Year: 2018 (Page 1 of 11)

Frozen in Time – 2018 Year End Edition

The end of 2018 is upon us. This has been a trying year, world-wide. [Insert endless political rants.] However, it’s been a pretty great year for new releases in the dark ambient genre. We are so proud to have spent another year with the dark ambient community. We really can’t thank you all enough for riding along on this journey, which started a few years ago as little more than a side-project. We hope to have another productive year ahead of us in 2019 for the dark ambient community.

It’s not all been great this year though. As the world gets more troubling, more and more people find themselves in dire straits. The wage gaps between rich and poor have never been greater, on a global scale. As we further divide, people are finding less and less “entertainment money”, instead focusing on the essentials of life and family. While this is absolutely understandable, I’d like for people to reflect, going into this new year, on what aspects of our underground community are absolutely essential to you. If, say, your favorite label closed up shop tomorrow, how would you feel? As we spend less on music, the labels in turn have less to work with for future releases. They begin digging into their personal savings to make a release happen, or close up shop for good, seeing that they are no longer able to keep the business afloat. Decide what is important to you, and instead of that Starbucks coffee, or new movie on Amazon, maybe think about directing that money toward buying a new release from your favorite label/mailorder. I am positive that every single one of them that I cover will appreciate this more than you could imagine! 

As usual, I have let this edition build up for a few months. So there is a ton of news here for you to absorb. Don’t try it all at once!  Bookmark the page and come back over the coming weeks as you have time to absorb/discover more new releases. Every single album I’ve covered in this list is, in my opinion, absolutely worth hearing/buying! Without further ado, here’s the news!

Michael Barnett

New Publications On This Is Darkness

Sodom & Chimera – Interview with film director James Quinn
Arktau Eos – Interview
Lars von Trier – The House That Jack Built – Movie Review
Hector Meinhof – Interview
Martin Bladh – Marty Page – Book Review
The Inner Sanctum – Dark Ambient Vlog: Episode 6 & Episode 7
Arthur Machen – The Recluse of Bayswater (1895) Full Novella Text
Algernon Blackwood – The Willows (1907) Full Novella Text
Cadabra Records – The Call of Cthulhu – Review
Senketsu No Night Club – Shikkoku – Review
VelgeNaturlig – Kundalini कुण्डलिनी – Review
Shinkiro – Archive: Volumes I-III – Review
Manifesto – Hive – Review
Atrium Carceri – Codex – Review
False Mirror – SIGINT – Review
Sysselmann – Live At Mir – Review
Arktau Eos – Erēmos – Review
Dahlia’s Tear – Through The Nightfall Grandeur – Review
Endless Chasm – Saṃsāra Eternal – Review

Dark Indie Films

Sodom & Chimera Productions
I discovered Sodom & Chimera a while back when they were working on Flesh of the Void (2017). They are currently preparing Tears of Apollo for its premiere, and meanwhile, Daughter of Dismay is going into post-production.

We have just published an interview with James Quinn, auteur behind these productions. Check out the interview here.

Tears of Apollo – Teaser (2018 Horror Short)
The story of Tears of Apollo, a throwback flick to low budget horror films from the 70s, revolves around a suicidal woman, who, during the apocalypse, meets just the person in what are supposed to be her last minutes on earth that no one should ever meet in a situation like such, let alone at all. Morbid doom ensues.
Shot on 16mm.
Find out more at sodomchimera.com.

The Quantum Terror – 1st Trailer Unveiled
The twin sister and ex-boyfriend of a missing grad student lead their friends down a labyrinth of dark tunnels inhabited by an alien entity, in search of her. A story of terror and madness, in the tradition of H.P. Lovecraft, David Lynch, and old school practical effects.
Directed by Christopher Cooksey (Total Moonlight Productions)

Music Videos

Apoptose – time-lapse city
Released over the summer, “time-lapse city” is a music video for a track from their latest album Die Zukunft.

Ashtoreth & No One – Redemption (Teaser)
“Redemption is a remarkable collaborative effort between Belgian artists No One and Ashtoreth. Ashtoreth improvised a track and then No One worked his magic. He took the track, decomposed it, and recomposed it, with soundscape, drones, field recordings and arrangements added. “Redemption” grew organically out of the ashes of the Ashtoreth improv into a thrilling and utterly gripping work of art, making the one hour trip a truly enthralling, yet galling redemption.”

Ashtoreth & Grey Malkin – Pilgrim
This video is for the track “Pilgrim” from the new release of the same name on Cursed Monk.

Black Mara Records – Palaces of Darkness (Video Teaser)
Black Mara presents the dark ambient / folk compilation “Palaces Of Darkness”. Featuring:
Corona Barathri, Ad Lux Tenebrae, Nubiferous, Sol Mortuus, Mrako-Su.

Empty Chalice – Treblinka’s Snow
From the forthcoming album, title and release date TBA, the first official video of the track called “Treblinka’s Snow”!

Gamardah Fungus – Crossing the Wasteland (Album Teaser)

Gamardah Fungus – Immortality
This is by no means a new track or album. This released back in 2013, but Gamardah Fungus found a few extra physical copies and I revisted the album. This music video, I think, is quite impressive. I had never seen it before and assume most of you haven’t either, so I thought I should share it! Screenplay and lead actor are Igor Yalivec (Gamardah Fungus). He shared editing and directing duties with Antoine Miroshnichenko, who also operated and edited the short.

Iluiteq – A Prayer for the Departed

Ivan Kamaldinov – Inreversed
Bonus track from “Unrest”.

M. Kardinal & Monocube – Apparitions: III. Substratum
“III. Substratum: An inner garden, a sacrament place for the one who yearns and seeks the place to restore themselves from the shattered cosmos. Slowly emerging into the light – one’s nature reveals itself exposing the beauty of a human mind’s substratum. Imagine a Hortus Amoris, which provides bewildering path into inner life and having a cryptic dialogue with themselves.

APPARITIONS: III. Substratum, the performance of M. Kardinal & Monocube is the third part of APPARITIONS series to reflect and embody elusive happenings beyond human’s perception using analog technique. With progression APPARITIONS becomes ominous and bleak, the collaboration of M. Kardinal and Monocube is an immersive and compelling work, seamlessly bound together in an embrace of beautiful darkness.”

Mebitek – Chi No Torrat & What I Have Lost

Moral Order – Dead Bodies
The new album Krypteia by Moral Order is due for release on Malignant Records soon!

MZ.412 – Svartmyrkr – (Album Teaser)
MZ.412 ‘Svartmyrkr’ CD/LP (CSR257CD/LP) Out 8th February 2019 on Cold Spring

Shibalba – Stars Al-Med Hum (Album Trailer)
Ritual ambient powerhouse Shibalba are back with a new album on Algonia Records.

Tim32 – [5[T]Н[I]3[M]2]

Listen / Download here: https://pantheophania.bandcamp.com/album/5-t-i-3-m-2

Vanessa Sinclair & Carl Abrahamsson – Live @ Fylkingen – 14 Sept 2018
Vanessa Sinclair & Carl Abrahamsson, live at Fylkingen, Stockholm, September 14th 2018. Live mix by Kali Malone and Per Åhlund. For more information, please visit: patreon.com/vanessa23carl and highbrow-lowlife.com

Misc. News

Endarkenment – Dark Ambient Newsletter
Danica Swanson has started a subscription-based dark ambient newsletter. She will be focused on specific themes and artists, instead of a standard news website like This Is Darkness. Her first exclusive edition included an in-depth interview with Ulf Söderberg of Sephiroth. Danica’s enthusiasm for his work, as well as the rarity of an interview with him, makes this an essential read for fans of this artist and other CMI era musicians!
Last month’s edition featured another in-depth interview, this time with Pär and Åsa Boström of Hypnagoga Press, and this month Swanson speaks with Northumbria!
Sign up for her newsletter at: https://endarkenment.substack.com

Noise Receptor Journal – Issue No.6 Pre-orders Available!
A highly respected and long-standing journalist in the post-industrial world for over two decades, Richard Stevenson first ran the Spectrum Magazine and later would change name and format to Noise Receptor Journal. Stevenson, as I said, is highly respected in the community and I have gathered a decent bit of my knowledge from the pages of his zines. Also, keep a look out for a Spectrum Compendium, all issues of Spectrum compiled into a single book.
“Noise receptor journal is a specialist micro print endeavour which constitutes the physical manifestation of the noise receptor website, but contains new interview and art content to differentiate it from the already published web-based reviews.”
https://noisereceptor.bigcartel.com

Events

Phobos X – An Evening of Dark Ambient Music
On 16 March 2019 in Sophienkirche Wuppertal, the Phobos Festival will have its tenth event. This year’s line-up looks to be glorious with performances from: Arktau Eos, Circular, TeHOM and Vortex. Martin Stürtzer, the organizer behind Phobos, asked me to mention that the event this year will be held in the old church, not the same place as last year’s event!
Pre-sale tickets and info are available at www.phelios.de

New Dark Ambient Releases

A Cryo Chamber Collaboration – New Album Released (Cryo Chamber – CD/Digital)
“A 2 hour dark soundscape album recorded by 20 ambient artists to pay tribute to H.P. Lovecraft.
Dark sounds from dreamy dimensions to never ending cursed forests. Join us in the ritual of lust for the Black Goat of the Woods.
Shub-Niggurath is an Outer God (or Outer Goddess) in the pantheon. She is a perverse fertility deity.
An enormous mass which extrudes black tentacles, slime-dripping mouths, and short, writhing goat legs. Small creatures are continually spat forth by the monstrosity, which are either consumed into the miasmatic form or escape to some monstrous life elsewhere.”

Alphaxone & Xerxes the Dark – New Album Released (Cryo Chamber – CD/Digital)
“Alphaxone & Xerxes the Dark brings an unsettling space collaboration to Cryo Chamber with Aftermath.
Dark swells, pulsating shimmers and endless reverberations greets you on this dark space exploration album.”

Alone in the Hollow Garden – New Album Released (Digital Only)
“Septem Spectris Metallum” was channeled as an incursion into the alchemic realm of the Seven Noble Metals and their esoteric correspondences found in every manifestation emerged from the all encompassing Fabric of the Stars.

All rituals were recorded live, only with the aid of a modular synth system and of a few metal piezo devices self made by A.I.T.H.G., with no overdubbing and other unnecessary embellishments and with the clear intention of keeping the alchemical flame of creation and dissolution in the purest, natural and spontaneous possible form.”

Ambiguous – New Album Released (aliensproduction – CD/Digital)
“One of the darkest Aliens production releases is momentarily actual thanks to this gentleman. Igor aka Ish and his devious side returns after a longer silence under the wings of Aliens Production. Once again Ambiguous is opening the gates of the mystery where is no boredom to dig and the remains of dead souls over which the sacred dust is decomposing will alive. Movies atmospheres are a strong source of energy and pulsating percussions shifts this piece into industrially tuned proportions. Atmospheric backdrop is wrapped in scary areas in which on the places embrace ancient testaments and abstract images. Painful but beautiful beginning of the end where various testaments and undiscovered corners meet.”

Apoptose – New Album Released (Tesco – CD/Digital)
“In the four years of production Apoptose selected a wide range of different singers for this album. Most outstanding is classical trained tenor Daniel Sans. He sings “What Power Art Thou” – a song that was composed by Henry Purcell in the late 17th century. Apoptose and Sans preserve the complex harmonic structure of the original translating it into a breathtaking five minute ride in apoptotic soundspheres. They succeed in conjuring up Purcell’s “cold genius” that had already fascinated legendary countertenor Klaus Nomi in the 1980s. Other voices on “Die Zukunft” include the gloomy spoken words of the advance single “Time-lapse City”, the lost girl’s voice on the title track and two female singers on “Dornen”. Consistent with the album title Apoptose does not look back, but is heading for novel territories within the dark ambient music genre.”

Argyre Planitia – New Album Released (Essentia Mundi – CD/Digital)
“Dystopian dark ambient – unplug from the network while still possible. The version of our future connecting strong AI, IoT and cyberhumans and a dark outcome…thou shall escape!”

Arktau Eos – New Album Released (Aural Hypnox – CD only)
Check out our review here! Highly recommended!
Arktau Eos unveil a new album, Eremos, one of their most involved and intense creations. While intentionally minimal on the surface, layer upon layer of subtle, haunting, and evocative sounds are slowly revealed to the attentive listener. Eremos aims at nothing less than the total transition of the listener to the desert realms implied by the title. Old synthesizers and ritualistic acoustic elements are seamlessly blended with even more obscure aural phenomena, including field recordings done in Northern Finland and the untamed steppes of Mongolia.

As has been the testimony of wise men and women of all faiths, solitude bestows its own distinct gifts upon the seeker, a process here treated in less intimate terms than on the voice-led Catacomb Resonator. Eremos is more expansive; the desert that opens before the listener is not a locus of temptations or simple retreat, but a vivid inner mindscape of dramatic confrontations and transformations between flora, fauna, stellar matter, earth, and stone. Gradually they shed away the humanness in its most banal sense, until man identifies with the scorpionic voice of power that carries to the ends of the earth – and cosmos.”
Order here.

Ashtoreth & No One – New Album Released (Consouling Sounds – CD/Digital)
“Redemption” is a remarkable collaborative effort between Belgian artists No One and Ashtoreth. Ashtoreth improvised a track and then No One worked his magic. He took the track, decomposed it, and recomposed it, with soundscape, drones, field recordings and arrangements added. “Redemption” grew organically out of the ashes of the Ashtoreth improv into a thrilling and utterly gripping work of art, making the one hour trip a truly enthralling, yet galling redemption.”

Ashtoreth & Grey Malkin – Preorders Available (Cursed Monk – CD/Digital)
Pilgrim is the first in a series of collaborative works between ASHTORETH and Grey Malkin, that was initially released as a limited (50 ex.) CD by UK based house of wyrd Reverb Worship in June 2018.
The album sold out within a week and got much acclaimed in the music press.

Cober Ord – New Album Released (Cyclic Law – CD/Digital)
“3rd album, and first for Cyclic Law, by the enigmatic French Pyrenean ritual ambient act created by Yann Hagimont (Habsyll, « O », Ecce Homo) and Yann Arexis (La Breiche, Stille Volk, Ihan). Recorded in various natural locations throughout the mystical Pyrenean landscape, in ancient temple caves, sacred mounds and ruins using an array of acoustic and electronic sources and local field recordings. Cover Ord functions as an ode to lost ruins and mineral elements, chants summoning the rising of nature, a post-modern ritual for times of ecocide. They’ve weaved and channeled an exceptional soundtrack exploring the confines of matter, spirit, time and space.”

Dahlia’s Tear – New Album Released (Cryo Chamber – CD/Digital)
Read our review here.
After 6 years of silence this veteran dark ambient producer is finally back with a new album. Through the Nightfall Grandeur is a dreamy and multi-layered melancholic journey through worlds both inner and outer.
The album revolves around a spiritual awakening where the shattering loneliness of the protagonist fuels the search for meaning. We follow through moonbathed nights on a journey through dark abysses, snowy mountains and desolate moors.
A detailed and layered album that takes many repeat listens to fully explore all the complexities, one mystery at a time unto enlightenment.

Daina Dieva – New Album Released (Digital Only)
“At the moment Daina Dieva aims at creating sounds that would become a shared experience between her and the listener. Based in Lithuania, she is interested in dystopia, non-human futures, dehumanising technologies, postindustrial landscapes, capitalocene, catastrophe, (green) activism and alternatives to the current state of affairs.”
‘hibou’ was created for Kaunas Magazine and consists of a plethora of sounds collected in the second half of 2018. Collected sounds include: bridge, under the bridge, freedom avenue, castle roundabout, night busses, sea st., street piano, sliced piano, construction site, mindaugas ave., cranes, night, keeping watch, silenceless spaces.

Dead Melodies – Preorder Available (Cryo Chamber – CD/Digital)
Dead Melodies presents us a dark cinematic space album with Primal Destination.
Deep drones, sweeping atmospheres and a mysterious setting creates an immersive setting for this sci-fi journey.

Desiderii Marginis – New Album Released (Cyclic Law – LP/CD/Digital)
“Long awaited new material by one of Sweden’s most revered Dark Ambient acts.?“Vita Arkivet” translates from Swedish as “The White Archive” and is an official document detailing ones funeral arrangements. In death our existence is whitewashed, the slate wiped clean. We start all over and we bring nothing with us were we go. We lose the agency of our own memory and leave it for those left behind to attend to, to continue our story, to write our eulogy. Vita is also the latin word for Life, so the meaning could also be “The Life Archive”. White is the colour of the casket lining, the plaster death masks and the walls of the chapel, it is the colour of the first and last pages. What is kept in between the covers of our life archives? This record is a personal reflection and manifestation of that process, the loss and the great detachment from life, from others, and from ourselves.”

Distorted Void – New Compilation Released (Distored Void – Digital Only)
This latest compilation on Distorted Void is a nice combination of some of my personal favorite under-rated dark ambient artists, as well as others I’ve not yet discovered. Definitely worth checking out to find some new talent!

Dronny Darko & Apollonius – New Album Released (ΠΑΝΘΕΟΝ – CDr/Digital)
“In the darkest places, there’s always a light. Hidden, untouched yet always omnipresent since it is its nature. The deepest sea levels, the vastness of space, the darkest corners of the human soul. It’s always there, waiting for the call, eager to unfold and to show an unexpectedly wide horizon of possibilities. On the fundamental level, it’s not even light as we know it – just feasibility of action, of motion and creation. We all have it. It’s a boundless sea and we are always on its shores.”

Embers Below Zero – New Album Released (Sombre Soniks – Digital)
“Urban Witchcraft tells the stories written on the walls of abandoned buildings. The tales of strange rituals performed on the last floors of glass skyscrapers. The stories of digital sorcery and of the nightsky that looks just as beautiful as it did centuries ago. While making this album, I had in my mind the image of a XXI century Jonathan Strange taking a mescaline trip on a summer night in Tangier. Just like the debut, “The Oblivion Sea”, released by Shimmering Moods Records, with atmospheric ambient as a foundation, this release derives from various types of experimental electronic music – from noise to dub – to build a passage between alchemy and technology.”

Endless Melancholy – New Album Released (Dronarivm – Vinyl/CD/Digital)
“‘Fragments of Scattered Whispers’ is a collection of soft piano melodies and transparent ambient textures, gently flowing one into another. On this album Endless Melancholy continues with the tape sound explorations, started on his previous album ‘The Vacation’, but in a new, more distinctive way. On this occasion, Oleksiy teamed up with Krzysztof Sujata (known for his musical outfit Valiska), who did some outstanding job on processing the tracks through different kinds of tape recorders and mastering them afterwards. Accompanied by a stunning artwork by an acclaimed artist Gregory Euclide, ‘Fragments of Scattered Whispers’ is meant to evoke hazy reminiscences from the deepest corners of listener’s mind, like a blurry photograph suddenly falling out of an old book.”

Experiment#508 – New Album Released (attenuation circuit – Digital)
The Hollow Ward is a dark ambient that lies firmly on the more experimental side of the genre. Staticy washes of sound and synthetic noises merge forming a post-apocalyptic sort of feel. ‘Name your price’, so check it out!

Foudre! – New Album Released (Gizeh – Vinyl/Digital)
“Improvised and recorded live at Le Rex de Toulouse supporting the 10th anniversary of French doom metal band Monarch!, KAMI神 extends the cosmogony and the sound of the band by taking excursions into the invisible and ambiguous side of nature. In this orgiastic and surprising mix of sonic textures and rhythms, you may hear strange phenomena, summoning of animistic spirits, shamanic calls, siren yellings and growls. The original chemigram artwork was created by French artist Fanny Béguély by painting with chemicals on light-sensitive paper.

Following the sold-out EARTH soundtrack (GZH71, 2015), KAMI 神 delivers an immersive soundscape for abstract clubbers, where kosmiche electronic, power ambient and industrial punk music are freely invited to commune. This pagan ceremonial is an ode to the ever-changing vortex of life – a sonic dream machine for the occurring now.”

Gamardah Fungus – New Album Released (Flaming Pines – CD/Digital)
“After a trip across the India, we decided to dedicate our new album to the Thar Desert, a large, arid region in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent that forms a natural boundary between India and Pakistan.

This album is our vision of modern and sacral Asian culture – rich, mysterious and insufficiently explored. And this is probably our most minimalistic album to date. We deliberately refused the multiple layers of sound forms and methods that were used on previous records. We wanted to concentrate on sound repetitions and pauses, like in Indian mantras and folk music, trying to achieve a deep trance with minimal arsenal – only guitar, modular synthesizer and tanpura.”

Hiemal – New Album Released (Digital Only)
“Five Drone Ambient tracks over a single field recording. Three hours under the northern lights, soothed by the cold tapestry of sound whispering softly among the mountains.”

Hilyard – New Album Released (Cryo Chamber – CD/Digital)
“Hilyard brings his first solo album to Cryo Chamber with Furthermore. A deep space adventure that lets you float in zero-G and gaze upon the anomalies of the universe.

Escape from a tired and dying world into the realms beyond quasars. Journey in isolation through thick dark matter in search of answers. Drift in quiet melancholy, past the failed floating structures, gas giants and furthermore, into an endless horizon.

Sweeping electronic drones combine with analogue bass to create a multilayered space ambient album that is emotionally captivating and enlightening.”

Holotrop & Vrna – New Split Released (Qualia – CD/Tape/Digital)
“Welcome to the Sleep Temple! Holotrop and Vrna, two of the best kept secrets of the contemporary dark ambient and ritual music scene, immersing into the profound mystery of dream incubation.
The religious practice, of sleeping with the intention of experiencing a divinely inspired dream, was practised by many ancient cultures all over the world.
Both projects reflecting and interpreting in four so called Onirokons their own practical dream work.
ENKOIMESIS works on the highest sensory level of perception. Typical ritual instruments like bells, gongs, chimes and drums mixed with drone and ambient soundscapes leading, accompanied by cryptic and mysteriously whispers, deep into the land of dreaming and opening the way to sacred gates.”

Ivan Kamaldinov – New Album Released (Digital Only)
Edgeless pulsating tones, vocals submerged below waves of droning static, completely sanded smooth output that strikes an excellent counterbalance between golden noise and sustained tones.
Full of neo-classical elements but taken into a proper electronic droney space through the held tones and electronic haze that permeates the tracks. Chords are held forever as if trapped in amber. The sounds vibrate in a wavey haze.
Surrender yourself now.

La Santa – New Album Released (Wannamarchi.club – Cassette/Digital)
“Calabria, Southern Italy — a landscape of unmarked graves hidden by abandoned construction sites left as monuments to a corrupt state; a code of silence masking a culture of extreme cruelty; age-old folk traditions and occulted religious rites which refuse to acknowledge the passing of time; the secret brotherhoods; the holy bloodline and birthplace of the ‘Ndrangheta – part business, part religious order and part ancient military, now one of the most powerful organised crime groups in the world.

Broken Britain Cassettes inaugurates its World Service imprint with Pax Mafiosa, the first dispatch from La Santa, a native Calabrese, who delivers a concoction of ceremonial death chants, phone tappings and initiation rituals. Based around collaged samples from an inherited record collection, Pax Mafiosa invokes visceral fear and spiritual ecstasy with biting electronics and harrowing field recordings.

In Calabria the sacred and the profane are not mutually exclusive. The name ‘La Santa’ refers to both the Virgin Mary and the highest, most secretive level of The ‘Ndrangheta, a secret society within a secret society which links the top bosses with freemasons and extremist terror organisations. Pax Mafiosa is a sonic mapping of this dysfunctional marriage of mafia and religion.”

La Tredicesima Luna – New Album Released (Lighten Up Sounds – Cassette/Digital)
“Italian solo artist Matteo Brusa (otherwise known as Medhelan) returns to the imprint with his remarkable project LA TREDICESIMA LUNA. This second full length from the project brings focused illumination to dark waters with a singular form of celestial luminescence.
The debut album from October 2017 brought shadowy tones and other-wordly fog, but with this newest work Oltre L’ultima Onda Del Mare (Beyond The Last Sea Wave), our Mother Moon guides us upon a grand ancestral voyage. A shard of guiding light breaks through blackened sky, the prismatic spectrum reflected across infinite sea.”

Lunar Abyss Deus Organum – new Album Released (ΠΑΝΘΕΟΝ – Cassette/Digital)
“Endless steppe, dry and cold air, the grass is everywhere… It lasted almost an eternity, no changes. Day after day, season after season… But someday the wind turned to ice blades. It wounded the sky and the snow started to fall. Sun was still bright, but the snow was falling more and more. The snow was so soft, that he started to feel sleepy. He stopped his life-long walk. He closed his eyes. It seemed that the glaciers were moving, melting, freezing, moving again… He saw how winds crafted some amazing figures off them. He saw the rains, the trees, the moss… And ice again, the wind. Birds were getting smaller in the sky. Then vanished. Then metal ones replaced them, leaving long trails behind. He saw the distant lights, heard sirens and rumble when metal things pierced the sky once again, leaving the fire behind. The rumble went still, the lights faded. It was silent again and the ice was bright when it started to melt. He opened his eyes. It was dry and cold again. He tried the grass – it was juicy and fresh. “What a wonderful dream”, he thought. And continued his walk.”

Mordançage – New Album Released (Facture – CD/Digital)
“Mordançage: an alternative photographic process that alters silver gelatin prints to give them a degraded effect. The mordançage solution works in two ways: it chemically bleaches the print so that it can be redeveloped, and it lifts the black areas of the emulsion away from the paper giving the appearance of veils.

Mordançage creates a degraded appearance by physically altering the film. The excellent new collaboration from Andrew Tasselmyer and Tobias Hellkvist has experienced the same process of slow alteration, its grey-washed ambient emerging from the recesses of a dark room. Standing in a rectangle of light, its music is a new being that’s experienced its own process of development.”

Med Gen – New Album Released (ΠΑΝΘΕΟΝ – CDr/Digital)
“The quiet humming of the earth and high-pitched bird calls, reflections of the autumn sun in the bog puddles… Silent steps on the path well-hidden in the thickets. No winds here. Just mesmerizing swaying of branches. Maybe they’re giving you signs not to partake in this journey, maybe better turn back and go home while you can… Yet this smell, these colors, those mysterious rustles in the deepness of the woods. One step after another and the story begins to unfold. What lies beneath these murky waters, between the layers of peat and on these oddly colored tussocks? Sun is approaching the horizon, so don’t hesitate, breathe in this night.”

Mortaur – New Album Released (Digital Only)
After a very long silence, Mortaur has returned with another horror ambient offering. This album takes him into more dynamic territory than he’s previous works, but keeps the deep darkness we’ve come to expect.

MZ.412 – Svartmyrkr available for preorder and streaming (Cold Spring – CD/Vinyl/Digital)
“Swedish behemoths MZ. 412 return with their first full-length album in 12 years, once again asserting their dominion as the true Kings of Black Industrial. “Svartmyrkr” is a massive tour de force that reinvents the classic sound of MZ. 412 whilst retaining their trademark malevolent harshness.

This album is dedicated to the true hell of the north – Helheim – and the giant goddess that rules it, Hel. From blackened ritual incantations, to bleak yet beautiful dark ambient arrangements, to harsh bombastic orchestrations, this album exceeds all expectations.

MZ. 412 blur the lines between music, magick and reality. The earth trembles… the mountains quake… all light is vanquished. The Swedish overlords darken the hearts and extinguish the souls of all who bear witness to “Svartmyrkr”.”

Northumbria – New Album Released (Cryo Chamber – CD/Digital)
“Vinland is the third and last album in Northumbria’s trilogy inspired by the Norse discovery of Canada.

The journey was long and hard, you lost good men sailing across the never ending sea, but now you stand on foreign land. The father of gods watches over you as his ravens circle the funeral pyre to bring his warriors home.
Using guitar and bass, and recording their improvised compositions live, Jim Field and Dorian Williamson create a deep textured sound world. Evoking the ancient wonder that the Norse explorers must have felt discovering Vinland, the Windswept Land.”

Oestergaards – New Album Released (Digital Only)
“You do not quench the sun with a jug of water” is an expression that no-one has said before but can match the dark ambient artist Oestergaards. Step by step, his dark-lied world receives attention internationally in that slightly shadowy genre. After the debut album Rötterna and the subsequent remix album Rötterna Decomposed, he is now back with a 4-track EP that goes deeper into the dark ambient genre. The titles of the songs are extracted from his acclaimed dialect Ovanåkersmål. A flashback in the past among one’s childhood home dreams, with the memory of time becoming increasingly foggy.

O Saala Sakraal – New Album Released (Cyclic Law – CD/Digital)
“A new collective led by former Hadewych member Peter Johan Nÿland. Etmaal (“natural day”) is the first in a series of explorations that aim to serve as a channel between the ethereal and chthonic, sacred and profane, the innermost black well and the outermost white sun. The album follows the circadian path as an analogue to the revelation of the actual self, with the sun as the inverted eye that unveils all things in their temporality, opposite the eternal inner black of night. Sudden transitions between coercive percussive hammering and sharp boreal drone pieces seek to mirror cosmic events; from glacial movements to throbbing punctuation and sudden death and with each end resolved arises a new tension and an attempt at cleansing and delving deeper with the intent of finally arriving at the inner clearing. In the recording process for Etmaal, the group effectively alternated between states of extreme focus and hiati in which subconscious impulses were allowed to arise and the result is an album that skilfully wanders an essential pathway between two planes in its own distinctive way.

Otovan Veret – New Album Released (Cyclic Law – CD/Digital)
“Syvys is the second demonstration of how Finland’s OTAVAN VERET decipher the pulse of the great cosmic filaments. The radiation from the distant otherness takes audible form in four pieces of ethereal, pulsating atmospherics, where the multitude of transmissions is implemented via a curious amalgam of electronic and acoustic sources operated by Kaarna & XVL. As a result “Syvys” reflects the many phases of a stellar journey in a dreamlike state, encountering both enchantment and anxiousness.”

Phragments – New Album Released (Malignant – CD/Digital)
“New full length from Phragments based on collaborative works done with Atranenia, Mindspawn, Rasalhague, Shock Frontier, and Terra Sancta. 40 minutes of sweeping textural doom, cinematic drift-scapes, and smog covered drones. Forlorn and dramatic music for the end of days, from the master of apocalyptic electronics. Limited to 300, released in collaboration with Construct.Destroy.Collective. Mastered by John Stillings, Steel Hook Audio.”

Rafaael Anton Irisarri – New Album Released (Umor Rex – Cassette/Digital)
“Rafael Anton Irisarri continues his string of post-minimalist releases with his third for Umor Rex: El Ferrocarril Desvaneciente. While composed as an ode to an overnight train journey through Spain he took many years ago, the music picks up sonically where his previous album Sirimiri left off. Irisarri focuses on deploying sonic cycles throughout these four shorter pieces, basing much of this sweeping ambience around looped sounds and distant pulses. The sound is however kept in a state of forward motion and constant evolution, invoking the slowly rumbling night train that inspired it —not to mention its cargo of misfits and travelers. Irisarri’s skill, set as a manipulator of minimal sound input, is at full strength here, imbuing even shorter pieces such as “El Espectro Electromagnético,” with chasms slowly cresting drama. The phantasmagoria of “Un Saltador” was even composed as a departure for him, toying with synths and pedals in a “modular kind of way,” letting an experiment unfold with minimal interaction.”

