by Beech, Mark
“So you’ll help me?” He said, smiling with that very look in his eyes; pupils as wide and as black as a shark’s.
“As if I had a choice,” I said, remembering the pages in his pocket and downing what remained of my drink.
3.
That night I had a dream. I recall it easily as it was the first night Peter Lampton slept under my roof. I dreamt about our guest. I say I dreamt about Peter, yet the resemblance was only an essence. I knew the presence in my dream was him, moving through the passages and rooms of my home, yet the glimpses I caught were of something not entirely human. He, or it, moved through the house like a force of nature, keeping to the shadows, indeed as if indistinguishable from them at times. At turns it had scales or fur or feathers. It seemed to bristle with bestial prowess; this Caliban could cross a room in a single bound of its lithe limbs. It left a trail in its wake of something palpable, as elemental and as ancient as earth or water. It was searching for something; roving from room to room, upturning chairs, scattering papers and rifling through books. By then my house had expanded to the proportions of a stately home to accommodate the beast’s prowling. Whenever I gained any ground on the creature I was only close enough to catch a hint of the anguish that distorted its features, as it cast a baleful look back at me as if to warn me off from following further. Then just as I’d been closing in it gave me the slip, vanishing between gnarled trunks and branches sprouting from the corner of a room. I was left to hunt alone, for what I no longer knew, thinking I could hear the soft piping of a flute that ceased as I drew near and faintly sounded at my every hesitation.
When my daughter Rachel met Peter the following morning I sensed something was not quite right. I know now of course that they had already renewed their childhood acquaintance behind my back. It’s impossible to recall that meeting without the knowledge of their deception colouring my memory. I had taken Peter into the front room for a private word, to confront him about what exactly he wanted from me, when the sound of Rachel’s return filled the hallway. She was still dressed in her outdoor gear, a pair of mud-caked boots in her hands. Her red hair was hanging loose to her shoulders. I went to greet her with Peter peering over my shoulder. I have no doubt they exchanged a smile as I embraced her. In every glance they shared I now see a glimmer of their concealed passion, or more precisely, the spell that had bound my daughter to that bastard. I witnessed the dance of their flirtations play out in the days that followed. I don’t know if they’d tried to keep them hidden or indeed coaxed them to the surface as part of his subtle plan to taunt me.
My wife couldn’t see it of course. She fell for it completely and when I thought about it later I realised she had probably hoped it would happen, all too willing to believe in the romance of their meeting. She enjoyed witnessing what she thought was the flourishing of a love right under her own roof and was steadily irritated by my indifference. I just wanted to quickly resolve the business I had with Lampton’s son and send him packing before he became rooted in my life.
Days passed and then a week, then a fortnight and Peter was still our lodger. Mercifully he was out most days, although he was never forthcoming about his movements, not to my satisfaction at any rate and in some ways his absence left me fearfully speculating what he was up to when I couldn’t keep my eye on him.
Most evenings Peter and I retired to the spare room for a time which served as my study but increasingly it took on another appearance; articles, photographs and local maps were pinned to the walls as our mutual obsession about his father’s life and death grew. All the while my silence was assured with the flutter of those pages of Lampton’s diary. Indeed it was the diary that became the focal point of our hushed meetings in that room. With the door closed Dorothy understood we were not to be disturbed from what she thought were our bookish pursuits.
The momentum built the more we delved into those pages. In the diary Lampton claimed he’d found or inherited something, at times even asserting that this artefact could not be seen, so he would never know if it lay close at hand. He spoke of it moving ever closer or emerging, yet then suddenly disappearing; alluding to the myth of Pan pursuing Syrinx all the while to convey the nature of his experience. Peter quoted his father at one point; “It provokes a fascination like no other... stirring up things buried long ago. Instinct... atavism... influence... All is remembered, nothing is learned. It is overwhelming... you can do nothing but surrender. It is the return of ancient things; of desires long-buried and thoughts almost extinguished yet lingering on in embers. Memories you are sure do not belong to you return. Although it cannot always be seen it is an instrument—a conduit. It’s in the wind, in every sound, every breath, from gentle to fierce. Its music can make the world wake and writhe and fall asleep again”.
