Memoria, or rather Hurry

Before Hurry had moved into the house, he had indeed had dreams of a place that was grand-- very grand. He had just been touring the European continent, and during that time had fallen in love with various castles there. His favorite was Schloss Neuschwanstein, with it’s magical coves and fairy tale spires, but among the other enchantments of the tour was Versaille, where he had read and learned much about the Sun King and his various mistresses. As he was a magician, the selling of love potions was quickly pointed out to him, and he learned very much about the scandal that broke out in that court, removing Madame de Montespan from favor after the Affair of the Poisons.

From France, Hurry had journeyed to England, where as per usual he had been billed too similarly to Houdini and was expected to perform all those same tricks, even though he considered himself a spiritualist-- directly opposed to the stated agenda of Houdini to debunk these sorts of claims. When it was discovered that he could talk with the dead, especially those who died lately in the war, he was brought into a lower sort of royal order, where he was introduced to various traditions. This is where he met Aleister Crowley, for example, and W.B. Yeats as well, who both instructed and initiated him into their orders, though would not allow him more than basic initiation. He thought it strange that he seemed to frighten each man. It was here that he was shown for the first time a black obsidian scrying mirror, of the kind used by Queen Elizabeth’s court magician, Dr. John Dee. And it was here that he, using his magical know how, spirited away the object. The mirrors that still exist on display in the British Museum are indeed replicas, and not the real thing, as Hurry brought the mirror back with him to America, where he had finally amassed enough of a fortune to settle down with a woman whom he, at least before they moved into Nevermore, truly loved.

Either love does not last forever, but twists and turns into something new, or Hurry so loved his wife that he wanted to posses her completely, to know what it was like to be her, because after they began to inhabit the house, things did change. He started every night to dream, and he faithfully recorded those dreams down in a journal, much like that diary I kept, which he kept secret and safe from his wife and servants.

In his dreams, Hurry always took the form of his wife, and always in them was seducing everyone around them. Each person that had been to Nevermore became a target for Hurry’s writing, became the seed of his next fantasy. And then, one day, his wife discovered the book. She was angry and hurt. She confronted him, much as my friends confronted me-- she arranged for him to walk into their bedroom to find one of his scenes playing out. One of the most trusted servants was entering her, while she called out, moaning, her own name. Hurry was hurt. He had wanted his stories to remain private. He had not yet done anything but remain faithful to his wife. But, she had taken his book to mean something he did not intend. And he began to think that he should be a much better wife to himself than the real memoria was. And as he thought that, he chanced to glance at his black obsidian mirror-- asking it what he should do.

Which is when a voice within him, that he could not shut out, awoke. It instructed him to use that mirror as a magical device. To speak his wishes and desires into it, instead of writing them down on the page. Then, the voice told him, they would become true.

“Try it,” the voice said. “become your own wife.” So Hurry made his wish, and from that day on, whenever he slipped on female clothes, which became more and more frequent, he was taken to be Memoria. Because of whatever shift in reality needed to happen, for this to be true, whenever Hurry dressed up as Memoria, Memoria dressed up as Hurry. Over time, as HUrry dressed up more and more, they each seem to have completely shifted, so Hurry began to live as Memoria full time, and Memoria began to live as her husband.

This was just the start of Hurry’s interactions with his mirror, which became as addicting as my scribbling in my little book, and my playing with my dollhouse. The voice was always telling him to do something, to control everyone in his house, through whispering his wishes and will into the mirror that hung now in his private bedroom. And he did so, beginning to think of himself as a God in control of the household, beginning to think that whatever he wanted would always happen. And for a while, this was so. But people under control, people used as dolls, as figures but not as humans, people used as slaves eventually begin to understand their condition. And Memoria heard the voice too: it suggested that she use the black mirror, as she had seen Hurry do on numerous occasions, to break free from his spell.

This last part I am guessing, based on what happened next. I-as-Hurry attempted to will Memoria away, to wave her out of my sight. But she, dressed in her male visage, slapped me. This was not so shocking, of course, at the time. She appeared to be the husband, and it was within her rights-- in the belief of those at the party-- to discipline his wife. She stormed off and began to chat with several of the women at the party. Hurry’s heart remained broken, and the pain of that first image of his wife cheating on him echoed again through his mind. He rushed up to her and began shouting. But she chose not to hear him, and she continued to speak with the women that were flocking around her. So he ran, smashing cups and glasses around him, and ran up to the attic. His wife, still disguised as him, actually realised what was happening and followed after him.

The voice laughed through both of their heads. Once again I was outside of the body I was supposedly inhabiting, looking in. It was like a high angle crane shot in a movie, looking down at the terrified souls trapped in that attic: Hurry, in his almost perfectly period dress, with his doppelganger wife reaching out to him. Before it allowed me to hear what it said to them that voice ran through my head and suggested that this was the way it always had to happen, that the darkness needed to swallow those in control, because the darkness itself, the shadow presence, the occurrence and reoccurrence of that voice was far more powerful than anything that would try to stop it.

“So here you both are,” said the voice. “Each ready to die.”

“I don’t want to die,” said Hurry. “I only want to be happy.”

“There’s no such thing!” the voice roared.

“I want happiness too. I thought I had it with you-- then I found that book… and then… then you made me like this.”

A horrible look of realization crossed Hurry’s face. He’d deduced what I had: that something within the house, something about the darkness of that very land is what drove him forward. A lack of honesty perhaps, or a lack of trust.

“I didn’t ever mean for you to become-- I just wanted to have some fun. You were never meant to--”

“Don’t lie to each other,” the voice said. “You only did what you wished to do. I simply helped you get there. And you can’t say I didn’t warn you. I told you both the story about the muse.”

“You see,” the modern version of the voice told me, “I have always, always allowed people the chance to make a choice. It is just a pity that human’s are so weak and lust so much for control. I will always exist, I will always be ready to take over the world again. And you have just about helped me break free--”

“You say we should die,” said Hurry. “But it is you that must be kept away from addicting other people. This house must be boarded up, never to be inhabited again.” He turned to his wife, reached his hand out to her. But the spirit, that faceless, infinite shadow stood in the way of their joining. “I guess in some ways the thing is right. I suppose I must die: it was my lust for control over the world that caused all our problems. Perhaps, if I go now, I can take that spirit with me.”

This is where Hurry, clever as he was, took the action that he knew within himself he needed to take. His arm, outstretched for his wife, was actually a trap for the shadow, who grabbed at him and tried to prevent them from making contact. When the shadow had a firm grip on Hurry, he grinned at his wife, mouthed one last, honest “I love you”, and pulled the shadow with him out through the window and down the three storeys into the little grove below.

“It was you that woke me up, with your dream,” the voice said. “Your dream of control.”

The whole vision of the past washed away, and I found myself in the attic, the window of which had split open during the storm. I could see that grove, and that gravestone supposedly marking Memoria’s **** far below me.

“I dreamed I was the devil--”

“Paradise Lost,” said Artur, who was suddenly beside me. I looked up to see my wife, Llorena Cox, Robert and Roman surrounding me.

“How-- how long have I been here?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Artur. “None of us know. We all seemed to happen back into cognizance at about the same time, though you still seemed to be in some kind of delirious fit. You were shouting out about Hurry Hendrickson.”