by Sam Gafford
‘Venture not upon your life,
This is mine own wedded wife.’
“The rich man’s son collapsed in a fit while the dark man went inside the room. Suddenly there was such shrieking and laughing and screaming and crying that the entire house was alerted, but they could not open the door and instead fled in terror. The next morning, the door was open but the girl was gone. Upon the bed lay two knots of faded green grass, dull red stones, and white stones, and faded yellow flowers. She was never seen again.”
“That’s—that’s the story you wrote in your book. Your mother told you that tale?”
Arthur nodded. “Please, Albert, no interruptions.
“As you can imagine, this story made a strong impression on me. I begged my mother for more information, but she would never say anything further. More than once I wondered if she might have been the girl in the story.
“Fear and wonder grew in me, hand in hand. I craved to know more about this ‘shadow-world’ while also terrified that my life would be taken at any time. In my mind, those four colours from the story grew to have a special, terrible significance. And so I began to develop the Ceremonies.
“You recall what I wrote? ‘Then there are the Ceremonies, which are all of them important, but some are more delightful than others—there are the White Ceremonies, and the Green Ceremonies, and the Scarlet Ceremonies.’ There is a precedence, you see, a progression: green, then white, then yellow, and then red. Each builds upon the other. The Green Ceremony can be performed anywhere there is a verdant field or trees or other elements of nature. The White Ceremony is best performed in or around water. The Yellow Ceremony needs to be done during the daytime. But the Scarlet Ceremonies can only be performed in particular places and during specific times.
“You asked once about the purpose of the ceremonies. When I ‘created’ them, they had no specific purpose other than what I ascribed to them at the time. But eventually I learned that each had its own particular nature and could produce its own results. Now this is the part that is difficult to explain. I say that I ‘created’ them, but I really didn’t. These were things that simply appeared in my mind, often when I was doing them, as if I were receiving a silent form of instruction that no one could hear but myself. They involved dances, rhythmic movements of the body, specifically the hands and feet, and the making of particular noises and faces at precisely the right time. It took some practice, but eventually I found that they all had their own designs.
“Everything to its own purpose.
“The Green Ceremony was one of creation. The White Ceremony was one of cleansing. The Yellow Ceremony was one of growth. The Scarlet Ceremony, when performed correctly with all the other Ceremonies preceding it, was one of sacrifice and illumination.
“With each step, I learned more about the realities around us and how to break down the barriers that separated them from this world. The final Ceremony, which I never perfected or performed, would have shattered those barriers irreversibly. It would have opened this universe to unfathomable horrors and destroyed this world utterly.”
“But you never performed the Scarlet Ceremony?”
Arthur shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“No, I never did . . .
“But that doesn’t mean I didn’t try.”
Chapter 76
Gentility of speech is at an end—[London] stinks; and whoso once inhales the stink can never forget it and can count himself lucky if he lives to remember it.
—Anon., The City Press, 1858
“That was what Mary was for.”
Arthur waved his hands anxiously.
“But I’m getting ahead of myself. Mary came later.
“I had become obsessed with the knowing. You recall our earlier conversations about the nature of ‘sin’?”
I nodded.
“That was when I developed my definitions of the concept. I learned early that what most people consider to be a sin is simply an act that is contrary to their beliefs. It has very little to do with the truth of sin and everything to do with limited intelligence and conditioned thinking. Train a person from birth to believe that, say, adultery is a sin, and that is how he will regard it.
“But sin, true sin, is vastly different. It is a perversion of the natural order at its most fundamental level. Remember what I asked you once? ‘What would your feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you, and to dispute with you in human accents? And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you noticed at night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning?’
“So it seemed to me that the true nature of sin was in the taking of heaven by storm. It is simply an attempt to penetrate into another and higher sphere in a forbidden manner. You can understand why it is so rare. There are few, indeed, who wish to penetrate into other spheres, higher or lower, in ways allowed or forbidden. Men, in the mass, are amply content with life as they find it. Therefore there are few saints, and sinners (in the proper sense) are fewer still; and men of genius, who partake sometimes of each character, are rare also. Yes, on the whole it is, perhaps, harder to be a great sinner than a great saint.
“I had then, at a still young age, resolved to become the greatest sinner of all.”
Arthur refilled his drink again and motioned to me, but I declined. I was spellbound. Here, at last, I was getting to the truth of the matter.
The sun had set outside. Dinner hour had come and gone and still he talked on with no interruption. It was as if he were finally feeling relief from a lifetime of restraining himself.
In that small study, under the gaze of a few lamps, Arthur Machen laid himself bare to me as few people have ever done in the world before or since.
“But how to accomplish the deed? That was the problem.
“Around this time, I had another experience which I wrote about in that diary. Alone, wandering the hills as was my custom, I came across a small pond that I had not seen before. I lay down to rest against the tree, and presently from out of the water and out of the wood came two wonderful white people, and they began to play and dance and sing. They were a kind of creamy white like the old ivory figure Mother had in the drawing-room; one was a beautiful lady with kind dark eyes, a grave face, and long black hair, and she smiled such a strange sad smile at the other, who laughed and came to her. They played together, and danced round and round the pool, and they sang a song with words from a strange language which I did not know but which sounded familiar to me as if I had heard it many years ago in a different lifetime and in a different place. They were both completely naked but exhibited no hint of shame in their movements or embraces. I fell asleep, and when I awoke they were gone. But I never forgot about them, because when I shut my eyes and it was quite quiet, and I was all alone, I could see them again, very faint and far away, but very splendid; and little bits of the song they sang came into my head, but I couldn’t sing it.
“I thought about these white people often.
“In my mind they had become symbols of the other side, and I felt that they would help me understand the Ceremonies and complete them. Not through direct communication, but I could add parts of their dance and song to what I already had designed. They would be the example that would provide the final piece I needed for the completion of the Ceremonies. But there was a problem.
“They danced as a team.”
I felt the implications of Arthur’s words press down on me.
“That is where Mary came in.”
There was a darkness outside the windows that seemed to enter into the room. The cold of October seeped inside and I found myself shivering—but not, I had to admit, only because of the chill wind. Arthur continued to speak, but his eye contact with me was limited and brief. I knew then that we were approaching the heart of the matter and the truth about what had happened on that hill in Wales so many years ago.
“By the time we met, I’d already had much of my plan in mind. I just needed an accomplice; but I had to be careful. My mother had drilled it into my head that I must never speak to anyone about what I saw or heard at night or in the woods. So I could not choose just anyone. It would have to be someone I could trust with my secrets; and, until Mary, there was no one.
“In many ways, I thought that she had been sent solely to fulfil my purpose.
“She was the same age as I, younger in mind but sweet and quite innocent. I began slowly, telling her some of my stories about the things I had heard or seen. At first, I expected her to recoil in fear and anxiously watched her for such a reaction; but instead, she was eager and intensely curious. It made me very happy to have a willing partner. In time I showed her many things, such as how to make the Aklo letters and the great Circles along with the Mao Games and all the chief songs. I showed her everything I knew up to that point. I taught her how to create the Dôls and explained to her the differences between the Jeelo and the voolas and why you must never confuse or mistake one for the other. There were darker secrets, however, that I was hesitant to reveal. Eventually, her curiousity so inflamed me that I even told her the deepest, most dangerous secret of all: the Alala.
“You could only invoke Alala in certain places at certain times. Occasionally, it would work if I closed my eyes very tightly as I lay in bed and said the right phrase in the language of the Tcho-Tcho people. It’s like a . . . scratching around the fringes of your mind. Sometimes, Alala would tell you things like old stories about people in the village or town and the things they had done. Other times, she would tell you secrets about the people around you and all the hidden desires and dark deeds that had gone on behind closed doors and windows. Alala could see through time. A hundred years ago existed alongside today, tomorrow, and a hundred years hence. When I would become stuck on interpreting the dance or song of a Ceremony, Alala would correct me. But in many ways Alala terrified me.
“That was why, I suppose, she latched onto Mary.
“I said before that Mary was curious; but she was more, much more than that. It was as if she were dying of thirst for this knowledge and she sucked it up as quickly as she could learn it. Our positions quickly changed. I had shown Mary all that I’d known, but it was not enough. She wanted to push further, and so she took the lead. And she began to listen to Alala.
“I guess there was something about me that was not suitable. Perhaps it was because there was still a part of me that questioned what we were doing; perhaps it was the fear that was growing inside me, or perhaps it was because I was male.
“I had cultivated Mary because it was my desire to have her join me in performing all the Ceremonies, culminating in the forbidden Scarlet Ceremony. My intention was for her to follow my lead and we would mimic the sounds and motions of the White People. But I hesitated.
