by Laird Barron
The song ends. Scratchy background noise repeats, the needle stuck in a run-out loop.
The record restarts from the beginning. This seems familiar, the scenario if not the voice. Perhaps her mother. Did Elizabeth sing along with records while I tried to sleep?
I’m out of bed again. Outside her bedroom, ear pressed to the door.
The voice pursues a more ethereal, almost angelic line than the main thrust of the recorded song, which is more aggressive, raw-edged and strident.
I drop to one knee, fit my eye to the keyhole.
In the center of her room, she stands looking up, arms raised in the same delicate nightshirt. Her orderly hair and intact makeup tell me she hasn’t yet been to bed. I can’t see what’s overhead, attracting her attention. Our bedrooms match, mirror images. Must be the skylight. In my own room, the glass is a black rectangle framing a few scattered stars. A million hours I stared up through that portal while the world slept.
Straining upward, she sings as if rhapsodizing some beauty unseen to me. The melody she weaves is strange, angular and swerving, yet beautiful. Beneath the startling bluish moonlight penetrating from above, her skin is radiant, her garment transparent.
Look away. I’m curious, fascinated, yet overcome with the exhaustion of many sleepless nights. Better to return to my room before she catches me watching. Close my eyes, try to dream.
***
By the time I’m ready to leave for work in the morning, there’s no sign of Bettine waking. I leave a note on the kitchen counter.
My boss knows my history, my scars, and the right hand I drag around like cold meat attached to my wrist. When she hears about Bettine, she suggests I head home early, catch up tomorrow. I think she feels sorry for me. A lifetime ago, I was a teaching assistant in the Music school, hoped to become a professor. I lost all that, lost everything. Can’t be bitter, though. They didn’t have to let me back in the department at all.
Anyway, I don’t mind playing sympathy for a few extra hours at home. Maybe Bettine and I will reconnect. Whether I need it more, or she does, I’m not sure.
At home, everything downstairs is exactly as I left it. The only sound, hardwoods creaking under my feet. My note sits untouched on the counter.
Then I hear the record playing.
As I climb the stairs, music clarifies. From the upper landing, I see her door standing open. I don’t want to burst in, frighten her. Having an adult daughter, I don’t know where to begin. No point of reference. Technically she’s still a teen, but I’m out of my depth, have no idea how to approach. Should I leave her alone? Who knows what she might be doing. I want to help, but I’m afraid she might be dangerous. All her talk of ecstasy, and white smoke.
Outside the open door I stop. I should announce myself.
Bettine’s standing next to the bed, just where I saw her last night, through the keyhole. This time, she’s surrounded by a white, whirling cloud. I expect a druggy smell, pungent like weed, or the plastic tang of a sizzling boulder, but what I get is airy, light and sweet, like a puff of powdered sugar inhaled off a donut.
“Is that…” I step into the room. Of course it is. “You can’t, Bettine! Not here.” I think to hold my breath, back away. Already the taste on my tongue is incredibly sweet. I should spit it out, but can’t. The intense, unexpected sensation brings me up short. I feel an urge to open my mouth, to take it in. I want more.
Only a man’s unbuttoned dress shirt and panties cover a model-thin body, legs impossibly long, the crest of hipbones visible through her flesh. Arms aloft, head tilted back, as if she hasn’t heard me, still thinks she’s alone. No paraphernalia visible. Just the music, and a girl gathering clouds to herself. Reveling in it.
I want to forbid this, drive it away, but there’s nothing tangible here. Nothing to prevent.
She notices me, turns. Upraised hands flutter, as if playing with something invisible, trying to catch butterflies I can’t see. Lowering her arms, she smiles like she knows I’m wondering what to make of this. As the cloud dissipates, she moves the needle back to the beginning of the 78. She drops playfully onto the bed, then reaches for something behind her on the mattress. Her hand goes between the old records, produces a black leather book. Not the black polish of her luggage, but aged and worn.
She pulls me down next to her, and scoots up close. It’s strange, touching her for the first time, feeling her warmth. I want to put my arms around her, squeeze her to me. I’m afraid of how that would feel.
