The White Hands and Other Weird Tales

by Mark Samuels

  For a time I wandered aimlessly around its circumference and across the abandoned square in which it stood, with its concrete loggias and unused car park. In the end I gave up and made my way home to my apartment on the other side of the city.

  Almost every night for weeks afterwards I would dream of treading the lost corridors and empty offices of the tower, the canteens, stairways, storage rooms and lavatories. During my lunch hours at work I would make sketches of the tower, drawing its planes and angles and noting its few stark details. My interest in it was the cause of some curiosity in my work colleagues and several of them even asked to view the structure through the field glasses that I had bought in order to examine the building more closely. I felt some resentment at their interest: I had begun to regard the tower as my sole preserve. I alone could appreciate the splendid starkness of its design and the desolation that it contained.

  I had always been an outsider in the profession. I worked alongside qualified architects who were university trained, but I was a mere technician. The fact that I did a comparable job meant nothing in terms of status or pay. Nevertheless, I had risen through the firm’s ranks and was now entrusted with overall control of some projects, although I was never given anything with any real scope for design. The moment I realised that the tower had become finally empty I began to neglect my proper work. But because I was considered such a useful employee it took quite some time before it was noticed that I was behind schedule and questions were asked.

  ***

  One afternoon a colleague who knew of my interest in the tower passed me a newspaper containing an advertisement for an art installation. I did not see the significance at first, but he pointed out that it was housed on the uppermost floors of my tower. The installation was temporarily closed but apparently due to reopen on the Friday of the following week. I had not been aware of its existence, although the installation, by the artist Eleazer Golmi, appeared to have been exhibited there for some undefined period. I recognised the name of the artist, of course, for he had also been the architect of the building that housed his installation.

  On several occasions I had attempted to track the man down in order to express my interest in his designs, but he seemed no longer to work in the profession and had, effectively, ‘gone underground’ after some unspecified crisis many years ago. The few that knew of him had told me that he had been disillusioned by attacks on his work from both inside and outside the profession. Other architects of the 1960s had been thick-skinned enough to ignore criticism, but not Golmi.

  The advertised details of the installation left me with mixed feelings. The show was entitled ‘Mannequins in Aspects of Terror’ and promised, it was claimed, an audio-visual experience of an unsettling nature in which one would encounter ‘a universe of fear’. This didn’t sound like the Golmi that I had imagined. Some saw horror, it was true, in what his buildings had been allowed to become: grimy, decaying concrete hulks. But I saw them as they were first built: tall, proud visions of a noble future, reaching up to the heavens with pure, dynamic lines. Golmi was not to blame if the owners of his buildings had refused to maintain them and let them crumble.

  But why was he interested in terror, and unsettling people, and exploring fear? I came up with many theories in the long days before I was able to see the installation for myself. It seemed probable that Golmi would be exploring the horror of what other people had done to his glorious work.

  I kept a close eye on the top floor of the building, and hung around the padlocked doors for many hours in the hope of detecting the work that would, no doubt, be required for the reopening. But I saw nothing.

  At last the designated night came and I found that the tower’s foyer had indeed been reopened. The padlocks and the boards were gone, exposing the dark green windows on the ground floor. A single poster advertised the installation: it was rather gaudy, with a purple gothic script on a yellow background. At its centre was a grainy photograph of the architect and artist.

  At the time the photograph was taken Golmi must have been in his fifties. He had brylcreemed grey hair, a high forehead and dark eyes, one of which, the right, was considerably larger than the other. It gave the face an unfortunate, lop-sided appearance. His expression reminded me of the rigidity common to those early photographs where the subject had to sit perfectly still for several minutes while the camera shutter was left open.

  I stood back and once again gazed up at Golmi’s monolith. Was it possible to reconcile the utopian vision of his design, with its sharp lines soaring ever upwards, with the crumbling pile of dark, stained concrete and glass it had become? Both fascinated me. Perhaps the fact that Golmi had placed his art installation in one of his own buildings meant that he, too, had realised the spectral potential of the tower. Had he also come to relish this desolate space in the teeming metropolis?

  I entered the foyer and made my way to a single desk situated in the very centre of the otherwise empty space. There was a simple sign declaring that the installation began on floor twenty-six and that payment was to be made at the end of the show. There was no attendant to direct the visitors, but next to the sign was a schedule of entry times. My watch told me that the next available slot began in five minutes. The last visitor had signed the register five minutes previously and marked the time clearly, as required in the box provided. A handwritten note at the top of the page stated that admittance was staggered to ensure the isolation necessary for each visitor.

  I faithfully signed the register and when my time came I made my way over to one of several lifts and pressed the button. A small sign informed me that this was the one to be used in order to visit the installation. I watched the numbers on the indicator above the single door flash from twenty-six downwards. While I waited I looked at the remnants of company names printed on a wooden board. They must have been defaced by disgruntled employees as their companies gave up and vacated the building.

