The gloom of a London October, and the exhaustion that came from a persistent sore throat, had almost persuaded me to take a plane back to New York, when my luck changed. In a bookshop in Maidstone I met Fr. Anthony Carter, a Carmelite monk and editor of a small literary magazine. He had met Machen in 1944—three years before the writer’s death, and had later devoted an issue of his magazine to Machen’s life and work. I accompanied Fr. Carter back to the Priory near Sevenoaks, and as he drove the baby Austin at a sedate thirty miles an hour, he talked to me at length about Machen. Finally, I asked him whether, to his knowledge, Machen had ever had contact with secret societies or black magic. “Oh, I doubt it,” he said, and my heart sank. Another false trail …“I suspect he picked up various odd traditions near his birthplace, Melincourt. It used to be the Roman Isca Silurum.”
“Traditions?” I tried to keep my voice casual. “What sort of traditions?”
“Oh, you know. The sort of thing he describes in The Hill of Dreams. Pagan cults and that sort of thing.”
“I thought that was pure imagination.”
“Oh, no. He once hinted to me that he’d seen a book that revealed all kinds of horrible things about the area of Wales.”
“Where? What kind of a book?”
“I’ve no idea. I didn’t pay too much attention. I believe he saw it in Paris—or it might have been Lyons. But I remember the name of the man who showed it to him. Staislav de Guaita.”
“Guaita!” I couldn’t keep my voice down, and he almost steered us off the road. He looked at me with mild reproach.
“That’s right. He was involved in some absurd black-magic society. Machen pretended to take it all seriously, but I’m sure he was pulling my leg.…”
Guaita was involved in the black-magic circle of Boullan and Naundorff. It was one more brick in the edifice.
“Where is Melincourt?”
“In Monmouthshire, I believe. Somewhere near Southport. Are you thinking of going?”
My train of thought must have been obvious. I saw no point in denying it.
The priest said nothing until the car stopped in the tree-shaded yard behind the Priory. Then he glanced at me and said mildly: “I wouldn’t get too involved if I were you.”
I made a noncommittal noise in my throat, and we dropped the subject. But a few hours later, back in my hotel room, I remembered his comment and was struck by it. If he believed that Machen had been pulling his leg about his “pagan cults,” why warn me not to get too involved? Did he really believe in them, but prefer to keep this to himself? As a Catholic, of course, he was bound to believe in the existence of supernatural evil.…
I had checked in the hotel’s Bradshaw before going to bed. There was a train to Newport from Paddington at 9:55, with a change for Caerleon at 2:30. At five minutes past ten, I was seated in the dining car, drinking coffee, watching the dull, soot-coloured houses of Ealing give way to the green fields of Middlesex, and feeling a depth and purity of excitement that was quite new to me. I cannot explain this. I can only say that, at this point in my search, I had a clear intuition that the important things were beginning. Until now, I had been slightly depressed, in spite of the challenges of the Voynich manuscript. Perhaps this was due to a faint distaste for the subject matter of the manuscript. I am as romantic as the next man—and I think most people are healthily romantic at bottom—but I suppose all this talk of black magic struck me ultimately as degrading nonsense—degrading to the human intellect and its capacity for evolution. But on this grey October morning, I felt something else—the stirring of the hair that Watson used to experience when Holmes shook him awake with “The game’s afoot, Watson.” I still had not the remotest idea what the game might consist of. But I was beginning to experience an odd intuition of its seriousness.
When I grew tired of looking at the scenery, I opened the book bag and took out a Guide to Wales, and two volumes of Arthur Machen; some selected stories, and the autobiographical Far Off Things. This latter led me to expect to find a land of enchantment in Machen’s part of Wales. He writes: “I shall always esteem it as the greatest piece of fortune that has fallen to me, that I was born in the heart of Gwent.” His descriptions of the “mystic tumulus,” the “giant rounded billow” of the Mountain of Stone, the deep woods and the winding river, made it sound like the landscape of a dream. And in fact, Melincourt is the legendary seat of King Arthur, and Tennyson sets his Idylls of the King there.
