Gateways to Abomination (10 page)

The frontispiece was a photograph of a group of men congregated on stone steps familiar to him as those of Northampton's City Hall, a building that looked to him like some kind of boxy medieval castle, complete with
balistraria and Norman towers.  The men were gravely countenanced and pit-eyed, affecting postures of arrogant defiance.  All wore smirks suggesting shared secrets.  They were dressed in formal topcoats.  Several men wore top-hats; two sported monocles. Tiered surnames in script at their feet identified the men above:  Whiteshirt, Slaughton, Gare, Dither.  Morphew, Lusk, Stockton, Ronstadt, Geist.  Geist!  The author of that horrible skin-bound book was a bald, stout man whose cheeks were stippled with acne scars.  He wore a patterned ascot and a vest. 

The other figure that struck him was that of Stockton.  Taller than the other men, and positioned prominently, his face was lined, brows thick and furrowed, lips thin.  Angled across his torso was a walking stick with a cat's head grip.  The fingers clasping the walking stick were long, almost feminine, each encircled with several rings forged in the shapes of mystical symbols.  There was something in the man's eyes...it seemed as though the man in the picture was looking across time up from the book at Clem, challenging, cajoling...glaring.  In a familiar way.  His jaw hanging, his eyes wide, Clem flipped to the table of contents:  An Incident in Southwick, The Monson Magicians, The Warlock of Williamsburg,
The Magi of the Second Laugh, Anna Gare and The Hilltown Ten.

The name pecked at his brain. 
Gare.  The name of the store.  He flipped back to the picture.  He had missed her the first time: among the men, mostly obscured, stood a thin woman in petticoats:  Anne Gare.  Her hair was slack, one of her bony hands resting on the shoulder of Stockton.  A flaw in the printing or in the photography distorted her features, though--her lower face appeared bulged, lips almost a perfect circle topped by an upcurved, flattened nose and slits for eyes.

Clem realized that he had been, for the last few moments, hearing a dribbling sound, a low and burbling trickle.  He placed the book down on the cushion next to him and stood.  As he approached the stairs, he saw that a thin stream
of water was dribbling down the steps and puddling in the cracks and crevices in the concrete floor.  It smelled dank, brackish. Then, suddenly, the entire stairway was flooded with bright light.  Wincing, Clem squinted, hand at his brow, up the stairs.  They were wet and reflected the light back at him.  He could make out a thin black, jagged shadow culminating three steps from the floor in the shape of an elongated jutting pipe and an upside down hat.  He looked at the top of the stairs, but all he could see was a slender silhouette framed in blinding light.  "There's a HOLE in the BUCKET," it sang out in a gurgling, insinuating voice, "Dear LIZA, dear LIZA."

Clem knew what was coming next, but before he could turn, a high-pitched bubbling voice gurgled directly behind him.  "Well FIX it, dear HENRY, dear HENRY, dear HENRY!"

Clem wheeled around and fell back against the stairs.  It was the thin woman from the Local History section--it was Anne Gare.  He now knew there had been no flaw in the printing, no flaw in the photograph. She opened her mouth as if to speak, revealing wide, flat yellow teeth, and then her jaw appeared to unhinge, her chin falling slack against her chest.  Water poured from her grotesque mouth in a reeking rush, and behind Clem more water poured down the stairs in seething, stinking, roiling waves.  The foul, bubbling water engulfed Clem and engulfed Anne Gare, in an instant filling the small room and climbing the stairs like a living thing.  Clem was pulled from his feet.  He held his breath for as long as he could.  Then he let go, wrenching open his mouth in the vain lust for air, and the water filled his throat and lungs like a fist opening inside his chest.  His body wrenched once, twice, then hung limply, bubbles rising from his slack mouth.

In the cloudy water, in the rippling bluish lamplight, Clem and Anne
Gare danced a slow and majestic dance, her blouse twirling languidly at her thighs, his overcoat forming a cape that fluttered dreamily above him. Floating, floating, they circled each other among the books that rose from the floor and the shelves and fluttered about them like winged things.

NATHAN WHITESHIRT remained unmarried for the whole of his fifty years. He lived in a two story house with a detectable tilt. Cats were frequently seen in the windows. He kept an unknown number.

NATHAN WHITESHIRT was thin, tall but stooped, his eyes bold and colorless under long, low brows. He was often the subject of rumors, particularly, but not exclusively, among the children of the town.

William Chesterfield, 8, claimed he saw NATHAN WHITESHIRT sitting high in a treetop, weeping.

Cynthia
Blamefoot, 10, said she hears NATHAN WHITESHIRT singing obscene songs outside her window at night.

Robert Rutherford, 11, said that he saw NATHAN WHITESHIRT attack a dog and bite into its belly until a great flood of blood sprayed forth.

Michael Stark, 38, swears he saw NATHAN WHITESHIRT climb the venerable churchtower like a nimble spider.

Richard Wren, 72, won't speak aloud the name of NATHAN WHITESHIRT for fear NATHAN WHITESHIRT will murder his wife.

Stanley N. Toothburgle, 89, claims that NATHAN WHITESHIRT humiliates him by pulling obscenely at his pajamas when he makes his slow and painful way down the long hall for a piss at night.

It was rumored that before
Winnifred Williston was found deceased in her bathroom, she had seen NATHAN WHITESHIRT when she pulled back the curtain to enter the bath.

When Father Ezekiel
Shineface murdered a parishioner with whom it was rumored he was having an affair, some said that he had caught NATHAN WHITESHIRT and she engaged in an act of execrable obscenity in the confessional.

"Look at the dead girl," Marie said, or that's what I
thought
she said. I replied--mm'hm--and the moment was past.

We were eating at Webster's and the girl and her parents were in the booth across from ours or, rather, the parents were in the booth. The girl, maybe nine or ten, was twirling in the aisle like a ballerina. "Look, mom," she kept saying. "Look!"

The parents didn't spare her so much as a glance. They looked haggard, and ate in silence. The man, balding and pale, had a look of concentration on his face. He ate voraciously and noisily, but betrayed no enjoyment. The woman was plain, her hair crowded into her face. She winced at the girl's entreaties, but otherwise looked as blank as the grille of a car.

I looked again at the girl, trying not to stare openly. I wondered if I hadn't misheard Marie. The girl looked wispy and somehow transparent, like a moth whose wings have been rubbed free of dust. She was so pale as to seem almost translucent, but betraying on her arms intricate webs of pale blue veins. There were dark circles around the girl
’s eyes, most times obscured by ringlets of hair so blond it looked almost white. Her hands were bony and looked fragile.

"She's a little sparkplug," Marie whispered. I'm sure that's what she whispered.

Suddenly there was a burst of static from the restaurant's speakers, which 'till then had been playing some local station too low to hear. The lights in the restaurant brightened, the girl spun madly in the aisle, and a thrumming surf music riff seemed to pass from the back of the dining room, over our table, to the front. A loud, low voice murmured something unintelligible, shaking the plates and glassware on the tables.

Then the power went out. Once my eyes adjusted, I could see everything fairly well, thanks to the streetlights, which were still on. People at their tables were looking around. Some stood and looked at the windows towards the shadowy turnpike. The family across from us continued to eat, as though nothing had happened. But now the girl was seated with them, staring agape at her plate, where a breaded king crab floated in a miasma of oil like a crusted bug in a long abandoned wading pool.

In a copse of trees near the river a young girl plays with a grey, exsanguined doll, bending its arms and balling its hands into fists. The doll's head hangs limp, a swollen purple tongue protruding from between black lips.

In the river is a man on a boat. The boat bobs in the water. The man can hear the sounds of the water lapping on the shore. The sun hangs high in the sky, enveloped in morning haze. A bird screeches. The man sits, hugging his knees, shivering. His breaths come in rasps. Suddenly he stands and steps silently off of the boat, slipping like a knife into the water. The ripples rock the boat slightly, then fade. The surface is again still. The boat drifts slowly towards shore.

