Bohemians of Sesqua Valley

by W. H. Pugmire

  “Your work has been so urbane—to the point where you’ve been described as a female Henry James, the writer who has inspired you the most. You have a knack for outré characters, but your settings lack imagination. I think that the valley will aid your facility for distinctive characterization, giving you a different background in which to drop your freaks and fools.” Akiva turned away from her and looked down the road toward the main section of Sesqua Town. “My friend has a charming café that serves the finest French toast I have ever tasted. Let’s go.” He linked his arm with hers and led her down the dirt road, to the main business section of town. They spent an hour at breakfast, and then Sarah said she wanted to investigate the area.

  “If it’s going to inspire new work, I need to take it all in and drink the ambiance. I confess I find this little area charming, like something from a 1950’s movie set. This town wears an aspect of unreality. Its inhabitants dress in a simple way that is neither modern nor outdated. I’ve seen but two cars. The quietude is like nothing I’ve known—where are the birds? Come, Akiva, show me this remarkable setting.”

  The poet led her away from the café and onto the sidewalks that were composed of planks of sturdy wood. Sarah drank in the rustic aura of the town as Akiva, in his low voice, spoke of various venerable homes and their inhabitants. Some of the Victorian-seeming dwellings would have fitted perfectly in Providence, for which she was becoming just a little homesick.

  “You’re frowning,” her friend informed her.

  She glanced around her before she answered, her eyes catching sight of the twin-peaked mountain. When she looked at him and tried to laugh, her noise was not successful. “I feel as though I’ve wandered into some alien realm wherein I am unwanted. The beauty of the place is fantastic—and yet one feels guilty soaking it in. To gaze too long a time at that white mountain makes me feel positively sinful, and I ache for my eyes to sink deeper into their sockets in escape. I’m not supposed to be here.”

  “I remember feeling exactly the same, especially when I began to meet the locals.” He paused, as if trying to decide how much he wanted to confess. “You don’t want to keep peering at the mountain—it doesn’t like to be scrutinized.”

  She did not heed his curious advice. “It looks like some strange slumbering beast. Those incredible arched peaks—they could be wings on a daemon’s back, ready to spread and lift the creature into the air. Whatever brought you to this place, Akiva?”

  “A book of poems. A rare secret book, that outsiders like me were never meant to see. And yet—I don’t feel like an outsider any longer, and I’m happy to be here. I’ve discovered things here that sing to me and seduce me into staying. She is such a one.”

  Sarah’s eyes followed the direction of his hand, and then her eyes grew wide. Across the road, bathing in the morning sunlight, was a magnificent sphinx. Captivated, the woman crossed the road and stood before the gigantic statue, and then she heard Akiva breathing beside her. “No—it’s not Greek, as you can tell from the headdress. Too, there are neither wings nor breasts. This is a child of Egypt, where such figures are usually male. The face is amazingly androgynous, however, so you may be excused for thinking it female.” She moved so as to look beyond the sculpture, past a low stone wall and into a spreading cemetery, wherein she espied a number of unusual monuments. Akiva’s hand stopped her as she began to move toward the area.

  “I’ll show you the Hungry Place tonight—in moonlight.”

  “The Hungry Place?”

  He held up a hand and nodded, as if to say that all would be explained eventually. “Come, let’s wander in the woods. You’ll find it charming.”

  He linked his arm to hers and led the woman away from town, toward the wide expanse of woodland; yet as they approached the area she felt that it would prove impenetrable, unwelcoming. The trees were too unnerving, twisted and ominous; the spaces between those trees were dark and foreboding, and although she espied no creatures in those spaces she felt that they were the haunts of hidden imps. The poet seemed to sense her hesitation and turned to smile at her; he laughed lightly at the expression on her face and then brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it. But she did not like the shape of his lips as they curled in mirth—his expression seemed curiously cunning. He was, she reflected, the author of the weird verse that she had read the previous evening, a tainted soul, strange and perplexing. She knew that he had altered, that his brain had somehow been bent by the influence of Sesqua Valley and her secret ways. But then the idea of her fear, her absurd sense of danger, caused her to chuckle as well. They made no sense, these new apprehensions, these confusions. She really was in need of a rest.

