III
Ach Golgotha
Of the many cemeteries and graveyards situated in the city of Thundermist, Lamb’s Blood Cemetery was by far one of the oldest, dating back to sometime before the year 1900. Surrounded by a black wrought-iron fence, the lower half of the cemetery was situated in Rhode Island while its upper half fell within the confines of Massachusetts, the borderline between the two states essentially dividing the cemetery into two halves. Timothy parked his car next to the sidewalk that bordered the east side of the cemetery. He then headed to the main entrance, which could be found on the southeast corner of the fence. The gates were swung wide open, and above them were ornate letters spelling out the name of the cemetery in French: Cimetière de sang d’agneau. As he stepped into the cemetery he slipped on his earphones (which were connected to a black iPod clipped to his belt), and he began listening to The Cure’s “The Holy Hour” (off their album Faith).
Timothy began wandering around the cemetery, seeking out the grave of Prof. Mancini. Many of the names on the graves were of French origin, and the epitaphs of these graves were also written entirely in French. As Timothy strolled through the necropolis, listening to The Cure, he reflected on what he knew about this cemetery. It was the largest cemetery in the city of Thundermist, and it was maintained by Lamb’s Blood Church. There were 16,000 people buried there, and since May 31, 1955, the cemetery had been shut off from any new burials. That same year, in August, Hurricane Diane had hit the city of Thundermist, and Baart Pond (which was located behind the cemetery) had flooded so greatly that it had taken part of the cemetery along with it. More than fifty caskets had shattered open and their contents floated away with the water. People who lived in houses next to the cemetery had reported seeing bodies floating down the street, and many of these bodies had eventually been washed out to sea, lost forever. It was for this reason that many people believed that the cemetery was haunted. In point of fact, paranormal investigators and amateur ghost hunters considered it to be one of the biggest hot spots for paranormal activity in the Rhode Island/New England area. Translucent orbs had supposedly been photographed floating over the graves at night, and shadowy figures had reportedly been seen lurking amongst the marble monuments. Paranormal investigators had even claimed to have recorded the sounds of the voices of the dead, along with other examples of Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). Adding to the atmosphere was the fact that Saddleworth Clinic, a mental hospital for the mentally insane, could be found slightly to the north of the cemetery, its decaying buildings casting bleak shadows on the graveyard below.
As Timothy walked along the winding paths of the cemetery, certain graves seemed to stand out to him. In the center of the cemetery was a large monument depicting a Calvary scene, and it was surrounded by the graves of long-dead priests (some of whom had served as pastors at St. Durtal’s Church). Timothy looked up at the Crucifixion scene. There was Christ, nailed to the cross, head bent down as he looked to the Earth, the letters INRI on a scroll of paper above his head. Three other statues stood at the base of the cross. To Christ’s left was St. John, long haired and effeminate, hands clasped in prayer, gazing up at Christ with a look of longing and despair on his handsome face. To the right of Christ was his mother, Mary, who, like her son, was also gazing downward, as if the sight of her son suffering on the cross were too great a sorrow for her to bear. Kneeling down at the foot of the cross was another woman, who Timothy assumed was Mary Magdalene. Staring up at this depiction of unbearable despair, this profound suffering cast from stone, Timothy thought of a line from Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion: “Ach Golgotha, unselges Golgotha!” Ah Golgotha, unhappy Golgotha!
A grave caught Timothy’s attention not far from the Calvary monument. This grave was graced with a large stone angel with feathery wings and a wreath in its left hand, the angel resting its right arm and head against the top of the gravestone, a look of profound sadness on its beautiful face. Timothy was aware that this style of monument was known as the “Weeping Angel,” and that its prototype was “Angel of Grief,” an 1894 sculpture by William Wetmore Story that served as a grave for him and his wife at the Protestant cemetery in Rome. To Timothy, it looked like the kind of thing one would expect to see on an old Joy Division record cover.
