Tenebrae - A Ghost Story
from the diary of Dr. Telemachus Riordan c.1889
October 13th-
It is now approaching Seven in the morning. For days now, longer, I have been beaten about the head by my strange situation. A situation that, one way or the other, will be drawn to resolution today - it must be so.
I am writing only in the patches of sunlight that the blinds are casting onto my desk. I've only been at this a brief while and already the symmetry of the lines has lapsed.
The light refracts and hazes against the large mirror that sits to my left - by three-quarter closing my eyes all becomes colours and the page before me dissolves into the matrix.
I'm writing this, but to write serves little or no purpose. No human truth can be recorded in this way, no human feeling replicated, neither love, hate nor humour or tragedy. I must cling to the facts or else be lost amongst the converging seas of allegory and poeticism. Know then that, for some months now, my wife has lain dead. The circumstances of her death do not concern you - no, nor the nature of our relationship. A happy marriage no more certainly begets an unhappy widower than an unhappy marriage a joyful one. The pain I felt must have been equal to that of the most devoted spouse, even though I was never one such. Her love for me was based, at least in part, upon a belief that she could save me from the various self-abuses that marked my later youth and early manhood. Dissolute I was, but to her sympathetic eye I became "misled" and "unhappy" - a true victim of circumstance.
It was under her watchful eye, and with the aid of her family purse that I was able to establish my practice on the site of the old pharmacy on St. James' Square in Whitechapel. I was able, finally, to use the skills that had, at such pains, been taught me and began once more to stake a claim to humanity. Perhaps you may think me weak, but I was not so to lapse, as I did, into dissolution once more - I was strong. It is strength, not weakness that makes a man leave a beautiful woman in his marital bed, her face crossed with shadows, to seek out the foulest, oldest hag that dares to still ply her trade on the streets. To gaze into the face of salvation and still turn one's back - I say again, it was strength.
My wife's passing had a profound effect upon me, it could not be called "sobering", for seldom was I such, but was more anaesthetising. The Laudanum-induced visions that had previously engaged me now played out before me as upon a theatrical stage - my presence in the audience precluded my involvement. It was frustrating, and in vain I sought for yet murkier thrills in the more foul corners of London. I coupled with prostitutes in the shit-stenching gutters in the docks; I would stalk the streets, waiting for some respectable looking character (male or female), would approach them with a smile as if to make some enquiry about the time before seizing their arm and forcibly injecting them with the same drug that now failed to thrill me. These unfortunates I would either discard or take home as the fancy seized me.
My practice naturally faltered and then closed, leaving me with time to go wandering. I would leave the house as early as was necessary to be aboard the first train out of Euston - and ride it to some arbitrary, though usually rural, locale. Here would I wander and, amongst the continual vibration and hum of nature I found something close to peace. The hallucinogens began to impact upon me once more and though these trips, lasting as they would for days, would sometimes leave me half-starved and near-dead, they were my sole sustaining pleasure in those dark days.
Ha! I say "those days", but of course, "those days" are "these days" still. I must now begin to detail the nature of my predicament. There was a peculiar spot in Canterbury that I grew to like, a long series of pitted and fallow fields that, one reached after half a days walk from the station. It must have belonged to someone, but never another living soul did I see there. It was a spot of the most perfect desolation and I suppose I hardly need add that at its centre was a large and twisted Cedar-wood that had, at some indeterminate point past, been set alight. It was now all black and grey and, in the rain, rivers of darkness would flow down upon my forehead. After one such rainfall a week or so ago, I suddenly felt alert. This was strange, for usually my binges led only to somnolence. My spine felt strangely compressed, as if two metal hands had broken the skin around it, clasped hold and wrenched it upright. I stood, in a state of absolute tension. Each hair on my body was on end and my skin was taught. My mood remained neutral, until I became aware of a presence in the distance - a figure. Have you ever dropped a small amount of black paint into a clear pot of water? The slow, creeping sense of profound distress spread through me in precisely this way - diffusing and touching every inch of me. I screamed out loud and fixed the apparition with a stare, though it made no move to advance or retreat. For a long time I stood watching the form - pinkish, even in the darkness - and waited for my body to relax.
