Black Wings Of Cthulhu: Volume Two Part 16

WALKER NEVER THOUGHT OF HIMSELF AS ANY KIND OF genius, but he knew that at least his body was never wrong. If his body told him not to eat something, he didn't. If his body told him not to go into a place, he stayed outside. If his body wanted to be somewhere, Walker let his body take him there. He figured he got his body from his father, who he never knew, but he knew his father had been someone remarkable, because his body knew remarkable things.

"Blood will tell," his mother used to say, in pretty much every situation when an important decision had to be made. He eventually understood this referred to the knowledge he had inherited from his father, held in his blood, and which informed his body which seemed to know so much. Walker's blood never said anything too loudly-it whispered its secrets so softly he couldn't always hear. But he could feel it pull in this or that direction, and that had been the compa.s.s that had brought them here.

The motel was small, all one story, just a row of doors and square windows along the inner side of an L-shaped building, with a dusty parking lot and no pool. Walker heard there used to be a pool, but they'd had a hard time keeping the water sanitary, so they'd filled it in with sand. A few cacti and th.o.r.n.y bushes now grew in that faded bit of rectangular s.p.a.ce, but none too well.

The maid-a withered-looking woman well into her seventies-tried confiding in Walker from day one. "There's something wrong with this dirt, and the water ain't never been quite right. You buy bottled water for your family while you're here-especially them kids." But Walker made them all drink right out of the rusty taps, because that was the drink his own blood was thirsting for.

If anything, Walker felt more at home at the Crossroads than he had anywhere in years. He'd drink the water and he'd breathe the dry desert air, taking it deep into his lungs until he found that trace of distant but unmistakable corruption he always knew to be there. He'd walk around outside barefoot at night, feeling the chill in the ground that went deeper than anyone else could know. He'd walk around outside barefoot during the middle of the day letting the grit burn into his soles until his eyes stung with unfamiliar tears.

Angie had started out asking nearly every day how long they'd be staying at the Crossroads, until he'd had enough and given her a little slap. He didn't really want to (he also didn't want not to), but it seemed necessary, and Walker always did what his body told him was necessary.

That was the thing about Walker-he could take people or he could leave them. And he felt no different about Angie. His body told him when it was time to have s.e.x with her, and his body told him to hide her pills so he could father some kids by her, but Walker himself never much cared either way.

"The four of us, we'll just stay here in the Crossroads until I hear about a new job. I have my applications in, and I've been hearing good things back." She never even asked how he could have possibly heard good things, waiting there in the middle of nowhere. He never called anyone. But she'd never asked him any questions about it. Angie was as dumb as a cow.

Somehow he'd convinced her that the Crossroads Motel was the perfect place for them to be right now. From the Crossroads they could travel into New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, or turn around and head back towards Denver. They could even go back home to Wyoming if they had a particularly desperate need to visit that state ever again. In order to do any of those things, though, they'd have to get a new car-theirs had barely made it to the Crossroads before falling apart. "But we have a world of choices." That's what he told her. Of course he'd lied. She was an ignorant cow, but the dumbest thing she ever did was fall in love with him.

Their fourth day there he'd made an interesting discovery. He'd always whittled, not because he liked it particularly, he just always did. He'd grabbed a piece of soft wood and gone out to that rectangular patch where the cacti grew and the swimming pool used to be-he called that area the "invisible swimming pool" sometimes, or just "the pool"-and sat down cross-legged in the sand, the sun bearing down on him like a hot piece of heavy iron pressing on his head, and started to carve. He was halfway through the piece-a banana-shaped head with depthless hollows for eyes and a ragged wound of mouth-when suddenly the hand holding the knife ran it off the wood and into the fatty part of his hand-slow and deliberate and unmindful of the consequences.

He permitted the blood to drip, then to pour heavily into the sand before stopping it with a torn-off piece of s.h.i.+rttail. Then it thickened, blackened, spread into four flows in different directions. Then each of those flows hardened and contracted, rose from the sand into four legs attempting to carry the now rounded body of it away. It had begun to grow a head with s.h.i.+ning eyes when the entire ma.s.s collapsed into a still shapelessness.

