Episode 4
Castle Monticello
Winter 2017
Three months before the attack
Charlotte
In 1957 the dam was complete, but it took The Solano Project nine years of back scratching, palm greasing, and eminent domain to make that happen. Then another five for Putah Creek to flood the valley and create Lake Berryessa. Like the native Patwin before them, the residents of the little town of Monticello were kicked out in the name of progress. Eight generations of homes, farms and history were razed to the ground then buried under three hundred feet of water, that’s now used for hydro power, drinking, and agriculture.
The Master’s residence quietly hides underneath the knife handle-shaped reservoir, nestled into the yellow foothills, not too far from California’s capital, Sacramento. During the dam's ambitious construction, among the chaos of stone, scaffolding, cranes, trucks, and manpower, The Master had Castle Monticello discreetly built into a hillside nook on the valley floor. The Master’s hypnotic persuasion had all the materials and labor conveniently buried in the dam’s inflated bureaucratic budget. Burrowed underground, Castle Monticello has over one hundred rooms, a grand hall, a library, two labs, a network of tunnels, a garage for his cars, servants’ quarters, and a now-defunct blood farm. The highest floors of the subterranean castle — the grand atrium, the eastern spire, and the broken western tower — pierce the darkest depths, the jade-black heart of Lake Berryessa.
Today, everyone’s forgotten about the history of the lush valley, the natives, and the old farming town kicked out by the Bureau of Reclamation. Most thoughts around here are where to launch your boat, are the fish are biting, and who’s bringing the cooler for the next drunken bash.
Past Spanish Flat recreation facility and the relocated cemetery, into the water, down the slopes, beneath the murky shadows, to the drowned valley floor and the submerged stone arches of The Putah Creek bridge, past the razed foundations of Main Street and the General Store, at the edge of the valley, built into the side of a hill, framed between a solitary spire and shattered tower, under one hundred meters of cold lake water, is a glowing Pyramid Atrium. The young fish are surprised to see a light so deep in the lake, the old fish know the doctor’s at work.
Outside the atrium, Donnie, one of the original inhabitants of the flooded town of Monticello, stands a remarkable ten meters with a long head of swimming hair. He’s stooped over the glass, peering into an area wiped clean, watching. Inside thick rhombic windows, packed with green leaves, blazing grow lights, pots, stalks, and more plants, is a woman in a white sleeping gown, tending her topiary. She adjusts her black welding goggles and assesses the boxwood shrub.
You think the legs could be longer? Doctor Charlotte trims a few dead leaves, making room for growth. She wipes thick brown hair from her face with the back of her stone-white hand and clips at the topiary centaur. She steps back, looks at the spring green bush, and up to him.
Nah, if you make’em too long. It’ll look cartoony.
I guess cartoony is better than just looking like a bush? Going for transportive here. She tilts her head and studies her growing creation. The shapes are getting more defined correct?
Yes. I like it.
She walks back to the horse shrub and shakes the branches. You watching anything fun these days? I just got my hands on a DVD for Movie Night. The Bones found it in The Master’s quarters. The boy pushes his face to the glass, and bubbles slip out of his mouth as he hollers. Under the water it sounds like a moan. Oh. I think you’ll like it. It’s a western, but all arty. A film by Jim Jarmusch.
Who’s that. What’s it about? I didn’t see any thing on TV?
It’s an art house movie. They don’t advertise on television. His large hands are pressed against the glass and more bubbles roll out of his mouth. His finger nails are about the size of the granite stones that make up most of the castle. Kicked up silt settles and three large shadows of fish dart past a darker green shadow. He sits, crosses his legs again, then mutters, I wanna go to an art house movie. An Art House seems like a fun place. Can you draw there? I used to draw all the time.
Oh, I guess you could draw if you like. Might be best to give your full attention to the presented work though. I’ll have Phung and Somchai set it up soon. We’ll move some plants around and hang a sheet. You can watch like last time.
Donnie smiles while picking at a splinter in the bottom of his foot. He’s excited about movie night. I think it’s funny. When I watch the back’a the screen, I see the actors go left, and you see them go right. Like we’re on opposite sides of the world, and the toilet flushes the other way.
The Coriolis Effect doesn’t apply to toilet water, but did you know the moon is upside down in the southern hemisphere?
Don’t think I’ll see that either.
She ignores his sad-boy bait and goes back to her topiary. I’ll bring a lot of snacks. She trims around the belly and chest of the mare. This movie is black and white, with Johnny Deep. She looks to the boy to see if he thinks Johnny’s as handsome as she does. Donnie's wiping away scum that gathered at the base of the garden’s atrium. Johnny Deep? From Twenty One Jump Street? Ooh, I like him. He’s cool. Donnie begins fishing something out of his long hair, a tree branch, that he snaps. Somchai looks up; he can hear the crack through the glass but not their telepathic conversation.
You like William Blake?
Yes, the poet? I remember from school. We had to learn them. He shakes hair out of his face in the underwater slow-motion time he lives in. Lovely Lyca Lay. I love that poem. He stands attention, hands to his side. A few more bubbles slip out as he pantomimes the words he’s thinking and she’s hearing.
