Shriek: An Afterword

At first, Duncan found Lacond to be cantankerous and irritating. He seemed unable to understand the value of adding us to his stable of broken-down journalistic nags. However, he had met Duncan before, read his work, and even reviewed one of his books in the past, and that made him warm to us. {Warm to me. I don’t know if he ever really warmed to you. It certainly wasn’t your fault—he was, without much doubt, a blustery old fart. The day I went to see him, James had already begun a downward spiral. I think this is why he wound up liking me when we got to know each other better. He saw in me a fellow lost soul, an underachiever, a candidate for an early reputational grave. As I was to find out, I had crossed his path as his expectations were decaying—journalism was as much a low point for him as for us. When I came upon him—bloated, red-nosed, squat, a cigar in his mouth—setting type for the printing presses that clacked and rattled and sobbed behind him, I sensed a stubbornness, a refusal as yet to acknowledge his fate. He was talking fast, his stubby fingers working the type in and out of position with an unexpected grace. The man liked plain shirts, over which would hang striped suspenders, holding up pants that he tucked into short boots. He often muttered to himself—always muttering to himself as long as I knew him, whether about the price of ink or the vagaries of typefaces.

{“What do you want?” he asked, never looking up from his work. He didn’t need to look up. I could guess our connection from the faint black stippling around his chin, his ears. He had been underground. And when he finally did look up, he recognized the same in me. After that, any reluctance on his part was mere economics.}

For Lacond, by fate or fortune, or both, was the founder of the Ambergrisians for the Original Inhabitants Society, a historical organization known for its outlandish theories and high fatality rates. As Duncan wrote in his Early History of Ambergris several years later:

Never has membership in a historical society been so fraught with peril. Every two or three years, another few members succumb to the temptation to pry open a manhole cover and go spelunking amongst the sewer drains. Inevitably, someone gets stuck in a drainpipe and the others go for help, or the gray caps, presumably, catch them and they disappear forever. One imagines the helpful AFTOIS members waving their official membership cards at the approaching, unimpressed gray caps. When not conspiring to commit assisted suicide, the AFTOIS publishes The Real History Newsletter.

This newsletter would later become Duncan’s eccentric flagship as he led a fearless crew of “fringe historians” into the uncharted and unclaimed waters of Oblivion. These hardy men and women subsisted at the far reaches of popular acclaim and derived what little sustenance they could from peripheral mentions in the lesser-known broadsheets and journals—lingering in the brackish backwaters of footnotes in papers by their more famous colleagues. {Mary’s footnotes would eventually take on this preservative quality, often the only extant mention of any number of historians, myself included. Although some felt gratitude, for most living in the margins proved a grim and unfulfilling existence.}

Our dad loved historians, of course, but he had always hated journalists. He considered them the juvenile, larval stage of the historian, and as with certain reptilian or insect species that eat their own young, he believed they should be done away with for society’s greater good. I remember he used to call journalists “Historians without the wisdom of perspective.”

As Duncan used to say, though, after the war, “Father was wrong. Journalists are just frightened people with notepads who are trying very hard not to get killed.” It was, paradoxically, a boring time, what with all the running around. All we did was skulk and hide, then run somewhere. Record what we saw—the aftermath of an explosion, an outbreak of illness, a battle—run somewhere else. Hide. Report. Run. Hide. Report. Run.

“Bring me the story!” Lacond used to bellow from his chosen spot behind the typesetting machine. “There’s a story out there—find it now!”

Even as, some weeks, he was reduced to paying us for those stories with bread, vegetables, and milk.

Bring me the story! This command became our lives. Rather than a slow, bleary-eyed stagger down to the gallery, my day would begin—in the deepest part of the night—with the telephone ringing. I would fumble for the phone, offer a mumbled “Hello?” A voice, usually Lacond’s, sometimes his assistant, would whisper “123 So-and-so Street—there’s been a bombing.” If the phones weren’t working, it would be a knock on the door from a runner, usually Sybel, who’d taken the job because there was nothing else for him in the city. Where once Sybel had dressed outrageously, now he wore clothes that allowed him to blend right into the wall. “To each time and place its own apparel,” he told me. “Not that I don’t miss the bad old days.” {Miss them? He was still living them. Acting as a runner for a broadsheet gave him a certain amount of neutrality in sections of the city critical for him to reach if he wanted to continue providing “substances to those who desire them,” as he was fond of saying. It certainly made it more convenient for Sybel to slip me my “peace of mind,” as he called the tincture I required. As for Sybel’s wartime clothes, they hardly taxed his skill at camouflage. You should have seen what he wore while in his natural element, the trees. Except…you couldn’t see him there.}

I would then rush into a shirt and trousers—the only practical clothes for a woman in such circumstances—shove big black boots over cold feet—and careen out the door, pen and notebook clutched in one hand. In my pants pocket, the dried mushrooms Duncan had given me. If a spore bomb exploded near me, I was to swallow them as an antidote. Of course, this only helped against F&L’s unconventional weapons. I would still be vulnerable to the shrapnel bombs of H&S.

I cannot think—through all of our transformations of position, location, and function—of a change more bone-crunching than that which made us reporters. I had never counted physical endurance among my attributes, but now I had to call on hidden reserves almost every day. I kept spraining my ankles, too, whether running toward a story {or away from one that had proven too hostile}, walking across an uneven island of pavement disfigured by fungi, or fighting to avoid being trampled by a mob of fleeing citizens. Eventually, I wrapped both ankles in bandages before I went out, hoping that the extra support would help.

Considering the ease with which death had found our father, it can only be luck that saved us. Sometimes, as we stared at the smoldering remains of a grocery store, the clerks reduced to red ash, the stench unbearable, I wondered if I wasn’t trying to kill myself all over again.