Remembering how, on those few occasions when he fell so deeply asleep he went silent, I sometimes stood in his room with the flap on his fire engine bed thrown back, watching him till I saw his chest rise and fall slightly, to reassure myself he was still alive.
Though life with Clark was hard—full stop, no negotiation—I knew that life without him would be impossible. I couldn’t even contemplate it.
Back to the document then. The matter at hand.
Arthur will never accept Kate-Mary, the next page began, whom he calls the Witch of Endor, and that within her hearing. I understand his misgivings, which come mainly from frustrated grief, though I am sure some business instinct as well. Yet I must admit my own assumption to have been that if she truly were the fraud he wishes to brand her, it would be far more efficacious on her part to pass me “messages” from Hyatt without regard to their plausibility, rather than doing what she has at our last three meetings: emerge slowly from her trance’s toils, sadly shake her head and apologize, telling me she will accept no payment because she has once more failed to deliver on her part of the bargain.
Seemingly against all evidence, she maintains she cannot contact our son, our dear lost creature, and that the reason remains unaltered, if baffling . . . for according to her, she simply cannot find him, neither in our waking world nor in the realm beyond.
Not here, but not there, in other words. Somewhere else. Elsewhere.
“You must make your own methods,” she tells me, offering no advice, allowing no coin to change hands between us. If this be the connivance of a charlatan, therefore, in my opinion it is ineffective, to say the least.
“Pretty sure Mr. Whitcomb disagreed with you on that one,” I muttered out loud, and paused to shut my eyes for what I thought was a moment before scanning further down. My lids were getting heavy, a dull ache outlining the sockets; sparks had already begun to fizzle at the corners of my gaze, slow-mounting. I needed a break.
The subsequent transition from reading to dreaming
was almost instantaneous. I found myself in a long, dim room, vaguely familiar—its atmosphere crisp and sere, paper-parched, lit mainly by a series of upright display cases full of spread books, plus an angled lamp on the desk I sat at. This last part was what tipped me off: the Toronto Public Reference Library’s restricted stacks area, a place I hadn’t been physically since the age of nineteen, probably, researching something for one of my Ryerson University journalism program electives. Augustans and Romantics, maybe; Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock,” Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Byron and Shelley and Keats (oh my).
But when I looked down, of course, what I was actually reading was probably Mrs. Whitcomb’s next entry, framed through half-shut lashes. It wavered in and out like heat haze, age-browned ink semi-visible at best, and I had to squint to make much sense of it: something more about Kate-Mary, about Lake of the North’s very own Spiritualist circle? Yes, but other stuff too, sentences popping out at me like automatic writing in constant revision, shaping and re-shaping themselves before my eyes.
How I do miss Arthur, his vast presence, one sighed, almost audible, even in the dream library’s desiccated air. He sends news of his European doings whenever the post allows, almost monthly, along with his love, and various diversions. This last packet came accompanied by a very new item indeed, one of M. et M. Lumière’s cameras, designed for the capture of images in motion. I may use it at Kate-Mary’s, with her permission, for those events should be chronicled, if they can be.
Spring again, with Hyatt gone two years. We are almost at Her time. In Dzéngast—
No, I will not think of that.
I could see my own hand taking notes, skin like bluish cheese, mould touched; see it, not feel it. The air full of orbs. A sudden empty pain all through my head, nostrils freeze dried, the white-gowned librarian leaning over my shoulder, face inverted and head on fire, to murmur: We have to keep it dim in here, you see, so the paper doesn’t degrade . . . these old documents are so fragile, you understand. Like—mummified skin.
(yes, oh yes)
It’s nothing personal. Nothing to do with you, at all.
(oh no, I didn’t think it was)
Beneath my fingers, the pen scratched on, spitting out words in clumps: this Sunday’s circle, our fellowship, join hands, the spirit cabinet, coughing out ectoplasm. I feel so sorry for these other mothers, Mrs. Whitcomb wrote, interior voice buzzing in my spit-less throat, clinging to their grief, loving it publicly as they would their own absent chicks, if they only could. Yet I envy them, too—hate them, almost, when my blackest fits are on me. Sometimes I watch their tears take shape in the developing solution, reduced to unstrung frames, then deliberately hold them up to open light before the fixative sets, and laugh to watch them melt away forever.
Amongst her visiting protégés, I see none with even a portion of Kate-Mary’s gift, which gives me a bitter satisfaction. Yet this new boy is different, or so she claims; his talent, like mine, expresses itself through the lens—a true mechanical prodigy, a child of this new age, as far removed from the shaking table or planchette as I now am from M. Knauff’s noxious daubs and horsehair brushes, the paint-encrusted palette knife with which he slit his throat. Some Slavic name, reminding me strongly of God’s Ear, before my father’s oddity drove us forth . . . Sidlo, yes. Vasek Sidlo.
Were there photos? I couldn’t recall seeing any. Thought about rummaging through the box, then remembered it wasn’t here anymore—fucking Wrob. Plus, this was a dream.
(a dream, just a dream)
Shit, my head was really killing now, sparks cascading every which-where. The librarian flickered in and out, her aura gone coronal. Beneath my still-scribbling hand, the print turned white, the pages black; Sidlo’s name humped up, a gasoline-filled anthill bulging and splitting under pressurized heat, fiery insect-letters blossoming in all directions.
And now the “librarian” was Mrs. Whitcomb once more, all dog snarl, corpse lips and nude teeth under her flowing beekeeper’s veil, crowned with a nodding mask of bleached flowers. Leaning closer still, and whispering in my frozen ear—
I took up Kate-Mary’s challenge, gave him an image to play with for proof of his ability, my hand on his brow like Hyatt in some fever, or the Lady’s on Hyatt’s, inside me
and sister, sister, when I ran the printed film through its chemical bath I saw him bloom again, my lovely boy running through the maze and laughing, my own thoughts pulled like silk through a skein from my skull to Vasek’s, Vasek’s to the reel he held
Hyatt in miniscule, shadow-rendered, engraved in poison and flammable with love, with grief
my memories struck long distance, match to a ceaseless flame, and oh
so impressive
Impressive, yes. That was the word she used. As in, “to impress.”