The first thing worth noting in Dark Sanctuary is its use of a historical record to provide authenticity. The history of Kestrel given in chapter one is as fictitious as the abbey and island itself, but it includes just enough real historical data to be believable. Positioned as it is, early in the novel, it also has the benefit of pulling the reader into the story almost immediately.
More important is the spiritual worldview against which the action is set, for when all is said and done, Dark Sanctuary is a very Christian novel. By this, I mean not that Gregory is preachy in the way a Benson or Blackwood or Roger Pater can sometimes be, but rather that the author’s viewpoint includes both for proactive evil and for an equally active and far more powerful good. In this, and in its depiction of Kestrel’s true horror, Dark Sanctuary is actually very similar to both Adrian Ross’ The Hole of the Pit and Eleanor Ingram’s much-neglected The Thing From the Lake.
Still, being a Rider novel, there are also differences. When Ingram introduces supernatural intervention to the climax of her novel it seems slightly out of place, not least because a religious element is almost wholly lacking up until that point. Gregory does not make the same mistake. Partly that’s because Dark Sanctuary is, from very early on, quite clearly the story of a struggle between good and evil; a conflict between the godly Michael Bennett, rector of St. Martins, and the worldly Dr. Grant, who would willingly free the demon trapped beneath the Abbey and send it out to ravage the world.
The result is an unusual but very entertaining mix. Black Masses vie with Christian epiphanies. The belief in “a personal God” clashes with the ideal of “union with the Ultimate Reality.” Christian miracles are contrasted with the miracles of other beliefs and systems (“magic leads to egotism” . . . etc.). Nor is that all. Hauntings, astral bodies, elemental spirits, and the tri-part nature of man are referenced, as is the legendary Merlin, who has a role of his own in the Kestrel mystery. Even a smattering of theosophy makes its way into the mix. When Michael Bennett says, “Mr. Hamilton, when you reach my age you will learn never to scoff at other people’s beliefs, because those beliefs often come to have a real existence, simply because they are believed in,” he is restating an idea that was not only used in Bridge Over Dark Gods, but which also underlies a large amount of classic supernatural fiction, including at least two of Jack Mann’s “Gee’s” novels.
Religious and philosophical elements notwithstanding, what makes Dark Sanctuary worth reading is the power of its story. In classic pulp and weird mystery tradition, Gregory produces both solid heroes and solid villains, but he also throws in some twists and turns along the way. And, when the conflict veers into the cosmic, it becomes hard for the reader to predict how the plot will eventually play itself out.
Sadly, Dark Sanctuary is H.B. Gregory’s only known book. Did the author, having produced the one novel which he had been impelled to write simply put down his pen and move on to other things? Was it the first novel of a career cut short and a life lost in World War II? We may never know. And while we can regret that the pen that brought us such a memorable place as the stormy, accursed isle of Kestrel never again put nib to paper, we can at least be thankful that its one creation is now back in print and ready to thrill new readers the way that it once thrilled a young aficionado of the obscure named Karl Edward Wagner. I think it is fair to say that Karl would be pleased by such a development.
D.H. Olson
Minneapolis, MN
December, 2000
CHAPTER I
I
The doctor passed a weary hand over his eyes and looked down half incredulously at the still figure on the bed. It seemed almost impossible that less than half a minute before those white, silent lips had been screaming the most horrible words it had ever been the misfortune of a little country doctor to hear. Struggling to maintain his professional calm, he began methodically to dismantle the shining syringe from which that merciful oblivion had come. The two servants who stood watching looked at each other. The man spoke:
“Will he be all right, Doctor?”
“For the moment, yes.” He must not let these people see how bewildered and uncertain he was. “But his son must be sent for; he’s in London, I suppose?”
“Yes, Doctor. I’ll send him a wire at once.”
“Do.”
Without another word the manservant went out. The woman made as if to follow him, but turned back to the doctor once more.
“Doctor — is it — the curse?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, my good woman!” There was nervous anger in his voice. “He’s had a bad shock, that’s all. Now go and rest. I don’t want another patient on my hands.”
Obediently she turned and left him alone with the sick man. As soon as the door was shut behind her the doctor left the bedside and went to the narrow, mullioned casement.
For a long time he stood there, gazing with unseeing eyes across the waste of grey, heaving water to the distant mainland coast. His thoughts ran round and round in his head like ferrets in a cage. The curse? Nonsense! He was a doctor — a man of science — nothing existed for him save that which he could see and touch, measure and analyse with his eyes and hands. This — this old wives’ tale — was the veriest nonsense: a bogey to frighten disobedient children with. And yet — here, on this lonely island, within the very walls of the Abbey itself, things seemed not quite as they had seemed to him in his spotless, shining surgery but yesterday.
He set his hands on the worn stone embrasure of the casement, and the contact brought him a brief, crushing vision of the enormous mass of masonry within which he stood: pier, wall, and buttress; arch, tower, and crenellated battlement — all imbued with that spirit of antiquity which makes man seem so ephemeral a creature. And this place, above all other, left with a legacy from that forgotten past beyond all human understanding — or so the legend ran.
