The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales (13 page)

It was a poem, and one, despite the reservations I have in making the assertion—for I am no expert on the form—that followed haphazardly the conventional rules of rhyme or scansion. Moreover, it contained such a bizarre medley of horrible images as to be the product of a diseased mind. This impression was strengthened by a third element, namely the
handwriting in which the verse had been penned
. It was legible, true, but evinced no internal consistency, and was as diverse as if the result of multiple rather than single authorship. I can therefore only
attempt
to give some indication as to its delirious nature, for I saw it but once and then briefly. I own this much: my
impression
is that it burnt itself upon my memory, but this may only be
fancy
on my part. Nevertheless, in my attempts to reproduce the poem faithfully for my readers, the clarity of that past moment
seems as real
as this very instant. Here, then, I set it down, for the purposes of this narrative:

At the conclusion of the verse it bore a signature and date—

“
Ligeia, October 7, 1849”.

Yesterday! I could scarcely credit the evidence of my eyes. Had, then, “Mr. Arnold” written this poem himself in the mad frenzy of some opium dream and signed it in his dead wife’s name? Surely no other reasonable explanation was possible?

The speculation had scarcely arisen in my mind when I became aware of a low and prolonged groan issuing from the ashen lips of “Mr. Arnold”. He slumbered, and from the anguished expression that now seized his features, he dreamed—and that he was in the grip of nightmare was apparent. When he spoke from the abyss of dream, it was with that dreadful voice which characterizes the sleep-talker, whose utterances have been loosed from the moorings of waking consciousness.

“
Ligeia!” he cried, “She of the black and the wild eyes!”

Fascinated by the drama unfolding before me, nevertheless I moved towards my host and prepared to attempt to awaken him should his visible distress approach an injurious degree of intensity.

He spoke again, but now, to my horror, in a voice quite unlike his own—

“
Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.”

The shock of hearing such a complete change in the timbre and pitch of his voice made me start back, recoiling even from my bounden duty as a physician. Momentarily I forgot myself, a slave to the dictates of the phantasm FEAR. Some terrible change had affected not only my patient, but also the very confines in which the motley drama was being enacted, for the shadows in that phantasmagoric chamber seemed to have taken on a life of their own, flitting up and down the arabesque designs on the tapestries that shrouded the vast and lofty walls.

“—
But
had she then grown taller since her malady?
” were the words he next cried aloud; his speech having returned to its usual form.

I overcame my immobility, willing myself to draw nearer “Mr. Arnold”, so as the better to observe his condition. As soon as I was within less than a yard of his trembling frame his eyes flickered open and his gaze locked onto my own. The expression in those eyes was impossible to define; it seemed a compound of myriad forms and reminded me of a kaleidoscopic series of disparate analogies in co-existence. I was reminded of the following (all as
aspects
of a single mysterious whole); of the moon viewed at sunset, of the dying ember of a candle stub, of the motion of a hungry spider, of a blemish wrought by leprosy, and of something I can only put into words as the
geometry
of the color yellow. All these elements flashed over my consciousness in an instant, but so too did a much less nebulous realization, one that caused me to utter an involuntary cry of amazement, a cry which echoed in the dim confines of the lofty and vaulted ceiling of the chamber.

The irises of the eyes of “Mr. Arnold” were, I distinctly recalled, a light green hue, but now,
but now
, they had inexplicably turned
jet-black
. The orbs that observed me were not those of “Mr. Arnold” at all, but of some intrusive entity that appeared to have taken occupancy of him and which had neglected to completely disguise its presence within.

As if in response to this suspicion on my part, his eyelids flickered, then drooped and finally closed, and he turned away from me with a groan, burying his face in the cushions upon the divan.
He did not cease to speak, however, and to communicate in that other voice I have already described
. His muffled exclamations consisted solely of a series of names. Since it was with some considerable difficulty I was able to discern anything he uttered, the list I set down hereafter cannot be considered exhaustive:

“
Ashoreth, Bacon, Glanvill, Democritus...”

And then, with “Mr. Arnold’s” face turned away from me, there came, as I stood there virtually stupefied, another physical transformation—and this one much more striking than any I had up to now observed. The full, but neatly trimmed black hair of my patient began, perceptibly, to
grow
. Like the movement of the minute hand on a timepiece it was scarcely discernible at first, and apparent after an interval in which disbelief can no longer be suspended. Within the passage of three minutes or so—during which I stood aghast—his voluminous tresses caressed the nape of his neck, and, within three more, passed his shoulders! The whole upper portion of his back had become hidden in the disheveled mass of raven-black hair before the process arrested itself and ceased altogether.

For my own part, I was transfixed, as if ensnared in the mind of another. The natural laws of the cosmos seemed suspended, along with my sense of volition. I had become a passive agent, a mere chronicler of events. It was with a sense of helplessness I realized the situation that had brought “Mr. Arnold” to this pass was beyond the amelioration of any physician—or indeed of any outside human agency. Here was a malady where
death
was not the end, but instead a form of
hideous metempsychosis
—a transformation beyond the capacity of human thought to comprehend in all its horror.

I could no longer hesitate and forced my limbs to obey the dictates of my mind again. I reached out my hand to the prostrate form upon the divan, turning “Mr. Arnold” on his side so he faced me once more. I had not realized, with his back to me, and the covering mass of disheveled raven-black hair, the full extent of the alteration wrought upon “Mr. Arnold”. I should have noticed his apparel no longer fitted him, and the contours of his body had shifted radically; to assume
all the characteristics of the female form
. All this should have been obvious before I reached out a hand to grasp him by the shoulder and turn him towards me, even though, given the bizarre circumstances, my attention was understandably disordered and unreliable.

But that particular alteration to which I refer was not what constituted the culminating
horror of horrors
. It was the sight of
the face
of “Mr. Arnold” that caused me to scream uncontrollably, and thereafter to flee the spectral castellated abbey, hurtling frantically across the vast surrounding plateau, with my every step seemingly leaden, as if I were already drowning in nightmare.

•

I am told I was discovered the next morning by one of the villagers, lying on the shingle beach beneath the sheer face of the cliff, with my clothes torn and covered in blood. I was told I raved incessantly, like some lunatic and had to be taken to the Mad-House. But, for my own part, I have no memory of the immediate aftermath—yet, what of the hideous face? Alas,
that
memory is an indelible stain upon my thoughts. Night after night it rises from the well of dream. During the day, persons glimpsed in shadow wear it like a mask. It troubles every mirror in which I see my reflection.

Had the face of “Mr. Arnold” been
merely the corpse-face of the Lady Ligeia
, I might not have lost my reason. But it was something greater and much more profound, something almost incommunicable. I know not what forbidden knowledge the Lady Ligeia possessed, or what revelation she had passed onto her husband, but I believe a black heaven had torn asunder every last shred of her identity and subsumed it into an expression of some ultimate, inhuman force made putrid by a hunger for bodily immortality in what is a transitory world.

It was the timeless face of all those who have rotted in their tombs in past ages and, so too, the face of all those who will rot in their tombs over the course of the centuries left in wait for us. Yes,
my
face was contained therein, as it will be after
my
death. Fools! How else could it be so, how otherwise in a vortex of infinite complexity? What I saw was the All and the One. It was the Alpha and the Omega. They say
I am mad
when I insist upon telling them what I saw. Idiots! It is
they
who are
mad
and blind! My eyes beheld the truth—
the truth
, I say, concerning she who had ascended to the heavenly throne through the power of her own incomparable Will—see how, despite those fools, I do not hesitate to reveal the truth,
for I tell you now that Ligeia’s face
was the cadaverous face of Almighty God!

A Contaminated Text

(Hamlet Act 3, Scene 2, 87–92)

When the José Vasconcelos Library opened in Mexico City in May 2006 it was mired in controversy. The opening was not public, but was by invitation only, and the whole project was forced through by President Vicente Fox who saw the building as his final chance to establish a permanent cultural legacy. Named after the celebrated Mexican philosopher and Government Head of Education, José Vasconcelos (b.1882 d.1959), the gargantuan modernist building was designed by Alberto Kalach (b.1960) to hold over two million volumes and seven hundred computer terminals in its forty-four thousand five-hundred square metres of space. Alas, it was beset by structural problems shortly afterwards. Its fantastical design, inspired by the Jorge Luis Borges story “The Library of Babel”, was found to be structurally insecure, and additional building work was required before it reopened in November 2008. The interior of the library is of a completely open plan design, with the staggering quantity of books themselves forming a titanic vista on all five levels. The volumes are housed in open tiers of metal bookshelves that project over the central hall, jutting out, as if suspended in immensity, and flanked by a veritable labyrinth of glass-floored walkways. The books are classified according to subject matter and language. As well as being classified by subject matter, there are whole sections of books written in English, German, Portuguese, French and so on.