LAST WEEK: Ryo (the ghost of River’s uncle) explained that Pamela had been born in 1886 to Teresa Wall, one of San Francisco’s great madams, but was raised by Sarah, a descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.
Read last week’s installment here. See all installments here. Read the next installment here.
Chapter 98
Gabriel
San Francisco — 1985
The Fault Line Within
Gabriel lives outside of time. Looking at his exquisite detachment, you might think he was a stone, hard and lovely as the crystal teeth he uses in such deadly fashion, but as the orchid traps the bee, so Gabriel lays his snares: without plan or malice, simply because he is driven.
While River works in the kitchen mixing concoctions of love and absolution, Gabriel creates jewelry of desire.
Just as Thanatos has not chosen to be a deliverer of death, Gabriel has not chosen to be a killer. Even the Moirai, spinners of fate, did not choose their fate. The fault within is not of their making. Few choose to be evil. They only choose to follow their passions. But Gabriel is only half man. The two strands of Gabriel—mother and father—sway together, the waltz of a double helix, the dance of DNA equals destiny.
Now, after the advent of dreams and the appearance of color, when Gabriel reads of a killing, something inside him screams. When he looks upon a charcoal figure that so recently possessed unearthly beauty, he mourns. He wants to create, not destroy. He doesn’t like the role in which he has been cast.
Chapter 99
Pamela
San Francisco — 1906
A Crack in the Foundation
“By 1906, Teresa had become one of the most popular madams in the city,” Ryo says. “Men of all professions and sentiments find release in unseen dens inside her warren. Preachers sneak in and out of hidden passages to worship at the warm altars of Aphrodite. Politicians gather in the parlor, drinking champagne and whisky, trading bon mots before bed.”
“‘A woman who wants to be the equal of a man lacks vision and ambition,’ Teresa told her girls. ‘I’ve tried marriage and I’ve tried sin and believe me: marriage is just whoring yourself to one, instead of many.’
“But despite silks, velvets, and jewels, Joseph visits Teresa nightly. The twilight sky is the same dark blue as his eyes had been. When she awakes, her sheets are damp with his fresh baby scent. The aroma envelops her.
“She tries to lose the vision in alcohol. She attempts to drown the smell in gin. She avoids Pamela, seeing in her healthy face and round apple cheeks only memories. She begins to despise this child, this physical reminder of loss.
“Pamela listens to wisps of laughter that float up from the salon, and other noises, less human, that drift in from the tiny bedrooms. Candles moving up and down the halls send fingers of flame beneath her door like ghosts. The light and noise disturb her. Pamela, unlike Joseph, is strong and vigorous. She was born happy and fearless. Now she is frightened of the night. Not, oddly enough, of its darkness or silence, but rather of its mysterious sounds and the dancing phantoms creeping across her pillow. Sarah has Margareta steal a satin face mask from Teresa’s boudoir. But Pam, already trapped inside her room, cannot bear the further restraint of encircling ties of ribbon. In addition, light sneaks beneath the mask, like lurking danger. Sarah returns one night with a scrap of dark velvet from one of Teresa’s old dresses. Pamela spends the night cradled in the soft caress of velvet hands. She loves it. The embrace of total darkness.
“Noise is more difficult. On a few occasions when sleep feels more vital than breath, she inserts the cotton wads, used by the girls to apply their make-up, into her ears. But deep animal groans from below easily permeate the soft fibers. She rolls bits of stolen love notes into little balls, but they slice her flesh with lies and broken promises. In the morning, her pillow’s red and hard with dried blood. She melts, shaves, and molds candles to fit her ears. But all she accomplishes is an admonition from Sarah and a visit from Doctor Stevens, who flushes out her ears with castor oil.
“One day, Sarah arrives with a special treat: cheese, brought all the way from Holland by one of Teresa’s customers. It’s encased in soft, red wax. The cheese is bland and mushy. Pamala much prefers the rich chocolates filled with cherries, cream, or nuts that Margareta sometimes brings her. They are sweet mysteries, hiding soft centers beneath hard darkness.
“Pamela loves the wax, however, which she warms between her fingers and fashions into gaunt screaming faces or flying birds which she sticks on her wall, like talismans. Sometimes she pretends they’re gifts from Teresa, bought just for her. She wraps them in scraps of tissue, carefully penning notes. Taking her style from novels, newspapers, and love notes that Sarah brings.
“To my dear daughter, Pamela, Pam writes. I don’t think it is possible that I could love you any more than I do. You are so special to me, that no words can even begin to cover what is in my soul. The angels definitely delivered you to me. Take care, my darling, darling girl — Kisses from your loving and grateful mother, Teresa.
“One night when molding the wax, Pam rolls it into pliant balls and pushes them into her ears. They seal out night noises, creating stillness and peace. It’s heaven, this silence. In the morning, Pam’s hair is red and sticky with wax.
“‘Just look at the mess you have made of your pretty auburn hair,’ Sarah scolds, peeling the wax from Pam’s braids.
“But Pamela does not care. It’s worth almost anything to gain entry into the land of dreams where she can fly, free as a bird above the city. She can spread soft wings and drift high on rising currents, never to return. She loves the dark and the still of the night where she can hide. She seeks refuge in shroud and shield. Just as you, River, are seeking refuge in silence.”
Chapter 100
Pamela
San Francisco — 1906
Tent City
“April 18th, 5:00 am. All but one of the customers has departed.
“Suddenly, the house shakes, like an unwrapped present in the hands of a curious child. It shudders for over seven minutes. Girls run half-naked into the streets, falling to their knees, pleading with God to forgive their many sins and to have mercy on their wretched souls.
“Perhaps, Teresa thinks, the end has finally come. Perhaps, she thinks, I will be with Joseph at last.
“But it’s not the end. It’s the great quake of 1906 which ignites the city like a tinderbox. Just as Teresa had lost her Edward to fire, she now loses her house. Out of the four hundred and ten thousand people who call San Francisco home, three hundred thousand are now homeless. Half flee across the Bay to Oakland and Berkeley. Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, the Panhandle, and North Beach are covered overnight with make-shift tents, which rise like pointed dragon’s teeth from burnt soil.
“In Monterey County, the mouth of the Salinas River permanently shifts its course. In Santa Cruz Bay, serpents rear and buck out of mile deep fissures in the sea bottom. Birds flying southward fall from the sky into waiting jaws and are seen no more.
“The Quake temporarily cracks the hardened crust of Teresa’s grief and dissolution. From the split earth, green hope and determination sprout. For a brief time, the city is united. Tragedy creates equality. Madam and matron stand side by side, taking sustenance from the open air kitchens that sprout throughout the city like geysers of benevolence.
“It’s one of those brief windows in history when tragedy unites, not divides. I like watching the images of goodwill flow over me. They never last long, these brief moments of connection, I don’t know why, and I suppose I never shall. It’s only the dead who no longer fight.
“Teresa, Sarah, Margareta, the girls, and Pamela move to one of the numerous tent cities that dot the peninsula like sails on the bay.
“This is a wondrous time for Pamela; for the first time, she is free. For the first time, she meets other children. Sometimes, Sarah allows her to spend a night in her new friend Jenny’s tent. Suddenly, she is part of a family and a home, even though it is not her family, even though the home is canvas. Life is a constant slumber party. She feels full, connected, and secure.
“‘Don’t get too comfortable,’ Sarah says. ‘A boat in the bay is secure, but boats are not built for bays, nor life for security.’
“Pamela doesn’t listen. She’s been waiting all her life for this. It never occurs to her that she is the only one to find this normal.”
Chapter 101
River
San Francisco — 1985
Mystery
River sits at home, head in hands. He cannot even bake. He doesn’t remember any recipes. Even he did, even if he read them right out of a book, even if he followed them ingredient by ingredient, spoon by spoon, measure by measure, he knows they’d be inedible, so full of bitterness they’d bring heartburn, so full of sorrow they’d make you ill.
River’s not listening to Ryo’s voice in the night. He doesn’t hear Huck struggling to turn on the faucet or pecking at the food cupboard. He’s unaware of everything but a twisting inside, a sadness so deep he cannot see an end. Why are love and pain so intricately linked? When one is with you, the other waits just outside the door. They say it is better to have loved and lost, but River doesn’t agree. Loss is too painful. It would be better never to have felt at all, than to feel this longing for what can never be.
Although he’d like to forget, he’s trying to understand. He cannot believe that Thanatos is a God. He cannot imagine what Pam and Mike are. He’s afraid to guess.
Perhaps, he thinks, Thanatos, Pamela, and Mike are all in some sort of a weird cult? Maybe, he muses, the blood is some sort of sacrament? Everything he’s seen is unbelievable.
River realizes that life is full of mystery. The world conceals treasures and terrors beneath cloudless skies. Things are not what they seem: surfaces are deceptive, solid bodies contain more space than matter. Fish change sex with ease. Worms liquefy, bodies dissolve and reform into winged creatures so delicate and fine, they seem like beings from a fantasy. He understands that the very air around him, so seemingly vast and empty, is teeming with unseen, unseeable life.
And ever since finding the pale, perfect infant in the field, he has known that the inexplicable happens. He’s watched Wang Lijun’s face emerge from fur under a full moon. He’s seen Lisa’s fangs glisten in the night like a warning. He’s smelled the sickly-sweet gardenia-scented bodies in the morgue.
Is it odder for a wolf to turn into a man than for a worm to turn into a butterfly? he wonders.
Huck squawks loudly, flapping his wings and upsetting the empty food and water bowls, but River doesn’t even notice. Huck has to land on River’s shoulder and gently peck his ear before River rises and fills his dishes.
Watch the author read this week’s installment in the video below:
NEXT WEEK: “The grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace… except you, little Pamela, except you.” The man laughs and vanishes. All that remains is a plume of inky smoke in the twilight sky, and the warm silver bullet in Pamela’s palm.
Edited by Mitchelle Lumumba and Sophie Gorjance.
E.E. King is cohost of the MetaStellar YouTube channel's Long Lost Friends segment. She is also a painter, performer, writer, and naturalist. She’ll do anything that won’t pay the bills, especially if it involves animals. Ray Bradbury called her stories “marvelously inventive, wildly funny and deeply thought-provoking. I cannot recommend them highly enough.” She’s been published widely, including Clarkesworld and Flametree. She also co-hosts The Long Lost Friends Show on MetaStellar's YouTube channel. Check out paintings, writing, musings, and books at ElizabethEveKing.com and visit her author page on Amazon.