The Vorrh tv-1

by B Catling

  PART THREE

  “In some country everyone is blind from birth. Some are eager for knowledge and aspire after truth. Sooner or later one of them will say, ‘You see, sirs, how we cannot walk straight along our way, but rather we frequently fall into holes. But I do not believe that the whole human race is under such a handicap, for the natural desire that we have to walk straight is not frustrated in the whole race. So I believe that there are some men who are endowed with a faculty for setting themselves straight.’”

  Nicholas of Autrecourt, Exigit ordo

  “The grandiosity of ‘paper buildings’ like Brueghel’s tower of Babel, Boullee’s funerary temples, Piranesi’s prisons, or Sant’Elia’s Futurist power stations have been realized, and by an amateur, a fanatically motivated little lady from New Haven whose dream palace was crafted with Yankee ingenuity.”

  John Ashbery

  1

  “…and as the disputational .44

  occurred in his hand and spun there

  in that warp of relativity one sees

  in the backward turning spokes

  of a buckboard,

  then came suddenly

  to rest, the barrel utterly justified

  with a line pointing

  to the neighborhood of infinity.”

  Ed Dorn, Gunslinger

  He stood before the oval mirror, combing his beard. He had lost weight again, and the furrows under the white strands looked dark grey, deep rills and valleys in a late, gaunt sliver of moon. He wore his finest shirt, one he had bought in Jermyn Street, at London’s most renowned tailor, The Consort’s own shirt-maker. There was a flicker in the peeling glass, tarnished silver curling away from the polished transparency, the shadow of a woman passing. He ignored the unimportant flicker of the past and looked closely at himself, catching the roaming eyes for a moment and holding them out of focus, not wanting to see into their meaning. The glass had warped since the time of his wife, become thin since her fatness had moved away. Perfumed colour and greasy powder no longer wallowed in its gilt frame; now, it was only the empty grey of his eyes reflected in its shallows, sphinctered tight against search or understanding.

  The doorbell rang: his carriage had arrived. He donned his surtout coat, picked up his cane and his new formal day hat and hurried for the door, his old bones creaking against the speed. He was on his way to meet the Grand Dame, and he must not be late.

  The carriage rattled as he held tightly to his stick, jittering with excitement and nerves; he had always wanted to meet her. She had sent the request through the Stanfords, inviting him to take tea with her on this bright March day. He was fascinated by her diminutive beauty and gigantic wealth, having seen the former many years before, across a ballroom as he passed through the garden. She was not a classic beauty, like one of the willowy Long Island sirens who fluttered and coiled in the gleaming white of society’s grandest parties. Her attractiveness came from within and radiated her every movement with grace and charisma; not a polished diamond, but an energetic nugget of strength and robust dignity. Since then, she had been overwhelmed with money and grief. The wasting death of her only daughter and untimely demise of her husband left only her loneliness to break her, and her vast inheritance to haunt every hope of an afterlife.

  Sarah was the only benefactor of the fortune earned by the enormous success of the Winchester repeating rifle, the gun that ‘won the west’. It was a greatly evolved version of the clumsier Henri rifle, and a revolutionary design: a tubular magazine sat under the barrel and fed twelve rounds into the breech by means of an under-lever, which also acted as a trigger guard. The lever action carbine could be rapidly fired from horseback. The firepower and speed of delivery made it a superior weapon to all that had gone before it.

  It tidied away the few remaining tribes who refused to yield to the white invasion. The gun, and its heavier calibre brothers, cleared the plains of the buffalo and every other creature with a price on its tail or horn. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the northern army bought the gun in vast quantities and money gushed and splashed into the Winchester coffers. It shot one bullet per second, and possessed a trajectory that wiped out half a generation of neighbours and friends.

  Sarah’s tears never really ended. After the first five years, they simply turned inwards. Her eyes would well and weep inside her lids, hollowing the flesh beneath the fine skin of her cheeks and finding her throat, so that she might swallow down the wet pictures of little Annie wasting at her breast. The child had nothing except ferocious hunger and pain; between its skeleton and its skin, no flesh or fat grew.

  Almost fifteen years later, she would swallow her pain with the rotted lungs of her young husband, as disease ate him away. He, like his screaming daughter, shrivelled in her arms. It was said that she balanced precariously on the edge of madness at the beginning of the 1880s, but some kind of resilience kept her from stepping over its line. She wasn’t sure where it came from: it certainly wasn’t rooted in the mountain of money that grew behind her grief, for she had no interest in that; there was nothing it could buy and so it stockpiled, a burgeoning model of her ballooning anguish. There had to be a reason why so much horror had quenched so much joy; when she eventually found it, it was appallingly obvious.

  He had come to explain. With his pale smile and his gentle hands, she had no doubt that it was her husband being described, standing at her side, beyond the reach of her untrained eye. He was here to explain their evolution, and lay her personal guilt to rest: none of this was her fault.

  The medium held a handkerchief to her face as she spoke his words for him, consoling him and encouraging him to speak more clearly. He said, through her, that those who had been slain by the terrible weapon were vengeful and returning, that they followed the dollar line back to those responsible, and that she, by default, was the only one left. They had taken William and Annie (who were happily together on the spirit side), but their anger was not extinguished.

