Arcane II (32 page)

How much longer could she hold on? If this was her only chance, something would have to happen soon. Templesmith had been vague as to the timeline for implantation, but Gough had hoped for more dramatic results. But then, hope had ever been his adversary.

Hadn’t the whole idea of bringing her to Dun Leah House for the commission, of trying to impress her with the eclectic collection of guests at the séance—hadn’t all of that elaborate framework been built upon the shaky foundation of hope? Hope that she might see something in him that would cause her to fall as deeply in love with him as he had fallen for her—first through her art, and then in person. Hope that by bringing her to his Camelot, she would become his Guinevere. But would that make him Arthur, the good king cuckold, or Lancelot, the one the queen
truly
loved? It had turned out that the Artist’s damned Bohemian friend had played the latter role, while Gough found himself more a butler or jester than a king.

***

[Dr. Templesmith’s Journal]

[MS. Illegible]
1863—

When the first cilia emerged around the site of the incision, I almost could not believe it. I’d nearly given up hope of success. The water in the tub had assumed a degree of opacity, reminiscent of the milkiness I witnessed when Roderick’s blisters had burst, though to a far lesser degree. It seems the organism has bypassed the blister stage, which may, in fact, point to some evolutionary advantage to be had from infecting a host from whom large swaths of skin have been removed, so long as the body is kept submerged throughout the gestation period of the cilia. Perhaps the blisters are actually a type of ovum or egg sac. It certainly bears more investigation, when time permits.

The wormlike cilia sway with the house’ motion as if in an undersea current. The other four sites (the opposite shoulder, the abdomen, and the one on each thigh) show no change. Only the graft on the right shoulder seems to have taken. Will it be enough?

Thinking that perhaps a bit of fresh seawater would help, I made the trek down the hall to the back stairs, and thence to the largely deserted second floor. At the top of the main stairway, I met Cristov, who stood guard with the elephant gun. He asked how she was, and I murmured something about improvement as I slung the pail over the banister and played out the line. I am fairly certain he knows there is no hope for her—they all do, even those who didn’t see her when she emerged from the flooded first floor. Perhaps he was just fishing for information—fodder for the rumor mill. Since Gough sank into his depression, he has not been much of a leader to the guests. Ostraander may be the closest thing they have to leadership now—who would have thought such a thing? Since our confrontation, he has spoken not a word to me, though I sense that he regrets losing his temper. Still, he has yet to organize the other guests against us, for which I am thankful.

The water had risen since my last trip downstairs—or rather, the house had sunk further. Now scarcely a handful of carpeted steps are dry above the water’s inky surface. Soon the second floor will be inundated, and we will be left like rats on a sinking ship, clambering over each other until the weakest are trampled or pushed under. Though I paid little enough heed at the time, what with Roderick’s rapidly changing health, the loss of Ostraander’s airship may well have been the death of hope in Dun Leah House.

***

Alone in the Artist’s studio, Gough sat surrounded by her sketches and studies, bathed in the dirty yellow light of a single lamp, the oil seiching softly in the reservoir with the rocking of the house, the unperturbed flame casting stark shadows on the wainscoting and shelves lined with books he’d never read. Echoing the oil’s motion was the fluid—a lie of omission to call it water anymore—in the claw foot bath at the center of the room. Outside, another cloudless night of strange stars and the even stranger cries of the sirens, as Ostraander had dubbed the crooning things (and why not? The calls
were
grotesquely alluring).

He sat alone in the lamplight, the doctor’s notebook open to a blank page, a pen hanging forgotten in his hand. He had intended to write what had happened, to give closure to the doctor’s story, as it were. Having gotten ready, however, he could not imagine what he might write—where he might begin. Battered from Gough’s constant rereading, most of which had proven a waste of time, the notebook lay like some dead thing in his lap. He wondered fleetingly if whatever madness had claimed the doctor might not be catching.

The Artist’s disappearance had been devastating, of course. Just as they had seemed to be making progress of a sort, she was suddenly gone. Templesmith vanishing the same night was just one more reason for despair. Just what had happened was unclear.

