The Mystery Surrounding Hamplock House

by John Tan

  ‘No, don’t think it’s a perspicuous flight of your own fancy, my dear Mick. You are right, truly.’

  With every one of my nerves was tingling, I had just finished my lunch and got up from my chair, not looking at the two doctors, and I slowly approached the same cook, who was then serving one or two of the inmates, and said I would like some peaches with a little cream. I wasn’t troubled by the man’s behavior: and I heard a sympathetic Mick said, ‘About her --’ indicating he meant me with his sly thumb, ‘I got the take on her from one of the doctors, and they have spoken to her mutual friend about her. Seems she had fallen in love with a handsome young man, and she and her elder sister had fought over this beautiful boy and had exhausted themselves, one to the very death of herself, literally, and the other, stricken with brain fever so that she stayed in this friend’s house for four months. Refused to go home plainly after that.’

  For the moment, my mind was totally blank for I could not recollect any of these things. In fact, none of it tallied with what I had known about myself, or had remembered about my own breakdown. Notwithstanding, I had supra-clarity about my own dignity in order to emotionally survive—to revitalize my drooping spirit, especially, after the death of my mother, and I had great right to see and understand things from my point of view: things which meaningful significance and even secret morphologies that hidden a deep emotional life trying to sort itself out. Yea, an emotional life of the sort that is a kind of life-in-death out of a death-in-life; or deaths-in-life? What kind of configurations do these things feature I hadn’t known, and, perhaps, even a doctor of the wildest imagination cannot grasp what lifts life up a little and keeps one going, carrying on in a peripheral existence, and perhaps, also—it is them, the others—that ought to be pitied because the none of these knew what had been going on in one’s secret life, beyond one’s power or desire to communicate to others! A complete mental detachment to one’s outer world is certainly a different kind of life. Is it totally bad? I can’t rightly say. Born of secret terrors and naked emotional collapse—more impressive than a slight systemic jarring—I had lost my self-confidence as a previously known identity, and a loss of meaning to the structures of meaning I had presented the interior and external world to myself somewhat. Like the flotsam drifting in the ocean after a vessel had sunk, I was still at the mercy of the wind and rain and internal storm, my impulse had been to abjure everything that was previously known—an abjuration by my whole mind, body and spirit—which tries to sever everything as completely as cutting the Gordian knot. What takes over one is a new story that replaces the old story, a story about one’s life, for, where one is going overshadows where one has been; and seen in an entirely new light, as my mind’s myth-making faculty kicks into high gear—and is urged to work overtime. This has been the result of arduously piecing together many things in my faulty mind, and in glancing over my notes what had been my impressions over a period of eight months. And believe me, eight months in Hamplock House was a long time. My intuition and my doctors’ efforts had made me believe I had seen a sort of light, and because I saw the light at the end of a long tunnel, I had to journey through the dark night of the soul, and join up all my lucid moments that I had a intervals, so that I might end up having only lucid moments, and, since then, that meant going the extra mile, because it takes the mickey out of one when one does something special or other people all the time, and my completely lucid, unclouded self is one that takes at least twenty years in the making; making other people prosper by one’s own unrelenting efforts till one lost being over-focused on oneself which has resulted in the breakdown in the first place. And, at last, when I had joined up all the bits and pockets of light, and an unending light bathed me with its shafts; it means I had conquered all my demons! I don’t think seeing a false light can do anything for me; because I would be stark, raving mad.

  9

  As would have been obvious by now, my impressions of myself and the influences of Hamplock House—in changing my personality, perhaps, subtly at first and then more and more later, as the drama enfolds, is that, I was to succumb—by how much or little you shall know—was--I was the beneficiary of a double-haunting; first, Mrs. Elkland’s ghost, a slight haunting, in that it hinted at certain things, and gave me thoughts and experiences, in the shape of dream visions and tame nightmares, which made me wake up in the morning with blood in my saliva—and second, an entity whose identity had not yet come to light. Something seemed to pervade the House and especially my room, which should perhaps be said justly to be less mine but an agency congruent with the late Mrs. Elkland be it for good or evil, I and couldn’t say, at first. However, I anticipate, and these experiences and what loomed or happened later will be shared with you too, dear reader, more effectively in the second and third part of my book. It suffice me to say, all my impressions come to me in overlapping layers, the facets which came to light later tending to modify or strengthen the earlier suppositions, or glimpses of ‘truth’ as the case may be; and this is still operative in me today. The salient features of the House is the emotional landscape that came wrapped up in its own emotional climate, and I find this reinforced or fall away as part of my ongoing experience. Dimly intuited at first, I write this with the aid of my diary, which was many a summary and compressed nuggets --few succinct descriptions of events that came along; concerning a recurring dream I had while sleeping in the room. In my dream, I was a young woman from a different, earlier era, which had the effect of making me wake up, thinking I had a brother, when my mother only bore daughters. This older brother took me to rides in his shadowy conveyance and we had long summer walks in the country, and picnicking together with luxurious spreads of food and drinks fit for a king! I had one distinct boat ride, whereby I felt and saw the placid blue sunlit river sliding from under me; and wading in the water, attending plays and visited the museum and going to flea-markets with a feeling of wonderment and having kindness bestowed on me; and I remember, watching a circus’s command performance from the stall among country yokels: my brother was well-off and generous. From these intense dreams, I truly wished I really had a brother! And this brother in my dream was a pastor and wore a roman collar, and I was his favorite relative. These vivid dreams were elegant as they were intriguing; but I could not see the originator who was controlling the scenes. The creature of my dreams was always kind and sweet and it had a kind of sermonizing air about him; and he visited me many nights for some weeks the period of my stay in Hamplock House between January and May. At first its contents made me pleased, as progressing along the same established lines; so that I wished to have the same dream every night. Incidents, sometimes spectacular were beyond credulity, whimsical, loving and slight tinted with capriciousness, its imagery rich with symbolism, but for a different themed dream, while I was leaning on my side against the sagged-in moldy wall on the right side of my bed, on the afternoon of 4th of April, as I jotted it down afterwards, whereby I dreamt I was Davy, my brother; and in it I was both actor and observer. As actor I was asleep, and felt a man, I supposed was Davy’s father, came up and voided all his rheum from his snot onto my hair and face; a most smeary drenching for ‘twas a tremendous quantity of gunk. My head was thoroughly wet with the stuff but I, as Davy, didn’t get angry, or voiced my remonstration at the dastardly deed. I just accepted it in a consciously constrained way, and went to clean myself up afterwards. I thought I saw the man, after the act was perpetrated, and he was full of keen malice. Then, Davy was completely disconnected from my dream-persona and he looked suspiciously like the boy in the downstairs portrait, outside the occupational therapist’s office. I mean, of course, the Augustine Hamplock Family portrait. It had the same rare and low keyed emotional voltage! After considering and pondering it for some time, I concluded that Davy was Millionaire Hamplock’s boy. The resolution was formed long before I put into words those portions of my experience, which led to notes that form the part of this chapter about the two offspring of the man in the pic
ture. Some external circumstances and perhaps a genetic predisposition or perhaps chance had led to an other-worldly kinship, a propinquity, perhaps, established in an emotional connection as regards us: as something had sought bonding beyond death and the grave. Soon, I was indulging in the fantasy I had a brother, but he had died because of stillbirth, and began to speak openly to people about this unknown brother of mine whom I named Watkins.

  Back to the dining room, the erratic assistant cook had cringingly removed his apron wrapped around his embonpoint with the buttoned up attire; and as he turned to go, I likewise, finished my last mouthful from my dessert-spoon, and went up the two short steps; walked casually to the front of the main building. Of course, there were subtle signs all was not well, and even the cook seemed to be very put out, on account of the doctors’ abusing his ear, no doubt; and all of a sudden, uttering a violent expletive which started me with a jolt, and from then on, I was edgy and nervous. It did but took me half a minute and I found myself standing before the aforementioned portrait, staring at it carefully, and this second time was beyond a mere cursory study. I stood actually contemplating the boy’s figure and its eyes met mine in a moment, and we hung for a space, mutually acknowledging each other and each other’s deeply felt, intuited pain. The strange boy spoke to me from across the wide gulf of time and space; this stranger whom I would never meet and didn’t know in real life. But, still, my experiences were more than a mere half-dream. I must have begun to twitch or else I had developed a nervous tic before I was aware of it, looking at the entire portrait, which was dominated by the huge man wearing black. From the man’s face I again studied the boy’s eyes, and I tried to mentally articulate my experience so that I’d remember my experience as I was absorbed by the boy’s power and innocence. It had boiled down to the fact that I was in Hamplock House because I had to cope with my mental pain, and rather hoped that something good might come out of it; and yet, it might offer some consolation out of this ‘friendship’ with me—as being aware of my deep sense of loss, revealing to me both had purloined souls, so to speak; and through this mutuality of circumstance through time and space and distances between us, it was urging me, well and good, to recognize it soon! Even as I stared at it, if I might couch my words in such terms—so to speak: for, here, was a presence that was more than mere paint, and forthwith seeming to brood upon my own affairs, which had brought me to live at Hamplock House this fall. It was hoping to pierce through my unshared life, that part of me that was bolted tight shut, and un-blot my memories that it wanted to re-conjure up; and—to replace a new key to the one I had discarded, so that perhaps, it might release me from the prison of my own mind, in order that my life be lived no more beyond the uncharted, unreachable seas of madness. Me-thought I caught his smile—that seemed to go with his slurred, proud, silent speech of his unmoving pouting lips: which at once recalled me to Davy’s slouching gait in one of my dreams of him; and then, my eye left his face to search for his little sister’s; and then, her evasive smile flashed up at me; as at some startling notion of mine or bee, buzzing in that bonnet of hers; which produced a kind of un-lisped or unspoken ‘eureka’ that both of us seemed to recognize, at once. The high diamond-shaped panes on the opposite and to the right caught the sun, and even before the sky was overcast again, something had set my mind’s alarm-bells ringing with apprehension; for despite the frigid attempt of a smile, there seemed to be some kind of incipient lunacy in the girl’s drooping expression, or strange bodily angle, as if nature peeps forth despite the painter’s intentional handiwork to disguise this fact. The two children seemed to be contemplating something that was an impenetrable mystery; as what they deigned or had chosen to hide for now, that they, perhaps, had reserved the right to disclose with the most earth-shattering, telling effect. They will spring it on me one of these days! For all I know, they must succeed in this endeavor to catch me unawares when the moment seemed most apt. And, it was after much consideration that I thought the case was so.

  Had the reader himself had gone to Hamplock House himself, and studied the portrait, he would not gainsay this, and you would have seen more besides, in the way of paintings and prints, like the ones by Van Gogh, depicting a subject of sunflowers and starry, starry night in Holland,--and that should sufficiently convey the atmosphere of the Hamplock cultural pedigree, with its chestnut-tree lined driveway, the arch over the gate, and artificial shallow pond, with goldfish in it, exotic potted plants from the world over, chilly rooms where a draught always finds a way in, and log-fires in winter-time; and perhaps, visitors to Hamplock House would like it much better when smoke is coming out of the black, sooty crooked chimneys and there was a light upon the windows, especially during the seasonal holidays, when some of the inmates were going home. Before too long, I got used to its rhythms and its moods, and I was making reasonable progress most of the time, and didn’t have a relapse; but I was also being stuck forcibly that some supernatural eddy circulating about the house, especially from the recesses in my floor, and no wonder, too; after seeing ghosts and a buckle belt that whacks itself that first night in Hamplock. Yes, oh, yes, the children in the painting were handsome children in the way all children are, yet a suppurating sadness pervades everything in this place, together with an unsuccessful attempt at forgetfulness and an unavailing regret or remorse; and the feelings permeated me now—looking at the boy’s regular features; but it popped into my head, some notion of an unhappy relationship with his parent, that was to be realized early in its life— all too soon! A pious, warm hearted boy, all in all, as evidenced by his hands folded over one another and slightly holding a pin-wheel, which was a stark contrast with his father’s manly if cadaverous and agnostic expression and bearing; and self-worship. In contrast to the boy’s straight nose, the father could only be described as a Lollard with a debased Frenchman’s hooked nose! The lad wore a brown suit over his blue silk—the very picture of a young Andalusisan boy, so fresh-looking still in the painting, looking as if he had been briskly walking up a mountain trail, in charge of his master’s pack-mules. But, instead of the little pin-wheel he would of course have a child’s stiff blackthorn cudgel. About his sister, I will write about her more later on; because, she indeed features as a main personage in this story—or, at least, her ghost did later; I didn’t see her, but hers was the presence that colors everything about that place.

  10

  In getting back to my room, the first thing as I shut the door behind me was that I felt a change in the air, for the usually uncommunicative Mrs. Cavendish looked up and called out to me in a mysterious raspy voice, ‘Miss, I think it is apt—appropriate for me to ask you a question to test your perspicuity—whether you are quick on the uptake—unlike me. Pardonnez moi, mademoiselle, mon ami—and I understand, you had had a breakdown recently yourself, therefore, as you have been improving—you might be able to answer this quiz. It was a quiz devised by the late, good Mrs. Elkland herself. The question is this: if those parts of your brain that are able to tell you what color you are seeing are juxtaposed together –er—with—I mean, if it had happened by an evolutionary quirk in mankind’s physiological development as a complex life form, the most complex—somehow, are you able to see sound and hear color because you have brain centers that let you to do so! Ha?’

  I gazed at Mrs. Cavendish’s white and blue and yellow ochre shepherd boy, one of her many knick-knacks, and, side-spied her thoughtfully. I thought there was a glimmer of glee as her expression of suppressed excitement, came to me she was trying to stifle her bronchitis attack as she observed me shyly back.