by Sam Fisher
I nod and realize he cannot see me. He goes on nevertheless.
“But there is another way in which a flame is like us. If you gaze into the heart of a candle flame, you will find it black, devoid of any light at all. Just as the yellow flame emerges from this void, so too do we emerge from nothingness. In fact, the whole, unimaginably complex galaxy around us emerged from the same nothingness — the original void, if you like.”
John reaches carefully now for the bookshelf behind him. His fingers skim lightly over the innumerable titles until they pause on one. He traces the spine and nods to himself. It is a fat, leather-bound sketchbook. He holds it out in my general direction, and I stand up to take it from his hands. I sit again and let it fall open on my knee. It is filled with pencil drawings of candles. Hundreds of pages of candles, each utterly unique and each a work of art in its own right.
“All creatures are born from this darkness, and to darkness they shall return. So it is with ideas. Ideas are creatures in our minds just as creatures are ideas in the universe, coming and going, flickering in and out of existence in exactly the same way.
“When I became aware that I was an idea who had ideas, I adopted the candlelight as a way of focusing my mind on that single curious realization. When I gazed into the dark heart of a flame, ideas popped into my head from a place I can never understand. The candle helped me see what I cannot see, to know what can never be known. Sadly, I became dependent on the practice. It became a crutch, if you will, or a thread to guide me through the labyrinth of my own mind. In time I came to realize that I could no more draw in the daylight than I could walk through walls.
“I believe in the void, Mr. Fletcher. If that is an evil from which my creative spirit draws its power, then so be it, the rumors are true. I worship darkness. Let the world judge me for that.”
* * *
“There’s a little more,” Wendy said, placing the pages in the middle of the table. “But that’s the most interesting part.”
“That’s one creepy guy,” Robbie said.
“Ugh!” Melissa said. “To think he spent all those years in Dad’s study, practicing his weird dark magic.”
Despite everything Morton still felt annoyed by Melissa’s attitude. “It doesn’t say he practiced dark magic,” he protested. “He just got his inspiration from candlelight. That’s not dark magic.”
“Uh, hello!” Melissa said mockingly. “It doesn’t get much darker.”
“Let’s just agree to say that he was eccentric,” James said, waving his hands in a calming gesture.
Morton puffed in frustration and picked up the magazine from the center of the table. He stared at the glossy photo of King. Why did everyone insist that King was either crazy or evil? Morton remained determined not to believe that was the case but realized it was getting harder to convince himself of that with each passing day.
In the photo, King was seated crookedly on a plain wooden chair in the middle of the famed circular room. Morton recognized the shelves as the same ones that still lined Dad’s study, except that in the picture they were crammed with books from floor to ceiling. Dad had always said that anyone, no matter who they were, would get smart if they read enough books. And King obviously had read a lot of books.
“I wonder what happened to all his books,” Morton mused. “There’s hundreds of them here. Even Dad doesn’t have that many.”
“I guess they sold them because he was bankrupt,” Wendy said. “I remember them emptying the whole house into a big moving truck after he died.”
Morton felt a little saddened by the thought of King’s vast book collection being split up and auctioned off to various bookstores and flea markets. Going blind must have been very difficult for someone with a passion for books. And King had clearly been passionate. Not only were all the shelves packed tightly, but precarious piles of books were scattered over the floor like termite hills. Many of the books were immensely large and ornately decorated. One book had a big black jewel set in the front and another appeared to have tree bark for a cover. Morton noticed one book was as large as a footstool.
It was funny to think that their dad was now using the very same office that King had once inhabited. The book-cluttered room looked so different and yet it was the same. All except for the books and …
Morton felt the hairs on his arms suddenly stand on end.
“I think I found something!” he screeched, jumping out of his seat.
Everyone leaned over to look at the photo.
“What is it?” Robbie said, getting up and walking around to Morton’s side of the table.
“It’s the one place in the house we haven’t seen,” Morton said.