Randal Collier-Ford – New EP Released (Digital Only)
“Inspired by the musical work of Akira Yamaoka
This record is a dedication to the millions of individuals who have, will, and still do suffer from the effects of crippling depression, anxiety, and what comes of these inner conflicts. Written during a state of depression, Cyclic is a cathartic messages of acceptance of this void that never fades away, but can only be subdued for a time. To be a reminder of what this state of mind brings about, from the lies we tell ourselves to the realities we must face and overcome, this EP is an ode to this age long conflict
Please, don’t go it alone. Seek help, seek strength, seek open arms.”

RNGMNN – New Album Released (Reverse Alignment – CD/Digital)
“RNGMNN is Ronny Engmann, a multidisciplinary musician working from his base Berlin, Germany.Combining his minimal dark ambient with contemporary horror music making an own experimental style he’s now entering the Reverse Alignment territory with the new album “On Darker trails”. Releasing several contributions on various net labels since 1999, “On Darker Trails” is the first official physical release on CD. The album takes a dive into the skies above and phenomena that, for humans unreachable, space and there after.”

Sacra Fern – New Album Released (Black Mara – CD/Digital)
“Protected by forest spirits, shining in the rays of magic fern, this stone has absorbed all the power of the Sun. It will open doors to a world of magic in the shortest night of the year for who follows his own willpower.”

Senketsu No Night Club – New Album Released (Aquarellist – CD/Digital)
Check out our review here.
“As in the most successful outcomes, the artistic alchemy of Vincenti, Leonardi, and the british saxophonist Ian Ferguson, generated a feverish and endless activity. Only a year ago the trium was busy laying the foundations of its debut album, recently pressed by Old Europa Cafè.
The sonic product of Senketsu No Night Club, floating between jazzy movements, dark ambient soundscapes, and power noise ruptures, celebrated then the far east extreme cinema whilst the Furachi Life’s fetish imaginary – if you are familiar with the perturbing japanese artist – was the band concept’s perfect incarnation.
Stunning yet sensual, as in the best representation of the sex/death duplicity. Today, with
a different approach, “Shikkoku” represents the nocturnal spleen and its melancholy, the erotic lyricism of Mishima’s novel “Nikutai No Gakko, ????”, and the eternal clash of Eros and Thanatos by G. Bataille. The beauty, the crime, the violence, the anguish.
100% Doom-Noir Jazz in a dark connection between Rome and Tokyo.”

S.E.T.I. – New Album Released (Loki-Found – CD/Digital)
“Right in time for the long nights Andrew Lagowski is back with his probably most ambitious project to date! A deep ambient space soundtrack of nothing less than eight hours on eight CDs presented in a beautiful cardboard box. These recordings have been composed, sequenced and mastered in such a way as to allow for periods of hazy dreams, deep sleep, time displacement and finally, awakening. Please use them as you see fit – perhaps as a toolbox for your own sleep travels and dream experimentation.”

Shibalba – New Album Released (Agonia – CD/LP/Digital)
“Shibalba is an otherworldly, meditative project from the members of Greek and Swedish black metal bands, Acherontas and Nåstrond. It differs greatly from the aforementioned acts, with main focus set on expressing shamanic, trance-like states, by the use of ethnic instruments and musical technics peculiar to religious rituals. In doing so, the band also incorporates contemporary synthesizers and guitar drones. Some of the more traditional instruments they use include Tibetan horns & singing bowls, bone & horne trumpets, darbukas, ceremonial bells & gongs as well as percussion instruments made of bones and skulls. The music is richly detailed and multidimensional, while its outcome is deep, unsettling and subconscious. As a whole, it offers an otherworldly voyage.”

Shinkiro – Preorders Available (Limited CDr and Digital)
Shinkiro continues with the release of his archives through this fourth edition in the series. Find out more about Shinkiro and the first three archives in our recent review here on This Is Darkness.

Shrine – New Album Released (Cyclic Law – CD/Digital)
“Based on the fictional story for Tomb Raider III, created by the British game studio CORE in 1998, the story begins in Antarctica millions of years ago, where a meteorite has crashed into the landmass and when the continent was still located in the tropics. Millennials later it was discovered by the ancient Polynesians who had reached the Antarctic coast and they soon realised that strange otherworldly powers surround the celestial rock and so the people began to worship it as a deity. After severe mutations started to occur among their newborn, the settlers fled in terror and never came back but before they left, they sealed the meteorite into a deep underground chamber, locked by four “keys”, four unique objects crafted from the same alien material as the meteorite itself. In the 19th century, a group of sailors travelling with Charles Darwin came to Antarctica and rediscovered the artefacts. The story follows the search for the four artefacts and the rediscovering of the meteorite, hypothesised to contain the most important findings in genetics and evolution since Darwin. We are aurally taken through this unique world through 6 singular chapters of pristine sonic grandeur.”

Slowlodger – New Album Released (Outside Noises – Cassette/Digital)
Slowlodger presents “A violent soundtrack for a non sense life” as the second reference of Outside Noises. This album is in the opposite concept side from the previous work by Blovk: AVSFANSL is a record located in the field of drone, dark ambient, noise or avant-garde music.
Thinked as a soundtrack that sonorize the moments in which a human can thinks that life make no sense, in this modern times and the coming future. Composed during the darkest moments of 2018.

Snowbeasts – New Album Released (Chthonic Streams – CDr/Digital)
Combining their knowledge and skills from previous releases, Snowbeasts deliver a new album which is as likely to linger in dark ambient despair as it is to erupt into post-industrial ferocity. These is another brilliant release from a project that has been delighting listeners since their 2014 debut. The highly limited (only 25!) and quite beautiful CD release, comes in a archival box with 3 art prints, by Noah G. Hirka, mounted on black boards and a pouch of talismans. This one is another tour-de-force in presentation by the Chthonic Streams label, run by Derek Rush (COMPACTOR, . Highly recommended.

Sun Through Eyelids (ΠΑΝΘΕΟΝ – CDr/Digital)
Liminal states and unexpected discoveries they bring – means of the evolution, a constant call inside some weird ones. Travelers, visionaries, tricksters, magicians, artists… Explorers of the Earth, of Cosmos and, hence – the deepness of the human possibilities. Which land will lull them in their last sleep? Will be it under tall trees or in the midst of iced tundra? Radiowaves and bird calls, forgotten rituals and enigmatic fossils – no one knows where and when this mystery will give some keys to its essence. But there is always someone ready to follow this path, no matter where it ends.

Syrinx – New Album Released (Sombre Soniks – Digital)
“Thee first album from Syrinx since their ‘Speaking Alone’ was released on Sombre Soniks in 2011! They return with just under an hour of material taken from an improvised session rekorded earlier this year…
Syrinx is thee kollaborative work of members from several Projekts inkluding Ghoul Detail, Pink Venom and Glowing Pixie.”

Valanx – New Album Released (Reverse Alignment – CD/Digital)
Water is flooding. Land is obsolete. Scattered tribes rule their part of the world. Struggling. Adapting. “Tidelands” is Valanx soundtrack to a post-apocalyptic future where water is abundant and the circumstances of living has changed radically.
This is the final album by Valanx and Reverse Alignment is very happy to release it. We’ve been fortunate to work with such great artist.
Arne Weinberg says:
“This album is the swansong of my long musical journey and I would like to dedicate it to the most important person in my life, my wife Petra. Without her I’d be lost in nothingness. Eternal love.
I’d also like to thank Kristian Widqvist for his continued belief in Valanx and his dedication to the project.
Last but not least, a big thank you to all the listeners over all these years.”

VelgeNaturlig – New Album Released (Winter-Light – CD/Digital)
On ‘Kundalini’, Ivo Santos presents us with an album, layered with a rich tapestry of dense drones, reverberating sub-bass and circulating processed sounds, cleverly woven together with field recordings.
As with most, if not all of VelgeNaturlig’s work, on ‘Kundalini’ the tracks flow together as one, creating vast musical landscapes to traverse within the minds eye. The music weaves an infinite pathway between the light and the dark, sometimes isolating but always keeping the listener engaged.
‘Kundalini’ is an album of true awakening, invoking a clash of primordial sounds and energies. Let the currents flow…..
Check out our review here.

Winterblood – New Album Released (Digital Only)
Self-released & ‘name your price’ new album by Winterblood.
“Musica di Mezzanotte’, is a concept focused on the rêverie, the contemplation of the fire, specially a candlelight; a journey through the rooms where the reader dreams, stares at the window, waiting for nothing. A dreamscape worth to be reached, to never come back.

Most of the music performed on Analog Paraphonic Synthesizer ‘Nyx’. Nyx is also the Greek goddess (or personification) of the night…”

Wolves and Horses – New Album Released (Digital Only)
“This album is about Earth, our Earth.
Each track name is based on a place or an interesting phenomenon around us.
I encourage you to check where and what these are.
We all have to change our attitude if we don’t want to lose all of this, if we want to have a place to leave to the next generations.
This is my tiny little brick in the wall…..and I hope you’ll enjoy the music.”

Zoloft Evra – New Album Released (Signora Ward – CD/Digital)
“Wounds of No Return “, the third album from ZOLOFT EVRA is a fierce merciless ritual, blood soaking void. Pure murderous sonic intercourse where death cult, self destruction, sexual fetish obsessions, antichristianity cross the fields of eerie negative industrial ambiences.”

 

Sodom & Chimera – Interview with film director James Quinn

James Quinn is the writer and director behind Sodom & Chimera Productions and their upcoming film Daughter of Dismay. Quinn has been solidifying his position in the film community over the last few years since the company launched with it’s debut film The Law of Sodom in 2016. I’ve found his work very compelling and have been following the company for the last few years. But, it seemed like things were really starting to take off in 2018. This is, indeed, the perfect time to speak with James Quinn. As industry renowned talent is being brought on board for post-production and the film gets closer to completion the scale and quality of what he’s orchestrated has become apparent. This is a huge step forward for a small company, which could see themselves moving toward ever loftier goals in the film industry over the coming years. I hope you’ll enjoy my interview with James Quinn, and that you will find his work as compelling as I have!

Krist Mort as The Demon

Interviewer: Michael Barnett
Interviewee: James Quinn

Michael: The end credits for The Law of Sodom looked a bit like those of Lynch’s Eraserhead. James Quinn, you seem to have carried most of the weight of Sodom & Chimera in its earliest incarnation. Was this something you enjoyed? Do you consider yourself an auteur, more than a compiler of elements, a true author of a production?

James: The Law of Sodom (2016) was a very personal and extreme project, both in terms of content and how it was made. A lot of time and pain went into it, and it’s indeed a production that I practically carried alone entirely. By now, the way I make films has changed dramatically. I do consider my projects to be somewhat of auteur works though. My ideas and concepts of films are things I’m very picky and strict about in terms of execution, and in most cases, what you see on screen is based on deep, personal ideas and emotions, things I try to convey in very specific ways. Though, it has to be made clear that all films are collective works, larger ones often more than smaller ones.

Regarding Eraserhead (1977), yes, that has always been a massive inspiration to me as a filmmaker, and has also influenced the making of The Law of Sodom.

Michael: How long has Sodom & Chimera been active? Was it long before the release of The Law of Sodom, or was it a fast-moving project from the very beginning?

James: Sodom & Chimera is fairly young. It was founded in October 2016, right after the North American premiere of The Law of Sodom, which was shot before Sodom & Chimera was a thing. Sodom & Chimera, to me, is more of a personal collective. We’re a small team, and work together on a lot of projects, but most importantly, it’s a way to connect all works, promote them, and give them a voice under the banner of something more recognizable than just the name of a director. Sodom & Chimera represents a large body of work, from photography to film, to the occasional other obscure piece of art that might present itself. It has indeed always been a very fast moving project, from the day it started.

Michael: What have been some of the biggest influences on the people behind Sodom & Chimera? Do you have a personal favorite director?

James: I can’t speak for my colleagues, but personally, there are only a handful of artists that directly influenced me. The very obvious one is David Lynch, though – even though I greatly enjoy all of his works – the only of his films that directly affected my own filmmaking are Eraserhead and Inland Empire (2006). Other big influences in terms of more obscure works have been Karim Hussain’s Subconscious Cruelty (2000), Merhige’s Begotten (1990), Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), Un Chien Andalou (1929), Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009), and several works from the 20s and 30s. Even though a lot of my previous films are very bizarre and surreal, the grotesque aspect of them was never my true objective. It was important to me, yes, but my main goal was always to create something that is beautiful or at least interesting to look at. Cinematography is the most important element in all of my films, it’s a tool I use not just to show what’s happening in a scene, but to be poetic and create impressions that stick out. To be completely honest, most of the ways I frame shots and try to explore visuals do not stem from inspiration from certain films or photography, but from paintings. Paintings are built differently, from the way they’re framed to the amount of detail present, to just how much image is included in the frame and where it cuts off. Creating images like this is a very mathematical process, actually. I try to keep that in mind whenever I build a scene.

Ieva Agnostic as The Witch in Daughter of Dismay

As to the question of who’s my favorite director, that’s an easy one, actually. Andrei Tarkovsky. Never have I seen any other works of film in my life that convey visuals like his. It’s pure cinematic bliss to me, and all of his films are truly like moving paintings. Having seen his film Andrei Rublev (1966) on 35mm, I don’t think I’ll ever change my mind on who my favorite director is.

Michael: Daughter of Dismay has been moving along nicely, with some great talent steadily being added to the project. How much work is going into this one in comparison to previous films?

James: Daughter of Dismay is a mammoth of a project that pretty much destroyed my health. There was so much careful planning, budgeting and pitching involved, so many days of going without sleeping, so much unbearable stress that I literally had to call an ambulance to my house due to heart problems a week after the shoot was over. I’m still recovering, even though production is nowhere near over. Once post is finished, the entirety of the production will have taken around a year, of which only two days were shooting. Shooting a short in 70mm IMAX, actually getting it made is pretty much near impossible, and it has a reason no one has done it yet. Getting closer and closer to the finish line of post production, I can see why no seems to have even attempted it yet. It completely eviscerated me, mentally and physically. But it was entirely worth it.
James Quinn

Michael: Do you anticipate Daughter of Dismay to be a more or less accessible (in terms of theme/content) film than your previous works?

James: Daughter of Dismay is supposed to be a film that can be enjoyed by the masses. It’s the most accessible film I directed so far, and can be enjoyed by pretty much anyone who is okay with darker themes. It is indeed extremely dark, emotional and sad, with one scene that might make some cringe, and the tone is very sinister, but in its core, it’s a very inspiring story with an extremely polished look. It’s not experimental in the slightest and presents itself in a very linear manner, with a focus on epic, visceral execution. We had an extremely large budget, which enabled us to get the most out of this and make it feel like a little blockbuster, instead of just an independent short, for which I’m very thankful. The reason I made the film this way is multi-faceted. I love creating dark niche visions, films that freak people out and evoke extreme reactions, raw, experimental films that mess with people’s heads, but I’ve also always particularly enjoyed the kind of cinema that relies on entirely different values; clean, more traditional pieces of direct storytelling, with a strong focus on emotion, something that progresses throughout the story and ends with a bang, a scene that leaves you emotionally affected while watching the credits roll. This is a recipe that works especially well with short films, one that I’ve been meaning to explore for a while, though never had the means to properly pull off. Some of the fans of my work might get cramps reading this, but Daughter of Dismay was made to be mainstream-accessible, which is one of the reasons we shot in IMAX, and will present it in this format. It’s supposed to be big, epic, dramatic and to be enjoyed by as many people as possible, though in this case not for being “fun”, but for the intense impact it has. Even though it is so very accessible, I still have to clearly mention that I included a lot of my trademark elements in the film, and it is guaranteed to be the darkest and most surreal IMAX film you’ve ever seen.

“I love creating dark niche visions, films that freak people out and evoke extreme reactions, raw, experimental films that mess with people’s heads, but I’ve also always particularly enjoyed the kind of cinema that relies on entirely different values; clean, more traditional pieces of direct storytelling, with a strong focus on emotion, something that progresses throughout the story and ends with a bang, a scene that leaves you emotionally affected while watching the credits roll.”

Michael: What is the most crucial change in the framework this time around? Someone added to the project of utmost importance or some perfect set location?

James: Everything was different about this project, and every single thing mattered. From the gigantic efforts our cinematographer took upon himself, making sure to pull this off in the most amazing way possible, and enabling us to shoot in IMAX, to the lighting team, who pulled off the insane task of shooting with an ISO of 50 in a location with barely any light, and made it look like the sun was shining intensely, to our special effects team, who built an entire fake human that looked completely life-like, to our incredible team of production assistants, we went big in every single aspect of the production and squeezed out every drop of potential there was, to make it the film it is now. It would be hard to pick something precise, something that I can point to specifically, since every single aspect of the film’s production was extremely important, and if just one were missing, the film wouldn’t exist.

Dajana Rajic on Daughter of Dismay set.

Michael: For Daughter of Dismay, are there any connections to previous films you’ve produced? What should the viewer know, going into the film?

James: I would actually go as far as to say the ideal way to watch this is without having seen any of my other work before. It has no connections whatsoever to the rest of my films, and is very different, in that it is just a lot less offensive or extreme, and, like mentioned earlier, much more accessible than anything I’ve ever done. So, having seen the rest of my work, one might get false expectations, which is one of the reasons I’m making it very clear that this is a cleaner version of my artistic vision, though I do think fans of my traditional work will enjoy it just as much. If you go into this not knowing anything about it, or about my work, you’ll be able to enjoy it unbiased, just knowing you’re going into a 70mm IMAX film, which I think really helps.

Michael: You created the film in 70mm, and appear to be one of the first in the industry to do so for a short film. What influenced this decision and what is so important about working in this format as opposed to the industry standards?

James: We’re the first narrative short film in the history of cinema to shoot in 70mm IMAX, actually. Most films that have been shot this way are either grand space documentaries, or other documentaries of gigantic proportions, or massive blockbusters like Dunkirk (2017) or The Dark Knight (2008). The reason we shot in this format is quite simple: It was clear pretty early on that Daughter of Dismay is supposed to be a big, epic piece of film, something you watch and go “wow”, something you don’t just watch, but actually experience. The closest experience to being inside a film itself (besides 3D, which I’m not a supporter of) is 70mm IMAX, a format that is so unlike any other format, simply due to the intensity of the image, the detail and sharpness, it’s like being sucked into the world of the film itself. Christopher Nolan very fittingly described it as “virtual reality without goggles”. You’re being moved closer to the screen, which is extremely large, not only being very wide, but multiple times as tall as regular screens, which places you directly in the center of the image. Additionally, the sharpness and detail are so intense, it makes things pop out that you would never see in any other format. The digital resolution equivalent is around 18K, something that is obviously impossible to reach with digital sensors. Actually, you see more detail in a 70mm IMAX projection than in real life. We had to stop and have someone remove a pencil from the forest ground during one scene since people would have been able to see it on the big screen. In real life, this was barely noticeable. The way we see things when looking at a two-dimensional image this sharp is vastly different from the way we see the world in real life, and it gives us a strange sensation of being “more real looking than real life”. This is exactly what I wanted for Daughter of Dismay. You don’t just go see it. You experience the entire thing. Obviously, not everyone will be able to see it in this format, but we’re going to make sure to have the rest of the presentations be as impressive as they can, which means most of them will be in regular 70mm or 35mm, both formats that are absolutely beautiful.

Michael: You filmed Daughter of Dismay deep in the woods of Austria. Was this the plan from the beginning? What are some features of the Austrian woodlands which attracted you to this set location?

James: I have always been fascinated by forest landscapes and the natural atmosphere they bring. There’s something mystical and sinister to them, even though I consider it to be a place of peace. Most of my films have scenes in the woods or take place in them entirely. The Austrian woods, besides being the most accessible to me, since Austria is my home, are especially beautiful to me. For Daughter of Dismay, I wanted a set that’s as visually impressive as possible. Fallen trees, very large, tall ones, big, thick roots, grounds full of leaves, all of this is essential to the visuals of the film. I’ve shot in many different forests so far, and all of them looked different. This time, I went back to one I’ve already shot in, for Flesh of the Void (2017), though in Daughter of Dismay everything looks vastly different due to the different format, color and style. I’ll most certainly continue to shoot in forests, though I’d love to explore different ones in the future. Getting to explore mystical locations for a film shoot is one of the many things I enjoy about filmmaking. It’s a multi-faceted process that brings me much joy.

Still from Daughter of Dismay

Michael: Joseph Bishara will be working on the film score for Daughter of Dismay. What has been your past relationship with this musician? Why is his work so fitting for the film?

James: I haven’t had any sort of relationship with Joseph previous to Daughter of Dismay. He was my first pick for the film’s score, and he agreed to do it. I consider us extremely lucky to be working with him. Joseph is an absolute genius in his field and, in my opinion, one of the most talented horror composers of all time. I clearly remember seeing Insidious in the theater in 2010, and being absolutely blown away by how anxiety-inducing and dreadful his sounds are.

The screeching violins, dissonant and violent, loud, metallic explosions of piano strings, paired with very harmonic, beautiful and emotional melodies placed me in an absolute state of awe. I remember going back home, and immediately looking up the score online, listening to it again to examine it. There’s a very psychological element to Joseph’s way of composing, with an extreme amount of detail and passion present in his music, as he’s able to give you chills by simple (and also very complex at the same time) means of sound, something that deeply impressed me. I ended up following his work closely, being blown away over and over again. For Daughter of Dismay, we needed something sinister, something dark and mystical, but at the same time something that is extremely emotional, melancholic and touching, something that puts you in a certain mood by just listening to the piece itself. Knowing very well about Joe’s talent in not just creating horrifying soundscapes, but also strong emotions, I contacted him and told him about the film, and the rest is history.

Michael: Ben Brahem Ziryab has been brought on as director of photography. He’s done some quite impressive work in the past. How has your experience been working with him? Does he bring a particular magic to this project?

James: Ben was absolutely amazing to work with. He did indeed bring a particular magic to the project. Not only did he enable us to expand to IMAX instead of regular 70mm, his work ethics, dedication and talent stood out so much, I know for certain already that I will continue to work with him on more projects. He initially contacted me about a possible collaboration, and after talking to him on the phone for hours, I knew absolutely that this was going to be a person I’d want to work with more regularly. His passion for analog film and cinematography is absolutely magical, and he is talented beyond belief. I especially urge readers to check out his short The Negative (2017), which was shot in VistaVision (horizontal 35mm film). It’s an absolute masterpiece of both, storytelling and cinematography, and is deeply inspiring as a project, too. We worked together closely on Daughter of Dismay, and prepared on location for around 10 days before the shoot, visiting the set almost daily, to plan everything through as carefully as possible. Working with him on set was fantastic, as our visions for the film matched perfectly, with some of his own touch making it the unique piece it is now.

Editor’s note: You can read more about Ben, VistaVision and The Negative in this article by Kodak cameras.

Director of Photography, Ben Brahem Ziryab on set.

Michael: As for the acting talent in Daughter of Dismay, do you have any recurring actors you seek to employ for each project?

James: I try to work with new talent as often as possible. I enjoy exploring the world of actors and actresses, and there are many fantastic talents out there. I do occasionally hire people I’ve previously worked with, as I did with Dajana Rajic, who plays the daughter of the witch in Daughter of Dismay and has acted in a music video I directed. But usually, I try to focus on being open towards new talent and finding the absolute perfect persona for the character of the film. In the case of Daughter of Dismay, we had an extremely talented all-female cast. Actually, the entire reason why the film exists is due to the lead actress, who I did a spontaneous photo shoot with in early 2018, in which she posed as a witch, which lead to very occult works of photography. I was so impressed by her ability to portray emotion and expression purely through her face and posture that I asked her if she was interested in starring in a film as the same character. She loved the idea, and I was so into the character that I ended up writing the script in a couple of hours, since I already had her entire background story laid out in my head. Everything progressed from there. She really sells the film, her talent and mystical looks are perfect for this role and inspiring. Dajana, who played the role of the daughter, a smaller role, but very important nonetheless, did an equally amazing job. I love working with children, and Dajana is especially gifted at following instructions, and has an intense emotional range that she can express on command. Her role was very dependent on conveying confusion and sadness, and she proved to be absolutely perfect for it. The shot before the very last shot in the film is a shot of her that is especially haunting, though you’ll have to see for yourself why.

Dajana Rajic in Daughter of Dismay (not that final shot mentioned above).

Michael: What are some other films and projects from Sodom & Chimera which you would like to mention?

James: With the promotion and publicity of Daughter of Dismay, I’m trying to focus on presenting it as a singular project, one that’s separate from my others, like mentioned. I’ve made a range of films so far that are all very different from each other, though many carry distinctive elements that I put in all of my films. My favorite so far, besides Daughter of Dismay, was Sulphur for Leviathan (2017). It’s a grimy arthouse short about Satanism and the downfall of Christianity, and was heavily inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky. It was painful to shoot and made me want to quit filmmaking, but I’m extremely glad we pulled it off. It’s still the most provocative and radical film I’ve made so far, even though there’s practically no violence in it.

For people who would like an introduction to my filmmaking roots, I suggest to check out The Law of Sodom, which is an extremely disturbing and experimental film about my personal experience with mental illness, all written and shot during episodes of psychosis. (Watch on Vimeo on Demand)

Like mentioned though, Daughter of Dismay is a very separate piece, and I’d like for people who see it to disregard any other work they might have seen of mine. That doesn’t mean I’m not proud of my other films – not at all. It’s just such a unique and different film, I’d like people to go into it without any specific expectations of my style.

From the photo set (same name) which inspired Daughter of Dismay.

Michael: You also work within still-photography, a number of these sets are available for browsing at sodomchimera.com/photos. I particularly enjoyed the ‘Idolatry of Emptiness’ set. Is this an equal passion to your filmmaking? What has been your most memorable photoshoot?

James: Photography is a big passion of mine, yes. Visual art is something I’m very fond of, and there’s something about photography which greatly excites me, which is the ability to tell an entire story with one single frame, to put very specific thoughts into people’s brains and make them make up their own stories. There are similarities to filmmaking in the way I approach it, but in the end, it’s such a wonderfully different medium, and it’s especially pleasing as an artist since it works quicker than shooting a film. I do prepare most of my shoots, and even script them, but with photos, the possibilities of being spontaneous are much more open, and I very much enjoy that. Often, my photography is later used as the base for films, as was the case with Daughter of Dismay.

from ‘Idolatry of Emptiness’ set.

Michael: For a newcomer to the films of Sodom & Chimera, what would you recommend to readers as the best starting point?

James: I’d say check out the photography first, and start with a more stylistic and less extreme short, like Sulphur for Leviathan. It will give you a better idea of our artistic goal, after which you can work your way up to more obscure works like The Law of Sodom and Flesh of the Void. Ideally, you’d start with Daughter of Dismay, but it’s obviously going to take a little while until that’s possible.

Michael: Do you have any lofty goals for Sodom & Chimera? Any dream projects which you are waiting for the perfect set of circumstances to proceed? Or have you been steadily working through most of the ideas as they arise?

James: There are a few projects and scripts that I’m sitting on that I’m waiting with still, just because they need the right resources and talent, and I’d like them to be perfect. I can’t really say a lot about our future work, though I can tell you that there will be more features coming.

Michael: I thank you very much for your time, James. If you have any last words or information that you would like to give readers, feel free!

James: Thank you! All I want to close with is an appeal to people to go out and experience movies more intimately and intensely, and give analog film a chance. Look up special screenings, take a road trip and check out a film in 70mm IMAX, watch old classics in 35mm, take the time to experience things and movies you don’t know or maybe wouldn’t have watched otherwise, try to see the medium of film as an experience and spectacle instead of something to pass time with. It’s such a beautiful art form, and there are amazing sights and experiences to be had beyond just watching a film on a flat screen or in your local multiplex. Go live some movies.

Links

Sodom & Chimera Official Website
Facebook – Sodom & Chimera
Instagram – Sodom & Chimera

Arktau Eos – Interview

Credit: Arktau Eos

Arktau Eos are one of the most distinct and respected groups in the ritual post-industrial scene. They have been among the top-tier acts in many of the most revered festivals in the scene over more than a decade. Arktau Eos, like the Aural Hypnox / Helixes collective as a whole, exudes an air of authenticity and primal energy which is unrivaled by most, I would passionately argue.

There haven’t been a large number of interviews over the years with anyone from the Aural Hypnox / Helixes collective, though the ones available are certainly worth seeking out! So, it is with great respect and privilege that I am presenting you with this highly in-depth interview with Arktau Eos, who also have authority to, and do, speak on matters of the label at large herein.

In this interview we will be discussing the future of Arktau Eos, their greater relationship (or lack thereof) with music, politics and religion, their current views on physical, digital and video formats, analysis of Eremos and its context in the Arktau Eos discography, proper setting/atmosphere for deeper listening/understanding of their music, and quite a bit more!


Michael: Arktau Eos has been an essential group in the ritual ambient scene for more than a decade. Do you see yourselves on the same trajectory, following the same ideologies and aesthetics as when the group was first formed?

Arktau Eos: First, thank you for your kind words. We are certainly still on the same trajectory. Aesthetics evolve, ideas are fine-tuned, our technical know-how improves, but as for fundamental changes – there have been none.

Perceived changes usually relate to matters nearly wholly external. Being something of lone wolves and outlaws, we have, for instance, gradually drifted apart from categories such as ‘ritual ambient’ or ‘dark ambient’. Granted, those terms are not entirely without merit and many of our listeners fall into the demographic; no disrespect is intended. Yet we have searched for a slightly better fitting description, using ‘elemental music’ on occasion, in reference to its primal origins, suggesting a step aside from the dominion of chronology to seek the eternal, while simultaneously recalling the Paracelsian tria prima and similar formulations: everything has its base in a few active elements from which things of great complexity may nevertheless be composed by skilled hands, aided by knowledge of nature’s mysterious ways. Then again, we can agree with Alexey Tegin from Phurpa, who is adamant that Arktau Eos – like his own group – in fact has nothing to do with music per se.

Michael: Where do you see the future taking Arktau Eos? Should we expect another decade of releases?

Arktau Eos: Without any doubt. After all, Arktau Eos is a part of our respective life works, a point where our mutual interests and goals converge in a partially public context. We acknowledge Death as the grand initiator whose presence drives us to continue apace. This is not a statement of some inherent morbidity – we laugh too much to pass for the most ardent death-worshippers – yet it holds true in many senses, the basest one being that we realise the limits as to what can be accomplished in this lifetime at best. One can only hope it is enough to create a sustained awareness in areas of transition, including the final one that awaits us all. To this end, our records are travelogues and notebooks, quick sketches of eldritch spaces in mind or elsewhere (is there a difference?), cryptic but meant to communicate keys of access to others via suggestion and deep, universal symbols: beyond textual means, beyond sound even.

Credits: Costin Chioreanu

Michael: What is the current line-up of Arktau Eos? Is this still a fluid roster, keeping the core members A.I.H. & A.I.L., but interchanging other members from album to album?

Arktau Eos: It has never been a fluid roster really. We have returned to the original Arktau Eos pact, a duo formation, and intend to keep it that way. If we require the expertise of additional musicians or artists, they will be invited as guests of honour and lavished with fine wines, champagne and Cuban cigars, but typical ‘band’ dynamics are usually just a hindrance to the actual work at hand, and to be avoided.

