by Lee, Edward
“You just missed him,” Flounder said.
Cordesman gaped. “What? You mean that guy on the crash cart was Fredrick?”
“That’s Professor Fredrick to you, and, yes. He—” The fat kid set down his Journal of Field Archaeology and shot Cordesman a smug look. “Your hair’s awfully long for a cop, isn’t it?”
Cordesman, irate, flashed his badge again. “You think this badge is too gold to be a cop’s too? Now what the goddamned hell happened here?”
Flounder pursed his lips. “Well if you’d quit hurling obscenities at me for just one minute, I’ll tell you. Professor Fredrick had a heart attack. Evidently he was working on something, and Doris thinks he was so engrossed, he forgot to take his heart medication.”
“But the guy just called me an hour ago, told me to come down here and see him,” Cordesman was stressed not to bellow.
“Excuse me—the guy? Oh, you mean Professor Fredrick. And I guess that long hair must be blocking your ears because I do seem to recall telling you several seconds ago that he had a heart attack. Professor Fredrick is quite famous, something of a hero around here. He discovered the ruins of Dis in 1986, you know.”
College students, Cordesman thought. He doubted much merit in slapping this kid in the jowls but… It could be fun. “Well, what’s his status?”
“It happens all the time, three, four times a year. Call the hospital if you want the exact prognosis. What do I look like? Marcus Welby?”
No, you look like Flounder. “Who’s this Doris person?”
“Oh, you mean Ms. Bartlett? She’s the professor’s senior T.A. When he didn’t show for his Regional Chronologies 401 lecture, she came back here and found him.”
“Okay, we’re making some headway,” Cordesman said. “Now, I don’t expect you to strain your powers of deductive reasoning, but I’d really appreciate it if you might tell me where I could find Ms. Bartlett.”
“She’s following the ambulance to the hospital.” Then Flounder went back to his magazine.
Cordesman imagined grabbing the kid by the collar, or, better, by a fat cheek. “I think I’ve made it clear to you, son, that I had some business with Professor Fredrick. As Professor Fredrick is detained for the moment, and, as I think I’ve made it clear to you that I’m a police officer, it might be a good bet that the business I had with Professor Fredrick is police business—”
Without looking up from the magazine, the kid pointed a fat finger. “Room 104, end of the hall, officer.”
“Not officer. Captain.” Cordesman strode for the door. “Give D-Day my regards.”
“What?”
Cordesman moved down the hall. Fat punk. I’d slap him so hard his fat would jiggle. Christ, what was wrong with kids these days? It’s these liberal colleges, Cordesman suspected. Brainwashes ’em. Turns ’em into fussy twinkies. The dark wood door to Room 104 swung open silently. Cordesman walked into something more like a cubby of the Smithsonian. The plushly paneled office seemed crammed with ancient relics: talberds, helmets, standards. A full suit of plate mail hung in the corner, one metal sleeve missing. Ouch, Cordesman thought. A dead computer monitor stared back from the side of an expansive desk. Fuck. Flounder had said Fredrick got the Big Chestpain while working on something. Probably a write up for me. But even if Cordesman knew how to turn on the computer, he wouldn’t know what the hell to do from there. To hell with all this hard-drive CD-ROM ODE-RAM MMX-processor bullshit.
Whatever happened to paper?
It was the search request that he’d sent—on a sheet of paper—to Central Processing on 1st Ave. There, the computer geeks had piped into every database index in the state. No responses except one from the most unlikely place: the University of Washington’s Department of Archaeological Studies. So the word was either relative to archaeology, or it was a mistake. The college’s mainframe had notified this Fredrick guy with the positive search-link. Just my luck the guy has a heart attack when I’m on my way over to see him.
He guessed he should just leave, maybe huff it over to the admin building and get somebody to look in Fredrick’s computer for anything that might appear to be a report on Cordesman’s inquiry. But the room amazed him with its display of artifacts. An upended old helmet sat on the desk. Ashtray, Cordesman deduced and fired up a Camel. He stared again at the blank computer screen. Yeah, all this high-falutin’ technology and I can’t do shit. Give me paper anyday…
Another glance around showed him a printer on a stand. A tray on the bottom showed him…a sheaf of paper.
Cordesman tapped an ash into the ashtray and snatched the paper up.
Yeah…
The top sheet read:
Professor F.A. Fredrick
Superintendent/ Depart of Archaeological Studies.
Washington State University
Suite 104/ The Tawes Bldg.
Seattle, WA 98195
Dear Captain Cordesman:
Here is a print-out of the write-up I prepared relative to your recent query regarding the word SCIFTAN, for your records after we’ve talked.
Right on, Cordesman thought. He crushed his cigarette out in the ashtray, never realizing that it actually wasn’t an ashtray at all but the helm of King Harold I of Angleland, which the King had worn, and died in, during the Battle of Senlac Hill, more popularly known as The Battle of Hastings.
