D is for ... DEUS EX MACHEN, A

 

DEUS EX MACHEN, A

 

 

 

 

Bennett found the manuscript in a box of papers at a car boot sale.

He’d almost walked past the stall – it was one of those house clearance deals with plastic crates overflowing with outdated or broken crap – but the papers caught his attention (who the hell sold papers at a car boot?) and pickings at the boot sale were slim, so he thought what the heck? and moved over to have a closer look.

There was a box of videotapes in front of the one he wanted, stacked with rip-offs of Disney cartoons with the titles of the original films but horribly inferior artwork. God only knew how terrible the actual animation would be. He moved the mockbusters out of the way and started rifling through the other box.

It was a strange selection of documents: some newspaper cuttings, a couple of academic theses, piles of lecture notes, something that looked like an exhaustive bibliography of works relating to the scholar and ghost story writer Montague Rhodes James, and a yellowing typescript.

     He picked up the typescript and frowned at the cover page.

 

NOVEL OF THE

GREY SHADOW

By Arthur Machen

 

     A joke, surely, he thought, idly flicking to the next page of the script. He read the first sentence.

 

The city streets were unnaturally dark, as if from the shutting of some vast

tomb door.

    

His eyes narrowed into slits. His heart started pounding in his chest. His mouth was suddenly parched dry.

Joke or not, it had to be worth a punt.

     He put the script back in the box, burying it beneath the other documents, attracted the attention of the stallholder, and pointed at the papers.

     “How much?” He said in as casual a tone as he could muster.

     The stallholder, a buck-toothed, overweight middle-aged man wearing denim dungarees over a grease-stained sweatshirt, gave the box a brief inspection.

     “Ten,” he said. “For the lot.”

     “Eight?”

     The man shrugged.

     “Eight’ll do it. I guess.”

     Bennett counted the money out in change, handed it over, picked up the box and carried it away.

 

He got the box back to his car and fired up Google on his phone. Put ‘Arthur Machen’ into the search box and pressed 'return'.

     He swiped and read and discovered just what he’d thought. Arthur Machen had written “Novel of the White Powder”, “Novel of the Dark Valley”, and “Novel of the Black Seal”, but there was no mention of “Novel of the Grey Shadow”.

     So, a hoax, then.

     Of course it was.

     But … but what if it wasn’t?

     What if he had actually found a previously undiscovered typescript from one of the absolute pioneers of modern horror?

     That had to be worth more than £8, didn’t it?

 

 

Val was a little less willing to entertain, or even listen to, the possibilities.

     “You paid a fiver for that box of crap?” She asked, the ‘you fucking idiot’ tone in her voice underlining the reason he’d knocked the price he’d paid down by a few quid in the telling. Val was nothing if not predictable in her disdain for anything that actually interested him.

     “It’s not crap.” He said, hating the defensive tone he’d felt forced into importing into his words. “It’s interesting.”

     “Should have put it on the electricity meter.” She snapped. “Instead you bought a box of bloody junk. You’ve got plenty of boxes of junk …”

     Bennett tuned her out and thought about the script.

     Later when he was on his own, in his retreat – the spare bedroom turned study where he read his books and dreamed of one day writing his own - he took it out of the box and started to read.

 

 

 

NOVEL OF THE

GREY SHADOW

By Arthur Machen

 

 

 

1.  THE CITY AT NIGHT

 

The city streets were unnaturally dark, as if from the shutting of some vast tomb door.

               Barnaby felt disoriented for a moment, standing there, feeling as if some crucial mystery or age-buried secret hung in the air around him; entwined around the ghosts of buildings that barely managed to stand out from the almost palpable blackness of the night.

               He reflected later that the whole cursed business that followed would have passed him by entirely if he hadn’t missed the last train out of the city. It certainly hadn’t been his intention to remain in town, but an early evening meal at his club had somehow expanded to fill the late evening too, mostly because Perkins had decided to try out a naïve political polemic on his captive audience and the result had been too compelling to drag himself away from. Perkins had recently been introduced to a particular pamphlet inspired by the works of Marx and Engels and was trying out its arguments without fully grasping them or understanding that he was very much part of the problem that the tract was describing. The spectacle, ameliorated with careful doses of claret and, later, port, had meant that Barnaby missed his train to the country, and was slightly worse for wear when he belatedly encountered the cold night air.

               That Barnaby’s equilibrium had been compromised by his self-medication was made clear to him when, as he turned into Wardour Street, he – quite literally in this case – bumped into an old friend.

               Norrington had pulled up on the pavement, absorbed in thought and, though the street was otherwise deserted, Barnaby hadn’t seen him until he collided with his erstwhile University roommate.

               ‘I say!’ Norrington exclaimed, plucked rudely from his own solitary thoughts. ‘Mind where you’re going, old chap!’

               Barnaby was midway through his muttered apologies when the identity of the gentleman before him fully registered.

               ‘My word! Norrington!’ He exclaimed. ‘How long has it been?’

               Norrington scrutinised the man in front of him with a puzzled – and it had to be said, vaguely hostile – glare before his face creased, brightened with recognition and, finally, became cordial.

               ‘Barnaby?’ The uncertain tone of his voice underscored the two or three years that had elapsed since they had last met. ‘Well, of all the luck.’

               ‘Luck?’ Barnaby enquired, suddenly wary that a demand was about to be made upon the night-strained contents of his pocketbook.

               ‘Why, yes.’ Norrington patted Barnaby’s shoulder. ‘I am in desperate need of your renowned rationality, my friend. I was standing here at somewhat of a loss, reflecting on some puzzling data and suggestive inferences, when suddenly the very man I need to pour light on some singular circumstances suddenly materialises.’

