Acolytes of Cthulhu

THE PEWTER RING

BY PETER CANNON

HIS COMING TO NEW YORK HAD PROBABLY BEEN THE SMARTEST move of his life—though he had not begun to think so until, after months of monotonous job-hunting, he had settled on some stimulating and marginally profitable publishing work. Scion of an ancient French Huguenot family, Edmund Aymar had left suburban Westchester for the metropolis of his forefathers, who had been among the island’s earlierand more prominent citizens. There he had anticipated making his mark on the world—not as a lawyer or banker or stockbroker, professions customarily pursued by Aymar men—but in one or another of the more Bohemian, less financially remunerative trades.

With the support of inherited money, wisely husbanded by the intervening generations since his great-great-grandfather, John Marshall Aymar, laid the foundation of the modern family fortune before the Civil War, Edmund Aymar was used to enjoying all the privileges of his class. (Educated privately, he had always been a dreamer who felt himself apart from the conventional classroom routine. Given his prep school record as an underachiever, he had failed like many of his background in these latter days to gain entrance to the Ivy League college traditionally attended by his people.) His independent income covered his basic needs: a one-bedroom, ground-floor rear West Side apartment; a wardrobe of Brooks Brothers clothes; and a freezer filled with Stouffer’s dinners. Freed from the anxieties faced by most young men embarking upon careers in the city, Aymar could indulge in cultivating his already richly refined aesthetic sensibilities.

An avid amateur student of architecture, Aymar delighted in strolling past the quaint brownstones that lined the side streets of his neighborhood, picking out such pleasing details as an elegant cornice here or an exquisite balustrade there. On occasion he ventured farther afield, exploring the curved lanes and irregular by-ways of Greenwich Village and other antique districts of the city. At first the imposing Manhattan skyline served only to oppress his spirit, but in time he came to relish the rugged beauty of those concrete and glass monoliths that soared, especially at night, like so many Arabian Nights arabesques to the starless haze above.

He took a keen interest in the history of New York, in particular in the activities of his ancestor, John Marshall Aymar, who had figured so eminently in the city’s business, political, and social life in the eighteen-forties and fifties. Spending much of his free time either at the New York Historical Society near him or else at the Museum of the City of New York (a brisk twenty-minute walk across Central Park), Aymar became increasingly fascinated with his great-great-grandfather the more he learned of him. The official accounts depicted the conscientious man of affairs, who had built a shipping empire, contributed generously to the Whig Party, and entertained lavishly at his Fifth Avenue mansion. Contemporary letters and diaries, however, gave hints of the inner man: a seeker after truth and beauty, sensitive and retiring, a poet, author of a slim volume of verse privately published in 1849. Portraits showed him to be slender, youthful, and fair, with the trace of an ethereal smile on delicate lips. (Oddly enough perhaps, Aymar looked nothing like his ancestor—but then everyone told him he strongly resembled his mother.) In no portrait did John Marshall Aymar betray the encroachment of age, for he had died in his forties of a queer, lingering disease that had baffled his physicians.

Immersed in his researches, Aymar learned as well of the past literary life of the city. He took particular satisfaction in knowing that in 1844 Edgar Allan Poe had lived in a farmhouse, where he had finished The Raven, at a site just two blocks away from him on Broadway. Old photographs showed a white wooden-framed home surrounded by shade trees on a hillside. By the end of the century the house had been razed, the trees cut, the hill leveled. Only a plaque affixed to the present-day Health Spa and Fitness Center reminds the passer-by that on this spot once dwelled America’s most illustrious author. Aymar was among those who petitioned the mayor to rename a stretch of West 84th Street in Poe’s honor; later he was one of those who wrote testy letters to the Times regarding the misspelling “Allen” for “Allan” on the street signs erected by the city.

