Abel Crowe had never been an extraordinary man. He grew up in New York with seven brothers and two sisters and his life could only be described as painfully average. In fact, he was so interchangeable with his siblings that no one noticed for months when he disappeared in the spring of 1798 at the age of twenty five. He was presumed dead by all with the exception of his youngest sister, Amelia, who knew Abel better than anyone even at her inexperienced age of five. 1798 was a year where people either disappeared or they didn’t. There wasn’t room for the sort of fantasies that young Amelia cooked up for her strange older brother after he was pronounced dead. Many blamed it on her over active imagination, some said it was the result of a terrible fever she had the night he vanished. Whatever it was, Amelia maintained her brother was alive and well until the day she died, an eccentric old woman of seventy.
In fact, Abel remembered very little of the night he seemed to vanish from his unbelievably ordinary life. He had worked as a book keeper for a number of years. He began as an apprentice as was common for a boy of average intelligence and average upbringing. By twenty five he had his own desk at the same shop he had been apprenticed at and worked for a man named Douglas Phelps. He went to work in the morning and was done by four o’clock everyday. He had no friends, no women, no obligations but to his large family. The night he disappeared was the first night Abel Crowe had broken the banality of his routine existence and what happened to him in those few adventurous hours would forever assure that his existence would never be ordinary again.
The roses had come early this year and the sweet smell of newborn babies wafted across the miles of sandpaper hills. The flat blue sky was streaked with broad white clouds, outlined by pink and custard shadows. A spring breeze stirred the sandy ground, lifting dead insects into the parched air and twirling them around the fingers of an invisible goddess.
Senegal was hot. Not humid or dry heat like the continent- but hot and unbearable. At noon, the African sun was a small pebble, held high above the busy villages and the quiet, barren fields. If one was to stare too long at the tiny spark, it would surely set fire to their soul.
Francoise Marie Renard sat on her porch, at a small table which had a fading picture of a puppy, surrounded by pink flowers, on its top. Next to her, a large ceramic bowl of shriveled snap peas waited anxiously for her plump little fingers. She didn=t like vegetables. She stared at the withering plum tree in the front garden of her home. The sour, dying fruit hung profoundly low on the flimsy black branches. Beads of sweat formed on Francoise=s forehead. She knew that if one of them dropped, it would split open all over the sparse grass and the bees would come. She was just old enough to remember the last time she had encountered bees. The way her skin boiled and her eyes swelled and wouldn=t tear. As the ailing plum fell to its demise, the mangled skin spread itself across a few stones, and its yellowed wet body was exposed to the hungry wild. Francoise stood, grabbed a fistful of peas and quickly dashed through the back door.
She ran through the kitchen, then the dining room, then the living space- pushing the double doors open with the sheer force of her fear, until she reached the foyer. This was the coolest area of the house, because of the marble insets on the wooden floors. However, it was also the most delicate and treasured area by Francoise=s mother, Autriche. Four shelves displayed an array of Chinese pottery, above a cherry wood chest, brought over from Austria. On the opposite wall, a large book case, closed off by glass doors, held the stories of cultures, Francoise could only dream about. Of women in large ball gowns, gliding across real marble floors and drinking wine on plush velvet chairs. Of gilded men in spats, wigs or top hats. The Arc du Triomphe, the Louvre, the opera houses, the cobblestone walkways and tall, ornate street lamps. She wanted it all B the gracefulness and elegance of the places in her dreams. She sighed as she tip toed out of the foyer, down the long hallway to her bedroom.
The room was as white as her dress, shoes, socks and face. She stood in front of her white-rimmed mirror and pulled her bottom lip down to her narrow chin. She wondered why her mother and father were so pale and why their voices were so stiff. Patin, their Aboy@, looked good in white. It was beautiful against his black skin. Azelle, her nanny, was as black as wet tree bark and she smelled like rain. Francoise lifted her sun bleached hair to study her neck. It was pale. She lifted her dress up and peeled back the top ruffle of her camisole. She was proud of her tan lines.
As the sun set, Francoise began to get drowsy. She rested in a large wicker chair near the window and played with a button she had found beneath her wardrobe- passing it back and forth from hand to hand. She noticed how small and smooth her hands were- not like the little black children with their grain pullers’ scrapes and aching knuckles. But Francoise’s legs told stories of long afternoons spent in places where she shouldn’t have been. Purple bruises, pink scrapes that at their outset had been red, little brown bumps that would blacken and then blue in another day or so. Her legs were a canvas for all the adventures she knew her mother would never approve of, just like her tan lines were, in and of themselves, a secret masterpiece.
