by Don Sloan
“Not my brand,” she says, “but thanks anyway.”
He strikes a match and lights his cigarette, watching the pale blue sheet of smoke drift listlessly up toward the gilded ceiling tiles. “So, what’s your brand? Pall Mall? Chesterfield?”
“Dunhill. It’s British. I doubt they have it here,” she says. “It doesn’t matter. I’m with you and that’s all that I want.”
But Androcci is feeling magnanimous. He has had a wonderful work day, perhaps the best in his life and he is in a classy restaurant with a beautiful young woman. “You want Dunhill, you’ll get Dunhill. I’ll be right back,” he says, and pushes the table back so he can ease his big, muscular frame from behind the table. In less than five minutes he is back, tearing the cellophane from the pack that he has bought from the hat-check girl. He taps on the pack until one slides out. Stella takes it, puts it between her cherry-red lips, and waits for him to strike a match. She inhales deeply and blows a stream of smoke away from the table.
“Thank you, Carlos,” she says, and rubs his thigh again, moving a little higher up this time. She raises her glass. “To new friends.”
He raises his and repeats the toast. She again sips her drink while he drains his glass. The fire from the Irish whiskey is beginning to go to his head. Perhaps he should order dinner, he thinks dully. He looks at Stella and grins, but he blinks several times. “Perhaps we should go to my place,” she says smoothly, sensing that he is already excited and ready for more. She does not want to wait until he is drunk and unable to leave the restaurant.
“All right,” he says, though he really wants another drink. But the raging fire in his loins is now demanding attention, and he knows that until he has consummated his desire, there will be no lasting satisfaction for him that night. Puzzled that only one drink could already make him feel so drunk, but somehow not caring, he stumbles out the front door with the young woman to the curb where a cab is waiting. It is the last thing he remembers that evening.
Candles are burning in a hundred places around the small room. It is dank, but the sulfurous smell of the burning wicks and the strong smell of tallow make the air cloying. The man, blindfolded and bound hand and foot, gags and vomits in the center of the white-tiled room. He weeps and pleads for his life. Hands are laid on his shoulders, and he is drawn back into a kneeling position, his hands in front of him. Tears and mucous mix on his face and run down into his mouth. He now prays, but the silence around him is complete, so the sounds fall flat as they leave his lips. Nothing stirs, and the five forms gathered around him in multi-colored robes are as still as church bells hanging in a belfry, awaiting the end of a funeral. A slim hand reaches out to the man’s head and peels off the blindfold. He blinks in terror, and looks into the eyes of a woman just past the age of thirty-five. Her countenance is self-assured, almost clinical, as she listens to his prayer.
“Our Father, in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done . . .” Furtively, he looks around the room. There are cloth hangings everywhere featuring demonic goings-on: horned men with pitchforks herding women and children into fiery furnaces; rosy-cheeked cherubs flying above men, weeping large, fine-textured tears, as the men are being tortured in unimaginable ways; a great, dark image of a half-man, half-wolf sitting on a throne, grinning, showing rows and rows of great, sharp teeth.
She makes no move to silence the man. But a thin, cruel smile crosses her face and she stretches her long arm over to an alcove with a single large pillar candle burning in it. From the alcove, she retrieves a photo, set in an elaborate frame. It shows a family: a seated, matronly-looking small woman with a young boy on her lap. To her right is her husband, a dapper, competent-looking man with one hand thrust deep into his pants side pocket. A gold watch chain runs in a long loop from the pocket to his belt loop. He is not smiling, nor are any of his family members. To the mother’s left, hard by her armchair, stands a young girl of ten or so. Her look is one of intense concentration, as though she is trying to penetrate the camera lens and will it to produce a photograph composed exactly in the way she wants it. It does not look like a happy family, but it is thrust nevertheless in front of the man’s eyes and held there, suspended by the woman’s slim and delicate hand.
“Do you know the man in this photo?” she calmly asks the prisoner.
“… on earth as it is in Heaven,” the man continues.
