by W.S. Lacey
“Won’t.”
“When the General gets here, he won’t think highly of your insubordination.”
“Don’t care. Won’t go.”
“I’ll shoot you.”
“I’m not going.” There was a long silence. Spender and North descended part way and looked down at the soldiers.
“Excuse me,” North shouted. The men jumped and looked up. “We’d like to come down.”
“Who are you?” The officer in charge looked up at them, his feather swaying slightly.
“Oh, no one in particular. We’d just like to go in that chamber.”
“If you come down here I’ll bloody well shoot you.” A second officer leaned over and whispered in his ear. “Actually,” the first officer called up, “that will be fine. Go in and see what’s happened to the others.”
By this time, they had gotten to a ladder that was propped against the bottom of the steps. The soldiers were all crowded back by the far wall and looked warily at the doorway. Spender looked above and saw the great carved stone wall with the eye at its center. North ducked his head and looked into the gloom beyond the doorway.
“Are you afraid of what’s in there?” he asked the officer.
“Never mind. Go in there-” the second officer whispered again, “yes, go in or we’ll shoot you.” Wanting to placate the officers as quickly as possible, Spender and North hurried through the door and came vis-à-vis with the sphinx.
Spender, being somewhat ill prepared for the reality of a monstrous stone chimæra, slipped in a pool of blood and thought fleetingly of taking his chances at being shot. North, who was slightly less unmanned, had the presence of mind to see that something not at all pleasant had happened to the other soldiers. Little remained of them aside from mangled weapons and gouts and splashes of blood on the dusty floor. The only noticeably ill effect the sphinx had suffered was a light scratch on the surface of its right forearm.
“Deeply incompetent,” it grumbled. “Refused to guess at the questions and tried to just charge in. They had no sense of the decorum this place demands. I have sat,” the sphinx swept a screwed up saber from the front of her blood stained pedestal, “on this spot since the very moment the eternal and mutable chaos was given form. The chaos, from whence all things come and to which all things return, stands directly behind me and I am its guardian.
“And these men,” the sphinx picked a bit of red fabric- possibly breeches- from its teeth, “charge in, waving their weapons, saying things like, “Give it up, you” and “We’ll haul you out piece by piece”. I’ve responded properly and I think that’s cooled their desire to storm the gate.”
“Why are you guarding it?” The sphinx kneaded its paws on the stairs leading up to the base.
“It’s pure being, Mr. Spender. It existed before someone began using pieces of it and it will exist long after its prison decays.”
“Why is it imprisoned; what exactly is it?” Spender asked. North, who had meant to interject, was thinking of the strange and beautiful cosmos that awaited them. The sphinx glanced dispassionately at the doorway where a small contingent of soldiers huddled together and seemed to be trying to go back the way they came.
“If you wish to pass, you must first answer three questions,” it said in a way familiar to North.
“The General will be here soon,” one of the soldiers called out, “then you’ll be sorry.” The sphinx sneered, insofar as it is possible for a stone sphinx to sneer, and looked down at Spender and North.
“I think you two had better go in,” it said. “It’s safer and it’s where you’re meant to go.”
The sphinx’s jaw dropped open and there was a scuffling sound as all the soldiers fought to be the first one out of the chamber. Though Spender had known what to expect, he had to admit that it was highly unnerving.
“Meant to go?” he whispered. North shrugged and the first officer’s voice echoed from outside ‘Let’s try shooting it again’. They climbed up and hastily ducked through the sphinx’s mouth. As its jaws shut behind them and they were swallowed up in darkness, Spender realized that the sphinx had neglected to answer his question.
#
The sphinx was very old, of course, and it may be reassuring to know that it used the word ‘chaos’ in a different way than you or I might today. The sphinx’s chaos was very much like Ovid’s idea of chaos. Ovid was an old Greek type who thought that, before things were all divided up and set in their proper place, there was a great jumble of nothing-in-particular out of which everything was made. Whereas today we might think of chaos as the cat jumping up on the table during breakfast and our father slipping in the spilt milk, Ovid and the sphinx meant something rather more grand and unfathomable.
