Imagined Slights

by James Lovegrove

  One by one these mental impressions flowed out of him and into Gregory, who saw them as if by telepathy, as if he were a television set and Aaron's voice the signal. A cloud of flamingos taking flight from salty marshes. A queen bee humming at the heart of a contented hive. A necklace of lights tracing the line of a coastal road through the thickening dusk. A sun-drenched park playing host to a summerful of children. Messages zinging through the wires of a nineteenth-century prairie telegraph. Two lovers moving against one another in the heavy lumbering flush of post-coition. Deep underground the bones of long-dead animals being cooled by a subterranean spring. A foundry from a bygone age gouting cinder-flecked smoke into the industrial night. A pack of wolves trotting down from the treeline to investigate the embers of a campfire. In the tiniest fluctuations of his vibrato, with each variation and modulation he introduced into his voice, Aaron drove these mental pictures like spikes of mercury into Gregory's mind. It was a song and yet not a song. It followed none of the conventions of musical composition. It was unearthly and rich and strange, and when it was over Aaron felt drained and satisfied. He had been worried that disuse would have dulled his talent, but it gleamed as brightly as ever. He was pleased.

  Gregory was sitting gripping the edge of the bed, the tears spilling freely down his cheeks, his body motionless.

  "I never thought..." he breathed. "I never knew..."

  All of a sudden the room was cramped and stiflingly muggy, and outside, in the streets of Bridgeville, men and women of a world that had once thought itself damned, then thought itself saved, and now wasn't sure what it was, men and women who had enjoyed times of plenty and doubted they would ever see them again, went about their business with a secret ache in their hearts which was dulled by the din of day but which throbbed into life at night.

  They came at night, usually, the fears. Kicked down the doors of the soul and rushed in to find what guilt had hidden there.

  Usually at night.

  The Unmentionable

  What follows is the transcript of a text I discovered recently while rummaging around in my attic. It is there that I keep, among other things, my great-grandfather's personal effects which, since his death some seven decades ago, have been passed from one branch of my family to another like a baton in a relay race, rarely staying in one place for any length of time owing to the quantity of the items involved and their inconvenient size. Finding myself in dire financial straits, I had been hoping to unearth something of value, but unfortunately my great-grandfather was an inveterate hoarder of junk, knick-knacks, gewgaws, trinkets, baubles and other ephemera, and the two dozen well-travelled trunks which had just over a month ago become my property contained little of any worth. Or so I thought.

  The discovery took the form of a notebook, weathered, worn and torn. Inside I found several pages of text written in pencil, many of the sentences faded almost beyond deciphering. To judge by the handwriting the work was completed in some haste, and although no name is appended to the manuscript, given its age and the curious circumstances surrounding my great-grandfather's brief tenancy of Peculiar Manor (the house that provides the location for the events the text relates), it would be safe to assume that authorship lies with none other than him. I print the contents below in their entirety, with a few judicious editings which will, I trust, diminish neither the integrity of the work nor my great-grandfather's reputation.

  A word about the man himself. M.H. Livegrave was that rarity, an impecunious lawyer. This is not to say that he was not successful in his chosen profession - a donkey in a wig and gown would be able to make a decent living by the Law - but almost every penny he earned went to fuel his passion for junk, which he accumulated with a mania. His particular enthusiasm was for sailors' scrimshaws of dubious authenticity. Indeed, many of these items which are now in my possession bear a manufacturer's stamp on the base, but my great-grandfather seems to have convinced himself that they were individually whittled by salt-caked sea-dogs and as a result paid well over the odds for them. He was also an amateur physician, and it was he who first championed the use of electricity as a stimulus for the flagging sexual appetites of the over-sixties, a treatment met with howls of derision by his contemporaries in the medical community but now, I believe, practised widely.