Not strong enough, he thought. But that will change.

Walker spent most of the next few days sitting in an old lawn chair he'd set up behind the motel. The cus.h.i.+on was faded and riddled with holes-rusty stuffing poked through like the organs of a drowned and bloated corpse. The whole thing smelled like sea and rot-odd because it was so dry here, miles from anything larger than a car wash puddle-but it was an aroma he'd always found comforting. It was like the most ancient smell of the world, what the lizards must have smelled when they first crawled out of the ocean.

He had the chair set up so he could gaze out across the desert that spread out behind the motel, away from the highway that fed out through the southwest corner of Colorado and into the rest of the West. That desert was as flat and featureless and as seamlessly light or as seamlessly dark as the ocean, depending on the time of day and the position of the sun and the moon. So much depended on those relative positions, and the things who waited beyond, much more than most human beings were destined to know.

Out on the distant edges of that desert, out at the farthest borders the sharpest human eye could see, lay shadowed dunes and hard rock exposures, ancient cinder cones and mesas, flattop islands in the sky. He had never been to such a place, but it had been a location fixed in his dreams for most of his life.

Every day Walker sat there in the chair, the eaves of the motel roof providing some minimal protection from glare, a notepad in his lap, a blue cooler full of beer at his feet, and watched those barely distinguishable distant features, waiting for something to change or appear, or even just for some slight alteration in his own understanding. "I'm working out our future plans and finances," was what he told Angie, and of course she'd believed him. If she'd only taken a peek at that notepad she would have seen the doodles depicting people and animals being consumed by creatures whose only purpose was to consume, or the long letters to beings unknown using words few human tongues could say. But no doubt she would not have understood what she was seeing, in any case. If he had a sense of humor he might say, "It's a letter from my father." But since he had never seen the utility of humor he did not.

Angie had never asked him why they had to travel so far just to wait for the results of some job applications, especially when there were no jobs at Crossroads or anywhere within a hundred miles of that place. He hadn't even bothered to concoct a story because he'd been so sure she wouldn't ask. This woman was making him lazy.

Once or twice he'd told her directly how stupid she was. She'd looked as if she might break apart. Part of him wanted to feel sorry for what he'd said. Part of him wanted to know what the feeling was like, to feel like your face was going to break. But he didn't have the capacity in him. He supposed some people were born victims. And some people were born like him. Predator was a good word for people like him, he supposed. There were a great many predators on this planet.

Their two kids had been climbing the walls. Not literally, of course, but that's the way Angie had expressed it. The only place they had to play was the motel parking lot. As far as he was concerned they should let them loose out there-the children could learn a few lessons about taking care of themselves. If they saw a car coming, let them learn to get out of the way. But Angie wouldn't allow it. He was their father, of course-they had his wise blood in their bodies. He could have insisted. But sometimes you let the mother have the final say where the care of the children is concerned.

Walker's own mother let him wander loose from the time he was six years old-that had been her way. It didn't mean she had no caring in her for him. Actually, he had no idea how she felt. She could have felt anything, or nothing. That was simply the way she was.

He'd never met his father, but he felt as if he knew him-certainly he could feel him. She'd lain with a hundred men or more, so it could have been anyone, or anything he supposed. But Walker felt he'd know his father if he saw him, however he manifested himself. It never bothered him. And if he did see this creature, his father, he wasn't even sure he'd say h.e.l.lo. But he might have questions. He might want a sample of his blood. He might want to see what happened if he poured his father's blood onto the grounds of the Crossroads.

The boy-they'd named him Jack-threw something at the girl. Gillian, or Ginger, depending on the day. Walker had never quite found a name he'd really liked for her, or even remembered from one day to the next. Walker didn't know what the boy tried to hit her with-he never saw anything. He didn't watch them very closely. And there was no sense in asking them-they were both little liars. That was okay with him-in his experience most human beings didn't respond well to the truth in the best of cases. These children were probably better off lying.

