Days passed, as days have an irritating habit of doing, and before I wasproperly prepared, Thursday arrived once again. I took an extra twenty minutes to settle my hair and poked myself in the eye twice trying to even out my eye shadow, telling myself all the while that I was not trying to impress anyone. At all. I’m a terrible liar.
But Damien never showed up to class. No one had heard from him, so we muddled through a discussion on the importance of uniforms in building identity among national armies, and no one gave me a second look, except for when Sam and I got in a spat over the merits of wool uniforms for infantrymen in the First World War. As we were rising to leave, Professor Bryson made an announcement that next week our meeting would take place in the conference room down the hall, as a new staff member would be moving in and he didn’t want “this group to be disturbing…disturbed. You know. “ And with a wave of an arm encased in some deeply disturbing mauve paisley fabric, we were dismissed.
I spent the rest of the day at work, slogging through a photocopy request that had come through from a patron that no one else wanted to tackle. Which was understandable, considering the fact that it took me the rest of the day to get even halfway through with the order, and in the end I had to call maintenance to bring up more toner so I could finish the rest on Friday. As with all manner of technology, as soon as the machine learned that I was in need of its services, it collapsed in a steaming heap of plastic and inkblots, and it took the vast majority of my day to convince it to act like a man and get the copies in the post.
The thick autumn sunlight outside was warm and I decided a bit of a walk would do me good, so I alighted the bus at Angel and ducked into the Tinderbox in order to fortify myself for the journey. I was standing in line behind a tall, heavyset man and his German Shepherd when a low voice behind me murmured, right in my ear, “And here I was, just looking for a friendly face.”
Being me means being very jumpy in crowds, and thus reacting very badly to chance meetings. Having had no sense that there was anyone at all behind me to begin with, I spun around, far more startled than any normal person would ever be, and found myself staring into a pair of familiar blue-gray eyes.
“Ned! I…oh. Hi. How…uh…hi.”
“Did I startle you? I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean...”
“No, no!” I tried again, wishing there was a way to discreetly kick myself. “I just…” I waved a hand and tried to look vaguely coordinated. And failed. “Didn’t expect to see you…here, I mean. Just surprised.”
“I’ll have to sneak up on you more often then.” He winked, his smile stretching as my face grew hot. He really was quite easy on the eyes, especially with that smile. Which made the whole situation ten times worse. It was difficult enough to talk with someone who was so socially at ease without becoming tongue-tied with jealousy. Being distracted by those eyes and that secret little smile was not in any way what the situation required.
“Spectacular,” I replied dryly.
“Can I help you?” The man behind the counter tapped his finger testily against the metal pitcher in his hand, making the milk thermometer clunk loudly in response.
“Large skinny latte,” I replied automatically.
“Make it two,” Damien interjected, and the man nodded briskly and set about steaming and brewing.
“So where were you yesterday?” I turned back, trying to slow my heartbeat, which was pounding in my ears so loudly that I could hardly hear his first few words.
“Uh…right.” He ducked his head. “I completely lost track of time and by the time I realized where I should be,” he shrugged and his eyes crinkled into a smile, “I figured showing up would just make things worse.”
“I see,” I replied, not entirely convinced.
He took an infinitesimal step closer.
“Miss me?”
My mouth opened, but before anything asinine could fall out, the man behind the counter set two cardboard cups before us. Damien paid for both and handed one to me. “The least I can do after stalking you.” He winked again and I followed him back onto the street, hoping the breeze would dampen the heat in my cheeks.
“Well, I can’t say it was the most stimulating class I’ve ever attended, so don’t feel bad,” I prevaricated. “I could get you my notes, if you think you’d like them.”
“Might not be a bad idea,” he said distantly, watching a few commuters hustle past the wall against which he had propped himself. When he turned back to me, his eyes stopped at the bag on my shoulder and his eyebrows lifted slowly.
I had visions of bird stains, of gaping holes; hell, at the rate this exchange was going, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn I was spontaneously combusting. With mounting trepidation, I looked to my left and saw my museum ID swinging from the strap of my bag.
