Imaginarium 2013

by Sandra Kasturi

  Perhaps she will be coming down here soon, that girl, the angel says. To see you. The way the young shepherdess in Italy went to watch her cousin at work in the barn, only to be found the next day with her mouth full of earth, her intestines torn out and trailing in the dirt. Or the way that bell-ringer from Boston invited a five-year-old up to his attic, on the pretext of showing her his pigeons, and instead beat her to death with a bat—beat her so badly, so completely, that when her own mother was shown the body later on, she could not positively identify her remains. . . .

  But: “I’m not like that,” Gustave spits back, his mouth full of bile. “I only—dream. Paint. I’ve never . . . done anything . . . more than that.”

  As yet, no.

  Feet on the stairs, girlish, tripping. Gustave claws for the wall again, upsetting his paint stand. Finds the smeary palette knife suddenly poised within gripping range, its handle toward his guilty, palsied hand.

  Ah, but perhaps, if you only drink the last of your Green Fairy I will go away, Knauff’s son, like any other morning-after hallucination. Or . . . perhaps not.

  The girl is right outside now, separated from him only by a thin layer of wood and metal; she skips from step to step, singing some sort of counting-out rhyme in French (or German). He bites his tongue at the very sound of it, grinding until he tastes blood.

  Why fight? the angel asks, in his ear, her no-voice thin as a murmuring dream of bees. I know you, all of you, caught as you are in time’s net like dead fish rotting, drunk on your own decay. You love only what you destroy, because you can destroy it—but do you really dream you are the worst this century will have to offer? Are you so arrogant?

  By the way her voice has faded, it would seem that the landlord’s daughter has finally reached the landing. Gustave can only pray she stays there, frozen in much the same way he now finds himself unable to move, straining for whatever the angel’s next words might be in the intimately gathering gloom—

  Listen, Knauff’s son: Here is what will happen, with or without your mother’s plans to blame for it. First, in five years’ time, there will be war . . . but not one of those many, tiny wars you and your friends worry over—this will be different, epic, startling. A true horror to behold. Fire will gush from the sky; lead will fall like rain; the muddy ground will be honeycombed with buried bombs, with trenches full of gas and disease. A war, as all of you will say, to end all wars—until the next one comes.

  More shuddering, more fluttering; sharp-edged, crisp enough to cut. Down in the front hall, the landlord’s daughter pauses, possibly having forgotten something. She turns on her heel, turns back, to mount the rickety stairs once more. Gustave presses palms to ears in order to block out the sound, but finds this only makes the angel’s voice ring more hollowly in the hissing cavern of his skull—damnably reasonable, utterly unstoppable.

  And then, then . . . just as He once spoke the Word and sent Gabriel Archangel to turn Sodom and Gomorrah into salt, so your kind will crack the atom like an egg, turning two more cities into glass. Nothing will be left behind but shadow and ash, factories run on rag and bone, a long and wasting invisible death that poisons the soil and sky, great holes full of corpses. Men and women of every age and station will die there together, families and strangers alike, thieves and saints and yet more Sodomites too, of any and all descriptions. . . .

  “And children?”

  Oh yes, and children, always. Children, more than any others. I have seen it so for centuries, ever since He sent me to lay my hand on Pharaoh’s first-born’s sleeping head.

  From Strange Provenance, Pataky-Hemsworth:

  According to part of a letter found plastered into the wall of Knauff’s former room (possibly dated 1908, or perhaps ’09), the “Annunciation” was sold to a private buyer that same year, which explains how it escaped the Bruges fire. In the missive, Knauff goes on to decode his painting’s various symbological features as a gesture of “educative good-will” towards “a loyal supporter and enthusiast”—this unnamed purchaser?

  Knauff identifies the sexless figure in green as “that same angel who culled Egypt’s firstborn,” now Fallen into acting as a sort of herald or guardian for the “Virgin”; the peacock-feather cloak it offers her reveals the involvement of Melek-i-Taus, notorious Peacock Angel of the Yezidic Goetists, who may be using her womb—or whatever comes out of it—to birth “himself” back into the material world. In other words, what Knauff seems to have at some point belonged to . . . and obviously later betrayed, thus probably leading to his death . . . was yet one more end-of-the-century cult with a distinctly familial slant, a birthing-pit for potential Anti-Christs.

