Séance Infernale

by Jonathan Skariton

  Over the sounds coming from his friend, Whitman poured another glass of Chivas.

  “I think the fuckup fairy has visited us again,” he said.

  —

  “We’ve been working on the film for the past few hours,” Whitman said, “with a dead body lying in the next room. Oh, this is great. Just great.”

  The phone rang. He picked up.

  “Hello?” he breathed into the receiver.

  “Get out of the house.” A woman’s voice. Scottish accent. “Now. You’re in danger.” The line went dead.

  He brushed the living room curtains aside and peeked out the window. A police car was parked next to the main door of the building. Within seconds, another police car pulled up in the middle of the road directly opposite the tenement. Two uniformed officers came out of the first car and went straight for the main door of the building. Even before Whitman heard the buzzer ringing in his flat, he knew they were coming for him.

  “But wait a minute,” he said. “Wait a minute, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet!”

  “Who’s buzzing?”

  “The police,” Whitman said.

  “It can’t be the police,” Charlie said. “We have a dead body in there.”

  “At least they’re fast,” Whitman said, lighting a cigarette.

  The buzzer rang again.

  “Are we going to answer that?”

  “Let’s think about this,” Whitman said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “The last person who slept on that bed was you, and that was last night.”

  “Right.”

  “As I’m sure you own a well-proportioned brain, you would have noticed if there was a dead body gathering flies next to you.”

  The buzzer rang again.

  “We left for the Archive just before four in the morning. When we got there, Nestor was nowhere to be seen. It seems logical that at that point he was already dead and probably not inside the building. So the only answer, since neither you nor I could have murdered him, is that someone moved the body here while we were at the Archive.”

  “Someone really wants this film.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  “Why do they want to set us up, then?”

  “I don’t know, Jabba. This is a whole new kind of weirdness.”

  The buzzer echoed throughout the flat for a fourth time.

  “You think we should let them in?”

  “You crazy? It’s like a scene from Eyes Without a Face in there!” Charlie went to the living room table as Whitman gathered Valdano’s files and stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray.

  “What do we do now? How do we escape?” Charlie said, the laptop case slung around his arm.

  “Through the front door, of course.”

  “But they’ll see us. We’re going to get pinched.”

  “I didn’t say otherwise, Chubs. Observe.”

  Whitman opened the door of their flat. The tenement building consisted of four floors, each accessible by a central stone staircase. They heard buzzers ringing in the other flat on the same floor. Charlie had started down the stairs when Whitman grabbed him by the arm. He pointed the other way, up to the fourth floor. “That way.”

  They trudged up. From downstairs, the sound of a buzzer and a lock giving in. The main door had opened.

  Footsteps echoed throughout the building.

  The fourth floor consisted of two flats. Charlie and Whitman waited between the two doors silently.

  The footsteps headed up the stairs, accompanied by the cackle of a radio. They stopped one floor below them.

  “Mr. Whitman? It’s the police.” They were knocking on the door. And after a beat: “Open up.”

  Just wait it out.

  They were banging now. “Open up.”

  No response.

  Whitman put his finger over his own lips, motioning his friend to remain silent.

  “Mr. Whitman?”

  Whitman heard them talking.

  It became apparent they didn’t have a warrant.

  After a few more knocks, the uniforms gave up. Whitman heard footsteps heading downstairs.

  24

  Elliot stood in front of his neighbor’s door for a long time.

  In the end, he threw the dice, so to speak—perhaps he wanted to tempt fate with the chance to stop him.

  The door opened, and before he knew it, she was standing in front of him. Those velvety legs, the delicate hands, the tangles of soft hair outlining a shadow on her brittle neck—all of these features like snapshots braided in a spiral, and at its center an apparition that irrevocably seized his thoughts.

  Something in her silence was haunting and hit close to home. But it was impossible to further acknowledge this, because by the time the realization had hit him, he had been ushered in her smell, in her ways, and in everything wicked she summoned inside him, a flickering charge of elated fervors and carnal desires registering too fast for him to catch up, in the blackness of her hair, her emerald eyes the only source of light, tongue tracing the contours of her lips—first the bottom, then the top—her pale skin emitting surges of warmth barely contained by her shirt, thighs brushing against the insides of her robe swishing the way a jungle will do in the wake of a tropical thunderstorm and one glimpse just one glimpse at the ambiguity of those eyes and he would be flying with her, speeding along a highway at night, leaving all the collapsed buildings and broken cars behind them, wind scoring their faces, their freedom informed by something deeper and unknown, holding on to th—

  The woman asked whether she could be of help.

  For a second he considered telling her it was a mistake. A part of him just wanted to go home and forget all about this. As he hesitated, the woman almost smiled at him. He surveyed her hallway and saw it was empty. He then knew it was his chance.