Michael: Your last release Catacomb Resonator as well as its predecessor Unworeldes were released on vinyl. Your newest album Erēmos has returned to a CD-only format. Does each release dictate its own physical characteristics (cassette/CD/vinyl), or do outside influences (market/pricing) dictate the choice?

Arktau Eos: A combination of both. CDs will in all probability remain the label mainstay. Rather sadly, vinyl is becoming increasingly infeasible for us. So much is good about vinyl, but the odd frequencies and lengthy tracks present lots of problems mastering-wise and reliable pressing plants are few. Catacomb Resonator is a case in point. While it turned out decent and benefits from the vinyl sound, the process of getting there was taxing to the point of ridiculousness – the endless travails of its emergence included inspecting and sending back every single copy of the entire run! Cassettes are less finicky. Genuine tape saturation and hiss usually work wonders for our sonics anyway.

As a side-note of potential interest to some readers, it remains a distinct possibility that we pushed our luck too much with Catacomb Resonator. Its third song or side (‘The Third Canticle’ of the liner notes), the real core of the record, is merely implied by hidden motifs on both sides A and B, residing soundlessly in-between them as a sort of ‘charged absence’… perhaps this artificial tension overloaded the aura of the album, playing a part in its troubled manifestation. This matter cannot be explained in plainer words, so we’ll leave it at that.

To get back to the original subject slightly: contrary to expectations the recent vinyl boom did not benefit any of the Aural Hypnox artists even marginally, so frankly, a release must justify its appearance on vinyl exceptionally well for the format to be even considered. Such are the realities as we speak, however disappointing to the vinylophiles among us.

Some Aural Hypnox customers have remarked that a CD is an easy (!) way to bring along Arktau Eos for walks in the woods and mountains. In fact, portability is the only sensible reason for download codes we have ever come up with; perhaps we will relent and add them to the physical releases sometime in the future as a gesture of good will towards those few folks inclined to take our music to accompany their private pilgrimages.

Credit: Robin Levet

Michael: You’ve worked again with the artist K.T.L. on the artwork for Erēmos. Is K.T.L. a part of the Aural Hypnox/Helixes collective, creating music under one of these projects? Or, is this someone from the outside world you’ve sought for collaborations?

Arktau Eos: Our collaboration came about the most natural and hassle-free way possible. Timo Ketola, or K.T.L. as he is known in the Hypnox circle, is A.I.L.’s friend since the ‘90s and has been more or less clued in to Arktau Eos’ ways of working ever since the release of Mirrorion. Having vast experience of metaphysical and artistical subjects consonant with ours, K.T.L. adapts easily to our peculiar whims and is a rich source of ideas himself. He is mainly known as a visual artist, a highly talented draughtsman and painter, who in recent years has also been apprenticing in the art of tattooing. However, A.I.L. and K.T.L. did perform together as boreal electro-Behenian duo Astrolithos in Salerno and Rome back in 2017; K.T.L. did percussion. The Astrolithos set was demoed to an advanced stage, but there hasn’t been a suitable opportunity to finish it.

Most pertinent is that we will be working with him again for the 2019 Blow Up festival in Helsinki; with a bit of luck, this also means another new release from Arktau Eos. In a way, we continue in the spirit of the Origin of Fire event in Stockholm in late 2017. At Origin of Fire, Welt, Ketola, and S.A. Hynninen exhibited their work, while Arktau Eos, Stephen O’Malley, Aluk Todolo and Corps provided the evening’s sonic backbone. A 96-page exhibition catalogue was released that night including a foreword by Bobby Beausoleil. It is well worth getting if still available.

Michael: Erēmos contains field recordings from the North Ostrobothnian Woods in Northern Finland, as well as the “untamed steppes of Mongolia”. Was the idea for Erēmos conceived unexpectedly during your travels to Mongolia in 2014? Or, did you travel to Mongolia with the creation of this album in mind?

Arktau Eos: No, the concept of Erēmos is not tied to these travels originally. It was conceived in late 2017, when we were finishing Catacomb Resonator, its distant relative. The recordings were drawn from our archives because they fit and enhanced the concept. It was not premeditated at all. We have unused recordings all the way from our early days, and often they just reappear when needed. A.I.L. also did additional recordings in solitude at a remote Tantric Buddhist initiation temple in Mongolia – with permission, we might add: the gifts of the spirits are unexpected and numerous! Those recordings are yet to be used. They need a context, something more ritualistic than Erēmos could convey, whereas the rationale for using the field recordings on Erēmos is tied to the polarities these remote places – the Finnish woods and the Mongolian steppe – represent. While both are potential locations of retreat, they are in many ways opposites. The eternally blue skies and the openness of the steppe is contrasted with the dank, dark, forbidding nature of the Finnish woods, the open air ovoos with the minuscule cell of a solitary monk etc. The vision that unfolds when listening to Erēmos is an unspecified ‘desert’, that is, a mind-scape of extreme retreat which manifests according to the individual, not necessarily something that has a physical presence or counterpart. Fittingly, after an absence of a few years, solar-Apollonian elements have also crept in, most notable in this sense is “Pacts of Stone and the Sun”, recorded during the Summer Solstice.

Credit: Jeanne Saint-Julien

Michael: Also on the topic of release formats, will there be plans for more full-length video releases in the future, similar to Taiwaskivi and R.A.S.H.N.K.A-RA by Halo Manash? Or, do you now prefer just doing individual music videos, similar to the recent Templum N.R. “The Unseen Tailor”?

Arktau Eos: Individual videos seem to be the way forward. The bigger issue here is not the format or length but the actual content: for instance, R.A.S.H.N.K.A-RA was fine for its time, but the focus of Aural Hypnox video productions has since shifted. Instead of depicting ritual customs, our interest right now is in their after-effects, in painting impressions of what it means to do a ritual and what sensations it evokes – and for ‘ritual’, please take a broad view and read also meditation, summoning, prayer, etc. The problem with ritualistic videos is that they are very much tied to a certain moment. Watching them after the energies have departed might satisfy someone’s curiosity for procedural minutiae, but that is neither here nor there. The power and intent are already elsewhere.

Michael: It’s been stated in past interviews that Aural Hypnox seeks to remain separate from any specific religious doctrines. Is this also the case specifically within Arktau Eos? If there are any universal beliefs followed within Arktau Eos, what would they be?

Arktau Eos: Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that while we do not avoid any specific religious doctrines, we tend to steer away from their most common or vulgar expressions. Alternatively, you could say there is an Arktau Eos filter at work. While recognizing the immensity – perhaps impossibility! – of the task, Arktau Eos attempts to reach beyond the obvious appearances to deeper ur-currents that feed the present religious, magical, or mystical expressions, remaining untainted by political agendas or intellectual fads. One must learn the mystery of the mask and the masked to do so without impunity, with open heart and discerning intellect. In our home studios, we are constantly surrounded by markers of this enigma; wooden idols, thangkas, icons, nkisis, and so forth, which may or may not leave their imprint to what we do – but at the very least their presence draws our minds back to the work whenever they start to drift toward everyday worries, which have no place in our studio-laboratory environment. While we shun shifting beliefs or paradigmatic approach to religion as a folly of the rootless, we refrain from proclaiming a single doctrine of truth; we leave preaching to others, and in general tend towards detachment and the apophatic. Power itself does not gain from being drawn towards the human; it is richer without limitations, some of which are instantaneously in effect, should we desire to address it.

Credit: Gavin Semple

In a practical sense, to remain on the same page regarding Arktau Eos, we assume a few working hypotheses which pertain more to cosmological and ontological rather than religious aspects. A few delineations follow, which may be of interest to the few who care about such matters. Most of these general ideas are nothing new: visualizing the vertical dimension as comprising of three distinct realms, understood as the underworld, our world, and the celestial and stellar domain. Man’s unique role may well be joining the superior with the inferior as Hermetic-derived traditions insist, yet sometimes it feels like we are lightning conductors and not logical operators in doing so! The universe appears to express harmony and correspondence, and analogical thinking enables us to correlate its contents and consolidate some of the seemingly conflicting world-views and maps of reality, while the axiom of the inner being the outer and the within being the without is a Gordian knot best split by the blade of sudden insight, not intellect. There is life before birth and life after death; even biologically speaking we return to the elements through the work of worms or the agency of fire. Some dreams appear to arrive from beyond these dramatic realignments, and they may even eradicate the boundaries shaping that which we in the wake world identify as ourselves (Ioh-Maera is heavily concerned with this process). Arktau Eos as an entity appears to stand motionless at the edge of twilight, Janus-faced, yet it walks the route of the return and the widdershins way at the same time, continuously realizing their unity as a point afresh in the eternity of NOW.

Michael: Arktau Eos, like Aural Hypnox as a whole, focuses on the mystical and spiritually connecting to the natural world. Do any members hold strong political views/beliefs which dictate the direction of the project? Put differently, do you see the current global issues, particularly focusing on the environment, as an important element in your artistic output? Or, do you try to stay focused on your own lives and remain separated from any greater political/cultural dialogues?

Arktau Eos: We make some conscious choices in our daily lives to reduce our impact on the environment, but we are not activists or especially politically orientated. To those who argue that no act at all is without political undertones, we may appear conservative: after all, we value the survival of old beliefs and traditional handicrafts. On the other hand, our sonic output obeys no rules at all. Arktau Eos sessions are devoid of political discussions. While we leave politics, and environmental politics in particular, to those more eloquent and passionate about them, for what it’s worth, it should be clear to anyone who has ever held an Aural Hypnox artefact in their hands that we want to create things that are of lasting value, forsaking throwaway produce and culture, and view purely utilitarian preying on the environment as short-sighted and negative.

Credit: recviem-art.ro

Michael: If you do see a need for concern, do you consider the output of Arktau Eos to be a way of reconnecting humanity to the natural world?

Our interest in this direction lies in the interactions of man with specific places in the natural world, the portals and power-zones, sites of attested theophanies and curious photic phenomena, unusual geomagnetic and geographical regions, mountaintops, caves, holy springs and lakes, nemetons, etc., all of which inspired our ancestors to marvel, worship gods known and forgotten, build shrines and tumuli, and erect megaliths based on stellar and solar alignments. Churches upon Mithraeums, chapels upon spots of pre-Christian apparitions… the layers are many and all are fascinating.

The otherworld is never but a figurative step away, but these liminal locations appear to amplify the catacomb resonances, the sense of the otherness, at times causing the veils of separation to unravel forcefully. Perhaps they are there to compartmentalize our experience, for who can withstand the full incursion of the greater reality unprepared? Beyond those veils certain sites shine as beacons to which flock entities that may bear little or no resemblance whatsoever to human life. Whether the impromptu sabbatic revels ensuing from encounters with such non- or un-beings still count as engagements with the natural world is obviously a matter of debate!

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

Our age lacks the framework for comprehending such experiences and casually relegates them to the category of the supernatural, now used pejoratively, stigmatizing unusual phenomena by equating them with hallucinations or glitches of brain-functions. All in vain hope that this would somehow nullify the nagging unease brought on by them displaying characteristics we are accustomed to associate with ourselves and related species, such as intelligence and independent will. We are not opposed to hard sciences and we value critical thinking, but merely wish to point out, as Shakespeare had Hamlet state to Horatio, that “there are more things in heaven and earth … than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. We have sent probes to Mars, which is all great, and even the depths of seas are becoming familiar to scientists, although their hold on imagination has not let go. And probably never will, so primal is the strata in which the idea of the abyss, tehom, resides, welling up as the waters of Genesis or earlier creation myths like that of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad. Yet, even today much on this planet remains little known, just consider the vastness of deep biosphere and how it defies expectations with its strange lifeforms: microbes living hundreds of thousands of years, for instance. Try, then, to explain the complexity of our imaginative faculty or of consciousness: the shoreless ocean or, indeed, abyss, the evolution of which spans geological epochs!

Some of our innate sensitivity to the numinous itself – the capability for apprehending pure awe that carries no moral or ethical baggage – has been lost, perhaps irrevocably. The common man has his senses dulled, his mind distracted by the ‘whys’ and ‘wherefores’, as if there would ever be an end to the chain of questioning. The culprits contributing to this sad state of affairs are numerous, but we could start with urbanization, light pollution, unnatural pace of life, over-reliance on technology, and the forceful shifts in our way of thinking since the Industrial Revolution, not to mention imperious scientism rife among the myopic and petty types. Religions and supposed experts on spiritual matters are not without fault themselves, having often accrued ways of conceiving the divine in terms unduly influenced by social and sociopolitical patterning. It is a precarious balance, to be sure.

In our own small way, we attempt to reverse the damage, cultivate an understanding of sacred sites within Arktau Eos, and walk their precincts with reverence. This is a reconnection, but alas! of a kind that will never be popular. Perhaps one must have a Gnostic sense of unease to seek out the forbidden and hidden to begin with. Few are truly called.

Credit: Arktau Eos

Michael: Aural Hypnox has previously unveiled Mount Hypnox, a line of hand-crafted incenses which could be used in connection with the label’s releases to further connect the listener to the aura of the music. Would you have any recommendations for the best incense blend to better connect the listener to the new album, Erēmos?

Arktau Eos: Erēmos calls for something uncomplicated. Locally available tree resins and the scent of a campfire are enough. Further down the line, we will probably release an Arktau Eos incense blend of more complexity. It should be clarified here that while we often use incense live, it is to add an extra dimension to the proceedings, an appeal to the olfactory senses to deepen immersion, and not to appease someone’s desire (fixation) for ritual as such. Immersion is vastly more important live than ceremony. The live shows should be more akin to a prolonged dream than a routine ‘ritual’ – at least they work better viewed that way.

Michael: Do you have any recommendations to listeners on the best way to enjoy this new release? Should it be enjoyed casually? During meditation? During one’s own rituals? Is there a right answer?

Arktau Eos: The gist of it is, indeed, that there is no correct answer. Over the years we have heard back from many listeners and have been pleasantly surprised about the ways people have deeply engaged with our albums. The knowledge that our records have been used in the rituals of certain magical orders and Neognostic enclaves is also gratifying in that it speaks volumes of their applicability and capability to communicate in such highly charged settings. Nevertheless, Erēmos is so unambiguously focused that a suggestion is hereby offered: it just might be best suited to lonely wanderings and meditations, whatever form they take. Trust your instincts. And by the way, we have no objections to casual enjoyment of our musical endeavours either. Your choice. Your responsibility, as ever. This is one area in which we have quit being elitist bastards. Working on the rest.

Credit: recviem-art.ro

Michael: Arktau Eos has recently performed at the L’Homme Sauvage event in France. What was the event like for Arktau Eos in comparison to some of your previous events. Were there any fellow artists from the line-up that you found particularly impressive?

Arktau Eos: L’Homme Sauvage is an excellent event, a whole community selflessly coming together to create something of greater good. It was our fourth time playing in the mountains (Stella Natura in the US twice, Funkenflug in the Austrian Alps, and now this). Rather conspicuously they all number among the highlights of our live ‘career’. Perhaps we have an affinity to mountains? At L’Homme Sauvage, we watched one of the bands struggle with power cut-offs earlier in the evening, but although stressful to the organisers, in the end the tension just seemed to heighten the collective anticipation and atmosphere. With bonfires lighting the area and a lone hurdy-gurdy resounding in distance, a truly unusual atmosphere took over, and when everything finally worked out as it should, people seemed to appreciate everything on-stage with heightened fervour. The organizers made a wise choice in having Visions play last, since his drone-heavy set helped that atmosphere linger on long into the night instead of being dissipated by traditional band-type sounds, as could have easily happened.

We had acclimatized to the Pyrenees, mentally preparing for the gig the entire preceding week by presenting ourselves to the powers that be on solitary peaks and other significant places, such as the many Cathar castle ruins dotting the landscape. We also spent some time with director-shaman Richard Stanley and witch Amanda, then residents of the village of Montségur, whose expert guidance in the region was most illuminative. Standing before the pog of Montségur, in full moon’s light in the dead of night, immersed in the profoundest silence punctuated by an owl’s hoots, remains one of the most powerful experiences of our recent travels. It is hard to relay without resorting to clichés since it is so archetypical: without warning – as gently as the first snow brushing your face yet as decidedly as a tidal flow – something entirely else came over and the landscape was transformed into an eerily beautiful faerie realm of timelessness. An extreme calmness remained although one’s sensorium was madly tingling owing to the presence of that which is beyond – and more than – human, leaving in its wake a curious nostalgia, or longing… And that is all that can be said, except that intuitively you feel certain that this has been experienced over and over again, century after century, by many folks, us being merely the last in a long line. Probably there are those who at that very interstice have decided to walk away from the life as we know it for good and now reside in that lambent ever-night permanently, barely remembering their former selves.

Our last time in Stella Natura was another momentous mountain spectacle from the beginning to the end, and to tell all would require pages and pages. Perhaps another time. As for the climax, we played in the early morning hours before the first light of dawn and it was actually damned hard to find our way out of the imposing Sierra Nevada woods and back to the trails after our set! A disastrous snowstorm had struck the day before and only a handful of people, the truly hard core, had stuck it out for our set, sipping magical potions infused with ingredients gathered from botanicas of San Francisco, drawn into that strange, cold void exhaling the breath of the earth and the intoxicating scent of pine resin deep in the woods. Together we formed a closed circle set apart from the rest of the world, in sway of total darkness except for the hues of spectral red bathing the stage, our drones and cymbals echoing through the massive canyon carved by the Yuba River nearby. Those gear-geeks looking for the ’best natural reverb’ on Internet forums, we declare the search over; but you can’t put it into a pedal, sorry!

Back to France and your question. Unfortunately, we did not get to see that many of our fellow performers at L’Homme Sauvage, being away on our own excursions under the mountains, exploring tunnels in darkness of which time itself flows in abnormal directions! Of the ones that we managed to hear, we enjoyed the tribal noise act 若潭 / ruò tán and the folk-goth of Traum’er Leben, both well-versed in their craft, and Mütterlein, who sounded very powerful. And as is natural in such rustic surroundings, the experimental folk stylings of La Breiche were more than fitting! Our friends Hexvessel are always good on-stage, and we gladly accepted their invitation to bring some of the Arktau Eos hexcraft onboard for a rendition of “I am the Ritual” to cap off the musical side of our trip.

Credit: Gavin Semple

Michael: You also recently performed at Death Cult Rising III in Barcelona, along with long-time label-mates Zoät-Aon. Were there any special moments from this event you’d like to share? Was it nice to see a Zoät-Aon performance after quite a lengthy silence from them?

Arktau Eos: Death Cult Rising III was another great festival and line-up. Always reassuring to see organisers put real effort into what they do, and the sound was fantastic. Highly recommended. This urbane setting – a club resembling a scene from a David Lynch movie complete with a masonic floorboard – was a nice contrast to the rustic festivities that soon followed it in form of L’Homme Sauvage. For ourselves, it was interesting to compare how our basic set took different directions with the slightest push, transforming itself to suit the surroundings in both cases. Let us hope 2019 will turn out equally fulfilling regarding live appearances!

As for Zoät-Aon, it was and is excellent to see Jaakko Vanhala set the old beast into motion again. We have both assisted him live at one point or another (A.I.L. accompanied him for the last two shows), and he fully deserves the credit and laudation he has acclaimed throughout the years for creating his original, highly technical yet feral brand of dark ambient. A running Hypnox house in-joke calls it ‘in-your-face ambient’.

Michael: Speaking of Zoät-Aon, I wonder if there are currently any plans to release another album as Arktau Aon?

Arktau Eos: No plans exist. The whole concept would need to reworked, as we cannot possibly re-create the youthful fire and spontaneity of the original sessions. It’s a miracle they survived and were recovered from our archives in the first place!

Michael: I wonder if you would be interested in detailing any of the process of creation for Arktau Eos? I’m particularly interested in how the drones and other synthetic elements are created in association to the live elements such as percussion, chanting, etc. Do you plan these rituals out in advance, creating the synthetic elements to be utilized in the live ritual setting? Or, do you create these synthetic elements intuitively and extemporaneously during a live ritual recording process?

Arktau Eos: There is always an element of intuition involved. We are not that big on presets, and enjoy tweaking sounds live, come what may. We always ensure there is room for improvisation, the possibility of taking the set in unanticipated directions. Certainly, much is planned and rehearsed, but should the situation call for it, a trip beyond in the spirit of joyful abandon will be seized with no remorse. We will never be a sterile live act that simply attempts to recreate studio work on-stage. What we can bring along creates natural limitations and the lack of second takes guarantees certain rawness and lack of refinement, but that is not necessarily a drawback.

When crafting our sound in the studio, there is no set work-flow. The only hard-and-fast rule these days is that it should immediately evoke that unmistakable presence of otherness to which one responds at gut-level. Synthetic, organic, digital, analog – while we have our preferences (vintage when possible!), it does not matter in the end, unless we want to involve some element or a self-made instrument for a distinct reason. We are not Luddites or attempting to recreate hypothetical prehistoric music, nor hold any pretensions to that effect, so there is never a question of authenticity in that sense – playing music with only sticks, bones and stones, to fulfill someone’s idealized, absurd notion of original ritual music! Catacomb Resonator was 90% vocals, Erēmos relied on other things… and what we work on right now sits right between the two albums, subject to change as always.

The studio environment is essentially a haunted microcosm and a crucible of change.

The studio environment is essentially a haunted microcosm and a crucible of change. We treat the synthetic parts as at least half-sentient, evolving things, animated by the subtle interrelated alchemy between everything that goes on in the studio. Electricity is an organic element as much as are fire and wind. Directing control voltages through analog gear is the act of mesmerizing the machine; electromagnetism is the kuṇḍalinī of the circuits!

Therefore, we also cherish and utilize to the full the moments when old or malfunctioning synthesizers and effects decide to embark on their own trajectories, bringing about unexpected changes. This goes in tandem with our interest in the romance and mystique of ‘transmissions’, whether supernatural or shortwave! Intention, if correctly formed, eventually pulls everything together. The filaments of the spider’s web reach into the unknown, carrying resonances from afar. Some of our synths involve the operator becoming part of the actual circuits, further fulfilling a mystic conjunction of flesh and metal. Tactility is a must: you will not be seeing Arktau Eos with a laptop on-stage anytime soon, perish the thought!

Credit: David Arranz

Michael: The ritual ambient genre seems to be growing every day. Though many of the musicians creating within this genre don’t seem to have nearly the depth of seriousness which musicians from Aural Hypnox consistently present. Would there be any certain musicians outside the Aural Hypnox/Helixes collective which you would recommend to followers of your works that are looking for the same level of dedication and authenticity?

Arktau Eos: To be honest, we do not wish to assume the mantle of arbiters regarding these matters: time will always tell. Let us see about dedication in five or ten years. Many from the old school have proven their dedication repeatedly and compared to them we are the newcomers. All hail and honour, you know who you are: acceptance by Arktau Eos is hardly needed! As for authenticity, the shallow ones are effortlessly told apart, although there is no pleasure in the exercise: those desperately striving for recognition, the pathologically self-important, the ones vacant-mindedly copying sigils from grimoires they do not grasp in hopes of impressing other dimwits, and so on, ad nauseam. All of them united by wallowing in the bitter waters of their smug self-complacency, while failing to recognize the vessel of crystal-clear stellar nectars when it is freely passed forth… You know the drill. Waste of energy, though fools may strike gold, once! More importantly, for the rest, the sincere ones we extend our well-wishes and a friendly word: just know how ‘authentic’ you want to become, because when things get real, they inevitably bring on danger, personal sacrifice – and your ego to the firing line. Those with escapist fantasies are not cut for such trials. The abyss will gaze back, unwavering.

Michael: Thank you very much for this interview, I am fully aware that these aren’t granted often, and I greatly appreciate the opportunity to speak with you gentlemen!

Arktau Eos: Thank you, it was a pleasure answering your thought-out questions! We appreciate your time and interest, wishing you the best of luck with This Is Darkness.

Arktau Eos Links

Helixes Collective Official Site
Aural Hypnox Official Site
Arktau Eos – Facebook
Aural Hypnox – Soundcloud
Aural Hypnox – Vimeo

Cadabra Records – The Call of Cthulhu – Review

Artists:
Andrew Leman (Spoken Word)
Theologian (Soundscapes)

Album: The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft
Release date: Spring 2018
Label: Cadabra Records

Cadabra Records has effectively carved out a niche for themselves with their H.P. Lovecraft vinyl series. It might seem strange to essentially buy an audiobook without the convenience, but their pressing of Lovecraft’s 1929/1930 work Fungi From Yuggoth takes the story’s effect to unimaginable heights. These projects aren’t mere reading. They’re gripping, haunting works of art in and of themselves.

Andrew Leman’s utterance of Lovecraft’s words is harrowing enough in and of itself, but the inclusion of post-industrial legends Theologian was a true stroke of genius. Their nebulous soundscapes embody Lovecraft’s fear of the unknown to a degree no other artist could hope to reach. Given how great Fungi turned out, it only made sense of Cadabra to unite the same artists once more to tackle Lovecraft’s magnum opus—The Call of Cthulhu.

A palpable aura sets into place right when the needle hits the wax, and only tightens its grip on the listener’s senses. Listening to this thing in the dark at high volumes is profoundly nightmarish, as the speaker and the musicians work to magnify the dreadful feeling The Call of Cthulhu elicits. The chemistry between Leman and Theologian is unprecedented in this type of media. Their respect for the source material is evident, as each sound and word resonates at the core of Lovecraft’s chilling narrative.

Subscriber only variant.

While Theologian’s input on this release doesn’t stray far from amorphous noisescapes, their sonic tides rise and fall in synchronization with the story’s emotional crescendos. As Leman gets more impassioned, the soundscape acquires more layers of paranoid sound. The result gives a dumbfounding fervor to protagonist Francis Wayland Thurston’s descent into madness. Lovecraft always made a point to detail the mental fallout experienced by his protagonists after beholding the Great Old Ones, which this recording mirrors as Leman’s tone of voice gets increasingly agitated.

Leman and Theologian’s respective contributions were obviously made to be mutually exclusive, but this project keeps both the reading and the music compelling. Leman’s reading would be captivating without Theologian backing him up, just like Theologian’s finely-crafted ambiance could transfix by itself.

Theologian made a good call to avoid trying too hard to evoke each plot-point as it happens. The musician instead supports the overall atmosphere, working tirelessly to up the ante as the chilling narrative takes its course. There are a few nuanced additions to drive some of the most terrifying moments home. When police official John Raymond hears the ritual drums that lead him to the Cthulhu cult’s terrifying procession, a very quiet, but deliberate rhythmic pulse creeps into the aura.

Instead of trying too hard to musically interpret the story, Theologian intuitively creates a head-space for the listener. It almost works like subliminal messaging, preparing the ears and mind for Lovecraft’s words. This release forces listeners to contend with monsters beyond comprehension after being whisked away to Lovecraft’s macabre world.

For vinyl lovers who haven’t read Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, this is the perfect introduction. For anyone already familiar with The Call of Cthulhu, this provides a re-experience like no other. This album’s immersive ambiance and expressive reading is nothing short of spectacular. It takes nothing from the source material, only adding to its impact as a seminal work of horror and weird fiction. Cadabra may well have outdone themselves with this project.

Written by: Maxwell Heilman

Lars von Trier – The House That Jack Built – Movie Review

Title: The House That Jack Built
Director: Lars von Trier
Starring: Matt Dillon, Bruno Ganz, Riley Keough, Uma Thurman, Jeremy Davies, Siobhan Fallon Hogan
Original Languages: English
Genre: Horror, Thriller, Drama
Running Time: 155
Year: 2018
Available at select theatres and on-demand services now.
Check for your own region.

Matt Dillon as Jack in The House That Jack Built, courtesy of Mongrel Media

 

“I don’t have a handle on how many processes
take part in the decay of a dead human,
but I know a bit about dessert wines.”

Jack

Lars Von Trier has been shocking audiences for over three decades now with his controversial, but often heart wrenching, films. But, with many seeing his best work behind him, in films like Dogville and Dancer in the Dark, Trier has slowly moved into a more shadowy region of the film industry. The fact that only one theatre in the whole Baltimore/DC region appeared to be showing it on opening day (Parkway Theater, home of the Maryland Film Festival), and on top of that I was one of four people in the theatre (this was a 3:30 PM showing, one of several throughout the day/night), seems to drive this point home. As with much of his work, The House That Jack Built seems destined to be misunderstood by many and totally unnoticed by most.

Lars von Trier has always worked with subjects that veer toward the darker sides of human emotion. His first major film, The Element of Crime (1984) was a post-apocalyptic crime noir, which was certainly the darkest work he’s produced to date. Europa (1991) put Trier on the map with its tragically pessimistic conclusion enveloped in a hazy historical piece. Riget (1996) (The Kingdom), along with shows like Twin Peaks (1990), helped to change the face of television, paving the path for future shows with much more intricate plots and content which often pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable for television at the time. But, the films Breaking The Waves (1996), Dancer in the Dark (2000), and Dogville (2003) positioned Lars von Trier as a Cannes favorite for years. These three films were able to harness the subtleties of that darkness from his previous films and blend it with much more personal tales of sorrow.

Director Lars Von Trier – Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

However, it wouldn’t be long before Trier dreamed of returning to the darkness that seemed to be at the source of his original inspirations. This coincided, coincidentally or otherwise, with his mental breakdown which landed him in a mental hospital for a brief stay, due to a major bout of depression. During and on the other side of that, we were presented with The Depression Trilogy. Antichrist (2009), Melancholia (2011), and Nymphomaniac (2013) explored the depths of utter despair and depression, and the depravity that is often spawned from these mind-states. While Melancholia received quite high esteems across the spectrum, Antichrist and Nymphomaniac haven’t been so well received by the film community or the general public. Add to this a very badly timed/executed Nazi joke, and Lars von Trier found himself persona non grata at his old strongholds like Cannes.

Left to right: Siobhan Fallon Hogan as Lady 2 and Matt Dillon as Jack in The House That Jack Built

Lars von Trier did present The House That Jack Built this year at the Cannes Film Festival, but it received a tepid response from crowd and critics, with many walking out of the film during some of the harsher scene. As mentioned at the beginning, the ability to see this one in theatres seems to be almost non-existent, unless you happen to live in a city/town with a film school, or other privately-owned theatre that seeks rarer/smaller films. There was news of the director’s cut being available for a brief period on YouTube the night before release, but it disappeared soon after. Luckily, the film does appear to be available for rent from On Demand services, so it should find a wider audience quickly.

“Sick, Violent and a Total Bore”
The New York Times

“Empty, Repugnant Provocations”
The New Yorker

“Von Trier can be a filmmaker of great empathy when he wants to be, but it’s exhausting to see him unable to think about the artistic process as anything other than a predator/prey dynamic.”
Vulture

The House That Jack Built isn’t going to win back any of those good/neutral critics. It is filled with violent acts against women and children. Jack almost seems to be Trier’s idea of one of these American incels, Jack delivering a speech on the injustices against modern men to drive the point home. I think this perspective will make it much harder for Trier to reconcile this work with his left-leaning critics who have been labeling him a misogynist for years. I have seen the positive traits Trier wants to evoke in so many of his female roles/actresses throughout the years, but if you were in the camp that felt he was already being demeaning toward women, this one will send you quite further down that path. Of course, there will be lunatic loving sadists coming to this film for the wrong reasons, just as there will be social justice warriors giving it attention from the other side, but I try to separate art from reality and see the film as it is supposed to be, incredibly uncomfortable art with many nuances.

