The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron by Ross E. Lockhart, Justin Steele Page B
Authors: Ross E. Lockhart, Justin Steele
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expensive tastes and no inclination to a hard day’s work, so men like Henri were bread and butter for us.
At the Steadman Gallery, he kissed Nicky’s hand but shook mine. He struck me then as I would continue to think of him throughout our acquaintance: as a spoiled dandy who enjoyed playing the beast because it amused him, more than because there was much actual beast in him.
Aside from his money and his interest in the arts, he was known mostly for what he called his “revels.” “Party,” he said to me once, “is far too small a word.” I don’t remember how many of them Nicky and I attended in the years that we knew Henri. Nicky always brought his camera, and he got a couple of decent series out of them, neither of them half as good as the work he was doing when we met, but then, booze and drugs and other temptations flowed freely at the revels, and Nicky was no less susceptible to them than I, and they took their toll on both of us, in different ways.
How to describe one of Henri’s revels? He once told a reporter, “I take intent, and marry it with time and place.” Which isn’t really very helpful, either. I guess that fundamentally they were just parties, on a grand scale, complete with the kinds of party games that would have shocked and titillated Victorians, but Henri saw them—or maybe he just sold them—as something more like performance art. A séance held at midnight in a haunted hotel. A black mass in the catacombs under Paris. Diversions for the bored and the rich and the morbid. Nicky and I were two of those, and Henri was rich enough for everybody.
This one, though, the one atop the Brocken, on Walpurgisnacht, was supposed to be different. More intimate, more personal, and his last. That’s what the invitations had said. Henri had supposedly discovered a rare film print by Eadweard Muybridge, something suitably infernal, not just studies of animals in motion, and he was going to screen it for a few dozen of his closest friends at midnight, “in its native habitat.” There was to be a small chamber orchestra, and Henri had reserved the entire hotel, so we wouldn’t be disturbed. “Unless of course some other witches decide to drop in.”
***
When the train pulled up to the station, Nicky and I got out, along with a few others that I recognized from Henri’s inner circle, and still more that I didn’t. Maybe new additions, maybe lapsed recruits pulled back in for one last hurrah. I helped Nicky shoulder one of his camera bags, and we all walked down to the cars that were waiting to take us the rest of the way to the top of the mountain.
We shared our car with a girl who looked young, and too thin for my tastes. She was wearing a black dress, with diamonds glittering at her wrists and neck, and silver hair that was probably a wig but might have been some impressive dye job. Nicky pulled out his camera and held it up, giving her a quizzical look to which he received a nod and giggle. He snapped several photos on the car ride up, flattering her, I’m sure, but I knew that he was just warming up, getting ready for the main event.
Would I have accepted Henri’s invitation, if it hadn’t been for Nicky? I don’t know. We’d not had the best time at the last of his revels that we attended, in some hunting lodge in some godforsaken part of Washington state, and it had left a bad taste in my mouth. I couldn’t really remember why, too much booze turning the filmstrip of my memory into a series of disassociated snapshots. Something about sitting in the dark by the fire, after the meat of the party was over, playing some idiotic child’s game called “Something Scary.” I’d never heard of it, but apparently Nicky played it when he was a kid, with his abusive father, the one he never talked about. He told me so afterward, on the car ride home, and he cried and shook in his sleep that night, and didn’t say why.
Everything else was blurred, just a bad, sick feeling in the
At the Steadman Gallery, he kissed Nicky’s hand but shook mine. He struck me then as I would continue to think of him throughout our acquaintance: as a spoiled dandy who enjoyed playing the beast because it amused him, more than because there was much actual beast in him.
Aside from his money and his interest in the arts, he was known mostly for what he called his “revels.” “Party,” he said to me once, “is far too small a word.” I don’t remember how many of them Nicky and I attended in the years that we knew Henri. Nicky always brought his camera, and he got a couple of decent series out of them, neither of them half as good as the work he was doing when we met, but then, booze and drugs and other temptations flowed freely at the revels, and Nicky was no less susceptible to them than I, and they took their toll on both of us, in different ways.
How to describe one of Henri’s revels? He once told a reporter, “I take intent, and marry it with time and place.” Which isn’t really very helpful, either. I guess that fundamentally they were just parties, on a grand scale, complete with the kinds of party games that would have shocked and titillated Victorians, but Henri saw them—or maybe he just sold them—as something more like performance art. A séance held at midnight in a haunted hotel. A black mass in the catacombs under Paris. Diversions for the bored and the rich and the morbid. Nicky and I were two of those, and Henri was rich enough for everybody.
This one, though, the one atop the Brocken, on Walpurgisnacht, was supposed to be different. More intimate, more personal, and his last. That’s what the invitations had said. Henri had supposedly discovered a rare film print by Eadweard Muybridge, something suitably infernal, not just studies of animals in motion, and he was going to screen it for a few dozen of his closest friends at midnight, “in its native habitat.” There was to be a small chamber orchestra, and Henri had reserved the entire hotel, so we wouldn’t be disturbed. “Unless of course some other witches decide to drop in.”
***
When the train pulled up to the station, Nicky and I got out, along with a few others that I recognized from Henri’s inner circle, and still more that I didn’t. Maybe new additions, maybe lapsed recruits pulled back in for one last hurrah. I helped Nicky shoulder one of his camera bags, and we all walked down to the cars that were waiting to take us the rest of the way to the top of the mountain.
We shared our car with a girl who looked young, and too thin for my tastes. She was wearing a black dress, with diamonds glittering at her wrists and neck, and silver hair that was probably a wig but might have been some impressive dye job. Nicky pulled out his camera and held it up, giving her a quizzical look to which he received a nod and giggle. He snapped several photos on the car ride up, flattering her, I’m sure, but I knew that he was just warming up, getting ready for the main event.
Would I have accepted Henri’s invitation, if it hadn’t been for Nicky? I don’t know. We’d not had the best time at the last of his revels that we attended, in some hunting lodge in some godforsaken part of Washington state, and it had left a bad taste in my mouth. I couldn’t really remember why, too much booze turning the filmstrip of my memory into a series of disassociated snapshots. Something about sitting in the dark by the fire, after the meat of the party was over, playing some idiotic child’s game called “Something Scary.” I’d never heard of it, but apparently Nicky played it when he was a kid, with his abusive father, the one he never talked about. He told me so afterward, on the car ride home, and he cried and shook in his sleep that night, and didn’t say why.
Everything else was blurred, just a bad, sick feeling in the
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