DEAR GOODTHINKER,321Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEHVqDdAP1D
321Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡB2deGLyg0s
321Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBFPKwp1BUq
I have a tale to tell you which seems a little bizarre [and even disturbing] to both Ed and me---see what you think. If nothing else, it may serve to amuse you while you battle the mosquitoes!
Two days after I mailed my last to you, a group of four young ladies arrived from the Corners under the supervision of an elderly lady of intimidatingly-competent visage named Mrs. Pratt, to set the place in order and to remove some of the dust that had been causing me to sneeze seemingly at every other step. They all seemed a bit nervous as they went about their chores; indeed, one flighty miss uttered a small screech when I entered the upstairs parlour (sic) as she dusted.321Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡADJ7qSjjJc
I asked Mrs. Pratt about this [she was dusting the downstairs hall with grim determination that would have quite amazed you, her hair done up in an old faded bandana], and she turned to me and said with an air of determination: “They don’t like the house, and I don’t like the house, sir, because it has always been an evil house.”
My jaw fell like a falling star at this unexpected bit; and she went on in a kindlier tone. “Now, I do not mean to say that Theodore Beal was not a fine man, for he was; I cleaned for him every second Thursday all the time he lived here, just as I cleaned for his father, Mr. Russell Beal, until he and his wife vanished in eighteen hundred and sixteen. Mr. Theodore was a good and kindly man, and so you see, sir (if you will please forgive my bluntness; I know no other way to speak), but the house is evil and it always has been, and no Beal has ever been happy here since your grandfather Anthony and his brother Jayson fell out over stolen [and here she paused, almost guiltily] items in seventeen hundred and eighty-nine.”
Lord! Such memories these folks have, Goodthinker!
Mrs. Pratt continued: “The house was built in misery, has been lived in with misery, there has been blood spilt on its floors [as you may or may not know, Goodthinker, my Uncle Anthony was involved in an accident on the cellar stairs which took the life of his daughter, Bathsheba; he then took his own life in a fit of remorse. The incident is related to me, on the sad occasion of his dead sister’s birthday], there has been disappearance and accident.321Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLGnL0jQPIb
“I have worked here, Mr. Beal, and I am neither blind nor deaf. I’ve heard awful sounds in the walls, sir, awful sounds---thumping's and crashing and once a strange wailing that was half-laughter. It fair made my blood curdle. It’s a dark place, sir.” And there she halted her narrative. But why? Was she afraid that she had spoken too much?
As for myself, I hardly knew whether to be offended or amused, cautious or merely matter-of-fact. I’m afraid that amusement won the day. “And what do you suspect, Mrs. Pratt? Ghosts rattling chains?”
But she only looked at me oddly. “Ghosts there may be. But it’s not ghosts in the walls. It’s not ghosts that wail and blubber like the damned and crash and blunder away in the darkness. It’s….”
“Come, Mrs. Pratt,” I prompted her. “You've come this far. Surely you can finish what you’ve begun.”321Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfxQO2bZIqi
The strangest expression of terror, pique, and---I would swear to it—religious awe passed over her face. “Some die not,” she whispered. “Some live in the twilight shadows between this world and the next to serve----Him!”
And so ended her narrative. For some minutes I continued to tax her, but she grew only more obstinate and would say no more to me. At last I desisted, fearing she might gather herself up and remove herself from the premises.
This is the end of one episode, but a second occurred the evening after. Edgar had laid a fire downstairs and I was sitting in the living room, drowsing over a copy of The Intelligencer and listening to the sound of wind-driven rain on the large bay window. I felt as comfortable as only one can on such a dreadful night, when all is miserable outside and all is warmth and comfort inside; but a moment later Ed appeared at the door, looking excited and a bit nervous.
“Are you awake, sir?” he asked.
“Only barely,” I said. “What is it?”
“I’ve found something upstairs which I think you should see,” he responded, with the same air of suppressed excitement.