“Within these pages,” she says slowly, dreamily, “all the secrets.”
“What…”
She flashes the book’s cover, illegibly titled. “Mother found the book here. In this house.”
“You said you didn’t remember, before.”
“She told me, as we departed Liège. Said she found it in her ancestral home, in Oregon, in America. Here. This book ignited her search, our trek to Europe. It fired her great hunger.”
Bettine doesn’t open the book, but allows a closer view of the florid script, waxy metallic ink the color of molten lead on the cover. Chansons de l’extase lumineuse. A scent, pleasantly earthy, almost pungent. As I reach, she withdraws the book to its hiding place, between records in brittle sleeves.
“I’ll be careful,” I venture. “It’s part of my job, repairing old books and records.”
“You said before. At a library.” She shifts slightly, hiding the book behind her.
I try another approach. “How did your mother really die?”
“Why should you want to hear about her?”
I don’t answer.
“You should hate her.” She looks up. “This book was all she cared about. Until the smoke.”
“I’ve never seen it before.” I regain eye contact, see she’s holding something back.
She hesitates. “She suffered. Those of us most susceptible to pleasure, we suffer most.”
That was me, before. Don’t want to remember. “You mentioned this man.” Despite all she’s experienced, I feel I should protect her. My stronger impulse, though, is the desire to know. I have to look away. “You called him Daddy.”
I glance back, catch her looking with pity at her poor father, scarred and broken. Carmine lips a recurve bow, her mother’s mocking smile. Maybe she wishes she found this place empty, enjoyed a solitary homecoming, free to pursue whatever inspired her return.
“It’s not answers you need.” Her accent thickens. “You have so much pain.”
“I’m glad you’re here. But you seem fully formed by your life over there.”
“It did offer many rewards.” Her eyes focus far away.
“So, why return?”
She exhales slowly. “Daddy decided Mother was right. He gave himself over to bliss.”
“What do you mean? He overdosed, thinking he’d be with your mother?”
“Something like that. Perhaps an accident. Some believe everyone who gives themselves to the smoke does so willingly. I had to leave while the Gendarmerie sorted things out. I thought I could return, that his house would become mine. I retained a lawyer to fight for me, but Daddy’s secrecy had been absolute. He had no public identity, no will. I could never return to the house on the Rue d’Auseil. I was homeless, and possessed only the essentials I carried with me that day, expecting within weeks I would return.”
“How lucky you took the records with you. And this book, something about songs.”
“As I said, some believe every seeming accident disguises secret intent.” She chews her bottom lip, eyes darting up, to the corner of the ceiling. “Perhaps I knew this was my journey’s next stage.”
“Your mother’s ancestral home.” I stand, shrugging off suspicions, feeling more settled than I can remember. Do I have a part to play? “Are you hungry? I’ll make dinner.”
She looks surprised. “I don’t need food.”
In the doorway, I stop. “I’ll make enough for two.”
After it’s clear she’s not coming down, I e
at alone. What’s left, I put in the refrigerator.
In solitude my mind settles. The house is dark enough, quiet enough. I might sleep.
***
Distant music shoves me sideways, from cramped sleep into sweat-drenched wakefulness. Such a song echoes in and out of uncomfortable dreams, carrying into black delirium the dizzy significance of half-forgotten mad hallucination.
I’m out of bed before I know it, standing in the hall, searching for recognition within the tune drifting from Bettine’s open door. A restless song, sharp thrusts and tension-fraught lunges.
Though the room seems empty, I’m hesitant to enter. Recently I’m always up late, listening at her door to the sounds within. I creep as far as the doorway. Bettine hasn’t left the bedroom since she arrived. Where could she have gone?
The Victrola spins unwatched under the pewter lamp’s glow. The old leather book amid lacquer records spilled across the bed evoke an age when Elizabeth’s forebears built this place.
