by Nelson Rusk
Without speaking, in a low mood, the men took leave of each other, except Muir and McEntyre who went to the castle to help the rescue services. Both recognized the high probability the police searched for them but could not bring themselves to flee justice. When they arrived at the place of the disaster, their fears proved unjustified. Many witnesses to the events of the evening had perished in the underground under the castle. No one could ever count the number of casualties that occurred during the fire, but they amounted to more than a hundred. The explosions that tore through the soldiers' quarters destroyed a large part of the British army stationed at the castle. A military funeral was held shortly afterward and the dead were buried and then forgotten.
Aftermath of the Fire
For several days after the incident, Robert Muir remained on the lookout for any news about Philips. Many soldiers were missing, lost souls who had led miserable lives and died unknown. The relief efforts paid more attention to senior officers, such as the aide-de-camp. Every morning, when the captain of his section brought news from the previous day, Muir feared to hear the despised name of the devil Philips. Still, part of him feared even more that he would remain forever in ignorance regarding the fate of the architect of the disaster that ravaged the castle. He believed his conscience would rest more peacefully if he was assured the aide-de-camp had perished during the explosion. Fate did not grant him this blessing. After several months of searching, the authorities declared Philips and the other missing persons dead.
The surviving soldiers, including Muir and McEntyre, were temporarily relocated to a wing of the castle left mostly untouched by the fire, other than the omnipresent burning smell to which the narrator never got used. Muir was not fond of living once more in this place he considered cursed. Since he had learned no trade other than soldiering, he could only resign himself to it.
McEntyre requested a reassignment to his native island. For him, who had left everything behind to get a new start away from the demons of his past, the New World had lost all its charm. The discovery of this primary and eternal evil, which originated in the depths of human existence, from continents that were old when Britain was in its infancy, had forever sullied the image he had of Quebec City. A few months later, the governor granted his reassignment. Muir escorted his old friend back to Quebec's harbor, where he sailed for New York and then London. It was with great sadness and a certain envy that Muir saw one of his last living allies depart for the open sea of the St. Lawrence.
Unlike all the other fires that occurred that winter, this time the police forces seemed highly motivated to find the culprits. Governor Aylmer himself made an appeal to the population, but their participation was mixed. There was an inherent mistrust of the English administration among the citizens of Quebec City. They preferred to close ranks on the guilty rather than hand them over to the justice of the King of England. Somehow or other, most of the key players on both sides had perished, making the investigation even more complicated.
Despite the many failures of the police investigation, Muir seemed in the last pages of his account more and more apprehensive of an impending arrest. The authorities did not falter in their attempts to extract information. The narrator had to testify several times about where he was at the time of the events. He could only answer by making lies that were unconvincing.
To avoid stirring up the suspicions against him and drawing the same suspicions on his co-conspirator, Muir never tried to contact Father Tremblay after the fire. The latter did the same. That is why, the following summer, the news Father Tremblay died from natural causes shocked the narrator. Churchgoers found his body slumped on his work desk, his life snuffed out seemingly without reason. Although his parishioners never questioned the word of the medical examiner—Father Tremblay was, after all, 72 years old—many commented on the sudden nature of this death. Days before the event, on his last sermon, the father still showed obvious signs of excellent health despite his age. The authorities added to the mystery by hastening the deceased's funeral and keeping the ceremonies to a minimum, so that few people attended it and no one could see the dead man.
From that moment on, Muir knew his arrest would come. As he mentions, he spent his whole days in his makeshift room writing this diary. For fear of being arrested or worse, and his papers destroyed, he hid his diary under the drawer of his desk, hoping that someone else would find it afterwards and that the truth would resurface.
The diary suddenly ends with the narrator describing a common day. Then, nothing more. As if the revealing lantern that is history had had just enough fuel to shine throughout the winter and until that day, and then died out. Only absolute darkness remained in its wake, opaque and jealous of its secrets, giving free rein to the most terrifying speculations. The contrast between the intimate and personal contact with Robert Muir and the intense emptiness that followed his eternal silence was for me a vertiginous abyss. An abyss whose duration of nearly a century was inconceivable for the human mind.
Ice bridge between Quebec City and Lévis, circa 1900.
January 12th, 1926 (Continued)
Waking Nightmare
I woke up with a start, my face flattened in Robert Muir's diary resting on my desk. An immaterial and yet tangible force was pressing my head against it. Haggard, I perceived that night’s darkness still dominated the room. A bluish light penetrated through the open window, like blood flowing from a wound. Unable to stand up to this irresistible force, I fought the torpor that had seized me, so much so that my chair fell backward, crashing to the ground. Stunned, the world around me was like an endless carousel. I tried to scream, but only incoherent babbling came out of my throat.
My eyesight was gradually returning. It took a few minutes before it became clearer. I realized that, in my confusion, my eyes had fixed on a shape seen through the bedroom window. In the starry inky sky, above the ghostly silhouette of the Château Frontenac, a gigantic ring had formed from a kind of bluish and swirling spectral dust. It was impossible for me to concentrate on this apparition, my vision coming in and out of focus. I could not develop any form of rational thought. My mind swayed and capsized under a sea of hallucinations—or what I hoped were hallucinations—both visual and auditory. Seas and worlds tore apart and eons unfolded in my mind without me being able to grasp the thread of time and hold on to it. What was happening?