I rose from my chair and followed him. As we climbed the wide stairs, Edgar said: “I was reading a book in the upstairs study---a rather strange one---when I heard a noise in the wall.”
“That would be the rats,” I said. “Hardly anything to disturb me over.”
He paused on the landing, looking at me solemnly. The lamp he held cast weird, lurking shadows on the dark draperies and on the half-eaten portraits that seemed now to leer rather than smile. Outside the wind rose to a brief scream and then subsided grudgingly.
“Tis’ not rats,” Ed said. “There was a kind of blundering, thudding sound from behind the book-cases, and then a horrible gurgling---horrible sir. And scratching, as if something were struggling to get out---to get at me!”
You can imagine my amusement, Goodthinker. Edgar is not the type to give way to hysterical flights of fancy. It began to seem that there was a mystery here after all---and perhaps a vile one indeed.
“What then?” I asked him. We resumed down the hall, and I could see the light from the study spilling forth onto the floor of the gallery. I viewed it with some trepidation; the night seemed no longer comfortable.
“The scratching noise stopped. After a moment the thudding, shuffling sounds began anew, this time moving away from me. It paused once, and I swear I heard a strange, almost inaudible laugh! I went to the book-case and began to push and pull, thinking there might be a partition, or a secret door.”
“Did you find one?”
Ed paused at the door to the study. “No---but I found this!
We stepped in and I saw a square black hole in the left case. The books at that point were nothing but dummies, and what Ed had found was a small hiding place. I flashed my lamp within it and saw nothing but a thick fall of dust, dust which must have been decades old.
“There was only this,” Ed said quietly, and handed me a yellowed foolscap. The thing was a map, drawn in spider-thin strokes of black ink---the map of a town or village. There were perhaps seven buildings, and one, clearly marked with a steeple, bore this legend beneath it: Null, The Living Darkness.
In the upper left corner, to what would have been the northwest of this little village, an arrow pointed. Inscribed beneath it: Wellfall.
Edgar said: “In town, sir, the locals speak rather superstitiously of a deserted township called Christian’s Lot. It’s a place they steer clear of.”
“But this?” I asked, fingering the odd legend below the steeple.
“I don’t know.”
A memory of Mrs. Pratt, adamant yet fearful, passed through my mind. “The Living Darkness….” I muttered.
"Do you know something, Mr. Beal?”
“Perhaps…..it might be to our advantage to have a look at this township tomorrow, wouldn’t you agree, Ed?”
He nodded, eyes lighting. We spent almost an hour after this looking for some breach in the wall behind the cubby-hole Ed had found, but with no success. Nor was there a recurrence of the noises Ed had described.
We retired with no further adventure that night.321Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ07UxcLSBBK
On the following morning, Edgar and I set out on our ramble through the woods. The rain of the night before had ceased, but the sky was somber and lowering. I could see Ed looking upon me with some doubtfulness and I hastened to reassure him that should I tire, or the journey prove too far, I would not hesitate to call a halt to the affair. We had equipped ourselves with a picnic lunch, a fine Buckwhite compass, and, of course, the odd and ancient map of Christian’s Lot.
It was a strange and brooding day; not a bird seemed to sing, nor an animal to move as we made our way through the great and gloomy stands of pine to the south and east. The only sounds were those of our own feet and the steady pound of the Atlantic against the headlands. The smell of the sea, almost preternaturally heavy, was our constant and only companion.
We had gone to no more than two miles when we struck an overgrown road of what I believe were once called the “corduroy” variety; this tended in our general direction and we struck off along it, making brisk time. We spoke little. The day, with its still and ominous quality, weighed heavily on our spirits.
At about eleven o’clock we heard the sound of rushing water. The remnant of road took a hard turn to the left, and on the other side of a boiling, salty little stream, like an apparition, was Christian’s Lot!