  And now, of course, there is a knock at the door—hesitant but soon repeated, growing ever stronger. Gustave looks down to see his knuckles already white around the palette-knife’s handle, while (looking up again) he finds the canvas he’s worked so hard on is less a soothing canal landscape than a black forest made from bones and meat, a place of slaughter just aching for some wayward red-caped maiden to amble, foolish-fearless, down any of its overhung paths.

  Believe me, Knauff’s son: All this will come to pass, whether or not the Peacock Angel comes home at last. But you, if you wish, my little Gustave—

  (hapless Goetist, self-made traitor, born too soon for doctors Jung and Freud, too late for the Inquisition’s tender mercies. You werewolf’s heart wrapped in a man’s slick skin, all canines and eye-whites, your quivering limbs kept irrigated by terror and desire alike)

  —you need not live to see it.

  The inquiring cry comes, long expected, in a voice innocent of all but the most cat-killing curiosity: “Herr Knauff? Herr Knauff, are you there?”

  But no, he knows it now: he will not answer, after all. Thank any god but the one his mother worships. . . .

  It is surprisingly easy for him to turn the knife upward, even to make that last, imperative slash, paint burning in his wound like cleansing fire: Chemicals, poisons, beauty. The sole real surprise is how little it seems to hurt, and how long the fall to the floor seems to take. He stays conscious just long enough to see the door open, the landlord gape down at him, before he finally dies choking on his own blood, with an oddly gentle smile on his red-soaked lips.

  The girl’s scream goes straight up to Heaven like an ill-shot arrow, missing its target entirely; she will live and die unaware of her own close escape from what the Germans are only now learning to call lustmord, sent to Buchenwald instead after sheltering Jews in her father’s basement, while he himself takes a far more merciful bullet to the back of the head, as he tries to tear her from an SS officer’s arms.

  And neither of them, in the end, is fast (or attentive) enough to see the angel Ma’ashith vanish, her task complete—blinking from existence in a spray of red-black cards which rise, fall, then hit the floor and scatter once again, eddying away as nothing more than dust.

  From Strange Provenance, Pataky-Hemsworth:

  The brief, intense fire which destroyed Knauff’s Bruges studio around Easter of 1909 only adds to his mystery; in addition to consuming the remainder of his unsold works, the one body found therein was so fire-damaged as to make identification largely speculative—the accelerant-effect of the studio’s paints and turpentine is blamed for this. Though the rest of the pension survived, the entire roof had to be replaced and lowered, essentially wiping all trace of Knauff from the city in which he had lived the last years of his incredibly ill-documented life.

  While many scholars posit that Knauff might have painted under a pseudonym (the name sounds suspiciously close to “Knopff,” after all), or even been a “house name” used by a coalition of like-minded artists trying to break into the last wave of the Decadent scene, my own research suggests it is far more likely he was related to the family behind Knauff’s of Switzerland, an international trading house founded by a Crusader who returned from the Holy Land having already married a woman “of singular beau
ty and sinister antecedents” who claimed she—along with the rest of her family—had already converted to Christianity when the Swiss delegation arrived.

  (In fact, a quick survey of those few remaining photos of the Swiss Knauffs prior to their 1946 emigration to Canada reveals that the female members of their line all seem to bear a striking resemblance to Rédon’s favourite blasphemous anti-Mary—most strikingly in the case of Mara Knauff, the company’s main stockholder since her 1939 debut, and great-grandmother of the current crop.

  (There are even rumours of a very early Kodak colour-process memorial photo taken three years after her marriage which shows her posing with a stillborn twin boy in either arm, attended by a slim young nurse or nanny dressed all in green, her face discreetly averted from Mrs. Knauff’s grief, a small and similarly-coloured veil further obscuring her shadowed features.

