The Triforium Page 10

  “You’re the first tonight. A bit early aren’t you?”

  “Oh we need some quiet time together before it gets rowdy. How’s it going Paula?”

  “Quite well, you know. I’ve scraped up enough money to get a flat of my own—”

  She stopped mid-sentence and stared in amazement at Wallace.

  “Come Wally,” Maeva ordered, as she grabbed his left hand and pulled him toward the white tile-lined stairway that led to the platform below. Industrial-grade florescent lamps starkly illuminated the series of steps.

  “One … two … three … four …” Butterfield started counting them beneath his breath as he worked his way down to the platform below.

  Step number sixty-four was the last step in his descent. Beyond where the stairs ended was a solid white wall with a simple white wooden door. Next to the door was a black version of the Amazon they had encountered on the way in. Above the door was a blue neon sign. The Brocken Specter, it said.

  “Maeva, how nice to see you this evening,” the woman said, as she opened the door for them.

  “Nice to see you too,” Maeva responded as she tugged Butterfield through the doorway.

  Cobalt, azurite, indigo, lapis lazuli, electric blue, Egyptian blue, and Mayan blue, multiple shades of blue were merging, ebbing, flowing, swirling about the walls and ceilings of the old train station. What once was a dual platform tube station had been gutted, and the circular tunnel that used to convey trains had been retrofitted with countless light-emitting diode tiles, embedded in the arched vault of the abandoned rail system. Like a shock wave, purple suddenly erupted at one end of the tunnel and was projected by the LED system down the length of the passage to where Maeva and Wallace stood.

  “Wow, that’s some light show. It’s a giant computer screen,” Wallace exclaimed, as he began to take in the physical details of the psychedelically retrofitted tube station.

  At the far end, where the trains used to come in, was a bar encased in mirrored glass and rising up over two stories. Hundreds of liquor bottles were displayed on glass shelves behind the bar. There was nothing in the center area where the tracks had been. The railroad platforms had been converted into a series of private booths.

  “Why is there nothing in the middle?”

  “It’s a mosh pit,” Maeva said, laughing. She was clearly enjoying Wallace’s astonishment. “Don’t worry, it will soon fill up. This place gets quite wild. I wanted you to see before they started the show. Besides, it gets so loud we won’t be able to talk to one another. Let’s grab a table.”

  They moved over to the nearest booth and sat down. A waitress appeared immediately and waited as Maeva took off her black blazer, revealing a cream-colored top with a rounded neckline. There was a large silver circle in the middle. The circle caught Wallace’s attention.

  “You wore a polka dot dress to my office. Is that just one polka dot?” He laughed.

  “Yes. How sweet of you to remember. It’s my shtick. I love polka dots. I’m Polish you know?”

  “Yes, so I’ve gathered. Should I order you a drink with Polish vodka?”

  “No, no. I don’t touch the stuff. But let me order for the both of us. This place has quite an interesting collection of booze. Are you game for something different?”

  He nodded.

  “Good,” she said as she turned to the waitress. “A fountain and a bottle of Green Man’s Own.”

  “What an appropriate name. What is it?”

  “Absinthe. I have a passion for it.” She said as she winked at him suggestively.

  “Well, I’ve never had it. Isn’t it hallucinogenic?”

  “Maybe, if you drink a lot of it.” Maeva leaned forward across the table, as Wallace subconsciously began to breathe in as much of her aroma as he could take in. “You do want to try some don’t you Wally?”

  “Why yes, of course.”

  The waitress returned with the bottle and the fountain and curiously with more glasses than were needed. Maeva nodded to her appreciatively, then picked up an absinthe spoon and placed sugar cubes on it. She mixed their drinks and handed Butterfield his. “Now Wally, I must hear all about you. Now that I’m part of your firm.”

  “Not much to tell. From Croydon. Father was an architect. I’m an architect. End of story.”