               ‘I am afraid I have sacrificed some of my rationality at the altar of conviviality. I am not sure I can be of much use …’

               ‘Perhaps, then, you will at least lend me a few moments of your time.  I have taken rooms a short distance from here. If I provide you with refreshments commensurate to the task, would you be so kind as to offer your ear and incredulity to some events and impressions that are haunting my waking hours of late?’

               ‘My curiosity is sufficiently piqued as to make the offer impossible to refuse. Lead on.’

               Barnaby noticed that before setting forth for his lodgings, Norrington nervously studied the pavement beneath them.

 

Bennett reached the end of the section and became aware of a tentative movement outside the door and knew that Val was plucking up the courage to come and give him more grief over his profligate ways, and the fact that he was now choosing to ignore her to read the script.

     He considered the possibility of opening the door and offering her an olive branch, but the idea quickly died. It wasn’t him who was at fault here, so why should he be the one to apologise? To wear the hair shirt when it would fit her so much better? Fuck her. Unless she apologised to him then he would just leave her to stew.

     How long had she been out there? He wondered. He’d only noticed her there because of the break in the narrative, so maybe she was lingering because she was trying to pluck up the courage to apologise to him.

     He wouldn’t be able to concentrate until he knew, so he got up and went to the door. He reached for the handle but stopped. Hair stood up on his arms, and there was a prickle down his spine.

A draught?

Had to be.

He rubbed his arm until it felt normal again, and then opened the door.

     The hall was empty.

     Val must had heard him coming, and then scuttled off before he could embarrass her. Typical of her.

He heard a noise above him, the sound of someone moving about upstairs. How had she got up the stairs so quickly? Her considered going up and asking her what she was playing at, but didn’t feel like manufacturing another confrontation tonight, and anyway, he had a story to read.

He went back into the study, closed the door, picked up the typescript and resumed the story.

 

 

 

2. A SIMPLE DEMONSTRATION

 

‘Do you think that all we see is all that there is?’ Norrington asked when they were seated in his rooms, a glass of whisky in one hand, a lit cigarette in the other.

               Barnaby, puzzled by the odd question his friend had opened the conversation with, sipped his own single malt, tilted his head, and attempted to answer the question thoroughly and honestly.

               ‘Is this enquiry merely an ice-breaker; a philosophical musing; or the prelude to some preternatural tale that is weighing down upon you? If it is the first, then my blasé response would be something along the lines of: the majority of life’s mysteries unfold beneath the scrutiny and analyses of learned men, so we may as well assume that, if there is indeed more, then those mysteries will also fall well within the bailiwick of scientific enquiry. If it was intended as a philosophical gambit then I would demand that you first define your terms. Then I would prevail upon you to narrow down the parameters of your question to ontology or psychology. If, however, it was the final possibility I would prevail upon you for another dram and settle myself back to listen.’

               Norrington smiled, a nervous thing that played briefly across his lips before returning to a taut flat line.

               ‘My question was, as you have guessed, a prelude to the story I wish to relate. But it is a central theme that runs through my account, so I will ask it again with some amendments. The general view is, I suppose, that science and rationalism have poured light into the dark corners of the earth, finding that the denizens of those corners are merely shadows of explicable phenomena, but distorted by imagination, misinterpretation, and superstition. So, we may assume, quite comfortably, that myth and legend were tentative steps along the path to enlightenment, primitive attempts to explain things without the benefit of the full facts. My real question then is this: are our brains capable of understanding the true processes and composition of the universe? With sight inferior to the acuity of the raptor can we truly know that the narrow band of visual stimuli open to us, how can we ever truly know that what we see is anything more than a fraction of the possibilities available?’

               Barnaby nodded, conceding the point somewhat, but perplexed as to its connection to any outward manifestations of objective reality.

               ‘The question is one that all of us entertain from time to time, I’m sure, but an answer is, I fear, impossible for us to know. Which, surely, makes it irrelevant to us. We cannot see what we cannot see. Unless we develop sufficiently sophisticated scientific apparatus that offers us a window onto such unseen levels of existence, then the question is most certainly moot.”

               Norrington inhaled from his cigarette, before releasing a dense plume from his lips.

               ‘I see your point. Indeed, I believe that I would concede it, if it wasn’t for a simple demonstration that I would like to conduct here, now, with you as its willing subject. Oh, dear friend, you should not look so discomforted, this is no hazardous experiment, merely something that you perform every day of your own volition. A commonplace. A trifle.’

               ‘What do you require of me?’

               ‘I just want you to close your eyes.’

               Barnaby nodded his assent, and then acted as he had been requested, feeling foolish, but unable to see a way to escape the position he had been manoeuvred into.

               ‘Can you see me?’ Norrington asked, with a gravity to the question that instantly dispelled Barnaby’s reflexive urge towards a flippant reply.

‘No. I cannot.’

               ‘Try.’

               ‘Without opening my eyes?’

            ‘Indeed.’

               ‘I still cannot see you.’

               There was a pause that Barnaby interpreted as one inserted for the purposes of drama, like a conjurer’s pause before revealing the true result to a particularly convoluted mixture of prestidigitation and misdirection.

               ‘Well, my friend, here is the question that demonstrates the grave importance of my seemingly abstract musings: can I see you?’
               ‘Of course you can,’ Barnaby snapped, irritated, but then the purpose of the experiment became utterly clear to him, and he felt an icy chill pass through him.

               ‘Ah, I see that the proverbial penny has completed its fall.” Norrington’s voice had a touch of frantic urgency. ‘Just because our own senses fall crudely short of perceiving realms beyond our own, just because our vision is insufficient to see the creatures that inhabit them, does not mean that they are unable to see us.’

               Barnaby opened his eyes and studied the face of his companion. There was a proselytising zeal about his normally guarded demeanour. Something of the reformed sinner protesting too much, or the preacher denying his own spiritual doubts with renewed evangelical fire.

               Barnaby found himself feeling cheated by the experience.

