Uttuku

The Books of Darkness

by Robert N. Stephenson

Chapter 9

part 1 of 2

Tomorrow was a long way off, and a night with Steven didn’t feel all that appealing. I knew my mood bordered on the suicide line; I’d been there before. The anti-depressants couldn’t keep up with all the extra crap going on around me. I had to get out, do something, anything better than staring at the walls and listening to more of Steven’s requests. He’d be back. He always came back.

Not for the first time I wondered about the state of my mind. My doctor questioned it, and I took pills to help control it; still, this didn’t help with the questions. Could I really see a ghost? Bi-polar depression could create visions as real as I could imagine. Could I be lost in a world of my making and in all reality be locked up in some psych ward jabbering to myself?

My neighbour across the street had gone that way. He saw and spoke to Martians, drank methylated spirits with them. Police and two men in suits wrestled him into a straitjacket in the middle of the street four years ago. I can remember his last words before being pushed into the back of the police car: “Let me go, I won’t tell them. Let me go. I won’t hurt you. I’m gonna kill you!”

With shaking hands I poured a drink, first into the glass and then down my throat. It helped. Being crazy like that didn’t fit with my kind of crazy. I called Sarina just to make sure she was real. She said it was okay and that I wasn’t going mad. Easy for her to say.

Crap. That’s what my life looked like tonight, absolute crap. I dressed in what I could find clean on the floor, baggy, dark clothes, a black T over a white shirt, black, head-kicker boots laced to the knees. Dress how you feel I’d read in a women’s magazine. Pulling a black, silver-studded bag from the wardrobe, I thought about Sarina’s love of black. Could she also be a closet psycho needing a big dose of lithium so she could see the light? Maybe I needed the drug?

Hitting the town might not be the best course of action. The keys were already in my hand and the front door open. No point wasting all this activity. The weather wasn’t good and matched my mood perfectly. The pills weren’t working and the booze was starting its drive to oblivion, and I wanted to be on board.

Standing on the front verandah I watched the rain falling across the streetlight, listened to its fall on the wide driveway, the slap against the leaves of the trees. The car sat protected slightly by a covered carport. Getting in wasn’t a problem. I really hated getting wet, even if feeling like a wet dog matched my decaying emotional state. How long had it been raining inside my brain, in my heart, drowning my soul?

Driving through intrepid weather into the city only increased the misery. The wipers dragged across the windscreen, like a dirty hand wiping away tears: quick and ineffective. The sound a constant reminder of a never-ending struggle, a lonely sound. I hit the CD button on the stereo. Siouxsie and the Banshees crashed, smashed all other sound from the depressing thoughts. Kaleidoscope brought the hype and emotions down, the slow, melodic darkness strummed its way into my being. Crashed out my mind.

I knew a place, my place, my hole in the ground that allowed me to crawl in when the crap got too much. The dark river of the road, white lines glistening and slippery, led me into a world of coloured lights, secrets and hidden mayhem.

Adelaide welcomed the disenfranchised with open arms. Not a happy welcome, more a watch your arse or die kind of thing. There had been plenty of disappearances in this city’s life, more sick crimes per capita than New York. The home of Kevin Spencer Von Einam. When coming to Adelaide, that was a name to research: the knowledge just might save your life one dark and stormy night. A cliché that could make you dead.

For the last three months I’d been delving deeper and deeper into the Goth scene. I avoided the drug networks and backhand deals made in shadows. I had my preferred poison and they respected that. I knew the city could be a violent place, a real bad place to be at night; in all my years I suppose I’ve been protected, shielded from such things. To me everything always looked okay; dark, but okay. Maybe it was God watching over me; someone certainly was, and I didn’t mind. One thing less to worry about.

Parking in front of the club — there was always a space for me — the great Australian author and number one patron of ‘Goth Club’ prepared to drop into a black, welcoming hole. Two huge men, not Goths, and with ‘Security’ written across their over tight T’s, recognized the car. One pulled an umbrella from within the club’s doorway, stepped to the driver’s side and made sure I didn’t get wet.

“Ms Arlyn,” he said. Polite, protective.

“Steve.” He led me to the door, nodding to the other guard. I paid no entry fee.

Down the stairs, black walls on either side, close, I slowly immersed myself in the throb of music fighting its way to the street. The Kinks, Celluloid Heroes pulled me in, sucked at the weariness. The Club wasn’t a fully dedicated Goth hangout, though many of the key figures in the culture did find their way here when the weather was bad and the night took on the appearance better found in horror films.

