The Supernatural Enhancements
Page 4
If you are reading this, the Wells have already taken it.
For you I have a last request. There are further letters I keep prepared for this eventuality, and I rely on your diligence to post them as soon as possible: to Curtis Knox in Lawrenceville and Caleb Ford in Clayboro, regarding our sad Society; and to Dr. Belknap in Midburg. You shall find these letters hidden between the pages of that wonderful book of our childhood, the one you used to read by a tree.
That will be all, Aeschylus. Good night.
Affectionately yours,
Ambrose Gabriel Wells
P.S.: The Van Krugge is all yours. Happy retirement.
NIAMH’S NOTEPAD
* * *
(At Gordon’s Café, 9 am, waiting for Glew.)
—You seem affected.
—It’s sad someone takes so much trouble to send a message to the right person at the right time, & still they fail.
—That’s true. But hey, at least it got to us.
—Come to think of it, I can’t remember any dead whose last wishes were carried out exactly as they wanted. Like we don’t respect them anymore.
—I guess the trend now is disappointing our fellow men. And the dead are no different.
SECURITY VIDEOTAPE: PONOPAH COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER
* * *
1995-11-07 TUE 11:51 CAM6
STAN walks onto the path between the kennels, announced by a boisterous ovation of dogs.
STAN: These are the stray adults. They’re all found in the wild and unclaimed.
[A young GUY in sunglasses and a teen GIRL with dread falls come in tow.]
GUY: [To the girl.] Okay, you choose.
[The girl catwalks down the path, studying the dogs on both sides. Her companion stays at a distance, arms crossed. The ruckus is saturating the audio.]
[The girl turns around, retraces her steps, stops halfway to the start point. She stands there, arms akimbo, avoiding eye contact, letting the animals bark themselves hoarse.]
[Stan checks with the guy twice in the next two minutes; he just signals to wait.]
[The barking commotion has now fallen to a senseless dialogue between two or three animals.]
[Eventually, one utters the last word.]
[The girl walks to his cage, a few steps behind, kneels, and leans her hand forward. The barking stops automatically.]
STAN: Noisiest of the lot.
GUY: Most extroverted too.
STAN: [Reaching the cage, unlocking the door.] The black pariah. He’s been here awhile. [Cage is opened.] Here. I’ll let you guys fraternize while I get his release papers.
[Stan leaves. The kid is now petting an excited (yet silent) medium-size dark mongrel, the man kneeling to greet it.]
GUY: I like him. What are you going to call him?
[The girl retrieves from under her pullover a small notepad and short pencil on a string around her neck; she writes.]
—Your choice—I’m not calling him.
LETTER
* * *
Axton House
1 Axton Rd.
Point Bless, VA 26969
Dear Aunt Liza,
And so, there are three of us. Let me introduce you to the newest member of the family. We called him Help, so as to ensure he’ll assist us in case of peril. Niamh is committed to turning him into our personal security guard in a matter of weeks. Until then, I’m not even sure whether he’ll raise the alarm in the event of (another) break-in (more on that later). He hasn’t yapped since he met Niamh, though he was the loudest barker in the shelter.
So. The break-in. […]
AUDIO RECORDING
* * *
[BACKGROUND: Gordon’s Café, morning rush.]
A.: Sir. Thanks for coming.
GLEW: As soon as I could. Miss. First things first—are you both all right?
A.: We’re all right. It was just a shock.
GLEW: In all these years, I never heard of Axton House being burgled. Did you leave the shutters open?
A.: I’m afraid we did, yes.
GLEW: I see. Strückner used to take care of that every night; now it is your responsibility. But I guess you already learned that the hard way.
A.: So we did.
GLEW: Hello. Coffee, please. Have you reported the crime? Can I assist you?
A.: Well, we don’t know what they took. If they took anything. Did you know there was a safe in the office?
GLEW: Yes, I knew. I just forgot to mention it.
A.: Do you know the combination?
GLEW: No. But if it’s open now, you probably will be able to change it.
A.: Didn’t you think that the safe could contain relevant documents? Like deeds and stuff?
GLEW: I already have copies of everything.
A.: Did you go through his papers after he died?
GLEW: Strückner did, but he found nothing. [Over coffee being poured.] Thank you.
A.: Didn’t he leave any note behind, a message for Strückner or something?
GLEW: No—why are you asking me all this?
A.: Well, there’s … There was a note from Ambrose to Strückner in the safe. It said that the watercolor that hangs over the safe is a present for him.
GLEW: A watercolor … Do you mean the Van Krugge?
A.: That’s it. Is it valuable?
GLEW: Well, to Strückner, it is the difference between a modest retirement and a life pension.
A.: Then we should give it to him.
GLEW: The will doesn’t mention it. Legally, it is still part of “Axton House and all of its contents,” so it’s yours to dispose of.
A.: Well, if Ambrose meant to give it to him, I want to do it.
GLEW: That’s very noble of you, but where is Strückner? That’s what I would like to know.
A.: Is it possible that he returned to Europe?
GLEW: It is.
A.: Was he German?
GLEW: Swiss. I should know, because Wells used to ascribe all of his virtues to the Swiss heritage—the Swiss thoroughness, the Swiss discretion, the Swiss cheesecake, and so on. His father, Strückner senior, worked in Axton House before him, serving Ambrose’s father. Then mother and child were reunited with the father, and he joined the staff.
[Sound of writing. Blank.]
A what? Spider-Man?
A.: Yeah, in the safe. It seemed a regular comic book to me, but since it was in there, I thought it’d have collector value. Or sentimental value, to Ambrose.
GLEW: A comic book? [Chortle.] I’m sure not. Truly, I am surprised; I’ve known him since we were boys and he never showed any interest in such things. [More writing in the background.] Let’s see, what is that now? [Pause.] A Mason, you say? Well … Of course, one might never know, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t.
[…] As for the windowpane, the glazier in town will come by tomorrow. There’s really no hurry, now that we’ve been reminded the shutters are there for a purpose.
Still, despite the statistical improbability of two burglars on consecutive nights, I will not sleep soundly tonight. This fortress of ours is too big to defend. Even Help, who’s been stocking up energy for months in a kennel, burned it all up in one morning running about the property.
I wish you could see the house as I see it now. The Polaroids don’t do it any justice. In the distance, when its grandiose form slides into view at the last turn of the road, it stands proud like an attempt at futuristic architecture in the plantation era. In the close-up, though, when you’re near enough to touch it with your fingertip, it just feels old. Not respectable old, but godforsaken old. Like a sepia-colored photograph, or Roman ruins that miraculously avoided tourist guides.
This house ages differently. It’s like those bungalows that endure decades, but are awake only three months a year in summer, so that they live one year, but age four. This happens to Axton House and the things within, “all of its contents.” They stand on the brink of the twenty-first century, but their age pulls them back. Maybe that’s why eve
rything in it is or seems anachronistic; a newspaper in it is outdated; any accessory falls out of fashion; Ambrose Wells lived in 1995 looking like a gentleman from 1910s London.
I am starting to feel it myself—like time is running faster than me, and I have to catch up. Like I’m stuck on the bank of a river while the space-time continuum keeps flowing. Like I’m being forgotten from the universe.
Okay, let me describe for you what I’m seeing now: I’m sitting on the porch and Niamh and Help are about fifty meters away in the garden, and I can’t see exactly what she’s saying to him, or how she’s saying it, but the dog is sitting, standing, and coming to her, following her orders. And every now and then she rewards him with corn flakes.
How the fuck does she do that?
Kisses,
A.
AUDIO RECORDING
* * *
[Blank.]
[Slight stir of blankets.]
A.: [Gasping sounds.]
[Silence vibrates. The air is about to crack.]
NO!!
[Blankets flutter away like a startled murder of crows, leaving A.’s accelerated breathing in the foreground.]
[After some seconds, the breathing slows down, not progressively, but in clear, self-aware drops of speed.]
[Then it ceases, tentatively.]
Niamh?
[Seconds later, breathing is resumed.]
[Almost in a whimper.] Help?
[The breathing yields to a subtle shudder. Blankets crawl back to the head of the bed; a body rolls on the mattress.]
[Then all goes blank again.]
NOVEMBER 8
?
* * *
I was walking barefoot on muffin snow along the spine of a steep roof with stair-shaped battlements. The sky was unnaturally yellow above. And below, an ashen fog covered the ground, nothing but bare trees sticking their heads out.
I was half-naked. My shoulders burned with cold. I couldn’t feel my hands.
Somewhere down on the street it’s still snowing and it’s daytime and cars honk at a red light and passersby smell of alcohol. There is one female driver trapped in the traffic jam, and she’s half-naked too, her skin warm in the winterproof universe inside the car. And she’s gorgeous. More than gorgeous: blazing hot, mindblastingly sexy, the kind any nonstupid person should kneel before. And she wears nothing but a pretty set of flowery lingerie, and the seat belt and the seat are unworthy of caressing her silken body.
I am on the passenger seat, twisting a Rubik’s cube in my hands. Now and then I peek at her ridiculously long legs.
A human skeleton stares back at the Renaissance men, his empty sockets filled with equal curiosity.
I slam a door open into the glaring white desert. I’m carrying a gun. My eyes hurt.
My eye hurts. The black soldier’s holding it open, and the surgeon sticks the pincers around my eyeball. I’m strapped down on the operating slab. I’m conscious, and screaming to prove it, until my throat’s torn and bleeding, but they don’t mind. He’s pulling my eyeball out, measuring the nerve’s resistance, until he yanks and it snaps like a whip and I don’t wake up—I stay there to feel the pain. I’m in the dark for a million years hearing them giggling at my eyeball.
Then I wake up and kill them and wake up.
SECURITY VIDEOTAPE: POINT BLESS POST OFFICE
* * *
1995-11-08 WED 09:42
NO AUDIO.
[Skinny TEENAGER walks in straight to the admissions window, a long scarf kiting behind her. She hands a letter to the CLERK and she fishes some coins from her pockets. As she waves her hand and starts to leave with a long, uncommonly kind smile, the clerk calls her over again. She is handed another letter. Off her guard, she flips the unexpected envelope in her hands, lips moving to both addresses.]
LETTER
* * *
165 Wheat Row
Milburn, NY 12984
Axton House
Point Bless, VA 26969
Nov 1st
Dear Leonidas,
I am forced to give up, for once, two months before the end. My task has provided me little fruit and much visible wearing. Dr. Herbert in Watertown is urging me to take some rest. I’ve been relying on sleeping pills for six months now, and my only relief is that I don’t look worse than Asterion: I visited him in April and he was taking Xanax as Mentos. I am able to sleep with a double dose of Starnox, but I keep dreaming. I tried the tablets he recommended to you to inhibit REM sleep. They are effective, but sleeping without dreaming is hardly sleeping at all.
I’m concerned about Asterion’s health. Honestly, I am concerned about your health as well. I am concerned about your dreams and I am concerned about what slipped into your note dated August 4th.
I have tried to answer your questions about John Wells. Unfortunately, my father is not a good conversationalist anymore. Age is slowly gnawing away his memories.
I confess, there have been times when I envied him.
I am not sure I am interested in attending our next reunion. But I do look forward to seeing you as soon as possible, in whichever circumstances.
Yours sincerely,
Prometheus4
NIAMH’S NOTEPAD
* * *
(At Gordon’s, over the letter.)
—What do you think?
—If this Wells’ Society, I don’t like the game they playing.
—I’m not sure you actually have to play the game.
—What do we do?
—We go on. What do you want to do?
—Must search for those letters, “Inside that wonderful book of our childhood.”
—True.
—What does it mean?
—Just another code. A safer one, because it’s based in personal experience: “The book you used to read by a tree.” That Spider-Man card you played was a good try, by the way.
(BLUSH!)
—I could start shaking books until something falls out.
—There’re about ten thousand books in the library. Not to mention the rest of the house.
—I have time.
—Maybe you shouldn’t. It’s just what you said about the wishes of the dead. Ambrose took so much trouble to ensure that those papers were found by whom he intended. We should be worthy of it.
—To be worthy, you must be Strückner.
—Not really be. We could ask.
A.’S DIARY
* * *
So Niamh began raiding the library while I returned to the office on the first floor, where the official papers are kept (in a pretense of order that all other workspaces around the house fail to observe) and found the latest phone bills. The volume of both outgoing and incoming international calls is staggering for someone labeled a hermit. I guess this intense communication made up for Ambrose’s unfitness to travel. However, he did not live alone, so I expected some of these calls to be Strückner’s. I highlighted some numbers in Switzerland, but failed to find any in the September–October bill, which lay unopened in the unread mail pile.
Still, I dialed the last number, just to give it a shot. Only while waiting for the tone I remembered I don’t speak German. A woman answered, and all I could babble was, “Strückner, bitte.” She replied impatiently and hung up.
I’m afraid that was most of my work plan for the morning. So I sat back and put my feet on the table and I studied the records again. And mused. And began writing this.
So okay, maybe he hasn’t left the country. Still, people make calls whenever their lives take a sharp turn. But to whom?
AN ANSWERING MACHINE TAPE
* * *
LINDSAY: Hello. Thank you for calling Whateley’s Domestic Staff Agency. Our business hours are nine a.m. to three p.m. Monday through Friday, and nine a.m. to noon on Saturdays. If you wish to be contacted, please leave your name and number after the signal.
[BEEP.]
MAN: Uh. Hi. This is—
[Sudden burst of techno music in the background.]
[Sound of the handset being dropped. Two minutes of uninterrupted music follow, until the time allotted runs out.]
A CUTOUT ARTICLE FROM SPEED MAGAZINE, APRIL/MAY 1994
* * *
Ann K. Sassari
We first heard about Ann K. while looking for a DJ for our acid-issue presentation party in ’91, and we haven’t missed a gig in London since. If you live on the forefront of dance music, you must attend one of her sessions. It’s not enough to stick with the many imitators who saw her once and live off the experience. She’s not a trend, but a line; she doesn’t read a score; she writes the score. And has written more pages in the history of techno trance than any other guru from Ibiza.
Sassari was born in Sardinia to a Malay father and a French mother. At 15 she became the adopted groupie of Parisian pop band Piqûres. While on tour she took up drums and guitar, along with other more frownable habits. She spent the following four years as a piece of Eurotrash living for nothing but acid and sex on the road. She finally found her epiphany on a nudist beach in Minorca, where she settled down—once again the Spanish islands cure a lifelong traveler. She is now a resident at Vis à Vis club in neighboring Ibiza and flies to Paris and London every now and then.
Persuaded by friend and coproducer Iris Lerroux, Ann K. agreed to release a CD with a random sample of her frenetic innovation. The EP’s title is Meuf, and the edition is superlimited (2,000 copies all over the world), but its four tracks are worth it. Even the most glorious seconds in “Bluenips” barely capture for an instant the musical ecstasy that Ann K. drives relentlessly from one orgasm to another, higher and unexplored, light-years from anything any other musician can conceive.