Spender and North stood on the precipice at the edge of this grand and unfathomable space and waited.
“It’s very pretty,” Spender said after a while, “but what are we supposed to do now?”
“Well,” North said, “last time I just sort of sat there.”
The nebulae drifted.
Stars waxed and waned.
It was really quite peaceful.
“What does that remind you of?” North said, pointing to one of the brilliant clouds of dust and gas.
“Map of Africa, maybe?” Spender said.
“Oh, that’s good. I thought it looked like a face. See, there’s the nose-”
“I see what you mean. What about that one?”
“A walrus.”
“Definitely a walrus.”
“What about that one?” North said.
“It looks like a woman.”
“Yes, I thought so.” North cocked his head ever so slightly. “Remarkably like a woman. Look, it even looks like it’s walking.”
“Yes-” Spender trailed off. The cloud that looked like a woman seemed to walk towards them, looking more like a woman and less like a cloud all the while until, much to their astonishment, a woman was standing in the void before them.
“Hello,” she said.
“H-hello,” Spender said. She was short- very short- and appeared to be wearing a dress made out of the stuff from which she had materialized; it shone and shifted around her in an insubstantial manner. Her appearance was so unexpected and dazzling that Spender and North could think of little to say and only waited for her to say something that would doubtless be profound, interesting, and capable of sorting out everything.
“Excuse me,” North said at last, “what exactly are you standing on?”
“Nothing-” the woman said, “the stuff of creation you might call it. It’s not nearly as precarious as it looks; please come out.” North looked at Spender in a should-we-trust-this-small-and-iridescent-woman sort of way and Spender, who felt strangely happy and confident, stepped off the edge.
He felt his feet buoyed up by some invisible force and stood, or rather drifted, between North and the woman. North followed and found that everything was all right after all. The three of them floated away from the precipice and were soon in a haze of multi-hued light.
“Are you-” Spender began to ask.
“Yes?” the woman said.
“Are you somehow my mother?”
“Goodness no; I don’t look much like her at any rate, do I?” The woman paused. “And in a way, I could be. I’m as much your mother as your dreams are you, do you understand? This,” she gestured at the cosmos, “is what remains of your mother and I’m a physical manifestation of it all.”
“You’re a manifestation?” North said.
“Yes. You needed someone to speak with you and this is much friendlier than talking to a vague collection of æther. Please have a seat.” Miss Manifest had conjured up a table and chairs that nebulously shifted and sent out wisps of mist. “You’ve come at the perfect time.”
“What do you mean?” Spender said.
“Breakfast. Strawberries and clotted cream?” It definitely occurred to both Spender and North that
the strawberries may not have been, in point of fact, real. They certainly came from nowhere and were produced by a woman who likened herself to a dream. Nevertheless, they were large and perfect and wonderfully fresh (not to mention the clotted cream, a thing which North in particular was very fond of); also, it had been ages since they had had anything better than hardtack and they were awfully hungry.
After three bowls each of the best strawberries and clotted cream they had ever had (real or not), Spender and North leaned back in their chairs and lounged contentedly.
“What’s that sound?” Spender said lazily. The sound, like distant thunder, came again.
“It’s that abominable man, I’m afraid,” Miss M. said. “We haven’t much time.” She pushed aside her picked over bowl of strawberries and looked grave. “Adelard Odd murdered your mother, Lewis, and used the undying part of her to create everything here. His intention is to stay here forever, and to bend things to his will.” Rumbling crashes echoed through the haze in a muffled way and North wondered how the sphinx was faring.
“That is why he wants to enter here,” Miss M. continued. “His power is nearly absolute; this is the only place left unconquered.”
“What would happen,” Spender said, “if we were here when he got in?”
“As I said, his power is nearly absolute.” They fell silent and the booming sounds reverberated around them.
“To be perfectly honest,” Spender said, “I don’t understand most of this- any of this- and I desperately want to before my impending death.”
“Ease your mind, Lewis. You aren’t going to die today as far as I know.”
“I’m not?”
“When you came through the Door, was there wind?”
“What?” Spender was perplexed to the point of being aghast.
“Was it a windy day?”
“Yes,” North said distantly.
“I thought as much. Before you go-”
“Go?” said Spender.
“Yes, go- you must know what to do. Adelard Odd didn’t pop into existence one day, he was made. Find one of his makers. I’m afraid that this is the last time I’ll be seeing you.” She placed a small hand on Spender’s. “Goodbye.” Everything assumed a severe tilt and they felt a familiar slipping, falling sensation. The muffled crashing turned to an earsplitting crack and, suddenly, it was very cold and wet.
Chapter Sixteen
Spender blundered out of the stream, breaking the thin film of ice as he went. North was already on the bank, wringing water out of his jacket.
“We’re back?” Spender asked, shivering.
“Yes, and we’d better get inside somewhere; your hair’s already frozen to your head.” They began walking fast to keep warm and soon pushed through a scant hedge and onto a road.
“After all we’ve been through, we can’t possibly freeze to death here,” Spender said.
“I don’t think we will,” North said. “There’s a milk man coming this way and Quartersoake is only three miles away.”
“How can you possibly see all that?”
“Well, there is the sign there,” North said, pointing to a post at the side of the road on which was written ‘Quartersoake 3, Finchmere 10’.
“Oh,” Spender said, feeling silly.
They hailed the milkman when he came into view and he reined in. As they clambered up into the back of his cart, he expressed his astonishment at finding “two young fellows out here and soaking wet as well.”
“We were bird watching,” North said promptly, “and the riverbank we were on collapsed.” The milkman said something about being able to watch birds perfectly well from a kitchen window and Spender marveled at the facility with which North could fabricate lies.
In addition to his cream and milk and eggs, Mr. Harris also had brought to his door a pair of shivering, miserable young men whose clothes crackled when they walked. Spender was about to knock when the door opened and Mr. Harris, still in a dressing gown, recoiled.
“Oh!” He looked closely at them, as if to assure himself that they were real. “My apologies; I wasn’t expecting anyone to be on my doorstep. I beg your pardon, are you covered in ice?”
“Y-yes,” Spender said. “May we come in?”
Mr. Harris said, “Of course; you can’t go around covered in ice in this kind of weather,” and led the way into his kitchen.
“Let’s break those clothes off of you,” Mr. Harris said. “You know, you could warn one before dropping by. I don’t understand why it is that you always come round in the morning.”
“We don’t really understand it either,” North said. Mr. Harris, who was arranging articles of clothing in advantageous positions around a warm stove, looked at them suspiciously.
“You know, I think that this might have something to do with that Door. However,” he adjusted his glasses, “I can’t really incorporate such a thing into my view of reality so I’m going to go on believing that it isn’t real.”
“Can’t incorporate-” Spender repeated wonderingly.
“I’d probably go mad if I had to face an idea like that. Wouldn’t do at all.” Mr. Harris whistled cheerily for a moment and broke off suddenly. “I say, we’re of a size, more or less. Let’s see if we can’t find something upstairs for you.”
It was clear to Spender and North that Mr. Harris favored tweed. They sat, like brown and slightly rumpled brethren, around Mr. Harris’s table and had coffee, bacon, and a scramble. After they had finished and thanked him for his hospitality, Spender was struck with a thought.
“You seem to know more about Adelard Odd than most.”
“I flatter myself that I do,” Mr. Harris said.
“Do you know where he came from, who made him what he was?”
“Made him? I suppose that’s one way of putting it. What I know is that, before he developed a disturbing habit of doing unpleasant supernatural things, he was a playwright named Alard Fletcher. Then he met Dr. Holroyd.”
