by Paula Guran
14 August 1874
I expressed my aggravation concerning the portrait to Mr. Aimsbury. He convinced me to reconsider.
23 September 1874
It has been weeks of sitting, and I know nothing more of Mr. Roderick than I did the first day. It’s as though he’s a different person each time we meet. One day he is moody and sullen, the next all charm. Two days ago he kissed my hand and spent the whole sitting contriving excuses to touch me, arranging my chin this way, my hair that. Yesterday he seized my shoulders as if to shake me, then immediately stepped back as though I’d struck him.
Yet my own sensibilities concerning Mr. Roderick are conflicted. I say I do not know him, but there are times I feel I know Blaine very well. But it’s not a comforting sort of knowing. Or being known.
Today I asked him about it. “Of course we’ve met,” he said. “The color can only be painted on you. Don’t you remember? In the desert? In the city?”
It seemed he would say more, but he stopped as though he’d forgotten how to speak entirely. There was an intensity about him, as though he were in a fever.
He leaned toward me. I thought he meant to kiss me, but he only put his hands on either side of my face and said, “There are colors that hunger, Charlotte. There is a word for them the same shade as hearts heavy with sin.”
I hadn’t the faintest idea what he meant. Except, I almost did.
13 October 1874
Today, Mr. Roderick spoke barely a word. We sat in silence and I felt I was being crushed to death under the weight of all that horrid silk. It does not breathe. I feel as if I will suffocate. And why yellow? At times, I feel as though the color itself is draining the life from me. Is that possible, for a color to be alive? No, alive is not the correct word. There is nothing of life about it. I am not even certain it is yellow. I cannot explain it, but there are moments when the dress gives the distinct impression of being some other color, merely masquerading as yellow. Whatever color it may be in actuality, I do not believe there is a name for it.
14 October 1874
How can I explain the horror of something that seems so simple by daylight? There was nothing monstrous in the dream. The dream itself was monstrous.
I dreamt of a hallway going on forever. I was terrified. But of what? A door opening? A door refusing to open?
It is irrational to be afraid of nothing. But in the dream, it was the very nothingness that frightened me. The unknown. The sense of waiting. Wanting. Is it possible fear and desire are only two sides of the same skin? To pierce one with a needle is to pierce both. Then one only needs follow the stitching to find the way through.
30 October 1874
Blaine forbade me from looking at the painting until it is finished. But I caught a glimpse today. It was an accident, only a moment. Perhaps it was my imagination? A trick of my overtired mind? I haven’t been sleeping well, after all.
I saw the hallway. The one full of doors. The one from my dreams. Blaine painted it behind me. I never breathed one word of it to him, but still, there it was.
He means to leave me in that terrible place, a doorway to step through and never think on again.
I will not let him. After dreaming that hallway every night, I know it far better than he ever can. I will learn its tricks and secrets. I will run its length forever, if I must, but he will not catch me and pin me down.
Casey – About last night. Look, you know I like girls. And I like you. I’m just not looking for anything super-serious right now. I thought you knew that. I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong idea. I’m just sorry. Talk to me? Rani.
From the papers of Dean Howard Aimsbury, St. Everild’s University, Special Collections, 1879.03.07.1:
18 November 1877
Gentlemen,
It is with a heavy heart that I tender my formal resignation from St. Everild’s University. I have had occasion to speak with each of you privately, and I am certain you understand this is in the best interests of all concerned.
I have given over twenty years of my life to this institution, but I cannot—
I cannot.
It is said time heals all wounds, but I have yet to find a thread strong enough to sew mine closed. The past two years since my wife’s disappearance have taught me hauntings are all too real. They exist between heart and gut, between skin and bone. No amount of prayer can banish them.
I believed the dismissal of Blaine Roderick would purge any lingering pain. But all it did was limit his access to me and slow the tide of unpleasant – and occasionally quite public – altercations he attempted to instigate.
As I’m sure you know, gentlemen, throughout this ordeal, I have had no care for my personal reputation. I care only for the reputation of St. Everild’s. Upon my resignation, I trust you will do your best to repair any damage I have done to the good name of this fine school.
