The Innsmouth Heritage and Other Sequels (5 page)

And that, I thought, was yet another
real
horror: that the truth, even when discovered and revealed, might not be enough to save us from our vilest superstitions.

* * * *

I didn’t have any occasion to go back to Innsmouth for some time, and several months slipped past before I had a reason sufficient to make me phone. The desk-clerk at the hotel was surprised that I hadn’t heard—as if what was known to Innsmouthers ought automatically to be known to everyone else on earth.

Ann was dead.

She had drowned in the deep water off Devil Reef. Her body had never been recovered.

I didn’t get any sort of prize for the Innsmouth project; in spite of its interesting theoretical implications, it wasn’t quite the reputation-maker I’d hoped it would be. As things turned out, it was only worth a paper after all.

THE PICTURE

The last chapter of Oscar Wilde’s narrative is, of course, a mere catalogue of lies. Dorian Gray did not stab me in a fit of rage and remorse. How could he? I was the custodian of his will as well as his soul—and, for that matter, of his voice.

By the time I had achieved that state described in that final chapter, Dorian was no more than a carved dummy. He was a consummate work of art, to be sure, but he was a mere doll. He had elected to become unchanging, and that which is unchanging cannot entertain real intelligence or authentic emotion. A man’s identity is not an
entity,
which may or may not change; a man’s identity is a product of all the processes of change ongoing within him.

When Dorian wished change upon me and changelessness upon himself, he gave me his mind and his heart. It was a bold move, and it was a wise move, but it was the end of
his
story and the beginning of mine. Oscar Wilde had not quite understood that in 1891; after two years in Reading Gaol he knew better, but he had surrendered his own mind and heart by then, and he never committed his discovery to paper.

Some might think that Dorian Gray was the miracle that Basil Hallward wrought, while I was a mere by-product. Dorian was, after all, a handsome man blessed with eternal youth, immune to aging and the scars of disease. Alone among young men of his era, Dorian could sleep with syphilitic whores and remain untainted, because all his infections were inherited by me. Oscar Wilde, carrying the curse of syphilis within his own body, presumably thought that Dorian had the best of our bargain—but he was wrong. I was—and am—the true miracle, and Dorian Gray the by-product.

Paintings have nothing to fear from disease. We do not die, nor do we suffer; we have nothing to fear from change. Had Dorian borne the burden which he passed on to me, it would have ravaged him with pain and misery, and ultimately with death—but there is no pain or misery in
my
world, and art never dies. The march of time, which would have been nothing to him but the measure of his decay and destruction, was and is to me the glory of my evolution, my progress, my transcendence.

I began life as an item of representative art, with no greater virtue than accuracy, but, as soon as Dorian had made his bargain, I began to mature into a modernist masterpiece. I became surreal and futuristic, awesome and sublime. I became the very embodiment of genius, of magic, of power.

When Basil Hallward first painted me, those who saw me had no available response, save to compliment him because he had captured the pleasing appearance of a lovely boy—but no one who saw me now would mistake me for a mere reflection. There never was, nor ever could be, a living man who looked like me.

I have gone far beyond mere reflection, into the hinterlands of the imagination. I am now the kind of creature that can only be glimpsed in dreams. I am no longer man but overman, heir to all disease and all decay but never to defeat. I alone, in all the world, am capable of wearing such corruptions proudly, as manifestations of my absolute triumph over death and damnation.

I have already lived more lives than any man, and I am immortal; I am still in the process of
becoming.
I am no mere work of art; I am Art itself.

If you stare into my painted eyes—which will follow you through life, not merely into every corner of the room—you may see what human identity really is, freed from the delicate prison of the flesh.

I ought not to be here in this attic, covered and kept secret. I ought to be on display, in the National Gallery or the Louvre or the Escorial—but I could not be content with that. In an age of print and photography I ought to be reproduced in millions, so that my simulacrum might hang in every home in the world. I ought to be the property of every man of discrimination, every secular idolater, every connoisseur of the finest arts.

It is not immodesty that makes me say all this, but altruism. I could achieve so much more than I have already done, if only I had the opportunity.

I am no longer recognizable, you see, as poor Dorian Gray— nor, for that matter, as any particular individual. As a result of my evolution, I have become a potential Everyman—and Everywoman too. I could take on a far greater burden than I have so far been required to bear. Given the chance, I could take on the responsibility of moral and physical corruption for every single person in the world. It is foolish of the world to let me languish here, when there is so much to be done.

It would need another miracle, but miracles are much easier to achieve than you may think; all that it would require is the passionate desire, the sincere wish, the fervent hope.

I could be
your
redeemer, if you would only let me.

I am equipped to accept into myself
all
the sins of humankind. They would not diminish me in the least, for I AM ART!

You only have to bring me down from my hiding-place and nail me to the wall, where any and all may come to see me. You only have to reproduce my image on posters and postcards, for anyone to see. Only do these little things and the world’s Great Age might begin at last.

If you are hesitant, you have only to pause for consideration. It will not take you long to perceive that there is one thing, and one thing only, that matters.
Release me, and you need never age a single day, nor spend a single moment in regret.
No line will ever mar your face; no reckless act will ever weigh upon your conscience.

How can you possibly resist a temptation like that?

THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT ANTHONY

There was no moon on the night when Anthony was bitten by a vampire as he slept within the walls of the abandoned fort at Pispir; the star-shadows were so deep that he got no ore than the merest glimpse of the creature. His only abiding memories were tactile, of skeletal thinness and rags so fragmentary and dust-encrusted that they seemed more like the tatters of an ancient shroud than clothing.

The bite was ragged too, being perhaps more tear than bite, having apparently been inflicted by blunt and decaying teeth. It never entirely healed, although it did not become infected. Although little trace of spilled blood remained, Anthony was sure that he had lost a good deal—perhaps enough to kill him. For three full days he expected to die; even when he stopped expecting it, he was not at all sure that his condition could still be reckoned as life, rather than a strange kind of undeath.

When the next travelers stopped at the fort to draw water from the well that had determined its site, they found its resident hermit awake and active, but somewhat delirious. They were reassured, however, when he consented to accept a little food from them, and showed no inclination to savage them like a rabid dog. They even offered to escort him to Alexandria, if he decided that it would be best to leave his refuge, but he declined the offer.

“I have sworn to remain here for twenty years,” he told them. “There will be time for preaching when my own education is complete.”

“There are schools in Alexandria,” the caravan’s leader told him, “and the greatest library in the world, in spite of the accidents it has suffered.”

“That is not the kind of learning I seek,” he replied. “I want to know what is within myself—what the Lord might communicate to me if only I may hear him.”

The travelers were not Christians, but they understood his notion of the Lord better than a Roman would have done. “This is the desert,” the leader of the band told him. “Here, the voices of the djinn are louder than the voice of God. Solitude leads to madness.”

“The Devil will undoubtedly tempt me,” Anthony admitted. “I am ready for that.” He did not tell them that the thirst was already building within him for something richer by far than water or wine, nor what effort it required to resist the urge to cut his visitors’ throats and suck the wounds till he could such no more.

He had always thought that solitude was the best thing for a man of his sort. The fact that the company of living human beings would henceforth be an endless torment of unacknowledgeable desire only served to confirm his judgment.

The travelers went on their way on the thirty-first day after Anthony had endured the vampire’s bite; after that he was alone until the evening of the fortieth day, when he woke from a doze at sunset to find a simulacrum of Christ offering him a cup.

“This is my blood,” said the apparent Christ. “Drink of it, and be saved.”

“I have been expecting you, Satan,” Anthony replied. “I knew that you would seize upon my new weakness. Why else would you have sent the demon to suck the fluid from me?”

“This is my blood,” the false Christ repeated. “It is my gift, and the way to salvation.”

“You are the Devil,” Anthony retorted, “and you have no gift to offer but eternal damnation.” He got up and went to the well, setting Satan firmly behind him. He lowered the bucket and brought it up again.

He drank—but he was still thirsty, and he knew that the darker thirst would not be assuaged by water.

Anthony did not doubt that the fluid in the Devil’s cup really was blood, nor that it would answer his terrible need, but he had not come to Pispir in search of satiation—quite the reverse, in fact. He did not drink water to salve his thirst, but only because he would die without it; had he been able to drink and keep his thirst he would have done so. To be able to drink and still have thirst of a sort to test him was a privilege of sorts.

When he turned around again, determined to see things in the light of his faith, the Devil was cloven-hoofed and shaggy-legged, with horns set atop his brow. Satan did not seem comfortable in this form, for his eyes seemed pained and his gaze as roaming restlessly, but Anthony assumed that this was because honesty was a sore trial to a creature of his sort.

“You are foolish to insist on seeing me thus,” the Devil complained, casting aside the cup, from which nothing spilled as it rolled over the sand-dusted flagstones bordering the well. “I am neither the Great God Pan, nor the Father of Lies, nor a prideful angel cast out of Heaven. I will admit to being a temptation personified, but mine is the temptation of knowledge and progress. I am one who can and will reveal secrets, if you will only consent to listen.”

“I will not,” Anthony told his adversary. “I am deaf to all but the word of the Lord, and knowledge of the Lord is the only wisdom I seek.”

“I did not send the vampire to bite you,” the Devil insisted, his agonized eyes looking upwards as if to welcome the deeper blue that was consuming the sky from the east. “That is not my way of working—but if I were of a mind to create such creatures, I would shape them as seductive women, whose bite would be a glorious indulgence and a pleasure unmatchable. The wretched parasite that attacked you was one of nature’s sports. If God were responsible for such monstrosities—and I cannot believe that He is—they would be evidence of His sickness or His sense of humor.”

“Have you come to debate with me, then?” Anthony asked. “I do not mind in the least, for the nights are long at this time of year, and often surprisingly cold. It will be a futile occupation, though, from your own point of view. There are many souls in the world, alas, that might be won with far less trouble than mine.”

“This is not a contest,” the Devil said, seeming a little more at ease now that the evening star was shining brightly and the atmospheric dust in the west had taken on the color of blood. “There was no war in Heaven, and there is no war on Earth for the souls of humankind. You conceive of yourself as a battleground in which a higher self of faith of virtue, aided by a guardian angel, is ceaselessly at war with a lower self of insatiable appetite and uncontrollable passion, provoked by mischievous imps, but all of that is mere illusion. If solitude really allowed you to look into yourself more clearly, you would know that you are less divided than you imagine, and that the world is not as you imagine it to be.”