Grotesquerie

by Richard Gavin

  Contented that any further investigation into this matter could be done on higher ground, Kolkamitza prepared to depart.

  That’s when Fate dangled another temptation before him; this one in the form of a pull-down staircase. The steps were collapsed in on one another like a nested serpent waiting to uncoil. Beneath the stairs was yet another door.

  Kolkamitza wedged his wrist between the folded steps and rapped three times upon the rectangular door, which dutifully opened. The wooden stairs fell noisily into form. The obscene clattering sent Kolkamitza cowering behind the grandfather clock for fear of discovery. But discovery by what?

  For a tense eternity, the room remained still. Its only soundtrack was Kolkamitza’s frantic heartbeat. The storage room was now illuminated by a new light source, one that emanated from the opened hatch in the floor. It lured Kolkamitza as though he were a moth.

  What stretched beneath this crude room of wood beams and clutter was not some grubby sub-basement, but a grand corridor whose floor was lavished with high-pile carpet and whose walls were panelled in walnut. The light, Kolkamitza now plainly saw, was radiating from a chandelier. Two or three landscape paintings brightened the dark wooden walls and there was an alabaster column standing directly across from the pull-down staircase. Upon it rested a vase of fresh chrysanthemums. Kolkamitza could smell their perfume.

  How far down could this place go? How far indeed, for the room in which he stood was no mere storage bunker, it was an attic. And he had just discovered an access to the main house.

  He carefully lowered a foot onto the uppermost step. He tried to make his descent silent, but even the slightest pressure caused the wooden stairs to creak or pop.

  Now in the great hallway and ravenous for validation of what he was seeing, Kolkamitza pressed his palm to the wall. It was firm and cool. His perspiration formed a perfect handprint on the walnut panel. He watched it dissolve.

  A few paces ahead, a landing was visible, along with the pillars that flanked a great staircase. The only thing that diverted his attention from this majestic sight was the presence of a half-open door at the end of the hall.

  To reach this door, he had to cross the open landing, which he did on tiptoe. He felt like a child playing some forbidden game. The landing overlooked a foyer of marble. A collection of coats hung from a standing tree. The foyer was lit by a chandelier that was easily three times the size of the one in the hall. The great staircase that connected these lavish storeys was spiral in design and was carpeted in what looked like animal pelts.

  Kolkamitza turned his attention back to the door and peeked through its frame. The room it opened unto hosted a canopied bed, an armchair, and two dressers. There was also an uncovered picture window. Reassured by the stillness inside, he entered the room and shone his flashlight against the window glass.

  “Do you come bearing my supper?”

  The voice lurched out from the far end of the room, where a luxurious armchair was stationed before the window. The window frame was white, which made it luminous as fresh bones against its view of compact soil.

  “I’m…I…” sputtered Kolkamitza.

  How had he not noticed that there was someone in here with him? The figure was so plain to him now; seated in the armchair, its body dressed in a sloppy heap of silks. Kolkamitza squinted to discern the face but to no avail. He was about to fix his light upon it but was somehow unable. It was not fear that prevented him, but a queer sense of propriety. He simply knew that such an action was not appropriate, not in this house.

  The figure in the chair turned its head and now appeared to be staring intently at the window. Kolkamitza followed this example. What he witnessed was a chthonic constellation; a firmament not of stars but of wriggling worms and thickly crooked tree roots and pale weeds as fine as nerves.

  “I already told them that I do not care for what they’re serving today. They sent me here. I’ve been informed that I enjoy the view.” The figure’s voice was awful; a wet, lurching sound, like porridge bubbling in a pot. Kolkamitza turned again to scrutinize the speaker. Its head, now in profile, remained frustratingly obscured. Was it wearing a stocking over its head in the manner of a thief? No, there was no mask. But something was insinuating itself between the figure’s face and Kolkamitza’s gaze, something hazy, a fine mist that was the colour of ground thyme. “Would you be good enough to inquire about my meal? There’s little else I’m able to do for them here.”

