The Sea of Ash (7 page)

6. DR. POND AND THE SPIRITO MACCHINA

I am rereading the section in
Albert Pond's journal where he visits the dark, clanging room beneath the
towering Italianate house in Manchester, trying to see if his experience will
give some perspective to mine.

 
Pond, like Simon Brinklow before him, had
embarked on a strange path of stepping-stones. His experience began with the
discovery of Arabella, and (to recap) continued with the shell-faced baby,
Brinklow's note, the discovery of Brinklow's books, the melting of the infant,
the strange and hideous death of Professor Wakefield (who wrote of the overlap
theory) and Fractured Harry, who sent him to the Banchini House in New
Hampshire.

Arcangelo Banchini, who built the
house and invented the Spirit Machine, was in his seventies when Dr. Pond went
to visit him, and while the man's health was failing, his mind remained sharp,
and his dark eyes revealed great intensity. Pond wrote that his host was a very
serious sort with no time left for humor or idleness. Similarly impatient with
small talk, Pond respected the older man's directness.

The machine-chamber was undergoing
some modifications at the time; Banchini cautioned Pond that there had been
some "difficulties" with it, and that it required some refining. A
Belgian fellow, who had traveled a great distance in hopes of contacting his
deceased twin sister, had left the room mysteriously deficient in fingers.
There were no wounds, nor blood, merely a lack of digits. The man did,
incidentally, enjoy a visit with his sibling.

Pond had familiarized himself with
the late Professor Wakefield's writings and was intrigued to read, according to
the hypothesis put forth, that overlaps might be either natural formations or
created. In the case of the Banchini device, the dimensional gateway did not
exist in that spot prior to the creation of the machine.

I find it somewhat reassuring that
even Pond was apprehensive about taking his next step, so to speak, closing
himself in that subterranean chamber amidst the noisy clutter, with the two doors
facing him, and the unknown pressed up against the other side of those doors.

Pond wrote of his intentions:
"I could not help but feel a kindredness with Brinklow, and something
more, a sense of obligation. He had reached out to me with his note, after all.
He must certainly have been trapped
somewhere
, in who knows what
conditions. Thus, my aim was to attempt to release him, or at the very least to
gain some communication with him."

 
Pond spoke Simon Brinklow's name into the
trumpet-like apparatus hanging down to his left. In his journal he did a fine
job of evoking the rest of his experience, detailing the dimness and the noise
of the many moving parts around him, then the lifting of one of the doors on
the other side of the chamber. In his case it was the left door that opened.

"Once the door had retracted
fully, I found myself gazing upon a seated figure the size of a grown man. It
was gracefully shaped from metal, and rather skeletal, with a chest that made
me think of a trilobite in that it was roughly ovular with pronounced ribs
nestled against each other."

The chair holding the puppet slid
out on its track, and Pond had a better look at its face. While lacking any
distinct expression, the bland suggestion of human features somehow displayed a
kind of tranquility.

The puppet stood up, and
artificial hands reached to open the hinged plates of the chest. Pond found
himself facing a soft luminosity that filled the opened area of the torso, like
a window misted by moonlight and breath. After several moments he discerned
movement there in the watery light -- a shape was moving toward the opening,
when suddenly the entire room rumbled painfully.

Pond grasped the arms of the chair
as the puppet flopped back into its seat, rattling like a suit of armor. The
sides of the chest compartment clanked open and shut repeatedly, a Cyclops
blinking. Then its chair flew back and forth on its rail, backward into the
darkness, then out into the only slightly more illuminated area where the man
sat. It did this several times, squealing metallically until the sliding door
came banging down on top of its head. That was when the room went black and
Pond sat there listening as the works shuddered and pinged their way toward
silence.

It was at about that time that
Pond felt something strike him in the chest, like a fist, and he himself
blacked out.

When Albert awoke he was on a sofa
in the parlor of the large house, and Arcangelo Banchini was leaning over him,
studying him with dark eyes.

Pond had lifted his hands and
examined them. "Well," he'd said, "I appear to have all my
fingers."

Banchini was profusely apologetic,
like a man whose prized dog has bitten a guest on the leg. It was clear that
his pride was wounded, because his invention had malfunctioned. Pond was
gracious nonetheless, and expressed interest in returning for a second try as
soon as the machine was up and running again. He had gotten a titillating
glimpse, and that, he assured his host, had made the trip worthwhile.

As for the blow to his chest,
there was no mark to be found, no bruising, no redness, no injury that could be
seen, although in his journal Pond would confide that the area just above his
solar plexus felt both sore and tingly.

7. SEPTEMBER

I must be going mad; there can be
no other explanation. Days have passed since I have been able to sleep. All I
do is pace my rooms and peek out around the shades. Maybe I need to talk to a
therapist -- maybe I'm suffering some sort of anxiety disorder. I've probably
spent too many years reading strange old books.

Following the upsetting incident
at the Banchini House, I decided to postpone the rest of my adventure
indefinitely. It was a sad thing, admittedly, and I've admonished myself over
it, abandoning the dream that I had waited years to pursue. But something
happened in that dark underchamber, something that frightened me deeply, and so
I made the painful decision to return home.

I know it's foolish. In fact,
nothing notably alarming occurred until this past Saturday. Every year the
Eastborough Library holds a sidewalk book sale, selling off old unloved books
for charity. The public is invited to bring boxes of their own to offer as
well. Most of the books are works of dreadful fiction, but I've found some
diamonds among the coal. Since my return I've been trying to read things other
than archaic esoteric texts, so I thought I might give the sale a try.

It was a fine day in the first
week of September, blue-skied, bright, with the early leaves turning. There was
even a trace of coolness in the air, a great relief, considering the muggy
August I had suffered. It was the kind of day that makes me want to eat plain
doughnuts and drink hot cider.

Long tables were set up on the
sidewalk along West Main Street; others crowded the front lawn in front of the
noble old structure of beige stone. I wandered among the tables, quietly
scrutinizing their contents. Books were stacked in irregular gravity-defying
pillars and stuffed into cardboard boxes, the white splits in worn bindings
giving the impression that their titles were emerging through static.

There were a good many potential
buyers perusing about, and they seemed nice enough, book-lovers being a more
civilized lot. I picked up a slim volume on British war ships of the late 1700s
and was standing in the shade of a maple, flipping through its pages, when I
felt something cold touching my arm.

Looking down, I noticed a pale
hand lighting on the back of my wrist. The wrinkled fingers were slender, with
nails that looked like tiny bleached trilobites.

Instinctively I stepped back and
looked up to see the face of the person who had touched me. There were leaves
tangled in the long white hair which blew across the face -- a shifting mask
obscuring all but the toothless smile.

A rush of adrenaline spun me from
the stranger. I dropped the book onto the nearest table and found myself
walking swiftly away from the crowd and the tables and the cool shade of the
library. I crossed West Main -- blood parading through my head with heavy feet
-- and did not turn to look back until I had reached my car.

Light flashed on the window of the
heavy library door as it swung shut. Leaves trembled down onto heaps of faded
books. People milled and hunched over tables. People chatted and smiled and
made purchases. The world appeared ordinary -- no sign of the white-haired
individual with prehistoric fingers.

I drove straight home, where I
have remained since. Sleepless. Pacing. I obsess over the incident, replay it
over and over in my mind. Was the hand that touched me as cold as my memory
tells me it was? Wasn't it simply some nice little elderly person on the verge
of asking some innocuous question? How could someone really have little white
trilobites for fingernails?

There must be something wrong with
me, acting this way. I think about the Banchini House and what I saw in the
opened chest of that metallic demon. But what did I see? Those faces bobbing in
the strange light were nothing other than images cast by a hidden projector,
weren't they? The one that was reaching out, or pulling itself out, was no more
than a clever illusion. That
has
to be the logical explanation. It was a
prank, a little something to agitate the imagination.