  When the lift arrived I opened the outer door and then pulled across the trellis gate that separated me from the panelled wooden cage within. The interior was not large, having a capacity for a maximum of four people. At first I simply thought it small for a building with such a potentially huge occupancy. It had obviously seen much use. I thought from its design that the lift must date to the 1950s. So perhaps the building was older than I’d thought? I was feeling a certain amount of confusion, perhaps due to my excitement at the prospect of the installation, but also because of the claustrophobia caused by being in such a small space and the reflection of myself in the full-length mirror on the back wall of the lift. Gazing into it I was somewhat startled by my anxious-looking appearance. My eyes seemed to stare wildly from behind my glasses and my cheeks were flushed. The business suit that I was obliged to wear to work seemed comically apt, as did the briefcase I carried. Since I had come directly from my office I had not had the opportunity to change my clothes.

  The lift rumbled upwards through the shaft, and floor after floor flashed by before it reached the twenty-sixth. The cage jolted to a halt and I pulled back the trellis door, opened the outer one and entered a long, deserted corridor, dimly lit and utterly silent. The floor was covered in tiled linoleum, but it was well worn and curled upwards at the edges. In patches it had come away altogether, revealing stained concrete beneath. As I proceeded uncertainly I could see holes in the false ceiling, where the covering polystyrene tiles had fallen down. Out of these holes trailed cables and wires.

  It was not obvious where I should be going, so I looked in through a half-opened door to my left. It was an abandoned gents toilet, thick with dirt. The cubicle doors hung ajar and the toilet bowls and urinals were broken, with fragments of porcelain scattered on the floor. I returned to the corridor and after a few more paces finally noticed a sign with an arrow, indicating the direction I was to follow.

  I turned right. This corridor seemed to be exactly the same as the first. I was beginning to feel a sense of emptiness creep over me, deadening my spirits, repl
acing the tension I’d previously felt. And then I realised what should have been obvious: this was the installation! The sense of isolation and dislocation was complete.

  I felt utterly alone as I walked through the confines of the artificial void. The atmosphere of neglect and decay grew steadily and I congratulated Golmi on his achievement.

  I wondered just when the idea for the installation had come to him? Perhaps he had received some dim intimation of the final destiny of his building when he was still a successful architect. It was a bold conceit to think of placing his personal nightmare in his own building as it had decayed and become uninhabitable.

  I even suspected him of vandalising his own building as a means of amplifying the decay. And what might he be saying about architecture in general, or modern life, or the human condition?

  Again I thought about the word on the advertisement, ‘re-opening.’ If the installation had been first opened while there were still occupants, then what had they thought of it? Did Golmi set up the installation when he knew that the last companies were moving out? Or had it hastened their exit? How far back had he considered this project?

  I thought of making my way out, but then remembered the title of the piece and guessed that I might not have seen it all. I had become aware of a sound, coming as if from a great distance. It was like the white noise found on frequencies between television stations. I had read that this was the sound of the background radiation generated when the universe came into existence billions of years ago. The sound remained at the same level as I proceeded and I could not detect its source, though I suspected that it must have been piped through concealed speakers. Looking through the windows to my left I saw the vast panorama of the city below, its glittering sodium-orange lights so very far removed from this study of desolation. Within was eternal twilight, greyness and shadow, an effect achieved by low-wattage strip lighting.

  There was a large office to my right. Inside, all of the furniture had been removed and there were marks on the thin carpet where the desks, chairs and filing cabinets must once have stood.

  The continuous hiss of background static was beginning to annoy me; its familiarity had failed to make it subliminal. If I listened with enough concentration it sounded almost like whispering and although it was almost inaudible I was becoming sure that it was charged with some hidden significance. In the next corridor was a sign, a ragged thing of cardboard, with letters scrawled as if in a child’s handwriting. It read ‘Mannequins in Aspects of Terror’. So perhaps the real installation was about to begin!

  Almost at once I came across the first of the mannequins. In the twilight of the corridor, and from a distance, I initially thought that it must be a custodian, there to oversee the exhibition and guide the visitors. This would certainly have been useful, for the arrows were few and far between.

  As I drew closer to the mannequin I noticed that the background hiss had acquired a new element. There were definite words amongst the static, though broken and garbled, like speech distorted by poor radio reception. I could not make out the words, but the voice seemed to speak as if in pain: almost as if it were incoherent with that pain. I thought that one of the words might be ‘alive!’ croaked out over and over again, but could not be sure.

  And then suddenly I was close enough to see the face of the mannequin. It had been made insidiously disturbing. It was rigid and frozen in stark panic, as if it were looking at some particularly horrific sight, and its arms were raised as if to ward off some approaching menace. As I stared at the thing, I felt contaminated by it, fearing that my own features were beginning to assume the dummy’s own and that my mind might give way to the fear that had frozen it. When I thought of that lifeless mouth actually forming the broken words that still mingled with the low, background noise of static I had to acknowledge that the artist had indeed managed to create the terror claimed by the advertisement.

