The Mephistophelean House by Benjamin Carrico Page B

the wall, the black X superimposed the pink circle. If I stood in front of it, the black X and pink circle came together.
    I stood in the windowless chamber, though it would have been difficult to call myself me. Pieces of a mirror lie on the floor.
    “The mirror. The red box. Wait. The red box. It’s gone. The red box isn’t here.”
    It was like a dream. Upstairs was bright and new. I went into the hall. The front door was open. Main Street was abandoned.
    The Deerhound yowled under the Walnut tree. A pigeon fluttered in the grass. The other pigeons looked down at it pitilessly.
    It had a broken snout.
    The horse rings on Main were hitched to their roundings. Slush melted in leaf-packed puddles. Chimneys pitched columns of ash. I followed the Deerhound up the hill. There were no people. Some houses I recognized. Some were dark. Some were empty.
    The Deerhound ducked into an alley. Goatsbeard and Grape Holly choked the cinder cone spillway. The Deerhound pulled farther and farther ahead. I fell farther and farther behind. The alley opened onto 55th. A barbican permitted access to a promontory with hemicycles and apses, the outline of a byzantine presidio visible through the hedge. The Deerhound passed through a metal turnstile with a cornerstone which bore the nameplate, ‘The House on Asylum Road.’
    “The House on the Hill.”
    I fell on the bank.
    “I am dead.”
    The clay eroded. Rain spilled into a sinkhole. I lay by the sinkhole on the edge of an endless reservoir of tears.
    “Quantum interference. All the things which never happened. That’s why It follows me wherever I go. The black X and pink circle are a nadir.”
    Could I return through the nadir?
    Back through the black X and pink circle?
    I stared up at the House on Asylum Road.
    Rain beat on the corrugated roof of Northgate. A guardhouse commanded the interstice. Inside the guard house an ugly man sat on a stool, staring through the grill.
    “Hello?” I rapped. “I’m…er…here to see the Doctor.”
    I noticed the chronic lesions of sarcoidosis, a hyperkeratinised scar running from crown to ear. Tiny puncture wounds dotted the superior and inferior temporal lines of his left parietal bone.
    “I said I’m here to the see the Doctor.”
    “Doctor!” the ugly man drooled.
    “Yes.”
    I waited.
    “Doctor?”
    “That’s what I said. The Doctor.”
    The ugly man was impish.
    If I wasn’t allowed in, why was he just sitting there? Why didn’t he do anything? Why didn’t he say something?
    I waited.
    It was as if the ugly man forgot I was there.
    “Forget it.”
    I followed the hedge down Madison to 55th. At the barbican an armed guard hailed me.
    “Sir!”
    “I’m here to see the Doctor.”
    “Sir!” the guard squinted.
    “I have an appointment.”
    “I’m sorry, Sir?”
    “I said I have an appointment.”
    “Let me ring the office,” the guard ducked inside the barbican. Ringed by a row of Hemlock the ornately landscaped park fronted a flute shafted mansion with horseless carriages.
    The guard popped out.
    “I'm sorry, is this some kind of joke?”
    “Some kind of joke? What are you talking about?”
    “I’m sorry Sir,” the guard stepped into the barbican. “Someone will escort you up directly.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Do you want to wait inside?”
    “No. I’ll only be here a moment.”
    “Sir?”
    “I said I’ll only be here a moment.”
    Burly guards with straight sticks donned the off-white garb of the institution, one clean shaven, the other with a long ropy beard.
    The gate opened.
    “For God sakes, I’ve been standing out here for an eternity,” I shouted.
    “Sir?” the ropy bearded guard stammered.
    “I said I’ve been out here for an eternity.”
    The guards looked at one another.
    “Errrr, this way,” the clean shaven guard pointed through the trees. The ropy bearded guard unlocked the front door of the mansion. We entered a narrow hallway just as a long case clock stuck the quarter hour. A woman