“Professor Archer,” he never gained the courage to call me Michael, “the crux of this study is the phenomena of new American mythologies. Sasquatches, the Tcho-Tcho of Burma – I am trying to meld together the foundations of anthropology, sociology and journalism through the lens of literature. I have eyewitness accounts, the stories inspired by them. All of it is a study of how literature permeates its way into the zeitgeist to mold the popular mind. The same way that Paradise Lost reinforced Christianity and the belief in it, I want to look at these twentieth century legends to see how they have left us. What we can do with them.”
My stomach sank as I replied, “William…as you show in your notes, this particular University has had firsthand experience with what you describe. Dryer’s account of – ”
“The Miskatonic and the Arkham, yes? The 1928 expedition? Yes, Professor, this would be the centerpiece of my study!”
I hesitated, dreading that my criticism and ultimate denial would deal a crushing blow to a promising, though misguided, young scholar. I paused before continuing, collecting my words into the most delicate arrangement I could think of. “Dyer, Wilmarth…these academics did irreparable damage to the University’s reputation. Do you know that for the first years following Dryer’s self-imposed exile from the University people actually believed him? Sure, they were on the fringes, but ultimately when another expedition to the same Antarctic coordinates found no lost city, no carvings, no monsters… Dyer died insane. His Australia story revealed to be a complete fabrication. Wilmarth admitted his fraud and took a generous severance from the University. And those are only the beginnings of the University’s history with hoaxes. I assume you pay at least a little attention to the Herbert West story in your study?”
William nodded. An understanding was coming into his eyes, a shadow that slithered from the back of his mind to the fronts of his eyes. His smile was coming undone and I knew that I could not avoid hurting him.
“You’ve picked an ambitious topic, William, but you’re at the wrong institution. Miskatonic, the literature department in particular, has been trying to distance itself from these hoaxes for over half a century. Not only that, but I am not sure it is suited for a Literature dissertation. You talk about bringing in other fields and I think...”
“I thought you would understand,” William murmured. His face had turned away from me, from his notes and down to the floor. William was rapidly becoming a photograph of despondency and I found myself swallowing back my own tears.
“I understand, believe me. Your enthusiasm for this project, the academic merit of it. I understand and appreciate it, I even admire it. But it is impossible. Here, anyway…perhaps you would want to shelve this project for a day after you receive tenure.”
I wanted to tell him more, that I knew what it was to have peaks of happiness and nadirs of incredible self-loathing, to be inexplicably motivated towards futile exercises only to hate myself after their completion. I understood, I wanted to tell William, how manic depression often works itself into the minds of eccentric genius. That there were ways he could manage and redirect the problem that I now saw writing itself on his face.
But before I could, he slammed his laptop shut, forced it into his bag and without looking at me screamed, “You don’t understand! No one does! I will continue my study, even if it is not here!”
He was out of my office before I could reach him. I called after him but the hallway was empty save for the echoes of his rapping footsteps and the puzzled, angry faces of the few professors whose research had been disrupted. I began to run after him but reminded myself that in my own nadirs I needed time alone.
So, sick with grief and regret, I graded a few papers and returned home.
It was the last time I would see William Dumont for three years.
II
I began to worry the first week I did not see him. I imagined he would walk through my office doors or silently intrude into my seminars and sit in the back row as I lectured. I had hoped that, though perhaps not fully recovered from my words, he would at the very least accept his need to move on. He knew I would write him a letter of recommendation to another university, should that be what he wanted, or I could provide him a salaried TA-ship if he needed funding while he reassessed his course of study.
After two weeks, I began searching. First I tried email, and when he did not reply, I asked my colleagues if they had heard from him. They only either feigned concern or displayed indifference. After all, they had their own students and projects to continue. I finally asked one of my students for his phone number. When a dial tone informed me the number had been disconnected, I resolved to find his address.
I found that William’s apartment was worse than I had imagined. He lived in a low part of Arkham, a neighborhood which had long ceded its pride to a fate of violence and perpetual poverty. Former colonial houses of tall and narrow architecture had been split apart into apartments and hovels. The bright, vibrant colors that could have been were drowned by the grays and browns of disrepair and neglect. Cars which had not moved in decades were parked on the lawns of houses with chain link perimeters and residents with old, evil stares. Then there was the smell in the neighborhood… food scraps and human excrement, thick with a black smoke.
I had known William would cut corners to fund his research instead of his well-being, but I never imagined something like that.
In the main office of the divided home William called his, an old woman with only half her teeth told me what I had was most afraid of. He left suddenly, she said through a thick wad of chewing tobacco. She was trying to fill his unit. His mother came by, though, with a couple of young men, and they moved his things away.
Did she leave a forwarding address in case he was still getting mail? Or a phone number?
The following weekend I was in Providence on the invitation of Mrs. Dumont. Lisa came with me, bringing Jordan who was less than thrilled with the idea of spending a weekend at her grandparents'. After dropping Lisa at her parent’s house, eye-rolling Jordan in tow, I went to speak with Mrs. Dumont.