During the first several years of his New York sojourn, Edmund Aymar took a quiet pride in residing in an almost forgotten, no longer fashionable neighborhood, inhabited at its core by a sizeable community of poor Hispanics. As the city as a whole recovered from a period of economic decline, however, prosperity like some insidious, viscous sea-creature began to spread its tentacles north from Lincoln Center along the broad, decayed avenues. In shockingly short time the mom-and-pop variety stores, the laundromats and shoe repairers, the ethnic bars and social clubs, and the plain, low-cost American eateries gave way to chic boutiques, trendy foreign restaurants, and slick singles joints catering to the BBQ crowd. Appalled, Aymar witnessed the pokey, two-story commercial buildings along Broadway succumb in a fever of real estate gluttony to hideous, high-rise apartment houses, whose tacky twin towers grotesquely aped the tasteful originals on Central Park West. Like a child who discovers too soon that instead of the stork leaving him under a cabbage leaf his parents had to engage in a gross physical act to bring about his existence, Aymar realized that the rapid, radical development of the city was not confined to some distant era in the history books, but was happening literally around the corner from him.

Disillusioned, Edmund Aymar retreated increasingly into those arcane studies that already had such a hold on his imagination. He withdrew to the billiards rooms and libraries of certain venerable clubs, where the old traditions were still esteemed among the genteel and bigoted members. His great-great-grandfather had helped to found the athletic club, where according to locker-room legend he had habitually escaped to avoid the demands and cares of business and family. The club library contained his volume of poetry, Damon and Pythias and Ganymede, tenuous verses celebrating the manly ideals of the classical world, which Aymar read and reread for inspiration.

A potent dreamer (in the usual sense of the word) from youth, Aymar often dreamed vividly of early New York: of bands of stoic Red Men stalking meager game over marsh and meadow; of comical Dutchmen with broad-bore muskets strutting between stepped-gabled houses and a wooden wall that would in time become Wall Street; of Negro slaves rioting amidst fire and smoke; of redcoated soldiers, more grimly determined than their Dutch predecessors, seizing illicit arms and being quartered in private homes; of sailors jostling one another on wharves stacked high with barrels and boxes before a forest of ships’ masts; of men parading in the street carrying torches and anti-draft placards; of a gloomy, long-bearded fellow inspecting a waterfront warehouse; of a slight, wispy-goateed gentleman supervising the construction of a gigantic pedestal on an island off the tip of Manhattan; and—most strikingly—of a blond, bland handsome figure with an enigmatic smile who seemed to be addressing him, teasing him with some maddening half-memory and the promise of titanic wonders just beyond the limit of ordinary human comprehension. This latter personage, he recognized with a thrill as soon as he woke up, was of course his own great-great-grandfather, John Marshall Aymar.

His ancestor became a larger and larger presence in his dreams, until one night Aymar could discern quite clearly his speech; indeed, his distinguished forebear instructed him to get up, get dressed, grab a flashlight, and go to a certain building site some ten blocks distant, where he would find in the rubble a ring—a pewter ring, to be exact. Not really knowing whether he still slept or was awake, Aymar obeyed and in a short while found himself prowling about in one of the many construction pits that made the West Side resemble Berlin circa 1945. Giving scant thought to the prospect of being picked up for trespassing, he felt as if he were being guided by some preternatural force and within a few minutes located a filth-encrusted object that he believed at first to be a pre-1965 quarter. Closer examination, coupled with an ecstatic shiver of the kind commonly experienced by those who are “born again,” convinced him that this had to be what he was after.

Back at his apartment an assiduous application of Gorham silver polish brought forth a gleaming pewter ring, incised with primitive jungle motifs, and inscribed on the inside with what initially appeared to be an alien alphabet but when turned the other way around proved to be an ornate monogram—the initials J.M.A.! A confirmed skeptic of psychic phenomena, Aymar was overcome with confused emotions of horror and elation in the face of such an uncanny and startling discovery. He could not begin to guess at the colossal significance of the pewter ring, but dared to hope he would soon be enlightened. Sleep being out of the question, he passed the remainder of the dark hours fondling the ring, trying it on, ultimately deciding that it fit perfectly on the fourth finger of his left hand.