“Dad’s study?” James said, confused. “We’ve been in there dozens of times.”
Morton shook his head. “I should have guessed. I saw bats up there the week we arrived. Look, it’s staring us right in the face.”
Morton pointed at a place on the photo directly behind John King’s head. At last everyone else saw what he saw. There on the ceiling was a large wooden hatch with a decorative brass handle.
“An attic!” Wendy exclaimed.
“Yes!” Morton said. “The turret has its own attic. It’s not connected to the main attic at all.”
“But that trapdoor isn’t there now,” Melissa said.
“It has to be,” Morton insisted.
Melissa was the first to bolt out of the room and bound up the stairs. Everyone followed, and within seconds they were all staring up at the ceiling in Dad’s study. The hatch, which was plainly visible in the photo, simply was not there. The ceiling, like a few other rooms in the house, was covered in decorative tin tiles. Everyone seemed momentarily deflated, but Morton had a clear plan of action. He held up the magazine and walked around the room until he was standing roughly where Warren Fletcher had snapped the photo some years earlier. He dragged a chair to the center of the room and pushed Robbie into a pose similar to John King’s. Then by carefully comparing the room to the photo and counting the tiles on the ceiling, he got Melissa to stand directly beneath the place where the hatch should be.
They all joined Melissa and peered up. Suddenly they could see it. If it hadn’t been for the overall disrepair of the house, it would have stood out a mile. As it was, it was a barely noticeable quirk in a house full of oddities. A large square of nine tiles was much dirtier than the others, with scratch marks running right across them and, most telling of all, four small screw holes marked the corners.
“A secret hatch,” James said. “What old house would be complete without one?”
“Now what?” Wendy asked.
“We get a flashlight and a screwdriver,” Morton said, dashing back downstairs, and a few minutes later he returned with a stepladder balanced on his shoulder, a screwdriver in his left hand, and a small flashlight between his teeth.
Robbie rushed to help with the ladder and set it up below the panel.
“Well, who wants to go first?” Melissa said, a hint of trepidation in her voice.
Everyone looked up at the hatch but nobody stepped forward.
“Do we have to go in tonight?” James said. “I mean, wouldn’t it be better to wait until daylight?”
“It has to be now,” Melissa said.
“Then let’s draw straws,” James said.
“No, I’ll do it. I’m not afraid,” Morton said, although in truth he was.
Melissa grabbed hold of the flashlight. “Okay, I’ll be right behind you,” she said in a surprisingly comforting voice.
Morton stepped up to the ladder, took several deep breaths like a high diver preparing for the plunge, and forced his feet to climb.
The ceiling panel dropped away, revealing a dark ebony hatch with a large brass ring bearing a ghoulish face. The eyeless sockets of the tarnished face made Morton feel as if blind John King himself were glaring down at him. Nonetheless, he brushed a thin layer of dust from his shoulders and gripped the ring with both hands. It rotated
easily, emitting a satisfying metallic thunk. He glanced down at the other four, who were all staring up anxiously.
He wanted to say something funny or clever, like, “Say good-bye to Kansas,” or “Let’s play Scrabble instead,” but everyone else looked so pale and serious that he decided to say nothing.
He folded the hatch all the way back and, without giving fear a chance to take hold of him, he hoisted himself into the inky blackness. He noticed a strong musty smell that for some reason reminded him of a church. “I am afraid of nothing,” he whispered, and groped his way clear of the hatch on his hands and knees, aware only of the texture of the worn rounded planks that made up the floor.
A blue-white light slashed randomly around the room as Melissa climbed in behind him holding the flashlight. Robbie climbed in next, followed by James, and last, Wendy.
They huddled together behind Melissa, who cast out the tiny flashlight beam like a narrow sword ahead of them. The darkness was so complete that it was difficult to build a picture of the room. Morton saw glimpses of stone pillars and what looked like an ornate wooden lectern set against a hazy clutter of cobwebs and grime.
“I think we need a bigger light,” Wendy said.
“There must be a light switch in here somewhere,” Melissa said.
“I doubt it,” James said. “We’re talking about the candle king, remember.”
James was right. Morton shuffled carefully over to the nearest stone pillar to discover it was a large, elaborate candleholder. A dust-covered box of plain household matches rested on a wide lip halfway down the pillar. He lit the first candle, which pushed a welcome globe of warm light into the gloom. He then worked his way around the darkness, lighting each candle in turn, each revealing a little more of the room, until the fifth and final candle was lit. Only then did he turn to take in the view.
It was like standing inside a giant witch’s hat. The conical roof spiraled up from the floor like an intricate rib cage of wooden rafters and struts that converged at the central peak high above.
Directly beneath the peak, in the dead center of the room, stood an ornate stone font, carved with hissing serpents and grinning, toothless faces — unnervingly reminiscent of the gargoyle. The five stone candlesticks stood equally spaced around it in a circle, and in front of each candle was a skeletal carcass still partially covered in mummified parchment-like skin. Each carcass had a large metal spike protruding from its back. At first Morton thought they might have been chickens or rabbits, but he quickly remembered Robbie’s tale and realized what they were.
“Are those what I think they are?” Melissa asked, in a nauseated voice.
“The black piglets,” Robbie said, crouching down to look more closely at one.
“That is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.”
“And a waste of good bacon,” James put in, with his usual dry tone.
Nobody laughed.
Morton moved to the center of the circle. A thick sandy grime lay over everything. He crouched down and brushed an area of the floor with his hand. There were some kind of markings on the wooden boards.
“What’s that?” Wendy said, leaning over him to get a better look. Morton was pretty sure he knew but said nothing. He crawled quickly around on his hands and knees, brushing dust aside to reveal what he’d hoped not to find. Someone had painted a geometrically accurate spiral in purple ink that started at the font and wound outward to the circle of candles. Morton felt something curl up inside him. This was dark magic. No doubt about it.
“What is it?” James asked, moving in beside Wendy.
“I’ve seen this in one of King’s stories,” Morton said shakily. “The spiral is like the road that leads down to the underworld. You walk along the spiral, chanting spells, until you reach the center, where you summon beings from … someplace else.”
“So,” Melissa said haughtily, “still think King was a benign genius?”
Morton swallowed and looked shiftily at the room, trying to hide his disappointment. There was no way to avoid the facts. Morton had secretly hoped for a hidden library, or a sealed office — something that would show King in a new light. But this was the exact opposite. This was the most deeply diabolical place he’d ever seen. There was nothing to redeem King at all. And the rest of the attic was almost bare. A few empty shelves, a pile of cluttered oddments and an antique trunk with two drawers in the bottom were the only other furnishings.
Wendy was crouching beside the trunk, looking in one of the drawers.
“Hey, look, more newspapers,” she said, pulling out a small bundle of yellowed papers. “They’re English. From England, I mean.”
She carried one of the papers close to the light of a nearby candle and read aloud. “The Welsh Chronicle. According to the date it’s two years old.”
“What’s on the cover?” James asked.
“Nothing important, just politics. Oh, wait a minute, I’ve found something!”
Everyone huddled around Wendy so they could see. There was a large black-and-white photo of a chillingly familiar gargoyle, with all three fingers intact.
“Why is there a picture of that in a Welsh newspaper?” Robbie mused.
Wendy shrugged and began to read.