Shadows shift on mahogany floorboards, the quality of light altered as if the lamp has moved. Stepping inside, I see at once what’s changed. It’s the skylight, not transparent to the dark sky, but full of milky liquid. What I’m seeing makes no sense, this glass portal filled like a shallow pool, contents held up by inverse gravity. A shimmering, seething maelstrom. Out of the surface—liquid, yet weightless as air—a white tendril reaches down, wavering like ivy growing at time-lapse speed.
My hand extends, against my will. The right hand, the dead one. This pale, wavering finger strains toward me from overhead. I want to touch it, despite knowing my dead nerves will feel nothing. I raise my left as well, strain on tiptoes toward the ceiling.
Pleasure tingles all my fingertips, hyper-stimulation that makes me suck in breath. Both hands are alive with sizzling, electric sensitivity. It’s too much. It’s wonderful. Dead nerves, thrillingly alive.
“I didn’t bring that in.” A woman’s voice, behind me. “This time, it was you.”
I spin.
My wife in a towel, wet skin flushed from a hot bath. Years spin past in reverse, before my eyes. Elizabeth, as I first knew her.
No. Memory is a filter, overlaying what I see.
It’s Bettine.
She approaches. “Now you’ve felt it. You understand.”
My heart pounds, fingers tremble. “You can’t have this in the house.”
“It’s always been here, and it’s sublime.” She stands beside me, rises on tiptoes, one hand grasping my shoulder as the other reaches. Her towel slips from her breasts. She reaches to catch it, but not before I smell her skin’s hot dampness, fragrant of gardenia. “What must change is your perception.”
She strains upward and the wet surface above her breaks. A misty hint of white reaches toward her, solidifying.
“What is this stuff? How’d you bring it with you?” I remember that sensation, desire to feel it again. I’m more afraid than ever, yet the temptation has also grown. I’m hungry to know that feeling again. “We have to stop. Otherwise…I’ll go.”
I turn away.
“Wait.” Her voice, softer. She reaches down, adjusts the Victrola. The strange music clarifies. “Every pain can be soothed. Nothing need trouble us, ever again.”
I try to flex my right hand, already deadening again. I crave that dazzling tingle, remember it clearly. “I’m an addict. Pills, powders, everything. I have to be afraid.”
“We’ve learned to approach the danger.” Bettine sits on the edge of the bed, daring me. Her eyes go to the skylight, where the gelatinous substance is now settled, motionless. “Reach, once again. I want you to breathe it in.”
My hands tremble. I mean to refuse, but no words will come. The strange wet surface shimmers into gaseous drift, subtly glowing.
“Inhale.” Her towel slips again. She starts to reach for it, then with a half-smile, allows it to fall. “Let it penetrate your lungs, gentle as a whisper. Let another reality shift into place, superimposed onto this one, like a slow film crossfade.”
“It’s dangerous,” I whisper. “You said it killed your mother.”
“It’s not the smoke that kills, but the ancient beings behind it. They use the smoke, a conduit to rapture, to tempt you nearer. It’s accessible only at certain windows, in a few houses in all the world. This is such a window. You only have to open yourself. Take from them their pleasures. Use the music as your shield.”
I force myself to look down, away.
She takes up the black book, broad and thin like an artist’s folio, perhaps fifty pages.
“Chansons de l’extase lumineuse.” Fingertips trace words standing out in thick relief. “The name, it means Songs of Luminous Ecstasy. It’s our instruction.”
I lean in, tentatively reach for the book, expecting her to snatch it away. She moves it just beyond my reach, and opens the cover to reveal pages lined like musical score. Some sheets are scrawled with dots and loops like alien musical notation. Others are handwritten in a mix of styles and colors, or annotated with diagrams.
“The only copy,” she says. “The work of many hands.”
“You helped write this?” I ask.
She laughs, surprised. “No. It’s very old.”
The words seem plain enough when I glance at an entire page. When I focus on individual lines, try to follow the thread, they shimmer out of focus. A smell of rotting flowers and incense, perhaps memory again. I rub my eyes, shake my head. “What does this say?”
Her finger traces a line, the hand’s proximity focusing my attention. Vague letterforms clarify, resolve into words, punctuation. Violet English cursive, needle thin, precise. Sky blue French, looping and textural. Inky black German, fraught with blotches and smears.