He wore the pewter ring to his office, an art gallery off Madison Avenue, where he had recently secured employment as an assistant. Still in a daze, he had scarcely noticed where he was on the bus ride across the park. At his desk, as he was on the verge of attending to some long overdue correspondence, Aymar saw the electric typewriter dissolve before his eyes, exposing not the woodlike surface of the desktop but genuine oak. The Bic ballpoint he customarily used had in turn, he realized upon seizing it, been transformed into a heavier, finer instrument—a fountain pen. An inkwell and sand stood on a blotter where none had stood before. Peering out the second-floor window, he beheld not a stream of fast, noisy motor vehicles but a thoroughfare alive with horse-drawn carriages of every description; men in beaver hats and swallowtail coats; vendors hawking their wares in heavy Irish accents. The weather suddenly was warm and foetid; the low hum of the air-conditioner was no longer audible.

As if propelled on some vital errand, Aymar rushed down into the street—a street paved with rough, square-cut stones—but he paid this marvel no more heed than the rest. He headed for Fifth Avenue, knowing that there he would find his destination. When he came up to the gate of the Palladian mansion he recognized it instantly as the home of his ancestor. The manservant who answered his rappings at the brass doorknocker seemed to be expecting him, and ushered him into a parlor decorated in the sumptuous Gothic Revival style of the mid-Victorian period. There against an oversize mantel leaned a gentleman in early middle-age, dressed in luxurious silks, whose bland, blond features seemed to glow with an otherworldly radiance.

“My dear young fellow, welcome,” said John Marshall Aymar. “You cannot imagine with what delight I have anticipated this meeting.” Finding himself at last face to face with the man of his dreams, Aymar was in too much awe to do any more than mutter his thanks. “Ah, you sport the pewter ring; but of course, how else are we united now? It is owing to its agency that you have been able to transcend the barrier.” For a moment his ancestor gazed at the ring with singular intensity.

“I have a great deal to impart to you, Edmund, but we cannot tarry here. Should my wife and children happen upon you, I would be sorely tried to explain how I came to be entertaining an unknown relation, a relation who has journeyed from so far away—in time.” The servant appeared in the doorway and announced that the hack awaited them. “Come, we shall repair to premises where we can confer without fear of interruption.”

On the ride downtown his ancestor kept silent, smiling with the serenity of one seemingly possessed of some vast, cosmic secret. From the enclosed coach Aymar watched the confusion of a hot, dusty, congested city, again accepting with equanimity his presence in a bygone age as somehow part of the natural order of things.

At last they arrived at a quiet side street near the river—Weekawken Street it may have been—and disembarked before a clapboard house with the sign “Saloon” above the entrance. In the dim front room a gang of dusky-skinned sailors huddled at the counter. The barkeeper showed them to a backroom, and poured them a dark liquid out of a labelless amber bottle.

John Marshall Aymar began his narrative by relating how he came to acquire the pewter ring. As part of his charitable work among the poor of the city, he had spent time visiting the Free Men who lived in the shantytown far west of Fifth Avenue. There he had encountered some Africans recently arrived in America via Haiti—“savages” who engaged in occult practices. Impressing them with his eagerness to pierce the veil, he had been granted the privilege of undergoing a physical rite of passage that few dared to brave. He had proved worthy in the process of initiation and had earned the pewter ring, though at a cost: he had contracted a fatal illness, whose subtle course would bring him to an early grave. The sacrifice was necessary, however, in order to attain “immortality.”

“I have already had a glimpse of what lies in the Beyond,” said his ancestor, who could not repress a smug, condescending smile. “Time is an illusion—all history is fixed in one omega-null continuum, toroidal in shape. Gödel and Rucker of your own century, by the by, are correct in their speculations on the ultimate nature of the space-time synthesis.”

He went on to explain that the ring had later been “reclaimed” by his African associates, with whom he had had a falling out. While his powers had been severely diminished, he still was able to exert some control over the “psychic energy” of the ring. Through the agency of dreams he could stretch across the decades and reach his first descendant to reside in the ring’s vicinity over a substantial enough period of time. Once that descendant—he, Edmund Aymar—had found the ring (which had been lost again fortuitously after his “death”), then it was a relatively simple matter to summon him back into the past.

