by Amy Cross
1925
Sitting in the mayoral office, staring at the papers awaiting my attention, I try to decide what to do about Victoria. Although my instinct is to be patient, I'm very aware that I could risk further harm coming to her mind if I wait too long. I have been away from my house for most of the day, yet I am quite certain Victoria will have done none of the usual chores that one expects of a wife. She will not have cleaned, or run errands, or cooked dinner; instead, she will have spent the day reading her uncle's notebooks and trying to divine his presence through the flickering lights of the candles in my study. It pains me to think of her sitting alone all day, her mind so troubled, and I am starting to feel that perhaps I am an inadequate husband. After all, could not most men find some way to pull their beloved out of such a trough of despair?
"You could fuck her back to her senses," Lawrence Evans whispers in my head.
"Go to hell," I reply. Here in the privacy of my own office, I feel I can talk back to Evans and perhaps force him to leave me alone.
"I'm just trying to help," he continues. "After all, you helped me out when I arrived in Devil's Briar."
On that point, at least, he is correct. When Evans came wandering into the town, lost and disorientated, I took him under my wing and offered him a deal. At the time, I was struggling to maintain my position in Devil's Briar, and I realized that I needed to make myself seem stronger. To that end, I paid Evans to cause disturbances; the idea was that I would eventually stand up to him and drive him away, with the result that the townsfolk would recognize my authority and see me in a different light. Unfortunately, Evans quickly went too far, with the result that there were several deaths. I eventually shot the rascal, and I was lauded for my actions; still, I cannot help but wonder whether I was wrong to come up with such a scheme in the first place.
"I'm going to be leaving you soon, Albert," Lawrence whispers. "How does that make you feel?"
I take a deep breath. "I can only pray that you will be gone for good," I reply after a moment.
"Oh, I'll be gone forever and ever," he replies. "Or until the wheel turns again and we're all back where we started. Either way, I've almost finished what I came here to do."
"And what is that?" I ask.
"I came here to find a man," he says. "It wasn't really my idea to find him, but I tagged along. I've found him now, or at least I've found out what happened to him. That's enough, isn't it?" He pauses. "I'll miss you, Albert, but there's still a little time left for some more fun. Why don't you go home and fuck your pretty little wife one more time? Give me one last look at her tits before I disappear."
"You are a foul man," I reply. "The way you speak about my dear Victoria -"
"The way I speak is the way you think!" he says firmly. "What do you think I am, Albert? A ghost? A spirit? Fuck all of that. I'm your guilty conscience, and I'm going to do you one last favor before I leave you alone. Now get your ass out of that chair and walk to the door."
"I have work to do," I reply, picking up a pile of papers from my desk.
"Get up!" he screams.
I pause for a moment. Having considered this episode in my life to be over following Victoria's intervention, I am rather alarmed to find that Lawrence Evans seems to be asserting himself more and more fully in my mind. I dearly want to ignore his every utterance, but perhaps if I give in to his demands one final time, he will go through with his promise to stop tormenting me.
"We both know you're going to do it," he continues, "so why not make this easier on both of us? Just get out of your fucking chair, Albert, and walk to the fucking door."
Sighing, I put my papers down and rise from the chair, feeling a twinge of pain in my knee. I take my walking cane from the corner and make my way carefully over to the door, where I stand and wait.
"Well?" I say, already tired of this game. "What now?"
"Go outside," he says. "Go all the way out into the town square and walk over to the cross."
I take a moment to button my coat, before heading out of the office. Lawrence Evans is mercifully quiet as I emerge into the town square and walk toward the cross. It is a fine day in Devil's Briar, and for once it seems as if the people of this town are getting on with their lives in a harmonious and most agreeable manner. I cannot help but wonder if the recent turmoil of Thomas Paternoster's brief spell as mayor has been mitigated by my own marriage to Victoria. Certainly, our wedding day was attended by almost everyone in town, and I feel that there is a new sense of community spirit.
"Now what?" I say quietly as I reach the cross. "What do you want?"
