Encounters with Enoch Coffin Read online

  “Evil may lurk during the brightest of days, Mr. Coffin,” I rejoined.

  “Indeed. Well, I don’t want to abuse you if you’re occupied. I was just on my way to Prospect Terrace on Congdon Street – such a wonderful view. You haven’t seen it? Tag along if you like, the view of downtown and other westward regions is really spectacular. I’ve got some postcards in my valise, as I like to sit on one of the benches and jot wee notes to chums. You’ll come? Delightful.”

  We walked together without speaking, and I grew suspicious when at last we entered the small park, as a familiar figure was seated on one of the benches and gazing toward the city spread below. Her bright red hair, which had been piled upon her head the previous day, now hung past her shoulders. She was attired in the same yellow dress, over which she wore a bright red coat that reached to her ankles. I almost wanted to make an excuse and depart, because I didn’t want to be a part of any game they might have planned to play with me. It simply couldn’t be coincidence, my being there with both of them. I decided I would be cordial for a little while and then be off. The woman stood as we approached her, and I tried not to gaze at her bosom, which seemed more exposed than it had previously, shockingly so. Coffin leered brutishly and let an obscene whistle escape his lips.

  “Gentlemen, good day. I was just about to make my way down to Benefit Street. There’s a forlorn little plot of wooded land just there.” She pointed to an area below us. “It has a charming path that turns into wooden steps adjacent to a shunned house of ill repute. It would make an excellent little scene for some eerie horror story.” She smiled at me. “Will you let me show you?”

  “Um, I actually have some things I need to do before I catch my bus to Salem.”

  “Ah, certainly. Mr. Coffin? You will find the spot exceedingly atmospheric. You may want to sketch it. I’ll pose for you, if you like.”

  “I’m all yours, wench. Nice knowing you, Reverend.”

  He held to her his arm and they prepared to walk away; and I was suddenly angered at being so easily dismissed, and so I cleared my throat and muttered something about joining them for the briefest moment. We walked, we three, down an extremely steep hill, and then along a rather rough road until we came to a path that took us into a little wooded region. We walked down the inclined path into a patch of gloom from which the light of day was held in abeyance, stopping just before a rather stout tree.

  “Oh, look – our familiar friend.”

  I did not understand what Miss Dubois was alluding to until I drew nearer to the tree and saw the heap of clothing next to the base of the tree, on top of which rested the squalid hat. My anger increased.

  “I don’t know what kind of game you two are playing, but I am not amused.”

  “I think this would be a perfect pose,” the Negress laughed as she leaned against the tree and unbuttoned more of her dress, so that her breasts spilled out. “What say you, Reverend?”

  “Most inappropriate,” I scolded, not looking away from the alluring sight.

  Coffin raised his head and scanned the area. “It’s a delicious atmosphere, don’t you think, St. Clair? Triggers the imagination, don’t you find? Come on, don’t be so stuffy. Good grief, you write weird fiction! This is the clime that you at times skillfully stir up with your delicate prose. You really have an engaging style. How wonderful, to find the beauty of the beast, the wondrous secrets of the darkened realm. But you could see it more clearly, if you only tried. We can help you there, partner. Would you enjoy really seeing into the darkness, into the Outside? Would you?”

  “I have no idea what you’re babbling about.”

  “Let us conjure darkness for you, Henry,” the woman sighed. “Let us show you what lurks therein, and help you to retain the taste of terror so that you can transfer it to your text. You have a splendid talent already – you just need a little assistance.” I watched as she bent down and picked up the ruined hat, and I protested as she placed the wretched thing upon my head. “Nay, don’t resist, my pet. Enjoy one new sensation.”

  She bent again, so as to dig her black hand into the debris of dirt and ash and bits of bone; and as she did so, Coffin pressed his lips together and began to whistle, and my blood froze as the sound that issued from his pursed lips was exactly the tune that I had heard, in dream or delirium I do not know, in my rented room the previous evening, that impish air, that fiendish melody. The Negress rose before me, her face a black sphere in which her eyes fantastically transformed and took on a diamond hue. I lifted my hand, wanting so to touch her eyes, as she brought forth her own hand and the pile of death that sat upon her palm. She blew the stuff into my eyes, and I blinked and blinked again as my vision altered, as I was able to see the darkness as never before, and that which lurks therein, as the cosmos whistled and shrieked idiotically all around me, and something, some dark thing, kissed at last my eye.

