Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  Lao custom maintains we return and live many lives, but I assure you there are better ways to come and go than others.

  I hold no illusions about my relationship to the falang. They prize my company for my intelligence, my youthful daring and my utter expendability. I am becoming more cautious with each successive venture. My employers demonstrate well that wealth is of little consequence if you are dead.

  And this is as dangerous a time as we have ever known. Laos has recently fallen under full occupation by France. To the south, they clash with troops from Siam, who employ fighting techniques gleaned from European mercenaries. It was not so long ago the ambitious Black Flag bandits were a menace across the countryside after the Haw Wars. The French spent months hunting the last defiant remnants of their vicious forces. There were few cities that had not been set to torch and plundered for our wealth. Our mountains are filled with many who do not appreciate the order of cities and falang, and there, they practice rites unknown beyond our borders that have not changed since their first fire thousands of years ago.

  In the West, they like to believe things change. They like to talk about monkeys who turn into humans. They laugh when I tell similar stories about strange fish Yunnanese traders say turn into dragons. We all have our myths of reality we treasure.

  I was surprised when Khampha came to me in my home almost a year ago. We had gone to great lengths to avoid each other in Luang Prabang. Khampha was hasty and it seemed as if he had forgotten all the animosity between us of recent months.

  He presented his purpose brusquely: He wanted my aid acquiring a rare palm-leaf manuscript we had seen together as children, a copy of the epic Thao Cheuang. I reminded him that the copy he was referring to had been seized and taken to Siam almost a decade before, when the French began consolidating their power. It was beyond our reach.

  Khampha corrected me that our revered Ajan Somnung at Wat Wisunalat had made several copies and that these included unique additions to the original. Alas, Ajan Somnung was beheaded by Black Flag bandits when they razed Wat Wisunalat. The library was lost in the flames. Khampha could not accept that and insisted with a snort that a copy of the manuscript must be somewhere.

  He paced the room, agitated. He insisted it was utterly important. The book contained clues to a temple of great holy power from well before the recorded ages of Lane Xang, the whispered Wat Bhunboutdham no living human had ever seen. I had to stifle an incredulous laugh at the absurdity of his inquiries.

  I reminded him that no one really understood the texts. Even Ajan Somnung confessed that his commentaries were humble efforts to add some clarity to the rambling ancient verse. Khampha interrupted me testily.

  “Your mistake is you always think I’m some ban nok bumpkin who knows nothing. You forget I was there with you in our classes. I was paying attention, too. It’s not respectful of you to dismiss me so poorly.”

  I was embarrassed by his accusation and, to regain my composure, I changed the subject to the practical.

  “So, who is this for? Father Boreau? Monsieur Dupin, perhaps? I’m excited for you, cousin. I hope this will lead to many more opportunities for you.”

  Khampha smiled smugly as he pried nosily among my curios in my home. “It’s none of the usual people I work for. This man knows our culture, even more than Dupin. And he is not afraid to spend money to acquire what he wants.”

  I thought of all of the new people who had come to Luang Prabang in recent months. It was very difficult not to become known if you were a wealthy falang. Besides Lao, my cousin only spoke rudimentary French. I knew he and his friends preferred to carouse drunkenly near Wat Xieng Thong. That it should be one who knew Lao culture allowed me to deduce at least seven possible candidates.

  “Oh!” I blurted. “Is it Monsieur Guillaume of Maison Ducornet? He seems generous if you have his favour.”

  Khampha scowled. I smiled at my cousin.

  “Don’t abuse your intelligence. Guillaume has many wealthy clients in Paris of indescribable hunger. I don’t think he likes much of our country. He seeks something more unusual and ancient.”

  “If he comes with a closed mind, he will find many closed doors, cousin,” I remarked. “But why go to so much trouble for him? Many falang pay well for far less risk.”

  “It’s not just for him.”

  “How did he even hear of Wat Bhunboutdham? Few in our own country know about it,” I asked.

  “You remember my parents’ talk of the falang who died here, Henri Mouhot? He was buried nearby, but his belongings were sent to Europe. Guillaume found a journal of Mouhot’s years ago that spoke of Wat Bhunboutdham.”

