Mr. X (40 page)

Otto Bremen swiveled his chair in my direction. One hand held a glass of bourbon, a cigarette burned in the other, and he was grinning like a Halloween pumpkin. “Come in and watch the Braves get the tar beat out of ’em. It’s a beautiful sight.”

I might have gone across the hall and spent the next ninety minutes helping Otto Bremen trounce the Atlanta Braves by drinking them to death, but Edward Rinehart’s book tempted me more. After I took
From Beyond
out of my knapsack, I flopped on the bed to read until Laurie Hatch showed up.

Torn between turning immediately to “Blue Fire” and avoiding it altogether, I took the easy way out and started at the beginning.

In “Professor Pendant’s Inheritance,” a retired professor of Middle Eastern studies moves to an eighteenth-century fishing village where a former colleague had unexpectedly bequeathed him an old house and a vast, legendary library. The retired professor plans to complete his study of Arabic folklore with the aid of this great resource. Forced into a pub during a downpour, the professor overhears a rumor oddly similar to a tale in one of his benefactor’s rarest volumes; soon after, he discovers a twelfth-century manuscript of dire incantations…. At the story’s end, Professor Pendant is devoured by the ancient god, one-third octopus, one-third snake, and one-third indescribable but hideous all the same, summoned by the manuscript.

“Recent Events in Rural Massachusetts” described the visit to a bleak hamlet of a young scholar who falls prey to a race of stunted beings produced by sexual congress between primitive
hominids and a ravenous deity from beyond the membrane of our universe.

“Darkness over Ephraim’s Landing” ended with this sentence:
As the bells of St. Arnulf’s chimed, I burst into the sacrosanct chamber and by the flickering light of my upraised candle glimpsed the frothing monstrosity which once had been Fulton Chambers crawl, with hideous alacrity, into the drain!

All of this, even the exclamation point, reminded me of something I had read at thirteen or fourteen, but could not place.

As prepared as I would ever be, I began reading “Blue Fire.” Half an hour later, I carried the book to the window and went on reading. “Blue Fire” was a novella about the life of one Godfrey Demmiman, whose experiences sometimes resembled nightmare versions of my own, and for all my fascination I had to struggle against the impulse to set the book on fire and toss it into the sink.

The child Demmiman receives a summons from an “ancient wood” at the edge of town. After he enters the woods, an inhuman voice informs him that he is the son of an Elder God, a new Jesus who shall bring about the Apocalypse by giving entry to his unearthly fathers. Through the agency of a sacred blue fire, he is granted unnatural powers. He displays these powers to local girls and kills them. Exiled to a military school, he drifts into madness under the influence of a sacred text.

In his early thirties, Demmiman moves to the city beloved of the text’s author and is drawn to a forbidding manse. He imagines himself stalked by furtive beings connected to both himself and the house, breaks in and discovers the crypt of eighteenth-century Demmimans—it is his ancestral home. Returning night after night, he senses a presence, an Other, which searches for him but flees at his approach. Once, carrying a candle through the dusty ballroom, he glances into a mirror and catches sight of a dark figure behind him—he whirls around—the figure has vanished. Two nights later, a darkening of the atmosphere suggests that the Other will at last permit himself to be seen. The sound of footsteps padding through distant rooms brings him to the library at the top of the house.

At the sound of a car pulling up in front of the rooming house, I looked up and saw the Mountaineer backing into a parking space. I jammed the book in my pocket, opened my door, and
extended a foot through the frame. I could go no further. Like an X-ray, a sharp pain pierced my head from back to front.

Instead of Helen Janette’s hallway and Otto Bremen beckoning from his easy chair, before me lay the room I had seen as a child and in the midst of my breakdown at Middlemount. A dying fern, a stuffed fox under a glass bell, and a brass clock occupied a mantelpiece. Somewhere out of sight, a man muttered an indistinct stream of words. All of this had existed long before my own time on earth. I lurched backward, and the scene dissolved.

The old man across the hall was looking at me. “Kid, you okay?”

“Dizzy spell.” I ran downstairs toward Laurie Hatch.

54
Mr.X

O Great Ones, O cruel Masters, Your long-suffering but faithful Servant bends once again to the pages of his Journal. I wish to make a confession.

Of late, my tales have much occupied my mind, one in particular. It was my longest, my best and most regretted. While writing it, I felt
godlike and fearful
. My pen flew across the page, and for the first and only time in my life I wrote what I knew not that I knew until it was written—I knocked at the door of the Temple and
was admitted
—my life became a
dark wood
, a
maze
, a
mystery
—it was then first I entered the
river-bankish
state—

Would that tale had never laid its hand upon my breast and whispered—take me in—

I need a moment to collect myself.

The inspiration descended during a weary, late-night return from Mountry Township in the summer of my last year as a Lord of Crime. A fool named Theodore Bright had attempted to eliminate me from my position in the criminal hierarchy. The necessary
payback had been devoid of pleasure. I wanted out. My thoughts turned to the consolations of art, and a pleasing notion came to me, that of adumbrating the plight of Godfrey Demmiman, a half-human creature granted the freedom of a god. My alter ego was to re-enact my struggles toward the Sacred Purpose. But as I wrote, my intentions surrendered to what rose up within me.

I PROTEST!

Every other tale went where it was supposed to go. Why should only
this
seem inhabited by art? Let me say this, let me spell it out loud and clear—

I HATE ART. ART NEVER DID ANYONE A BIT OF GOOD. IT NEVER WON A WAR, PUT FOOD ON THE TABLE, SWEPT THE FLOOR, TOOK OUT THE GARBAGE, OR SLIPPED YOU A TWENTY WHEN YOU WERE DOWN AND OUT. ART DOESN’T ACT THAT WAY.

The beginning went as anticipated. Through the medium of Godfrey Demmiman’s childhood and youth, I revisited my own. We had mystical experiences in a deep wood and the descent of godlike gifts. My tears brimmed over at the discovery of the Sacred Book. Then hoodlum Imagination brushed aside intention and destroyed my peace. In place of conviction—doubt; in place of clarity—confusion; of design—chaos; in place of triumph—who knows, but certainly not triumph.

Demmiman moves to Markham, the New England village beloved of his Master, and through its winding lanes and passages imagines himself led by misshapen beings to a long-abandoned house of evil repute. He breaks in and finds it to have been the residence of his ancestors. Within, a Presence stalks him—he stalks the Presence—they confront each other—horribly—of the blasphemous ending I decline to speak. For the sake of Coming Generations, I enter the following into the Record:

I Hereby Recant the concluding passages of the story entitled “Blue Fire,” those beginning with the words,
“Slowly, with dragging step, an indistinct figure emerged from the shadows,”
and place these conditions upon their distribution. They are to be banned from the Reading Lists of Your Secondary Schools and Institutes of Higher Education. Where available, access must be restricted to Historians and Other Scholars, and this Statement is to be printed in its entirety upon the facing page.

What follows is an account of recent actions on Behalf of the Stupendous Cause.