by Greg James
Nothing.
“Esme, can you see...anything?”
Nothing.
Then, something. Her lips trembled, twitching, curling, hardening then softening. Falling open, her tongue hung loosely in her mouth, so very still, then it happened. A minute vibration, a pendulous motion, an utterance that was seismic in the cabin's interminable, expectant silence.
“Darkness.”
“You see only darkness?”
“ … no ... darkness ... not darkness ... bright and ... white ... white darkness ... outside darkness ... outside time ... “
“What the hell is she on about?” Fairview was breathing down my neck, an unpleasant sensation.
“Your patience, please, Mr Fairview. I assure you that your daughter is under as you requested.”
“What's all this jibber-jabber about white darkness? I want her to find Amen-Ra.”
Sweating a little, I bluffed, “The astral form cannot be guided as one of the blind. Think of her as a leaf in the wind, blown hither and yon, we must wait for her to find Amen-Ra naturally.”
“Naturally ... right ... how long will that take?”
“Please, Mr Fairview. Let me do as you have asked.”
“Okay, son. But you get me what I asked for or you don't get a dime. Clear?”
I nodded my understanding and took up Esme's hands in mine, hoping physical contact might create a grounding influence for her, like copper earthing an electrical current. “Esme, please, tell us more of who is there with you?”
I tried not to let my teeth grind together or to squeeze her fingers as I waited for a response. It seemed to be in vain as I listened to time passing, punctuated by the staccato breathing of Fairview and his coterie of followers. Though uncowled and lacking witch-like deformity, I was sure that this was the reason for their unspeaking yet oppressive presence in the cabin.
Esme was suddenly seized by a series of extreme spasms that made me wince and cringe. The urge to go to her aid was beating strong in my breast but I was well aware of the perils inherent in doing so. My childhood friend, Bertram Stephens, died before his time after a maid disturbed him during a sleep-walking episode that ended in his starting suddenly awake and then tumbling over the stair bannister to break his neck and shatter his skull on the floor below. As I hoped, she did eventually settle down but there was a marked change in her temperament when she did. There was a firmness of posture and rigidity in her bearing that was not apparent before. There was a sense of, not someone but something else being there – inside her. Dry and aching, my throat caught on her name as a needle catches on a record. “Esme–”
Her eyes opened and her fingers wound tight around my own, squeezing with an insidious strength that made me cry out and strike hard upon a most effeminate octave. God, the power in her then, and those eyes, what was stirring in them. The bejewelled emerald irises were gone as were the pupils and the whites. There was only a pulsating luminescence that brought tears to my eyes and that same surging of melancholy as before only now it was peaking into a metaphysical quaking; an abiding and biting sense of despair that went tearing into me as long as I met those eyes. I think I would have expired there and then had it not been for Fairview; eager and foolish, he pushed me aside and I fell to the floor, breaking both the hold of her hands and the alien gaze of her possessed eyes.
“Esme? You there? Amen-Ra, is that you, huh?”
From her hanging tongue came a sound that haunts me still; an echo carried from the depths of some cosmic slaughterhouse, of something slowly and wetly dying, far-off, far away, in a space that should not be and a time that we should not know. Recovering, I realised Fairview was not moving and neither were his faithful followers. It was then that I was witness to the most startling revelation of the night for, as I witnessed the spread of the contagious paralysing fit on those before me and wondered what I was to do about it, there was an utterance from the bed.
From the long-dead thing resting upon it? No, impossible!
Like a fool, I snatched up the nearest oil lamp, lengthening the wick enough that a healthy light emanated from the glass. I had had enough of shadows and suggestive gloom. Stumbling over to the bed, I held the lamp close to the dried-up remains of Amen-Ra and beheld an occurrence so small and yet so terrible that I wish I was not so willed as to set it down in words – it breathed.
The ragged mouth, which had worn down to little more than coarse paper over the centuries of internment, moved of its own volition. The reptilian skin around the teeth crackling as if it were being set aflame. I heard the unmistakable sound of air being thinly drawn into a hollow space where there were no longer lungs left to receive it.