As for myself, what could Blaine Roderick say of me that I have not thought of myself? He made me complicit. He was ever the shadow, the puppet master, steering my hand. I am not blameless, but his will always be the greater share of the blame.
I am not without heart. Nor am I so vain that I cannot sympathize with the notion of a younger woman, married to a man nearly twice her age seeking companionship amongst her peers. If Charlotte . . . I would not blame her. Whatever the truth of their relationships, whatever Blaine Roderick may have felt for Charlotte, I do believe this: He hated her by the end. He feared her. Yet he was ever the coward. He could not bear to do the deed himself, and so he drove me to it.
Gentlemen, you know me. You know I did not, could not, commit violence against my wife. I cherished her.
And yet, in the depths of my soul I know there might have been a chance for her to, somehow, return. If the painting still existed.
Charlotte’s hope for life, for return, is now in ashes. My hand did the deed, but Blaine Roderick bears the blame.
I am weary, gentlemen. If this letter seems improper, I am certain you will forgive me.
Yours, etc.,
Howard Aimsbury
I’m scared, Casey. I can’t remember everything that happened that night. I know we both got pretty fucked up. It was a mistake. I’m sorry.
I wanted to tell you . . . I don’t think I can stay here. I know I haven’t been around the past few days, but it isn’t enough. I can’t stay in that house with you. When the semester ends, I’m going to call my parents and ask them to take me home.
It’s not your fault. We were both . . .
We fooled around. I shouldn’t have let it happen, knowing how you feel, and I’m sorry.
But I don’t remember everything else that happened. I have bits of it, but there are pieces missing.
All that wine. Everything was so hot, like I had a fever. I remember the color flaking, and falling like ash around me. Then there were colors running down the bathtub drain. I was scrubbing my skin so hard it hurt, and you were pounding on the bathroom door.
There are bruises.
Fuck.
Please don’t finish the painting, Casey.
I know it’s of me. Even though it isn’t done, I can tell. It’s fucking with my head, and I’m scared. I’m sorry . . .
I came back to the house just to get my stuff. I looked at the painting again, and it’s still wet. I don’t remember putting on that dress. Where did you even get it? The way you painted the shadows in the folds of the fabric. They’re hungry. Like mouths that have never known kisses, only pain. All those smudges of blue-gray of around my throat. You painted me like I’d been strangled.
I don’t even understand some of the colors you used. They’re . . . I don’t know the names for them. But I can taste them at the back of my throat, slick and just starting to rot. I keep finding paint caked under my nails, like I’ve been scratching – rust, dirt, bone, a color like the texture of a shadow under an owl’s wing, like the sound of things crawling in the earth, like angles that don’t match and . . .
I don’t know what I did
to you. I know. But I’m sorry, Casey. Just take it back, okay?
I can smell the smoke from when the city burned, the tide from when it drowned. It’s sand-grit when I close my eyes, rubbing every time I blink. The dress is in tatters, and he is ragged where his shadow is stripped raw from the wind. He is walking from the horizon. I don’t want to go. I can’t. I have to go.
From the collected papers of Dr. Thaddeus Pilcher (Bequest), St. Everild’s University, Special Collections, 1891.06.12.1:
Physician’s Report: Patient Charlotte Aimsbury, 1 November 1874 Called to examine Charlotte Aimsbury today. Cause of condition uncertain.
(I have known Charlotte since she was a little girl, and I have never found her to be prone to fits of hysteria like so many of her sex. She has a good head on her shoulders. She is a most remarkable woman.)
Patient claims no memory of collapse. Can only surmise exhaustion the cause.
(I do not blame Charlotte. While I make a point of rising above such things, talk, when persistent enough, often cannot be avoided. Being the subject of so many wagging tongues would be enough to weary even the strongest spirit.
