I am writing
about events I do not understand. If I had time, I could regulate my thoughts
into a clear and simple account, over the course, perhaps, of several months.
But I have neither the time nor the want to delay any further. My tale will be
shapeless and weird, defying the boundaries of sense, but I choose to write
now, and in great haste, because my memories are as vivid as they will ever be.
I hold these thoughts in my mind’s eye as water is so briefly held between the
fingers. If I shift my attention from this task, I will lose these thoughts
forever.
It is fitting, I
suppose, that I ended up in this state whilst searching for the body of my
editor. It is now, as I give myself over to this strange and shifting narrative,
that I need Alexander the most.
Alexander Yates
had edited my writing since I was seven-teen. He was not a professional editor
– in fact, he was an engineer by trade. Alexander and I grew up together in the
provincial town of Hullport, east of Essex. He encouraged my writing at a time
when I assigned little value to it. This was an ad hoc arrangement, never
formalised, but it worked excellently. He saw what my writing could be – what I
could be – when I could not. When Alexander spoke of the things he believed,
you believed in them, too.
I later moved to
London and begun my literary career in earnest. I made a name for myself as a
writer of essays, largely autobiographical, and of some criticism. Alexander
remained behind in Hullport and concentrated on his engineering work. Still, I
engaged his counsel for all of my writing, though as he grew busier and I was
forced to deal more with literary agents and publishing houses, our partnership
no longer had the easy priority it once enjoyed.
But it was always
Alexander’s voice that I trusted the most. Perhaps because it was the first
voice I ever trusted at all. To write without an editor, without Alexander,
would be… it would be to build a house with faulty wiring. The exterior would
appear sound, but the edges are dangerous, frayed. I would not know myself
whether the words were good or bad. Without Alexander, I write blindly, without
assurances, and I write at length and in desperation, writing and publishing on
and on and on and on for how-ever long it takes for my words to meet with
response and for someone to confirm the words as being true and good.
Recently, I
received a cable in London notifying me that Alexander Yates had died. I later
clarified he was merely presumed dead. Alexander had disappeared in a
mineshaft, the site of one of the many construction projects to which he was
contracted. The authorities called off the search after a month.
I reported to
Hullport for the funeral service. With no body to bury, the local authorities
decided to symbolically fill Alexander’s coffin with the pet turtle from a
local classroom. But the schoolchildren complained, and they had to give the
turtle back. In the end, they buried only an empty casket.
The funeral
service was entirely unworthy of Alexander. Less men attended than I would have
thought proper. The pastor read perfunctorily from Corinthians, and only I
remained at the grave. Clad in my sodden overcoat, I kept a miserable vigil in
the thunderous rain of the after-noon. After I departed, the local teen-agers
congregated at the cemetery to eat ham-burgers and exchange hand-jobs. And I
wondered whether luck smiled on Alexander as it had the turtle. Was his life
spared, too?
Certainly I wished that to be true. I pondered
the question as I walked from the cemetery to the police station, inattentive
to the downpour. The docks, whose industry is the diseased blood that courses
through the clotted veins of this half-a-town, border the industrial
smokestacks of the refineries, which the workers, in their hardhats and their
overalls, leave in dour formation for the pub, where they drown their sorrows
and all else that remains of them. The walls of the pub are viscous – thick and
sticky to the touch from a paint job that never fully healed. It is odd: for as
much as these men drink, I have never seen one fully drunk.
The people of Hullport are a dull lot, sickly
and physically unfortunate. I never understood what Alexander saw in Hullport
and why he devoted so much of his life to these people. They remain firmly in
the last century, I feel, literally shackled by superstition – take, for
example, the tales they tell of the roaming ‘Hullport mudmonster’, a supposed
local cryptid whose body is made of dirty mud. They claim to fear this creature
even as they gleefully propagate its legend. No men of science are these.
As the local constabulary is selected from
this population, I had little faith in the thoroughness of the police
investigation, and the verdict on Alexander’s ‘death’. At the station, I spoke
with the inspector, a portly man with swollen reptilian lips, of the name
Barnes. Barnes had no leads, no information, and was roundly unconcerned about
not having recovered or even located the body from the mine. Alexander had
likely been crushed in a mine collapse, he theorised – or simply asphyxiated, or
fallen or trapped. The mines were deep, he told me, with many dark and
uncharted passageways – nobody even knew where they all led. Or perhaps, he
said, Alexander was eaten alive by some strange creature, e.g. the Hullport
mudmonster.
“Mudmonster!” I exclaimed. “You expect me to
believe that rubbish?”
“The simplest explanation is often times the
correct one,” he insisted, smacking his lips. “Mudmonster’s razor.”
That night, I supped in the Great Room of
Alexander’s mansion, joined by Alexander’s elderly butler Rickards. We sat by
the ornate fireplace in leather armchairs and sniffed at glasses of rare brandy
from Alexander’s private collection. The house was magnificent. It brought me
great comfort to know that Alexander had spent the last years of his life in
great comfort.