The cry I let out and the violence of the fit that seized upon me were the cause of my temporary salvation. The lamp fell from my fingers, its glass bursting and scalding oil spilling out across the desiccated corpse. The light of the wick found kindling in her bones and fire began to devour the corpse hungrily. Soon the flames were spreading across the bedspread, consuming the frail horror that was twitching there in a beggarly fashion. It screamed, though it had no means to do so, no organic engine by which to produce such a terrible and pealing sound. The blackening twigs that had once been the mummy of Amen-Ra let loose a raging shriek; a terrifying banshee's fury. Soon enough, it guttered and choked down into smoke-tinged silence – as did the fire. It should have continued to spread but instead it died out as if it had never been. I stood away and watched the liquescent stain darkening the silk and cloth before gathering them over the incinerated mess, burying it from my sight.
The tableau of paralysis was unchanged behind me so I thought, until I looked closer though taking care not to move myself physically closer, depend upon it. I saw that the eyes of Fairview and his followers were as his daughter's - pouring forth a luminescence that would make them soon become seething singularities; portals of all-devouring pain. To look upon it was fatal, of that I was sure. Fairview had saved me by knocking me down and taken my place as the first vessel to bear this incorporeal parasite. The others in the cabin had looked and become the same. They were all empty – dead inside.
This light of darkness had passed from Esme to her father and then on to the rest. Once this cabin was disturbed by outsiders, a maid, say, an officer, one of the crew, then it would pass to them and so on. Titanic would dock in New York and the people there … it would go on and on, spreading without end. For how does cure darkness? By illuminating it. I could not think of how this dreadful light might be darkened successfully. The scope of this, what it could become, made me shake. The only thing that upset me more was what I would have to do to ensure such a future never came to pass.
*
It was a bitter night upon the starboard deck. Esme Fairview was so light in my arms as if her bones had been hollowed out, the weight of her vitality drawn away to some other space where light was a gnawing thing of pain and darkness. I wept as I carried her, wrapped in the stained sheets that once cradled Amen-Ra's extinct form. They did not stop me, Fairview and his followers, their motivating life-force similarly deadened, I imagine, by the possessing presence. However, I am sure it saw me through their eyes and surmised what I was about. I felt it as one feels the eyes of another upon the skin, a spider-like creeping sensation upon the nape of the neck. As I walked, a dead man, mesmerised by the horror of what I was about to do, I thought on how wrong they had been - the men who deciphered the hieroglyphics of Amen-Ra's tomb. How they had misread the meaning of the princess having intercourse with a foreigner; an outsider. Dear god, what parochial fools and idiots we are. We see the things of the universe by our own small definitions and thus we do not see them at all. What fate awaits us when we are so wilfully blind?
At the side of the ship, I stopped and swayed, my eyes on the waters below, so deep and so dark. Could I do this? It was murder. I would be tried, possibly consigned to the same madhouse as Alistair Pearson. The man who buried a bullet into his brain because he knew it was the onl
y thing that would take the pain of the light away; knowing the emptiness of lobotomy was the only certain cure. Still I hesitated, still I risked hands falling upon me, tearing her from my arms, voices demanding to know what I was about, the sheet coming away, the luminescence spilling forth from her eyes; their eyes, the eyes of one and all, and all then being done for. Esme Fairview was as Amen-Ra – with her demise, the light would be snuffed out, whether Donald Fairview and his followers would live again I did not know. I doubted it.
I felt the sudden lurching beneath my feet and, out of the night, out of the darkness, white and shining, a relentless and ancient edifice of ice, as old as Amen-Ra, carved by forces as intangible as that which she had let into our world came bearing down on me, I could already hear the screams, the shrieking of metal, the pounding of water gushing in, seeking to drown us all. It was so close, I could see it glistening as the glacial skull of Amen-Ra once glistened. Esme stirred in my arms, the sheets of her makeshift shroud slithering, a shapely bare foot dangling freely, and I knew then that I had no more time. I stepped forward, thrust out my arms, there may have been a cry from her, not from what possessed her but one last desperate sound from the lost soul of Esme Fairview. The small sound was quickly snatched away on the night's wind and, for a moment, I glimpsed a drifting scrap of pale cloth upon the waves below, it may have been her fair face, then it was drawn under and the iceberg was upon us.
