The White Hands and Other Weird Tales (3 page)

***

Hughes’ house in Highgate was littered with newspaper clippings of chess columns, scribbled chess notation and pages torn from chess manuals. There were piles of chess books jammed into corners. The place reeked of stale cigarette smoke. In the centre of his study stood a large table topped with a chessboard: with a start Father Mooney recognised it as Petrovski’s purple and gold board. The room was lit by a profusion of candles that, in the gathering twilight, cast flickering shadows on the walls.
 

Father Mooney crossed the study and looked down at the misshapen chess pieces. They were even more horrible than the mental images Hughes’ narrative had formed in his imagination. The white pieces were from an ordinary modern set. Father Mooney ran his fingers over the chess clock.

‘Sit down and play Father.’ Hughes gasped, his words breaking the train of Father Mooney’s thoughts. Could it really be Petrovski who addressed Father Mooney now? The priest noted that Petrovski’s accent had shifted to thick, guttural Russian. It seemed that all this was leading up inexorably to a rematch between himself and the Russian. But why?

The most likely explanation was also the most outrageous. There had been those rumours about Petrovski’s interest in the occult. There were some who had believed that Petrovski had found a way of employing the forces of the Qlippoth, the reverse structure of the universe in Kabbalistic magic. It supposedly gave black an almost irresistible advantage in play over the board. The rumours had been that Petrovski had gone so far as to create his own chess set based on this arcanum. But the Russian was dead, wasn’t he?

‘Play.’ The voice said.

***

Father Mooney leaned over the board, looked at it for the fifth time and then glanced at his clock. If he continued playing at such a slow rate he would forfeit the game. His mouth was painfully dry and he longed for a glass of cool water. He didn’t dare look at his opponent’s face again. He’d made that mistake once before. He thanked God that candles rather than electricity lighted the room and that the shadowy horror across the board was only partially visible. There was a wolfish gleam in Petrovski’s eyes as he played and a mocking sneer on his lips despite the continuous, painful wheezing of his lungs.
 

The game was going very badly for the priest. And yet he was undoubtedly playing the best chess of his life. His multifaceted strategy was even more brilliant than the one he’d used when he defeated Petrovski all those years ago. But his opponent was playing with contemptuous speed and power. He made Father Mooney’s moves seem like the fumblings of a beginner.

Father Mooney checked to see how many minutes had passed and pushed his queen forward. He stopped the clock on his side.

Petrovski replied instantly and, to the priest’s horror, he realised he must lose the piece.

Father Mooney countered, only staving off absolute disaster by forfeiting one of his bishops in addition to the queen. Of course he could not resign. But now he teetered on the brink of the pit. He found his concentration failing. The wheezing of Petrovski’s lungs was becoming louder.

Nothing came to Father Mooney. He sat staring at the board. The clock was ticking away. His time was virtually up. Every possible counter-move seemed to lead inevitably to black’s victory. It seemed utterly hopeless.

In his despair, the priest felt his faith falling away. He was coming to believe that his vocation to the priesthood was a sham. It seemed but a feeble self-justification of his inability to form a meaningful relationship with a woman. He was an impotent, terrified old hypocrite. Hollow and afraid. Suddenly he thought of the people that were being snuffed out like candle flames all across the world at that very moment. Those dying alone in hospital beds, bundled up beside dirty syringes, on roads smeared with their own blood and guts, or in brilliant sunshine with empty bellies, in the oceans with lungs filled by sea water, or in stinking alleyways with knife wounds; and all those who simply waste away, day by day, bit by bit, in the clutches of an intolerable sense of loneliness, unshriven and cursing the God in whom they did not believe, who could not deliver them from their pain.

But then, in a flash, Father Mooney moved his remaining bishop, flinging it triumphantly across the board in a huge diagonal sweep.

‘Mate in three!’ He cried.

His opponent howled, glanced at the board, and scattered all the pieces across it. A transformation took place in the flickering shadows. The figure opposite arched its back and stretched itself in the way that a huge cat would after awakening from a deep sleep. But the stretching went on and on until the body elongated and twisted beyond its limits. Its asthmatic breathing was as loud as waves crashing against rocks and it stretched out clawed hands towards Father Mooney.

The candles flickered uncertainly. Finally they blew out and the howling form leapt at him in the darkness.