Awake….eyes open….nothing happening. All night I had shifted in my bed, waking up every hour on the hour. I was hot and my legs slipped over one another with sweat. Every time I rolled onto my left side I could no longer stare at my front door. I would have to stare at the window- with the heavy plum curtain. I couldn’t tell you what I feared so much about turning my back on that door…just that it kept me in a waking state. That door- with two locks on top, one at the bottom, a chain in the middle and an old Victorian police lock right in the centre. There was no other entrance to this room. Perhaps I feared that there may be an alternative exit someplace or maybe someone, somewhere in the world had a duplicate key to every lock. Either way, I heard things creeping inside the walls and that was enough to make anyone toss and turn. It was very early morning- too dark yet to get up and start the day but light enough for me to thank God I had made it safely through one more night- scared as I was.
At this point I heard what sounded like an angel falling from the skies- a short shriek and a crash like glass armor hitting iced pavement. I did not move- just pulled the sheet close under my chin and rolled to my right side- eyes fixated on the door. I was so tired and my eyes ached from the previous day which I had spent weeping. I wept not because of sadness or joy- I wept with anxiety. Anxiety for the world and for the tiny part I sometimes did not even seem to have in it. After all, what could one really do in this world that seemed to be careening completely off course? If people in the Peace Corps or the
I could hear footsteps coming up the stairwell from the laundry room of my building. They were heavy, though they seemed to move quickly. I kept my eyes on the door. I was lying on my right arm and it began to go numb. A yawn escaped my mouth and I could feel my eyelids slowly drooping. I fought as hard as possible to keep them open but before long they had shut completely and I began to dream. I was in a small boat and could hear nothing but the water beneath me, slapping up against the wooden hull. My arms convulsed on the bed as if I had been thrown overboard - my eyes flew open and desperately tried to focus.
A figure stood over me. I was so shocked that someone had gotten in – had penetrated my fortress- my stronghold- my safety that I had worked so hard to maintain, that I scarcely seemed afraid of this intrusive presence. It was still too dark in my room to make out a face, but a strange smell wafted over my bed. It smelled like death- that rusty smell that you can taste on the back of your tongue. And then it lifted and the most wonderful aroma of sunflowers filled the room. Had I died in my sleep?
to be continued....
I cannot clearly state- even to this day- how this figure had entered through the locked door- or how it was that, once my eyes had focused, I was staring into the perfect blue eyes of Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde.
He took my hand and with his other covered my mouth. It is here where my journey truly began. I tired to scream and sat straight up in bed. He was gripping my face so hard that I could think of nothing to do but bite down twice as hard.
“So- you do want to live then?”
His comment calmed me and he cautiously moved his hand away from my mouth. He smiled warmly and asked me again.
“Were you really going to kill me?” My eyes were wide with terror and awe.
“No dear- but I thought I may as well give you a bit of a shock- you know….stir up the spirit a bit”.
He chuckled, lit up a cigarette and examined my book shelf. His eyes fell, firstly, to his own works right there- proudly alphabetized on the top shelf. Just below it, a shelf of commentary, conspiracy theories and a compilation of his letters. I sat on the edge of my bed- trying to straighten out my messy hair. And for the first time in a long time I wished that I had worn a formal nightgown to bed instead of my ex-boyfriend’s oversized “Natural Born Killers” t-shirt, complete with “Kiss Me I’m Irish” boxers.
“So…” he began, glancing once more at my collection “Do you know who I am?”
“Of course- but…how? How are you here?”
“Well…”
“Am I dead?”
“No…but I am”
He then approached me and closed my eyes gently with his left hand. No words were exchanged as he placed two coins on my closed eyelids- under my skin, I could feel the cold silver weighing upon them. He then took my body into his with his right hand and we were in an artist’s embrace and I could feel time moving around us.
“By the way…I love the boxers” he whispered.
Limbo:
Awake…eyes closed…something cold and wet. I rolled over and the coins fell to the floor with a ping. I looked around and could see very little in the darkness. My clothes were soaked through with sweat. Had I fallen onto the floor in a fit of dreaming?
“Oscar- er- Mr. Wilde…sir?” I called out.
Nothing happened. Then suddenly I felt something slither along my ankle and looked down to find a black snake unlike any I had ever seen before. It moved across my skin and more of it seemed to keep coming out of the darkness- it may have been up to fifty feet in length. Naturally I screamed and a large hand reached out from behind me and once again I bit down as hard as I could.
“Darling- we have got to stop meeting this way!”
I recognized his voice and immediately felt at ease again.
“Now then…there used to be a door here…let’s see…ah- there we are”
“A door? To where? Where are we?”
“There will be time for questions at the end of the tour, you silly girl!” He then flashed me a quick smile and lit a match, revealing a queerly shaped door.
“Tour?”
“Indeed…now then... Mind those slithery things and do watch your step”.
He turned the worn knob and pushed me through the doorway. Down and down I spun through the hot air. My guide followed closely behind me, all the while sipping tea very elegantly from an ivory tea set that seemed to be eternally suspended next to him. With a thud, I landed and quickly gathered myself up from the floor. Mr. Wilde planted his feet firmly on the ground and threw his tea cup over his shoulder- strangely it did not shatter.
