Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation (7 page)

Ever since the failure of Marx, it had appeared that philosophy could not actually change the world and could only spout on and on about it, like a crazy aunt at the dinner table. But I knew I was on the verge of a breakthrough in my philosophy, something that would literally break through into the world itself. I was so absorbed in my studies that I had not even seen every room of my new house. There were four floors in all, and I had only been on three of them.
One night a terrible storm took down the lightning rod. In the morning I decided to finally visit the top floor and see if I could find a way to the roof.
On the way up I thought I heard the sound of an acoustic guitar playing. It was very faint, but I could just discern the motions of a fugue. It was possible someone was practicing somewhere in a field nearby; there were plenty of hippies around Ghostmoth in those days. I continued up the stairs and found no way to get to the roof through the house. In fact there were no doors or rooms on the top floor.
I found a ladder in the cellar and as I reached the fourth floor from outside, I heard the fugue again. I also saw a rectangular shape on the side of the house that suggested the location of a covered-over window.
I gave up on the lightning rod for the moment and decided to find out what was behind the walls of the fourth floor. On the inside again, I broke a hole in the wall from beyond which the music was definitely drifting.
Inside was a large room that smelled as if maggots infested with maggots had been stuffed up my nostrils. In one corner was a little writing desk, and in the other was a corpse, leaning upright on a stool, and incessantly playing a fugue on his rusty-stringed guitar.
The musician’s features had long ago rotted away but bits of skin still clung to him as sky clings to snow. On the desk was a sheaf of musical notation and lyrics and a piece of paper covered in 12 strange characters resembling symbols used in electrical diagrams.
After this discovery, I was not seen on campus for two months. I said my absence was due to “medical reasons.” When I returned, I was the same man, but I was most surely not.

I had determined that the 12 “categories” this freak musician had discovered implied 3 more to form a complete series which would transcend the abstract and enter fully into the concrete, “real world.” My task now is to discover and then learn how to use all 15 properly.

3. Lyrics found in the 4
^th
Floor Room, signed Tristan "Reedy" Richards: circa 1965
A stranger shadow troubled Tristan.
At the speed of rain, it painted his hand.
He looked up to see a headless hawk
Never watching him with care.
It shifted on its perch,
Left to right, right to air;
Spreading feathered bone, it flew.
Once more it had to disappear.
4. Journal entry of Burton Talisman: circa 1973
. . . And while I’m on the subject of people that I don’t like, I don’t care what anyone says, Dr. Wilks is a dangerous person. Not only do the number of students enrolling in his classes increases every semester, but the same students continually re-take his courses, even if they cannot get credit for them. One student, Max Blick, has taken the same course with Dr. Wilks over 11 times in the last few years. I seriously think that he should have graduated a few semesters ago but taking the Wilks courses is holding him back. I can’t imagine that he’s missed something. Blick is that kid who never speaks, his eyes are gray and cold like bullets, and you get the feeling he knows how long it takes for a wingless fly to croak. And there are some other students who seem to be following his lead—what kind of peers do I have when Max Blick can exert peer pressure!? What’s really bizarre is that Wilks teaches philosophy—it’s not exactly a discipline that results in being able to do anything, like economics or anthropology, my majors.

Some people think I am overly obsessed with thinking about this stuff but there's nothing else to do and I like people—when I’m watching them or when they’re in my head.

5. Ghostmoth Herald Interview with April Jefferson: September 19, 1978
I ran away from my mom and dad fighting. I went to see grandma at Windy Ponds Cemetery. Nanna had always been the one to make those fights stop, and make things better, and now that she was gone they kept going. Every day was the same and every day got worse. This time dad bought mom a necklace and they were at each others throats—how can a gift take something away? So I sat on her grave and cried, over and over. I can cry a lot. I guess my tears are pretty heavy, because I crashed through the grave and into Nanna's arms, like she was waiting for me.
One arm broke off and I smelled earthworms and 2
^nd
grade—the inside lid of the coffin was made of blackboard pieces. I could still see some kid’s writing in chalk. It was the Pledge of Allegiance. The only readable letters were “EDGE . . . GOD . . . ON.” I’ve been doing more drugs than ever since that.

6. Class notes of Maxwell Blick: circa 1974
Even the entirely “new event” repeats itself—which is to say, every day the “new” happens, over and over. There are a million “first times” going on right now, each notable not only for being “the first” but also for being “the millionth.”

Some of those Times ↔ Bloody (Sum of that Blood ^ Timely).

7. GMPD interview with Neville Parsons: October 3, 1979
Mary and I were walking down the street at about 2 AM. We both have insomnia and walking around the block repeatedly often helps. It was quiet, deserted—a usual Ghostmoth Sunday night. I noticed someone had stabbed holes in the door of a car parked on the street, or it had been shot up. That was weird since we don’t usually have vandalism in Ghostmoth. Then I saw all the cars on the street had been stabbed that way, with deep puncture wounds through the doors. Mary pointed out each tree lining the block had also been poked with something sharp. We were beginning to get worried, and we fairly ran home to find our front door full of holes.
8. Written on back of GMPD interview with Neville Parsons: Date Unknown

I have been up to the 4th floor of the Reedy Place too many times to count, and I cannot find any evidence that corroborates Hammond Wilks' Red Book regarding the perpetually musical cadaver or any indications of any other odd activity taking place there. This is particularly frustrating, since I feel finding this room would be the best bet for locating
The Repetition Must Repeat Itself Now
.

