The White Hands and Other Weird Tales (10 page)

***

My last sight of Emily Curtis was in the café where we first met.
 

Some days after the incident I have just described, I was out on the streets, seeking further signs of the contamination. There was indeed ample evidence of its unchecked spread. The symbols had been plastered on bridges, railway carriages, buses and any wall that would show them clearly. I am not sure that the people were particularly aware, except for Curtis, the unknown vagrant, the vandals and, of course, myself. I had been one of the very first, the pathfinder, so to speak. There were twelve billion of us waiting out there, so only around half our number would be able to find shelter in the human race on this planet. In order for a successful transfer to take place, all human thoughts had to be extinguished from the individual for a long enough period to allow our own to take hold, so the prior death of the brain was entirely necessary.

Emily Curtis was sitting in the window, gazing out through the misty, condensation-soaked glass of the café at nothing in particular. Her skin was even paler than it had been in life and was caked in the same white foundation that I wore. As I passed by, her eyes met mine for a brief moment. There lurked within them a black radiance, filtered from the stars.

She knew now, as did I, that we are here only temporarily, until these physical shells rotted away. Then we would have to move on again, fleeing the death that pursued us. But for now, like me, she was trapped within the human carcass, suffering the horrifying existence of the biped simian, the maddening trace-memories lingering within the fabric of their brains: a dead person’s memories, names drawn in the sand just beyond the reach of the waves breaking from the black ocean before it.

The man who writes these lines bears only an infinitesimal resemblance to the bespectacled student of the waking world who left Dublin æons ago clad in his father’s three-piece suit. That memory is now my only link to the past. Many individuals take refuge in a foreign country but what of those who depart for the exile of dreams? Was I really the ‘dangerous’ atheist who, forsaking the Judaism of his immediate ancestors and the Roman Catholicism of his adopted country, had turned to the world of the secular imagination? I studied metaphysics at Trinity and it was in the library there that I must have first stumbled across some reference to the writings of Thomas Ariel while I half-dozed over its ancient and mouldy volumes. It seems obvious to me now that whatever glimpses I have obtained into the life and works of Ariel have occurred at points where, as Poe claimed, ‘the confines of the waking world blend with the world of dreams.’
 

Ariel was the author of a number of provocative works published during the first half of the nineteenth century. His ontological speculations were akin to the wildest phantasies of Poe and De Quincey. His fundamental belief was that the mechanism of dreaming was a function with limitless possibilities. When he attempted the private publication of his short treatise,
The Mysteries of Dreaming
, the printers refused to handle it. Details of its contents were passed to the authorities and a warrant was issued for Ariel’s arrest. He fled England in 1824. There followed a quiet campaign of book burning and the eradication of his name from most bibliographic records.
Blackwoods
,
The Quarterly
and like publications henceforth returned his letters and accompanying manuscripts unopened. But I managed to accumulate a small number of documents, articles etc. by Ariel and also a charred daguerreotype taken in northern Germany during his long exile with the date ‘1842’ scratched into the back. It depicted the head of a balding, clean-shaven man in his fifties with traces of whitening hair around the temples. His expansive face was haunted by shadows. His eyes were set deep in the sockets and in their expression there seemed to lurk a suggestion of world-weary nihilism. A black neckerchief was wrapped around his throat. The overall effect was quite funereal.

Records of Ariel during his exile in Europe are extremely sketchy. One or two sources gave credence to the rumour that he had, in 1879, at the grand old age of eighty-nine, turned up unexpectedly in the cathedral city of Basel, paying a call on a prominent professor of classical philology. After this there is silence—for Ariel seemed determined to die in as northern a latitude as he could, apparently intent on feasting his dying eyes on the
aurora borealis
while filling his lungs with opium-smoke.

Perhaps, mentally, he had not travelled far from those early days when De Quincey had praised his work, hiding discreetly behind his pseudonym X.Y.Z. in
The London Magazine
:

I go on, therefore, to commend the work of Mr A—. Though not of a moral nature, one might say of his points of genius, like one of the twelve Caesars,
Ut puto, Deus fio
. Marvellously, indeed, has this author succeeded in revealing tantalising glimpses of those hoary volumes which rest in chambers outside the scope of present human knowledge, until now known only to the moonstruck and the opium-eater. No man is better qualified to explore those obtuse speculations of a metaphysical cast which redeem the excesses of the rationalists. His proposed work
Kruptos
bids fair to be a most notable production.

It was the manuscript of
Kruptos
which I sought above all else. Ariel had started work on it before his enforced flight from England and in all probability carried it with him across Europe throughout his exile. It was to be the
magnum opus
which would secure his reputation. But it seemed that he never finished it and I came to believe that he took the uncompleted manuscript with him, in 1880, when he travelled northwards towards his strange, planned death within the Arctic circle.

