Act 2:
When It Rains....
Episode One: One Problem Solved
Nearly the moment I close the secret portal to my basement laboratory, I hear the click and feel the whoosh of hot air signaling my door has opened.
I turn, skin tingling with fight or flight preparedness. My eyes travel the corridor of light which illumines my obviously empty chair and find, standing in my doorway, the unmistakeable silhouette of Regina.
“Rob?” she calls into the dark. “Are you here?”
I cannot help but notice an uncharacteristic quaver in her voice, as though she is terrified, on the verg of breaking down in uncontrollable tears.
“Yes?” I respond, still frozen in place – still unsure whether I should flee or try to hide.
“Where.... What are you doing?”
Being thankful I'm sober, I all but sigh.
Yes, this is quite unlike you.
“Shut up,” I mutter, as though it were the voices in my head I'd hidden downstairs. “Nothing. Thinking.”
“All the way back there?” Her eyes must have adjusted enough to see me. The jig was up, then. “But... why?”
“I've been pacing. Needed to stretch my legs.” I didn't like lying to her, but, what, was I going to tell her the truth?
She can't handle the Truth.
You don't know what she can handle.
You two need to shut up, now.
I start making my way back to my desk when she asks:
“Are you working? Is now a bad time?”
She is so... timid. I've never known her to consider anyone else's time but her own – or to be anything but as brash and as brazen as any mafioso.
Something is very wrong.
The thought keeps me from laughing. “When have you ever known me to be too busy for you? Are you coming in?”
I round and lower myself into my hugely overstuffed chair – more of a throne, really: black and tall-backed with high, round arms, it's every Goth kid's dream. Regina is still standing in the doorway. Wavering, really, as though she is having second – or third – or fourth – thoughts about being here at all.
“Well?”
She nods, a quick jerk of the neck. A visible summoning of her courage.
By the time she has closed the door behind her, I have the candles lit and sit in their weak, hardly-overlapping spheres of illumination. Regina's hands – maybe her whole body – are shaking when she takes her seat. I hear it in the wobbling click of the one short leg against the floor.
Her face is.... I've never seen her like this. I've seen her in what I thought was the entire spectrum of emotion of which she was capable. Her husband was not a kind man, and more than a few times had she run directly to me after one of her abuses. Indeed, it was her habit. But this was different. Always before, whether it were her face which was bruised or merely her considerable pride, she had met my eye with spine straight, a light approaching very near to defiance in her eye. Today all light is gone from them. Her shoulders are bent. Her hands grip one another in her lap as though to conceal their palsey. And her eyes aim directly at the floor.
I remember our last conversation and frown. My heart hardens. My tongue shapes a dagger, a demand to know what happened to her being done with me. Instead, with a considerable effort of will, I remind myself not to be the Master, not to hold her feet to the fire just and only because I have power over her. My voice, while not as gentle as I mean it to be, is softer than my heart.
“What is it, Regina? What's wrong?”
She looks, slowly, agonizingly, up to me. Her lips quiver, her chin, her brow. Tears flow freely down her cheeks.
“It's... Francis.”
“What is? What's he done now? I told you – I'm not going to help you destroy him.”
“He's... he's... dead!” Her voice cracks and her throat splits in a wailing sob which she tries with very little success to hide behind her hands. All composure is forgotten. Her body wracks and trembles.
Wailing and gnashing of teeth indeed.
Could've seen this one coming.
You should've—
Really, guys. Not now.
Death was a normal part of life in that Dark Age, sudden and terrible. More than once – more, really, than a few times – had I consoled a mother or father, sister, brother, wife, husband. I knew the things they wanted to hear. The words to say to make the pain seem bearable. But it wasn't like I was a priest – not like there was a court of Law or anything I could do about it. And not like any of them had ever asked me to do what I knew she had come here to ask of me.
I don't know what to think. I don't know what to do.
But I know what I said.
“You shouldn't have come here.”