Without warning, the woman strikes the man hard across the face with the framed photograph, causing a deep cut in his forehead. The bleeding is instant and profuse and almost causes the man to black out. He wavers and slumps. Hands quickly bring him back into a kneeling position.
“I said for you to identify the man in this photograph, you immigrant pig,” says the woman.
For the first time, the man seems to be aware of what he is supposed to do. With dazed eyes, he tries to focus on the photograph, but cannot see it through the bleeding that now runs into both eyes and down his face. He begins whimpering again, and resumes praying.
“… on earth, as it is in heaven.” His voice quavers, but as he speaks the prayer his voice gathers strength.
“That’s my father in this picture, you Wop, you Italian slime. You killed him, and now you are going to die. For what you did to us―to my mother, my brother and me―all those years ago.”
And then the man does recognize the faces in the photograph, because the age of the man standing so self-assuredly with his family was no more than 40 at the time, and he looked much the same in the picture as he had on the day he came to the jobsite to press the foreman for an unreasonable deadline. They had both been much younger then, perhaps too young to settle so petty a dispute simply by talking. So the matter had come to blows, and the end had been swift, unexpected and tragic.
“It’s Mr. Claymore,” says Androcci.
The thin woman smiled, revealing large white teeth. “That’s right. It’s Mr. Claymore: my father, my brother’s father and my mother’s husband.” The photo dances in front of the Androcci’s face, thrust too close for him to really make out much detail. And the blood continues to stream down his face. He is beginning to become dizzy, and a throbbing noise in his ears is getting louder. “Do you have any idea what you did to us that day?” the woman shouts.
The man wobbles his head from side to side numbly. He is beginning to sag and lose consciousness.
“Stella, get some water to clean this pig up,” the woman commands one of the other women standing in the semi-circle. Stella begins climbing a shallow set of steps to a tiny alcove.
Moira Claymore turns back to Androcci, who is swaying back and forth. “You ended our lives when you ended his life. We had to work―all of us. All we really had was this damned house. The money we thought my father had―there wasn’t any. Turned out, he had pissed it away in a lot of money-making schemes that had never really worked, except for this house. This damned old house,” she repeats tonelessly and wearily.
Androcci pitches forward suddenly and vomits again―this time on Moira’s robe. She steps back in horror.
“Filthy pig! You filthy, ignorant Wop! You have lived far too long. It took a long time to find you, but we have finally done it and now you will pay.” Stella kneels and sponges Androcci’s face and cleans away the blood. The sting of the cold water brings him back to full consciousness and he begins to struggle against his bonds. He lurches forward and knocks Moira back against the cellar wall. Now he is in a standing position, but his legs are still tied and his hands are pinioned in front of him. He is a very strong man, and the sedative that had rendered him inactive enough to be trussed up when they had kidnapped him far away in New York is wearing off. His face takes on a grim countenance and he pitches first one way and then the next, like a bull hemmed in by bullfighters. The other women shrink back against the walls as he hops and stumbles around the room, trying to reach the ladder. He somehow knows that if he can make it up the ladder, he can get out the door to freedom. For he knows now what place he is
in, and the fear that had gripped him earlier, though very strong, is now ebbing away.
“Get him! Knock him down! Don’t let him reach the ladder!” Moira shrieks. One of the women picks up a nearby brick and hits Androcci in the head, over and over. He yells, a deafening, enraged sound in the small room, and he head-butts her away. But the other women are on him now, and are dragging him back to the center of the room. His head aches and the blood continues to stream into his eyes. He knows he will soon pass out and then he will have no chance at all.
“You are giving far too much trouble, you Italian vermin. People like you should not be allowed to breathe the same air as the rest of us. And I am going to sacrifice you to our Dark God in the belief that you will be the first to go to that special hell even worse than the one we grew up in.” Moira pulls a long knife across his throat and he stops struggling.
“I didn’t mean to kill him, I swear.”