But Angie wouldn't stop. "They're going to grow up to be monsters! Both of them! Jack slaps her. Gillian kicks him. This c.r.a.p goes on all day! Do you even care how they might turn out?"

"Of course I care," he'd lied. Because it would have been inconvenient if Angie had fully understood his basic att.i.tude toward their children. He couldn't have her attempting to take the children and leave before things had completed. "I'll talk to them." The relief in her face almost made him smile.

The children looked up at him sullenly, defiantly. This was good, he thought. Most children were naturally afraid of him. "Jack, what did you throw at her?" he asked.

"It was a rock," Gillian or Ginger said. Walker slapped her hard across the face, her little head rocking like a string puppet's.

"I asked Jack," he explained.

She didn't cry, just stared at him, a bubble of blood hanging from one nostril.

"It was a rock," Jack said quietly. Walker examined his son's face. Something dark and distant appeared to be swimming in his light green eyes. Angie's eyes were also that color, but Walker had never seen anything swimming there.

"Would it have made you feel badly if you had really hurt her?"

Jack stared up at him dully. Then the boy turned to his sister and they looked at each other. Then they both looked back up at Walker.

"I don't know," Jack replied.

"If you continue to behave this way where other people can see you, eventually you may be detained and imprisoned. It's your decision, but that is something to think about. Right now, you are upsetting your mother. You do not want to do that. You upset her and she becomes troublesome for me. You do not want that, do you understand?" Both children nodded. "Very well, go play quietly for awhile. Stay out of my field of vision."

After they left Walker saw that a couple of drops of his daughter's blood were resting on top of the sand. He kicked at them and they scurried away.

When they'd first checked in the Crossroads had been practically empty, just a single elderly couple with a camper who'd checked out the very next day. But since then a series of single guests and families had wandered in, almost unnoticeable at first since they mostly came in during the night, but the last couple of days there had been a steady stream, so by week's end the motel was full. Still, more people came into the parking lot, or stopped in the empty land around the building, some on foot with backpacks who set up small tents or lean-tos, others in cars they could sleep in. Despite their numbers, these new visitors were relatively quiet, remaining in their rooms or whatever shelter they'd managed, or gathering casually to talk quietly amongst themselves. Many had no particular focus to their activities, but some could not keep their eyes off that horizon far beyond the motel, with its vague suggestion of dunes and mesas s.h.i.+mmering liquidly in the heat.

"Why are they all here?" Angie eventually came around to asking.

"They're part of some traveling church group. They'll be on their way after they rest, I'm told."

For the first time she looked doubtful about one of his improvised explanations, but she said nothing.

As more people gathered his son and daughter became steadily more subdued, until eventually they were little more than phantom versions of their former selves, walking slowly through the crowd, looking carefully at every one of them, but not speaking to them, even when some of the newcomers asked them questions.

This continued for a day or two, and although Walker could see a great deal of nervousness, a great many anxious gestures and aimless whispering, and although his sense of the bottled-up energy contained in this one location unexpectedly made his own nerves ragged, there was no explosion, and no outward signs of violence. Some of the people in the crowd actually appeared to be paralyzed. One young, dark-bearded fellow had stood by the outside elbow of the motel for two days, Walker was sure, without moving at all. Parts of the man's cheeks had turned scarlet and begun to blister.

He noticed that the longer the people stayed here, interacting, soaking up one another's presence, the more they appeared to resemble one another, and him, and his children, as if they had gathered here for some large family reunion. Walker wondered if he were to cut one of them if their blood would also walk, and he was almost sure it would.

He took his morning barefoot walk-why his own feet hadn't burned he had no idea, he didn't really even care to know-by the invisible pool. An old woman crouched there like some sort of ape. At first he thought she was humming, but as he pa.s.sed her he realized she was speaking low and rapidly, and completely incomprehensibly. She sounded vaguely Germanic, but he suspected her speech wasn't anything but her own spontaneous creation.

He gradually became aware of a rancid stink carried on the dry desert wind. Looking around he saw that those who had sought shelter outside the poor accommodations of the Crossroads were up and about, although moving slowly. When he went toward them, it quickly became obvious that they were the source of the smell.

A tall woman with long dark hair approached him. "You seem familiar," she said weakly, and raised her hand as if to touch his face. He stepped back quickly, and it wasn't because he now saw that a portion of the left cheek of her otherwise beautiful face appeared melted, but because he'd never liked the idea of strangers touching him. He knew this made little sense because he'd always been a lone figure among strangers. Angie, certainly, was a stranger as far as he was concerned, and his children Jack and (what was the girl's name?) little better.

Then an elderly man appeared beside her, and a young boy, all with bubbling, disease-ridden skin. Walker darted past them, and into a crowd of grasping, distorted hands, blisters bursting open on raw, burnt-looking skin. He squirmed his way out, but not without soiling himself with their secretions.

He felt embarra.s.sed to be so squeamish. Was he any different than they? He'd seen the dark familiar shapes swimming in their eyes like the reflections of still-evolving life forms. Clearly, he was no longer alone in the world, because what he had seen in them was both familiar and vaguely familial. But it was an uncomfortable, even an appalling knowledge.

He was some kind of mongrel, a blending of two disparate species, and yet so were they. He doubted any of them had known their fathers. His own children were their blood kin, but at least they knew their father.

The two most familiar children came out of the crowd and gazed at him, their faces running with changes. He felt a kind of unknowable loss, for a kind of kins.h.i.+p that had never been completely his, for the simpler Sunday afternoon picnic world of humanity that would now be forever out of his reach.

Angie came outside for her children then, bellowing the dumb unmelodic scream of a despairing cow, and he struck her down with indifferent blows from both suddenly-so-leaden hands. She had been his last possible door into humanity, and he had slammed her irrevocably closed. Her children looked on as unconcerned as an incursion of sand over an abandoned threshold.

And now they've come out of those distant mesas and deserts, on their astounding black wings, on their thousand-legged spines, their mouths open and humming like the excited blood of ten thousand boiling insects, like the secret longings of the b.e.s.t.i.a.l herd, like his blood preparing to leave the confines of vein, like his blood crawling out of the midnight of collective pain, the liquid horizon unfolding.

And out of that s.h.i.+mmering line the fathers come to reclaim their children, the keepers of their dark blood. And Walker must collapse in surrender as these old fathers out of the despairing nights of human frailty, in endless rebellion from the laws of the physical universe, these fathers, these cruel fathers, consume.

The Wilc.o.x Remainder BRIAN EVENSON.

Brian Evenson is the author of ten books of fiction. His novel Last Days (Underland Press, 2006) won the ALA/RUSA award for best horror novel of the year. Other books include The Wavering Knife (FC2, 2004), The Open Curtain (Coffee House Press, 2006), and Fugue State (Coffee House Press, 2009). His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, j.a.panese, and Slovenian. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University's Literary Arts Program.

NOT LONG AGO, WHILE VISITING MY AUNT ON THE other side of Providence in what she refers to as a resort but which, as the sign outside testifies, is a "mental hospital" (and which until just a few decades ago was called, more bluntly and more honestly, Butler Hospital for the Insane), I was b.u.t.tonholed by a man who at first I took to be an orderly. In a confidential whisper, he claimed he had something to tell me. Thinking it must be about my aunt and her rapidly declining condition, I acquiesced. Gradually, as his speech quickened and then became more and more frantic, as his gestures grew increasingly erratic, I realized my mistake. However, afraid of alarming him into doing something drastic, I feigned attention and made no sudden moves until the moment when three actual orderlies approached, immobilized the fellow after a struggle, and dragged him screaming away.

It was only near the end of the episode, when I saw the man extract from a pocket a sharp tongue of gla.s.s with one end imperfectly wrapped in cloth and use it to hold the orderlies temporarily at bay, that I began to realize what danger I had been in. As he was immobilized and one of the orderlies tried to bandage the man's very badly cut hand, I became unsteady on my feet and had to lean against the wall. I must have been pale, for one of the men leading the inmate away parted from his companions and returned to make certain of my condition. When he had a.s.sured himself that I had partially recovered, he led me not to the exit but to the director's office. Giving me a plastic cup of water and forcing me to sit, he extracted from me the promise to wait there until I recovered.

AT FIRST MY CONDITION WAS SUCH THAT I DID NOT PAY the office itself much heed, and was indeed little aware of my own actions. My tie had been loosened and collar undone without my having any clear memory of my hands having done so. The plastic cup had been drained dry, and yet my mouth itself was still chalky and raw. My hands, I saw, were still shaking and making strange roiling movements as if they were being directed by a mind other than my own. It was only with a great deal of effort that I mastered myself and, to distract myself, rose to my feet and began to pace the room.

There was nothing extraordinary about the office itself. Dominating the room was a ponderous oak desk, big enough that it seemed impossible that it might have once shouldered its way through the door. Its surface was covered with a scuffed green leather blotter, a single sheet of creamy hospital stationery arranged carefully in its exact center. Four pens were arranged in a meticulous line beside the stationery. The chair I had been sitting in was a well-worn leather-backed and leather-seated chair of st.u.r.dy workmans.h.i.+p, perhaps an antique though in good condition. A similar chair sat on the other side of the desk and behind it, tight against the back wall, was a gla.s.s-fronted bookcase. This was full of old nineteenth-century medical books as well as, on a lower shelf, a sequence of gilt and leather-bound literary volumes. The smell of the place was of cracked leather and dust, the air fumid with motes of dust turning slowly in the shaft of sunlight coming through a solitary window.

I paced back and forth. I was, I told myself, recovered: I was now in a condition to leave. And yet I did not leave. What was the patient trying to say to me? I wondered. Despite giving the impression of listening in trying to appease him, I had let his words drift past me, had taken little in, and it was only with difficulty that I could recapture their gist. And his way of speaking had been such that very quickly words had been replaced by garbled moans and shrieks. But these had had a particular, peculiar cadence to them-as if his noises were not at all random but intentional. As if he were speaking an unknown but hideous language.

But what language? I thought, my feet swinging me past the bookcase again until I stopped there at one end, thinking. It was no language with which I, despite my university training, had any familiarity. No, I tried to tell myself. I well knew from my experience with my aunt that the unbalanced mind can convince itself that it is free of aberration, that the structure of a language does not a language make.

And yet, I could not forget the man, his imploring look, the way he grabbed my sleeve, the things he had said in plain English before his descent into the cluttered and hard sounds that seemed like the issue of no human throat. They must not be allowed, he had told me, tightening his grip on my jacket. No, he had said, the statue, it wants to proliferate. I think that is what he said-but what could it mean for a statue to proliferate? Take it, he hissed. Warn them, unless it was learn them. Before they come, he said.

And then his eyes went gla.s.sy and he spat a sound that sounded more like the snarl of a dog, no human word I knew, and it was all I could do not to draw away.

FOR SOME TIME, I REALIZED, I HAD BEEN STANDING before the bookcase, unmoving, staring at something without seeing it. At first I focused on the gla.s.s itself, on my faded reflection in it, but no, that wasn't it. Instead, there, behind the gla.s.s, was a strange clay image, a figurine that at first glance looked unfinished, half-formed. I moved my head to block the light and see the thing better, and then, still not satisfied, reached up and opened the gla.s.s.

From there it was a small thing to pick the figure up. It was, I now could see, finished after all, humanoid in form but hideous in appearance, unnaturally squat. In place of a head it had a sloping protuberance, shapeless on the top and strangely bristling near where it joined the figure's shoulders. I found it at once alluring and disturbing. It exerted a certain fascination, though thinking now objectively of why that should be the case, I am at a loss to explain why. Perhaps it was because it was not quite like anything I had ever seen before. It wasn't ancient but rather of recent manufacture, perhaps the work of one of the patients. What a strange statue, I thought, and, thinking that, I thought again of my encounter and half wondered if this was the statue that wanted to proliferate itself, whatever that meant. Before I knew it, almost without meaning to, I had slipped the thing into my pocket and closed the gla.s.s door.

