Along the sides of the valley stood a row of statues carved from immense blocks of black stone. Those silent presences, with their hollow, staring eye sockets, seemed as menacing as anything we had yet encountered.
This place, now, was our reality; the Paris drawing room where my other self lay senseless in her chair had faded to a dream.
As we went on the landscape altered, became green and lush; the air was rich with flowery scents. Trees arched overhead, dripping with wisteria and tropical vines. Rank jungle vegetation crept across the path. Then the land rose sharply, and as we crested a rise, Alexandra, walking a little ahead, gave a cry of astonished joy.
There in the near distance rose a city of out of fairytale. Slender white spires glittered against a sky no longer grey, but azure. As we approached, the city revealed itself in a gorgeous confusion of turrets and cupolas and campaniles, gilded domes and steeples, jeweled mosaic walls and gates of shining metal. Could this be some fabled city of antiquity — Byzantium, or Samarkand , or Xanadu?
“The city of dreams,” breathed Alexandra, breaking our awestruck silence.
“Poor M’sieu Verlaine,” I said. “How sad that he will never see it.”
We passed through gates of gilded bronze and climbed a flight of marble stairs. At the top was a pillared colonnade lit by hanging lamps of silver filigree. It opened onto a broad plaza lined on both sides by arcades, their columns and archways sheathed in mother-of-pearl. The floor was paved (marvelled Alexandra) with sardonyx and malachite and rose-quartz. But there were no shops or cafés or market booths, no musicians or chestnut sellers or children playing.
We saw no one, heard not a single human voice. We held our breath, not daring to look away for an instant, for fear this miraculous city would vanish, as the road behind us had vanished, and we would find ourselves once again on the edge of an abyss. And so we stood for a long while gazing at tapestries embroidered with gold thread and stitched with pearls; rows of alabaster statues; wall panels of delicate green and silver cloisonné; waterlilies like scraps of moonlight floating on a lapis lazuli pool.
And yet, there was wrongness here. It was like a faint whiff of mildew and decay, not quite disguised by the fragrance of sandalwood and jasmine, an effluvium that somehow seeped from the iridescent columns, the gleaming marquetry.
And where were the people who should have inhabited this enchanted place?
At the end of the plaza was an archway set in a wall of ice-white crystal. I looked at Alexandra, saw my own fearful uncertainty reflected in her face. What lay beyond? Would we discover palaces and pleasure-gardens? Lords and ladies in cloth-of-gold and peacock feather masks? Or would we find only hushed and echoing courtyards, deserted streets?
There was another question neither of us wished to ask aloud. Beyond that glimmering archway, would we find our way home?
We stepped through. And everything changed.
We looked out across a dismal ash-grey cityscape, an endless vista of black columns and featureless granite walls. A bitter wind scattered dead leaves along the cobbled street, chased dark clouds across a waning moon.
At first we heard only voices: a thin, wordless chorus of lamentation, a sound filled with such inexpressible misery that we wanted to stop our ears. And then we saw what had made those cries. They were everywhere, circling all about us: faceless things made of dusk and shadow, ribbons of blackness swirling around the basalt pillars, scarves of smoke blown across the cobbles and congealing into clots of darkness. Now and again there was the suggestion of a blind dead eye, a skeletal limb, a mouth gaping in a howl of fury or despair.
And I knew them at once for what they were.
“ . . . I have seen a monstrous bodiless creature seizing hold of someone. It wraps itself around its victim like a black shroud, and slowly disappears as if drawn into his body through his living pores.” Thus Madame Blavatsky had spoken of disembodied spirits, soulless reanimated shadows desperate to regain a human form. I saw Alexandra cross herself, saw her lips move in a silent, terror-stricken appeal to her childhood God, and I knew that she remembered those words as well as I.
A creature made of shadow was taking hideous shape. Eyes burned like coals in its cadaverous face. It was the face I had tried all these months to forget, the one that still haunted my dreams. How well I knew that mocking grin, though it was infinitely more vengeful and malevolent now than it had been in life.
It wraps itself around its victim like a black shroud, and slowly disappears as if drawn into his body through his living pores . . .
George had come for his revenge.