The dreadful screaming of the sick man, so lately silenced, still rang in his ears. What had been the words? A quotation, evidently from some book, thrown up by the subconscious in delirium.
“During his lifetime, the curse, from a formless cloud of evil, grew into a monstrous thing having material shape, which at length overthrew his dominion and destroyed him. And now it dwells in the bowels of the abbey rock . . .”
Fantastic, of course, albeit interesting folk-lore, no doubt, in its proper place. But the proper place emphatically was not here, on that very rock. The doctor strove to turn his mind from the subject, but the old man’s last cry beat remorselessly upon his unwilling memory:
“It’s after me, Doctor! Save me! Save me!” And then such a scream as might have sickened Bedlam, until the drug cut it short in his throat.
Bah! Nonsense! Since when have doctors taken seriously the delirious ravings of their patients? That way lay madness. With something of an effort he took his hands from the cold stone and turned from the window and the grateful light of day to the dim, vaulted chamber and his unconscious patient.
II
Young Anthony Lovell helped himself to one of his friend’s cigarettes with the air of a man making a great effort. John Hamilton smiled slightly as he watched him.
“What’s the matter, Tony?” he asked. “Life getting you down?”
“Oh, I’m bored, John, bored to tears. There’s nothing doing in London tonight.”
“I can’t think why you stay here at all, Tony, when you could be at that superb place of yours in Cornwall.”
“What, Kestrel? I loathe the place. It would suit you, John, but it’s too beastly lonely for me. Do you know, we only keep three servants at the Abbey — a housekeeper, her husband, and one maid. Three, mark you, to run a place which would take thirty to do the thing properly.”
“But your father lives there.”
“Well, he’s getting on, you know, and likes it, or says he does. Personally, I don’t think he’s any keener than I am; but it has a sort of fascination for him. Perhaps that’s why I keep away; it might grow on me too.”
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br /> “And why not?” Hamilton leaned forward eagerly. “It’s not as if you kept any style here. You don’t use your Town house — ”
“That mausoleum? Never. It won’t do, John; it simply will not do. You can’t bully me into living up to tradition. I’m quite satisfied with my life as it is.”
“But I’m not! Can you give me the least reason for your existence? Oh, you’re a good fellow, and all that sort of thing, and amuse your own little set, no doubt. But that’s not enough. Either take your proper place here in Town, as your father’s heir, or go to Kestrel, and live as God meant you to.”
Tony did not reply to his friend’s outburst, but sat staring at the glowing filaments of the electric fire, his forgotten cigarette sending up a steady tendril of smoke in the warm air. He looked oddly out of place, with his immaculate evening kit, in the workmanlike study of Hamilton’s flat. Behind him a desk, with typewriter and heap of manuscript, proclaimed its owner’s trade in unmistakable terms, although the near-by bookcase betrayed a poetic taste seemingly at variance with freelance journalism. The truth was that Hamilton, albeit a poet at heart, could not afford to give his art full rein, and eked out a very modest private income with the less romantic literary work.
When the silence had become almost oppressive Hamilton spoke again:
“Forgive me, Tony, if I said too much. But I’m your friend, and it hurts me to see you wasting Heaven-sent opportunities like this.”
The other looked up with a start.
“Sorry, old man. I was day-dreaming. Don’t apologize. Everything you said was true, and very much to the point. But don’t deceive yourself about our traditions: we have none — to be proud of. The Lovells have been either bad or indifferent since they first owned Kestrel. You’ve heard the tale, of course?”
“Everyone has, more or less. A family curse, or something, wasn’t it? You don’t mean to say you believe in it, Tony?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t, and sometimes — I wonder. Kestrel’s queer, John, very queer. You’ve never been there, have you?”
“Once I saw it from the coast. I must say it impressed me then. That rocky island, with the Abbey crouching on its back, jutting so starkly from the sea. Rather grim, it looked, with the sun setting right behind it.”
“And rather grim it is, John — sunset, sunrise, or high noon. We were never wanted there, and now we’re bound to it, whether we like or no.”
“Tell me the story, Tony. But have another drink first.”
Tony nodded, and his friend charged their empty glasses from the decanter at his elbow. Then he waited, watching that young face across the table, with its fine brow and delicate nose, marred only by a mouth ever so slightly irresolute, now set in an unwonted grimness as its owner marshaled his thoughts. Without looking at Hamilton he plunged into his tale.
“About the middle of the thirteenth century an order of Cistercian monks settled on Kestrel, and built the Abbey. There is a rather peculiar legend in those parts that there had been a castle on the island before — the Wizard Merlin’s castle, to be exact, for it is said to be the last remnant of Lyonesse left above the sea.
“Be that as it may, the good monks flourished for nearly three hundred years, until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1532. Then Henry VIII presented it to one of his boon companions, the first Sir Anthony Lovell, my unfortunate ancestor.
“He went along and rousted out the brethren with scant ceremony, and scantier respect for their cloth. There was, I believe, some pretty dirty work done — sacrilege, you know — one of the monks murdered at the altar. The Abbot was, rather naturally, annoyed, and, as was customary in those days, proceeded to curse Sir Anthony, going into the fullest details of how Kestrel would ruin him, and his family, body and soul.
