The Sea of Ash (5 page)

4. STRANGE APPARATUS

I am alone on the open road. We've
all imagined the archetypal highway stretching off into a distance of uncharted
possibilities -- a dream that both thrills and frightens. But, I am spared the
brunt of those sensations, for I am only an admirer of explorers, and I'm
traveling to a specified destination. Others have done the dirty work, so to
speak, in this case. Still, the solitude suits me, and the sky is such a wide
morning blue above the shadow-mottled pines that I delight in the illusion that
I too am an adventurer.

I cross the border, and a large
sign welcomes me to New Hampshire, The Granite State. I proceed to Manchester,
where the prime thoroughfare is long and wide, stretching toward garages and
unglamorous localities in one direction, while the other ends with noble old
houses smacking of money. There is something earnest about this city, a
working-class lack of pretentiousness that an old mill town ought to convey. I
am spared the studied hipness of say, Boston's Newbury Street, and the glare of
icy glass skyscrapers. Instead, there is brick and verdigris and weathered
steeples poking above the neighborhoods.

It is a Sunday morning, and the
traffic is light. My instructions guide me without incident to a residential
area dominated by Victorians. I recognize the house that I am looking for, park
my vehicle and shoot several pictures. The light-grey building rises steeply
from the street, so it is a short walk to the impressive double doors.

This is the Arcangelo Banchini
House. Built in 1878, it is an imposing example of Italianate architecture. The
roof is almost flat, with eaves that project out, supported by ornamental
brackets. There are bay windows -- both upper and lower story -- on one side;
the rest are long thin things with arched brows. While the facade boasts a fine
entry porch, the most dramatic feature is the narrow tower that presides above.
Each of its four sides holds a pair of hooded windows beneath a precipitous
mansard roof that sits atop like a strange angular hat.

Simon Brinklow had already
vanished by the time this place was erected, but Albert Pond certainly paid
visit here. It was in the summer of 1920. This is where Fractured Harry had
directed him.

I have an appointment with the
present owner, the great-grandson of the brilliant inventor who built the
house. Vincent Banchini answers the door in a plaid bathrobe. He has a coffee
mug in hand and a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. Funny how we
envision people we've met over the telephone differently from how they turn out
to be in the flesh. This man is not what my imagination had made him out to be.
He is a middle-aged fellow of average proportions, balding on top, with a
longish black tail tied in back. He is unshaven and wears round sunglasses the
color of stout.

"Man," he says,
"you're punctual." Then he laughs, vigorously shakes my hand, and
drags me in before releasing it.

I'm immediately ushered into a
sunny parlor full of heavy Victorian furniture. A figure hovers by a tea table
dressed in a sack-like Middle Eastern burka. The dark garment covers the wearer
from head to foot, but for a thin meshed opening at the eyes.

"This is Tabina, my
housemaid," Vincent says with a gesture. Then, close to my ear, he
confides with a snicker, "I like a challenge when I mentally undress a
woman."

I struggle out a little laugh and
bid good morning to the inscrutable female pillar.

My host feels the urge to clarify:
"Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not some subjugating patriarchal control
freak. She chooses to dress this way. It's her traditional garb, as they
say."

"Yes, of course," I
return.

Vincent thrusts a finger at me and
blurts, "Coffee! Don't tell me...cream and two sugars."

"That's right," I say.

The man beams. "I can always
tell. I have a sense for these things. With tea I'm a little foggy, but coffee
drinkers, I can read 'em a mile away."

We sit. Tabina pours and prepares
my coffee. She does a better job than I am known to do.

"I'm also a human
thermometer," Vincent chatters. He sticks an open hand into the air,
thinks a moment, then proclaims, "Sixty-six degrees. Guaranteed."
Then he scrunches out his cigarette and lights another.

The draped figure, like an upright
body bag, stands solemnly a few paces from the table. I find this intimidating.
Considering the locale, how can I know for certain that there is even a human
under that thing?

Vincent carries the conversation.
"So, you're traipsing around in the tracks of that Pond guy, eh? Cool. I
can't honestly say I know much about him. Hey, didn't he kill somebody?"

Before I can answer, Vincent is up
on his feet and rushing across the room. He plucks an oversized book off the
cushion of a sofa and returns, puffing a trail from the cigarette in his mouth.

"See," he says,
"here's his signature."

There, indeed, is Dr. Albert
Pond's mark. The old leather ledger contains nothing but signatures, the names
of those who experienced the wonders of the hidden room below this structure.

"My great-grandfather didn't
believe in documentation. He never wrote any articles about his work, no books,
nothing. Not even a journal. He kept it all up here..." He taps his head.
"His work was too important, too secretive, and he didn't want it falling
into hands that would have misused it, and there are always plenty of those
around. Undesirable hands. He kept his secrets to himself and worthy
associates."

"Understandably," I
utter.

"So, this book of signatures,
and the contraption itself, are all that remain."

Vincent allows me to photograph
the ledger. Before I can finish my coffee, I am being led down a steep wooden
staircase into the under-chambers of the old house. There is a short dark hall
with an adjacent compartment dominated by a coal bin and some kind of boxy
object that looks to be a furnace of sorts. At the end of the hall there is a
heavy rust-colored door constructed entirely of metal. The host opens it.

"Here we are," Vincent
announces, "the
Spirito Macchina
, as old Arcangelo called it."

Vincent Banchini is a metal
sculptor, a vocation undoubtedly inspired by his great-grandfather, whose
artistry produced the dimly lit room we enter. There is nothing extraordinary
about the shape of the enclosure. It is a simple rectangle. This rectangle,
however, contains a petrified jungle of baroque clutter, the walls and ceiling
textured with rusty mechanical detail, the lines of which bear an archaic and
ornamental grace -- the Victorian impulse for embellishment evident. There are
crusted pipes and leather bellows, flaking gears and oily pistons, chains,
springs, grates, all delicately smothered in dusty webs. The room is a machine.

A single high-backed chair stands
on a low platform facing away from the entry. It looks upon a pair of tall
narrow doors that are streaked with what I hope is only rust. Void of knobs,
handles and even hinges, they are set into the far wall.

"It's amazing," I
breathe.

"Still works, too," my
host notes nonchalantly.

"Really?" He had not
mentioned that on the phone when I had arranged to come and photograph the
apparatus.

"Sure. Last week I saw this
cute little brunette with no arms or legs, just an umbilical cord whipping
around like a drunken cobra."

I get a chill.

"Here, hop in the pilot's
seat," Vincent says, a fresh cigarette bobbing.

I stare at him. "Do you mean
you want me to
operate
it?"

"You didn't drive all this
way just for a few snapshots, did you?" He peers over his glasses.

The fact is I'm more than happy
just snapping my pictures. "Thank you, Vincent, but I'm fine."

He looks hurt. "Oh, come on,
don't be a pussy. This is an opportunity to look beyond the Big Lie. Give it a
shot."

I've never been good at saying no.
My students had taken terrible advantage of that weakness. Before I can find
the words to rationalize a refusal, I am sitting in the stiff metal chair.

Vincent blathers, "I've had
all types of things come through here, and they're not all people who've died.
I had a Swiss mountain climber who disappeared in the Himalayas back in 1938.
Guy hadn't aged a day. He stayed out
here
, by the way, ended up going
back to the home country."

I suddenly feel feverish.

But there's more: "I've even
seen some things that aren't quite human, but the beauty of it is that you can
sort of window shop. If you see something coming through that you think is bad
news, you can throw a lever and bingo! It gets shut out."

I actually stammer, "I'm not
sure I--"

"Okay, here's how it works...

"If you're looking to talk
with someone specific, you call to them through this thing." He points to
a funnel, a refurbished ear-trumpet maybe, that hangs to the left, at face
level. It is the terminal end of a twisty metal pipe that snakes up into the
ceiling.

The man goes on, rapidly
instructing me on the use of several tall levers that jut up from the floor at
the base of the chair.

Ashes rain down Vincent's bathrobe
as he looks at me squarely and warns, "Remember, if you see the right door
opening, it means you've got something undesirable trying to come through.
Don't hesitate, just go for your lever."

"But...."

Vincent is heading for the door.
"It won't work if there's more than one person in the room, but don't
worry -- I'll be right outside. Okay, I'm off to fire this baby up..."

The door behind me clangs shut and
I find myself sitting here alone in a haze of cigarette smoke with my camera in
my lap like a bulletless gun. I feel as if I am sitting in a submarine, deep in
a night-dark sea. It may as well be night for the darkness of the chamber, the
meager light sources vague, set somewhere in the jumbled components.

I find myself questioning the
degree of belief that I have in all things supernatural. At a safe distance, I
would have thrilled at the
thought
of an opportunity to have actual
contact with Pond, but now, seated in the darkness beneath the Banchini House,
I feel only trepidation. Maybe Pond was indeed a madman, maybe there never was
an Arabella, or a baby with a seashell face, or overlaps where dimensions
merge. Maybe this room is an entertainment, or a fake, like doctored Victorian
“ghost” photographs, mock ectoplasm, profitable spirit-knockings and the like.
Maybe Vincent is rushing into a hidden room to operate levitating bed sheets,
or to moan and rattle chains through one of the vents. Maybe his
great-grandfather Arcangelo Banchini made his fortune hoaxing during the
spiritualist craze.

Trembling, I hear a soft hiss of
steam as the lights flutter. A gear alongside one of the walls squeals and
starts to revolve, hesitantly at first, loosened scabs of rust clicking like
hail as they fall to the metal floor. Then plates in the floor begin to rumble
as mechanisms beneath the room stagger to life, groaning and rasping. I hadn't
realized that there was another level
beneath
the cellar. As the
platform under my feet vibrates I find myself hoping that the plates are stable
and that I don't end up falling through the floor, chair and all. To my left
something bangs as though someone has hurled a hammer. Pistons pulse, and the
whole chamber rattles like a factory. There is clanking and squeaking, and I
imagine disrupted mice scurrying unseen over the floor, their footfalls lost in
the cacophony.

"What if this is
real
?"
I say to myself.

I must do something. If spirits,
or whatever, are being conjured, it's best that I dictate what they are. I turn
to the mouth-funnel and stutter…

"Albert Pond...Dr. Albert
Pond..."

I hear several loud booms as if
something powerful is punching to get through the metal doors.

"Albert Pond, please...Albert
Pond...."

Pale motion draws my eye. Only a
mist of steam leaking from a pipe. But then a more dramatic movement. One of
the far doors is starting to open.

It is the right door sliding up
into the ceiling like a guillotine blade in reverse. I tense, recalling what
Vincent had said about the right door. Something bad is trying to enter.

I look down at the stiff levers.
He had jabbered instructions about what to do if the bad door opened. But there
are three levers, and he was talking so fast that I didn't quite take in what
he was saying. Which lever do I pull?

The door makes a grinding sound as
it goes up. I see only darkness beyond it. The door is fully open. My eyes
adjust, and the light reveals a vague figure seated in a chair. It is thin and
dark, coming into focus as the chair slides forward on rails. The chair jerks
as it halts and the ghastly metal puppet sitting there lurches forward.

I cry out and grip the arms of my
chair.