“The truth is that… whatever is contradictory in the natural world is also true in the unnatural world and even then, one can never really know if the unnatural is merely a reserved reflection of our most basic and natural desires”.
“Do you spend every minute of your life….er- death coming up with confusing, contradictory little sayings and kidnapping people in the middle of the night?!”
“Naturally” he replied with a sly smirk.
“That is it! I have had enough of your cryptic little babblings! Where in the hell am I?”
“Exactly”
“What the hell are you talking about?!”
“Exactly!”
“Godamnit! Where are we?!”
“We’re in hell dear”.
“Oh…for a moment I thought I’d gone down the rabbit hole!” I chuckled nervously.
He then looked at me sternly and said “yes well….we shall see Mr. Dodgson soon enough”.
“Lewis Carroll is in hell? What on earth for?”
“Shhh!”
“What?”
“You may want to look about you- and incidentally…keep your wits about you- sometimes your wit is all you can rely on when confronted with the hypocritical, the self-serving…sometimes the apathetic….sometimes…the mad”
“The mad?”
All around us the walls began to move and the sound of far away whispers could be heard. Some of the voices were singing, some were laughing so hard and so erratically that it was difficult at times to tell if they weren’t in fact wailing in agony. I studied the dark coloured wall and even put my hand to it. It felt like skin- but tougher. Suddenly, a pair of eyes rolled open and a dark figure leapt out of the wall, pinning me beneath it. I screamed and called for help.
“Oh- child! Really! We all must face the madness inside of us if we are to…tear down the walls of our own personal purgatory- sort of speak.”
I closed my eyes as this poor soul ravaged my body with screams. I laid there indifferent- excepting that I very well may die right there- either from fear or madness. And then it took a great leap backwards and reattached to the mass of skin that was moving on the walls.
“What was that?”
“Limbo my dear- we’re in Limbo- its where people go who do things out of madness.”
“Like what?”
“Lay about…waste their lives…torture….kill…”
“But wouldn’t they be lumped together with murderers or the slothful?”
“Ah- but they had no choice in the matter- they didn’t choose to be mentally unstable….and incidentally…you’ve been reading far too much Dante”
“So- it isn’t like the Inferno?”
“Well- its hot if that’s what you mean” he smiled.
“I mean- the way its all ordered- is it really nine levels?”
“Well- it s more like seven….and I may as well tell you now- they are not as easily compartmentalized as he would have you believe- because , lets face it…life is not that easy to categorize and file away- and well, neither is death. You’ll find nothing is quite what it seems down here and nothing that happens up there goes unnoticed down here.” He then confidently grabbed my right hand and led me down a long hallway.
As the passage narrowed I found myself a bit stuck. I could barely squeeze through the next door, yet my somewhat portly guide seemed to get through it effortlessly.
“Just open your mind” he said smugly.
I took a deep breath and sucked in as much air as I could hold and as I continued to squeeze my way through, the door suddenly grew wider and I flew into the next chamber. This room was composed entirely of mirrors. Occasionally people would wander through one mirror and out the other, but if they looked directly at themselves they would see what was truly inside them, for this realm, I was told, belonged to the hypocrites and liars. Just as in Limbo, I could hear whispers of the dead all around me.
“If it doesn’t fit- you must acquit” and “I am not a crook” echoed and bounced off the polished glass. Mr. Wilde led me to a mirror and I looked upon myself- but it was not me gazing back at myself, but an exaggeration of all my features- a funny looking caricature.
“That’s not me!” I yelled.
“It is…now….though you may be able to change your ways and avoid looking like that” he pointed at a man nearby who was gazing at his distorted figure in the glass.
“That’s- that’s Dr. King...isn’t it?”
As I approached him, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. turned his head to look at me. His eyes were every bit as awe inspiring as I had always imagined they would be. His shoulders were strong and his overall countenance was something marvelous to behold.
“Dr. King” my voice shook, “It is such an absolute honour to meet you- I….I don’t know what to say...”
“That’s alright little lady- that sweet smile of yours is enough”. His voice was like a creamy, undoubtedly fatty, spread and my heart was an eager biscuit. I would have listened to him preach for decades if my guide had not interrupted and drawn my attention to the good doctor’s reflection. His eyes were completely gone- nothing remained but black sockets. His lips were sewn together with thick cord. On each arm a dozen pretty women clung to his sleeves. On each of their hands, a wedding band glistened and it all became disturbingly clear to me. I backed away and felt more than a little sick.
As we collected ourselves to move on, I noticed a man with his back against a mirror, staring at his feet and mumbling something. He seemed to be in prayer, so I thought it best not to disturb him.
“Dominae, labia mea aperies.”