Episode 1.7

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Introduction

Welcome to The Phosphene Catalogue no. # 15007
We see light where others see only darkness.

I haven't much to say here.

I wish both the reader and The Catalogue the very best for the future.

You too, Morwenna.

Side A: The Shipwreck

Lot no. 8091. "The Shipwreck", Sarah Porter. 1965. Oil on wooden panel.

A relatively unknown name to the Catalogue, The Shipwreck was submitted for auction by the artist herself, and looking at it, I can see why.

Despite the obscurity of its creator, the painting is astonishing, showing an understanding of water, current, wind, and the emotion of a turbulent sea captured with a talent I can only dream of.

The composition is of a seascape on an overcast day, with the dark sky reflected in the agitated water.
The shoreline is a mere afterthought, a thin line of grey painted at the bottom of the frame. The body of the work is the sea, waves pounding the beach, not a rock in sight, all details having been milled to sand by the ocean.

The title of this painting is "The Shipwreck" but no ship exists. Lean close when you view this in our perfectly-lit showroom. You will not find a single board of flotsam or darkening of the water to suggest a ship was ever there.

The painting is named The Shipwreck, so ship there must be. You can't see it. But I feel it, when staring long at this painting.
I can hear the echoes of the sailors as their great gambit failed, hear shouted orders turn to pitiful calls for mercy, and then silence.

The ocean doesn't owe you a thing.
The ocean will take the ships when she feels like it.

The wooden frame of The Shipwreck is wet to the touch.
And smells slightly... of seawater.

Morwenna, you left Nelson Cartwright's tape of Edie sleeping on my desk, didn't you?
After I finished up for that day.

Do you ever leave The Catalogue's building?
Do you live here? This is a genuine question.
I imagine some kind of cosy sub-basement, perhaps a room with an ancient boiler in, roaring and keeping it warm.
I'm picturing a comfortable bed, a stack of books and a cat?

I'm sure my mind is getting away from me.
You'd tell me if you lived here, wouldn't you?

After our dinner, Josephine Croft and David Isaac invited me to what they called Nelson Cartwright's dream session.

We sat in the Rossetti House lounge, in single armchairs around the fire.
It was midnight, or close enough, and beside Nelson's chair he had pulled over the green-felted card table, on which he placed a large reel-to-reel tape recorder.

It would be safe, Nelson said. And to honour their new guest - me - we would not be going very far into the Garden tonight.
That's what he calls this dream state, this shared hallucination.

I was terrified, Morwenna, but I had to experience it for myself.

Nelson turned off all electric lights in the room, and lit a handful of candles arrayed on tables and the mantelpiece.
The flickering flames threw long shadows up into the ceiling as he worked.

He closed the curtains and locked the doors while he explained, in his melodious, honey-coloured voice, what was to happen.

We would all take the dream drug, which he called Somnium, in turn, and once he was sure we were comfortable, doses vary between people, he would move to the next person.

"I will stay awake and guard your mortal shells while you explore the Garden and report back what you see." he said.
I didnt like this idea, but couldn't see a way back from this course I had laid for myself.

Josephine Croft was first, asking rapid-fire questions even as he tied a piece of rubber tubing around her arm and injected the silver-flecked drug.
After a minute, Jo's staccato voice had shrunk to murmurs, as her eyes closed.

David was next, but said little, only speaking to confirm to Nelson what he needed to know, "left arm please", "no that's too tight", "yes, I can feel it".

And he, too, slept.

I was last.

Nelson held out his hand, I rolled up my left shirt sleeve, and he took my arm and flicked the skin in the crook of my elbow.
"You have beautiful veins." he said, bright blue eyes meeting mine as the needle pinched my skin.

You would have been proud of me, Morwenna, I didn't cry out, nor say much at all throughout.
I was worried that if I spoke, I'd reveal my second thoughts!

The pain was more surprise than severe.