  Salvation was possible, and it had a physical form. Her husband told her to build a house, a mansion, for herself and the dead to cohabit; one large enough to accommodate every lost soul, before they came homelessly scratching at her existence. She must never stop work on this ambition, he warned. The house must continuously grow; if its expansion ceased, she would die, and they might never meet again on the other side.

  Sarah left the séance that day with hope and a purpose; after years of pain, she finally had something worthwhile to channel her money and energies into. She had been given a first deposit on a new life, a pilgrimage that would divert Leyland Stanford’s train lines to the building site of her new home in the west, and she thanked the medium for guiding her in the right direction. She employed an army of workmen day and night to construct a monstrous labyrinth of wood to hide herself in. Llanda Villa multiplied around her, its blind corridors and infatuation with the number thirteen snaking in all directions, funnelling the furious demons and mortally wounded ghosts into blocked passages, insane turrets and flights of stairs which ascended, essentially, to absolutely nowhere – but always away from the nucleus of her grief.

  Muybridge had heard it all, but his memory was selective and grievously affected by his need. Sarah Winchester was a woman of influence and beauty; he admired her purity. She had never remarried and was fiercely loyal to the memory of her deceased family. She would understand him, he was sure of it. She must have heard about the incident with Larkyns. He was certain that she would appreciate his justification and see him as a chivalrous gentleman as well as, he hoped, a significant artist.

  The carriage stopped before the garden entrance of the growing house. He stepped down and walked up the path, passing by the fountain and up to the porch. The pillared entrance was cool and elegant, a mechanical glade of craftsmanship. The door opened and a hushed man took him inside.

  The house was immaculate and squeakingly new. It smelt of polish and sawdust, both scents sharpened by subtle undertones of varnish. The hand-fitted
marquee flooring was perfect and infinite; he seemed to follow the man forever, unable to resist occasionally dropping back for a closer examination of each detail and angle. They entered a hall whose possessions outnumbered all the other rooms put together. In the centre stood a piano that dominated the furniture and pictures. These were obviously the occupied parts of the house. The other rooms were token, superfluous, but these rooms had life. He could feel her presence in the next room.

  The hushed man left him standing and went ahead, closing the door behind him. His anxiety twitched his hat and cane and he longed to lay them down, but dared not risk causing offence. He fretted and looked around the room, said belongings tapping against his leg. Murmured voices could be heard and then the door opened and his host stepped forward, holding her hand out in greeting.

  ‘Mr. Muybridge, thank you for coming.’

  He was shocked by her appearance. The lady of his historical glimpses was utterly changed. She had thickened, become solid, not with fat or ease, but as if the gravitation of the world around her had changed. She had become compressed by her circumstances, by the weight of the house. Her face was lined and hollowed, yet each line was somehow attached to the plumpness of her skin; she was a contradiction of form, almost as if the contours of her expression had been painted over the wrong surface. The layers of make-up, stencilled over her once flawless complexion, gave her face a strange hint of varnish. Only her teeth remained perfect, though her eyes had retained a glimmer of something constant and disconcerting. In the distance, hammering could be heard, but he tried to ignore it. He bowed slightly and gave her his hand.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs. Winchester,’ he said, a boyish blush blooming under his pale skin. ‘I was delighted to receive your invitation.’ She smiled graciously and led him through to the smaller sitting room, where tea was already laid out on a small dining table. They sat and spoke politely of weather and acquaintances. After twenty minutes of stiflingly obligatory formalities, the conversation at last began to move towards the purpose of her invitation.

  ‘The Stanfords have been introducing me to your work, Mr. Muybridge. I must say, I am quite impressed.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am. May I ask which photographs you have seen so far?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, pictures of mountains, a volcanic place and the primitives dancing in a circle.’

  ‘Ah, the Ghost Dance,’ he said with glee. ‘I am the only person ever to have photographed it.’

  ‘The Ghost Dance?’ she said, her attention caught in exactly the way he had hoped. ‘What is that?’

  ‘It was a belief held by many native tribes that they could summon their dead to help them stand against the settlers who were moving west. They imagined an uprising and a joining of clans, dead and alive, to hold what they regarded as their sacred lands.’

  Sarah shifted forward slightly in her hard-backed chair. ‘When exactly did these dances occur?’ she asked.

  He gave her the dates of his prints and she fell silent, her mind quickly calculating their significance. A staccato quietness filled the room and she looked at the floor, the corner of her mouth twitching softly, as if something was working in her throat. It seemed wise to change the landscape and the subject.

  ‘My other experimental work is progressing excellently,’ he interjected. ‘I have captured the movement of many animals in my cameras, even humans!’

  His attempt to raise the energies of his host met with a heavy silence. She raised her forlorn eyes to look into his, and he had to look away.

  ‘I am inventing new cameras,’ he continued awkwardly, ‘with faster shutters. Triggers that work repeatedly to grab an image. A bit like your wonderful rifle, ma’am, which I once used in Arizona; a superb mechanism. I aim to develop something similar in my cameras, that same speed and accuracy, dividing time…’ Her expression silenced him.