  “Oh there has to be much more to Wallace Butterfield than that.” She glanced up just over his head. Due to her intake of wormwood, Wallace’s ghost was just visible but she could see that he was still sneering at her. Maeva had been a bother to him all evening and he was desperately trying ways to make Wallace aware of his presence but it was proving to be hopeless. Every time he sent a chill of foreboding down Butterfield’s spine, a rush of pleasure welling up from his groin counteracted it.

  “Not much,” he added. “My father passed on last year. Heart attack. I took over the business.”

  “What about your mother?”

  Butterfield was amused by the question. “She ran off when I was a babe with a data engineer for a bank. Went off to Australia, I’ve been told. Guess I might have some boomerang-throwing half-brothers and sisters. Don’t know.”

  “How about hobbies — bred fancy tail guppies? Kept ferrets?”

  “No. I had a terrier, Mutsy. I also had a train set that I was keen on. Still have it, but it’s packed away. My dad was into radiotelegraphy. He had a citizen’s band radio — you know with a telegraph key. We’d spend hours typing out messages to people all over the world. But I want to know about you,” he said, breathing in deeply.

  Maeva mixed him a second glass of absinthe. As she handed it to him, she said, “Well, my family had a textile factory in Hertfordshire. They sold it a few years back. I’ve been out of school awhile and living in London. But you’ve read my résumé, haven’t you?”

  Wallace emphatically nodded that he most certainly had. “But what sorts of things were made in your factory? Don’t tell me polka dot prints?”

  “No. Ladies clothes and, during World War II, just military stuff.”

  “Uniforms and blankets, that sort of thing?”

  “Parachutes.”

  The LED light show went totally black. Then, like glowworms on the roof of a cave, bottle green maggot-like images appeared in the darkness and slithered down and around throughout the system. Pictures began to flash up on the curved sides of the former rail tunnel. Prehistoric cave paintings were now the theme. Bison, lions, antelopes, horses, and scores of human handprints etched in ochre and charcoal.

  “Parachutes?” Butterfield asked firmly, attempting to put the visual distraction out of his mind.

  “Parachutes are how we Woluskys made our money. Big demand for them during the war.”

  A rock group of five blonde women in red patent leather cat suits began to tinker with their mics and amplifiers in front of the bar.

  “So did your family come over from Poland and set up a factory here?” He was raising his voice now, so he could be heard.

  “No. Not quite.” Maeva was almost shouting. “It was on my father’s mother’s side, the Ridleys. My grandma Ridley joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force during the war, and, since the family was into parachute-making, they determined that she could best serve by packing parachutes at Spitalgate. It was an RAF training facility. My grandpa Wolusky was in the First Polish Independent Parachute Brigade. She met him there.”

  Maeva poured Butterfield a third glass and slid it next to the one she had just poured. She was forming a tabletop conveyor belt of drinks, which she hoped Butterfield would keep hoisting to his mouth.

  People were beginning to crowd the nightclub but Butterfield ignored them and the fact that they were all women. He was trying to have a conversation. The fact that these women were in outlandish attire and had more makeup on than circus clowns was not registering with him. />
  “So your grandfather was a war hero. Nothing like that with us. We were clerks and cooks and technicians, that sort of thing. But your family history sounds like great stuff for a romance. War hero meets WAAF who packs his parachute. They fall in love. They marry and raise a family.”

  Butterfield’s speech was beginning to become very deliberate. He was trying to keep control of what he was saying, but the absinthe was taking hold of him.

  “Well, it was that way for a little while. My father was born shortly after they got married. But then things got nasty when grandma discovered, from one of his army buddies, that grandpa had another wife in Lublin,” Maeva said as she finished her third drink and poured the two of them their fourths.

  The band had completed its tuning and now was blasting death metal to a mosh pit full of screaming, undulating ladies.

  Butterfield had to yell. “That’s too bad. Did she divorce him? Take him to court?”

  “No, he died shortly after that.”

  “Oh. In combat?”