  Darkness swallowed them, as they found a pathway that twisted through the woodland. The foreboding atmosphere dissipated. Immediately, Sarah’s sense of unease dissipated. The shade of the place felt soothing on her eyes as she stepped on ground that was cushioned with leaves and soft mossy earth. The air sucked in had altered and was no longer cloying but refreshing and minty in taste. Somehow, light of a kind fell onto various places, dimly illuminating the woodland and making it easier for her to take in her surroundings. She could not feel a breeze moving through the place, and yet the trees sometimes moved, subtly, as touched by gust. Black boulders of remarkable size and shape were everywhere, and at one point they passed a deep ravine, at the bottom of which she could espy a murky stream that reflected patches of fallen radiance.

  A distant sound caught their notice, and Akiva ceased all movement. Although his face was encased in shadow, Sarah could sense his distress, and when she touched his arm it trembled beneath her hand. Her mouth parted as she prepared to ask him what it was he feared, but then the music grew in resonance. Eerily compelled, the woman moved away from her friend, toward the uncanny tone. She witnessed the place where blackness reeled, a whirlwind of gloom, within which odd music sounded. And then the spinning darkness fell before the figure that stood there, lowering as if to grovel at the creature’s feet before melting entirely into the earth. Sarah watched the outline take on a more solid form as it removed something long and lean from its mouth. The only features that were clearly evident were two slanted eyes that shimmered as if composed of liquid mercury. As the figure began to drift toward her, Sarah was kissed by an thrill of fear such as she had never known, and yet she could not turn away and flee. She had been caught completely. Someone behind her wrapped their arms around her waist, but Akiva remained silent as the beast drew nearer and then stopped. Sarah’s alarm sharpened as she experienced the entire trembling of her friend’s body as he held her.

  “Ah—Loveman, it’s you. What curious expressions you both wear. Has something in our wooded realm haunted you?”

  “Yes, your piping. I’ve never heard anything quite like it. It was more than music—it was like some evocation of lost or secret things, and it aroused a kind of fear that such things might once again be located.” She stopped, as if suddenly aware of her words. “Oh dear, what nonsense I’m talking!”

  The tall man slipped his flute into an inside pocket of his jacket as Sarah took in his attire, which resembled that of another era. This fellow could have stepped out of the 1930’s. His alchemical eyes had lost a little of their brilliance, and they now had to compete with the fantastic nature of his ensembled facial features. She had never met anyone so grotesque, with an ugliness that seemed, in a way, inhuman. Certain characteristics of his face seemed amphibian, but the general outline of the face reminded her of a deformed wolf . His voice was cultured and his enunciation crisp, as if language was something he relished and spoke carefully. Although his hair was mostly covered by a hat, she sensed that he wore it long, in the fashion of a young Oscar Wilde. He cocked his head and smiled at Sarah.

  “Oh contraire. Your words were quite applicable. You have been touched by our local sorcery. I will leave you so that you may revel in the wonder of it all. But don’t loiter in the woods overlong, Loveman—you know how it at times affects your imaginat
ion. Your previous howling still echo in mine ears! Au revoir.” His smile lingered a few moments longer, and then he turned and nodded to Akiva as he ambled down the path and out of sight.

  “That man is a freak. What on earth was he nattering about, your howls?” She turned to her friend, whose face was mostly eclipsed in shadow; but she could sense the fear that caused his eyes to tremble, the fear aroused by the creature they had just encountered. Sarah could not suppress a shudder. “I think I’d like to get out of here,” she told her friend as the shadows of the area darkened around them. Taking hold of Sarah’s hand, Akiva led her from the lonesome place.