  Everyone knew the story of how the famed explorer died screaming-mad in malarial fever in the jungle nearby.

  “To discover examples of ancient Lao the world has never seen before? Falang should learn to live in the present moment and appreciate what is here, already.”

  “They pay well for a stranger’s pasts,” Khampha laughed with a sly smile.

  “I suppose it is the civilized thing to do.”

  “He is very particular about who participates, but if you want, I’ll mention you,” Khampha offered. “I’ll ensure your fair share.”

  I promised to look for what Khampha wanted and would ask friends all over to find a surviving copy of Ajan Somnung’s manuscript. I warned him it might take some time and he would need to be patient.

  Satisfied, Khampha took his leave, muttering vaguely that Ajan Somnung knew and could have proven the truth of the old legends any time he wanted.

  I shook my head at his parting. Lao tradition believes that unhealthy desire leads to suffering. You might spend your afterlife as some pitiable wandering minor spirit with a mouth smaller than a grain of rice but a belly the size of a rotting cask, insatiably hungry. Or worse.

  Khampha’s visit troubled me, but I had made a sincere promise to him in good faith. I was also intrigued, ultimately rewarded for my diligence within a few months, thanks to a good friend in Savannakhet. Their father had helped Ajan Somnung make copies of the Thao Cheuang. With the fighting down in the south, it was not easy to arrange for its safe arrival in Luang Prabang, but I found myself overjoyed to see the familiar text once more.

  Ajan Somnung had sternly encouraged us not to look too closely for some secrets, but to turn our eyes to the lessons of the Buddha. The search for Nirvana should supersede any attachments to this illusory world and all its perilous entanglements. He had taught us that death was impermanent, a great dreaming slumber, and one day, we could break free of our eternal returns because, after a time, even death would die.

  I had to take care unfurling the aged palm leaves. Many were in terrible condition, crumbling at my gentlest touch, and I could see already many sections were missing or beyond legibility. Ajan Somnung’s version still seemed indecipherable, but I tried to take some notes of my own in the chance it would prove useful for another occasion.

  I soon notified Khampha of the manuscript’s arrival and he came immediately, eyes burning with singular intensity, as I’d never seen before in my cousin. As a good host, I offered him some food, but he did not take any. He did not waste time poring over the manuscript, except the section outlining the capture of Muang Pakan and the division of their territories. His fingers quivered like a shrew when he turned to me and exclaimed: “Listen!” And he proceeded to read to me a passage that spoke of an old, old temple where a strange god was worshiped by a race of giant creatures before humans came to be. Preposterous, but Ajang Somnung wrote the note with deep conviction.

  “Tomorrow I talk to Guillaume. Lend me the manuscript; I need it. We’ll go and find whatever secrets are there. It must be an amazing treasure of jewels and gold.” His delight was irrepressible.

  So saying, Khampha scurried out into the evening. I reviewed the notes I’d copied from Ajan Somnung, and realized they were far stranger and provocative than I would have believed our gentle teacher capable of. What I now knew of Wat Bhunboutdham
disturbed me and troubled my dreams that night. As much as my cousin and I might disagree, I felt compelled to speak with him before he left. But in the morning, it was already too late.

  I learned from a friend serving the Guillaumes that they had all left with great excitement – my cousin Khampha ecstatic, while the hardy Monsieur Guillaume gave strict instruction to the others not to disclose the location, lest rivals beat them to their glittering prize. There were 13 in all.

  By karma, that week, I met Madame Guillaume and easily earned her confidence. It helped that Khampha was my cousin. We shared a deep mutual concern for everyone who had departed by his lead.

  In our first moments, she looked about constantly, as if some foreign thing were coming from beyond to break into her world. Some world where she made everything seem petty and trivial against a vast, galactic backdrop only she could perceive.

