Autopsy of an Eldritch City: Ten Tales of Strange and Unproductive Thinking

by James Champagne

  Timothy himself was descended from these French-Canadian immigrants, and being something of a Francophile himself (he especially loved their literature: on his bookshelves one could find many titles by J.K. Huysmans, Jean Genet, Lautreamont, Pierre Guyotat, Charles Baudelaire, and Arthur Rimbaud), it was perhaps no great surprise that as Timothy grew older he began to find himself spending some of his free time wandering through the crumbling Catholic cemeteries that were located throughout the city, and every now and then even attending Mass at some of the old Catholic churches of Thundermist, Lamb’s Blood Church being one of them (which was built all the way back in the early 1870’s: it was the city’s very first church, in fact). Even though Timothy suspected, in his heart of hearts, that he could never return to Catholicism (as a gay man, he simply couldn’t justify being part of an organization that considered people such as himself to be “intrinsically disordered,” though he did kind of like the new Pope), he did try to lead as Christian a life as possible, in his own unorthodox way.

  Of all the old churches that could be found in the city of Thundermist, the one that fascinated him the most was St. Durtal’s Church, which was located in the northern half of the city, on Broderbund Street, facing the Blackstone River. On the east side of the church was Locust Street, while on its west side was the rectory and, beyond that, a three-story office building named Plaza Center that housed a number of psychiatric practices and law offices. Timothy passed by this church every day while driving to his job at the public library on Main Street, and he always marveled at how it seemed to dwarf the local buildings around it, including a dumpy apartment building on Locust Street and a Tim Horton’s located on the street opposite it. The church was 200 feet long and 118 feet wide, built on a granite block foundation, its main body constructed of light-colored brick with cement stone trimmings. Like many old churches, it was built in the form of a large Roman cross, in the Modern French Renaissance style. Its architecture was Romanesque in design, inspired by the work of the 16th century architects Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola (who is perhaps best known for his Jesuit Church of the Gesù in Rome) and Andrea Palladio. The roof of St. Durtal’s was covered with slate and copper trimming, while the front of the church was flanked by two 160-foot-tall towers, each of which was topped by an eight-foot-tall copper gilded cross (the tower on the Locust Street side also had a belfry which housed three giant bells). Eternally brooding near the tops of these two towers were a number of grotesque and demonic gargoyles that bore a strong resemblance to the ones that can be found at Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris. There could be no doubt about it: St. Durtal’s Church was a truly impressive structure, and this building, which looked like something that had been transported into Thundermist from the Middle Ages itself, looked utterly incongruous placed as it was next to more modern-looking buildings.

  Timothy was well aware of the history of the church. In June 1913, the Bishop of Providence, Rhode Island had given Father Marcus Duchamps permission to build a new church to meet the growing demands of Thundermist’s parishioners. In August of that year plans were drawn up by the architect Louis Fontaine, and that November ground was broken for excavation of the church’s foundation. On May 24, 1914, the church’s cornerstone was blessed, and by the fall of 1917 the church was almost completed. Finally, it was open to the public on February 17, 1918. As the years went by, the church underwent a gradual beautification process. Between the years of 1923 to 1925 forty stained glass windows were installed, and in 1928 local Redemptorist Fathers donated to the church a life-sized figure of Jesus on the Cross. And, most importantly, between the years of April of 1941 to the autumn of 1948 the interior of the church was painted by Professor Fausto Mancini, who had painted the entire church in the buon fresco technique. For many years, the church had served the needs of its community, and was a popular gathering place for the faithful of Thundermist.

  That all changed in the year 2000, when the Diocese of Providence announced that it would be closing the church, on account of a dwindling number of parishioners and rising maintenance costs. The church closed down at the end of that year, and there was even talk of it being torn down entirely, a thought that horrified both its former parishioners and secular art lovers in equal measure. The building was saved in September of 2004, when the Diocese turned over the ownership of the church to a nonreligious-affiliated non-profit corporation that came to be known as the St. Durtal’s Arts & Cultural Center (SDACC for short). This corporation was dedicated to the restoration and preservation of St. Durtal’s Church, and they set about renovating the building and halting the progress of its decay. Even though Masses were no longer held at the church, the SDACC still held tours for the public every Sunday, from one to four in the afternoon. In addition, couples could also rent out the church as a place to hold their weddings.

