The Starry Wisdom

by D. M. Mitchell

  All my life, this place had been dragging around with me like a fist around my heart. My life had become a bottomless pit of crime; drunkenness and sexual cruelty – and always lurking somewhere in the depths of the pit was the Old School. But now it was subtly altered – it had gained characteristics, modalities and effects from every miserable drudge job I'd ever worked at. And I realised that I'd never left the school and never would.

  Somewhere in the back of my head, the spider-sun squirmed like an old maggoty cunt. I walked on.

  Several people from my past drifted by, oblivious to me, or lo the fact they were dead. Up staircases, along corridors, past classrooms cloaked in sinister shadows, through an annexe where terror gripped me as, beneath a flickering halogen strip-light, I finally arrived at the art-rooms.

  There were no people in sight. I vaguely wondered how all this could be contained in a hotel, but logic was draining away like piss down a storm drain. I peered into the first room and a stale nosfatgia hit me as I looked at the pupils' work hanging dull and abandoned, losland yellowing. Prints of menhirs and water colours of bleak hillsides, one of a great black shadow that could have been an owl swooping on a sheep with a decayed face. Others were mostly black, murky, forgotten things.

  I realised they'd been there all this time and had become gradually infused with the despair, frustration and lost hopes of the children who'd originally painted them.

  The joy and naivete had somed and turned to curdled hate as they'd made the lugubrious uphill trudge to the partial existence of adulthood. I found the ram's skull I'd loved so much and had spent hours drawing and painting, and tears streamed down my face as I turned it over and over in my hands. I carried it with me into the second art-room where imbecile papier-mache forms lay scattered around the parquet floor. There was a faint parmesan smell of vomit in the air. I began to examine the puppets. They were crude and idiotic – the creations of emotional retards, part human part amorphous mass, with Jumpy malformed heads and hands.

  The crudest of features painted on their soulless blob heads with poster colours. They epitomised Britain and the British mentality.

  The more I looked at them, the worse they became, until, putting down the ram's skull I backed out of the room, panic rising inexplicably in the pit of my stomach. I ran from the wing into the bowels of the building and I half fancied that I heard clumsy feet trudging after me as I searched for Marie.

  I eventually stood at the end of a corridor, hung about with black drapes that moved slightly from some breeze I could not detect. As I progressed, each drape swung open revealing a picture frame. In each frame was a living, flesh and blood, human mouth. As I passed by, they spoke to me...

  "You'll die without my face, my love – my mouth – like a moth jumping in a locomotive – and you'll be dead and forget and sink – our porch of the river – no more, no more – I saw you handsome my husband, walking with your lantern shadow – I was dumb on the ground – the mouth of the alley – the snow – he'd been a reporter- farewell..."

  After I'd passed each one in turn, the lips ceased their discourse and the curtains fell over them. Others resumed the fragmented whispering which reminded me of the speech of reptiles, like a giant snake coiling and uncoiling around a black stone.

  "I will pronounce your name, I will disclaim you, Ibadan, running splash of rust – silence in the cabin – the twirling mountains of the river – the cool waters overhung with mist cast your bangles – in your presence I rediscovered your name and came into your arms – it is dark now and grave.."

  At last I reached the corridor and turned the handle.

  I couldn't bring myself to look back along the rows of lost soulless orifices waiting concealed for the next unsuspecting passer-by. Was this the only purpose of their half-existence – if so, then how much of it must remain merely an absence?

  The next chamber was empty and lit only by a sputtering neon-tube overhead. For the first time since waking I could hear noises from the main body of the hotel.

  I realised at last where I was trapped. It was not I who was dreaming, but somebody else. I had unwittingly walked into somebody else's dream. But whose? "The building was slippery and inconsistent, h'ke an Escher drawing. The further on I walked the bigger and more confusing it became.

  Beyond the flickering room was a balcony overlooking an impossibly huge assembly-hall which stretched upward to a vaulted baroque ceiling of glass panels that admitted only the oppressive purpJe glow from the Black Sun, It crawled and writhed above, dimly glimpsed through the filthy glass.

  About forty feet below me, moved figures – partly visible from this altitude... mercifully! Most of them were at least semi-human, moving in lines and columns, but others were loo large, incomplete or otherwise malformed, to be human. I pulled back, suddenly shocked by something I saw, and which I thought had also spotted me. I edged round the gallery away from it into a long corridor of steel and glass glowing slightiy with twilight's last gleaming. I could feel something bearing down on me – a feeling of expectation and apprehension, crawling from the base of my spine; a low droning growing with Ihc realisation that this was all inside someone's (or something's) head, the interstices of floors, landings, balconies, whose geometry mirrored some internal spinal architecture.

  Faceless forms glided silently past eye-like windows, in abstract postures of sexual abandon. A large, reptilian form twined in and out of the superstructure;- semi-tangible and flickering, dissolving into the brickwork like a blurred sepia photograph. These were embodied memories of prehistoric stales, externalised as artefacts, scorpion-machinery, centipedal vehicles, cold insect winking of tv eyes in the neon glow of an alien sexuality. The reptile brainstem of a sleeping

  Manifestations of The Eye; – black, lucid, gelatinous, quivering and ciliated – omnipotent, it hungwithin the main hall on a vast web of semen and mucous. J could have ignored it were it not for the screaming which was agonising beyond belief. Mouthless priests chanted a litany of The Eye, suprisingly harmonious, almost crystalline.

  "Oh Eye who spies on secret dreams, Eye of fuck and shit, sperm and gold... drip on us in your infinite lassitude. Closing up like an old cunt, crawling with flies, opening holes in sleeping ceilings onto a world of warped magnetism. Let us climb the ladder out of our flesh and burn with you."

  As I plunged deeper into the recesses of the hotel, the unmanifest began to manifest in increasingly less normal ways. Childhood memories and fetishistic objects laden with numinosity multiplied, cut in a kaleidoscopic fashion with animal and plant forms. People walked into mineral deposits, walls pulsated like flesh; groups writhed in formations of sexual mutation, organs forming and retracting, forcing entry where no orifice previously existed, detaching and being absorbed into the other's body. The mass of heaving flesh was coated with a slug-like slime which stank not unpleasantly. I stopped in a library to peer at some ancient titles in alien tongues, which I almost understood.

  In a darkened corner, something laughed and I glanced across at a thing with too many jointed legs, whose upper half resembled an old woman. Cackling, it scuttled towards me. I shot at it several times and ran, hearing its screams echoing behind me, as I ploughed on, searching for Marie.

  It was pitch black in the corridor beyond, and for some reason I found myself creeping along as quietly as possible. Turning a corner, by touch alone, I gradually made out a faint glimmer of light ahead. Getting closer I saw it was a doorway – voices coming from inside. I put my ear against the door to listen, then jumped back in disgust as something brushed my leg. Glancing down, I saw a strange creature halfway between a lizard and a chicken – pacing back and forth like a cat. The door opened abruptly, and the light momentarily blinded me.

  Standing in the doorway was a young woman – a silhouette conjured from dream – trapped in the zone between darkness and light. She was beautiful, dressed in some sort of nurse's uniform, wearing dark glasses. She beckoned me inside, and I followed. The decor of the room wa
s identical to the room in which I'd woke up. She took me into another room lit by an ultra-violet strobe. Before me was a bed, draped with black velvet. In it was an old man / woman, dressed in black – seemingly very feeble. As I stepped closer, he / she extended a chicken-claw hand towards me. He / she had one eye thai was blood red and pupilless, the other blank and while, like a shelled boiled egg.

  He / she pointed to a bookshelf nearby and I walked over to it. Between a copy of Bateille's "Solar Anus" and Harry Crosby's "Black Sun" was an untitled leather-bound volume. I took it down and turned the pages. They were black, containing no writing. The figure on the bed nodded its head as though I were reading aloud. As I turned the twenty-second page, a large centipede scuttled out across my wrist. I jumped back in disgust, letting the book fall shut. The man / woman on the bed began to rock violently with soundless laughter. As I stared, another centipede crawled out of its mouth, violet and biack, and slid off the bed. My skin crawled as the figure's head detached itself from the neck and dropped to the counterpane. I realised it was made of porcelain, the inside filled with cobwebs.

  The nurse walked slowly towards me, removing her glasses. Her eye sockets were empty – and from (he corner of some distant galaxy within and beyond, a black insect sun trembled with cilia. I ran to the door, an impression in the corner of my eye of the nurse following, arms outstretched as if blind. I slammed the door and made off down the darkened corridor, into the bowels of the Hotel Amenta, looking for Marie.

  JELLY

  Hank Kirton

  -1-

  As far as Danny knew, he was Damon’s only friend. They were in the same fourth-grade class; Mrs. Arcentales’s class.

  Damon had moved to Vermont from California and was slow to make friends in the New England climate.

  Everybody thought Damon was really weird.

  Damon was small for his age; skinny and pale. His hair was long and snarled, his clothes worn and old-fashioned and too small for him; Salvation Army clothes, everybody said. Some of the girls claimed he wore “dead kid’s clothes” but Danny never figured out how something like that could be so easily ascertained. Damon had big crooked teeth crowding his mouth, as if two sets of choppers were trying to grow in at once. He didn’t talk much.

  Damon sat behind Danny. Danny’s last name was Brockney. Damon’s last name was Brody. So Damon sat behind him.

  Danny’s dad drove him to school on his way to work. His dad was a shipping clerk at Tantalus Tech, a factory that made plastic bottle caps. Danny’s dad made him collect them. Whenever a new cap rolled off the line, Danny’s dad would come home with a pocketful for Danny.

  “Bran-spankin’ new, kiddo. Check it out!” he’d say.

  Last week the caps had been white with a picture of a pine tree on them.

  One rainy Monday, Danny’s dad had to report to work an hour early, so Danny was dropped off before school started. He got to class even before Mrs. Arcentales. But Damon was already at his desk, the only other kid in school, reading a book of short stories by Ray Bradbury.

  Danny took his seat. Nobody had turned on the lights and everything looked strange in the early morning light; sad and spooky.

  Danny sat quietly for a long time. Nobody else came in. Eventually, he turned around.

  “What are you reading?” he asked Damon.

  Damon didn’t bother to look up from his book when he answered, “Stories.”

  Danny read the title aloud; “The Illustrated Man,” he said. “I like Ray Bradbury too.”

  And that’s how they became friends.

  As it turned out, they had lots of other things in common. They both liked horror movies and Fangoria magazine. They both liked to draw and write weird, gross stories. They started hanging out together at recess, and after school. They made big plans to write and publish their own comics and stories. They’d pass notes back and forth during class, cracking each other up.

  Mrs. Arcentales threatened to separate them a few times but never followed through.

  After a few weeks of this intense, creative solidarity, some of the other kids started to think maybe Danny was kind of weird too.

  Damon started going over to Danny’s house. Danny felt a little embarrassed when Damon first marveled at all the stuff Danny had in his room. His eyes boggled like he’d walked into a vault filled with treasure. “Wow, your family must be rich,” he declared. “Look at all this stuff...”

  “Aw, shut-up. This stuff doesn’t cost that much.” Danny insisted.

  “Yeah, right! Whoa, where’d you get this?” he said, holding up a plastic model of Ed Gein.

  “I got it for my birthday last year,” Danny said, hunching his shoulders. “It’s no big deal.”

  “It is to me. I don’t have anything this cool.”

  “What kind of stuff do you have?” Danny asked. He was curious to see where Damon lived, but Damon was reluctant to discuss his home life. As far as Danny knew, Damon didn’t even have parents or live in a house.

