One Thing about the Night.
Terry Dowling.
Terry Dowling [eidolon.net/homesite.html?section_name= terry_dowling] lives in Hunters Hill, Australia, and is one of the best prose stylists in science fiction and fantasy. His short fiction is widely published in Australia and has appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, SciFiction, and Interzone. Although he has never written a novel, his SF stories have been collected in eight volumes in Australia since 1990, most famously in the Tom Rynosseros series, and his influences are most saliently the stories of J. G. Ballard, Ray Bradbury, and Jack Vance. He was presented with the special Convenor's Award for Excellence at the 1999 Aurealis Awards for Antique Futures: The Best of Terry Dowling. In addition a critic and reviewer, and an anthologist, Dowling is also a musician and songwriter, with eight years of appearances on Australia's longest-running television program, ABC's Mr. Squiggle & Friends. Presently, he teaches creative writing in Sydney and Perth.
"One Thing about the Night" was published in The Dark, edited by Ellen Datlow, a distinguished original anthology of horror and the supernatural. It is a polished and slickly told story of supernatural research, with rational scientific arguments and a finely tuned atmosphere that is the hallmark of the master craftsman. It somehow manages to be both authentically horrific and optimistic. It is an interesting comparison to the Neil Gaiman story, earlier in this book.
Like the good friend he was, Paul Vickrey had kept to our first rule. He'd told me nothing about the Janss place, hadn't dared mention that name in his e-mail, but what precious few words there were brought me halfway around the world nineteen hours after it reached me.
Access to hexagonal prime natural.
Owner missing. Come soonest.
Suitably vague, appropriately cautious in these spying, prying, hacker-cracker times, "prime natural" would have been enough to do it. But hexagonal! Paul had seen this six-sided mirror room firsthand, had verified as far as anyone reasonably could that it was probably someone's personal, private, secret creation, and not the work of fakers, frauds, or proven charlatans muddying the waters, salting the lode, exploiting both would-be experts and the gullible.
The complete professional, Paul had even arranged for an independent observer for us. Connie Peake stood with Paul Vickrey and me in the windy afternoon before 67 Ferry Street, the red-brick, suburban home overlooking the lawns and Moreton Bay Figs of Putney Park, which in turn looked out over the Parramatta River. She promised to be a natural in that other sense: someone with a healthy curiosity, an open and scientific mind, and a respected position in a local IT business, recommended to Paul by a mutual friend as someone unfamiliar with the whole notion of psychomantiums and willing to help. And now Paul was briefing her, giving her much of what he'd given me on our way from the airport. The Janss place would have been an ordinary enough, single-storied house except that its missing owner had bricked up his windows a year ago. At least a year, Paul was telling her, because it was all behind window frames and venetian blinds before then. Finally one of those venetians had fallen, revealing an inner wall of gray brickwork beyond, making 67 Ferry Street an eyesore and its reclusive owner an increasingly mysterious and unpopular neighbor.
"Seems Janss was a nice enough guy at one time," Paul was saying. "Friendly, always obliging. When he lost his wife and kids in the car accident, he went funny. He bricked up the windows, never answered the door. He abandoned the shed he was building in the yard, though he moved his bed out there and prepared meals and slept in the finished half. The neighbors still saw him around the place until two months ago."
"Surely local authorities did something," Connie Peake said. "Contravening building ordinances like this." We hadn't known her long, but Connie definitely seemed the sort of person who used words like "contravening."
"They never knew," Paul told her. "Not till the blinds in the living-room window there fell-in what used to be the living room anyway. Finally, neighbors did phone it in. The council investigated, and my contact arranged for me to be there soon afterward, as Janss's solicitor."
Which he wasn't, of course, but Paul was hardly going to tell Connie that. Who was to know that Janss hadn't had one since the inquest three years ago?
Bringing me from the airport, Paul had explained that there was a sister in Perth who had come over for the funeral but seemed to have moved since then.
"A neighbor convinced them that they should break in, in case Janss had had a stroke or something and was lying there. He wasn't. The place was abandoned. So they fitted a new lock and stuck an inspection notice on the back door. My contact told me about the room."
"And now you have a key." His sangfroid had, quite frankly, astonished me.