***

Leonard Hughes awoke feeling a sense of blissful release. It was as if he had suddenly recovered from an agonising sickness. He knew at once that, whatever the thing was that had taken him over, it was gone; he was himself again. Yet still some lingering trace of the thing’s memory remained in his brain, a stench of brimstone trailing in its wake. He got up and fumbled towards the nearest of the candles, lit it and peered around the room.
 

The chess set was a blackened, burnt mass. And on the floor, in a crumpled heap with his head twisted backward at a hideous angle, lay the corpse of Father Mooney. His body appeared to have been flung back and forth across the room like a rag-doll at the mercy of an enraged child. Hughes bent over and examined its features. There was no sign of any intrusion upon them.

Then, just before the very last of the beast’s memories had finally dissipated, he remembered its awful rage at having lost the game.

It had realised, too late, that Father Mooney had placed his bishop on a square that could only be reached by cheating.

Your eyes did see my unformed substance

Psalm 139

The office tower had long fascinated me.

I would gaze at it from the windows of Barlow and Barlow Associates, the architectural firm that employed me. Over the course of the last four years I had watched the tower becoming gradually deserted. One company after another had left the premises and, once darkness fell, the number of windows that were lit up became gradually less. Businesses whose offices were located there seemed unable to achieve commercial success. From what I could gather, those working within its confines complained of a general malaise and a progressive worsening of staff morale over time. There were rumours about the air-conditioning system carrying some form of Legionnaires’ disease, but extensive tests showed no trace of its presence. In the end the inconclusive reason given was that those working there were subject to ‘sick building syndrome.’

The tower consisted of twenty-seven floors with an exterior of dark green glass. Its appearance had worsened as the years passed and it stood as an obvious indictment of 1960s architecture: a decaying monument to inhuman design that dominated the skyline for miles around.

And then one night I realised that the last of the businesses in the building must have relocated. The single floor that had been lit during the hours of darkness now had windows as black as the rest. The building was untenanted and desolate. Nothing moved within its confines and I imagined in my mind’s eye the abandoned and silent spaces, the empty rooms, and the labyrinth of dusty corridors. In the teeming metropolis, whose streets and buildings were crawling with people, like insects in a hive, this tower was vacant: a void.

The building had a profound effect upon my own work. The architectural designs upon which I was working for my firm gave me little satisfaction. My realised projects had consisted only of nondescript houses, public utilities and the updating of an unremarkable bus depot in the north of the country. I longed for the opportunity to work on a larger, grander scale, on some construction that would be appreciated, that would be seen from far away, my own pinnacle amongst the office towers scattered across the city. In idle moments I would sketch designs for the tower that I would build and invariably its lines echoed the empty building that dominated the view from my drawing board.

I wanted so badly to wander around inside the building and I told myself that it was for the purposes of my pet architectural project. Yet perhaps it was really a fascination for solitude that drew me to it. Certainly I had been conscious of its appeal becoming stronger as fewer and fewer windows had been left lit in the evenings. So completely abandoned, it seemed to me a consummation of a terrible beauty. For what was it now but a vacuum, an oasis of nothing, where all else around it was but the maddening whirl of asinine human activity? I viewed it as a vertical desert, closed off from the outside, a region without the distractions of the commonplace. I did wonder for a while whether it would be feasible to employ the designs for my own tower in a radical refurbishment of the existing building, but in the end I resisted this idea. It was not just that my ego preferred the potential of an entirely new project; I also did not want to see the building changed. I was fascinated by the tower because of its very abandonment.

Yet if it was my ambition to be the designer of a similar tower with the same starkness of design, a construction looming high above the teeming streets and framed by the sky, one whose very presence caused men’s views to be drawn upwards by its smooth lines and uncluttered simplicity, then it would make sense for me to see the original from the inside, to study it fully.

A few days after the lights on that last occupied floor were extinguished, I attempted to gain entry. I finished at work and walked through the few streets that lay between my place of employment and the tower. It was a dark winter’s afternoon, even though it wasn’t late, and although I knew that my expedition was likely to end in failure, I needed to at least try to get into the building, if only for my own peace of mind.

I finally stood at its base. The gigantic monolith seemed almost to blot out the sky. It was immediately obvious that I was not going to be able to get inside. The foyer had been boarded up and padlocked and the first two floors were protected by corrugated iron sheets. Higher up, the windows were completely dark. For a brief moment I fancied that I saw a pale, white face at one of them, but quickly realised that it must have been a trick of the early evening light. The whole building was obviously deserted.