  She held one hand to the nape of her neck and blinked, clearing her throat as her voice prepared to be used.

  ‘Can you…’ she paused again, seeming unsure of how to phrase her query. ‘Have you ever… photographed the dead?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not sure I understand, ma’am,’ he said carefully.

  ‘I am told that certain European photographers are able to capture images of those who have passed over to the spirit world,’ she stated sternly, burying a wave of emotion beneath her severe exterior. ‘I am looking for such an artist. According to the Stanfords, you are the best there is. If anyone might be capable of catching such likenesses, I am told it would be you.’

  Muybridge was appalled, but stiffened himself towards an answer.

  ‘I have never made such pictures,’ he replied, trying not to betray his inner wave of disgust.

  ‘Would you be willing to try?’ she asked, hope piercing her eyes and his internal complexes. He paused before answering, enthusiasm eluding his disenchanted artistic streak.

  ‘For you, Mrs. Winchester, I will try.’

  It was with a heavy heart that he carried his cameras, tripods and other equipment through the polished tunnels of the expanding house two days later. The séances were held in a room designed for the purpose, a circular table at its centre and small, high windows at its edges, which opened onto the interior of the house. There was no direct light; the room was located at the core of the twisted architecture, a long way in every direction from an external wall or the scent of the outside. Not that it mattered: his photographs would all be taken in the dark.

  He had seen the ‘spirit’ images she had spoken of. All were conspicuous fakes: double exposures and ridiculous montages, executed without any subtlety or skill. His opinion of Sarah Winchester had collapsed in that moment. How could anybody be taken in by such manipulated lies? It reeked of the worst excesses of affluent, puerile fiction, dressed up as truth. But the fact remained that he needed her patronage, her circle of friends, her wealth. And, with that in mind, one could forgive the beliefs and sad fantasies of a grief-ridden old woman who never left her home. Perhaps when she understood the qualities of his work and the accuracy of his scientific objectiveness, her fanciful commission may lead to more serious work offers.

  He positioned his cameras in the far corner of the room and set his face in the great seriousness of an Old Testament patriarch: it was his best posture.

  Sarah brought three other people into the room – all devout spiritualists, he guessed. Today’s medium was to be Madam Grezach, a striking woman of Polish origin. She had a smouldering attractiveness which hid beneath a face that melted uncontrollably between the ages of eight and sixty-five. She sat at the table, flanked by her sitters. Elder Thomas sat close to Sarah, to the left of the medium. On her right sat a large, horse-faced woman, whose name Muybridge instantly forgot.

  A prayer was said. Soon after its finish, Madam Grezach started to sway and softly moan, her eyes rolling beneath their closed lids. It could all be clearly seen by the light of the dim lamp that hung above. Unlike many larger circles, they did not hold hands, but placed their palms down on the table, fingers evenly splayed. Muybridge was vividly reminded of a photograph he had never stopped to take: Mexico; a row of freshly caught deep-sea spider crabs, laid out to dry in the bleaching sun, their salmon pink shells vacuous and surrendered on the sand. He shook the thought and its attendant smile out of his head without moving a muscle. Madam Grezach groaned again, in a deeper, more masculine tone. She said her spirit guide was called Wang Chi, that he was here now, to help them and guide those who had passed over to the table.

  Muybridge took his first picture on a wide-open lens and silently wondered why any Chinaman would help in this way. Outside, on the streets, the Chinese were little more than slave labour, treated like dogs, their ancient culture spat on. Sixty miles from here, he had witnessed a ‘chink-hunt’; four of the best local pistoleros had placed wagers to see how many Chinese they could shoot from horseback. Their targets were the immigrant labourers, recently dismissed after building a stretch of the new railway line. The distressed
men had fled in panic, dropping their few possessions to gain more speed. Sixteen fell that day, under a laughing hail of bullets. Nine died. One of the sportsmen was using a Winchester ‘73. It was unclear who had won the wager, but Wang Chi had either gained great benevolence or vast ignorance on the other side, for he was apparently bringing Sarah’s lost child to the table.

  The medium’s voice tightened into falsetto and Muybridge took his second picture, this time in a blaze of flash powder. All – including the spirits – had been warned about the potential intrusion, so that most closed their eyes when he said ‘NOW!’ and fired the light.

  After-blurs danced in their heads and added to the sense of aura, the smell of nitrate and magnesium stinging the closed air of the wooden chamber. Amid choked sobs and watery sighs, a child expressed her innocent love for her mother.

  Muybridge was preparing to take his third picture when the medium announced that another presence had joined them. As he squeezed the bulb to slice out another long exposure, something moved in the corner of his vision. He jolted to see it, but there was nothing there. The sitters seemed oblivious to his change of attention.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Madam Grezach, in long, drawn-out, saggy words.

  She brought her hand to her face and made a few passes over her eyes.

  ‘Someone is here for you!’ she said in operatic surprise. ‘For you, Mr. Muggeridge, for you!’

  He flinched to hear his real name being spoken, especially in front of the Winchester heiress. He moved to correct Madam Grezach when she spoke again.