure don’t make many men like you these days.” She sighed. “And now I guess you think I’m a super slut for pulling a move like that...”
“New, durn’t worry none. We all gots our thing.”
“I just didn’t know how else to thank you...”
He raised a finger. “Come by the Curiosity Shoppe. It’d make me look good to the owner if’n ya bought something, and I’ll bet there’s plenty theer you’d fancy.”
“I’ll look forward to it, Horace.”
“And like I said a’fore.” He smiled contentedly behind the wheel. “Durn’t thank me, thank the Lord...”
The rain had just started when Hazel entered the cabin. Lights burned softly in the front room, but Sonia wasn’t there. “Sonia? I’m back.”
“Oh—In here.”
Hazel followed her friend’s voice into the small den. Sonia sat at Henry Wilmarth’s desk, studying an array of papers.
“Wow, that was some walk,” Sonia said without looking up.
“Took longer than I thought, and—”
Finally Sonia’s eyes looked up in exclamation. “What’s wrong! Are you hurt?”
Hazel limped in. Well, I just got foot-fucked, if that’s what you mean. “I guess I’m not in the good shape I thought. Sore all over. I was so tired halfway back, I hitched a ride with a local.”
Did Sonia offer a suspicious frown? Suddenly thunder rumbled, then rain began to patter the roof.
“And I got back just in time,” Hazel added. She leaned over the desk. “Looks like some serious Nosy Parkering going on here.”
“I took the liberty of looking over Henry’s papers,” Sonia defended herself.
“Feminist doctrine. Sounds good to me.” Hazel noticed lots of papers written by hand, many of which appeared to be in foreign languages. “And?”
Sonia sat back, sighing. She adjusted her position in the seat to accommodate her swollen belly. “A whole lot of really bizarre rigamarole.”
“This is definitely Latin,” Hazel said, picking a sheet up. “And it also looks like—”
“I know. Not a photocopy but an old style mimeograph,” Sonia augmented. The sheet was purple-tinted and frayed. “I haven’t seen something like that in decades.”
Hazel skimmed a few lines. “I took some Latin, but most of this is illegible. Terrum Per Me Ambula? Something about ‘walking the earth...’” She squinted. “‘Per qua spheres opportunus’ means ‘by where the spheres meet.’ And...‘Non in notus tractus tamen inter illud tractus?’ Damn, I don’t know. Maybe “Not in known spaces but between them?’”
Sonia showed her another paper. Hazel recited, “‘They frendo civis...’” She blinked. “‘They crush the cites,’ or something like that.”
“Weird.”
On the back, a Post-It was stuck. It read in cursive script: Mimeo of hand-copied intercession page of A.A. I believe someone scrivened the page from the Wormius translation of A.D. 1228. Either the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, or the copy in Lima.
“Beats me,” Hazel said. “What about the others?”
Sonia handed her a frayed 8 x 10 photograph that looked almost as worn as the mimeograph. The back read, in the same script:
Probably illegally photographed p. of rumored copy of Greek trans. of N. (Th
eodorus Philatus, A.D. 950) that escaped condemnation and burning ordered by Patriarch Michael, A.D. 1050 . (Is this the copy thought to be hidden in Vatican?)
“Greek, huh?” Hazel noted. “Good luck translating that.”
“Yeah. And the notations look like Henry’s handwriting.”
“It makes sense. It’s his stuff, and something he was obviously studying with some interest.”
“Transcriptions of Latin and Greek, from the Middle Ages and older? Printing presses didn’t even exist then,” Sonia seemed stifled. “So somebody accessed original copies of the texts, which had to have been handwritten, and then copied certain parts in their own hand?”
Hazel shrugged in resignation. “I guess. But so what?”
“Henry Wilmarth was a mathematician, Hazel, and a scholar of geometry. But this stuff looks like old folklore or something. And there’s not a single number or equation on any of these pages.”
“Sonia!” Hazel blurted. “How do you say ‘I don’t give a shit’ in Greek?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Sonia smirked back. “But now, look at this.”
Another dog-eared 8 x 10. At the bottom, clearly scribed in fountain pen and not in Henry Wilmarth’s hand, were the words: one of only two extant sheets of Al Azif, pilfered by Deacon M. Bari days before the fall of Const. The photo itself, however, was immediately recognizable: a hand-drawn exploded-diagram of a box whose planes were not quite even. On each plane were drawings of the same geometric shapes (v’s,>’s,^’s, >’s) that Hazel recognized from the metal box.
She took the box down off the shelf and compared it.
“It’s the same,” she deduced. “The dimensions and the symbols.”
“Yes, and isn’t that interesting?”
Hazel’s brow rose. “Actually, yes.” At once she felt animated. She was about to tell Sonia about the similar clay box that Henry had contracted Horace to craft, but thought better of it. Find out about this first. “And the ‘fall of Const.’ has to be the fall of Constantinople, right?”
“Uh-huh. The mid-1400s. This is some really old stuff, Hazel.
Now...look on the back.”
