The Ruined City

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The Ruined City Page 5

by John Wilson


  The building itself was U-shaped. Its two wings stretched forward, drawing visitors to the flight of stone steps that led up to the imposing pillared entrance of the domed central building. Cate and Howard walked briskly toward that entrance. As they reached the base of the steps, the heavens opened as if someone far above had turned on a tap. They leaped up the steps just as a blinding light flashed and a thunderous roar shook the ground beneath them.

  Howard’s skin tingled, and his hair felt like it was standing on end. Dark spots swam across his eyes, and the solid world around him wavered. The pillars at the front door melted into a glutinous mass that began to pour down the steps toward him. He looked back and saw the building’s wings swing around and come at him. Their sharp corners shimmered and smoothed, and they began to look like two arms moving in to embrace him, to draw him down into the heart of the building. Howard gasped and shook his head. Water sprayed off his soaking hair. The rumbling faded, the buildings solidified, and his vision cleared.

  “What’s the matter?” Cate asked.

  “I don’t know. Everything seemed to melt for a moment.”

  When they reached the shelter of the doorway, Howard stretched out and touched the cold stone pillars. They felt reassuringly solid. From her sheltered corner, Heimao stared at him with her piercing green eyes.

  “Lightning can do odd things,” Cate said, wringing water out of her hair, “and that strike was really close. I felt a tingling all over.”

  It sounded like a supportive, rational explanation, but Howard couldn’t help noticing that she was looking at him oddly.

  “It almost seemed as if the building was trying to hug me.” Howard shivered. “I guess it must have been some kind of optical illusion caused by the electric charge in the air.” He hoped Cate wouldn’t think he was going crazy like his dad, but he didn’t fully believe it himself. The sense of the building melting and coming at him had been incredibly real.

  He and Cate dripped their way into the bright reception area of the institute. A smiling young woman behind the desk looked up.

  “Hello, Howard. How are you this week?”

  “Good,” Howard responded as he returned the smile. “This is my friend Cate. How’s Dad doing?”

  “Much the same,” the nurse said, as she did every week. “He’s been a bit more restless the past couple of nights, but nothing violent—just tossing and turning and occasional shouts. The doctor says it’s a good sign. Dreams mean that he’s processing information, so maybe he’s beginning to absorb more during the day.”

  “That’s encouraging,” Howard said without enthusiasm. His dad had had spells like this before, but they never amounted to anything.

  “The doctor’s running a bit late with his afternoon rounds,” the nurse went on, “so he’s still with your father. Shouldn’t be long though.”

  “Can I take Cate up to meet the bibliognost and see the reading room while we’re waiting?” Howard asked.

  “Sure. Just be careful on the stairs.”

  “Who’s the bibliognost?” Cate asked as they set off along a wide, brightly painted corridor.

  “You’ll find out soon,” Howard answered with a wink.

  Cheerful paintings of rural scenes and photographs of wildlife and sunsets lined the walls. Double doors on the right opened into a large lounge where several groups of people were sitting at tables, playing board games or watching daytime television on a large-screen TV.

  “It’s very relaxed,” Howard said.

  “Yeah,” Cate agreed. “From the outside, I was expecting something a lot more Victorian.”

  “Apparently, this central part was a private house in the late 1800s. The wings were added when it was turned into the AIPC. Of course, it’s been remodeled several times since then.” He stopped at a widening in the corridor and pointed to a wrought-iron spiral staircase that rose to the floor above. “But they did keep some original fixtures, although there’s a modern staircase at the back.”

  “Cool,” Cate said, following Howard up the steep stairs. He led the way carefully, aware of the weight of his backpack, which was threatening to tip him backward. At the top Cate let out an involuntary gasp as they stepped into the reading room of the AIPC.

  It was a large circular room with walls fully two stories high and topped by a glass dome. As Cate looked up, a flash of lightning flooded the room with colors from the dome’s intricate stained glass.

  “Wow!” she exclaimed as a roll of thunder echoed around the room. “You sure know how to put on a show.”

