We still traveled and performed, though the acts were very different, and so were the customers who wanted our services. The best way that I can describe the shows are as public displays of sexual torment and humiliation, with emphasis on rape, on incest, on molestation. And Madeline was still our brightest star. It sickens me to think what she endured, and what is worse is the thought of how much she enjoyed it. That hell spawn, Remy, had taken up residence in her head, and she still shone as radiant as ever, but now with a hideous and unnatural light. She was a perversion of what she had once been. We traveled now farther than we ever had before, leaving Europe and crossing the Atlantic, and we did shows for the first time on American soil. You can only guess at the sort of people to whom our wares appealed, the unfathomably rich and powerful, and also the most mad and despotic and deranged. They exist, believe me, and none are more dangerous than the ones that put on a smooth and smiling public face and command multibillion dollar conglomerates. I found that the wealthier and the more powerful one is, the more twisted are the ways in which one likes to entertain oneself.
It was during this point that Madeline purchased the property where we now find ourselves sitting. She did it at Remy’s direction; this was far from the only land acquisition, both here and abroad, that he instructed her to make. Why here, you may ask? Feral, West Virginia, a little hick-ridden, Podunk town in the middle of nowhere? It’s a fair question. The answer is this- Feral is not all that it immediately appears. Or, to be more precise, it is more than it appears on the surface. In one way of looking at it, it is a small, quiet Midwestern town. But there is something that makes it unique, and you have experienced it for yourself, my lad. It’s why, I’m willing to bet, there are a few voices roaming around in your head that you’re pretty sure aren’t your own. Feral is a source, you see. It is a gathering point for a natural spring- a spring of the Essence. We’re directly above a groundswell of it now. This house was constructed right on top of it.
I’m sure your next question would be, just what exactly is Essence? It’s a little difficult to explain, actually. It is an elemental substance. It is not solid, exactly, or liquid, or gas, and I don’t know what it’s made of, or what its chemical composition is, or where it comes from. It has existed, I believe, for as long as the world has. Perhaps at some point there was more of it, I don’t know. But there is very little of it left, now. It collects, I suppose you could say, in certain “hot spots” around the globe, and it’s incredibly rare. There aren’t many places like this one anywhere, at least not a pure, undiluted source like the one in the cavern below. I can tell you that it’s incredibly powerful stuff. It’s powerful enough that it bestows certain special properties on everything around it, and that includes the woods, and all the grass and other vegetation, and the animals, and all other things natural for miles around. And its effects become stronger the closer you get to the house.
It was no accident that Remy told Madeline to buy this property; he knew the source was here, and he wanted access to it. I have told you that he coveted power most of all, and to have in his possession such a dynamo of natural energy was, I’m sure, like his greatest wet dream come true. Whenever the group of us took trips to the states, traveling together, we came here. The house was built by all of us, combined, and all those legendarily intelligent minds have left their imprint on it. I believe that a little of all of them is still present here. I can feel them, roaming about. It’s a strange place, I don’t need to tell you. There’s not another like it in the world. It’s built on top of this intensely powerful source of natural energy, and also, you must realize that this was like a stronghold for us when we were in the states- we lived her, and added onto it over the years, and we put on many, many of our most successful, and I must say, our most perverse performances here. For it got to a point where we no longer traveled as much, and instead we had people come to us. This is where they came, for our shows that were like nothing that had ever been seen- here, to this very house. And the memories of such events do not just fade away. They linger throughout time.
I’m sure another question in your mind is how these people, our guests, were able to come here without the suspicions of the normals in town being raised. There is another unique feature of the place that you’ve also seen. In the cavern below there are what appear to be the entrances to many tunnels. And indeed, that is what they are, but there’s more to them than that. They’re called skips, in some circles- portals that look out on different places in the world. Some of them are accessible to all. Anyone who blunders across one can use it. But most of them are hidden, and even if you were to find one, chances are you wouldn’t know how to use it. That is how the traffic in the house comes and goes. It happens where the rest of the town never sees, or suspects.
But I was telling you about what happened once we were established here in the States. We put on shows here at the house on a semi-regular basis. There even came to be a name for our craft; it was known as “vulgar art.” I suppose you could say that things were relatively copasetic at that time. The townspeople remained blissfully unaware of our presence, though of course I was far from happy in my life. The woman who I still loved more than any other, and who I still considered my best friend in the world, changed as she was, was married to another man, and a cruel, unpredictable, possessive one at that. But I accepted things because I felt I had no choice in the matter. I suppose the rest of the group was generally happy; the few who could not abide by Remy’s teachings broke off and went their separate ways. But it didn’t happen often, because of the hold that he and Madeline together had over us all. Separately their influence was formidable, but together, no one could resist them. We had the first Decadence event right around that time, inviting guests from around the world that shared our interest in the sexual, the artistic, the subversive, and the bizarre. I enjoyed the company of some of them. Despite my reservations, it was an exciting thing to be a part of. There was an air of excitement, fueled by rumors of Remy and his growing powers. There were whispers that Remy was on the verge of great things, the like of which had never been seen. I remember hearing it said, on that night, that through his knowledge he would become a veritable god, and all those who were loyal to him would be blessed with gifts of power and prestige that would set them apart from and above all other mortals. I didn’t believe it. But in all honesty, I didn’t completely disbelieve it either.