"What if I told you that everything Victoria says about her uncle is true?" Lawrence Evans asks. "What if I told you that she's absolutely fucking bang-on when she talks about his work, and when she tries to find some evidence that he's coming back."
"My wife is under a great deal of strain," I reply quietly, keeping my voice low so as not to attract attention from passersby.
"And you've just assumed that she's losing her mind," he says, "but why don't you consider, just for a moment, the possibility that she's right? What if she's simply continuing her uncle's work?"
"I wish it were so," I mutter.
"It is so," he hisses. "It's very, very so, Albert. You just need to have faith in that gorgeous little wife of yours. Trust her. She's smart. She's much smarter than you. She's even smarter than her uncle. Do you know she used to make corrections in his notebooks? Without her input, he'd never have got this far."
"I don't see that Thomas Paternoster got very far at all," I reply. "The man blew his brains out."
"All part of the plan," he says. "All part of the grand experiment. Now reach out and touch the cross."
"Is there a reason for this?"
"Just do it," he says. "You'll see."
Sighing, I place my hand on the cold metal of the cross, and I realize to my great surprise that there is a faint tremor coming from within the structure. It is almost as if the cross contains some mechanism that is functioning deep inside its form.
"You feel that?" Lawrence Evans asks. "That's the problem. Paternoster's machine is fucking up the air around this place. You've got no fucking idea how much energy this thing is churning, and that little vibration is just the tiniest fraction of the whole." He pauses for a moment. "You want to know something crazy, Albert? One day, people are gonna come to Devil's Briar and find the whole place is deserted, and they're gonna try to work out what happened, and they're gonna mostly go mad in the process. They're gonna try to slip the groove on the loop, and they're gonna fail."
"I have done what you asked," I reply, taking my hand off the cross. "Will you now fulfill your side of the agreement, and leave me alone?"
He laughs. "Is there any way I can persuade you to let me have one last look at your wife's cherry tits before I go?"
"Leave me alone!" I say firmly, glancing up and seeing with relief that no-one is nearby to overhear my words.
"Fine," he says. "You're on your own now, Albert. I could've stuck around to help you, but I can tell I'm not wanted. I don't wanna overstay my welcome, so I'll be off now. Seeya on the next trip around."
I stand and wait for some sign that he is gone, but finally I realize that the silence in my mind is proof enough. Taking a deep breath, I turn and hurry across the town square, determined to find my dear Victoria and see if I can lift her burden. She was so good to me, rescuing me from the foul Dr. Collings and nursing me back to health, and I am quite certain I must repay her kindness. There must be some way to lift her from this malaise, so that we might embark upon a happy life together as husband and wife.
As I pass the hotel, I glance at the window and see John Saxon staring out at me. From the curious smile on his lips, I can only assume he has been observing me, and perhaps he noticed that I seemed to be having a conversation with thin air over by the cross. A shiver runs through my body as I reflect that even if Lawrence Evans is truly gone, there is still one potential trouble-maker in town.
If I am to truly ease Victoria's troubles, it might be that I must first chase this Mr. Saxon out of Devil's Briar. He is at the very least a disruptive influence, and his continued presence must surely serve to constantly remind Victoria of her uncle's passing. No matter what the means, I am determined to save Victoria from the tortures of her own mind, and from Saxon's lecherous advances. Even as he looks at me, I can see from the look in his eyes that he believes he can take Victoria away from me. Time is running out, and I must get rid of this man as soon as possible.
Chapter Six
Today
"Bill!" I shout as I race up to the first floor of the hotel and start desperately searching every room. Every time I push open another door, I prepare myself to come face to face with Bill, but every time I end up disappointed. Finally, I come to a breathless halt and realize I've checked every room, and there's no sign of him. I stand in the hallway and try to work out what just happened. I swear to God, I'm not losing my mind: I saw a human figure in this place. Finally, I remember that there's one more room downstairs that I haven't checked, leading off from the kitchen. I hurry through, but all I find is the skeleton that Bill and I discovered earlier.
"Bill!" I call out again, hoping against hope that he might be here somewhere. I listen, but the whole building seems to be completely silent. I want to call out to him one more time, but I force myself to wait a moment longer. If he's here, he clearly doesn't want to be reached. Taking a deep breath, I'm about to go back through to the hallway when I suddenly realize I can hear voices from somewhere else in the building. They're too muffled for me to be able to make out what they're saying, but I think they're coming from one of the rooms near the old reception area. With my heart racing, I make my way slowly along the corridor until finally I realize the voices are coming from the adjacent saloon bar.
"Mr. Paternoster gave the town a magnificent gift," a male voice says. "He was a very religious man."
"If that's what you want to call him," says another voice, laughing. "I'm just messing with you. Thomas Paternoster wasn't a bad guy, though I'd be careful around his experiments. They tended to go boom in a pretty big way, and I'm not just talking about the machines. Victoria might be beautiful, but she's still his work. You want to be careful. Don't turn your back. She goes from one extreme to the other, and it can get messy."
"I don't need your advice regarding my wife," the first voice says. "However, seeing as Mr. Paternoster is sadly no longer with us, and Victoria Paternoster is a married woman, I imagine you'll be wanting to get out of town in the near future."
Pushing the door open, I step into the saloon bar and the voices immediately stop. I find myself standing alone in the room, with nothing around me but empty silence. Still, I swear I heard those voices, and I'm pretty sure I haven't yet reached the point where I've started to imagine things. The voices were discussing names I've heard before: Thomas and Victoria Paternoster both appeared in the records we found here in Devil's Briar. Maybe my imagination is running overtime, but I'm certain that there's something else going on here. Last time I was in this town, I started to believe that ghosts might be real; this time, I'm absolutely certain that I've started to hear voices from an earlier time. All that remains is for me to find some way to convince Ed that this is all true, and to work out how to collect absolute, verifiable truth.
"Hey," says a voice behind me. I turn to find that Ed has returned to the hotel. "You okay?" he asks.
"Yeah," I reply cautiously, figuring I should probably keep quiet about the voices until I've worked out how to raise the subject without coming across as a total idiot. Ed probably already has doubts about me, after I started disturbing the bones out in the forest, and I guess the last thing I need to do right now is start rambling on about voices and ghosts.
"I just wanted to apologize," Ed continues. "I was a little harsh on you back there."
"It's fine," I say. "I just thought the -" Suddenly I realize that I've dropped the small crucifix. Somewhere between the edge of town and this room, it slipped from my hand. "Did you learn anything new?" I ask, trying to get the conversation back on track.
"Not much," he replies, "but it's still early days. Cole's back there documenting the skeletons. It's his kind of work. He's loving it." He pauses for a moment. "So I couldn't help but notice the spectrometer took a bit of a dent. Did something happen?"
"I don't know," I say. "It was like that when I got back from the forest."
"Uh-huh," he says, clearly a little suspicious.
"You think I did it?" I ask, immediately realizing that I sound kinda defensive. Then again, Ed is accusing me of sabotaging our work. "Why the hell would I do something like that?" I continue, when I realize he genuinely thinks I'm responsible. "Give me one good reason why I'd be motivated to smash up a piece of kit."
"You're tired," he replies. "You're emotional -"
"And that's why I'd start wrecking our work?"
He stares at me, and I can tell that he thinks I'm turning into some kind of wreck. "You said yourself," he continues after a moment, "being up here is a little strange. It's a weird place, and there's the added strain of Bill's disappearance. I know you never wanted to come back to Devil's Briar, and I think maybe I pushed you a little too hard. I should never have -"
I wait for him to finish the sentence. "Never have what?" I ask eventually.
"When we got here," he continues, "I knew we needed you. I felt like your obstinate refusal to come up here with us and help us out was based purely on the fact that you were worried about running into Bill again. When we realized Bill wasn't here, I decided I had to get you up here, so I..." He pauses again.
"So you lied to me," I reply, as I start to realize what he means. "You told me you couldn't find Devil's Briar, when you'd already found it."