I am standing on the banks of the river in my topcoat, leaning heavily on my cane, acorns and incarnadine leaves falling around me like rain. My kerchief, stuffed into my side pocket, is soaked with saliva and vomitus. I can feel it through the fabric. My shoes are caked in red mud. Somewhere behind me the town is waking, people wandering out onto the streets, shopkeepers uncloaking displays and unlatching doors. Somewhere, a woman is screaming as she runs barefoot through shattered glass to an empty crib.

I had awakened early, in darkness, my cat Leopold stretched across my stomach. I shoved him aside, went into the bathroom to evacuate my bowels. My stools were deep black and long, like spears. I dressed by lamplight and walked out onto Elm St. The sky was black. As I walked through and past the town, the sky went a deep blue that
signaled the coming of dawn. There were clouds though, long and black and pointed. The clouds looked like murder.

This has been
Jebediah Blackstye with the WXXT traffic report. Up next, Ben Stockton with the weather. WXXT, the Valley's only Real Radio.

In 1818 a fire tore through St. Feuster's Nursery on Elm Street in Northampton, Massachusetts. A cook in the kitchen had been seized by fits, and had flung a lit wooden match into a pile of soiled aprons. The nursery had housed 32 baby boys and girls, watched over by a staff of nine. Strangely, the women who fled saved all the girls; no men or boys survived, at least not in the recognized sense of the word.

I was part of a crew charged with cleaning the site. Armed with sledgehammers, pickaxes, shovels, buckets, chemicals and solvents, we resolved to destroy or remove all that remained, leaving only the stone ce
llar, scorched, but, it was hoped, salvageable. After three days we had cleared what remained of the walls and ruined floors from ground level, and had in front of us the recovery of the bodies from the rubble in the hole that remained.

The work was difficult, the task strenuous and grim. I was regularly short with my wife and my boy, and I slept fitfully. In some stretches of sleep I'd dream. In one dream a wooden box with a rusted metal grate told me in a slurred voice that I could count on nothing. Then worms poured through the grate like living liquid. I tried to flee, and it was
as though I were running through water. In another dream angels hovered among leafless treetops at dusk. I watched from a hammock made of muscle and sinew which swung dreamily over an expanse of smoldering ash. I saw that the angels bore the rotting faces of dead goats, their toothy mouths ringed with green mucous. One hovered almost above me, head lolling heavily. Horribly, I could see up its gossamer frock; past its twisted-toed feet and knotted, gnarled legs; up to its abominable sex. What I saw I will not describe, but it filled me with panic, horror, and hopelessness.

The morning it happened was grey and cold and humid. Roderick Whittier, who had been sweeping ash from atop cabinets, scrambled up the blackened, tumbled bricks, cracking his fingernails, shrieking and cursing. Something had moved in the ash. I looked and a baby blackened like seared meat emerged from the wreckage. Brilliant blue eyes opened in the blackness of the ruined face. They seemed possessed of a knowledge, or an intelligence, that was impossible. Its tiny hands raised and it began peeling from
its head blackened strips of burnt flesh, as blood poured down its visage. It did not cry. It did not make a sound. It only stared.

Whittier, an obstinate, thick dud of a man, began frantically reciting a fractured version of the Lord's Prayer:

Our Father

Who aren’t in
Heaven

Hollow be thy name

Thy kingdom done…

I held up a hand and he stopped, but began gulping rapidly. I could only stand stunned, and a nurse who had been watching from the
treeline bolted forward and plunged down into the cellar. She grabbed the baby and helped it pull at its stinking black rind. She was sobbing, and her eyes were red. I accompanied her to the offices of my family doctor, the venerable Dr. Gladmost Alespiller. He took in the infant, and set up a room for him in a nursery that had been meant for his own son, who had died in childbirth, dragging Mrs. Alespiller with him back into blackness.

The nurse took up residence with the young doctor. It was quite a scandalous
arrangement for the time, an abominable coupling with an abomination for a child. They seldom left the house, and not long after, the good Doctor stopped seeing patients. Walking by at night became a hobby for the curious. Sometimes the sounds of the couple's lovemaking could be discerned, and it was all shrieks and curses and mutterings. The next window over was that of the nursery. It glowed warmly, as though beckoning to cold travelers. No one knew what happened to the boy until much later, of course.