Arcane II (31 page)

“You may be right, Doctor,” Baskin Gough said softly, coming up behind me. “It may signal some change. But our Danish friend is also correct.” He started down the stairs. “This is indeed the first creature we’ve encountered that I wouldn’t hesitate to eat. We have no idea how long it will be before help arrives. We can’t afford to pass up this opportunity.” He stopped midway down the stairs. The whale eased away, its spiraling horn gouging the wainscoting as it turned.

“Gough, look—” began the doctor.

“The rifle, Gerick.”

I desperately wanted the whale to make good its escape before he had time to shoot. Why, I don’t know. I’ve never been one to romanticize my food, but there was something noble about the beast, something almost mythical. I imagined that the house was somehow safer, that we were safer, as long as that beautiful whale was there. That elegantly fluted horn might be a beacon pointing us homeward.

Gerick came down several steps, his eyes locked on the whale, which drifted unhurriedly toward the darkly gaping doorway. The light of the oil lamps glinted on its rubbery skin, and on the ripples in the water. Baskin took the weapon, and smoothly tucked its butt against his right shoulder as he sighted down the barrel.

The doctor started to say something more, but the rifle’s thunderous
boom
obliterated all else. I was so shocked by the blast that, for an instant, I didn’t think to look where all that terrible force had been directed. The whale spun suddenly, its powerful tail tearing one of the double doors halfway off its hinges with a single slap. Its body arched up, and as its glistening body rolled through the air as if through a thick syrup—time gone viscous and dense—the bloody wound showed itself lewdly for an instant and was gone. The careening whale seemed to take flight as its tail snapped up and out of the water. And then it was gone.

Not through the door, not down the flooded hall—it
dove
and disappeared. As if the water in the entryway were not a mere two feet deep, it plunged, horn first, down, down, down, and was gone. As if there were no floor there at all. As if the walls ended where they met the water, and below was only water and more water on down to the end of light and beyond. It was beautiful—and terrible.

The gunshot brought the others, who found the four of us, gaping down at the flooded entryway like fish drowning in the air. Baskin said not a word, but handed the smoking rifle back to the Dane and stalked away, pushing through the throng. Gerick and the doctor looked at each other, and then up at me where I sat in my wheelchair at the banister. There was nothing to be said. The others asked about the shot, the blood sprayed across the walls of the entryway below, the shattered door. If either of the men answered, I didn’t hear.

I wheeled myself away, sickened, though I can’t say if it was from the violence I’d witnessed, or from the dawning realization of what the whale’s escape might mean for we who remain trapped here. Dun Leah House has become altogether too small to contain all this—these secrets, these obsessions, these fears.

***

“You cannot seriously mean to go through with this!” Ostraander’s usually florid face was dark red in the dimming sunset of another unnatural day. The sun could not have been above the horizon for more than forty-five minutes; it had risen clear to its apogee and descended to the western horizon as quickly as the minute hand of a clock made the trip from nine to three.

“This is none of your concern,” Gough murmured.

“We’re all on this damned house together, like it or not,” Ostraander snapped back. “She was a guest, just like the rest of us.” Except that wasn’t true. The artist, Ostraander knew, had been Gough’s prey, while everything else—the commission, the séance, the guests, everything—had made up the web he’d woven to lure her to him.

The doctor, who had been scribbling in a notebook when Ostraander had entered the study, opened his mouth, but their host’s icy reply cut him short. “True. And look where it has gotten her.”

Gough stood stiffly at the window bathed in the dying light from across the featureless sea. Arms akimbo and in stark silhouette, he might have been some erstwhile king surveying his realm, except this sovereign’s dominion encompassed only a sinking house and a waste of unstable and unknowable water. “Please understand, Gerick, I have to do something.”