Rickards was a thin gent, possessed of stentorian
voice and humourless face. I appreciated his company on that weird night. He
briefed me at length about what Alexander had done with himself in the years
since I left Hullport. Alexander had invested heavily in arterial projects –
roads, bridges, tunnels, and railways – and was responsible perhaps more than
anyone for the upkeep of the town’s infrastructure. He had done quite well for himself
here, and turned his accumulated largesse to some of his individual passions,
like the importation of exotic meats and foreign meats. Alexander would
celebrate his acquisitions of new meats by opening up his mansion for great
feasts, at which all the people of Hullport were welcome to sample said meats.
Despite his carnal appetites, Rickards said, Alexander was a great lover of
animals, and took in abandoned and abused dogs to raise them back to full
health. Rickards may as well have been describing to me a stranger. I realised
then how little I had truly known of Alexander’s life beyond his involvement in
mine.
As I contemplated the implications of this, my
eye drifted across the room where I glimpsed something that chilled me to the
marrow. I saw a pack of tiny, white apparitions flit across the doorway, and
then disappear down the Great Corridor. It happened so quickly it was if I had
caught them dashing between our world and the next.
“By God, Rickards!” I exclaimed, leaping out
of my chair. The brandy snifter crashed on the hardwood floor. “Spectres!”
Rickards shook his head. “Not spectres, sir.
That is the Ghost Club. It is a recreational after-school programme devised and
funded by Mr Yates. It keeps the children off the streets and inside ghost
costumes.”
Then Alexander was a philanthropist, on top of all
else.
I retook my seat. One of Alexander’s black
hounds entered the Great Room and lapped up the spilled brandy.
“When did you last see Alexander?” I petted
the dog on its head. “What did he say to you?”
“The last time I saw Mr Yates…” Rickards
paused to remember. “For some weeks, Mr Yates had been closely involved with
the town’s underground rail line project. He had been commissioned to
reconnoitre the planned site. That was where the mine came in. Every day, Mr
Yates would visit the mine, and soon he began to have troubled nights. When he
slept… when he did sleep, he would
toss and turn, and shout out in the night. He told me he was plagued by dark
visions, images of teeth, and of stars. One night I heard him cry out the
words: ‘Ndyuthr! Ndyuthr!’
“He told me later that it was the mine: that
there was something down there. On the last day I saw him, he left the house in
the morning with one of the hounds and an oil lamp. He said to me, ‘Mr
Rickards, I expect this will be the last we see of one another.’ Indeed, only
the hound returned home that day.”
“Mr Rickards! Why did you not report this
information to the police?”
“I don’t see the relevance.”
“The relevance? Why, Mr Rickards, Alexander
clearly found something quite disturbing in the mine, and told you that he was
walking to his certain death!”
“I don’t see how you could take that from what
I said.”
That night, the after-noon and evening rain
picked up speed and ferocity, and Rickards agreed to have me stay in one of
Alexander’s guest rooms. The electricity in the house had somehow failed, so I
lighted my way with a tinderbox. I lay in bed and became drowsy to the rhythms
of the rain and the wind thrashing against the window. I do not know how long I
had slept – if I had slept at all – by the time I awoke to the shattering of
the window. I saw the curtains throw a hail of wet glass into the room and I
hit the mattress to protect my face. I barely had time to collect myself when
three urgent, pounding knocks arrived at the door.
“Rickards?” I called out. The pounding
continued unabated. “Rickards, is that you?”
Again, I heard no answer but the battering of
the door. Through the broken window, the cold mist slithered down my neck. “Is
this one of the Ghost Club children? I have no fondness for horseplay.” The
pounding turned so violent that the door now buckled under the pressure.
“Rickards?” The wind screamed. “Inspector
Barnes?” This intolerable pounding! I ventured another name.
“Ndyuthr?”
The noises stopped. I laid still a while to
make sure that the presence behind the door had truly disappeared, and once I
was satisfied, I left the bed and pushed the wardrobe quietly to block the
door.
I did not manage to fall asleep that night,
and in the protracted hours I spent lying in the bed, I had much time to
consider Alexander’s premature legacy. The man had built this town, paid for
its roads, kept safe its children, treated its men and women to great banquets,
and saved its animals from death. All for Hullport. And in return? Hullport
wrote him off as dead and intended to bury a turtle in his grave, and even at
that, they failed.
But had I treated my friend any better?
In Alexander’s spare time, of which I am now
surprised he had any, he supported me literally to the hilt – with his time,
with his hospitality, with his friendship, even with his money. And what had I
done with these gifts but glorify myself? I had never compensated Alexander –
not financially, not in any way. I wrote about myself – long essays about my
thoughts, my life, my problems – this is all I wrote about. Of what value was
this? Had I declared myself to be the only subject in the world of any meaning?
What were other people to me but ‘subjects’ of ‘pieces’? What were women to me
but ‘stories’? And what had Alexander been to me but… a means? Had I ever done
a good deed for another as Alexander had done for me? Had I ever done one good
thing for anybody? Had I ever done a single goddamn thing?