Then, something happened that changed everything. Madeline announced that she was pregnant. Late in ’64, that was. It was assumed that Remy was the father, though it could have been another one of the group. After all, Madeline engaged in sexual activity of all sorts with members of the family as part of the act. Naturally, precautions had always been taken, but it happened anyway…no method is completely foolproof, you know. So Madeline had this decision on her hands, and she decided to keep it. She was into her mid-thirties by this point, and she probably wouldn’t have had another opportunity to be a mother. Remy weighed in on her decision too, of course, as he did all others in her life, and surprisingly, he wanted her to have the child also. I thought it strange at the time, but looking back, it makes sense. He wanted a protégée, and whether the child was actually his or not was irrelevant. He would raise it as his own. And so, in the spring of 1965, James Crawley was born, right here, in this very house. His mother wanted the surname to live on, you see, there not being any other male Crawley heirs…Remy had no objection. You know him as Daddy, and by many other names as well, I’d imagine.
Tad leaned back, stroking his chin with one hand. James, he thought. Jimbo. Another mystery solved. Stitch went on. So. Enter your nemesis. A strange child, from the very beginning. He had physical problems, some of them actually quite serious. It was uncertain, early on, whether he would even survive. He was frail. Sickly. James has, among other things, Graves’ disease. It’s a condition caused by excessive production of the thyroid hormone. It tends to cause extreme nervousness and agitation, as you’ve no doubt noti
ced, and also the protruding eyeballs. He encircled his eyes with his thumbs and fingers, extending his hands so it looked as though they were popping out. Tad nodded. Madeline had still been performing, when she was pregnant, so I suppose you could say that James had begun to be acclimated to the lifestyle in which he was going to be brought up before he was even born. When he was still a baby, we went on the road again, she and the child, and Remy, of course, as well as myself and other members of the group, while others of us remained behind, here at the house, and continued the more or less endless process of adding to it. James grew through his infancy traveling the globe with us, and no aspect of vulgar art, our creation, was ever concealed from him. On the contrary, Remy and Madeline made it a point of exposing him to everything from the very beginning. He saw his parents engaging in the very acts themselves. Again, looking back, these are things of which I am deeply ashamed. No child should ever see what he saw, or be subjected to the atmosphere that he was. But I never did anything to stop it; as I’ve explained, I was rather beyond the point of caring, at this juncture, old feelings in me of bitterness and futility having resurfaced. The boy was not one of my concerns. I had enough of my own, though even at that point I was sometimes called upon to look after him, what with me being unwilling for the most part to actually take part in the grotesque displays, and therefore being available to care for him.
A couple of years passed, during which time we were mostly on the road, stopping occasionally for sabbaticals in Feral. Our network of friends, well wishers and other supporters were always coming and going, using the skips, safe from the sleepy eyes of the Feral townspeople. I did not always know what the rest of the group did in private, though I always got a good look at what new debauchery Remy was leading them toward when they unveiled one of their new pieces of performance art. They were growing more and more perverse, difficult to watch, even for those devoted followers we’d collected, who, I believed, only kept on coming back to see us continually outdo ourselves in terms of what was sickening and senseless. Or perhaps they did it because they still believed that by attaching themselves to Remy in some way they would be endowed with their own measure of power and mastery, over this reality and others, thinking it would take place when he ascended to greater heights himself. Seeing some of the things I did, at this point, I could believe they were on to something. Remy’s skills seemed to be growing exponentially. The things that I saw during the performances at this time frightened me worse than anything else had to that point. Again I am hesitant to use the word magic; the one I will use instead is sorcery. There can be no other way of describing what took place. And I do not like to call anything unnatural, for I believe that everything, in this world and others, stems from a natural source. Though, as I said before, there are some lines that should not be crossed, and boundaries that should not be broken, and when you see them crossed, or if you cross them yourself, you know it, instinctually. But the point had long passed when any protest of mine might have done any good, and I knew that.
