by Lee, Edward
“That’s Mr. Martin and his…assistants,” Jason explained, casting an eye toward the second cottage. “They get into some partying. If it’s too loud, let me know. I’d be happy to move you into a room in the house.”
“No, this is fine,” Locke said. Drapes over the next cottage’s window were pulled tight, but he could see figures moving in the lamplight, and faintly detected music. “I can sleep through an earthquake.”
Jason, then, led Locke into his own cottage. Inside was immaculate, spare: a pristine four-poster, a leather recamier sofa, and a narrow stained-oak chiffonier to serve as a dresser. It would do.
The driver put his bag down at the doorstep. “Is there anything else, Mr. Locke?”
Locke wanted to level with him, ask, Hey, man, does Lethe pay you a lot to wear that mask and dress up like a manservant? but that would’ve been a shit-heel thing to do. You’ll embarrass the guy… “No, I’m all set, Jason, thanks. See you tomorrow, man.”
The manservant nodded curtly, then left, clicking the door shut behind him.
Locke sat down on the deep bed, sinking into a soft mattress.
All right, I’m drunk, but I feel pretty good.
No regrets—it amazed him. He returned ten thousand in cash, and felt good. He knew why, of course. This was the first step in the trek back to his sense of truth, his old self before his life collapsed. It told him something he hadn’t believed yesterday, or three months ago.
There was a road back…
And I’ve got my feet on the path.
Or, in this case, the egress.
Art-clique sophistry or not, Lethe’s articulate conversation was stimulating. By symbolizing the most emotive events in his life—with his work—Locke was building an exit-ramp of sorts. The notion left him enthused, but…
Talking was one thing. Doing it was another.
I’ll just have to do it.
The wine filled his head. He actually wanted to write for a change but the tingeing drunkenness stifled him. He quickly left the cottage and began to take long strides about the plush back yard. Fresh air was all he needed, and a little Mother Nature. Above, the clouds broke, showing a spectacular twilight. An owl hooted from a high tree beyond the brick fence, and a light gust of wind made the shrubs whisper. Locke sighed at a sense of peace.
The second cottage was dark now, no lights behind the drapes, no music or loud talk when only a few minutes ago, they’d been partying in there. Strange. Then he walked further into the moon-tinted yard. The third and fourth cottages stood dark too. Did Lethe have more guests staying in these?
He felt more than saw the light flick on at the fourth cottage. The small windows stood brightly lit through the slats of their blinds. I didn’t see anyone go in there, he felt sure. Which could only mean that the occupants had been inside all along. Perhaps Lethe did have some other guests.
As quickly as it had come on, though, the light went out again, and the door clicked open, showing an oblong block of darkness. Then it clicked shut.
Locke squinted, hidden in the back yard’s murk.
Who the hell—
A figure walked silently from the fourth cottage to the third. Locke could detect no details, only that the figure couldn’t be Jason. Not tall enough, not the right gait. In a moment, however, the figure entered the third cottage, closed the door and locked it. Whoever it was, they clearly hadn’t noticed Locke. He felt like a spy.
Dimmer lights flicked on in the third cottage’s front windows, probably a light closer to the rear of the main room. Through the blind-slats, he could see the figure moving inside.
He’d crept along most of the fence perimeter before his thoughts caught him: Are you out of your mind? What are you doing?
Even Locke wasn’t sure at first. It was just an impulse, as human, perhaps, as it was immoral. Locke’s will pulled away from him—You asshole! Someone’s going to see you!—and after only a minute or two, he found himself back against the cottage’s darkest side next to a smaller window. For whatever reason, then, he looked in even as his thoughts continued to object.
What kind of a nutcake crackpot weirdo pervert are you? You’re supposed to be writing poetry, not peeping in people’s windows!