  Matter of Truth and Death

  I.

  The cry of the beast was the combined final roar of every last dinosaur at the moment of mass extinction. The forlorn moan of a pod of sperm whales dying on the floor of the ocean. The howl of a hurricane at its vertex of strength, before its long diminishment. The long, single cry of the beast was all of these sounds at once, and yet even those comparisons could not capture its haunting resonance, its unearthly essence.

  He had no idea how large the creature was, but it must be colossal, and yet there was something skeletal, wasted, in its aspect. It rested on all four weirdly bent, bony limbs, its emaciated body the same color as the rock upon which it was perched; a grayish-green, as if it were a chameleon that had changed its hue to blend in. The only other color was a white cloth or gauze wrapped around its hairless head, completely concealing its face. But as it called out, the depression of its elongated open mouth could be seen through the material that bound and blinded it.

  The roughly-shaped block of green stone the beast squatted upon was the last in a string of similar blocks of varying sizes. He was not sure how many of these crude blocks there were, but all of them hung in the sky in defiance of earthly law, like fragments of an exploded moon in orbit around a globe. Yet above and below, instead of the blackness of space, there was only churning white mist. Against all this formlessness, only these hovering blocks. Maybe they were not fragments of something destroyed, however, so much as pieces yet to be assembled. Assembled into what, though?

  So then, could it also be that the beast was not so much wasted away, as yet to be given its substance? Not crying out in impending death, but wailing in despair for not knowing what its final form must be?

  As he gazed upon the floating chain of blocks, he noticed that there were odd symbols engraved into their surfaces, marks he had at first taken to be natural fissures. He could not decipher their meaning, but he sensed a potency in the carvings. What beings had incised these vast symbols, and how had they managed it with the rocks hanging in the void as they did? How gigantic must these entities be? Larger, perhaps, even than the wretched titan that crouched on the very last of the suspended fragments?

  As if in answer to his question, he saw two immense arms emerge from the boiling, glowing mists. Two impossibly gigantic arms reaching toward the first in the string of suspended greenish blocks. His heart thudded in awe, for this being did indeed dwarf the enormous howling beast. It must be a god, with the powers of destruction and creation in those ten spread fingers.

  And as he breathlessly watched, those hands took hold of the first hovering rock. They gripped it with such strength that the fingers dug deeply into the substance of the block. That substance proved malleable in the god-like entity’s grasp. The two clutching hands squeezed, squeezed tighter, until the gray-green block was squashed and lost its form. Consequently, the odd glyphs carved into the surface lost their form as well.

  With the symbols thus obliterated, a spell was broken and the vision faded from view, swallowed in the mists. But in the final moments before even that luminous fog lifted from his eyes and
Enoch Coffin returned to himself, he realized that the two gigantic hands that had crushed the block of clay had been his own.

  II.

  Enoch Coffin roused from the self-induced trance of his waking dream to find himself again in his artist’s studio, seated at a heavy wooden worktable much spattered with old paint. His hands rested on the tabletop in front of him, and in them he had crushed a large blob of oil-based greenish clay, extra-pliable from the warmth of his skin. He smiled in satisfaction, and still holding the mass of clay he rose from the table and turned toward a raised cement base he had molded in the center of the attic’s floor.

  Upon this makeshift pedestal crouched an odd figure, as large as himself. It was a bent-backed thing, with weird crooked limbs like those of a dog – a dog with human hands and feet. But the figure was merely an outline suggested by lengths of copper wire, its curved spine a bent piece of rebar, rooted in the cement block to support the wire skeleton. The head was merely suggested by several loops of the wire, a cloth draped over it.

