by Tanith Lee
“Trying to get me drunk again,” he said softly.
“You’ll get a good night’s sleep. Or you can leave, as you said. I don’t take prisoners.”
“No?”
“No.”
He rose. “Anyway,” he said, “I’ll play for you, before I go. What would you like?”
“Your choice.”
He paused, looking at the piano; then he turned and looked across at the mantelpiece. I’d known he would. I had known.
“Where’s the glass dog?”
“Oh that. Still upstairs. When I get the room fixed, I’ll bring it down again.”
“It means something to you, doesn’t it, the dog?”
“Yes. My mother loved it. It reminded her of the past, some happy memories, and she said to me once, When we’re gone, Roy, whatever you get rid of, please keep the dog.”
“It’s nice you had a mother,” he said.
I said, “Wait a minute. I’ll get it.”
He looked tired. For a moment he looked, as I’ve said, as we all know the young sometimes do, much older than he could possibly be, whoever’s son he was – Lynda’s, Maureen’s, Ashabelle’s – Mine.
He sat down before the piano and opened the lid, and ran his fingers along its keys, stumbling once, a false rill of notes, which I’d never heard happen in his playing before.
I was upstairs, the red glass dog in my hand, when I heard him begin a Rachmaninov concerto – a transposition which perhaps he could effect spontaneously. It was the Second, the most beautiful and therefore the most hackneyed of the opus; the breaking melody of the second movement. When you hear this, for the first, or if you listen even after long familiarity, it has the power to shake the heart, even the dullest or the darkest heart. Unlike the Third Concerto, which is virtually perfect, the work of a supreme genius, the Second is imperfect, yet has been, as they say, dictated by God.
I stood at the head of the stairs with the dog in my hands, and I listened as Joseph played.
What was he? What?
But through the melody stared all the rest of what had been, and what he was otherwise. And I had known from the beginning, from before even he had come back to my door.
Returning into the room I sat quietly behind him, back on my chair, holding the dog. I rubbed my fingers over the smooth glass, and Rachmaninov poured from the piano.
No mistakes now.
In the upright wooden shell of the instrument, where the strings stretch unseen from keys to hammers, like the hidden muscles of the emotional body itself, I could see his face reflected. Lowered towards the keyboard, intent and pale, only the dusting of the bruise under his cheekbone. His eyes seemed closed. He lived and expressed the music.
I remembered how I had known I couldn’t harm his hands.
Some trick of the light, the redness of the room, cast a red glimmer across his forehead. It was where the smear of paint had been when he worked on the walls. Red, the lowest chakra, reproduced at the exact region of the higher sixth chakra, the Third Eye, Vilmos’s focus, the goal of his corrupt Order, (Indigo), inner seeing and self-knowledge and thus the dominion over All Things, but firstly of the Self.
Slowly I got up again and moved quietly across, as if drawn forward by the music and wanting to watch the movement of his hands up close.
I stood behind his left shoulder, as the Devil does in some Mediaeval woodcuts. Retro me Satanus…
Yes, he was entirely absorbed in his playing, and I too could become so. The rapid dance of his fingers and the waves, black to white to black to white of the keys, were mesmerising.
I went on watching, until the aching melody had almost reached its end. Although the ultimate theme of the last Movement is the greater, this Second Movement premonition of it is perhaps more pervasive. Unheralded, it invades. Unfinished, it haunts and echoes on the corridors of the mind.
But he would stop. He was tired and in pain. He might have to.
I stepped back a little, and half turned away, and stood almost with my back to him.
My reflection too would be in the upright wood.
I changed the position of the red glass dog in my right hand.
Steady as a rock. Nothing in me felt frail. I wouldn’t falter.
The stream of music was running to its close. Now, then. It would have to be now.
Turning round again I struck him violently on the back of the head, with all my weight – and if undersized and slight – still I’m a grown man – behind it.
The dog was heavy, solid. I felt the point of its nose connect with the parietal lobe to the left of his skull.
