“Okay. What’s this about?”
“I would imagine you could guess.”
“You have questions?”
A pause. Confusion in his voice.
“Should I? I was under the impression that you didn’t know anything at all, Mr. Tauschen. What could you possibly tell me?”
I didn’t have an answer for him. I kept waiting for my vision to clear, or adjust to the dark, but neither happened. There must have been something over my head – a bag, or a blindfold – but I couldn’t feel it. I strained against the darkness, occasionally convincing myself that I saw something.
“I know more than you might think,” I boasted, playing for time. “If you don’t have questions, though, then I’ve got some for you, Eli.”
“More questions about my supposed crush, then?”
I tried out a laugh, and it sounded weird.
“Not exactly. I got that one figured. Kinda weird, though, when you consider that the woman you are hot for is your great grand aunt…”
“Great grandaunt,” he corrected, sounding annoyed. “And you are mistaken. Madeleine Diem has been a friend and a patron.”
“What about Holly?”
“I have no doubt that my great grandmother cares,” Elijah said coldly. “Holly has been decidedly less helpful to me, however, in recent months. Jealousy, no doubt, over my acquisition of such a choice relic, but it is little matter. We will have to time to work out our family affairs once more pressing matters are settled.”
I was relieved to hear it. I doubted Elijah would lie to me, particularly when he had me at this kind of disadvantage. He simply didn’t think enough of me to bother. A lie can be a sort of compliment, approached correctly.
“Pressing matters? Such as collecting limbs from innocent schoolgirls? Sumire thought you were a friend, you know.”
“She is more than capable of defending herself,” Elijah said, his tone worked up and arrogant. “Without the Pallid Mask, she might have defeated me. It was a sporting venture, I assure you.”
“That’ll be a great comfort to her, I’m sure. Where did you get that mask, anyway?”
“I told you, or I tried to. My great grandaunt facilitated a contact with the Outer Dark, and I made a profitable exchange.”
“If you think you came out ahead, then you don’t understand the deal,” I said, all aloof and worldly-wise. “What’s that mask do that makes it so special, anyway?”
“It causes travelers to lose their way, though that is one of its minor attributes,” he explained, his voice as oily as a junk bond salesman. “Better to show than to explain, I think.”
The darkness resolved. There was no blindfold, but rather a murky blob of shadow, the room occupied by a darkness with an oppressive tangibility. The dark rippled like an oil spill on the surface of a stormy ocean, and in the center, a face smiled at nothing in particular. The face belonged to Elijah Pickman, but it was also something more and much less than that. The face was an expressive, animate mask, and the shadow in the room radiated out from it like light from the sun.
Then Elijah stepped out of the shadow, a candle in his left hand, and the illusion dissipated. He smiled at me in neighborly sort of way.
“What is this about?”
He smiled at me.
“Art.”
“What?”
“Art, Preston.”
A repeat of his dreadful smile.
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“This is my studio, Preston,” Elijah explained, lighting a couple of the candles on a centrally located candelabra. “A basement, I’m afraid, so there goes the view, but it is on Prospect Hill nonetheless. A grand old house, really, two centuries old and hardly changed at all. A glorious place to create, even if one cannot see the city from a basement.”
“Oh. Good for you, I guess.”
“I thought perhaps I would show you some of my etchings,” he suggested, walking across the room. “You might learn something.”
The candlelight offered a rough picture of the room. I was secured to a chair in the center of the basement, which was itself secured to an ancient black iron wood stove, fortunately not in service. The room itself was not large, perhaps five meters across, and short enough that my head would have scraped the ceiling beams, if I could have stood. Arrayed about me in a circle were a number of easels – thirteen, by my count – each concealed by a sheet.
“You were serious about the etchings?”
“Oh, yes.” He looked confused. “Absolutely.”
“Not much of an art lover, I’m afraid. You might want to save them for a more appreciative audience.”
“That won’t be a problem,” he assured me. “No one ever cares for my etchings.”