  His face changed, his brow furrowed. He looked worried. “I’m your neighbor from across the hall,” he said and the woman’s expression indicated she recognized him. He made a movement with his head, as if by way of apology. He knew his face was turning red, but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t even look her in the eye, just kept staring down as if he were talking to the ground. Yet for a moment he thought she had smiled at him.

  “My daughter,” he finally said, pointing back to his own flat. “She’s having a severe asthma attack.”

  “Oh, my God! Do you want me to call someone? An ambulance!”

  “No, no,” he said, shaking his head, “I’ve done that already. Just need someone to stay with her while I get everything ready.”

  “Oh, of course.” She seemed to recollect herself, grabbed her handbag and keys from the stand, and then thought of something. She darted to the living room.

  Elliot heard her speak to her daughter: “Mommy will be next door, darling. I’ll just be a few minutes, okay?” He smiled like a hungry wolf.

  “What’s her name?” she asked while shutting and locking the door to her flat. She placed her keys in her pocket and joined him in the hallway.

  He could feel her breathing next to him, and he enjoyed that. He wanted to inhale her breathing and let it slide inside him. He wanted to inhale it and quench this irreparable need. He wanted to devour it and feel it run through his body as if this very act could fix him, put him back together. Make him what he should be. He wanted that lively, luscious breath that permeated her long black hair running to the base of her spine, the breath that pumped those green eyes—the kind that change color depending on the amount of sunlight; the breath that escaped from the pores of her pale white skin and her thick, blood-red lips. He looked at her clothes—the blue jeans and the skirt over them and the slippers—and he got the feeling that whatever she might wear would look oversize on her frail body.

  Make me what I should be.

  Seeing her face, Elliot realized a reply was expected. He did a double take. Then, upon understanding what she meant:

  “Amanda. My daughter’s name is Amanda.”

  “That’s a beautiful name,” she sai
d.

  “I took her for a tea today at this beautiful café on Drummond Street. She loved it so much…but I think the excitement and the walk back knocked the wind out of her.”

  “Oh, I know the one you’re talking about…I go there all the time. It’s called Black Med—”

  She must have realized he was standing too close to her, because she moved. But it was too late. The knife was out of his pocket.

  She was so surprised she didn’t even make a sound. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. He pressed the knife against her spine and pushed her forward. He urged her down the steps, humming his little melody.

  —

  He finally got her inside the vault, then he jerked closed the door, got in, ensured she was still in place, and shut the doors. She was his now, and this was exciting. Her face was plain white—she was a sight for sore eyes, really. Her eyes were pleading and afraid. On some level it was funny. She just stared at him, waiting.

  Everything was so quiet down there, like the dry summer afternoons in the shade of a tree. She started bawling and shaking so hard she could barely walk. He lowered his hand off her shoulder to grasp the upper part of her arm, holding her up. They were still walking, but she couldn’t feel her legs.

  She turned to run, but he grabbed the back of her hair, spun her around to face him, and pulled her up by the hair until her toes grazed the ground. The pain was excruciating. All she could do was try to kick and pound her fists on his arm. She screamed as loud as she could.

  He slapped his free hand over her mouth and said, “Down here no one can hear us.” He got a pad from his pocket and flung it right across her mouth and nose. He thought he could smell fumes, even though there was no fire. She struggled like a small animal. But she was too weak, such a small thing.

  She clung to the arm that held her and tried to hoist her body up, to take away the pressure from her scalp. He lowered his arm slowly until her feet touched the ground. One of her slippers had fallen off when she tried to kick him, so she was off-balance and stumbled backwards. The step hit the back of her knees, and she landed on her rear end at the foot of the stairs. She sat there and stared out at him as the chloroform took effect, shaking so hard her teeth chattered. The horror took over only when she realized he had seen her put her house keys in her pocket and her daughter, Lily, was all alone in there. From her vantage point at the foot of the stairs, the light was bright behind his head, turning his face dark and outlining him in light.

  He whispered into the darkness:

  “Have you ever seen a fire, my love?”

  25

  The place stunk of voodoo.

  They were sitting in a popular student haunt on the corner of Nicolson Street and Drummond Street. It was a brooding, totem-poled coffee shop, where they sometimes misspelled “cappuccino” on the menu board behind the bar. The ethnic decoration was packed with carved, tree-trunk-like benches uncomfortable to a man’s behind, but the interior was warm and cozy, playing off the ergonomic driftwood theme of quirky au naturel chairs and tables.

  Whitman and Charlie were sequestered in a little corner, sheltering from the rain. Whitman looked at his friend; his eyes were bloodshot, teeth chattering, tremors slowly quivering his limbs.

  “What do we do now?” he kept saying.

  Whitman remained silent.

  A beeping sound from Whitman’s phone interrupted them. He looked at the screen, expecting to see Valdano’s number, but it was an 0131 number: local. He answered.

  A male voice asked whether it was speaking to Mr. Alex Whitman.

  “Who is this?”

  “My client’s name is Kasper Gutman.”

  “I don’t suppose he wants me to find a missing bird for him?”