As in response to this question, my vision became clear. I immediately regretted it. The ring in the sky was still there. I could see the volutes that formed it. They danced and created myriads of impossible forms. In the middle of the ring, the sky was of an indescribable opacity. I had the impression an infinity of layers made up this opacity, each layer representing a dimension, superimposed on the next and the next, forming an infinite collage of imagined worlds. My mind was not ready for such ravings and I remained pinned to the ground, my soul beating with boundless exhilaration.
While I thought it was not possible to have a more real, more tangible, more concrete experience, the thing opened. Only then did I understand what that ring in the sky meant. The veil of opacity lifted, showing what was behind everything. It was an eye. Of a size appropriate for a titan, this eye covered the Earth, which seemed tiny and insignificant by its side. Magnificent colors adorned the sphere, one moment blue, the other orange, at its apex all the colors at once. In this glass opening, there was the vision of the infinite. All my senses were in effervescence. I had the impression that my body screamed, of ecstasy or horror, but this impression seemed to have traveled light years before reaching me. My senses were leaving me and on the way to a massive and total overdose.
Still, I kept focusing on the eye. It represented my whole life at that moment. An inexpressible wisdom imbued the spherical entity. It contained both knowledge, spirituality, and voluptuousness. But there was a dark spot inside. It wasn't the first time I'd seen it. For some reason I did not know, my gaze came back again and again to the ridged crevice, like a drop of ink that had fallen into m
ilk. The more I stared at it, the bigger it got. I lost myself in it for a moment, just for a second. When I emerged from it, I saw that it covered the entire eye.
Without my noticing, the overall appearance of the eye had changed. While it once signified wisdom and serenity, a hideous inheritance had corrupted the eye, impregnating it with a terrible expression. There was an unfulfilled and insatiable desire for...I had trouble deciphering it...for...for...for evil? No, not that. Hate? No, it was too visceral. Sadness? No, there was too much strength in the organ for such a weakness. It was not an emotion or a thought. I finally understood it, like lightning in a summer sky. It was destruction. Pure and simple. The taste of emptiness that grips each man in his time and brings him to the edge of the abyss. There was in that eye an eternal desire for senseless destruction. Destruction as an end and purpose. Both irrational and duly meditated. Both human and beyond comprehension.
I screamed. And screamed. And screamed. At first, the sound was only weak and distant, but the more I put in a sustained effort, the more real my cries became. The gigantic eye was still staring at me, impassive to the laments of the insignificant human being I was. It looked at the whole horizon but stared at me, and only at me.
When the paroxysm of my cries had reached its peak, I opened my eyes, in a state of panicked terror. My frozen body, paralyzed by an excruciating fear, was lying like a wreck on the floor of my room. Out of breath, I held back my last scream in my throat. I looked around me. My room was the way I left it. The weight keeping me on the ground had disappeared. Through the open window of my room, an icy wind was blowing in, causing me to shiver. I got up and shut it immediately. I had opened it earlier in the evening and had forgotten to close it again, so caught I was in the tale. On the ground, my chair was knocked over, broken by the shock of my fall. Robert Muir's diary was spread out on my desk, opened at the last page.
Letting out a deep sigh, I wiped away the cold sweat that was running down my face. Despite all the signs that the recent events were only a dream, I could hardly convince myself of it. I walked to the window and contemplated the night sky. Was there a circle? At times, I thought I could guess its outline. As soon as I concentrated my eyes on it, I lost track of it. Like a fleeting dream, I could only grasp it when I let my subconscious run free.
I needed sleep. My readings and their terrible implications had chased away all possibilities of rest. I felt my nerves were tense, about to break. A soothing cotton veil seemed to cover the physical world, attenuating my sensory impulses and preventing a full comprehension of my predicament. I only had two hours before sunrise. There was no time to waste. As soon as dawn broke, I planned to search the colony's and province's archives to find out what had happened to Robert Muir. It was imperative I learned what had become of him. I also had to warn Alise of the danger we were in. I would have preferred to bring her the good news that Mr. Martin was safe, that our concerns were in vain, but the grim truth was more valuable than misleading ignorance.
After extinguishing the candles, I laid my bruised body on my bed. For the second night in a row, I slept in my clothes and on the blankets. This kind of detail seemed trivial compared to the horrors I had experienced by proxy when I read Robert Muir's diary. How was it possible to continue to live under the weight of such revelations? If what I read was true, it turned my most intimate assumptions about mankind and its place in the universe upside down. The forces revealed by Mr. Muir that strived for humanity’s destruction challenged the foundations of modern physics. How would a scholar like Einstein, whose famous theory of relativity was making so much noise at the moment, react to such a breach in the fragile edifice of our knowledge? These disturbing and unsettling thoughts led me to a restless, ineffective, and too short sleep.
January 13th, 1926
Moment of Respite
I woke up the next day as the weak northern sun filled my room with its rays. I was still tired, but my brief rest had pushed back the absolute limit of my physical abilities into the uncertain future. I showered and dressed in clean clothes, taking comfort from these routine rituals. Without further ado, I put on my coat and headed for the Château Frontenac.
When I got there, I asked the young man with the tired face at the reception desk to have my lunch brought in for me. I requested Alise, on the pretext of her impeccable service, which was not a lie. Then I hastily made my way to my office, skirting the walls to avoid any misguided encounter. Despite this, I resolved to ask a worker, with an air of nonchalance, where Mr. Martin was. He had not returned this morning, further confirming my suspicions, if that was necessary. When I asked the worker who oversaw the work in his absence, he replied that Mr. Bernard was the second foreman. This did not reassure me, since I had suspicions, admittedly unproven, against him.
I waited at my desk, with an absent look, unable to read a single line from my General History of New France. My perspective on the whole thing had changed since last night when I read that same book. It was no longer possible to attribute the evil that was brewing in the heart of the Château Frontenac to a simple coincidence. There was a conspiracy involving unknown actors, and someone would have to act to put an end to it. A nameless fear filled my soul at the thought this person could only be me.
About fifteen minutes later, Alise slipped through the door of my office, with the same stealth as I had done. She was carrying a plate that she put on the desk. Without paying attention to it, I approached her. Horror lurked in her eyes. Realizing she already knew of Mr. Martin's situation, I stated what seemed obvious:
“Someone told you Mr. Martin did come to work this morning.” She nodded in the affirmative.
“I asked a worker this morning and he confirmed it to me. My God, what the hell happened to him?” she asked in a trembling voice, “Have you no news of him?” I looked her in the eye for a moment before answering. Fear was clear despite her professional façade, which masked her youth and innocence. This situation went far beyond the limits of her personal experience. Come to think of it, it went far beyond mine. I answered in a low voice:
“I have not seen a trace of Mr. Martin since yesterday morning. I am afraid I have worse news than that. Last night, when I realized that Mr. Martin would not return, I drove to his house.” I remained silent a moment, struggling before the prospect of announcing such abominable news. Alise was hanging to my lips, her eyes glassy. I said, “Mr. Martin's house was burned down. This is without a doubt a criminal act. Such an improbable coincidence is unthinkable under the circumstances. We are dealing with very dangerous people.”
Alise remained stoic when faced with this revelation. All force seemed to have escaped from her limbs. Empty-eyed, she walked toward my chair. I approached it toward her to make it easy for her and she collapsed into it. Laying her elbow on the desk, she raised her hand to rest her head, caught in a trance. I noticed that a bandage was covering the hand on which she was leaning her head. I could have sworn that this bandage was not there the day before.
Unsettled, I grabbed her wrist and held it before my eyes. She neither resisted nor paid any attention. As I pulled off the bandage, I saw traces of a burn wound. Superficial, but over a wide area of the hand.
“What the hell is this?” I cried, in a harsher tone than I intended. She would not listen. “Alise, what is this?” I repeated several times until she came out of her torpor.
That, I... Ah, I burned myself this morning. Well, a cook dropped a pot of boiling water and splashed it on me. Eric—I mean, nurse Lefrançois—dressed me up. He told me that the wound would heal almost without a scar. It reassured me because it seemed bad at first.
But how did this happen?” I insisted. “This cook has a habit of such accidents?” She must have noticed the alarm in my voice since she answered on the defensive.
“The cook in question was Jean Beaumont. No, he's a good cook. Unsociable, but reliable and skillful. It had never happened before that he caused such an accident. You're scaring me, Mr.
Roussin, what is it?”
How to explain her my suspicions? How to tell her what was going through my mind? I could not do so, for the same reason that I had not yet notified the police when everything should have made me contact them. How could I explain what I knew without sounding crazy? How could I tell Alise that I thought the cook, her co-worker, had knowingly knocked the cauldron over on her arm to mark her with a burn wound, to use their infamous language? A week earlier, I would have considered such an idea crazy. At this moment, it seemed the only rational explanation. I tried to reduce the scope of what I had said.
“It's nothing, Alise. A stupid thought. I still believe you're in great danger. People died for what we saw in Mr. Martin's office. Be very careful who you confide in. I have good reason to believe the Château Frontenac is the epicenter of a criminal organization. It is better for you to pretend ignorance of its existence rather than to engage in inappropriate investigations. For now, let me try to find out more about it. I'll let you know if I find anything. But, I repeat, be careful,” I told her to avoid alarming her. Seeing my absolute seriousness, she repressed any objection she might have had and nodded. I said, “Okay. Try to continue your day as if nothing had happened. I have research to do that will require me to leave the castle, perhaps for the day. I'll let you know as soon as possible if I find anything.
All right. Where can I contact you if I learn anything about this case and need to give you information? It would be better if it wasn't here.” This question caught me off guard. Alise had more courage than I had assumed.