“I have worked hard, Edmund, for success in this world. I am an ambitious man.” John Marshall Aymar grinned, relishing his triumphs. “I have enjoyed but a mere taste of the ring’s glories, and no longer take an interest in the usual diversions of earthly existence. Circumstances have forced me to lead a double-life, but I shan’t have to maintain appearances for long.

“You as well can achieve a similar transcendence—and I don’t mean the sort of ‘transcendental’ experience extolled by those New England prigs, Emerson and Thoreau. It will require the surrender of your bodily shell; but the loss is small when you consider the gains to be had in return. What’s another forty years of dilettantish dabbling, when if you choose the path of the pewter ring you can meet my late friend, the editor of the Broadway Journal, at the height of his powers? You can dwell in the New York of any era you wish. Millions of years from today, you may be piqued to know, volcanoes will dominate the horizon and once more New York will be a pastoral paradise, free of the teeming, uncouth hoi-polloi…

“I need your help, Edmund. You must give me back the pewter ring, for only then will I have the strength to aid you and secure your ultimate salvation. You shall follow, but first you must return to your own age. You cannot depart unless you release the ring to me… Here, lad, take a little more grog.”

Dizzy with strong drink, Aymar had no desire to disappoint his ancestor and yet hesitated to give him the ring. But John Marshall Aymar would brook not the merest hint of opposition. Grinning maniacally, he lunged at Aymar’s left hand. Instinctively recoiling from the assault, Edmund Aymar lurched clumsily to his feet, upsetting the table and glasses before them. More accustomed to heady beverages than his descendant, the older man regained his balance in a moment and seized him from behind. The two tumbled to the sawdust floor, where they rolled like beasts until their cries brought men rushing in from the outer room. Dark faces filled with cruel anticipation were the youth’s final sight before he lost consciousness.

* * *

When Edmund Aymar woke up, bruised and sore, he found himself lying in the street, next to a homeless person also stretched out and disheveled, in front of a familiar house. Indeed, it was the same building he had entered perhaps hours before, but now it was covered with brown shingles where clapboard had been; too, electric street lamps illustrated the scene, not gas-lights. Aymar made his way to the Sheridan Square subway. That the pewter ring was missing from his finger he was too numb to notice.

In the months that followed Edmund Aymar wondered whether his coming to New York had been such a good idea after all. He obliquely discussed his “dream” experience with his therapist, sounding him out on the matter of free will versus determinism and the paradoxes inherent in time travel. Eventually he became fed up with the tiresome sessions and, like some Creationist repudiating evolution, dismissed his therapist, unshaken in his belief that heredity is more important than environment and that personality is largely innate. Resigned to whatever fate might bring, indifferent to his usual aesthetic pursuits, he gave up working altogether and scarcely stirred outside his cave-like apartment.

He also began to lose weight, to be prone to colds and the slightest infections.

The night before he was supposed to enter the hospital for tests, Edmund Aymar dreamed again of the old things. He was picking his way uncertainly along an unfamiliar path in what he thought was Riverside Park—though it was a wild, unlandscaped Riverside Park. Ahead of him, on an imposing outcropping of rock, he spied a cloaked figure, silhouetted against the setting sun. The man turned to meet his gaze, displaying a head of fine-webbed hair, wide brow, liquid eye, and silken moustache, then vanished into a copse beyond. Gaining the crest of the rock, Aymar beheld a great river, surely the Hudson, whose far shore was an unmarred stretch of cliff topped by an expanse of green rapidly darkening as night closed in. Then from behind he was accosted by the bland, blond form of his ancestor who, as he held out his hand to reveal a gleaming pewter ring, laughed with deep, sardonic pleasure.

The vision faded, and he realized that he was back in the New York of his own time, in the park at night—where three Hispanic youths were now demanding of him that he “hand it over, mister, or—” His protests that he no longer had the ring did not satisfy them, and in the ecstatic moment just after the fist struck his cheek and just before he lost consciousness Edmund Aymar felt renewed in his faith—faith in all the promises of his ancestor that he soon would be “having it all.”