  “I arranged the storm personally,” Howard said, thrilled to see Cate so happy.

  The walls were floor-to-ceiling bookcases; an iron balcony encircled the room about halfway up. Heavy wooden desks surrounded a central circular counter where a striking Chinese woman sat. She lifted her head from a book as they entered.

  “Well, hello again, Howard. Here to see your dad?” she asked with a slight American accent.

  “Yes,” Howard replied with a smile, “and I’ve brought a friend to see my favorite bibliognost. Cate, this is Aileen. She looks after this place and has probably read every book in it.”

  Aileen laughed and bowed to Cate. She had long snow-white hair that cascaded over her shoulders and striking gray eyes that sparkled above sharp cheekbones.

  “I made the mistake of once telling Howard that I should be known as a bibliognost because it sounded much more mysterious and romantic than librarian.”

  “What does it mean?” Cate asked.

  “It’s simply a fancy name for someone who knows a lot about books. Sometimes I think I’m the last one. You young people have the world at your fingertips with your high-tech phones and computers. In an instant, you can find out things it would have taken me weeks to dig up in my dusty old library.”

  “I’m very pleased to meet a real bibliognost,” Cate said, returning the bow. “This is a wonderful place. Do you mind if I take a few pictures with my new high-tech phone?”

  Aileen laughed again, a light, tinkling sound. “Absolutely not. I wish I’d had one of those things when I was young. I could have captured all the places and people that exist only in my memory.” She pointed an index finger at her temple. “That corner over there will give you the best views.”

  Cate stepped away from the desk and took a short video that, luckily, captured the burst of color from the next lightning flash. Then she wandered around the reading room, browsing the book titles and snapping occasional shots. When she reached the corner Aileen had indicated, she photographed Howard and Aileen standing at the central desk.

  Cate was about to head back when she froze in midstep and gaped at a shelf beside her. She dropped her phone into her bag and tentatively eased a small red book out of its place on the shelf. She stared at the cover and flipped through a couple of pages as she slowly walked back to the desk.

  “Can I borrow this?” she asked Aileen.

  Howard squinted over her shoulder. The book was obviously very old. The cover was a deep red color with strange black characters in the middle— The corners were worn and dog-eared, as if the book had been well read.

  Aileen lifted the reading glasses that hung around her neck, adjusted them on her nose and peered at the book. “Ah,” she said. “No one’s read that one as long as I’ve been here. It’s one of the original books. Jinse de mianju,” she said, reading the title. “Of course you may borrow it. Tell me what it’s about when you bring it back.”

  “Thanks.” Cate placed the book carefully in her bag. “What did you mean when you said that it was one of the original books?”

  “Do you have time for a good story?”

  Cate looked over at Howard, who nodded. His dad would still be downstairs in his room whenever they got there.

  Aileen leaned over the counter toward her visitors. “You know this used to be a private house before the AIPC took it over?” Howard and Cate both nodded. “It was built by a man named Wat Heely. Legend is he made a fortune i
n shipping in California during the 1849 gold rush. After the gold ran out, he brought his money up here when this was still the Oregon Territory. He ran his shipping fleet out of here, and he owned most of the warehouses and fish-canning plants in town. He used Chinese laborers from the goldfields or direct from China. That’s why at one time Aylford had one of the biggest Chinatowns on the west coast.

  “I don’t think he liked company, because this place must have been kind of hard to get to back then. He lived here alone, with only a single Chinese servant he’d brought up from San Francisco. Hardly anyone ever saw Heely. He spent all his time in this house and sent his servant down the hill into town to conduct his business and buy all his supplies. The only times he was seen was as a distant figure taking walks in the Black Hills.

  “Seems he had a passion for learning. He kept in touch with scientists all over the world, and his servant used to give lists of books to ships’ captains who traded with him. Heely wanted them to search out books in all the little-visited corners of the world where trade and tides might take them. He paid well when they brought back something he wanted. That’s what built this library. It was the center of the original house and Heely’s pride and joy.”

