The Tindalos Asset

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  6.: The Lady and the Tiger Go To Hell

  (Somewhere West of Denver, December 1956)

  My Dearest Ruth,

  I’m beginning this as the train pulls out of Union Station. The day is bright and sunny, though it snowed here last night, and I imagine it’s as fine a way to spend a Christmas Eve as any, being ferried on steel rails through the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. I’ll post the letter when we reach Grand Junction, and then I’ll be traveling on to Sacramento. I have quite a lot of work to do before the semester begins. I hope that you’re well, and I hope this holiday season finds you in all ways better than did the last.

  When I spoke with Sarah Beringer in Chicago last week, she was emphatic that I write and tell you of my encounter with Marquardt and her woman, though I can’t imagine I have anything to say that will prove useful to anyone who’s had as much firsthand experience with those two as have you. I’m also not especially keen to revisit that autumn evening in Providence. It still, on occasion, gives me nightmares. I’ve awakened in a cold sweat from dreams of the gathering on Benefit Street. Regardless, I promised Sarah that I would write, and I do hope that I may be of some help to you, no matter how small. I trust, of course, your discretion in this matter, and I trust that what I write here will be kept strictly between the two of us.

  As you know already, as Sarah has told you, I met Marquardt through an acquaintance, an anthropologist formerly on faculty in the Dept. of Archeology at Brown. He has asked that I please omit his name from any and all accounts I may write on the subject of Dr. Adelie Marquardt, and I am bound by our friendship to oblige him. It matters only that he knew of my interest in Dagon and in Semitic Mesopotamian fertility gods in general and that, through him, the fateful introduction was made, following a lecture at Manning Hall. That was on the afternoon of October 12th of last year, and it was there that I was invited to the gathering on Benefit Street. I admit that I found Marquardt personable enough on our initial meeting. Certainly, she’s striking, just shy of six feet tall; the sort of woman I do not hesitate to term handsome. I don’t mean in any way mannish, but handsome. The sort of woman for whom I’ve always had a weakness. From what I’ve gathered, she excels at making good first impressions, the same way, I think, that a pitcher plant excels at seducing hungry insects. Aggressive mimicry, as the evolutionists say. Her grey eyes, her easy smile, her immediate interest in whomever she’s speaking to, the authority in her voice, and yet, I also confess to feeling the faintest inkling of apprehension when we shook hands. I can’t say why. I mean, I don’t know why. The vestige of some primal survival instinct, perhaps, something meant to keep us safe that human beings have, to our detriment, forgotten how to recognize for what it is.

  Her companion was not with her that day, and I gather that’s fairly unusual, seeing the two of them apart. I wouldn’t meet her until the evening of the gathering.

  “I know your work,” Dr. Marquardt told me. “Your article in Acta Archaeologica on the Septuagint’s account of the destruction of the idol in the temple of Dagon in Ashdod. I read that. Fascinating stuff.”

  Now, if you wish to flatter me, Ruth, and gain some measure of my trust, you have only to claim a passing familiarity with my research. I’m easy that way, as, I suspect, are most academics laboring in obscure and esoteric fields of study.

  “I have something I’d very much like you to see,” she continued. “A piece I’m told was recovered from the ruins at Ras Shamra during Claude Schaeffer’s excavations there in 1929. It’s been hidden away in a private collection for decades, so you won’t find it in the literature anywhere.” She told me that no one seemed to know why the artifact in question hadn’t gone to Strasbourg with the rest of Schaeffer’s material.

  “If it’s genuine,” said Marquardt, “it’s very important, indeed.”

  I told her I looked forward to seeing it, thanked her for the invitation, and we parted ways. I spent most of the next week up at Harvard, at both the Semitic Museum and the Peabody. My department’s endowment is modest (some would say meager), and it isn’t often I have the opportunity to visit institutions back East. As is always the case when I can travel, I was determined to make my stay as productive as possible, wringing the most from every waking hour, even if it meant wearing myself down to a frazzle. Which I promptly did. By the evening of Dr. Marquardt’s gathering, which was Friday the 29th, I was exhausted, and I very nearly begged off. Of course, in hindsight, heeding the wishes of my exhausted mind and body would have proven the most fortunate course. I’d not now be writing you this letter, and my sleep would not be so frequently interrupted by bad dreams. My nerves would not be always on edge. Hindsight, though, is rarely more than a cruel voice, taunting us from the shadows.

  I showered, got dressed, and walked from my room at Miller Hall to an old slatboard house at 135 Benefit. It’s built partway into the steep hill, with the basement opening out onto the street, and has been painted a ghastly shade of yellow. I’ve read it was constructed in 1763 by a Providence merchant named Stephen Harris, who fell on hard times almost as soon as the house was completed. Therefore, naturally, it has a reputation as a cursed house. I’d been told to arrive at 6 p.m. sharp, so the sun was well down by the time I reached the address. A housemaid greeted me at the door, and I found to my surprise that the gathering was already in full swing.

  The maid took my coat and ushered me from the foyer down a narrow hallway to a spacious drawing room. The air was smoky and redolent with the commingled odors of cigarettes, cologne, and perfume. Adelie Marquardt spotted me almost at once, and I was immediately introduced to her companion, Ecaterina, for whom I never got more than a first name. She was a very pretty woman, dark-eyed and her hair black as coal, and I must confess that she and Marquardt made quite a dashing couple. She’s from Bucharest, the companion, and she spoke with a heavy Romanian accent.

  “I trust you had no trouble finding the house?” asked Marquardt, and I assured her that I’d had no trouble whatsoever. “Good,” she said, “good. I don’t yet know Providence well myself, and I confess I still get turned around from time to time.”

  “Am I late?” I asked, looking about the crowded room.

  “No, no. You’re right on time,” she said. “You’re fine, my dear.”

  Another servant arrived, this one with a silver tray of fluted glasses, and she offered me champagne. I took a glass, though I’ve never much cared for the taste.

  Marquardt had begun explaining how she and Ecaterina had met in Paris, four years earlier, but I was, at best, only half listening. My attention had been drawn to the other guests, of whom there were at least fifteen or so. Ruth, when I say that they were an odd lot, I’m not exaggerating. I know that I have a reputation for being something of a prude; I’ve never kept company with Beatniks and Bohemians and whatnot, but I think even your beloved Kerouac and Ginsberg would have been taken aback by this outré bunch. Most were women, and there was a definite effeminacy about the few men in attendance, both in manner and appearance. I would say there was a conscious, purposeful outrageousness to the way these people dressed and carried themselves. They reminded me of a flock of some peculiar species of songbird, birds whose feathers are far too gaudy to be beautiful and whose bodies are so ungainly that one wonders how it is they manage ever to fly.

  “Well, would you like to see it now?” asked Dr. Marquardt. “The artifact from Ras Shamra?”

  I might have said yes. Or I might only have nodded. I can’t remember. But I do recall that, just then, I noticed a young man, down on his knees before the fireplace. He was entirely naked, save a crown of ivy set on his head and a red cloth tied about his face for a blindfold. His lips and cheeks had been rouged, and his head was bowed slightly, so that I couldn’t clearly see his face. A woman stood on either side of him, each dressed in gold and garish shades of red. Each held a silver chalice. I started to say something, to ask for some explanation of this bizarre tableau vivant, when Marquardt said, “Oh, don’t be sho
cked, my dear. It’s only a bit of sport. We like our games, you know.”

