Philip Nutman - Cities of Night

“You know how much that Picasso’s worth?”

“Half a million,” Carla replies.

“One-point-five, baby. One-point-five.”

Silence descends then, and I wonder what painting they are referring to. Surely not that hideous triangular woman? One could hardly call that art.

My liberators continue to guide our travels in quiet for a little while, and any trepidation I had fades like the colours of Her portrait. The sensation is most pleasing and lulls me into a reverie. Words which had eluded me earlier now flow forth unbidden. If only I could write them down!

Then, as I am measuring the beat of a line, refining to the precise dictates of iambic pentameter, Miss Carla’s sudden urgent tone derails my inspired train of thought.

“Slow down, Stan. You’re going too fast.”

“More likely to attract attention at this time of night if I stick to the limit like some drunk pretending to be sober.”

“Slow down! I think I see something blue up ahead,” she stresses.

“You’re imagining things.”

“No. There — in the median, hiding in the bushes.”

“Fuck. Well spotted. Probably just the state patrol doing their job. Old Joe Cop’s snacking on a doughnut, waiting to slap down a DUI,” Stan laughs.

Our motion slows steadily, and I wonder what they are talking about, the nuances of their slang escaping me.

“Damn, he pulled out,” Carla snaps. “He’s following us.”

“No, he isn’t. It’s just a coincidence. If he was, he’d have those blues going.”

“Slow down.”

“Honey, I’m going five under the limit.”

Then a sudden, high-pitched banshee wail assails my ancient ears, and the horseless carriage lurches forward.

“Shit!”

“Oh, hell,” Carla cries. “Maybe they’re only checking for insurance.”

“I don’t think so! Damn! There must have been a secondary alarm.”

A sudden, frantic spurt of power tosses my rolled form backward, thrusting me up against the duffel bag as a terrible roar descends from somewhere in front.

“Try and catch me, you dirty pig!” Stan laughs.

The roaring increases, the devilish wail retreats somewhat, and a peculiar affliction assaults my stomach. Then it dawns on me — I am feeling sick, a sensation that I had long forgotten.

“Slow down! The road bends ahead!” Carla, ever the voice of reason, shouts.

“I can’t! We’ve gotta lose him!”

“Stan! No!”

“Hold on, baby!”

“Look out! He’s over the line!”

Nothing could prepare me for the sudden motion which hurls me over and over as my night-time escape from Her dead eyes turns into a rolling barrel ride, a terrible, unearthly bellowing like a Spanish bull slain by a toreador roaring around us. A most dreadful crashing, smashing cacophony explodes, and my new friends and I are flung violently to one side. But the torment continues as Miss Carla screams and Stan cries out in terror. Sailors at the mercy of a cruel sea are we, tossed and turned and —

Then I am free, flying through the night air.

NO! I want to cry. No! No!

My portrait glides slowly, with such unexpected gentleness in contrast to the terrifying violence, and as I float to the soft embrace of a grassy embankment, my canvas unrolls, allowing me to see what has happened.

Stan’s horseless carriage is a gnarled tangle of metal and broken glass lying on its side. And there, not more than a stone’s throw away, is another of those infernal contraptions. It, too, looks like it has been smote by the hammer of Thor, the Norse God of Thunder. Behind the wreckage, a third vehicle approaches, seemingly the source of the harpy’s screech, a fact confirmed when it comes to a stop and the noise ceases. Only the satanic red and bright blue of its lanterns persists, painting the dark countryside with rhythmic splashes of primary colors. Then poor Miss Carla begins to scream, and from my vantage point on the embankment, I see why.

Tongues of fire lick at the back and belly of the metal beast.

“Run! Get out!” I shout in my eternal silence. “Save yourselves, my friends!”

A tall man in some kind of uniform I do not recognize steps from the vehicle of flashing lights and dashes toward the rapidly spreading conflagration. Then an explosion, the likes of which I had never imagined, splits the sky asunder more violently than any lightning storm I had witnessed as a young man in Florida. The sound deafens this poet’s ears and is followed by a hot wind of dragon’s breath which snatches me from my grassy resting place.

Up, up I go, rolling, then tumbling down, down toward the road. But no, it is not to be. A spring breeze decides at that very moment to chase the fiery wind, and on I go, borne aloft by invisible arms. As I float over the other smashed carriage, I see a young man, bloodied and beaten, struggle to free himself. Then he is gone as the blessed breeze snatches me away from the tragic scene.

Oh, my poor friends! Dear Stan of the profane mouth. Poor Miss Carla. How right you were. And now my freedom is empty, for I shall never hang on the wall of your home and watch your two lives in the making. Once again, I feel the truth of the pronouncement: “the wages of sin are death.”

The breeze exhausts itself, and I flutter down to hook onto a bush.

I am cold and wet despite the sun’s steadily warming rays, for it rained before dawn, a deluge of biblical proportions. Some of my oil has run, and I feel most queer. My left eye, I fear, has drooped a little and now my perspective on the radiant countryside is askew. It promises to be a fiercely hot day, and it is not yet noon. Will it hurt as I dry, Her brush strokes flaking as the elements undo Her artful work?

Yes, I will soon be released, and I pray the Good Lord will lift me with open arms into His place. I will endure the pain, for certainly that will come as nature’s forces consume me, and in fact I welcome it. After one hundred and fifty years of numbing confinement, it is wonderful to feel something. And at least I have the scent of blooming flowers and the hedgerow song of birds to stimulate the higher senses.

I will be free, but who will mourn for me?

Dedicated to the memory of Dr. Thomas Holley Chivers, “the Lost Poet of Georgia,” who did, in fact, accuse Edgar Allan Poe of plagiarism and, later in life, according to local legend, request to be buried beneath the doorstep of his home, Villa Allegra, so that his lovely younger wife would never remarry.

Van Helsing’s Journal, September 14th, 1861.

It pains me so to commit shameful details to vellum, yet I cannot help but believe perhaps some significance lies in the reoccurrence of these terrible dreams, these night-shadows which haunt me such that I awake trembling with disgust. Yet my occult studies have proven much can be learned in the dusty recesses of a man’s mind.

For the fifth night in succession, the phantoms of memory have come to vex me like a succubus, though never in my forty years have dreams elicited a sense of dread so strong, so devastating to the soul. I wake a man whose very moral fibre threatens to shred.

This night’s black agent was of the most negrescent stripe, and by far the most heinous a man of my standing could tolerate. It began, as always, by finding myself exiting Piccadilly Circus in the direction of The Strand. The smuts, as ever, hung thick enough to induce a heaviness of the lungs, a sluggishness of step.

There, on the corner of The Haymarket, stood a Mother Midnight, her reddened lips smeared by what I do not wish to think about. Like many of her ilk, she had with her a daughter for trade peering with the startled eyes of a wounded lamb.