Fortress of Ephemera: A Gothic Thriller by Eric Christopherson Read Free Book Online

of unopened mail and—oh, suffice it to say, scores of other collections, all layered with dust, latticed with spider webs.
    In shadow the stacks of clutter often resembled cubist sculpture, or in some way or another were charged with aesthetic properties, but when exposed by passing light, profaned the order of the universe.
    Noah addressed the party: “As you can see the house is something of a mess, and you have my deepest apologies. If only you had waited until next week, and given me a chance to dust and clean up and put some things away …” His voice trailed off. No one challenged this amazing ludicrosity, and I wondered what exactly he saw when he looked about his own home.
    In the great hall we passed a great pyramid of rolled up rugs, a white sea of draped furniture, an island chain of grand and baby grand pianos—seven in total, I think—and a regiment of grandfather clocks about forty members strong and ticking out of synchrony. It was materialism run amok. It was the garbled language of the mad. It was virtually a walk inside an unhinged mind.
    With the ground floor windows boarded up, the darkness achieved a lurid hue. It was the darkness of spelunking, of shut closets and blankets pulled overhead in the night. Nary a city sound, nor the pounding sleet, could be heard, so thoroughly did the family's copious accumulations insulate the household.
    “It's quiet as a crypt in here,” Patrolman Cox said, “save for Noah's jingling.”
    “Cold as a crypt too,” Howard said.
    Willie, just ahead of me, whispered over his shoulder and through his mask: “Smell's getting worse. What is it?”
    “A putrid stew,” I whispered back, “with a thousand or more ingredients. Simmering since before you were born.”
    The miasma so overwhelmed Miss Buxton that she was having difficulty engaging her target of charity in conversation. With every ragged breath or extended pause I expected her to retch, though she never did. Not then.
    Our tortuous goat path narrowed to about sixteen inches at one point, and we had to journey sideways until it widened again. Progress halted briefly as Patrolman Cox announced we had reached “a fork in the road.” Noah directed him to take the right fork, and within minutes we were descending a rickety wooden staircase lined on both sides with empty milk bottles and cardboard boxes of canned goods and catarrhal powder and leading into the basement. I had not previously visited this portion of the home—I hadn't seen most of it, in fact—and I recall feeling a mix of trepidation and wonder, like the boy Aladdin descending into his cave, for I knew this much: that more of the unimaginable awaited.
     
    The Basement
     
    Approximately 6:00 PM
     
    Now the basement of the average American domicile—the attic too, I suppose—is a likely place in which to find Langley-like clutter. (Perhaps there is a little Noah and Elizabeth in most of us. How about yourself, Doctor Dunn?) So imagine just how overstuffed we found this one particular basement.
    It was a dense, surgically packed clutter from the cement floor to the ceiling rafters, except for a pair of Noah's meandering trails, a fully outfitted workbench with a place to stand in front of it, and an automobile buried merely to its wheels in the center of the room.
    Yes, an automobile. And no flivver this one, but a turn-of-the-century era luxury car with a white frame of pressed steel, red leather seats, and a golden horn the size of a gramophone's.
    “Now don't that beat all,” Willie said, wide-eyed.
    “What's next?” Howard wondered. “A Sopwith Camel?”
    “It's beautiful,” Miss Buxton said through her handkerchief. “What kind is it, Mister Langley? I don't think I've ever seen one before.”
    “It's called a 'Mercedes,' ” he said. “A 'Mercedes Simplex.' My father purchased it about six months before his death in 1903, and it arrived by ship from Germany the day after his funeral. Although I don't feel the urge to drive