The dream drug was like nothing any doctor has prescribed to me before.
The glinting silver inside it, I could FEEL moving up my arm, like pins and needles, like my arm was falling asleep before the rest of me.
It reached my shoulder, then my neck, and I shook my head gently as a powerful shudder of fatigue washed over me, pushing my eyes closed.

I fell asleep like you fall in love.^[1]
Slowly, then all at once.

The last thing I remember was Nelson placing blankets gently over us, and switching on the tape recorder.

I regained consciousness with difficulty, like I was swimming up from the bottom of a deep well of warm water.

Morwenna, I'm sure you've had those mornings just as I have, in your cosy sub-basement or wherever it is that you hide under the building!

I was warm and comfortable, and my first thought was that I was in my bed, but I was not.
I was in the same place that I fell asleep, the armchair in the Rossetti House lounge.

David Isaac and Josephine Croft were already awake, or awake in the dream, or whatever it is. It's hard to find the language for this.
They were standing, yawning, and stretching, looking for all the world like they had just woken up from sleep, not the other way around.

"Come on!" Josephine Croft said, taking my hand, and pulling me with a strength that surprised me, to my feet.
I was still tired, and I held on to her, dizzy, as we walked to the kitchen.
I looked down at her as we walked, confused why I was now taller than her, when it is usually I who is jealous of her elegant stature.

We took the shortcut through the scullery corridor, I tripped on the step-up, as I lent on Josephine Croft, with David Isaac ahead.
He pushed open the door, but I knew what I would see before we entered:

The kitchen was flooded, and there was a waterfall flowing up to the ceiling - the same as in my dream.

Or, not quite the same.
The colours were richer, the water less grey, moving shapes above the ripples of the ceiling more defined.
And the water was warm.

David turned and grinned, eyes wide with excitement.
"We don't have much time." he said, to Josephine Croft, then spread his arms wide, and let himself fall backwards into the water.
Josephine Croft dived in after him without a backwards glance, leaving me, standing unsteadily, with wet feet, alone.

I waited for some minutes.
The two did not return to the surface of the water.

I braced for what I assumed I had to do, telling myself "It's just a dream, it's just a dream, it's just a dream.".

And I jumped.

Intermission

Hi folks, Tris here, writer of The Phosphene Catalogue.
If you're interested in updates about Season 2, and more: Stay tuned after the credits at the end of the episode.

Right.

Let's finish listening to the last cassette in the box, shall we?

Side B: Endings

The sunlight hurt my eyes, giving me an immediate, but short-lived headache.
The kind that pushes behind your temple and makes you touch your forehead.

The feeling passed, and I blinked.

I was on the riverbank, the one I saw above the kitchen ceiling, with the waterfall flowing up to it.

Looking around, I was in a warm meadow, surrounded by trees twisting around each other, and joining in a canopy, miles overhead.
I was sat facing a slow stream, in the depths of which I could just make out the dark moonlit kitchen from which I had come.

I looked around me and couldn't see David Isaac or Josephine Croft, though I could hear them, shouting and laughing together, somewhere, voices somehow different to usual.

Something threw a momentary shadow over the sun.

"You can go back, if you like." Said a voice, right next to me.
I started, catching myself as I leaned away from them, surprised.

Edith MacKinley was sitting next to me, looking down into the river, playing with a stem of grass, tearing pieces off and throwing them into the water.

Nelson's voice, echoed from nowhere in particular, saying "Do you see The Gate? Find The Gate!"
We ignored him.

Edith was grinning at me, she looked just as I remember, perhaps a little better.
Her skin rosier, eye sockets less dark than they had been since Heather left, the long nights of drink, drugs and... everything else, had given her a gaunt complexion that had now lifted.

Her eyes were different, though. They now sparkled with silver flecks, where once they had been brown.
I wondered if my own now looked the same.

She wore a blue, knee-length puffed sleeve dress with a white pinafore over it, and black ankle-strap shoes.