  All this time later, little details still keep coming back to me. For example, it was just a few weeks ago that I remembered the huge old Victrola in the drawing room, and that the record on the turntable was Hoagy Carmicheal’s “Stardust.” That was a favorite of my mother’s, and it was also one of the first songs I learned to play on the piano (I gave up music after high school). Oh, and the roses. I’ve not mentioned them. There were bouquets of rosebuds placed all about the room, arranged in reproductions of Ming vases. There must have been a hundred roses that night, but not a single one of them had opened. Their petals had been dyed blue, Mohammedan blue to match the blue of the porcelain vases. I’m digressing. But all of these details, and so many others that I don’t have time to include here, somehow they added up to a singular wrongness, as if the room in that yellow house at 135 Benefit had been carefully decorated so as to achieve a very specific and disorienting effect.

  There were pocket doors separating the drawing room from a small book-lined study, and Marquardt slid the doors open and ushered me inside. Ecaterina followed, and then Marquardt pulled the doors shut again, muffling the music and the voices of the other guests. In the center of the room was a small table, a scallop-topped tea table, and the thing that she’d invited me to that house to see sat alone at its center. When I saw it, I think I actually gasped.

  Were I writing to almost anyone else, Ruth, instead of to you, instead of to someone who has had firsthand experience with these people, I think that might sound hysterical. But yes, I must have gasped. And this seemed to please both Marquardt and her companion. They exchanged a smile, and I had the distinct impression that they were sharing some secret, like the punchline of a joke to which I’d not been privy.

  “Remarkable, isn’t it?” said Marquardt. “The craftsmanship is exquisite. And obviously it isn’t actually Ugaritic, despite its provenance. Likely, it came to Ras Shamra from Egypt, possibly during the reign of Amenemhat III, sometime after 1814 BC. According to Schaeffer’s field notes, this piece was found in association with a stela depicting the pharaoh.”

  For a few moments, then, I forgot Marquardt and her companion and their strange guests. I forgot about the blue roses and the naked boy kneeling at the hearth. For those few moments, the statuette on the table completely consumed my attention. Yes, the craftsmanship was exquisite, but there was nothing of beauty about the object. It was in all ways hideous. If I say it was wicked, would you understand my meaning? I think you might, knowing what you know and having seen what you’ve seen. The statuette was a wicked thing. And vile. And yet I found myself unable to look away from it.

  “It isn’t Dagon,” I said finally. “Whatever else it’s meant to be, it clearly isn’t an image of Dagon.”

  “I agree,” said Marquardt. “Obviously. Are you familiar with the early Sumerian and the later Assyro-Babylonian texts that suggest Dagon, or Dagan, had a wife? And that the wife may have been the goddess—”

  “Of course,” I said, interrupting her. That isn’t like me, interrupting anyone. But suddenly I was dizzy and my mouth had gone cottony. I took a sip of champagne and stared at the hideous statuette. “But this isn’t Ishara.”

  “No, it isn’t. But in Schaeffer’s notes, there’s a description of something he calls ‘Mother Hydra,’ and it’s accompanied by a sketch of this artifact. He says that when one of his workers uncovered the figurine, all the men fled in terror, and that only after it had been removed from the site would they return to the diggings.”

  “So, if it didn’t go to Strasbourg, where did it end up?” I asked.

  “As I said, a private collection. It appears that Schaeffer sold it to a Frenchman, Absolon Thibault Moreau, who’d been a student of Helena Blavatsky’s when he was hardly more than a boy. Moreau was obsessed with the various myths and traditions concerning sunken continents—Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu, and so forth—and he believed that the Phoenicians knew of a submerged land in the South Pacific called R’lyeh. He also believed that the god Dagon had originated in R’lyeh, and that the god’s consort, this—” and Marquardt waved a hand at the statuette, “still dwelt there, waiting for a coming apocalypse—a great flood, to be precise, that would herald the resurrection of a still mightier being than either Dagon or his wife.”

  There was a sharp knock at the doors, then, and Ecaterina slid them open just enough to whisper with whoever was on the other side.

  “So, if it went to this Moreau fellow,” I said, “how did it come into your possession?” I’d taken a step nearer the table and the statuette, and as much as I wanted to be away from the thing, I also wanted to pick it up, to hold it, to know the weight of it in my hands. I imagined it would feel oily.

