Ancient Illusions

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The evening before, despite being at the dinner table at eight on the dot, Michael had eaten alone. The housekeeper, Patience, had told him his father was tired, and had requested a light supper in his room. The quality of the dinner surprised Michael—filet mignon, braised asparagus, French onion soup, and a bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild to wash it down. He half expected his father to order he be served bread and water.

But trying to sleep that night had been another story. He dreamed about his childhood, one filled with memories of his mother and brother.

In the dream, his mother had been just as he remembered her; the way he would always remember her. Lionel had faded in and out. He had few memories of his older brother. Ten years' difference in age was a lifetime to a young boy, and both boys had spent most of those years at different boarding schools. As adults, they were never close. But as the dream continued, it changed. He watched his mother and Lionel die and decay into horrible, malformed creatures that reached out to him, wanting him to join them.

He had forced himself awake, but once awake, felt he wasn’t alone in the room. Ghosts walked the halls of this house. He had believed that as a boy and continued to do so now. Ghosts, or something worse.

He switched on the lamp. He was in his old bedroom. It should have been a typical teenage boy’s room filled with posters and books, stereo equipment, and sports paraphernalia, but it had none of that. Instead, it had a single bed with a high wooden headboard, a dark wooden desk with an ancient computer and printer, and three bookcases filled with scholarly tomes as well as several science fiction and historical fiction novels. More than any person, those books had been his friends as he grew up.

Perhaps being in the room he had used as a child had caused the strange dream. Despite his rationalizations, a couple of hours passed before he could sleep again.

That morning, more than ever, he wanted the answers that he had come here to obtain. Then, he planned to leave Wintersgate and never return.

In the breakfast room, a sideboard held a choice of breads, eggs, sausage, and fresh fruit, along with coffee, tea, and orange juice. After the meal, he took the stairs two at a time up to the laboratory where, in the past, his father could always be found.

He knocked, but received no answer. To his surprise, the door was locked.

His father’s bedroom and study were also empty, as was the patio. Finally he went into the kitchen to talk to the cook. Patience told him Stedman had driven William Claude to town in the Bentley. She had no idea when they would return.

Michael walked down to the beach, and after a brief hike, headed back to the house. As William Claude had not yet returned, he went into the library. The room had been out of bounds for Michael until he was of college age and William Claude no longer feared his “grimy, sticky, little boy hands” touching the books. Of course, once in college, Michael had no time or interest to go through his father’s library.

The light in the room was poor, and the shelves high. He had just begun to pour over a section with a number of very old tomes about the Reformation when he heard a book fall to the hardwood floor with a distinctive “thwack.”

A thin book lay on the floor across the room. He went over and picked it up to find it had the strange name, Kwaidan, written by an author with an equally strange name, Lafcadio Hearn.

Something about them, however, resonated with Michael. Not until he flipped through the book to see it was a collection of Japanese ghost stories did he remember what it was. Several of the stories had been made into an art-house movie years earlier. In college, Michael had watched it on video with a few of his fellow students and discussed it deep into the night over beer – probably the best way to talk about ghost stories. Michael smiled from the memory as he flipped through the book’s pages.

Near the end of the book was a piece of linen paper. Michael took it out. The ink had faded, but the old-fashioned script was neatly written and still legible:

In the world of sleep, all the dead people we loved meet us again; the father recovers his long-buried child, the husband his lost wife, separated lovers find the union that was impossible in this world, those whom we lost sight of in early years—dead sisters, brothers, friends—all come back to us as loving, and as young, and perhaps even more beautiful than they could really have been. In the world of sleep, there is no growing old; there is immortality, there is everlasting youth.

The passage was startling, almost as if whoever wrote it had known about his dream—or about the part of it he had enjoyed before it turned into a nightmare.

No one had signed the passage, and there was no other indication as to who had written it. Michael noticed several books by Lafcadio Hearn on the shelf, including an empty space were Kwaidan must have sat. He wondered why it fell, but this was an old house that probably creaked and shifted and settled over the years. His footsteps alone might have caused it to topple over. He was about to put it back on the shelf when he noticed a small bundle of papers there written by the same hand as the note he’d just read. Included were letters that had been signed, “Lafcadio.”

Down the hall, he heard the front door open and shut. William Claude had returned. Michael left the papers but took Kwaidan with him to the breakfast room. William Claude sat near the windows.

“Did you have an interesting time out?” Michael asked.

“A doctor’s visit. I’m not ready to push up the grass yet, boy, so don’t get your hopes up.”

Michael held his tongue, then glanced down at the book in his hands. “I saw your collection of Lafcadio Hearn writings. I didn’t think Japan interested you.”

“It doesn’t. All those books were here when I inherited the house. I’m surprised you’ve heard of him.”

“I've heard little except that he’s one of the first Westerners with real literary skill to write about life in Japan.”

“Sit down, Michael. I’m getting a crick in my neck trying to talk to you.” William Claude rang for Stedman to bring them some whiskey and soda, then eased back in his chair, legs crossed, as he put tobacco in his pipe. “Actually, Hearn might interest you, him being a devotee of the Japanese occult and alchemy.”

“Alchemy? That’s hard to believe.” Michael sat as William Claude took two more puffs on the pipe.

