Eternal Return
by C. M. Barnes
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 4 |
part 2
6/4/16
No time for pleasantries this morning, Doctor. Events have outrun the need for small talk, and, as skeptical as I’ve been regarding this journaling/seclusion process, even I recognize something strange is happening here, something that might bear on your diagnosis and probably not in my favor. Still, I promised that this journal would be a confession, and a confession it shall be, wholly and truthfully to the end, forever and ever. Amen.
(Not sure why I added that last part.)
I had just finished my reading last night — I am making some productive headway with one volume in particular. It is loosely translatable from the High Castilian as The Demonic Key, but that’s for another time — when I heard one of the doors in the back of the house swing open. Still having the lights and my clothes on, I was able to summon the courage to investigate. Not surprisingly, I tracked the sound back to that same room next to my own.
I opened the door, and, this time, there was something indeed. The exterior door was shut again, but a single, definitive footprint marred the tile in front of it. A shoeprint, I should say, a surprisingly small one based on the weight I had heard landing in my “dream” the night before. Not much tread either, like a fine dress shoe someone had foolishly tracked through a swamp.
At this point, I was still more curious than frightened. Three glasses of cheap Malbec will do that for you, and I was just stooping to analyze the print further when I heard another door open. This time the sound came from the front of the house. That is to say, from where I had just come from. It had to be the front door.
I jumped up and ran out into the hall. From there, I could just see into the living room, into the back corner of the living room, specifically. In that corner, there was no furniture or decoration, only the joinder of two blank walls, perfect for capturing the fleeting shadow of someone, or — it must be said — something moving across the room.
The shadow was large enough to be a man’s — not a tall man’s, but a man’s nonetheless — and it moved with an eerie speed I associate with professional dancers and stunt men. I watched it flit by from the hall without moving, unsure of what I was even seeing. I didn’t manage to shout until it was gone. When I did, my voice came out in a shrill, affronted-Victorian tone that I didn’t even know I was capable of: “Who goes there?”
I kid you not, Doctor. That is what I shouted.
Naturally, there was no answer. Only the crash of the front door slamming shut behind the fleet-footed intruder. He (It?) must have moved with preternatural speed to get around the house in the time it took me to move from my desk back to the bedroom. Then again, the dead travel fast, as Stoker once observed.
But now I’ve sloughed the limp cat out of the wet bag, because, this morning, after a sleepless but uneventful night, I stumbled out onto the back porch to find the second of the three mounds collapsed. Now it looks the same as the first: shrunken, sullen, and muddy below the level of the dry, surrounding dirt. Again, the grass over the top looks more overturned from below than disturbed from above. Again, no sign of anything digging, which only leaves one other possibility, yes?
What to do? There seems to be only one answer and, unfortunately, it involves a shovel. Fleeing this house is, of course, out of the question, as you would justifiably categorize me as unstable. Bye-bye, career!
I remember seeing an old digging implement in a closet somewhere; bony, webby, and straight as a Puritan’s denuded spine. The real question is, do I have the nerve? Jell-O man that I am, I still think that I do, at least during daylight. I just wanted to get this all down before proceeding. Why? Let’s not speculate.
Post Note:
I also got another email from Hannah about scheduling dinner for tomorrow night at a local establishment called The Pink Casita. I guess someone in the department tipped her off that I was staying near Taos. Amazingly enough, I remain frightened about this, too, although, as with the shovel, I see no choice in the matter. Aren’t affairs of the heart darkly funny? At least I won’t seem too eager when I finally accept her invitation. Hopefully, I’ll also seem only “charmingly preoccupied” when/if we meet.
6/5/16
The horror! The horror!
Just kidding! It’s good to have a laugh every now and again, isn’t it, Doc?
