The Curious Incident of the Séance (7)

I watched aghast as the figure reached forward, placed his hand through Philippe's skull, and Philippe fell forward, on to the table, his face ashen. Then Briony screamed, of course, and the whole mood in the room changed from one of concentration on the proceedings in to something that would be best described as blind panic. Claude grabbed me and pulled me out of the way as the shape swept through the room. It caught Mme Friante with its cloak, and left her crying.

"He's dead," said Briony. I wasn't particularly surprised, but the words still left me feeling a shade colder.

"We should get out of here," said Claude, and while I agreed with him, I found myself wondering where the shadowy figure had gone, and why. The only person who might know was Mme Friante, and despite all of Mistress Bleaker's frantic shaking, she could say little beyond "I am so small, so small."

"Yes," agreed Briony. "We should leave." None of us moved towards the door. We stood in silence, listening to our own breathing.

And then a scream that can only have been Bullen. And then nothing.

The shape of fear

This is how it sounds in his head.

i can't be the only one that sees this, the only one that looks around and sees that everyone out there, every fucking one of us is fake. we build a little world around us, a fragile shitty lie so we can live our fragile shitty lives. we feign confidence we feign success we feign happiness in the stupid pointless hope that someday we'll actually start to believe it ourselves. we follow philosophies that are as meaningless and fleeting as sand and pretend that they give our lives meaning when our only true purpose is to fuck and die. we are all made of glass and we live in glass houses that we have built ourselves. we are nothing and our aspirations will take us nowhere. there is no point, so there is no point in looking for one. i can't be the only one that looks around me and sees this can i?

This is how it sounds in his head.

i could destroy you. with a few well chosen words i could pick apart your lie and make you think for a second and then you'll see how small and pathetic you are. i could tear down the walls between you and the hugeness, and leave you naked small and alone and you know what? at least it would be fucking honest. you are not the centre of the universe. you are small and insignificant. you are nothing. and i could make you see that.

This is how it sounds in his head.

i am nothing. i can see that.

And then, he can't hear it at all.

The Curious Incident of the Séance (6)

Nobody else seemed to have noticed anything untoward. Mistress Bleaker was still looking faintly euphoric, as though expecting a message to emerge at any moment. The Maurer-O'Callaghan's looked decidedly bored, and Claude seemed to be daydreaming. I could not read the expression on Mme Friante's face at all, and I returned my attention to the shadows.

Yes, there was a definite movement there, a swirling as though of a cloak, twirling in the same way that those moustachioed mountebanks in the popular theatre swirl their cloaks on their entrances and exits, the better to signify their villainy. At times it seemed there was a figure there, a man perhaps? I could not say at first, but the more I watched, the louder Friante's chanting rose and swelled, the more frantic and erratic the movements of the planchette became, the more distinct the figure in the darkness grew and at last I could see him.

I saw him in profile first - a tall man, handsome, with his hair cropped short in the fashionable style. His face was pale, his lips narrow, his jaw jutting and forthright. His eyes closed. His skin as smooth as porcelain. He turned to face me, and the right side of his face was monstrous - scarred and deformed as though burned. I could not help myself. I released my grip on Claude's shoulder, let go of the planchette, and stumbled to my feet, my chair falling behind me as I stood.

The Curious Incident of the Séance (5)

The planchette skidded erratically across the table. I tried to steer it, to make it spell out a word, but I found myself incabale of exerting the slightest pressure without feeling sure that I was detected by otehrs at the table. However, pressure there most certainly was, as the device skimmed gently over the table, almost as though floating towards the twenty six lettered cards, arranged alphabetically.

The letters that the planchette selected made no sense. We all watched, hoping to see a pattern, expecting something to happen, but nothing came. The world around us contracted - I was aware only of the table and the planchette, only barely noticing my companions, and the continuous, intensifying muttering of Mme Friante, the building rhythm in my head, the heavy darkness around us, the nonsense words being spelled out faster, with more intensity as the nonsense mutterings.

And then my focus changed, and I saw what was really happening. I swear that my jaw dropped, and looking at Claude, I saw that he too had realised the truth. The movements of the planchette were not taking it from letter to letter, but forming the shapes of letters themselves. A letter, then a pause, then another. I didn't recognise some of the letters.

Mistress Bleaker looked confused, and possibly slightly disappointed. In contrast, Mme Friante's face held a look somewhere between awe and ecstasy. Philippe was nodding slowly. And behind him, in the shadows, something was moving.

The Curious Incident of the Séance (4)

We sat around the table, shoulder to shoulder. I was seated between Claude and Mistress Bleaker, and while Claude sat very still, Mistress Bleaker was shivering with anticipation. "We must keep our minds open," she admonished us. I wondered how much she was paying Friante for the evening's entertainment.

Planchette. The word means 'little board'. Friante's planchette was made of crystal and bone, and when I asked her what sort of bone it was she muttered something about not questioning, and fell silent. It was constructed from shards of bone, pieces that looked like shards of skull, fingers, toes. I could not say whether it was all from one creature or several, and I could not be certain whether the bones were human, animal, or something other. Between shards of bone, shafts of crystal were embedded, giving the whole piece an appearance of a helmet or mask, placed face up on the table, gazing at God.

At Friante's instruction, we each placed our right hand on the planchette, and our left on the shoulder of our neighbour. Mistress Bleaker's fingers dug in to my flesh, leaving me in no doubt that she was taking this evening's entertainment a little more seriously than I was.

The lights were dimmed, and Friante started to murmur to herself, a low noise without clear words. And slowly, ever so slowly, the planchette began to move.

He Fell

Back in the dim-and-distant, we all lived together. There were no more than a handful of us then, men and women living together in one beautiful spot of green in the middle of an unwelcoming wasteland. We called it the Garden, and it might as well have been the entire universe, for we could envision nothing welcoming beyond its boundaries.

And we were happy there. We had no knowledge beyond our boundaries, but we were happy with what we knew, we lived within the ability of Garden to support us, and we lived long, and well and knew neither disease nor death. We had no real leader, but we valued each member of our community for their own individual skills. Thus the best fisherman went fishing, the best cook prepared the meal, and the best storyspinner entertained us. Our lives were simple and contented.

And then he came. Or was born. Or something. We only have the story, and the story doesn’t tell us where he came from. Perhaps he was there all the time. He looked up at the sun, and decided that he wanted to own this bright jewel. So he resolved to bring it down from the sky, to own it, and to that end he built.

He spoke to the toolmaker and told him that once he owned the Sun, he would give him a piece. The toolmaker looked up at the sky, and saw the brilliance of the sun, and agreed to craft the finest axe that had ever been made.

Then he spoke to the woodcutters and the weavers, and again he offered them fragments of the Sun, if they would help him, by cutting down trees to build a scaffold, and by knotting vines with which to tie the scaffold together. And they agreed, for they too saw the Sun and thought of the marvel of owning a part of it for themselves.

And then he spoke to the tailor, and asked him to make a suit to protect him from the heat of the Sun as he grew closer. But the tailor declined, and no matter how much of the Sun he offered to give up, nothing could change the tailor’s mind. So he made his own suit, from palm leaves sewn together with fine creeper.

At length, the day came when he was due to climb to pluck the Sun from the sky and bring it down to the Garden. The great scaffold was hoisted in to position, and clad in his protective suit, he began to climb. Up, he climbed, up and up, and we stood at the base of the tower and watched, until he was so small that he could barely be seen, and then vanished completely. And we waited for him to return, and the sun set. We thought that the had plucked the sun from the sky, and we waited for him to return, but he did not. And in the morning, the sun still rose, and there was still no sign of him. And some of us thought that he had gone forever, and that we should pull down the tower, but some of us disagreed. And so we waited, and we watched for two days and two nights, but still he did not come down.

Some of us thought that he must be tired. He will grow tired, and weak from lack of food, we said. And he will lose his grip and fall. Others of us thought that he had reached the Sun, and was still there, staring it its beauty, and sharing its journey across the heavens. We left the tower standing, and watched for his return, but with each day that passed, fewer of us watched. He returned on the morning of the eighth day.

He was weak, and his skin was pale, but he was alive and healthy. He had not reached the Sun, he said. The Sun had moved further away as he approached, and had continued to elude his grasp. But when he had reached the top of the sky, he looked down. And when he looked down, he saw the Garden far below him, and it was small and insignificant. All around it, far away but still visible, were other gardens, some far bigger than our Garden. Some were green, and some were vast and blue. He told us that he thought he saw other people living in other Gardens. We were not alone, he said.

Some of us thought he was just babbling through exhaustion.

After he was rested, he went back to speak to the toolmaker. I want a tool, he said, that will let me control another man, in the same way that an axe controls a tree, or a harpoon controls a fish. I want to go to another Garden and take their fish and their water and their berries and fruit from them.

Why would you do this? asked the toolmaker. The people in other Gardens have done nothing to harm us – why should you wish to take from them?

The people in other Gardens have not harmed us yet, because they have not built their own towers to the Sun, he said. They do not even know that we exist. But it is only a matter of time. We should take from them before they take from us. For our Garden is a wonderful place, and all who look upon it would covet it.

But the toolmaker would not help him.

And so he went to the herbalist. I want a herb, he said, that I can place in the water of another Garden, so the people who drink of it will sleep, like the sleep that comes from the bite of the knapworm. Then, while they sleep, I will take their fish and their water and their berries and fruit.

But the herbalist would not help him.

And so he went to the young men of the Garden and asked them to join him. He needed their help, he said. With a group of men, and the knowledge he had gained, they would go to another Garden. And while the people in the other Garden slept, the group would go in to the Garden and take the fish and water and berries and fruit.

But the young men were happy with what they had, and would not help him.

At length, he had asked everyone in the Garden, and all of them were troubled by his requests, and none of them would help him. And he realised that he no longer had any place in the Garden, and so he left, never to return.

Some say he still walks the world.

The Curious Incident of the Séance (3)

While we waited for the rest of the guests to arrive, Bullen brought round a small tray of canapés, and conversation turned to the supernatural, rum and uncanny.

"Of course," said Mistress Bleaker, "when I was much younger, I was hugely sceptical about these things. I thought that the afterlife was a strange and curious concept, that religion was largely a waste of time, and that pixies were invented to give children nightmares. However, as I advance in my years, I have found myself curious to know whether there might not be a possibility of life after death."

"I'm sorry," said Claude, "but I must admit that I find the whole idea slightly whimsical. After death, there is nothing. Plain and simple. Even if there were anything beyond death, then surely we were not meant to know it."

I said nothing, although I found myself more agreeing with Claude than with Mistress Bleaker. There was such a look of hope in her eyes, though, as though she wanted to know that her own death would not mean the end of her. She looked so frail, and I for a second I didn’t recognise her as the bright, fiercely intelligent woman that she had been when first we met.

Bullen ushered the final three guests in to join us. Philippe and Briony Maurer-O’Callaghan I knew as nodding acquaintances only – mainly from gallery openings and the occasional charity dinner. They were a well-matched couple both in their early thirties, both of a short height and slight build. He wore an evening suit, and she wore a simple dark linen frock which managed to be demure and yet hugged her figure well. Mademoiselle Friante, on the other hand, was tall and angular, with her hair pulled up so far above her head that she had to stoop as she entered the room. She was dressed entirely in black, and seemed to draw the shadows to herself as she walked towards Mistress Bleaker. She knelt, and took the old woman’s hand in hers.

“I am honoured,” she said, through a heavy accent. Perhaps too heavy, I thought. Mistress Bleaker, however, was charmed completely.

“Well, now we’re all here, shall we get started?” she said, and led the way through to the dining room, Friante by her side, Claude and myself behind them, and behind us came Philippe and Briony, their mouths still full of their first, half-eaten, canapés.