  III

  (From the journal of Sarah Paget-Lowe)

  My memory has always been quite keen. However, since returning to Providence my reminiscence of those three weeks spent in Sesqua Valley are beginning to cloud, to dim. It’s as if the valley were trying to remove its images from my mind, to cloud my memory. That’s why I’ve begun this journal of my recollections of my days spent with Akiva, who seems now to have forgotten that such a place as Sesqua Valley exists. Here’s the weird thing: something in the nature of that valley and the secrets that it revealed to me seems to have touched my eyes with new perception. I have always found the antiquities of Providence charming. I love the sense of the past that one can feel here from walking down certain streets, no matter how modern the city has become. Now, however, my senses have been enhanced, and I am more and more aware of a different kind of aura here, something a bit sinister and secret. I have found pockets of the past that I never noticed before. Once, while sitting on a tabletop tomb in St. John’s churchyard, I heard the wind arising, and felt something grasp my hair and press against my ear as though it were some phantom mouth. Disquieting as the experience was, it also rather delighted me. Perhaps this is but one aspect of my new Muse, the thing that has inspired me to neglect the Jamesian novel I’ve been working on and spend my time writing some delightful horror tales. I read one of these new things to Herbert when he was visiting from New York, and he was riveted. “If you can write a book-full of these things, I’ll publish them!” he exclaimed.

  I have been followed by a denizen of the valley, I’m sure of it. I noticed it as I was wandering down Benefit Street and stopped to admire a small copse that rises beside an antique house. One small tree that was almost entirely concealed by tall bushes looked so odd that I continued staring at it for quite some time, and then I thought it wasn’t a tree at all but something, some creature, disguised as a tree. I thought it was sunlight catching some bits of moss or whatever and illuminating the tiny patches of growth, but then I fancied that the two tiny spots of brilliance resembled a pair of silver eyes. I rushed away!

  One of the things I want to make note of in this journal is the transformation of Akiva Loveman. He is such a brilliant poet, and yet he has always been so nonchalant about his work and its reception. His two collections of verse came about only because of my insistence and my showing his work to my publisher. Although those books garnered some very glowing reviews, they sold poorly, and it was shortly after the publication of the second book that Akiva suddenly vanished, not to be heard from until six months later, when he wrote to me from his new dwelling. He had learned that I had been feeling tired and listless and assumed that this was due to writer’s block, when in fact I was simply burned out from having finished too many projects in too little a time. And so he invited me to visit him in what he called Sesqua Town and gave me instructions on how to reach the place by train. I hadn’t traveled by train for three decades, and it was a pleasant (although overlong) experience. I had, of course, never corresponded with my friend, as we were both living in this beloved city until his sudden disappearance. Aspects of his letter were peculiar. He expressed himself in queer idiom, and at times I seemed to be reading a macabre prose-poem full of morbid hints and half-expressed emotions. He demanded that I tell no one of my destiny and destroy his letter after having made my traveling arrangements. I did no such thing.

  Akiva has changed, in ways I cannot understand. He has always seemed so reserved and serious, living for his art, his love of literature. A new characteristic revealed itself to me during my visit—a coy playfulness. I can best explain this by describing our visit to the Hungry Place, as he called the local graveyard. I’ve written up the experience as a wee horror story, so my description of it here may become over-literary and fictive in nature. But that’s okay. I want to evoke precisely what happened and how it affected us.

  My young friend has always been a collector of rare things, mostly fabulous editions of old books. After moving to Sesqua Valley, he began collecting other items, some of them quite curious. For example, he had, on his mantelpiece, a collection of small animal skulls, some of which were quite bizarre. He laughed when I suggested that some of the skulls were fakeries, however cleverly crafted. One thing that caught my attention was a beautiful antique lantern, which he said he had found in a place called Kingsport. It was my interest in the lantern that reminded him of something he wanted to show me.

  “There’s a mausoleum in the Hungry Place that I want to take you to. It will help you to experience the new ecstasy I feel for fantastic sensations, the stuff that feeds my latest verse. It’s a place that needs to be visited in moonlight, and the moon tonight is very fine. We’ll take the lantern, for we’ll need its assistance.”