Her mouth comes, but not dramatic gasp comes. Instead she practically dribbles: “Robert, please. Don't do this to me.”
“Don't do this to you? You don't do this to me!”
“But he was your... your partner! Don't you owe him? Aren't you supposed to do something about it?”
“I am doing something about it.”
I'm getting his killer the hell away from me!
My hands itch to roll a Mwg. My mouth fills with saliva; my throat clenches in anticipation of the burning smoke.
“Protecting yourself? I might have expected that from... him. But you? I thought you were better. You're supposed to be one of the Good ones.”
As she is speaking, the defiance, the strength in her neck and shoulders and spine return. It is good to have adversity in times of grief. If only, perhaps, I had not been her Satan. Maybe things might have ended better for her.
One of the Good ones? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
Why won't she use Francis's name?
“I thought that I'm an asshole?” I don't know why I'm saying this except that I'm suddenly as afraid as she is broken, emotionally shattered.
“I— I didn't mean that. I was angry. I— I'm sorry, Robert. I didn't—“
“You sure sounded like you meant it.”
“Why are you doing this? Please— I'm sorry! I need your help. I—“
“You don't want my help. You want me to fix it for you.”
“You're right. I do. I do. Fix it for me, please. I'll—“
She stands, her posture suggesting she means to come round my desk, the trajectory of her eyes at my pelvis telegraphing what she means to do when she gets there.
“Stop it. Sit down.”
My head is whirling, but, thankfully, no thoughts will come. There is only fear bordering on panic – and the soul-deep knowledge that, whatever she has done, it is my chance to escape this place. It might be my only option, now.
Regina's mouth twists and her arms cross beneath her breasts. When she drops back to the chair, a petulant grunt escapes her nose. Then a sniffle, her lips contorted with contained sobs.
“You're better than that,” I say.
“Better than what?” she demands, her eyes suddenly alight with almond fire.
“Better than telling me what you think I want to hear.”
“Isn't it?”
I say nothing, just watch her.
You should tell her to leave and be done with her before someone figures out where she's gone.
“You're cruel.”
“And you're careless. How could you kill him and then—“
“I didn't kill him!”
“And I don't believe you! Why did you do it? Huh? To get me to leave my wife? Huh? Did you think if you killed Francis I'd run away with you? Huh?!”
I have to restrain myself from slapping my desk. I'm getting emotional.
“I didn't kill him!” she screams. Then her face collapses into her hands and her body is wracked by ferocious sobs. For a long moment, the only other sound is the clicking of the short leg of the chair against the floor as her body rocks the chair back and forth.
I open the top-left drawer of my desk, then quietly push it back closed.
“Regina— Tell me the truth.”
Her face lifts from her hands. The puffy, red waterfalls which her eyes have become blink. “I did.” When I say nothing, just stare at her, she she struggles to say with lungs which will not stop siezing: “All right,”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“You told me you wanted him dead.”
“Half of Genoa want him dead!” she shouts. “You want him dead! Do you know anyone who has met him who wouldn't prefer him—? Why do you assume I—“
“I'm not assuming anything.”
I know this isn't true. I don't care right now.
“Why me, then? Why do you think I did it?”
“Did what, Regina? Say it.”
“Killed... him.”
“Killed who, Regina?”
“My husband, all right? Someone killed my husband and you want to accuse me!”
I sigh while again she covers her face and sobs.
“Because,” I say to the top of her head, “you are whom the Consuls are going to assume did it. Killed Francis.”
“Can you please stop saying his name?” she mutters into her hands.
“They're going to say you killed him because you couldn't get permission to divorce him.”
“But I didn't ask for—!”
Her head whips up. Her eyes and mouth are wide with an emotion – part surprise, part defiance.
“And then, because you were so foolish as to come here—“
“Where else could I go, Robert? Santa Maria? Who else would believe me? The wife is always the killer. Everyone knows that. They would put me to the Trials. I can't... I couldn't....”