I MIGHT HAVE LEFT THEN HAD THE HOSPITAL'S DIRECTOR not suddenly appeared. He was a stout older gentleman, face red but eye steady, and though he must have been surprised to find someone in his office, he did not betray any hesitation or surprise. Instead, he extended his hand and took mine in his firm grip. He introduced himself as Wilc.o.x and admitted, when I questioned him, that he was a member of Providence's ill.u.s.trious Wilc.o.x family-was, so he claimed, one of the younger sons of long-deceased Anthony Wilc.o.x.

Haltingly, I told him which of his inmates I was connected to. He asked me if something was wrong, if there was something about my aunt's situation that needed attention. I quickly a.s.sured him that no, everything was fine as far as she was concerned. Since he still waited attentively, I explained to him the situation that had led me to his office.

"Ah," he said, and released my hand. "You've had the dubious pleasure of meeting Henry."

I explained that the man hadn't shared with me his name.

"And what did he share with you?" he asked, and I could almost see his gaze sharpening, tightening on me. "What did he tell you?"

I don't know what stopped me from telling him the story in detail. Perhaps it was his own manner, his sudden almost rapacious attentiveness. Perhaps it was simply that one cannot but be loth to say anything within the walls of a madhouse that might cause your own sanity to be called into question. In any event, I claimed that Henry had been so disordered that I hadn't understood a thing. Once I had convinced him of this, and convinced him as well that even had I heard something I would have paid it no heed, he was quick to usher me out of his office and lead me down the stairs to the exit.

IT IS AT THIS POINT THAT MY TALE BEGINS TO TURN dubious. Sometimes I do not believe it myself. If I was reluctant to tell a hospital director the details of my encounter with the inmate named Henry, imagine how much more reluctant I would be to tell him of the matters that follow.

Upon leaving my aunt, I returned to my office at the university. Outside of the hospital, in the full light of day, surrounded by people who I had every suspicion to believe were sane, it all seemed ludicrous. It had been an odd impulse to steal the clay figurine, I told myself, clearly the matter of being unsettled by Henry and not acting as I normally would. There was nothing to it: the little statue was simply a curio that Wilc.o.x had collected, or perhaps a keepsake from a patient, and it meant nothing. Telling myself I would find a way to return it to him on my next visit to my aunt, I took it out of my pocket and deposited it in my desk.

The rest of the day pa.s.sed normally: I taught, had a few meetings with students, attended a late afternoon lecture in the McCormack Theater. By the time I started to walk home, I had completely forgotten about the figurine.

And yet, when I reached the house and felt into my pocket for the key to my front door, I found not only the keys but a small hard object which, when I removed it, I saw was the figurine. All right, I told myself, I must have absently reached into the desk and put it in my pocket upon leaving. I thought about it only for the barest moment and then, once inside, tossed the figurine into the junk drawer, thinking that would be as good a place as any for it until I remembered to return it to Director Wilc.o.x.

THAT NIGHT, I WAS BESET BY DREAMS OF A KIND I HAD never experienced before. I was, I found, in a strange city, the walls and angles of which were, for lack of a better descriptor, simply wrong. It felt wrong to be there, dizzying even, and I had at moments the impression that gravity had gone wrong as well, that I was walking or standing on surfaces that I should have fallen from or slid off. I was, in this city, little larger than an ant; the dark buildings and monoliths, doorless and indifferent, rose impossibly high above me, splotched with what I thought at first was a mold of some sort but which was damp and wet to the touch. Among them there was one building, much broader than the rest, squat in size and appearance, which, unlike the others, was not featureless but had on one awkwardly swayed side a warped bas-relief depicting a creature of hideous aspect not unlike that of the clay sculpture I had stolen, but more articulated. Here, I could see that what I had taken for spikes on the clay figure were tentacles, as if someone had lopped the head off a squat, misshapen body and put in its place the floppy body of a cephalopod. It was huge, and all the more hideous for being so. I stared up at it, rapt with awe and terror.

