Iron Chamber of Memory

by John C. Wright

  He said, “I don’t know. I had the feeling, earlier, as if I had seen this house before.”

  “Manfred must have described it to you in a letter.”

  “No, his letters were mostly about the legal difficulties of moving in, getting the place ready, the reading of the Will, that sort of thing. He told me this house has ‘great character’ and he’s been bewildered each time he enters. You can start from anywhere and get to any room two or three ways. Manfred says he gets lost in here even in the daylight. And he never gets lost, and never forgets an appointment.”

  “Well,” she said, with a dulcet note of scorn in her melodious voice, “I do not know how Manfred managed to forget inviting his Bride To Be and Best Man to this old pile on the same day. It is not as if wild beasts got him.”

  “Maybe he was detained?”

  “Manny in jail? Well, that would be delicious. But, no, he would have had his barrister or someone tell Mr. Stocks at the Inn what had happened, to tell me. He forgot.”

  Hal marched through the darkness, footsteps booming on the uncarpeted wooden floor, turned left, took a step, turned right, took five steps, found and threw the latch, and pushed open the two leaves of the great front door.

  Now the fresh air met him. Enough starlight fell in through the open door, that his eyes could make out the dim shape of the main staircase when he turned. There was nothing else in the main hall. Hal had been expecting tapestries and suits of armor or some other decoration; he saw a square shadow that may have been a coffin, or may have been an empty crate.

  The Open Door

  The slender girl came up next to him. From here, the great front lawn was visible, the pale stones of the wall, and the dark murmuring shadows of the ancient wood. Beyond that the shadows implied the textures of pasture and farms, outcroppings of tall rock, and the glint of starlight on the sea. The moon was not up.

  He said thoughtfully, “I have been wondering, ever since last Christmas, actually, how anyone forgets anything. I mean, why would evolution or providence design our brains to have our memories be like words written in the dust, that any footstep or wind can wipe away, instead of making our brains like a stone with the marks of memory engraved forever?”

  She said, “I think it would be unbearable if we remembered too much.”

  He felt her shiver. She said, “I’m cold.” He doffed his coat and draped it over her shoulders, and then put his arm around her.

  He did not bother to remove his hand, even though a small voice inside him told him it might be wise. After all, the night was cold, and it would be rude to keep his warmth to himself.

  Laurel pressed herself closer to him, eager for warmth. “My nurse told me once that if we saw the bright powers and the dark at war in the earth and sea and sky, struggling over every soul, we’d be petrified. If we saw the spirits of evil that hunt men like famished wolves, like leopards and lionesses with shining eyes in the dark, hungry not for mere flesh that rots, but for our immortal souls, hungry with a terrible hunger, we would go blind. I used to have such terrible nightmares about drowning, about seeing a palace at the bottom of the sea, I was glad to forget.”

  Still standing in the doorway, Hal felt as if eyes were in that dark forest watching him. He could not shake the sensation. It was unnerving. He reached out and hooked the handle of the door with the hawk-beak of his cane, and yanked one leaf shut, and then the other. Again, with the cane, blindly, he smartly struck the upper bar of the latch and shoved it home, and then, with his boot, the lower. The thick iron bars fell to with a loud sound in the close darkness.

  “I say! I think we rather need all the light we can get,” the girl objected.

  “I think I can find that lamp we saw,” he said, and with the girl his best friend intended to marry still cuddled tightly in one arm, her body pressed against his side, he walked slowly up the staircase to the upper floors. His footsteps were sure, and he did not stumble on the top step when he crossed it.

  The Empty Attic

  The pair kept their arms about each other. Hal assured himself that any man would be duty-bound to place a brotherly arm about any cold girl in the dark. With the door closed, it was a little warmer but he could still feel the shivers that caused her body to tremble from time to time.

  It was strange, he thought, how they had been drawn close to each other so many times during this evening, after years of contact no more intimate than brushing shoulders. He could count on one hand the number of times it had happened before and still have two fingers left over.

  There was the time he helped her out of the boat at Brighton, and the tide moved the vessel away from the dock as she disembarked, causing her to fall against his shoulder. There was that time they were running up a flight of stairs, for what purpose, he could no longer remember. Those absurd high-heeled shoes she always insisted on wearing had slipped, causing her to stumble, and he reached out a hand to steady her back. He still recalled the jolt he had felt when he had perceived, through the silk of her blouse, the soft slenderness of her body. And then there was the time at The Golden Lion Inn, in Cornwall, when he had uttered some foolish drollery, and she had laughingly pinched his ear. Caught up in the grips of mirth, she had leaned forward and rested her forehead for a moment upon his back, unwittingly filling his nostrils with the sweet perfume that seemed to cling to her hair.

  Other that those three incidents, however, it had been Manfred whose ear she pinched, Manfred whose back she leaned upon, Manfred whose hand she took.

  Today, on the other hand, he and Laurel seemed to be falling against each other and clinging to one another at every turn. It was almost as if she were…

  No. He forced himself to abandon that treacherous line of thought.