Ostraander guessed that the doctor, having finally thought better of their experimentation, had carried the Artist’s body to the window to release it to the waters, only to stumble and fall in himself. Gough, however, had a more disconcerting scenario in mind, though he kept it to himself. It was, in part, the final pages of notes in the doctor’s journal, nearly illegible and almost entirely nonsensical, that made him suspect something else had happened to Templesmith. The resonances between the Artist’s disappearance and Roderick’s were undeniable, except Roderick had not been supervised at the time.

Gough finished his absinth—nearly the last of Ostraander’s guest gift. He’d sat like this for an interminable span, the lamp’s barely perceptible hiss sounding as if someone whispered in a dark corner or just beyond the locked door. At last, he sighed deeply, stretched, and crossed to the window. Outside, and a floor and a half below, the water reflected a warbly star field. The house drifted on, long since having forgotten from whence it came, and with no clearer notion of where it was headed.

When his feet grew sore he turned his back to the night and wandered in the intermittent shadow and glare of the studio. At last, he stopped his pacing, and stood, head cocked like some curious spaniel, almost sure he’d heard something. There. At the window.

He hurried across the room, his heart drumming against his ribs. Almost he went for the rifle over the mantle, but then he recalled that it was in use by Ellis Enoch at watch on the servants’ stair. Peering warily from the window, he saw only the same dark water and the same reflected stars. He squeezed his eyes shut at the realization of how much he had hoped.

Hoped for what? A miracle? A fairy-tale ending? The Artist to return to him, healed and whole again? A miraculous rescue at this, their darkest hour? But
he
was supposed to be the lead actor, the protagonist in this miscarriage of a romance. He had called them: the medium, the pretentious scions of ancient families, the young priest, the war hero, the Russian actor—all of them, here to Dun Leah House. He had gathered the most remarkable cast of characters his extensive connections could yield up, all for the paltry goal of impressing her.

The Artist.

But then, when everything had descended into utter madness, and the time had come for him to step forward and save them—and most importantly her—Gough had found himself impotent against the inexorable waters and the fathomless mysteries they at once embodied and concealed. His nails dug into the windowsill, and a wordless growl of despair escaped his lips. The sound startled him, and his eyes snapped open, just as he felt his mind caressed by the first ethereal wisp of a nascent insight. He spun on his heel, suddenly out of breath.
Of course!

***

The noise again. Very like a curious cat.

And again. Closer now.

Then a movement he could sense through the vibration of the fluid enveloping him. It was akin to hearing, but rather than his eardrums, it was as if every inch of him was drawn tight and tuned to detect vibration.
It’s working
, he thought. It had to be.

Someone pounded at the door, rattled the knob. There was a shout, the knob jiggled again, and then something heavy slammed against the stout oak. He thought someone called his name.

He watched a hand, fine boned and webbed slip over the edge of the windowsill—an artist’s hand, to be sure—groping like a nimble starfish, seeking purchase. A slender arm followed, and a second hand, then the rest of the figure, dripping as it came. She dropped to the floor and out of view.

The Artist.

She had come back to him. She had returned—whether for revenge or reunion, he hardly cared. Lost to and reborn from the weird depths of the waters that bore Dun Leah House along on its never-ending journey. His savior. His fate. His love. His life in more ways than he could enumerate.

A profound transformation was taking place within him, and she... she was his destiny, his future, and his doom. She had been since that chill March morning when, as if guided by the fates, he had found his way into her dusty studio above the printer’s shop. Everything since had been no more than a protracted denouement.

More noise from the door now, someone trying to batter it down. Ostraander. His only true friend in Dun Leah House. Almost Gough wished he could go to him, open the door, and thank him. Thank him for staying with them when he could so easily have left, for trying to stop their mad meddling for the Artist’s sake, for not abandoning him, even now.

Her hands scaled the rim of the tub, and a moment later her face hove into view, furred with minute silken cilia that glistened wetly and writhed in the lamplight like blind inchworms. She was beautiful and terrible beyond reason, and he sobbed despite himself.
It was the only way
, he tried to explain. He hadn’t expected to be so afraid.

