Bohemians of Sesqua Valley

by W. H. Pugmire

  Howie’s voice, when he talked, was very high-pitched, almost comically so; but when he read his work that voice transformed and deepened in tone, and its effect was amazing. His voice became musical and perfectly matched the lyricism of his prose. I listened, entranced, and when again I brought the coffee cup to my mouth its liquid was cold. A new party of people entered the establishment, holding the door open for each other so that a vigorous wind blew in from the street and tossed some of our paper napkins onto the floor. That wind was like a herald and we obeyed, pulling out our wallets and piling bills with which to pay our fare. And then we rose as one and followed Howard out onto Atwells Avenue, into the wind and below the street lights.

  Compelled to lead the way, I walked past Howie and down the avenue, suddenly turning into an alley and paying no heed to the protests of my fellows. Old Howie was suddenly beside me and pressing his hand onto my shoulder. “Surely you’ve been down here before,” I told him, “what with your endless night-time explorations of this old town. No? That surprises me, you having lived in Providence for most of your long life. This Little Italy district has many old world charms, and here is one of them.” I stopped before a door that seemed composed of very old wood, the frame of which was slightly askew, like something one may find in a funhouse. “Come, gentlemen, follow me and meet our local Strega.”

  I led the way across the threshold and into the crowded showroom, where fantastic things were on display. The place was lit by lantern light, and as I turned to wink at Howard I saw that his white hair, which had become disheveled by his running of nervous hands through it, almost glowed with the effect of the light behind it. The elderly fellow was in need of a haircut, and three lengthy strands of hair stood erect, making it look as though the poet was wearing a triple crown composed of pallid metal. I could not comprehend the look of distaste that was evident on his lean face.

  “I thought you would adore this place,” I scolded him. “Your beloved past is here, in every corner.”

  He sneered. “I see little more than squalor. Filth is everywhere. Look at those wisps of web. And there is a peculiar smell, like stale patchouli oil. Very unpleasant, this place.”

  “It’s your racial snobbishness raising its snout again, that is all. Much as you adore Italian cuisine, you have always spoken of Italy’s people as a squalid race, dark and dirty. It’s too absurd; they are such beautiful creatures.” And then I espied the tiny vecchia signora who observed us from one corner of the room. She smiled, as if intuiting that she belied my expression of her race as beauteous—for she was not pretty, being deformed by incredible age and ugliness. Howard, who seemed to share Wilde’s distaste for unsightly humans, turned away and gazed at an object that hung upon one wall. I squinted at him, curious about the sudden noise that had erupted from his throat. I stepped to him and followed his upward gaze to the crux ansata that had been fastened to the wall.

  La Strega crept beside me and spoke with raspy voice. “It was discovered in one very old church, perhaps you remember the story of what was found there just before its demolition in 1992? Perhaps the signore are familiar with the story, eh?”

  “I am,” piped Howard, “from personal investigation. Some of you may remember my long poem, ‘Dark Church on Federal Hill.’ It was about that place, and what I found on the night I stole into it. I saw many queer things, some of which I have happily forgotten. But I’ve not forgotten that.” He pointed to the ankh. “It seemed preposterous, that an ancient Egyptian symbol of Life should be there, in that place that felt so deceased—and diseased. Gawd, the dry still air, like that of a tomb, and the dirt and darkness everywhere! Yah, the morbid art on the sooty panes of the apsidal windows!”

  “Captivating darkness,” the ancient woman said, nodding her head, “especially in the upper reaches, that troubled lair. Did you climb the spiral staircase? To the tower chamber? Can you recall the air in that small room—its hot-house vapor, like reptile’s breath? Aha! The sinister light that trembles in your eyes as you see into your past. Did you run then, down the staircase and through the nave? Had you noticed the blackened panes of the large windows, whereon saints should have been displayed? With what had those windows been stained? Not soot merely. Methinks they had been touched by outer gloom and the being that fumbled therein. Portions of those windows have been pilfered by things that walk like men. Some of the windows were shattered just before the demolition. Their sooty shards have an allure for some who know the old and secret ways. There are some with a talent to raise the spectre of that foreboding church with sound and movement. Did you sense that spectre as you stood within that place? Most say that it has fled, to the stars and beyond them. Some whisper that it left a certain monstrous aftermath, an eidolon of blemish and soot that can be conjured.”