In his diary Lampton even claimed that the artefact started to appear, to grow and reform. He believed he was somehow only assisting in its restoration and that there were other forces at play, as if the artefact was gradually repairing itself. Back when Lampton was still alive I thought I saw the broken artefact on a few occasions at his house but I never had it in my possession. Yet he had so many odd things cluttering his room there. I may have seen photographs of it, though for some reason I think I recall that the photographs differed from the photographs Peter had from his father’s collection. Was it a different artefact? Was there more than one? Or was it as Lampton had claimed; that this indeed was the same artefact only at different stages in its transformation?
At one point Lampton even remarks in his diary that he is prepared to accept that he had dreamt the artefact and according to strange whims rather than archaeological evidence decided to reconstruct the object from memories of his dreams. Increasingly there are references in his diary about a fascination with going to the canal, gazing at his reflection and believing that in doing so he is able to play this imaginary flute—the syrinx, believing that it is bringing about a transformation he finds both beautiful and terrifying. Lampton starts to describe how he finds his own eyes alluring. Narcissism? He drowns taking the flute with him. The flute is never found, if it ever existed. These were the speculations we reached together after many nights of fevered discussion, nights that, despite the animosity I felt, were not without tears and the need for consolation. Peter had been the victim in this too, suffering as a witness and as a test subject for his father’s mania.
Then a suspicion occurred to me; this diary from which Peter recited and kept me captivated, how did I know for certain all of these passages were Martin Lampton’s words at all? It could have easily been his son who had elaborated on the diary, inventing his own interpretations of the past and thereby slowly coaxing me into his madness.
One pivotal conversation took place behind that door; I had been anticipating it for weeks.
“You must recall that in my father’s diary he describes visiting a place, in the Fifties he reckoned. It’s a tourist spot now of course but back then it was all different.”
“You mean the cave. I doubt he ever went there, Peter.” Yet Peter was unperturbed.
“So you’ve been keeping your knowledge of this from me. And I thought we’d been making progress? You said yourself he travelled in the army, and later in the merchant navy, so why not there, why not Kefalonia? He wrote about it with conviction in his diary. Melissani Cave, it was newly discovered only a couple of years before he was there. He went on one of the earliest tours of the lake. The dates of the entries too, it all makes sense. Why would he go to the trouble of making that up?”
“Why indeed. I recall there was an article on the cave’s discovery folded into his diary. I think he’d cut it from the pages of the National Geographic. There was an earthquake I recall, which brought the roof of a cavern down revealing this subterranean lake. It must have appealed to your father’s imagination, that’s all. Like I was saying, I don’t want to sound harsh but he was a dreamer.”
“You mean to say he made it all up? He was never there. That’s what you’
re saying. He never met the discoverer of the cave, never talked to the locals there and never found the artefact. The island within the lake was said to be one of the entrances to the Underworld. Researchers believed it was once a shrine to the god Pan and the water there was home to...”
“Precisely, it couldn’t be more convenient for his delusion, which really supports my point further. Let’s face it; he incorporated a tourist article from a popular magazine into this secret plot of his, this delusional quest, I’m sorry but that’s the way I see it.”
“He also spoke of something returning through him. Do you remember that too? Do you remember his fear? Do you remember him saying to you he feared his own mortality? He said he’d turned to you for help but you seemed indifferent. It’s in his diary—or was that a page you missed? Is that something you’d prefer to forget?” Peter was strangely composed in his accusations, his anger having a certain precision in delivery, as if he’d rehearsed the scene.