  Sadly, during his youth Timothy had never really had the pleasure of attending Mass at St. Durtal’s Church, as his family belonged to another parish (Our Lady of Sorrows, which was located across the street from a Stop & Shop supermarket that Timothy had worked at part time during his college years). Visually speaking, Our Lady of Sorrows Church had been a very modern and somewhat boring-looking church, nowhere near being a feast for the eyes like St. Durtal’s (though he had very much enjoyed listening to the sermons of Father Severin). However, he did have vague memories of attending a dead uncle’s Requiem Mass at St. Durtal’s in the mid 1990’s, and he recalled how he had been blown away by its epic beauty at the time. But that had been many years ago, and now all that Timothy was left with were hazy memories of the place, memories that lingered in his brain like the smell of incense.

  One cloudy Sunday afternoon in early December 2013, Timothy decided to take a tour of the church to quench his longstanding curiosity about the place. As it was, he had that particular day off (as the library where he worked was closed during the weekends). In other words, he had nothing better to do, so why not?

  As Timothy drove to the church, the instrumental version of the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s “Christmas Time is Here” playing softly on the radio, he would glance at his surroundings and realize that Christmas seemed kind of somber in Thundermist that year. It was almost as if all the candy canes were drooping, and the Christmas trees being sold were so sickly looking they made Charlie Brown’s tree look like the picture of health. Even the Santa at the mall had seemed seedy, less a jolly old elf and more Goya’s Saturn, more apt to devour the children perched on his lap than listen to what they wanted on the morning of December 25th. To take his mind off this gloominess, he reflected on his own lifelong spiritual quest. From the time of his birth to the age of 18, he had been a member of the Roman Catholic Church, and had dutifully attended Mass with his family every Sunday during that time period. But upon graduating high school and coming to the realization that he was gay, he found that he was unable to reconcile his sexual orientation with the beliefs of the religion he was raised in. So he had broken away from the Church. After a period of hazy agnosticism, he began to dabble in the occult during his second year of college. During this time period he had done tarot spreads, consulted Qabalistic correspondences charts, cast runes, used haunted Ouija tables to communicate with the dead, studied ancient alchemical texts, and invoked the Great God Pan into his fragile body. He had assumed the Death Posture, swallowed his own semen, studied the contents of his fecal matter for divination purposes, all in the name of the Great Work. He had even mastered the art of astral travel, and had projected himself into alien dimensions and achieved contact with fantastic and bizarre spirits and monsters (one of whom had resembled a multi-eyed tenticular monstrosity with antennas, similar to the one encountered by Spaceman Spiff on pg. 138 of the Calvin & Hobbes collection entitled The Days are Just Packed).

  But then, after four or so years as a practicing occultist, he had suddenly lost all interest in the topic and had begun to drift more towards Buddhism and Eastern religion. He read the Dhammapada and the Tao Te Ching and the Upanishads and
the Bhagavad Gita, at the same time studying the teachings of beloved gurus of Hinduism such as Sri Ramana Maharshi. Still, despite all of this, he had never been able to lose his fixation on Christianity. As Antonia White had observed in her book The Hound and the Falcon, “Nevertheless, if one has been brought up as a Catholic and for many years has unquestionably believed in its doctrine and practiced with some degree of fervor, the pull of the Church is very strong. It is like one’s native language and, though one may become denationalized, one cannot help reverting to it and even thinking in its terms... often I long to embrace it again—even to practice it without literally believing in it—if that is possible. But I find it an impossible problem.” These days, Timothy found his spiritual beliefs to be a weird combination of Christianity, Gnosticism, and Eastern religion. Or as he often stated, Eastern religions appealed to his intellect while Christianity appealed to his heart.

  He arrived at the church at 12:25, parking his car in the small parking lot located to the side of Plaza Center. He then walked over to the front of the church, shivering a bit from the cold. The main doors could be accessed by ascending a number of granite steps which formed a terrace across the front of the church’s facade. There were seven of these steps, that number being symbolic of the number of days that it had taken God to create the Earth. As Timothy made his way to the steps, he glanced up at the snow-capped two towers, a little intimidated by their soaring heights and the gargoyles leering down at him: from street level, he could see crows flying into and out of the tops of the towers, and from this distance the crows resembled tiny winged demons as they nestled amongst the gargoyles. Three doorways served as an entrance into the church, no doubt symbolizing the Holy Trinity, and these doors were made of wood, and had been painted a brownish-red color, symbolizing the blood that Christ had shed for humanity. Instead of a rose window above the main doors, there were three large stained glass windows, these also representing the Holy Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Above the central door was a ledge, held up by four big ionic columns, and resting on this ledge (and standing sentinel before the trio of stained-glass windows) was a six foot, nine inch tall hollow-cast bronze statue of St. Durtal himself, the saint who the church was named after and dedicated to. Timothy gazed admiringly at this statue as he ascended the slippery granite steps: the statue depicted a man in his fifties in terms of age, dressed like a monk, with a bald head, a neatly trimmed moustache and pointy-beard, cat-like eyes and Mephistopheles eyebrows, his hands slender, nicotine stained and almost feminine. For some reason, Timothy had always felt that St. Durtal greatly resembled the 19th century French writer J.K. Huysmans in appearance.

  A few other people were gathered outside the wooden front doors, most of them standing, a few seated on the steps, huddling to keep warm. Timothy spotted a young mother with her two children (one of whom was a boy, the other a girl: the girl was playing Candy Crush Saga on her iPad while the boy was picking his nose), an elderly man huddled under what looked like ten jackets, and a nondescript middle-aged married couple wearing New England Patriots sportswear. Timothy tried to blend in, which was somewhat difficult as he kind of stood out: his hair was dyed bright blue and pink and cut in a very stylized, almost emo-like fashion, while his extremely thin body was clad in a Lady Gaga Fame Monster t-shirt (the front of which depicted a close-up of the pop star’s face as she cried tears of blood) and tight dark purple leather pants. Still, the back of the t-shirt provided a list of all the venues on Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball tour, and all of these names were arranged to form the shape of a Christian cross, so in a manner of speaking the t-shirt was appropriate. Also, crying tears of blood is often seen as one of the signs of the stigmata, Timothy reminded himself. As he waited for the tour to begin, he noticed a few signs near the front doors of the church, such as “No Loitering” and “No Trespassing: Police Will Take Notice.” He wished that his friend Daphne were there with him, so that he would feel less alone, and he felt a sliver of sadness sink into his heart. He had tried to convince his friend Christopher to come along, but his friend had just mumbled something about there being “too much glass” at the church, so Timothy had just decided to drop the subject.

  Around a minute or so after one o’clock, the central door of the church was unlocked and a man stepped out. He was middle aged, a tall and thin fellow with a shiny bald head, a curly moustache that looked as if it were waxed religiously every day, and serene eyes that resembled two tiny round meditating Buddhist monks. He wore a black Adidas track suit, similar in appearance to the one sported by Jane Lynch’s Coach Sue character on the TV show Glee, and on his feet he wore neither socks nor shoes, but instead moccasin slippers. When he saw the people assembled outside, waiting to enter the church, he smiled and gave them a little bow. “Good afternoon,” he said to them in a laid-back voice, a heavy French-Canadian accent present in his speech. “Welcome to St. Durtal’s Church. Please follow me inside. My name is Henri, and I’ll be your guide.” He pronounced his name ‘On-Ree’ as opposed to ‘Hen-Ree.’ The small assembly followed Henri into the heated church, grateful to get out of the cold. Timothy saw that he was in a small vestibule, which in the old days would have been called the narthex. It was a tiny foyer, with three doors directly in front of them leading into the church’s nave. To their right was another door which Timothy knew led up to the choir loft and, beyond that, the belfry. Next to one of the doors leading back outside was a wooden stool and on this stool there was an old-fashioned boom box that Timothy supposed supplied the interior of the church with background music. As Timothy walked past this boom box he stole a quick glance at the CD jewel case resting atop it, saw that it was a Libera CD: Eternal: The Best of Libera, to be precise.