I stared at her, not speaking, from shock of seeing my lost friend again, but then a laugh surprised both of us.
"Hello Alice!" I teased, gently tugging on her preposterous dress.

"You can be whoever you want to be, here," She said, with a shrug, nodding towards Josephine. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is my favourite book."
She turned back to the water, looking down into the kitchen below, and her reflection above.

"I think that's what this place is," she continued, "Wonderland."

Nelson's voice interrupted again, but Edie silenced the sound with a gesture.

"Tell me about it?" I said.

And she did, while David Isaac and Josephine Croft did things they never would be allowed to do with each other outside the dream.

The sun slowly moved across the sky as Edith MacKinley and I talked for hours, we spoke of all the things two friends catching up might, of people, and food, and places.

But she also told me what she knew about this dream world.

Morwenna, I can't remember her exact words. Truth be told, I didn't understand half of it, but I understood enough:

Edie talked of impossible places with impossible geometries, food and drink that changed your emotions, and emotions that changed the world.
Time and cause and effect do not run linearly here, mistakes can be unmade or, if you like, remade.

It's a shared dream, not just between those who took the drug with you, like Josephine Croft and David Isaac, but everyone in the world, she thought.
The Garden I was in, is linked to Rossetti House, but one could travel, by flying or blinking between places in an instant, to other gardens, if you know where to find them.
Some can visit this world even without the drug, she told me, and there isn't just one way of getting here, and many Guise societies know of its existence.

It's an artist's paradise, Morwenna. Though you can't take anything with you, or bring anything back, it does change you.

I felt a rush of inspiration, or motivation, just being there.

"That will stay with you," Edie said, "Or it should. It never worked out like that for me."

The sun began to set, and David Isaac and Josephine Croft returned, hand in hand.
We watched them pause above the river, sharing one last moment here, that they could not share as freely in the world they were about to return to, and then dived in, hands separating as they crashed through the water to the kitchen below.

"I can't do that any more" Edie said, sadly, as the last of the orange shafts of light made their way up the tall, twisted trees.
"It's dangerous to stay here after sunset Nelson told us, your body pulls you back, it knows you must wake up.
I tried to stay, every time I fought it, as he was telling me to wake up."

An echo of Nelson's voice came from the water below us, but Edith waved her hand dismissively, and the noise stopped.

"I so love this place, and so hate the outside world, now that she's not in it with me.
Heather was my only reason for waking."

Edie wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging herself, and continued.

"I knew something was different when I didn't feel the pull at sunset.
You feel it now, don't you?"

I did. A gentle, but growing, tugging sensation in my stomach, like being in an aeroplane taking off backwards and upside-down.

"The last time, I watched the sun set, and something inside me snapped.
The pain rose and rose, I fought it, holding on to the dream, it was terrible for a moment, and then... nothing.

I was delighted, at first. More time to have ideas, to do what I want to do, to feel the gentle focus and certainty of the muses that had stopped visiting me back in my studio.

But in the dark, something I'd never experienced in The Garden before, I felt afraid.
It isn't quite as beautiful here at night, Jude.
It's..."

Her voice trailed off with a shiver.

As she hugged herself against the cool of the evening, her hand caught the left sleeve of her dress, pulling it up slightly, revealing a fresh scar, deep and wide.

"I jumped back into the water to go home," She continued, "But I floated!
Usually, I would sink right through, back to the ugly world, then go to wherever my body was, and wake up.

I desperately tried to swim back down to the room, but I was too buoyant, something was keeping me here."

I could see the light fading over Edith's shoulder as she spoke.
I stood up, in the dream, on the riverbank.
Even without properly knowing the rules of this world, my gut was telling me it was time to leave.

Edith stood, too, holding my hands tightly in hers. When she spoke again, her voice was fast and urgent.

