“Actually. My name isn’t Smith... it’s...” “It’s Smith now, my dear Edward,” she scolded. “It doesn’t matter what it was.” How was he going to tell his mother? He would have to admit to not only taking the bar exam, but sneaking off with another woman. Edward had a habit of pacing when he was nervous. He began to fiddle with his cufflinks and pace around the furniture. He was going to have to pull permits for the business, construction, signs, and many other things. Suddenly his life was full of projects.
Edward stubbed his toe on something behind the sofa. He looked and saw his briefcase still sitting on the floor where he left it earlier. He looked across to the coffee table and saw it there as well. If there were two briefcases, they were identical.
“How?”
“Shhh. Sit down and have another toffee.” Angelica placed a hand on his shoulder. This time it felt less exciting. Edward hated to think it, but it felt more motherly. She took a toffee from the dish and held it to his mouth. “You know it’s rude to pass on something a host offers you.”
Edward began to feel as if he was in a haze. As they circled the couch, something terrible came into view. It turned Edward’s stomach so hard, he popped a cufflink right off, letting it scatter across the floor. A crumpled figure lay between the sofa and the coffee table. Edward realized he was looking into his own eyes. His doppelganger's neck was broken. It was bent viciously on the corner of the coffee table. The twisted tweed suit was crumpled around his form. Edward’s head began to spin. The room wobbled and waved around him.
He would have struck the floor again if not for Angelica, who gracefully caught him in her arms. Her cold fingers and soft fabric washed over Edwards’s hands and neck.
“I know. It’s not easy at first, my dear Edward. But you are in good hands. I will take great care of you,” she whispered. She spat onto the corner of a hankie and cleaned the edge of Edward’s mouth. “There you go, sweetie.
Know All Men By These Present
The story of:
Davis A. Willingham, a Property Developer
Bracken MacLeod
From the Journal of Davis A. Willingham - 1911
I checked my watch a fourth time, waiting for the seller’s attorney to arrive. Nestling it back in my vest pocket, I resisted the urge to immediately withdraw it again, my gaze having neither comprehended the time nor hastened the overdue man’s arrival. The Middlesex County Registry of Deeds was deadly hot and as humid as an Indian bungalow. I half expected to find a circle of turbaned men in the lobby placing wagers on whether the cobra or mongoose would prevail. However, my company was kept only by men with better sense than I, dressed in lighter fabrics.
Climbing the stairs to the Registry floor, I found a seat in one of the private signing rooms and tried to distract myself with the newspaper. The Globe’s continuing stories of President McKinley’s assassination, the smallpox epidemic spreading through the city, and Yale’s impending bicentennial celebration only filled me with despair. I chose instead to pass the time staring out the window at the street below, fanning myself with the paper rather than continue reading it. The times were changing in ever more troubling ways. An increasing number of automobiles traveled the thoroughfare, bringing with them a noxious odor and almost constant noise. It was not as troubling, however, as the sight of a woman riding astride instead of side saddle.
The world degraded with increasing discourtesy and shamelessness each passing day. How was one to continue living in it?
After a few more minutes of quiet meditation, my counterpart arrived in a flurry of loose papers and unconvincing excuses. “Mr. Willingham,” he said, “I apologize for being late. I was delayed by a mob of people gawking at the electric subway car tunnels. One wonders when folk will tire of staring at a hole in the ground.”
“Indeed. Do you have the papers, Mr. Kenyon?” I asked.
“I do.” He smiled at me, his left front incisor dead and gray. It stood out in an already unappealing grimace. He set his bags upon the table and withdrew the several documents requiring my attention, spreading them out in order they should be executed. “Are you certain you would not prefer your attorney handle this matter?”
“He’s done all I need; I prefer to sign papers myself. I like to see what I am agreeing to.” I leaned over and signed my name a half dozen times. He followed suit, signing on his client’s behalf, assuring me with a copy of his power of attorney, even though I felt no need to see it.