Then there was a grave that portrayed a young woman wearing a robe, clinging to a large cross, as if she were drowning out at sea and the cross was a rock or life preserver that she was clutching to for dear life. Looking at this statue (while The Cure’s “The Blood” began playing on his iPod) caused Timothy to think of “Rock of Ages,” that famous old Christian hymn written by the Calvinist Reverend Augustus Montague Toplady in 1763 (and first published in The Gospel Magazine in 1775). In particular, Timothy recalled the following snatch of lyrics from the hymn: “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.”
The most impressive monument at Lamb’s Blood Cemetery, by far, was the Dunwich Mausoleum, which was the final resting place of Howard Dunwich, the governor of Rhode Island during the time period in which St. Durtal’s Church was initially constructed. Built on a lot 150 feet in diameter and designed by the same architect who had designed St. Durtal’s, there was enough space for 33 plots in the burial vault beneath the mausoleum’s superstructure. The Dunwich Mausoleum was constructed from top-grade granite and built in the form of a semi-circle that was 44 feet wide and 41 feet deep, with a long row of twenty foot high Ionic columns at the rear of the upper platform that could be reached by ascending 14 steps. The mausoleum looked like something from a movie set, and being built up high on a hill, cast its shadow over the rest of the cemetery.
After a few minutes of searching, Timothy finally found Prof. Mancini’s grave. It was located on the south side of the cemetery, next to a small aboveground crypt whose outer surface was covered with vines and red and green leaves. The headstone wasn’t all that much to look at, but Timothy made a careful note of its epitaph, writing it down on a notepad that he had taken along with him:
Fausto Mancini
Sept. 19, 1885-Jan. 21, 1973
“To Heaven my eyes I raise,
up above I eternally gaze.
In my hand I hold the Keys,
I praised the Goat upon my knees.”
H’mm, that’s weird, Timothy thought as he jotted down the epitaph. What could it possibly mean? Then he remembered how, just a few days ago, Henri had told him that many people believed that the fresco of St. Peter in the north transept of St. Durtal’s was a self-portrait of Prof. Mancini himself. And Timothy also remembered how in this fresco, St. Peter had been holding keys in one hand while raising his eyes to the heavens. “To Heaven my eyes I raise,” Timothy muttered. “But what’s all this about praising a goat on his knees? Maybe I should go back to St. Durtal’s and look into the matter further.”
So that following Sunday, Timothy returned to St. Durtal’s Church at 1:00 PM to take part in another tour of the facility. After parking his car in the parking lot at Plaza Center, he decided to walk behind the church and see what it looked like from the back. So he made his way down Locust Street, passing by many crumbling houses with boarded-up windows: on the side of one of these houses someone had spray-painted the words “Crip Gang,” causing Timothy to shiver and not linger on this particular street, which was as silent as the Aeon of Maat. Eventually, he reached the back of the church, though this wasn’t nearly as impressive to look at as the building’s front; still, the sheer bulk of the apse’s exterior was an impressive sight in its own right. Timothy walked along the shady cement path that ran in between the church’s west wall and the rectory, eventually making it to the front again.
As soon as Henri opened the doors, Timothy headed directly to the north transept, until he stood before the large crucifixion stained glass window. There was the fresco of St. Peter, and now that Timothy had seen a photograph of Prof. Mancini he did note a strong resemblance, though St. Peter was bearded, while in real life the professor had been quite clean sha
ven, almost cherubic looking, his skin as pink as that of a newly born infant. Timothy looked at the two large keys held in St. Peter’s hand, then at the face of the saint, at those eyes raised to Heaven. Timothy also looked up, to the larger fresco directly above that of St. Peter. This one depicted Jacob wrestling with an angel, from that famous scene in the Book of Genesis, 32:24. It reminded Timothy of a similar scene drawn by Gustave Doré in 1885, only here there was something almost demonic looking about the angel, an expression on its face that seemed to set it apart from the other multitude of angels keeping watch over the church, as if it were a false note in the music of their heavenly choir. The fresco depicted the struggle between Jacob and the angel as taking place in the evening, and the night sky was devoid of almost any detail at all, aside from one constellation: that of Capricorn.