“He was an interesting man, son of an Army surgeon for the British, and a saucy Greek woman. Apparently, when his father was reassigned away from Greece, his mother moved to Dublin to live with her in-laws.” He took another puff. “The Hearns were elevated in Ireland’s Protestant society, and when the colorful Greek Orthodox woman showed up with three unruly children, to say she was unwelcome was putting it mildly.” William Claude chuckled at the image.

“I can imagine,” Michael said.

“She soon returned to Greece alone. Lafcadio never saw her again.”

“She abandoned him?” Michael asked, surprised a mother would do that.

“She did. And after his father married a woman more socially acceptable, he also paid no more attention to his half-Greek offspring. Relatives doled out the children, and the aunt who was ‘stuck’ with Lafcadio soon shipped him off to boarding school. He was always small and shy, and after losing an eye playing sports he was sure he looked ugly, and that people were hell-bent for an excuse to abandon him as his mother, father, and aunt had done.”

His father stopped speaking as Stedman brought in their drinks, giving Michael a moment to reflect on Hearn’s childhood. He understood it. He had rarely spent time with other children when he lived at Wintersgate, so when he was sent to boarding school he had no idea how to fit in. After his mother died, he felt rudderless, and his sense of loneliness grew worse. A couple of times he had “acted out” in school. The first time William Claude went to the school to handle it. The second time, it was Stedman.

Michael hated thinking about those days.

Stedman soon left the room.

“Is that why he went to Japan? To get as far away from that family as possible?” Michael asked.

“He wanted to get away, but his first stop was the U.S.,” William Claude said. “In Cincinnati, Ohio, he got a job on the city’s newspaper, and then married a woman whose mother had been a slave and her father an Irish plantation owner. To him, the two shared having been abandoned by their Irish fathers. Lafcadio had no idea that in the U.S. such an interracial marriage was illegal. He was immediately fired, and soon after, he and the woman had a falling out.”

Michael shook his head. “And since they weren’t really married …”

William Claude nodded. “Exactly. So off he went to New Orleans where he became fascinated with voodoo. That brought him to the West Indies where he met Victor Rempart.”

The name surprised Michael. “Victor? The man who built Wintersgate?”

“That’s right. Victor left France and moved to Martinique when he was twenty-five. There, he and Lafcadio talked about voodoo and such, as well as about alchemy. They realized that the Hearn family was from the same part of Ireland as John Kelley, our famous alchemist ancestor. They discovered they had other ancestors in common and so must be cousins.”

“Cousins? Lafcadio Hearn is a relative?”

“So it seems,” William Claude said with a shrug. “Anyway, Victor grew tired of the heat in Martinique and headed north, ending up buying these twenty acres and building Wintersgate. When his talented cousin’s wanderlust caused him to want to go to Japan, Victor helped him out.”

“And that’s why so many of Lafcadio’s unpublished letters and such are in this house?” Michael asked.

“Yes, although I don’t know why he sent them to Victor.”

“Interesting,” Michael said.

“But unimportant.” William Claude finished his drink. “What’s important is that Victor’s money, obtained through alchemy, allowed him to help the poor man, cousin or not.”

“With you, it always goes back to alchemy, doesn’t it?”

“Why else would I want you here?”

The words thundered in Michael’s head. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s time for you to help. Your power is great. I have a need for it.”

Michael stood. “I didn’t come here to help you! I came here for the truth!”

“The truth? What truth?” William Claude stopped, then rolled his eyes. “My God. Are you still blathering about that woman? She’s not important.”

Michael stiffened. “That woman” was Irina Petrescu. She was the daughter of William Claude’s housekeeper. “She was important to me,” he shouted.

“Was! Was! She’s nothing now. What’s important is alchemy and all we can do with it.”

Michael froze. “What do you mean, she’s nothing now?”

“She’s dead.”

Michael stared. “No. I don’t believe you.”

“I heard it from her mother this past winter.”

Michael felt himself crumbling inside.

Irina … dead. Of all possibilities that had crossed his mind about how he would reconcile himself to the past, he had never thought she might die before he could see her once more. “What happened to her?” His voice was barely above a whisper.

“Auto accident. Single car. That’s all I know.”

Michael’s flesh turned ice cold.

“I’m sorry, Michael,” his father said. “Sorry that you never understood everything I did was for you, for what I believed would be best for you.” His lips curled into a bitter sneer. “I would never have allowed that woman into this family. Her family was the cause of your mother’s death, the cause of so much trouble and sorrow.”

The words were like so much noise spinning around and around in Michael’s head. “What are you talking about?”

William Claude’s gaze turned cold and hard. “Do you think I would have allowed her to be rewarded with any part of the Rempart heritage? And if the two of you had children, do you imagine I would have allowed what my ancestors built to go to them? Never!”

Michael stood, furious. “Instead, this heritage you’re so proud of may well end with me. I hardly see love, marriage, and a family in my future.”

The look William Claude cast on his son was one of pure contempt. “That may be for the best. You don’t deserve to be a Rempart!”

Michael walked away, in no mood to hear any more of his father’s rant, his mind filled with Irina’s death.

In his room, he sat on the bed trying not to think, trying not to acknowledge the shock he felt. But he had no tears. As a young man, he had shed too many because of her. Then, one day, they stopped.

He hadn’t cried over anything since.