I dug down into the third mound yesterday afternoon and found precisely nothing. Actually, that’s not true. I found the remains of what looked to be a long-decomposed pile of trash. Not a great smell; in fact, a rotting, moist, sulfurous corruption that staggered me, but hardly the interred monster I feared. Assuming whoever takes care of this place has just been burying garbage out there, it seems I have little to worry about.
As I mentioned, it’s been unseasonably warm, definitely warm enough to catalyze the collapse of some poorly-conceived mini-landfills. I didn’t dig down into the others, if for no other reason than to spare myself the stench. I’m a professor, after all. My tolerance for manual labor is shorter than Socrates’ prick in a cold stream.
Sorry for the vulgarity, Doctor. I’m just in a good mood! This feeling extends to the now foiled mystery of the doors, the footprint, and the shadow as well. After a blessedly uneventful night and in the reassuring rays of a fresh morning, I’m happy to attribute the first to strong gusts coming over the mountains and odd drafts moving through this labyrinthine wind tunnel of a house.
The footprint, I’m now fairly certain, was mine. I like to wear a kind of high-end slipper in the evening. It is treadless, and I’m pretty sure I stepped outside at some point to clear my head of the garbled Spanish, Latin, and something else unrecognizable in The Demonic Key. But again, more on that to come. It’s true that I don’t remember doing any reading in the bedroom where I found the print, but I tend to wander when engrossed in study.
As for the shadow in the living room... that I still can’t explain. But, I haven’t been sleeping well and I am under a lot of stress, what with trying to regain my job, deal with the return of a lost love, and pay The Key the scholarly attention it deserves.
In your professional opinion, isn’t it likely that some combination of wind, fluttering doors, late night lamp light, alcohol, mind-altering prescription medication, and agitation all combined to produce the illusion of a small, athletic man’s shadow scampering across the wall? I think so, and, until further evidence presents itself, that’s what I’m going with.
Speaking of agitation, Hannah and I are on for dinner tonight at The Pink Casita. I tried to sound as cheery as possible in my acceptance email, but I’m afraid I just came off as grasping. C’est la vie. I have decided to hide nothing about my current situation. As you have told me many times, Doctor, there is no shame in my condition. In fact, it is often a mark of an original mind. How full of myself I have become now that I no longer feel haunted!
In any case, hopefully she will still feel something of the same about me when we meet, especially when I present my latest research. For my part, I am very interested in her research, as it, too, presumably still deals with the occult. I hope she will explain it to me in full.
What’s that word again for a romantic attraction based on intelligence? Sapiosexuality? It’s really all I have to rely on now that the years have ravaged my body. Believe it or not, Doctor, I was once a very handsome man. Not to the celestial level of the movie star whose home I currently occupy, but enough to be striking, even comment-worthy.
Sadly, that’s all faded now. Multiple decades spent hunched over small print in ill-lit rooms will do that: turn you into a hunch-backed, beady-eyed, pale-skinned larva of your former self. It’s no accident that the Actor — can I just call him that? — is probably best known for a scene in a 1980s film where he plays football without a shirt on. Hardly the stuff of sapiosexual attraction, and it’s worth noting that I have not taken my shirt off in public once in this century.
My pants, of course, are a different story.
Not that I follow these things, but he’s apparently starring in a sequel to said shirtless football film to come out later this decade. Apparently — so I’ve heard in passing — he still looks just as good as he did back then. Impossible, and yet... But no. Whatever secret of physical rejuvenation he’s found is his and his alone. There’s nothing to gain by castigating myself for going to seed.
I’ve got a date tonight, I think. I need to clean myself up. Brush myself off. Knock the dust off my charm and be ready to deliver incendiary conversation, if only to draw attention away from my flame-retardant looks.
6/5/16 (Cont’d)
What an interesting evening! The Pink Casita was hopping with fashionable business and local charm. The margaritas were salty and saucy with acerbic wit, the green chiles delicious and viscous as a zombie’s runny eyes. The chocolate ganache desert — that eternal classic of an aphrodisiac — was sweet enough to kill. What’s more, Hannah and I had a lot to talk about!
