by Pete Kahle
Yet upon further reflection, I begin to regret my precipitate action: might I not have taken this opportunity to question the children instead of terrorizing them, and perhaps adding thereby to my pitifully small stock of information?
What if any relation, for instance, might the hidden beast-thing of their pantomime have borne to the object of my search? True, even concealed, the effigy gave the impression of a loathsome, pulpy shapelessness, quite inconsistent with the undeniable discreteness of the spider-creature of my hypothesis.
But such speculations as to what I might have done are useless. For if I had seen that ACT progress any further, I would certainly have lost my reason…
Even now I—
No—I shall not think of it further.
# # #
It is some three hours after midnight, and I find myself compelled to append a brief post-scriptum to the above.
Sleep is impossible. For much of the night I have wept; twice, I have vomited into my wash-basin.
The memory of the ACT I have witnessed will not leave me; again and again I seem to watch it slowly unfold in my mind’s eye, as I lie in darkness.
Perhaps if I try to write of it, I may find some slight relief? Yet I despair of conveying its essential awfulness, or even approximately describing its nature, within the confines of the English, or indeed any human, language…
Perhaps I might essay a series of contrasts?
Shall I say, that to be subjected to the most ingenious bodily torments which a mediæval castellan might devise—or to be used carnally, nay brutally violated in such wise—or even to be devoured, cannibalized, whilst still alive…these fates would be accounted the most delicious pleasures in comparison with…with the…
No, this avails nothing. I simply must put it from my mind, or else—
# # #
For many women, it is said, the memory of childbirth, with its attendant agonies, will wane with the passage of time, sometimes even disappearing altogether.
This is the closest analogy I can find for the situation in which I found myself upon awakening half an hour ago (after troubled but indistinct dreams), and consulting the last entries which I made in my journal.
Perfectly do I recall nearly everything recorded there: certainly I remain haunted by the image of that awful man with the buckets! But whatever I might have been trying to convey by the bizarre outpourings I find in the final pages of my book, is quite beyond my present power to reconstruct….
Nay, I cannot, for the life of me, imagine what could have been presented within the context of a children’s clumsy puppet-play so dreadful as to draw from me such wildly irresponsible expressions as those I penned yesternight.
I can only conjecture, that something I ate at breakfast did not agree with me; an unwell body can have, as we know, the most curious influences upon the mind. Certainly, after a few hours of sound sleep, I find myself as hale as ever, and as ready to pursue my quarry.
I own, however, that I am somewhat troubled by the queer hiatus in my memory. Strangely, I find myself unable to recall the catastrophe of the children’s performance: that supposedly ‘unnamable’ event (but the very conceit is, surely, puerile!) which seemed to disturb me so.
If I concentrate I can almost—
No, it is quite lost.
Well, no matter. After repairing below for breakfast, I shall walk to the maize-fields and, with luck, find occasion to question the boy about the creature on the curtains….
# # #
I have learnt a good deal today, with imminent promise of further disclosures to come; but the knowledge has not been without cost. I am much shaken; if only I could forget that sound—
But how many times, Ned, must I chastise this predilection for an o’erleaping haste in narration, which wholly undoes our admirable desire for sequence and clarity!
I shall take a deep breath; and then another. Good.
# # #
I found the maize-fields easily enough this morning, by following some stragglers on their way to the harvest. Upon arriving at the periphery of the vast, green expanse of tall, waving maize-stalks, I paused to marvel at the plants’ sheer size: true, I had never before seen the species, but these were of a height and a robustness which must, surely, have been highly unusual.
But my admiration for these agricultural prodigies was interrupted by my sighting of the lad, some little distance from me. I hailed him, and trotted to his side.
Even as we exchanged greetings, I noticed his nervous agitation, but did not ask him the reason for it, since it was (as I thought) easily enough explained by the presence of his father, who stood some little distance away, wiping at his glistening brow with a bit of cloth and frowning at us both.
In the event, I did not have time to put even a single question to him; seeing his sire watching us thusly, the lad shook his head violently, as if in repulse, then bent his head and trudged back to the field. But as he did so I heard him utter, in an undertone, a sentence of which I could just make out the words ‘in the church…’
I watched him depart in mingled triumph and perplexity. Here was a clue, surely, but much remained ambiguous: who or what was I to seek ‘in the church,’ and how might this relate to my investigation?
Yet of course I dared not question him further, under the circumstances, and as there could be little doubt about which church was meant, I turned with as much nonchalance as I could dissemble and directed my steps back the way I had come.
Once out of sight of the maize-fields, however, it was all I could do to keep from running at the top of my speed, and a very few minutes found me back in the deserted village centre, staring up at the solitary structure I had noticed earlier, the only building which could possibly have answered to such a description. This was a humble structure of wood, in very bad repair: peeling white paint hung from it in ribbons, revealing the grey wood beneath, while its damaged steeple gave every evidence of having been made the habitation of squirrels (Sciurus Carolinensis, I should think).
I knocked at the weathered door, expecting no answer and, receiving none, pushed it creakingly open with palpitating heart, and entered the neglected rustic fane.
Inside it was dim, and the air cool, which would have made for a welcome change from the late-summer heat outside, had it not been for a faint—exquisitely faint, wholly undefinable, and perfectly loathsome odour which pervaded the place.
Indeed, the thought had scarcely entered my head that I should prefer even the stench of that horrid, bucket-borne burden I had seen carried yesterday, when to my surprise I saw the self-same buckets in the church entryway, empty now though still filth-encrusted. Had this, then, been their bearer’s destination? And where had he deposited their revolting contents—and wherefore?
Proceeding now with somewhat more caution, I entered the small, simple, and much-damaged sanctuary, in which could be discerned but few evidences of its original function. Most of the pews had been removed—and at no recent date, to judge by the thick drifting dust which lay, largely undisturbed, on the floor. Those which remained were draped with mildewed sheets. The pulpit was hidden by an embroidered coverlet, on which I was only mildly surprised to see replicated the quasi-arachnoid pattern of which I have already spoken at length.
As the sanctuary contained nothing else of obvious significance, I turned my attention to the door standing ajar to the left of the hidden pulpit, presumably leading to the minister’s study. Here was there a well-travelled path through the dust and grime on the floor, which I followed. Pushing open the door, I found myself within what must once have been a clergyman’s sanctum indeed; but now, sadly changed, it presented a most depressing spectacle to the eye.
My gaze fell first upon a fine, antique book-case which stood beside the sole window. It had been emptied of its original contents—I noticed with sorrow some very old books disintegrating in a corner, surrounded by droppings which suggested that they had been made into a rats’ nest. In place of these volumes now
stood tins of food and cheap, mostly unlabelled bottles of spirits. In one corner I saw a kind of camp-cot, with a moth-eaten blanket upon it and a chamber pot (brim-full, I record with sorrow) stowed beneath it.
I was also startled (though I should perhaps not have been, after my discovery of the buckets) to see the shabby black coat worn by the man of yesterday, hung carelessly upon a nail protruding from the wall. Seeing it now in an ecclesiastical context, I realized that it must once have been a clergyman’s frock-coat. Nay, further: in that same instant I saw with perfect clarity (though admittedly upon scanty enough evidence) that the drooling creature I had seen labouring with his twofold burden of filth must be the descendant of the minister, or line of ministers, who had stood in that pulpit many years ago, before the church’s unexplained superannuation, or I may say extinction.
Shaking my head sadly at the narrative of degeneracy my supposition implied, I turned to leave, only to notice for the first time a looming, narrow piece of furniture in the far corner, draped with a horse blanket and hidden in shadow. In as little time as it takes to pen these words, curiosity vanquished scruple, and I tugged the blanket away to reveal a tall oaken cabinet, much eaten away by worm and water.
A moment later I was on my knees, pulling the reluctant doors open, and rifling through the contents of the cabinet’s many shelves. It was, I saw, the only portion of that erstwhile study to have been spared the depredations of time and retrogression. Inside I found several old and valuable books, the most recent being a first edition of Rev. Paley’s Evidences, as well as a tarnished watch, some candles, and numerous other articles of a more personal nature. But most of all I found letters: sheaves upon sheaves of letters tied together with rotting ribbon and organized in small boxes, labelled by year and stacked in a kind of pyramid at the bottom of the cabinet.
The dates, written in very old and faded ink, were those of the very last years of the eighteenth century. The box corresponding to the latest year there represented—1799—being uppermost, I reached in and took from it the ribboned packet it held.
Standing, I began to brush the dust from the parcel of antique letters when my blood was fairly congealed (I use the hackneyed expression advisedly) by a sound emanating from somewhere beneath the uncarpeted floor-planks on which I stood.
It was—how can I possibly describe it?—something betwixt an animal lowing or bleating and a half-articulate human cry: a muffled, hybrid moan hideously expressive of…of… I know not what exactly. But hideous it was, and like nothing I have ever heard before. There succeeded another like cry—and another—or perhaps these were echoes of the first?—and above these came floating a high, maniac laughter, unequivocally human, and mingled I believe with sobs of pathos or terror.
It was not until I had run nearly half a mile and squatted, panting and trembling, in the centre of a dusty, unplanted field, that I realized I still clutched the bundle of letters.
I write these words, somewhat recovered, at the dining-table of my lodging. The family are all (I presume) in the fields still; I am quite alone in the house. The ribbon-tied packet lies before me. Since no consideration on earth could compel me to return to that church to return them, I may as well peruse them. Perhaps they may serve to illuminate the deepening mystery which surrounds me. Though the troubling incidents of yesterday and this morning have shaken my nerves, they have, I am glad to say, also strengthened my resolve. That there is some crypto-zoological riddle here to be solved, I can no longer doubt.
# # #
I have spent the entire afternoon shut up in my bedroom with the packet of letters, taking only some tea brought up by my hostess (along with a bowl of steaming broth aswim with plump kernels of Indian-corn—a most remarkable food, truly!). The time has not been wasted, for the narrative told by this sheaf of epistles is a remarkable one.