  The artist knelt down as if genuflecting and began pressing the clay around the right foot and lower leg of the framework. With sensuous strokes his thumbs smoothed the warm clay, which had the feel of human skin. And still he was smiling. Looking up at the veiled head, Enoch said in an arch, satisfied tone, “One obstacle removed. One step closer to you. When I finally stand before you on your pedestal, I’ll tear that mask from your face – and know you.”

  Still shaping the artificial flesh with his skillful fingers, Enoch glanced behind him at the large package of clay resting atop the table. Tomorrow he would sit and concentrate on the vision again, focus on that image of the beast perched upon the last in a whole archipelago of clay blocks. Once more his dream self would slip through the weave of the curtain that separated this world from that other, and the mere vision would be replaced with awesome reality. At least, as much of a representation of that other reality as his human mind could process. But he had never let his human mind limit him in the pursuit of his art.

  Each hovering block was etched with a binding spell, to keep the wailing prisoner isolated. But one by one he would eliminate those obstacles that separated him from his model. And with each block he destroyed in that world, when he returned he would add another mass of clay to the barren skeleton. The beast was the feral avatar of a Faceless God – a wild aspect of that god, which the god itself had imprisoned. Yet Enoch Coffin felt like a god himself, making Adam from the “dust of the ground.”

  He did not believe that this entity had no face, but only a hidden face. He was determined to see it -- and reproduce it.

  III.

  With his concerns now returned to purely terrestrial matters, Enoch was prepared to leave his abode to take dinner and perhaps some carnal dessert at the apartment of a lady friend who ran a gallery on Newbury Street, and had even set upon his head his floppy-brimmed slouch hat so as to embark, when a figure stepped across the threshold of his attic studio unannounced. Enoch had witnessed -- had conjured, both in his art and literally -- many sinister things, and so he did not startle easily. His reaction to seeing this figure admit itself into his private sanctuary, then, was not one of fear but of anger.

  “Will Ashman!” he exclaimed. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, letting yourself into my home this way?”

  The uninvited guest was an attractive young man with a tall, slender build, who looked as though he should move with a dancer’s grace. Instead, he nearly collided with a small table by the door holding a lamp and a stack of sketchbooks. Ashman corrected himself with a little chuckle, but almost tipped back on his heels in so doing. He caught himself, staggered, and replied, “Sorry, my friend, very sorry. I did ring the bell, you know.”

  “The bell hasn’t worked in decades.”

  “I knocked, too.” Ashman had caught sight of a large unframed canvas leaning against a wall, and stumbled toward it to bend down and take a closer look. His expression twisted with confusion, then disgust. “It’s perverse, your obsession with capturing ugliness so beautifully.”

  “If I didn’t hear your knocks, that doesn’t give you the right to let yourself in here.”

  Ashman straightened up again, grinning. “That will teach you not to lock your door in Boston.”

  “So it shall. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere to be.”

  “Oh! So rude! But I know, shh, I know – it’s I who am rude. Yes. So terrible, am I.”

  “So drunk, are you.”

  “Forgive me, Enoch,” Ashman replied, with his smile now twitching almost imperceptibly. “I suppose I’m still mourning.”

  Enoch was mindful of a row of steel sculpting implements close by his hand, some with arrow-like tips and others with little hooks like dental probes. He had known that their exchange would soon turn to this matter, and he was wary. In a calmer tone, he said, “I’m sorry about your wife, Will.”

  “Sorry? Sorry, are you? What are you sorry for, exactly, Enoch?”

  “I’m sorry that she killed herself, of course.”

  “Did you love Shoshana?”

  “Will, don’t talk foolishly. She was only a model to me.”

  “Oh! And did she know that? But of course she did. Maybe that sad knowledge prompted her decision, eh?”

  Enoch lost his calm tone when he replied, “I’m sure your own difficulties had a lot more to do with her decision, Will, and your difficulties existed long before I met the two of you, so I won’t have you laying Shoshana’s suicide at my door.”

  Ashman cackled wildly, then clamped his hand over his mouth. “Sorry…sorry…but what an image you just put into my head! Me laying Shoshana’s dead body at your doorstep. You should paint that, don’t you think? Better yet, let me exhume her for you, maybe in a few years when she’s more like the rest of the things you paint, and she can model for you once more!”