Given William’s living conditions, I expected a level of poverty in the Dumont home. I was shocked to see a more than generous two-storied house tucked safely into the rolling green lawns of the suburbs. There was no gate, no wide driveway, or other obscene signs of an outlandish wealth, but a maintained and disciplined home with wrought-iron fences overpowered by deep but carefully groomed ivy. The home, impeccably pristine and white, looked as if it could house two families or more. The door opened and a little Jack Russell terrier came out to greet me.
“Dr. Archer?” Mrs. Dumont’s voice carried her weighted sorrow. Seeing her, a mother past her prime who only had the hope of finding her son, dark gun-metal gray hair neatly bunned out of ritual, pink eyes heavy from crying and lack of sleep, I was reminded that the beautiful day and home were meaningless in this context. Mrs. Dumont shook my hand, a weak and shaking grip, and invited me in for an afternoon coffee.
Her home was ornamented with decorations and framed pictures. Eclectic memorabilia from all over the world manifested in little monuments and trinkets, carefully dusted and polished. On the walls, I saw pictures of old relatives in grained-hazy photographs, and vibrant youths (one of them no doubt William) smiling through funny, baby-toothed grins. There was a certain antiquity to the home; polished wood on the railings and walls, a small kitchen from which Mrs. Dumont brought out the coffee. It was all so much better than William’s apartment.
“I know,” Mrs. Dumont told me. “I would send him money every month. He told me he didn’t need it, but what good is money if you can’t spend it on your children?” She smiled distantly and tried to change the subject, “Do you have any children, Dr. Archer?”
“Yes, I have two. A boy and girl.”
“Ah. Me, too.” The melancholy in her voice was contagious and I thought of Eric. Perhaps, I thought, this was the way to begin the conversation. I told her about my last meeting with William, about how I wa
s worried because he showed signs of manic depression.
“I know, Dr. Archer.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“Was William on any medication?”
Then came the tell-tale sigh, the prolonged ‘no’ that only the relatives of the emotionally ill can give. A sigh I had heard given by my wife, by my daughter too many times. I had vowed to never hear it again after a particularly bad episode and began taking my medication as if it were a matter of biology rather than choice. Mrs. Dumont told me that William did not adhere to the same code.
“He said that they ‘dampened his creativity.’ His father said the same thing before he left us. You have to understand, Dr. Archer,” she looked at me imploringly, begging me not to think any less of her or her family, “you must understand that whatever William has done is not his fault. This sickness runs through the males of his father’s family. It’s a sad chain, insanity and suicides for as long as we can trace them back. Some have been successful and normal. William had an uncle who I had hoped could be a role model but he never did recover from his father’s abandoning us. He even changed his last name to mine when he was old enough.”
“‘William Dumont’ was not his name?”
“Not his birth one, no. His father’s name was William, also. William Dyer III.”
And then the history of William Dumont began to unfold, a young man who hated his father as soon as he could talk. Young William had been happy, vibrant for the space of six years before he began the decline into introverted sadness. In his moods, he would read books and journals inherited from his father and, at the formative age of 10, discovered the original notes of the 1928 expedition to the Antarctic. Since that point, he had developed a fascination with literature and history, but at some points was given over to a hysterical belief that the notes were of something other than fiction.
“He would have dreams, Professor,” Mrs., Ms. Dumont spoke from the rim of her coffee mug. “The most awful things I had ever heard and he could recount them with such detail. Things that are not in those notes, you understand? He would horrify his sister and I, make us sick to our stomach with the way he described the anatomy of those things. Finally, when he was fourteen he was put on a new medication and the dreams stopped. I hadn’t heard about them again until about a year ago, when he stopped taking his medication.”
Eager to lighten the mood, I told her that her son was one of the brightest pupils that I ever had. I recalled fond stories of his daunting intelligence, his contagious determination, the way he immediately mastered any material or assignment he could consume. She, in exchange, told me her own fond memories, and for a moment the air of sadness lifted as levity rose. But ultimately, her questions bubbled back to the surface.
“And you are sure that you have no idea where he has gone?” I asked.
“I am afraid not,” she replied, sadly.
“Was he seeing anyone, maybe a girl who he could have ran away with?”
“Not that I know of.”
And I recalled that I never had seen William with anyone, nor heard anything from the graduate students. I thought of my oldest, Eric, and how his fiancé probably rescued him from our disease the same way Lisa rescued me. I wondered what good that sort of love would have done for William, who I had decided that I would probably never see again.
“You’ll let me know if you hear anything from him?” She began to sob.
I reassured her as best I could that everything was okay, that I would do everything in my power to find William. I left her with the promise that I would call often.
III
When Lisa first became sick I forgot my promise. After our trip to Providence, she developed a thick, haggard cough. When she almost choked next to me one night, we went to the doctor and demanded something other than antibiotics. The chest x-ray came back with the horrifying picture of gray hazy clouds inside a white ribcage. Fighting my tears, I demanded to know how something like this could happen, how she could take such a turn for the worse so suddenly.
“Professor Archer,” a gray-bearded man only a little older than my wife and I spoke through thin glasses, “It is highly unusual but not unheard of. There is still much we do not know about cancer, unfortunately, but we know it may sometimes progress faster than normal. She probably has had it for years.”
“What are our chances with chemo?” I asked. My wife had taken a stoic, proud silence.
“I’m sorry,” the graybeard answered in a broken voice.
We were given six months, and my life became a series of late nights, doctors’ appointments and housekeeping chores. For a moment, I could escape my sadness by helping Jordan with her homework or putting together her college applications with her. She was growing so beautiful, so like her mother, it broke and healed my heart at once. I encouraged her to spend as much time with her mother as she could and she did, but Lisa insisted that we not “Stop your lives for mine.”
It was easier said than done.
Eric called the house every night. From Miami he told me that Mikey, the one-year-old who I was honored to have named after me, was learning to walk and that Isabelle was loving her job as a pediatrician. I had always wished Eric would live closer to home, the well-meaning but selfish desire of a parent who never wants to lose their child. But, he constantly reminded me, Isabelle’s parents were in Miami and so were their jobs. It couldn’t be helped.
“But I should be there soon,” he told me in eagerness and dread. “I’ve talked to my supervisor and they are willing to give me extended leave. I…” He swallowed. I could not imagine how hard this was for him. “I think it’s important that Mom see Mikey a few times before…before…”
And he would cry. And after our conversations, after we had said our goodbyes, I would hide myself in my office and cry for him. For me. For Lisa. I would not let Jordan see it, no matter how painful this endeavor. I had told myself that I would need to be strong for both Jordan and her mother.
Two months after the sickness began, the hallucinations started. I was at home all day by that time, locking myself in my office for hours while Lisa slept so that I could keep up the semblance of work.
The first hallucination came at noon, when the sun was at its brightest and lapped in gentle, soft waves through our windows. The scream launched me from my studies and back into reality. It was the scream of a flayed animal, something torn open and salted. It did not register with me until I was almost to our room those screams belonged to Lisa and I braced myself for the end.
She was lying face up with her mouth contorted into a jagged angle of a hoarse, grating scream. She was looking at the corner of our room where a little crack in the wall gave way to the attic above us, a little crack only a bit more than a hairline. I gently touched her on the shoulder but she did not respond and screamed without breathing. I called for her, pleading for her to wake up and when she finally did, my spirits were even darker than before.
“Michael, they are here. They were up there, in the attic. I saw them bubble through with their glowing eyes! They’re so horrible…but they already have me!”
“Who…what are you talking about, Lisa?”
She could not articulate her answer to me. But the black things with yellow eyes were not done with my wife, for their unseen presence was felt in every dark corner, every unlit hallway. I begged hundreds of doctors in frantic phone calls, pleading for a drug that would help her through her hallucinations. Nothing worked.
I moved my study into our bedroom, setting up a little desk so I could maintain the illusion of work and not leave Lisa by herself. When I absolutely could not be there, I asked Eric and Isabelle to come from the room they were renting so that Lisa would not be left alone with her unseen tormentors.
Then, one day she had an episode when Eric was in the room. Walking with him supporting her into a bright, well-lit room, she fell down. He cursed himself as he told me about how she looked up into the ceiling and screamed in pain and fr
ight. She howled about something swirling, a great mass of eyes and mouths bleeding out from the ceiling to swallow her whole!
“She said, ‘Protect me Eric, stop them!’” he told me in deadened tones. “But I knew that I couldn’t. There was nothing I could do for her.”
I stopped asking Eric to take any portion of the burden. As the muscle and blood was stripped away by the illnesses, she resembled less the beautiful woman who rescued me and more a pitiful skeleton. I made the decision that seeing her like this was no longer good for Jordan, who I think was relieved when I began sending her to spend time with her friends outside of the house.
The days became quietly ritualistic for me. No longer willing to leave Lisa alone, I left the rest of the house to clutter and dust. Jordan, I think, cleaned without my knowledge. All the while Lisa continued to prematurely rot, meat and muscle sucked out of her each day by a force which I imagined with the same sort of hatred one gives their own executioner. I would stare at my screen, at the unanswered emails and empty, blinking pages and hope that somehow I could escape into them. But all of it was artificial, meaningless compared to Lisa.
So I watched her. For hours.
Sometimes she would lean up in bed suddenly, seeming healthy and happy until she looked at the corner of the room and began screaming. She would point and jab at the air, pleading with me to just look at the little hole! I could see it, she explained, if I would only squint my eyes just right. I never did see it, though, and eventually her screaming and hysterics stopped. She began simply looking at the crack and her already pale face would tremble. And I would hold her.
She seemed to know when the end was coming because she asked me to take her out of the room more routinely. I would pick her up, the sore little relic of my wife, and place her in a wheelchair or carry her down the stairs while she wordlessly winced at each little step. The sunlight was softer then, horribly soft.
Miskatonic Dreams Page 10