Bohemians of Sesqua Valley (7 page)

“Oh contraire. Your words were quite applicable. You have been touched by our local sorcery. I will leave you so that you may revel in the wonder of it all. But don’t loiter in the woods overlong, Loveman—you know how it at times affects your imagination. Your previous howling still echo in mine ears! Au revoir.” His smile lingered a few moments longer, and then he turned and nodded to Akiva as he ambled down the path and out of sight.

“That man is a freak. What on earth was he nattering about, your howls?” She turned to her friend, whose face was mostly eclipsed in shadow; but she could sense the fear that caused his eyes to tremble, the fear aroused by the creature they had just encountered. Sarah could not suppress a shudder. “I think I’d like to get out of here,” she told her friend as the shadows of the area darkened around them. Taking hold of Sarah’s hand, Akiva led her from the lonesome place.

III

(From the journal of Sarah Paget-Lowe)

My memory has always been quite keen. However, since returning to Providence my reminiscence of those three weeks spent in Sesqua Valley are beginning to cloud, to dim. It’s as if the valley were trying to remove its images from my mind, to cloud my memory. That’s why I’ve begun this journal of my recollections of my days spent with Akiva, who seems now to have forgotten that such a place as Sesqua Valley exists. Here’s the weird thing: something in the nature of that valley and the secrets that it revealed to me seems to have touched my eyes with new perception. I have always found the antiquities of Providence charming. I love the sense of the past that one can feel here from walking down certain streets, no matter how modern the city has become. Now, however, my senses have been enhanced, and I am more and more aware of a different kind of aura here, something a bit sinister and secret. I have found pockets of the past that I never noticed before. Once, while sitting on a tabletop tomb in St. John’s churchyard, I heard the wind arising, and felt something grasp my hair and press against my ear as though it were some phantom mouth. Disquieting as the experience was, it also rather delighted me. Perhaps this is but one aspect of my new Muse, the thing that has inspired me to neglect the Jamesian novel I’ve been working on and spend my time writing some delightful horror tales. I read one of these new things to Herbert when he was visiting from New York, and he was riveted. “If you can write a book-full of these things, I’ll publish them!” he exclaimed.

I have been followed by a denizen of the valley, I’m sure of it. I noticed it as I was wandering down Benefit Street and stopped to admire a small copse that rises beside an antique house. One small tree that was almost entirely concealed by tall bushes looked so odd that I continued staring at it for quite some time, and then I thought it wasn’t a tree at all but something, some creature, disguised as a tree. I thought it was sunlight catching some bits of moss or whatever and illuminating the tiny patches of growth, but then I fancied that the two tiny spots of brilliance resembled a pair of silver eyes. I rushed away!

One of the things I want to make note of in this journal is the transformation of Akiva Loveman. He is such a brilliant poet, and yet he has always been so nonchalant about his work and its reception. His two collections of verse came about only because of my insistence and my showing his work to my publisher. Although those books garnered some very glowing reviews, they sold poorly, and it was shortly after the publication of the second book that Akiva suddenly vanished, not to be heard from until six months later, when he wrote to me from his new dwelling. He had learned that I had been feeling tired and listless and assumed that this was due to writer’s block, when in fact I was simply burned out from having finished too many projects in too little a time. And so he invited me to visit him in what he called Sesqua Town and gave me instructions on how to reach the place by train. I hadn’t traveled by train for three decades, and it was a pleasant (although overlong) experience. I had, of course, never corresponded with my friend, as we were both living in this beloved city until his sudden disappearance. Aspects of his letter were peculiar. He expressed himself in queer idiom, and at times I seemed to be reading a macabre prose-poem full of morbid hints and half-expressed emotions. He demanded that I tell no one of my destiny and destroy his letter after having made my traveling arrangements. I did no such thing.

Akiva has changed, in ways I cannot understand. He has always seemed so reserved and serious, living for his art, his love of literature. A new characteristic revealed itself to me during my visit—a coy playfulness. I can best explain this by describing our visit to the Hungry Place, as he called the local graveyard. I’ve written up the experience as a wee horror story, so my description of it here may become over-literary and fictive in nature. But that’s okay. I want to evoke precisely what happened and how it affected us.

My young friend has always been a collector of rare things, mostly fabulous editions of old books. After moving to Sesqua Valley, he began collecting other items, some of them quite curious. For example, he had, on his mantelpiece, a collection of small animal skulls, some of which were quite bizarre. He laughed when I suggested that some of the skulls were fakeries, however cleverly crafted. One thing that caught my attention was a beautiful antique lantern, which he said he had found in a place called Kingsport. It was my interest in the lantern that reminded him of something he wanted to show me.

“There’s a mausoleum in the Hungry Place that I want to take you to. It will help you to experience the new ecstasy I feel for fantastic sensations, the stuff that feeds my latest verse. It’s a place that needs to be visited in moonlight, and the moon tonight is very fine. We’ll take the lantern, for we’ll need its assistance.”

The lantern was on a small cedar table next to the intriguing black statue, and it was before that statue that Akiva made a very bizarre motion. I have said that one of the statue’s hands was held away from its body, palm outward. As I watched him, Akiva stood before the statue and began to mutter strange words in a language I did not recognize, although portions of the words seemed Semitic. I was astonished, because I knew that he had forsaken completely his racial and religious heritage. He then touched his fingers to the upraised palm of the black statue, as a Hebrew might touch the casing that holds a mezuzah parchment, and brought those fingers to his lips. Apparently my astonishment was evident, for he turned to gaze at me with playful wickedness shining in his eyes, and then he brought his fingers to my mouth. My kiss was a tender thing.

“Let’s go,” he told me, grabbing a jacket and leading me outdoors.

We walked beneath the moon and stars, which seemed intimately near in the sky above Sesqua Valley. I noticed, as we walked, how relaxed my friend was, with such a mellow expression on his face. Whatever it was that had drawn him to that mysterious valley, his dwelling there had had an advantageous effect, of that there was no doubt. At one point he began to whistle as he guided me down the dirt road toward town. It was a lengthy walk, and I wondered why he didn’t use his car more often, as he had when he picked me up from the train depot. But I had seen very few cars on the roadways, most people preferring to walk instead. The lack of vehicles added to the quietude of the place, which was striking to a city lass.

After a length of time I espied the large Sphinx statue in the distance, looking eerie in moonlight. I was touched, as we passed the statue, with a sense of mild foreboding, feeling as though the sculpted beast had been awaiting and was now observing us as we passed it on our way to the walled cemetery.

What strange apprehension I suddenly feel as I prepare to record this memory. So much of my time spent in Sesqua Valley is fading away, and when I try to remember things all I see in my mind is a kind of haze, a mauve mist. But this one midnight stroll is keen and clear, to the point where I can almost taste the fear it arouses. I remember thinking that the moon had never seemed so near to our planet and that I saw that sphere of dust as never before. The cosmos seemed but a little skip away, as if I could jump upward and follow a trail of twinkling stars into the depths of night. Akiva’s mellow mood struck me oddly: it should have helped to relax me, but instead it was a source of anxiety, as if he knew secret things that were not to be shared. He led me to an opening in the low stone wall and we entered the graveyard, which he called the Hungry Place. Very few of the stones seemed old, and on many of them there was but a name and date of death. I noticed a change in the air as we stepped onto the cemetery sod, a chilliness that I had not previously noticed. Akiva led me past tombs until he reached a statue that stood upon a colume of marble.

“This is the man who brought me to Sesqua Town,” he whispered to me. “The poet, William Davis Manly. I had found a rare edition of his verse in an antique shop in Boston, and I bought it on a whim—or so I thought. Now I feel that I was destined to own it, and to bring it home. The verse affected me deeply, especially the sequence of seventeen sonnets entitled ‘The Seventh Sun.’ Tucked inside the book was a short epistle to the book’s original owner, which mentioned this hidden valley. The more I delved into that book, the stronger was my ache to find this town.”

“And this is where the poet is buried?”

“No. I—I don’t quite understand what happened to him, people don’t care to discuss it with me. I’ll find out, in time. I need to become more rooted to this soil. Come on, the place I want to show you is up a ways.”

We approached a place where many trees enshrouded what I eventually saw was a large mausoleum. Oddly, the closer we got to it, the darker the sky became, and I noticed a vague stench which my fancy absurdly associated with rotting stone. As we drew nearer the edifice, some large winged thing drifted out of the trees and floated toward the twin-peaked mountain, uttering no cry. I had yet to hear any birdcall during my time in the valley, nor had I seen any squirrels or other wildlife. However, as I began to listen, attentively, to the aura of the place, I thought that I could detect a sentience, as if some thing was indeed aware of us. I could feel the thing’s interest in us, and its appetite. Stopping for a moment, Akiva dug into his pocket and produced a lighter, with which he set fire to the lantern’s wick. We climbed the three steps that took us to the crypt’s double gates, which we opened together. Inside, we found three immense granite slabs.

“No names, or plaques,” I whispered. And then I pressed my hand to my forehead and used my other hand to steady myself on the nearest tomb, for I had been overcome with slight and sudden vertigo. “That was weird,” I told my friend.

“No, it’s a common occurrence in the Hungry Place. The children of the valley never come here, it affects them strongly.”

“It?”

“The Hungry Place and its unholy appetite.”

“My dear, you’re sounding like one of your fantastic poems. Please, talk sense. A little common sense would benefit me in this macabre place. Ugh! Your lamp is casting the queerest shadows.”

“The lamp will light our way.”

“Our way to where?”

“Below.” He moved away from me, toward a back wall, then paused and turned to smile at me, and once again I felt a tinge of fear, his expression was so abnormal. And then Akiva began to sink into the ground, taking the light with him, which increased my dread. I rushed to where he was descending and saw the large pit and earthen steps leading into a depth of darkness, from which an odor of decay arose. Following his light, I cautiously descended the soft steps, which took us into a small grotto. The air grew very thin and dry. I did not understand why the flame of Akiva’s lamp had darkened and grown red, casting a crimson pall all around us. I shuddered at the smell encountered in the chamber, and at the disquiet that the stench inspired. Akiva rested his lantern onto a large oblong slab that looked as if it had been made one-thousand years ago; and I wondered what on earth could have been interred in so large a sepulcher. I then noticed the two items that rested on the slab of stone and reached for the smallest. It was an old diary or some such thing, and judging from its appearance it was quite aged, a relic of the past. Turning the frayed faux leather cover, I saw a faint script where someone had written a name, which I made out as ‘Harley Warren.’ The pages of the diary were so brittle that I knew it would most likely split and rip in my attempt to read it, and so I shut the cover and returned it to its place upon the slab. Reaching for the other book, I picked it up, surprised that it was so weighty. It too reeked of age, and yet I could tell it was of a more solid construction. It felt nasty in my grasp, moist and squalid, like something that had been retrieved from swampland. Hurriedly, I set it down on the slab and watched as Akiva turned its binding.

“Curious, isn’t it? I’ve never seen such alien-looking and undecipherable characters. Impossible to tell if the pages are printed or if the lines are handwritten. The script is very fine, however foreign. You see that one character, which is oft repeated? Look.”

Picking up his lamp, he stepped away from the sepulcher and to one lightless corner. I gasped at the sight of the thing that stood there. Its stone, I sensed, was as ancient as that of the hoary tomb, and I knew that it was a thing of great age. And yet it was almost an exact replica of the black statue that Akiva kept in his living room. It had an identical stance, with the one arm lifted just a little from its body, palm outward. My friend shone his lantern’s light on that palm, and I saw the character that had been chiseled upon it, the same strange sigil that had been repeated in the text of the outré book.