Not that I believe there’s any truth to even half of what is said. Having met Mr. Roderick, I cannot imagine Charlotte succumbing to his charms, few as they are. Roderick is brusque, rude, and highly distractible. I see little to draw Charlotte’s eye. Yet, I suppose it is no great wonder that many would gossip.
In my own admittedly biased opinion, Charlotte is a very moral and upstanding woman. I refuse to believe her the faithless type.)
Final diagnosis: Exhaustion. Odd pattern of bruising evident on patient’s skin determined to be symptom of collapse, not cause. Other physical signs bear out diagnosis – pallor, shading beneath eyes indicating lack of sleep; prominence of bones may indicate a loss of weight. Patient complained of nightmares. Calmative prescribed.
(I pray that will be the end of it.)
Appended Case Note: The enclosed documents were turned over to authorities by Kyle Walters, a librarian at St. Everild’s University, following his report of Ms. Wilton’s disappearance in January 2015. The painting described by Ms. Alam in her addition to Ms. Wilton’s notes was not among the effects in their shared residence following Ms. Wilton’s disappearance, nor was it reported as being present at the time of the initial investigation into Ms. Alam’s disappearance in November 2015.
Mr. Walters admitted to removing the documents from Ms. Wilton’s residence, but provided a sworn statement that nothing else had been removed or altered. Mr. Walters is being charged with interference in a police investigation, but at this time is not a suspect in either disappearance. Investigations are ongoing.
“Two elements of Lovecraft’s fiction that hold perennial appeal,” for Richard Gavin “are his evocations of decayed place and the inconceivably vast machinations of life that churn beneath the crust of civilization. ‘Deep Eden’ attempts to draw upon both. It speaks of an altogether other genesis.”
Gavin is a critically acclaimed author who works in horror and the primordial, often illuminating the crossroads where these realms meet. He has authored five books of macabre fiction, including At Fear’s Altar (Hippocampus Press). His esoteric writings consist of The Benighted Path (Theion Publishing), as well as essays in Starfire and Clavis: Journal of Occult Arts, Letters and Experience.
Deep Eden
Richard Gavin
——
Ash Lake occasionally embodies its name. On November days such as this, when the sunbeams can scarcely press through the leaden clouds, the lake roils gray and ghostly, taking on the appearance of shifting dunes of ash; incinerated remains that somehow survived the crematorium.
How I loved days like this when I was a girl. In those distant autumns I would venture down to the lakefront, with Dad and Rita by my side. Together we would toss stones and spy for any boats daring enough to brave the gales. Those days were buoyed by a feeling, very rare and very delicious, that my sister, father, and I were the only three people left in Evendale.
Of late this same feeling has become a constant, but it has lost its succulence.
Perhaps that was the unconscious source of my desire to make the detour to the beach today: the thin hope that somehow the sight of Ash Lake in late autumn might uplift me, give me the clarity to make sense of the senselessness that is now the norm in Evendale.
I scooped up a handful of fog-moistened stones, then let them drop un-hurled. As I made my way back to the jeep I listened to the surf whose mist-hidden waves sounded much like mocking asthmatic laughter.
The fuel gauge began to flash “E” as soon as I turned the ignition, so I began to woo the vehicle, coaxing it to carry me far enough to reach the Main Street filling station that still, as of last week, had fuel.
Veering into the narrow lot, I left the engine running and ran out to test the pumps. The first two were bone-dry, but the third valve spat out unleaded. As I filled the jeep I wondered how many tankfuls were left in this town; two, possibly three? The residents of Evendale had, up until recently, kept a routine of sorts, a choreographed pantomime of a sleepy but still functioning town. A certain segment of the locals remained above to man the fueling station, to switch on houselights on a rotating basis, to plow the main roads when the snow accumulated. The concern over keeping up appearances to the outside world has waned now that everyone’s below.
My memories of this town, paled as they are, paint Evendale as little more than a tangle of poorly paved roads lined with dreary structures. But neither the years nor the miles that I set between myself and my home could account for its present condition. The houses and shops all have the air of heaped wreckage, of withered husks that no longer sheltered living things.
Most of the spaces advertise themselves as being for lease. A few of them were boarded up with slabs of cheap wood, like coffins bound for pauper’s row.
The street entrance to Venus Women’s Wear was sheathed in brown butcher paper. A sign in the display window advised potential customers that they were closed for renovation. I made my way to the alley beside the shop and found the side door unlocked.
There was no light inside the shop but I didn’t need any. My time below has sharpened my ability to see in the dark. It took me several minutes to find the dress Rita had described to me: purple silk with a dragonfly embroidered in glittering black thread over the left breast. This was the first time she had ever requested anything since going below. How I had hoped that her desire could have lured her up and out, into the light. But Rita never comes above anymore.
I zippered the dress inside a plastic garment bag with the Venus logo and the store’s address printed on the back, then I carried it back to the jeep and drove on.
Loath as I am to admit it, I now find being above rather unsettling. The airiness, the brightness, after those first few heaves of revivifying oxygen, sours quickly. More and more I want to be below. But I do not want to want that.
I turned onto Apple Road to complete my errand. In addition to the purple dress from Venus, Rita also requested that our late mother’s silver-handled mirror and hairbrush set be collected from our house.
Hypocrisy abounds: after robbing Venus I fished out the keys for my childhood home. We keep it locked up snugly, perhaps afraid to lose our past, meager though it may be.
I took the hairbrush and mirror from Rita’s dresser. Noting their condition, I rummaged around Father’s workroom until I found a can of silver polish and a soft rag. A canvas grocery sack hung from the foyer coat rack. I plucked it from its hook and filled it with a few canned goods, a jar of instant coffee, and some packets of oatmeal. I found five bottles of water left in the back of the pantry then I headed back to the mine.
The Dunford Incorporated coal mine had opened shortly after World War II, and had been Evendale’s main employer for nearly forty years before a tragic tunnel collapse took the lives of a dozen miners. Eventually, through resulting lawsuits and legal fees, it also took the life o
f Dunford Inc. The company declared bankruptcy and shut down the mine in 1983. It stood deserted in the arid field on Evendale’s outskirts thereafter.
I escaped Evendale in 1991, moving to the city in search of myself. At that time there were rumblings of a new company purchasing and re-opening the dormant mine, but it was not to be. After Dunford Inc. laid my father off (mercifully, a year before the collapse) he used to tell my sister and me that there was hardly any coal left in those shafts anyway. I’d always thought these words were merely a way for my father to sooth his wounded pride, but given that no one had seen fit to resume clawing at those tunnels perhaps he was speaking the truth.
Either way, the site was left to rot; its towering iron scaffolds bowing like aging men, its subterranean maze resting hushed and hollowed like some vacated netherworld.
As to the origins of the mine’s more recent and more rarefied role in the lives of the townspeople, accounts differ depending on whom you ask. That a posse had formed to rescue a child who had climbed down into the shafts on a dare and gotten lost seems to be the most common account. But the age and gender of the strayed child varies from teller to teller. A point that did run uniform through this folklore was the discovery of the emerald light.
The search party had apparently bored through one of the walls of the farthest tunnel. Their claim was that the lost child could be heard sobbing and pleading on the far side of that rugged culm barrier. When their picks and shovels and scrabbling hands finally pierced through, they found neither boy nor girl, but instead a luminescence. Were they the beams of some strange fallen sun long-interred in the earth’s bowels? A green jewel dislodged from a great crown of one who had fallen from heaven? I can only theorize based on the testimonials that have been whispered to me below, for I have never seen the light myself. Nor has Rita. But unlike me, she is convinced of its existence.
My sister loves to brand me as the eternal skeptic, one unwilling to accept there are things that lurk beyond the reach of our five paltry senses. Honestly, I cannot say I’m even that, for a true skeptic would be eager to disprove the myth of the emerald light, to expose the folly of those below. While I will concede that yes, there may well be a greenish glow in the depths of the mines, I suspect that its presence is some natural anomaly, some phosphorescent property in the carbon, or a trick of the eye when met with absolute darkness.