The Trials she means are known as Trials by Ordeal. There are many – many – and they date back in writing as far as the Codes of Hammurabi and Ur-Nammu, and indeed there is even a Trial prescribed for adulterous women in the Hebrew bible. The long and short of it is that an accused person – usually of things heinous like witchcraft or murder; but civil disputes could be handled this way too – would be forced to walk across red-hot coals or carry a red-hot iron, or to reach into a pot of some boiling substance to pull out a stone or some such. The point was that if you were willing to undergo the Trial you were likely innocent, but if your sustained injuries didn't heal in the appropriate time you were guilty. Or, conversely, if you suffered no injuries, it was proof that God – or the gods, as the time and place might dictate – had intervened on your behalf. There were also Trials by combat, made so famous by the duel between the Mountain and whoever in HBO's Game of Thrones.
Cruentation was another story altogether – but not altogether dissimilar.
Torture, whether psych- or physio-logical until confession was the point. And it was effective.
Whatever means they might put Regina to Trial, she was right about one thing – even if she weren't Francis's murderer, she wouldn't be able to withstand the Trial. She would be best off putting herself to death – we could both assume they were certainly going to.
“What else am I to do?” she asks, sniffling. “If I went to a Consul.... You're right. I know that. I suppose I knew that. But, Robert, what am I to do? I need you help. You have to....”
“I have to what?” I ask. “Prove your innocence? Who is going to listen to—“
I sigh. My hand rubs the bridge of my nose, between my eyes, and I close them. Little difference in the next-to-no light. But at least now I can't see her, can only barely sense her. At least this way she can't visually influence what I'm about to do and I can argue with myself later that the thing I'm about to say isn't as foolish as I know it is.
“All right.” I look at her. “All right. You're going to tell me what you know. Everything.“
“Yes, Robert – anything you want.”
“But not like this. You're too emotional”
And, frankly, my dear, I don't believe a word that comes out of your mouth.
Shut up. Please, for the love of God and all things holy, just shut up this once.
I hold up my hand, one finger extended. Her gaze trains on it, accustomed from long practice to what I'm about to do. Slowly, I move it back and forth, tracing a small line in the air between us. Her eyes follow it, ticking back and forth, back and forth.
“I'm going to count down from five. Breathe – as I've taught you.”
“Yes, Robert.”
Her voice is already getting dreamy. For the first time, I'm not sure I'm glad I'd already taught her how to do this. For the first time, I'm reticent of what I will find when I look inside her mind.
“Five. Four. Three. You are feeling relaxed. At peace. You can close your eyes, now. Two. You are in a safe space. Unafraid. One.” I snap my fingers. The sound reverberates, echoing in an uncanny and unusual way which sends a shiver down my own spine.
I pause for a moment to examine her. It's difficult to see her clearly in this dark, the only light that of the twin candles atop my desk, and that barely enough by which to see anything. But I can see that her eyes are closed, and indeed her face is as relaxed as that of a dreamer in Elysian meadows.
“When you're ready,” I say, slowly, with uncommon reticence – but thankful, at least, that the Voices aren't haranguing me and I can think, “I want you to go to your memory of this morning. You can stay distant from it, like it happened to someone else, if you need to. But I need you to find Francis again for me.”
Her head slowly nods forward until her chin is resting against her sternum.
“Yes, Robert.”
“Are you there?”
Her mouth falls open, her face contorted with silent horror.
I guess so.
Her eyelids fly apart. The orbs have rolled up in her head. Only the whites are visible. It's almost like she's trying to look at me.
Eerie.
This has never happened before.
Her head moves, almost imperceptibly, from side to side, as if examining their surroundings. Then her hands lift from her lap. Slowly, limply, as though there were invisible strings tied to her wrists and an unseen – or incorporeal – marionettist were toying with them. Her hands sieze her head by the hair at her temples and lift her face so that she is looking right at me. Her jaw slowly closes, the horror on her face slowly metamorphosing into a sly and hideous grin.