He assembled the documents and turned, ready to leave our private room to join the line at the Registry to record them. Pausing in the doorway, he said, “May I ask, Mr. Willingham, if it is not an imposition, what interest you have in hotels.”
“Almost none, sir. I have an interest in property that makes money. Public houses, theaters, hotels--it doesn’t matter what business is done as long as I stand to profit from it.”
He laughed as though privy to a secret I had not yet unearthed. “Well sir, I wish you luck. My client and his wife made a steady living in the establishment certainly, but were far from enriched by its income. Not until your generous offer came along, in any event. I hope the investment returns what you expect.”
“Thank you.” I held out my hand. Kenyon’s grip was as soft as his negotiating skill. He’d secured his clients only half of what I’d been willing to pay for their establishment. He made to let go, but I held on. “I believe you have two items for me.”
His eyes went momentarily wide. Realization spread across his face, and I released his hand. He reached into his bag, withdrawing first a key and then a ledger. “My clients apologize...”
“I was dismayed, shall we say, to find a missing volume of the guest register upon the final inspection of the property. My offered purchase price was for the building as well as all fixtures and appurtenances.”
“Yes. Well, as I said, my apologies. My clients possess a touch of sentimentality regarding this edition of the register.” He set it on the table and opened the cover. Turning pages, he settled upon the registrations for 15 September 1899. Tapping a finger, he indicated the reason the sellers had tried to abscond with my property. Theodore Roosevelt’s signature was hastily scrawled and partially illegible. “Given the events of late, they hoped to retain the President’s signature in their guestbook.”
“My guestbook. And he wasn’t the president when he stayed.”
Kenyon nodded his head in agreement. I could see in the man’s pained expression he would have offered debate over the value of the page if he thought he saw an avenue of success available to him. All roads in that direction were closed. I would have offered to excise the page for his clients if he’d only asked. He didn’t ask and neither did I offer, however. Instead, he gave a curt bow and departed.
After the man left, I sat with the book a moment. I traced a finger over the former vice-president, now president’s, signature, thinking on how the life of a man can change in only an instant. In the time it took to shake hands, one man was mortally wounded and another would be taken to account for it. In less than a fortnight, yet another man would be elevated to the leadership of a nation and, as a result, a book that formerly had little value, suddenly had much. Not that I cared for Roosevelt’s autograph. It was worthless to me.
I turned the pages back until I found what I was looking for. 15 September 1900. The name signed halfway down the page made my hackles rise and I hesitated to touch it for fear of what it might do to me. I did touch it. The stroke of his hand resembled an unraveling more than a name and the sight of it had no appreciable physical effect upon me. A burden of emotional weight settled in my heart, however.
Erich Nunn.
The name of the demon that haunted me sat lifeless on the page. Reading it neither summoned nor condemned him. If I could tear the letters away and feel the rending of his flesh, I would have done so with haste. I would have set match to the foundations of the Registry if the resultant destruction of the book would slay the beast who’d signed it. But books hav
e no such power. They cannot create or destroy outside of the imagination. No matter what my intentions.
What the book did was ratify my purchase of the Waltham Cross House. He had stayed there. He slept under its roof. I had another place to look for the demon.
~*~
From the street, the hotel itself was unremarkable: a temple front Greek revival building with four black Doric columns supporting a second story balcony. A dead bramble beside the steps suggested purple azaleas once might have greeted its lodgers. I let myself in using the key Kenyon had given me and found the hotel as diminished within as it was without. Yellowed floral wallpaper peeled from the wall behind the front desk. Battered floors below and a suspended cloth ceiling above were both in need of repair. The appearance of the place mattered very little to me. I had no intentions of reopening it as a place of public accommodation.
I walked along the main hall to the proprietors’ office. As agreed, they had left everything not a personal possession--everything but the book under my arm. I gazed at the gap on the shelf above the desk where it belonged. How the McCrearys ever thought to hide their pilfer from me was unimaginable. The Irish!
Resting my things upon the desk, I shrugged out of my suit coat and hung it on the hook beside the door. The house was cool. A welcome respite from the stifling courthouse and the late season heat outside. I imagined the cellar would be even more pleasant and tried to contain my enthusiasm to find my way down into it. Instead, I took a breath and tried to steady the beat of my heart. He’d been here. Above me in room fourteen. I withdrew the bottle from my bag, and with it and the register in hand, made my way upstairs.
The room was small. A full-sized bed and an armoire dominated much of the space. Beside the window stood a small secretary desk and chair. I pulled open the lid and stroked the surface of the desk with my palm trying to feel Nunn’s presence. He’d left nothing of himself in the smooth lacquered wood.
The undressed bed was the same. My palm found only a smooth, cool mattress without resonance of any of its former dreamers.
I uncorked the bottle and poured a crimson drop into my hand. Rubbing them together, I tried feeling for him again. And a second time I found nothing that would tell me about Nunn and what he’d done in this room or any other. I lay down and took deep breaths, holding on as though the bed was unstably hovering above the ground and might topple me out if I shifted left or right. I closed my eyes and resigned to let sleep take me. The heat of the day was unremitting and the coolness of the house had brought about a torpor I could not resist.
As always, my dreams were punishing. My mind, a Hell of my own making. In sleep I watched helplessly while the demon, Nunn, took my daughter’s hand from my own. I stepped away and they turned to face the priest who bound them together. I did not protest when the opportunity was presented; no, I consented to the union and ratified it with a toast, giving my blessing for Sabina to wed the beast. My mind took me places I hadn’t been, but knew existed. The nuptial chamber. Nunn atop my daughter like a courtesan in the Abyss’ brothel. She rode him, damning her spirit and defiling her body. And I stood in the corner, a dream ghost, an incorporeal witness to the selling of a soul.
I awoke feeling weary and unrested as I did at the end of all such nightmares. The sun had set, leaving me in darkness. Gathering my things, I staggered into the black hallway and down to the first floor. I fumbled in the shadows until I found a half full oil lamp in the storage pantry and lit it. The glow of the flame further yellowed my surroundings making me feel trapped in amber like a prehistoric insect. An ornament for the Devil’s walking stick.
I knew my answers were in the cellar. In every other building I’d purchased, they had been underground.
The basement was black and cold. It was empty and vast. Like me. I set the book and the bottle down and undressed. Gooseflesh spread over my skin, making the fine hairs on my body stand erect. I felt a hint of a draft blowing through the space as though the final exhalations of a dying house were being breathed upon me.
The bottle was growing close to empty as I poured a palmful into my cupped hand. I drew the design across my chest and belly, down to my groin and up to my neck, covering my most vital places with redness.
From my bag I produced the jar containing a heart. It was pink and grayish purple and still. When I’d first placed it in the jar, it had beat with the reflexive energy of a spirit not yet departed. All that remained of the prostitute I’d engaged in Boston, however, was the organ and the last of her blood in the bottle. That I poured in a circle in the dirt, adorning the center with the whore’s heart. I clutched the register to my painted chest and spoke the evocatio which I dare not commit to paper now.
At first, nothing. Then, the sickness. The room closed around me as the pressure of the sea crushing a diving bell. My head ached and my stomach heaved; I felt a pop in my sinus heralding the surge of hot blood from my nose. I stood, weaving, trying to remain focused on the tribute. A morsel for the beast in the center of my circle of binding.
The sounds of it eating occurred to me before the sight of it. I felt the urge to flee, not to witness the horrible abomination I’d called up. But, I had come for this. Bought the house, slain the woman, and called forth the Beast to enforce my bargain.
In my daze I saw my grandson, known only to me in dreams. No longer an infant, but a child. It rent the last of the whore’s heart with rows of dead, gray teeth like Kenyon’s, giggling with pleasure at the treat.
“Beautiful, isn’t he?” Nunn said from a place I couldn’t see. His voice slipped out of the shadows around me like audible mist.
“I want what you promised,” I said.
The beast’s whisper beat against the inside of my skull like fists. “‘Your wildest dreams come true’ was the bargain. You have exactly that. You could have had so much more, but it is not my fault you suffer from a paucity of imagination.”
I pressed my hands to my head, trying to clear it. The fog of confusion in which I labored to have a cogent thought grew thicker. I struggled to remember my own name as my muscles weakened and my slack knees folded beneath me.
“Do you care to know how your daughter fares?” Nunn asked. “She is happy and well. Motherhood has transformed her. She is as resplendent as the morning star. I’d say I got the better end of the bargain when you sold her soul. As I often do.”
“I want more,” I fought to say.
“You only have to dream it.”
“I want... what... he has.” I pointed at the child. It snapped at my finger.
I focused the last of my will and lunged at my grandson. Breaking the circle banished the apparition, leaving only the empty jar in his place. I landed upon it, shattering the vessel, glass shards stabbing into my chest. Pain reached up in me. I struggled to breathe and fumbled at the pieces. Pulling at them, they slid out of my body like tiny knives cutting paths to the deeper truths of me. Red daggers reaching for the heart of the man.
Nunn’s laughter mixed with the giggles of the child became the crash of the front door and thundering footsteps above. Clear vision of the cellar returned along with the iron taste of blood and raw flesh upon my tongue. Mrs. McCreary’s body lay next to me in a state of scandalous undress. Her breasts fell to the sides under her outstretched arms, exposing with greater emphasis the empty red cavern in her chest. Her husband, I knew in an instant, lay lifeless in room Fourteen above us. I felt full, but still unsatisfied.
I sat in the circle as the Irish cop descending the stairs shouted at me in his odious, unintelligible brogue. I succumbed to the fall of his truncheon, my binding ring, protecting me not at all.
#
#
From the patient records of Alger Horsely, M.D. PhD., recorded at the State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers, Massachusetts.
21 December 1911
Mr. Willingham persists in the delusion that he is the victim of false evidence produced against him in the several murders and unspeakable crimes against nature whic
h he has been found to have committed. His delusional construct imagines an unfulfilled bargain with a demonic being in exchange for some indefinable return. He has convinced himself the stumbling block in this agreement is that his daughter wed this evil spirit. Her soul unconsumed, the deal remains unexecuted. He also believes she has produced offspring with the beast.
No amount of treatment utilizing Dr. Freud’s talking cure seems able to dispel that delusion, nor does the photographic evidence of his daughter’s remains, discovered in the basement of his own home, seem capable of penetrating Mr. Willingham’s madness.
He denies he has committed the crimes unearthed in the subfloors of his various properties, asserting it is this demon, Nunn, who is responsible. His own delusional structure posits that occasional acts of murder in order to pursue the beast were both required and justified, and that he should not be held accountable for anything he has done in order to track down this Nunn character.
As no therapeutic regimen has yet proven successful, and given his propensity for violent acting out, I can only recommend continued physical restraint and narcotic sedation for Mr. Willingham. In addition, the sexual nature of his psychosis, both in origin and expression has compelled me to obtain an order for his immediate surgical sterilization. I intend this order to be carried out upon resumption of staff activity after the holidays.
It is a small blessing his late daughter was his only known issue. It would be too heavy a burden on my conscience to imagine the suffering any offspring of Mr. Willingham would have to endure in either inherited shame or madness.
Alger Horsely, M.D. PhD.
#
#
Record of Births in the City of Cambridge during the year next preceding January 1, 1910
***
Name: Jonathan Arthur Willingham
Sex: Male
Date of Birth: June 6, 1909
Name and Surname of Parents: Davis A. and Sabina Willingham
My Peculiar Family Page 5