  Timothy stepped into the church itself and as soon as he did so, it took all of his self-control to keep his mouth from dropping open. Simply put, the interior of St. Durtal’s Church was staggeringly huge: in terms of square footing it was actually larger than the Sistine Chapel. With a seating capacity of 1,300 people and ceiling vaults that were over 65 feet high, everything about St. Durtal’s church was supersized: even the two large stained glass windows at the transepts had the square footage of a ranch house, being 32 feet in height and 22 feet in width. Everywhere Timothy looked, there was some new novelty to feast his eyes on, from the towering marble forest of Corinthian columns to the soaring flying buttresses to the statues of angels wielding swords and shields standing guard near the ceiling of the church, these angelic statues illuminated by spotlights near their feet, spotlights that were hidden from view for those on the ground level looking up at them. And, of course, Prof. Mancini’s frescoes, which covered the walls and ceilings of the church every which way. This is religious art of the highest order, Timothy thought in awe as he gazed at the frescoes all around him, all of which were bursting with color and life. Surely the angels themselves helped guide the artist’s paintbrush as he went about his task beautifying this church. To think that one man had done all of this: St. Durtal’s church housed over 200 fresco paintings, featuring over 600 characters. For the most part, the frescoes depicted scenes and characters from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. In effect, to gaze at the frescoes within the church was to look at one of the world’s largest illustrated Bibles. This church tells a story; it’s a building you can read like a book, Timothy thought, feeling almost overwhelmed by all of the beauty surrounding him. And to think that this treasure house of Christian art is located here, in plain old Thundermist… truly this church is like the diamond in the rough.

  Henri led them in front of a small gift shop set up near the doors leading out to the vestibule (this gift shop obviously being a recent addition to the church). He then gave the group a few quick facts about the church, all of which Timothy was already aware. Henri then encouraged the group to go and explore the church at their own leisure, and if they had any questions, to just ask him. But Timothy, by that point, had already broken away from the group to start examin
ing the church in greater detail on his own.

  He began by walking along the aisles of the nave, passing by the long rows of empty pews, his wanderings accompanied by the angelic music of Libera coming forth from speakers set up all around the church, most of these speakers clinging to the Corinthian columns: the current song playing was “Sanctus.” The aisles of the nave (the nave being the area where parishioners sat or stood, and which formed the length of the cross shape) were lined with stained glass windows, five on each side, these windows being eighteen feet in height and seven feet wide. They depicted various scenes from the Bible, or religious scenes in general: the ones on the eastern (or Locust Street) side of the church showcased St. Peter being saved from the waters, the Last Supper, Mary’s Communion, the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, and Pope Pius X giving communion to the children. Meanwhile, the stained glass windows on the western (or rectory) side of the nave depicted Jesus resurrecting Lazarus, the Samaritan Woman, Christ among the teachers, the Nativity, and the Annunciation. Above all of these stained glass windows, in the topmost story of the nave wall known as the clerestory, were smaller stained glass windows, these portraying the Twelve Apostles.

  Timothy walked along both of the aisles, analyzing each window, and he eventually came to the conclusion that he liked the Last Supper one the best. It consisted of Jesus Christ, his head surrounded by a halo, the Holy Graal in one hand, with his other hand blessing the bread that lay on the table before him. Surrounding him were his Twelve Apostles, with Judas standing off at the far right of the window, a pensive hand held to his chin while he gazed at Christ with a sinister expression on his bearded face. However, Timothy was most captivated by St. John, who sat on Christ’s left. St. John, as he was depicted in this window, had long and almost girlish-looking orange-blonde hair, and he was the only Apostle in the window who was without beard, being clean shaven and almost effeminate looking. He had his head tilted and was gazing up at Jesus with a rapt, almost loving expression on his feminine face. Of all the Apostles, Timothy had always liked John the best, so much so that when the time had come for Timothy to choose a Confirmation name many years ago, he had almost chosen the name John, but had instead ended up going with Teresa, as Saint Teresa of Avila was his favorite saint: needless to say, some of his classmates had teased him about that, but luckily for him, there were no rules that said a male Catholic couldn’t assume the name of a female saint as his Confirmation name.