What lies there upon the table is a portion of the correspondence, now eighty years old, of the quondam minister of the town church. His name was Ebenezer Lovel, and his letters show him to have been a man of no little learning, and much decency. O, what a falling-off of the family line has there been if, as I sadly suspect, the present inhabitant of the church be his descendant (probably his grandson)!
The letters I have inadvertently taken form a continuous narrative, dating from the spring and summer of the final year of the last century (the series breaks off suddenly in early September). Fortunately for my purposes, Lovel made and kept careful copies of his own letters, as well as those he received; and so I have a tolerably complete record of his activities and observations during this period.
The earlier letters (and, I imagine, the remainder of that epistolary ziggurat I left behind in the church) are prodigiously dull, being chiefly concerned with the quotidian minutiæ to be expected of a life spent in ministering to the souls of a simple, rustic people, though these are enlivened by occasional flashes of laconic wit. But with the arrival in town of a most singular gentleman from England, one Sir Joseph Suncoke (here, by the by, is the origin, if not the explanation, of the township’s curious nomenclature resolved; in his letters Lovel uses another name for the village), a novel narrative element emerges in the letters, embodied in a series of (increasingly contentious) exchanges between Lovel and the newcomer.
I shall now attempt a précis of those portions of the correspondence related to this figure, interspersing such passages verbatim as seem to me particularly salient.
First, by way of background: it seems that, in the months before Suncoke’s arrival he had caused a large and stately mansion to be constructed somewhere in the woods adjoining the village, a large tract of which land he had earlier purchased through an agent. (This portion of the story I have pieced together from references contained within such of Lovel's letters as are in my possession.) Then, in March of the year in question, Suncoke himself arrived, to supervise the completion of the house from hired quarters in the village. It was at this point that Lovel made the acquaintance of the man, paying a call upon him as the town’s resident clergyman and, as it were, sole representative of the cultivated world (there being no person of comparable learning within a compass of many miles).
This initial visit appears to have passed without particular incident; Suncoke behaved civilly enough to the country minister, who reports a not unagreeable tea, brought by a very aged and silent serving-woman, over which the conversation touched upon a number of topics. In his record of this first meeting, Lovel shows himself to have been deeply impressed by the Englishman’s eclectic yet profound knowledge of letters:
I possess(he tells a correspondent) some pardonable Degree of Pride regarding my Acquaintance with the classic Tongues; yet our Discourse had not progressed half an Hour before it was apparent to me, that Sun-cooke was easily my Master in both Greek and Latin; furthermore, and what is more wounding to the Vanity of a Clergy-Man, he has a substantial Knowledge of both Hebrew and Syriac, of which Languages I am, as you know, wholly ignorant.
But it was in his character of a singularly accomplished natural philosopher (this being, one must recall, some few decades before Mr Whewell gave us the term ‘scientist’) that Suncoke most impressed Lovel. Whilst remaining vague on the subject of his own researches (which, he claimed, he had come to the solitude of an American wilderness to pursue in peace and privacy), he spoke with animation of a host of fellow-travelers, past and present, in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. These ranged, as Lovel writes,
...from Figures well known to me, like Bacon, Des Cartes, Leibnitz, and (in our own Time) Jos. Priestley and Erasmus Darwin (Figures, however, upon whose Theories he put, it seemed to me, the most curious Constructions); to certain Names awakening but a dim Recognition in my Brain, such as Thos. Heriot, M. La Mettrie, and Athanasius Kircher; to some Few entirely unknown to me: one Prosperus Sleath, for instance, a Mr. Whoole or Whoule and, most particularly, one M. Lamarck, a Gallic Contemporary termed by Suncooke, in a surprising Out-burst of Enthusiasm, the greatest Genius since Aristotle.
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br /> The only thing seeming to mar the visit for Lovel was—but let me give him his own words once more:
Whilst we conversed upon these and divers other Topics, my gentle Interlocutor being, to all Appearance, the very Paragon of a pleasant Host, there yet played now and then upon his Lips, like the lambent Sparks which may sometimes appear about the Masts of Ships, a subtle yet markedly sardonic expression, which did much repel me, be our Discourse never so amiable upon the Surface.
Precisely what may have transpired during the next few weeks with respect to Suncoke’s relations with both Lovel and the congregants of his church is not clear. That some highly unpleasant sequence of events there must have been can, however, be clearly inferred from a sudden flurry of correspondence, begun in late May, in which Lovel begins to make inquiries about his neighbour. His initial queries, however, directed to colleagues and friends in Boston, New Bedford, and New York, seem to have elicited little or no useful information. But in early June, a letter directed to a parsonage in Yorkshire bore fruit. In it Lovel writes to one with whom he seems to have been intimate in younger days, now a clergyman like himself (I omit, however, those inessential exchanges of a personal nature which sanction such inferences on my part).
My dear Georgy,
Notwithstanding the Distance of Years since we have had occasion to correspond (to say nothing of the great, grey Ocean separating us!), I hope I retain esteem enough in your Memory that you will understand, without my having to say so, that I am naturally reluctant to engage in anything so unsavory as a back-door Inquisition anent the Character of a Gentleman, particularly one against whom I have little tangible Grounds for Complaint.
