Bohemians of Sesqua Valley (22 page)

In his personal study beneath the room where April Dorgan slept, Adam Webster fondled runic bones in his hand, tossed them onto a table and frowned at the portent they conveyed. His large hand swept the bones to the floor and picked up the partial translation of the Dhol Chants that had been one of the books that had belonged to Laird Dorgan. He spoke one of the chants in his low voice, using the original Chinese inflections, and felt the psychic response that wove through the aether from the one who had entered the ancient church. In the room above him, the sleeping woman whispered a response to Adam’s muttered phrase.

Cyrus crept beneath the alien starlight. The sky had never looked as it did this night, so similar to the plate of window pane that had been taken from a haunted church in Providence, Rhode Island, just before that building had been razed. Darkness whirled within darkness, and light danced within lines of light. As he gazed into the sky, Cyrus felt as never before that he was a creature of the valley and its elements, rooted to this planet and its particular chemistry of earth and air. That air was now tainted by the presence that had invaded it, but the sacred sod was pure. Cyrus fell to his knees and clawed into the earth, picked up handfuls of dirt and rubbed the substance into his face. He listened to the ground and sensed the subdued pulsation of that which served as the valley’s heart. And then he rose and walked toward the raised ground on which Simon Gregory Williams had had his cathedral of arcane art erected; he climbed up the earthen steps that took him up the incline, to the black ancient pile that was eerily shadowed in encroaching moonlight. Cyrus approached the arched threshold through which he could see the deep purple light that filled the church, the light that emanated from the tall and lean figure that stood upon the altar with one dark hand against the square of black glass that had once been a portion of a great apsidal window in a spectral church in New England.

The child of Sesqua Valley stepped into the haunted realm and saw the shapeless forms that huddled here and there burning low mounds of incense. He walked through the purple radiance to the raised platform of the altar. The Dark One did not look at him. “Ah, child of elemental shadow, what have you come to offer me?”

“I offer you nothing. I’m not some mortal with whom you can play. Why do you manifest yourself?”

“I have been summoned, Cyrus. I do not leave empty-handed. The Beast is not among you?”

“No, Simon’s in Prague.”

The Dark One uttered laughter, deeply toned and unearthly. “He amuses me. I am sorry to have missed him. Come to me, child of shadow.”

Cyrus shivered as he watched the hand move away from the pane of glass, the hand that was now offered to him; but he did not move. “I offer you no mortal veneration.”

At this the figure turned and stared at him with haughty eyes set in a proud and beautiful façade that reminded Cyrus of a painting of an archangel that Simon had shown him in Italy, the work of an unknown artist. The thing before him looked very young and self-assured. Its masculine attire was of black cloth that contained a deep red undertone of color. When it spoke, its mellow tones rippled through the air like liquid language. “Then I will snatch my due from some other source. But you are mistaken to think you have no mortal soul; for when your elemental stuff walks this plane in the guise of flesh and blood, you live within the law of earthly substance that is far removed from your realm of shadow and mist. That is the portion of you that I can claim at any time. Be cautious, Cyrus Lynchwood.” The Dark One moved down the platform and loomed before the lad. He offered the child his black hand once again. “While you walk this valley, you are a beast indeed. Do as beasts of earth must, child. Give the veneration of thy tongue.”

The young Sesquan felt it then, a thing he had never known before: the velvet kiss of fear. He marveled at how his husk of mortal flesh trembled as he bent to the offered hand and smoothed his tongue along its alien texture.

VI

April awakened to a gentle rapping at her chamber door. She was surprised to see her call answered by Adam Webster carrying a large tray of what smelled like breakfast food and watched silently as he placed the tray on a table and then found a bed tray that he placed over her blanketed legs.

“There’s no clock in here,” she mumbled, looking around.

“It’s early afternoon. You’ve slept soundly, but I think you must be famished, you’ve not eaten much since your arrival. I’ve taken the liberty to prepare you a late breakfast. I suppose you’ll want to be heading back home today. Perhaps this amount will suffice for the box of books, and if you agree I have the funds in my study.”

