by RA Williams
‘You are more important than you can know, Eleanor,’ he replied, walking again.
Elle watched him go, his tracks leaving fresh footprints in the snow. Optimism won out over caution, and she quickly caught up with him again.
‘I have been studying an Indigenous American Indian tribe for some months. But my work is done for now. I was on my way to New York by train. In three days’ time, I return to France, by steamer. My train made a scheduled stop in Detroit. It would have been irresponsible not to call on you.’
‘But why? I’m just a professor at a prep school,’ Elle said, almost repeating what she’d said earlier.
‘Great oaks once were acorns,’ he reminded her, raising his eyes to the snow-laden trees. ‘St Dunstan’s Journal of Science found its way to me.’
Elle dismissed the mention of her school’s journal. ‘Not exactly L’Année Sociologique, is it?’
‘A tribe of anthropophagi lurking at the fringes of society emerges from the night, committing predation upon ancient civilisations? Mon Dieu,’ he said with a chuckle, blowing blue cigar smoke into the air. ‘Your theory is still à ses débuts, but you are closer than you yet realise.’
She awaited an explanation for him saying her theory was in its infancy, but none was forthcoming.
Leaving the wood behind, Mauss paused before a three-tiered reflecting pool, lined with oaks. Elle thought she should explain. ‘These are the Triton Pools. My favourite place on campus. I often take a sack lunch here.’
Looking across the dry fountain bed, its bronze statues cloaked in snow, Dr Mauss nodded silently.
‘It’s prettier in the fine weather,’ she continued. ‘Triton dancing in the fountain spray amid fish, swimming mermaids and all.’
‘I can see it perfectly in my mind.’ Then, abruptly, he added, ‘But you asked me if I travelled here to debate the merits of capitalism with you. I did not. Is there somewhere we might sit?’
‘Of course. Come with me.’ Mounting freshly shovelled stairs, she directed him under the school’s Marquis Arch and into St Dunstan’s Quadrangle, the heart of the campus. Already, the flagstones had been dusted with salt to keep the snow at bay.
Dr Mauss looked about the quad.
‘What a unique environment for study. Both monastic and collegiate.’
‘It is a bit neither here nor there,’ she remarked. ‘Medieval meets Finnish Bauhaus.’
Mauss’s steel-grey eyes fell upon her. ‘Would you not agree that things seen are mightier than those heard?’
She paused, thinking.
‘I would.’
Wiping the snow from a bench, he sat, resting his gloved hands neatly on his lap. ‘We drink of the same apéritif.’ Leaning towards her and with voice hushed, he added, ‘Tell me of your Wilderzeichen and I will tell you of my own wild sign.’
A shiver rocketed down her spine.
‘You have also had a wild sign?’
‘As I said, we drink of the same apéritif – only from different cups. I’ve been studying a small group of Pueblo Indians living within a reservation in Arizona. Unlike your ancient Maya, who left evidence of their existence in hieroglyphic form, the Pueblo pass down their stories orally.’
‘They tell of Crimen predation?’
‘You are familiar with the Pueblo?’
She shook her head.
‘Well, they are descendants of an earlier nation – the Anasazi. Their dwellings were built in caves, high up the side of cliff faces, accessible only by retractable ladders.’
She listened, attentive to his every word, but didn’t quite understand what he was getting at.
‘Do you not see? They tried to protect themselves.’
‘Tried?’ Elle asked.
‘And failed,’ replied Dr Mauss.
‘They vanished?’
He nodded. ‘Like the Maya of Copán. You can imagine my surprise when a Pueblo Elder uttered a word as foreign as a Frenchy in Arizona.’
‘Wilderzeichen?’
He nodded. ‘You can be sure of the resurrection of the dead.’
Staring at him, she was hit by a sudden overwhelming wave of emotion. Jaw quivering, she tried desperately to keep her tears back, but it was no use. They came, fat and warm, thawing her cold cheeks where they fell. Leaning against Dr Mauss, she was suddenly a vulnerable child who desperately needed a protective arm.
Dr Mauss comforted her. ‘There, there now.’
She was gripped by the need to explain herself to him.