Unlike the scenes in so many films, there was no discordant clash of chords. His hands slipped noiseless from the keys. His body jerked once and slumped forward, his head striking again, the frontal lobe now, on the wood of the piano.
I’d believed the dog would shatter. It hadn’t. Instead, very neatly it had split in two sections, breaking just behind the neck. I bent down and retrieved the smaller piece, the head, examined it and quickly saw I would be able to superglue it back together.
XIX
(‘Untitled’: Page 333)
THE cataclysm that had destroyed the Chamber had been visible to Vilmos only for those six or seven brief seconds, when he seemed to hang in space between earth and sky, day and night, life and eternity. Then came the locomotion of a colossal fall, worthy of Lucifer’s it seemed to him, although later he spurned a comparison of such ineptitude. The end of the fall, its destination, threw him feet first through the collapsing cellarage of the Master’s house. He found himself then, abruptly, as if just waking from a vivid dream, floating comfortably on the broad bosom of the river, a bridge before him that was not the Flavel, the moon, thin as a cat’s closed eye, squinting down from above.
He knew the water would buoy him up, carry him. There was no need to struggle. The river did so and presently bumped him home against the bank.
The stone jumble of the City was sparse here. A tree craned to the water and Vilmos caught its lowest bough and hauled himself in with little effort.
It was not cold. Already his garments seemed to dry themselves in the extreme incandescent energy which still radiated from his body.
The lights of the mystic Cakras had faded from him, at least to the physical eye, but every part of him felt charged and effulgent.
Vilmos was well aware of what had happened.
Twelve, not thirteen.
They had made an error in the formula of their spell, and this had warped it. And so he had been able, on reaching the indigo instant of utter power, to claim himself back from them, and so wrench free. The power he shed, meanwhile, when this took place, detonated instead in the room.
He doubted any of them had survived, but now, standing on the bank and gazing back along the curve of the river, he saw a livid rusty glare, and a solid black cumulous of smoke that was rising up. It came to him this went on about where he would expect to find the Master’s house. And that therefore, not only had it been shaken down, but it was on fire, and burned.
Imagining the crowds of neighbours in their nightshirts springing out in horror on the street, gazing at this in frightened awe and malign disgust, Vilmos smiled to himself.
Without questioning or reticence, he knew that all the might of the ritual and the alchemical surge had entered and refined only him. What now then might he not do?
On an impulse he turned, and with a look struck a flame on the black river. It lit at once and blazed there like a lily of phosphorous. He had done this by his will alone.
Notions of Satan and God had become superfluous.
Vilmos was his own man now.
Just then the Master’s ancient toad pulled itself out of the water also, and squatted on the bank, staring at him. As the engendered flame was extinguished, Vilmos saw both the toad’s eyes, and the evil jewel between them, had kept the terrific dark blue of the Indigo Instant. Only the toad and he had escaped alive. And perhaps it too had been able
to garner some power.
In all his life no single human had either joyed or contented Vilmos. But he might benefit from a companion.
“Come then,” he called to the toad, and like an image of black jade, understanding him, it lifted itself and approached. “Which way shall we go?” he inquired of it. The toad reversed itself, and Vilmos saw that over there, in the east, dawn was commencing. He had no need to fear light any longer. Nor dark, if it came to it. “East then,” said Vilmos. And eastward they went.
TWENTY-THREE
At first I thought I’d killed him outright.
When I pulled him back from the piano, his face was pallid and slightly puffy and I couldn’t see him breathing. But there was the vaguest pulse in his throat. Still alive then?
Unusual strength can be accessed in times of stress. I’d read of it, even written about it. Now I found it to be true.
I dragged Sej off the seat and from the room, along the hall into the kitchen, without trouble.
What I did next was a precaution. It was my more pedantic side, making certain, covering all possible eventualities. A writer’s action, or the deliberate murderer’s.
Having got him on the floor, leaning by the table I pulled him forward, and cracked his head, the back of it, a second time very hard against the table’s corner. Then I allowed him to fall.
Still I couldn’t see any breathing. Yet the pulse in his neck stumblingly kept on.
It didn’t really matter, did it? He wasn’t going to interfere in what came next.
Perhaps I should note my state of mind during all this. I was flatly calm. I was rational, unexcited and concise. I might have been organizing my washing, or checking over an especially-to-me boring proof chapter in one of my novels. This mood had opened up in me like a well of cool water the moment I saw him standing outside my door in the rain. Partly, at the beginning, I’d wondered if it would suddenly desert me, leaving me after all unsure and panicked, unable to make a decision. But it had not. And in some odd mental fashion, I’d known from that same first moment what I must do, and roughly how I would do it. As if, as with the plots of my stories, I’d already written out a careful synopsis, and only had to consult that from time to time in order to construct the book.
Once I’d seen him sprawled on the floor, I went upstairs and got ready.
I was particularly facile at packing by this time. It was after all my third attempt to escape. On this occasion however, I didn’t pack all the documents, only birth certificate, passport, bank details and those of my savings, plus their necessary various cards and other safeguards. Some of these things I might legitimately take with me when travelling. Some of them I could, if I had to, claim to have mislaid years ago, as many of us do. While some of the items now left out would, after tonight, be redundant anyway.
Naturally I packed more clothes, more toiletries. Again legitimate. I was going to stay with my poor upset old friend at Cheston for quite a while, wasn’t I? Duran believed I’d gone up there before. I’d mentioned Matthew’s frame of mind post his ‘betrayal’ by Sylvia. From the brief picture I had then, perhaps innocently, painted, Duran definitely wouldn’t be astonished I’d been begged to go back. As for George and Vita next door, those two silly old fools hadn’t seen me for days during Sej’s last sojourn, and only had his word for it I was in the house. While, as Mr C had pointed out witnesses, (especially elderly ones) were unreliable.
None of this might help, of course.
But it was reasonable for me. After so many invented third-hand literary alibis and get-outs, to fabricate something now.
When I had everything ready in the two larger bags, including the two bits of the red glass dog, carefully wrapped, I came back downstairs.
I bent and touched him again. He felt very cold and lay totally inert. I couldn’t find any pulse now. But being no doctor, I couldn’t rely on that.
From the freezer I took a pack of pork sausages. The remains of the pizza and the wine, mugs, glasses, plates, the coffee, still lay on the table. On the hob I put an over-full pan of oil, and placed four of the sausages in it. Just the sort of late snack a young healthy man might fancy, particularly if depressed, even after all the pizza eaten between seven and eight o’clock. The cake was still on the side, too. It should burn very well.
It wouldn’t be a problem that the sausages were frozen; just slow everything down a little. Which was a good thing, given the circumstances.
I lit the hob, kept it very low.
Outside the kitchen the night lay ink black, a few stars showing dully like wet grains of sugar.
I hoped the fir tree wouldn’t be affected. Probably not. Long before the wooden fences went up someone would have heard or smelled something wrong at No 74.
The cooking oil I sloshed liberally round the kitchen, the table, and over him. How lucky I’d bought an extra bottle. There was enough to trail along the hallway and the bottom of the stairs; even the library carpet got a sprinkle. But books burn beautifully, as Ray Bradbury let us know in Fahrenheit 451. That is, if we’d missed the history lesson that began even before the great Library burned in Alexandria in the time of Caesar and Cleopatra.
In my bag I had the MS of Untitled, plus the disc, including the last chapter, XIX – if such it was – work in progress, that was the file and disc for Kill Me Tomorrow. I had Last Orders too, in its paperback form. My favourite. But why shouldn’t I take that to read over on the long train to the north? Quite legitimate. And writers often travel with their work, picking at it in odd moments. I’d be able to use Matt’s computer, wouldn’t I, if I could persuade him away from his twenty-four hour blog, which he’d started to describe Sylvia, if under another name, and all her slut-like wickedness. He’d told me during our short telephone conversation about this blog, and how he was getting hundreds of ‘hits’. Men – and women. An Age of Traitors he called it.