               ‘I say, far be it for me to declaim the emperor’s state of immodest attire, but the demonstration proves nothing. It is a parlour game. The validity of its grand reveal relies entirely upon the truth of the proposition that preceded it, something that we are far from establishing. Indeed, if the first proposition is indemonstrable, then the revelation at its end is little more than a diverting non sequitur.’

               Norrington stilled him with a gesture of his hand.

               ‘This is but the overture. A prologue. Now, let me relate the chain of events that so concerns me. Hear me out as I refresh your glass, and when I am finished you may, I hope, greater apprehend my state of perplexity.’

               Barnaby nodded, his glass was duly refilled, and settled back in his chair to listen to his friend’s tale.

 

 

3. THE STORY FROM THE CITY STREETS

 

‘I am, you must recall, a great believer in the constitutional necessity of walking. What you may not know is that my frequent meanderings through this fine city are not just idle journeys-for-journeys sake, but rather an exploration of both outer and inner geographies. In many ways I see myself as analogous to the stock character from 17^th Century French literature, the flâneur,  as immortalised by Larousse in his Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle. I am, I submit, a connoisseur of the street; a wanderer who seeks to observe – and hopefully to interpret – the hidden language of the city he traverses. My methodology is simple: I start walking until some feature of the city suggests to me a change of direction. This feature can be as arbitrary as a street sign that contains a word or name that resonates within me; it can be the direction taken by an animal, be it cat, dog, bird or even rat; it can be an overheard word or phrase that nudges me along a new trajectory; or it can be a sudden, inexplicable thought or feeling that projects me off the main thoroughfares into darker, less known corners of this majestic metropolis. The purpose of these wanderings, I have come to realise, is an instinctual, maybe even atavistic urge to understand the city on its own terms, to engage with its rhythms, and to attempt to see its truest aspect, its secret face.

               ‘I see your expression, Barnaby, and I understand the objection it reflects. You see this … search for the true face of London as some attempt at personification, that the city has facades, but no true faces. But allow me this conceit and we can move to the substantive details of the account I wish to relate. Good.

               ‘Now, one such wandering path took me on a long and interesting route that led me, through its nudges and shoves, all the way to Notting Hill, where I stopped to listen to the conversation between two street vendors whose topic was the liquidation of a bookbinders shop a few streets away. I learned that a fire had consumed half of the establishment and that the proprietor was in the process of shedding many of the surviving items of his stock by way of a kerbside sale. The consensus between the two vendors was that the proprietor was using the fire as an excuse to finally retire from his trade, something that he had long desired but had never found the impetus for. I headed in the direction indicated by the vendors’ exuberant gestures and found the shop easily. Tools, finished volumes and rolls of leather were laid out on the street in an incongruous medley, and I stopped to investigate the wares with an odd feeling that I was on the edge of some kind of revelatory moment, as if another detail of the city’s true face awaited my attention, if I could but find it. I ran my hand through a box of awls, nippers, and bone folders, then turned my attention to a box of beeswax cylinders, then to a pile of unbound pages. I toyed idly with the pages, until my attention was seized by a manuscript written in a florid hand entitled:

 

MELMOTH PURSUED

by the Author of “BERTRAM” &c.

              

‘My heart skipped a beat. Not a rhetorical beat, I will add, but a tremor of shock that literally affected my heart, throwing it out of its clockwork movement. I need not tell you that the author of “Bertram” was none other than Charles Robert Maturin, whose most celebrated work “Melmoth the Wanderer” remains one of the most technically ambitious, and morally ambiguous, of the Gothic romances. Was it conceivable that the bookbinder had in his possession an unpublished manuscript detailing the further travels of the Irish Faust, Melmoth? Not the continuation perpetrated by Balzac, but an original text from Maturin himself. It seemed impossible, but, conversely, surely worthy of a modest investment, if only for the intellectual exercise of disproving the veracity of its already dubious provenance. The proprietor was a strange type, with protruding teeth, a voluminous waistline and an odd set of blue, sleeveless overalls worn over an oil-stained sweater. I indicated the manuscript and the man quoted me a low price that seemed beyond the need for haggling. I paid him and brought the manuscript back here, where I read it in one sitting.

               ‘And that, Barnaby, is when all my troubles began.’

 

 

Bennett looked up from the manuscript, aware of a change in the room, a dipping of the temperature that made him remember Val’s dig that he should have invested his money on the electricity meter, rather than at the car boot.

     That was, though, what jumpers were for and there was one over the other side of the room.

     He started to rise from his seat but was pushed back as if by an unseen hand. He felt a moment’s utter incomprehension, then felt a spasm of pain near the base his spine and the mystery was solved. His back had seized up, moulded to the curve of the chair back, making him unable to stand up straight. Muscles complained as he shifted himself back into his seat. He’d get the jumper in a minute when his back was less troublesome. He still had the typescript in his hand, so decided that he may as well carry on reading until then.

 

 

4. (EXTRACT FROM) DIVERS WORDS OF THE BIBLIOPHILE

 

‘The manuscript was short, more like a treatment for a novel rather than a story unto itself, but its brevity was, I have become convinced, a mercy. Like the published Melmoth, it was a series of nested stories that added slowly details to a bigger picture. This time it did not need to delineate the curse that Melmoth operated under, but was rather a more focused narrative, collating documents and anecdotes that lent weight to a peculiar, and disturbing pattern that was so tangentially connected to Melmoth as to make one wonder about his inclusion in the work.