  “He was arrested for murder,” she said. “Eight murders, to be precise. The bodies were found buried on his estate, just outside Avignon. There were allegations of cannibalism, but nothing was ever proven.”

  Just then there was a terrific commotion from the drawing room. Someone cried out—an awful sound, like a cornered, hurting animal—and my mind returned at once to the blindfolded boy at the fireplace. Ecaterina quickly pulled the pocket doors shut again. She glanced over her shoulder and muttered something in Romanian. At least, I assumed it was Romanian. And I saw, or more likely I only imagined that I saw, a reddish iridescent shimmer in the woman’s eyes, like the eyeshine from a wild animal. And I thought, I do not believe in werewolves, but if I did, then I would believe without hesitation that’s exactly what this woman is.

  Then Adelie Marquardt took my elbow, and she said, “You must leave now. I do apologize, but there’s an urgent matter that requires my attention. I regret the inconvenience.” The way she said this, it seemed exactly as if she were reading a prepared and carefully worded statement. She nodded to a small door opposite the tea table, a door I hadn’t noticed. “That will lead you back out to the street. It’s best you hurry.”

  And I did hurry. I found that I wanted—more than I’d ever wanted anything, I think—to be out of that house and away from those strange people and that wicked statuette. Somewhere above us, bells had begun to chime; they sounded very much like buoy bells. I exited the study, followed a narrow, musty hallway, and was soon out on Benefit Street again, looking back from the safety of a flickering pool of gaslight. I’m not sure how long I stood there by the lamppost, my heart racing, regarding Stephen Harris’s unlucky yellow house. Five minutes? Ten? And then I went back to Miller Hall. I left the lights burning until dawn, and I didn’t sleep. I left Providence the next day, three days earlier than I’d planned, and was grateful to be on my way back to California.

  I will add one last thing, and then I’ll close. Two weeks or so after that night, I received by mail an envelope containing a clipping from the Providence Journal. There was no return address, and I have no idea who sent it, but there was a Boston postmark. On November 5th, a week after Marquardt’s gathering, a body was found floating in the Seekonk River, not so far from the yellow house. The nude body of a young man. His tongue had been cut out, as had his eyes.

  As I said, I’ll post this from Grand Junction. Be safe, dear Ruth. Please stay away from that woman.

  Yours Truly,

  Ysabeau

  7.: Black Ops Alt (#friendlyskies)

  (Over Monument Valley, Utah, January 18, 2018)

  Thirty-five thousand feet up, Ellison Nicodemo wakes from a dream of drowning. She opens her eyes and squints and blinks painfully at the pale blue sky, at the white stratus and cumulus clouds, and at all the shades of terra-cotta red and brown, ochre yellow and sage green that are the desert laid out far below. The cabin of the Beechcraft King Air B200 is drenched with cold, bright morning sunlight spilling in through twelve circular portholes. Kitty Wells is singing and there’s the smell of coffee and leather upholstery. Ellison’s throat and mouth are parched, her eyes gummy from the pressurized, recirculated air of the plane, and her tongue feels like the bins
of whole dried fish at the Korean market a few doors down from her shithole apartment back in Los Angeles. Her sinuses ache, and there’s a vague, unfamiliar sort of nausea stirring in her belly, a touch of airsickness; she hasn’t flown in years.

  She sits up and stares at her reflection in the window, superimposed on the western sky. She’s wearing the new clothes they gave her back at LAAFB, more or less standard-issue agency threads—a black leather blazer, white dress shirt and black slacks, and a pair of inexpensive-looking black block-heel pumps. After she was dressed, the Signalman gave her a silver-and-turquoise bolo tie, and she’s wearing that, too. There’s a chunky Timex digital watch on her right wrist, so she knows that it’s 8:24 a.m., and there’s a Glock 17M 9mm tucked snug inside a shoulder holster—just like the bad old days, and never mind that she hasn’t fired a gun since 2011.