Asphodel: The Second Volume of the Muse Chronicles

by David P. Jacobs

  “Of course she does, Mr. Cauliflower.” She turned to him. “The majority of the Nine Greatest Muses, including the two of us, are already dead. There are a small fraction of them that are alive – Mrs. Slocum being one. She’s fragile, Mr. Cauliflower. If something goes wrong at the slightest misstep Mrs. Slocum could die again. I can’t make any guarantee that she’ll return to us or that you’ll ever find her. No matter how many times you reincarnate.”

  Fiona placed a comforting hand on Nathaniel’s back. As she did, Nathaniel flinched slightly with a brief intake of breath.

  “You’ve lived seven lifetimes with regrets, Mr. Cauliflower. I’d hate to see that trend persist. The past gives us a firm foundation to build upon. We must not be so concerned with the roots that we forget to ride on the growing, winding branches that rise above.”

  Nathaniel considered Fiona’s words. He stood upright. “What needs to be done once I get there?”

  “Mr. Rothchild has taken several inspirations from us,” Fiona said matter-of-factly. “For this to end, we need to steal them back and return everyone, including Mrs. Slocum, home safe and sound.”

  The grand exodus had already been set into motion. All Nathaniel needed was to gather his strength and fearlessly assist. Even though he may not be the ultimate victor by winning her heart at least Nathaniel could live without an added regret.

  “The individual who takes over your role of Head Muse is going to have large shoes to fill, Fiona.”

  “They’ll be who they’ll be,” Fiona said with her own smile. “They’ll bring their own wisdom, backgrounds and agendas. We must have faith that, no matter who we invite into our offices, that person has righteousness; even if it may take seven lifetimes, or even three-thousand colored pegs, to find it.”

  Nathaniel left Fiona in the narthex and passed by the pews on his way to the altar. Adam was involved in telling about his escape from Sisyphus Hill. His story was put on hold.

  “Hey! Hey Nate!” Those were the words called out as Nathaniel went by. He didn’t stop as his childhood name was called by Annette’s fiancé.

  Adam caught up with him and said “Nate, wait up!”

  “Yes, Mr. McCloud?” Nathaniel asked with pursed lips. His fingers were on Phillip’s red-colored peg ready to rotate it clockwise.

  “You can’t go to that house. There’s no getting out. Icarus and I barely escaped.”

  Nathaniel started to rotate the colored peg clockwise.

  “Trust me, bro. Annette’s marooned. You don’t know the house like I know it.”

  Nathaniel raised an eyebrow and said blandly, “You’d be surprised.”

  Adam reached for the colored peg but Nathaniel gave him a pointed look. He said to Nathaniel, “Fine. If you’re going I’m going with you.”

  With this proposition, Nathaniel looked over his shoulder at the dilapidated church and the muses who gathered at the front pews. From his standpoint Lucas was trying to converse with Icarus but was greeted by depressing avoidance. Nathaniel looked at Edgar Allen Poe who casually sat on the side gathering ideas for his future writings. He looked to Fiona who stood at the narthex door with her arms folded. She nodded to Nathaniel as if accepting Adam’s terms on the contender’s behalf. Nathaniel knew that if he succeeded with this commission he would be returning back to the same building in the original timeline. He knew that, in the correct timeline, this building would be immaculately littered with yellow flowers. The pews would be occupied by family and friends. Nathaniel knew that he would have to allow Annette to go. Though this saddened him, and though he would have to live without Annette in the long run, Nathaniel took satisfaction that his personal send-off would be spectacular.

  CHAPTER 23: A BITTERSWEET ACT OF MERCY

  On the kitchen counter sat a carton containing a dozen large eggs, a half-gallon jug of skim milk, an unopened bag of all-purpose flour, a stone jar filled with sugar, a box of baking soda, a decanter of vegetable oil, a closed cardboard cylinder of salt, a flask of vanilla and a sealed plastic bag of powdered sugar. These ingredients encircled an empty glass bowl which Doris stared at with a blank expression. She was positioned in the halo of a yellow light from a single bulb above her head. It was a slimy color akin to the mucus-like pastels of a putrid, fly-infested swamp. Her thick coke-bottle lenses, in their unflattering black frames, accentuated her profound absentmindedness.