  The noise began to fade as I walked nervously on down the dusty corridor. It was gradually replaced by another sound, like that of people muttering quietly to each other in some other part of the building. The mutterings were clearly audible and I could not shake off the feeling that they were aware of my presence, even though the idea was absurd. I kept glancing behind me as I progressed, and found that I was almost creeping along, anticipating dangers that might lurk around the next corner.

  In my anxiety I began to mumble to myself and the sound of my own voice offered some meagre comfort.

  The next port of call was an office that appeared, at first glance, to be still in use. I paused for a moment, taken in by the illusion, until I perceived that the figures therein were absolutely motionless. I could not find the courage to enter the room and was gripped by the unsettling notion that they had stopped their activities at the very moment that I had first caught sight of them. The sounds of activity that I had heard with increasingly clarity had also seemed to cease at that exact moment. A hidden motion sensor must have detected me and would have been programmed to turn off the tape recording of the voices.

  Four mannequins occupied this office, three of which were hunched in front of blank computer screens. Their hands were at the keyboards, as if they had been interrupted in the act of inputting data. The dummies were dressed in business suits that showed signs of old age and wear. The elbows and cuffs were frayed and there were patches of ugly discoloration across the pinstriped fabric. These mannequins seemed to be smiling, but as I reluctantly entered the room for a closer look at them, I saw that they were not pleasant smiles, they had been crafted so as to resemble the rictus grin of the human skull.

  The sole standing mannequin had been given a similar expression, but its staring eyes seemed less glassy than the others. I thought they had moved.

  I left the room and walked, more swiftly now, along the corridor. The sounds of activity resumed behind me, furtively at first, but with increasing boldness as I moved further away. I could not help looking back, for I had developed a dread that the standing mannequin would start into spasmodic life and come after me.

  I had by this time reached a stairwell and a painted arrow indicated that I was to ascend to the floor above. The walls were in a shocking state, being cracked and crumbling under the flaking brown paint. A draught of air coming from below bore with it the unmistakable odour of mould. Here on the stairs a sound of movement came from above and I could hardly bring myself to make the climb.

  The echoes filtered through a door directly at the head of the stairs and now that the sound was clearer I detected what I thought were more voices. These were not like the low mutterings that I had heard previously. They were much clearer and made no attempt at concealment. They possessed a breathless and hollow quality as if the unintelligible words they uttered were formed by some imperfect replica of the human model, speaking in accents that betrayed their attempt at imitation. I thought of lips not designed for speech, croaking out anguished words, trying vainly to communicate.

  I stood there in the stairwell for what seemed like minutes. Whether it was the awful atmosphere that worked on my brain or whether the sound was real I couldn’t tell, but when I did hear footsteps climbing up from below they sounded too awkward to be the next, timed visitor to the installation. Someone seemed to be staggering, almost dragging his limbs along, and as I looked down a shadow moved across the wall at a turn in the stairs. It may have been the dim light, but the figure appeared twisted over to one side. I panicked. I raced up towards the door ahead, bolting through it, with no other thought than to get away. I could not stop myself from thinking about the standing mannequin I had seen in the office of the mad grins, of that unliving face imbued with an insane animation.

  Now that I was through the door and it closed behind me the sound of the broken voices ceased. I stood shaking and listening for movement but there was none.

  Although all was now quiet, the smell of the mould was overpowering. Mould grew everywhere in this corridor. There were great patches on bare walls and even underf
oot on the rotten, threadbare carpet.

  An arrow scrawled in chalk told me to bear left and I found myself in another abandoned office. On a desk there were several duplicated sheets of paper, filled with handwritten words. The strip lighting here was as poor as elsewhere in the building and this, coupled with the awkward script, made the words difficult to decipher. Slowly I worked my way through it. The manuscript seemed to be some sort of manifesto, a statement of intent written by Golmi:

  Mannequins in Aspects of Terror:

  An Art Installation

  by Eleazer Golmi

  Many have ruminated on the attraction of horror in art and in literature, but all have drawn erroneous conclusions. The art of false horror seeks not to engender actual fear, but to distance those experiencing it and allow them a pleasurable frisson, the sense that one might approach without arrival.

  But this installation is a full immersion into terror. It is designed to generate a situation where the individual is subject to that terror and participates directly in it. In this installation one does not play a character, as does an actor in a play; one is that character. Nor must the artist be exempt from this immersion. In order for the work of art to be authentic the artist himself must also become a component of it. He must feel the terror that he creates.

  Remember that there is always an end to suffering in life: pain, disease and madness lead either to recovery or to extinction, but such is not necessarily the case in art. In art a moment may be fixed for all eternity.

  Imagine, if you will, a simulacrum whose existence is such a state. This is the purpose of my installation. The desolate spaces are my own little universe of terror. And the mannequins are my pretty creations, playing in the wilderness of torment, in the misery of one moment of supreme terror. And I, too, play with them, having deciphered the alphabet of the 221 gates.