She glanced at the figure that had been penned onto the slip of paper he placed before her. “That’s far more than I expected.”

He shrugged. “The books are choice indeed, and their condition is excellent. Simon will be happy to have them. When were you planning on leaving the valley?”

“I haven’t really thought about it. I’m enjoying being away from my little world in Wisconsin more than I thought I would. I’ve imposed on your generosity long enough, though, so I’ll find a room in town.”

“Nonsense, it’s pleasant to have some company. I thought, perhaps, you would enjoy accompanying me to a small gathering of poets tonight. I think the crowd may appeal to what I perceive to be your Bohemian identity.” He smiled, and although his face was so very odd, his smile seemed genuine enough, and she accepted his invitation. She ate and dressed, and then decided to go for another walk, and found herself strolling once again to the ancient church and its display of esoteric art. She thought, perhaps, that she had dreamt of the place in the night, but the memory of those dreams was hazy and vague. She knew that at one point in her dream she had been gazing at the black window and been sucked into its subtly swirling vortex. The day was cooler and the sky overcast—rain was probably on its way, which she would welcome if it cooled the still-hot atmosphere of the valley. Although there was a fairly strong wind, its force did not dissipate the streams of vapor that rose from the small plateau on which the old church stood. April climbed the earthen steps that took her up that bit of raised land, to the ancient edifice, and she frowned in confusion, not understanding the movement of light that she watched as she peered into the rectangular opening.

She entered the dark and lonely place and could not comprehend what she was seeing. Some vague figure stood on the altar behind the pane of black glass, a man who held a globe of purple illumination in his hands. The black light that emanated from the globe shone through the window and spilled weird illumination to the ceiling, a pattern of strangely colored light that whirled and writhed above her. She had never seen such alien combinations of color, and as she gazed at them she experienced sharp pain inside her head. It was as though she were looking up at some unfathomable cosmic force, some spinning horde of stars, and out of the abysses between those stars swept chilly currents of pain that pierced her eyes and split her brain. This sharp cold pain crept from her head to all her flesh, which shivered as with ague. It was then that the figure behind the black window stepped forth, through the darkness and light, to her. She looked at the swarthy skin, the young and slightly sinister face. As she gazed into his eyes her sense of nervous anxiety increased, and she began to shake violently. And then the stranger’s cool hands encased her arms, and she calmed. He stood before her, the dark man, like some weird sentient shadow, observing her face as if he knew her and was about to speak her name. She did not want this being to say her name. April opened her mouth and tried to speak, but found herself unable to utter sound. The globe of outré light that the fellow had held was gone, as were its effects above them. The dusky place was very still, very quiet, but there was a riot of whispering within her head. She shut her eyes as if by so doing she could shut off her fear. Shivering, she raised her hands so as to rub her arms, and in so doing realized that no one now held her, that she stood alone within the nave. April opened her eyes and felt that she was dreaming, for the scene around her was one of distortion and ruin. The walls of the ancient church were cracked, with portions of the huge bricks missing. A horrid green hue spilled into the ruins, like the light of some diseased moon. The ground on which she stood had been disrupted, so that she stumbled over raised portions of the ground as she crept toward the arched threshold. The black window swung slowly on the chains that held it, its surface suffused with a kind of dark purple phosphorescence within which lines of light that resembled lightning occasionally flickered. Although she could not detect the figure she had imagined, she seemed to feel its presence all around her, a sensation that so disturbed her that she fled from the building, into dark air. The storm had not yet erupted, but the sky above her was black with seething clouds of tempest.