"I do. If anyone challenges me on it, I'll say Janss and I had a verbal agreement. No paperwork yet."
"Provided he doesn't turn up."
"Provided that, though I'd just say someone phoned claiming to be him. Very thin, I know, but it's worth it. We have a window of opportunity here, Andy."
I could only agree. Hearing him talk to Connie now, I marveled yet again at how my only contact in this part of the world, a middle-aged former lawyer normally busy running his antique business, just happened to learn of this particular house halfway across the city, not through his usual antique-market channels but through an acquaintance who knew something about his interest in mirrored rooms.
"I'd like to see it," Connie Peake said, as if tracking my thoughts. "It's cool out here."
It was. A chill autumn wind was blowing across the river from the southwest. The big trees in the park across Ferry Street took most of the force, heaving and churning under a rapidly growing overcast, but screened off much of the lowering sun as well.
"Of course," Paul said. "We have to go around back. There's no front door anymore."
Connie frowned. "But-oh, it's bricked up, too."
The comment brought a thrill. More than Paul's e-mail, more than seeing the dull-gray Besser bricks behind the window glass in the red-brick wall where the living room used to be. There was a prime hexagonal in there, in all likelihood a genuine psychomantium and more.
Eric Janss had let the trees and bushes in his driveway and backyard grow tall. No curious neighbors could peer over their fences at us. Anyone seeing us arrive would be left with impressions of three well-dressed, professional-looking people talking out front, obviously there in some official capacity and driven inside because of the deteriorating weather. Paul unlocked the sturdy back door and we stepped into an ordinary enough combination laundry-bathroom. There was a washing machine, sink, drier, and water heater to one side, a toilet and a shower stall to the other. What looked like a closed sliding door at the end led deeper into the house.
"It gets stranger from here," Paul said for Connie's benefit, closing and locking the back door behind us. "I'll have to go first."
At one time, the sliding door would have led into a kitchen. Now, as Paul drew it aside, it revealed a short, dim passage of the same drab Besser brick we'd seen behind the front windows. At the end of its barely two-meter length was another door, made of wood, painted matte black. Paul switched on his torch, waited till we were all in the passage, and slid the first door shut behind us.
"So most of the house is dead space or solid?" I asked, again for Connie's benefit.
"We can't know without demolition or soundings, Andy. Janss probably brought in the mirrors through the French windows facing the yard, then bricked them up behind the frames. None of this is the original house plan. He pulled down interior load-bearing walls, pulled up flooring, and anchored the new construction in concrete."
"And the neighbors never knew?" I said. "Never saw him bringing in bricks or heard him doing renovations?"
"Apparently not. He was just the reclusive, recently bereaved neighbor. Maybe he brought in stuff late at night or waited till people went on holidays. Who would have known? You saw how overgrown the driveway and backyard are."
"Can we get on with this please, Mr. Vickrey...Paul?" Connie said. 'I'm supposed to be back at the office by five. You wanted me to see the room!'
She didn't mean it peevishly. She just had things to do; things no doubt set out very meticulously in a busily filled diary. In another life she might have been a relaxed, even pretty, woman. But not here, not now, not this Connie.
"Of course," Paul said, and moved past us to push on the inner door. It opened with a spring-loaded snick.
Other torches shone back at us immediately, dozens, hundreds of them, in a sudden rush of stars. It was like walking onto a television set, that kind of dramatic, overlit intensity.
It was the single eye of Paul's torch, of course, thrown back at us a thousandfold from the mirror walls of Eric Janss's secret room.
"Oh my!" Connie said. "It's all mirrors!"
Paul, bless him, had been right. This was a prime and, with any luck, a true prime natural.
We stood inside a hexagonal room at least five meters in diameter but seeming larger because of the floor-to-ceiling mirror walls on all six sides. Even the wall behind us was mirrored, the door set flush in it as a hairline rectangle and barely visible, spring-latched to open at the slightest touch from either side. The floor was dark, varnished timber, but with little resilience to it; probably laid over concrete. The two-and-a-half-meter ceiling was matte black with a recessed light-fitting at its center. The only other features were an old-style bentwood chair and the reed-thin shaft of a candle stand next to it, a waist-high, wrought-iron affair and empty now. Whatever candle it had last held had burned right down. The chair and stand were at the room's midpoint. Paul crossed to where two mirror walls came together and pressed a tiny switch concealed in the join. Soft yellow light from the ceiling fixture confirmed the reality, sent images of us curving away on all sides. What had already been a moderately large room now went on forever, every wall the wall of another room just like it, then another and another and another, on and on. It was as if you stood in, yes, a maze, or on a plain, or at the junction of promenades like those on the space station in Kubrick's 2001, arching and curving off. Very large array came to mind. It was startling, riveting, overwhelming, all those linked, hexagonal chambers, all those countless Pauls, Connies, and Andys sweeping away in an infinite regress. You knew the room ended right there, hard and cold at silvered glass, yet that was nonsense now, impossible. We were at the center of a universe.
"You see why I e-mailed you, Andy," Paul said. Connie Peake had her notepad out, checking the word Paul had given her earlier. "And this is a...psychomantium?"
"Probably is," Paul answered. "There are other theories."
"Psychomantium covers it," I said, trying to cue Paul to hold back, but it only made Connie more curious.
"No. Please, Mr. Galt-Andy-you wanted me here as observer for this first entry. What is a psychomantium? What are these other theories?"
"It'll bias you, Connie. You're meant to report only on what you see today, what is actually here in case the site ever becomes-"
"I know. But you and Mr. Vickrey both know I'm going to do a Net search the minute I get back to the office. You might as well tell me."
"All right. But help us here, please. Just observe. You can go verify whatever you want and bring questions later. Paul, best guess, how long have we got?"
Paul shook his head. "Can't say. It's not being treated as a crime scene. Janss has disappeared, but there's no suggestion of foul play. He may have just gone off."
"But you don't think so," Connie said. "Look, I'm trying to be of use. Say I've done a Net search already. What's a psychomantium?"
Another time I might have resented the presence of this officious young woman, but not now. It was good to be challenged on the fundamentals, especially on the fundamentals. Instead of pleading jet lag and letting Paul deal with her questions, I kept my attention on the earnest face, not wanting her to see Paul and me exchange glances, and didn't hesitate.
"Okay. Psychomancy was originally telling fortunes by gazing into people's souls. Catoptromancy was scrying using mirrors. The Victorians were especially fond of combining the two: building mirrored rooms so they could contact spirits of the dead. Mirrors are traditionally meant to trap the souls of the departed and act as doorways to the other side; that's why they used to be covered or removed when someone died. A psychomantium is a mirrored room built for that purpose."
"You believe this?"
Again I didn't look at Paul. This was the way to go and I hoped he'd see that it was.
"That they existed and still exist today, yes. That they permit communication with the dead, no. But others believe it, and I've been collecting psychomantia, mainly the modern ones."
"What, as oddments? Curiosities?"
"As something humans habitually do, yes. As a constant; part of a fascinating social phenomenon."
"So not just as functioning psychomantiums," Connie Peake said. "You want the range of possibility behind them."
Now Paul and I did exchange looks. Where did you find this woman? mine said. I had no idea! said Paul's.
Again, I barely hesitated. Connie was surprising me, changing the preconceptions I had of her. "Exactly. It's the infinite regress that's the common factor, and Janss has created it here using a hexagon, what I consider the classic form. The reflections in the angling of two facing mirrors have to be as old as reflective surfaces: the first virtual reality. It must have always been profound, something people just naturally hooked things onto. The French have the perfect term for it-mise-en-abime: plunged into the abyss."
We gazed into that abyss now, the endless rush of corridors taking the three of us off to infinity, doing it in long curves, sending us to the left in one mirror wall, to the right in the next, back to the left, and so on. The ceiling light had seemed kind at first, pleasantly free of glare. Now my eyes had adjusted, and it lent a hard, almost clinical quality to the unending rooms and hallways, making me think of the oppressive cubicles in George Tooker's The Waiting Room. I couldn't prevent it.
"Have you seen many?" Connie asked, almost in a whisper. The faux cathedral space seemed to demand it.
"Not dedicated ones like this. Mostly you get full-length mirrors set opposite each other in drawing rooms and parlors that give the regression effect, or batwing dressing tables with adjustable side mirrors set a certain way. Sometimes it's hard proving they were intended as psychomantiums at all. There are a lot of hoaxes; descendants staging the effect for tourism purposes, claiming all sorts of things. Paul and I are looking for prime naturals, dedicated setups like this, with no trumped-up back-story to work through."
"And you've been lucky?"
"We've seen most of the famous ones," Paul said. "But it's the newer kind, the local ones, we're after. I've found four naturals, none as fine as this. Andy's located five, including a dodecagonal room-twelve mirror walls marked out according to the hours of the clock-a splendid octagonal, and two rather poor hexagonals."
"Using candlelight?" Connie indicated the candle stand.
"Almost always," Paul said. "It gives the most powerful-and traditional-effects."
"The most suggestive, I imagine. The most scary."
"No, powerful," I said, interrupting. "Look for yourself. This present lighting is effective. Janss knew to use a lowwattage, yellowish bulb, but it's like you get on mirror-wall escalators in malls and old department stores. It's not optimal, hence the candle stand. He wanted a controlled effect. So far as we can tell, all the naturals originally involved candles."
"Janss let his burn down," Connie said.
"And that's what we'll do," I said, letting Paul know that it was all right for Connie to know more. He'd accept the decision. "We'll sit here and let ours burn down."
"Turn about," Paul said.
"Turn about," I confirmed.
"You'll do it alone?" Connie actually gave a shudder. "It reminds me of that old skipping song we sang at school."
"I'm sorry. The what?" Paul asked.
"A skipping song." She gave an odd smile, part self-consciousness, part excitement, and recited it in the singsong rhythm of the schoolyard. One thing about the night, One thing about the day, You turn around and meet yourself And go the other way.
She gave another little smile. "The rope would be going really fast, and everyone kept singing it over and over till you had the nerve to turn around. If the rope was long enough, you'd either move back to where you started and duck out, or you'd keep changing directions on the word 'way' until you were out. The one who turned the most times won." She gazed off into the regress.
"I guess Janss did his sittings mostly at night."
Now she had me. "Why do you say that? The room is completely sealed. It shouldn't make a difference."
"I think it completes the effect. He's got infinite night in here, but the sense of corridors leading off would be completed at night."
"It's less virtual."
"That's it." Connie checked her watch, but instead of reminding us she had to go, she surprised me again. "Can I stay for part of this? I won't intrude. I'd just like to...well, know more."
"We'll consider it, Connie," I said, the best refusal I could manage after a long flight and having been awake for twenty hours.
"You hope to find Janss."
"We're doing this irrespective of Janss," I said too quickly, too harshly.
"Excuse me."
"Can you explain that?" she asked. "Before I go?" Connie Peake was proving to be a master at this, and her enthusiasm was infectious. Paul came to my aid. "Janss left no journals, no papers, doesn't seem to have had a computer. We probably won't ever know what he was really doing. We'll have to go by what he made here."
"It's like archaeology," Connie said and turned to me again. "That other word you said about using mirrors. Catop-catop-something."
"Catoptromancy. Catoptrics is the branch of optics concerned with reflection, with forming images using mirrors. Catoptromancy is scrying by mirrors. A catoptromantium is an arrangement, sometimes a room, for doing this."
I hoped my tone would warn her off, remind her that I wanted to examine the room with Paul. She did begin to move to the door.
"So you can't know for certain if a room was meant as a psychomantium or not?"
"No, the distinction has been lost." My tone was even cooler. Please go, Connie, go. "It's more dramatic to talk of contacting the dead. It gets the media attention." Why was I encouraging her?
"I bet. And I guess you have lots of models at home. Miniature rooms made of mirror tiles."
She'd done it again. I had to laugh. "Yes, I do. It's a hobby."
"It's more than that," she said. "You're trying to know something. Look, Andy, can I see you? Can we go for a coffee or a meal?" She was so direct it stunned me. It was as if Paul wasn't even standing there.
"Connie, ask me another time. I've just arrived. I'm jetlagged and there's a lot to do."
"Of course. But another time. Please."
"Another time," I said, and we saw her out, to discover that the weather had turned. Rain squalls blew in across the river and the park, keeping farewells to a minimum. We watched Connie drive off, then hurried inside. Paul locked the back door behind us.
"Sorry, Andy. She was more high-maintenance than I expected."