Shriek: An Afterword

To replace such outdated structures came wide staircases of marble bought from the Kalif at ridiculous prices and large glass windows that any lout with a plank of wood would find irresistible come Festival time. They had scented candles and handmade bedsheets made by the few Dogghe tribesmen who hadn’t been slaughtered by our ancestors, and chairs and tables crafted by carpenters from the Southern Isles. Every floor had its own telephone on a pedestal, conveniently located near the staircase. The smell of new stone, new furnishings, and clean sheets was so un-Ambergrisian that as soon as I stepped into the place, I knew no locals would be checking in for a night’s rest and relaxation.

The party would take up the ground floor, centered around the banquet hall, while the artists’ gathering/gallery would be located on the second floor, in a smaller room.

That night was calm but for a steady drizzle and drip of rain, the moon missing, but the street lamps making up for it. A breeze blew into the reception area. It felt cool as I waited for the Four Ghosts of Lake’s Past to arrive for the party.

I stood in the doorway, smoking a Smashing Ted’s Deluxe cigar and nursing a glass of cheap red wine from the kitchen staff ’s stock. I intended to enjoy my evening by indulging myself early on, so if things went hideously wrong, I would still have a memory to look back on with fondness.

I watched the night as it passed by me on Albumuth Boulevard, one of the last times I had a chance to just relax and observe, as it turned out. And yet, a feeling of peculiar intensity came over me. I saw it all with such precise detail, in a way that I cannot put into words. It was not that the world slowed down or that I saw anything hidden in it, although I knew there was more in front of me than I could see—I had the glasses in my pocket to remind of that. It was more that my gaze lingered for once. It lingered and held, as if I was parched for that little glistening of light off water in the gutter as a motored vehicle rumbled past. As if I was hungry for the exact way a street vendor cocked his head while rattling off a list of his offerings. The quiet syncopation of conversation half-heard and then gone as people walked by. The lamppost opposite the hotel, illuminating the facade of a closed bank door. The quick-low cry of a nighthawk circling somewhere above. The feel of the street through my shoes. The grit of the doorway against my shoulder as I leaned on it. The bliss of the cigar’s trembling surge of flavor, the biting smoothness of the wine.

I think I already knew then that I was not long for such sights.

The four artists arrived on time—two by an old-fashioned carriage, another by hired motored vehicle, a fourth on foot. Sonter, Kinsky, Raffe, and Constance were their names: a motley rabble of ragtag talent, and none of them had ever so much as scaled a small mountain of acclaim except through the long-ago benevolent influence of Lake’s hand upon them.

Sonter looked ancient and creaky, like a narrow, withered boat with bad caulking—on the verge of a watery death, perhaps. A decade spent on an island in the middle of the River Moth had done him no favors. Kinsky had become broad and looked defeated but brave, the gray circles under his eyes negated by an animation lacking from the others. Constance maintained a look of perpetual outrage that made me roll my eyes before I could help myself. Only Raffe, though aging—and, I realized with a shock, probably my own age—appeared in any way serene or accepting of Fate.

I greeted them. They were polite. That was all I expected from them.

Raffe said to me, “You look tired. Can we help with anything?”

Which comment, for some reason, made me want to cry.

I took them upstairs to the temporary gallery—a room converted from its original function as a bar. The lighting was all wrong and I hadn’t been able to hang the paintings the way I would have liked due to an incompetent helper, but at least a small throng had gathered there already. I don’t remember my welcoming speech, I just know that, for a moment, an emotion welled up in my throat that came close to affection for those I was introducing. After all, they were survivors just like me. They were also artists, and for twenty years of my life all I had done was introduce artists. Was there a sad twinge for my lost gallery? Of course, but these days there is a sad twinge about everything—to the point that I begin to wonder if it’s my heart that’s gone bad, rather than anything to do with my memories.

Besides, it can’t be avoided. Bonmot once told me, “If you don’t feel a certain sadness toward the past, then you probably don’t understand it.”

After my introduction and short speeches by the artists, the adoring if small-in-numbers public pushed forward to engage the Obscure, Sonter somehow evading the crush and coming up to me.

“I heard Mary Sabon will be here tonight,” he said. “Is that true?”

The peace I had been experiencing left me.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “I didn’t see her on the guest list.”

That had been my one petty triumph—I’d managed through sleight of hand to get Mary Sabon uninvited from Lake’s party, said sleight of hand involving an unmailed invitation and a sidewalk gutter leading to the nether depths. Somewhere down there a gray cap might be clutching that invitation as I write this account. It might be its most treasured possession.

So I hope you will understand in advance that my later actions were spontaneous, perhaps even unplanned. I did not go to the party, as some claimed in muttering whispers afterwards, to confront Mary. I had done my best to make sure she would not be there at all. {I believe you.}

Sonter opened his mouth to question me further, but I shut it with a well-aimed appetizer delivered on raised foot, the appetizer rescued from a passing waiter’s tray with an ease I almost never experience. Sonter turned away immediately.

There may have been an expression on my face that made him turn away. It may have had nothing to do with the appetizer. I would not rule it out if I were you.

For the next two hours, I attended to the artists, explaining their paintings to those who required an explanation. It was hard work. Some of the paintings came from the kind of obscure symbolism that either baffles me or brings out my inventiveness, but the old potent phrases from the past came back to me from the void of memory soon enough.

“Vibrant use of color.”

“Brave application of the oils.”

“The composition accentuates the face, for nicely subtle symbolic effect.”

This part I enjoyed, I admit. It made me feel free. For a brief time, while pointing out the detail of a sudden azure thrush in the dull emerald undergrowth at the bottom of one of Raffe’s paintings, I could pretend Lake was still my client, that my gallery still served as the nexus of the New Art. I even caught the eye of a former lover from across the room, and he smiled. You could say I was happy.