What Manner of Man: Chapter 12 🦇

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LETTER TO VERA ARDELIAN

Dated May 1, 1950. 

Dearest Sister,

I wonder — what is it about this place that breathes life into my memories, dead and forgotten for so many years? Doubtless you recall my old school friend, Monty; he spent some summer vacations with us at the cottage (though, as I recall, Father rather disapproved.) It must be fifteen years or more, now, since the sad end of those summer days. 

In my mind, I’m back in the library; the soft, summer rain tapping gently against the window. You’re reading through a scene with us to help Monty and myself rehearse for the school production of As You Like It. Even my lines come back to me — “Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.”

I was never much of a Rosalind, but Monty excelled as Orlando. (For months, I recall, you both called me Ganymede.) How many afternoons we spent that summer dreaming the little apple orchard outside our window was the Forest of Arden. We were so full of youth, and everything seemed possible.

At times, in this place, I do feel rather like one who has been banished to live in the wilderness. 

Disappointingly, the plan which I mentioned in my last letter to explore the ruins beneath the manor did not amount to much. I had hardly made it any distance before, absurd as it sounds, I fainted! The air down there did not agree with me, it seems. Fortunately Lord Vane came to find me before long and no harm was done. I had some rather queer dreams, but I suppose that’s only natural under the circumstances. It was a disquieting experience, but I am resting and I’m sure I shall be well soon.

Swallow’s Rest is no Arden, Vera. Would you laugh if I said I thought the island itself might be cursed? That — No, never mind. It’s all too fantastic.

I do hope you are well. 

Your loving brother,
Victor Ardelian

JOURNAL ENTRY

May 2, 1950.

What a coward I am proving myself to be; I simply cannot bring myself to face him. (All because of a mere dream! An immaterial vision with no basis in reality.) I have kept him out by telling him that I’m ill — a chill, perhaps, caught in the damp passages — and I don’t wish to expose him to any unnecessary risk.

Was it truly a mere dream, though, when I’m quite certain that both sleep and vision alike were demonic in origin? No — I must not shy away from blame. The demon laid the seed, perhaps, and may even have induced me to sleep; but it was not all his doing. It was I who broke; whose will was not enough to master myself and turn away from temptation. I have at last seen my demon, fool that I am. 

Oh, how wrong I was — how arrogant to ever have thought I might be strong enough to overcome that dark master, who has such perfect knowledge of my weaknesses. Would that I had not needed to learn this lesson in so terrible a way. Every night, now, I fight against debasing myself again at the memory of it. I have not yet committed any grave sin (it was still a dream, after all) but I can feel myself slipping.

I must not allow myself to wallow in melancholy. To be tempted is not a sin, and what he shows me is not real. I will resist.

JOURNAL ENTRY

May 3, 1950.

Two full days now I have kept myself hidden away, too ashamed even to show my face. I have not spoken a word to Lord Vane except through the door of my chamber. 

The tapestry grows intolerable to me. I feel sure that all the monstrous things that creep across its surface come alive while I sleep and gather round the foot of my bed. How can I hope to beseech God when I am continuously under the gaze of such an object?

I can hardly bear to look at it, and yet it dominates nearly the entire end of the room, so that I cannot so much as glance in that direction without seeing it. It mocks me — all those beastly figures leering at me, their faces contorted in demoniacal mirth. I know it is only my mind playing tricks on me, yet I cannot drive it from my thoughts.

JOURNAL ENTRY

May 5, 1950.

I know I shouldn’t have done it but this evening, in a moment of weakness, I took out my pent-up frustrations on the tapestry and struck at the foul thing with violence. The result, however, was that my hand met the wall behind with an unexpected, hollow thud. Not at all the sound of an object hitting stone. 

I pushed the heavy fabric aside, and there, in the wall directly opposite my bed, I found a door! For a moment all I could do was stare in amazement. It was a little troubling to think that this entrance to my chamber has lain here quietly all these many nights — but I know the feeling was purely irrational, for nothing could possibly have come through it during the time I’d been at Whithern Hall. The door, which was rather small, was supported by a pair of venerable iron hinges — rusted with age and thickly coated with the dust of long disuse. It had clearly not been disturbed for a long time. If anything had entered this way, it could not have been more substantial than a ghost.

My curiosity was irrepressible. For, though I felt the chill breath of fear at my heart, I found it was not sufficient to dissuade me. I needed to know what lay beyond.

Though unbolted, it took some doing to shift the door; whether due the sheer mass of it, or merely the rusted hinges, I’m not sure. With my full weight against it, though, by inches it began to swing inward — exposing a dark, precipitous stairwell leading down. 

I took up a lamp and began to make a careful descent. The passage I found at the foot of the iron stairs was just large enough for me to stand upright, though black as the depths of a cave. My first thought was that it must connect to the passages below, but I am less certain now about anything to do with the business. 

Having been back and forth along the corridors beyond, I now suspect that, in this house’s more prosperous days, they were likely used by less scrupulous persons to keep clandestine appointments in one another’s private apartments after hours. That was the majority of what I found — a series of bedchambers, more or less equivalent to my own.

This area, though exceedingly dark, was wholesome enough, but further along came a larger stairwell. I never made it to the bottom, so I do not know where precisely it led, but some quality of the air that drafted up from those depths caused me to shiver. I began down these stairs, each footstep trembling with hesitation — until, part way down, I came to another door.

Behind this I found what I can only describe as a sort of lumber room full of treasures. Lord Vane’s ancestors must have used this room to store their most secret valuables. The bulk of the space was actually filled with shelves, boxes, and loose piles of documents. Behind these, however, were heaped-up quantities of beautiful and priceless things of all eras. Amid the jumble I saw brooches and diadems made of silver, set with turquoise and lustrous pearls; gold-handled weapons of curious and subtle design; and countless boxes of ancient coins. I noticed the curved spine of a golden harp, and, beside it, what looked like some sort of strange gold headdress, halo-like. Somewhere in the muddle glinted the delicate mechanism of an orrery, its cosmos half-obscured by a landslide of toppled papers.

I took nothing, of course. (I may be a fool but I am not so foolish that I don’t know better than to do that.) No, I hardly touched these treasures, but I could not resist the possibility of learning more about this situation I find myself in. All the treasure in the world would not have been as tempting to me as the laden shelves and packets of dated correspondence that had been strewn so haphazardly around the chamber.

Even now, I scarcely know what to make of the image I pieced together from all that I was able to read by the light of my small lamp (replacing all as exactly as possible when I was done.) Those of the letters that were dated went back hundreds of years — uncounted generations of Lord Vane’s family. I did not have to read long before a perceptible pattern emerged. Time and again the subject returns — they wanted Roman Catholics, particularly clergy. They entertained Catholic heads of state for this purpose, building entire wings of the manor to accommodate them. There are records here of renovations undertaken to make Whithern Hall one of the great destinations of its day, and all of it seemingly to lure my kind into the spider’s web. I can hardly guess what it means — only that, if all this is connected with my experience, (and I do not see how it could fail to be,) — the demon, whatever it is, must be in some manner hereditary; a kind of family curse.

I am calm enough now, but, as I read on, the creeping implications of this woke near-panic in me, and presently I fled the place in terror. As I returned to my room, I bolted the door and put the tapestry back in its accustomed place. I have, furthermore, placed a desk and some chairs before the sinister door for good measure. In spite of all the dust and cobwebs, I feel my rest may be more peaceful now that it is bolted and guarded. I need no more ghosts to haunt me in the night.

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-St John

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