SCIFTAN: a proper noun of ultimately unknown origin, taking from the Old Frisian alt. transitive: sciff—to mutate, and tannin—one who. It is a very rare reference indeed, only identified once in the history of modern archaeological discovery, and one in which I’m happy to claim being part of, namely the subterranean accident which occurred in Gatwick, England in 1971, a water-main rupture. The repair diggings uncovered a well-preserved collection of stemmae from the Archives of the Registry of Publius Aelius Hadrianus, a.k.a. Hadrian, the Emperor of Rome from A.D. 117-38. These archives uniquely elucidated upon the local mythologies exacted from conquered communities before Hadrian terminated Roman Expansionism.
I will structure my report in an expository fashion, rendering the definition of your search request, and then positing elaboration in progressive order, via the basic outline form.
1) DEFINITION OF SEARCH WORD: SCIFTAN:
Denotatively, Sciftan, from the early Brythic, pre-Druidic, and original interpretations of the Old Frisian subjunctive verb lists, can be translated into Modern English to this: SHIFTER.
Cordesman sat down behind the cardiac patient’s desk and lit another smoke. This might take a while.
(vi)
Locke thought of the joke of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, gleaned from Macbeth’s soliloquy by Shakespeare: Life is a tale told by an idiot… He continued to stare into the wee window of the second cottage, seeing all. It didn’t matter that the body-chopped blonde still flailed in the betrayal of her artist/pimp, nor that the hanging redhead still bucked against her previous tortures—never mind that her eyes had been batted out of her head and her spinal cord had been punctured with an ice-pick. None of that bore significance since this was a different place—Locke knew now—a sign of the real world’s life into some otherworldly crevasse. Yet Locke watched on, against all human power, as Martin continued to revel over his vermilion-and-puke masterpiece. This was the same thing, wasn’t it? One reality—one truth—opposing another. The line from the drunken scribe’s pen rang in Locke’s ear: Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting… The tale of the world told most accurately was that of the retardate—an idiot—signifying…what? What was possibly the greatest novel of all time displayed three different views of the world, and the only one that was worth more than a pinch of shit was the view of the defected mind. In essence, the flawed narrator of the book’s first section was encapsulating a differentiation of perceived truth.
A differentiation of reality.
Locke continued to witness, however extremely, a similar differentiation.
By now Martin had made us
e of the ax once more, to reduce Darlie’s legs, pelvis, and chest into bloody hanks and now engaged upon arranging the pieces. Meanwhile, the blonde prostitute’s shoulders and head continued to bitch.
“Jesus Christ, Marty! What did you do that for?”
“A montage,” he murmured back in the least acknowledgment. His Keds stepped gingerly amongst the tableau’s component parts, leaving prints of gore. The eyeless redhead twitched and sputtered as if to offer subverbal suggestions. Then Martin rearranged a knee-joint and a foot, and stepped back.
“I think that does it, huh? The montage is done. Fuck Kline and Mondrian and all those gimmick assholes. Christ, any dickbrain can slop shingles and housepaint on the floor and call it art. This is the real thing… I think I’ll call it The Truncation of the Crack-Whore. Whaddaya think?”
The blonde—with her hands, of course—climbed back up onto the mottled couch. “Fuck, Marty! How am I gonna turn tricks like this? What, I’m gonna walk up and down the main drag on my hands?”
“Look at it this way, babe. You don’t have to peddle your ass anymore.” Martin gusted laughter. “Now you can peddle your head!”
“Oh, that’s real funny,” the blonde’s head came back; one skinny arm extended to give him the finger. Then she gawped. “Aren’t you ever gonna finish this shit?”
“Darlie, the artist’s inspiration isn’t subject to time. My creativity won’t let go—I’ve still got more work to do.” Busied by more of this inspiration, Martin ran an errant hand back over his mohawk, then took up a long carving knife. “Yes, yes, I’ve got it!” In a frenzy now, he cut off the redhead’s tiny breasts, quick as an Oriental waiter carving Peking Duck. And—
SPLAT!
—threw both breasts against the wall where they stuck amid swashes of blood.
“Yes! It’s my best work to date!”
“Great, Marty,” the blonde pecked. “What’s the new Rembrandt gonna call that masterpiece?”
Martin made a long face at her. “Not sure. I guess it’s a toss-up between Madonna With Child and Two Little Junkie Tits on a Wall.”
The eyeless redhead jerked and mewled.
Locke, at last, was released; he stumbled backward, away from the atrocious window into drenching darkness. The putrid ground fog billowed around the clumsy back-steps; more things crunched beneath.
This was a different place, yes, but also the same. He knew that all too well, like Faulkner’s narrator. Only one mission occurred to him now… Find Lethe. I made the door, but Lethe is the key.
Locke swatted at winged bugs with thoraxes fat as gumballs. They splattered lumpen-yellow against his skin, and stank like cheese mold. Some sunk stingers into his skin but he scraped them off, leaving trails of mucous. His feet stomped down the fog-topped path, stopped at the French doors which led into the mansion, then he yanked open the doors—
“Hooooooly SHIT!”