“It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t mean to do. You did what you did, and we have suffered a long time. You will only suffer a short time, but it will be good to watch.”
And with that said, she makes a long, deep incision into his windpipe. He is too weak now to struggle much, and he can only utter small, inarticulate sounds, as the blood flows from the incision in his throat as well as the cuts on his head. He falls to his knees and rolls onto his side. A bright red pool is growing around his head and the women begin a terrible chant, offering up this great sacrifice to their heathen God, the Father of all that is evil on earth.
“You will pay for what you did,” Moira says, smiling. “You will pay now and my father will finally be avenged.” Saying this, she speaks a short, chanting prayer of malevolence and dark oaths, and draws the knife back and forth against the man’s throat, holding his head by his black hair, and quickens her motions until it seems as though she is sawing a tree, or playing a hideous cello. Back and forth and back and forth, while the man gargles and sputters, and his eyes grow to be as wide as silver dollars. Finally, Androcci’s head comes completely off, and she lets it roll a short distance away from his body. Moira yells triumphantly and all the women—except Stella, who withdraws a little way in horror—gather in close to make the chant louder and more terrible. A salty, pungent smell fills the room along with the smell of burning tallow.
And, faintly, over in the far corner, a dim blue sheet of smoke goes up to the ceiling from a single cigarette, cupped in the palm of a man leaning quietly against a post. He smiles and rubs something deep in his pocket, then turns and begins climbing the ladder.
Chapter 10
Nathan curled up in a blanket on the sofa, watching the flames in the fireplace. He had built it up strong and hot before moving to the sofa, and now he could not sleep. The house was very quiet. After he had tucked Sarah into bed upstairs he had gone outside and found a quarter moon rising in the east over the ocean. The beauty of the late night scene was touching, and it eased some of the trouble that filled his heart. He lingered on the porch for a long moment―it was still very cold out―and then he had taken the blankets and pillow Sarah had provided to make his bed. There was nothing to do but sleep. He had turned off most of the lights, reasoning that running up the electric bill would be of no use whatsoever, and Sarah―who had taken a mild sleeping pill that her doctor in the city had prescribed shortly after the break-up with Rob―was already asleep. He had checked on her twice in the last hour, climbing the dark stairs quietly and slipping over to look at her sleeping form. How childlike she had looked, curled up in the middle of the big four-poster bed. It would scarcely have surprised him to see her with a thumb in her mouth. She was bringing out a fierce protectiveness in him, one that he had only known a few times in his life, and that only with people he really cared for.
“Does that mean she’s the one that is meant to be with me forever?” he asked himself quietly now, as he sought sleep on the sofa in front of the fire. “Is this what happens? After years of being on the lookout for the right person, they suddenly and for no apparent reason just fall into your life?” No answer came to him―just an empty ache that made him melancholy. He brooded for a long while until his eyes drooped. Then, he went to sleep.
Nathan’s dream began by sliding him into a deep, deep slumber as quickly as if he had ridden a long slide to the bottom in a playground. But it was no playground he found himself in. He was in a tuxedo, complete with white tie and tails, and he was in a house very much like this one, but not this one, and not his own. Somehow he knew this, and he blinked rapidly as he ran his fingers over the keyboard of a sleek, black grand piano. He played well and proficiently, moving from one classical piece into another. He looked up once and saw that a roomful of people was listening appreciatively to his concert, and he wondered how he knew how to play the way he was playing. He had only learned to play piano with a few lessons from his Aunt Millie. Yet here he was, as proficient as a young Van Cliburn, playing as though he were in a competition. His hands fairly flew over the 88 keys, as though he had known them all his life, and made the playing of these pieces his special passion.
The room began spinning, first slowly, as though he were sitting in the middle of a carousel, then faster and faster. The crowd of people and their faces began to whirl by at an alarming speed. Thus, he deduced that the room itself was not spinning―only himself, and his grand piano. This felt very odd, and gave him vertigo, so he decided to concentrate on the keys, and on his playing. He had reached a portion of the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in G minor, Op. 33 by Dvorak, and it was difficult to recall. As he watched his fingers fly, they became like quicksilver, flowing from one key to the next and then blurring into flesh-colored masses that writhed on the ends of his arms, like tentacles. Still he played on and he stole a quick glance up.
The room had changed to a prison cell, and as it spun by, he was aware of a sparely covered bunk and mattress, a toilet without a cover or lid, and a barred window through which he could see the quarter moon rising. He wondered what heinous crime had put him there and he quickly returned his gaze back to his hands, which still flew up and down the keyboard at an amazing speed, making the instrument sing like a large, ungainly songbird. He glanced down at his chest and found it bare. He no longer wore the stiff white frontispiece of the tuxedo, with its pearl studs, but the coat remained. He shifted a little to the side on the bench as he played, still faster and faster, and discovered that his pants were also gone, along with his underwear. He was, he discovered, stark naked, except for a tuxedo jacket, and playing Dvorak in a prison cell. He was smiling, because he knew it was a dream, and he wondered how he was going to tell Sarah about it. Then, the dream took a turn for the worse, and his attention was riveted back as though a hand had grabbed him by his hair and forced him to look to his left.
The cell was gone, and the room in which he had started was no longer spinning. The people were gone, but the room remained, lifeless and in shades of gray and brown. Here and there was a splotch of color, as though someone had hand-colored a sepia print and placed him inside it. He stopped playing and slowly rose from the bench. He heard music, an old record of Dvorak, the same symphony piece he had been playing, coming from another room, and he went toward it to investigate. The house he was in had the wide hall of both his and Sarah’s house, but with enough cosmetic differences to let Nathan know he had somehow been transported into another house on Beach Avenue. He wasn’t sure of the year, but the music playing did not sound as though it came from a CD or even from a phonograph record. He moved carefully into the great room and saw that the music was coming from a tall upright piece of furniture, as large as a small refrigerator. The lid was up and he saw a round copper sheet turning slowly on the top. He noted tiny square holes that passed over a roller, and he guessed that this in turn drove a series of metal rods beneath it like tuning forks, representing the strings of a piano, and the round plate tweaked each one in rapid succession. This gave the rich sound of an orchestra playing the famous piece,
and the boxy instrument poured out the music through large, open doors on its front.
“It’s a music box,” Nathan said. “I’ll be damned. The biggest one I’ve ever seen.”
And he was mesmerized by the sound. It flowed right around and over him, as though he had stepped into a swift river, and he could feel each succession of notes as they briefly kissed his naked body and then flew on into the rest of the house. He began to dance slowly around in a circle, stepping off in side to side quarter turns, and holding his arms as though they held a beautiful partner.
He moved to his right, past an elaborately upholstered armchair, and past a potted fern out into a garden. French doors opened wide out from the great room, and through these Nathan danced, pirhouetting like a ballet dancer, into the balmy cool night air of Cape May. The season was mid-summer, and he could hear faintly now, over the sounds of the music box, the crashing of the waves.
Around and around the terraced patio he danced, naked as a baby, except for the cutaway white jacket with tails, and he did not care. His mind filled with wonder at this beautiful, dancing sensation and his sudden ease with music and the experience of it, and he looked up into the heavens above him and at the quarter moon, which had now risen high in the velvet night sky.
Around and around the patio he danced, like Fred Astaire, better than Fred Astaire, he thought, stepping as lightly as though he were on air and his movements as fluid as fine oil. He looked down and saw that he was no longer on the patio, but far above it, looking down on the house and the ocean. He stopped dancing and just looked around him. The night sky was cooler up here and he could see clouds coming from out beyond the horizon, storm clouds.
Lightning skittered and flaked inside the clouds and he began to be afraid. He was not rising any more. He floated motionless above the house, which he now saw was three down from his, and on the corner of Howard Street and Beach Avenue. The old place had been abandoned years ago and he saw the weedy yard in dark shadow far below him.