  “Yes,” Kolkamitza managed, bewildered, “yes, I will.”

  Creeping his way out of the room, Kolkamitza steeled himself for the figure in the chair to rise, perhaps even attack him. But the shape did not so much as flinch. Its attention was lost in the view of the land upon which Kolkamitza’s house, and the civilized world, stood. Kolkamitza’s eyes were drawn back to the large windows, where a plump grub was squirming flat against the pane, its white form flexing into a crescent-shape; a new moon rising in this buried nightscape.

  Scared and speechless, Kolkamitza shuffled to the spiral staircase and made his way to what might be the main floor. The staircase bannister was smooth, as though well-worn by many hands. The foyer was colossal, gorgeous. This was a mansion. More than a mansion; a palace. He staggered about the cavernous room. How large was this place? He must be beneath one of his neighbour’s houses at this point, perhaps beneath another street altogether. He wondered just how many regal structures like this one had been reposing beneath his feet without his knowledge.

  There came the glassy sound of laughter from somewhere nearby.

  Kolkamitza turned and, apropos for this journey, found himself facing a door. Its face was engraved with a bewildering pattern. The smell of wood-stain was heady. He eavesdropped as best he could to the conversations that rumbled beyond the door. Then he knocked three times.

  The muted chatter dissipated. For several moments there were no sounds at all.

  Kolkamitza strained to listen but his ears found only silence. Until a voice rang out, one bidding him to enter.

  Jutting a finger toward the door’s brass push-plate, Kolkamitza found that the most sheepish of touches was enough to push the swinging door back from the frame.

  He found himself facing a dinner party, one so opulent and cliché in demeanour that Kolkamitza wondered if it was a parody.

  “One of our guests lately declined their invitation,” said someone with a reedy, almost musical voice. “You may occupy their setting.”

  Kolkamitza raised his hand. The finger he’d used to inadvertently open the dining hall door was still extended. One of the diners must have assumed he was pointing toward the ceiling.

  “Yes, that’s the one,” said another guest. “Tucked away upstairs, the deluded creature.”

  “Sit,” invited a third. “We’ll be dining soon.”

  The feast hall was decorated in blue-and-black wallpaper and ivory mouldings. The floor was oiled wood that shone like a millpond beneath the various candles that guttered in their silver holders. The table was long, of a size one might see in a cafeteria, only much finer, much more lavishly set. There were china plates and silverware polished to a sparkling degree. The guests were all dressed regally. Kolkamitza wished to study them more closely but did not want to appear gauche. He opened his mouth to say something but found himself temporarily mute.

  His bewilderment was so great that Kolkamitza did not even register that someone was approaching him from behind, even though they were pushing a serving trolley whose wheels were audibly parched for grease.

  The figure stepped out from behind this cart and struck the small gong that hung by the dining hall entrance. The reverberations echoed through the great corridor and although the sound startled Kolkamitza, he did not flinch.

  “This way,” the servant said. A gloved hand was now at Kolkamitza’s back and was pushing him into the room. This gesture was more seductive than forceful. The very idea of resisting somehow eluded Kolkamitza as he carefully squeezed himself between the rows of
throne-like chairs and the gorgeously tall china hutches that lined the walls. These cabinets looked to be of the same walnut that panelled the upper hallway. Kolkamitza counted seven of them.

  The vacancy was at the head of the great table. Kolkamitza was expecting the chair to be more comfortable than it was. It felt like cold concrete beneath him. One of the hutches loomed behind his seat, limiting his movements. The plate before him was chipped and the flatware was mismatched. His napkin was of purple silk. A quick inventory of the other settings revealed that each guest had a different coloured napkin. Kolkamitza dearly hoped this did not mean there would be party games.

  The squeaking cart was wheeled into the room. A large silver cloche sat atop it. When the servant gripped the server lid handle, everyone reached for their napkin. Kolkamitza followed suit, but where he draped his across his lap, the others raised theirs to their faces. In perfect unison, all the guests blindfolded themselves. They then turned their masked eyes toward Kolkamitza. They resembled two rows of the condemned awaiting the firing squad.