I am brought to mind immediately of Perseus holding the Gorgon Medusa by her hair.
He seized her by the hair and—
“Robert Longshore.”
The slow, langorous voice which speaks from her lips, lisping or hissing its way through the syllables, each one like a word all its own, is not Regina's. My heart stops.
That expression is... clunky and cliché, I know. But how else do you describe the feeling of shock, of terror, at witnessing something besides your nominal girlfriend speaking from – manipulating - her body? This is not said from hindsight, either. From the moment her eyes opened, I knew – I could feel it. I was not speaking with Regina anymore. I was speaking with... something else. Something that had taken her body – to speak with me.
“It issss niccccce to meeeeet you, Fulcruummm.”
When the blood again starts moving through my body, it is cold. The pounding in my chest the only thing about this moment that feels real. And, to some degree, I am thankful for it. It means that – for the moment, at least – I am still alive. And yet, for all that I might have anticipated that I would be panicked, that my mind would run, screaming, from this kind of thing – believe me, there has never been a hypnotization, from my first to this one, and from this one to my last, where I have not feared – if only in the darkest recesses of my Instinctual brain, that this could and very likely would happen – I am as calm as the day I spent meditating beneath a spring waterfall with the M—
“Fulcrum? What is that?” I ask.
The question is out of my mouth before I can think to wonder why I'm asking it. Between us, Listener, I do not remember yesterday's events, after leaving my office. Whether you need reminded, or I need to insist upon it, is irrelevant. And yet, I could sense, like an itching just beyond my inner ear, that this word was meaningful – that I had heard it someplace. All thought of Regina and Francis have fled from my mind; forgotten, unimportant.
If you spoke with a being that dangled unthinkable secrets before your face, what would you do? Would you know it is an angler fish – that the secrets are a trap? Or would you run headlong into its mouth?
“Yoooou. You are the Fulcruuummm.”
“Me? The Fulcrum of what? Between what?”
“Fate. Huuuman Faaaate.” She chuckles. A slow, gutteral sound deep in Regina's throat. “But that isss not what you brought me here to assssk. Sssspeak your one question – assssk what you wissssh to knooow.”
One question?
What you wish to know?
Brought her here?
I shake my head. I need to be in control.
It occurs to me that I have no circle, wove no spell of binding. And again that I don't believe in Magic Circles or Spells of Binding. Why would I have done either of those things.
Why, then, did I have one in my basement?
Stop it. Stop this. Breathe. You are in control. It thinks you brought it here. Ask a good question.
A good question.
“I... didn't bring you here, Spirit. Who are you?”
That was not a good question.
“Ah... ah... ah.” one finger uncoils itself like a snake and dances back and forth, wagging playful admonishment. “That isssss not what you wisssssh to knooooow.”
“Isn't it? I... I don't know what you want me to ask. I don't know—“
Sudden rage – or, perhaps better said, fury – flashes across Regina's face, fills the room and flares the candles. The brightness hurts my eyes. The heat seems to sear the flesh of my face.
“You! You dare wassste my time in this way? Releassssssse me, fool boy!” Then she smiles again, as calm and collected as a teacher of small children on the playground. “Gird your loinsss, Fulcruum. Prepaaaare yourssssself. When you sssummon me next, have a quessssstioonnn!”
Release it? Does it mean dismiss it?
Is it a demon that wants to be exorcised?
That can't be right.
Is it an oracle, then?
That didn't feel right, either. And why did I want so badly to think of it as a she?
“I will ask a question I want to know,” I say, slowly. Feeling out my command of the situation. Waiting, expecting, for her to shout at me once more. “If you will not tell me your name—“ and it occurs to me just then that asking a Spirit its name is a fool's game in this situation – I have next to no power over this thing; have done no sort of ritual; have, as she said, prepared nothing. She could lie to me as easily as I could be lying to you, and I would never know it. I would believe, and any Work I attempted with her name would fail as surely as trying to build a ladder to the Moon.