The stream was perhaps eight feet across, spanned by a moss-grown footbridge. On the far side, Goodthinker, stood the most perfect little village you might imagine, understandably weathered, but amazingly preserved. Several houses, done in that austere yet commanding form for which the Puritans were justly famous, stood clustered near the steeply-sheared bank. Further beyond, along a weed-grown thoroughfare, stood three or four of what might have been crude business establishments, and beyond that, the spire of the church marked on the map, rising up to the gray sky and looking grim beyond description with its peeled pain and tarnished, leaning cross.
“The town is well named,” Ed said softly beside me.
We crossed to the town and began to poke through it---and this is where my story grows slightly amazing, Goodthinker, so prepare yourself!
The air seemed heavy as we walked among the buildings; weighted, if you prefer. The edifices were in a state of decay---shutters torn off, roofs crumbled under the weight of heavy snows gone by, windows dusty and leering. Shadows from odd corners and warped angles seemed to sit in sinister pools.
We entered an old and rotting tavern first---somehow it did not seem right that we should invade any of those houses to which people had retired when they wished privacy. An old and weather-scurbbed signe above the splintered door announced that this had once been the THE NEEDY PALADIN INN AND TAVERN. The door creaked hellishly on its one remaining hinge, and we stepped into the shadowed interior. The smell of rot and mould was vaporous and nearly overpowering. And beneath it seemed to lie an even deeper smell, a slimy and pestiferous smell, a small of ages and the decay of ages. Such a stench as might issue from corrupt coffins or violated tombs. I held my handkerchief to my nose and Ed did likewise. We surveyed the place.
“My God, sir….” Ed said fainly.
“It’s never been touched,” I finished for him.
As indeed it had not. Tables and chairs stood about like ghostly guardians of the watch, dusty, warped by the extreme changes in temperature for which the New England climate is famous for, but otherwise perfect---as if they had waited through the silent, echoing decades for those long gone to enter once more, to call for a pint or a dram, to deal cards and light clay pipes. A small square mirror hung beside the rules of the tavern, unbroken. Do you see the significance, Goodthinker? Small boys are noted for exploration and vandalism; there is not a “haunted” house which stands with windows intact, no matter how fearsome the spectral inhabitants are rumored to be; not a shadowy graveyard without at least one tombstone upended by young pranksters. Certainly there must be a score of young pranksters in Ministers’ Corners, not two miles from Christian’s Lot. And yet the innkeeper’s glass [which must have cost him a tidy sum] was intact---as were the other fragile items we found in our poking. The only damage in Christian’s Lot has been done by impersonal Nature. The implication is obvious: Christian’s Lot is a shunned town. But why? I have a notion, but before I even dare hint at it, I must proceed to the unsettling conclusion of our visit.
We went up to the sleeping quarters and found beds made up, pewter water-pitchers neatly placed beside them. The kitchen was likewise untouched by anything save the dust of the years and that horrible, sunken stench of decay. The tavern alone would be an antiquarian’s paradise; the wondrously queer kitchen stove alone would fetch a king’s ransom at a Boston auction.
“What do you think, Ed?” I asked when we had emerged again into the uncertain daylight.
“I think it’s bad business, Mr. Beale,” he replied in his doleful way, “and that we must see more to know more.”
We gave the other shops scant notice---there was a hostelry with mouldering leather goods still hung on rusted flatnails, a chandler’s, a warehouse with oak and pine still stacked within, a smithy.
We entered two houses as we made our way toward the church at the center of the village. Both were perfectly in the Puritan mode, full of items a collector would give his arm for, both deserted and full of the same rotten scent.
Nothing seemed to live or move in all of this but ourselves. We saw no insects, no birds, not even a cobweb fashioned in a window corner. Only dust.