  The Guillaumes lived in a two-story villa that exuded an alien-but-refined intellect in its arrangement. The broad windows had mahogany shutters that they rarely opened, to keep out the day’s heat. As she showed me around their home, my curiosity was piqued by Monsieur Guillaume’s study and the great lengths he had undertaken to bring his library to Laos. The design was elegant, yet its geometry puzzled me, the harmonies decidedly distinct from other homes I had visited. Their villa was densely furnished with designs almost out of a different time, a different aesthetic, both commanding and esoteric.

  Madame Guillaume was a dark-eyed woman, her heavy jet tresses coiled atop her head. Her face was sharp and angular, but the rest of her reminded me of the lush, flowing Khmer sandstone statuary of antiquity that the falang ardently admired. She was a sufficiently pious woman, who did not dress lavishly but within the prim basics of the Parisian style. She wore a curious, antique copper brooch composed of geometric tendrils wriggling and intertwining around a most fearsome eye – a bauble from another life, she claimed. She offered me tea. I did not refuse.

  She was evasive about how she had first met her husband, but she readily discussed her other journeys with him.

  I learned that, in her travels, she had conversed with the communal cenobites in India, who followed the model of Mar Awgin, and she had also consulted the aging mystic Helena Blavatsky on theosophy. She’d had meetings with many remarkable men and women abroad, emerging with a sense of the cosmos not so far removed from the rigid, austere faith she’d grown up with. She admired the discipline of our ascetic hermits, but I confessed I found them repellent in their relentless mortification of the body, their denial of their humanity to transcend our petty failings.

  Some would say it was an inappropriate gathering, but if you learn from it, how can it be wrong? Our worlds are not some fragile bits of glass that shatter at the encounter with the Other. Our ability to inquire surely defines our humanity; it sets us above hounds and mere rutting beasts of the field, all jaw and genital.

  To my delight, she found my curiosity charming and invited me to come back if I had occasion.

  One morning, I brought her a selection of fresh fruit from my family’s farm and some uncommon examples from the deeper jungle that I had retrieved with no small effort. Their succulence is an indescribable temptation. I am sure falang have never seen such delicacies in their own homelands. It would have been unfitting and inhospitable for me not to introduce her to them during her time among us.

  She received them graciously and, as we sat at the table, we conversed of many things, the merits of good and evil, the need for order to triumph over chaos, the journeys of empire and the wisdom of civilization.

  “Centuries ago, Ashoka the Great conquered the realm of Kalinga, but he was overcome with sorrow at the lives he destroyed and the karmic weight he had taken upon himself,” I told her, to explain the beliefs of our homeland. “He sought to atone by dispatching holy wise men around the world to teach the dharma and the truths of the Buddha.”

  As I reflected on the carnage of the falang of the last decade, I wondered whom they will send someday. She seemed lost in thought, distracted by something as if I were an insignificant fly. She poured a cup of tea. I could hear clocks ticking around the room. Occasionally, they would chime.

  She inquired about my cousin Khampha. “Is he steadfast?”

  I smiled. “As long as I have known him, he knows whom to protect and he will do so unfailingly. He has great strength and instincts.”

  She seemed pleased to learn she was a perceptive judge of character.

  Idly, she revealed her belief in a lost continent of Lemuria, drunk by a pitiless ocean eons ago. They were peopled by mindless-yet-spiritual giants, prone to degeneracy and horrid acts. Madame Guillaume suggested that not all of the Lemurians sank with their homeland in the cataclysm.

  In turn, I shared the story of the loathsome Old Ones of Laos, ancient elder things who once terrorized humanity, such as treacherous Raphanasuan, a nefarious giant fiend who devoured mortals, affronting the heavens with his lust and malice. It was clear she found my account as quaint as children’s tales.

  There was a commotion one day near Wat Xieng Thong, with many men rushing back and forth, gathering supplies and making frantic preparations, seeking blessings from the monks for their task.

  “What is it?” Madame Guillaume inquired. “What has them so excited?” She watched their efforts with intense curiosity. I asked the men and returned to her.

  “They are getting ready to hunt a tiger,” I told her. “It has been seen running wild for many months now and it is clear nothing can appease it. It has killed many in the hills and deep forest.”