‘Seventeen years ago, I witnessed something I couldn’t accept,’ she said, grasping hold of the thick sleeve of his greatcoat. ‘It awakened a curiosity in me I’ve never lost. I left the path chosen for me, took my own. But I resigned myself to keeping the details of what I saw a secret. That secret is my private salvation.’
A gang of students carrying ice hockey sticks heaved snowballs at one another. Spotting her, their fight came to an abrupt end. She leaned back against the bench, wiping her tears away before they passed.
‘Move along, boys. And Happy Easter,’ she called out to them.
‘Happy Easter,’ they replied as one, doffing their hats before scurrying off.
She turned back to Mauss.
‘I’m not usually a weepy old maid. It’s just I thought nobody ever could understand the things I saw.’
‘I do understand.’
‘Do you really?’ she asked, the thought making her feel uncomfortable, almost. ‘A vestige of that terrifying night remains with me. But with the passing years, that vestige bleeds away. I have long given up trying to deny what I know within my soul to be true. But I am alone in this knowledge, Dr Mauss. I shun friends, and my colleagues mock me. Only my research is cathartic. For Chrissake, I haven’t had a close friend or lover since boarding school.’
Mauss tipped cigar ash into the turn-ups of his trousers, and then turned towards her.
‘My dear, I am a sociologist. I cannot help you. What you require is a psychiatrist.’ He paused, and then looked straight into her eyes with a smile. ‘Or three nights in a hotel in Havana.’
She laughed. It was much needed. Taking a deep breath and wiping away the last of her tears, she asked about his wild sign.
‘The Pueblo are suspicious of outsiders. It took me three years to earn the trust of their Elders. Last week, in the dead of night, I was taken to a hollow, deep within their spirit mountain. At its entrance I saw these same runes.’
‘Sekr?’
He nodded. ‘Here, they showed me something both extraordinary and terrifying. The place where Crimen are entombed.’
He went quiet, puffing away at his cigar and watching the snow fall around them. Elle was impatient for him to continue. Having spent seventeen years desperately searching for answers, she felt she couldn’t wait an instant longer. Just as she was about to give him a poke, he returned from wherever his mind had taken him.
‘Among chalk sarcophagi of ancient origin, the medicine man passed a pipe. A long, wooden thing packed with a sacred medicine they call peyote – a fascinating desert plant, brimming with psychoactive alkaloids. When smoked, it permitted me to see clearly those things lurking in the twilight realm.’
‘Sarcophagi? You suggest there were more than one?’
‘There were many. More than I could count. Inhumed within were terrible, terrible fiends.’
She almost laughed. Finally, someone who understood. ‘They are elusive.’
He agreed. ‘Yet I have seen them clearly.’
‘Tell me.’
‘You have seen these Crimen, oui?’
‘Just one,’ she admitted.
He shook his head. ‘You have seen many.’ She looked at him perplexed, and without reply.
‘Camazotz. Hel. Ahriman.’
‘The gods?’ she replied, confused and excited at the same time.
‘Sentinels.’
‘Sentinels?’ she repeated.
‘La Reine Blanche.’
‘The White Queen? Real
ly? Next you’re going to tell me there are seven dwarfs.’
‘I assure you there are no dwarfs. But the White Queen is very real.’
‘Siobhan?’
It was his turn to look flabbergasted. ‘How could you know this name?’
‘I heard it. On Titanic.’
‘She is a banshee,’ Mauss declared, almost spitting into the snow.
‘Tell me. Please.’
‘She is predatory. Opportunistic. Appearing when her prey is vulnerable, at times of upheaval: war, famine, pestilence. In this instance, the predation event caused the extinction of an entire Indigenous American nation already under stress from disease. Upon arrival, she turns a mortal.’
‘The Sentinel,’ Elle repeated. ‘Like a guard?’
‘Far more than this – a partner to her awful lusts.’
‘And then?’
‘You must understand the stories the medicine man tells are passed down through many, many generations. Hundreds of years. Critical details are lost. My vision is incomplete, but an important fact is preserved; before she vanishes, she endows a gift upon her victims,’ Dr Mauss continued.
‘A gift? You’re suggesting there is truth to my theory?’