An avalanche of corpses poured from the doorway as though one of Belsen’s grave-pits had been emptied onto him. Mortified, Locke trudged backward, no longer knee-deep in noxious fog but knee-deep in a mass grave. The death-stench rose to kill him—perhaps that would’ve been better now—and burn. Skulls with bits of parchment-thin flesh still clinging to them lolled on spindly necks, limbs as gaunt as broomsticks lay scattered like a madman’s latticework.
A corpse-pile, falling out the French doors. A bilge of putrefactive slime flowed, low between the bodies, staining Locke’s pants. Eventually, gagging, he trudged back out.
Lord, he thought, looking at the pile.
To get into the house—it was clear—he’d have to crawl over the bodies. Next suggestion?
There must be some other way.
The brick fence…
It was a start but somehow Locke knew that the spillage of corpses was a tactic, forcing an alternative direction. He wants me to find another way…because there’s more he wants me to see.
Locke trod back through the swamp-like fog, meaning to find a break in the sullied hedges and scale the fence. But as he moved past the fourth cottage…
He stopped.
The fourth cottage. The only one he hadn’t checked.
A tenuous, clear slime seemed to bathe the door when he kicked it open. It was more macabre disrepair he saw when he first entered: furniture so old it had begun to decompose. Streaks of foxfire and fungus grew up the bare walls, fed by the humid air. But in the corner, the top of a trap door stood open.
Locke descended down slatted, bending steps into darkness tinged with light like a roasting fire. Wet cobwebs spread and snapped across his face as he tromped downward into the tinted murk. A narrow passage like a gangway in an old 1700s ship took him under the house. To aid his bearings, he ran his hands along the sidewalls, through some fluid sweating through the wood slick as blood. Eventually, he tripped over another set of wooden steps, and took them up—
Into a room so clotted with dust, cobwebs, and fetid mold that Locke imagined a den that hadn’t been entered for centuries. But once he stood up in the room, he saw that he was wrong.
Footprints through the dust led from a far door to the edge of a pile of junk: pieces of furniture tossed onto more, old paintings, old implements, boxes, crates, bottles, etc. The footprints, however, made no secret of the room’s most recent deposit.
A coffin.
Locke knew that the coffin would be empty when he opened it. Or…not empty but devoid of a cadaver. Instead—
Shit.
It was filled with several gold bars.
Not many—seven, in fact. Just enough to… Feign the weight of a human being, Locke calculated.
A cursory inspection of the heaps that were the room’s contents seemed innocuous at first, until he made a closer examination: three rust-pitted hand-forged nails, a blood-stained silver platter, a vermiculated wooden staff, a felt sack containing exactly thirty silver coins imprinted with the likeness of King Herod.
And more:
A tri-layered cloak, one layer, green, one scarlet, one black. A butted .46 caliber piece of lead ball ammunition, like the type that would’ve been manufactured in, say, 1865. A skull in a box with a black-tarnished plate that read D.F.S. A black medical bag with a similar plaque that read Doctor Neal Creame. Locke grew bored quickly, knowing the implications. Lethe was a collector, all right. The last thing Locke looked at was something he didn’t get. It was a book that weighed at least thirty pounds, nothing on the cover, no title, no author. The cover’s substance seemed to be fashioned from some manner of reptile skin. Locke flipped it open and saw the first page, so old it had yellowed to a hue that was more brown. Arabic script. Locke dropped the book back into the dust.
A click resounded, and his eyes shot up.
The far door had opened, and a tall figure filled the frame in silhouette.
“I’m happy to have guessed correctly, Mr. Locke. You’ve found my junk room. When you’re done with your perusal, please follow me.”
The rich, sibilant voice, of course, was Lethe’s.
SEVENTEEN
Interstice
(i)
“Six more feem reds, they look like, Ms. Brock. Can’t say for sure but—”
Jill Brock’s surgical-gloved fingers whipped the ev-bag from the tech’s hand. She held them up to the ceiling light. “They’re feems, Jerry. Less kink in the line-curve, more micronically narrow. You want to bet paychecks they’re the same?”
“You kidding me?” the kneeling technician replied.
Cordesman was smoking in the corner, leafing through a stack of 8 1/2 by 11 paper sitting in a plastic bin labeled: ROUGHS. He was reading a crudely-typed sheet of paper:
Irrelative time ticks towards one o’clock
when you walk in
and flense my poet’s discipline:
Siren atrocity of verse and rhyme,
so I leave as I’m sure I will
every other time.
Cordesman’s eyes narrowed. He picked up another one.
&nb
sp; But the moon
is full tonight!
It’s beautiful
like you…
pristine white
radiant teeming
like my love
all and forever
within me
dreaming of you
in my arms again
“All right,” Cordesman muttered. “Love. Big deal.”
“What’s that, Captain?” Jill Brock’s voice boomed across the small room.
Cordesman winced at her. “Just keep doing what you’re doing, huh?” He picked up another.
R.I.P. (to Ian Curtis)
by Richard Locke
A sullen face,
a hangman’s noose.
Bright life unfurled,
dark heart unloosed.
Oh, jubilant promise,
a fading apparition.
Welcome, dear poets
to the atrocity exhibition.
“Jill?” Cordesman called out over her crew of kneeling men. “Who the hell is Ian Curtis?”