I knew that it was no ordinary person that awaited me in the near distance. It was something dreadfully wrong - something base and unspeakable. Gradually I began to advance upon the apparition. As I approached I made out the form of an undressed woman - or the shape of such a woman, for there were no features. Certainly there was hair - long and brown - and eyes - though they seemed closed. But no mouth nor nose was there upon the face. Like some sort of wax dummy it stood, in the light drizzle of the early morning. Tufts of grass stuck up between its toes and the arms hung loosely about its sides. Gripped by an unspeakable terror, but compelled by some force I know not what, I reached out a hand to its neck. The neck was warm, too warm for naked skin at such an hour and I pressed my whole hand against it. Immediately the thing changed in such horrible ways as I can barely relate. The bare skin that formed most of its face began to tighten and relax, as if some unseen mouth were trying to breathe beneath it. This proved to be the case as, where there had been none, a slit opened out into a cruel smile that revealed a set of perfectly formed, if sharp, teeth. Then the eyes rolled open and looked forward with such anger that I struggle to describe- they were pure amber, with neither pupil nor iris.
Still though, it remained motionless and my attention returned to its neck. A welt had formed in a perfect simulacrum of my hand. This welt began to throb and swell with blood. Aghast I watched as the skin broke violently open, releasing a torrent of blood. Such a torrent as I thought would never end. I reached in desperation to seize the thing around the waist and lay it down - meaning that my face was pressed close to the thing's. It tenderly leant forward and pressed its lipless mouth to mine, leaving a trail of thickly clotted blood on my moustaches. In my arms the thing began to crumple and collapse as its innards continued to flow via the neck wound. Suddenly the reality of the situation seized me and I flung the remains of the thing to the ground and took to my heels. I was not alone though, for with every step I felt some ominous presence keeping easy pace with my frenzied stride.
These events, as you may well imagine, have lingered with me these last days. The more I think of the strange features of my unearthly companion that night, the more they resemble those of my late wife - though they surely cannot. I have been overcome by a sexual desire for this thing - this non-woman. The thought both repulses me and fills me with dread, for there can be no happy outcome to a reunion with my companion - but some part of me is compelled to return to the spot with what end I do not know, and quail at imagining.
I will go today.
I will go today.
I will go today.
Yay, though I walk the Earth as you
Do not be deceived
I am inhuman and untrue.
- Gaizka de Rochemback
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from the Daily Telegraph December 23rd, 1889.
SENSATIONAL MURDER OF
WIDOWED DOCTOR
Canterbury- police hunting for Dr. Telemachus Riordan -
who was reported as missing by his mother-in-law over a
month a go - yesterday made a gruesome discovery that has
brought the episode to a sad and mystifying end.
TERROR
Police constable Henry Mullins was examining an area of
countryside near the hamlet of Wyddishom when he found
a body, its face contorted in terror, with several severe
wounds to the "lower body". Bizarrely, the police at first
assumed that Riordan (for he was quickly identified as such
by his mother-in-law, Sicily Bradshaw) had been the
victim of a bestial assault due to a pattern of lacerations and
bite marks that marked the corpse. This theory was later
discounted due to patterns of bruising that more accurately
recalled physical abuse by another person.
MYSTERY
Mullins was attracted to the spot by a trail of smoke from a
smouldering Cedar-wood tree, though there had been heavy
rainfall for the preceding week. The exact circumstances of
the doctor's death are likely to remain a mystery - as indeed
were those surrounding the passing of Caroline Riordan, who
died this August last. Your correspondent contemporaneously
revealed details of the grisly account - police were only able to
assemble one half of Mrs. Riordan's earthly remains. She was
assumed to be a victim of an unprovoked assault whilst returning
to her home from a Church committee meeting.
HORROR
Mrs. Bradshaw, herself a Widow, has reacted to these events in
an extreme manner. Upon hearing the details of this latest family
tragedy, she collapsed into an hysterical fever, her recovery from
which is by no means assured. This series of macabre events that
have affected the Riordan and Bradshaw families now appears to
be at an end - for no member of either family remains living or (in
the case of Mrs. Bradshaw) sane. The police investigation is
ongoing.
By J.L. Cranfield
Copyright January 2006
