The process of editing the volume you now hold in your hands has been a quizzical one, it began, not least because the transcriber of these tales was as curious a figure in life as she was in her, if not death, then certainly ending. Mrs. Iris Dunlopp Whitcomb was, in her time, a painter, scholar, helpmeet, and mother; a charitable institution, a seeker after occult knowledge whose tireless chronicling of the Unseen all similarly inclined personages must sure feel grateful for—
My knuckles went white.
—and such further records as were left behind in the wake of her “departure” serve to reflect both the truly mercurial and impermanent nature of all such talents. The tales held within these pages are not the result of any formal study in the folkloric field, but rather the efforts of a gifted amateur; they comprise the contents of a series of notebooks found at the famed Whitcomb Vinegar House and thought to be Mrs. Whitcomb’s private aides-mémoires, ranging from early 1899 to mid-1918. From these journals’ perusal, it becomes clear that Mrs. Whitcomb’s interest in the Austro-Slavic mythology of her Wendish ancestors was a lifelong body of work, though she did not begin transcribing fully-translated versions of the stories until the year 1905, possibly as an entertainment for her lamented only son Hyatt, before his own vanishing.
Started the stories in 1905, my brain repeated, idiotically. Before Hyatt; before the train. Before she took the veil. Long before those films were made . . . before she made those films, goddamnit: there it was, in black and white. My proof.
A massive yawn took me by surprise; my eyelids felt like iron, vision blurry and balance wobbly as I pushed myself to my feet, letting the book fall. Maybe I should go back to bed, look at it in the morning, take some time; not like there was any great rush, now. I turned back toward bed, toward Simon, not meaning to wake him so much as snuggle up and murmur in his ear, apologize for my depressive agnostic’s lack of belief.
Thinking, my whole body humming: This is going to happen. I’m going to make this happen.
(Please don’t.)
I looked up at the sound—the thought, more like—and caught sight of my own reflection in the double window that ran ceiling-to-floor along our living room’s front wall, blinds un-pulled to show a mostly black cityscape with occasional light pollution; the balcony of the guy across the road, where he sunbathed every summer. Superimposed, however, came a single, horrid, micro-moment’s blink of something else—behind me yet in front of me, suddenly inside my silhouette, some bad idea made manifest. Another figure impossibly occupying the chair I’d only now vacated, legs sprawled and skirt awry as a dropped doll, looking up through a thickness of veil: sequin-eyes flashing cold, white brightness, palely lit, like glass in noonday sun.
At the sight, I released a completely involuntary sound, gasp-choking—spun around, staggered back. My foot slipped on something, a toy of Clark’s we’d managed to miss in our scramble—a puffball-shaped green creature with big plastic eyes, one patched like a pirate’s: Arrrr, matey, walk the plank! it exclaimed in a tiny, tinny electronic voice as the wrench threw everything about my body out of balance: hips, neck, back. My shoulder gave an actual spark, shocking as any touched wire.
Heart-punched, I slumped against the wall, cursing. Made myself look, and saw—nothing, obviously. An empty chair, slightly dented from my own ass.
Back inside our bedroom, Simon turned over. And—
Two days on, I turned up back at the NFA armed with a spreadsheet tracking imagery from every Snake-Queen’s Daughter story, and Mattheuis and I went through the rest of the Japery films, connecting the dots. One of the biggest surprises? All of the Quarry Argent Museum cache turned out to be probably Mrs. Whitcomb’s, given their content—the funny ones as well as the morbid: one must’ve been her riffing off the “Old Man With A Frog’s Mouth” model, a creature I’d since ascertained was called a vodyanoi, smoking his pipe by one of those Lake of the North alkaline swamps and leading travellers astray, sending them into the clutches of sexy rusalki who used their long hair like a fishing net to trap unwary young men. By the end, Mattheuis was literally rubbing his hands together, and I couldn’t stop myself from grinning.
“So Wrob was right,” I said, at last. Mattheuis snorted, replying, “Oh, fuck Wrob, Lois—and I say that as someone who has. You were right.”
Yeah, I thought. For once, I was.
I got my contract, my money, my project. Simon kissed me when I came home. Mom congratulated me when I called to tell her. Clark danced and sang. Granted, I don’t think I had much to do with that last part, since I rarely did—but for once, it was a lot of fun.
The next day, I found another text message from Wrob Barney on my voicemail, that same flat robot monotone: congrats on yr coup cairns. He’d found out, just like I’d suspected he would; Wrob has his sources, Leonard Warsame would warn me, eventually. But even without knowing that yet, I still ignored it.
Five minutes later, as I was checking Facebook, my phone rang.
“So,” Wrob said, as I picked up. “You really are as big a bitch as people say.”
I flinched, but kept things light, shooting back: “Yeah, probably. Care to get specific?”
“Uh, all right. Specifically, I handed you Mrs. Whitcomb on a platter, and specifically, you took me up on it, to the tune of Jan fronting you, what—was it ten thousand? Twenty?” Twelve, I automatically filled in, not answering. “Solid like that rates a thank you, I’d think, at the very fucking least.”
“Well, okay, Wrob: thanks, a lot. Very much. Are we done?”
“Like fun, we are. Already wrote a review an
d an interview linking Untitled 13 to this big discovery of yours, Lois, which means I’m in this already, balls-deep. Think I’m gonna let you ret-con it so I’m not?”
“Of course not! You did all the digitization, the preliminary cataloguing, and I’m going to give credit where credit’s due. I want to be fair.”
“Which is why you’re gonna talk to Jan for me, right? Get me re-hired.”
“What? Um . . . no.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s between you and Jan, Wrob. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
“But . . .” he trailed away, genuinely nonplussed. “. . . he’s never going to let me back on unless you push, and if I don’t get back on, we can’t work together.”
“I’ve got my own people in mind, Wrob.”