“At which Sir Anthony, never an easy-going fellow, from all accounts, killed the wretched Abbot on the spot. A general massacre began, from which only six of the monks escaped, by boat, to France.
“I imagine that my tactless ancestor was rather shaken when he sobered up and realized what he’d done, but he was a tough nut, and didn’t care to show that he was badly frightened. He swore that it would take more than old-wives’ tales to scare him off his rightful property, and proceeded to adapt the Abbey to his own uses, fortifying it, and turning the chapel into a dining-hall.
“Curse or no, he went from bad to worse, and some pretty unpleasant tales are told of the orgies which took place on Kestrel when he gathered his friends together.”
At this point Hamilton, who had been following the narrative with close interest, interjected:
“And how did he die?”
Tony looked at him oddly.
“No one knows,” he said slowly. “He disappeared one day, after a particularly violent drinking bout. It was thought that he must have gone on to the western battlements, which are sheer above the sea, and fallen off; still stupid with drink, and unable to save himself. Naturally, there are other legends, but they are too fantastic to take seriously.”
“What sort of legends?” Hamilton insisted.
“Oh, some rot about the curse materializing in the shape of a ghastly monster, and carrying him away.”
“I see. Who succeeded him?”
“His son, James Lovell. Quite a different type: no hearty, hard-living, hard-drinking bully like his father, but a lean, cruel-lipped ferret of a man. Just what he did on Kestrel no one really knows, but there are dark hints of black magic, pacts with the devil, and that sort of bilge. They even go so far as to accuse him of stealing children from the mainland, for use at his satanic rites. I believe the country people would have burnt him at the stake if they could have got hold of him, but the island was too well fortified.
“Finally, even his bosom friends deserted him, and he spent several weeks alone. Here again the legends go off the rails with their tale of the lurid glare that shone from the Abbey turrets in those days.
“When his friends plucked up courage, and went back, they found him dead. He’d been dead quite a while, too, or else the natural process of decay had been unusually rapid . . .”
Hamilton relit his pipe, which he had let go out in his absorption, and pushed the cigarette-box towards Tony. The younger man took one absently and lit it at Hamilton’s match. Then he went on:
“James left no son, and the estate and title passed to one Thomas Lovell, his nephew, an undistinguished man, who slept — or failed to sleep — one night on the island, and then retired hurriedly to London. However, a few weeks before his death he went back, and died, quite quietly, in his bed.
“Since then nothing of any great note has happened. There have been one or two bad hats, but no one really distinguished, either bad or good. Just nonentities; and yet the line still goes on. It’s amazing, really. Every one of us has died on Kestrel, I believe; either spending our last years there or just going back to die. My father has been there now for five years; he went after Mother died. I expect he’ll die there too, and so shall I, and so on . . .
“It’s heart-breaking — a family so old. We should be great, and yet we do nothing, nothing at all, except keep Kestrel going. The shadow of that blasted island is always upon us, from the cradle to the grave.”
He drank deeply, and lapsed into silence. Hamilton sat still, his lean, strong face very grave, his eyes closed. He seemed to see, as in a picture, that unhappy family passing like pale shadows through the unchanging halls of Kestrel; meek, bowing their necks beneath the yoke, living only that the dark and secret life of that great pile of stone might go on eternally — drawing its sustenance from them, and leaving empty husks of no account.
His reverie was interrupted by a strangled cry from Tony, and he opened his eyes to see that the other had jumped up, and now stood grinding out the stub of his cigarette in the ash-tray.
“No, by God, it shan’t go on!” he cried. “I am the last, and there shall be no more. I’ll never marry; there shall be no heir this time.” With something very lik
e a sob he turned abruptly and strode to the window, pulling aside the curtains and staring into the dark.
His friend did not move; he knew these moods. Gently he said:
“There is a better way, Tony. Not by annihilation, and the ending of the line, but by a clean break. Take something up — politics, art, any mortal thing. When your father dies, sell Kestrel, or burn it to the ground. You could be great.”
The other turned slowly.
“Do you think so, John? Do you really think so? If only I could! If we could start again, here in London, among people, at the heart of the world, away from that damned rock!”
For a moment his blue eyes blazed with enthusiasm, and the light from a neighbouring street lamp caught his hair, turning it to gold. Then the glory faded, his shoulders drooped, and his face took on its former dejected look.
“No, John,” he said sadly, “it’s not possible. We’ve tried before; we’re done for now. Oh, give me another drink, I feel like hell!”
He came slowly back to the fireside, his feet dragging, and slumped heavily into his chair. Hamilton poured out the requested drink, and returned to the charge with: “That seems to have been the attitude of all your people: defeatism, Tony. Be a man, lad; I know you’ve mettle in you. Show the world that all the Lovells aren’t quitters.”
“God knows I’ve tried. But if you’ll help me, John, I’ll try again. What shall I do? I know nothing of art; politics bore me stiff.”
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