9. Coroner’s report: October 4, 1979
Scene Description
: The death occurred at the decedent’s home. A copy of a suicide note in Maxwell Blick’s handwriting was provided by GMPD Detective King. The note was written on the back of copy of a German book,
Wissenschaft der Logik
by G.W.F. Hegel and stated “The Repetition must repeat itself NOW. No need to wait, or Philosophy is the drunken whore everyone thinks She is.” The note is not dated.
Body Examination:
Initial body examination at GCH revealed an adult male Caucasian seen supine on a steel autopsy table. The decedent has blond hair, green eyes, all natural teeth, an unshaven face, and multiple small scars on the posterior left forearm. There is a small tattoo of the infinity symbol on the upper right bicep, and two apparent single-edged stab wounds are noted in the center of the chest. No hesitation marks are seen surrounding these wounds. No additional external trauma is noted during the preliminary visual examination.
10. Unmailed letter from owner of Ghostmoth Casket Co: October 1, 1978
We knew a guy who had an ungodly supply of blackboards that schools didn’t need. I don’t know where he got them—I guess kids today don’t learn to read or write anymore. Anyway, rather than using a full blank of mahogany, we could just take the blackboard and cut it, put a mahogany veneer on and nobody would know the difference on burial day. We did this over and over without a problem. But after the April Jefferson thing, that was it. We had to give up which bodies had been buried in the “blackboard coffins” and replace them with the proper lids, at great expense. The only one we didn’t change was the one Professor Wilks had been buried in. He had no family to request we fix it, and we didn’t want to spend the money. So he’s still down there with his blackboard.

11. Purple book of Dr. Hammond Wilks: December 29, 1975
Everything that exists repeats itself; from moment to moment it exists, over and over. But if everything repeats itself from moment to moment, then in each moment it is not the same thing that it was a moment ago; it is the thing in this particular moment and not another moment. In this case the word “Everything” must refer to something else every time it is used, and further, even the word “Everything” itself is not the same word it was a moment ago. Strict continuity is not possible. So each thing is what it is not. This includes Life and Death, the key to each of which is a proper understanding of Repetition. That understanding, in turn, can be found through the application of my Fifteen Categories.
There is one other person whom I believe can follow me to the never-ending of this journey, a young man named Maxwell Blick. He has a history of somewhat sociopathic behavior, but he has truly discerned the kernel of my teachings and I have decided to invite him to join me on a research project into this, the furthest depths of Repetition.

It occurs to me that to call Maxwell Blick by his name is to use empty words. What makes Maxwell
what
he is, is not his "Maxwell Blickness." But I digress.
12. Journal of Paris Sparks, president of Ghostmoth University: May 29, 1974
I met with Dr. Wilks to ask him about the recent, disturbing behavior of his students, while trying carefully not to imply I blame him for this. But there are some important questions to be answered: Why are the students constantly repeating his classes, even when the syllabus has not altered? Why do the best students in our school show up even when the school is closed, and wait outside the doors, reviewing the same notes they reviewed weeks before?
Dr. Wilks is clearly an asset to the university, and the (very) small circle who understands what he is saying believe he will be remembered as the greatest philosopher of the 21st Century, so it is difficult for me to broach this subject with him, and I had to be delicate.

Luckily, I found him sympathetic. He claimed he too was concerned for his students and suggested holding his classes off campus, in the spacious 4th floor room of his Victorian House—the Old Reedy Place. There he could keep better watch on them, and provide food and bedding when required. I must admit this is not the solution I was looking for but there is something very persuasive about this man. It must be his eyes. The more you look at them, the more they resemble forgetting them. So you look again and again. In some ways, each dark eye appears like a thing in itself, like a drawing of an eye in an anatomy book that leaves out the face. And then the face sometimes appears this way too, like an unworn mask. It is difficult to take Wilks in at once.

Because Ghostmoth is nothing if not a cutting-edge university, and it is the 70’s after all, I hesitantly agreed to his plan.

13. Petitioner’s declaration filing (for divorce): January 1, 1957
OTHER INFORMATION: Tristan was unable to perform normal daily tasks because he would constantly hum the same tune over and over. The song would take over his every waking minute and sometimes he would hum in his sleep. In addition, he became more and more obsessed with what he called his 12 children—a bunch of symbols he had invented to communicate with “The Headless Hawk of Ghostmoth.”He told me that my head did not do much and that he could remove it and I could still do the dishes if I would let him show me how.

