The Broken Hours: A Novel of H. P. Lovecraft (34 page)

What happened to it?

It died
, she said shortly. She resumed her slow wiping.
But you don’t understand. It could never have lived.

I sat there, uncertain how to take her words.

The important thing
, she said fiercely, turning to me again,
the thing to remember, is that she was never the same. One cannot take to heart things said by—
she hesitated—
those who are not right in their own heads. In their own hearts.

I understood. I thought I did. We stayed that way a long while. Finally she pulled the kettle from the drawer beneath the range and filled it at the spitting sink and put it on the stove. The blue flame gasped into life.

Outside the window, the cats sunned themselves on the shed roof. The silver tabby was there. The trees had begun to bud. A forsythia burst yellow against the stone wall. And beyond, the boy James, in his shirt sleeves, snaked a branch through the grass for one of the cats. Laughing, laughing, as if all was—as if all could be—set right again. As if he were, just then, outside his house in the country with a red barn open to the sunlight and his father in the fields and his mother cooking their breakfast at the little white range in their kitchen, ordinary, perfect.

When, I wondered, had spring come?

Will you have tea?
the aunt asked.

Thank you, no
.

It seemed as good a time as any to mention the matter of payment.

She moved slowly out to the hall and came back with a black patent purse, which she set on the table, pulling from it a generous handful of bills, which, to my astonishment, she did not bother to count, but handed to me in its entirety.

I hope this will cover things
, she said,
for the time being. You will let me know, of course, when you require more.

I scarcely knew what to say. I thanked her and pocketed the bills.

Will you eat something before you go?
she asked over her shoulder.

I’m not terribly hungry, thank you.

She nodded, as if she’d expected as much, then went back to her slow wiping. She did not look at me again.

On my way out, I stopped in astonishment at Flossie’s door: the locks hung loose and undone, the door standing slightly ajar. I knocked anyway, and when no answer came, opened the door a little and called inside, reminded of my arrival at the house only a little more than a week ago. My god, how fast it had gone. No answer came and so I stepped inside.

I stood a moment, perplexed. Gone were the violet cushions and sheer draperies and thick white rug. Gone were the bottles of nail polish scattered about the coffee table, and the magazines with their broken spines, and the blue china cups of tea half finished. Gone were the bouquets of white chrysanthemums. The ferns stood again in their stead, but were dried and crumbling at the touch. On the mantel sat the marble horse.

I bent and brushed a hand across the coffee table, leaving a broad, clear streak in the heavy dust, the dust of months. I wiped my hand on my trousers.

At a loss, I sat down on the sofa, as I had used to, and waited. I waited until the light faded and the room was dark all around me and the street lights came on, shining but dim through the heavy draperies.

I might have slept. I wasn’t certain. When I opened my eyes, it was with the sense of a great deal of time having passed, and someone leaning over me in the half-light.

Howard
, she said.
I thought I might find you here.

She moved slowly, painfully, out of the apartment and up the creaking stairs and I followed.

I’ve made us tea
, she said.

I stood in the front hall, watching her. The emerald lamp was lit at my elbow.

Then I remembered.
I must check the post
, I said.

What for?

I’m expecting a wire, or a letter at least, from my wife.
But it sounded wrong.

From Sonia? Why on earth?

From Jane
, I said.

She turned away.

I’ve made tea
, she said again, flatly, and gestured toward the kitchen. She looked very tired.
Come,
she said.
You’ll feel better
.

I almost did. I almost followed her to the kitchen and sat and drank tea and ate. It would have been so easy. Instead I turned and walked to the study door. I had an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. I heard the aunt come to the kitchen doorway and stand watching me. I reached out and grasped the latch. I turned to look at her. She seemed a bit funny around the mouth and eyes, a bit pinched.

Imagination
, she said,
is a double-edged sword
.

As before, the latch clicked, and then the door was open and I looked in again upon the lighted room, the mystery, the heart of all my days.

And I went in.

I dreamed I went to Angell Street again.

All the lights blazed out from the windows there, as if for a party, falling yellow on the walk and on the grass and on the fountain trickling musically into the night. There were fireflies in the woods and they glittered faintly, floated up and up, cold stars against the blackened ether. Then the woods darkened, and the lights in the great house went out, one by one, in every window, and I was being led by the hand through its rooms, slowly, until my fear was gone. How easy to hide oneself there. And, hidden, to lose oneself.

But within all darkness is the possibility of light.

Providence, tonight, is lightless. All down College Street the old houses turn inward. Beyond the observatory, Butler Hospital lies like a dead star, consuming its own darkness. The moon is not yet risen, the stars still dark, though the river is there, winding its black way through the sleeping city.

Time is short. The night falls and falls.

I ask you: How much loss can we be made to bear?

A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In the spring of 1936, Howard Phillips Lovecraft was chronically ill with the cancer that would kill him less than a year later. The aunt he lived with was in hospital recovering from a mastectomy, leaving him alone, a situation which, in spite of his reclusiveness, he’d never borne easily. Over the course of those few weeks, during which he believed he suffered only from the flu, he despaired over his lack of literary and, therefore, financial success, and he mourned the loss of his idyllic childhood, claiming he was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, not the first in his life.

For “facts” of this sort, I looked to Lovecraft’s excellent biographers and to his own letters. But facts, like ghosts, too, are perhaps best viewed from the corner of the eye. Lovecraft himself wrote:
Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them.
Although this work of fiction is based on the known “reality” of Lovecraft’s life, I have taken liberties with certain details while, I believe, remaining true to the spirit of the man I found in his stories and letters.

Memories and possibilities
, Lovecraft also wrote,
are ever more hideous than realities.

My thanks to Lovecraft’s biographers of the real. To Jane Warren, Martha Magor Webb, Timothy Birch, and Nicole Frail. To John, Gabrielle, and Julian. To my mother, Lorraine, as always. And, especially, to Steven Price; what a debt of gratitude lies herein.