A man named Mr Pell (sometimes
Doctor
Pell) was to my knowledge the first to use the word ‘disappearances’ in order to illuminate, during the course of one of our twilight gatherings, the cause of the town’s slightly reduced population. He was sitting in the shadows on the other side of an overturned desk or bookcase, so his words were not entirely audible as he whispered them in the direction of a darkened doorway, perhaps speaking to someone who was standing, or possibly lying down, in the darkness beyond the aperture. But once this concept – of ‘disappearances,’ that is – had been introduced, it seemed that quite a few persons had something to say on the subject, especially those who had lived in the town longer than most of us or who had lived in the oldest parts of the town for more years than I had. It was from one of the latter, a veteran of all kinds of hysteria, that I learned about the demonic preacher Reverend Cork, whose sermonizing I had apparently heard during the previous night as it reverberated through the leathery trap door in my apartment room. ‘You didn’t happen to open that trap door, did you?’ the old hysteric asked in a somewhat coy tone of voice. We were sitting, just the two of us, on some wooden crates we had found in the opening to a narrow alley. ‘Tell me,’ he urged as the light from a streetlamp shone upon his thin face in the darkening twilight. ‘Tell me that you didn’t just take a little peek inside that trap door.’ I then told him I had done nothing of the sort. Suddenly he began to laugh hysterically in a voice that was both high-pitched and extremely coarse. ‘Of course you didn’t take a little peek inside the trap door,’ he said when he finally settled down. ‘If you had, then you wouldn’tbe
here
with
me
, you would be
there
with
him
.’
The antics and coy tone of the old hysteric notwithstanding, there was a meaning in his words that resonated with my experience in my apartment room and also with my perception that day of a profound change in the town near the northern border. At first I tended to conceive of the figure of Reverend Cork as a spirit of the dead, someone who had ‘disappeared’ by wholly natural means. In these terms I was able to think of myself as having been the victim of a haunting at the large rooming house where, no doubt, many persons had ended their lives in one way or another. This metaphysical framework seemed to apply nicely to my recent experiences and did not conflict with what I had been told in that narrow alley as twilight turned into evening. I was indeed
here
, in the northern border town with the old hysteric, and not
there
, in the land of the dead with Reverend Cork the demonic preacher.
But as the night wore on, and I moved among other residents of the town who had lived there far longer than I, it became evident that Reverend Cork, whose voice I had heard ‘preaching’ the night before, was neither dead, in the usual sense of the word, nor among those who had only recently ‘disappeared,’ many of whom, I learned, had not disappeared in any mysterious way at all but had simply abandoned the northern border town without notifying anyone. They had made this hasty exodus, according to several hysterics or impostors I spoke with that night, because they had ‘seen the signs,’ even as I had seen that leathery trap door whose existence in my apartment room was previously and entirely unsuspected.
Although I had not recognized it as such, this trap door, which appeared to lead to a cellar beneath the rooming house where I lived, was among the most typical of the so-called ‘signs.’ All of them, as numerous persons hysterically avowed, were indications of some type of
threshold
– doorways or passages that one should be cautious not to enter, or even to approach. Most of these signs, in fact, took the form of doors of various types, particularly those which might be found in odd, out-of-the-way places, such as a miniature door at the back of a broom closet or a door appearing on the inner wall of a fireplace, and even doors that might not seem to lead to any sensible space, as would be the case with a trap door in an apartment on the ground floor of a rooming house that did not have a cellar, nor had ever had one that could be accessed in such a way. I did hear about other such ‘threshold-signs,’ including window frames in the most queer locations, stairways that spiraled downward into depths beneath a common basement or led below ground level along lonely sidewalks, and even entrances to streets that were not formerly known to exist, with perhaps a narrow gate swinging open in temptation.
Yet all of these signs or thresholds gave themselves away by their distinctive appearance, which, according to many of those knowledgeable of such things, was very much like that withered and leathery appearance of the trap door in my apartment room, not to mention displaying the same kind of shapes and angles that were strikingly at odds with their surroundings.
Nevertheless, there were still those who, for one reason or another, chose to ignore the signs or were unable to resist the enticements of thresholds that simply cropped up overnight in the most unforeseen places around the northern border town. To all appearances, at that point, the demonic preacher Reverend Cork had been one of the persons who had ‘disappeared’ in this way. I now became aware, as the evening progressed into a brilliantly star-filled night, that I had not been the victim of a
haunting
, as I had earlier supposed, but had actually witnessed a phenomenon of quite a different sort.
‘The reverend has been gone since the last disappearances,’ said an old woman whose face I could barely see in the candlelight that illuminated the enormous, echoing lobby of a defunct hotel where some of us had gathered after midnight. But someone took issue with the old woman, or ‘idiot-hag,’ as this person called her. The preacher, this other person contended in exactly the following words, was
old town
. This was my first exposure to the phrase ‘old town,’ but before I could take in its full meaning or implications it began to undergo a metamorphosis among those gathered after midnight in the lobby of that defunct hotel. While the person who called the old woman an idiot-hag continued to speak of the ‘old town,’ where he said Reverend Cork resided or was originally
from
, the old woman and a few of those who sided with her spoke only about the
other
town. ‘No one is
from
the other town,’ the woman said to the person who was calling her an idiot-hag. ‘There are only those who disappear
into
the other town, among them the demonic preacher Reverend Cork, who may have been a ludicrous impostor but was never what anyone would call
demonic
until he disappeared into that trap door in the room where this gentleman,’ she said, referring to me, ‘heard him preaching only last night.’
‘You idiot-hag,’ said the other person, ‘the old town existed on the very spot where this northern border town now exists . . . until the day when it disappeared, along with everyone who lived in it, including the demonic preacher Reverend Cork.’
