I see it growing larger, yet minuscule in the boundless blue. Shaping into a cyan lagoon, with sand borders, and evergreen arecaceae, and a World War II bunker on one of the corners, all this closing up at the speed of lightning.
I kaboom-land on the rooftop. Thunder.
I wait for the dust to be carried away by the tropical breeze. Ears adjusting to the pressure. The cement is cracked in a twelve-inch radius around me—ground to dust in the epicenter under my rubber soles. Bones resonate like steel. I stand up, legs called to attention and responding, the tingling sensation fading away.
Seagulls squawk. No one noticed me.
VIDEO RECORDING
* * *
[JACK IN: Black shapes crawling over the screen. As the figure operating the camera moves back, it focuses automatically to define her in high-angle shot. NIAMH smiles back, self-proud. Her hair is buzz-cut on the left side, long and violet and untamed on the right. Behind her, a tiled bathroom with a vaulted ceiling.]
[At ground level, A. walks in, stops halfway to the toilet to check Niamh. She’s now plugging in the SOUND: atmosphere noise. Voices are strongly metallic, hollow.]
A.: Oh, good. Peeing in front of a nineteenth-century ghost AND a sound recorder wasn’t that embarrassing anymore. Good for you to keep up the challenge.
NIAMH: [Turns to him, holding herself to the top of the ladder; gestures downward emphatically.]
A.: Yes, I know there are other bathrooms, Niamh. [Turns back to the toilet.] I just can’t remember where we put them.
[SQUEAK. As he checks to his right, the camera pans in that direction, as pushed by Niamh herself. There’s a dog in the tub.]
There’s a dog in the tub.
[HELP was chasing a rubber duck floating in the water and foam of his bath. Now noticing his master’s attention, he noisily wades across and tries to lean out.]
NIAMH: [Without turning this time: short, commanding whistle in G minor.]
[Help sits in the water obediently.]
[Fully satisfied with her overall performance, Niamh jumps off the ladder. Before she leaves to give him some privacy, a supershort whistle to call his partner’s attention, then a quick cross sign. Now she exits.]
A.: [Looking her way.] What? Is it Sunday AGAIN?
[No answer is heard, unsurprisingly.]
[To Help.] Teenagers. It’s always church, church, church with them.
[The dog snorts some foam.]
NIAMH’S NOTEPAD
* * *
(In church.)
—SUNGLASSES OFF! This is MY God you’re talking to!
LETTER
* * *
Axton House
Axton Rd.
Point Bless, VA 26969
Dear Aunt Liza,
One in the music room where we spend the evenings playing piano and writing our celebrated epistles to you. One in the mile-spanning library, sentineling the desk we continue to mine from time to time, invariably obtaining frustration and tedium. One in the kitchen where we cook and eat. One in the bathroom, where the ghost was last seen. That’s the present distribution of our newly acquired security cameras—a giant leap forward from our EVP recordings. The old smoking room (northwest corner of the second floor, a room where we used to play pool on the rare occasions when we remembered there was a pool table there and could find the room) is now the surveillance center, where the monitors are. And, of course, miles and miles of cable now slither about the corridors and hang down the stairwells.
I still don’t know exactly what we’re trying to catch. Niamh won’t tell. That’s so much like Niamh.
Anyway, what with the cameras and the shutters and the reinforcing boards that Mr. Brodie helped us put on the conservatory—there’s a tornado watch in the area and even Father Epps gave a warning after the service—the house is looking more and more like a fortress. And we’re still due to find the treasure hidden inside.
In fact, we keep checking in at the tower more and more often and looking outward, our skin cracking like ice under the western wind. The cloudscapes are apocalyptic.
NIAMH’S NOTEPAD
* * *
(In the tower, watching the storm approach.)
—Weather will never get better after this.
—You think so?
—Sun will never shine again. Winter will follow. This the final airstrike on a very old summer.
(I hold his hand.)
—Still, that winter won’t last forever, you know.
—Too far ahead.
—Yeah. That’s beyond winter solstice anyway.
—I so curious about that day, like time will end after that.
A.’S DIARY
* * *
I don’t think we had been offered such a spectacular view of the area since our car trip to Alexandria. Even after we left the tower, we couldn’t hide from it. The wind was strenuous. The windows shuddered in their jambs. I could put my hand on the wood paneling and feel it tremble. Downstairs we found Help moaning at the front door. Not even Niamh could coax him into doing his business on some newspapers—he’s already used to running all the way across the front yard to the first line of trees, so we let him out. Meanwhile we stood watching reports of an F2 in Appomattox, not three counties from here. Our fascination was slowly turning into … I don’t know. Something close to fear.
Right then, we heard Help over the skyquake, barking. I hadn’t heard him bark since we brought him home. I was beginning to think that Niamh was infectious.
We tiptoed outside. Virginia had turned into Mordor. Ice pellets began to ricochet on the gravel. Help was barking menacingly at a car, stopped about thirty meters from the south corner. The car didn’t fit. It was white and belonged to this half of the century. No one stepped out of it.
Then the car started again and rolled to the pergola before the conservatory. We ran toward it, Niamh carrying an umbrella she didn’t dare open for fear of being Marypoppinsed away.
Just as the driver opened the door, the wind stopped. I felt the air around us come to a standstill. It was like the troposphere was going to plummet to Earth.
And then our guest stood up.
LETTER
* * *
[Cont’d.]
Let me write a portrait of Mark Strückner to caption Niamh’s picture.
He seems the kind of man this house was built for—even though he was only the butler. For a start, the house does not look too high around him. That’s because he stands seven feet. And he doesn’t bow often.
He’d be well built for a shorter man, but his height makes him look thin, in the Gothic style the house favors. His cheeks are so caved in, his skull stands like the ruins of an abbey in a Friedrich painting, hollowed out like a dome, deserted by receding gray hair. His blue eyes, as far as I could tell, are tragically sad. His handshake amazingly gentle.
Niamh really liked him from the beginning. That’s good enough for me.
AUDIO RECORDING
* * *
[Rain pattering in the background. In the foreground, porcelain shivering.]
A.: Do you take milk or sugar?
STRÜCKNER: Uh, sweetener, actually. Wait, there’s some in—
A.: No, no, please; you sit down. Niamh, can you get that, please?
STRÜCKNER: It used to be in the second cupboard on the right, above the oven. [Pause.]
A.: Is something wrong?
STRÜCKNER: I was … thinking that carpet needs cleaning. Sorry. I’m not used to being a guest in this house.
A.: A guest? Please. You lived here far longer than we have.
STRÜCKNER: That means nothing. It is your house now; I … I did my part. It belongs to you now. The Wells scion. Thank you.
[Stirring.]
You don’t look at all like him. I mean that as a good thing.
[Spoon pats the cup.]
A.: I guess my arrival came as a surprise.
STRÜCKNER: Yes, it did. It did. Although Mr. Wells mentioned he still had some lo
st relatives in Europe. More often during the last year. But of course, I couldn’t imagine you’d turn up and claim the property.
A.: We didn’t. That was Ambrose’s doing. And Mr. Glew deserves some credit for finding me. He’s been looking for you too.
STRÜCKNER: Yes, I thought so. I … I’m sorry about that. Suddenly the house didn’t feel all that hospitable.
A.: We feared you might’ve gone back to Europe.
STRÜCKNER: Oh, no. No. I have nothing left in Europe. My whole family lived here. Within these walls. During World War Two, in Germany, John Wells, Ambrose’s father, was a cryptographer in charge of deciphering German intelligence, and my father was an informant. He sent my mother and me to Switzerland with her family while he stayed in Germany, resolved to see the Nazis fall. But as the fight neared its end, it became clear that the Reich would take Germany with it, whereas he, as a humble cook gone spy, would be lucky to get a tin medal. So when Wells was discharged in ’forty-four, he took Father under his wing, offering him a good position in this house. Mother and I joined them in ’fifty-two. I was ten. Ambrose was seven.
A.: You two grew up together.
STRÜCKNER: Despite our differences. I started doing housework soon after my arrival, so we didn’t share the playroom much. Still, our fathers served as models; they showed us how servant and master could treat each other with mutual respect and comradeship; and so we did as I gradually became houseboy, cook’s assistant, cook, and butler after my father, whereas Ambrose succeeded John as Mr. Wells. When I say my whole family lived within these walls, I include everyone within these walls.
[Slowly, a teacup alights back on its saucer. Rain persists.]
So when Ambrose … Mr. Wells passed away, I saw nothing to keep me here. I contacted an agency. There was an opening in Washington. I decided enough people had grown lonely to death in Axton House, and I took it.
A.: You said Ambrose mentioned me more often during the last year?
STRÜCKNER: Yes. Actually, it was like he’d been reminded of his relatives in Europe around May. I remember he got a phone call; the next day he drove to Clayboro to meet somebody about his family, or so I guessed. After that, he spent much time … arranging things. Like rewriting his will.
A.: So … he knew.
STRÜCKNER: Knew?
A.: What he was about to do.
STRÜCKNER: I don’t … [Hesitation.]
A.: What?
STRÜCKNER: I don’t know.
[A most uneventful minute elapses.]
Look … I don’t think he knew what he was about to do, no. He just … suspected it.
A.: He suspected he would jump out of a window?
STRÜCKNER: Yes.
A.: But a suicide knows what he’s doing.
STRÜCKNER: A suicide opens the window in advance.
[…]
[Nothing.]
[Just rain.]
A.: Whoa.
[Pencil scratching. Expectation.]
STRÜCKNER: Uh … No. No, his father did open the window. [Muffled.] God, I’d never thought of that.
A.: But why? Why do you think he did suspect—
STRÜCKNER: Because he knew he was following his father’s path. That’s why.
A.: What, what path?
STRÜCKNER: Everything. His work, his reunions … The obsessive research chasing him into his dreams. The nightmares. The hallucinations.
You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?
[Wind whooshing, stirring the downpour.]
A.: I … I’ve been having some rough nights.
STRÜCKNER: Waking up screaming?
A.: A couple times.
STRÜCKNER: Going to the bathroom in the middle of the night and seeing things?
A.: Okay, okay, I see the pattern. Then why me? She sleeps in the same room and she’s okay.
STRÜCKNER: Then it must run in the family. Maybe you are a little like your cousin after all. Sorry to say.
A.: But I’m not following in his steps; I don’t work; I’m not doing research—
[Pencil slashing violently. Pause.]
Okay, we do research, but not the kind Ambrose did, I’m pretty sure. What did he do?
STRÜCKNER: I don’t know.
A.: What did the Society do?
STRÜCKNER: I don’t know.
A.: What is it all about?
STRÜCKNER: I don’t know!
[Zenith reached. The wind weakens. Vertical rain resumes. So do the speakers, quietly.]
A.: Tell me about the reunions. Whatever you know.
[Tea refill.]
STRÜCKNER: [Oxygen refill.] Every year since I remember, since before I arrived, since before my father arrived, the night of December the twenty-first, a large banquet is prepared and the table is laid for twenty people exactly. The food is to be left in a buffet for guests to help themselves, and all bedrooms must be clean and ready for use, including the staff quarters. At exactly six o’clock, all servants are to leave the house.
A.: Where are they supposed to go?
STRÜCKNER: Anywhere. In the old days, they were paid for the trouble. Now that I’m the only permanent staff they used to send me to the Jefferson in Richmond. They even carried my suitcase to the car and everything. Masters serving the servant.
A.: So you actually met the twenty?