  Returning his attention to their surroundings, he tapped about the room with his cane again, finding doors to one side that boomed hollowly, and square openings to the other. The first two doors he tried were locked. The openings to the other side at first he thought were niches or alcoves, but there was no glass, no shutters. Hal stuck his head out one: the world beyond was utterly dark, and the air was still and close. Hal shouted, listening to the echo. He realized these must be interior windows overlooking a central nave of the Priory, a large multistory space, like a roofed-in courtyard, with the dome overhead.

  She slid from under his shoulder, leaving a place along his side that tingled in the sudden, unexpected cold now that the warmth of her had departed. Taking his hand, she pulled him forward. “Let’s not stop to shout at things in the dark, shall we? I don’t want to hear the answer.”

  The corridor turned after a dozen steps. He felt around the corner where wall met wall. It was wider than a right angle. He said, “I bet this corridor goes all the way around the Priory.”

  He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the shape it would make. Was it a pentagram? No, surely not!

  She said, “I think I see a light.”

  It was true. Up ahead was a thin line of silver touching the floor. It was light escaping under the door crack. Hal rattled the knob. The door was locked. He smashed his shoulder against it once, twice, and heard the wood frame crack. He stepped back and kicked with his boot. The door flew open with a bang.

  She made a little noise of exasperation in her throat.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You are hurting my future home, Hal. I already love it. These old things have no one to defend them. Usually you are so gallant.”

  “You told me to break into the cellar.”

  “Well, don't be stupid. Nobody loves a cellar.”

  The broken door hung suspended from its hinges. But there was no candle in the room beyond. The light had come from the newly-risen Moon, which was visible in a dormer window, that had neither blinds nor shades. The window was open and Hal could smell the night wind. Two walls were white and empty except for a few nails and a crooked scrap of wire. The far wall was white-painted wood planks slanting sharply, pierced by the gabled frame of the dorme
r window. This was an attic room. There was a cot sitting foursquare in the center of the room, on the uncarpeted boards.

  Hal stepped forward, and felt something roll under his boot toe. He stooped, groping, and picked up what felt like a cylinder smaller than his thumb. He held it to his nose and smelled a familiar smell. It was the spent shell of a large-caliber bullet.

  “Jackpot!” exclaimed the girl. “I’ve found a torch!” There was a dazzling cone of electric light. All the objects in the room snapped into sharpness and solidity. Hal blinked, momentarily blinded. Laurel pointed the flashlight down. The cot was a folding wooden frame of green fabric, like something that would have been found in an Army surplus store forty years ago.

  She said, “Oh, this is odd.” And for once, the note of dry humor that floated through the music of her voice was absent. The flashlight shined on two neatly stacked pyramids of aluminum cans. The first was canned goods, pears in syrup, hash, baked beans, pasta, meat. The second was the empty cans, stained and crusted, lids bent up at identical angles. There was a can opener, a fork, and knife, laying carefully on a handkerchief on the floorboards. The circle of the flashlight darted over to the small fireplace in the corner. The grate was clean, free of ashes but dull with dust. It had not been used recently.

  She said, “What sort of beast eats canned ravioli cold from the can?”

  “Manfred does,” said Hal. “I remember he used to eat it like that when our hot plate broke.”

  “How long has he been living here?” She looked at the tall pyramid of empty cans. “He must have been here for a month! Did you realize he’d been away from school so long?”

  Hal said, “No. I have not seen him lately. I moved out of the dorm last year, remember? I live above a smokeshop in town, these days.”

  In the light reflected from the walls, he saw two upright lengths propped up near the window. He stepped over and picked one of them up. It felt comfortable and familiar in his hands. A hunting rifle.

  “Now this is strange,” he said.

  “Two months,” she said. “Because he moved here the day after Christmas. The Feast of Stephen.” She shined the light at Hal, blinding him.

  He blinked and shielded his eyes. “Do you mind?”

  “What have you there?” she asked

  “A large-bore Winchester 70,” he said. “It’s a hunting rifle.”

  “For hunting what?”

  “Anything, really. It could shoot a .308 or a .270.”

  “I don’t know what that means. I’m British. We don’t speak in numbers.”

  “You could hunt anything from vermin all the way up to pronghorn antelope or deer. Or a black bear. Not a grizzly, though.”

  “There are no bears in England.”

  “It is also good for target shooting. It shoots flat, it’s very accurate.”

  Hal felt something roll under his boot, and go tinkling away. “Shine the light at my feet, please.” When she did, he saw dozens and dozens of other expended shells on the floor, over a hundred, in a pool of brass to the right of the hunting rifles, just where the ejector would throw them each time the bolt action was worked. “He was doing a lot of target practice out that window. Is that even legal in England? I thought you guys have all kinds of regulations about these sorts of things.”

  She stepped over and shined the flashlight beam out the window, sweeping the circle of light back and forth over the grass, the well house, the overgrown bushes near the dovecote.

  Hal stepped near. Without thinking, he put his hand around her waist.

  “There!” she whispered. He jerked his hand away from her, remembering himself. But she was not paying attention to him, she was staring out the window. He looked where she was looking.

  The shadows near the foot of the dovecote flickered and swayed as the girl’s hand trembled. Wedged between two unclipped bushes, with its pierced skull resting on flagstones that were cracked and marred with bullet holes, was the corpse of a large, black dog.