Around the age of two, when the earliest semblance of an actual personality begins to appear in a child, Remy began to take a much more active interest in James. He would depart with the child for days on end, or the two of them would disappear into the upper sections of the house, here, and not emerge for many hours. Remy had begun to teach the boy, and I have every confidence in saying, especially now, so many years later, that he reserved the greatest secrets over which he was master for his son. It was to James that the gifts were bestowed that the other members of our cadre had for so long striven for. Poor boy. You can begin to understand, now, a bit about how James came to be who and what he is. Born into a freakish family with many surrogate parents, traveling to foreign lands, brought up into an atmosphere where sex and depravity are everywhere, an everyday occurrence. Deprived of a formal education- though as I’m sure you’ve discovered, he is highly intelligent, and knowledgeable. I have told you how well versed in many disciplines were the members of our tribe, and James was thirsty for knowledge of all kinds. He learned languages, Latin, French from his father, of course. Many others. From early on he had a special interest in biology, sociology, zoology. But he spent most of his time either with his father, learning whatever it was that Remy saw fit to teach him, I suppose, and with Madeline, who he loved totally and unconditionally, as everyone did who she came into contact with. Toward me he was friendly but contemptuous, even at a very young age, an attitude he picked up from his father, I’m sure, who had looked down on me ever since I’d broken away from him from an ideological standpoint and refused to take part in his ceremonies and rituals.
And so James grew, living the strangest life, I’d be bound, that any boy ever has. Watching his mother gang-fucked multiple times a week by his own father and others in the name of art. Watching her being beaten with whips and chains and slapped and spat on while well dressed strangers reclined in comfortable chairs, drinking the blood of freshly killed animals, and taking it all as a matter of course. What did he know that his mind was being warped, he who had never known anything else? And all the while, those protruding eyes in that pale face taking it all in, the prodigy and pupil of a strange, stern man, whose delusions of grandeur were not actually delusions at all, but cold and deadly fact.
Five more years passed, in this way. Toward the end of that time period, Remy called all of us together for a special meeting. He made a point of inviting me personally, or else I probably wouldn’t have come. I couldn’t abide the man, and well did he know my feelings toward him, especially where Madeline was concerned. I’d never hidden them from him. It was in the ballroom that we came together, all of us, in front of a blazing fire in the hearth. Madeline sat near to him, with James cross legged at her feet, watching his father with awe and admiration, as he always did. Remy stood before us, looking immensely pleased with himself, searching each face for something, as I thought. It was a long time before he spoke, and when he did, it was with a clear, loud voice that shook with emotion. He said he wanted to finally announce that our traveling sideshow was going to put down roots, once and for all, and remain here in Feral. Our touring days were done, he said. He felt they had run their course. We would remain here for the duration, putting on a last run of shows. A stunned clamor of conversation swept through the room, but he raised his hands for silence again. The last ones that we would put on, he said, would be grander than anything that had preceded them. He said that he was on the verge of taking a step that would reveal the truths behind the very questions of space and time that had baffled the greatest thinkers and scientific minds throughout the centuries. For all who had believed, for all who had followed, now was the time of ascension to a higher place. The rumors that followed him, the whispers I’d become so familiar with that had spread amongst our group like a poisonous mist since the day he’d darkened our door, the ones that he’d never directly acknowledged until now, they were all true. The time was near at hand, the time of his power.
I wasn’t sure how to react to this news, but mainly what I felt was apprehension. I had disapproved for so long of the direction in which Remy had taken us, but I’d never had the powers of persuasion or the gift for eloquent speech that he had. My views had been lost in the shuffle, and I’d been demoted from fully functioning member of the family to “Gatey,” a glorified security guard and babysitter. I’d done all I could to impart to young James a sense of compassion and decency, but how much could I truly do, when he saw his mother humiliated and degraded on a daily basis? And who knew what Remy was teaching him, whenever he had him in his private chambers, away from prying eyes. What made me the most nervous about that night was Remy’s trying to include me, personally. It made me suspicious. What was the reason for it?
The next day, I remember, my heart was heavy with a secret dread. While Remy was busy with James, I took Madeline aside and poured my heart out to her in a way I hadn’t done since years before, in our early association. At first she didn’t want to listen t
o me. Remy had such a powerful hold on her that he had become her entire world. But I felt an urgency, the reasons for which I could not have said, that was compelling me to act. I would not let her ignore me, and finally I convinced her to ask Remy about the details of these “last performances.” For my sake, she said she would do it.
It was very late that night, or rather very early in the morning, that she came to me, to my bedroom up there on the top floor of the house. I awoke to hear her knocking on the door, and when I came to answer it she was there in the hall, in her nightgown, shivering, hugging herself. She swept past me and sat on the bed, and for some time would not speak, but would only rock back and forth, biting at her lower lip till she drew blood. But she began to talk, at last. She’d waited in the chambers she shared with Remy until he’d made his preparations for the night, and then she’d tried to broach the subject. At first he was reticent, but when she persisted, he agreed to share some of the details with her. And when he started in on it, it wasn’t long before she’d heard it all, because it was obvious that this was something that Remy was immensely proud of, and he had such a gigantic ego that once he’d begun, he couldn’t keep himself from revealing all the details. He wouldn’t have spoken of it with anyone else, but after all, Madeline was his wife, and I suppose he trusted her.
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