What world would I think to do in her name?
I feel insane.
Half-thoughts and impressions press themselves against my mind, from where and from whom I'm not certain – at the time. I have... ideas, now.
“—Then tell me this: what are you? What sort of spirit are you?”
“Ahhhhhh. He isss not an idiiiot afteralll. An asssssshoolllllle, perhapssss—“ Her grin ticks up at one corner, the opposite eye twitching in what might have been a wink. “But not an idiot.”
She sure is taking her time, if she is under any compulsion to speak the Truth.
“That was two questionssss. But I will answer.” Her amusement with me, with this situation – perhaps, I think now, with herself for being so easily – and accidentally – trapped by me. “I... am the Lammmmiiia sssspirit.”
And with those words – before I can so much as flinch at hearing the name – the Spirit, she, is gone. Regina's head crashes back to her chin fast and hard enough that I flinch. Her eyes close. Her hands thump to her sides, like the furniture in your kitchen when a poltergeist is done with its fun. And yet—
She's not gone.
We can still feel her. Watching. Waiting.
Whaaaat willllll you dooooo nexxxxxxxxt, Fulcrummmm? A whisper asks on a wind which is not blowing in my office, into and through my mind.
A wind which climbs my spine with formicatious feet and courses shivers through my being.
I clear my throat. If I had a tie, I might adjust it like Rodney Dangerfield. My eyes were certainly trying to bug out of my skull. I roll my head on my neck and try – again – to clear the imaginary blockage from my throat, to speak words which I have forgotten.
“Regina?”
My voice squeaks and I am thankful I am alone.
Distantly I am aware of a woman's hysterical laughter.
“Regina.”
“Yes, Robert?”
Regina's voice is like a … well, it's not like anything. It's her voice. And I am soothed to hear it. Normalcy returns to this decidedly unnormal practice.
“Are you with Francis?”
Regina's head makes a motion like nodding.
“Can you tell me what you see?”
“He's lying in the floor. In his room. Oh, it's just awful. There's.... It's everywhere. It's so horrible.”
“All right, Regina. You can leave his room. Go someplace else, someplace safe and quiet. ...Are you there?”
“Yes, Robert.”
“Good. Tell me what happened. Start from the beginning.”
“He— It was last night. We were eating dinner. He was grumpy. He's always grumpy with me. But this was different. He said— We had a row. A tiff. I was still angry at you, tired of his— of him. I wished he would just die. He complained that his stomach was hurting. He didn't eat much. It's not like him not to eat much. He said he was going to bed early – that he had some sort of business to attend to – early today. I thought— I assumed it was... another woman. I told him I hated him and that I hoped his stomach killed him. I finished my dinner, told the servants good night, and I went to my bed.”
As she speaks, she get visibly and audibly more comfortable. Distant from whatever she was seeing when she was with Francis in her mind. Soon she is almost herself. Like she is gossiping with another wife in a garden.
“When I awoke today, I didn't think anything of not seeing him for breakfast. The servants never wake him. He doesn't like it – and they don't like being berated and beaten for it. So I didn't think anything of him not being at breakfast. And he said – he said he had something important to do. I hated him. After breakfast was over and the servants had been dismissed for the day, I.... I thought of you, Robert. I thought of what I'd asked you. And I thought – I thought maybe I could find something myself. Maybe I could prove his.... Well. I found something, alright. I found him.”
“Thank you, Regina,” I say, suddenly. I didn't need her to tell me any more. I thought I had heard enough. It is difficult.... In the modern world, we know that hypnotization is a tricky business. That's because it is. It is difficult even for a professional, someone with much more experience than I had, to say for certain whether the information gained from someone in this state is reliable or whether the hypnotist has inserted the information in their head. I can't even say now whether it's certain that she was even under, as they say.
I have many gifts, many powers, you might say. There are many things I can see and know which you, and which I then, can not. But I believed her. As guileful a woman as she was – if I believed Solomon, as all women are incapable of not being – she wasn't a murderer. Not a poisoner. And where would she have gotten the poison? And why would she lie to me about it?