"I never got the hang of life, Jude," she said, "but you must go.
There is a gate here in one of the gardens that Nelson wants all of us to find, he'll ask you about it when you wake up.

You can't open it.
He can't either.
No one alive may pass through it.

But I can.

Tell him, if he wants to see what is on the other side, he must follow my example.
That'll vex him!"

She laughed and dropped my hands, and we turned to look at the river, which reflected the honey-gold from the bright treetops, far overhead.

"You've got just a few minutes," she said, "you should go now."
I did not need to look at her to know she was crying.

"Tell Mum I'm OK, will you?" she whispered, "I miss her."

I let the pull of the world drag me down through the water, reclaimed my chair by the fire, and found myself washed up in the waking world, with the grey dawn light behind the curtains in the Rossetti House lounge.

I'm leaving, Morwenna.

I've posted my resignation into the locked offices of The Owners, with whom I think you are more intimately familiar than I had, until recently, been aware of.

Why are you MY secretary, Morwenna, or Miss Morwenna, or.. - Shouldn't you have your OWN secretary? Or board of directors, even!?

Is it for a sense of control, to make sure everything that goes in YOUR catalogue is written by YOUR own hand?
Or do you like to put people at ease, by taking this unassuming role, in order to find out their secrets?

Either way, thank you, ma'am for this opportunity.

I understand that Warrick Blackwood will take my place under short notice, he and I have been talking about handing over a great many of my responsibilities.

I don't doubt that he will be an... interesting curator.

I've learned a great deal in this role, not all of which I'm happy to know.
But I cannot shut that particular door, the horse has bolted and I must follow it to know more.

I'm leaving the Catalogue, but I'm also leaving Rossetti House.
Thanks to Heather Baldwin, my rent is paid up for another 3 years, and I'm leaving it all in Warrick's care.
He can stay there if he likes, I recommended against it.

The house, like The Catalogue, has been a mixed blessing for me.
Though I'm happy for them, I no longer feel kinship with Josephine Croft and David Isaac, knowing of their involvement with The Voyagers and with Edie's death.

The house again echoes with the sounds of Opening parties every Friday, perhaps even wilder than before.
I hear them from my bedroom, as I try to sleep, with what Edie told me running through my head:

There are Guise societies hidden in every city, town, and village in the world.
Many know how to access to the Garden, but also other places. And it's not just dreams they weave control of...

"The garden was made." Edie told me. She did not know by whom.

I will travel, investigate, find out who made it, and what else there lies hiding, under the surface of our society.

But first I will go to Kings Cross Station, and board a train to Scotland to have tea with Mrs Mackinley of Canning Street, Edinburgh.

I have a message to deliver from an old friend.

Finale Credits

That’s a wrap for season 1! Stay tuned after the credits for updates!

The Phosphene Catalogue is a NAMTAO production.
The voice of Jude Francis-sharp is Wolfie Thorns,
The show is written and produced by me, Tris Oaten, and all the music can be found at my website: http://namtao.com.

Special thanks to our Art Producers:

• Stephen McCandless
  And to all our patrons!

For links to our merch store, the music, and mastodon account, check out the podcast's website,
https://phosphenecatalogue.com

And now, some updates:

Firstly, did you know we have a Patreon?
I know, how unusual!

We’re putting together some digital and physical free gifts, and will be sending them out to our patrons ahead of Season 2, soon.

There are more benefits including a private area of the Discord server available to patrons at http://patreon.com/phosphenecatalogue
We’re an independent production, the show is just Wolfie and I, and we are so grateful for everyone’s support.

Talking of Season 2: There is going to be one!
I don't have a date for you yet, but I had SUCH a fantastic time writing this show, I can't stop here!
The show's format really lends itself to further episodic storytelling, and there's so much more of The Guise society left to uncover...

Tell us what you’d like to hear more of in reviews on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you're listening to this, it really does help us.

Thank you all so much, stay tuned for updates, and listen out for the postman, The Catalogue will return!