  “A tiger has them so distressed?” she asked, with clear disbelief on her face.

  “They do not believe it is an ordinary tiger, but one of the spirits who take the shape of tigers. Sometimes, they appear as a beautiful, bathing woman with long, dark hair, sometimes as a meditating monk by a tree,” I told her. “But they are all dangerous.”

  I knew of a time when such a spirit appeared as a baby. They then tore you to pieces when your guard was down. “They use the souls of their victims to give them power. It is dangerous for men to hunt them, because they will eventually be killed and turned into tigers, themselves, by vengeful spirits.”

  She laughed dismissively at my account. A falang will only believe so much in our nation. They forget their own words about ‘when in Rome’. Perhaps it is better that way.

  “How dangerous is it, truly?” she asked. “In the wilderness of your people?”

  I knew she wanted a ‘rational’ answer. I did not wish to worry her and, instead, regaled her with tales of gentle creatures and inspired sights that rewarded the patient traveler. “But haste in Laos can be lethal and you cannot take what is on the surface for granted. What is tranquil to the eye can have a storm in the heart,” I conceded. “The most dangerous of all are other humans. A human is hardest of all to be certain of. If Khampha has any weakness, it is that he does not know the ways of others as well as I,” I explained. “Even when he can speak to the villagers in the mountains, he does not understand their beliefs, their customs. He thinks they should just do things as the Lao do and make it easier for themselves.”

  “He seems very good with the French,” Madame Guillaume reminded me. “He is very obedient and quick to please us.”

  “I suppose that is enough,” I replied.

  On another morning, we strolled leisurely through the streets of the city in the early hours, while it was still cool. I deigned to show her the gilded spires and temples we’d erected over the centuries. She thought the elaborate giant serpents on the balustrades of our temples horrific and heathen, but I explained their comforting significance as our guardians in such a world as ours. But to her, the serpent was forever some symbol of paradise lost, a fallen humanity estranged from the divine truth and good words.

  The falang are curious creatures to me, insistent on the written, as if one’s spoken word is insufficient. They found a thousand ways to complicate time, enchanting our neighbou
rs with trinkets and clockworks in exchange for poppies and silk, a bit of spice and teas. A strange bargain.

  What a bleak world they come from.

  One afternoon, in the villa, she presented me with a book of poetry by Lautreamont, Chansons de Maldoror. I cannot claim to fully appreciate its cryptic fantasies and the misanthropic verse she read to me. But she was enamoured with his language and the florid poems of Baudelaire. I gave her an antique Buddha I had kept from one of my many travels. She told me it would fetch an excellent price in Paris.

  It has not always been easy for me to make my way among people. When I was young, and so quickly apprehended the words of strangers, some soon accused me of dark magic and I dared not stay long among the highlanders, whose elders were a grim, suspicious and superstitious lot. When the falang arrived and I began to practice their language with ease, many dismissed me as some mere parrot, a mimic incapable of original thought or a sense of history. But I was useful and amusing as a guide. Word spread, little by little.

  Madame Guillaume entertained me with the theories of Pasteur and his vaccines, but many who arrived from foreign shores were still unprepared for the pitiless crucible of our tropics. They fell to malaria, dengue fever and other horrific diseases that left them dying, miserable and delirious in our sun.

  I came to appreciate Madame Guillaume’s extensive knowledge of les petites morts, the little deaths of the world. I shudder to recall them and the way a human screams in their throes. Humanity is filled with many forbidden moments, memories they lock away, lest they be undone by truths, or the writhing chaos that may destroy them and bring total oblivion.

  “Your jungles remind us of lost worlds, their raw beauty a reminder of a pure humanity before we tamed nature, shackling her intensity to our mortal, time-bound whims,” she said wistfully, as we stood atop holy Mount Phu Si, watching for some sign of Monsieur Guillaume’s return. For nearly a month, we returned there each sunset. I began to think of the Annamite legend of Nui Vong Phu, a tragic beauty who turned to stone, awaiting her husband’s return from the sea near Lang Son.