The Fabulous Beast Page 9

  ‘You’re leading me to Hell!’ I accused them.

  The pair looked shocked. They then took pains to explain to me that it was an optical illusion. Pathways to Heaven were by their nature strange and wonderful. It only seemed as if we were on a downward slope. In fact the way was quite steeply upward. Could I not feel it in the calves of my legs, in my thigh muscles? I was climbing, not descending.

  I realised they were right.

  By now I realised others had joined us. There were, I suppose, about a dozen in all besides myself, one or two women amongst them.

  The young man on my right continued to explain our mission.

  ‘Those souls who ascend after death have undergone a transition. Their spirits are able to withstand, absorb and yes, even relish a tremendous bombardment of Heavenly Joy. They are in a state of being able to accept the flood of Eternal Love. They are able to be saturated by levels of happiness and sorrow never before experienced by a human soul.’

  He paused before adding, ‘But we are the living, we are the quick not the dead, and have not been prepared for such a fierce attack of pathos and pleasure. Our souls are not ready. The first expedition found that out to their cost. They’re shattered, emotionally, even the women priests who ordinarily are much more able to cope with such an onslaught . . .’

  Another terrible thought then struck me.

  ‘We’re going to be judged,’ I said. ‘God will find me guilty.’

  One of the young men shook his head. ‘God only judges those who have entered the Afterlife by the usual path – one has to live one’s life out to the full before one can be judged. Who knows what a man or woman might do with the rest of their time? Bad things, good things? No, you have to die before your soul can come before the Lord for judgement.’

  We were stumbling along now as they led me up what appeared to be a long white lane lined with dark trees. I could see my old friend the bishop striding forth in the front, seemingly eager to reach our destination.

  ‘Will we see him?’ I asked. ‘Will we see – God?’

  The young man at his left hand answered. ‘One does not see God – one simply feels his presence, but here we are . . . oh, look,’ continued the young man in a voice devoid of any amazement or emotion, ‘an angel.’ I knew that all the other members of the expedition had undergone psychological training. An attempt at giving them some impermeability to emotion in order to witness but not to feel wonder.

  I however stopped and stared in great awe. There was a magnificent creature standing at the entrance to Heaven, so beautiful it made me want to cry. It was at least twelve feet tall and dressed only in a shimmering light that hung from its form as crystal water hangs from a high waterfall. Its face was beset with the loveliest features I had ever encountered, especially its unparalleled pair of brilliant eyes that shone with Fathomless Love.

  The angel lifted its pale hands in a gesture of welcome as the expedition walked under its arms to enter Heaven itself, where there were many such enthralling creatures at various tasks.

  There were also of course the souls of the dead who had been Good Enough during life on Earth to be permitted to enter into the High Kingdom.

  Here, I found to my cost, there was nothing but Love. In some forms it was drenched in sadness, in others swollen with happiness. There was Love of every type and measure, some which had been known down on Earth, others only experienced in the afterlife. Love filled the atmosphere as would moisture in a humid climate. It dripped from high places and hanging walls. It gushed from the gutters of Heaven and overflowed into its white-light lanes. It flowed along the pathways of the Eternal Kingdom and swilled under its bridges. It bloomed on the trees it blossomed in the flowers. It swirled as mist around our feet, it fell as glistening mizzle from above.

  Love rushed at me like floodwater, washing over me, pouring into every orifice, the black hole within me drawing it inside through every pore, swamping me, drowning me, until I thought my heart would explode with this overwhelming passion.

  I wrenched my wrists free from my guides in horror as Love Divine swamped me, the weight of it bearing down on me forcing me to my knees in an unfamiliar posture of genuflection. Wave on wave of it came at me, relentlessly thundering into me like combers on a coral reef. Even the spume from the very fringes blinded me and stunned my tongue, its cloying sweetness making me gag. I choked on a terrible excess of Heavenly Joy, desperately trying to find breath or words to cry for help, to tell the others I could not cope with such an onslaught of emotion. It was, in its undiluted form, simply unbearable for a still-living man.

  Around my kneeling form the other members of the expedition moved and gathered such information as they thought interesting. They stayed as close as possible to their sacrificial anode, as I drew the corrosive materials from the atmosphere around them, so that they were unsullied and able to work without too much distraction. Of course as with such devices on ships which always gathered a little of the salt and minerals from the surrounding seawater, some of the harmful ambience entered their souls and caused them discomfort. I could see that. But they were obviously able to bear the dimmed affects of this emotional attack and continue with their studies without harm.

  It was at least six hours, Earth time, before they were finished with their studies and ready to leave.

  I had collapsed long ago, the osmosis having completely overwhelmed my senses. Priests now carried me down the tunnel as a limp and pallid form drenched through-and-through with an excess of devastating feelings. Once out of Heaven’s influence it seeped back out through the pores of my skin as a viscous fluid, so intensely sweet-smelling it caused my bearers to vomit. One of them told me it was all they could do not to toss me down to Earth, as their successful mission returned along the same pioneer path we had taken aloft.

  When we finally reached Earth again I was placed in the tender hands of a nurse called Phylis. Phylis watched over me for a while but found she could not stand my lovingness, my expressions of utter joy. I spent many many months lying on my back, completely destroyed by the experience, a sodden useless sponge from which the Love could never be completely wrung. My soul had been corroded for good.

  I did recover enough to re-enter society again, but I found myself shunned by all men, and by most women. One or two women did try to bear my company, but the affects of my expedition to Heaven had left me with a scar in the form of involuntary emotional outpourings. They weren’t ugly, far from it, they were just indigestible to those without my experience. I could see faces around me turn sickly pale as my mellifluous words fell on their ears, cloying their feelings.

  I found myself alone and unwanted, which allowed me to concentrate fully on my own studies. Not long after I had recovered sufficiently to go out into the world again, I began visiting circuses to observe the vanguard of those who were intent on conquering us. In all of them there was always one clown who took the brunt of the punishment from the others, thus eliciting the sympathy of the audience. One clown who had pies thrown in his face, buckets of water tossed over him, was tripped and pushed, kicked and generally maltreated. The plight of this poor victim always drew the fixed attention of the audience, leaving his fellow clowns free to study the indigenes of this planet.

  Once, one of these creatures – red nose, tall yellow hat, baggy pantaloons and red braces, huge floppy boots – came by my seat on the edge of the ring. He looked into my face and I into his eyes. I saw the offworld strangeness there, clear and malevolent, just before he was hit on the head by a rubber hammer wielded by one of his kind.

  I nodded knowingly, speaking in undertones.

  ‘You, my friend,’ I whispered, ‘are the sacrificial anode.’

  He gave me a worried look, then hurried back to his tormentors.

  Moretta

  ‘My God, what an ugly-looking place,’ I said, staring at the photograph. ‘Lucy lived there?’

  ‘Moretta, not Lucy. She liked to call herself Moretta.’

  Elain
e, my niece, sighed and expanded on this piece of information. ‘It’s the name of one of those Venetian masks, that they wear at carnival time. Black of course. You know Moretta was into the macabre in a big way. Black clothes, black lacy gloves. All that sort of thing.’

  ‘A Goth?’

  ‘I suppose you could call her that, though I think she took the thing a step further than just a fashion statement. The house . . .’ Elaine paused. Elaine herself was a university professor. She lectured in economics at the LSE. She was worldly and no prude. ‘. . . you should see the house. You will see the house. It’s dreadful. Full of ghastly-looking furniture and ornaments straight out of a horror film. Dracula would have a hard time living there without tripping over a stuffed raven.’

  I peered again at the photo. It was, yes, a Gothic-looking mansion on the top of a cliff: dark, brooding, bristling with those corner spires that seem only to appear on seaside town houses. The ocean below it was caught in mid-flamenco. In the distance there was a ruin of sorts, beyond a tangle of brambles and gorse, half-hidden amongst some raggedy pines.

  ‘What’s this place?’ I asked, pointing.

  Elaine peeked over my shoulder. ‘Oh, the old leper colony. It’s no longer in use.’

  ‘I should bloody-well hope so.’

  ‘Well, Steve, there are still lepers in the world, you know. Probably in England. Is James going with you, by the way?’

  ‘Yes, you don’t think I’d go to a house like this,’ I flicked the photo, ‘without a bodyguard.’

  She laughed at that. The idea of a gentle creature like James being the tough heavy of the two of us was strongly ludicrous.

  ‘So, tell me again what happened.’

  Elaine sat down on one of her kitchen chairs.

  ‘About two months ago Moretta was found dead in her bedroom, in her bed, actually. It appeared she passed away in her sleep. However, the autopsy found signs of suffocation – oh, nothing like a pillow over her face, or anything like that – it seemed pressure had been put on her lungs. You know that torture they used to have in the Inquisition? And other Medieval institutions, I suppose. Where they laid heavy stones on the victim’s chest to crush them to death? Apparently that would have produced the same effect. There were no stones of course, nor heavy weights of any kind. Poor dear Moretta. Something had squeezed her to death, but what? The coroner’s verdict was left open.’

  ‘And Lucy – sorry, Moretta left the house to you in her will.’

  Elaine shrugged. ‘Yes, to me and Lloyd. My sister was quite conventional in lots of ways, you know, despite her eccentricities in others.’

  ‘And you and Lloyd didn’t want to sell the house?’

  ‘We did, but look at it! We’d need to find another Moretta to fall in love with it. And also you must know that the village of Dunwich has been slipping into the sea since the 1400s. There are streets of houses, churches, shops, all under water now. Some say you can hear the church bells sounding on stormy nights. Who would want to buy a house on a cliff in a place like that? You can see by the picture that it’s close to the edge. It won’t been too long before erosion claims another victim.’

  ‘So you rent it out as a themed holiday home, presumably to lovers of Gothic literature and movies. How do you look after it?’

  ‘An agency. They send in a cleaner and manage the clients.’

  ‘But not at the moment.’

  ‘Not since Mr and Mrs Clements died.’

  ‘In the same way as Moretta.’

  ‘Yes. They had been crushed to death. The couple were from the States. California I think. Anyway the police were called in, but nothing untoward was found.’

  ‘Beyond all the grisly contents.’

  We both stared at each other.

  Elaine said, ‘You don’t have to do this, Steve. We could just leave the place to fall down or drop into the sea. Lloyd and I don’t actually need the money. It would be a waste, but preventing more loss of life must be the priority.’

  ‘I know,’ I replied, smiling, ‘but what else have I got to do. I’m a retired old major. I don’t like fishing or golf. As an ex-army cryptographer, naturally what I like is puzzles. This will make a change from the daily crossword.’

  ‘Well, be careful.’

  ‘Just what your aunt Sybil used to say before I went to foreign climes with a gun over my shoulder. I’m still here.’

  ‘This is different and you know it.’

  ‘It’s intriguing, I know that.’

  ~

  By evening the next day, James and I were on the train heading towards Ipswich, where we intended hiring a car to drive to Dunwich. I like East Anglia, with its rugged evocative coastline. It has an oldy-worldly feel about it, especially places like Orford and Shingle Street, which are out on the very tip of the end of nowhere. And Dunwich, of course. Suffolk and Norfolk are a shotgun blast of villages, with only the odd town or two of concentrated life. They are said to be the least inhabited of the English counties. On top of this, once we were in the car we found out that there are very few street lights in Suffolk, even now in the 21st Century, in this amazing Technological Age.

  ‘Why is that, do you think?’ I asked James, as I concentrated on hurtling the vehicle into the pitch blackness.

  James was an ex-telecoms man, not BT, but a firm called Cable and Wireless, a company who operated mostly in countries abroad. We had met at the London-based ‘Hong Kong Society’, having both spent some years in that wonderful Oriental city, with its mystical undercurrents and effervescent street life. Suffolk was a million miles away from one of the most densely populated places on the planet.

  ‘The villagers don’t like street lights,’ he said, emphatically.

  ‘The reason being?’

  ‘Once you get street lights, the council starts putting in double yellow lines. They can’t do that without the street lights being there in the first place. You can’t see yellow lines in the dark.’

  ‘Interesting. Canny people, these Suffolk yokels. Ah, here we are in dear old Dunwich.’

  I drove down a slope and found myself in an unmade car park near the pebbled beach. All roads lead to the sea from Dunwich. We left the car there and with backpacks on and torches bravely beaming, we set off along a track which led up to the top of the cliffs.

  After about a quarter of a mile of walking along the path between the forest and the sea, we came to the house. Moretta’s place. I had looked up my niece’s new name on the internet. A moretta was an oval mask of black velvet with a fringe-veil at the bottom, worn all year round by women in Venice visiting convents, as well as at Carnival. Perfect for a drama queen like Lucy, who seemed to have taken up the macabre in her fifties the way some women take up voluntary work.

  It was indeed a ramshackle-looking place. Godforsaken, one would have called it, even in the 19th Century, when presumably it was built. The windows were small, twisted and mean, no doubt to keep out the fierce North Sea gales, and the misshapen doors had obviously been swollen by the constant dampness fed by sprigs of sea-spray coming up from the sea below. The chimneys were right out of Gormenghast, sprouting at odd angles from slick-tiled roof full of dips and rises. There were all sorts of porches and gables, and dormers, and a weather vane shaped like a terrified man in flight. My torchlight ranged over lumps and bumps in the exterior, which at one time had been intended for decoration, but now looked like canker growths and galls on oak branches. A wind from the ocean was causing a wild stirring amongst the glass panes, loose in their frames. They rattled and shook as if trying to escape their prisons. In silhouette, with the starlit sea shining behind it, I have to say the dwelling looked quite uninviting.

  ‘Let’s go an stay at a pub tonight,’ I suggested, ‘and come back in the morning.’

  ‘Scaredy-cat,’ replied James, but he turned as he did so and we headed back along the track towards the village.

  I was indeed a little unnerved. There are those who expect ex-army majors to be pragmatists with lit
tle sensitivity in their bones. Actually army majors are as mixed in temperament and character as the rest of the population. There are those who have no imagination, no depths to their soul, so to speak. But I was not one of them. I had a very fertile mind and had owned a quixotic streak since childhood. The army needs both kind of men: those who walk in straight lines and those who like to look around the corner first. Since Hong Kong, where I had met Chinese businessmen who I greatly admired, men who firmly believed in the supernatural, I was not always ready to discount an aberrant solution to a problem that did not appear to have a logical one.

  So, yes, my little friend was right, I was scared. I had a healthy respect for the state of fear. You do not ignore it just because you want to look a bold, nerveless commander frightened of nothing. Too many of those types have led their men into terrible firefights and lost not only their own lives, but also the life of many a good ordinary soldier.

  James and I found a goodly tavern, had a nice meal, then went to bed.

  The following morning we returned to the house. In the light of day it didn’t look so forbidding. In fact it looked a little ludicrous and I mentally chastised myself for the previous evening’s show of funk. This time we used the giant door key to enter a world of dried bats dangling from cotton threads, stuffed ravens, strangely-dressed mannequins, books on the occult including fiction by Bram Stoker and other predictable authors, hats and masks, puppets, weirdly-shaped objects that might have been anything or nothing, purple walls and doors, cobwebs real and unreal, spiders real and unreal, stuffed rats, instruments of torture and degradation, and a whole host of paraphernalia connected with the dark arts and gruesome magic. The musty smell almost knocked us over each time we entered a new room. Clearly Moretta had spent a lifetime collecting the black, dusty carrion of human endeavour, which must have been such a comfort to her in her loneliness and solitude.

  James, in offering me his feelings on the place, also decided to go for irony.

  ‘Nice and cosy,’ he murmured. ‘There’s a very pleasant under-odour of alley cats. Lunch?’