I intended to follow in his footsteps and I had traced his movements to his final resting place at the town of Karnswilloch. It is a place not to be found on any map (a place that seems to have appeared from the snow and the ice
and
disappeared
again
after
Ariel’s
arrival),
but
I knew it to be located somewhere in the Varanger Peninsula.

And so, in 1940, at a time when the Nazis occupied virtually the whole of Europe, I undertook a foolhardy journey to Karnswilloch in the northern corner of the continent. I travelled with documents proving my neutral Irish nationality and which obscured my racial origins.

But first I visited Paris, its boulevards ablaze with flags bearing the swastika, to consult manuscripts in the Bibliotheque Nationale which had not been handled for fifty years. I made the final preparations for the journey north in a dusty garret situated on the Rue Duval in the Montmartre district. I stuffed my suitcases with books and manuscripts, with snow-boots, scarves, mittens and a huge seal-skin coat.

It required a considerable bribe to secure a seat and berth on one of the Etoile du Nord Pullman trains bound for Hamburg. I saw blasted fields and towns as we passed through France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

When the train reached the German frontier a group of S.S. officers boarded and filed through the carriages, apparently in search of some quarry. One of them looked very closely at my papers and then stared at me directly for a minute or so. I could not look him in the eye and explained in faltering German that I was a student on my way to Finland to pursue academic research. Sweat was dribbling down my forehead and temples and my hands shook uncontrollably as I tried to light a cigarette. The officer walked over to one of his companions and pointed back at me. They both smiled unpleasantly and leafed through my documents, holding them up to one of the light bulbs in the carriage ceiling before finally passing them back to me as if they were distasteful.

The train was soon rumbling northwards into Germany itself.

I had to change at Hamburg and wandered around that grey, miserable port for an hour or so. I saw Jews being attacked and carried off in the streets. The Star of David was scrawled in blood-red paint on boarded shop windows and doors. The spectacle sickened me more than it is possible to imagine. A hurricane of bigotry was sweeping across Germany and into the rest of Europe tearing at the souls of men.

We passed through Denmark into Sweden and the landscape
became
increasingly
bleached.
The
train
I boarded
at
Malmo
steamed
across
plains
of
snow, through Stockholm, Sundsvall and Vannas. Looking out of the carriage window I saw the frozen Gulf of Bothnia in the distance; a vast and level vista of pack ice stretching as far east as the eye could see.

The heating inside the carriage was not sufficient to ward off the deep chill of the freezing air without and I wrapped myself in the seal-skin coat and scarf. I began to leaf through my documents in order to keep my mind from dwelling on the grim landscape and the sharp grip of the cold.

One item in particular drew my attention; an old Scandinavian travelogue which I had found in Paris and had not previously had the opportunity to examine. It included an account by the English author George Burgess of a chance meeting with Thomas Ariel in a tavern as the latter was making his way northwards towards Karnswilloch:

Shortly after my narrow escape from the clutches of a black menace in Råbäck I found myself drowning the memory of the incident at a certain tavern in Jokkmokk. There was an awful blizzard raging outside and it contrasted sharply with the fire before which I sat, drinking hot grog and thanking Providence. I must have downed my third or fourth tankard when the door flew open, admitting a great breath of freezing wind and snow and a well-wrapped figure in a dark cloak and hat carrying a thick volume. For a moment my heart thumped in my chest and the colour must have drained from my face—I thought perhaps that I had not left the horror of Råbäck behind. But then the stranger removed his hat, scarf and cloak and surveyed the room about him.

I saw the face of an extremely elderly man. It was deeply lined and weather-beaten with an aspect like that of crumpled leather. His sunken eyes were half-covered by drooping lids, the eyes of a man who had peered long and hard into infinities. The pupils were bottomless. He was completely bald. His gaze fastened on my own and he moved across the room like a hawk swooping towards me. He flung his garments at the innkeeper and introduced himself. He was no less a personage than Thomas Ariel, the notorious metaphysician and author, whose name has been elevated to whispered legend. He put the thick volume, bound in leather, on the table between us.

His conversation was made remarkable by the breadth and novelty of his metaphysical speculations. It was as if he had wandered into the tavern from beyond the gates of oblivion. His voice had a certain hollow, tomb-like quality and the matters of which he spoke were shot through with infinite splendour and vision. He made me believe that he was no longer entirely of this world but had become an ambassador from some twilight quarter where dreams are unceasing.

