“Well, would you like to see it now?” asked Dr. Marquardt. “The artifact from Ras Shamra?”
I might have said yes. Or I might only have nodded. I can’t remember. But I do recall that, just then, I noticed a young man, down on his knees before the fireplace. He was entirely naked, save a crown of ivy set on his head and a red cloth tied about his face for a blindfold. His lips and cheeks had been rouged, and his head was bowed slightly, so that I couldn’t clearly see his face. A woman stood on either side of him, each dressed in gold and garish shades of red. Each held a silver chalice. I started to say something, to ask for some explanation of this bizarre tableau vivant, when Marquardt said, “Oh, don’t be shocked, my dear. It’s only a bit of sport. We like our games, you know.”
All this time later, little details still keep coming back to me. For example, it was just a few weeks ago that I remembered the huge old Victrola in the drawing room, and that the record on the turntable was Hoagy Carmicheal’s “Stardust.” That was a favorite of my mother’s, and it was also one of the first songs I learned to play on the piano (I gave up music after high school). Oh, and the roses. I’ve not mentioned them. There were bouquets of rosebuds placed all about the room, arranged in reproductions of Ming vases. There must have been a hundred roses that night, but not a single one of them had opened. Their petals had been dyed blue, Mohammedan blue to match the blue of the porcelain vases. I’m digressing. But all of these details, and so many others that I don’t have time to include here, somehow they added up to a singular wrongness, as if the room in that yellow house at 135 Benefit had been carefully decorated so as to achieve a very specific and disorienting effect.
There were pocket doors separating the drawing room from a small book-lined study, and Marquardt slid the doors open and ushered me inside. Ecaterina followed, and then Marquardt pulled the doors shut again, muffling the music and the voices of the other guests. In the center of the room was a small table, a scallop-topped tea table, and the thing that she’d invited me to that house to see sat alone at its center. When I saw it, I think I actually gasped.
Were I writing to almost anyone else, Ruth, instead of to you, instead of to someone who has had firsthand experience with these people, I think that might sound hysterical. But yes, I must have gasped. And this seemed to please both Marquardt and her companion. They exchanged a smile, and I had the distinct impression that they were sharing some secret, like the punchline of a joke to which I’d not been privy.
“Remarkable, isn’t it?” said Marquardt. “The craftsmanship is exquisite. And obviously it isn’t actually Ugaritic, despite its provenance. Likely, it came to Ras Shamra from Egypt, possibly during the reign of Amenemhat III, sometime after 1814 BC. According to Schaeffer’s field notes, this piece was found in association with a stela depicting the pharaoh.”
For a few moments, then, I forgot Marquardt and her companion and their strange guests. I forgot about the blue roses and the naked boy kneeling at the hearth. For those few moments, the statuette on the table completely consumed my attention. Yes, the craftsmanship was exquisite, but there was nothing of beauty about the object. It was in all ways hideous. If I say it was wicked, would you understand my meaning? I think you might, knowing what you know and having seen what you’ve seen. The statuette was a wicked thing. And vile. And yet I found myself unable to look away from it.
“It isn’t Dagon,” I said finally. “Whatever else it’s meant to be, it clearly isn’t an image of Dagon.”
“I agree,” said Marquardt. “Obviously. Are you familiar with the early Sumerian and the later Assyro-Babylonian texts that suggest Dagon, or Dagan, had a wife? And that the wife may have been the goddess—”
“Of course,” I said, interrupting her. That isn’t like me, interrupting anyone. But suddenly I was dizzy and my mouth had gone cottony. I took a sip of champagne and stared at the hideous statuette. “But this isn’t Ishara.”
“No, it isn’t. But in Schaeffer’s notes, there’s a description of something he calls ‘Mother Hydra,’ and it’s accompanied by a sketch of this artifact. He says that when one of his workers uncovered the figurine, all the men fled in terror, and that only after it had been removed from the site would they return to the diggings.”
“So, if it didn’t go to Strasbourg, where did it end up?” I asked.
“As I said, a private collection. It appears that Schaeffer sold it to a Frenchman, Absolon Thibault Moreau, who’d been a student of Helena Blavatsky’s when he was hardly more than a boy. Moreau was obsessed with the various myths and traditions concerning sunken continents—Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu, and so forth—and he believed that the Phoenicians knew of a submerged land in the South Pacific called R’lyeh. He also believed that the god Dagon had originated in R’lyeh, and that the god’s consort, this—” and Marquardt waved a hand at the statuette, “still dwelt there, waiting for a coming apocalypse—a great flood, to be precise, that would herald the resurrection of a still mightier being than either Dagon or his wife.”
There was a sharp knock at the doors, then, and Ecaterina slid them open just enough to whisper with whoever was on the other side.
“So, if it went to this Moreau fellow,” I said, “how did it come into your possession?” I’d taken a step nearer the table and the statuette, and as much as I wanted to be away from the thing, I also wanted to pick it up, to hold it, to know the weight of it in my hands. I imagined it would feel oily.
“He was arrested for murder,” she said. “Eight murders, to be precise. The bodies were found buried on his estate, just outside Avignon. There were allegations of cannibalism, but nothing was ever proven.”
Just then there was a terrific commotion from the drawing room. Someone cried out—an awful sound, like a cornered, hurting animal—and my mind returned at once to the blindfolded boy at the fireplace. Ecaterina quickly pulled the pocket doors shut again. She glanced over her shoulder and muttered something in Romanian. At least, I assumed it was Romanian. And I saw, or more likely I only imagined that I saw, a reddish iridescent shimmer in the woman’s eyes, like the eyeshine from a wild animal. And I thought, I do not believe in werewolves, but if I did, then I would believe without hesitation that’s exactly what this woman is.
Then Adelie Marquardt took my elbow, and she said, “You must leave now. I do apologize, but there’s an urgent matter that requires my attention. I regret the inconvenience.” The way she said this, it seemed exactly as if she were reading a prepared and carefully worded statement. She nodded to a small door opposite the tea table, a door I hadn’t noticed. “That will lead you back out to the street. It’s best you hurry.”
And I did hurry. I found that I wanted—more than I’d ever wanted anything, I think—to be out of that house and away from those strange people and that wicked statuette. Somewhere above us, bells had begun to chime; they sounded very much like buoy bells. I exited the study, followed a narrow, musty hallway, and was soon out on Benefit Street again, looking back from the safety of a flickering pool of gaslight. I’m not sure how long I stood there by the lamppost, my heart racing, regarding Stephen Harris’s unlucky yellow house. Five minutes? Ten? And then I went back to Miller Hall. I left the lights burning until dawn, and I didn’t sleep. I left Providence the next day, three days earlier than I’d planned, and was grateful to be on my way back to California.