There was one thing I could do for Alexander,
which nobody else would. I would go down into that mine. I would find the place
where Alexander lay. If he still lived, then I would save him, and if not,
well, I would give him the memorial he deserved. This I would do: one final,
and perhaps my first, act of friendship.
I set out at first light. I leashed one of
Alexander’s hounds as my guide, and retrieved an oil lamp in the cellar. I
paused at the doorway and said goodbye to Rickards, who was dusting in the
foyer.
“Mr Rickards, I expect this will be the last
we see of one another.”
“See you later, then.”
The road to the mine was long, and took the
hound and I far away from what passes in Hullport for civilisation. On the
trail we passed the ripe corpse of some rotting animal, and the dog peed on it,
and I hated everything about that.
To
my good fortune – so I thought at the time – the entrance to the mine was
unsealed. No matter that it was a crime scene, no matter that Alexander Yates
still waited inside for rescue or internment. I had much to say about the
standard of policing in this wreck of a town and I thought that perhaps when I
returned to London I should write a letter.
In
the mine, the air was warm and thick with dust, and absolutely silent but for
the simmering wind and the whimpering of the dog. The miners’ tools lay where
the miners had abandoned them, scattered over the ground amidst the sawdust and
the rocks. The lights had gone some time ago. I swung the lantern in the
blackness to chart a path, and followed the path of the rails deeper into the
chasm.
As we progressed, the dog’s protests grew in
their fervour. It drove its heels into the ground and held fast as I yanked its
leash onwards. It howled softly. I knelt down beside the pitiable creature and
hung the lantern between us. In the patch of light, the dog turned its soft
eyes up to me and with them begged for clemency. Tears rolled down the side of
its face.
“But this is Alexander,” I explained to the
dog. “We’re trying to find Alexander. We’re trying to save him.”
The dog nuzzled its long snout into the crook
of my arm. I let the leash drop and, perhaps in a display of gratitude, the dog
pressed its wet mouth to my nose. I closed my eyes and listened to the dog’s soft
footsteps recede hurriedly into the daylight.
I proceeded further into the mine, the worn
brass handle of the lantern slippery in the accumulated sweat of my palm. The
mine subdivided into paths and passageways, and each passageway begat more and
more passageways, expanding into a confounding veinal labyrinth. I had no sense
of the size of this maze and no hope of arranging it into a clear pattern in my
mind. I chose passageways without thinking and subjected myself to the guiding
hand of providence. The path sloped down sharply, and I descended carefully
over the uncut rock.
“YOU
WILL NOT FIND WHAT YOU SEEK!”
That voice!
That voice, like the scraping of teeth against
chalkboard!
I clambered back up the incline, dropping the
lantern in my haste. It cascaded down the mine, splaying its beam in a
spasmodic arc across the tunnel walls. I scrambled and ran, from the wind that
snarled at my back, and the voice that drilled into my flesh. I tripped, became
unbalanced, and fell back down the slope as the lantern had moments before. I
dashed my head open on the rocks below.
In retrospect, I am glad for the fall. It
denied my cowardly attempt to flee, and allowed me the chance to comport myself
and meet my death with some dignity. I am dying here, on the dark floor of the
mine, as the blood seeps freely from the gashes that defile my face. Above me,
I can hear its breathing, which is rough and primal, and grows ever louder as
the thing makes its invisible approach. And I can see Alexander, his body
resting against the tree trunk by the shore. Whether he is alive or dead there
I cannot say, but I feel that shortly, I will know.
All that remains is to conclude my story. I
have staved off the end long enough to pen this strange account on the sides of
a mine cart. This took a really long time. I hope that my effort will not be
for naught. I hope that my story will eventually be discovered, and – maybe
even one day – understood.
I hold a conviction now, which had never
before occurred to me. It is this: A good
writer writes to glorify himself, a great writer writes to glorify others.
I am prouder of those words than anything I have ever written. I would like that
to be engraved upon my headstone. Or perhaps, in the spirit of the sentiment, I
should have those engraved on the headstone of somebody else. I am not sure
whose headstone specifically. I think just any headstone will be fine. Anybody
would be thankful to have that.
[Archival
Note, 17/09/13: i’m the assistant archaeologist who had to transcribe this and it
took forever. it's done now though. this guy never wrote his name down anywhere
so I don’t really know who he was. my name is shaun. archaeology is only a day
job for me, i'm in a band, sort of heavy pop-punk, called Midgard Cruising. i
do lead guitar and vox and cowrite all the songs with craig. if yr in hullport
you should come and check us out, we have a couple of shows we’re playing at
the Bard on 24/9, 27/9, 1/10, 5/10, 8/10, 15/10, 22/10 and 25/10. more dates to
come hopefully. we are on facebook and bandcamp also. we are getting some
tshirts and buttons printed and you should be able to buy those at the october
shows, but that depends 100% on our supplier who we found on the web. do NOT
come to the 24/9 and 27/9 shows expecting to buy tshirts and buttons, they will
NOT be there. anyway hope you come out and support the band. white power.]
