The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

Relics of Saratoga Falls

Previously: "Getting to the Root of Things" 

"Mrs. Grissom?" you say to the little old woman who has opened the door. "I'm Melody Weiss."

Her wizened, kittenish face, which had been frowning with a wary puzzlement, instantly breaks into a warm smile.

"My dear!" she exclaims. "Do come in!" She stands aside.

It's Tuesday afternoon, and you have three hours off between classes. The last mask is polished, and the completed metal band is attached to it. All you have to do is take it the professor's house tomorrow night, and use it on him.

So why are you so nervous about what's to come? Because that's all you have to do? Or because everything, possibly, depends on you not fucking up?

It's the fear of fucking up that has brought you here, to the home of the chairwoman of the local historical society. You want to learn all you can about Blackwell's house—and everything connected to it—before you step inside it again.

Mrs. Grissom is someone that Melody has been trying to chase down for some time. She was never in her offices when she called, and you only managed to secure this interview by mentioning the magic phrase "honors thesis coming due" to the secretary. That apparently unlocked the file that contained the chairwoman's home address and phone number. You called, and she said she'd be glad to meet you at her home this afternoon.

She looks like a historical relic herself. She is eighty years old if she is a day, and she might be over ninety. She is a tiny woman with wrinkled, baggy skin. Her dark eyes have sunk almost out of sight into their sockets. But her teeth—dentures, obviously—are bright and her smile warm and kindly. She is dressed in a blouse and a long skirt and hose, and drapes a heavy shawl over her shoulders despite the warmth of the house. With tiny footsteps she ushers you through the foyer and into a small sitting room on the other side.

It's one of the city's grand old houses that you are entering, on Grant Avenue, directly across from the university: the houses that the town fathers and bankers and politicians built for themselves in the 1870s and 1890s, and which have kept up their splendor even as the shadow of age has fallen over them. The sitting room of this one is almost claustrophobic with chintz: a low settee draped with a vermillion blanket and a white-and-green quilt; a low coffee with a glass top, on which rests a silver tray with yellow teacup; a tall bookcase with glass doors against one wall, and a tall cabinet, packed with chinaware behind its glass doors, on another. Behind the sofa hangs a large painting that shows a hunting scene in the English countryside: hounds and horses making arcing leaps along the rolling hillsides. Only the large, flatscreen TV that hangs on the wall opposite the settee strikes a modern note. The rest of the room could have been decorated in the 1920s.

Though the sitting room is small, the rest of the house is very large, with two projecting two-story wings from a three-story main house under a cupola. Such a large house for such a small woman, you think. Part of the solution comes at the sound of heavy footsteps, and you look over to see a titanic black woman, with a head the size of a basketball, standing in the doorway. She regards you and her employer with a kind of glum hostility.

"Would you like something to drink or eat, dear?" Mrs. Grissom asks you. "Nothing for now, Zaila," she says when you politely decline. The servant vanishes from the doorway, like the moon going into eclipse.

"You said over the phone that you are working on an honors thesis," Mrs. Grissom says as she settles gently onto the settee, and indicates that you should take a nearby arm chair. "About the history of the city?"

"Yes. Particularly—" You hesitate. You don't want to sound like a crank, but if you say you are studying its founding, you will just get a lot of dates and names. "Particularly about the Tabernacle of Jehovah." You study her closely for a reaction. "And whatever ceremonies or liturgies they might have performed at its founding."

Mrs. Grissom doesn't react, except that she blinks and her brow lowers into a soft frown.

"Oh my," she says. "That is an obscure subject. May I ask what drew you to it?"

"I'm studying anthropology and history, and to be frank my main interest is in, um, heterodox Christian sects of the medieval and post-medieval eras." This is not strictly true, but you are confident you can bullshit her. "I know that there was some connection, a possible source of transmission, from Europe to the United States, and to Saratoga Falls in particular, via the Tabernacle." You affect a helpless shrug. "I thought it would be fascinating to see if some echoes or reflections of those medieval sects showed up here, at the founding of the city, and to see how they might have evolved."

Her eyes are wide now, and clear, with a light of curiosity.

"Why, that sounds fascinating, dear," she says. "Of course, the participation of the, er, Tabernacle is a well-known fact locally. Well, to those of us who know the town's history, it is," she corrects herself. "But I confess I always assumed the whole thing was made up, like Joseph Smith and his golden plates, or John Newbrough and his automatic typewriter. But it can be traced back to Europe?" she asks in some astonishment.

"Possibly. That's one of the things I want to investigate, but the founder—"

"Prophet," Mrs. Grissom murmurs.

The correction catches your attention, and you stare at her. But when she says nothing further, you continue.

"But the, er, prophet, Irving Henry. You know?" You pause. She smiles encouragingly, but says nothing. "He was in Europe just before he started—founded—the Tabernacle. There's some indication that he met and corresponded with a group there called the Temple of the Rose. They may have been an influence on him."

"Well, that is certainly news to me," Mrs. Grissom says after you have left her hanging for a moment. She picks up her tea cup, finds that it is empty, and puts it down again. "My own interest has been purely in the early history of the town, not its, well, pre-history, I suppose you could call it. And there is so very little information about the sect still out there. There were so few of them, and they died out so quickly." Her smile turns crooked. "I'm afraid my own forebears had something to do with that."

"Oh?"

"Oh, I don't mean— Well, the poor things were rather swamped as the town began to grow. The city might have started as a religious colony, but it wasn't long before the colonists were outnumbered ten or twenty to one by new arrivals. My own great-grandfather—"

She pauses and gazes past you at the wall behind. You turn to look. On a shelf you hadn't noticed before sits a dozen framed photographs.

"The one at the very left," Mrs. Grissom says. "Silas Winfield Stuart." She pauses as you take in the face. "He was the eighth mayor of the city, moved here with his own father when he was six. His father was one of the ones who got the original charter revoked and the new town charter established. Which was the end of the 'religious colony'."

The picture you are looking at is of the man's son, but if he was anything like his father, you can imagine the father getting the change made. It's heavy-set face, jowly and clean-shaven, set in a firm scowl of determination. The face of a man who could lay a transcontinental railroad, or clear a battlefield of Apaches or Confederates.

"Well," Mrs. Grissom says with a sigh, "have you found any traces in town that still suggest the, erm, presence or activities of the Tabernacle?"

* * * * *

But that's what you're unsure of, as you have to confess. The evidence is circumstantial at best, and suggests only either that the Tabernacle (or the other founders of Saratoga Falls) had some very peculiar tastes in civic ornamentation, or that their inheritances from the Temple of the Rose underwent some dramatic evolutions while crossing the Atlantic.

There are only two that you can specifically mention to her: the ornamental temple that stands in the middle of Stewart's Hole—a large pond in a local park—and the decorative medallion at Potsdam Park.

The former is a reconstruction of the original structure, which was erected in the 1830s, during the first decade of the city's existence. In form it resembles a pagoda, except that it is arranged with ten pillars in the pattern of two overlapping, five-sided pentagrams. A historical marker at the site displays a large, fading photograph of the original wooden flooring, which has long since vanished. Onto it was painted an enormous hand, palms up and stretching wide with splayed fingers. The original effect of standing in its center must have been a slightly uncanny experience, akin to standing in the palm of a giant that is about to close his hand on you.

The second is even creepier. The copper medallion, which is about the size of a manhole cover, is planted in the cement floor of the gazebo at Potsdam Park, in the center, and is engraved to depict, in a primitive style, a man's face. Though crowned, his eyes are wide and staring and his mouth crooked into a kind of frown. Despite being designed in a very simple style—only a few rude lines—it is somehow very expressive and even lifelike, and the eyes of the figure seem to lock onto and see into yours. Worst of all is the emotion within them. The fear in his face is all to easy to read: He looks like a man who has realized too late that something supremely awful is about to befall him.

You only mention these to Mrs. Grissom, and say nothing of the emotional effect they give to you. She shakes her head and says that although she knows of them, she knows nothing about them.

Nor, when you come to the point, can she tell you anything about the house that stands now where the Tabernacle once stood.

* To take Joe with you to Blackwell's: "Joe's Company" 
* To go to Blackwell's alone: "Blackwell Has a Visitor" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"