The Friendship of Mortals

by Audrey Driscoll

  Part 1, Andre Boudreau

  I’m not the kind of guy who sits down and writes his life story. Other people do it, and good luck to them. The Doctor, now, he’s got a story to tell, and I am happy to talk with him about old times if it helps him to remember things for his book. But me, Andre Boudreau, why should I do that? I’m the one who polishes his boots and sews on his buttons, and makes sure the coal is delivered on time. Someone has to do all that, and he’s lucky it’s me, because I am a man who can do what needs to be done.

  A couple of weeks ago he comes to me and says, “Andre, I want you to write down all about your life, everything you can remember.”

  I see a way to wiggle out of that. “But Doctor, you know I can’t remember much from before – "

  “Yes, but you can remember what happened after that. I know, because I hear you yarning with the tradespeople. So just remember it all in order, and write it down.”

  “Yarning’s different,” I say. “You don’t have to tell things in order. And you don’t have to tell the truth.”

  He laughed at that. Oh, I know for sure he doesn’t always tell the truth. I had him there, all right. But he wasn’t about to give up on the idea.

  “Well, at least start remembering. As for the writing down, it will have to be a collaborative effort. I can think of someone who could help you with that part. But you have to do your own remembering.”

  “All right, Doctor. But don’t expect too much.”

  He was right, there’s a hell of a lot stuffed into my brain. It’s like a trunk that’s been packed in a hurry by someone who doesn’t care. You pull on one thing and six others come flopping out.

  I guess I’ve been thinking about trunks and packing because I just did a lot of that. A few weeks ago, the Doctor and I moved into this house, on College Hill, Providence, Rhode Island. There aren’t a lot of miles between here and Arkham, but there were for the Doctor and me, since we left there fourteen years ago, in 1923. A whole world of miles.

  You could say we’ve both been to Hell and back. I didn’t see the Devil, but I think he did.

  I don’t have memories of my childhood. My first memories are of blackness. I came out of blackness. I was a very small thing, a little spark in the blackness. That was all, for a long time.

  Then I began to see. Only for short moments, like when there’s lightning at night. Except it was slow lightning. I’d open my eyes and see things, but I didn’t know what they were. Now I think they were the roof of a tent, the inside of a train, the ceiling of some building. A face. Another face. Faces coming and going. Sometimes I heard groans, screams, someone praying in words I couldn’t understand. Maybe it was me. I couldn’t feel anything, though. There was no pain. I wasn’t even cold. Then the darkness again, for I don’t know how long. It wasn’t really me who saw and heard these things, just a little part of me acting like a scout for the rest, which was back in the blackness, waiting for the scout to report so it could decide what to do next.

  There was one picture clearer than the rest – I saw the angel of death standing before me. He was beautiful and terrible – all white and silver, with eyes like ice. He looked at me for a long time and said, “No. Not this one. He’s already dead.” So I thought, “There’s no need to hold on anymore,” and let myself slide back into the blackness. As I went I said goodbye to everything – my childhood, family, comrades, my newly hatched young man’s ambitions and lusts. I wasn’t going to go back to New Brunswick after the war to show them how things worked in the big world. Goodbye, everyone. Goodbye Maman, Papa, Nicholas, Michel, Roger, Paulette, Marguerite, sweet little Louise. Goodbye, Grassadoo, goodbye Andre. Short but sweet, it was. Now it’s all gone.

  I don’t know how long it lasted. I don't think I'll ever know. But it was nothing. There was no “I” any more. It’s like trying to think of what there was, before there was anything. Before God made the world there was nothing, they say. But there was – No, nothing. My mind can’t think this thing. So I say only: there was nothing.

  Then, my first new memory. It was only a feeling. Hot, like fire. Fire was running all through me. I was a man made of fire and heat, my shape burning a hole in the nothing. A red mist swirled through my head and I could feel my heart pumping. No, being pumped, by something outside me. It was like a machine had taken over and was running me, running too hard and hot and jerky. It felt dangerous. It felt wrong. It was worse than dying. I was terribly afraid. Maybe I was in Hell and this would go on forever.

  Then I opened my eyes. No, that wasn’t it. My eyes were opened, like somebody pulled a string. Light stabbed into my head, and the pain it made joined the heat in my body. I saw the angel again and thought, “I must be in Heaven. But why does everything hurt, and why am I so afraid?”

  He was different now, not like the death angel I saw before. He was white and golden now. There was a brightness behind his head, and his strange bright eyes seemed to look right into my soul. I was still afraid, but I could feel his hands touching me, cooling the heat in my body. Then I was in a river, moving faster and faster. Was I going to drown? I didn’t care any more. It was too much trouble to care. I closed my eyes and gave up. If the angel wanted to, he would save me. If not, it didn’t matter.

  There is a carved wooden angel in the church at Grassadoo, New Brunswick, where I was born. When I went back there in ’23, it was still there. I almost remembered it. When I saw it, I felt my breath go in sharp and I thought, “It’s Raphael!” That was my name for him. And my second thought was, “Yes, that’s why. That’s who he reminded me of.”

