on my death bed that I saw it. I saw Luella Miller and
Erastus Miller, and Lily, and Aunt Abby, and Maria, and
the Doctor, and Sarah, all goin’ out of her door, and all
but Luella shone white in the moonlight, and they were
Luella M iller
287
all helpin’ her along till she seemed to fairly fly in the
midst of them. Then it all disappeared. I stood a minute
with my heart poundin’, then I went over there. I thought
of goin’ for Mrs. Babbit, but I thought she’d be afraid. So
I went alone, though I knew what had happened. Luella
was layin’ real peaceful, dead on her bed.”
This was the story that the old woman, Lydia Anderson, told, but the sequel was told by the people who survived her, and this is the tale which has become
folklore in the village.
Lydia Anderson died when she was eighty-seven. She
had continued wonderfully hale and hearty for one of
her years until about two weeks before her death.
One bright moonlight evening she was sitting beside a
window in her parlour when she made a sudden exclamation, and was out of the house and across the street before the neighbour who was taking care of her could
stop her. She followed as fast as possible and found
Lydia Anderson stretched on the ground before the door
of Luella Miller’s deserted house, and she was quite
dead.
The next night there was a red gleam of fire athwart
the moonlight and the old house of Luella Miller was
burned to the ground. Nothing is now left of it except a
few old cellar stones and a lilac bush, and in summer a
helpless trail of morning glories among the weeds, which
might be considered emblematic of Luella herself.
Gerald Durrell (b. 1925)
The Entrance
Gerald Durrell is the brother o f Lawrence Durrell, who
exceeded his sibling's literary success and reputation in the
1950s with The Alexandria Quartet. Yet Gerald, the world-
famous naturalist, always made more money, principally on
nonfiction. Gerald's short fiction is not well known and
“The Entrance” seems to spring from nowhere in the body
of his work. It was a serious project for him, and he was
reportedly pleased that Lawrence praised the piece that
moved in a new direction, over which he had taken some
time. O ne suspects that, like Fuentes’ "A ura,” the story
was generated not by genre reading but by rich reading
experiences and, perhaps, images of mirrors. The device of
a tale told by a manuscript is common in horror, from Le
Fanu and M .R . Jam es through, for instance, Jean Ray’s
"The Shadowy S treet" (which makes an interesting comparison). Another literary antecedent might well be Oscar W ilde’s classic novella. "The Portrait of Dorian G ray.”
Another, Through The Looking Glass. In any case, “The
Entrance" is a polished and effective tale of horror that
deserves wide recognition and repays careful reading. It is
a monster story about the nature of identity.
My friends Paul and Marjorie Glenham are both
failed artists or, perhaps, to put it more charitably,
288
The Entrance
289
they are both unsuccessful. But they enjoy their failure
more than most successful artists enjoy their success,
and this is what makes them such good company and is
one of the reasons why I always go and stay with them
when I am in France. Their rambling farmhouse in
Provence was always in a state of chaos, with sacks of
potatoes, piles of dried herbs, plates of garlic and forests
of dried maize jostling with piles of half-finished water-
colors and oil paintings of the most hideous sort, perpetrated by Marjorie, and strange Neanderthal sculpture, which was Paul’s handiwork. Throughout this marketlike mess prowled cats of every shade and marking and a river of dogs, from an Irish wolfhound the size of a pony
to an old English bulldog that made noises like Stevenson’s Rocket. Around the walls in ornate cages were housed Marjorie’s collection of roller canaries, who sang
with undiminished vigor regardless of the hour, thus
making speech difficult. It was a warm, friendly cacophonous atmosphere and I loved it.
When I arrived in the early evening I had had a long
drive and was tired, a condition that Paul set about
remedying with a hot brandy and lemon of Herculean
proportions. I was glad to have got there, for during the
last half hour a summer storm had moved ponderously
over the landscape like a great black cloak, and thunder
reverberated among the crags like a million rocks cascading down a wooden staircase. I had only just reached the safety of the warm, noisy kitchen, redolent with the
mouth-watering smells of Marjorie’s cooking, when the
rain started in torrents. The noise of it on the tile roof,
combined with the massive thunder claps that made
even the solid stone farmhouse shudder, aroused the
competitive spirit in the canaries and they all burst into
song simultaneously. It was the noisiest storm I had ever
encountered.
“Another noggin, dear boy?” enquired Paul hopefully.
“No, no!” shouted Marjorie above the bubbling songs
of the birds and the roar of the rain. “The food’s ready
290
Gerald Durrell
and it will spoil if you keep it waiting. Have some wine.
Come and sit down, Gerry dear.”
“Wine, wine, that’s the thing. I’ve got something
special for you, dear boy,” said Paul, and he went off into
the cellar to reappear a moment later with his arms full
of bottles, which he placed reverently on the table near
me. “A special Gigondas I have discovered,” he said.
“Brontosaurus blood, I do assure you my dear fellow,
pure prehistoric monster juice. It will go well with the
truffles and the guinea fowl Maijorie’s run up.”
He uncorked a bottle and splashed the deep red wine
into a generously large goblet. He was right. The wine
slid into your mouth like red velvet and then, when it
reached the back of your tongue, it exploded like a
fireworks display into your brain cells.
“Good, eh?” said Paul, watching my expression. “I
found it in a small cave near Avignon. It was a blistering
hot day and the cave was so nice and cool that I sat and
drank two bottles of it before I realized what I was doing.
It’s a seducing wine, alright. Of course, when I got out in
the sun again the damn stuff hit me like a sledgehammer.
Maijorie had to drive.”
“I was so ashamed,” said Marjorie, placing in front of
me a black truffle the size of a peach, encased in a fragile,
feather-light overcoat of crisp brown pastry. “He paid
for the wine and then bowed to the Patron and fell flat on
his face. The Patron and his sons had to lift him into the
car. It was disgusting.”
“Nonsense,” said Paul. “The Patron was enchanted. It
gave his wine the accolade it needed.”
“That’s what you think,” said Maijorie. “Now start,
Gerry, before it gets cold.”
released the scent of the truffle, like the delicious aroma
of a damp autumn wood, a million leafy, earthy smells
rolled up into one. With the Gigondas as an accompaniment, this promised to be a meal for the Gods. We fell silent as we attacked our truffles and listened to the rain
The Entrance
291
on the roof, the roar of thunder and the almost apoplectic singing of the canaries. The bulldog, who had for no apparent reason fallen suddenly and deeply in love with
me, sat by my chair watching me fixedly with his
protuberant brown eyes, panting gently and wheezing.
“Magnificent, Marjorie,” I said as the last fragment of
pastry dissolved like a snowflake on my tongue. “I don’t
know why you and Paul don’t set up a restaurant: with
your cooking and Paul’s choice of wines you’d be one of
the three-star Michelin jobs in next to no time.”
“Thank you, dear,” said Marjorie, sipping her wine,
“but I prefer to cook for a small audience of gourmets
rather than a large audience of gourmands.”
“ She’s right; there’s no gainsaying it,” agreed Paul,
splashing wine into our glasses with gay abandon.
A sudden prolonged roar of thunder directly overhead
precluded speech for a long minute and was so fierce and
sustained that even the canaries fell silent, intimidated
by the sound. When it had finished, Marjorie waved her
fork at her spouse.
“You mustn’t forget to give Gerry your thingummy,”
she said.
“Thingummy?” asked Paul blankly. “What thingummy?”
“You know,” said Marjorie impatiently, “your thingummy . . . your m anuscript. . . It’s just the right sort of night for him to read it.”
“Oh, the m anuscript. . . yes,” said Paul enthusiastically. “The very night for him to read it.”
“I refuse,” I protested. “Your paintings and sculptures
are bad enough. I’m damned if I’ll read your literary
efforts as well.”
“Heathen,” said Marjorie good-naturedly. “Anyway,
it’s not Paul’s, it’s someone else’s.”
“I don’t think he deserves to read it after those
disparaging remarks about my art,” said Paul. “It’s too
good for him.”
“What is it?” I asked.
292
Gerald Durrell
“It’s a very curious manuscript I picked up,” Paul
began when Marjorie interrupted.
“Don’t tell him about it; let him read it,” she said. “I
might say it gave me nightmares.”
While Maijorie was serving helpings of guinea fowl
wrapped in an almost tangible aroma of herbs and garlic,
Paul went over to the comer of the kitchen, where a
tottering mound of books, like some ruined castle, lay
between two sacks of potatoes and a large barrel of wine.
He rummaged around for a bit and then emerged
triumphantly with a fat red notebook, very much the
worse for wear, and came and put it on the table.
“There!” he said with satisfaction. “The moment I’d
read it I thought of you. I got it among a load of books I
bought from the library of old Doctor Lepitre, who used
to be prison doctor down in Marseilles. I don’t know
whether it’s a hoax or what.”
I opened the book, and on the inside of the cover I
found a bookplate in black, three Cyprus trees and a
sundial under which was written, in Gothic script, E x
Libras Lepitre. I flipped over the pages and saw that the
manuscript was in longhand, some of the most beautiful
and elegant copperplate handwriting I had seen, the ink
now faded to a rusty brown.
“I wish I had waited until daylight to read it,” said
Maijorie with a shudder.
“What is it? A ghost story?” I asked curiously.
“No,” said Paul uncertainly, “at least, not exactly. Old
Lepitre is dead, unfortunately, so I couldn’t find out
about it. It’s a very curious story. But the moment I read
it I thought of you, knowing your interest in the occult
and things that go bump in the night. Read it and tell me
what you think. You can have the manuscript if you want
it. It might amuse you, anyway.”
“I would hardly call it amusing,” said Marjorie,
“anything but amusing. I think it’s horrid.”
Some hours later, full of good food and wine, I took
the giant golden oil lamp, carefully trimmed, and in its
The Entrance
293
gentle daffodil-yellow light I made my way upstairs to the
guest room and a feather bed the size of a barn door. The
bulldog had followed me upstairs and had sat wheezing,
watching me undress and climb into bed. He sat by the
bed looking at me soulfully. The storm continued unabated, and the rumble of thunder was almost continuous while the dazzling flashes of lightning lit up the whole room at intervals. I adjusted the wick of the lamp,
moved it closer to me, picked up the red notebook and
settled myself back against the pillows to read. The
manuscript began without preamble:
March 16th, 1901, Marseilles.
I have all night lying ahead of me, and as I know I
cannot sleep— in spite of my resolve— I thought I would
try and write down in detail the thing that has just
happened to me. I am afraid that even setting it down
like this will not make it any the more believable, but it
will pass the time until dawn comes and with it my
release.
Firstly, I must explain a little about myself and my
relationship with Gideon de Teildras Villeray so that the
reader (if there ever is one) will understand how I came
to be in the depths of France in midwinter. I am an
antiquarian bookseller and I can say, in all modesty, I
am at the top of my profession. Or perhaps it would be
more accurate to say that I was at the top of my
profession. I was even once described by one of my
fellow booksellers— I hope more in a spirit of levity than
one of jealousy— as a “literary truffle hound,” a description that I suppose, in its amusing way, does describe me.
A hundred or more libraries have passed through my
hands, and I have been responsible for a number of
important finds, the original Gottenstein manuscript,
for example, the rare “Conrad” illustrated Bible, said by
some to be as beautiful as the Book o f Kells, the five new
poems by Blake that I unearthed at an unpromising
country house sale in the Midlands, and many lesser but
294
Gerald Durrell
nonetheless satisfying discoveries, such as the signed first
edition of Alice in Wonderland that I found in a trunk full
of rag books and toys in the nursery of a vicarage in
Shropshire and a presentation copy of Sonnets from the
Portuguese, signed and with a six-line verse written on
the flyleaf by both Robert and Elizabeth Browning. I
think to be able to unearth such things in unlikely places
is a gift that you are bom with. It is really rather like
water di
vining; either you are bom with the gift or not,
but it is not a gift you can acquire, though most certainly,
with practice, you are able to sharpen your perceptions
and make your eye keener. In my spare time I also
catalogue some of the smaller and more important
libraries, as I get enormous pleasure out of simply being
with books. To me the quietness of a library, the smell
and the feel of the books is like the smell and texture of
food to a gourmet. It may sound fanciful, but I can stand
in the middle of a library and hear the myriad voices
around me as though I were standing in the middle of a
vast choir, a choir of knowledge and beauty.
Naturally, because of my work, it was at Sotheby’s that
I first met Gideon. I had unearthed in a house in Sussex a
small but quite interesting collection of first editions,
and being interested to see what they would fetch, I had
attended the sale myself. As the bidding was in progress I
got the rather uncomfortable feeling that I was being
watched. I glanced around but could see no one whose
attention was not upon the auctioneer. Yet, as the sale
proceeded I got more and more uncomfortable. Perhaps
this is too strong a word, but I became convinced that I
was the object of an intense scrutiny. At last the crowd in
the salesroom moved slightly and I saw who it was. He
was a man of medium height with a handsome but
somewhat plump face, piercing and very large dark eyes
and smoky black curly hair, worn rather long. He was
dressed in a very well cut dark overcoat with an astrakhan collar, and in his elegantly gloved hands he carried the sales catalogue and a wide-brimmed dark velour hat.
The Entrance
295
His glittering, gypsylike eyes were fixed on me intently
but then, when he saw me looking at him, the fierceness
of his gaze faded, and he gave me a faint smile and a tiny
nod of his head, as if to acknowledge that he had been
caught out in staring at me in such a vulgar fashion. He
turned then and shouldered his way through the people
who surrounded him and was soon lost to my sight. I
don’t know why but the intense scrutiny of this stranger
somewhat disconcerted me, to such an extent that I did
not follow the rest of the sale with any degree of
Visions of Fear - Foundations of Fear III (1992) Page 36