  We all listened, entranced. Her English, although heavily accented, was good and easily understood. Yet there was something truly alien caught within the shadows of her eyes. With seemingly evil intent, those eyes peered to something directly above us. I raised my face to the instrument that hung over us from where it had been fastened to the ceiling. It resembled a curious wind chime composed of silver threads and dark shards of blackened glass. La Strega raised her withered hand and moved its crooked fingers, and the display above us began to sway, to touch its components so that a musical sound filtered down like dust. It was an awful noise, a clamor that seemed to splinter my brain and pierce my mind with monstrous visions of unholy things. I began to sense the cosmic wind that formulated and gradually surrounded us. I tasted that exhalation’s reptilian essence. I could almost see that coil of alien air as it encased us within its hot whirling walls.

  Old Howard leaned into my embrace and shuddered. He pressed his shocking face to mine so that I could taste his tears of terror. His slobbering mouth stained my cheek as he began to yell. “Rifts in time, and dead things that stalk between the stars. Black suns that call to us, shimmering with evil intent like those shards above us. See, Frank, see! The hungry stars and dead moons call us! They would pull us to other worlds, unfathomable galaxies, wherein to be mortal is to be a thing of naught. Dark dimensions in the ultimate void! Cold, cold upon our hot mortal eyes. Avatar of Nyarlathotep, slinking between dimensions and leaving behind a wretched odor of madness and memory. It burns inside my brain—burns like alien ice!” And then the old man screamed and fell into my embrace. I held on to him with one arm, one arm that seemed to contain a strength that was more than human. Shrieking, I reached with my free hand for the nearest object, a statuette that resembled Anubis, made of smooth and heavy jade. I hurled the thing at the chimes above us, then used my hands to cover Howard’s eyes as particles of broken glass and metal rained downward. The walls of bright sentient wind melted from us, and my eyes gradually adjusted to the candlelight of the quiet room. The hag was nowhere to be seen, and my other companions had fled into the night. Heavily, my friend slumped in my embrace. I called his name as I set his weighty form onto the floor; but there came no reply, for my friend was dead.

  VII

  I had reclined onto the tabletop tomb of John Merritt within St. John’s hidden churchyard and contemplated the past. Not ordinary history, but the occult past of bewitching Providence. An obscure chronicle, to be certain. Even John Merritt was rumored, in vague records, to have been acquainted with the Providence warlock, Joseph Curwen, in the late 1740’s. I thought about these things as I stretched my limbs on the antique tomb in chill October sunlight. I listened to the immortal wind to see if I could detect any echo from that past to which I felt so queerly connected. A call came to me, but it was the city itself that summoned my soul; and so I pushed off the tomb and found my way to Benefit Street, walking slowly past the grand houses until I came to the yellow house from which I always sensed a kind of emanation. As I stood gazing at the house it seemed the wind beyond me became musical, and then I realized that the sound was not the wind at all but rather the playing of some instrument nearby. Slowly, I strolled beyond the
house, to the small memorial park adjacent to it, and saw the incredible sight. Someone sat upon a stool and played a viol. The goat mask that the figure wore was most unusual, for its texture seemed to blend smoothly with the person’s human flesh, and the black eyes behind the mask blinked wickedly as they beheld me. I was almost overwhelmed with strange compulsion, with an ache to float to the figure and drink the elixir of its breath. I did not move, I barely took in air; and as I stood there, breathless and transfixed, the area around the figure darkened, uncannily, until I could just make out the figure’s silhouette in a realm of bizarre shadow.