  The carving was very old. It was made from a piece of wood from the beach, and its shape was made by the shape of the wood. So he had short hair, this angel, painted yellow, and a halo that the carver had made from a different piece of wood and stuck on with pegs. His wings were kind of small, but that didn’t matter, because they were the right shape, and he wasn’t going to fly anywhere. He had bright blue eyes, but the look in them wasn’t very angelic. Something about the way the carver had painted them made it look like the angel wanted to fight instead of praying and singing hymns.

  One of my younger brothers told me that I used to tell him stories about that angel when we were boys. “You called him Raphael,” Michel told me. “And you said you used to argue with him in church.”

  Well, I couldn’t argue with Michel about that. Who knows, maybe I did tell him those things. Michel said I told him I could hear the angel’s voice in my head. I would complain to him about things that made me mad, and he would help me.

  “How did I say he helped me?” I asked.

  “He would tell you the reasons for things. Like when Papa had to shoot your dog. Or when Maurice and Peter drowned in the big storm. You said that Raphael would say to you, ‘Are you going to lie down and die because of this, Andre? Because if you do I won’t be your friend anymore.’”

  So what am I saying here? Yes, there is a wooden angel in the church at Grassadoo. Yes, I’m pretty sure I called him Raphael when I was a boy. And when I woke up again, in 1917, when I came out of the blackness, I thought I recognized him. I just kept looking at him, because that was all I could do. I didn’t know who I was, where I was, or why I was there. There was only him.

  The strange heat was gone. I almost missed it, because now I could feel pain – four or five different kinds, if I thought about it, or I could just let them mix together into one big pain. I was afraid to move, because some of the pains felt dangerous, like they would get much worse if I gave them a reason to. I could feel liquids oozing out of me in places, soaking into the bedding and making cold spots. Was I still in the river? Maybe I was lying in mud on the shore. But no, there was a ceiling over me, so that couldn’t be it.

  I looked at that ceiling for a long time. I got to know it really well, the colours, stripes, streaks and knots. It was made of corrugated iron laid on wooden beams. A bright shiny streak in the metal drew my eye. Nearby was a patch of rust that looked like a face
with a beard, and a bunch of dark spots, like little black stars. One of the beams was light and plain, another had dark and light stripes, and a third one was all dark, with a couple of knots in it. I counted seven spider webs in the angles between the metal and the beams.

  I looked at that ceiling until my eyes got tired and closed. I had a dream about sailing a little silver boat in the sky, with a man who had a bushy red beard.

  When I woke up, it was dark. I started to get scared. And mad. Why was I all alone? I knew there was something wrong with me, even if I didn’t know what. I was thirsty and I had to piss. "Screw the pain," I thought, and turned my head so I could see more of the place. When I tried to get up I found out that my arms and ankles were held down with clamps. I couldn’t get loose, no matter how much I struggled. I felt my bladder let go and that’s when I started to yell, like a baby in his crib. I don’t know how long I yelled, but nobody came.

  When I woke up again, someone was with me. There was still pain, but I could feel heat in the places that hurt –not the dangerous heat like before, but a good heat, as though something was working hard to fix my body. I wasn’t thirsty and the sheets were dry. “Someone is helping me,” I thought. “Maybe it’s the angel.”

  He was still there, tucking the blankets around me, pulling them up to my chin. That was what woke me up.

  I could see him better now, and I wondered – was this really the angel? I didn’t think angels wore clothes with buttons. And I didn’t think they ever got tired. This man was tired. I could see it in his eyes. That was another thing – his eyes weren’t blue, like Raphael’s, but grey, the colour of river ice before it melts in spring.

  He must have seen me looking at him, and he spoke to me for the first time.

  “You’re going to live, I think. I wasn’t sure at first, but it’s been twelve hours now. The hemorrhaging has stopped and you’re a little stronger. Tomorrow I’ll move you to a place where you can be looked after properly. Can you speak? What’s your name? Can you tell me that?”

  I couldn’t say a thing. I had forgotten how to talk. I could understand his words, but I didn’t know how to make any myself. And my name? I didn’t know that either, and that scared me all over again. He must have seen that, because he touched my shoulder and said,

  “Never mind. It’s too early for that. Enough that you’re alive. Don’t worry, I’ll look after you. I want you to live. You’ll be the tenth – one of a select company. Go to sleep now. I’ll be back later.”

  I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to think about all this. I would be the tenth what? What was wrong with me? Who was he? And who was I? But I felt a little bee sting in my arm, and then I was sliding asleep.

  This time I dreamt that I was on a train, going up a mountain. Part of me was trying to enjoy the trip, but another part kept wondering what would happen when I got to the top. Would the train go roaring down the other side? It went slower and slower. Then there was a jolt and a shake, and I was flying. I woke up, and it was morning, and all the birds were singing.