Doctor Templesmith gripped Gough’s shoulder in an awkward gesture of sympathy or solidarity, Ostraander couldn’t be sure which. “Her... situation is no fault of yours, Baskin.” His hand trembled as it slipped back to his side, and he turned to Ostraander, his face composed as for mourning, though the gleam in his watery eyes betrayed a certain eager anticipation. “We have before us the opportunity to help the girl. My studies of this organism indicate it may well offer hope where otherwise hope is dead. Surely you’d not waste this chance, purely out of some petty
ethical
squeamishness—she is, after all, very nearly dead. How much longer do you propose we prolong her agonies by waiting?”

“It isn’t right. Better to give her an easy death than gamble on some bloody parasite saving her.”

“How exactly could it be any worse for the poor woman, Gerick?” Templesmith demanded. “How?”

Ostraander didn’t answer. He was making no headway with his friend, and arguing with the doctor, he knew, would only make it worse. Over Gough’s shoulder, the twilit water gleamed a sickly green-orange. After its precipitous plunge below the horizon, the sun seemed to have stalled, prolonging the gloaming beyond all reason. It was like everything else here, wrong on some level below understanding. “Gough, she deserves better than this.”

“I must know if there is a chance, any chance,” Gough whispered. “And I can’t bear the thought that those things out there might have her.”

“Yes, Gerick, if she dies out here, we’ll have no choice but to sink the body.” Templesmith sounded reasonable enough, but reason wasn’t how the doctor had persuaded Gough in the first place, and Ostraander ground his teeth to stop from shouting at him. “You heard Madame Tessier: Ms. Morden believed that the waters, and whatever the hell is down there, were her doom. She was terrified. Surely you’d not—”

“This isn’t some medical school cadaver for you to experiment on; she was a
guest
in this house—has
that
become sufficient consent to have one’s body used in some fool experiment? We may be rather out of touch with society here, but that’s madness!”

“I
won’t
surrender her to them,” said Gough as if he hadn’t even heard their exchange.

“Let her
go
. The doctor can no more promise to save her than I can.” Ostraander paused, groping for a new tact. Gough seemed to be listening, though his posture had not softened. “Did he save Roderick? Is he back to his old self again? No,
they
took him. And now Templesmith would infect her with the same organism? How does he propose it will help her?”

“It is her only chance.” Gough didn’t sound so sure anymore.

“Quite true,” Templesmith said. “It is remarkable she’s even lived this long, what with the extent of her injuries. She has no other options.”

“She’s gone, man!” Osraander took Gough by the arm, half-turning him away from the window. “He just wants to study these damned parasites, and happens to need a body to do it. Don’t put stock in his lies!”

“If there is any chance, any chance at all—”

“Can’t you see, you fool?” Templesmith demanded. “We have no way of knowing what possibilities this organism might present for medicine. Can I save the girl? Heal her? Not with what I know at this point, and certainly not with the limited supplies and facilities at my disposal, but if we don’t try, if we don’t glean all that we can from these things, we’ll never know what might be achievable.”

Templesmith was playing Gough like a school boy plays a recorder, and whatever Ostraander said was only twisted to strengthen the doctor’s case and Gough’s resolve. He would not give up, though. Not on this.

“How many failures will it take to learn?” His voice shook. “We’re in serious trouble here, but torturing some poor girl in her last hours will not save anyone, least of all her.”

Gough shook his head as if to rid himself of a pesky insect.

There comes a point for a man of action when he simply runs out of words. Ostraander’s right cross caught Templesmith by surprise, and he crumpled like a marionette with snipped strings. The doctor curled up on the floor to protect himself from further attack, though none was forthcoming. Ostraander’s hand stung where several knuckles had split open. It was a welcome pain—the feel of action and reaction, untempered by reason or restraint. It took him back to simpler days.

“What do this cold-hearted bastard’s observations of these things hold but a warning? When does this bloody end?” He crossed the room in three strides, and only paused when Gough spoke, his voice unchanged, as if the momentary violence had gone entirely unnoticed. Perhaps it had.

“I have to know, Gerick,” Gough said, turning at last. His eyes glittered, perhaps with unshed tears or something less rational. “Please,” he said, softly, but with an undercurrent of urgency, “Understand that. If there is a way, I must try it. I have to know.”