  The lantern was on a small cedar table next to the intriguing black statue, and it was before that statue that Akiva made a very bizarre motion. I have said that one of the statue’s hands was held away from its body, palm outward. As I watched him, Akiva stood before the statue and began to mutter strange words in a language I did not recognize, although portions of the words seemed Semitic. I was astonished, because I knew that he had forsaken completely his racial and religious heritage. He then touched his fingers to the upraised palm of the black statue, as a Hebrew might touch the casing that holds a mezuzah parchment, and brought those fingers to his lips. Apparently my astonishment was evident, for he turned to gaze at me with playful wickedness shining in his eyes, and then he brought his fingers to my mouth. My kiss was a tender thing.

  “Let’s go,” he told me, grabbing a jacket and leading me outdoors.

  We walked beneath the moon and stars, which seemed intimately near in the sky above Sesqua Valley. I noticed, as we walked, how relaxed my friend was, with such a mellow expression on his face. Whatever it was that had drawn him to that mysterious valley, his dwelling there had had an advantageous effect, of that there was no doubt. At one point he began to whistle as he guided me down the dirt road toward town. It was a lengthy walk, and I wondered why he didn’t use his car more often, as he had when he picked me up from the train depot. But I had seen very few cars on the roadways, most people preferring to walk instead. The lack of vehicles added to the quietude of the place, which was striking to a city lass.

  After a length of time I espied the large Sphinx statue in the distance, looking eerie in moonlight. I was touched, as we passed the statue, with a sense of mild foreboding, feeling as though the sculpted beast had been awaiting and was now observing us as we passed it on our way to the walled cemetery.

  What strange apprehension I suddenly feel as I prepare to record this memory. So much of my time spent in Sesqua Valley is fading away, and when I try to remember things all I see in my mind is a kind of haze, a mauve mist. But this one midnight stroll is keen and clear, to the point where I can almost taste the fear it arouses. I remember thinking that the moon had never seemed so near to our planet and that I saw that sphere of dust as never before. The cosmos seemed but a little skip away, as if I could jump upward and follow a trail of twinkling stars into the depths of night. Akiva’s mellow mood struck me oddly: it should have helped to relax me, but instead it was a source of anxiety, as if he knew secret things that were not to be shared. He led me to an opening in the low stone wall and we entered the graveyard, which he called the Hungry Place. Very few of the stones
seemed old, and on many of them there was but a name and date of death. I noticed a change in the air as we stepped onto the cemetery sod, a chilliness that I had not previously noticed. Akiva led me past tombs until he reached a statue that stood upon a colume of marble.

  “This is the man who brought me to Sesqua Town,” he whispered to me. “The poet, William Davis Manly. I had found a rare edition of his verse in an antique shop in Boston, and I bought it on a whim—or so I thought. Now I feel that I was destined to own it, and to bring it home. The verse affected me deeply, especially the sequence of seventeen sonnets entitled ‘The Seventh Sun.’ Tucked inside the book was a short epistle to the book’s original owner, which mentioned this hidden valley. The more I delved into that book, the stronger was my ache to find this town.”

  “And this is where the poet is buried?”

  “No. I—I don’t quite understand what happened to him, people don’t care to discuss it with me. I’ll find out, in time. I need to become more rooted to this soil. Come on, the place I want to show you is up a ways.”

  We approached a place where many trees enshrouded what I eventually saw was a large mausoleum. Oddly, the closer we got to it, the darker the sky became, and I noticed a vague stench which my fancy absurdly associated with rotting stone. As we drew nearer the edifice, some large winged thing drifted out of the trees and floated toward the twin-peaked mountain, uttering no cry. I had yet to hear any birdcall during my time in the valley, nor had I seen any squirrels or other wildlife. However, as I began to listen, attentively, to the aura of the place, I thought that I could detect a sentience, as if some thing was indeed aware of us. I could feel the thing’s interest in us, and its appetite. Stopping for a moment, Akiva dug into his pocket and produced a lighter, with which he set fire to the lantern’s wick. We climbed the three steps that took us to the crypt’s double gates, which we opened together. Inside, we found three immense granite slabs.