Hold on a minute here, Timothy thought, his mind racing in excitement. Capricorn was usually portrayed as a goat with a fish tail on the zodiac: its name in Latin even meant “horned male goat.” Could this be a reference to the goat that Prof. Mancini had mentioned on his epitaph? Timothy was well aware of the diabolical connotations of Capricorn. In the Tarot, the card that Capricorn was associated with was The Devil. Timothy recalled how years ago, while reading Kenneth Grant’s The Magical Revival, he had come across a passage explaining how the goat came to be the dominant bestial type assigned to symbolize the Devil: how early civilizations had noted that, during the Winter Solstice, the Sun, when dipping below the horizon and ushering in the darkness of night, could be seen entering the constellation of Capricorn, the Goat. Thus did the goat become a type of God identified with the underworld and, later on, the Egyptian god Set, the Greek god Pan, and, of course, Christianity’s Satan.
Upon arriving at home, Timothy decided to research the matter further. He began studying the theory of Christian constellations online, exploring the idea that one could find examples of messages from the Gospels in the stars (this idea being popularized in the 1800’s by the writings of E.W. Bullinger and J.A. Seiss). He read about Julius Schiller (c. 1580-1627), a German lawyer who, in the year of his death, had published a star atlas known as the Coelum Stellatum Christianum, which replaced the pagan constellations with Biblical figures. That is, the twelve major zodiacal constellations were here replaced instead with the Twelve Apostles. Timothy looked up which Biblical figure that Schiller had used to replace Capricorn, and saw that it was... Jacob.
It can’t be a coincidence, Timothy mused. Professor Mancini was notorious for hiding little puzzles in his artwork, and had supposedly been a great admirer of the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges. As far as Timothy was concerned, most of the puzzling aspects of the epitaph had been explained, aside from the part about praising the goat on his knees. Yet he was still no closer to locating the professor’s “Black Studio” (assuming that such a studio even existed), or, for that matter, uncovering the identity of the boys who had served as the models for St. Durtal’s demons, which was what had got him started on this whole wild goose chase to begin with.
There’s only one thing left to do: I need to go and search Prof. Mancini’s estate itself, and see if I can find any clues there, Timothy thought. He knew a few basic facts about Prof. Mancini’s mansion. Between his stained glass window business and the money he made decorating churches on the side, Prof. Mancini had been quite well off, to the extent that, upon moving from Boston to Thundermist in 1940, he had been able to buy a large estate on the border of the town, next to Baart Pond and not far from Lamb’s Blood Cemetery and the Saddleworth Clinic. Apparently, the professor had been quite fond of Lamb’s Blood Cemetery, and back in the day was often spotted strolling along its winding paths when the weather was mild. “When I’m in Lamb’s Blood Cemetery, I feel as if the dead are very near to me,” Prof. Mancini had once been quoted as saying. Well, that wasn’t shocking: Timothy believed that cemeteries were notorious hang-outs for the Qliphoth, the husks of the dead and denizens of the World of Shells. In any case, the layout of Prof. Mancini’s estate was modeled after that of old Zebulon Windrow’s estate near Haverstraw, New York, the Windrows being a family of black magicians and necromancers, said to be in possession of the Urim and Thummim mentioned in the Biblical Book of Exodus. So why on earth did a pious Christian like Prof. Mancini have such a fascination with them? Timothy was confused. Like the professor’s friendship with the diabolic artist Richard Pickton, it just didn’t add up.
Whatever the case was, Timothy’s next step seemed clear. He needed to get into Prof. Mancini’s mansion and poke around a bit. In the period following the professor’s death, the mansion had stood empty for years, slowly falling into ruin. But Timothy had recently read in the Thundermist Times that a couple of years ago, the SDACC had purchased the place and was in the process of renovating it, with the intention of turning it into a tourist attraction, just like they had done with St. Durtal’s Church. At night the place was certain to be empty. Timothy decided that he could sneak in then and do some snooping. And with that thought in mind, he went to bed, with the intention of exploring Prof. Mancini’s estate sometime in the near future.