***

[Unsigned letter, presumably from Ms. Morden]

Did I ever tell you, Camille, how I first met Baskin Gough? It was in Chicago, of course. Reliene had spent the night elsewhere after a silly row at a party. I was pouring a cup of tea when I heard the bells on the studio door. I barely had time to fluff my pillow-flattened hair and take my place at my easel before the footsteps on the stairs reached the door.

Clean-shaven, he looked more like a boy than I suspect he liked, but I suspected a neat beard would give him more of an air of dignity. His gaze darted around, taking in the whole of the high-ceilinged flat before settling on me like a skittish bird.

He stammered something about having seen my
Nocturne, Rive Gauche
while dining downtown at Chez Louise. I continued touching up the highlights in the cityscape on my easel. I treat all potential customers as if they are imposing on my time and should be grateful for any attention I can spare. A petty ruse, I know, but it sells more than bootlicking and pandering ever have.

He said he very much liked my work, and wanted to purchase something. Stepping across the room to where several canvases were drying, he glanced over each, but moved on too quickly to be a true appreciator of art.

We went back and forth, and it became clear that what he wanted was whatever
I
thought was the most valuable piece I had. I showed him
The Loss of Midsummer
, if you remember it, which I’d only ever tried to sell halfheartedly before. He was convinced as soon as I explained it was overpriced because I didn’t really want to part with it. He wrote a check for more than eight months’ rent of the flat—almost twice what I’d quoted, and asked me to hold the painting for until the end of the week.

When I saw him next, he was unshaven, and indeed did look older, and I wondered if he’d read my mind. He seemed more interested in talking than in concluding our business, though—indeed, he might almost have forgotten about the painting. He was from Michigan, he said. A copper baron’s son. As we spoke, it came out that he wanted to commission me to paint a series of his home, Dun Leah House. He would pay for my travel, and I would have whatever I needed for the duration of my stay. I was flattered, of course, but concerned too.

He knew nothing of Reliene, I presumed (she had not come home the previous night either), and it seemed he had a mistaken idea of me. Still, his overt interest was in my work, and he’d already paid me more than I’d ever gotten for a piece. A commission would be highly profitable, even more so if it could be parlayed into a long-term patronage.

It wasn’t until I got here though, that I began to see the depths of his obsession. He has imagined an elaborate future (perhaps even a past) for the two of us, and what he says and does is perfectly acceptable in
that
context. Of course, the reality is there is nothing between us, nor will there
ever
be. It scares me sometimes, the intensity with which he watches me. At the beginning I didn’t discourage him, for fear of losing his patronage, and now, of course, it’s too late to make an escape.

Gough’s leering makes me more and more uncomfortable. Surely he knows that Reliene and I are—or rather were—lovers. I should never have come here. I’ve lost her and, though it’s true I’ve gained myself, I cannot stand this house anymore. I have a terrible feeling that we’re utterly doomed, though Gough hardly seems worried about the fact that we’re floating off to god-knows-what-end, just so long as he has me here.

***

In her third-floor studio, a study repurposed when she’d come to work on her commission, the Artist lay motionless in the beaten copper tub, almost entirely submerged in cool saltwater. The seeping blood had long since ceased, leaving the water as clear as aquarium glass. It was very like observing some exquisite sea creature at rest, though a less romantic viewer might have compared it to a pickled specimen in a jar.

She still breathed, though shallowly and with a wet sound. The ether the doctor periodically administered kept her unconscious, but it was all they could do for her. Except wait.

Gough slouched in a wingback chair, one ankle carelessly propped on the opposite thigh. It had to have been more than twenty-four hours already, and yet nothing had changed. Of course, with the clocks misbehaving there was no way to know for sure how much time had passed, and the glaring white eye of the sun had hung motionless two thirds of the way up the silver-blue dome of the sky today for what seemed an eternity, but Gough was sure at least a day had passed. The remaining cilia samples the doctor had taken from Roderick—those that they had retained in case this didn’t work—were as active and hardy looking as ever, but even a close examination of the incision sites on the Artist’s body showed no change.