In the southern clime,
Where the summers prime,
Never fades away:
Lovely Lyca lay.
Seven summers old
Lovely Lyca told.
She had wanderd long.
Hearing wild birds song.
Well done! Now do you remember any of Little Girl Found?
He shakes his head. I don’t like that part with the lion eating the girl an’ all.
Yes, that is an interpretation. I’ve always loved the imagery of a free-spirited little girl hanging out with wild animals, running through the sun. Mid snip of a branch, she tries to remember a bright, endless cerulean sky, but can only recall lost dreams of daylight. Like a picture of a picture of a copy of a copy, her memory of sunlight has almost totally faded. At 100 meters below, the lake is dark-green and moldy-black. She steers her focus back on the conversation on Blake and his little girl lost, Sometimes heavy symbolism breaks the escape doesn’t it?
In the natural beat of their subterranean conversations, he leaps to the surface through the dark water, away from the artificial light of the atrium. A hypnotic bloom of blood spills from his foot, where he removed a shard of wood. Privately, her mesolimbic instinct is to chase, bite, and kill, but she calms herself. The tea still works. She blocks Walters murmurs in her head. The Master feels the triggering sustenance. Piss on him. He’s fine. He doesn’t get anything.
She closes her eyes to the blood temptation and says to herself, Yes, see? There it is again.
Recently, a high squeaking ring has been filling her ears. Over the last few days it keeps getting louder and changing slightly, like something is tuning in, a signal, or finding a radio station.
She sheaths the clippers, and Donnie’s large face reappears in the atrium glass. When’s movie time? And do we get popcorn? Can we watch tonight?
No popcorn this time, it’s still raining. We can watch from my room. She moves to get some water for her plants. Her words become distant and long, the ringing is getting worse. We’ll do that in the summer. He can tell she’s distracted, but he’s used to the strange pace of her conversations. Charlotte goes silent as her vacant amber eyes stare, thinking, listening.
Remember? Somchai brought out that pot, and the popcorn went everywhere, all over the grass, into the lake? That was fun!
The ringing is new, even for her, after all these years. Yes, I’ll have the Bones cook up a huge batch. Just like last summer. She decides the plants are damp enough and starts to put away her trimming equipment. Charlotte forces a smile, flashing her sharp canines.
Yes, that was a fun movie. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. He arranges his face to serious, and quotes again. You don’t wanna get mixed up with a guy like me. I’m a loner, Dotty, a rebel.
Yes, such a brain for poetry. Phung will have your Supper out soon. She brushes soil from her sleeping gown and flexes another smile to Donnie. I have to visit the Master and need a little privacy, dear.
Her mood darkens as she curses to herself. She won’t ask Walter, but she’s curious if the ringing in her ears is something he’s up to. I hate going down there! She packs her clippings into the waste basket.
Is it roast? That’s what’s to eat tonight?
You’ll see. Smells like it. She switches her dark mood back to nice. Carrots, potatoes and such. He smiles and nods his head again. I'll have Somchai put your show on in the East Spire while you wait for dinner. Dr. Charlotte hears the bone feet clatter on stone and looks at the hunched skeleton, Phung’s already headed over to prepare the pre-dinner television.
Ooo, maybe it’s Vanna time. Wheel. Of. Fortune! He swims to the standing spire. Somchai’s already out the atrium, across the hall and in the spire, pointing the small television out the thick glass. Donnie wipes the window of silt, slips his large thumb into his mouth, sits on the valley floor, and leans on the tower. His face is right up to the glass, his eye’s about the same size as the screen.
Charlotte leaves the bright atrium, cinching the wheel door and shutting out the bright grow lights. She pushes the welding glasses around her neck and mutters more curses at Walter. Her bare feet quickly descend the curved stairs to the Great Hall — the white gown would be ghost-like, but nothing shows in this blackness.
Inside, through the dark, a kaleidoscopic stained-glass rose window sits on three rows of more stained glass. The decorative view consumes the opposite wall of the stairs. The works were commissioned from third-generation European craftsmen, some say stolen from a cathedral in Germany, then modified. If one could see in this eternal deep water night, one might notice the window collection depicts typical themes and images of religious iconography. But, where Christ might have been, is a figure who looks remarkably like the Master, and where the Virgin weeps is a dead ringer for Doctor Charlotte. The others in adoration seem clueless participants and look somehow food-like — rosy, plump, and ready for the picking.
She drifts to the end of the Great Hall, through the cold stone hearth, down spiral stairs, through the wet catacomb hallway, past moldy shelves of Walter’s stacks of organized bones, into his murky piles of abandoned papers, books, and collectibles. Once in his study, she stares to the silent lake through a group of lancet windows, a red Hieronymus Bosh-like triptych of a blood inferno. She spits and shakes her head at the depiction of hundreds of nude bodies being flayed, eaten, cooked, and whatever else.
At another wheel door, she steadies her breathing reflex and snatches a clutch of silver nails and a framing hammer from the end table. Before entering the Combination Room, she knocks on the rusty door and says aloud in a high false pitch, “Dear. Are you decent?“ The silver nails sear into her clenched fist.