I am not proud of how I escaped the fate that befell so many that night; surviving when better men laid down their lives so that the women and children might live. I had no qualms about being one of the few men found aboard the lifeboats when the RMS Carpathia came to our rescue. No, I dared not let myself be one of those sinking into the salt waters, descending to whatever fate Amen-Ra would have waiting for me beneath the surface of the waves. I saw her breathe even though she was long dead. I saw a light that was the quintessence of all suffering, which behaved as if it were a communicable disease. This knowledge wears away at the root of my brain. Such things as I saw are impossible by all the laws of existence we hold dear. I have seen what I have seen, heard what I have heard, and yet I still doubt it and wish to set it all aside and return to my life as it was before I set foot upon the decks of RMS Titanic and heard the name Amen-Ra. However, this was an impossibility upon finding myself in New York; my fortunes went from bad to worse and a nauseating grippe laid me low that soon grew into something far more onerous, leading me to guess successfully at its source and cause. I have seen it again a number of times since.
The sickness works upon me and the world about me seems to disintegrate, on these occasions, into a flowing loamy putrescence that, when I touch it, yields and evaporates to reveal planes of existence that I can best describe as endless expanses of howling prismatic glass. There is a white darkness there, roiling within. It blinds and staggers me as no light could possibly do in our world and it reaches out for me, burning with a cold despairing touch that pierces the heart. I realise this is where the light in their eyes came from as well as those glistening patches adorning Amen-Ra's bared skull and I begin to see deeper, I move into it, ashes cast by a cruel hand back into the fire. It knows me, somehow, as one might know an insect that has caused a wound from the way that it slowly limps and shuffles away, awaiting the fatal moment that is sure to come after you have swatted at it. I awaken from these strange moments, gasping, sometimes screaming, and I see more of these damnable growths upon my skin, very probably they are inside of me as well. Grief, the hurt of it all, the burning cold, the fucking pain!
Esme, forgive me! No, don't leave me! Not alone like this again, please!
My vision flickers, waxing, waning, and I do not think it is the fault of my diminishing candle this time. The walls, they grow seamy and the air is stifling, I taste blood and faecal matter in each slow breath I take. Soon enough, Nature will scream and, at the crescendo, she will come apart at the seams like thick, heavy theatre curtains. I must be quick, before the white darkness that lives beyond all the things we know pours itself into me. I must do it now, die, before it burns through those strange glacial planes that somehow restrain and hold
Author's note: This account was recovered from a small rented apartment in State Street, Brooklyn, New York on 15 April 1913. The apartment was disturbed by police after other tenants complained of a repulsive odour emanating from within. The rooms were found to be in lamentable condition, whether this was the fault of tenant or landlady is a matter for dispute. The occupant was also in lamentable condition, having expired, and when examined by one of the officers it was reported that the remains came apart at the seams, crumbling and releasing an even more obnoxious variety of the foul odour already noted.
The subsequent coroner's report makes for highly unsettling reading as it describes the bubonic and irradiated state of the surviving flesh, musculature and internal organs. However, the most discomposing detail is this, upon studying the bones of the deceased, the coroner found them to be made of a scintillating and utterly beautiful form of prismatic glass.
Fear and Wonder
Beauty is the mask we weave over the world’s unsightly visage. We mould it and shape it, from birth unto death, until reality is pleasingly deceitful; a most correct lie for us to suffer through. Those who wander, stumbling from the path, will find themselves in strange, unquiet places, shrouded syphilitic realms, where mendacious wonder disintegrates, falls to pieces, before the baleful gaze of the unknown fearful things that dwell therein and walk abroad.