Matt Dillon as Jack in The House That Jack Built, courtesy of Mongrel Media

This film certainly follows in the footsteps of The Depression Trilogy in many of its features. Though, there do also seem to be enough differences to say that he has moved on from that trilogy and is not seeking to add this to its ranks. But, as you will see, Lars von Trier has continued to keep a strong connection between the actions of his protagonists and mental diagnoses with, for instance, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder being used to invoke some of the most comical moments of the film.

“A murderer with OCD it’s almost ridiculous. But how unfortunate for you Jack, and to top it off, with cleaning compulsions.”
Virgil

The best way I could sum up the film is to say that it is a perfect combination of the Hannibal (2013) TV show with American Psycho (2000). These elements are, of course, run through the Lars von Trier filter, meaning there will be the sorts of halts in narrative, tutorials, and multiple time-lines which have been staples of The Depression Trilogy. The film is more-or-less a narrative, Jack tells Virgil (author of The Aeneid) about a few of his most memorable kills/situations as they are traveling together.

*Possible Spoiler*—> While the majority of this film follows the above framework, the epilogue takes us into a vastly different situation. This is the part which makes me wonder if this will end up being my favorite Lars von Trier film of all time. I will not give away the scenes/events, but I will say that we are taken into another place, a place which could hold analogies to David Lynch‘s Red Room. While in this place, there is a sound, a sound which must be heard at great volumes. This sound is a sort of dark-ambient droning I would say, it’s really quite an impressive sound which adds so much emphasis to the scene. So there are dark ambient drones and a sort of alternative Red Room scenario. <— *Possible Spoiler* The final point I’d like to mention on that connection is in the way that new chapters are introduced in the film. Trier has used this style in the past, but I find it to be the most well executed in this film. The animations of these chapter-markers show the handwritten text reverse-dripping. The scenes are very Trier, but they also seem incredibly Lynchian to me, like artwork that could be pulled right out of his studio. This isn’t to say that Trier is ripping off David Lynch, I don’t think he is at all. But, the things that make me like both of these directors so much can come into such harmony at times that it surprises me. I often daydream of what sort of monster would be created if these two directors were ever to work side by side on a project. Alternate directing television episodes? I think there could be gold there!

Matt Dillon plays the serial killer Jack. While he’s a well-enough-known actor in Hollywood, and has been starring in films for decades, he’s never gotten the esteem or top-roles of actors like Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Jake Gyllenhaal and other grounded-sort-of-actors. This role, if you’ve totally separate it from any feelings on Lars von Trier, was played magnificently by Matt Dillon. It is a combination of him being a natural choice for the role and him truly living up to its demands. He is able to successfully convey a range of emotions in this role that will take the viewer from laughing out of their seat, to trembling with unease at his psychopathic, homicidal gaze. Performances by victims Uma Thurman and Riley Keough also stood out for me, along with the epic voice of Bruno Ganz.

Left to right: Riley Keough as Simple and Matt Dillon as Jack in The House That Jack Built

The film is shot, mostly, using the hand-held camcorder format which Lars von Trier has been incorporating for quite a long time. There are also the occasional art stills which have been so beautifully realized in his past works. There are sort of scrapbook-like pieces added throughout as well, along with the aforementioned tutorials. In short, this is typical Trier, atypical Hollywood. There is a point in the film, where we are given a deeper glance into the works of Trier. This moment will be obvious to viewers because he actually uses scenes from throughout his film career to convey the message. I’ll leave that one to you, but it is worth noting that he really seems to be working with something personal here. Maybe, as with depression, Trier sees elements in this film that have been essential to his entire career.

I’d rather not go into too great of detail on the specifics within the film’s narrative. I recommend watching it for past fans of Trier’s work. But, this one should be interesting well outside his usual crowd. There is a massive market these days in the genre of true crime. Books and podcasts are selling off the shelves on the topic, so a new serial killer film should find its own audience easily enough. This one feels a bit less artistic as a whole, in comparison to Antichrist or Melancholia, but it still holds many of those elements which make his past films equally timeless and transgressive. If you have the stomach for a serial killer’s mentality through the no-holds-barred approach of Lars von Trier, this film is sure to delight you.

Written by: Michael Barnett

Hector Meinhof – Interview

Hector Meinhof is an author and musician out of Sweden that has recently released his debut book, Three Nails, Four Wounds through Infinity Land Press. Outside his writing, Meinhof is known for his work as a classically-trained percussionist. He’s performed as part of Kroumata, a percussion ensemble. He’s also part of the scenic music duo, Hidden Mother. He is a collector of  antique photography, specialized in post-mortem, medical and religious themes.

This book had a real impact on me, more so than with many/most books I’ve read in recent years. There is a perfect melange of macabre photography with a strange story that takes place in an asylum, centered on seven 11 year old girls. The story is filled with brilliant allusions to an apocalypse, mental/physical disability, old-fashion asylum conditions, and a dark and twisted conception of Christianity. Mingled with this is a very unique writing style, a blend of dialogues, poetry, and prose which all come together with the images to form an incredibly powerful experience.

Hector Meinhof has written a book that is both beautiful and cruel. His poetic prose and the doom-laden pictures from his extensive collection of vintage photographs have bled into one tortured, corporeal unity. This is the illustrated scripture for the new dark ages, it will be read and beheld again and again. – Martin Bladh

I decided that only reviewing the book wouldn’t do this work enough justice. I wanted to delve into the topics a bit deeper with Meinhof and find out a bit more about this promising new artist to the literary world. There will be a review coming along soon, but for now I highly recommend this book! Enjoy, and thank you all for your continued support of This Is Darkness and the works we cover!

Interviewee: Hector Meinhof
Conducted by: Michael Barnett

Michael: First off, thank you very much for agreeing to the interview. Three Nails, Four Wounds was my first introduction to your art-form and I must say I am incredibly impressed. I rarely am eager to go right back to the beginning of a book and start reading again, immediately after finishing it. But this the case with Three Nails, Four Wounds.

Hector: Thank you for those kind words, Michael. I’m looking forward to hearing your questions. Let’s dig into it!

Michael: Christianity plays a major role throughout the narrative of Three Nails, Four Wounds. What is your particular relationship with religion? Do you fascinate on it from afar, or do you hold some beliefs?

Hector: I did not have a religious upbringing at all (by the way: Sweden is mostly protestant). I thought religion was the most boring subject when I went to school. I didn’t care about these things until my 30s when I started to read about Christian mysticism. People on the fringe of society have always interested me and all those eccentric mystics – the saints, the stigmatics, Christ-erotics, those crazy nose-bleeding nuns, levitating, fasting, suffering, flagellating themselves – really struck me as the most extreme way of life ever recorded in the human history. It also made me aware of my Christian heritage. In the West – especially in Europe – we are all cultural Christians whether we like it or not. It’s not just the architecture, music, art, philosophy – but it’s in our way of thinking, in how we perceive things. So, whether you believe Christ was crucified for our sins or that he was “incompetence hanging on a tree” [Anton Szandor LaVey] it doesn’t really matter – we are what we are because of Christianity. In Scandinavia, Christendom is of course mixed with Norse mythology (look at the Norwegian stave churches with their dragons).  Personally, I don’t have a problem with our Christian heritage, it has given birth to astonishing art, literature and philosophy, a rich set-up of archetypes that can guide and inspire, and the church’s demand for control wasn’t strong enough to keep the light of science from creeping in.

Michael: Martin has mentioned in the Afterword that it took you a great deal of time to find your individual writing voice. Do you think you’ve finally found that voice with Three Nails, Four Wounds?

Hector: That’s a good question. There are so many books in the world – is it even possible to create something new? Since I can’t do better work than Dante, Göthe, Shakespeare, Bronte,  Dostoevsky, Huysmans, Rilke, Woolf, Proust, Camus, Bataille, Zürn, Ungar and Wittkop, already have done, I need to find themes, or a combination of themes, that haven’t been explored (at least not the way I do it); combine that with a personal style regarding language and form – then maybe you can create something that at least could be perceived as original. I had been writing for many years, but never thought anything turned out good enough for publishing. This time I thought it did. I guess this is my voice then – but I suspect that it will change over time. It took a long time for me to learn how to write, let’s leave it at that.

Let me add that when I started to write “Three Nails, Four Wounds” I knew that I wanted the story to take place in a hospital, and that although the religious themes would be there (like a skeleton of the book), my main focus was to find ways to express feelings of despair, pain, loneliness, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, a frustrated stutterer full of things to say lacking the ability to talk freely, and mental illness in general. I didn’t want it to be a conventional novel (building up characters, etc.), and I wanted a slightly surreal tone in the girls’ speech – that was my biggest problem: how to make them talk like they were from another dimension of life. So, I got the idea of using old poems (written ca. 15 years ago) as lines – and that’s how I found the tone in the dialogue. At one stage, I did consider composing the book entirely of lines of dialogue, but it felt too constructed.

From Three Nails, Four Wounds

Michael: Was Three Nails, Four Wounds part of this process of finding your voice, or did you begin the book after you felt that you were in this proper mindset and had found a narrative voice suitable to continue with a more intensified and directed focus?

Hector: I guess “Three Nails” was part of the process. I wrote the book, read it, and felt for the first time that this book made it through the needle eye of my ambitions. I was ready. Twenty years from now, I will hopefully be a much better writer and then I will probably see flaws in this first book of mine – but I do believe that I will stand behind it and defend it.

Michael: Would you like to elaborate on some of the ideas that you were working on when writing this book?

Hector: My heroines, the seven 11-year-old girls, are not victims of anything, they act without hesitation, they are not afraid of the present. And many people are afraid of the present. A psychologist (I can’t remember who) talked about a man, happily married with children for 15 years. One day, his wife tells him that she has had an affair for the last five years and that she wants a divorce. The man is shocked. He says: “But I thought we were happy – when we had dinner last weekend, our holidays in France, when we visited your parents… Now, it’s like I don’t know myself anymore” – and the man had a breakdown. Happy memories turned into memories of deceit. His wife’s betrayal had changed his past, his history. So, the present can change the past, and that’s why it’s scary. In the present, we lack control. Everyday unexpected things can happen. Someone might walk up to you and say or do something that changes your past – and then we don’t know who we are anymore. The seven 11-year-old girls don’t remember, maybe they don’t have a past at all – and they are not afraid of anything.

My heroines are female because I think Woman has a certain inclination to spirituality – and most important: they use their body to express this spirituality. Reading about, for example, Mechthild von Magdeburg (which is quoted in the book), there is a very physical side to her belief in God. She talks about Christ more as a physical lover rather than something unreachable. The female saints bleed, they experience stigmata, they fast, they throw up objects, they levitate; when their bodies are dead they smell of flowers, when their hearts are dissected we find patterns and symbols inside. It seems to me, that female mystics use their flesh in a way male mystics don’t (there are, of course, exceptions). Their worship is like an art-form – and makes me think of contemporary performance artists, such as Marina Abramovic, especially her work in the 1970s.

Editor’s Note: An interesting article, if you want to learn more about some of Marina Abramovic’s work in the 70s.
https://www.elitereaders.com/performance-artist-marina-abramovic-social-experiment/?cn-reloaded=1

Hector: My heroines are children because I wanted them to be virgins. You could say that I use the seven 11-year-old girls as a cliché of the innocent childhood, not yet affected by social rules, sensual not sexual etc. But there’s a deeper meaning to it: their virginality – and I’m not talking about the bodily aspect of the term, but rather as a mental state. The virgin is self-enclosed, remote, secluded, turned inwards, doesn’t please others, penetrating only her own body, sterile, uncontaminated. Virginity as a state of mind is a sort of resistance. Let me quote from a book I just read [Images of the Untouched, 1982] about how to make a unicorn trap. You place the virgin in a forest, “with her breast uncovered, and by its scent the unicorn perceives it; then it comes to the virgin and kisses her breast, falls asleep on her lap and so comes to its death.” You could interpret the unicorn as “the spirit”, and the ”unicorn trap” as a way to unite the spirit with the body. “The virginal nourishes the spirit, while spirit makes the virginal psyche pregnant.” So, virginity as a state of mind is to be pregnant – that is: creative. In some cultures, the menstrual blood is viewed as a manifestation of creative power, especially a girl’s first menstruation. So, in my book you can see what happens when seven 11-year-old psychic virgins start acting, breaking the snow-white silence and awakening the avalanche.

Michael: There are hints that this book may not take place in a century-old past, as may seem more obvious, but that it is a look into the future. A possible warning about our coming struggles as humanity, as we wrestle with the ramifications of our systematic destruction of our own planet and existence. Do you see this as a sort of apocalyptic warning, a sort of prophecy?  Something more abstract than this?  Or do you prefer to let the reader sort these details out on their own?

Hector: Timewise, the book takes place in all eras (including the future). I think that in our culture we have lost the belief (and understanding) in sacrifice as a means for change.  I wanted to remind people of that. I have a really bad feeling about the future. On the other hand: the way I read the book, it actually has a happy ending. I believe that in the end of the book [spoiler alert! -> when the seven girls torture themselves to death, this sacrifice actually saves the town and the people in it. <- spoiler alert!] Let me just add that I don’t have an agenda – political or religious – with my work, you might see it as an intellectual preparation for the approaching darkness.

From Three Nails, Four Wounds

Michael: Were there any worries about the subject matter/visual content of Three Nails, Four Wounds?  It is, of course, packed with some quite macabre imagery, unavoidable considering the themes of the photographic content.

Hector: Not really. I did suggest that we black out the eyes of the disabled children, because those photos were taken in the 1940-50s (so they could still be alive, although I doubt it). It is, of course, a bit weird that photographs taken in the 19th century – for private use or as documentation – are now viewed as art. I see them as historic artifacts worthy of our attention, as memento mori objects, as our past, our collective memory.

From Three Nails, Four Wounds

Michael: It seems reasonably obvious that Infinite Land Press wouldn’t take issue with pressing such an intense release, as it is really the culture of their company. But, what of the hapless consumer that stumbles across your work. The person that had no clue what to expect. Do you have any preferred reaction/emotion you’d like to see coming from them?

Hector: I think the hapless consumer will be alright. If he or she doesn’t like my book they can just throw it away. People get offended by different things, some by photos of the dead, some by naked breasts, some by stupidity. I cannot limit myself by the fears of others. I saw ”The Shining” [Kubrick 1980] when I was ten, and I couldn’t sleep for days. I got extreme anxiety when I had to watch an anti-drug movie in school, where a woman injected heroin into her neck. But I survived – and rather than prosecute the people behind these ”childhood traumas” I feel grateful for being exposed to great art (The Shining) and brutal reality (syringe in neck). And no, I do not have any preferred reactions from a reader – all emotions are welcome.

From Three Nails, Four Wounds

Michael: “The Shining” was the first film that I appreciated more deeply and intuitively. A horror that could overcome the viewer on multiple levels. I, also, wouldn’t have had it any other way. Now that you are moving in the published world, do you have plans for more publications to follow in the foreseeable future?

Hector: I am currently writing a new book. Infinity Land Press is interested. I need at least one more year to finish it. The plan is to get it out in 2020.

Michael: Have you been holding back ideas with the anticipation of coming into your own as a writer, or have you been working through material as it presents itself?

Hector: The latter, I believe. Writing for me is very intuitive. I don’t know what’s going on inside my head when I’m working. It’s a mystery to me – and I like that.

Michael: Martin Bladh mentions that you found inspiration in a passage from the ancient Roman historian Plutarch, in which fear of being carried naked through the market stopped a sudden phenomenon of the Miletus townswomen impulsively hanging themselves. Was this an interesting tidbit you found? Or do you have a deeper fascination with Roman history/stories/mythology?

Hector: I would like to learn more about Roman history, but the Plutarch story was just something that I stumbled upon and felt was connected to my book.

From Three Nails, Four Wounds

Michael: During my studies of Roman history at university, I found the stories: ‘The Golden Ass’ by Apuleius, ‘Satyricon’ by Petronius, and ‘The Satires’ by Juvenal, to all be the most resoundingly interesting. But there is a never-ending torrent of literature worth reading. One must be selective with their time, especially in modernity when vacation and retirement are imaginary concepts for most people. (At least here, in the U.S.)

Hector: I agree, there are so many books to read! Think about a man like Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. He read all books that existed in his time, he possessed all knowledge there was in the world and could grasp the whole intellectual effort made by mankind. You could say that he knew everything. Today that would not be possible – and knowledge is consequently fragmented upon various experts. And now I have contributed to the ever growing pile of books in the world with my own book…  I would guess that psychic virgins are very selective readers (or they probably don’t read at all).

Michael: What are your thoughts on Francesca Woodman’s perspective on her art?  Do you think it was auto-biographical in nature? Do you think her still largely unreleased body of work would inform us better on this matter?

Francesca Woodman, Space 2, 1976.

Hector: I was around 20 years old when I discovered Francesca Woodman. It had a great impact on me back then, but I haven’t thought about her for some years now. I don’t want to speculate about her work, if it was auto-biographical or not – it is what it is, for us to enjoy. But there is something mysterious about her, both in her work and her as a person. A feeling of something untold. I saw that documentary [The Woodmans, 2011] a few years ago, it had a weird atmosphere – her father photographing young Francesca-like women, like he was repeating (or continuing) his dead daughter’s work. The documentary didn’t really give much new information, but it was nice to see bits from her performance videos, and to hear her “Minnie Mouse” voice.  When she jumped out of a window at her New York apartment she did not leave a suicide note, but in a letter to a friend she wrote: “My life at this point is like very old coffee-cup sediment and I would rather die young leaving various accomplishments, i.e. some work, my friendship with you, some other artefacts intact, instead of pell-mell erasing all of these delicate things.”  That tells us quite a bit regarding her aim for perfection. I do hope we will get to see the rest of her work someday, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Michael: Have you found any current photographers that are able to capture her level of emotion in their works which you found so profound with Francesca Woodman?

Hector: For the last ten years or so my focus has been on antique photography, so I’m not really up to date on contemporary artists. But if you want pain, I can recommend the saint-like Spanish photographer David Nebreda.

Michael: Again, in the Afterword, Martin mentions your original fondness for film directors like Pasolini, Dreyer, Bergman and Tarkovsky. Who are some of your more modern favorites? I’m, personally, a huge fan of the works of Lars von Trier and David Lynch, quite a bit above most other current filmmakers, though I’m always looking for some young talents to carry the torch for the next generation.

Hector: When I started writing, film was an important source of influence. I went to a movie theater (that showed classics and art house films) almost every day. But as with contemporary photographs, nowadays I’m not really up-to-date with what’s going on. I like Michael Haneke’s films, Tarr and Alexander Sokurov. If I should name a Swedish director, it would be Ruben Östlund. Sorry, don’t come to me if you want tips on photographers or directors! When I was younger, I searched for influences everywhere, nowadays I try to avoid influences – the thoughts inside my own head are enough.

Vintage hidden mother photographs from Three Nails, Four Wounds.

Michael: How has your collection progressed since you started procuring 19th and early 20th century photography? Do you just find this sort of stuff on the internet, or do you attend auctions and other markets for finding such niche photography? I imagine there must be so much of this stuff out there, waiting in attics for some horrified descendant to one day unpack, and they wouldn’t have the slightest clue what to do with an oddity like this.

Hector: I think my interest in buying antique photographs started when I saw a “hidden mother” on eBay. I realized that there were a lot of interesting photos on the market. Pretty soon, I started to buy post-mortems, and then medical photos, and then religious themes. Most of them I bought at on-line auctions like eBay, but I have also gotten to know photo collectors from around the world. It’s a small community and we know each other’s interests, we sell and trade with each other. Some of the photos in the book make me uncomfortable too, looking back I think this was a way for me to come to terms with certain fears, and to learn to see beauty even in the nastiest subjects. I like to look at kittens too.

From Meinhof’s personal collection.

Michael: I imagine a hobby like collecting 19th – early 20th century post-mortem photography wouldn’t present itself in a vacuum. Do you have any other interesting collections you’d like to mention?

Hector: Well, that would be old books – but beyond that I don’t really think that I’m such a hoarder. On the other hand, if I had a lot of money, I could easily imagine myself surrounded with exquisite antiques – cylinder music boxes, medieval paintings, large vellum books, talking machines, phonographs, 17th century medical models in ivory, religious objects and relics from saints – in my little castle in the Swiss alps…

Michael: That sounds like a wonderful way of spending a fortune! Has your particular environment had an impact on your artistic direction?  As you are Swedish, it is understandable that the works of Ingmar Bergman would come to you at an earlier age than for someone like myself growing up in a rather traditional American family.

Hector: Bergman was important, films like Persona, Hour of the Wolf, Cries and Whispers, had a huge impact on me. Not just visually, but also his treatment of the Swedish language. But most of all, this feeling of independence and freedom; that you can create a piece of art with its own inner logic regarding form and content, not following the manual and not caring about what other people think or say. And, since I have been working with hardcore contemporary art music for my whole adult life, I think (although I cannot explain exactly how) that this has influenced my sense of form and structure. Xenakis, Stockhausen, Cage, Lucier, Ligeti, Sciarrino, Whitehouse…

From Three Nails, Four Wounds

Michael: What are your feelings on Infinity Land Press? Are you happy with the book and Martin and Karolina?

Hector: I had met Martin once before in connection with the recording of the CD Closure… by his post-industrial band IRM. They wanted some additional percussion on the album and, via a mutual friend, I got the job. A few years later when I had finished Three Nails, I heard that Martin had moved to London and started Infinity Land Press, together with Karolina. I sent him the manuscript and he replied like 24 hours later that he wanted to publish it – I was stunned! Martin and Karolina are very professional, both are artists themselves, so we have the same understanding of where the boundaries in our different roles (writer – publisher) should be. I think Karolina’s design of the book is very tasteful and Martin provided a thoughtful afterword that gives the reader some background to the thematic aspects of the book. And of course, the translators Marianne Griolet and John Macmillan were crucial for the birth of this book as a physical object. To produce a book with over 100 photos is expensive, and I wanted it to be affordable (especially since this is my debut), and I think that ILP managed to make a book that feels luxurious without costing a fortune. I am very happy with the result, it’s a little gem. And the reception has been fantastic, I’m humbled by all the praise from my readers.

Michael: I think you hit your goal nicely. I forgot the book was under £20, it certainly feels like a more expensive and very well-made product.  Do you see any other publisher out there working on projects of these sorts?

Hector: I think you know more about publishers than I do, Michael. But we have, for example, Kiddiepunk [Michael Salerno], and Amphetamine Sulphate [Philip Best]. I was happy that Wakefield Press released two books by Gabrielle Wittkop a few years ago.

Michael: I am learning new things every day. I am constantly finding new artists, publishers, film directors, that are changing my ideas on art and its limits. I just try to bring the zine’s readers along in my process of discovery. You never know where the next hidden gem will decide to shine and reveal itself. I find that an artist’s particular set of interests can often unlock a whole new world of interests to their followers. So, I thank you for sharing some insight, not only into your own work and process, but also into the things that brought you to become the artist you are today. I thank you again for your time, and I’ll leave the final words to you!

Hector: The pleasure was mine, Michael. Thank you for spreading the New Gospel! My final words… well, the aborted calf is shaved and skinned. The skin is stretched over the firmament: In the afternoon sun, people cease to cast shadows. In the town square, the puppet theater closes for the day. The puppet master pulls off the puppets and discovers that his hands are soaked with blood. You see, this is for real.

Purchase Three Nails, Four Wounds here.

Hector Meinhof Links

Official Website
Facebook
Instagram
Youtube
Hidden Mothers band site

The Recluse of Bayswater Mix

We will be incorporating more works like this in the future. Full texts of old horror and weird fiction which has fallen into public domain, but is certainly still worthy of reading. We would greatly appreciate feedback on this feature. What sort of stories would you prefer? Longer? Shorter? Stupid idea? Let us know! Also we are keeping an eye open for new unpublished works by modern authors who may be looking for some extra exposure through the zine. So, please get in touch!

This feature will include a mix of music inspired by the text, as well as a perfect companion to its reading. The story will also be preceded by a brief foreword written and/or compiled by This Is Darkness.

Check out the novella and mix here.

Links to all included albums on the mix can be found below the player.

01. 0:00:00 Endless Melancholy – Prologue (For A Broken Tape Recorder)
02. 0:01:30 The Caretaker – Now The Night Is Over And The Dawn Is About To Break
03. 0:06:25 Mortaur – Suit Wearer Walking Backwards
04. 0:08:10 Flowers for Bodysnatchers – Dear Ernest, You’re Dead
05. 0:16:30 L’Horrible Passion – Mnemosine (or how to lose your eyes to never see the light again)
06. 0:25:50 Ian Fleming – The Smell of Flesh As It Cooks
07. 0:30:40 Atrium Carceri – The Ancient City
08. 0:34:45 The Caretaker – An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
09. 0:38:30 Secluded Alchemist – As Ages Pass, Solace is Found
10. 0:43:20 Manifesto – Dog Country
11. 0:47:50 David Lynch & Dean Hurley – The Air is on Fire: VII (Interior)
12. 0:51:30 Spiralithic – Les Gnossiennes d’Erik Satie – Gnossienne No.3
13. 0:54:00 Teahouse Radio – Death would find my halls and flood them
14. 0:57:40 Council of Nine – This World Has Not Been Kind
15. 1:03:30 Atrium Carceri – Red Stains
16. 1:06:00 Mebitek feat. Nicola Melis – Romantic Deepness
17. 1:12:30 Wordclock – Beatrice’s Euphoria
18. 1:18:30 The Caretaker – Glimpses of hope in trying times
19. 1:23:10 First Human Ferro – Prophetic Decay of Angel
20. 1:29:20 Sana Obruent – Good Night
21. 1:32:30 Tapes and Topographies – Stay Until I Sleep

Arthur Machen – The Recluse of Bayswater (Novel of the White Powder) – Full Text

We will be incorporating more works like this in the future. Full texts of old horror and weird fiction which has fallen into public domain, but is certainly still worthy of reading. We would greatly appreciate feedback on this feature. What sort of stories would you prefer? Longer? Shorter? Stupid idea? Let us know! Also we are keeping an eye open for new unpublished works by modern authors who may be looking for some extra exposure through the zine. So, please get in touch!

This feature will include a mix of music inspired by the text, as well as a perfect companion to it’s reading. The story will also be preceded by a brief foreword written and/or compiled by This Is Darkness.

Find links to all albums included in the mix here.

 

THE RECLUSE OF BAYSWATER

Arthur Machen
from the collection: The Three Impostors (or The Transmutations)
1895

Preface

The Recluse of Bayswater is a story within a larger collection by Arthur Machen, entitled The Three Impostors. However, within The Recluse of Bayswater is yet another story, Novel of the White Powder, which is considered one of the all-time horror greats. H.P. Lovecraft said that it “approaches the absolute culmination of loathsome fright” in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature.

I’ll use another slightly edited quote here from Supernatural Horror in Literature to give an idea of how Machen stood among his peers in the early twentieth century. H.P. Lovecraft says, “…few if any can hope to equal the versatile Arthur Machen; author of some dozen tales long and short, in which the elements of hidden horror and brooding fright attain an almost incomparable substance and realistic acuteness. Mr. Machen, a general man of letters and master of an exquisitely lyrical and expressive prose style, has perhaps put more conscious effort into his picaresque Chronicle of Clemendy… [Here Lovecraft detailed some of the non horror accomplishments of Machen.] …But the fact remains that his powerful horror-material of the ’nineties and earlier nineteen-hundreds stands alone in its class, and marks a distinct epoch in the history of this literary form.”

While our last installment The Willows by Algernon Blackwood focused on the horror of the vast and incomprehensible elements of nature, The Recluse of Bayswater, as well as the inner-story Novel of the White Powder, takes place in an urban setting. Drug use and erratic behavior are central to this hazy classic horror tale. So turn on the mix, sit back, and enjoy another classic of the horror genre.

Amongst the many friends who were favored with the occasional pleasure of Mr. Dyson’s society was Mr. Edgar Russell, realist and obscure struggler, who occupied a small back room on the second floor of a house in Abingdon Grove, Notting Hill. Turning off from the main street and walking a few paces onward, one was conscious of a certain calm, a drowsy peace, which made the feet inclined to loiter; and this was ever the atmosphere of Abingdon Grove. The houses stood a little back, with gardens where the lilac and laburnum and blood-red may blossomed gayly in their seasons, and there was a corner where an older house in another street had managed to keep a back garden of real extent; a walled-in garden whence there came a pleasant scent of greenness after the rains of early summer, where old elms held memories of the open fields, where there was yet sweet grass to walk on. The houses in Abingdon Grove belonged chiefly to the nondescript stucco period of thirty-five years ago, tolerably built with passable accommodation for moderate incomes; they had largely passed into the state of lodgings, and cards bearing the inscription “Furnished Apartments” were not infrequent over the doors. Here, then, in a house of sufficiently good appearance, Mr. Russell had established himself; for he looked upon the traditional dirt and squalor of Grub Street as a false and obsolete convention, and preferred, as he said, to live within sight of green leaves. Indeed, from his room one had a magnificent view of a long line of gardens, and a screen of poplars shut out the melancholy back premises of Wilton Street during the summer months. Mr. Russell lived chiefly on bread and tea, for his means were of the smallest; but when Dyson came to see him, he would send out the slavey for six-ale, and Dyson was always at liberty to smoke as much of his own tobacco as he pleased. The landlady had been so unfortunate as to have her drawing-room floor vacant for many months; a card had long proclaimed the void within; and Dyson, when he walked up the steps one evening in early autumn, had a sense that something was missing, and, looking at the fanlight, saw the appealing card had disappeared.

“You have let your first floor, have you?” he said, as he greeted Mr. Russell.

“Yes; it was taken about a fortnight ago by a lady.”

“Indeed,” said Dyson, always curious; “a young lady?”

“Yes, I believe so. She is a widow, and wears a thick crape veil. I have met her once or twice on the stairs and in the street, but I should not know her face.”

“Well,” said Dyson, when the beer had arrived, and the pipes were in full blast, “and what have you been doing? Do you find the work getting any easier?”

“Alas!” said the young man, with an expression of great gloom, “the life is a purgatory, and all but a hell. I write, picking out my words, weighing and balancing the force of every syllable, calculating the minutest effects that language can produce, erasing and rewriting, and spending a whole evening over a page of manuscript. And then in the morning when I read what I have written—Well, there is nothing to be done but to throw it in the waste-paper basket if the verso has been already written on, or to put it in the drawer if the other side happens to be clean. When I have written a phrase which undoubtedly embodies a happy turn of thought, I find it dressed up in feeble commonplace; and when the style is good, it serves only to conceal the baldness of superannuated fancies. I sweat over my work, Dyson,—every finished line means so much agony. I envy the lot of the carpenter in the side street who has a craft which he understands. When he gets an order for a table, he does not writhe with anguish; but if I were so unlucky as to get an order for a book, I think I should go mad.”

“My dear fellow, you take it all too seriously. You should let the ink flow more readily. Above all, firmly believe, when you sit down to write, that you are an artist, and that whatever you are about is a masterpiece. Suppose ideas fail you, say; as I heard one of our most exquisite artists say, “It’s of no consequence; the ideas are all there, at the bottom of that box of cigarettes.” You, indeed, smoke tobacco, but the application is the same. Besides, you must have some happy moments, and these should be ample consolation.”