  The server—or was he the host? —lifted the cloche.

  Kolkamitza spied a nest of pulsating lights. They were smallish and bunched together like luminous grapes. They were of a colour he could not identify. They flexed and twitched like beached fish.

  There came the sound of creaking wood. Kolkamitza tried to rise but was forcefully seized by someone from behind. Had the creak been that of a hutch opening? Before he could even resist, his assailant had snatched the blindfold from the floor where it had fallen and swiftly bound it across his eyes.

  “Still…” a voice whispered in his ear. He almost recognized it.

  The dining hall was now awash in rattling, scrapes, shuffling.

  Someone announced, “This will do. I found it in the Uppers. His, no doubt.”

  Hands were now pressing Kolkamitza firmly into that unforgiving chair. He then felt the pressure of the nylon rope he’d used to repel himself down here. It was now being used to lash his arms and his ankles to his seat.

  “Be still…” repeated the voice at his ear. The speaker now wrapped their arm across his chest, their hand positioned above his heart. “They’re serving Fool’s Fire…Eat…”

  He could feel something cold had been brought to his mouth. His lips were chilled by what felt like frost. Kolkamitza wanted to refuse but his jaw autonomously fell open. A fork was wrested between his teeth.

  The delicacy on his tongue crackled, began to dissolve like candyfloss. It tasted like some bitter root.

  With the offering now fully ingested, the crowd began to chitter and whisper amongst themselves. Kolkamitza asked what was happening. He heard a moan that was explicitly carnal, followed by footsteps clattering across that great marble foyer. These clacks grew fainter, more distant, soon becoming the slight groans of the ceiling above.

  They were upstairs now, moving away, moving perhaps to the attic with its open hatch that led to the living world above.

  Eventually there were no sounds at all.

  “Hello?” croaked Kolkamitza. His voice bounced through the vacated hall like a stone skipping across still waters.

  The hand was still at his chest. “Shhhh…” the voice purred, “listen…”

  Kolkamitza strained. A new noise, one fluttery and crisp, flooded the dining hall. He then heard the familiar cawing of a jackdaw.

  “Rheims?” he called in a broken voice.

  “Thank you, darling…”

  At last the hand was lifted from his chest. Kolkamitza could only listen to the telltale sounds of the woman crossing the foyer, scaling the spiral staircase, fading across the upper corridor with its fine walnut panelling.

  All around him, the air was thinning, growing more and more scarce. Every heartbeat caused a flaring pain in his chest.

  “Wait…” he muttered, but too late. His heart felt taut, like a fist within his chest. It began to slow. Wilting, resigned, Kolkamitza counted off his heart’s final beats, which were three in number.

  Ten of Swords: Ruin

  The days had been thick with summer; with blades of sun and stifling heat and swarms of noisy, thirsty insects.

  The eldest sister awoke first and was delighted to discover that this morning was the sort she and Celeste both held precious; a day when the sun stumbles a bit in its swagger, when it falls behind a drape of tin-grey clouds. A day when the swelter is pierced, when the trance of surf and shade and cicadas rattling in the greenery is threatened by the reminder that autumn is never far behind, that all things do pass.

  This autumnal omen poured itself between the trees and columns of the great house like cold treacle. It might last only a handful of hours and may well be ignored by those who cannot grasp its meaning, its visions of harvests reaped and nights distending.

  The sisters would not ignore this omen, they would welcome it. They had in fact been anticipating it, quietly hoping for that little oasis of breezes that would raise hackles instead of stirring dust. They’d been yearning for fog and billowing drapes and the muted lull that piles upon the world entire.

  Desdemona stirred in her bed and knew intuitively that this was to be a day of secret things; of creeping about the great house on cat’s paws and listening with bated breath and turning locks and pressing open long-shut doors.

