Tales of the Grotesque: A Collection of Uneasy Tales

by L. A. Lewis

  As day succeeded day, I became more adapted to the extraordinary, but publicly unknown fact of the Tower’s existence as a finished work. In the first week I secured various textbooks published by the Theosophical Society and kindred bodies, and refreshed my memory upon a fund of subjects once half studied in the wayward fashion of youthful curiosity. One paragraph in particular I unearthed from a tome entitled Nature Spirits and Thought-forms and underlined. It ran as follows -

  ‘...It must never be forgotten that the most transitory, trivial thought born of a human mind is as real and lasting a thing as a house built of stones and mortar. It is not just an impalpable vision illuminated for so long as the mind retains it, but a positive creation that lives on after the creator has consciously forgotten it, for a period proportionate to its own strength. Hence it has been asserted by numerous clairvoyants that the perpetual, concerted faith of devotees in the idolatrous gods of ancient Egypt actually created such beings and endowed them with minds far out-reaching those of their creators, and vital force enabling them to exist through the centuries even down to the present day!’

  Applying this principle, a plausible one enough, I concluded that for some reason I had been suddenly invested with clairvoyant perception and had become aware of The Tower of Moab as conceived in the minds of its founders and completed on the astral plane after its physical growth had stopped.

  During the second week I purchased a pair of field-glasses, and spent hours at the sitting-room window scrutinising the higher faces of the Tower and the fresh mural panels gradually unfolding above me. I realised the futility' of taking anyone into my confidence, and, in order to carry out my design without attracting unwelcome attention from passers-by, I used to lower the Venetian blind during the sunny hours on the pretext of keeping out the heat and conduct my investigations between the slats. At night, however, after the household was in bed, I would come down from my back room and sit with the blind up, gazing at the vast bulk of the Tower, which then stood black and menacing, like some giant chimney, its top lost in the stars.

  It was in the third week of my voluntary imprisonment in that house, for by then I rarely left it for exercise or other purposes, that I began to see, dimly at first, but with growing clarity, the host of astral organisms that haunted the Tower and seemed to emanate from it as though its presence gave them link or contact with the world of matter. They took form identical with that of the cherubim and seraphim of the familiar old prints, and soon I could discern them by day as well as night, filmy but distinct, circling about the Tower, and writhing tenuously in the air currents, sometimes descending into the busy twentieth-century street to mingle with the work-a-day crowds, potent, vital, but all unseen as they moved in weird co-existence with the grosser clay.

  By daylight, I was aware of distant, effulgent beings borne on bright pinions at an immense height near the crest of the Tower, which was the sun; but in the hours of darkness these disappeared, and from out of the earth, where its base now formed a dense pit or pool of shadow engulfing the houses and the feeble lamps, came horrid, reptilian things of gargantuan proportions, which crawled sluggishly about the highways and leered with hydra-heads into the windows of drinking places, and upon groups of degenerates lounging enviously outside. Mostly, however, I was absorbed in watching the throng of evilly alluring entities in the likeness of men and women that seemed most closely connected with those humans within my range of vision. Unaware though he or she might be of their proximity, each person who entered the strange pageant was shadowed by two or three of these beings, fighting among themselves for possession of the body they pursued, and succeeding in proportion to the victim’s natural inclination towards the debaucheries they sought, as by proxy, to enjoy.

  For my part, I would recline at my window drinking whisky with an immunity at which I myself marvelled and speculating cynically on the moral lessons I witnessed. But my cynicism was short-lived, and swiftly on its heels came the birth of that fundamental horror which can never leave me again - the final enfoldment of my new gift.

  I was crouching, one vivid afternoon, at my usual post, watching through the chink of the blind a veritable flock of ghoulish wraiths whirling about a young girl who stood on the kerb, wearing on her face a look of desperation that spoke of private tragedy. All the bitterness of some shocking disillusionment was in that look, and I noticed several people staring at her as they passed. She seemed torn between two impulses, and would first take a step forward as if to go upon her way, then halt again in indecision. And all the while the spirit creatures whirled faster about - beckoning.

  I was callously wondering what they wanted of her when the end came. She uttered a ghastly, sobbing scream, and hurled herself with a kind of boneless wriggle under the wheels of a lorry.

  I swung round, startled at a chorus of low-pitched, but intensely dreadful, laughter from behind me.

  It is strange that, while unconcernedly watching the hounding of my fellows by these frightful Things, it had never occurred to me that I was other than a spectator. Now, at last, my eyes were fully opened, and I knew myself to be the destined plaything of a tribe of unthinkable horrors that confronted me. And, now, too, the understanding of my sensation of panic on first visiting the Tower became clear.

  Fore-ordained, for what forgotten guilt I knew not - this dreadful fate had been awaiting me. My whole previous life had been no more than a cruel prelude to this ultimate moment - to know myself, in common with the greater portion of condemned Humanity, inevitably given over to the punishment for Original Sin. To be the sport of devils for ever and ever!