I tested my bonds again, and again found no weakness to exploit.
“Where to begin, where to begin…hmm. The Principalities of the Air? The Bespoke Girl? Perhaps The Concordance of the Fifth Assembly?” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and then snapped his fingers. “Of course! We will start with the first in the series. You will recognize the subject matter; though the perspective on your neighbors might seem a little…different.”
He strode purposefully over to one of the canvases, and lit a candle on a stand beside the easel.
“Brace yourself,” Elijah suggested kindly. “You may close your eyes or look away, should you wish. It makes no difference.”
He tore away the covering, revealing the modestly sized etching beneath. I looked at it for a fraction of a second, and then recoiled, shutting my eyes and averting my gaze. My chest heaved and my stomach turned, my muscles flexing uselessly within the ropes. The bastard was right. I could still see the damn etching. Blame the Azure – I did.
The style recalled the later works of Francisco Goya, and also perhaps the darker creations of Francis Bacon. The etching was a detailed rendering of an empty, featureless room. Every panel of glass in the windows was broken; there was no other detail.
It was my living room at the Estates.
A figure lay across the floor of the ruined room, posed like a crime scene. I couldn’t shake the suspicion that the figure depicted was April, but perhaps my mind simply volunteered detail in detail’s absence. My memory of the etching is fortunately clouded, but I recall the figure as being indistinctly feminine.
The etching somehow also featured the thing that did not yet occupy the room, but inevitably would. It was a collection of disjointed images and impossible geometries; it ached like a cavity and promised atrocity.
I whimpered, and then worse. The etching was visible until Elijah restored the cloth covering to it. I slumped in the chair, a shuddering mess, sweat running down my face.
“I’m flattered,” Elijah Pickman said, with a mocking bow. There was something wrong with his face. It kept slipping. “Twelve more to go, Mr. Tauschen.”
***
A red interval. Lost time.
The sunset was dazzlingly bright from the open basement door, reducing her to a silhouette, the light filtering gauzily through her ephemeral skirts and long sleeves, and reflecting off the brass handle of her scissors in a manner that caused my mouth to water, filled with the taste of pennies.
“I told you to come home for dinner,” she said clearly, ignoring Elijah entirely. “You are so late, Preston.”
I smiled, or I tried to smile. The cold air stung my cracked and chipped teeth, and bloody saliva leaked freely out of the corners of my mouth. I wondered where in the hell she got her hands on those scissors.
“How can you be so mean?” She leaned her head against the doorframe, sounding as if she might fall asleep. “I’m really angry.”
Elijah leapt to his feet. His glasses fogged with the labors of his breath, and his clothing clung to him, soaked with sweat.
Poor guy. It looked as if he’d had a rough day.
“The manufactured cypher,” Elijah said wonderingly. “I have a purpose for you, as well, but not at present.”
A
pril started, as if she had just noticed Elijah. Her bare feet left bloody tracks, her soles injured by the long walk from the Estates, swaying from side to side with each unsteady step.
“April?” He laughed shrilly. “Is this a game? I know you can understand me.”
He was wrong. April was far from understanding.
It is difficult to be certain were the damage April endured at the Institute ends, and where she herself begins. Much of her behavior is dictated by trauma, past and ongoing, and she leads a strictly regulated existence in order to minimize the threat to herself or others. April exists by a set of self-imposed rules, and my primary responsibility is to see them implemented.
The most fundamental rule of April’s existence – outside of the sanctified and warded confines of her home, she can never be left alone. Not for a moment, at risk of a violent episode. And chances were she had just completed a long, deranged march to the studio from the Academy by her lonesome, a walk that must have taken hours.
I wondered how many bodies were scattered along that route.
“April?” Elijah took a short step back, sounding a little warier. “Where did you get those scissors, dear?”
An excellent question. My guess?
Holly Diem.
April stumbled further into the room, dirty bare feet against fluid-splattered tile. One hand trailed along the wall for a balance, and every third step threatened to send her tumbling to the ground.
“Pull yourself together, girl,” Elijah commanded imperiously. “Let’s have a conversation!”
April hissed through clenched teeth, her face mostly hidden behind a thicket of hair. She clutched the scissors perpendicular to her leg, the rounded metal of the handle resting against the pleats of her skirt. I wondered if she had dressed herself.
“April,” Elijah said, taking another step back. “How did you find us?”
April didn’t answer, entranced by the scissors in her hand, and the impending bloodshed. Her eyes were slate blank and her sweat beaded on her skin. She stalked Elijah like a haggard cat at the end of a long pursuit.
It must have been Holly who told her about the studio, probably while she was providing her with a sharp object in direct contradiction to every instruction she had been given. Holly would likely argue that she was doing me a favor, sending a deranged April off to the rescue – but then again, Holly was perfectly aware that I never would have put April in so much risk, were the choice mine.
I don’t know about you, but I was getting a little tired of witches.
“Don’t take another step, April.”
Elijah bent and rummaged through a toolbox resting beside his press and etching equipment, coming up with an échoppe needle as long as his forearm. A quick feint to the body, and then Elijah sprang at her, the point of the needle aimed for her throat. April ducked, and the needle entangled itself briefly in her hair. The scissors were a metallic blur, puncturing him rapidly in the throat, chest, and stomach. It was over before I could blink, in a terrifying and frenetic portion of a second.
April darted away, while Elijah’s needle clattered to the tile. Thick as honey, blood stained April’s hands, and dripped haltingly from the scissors. She held them out in front of her like a fencer’s rapier, the point tracking Elijah’s right eyeball. He shifted and stumbled, grabbing at himself distractedly, uncertain which injury vexed him the most. He wore black, so there was no obvious blood, but the palms of his hands were red where he touched himself.
He opened his mouth, and made a strange, interrogative sound. He adjusted his glasses, and then repeated the gesture a moment later.
“You were such an excellent tutor.” April slumped slowly to the ground, her voice exhausted and shrill. “I really enjoyed struggling with my studies.”
“I see I made a mistake, taking Preston first.” Elijah came to rest against the far wall, still on his feet, but moving stiffly and bleeding freely. “Are you certain that you actually understand the pluperfect tense, April? I was truly fooled, then.”
“This is sad. Where will I find a tutor as handsome as you?” April explained dully, putting a finger to his aristocratic jaw and regarding it solemnly, like a breeder examining a horse’s teeth. “I had such plans.”
Elijah coughed blood onto April’s chest, and then shook his head apologetically.
“Staunch your bleeding heart,” he suggested, reaching behind his head with shaking hands. “I am not entirely done with your lessons, April.”
April hopped back, tracing a strange design with the point of the scissors in the air between them, a ward invisible to all the rest of the world.
“Your friends have enemies,” Elijah advised, fumbling with something behind his ears. “Some carry more weight than others. I made a deal with Yael Kaufman’s creditor, the King in Yellow, to create an exhibition, a series of etchings that allow it access to the Nameless City. In return, the King in Yellow gave me a gift from the Outer Dark. The Pallid Mask has seen a million worlds and more, but none has survived the viewing. Perhaps the Nameless City will be the exception, unlike Roanoke? On the other hand, perhaps not. Would you like to see the gift the King in Yellow gave me, in return for opening the way?”
April took another step back, and shook her head solemnly.
Elijah laughed. The knot he had been struggling with yielded to his determined fingers and his face slipped just slightly, revealing itself as a mask. His regal features were static and rigid, as if they belonged to a classical sculpture.
“It works well,” he said, his voice coming from behind his immobile lips. “It is rather uncomfortable, though. This is always…”
The mask fell away entirely into his waiting hands. There was nothing but animate shadow beneath, and looking at it hurt. April faced Elijah stoically, blood permeating the white tissue of her eyes and dripping steadily from her nose. The brass scissors glowed as if scalding hot. I was fascinated; I wanted to die.
The mask in his hands was a bone-white, hideous approximation of a human face, sculpted in a permanent leer or grimace, depending on the angle.
“The Pallid Mask,” Elijah said, from nowhere and everywhere all at once. “All it cost me was my face and my shadow.” He gestured at the aching absence, the event horizon of his empty face. “And now I have this. You cannot imagine how much better it feels. Your face is a cage, April Ersten. Allow me to free you from it.”
It was hard to see what happened, and harder still to explain. Elijah didn’t move at all, except to cross his arms and laugh. It was his shadow – and the moment it moved, it revealed itself as patently false as a Hollywood set painting. It was camouflage and habitat both for the parasite that used Elijah as a host. There was a rush of darkness, a strange bending of dimensions, and then something like an explosion, a tremendous rush of energy directed at April, who brought up her arms to protect her face. The force of the impact rattled the walls and worked up a cloud of dust and debris. Forced to close my eyes, I tried to blink away the grit.
When my vision cleared, there was nothing but shadow where April had been. These shadows were craven, insatiable, and sharp. These shadows had teeth. They swirled like a dust devil around the room, and everywhere they touched felt like alcohol sprayed on my skin, a burning cold that left blisters and sores in its wake.
It must have ended, eventually.
The caged lightbulb buzzed and whined back to life and the counterfeit shadows congregated within Elijah’s shadow, and in the depths of his nothing-head.
April swayed with exhaustion, the scissors hanging loosely from her limp fingers.
The predatory shadows had reduced her clothing to rags and singed her hair. The skin beneath her shredded clothing was covered in a dense mesh of marker script. Looking closer, I saw the same thing beneath the various rips and tears in her clothing – a single symbol, written with black paint pen in varying size, in a steady and elegant hand that could only be April’s own.
“The Yellow Sign,” April said, examining her
shredded outfit sadly. “Weaponized Linguistics; first year, second semester.” She pointed the tip of scissors at his left eye. “Are you pleased with me, tutor? Have I earned a pat on the head?”
Elijah took a pocket watch from a suit pocket, examined it, and sighed heavily.
“I am, and you have.” He fit the Pallid Mask across his face, and then began to tie it in place. “Unfortunately, I have other obligations which must be addressed.”
“You’re leaving? What was the point in all this, then?”
“I’m afraid that I must leave,” Elijah said, stroking his hairless chin. “In any case, all I truly needed was to remove the both of you from the Estates. Perhaps my method wasn’t ideal, but taking Mr. Tauschen was effective nonetheless, wouldn’t you say?”
“You’re testing me; aren’t you, tutor?”
“Of course!” He sounded overjoyed. “The world is a laboratory that you will never escape, Subject Nineteen.”
Her eyes narrowed. A vein in the side of her neck throbbed along with her pulse.
“Where did you hear that, Elijah?”
“The King in Yellow; he whispers secrets to me, in the dark, so that I can never fall asleep. Terrible, scalding secrets.” Elijah opened the grating to the dormant potbelly stove, and then climbed inside, collapsing his legs beneath him like a spider to fit through the narrow opening. The Pallid Mask smiled out of the sooty darkness inside the stove. “You will understand soon enough. Or never. It’s the same thing, really.”
April settled slowly to the floor, her legs curled beneath her. Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Where are you going, tutor?”
“Another hint?” His tone was incredulous, but he paused in the act of stuffing himself into the impossibly small confines of the stovepipe. “Very well; only because you are my favorite. You and Preston have come to rely on the sanctity of the Unknown Kadath Estates, have you not?”
He studied us in turn, eyes as false as Madeleine Diem’s doll eyes.
“That was lazy and arrogant. What do you know of the witch who calls it home? Or,” he added, with relish, “her loyalties?”
The Mysteries of Holly Diem (Unknown Kadath Estates Book 2) Page 24