  For such a man any marriage was surely doomed to failure, and under the circumstances it seems remarkable that his lasted long enough for him to sire two sons before his wife - apparently a woman of saint-like demeanour, no doubt driven to despair by my great-grandfather's bouts of eccentric behaviour and his accumulation of junk - finally expelled him and his belongings from the house. He travelled to North America, and after many Wanderjahren in that great continent settled down in Boston where, finding himself unable to practise his profession, he obtained gainful employment in a bakery. I realise that in submitting this piece for publication I am laying myself open to accusations of profiteering. Nothing could be further from my intentions. I believe this to be a document of considerable historical significance, detailing an extraordinary episode in the life of an extraordinary man. It is true that I have approached a number of museums with a view to their purchasing the original manuscript - so far, it must be said, without much success - but I am of the firm opinion that any monies which do accrue from its sale or publication are simply a vindication of my faith in its importance.

  However, before you commence reading, I must leave you with a stern warning. What follows is not for the faint of heart.

  Ah God, can I bring myself to relate the events of these past few weeks? Yet I must, I must, for I shall surely go mad if I do not! E'en now I can hear the sinister tick of the deathwatch beetle in the walls of this very room, counting down the seconds that remain to me. Ah, how I wish I had never clapped eyes on that thrice-cursèd book the Encyclopaedia Culinaria, that dread tome which, if my intuition is correct, was first set down over two thousand years ago by some mad heretic monk who wrote his foul enchantments on parchment made of human skin, using his own blood for ink. What have I unleashed upon the world? The very thought of it freezes the blood in my veins to ice-water. But I must be calm. I must set down the events in order, as they occurred, so that I might make sense of my madness and leave a warning to others not to follow my example and seek that which they should not seek. I came to Peculiar Manor in the county of Fetlock, Mass., in March of this year, 18--. I was still in something of a state of shock following the news that a relative I had barely heard of - Cyrus Livegrave, my third cousin once removed, a lifelong Classical scholar and the undisputed expert on the work of the critically overlooked Ancient Greek poet Uttatos - had died and that, as his only remaining descendant, Peculiar Manor was to be passed on to me. It was with a nervous but anticipatorily fluttering heart that I leaned out of the window of the carriage as it rattled through the Manor's imposing wrought-iron gates, framed by the louring branches of dark cedars, and caught my first glimpse of my new home. How my heart sank to behold that crumbling edifice, a pitiful mass of brick and creeping vine that loomed on the brow of a steep hill overlooking the town of Surgeon Mills. If I had known then what terrors awaited me within those four walls, my soul would have been plunged yet further into gloom.

  The carriage drew up outside the Manor but the driver, for some inexplicable reason, declined to unload my cases, let alone hold the door open for me, so that I was obliged to perform both functions for myself. The fellow seemed wary, of what I knew not. Indeed, he had evinced nothing but mounting apprehension the entire journey, ever since our departure from Boston which, I may say, was somewhat hastier than I would have wished, but he had happened to be passing and I was fortunate to find a carriage at all in the district in which my straitened circumstances obliged me to live. Now he sat huddled in his seat with his cape wrapped tight about him and, when I came to render payment, was most unwilling to accept the money. I pressed it upon him until, at last, and with the utmost reluctance, he relented. I then asked him what affrighted him so.

/>   "'Tis not my vehicle, sir. I've stolen it," replied he, and whipped the horses. But even as the carriage clattered down the drive I was convinced that this was a mere ruse. His terror was not that of a man who fears the unmasking of a felony. Might it not be the Manor itself that was the source of his fright?

  If, as I stood there in the driveway surrounded by the two dozen crates, trunks and packing cases that contained my belongings, I had had an inkling of the horrors that lay in store for me in the coming weeks, I might have pursued that carriage shrieking for help. However, with night fast closing in, I had no choice but to climb the Manor steps and ring the doorbell, whose sonorous echoes reverberated deep within the bowels of the building. A full quarter of an hour elapsed before the housekeeper arrived to open the door, during which time the sun's flaring orb fell below the western horizon and the shades of night engulfed the sky, but my dampened spirits dried and my heart lifted when I beheld the genial face of the woman who was to become my friend, confidante and companion over the coming weeks: the redoubtable Mrs Slugworthy. This lady was the possessor of a single eye, the other, as I learned, having been lost in a disagreement with a neighbour over the position of a garden fence. Hair-crowned warts proliferated on her face and vast forearms, but she had a welcoming smile and nearly all of her teeth.