Ladies first. As she indicated in her email, she is indeed doing research in the area, specifically into some of the darker folktales native to Taos that date back to the early colonial era. In particular, she is interested in the story of one of the first Spanish governors of this region, an Alejandro Cortéz de Cruz who seems to have ruled over this valley with an iron — but likely rusted — fist for about one-hundred and twenty-two years. I’ll type that out again: 122 years!
Obviously, this is just a folk tale, and yet there’s enough support in moldered church records and local oral history to ground the conclusion that, at the least, he ruled for a very long time. What’s more —there’s always more, isn’t there? — he seems to have managed to stay young the whole time he was doing it!
Okay. As usual, I know what you’re thinking, Doctor: 1) Everyone knows the conquistadors were obsessed with mythical cities of gold and fountains of youth. No surprise that one of them at least cultivated the illusion that he’d found the latter, and 2) What a marvelous coincidence that this ageless old oppressor shares the defining characteristic of my current famous benefactor. I hear you. I really do, and yet, when I presented my own research, namely the amazing passages I’ve located in The Demonic Key, there was incredible synchronicity!
You see, I’ve found that The Key is a kind of compilation of traditional Catholic invocation regarding the dead and local indigenous ceremonies to evoke the spirit world. In plain English: Pope meets Shaman, but with the shaman part not coming from any of the current surrounding tribal communities but rather some more ancient, mysterious people lost to time or at least to written history.
It seems the author or authors of the book — unfortunately, they are not named — were interested in combining these two arcane schools of thought into a kind of hybrid, how-to manual for marshaling forces from the other side.
Of course, there are other famous, fabled examples of such dark literary efforts. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, for one. Also, The Persian Mystery Scrolls. Even our own much-misinterpreted Necronomicon here in the wild, wild West. But I’ve never, in all my years of study, come across a text quite like this one. Hannah hadn’t either, and I wished I’d brought it with me to dinner, so we could pore over it together, passionately struggling to interpret its odd pigeon combinations of Latin, Spanish, and some other, throaty unknown language over our margaritas. All the time we would be growing closer together, elbow-to-elbow, shoulder-to-shoulder, cheek-to-cheek...
That would have been something, wouldn’t it? Too old, egghead lovers — one admittedly looking much older than the other — drawn back together by words meant to summon up Hell! But I didn’t have the book with me, which is saying something, as lately I’ve found I have trouble putting it down. Right now, it rests right here beside me on the desk next to my laptop. It’s kind of staring at me, really, its burned red title letters leering up at me from a black, calf-skin cover. Whenever I am done pounding away here, I will no doubt carry it with me as I wander from room to room.
Unfortunately, I should elaborate on the note about aging. Hannah does still look great. Her supple skin is still the color and consistency of uncut cream. Her black hair is still as satiny and lustrous as a stallion’s mane. I don’t think I’m confessing anything surprising by admitting that I was attracted. If anything, I suppose it’s a promising sign of some latent vigor still animating these old bones.
Could the same be true for her? Perhaps, but it’s hard to think so. There was a moment — midway through my excited description of how The Key uniquely inverts the traditional rite of exorcism to reverse effect — that our eyes met over our salted glasses, and I thought, yes! But then she looked away, and I sensed not a fear of an old flame erupting so much as a cold chill of pity and loss... For what might have been, perhaps?
Who knows? None but God and the Devil. Or perhaps merely the near-infinite physical particles comprising the straitjacket of our neurochemistries. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Thankfully, we at least plan to meet again while she’s in town.
Post Note: In case you were curious, Doctor, I made good on my pledge and confessed my recent disgraceful “episode” at the college right off the top of our conversation. As predicted, Hannah was utterly sympathetic and understanding. Truly a wonderful woman to know! Truly a compassionate age we live in!
Copyright © 2021 by C. M. Barnes