September whispers around my
house, a blend of crickets and breeze. It gets dark earlier now. I prop myself
up on coffee legs and pace. I'll have another cup. I hear a noise out in the
dusk and go to the window, peel back the edge of the drawn shade and peer out.
Only back-lit leaves flitting past the street lamp, straying from their limbs.

8. BOOKS

Burnt sage leaves have left a
strange smell throughout my village Colonial, remnants of a protection ritual I
performed some hours ago -- a simple spell taken from
Cricket and Moth
,
an anonymously written volume that appeared in 1935. The book has no formal
title, though the cover bears the moon-colored image of a moth above a
silhouetted cricket, both set against a pale green background. The lettering
inside is curious; it resembles black ants arranged to form words. The spells
themselves are elegant in their simplicity, poetic in essence.

Yes, I've returned to my strange
books. I spent hours distracting myself with Nana's volumes on old New England
houses, but eventually, inevitably, I went to the bookcase in my study where my
collection of rarities resides.

Lying to myself has not worked. I
know what I saw at the Banchini House. I actually experienced the cold from
that stranger's touch, and I saw the trilobite fingernails with my own eyes.
Albert Pond and Simon Brinklow knew that the world is much more than we think it
is. I know this too.

So the question now is...what
should I do? Something made its way through the overlap in Banchini's machine,
and whatever it is, it's followed me all the way from Manchester. Terrifying as
that realization is, it serves me no purpose to deny it.

I can't exactly call the police
and report a thing like this. But, there must be someone I can turn to --
someone stronger, more capable of confronting danger. I am reading
Dr.
Pond's Journal
again. Maybe his courage will bolster me, maybe his
experiences will give me some insight into how to proceed...

9. CROCKER'S BITE

The failure of Arcangelo
Banchini's Spirit Machine was a setback to Pond. He wasn't sure how next to
proceed. He attempted to find out more about the "haunted" apple basket
into which Brinklow had vanished, but nothing came of his inquiries. No one
seemed to know what had become of the basket, and the Rice Farm had long since
fallen to neglect. He wished that he could return to The Sumner Inn and contact
Fractured Harry again, but Harry would only come to a particular individual
once every seven years.

One rainy evening, cooped up in a
brick hotel overlooking a glum tract of Manchester, Pond was surprised by a
knocking at his door. It was the desk clerk, reporting that a visitor was
asking for him. An old man. Pond told the fellow to send the visitor up.

Albert was glad to see Arcangelo
Banchini again. The old man was soaked from the rain, his fedora dripping. Pond
invited him in and they sat a while, talking. Banchini offered a gnarled little
Italian cigar and Pond shared some illegal brandy (Prohibition had gone into
effect back in January).

After apologizing once more,
Banchini said, "I've seen many amazing things, my friend. You would think
I was mad if I told you. And I have learned remarkable things, because of the
machine; I have learned about places that interest men like us. There is one in
particular that you might find useful..."

Pond was intrigued, of course.

I am on the road again, an hour
and a half away from home, traveling in north central Massachusetts. Route 2
takes me through Templeton, Phillipston, and beyond, on into Erving, where the
road curves close to the towering paper mill. White clouds swell from the
stacks and the air almost smells like the sea. I drive along the Millers River,
through a landscape of wooded hills and enduring bridges. There are cadmium
fields of goldenrod, open tracts of farmland, stands selling apples and
pumpkins.

I feel somewhat better for being
this far from the area where I encountered the white-haired stranger. Still, my
relief is tempered, for if it was able to follow me from New Hampshire to
central Massachusetts, then I'm not sure I'll be truly safe anywhere.

What does it want with me?

It is late morning and I have
entered historic Deerfield, famous for the French and Indian attack of 1704,
and now known for its grand street of 18th and early 19th century houses. As
much as I would love to stroll among those architectural wonders, beneath the
large trees that shade the stretch, I feel that all things pleasant must wait
until I have taken some form of action to further defend myself.

