by Don Webb
“As I became ready, pieces of knowledge and opportunity would arise. I got a chance to work in Egypt at the Kon Ombo irrigation project. My job was to ensure the resulting groundwater currents wouldn’t seep into the digs of the Temple of Set. I got to spend a lot of time in those strange chambers being marked and changed by their angles and darkness. When I got back to the States I set up a chamber. I tried laying lots of women who looked like her —trying to bring her back into one of them. I studied her bedroom and found it was slightly off square. Someone had bought her house. I warned them that they should change that bedroom, that they couldn’t withstand its angles without training. They paid no attention. Within a year they were both dead of cancer. The shape waves had shattered their DNA spirals. Other people understood. ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’ ‘The Hounds of Tindalos.’ The King in Yellow. Her music was the mystery veiled in the story of the Pied Piper. She wouldn’t let me alone.
“Eleven years after her death (to the night) I broke into the now-empty house again. I tried a simple ceremony, she forced me to . . . I know that when the drugs flooded her body she escaped to the one place she could. To the angular streams of time—the nightmare world that runs in rough parallel to our own curved stream. Sometimes they touch and you have Hitler’s death camps—sometimes an artist may glimpse them and you get the paintings of a Bruegel or a Roberto Matta. For the rest of us, there’s those things you see out of the corners of your eyes. She’s in that stream. I can feel her here. I wouldn’t have told you this much. I’ve never told anyone, but this house, this valley . . .”
The sky had begun to darken again. A few fat drops of rain hit the sundial. Someone knocked heavily at the outside door. “Goddammit, I locked myself out.”
The two stood up, scattering crumbs of bread and cheese on the cheap linoleum. Lew let Jeff in; he was carrying a case of Tecate and a Phillips Cobramatic. The stylus had been shaped and painted to resemble a snake’s head. State of the art for 1955. Mark took the beer to feed the refrigerator. Lew set up the Cobramatic. Jeff shook himself like a dog. He said, “There’s a nasty-looking cloud building up in the southwest. It might be a hook cloud. He’s rented the record player, got any records?”
“Weirdly enough, yeah. Electric Commode and Geronimo Jackson,” said Mark. “Have a beer.”
Mark opened three bottles. Lew put on an old Argent album.
Jeff toasted, “To the good old days.”
Lew raised his bottle. “Gone but not forgotten.”
Mark brought his bottle into clinking contact with the other two. “Maybe not even gone.” They drank. Jeff shot Mark a cold ugly look across the light-years.
Jeff said, “I hope my past is gone. I’d hate to come across some scene from it.” Something passed between the two of them. A ripple of hate. Lew tried to withdraw. There had been ugly rumors on campus. Maybe that was where Mark’s descent into Black Magic had begun. An image of twisting bodies in torchlight. Lew sought to banish the personal past with the impersonal. “Thomas Jefferson wanted to build a series of signal towers across North America. Go down. Down into Mexico to tie to the ancient system here.” Tension lifted, a little.
Mark said, “I’m not surprised. Jefferson was a Mason. He designed the great seal of the United States. A trapezoidal signal tower. He’d have built them across the entire Louisiana Purchase—up north to Alaska where he could flash messages across to his fellow Mason, Tsar Alexander. Can’t you see those stone frustums signaling each to each in the polar night?”
The record was on its last cut. “God Gave Rock-n-Roll to You.”
Jeff said, “You’re off in outer space again. The point in reunions is reality. You look at where you’ve been and where you are now. You ground yourself in what-was, inventory what-is, and make a firm plan on what-will-be.”
Lew said, “We goddamn know your reason for arranging this reunion. You’re a fine lawyer now. You can buy and sell any of us. Nice home in Austin. Hot tub. Fancy PC. Mark’s hung up on some dead rocker and I’m a junky eking out an existence in the Third World. You can prove to yourself that you made it. If you want, bring out your birth certificate and we’ll validate it for you. But don’t expect us to succumb to your motives. When you drove into this valley, other motives became manifest.”
Mark went over to the Cobramatic. He took Argent off and put on Jeena Normal’s Black album.
“Oh, God, I’m not going to put up with this. You even carry her albums along with you, don’t you?” asked Jeff.
“No, this is Lew’s album. Most red-blooded American males have at least one Jeena album, even if it’s only I Dream of Jeena. Bet you don’t have any. If you’re so successful, why aren’t you married? Isn’t that recommended for young lawyers on the fast track?”
“That’s an old-fashioned idea,” said Jeff.
“You’ve been jealous of Jeena all these years,” said Mark.
“You’re a sick lad, Mark, my boy.”
Mark remained by the record player, softly swaying. The music echoed strangely. Sometimes a note would come back from a wall two or three beats later, creating tooth-jarring dissonance. The dissonances didn’t fall where you expected them to. Lew thought with a little effort he could get into that pattern. Jeff toyed with the figure of Ganesh from the windowsill. There had to be, he thought, a way out of this. Jeff listened for the pattern. Mark was in step with the strange echoes. If he could watch Mark, he’d get it. He was almost in sync when he heard the roar.
“Jesus, what’s that?” asked Lew.
“Sounds like a tornado. Where’s the solidest walls in your house?” asked Jeff.
“In the hall. There’s some stone walls that stuck out of the valley. I built around it.”
Jeff and Lew ran to the hall. Jeff said, “Get your mattress. Hold it over us. Mark, come here. Dammit, don’t you hear that?”
Mark continued to sway as though he heard the music, which would be impossible with the roar. Lew ran in with the mattress. Jeff and Lew huddled against the stone wall. It had begun to vibrate. Lew said, “I belong to this valley and the valley’s coming for me.”
When the tornado hit the house, all the windows exploded outward. The sheetrock walls rippled like a jellyfish in the sea. A tiny crack formed in the ancient stone wall. No bigger than three inches. Lew was sucked through it. Jeff pushed himself away from the wall. He wanted to get to Mark. His ears popped in the dropping pressure. For a moment he realized he was in a vacuum. He put his hand to his cheek. He was sweating blood through his pores. Black spots boiled in the center of his vision. He forced himself into the front room. For a moment he thought he was facing a cracked mirror. Black lines of nothingness radiated out from the record player’s speakers. A strange angular network. Mark’s body was in several of the planes. Moving toward and away from itself. He could see several of the internal parts.
He heard Lew screaming at him through the floor below and through the walls. Lew’s screams were being drowned out through some chant. Nahuatl perhaps. He watched Mark work his way deeper into the night of angles. Mark’s heart—or a dark cubist’s version of it—suddenly appeared in the air above him. He reached up for it. A single drop of blood falling somehow sideways struck his left hand. It was hot, burning, acid. It didn’t make a proper splot. A dark red trapezoid burned itself into his hand. An angular platinum comet came into the room. It darted around, weaving itself into Mark’s mass. More parts followed. Woman parts. For an instant he glimpsed Jeena’s face on one of the angled planes—upside down and backwards—but her face nonetheless. The Jeena mass connected itself to the Mark mass. The music became louder. It became one with the chanting. The dark lines began to shake with the combined rhythm and everything went black.
When Jeff came to, he thought he saw his mother bending over him. Then his eyes focused on the old Mexican woman, her neck covered by charms. She was directing two youths digging him free. She smiled. She said, “You are okay.” Then she walked to the stone wall and traced a pattern over the crack. It seemed t
o close, or perhaps it was his eyesight again.
Jeff remained conscious for most of the ambulance ride into Mexico City. He toyed with the lock of platinum blond hair which he’d found in his left hand.
(For Frank Belknap Long)
Plush Cthulhu
As soon as the excuse left his lips Larry Ellison felt slightly lower than the belly of a rattlesnake in a wagon rut. Larry had tried for years to reach his students at James Bowie Junior High with Western metaphors, reasoning (incorrectly) that kids in central Texas had something of the Old West about them. His principal, Miss Rebecca Gonzalez, looked appropriately shocked. His assistant principal, Mr. José Wong Jr., who had not smiled at him in his five years of employment, actually put his hand around Larry’s shoulders. Larry had no idea where the excuse had come from, and was amazed at some deep level that God hadn’t smitten him on the spot.