The chill wind of the hills made Ariana gasp as she made her way along the small dirt road. It was barely a road; a grubby cleft cut through the grass and occasional sprouts of undergrowth. The sky overhead was heavy and grey. Mountains grew as teeth from the softer lines of the horizon and, gradually, they were becoming stained by the blood of approaching sunset. She was far from home and nowhere near her destination. Few animals roamed these parts and no birds sang from the isolated copses that she passed by. Each tree was bereft of leaves; their dried limbs twisting in ways painful to the mortal eye. Winter was coming. Autumn was gone. The land was dead and she was the last living thing this side of the mountains. Once she was through to the other side, there would be towns and villages; the hardship being daily visited upon her throbbing legs and aching feet would be in the past. Ahead she saw a small wood; a welcome sight, for it was the only shelter hereabouts. “I’ll bed down there for the night.” she said, “The wind won’t be as wicked with those heavy bows and boles standing about me.”
Without fear, she pushed through the rattling long-fingered branches. At the heart of the wood was a sight she did not expect to see. A caravan, all broken down, its bright gypsy wheels shattered and collapsed. The soot of a campfire resting as a dirty blackened clump near to its rear axle. There was no sign of the horses, alive or dead, that should have pulled such an antique contraption. The ground was nowhere disturbed by tracks, human or animal. Ariana felt her heart beating uncomfortably and quick in her chest. The paint on the caravan’s sides was peeling, sloughing off in skin-like reams, yellow having faded to a decayed brown. Rich reds were long gone leaving a few crusty, septicaemic orange traces. Her feet bore her towards the thing, as much as she was revolted by it. Perhaps it was all the walking, she could not stay still, she was in too much a state of being driven onward and onward to stop. Then again, it could be a sense of fascination; a desire to reach out and touch something so scabrous and lame, so obviously hidden away, abandoned by a thoughtless denizen of the world.
The door of the caravan was an open black rectangle. Her fingers grasping the crumbling frame, she pulled herself up and into the interior. It smelt bad and ripe. The soles of her boots crunched on unseen forms that scattered before her. Slowly, steadily, her eyes adjusted to the musky gloom, drawing out details from what, at first, seemed to be a colourless, blank emptiness. There were items she would expect to find in a gypsy’s caravan: decorated cloths hung over surfaces, primary-coloured cupboards, collec
tions of exotic knick-knacks, pagan bric-a-brac and so on
In the corner, there sat a corpse. Ariana did not scream, nor did she run. The dead were dead and nothing to fear. She went towards it, her eyes marvelling at the walnut wrinkles of its face, at skin shrunken so tight over the skull that there were tears in it, revealing the bleached white of bone. Fingers, withered sticks, were clasping something, fiercely wound around a bulbous shape. For a moment, she thought it was a dead child then she saw it for what it was – a mandrake root. Her tongue was dry in her mouth as she remembered the stories of how it was used in ceremonies practised by outlaws who, being cast from society, would wander wastelands, such as she was in, riding in carts and caravans, such as she was in.
The toe of her boot shifted an object on the floor. She heard it rustle. Kneeling, she placed her hands upon the weathered leather covering of a book. Gingerly cradling its fibrous form in her hands, she found herself opening it, turning the pages, and thus reading the last words of the dead man resting before her.
XVII – 'Tis true what the legends say! Poor and hungry for so long, I have at last found my fortune. I was at the gallows crossroad this evening and beheld the latest victim of the witch-hunt. Hanging by his broken neck, his tongue thrust out, purple and black veins staining his face, turning it daemonic. The hounded soul had been executed unjustly, bare naked he was, a further humiliation to add to his ample sorrows, no doubt. As I briefly mourned and made the sign of the Darkness o’er him, I espied a bless’d miracle. Sprouting from the soil beneath his swinging feet, a mandrake root, spawning itself from the fallen blood-seed of this hanged man. Tears hurried down my cheeks and I sucked at my lips, kissing myself for I had no-one to share my joy with. I tore the thing from the earth, ignoring its thrashing and shrieking, and I locked it into one of the caravan’s cupboards. To feast on the meat of such a magical being, how sweet. I shall make a soup of it, boil it into a broth, maybe roast it and scoff it down. A bellyful of black magic, a reward I am well overdue.