  Doris hoped that, by instinctively reaching for an egg, the recipe would come to her. As her fingers touched the cold hard shell of the first egg, Doris felt a wave of concentrated confusion. The egg, or what the egg represented, wasn’t familiar. She left the egg alone and reached for the bag of flour. But she second-guessed herself on that, too. Her eyes shifted to the half-gallon of milk. No matter where she started, Doris frowned upon strange objects that didn’t seem to add up.

  “What are we making?” said a male’s voice. Jonas’ hand was wrapped affectionately around her middle from behind. Her lover’s chin rested on Doris’ left shoulder with his lips, and soothing voice, centimeters from her ear.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Doris tried to explain as she fell into him. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know how to cook,” Jonas told her. “Why don’t you leave dinner to me?” As he nibbled on her ear lobe, Doris closed her eyes.

  “Yes . . .” Doris sighed happily. Then her eyes opened. “No. No, I set out to make something here, baby.” She pulled from him and reached for the egg again. She was too busy with the ingredients to notice Jonas’ look turn sour. Doris went on in saying, “When I was a girl, my parents took me to the county fair. They would buy me funnel cakes. I know how to make a funnel cake or at least I think I do. I need to remember how.” Confusion swept over her. “I know the dry ingredients need to be separate from the wet –” Her words were cut short as Jonas playfully turned Doris around to face him. She wore a frilly black-and-white 1950’s house dress complete with a white apron which rippled as he twirled her toward him.

  Jonas pelted her with heated kisses and Doris fainted into them. His hand went up her skirt and Doris giggled.

  “Baby, we have guests!” As soon as Doris said these words she was sober and serious. She turned to the ingredients. “And I want to make a good impression on our newest tenant. What was her name? Annette? She’s pretty. Almost too pretty,” Doris said these three words in a whisper with a hint of insecurity.

  He turned her around slower this time and looked through Doris’ lenses to her magnified eyes. “Doris,” Jonas cooed. “I love you. You’re more beautiful, more exquisite, than any woman I’ve met.” Jonas shrugged his shoulders. “That’s not to say that Annette isn’t important. As I’ve told you, Annette is the reason that we’re here. But she’s not you. Nor does she compare.” It was evident that his flattering words, even though they were a lie, affected his personal audience as distinctly as he had intended. “You love me too, don’t you?” He kissed her fingertips.

  “Yes,” Doris blushed.

  “There isn’t anyone I could love more than you,” Jonas sang. “And there’s no one else out there who could love you any more than I ever could. No other man could possibly see in you what I do.

  It’s us, baby. You and me. I’ll take care of you. I’ll be chef enough for both of us.” The enamored look in Doris’ eyes told Jonas he had her where he wanted her. “Now, why don’t you check on our guest? See if she’s tried on that dress that you picked out for her. Meanwhile, I’ll clean everything here in the kitchen.”

  Doris surrendered her task work, smiled and flitted out of the kitchen. The superficial head wound suffered from Adam’s blow in the study had settled. She seemed as much herself as she had been. While most lovers would be pleased to see that an injury like this had healed, Jonas’ paramour façade crumbled leaving the monstrous look that was true to his soul.

  He found the ingredients and frowned. He opened the cabinet underneath the sink where he discovered the trashcan. Furiously dumping in the ingredients, and
the glass bowl, into the black garbage bag with forceful punches, Jonas cursed the items. He ripped the bag from the trashcan and sealed it with the plastic straps, double-knotting the entrance to assure no one could gain access. He replaced the old bag with an empty one. He promptly fit the trashcan under the sink and closed the cabinet drawer. With the sealed trash bag in hand, Jonas switched out the light.

  Passing by the living room on the way to the garage, Jonas spotted the bereft Lyle Slocum sitting in a tufted brown Chesterfield chair in the upstairs den hypnotized by re-run episodes of My Three Sons. Jonas grinned at his cleverness in keeping Doris from recreating the funnel cake recipe. If Doris had been successful in baking a funnel cake, performing the act would have run the risk of precipitately ending his long-standing agenda. Jonas had Doris and Lyle right where he wanted them. He was fiercely determined to do whatever it took to keep them, and the others, in his totalitarian control.