Larry had just told the administration that he had missed Monday because his mom had died on Sunday. He had missed because he was high on ecstasy and balling some woman, whose name (he thought) was Chandra Azathoth Nibiru, or maybe it was Sandra? Although now he realized that was probably a stage name; she was probably named Rebecca Fielding or some such. His mother was (to the best of his knowledge) alive, if not well, at the Machen Assisted Living Center about twenty miles north in Austin, Texas.
“If you need to take more time off, Larry, the district gives a five-day leave for death of a parent or spouse in addition to the normal state and local days,” said Mr. Wong. Wong had never used his first name before. But the big lie had apparently made his heart grow three sizes larger.
“I’ll need Thursday and Friday off for the funeral.” It was snowballing now. “But otherwise I want to stay at work, keep my mind focused on things.”
“I was the same way when my mother died,” said Miss Gonzalez. “She had been in a rest home like your mom. Is the funeral going to be here, I mean in Austin?”
“No, ma’am. It will be in her hometown of Amarillo.”
“Let us know where we can send flowers,” said Wong.
Oh, God. “I, well, my brothers and I are asking that donations be made to Book Aid International.” Mom had probably never heard of Book Aid International; it was one of Larry’s favorites. Oh, God, I am going to hell for this, for sure. Larry made an exaggerated stare at the Brother brand clock in Miss G.’s office, “I need to get to first period.”
He left her office and made an effort to stare at the brown terrazzo floors. Larry was not a frequent liar. All his lies had been small ones. Yes, he was sure the copy machine was turned off; yes, he had all his grades in; of course he knew his autistic student’s IEP by heart. He made his way to the second floor, not enjoying running his hand over the age-smoothed banister or the Latin motto in the wall, Non scholae, sed vitae discimus. Not for school, but for life we learn. Seneca. Bowie Junior High was one of the landmarks of Doublesign, Texas—and he had enjoyed its solidity as he had his own until today. He had about ten minutes to get his day’s objectives for English 8 on the board. It was almost the last day of the poetry unit, and most of the students had still not written the poem and paper required.
When noon came, all the teachers made their way over to him: Mrs. Spradlin, Mr. Henley, Mr. Gutierrez, Miss Leach, Miss Mertin, Mr. Ousley, Mrs. Olrun, Mr. Watson. All Larry could do was think what was going to happen when Momma really died? She was almost ninety, for Christ’s sake.
He wanted to call the nursing home during his conference period to make sure she was still alive, or he fantasized grimly maybe she has died. He was reaching for his cell phone when it started to vibrate. He hoped it was Chandra, but to his horror he saw it was the nursing home.
His mother may have had a stroke. They had rushed her to Seaton Hospital, but the hospital had returned her asking that she be closely observed for the next twenty-four hours. Could he come and see her? He said that he would be out immediately after work, and they must not call the school because, because, because they were doing standardized testing.
The next two periods might have been dipped in lead. Cotton filled his ears; his corneas were surely tinted with weak tea. The eighth-graders muttered little rhymes like miniature witches and warlocks. Just before the last bell, he could have sworn he heard some girl saying, “Step on a crack . . .”
He felt too drained to run, and too anxious to collapse. So he made his way to his car. Teachers weren’t supposed to leave until half an hour after the last bell, but given his recent bereavement, he knew no one would stop him. Some of the para-professionals were putting up cardboard snowmen, others symbols of a New England Thanksgiving. It was a warm afternoon; he wondered how long the decorations made for school would take to catch up with global warming. None of his students had ever seen more than a half-inch of snow—they had no reference to a world covered in pristine white.
He had taught middle school too long, he decided as he drove north into Austin. He had given a middle school excuse. Probably the ecstasy has fucked his mind. He was having some mid-life crisis. It was probably the girl’s fault. Oh, great, another middle school response. He hadn’t planned to go to Austin for Halloween, at least not be in the city after nightfall. Austin had a huge drunk party on Sixth Street fueled by revealing costumes, live music, and cheap drinks. There were over forty thousand students in attendance at the University of Texas. He had stopped at a used music store. This amazingly tall bronze woman in a deep purple miniskirt disrupted his thumbing through jazz CDs by bending over to look at psychedelic vinyl. With her white go-go boots and long raven hair, she looked as though she belonged to the psychedelic era. She stamped her boots and sighed loudly, inviting comment. Despite the twenty-year difference in their ages, Larry played along.