At the time I was enraptured. But once he had departed I seemed unable to contain the memory of his revelations in my brain. They seemed too vast for its scope. Nevertheless the brief encounter opened up an incredible vista in my mind which has, since then, been continually haunted by shades of fantastic mystery. Yet, I feel sure that his mystical pilgrimage ever northwards, into the lost plains of ice and tundra, was one that no mortal man could possibly survive. And surely that book,
Kruptos
, which had been between us the whole time, was no longer for the understanding of men.

I put down the curious travelogue and lit a cigarette. The smoke felt bitter and cold in my throat and lungs. I scraped the ice from the carriage window and watched the landscape of fjords passing by. It was unchanging: endless snow and tundra and the sea of ice to the east. The locomotive ploughed on through Boden, Kiruna and then across Torne Lappmark to the Finnmarks-vidda and beyond.

I must have dozed for a while and was awakened by the train drawing to a halt with a shudder and a huge burst of steam. I gathered up my belongings, hauled them through the corridor and lowered them onto the deserted platform. Snow was falling heavily and the cold was unbearable.

I looked around for signs of life. No-one else had disembarked from the train and so I walked along its length to the engine at the front in search of the driver. His cabin was deserted. The place name on the station platform had long ceased to be readable. This was the end of the line.

I hauled my trunk and bags onto a track outside the station. Within an hour or so, at the rate the snow was now falling, the railway line would be impassable. Indeed, the line, the station, everything would be buried. I had stood for several minutes, stamping my feet and trying to encourage my circulation, when I heard something coming along the track towards me. It was a peasant
with
a
reindeer
and
a small trap. He had evidently been trying to collect firewood. I stepped into his path and shouted ‘Hallo!’ while waving my arms. He drew on the reindeer’s reins. One could almost believe that it was merely a great heap of furs guiding the trap. Even the peasant’s eyes were hidden behind thick goggles. He climbed down and helped me put my belongings into the trap, on top of the small pile of firewood, and then we got up to the seat behind the reindeer. The peasant appeared to speak no English and did not comprehend any of my attempts to communicate with him in various Scandinavian tongues. In the end I simply pointed along the track, which ran parallel with the railway line and extended beyond it. With a shake of the reins we moved northwards into the near blizzard.

We travelled for hours and I often thought how miraculous it was that the snowstorm had not forced us to stop. At last, though, the storm subsided and a great casement of deep blue sky opened out ahead of us. Then we were bathed in a spectacular sunset, seemingly frozen in space and time; ghosts at the edge of the universe.

We came to a plain of ice that mirrored the sky above and I saw Karnswilloch in the distance. It was built on five hills in the shape of a cross. The central and tallest hill bore a crumbling tower which dominated the cluster of rooftops around it. Swathes of icy fog curled around the ruined steeples, domes and chimney stacks. The town was snowed-in and its half-buried streets wound about the hills in labyrinthine fashion, through abandoned courtyards and squares and silent passage-ways.

Then, suddenly, the
aurora borealis
appeared in the sky. The shower of multicoloured light towered and flamed gorgeously above our heads.

We drew close to the town and passed through a titanic arch with four pillars. I saw narrow and inter-twining streets and bridges suspended over frozen canals. The spires and domes were of extreme antiquity, their interiors gutted and dark and choked with tattered volumes.

I have never seen so many books. They were everywhere: on icy streets, floors, in doorways, blocking windows. And at times I saw ghostly forms, like images from faded photographs, endlessly searching through the volumes as we travelled through the decrepit chaos, ascending and descending past ruined façades of dead buildings. There were tiers of sagging or collapsed roofs above and below us and endless mazes of hollowed steps leading up to railed streets. The houses tottered, their garrets shedding books from high windows like autumn leaves scattered by the wind.

We were spectral in the snow and fog, moving slowly through the strange bibliopolis, the trap climbing steadily upwards towards the great central hill. Now and then I lost sight of the crumbling tower we had seen from the distance. Finally we came out into a large, central square, rolling across a profusion of torn books and pages.

The wind was of terrific force and hurled papers and snow across the open space. It was difficult to remain upright. We watched the fog curling around the rooftops and spires below us.

The tower was situated on a plateau bounded by a lofty bank some twelve feet above the level of the square. Crumbling steps, cleared by the wind of snow, led up to this higher ground. My companion helped unload my trunk and other belongings. We had not exchanged a single word since we had left the station and I had not seen his face. He stuck out his fur-gloved, shapeless hand and I clasped it in both of mine.

I was surely lost in a dream. The journey across countries had seemed to last for centuries, and I had finally arrived in a fantastic region. The war-torn Europe I had left behind seemed as distant as the far side of the moon. The secrets that I hoped to uncover would live down the centuries whereas Hitler would rank with Genghis Khan as merely a historical curiosity. I sought concepts of a magnitude as yet unplumbed, beyond immortality, infinitely more significant than any previous philosophy.