“Perhaps you are right. But such moments are so few; and then there is the torture of a glorious conception matched, with execution beneath the standard of the Family Story Paper. For instance, I was happy for two hours a night or two ago; I lay awake and saw visions. But then the morning!”

“What was your idea?”

“It seemed to me a splendid one; I thought of Balzac and the ‘Comédie Humaine,’ of Zola and the Rougon-Macquart family. It dawned upon me that I would write the history of a street. Every house should form a volume. I fixed upon the street, I saw each house, and read, as clearly as in letters, the physiology and psychology of each. The little by-way stretched before me in its actual shape,—a street that I know and have passed down a hundred times; with some twenty houses, prosperous and mean, and lilac bushes in purple blossom; and yet it was at the same time a symbol, a via dolorosa of hopes cherished and disappointed, of years of monotonous existence without content or discontent, of tragedies and obscure sorrows; and on the door of one of those houses I saw the red stain of blood, and behind a window two shadows, blackened and faded, on the blind, as they swayed on tightened cords,—the shadows of a man and a woman hanging in a vulgar, gas-lit parlor. These were my fancies; but when pen touched paper, they shrivelled and vanished away,”

“Yes,” said. Dyson, “there is a lot in that. I envy you the pains of transmuting vision into reality, and still more I envy you the day when you will look at your bookshelf and see twenty goodly books upon the shelves,—the series complete and done forever. Let me entreat you to have them bound in solid parchment, with gold lettering. It is the only real cover for a valiant book. When I look in at the windows of some choice shop, and see the bindings of Levant morocco, with pretty tools and panellings, and your sweet contrasts of red and green, I say to myself, ‘These are not books, but bibelots.’ A book bound so—a true book, mind you—is like a Gothic statue draped in brocade of Lyons.”

“Alas!” said Russell, “we need not discuss the binding,—the books are not begun.”

The talk went on as usual till eleven o’clock, when Dyson bade his friend good-night. He knew the way downstairs, and walked down by himself; but greatly to his surprise, as he crossed the first-floor landing, the door opened slightly, and a hand was stretched out, beckoning.

Dyson was not the man to hesitate under such circumstances. In a moment he saw himself involved in adventure; and, as he told himself, the Dysons had never disobeyed a lady’s summons. Softly, then, with due regard for the lady’s honor, he would have entered the room, when a low but clear voice spoke to him,—

“Go downstairs and open the door, and shut it again rather loudly. Then come up to me; and for heaven’s sake, walk softly.”

Dyson obeyed her commands,—not without some hesitation, for he was afraid of meeting the landlady or the maid on his return journey. But walking like a cat, and making each step he trod on crack loudly, he flattered himself that he had escaped observation; and as he gained the top of the stairs, the door opened wide before him, and he found himself in the lady’s drawing-room, bowing awkwardly.

“Pray be seated, sir. Perhaps this chair will be the best; it was the favored chair of my landlady’s deceased husband. I would ask you to smoke, but the odor would betray me. I know my proceedings must seem to you unconventional; but I saw you arrive this evening, and I do not think you would refuse to help a woman who is so unfortunate as I am.”

Mr. Dyson looked shyly at the young lady before him. She was dressed in deep mourning; but the piquant smiling face and charming hazel eyes ill accorded with the heavy garments, and the mouldering surface of the crape.

“Madam,” he said gallantly, “your instinct has served you well. We will not trouble, if you please, about the question of social conventions; the chivalrous gentleman knows nothing of such matters. I hope I may be privileged to serve you.”

“You are very kind to me, but I knew it would be so. Alas, sir, I have had experience of life, and I am rarely mistaken. Yet man is too often so vile and so misjudging that I trembled even as I resolved to take this step, which, for all I knew, might prove to be both desperate and ruinous.”

“With me you have nothing to fear,” said Dyson. “I was nurtured in the faith of chivalry, and I have always endeavored to remember the proud traditions of my race. Confide in me then, and count upon my secrecy, and, if it prove possible, you may rely on my help.”

“Sir, I will not waste your time, which I am sure is valuable, by idle parleyings. Learn, then, that I am a fugitive, and in hiding here. I place myself in your power; you have but to describe my features, and I fall into the hands of my relentless enemy.”

Mr. Dyson wondered for a passing instant how this could be; but he only renewed his promise of silence, repeating that he would be the embodied spirit of dark concealment.

“Good,” said the lady; “the Oriental fervor of your style is delightful. In the first place, I must disabuse your mind of the conviction that I am a widow. These gloomy vestments have been forced on me by strange circumstance; in plain language, I have deemed it expedient to go disguised. You have a friend, I think, in the house,—Mr. Russell? He seems of a coy and retiring nature.”

“Excuse me, madam,” said Dyson, “he is not coy, but he is a realist; and perhaps you are aware that no Carthusian monk can emulate the cloistral seclusion in which a realistic novelist loves to shroud himself. It is his way of observing human, nature.”

“Well, well,” said the lady; “all this, though deeply interesting is not germane to our affair. I must tell you my history.”

With these words the young lady proceeded to relate the


NOVEL OF THE WHITE POWDER

 

Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nürnberg
Desteliergefäße aus dem chemischen Laboratorium spätes 18. Jahrhundert


M
y name is Leicester; my father. Major General Wyn Leicester, a distinguished officer of artillery, succumbed five years ago to a complicated liver complaint acquired in the deadly climate of India. A year later my only brother, Francis, came home after an exceptionally brilliant career at the University, and settled down with the resolution of a hermit to master what has been well called the great legend of the law. He was a man who seemed to live in utter indifference to everything that is called pleasure; and though he was handsomer than most men, and could talk as merrily and wittily as if he were a mere vagabond, he avoided society, and shut himself up in a large room at the top of the house to make himself a lawyer. Ten hours a day of hard reading was at first his allotted portion; from the first light in the east to the late afternoon he remained shut up with his books, taking a hasty half-hour’s lunch with me as if he grudged the wasting of the moments, and going out for a short walk when it began to grow dusk. I thought that such relentless application must be injurious, and tried to cajole him from the crabbed text-books; but his ardor seemed to grow rather than diminish, and his daily tale of hours increased. I spoke to him seriously, suggesting some occasional relaxation, if it were but an idle afternoon with a harmless novel; but he laughed, and said that he read about feudal tenures when he felt in need of amusement, and scoffed at the notion of theatres, or a month’s fresh confessed that he looked well, and seemed not to suffer from his labors; but I knew that such unnatural toil would take revenge at last, and I was not mistaken. A look of anxiety began to lurk about his eyes, and he seemed languid, and at last he avowed that he was no longer in perfect health; he was troubled, he said, with a sensation of dizziness, and awoke now and then of nights from fearful dreams, terrified and cold with icy sweats. “I am taking care of myself,” he said; “so you must not trouble. I passed the whole of yesterday afternoon in idleness, leaning back in that comfortable chair you gave me, and scribbling nonsense on a sheet of paper. No, no; I will not overdo my work. I shall be well enough in a week or two, depend upon it.”

Yet, in spite of his assurances, I could see that he grew no better, but rather worse; he would enter the drawing-room with a face all miserably wrinkled and despondent, and endeavor to look gayly when my eyes fell on him, and I thought such symptoms of evil omen, and was frightened sometimes at the nervous irritation of his movements, and at glances which I could not decipher. Much against his will, I prevailed on him to have medical advice, and with an ill grace he called in our old doctor.

Dr. Haberden cheered me after his examination of his patient.

“There is nothing really much amiss,” he said to me. “No doubt he reads too hard, and eats hastily, and then goes back again to his books in too great a hurry; and the natural consequence is some digestive trouble, and a little mischief in the nervous system. But I think—I do, indeed, Miss Leicester—that we shall be able to set this all right. I have written him a prescription which ought to do great things. So you have no cause for anxiety.”

My brother insisted on having the prescription made up by a chemist in the neighborhood; it was an odd old-fashioned shop, devoid of the studied coquetry and calculated glitter that make so gay a show on the counters and shelves of the modern apothecary; but Francis liked the old chemist, and believed in the scrupulous purity of his drugs. The medicine was sent in due course, and I saw that my brother took it regularly after lunch and dinner. It was an innocent-looking white powder, of which a little was dissolved, in a glass of cold water. I stirred it in, and it seemed to disappear, leaving the water clear and colorless. At first Francis seemed to benefit greatly; the weariness vanished from his face, and he became more cheerful than he had ever been since the time when he left school; he talked gayly of reforming himself, and avowed to me that he had wasted his time.

“I have given too many hours to law,” he said, laughing; “I think you have saved me in the nick of time. Come, I shall be Lord Chancellor yet, but I must not forget life. You and I will have a holiday together before long; we will go to Paris and enjoy ourselves, and keep away from the Bibliothèque Nationale.”

I confessed myself delighted with the prospect.

“When shall we go?” I said. “I can start the day after to-morrow, if you like.”

“Ah, that is perhaps a little too soon; after all, I do not know London yet, and I suppose a man ought to give the pleasures of his own country the first choice. But we will go off together in a week or two, so try and furbish up your French. I only know law French myself, and I am afraid that wouldn’t do.”

We were just finishing dinner, and he quaffed off his medicine with a parade of carousal as if it had been wine from some choicest bin.

“Has it any particular taste?” I said.

“No; I should not know I was not drinking water,” and he got up from his chair, and began to pace up and down the room as if he were undecided as to what he should do next.

“Shall we have coffee in the drawing-room,” I said, “or would you like to smoke?”

“No; I think I will take a turn, it seems a pleasant evening. Look at the afterglow; why, it is as if a great city were burning in flames, and down there between the dark houses it is raining blood fast, fast. Yes, I will go out. I may be in soon, but I shall take my key, so good-night, dear, if I don’t see you again.”

The door slammed behind him, and I saw him walk lightly down the street, swinging his malacca cane, and I felt grateful to Dr. Haberden for such an improvement.

Forman – London 1913

I believe my brother came home very late that night; but he was in a merry mood the next morning.

“I walked on without thinking where I was going,” he said, “enjoying the freshness of the air, and livened by the crowds as I reached more frequented quarters. And then I met an old college friend, Orford, in the press of the pavement, and then—well, we enjoyed ourselves. I have felt what it is to be young and a man, I find I have blood in my veins, as other men have. I made an appointment with Orford for to-night; there will be a little party of us at the restaurant. Yes, I shall enjoy myself for a week or two, and hear the chimes at midnight, and then we will go for our little trip together.”

Such was the transmutation of my brother’s character that in a few days he became a lover of pleasure, a careless and merry idler of western pavements, a hunter out of snug restaurants, and a fine critic of fantastic dancing; he grew fat before my eyes, and said no more of Paris, for he had clearly found his Paradise in London. I rejoiced, and yet wondered a little, for there was, I thought, something in his gayety that indefinitely displeased me, though I could not have defined my feeling. But by degrees there came a change; he returned still in the cold, hours of the morning, but I heard no more about his pleasures, and one morning as we sat at breakfast together, I looked suddenly into his eyes and saw a stranger before me.

“Oh, Francis!” I cried; “Oh, Francis, Francis, what have you done?” and rending sobs cut the words short, and I went weeping out of the room, for though I knew nothing, yet I knew all, and by some odd play of thought I remembered the evening when he first went abroad to prove his manhood, and the picture of the sunset sky glowed before me; the clouds like a city in burning flames, and the rain of blood. Yet I did battle with such thoughts, resolving that perhaps, after all, no great harm had been done, and in the evening at dinner I resolved to press him to fix a day for our holiday in Paris. We had talked easily enough, and my brother had just taken his medicine, which he had continued all the while. I was about to begin my topic, when the words forming in my mind vanished, and I wondered for a second what icy and intolerable weight oppressed my heart and suffocated me as with the unutterable horror of the coffin-lid nailed down on the living.

We had dined without candles, and the room had slowly grown from twilight to gloom, and the walls and corners were indistinct in the shadow. But from where I sat I looked out into the street; and as I thought of what I would say to Francis, the sky began to flush and shine, as it had done on a well-remembered evening, and in the gap between two dark masses that were houses an awful pageantry of flame appeared. Lurid whorls of writhed cloud, and utter depths burning, and gray masses like the fume blown from a smoking city, and an evil glory blazing far above shot with tongues of more ardent fire, and below as if there were a deep pool of blood. I looked down to where my brother sat facing me, and the words were shaped on my lips, when I saw his hand resting on the table. Between the thumb and forefinger of the closed hand, there was a mark, a small patch about the size of a sixpence, and somewhat of the color of a bad bruise. Yet, by some sense I cannot define, I knew that what I saw was no bruise at all. Oh, if human flesh could burn with flame, and if flame could be black as pitch, such was that before me! Without thought or fashioning of words, gray horror shaped within me at the sight, and in an inner cell it was known to be a brand. For a moment the stained sky became dark as midnight, and when the light returned to me, I was alone in the silent room, and soon after I heard my brother go out.

Late as it was, I put on my bonnet and went to Dr. Haberden, and in his great consulting-room, ill-lighted by a candle which the doctor brought in with him, with stammering lips, and a voice that would break in spite of my resolve, I told him all; from the day on which my brother began to take the medicine down to the dreadful thing I had seen scarcely half an hour before.

When I had done, the doctor looked at me for a minute with an expression of great pity on his face.

“My dear Miss Leicester,” he said, “you have evidently been anxious about your brother; you have been worrying over him, I am sure. Come, now, is it not so?

“I have certainly been anxious,” I said. “For the last week or two I have not felt at ease.”

“Quite so; you know, of course, what a queer thing the brain is?”

“I understand what you mean; but I was not deceived. I saw what I have told you with my own eyes.”

“Yes, yes, of course. But your eyes had been staring at that very curious sunset we had to-night. That is the only explanation. You will see it in the proper light to-morrow, I am sure. But, remember, I am always ready to give any help that is in my power; do not scruple to come to me, or to send for me if you are in any distress.”

I went away but little comforted, all confusion and terror and sorrow, not knowing where to turn. When my brother and I met the next day, I looked quickly at him, and noticed, with a sickening at heart, that the right hand, the hand on which I had clearly seen the patch as of a black fire, was wrapped up with a handkerchief.

“What is the matter with your hand, Francis?” I said in a steady voice.

“Nothing of consequence. I cut a finger last night, and it bled rather awkwardly, so I did it up roughly to the best of my ability.”

“I will do it neatly for you, if you like.”

“No, thank you, dear, this will answer very well. Suppose we have breakfast; I am quite hungry.”

We sat down, and I watched him. He scarcely ate or drank at all, but tossed his meat to the dog when he thought my eyes were turned away; and there was a look in his eyes that I had never yet seen, and the thought fled across my mind that it was a look that was scarcely human. I was firmly convinced that awful and incredible as was the thing I had seen the night before, yet it was no illusion, no glamour of bewildered sense, and in the course of the morning I went again to the doctor’s house.

He shook his head with an air puzzled and incredulous, and seemed to reflect for a few minutes.

“And you say he still keeps up the medicine? But why? As I understand, all the symptoms he complained of have disappeared long ago; why should he go on taking the stuff when he is quite well? And by the bye where did he get it made up? At Sayce’s? I never send any one there; the old man is getting careless. Suppose you come with me to the chemist’s; I should like to have some talk with him.”

We walked together to the shop. Old Sayce knew Dr. Haberden, and was quite ready to give any information.

“You have been sending that in to Mr. Leicester for some weeks, I think, on my prescription,” said the doctor, giving the old man a pencilled scrap of paper.

The chemist put on his great spectacles with trembling uncertainty, and held up the paper with a shaking hand.

“Oh, yes,” he said, “I have very little of it left; it is rather an uncommon drug, and I have had it in stock some time. I must get in some more, if Mr. Leicester goes on with it.”

“Kindly let me have a look at the stuff,” said Haberden; and the chemist gave him a glass bottle. He took out the stopper and smelt the contents, and looked strangely at the old man.

“Where did you get this?” he said, “and what is it? For one thing, Mr. Sayce, it is not what I prescribed. Yes, yes, I see the label is right enough, but I tell you this is not the drug.”

“I have had it a long time,” said the old man, in feeble terror. “I got it from Burbage’s in the usual way. It is not prescribed often, and I have had it on the shelf for some years. You see there is very little left.”

“You had better give it to me,” said Haberden. “I am afraid something wrong has happened.”

We went out of the shop in silence, the doctor carrying the bottle neatly wrapped in paper under his arm.

“Dr. Haberden,” I said when we had walked a little way—”Dr. Haberden.”

“Yes,” he said, looking at me gloomily enough.

“I should like you to tell me what my brother has been taking twice a day for the last month or so.”

“Frankly, Miss Leicester, I don’t know. We will speak of this when we get to my house,”

We walked on quickly without another word till we reached Dr. Haberden’s. He asked me to sit down, and began pacing up and down the room, his face clouded over, as I could see, with no common fears.

“Well,” he said at length, “this is all very strange; it is only natural that you should feel alarmed, and I must confess that my mind is far from easy. We will put aside, if you please, what you told me last night and this morning, but the fact remains that for the last few weeks Mr. Leicester has been impregnating his system with a drug which is completely unknown to me. I tell you, it is not what I ordered; and what that stuff in the bottle really is remains to be seen.”

He undid the wrapper, and cautiously tilted a few grains of the white powder on to a piece of paper, and peered curiously at it.

“Yes,” he said, “it is like the sulphate of quinine, as you say; it is flaky. But smell it.”

He held the bottle to me, and I bent over it. It was a strange sickly smell, vaporous and overpowering, like some strong anæsthetic.

“I shall have it analyzed,” said Haberden. “I have a friend who has devoted his whole life to chemistry as a science. Then we shall have something to go upon. No, no, say no more about that other matter; I cannot listen to that, and take my advice and think no more about it yourself.”

That evening my brother did not go out as usual after dinner.

“I have had my fling,” he said with a queer laugh; “and I must go back to my old ways. A little law will be quite a relaxation after so sharp a dose of pleasure,” and he grinned to himself, and soon after went up to his room. His hand was still all bandaged.

Dr. Haberden called a few days later.

“I have no special news to give you,” he said. “Chambers is out of town, so I know no more about that stuff than you do. But I should like to see Mr. Leicester if he is in.”

“He is in his room,” I said; “I will tell him you are here.”

“No, no, I will go up to him; we will have a little quiet talk together. I dare say that we have made a good deal of fuss about very little; for, after all, whatever the white powder may be, it seems to have done him good.”

The doctor went upstairs, and standing in the hall I heard his knock, and the opening and shutting of the door; and then I waited in the silent house for an hour, and the stillness grew more and more intense as the hands of the clock crept round. Then there sounded from above the noise of a door shut sharply, and the doctor was coming down the stairs. His footsteps crossed the hall, and there was a pause at the door. I drew a long sick breath with difficulty, and saw my face white in a little mirror, and he came in and stood at the door. There was an unutterable horror shining in his eyes; he steadied himself by holding the back of a chair with one hand, and his lower lip trembled like a horse’s, and he gulped and stammered unintelligible sounds before he spoke.

“I have seen that man,” he began in a dry whisper. “I have been sitting in his presence for the last hour. My God! and I am alive and in my senses! I, who have dealt with death all my life, and have dabbled with the melting ruins of the earthly tabernacle. But not this! Oh, not this,” and he covered his face with his hands as if to shut out the sight of something before him.

“Do not send for me again, Miss Leicester,” he said with more composure. “I can do nothing in this house. Good-bye.”

As I watched him totter down the steps and along the pavement towards his house, it seemed to me that he had aged by ten years since the morning.

My brother remained in his room. He called out to me in a voice I hardly recognized, that he was very busy, and would like his meals brought to his door and left there, and I gave the order to the servants. From that day it seemed as if the arbitrary conception we call time had been annihilated for me. I lived in an ever present sense of horror, going through the routine of the house mechanically, and only speaking a few necessary words to the servants. Now and then I went out and paced the streets for an hour or two and came home again; but whether I were without or within, my spirit delayed before the closed door of the upper room, and, shuddering, waited for it to open. I have said that I scarcely reckoned time, but I suppose it must have been a fortnight after Dr. Haberden’s visit that I came home from my stroll a little refreshed and lightened. The air was sweet and pleasant, and the hazy form of green leaves, floating cloud-like in the square, and the smell of blossoms, had charmed my senses, and I felt happier and walked more briskly. As I delayed a moment at the verge of the pavement, waiting for a van to pass by before crossing over to the house, I happened to look up at the windows, and instantly there was the rush and swirl of deep cold waters in my ears, and my heart leapt up, and fell down, down as into a deep hollow, and I was amazed with a dread and terror without form or shape. I stretched out a hand blindly through folds of thick darkness, from the black and shadowy valley, and held myself from falling, while the stones beneath my feet rocked and swayed and tilted, and the sense of solid things seemed to sink away from under me. I had glanced up at the window of my brother’s study, and at that moment the blind was drawn aside, and something that had life stared out into the world. Nay, I cannot say I saw a face or any human likeness; a living thing, two eyes of burning flame glared at me, and they were in the midst of something as formless as my fear, the symbol and presence of all evil and all hideous corruption. I stood shuddering and quaking as with the grip of ague, sick with unspeakable agonies of fear and loathing, and for five minutes I could not summon force or motion to my limbs. When I was within the door, I ran up the stairs to my brother’s room, and knocked.

“Francis, Francis,” I cried, “for heaven’s sake answer me. What is the horrible thing in your room? Cast it out, Francis, cast it from you!”

I heard a noise as of feet shuffling slowly and awkwardly, and a choking, gurgling sound, as if some one was struggling to find utterance, and then the noise of a voice, broken and stifled, and words that I could scarcely understand.

Oscar Gustav Rejlander – Unknown young woman (1860 – 1866)

“There is nothing here,” the voice said, “Pray do not disturb me. I am not very well to-day.”

I turned away, horrified and yet helpless. I could do nothing, and I wondered why Francis had lied to me, for I had seen the appearance beyond the glass too plainly to be deceived, though it was but the sight of a moment. And I sat still, conscious that there had been something else, something I had seen in the first flash of terror before those burning eyes had looked at me. Suddenly I remembered; as I lifted my face the blind was being drawn back, and I had had an instant’s glance of the thing that was moving it, and in my recollection I knew that a hideous image was engraved forever on my brain. It was not a hand: there were no fingers that held the blind, but a black stump pushed it aside; the mouldering outline and the clumsy movement as of a beast’s paw had glowed into my senses before the darkling waves of terror had overwhelmed me as I went down quick into the pit. My mind was aghast at the thought of this, and of the awful presence that dwelt with my brother in his room; I went to his door and cried to him again, but no answer came. That night one of the servants came up to me and told me in a whisper that for three days food had been regularly placed at the door and left untouched; the maid had knocked, but had received no answer; she had heard the noise of shuffling feet that I had noticed. Day after day went by, and still my brother’s meals were brought to his door and left untouched; and though I knocked and called again and again, I could get no answer. The servants began to talk to me; it appeared they were as alarmed as I. The cook said that when my brother first shut himself up in his room, she used to hear him come out at night and go about the house; and once, she said, the hall door had opened and closed again, but for several nights she had heard no sound. The climax came at last. It was in the dusk of the evening, and I was sitting in the darkening dreary room when a terrible shriek jarred and rang harshly out of the silence, and I heard a frightened scurry of feet dashing down the stairs. I waited, and the servant maid staggered into the room and faced me, white and trembling.

“O Miss Helen,” she whispered. “Oh, for the Lord’s sake, Miss Helen, what has happened? Look at my hand, miss; look at that hand!” I drew her to the window, and saw there was a black wet stain upon her hand.

“I do not understand you,” I said. “Will you explain to me?”

“I was doing your room just now,” she began. “I was turning down the bedclothes, and all of a sudden there was something fell upon my hand wet, and I looked up, and the ceiling was black and dripping on me.”

I looked bard at her, and bit my lip. “Come with me,” I said. “Bring your candle with you.”

The room I slept in was beneath my brother’s, and as I went in I felt I was trembling. I looked up at the ceiling, and saw a patch, all black and wet and a dew of black drops upon it, and a pool of horrible liquor soaking into the white bedclothes.

I ran upstairs and knocked loudly.

“O Francis, Francis, my dear brother,” I cried, “what has happened to you?”

And I listened. There was a sound of choking, and a noise like water bubbling and regurgitating, but nothing else, and I called louder, but no answer came.

In spite of what Dr. Haberden had said, I went to him, and with tears streaming down my cheeks, I told him of all that had happened, and he listened to me with a face set hard and grim.

“For your father’s sake,” he said at last, “I will go with you, though I can do nothing.”

We went out together; the streets were dark and silent, and heavy with heat and a drought of many weeks. I saw the doctor’s face white under the gas-lamps, and when we reached the house his hand was shaking. We did not hesitate, but went upstairs directly. I held the lamp, and he called out in a loud, determined voice:—

“Mr. Leicester, do you hear me? I insist on seeing you. Answer me at once.”

There was no answer, but we both heard that choking noise I have mentioned.

“Mr. Leicester, I am waiting for you. Open the door this instant, or I shall break it down.” And he called a third time in a voice that rang and echoed from the walls.

“Mr. Leicester! For the last time I order you to open the door.”

“Ah!” he said, after a pause of heavy silence, “we are wasting time here. Will you be so kind as to get me a poker, or something of the kind?”

I ran into a little room at the back where odd articles were kept, and found a heavy adze-like tool that I thought might serve the doctor’s purpose.

“Very good,” he said, “that will do, I dare say. I give you notice, Mr. Leicester,” he cried loudly at the keyhole, “that I am now about to break into your room.”

Then I heard the wrench of the adze, and the woodwork split and cracked under it, and with a loud crash the door suddenly burst open; and for a moment we started back aghast at a fearful screaming cry, no human voice, but as the roar of a monster, that burst forth inarticulate and struck at us out of the darkness.

“Hold the lamp,” said the doctor, and we went in and glanced quickly round the room. “There it is,” said Dr. Haberden, drawing a quick breath; “look, in that corner.”

I looked, and a pang of horror seized my heart as with a white-hot iron. There upon the floor was a dark and putrid mass, seething with corruption and hideous rottenness, neither liquid nor solid, but melting and changing before our eyes, and bubbling with unctuous oily bubbles like boiling pitch. And out of the midst of it shone two burning points like eyes, and I saw a writhing and stirring as of limbs, and something moved and lifted up that might have been an arm. The doctor took a step forward, and raised the iron bar and struck at the burning points, and drove in the weapon, and struck again and again in a fury of loathing. At last the thing was quiet.

A week or two later, when I had to some extent recovered from the terrible shock, Dr. Haberden came to see me.

“I have sold my practice,” he began, “and to-morrow I am sailing on a long voyage. I do not know whether I shall ever return to England; in all probability I shall buy a little land in California, and settle there for the remainder of my life. I have brought you this packet, which you may open and read when you feel able to do so. It contains the report of Dr. Chambers on what I submitted to him. Good-bye, Miss Leicester, good-bye.”

When he was gone, I opened the envelope; I could not wait, and proceeded to read the papers within. Here is the manuscript; and if you will allow me, I will read you the astounding story it contains.

“My dear Haberden,” the letter began, “I have delayed inexcusably in answering your questions as to the white substance you sent me. To tell you the truth, I have hesitated for some time as to what course I should adopt, for there is a bigotry and an orthodox standard in physical science as in theology, and I knew that if I told you the truth I should offend rooted prejudices which I once held dear myself. However, I have determined to be plain with you, and first I must enter into a short personal explanation.

“You have known me, Haberden, for many years as a scientific man; you and I have often talked of our profession together, and discussed the hopeless gulf that opens before the feet of those who think to attain to truth by any means whatsoever, except the beaten way of experiment and observation, in the sphere of material things. I remember the scorn with which you have spoken to me of men of science who have dabbled a little in the unseen, and have timidly hinted that perhaps the senses are not, after all, the eternal, impenetrable bounds of all knowledge, the everlasting walls beyond which no human being has ever passed. We have laughed together heartily, and I think justly, at the “occult” follies of the day, disguised under various names,—the mesmerisms, spiritualisms, materializations, theosophies, all the rabble rant of imposture, with their machinery of poor tricks and feeble conjuring, the true back-parlor magic of shabby London streets. Yet, in spite of what I have said, I must confess to you that I am no materialist, taking the word of course in its usual signification. It is now many years since I have convinced myself, convinced myself a sceptic remember, that the old iron-bound theory is utterly and entirely false. Perhaps this confession will not wound you so sharply as it would have done twenty years ago; for I think you cannot have failed to notice that for some time hypotheses have been advanced by men of pure science which are nothing less than transcendental, and I suspect that most modern chemists and biologists of repute would not hesitate to subscribe the dictum of the old Schoolman, Omnia exeunt in mysterium, which means, I take it, that every branch of human knowledge if traced up to its source and final principles vanishes into mystery. I need not trouble you now with a detailed account of the painful steps which led me to my conclusions; a few simple experiments suggested a doubt as to my then standpoint, and a train of thought that rose from circumstances comparatively trifling brought me far. My old conception of the universe has been swept away, and I stand in a world that seems as strange and awful to me as the endless waves of the ocean seen for the first time, shining, from a Peak in Darien. Now I know that the walls of sense that seemed so impenetrable, that seemed to loom up above the heavens and to be founded below the depths, and to shut us in forevermore, are no such everlasting impassable barriers as we fancied, but thinnest and most airy veils that melt away before the seeker, and dissolve as the early mist of the morning about the brooks. I know that you never adopted the extreme materialistic position: you did not go about trying to prove a universal negative, for your logical sense withheld you from that crowning absurdity; yet I am sure that you will find all that I am saying strange and repellent to your habits of thought. Yet, Haberden, what I tell you is the truth, nay, to adopt our common language, the sole and scientific truth, verified by experience; and the universe is verily more splendid and more awful than we used to dream. The whole universe, my friend, is a tremendous sacrament; a mystic, ineffable force and energy, veiled by an outward form of matter; and man, and the sun and the other stars, and the flower of the grass, and the crystal in the test-tube, are each and every one as spiritual, as material, and subject to an inner working.

“You will perhaps wonder, Haberden, whence all this tends; but I think a little thought will make it clear. You will understand that from such a standpoint the whole view of things is changed, and what we thought incredible and absurd may be possible enough. In short, we must look at legend and belief with other eyes, and be prepared to accept tales that had become mere fables. Indeed, this is no such great demand. After all, modern science will concede as much, in a hypocritical manner. You must not, it is true, believe in witchcraft, but you may credit hypnotism; ghosts are out of date, but there is a good deal to be said for the theory of telepathy. Give a superstition a Greek name, and believe in it, should almost be a proverb.