STRÜCKNER: Yes. In the beginning the servants were supposed to leave before they arrived, but with Ambrose the rule became laxer. Besides, some of them I knew already; they’d come more often.
A.: I know. Caleb Ford and Curtis Knox. I spoke to Knox two weeks ago.
STRÜCKNER: Mr. Ford was maybe the closest friend of Ambrose’s. Their fathers were friends too; they were together in the war. Ford lives a short drive from here, in Clayboro.
A.: So I heard. He’s in Africa now.
STRÜCKNER: Still? Ambrose—uh, Mr. Wells was worried he couldn’t find him.
A.: Sorry, you were saying the servants are gone, and then … ?
STRÜCKNER: Oh, yes. Once the twenty are alone, they eat, they drink, and at night or early morning they perform their one and only ritual. Don’t ask; I don’t know the slightest thing about it.
[Pause for challenging questions; none are posed.]
The next morning they sleep late, then spend the rest of the second day distributing their homework, and they leave early on the third, when I come back. They are allowed to stay longer, but some of them have families to spend Christmas with. [Beat.] Well, a few.
A.: What’s the homework about? What are they supposed to do?
STRÜCKNER: I never knew. It’s what they call research. Though sometimes, by the way John Wells talked about it especially … it seemed like a hunt to me.
A.: A hunt.
STRÜCKNER: A manhunt, yes.
[Silence.]
Whatever it was, it used to require piles of books, frequent visits to college libraries … and field trips, of course, until ten years ago, when Mr. Wells was forbidden to travel abroad. Rheumatism. His father suffered from it too.
A.: Where did he travel to?
STRÜCKNER: You name it. His last trip was to China—six months. The year before that, Greenland. The year before that, Brazil. After the doctors banned him from going abroad, he still spent a month in Alaska.
A.: Did he travel alone?
STRÜCKNER: I think each one had his own task; only occasionally would they assist one another. The years without trips were the worst, I think. He could stay up reading till dawn, talking foreign languages on the phone …
A.: So you think he suffered … I don’t know, occupational stress? Like a yuppie?
STRÜCKNER: [Quick.] No.
[Slower.] Well, I don’t know. But it’s the nature of that occupation … Do yuppies have nightmares? Do yuppies bite their tongues in their sleep? Do they stare at you in the morning like they’d been to hell and back during the night?
[Silence answering the rhetorical question.]
But then
, he made it all seem so trivial. “Old men playing old games,” he used to say. “Do not worry,” he said to me once. “You might think we’re studying dark subjects, playing with forbidden things, but we don’t interfere in cosmic matters. We just watch from behind the red rope. It’s just a bourgeois pastime.” That’s what he called it. “A bourgeois pastime.”
A.: Doesn’t sound like he enjoyed it very much.
STRÜCKNER: Sometimes he did. That’s the point. A few times he would return from abroad exhausted, but immensely happy, retelling everything he had seen, possibly concealing the most crucial of it, but exultant anyway. And he was happy for the rest of the year, as though he’d passed all his exams. Most other times, though, he worked straight from one December the twenty-first to the next, some years looking just overwhelmed by the problem, others perplexed, others even bored. And then there were bad years. After I came back from Richmond the last time, when I understood that the year of his fiftieth birthday was going to be one of the bad ones … I feared this would happen.
A.: [Quickly, not allowing the rain to steal another dramatic pause.] Listen, this Society of his … Do you know if they used code names?
STRÜCKNER: Code names? No. [Beat.] No, no, I’m pretty sure they didn’t. Although … Well, they did …
A.: It’s okay; say it. You’re just supposed to be discreet, not deaf.
STRÜCKNER: [Chuckle.] Well … they always used a lot of references to Roman and Greek classics. But it’s the sentences they used … like “being Archimedes.” Or “I wish I were Sophocles.” They made it sound like a theater class.
A.: Did you have a code name?
The Supernatural Enhancements Page 8