Shining chlorophyll green, her eyes fixed on his—inscrutable and unspeakably alien. Through the buzzing terror that threatened to overmaster him stabbed a thought, glass sharp and colder than ice: maybe it wasn’t her at all. Maybe whatever intelligence illumined those eyes wasn’t hers, wasn’t anything he could ever hope to understand. He tried to speak, to tell her... something, but his jaw locked, from terror or the creeping paralysis that accompanied the transformation.
I had no choice
, he whispered into the vast silence of his mind.
It was the only way I could have you.

She might have smiled (or was it only a trick of light and shadow?) as she took hold of his face almost tenderly and forced his head down into the inky brine. Everything in Gough strove against the cold water and her colder hands, but his limbs would not obey.

His lungs burned, and white and green flashed behind his eyes with every heartbeat. Between the flashes of color, which became more and more sporadic, he thought he glimpsed something that might have been a future: murky water, deeper than night, a light that wasn’t light, a wall, a reef rising like a mountain from the benthic slime; closer, the structure’s irregular surface was motile with tiny, pale tentacles swaying sluggishly in a deep current; the bodies stacked a hundred thousand high, green eyes glowering—colonized, incorporated, belonging at last to something greater; the tower reaching ever toward the poison air, narrowing as it climbed, and at the top, the newest additions to the over-body circumscribed a dark orifice, a fell mouth with a hunger deeper than the world. There, upon the lip of the behemoth, Baskin Gough glimpsed the place reserved for him from the beginning, at the very feet of the Artist.

Triptych

Adele Gardner

I.

Noon punished him through the winding, sweaty drive to the camera shop. Twenty-five miles an hour, with police hidden in every curve. It wasn’t what he’d planned to do on his day off.

Martin had lost his darkroom to a terrible irony. Rose, whom he had loved... his favorite, perfect model... Rose had left him, because she could no longer abide the sound of the shutter, the flash of the lens that created a smooth barrier between them. She’d fallen victim to the tired refrain that the photographer hid behind his camera. Why couldn’t she understand it was precisely the reverse? That the camera let him slip deep inside the world, through a perspective no one else could see?

With his salary as a museum photographer, he couldn’t afford the chemicals, nor the extra room he’d need. Rose had his lab equipment under lock and key against the money he owed her, months when his eye struck only blandness, a fatal blank. With Rose gone, it all felt that way—listless, he would pick up a camera only to dabble, drawing the empty hollow he’d become.

Martin swung open the door to the camera shop, the familiar chemical scent teasing him above new leather and sweating customers. He waited by the counter while Gus retrieved the prints. On the display shelf stood a bank of antique cameras, tall hoods and black leather cases, smooth old steel and chrome, meticulously cleaned lenses that stared him down like an unblinking gallery of eyes, drinking the light into their black, unloaded boxes. Possibilities. A world he missed.

“Martin L. Gregory,” Gus muttered as he filled out the sales slip. “Haven’t seen you in a million years.”

“How much?”

“Fifty dollars. I’m throwing in the enlargements. Do you still work on commission? My daughter has a friend getting married in October.”

“How much,” Martin repeated softly, “for the Stereo Realist?” His worn brown eyes reached up to the twin lenses. How much better it would be, how much simpler... As if in a dream, his hand stretched toward the camera. Gus handed the slim rectangle to Martin.

“Go on, take it,” Gus said gently. “You can pay me next time you come in.”

And Martin looked up then, raw, blind, seeing him only with the photographer’s eye. He clutched the camera to his chest and walked out before Gus could change his mind.

***

The camera galvanized him. He took it everywhere, lover on a honeymoon, exploring the beauty of position—the curve of the bridge, the latticework of struts, the broken line of an abandoned fence through the trees. Sometimes he got so engrossed in its sleek, dual vision that he forgot to eat. He built a night-darkroom in the hall closet, barely big enough to breathe. As he developed prints and mounted them painstakingly on the viewing cards, sliding them into the stereoviewer one by one, three dimensions leapt out of two like a pair of hands that clutched his neck to drag him into the real world.