Then someone else, who was lying deep in the cushions of an old divan in the lobby, added the following words: ‘It was a
demon town
and was inhabited by demonic entities of all sorts who made the whole thing invisible. Now they throw out these
thresholds
as a way to lure another group of us who only want to live in this town near the northern border and not in some intolerable demon town.’
Nonetheless, the old woman and the few others who sided with her persisted in speaking not about an
old town
or an invisible
demon town
, but about the
other
town, which, they all agreed, never had any concrete existence to speak of, but was simply a metaphysical backdrop to the northern border town that we all knew and that was a place where many of us fervently desired to make an end of our lives. Whatever the facts in this matter, one point was hammered into my brain over and over again: there was simply no peace to be had no matter where you hid yourself away. Even in a northern border town of such intensely chaotic oddity and corruption there was still some greater chaos, some deeper insanity, than one had counted on, or could ever be taken into account – wherever there was anything, there would be chaos and insanity to such a degree that one could never come to terms with it, and it was only a matter of time before your world, whatever you thought it to be, was undermined, if not completely overrun, by another world.
Throughout the late hours of that night the debates and theories and fine qualifications continued regarding the spectral towns and the tangible thresholds that served to reduce the number of permanent residents of the northern border town, either by causing them to disappear through some out-of-the-way door or window or down a spiraling stairway or phantom street, or by forcing them to abandon the town because, for whatever reason, it had become, or seemed to become, something quite different from the place they had known it to be, or believed it to be, for so long. Whether or not they arrived at a resolution of their conflicting views I will never know, since I left the defunct hotel while the discussion was still going strong. But I did not go back to my small apartment in one of the oldest parts of town. Instead I wandered out to the hilltop graveyard outside of town and stood among the graves until the following morning, which was as cold and overcast as the one before it. I knew then that I would not die in the northern border town, either by means of a violent misadventure or a wasting disease, or even by my own hand, and therefore I would not be buried in the hilltop graveyard where I stood that morning looking down on the place where I had lived for so long. I had already wandered the streets of the northern border town for the last time and found, for whatever reason, that they had become something different from what they had been, or had once seemed to be. This was the only thing that was now certain in my mind. For a moment I considered returning to the town and seeking out one of the newly appeared thresholds in order to enter it before all of them mysteriously disappeared again, so that I might disappear along with them into the other town, or the old town, where perhaps I might find once more what I seemed to have lost in the northern border town. Possibly there might have been something there – on the other side of the town – that was like the dead-end street where, it was said, ‘When you hear the singing, you will know it is time.’ And while I might never be able to die in the town near the northern border, neither would I ever have to leave it. To have such thoughts was, of course, only more chaos and insanity. But I had not slept for two nights. I was tired and felt the ache of every broken dream I had ever carried within me. Perhaps I would one day seek out another town in another land where I could make an end of it, or at least where I could wait in a fatalistic delirium for the end to come. Now it was time to just walk away in silence.
Years later I learned there was a movement to ‘clean up’ the northern border town of what was elsewhere perceived to be its ‘contaminated’ elements. On arriving in the town, however, the investigators assigned to this task discovered a place that was all but deserted, the only remaining residents being a few hysterics or impostors who muttered endlessly about ‘other towns’ or ‘demon towns,’ and even of an ‘old town.’ Among these individuals was a large and gaudily attired old woman who styled herself as the owner of a lodging house and several other properties. These venues, she said, along with many others throughout the town, had been rendered uninhabitable and useless for any practical purpose. This statement seemed to capsulize the findings of the investigators, who ultimately composed a report that was dismissive of any threat that might be posed by the town near the northern border, which, whatever else it may have been, or seemed to be, was always a genius of the most insidious illusions.
THE DAMAGED AND THE DISEASED
TEATRO GROTTESCO
T
he first thing I learned was that no one
anticipates
the arrival of the Teatro. One would not say, or even think, ‘The Teatro has never come to this city – it seems we’re due for a visit,’ or perhaps, ‘Don’t be surprised when you-know-what turns up. It’s been years since the last time.’ Even if the city in which one lives is exactly the kind of place favored by the Teatro, there can be no basis for predicting its appearance. No warnings are given, no fanfare to announce that a Teatro season is about to begin, or that
another
season of that sort will soon be upon us. But if a particular city possesses what is sometimes called an ‘artistic underworld,’ and if one is in close touch with this society of artists, the chances are optimal for being among those who discover that things have already started. This is the most one can expect.
For a time it was all rumors and lore, hearsay and dreams. Anyone who failed to show up for a few days at the usual club or bookstore or special artistic event was the subject of speculation. But most of the crowd I am referring to led highly unstable, even precarious lives. Any of them might have packed up and disappeared without notifying a single soul. And almost all of the supposedly ‘missing ones’ were, at some point, seen again. One such person was a filmmaker whose short movie
Private Hell
served as the featured subject of a local one-night festival. But he was nowhere to be seen either during the exhibition or at the party afterward. ‘Gone with the Teatro,’ someone said with a blasé knowingness, while others smiled and clinked glasses in a sardonic farewell toast.
Yet only a week later the filmmaker was spotted in one of the back rows of a pornographic theater. He later explained his absence by insisting he had been in the hospital following a thorough beating at the hands of some people he had been filming who did not consent or desire to be filmed. This sounded plausible, given the subject matter of the man’s work. But for some reason no one believed his hospital story, despite the evidence of bandages he was still required to wear. ‘It has to be the Teatro,’ argued a woman who always dressed in shades of purple and who was a good friend of the filmmaker. ‘
His
stuff and
Teatro
stuff,’ she said, holding up two crossed fingers for everyone to see.