  I grasped a new bottle of whisky from the table and drank myself into a state of insensibility.

  They took me away at last after many weeks to the place where I am now kept. They thought, because I did not argue or seek to explain, that my mind had gone. As though any explanation could be made to ordinary folk without actually strengthening that belief! They supposed that I could not understand because I paid no attention when they spoke in my hearing of a legacy which was to be handled by trustees to provide for me until I regained my sanity, and of an asylum for dipsomaniacs to which I must go. They did not realise that I heard and understood every word, because I did not even bother to ask the source or size of my legacy. What could I care about this belated affluence when my mind was tortured by the new and appalling burden of knowledge thrust upon it?

  I made no resistance when they took my few belongings and escorted me down to a waiting car, on the roof of which crouched an undraped huddle of gesticulating devils, and in the headlights of which a twenty-foot coil of a sluggish reptile was undulating.

  I was glad to go when I heard that our destination was many miles away on the other coast, for I hoped against hope that, when I could no longer see the Tower, I might find forgetfulness. It was the vainest hope I could have held. I was drugged that night, and knew nothing of my journey to the West till I awoke at high noon in the room allotted to me at the asylum. It was an East-facing room, and they had wheeled my bed into a great bay-window where I could benefit by the sunshine and the healthy moorland winds.

  I turned my head with lethargy, and looked broodingly out over the heather-clad expanse. The sky was cloudless - a vast vault of blue divided into two parts by a thin, yellow ray stretching vertically from horizon to zenith.

  Came a movement from somewhere behind me, and a woman’s voice asked, ‘How do you feel?’ I would have replied, for I still retain the instinct of politeness despite my absorption in matters that dwarf conversation; but it was at that very moment that I realised the meaning of the yellow ray. It was The Tower of Moab - so tall that no horizon can hide it - the fearful link forged in Man’s defiance of God’s ordaining, that has not only made contact with the higher realms, but given lease to the beasts of the Pit.

  For the first time in my adult life I opened my lips and screamed.

  The Child

  BECAUSE I AM not a member of the Psychic Research Soc
iety, and because I have never attempted to write a work of reference on occult subjects, I do not arrogate to myself any claim as an authority on such matters. Therefore I shall not put forward a so-called scientific explanation of my experience at Wailing Dip, preferring to leave this task to anyone clever enough to recognise the place from my account. Its real name, of course, is different.

  Naturally I’ve read a mint of other people’s efforts - both serious textbooks and works of fiction - but in spite of all the mass of conjectures about spirit manifestation which they have contained I am left guessing as to whether what I encountered in that revolting house was a spirit craving incarnation and angered by cruelly thwarted desire or some monstrous survival, if anything more horrifying still.

  I got let in for the business entirely through my own curiosity, having always been keen on tales of the supernatural. I happened to be making a trip on my motor cycle to spend a couple of weeks with an old school friend on the other side of England, and, having plenty of time to spare, was amusing myself side-tracking from the main road wherever the countryside looked most attractive, in the hope of discovering some of those really old-world villages that one may still occasionally unearth in these days of the charabanc and filling station. Wailing Dip - its real name is equally quaint - proved to be one of these, and so charmingly unspoilt that I suppose I should have eventually paid it a lengthy visit even if my machine had not elected to break down badly just as I arrived. As it was, I found that it would investigating.

  ‘Mrs. Jackson,’ I said, ‘because I arrive in this village on a motor cycle, a form of transport I detest, but can afford, don’t class me with the type that carries a leggy flapper on the pillion and sports a cigarette holder a yard long. Believe me, I have really quite a serious mind. I have never seen a ghost, but would like to. I certainly don’t laugh at them. You obviously have a good story to tell. Now, be an equally good soul, get me another tankard, bring yourself just what you feel like, and spare a bit more time to tell it.’

  I had to say a lot more to convince her of my earnestness, but eventually elicited an unpleasant piece of local history which would have been interesting enough even without a sequel.

  It appeared that, situated near the middle of the wood, which was a hundred acres in extent and very dense, there was a gamekeeper’s cottage which had been inhabited by the same family in the Squire’s employ for an indefinite period, the job of safeguarding that particular covert having passed from father to son for several generations. The last gamekeeper, however, had never had any children, and, on his death, only seven years ago, a north countryman and his wife had been taken on to fill the vacancy. The man, according to Mrs. Jackson, had been quite a decent sort, if just a bit morose and unwilling to mix with the village people, but his wife, though good looking, had aroused an antagonism soon amounting to hatred from the first moment she appeared. She was extremely selfish and greedy for money, and seemed to derive no pleasure from looking after the cottage for her husband, with whom, it was said, she continually had the most frightful scenes. Unlike him, she was not averse to the society of her fellow creatures, nor was she above coming into the inn unescorted and drinking gin copiously with any poacher or passing tramp who would join her. At these times when her tongue was loosened she made no secret of her opinions as to the dead and alive character of the village, the shamefully humble nature of her husband’s work, and the even more shameful smallness of his wages. Some of the older women in the village had tried to reason with her, pointing out that many others were satisfied with similar occupations on the Squire’s land, and found their men’s pay ample to bring up a happy family into the bargain, to which she flashed out that she wanted no squalling brat to guzzle the money that was already insufficient for two.