14. Diary of Burton Talisman: October 6, 1979
I don’t know why I decided to follow Max Blick around. I guess I have been kind of fascinated with him ever since he started taking those Wilks courses. There’s not a lot to do in Ghostmoth so if you can't afford drugs, you make your own fun, I guess. I learned that in anthropology class.
This time Max was walking strangely, sort of staggering. His hair was totally messed up. He was barefoot, which is really odd. He had a metal pole with a sharpened point on it. I think it was the lightning rod from the Old Reedy Place. He was walking down the trail slowly and stabbing at everything he saw with it—trees, bushes, squirrels, rocks—it was like he wanted to spear whatever he could.
I was about thirty feet behind him, treading carefully. If he noticed I could pretend to be hiking, since the trail was pretty popular and leaves were turning nicely. Then he stabbed a hornet’s nest hanging from a tree.
I couldn’t help but watch as they flew out and began stinging him all over. Then I got a little scared when he just kept walking while they covered him with venom. I thought he would fall over. But he didn’t fight them, and he didn’t slow down. I stayed as far back as I could while keeping him and the black and yellow cloud in sight.

I realized his walk was so weird because it consisted of a series of exactly repeated motions. No matter what terrain he stepped on, rocks, sticks, etc.—he stepped the same way, moved his arms the same way. Like a wind-up toy.
I saw someone jogging down the path ahead of us. She was easy to see because she wore a bright red track suit. Her head was down and she was focused on each step.
She heard the swarm and screamed. Max approached her, pulsating stingers hanging out from all over his skin, hornets coming out of his ears, his nose, his mouth. I saw her step back and Max stabbed her in the gut with the sharpened pole. He pulled it out and walked over her body, kept going down the path.
I wanted to help her, I really did, but she must have been almost dead and those hornets were all over the place. I might be allergic and die, I don’t know since I’ve never been stung. I’m not proud of it, but I turned and ran and I called 911 when I finally could pick up a phone without shaking, about an hour later.
15. Tape recording of an unidentified male in his mid-thirties: circa 2009
Now that I’ve found the unsent letter from the owner of Ghostmoth Casket Company behind a dresser in his office, I am at Windy Ponds Cemetery to dig up the body of Dr. Hammond Wilks. If that letter is true, they left him in a blackboard-lidded coffin . . .
I’ve finished digging up the grave. It is silent here. I saw a hawk, circling—too far away to see if it had a head or not—but otherwise all is quiet. I’m going to pry open the lid.
. . . (Indecipherable) amazing, he is writing something over and over, tracing marks in the air with the point of his chalky hand . . . everything about him is absolutely dead, but for the arm and hand which keep repeating motions endlessly like a seismograph reliving a traumatic quake.
From thirty years of wear, the index finger on his moving hand is worn down to a nub, but the words he has been writing are clearly visible, etched through the mahogany veneer and into the blackboard coffin-lid: 4
^th
FLOOR UNDER RICHARDS, 4
^th
FLOOR UNDER RICHARDS, 4
^th
FLOOR UNDER RICHARDS, 4
^th
FLOOR UNDER RICHARDS . . .
But I have been up to the 4
^th
floor of the Reedy Place so many times, and found nothing . . .
I’m at the Reedy Place again. I have already searched the 4
^th
floor where classes supposedly took place, where Wilks found the body of Tristan Richards playing a fugue over and over, in vain. But then it struck me that Wilks could have
moved
the 4
^th
floor somewhere else, that is to say, moved whatever made the 4
^th
floor what it was to another location . . . I recall what he said in his Purple Book about how Maxwell Blick is not who he is because of his "Maxwell Blickness." Similarly, the 4th floor may not be what it is because of its "4th floorness" but because of some other quality which can be transferred elsewhere.. . . I’m in the cellar and I have found a door beneath a pile of coal that leads to a small flight of stairs . . .
There is the corpse of Richards, playing a silent fugue—all strings on his guitar snapped and hanging floor-wards like the long feelers of a deep-sea predator—his white hands moving over stale air and warped wood as night-bugs patrol light bulbs, maggots dropping from his jaw-less mouth where the words “painted” or “perched” or “disappear” should be sung. Under his rotten backside, I see a thick manuscript for a cushion . . . (Indecipherable)
. . . I have applied the 15
^th
Category, and now understand what has happened in Ghostmoth, from the little details to the big master strokes of time, from how Maxwell Blick stabbed himself and went on to stab and stab for eternity, making that stabbing the sole meaning of his existence and therefore giving his existence true meaning by giving it one, single meaning; how he killed who he could and how the other students died of starvation after Wilks died, waiting for class to continue; how the rest of the town (Indecipherable); how Reedy made the playing of a song he could not stop humming the meaning of his existence, how that meaning endures. And by lying in that grave, moving his hand like a magician whose method of misdirection is the same as his trick’s effect, Wilks is constantly transforming his entire Existence (not his mere life or death) solely into a sign that repeatedly points the way to the answers of the deepest mysteries, the greatest teacher that ever taught, who is not only teaching but is
only
teaching . . . and that brings me to this moment, here.