Her kind of guile, if she had planned something like this, she would have been pleased with herself. She would have felt that she had done justice by herself. She would not have come to me sobbing and panicked like a little girl. She would have been ready to leave, with a pack and money enough to start a new life somewhere. And if I weren't going to come with her – naturally I wouldn't have – I like to think that at any rate – she would have been prepared to strike out on her own. Indeed, she very likely would have had another man lined up in the distinct and known to her possibility that I would refuse.
Hell. She probably would have poisoned me right along with him.
If she were that kind of person.
“That's enough,” I say, more to myself than to her. But the words are, indeed, enough. “I'm going to count up to five, and when you're ready, you can come back to me, all right?”
She moves like a nod.
When I have finished my count and she has slowly stirred herself, I am not surprised to see that her eyes are filled with tears. Not tears of emotion – this is a sign, a symptom, you might say, of a successful hypnotization. What I am surprised to see, however, is that the whites of her eyes are a deep, evidently painful red. This is known today as conjunctivitis. I had never seen anything like it before. If nothing else about this... encounter had surprised me, this most certainly did.
And why was there an itching at the back of my mind like I'd heard a story – recently? - about a man with red, swollen, bloodshot eyes?
“How do you feel?” I ask her, feeling like an idiot for the question.
Her eyes search mine, her face slowly shifting through a range – maybe the entire range – of emotion. Not that I was willing to underestimate the profuseness of her feelings any longer. Then she smiles. It's weak, small, but the corners of her lips turn up and her brows and cheeks relax.
“I feel... fine,” she says at last. “Not good. But... fine.”
“That's good,” I hear myself saying.
“What happened?” Regina asks. “Did I kill him?”
I forgot to ask. Shit.
The Lamia Spirit?
Lamia.... I... I have known for some time – since, really, V compelled me to tell you the stories of the tavernmaster and The Captain – that I was going to have to tell you about Lamia at some point, Listener; and I find that, even after all of these years of composing and composting this narrative, I am not ready. I am still, after eleven and a half centuries, too close to this – too close to Her – to succinctly explain what – or whom – She was. Is. For now.... You have, if you are interested in the kinds of things which have brought you to my telling, very likely heard of Lilith.
At that time of my life and indeed, as I am struggling to come up with an answer for Regina, I am thinking about Lilith. I understood her to be a sort of vampire figure. A bogeyman of the Hebrew variety. A demon – her origins being inconsequential for now – which hunts in the night, killing men whose eyes and minds and bodies wander toward infidelity, and who abducts small children. Possibly to eat them. Possibly to raise them as her own. Stories conflict. Stories conflate.
“I don't think you did, no,” I finally say after some time.
Regina's face alights – the light of the accused-found-innocent – and my heart cramps.
Whether she did it or not, no one is going to believe the Lamia Spirit did.
This does not absolve her.
I know. I know.
Then then what will you do?
I....
Don't want to do this.
“Listen,” I say. “I need you to go home. Quickly. Before your servants decide that your not being there is a perfect time to snoop around.”
“The servants are—“
“Never trustworthy. They very likely know something is wrong. Knowing you—“
I find myself unable to say anything mean to her today. There is, after all, a first time for everything.
“Just... just go home. I'll....” Her eyes widen, and I am nearly crushed under their weight – the gravity of the hope which fills them. “I'll be by soon. I'll see what I can do.”
She nods. Suddenly girlish and demure, she stands. I'd never known her to be speechless, but.... She curls her lips into her mouth, apparently biting them closed – or maybe hiding joyous celebration. There's no way to be sure. Curtsying, a behavior unlike anything I have ever seen in her, she turns and practically skips to the door.
What the fuck is going on with her?
We all infantilize in our own ways. She is excited, Robert. She has died this morning and been reborn.
I don't like the fee\l of that.
Not at all.
Not even a little bit.
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