I stood alone on the windswept square. The peasant and his reindeer departed and I watched the trap disappear silently, swallowed up by the white fog.

Before me stood the tower fashioned from crumbling brick with several lozenge-shaped windows around its circumference. I climbed the hollowed steps which led to the plateau where the tower stood, up through the bank, and then across the level surface to its entrance. I passed through an ornate doorway with an unlocked portal into the interior. It was difficult to gain entrance because a pile of rotten books half-blocked the way. Indeed, the whole interior was clogged with discarded volumes. The tower seemed to be a series of libraries, stuffed and overflowing with tomes, one on top of another. There was a partly ruined spiral staircase which wound through the floors but even this was made nearly impassable by masses of books thrown down from the floors above.

I climbed upwards as best I could, determined to reach the top, but stumbling over the carcasses of hundreds of volumes. The very walls and floors of the upper chambers seemed composed of the spines of books. Outside, through the windows, I could see the full scope of the town. It was otherworldly, lit by the subtle hues of the northern lights.

In the highest chamber of the tower was an arched and narrow doorway. In the room beyond, boxed in by volumes in various states of decay, was an unmistakable figure. He was dressed in a black frock coat and stiff collar with neckerchief. On the table in front of him stood a single candle. He was leaning over and writing furiously with a quill. His bald head and face were deeply etched with a thousand lines. The flickering illumination touched his visage as he turned to regard me. His eyes bored straight into my soul from beneath heavy lids. What incalculable knowledge shone in them! Their pupils were unnaturally large and black; they had no beginning or end but were like twin abysses, illimitable gateways to the secrets of time and space.

I moved closer and Ariel put down his quill. Inside this unbelievably aged human form—now little more than a shell—was an inexhaustible presence. Ariel had transcended human thought and knowledge altogether, had become a living enigma unbounded by the human paradigm, an avatar of ultimate mystery. It was like standing before all the stars and oceans. I attempted to speak to him but there was simply no means of communication open to me. Language was utterly useless. It was as futile to address him as to address the universe itself.

And yet he arose and walked slowly across the chamber, drawing a battered old leather volume from amongst a dozen others in a pile and handing it to me.

It was the book for which I had sought so long. At last, it was
Kruptos
.

As I turned away with the book in my grasp I looked over my shoulder and imagined I saw a curious expression on the face of the ancient metaphysician. I had seen something like it before in the suggestion of nihilism in his 1842 daguerreotype. But now there was something else mingled with it. Something damnably close to irony.

I made my way down the choked staircase and out of the tower, hauling my trunk and belongings with me. Across the square was a gaunt house which looked less desolate than the rest and I forced the door open. Here I could study the book in full and unravel its innermost secrets for myself.

The gaunt old house faced the central tower and I could see it through a long and narrow bay window which reached to the top of the room’s lofty ceiling. This building, like all the others, was overflowing with discarded tomes and I had to clear many of them so as to make a space for my belongings. The cellar was piled with wood and I soon had a ferocious blaze crackling in the fireplace.

I could barely control my desire to read
Kruptos
. I did everything else in a daze. Finally I sat on a heap of books by the fire and worked my way through the first few pages.

It was a mighty volume, over two thousand pages long, and I studied it carefully during the following days. I paused only to eat the food packed amongst my belongings and to lapse into exhausted slumbers.

On and on I read in that lost and fabulous town haunted by the endless twilight and the
aurora borealis
.

The conjectures and speculations in
Kruptos
indeed exceeded all previous metaphysics and philosophy. The arguments were constructed with the grandeur of some titanic gothic cathedral, argument by argument, the text ascending higher and higher like a celestial steeple, and progressed beyond the limits of my understanding. It would take many centuries to comprehend the concepts in full and to follow the final chapters into their upper reaches, but from what I understood of the first two or three hundred pages,
Kruptos
would revolutionise the minds of men forever.

At last my brain felt as if it were bursting with tremendous thoughts and ideas and I was forced to put the book aside. As I sat there smoking, my mind, seeking relief from the profound abstractions which had occupied it, began to contemplate questions which, until then, I had not fully considered.

What was Karnswilloch? Who were those elusive beings in their hats and greatcoats searching endlessly amongst the ruins? The town seemed to stand on the borderland between dream and waking consciousness. It existed and yet did not exist.

Another thought occurred to me. What were the innumerable volumes which lay scattered in the snows and the hollow buildings?

I picked a book at random from amongst the multitudes and turned it over to look at the title on the flyleaf. It read: