He appeared in the doorway. He invited me in. More woodworm dust fell into my hood as I walked through and the door closed behind me.
I glanced around the room. Collapsed cobwebs were clinging to the picture rail in a sort of wave-form. There was a vase of dead flowers on the side-table. There were bookshelves and a sideboard, but no seating other than a brocaded settle that looked scarcely able to accommodate as many as two people. I could hear the fire crackling, but it appeared to be exuding nothing but smoke.
He sat down on the settle and gestured for me to sit next to him. As I sat down, the abrasion of my robe against the brocade expelled an amount of dust that was not only more extensive than the smoke, but also of a type that was almost red in colour: the red of the sand of a desert that I used to know. There was a faint perfume to it, as if rose petals had been ground down to a powder that contaminated not just the settle, but apparently every item of furniture in the room.
He gazed at me.
— I am afraid that I have nothing to offer you in the way of refreshment, he said.
I noticed that the utterance of every syllable caused a draft of steam to issue from his lips.
— That is all right, I replied. I do not eat or drink during the hours of daylight on any day of the year. It is a rule of my order and one that I am happy to follow.
— And I keep no food or drink on the premises at all. For reasons that will perhaps emerge during the course of our conversation. Or perhaps not.
He looked away.
— Then my dietary requirements are compatible with your dietary provisions, I said. Let us hope that we achieve a similar compatibility in my need for information and your ability to supply it.
He looked at me again. His eyes looked as if a spider resided in each of them and that each one had woven its web from his blood. I could feel two slight patches of heat on my cheeks. His voice quavered slightly, and the cobwebs vibrated. There was no smell to his breath.
— Forgive my pedantry, he said. I trust that we shall not fall out over this matter, but to my mind you have no need for information, merely a desire. And there is no obligation on my part to supply it.
He shivered slightly, abruptly rose from the settle, walked to the fireplace, and busied himself with attempting to coax more life from the fire. I addressed my remarks to his bent back.
— I trust that I have not offended you. I freely concede that you have no obligation to supply me with any information, but I have an interest in these matters – a very practical one – and a third party – that party we have both agreed not to name, as I understand it – indicated that this conversation would be to our mutual advantage.
He appeared satisfied with the state of the fire – although I could discern no improvement in the miserliness of its effusions – and returned to the settle. The dust that he displaced this time most certainly smelt – I am sure – of roses: roses cut (and hence dying) but smelling of exposure to the open air, as if recently placed in a graveyard vase.
— Well, let us begin, he said, and attempt to discover if it is indeed to our mutual advantage. What do you wish to know?
His clothes exuded a sort of weary discarded smell, as if he had sweated out his words already, and was now merely about to repeat them.
— I understand that you have had an encounter with a ghost, or rather, several encounters with several ghosts.
— That is correct.
— When and where was this?
He sighed. His breath seemed to hang heavily.
— It occurred whilst I was residing in a city where, as has been poetically described rather too many times, one continent slides into another. I was plagued (and I do not consider this too strong a word to use) by sand and dust blowing into my eyes, and owing to a temporary but prolonged inability to produce liquid from my tear ducts, the material remained in the corners of my eyes, abrading them. Let me explain one item of fact: I have three previous wives and seven estranged children. As soon as this phenomenon had manifested itself, images of all of them appeared doubled in my peripheral vision at regular intervals, intervals so regular, indeed, that one could set one’s timepiece by them, because they were of slightly fewer than fifteen minutes, as if the day had been divided into a hundred hours.
A circular wind seemed to reverberate around the room, dragging smoke from the fire with it. I momentarily felt cold, but I also noticed that for the duration of the wind’s visit, steam was escaping through his clothing. I felt needle-points on my skin as he continued.
— However, not only did I see them, but they also spoke to me, warmly, as if we were all still in the family home. They were diurnal presences, so as soon as I lay down to sleep they made their exit, which I understand is the reverse of ‘normal’ manifestations. Perhaps you are in a position to advise me on that.
— Certainly. On the balance of probability, that is indeed the case. However, what you describe is by no means a universally nocturnal phenomenon.
— I am interested to hear that. Perhaps we may discuss this at greater length later.
I felt my skin tighten.
— Certainly. But in the meantime, please continue.
— I had lost contact with all of them, owing to circumstances that it would be pointless and tasteless to elaborate here, but suffice it to say that, when I investigated the matter, I discovered that all of them had died before I saw them.
— What, all of them?
— Yes. This merely reflects the state of the country that I left, my alleged standing in it, and their perilous position within it.
— You are sure of this?
— Yes. At that time, I was still in contact with people who were aware of what was going on in the country that I used to inhabit. They kept me apprised of all . . . details. Including the fate of my wives and children.
— You had more than one wife at a time?
— Yes, although that is of no significance, in my opinion.
— Perhaps. Perhaps not. Please continue.
— Not long ago, shortly after coming to this country, I received medical treatment to alleviate the damage to my tear ducts, and my . . . companions left me, but ever since then, either as a direct consequence of their desertion or as a side-effect of the medication that I am obliged to continue to take, I have been beleaguered by headaches, which keep me awake and make me long for the return of my ghosts.
I felt my skin loosen slightly.
— If they are still out there, I said.
— I know that they are still out there.
— How do you know?
— The bedhangers told me.
— The bedhangers? And what are they?
My eyes felt as if they were drying up.
— My constant need for repose as a result of my symptoms brought me into contact with them. They communicated with me whenever my eyes were closed. I understood the phenomenon no more than I understood the presence of the ghosts until I received a communication a little over two weeks ago. It was pushed beneath my door. It provides an explanation of sorts. This is the reason I agreed to your presence here. Please read this.
He reached into his jacket pocket, and handed me a piece of paper. It was scorched with radial stripes that echoed the arachnid confusion of his eyes. I read:
This is a warning. You have little time left. The bedhangers will acquire you. They are already with you, standing on your bedhead, looking down on you, looking into you, scooting on the cushions of air from your nightly snorings, light as noise, synchronised with your breathings, the breathings that they pull out with the noddings of their flimsy muscled necks. They have absorbed what you expel, but they are hungrier for more, and can dig far more deeply. They will supply an explanation, but not one that will provide you with any succour.
I looked up. The cobwebs appeared to have writhed around and attained a flatter shape and now looked more like a series of smears of human hair. I handed back the piece of paper. I held out my hand and looked at it. The skin had dropped slightly.
— So what do you make of that? he asked. Are you familiar with these bedhangers?
— With the concept, I said, not the word.
— So this is a recognised phenomenon?
— The existence of nocturnal malevolent dislocated wisps of spirit? Certainly. And they often afflict people in your circumstances: people who have offended larger, more mature ghosts in some way. They can be a form of emissary of the future coming of that more mature ghost, or conversely, a type of residue: the fractured remnants of a departed spirit. They inhabit a space that the more significant ghost cannot occupy or does not choose to.
— And the warning letter?
— That is highly unusual. These phenomena do not normally have the power of verbal communication, whether written or oral, so I would tend to regard it as genuine warning from a third party rather than a threat from the presences themselves. I notice that the language is slightly arcane, slightly unusual – possibly of a foreign nature originally. Please tell me: how did they – and indeed how do they – communicate with you?
— They set up a rhythmical tapping. Deep within my head. Throughout the night. There is a succession of changing but yet regular beats but there are also improvised percussive sections of a sometimes excessively violent nature. Whilst there is nothing as crude as some universal coding method, there is nevertheless some sort of message embedded within the tapping, and I have come to recognise it.
— So what is the nature of the message from these – bedhangers?
— Let me attempt to explain a little further. In the country where I used to reside, each rhythm – used most specifically for dances of various natures – has a complex and quite sophisticated meaning. Any named rhythm can indicate a rural or urban environment, a religious or a bawdy tone, an indication of happiness or sadness, a feeling of solidarity or estrangement, and many more things. In this way, a subtle vocabulary can be built up within the non-conscious mind, and a message – often quite a complicated one – can be imparted by assembling these rhythmic elements in a variety of sequences. I trust that I am making sense?
— Indeed you are, and this is a phenomenon that has been described to me before, although I can feel no affinity with it personally. However, does this mean that your sleeping hours were plagued – to use that word again – by constant drumming?
He made a sort of half-smile, half-grimace. His teeth looked cleaner.
— Not so much plagued, as anointed. They did not help me sleep better, nor did they ease my headaches, but they provided stimulation for the long, lonely nights and they gave hints of a possible journey that would relieve me from my accursed state of permanent ennui.
— But presumably the veracity of the message is entirely at the whim of the subjective interpretation of your non-conscious mind?
— Most certainly. But none the worse for that. In my opinion, of course.
My mouth felt grubbier. I stretched my tongue over my teeth and it seemed to become serrated.
— So what did they – do they – tell you?
— They communicated what appeared to be many conflicting things initially, but over a period of time, matters were slowly resolved, and following one night when I was more tightly asleep than ever before, the only possible interpretation was made clear to me.
He rose from the settle; his hand brushed mine: unnecessarily, I thought. He busied himself with the vase of flowers, which appeared knobblier, as if, by some perversion of the natural process, buds were forming. He sat down again, grabbing at the sleeve of my robe for support. His suit was more frayed than when he had stood up.
— You were talking about the interpretation, I said.
— Yes.
— And that interpretation was?
— That I had to suffer for my desertion. That my ghosts were pursuing me as relentlessly as agents of an enemy power. That I was guilty until and unless I established, not only my innocence, but the identity of the guilty party, because there was no doubt in the minds of the ghosts that the bedhangers represented that a crime had been committed.
His suit continued to fray as he sat there. Filaments of it were turning to vapour in the smoky wind, rising and forming shapes and then twitching apart and descending.
— So, I said, you have to find the true guilty party?
— Yes.
— The true guilty party, or a scapegoat?
— I recognise no distinction.
— Do they?
— No.
— So you just require someone onto whom to pass your perceived guilt?
— Indeed.
— And how do you propose to do that?
— Like this.
And suddenly, he reached into his suit pocket, screwed up the piece of paper, and threw it into the fire. Flames rushed up to devour it, causing sufficient heat to blister the wood of the bookcases. The flames seem to evaporate around the room, then condense to more red dust. The wind roared out of the fire. His suit decomposed further to its component threads that were sucked towards the mutant flowers in the vase and powdered into a hanging twitch of pollen that was absorbed by the burgeoning buds, causing an instant blooming. And then he was naked, and not only naked but also transparent, and looking out from his abdomen were three women and seven children, bent over, handcuffed to his transparent ribs as if they were prison bars and by some trick of perspective they appeared to be of full size even though they were constrained by the cavity of his abdomen. He had no internal organs.
And again the wind filled the room with billowing smoke from the fire. And everything turned red and dusty. And it hid him from view, and when it had dispersed, he had disappeared.
And that is where we have reached. I am here, and he is not. It feels as if there is a pause, rather than a gap between us. All that I can hear is the sound of fragmented drumming.
He has not returned physically. I suspect that he will not. I look down at the document, which has been violently expelled by the fire. It is now comprised almost entirely of ash, with only the words picked out in paper. I kneel down and read it again:
You have no time left. The bedhangers have acquired you. You are an easier subject. They can operate on you whether you are asleep or not, because you are too weak and too badly trained to resist. But they have now done their job. The next stage is upon you. But they may well be back, for remember: people grow old, gods grow old, even ghosts grow old, but the bedhangers are tireless and the bedhangers are ageless and the bedhangers will always be here if there is a job to be done.
The document disintegrates and blows away. I reach down, and pick up a pile of red dust. It smells of roses. I throw handfuls of it to every crevice of the room. At every angle of wall and floor, it does not quite settle, but folds over itself, a kind of constant visual ululation. I feel something scratching at my brain, like a cat trying to get in or get out. I blow on the remainder of the dust on my fingers and it buffets up and lodges in the corner of my eyes. I hear three voices in unison, underpinned by an indecipherable, higher-pitched wailing.
You will not remember us, but we are the ones you deserted. But we shall not desert you. We promise you that. And we can promise you that because we are not about to join you: you are about to join us.
I am unable to speak. I feel an overwhelming desire to lie down. I must make my way to the bed. I am getting lighter. I seem to be spreading thinly across all the sharp surfaces of the room. I am fraying like an old suit. My thoughts cry out to my gods, but they do not hear. My head is clamped by whispering pain. I can float above everything. I can see everything. I will . . .
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