The Sea of Ash Read online

  The journal does inform us that Pond did quite a bit of traveling in late August and early September, putting many miles on his trustworthy Nash. The old-fashioned pistol accompanied him, tucked in his waistband. He only shares glimpses of some places; for instance, the site called Burnt Stream. The preceding page was gone, so I have no way of knowing what New England state Burnt Stream was (or is) in. In the published version of the journal Wagner inserted blank pages to signify where leaves in the original were absent.

  At any rate, Pond wrote: " -- detected a certain charred smell by the banks of the fast, ash-colored water. On the night in question, the farmer heard strange noises coming from the wood that encloses the stream. He imitated the high, hollow sound, and I was put in mind of coyotes, which, he insisted, were not responsible for the cries.

  "Back at his house, I examined the dark lengths of seemingly human hair, and the photographs of other things he had fished from the water...the small copper fish, and the larger oddity, like the emaciated grey torso of a two-year-old child, all ribs and slick tendrils. It looked as if it never had possessed a head. The creature had survived for several days, the old man told me; it lay there on his sofa with its multiple limbs whipping, slowing in their movements as it darkened and died and eventually turned into what he called tar."

  Pond's host took a photograph of him, the last known picture ever taken of the doctor. It is the picture I now possess, along with the burnt image of Arabella's baby. I purchased them for a hefty price at the annual auction held by the little-known Society of Esoteric Antiquities.

  The photograph shows a man who had seen much, a man who had suffered war and loss. Yet his eyes revealed an unflinching determination. Turning back was not a consideration.

  Pond was in New Hampshire on the sixth of September. He stayed at a Concord hotel which, he suspected, contained a speakeasy in its cellar. His amazing new protuberance, secreted beneath his garments, had remained inactive throughout his recent travels, spare the occasional tremor.

  He had contemplated the arm thoroughly. It was fairly obvious that he had picked up an internal passenger, or part of one, from Banchini's machinery. It had proven harmless so far. He was thankful for that, for there was little chance of getting away from it but for amputation, the possibility of which he had discarded early on. He wondered if the dreams of London were an indication of the arm's identity.

  Of his night in Concord, his journal entry goes as follows... "At some point in my sleep I was vaguely aware of fingers delicately exploring my face, as if a blind person were trying to recognize me."

  The journal goes on to show that Pond had encounters with wondrous beauty, as well as things unsettling. Pausing at the home of Brady Cushing Lodge, amidst the coloring hills of Glastenbury, Vermont, he had the opportunity to listen to the Ring of Masks.

  Brady was a man of many interests, ranging from astronomy and archaeology to anthropology and necromancy. He had spent a great deal of time digging along the Green Mountain range -- an area popular with treasure hunters, despite the fact that Vermont is not by the sea and thus would be an unlikely source of pirate's gold. Burrowing under the shadows and stones of South Mountain, Lodge made a fascinating discovery. He unearthed a circular stone-lined pit containing seven clay masks of undeterminable age.

  The masks were not quite like anything he had seen before, and, considering his anthropological expertise, he was familiar with the stylistic particulars of masks found worldwide. These artifacts certainly did not appear to be the work of indigenous peoples.

  The masks all looked alike, although some were better preserved than others. They were pale, smooth but for chips and cracks, with no mouths indicated. The noses were understated, and the eyes were dark mussel shells, apparently pressed into the clay faces while they were still soft.

  Rather than simply hoard his find, Lodge sought guidance through necromantic communications (automatic writing) and constructed a curious device which integrated the clay faces... The Ring of Masks resembled a chandelier in a way; it was a skeletal thing of dark metal arms, suspended from a rotating mechanism which nestled under the ceiling of a small dark room no bigger than a pantry. The masks were attached to the thin arms, facing inward, facing each other.