At last we reached the church. It reared above us, grim, uninviting, cold. Its windows were black with the shadows inside, and any Godliness or sanctity had departed from it long ago. Of that I am certain. We mounted the steps, and I placed my hand on the large iron door-pull. A set, dark look passed from myself to Edgar and back again. I opened the portal. How long was it since the last time that door was touched? I would say with confidence that mine was the first hand in fifty years, perhaps longer, to touch it. Rust-clogged hinges screamed as I opened it. The smell of rot and decay which smote us was nearly palpable. Ed made a gagging sound in his throat and twisted his head involuntarily for clearer air.321Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhOqCbLvsnR
“Sir,” he asked, “are you sure that you are….?”
“I’m fine,” I said calmly. But I did not feel calm, Goodthinker, no more than I do now. I believe, with Moses, with Jeroboam, with Increase Mather, and with our own Troost [when he is in a philosophical temperament], that there are spiritually noxious places, buildings where the milk of the cosmos had became sour and rancid. This church is such a place; I would swear to it.
We stepped into a long vestibule equipped with a dusty coat rack and shelved hymnals. It was windowless. Oil-lamps stood in niches here and there. An unremarkable room, I thought, until I heard Ed’s sharp gasp and saw what he had already noticed.
It was an obscenity!
I daren’t describe that elaborately-framed picture further than this: that it was done by an unknown artist in a fleshy style suggestive of the famous Dutch artist Rubens: that it contained a misshapen caricature of a Madonna and child; that strange, half-shadowed creatures sported and crawled in the background.
“God,” I whispered.
“There’s no God here,” Edgar said, and his words seemed to hang in the air. I opened the door leading into the church itself, and the odor became a miasma, nearly overpowering.
In the glimmering half-light of afternoon the pews stretched ghostlike to the altar. Above them was a high oaken pulpit and a shadow-struck narthex from which gold glimmered.
With a half-sob Edgar, that devout Catholic, made the Holy Sign and I followed suit. For the gold was a large, beautifully-wrought cross----but it was hung upside down, symbol of Satan’s Black Mass.
“We must stay calm,” I heard myself saying. “We must stay calm, Edgar. We must stay calm.”
But a shadow had touched my heart, and I was afraid as I had ever been. I have walked beneath death’s umbrella and thought there was none darker. But there is. There is!
We walked down the aisle, our footfalls echoing above and around us. We left tracks in the dust. And at the altar there were other tenebrous objets d’art. I cannot, and will not, let my mind dwell upon them.
I began to mount the pulpit itself.
“Don’t, Mr. Beal!” Ed cried suddenly. “I’m afraid….!”
But I had gained it. A huge book lay open upon the stand, writ both in Latin and rudimentary hieroglyphics, which looked, to my unpracticed eye, like an alphabet invented by beings of a world surely not our own. I enclose a card with several of the symbols, redrawn from memory.
I closed the book and looked at the words stamped into the leather: Nullam In Libro. My Latin is rusty, but serviceable enough to translate: The Book of Null.
As I touched it, that accursed church and Edgar’s white, upturned face seemed to swim before me. It seemed that I heard low, chanting voices, full of hideous yet eager fear---and blow that sound, another, filling the bowels of the Earth. An hallucination, I doubt it not----but at the same moment, the church was filled with a very real sound, which I can only describe as a huge and macabre pulsating beneath my feet. The pulpit trembled beneath my fingers; the desecrated cross trembled on the wall.
We exited together, Ed and I, leaving the place to its own darkness, and neither of us dared look back until we had crossed the rude planks spanning the stream. I will not say we defiled the nineteen hundred years man has spent climbing upward from a hunkering and superstitious savage by actually running; but I would be a liar to say that we strolled.321Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNdHJrIsL7t
That is my tale. You mustn’t shadow your recovery by fearing that the fever has touched me again. Ed can attest to all in these pages, up to and including the hideous noise.
Thus I close, saying only that I wish I might see you [knowing that much of my bewilderment would drop away immediately], and that I remain your friend and admirer.321Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtYVML7HMyy
CHARLES 321Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEkLoGzjkKq
