Free Unseaming by Mike Allen Page A

mouth to speak, knows the precise rhythms and pauses. And as this happens the squealing black thing in the den begins to foam, to buck, to lengthen and thicken and lighten in hue. Delmar’s vision blurs, with tears that he understands no more than he does the incantation.
His voice rises in crescendo, and all the space around him seems to ripple, in a way that can’t be seen physically—yet his mind still senses it. The ripple starts where he’s standing and spreads through the room, the house, even the land beyond, and he knows that the power in that subtle wave is setting things to right. The voice tells him so.
The black thing is gone. There’s only Lynda, resting peaceful on the couch, her only motion the soft rise and fall of her breath. There is no sign of Meaghan, but the voice is telling him not to worry about that. He might not see her, yet whenever he asks, she’ll speak, and he’ll know she still loves him.
Lynda’s limp as a bag of straw, but he’s strong enough to lift her. He carries her to bed.
* * *
     
Using the book always makes him uneasy—vaguely, he recalls he’s had to before—but now all is restored. Outside, there are no stars, but neither is there darkness. Just as with the sunlight, an unseen moon bathes his farmland in its shine. He can make out the shapes of the horses, straight-legged and still, possibly sleeping.
He snuggles in beside his lovely, witchy wife, no troubles on his mind, and settles his head in the pillows.
He’s back on the sofa, and behind him the projector rattles. Meaghan sits next to him, kicking her legs, which don’t quite touch the hardwood floor. I asked grandpa to get this out again, she says. We haven’t watched it since forever.
The film unspools in grainy black and white, just like before. But now it resembles hidden camera footage, the view angled down from a corner of the ceiling. From this vantage the disembodied observer peers into a large room with cinder block walls, its carpet and other objects, mostly large plastic toys—a playhouse, a hobby horse, a Sit ‘N Spin—shoved hastily against the far wall to bare the cement floor. Three figures huddle at the center of the bare floor, a man, a woman, a girl maybe seven years old. And the man has a book, a huge ominous tome. There is a small window in the far wall, placed high, indicating a basement room. The window is just out of the camera’s range of clear focus. Beyond it, through dingy glass, shadows move with chaotic fury. Sometimes blinding light flares there. Sometimes the window goes completely dark.
The man is drawing frantically on the ground. The film speeds, somehow recorded in time lapse, an effect that drastically accelerates the chaos seen in silhouette through the high window. The man completes a huge circle inscribed along its entire circumference with headache-inducing sigils. The circle encloses him and the woman and child.
“You were always so good at drawing when you worked at that school,” Meaghan says beside him.
“University,” he corrects out of reflex.
She giggles. “I remember how you came home all the time with those weird drawings in your coloring book.”
“Sketchpad, darling. It was a sketchpad.”
“How you said you got ’em from some book you were studying and you never let me look at ’em. Never.”
He turns to tell her to stop sounding mad, it was all for her own good, but she’s gone. Yet he’s not alone: he’s looking at a copy of himself, but with bruises on his face, a cut down one cheek, dressed in an Oxford shirt with a deeply stained collar, a torn sweater vest, fancy slacks ruined by more flowing stains. He looks like an academic who just escaped from the mouth of Hell. He’s dressed just like the man in the movie. He is the man in the movie.
I try to stop you from remembering , this new self says, but you fight me. Some part of you is always warring with me, trying to remember everything. And when you do, you’ll understand why you have to