‘Your theory is fact.’
‘Shit,’ she mumbled, as any self-doubt melted away like the snowflakes now landing softly on her cheeks.
‘And this “gift”. What is it?’
He exhaled. A cloud of blue cigar smoke drifted slowly amid the falling snow as he seemed to contemplate his words.
‘What is it all old men want?’
She stared at him incredulously. ‘Not – immortality?’
He nodded.
‘I’ll be damned. This really is a penny dreadful.’
‘There is more truth to your Spring-heeled Jack than you suppose.’
‘What form does the gift take?’ she asked.
‘For this, you need look into the etymology of the word itself,’ he replied.
She had a think.
‘From the Greek,’ he continued.
‘Dosis?’
He nodded and then added, ‘Dose of what?’
‘Dose of what?’ she repeated. ‘A dose of… I don’t know.’
‘Matan. Angebinde. Atâ. You hypothesise these hollows were abattoirs; slaughterhouses, where the predation occurred. A dose of—’
‘Venenum,’ she realised. ‘Venom.’
‘Venenum,’ he repeated. ‘And in Sanskrit?’
‘I’m afraid you’ve totally exhausted my knowledge of foreign tongues.’
‘Pleasure.’
She looked away, her mind pushing through the blizzard within her head, sorting through all that he had said. Finally, it clicked.
‘Siobhan.’ She turned back to him. ‘The banshee takes a Sentinel through seduction.’
He nodded. ‘By giving pleasure.’
‘Venenum. She injects them.’
‘Once she has turned them, they begin to feed.’
Elle’s mind took her back to Titanic. To a berth splattered with blood, half-devoured corpses bobbing in an awash hold.
‘I witnessed a predation event.’
‘And lived to tell of it. That, in and of itself, is remarkable.’
At last, she told him of her wild sign. He listened.
Elle had never shared what she had witnessed with anyone. Finally doing so flooded her with a sense of bliss she had never felt. She lit a cigarette, savouring the moment.
A question came to her.
‘My theory of a subculture of Crimen lurking at society’s fringe was born from what I witnessed. You have also witnessed them?’
‘Crimen have structure.’
‘They are not mindless fiends?’
‘They are not,’ he confirmed. ‘They exist in a distinctive hierarchy. The fiend you witnessed was merely prey. Not consumed, it was infected, turned Guilty and began to scavenge. This lowest caste, these are Huntians. Feeble feeders.’
‘The one I witnessed wasn’t feeble.’
‘Pardonnez-moi?’
‘It tore through a cabin full of men as if they were sides of beef.’
‘Mon Dieu. Your Wilderzeichen was a Sentinel.’
Leaning back against the bench, she took a good long drag from her cigarette. ‘Strange.’
‘What is?’
‘Hearing you say it. Wilderzeichen. When I hear it outside my head, it makes me realise these Crimen are real and not just a crazy theory of mine.’
‘They are real.’
She blew the smoke out into the cold morning air.
‘I heard it on Titanic. Wilderzeichen. From a man carrying a shotgun. I thought it strange at the time. I mean, why would anyone carry a shotgun on a sinking ship?’
‘Tell me of this man.’
‘Titanic was going down at the head. Hold awash. Pitch-dark. This fiend, this Sentinel, was in its sarcophagus. The man killed it.’
‘How?’
‘With a spike. He thrust it into the beast’s chest.’
‘Merde,’ said Mauss, leaning back against the bench. ‘You were witness to the Nephilim.’
‘Nephilim?’
‘The Nephilim is a mortal, taken by the banshee.’
‘Is that not a Sentinel?’
‘He was to be more than a Sentinel. More than her guard. The Nephilim is chosen for special privileges – to be Siobhan’s lover.’
Elle felt an unexpected stab of spite. She tried her best to hide it behind her cigarette as she took another hit.
Mauss continued. ‘But this man you saw is unique. Rebellious. He cast aside the heinous addiction of being Guilty. And it is only he who prevents mortal man from becoming a festin de reine.’
She knew French and understood: a queen’s feast.
Mauss continued. ‘The medicine man called him Balthasar the Good. He is the Nephilim. It is he who saved the Pueblo from Crimen infestation.’
Loosening the collar of her alpaca coat, Elle removed the fine chain tucked in under her woolly jumper. On its end swung the silver talisman she had worn around her neck since Titanic. ‘Balthasar saved me.’
Pulling on a pair of pince-nez, Mauss inspected the death symbol. ‘From where did you get this?’
‘You’ve seen this before?’
Dr Mauss nodded.
The snow continued to fall, as they sat in silence.
❖❖❖
4 APRIL 1929
ABACO ISLANDS,
BAHAMAS
Elle grasped the talisman swinging about her neck, sun prickly on her bare shoulders, sea spray splashing her legs dangling over Weezy’s bow.
Hope renewed, she watched her shadow dancing in the curling waves, her thumb pressing against the talisman’s face. Balthasar Toule. The name etched into the periphery of the death symbol. Balthasar the Good. One and the same. Both her lingering vestige.
‘Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum,’ she whispered to herself. There was no need to look at the talisman; she’d worn it every day for the last seventeen years. Etched into it was a human figure, cleaved stomach releasing a river of maggots, a Totenkopf proclaiming the peculiar apophthegm, ‘Expect the resurrection of the dead’.
Balthasar Toule had been resurrected.
Mauss thought so. He recognised the death symbol from the sarcophagi lids. And, like the passel of Crimen buried deep in a mountain hollow in Arizona, Elle had kept the terrible things she’d witnessed buried within herself. Until Mauss.
Now, she was not alone in her adamantine belief in Balthasar’s existence. And not in the past tense.
It gave her hope.
Raising her head, she followed the sun’s path across Bahamian shallows to distant, palm-dotted cays. Spending the Easter holiday on the family yacht was tradition. Father had named her Weezy – Mother’s nickname. Mother hated it. She also hated ships. Elle couldn’t really blame her.
Elle had arrived late to the yacht, the crew already asleep in their bunks. Coming aboard, she’d gone di
rectly to her cabin and fallen asleep. Awakened by the thrum of engines, the gentle sloshing against the hull told her Weezy was making way. She climbed to the deck. There was nothing quite as spectacular as a first morning: shimmering sea, warm sun turning winter skin a golden brown. The most ordinary of things the most extraordinary of all.
‘Don’t go falling in the drink, now.’
Snapped out of her daydreaming, she turned her head. On the foredeck, skin like leather, stood Corky O’Shea.
‘Not to worry, Cork. My crawl is pretty fair.’
‘I still swim for shite.’
The Irishman and her father had leaped from Titanic together. As promised, he had looked up her father in Detroit. And in return, Father had made him skipper of the family yacht. Elle returned to the sun lounger, pulling a silk Hermès stole around her shoulders before giving Corky a kiss on his stubbly cheek.
‘Ain’t you a sight for these tired lamps,’ he said, his brogue punctuated by the Bahamian drawl he had acquired over his seventeen years in the Abacos. ‘Proper lady, you is.’
‘Every year you say that, Cork,’ she reminded him, squeezing his rough old hands. ‘You know perfectly well, I’m no proper anything.’
They shared a laugh. ‘Lord’s image of Eve.’
‘Bilge,’ she dismissed with a wave. ‘Mrs O’Shea better not hear you say that.’
‘Mrs O’Shea took a launch to Hope Town, lobster provisioning.’ Reaching back through an opened bridge window, he took up his pipe. ‘Birthday coming up, haven’t ya?’
‘You really needed to remind me?’
‘How many candles?’
‘Better not ask a proper lady that.’
‘You’re no proper anything, remember?’
‘Touché,’ she laughed. ‘Thirty-four.’
‘Thirty-four,’ he repeated, dragging a match along the deck rail before sparking up his pipe. ‘Haven’t seen your da’ in a few years. How’s he gettin’ on?’
‘Well enough. St Dunstan’s keeps my parents occupied. Neither of them has the pot for open water any more.’
‘No keeping you away from the briny deep, though.’
‘They wish to forget Titanic,’ she replied, lighting a cigarette. ‘I never want to forget.’
‘I can’t understand your fascination with that night, Eleanor. I been trying to forget it for seventeen years.’