  “I don’t know. The usual stuff,” he said, placing Ed Gein back on the shelf between The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Leatherface.

  “Like what? What’s usual?”

  Damon was looking around the room, gesturing with his empty hands as if trying to grab an answer from the air.

  “I don’t know, whatever...”

  -2-

  One chilly, overcast morning, Danny and Damon were picking their way across the lot behind Fontaine’s Shopping Centre. The back of Fontaine’s resembled a post-apocalyptic landscape. Behind the stark, brick cliffs of the loading docks was a row of seventeen Dumpsters, constantly vomiting the detritus and discard from forty stores. Beyond the Dumpsters, a sprawling no-man’s-land of sand and limestone, crabgrass and litter stretched to the edge of a caged-off freeway.

  Damon was using a broken ski-pole as a walking stick, describing a movie he’d heard about. “...And they cut off his fingers with scissors and made him eat them. The guy eats his own fingers.”

  “Whoa, that’s gross,” said Danny.

  Damon stopped. “Hey, what’s that?” he said, pointing to a curl of steam rising behind a stack of pallets.

  Danny said, “I don’t know. Let’s check it out.” As the boys moved closer, they noticed a mounting odor; a noxious mix of sulfur and ammonia. Danny pulled his shirt up over his nose. When they reached the pallets he stopped. Damon looked at him. “What’s wrong?” Danny was scared. Even filtered through his shirt, the smell was overpowering. He shook his head. “That smell. It might be poisonous. Or radioactive.” Damon laughed. “Are you nuts? They wouldn’t just throw away something that dangerous. C’mon.” He disappeared behind the pallets.

  Danny heard him say, “Holy shit!”

  Then silence, for what seemed like a long time.

  Danny said, “Damon? What is it?”

  No answer.

  “Damon?”

  Panic rushed at him and his first thought was to flee and get help, but before he could run Damon said, “Hey, come here. Look at this.”

  Danny hesitated. Damon’s voice had grown slow and deep. “What is it?” Danny said. His own voice had gotten higher.

  “Just come here and see,” Damon said.

  Danny swallowed and went behind the pallets to look.

  Whatever it was, it was dead.

  It looked like a big beached jellyfish with a face.

  Glutinous, translucent flesh oozed over a visible skeleton.

  Thin, beige veins twined like dying ivy over dormant, watery organs. Its large, lifeless eyes were cloudy, staring blindly at the sky. Its face was a melting expression of madness. The acrid stench emanating from it burned Danny’s nose and throat. Damon was staring at it with a look of stunned wonder.

  “What is it?” Danny said.

  “I don’t know. I think it’s an alien.”

  Danny looked at his friend. “Like an outer space alien?”

  Damon nodded. “Yeah...”

  “Shit. What do we d
o? Go to the cops?”

  Damon’s stoic expression didn’t change as he lifted the ski-pole and stabbed the thing in the chest.

  A jet of steam rushed from the wound, hitting Damon smack in the face and he reeled back, choking, gagging.

  Danny took cover behind the pallets. He listened to Damon cough and sputter for a few minutes. When he finally fell silent, Danny peeked out. “You okay?” he said.

  Damon looked over with red, watery eyes. He exhaled a ruptured, “Yuh...” then descended into another coughing fit.

  Danny came out from behind the pallets.

  The thing had dissolved into a puddle of colorless mucus. They looked at it. Damon’s breathing was labored and raspy. “Do you want to go to the hospital?” Danny asked, concerned.

  “No. C’mon.” Damon started walking toward the freeway.

  Danny followed. “You sure? Maybe we should call your parents and tell them what happened. They might want to take you to a doctor.”

  “No they won’t.” Damon was still carrying the ski-pole, the tip clinging with jellied remnants.

  When they reached the chain-link fence that sealed off the freeway, Damon hooked his fingers through the links and watched the passing traffic. Danny didn’t know what to say anymore. It started to rain.

  Then Damon said, “I want to kiss the cars.”