  “No, during a training jump. His shoot didn’t open.”

  “Oh … too bad. I mean too bad for everyone.” Butterfield muttered as his head came to rest on the table.

  Maeva moved to his side of the booth and handed him another glass of absinthe. She made sure that he drank it down before speaking into his ear. “Wally, I hope you don’t mind me asking but were you ever very sick as a child?”

  “No, I don’t mind.” He slurred. “Odd question. No, not sick.”

  “No close calls with death?”

  “Noooo.” He raised his head up off the table and stared into her eyes. “Maeva — what a pretty name. Irish?”

  “Why yes Wally. It’s Gaelic.”

  “Does it mean beautiful princess?”

  “No Wally. It means intoxicating.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” Butterfield murmured as his head collapsed back onto the table.

  The walls of the nightclub now appeared fiery red as images of ancient mother goddesses flashed into view. First came crude looking bits of clay that had been molded to show off the oversized buttocks and breasts of some prehistoric woman. Then, the naked and winged Ishtar of Assyria was displayed. Next, came a bare-chested woman from ancient Crete, holding up two snakes. Then, a fifteen-breasted Artemis was revealed. The last image wasn’t of a mother goddess, but it was female. It was part woman and part lioness. It was Sekhmet,

  “Mistress of Dread.”

  “Lady of Slaughter.”

  “Lady of the Flame.”

  The crowd in the mosh pit went wild.

  A tall woman with large three-dimensional linen gorgon heads sewn onto her shoulders, chest, and back, making her look like she was covered with tormented spirits, looked down upon the now unconscious Butterfield. Next to her was a short pudgy woman in a Raven costume.

  “Well?” demanded the taller of the two women. This was followed by a less imperious sounding, “Well?” from the shorter woman.

  Maeva looked up at Hecuba and Artemisia. “I don’t know. I’ve got too much Green Man’s Own in me to still see it. Has his ghost gone away? Is it back in him? Or has it disappeared?”

  “Neither,” Hecuba said tartly. “It appears to be as out of it as Butterfield is. His ghost’s head has crashed on the table just above his. So, did you find anything out?”

  “No, not really. Beyond that he’s awfully cute … Wally that is. You know, I know it doesn’t matter much but I don’t think I could bear it if my ghost were that bad looking.”

  Hecuba and Artemisia knowingly rolled their eyes at each other.

  The drink had made Maeva too uninhibited around her sister WITCHes. She hastened to return to the relevant topic.

  “But he never had a near-death experience. So, that rules out him almost dying and his ghost somehow being trapped in him on his way out.”

  “Maeva, this isn’t a date. Obviously, there is no point in having you continue looking into this matter. We’ll be taking him now. And I assure you that we will find out what’s going on here one way or the other.”

  She gave Maeva a menacing stare as she reached for Butterfield’s shoulders.

  “No you won’t!” Maeva slammed both of her palms into the table as she raised herself up. She quickly reached over and snatched Hecuba’s hands off of Wallace. “I’m the president! It’s my call. Leave him alone!”

  Hecuba reluctantly backed away. “Okay you’re the president. That is until our next election. Which I assure you will be soon.”

  ***

  Sometime during the middle of the night Wallace woke up to discover that he was in his bedsit and that Maeva had taken the liberty to crawl into bed beside him. He couldn’t remember how any of this had happened. But there she was. He examined her naked body through a drunken haze and then nodded off to sleep again. However, in the early morning, chance would have it that both of them opened their eyes simultaneously. What happened next, during those few minutes, when Maeva and Wallace were conscious together, disgusted Butterfield’s ghost. It confirmed his belief that humans were nothing more than sacks. Certainly they were sacks for ghosts, but their culture was about sacks too. Everything important had to go into a sack — food, liquor, sperm, and dog’s droppings, even their children raced about in burlap versions during their family reunions. He had developed this theory that humans measured the significance of their lives by the number of sacks they had filled. Once again he had witnessed another sack filling, and though this variety might provide for some more ghosts, the whole thing was just so tedious that it appalled him. He figured that the only reason humans died when their ghosts left them was because they were no longer useful as sacks.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Coffee Possession