For a time I wandered aimlessly around its circumference and across the abandoned square in which it stood, with its concrete loggias and unused car park. In the end I gave up and made my way home to my apartment on the other side of the city.

Almost every night for weeks afterwards I would dream of treading the lost corridors and empty offices of the tower, the canteens, stairways, storage rooms and lavatories. During my lunch hours at work I would make sketches of the tower, drawing its planes and angles and noting its few stark details. My interest in it was the cause of some curiosity in my work colleagues and several of them even asked to view the structure through the field glasses that I had bought in order to examine the building more closely. I felt some resentment at their interest: I had begun to regard the tower as my sole preserve. I alone could appreciate the splendid starkness of its design and the desolation that it contained.

I had always been an outsider in the profession. I worked alongside qualified architects who were university trained, but I was a mere technician. The fact that I did a comparable job meant nothing in terms of status or pay. Nevertheless, I had risen through the firm’s ranks and was now entrusted with overall control of some projects, although I was never given anything with any real scope for design. The moment I realised that the tower had become finally empty I began to neglect my proper work. But because I was considered such a useful employee it took quite some time before it was noticed that I was behind schedule and questions were asked.

***

One afternoon a colleague who knew of my interest in the tower passed me a newspaper containing an advertisement for an art installation. I did not see the significance at first, but he pointed out that it was housed on the uppermost floors of my tower. The installation was temporarily closed but apparently due to reopen on the Friday of the following week. I had not been aware of its existence, although the installation, by the artist Eleazer Golmi, appeared to have been exhibited there for some undefined period. I recognised the name of the artist, of course, for he had also been the architect of the building that housed his installation.
 

On several occasions I had attempted to track the man down in order to express my interest in his designs, but he seemed no longer to work in the profession and had, effectively, ‘gone underground’ after some unspecified crisis many years ago. The few that knew of him had told me that he had been disillusioned by attacks on his work from both inside and outside the profession. Other architects of the 1960s had been thick-skinned enough to ignore criticism, but not Golmi.

The advertised details of the installation left me with mixed feelings. The show was entitled ‘Mannequins in Aspects of Terror’ and promised, it was claimed, an audio-visual experience of an unsettling nature in which one would encounter ‘a universe of fear’. This didn’t sound like the Golmi that I had imagined. Some saw horror, it was true, in what his buildings had been allowed to become: grimy, decaying concrete hulks. But I saw them as they were first built: tall, proud visions of a noble future, reaching up to the heavens with pure, dynamic lines. Golmi was not to blame if the owners of his buildings had refused to maintain them and let them crumble.

But why was he interested in terror, and unsettling people, and exploring fear? I came up with many theories in the long days before I was able to see the installation for myself. It seemed probable that Golmi would be exploring the horror of what other people had done to his glorious work.

I kept a close eye on the top floor of the building, and hung around the padlocked doors for many hours in the hope of detecting the work that would, no doubt, be required for the reopening. But I saw nothing.

At last the designated night came and I found that the tower’s foyer had indeed been reopened. The padlocks and the boards were gone, exposing the dark green windows on the ground floor. A single poster advertised the installation: it was rather gaudy, with a purple gothic script on a yellow background. At its centre was a grainy photograph of the architect and artist.

At the time the photograph was taken Golmi must have been in his fifties. He had brylcreemed grey hair, a high forehead and dark eyes, one of which, the right, was considerably larger than the other. It gave the face an unfortunate, lop-sided appearance. His expression reminded me of the rigidity common to those early photographs where the subject had to sit perfectly still for several minutes while the camera shutter was left open.

I stood back and once again gazed up at Golmi’s monolith. Was it possible to reconcile the utopian vision of his design, with its sharp lines soaring ever upwards, with the crumbling pile of dark, stained concrete and glass it had become? Both fascinated me. Perhaps the fact that Golmi had placed his art installation in one of his own buildings meant that he, too, had realised the spectral potential of the tower. Had he also come to relish this desolate space in the teeming metropolis?

I entered the foyer and made my way to a single desk situated in the very centre of the otherwise empty space. There was a simple sign declaring that the installation began on floor twenty-six and that payment was to be made at the end of the show. There was no attendant to direct the visitors, but next to the sign was a schedule of entry times. My watch told me that the next available slot began in five minutes. The last visitor had signed the register five minutes previously and marked the time clearly, as required in the box provided. A handwritten note at the top of the page stated that admittance was staggered to ensure the isolation necessary for each visitor.