April turned again to gaze at the ancient church and saw no signs of the violent destruction that she had imagined inside, but the figure of the strange totem caught her attention. Something about the thing made her think of Grandfather and the stories he told her, late in life, about his experience at Rick’s Lake. She could not quite remember, but the more she studied the queer totem the more the diseased aura of the place got to her, and thus she turned and rushed down the grassy slope to the road that led back to town. The sight of the Webster habitation actually gave her a feeling of relief. Webster himself was at his desk inside the shop, and he looked at her inquisitively as she stopped at the entrance to the shop as though she might speak to him; but then she pushed away from the door and found her way up the stairs and to her quiet room. She had left one of the room’s small windows open, and cold air now gushed into the chamber, chilling her. She closed the window as rain finally began to fall, the sound of which seemed to calm her. That she had need of calming perplexed her—she could not understand what she had experienced in the church, or the emotional aftermath of that occurrence. Something had touched her mind, some troubling thing that had traumatized her imagination.

The world outside her windows darkened, and suddenly April did not want to be alone. She changed into a dress and applied a modicum of make-up, and then went down the stairs to the main room of Webster’s bookshop, where Adam still sat at his desk, looking over some old books. “Are we still on for tonight?”

“Yes. This is actually a good time to leave. It’s a small club where the artistic souls of the valley convene.”

“Great. We can take my car, unless you want to drive.”

“I do not drive, Miss Dorgan.”

They exited the building and stepped into a light rainfall that felt, to her, refreshing. The stifling heat that had plagued the valley had dissipated, and the sweetness that April had originally detected in the air had returned. The odd man who sat beside her in the car remained silent, except to give some few directions, but her initial wariness of the fellow had eased; he was an isolated creature in a ridiculously small town and was probably not used to nor comfortable with a sudden intrusion such as she had thrown upon him. They entered the main part of what she guessed would have been their downtown section and parked in front of the place that he indicated. The antiquated buildings had been built close together and seemed like structures that had been raised many decades earlier, and the wooden sidewalks made her feel as though she had escaped into some pocket of old time. He vacated the car and then waited for her at the door of the club or whatever it was, and she nodded pleasantly at him as she walked past him into the establishment, which proved to look like so many other clubs she had known, with low lighting and many tables at which people whispered to each other over drinks. At one place in the club there was a small platform that served as performance stage, and looking at it gave her a momentary chill, for it reminded her of the altar in the sinister church; and with good reason, for a dark figure stood upon it, at whom many of the club’s denizens gazed with troubled faces. The tall lean man stood very still, with one hand on top of the head of the boy who sat crossed-legged before him. Cyrus did not look into the crowd as he raised a flute to his mouth, and the music that issued from that instrument was disquieting. It puzzled April how such a deep-toned sound could flow from so slim a piece of wood, a sound that reminded her of echoed tempest heard within the eaves of some vast roof.

The black man smiled as he peered into the crowd. Although his flesh was black as pitch, his features were not Negroid but reminded the woman of a replica she had once seen of an Egyptian Sphinx. She had read once that the Greek word had perhaps derived from the Egyptian “Shesepankh” and meant something like “living statue.” The man who gazed at them from the stage could easily have been such an entity, for there was something about his smooth and youthful features that looked mask-like and ersatz, a sly mockery of mortality. The chiseled mouth opened as the black man began to sing.

“Gonna blow the dust of earth,

Until it is dispersed.

Blow that dust of earth.

Gonna blow the glorious sun,

Until that globe is gone.

Blow the glorious sun.

Gonna blow your mortal mind,

Then leave you far behind,

Deaf and dumb and blind.”

April found the fellow’s mellow voice troubling—it didn’t sound quite real, having a quality that sounded almost like a recording. She did not like the way the man’s black hand moved through Cyrus’s hair, like some predatory thing, and she watched as Adam rose from his chair and went to the stage and removed the hand from the boy’s head. She thought she heard Adam mutter something like “You cannot claim him” to the black man and the lad was pulled from the stage and joined them at their table as Adam stepped to the bar and ordered drinks. The young man’s silver eyes wore an unfathomable expression as they watched the black man float from the stage and stalk toward them. The fellow stopped momentarily at their table and smiled down at her.