“Dr. Holroyd?”
“A debauched, disgraced doctor who dabbled in some pretty perverse things- secret societies and black arts, the whole mess.”
“Is he still alive?” North said.
“As far as I know. He fled the country ahead of charges of gross indecency and obscenity. He only just avoided arrest.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“Tunisia, as I heard it. He went incognito but did a really poor job of it.”
#
After Mr. Harris had kindly dropped them off at the Humber, they sat with North behind the wheel and looked at the barren field that had once been an asylum. The wind had pushed over the precarious tower and Odd’s Door now lay on the ground amidst the rubble.
“That must have been the jolt that sent us back,” North said.
“Yes.” Spender was pensive. “North, how am I going to get to Tunisia to see this Holroyd?”
“I thought we might travel by ship.”
“Do you really mean to continue on?”
“I do.” Though he didn’t say so, Spender was grateful and happy in the way one is when one’s very good friend is particularly kind and reassuring. They drove in silence.
“What do you think would happen if the Door was completely destroyed; would things go on there with no way of getting in or out?”
“I don’t know. If anyone does, I bet it’s Dr. Holroyd.”
“He doesn’t sound particularly safe.”
“I don’t think any associate of Adelard Odd would be. We’ll just have to be careful.”
Chapter Seventeen
“I cordially hate him,” Tom said.
“Whyever do you hate him?” the Very Pretty Girl asked.
“I only dislike him for his money and good looks,” he said, “and that makes me feel guilty for being so petty. It’s the guilt that makes him absolutely unbearable.”
“You hate him because he makes you feel guilty for hating him?” Tom and t
he Very Pretty Girl paused as a few members of the audience tittered politely.
“He really should know better.”
In the wings, Fletcher stood with his arms crossed and a look of dissatisfaction on his face. The director, one Mr. Dodd, stood beside him watching the actors banter.
“Everything all right, Mr. Fletcher?” he said.
“Do you know why people have come to this theater, Mr. Dodd?”
“To see the play, of course.”
“No, they’ve come to see each other; to see and be seen, more accurately. This play is nothing but a suitable pretense for carrying out social intrigues.” Mr. Dodd said nothing to this and looked uncomfortable because, if he were to be completely honest, he agreed. “They call my work ‘inconsequential’,” Fletcher continued, “and the worst of it is that they’re right.”
“Critics,” Mr. Dodd said sagely, “will criticize, Mr. Fletcher. It’s best not to let them bother you.”
“It’s a strange thing for a writer of comedies,” Fletcher said, still watching the stage, “but I absolutely hate being laughed at.”
Late that night, Fletcher returned to his rooms. He lived in a neighborhood full of artists and people who spent much of their days contradicting each other and writing pamphlets. Because of this, there were voices and the smell of cigarette smoke spilling out of the dimly lit courtyard that lay just below his window (even though it was late enough that more stolid and less idealistic people were long in bed). Fletcher did not, as a rule, bandy words with the artists and pamphleteers, nor did he involve himself in their search for beauty and truth. He did, however, keep appalling hours and depleted bottles of green stuff that he secreted in his writing desk. These practices, frowned upon as they might be in more a more respected quarter, were taken as a matter of course among the bohemian element and so he found himself more or less at home.
He tried to sleep and, when that proved impossible, to write. He found himself pacing his room and thinking about a girl that he had met at a party once- the way her hair fell just so, the shape of her ears, and the delicacy of her collarbone. With a paroxysm of self loathing, he found his green bottle and several sugar cubes and diverted himself in this way for some time.
It was when he had gone through his sugar cubes and water and was feeling rather swimmy in the head that he noted the silence outside his window. He tried looking at the time but the clock was behaving strangely and he made the decision to find the window and get some air. He leaned out and watched as the stars reeled about in the sky when he felt something drawing his gaze down.