I faithfully signed the register and when my time came I made my way over to one of several lifts and pressed the button. A small sign informed me that this was the one to be used in order to visit the installation. I watched the numbers on the indicator above the single door flash from twenty-six downwards. While I waited I looked at the remnants of company names printed on a wooden board. They must have been defaced by disgruntled employees as their companies gave up and vacated the building.

When the lift arrived I opened the outer door and then pulled across the trellis gate that separated me from the panelled wooden cage within. The interior was not large, having a capacity for a maximum of four people. At first I simply thought it small for a building with such a potentially huge occupancy. It had obviously seen much use. I thought from its design that the lift must date to the 1950s. So perhaps the building was older than I’d thought? I was feeling a certain amount of confusion, perhaps due to my excitement at the prospect of the installation, but also because of the claustrophobia caused by being in such a small space and the reflection of myself in the full-length mirror on the back wall of the lift. Gazing into it I was somewhat startled by my anxious-looking appearance. My eyes seemed to stare wildly from behind my glasses and my cheeks were flushed. The business suit that I was obliged to wear to work seemed comically apt, as did the briefcase I carried. Since I had come directly from my office I had not had the opportunity to change my clothes.

The lift rumbled upwards through the shaft, and floor after floor flashed by before it reached the twenty-sixth. The cage jolted to a halt and I pulled back the trellis door, opened the outer one and entered a long, deserted corridor, dimly lit and utterly silent. The floor was covered in tiled linoleum, but it was well worn and curled upwards at the edges. In patches it had come away altogether, revealing stained concrete beneath. As I proceeded uncertainly I could see holes in the false ceiling, where the covering polystyrene tiles had fallen down. Out of these holes trailed cables and wires.

It was not obvious where I should be going, so I looked in through a half-opened door to my left. It was an abandoned gents toilet, thick with dirt. The cubicle doors hung ajar and the toilet bowls and urinals were broken, with fragments of porcelain scattered on the floor. I returned to the corridor and after a few more paces finally noticed a sign with an arrow, indicating the direction I was to follow.

I turned right. This corridor seemed to be exactly the same as the first. I was beginning to feel a sense of emptiness creep over me, deadening my spirits, replacing the tension I’d previously felt. And then I realised what should have been obvious: this was the installation! The sense of isolation and dislocation was complete.

I felt utterly alone as I walked through the confines of the artificial void. The atmosphere of neglect and decay grew steadily and I congratulated Golmi on his achievement.

I wondered just when the idea for the installation had come to him? Perhaps he had received some dim intimation of the final destiny of his building when he was still a successful architect. It was a bold conceit to think of placing his personal nightmare in his own building as it had decayed and become uninhabitable.

I even suspected him of vandalising his own building as a means of amplifying the decay. And what might he be saying about architecture in general, or modern life, or the human condition?

Again I thought about the word on the advertisement, ‘re-opening.’ If the installation had been first opened while there were still occupants, then what had they thought of it? Did Golmi set up the installation when he knew that the last companies were moving out? Or had it hastened their exit? How far back had he considered this project?

I thought of making my way out, but then remembered the title of the piece and guessed that I might not have seen it all. I had become aware of a sound, coming as if from a great distance. It was like the white noise found on frequencies between television stations. I had read that this was the sound of the background radiation generated when the universe came into existence billions of years ago. The sound remained at the same level as I proceeded and I could not detect its source, though I suspected that it must have been piped through concealed speakers. Looking through the windows to my left I saw the vast panorama of the city below, its glittering sodium-orange lights so very far removed from this study of desolation. Within was eternal twilight, greyness and shadow, an effect achieved by low-wattage strip lighting.

There was a large office to my right. Inside, all of the furniture had been removed and there were marks on the thin carpet where the desks, chairs and filing cabinets must once have stood.

The continuous hiss of background static was beginning to annoy me; its familiarity had failed to make it subliminal. If I listened with enough concentration it sounded almost like whispering and although it was almost inaudible I was becoming sure that it was charged with some hidden significance. In the next corridor was a sign, a ragged thing of cardboard, with letters scrawled as if
in
a
child’s
handwriting.
It
read
‘Mannequins
in
Aspects of Terror’. So perhaps the real installation was about to begin!