  It took Butterfield hours to wake up. When he did so, it took another full hour to get out of bed. He felt so weak and frail. His ghost felt the same way. Butterfield’s condition was far worse, for he was nauseous. Ghosts never suffered from that. So, Butterfield’s ghost looked on disapprovingly as Wallace Butterfield hurled into the toilet. Everything that Wallace had taken such care to place into his food sack the night before was now being thrown out and flushed away. Butterfield’s ghost had learned this lesson about human hosts a long time ago. They were never satisfied with what they had.

  At some point, late in the morning, Wallace Butterfield began to piece together his evening. It occurred to him, despite his hangover, that he had had quite a wonderful time. He searched his room hoping to find a note, an article of clothing; perhaps an earring had been inadvertently left behind. But he found nothing. No note. No token. There wasn’t a trace of the woman he had become so attached to. Then he grabbed his pillow from his bed, placed it to his nose and breathed in deeply. It was true! His nose confirmed it! Maeva had been here!

  This post-inebriate realization did wonders for him. His vital signs improved. The sticky sweat that clung to his skin and had saturated his bed sheets and underclothes started to evaporate. His skin temperature decreased. He developed goose bumps and felt refreshingly chilled. His stomach then reported in and grumbled for another chance at food. Soon, Butterfield could move his head from side to side without causing himself any injury. His brain was once again comfortable sloshing about in his brainpan. His legs were a little unsteady, but they were fit enough for service. It was time for Wallace Butterfield to rejoin the living.

  Though the heel of one sock was twisted and his shirt buttons were fastened in the wrong order, he managed to get his clothes on and approach the narrow stairway that led down to his office. One step at a time, he lowered himself down, making sure that both his hands were pressing firmly on the walls on either side of him. As he stood on the ground floor, his bloodshot eyes swept about his office, just in case there might be something there. Maybe she left a note in his office? He
was right. There it was taped to his computer screen. Butterfield lovingly coaxed the taped note from his computer, then read it.

  “What a wonderful evening. Went home to freshen up. Can’t wait to get started on Monday morning. Loved the Ferris wheel. Let’s have coffee. I noticed a place just a few streets down the road from the office. Though I don’t get about Croydon, I’ve been there before. The place with all the paintings. Excellent green-eyed coffee. Be there elevenish.

  Love you Wally,

  Maeva”

  “Be there elevenish.” How charming he thought. So cute that she was giving him orders. It didn’t matter, after all, she was coming back, she liked the London Eye, and she said love. Maybe she just used the word casually, but to him it was so nice to read it in association with his name. What a wonder, he was starting a romance with Maeva and had a commission from Westminster Abbey. His life had become too good to be true. And though he could feel a faint ghoulish chill running up and down his spine, he chose to ignore it.

  Wallace Butterfield was becoming a success story! He threw open the door to the street and stepped outside and onto the sidewalk as though he owned it, as though he were a conqueror: Wallace Butterfield the Hernando Cortez of Croydon. Outside of his office, Butterfield normally felt like a snail without his shell, but not today. And though the sun beat down upon his fragile pale skin, as colorless as a cave dwelling salamander, he refused to shrink from the sunlight. Instead, he breathed in several lungs full of crisp Croydon air, which had just been rated 88 on the London Air Quality Index, and set off to find the coffee shop.

  ***

  Even though it wasn’t usual to have a meeting of WITCH during the morning hours, Hecuba had summoned most of the membership to the old Tipsy Dolls Restaurant for an emergency session.

  “How can you be sure that she’s betrayed us?” demanded Zoraida indignantly.

  “Because I followed them back to his office and saw the lights go on then off in his upstairs flat. She was there all night. I saw her come out around seven this morning.”