Music pressed, pulsed, vibrated my skin, shook the bones. Black and chrome welcomed and promised. The bar, running the full length of one wall, glittered with silver skulls and bats on its face. Flickering shimmers against the flat black of the panels. The bar top, lit from beneath and above looked like a wall of white light sandwiched, top and bottom, between solid banks of night.

One of the barmen saw me. A scotch sat in the pool of light before I could open my bag.

“On the house,” he yelled, sliding the drink forward. I raised the glass in salute, then down it went in one gulp. He poured another, and again refused payment. Being a celebrity who stays close to the heart of the locals did have its advantages. Free drinks weren’t one of the perks I’d been granted here. I didn’t argue: let someone else flip the bill for my woes, just don’t expect a thank-you.

Tall, black top on chrome tube, standing tables filled most of the front section of the club, above each a tight beam of light crashed into the table top creating the effect of prison bars throughout the club. A cool look. We were all prisoners of something. The real Goths would be towards the back, by the dance floor, sitting on worn black sofas and chairs, smoking and existing in a moment of their choosing.

People stood about, soaked through with sound, damp with the pounding from a life they only looked at, and rarely venture into. These were the watchers, those who made sojourns into the culture just to see, and gawk at others who they’d never be able to understand. Fingers pointed, heads turned, eyes fell across me like shadows. Recognition kept the club bringing in new custom and I didn’t mind. I left the bar with my third drink, pushing beneath the haze of grey cigarette smoke, towards the reality I sought.

White faces, black eyes, black lips, tattoos, piercings and the layering of clothing usually seen on street sleepers occupied the small section of world I needed right now. Voltaire’s Vampire Club drew me towards the gutter of my heart.

Two women, wearing black leather and white lace — we’d had sex a few times over the years — approached, kissed my cheek, hugged and whispered welcomes I didn’t hear. Faces smiled, hands waved in welcome. I didn’t know their names, didn’t have to, they knew me and that was all I needed and that they required.

Being allowed to sit in one of the chairs, an offer I never refused, helped create the impression of being home, somewhere wanted. I hadn’t gone the full Goth look myself, and somehow I think they understood. Like an audience we watched the crowd drift in and out, looking at us the way children watch animals in a zoo. We studied and learned more from them they did from us.

Most of us had come from the glitter life, the white side of life, and already knew the social structure which drove escape. What the lookers saw were strange beings with unfathomable and unreadable faces. In the faded light of the club their eyes wouldn’t be seen, lost in the black rings of mascara and shadow. Those who came to see the Goths at play didn’t get it, didn’t see what we were doing, what we represented to the world.

I couldn’t really talk to anyone; the music, obscure but loud, made it impossible. Drinks kept coming, and I kept right on drinking them. Steven became more and more a blur as the sun approached the sky. Did Sarina ever come here? Would she enjoy the spectacle? Rubbing the numbness deeper into my face I thought not. Where did something like her go to unwind?

Some of the people gathered about I knew slept in coffins, had sex in coffins and lived a life close to dark legends and folk tales. No matter how plastered I got, how out of my mind with the culture’s meaning and influences, I could never sleep in a coffin. Then, how many of them had a real live ghost in their house?

Bodies moved about and through the small dance floor. No one really danced here. They swayed, pushed around by the strumming of electric guitars and the rattling percussion of bass and drums or the deep melodic tones of black sound, voodoo sound.

Movement dictated by sound and sound dictated by slowly decaying society. The decline into night, was what I’d said of my work in an interview. Sipping, letting eyes fold in on themselves, I let the slow decline wind me down into a pit of darkness created by my own hand.

“Time to leave.” Distant voice, distant touch, dreams, murky, clouded in fog. “Help me get her outside.”

Moving, shifting, sleeping. In and out, in and out with the flicker of the sun. The flicker of the sun, the sun.

Turning in a bed I didn’t remember. Couldn’t remember, didn’t want to know how I got home. Fuzziness, seediness and aches held me down, pressed into the firmness of the bed. I knew where I was, the smells, the touch of the sheets against my skin; cool cotton, smooth, comfortable. The day’s smell, trees and grass, the birds, the rumble of a train through the distant hill’s cuttings. My world, my life.

I rolled, felt the bed. Alone. Always alone. Last night, the loneliness created by the abundance of sound kept me cocooned, separated from those around me. The crowd around the star wanting to be seen, to touch, to, for a brief time, be apart of something they weren’t. I still had my underwear on; disappointment. My rescuer had left me untouched again. It wouldn’t have surprised me to have had sex without knowing, not the first time, doubted it would be the last.