Almost at once I came across the first of the mannequins. In the twilight of the corridor, and from a distance, I initially thought that it must be a custodian, there to oversee the exhibition and guide the visitors. This would certainly have been useful, for the arrows were few and far between.

As I drew closer to the mannequin I noticed that the background hiss had acquired a new element. There were definite words amongst the static, though broken and garbled, like speech distorted by poor radio reception. I could not make out the words, but the voice seemed to speak as if in pain: almost as if it were incoherent with that pain. I thought that one of the words might be ‘alive!’ croaked out over and over again, but could not be sure.

And then suddenly I was close enough to see the face of the mannequin. It had been made insidiously disturbing. It was rigid and frozen in stark panic, as if it were looking at some particularly horrific sight, and its arms were raised as if to ward off some approaching menace. As I stared at the thing, I felt contaminated by it, fearing that my own features were beginning to assume the dummy’s own and that my mind might give way to the fear that had frozen it. When I thought of that lifeless mouth actually forming the broken words that still mingled with the low, background noise of static I had to acknowledge that the artist had indeed managed to create the terror claimed by the advertisement.

The noise began to fade as I walked nervously on down the dusty corridor. It was gradually replaced by another sound, like that of people muttering quietly to each other in some other part of the building. The mutterings were clearly audible and I could not shake off the feeling that they were aware of my presence, even though the idea was absurd. I kept glancing behind me as I progressed, and found that I was almost creeping along, anticipating dangers that might lurk around the next corner.

In my anxiety I began to mumble to myself and the sound of my own voice offered some meagre comfort.

The next port of call was an office that appeared, at first glance, to be still in use. I paused for a moment, taken in by the illusion, until I perceived that the figures therein were absolutely motionless. I could not find the courage to enter the room and was gripped by the unsettling notion that they had stopped their activities at the very moment that I had first caught sight of them. The sounds of activity that I had heard with increasingly clarity had also seemed to cease at that exact moment. A hidden motion sensor must have detected me and would have been programmed to turn off the tape recording of the voices.

Four mannequins occupied this office, three of which were hunched in front of blank computer screens. Their hands were at the keyboards, as if they had been interrupted in the act of inputting data. The dummies were dressed in business suits that showed signs of old age and wear. The elbows and cuffs were frayed and there were patches of ugly discoloration across the pinstriped fabric. These mannequins seemed to be smiling, but as I reluctantly entered the room for a closer look at them, I saw that they were not pleasant smiles, they had been crafted so as to resemble the rictus grin of the human skull.

The sole standing mannequin had been given a similar expression, but its staring eyes seemed less glassy than the others. I thought they had moved.

I left the room and walked, more swiftly now, along the corridor. The sounds of activity resumed behind me, furtively at first, but with increasing boldness as I moved further away. I could not help looking back, for I had developed a dread that the standing mannequin would start into spasmodic life and come after me.

I had by this time reached a stairwell and a painted arrow indicated that I was to ascend to the floor above. The walls were in a shocking state, being cracked and crumbling under the flaking brown paint. A draught of air coming from below bore with it the unmistakable odour of mould. Here on the stairs a sound of movement came from above and I could hardly bring myself to make the climb.

The echoes filtered through a door directly at the head of the stairs and now that the sound was clearer I detected what I thought were more voices. These were not like the low mutterings that I had heard previously. They were much clearer and made no attempt at concealment. They possessed a breathless and hollow quality as if the unintelligible words they uttered were formed by some imperfect replica of the human model, speaking in accents that betrayed their attempt at imitation. I thought of lips not designed for speech, croaking out anguished words, trying vainly to communicate.

I stood there in the stairwell for what seemed like minutes. Whether it was the awful atmosphere that worked on my brain or whether the sound was real I couldn’t tell, but when I did hear footsteps climbing up from below they sounded too awkward to be the next, timed visitor to the installation. Someone seemed to be staggering, almost dragging his limbs along, and as I looked down a shadow moved across the wall at a turn in the stairs. It may have been the dim light, but the figure appeared twisted over to one side. I panicked. I raced up towards the door ahead, bolting through it, with no other thought than to get away. I could not stop myself from thinking about the standing mannequin I had seen in the office of the mad grins, of that unliving face imbued with an insane animation.