Going back to put the emptied bottle of oil in the kitchen bin, I was careful not to tread in any of it. I’d been especially careful not to splash any on my clothing. I washed my hands at the sink. Like Pilot.
I did glance at him before I left the kitchen, leaving on the light, as I’d left on the light in the lavatory and the study upstairs. (I had got the spare bed out and put it ready too, placing blankets and sheets and a pillow on it, all prepared for Sej’s never-to-be-realised crash).
Sej lay exactly as I’d left him. A little line of blood had run from his nose. I didn’t know what that might mean, but it could hardly auger well.
My bags were already by the front door. Again cautious where I stepped, I let myself out and relocked the door, both locks, then slid the keys back through the letter-box on to the floor, where he might casually have dropped them. Because naturally, if he were minding my house while I was away, he would need them. For what it was worth, I kept the other set, those he had copied from mine. I had deactivated the burglar alarm, too, for the liar’s reason that Sej might have trouble with it.
My previous dialogue with the police, asking for protection, also had an explanation. I’d been afraid of this sudden stalker. Then found out he was the son of a woman I’d known years ago. We’d sorted it all out, and even though he was a little strange, I’d had a fondness for him, because of her, and because I’d last seen him as a child. Obviously this was my gullibility. I’d accepted the yarn he spun me. No doubt the police would eventually point this out. Whatever else, I’d had to go to Cheston to visit Matt. I’d left Sej in the house because he’d told me he was upset, needed a bolt-hole. Some woman he’d got into difficulties over. (If he had told that tale at the hospital, I might have extra back-up).
On the other hand I didn’t really trust any of this to bale me out for long, if the proverbial shit hit the fan. And presumably it would. Matt for one was a doubtful ally.
Old Church Lane seemed in its normal night-time phase. The rain had gone, leaving a cold sparkle on the edges of things. The clock on the church was striking ten-fifteen. All around, the usual fl
ick and flutter of TV and computer screens through glass or drawn blinds and curtains. No lights were visible at all over the road in 73. Perhaps at the back, where the bedroom was. A black or dark blue car had been parked outside No 80. A tall girl and a young man were leaning on the side, embracing, locked in a prolonged kiss. What must that be like? Did I recall? Yes. Oh yes.
I walked across the paving to 72 and rang their bell.
It was late for them, but some lights were still on upstairs and down.
Perhaps they wouldn’t answer, however, already into the bedtime routine, dressing-gowns and cocoa, or whatever they drank last thing. In this day and age even George and Vita probably resorted to a tot of alcohol and a sleeping pill.
Then someone shot the bolts.
George opened the door, virtually as I’d pictured, in a port wine paisley dressing-gown. “Oh – it’s you,” he said.
“Sorry to disturb you.” I was factual and restrained. “I thought I’d better let you know. I’m off again,” (the “again” was deliberate), “that pal of mine up north. I can’t really say no.”
George looked baffled and slightly offended.
“The thing is, in case you hear sounds through the wall, Joseph – is there. He’s staying over for a couple of days. He needs – well, somewhere to get away from it all.”
Something had happened while I said this. I had grasped I didn’t know if George knew Sej by that name, or the other one, Joseph – or by some other name entirely. Had I ever heard him call Sej by a name? Had Sej ever mentioned what George knew him as? I didn’t think so. And certainly George still seemed baffled, and now uneasy. I added, “Joseph. That’s the young man who said he was my son. My friend’s boy.”
“I see.”
“Actually, he’s pretty depressed.” I made myself sound world-weary rather than confiding. “Some trouble with a young woman. I wish it was that easy with my chum Matt, up north. His wife,” I said, “has let him down rather badly.”