* * *
Police are baffled by a recent theft at a small museum on the outskirts of the picturesque city of Aberystwyth on the Welsh coast. An elaborate break-in was staged sometime between midnight and four a.m. last night, but only one obscure item was taken. The large gargoyle, of uncertain origin, was not considered to be among the museum’s more valuable pieces but obviously appealed to one eccentric collector. “It’s a crazed hippie, I shouldn’t wonder,” explained Miss Penrose, the museum’s curator. “The odd little creature was carved out of Preseli Bluestone, which is the only reason I can think anybody would want it.” Miss Penrose explained that the famous Preseli Bluestone, which is found only in the Welsh mountains, was used to erect the inner ring of Stonehenge in 2000 BC. This connection would be enough, she thinks, to attract any number of fanatics to the object. It is thought that the statue itself was carved less than a hundred years ago by a modern sect of an ancient cult that believes the Bluestone holds magical powers.
Despite the mystery, Miss Penrose didn’t seem too upset by the loss. She concluded the interview with this statement:
“To be perfectly frank, I’ll not miss the ugly little fellow at all. No doubt whoever took it will be dancing around it in his underpants come this summer solstice performing some crackpot ritual. Honestly, you’d think people had something better to do with their time.”
* * *
“I’d say we know who did it,” Wendy said. “But King couldn’t have stolen the gargoyle himself. He was already blind by that time.”
“Maybe he wasn’t blind after all,” Robbie said. “Maybe he was just pretending to be blind.”
“If he wasn’t blind, then how come he fell down the well?” Melissa said.
“You know,” James said, “I keep thinking about that. There’s a three-foot-high wall around the well. Even if you were blind, how would you fall down it?”
Wendy tapped her finger to her lips in a pensive manner. “I don’t know. That Fletcher, the man who interviewed him, said he was still a bit clumsy. I mean, he wasn’t an experienced blind person.”
“I’m clumsy,” James said, “but I don’t think even I could manage to fall down that well.”
“You have a point,” Wendy said.
“What if he wasn’t blind and he didn’t fall down the well?” Robbie said ominously.
“What are you suggesting?” James asked.
“He’s suggesting that King is still alive,” Morton said. “Am I right?”
Robbie nodded. “They never found his body. What if he faked his death and his blindness? That way he could have traveled to England …”
“Wales,” Wendy corrected.
“Whatever, he could have stolen the gargoyle and brought it back here.”
/> “If King went to all the trouble to steal the gargoyle, then he must have known it was magic,” Morton said, feeling certain they were still missing something vitally important. “And if he knew it was magic, then why bury it and fake his own death?”
“Crazy people don’t need reasons,” Melissa cut in.
Morton still didn’t buy it. King might have been evil after all, but he was too brilliant to be merely crazy.
He wandered over to the font to take a closer look. Curiously it was filled with ashes, as if someone had lit a small fire in there. Half buried in the dark cinders was a lumpy black object. At first he thought it was a dead bat, but as he moved closer he realized it was the charred remains of what was once a leather-bound book.
“Hey!” Morton said, holding up the blackened fragment in his hand.
“What is it?” James asked, walking over to get a good look.
Morton carefully peeled open the brittle remnant. There was almost nothing left at all, just a few charred pages with mostly unreadable snippets of handwritten text. Only one page had anything legible, and that was meaningless. It merely said:
“… spreads, like ink on blotting paper, or fire in a forest …”
“I don’t know,” Morton said. “A diary, maybe?”
“Blind men can’t write diaries,” Melissa said dismissively.
“Whatever it was,” Robbie said, “King must have been trying to hide it. Otherwise, why burn it?”
Melissa began to chew angrily at her nails. “This is stupid. We haven’t learned a thing!”
“That’s not true,” Wendy said. “We know where the gargoyle came from, and we know it had something to do with ancient magic.”
“Yes, but none of that is going to help us get rid of Morton’s monsters.”
Morton dropped the charred fragment back into the font. Melissa was right. If anything, the discovery of the attic had only raised more questions. Was King still alive? If so, where was he? And why did he fake his own death? Was it even true that he was blind? Why did he burn his diary, if that’s what it was? And, most perplexing of all, why did he bury a magical gargoyle in a shallow grave at the bottom of the garden after going to all the trouble to steal it from a Welsh museum?