THE GOTHIC HORROR
BY GEORGE WETZEL
Quite often Penhryn had puzzled over the reasons Gothic arts were made so hideous; every cathedral he had visited, every Gothic mss read, even Medieval tapestry was cursed with this ubiquitous grotesqueness. Once a medieval archaeologist told him it perhaps was the soul—ugly and deformed—of the Age that tolerated it. Perhaps so. Certainly there was a shocking parallel between it and the practices of the witch covens that marked that period; a parallel that suggested many hidden Satanists carved the wood and stone of the cathedrals. For did not the same spirit of mockery and perversion of Mass ritual exist in the gargoyles who leered atop cathedral parapets and from cornices and recesses?
Even now, the tympanum Penhryn studied was such an example of that blasphemy. A sly, cynical hint of bigotry, it seemed to him, was expressed in the too closely crowded group of saints and reveling demons. Another infamy like this present symbolism of the Elect and the Damned, he recalled, once carved on the tympanum of Rheims Cathedral, so shocked its 18th century clergy that they had it chiseled out.
His examination of the stone figures on the entrance arch was broken by the verger, commenting pedantically on some IX century Saxon brickwork in the wall. Penhryn stepped into the cathedral and a palpable sea of silence which even the stone of sound (that was his footsteps) could barely ripple. Mumbling about the church's reliquary, the verger started off; and Penhryn, despite the verger's boresome presence, decided to follow him.
Beneath tones of stone they passed, whose weight elfin Plantagenet ribbed vaults appeared incapable of supporting. Reaching the Reliquary in the gloom of the west transept arm, the verger unlocked it and brought out of a chest therein the cathedral's mortuary wealth—the remains of illustrious prelates and canonized saints—that reposed in bejeweled, golden urns and containers. Dryly, the verger spoke of dullsome abbots and obscure saints.
"This particular urn," said the verger, picking one manifestly no different from the rest, "whose osseous contents are those of an early saint, has a quaint history. In 1163 the Popish monks here gathered some henbane found growing in their garden, mistaking it for a kind of parsley."
Unimaginatively, he went on, relating—despitehis pedantic manner—an interesting account of how those monks who did not eat of it were woke that same midnight by the Matin's bell. And coming into the cathedral read scrawled across the sacred books what was never originally written there, saw written in chalk on the walls blasphemy, and heard profane things uttered by those who had awakened them.
"The archives," said the verger, "are not explicit on the outrages; though they did say how the drugged monks, for one thing, made a mockery of Christian ritual by reverencing this urn."
At Penhryn's look of amazement, the verger smiled, reflected a bit, and said: "Oh, we've had other misfortunes here, worse than that. Why the west tower has come down four times since their time. And fires without number are always breaking out and always had been." The verger went on to recount other calamities suffered by the cathedral.
"Don't you think it odd," interrupted Penhryn, "such an uncommon number of disasters has struck here?"
The verger pondered this a moment and then smiled triumphantly, "Why, not at all. We have missed some serious misfortunes that have plagued lesser churches.... Cromwell's troopers let us alone when they desecrated other cathedrals about us."
"But Cromwell was a hidden Satanist," blurted out Penhryn. "At least Montague Summers thought he was."
"Which is why," added the verger, "he and his Roundheads desecrated so many British churches."
Penhryn desisted from further argument. The verger did not see he meant his emphasis on the fact that Cromwell had leftthis placeinviolate. He pondered a bit. Then, he asked the verger another question, "I wonder—just what do the bones in that urn," he pointed to the one that figured in the curious story of the drugged monks, "look like?"
A look of quizzical tolerance crossed the verger's face, "Just like any other, if not dust already." Then the amused verger added, "They could be fraudulent, you know. It wouldn't be the first time three thigh bones of a saint existed in three separate churches."
Whet the verger referred to was the traffic in spurious relics during the medieval times, the monstrous incongruities that sometimes existed along with the monkish pilfering of relics from rival monasteries. But that was not what Penhryn had in mind—at least not entirely. Better he not voice what he thought of those relics lest he shock the verger. Considering the spirit that motivated the Gothic decorations, it was very likely justwhatthose relics might be.
