On the Hill of Roses

by Stefan Grabinski

  Concurrently with the disappearance of the projection of this key, the second shadow became clearer - projecting an image of a type of... frame. Today the lines have taken on the satiety of strength, as if in compensation for the disappearance of the previous phantom image. What yesterday had been a misty, dissipated net, slender like a spider’s web, with patches in the middle, appears completely clear now. I am looking at it and becoming convinced that it is the likeness of a grated window. But the grating appears to be broken in the very centre, as if a large cannon ball or some hard, heavy object - perhaps a rock - had gone through it. The shadows of the bars are broken in the middle, which glows with an open, wide, white space. In a fit of childish caprice, I placed my head to this perfect hole to ascertain if the size corresponded, more or less, to the width of my skull.

  ‘If,’ I thought with a smile, ‘beyond this grating a beautiful nun was concealed, I could easily kiss her through the opening. All I would have to do is to put my head through the opening to the other side. Peek-a-boo, my dear, peek-a-boo!’

  June 15. I have been waging a battle with that grated window for a week now. A stubborn shadow! Whenever I try to cover it with my screen, it rises to a position high above my head where I cannot reach it. Several times I’ve climbed on top of the table to hide this unruly picture - in vain; it slips away from under the screen and shows up in another place. Today it even went to the opposite wall, here, above the mirror. A wandering shadow.

  And yet this travelling seems to have worn it out, for the shadow is now weaker and as if contracted: the window has shrunk to the measurement of a few decimetres.

  June 17. The projection of the broken grating has become completely dwarfish: today it looks like a small rectangle of a few centimetres that is hanging somewhere atop, right under the ceiling.

  Instead a new picture has appeared, quite delicate and subtle. It looks like the shadow of a medieval baptismal font with a pair winged angels at its sides. I haven’t tried to cover it with the screen for I know this would be useless. I am curious as to what will happen next.

  June 30. A crazy story! If someone were to read my confidences, he would take me for a madman. Yet I have all my faculties about me, and I’m writing down the truth...

  The image of the window has not yet disappeared; it is continually there, though in reduced size. Perhaps it is the primary motive, the guiding leitmotif of the entire history of shadows? I don’t know. In any case, it is continually showing up and stubbornly remains under the ceiling, while the other images change as in a kaleidoscope. A mysterious leitmotif of shadows!

  And now I will relate in a few words what I saw yesterday on the wall. I will be brief, for what I saw was hideous, sacrilegious. If it is a creation of a sick mind, then let someone shoot me in the head on the street as if I were a rabid dog! This is what occurred:

  After turning on the light, the baptismal font that had been tormenting me for thirteen days appeared. With a weary glance, I looked at the maliciously contorted profiles of the angels, at the massively curved lips that were bewitching its edges. Suddenly something began to rise from inside the disk, to grow in a cudgel-shaped column, to swell... I gave a start, averting my eyes in disgust: a phallus was rising out of the font...

  July 2. And yet it seems to me that these projections have some basis in reality. Slowly, mysterious spans and links to life are becoming visible - at least to my life.

  Today I discovered that the key that I had found was to render an important service: it proved useful.

  Visiting the ruins as usual, I fell upon a trail in an underground gallery as yet unknown to me. It extends along the right wing of the monastery, perhaps three meters below ground level. Until now I had always ventured into these winding pathways without any obstacles: they were open to me. If there were any doors, I found them usually slightly ajar or only shut - and they gave way with just a stronger push. Today was the first time that I came upon a tightly-closed door leading to the aforementioned gallery at the right wing. I pressed down on the handle - the door did not budge. I tried to force it open with my leg, I pushed on it with my whole weight, without success; it was apparently locked by a key.

  Worn out with my efforts, I sat down on a rock opposite and examined the stubborn door. An interesting double-leaf gate! Most probably it is made entirely of bronze, covered from top to bottom with bas reliefs distributed over six areas, each embraced in a square border, as if in a frame. The carvings are splendidly preserved; the pictures are clear and distinct - the patina of age has not marred them.

  What themes, however! In truth I’m beginning to believe the horrors told in the medieval ‘Witches Hammer,’ and I no longer wonder at the fanaticism of the Holy Inquisition.

  So, the first plate from the left on top. Some monk, completely naked, girded only with a rosary, is flogging with a leather strap a half-clothed nun. The face of the tortured woman betrays both pain and endless pleasure.

  On the neighbouring plate, naked women in nun’s veils are dancing in a hellish procession. The third picture - that of the adoration of the phallus, horrible in its cynicism, brutal in its execution, captivating in its savagery. The reliefs at the bottom depict three scenes from the Black Mass, startling with shamelessness - dangerous, wild, insane images.

  I rose from the rock.

  ‘A promising portal! What lies behind it?’

  Once again, I renewed my efforts to separate the door from its hinges. In vain. Suddenly I remembered the key that I had found, which for several days I had been carrying in my pocket, I do not know why.

  ‘Perhaps this key is meant for this gate?’

  I put it inside the lock and turned it. And wonder of wonders! The lock emitted a rough, grating sound, the door opened, and I saw before me the black abyss of a subterranean corridor. A waft of air, stifling and musty, hit me. The interior, apparently closed off for a long time, started to breathe after ages of poisonous exhalations.

  It is dangerous there now. Let it first be aired out. I will come back here in a couple of days. I left the door ajar...

  July 15. The shadow of the profane baptismal font has finally disappeared - I do not see it anymore. Instead, the ‘leitmotif’ that broken grating, is continually there - it even seems to have increased in size and descended from its summit under the ceiling: at the present moment the grating darkens the wall half-way up. ‘Remember me.’

  There is also the start of something new. Some type of transparent scarves, delicate like a spider’s web, are floating along the walls, winding in misty spirals, converging waveringly at their centre. Something is taking place...

  I have no doubt now that a connection exists between that which has been taking place on my walls for some time and what’s within the walls of the monastery. Only I am not able to find the unified aim in all of this, I do not understand the intention.

  Two days ago a mystical treatise written by an unknown monk of the Carthusian order fell into my hands. The opinions within provide many answers and perhaps explain, at least in part, the phenomena I have been witnessing for a couple of months.

  The author of this dissertation talks about projections of thought coalescing into visible shapes and dwells extensively on the subject of the spectral appearance of objects that apparently do not exist on the surface. I would add from my end the problem of subconscious thoughts that exist at the threshold of consciousness, lurking in its lair...

  But who will vouch that other intelligences are not mixed up in this? Are not forces outside of me involved in this strange history, perhaps forces even antagonistically inclined?

  At times I am seized by a terrible fright and I fear looking ahead, so as not to see something that could freeze my blood. Recently, I have been spending my entire evenings in darkness. I don’t have the courage to turn on the light and look at the wall.

  Perhaps I should change my residence or get someone to share this apartment with me?

  July 20. The dream-like swirls, which I re
ferred to the last time, have taken on a more distinct form; an emphatic picture has emerged from these nebulous shapes. It is the beautiful profile of a nun. She has a Roman face, with clear lines, an aquiline nose, and a divinely high forehead under a wide cornet. The head of a classical vestal.

  I cannot tear my eyes off the wall.

  July 25. Yesterday I uncovered another underground offshoot - a lengthy, immeasurably lengthy pathway that stretches in a narrow neck far, far beyond the city. I walked this pathway for an entire long hour. At its outlet I found myself in a stony area overgrown with weeds and grass with the remains of walls and Gothic oriels.

  And here were some kind of ruins, but for certain they are not the continuation of those other ones. They comprise a separate, self-contained architectural unit, also of a monastic character. Besides, it is a bit too far from the monastery of the Trappistine nuns - almost half a mile. It seems I was not mistaken. Today I found out that these were once the mines of a Cistercian abbey.

  So, an underground communication existed between the two...

  July 25. I have moved from my study to the adjacent room, and now I spend all my time in the bedroom. I escaped from the spectre of the beautiful nun.

  July 30. Everything for naught. The shadow of the vestal chases me and has been haunting me for a couple of days: it blossomed right here, above my bed.

  And by this ominous shadow, that miniature grating...

  August 2. A moment ago I returned from the doctor’s and am now sitting in a dark room. I fear turning on the light, so as not to see the movement of her lips or her long, silky eyelashes. Because - I swear to you - they are moving! I noticed this yesterday for the first time. Her wonderfully wide lips parted suddenly and quivered, as if in a silent reproach. She wants to speak! And then that gentle movement of her eyelashes. I saw clearly how the silky fringe of her lashes moved out to withdraw back into the eyelids. A shiver ran through my body - a shiver of both rapture and fear at the same time. A blinking shadow!

  August 4. An hour ago I returned from the monastery and I cannot calm myself down. I’m trembling as if in a fever. I must have a fever, because my pulse is beating like a hammer. Glancing by chance into the mirror, I scared myself. I am as white as a sheet; my hair is standing erect on my head, while my eyes have the look of a madman about them.

  What a horrible outing!... I finally visited the gallery I uncovered over a month ago. In truth, the double-leaf door, which so jealously protected it, contains stylized carvings perfectly concordant with the mysteries inside...

  With a burning oil lamp in my hand, I went down the steep, stone stairs. The stuffiness of the interior was less now; the air had been cleaned up thanks to weeks of ventilation. Despite this, the light flickered with a faint, sickly flame... Thus I went along for quarter of an hour, finally turning into a side corridor. Here the ground became lower still, while the space between the walls narrowed to the width of a human figure. I moved forward with difficulty, from time to time bumping my head against the low ceiling. Suddenly the pathway ended, opening up into a wide, half-spherical vaulted room in the shape of a honeycomb. Placing the oil lamp in a niche, I leaned against the wall, exhausted from my journey, and wiped the sweat from my forehead. The small flame of my lamp licked the damp walls, moving lazily along the mouldy stone, peering into shadowy crannies.

  Finally, its extended tongue slithered into the recess opposite me and lit up a couple of angular objects that seemed to be of rotten wood.

  I approached a few steps in that direction to examine these objects better. They were some type of large crates shod heavily at the comers, but open at the top, without lids. As I was attempting to lean over one,

  I was hit from behind by a soft bluish glow. Turning around, I saw that a blue light was coming from the end of a long, narrow corridor of another underground offshoot. Apparently the room I found myself in did not constitute the final stage of the pathway I had walked, but led to second branch that went into a further network of winding corridors. Yet, perhaps, that very corridor from which the light fell was the last branch of this underground labyrinth and, from there, one exited onto the world and into the sun? In that case, what was the source of that blue light? Could it be a reflection of the sky bouncing off monastery walls or coming from one of the remaining stained glass windows? I did not discern any opening at the far end of this corridor; the light seemed to come beyond a bend in the wall. And from there, from around the corner, that strange glow7 lit up a part of the vault.

  My curiosity aroused by this new detail, I decided that I would venture to the end of this offshoot in the hope that perhaps I would emerge out of the underground. But first, it would do to inspect these crates.

  I thrust my hand into the one closest to me, investigating the darkness with my fingers. Suddenly I came across a smooth, hard object. I grabbed it and removed it from the interior. A shiver of fear slammed me to the core: it was a human bone: a small, narrow tibia. Holding my lamp above, I leaned over the chest and saw piles of children’s skeletons inside. The skeletons were lying in disarray, one on top of the other, among rotten tatters, foetid rags, crusted shrouds...

  I rushed out of the tomb of the innocent. I ran at full speed through the empty galleries and blind pathways, until I reached the steps going up and the outside world.

  And now I am sitting at my desk and I can’t stop shaking. In my mind there is disarray, in my veins a fever burns. I am gazing at the wall in front of me and looking for the profile of the vestal, that devil woman. A strange thing! She is not there anymore! She has disappeared without a trace! And together with her, that ‘leitmotif.’ The wall is clear and white. Tabula rasa.

  Has this history finally come to an end?

  August 5. Upset by what I had seen in that burial chamber, I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time. Finally, before dawn, a heavy dream enveloped me, overflowing with scenes of grim danger.

  I dreamt of the monastery’s underground and its many-branched, endless corridors. In one of them, by the bloody light of torches and oil lamps, a procession of monks and nuns moved along. Their attire was dark, trailing, funereal. Hoods closely hid their faces. They walked in silence in an elongated line. In the spaces between one torch and the next, the nuns, in twos, carried on their shoulders some heavy objects, wrapped in black palls that fell to the ground. Suddenly one of the wraps came loose, and the stiffly extended, corpse-white hands of a child were seen...

  The funeral procession turned into the corridor that was already familiar to me, the one leading to the honeycombed tomb. And there, in that room, the mourning nuns opened up the shrouds and began to tumble the cadavers into the crates. One of the nuns involuntarily rushed to a freely falling body, pressing her lips to it. For a moment, for a brief single moment, something decent had been awakened within her... Someone was sobbing in the darkness...

  Suddenly the leader of the procession, slim and lithe like a Roman cypress, turned and, casting aside her veil, looked in my direction.

  I shuddered. It was the vestal!

  Pointing to the bluish turn in the gallery, she nodded her head to me, saying:

  ‘Come! Follow me!’

  And she began to walk away into that corridor with a majestic, even step.

  ‘No! No, I will not follow you!’ I cried out, fighting against the bewitching order with all of my will.

  With that cry on my lips, I woke up__

  And yet I feel that, despite everything, I will go there, I will follow her, because I have to. Let happen what must! I will go even today, before nightfall...

  Afterword by the publishers of this diary.

  At the beginning of August 1880, the well-respected architect Tadeusz Sniezko disappeared without a trace in the town of W. This came to light by chance when an acquaintance of his, Mr. Z., troubled by his lengthy absence from the club, went to his residence to visit him. There he learned from neighbours and the caretaker that for an extended period of time no one had seen Sniezko. Th
e tightly closed door of his apartment was forced open. The architect was not inside. Mr. Z found on a writing desk a diary written in Sniezko’s hand, with the end date of August 5th. The content of the manuscript furnished several clues as to the direction where a search should be conducted. It appears that T. Sniezko went through a nervous crisis in recent times and, aware of his condition, avoided people. Instead, he made frequent excursions to the ruins of a Trappistine monastery, not that far from where he was staying. It was there that the first investigations took place. But all the efforts of the police came to naught. Sniezko was not found. It was possible that he had disappeared somewhere in the labyrinthine pathways found underground, of which there are many.

  Only a year later did a fortuitous circumstance solve the mystery of his whereabouts. One day, an old peasant woman, gathering herbs among the southerly ruins, spotted the head of a corpse at the grating of the window of a monastery dungeon. News of this horrible discovery spread quickly through town and the authorities were summoned. The investigating commission that arrived ascertained the identity of the corpse as being that of the missing Sniezko. A wide hole was knocked out in the wall, allowing for an opening where one could enter inside.

  After an examination of the area, the police authorities came to the conclusion that Sniezko had been a victim of an unfortunate accident. Most probably, while traversing the under-ground, he had lost his way and made a wrong turn into an unknown corridor. There he fell, tumbling down with force along the slanted ground to the grated window. By a peculiar circumstance the head of the luckless man went through the opening in the window, which had been knocked out in former times by a stray cannon ball. Death seems to have occurred in this manner, that Sniezko, regaining consciousness after his fall, tried to free himself from the bars choking his neck. He therefore yanked and threw himself backward, but this movement was fatal: the spikes of the broken grating, protruding outward, became embedded in his larynx, cutting into his trachea.