“Can’t find something?” he asked.
“My girlfriend told me that she had seen an Electric Commode album here today. I’ve been hunting it for years.”
“I take it that it hasn’t made iTunes yet.”
She smiled, and he was lost in her liquid brown eyes.
“It was an obscure band even then. Part of the Arkham sound. They did some work with a theremin-like device I am trying to rebuild.”
“Like in that documentary . . . who was she? Clara Rockmore?” asked Larry.
The woman’s face lit up. “Oh, cool. Yes, Clara was a lover and student of Leon Theremin. Are you interested in alternative electronica?”
Larry had never heard the phrase “alternative electronica” in his life, but he hadn’t been laid in three years. So his agreement sounded genuine and enthusiastic.
Larry pulled up at the Machen Assisted Living Center. A bright yellow-green ambulance was parked in front of the light gray one-story building. But that was nothing new. He swallowed as much guilt as he could and then headed inside. It didn’t smell as strongly as the place his grandfather had died in twenty years ago. Maybe there had been breakthroughs in anti-death-smell chemistry. The administrator at reception looked professionally sad.
“Mr. Ellison, when your mother began living here, we talked about the stages of our process. Your mom won’t have her own room anymore. We’re going to have to watch her a little more closely. Would you like to see her?”
Mom’s hair was white as snow, her skin translucent. She had shrunk so over the last three years. She wore a faded Sears housedress, no doubt older than any of his students. Her eyes had faded from a rich brown to the color of weak tea, and they looked angry. She sat in the “sun room” in a gerry chair, the restraining wheelchair that kept mindless patients from roaming the halls on their own. She smelled of piss. Someone had given her a plush Cthulhu doll. She clutched the little green monstrosity fiercely. It was an odd gift. Mom had never been much of a reader and preferred Danielle Steel to Stephen King and certainly to Lovecraft. It was a silly, stupid toy, dark green plush with a lighter green underbelly, as though Cthulhu were a relation of Kermit. It soft blunted tentacles and soft wings removed any sense of cosmic evil, and its brown eyes were a
lmost shy. It tore at Larry’s heart; the toy’s eyes were more alive than his momma’s.
She looked at Larry.
She didn’t know him.
He actually heard his heart break. Well, not his heart, but the emotional break had a sound accompanying it—it sounded as if a hollow reed had been snapped behind his neck.
Larry walked over to where she was and sank on his knees. He looked at her and nothing really looked back. He said “Momma” six or seven times. No change in her face. He tried to take Cthulhu away from her. She resisted, but it was easy to deprive her of the toy. She made a sad sound and tried to get the doll back. The other seniors looked at him with the same horror one would give to the thief of an infant’s candy. He gave her the doll back. He had a hard time standing. His face was wet. He hadn’t cried in a very long time.
“Did you step on a crack?”
He wheeled on the administrator. “What did you say?” he asked.
“I said it’s so hard the first time they don’t know us. I remember how it was with my own mother.”
The room seemed very unstable. Larry opened his mouth and couldn’t maker a sound. He tried again and managed, “I know you are trying to share a helpful story, but I can’t really hear anything right now. I’ve got to go, I’ll talk to her doctor tomorrow.”
He made it to the parking lot. This was Momma. Momma who had helped through a bad marriage, Momma who had worked two jobs so that he could get his English degree at UT. Momma who had rocked him when he had those terrible earaches as a kid. He was going to have to tell his boss the truth. Surely she was about to die. It was all wrong. All fucked up.
He had heard that sound before. At Chandra’s apartment.
Her apartment was over a Mexican import shop on South Congress. It was jam-packed with books, CDs, old vinyl, and strange-looking electronic instruments. She told him some of the names: the Persephone, the Electronode, the Tepaphone, the Haken Continuum, the Trautonium, the Sonorous Cross, the Shaggaipolyphonic.