  Presently, however, the word went round, as such things will in a small community, that she was undoubtedly going to have a baby, and many were the hopes expressed that its advent would soften her and bring out the good which must be somewhere in her nature. In due time the child was stillborn, and buried a few days later near the village church-yard, the father alone attending the funeral. When the wife was able to be about again it was at once seen that no good had come of her experience.

  Rather she was more slovenly and discontented than ever, and began to pay more frequent visits to the tap-room. Some pitied her, putting down her behaviour to the sense of fruitless travail. Others swore, by her own former statement, that she was glad to have no extra mouth to feed.

  A few hinted that the child had not been stillborn.

  The following year she brought another one into the world with the help of an old midwife who had attended all the births in the village for half a century’, but who had not been called in the first time. It lived a fortnight and was found by its father, suffocated in its cradle, the day after the old cottager had gone back to her home. The wife said that she had been out in the wood for an hour chopping sticks, and that the baby must have turned over in its sleep.

  The third year there came another, and this, too, met with an untimely end, being found with its neck broken on the floor beneath the cradle, which stood on a comparatively high trestle table, to be, as the mother explained, less easy for the cat to reach.

  By this time everybody was talking - which, considering the woman’s reputation, was not surprising - and when, the following year, a fourth tragedy took place, the two months’ child this time having no marks to indicate the cause of death, an inquest was held by the express order of the Squire. The post-mortem revealed that some sharp, thin instrument, such as a hat-pin, had been passed through one of the ear-drums into the brain, and that traces of any external bleeding must have been carefully washed away after the flow had ceased.

  A verdict of wilful murder was recorded against the mother, and the case passed on to the next Assizes, where she was found ‘guilty but insane’, and sent to an asylum. Her husband then threw up his job and left the neighbourhood, and the village concluded that the terrible drama it had witnessed was at an end. There was, however, one more act to come.

  Several months later the woman made her escape, and though the asylum authorities tried to keep it dark while attempting her recapture, the fact leaked out owing to her being seen by a courting couple entering the wood at Wailing Dip. Suspecting what had happened, these young people notified the village constable, who, through his County Station, confirmed the escape. He also learned that the convicted murderess who, it must be remembered, had not committed her crime until her last-born was two months old, was once more an expectant mother.

  A search party was formed, and had already spent some hours beating the side of the wood adjacent to the village when word came through that the fugitive had been seen emerging on the far side and making her way towards a desolate stretch of moorland known as the Great Waste. Further scorning of the wood was thereupon called off, and those of the search party who were willing to continue their services were taken round to the new starting-point in police cars.

  To cut a long story short, the mad woman was never captured. She had had nearly two hours’ start from the time she left the wood owing to the fact that her second witness, not knowing of the hue and cry, had failed to report seeing her leave it.

  With the assistance of bloodhounds she was traced to the edge of one of the abysmally deep pot-holes which dot the moor in that region. Failure to pick up the scent from that point was proof enough that she had either jumped or fallen into the abyss, and there the matter had to rest after a few half-hearted attempts to descend with ropes and lanterns.

  ‘But ever since then,’ Mrs. Jackson concluded, ‘the feeling has grown around here that the wood and the cottage are haunted; and I doubt if a solitary soul has stepped inside its boundaries these two years excepting one poacher from a hamlet twenty miles away, who went there after pheasants and came in to me for the stiffest drink I’d got - that scared he couldn't, or wouldn't, tell exactly what he’d seen.’

  ‘But,’ I
said, ‘doesn’t he sometimes shoot over it?’

  Mrs. Jackson shook her head.

  ‘Since that night, sir, there’s never been a game bird in the whole covert. Never a fox. Never even a badger, as far as I know. You could stop with me a twelve month, and you'd never hear the cry of one, night or day. Plenty in the other woods - but not this side of the house. Besides...’ she dropped her tone to a whisper... ‘It’s not only what doesn’t live in the wood, sir. It’s the poultry and things that’s killed and taken away from the village, sir, by something that comes out of the wood, so people say!'

  ‘But, Good God!’ I ejaculated, ‘what do they think it is that haunts the wood? Your story’s horrible enough in all conscience without the final touch about stolen chickens, which are most likely taken by foxes; but has anyone ever seen a ghost there? If so, what’s it like? Is it the mad woman herself or the poor little wretches she destroyed? Surely they would excite more pity than fear.’