Herald of the Hidden

by Valentine, Mark

  Miss Duncan only vaguely heard the commotion—it did not intrude upon her consciousness much at all. She was still eagerly perusing the astonishing details concerning a gift her great-uncle had received from a particularly ‘degenerate’ tribe in Papua—she read the entries over and over with a macabre delight. And now the gift was in the very guest room where . . .

  Melvace felt very hot and bothered. He really must have some fresh air. The rude awakening from his blissful contemplations, the streak of sheer shock which had scorched his nerves, and then the laborious lugging of the fallen mask, had all taken a toll. To breathe in the cool night air for a few minutes would calm him a little, give him a chance to resume his equanimity. He stepped towards the French windows, and, pushing aside the gruesomely-hued curtains, fumbled with the catch. The doors snapped open rather sharply, letting in a gust of seething wind. The curtains flapped vigorously. Jerked forward by the impetus of the swinging door, he grabbed aimlessly with his free hand and, in his descent, succeeded in ripping a curtain, with a rasping tear, from its hangings. It tumbled down heavily upon him, and he was enveloped in a mass of thick cloth, which had about it a pungent odour that was very unpleasant.

  The other curtain, billowing frantically in the wind, struck his face, flicking an eye so that it stung unbearably. Clutching this wound in an agony of surprise, he tried unsuccessfully to fling off the cumbersome weight upon him. Tottering desperately, dividing his attention between the searing pain of the afflicted eye and the suffocating drapings, he became enmeshed in the other, still captive, curtain, and struggled with this blindly.

  Then there came a tight knot to his throat. It was as if these hideous pieces of lurid material, coarse and stinking, were grappling by an active will at his neck. Forgetting his smarting eye, in the throes now of a grimmer struggle, he tore wildly at them; still they wound tighter, relentless. The more he contorted himself in a frenzied effort to escape, the greater he wound himself into their garrotte.

  In a few moments, his lifeless form dropped falteringly through the heavy folds to the floor.

  In her inventory, Miss Duncan wrote carefully:

  Two human hides, from the freshly dead acolytes of a shaman, Papua, 186-.

  She read again her great-uncle’s notes:

  It is the tradition of this people to flay their close friends and relations, after their decease, and to make use of the resulting pelts as hangings in their huts. It is considered a great and noble art to successfully detach the entire skin; and equal skill is evinced in the treatment of it with a kind of preservative, a concoction of many saps, juices and herbs; further, the womenfolk may weave into the (if I may so express it) pickled flesh, a coarse fibre to make it more staunch and durable. These very personal mementoes of a loved one may appear to us somewhat grisly, but the practice is deemed both natural and a sign of great human affection by this race.

  Viewed in this light, I was happy to accept from my mentor and friend, the local sorcerer, the gift of two skins which had adorned a pair of young helpers, who had succumbed to poison in some unwise experiments. He explained that these had no immediate kin, and their deaths had been neither venerable nor honourable, so I might take them with no qualms, especially as they had been my guides on a number of occasions, and once protected me from the alarmed molestations of a neighbouring tribe. Their spirits, it was explained, would be grateful to me for saving their mortal remains from the indignity of rotting, for it was adjudged amongst them a shameful fate for the body to be left to decay; it implied the deceased had been held in no esteem or affection.

  I was intrigued to notice that estrangement from the skeleton, then the drying, treating and weaving, gave the hides a mottled pallor which, along with the smell, texture and general composition, reminded one unavoidably of pigskin.

  In a later hand was added:

  I have seen fit to use these valued items in a similar manner to that employed by the people from which they originate, i.e. as ornamental drapings. They serve now the purpose of curtains in the rear (or guest) bedroom, where we might imagine they watchfully guard the outer approaches to my house.

  Miss Duncan smiled softly to herself. Such an eccentric notion of her great-uncle’s!