Over the years I have been in
contact with a good number of interesting people representing a varied range of
mystical systems and spiritual bents. Most have come to my attention through my
pursuit of collectible books. I know astrologers, psychics, Wiccans,
herbalists, dowsers, ceremonial magicians, and on... One of the latter is a
young woman named Lauren McAlester who possesses the uncanny ability to track
down rare items useful to those practicing the unconventional arts.

Lauren was very sympathetic to my
situation when I spoke with her over the phone. She is one of the few humans I
know whom I would even have considered relating the experience to, for while my
circle of contacts is rather wide, I am a solitary sort, and private by nature.
I guess I am like Dr. Pond in that way -- I have more acquaintances than
friends.

Turning onto a side road, I come
upon a Second Empire house set back behind a diminishing hedge of lilac. A
tallish hydrangea stands to one side; at a distance the clustered blooms look
like puffs of cotton candy. The house is a small specimen for its type, just
two stories high, with the windowed upper level encased in a mansard roof.
There is a small entry porch at the left of the facade -- I park my car and
head for this.

A thin red-haired woman bounds
from the house to greet me. To look at her, one would never suspect that she
engages in ritual magic, conjuring arcane forces and the like. She is freckled,
with a pleasing plainness, her hair braided behind her. Her clothing is
unostentatious -- jeans and T-shirt. I receive a big smile and a hearty
handshake; her fingers smell of tomato plants.

Lauren leads me to the back of the
house, where the grounds remind me of Nana's garden. There is an English
cottage sensibility to the space as opposed to the stiffly manicured look so
popular in these times.

We drink herbal tea under darting
dragonflies, and I recount my strange tale in full, sparing no detail. I talk
about Brinklow and Pond, and the Banchini machine. The young woman is familiar
(more or less) with these subjects. When I finish, she sits thinking for a
time.

"I could give you some
protective amulets and exorcism powder, but a situation like this calls for
something stronger," Lauren says. "Are you familiar with Crocker's
Bite?"

 
"I'm afraid not," I reply.

My hostess explains... A sprawling
farm once stood on the outskirts of Kingston, Rhode Island. It was owned by a
man named Gilbert Crocker. In the summer of 1860 a fierce storm pounded the
area with thunder and rain. During the barrage, a bolt of lightning struck the
heavy wooden door of the Crocker barn. Fortunately the structure did not burn,
though a good-sized mark was left behind. The blackened area was roughly ovular
in shape, and embedded within that charred wood were hundreds of human teeth.

Crocker, for whatever reason, felt
that the teeth were a symbol of good luck, and over the years people dug them
out of the door to carry for protection. In time, certain individuals found
that the teeth possessed an even more dramatic power when used as a tool to
dispel unwanted entities.

Lauren cites one case in
particular, in which a family in Newport was terrorized by a hair-pulling
boy-like thing in the winter of 1960. They eventually contacted a local medium,
who utilized one of the teeth, successfully driving the bothersome spirit away.

My hostess goes into her house and
returns with a small bag made of black cloth. Inside is what looks to be a
yellowed human molar.

"A gift," the woman
says.

I offer to pay her for it, but she
assures me that she has others, and insists on its being a present. I accept
her generosity and thank her profusely.

"So, what do I
do
with
it?"

"Well, it's a close-quarters
kind of thing," Lauren says, leaning forward in her lawn chair. "All
you have to do is touch it to the target and that should do the trick."

"Touch it?" I ask,
frowning. "I was hoping I wouldn't ever be close enough to that thing to
touch it again."

Lauren has a way of being pleasant
and dead serious all in the same breath. I respect her frankness, though her
words cause me to shudder. "Well, situations arise against our will, and
we're left to deal with them. You may not have a choice in the matter."

I hold the tooth in my hand,
looking down at it. Lauren watches me, her face quiet and kind. I ask,
"What should I do now?"

"Well, you could try to
outrun it, I suppose, but if I were you, I'd just settle in someplace and let
it come to you. Facing it will be less maddening than anticipating it."

This is all so surreal. A very bad
dream in the middle of a beautiful September day. I sit here in the sunny
garden and begin to laugh. Sometimes laughter is an expression of terror.