“Entice them,” Bettine reads, “take their sweet fruit, but beware, they would devour.”
The words on the page come clear.
“Desire of mind to bring them. Music of Reich to sooth them. Songs of Zann to drive them away.” She turns the page, hands the book to me.
I read where she left off. “We feed of their fruit, they feed of our worship. Such is the ecstasy of the Glass Altar.”
“For years uncounted, this music, has kept at bay the harm approaching the callers of the white smoke.” She kneels naked at the phonograph. Though the song isn’t finished, she lifts the needle back to the beginning. “Some, like Mother, believe it possible to ascend. To become a higher being, dwelling forever within bliss.”
“I’m not going that far,” I whisper. “I just want to feel good. Just for one minute.”
“I know what you need,” she sings, voice light as the mist. “I’ll protect you.”
I crave something I barely understand. I’m tired, weak from lack of sleep. Too much worry. Not enough happiness. I stand, raise my face to the glass. Let it come to me.
Beside me, Bettine looks up at the skylight, filled with liquid clouds. A pale, barely tangible finger extends. She sings a brief, urgent melody, and the snaking tendril withdraws, leaving behind an airy puff of floating powder. She flicks out her tongue. I taste what she tastes, sweetness like powdered sugar inhaled. The flavor of her mouth, like a kiss. I can’t help swallowing. A rush of pleasure floods my body, the swirling embrace like a warm opiate cloud, but more energetic. The perfect balance of peace and stimulation.
Against this, I have no defense. I desire nothing more.
***
What paradise would I choose? A shimmering ecstasy of safety, comfort, belonging. Blackness of night transformed to a limitless, accepting universe.
Swallow deep. Again. Who could ever want anything else?
I wander hallways, explore an infinitude that has always existed, all around. Every time I think I’m dead-ended, new doors swing open. Unfamiliar rooms, passageways to my past, my future. I thrill at possibilities, certain this wondrous potential will remain, available to me after my head clears. My bitterness no longer matters. Without it, I’m weightless. All the pain, memories of blood,
acid rage. All set aside. A lifetime of unmet desires and cumulative defeats. Unwind years of struggle. Vanilla self-help books. Endless platitudes of diversion, rehab.
Inhale sweetness, that’s all. Can’t stop myself. Smoke is solid, spun sugar in my lungs.
Pinned and wriggling, mouth agape, breathing helpless in white delirium. A mind-reeling, spinning cinema, of a scale vastly beyond the human.
Anxiety feels distant, benign awareness of risks behind my pleasurable veneer. Remember, the smoke doesn’t kill. It’s the ancient things behind. That’s what got Elizabeth. Dangers unknowable to us, except by their beautiful creation. The loving smoke.
We just have to remember the music. Our book tells us so. A soundtrack, far away, reminds me. Climb again. Here Elizabeth glows, a slow motion drift. Her smile tells me she knows my thoughts.
I drop to the floor beside the bed, out of range of the smoke. Lying on my back on the polished hardwoods, head clearing as lungs gasp flavorless air.
Bettine leans down, grabs my right hand. “Come on!”
She pulls, but my sweat-slick hands slip loose. She takes my wrist two-handed, pulls.
I’m up again, beneath the skylight, pressing my face into a warm, blissful dessert.
“I want you to see it up close. Not just the outer smoke. Delve inside, to the heart of it.”
Together we enter a whirling other-realm, throb with impulses triggering every sense, amplified. A cycle of mad hunger and feeding, only to feel greater need, a desire where attainment merely heightens craving. Everything escalates. There is no limit. I press deeper into the whiteness, sensing power, concentrated and profound. My eyes see a darker core within.
A hand on my shoulder surprises me. I’m still here, tangible. So long since I lost track. I remember, I’m standing in Bettine’s bedroom.
Grinning wildly, she shakes me. “Isn’t it the utmost?”
“I decided to give in.” I’m breathing hard. “Stopped fighting.”
She embraces me. “You took the smallest taste, went flying.”