Yet peep he did. It was a woman inside, undressing. Locke could barely see her but could see enough. She stood in just a slant of wan, butter-toned lamplight, blocked off to either side by wider slants of darkness which made the cramped room seem submerged in ink. Further movement drew Locke’s face closer to the tiny glass pane…
The slat he peered through only allowed him to see her from mid-thigh to bosom. She appeared to be removing a short, shiny-black skirt and bodice of some kind but before Locke could speculate further it was off and she was nude. Something primal lured his gaze to her breasts: not large but high, pert, and white like sculpted limestone. Nipples of deep sepia jutted to fascinating points. Then her hand—fine, white, with short, black-painted nails—raised to caress one of the breasts.
This could get interesting, Locke deduced. This view’s almost worth the misdemeanor charge… But who was she? A guest? An employee? No, wait! The maid who’d been driving the Daimler! It must be. And though details were nearly impossible to discern beyond the meager slant of light, why did the room seem barren? But that was not the only incongruence, was it?
Locke squinted so hard his temples thumped; his vision strained, groped for more of the curious image. She was just standing there, plucking at the large nipples, an erotic headless statuette. It was the immediate distraction of her breasts that had sideswiped Locke’s attentions. His eyes now focused on the flat of her abdomen, smooth and tight as a gymnast’s. But…
The belly appeared swollen to the extent that Locke guessed she must be five or six months pregnant. He noted the curve of the tiniest line of fine hair tracing from her navel to her pubic hair. Her hand lowered to the center of the swelling and rubbed it.
Then Locke turned to ice when someone else entered the room.
Shit!
“It’s late. The poet’s asleep,” came a gruff voice. Locke recognized it at once: Jason, the manservant. Jason’s own hand reached out (he remained dressed in his French-cuffed butler’s jacket and the morning trousers) and touched the woman’s stomach. “I thought they were going to drink all night.”
Locke realized in an instant: Jason and the woman must be lovers, and this third cottage must be their hideaway. Was she pregnant by the driver? Yeah, Locke thought. They’re lovers. But after what he saw next, he knew—
“Stand still, bitch. Let me see it.”
—they were lovers of a very strange bent.
Jason had opened his trousers and just stood there in front of her, masturbating. The borders of the slat prevented Locke from seeing either face; it was simply a blocked frame of bodies in dim, angled light. The driver’s hand shucked the penis back and forth—it was a large penis—while the woman’s index and middle fingers V’d to hold open her furred labia, which shined bright mallow pink. Then—
SLAP!
The woman’s body jerked in the frame—clearly Jason had brought his other hand across the side of her face, and with some force. But she issued not even a whimper.
“Like that?”
SLAP!
“Bet that puts some juice between your gams, huh?”
SLAP! SLAP!
Twice more, then the driver’s business hand worked harder.
“Got some comin’ for ya…”
The woman’s belly looked protuberant; swollen as it already was, it seemed now that she was pushing it out further in some uninterpretable stimulation. The modest breasts heaved, the dark nipples now so full of excitation they stuck out rigid like pinkie-ends. Gusts of breath grew hot; Locke had never seen anything so strange. Whatever happened to coitus?
“Here, here—”
Now the offending hand seemed to raise to her throat and squeeze. Locke heard the most petite choking sounds.
“Fuckin’ whore. Let
’s shine you up.”
It didn’t take much longer for Jason to have his crisis. His hips flinched, his hand moving now in a rabid blur, and—
“Yeah, bitch. There. There it is—”
The ejaculation launched out: gelatinous worms now squirmed onto the faceless woman’s belly. The belly sucked in and out; then the sperm ran down the fine, white skin to settle in globs amid the tuft of pubic hair. Irregular pearls in a nest.
“All right,” the driver gruffed. “I’m ready now…”
Locke’s eyes flicked up, to the girl’s bosom. Now she was pinching a nipple between index finger and thumb, pinching hard, and simultaneously—
Oww! Locke thought.
—inserting a frightfully long sewing needle directly into the end of the nipple.
Locke heard a feminine hiss.
Both figures moved back into the darkness then, as Jason lowered his mouth to the speared nipple.
Mmmm, mmmmmm…
Faint if not greedy sucking noises ensued; the figures disappeared into murky ink beyond the room.