“I remember very clearly that he’d become an insufferable bastard,” I could see by the severity of Peter’s expression that my outburst risked provoking him further. “Look, I’m sorry... all I’m trying to say is, for whatever reason, he became terribly confused and these things happened to be there and fuelled his obsession. There was nothing more to it than that and...”
“No. You didn’t read his diary closely enough. Have we been wasting our time here in this room? You’ve blinded yourself to what is crying out to be seen. My father was no longer himself.”
“I agree—he needed help...”
“You still don’t understand. My father was no longer what he had been. He knew that. He knew he was changing and it frightened him. Yet he wanted it. He had looked for it all his life, it seemed. He didn’t want to be cured or to be rid of it. He was struggling to become something else. He was waking to the call... to leave all this behind, all this... this... society... civilisation... call it what you will. He wanted to change, to go beyond it all. If he needed help it was in that way. That’s what he believed. He needed someone to walk by his side, to be near him as he changed. It’s just the way it is. Someone must be there, to be brave enough to walk part of the way and at the last moment let go.”
“But Peter, he pushed everyone away in the end. It’s too much to ask of anyone. This thing you talk about, this thing calling him... whatever you think it is... it wasn’t liberating for him... it killed him in the end and there was nothing anyone could do about it. It was a call to end his life disguised as something else. I’m no psychiatrist but over the years I’ve had to come to terms with it and that’s been my conclusion. Maybe other people would humour you but I’m not going to do that.”
“No, I wouldn’t recommend it but you’re wrong. You see, I’m also waking to that same call and I’ve chosen you to come with me. Yet this time you will find the courage to walk with me for a while down that path, until... well we’ll have to wait and see. But you must let me know when you are ready to take the next step.” He let out a sound as if he’d stifled a sigh or was it a laugh?
By then we’d made our way downstairs having heard Dorothy and Rachel retire for the night. We ended up drinking a considerable amount and Peter started to slur his words. His voice had taken on a distant distracted tone, as if speculating rather than engaging in conversation. The final things he’d said that night in his stupor were mostly incomprehensible ramblings yet the odd word or phrase had unnerved me. Indeed it seemed at times that he was both questioning and answering himself. I waited for him to fall asleep in his chair. For a while I watched as nervous firelight danced across his features and it was as if I’d witnessed more than one face there flickering in the shadows, like reflections shimmering in water; of Peter, his father and a third I could not place.
4.
Sleep was long in coming that night. Dorothy kept turning over in bed, mumbling to herself. My thoughts kept returning to all that had happened, memories emerging that I thought I’d long since put to rest. Exhausted my thoughts returned to the day of Lampton’s burial, the few family and friends in attendance gathered by the grave like restless crows.
The account of Lampton’s life given at his funeral had left me troubled. The priest described the friend I’d lost yet not the man they’d buried that day. None of those gathered at the graveside could appreciate how much Lampton had changed in the year leading up to his death, only I knew; only I had seen his secret face. I’d felt betrayed. And yet I could not ease my burden by sharing my memory with others because to do so could only cause them harm. So I let it go, let our mutual friends and acquaintances believe what they wanted to believe. Being a custodian of that knowledge immediately made me into a man they’d rather forget. Even at the wake I could sense how others felt uneasy when I was near, so I found a secluded spot in the snug by the bar and downed one drink to Lampton’s memory and left.
In the space of a year the change in Lampton’s personality had been so sudden and so violent that I’d found it hard to recall the man I’d once known; his qualities and beliefs, the reasons why I’d considered him a close friend, all became twisted beyond recognition before they faded altogether. He’d become increasingly secretive, cruel and manipulative. In my mind my old dear friend had died the year before and the stranger that had replaced him was dedicated to destroying the memory I had of him. For the brief and infrequent times he spent with his other friends he seemed to be able to maintain a convincing performance of normality, so they would never know how fortunate they were in being spared the experience of Lampton’s decline.
Despite having everything he claimed he could ever want in life; a wife, a child, rewarding work and friends, something insidious emerged in his thoughts and dominated them. It was as though some part of him relished the discord he sowed. At first I was able to make allowances for his behaviour yet he’d become increasingly quick-tempered and devious, as if sadistically testing the extent of my tolerance. He started to claim that I was somehow choosing an easy path in living my life the way I did. While he had no reason to, he seemed to envy the easy contentment in life he mistakenly thought I possessed. He said that “men like me” were fortunate to have such ordinary needs, always implying that his life had now taken a turn of tragic proportions. He hinted that he had entered into a transaction with someone that had turned sour and must now run its course. That’s all that he was prepared to say, refusing to name this other party and laughing at the naivety of my question. He’d made a mistake that couldn’t be rectified or reversed. He bitterly rejected any offer of support, as if he’d found such an idea beneath him. Eventually much of his energy was expended on attempting to manipulate the people he knew to his own advantage and condemning those he once held dear.
Towards the end he became increasingly convoluted and conflicted in the things he said, seeing portents and signs in conversations or actions that hadn’t been intended. A note I’d made of a phrase he’d repeatedly used in his diary stays with me: “You hear the music only once you’ve joined the dance.” In other contexts it might seem quite prosaic or trite, no more than a corrupted cliché, yet for him the phrase was charged with foreboding. And there were other remarks too more enigmatic than that, of which I can only vaguely recollect; ideas of something unseen moving ever-closer, something longed-for yet unobtainable, something intangible yet terribly present.
The same longing had been there in the third face I’d seen the night I’d watched Peter fall asleep. Its features had been so distorted it had rendered the face almost bestial in appearance, as if snarling. Yet there was something far worse in that expression; it took delight in torment and mania and craved for more. That craving was contagious as I had not known restlessness like it until I’d seen that face, my stomach always churning, my heart drumming.
Most evenings since then, when Peter sat across from me at the table at meals, or in the chair by the fire in my family’s company I could see that other ravenous face flickering in the shadows of his features, as if it
might emerge, as if something terrible at any moment might slip free from that human guise to walk unimpeded amongst ordinary men. I had to be careful not to dwell too long on his face and thereby risk suspicion. On one such night, as my wife peacefully listened to the radio and as usual I attempted to maintain some semblance of normality by making idle conversation, our lodger suddenly raised the question. Peter asked permission to marry my daughter. Of course Dorothy’s face instantly lit up and Peter beamed back at her. No doubt he took satisfaction in knowing I’d see it for the stratagem it was, yet was unable to protest. I can still picture the look on Dorothy’s face; welling-up at the promise of what she saw as joyful news, yet vigilant, as if preparing to defy any doubts I might voice. Of course I knew I had to bide my time, I was bound to him until we’d put his father to rest, so I shook his hand and congratulated him. Dorothy, while pleased sensed there was something wrong, yet increasingly put this down to her growing disenchantment with me. Peter rounded off the insult with a further injury, moving over to her chair he planted a kiss on my wife’s cheek, so close to her mouth that she blushed and cast a guilty glance in my direction. It took all my strength to merely look away as if nothing had happened, fearing an outburst might alienate my wife altogether.
As we were about to retire that night I let Dorothy go upstairs ahead of me. Peter was about to leave the room when I intervened, stepping into the doorway and closing the door to the hall to ensure privacy.
“I’m ready to take the next step. You asked me to tell you when I was ready, well I am ready.”
“I’m not so sure that you are. I’m not sure you’re suitably receptive. But you’ll have to do. Perhaps it would help if we stepped-up our activity. Well, we’ll see what happens. We’ll go out to the canal tomorrow and see what we can see.”
In the morning Dorothy had complained about her sleep being disturbed; “Didn’t you hear it? When I first woke up I thought it was a bird singing but it wasn’t. Then I thought it was the wind in the eaves. It became faint then, it made me sleepy. I must have nodded off. I had an awful dream.”