And then, as I watched, it moved. Very, very slowly it turned and fixed me with one unnatural and indifferent eye.

I WOKE UP IN A COLD SWEAT TO FIND THE CLAY FIGURINE balanced upright on the nightstand beside my bed, though I had no memory of getting up and putting it there-remembered clearly putting it in the kitchen drawer and leaving it there. And yet there it was. I live alone, so I could not claim that it had been the work of someone else, unless that someone had broken into my house, moved the object, and then left without leaving a trace of his presence. I had never had a tendency toward somnabulism, could not imagine myself waking in the middle of the night and sleepwalking into the other room, opening the drawer, and bringing the thing back. And yet, unmistakably, there it was.

And so not knowing what to do I took the creature into the kitchen, took up one of my shoes from where it lay discarded near the door, and meticulously crushed the hated object into a fine powder with its heel.

Or at least that is what I thought I did. For when I woke up there it was again on the bedside table, facing me.

WE DREAM AND WE CONVINCE OURSELVES WE ARE awake. We wake and convince ourselves we are still dreaming. In the few days that followed I did my best to convince myself that this was not happening, that the figure was not moving, seemingly of its own accord, from the places where I thrust it. That I was not, even though I thought I was, repeatedly destroying the figure only to have it reappear again shortly after. Surely, I told myself, there is some logical explanation. But the only logical explanation I could think of hinted of excessive paranoia: Director Wilc.o.x knew I had the figurine and had hired a man, or a group of men, to slip replacements of it into my house each time I destroyed it. I tried to tell myself I was imagining this, that the dividing line between fantasy and reality had somehow ruptured for me. I even tried to convince myself that I had in fact destroyed the figure but then had somehow, in a sort of fugue state, fas.h.i.+oned a new one, and that I had done this again, and again, and again. But none of these explanations satisfied me. Perhaps I was dreaming, perhaps I was mad, or perhaps someone was trying to make me believe that I was mad. Or perhaps something was truly wrong with the figurine itself.

I took a few days' sick leave from school. I abandoned the clay figurine near the pond in Swan Point Cemetery only to have it reappear a few hours later on my kitchen counter. I drove across the bridge into East Providence and threw it into the waters of Watchemoket Cove. Still the horror returned. I crushed it and crushed it, and still it returned. I could not get rid of it, whatever I did.

The dreams too kept coming, the figure on the bas-relief watching me more and more attentively, and the strange ma.s.sive building that the bas-relief was carved into now beginning to reveal a thin band of light, as of the crack of a door. I was terrified by the idea of what I might see when the door opened.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IN SUCH A SITUATION, I ASK YOU? I was not sleeping, was beset by nightmares, felt more and more that it should be myself, and not my aunt, who should be confined in an asylum. I had to free myself of this thing, this figurine or statuette or fetish, whatever it was. And yet, it would not let me go.

And so I went back to Butler Hospital, ostensibly to visit my aunt but with the actual purpose of trying to replace the object I had stolen, hoping that then it would release me. When I was admitted I asked if I might speak to the director.

I gained his office without difficulty. The difficulty I had worried about having-that the director would be in his office when I was admitted-did not occur. I was free to do as I pleased.

In my envisioning of the scenario beforehand, I had seen myself waiting until the orderly had left me and then hurrying quickly around the desk, slipping open the gla.s.s-fronted bookcase, and thrusting the figure deep inside. It would, I was sure, be easy, as long as the director was not in the room. And yet, the director was not in the room and it was still not easy. Why? Because somehow it was not the same room. It did not even seem as if it belonged to the same century. Where before I had seen a heavy wooden desk and leather-backed chairs, I now saw aluminum filing cabinets, a gla.s.s-topped desk scattered with papers, and two Eames chairs. Where there had before been a gla.s.s-fronted bookshelf there was now only bare blank wall.

And yes, I realized suddenly, every time I had been to the director's office before it had been like this. Every time except the one time, the time when I had stolen the figurine. Why had I not known immediately at that time that something was wrong?