  Go to the West

  The greatest discovery of the alchemist Peakfellow, lost for over two centuries, could not now be far from Michael Bacon’s grasp. For hours, whilst his physical form was quite still, stirred only by soft, measured breathing, his mind faltered through a series of states of reverie. And now, gaining strength and heightened perception from these glimpses—tastes of the eternal—he felt ready to free himself of all that held him to creature-existence, of all the instincts and inherited limitations, of all that was brutish and corporeal. He would relinquish his place in the race of wingless bipeds, that strange order of beings who, having the gift of self-consciousness, spend their energies in extinguishing it within themselves. He would become beyond the human.

  Though there was no perceptible outward change to the figure which reclined in the sparse, shaded room, the spirit within it hovered momentarily, longingly, over the hushed images which were its refreshment and preparation: then, like a breeze that suddenly rises from the dust, it leapt into the formlessness.

  Yet even whilst the substance of his soul was drawn into this inexorable process far beyond the cool, austere cell, there still lingered for Michael Bacon the taste of mortal satisfaction. He had followed the scribbled notes and charts of his colleague Wilson diligently, and now he could not be far from reaping the result of his labours—and it would more than recompense for the years of weary drudgery, the petty banalities and vanities of what passes for living amongst us. But aside from the personal advantages he did not doubt lay before him, Bacon earnestly believed that this quest had in it something of the nature of a tribute to his deceased friend’s memory. Old Wilson had devoted most of his later years to meticulous and often dreary archival research; to obsessive cross-referencing and collating of seemingly shapeless strands of thought; to clutching for clues and ideas of an elusive and tantalising kind, which more prudent scholars had abandoned as illusory or impenetrable. It was not enough to be the foremost authority on Peakfellow’s life and works, nor even to possess a compendious knowledge of those more ancient, solemn and ponderous grimoires, some ludicrous, some strangely convincing, which Peakfellow had edited, amended and extended. For Wilson was in pursuit of a higher goal than scholastic merit—he believed, or rather sensed, with a keen intuition, that Peakfellow had, in his last days, before he finally cast aside all his curious contrivances and unearthly chemicals, before he quit the enigmatic Axis Lodge constructed according to his designs and funded by a noble patron; before the pathos of his subservient, semi-senile end under the gloating, morbidly sanctimonious eyes of an order of Austin monks; before this inglorious climax to a life of dazzling intellectual virtuosity, Wilson was convinced, the alchemist had achieved a remarkable breakthrough.

  It was an especially bitter irony that neither Peakfellow nor Wilson could follow their fundamental insights through to the ineffably transfiguring experience which must surely await; both had succumbed to the crude, vitiating effects of advanced age, worn and harried by the demanding emotional trials they had suffered, and virtually unable to comprehend how close they were to completeness.

  Bacon had been with Wilson in the last hours of life. The severity of the toll which the years of toil had exacted came as a great shock, and Bacon scarcely recognised his old mentor, when he was ushered into the dim bedchamber. It could scarcely be three months since he had last seen him, to seek out certain artefacts necessary to their work; yet the alteration was disturbing. The face was drained and haggard, and the body decrepit. Worse was the tongue which lolled and slobbered, and the eyes glazed over into the brink of idiocy, whose expression Bacon found particularly distressing, having seen in them before the living gleam of the enthused academic.

  At a loss for words, Bacon had murmured assurances th
at he would carry on the work that the dying man could not now accomplish, that he would see it through. It was plain these promises brought some consolation even into the dementia which had seized Wilson, for his wracked form stirred in some animation in response, the eyes wobbling wildly in an effort to convey burning conviction: and Bacon heard the wasted face croak out, in heavy, slurred groans, ‘Go to the West’, and again ‘Go to the West’. The effort to thus articulate must have cost much, for although a lingering biological existence continued some hours further, sentient, reasoning life departed for all outward purposes at that point.

  To the outsider, the instruction given by the dying man would appear hopelessly imprecise, and maybe no more than a raving phrase plucked at random from a deteriorating consciousness. But Bacon was not an outsider. He had shared in Wilson’s single-minded devotion to this task, and though his knowledge was by no means as trenchant, yet he had more instinctive resourcefulness, not to say cunning. And the words ‘Go to the West’ were like a motto and a rallying-cry to him. They meant the culmination of all their work: and in their urgent, terse insistence, they swept aside any doubts he may have harboured, and assured him of the old man’s blessing.

  So it was that now, acting on the aged master’s imperative ultimate words, Bacon lay in the plain room which had been both their study and temple. Echoing the endlessness where his higher consciousness now roamed, his gaze was saturated by the deep crimson symbol which Wilson had cast upon one wan white wall. It was a rose, burningly red on its outer edge but becoming more vastly vivid layer by layer until the bud at the heart, so dark and dense it seemed it must be formed of purest black. Four radiant white-gold rays streamed at equal points from this strange device. What hues and tints and dyes could be used to such effect it was difficult to surmise. Yet Wilson had been a man whose flawed intellect had streaks of potency, rich veins of sensitivity, which belied his plodding mannerisms. Relishing the memory of his mentor, Bacon reflected on the peculiarly contrary genius that had led Wilson to Peakfellow’s obscure Rite of the Compass Rose.

  The extant folios of the alchemist’s writings and workings contained much that appeared to hold out ominous promise—influence over kings and emperors, great wealth, the choice of love-partners, discourse with devils, journeys in time and space, strange powers over the seas or over animals, shape-shifting, invisibility, immunity from violent attack, premonition; all these were offered to the acolyte who would rightly obey the requisite ceremonial practices, the incantations, conjurations, offerings and oaths, states of trance, and skilful craft. And yet, against these, on a discarded sheaf of coarse parchment, the brevity and simplicity of the Rite of the Compass Rose promised only that the supplicant would, by its means, travel as far North, South, East or West, as they might wish to go. Wilson had seen beyond this guarded legend, and correctly interpreted Peakfellow’s reticence as a guise. A fusing of the Rite with other elements, and Wilson’s own cautious explorations, had revealed little by little how near to the edge of the alchemist’s wildest wanderings it was, and ultimately, after many painstaking days, all the concentrated perception that had been gathered led inexorably to the West Way as being where the final glory lay.

  But still Wilson, mindful of the ambivalence of all he found, had insisted on the sustained use of elaborate safeguards and the full respectful observances, including fasting, vigil, and often ponderous ritual. Bacon had grown impatient of this, and urged his master on to the highest possible attainment, regardless of the paraphernalia and pomposities that he believed Peakfellow had needlessly and mischievously inserted. And now . . . Wilson’s last words were clearly a signal that all lay open and prepared, that he must hasten to the uttermost brink of the West Way, whilst the time was still propitious. Even—who could say—the old man’s wasting away might have been a self-imposed ultimate sacrifice, a gift to seal the compact, in order that he, Michael Bacon, might reach the holy and just reward for such devotion, selflessness and mortal endeavour.

  And what reward! There was little doubt what it was Peakfellow had sought. As more and more of his inner self seemed to be sucked into the vastness, Bacon clung, despite his zeal to seize the throne of imperishable delight, to those personal urges still left to him by the process. He brooded over the prize which lay at the far rim of Peakfellow’s esoterically delineated quest. The vulgar called it the Philosopher’s Stone, and imagined it a treasure-trove talisman that could transmute base metals to precious. Such a property it certainly possessed, and that was in itself no doubt rather useful; but that, too, was a trick, a sparkling bauble to distract, a trap for the viciously greedy. No, Bacon knew the Stone’s real essence was of far greater worth: it could bestow blissful immortality. Not for nothing did the ancient legends of many races speak of the Isles of the Blessed far away in the West, but foolish Irish monks and primitive Viking warriors who sailed away and came upon Newfoundland or Greenland mistook this for a physical direction when in truth, it was a metaphysical one!

  Bacon relished the prospect of taking his rightful place in the one attainable paradise (for all else was Christian carrot-and-stick cant. Of course there was no Hell, any more than there was a Heaven, at least not for the common herd, whose dull, sordid little souls died with their fleshy effigies). No, only those who penetrated far into the coetaneous realms of being, either unconsciously (as perhaps poets, and other artists, and madmen might) or purposefully (as the mages and other mystics and occultists might), stood any chance of savouring the abyss of torment which the Christians called Hell and stupidly supposed was set aside for the perpetrators of trivial mortal misdemeanours; or the beauty and grace and perfect perpetual freedom of the true Arcadian plane which, again, the ecclesiasts fondly promised to mere do-gooders and timeservers.

  As to which fate the madmen or mages might find—the abyss or arcadia—well, indeed, few found either. For they floundered about in the primordial aether as if it were just one more diverting experience to set beside the more exotic arts of earth. Few were those who knew what it was they sought; and fewer still those who knew the Way. But Bacon had devised an absurd little rhyme, of which he was rather fond, though it was pure doggerel, and he felt it summarised the inner key to the Rite of the Compass Rose.

  As his spirit soared through numbing worlds, striking searingly through the challenges, obstacles and enticing pleasure-points which were toys to an adept, the last, scarcely coherent remnant of Bacon’s selfhood took refuge in repetition and childlike glee, and he began to recite, in lilting time:

  ‘Go to the West, To the Isles of the Blessed; Go to the East, Meet the Great Beast . . .’

  and gales of shuddering exuberance shook through him, at the delightfulness of his poem.

  For this was the kernel: that the same Rite which led to the preserve of the adored, by way of the far West, was equally capable of consigning the seeker by the opposite route to the abode of the damned, or of leading by tortuous paths to the barren North or South. So, Bacon knew, even those sage enough to discover the hidden significance of the Rite, might still, in chaos of the soul, misinterpret some vital element, with consequences that were better kept conjectural. The West it was, and only the West, that Peakfellow had dared to approach—and now Michael Bacon was within its outer influence.

  In the carefully prepared room where he had now been virtually inert all of the day, as dusk stole through the narrow windows, a light gust flickered almost-gutted candles, rippled the rare water in copper bowls, rustled the sprigs of leaves from the sacred trees, and ruffled his hair. Like a gentle ebbing, not at all like the surging emergence he’d envisaged, Michael Bacon felt the last elements of his self go. After all then, at the end, when his ascendancy was accepted and assumed, it was as simple, and graceful, and noble, as this. A serene smile lit his countenance.

  Then there reared above him, huge and awesome, a horned, cloven-hoofed form that stank acridly of animal. On hind legs towered the black, bellowing beast—and all around it sang the air like sounds
forced through a funnel, a distorted, dense pounding which tore at all his senses, and a half-laughing, half-chanting chorus of bleats, singing ‘Goat of the West’, ‘Goat of the West’. This it was that Peakfellow had discovered—the highest, hidden name and form of the Pan-Demon, the title which revealed the obscenest truth of all. In the moments before Bacon was finally claimed by the abyss, there sank into him with hideous force how much he had misunderstood—not just his dying friend’s hoarse, indistinct moans, which were in warning not exhortation; but also the vast dark joke of the demiurge, whereby those who were led on to what they believed was a celestial sanctuary and a joyous eternity, came instead upon the great beast’s lair, and found what was heaviest of all to bear: that the abyss is everywhere.

  Tree Worship

  On the outskirts of a market town, where once there were only pastures, a developer bought land and obtained permission to build an estate of ‘executive homes’. It was a fine site, by the side of a Roman road, and it nestled an equidistance between the facilities of the urban centre and the gentle, if unremarkable, countryside. ‘Hedgerows’ it was named; and there was Hawthorn Lane and Elder Close, and other evocative titles. Steel lamp-posts were installed, high concrete kerbs and bold traffic markings made, drains and cables and pipelines laid. Then the bright yellow machines moved in, wrenched the wan green meadow away and revealed the rich brown soil beneath (the garden plots would be good). And soon the brick shells of houses began to emerge. . . .