“Sorry…didn’t mean to stare. I just had no idea you worked there.”
“No worries.”
“Sounds perfect for you.”
“Not far from it, at any rate,” I smiled.
“What do you do?”
“I catalogue new First World War acquisitions—letters, diaries, that kind of stuff.”
“Jesus, seriously, that sounds perfect.” He sipped his coffee and watched my smile intently. “Oh! Speaking of which,” he rolled his own bag from his shoulder to the ground and knelt beside it, ruffling through several bunches of loose paper before extracting a small pile of photocopied sheets stapled together. “I copied those stories I was telling you about. If—you’d still like to read them.”
For an instant, he looked unsure of himself; but I put out my hand and took the stack. His hand was cool and dry when it brushed my own.
The top of the page was headed with Early 20th Century Fiction: An Anthology. The shadows on the photocopies suggested they were made from a hardcover book, and the traceries of cracks and folds made me fairly sure the book had not been a new one.
“There’s only two of them, but it’s a start.” I was saying, as I flipped through the pages. “I’d love to find some more—it would make the rest of the paper so much better.”
I started to tell him about my find at the museum, about the other Barnaby Rutledge stories I’d found, about the letters that might contain more information or further leads. Then, with a stab of guilt, I bit my lip. I had already started thinking of Rutledge as mine, and the idea of sharing him so soon was not one I was willing to tolerate.
“I’ll keep my eyes out for something,” I said instead.
“I’ve tried before,” he zipped his bag and settled it across his shoulder once again. “It’s like he just…I don’t know. Disappeared, or something.”
“How bizarre.”
“I know. Sometimes, I wonder—“
A cell phone began chirping urgently. With practiced ease, Damien shifted his cup to his other hand and extracted a phone from his pocket. It was sleek and chrome and looks incredibly efficient.
“Damn. I need to run,” he said, staring at the blinking screen. “But you’ll have to let me know what you think of those.” He nodded towards the stories and a lock of hair tumbled into his eyes. He shook it away and his eyes locked on mine. “Sometime next week, alright?”
I nodded, and felt heat tingle through my hand as I held my own cup tighter and tighter.
“Excellent.” He smiled that charmingly bemused smile at me. “I’ll try to be a better stalker and not scare you to death next time, ok?”
I laughed. “Fair enough.”
He jogged across the street and headed into the network of streets by St. Michael’s Church, while I sagged into the wall and grinned like an idiot.
That night, after Mitch got home and showered away the stale smoke and fug of other people’s colognes, we made Flingpot for dinner in his house. Flingpot, you see, involves collecting all the potentially perishable things in the refrigerator and flinging them in a pot. That night, our Flingpot consisted of basmati rice, red peppers, mushrooms, broccoli and cloves, and was remarkably edible. Especially considering the other combinations of Flingpot we’d tried in the past…
While cleaned up, I filled Mitch in on my run-in with Damien and the new Barnaby Rutledge stories he’d provided.
“Hmm,” Mitch tapped a spoon against the inside of the metal sink, clearly delighted by the hollow clunking sound it produced. “I’d keep an eye on him, Kip.” He grinned wickedly. “He’s clearly got his on you.”
I threw a sponge at him.
“We’re changing the subject.”
Mitch rolled his eyes and flicked an errant soap smudge from his sweater.
“Very well,” he sighed dramatically. “What about the Rutledge bloke’s stories?”
“No idea. Haven’t looked at them as yet.”
“Good. I’m too tired to watch a film. You can read to me.”
So we tramped across to my house, which had more furniture, and Mitch sprawled out on the divan, his bright eyes fixed on the photocopies in my hands.
“Go on then. What’s it say?”
“Well, the introductory stuff says that Rutledge was in the First World War…apparently saw action at Ypres in 1915, the Dardanelles, the Somme….Jesus, back to Ypres in 1917—how the hell did he manage all that? –And was taken prisoner in the winter of 1917-8. Treated for shell-shock—little surprise there—and began writing in order to “expunge the memories of the horrors from his mind.” Apparently, he suffered severe insomnia and most of his descriptions of the people in the hospitals were taken from real life, observed at night while they slept.”
“How awful,” Mitch breathed.
“I know. Let’s see… released from Queens Square National Hospital in 1926 and published continually until his death in 1941. No mention of any private life, though…hmm… Listen to this: ”His departure from our workaday world is a tragedy among tragedies. Alone, without family and with only the specters of his past for company, Mr. Rutledge’s works are terrifying, entrancing reminders of the darkness that is possessed in every human soul. His writing probes the secrets in all our hearts and sings a siren’s song of madness that every heart can, in some way, understand.”
“Well, if that wasn’t histrionic, I don’t know what is.”
I grinned distractedly. “Agreed. But did you hear that? ‘His departure from the world.’ Not ‘his death’.”
“Just a quaint little euphemism, isn’t it?”
“Is it? That Wikipedia entry said he might have faked his death.”
“Do you listen to yourself sometimes? A Wikipedia article?”
“I know, I know. But it is interesting.”
“No, I suppose you’re right. It is odd. And he had a family somewhere, too.”
“Good point.”
“So what stories are there?”
There were two. One was entitled “Down from the Mountain”, and was a retelling of a sorts of Rip Van Winkle. In this version, a soldier is released from a POW camp in Germany and finds himself in an utterly changed, utterly alien world: “Women walked about dressed as men and men sat is metal chairs with vacant eyes and useless limbs.” The man finds work at a restaurant where he plays the piano while the strange, unknowable people eat: “They consumed their food, they talked and they lived with a strange, frenzied haste, as if they knew everything before them could be obliterated. Life had to be lived at a pace that kept time with the scream of bombs and the march of boots. And in his corner, The Man tapped at his keys and marked their time for them, all the while wondering if the horrors he had escaped were not quite as frightening as the world into which he had been freed.”
In the end, The Man sees a woman he had loved from before the war. He tried to play a song for her that will make her remember him:
And whatever was left of his stained soul called out to whatever was left in her that could still be called human. And as he played, he heard the wind sigh in trees that had been burned to ashes years before, and the laughter of children long since dead, and felt the heat of the sun on skin, which, for an instant was smooth and young and nearly beautiful. And she turned her head and looked at him and he wished that he had died in the cold or in the flames or in the filth. For there was nothing in her eyes but vacant fear. The soul he had known was gone and she was one of Them.”
“My Lord,” Mitch huffed as he rolled over, his long fingers brushing at the fringe of the blanket over the back of the divan. “He can make anything sound like a nightmare, can’t he.”
I nodded, thinking of the Lost Angel from the last story and the song she had heard in the shadows of the ward. There was a odd feeling of continuation in the two stories that made my skin tingle.
“I mean,” Mitch propped himself up and pointed to the page. “How do you think like that? Are you born that…dark? That fucked up? Or…”
What had that other story said? That the fiancé was “lost in the great fire of 1917”. Not killed. Taken prisoner.
“Or did he become like this?” He looked up at me, the echo of my question on his face.
The other story had mentioned her eyes, too. Vacant eyes. And this woman was silent, too.
“Read the next one.” He said, rolling over onto his back once again and folding his arms around him. “Not like I can be any more disturbed, right?”
My mother would have called them “Famous last words”.
The italic introduction noted that the second story was taken from Rutledge’s 1940 book, The Many Deaths of Barnaby Rutledge. “Perhaps the most well-known of Rutledge’s works,” the introduction explained, “it has never been determined how much of the stories in this collection were taken from the author’s experience and how much was a product of imagination or hearsay. What is certainly true is that, of all of Rutledge’s stories, these are the most realistic and, perhaps, the most simplistic. In the following, Rutledge seeks not to trap the reader in a nightmare, but to lay before them the truth, which, under his pen, is equally as chilling and labyrinthine.”
The except was only five pages long…