  "Master Mortimer Hereward Livegrave!" exclaimed this virtuous woman. "Welcome, new owner of Peculiar Manor!" She took me in her arms and smothered me in her voluminous bosom. "My, but you are a fine-looking gentleman."

  "And you," I replied graciously, "have marvellous ears."

  Mrs Slugworthy wasted no time in hauling my things indoors. I shall never forget my first sight of that great hallway with its sweeping staircase. Above all I recall the portrait of my distant relative that stared down at me forbiddingly from above the fireplace. Cousin Cyrus's expression seemed to be warning me about something, I could not conceive what. I could only stare back numbly, as though mesmerised.

  "Come, Master Mortimer," said Mrs Slugworthy, clapping a hand on my shoulder and breaking my reverie, "let me feed you and get you warm. You must be tired after your long and wearying journey."

  I replied that I was, indeed, somewhat fatigued and hungry, having eaten nothing since lunchtime four hours ago, when I enjoyed a side of beef with a generous side-portion of potatoes, several buttered breadrolls and a jar of ale at a roadside tavern at which I had insisted the driver stop en route. Mrs Slugworthy guided me to the kitchen, sat me down before a log fire and produced some comestibles - a leg of ham that was apparently the last thing my distant relative ate and a glass of wine from the very bottle he had been drinking before he died. While consuming this repast, my appetite not in the slightest diminished by the greenish hue of certain portions of the ham, I enquired of Mrs Slugworthy her recollection of my predecessor's last hours.

  "Ah, that was some months back, Master Mortimer, but I do recall finding him at his desk in his study that fateful morning, sprawled over a book with this awful look on his face, a look of..."

  "Of what?" I urged her, eager in my impatience.

  "Terrible agony," she whispered, and the hair stiffened at the nape of my neck. "But then," she added, "he had always suffered from problems of a digestive nature. I fear that is what eventually killed him." She sighed and tousled my hair. "He was never the trencherman that you are, though in other respects you are as like as two peas in a pod. In fact, now that I inspect you more closely, Master Mortimer, I see that you are the spitting image of Master Cyrus, though you do not smell quite as bad."

  It had not escaped my notice that the late Cyrus and I shared many physiognomic characteristics, and my assumption was that the familial distance between us must surely have been less great than I had hitherto been led to believe, which caused me to wonder if the rumours about Cyrus's relations with close members of his family were not wholly without foundation. But I leave such conjecture to genealogists. My concern is myself.

  I thanked Mrs Slugworthy for the compliment and, in an offhand manner, asked which book it was he had been reading that had brought on his demise. At this, her face was transformed into a mask of the purest anguish.

  "Oh, Master Mortimer, don't ever ask such a thing! That book is not for the likes of you, oh no, nor any mortal man who values his soul. Whatever you do, do not ask me to show you that book. That book, which you must never demand to see, has brought only misery to whomsoever has possessed it, so never beg me to go into the library and fetch it down from the shelf for you, for you will surely regret it. I shall never vouchsafe its name to you, lest you seek it out for yourself in the Taboo Texts section of the library under E for Encyclopaedia Culinaria."

  Encyclopaedia Culinaria! E'en now the name sends a shiver of incomprehensible magnitude through my vitals, yet how my mind thrilled to the dark whispers and implications that it first conveyed. Alas, the curse of the civilised man is to thirst after forbidden knowledge. "Here it is," said Mrs Slugworthy, laying the book before me on the kitchen table. Encyclopaedia Culinaria. I ran nerveless fingers over the book's binding, tracing the letters of the title embossed in gold, digging for which countless miners must surely have perished. Hesitantly I opened the cover, flicked through and almost immediately found the engraving of a ghastly apparition glaring balefully up at me. It was possessed of a beak-like maw, two evilly glittering eyes and legs scaly like a lizard's, with feathers protruding all over it at fantastic angles in a manner reminiscent of the garb of an Aztec priest. I was transfixed with horror at the drawing.

  "What can it be, Mrs Slugworthy?" I gasped. She replied, in measured tones, "Why, a chicken." "Yes, but surely it is a demon chicken." "Then the Manor is overrun with demons, for we have fifty such beasts in the back yard." "But most certainly, then, it is used for heinous, heretical sacrifices committed in the dead of night by depraved and demented Satanists!" "It is used, Master Mortimer, for its flesh and its eggs."

  Mrs Slugworthy's words failed to reassure my seething mind, and I continued to inspect the book with mounting apprehension, leafing through page after page of pictures of more and yet more of the hideous creatures. Though they masqueraded under innocent names such as Rabbit and Pig and Lamb, I sensed that this was a mere ruse and that the so-called "recipes" that accompanied the illustrations were nothing less than thinly disguised necromantic rituals. What could "cooking" be but an arcane term for summoning up? What could one make of the repeated use of the words "flame" and "fire" but as references to the hellish regions where malicious entities dwell? Why else was there a whole chapter devoted to "Use of Spirits" if the book was not intended as a guide for one who would have truck with beings from the Other Side?

  I was trembling when I closed the volume, sweat on my palms, my hairs erect. "What you need is a good rubdown," Mrs Slugworthy told me, and promptly gave me one.

  The next passage is obscure and largely illegible, although the mention of "visiting the nether regions" would suggest that my great-grandfather commenced straight away upon his ill-advised attempts to make contact with the spirit plane. The manuscript continues:I was ejected from my slumber in the depths of the night by a sound that made my skin crawl. At first I thought it must be the wheezing of some hideous, suppurating creature from beyond the Veil that squatted unseen in a corner of the room, but after some moments of abject dread it occurred to me that the source of the sounds was in fact lying beside me. Mrs Slugworthy's nasal cavity, and the stentorian vibrations made by the breaths passing in and out of those mighty passages, were the agent of my anxiety.

  Solicitous that I should not disturb Mrs Slugworthy's rest, for the good lady was plainly exhausted after her exertions, I lit a candle and crept from the bedchamber. As I passed along the corridor the candle guttered in the chilly draughts that blew through the Manor but fortunately remained alight, sparing me from being plunged into utter darkness. I headed downstairs, prompted by an instinctive urge that would not let up until I had found a privy wherein to relieve myself. Then I felt s
omething - I dare not guess what, some terrible hunger - that drew me to the kitchen with a remorseless, inexorable power and was not sated until I had finished the rest of the ham and the last of the wine.

  My eye then alighted upon the book which had lain on the table undisturbed since Mrs Slugworthy and I had departed hence in some haste a few hours earlier. I sat before it, set down the candle, and opened the heavy tome once more, breathless with anticipation, my heart pounding with fear. Again I pored over that mystic, runic text and those symbolic, cabalistic illustrations. Some showed the lines along which one should cut the sacrificial beast, others depicted the utensils necessary for this unspeakable practice.

  At one point I started, startled by a stark sound. It was a tapping on the window such as of dry, scaly claws, although the demonic owner of those talons would have had me believe that the sound was caused by the tips of the branches of the old oak tree directly outside the kitchen rattling against the glass in the wind. I knew better, and warily resumed my reading. So struck was I by the spells in the Encyclopaedia Culinaria that I set about incanting them over and over to myself. What follies does madness inflict upon the deranged mind of an insane man! As I reiterated those phrases intended for no human tongue, I sensed a strangeness in the kitchen. It seemed that myriad tiny scarlet eyes were peering at me from the darkened crevices and corners beyond the range of the feeble light of the candle. I peered round in the hope that I might catch a glimpse of my observers. It may have been an illusion, a trick of the light brought about by the flickering of the candle flame, but the shadows seemed to move to form horrible shapes. They lurked close to the floor, and flowed over one another in a dark tide, as tiny and as quiet as...