  Howard looked around at the bookshelves, expecting to see rows of dusty, leather-bound volumes like the red book Cate had found. Instead, he saw what looked more like the public library in town: the bright dust jackets of popular novels, the spines of large illustrated books and the dog-eared pages of paperbacks.

  Aileen noticed Howard’s look. “The only old book here now is the one that Cate found.”

  “What happened to the others? Some of them must have been worth a lot of money.”

  “Undoubtedly. Trouble was, Heely wasn’t popular.”

  “Why not?” Cate asked. “Because of his money?”

  “Oh no,” Aileen said. “Heely was generous enough. He paid for a new schoolhouse when the old one burned down in 1885, and he put considerable money into the college. At one time there was even talk of calling it Heely College in his honor.” She glanced around at the scattered readers. None were paying the group at the counter any attention. “There was talk that Wat Heely’s curiosity led him to paths no one should venture along.”

  “What sort of paths?” Howard asked.

  “Probably nothing. Like I said, Heely was a recluse. I suspect he was just a lonely, eccentric old man, but talk went around town of strange lights and noises coming from the windows in the dead of night—lights in colors that shouldn’t be, and cries and screams not from any human or animal throat. People said there was ancient lore in some of Heely’s books—spells and such that would summon creatures no sane man would want in this world.” Aileen’s voice dropped to a whisper. “They say he invoked the devil himself.”

  With perfect timing, lightning flashed outside and thunder rumbled.

  Howard jumped.

  Aileen laughed. “I told you it was a good story.”

  “Accusations of witchcraft and devil worship were common enough in small inbred communities,” Cate pointed out. “As you say, Heely was probably just an old eccentric with a scientific turn of mind.”

  “But the tale’s not done yet. On the night of the great storm of 1891, Heely and his Chinese servant disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?” Howard asked, drawn back into the story.

  “Yup, disappeared. The storm was more violent than anyone could remember. The wind blew down most of the trees in town and ripped the roof off the town hall. The Bane River rose until it broke its banks and flooded most of the streets downtown. Destroyed many of Heely’s warehouses and washed away most of Chinatown. No one knows how many people died that night.”

  “So why was Heely’s disappearance so unusual?” Howard asked. “Maybe he and his servant went down to try to save his property by the river.”

  “Maybe.” Aileen sounded unconvinced. “But this wasn’t an ordinary storm. It came down, like most do, from the Black Hills, but instead of blowing through town, this one stopped. That’s why there was so much flooding and destruction. The strange thing was, people swore afterward that the storm was centered here, over Heely’s house. When dawn came, and the wind died down and the waters receded, a few brave souls ventured up here to investigate. Remarkably, the house was undamaged, but there was no sign of Heely or his servant anywhere. They had vanished, and no trace of them was ever found.”

  “They probably just went out in the storm and got lost,” Howard suggested.

  Aileen leaned back. “Perhaps,” she said with a smile.

  “So what happened to the books?” Cate asked, reminding Howard of why they were being told the story in the first place.

  “There were tales that went around after that night of the curious things folks had seen in the house—unnatural creatures preserved in bottles, dried plants that no one could recognize. They were probably just scientific curios, but people claimed there were other things, which they were reluctant to speak about, and the entire house was soaking wet. In the basement, where Heely had his laboratory, there was knee-deep water. Some people said it was as if the walls and the ceilings had been weeping, until there were a good two inches of water in every room.”

  “It must have been flooding from the storm,” Howard suggested.

  “Maybe,” Aileen acknowledged, “but people said that when the water dried out, it left salt stains on the walls, as if it had been seawater.”

  Howard opened his mouth to suggest that the staining probably came from the chemicals in Heely’s lab, but Aileen wasn’t finished.

  “Strangest thing, though, was that the library was untouched. It was completely dry. The other strange thing was that even though the house was allowed to lie empty for years after Heely’s disappearance, and in that time there were many heavy rainstorms, the inside of the house, even the basement, remained bone dry.”

  Now Howard could think of nothing to say. He glanced at Cate, but she was staring intently at Aileen.