IV
To Feed the Moon
A few nights later, after the sun had set, Timothy had climbed into his car and driven up to the Mancini estate. The streets were all but deserted at that hour, and as Timothy drove he had the radio on, was listening to the song “Demons” by Imagine Dragons. On the car seat next to him was a duffel bag containing a flashlight, matches, a screwdriver, a crowbar, some rope, a first aid kit, and other useful tools. He was dressed mostly in black, wearing his favorite t-shirt, one that had the movie poster art for the Jessica Alba horror film The Eye on the front of it. He had the evening all planned out: he would park his car a mile or so down the road from the estate, then hoof it on foot the rest of the way there. As matters stood, there weren’t any other homes or businesses on the street leading to the Mancini estate, so it wasn’t as if he had to worry about being spotted. Once at the estate he’d look around and see if he could find anything. On the off chance that he’d trigger some kind of security alarm, or were he to be arrested, he would claim that his car had broken down and he had gone over to the estate to see if there had been a phone he could use. Timothy was aware that it wasn’t the greatest plan in the world (“Yes, officer, my car broke down. Don’t mind this duffel bag that just happens to be loaded up with just the sort of tools an intruder would use to break into private property”), but what the hell, it was worth a shot.
Timothy reached the intended spot and parked his car. He exited the vehicle and began walking in the direction of the estate, his lonely wandering accompanied by the hooting of owls. He was wearing a heavy winter coat, on account of the fact that it was a very chilly and wintry night out. A few minutes later and he had reached his destination. The estate was surrounded by an especially dirty-looking red sandstone wall. Rising into view from behind this wall were a number of tall oak trees, along with the upper floors of the mansion itself. Timothy walked along the imposing wall until he came to the main gate, which consisted of two tall black granite pillars, a grinning skull atop each of them. In between these two pillars was a large black gate. Beyond the gate was a white flagstone path which eventually split into two forking paths: the left path led to the estate’s backyard while the right path led to the mansion. The mansion itself was surrounded by fog that evening, and in the murky light of the moon it resembled the phantasmagoria of some perverted fairyland, the product of the fevered mind of some anonymous curate whose brain was fried by cocaine: the sinister atmosphere generated by the place made Timothy recall the haunted vibes he had felt upon first laying eyes on Caspar David Friedrcih’s The Abbey in the Oakwood. The mansion, a three-story hulking Gothic structure, reminded Timothy of Bartram-Haugh, the malignant mansion that had featured in Sheridan LeFanu’s famous 19th century Victorian mystery thriller Uncle Silas. Could this place possibly look any creepier? Timothy wondered to himself as he stared at the estate fro
m behind the safety of the gate. All that’s missing is Bach’s “Tocotta & Fugue in D Minor” being played on a pipe organ as background music.
The front gate was out of the question, as it was padlocked firmly shut. However, to the left of the gate was a small stone gatehouse set into the wall, a narrow bronze door with a round arch providing an alternate entrance. Timothy tried to open the gatehouse door and to his surprise found that it was unlocked. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy, he thought as he stepped into a tiny room, which contained another nondescript door, which also wasn’t locked. Timothy stepped past it and set foot upon the grounds of the estate.
That was easy... maybe a little too easy, Timothy thought. He began walking down the white flagstone path, passing by numerous cement mixers, wheelbarrows, and scaffolding on the way, reminders that this place was still in the process of being renovated. Even though the fog swirled all around him like the congealed souls of dead maggots, the light of the moon above made it easy for him to see where he was going. As he made his way to the mansion, he kept shooting nervous glances at the clusters of oak trees scattered around the grounds of the estate, expecting at any moment that a figure would step out from their leafy shadows, perhaps a cloaked creature with tentacles for arms and suction cups for a face, like that horrible familiar summoned from Hell in John Bellairs’ book The Revenge of the Wizard’s Ghost. But his trip to the mansion proved to be uneventful and he made it to the front doors unmolested by any nocturnal denizens.
Autopsy of an Eldritch City: Ten Tales of Strange and Unproductive Thinking Page 22