  *

  It wasn’t long after the incident in the kitchen that Jonas stopped by the open study door. His newest guest was standing in the space amid the clutter. A sleek, floor-length black satin cocktail dress clung to Annette’s figure as she stood in front of the fireplace mantle inspecting the pervasive petite witch of the Weather Wizard. Jonas wondered if she was trying to picture the farm house in which it had been taken. He wondered if Annette imagined the farm house to be the same quaint abode that he often did, which had served its purpose in the humble beginnings of he and Nathaniel. Dusty photo albums and other memorabilia from Jonas and Nathaniel’s past littered nearly every inch and crevice of the space scaling the interior’s confined perimeter. These clusters of physical evidence, which stemmed from Nathaniel and Jonas’ initial collision as children, served as a stilled shockwave that once emanated from the Weather Wizard’s epicenter.

  The house had been empty when Jonas had disrupted Phillip’s timeline. This “crap”, as Jonas so often eloquently put it, had accumulated shortly after. It had cropped up in every room like misshapen fungus. Aged furniture from previous lives led, moth-eaten curtains and fragile photo albums had sprung up so often Jonas would enter a room to find something else had appeared. Whether it was another item or trinket, like a blood-stained canvas or a kerosene lamp, or a hand-knitted handkerchief with cryptic messages in red thread, these objects would compellingly conjure memories that Jonas would rather choose to forget. When he had been a Tenth Generation muse in the department, the real judgment for his actions had come from within. Here in the living world, the longer he resided at 252 Sisyphus Hill the objects themselves, and their representations, physically appeared instead.

  Nothing tangible in the room spoke more of Annette’s involvement than the unorganized pile of unmarked violet envelopes which were scattered about the study’s desk underneath the illuminated antique brass banker’s lamp that Adam had used to bludgeon Doris. Atop the pile were three violet envelopes that were numbered “4” and “2” and “1.”

  Though her back was to him, Jonas watched as Annette lifted both envelopes and opened the flaps. Pictures alluding to Jonas’ latest additions were taken from the envelopes. He could hear her muffled anguish as she opened the “4” envelope to find a picture of her fiancé in a billiard hall accompanied by their wedding invitation.

  In the envelope marked “2” she uncovered a photograph of Nathaniel in his youth on Justine’s wedding day. In the photograph, Nathaniel was eight years old and dressed in a miniature tuxedo. Beside him was another boy, nine-year-old Jonas, who was also dressed to the nines. Behind both of the boys was the waist of Justine’s white wedding dress along with Thomas’ pant legs.

  Three photographs were found in the envelope marked with a “1.” Through a progression of time periods, they told the story of Evangeline and her reincarnations. The first image was a daguerreotype of a middle-aged Evangeline as she sat in a wing-back chair amidst the foliage of her château solarium. The second was a torn wedding photograph of Annette when she married Lyle Slocum in 1999. Lyle’s portion of the picture had been removed during the third abduction in 2009 after Jonas, and his apprentice, had forcefully broken the front doorknob with an electric drill. Lastly, Annette found the third picture in the group: a recent photograph of her as Detective Redmond which had been taken as she had exited her bridal dress shop after a fitting.

  Annette spotted another advantageously placed object amidst the desk’s disorder: A Christmas ornament constructed of a crushed soda can with the face of Santa Claus painted on it. Annette approached the ornament and, looking slightly over her shoulder and missing Jonas who stood outside of her peripheral, hooked her index finger through the attached loop of red string. She lifted the ornament several inches bringing it to the palm of her left hand.

  “There you are,” Annette said to the Christmas ornament.

  “Settling in?” Jonas asked.

  Annette gave a slight gasp and turned round to face him with the Christmas ornament clinched in her hand keeping it out of sight behind her back. Jonas didn’t mind that Annette held the ornament. He knew that once she touched that ornament Annette would be exactly where he wanted her.

  “How do you like your room?” Jonas inquired.

  Annette nodded, inspecting the study. There was a brown-leather fainting couch that served as Annette’s bed which wasn’t accommodating due to the precarious stacks of photo albums that rested on the cushion. “It’s nice,” she told him. “Vintage. Chic.”

  “Tour,” Jonas stated with a forced smile which promptly sank as swift as it had surfaced. “And be sure to bring that Christmas ornament with you.”

  He nonchalantly guided his less than enthusiastic detective around a house encased in its own foul gloom.

  She was introduced to the master bedroom where Doris sat at the vanity staring at her down-hearted reflection. Lyle was discovered in the upstairs den lodging in the Chesterfield chair with his glazed eyes glued to the flickering black-and-white images on an outdated 1960’s tube television. A woman, whom Annette recognized as Sarah Milbourne, slept soundly in a sedate ruddiness of the pink-shaded living room lamp. A book, specifically pertaining to the scholarship and properties of storms, lay on Sarah Milbourne’s waist as she dreamed. On a nearby coffee table, Annette spied a hefty stack of other college textbooks from his academic years as an Earth Sciences major. Jonas explained to Annette that Sarah Milbourne was an undiagnosed narcoleptic whom he had been assigned to inspire.

  “I felt in my heart that I was brought to her to inspire her to wake and seek medical attention for her disease. To grasp what the world had to offer,” Jonas told Annette in a full voice. There was no need to whisper as Sarah Milbourne was intensely deadened by paralysis. “But how could I, in good conscience, introduce her to a world that I, myself, hated? I knew that if she was going to wake, or if anyone in this world had to successfully survive, I had to pick things apart to make it adequate.”

  Also asleep in the living room on a separate couch was another one of Jonas’ victims: the man from whom the violin had been taken. Jonathan slept in the same troubled position which Jonas had found him. From Jonas’ perspective, Annette carried an authentically saddened expression on seeing the impecunious violinist.

  It was a look that she sported as a door to the upstairs guest bedroom was opened a crack and Annette peered in. This had been Phillip’s room during his glow-in-the-dark-starred childhood when the red peg had been turned counter-clockwise. The room was void of prior cosmic accoutrements. In the space were intentionally torn canvases of ruined paintings from Jonas’ Romanticism period as a painter; the discarded artwork was propped against the room’s four walls as a deliberate aide-mémoire of how it had originated in 1808. A wooden chair was positioned by the room’s only window. It had been the same window that Phillip had looked out in his teens when he found his mother making a bonfire of his father’s belongings. Sitting in the chair, with his back turned to Annette, was Phillip as he stared out the glass to the billowing thunderclouds. The clo
uds blotted the stars that may have inspired Jonas’ grandchild, further establishing Jonas as an empowered regulator.

  “This could have been avoided,” Jonas told Annette as they approached the stairs leading to the finished basement. “There was a broken record with a scratched melody that both you and Broccoli listened to. It was the ‘singing destiny’ on that vinyl that brought us here. If you hadn’t been so impetuous to hear the record that Broccoli was playing then you wouldn’t have known the destiny that awaited. If you hadn’t known that destiny, you would have, in all likelihood, put the envelope into that mailbox as instructed.”

  They stopped at the closed basement door. It had been kicked in at some point from the looks of things but had been rehung. Jonas did not enter. Instead, he yakked directly to Annette. “If you had put the misdirected letter in the mailbox, you wouldn’t have escaped and reincarnated through seven lifetimes. And Broccoli wouldn’t have chased you. He and I wouldn’t have reincarnated into this life and become step-brothers. History would have been different, Annette. So, in essence, the person you have to blame for this mess . . . is the same red-headed detective who’s been obsessing over this case. Irony is a depraved thing, isn’t it?”

  Annette looked at Jonas and scrunched her face into a righteous scowl. “If you’re trying to discourage me from rescuing these people, it’s not going to work.”

  “Annette, Annette, Annette . . .” Jonas shook his head with a smile. He took hold of the handle and turned it, opening the door wide. “I’m not trying to discourage you to do anything, honest,” he said with a warm, inviting smile. He showed her through the door. Annette gave him a distrusting look but went in regardless. Jonas entered the room and closed the door behind them. The single kerosene lamp-lit common room was as he had left it but with a slightly irritating festive excess in its formerly tasteless decor.

  Similarly, as the funnel cake ingredients had appeared for Doris in the kitchen, uncapped plastic totes topped with Christmas decorations had appeared as blistering cankers. There were wreaths and garlands of timeless replica foliage, crinkled oversized red ribbon bows, faded piano sheet music, a tatty snow sled from Thomas’ youth and, finally, several tangled balls of burnt-out Christmas tree lights which Luanne feverishly tried to disentangle. A fake tree stood resolute in the center of the room which Luanne had intended to embellish once the lights were in working order. Thankfully for Jonas, the Christmas decorations lacked the very enhancement that it so desperately required: an assemblage of dangling ornaments.