  “You have something in your possession he is very interested in.”

  “Wouldn’t be my good looks, now, would it?”

  “The film, Mr. Whitman.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The film. My client can offer information about the film that would be particularly important for your…research.”

  “What research would that be?”

  “I surmise you have already figured out there are hidden frames inside the film?”

  Whitman didn’t reply.

  “Surely you are aware the film is incomplete,” the caller said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “The last five frames are missing. I have them here with me. Pictures of a little girl. She might even remind you of someone.”

  Whitman silently breathed into the telephone. He realized the man was not talking about a client anymore; it was “I,” and “me.”

  “How do you know about the last frames?”

  “The copy you have?”

  “Yes?”

  “I left it there for you. Are you still there, Mr. Whitman?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I understand you have a deal with a quite prosperous client. In exchange for the voiding of this deal, I can provide the remaining frames and a hefty six-figure sum. Needless to say, I will hold on to the original paper film.”

  “I don’t suppose you have anything to do with the dead Catalan.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What do you need me for?”

  “I need help with deciphering the codes.”

  “What’s in it for you?” Whitman said. Codes? he thought. What codes?

  “That should not concern you.”

  Whitman weighed his options.

  “Clock’s ticking,” the man said.

  “Name a place.”

  —

  “He said something about a code. That he needs help.”

  “Who cares about that?” Charlie asked. “Nestor’s body is in your house!”

  “You can bail if you want to. I need to stay and figure this out.”

  “Curiosity killed the cat, Alex. I think we have to watch our backs.” He was still shaking.

  Whitman tried to laugh it away, hoping his relaxed demeanor would calm his friend.

  Charlie nodded in return. “Want me to come with?”

  “No, I’ll call you when I finish.”

  Outside, students with tired eyes just out of Old College; skate kids with baggy trousers newly purchased from Flip; cheap-food aficionados with their bellies full from the Chinese buffet up the road; a blind man waiting on the traffic light. Whitman watched the light turn red and heard the beeping sound echo, an acoustical guidance tag to help those with loss of sight. The blind man began to cross the street, his cane moving left to right, feeling the way. The frequency of the guidance sound increased and then ceased, giving the man enough time to get across to the other sidewalk.

  Whitman got up from his seat, almost spilling his mug of coffee. “We need to get to a library. Now.”

  “You got a sudden craving for reading?”

  “Remember the clapperboard? The ‘dominoes’?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not what we thought.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s braille,” Whitman said. “The son of a bitch put braille code inside the frames.”

  —

  They crossed the road, turning onto Chambers Street; at the end of the road they turned right onto George IV Bridge and stopped in front of the National Library of Scotland.

  Three crows were perched side by side on the pavilion roof of the Edinburgh Public Library; a further two flew in circles around the octagonal Caenesque lantern, all below an ashen sky.

  Whitman and Charlie sat at a computer on the library’s ground floor. Charlie hauled a few books from a shelf. It turned out they just needed one; it was called Braille in Brief, by an author named Kyoko Toshiego.

  Whitman pulled out a piece of paper. From their printed material, they aligned the image of the first “domino frame” and began their trials.

  Two words formed.

  DEAR FRIEND

  They looked at each other, their gut i
nstincts confirmed.

  It took them the better part of an hour to decipher the code. Whitman held the paper in front of him. Augustin Sekuler was talking to them.

  Dear friend, I have experienced the most horrendous of times these past months. I found solace in the animated pictures. Although it gave me comfort, I eventually encountered the demons that sleep within that medium. I am surrounded by shadows and closely watched by hungry eyes, who aspire to my demise. And you, dear friend? Are you truthful to my values?

  I have thought greatly over this matter in search of a vessel for my secret, a way to protect it against the burning of memory and the oblivion of time. I have found no such vessel greater than the moving picture. Its frames have the capacity to embody the truth of man, even in its most abstruse form.

  My name is Augustin Louis Sekuler and I importune neither confidence nor conviction. Primarily so in the series of events I am about to embark on, where perception scorns reason and observation impugns perspicacity. I have been inspired by this city and its ancestors, whose works will stand after a thousand years. It is in this city I have hidden my greatest secret and I invite you to find it. I regard this city as an entity; its soul has survived until today and it has been my companion in struggle. I have used it to devise a series of riddles which mask my great secret. Their solution can unveil my true words. You must prove yourself a lover of this city and its beauty, so that I will know your intentions are honourable. Should you accomplish this, the city itself will reveal the answers to you.

  The first clue is among you, for all to see. ’Tis a house that argues with its neighbours and it speaks; yet only the mirror can see the secret it keeps.

  PESPECTOIRESUMRAHDIECRASTIBIVITAEMRTALIUM CRIGITURCRASMIHIUTTULINGUAETUAESICEGMEARAU RIUALTERACNSTANTI

  The smell of honeysuckle and an image of a little girl riding a bicycle along the path of an Edinburgh park.