The bedroom blinds were part drawn, a valley breeze, afternoon, brushed over the bed, touched exposed skin, tickled life back into alcohol death. Someone rescued me, delivered me to safety. Who, didn’t come into it. Care, care settled and comforted. Someone cared.

A clatter at the back of the house drew me closer to the day, further away from the depression I knew crept through the brain, pumped from a heart too many times strangled.

The kitchen!

I sat up. Head screaming.

Steven!

“I hit the town last night,” I told Sarina over the phone. “Tied on a big one.”

“You’d better not come today then.”

“I want to see you.”

“Not today. Tomorrow, okay?”

“Maybe talk about the book?” I said. I didn’t know if she was disappointed in me.

Sarina hung up. I sat on the end of my bed in my undies and bra. The shower had helped, but the glass of scotch after a bowl of cereal did ease some of the wooziness. I had a book of my own to complete, well the last rewrite for the publisher. With anything up to four books on the go at the same time I rarely missed a deadline or didn’t have something to sell. I’d spend the rest of the day and part of the night writing. Maybe some good would come from getting words out and ordered. God knows I needed some order.

My office, as usual, waited cramped and littered with books, drafts of novels and clothes I hadn’t bothered to put away. I always looked good when out, but at home, blatant slobbery took root. In the disaster area of the room there was order of a sort.

The laptop, crammed on the desk between piles of novels I’d never get around to reading, became a grey and black oasis waiting for a visit. The printer, a massive laser designed for hard work, sat under the desk, scuff marks from shoes scarred its once pristine, white surface.

On a shelf above the desk, bowing in the middle from the weight of books, and years passed staining, sat awards, texts on ancient history and two large dictionaries, which I never really used. Looks were everything, I suppose.

The old carpet, once a brilliant blue and plush, had been ground down to a lifeless matting, threadbare and uninviting. Today I felt like the carpet, my mouth tasted likes its underlay. I’ve tasted underlay, you don’t drink as much as I do without being face down on the mat a few times in your life.

In the chair, the ancient wooden swivel and tilt type, again the look, the computer powered up and the screen came alive with a background covered in documents I couldn’t find the time to file. Cluttered room, cluttered computer, more than likely a cluttered mind.

I had Sarina’s document, simply titled Bela. This one I made a file for, not sure why, but it felt better not having the document so easily seen. In fact I encrypted it. I hated encryption; I hated most rules and regulations. It felt like putting bars on windows to keep the nasties out. What about the prisoner within? Locking freedom outside as though it presented itself as a criminal just waiting to pounce. Not my thing, and Steven walked through doors, so bars weren’t going to do me any good anyway.

Research first. I needed to find out about Bela Lugosi, his past, his family, anything that would put Sarina into the same picture. Google is a wonderful place, find anything, even information you didn’t want to find. The odd website of P.S. Gifford; hadn’t heard of him but the sample works of his writing were at least interesting. I’d email him later, maybe, find out where he lives. If he didn’t list me as an outcast, I just might make a friend.

The Lugosi family runs its own website, which answered a lot of background details, but no mention of Sarina, directly or indirectly. She became a fiction against the backdrop of Lugosi’s life. In a way I expected this.

Straight data: Bela was the youngest son of Paula de Vojnich and the banker, Istvan Blasko and raised a Roman Catholic. He made films in Austria-Hungary between 1917 and 1918; twelve in fact. Funny that the man had been famous before becoming famous. The fame dwindled because he helped create the actors’ union. He wasn’t allowed to act in his own country. In exile in Germany he made a number of well-received films, including a few adaptations of Steven May novels. I noted this down, I’d look up May on Wikipedia. Probably meant nothing. I’d check it out anyway.

Bela left Germany in October 1920 and arrived at Ellis Island in the U.S. in March 1921. He worked as a labourer for a time. This fit with Sarina’s suggested time frame. I wondered where she really fit in. She wasn’t even a part of real history.

There were a lot of references to films. The Black Cat, The Raven and Son of Frankenstein were the most notable, and had him paired with Boris Karloff. More research. I knew the name, not much else.

Lugosi played Ygor in Son of Frankenstein. I’d find the film and have a look myself. There was a lot of history here, more information than I knew what do do with. Most of it wouldn’t go in the book, I was sure of it; just knowing what to leave out dictated just what the structure would be.

The distraction did me good. I’d finished one bottle of wine and a full pack of potato chips; a better diet than yesterday. I bookmarked the sites I needed to view again and shut the computer down. The desk clock displayed eleven-thirty; the view from the office, dark, my garden hidden by night.

I watched TV with a scotch or two before going to bed. I had an appointment to keep, which never filled me with joy.

* * *

Proceed to part 2...

This link goes to the book website.