Anaïs Nin at the Grand Guignol by Robert Levy

Author:Robert Levy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lethe Press
Published: 2019-10-03T12:11:14+00:00

I wake in the night and reach for Hugo, only to find the space beside me empty. And so I step out of bed and throw on a negligee, the dogs fast asleep before the cindering hearth as I slip out of the room and down the stairs in darkness. In the strange, crepuscular shine through the windows, I make my way to the front door, which I discover has been left open. I cross the threshold, the air heady with the scent of night flowers as I enter the garden, the grass beneath my bare feet slicked with cool dew.

I realize now that I am dreaming, and stare back at the house and its wide face, its eleven shutters closed to the evening like slumbering eyelids. All save the center shutter, which is thrown wide, the glass of its window visible in the moon’s mellow glow. The sealed room has been opened.

The soft crunch of wet leaves, and I turn. There is a slight figure adjacent to the elm tree, past the drive and the far side of the fountain. A crouched and half-hidden shape, barely perceptible in the blue moonlight but there nevertheless, not ten yards away. I am too scared to move any closer, and yet I know I must puzzle out what is happening, that the answer will comprise the most important truth I have ever known.

“Maxa?” I whisper. Perhaps she has decided to pay me a visit after all, here in this twilit realm. “Maxa? Is that you?” The figure shifts behind the tree so that it is hidden, and I force myself forward. One foot before the next, and it takes all my courage to make the slow and inexorable walk to the tree and the fleeting shape beyond.

When I finally reach the elm, I travel counterclockwise around its formidable trunk, its branches swollen and dripping with moisture. There is no one here any longer, and only now do I realize I am holding my breath. I exhale a cloud of perfumed smoke and lean against the rough bark, my relief laced with a disturbing sense of unease, the source of which I cannot place. I close my eyes, and listen to the trill of a nightingale chirruping in the heavy leafage above.

“Have you forgotten me so soon?”

The stranger’s molasses voice shocks me to attention. A melodic baritone spoken everywhere at once, as if sung by a midnight choir of the damned. I attempt to run, but my spine is adhered to the bark, fixed to the elm’s rough trunk like a fly drowning in amber. My hands stick to the tree as well, and I thrash and struggle as I try to free myself. Soon, however, I am immobilized altogether.

“Come.” The invisible fiend whispers into the shell of my ear, the disembodied word seductive, ravenous. “There is so much more I want to show you.”

The heavy branches quiver and bend, and the elm’s dense and unseasonal greenery ripples and descends, draping me in a foliate shroud.

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