  “Some months after the storm,” Aileen carried on, “a bookseller came to town and bought up every book in old Heely’s library. He got them for a song. Heely had no known relatives, so the townsfolk were happy to let the stranger take the books away for a generous contribution to the fund for fixing the town-hall roof. He removed the books in three cartloads. Most were sold for good money in Arkminster or farther off. Made the bookseller a rich man. I reckon no one was interested in an old Chinese book though.” Aileen smiled at Cate. “Anyway, with some of his money, the bookseller bought a mansion on Hangman’s Hill.”

  “Which house?” Howard asked.

  “The big red-brick one with turrets at the top. Family still lives there to this day.”

  Howard pictured the houses on Hangman’s Hill. “What was the bookseller’s name?”

  “Josiah Whateley.”

  “Leon’s family!” Howard exclaimed. “That explains where his money comes from.”

  “Indeed it does,” Aileen said, “and there’s plenty of tales attached to that lineage too. But that’s enough stories for today. You’d better go and see your dad if you want to get home before it’s late.”

  “Thank you for a great story,” Howard said, “and for showing us the reading room.” He nodded to Aileen and turned toward the stairs.

  Cate remained by the desk. “Heely’s servant,” she said. “Did anyone record his name?”

  Aileen shook her head. “People called him Hei, but whether that was his name or just what people shouted at him is anyone’s guess. Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious. Thanks for sharing your stories.”

  Cate joined Howard, and the pair carefully descended the spiral staircase.

  AYLFORD

  A BREAKTHROUGH

  Back in the main corridor, Cate and Howard stood and looked at each other. Howard broke the silence.

  “Cool place, eh? Must have been incredible when it was filled with the original books.”

  Cate seemed preoc
cupied. “Aileen knows a lot about the town and its history,” she said thoughtfully.

  “Well, she is a bibliognost,” Howard pointed out.

  “Let’s go and visit your dad.”

  Howard led the way toward the west wing of the institute. Closed doors lined the walls on either side of the corridor.

  “This side’s more like a hospital than the east wing is. Over there are the patients who can function fairly well, so there are a lot more common areas and activity rooms. The west wing is mostly for patients who need more medical care.”

  About halfway down the hallway he stopped in front of a door but made no move to knock or open it. Cate took his hand as she had earlier.

  “This must be hard for you,” she said gently.

  “You’re the first person I’ve ever brought to see Dad. Mom and I are the only visitors he gets.”

  “I’m honored that you’ve brought me.” She squeezed his hand. “It’s difficult to invite a stranger into such an emotional part of your life.”

  Howard surprised himself by saying, “You’re not a stranger.”

  It was true. He’d known Cate only since lunchtime, and yet he felt as if she was an old friend. He was rewarded with a smile before the door opened and a man in a white coat stepped out. He was short and almost completely bald, and he wore small gold-rimmed spectacles. His round face was creased into a thoughtful frown, but it brightened into a broad smile when he saw Howard.

  “Hello, Howard,” he said. “Hope you haven’t been waiting too long. Afraid I’m running a bit late. All the patients seem a bit restless today, and we’ve had a few minor crises.”

  “Is there a full moon?” Howard asked.

  The doctor laughed. “I wish it were that simple, but that’s just an old wives’ tale. There are times when everyone seems to get upset, but I can never see a pattern to it.” He nodded toward Cate. “I see you’ve brought a friend to visit.”

  “I have, Dr. Roe. This is Cate, a friend from school.”

  “Excellent,” Dr. Roe said. “The more the merrier. As you know, mental stimulation is very important in cases like this.” He turned to Cate. “Whatever was going on in Howard’s dad’s mind before he came here, it was so disturbing that his brain has blocked it out. Unfortunately, it overreacted and blocked out everything else as well. Our job is to try to stimulate the unthreatened part of his brain—talk to him, read stories, play music, sing. It’s hard when you don’t get any response, but I’m convinced that some things get through. When enough does get through, we hope it will unlock the safe memories, and we can bring him back.”

 

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