The Guide to Wales, which I had picked up at a secondhand bookshop in the Charing Cross Road, described Southport as a little country market town “amid a pleasant, undulating, and luxuriant landscape of wood and meadow.” I had half an hour to spare between trains, and decided to look at the town. Ten minutes was enough. Whatever may have been its charms in 1900 (the date of the Guide), it is now a typical industrial town with cranes on the skyline and the hooting of trains and boats. I drank a double whisky in the hotel next to the station, to fortify myself in the event of a similar disappointment in Caerleon. And even this did little to relieve the impact of the dreary, modernised little town in which I found myself an hour later, after a short journey through the suburbs of Southport. The town is dominated by an immense red brick monstrosity, which I guessed correctly to be a mental institution. And Chesterton’s “Usk of mighty murmurings” struck me as a muddy stream whose appearance was not improved by the rain that now fell from the slate grey sky.
I checked into my hotel—an unpretentious place, without central heating—at half past three, looked at the flowered wallpaper in my bedroom—at least one survival from 1900—and decided to walk out in the rain.
A hundred yards along the main street, I passed a garage with a hand-printed notice CARS FOR HIRE. A short, bespectacled man was leaning over the engine of a car. I asked him whether there was a driver available.
“Oh yes, sir.”
“This afternoon?”
“If you like, sir. Where did you want to go?”
“Just to look at the countryside.”
He looked incredulous. “You are a tourist, are you, sir?”
“I suppose so, in a way.”
“I’ll be right with you.”
His air as he wiped his hands suggested that he thought this was too good to miss. Five minutes later, he was waiting in front of the building, wearing a leather motoring jacket of a 1920ish vintage, and driving a car of the same period. The headlights actually vibrated up and down to the chatter of its engine.
“Where to?”
“Anywhere. Somewhere towards the north—towards Monmouth.”
I sat huddled in the back, watching the rain, and feeling distinct signs of a cold coming on. But after ten minutes, the car warmed up, and the scenery improved. In spite of modernisation and the October drizzle, the Usk valley remained extremely beautiful. The green of the fields was striking, even compared to Virginia. The woods were, as Machen said, mysterious and shadowy, and the scenery looked almost too picturesque to be genuine, like one of those grandiose romantic landscapes by Asher Durand. And to the north and northeast lay the mountains, hardly visible through the smokey clouds; the desolate landscape of “The White People” and “The Novel of the Black Seal”—both very fresh in my mind. Mr. Evans, my driver, had the tact not to speak, but to allow me to soak up the feeling of the landscape.
I asked my driver whether he had ever seen Machen, but I had to spell the name before Mr. Evans ever recognised it. As far as I could tell, Machen seemed completely forgotten in his native town.
“You studyin’ him, are you, sir?”
He used the word “studying” as if it were some remote and ritualistic activity. I acknowledged that I was; in fact, I exaggerated slightly and said that I thought of writing a book on Machen. This aroused his interest; whatever might have been his attitude to dead writers, he had nothing but respect for living ones. I told him that several of Machen’s stories were set in these desolate hills that lay ahead of us, and I added casually:
“What I really want to find out is where he picked up the legends he used in his stories. I’m fairly sure he didn’t invent them. Do you know of anyone around here who might know about them—the vicar, for example?”
“Oh, no. The vicar wouldn’t know anythin’ about legends.” He made it sound as if legends were a thoroughly pagan activity.
“Can you think of anyone who might?”
“Let’s see. There’s the Colonel, if you could get on the right side of him. He’s a funny chap, is the Colonel. If he don’t like you, you’d be wastin’ your breath.”
I tried to find out more about this Colonel—whether he was an antiquary, perhaps; but Evans’s statements remained Celtically vague. I changed the subject to the scenery, and got a steady stream of information that lasted all the way back to Melincourt. At Mr. Evans’s suggestion, we drove as far north as Raglan, then turned west and drove back with the Black Mountains on our right, looking bleaker and more menacing at close quarters than from the green lowlands around Melincourt. In Pontypool, I stopped and bought a book about the Roman remains at Melincourt, and a secondhand copy of Giraldus Cambrensis, the Welsh historian and geographer, a contemporary of Roger Bacon.