            ‘The first part is an introductory passage, describing John Melmoth and Alonzo Monçada’s actions in the immediate aftermath of ‘The Wanderer’. Although it appears that the eponymous Melmoth has perished, delivered into the hell that was the final price of the deal he made through his knowledge of the dark arts, the actual evidence is so slight that Monçada wants more proof.  And so begins a series of tales – from an innkeeper, a privateer, a bibliophile, an explorer and a Roman Catholic priest - that eventually coalesce to reveal that Melmoth is now the merest shade of his former self, doomed, still, to haunt the earth but in less corporeal form. He is described as ‘a noxious amalgamation of smoke and darkest intention’ in the Statement of the Priest, and as ‘an indefinable terror, that by its stubborn refusal to conform to the patterns of the living, has become the very quintessence of evil’ by the privateer. Indeed, it is strongly hinted at that Melmoth is now a creature hinted at in a deleted pasage from John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, a fact that the bibliophile is introduced to the tale for the sole purpose of expounding.

            ‘I will not spend too long on the manuscript. I cannot verify that it comes from the hand of Maturin, nor can I report that it makes a suitable sequel to the original tale. All I can relate is the effect that it has had upon my life since I discovered it at that forlorn bookbinder’s outdoor sale. It is said that books can change lives, alter perspectives, rewrite destinies; that a man leaves a book changed by the experience. I have always felt these grand claims ring hollow upon my ears, that a story is merely a dream given physical form, and probably provides as much moral instruction, societal insight, or philosophical enquiry as one formed within the folds of sleep.  I know this makes me sound like a heathen savage, but what I mean is that I am a man of the world, not of a simulacrum of that world. I am of the senses, not just of sight. Although I appreciate the craft and artistry of the written word, I am by no means shaken from my tactile world by its artifices. In matters of philosophy and meaning, I rely more on my own senses as on the edifices of printed word. I am reminded of Thomas Browne’s comment that we yet discourse in Platoes denne, and are but Embryon Philosophers, but fear that Platoes denne is more a product of the words we use to build, rather than an illusion wrought from the senses. Many things can be constructed in words that cannot be replicated in the actual world, and many things occur in the actual world that can never find accurate recreation in the world of the word. There is, I fear, a near impermeable membrane betwixt word and world, and traffic through the membrane is never total, there is never a one-to-one mapping, but rather a translation between alien orders that suffers the detriment of the process. Which is, Barnaby, a rather long-winded and possibly opaque attempt at an explanation of my unusual relationship with the printed word. Although it stimulates my intellect, I am of the belief that intellect is insufficient to interpret and understand the universe. Although it provokes my imaginative faculties, I believe that imagination is as limited as intellect to provide us with a workable model and explanation for the forces that control us. I believe, I suppose it can be said, that the universe can only be reacted to, rather than delineated, for we will never understand the universe and our place within it.

            ‘This manuscript, however, has changed me, Barnaby, perhaps for all the time that remains in the universe.  I have said that I do not wish to dwell too much upon the putative Melmoth manuscript, and there are practical reasons for this that will, I hope, become clearer. But there is one of the nested stories that requires my deeper exploration. Divers Words of the Bibliophile. I will only share a part of it, for the practical reason I mentioned, but it is imperative that you understand the meat of the supernal inferences contained within.’

            Norrington journeyed over to his desk and retrieved some papers. He flicked through them for a few moments then, when he had found the piece he was looking for, turned and read out loud.

 

“ … I have obtained the fragments from a disreputable source; a situation that still manages to distress me, for I had always believed in the implacability of my own honesty and integrity; - but here was I consorting with the lowest wretch, a man whose unpleasant demeanour was merely the physical manifestation of some deeper and darker penumbra of rot of both soul and spirit.   The amount that I tendered to this ignoble and wretched individual is surely less than the repayments that must be subtracted from my own soul, and there is no sense of pride in my discovery, merely anxiety and terror, iniquity, and sorrow.

   “  The fragments were faded and timeworn, and the writing was, of course, in the hand of an amanuensis, but – although the text was like none ever attributed to Milton, and was cruder and less thoughtfully fashioned than the rest of Paradise Lost – I found myself unable to doubt it was no less than its bill of sale had advertised it.

  “  From the moment I first read the verses I have been in a purgatorial half-life, and the passage that haunts both my distressing days and terrifying nights is this:

 

The coldest screams of long-forgotten lands

Doth echo through the Kingdoms of the Light

Wherein all who hear its strange commotion,

Feel lost and moved by powers beyond ken.

For this scream is from the darkest epoch

When all was but dream in the mind of God

And Nightmare! —loosed from the chains of reason

–Finds new expression in the minds of men

Who twist it to their own dark purposes

Feed it with the sustenance of their fears

Giving it form to travel through their world

And the power to feed as it desires.

              I am cursed to provide it a vessel

That you have taken from a sinful soul

And you shall not find surcease from this curse

Until it is once again circumscribed

Within the prison that words can provide.

 

 

“  Everything that besets my faltering existence is hinged upon those darkening syllables, and all that follows is a product of my hunger for the unknown and my inability to describe the horror that I have unleashed. For horror it is that I have brought upon this world, and the true horror is that I have not the words to send the damned thing back to where it was imprisoned.

              “  Language fails me when I need it the most …”

 

 

Bennett suddenly became aware that he was not alone in the room, but there had been no sense of the door opening and closing. He put the script down on his desk and looked around the room.

     Empty.

     But that didn’t explain the feeling that not only was someone else in here with him, but that they were scrutinising him, too.

     That sense of being observed, surely a vestigial relic from the days when humanity was prey rather than predator, manifested itself in his hackles peeling away from the skin of his neck until they allowed the cold to settle in the area they had once covered.

     It was a horrible, exposed sensation that multiple surveys of the room failed to dispel.

     But there’s nothing here, he attempted to reason with himself.

     Are you sure? Another part of him taunted. Really, really sure?

     He answered this one aloud -- “Of course I am” – immediately feeling foolish to hear his own voice ring around the empty room.  

     He looked around once more, making sure that the room was indeed still empty, then let out an amused snort.

     “Idiot.” He told himself. “The story isn’t even remotely scary.”

     Then why are you jumping at shadows?

     “I’m not.”

     … shadows …

     Bennett felt his mind slip sideways on it track, because the word ‘shadows’ was exactly the one he did not want to hear.

     Because …

     Because of the shadow cast by the light on the ceiling over onto the wall over his desk.

     Or rather …

     the two shadows.

     Single bulb: two shadows.

     He studied the wall, trying to figure out the trick that allowed one bulb to cast two distinct shadows. One shadow was just as he would expect to see, his outline rendered by light and darkness. The other shadow … the other shadow was different. Wrong. It wasn’t dark. Or rather it wasn’t dark enough. He turned his head to get a better look at the ceiling light, at its shade, to try to work out whether something there was causing the split shadow effect.

     Only one of the shadows moved with him.

     He caught it out of the corner of his eye and whipped around to try to confirm the impression he’d just had, and the darker of the two shadows moved too.

     The grey shadow, however, made no such movement.

     It just stayed, utterly still.

Still.

Grey.

Unfathomable.

He moved his hand towards the grey shadow, watching the black fingers from the shadow that made sense aping his movement. He hesitated …

     His study door opened, and Val stood framed in the opening.

     “What are you doing in here?” she asked, obviously still angry, but angry or not Bennett found himself welcoming the intrusion.

     “Just reading.” He said, then felt a sudden need to connect, to put aside the enmity and try to mend the wounds that had caused it. “Look, I’m sorry that I spent our money at the car boot. It was thoughtless. But this story …”

     “I’m sorry too.” Val said, abruptly. “I really am. I just spend so much time worrying about money … I shouldn’t take it out on you. I’ll leave you to it, but I mean it. I am sorry.”

     She turned and left, closing the door behind her.

     When Bennett turned back his shadow did too.

     His one shadow.

     Of the static, grey shadow there was no sign.

     He shuddered, then followed Val upstairs.

    

He awoke in the early morning from unsettling dreams that melted on contact with the air. He lay there in what Ingmar Bergman had labelled The Hour of the Wolf, finding the metaphor to be apt and somewhat hungry as his thoughts turned on him and made further sleep an ambition for some future time.

     In twenty minutes of wrestling with the darkness both without and within he had convinced himself that the grey shadow in his study was easily explicable. He had taken the title of the typescript a little too literally, and the rest was imagination, helped – in no small part – by his strained interactions with Val. Clearing the air had exorcised the ghost. And seeing as sleep was now out of the question, then perhaps the time had come to finish reading.

     He got out of bed carefully so as to not awaken Val and headed downstairs to his study.

     When he turned the light on there was only one shadow.   

    

5. THE GREY SHADOW

 

‘It is an infuriating section, both in its poor facsimile of Milton’s verse style, and in its odd suggestions. Its connection to the story of Melmoth was tenuous, and its placing within that narrative seemed arbitrary and disconnected, as if shoe-horned into the larger work with no thought as to how it would add to the overall picture.

               ‘I would not have given it a second thought, were it not that that the chapter began to insinuate itself into my actual life. Now I can see, once more, that I am overstepping the boundaries of your credulity with my account, and I understand all too well how this must sound like the words of an oversensitive soul seeing faces in the wood of a wardrobe and declaring that there is a man trapped within the grain, struggling to be released, but I must just beg your indulgence for a little longer.

               ‘I am not, by nature, prey to the superstitions of man. Indeed, I like to think of myself as untroubled by the bigger questions of theology and the occult. Legends are, to my mind, symbols rather than depictions of some preternatural history, and I remain untroubled by the ideas of ghosts and spirits. Even my wanderings through the city are about the interior journey, what the city tells me about myself as an inhabitant of it. My search for the face of the city that made you frown so earlier is a search for a chimera, but one that gives me purpose and meaning in a society to seems to lose those two things as the century progresses.

               ‘So when I tell you of the effects of the manuscript I need you to understand that I am not speaking in metaphors and symbols, but in actual, observable phenomena.

               ‘When I finished the Melmoth manuscript, all it had really given to me was a headache. I was untouched by the story – such as it was – and I attempted to defeat the pain it invoked with a draught and a lie-down. I slept fitfully and awoke to the creeping feeling that I was not alone in my room. I turned on the lamp and, although I could find nothing in the room to support that feeling, that did not lessen the certainty with which the thought had taken root in my mind. Unease had settled into residence and in an effort to dispel it I physically searched the room. I must have made a fine sight as I frantically moved through the room, but my investigation revealed no intruder, phantasmal or otherwise.  I was overwrought. The story must have affected me without me consciously realising it. I searched the room again, all the time feeling as if unseen eyes were surveying me, watching me, waiting for me to make some mistake or lapse of concentration before revealing themselves to me. I even knew, deep down, that the idea was nonsensical, but that did not lessen the feeling of panic that was welling within me, threatening to consume me. I tried to calm myself, telling myself that finding no hidden watcher within the room was surely evidence that I was, indeed, alone, but a dark part of me ignored such rationalisations.

               ‘It was as the first fingers of dawn stroked at the windowpanes that I first noticed the shadow on the carpet. A human outline, drawn in grey, rather than the black tones of all the other shadows in the room. Human-shaped. But not my-shaped. I looked around for something within the room that could make such a distorted shadow, then investigated the windows to see if something, or someone, outside could be responsible, but found nothing to explain that singular grey shape upon the room’s floor. I say that it was human-shaped, and I am sure that is correct, but there were suggestions of some more terrifying aspects to the shape that I found myself not wishing to consider, odd attachments that bear no relation to any natural appendages, incredibly thin but somehow distressing, almost whip-like.

               ‘It was not my shadow, that much was obvious. It did not follow me around the room, content to just remain there on the floor, but that did not mean it was entirely still, for those whip-like structures I just mentioned moved as if stirred by a languid breeze, and I felt certain that they were moving closer to me and my actual shadow as if seeking to reach out to touch me …

               ‘I know this sounds like madness, or the result of too strong a draught, but I cannot stress enough that this grey shadow was not a hallucination. I not only feel this to be true, I also somehow know this to be true. I remember you talking about that writer friend of yours, the one who said that if the roses in your garden suddenly sang a weird song that it would drive you insane, and I can tell you that when the ordinary becomes extraordinary in that manner there is indeed a fear that the mind will irrevocably break. I felt it then, confronted by a shadow with no visible source that seemed able to move of its own volition, not like a shadow at all, but like some loathsome blot, some creature that was only by analogy a shadow, but belonged to some whole other order of phenomenon that I had somehow released by …’

               Norrington drank deep from his whisky glass, refilled it, then drank again.  He seemed reticent to finish the sentence, so Barnaby did it for him.

               ‘By reading the manuscript.’ He said, and Norrington looked at him with a horrified expression. It was perfectly tenable to have the thought, but to release it into the air like that was, it appeared, a step too far.

               Norrington only nodded his weary agreement.

               ‘But can’t you see that this is madness? A shadow released from the reading of a manuscript? How could such a thing be? It’s madness I tell you.’

               ‘I would have agreed with you. I want to agree with you. Can’t you see that I would prefer it be madness? It would be preferable, believe me, to the horrible alternative. But there are two things that make that impossible for me.’

               ‘Then tell me them and let me explain them away without recourse to the supernatural.’

               ‘I cannot tell you. I can only show you.’

               ‘Then show me and let us bring this matter to a rational conclusion.’

               Norrington returned to his writing desk and opened a drawer, taking out a small sheaf of pages that looked as if they had been taken from a notebook. Barnaby could see that they were covered with childlike scrawls of writing. He raised an eyebrow of inquiry.

               ‘And what further folly is this?’

               ‘No folly. Simply something that had found its way into the Melmoth manuscript. Not a part of the manuscript, but something that had become mixed in with it. Something that, perhaps, shines light onto this whole, uncanny affair.’

               ‘So the first thing you want to show me is this … child’s scrawl?’

               ‘No, this is the second thing. I want you to read it after I show you the first thing.’

               ‘And that is …?’

               Norrington grimaced, then pointed at the wall behind Barnaby who turned, impatiently, to see what his friend was indicating.

               The shape of the shadow on the wall could just about be described as  ‘human’, and only because the mind demanded that shapes be comprehensible, recognisable, explicable.  It was why people saw shapes in cloud formations, or in the bark of elderly tree trunks.

               The grey shadow, with its creeping tendrils, did not look like it was produced by a light source and intervening object. It looked like it was a stain on the wall, or a well-established fungus. The simple fact of its presence assailed Barnaby’s mind with a ferocity that came from some primitive place that had possibly been handed down as an instinct through countless generations.

               He had to turn away, and Norrington chose that moment to drop the small sheaf of papers down into his lap.

               With the cold sting of fear moving through him, Barnaby picked up the pages and began to read.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

 

 

 

 

6. THE DIARY (?) OF LIZZIE CARPENTER, AGED 7

 

 

wot happnd to sharon binks and

wye my mothr has to dye (probly)

 

 

mum an dad argude agen this morning, all ‘but u sayed this’ and ‘y dint u do that?’ and im hidng in bed makng out i ws aslepe and everlythign, but it still made me very sad.

i mean its sad they don’t seme to care about eech other like thye should.

or evenly like they DID.

past tens.

wen dad went downstares to work my mum got all tears in her I’s and she went round the hous tidyng and cleanng like she culd wash awa all the bad words theyd sayed to eech other. i’m nearley eihgt years old and evenly i no that isn’t going to work. words cant be calld back like some old dog that run off when u dint want it two. they runaround, loose, weather u want them two or not, only comng back 2 bite u haha

mum wuldnt come neer my room, not evenly to clean it, so i pretended i had a friend to talk to.

i pretended REEL HARD.

and then- tada - i had a friend to talk to.

her name was molly. molly scorp and she had I’s that look liked a dols I’s, big and round and kind of sad rearly. but she had a nice voyse. a soft voyse. and that was becors i dint want to here any more shouting like mum and dad so i made it so her voyse stayed quite. not a wisper, but not loud eever.

molly was her name and she had a tail like a scorpian with a sting and everlythign. gess i was still cross and sad to pretend THAT hard that she had a sting but somtims my pretendng gets creaytive and anyway i sort of like scorpians anyway so that’s good enouhg to expliane it.

n e way, we playd and talkd and it made me fell less sad. mum carryd on doing her ‘im dealng with it in my own wa’ stuff and i spose i culd have pretended she wasnt angry but shes been orfly crool to me so i let her go on like that and don’t let her off the hook eesy.

its not my folt, i telld molly scorp, mum just saw somethign she wusnt sposed to and now she thinks thez something rong with me. i think … ok i no … that was what startd the crosswords with dad. her prodlem is dad dint see it so the things mum says sound like they are comng out of a CRAZY person or somethign.

her prodlem, becors it works for me.

molly scorp arxd y i don’t just pretend mum out of her suspishons, y i don’t just make her 4get what she saw. u culd tell molly scorp was getting angery with mum becors her sting startd to drip with her venum, but i told her it was fine, i had my own way of dealng with the prodlem becors mum rearly needd to pa for some of the bad thigns she said two me and also two dad.

she sayd i was a deval child, and that she culd not beleave i was evenly her dorter. she sayd that i belongd in hell – and this comng form a wuman that hasn’t been to church in all the years that I no about.

molly scorp sayd shes a hippocrit for that but I told her that mum was actchooly just scarrd becors she saw me with my tooth face on.

no.

tooth face.

that’s not quiet rigth.

its close but i haven’t got the rigth words. im not evenly shure there r words for some of my thigns. not hughman words, anywa. like ‘pretendng’. again that’s close, but also far awa.

tooth face

feedng smile

bone masheen

they r all close but no sigar – as my dad says. he has all kinds of sayngs that make no sens, but i think i like them anywa. like ‘its hot enuff for dux’ and ‘in a nutshel’ and ‘ure thick glass’ and ‘u can have anover but don’t tell your mum’.

    molly scorp sayd then that dad is part of the prodlem and she startd to lauhg. when she sayd that, the venum in her sting drippd loose onto the carpit and i got cross and pretended hard and she was no longher their and that’s y im on my own again.

that’s the mane thign about me, rearly.

im alone.

allwas alone.

shore dad trys hard – mum two before she saw my tooth face and imadjinnd me in hell – but theres thigns in my head that i no but they don’t and it all makes it so confusign in my head.

i look around my bedroom, suddenly feelng like im in a cayj, like an aminal in a zoo. i no, deep down, that i don’t b-long here. i have allwas felt like that. instinked i gess.

still, beefor i can get out of the cayj i need to do something about mum.

see, i mad a mistake. i no, i no, not like me, i try to be so so so so cairful. or as dad says in anover of his sayngs, i cover my traxs. I cover them well.

heres what happend.

See, mum oranged for a frend to come to the house and to let me pla with her dorter calld sharon binks. mum is quiet friendly with sharon binks mum sins they surv twogehter on the paris cownsill wotvr that mihgt be so as a reslt sharon binks came round to pla.

prodlem is shes not nor will she eva be one of my faverit peepil. shes snooty and rude and so full of herslef and she talks and talks and talks about her pony and her dog and and how much monee her dad makes in bankng -witch sounds like steelng monee from paw peepil and giving it two rich peepil witch sounds an orful wa to go about thigns if im onest.

so were playng in my room, sharon binks and i, and its not terable, but its not good eva. and sharon binks is playng with my faverit dol – I cal her voola becors she looks like she can pretend two – when sudnly she says that she wants to keep it. right, one, voola is not an it, voola is a she. and two she is sirtenly not for sharon binks. so i tel her ‘no’ and she gets all redfaced becors i think her mum and dad don’t say that word two her very mutch. so i try to get voola back and sharon binks wont let go of her. and wen i sa i will tell my mum on her, she says she will tell HER mum that i hit her or evenly bit her if i doent let her have voola for keeps.

well, that’s when i got SO angery that I felt my girl face slip away and sudnly thers my tooth face instead and sharon binks is lookng at me with absoloot horror evenly as i feel the glorius serj of my secrit slef as it pushs throuhg the dissguys i wear and i fell on her with anger and hungr and a feelng like finaly im my real self again.

i held onto her shoulders and startd to vibrait on the speshul freekwensea that starts somewere in my brain and spreads out throuhg my body. i wached as sharon binks startd vibraitng two, vibraitng so hard that it lookd like ther was dozuns of her sudenly, but rearly close togehter like when you rub a coin under paper and get an inprint but the paper slips and you get anohter inprint, but like if the paper slipt loads of times and u got hundreds of inprints but their not lined up and anywa thats how sharon binks lookd sort off. and the vibraishuns mad her just a bit less solid eech time and i culd feel her becoming less and less real in my hands and i made her vibraite fastr and when my hands culd no longr feel her sholders, just static electicity like you get from takng a jumper of two quikly, i opend up my tooth face and breathd in deep and hard.

i don’t get to do this as mutch as id like, so mabye i took too mutch time, a litel more than i shuld, but her vibraishuns tastd SO GOOD that i tryed to savur them and the NEX THIGN I no is that some1 is screemng and I turn my tooth face and see mum is in the doorway watching as the last of sharon binks pases thru the bones and teeth and – and theres not rearly a word for this, but GRINDNG PLATE seems to come closet – and i rearlies i might have made a big mistake.

i drinkd in the last, faint vibraishuns that were onse calld sharon binks and then let the mask fall back down so i was just litil lizzie carpenter again, but mums face was stuck in a big O shape of fear.

I was feelng all full up, but I still had my wits about me so I pretended hard REAL HARD that Sharon binks had neverly eggzisted, had neverly been born and the world kind of rippld around me as the chainge was spreading out into the eether, and then it became tru, and no1 wuld evenly rember that Sharon binks had everly been.

prodlem was that it wasn’t Sharon binks beeng eaten that had stuck in mums mind. it was me with my tooth face on. And tho I tryd to pretend REAL HARD she hadnt seen it there were no rippels and i recon it had been SO shokng and scarry for her that it just sort of stuck in her mind and no pretendng in the world was going to shake it loose. mabye it was stuckd to her brane like those picturs I found she sayed wuldnt come of when i stuk them on the war drobe. i mean u culd peel them of but they left glu or tor the sirfis of the wood and there was always a gohst of them horntng the wood foreverafter and i gess my tooth face was like a picture stuk to a war drobe and prtendng hard peeld most of it awa but some of it stayd and when i look in her I’s now i can see that a deep part of her than i canot reach will always rember that fear when she saw me with all my spels down, when she saw thru the glamors and majicks and saw me as i rearly am and she will neverly see littil lizzie carpenter again, just my hiden face, shell always see the bone and tooth and grindr and I cant let her sa anymor bad thigns about me to dad.

i cant i cant i cant i wont i wont i wont

and I no I culd just have pretendd REAL HARD for mum to have neverly eggzisted like ruddy sharon bluddy binks but that wuld make prodlems of its own and anywa im not shore if that evenly obays the rooles …

but I cant let it go on like this.

Mum will just keep runnng that tooth face over and over in her mind and i think shell start to thinkng im not evenly her dorter.

shes right, u no.

im not.

heres the thing

littil lizzie carpenter was takn from her cot in the mddel of the night just a few das after she was born. my REAL parnts took her and put me in her cot. they pretendd rearly hard and made me look like her and left me to grow up in a hughman family and they took lizzie carpenter to the hiddn places of jeelo and deep dendo where they will teech the real lizzie carpenter about the left hand path and the chief songs and the mao games and all the other secrits that r are birthrihgt.

they come back, somtimes, my REAL mum and dad. they come back and they wisper to me on the speshul nigths of the moon and they tell me that i need to seam like a hughman until the time of the green seramonees when i can be myslef again, and we can all feed until were burstng full with the sowls of thousands.

lizzie carpenter – the REAL lizzie carpenter – is wear I dream of evy nihgt, deep in the urth wear sunlihgt neverly reachs, where are peepil have allwas been, comng out only to pla there triks on peepil from this sirfis world wear they make deals that will leed to the hughmans thinkng they will get everythign they everly wantd, only to end up mad or dead or werse.

hughmans call us the wihte peepil, or somtimes the fayry foke becors they’ve neverly been good at namng the thigns they dont understand, and they NEVER sirvive incountrs wear they get to see are TRUE faces.

and that makes me think – dose that mean that mum MUST dye? i mean tecnicly it must, but its so hard to no for shore. I mean I dont want her to dye, but i think it mite be becors of the prodlems it will corse, not becors I car about her or anythign. maybe if i culd make it look like an axident. a fallng down the stares praps, or a fire, but nuthng that culd make it look like I had anythign to do with it. my REAL parnts have warnd me about drawng any atteshun to myslef becors it is getting harder and harder to be 1 of us. the modren world is all facts and numbrs, syence and invenshuns. they bilt howses on our places, and trapd us in cayjes of lojic and reeson. my REAL parnts have told me that they can trap us in so many ways withowt us even rearlisng it, they can trap us with syence and ekwashuns, they can even trap us in songs or storys as long as they bild traps in them, like putting storys insyde storys inside storys with us in the middel, like a box full or mirors that reflex us back ipon ourslevs, or like those rushng dols my dad shoed me that has a dol insyde a dol insyde a dol insyde anotherly dol and rite in the middel is one of us, trapd, until somewon reads the story amd lets a liittel of us lose into the world wear we can start to spred ourslef thruhg the craks that still eksist between our world and threres.

they say that i must allways be looking for the books that they hide us insyde, and i must pars them on two someone hughman so that they read the storys and another 1 of us can come back from our prizun. but they hyde them so wel and i am only a littel girl but when i am bigga i will look for them and i am sure i will find some and then I will have a friend that knows the words and jeschers and seramonees and

mum is comng up the stares now and I gess i should hide this words in case she reads them and sees the troof. i will put them under my pilow, and then latre i can hyde them downstares in dads shop, wear he keeps so many books and papres that it is like hidng a preshus leaf in a forest or a ded man in a greyveyard    

 

 

 

 

 

7. THE SOLUTION

 

 

When Barnaby put the handwritten pages down, his demeanour was ashen and his hand shaking.

               ‘It’s monstrous.’ He said, reaching for the whisky glass that Norrington had already filled for him in anticipation. ‘Utterly monstrous. It has to be a joke. A Modernist hoax. Surely…’

               Norrington shrugged.

               ‘What if it isn’t?’

               Barnaby surveyed his friend gravely, his eyes dark pools that had once looked at the sun, but now could see only the endless void of space.

               ‘Then everything we know about the world is wrong, completely and utterly wrong. Then there are holes in the world through which the darkest things can emerge, things that can reach across time-blurred aeons and exert their dark forces upon the present. Then science and reason are simply lies we have used to overwrite a much stranger world than we have ever imagined.’

               He looked into his friend’s eyes with something close to pleading, and Norrington returned the look with a silent apology.

               Barnaby risked a look over his shoulder and was certain that the shadow, the blot, the corruption had increased in size.

               ‘What do we do?’ He asked.

               ‘We write it back.’ Norrington replied.

              

Bennett sat back, feeling drained. There was no more to read, because the typescript ended there. Bennett didn’t know whether to feel cheated, or glad.

He realised that it didn’t matter how the story ended, not

really. All the information he needed was there on the pages.

     He was still sitting there when Val knocked on the door and he told her to ‘come in’.

     “What are you up to in here?” Val asked, her voice soft and sleepy and with no trace of hostility.

     “I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I came down here to read.’ Bennett said and studied her. She was in the furry dressing he’d bought her that Christmas and he was suddenly ashamed of the way he constantly tried to pretend that she didn’t understand him, or meant to ruin his joys, just so he didn’t have to face the fact that the only one who made his life harder to live was him.

     He felt a sudden surge of emotion, of love, for her and was about to tell her when he saw the shadow that she cast upon the door. And the grey shadow cast in the air of the open doorway.

Where no shadow could ever exist.

     He saw its tendrils flex and move and reach out towards her.

     He swallowed.

     “Go back to bed, my darling.” He tried as hard as he could to keep his voice level and even, even though he felt so far from those things that he was sure he was failing.

     But Val just gave him a half smile and nodded.

     “Are you coming, too?”

     “I will.” He said.

     He watched the grey shadow as it folded in on itself, then unfolded. It was bigger, now. Darker, too. And with many more of those tendrils. Some of them seemed to be touching Val’s head, and he felt sick when he saw her brush at her hair as if trying to dislodge a fly.

     “Look, I’ll see you soon.” He said, striving to keep his composure, to refrain from screaming. “You know what? I think that I’m going to try writing that story I’ve always said I wanted to.”

     She came over to him and kissed the top of his head.

     “That sounds like a great idea.” She said. “I’ll see you soon.”

     When she turned and moved into the hall he saw her pass through the shadow and knew that he still had time before it was fully here, in this world.

     But not much, he thought, and he reached for a notepad and pencil.