  Dr. Pond sat in a chair as this bizarre contraption was lowered down to encircle his head. He found himself eye to eye with one of the inscrutably gazing masks, then with another as they gradually began to rotate. Less than a foot from his face, they continued to spin faster, the speed increasing as the device dictated until they were whirling dizzily, the pale faces blurring, the dark shell eyes smudging upon the air like an unbroken bar of black.

  "Mesmerizing as the imagery was," Pond wrote, "it was the sound that I heard which made the greatest impression on me. Hushed at first, it increased in volume as the faces moved faster around my head. Their whispers merged into something that I have never heard before, and I am haunted by the memory...

  "It was a million drowning heartbeats swept along in a single note -- a river, a wind -- the song of dark seas dreaming. A dirge of moonlight reborn in a sunken temple.

  “I feel that I would be insulting this music if I were to try and confine it further with human language, so I will only say this: it was the most beautiful sound ever to enter my ears.

  "While there was no actual information for me to take away and decipher from this experience, on some level I suddenly knew that I was approaching the end of my quest."

  The journal pages marking the first week of October are missing -- a blank sheet represents them. A series of brief entries follow...

  "Oct. 9th, 1920: Tunnels under old brick church in Hancock, New Hampshire."

  Pond lists no particular state for the site he visited on Oct. 12th. I have not been able to locate the spot on contemporary or archaic maps. The entry reads: "Oct. 12th, 1920: Oddmeadow, where the moon is seen to move in reverse."

  By mid-month he was in Massachusetts... "Oct. 16th, 1920: Old Burying Ground, Barnstable. Knox grave. Read epitaph backward by moonlight. It spelled END OF THE WORLD."

  It's likely that Pond is referring to the grave of Capt. Duncan Knox, whose schooner, the Catherine Hope, went down off Block Island in the spring of 1856. Incredibly, the Captain's body washed up on the distant Cape Cod Bay not two hours later, his mouth filled with clumps of long white hair.

  Pond was obviously employing some kind of mysterious technique at the cemetery, for the epitaph when read in reverse is actually a nonsensical jumble.

  In the journal the publisher noted that part of one page from the late October section was torn away, thus the following entry appears incomplete: "--decrepit, abandoned for many years. House sits amidst overgrown fields of dull autumn grass and weeds. Upstairs, northern bedchamber -- looking out window saw a vast expanse of stormy grey water. Lowering sky above a horizon of milky luminescence. Water came up to the edge of second-floor panes. Small boat tossed on waves, passed window just feet away. Lone occupant was naked old man, crouched or half-standing. Grey skin, emaciated. Dark screeching birds fastened to him head to foot by rusty spikes.

  "When I opened the sash of the window the view appeared ordinary -- nothing but the overgrown fields."

  It's been speculated that Pond was writing of the Parson Ezekiel Littlefield House in Middleborough, Massachusetts (no longer standing) where the cleric was rumored to keep a mysterious young woman captive in an upstairs chamber. Then, toward the end of the month, the name Arabella reappears. Pond had visited an art show featuring the work of a promising Boston portrait artist who had recently gone missing. One image in particular caught Pond's attention... Norris Sarde had painted a naked woman with dark hair lying on a damp grey beach at the base of a looming stone temple. It was entitled The Sixth Ocean.

  None of Sarde's acquaintances could offer Pond much information regarding the woman who had posed for the artist. Only one of them had met her, and that individual could not recall the woman uttering a single word. "She never sm
iled either," the witness reflected. He was sure that Sarde had mentioned his model's name at the time, but he could not remember what it was.

  We can only wonder about some of the adventures Pond experienced and what he might have learned from them. He certainly had his reasons for going to Oddmeadow, the graveyard, the parson's house and the tunnels under an old New Hampshire church (and who knows where else). We are also left to speculate as to how he came across the exhibition of Norris Sarde's work. Somewhere along the way he uncovered an odd way of locating individuals. He made use of the procedure at Nantasket Beach on October 20th.

  In preparation for the ritual, Pond procured two handfuls of black sunflower seeds. These were placed inside a hollowed-out turnip. He replaced the lid of the organic vessel, sealed it with wax, then placed it in a pot of milk. He slept with the pot under his bed.

  At the next high tide -- which happened to be the following morning -- he went down to the sea and knelt at the edge of the nudging waves. He opened the gourd and sprinkled the seeds into the surf. They floated, dispersed and were carried out to sea.

  Pond passed the time in a hotel room. Shortly before low tide he returned to the spot where he had deposited the seeds. Dusk was falling, and there was moisture in the sea air -- lighter than drizzle, more dappling than mist. He knelt by the shore, watching the ashen foam as the waves slid back. The reversing water revealed damp sand, and pressed into the surface of the sand were the sunflower seeds. They were arranged in such a way as to spell out asymmetric words... They gave a location, a date and a time.

  14. RETURN TO LEXINGTON

  Anticipating the return of the white-haired figure has left my nerves in a fragile state. I shy at sudden sounds, and my entire body clenches each time a person with long light hair enters my periphery. My appetite is compromised, and my hands have adopted a chronic tremble. I am, by nature, anything but a combative creature...I dread the inevitable confrontation.

  The small black bag containing the tooth remains in my pocket at all times. It offers some slight degree of comfort, but wouldn't I feel stronger if I were armed with a pistol as Pond was? I suppose I could venture to the site where The Garden of Guns once grew, but that in itself might prove dangerous. A low-income housing project was built on the spot back in the mid-seventies. Since then the complex of dreary brick boxes has become infested with drugs and criminals. In fact, there are a disproportionate number of shootings there in the tenements, and interestingly enough, many of the weapons involved are antiques.

  I suppose it is possible that the thing that followed me from New Hampshire has lost interest in me. If it were truly intent on locating me wouldn't it have done so by now? Couldn't it have done me harm right there outside the Eastborough library if it had been so inclined?

  I mustn't talk myself into a false sense of security. There have been some terrible deaths related to the phenomenon of overlaps, as well as the disappearances. Poor Professor Wakefield certainly suffered a disturbing end there in Pond's examination office, and then there was the Rosemary Willard case of 1969.

  Roy and Rosemary Willard were a married couple living in a working-class neighborhood of Bridgeport, Connecticut. It was the end of July, and they had just returned from a vacation trip to Cape Cod. Roy had done some fishing on the Cape -- he caught a small coppery fish the likes of which he had never seen. It broke like glass when it squirmed from his hands and landed on the deck of the boat.

  After the couple unpacked, so the story goes, Roy went upstairs to take a bath. His wife remained downstairs; she heard the water running for an unnaturally long time and wondered if her husband had fallen asleep with the faucet on. She went upstairs and knocked at the bathroom door but received no answer. She knocked louder and called to her husband, but still he did not reply. Finally she opened the door and looked in.

  The floor was flooded. Roy was slumped on his back in the overflowing tub with a small grey person the size of a cat crouching on his chest. The creature had its arms wrapped around the oversized handle of a black metal tool reminiscent of a garden spade. It was scooping out a large hole where her husband's face had been, hollowing out his head as if it were a jack-o'-lantern.

  Rosemary ran from the house and was found screaming in the street. When the police came, she told them what she saw. It was obvious to them that she had gone mad and killed the man. She was arrested for murder and placed in jail to await trial.

  Several weeks later Rosemary vanished from her cell. The compartment did not appear compromised in any way, and yet she was gone. All that the authorities found were a few briny strands of black seaweed strewn on the floor.

  Is it any wonder that I can't eat or sleep?

  I have returned to Lexington, to the noble old Sumner Inn. Somehow, looming against a backdrop of colorful maples, it seems older than when I last saw it. But autumn has a way of making all of New England seem a glorious and haunted antique.

  It is good to be in the warming company of Imogene Carlisle. She feeds me, seats me by the fire and pours me tea. I am comfortable enough to tell her about my travels and my encounter with the ghastly stranger.

  She is a steady woman as well as self-sufficient. She reassures me that I will be fine. But, I wonder if those are merely the obligatory words of a good-hearted individual -- didn't I see a look of fear flicker in her eyes?

  It is late, and I am sitting in my room. This is the same one in which I stayed last time. A soft September rain pads at the window, and wind breathes through the wet leaves. I am steeling myself. A flashlight, an umbrella and an empty glass bottle are waiting on the bed.

  Not knowing where to turn, I have decided to summon Fractured Harry. He, or it, will guide me, suggest a location where I should go -- maybe someplace to escape the thing that stole into this realm, or maybe someplace to find it. I have memorized the strange little conjuration song; I whisper it into the bottle. I cork the bottle and slip it into my raincoat. I leave my room, walk quietly through the old Georgian inn and step out into the rain.

  The old cemetery is a short walk down the road. Raindrops wink in the beam of my flashlight; others dapple my umbrella. The burial yard is shapeless in the dark. The old tilted slates regard me inscrutably with their carved faces. Wet leaves squeak and hiss under my feet, wet leaves scent the air. I bend, stuff the bottle into damp grass and head back to the inn.

  15. THE RECITAL

  The seeds in the sand showed Pond where to go. It was the evening of October 30th, 1920. He drove west through rain and falling leaves, through a tunnel of soggy trees. He reached the humble center of Sterling, Massachusetts, found the old meetinghouse and parked the Nash.

  Other vehicles were crowded outside the big white building; lights filled the tall windows. Pond could hear music coming from inside, moody strings humming, rumbling like the thunder that the storm did not provide.

  Pond was wearing his finest suit. He adjusted his shirt to better hide the extra limb, straightened his tie, then climbed the granite steps. The large double doors whined as he entered the lobby. A sign on an easel announced a free chamber music recital by the local composer Davis Storrow.

  Rich tones filled the old 1850s structure, warming it. There were cello chords so deep that they nearly vibrated through the floor. Pond followed the sounds, his fast heart contrasting with the pensive flow of music. He came to an open doorway and peered in. The audience was a modest crowd, largely obscured in dimness; a string quartet was seated on a small stage.

  Pond scanned the audience for Arabella. Many women were wearing hats, but she was not -- he knew her by her black hair; even from behind, he knew. She was in the front row. The music piece came to an end and the hall was briefly silent. Someone suppressed a cough. Old floorboards creaked under Pond's nervous shifting.

  The lead violinist stood up and smiled. He was handsome and rather young with a thin mustache, his hair slicked back and dark. It was Davis Storrow.

  "Now," Storrow said, gazing into the front row, a certain
intimate quality in his manner informing Pond that the performer was holding the eye of a lover, "we will be performing my latest composition, entitled Daughter of the Drowned Temple."

  Pond stepped forward as the first bow touched its strings. High notes. Storrow played well -- the sound conjured a mental image of moonlight shimmering on water. Pond was through the doorway and in the hall proper. The cello came in; it moaned with a rhythm like slow waves. Pond walked along one side of the audience, staring at the back of Arabella's head.

  It was a lovely piece of music, steady and building as Pachelbel's Canon. Storrow was rapt. The music was suffused with beauty and sadness as it filled the air. Pond moved through it as if wading in water. He was nearing the front row.

  He did not know what he would say to her, or if she would even remember him. Was she now capable of speech? What in fact was she? He had succeeded in finding her, and yet, as he closed the distance between them, he found himself wondering, "what next?"

  The strings dipped, hauntingly low. Arabella's profile came into view. The doctor's shadow swept over her, and she turned, looked up as he stepped in front of her. She was as beautiful as he remembered, her eyes darker than black, a striking contrast to her flesh, her pearls and her simple white dress.

  "Hello," he said.

  Arabella grinned pleasantly and tilted her head. He saw the recognition register, and something else entirely as the small third arm darted out from his shirt, snatched the pistol from his waistband and fired into her face.

  Pond was as surprised as the rest.