“So much for my personal explanation. You sent me, Haberden, a phial, stoppered and sealed, containing a small quantity of a flaky white powder, obtained from a chemist who has been dispensing it to one of your patients. I am not surprised to hear that this powder refused to yield any results to your analysis. It is a substance which was known to a few many hundred years ago, but which I never expected to have submitted to me from the shop of a modern apothecary. There seems no reason to doubt the truth of the man’s tale; he no doubt got, as he says, the rather uncommon salt you prescribed from the wholesale chemist’s; and it has probably remained on his shelf for twenty years, or perhaps longer. Here what we call chance and coincidence begins to work; during all these years the salt in the bottle was exposed to certain recurring variations of temperature, variations probably ranging from 40° to 80°. And, as it happens, such changes, recurring year after year at irregular intervals, and with varying degrees of intensity and duration, have constituted a process, and a process so complicated and so delicate, that I question whether modern scientific apparatus directed with the utmost precision could produce the same result. The white powder you sent me is something very different from the drug you prescribed; it is the powder from which the wine of the Sabbath, the Vinum Sabbati was prepared. No doubt you have read of the Witches’ Sabbath, and have laughed at the tales which terrified our ancestors; the black cats, and the broomsticks, and dooms pronounced against some old woman’s cow. Since I have known the truth I have often reflected that it is on the whole a happy thing that such burlesque as this is believed, for it serves to conceal much that it is better should not be known generally. However, if you care to read the appendix to Payne Knight’s monograph, you will find that the true Sabbath was something very different, though the writer has very nicely refrained from printing all he knew. The secrets of the true Sabbath were the secrets of remote times surviving into the Middle Ages, secrets of an evil science which existed long before Aryan man entered Europe. Men and women, seduced from their homes on specious pretences, were met by beings well qualified to assume, as they did assume, the part of devils, and taken by their guides to some, desolate and lonely place, known to the initiate by long tradition and unknown to all else. Perhaps it was a cave in some bare and wind-swept hill; perhaps some inmost recess of a great forest, and there the Sabbath was held. There, in the blackest hour of night, the Vinum Sabbati was prepared, and this evil graal was poured forth and offered to the neophytes, and they partook of an infernal sacrament; sumentes calicem principis inferorum, as an old author well expresses it. And suddenly, each one that had drunk found himself attended by a companion, a shape of glamour and unearthly allurement, beckoning him apart to share in joys more exquisite, more piercing than the thrill of any dream, to the consummation of the marriage of the Sabbath. It is hard to write of such things as these, and chiefly because that shape that allured with loveliness was no hallucination, but, awful as it is to express, the man himself. By the power of that Sabbath wine, a few grains of white powder thrown into a glass of water, the house of life was riven asunder, and the human trinity dissolved, and the worm which never dies, that which lies sleeping within us all, was made tangible and an external thing, and clothed with a garment of flesh. And then in the hour of midnight, the primal fall was repeated and represented, and the awful thing veiled in the mythos of the Tree in the Garden was done anew. Such was the nuptiæ Sabbati.

Witches Sabbath in Paris (1900)

 

“I prefer to say no more; you, Haberden, know as well as I do that the most trivial laws of life are not to be broken with impunity; and for so terrible an act as this, in which the very inmost place of the temple was broken open and defiled, a terrible vengeance followed. What began with corruption ended also with corruption.”

Underneath is the following in Dr. Haberden’s writing:—

“The whole of the above is unfortunately strictly and entirely true. Your brother confessed all to me on that morning when I saw him in his room. My attention was first attracted to the bandaged hand, and I forced him to show it me. What I saw made me, a medical man of many years standing, grow sick with loathing; and the story I was forced to listen to was infinitely more frightful than I could have believed possible. It has tempted me to doubt the Eternal Goodness which can permit nature to offer such hideous possibilities; and if you had not with your own eyes seen the end, I should have said to you—disbelieve it all. I have not, I think, many more weeks to live, but you are young, and may forget all this.

“JOSEPH HABERDEN, M.D.”

In the course of two or three months I heard that Dr. Haberden had died at sea, shortly after the ship left England.

Miss Leicester ceased speaking, and looked pathetically at Dyson, who could not refrain from exhibiting some symptoms of uneasiness.

He stuttered out some broken phrases expressive of his deep interest in her extraordinary history, and then said with a better grace—

“But, pardon me, Miss Leicester, I understood you were in some difficulty. You were kind enough to ask me to assist you in some way.”

“Ah,” she said, “I had forgotten that. My own present trouble seems of such little consequence in comparison with what I have told you. But as you are so good to me, I will go on. You will scarcely believe it, but I found that certain persons suspected, or rather pretended to suspect that I had murdered my brother. These persons were relatives of mine, and their motives were extremely sordid ones; but I actually found myself subject to the shameful indignity of being watched. Yes, sir, my steps were dogged when I went abroad, and at home I found myself exposed to constant if artful observation. With my high spirit this was more than I could brook, and I resolved to set my wits to work and elude the persons who were shadowing me. I was so fortunate as to succeed. I assumed this disguise, and for some time have lain snug and unsuspected. But of late I have reason to believe that the pursuer is on my track; unless I am greatly deceived, I saw yesterday the detective who is charged with the odious duty of observing my movements. You, sir, are watchful and keen-sighted; tell me, did you see any one lurking about this evening?”

“I hardly think so,” said Dyson, “but perhaps you would give me some description of the detective in question.”

“Certainly; he is a youngish man, dark, with dark whiskers. He has adopted spectacles of large size in the hope of disguising himself effectually, but he cannot disguise his uneasy manner, and the quick, nervous glances he casts to right and left.”

This piece of description was the last straw for the unhappy Dyson, who was foaming with impatience to get out of the house, and would gladly have sworn eighteenth century oaths if propriety had not frowned on such a course.

“Excuse me, Miss Leicester,” he said with cold politeness, “I cannot assist you.”

“Ah!” she said sadly, “I have offended you in some way. Tell me what I have done, and I will ask you to forgive me.”

“You are mistaken,” said Dyson, grabbing his hat, but speaking with some difficulty; “you have done nothing. But, as I say, I cannot help you. Perhaps,” he added, with some tinge of sarcasm, “my friend Russell might be of service.”

“Thank you,” she replied; “I will try him,” and the lady went off into a shriek of laughter, which filled up Mr. Dyson’s cup of scandal and confusion.

He left the house shortly afterwards, and had the peculiar delight of a five-mile walk, through streets which slowly changed from black to gray, and from gray to shining passages of glory for the sun to brighten. Here and there he met or overtook strayed revellers, but he reflected that no one could have spent the night in a more futile fashion than himself; and when he reached his home he had made resolves for reformation. He decided that he would abjure all Milesian and Arabian methods of entertainment, and subscribe to Mudie’s for a regular supply of mild and innocuous romance.

Edited and foreword by: Michael Barnett

The Willows Mix – Atmospheric Dark Ambient Mix

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The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

We will be incorporating more works like this in the future. Full texts of old horror and weird fiction which has fallen into public domain, but is certainly still worthy of reading. We would greatly appreciate feedback on this feature. What sort of stories would you prefer? Longer? Shorter? Stupid idea? Let us know! Also we are keeping an eye open for new unpublished works by modern authors who may be looking for some extra exposure through the zine. So, please get in touch!

The format for this feature will be a mix of music inspired by the text, as well as a perfect companion to it’s reading. This means no distracting elements will be present, unless it is utterly warranted by the content of the text. The story will also be preceded by a brief foreword written and/or compiled by This Is Darkness.

Check out the full text for the novella, The Willows by Algernon Blackwood here.

Tracklist:
01. 0:00:00 Dead Melodies – Peach Black Descent
02. 0:05:35 Old Green Mountain – Dead Leaf Blues
03. 0:07:30 Kristoffer Oustad – Row Me Over
04. 0:15:45 Dronny Darko & Apollonius – Lost
05. 0:28:45 Fross – La Otra Muerte
06. 0:32:30 Cisfinitum – The Bog (edit)
07. 0:44:00 Caleb R.K. Williams – Dead Prairie Theme
08. 0:46:00 Med Gen – Fallen Woods (edit)
09. 0:57:30 Bonini Bulga – Guided
10. 1:01:35 Atrium Carceri – Across the Sea of the Dead
11. 1:08:30 Northumbria – Borderlands
12. 1:13:10 Leigh Toro – The Owl in Daylight
13. 1:18:15 Ugasanie & Xerxes the Dark – Ships that do not Return
14. 1:26:00 Item Caligo – Painful Sleep
15. 1:34:30 Sun Through Eyelids – …And It All Went Black
16. 1:36:30 Simon Serc – Action V (edit)
17. 1:46:35 Emilia – Drowned Laments
18. 1:47:20 Sysselmann – Stormwatch
19. 1:53:40 Dramavinile – Silfra IX
20. 1:55:50 protoU & Hilyard – Blood Grass Sojourn
21. 2:07:35 Ugasanie – To the Land of Storms and Mists
22. 2:11:15 Taphephobia & Bleak Fiction – Main Scene, Nuuk freeze (night)
23. 2:15:50 Northaunt – Nightfall In The Woods
24. 2:20:30 Ajna – Spirits I
25. 2:27:00 Creation VI – Natura Renovatur
26. 2:48:45 kj – Foxes (feat. Aaron Martin)
27. 2:55:30 Tapes and Topographies – Far Fields
28. 2:59:15 Atasehir – Let Us Guide You Home
29. 3:05:05 Kaya North – The Skull
30. 3:10:45 VelgeNaturlig – Secret Dialogue

Algernon Blackwood – The Willows (1907) – Full Novella Text

We will be incorporating more works like this in the future. Full texts of old horror and weird fiction which has fallen into public domain, but is certainly still worthy of reading. We would greatly appreciate feedback on this feature. What sort of stories would you prefer? Longer? Shorter? Stupid idea? Let us know! Also we are keeping an eye open for new unpublished works by modern authors who may be looking for some extra exposure through the zine. So, please get in touch!

The format for this feature will be a mix of music inspired by the text, as well as a perfect companion to it’s reading. This means no distracting elements will be present, unless it is utterly warranted by the content of the text. The story will also be preceded by a brief foreword written and/or compiled by This Is Darkness.

Find the full tracklist w/ timestamps here.

 

THE WILLOWS

Algernon Blackwood
(1907)

Horace Vernet – Hunting In The Pontine Marshes (1833)


Foreword

The Willows is one of the most popular stories by Algernon Blackwood. The novella was written as part of his 1907 collection The Listener and Other Stories. Among others, H.P. Lovecraft considered it to be his very favorite piece of weird fiction. Rather than fumble through a description for myself, I will leave it to the master. In his essay on weird fiction, Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927)H.P. Lovecraft writes:

“Less intense than Mr. Machen in delineating the extremes of stark fear, yet infinitely more closely wedded to the idea of an unreal world constantly pressing upon ours is the inspired and prolific Algernon Blackwood, amidst whose voluminous and uneven work may be found some of the finest spectral literature of this or any age. Of the quality of Mr. Blackwood’s genius there can be no dispute; for no one has even approached the skill, seriousness, and minute fidelity with which he records the overtones of strangeness in ordinary things and experiences, or the preternatural insight with which he builds up detail by detail the complete sensations and perceptions leading from reality into supernormal life or vision. Without notable command of the poetic witchery of mere words, he is the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere; and can evoke what amounts almost to a story from a simple fragment of humourless psychological description. Above all others he understands how fully some sensitive minds dwell forever on the borderland of dream, and how relatively slight is the distinction betwixt those images formed from actual objects and those excited by the play of the imagination.

Mr. Blackwood’s lesser work is marred by several defects such as ethical didacticism, occasional insipid whimsicality, the flatness of benignant supernaturalism, and a too free use of the trade jargon of modem “occultism.” A fault of his more serious efforts is that diffuseness and long-windedness which results from an excessively elaborate attempt, under the handicap of a somewhat bald and journalistic style devoid of intrinsic magic, colour, and vitality, to visualise precise sensations and nuances of uncanny suggestion. But in spite of all this, the major products of Mr. Blackwood attain a genuinely classic level, and evoke as does nothing else in literature in awed convinced sense of the imminence of strange spiritual spheres of entities.

The well-nigh endless array of Mr. Blackwood’s fiction includes both novels and shorter tales, the latter sometimes independent and sometimes arrayed in series. Foremost of all must be reckoned The Willows, in which the nameless presences on a desolate Danube island are horribly felt and recognised by a pair of idle voyagers. Here art and restraint in narrative reach their very highest development, and an impression of lasting poignancy is produced without a, single strained passage or a single false note.”¹

Von Guérard – Sumpfe nahe Erkrath 1841


I

After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and across it may be seen in large straggling letters the word Sumpfe, meaning marshes.

In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and willow-grown islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal seasons the bushes bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to the sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive. For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too, until the branches turn and lift, and then silvery white as their underside turns to the sun.

Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here wanders about at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters pour with a shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks; carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps; and forming new islands innumerably which shift daily in size and shape and possess at best an impermanent life, since the flood-time obliterates their very existence.

Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river’s life begins soon after leaving Pressburg, and we, in our Canadian canoe, with gipsy tent and frying-pan on board, reached it on the crest of a rising flood about mid-July. That very same morning, when the sky was reddening before sunrise, we had slipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna, leaving it a couple of hours later a mere patch of smoke against the blue hills of the Wienerwald on the horizon; we had breakfasted below Fischeramend under a grove of birch trees roaring in the wind; and had then swept on the tearing current past Orth, Hainburg, Petronell (the old Roman Carnuntum of Marcus Aurelius), and so under the frowning heights of Thelsen on a spur of the Carpathians, where the March steals in quietly from the left and the frontier is crossed between Austria and Hungary.

Racing along at twelve kilometers an hour soon took us well into Hungary, and the muddy waters—sure sign of flood—sent us aground on many a shingle-bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden belching whirlpool before the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Poszony) showed against the sky; and then the canoe, leaping like a spirited horse, flew at top speed under the grey walls, negotiated safely the sunken chain of the Fliegende Brucke ferry, turned the corner sharply to the left, and plunged on yellow foam into the wilderness of islands, sandbanks, and swamp-land beyond—the land of the willows.

The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps down on the streets of a town and shifts without warning into the scenery of lake and forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings, and in less than half an hour there was neither boat nor fishing-hut nor red roof, nor any single sign of human habitation and civilization within sight. The sense of remoteness from the world of humankind, the utter isolation, the fascination of this singular world of willows, winds, and waters, instantly laid its spell upon us both, so that we allowed laughingly to one another that we ought by rights to have held some special kind of passport to admit us, and that we had, somewhat audaciously, come without asking leave into a separate little kingdom of wonder and magic—a kingdom that was reserved for the use of others who had a right to it, with everywhere unwritten warnings to trespassers for those who had the imagination to discover them.

Though still early in the afternoon, the ceaseless buffetings of a most tempestuous wind made us feel weary, and we at once began casting about for a suitable camping-ground for the night. But the bewildering character of the islands made landing difficult; the swirling flood carried us in shore and then swept us out again; the willow branches tore our hands as we seized them to stop the canoe, and we pulled many a yard of sandy bank into the water before at length we shot with a great sideways blow from the wind into a backwater and managed to beach the bows in a cloud of spray. Then we lay panting and laughing after our exertions on the hot yellow sand, sheltered from the wind, and in the full blaze of a scorching sun, a cloudless blue sky above, and an immense army of dancing, shouting willow bushes, closing in from all sides, shining with spray and clapping their thousand little hands as though to applaud the success of our efforts.

“What a river!” I said to my companion, thinking of all the way we had traveled from the source in the Black Forest, and how he had often been obliged to wade and push in the upper shallows at the beginning of June.

“Won’t stand much nonsense now, will it?” he said, pulling the canoe a little farther into safety up the sand, and then composing himself for a nap.

I lay by his side, happy and peaceful in the bath of the elements—water, wind, sand, and the great fire of the sun—thinking of the long journey that lay behind us, and of the great stretch before us to the Black Sea, and how lucky I was to have such a delightful and charming traveling companion as my friend, the Swede.

We had made many similar journeys together, but the Danube, more than any other river I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with its aliveness. From its tiny bubbling entry into the world among the pinewood gardens of Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to play the great river-game of losing itself among the deserted swamps, unobserved, unrestrained, it had seemed to us like following the grown of some living creature. Sleepy at first, but later developing violent desires as it became conscious of its deep soul, it rolled, like some huge fluid being, through all the countries we had passed, holding our little craft on its mighty shoulders, playing roughly with us sometimes, yet always friendly and well-meaning, till at length we had come inevitably to regard it as a Great Personage.

How, indeed, could it be otherwise, since it told us so much of its secret life? At night we heard it singing to the moon as we lay in our tent, uttering that odd sibilant note peculiar to itself and said to be caused by the rapid tearing of the pebbles along its bed, so great is its hurrying speed. We knew, too, the voice of its gurgling whirlpools, suddenly bubbling up on a surface previously quite calm; the roar of its shallows and swift rapids; its constant steady thundering below all mere surface sounds; and that ceaseless tearing of its icy waters at the banks. How it stood up and shouted when the rains fell flat upon its face! And how its laughter roared out when the wind blew up-stream and tried to stop its growing speed! We knew all its sounds and voices, its tumblings and foamings, its unnecessary splashing against the bridges; that self-conscious chatter when there were hills to look on; the affected dignity of its speech when it passed through the little towns, far too important to laugh; and all these faint, sweet whisperings when the sun caught it fairly in some slow curve and poured down upon it till the steam rose.

It was full of tricks, too, in its early life before the great world knew it. There were places in the upper reaches among the Swabian forests, when yet the first whispers of its destiny had not reached it, where it elected to disappear through holes in the ground, to appear again on the other side of the porous limestone hills and start a new river with another name; leaving, too, so little water in its own bed that we had to climb out and wade and push the canoe through miles of shallows.

And a chief pleasure, in those early days of its irresponsible youth, was to lie low, like Brer Fox, just before the little turbulent tributaries came to join it from the Alps, and to refuse to acknowledge them when in, but to run for miles side by side, the dividing line well marked, the very levels different, the Danube utterly declining to recognize the newcomer. Below Passau, however, it gave up this particular trick, for there the Inn comes in with a thundering power impossible to ignore, and so pushes and incommodes the parent river that there is hardly room for them in the long twisting gorge that follows, and the Danube is shoved this way and that against the cliffs, and forced to hurry itself with great waves and much dashing to and fro in order to get through in time. And during the fight our canoe slipped down from its shoulder to its breast, and had the time of its life among the struggling waves. But the Inn taught the old river a lesson, and after Passau it no longer pretended to ignore new arrivals.

This was many days back, of course, and since then we had come to know other aspects of the great creature, and across the Bavarian wheat plain of Straubing she wandered so slowly under the blazing June sun that we could well imagine only the surface inches were water, while below there moved, concealed as by a silken mantle, a whole army of Undines, passing silently and unseen down to the sea, and very leisurely too, lest they be discovered.

Much, too, we forgave her because of her friendliness to the birds and animals that haunted the shores. Cormorants lined the banks in lonely places in rows like short black palings; grey crows crowded the shingle-beds; storks stood fishing in the vistas of shallower water that opened up between the islands, and hawks, swans, and marsh birds of all sorts filled the air with glinting wings and singing, petulant cries. It was impossible to feel annoyed with the river’s vagaries after seeing a deer leap with a splash into the water at sunrise and swim past the bows of the canoe; and often we saw fawns peering at us from the underbrush, or looked straight into the brown eyes of a stag as we charged full tilt round a corner and entered another reach of the river. Foxes, too, everywhere haunted the banks, tripping daintily among the driftwood and disappearing so suddenly that it was impossible to see how they managed it.

But now, after leaving Pressburg, everything changed a little, and the Danube became more serious. It ceased trifling. It was half-way to the Black Sea, within seeming distance almost of other, stranger countries where no tricks would be permitted or understood. It became suddenly grown-up, and claimed our respect and even our awe. It broke out into three arms, for one thing, that only met again a hundred kilometers farther down, and for a canoe there were no indications which one was intended to be followed.

“If you take a side channel,” said the Hungarian officer we met in the Pressburg shop while buying provisions, “you may find yourselves, when the flood subsides, forty miles from anywhere, high and dry, and you may easily starve. There are no people, no farms, no fishermen. I warn you not to continue. The river, too, is still rising, and this wind will increase.”

The rising river did not alarm us in the least, but the matter of being left high and dry by a sudden subsidence of the waters might be serious, and we had consequently laid in an extra stock of provisions. For the rest, the officer’s prophecy held true, and the wind, blowing down a perfectly clear sky, increased steadily till it reached the dignity of a westerly gale.

It was earlier than usual when we camped, for the sun was a good hour or two from the horizon, and leaving my friend still asleep on the hot sand, I wandered about in desultory examination of our hotel. The island, I found, was less than an acre in extent, a mere sandy bank standing some two or three feet above the level of the river. The far end, pointing into the sunset, was covered with flying spray which the tremendous wind drove off the crests of the broken waves. It was triangular in shape, with the apex up stream.

I stood there for several minutes, watching the impetuous crimson flood bearing down with a shouting roar, dashing in waves against the bank as though to sweep it bodily away, and then swirling by in two foaming streams on either side. The ground seemed to shake with the shock and rush, while the furious movement of the willow bushes as the wind poured over them increased the curious illusion that the island itself actually moved. Above, for a mile or two, I could see the great river descending upon me; it was like looking up the slope of a sliding hill, white with foam, and leaping up everywhere to show itself to the sun.

Arnold Schulten -Wasserfall in den Alpen

The rest of the island was too thickly grown with willows to make walking pleasant, but I made the tour, nevertheless. From the lower end the light, of course, changed, and the river looked dark and angry. Only the backs of the flying waves were visible, streaked with foam, and pushed forcibly by the great puffs of wind that fell upon them from behind. For a short mile it was visible, pouring in and out among the islands, and then disappearing with a huge sweep into the willows, which closed about it like a herd of monstrous antediluvian creatures crowding down to drink. They made me think of gigantic sponge-like growths that sucked the river up into themselves. They caused it to vanish from sight. They herded there together in such overpowering numbers.

Altogether it was an impressive scene, with its utter loneliness, its bizarre suggestion; and as I gazed, long and curiously, a singular emotion began to stir somewhere in the depths of me. Midway in my delight of the wild beauty, there crept, unbidden and unexplained, a curious feeling of disquietude, almost of alarm.

A rising river, perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous; many of the little islands I saw before me would probably have been swept away by the morning; this resistless, thundering flood of water touched the sense of awe. Yet I was aware that my uneasiness lay deeper far than the emotions of awe and wonder. It was not that I felt. Nor had it directly to do with the power of the driving wind—this shouting hurricane that might almost carry up a few acres of willows into the air and scatter them like so much chaff over the landscape. The wind was simply enjoying itself, for nothing rose out of the flat landscape to stop it, and I was conscious of sharing its great game with a kind of pleasurable excitement. Yet this novel emotion had nothing to do with the wind. Indeed, so vague was the sense of distress I experienced, that it was impossible to trace it to its source and deal with it accordingly, though I was aware somehow that it had to do with my realization of our utter insignificance before this unrestrained power of the elements about me. The huge-grown river had something to do with it too—a vague, unpleasant idea that we had somehow trifled with these great elemental forces in whose power we lay helpless every hour of the day and night. For here, indeed, they were gigantically at play together, and the sight appealed to the imagination.

But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach itself more particularly to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres of willows, crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the eye could reach, pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it, standing in dense array mile after mile beneath the sky, watching, waiting, listening. And, apart quite from the elements, the willows connected themselves subtly with my malaise, attacking the mind insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and contriving in some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and mighty power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us.

Great revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one way or another, and I was no stranger to moods of the kind. Mountains overawe and oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises a spell peculiarly its own. But all these, at one point or another, somewhere link on intimately with human life and human experience. They stir comprehensible, even if alarming, emotions. They tend on the whole to exalt.

With this multitude of willows, however, it was something far different, I felt. Some essence emanated from them that besieged the heart. A sense of awe awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a vague terror. Their serried ranks, growing everywhere darker about me as the shadows deepened, moving furiously yet softly in the wind, woke in me the curious and unwelcome suggestion that we had trespassed here upon the borders of an alien world, a world where we were intruders, a world where we were not wanted or invited to remain—where we ran grave risks perhaps!

The feeling, however, though it refused to yield its meaning entirely to analysis, did not at the time trouble me by passing into menace. Yet it never left me quite, even during the very practical business of putting up the tent in a hurricane of wind and building a fire for the stew-pot. It remained, just enough to bother and perplex, and to rob a most delightful camping-ground of a good portion of its charm. To my companion, however, I said nothing, for he was a man I considered devoid of imagination. In the first place, I could never have explained to him what I meant, and in the second, he would have laughed stupidly at me if I had.

There was a slight depression in the center of the island, and here we pitched the tent. The surrounding willows broke the wind a bit.

“A poor camp,” observed the imperturbable Swede when at last the tent stood upright, “no stones and precious little firewood. I’m for moving on early tomorrow—eh? This sand won’t hold anything.”

But the experience of a collapsing tent at midnight had taught us many devices, and we made the cozy gipsy house as safe as possible, and then set about collecting a store of wood to last till bed-time. Willow bushes drop no branches, and driftwood was our only source of supply. We hunted the shores pretty thoroughly. Everywhere the banks were crumbling as the rising flood tore at them and carried away great portions with a splash and a gurgle.

“The island’s much smaller than when we landed,” said the accurate Swede. “It won’t last long at this rate. We’d better drag the canoe close to the tent, and be ready to start at a moment’s notice. I shall sleep in my clothes.”

He was a little distance off, climbing along the bank, and I heard his rather jolly laugh as he spoke.

“By Jove!” I heard him call, a moment later, and turned to see what had caused his exclamation. But for the moment he was hidden by the willows, and I could not find him.

“What in the world’s this?” I heard him cry again, and this time his voice had become serious.

I ran up quickly and joined him on the bank. He was looking over the river, pointing at something in the water.

“Good heavens, it’s a man’s body!” he cried excitedly. “Look!”

A black thing, turning over and over in the foaming waves, swept rapidly past. It kept disappearing and coming up to the surface again. It was about twenty feet from the shore, and just as it was opposite to where we stood it lurched round and looked straight at us. We saw its eyes reflecting the sunset, and gleaming an odd yellow as the body turned over. Then it gave a swift, gulping plunge, and dived out of sight in a flash.

“An otter, by gad!” we exclaimed in the same breath, laughing.It was an otter, alive, and out on the hunt; yet it had looked exactly like the body of a drowned man turning helplessly in the current. Far below it came to the surface once again, and we saw its black skin, wet and shining in the sunlight.

Then, too, just as we turned back, our arms full of driftwood, another thing happened to recall us to the river bank. This time it really was a man, and what was more, a man in a boat. Now a small boat on the Danube was an unusual sight at any time, but here in this deserted region, and at flood time, it was so unexpected as to constitute a real event. We stood and stared.

Whether it was due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I found it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying apparition. It seemed, however, to be a man standing upright in a sort of flat-bottomed boat, steering with a long oar, and being carried down the opposite shore at a tremendous pace. He apparently was looking across in our direction, but the distance was too great and the light too uncertain for us to make out very plainly what he was about. It seemed to me that he was gesticulating and making signs at us. His voice came across the water to us shouting something furiously, but the wind drowned it so that no single word was audible. There was something curious about the whole appearance—man, boat, signs, voice—that made an impression on me out of all proportion to its cause.

“He’s crossing himself!” I cried. “Look, he’s making the sign of the Cross!”

“I believe you’re right,” the Swede said, shading his eyes with his hand and watching the man out of sight. He seemed to be gone in a moment, melting away down there into the sea of willows where the sun caught them in the bend of the river and turned them into a great crimson wall of beauty. Mist, too, had begun to ruse, so that the air was hazy.

“But what in the world is he doing at nightfall on this flooded river?” I said, half to myself. “Where is he going at such a time, and what did he mean by his signs and shouting? D’you think he wished to warn us about something?”

“He saw our smoke, and thought we were spirits probably,” laughed my companion. “These Hungarians believe in all sorts of rubbish; you remember the shopwoman at Pressburg warning us that no one ever landed here because it belonged to some sort of beings outside man’s world! I suppose they believe in fairies and elementals, possibly demons, too. That peasant in the boat saw people on the islands for the first time in his life,” he added, after a slight pause, “and it scared him, that’s all.”

The Swede’s tone of voice was not convincing, and his manner lacked something that was usually there. I noted the change instantly while he talked, though without being able to label it precisely.

“If they had enough imagination,” I laughed loudly—I remember trying to make as much noise as I could—”they might well people a place like this with the old gods of antiquity. The Romans must have haunted all this region more or less with their shrines and sacred groves and elemental deities.”

Ferdinand Knab – Ruinenlandschaft 1888

The subject dropped and we returned to our stew-pot, for my friend was not given to imaginative conversation as a rule. Moreover, just then I remember feeling distinctly glad that he was not imaginative; his stolid, practical nature suddenly seemed to me welcome and comforting. It was an admirable temperament, I felt; he could steer down rapids like a red Indian, shoot dangerous bridges and whirlpools better than any white man I ever saw in a canoe. He was a grand fellow for an adventurous trip, a tower of strength when untoward things happened. I looked at his strong face and light curly hair as he staggered along under his pile of driftwood (twice the size of mine!), and I experienced a feeling of relief. Yes, I was distinctly glad just then that the Swede was—what he was, and that he never made remarks that suggested more than they said.

“The river’s still rising, though,” he added, as if following out some thoughts of his own, and dropping his load with a gasp. “This island will be under water in two days if it goes on.”

“I wish the wind would go down,” I said. “I don’t care a fig for the river.”

The flood, indeed, had no terrors for us; we could get off at ten minutes’ notice, and the more water the better we liked it. It meant an increasing current and the obliteration of the treacherous shingle-beds that so often threatened to tear the bottom out of our canoe.

Contrary to our expectations, the wind did not go down with the sun. It seemed to increase with the darkness, howling overhead and shaking the willows round us like straws. Curious sounds accompanied it sometimes, like the explosion of heavy guns, and it fell upon the water and the island in great flat blows of immense power. It made me think of the sounds a planet must make, could we only hear it, driving along through space.

But the sky kept wholly clear of clouds, and soon after supper the full moon rose up in the east and covered the river and the plain of shouting willows with a light like the day.

We lay on the sandy patch beside the fire, smoking, listening to the noises of the night round us, and talking happily of the journey we had already made, and of our plans ahead. The map lay spread in the door of the tent, but the high wind made it hard to study, and presently we lowered the curtain and extinguished the lantern. The firelight was enough to smoke and see each other’s faces by, and the sparks flew about overhead like fireworks. A few yards beyond, the river gurgled and hissed, and from time to time a heavy splash announced the falling away of further portions of the bank.

Our talk, I noticed, had to do with the faraway scenes and incidents of our first camps in the Black Forest, or of other subjects altogether remote from the present setting, for neither of us spoke of the actual moment more than was necessary—almost as though we had agreed tacitly to avoid discussion of the camp and its incidents. Neither the otter nor the boatman, for instance, received the honor of a single mention, though ordinarily these would have furnished discussion for the greater part of the evening. They were, of course, distinct events in such a place.

The scarcity of wood made it a business to keep the fire going, for the wind, that drove the smoke in our faces wherever we sat, helped at the same time to make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make some foraging expeditions into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede brought back always made me feel that he took an absurdly long time finding it; for the fact was I did not care much about being left alone, and yet it always seemed to be my turn to grub about among the bushes or scramble along the slippery banks in the moonlight. The long day’s battle with wind and water—such wind and such water!—had tired us both, and an early bed was the obvious program. Yet neither of us made the move for the tent. We lay there, tending the fire, talking in desultory fashion, peering about us into the dense willow bushes, and listening to the thunder of wind and river. The loneliness of the place had entered our very bones, and silence seemed natural, for after a bit the sound of our voices became a trifle unreal and forced; whispering would have been the fitting mode of communication, I felt, and the human voice, always rather absurd amid the roar of the elements, now carried with it something almost illegitimate. It was like talking out loud in church, or in some place where it was not lawful, perhaps not quite safe, to be overheard.

The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept by a hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us both, I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there beneath the moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of another world, an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the souls of willows. And we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even to make use of it! Something more than the power of its mystery stirred in me as I lay on the sand, feet to fire, and peered up through the leaves at the stars. For the last time I rose to get firewood.

“When this has burnt up,” I said firmly, “I shall turn in,” and my companion watched me lazily as I moved off into the surrounding shadows.

For an unimaginative man I thought he seemed unusually receptive that night, unusually open to suggestion of things other than sensory. He too was touched by the beauty and loneliness of the place. I was not altogether pleased, I remember, to recognize this slight change in him, and instead of immediately collecting sticks, I made my way to the far point of the island where the moonlight on plain and river could be seen to better advantage. The desire to be alone had come suddenly upon me; my former dread returned in force; there was a vague feeling in me I wished to face and probe to the bottom.

When I reached the point of sand jutting out among the waves, the spell of the place descended upon me with a positive shock. No mere “scenery” could have produced such an effect. There was something more here, something to alarm.

I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering willows; I heard the ceaseless beating of the tireless wind; and, one and all, each in its own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange distress. But the willows especially; for ever they went on chattering and talking among themselves, laughing a little, shrilly crying out, sometimes sighing—but what it was they made so much to-do about belonged to the secret life of the great plain they inhabited. And it was utterly alien to the world I knew, or to that of the wild yet kindly elements. They made me think of a host of beings from another plane of life, another evolution altogether, perhaps, all discussing a mystery known only to themselves. I watched them moving busily together, oddly shaking their big bushy heads, twirling their myriad leaves even when there was no wind. They moved of their own will as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen sense of the horrible.

There they stood in the moonlight, like a vast army surrounding our camp, shaking their innumerable silver spears defiantly, formed all ready for an attack.

The psychology of places, for some imaginations at least, is very vivid; for the wanderer, especially, camps have their “note” either of welcome or rejection. At first it may not always be apparent, because the busy preparations of tent and cooking prevent, but with the first pause—after supper usually—it comes and announces itself. And the note of this willow-camp now became unmistakably plain to me; we were interlopers, trespassers; we were not welcomed. The sense of unfamiliarity grew upon me as I stood there watching. We touched the frontier of a region where our presence was resented. For a night’s lodging we might perhaps be tolerated; but for a prolonged and inquisitive stay—No! by all the gods of the trees and wilderness, no! We were the first human influences upon this island, and we were not wanted. The willows were against us.

Strange thoughts like these, bizarre fancies, borne I know not whence, found lodgment in my mind as I stood listening. What, I thought, if, after all, these crouching willows proved to be alive; if suddenly they should rise up, like a swarm of living creatures, marshaled by the gods whose territory we had invaded, sweep towards us off the vast swamps, booming overhead in the night—and then settle down! As I looked it was so easy to imagine they actually moved, crept nearer, retreated a little, huddled together in masses, hostile, waiting for the great wind that should finally start them a-running. I could have sworn their aspect changed a little, and their ranks deepened and pressed more closely together.

The melancholy shrill cry of a night-bird sounded overhead, and suddenly I nearly lost my balance as the piece of bank I stood upon fell with a great splash into the river, undermined by the flood. I stepped back just in time, and went on hunting for firewood again, half laughing at the odd fancies that crowded so thickly into my mind and cast their spell upon me. I recalled the Swede’s remark about moving on next day, and I was just thinking that I fully agreed with him, when I turned with a start and saw the subject of my thoughts standing immediately in front of me. He was quite close. The roar of the elements had covered his approach.

 

Alexandre Calame – The Thunderstorm at Handeck (1838)


II

“You’ve been gone so long,” he shouted above the wind, “I thought something must have happened to you.”

But there was that in his tone, and a certain look in his face as well, that conveyed to me more than his usual words, and in a flash I understood the real reason for his coming. It was because the spell of the place had entered his soul too, and he did not like being alone.

“River still rising,” he cried, pointing to the flood in the moonlight, “and the wind’s simply awful.”

He always said the same things, but it was the cry for companionship that gave the real importance to his words.

“Lucky,” I cried back, “our tent’s in the hollow. I think it’ll hold all right.” I added something about the difficulty of finding wood, in order to explain my absence, but the wind caught my words and flung them across the river, so that he did not hear, but just looked at me through the branches, nodding his head.

“Lucky if we get away without disaster!” he shouted, or words to that effect; and I remember feeling half angry with him for putting the thought into words, for it was exactly what I felt myself. There was disaster impending somewhere, and the sense of presentiment lay unpleasantly upon me.

We went back to the fire and made a final blaze, poking it up with our feet. We took a last look round. But for the wind the heat would have been unpleasant. I put this thought into words, and I remember my friend’s reply struck me oddly: that he would rather have the heat, the ordinary July weather, than this “diabolical wind.”

Everything was snug for the night; the canoe lying turned over beside the tent, with both yellow paddles beneath her; the provision sack hanging from a willow-stem, and the washed-up dishes removed to a safe distance from the fire, all ready for the morning meal.We smothered the embers of the fire with sand, and then turned in. The flap of the tent door was up, and I saw the branches and the stars and the white moonlight. The shaking willows and the heavy buffetings of the wind against our taut little house were the last things I remembered as sleep came down and covered all with its soft and delicious forgetfulness.

Suddenly I found myself lying awake, peering from my sandy mattress through the door of the tent. I looked at my watch pinned against the canvas, and saw by the bright moonlight that it was past twelve o’clock—the threshold of a new day—and I had therefore slept a couple of hours. The Swede was asleep still beside me; the wind howled as before; something plucked at my heart and made me feel afraid. There was a sense of disturbance in my immediate neighborhood.

I sat up quickly and looked out. The trees were swaying violently to and fro as the gusts smote them, but our little bit of green canvas lay snugly safe in the hollow, for the wind passed over it without meeting enough resistance to make it vicious. The feeling of disquietude did not pass, however, and I crawled quietly out of the tent to see if our belongings were safe. I moved carefully so as not to waken my companion. A curious excitement was on me.

I was half-way out, kneeling on all fours, when my eye first took in that the tops of the bushes opposite, with their moving tracery of leaves, made shapes against the sky. I sat back on my haunches and stared. It was incredible, surely, but there, opposite and slightly above me, were shapes of some indeterminate sort among the willows, and as the branches swayed in the wind they seemed to group themselves about these shapes, forming a series of monstrous outlines that shifted rapidly beneath the moon. Close, about fifty feet in front of me, I saw these things.

My first instinct was to waken my companion, that he too might see them, but something made me hesitate—the sudden realization, probably, that I should not welcome corroboration; and meanwhile I crouched there staring in amazement with smarting eyes. I was wide awake. I remember saying to myself that I was not dreaming.

They first became properly visible, these huge figures, just within the tops of the bushes—immense, bronze-colored, moving, and wholly independent of the swaying of the branches. I saw them plainly and noted, now I came to examine them more calmly, that they were very much larger than human, and indeed that something in their appearance proclaimed them to be not human at all. Certainly they were not merely the moving tracery of the branches against the moonlight. They shifted independently. They rose upwards in a continuous stream from earth to sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they reached the dark of the sky. They were interlaced one with another, making a great column, and I saw their limbs and huge bodies melting in and out of each other, forming this serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally with the contortions of the wind-tossed trees. They were nude, fluid shapes, passing up the bushes, within the leaves almost—rising up in a living column into the heavens. Their faces I never could see. Unceasingly they poured upwards, swaying in great bending curves, with a hue of dull bronze upon their skins.

I stared, trying to force every atom of vision from my eyes. For a long time I thought they must every moment disappear and resolve themselves into the movements of the branches and prove to be an optical illusion. I searched everywhere for a proof of reality, when all the while I understood quite well that the standard of reality had changed. For the longer I looked the more certain I became that these figures were real and living, though perhaps not according to the standards that the camera and the biologist would insist upon.

Far from feeling fear, I was possessed with a sense of awe and wonder such as I have never known. I seemed to be gazing at the personified elemental forces of this haunted and primeval region. Our intrusion had stirred the powers of the place into activity. It was we who were the cause of the disturbance, and my brain filled to bursting with stories and legends of the spirits and deities of places that have been acknowledged and worshipped by men in all ages of the world’s history. But, before I could arrive at any possible explanation, something impelled me to go farther out, and I crept forward on the sand and stood upright. I felt the ground still warm under my bare feet; the wind tore at my hair and face; and the sound of the river burst upon my ears with a sudden roar. These things, I knew, were real, and proved that my senses were acting normally. Yet the figures still rose from earth to heaven, silent, majestically, in a great spiral of grace and strength that overwhelmed me at length with a genuine deep emotion of worship. I felt that I must fall down and worship—absolutely worship.

Perhaps in another minute I might have done so, when a gust of wind swept against me with such force that it blew me sideways, and I nearly stumbled and fell. It seemed to shake the dream violently out of me. At least it gave me another point of view somehow. The figures still remained, still ascended into heaven from the heart of the night, but myreason at last began to assert itself. It must be a subjective experience, I argued—none the less real for that, but still subjective. The moonlight and the branches combined to work out these pictures upon the mirror of my imagination, and for some reason I projected them outwards and made them appear objective. I knew this must be the case, of course. I took courage, and began to move forward across the open patches of sand. By Jove, though, was it all hallucination? Was it merely subjective? Did not my reason argue in the old futile way from the little standard of the known?

I only know that great column of figures ascended darkly into the sky for what seemed a very long period of time, and with a very complete measure of reality as most men are accustomed to gauge reality. Then suddenly they were gone!

And, once they were gone and the immediate wonder of their great presence had passed, fear came down upon me with a cold rush. The esoteric meaning of this lonely and haunted region suddenly flamed up within me, and I began to tremble dreadfully. I took a quick look round—a look of horror that came near to panic—calculating vainly ways of escape; and then, realizing how helpless I was to achieve anything really effective, I crept back silently into the tent and lay down again upon my sandy mattress, first lowering the door-curtain to shut out the sight of the willows in the moonlight, and then burying my head as deeply as possible beneath the blankets to deaden the sound of the terrifying wind.

As though further to convince me that I had not been dreaming, I remember that it was a long time before I fell again into a troubled and restless sleep; and even then only the upper crust of me slept, and underneath there was something that never quite lost consciousness, but lay alert and on the watch.

But this second time I jumped up with a genuine start of terror. It was neither the wind nor the river that woke me, but the slow approach of something that caused the sleeping portion of me to grow smaller and smaller till at last it vanished altogether, and I found myself sitting bolt upright—listening.

Outside there was a sound of multitudinous little patterings. They had been coming, I was aware, for a long time, and in my sleep they had first become audible. I sat there nervously wide awake as though I had not slept at all. It seemed to me that my breathing came with difficulty, and that there was a great weight upon the surface of my body. In spite of the hot night, I felt clammy with cold and shivered. Something surely was pressing steadily against the sides of the tent and weighing down upon it from above. Was it the body of the wind? Was this the pattering rain, the dripping of the leaves? The spray blown from the river by the wind and gathering in big drops? I thought quickly of a dozen things.

Then suddenly the explanation leaped into my mind: a bough from the poplar, the only large tree on the island, had fallen with the wind. Still half caught by the other branches, it would fall with the next gust and crush us, and meanwhile its leaves brushed and tapped upon the tight canvas surface of the tent. I raised a loose flap and rushed out, calling to the Swede to follow.

But when I got out and stood upright I saw that the tent was free. There was no hanging bough; there was no rain or spray; nothing approached.

A cold, grey light filtered down through the bushes and lay on the faintly gleaming sand. Stars still crowded the sky directly overhead, and the wind howled magnificently, but the fire no longer gave out any glow, and I saw the east reddening in streaks through the trees. Several hours must have passed since I stood there before watching the ascending figures, and the memory of it now came back to me horribly, like an evil dream. Oh, how tired it made me feel, that ceaseless raging wind! Yet, though the deep lassitude of a sleepless night was on me, my nerves were tingling with the activity of an equally tireless apprehension, and all idea of repose was out of the question. The river I saw had risen further. Its thunder filled the air, and a fine spray made itself felt through my thin sleeping shirt.

Yet nowhere did I discover the slightest evidence of anything to cause alarm. This deep, prolonged disturbance in my heart remained wholly unaccounted for.

My companion had not stirred when I called him, and there was no need to waken him now. I looked about me carefully, noting everything; the turned-over canoe; the yellow paddles—two of them, I’m certain; the provision sack and the extra lantern hanging together from the tree; and, crowding everywhere about me, enveloping all, the willows, those endless, shaking willows. A bird uttered its morning cry, and a string of duck passed with whirring flight overhead in the twilight. The sand whirled, dry and stinging, about my bare feet in the wind.

I walked round the tent and then went out a little way into the bush, so that I could see across the river to the farther landscape, and the same profound yet indefinable emotion of distress seized upon me again as I saw the interminable sea of bushes stretching to the horizon, looking ghostly and unreal in the wan light of dawn. I walked softly here and there, still puzzling over that odd sound of infinite pattering, and of that pressure upon the tent that had wakened me. It must have been the wind, I reflected—the wind bearing upon the loose, hot sand, driving the dry particles smartly against the taut canvas—the wind dropping heavily upon our fragile roof.

Yet all the time my nervousness and malaise increased appreciably.

I crossed over to the farther shore and noted how the coast-line had altered in the night, and what masses of sand the river had torn away. I dipped my hands and feet into the cool current, and bathed my forehead. Already there was a glow of sunrise in the sky and the exquisite freshness of coming day. On my way back I passed purposely beneath the very bushes where I had seen the column of figures rising into the air, and midway among the clumps I suddenly found myself overtaken by a sense of vast terror. From the shadows a large figure went swiftly by. Someone passed me, as sure as ever man did….

It was a great staggering blow from the wind that helped me forward again, and once out in the more open space, the sense of terror diminished strangely. The winds were about and walking, I remember saying to myself, for the winds often move like great presences under the trees. And altogether the fear that hovered about me was such an unknown and immense kind of fear, so unlike anything I had ever felt before, that it woke a sense of awe and wonder in me that did much to counteract its worst effects; and when I reached a high point in the middle of the island from which I could see the wide stretch of river, crimson in the sunrise, the whole magical beauty of it all was so overpowering that a sort of wild yearning woke in me and almost brought a cry up into the throat.

But this cry found no expression, for as my eyes wandered from the plain beyond to the island round me and noted our little tent half hidden among the willows, a dreadful discovery leaped out at me, compared to which my terror of the walking winds seemed as nothing at all.

For a change, I thought, had somehow come about in the arrangement of the landscape. It was not that my point of vantage gave me a different view, but that an alteration had apparently been effected in the relation of the tent to the willows, and of the willows to the tent. Surely the bushes now crowded much closer—unnecessarily, unpleasantly close. They had moved nearer.

Creeping with silent feet over the shifting sands, drawing imperceptibly nearer by soft, unhurried movements, the willows had come closer during the night. But had the wind moved them, or had they moved of themselves? I recalled the sound of infinite small patterings and the pressure upon the tent and upon my own heart that caused me to wake in terror. I swayed for a moment in the wind like a tree, finding it hard to keep my upright position on the sandy hillock. There was a suggestion here of personal agency, of deliberate intention, of aggressive hostility, and it terrified me into a sort of rigidity.

Then the reaction followed quickly. The idea was so bizarre, so absurd, that I felt inclined to laugh. But the laughter came no more readily than the cry, for the knowledge that my mind was so receptive to such dangerous imaginings brought the additional terror that it was through our minds and not through our physical bodies that the attack would come, and was coming.

Alexandre Calame – Mountain Torrent Before A Storm (1848)0

The wind buffeted me about, and, very quickly it seemed, the sun came up over the horizon, for it was after four o’clock, and I must have stood on that little pinnacle of sand longer than I knew, afraid to come down to close quarters with the willows. I returned quietly, creepily, to the tent, first taking another exhaustive look round and—yes, I confess it—making a few measurements. I paced out on the warm sand the distances between the willows and the tent, making a note of the shortest distance particularly.

I crawled stealthily into my blankets. My companion, to all appearances, still slept soundly, and I was glad that this was so. Provided my experiences were not corroborated, I could find strength somehow to deny them, perhaps. With the daylight I could persuade myself that it was all a subjective hallucination, a fantasy of the night, a projection of the excited imagination.

Nothing further came in to disturb me, and I fell asleep almost at once, utterly exhausted, yet still in dread of hearing again that weird sound of multitudinous pattering, or of feeling the pressure upon my heart that had made it difficult to breathe.

The sun was high in the heavens when my companion woke me from a heavy sleep and announced that the porridge was cooked and there was just time to bathe. The grateful smell of frizzling bacon entered the tent door.

“River still rising,” he said, “and several islands out in mid-stream have disappeared altogether. Our own island’s much smaller.”

“Any wood left?” I asked sleepily.

“The wood and the island will finish tomorrow in a dead heat,” he laughed, “but there’s enough to last us till then.”

I plunged in from the point of the island, which had indeed altered a lot in size and shape during the night, and was swept down in a moment to the landing-place opposite the tent. The water was icy, and the banks flew by like the country from an express train. Bathing under such conditions was an exhilarating operation, and the terror of the night seemed cleansed out of me by a process of evaporation in the brain. The sun was blazing hot; not a cloud showed itself anywhere; the wind, however, had not abated one little jot.

Quite suddenly then the implied meaning of the Swede’s words flashed across me, showing that he no longer wished to leave post-haste, and had changed his mind. “Enough to last till tomorrow”—he assumed we should stay on the island another night. It struck me as odd. The night before he was so positive the other way. How had the change come about?

Great crumblings of the banks occurred at breakfast, with heavy splashings and clouds of spray which the wind brought into our frying-pan, and my fellow-traveler talked incessantly about the difficulty the Vienna-Pesth steamers must have to find the channel in flood. But the state of his mind interested and impressed me far more than the state of the river or the difficulties of the steamers. He had changed somehow since the evening before. His manner was different—a trifle excited, a trifle shy, with a sort of suspicion about his voice and gestures. I hardly know how to describe it now in cold blood, but at the time I remember being quite certain of one thing—that he had become frightened?

He ate very little breakfast, and for once omitted to smoke his pipe. He had the map spread open beside him, and kept studying its markings.

“We’d better get off sharp in an hour,” I said presently, feeling for an opening that must bring him indirectly to a partial confession at any rate. And his answer puzzled me uncomfortably: “Rather! If they’ll let us.”

“Who’ll let us? The elements?” I asked quickly, with affected indifference.

“The powers of this awful place, whoever they are,” he replied, keeping his eyes on the map. “The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in the world.”

“The elements are always the true immortals,” I replied, laughing as naturally as I could manage, yet knowing quite well that my face reflected my true feelings when he looked up gravely at me and spoke across the smoke:

“We shall be fortunate if we get away without further disaster.”

This was exactly what I had dreaded, and I screwed myself up to the point of the direct question. It was like agreeing to allow the dentist to extract the tooth; it had to come anyhow in the long run, and the rest was all pretence.

“Further disaster! Why, what’s happened?”

“For one thing—the steering paddle’s gone,” he said quietly.

“The steering paddle gone!” I repeated, greatly excited, for this was our rudder, and the Danube in flood without a rudder was suicide. “But what—”

“And there’s a tear in the bottom of the canoe,” he added, with a genuine little tremor in his voice.

I continued staring at him, able only to repeat the words in his face somewhat foolishly. There, in the heat of the sun, and on this burning sand, I was aware of a freezing atmosphere descending round us. I got up to follow him, for he merely nodded his head gravely and led the way towards the tent a few yards on the other side of the fireplace. The canoe still lay there as I had last seen her in the night, ribs uppermost, the paddles, or rather, the paddle, on the sand beside her.

“There’s only one,” he said, stooping to pick it up. “And here’s the rent in the base-board.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I had clearly noticed two paddles a few hours before, but a second impulse made me think better of it, and I said nothing. I approached to see.

There was a long, finely made tear in the bottom of the canoe where a little slither of wood had been neatly taken clean out; it looked as if the tooth of a sharp rock or snag had eaten down her length, and investigation showed that the hole went through. Had we launched out in her without observing it we must inevitably have foundered. At first the water would have made the wood swell so as to close the hole, but once out in mid-stream the water must have poured in, and the canoe, never more than two inches above the surface, would have filled and sunk very rapidly.

“There, you see an attempt to prepare a victim for the sacrifice,” I heard him saying, more to himself than to me, “two victims rather,” he added as he bent over and ran his fingers along the slit.

I began to whistle—a thing I always do unconsciously when utterly nonplussed—and purposely paid no attention to his words. I was determined to consider them foolish.

“It wasn’t there last night,” he said presently, straightening up from his examination and looking anywhere but at me.

“We must have scratched her in landing, of course,” I stopped whistling to say. “The stones are very sharp.”

I stopped abruptly, for at that moment he turned round and met my eye squarely. I knew just as well as he did how impossible my explanation was. There were no stones, to begin with.

“And then there’s this to explain too,” he added quietly, handing me the paddle and pointing to the blade.

A new and curious emotion spread freezingly over me as I took and examined it. The blade was scraped down all over, beautifully scraped, as though someone had sand-papered it with care, making it so thin that the first vigorous stroke must have snapped it off at the elbow.

“One of us walked in his sleep and did this thing,” I said feebly, “or—or it has been filed by the constant stream of sand particles blown against it by the wind, perhaps.”

“Ah,” said the Swede, turning away, laughing a little, “you can explain everything.”

“The same wind that caught the steering paddle and flung it so near the bank that it fell in with the next lump that crumbled,” I called out after him, absolutely determined to find an explanation for everything he showed me.

“I see,” he shouted back, turning his head to look at me before disappearing among the willow bushes.

Once alone with these perplexing evidences of personal agency, I think my first thoughts took the form of “One of us must have done this thing, and it certainly was not I.” But my second thought decided how impossible it was to suppose, under all the circumstances, that either of us had done it. That my companion, the trusted friend of a dozen similar expeditions, could have knowingly had a hand in it, was a suggestion not to be entertained for a moment. Equally absurd seemed the explanation that this imperturbable and densely practical nature had suddenly become insane and was busied with insane purposes.

Yet the fact remained that what disturbed me most, and kept my fear actively alive even in this blaze of sunshine and wild beauty, was the clear certainty that some curious alteration had come about in his mind—that he was nervous, timid, suspicious, aware of goings on he did not speak about, watching a series of secret and hitherto unmentionable events—waiting, in a word, for a climax that he expected, and, I thought, expected very soon. This grew up in my mind intuitively—I hardly knew how.

I made a hurried examination of the tent and its surroundings, but the measurements of the night remained the same. There were deep hollows formed in the sand I now noticed for the first time, basin-shaped and of various depths and sizes, varying from that of a tea-cup to a large bowl. The wind, no doubt, was responsible for these miniature craters, just as it was for lifting the paddle and tossing it towards the water. The rent in the canoe was the only thing that seemed quite inexplicable; and, after all, it was conceivable that a sharp point had caught it when we landed. The examination I made of the shore did not assist this theory, but all the same I clung to it with that diminishing portion of my intelligence which I called my “reason.” An explanation of some kind was an absolute necessity, just as some working explanation of the universe is necessary—however absurd—to the happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face the problems of life. The simile seemed to me at the time an exact parallel.

I at once set the pitch melting, and presently the Swede joined me at the work, though under the best conditions in the world the canoe could not be safe for traveling till the following day. I drew his attention casually to the hollows in the sand.

“Yes,” he said, “I know. They’re all over the island. But you can explain them, no doubt!”

“Wind, of course,” I answered without hesitation. “Have you never watched those little whirlwinds in the street that twist and twirl everything into a circle? This sand’s loose enough to yield, that’s all.”

He made no reply, and we worked on in silence for a bit. I watched him surreptitiously all the time, and I had an idea he was watching me. He seemed, too, to be always listening attentively to something I could not hear, or perhaps for something that he expected to hear, for he kept turning about and staring into the bushes, and up into the sky, and out across the water where it was visible through the openings among the willows. Sometimes he even put his hand to his ear and held it there for several minutes. He said nothing to me, however, about it, and I asked no questions. And meanwhile, as he mended that torn canoe with the skill and address of a red Indian, I was glad to notice his absorption in the work, for there was a vague dread in my heart that he would speak of the changed aspect of the willows. And, if he had noticed that, my imagination could no longer be held a sufficient explanation of it.

Caspar David Friedrich – Willow Bush under a Setting Sun (ca.1832-35)


III

At length, after a long pause, he began to talk.

“Queer thing,” he added in a hurried sort of voice, as though he wanted to say something and get it over. “Queer thing. I mean, about that otter last night.”

I had expected something so totally different that he caught me with surprise, and I looked up sharply.

“Shows how lonely this place is. Otters are awfully shy things—”

“I don’t mean that, of course,” he interrupted. “I mean—do you think—did you think it really was an otter?”

“What else, in the name of Heaven, what else?”

“You know, I saw it before you did, and at first it seemed—so much bigger than an otter.”

“The sunset as you looked up-stream magnified it, or something,” I replied.

He looked at me absently a moment, as though his mind were busy with other thoughts.

“It had such extraordinary yellow eyes,” he went on half to himself.

“That was the sun too,” I laughed, a trifle boisterously. “I suppose you’ll wonder next if that fellow in the boat—”

I suddenly decided not to finish the sentence. He was in the act again of listening, turning his head to the wind, and something in the expression of his face made me halt. The subject dropped, and we went on with our caulking. Apparently he had not noticed my unfinished sentence. Five minutes later, however, he looked at me across the canoe, the smoking pitch in his hand, his face exceedingly grave.

“I did rather wonder, if you want to know,” he said slowly, “what that thing in the boat was. I remember thinking at the time it was not a man. The whole business seemed to rise quite suddenly out of the water.”

I laughed again boisterously in his face, but this time there was impatience, and a strain of anger too, in my feeling.

“Look here now,” I cried, “this place is quite queer enough without going out of our way to imagine things! That boat was an ordinary boat, and the man in it was an ordinary man, and they were both going down-stream as fast as they could lick. And that otter was an otter, so don’t let’s play the fool about it!”

He looked steadily at me with the same grave expression. He was not in the least annoyed. I took courage from his silence.

“And, for Heaven’s sake,” I went on, “don’t keep pretending you hear things, because it only gives me the jumps, and there’s nothing to hear but the river and this cursed old thundering wind.”

“You fool!” he answered in a low, shocked voice, “you utter fool. That’s just the way all victims talk. As if you didn’t understand just as well as I do!” he sneered with scorn in his voice, and a sort of resignation. “The best thing you can do is to keep quiet and try to hold your mind as firm as possible. This feeble attempt at self-deception only makes the truth harder when you’re forced to meet it.”

My little effort was over, and I found nothing more to say, for I knew quite well his words were true, and that I was the fool, not he. Up to a certain stage in the adventure he kept ahead of me easily, and I think I felt annoyed to be out of it, to be thus proved less psychic, less sensitive than himself to these extraordinary happenings, and half ignorant all the time of what was going on under my very nose. He knew from the very beginning, apparently. But at the moment I wholly missed the point of his words about the necessity of there being a victim, and that we ourselves were destined to satisfy the want. I dropped all pretence thenceforward, but thenceforward likewise my fear increased steadily to the climax.

“But you’re quite right about one thing,” he added, before the subject passed, “and that is that we’re wiser not to talk about it, or even to think about it, because what one thinks finds expression in words, and what one says, happens.”

That afternoon, while the canoe dried and hardened, we spent trying to fish, testing the leak, collecting wood, and watching the enormous flood of rising water. Masses of driftwood swept near our shores sometimes, and we fished for them with long willow branches. The island grew perceptibly smaller as the banks were torn away with great gulps and splashes. The weather kept brilliantly fine till about four o’clock, and then for the first time for three days the wind showed signs of abating. Clouds began to gather in the south-west, spreading thence slowly over the sky.

This lessening of the wind came as a great relief, for the incessant roaring, banging, and thundering had irritated our nerves. Yet the silence that came about five o’clock with its sudden cessation was in a manner quite as oppressive. The booming of the river had everything in its own way then; it filled the air with deep murmurs, more musical than the wind noises, but infinitely more monotonous. The wind held many notes, rising, falling always beating out some sort of great elemental tune; whereas the river’s song lay between three notes at most—dull pedal notes, that held a lugubrious quality foreign to the wind, and somehow seemed to me, in my then nervous state, to sound wonderfully well the music of doom.

“The wind held many notes, rising, falling always beating out some sort of great elemental tune; whereas the river’s song lay between three notes at most—dull pedal notes, that held a lugubrious quality foreign to the wind, and somehow seemed to me, in my then nervous state, to sound wonderfully well the music of doom.”

It was extraordinary, too, how the withdrawal suddenly of bright sunlight took everything out of the landscape that made for cheerfulness; and since this particular landscape had already managed to convey the suggestion of something sinister, the change of course was all the more unwelcome and noticeable. For me, I know, the darkening outlook became distinctly more alarming, and I found myself more than once calculating how soon after sunset the full moon would get up in the east, and whether the gathering clouds would greatly interfere with her lighting of the little island.

With this general hush of the wind—though it still indulged in occasional brief gusts—the river seemed to me to grow blacker, the willows to stand more densely together. The latter, too, kept up a sort of independent movement of their own, rustling among themselves when no wind stirred, and shaking oddly from the roots upwards. When common objects in this way become charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us. The forces of the region drew nearer with the coming of night. They were focusing upon our island, and more particularly upon ourselves. For thus, somehow, in the terms of the imagination, did my really indescribable sensations in this extraordinary place present themselves.

I had slept a good deal in the early afternoon, and had thus recovered somewhat from the exhaustion of a disturbed night, but this only served apparently to render me more susceptible than before to the obsessing spell of the haunting. I fought against it, laughing at my feelings as absurd and childish, with very obvious physiological explanations, yet, in spite of every effort, they gained in strength upon me so that I dreaded the night as a child lost in a forest must dread the approach of darkness.

The canoe we had carefully covered with a waterproof sheet during the day, and the one remaining paddle had been securely tied by the Swede to the base of a tree, lest the wind should rob us of that too. From five o’clock onwards I busied myself with the stew-pot and preparations for dinner, it being my turn to cook that night. We had potatoes, onions, bits of bacon fat to add flavor, and a general thick residue from former stews at the bottom of the pot; with black bread broken up into it the result was most excellent, and it was followed by a stew of plums with sugar and a brew of strong tea with dried milk. A good pile of wood lay close at hand, and the absence of wind made my duties easy. My companion sat lazily watching me, dividing his attentions between cleaning his pipe and giving useless advice—an admitted privilege of the off-duty man. He had been very quiet all the afternoon, engaged in re-caulking the canoe, strengthening the tent ropes, and fishing for driftwood while I slept. No more talk about undesirable things had passed between us, and I think his only remarks had to do with the gradual destruction of the island, which he declared was not fully a third smaller than when we first landed.

The pot had just begun to bubble when I heard his voice calling to me from the bank, where he had wandered away without my noticing. I ran up.

“Come and listen,” he said, “and see what you make of it.” He held his hand cupwise to his ear, as so often before.

“Now do you hear anything?” he asked, watching me curiously.

We stood there, listening attentively together. At first I heard only the deep note of the water and the hissings rising from its turbulent surface. The willows, for once, were motionless and silent. Then a sound began to reach my ears faintly, a peculiar sound—something like the humming of a distant gong. It seemed to come across to us in the darkness from the waste of swamps and willows opposite. It was repeated at regular intervals, but it was certainly neither the sound of a bell nor the hooting of a distant steamer. I can liken it to nothing so much as to the sound of an immense gong, suspended far up in the sky, repeating incessantly its muffled metallic note, soft and musical, as it was repeatedly struck. My heart quickened as I listened.

“I’ve heard it all day,” said my companion. “While you slept this afternoon it came all round the island. I hunted it down, but could never get near enough to see—to localize it correctly. Sometimes it was overhead, and sometimes it seemed under the water. Once or twice, too, I could have sworn it was not outside at all, but within myself—you know—the way a sound in the fourth dimension is supposed to come.”

I was too much puzzled to pay much attention to his words. I listened carefully, striving to associate it with any known familiar sound I could think of, but without success. It changed in the direction, too, coming nearer, and then sinking utterly away into remote distance. I cannot say that it was ominous in quality, because to me it seemed distinctly musical, yet I must admit it set going a distressing feeling that made me wish I had never heard it.

“The wind blowing in those sand-funnels,” I said determined to find an explanation, “or the bushes rubbing together after the storm perhaps.”

“It comes off the whole swamp,” my friend answered. “It comes from everywhere at once.” He ignored my explanations. “It comes from the willow bushes somehow—”

“But now the wind has dropped,” I objected. “The willows can hardly make a noise by themselves, can they?”

Caspar David Friedrich – Two Men Contemplating the Moon (1819/20)

His answer frightened me, first because I had dreaded it, and secondly, because I knew intuitively it was true.

“It is because the wind has dropped we now hear it. It was drowned before.

It is the cry, I believe, of the—”

I dashed back to my fire, warned by the sound of bubbling that the stew was in danger, but determined at the same time to escape further conversation. I was resolute, if possible, to avoid the exchanging of views. I dreaded, too, that he would begin about the gods, or the elemental forces, or something else disquieting, and I wanted to keep myself well in hand for what might happen later. There was another night to be faced before we escaped from this distressing place, and there was no knowing yet what it might bring forth.

“Come and cut up bread for the pot,” I called to him, vigorously stirring the appetizing mixture. That stew-pot held sanity for us both, and the thought made me laugh.

He came over slowly and took the provision sack from the tree, fumbling in its mysterious depths, and then emptying the entire contents upon the ground-sheet at his feet.

“Hurry up!” I cried; “it’s boiling.”

The Swede burst out into a roar of laughter that startled me. It was forced laughter, not artificial exactly, but mirthless.

“There’s nothing here!” he shouted, holding his sides.

“Bread, I mean.”

“It’s gone. There is no bread. They’ve taken it!”

I dropped the long spoon and ran up. Everything the sack had contained lay upon the ground-sheet, but there was no loaf.

The whole dead weight of my growing fear fell upon me and shook me. Then I burst out laughing too. It was the only thing to do: and the sound of my laughter also made me understand his. The stain of psychical pressure caused it—this explosion of unnatural laughter in both of us; it was an effort of repressed forces to seek relief; it was a temporary safety-valve. And with both of us it ceased quite suddenly.

“How criminally stupid of me!” I cried, still determined to be consistent and find an explanation. “I clean forgot to buy a loaf at Pressburg. That chattering woman put everything out of my head, and I must have left it lying on the counter or—”

“The oatmeal, too, is much less than it was this morning,” the Swede interrupted.

Why in the world need he draw attention to it? I thought angrily.

“There’s enough for tomorrow,” I said, stirring vigorously, “and we can get lots more at Komorn or Gran. In twenty-four hours we shall be miles from here.”

“I hope so—to God,” he muttered, putting the things back into the sack, “unless we’re claimed first as victims for the sacrifice,” he added with a foolish laugh. He dragged the sack into the tent, for safety’s sake, I suppose, and I heard him mumbling to himself, but so indistinctly that it seemed quite natural for me to ignore his words.

Our meal was beyond question a gloomy one, and we ate it almost in silence, avoiding one another’s eyes, and keeping the fire bright. Then we washed up and prepared for the night, and, once smoking, our minds unoccupied with any definite duties, the apprehension I had felt all day long became more and more acute. It was not then active fear, I think, but the very vagueness of its origin distressed me far more than if I had been able to ticket and face it squarely. The curious sound I have likened to the note of a gong became now almost incessant, and filled the stillness of the night with a faint, continuous ringing rather than a series of distinct notes. At one time it was behind and at another time in front of us. Sometimes I fancied it came from the bushes on our left, and then again from the clumps on our right. More often it hovered directly overhead like the whirring of wings. It was really everywhere at once, behind, in front, at our sides and over our heads, completely surrounding us. The sound really defies description. But nothing within my knowledge is like that ceaseless muffled humming rising off the deserted world of swamps and willows.

We sat smoking in comparative silence, the strain growing every minute greater. The worst feature of the situation seemed to me that we did not know what to expect, and could therefore make no sort of preparation by way of defense. We could anticipate nothing. My explanations made in the sunshine, moreover, now came to haunt me with their foolish and wholly unsatisfactory nature, and it was more and more clear to us that some kind of plain talk with my companion was inevitable, whether I liked it or not. After all, we had to spend the night together, and to sleep in the same tent side by side. I saw that I could not get along much longer without the support of his mind, and for that, of course, plain talk was imperative. As long as possible, however, I postponed this little climax, and tried to ignore or laugh at the occasional sentences he flung into the emptiness.

Some of these sentences, moreover, were confoundedly disquieting to me, coming as they did to corroborate much that I felt myself; corroboration, too—which made it so much more convincing—from a totally different point of view. He composed such curious sentences, and hurled them at me in such an inconsequential sort of way, as though his main line of thought was secret to himself, and these fragments were mere bits he found it impossible to digest. He got rid of them by uttering them. Speech relieved him. It was like being sick.

“There are things about us, I’m sure, that make for disorder, disintegration, destruction, our destruction,” he said once, while the fire blazed between us. “We’ve strayed out of a safe line somewhere.”

And, another time, when the gong sounds had come nearer, ringing much louder than before, and directly over our heads, he said as though talking to himself:

“I don’t think a gramophone would show any record of that. The sound doesn’t come to me by the ears at all. The vibrations reach me in another manner altogether, and seem to be within me, which is precisely how a fourth dimensional sound might be supposed to make itself heard.”

I purposely made no reply to this, but I sat up a little closer to the fire and peered about me into the darkness. The clouds were massed all over the sky, and no trace of moonlight came through. Very still, too, everything was, so that the river and the frogs had things all their own way.

“It has that about it,” he went on, “which is utterly out of common experience. It is unknown. Only one thing describes it really; it is a non-human sound; I mean a sound outside humanity.”

Having rid himself of this indigestible morsel, he lay quiet for a time, but he had so admirably expressed my own feeling that it was a relief to have the thought out, and to have confined it by the limitation of words from dangerous wandering to and fro in the mind.

The solitude of that Danube camping-place, can I ever forget it? The feeling of being utterly alone on an empty planet! My thoughts ran incessantly upon cities and the haunts of men. I would have given my soul, as the saying is, for the “feel” of those Bavarian villages we had passed through by the score; for the normal, human commonplaces; peasants drinking beer, tables beneath the trees, hot sunshine, and a ruined castle on the rocks behind the red-roofed church. Even the tourists would have been welcome.

Yet what I felt of dread was no ordinary ghostly fear. It was infinitely greater, stranger, and seemed to arise from some dim ancestral sense of terror more profoundly disturbing than anything I had known or dreamed of. We had “strayed,” as the Swede put it, into some region or some set of conditions where the risks were great, yet unintelligible to us; where the frontiers of some unknown world lay close about us. It was a spot held by the dwellers in some outer space, a sort of peep-hole whence they could spy upon the earth, themselves unseen, a point where the veil between had worn a little thin. As the final result of too long a sojourn here, we should be carried over the border and deprived of what we called “our lives,” yet by mental, not physical, processes. In that sense, as he said, we should be the victims of our adventure—a sacrifice.

It took us in different fashion, each according to the measure of his sensitiveness and powers of resistance. I translated it vaguely into a personification of the mightily disturbed elements, investing them with the horror of a deliberate and malefic purpose, resentful of our audacious intrusion into their breeding-place; whereas my friend threw it into the unoriginal form at first of a trespass on some ancient shrine, some place where the old gods still held sway, where the emotional forces of former worshippers still clung, and the ancestral portion of him yielded to the old pagan spell.

At any rate, here was a place unpolluted by men, kept clean by the winds from coarsening human influences, a place where spiritual agencies were within reach and aggressive. Never, before or since, have I been so attacked by indescribable suggestions of a “beyond region,” of another scheme of life, another revolution not parallel to the human. And in the end our minds would succumb under the weight of the awful spell, and we should be drawn across the frontier into their world.

Small things testified to the amazing influence of the place, and now in the silence round the fire they allowed themselves to be noted by the mind. The very atmosphere had proved itself a magnifying medium to distort every indication: the otter rolling in the current, the hurrying boatman making signs, the shifting willows, one and all had been robbed of its natural character, and revealed in something of its other aspect—as it existed across the border to that other region. And this changed aspect I felt was now not merely to me, but to the race. The whole experience whose verge we touched was unknown to humanity at all. It was a new order of experience, and in the true sense of the word unearthly.

“It’s the deliberate, calculating purpose that reduces one’s courage to zero,” the Swede said suddenly, as if he had been actually following my thoughts. “Otherwise imagination might count for much. But the paddle, the canoe, the lessening food—”

“Haven’t I explained all that once?” I interrupted viciously.

“You have,” he answered dryly; “you have indeed.”

He made other remarks too, as usual, about what he called the “plain determination to provide a victim”; but, having now arranged my thoughts better, I recognized that this was simply the cry of his frightened soul against the knowledge that he was being attacked in a vital part, and that he would be somehow taken or destroyed. The situation called for a courage and calmness of reasoning that neither of us could compass, and I have never before been so clearly conscious of two persons in me—the one that explained everything, and the other that laughed at such foolish explanations, yet was horribly afraid.

Meanwhile, in the pitchy night the fire died down and the wood pile grew small. Neither of us moved to replenish the stock, and the darkness consequently came up very close to our faces. A few feet beyond the circle of firelight it was inky black. Occasionally a stray puff of wind set the willows shivering about us, but apart from this not very welcome sound a deep and depressing silence reigned, broken only by the gurgling of the river and the humming in the air overhead.

We both missed, I think, the shouting company of the winds.

At length, at a moment when a stray puff prolonged itself as though the wind were about to rise again, I reached the point for me of saturation, the point where it was absolutely necessary to find relief in plain speech, or else to betray myself by some hysterical extravagance that must have been far worse in its effect upon both of us. I kicked the fire into a blaze, and turned to my companion abruptly. He looked up with a start.

“I can’t disguise it any longer,” I said; “I don’t like this place, and the darkness, and the noises, and the awful feelings I get. There’s something here that beats me utterly. I’m in a blue funk, and that’s the plain truth. If the other shore was—different, I swear I’d be inclined to swim for it!”

The Swede’s face turned very white beneath the deep tan of sun and wind. He stared straight at me and answered quietly, but his voice betrayed his huge excitement by its unnatural calmness. For the moment, at any rate, he was the strong man of the two. He was more phlegmatic, for one thing.

“It’s not a physical condition we can escape from by running away,” he replied, in the tone of a doctor diagnosing some grave disease; “we must sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill a herd of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save us.”

I put a dozen questions into my expression of face, but found no words. It was precisely like listening to an accurate description of a disease whose symptoms had puzzled me.

“I mean that so far, although aware of our disturbing presence, they have not found us—not ‘located’ us, as the Americans say,” he went on. “They’re blundering about like men hunting for a leak of gas. The paddle and canoe and provisions prove that. I think they feel us, but cannot actually see us. We must keep our minds quiet—it’s our minds they feel. We must control our thoughts, or it’s all up with us.”

“Death, you mean?” I stammered, icy with the horror of his suggestion.

“Worse—by far,” he said. “Death, according to one’s belief, means either annihilation or release from the limitations of the senses, but it involves no change of character. You don’t suddenly alter just because the body’s gone. But this means a radical alteration, a complete change, a horrible loss of oneself by substitution—far worse than death, and not even annihilation. We happen to have camped in a spot where their region touches ours, where the veil between has worn thin”—horrors! he was using my very own phrase, my actual words—”so that they are aware of our being in their neighborhood.”

“But who are aware?” I asked.

I forgot the shaking of the willows in the windless calm, the humming overhead, everything except that I was waiting for an answer that I dreaded more than I can possibly explain.

He lowered his voice at once to reply, leaning forward a little over the fire, an indefinable change in his face that made me avoid his eyes and look down upon the ground.

“All my life,” he said, “I have been strangely, vividly conscious of another region—not far removed from our own world in one sense, yet wholly different in kind—where great things go on unceasingly, where immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the destinies of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as dust in the balance; vast purposes, I mean, that deal directly with the soul, and not indirectly with more expressions of the soul—”

“I suggest just now—” I began, seeking to stop him, feeling as though I was face to face with a madman. But he instantly overbore me with his torrent that had to come.

“You think,” he said, “it is the spirit of the elements, and I thought perhaps it was the old gods. But I tell you now it is—neither. These would be comprehensible entities, for they have relations with men, depending upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these beings who are now about us have absolutely nothing to do with mankind, and it is mere chance that their space happens just at this spot to touch our own.”

The mere conception, which his words somehow made so convincing, as I listened to them there in the dark stillness of that lonely island, set me shaking a little all over. I found it impossible to control my movements.

“And what do you propose?” I began again.

“A sacrifice, a victim, might save us by distracting them until we could get away,” he went on, “just as the wolves stop to devour the dogs and give the sleigh another start. But—I see no chance of any other victim now.”

I stared blankly at him. The gleam in his eye was dreadful. Presently he continued.

Salvator Rosa – Demokritus in Meditation (1650-51)


IV

“It’s the willows, of course. The willows mask the others, but the others are feeling about for us. If we let our minds betray our fear, we’re lost, lost utterly.” He looked at me with an expression so calm, so determined, so sincere, that I no longer had any doubts as to his sanity. He was as sane as any man ever was. “If we can hold out through the night,” he added, “we may get off in the daylight unnoticed, or rather, undiscovered.”

“But you really think a sacrifice would—”

That gong-like humming came down very close over our heads as I spoke, but it was my friend’s scared face that really stopped my mouth.

“Hush!” he whispered, holding up his hand. “Do not mention them more than you can help. Do not refer to them by name. To name is to reveal; it is the inevitable clue, and our only hope lies in ignoring them, in order that they may ignore us.”

“Even in thought?” He was extraordinarily agitated.

“Especially in thought. Our thoughts make spirals in their world. We must keep them out of our minds at all costs if possible.”

I raked the fire together to prevent the darkness having everything its own way. I never longed for the sun as I longed for it then in the awful blackness of that summer night.

“Were you awake all last night?” he went on suddenly.

“I slept badly a little after dawn,” I replied evasively, trying to follow his instructions, which I knew instinctively were true, “but the wind, of course—”

“I know. But the wind won’t account for all the noises.”

“Then you heard it too?”

“The multiplying countless little footsteps I heard,” he said, adding, after a moment’s hesitation, “and that other sound—”

“You mean above the tent, and the pressing down upon us of something tremendous, gigantic?”

He nodded significantly.

“It was like the beginning of a sort of inner suffocation?” I said.

“Partly, yes. It seemed to me that the weight of the atmosphere had been altered—had increased enormously, so that we should have been crushed.”

“And that,” I went on, determined to have it all out, pointing upwards where the gong-like note hummed ceaselessly, rising and falling like wind. “What do you make of that?”

“It’s their sound,” he whispered gravely. “It’s the sound of their world, the humming in their region. The division here is so thin that it leaks through somehow. But, if you listen carefully, you’ll find it’s not above so much as around us. It’s in the willows. It’s the willows themselves humming, because here the willows have been made symbols of the forces that are against us.”

I could not follow exactly what he meant by this, yet the thought and idea in my mind were beyond question the thought and idea in his. I realized what he realized, only with less power of analysis than his. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him at last about my hallucination of the ascending figures and the moving bushes, when he suddenly thrust his face again close into mine across the firelight and began to speak in a very earnest whisper. He amazed me by his calmness and pluck, his apparent control of the situation. This man I had for years deemed unimaginative, stolid!

“Now listen,” he said. “The only thing for us to do is to go on as though nothing had happened, follow our usual habits, go to bed, and so forth; pretend we feel nothing and notice nothing. It is a question wholly of the mind, and the less we think about them the better our chance of escape. Above all, don’t think, for what you think happens!”

“All right,” I managed to reply, simply breathless with his words and the strangeness of it all; “all right, I’ll try, but tell me one more thing first. Tell me what you make of those hollows in the ground all about us, those sand-funnels?”

“No!” he cried, forgetting to whisper in his excitement. “I dare not, simply dare not, put the thought into words. If you have not guessed I am glad. Don’t try to. They have put it into my mind; try your hardest to prevent their putting it into yours.”

He sank his voice again to a whisper before he finished, and I did not press him to explain. There was already just about as much horror in me as I could hold. The conversation came to an end, and we smoked our pipes busily in silence.

Then something happened, something unimportant apparently, as the way is when the nerves are in a very great state of tension, and this small thing for a brief space gave me an entirely different point of view. I chanced to look down at my sand-shoe—the sort we used for the canoe—and something to do with the hole at the toe suddenly recalled to me the London shop where I had bought them, the difficulty the man had in fitting me, and other details of the uninteresting but practical operation. At once, in its train, followed a wholesome view of the modern skeptical world I was accustomed to move in at home. I thought of roast beef, and ale, motor-cars, policemen, brass bands, and a dozen other things that proclaimed the soul of ordinariness or utility. The effect was immediate and astonishing even to myself. Psychologically, I suppose, it was simply a sudden and violent reaction after the strain of living in an atmosphere of things that to the normal consciousness must seem impossible and incredible. But, whatever the cause, it momentarily lifted the spell from my heart, and left me for the short space of a minute feeling free and utterly unafraid. I looked up at my friend opposite.

“You damned old pagan!” I cried, laughing aloud in his face. “You imaginative idiot! You superstitious idolater! You—”

I stopped in the middle, seized anew by the old horror. I tried to smother the sound of my voice as something sacrilegious. The Swede, of course, heard it too—the strange cry overhead in the darkness—and that sudden drop in the air as though something had come nearer.

He had turned ashen white under the tan. He stood bolt upright in front of the fire, stiff as a rod, staring at me.

“After that,” he said in a sort of helpless, frantic way, “we must go! We can’t stay now; we must strike camp this very instant and go on—down the river.”

He was talking, I saw, quite wildly, his words dictated by abject terror—the terror he had resisted so long, but which had caught him at last.

“In the dark?” I exclaimed, shaking with fear after my hysterical outburst, but still realizing our position better than he did. “Sheer madness! The river’s in flood, and we’ve only got a single paddle. Besides, we only go deeper into their country! There’s nothing ahead for fifty miles but willows, willows, willows!”

He sat down again in a state of semi-collapse. The positions, by one of those kaleidoscopic changes nature loves, were suddenly reversed, and the control of our forces passed over into my hands. His mind at last had reached the point where it was beginning to weaken.

“What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?” he whispered with the awe of genuine terror in his voice and face.

I crossed round to his side of the fire. I took both his hands in mine, kneeling down beside him and looking straight into his frightened eyes.

“We’ll make one more blaze,” I said firmly, “and then turn in for the night. At sunrise we’ll be off full speed for Komorn. Now, pull yourself together a bit, and remember your own advice about not thinking fear!”

He said no more, and I saw that he would agree and obey. In some measure, too, it was a sort of relief to get up and make an excursion into the darkness for more wood. We kept close together, almost touching, groping among the bushes and along the bank. The humming overhead never ceased, but seemed to me to grow louder as we increased our distance from the fire. It was shivery work!

We were grubbing away in the middle of a thickish clump of willows where some driftwood from a former flood had caught high among the branches, when my body was seized in a grip that made me half drop upon the sand. It was the Swede. He had fallen against me, and was clutching me for support. I heard his breath coming and going in short gasps.

“Look! By my soul!” he whispered, and for the first time in my experience I knew what it was to hear tears of terror in a human voice. He was pointing to the fire, some fifty feet away. I followed the direction of his finger, and I swear my heart missed a beat.

There, in front of the dim glow, something was moving.

I saw it through a veil that hung before my eyes like the gauze drop-curtain used at the back of a theater—hazily a little. It was neither a human figure nor an animal. To me it gave the strange impression of being as large as several animals grouped together, like horses, two or three, moving slowly. The Swede, too, got a similar result, though expressing it differently, for he thought it was shaped and sized like a clump of willow bushes, rounded at the top, and moving all over upon its surface—”coiling upon itself like smoke,” he said afterwards.

“I watched it settle downwards through the bushes,” he sobbed at me. “Look, by God! It’s coming this way! Oh, oh!”—he gave a kind of whistling cry. “They’ve found us.”

I gave one terrified glance, which just enabled me to see that the shadowy form was swinging towards us through the bushes, and then I collapsed backwards with a crash into the branches. These failed, of course, to support my weight, so that with the Swede on top of me we fell in a struggling heap upon the sand. I really hardly knew what was happening. I was conscious only of a sort of enveloping sensation of icy fear that plucked the nerves out of their fleshly covering, twisted them this way and that, and replaced them quivering. My eyes were tightly shut; something in my throat choked me; a feeling that my consciousness was expanding, extending out into space, swiftly gave way to another feeling that I was losing it altogether, and about to die.

An acute spasm of pain passed through me, and I was aware that the Swede had hold of me in such a way that he hurt me abominably. It was the way he caught at me in falling.

But it was the pain, he declared afterwards, that saved me; it caused me to forget them and think of something else at the very instant when they were about to find me. It concealed my mind from them at the moment of discovery, yet just in time to evade their terrible seizing of me. He himself, he says, actually swooned at the same moment, and that was what saved him.

I only know that at a later date, how long or short is impossible to say, I found myself scrambling up out of the slippery network of willow branches, and saw my companion standing in front of me holding out a hand to assist me. I stared at him in a dazed way, rubbing the arm he had twisted for me. Nothing came to me to say, somehow.

Salvator Rosa – St. Francis in Ecstasy (1644)

“I lost consciousness for a moment or two,” I heard him say. “That’s what saved me. It made me stop thinking about them.”

“You nearly broke my arm in two,” I said, uttering my only connected thought at the moment. A numbness came over me.

“That’s what saved you!” he replied. “Between us, we’ve managed to set them off on a false tack somewhere. The humming has ceased. It’s gone—for the moment at any rate!”

A wave of hysterical laughter seized me again, and this time spread to my friend too—great healing gusts of shaking laughter that brought a tremendous sense of relief in their train. We made our way back to the fire and put the wood on so that it blazed at once. Then we saw that the tent had fallen over and lay in a tangled heap upon the ground.

We picked it up, and during the process tripped more than once and caught our feet in sand.

“It’s those sand-funnels,” exclaimed the Swede, when the tent was up again and the firelight lit up the ground for several yards about us. “And look at the size of them!”

All round the tent and about the fireplace where we had seen the moving shadows there were deep funnel-shaped hollows in the sand, exactly similar to the ones we had already found over the island, only far bigger and deeper, beautifully formed, and wide enough in some instances to admit the whole of my foot and leg.

Neither of us said a word. We both knew that sleep was the safest thing we could do, and to bed we went accordingly without further delay, having first thrown sand on the fire and taken the provision sack and the paddle inside the tent with us. The canoe, too, we propped in such a way at the end of the tent that our feet touched it, and the least motion would disturb and wake us.

In case of emergency, too, we again went to bed in our clothes, ready for a sudden start.

It was my firm intention to lie awake all night and watch, but the exhaustion of nerves and body decreed otherwise, and sleep after a while came over me with a welcome blanket of oblivion. The fact that my companion also slept quickened its approach. At first he fidgeted and constantly sat up, asking me if I “heard this” or “heard that.” He tossed about on his cork mattress, and said the tent was moving and the river had risen over the point of the island, but each time I went out to look I returned with the report that all was well, and finally he grew calmer and lay still. Then at length his breathing became regular and I heard unmistakable sounds of snoring—the first and only time in my life when snoring has been a welcome and calming influence.

This, I remember, was the last thought in my mind before dozing off.

A difficulty in breathing woke me, and I found the blanket over my face. But something else besides the blanket was pressing upon me, and my first thought was that my companion had rolled off his mattress on to my own in his sleep. I called to him and sat up, and at the same moment it came to me that the tent was surrounded. That sound of multitudinous soft pattering was again audible outside, filling the night with horror.

I called again to him, louder than before. He did not answer, but I missed the sound of his snoring, and also noticed that the flap of the tent was down. This was the unpardonable sin. I crawled out in the darkness to hook it back securely, and it was then for the first time I realized positively that the Swede was not here. He had gone.

I dashed out in a mad run, seized by a dreadful agitation, and the moment I was out I plunged into a sort of torrent of humming that surrounded me completely and came out of every quarter of the heavens at once. It was that same familiar humming—gone mad! A swarm of great invisible bees might have been about me in the air. The sound seemed to thicken the very atmosphere, and I felt that my lungs worked with difficulty.

But my friend was in danger, and I could not hesitate.

The dawn was just about to break, and a faint whitish light spread upwards over the clouds from a thin strip of clear horizon. No wind stirred. I could just make out the bushes and river beyond, and the pale sandy patches. In my excitement I ran frantically to and fro about the island, calling him by name, shouting at the top of my voice the first words that came into my head. But the willows smothered my voice, and the humming muffled it, so that the sound only traveled a few feet round me. I plunged among the bushes, tripping headlong, tumbling over roots, and scraping my face as I tore this way and that among the preventing branches.

Then, quite unexpectedly, I came out upon the island’s point and saw a dark figure outlined between the water and the sky. It was the Swede. And already he had one foot in the river! A moment more and he would have taken the plunge.

I threw myself upon him, flinging my arms about his waist and dragging him shorewards with all my strength. Of course he struggled furiously, making a noise all the time just like that cursed humming, and using the most outlandish phrases in his anger about “going inside to Them,” and “taking the way of the water and the wind,” and God only knows what more besides, that I tried in vain to recall afterwards, but which turned me sick with horror and amazement as I listened. But in the end I managed to get him into the comparative safety of the tent, and flung him breathless and cursing upon the mattress where I held him until the fit had passed.

I think the suddenness with which it all went and he grew calm, coinciding as it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming and pattering outside—I think this was almost the strangest part of the whole business perhaps. For he had just opened his eyes and turned his tired face up to me so that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through the doorway, and said, for all the world just like a frightened child:

“My life, old man—it’s my life I owe you. But it’s all over now anyhow.

They’ve found a victim in our place!”

Then he dropped back upon his blankets and went to sleep literally under my eyes. He simply collapsed, and began to snore again as healthily as though nothing had happened and he had never tried to offer his own life as a sacrifice by drowning. And when the sunlight woke him three hours later—hours of ceaseless vigil for me—it became so clear to me that he remembered absolutely nothing of what he had attempted to do, that I deemed it wise to hold my peace and ask no dangerous questions.

He woke naturally and easily, as I have said, when the sun was already high in a windless hot sky, and he at once got up and set about the preparation of the fire for breakfast. I followed him anxiously at bathing, but he did not attempt to plunge in, merely dipping his head and making some remark about the extra coldness of the water.

“River’s falling at last,” he said, “and I’m glad of it.”

“The humming has stopped too,” I said.

He looked up at me quietly with his normal expression. Evidently he remembered everything except his own attempt at suicide.

“Everything has stopped,” he said, “because—”

He hesitated. But I knew some reference to that remark he had made just before he fainted was in his mind, and I was determined to know it.

“Because ‘They’ve found another victim’?” I said, forcing a little laugh.

“Exactly,” he answered, “exactly! I feel as positive of it as though—as though—I feel quite safe again, I mean,” he finished.

He began to look curiously about him. The sunlight lay in hot patches on the sand. There was no wind. The willows were motionless. He slowly rose to feet.

“Come,” he said; “I think if we look, we shall find it.”

He started off on a run, and I followed him. He kept to the banks, poking with a stick among the sandy bays and caves and little back-waters, myself always close on his heels.

“Ah!” he exclaimed presently, “ah!”

The tone of his voice somehow brought back to me a vivid sense of the horror of the last twenty-four hours, and I hurried up to join him. He was pointing with his stick at a large black object that lay half in the water and half on the sand. It appeared to be caught by some twisted willow roots so that the river could not sweep it away. A few hours before the spot must have been under water.

“See,” he said quietly, “the victim that made our escape possible!”

And when I peered across his shoulder I saw that his stick rested on the body of a man. He turned it over. It was the corpse of a peasant, and the face was hidden in the sand. Clearly the man had been drowned, but a few hours before, and his body must have been swept down upon our island somewhere about the hour of the dawn—at the very time the fit had passed.

“We must give it a decent burial, you know.”

“I suppose so,” I replied. I shuddered a little in spite of myself, for there was something about the appearance of that poor drowned man that turned me cold.

The Swede glanced up sharply at me, an undecipherable expression on his face, and began clambering down the bank. I followed him more leisurely. The current, I noticed, had torn away much of the clothing from the body, so that the neck and part of the chest lay bare.

Halfway down the bank my companion suddenly stopped and held up his hand in warning; but either my foot slipped, or I had gained too much momentum to bring myself quickly to a halt, for I bumped into him and sent him forward with a sort of leap to save himself. We tumbled together on to the hard sand so that our feet splashed into the water. And, before anything could be done, we had collided a little heavily against the corpse.

The Swede uttered a sharp cry. And I sprang back as if I had been shot.

At the moment we touched the body there rose from its surface the loud sound of humming—the sound of several hummings—which passed with a vast commotion as of winged things in the air about us and disappeared upwards into the sky, growing fainter and fainter till they finally ceased in the distance. It was exactly as though we had disturbed some living yet invisible creatures at work.

My companion clutched me, and I think I clutched him, but before either of us had time properly to recover from the unexpected shock, we saw that a movement of the current was turning the corpse round so that it became released from the grip of the willow roots. A moment later it had turned completely over, the dead face uppermost, staring at the sky. It lay on the edge of the main stream. In another moment it would be swept away.

The Swede started to save it, shouting again something I did not catch about a “proper burial”—and then abruptly dropped upon his knees on the sand and covered his eyes with his hands. I was beside him in an instant.

I saw what he had seen.

For just as the body swung round to the current the face and the exposed chest turned full towards us, and showed plainly how the skin and flesh were indented with small hollows, beautifully formed, and exactly similar in shape and kind to the sand-funnels that we had found all over the island.

“Their mark!” I heard my companion mutter under his breath. “Their awful mark!”

And when I turned my eyes again from his ghastly face to the river, the current had done its work, and the body had been swept away into mid-stream and was already beyond our reach and almost out of sight, turning over and over on the waves like an otter.

Edited & Foreword by: Michael Barnett

Salvator Rosa – A Witch – 1646

¹ Lovecraft, H.P. Supernatural Horror in Literature. “The Modern Masters.” 1927. http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/lovecraft/essays/supernat/supern10.htm

If you enjoyed this novella, keep an eye out for more like this coming soon!

Check out this rare poem which I couldn’t find anywhere online, so published it myself.
‘To Satan’ by Samuel Loveman to H.P. Lovecraft.

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