  Rain had been falling lazily for hours by the time Desdemona finally opened her eyes and stretched out the atrophy of youthful summers. She sat up and listened to the pattering upon the roof of their turret room. She was facing the mirrored backing of her dresser that stood against the far wall, but the morning’s gloom prevented her from seeing her reflection. Nevertheless, Desdemona somehow sensed that she appeared unwholesome.

  She turned down the sheets, moved to the curtains and peeked into the outer world. The lake that hemmed their property was brown and churning. The waves slapped down foamy against the great stones along the shore.

  “Celeste, wake up,” she said sotto voce, giving her sister’s sleeping form a shake as she crossed the room.

  Down the hall, the door to the parents’ room sat open. Desdemona could see that their great bed had been crisply made and that Father’s bag of things was no longer reposing on the circular table.

  “Mother?” she called into the corridor, meekly, for she did not truly wish to be heard. When the only response she received was the rain’s ongoing pattering Desdemona leaned back into the room. “It looks like they’re gone again.”

  “Who’s gone?” asked Celeste. Her mousy hair was splayed across the pillows like a great tangled net that had ensnared her slight face. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and yawned.

  “Mother and Father. They’ve left. But don’t be too sad. There’s some good news, too. Listen. Do you hear the rain?”

  The noise then became an agent for Celeste, who charged with the unbridled enthusiasm of Christmas morning. She bounded from the bed and hurriedly began to dress.

  Desdemona did the same, but more discreetly. She slipped behind the Japanese shoji that Mother had given her for their thirteenth year together. It is well known that the most beautiful things need not come at a great cost, but lesser realised is that true beauty is something an object is not immediately born with, but is instead a quality that accretes after that object has travelled across great spans of miles, or of time, or both.

  Besides this beautiful privacy screen of charred wood and moon-pale rice paper, Mother had presented her with other gifts as well: bottles, a palm-sized diary with a thin charcoal pencil, a rabbit’s foot on a silver chain, a scroll that was revealed to be a sepia-toned chart detailing the lunar phases.

  Worrying into a plain dress, Desdemona forced a brush through her hair and stepped out from behind the divider.

  “You should do the same,” she said, extending the brush to Celeste. “You look like Mr. Rochester’s first wife.”

  Celeste huffed but complied. She scraped the brush across the mass of tangles, wincing with each pass. “Wher
e should we start?”

  “Start what?”

  “Start looking. What else?”

  Desdemona stared out again at the great yard, at the maelstrom of the lake. Something queer and greasy suddenly began to stir in the pit of her stomach. It was a very unpleasant sensation; not one of sickness, but of something foreboding, as though an invisible wall was trying to insinuate itself between her and something in her future. The sensation lasted merely a moment before fading.

  “We need to eat first,” said Desdemona.

  “Why?” Celeste’s voice curled with a disappointed whine.

  A burst of lightning brightened the room with painful suddenness. The thunder that followed it was sonorous and seemed to shake the very foundation of the house.

  “Because we are responsible women,” Desdemona replied.

  *

  Despite Celeste’s request for a breakfast of mere butter and honey, Desdemona insisted that they eat the food Mother had left for them: hardboiled eggs and wedges of cheese and bowls of berries with cream. Their meal had been set upon the table in the great dining hall.

  They ate at the long slab table, each sister positioned at one end.

  “This is the head of the table, you know,” Celeste proudly explained. “That makes me the leader, since Father isn’t here.”

  “Father’s not the leader. And don’t put your elbows on the table.”

  “Who is then? Mother?”

  Desdemona shrugged. “Maybe there isn’t a leader.”

  For a spell they fed wordlessly, until Celeste finally confessed that she did not like the quiet.

  “It reminds me of Mother’s suppers.”

  “It’s not one of those.” Desdemona said firmly. She cleared her throat and changed both the tone and the subject of discussion. “So, what shall we look for today?”

  Celeste thought hard on the question. “I want to explore Mother’s things.”

  “No. That’s not a good idea.”