Shit, Locke thought. Call me a prude…but that’s a bit too kinky for me… In 1990, he’d dated a girl—a grocery-story cashier—who’d seemed very straitlaced. Mousy, thick glasses, librarianesque. But after a few drinks and once in bed, she begun to gutter such instructions as, “Bite me till I bleed!” “Yank my hair!” and “Choke me out!” Ever the selfless lover, Locke had tried as he might to please her but simply couldn’t continue when her lewdly smiling face began to turn blue. She’d raged at him. “You stupid fuck! You were supposed to choke me out!” Locke declined calling her back.
But this?
He heard a whisper—“Ja…, sheiss…”—which sounded vaguely Germanic. Then he remembered the woman who’d answered the phone when he’d called yesterday. This kink-job racehorse must be Lethe’s receptionist, he gathered.
“Gott… Blut…”
In the murk, Locke could only see the palest form of her coltish legs wrap around her paramour’s jacketed back. The legs squeezed, and she squealed. After that… Just more greedy sucking sounds.
Then, more vaguely, Jason’s form rose—
“Here’s one more for ya—”
A sharp, splattering sound now, like someone upending a bucket of beef stew onto pavement.
Jason threw up into what Locke guessed must be the girl’s face.
“Eat my puke, ya cum-dump. You like it, it’s the best meal ya had in a week, like Campbell’s Chunky Style, huh? Don’t get jealous—tomorrow you get to puke.”
Locke couldn’t actually see what happened next, but he could hear it. A more steady, fainter splattering, and an accommodating ink-shape in the darkness. The shape of the macabre driver standing over the girl, urinating on her with verve.
“Good action?”
Locke’s heart stopped when someone from behind tapped him on the shoulder. He was fainting from the shock as he pinwheeled, then collapsed.
Fading.
Fading.
A repugnant stench flurried: decomposition. It seemed to reach down and touch his face like curious fingers, and in the second before his consciousness sailed away, Locke saw a dilapidated figure standing before him, and heard this:
“I told you not to come here. Nothing can stop the transposition now, so you better get ready for it…”
(iii)
Professor Fredrick awoke to the sound of—What? he thought. His mind felt clotted, a once-reliable machine now slowed down by pitted bearings. A clock fitted neatly with Phonetician numerals ticked on the wall. Three in the morning?
God. He’d fallen asleep grading papers after his last class. Seventy-five years old, the realization creaked along with his office chair when he leaned up. Ten years ago they’d told him he was too old for anymore field work; as an archaeologist, that was like telling a veteran mechanic he was too old to pick up a box wrench. Now I’m too old to stay awake at my desk.
Fredrick was the Chairman of the University of Washington’s Department of Archaeological Studies. For the past half a century, he’d seen it all, done it all, and was perhaps the most esteemed living member of his profession in the world. No, no more digs—he was a health insurance risk with the mid-stage osteoporosis and borderline emphysema—not from smoking but from breathing the dust of buried civilizations and a thousand ancient sepulchers that he himself had opened. The revenge of the gods, the price of daring to look into the mummified faces of Ramses III and Duncan I, of kings and queens and princes and peasants. At least I got a nice office out of it, he thought now.
His fax machine was slowly spitting something out—the noise that had wakened him. But who would be faxing him at this ungodly hour? He started to get up but flinched and sat back down, a bite of pain in his lower back that had plagued him since he’d pushed over a vault lid in Nequada twenty years ago, searching for the body of one of Herod’s bastard sons. The damage was for nothing; all that filled the crypt were pieces of broken tabby urns—potsherds—used to store flax and millet for the world’s first zymurgists. In the respite, his hooded eyes gazed around the office and at the relics that filled it. Brooches and jupon-clips. Masks of bronze and wristcuffs of primal iron. Stave-caps, armlets, breastplates, and even Princess Canessa’s chastity belt. A slate-palette from King Narmer’s scribes, an ivory macehead from a Basque grave. The stuff of history? Or junk? he wondered now at this wee hour. Rubbish that no one cares about. The gold inlays of a priceless robe-clasp once belonging to Queen Nefertiti had now, after, oh, say, 3,500 years, disintegrated, infinity taking back what it was owed. Why let Fredrick have it merely to sit unlooked at in his droll office? Lastly, in the corner by a bust of Nergal, hung his clay-flecked leather boots, the same he’d worn on countless digs. From Galli to Nineveh, from Jericho to Troy to Knossos. He abstracted, wanting to smile. He thought of himself as a specter of the future. All these cities, once great, had been predestined to be trod upon by Fredrick’s old boots thousands of years later. Time buried. Whole civilizations locked in layers of clay. He had spent his life walking on worlds, and some day, he realized, someone like him would walk on his.
The fax machine’s whine ceased, the single sheet of paper lolling like a sheet of skin. Just once he wished he’d get a decent inquiry, something to sink the few teeth he had left into. Sometimes he wished he could be dead rather that serve out the rest of this prison term as a teacher.
With an audible groan, he leaned forward again and snatched up the fax paper. Just one sheet, with a curious header that read:
STATE MACRO-ANALYSIS COMPUTER (MAC) TOPIC/NAME/SUBJECT SEARCH CONCLUSION.
PAGE ONE OF ONE (1) PAGE
RECIPIENT: YOU HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED AS A POSSIBLE CONSULTANT FOR THE FOLLOWING SEARCH REQUEST INITIATED BY:
CORDESMAN, J., CAPT., SEATTLE POLICE DEPARTMENT/NORTH PRECINCT HOMICIDE/ ASSAULT UNIT.
Fredrick’s tired eyes squinted at first, as if bored. He got these things all the time, technical inquiries from the state and county governments, or lawyers, usually just questions about foreclosures on land that might be of historic value, and every now and then he’d get one from the police regarding museum thefts.
But after reading the following few lines of this query, he chuckled to himself and whispered, “Oh, thank you, God. Thank you for giving this old heretic something fun to do.”
(iv)
Was it a dream?
A blazing blue sky nearly blinded him from above. A lone finch seemed to dive out of the sun, right toward him, then was gone. He thought he heard tiny waves lapping a shore but couldn’t see water. Then came the smell of burning leaves. Where was he, dream notwithstanding? The Downtown Waterfront? Gasworks Park? It didn’t really matter. It was a place of tranquil beauty, of placation and sunlight…
Then the dream-world turned dark.
“Do you hear me? Do you recognize my voice?” Locke heard through the vale of black. Yes, he did. But this is just a dream, he realized. So why should I be afraid?
“Byers… White Shirt…”
“You got it. And let me tell you something—” but then the words drained down to vocal drizzle, nothing left intelligible.
“What!” Locke snapped. “What!”
Warbling, and the sound of a dead surf. A single word worked through it all, and it sounded like, “…malefactor…”
What was this? More drunkenness? An alcohol-reaction to the hypothalamus? More pre-D.T. hallucinatory effects? He’d drunk a lot, yes, but he’d also eaten a lot—had stuffed himself, actually, on Lethe’s charity of French cuisine. Drunks always look for an excuse, and this is just a dream! Locke thought in the dream.
Then the dream turned hot. Hot as hell.
Caverns of charred rock, caverns of skin whose pores eddied oily smoke. An imprecation, a visual melange: chaos in the scape of his mind. Reefs of blood-red clouds roved past a black moon. The sky shone smoky pink like begonias patted with industrial soot. Beyond the vale, a range descended, a range of more sizzling rock black as anthracite. The zenith behind him—if it could be called that—was studded by plinths, by black cenotaphs and dolmens old as the world. Then Locke’s hot eyes recast to the pit below. Ringed by unspeakable bushes and weeds limp and slimy as snakes, a tarn glittered the black moonlight off its crystal face. Tiny rovings could be detected beneath the death-still surface: faces? Tendrils of mist crawled upward, and eventually Locke saw bubbles emerge.