Mr. Evans’s taxi rates proved to be surprisingly reasonable, and I agreed to hire him for a whole day as soon as the weather improved. Then, back in the hotel, with a potation called grog, consisting of brown rum, hot water, lemon juice, and sugar, I read the London newspapers, and made cautious enquiries about the Colonel. This line of approach proving barren—the Welsh are not forthcoming with strangers—I looked him up in the phone book. Colonel Lionel Urquart, The Leasowes, Melincourt. Then, fortified by my grog, I went into the icy phone kiosk and dialled his number. A woman’s voice with an almost incomprehensible Welsh accent said the Colonel was not at home, then said he might be, and she would go and look.
After a long wait, a harsh British upper-class voice barked into the phone: “Hello, who is it?” I identified myself, but before I could finish, he snapped: “I’m sorry, I never give interviews.” I explained quickly that I was a professor of literature, not a journalist.
“Ah, literature. What kind of literature?”
“At the moment, I’m interested in the local legends. Someone mentioned that you knew a great deal about them.”
“Ah, they did, eh? Well, I suppose I do. What did you say your name was?”
I repeated it, and mentioned the University of Virginia, and my major publications. There were odd mumbling noises at the other end of the line, as if he were eating his moustache and finding it hard to swallow. Finally, he said:
“Look here … supposing you come over here a bit later this evening, around nine? We can have a drink and talk.”
I thanked him, and went back to the lounge, where there was a good fire, and ordered another rum. I felt I deserved congratulations, after Mr. Evans’s warnings about the Colonel. Only one thing worried me. I still had no idea of who he was, or what kind of legends interested him. I could only guess that he was the local antiquary
At half past eight, after an ample but unimaginative supper of lamb chops, boiled potatoes, and some unidentifiable green vegetable, I set out for the Colonel’s house, having enquired the way from the desk clerk, who was obviously intrigued. It was still raining and windy, but my cold was held at bay by the grog.
The Colonel’s house was outside the town, halfway up a steep hill. There was a rusty iron gate, and a driveway full of pools of muddy water. When I rang the doorbell, ten dogs began to bark at once, and one approached the door on the other side and snarled discouragingly. A plump Welsh woman opened the door, slapped the Doberman pinscher that growled and slavered, and led me past a pack of yelping dogs—several, I noticed, with scars and torn ears—into a dimly lit library smelling of coal smoke. I’m not sure what sort of a man I expected to meet—probably tall and British, with a sunburned face and bristly moustache—but he proved rather a surprise. Short and twisted—a riding accident had broken his right hip—his dark complexion suggested mixed blood, while the receding chin gave him a slightly reptilian look. On first acquaintance, a definitely repellant character. His eyes were bright and intelligent, but mistrustful. He struck me as a man who could generate considerable resentment. He shook my hand and asked me to sit down. I sat near the fire. A cloud of smoke immediately billowed out, making me choke and gasp.
“Needs sweeping,” said my host. “Try that chair.” A few moments later, something fell down the chimney along with a quantity of soot, and before the flames made it unrecognisable, I thought I recognised the skeleton of a bat. I surmised—correctly, as it turned out—that Colonel Urquart had few visitors, and therefore few occasions to use the library.
“Which of my books have you come across?” he asked me.
“I … er … to be quite honest, I only know them by hearsay.”
I was relieved when he said dryly: “Like most people. Still, it’s encouraging to know you’re interested.”
At this point, looking past his head, I noticed his name on the spine of a book. It seemed a rather luridly designed dust jacket, and the title, The Mysteries of Mu, was quite clearly visible in scarlet letters. So I added quickly:
“Of course, I don’t know a great deal about Mu. I remember reading a book by Spence.…”
“Total charlatan!” Urquart snapped, and I thought his eyes took on a reddish tinge in the firelight.
“And then,” I added, “Robert Graves has some curious theories about Wales and the Welsh.…”
“Lost tribes of Israel, indeed! I’ve never heard such an infantile and far-fetched idea! Anyone could tell you it’s nonsense. And besides, I’ve proved conclusively that the Welsh are survivors from the lost continent of Mu. I have evidence to prove it. No doubt you’ve come across some of it.”