  The lanes of Providence called to me once more. I turned away from shadow and continued down the sunlit sidewalk, crossing Benefit as I approach Thomas Street, where I stopped for some few moments to admire the majestic steeple of the First Baptist Church. I then walked down to the Fleur-de-Lys Building, which had been so weirdly designed by Edmund R. Willson and erected in 1886. The fantastic façade of the building always made me grin, although I knew its really extraordinary aspect dwelt within, among artistic clutter. I had been renting an upper studio, but as I turned my key and pushed open its wide door, I knew that I didn’t want to ascend the stairs. Looking up that stairway and seeing the lean antique doors of the hallways always gave me a thrill, for here the past seemed to live in an audacious way, defiantly. I had never entered a building where time not only stopped but seemed transformed, as it was within the Fleur-de-Lys. Even the shadows of the place struck one as unusual and formed of a dissimilar kind of darkness than that which was ordinary.

  I entered the large main studio, with its tables packed with implements and relics of artistic expression. I glanced around at the pale painted walls, the old woodwork and red hearth, the hanging florescent lights—the mixture of bright plastic modernity and shadowed past. The tarnished upright mirror that stood near to the hearth had not been there previously. The soft sunlight that seeped into the room from the windows caught the gilt of the mirror’s frame in a magnificent manner, so that the dusky glass encased within it seemed hallowed by golden splendor. I walked toward the mirror and stopped two feet from it. My image oppressed me with misery. The reflected room itself looked different, duskier and older—turning the mirrored image into a portrait of the past, the one flaw of which was my modern self. I sneered at the ridiculous attire with which my black flesh was clothed. It was only in my facial features that I seemed to behold my ancientness of heritage. I was overwhelmed with sudden and passionate desire, a longing to escape bright modernity and sink into an elder era. I half fancied that the wind was speaking to me; and then I knew that it was not the wind at all but rather an exquisitely low and distant musical note, prolonged and increasing in crescendo. As the sound swelled, the reflected room within the mirror became animated with swarming shadow. I felt such kindred with that growing blackness. Nonchalantly, I removed my clothing so that my reflection was more in keeping with the imagery before me. And then all light extinguished within the spacious studio room and its echoed semblance in the mirror. Only the golden arch remained, shimmering before me like some wraithlike gateway.

  I began to move toward the golden arch but tripped over one of my discarded shoes. Hissing at the disturbance of my balance, I raised my black hand so that it would touch the mirror and thus break my fall. But my fingers did not meet a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass within its great gilded frame, for there was nothing within that frame except a void of darkness into which I faltered. For one moment I was convulsed with confused fear, not understanding my fate, thinking I was being hurled into some dream-like state. Perhaps this is a dream into which I have fallen, swiftly and silently. I exist in blackness, with no hint of light except, occasionally, a ghost-like orb that may be a memory of the moon. Sometimes I rest, lulled by a cosmic suggestion of sound that may be an exquisitely low and infinitely distant musical note. But mostly I seep and whirl, gracefully and meaningless, within the obscurity that is my residence of horror.

  VIII

  She gazed inward and saw murky shifting shapes, apparitions that, churning, laced her soul with wonder. Something in the semblance of the phantoms, in the way they stretched and seethed, awakened a kind of unholy appetite deep within her. She ached to suck them into her with hungry mouth, suck them deeply so that they wheeled around her heart and taught that organ spectral palpitation. She wanted to be a thing of smoke, like unto these things she envisioned, so as to flit among the tombstones and seep through the trunks of ancient trees. Thus she lifted her arms to humming wind and danced upon the graveyard ground, hoping that she would be lifted into the buzzing air; and then she shrieked with laughter as, instead, she fell into a shallow indentation in the earth, falling until her face was buried in the pit of upturned sod, where she tasted dirt and darkness. Although she could not breathe, she moved deeper into the earth’s embrace, and when at last she felt very far from the living, she turned over and stretched so that worms could caress her fingers. It pleased her to know that she was not alone; for her phantoms had descended with her, and touched her with their melting hands, and clawed away the ground beneath her so that she sank further into the lonesome place. And as she sank, she listened to her throbbing heartbeat as it became unearthly, as if her mortal heart had found some further deceleration, an elder palpitation that pulsed behind her eyes and taught them to envision an obscure realm where dreams are grown diseased and fed her keen ennui with the world of living things. That sickness unto death encased her like some acidic cocoon in which she disintegrated, and from which she emerged as phantom particles that lifted toward the abyss of night. Above ground, she reassembled as a quasi-mortal fiend, and with daemonic eyes she found, when scanning heaven, one hellish star; but she did not know the name of that blood-hued sphere, and so she could not call to it and lure it from its place among clouds. Thus she clawed into her transformed face and dug out what remained of fleshy eyes, those chilly jewels that she hurled into heaven so that they could shine beside the daemon star. Blind, she reached out to buzzing wind, in which she detected subtle articulation; and her outstretched hands were taken by the unsubstantial hands of her phantoms, those devils that kissed her hand with spooky mouth as they freed her, at last, from all vestiges of humanity and danced with her into wraithlike nothingness.

  IX

  It towered, the twisted entity, above the ground-mist that enveloped me as I swept into that hollow of old oaks. I confess that it felt strange, knowing once again the uncanny consciousness that I had experienced in youth; for I had put childish things behind me, had become absorbed in my studies at Harvard and Miskatonic, had done my best to abolish the farm boy from Dunwich. Yet here I was, an adult, standing before the grotesque oak that had bewitched me with fear and marvel as a child. It enchanted me still, with its incredible height and extensions of menacing branches that spread out as though they were hunting for some nourishing prey to pluck from the ground. My sister had mocked my sense of peril whenever we approached that tree on our way to our altar in the hollow; yet now I was returned to Dunwich, because Elana’s corpse had been found tangled among the tall branches of that old oak.

  The grey mist was the same that I had known when I was young, and its reek was an odor that had found me in dream no matter how far I had travelled from this land. There are aromas that can be found in Dunwich only—or perhaps we who are bred here have developed uncommon senses with which to detect the region’s aberrant quality. Those perceptions awakened now, as I walked into the hollow’s depths and found the megalithic site that had been my boyhood haunt. It had enchanted me then—and bewitched me still, the circle of tall stone pillars that bespoke of incredible age and mystery. There was something unearthly in the way the stones had been assembled, and the sight of them now touched my eyes with a chilly wonder that seeped to my brain and touched it with frigid reminiscence. I saw again the rough-hewn altar stone within that monolithic circle, and could smell the herbage, rank and wild, that clung to the sinister slab.
My liquid eyes peeped through mists of time and saw the body that reclined on that dank stone, and I knew that it was I. I felt, again, that other chaff, those weeds of delirium that I thought I had expunged by leaving Dunwich and dwelling among ordinary folk. But no—it clung to my skull and infected my brain, and I knew that it was the immortal madness that is a Dunwich legacy.

  Suddenly, I recalled the one infiltration of that familial folly when I was at Miskatonic. Elana had come to visit me, on a whim, her first venture out of Dunwich Village. I had ushered her into an abandoned science room, so as to hide her deformity from the other students; for my sister wore the fleshy remnants with which some of our kindred were cursed, a kind of swarthy texture to the skin that did not look natural to human kind and that led to talk of witch-blood and traffic with strange forest presences. Ah, the cruelty I saw in her slanted ochre eyes; oh, her nasty laughter at my rush to sequester her from notice.

  “Ye’ve done well, my brother,” she cooed, “hiding your ancestry from yon students. You’ve refined your outward self, and your way of speaking is so nice. Do any of ‘em know that ye were squeezed from a filthy Dunwich womb? Peculiar, I call it, how so many young village lads are lured to Miskatonic University. I thought I recognized one other on my way through the square. Nigh, I heard they has some books here, like the ones grand dad borrowed from the Whateley farmhouse right afore ye Horror. Remember that one book, how we used to sneak it down and study its queer diagrams until mater found us with it and hurled it into ye hearth? Ma didn’t know about my notes, did she? Nar! Never caught me digging sigils in farmyard dirt. Now then, what’s the matter, my brother? Why are you so pale, and your eyes so fevered? Got one of your headaches? Come, rest ye on this metal table, here, and let me hold your head in my soft hands. Look, a little knife. What is that ye call it, a scalpel? A science tool? Hell, we could have used it in the hollow, when I rested ye on that altar and etched diagrams into your hide with mama’s dull kitchen knife. Come, stretch on this chilly metal and rest your head, Elias.”