  (An odd further detail: Cards, surely inappropriate in such circumstances, are laid out on a nearby table.)

  Slowly and surely a belief is growing in the bankruptcy of Nature which promises to become the sinister faith of the twentieth century.

  —Paul Bourget

  since breaking through the ice

  DOMINIK PARISIEN

  I have seen them bend a man in an impossible way

  and pull him down a fishing hole; wrapped

  my hands, too cold to hold, around my neck

  and dreamt of drowning under white skies;

  discovered a mark like a crow’s wings

  around my left calf;

  scoured the shore in spring for blue-black

  bodies I pray wash up but never do;

  walked on water as though it were frozen,

  tried diving in only to hit a rippling surface;

  yearned for the day the ice breaks under me

  again, so I may go home to them.

  the pack

  MATT MOORE

  DOCUMENT 1: COMMUNIQUÉ

  SENDER: Dr. C.-L. Ibarro, Medical Director, Advanced Soldier Enhancement and Survival Program (ASESP)

  RECIPIENTS: Brigadier General Douglas Stern, Advanced Weapon Systems Research, Development and Engineering Center (AWSRDEC) / Clark Bernshaw, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense

  I have completed assessments of the six surviving members of the ASESP.

  The nanites now constitute between 2% and 3% of the men’s body weight. This represents an unanticipated 300-fold increase from initial dosage.

  There is another complication. Each man was injected with a unique nanite model. Each man now hosts an identical hybrid model which appears to be the result of cross-contamination and replication.

  I cannot explain the periods of prolonged silence reported among the program’s survivors.

  I cannot predict what other side-effects may occur.

  I will repeat that I warned that field testing could result in unexpected consequences.

  I recommend the nanites be removed immediately.

  * * *

  DOCUMENT 2: COMMUNIQUÉ

  SENDER: Brig. Gen. Stern, AWSRDEC

  RECIPIENT: ADUSecDef Bernshaw

  Sir —

  Dr. Ibarro was unable to remove the nanites. She is unsure how to proceed.

  I’m worried by these men, who took on the nickname “The Pack” during their training. The few times I’ve talked to Sergeant Calabrese, it’s like he’s looking right through me.

  I haven’t heard one laugh, seen one smile, get mad. When they’re together, they’ll go hours without saying a word. It’s eerie. Makes me wonder how far Dr. Ibarro went with having those things play with their brains.

  The only outsider they retain any respect for seems to be Colonel Holding. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think they’d follow chain of command. I have increased Holding’s security clearance. We will need him fully informed on the nature of the program if we are to have any hope of working with these men further.

  Honestly, I think something happened to them in the desert.

  — Doug

  * * *

  DOCUMENT 3: COMMUNIQUÉ

  SENDER: ADUSecDef Bernshaw

  RECIPIENT: Brig. Gen. Stern

  Doug: I know you opposed early discussions of extreme ASESP termination measures, but I ask you to look to the safety of your command and the American people. Consider the changed behaviour of these men and the capabilities this program was designed to instill. I have come to believe they could pose a significant danger.

  The men volunteered. They were aware of the risks. It seems Dr. Ibarro’s technology did not undergo a thorough shakedown on their last mission; perhaps a more dangerous mission is called for.

  * * *

  DOCUMENT 4: TRANSCRIPT

  (Audio file on cell phone recovered from ADUSecDef Bernshaw’s basement. The voice has been confirmed as Sergeant Calabrese.)

  CALABRESE: Good, you’re awake. Didn’t mean to hit you so hard, but couldn’t have you screaming like that. It could draw attention in this nice Arlington suburb.

  Stop struggling, Under Secretary. The straps are too tight. No one is coming to save you. Your bodyguards? Dead.

  You know who we are, right?

  BERNSHAW: Sergeant Calabrese. From—

  CALABRESE: Good. Now, you’re going to tell us what the hell you did to us. Then, how to fix it. And I’m recording this in case anything happens to us.

  BERNSHAW: Let me make a phone call. We can sort this out—

  [SOUNDS OF A STRUGGLE; MUFFLED VOICE]

  CALABRESE: No. No calls. Going to tell someone where we are? We’d just kill them, too.

  [SEVERAL SECONDS OF SILENCE]

  CALABRESE (cont’d): My friends say to kill you. But you’re going to understand, Under Secretary. What we’ve been through. What we’ve become.

  Colonel Holding had three hundred volunteers that first day. Three hundred guys willing to put their lives on the line. We didn’t even know the risks. “Become better, stronger soldiers,” they told us. Win these damned wars and get our boys back home. And after guys got screened out or flunked out, you had ten of us. We put up with injections and drinking crap that looked and smelled like motor oil past its prime.

  Some quick shakedown missions. Then the big one. Dropped deep behind enemy lines to hit a supply depot. We pulled it off, then waited for an evac chopper that never came. Heard about the double agent, the chopper getting shot down, in debrief. All we knew then was that we had strict radio silence orders and a fifty-klick march through hell.

  We reported minimal enemy contact. But that’s bullshit. We got hit on the third day.

  Small arms fire and mortars. We’d been holed up, catching some sleep. Had some of our gear off. Shrapnel cut Bailey across the middle, guts spilling out. Screaming, thrashing. I held him down and Gündersen got a pressure bandage on. Over Bailey’s screaming, Gündersen said he felt something moving. I told him to shut up and dug for a fentanyl tab in my kit. But Gündersen lifted the bandage.

  The rip in Bailey’s skin looked like scorched, ragged lips pulled back over a mouth of blood-smeared meat. But the bleeding had stopped. And I thought I was seeing things, but the organs were shifting, putting themselves back where they belonged. Should’ve shit my pants. Or puked. Or something. Instead, I put the tab in Bailey’s mouth, calm as can be. Knocked him out a few seconds later. The organs kept moving. Then two feet of ripped-up bowel got shoved out of the wound. And I’ll be damned if the skin didn’t pull together on its own.

  Next second, a mortar threw me into a rock, head first. I didn’t have my helmet on. Just remember the sound of my skull breaking.

  When I came to, the enemy had broken off. Gündersen was down. Caught five rounds in the chest.

  Five rounds I saw get pushed back out of the entry wounds.

  The next day, the three of us were up like nothing had happened. We knew the program would make us tough, but
this? I felt like nothing could stop Bailey, Gündersen and me. We were tight. And I don’t mean because we’d been through the shit together. We acted as one. Like we knew what each other was thinking.

  Two days later, an RPG took Nawaz’s arm and half of Pratt’s face. And then they were Pack, too.

  Soon we all were.

  But we lost people. Whatever you did can’t fix an artillery shell taking your head off.

  Or Danielson. Cut in half by an IED. Chest level. Could see the bottom of his lungs inflating. Still alive, dragging himself through the sand and rocks, begging for us to kill him. But we couldn’t do it. Knew we had to, but couldn’t. He finally offed himself.

  Ever lose anyone close, Under Secretary? A parent? A child, maybe? That’s nothing. Imagine your happiest memories torn away. A healthy tooth ripped out of your jaw. A ragged, bloody wound that will never heal.

  And then those things we did to the locals. Soldier, revolutionary, counter-revolutionary. Even civilians. Cutting them, beating them, killing one while another watched.

  It wasn’t payback. It just needed to be done. We needed the intelligence: enemy size and location, passable routes, places where we could get food and water.

  I figured we were getting frosty.

  But the truth is, I could murder a hundred infants with my bare hands. To protect the Pack. You bastard, what did you do to us?

  Damn it, a good soldier needs to know when to stop.

  So after three weeks, six of us walked out of that desert. All Pack. Even Depardieu, who hadn’t been hit. And with Lieutenant Carter dead, I was its leader.

  We lied to Holding during the debriefing, of course. Didn’t tell him we’d survived shit that should have killed us. He’s a good officer, but we lied to his face. Figured if we didn’t, you might start poking and prodding us. Maybe split us up.