“What the Scarlet Ceremony would do, I could not be sure. My belief was that it would allow me to glimpse through time and space and see all the other realities that exist beside our own. Then, if things became too dangerous, I would end the ritual and break the link. Mary had also agreed and promised to sever the connexion if anything went wrong, but she lied.
“With the corrections and changes she had brought to the Ceremonies, I could feel that not only were they correct, but they were serving to unlock portions of my brain and mind. Each time we practised, I felt that I could see more and further than I ever had before. There were times when I experienced . . . lapses from this reality and was actually existing somewhere else. This just made me more eager to increase our efforts and complete the Scarlet Ceremony.
“As Mary, and Alala, knew that it would.
“After months of practice, Mary announced that we were ready. We walked to Isca Silurum, removed our clothing, and did our dance. The sky grew dark as grey clouds covered the sun. You remember I told you before about this event? How Mary had tricked me into performing the Ceremony to bring life to the dhole?”
I nodded.
“That was a lie. Well, not all of it, but enough of it. I’m sorry I never told you the truth from the beginning, Albert. Perhaps we could have prevented all this, or perhaps we should have just tracked Mary down and shot her in the head.
“Before we could finish, Mary broke away and began performing her own dance. It was a variation on one we had done before, and as she leaned inward to the slope of the hill she vanished from sight.
“I could hear her laughing and taunting me, boasting that her knowledge was so much greater than mine. Being young, I could not stand it, so I attempted to duplicate her dance. I nearly made it, but failed to lean at the right time. On the third try, I slipped through and saw the hill as I once described it to you.
“There were white stones ringing around it, spiralling up to the top where Mary stood before a long, stone table. She continued to laugh at me. I tried to climb up to the top, but it was like swimming through mud. When I finally got there, I found a body lying on the table. It was I.
“Stunned, I stumbled backward, but Mary caught me and pulled me closer. Within an instant, I was on the table and Mary and my doppelgänger were holding me down. I struggled but could not move despite my double’s almost dough-like flesh. That’s when I realised that this thing before me was actually the dhole that I had shown Mary how to create and animate; but she had taken it far further than I ever had. It had leeched itself onto my psyche somehow and changed its form and features to mimic my own. I knew then that they intended to kill me, and the dhole would simply take my place.
“Mary was chanting in the Tcho-Tcho language and using words I’d never heard before but which sounded familiar. She held my head down firmly on the stone, and all I could see was the sky above me. The clouds were swirling in a circle, going round and round and picking up speed as they moved. The centre turned black and I could see the nighttime stars twinkling in the darkness. Then a shape began to move beyond the clouds and edged closer to the middle, and I struggled as hard as I could.
“Screaming, Mary lifted a stone knife and I could feel time slow around me. Everything became blurry, and I sensed that we were completely exposed. It was as if every possible reality suddenly had the ability to see us and, from off in the distance, I could hear a voice screaming our names. I could see Mary out of the corner of my eye, and she was billowing as if she had become nothing more than an empty sheet in the wind. The shape dropped down from the clouds in a sudden downpour of darkness that poured into Mary as if she were a glass container holding a funnel in its mouth.
“The knife came down, but I managed to move to the side, so it struck me only a glancing blow in the side of my forehead; but it streamed blood like a firehose. Before I knew what was happening, I felt my arms free, and through the red gusher that flowed into my eyes I could see the dhole running off in the distance. I had unknowingly broken the spell. Mary stood there, shaking from some sort of seizure, and people were climbing all over the hill and us. I was quickly bundled up and taken away to the doctor, but as I went I could hear Mary screaming in the Tcho-Tcho language and cursing the others who were tying her up and covering her naked body.
“Then I blacked out.
“When I came to a few days later, I learned what had happened. Mary’s parents, concerned that morning because of her strange talk and mannerisms the previous days, had gathered a search party when she could not be found in the town. My involvement was not even suspected until we were found. At that single moment, when I experienced that second of absolute clarity, the searchers had happened to be nearby, attracted because the hill noises had gotten particularly loud. I was thought to be her innocent victim and, as I told you before, Mary was branded a witch and was nearly lynched that very night. Saner heads prevailed, and she was locked up in a cell in the town square. It might have been more merciful to kill her instead. Her treatment at the hands of the townsfolk was vile and degrading. It shames me even to speak of it now. That we would condone such treatm
ent in our modern age was abominable! But, I’ve come to find, most people can do abominable things given the right circumstances, and there are some who are even eager to do so.