Chapter 3: This Deplorable Depressing Delight

“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”

— H. P. Lovecraft, in a letter to Sara Sigourney Rice, dated September 1929. First published in Selected Letters V (1934–1937), edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Copyright © 1976 by Arkham House Publishers, Inc.

Silas wandered through his days without much distinction. Time had become as sluggish as he felt. It was a dying quality to existence that dragged its limbs through the halls of the Wolcott estate even as he took one step at a time.

There was no aim or purpose in his walk because he was no longer drawn by familial obligation nor guided by desire of his ambition. The corridors were lined with portraits that watched him in disapproval of his dispiritedness.

Each morning, if it could be called such, he emerged without any certainty at what point in the day he emerged from his chamber. Truthfully, he was unaware when sleep ended or wakefulness began. His body remembered grief even when the mind had grown numb to it.

He would descend the staircase in a dressing robe and drift to the study. The letter was always there to greet him on the desk. It sat beneath a paperweight wrought from iron. The seal remained unbroken. The seven-pointed crown pressed deep into wax that had once been crimson and now resembled dried blood.

While he did not open it, he wondered what it all meant. His family had thrown off the aristocracy. To be a king of fortune should have been enough for his family. That here was a letter, given to him by a lawyer with a crown on the wax meant something foreboding, surely.

Rather than allow his mind to rest on the letter from his deceased father, he leafed through ledgers of his family’s assets. His eyes scarcely glanced at the numbers. The product of his family’s ‘hard work’ only seemed to grow as if to whisper the one truth that he had already suspected: this vast machine of wealth and land, debt and profit, could not be stopped.

It moved through his personage, over him, like the very Connecticut River that his family owned. The currents were indifferent as to whether a swimmer were to drown, swim, or ride its waters in a boat.

Thomas brought his meals at regular intervals despite Silas never asking for them. The butler did not speak when he tried to place food near the master of the estate.

Why should he? He was a man of dignified endurance. He would set down the tray, nod once.

On a rare occasion, he would say, “Good day, Master Silas.”

If he spoke at all, Silas would mutter, “Thank you, Thomas.”

That was enough for the servant to accept that the owner of the home was well. There was an understanding of the sons of slaves in the United States. They were to comply. No amount of freedom or kindness could ever allow one such as Thomas to forget that his father was once in chains, and he could, in turn, be placed in them himself.

Silas did not notice the concern or fear in the orderly. He only ate enough to stave off the weakness that threatened his limbs, so his mind was no longer keen. Luxuries like taste and compassion were equal in measure to him.

He walked the estate at times. He wandered along the gravel and dirt paths that cut through the gardens. What were once cared for greenery were quickly becoming tangled and uncared for. The fountains were no longer running at full power. He did not personally see to the upkeep of the estate, so such disrepair should have worried him.

In normal circumstances, it might have. However, his mind’s focus was on the death of his father, and the money he felt wrong for having. Why was his mind going in such repetitive circles? He could not know, but until he did, he was forced to wonder about leaving the manor, how to manage it, would others come for the estate, so on and so forth until he just was lost in the knowledge that he was in some bleak existence by which he could never escape.

When faced with such a thought as that, he was no longer able to notice the state of some statue or some other hedge.

The servants moved through the house like scared cats in avoiding him. He remembered most by name, but there were some that were new; they must have been hired after he had gone to university.

How long ago this must have been for him. What might have been less than eight years felt like two lifetimes. He had gone to study medicine and the law as most upstanding men did in order to have a positive effect on the world. He meant to help further the progression of humanity. Where others hungered for silver and gold, Silas yearned for restorative justice.

This was the fundamental reason having so much excess was wrong to him. Perhaps when he worked out his feelings, he could stop feeling such despair.

He no longer went to town. He owned at least one of the tavern and the largest hospital in the area. To look upon those places and people and know he was responsible for some of their circumstances, he felt a burden on his shoulders that he did not ask for.

As he shook his head, he recalled how correct he was about vultures. Correspondences came in from supposed family all over the world. He refused to read them after the first two days. The post was slow. A letter from England would take around six weeks to come through and those settlers who were taking some Oregon Trail were slower still; mail from that region would take about six months to reach him.

It was a perverse magic that these correspondences should reach his desk so soon after his father’s passing. Either they had a preternatural understanding of when his father was going to die, or they had sent them in the preemptive hope that he would pass and Silas would be the easier of the two to manipulate.

They were all leeches and parasites, trying to suck the blood from his flesh. That was the truth of it, and they deserved no more thought than that assessment.

Regardless of the selfishness of relatives, each hour bent into the next until time lost all sense of rhythm for Silas. In the quietude of his solitude, he began to suspect that even the walls were listening. A paranoia of who to trust was setting in.

The estate was ancient. It had roots laid back to the 1600s. Perhaps something that old was alive and capable of breathing, and he was only the latest Wolcott to suffer this discovery.