“Not as much as I could have wished,” I said, wondering what I’d let myself in for.
At this point he interrupted himself to offer me a whisky, and I had to make a quick decision—whether to plead another appointment and escape, or to stick it out. The sound of rain on the windows decided me. I would stick it out.
As he poured the whisky, he said, “I think I can guess what you are thinking. Why Mu rather than Atlantis?”
“Why, indeed,” I said, in a bemused way. I wasn’t even aware, at that stage, that Mu was supposed to have been situated in the Pacific.
“Quite. I asked myself exactly that question twenty years ago, when I first made my discoveries. Why Mu, when the major relics lie in South Wales and Providence?”
“Providence? Which Providence?”
“Rhode Island. I have proof that it was the centre of the religion of the survivors from Mu.
“Relics. This, for example.” He handed me a chunk of green stone, almost too heavy to hold in one hand. I had never seen such stone before, although I know a little about geology. Neither had I seen anything like the drawing and inscription cut into it, except once in a temple in the jungles of Brazil. The inscription was in curved characters, not unlike Pitman’s shorthand; the face in the midst of them could have been a devil mask, or a snake god, or a sea monster. As I stared at it, I felt the same distaste—the sense of nastiness—that I had experienced on first seeing the Voynich manuscript. I took a large swallow of my whisky. Urquart indicated the “sea monster.”
“The symbol of the people of Mu. The Yambi. This stone is their colour. It’s one of the ways to learn where they’ve been—water of that colour.”
I looked at him blankly. “In what way?”
“When they destroy a place, they like to leave behind pools of water—small lakes, if possible. You can always tell them because they look slightly different from an ordinary pool of water. You get this combination of the green of stagnation, and that bluey-grey you can see here.”
He turned to the bookshelf and took down an expensive art book with a title like The Pleasures of Ruins. He opened it and pointed at a photograph. It was in colour.
�
��Look at this—Sidon in Lebanon. The same green water. And look at this: Anuradhapura in Ceylon—the same green and blue. Colours of decay and death. Both places they destroyed at some point. There are six more that I know of.”
I was fascinated and impressed in spite of myself; perhaps it was the stone that did it.
“But how did they do that?”
“You make the usual mistake—of thinking of them as being like ourselves. They weren’t. In human terms, they were formless and invisible.”
“Invisible?”
“Like wind or electricity. You have to understand they were forces rather than beings. They weren’t even clear separate identities, as we are. That’s stated in Churchward’s Naacal tablets.”
He proceeded to talk, and I shall not attempt to set down all he said. A lot of it struck me as sheer nonsense. But there was a crazy logic in much of it. He would snatch up books off his shelves and read me passages—most of these, as far as I could see, by all kinds of cranks. But he would then take up a textbook of anthropology or paleontology, and read some extract that seemed to confirm what he had just said.
What he told me, in brief, was this. The continent of Mu existed in the South Pacific between twenty thousand and twelve thousand years ago. It consisted of two races, one of which resembled present-day man. The other consisted of Urquart’s “invisible ones from the stars.” These latter, he said, were definitely aliens on our earth, and the chief among them was called Ghatanothoa, the dark one. They sometimes took forms, such as the monster on the tablet—who was a representation of Ghatanothoa—but existed as “vortices” of power in their natural state. They were not benevolent, in our sense, for their instincts and desires were completely unlike ours. A tradition of the Naacal tablets has it that these beings created man, but this, Urquart said, must be incorrect, since archaeological evidence proved that man had evolved over millions of years. However, the men on Mu were certainly their slaves, and were apparently treated with what we would consider unbelievable barbarity. The Lloigor, or star-beings, could amputate limbs without causing death, and did this at the least sign of rebelliousness. They could also cause cancer-like tentacles to grow on their human slaves, and also used this as a form of punishment. One picture in the Naacal tablets shows a man with tentacles growing from both eye sockets.
Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos Page 46