  “You must leave this instant, Will,” Enoch said in his most composed tone of voice. It was also his darkest, grimmest tone of voice.

  Ashman ignored him, moving – as Enoch had feared – to the skeletal framework upon its crude pedestal. He didn’t touch it, however, and didn’t even remark upon it. To his layman’s eyes, it was too insubstantial a form as yet to register as anything. Instead, the man went on, “As further proof of your perversity, in the painting of my dear wife I commissioned – yes, I introduced you to her myself, didn’t I? – in that painting you made the beautiful Shoshana appear ugly, haunted, close to madness.”

  “I painted what I saw in her.”

  “It was a mirror she couldn’t handle. Do you know she slashed your canvas to ribbons before she slashed her own flesh?”

  Enoch made an involuntary sound of pain.

  “Ah! But did you groan that way when you found out Shoshana was dead, or is it only your painting you mourn?” Ashman held his arms out wide. “Why not me, Enoch?”

  “Why not you, what?”

  “Why haven’t you asked to paint me?”

  “I didn’t ask to paint your wife; you paid me, as you just stated.”

  “Why not paint me now? All right, I’ll pay you, then! Paint me…paint me as you see me, too!”

  “You wouldn’t like what I see.”

  Ashman had already begun opening the front of his shirt. A button tore free and clattered across the attic’s ancient floorboards. “Why won’t you paint me?” the man sobbed the words now, undoing his belt and the front of his trousers.

  As Enoch watched the young man remove the remainder of his clothing, and once again spread wide his arms as if crucified to an invisible cross, the truth dawned on him at last. How could he have missed it before? Will Ashman wasn’t jealous that the artist had taken his wife as a lover. He was jealous that Enoch hadn’t taken him as his lover, instead.

  At the same time he took in this truth, he took in Ashman’s wasted form. Had he always been this emaciated, or was it a result of his anguish? The man standing before him, wracked with sobs, was little more t
han a skeleton himself. The handsome features of his face had belied his actual condition. “Hideous, aren’t I?” Ashman blubbered. “Do I repulse you?”

  “No,” Enoch stated, and he meant his words. “I find you terribly beautiful, actually.”

  The nude figure dropped to his knees, and now held his arms toward the artist in supplication. “Then make me your model! Me…make me!”

  Enoch acted on inspiration then, upon the artist’s instincts he trusted more than he trusted conscious thought. After all, though of course much purposeful decision-making was part of each artwork he produced, Enoch Coffin also believed very much in intuition, and in the providence of the “happy accident.” Such gifts as seemed to be given him by unknown powers he could almost credit as his collaborators.

  What Enoch did was dig his hands into the open package of clay on his worktable, soften and warm a glob of it between his squeezing palms, and then approach his kneeling visitor. He reached out and smeared the greenish clay upon Will Ashman’s face. Ashman closed his eyes and smiled rapturously, letting out a little sigh at the contact of the other’s hands.

  “My poor, poor golem,” Enoch cooed, next smearing the clay down Ashman’s neck, his shoulders, across his hairless chest.

  “Yes,” Ashman whimpered. “Yes!”

  Before he had approached Ashman, and unknown to him, Enoch had pocketed one of his steel sculpting tools, one of those with a sharp little hook at its tip. With Ashman’s eyes still closed and partially sealed by the sticky membrane of clay across his face, he didn’t see Enoch raise this implement now and poise its tip over his forehead. Ashman gasped loudly when the tip bit into his flesh. As Enoch carved through the clay and into Ashman’s flesh, he was reminded of the binding spells engraved on the archipelago of floating blocks in that other realm. The three symbols he inscribed, however, spelled out the Hebrew word emet, or “truth.”

  Ashman groaned in pleasure, not pain, as thin trickles of blood oozed from his new clay skin where it had been wounded. He lowered himself onto his back on the bare floorboards. And Enoch Coffin lowered over him, forgetting his dinner plans, forgetting his former disgust for his visitor. Happy accidents, and all that.