With a creak of wood, and perhaps of bone, the old man stepped from the doorway and clumped stiffly toward Judith. Involuntarily, she took a step backwards...though he was stunted and obviously frail. It was his dark glasses that lent him an air of ominousness. It had become overcast, and again, he’d been lurking in gloom. Could he be blind? Or might the eyes behind those dark lenses be a glowing lurid pink?
“Robert Fuseli lives in his mother’s house,” the elderly man related. “But you would do well to leave him alone in his task, my dear.”
“Robert is
here?”
Judith said. Though she had known he must be, an ache of both excitement and dread wrung her heart like a rag in her chest. And then: “What task?”
“The task of his mother, and his father before that. You aren’t from Sesqua, my dear girl...you can’t understand our tasks and callings. He should never have left here. He should never have married an outsider. Go back to where you came from, my dear.”
Judith tossed aside her unlit cigarette, and slung her bags over her slight shoulders. “Thank you for your help,” she said curtly, and started away. She didn’t like the way the old man had kept stiffly advancing on her, like some animated corpse, as if he might not stop until he had hold of her.
“Wait,” he croaked, behind her back.
She turned, and started—for the man had removed his glasses. And his eyes were not pink...but a silvery color, as if clouded with cataracts.
“If you must find your husband...then stay here with him. Outsiders have made their home here before. But don’t take him away from his task. Now that his mother is dead...who else is there?”
Judith could not respond to the man, at first. For one thing, his words made little sense to her. For another—those metallic eyes. For they were so like Robert’s own eyes. And his mother’s. The effect was more subtle in the Fuselis, but similar enough. She had found Robert’s eyes magical, unique, beautiful...and unnerving. They had excited her for unnerving her, in the beginning. But she had taken it to be a peculiar family trait.
“Are you related to Robert?” she asked.
“We are both Sesquans,” the old man replied. “You are not.” And with that, he stopped advancing just short of stepping out of the shadow of the building and into the pallid sunlight.
Judith stared at the man a moment more, and then turned away from him again, hurrying on her way. She didn’t look back this time, but felt his silvery gaze upon her until she had turned a bend in the narrow, forest-flanked road.
* * *
By the time she reached the old two-story house, it was early evening, and a light chill rain had just begun to fall. For the last half hour, Judith had become increasingly anxious, afraid that she had taken the wrong road. For that last half hour she had seen no other dwellings along the narrow road that wound through black fir trees so massed that it seemed it would be impossible to enter amongst them. But now, the house lay before her as she came around a bend, as if the black curtains of trees drew back to unveil it.
Beyond the house she could see a wide pasture, long overgrown with weeds and wild grasses, waist-high, yellow and bent down in a greeting to autumn. The pasture was bordered on its distant edge by a looming inky line of trees like the spiked and spired wall of some fairy tale fortress. And lending itself to this mystical image was a large standing stone in the very center of the clearing, gray in the gray light, tilted in the soil, like some fragment of an exploded world thrown to earth, impaling it.
Though from Britain, Judith was a city girl and had never herself seen any of the megaliths scattered across her land. This sight had made her marvel when Robert first showed it to her.
She had asked him if it had been erected by a primitive people for religious or astrological purposes. He told her, as some asserted regarding the British megaliths, that it was probably just a scratching post for cows to rub their hides against.
Judith held back a few moments, watching the softly yellow windows for a passing silhouette, but saw none. The rain was starting to pick up, however, and she found herself floating to the door like a somnambulist. Watched her arm float up. Listened to the feeble rap of her knuckles.
The door opened, and there were the dark eyes with the silvery sheen, as if he wore contacts of a translucent chrome. Robert. His short dark hair, like her own, was tousled...his skin, like her own, as pale as that of some cave-dwelling animal that the light might wither. He needed a shave, and he looked thin in an oversized T-shirt, baggy pants, his bony feet bare. He looked distressed, as he took her in...as if he thought that she had died in these past months, and it was an apparition of his ex-wife he saw standing on his doorstep.
“What are you doing here?” he husked.
She gave him a strained little smile that barely touched her lips. Her lipstick was brown, his favorite shade, because it complemented her large dark eyes and the full dark brows that lowered over them intensely, mysteriously. She knew the power her own eyes held over him, but tried not to let her knowledge be transparent. In a voice dark as her looks, she casually joked, “I’m getting quite wet, is what I’m doing.”
He craned his neck, peering over her head into the gathering murk. “You shouldn’t be walking alone out here at night. You shouldn’t be here at all...” He gestured at her bags. “What are these for?”
“Please help me with them, Robert.” A moment, and then: “Please let me come in.”
She saw his throat move as he swallowed. And then he was stepping aside for her, and holding the door wider.
* * *
He made a fresh pot of coffee; he knew she preferred it to tea. They had first had coffee together, on their first date, while strolling through Victoria’s Butchart Gardens. Judith’s family had moved to the very British city of Victoria, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, shortly after she had graduated from school. In her mid-twenties, she met Robert, who had also left his home behind; the Sesqua Valley in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. She was the art director for a printing company. He was an aspiring artist who ran a printing press to pay his bills. In that regard, nothing much had changed for them over the five years of their marriage. In that regard.
After her long chill walk, Judith sipped the black coffee gratefully. Coffee had been the first passion they’d shared.
They stood about his small, warm kitchen, and now Robert turned to fully face her, to address her. “Why are you here, Jude?” he asked grimly.
Jude the Obscure had been his teasing nickname for her. They had also shared a passion for the works of
Jude’s
author, Thomas Hardy. Robert’s favorite of his novels was
Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
Thinking of the standing stone in the pasture, Judith remembered the climactic scene of Tess’s capture and symbolic sacrifice at Stonehenge, after murdering her cruel lover so as to return to her husband...
For all their power over him, Judith still found herself averting her eyes. They didn’t feel powerful at the moment. “Ian and I are no longer together, Robert.”
Several moments. And then: “Really? Did you leave him, or did he leave you?”
“He’s back with his wife. They’re going to try again.”
“I see. He dumped you. And so now, here you are. Here. With bags.”
“Robert...you must believe that when we broke up—Ian and I—I was honestly relieved. I was actually happy. He’s doing the right thing, going back to try to salvage his marriage. He should never have left her in the first place.” She lifted her gaze to his at last. “And I made a terrible mistake as well.”
Robert’s voice had risen a trifle, and trembled slightly, but he was obviously struggling to keep its tone icy and composed. “A relief, huh? You were happy he dumped you? You weren’t at all hurt? At all angry?”
“Yes...I was hurt and angry, too. But I was relieved. I was anxious to find you...”
“Find me. The spare tire, now that the other is flat. Find me...your second choice.”
“Robert.”
“Jude, you would not be here if Ian hadn’t broken off with you. He’s the love of your life. The one you left your five-year marriage for...”
“Robert, I never stopped loving you. It wasn’t easy for me, leaving you. It hurt me horribly.”
“I’m sure he comforted you. Listen, Jude...I can understand why you left me. You should never have been with me in the first place. I was poor...we lived more on your money than mine. We could never vacation, struggled with our bills...”
“I never blamed you for that.”
“But the money made it tense. We were scared, and we fought. Subconsciously, maybe, you resented me for not trying harder. Thought I was weak...”
“No. I never resented you. But yes, the money problems depressed me greatly. I was unhappy. We were both of us miserable. And then—Ian came along. Charming...handsome. I became dazzled like a wanky little teenager. He distracted me from all the fear and depression. But you weren’t the source of my fear and depression, Robert.”
“Ian is the man you always wanted. You were reluctant to be with me from the start, but I was persistent. You always said we weren’t perfectly suited. Ian is British...he’s more your ideal in every way.”
“No, Robert. You and I aren’t perfectly suited...no couple is. But we’re both artists, and that makes us as well-suited as any two people could be. Don’t blame yourself for this in any way. It was entirely me. People are greedy, selfish. They become jaded, and lose their perspectives. They’re restless and never content. Our...bloody consumer-obsessed society teaches us to always want more, something better, something different; that relationships are disposable like everything else...”
“I never felt that way.”
“I know you didn’t. You’re different. You’re loyal. Loyal to your family. Loyal to me. Don’t put yourself down. You didn’t disappoint me. God, you’re too forgiving...but at the same time, I’m here to ask your forgiveness.” Her dark voice had grown husky, and now cracked. Her brows gathered like storm clouds over her eyes. “I’m so sorry that I hurt you...”
“You think...you think I can just forget that you left me for him? That you laughed with him? Held his hand? That you made love? Him inside you, his hands on you? It
poisons
me, Jude. And I can’t be someone’s second choice.”
“Robert, you are my first and only choice, now. I can see that Ian didn’t love me as I thought. That changed my feelings for him. Yes, I was hurt. But it felt right that he left me. It felt right to remember my love for you.”
A cruel, agonized smile marred Robert’s face. “It’s ironic, isn’t it? Neither of us can be the first choice of our loves. You aren’t Ian’s, and I’m not yours. So I guess we two unwanted things are well-suited, after all.”
“Robert, I’m telling you, it isn’t that way...not any more...”
“You can never convince me that it isn’t. You would be with Ian forever if he hadn’t changed that.”
“I don’t know that. And I’d like to try to change your mind...if you’ll only give me the chance.”
“I can’t go through this again, Jude! I barely survived it once. If it didn’t work again...I can’t. I could understand your leaving me. I could accept it because I felt I never deserved you in the first place. But don’t do this to me now...” his voice broke, his face crumpled like a child’s “...don’t...”
Judith started toward him, reached out to him, but he backed against the sink, held up warding hands.
“Anyway, it’s too late. I’m back in Sesqua, Jude. I swore I’d never come back here...even though I knew my poor mother was sick. But when we broke up, when I had nowhere else to go...”
“It isn’t too late...”
“It is too late!” he half shouted, half sobbed. “I have things to do here, things you could never understand. Things I can’t even describe, and that you’d never even believe...”
“What are you talking about? Robert, please—I’ll do anything you ask. I’ll even move here with you if that’s what you want. I’ll quit my job, freelance from here. Robert...only you matter...”
“No! No. You can spend the night. But tomorrow you have to leave. It’s the only way it can be.” He covered his face in his long, graceful artist’s hands, scarred by years of factory labor. “It’s too late...”
Judith once more thought of Hardy’s Tess, how she had told her husband it was too late for them to be together again. Too late to stop the terrible gears of her fate. But Judith was determined that it was not too late for herself. She did not again try to touch Robert so as to comfort his weeping. But by the same token, though this was his house, she had no intention of leaving it tomorrow. She could have been wrong, but she believed that in his heart of hearts, he didn’t want her to leave now any more than he had wanted her to leave him the first time...
* * *
In her dream, she knew the name of the tower that soared with impossible height from the caverns below...soared to touch the crust of the waking world. Koth, it was called...
And she knew the beings were called Gugs, before she could even discern them. At first, they were merely shambling hulks, dark and dark-furred. If only they hadn’t reached that circle of stones. In its center, they had lit a bonfire. The light of its flames illuminated the silent procession...and their terrible activities at the megaliths they had erected. Each of these was a brother to the stone in Robert’s pasture...
The flames seemed to glow inside pink eyes set on jagged, hooded projections of bone. And mouths gaped wide, soundlessly. Mouths that gaped vertically in hideous faces...fangs that flashed back the colors of fire and blood.
And what they were doing. What they were doing...God help her that she ever should have seen. The Great Ones had banished them for just such practices...
And there was something more horrible yet...
...and that was that the creatures seemed to be aware she was observing them. First one, then another, then all turned to gaze directly at her invisible dreamer’s form, amongst them, spying on them.
It was then that the first of the Gugs started toward her.