"Would you have come otherwise?" he asks. "If I'd phoned you up and told you we'd found it, would you be standing here right now? Even if I'd told you we couldn't find Bill, would you have packed a bag and made your way out here?"
"That doesn't give you the right to lie to me," I tell him. "I came up here for one reason and one reason only. I came because you told me you couldn't find the place, and you told me that if I didn't come and help, you might never be able to get to Bill. You fed me some bullshit story about Devil's Briar disappearing and then reappearing -"
"The maps were real," he says.
"But the rest of it?" I stare at him for a moment, realizing how easily he managed to fool me. All it took were a few claims about the whole town not being here, and I started to buy into the idea of Devil's Briar being the focus of some kind of supernatural or paranormal activity. I started seeing movement in the shadows. Bill was right when he said that the human mind can play powerful tricks. Damn it, I started to believe in all this crap. I can't believe I was so gullible, but I guess this is a valuable lesson.
"So do you hate me?" Ed asks.
"Yes," I reply, feeling a kind of ice-cold anger start to rise through my body. I'm not a violent person, but right now I want to punch him in the face. "I didn't smash your precious spectrometer," I say, taking deep breaths in an attempt to calm down. "I didn't sabotage anything. Out of the two of us, I'm not the one who's being deceitful here."
"Everything else is true," he replies. "You saw what happened to Lawrence. You've seen that Bill isn't here. You've seen the skeletons. Everything that's happened since you got here has been completely true. The only lie was in the method I used to get you to come back."
I nod, realizing that I'm almost shaking with rage. I can't believe I allowed Ed to manipulate me so easily. "I want to leave," I say finally. "Are you gonna drive me, or do I have to take the truck and abandon the pair of you?"
"Wait a couple more days," Ed says.
"No!" I shout. "I've already been through all of that with Bill! I'm not hanging around while you finish your work. I'm leaving right now, for good, and I'm never, ever coming back to this place. I'm sick of all the lies and the tricks and
the voices and the -" I pause, realizing I've said too much.
"Voices?" Ed asks.
"Nothing," I say. "I'm going to the truck. Right now. Are you coming to drive me, or are you going to pull the same bullshit Bill pulled? 'Cause in case you haven't noticed, that didn't really work out too well for him, did it?"
"Let me go and tell Reuben," Ed says. "I'll tell him I'm driving you back to Florence."
"Okay," I reply. "I'll grab my stuff and meet you at the truck." I try to walk past him, but he grabs my arm. "Get off," I say firmly.
"Paula, I just wanted to say I'm -"
"Get off," I say, pulling free. "If you're not at the truck in twenty minutes, I'll hot-wire the fucking thing and leave you both here." Walking quickly out of the room, I head upstairs and grab my bag from the little bedroom where I slept last night. As I'm about to leave, I glance out the window and see Ed slowly walking across the town square, heading to find Dr. Cole and tell him what's going on. Taking a deep breath, I take one final look across the room and notice the small painting on the wall. I walk over and see that it's the same painting I noticed on my first day in Devil's Briar: the image shows a woman bending over as she does some washing, while a devil leers at her. Reaching up, I unhook the picture from the wall and shove it in my bag as a kind of memento, before having a change of heart and hurrying to the door. At the last moment, I realize there's no way I want any kind of memento from this place, so I take the picture back out of my bag and place it on the table by the bed, before heading downstairs. All I want to do right now is get as far away from Devil's Briar as possible, and I meant what I said to Ed: if he isn't at the truck in twenty minutes, I'm going to drive out of here alone. I'll let the people in Boston know they need to send someone to pick Ed and Reuben up, but there's no way I'm hanging around this place a moment longer.
As I walk out of the hotel, I spot the little crucifix on the ground where I dropped it. Annoyed at my own superstitions, I decide to leave the crucifix in the dust and instead I make my way quickly across the town square, heading for the truck. There's no sign of Ed so far, but hopefully - for his own sake - he'll be along soon to drive me back to town. I certainly don't want to end up with a repeat of the previous situation, where I drove away and had to arrange for someone else to come back and get Bill; nevertheless, I have this physical need to get as far from Devil's Briar as possible.