  The Rosy Light

  Some of the gaiety was gone from her voice. “Why was Manfred here alone in a house without lights or heat during the last two months of winter, sleeping on a cot and shooting at dogs? He is the only one on the island allowed to keep a dog.”

  Hal said, “I did not hear any cooing of any doves in the dove tower either. If Manfred were bringing animals here, one would think he would put his dove in the dove tower first, before bringing a dog.”

  Laurel made a delicate noise in her nose. “If he purchased a dog just to blast its head off with a firearm while eating cold beans, there are more aspect to his multifaceted character than I had previously suspected. And I used to think his interest in reports of mesmeric influence among non-European peoples was his most eccentric idiosyncrasy. I do hope he does not expect me to take up the sport of shooting game puppies once we're married. But I will try to be supportive.”

  Leaving the room, they tried the doors along the corridor. She pointed the flashlight at one door after another, and he rattled one knob after another. All doors were locked. She shined the beam into the small arched openings to the other side. The width of the nave defeated the strength of the light. There was a dark floor down below, a set of concentric roof beams above, but no sign of an altar stone or lofts or whatever had originally been in this round empty space.

  Every dozen paces or so, another corridor branched off from this one, leading to a short stair or a long one, a straight flight or a crook spiral. In one place, was a ladder that led to a trap door. In another, an archway led to a ramp that reached down and down beyond the reach of the flashlight, a narrow flagstone passage with no turns and no openings, serving no imaginable architectural purpose. All was uncarpeted, undecorated. In one place an empty bookshelf stood. The walls were bare.

  As they walked, they talked about ordinary trivialities to keep the darkness at bay. Laurel asked Hal about his mother and his sister.

  Hal said, “I can only do so much by telephone. It is as if I am fighting some monster at a distance that is trying to swallow up my mother. Elaine’s new husband is the one causing all the domestic confusion. I would fly home and take care of it myself, except I can’t afford the flight. It’s funny, but my strongest ally is that little old priest I met at the funeral. And I cannot even remember his name.”

  He changed the subject. “How is the acting career going? Are you going to stick with it after you get hitched?”

  She snorted. “I have not made up my mind.”

  “You know Manfred expects you to quit once you are married.”

  Laurel’s voice grew soft and thoughtful. “When I was a little girl, I discovered that my life was pointless and powerless. The real world is safe and gray and too confining. So I thought that if I could not have adventures, I would pretend in plays and such. I have a natural talent for deceiving people, which is all actresses really do, after all. But looks only last so long. There is no future in it. The state of the British theater is atrocious. No one can make a living at it, except by means well-brought-up girls do not mention, let alone consider. It is a dirty business, really. I rather hope for something better.”

  “The world is not as safe as all that,” Hal observed. “There are still dangerous deeds that need to be done, and God knows there are people who need to be protected.”

  She laughed deep in her throat and laid a hand on his arm. “That is what is so charming about you, Hal. You always see the nobility in things! You really lost your true calling when they shut down the Round Table.”

  Hal chuckled as if this had been a joke, but he was warmed in his heart. Laurel had a talent for saying exactly what men wanted to hear. “You are an insightful woman, Laurel. Manfred is a lucky fellow.”

  He smiled at her in the dark, glad that, ever since they had found the torch, the unexpected intimacy in which they had found themselves earlier in the evening was gone, vanished as mysteriously as it had come, and they were back to their customary ways, easy and companionable.r />
  As they turned a corner, a window at the end of a hallway showed a glimpse of the sharp cliffs and the moonlit sea.

  “This island is an angler’s dream,” Laurel told him. “Do you know that this island is fishable from any water’s edge? In most cases, you need to climb a bit, though. Competing for fishing records is one of the tourist attractions here. If you catch anything you think might make the cut, you can bring it round the tackle and bait shop in town to be weighed and measured. The owner is a member of the Bailiwick of Guernsey Record Rod-Caught Fish Committee.”

  Then she laughed. “Look at me, and my useless array of knowledge. Which just goes to show, you can take the girl out of the fishing town, but you can’t take the fishing town out of the girl. No matter how desperately the girl might want it.

  “Hang on!” She stopped abruptly. “We’ve gone in a circle. There is the door you kicked in.”

  Hal said, “This house is insane, or maybe we are. We must be near the window we saw before, the one with the lights.”

  “We should have seen the light we saw, leaking under a door or something. Do you think the candle went out? If it were a candle.”

  “Douse the flashlight. Perhaps if our eyes adjust we’ll spot it.”

  Darkness closed in like a tomb. The wind could be heard moaning softly in the distance, and taps and creaks, such as old houses are wont to make, began creeping near to them. She stepped near to him nervously, and he put his arm around her before he realized he had done so. He told himself this was not an embrace. It was like putting one’s arm around one’s little sister, really.

  In the darkness, he said, “Is there any madness in your family?”

  Her voice was close in the dark, her breath scented and warm on his cheek. “I don’t get along with my mother very well. Our mother-daughter love is expressed by shouting, as it were. I have an uncle who collects Spanish coins and believes in ghosts, if that is what you mean.”