At moment a man in faded overalls entered the cathedral, looked about, and spying the verger, came over. A conversation about gardening ensued. Finally, the gardener—quite obviously—not comprehending the pedantic instructions of the verger, asked that person to accompany him outside and see the vegetable problem himself. Penhryn breathed a deep sigh of relief. The verger was a bore, besides openly regarding Penhryn as a ridiculous, superstitious man.
Now at last Penhryn could do what he originally came for—examination of the cathedral's organ. As he ascended to the triforium gallery, a feeling of self reproach arose. He regretted remarking on the oddness of this place; no wonder the verger had smiled. And yet there was no denying of it—the cathedral had an atmosphere of wrongness; it affected him.
Sunlight glorified the mosaic panes up here; and alternately, where no window pierced the stone wall, a chill darkness lurked. Thrusting up its ornate spires and pipes in perpendicular Gothic style was the organ case beneath the oculus window. Dry dust assailed his nose as he crawled behind the organ to examine its geometric world of square and round pipes. Coming out, after a time, he paused to look over the balustrade into the hollowed out nave below, and was seized with awe; the Gothic craftsman had been clever, for their arboreal and animal carvings on pew boards, corbel-tables, and moldings seemed living things frozen in acts of motion, waiting for some mysterious summons before they convulsed with life again.
Penhryn felt an oppressive sense of heat; and looking up, saw last, lingering sunlight burning through a window. And the sainted figure that looked down at him seemed to be twisting agonizingly, as though its abode there was some fiery hell. The window frames were wrought in sections resembling flame tongues—a feature similar to the French Flamboyant Gothic style—which furthered the illusion that the window opened into a fiery domain. And he speculated if flame tracery was not also deliberately fashioned, along with the grotesqueness of the Gothic carvings. Another thought, of imitative magic—at least the wish it expressed—came to mind as he looked at the fiery window, and he grew more uneasy. Quite suddenly he realized there wassome sortof blistering warmth emanating from the window—too much for comfort—and he retired into the gloom.
Raising his eyes upwards to the clerestory regions, he noted the irregular alignment of the longitudinal axis, proof that a later repair had been incorrectly engineered. While he studied this mistake, the shifting sunlight retreated roofwards as darkness filled the depths below, and he became aware of the long time he had browsed up here, hoping it was not so long that the verger may have forgotten his presence and locked him in. The thought terrified him—the spending of a cold night here—but why he could not say, or else did not want to dredge up the reason.
Hastening downwards he found his worst fears were true. The entrance door had been locked. A kind of reasonless panic threatened to engulf him—his theories about Gothic art were the blame—but by mimicking the verger's pedantic cynicism, he kept a surface calm. Possibly he could find a broken pane somewheres where he could shout out until someone came. Penhryn had barely made up his mind when it happened. Hitherto all was a canvas of dead silence but now a sound was brushed across it. From the transept of the Reliquary it had come; and as he turned in that direction he sensed, then saw, a stirring in the almost impenetrable dark. Fear had called up that presence.
Memory was fragmentary after that. Some shock drove him to seek the upper regions where a blur of light remained. A priceless stained glass window was smashed. And he plunged to the ground outside. No questions were asked him when days later he came out of a state of delirium. None were needed; he had babbled disjointedly while in that state, enough to cause the cathedral to be closed. An examination was made, discreetly, of certain relics. Later the gardener was observed by some to cast a small paper parcel into the river. And shortly afterwards several high ranking clergymen held a private church service in the cathedral to which no one was admitted. Though the more noisy spoke of hearing a hand bell ring and ponderous Latin phrases uttered.
Penhryn's experience had blanks in it which was well for him. One thing, not fully erased, was of a "face eaten away by darkness." There was one final thing that, when he learned of it, sent him into a paroxysm of horror. The investigators, taking much of his delirium babbling into serious consideration, had medical examinations made of the relics. One osseous remain—that which the drugged monks had blasphemously reverenced—had been non-human and unhallowed; a spurious relic passed off as genuine. The substitution was made obviously by a hidden Satanist, mocking the Church, as the Gothic carvers had, and the witch covens.
The End
DIFFERENT
A Voice of the Atomic Ageresumes publication at 79-14 266 St. Glen Oaks, Floral Park, Long Island, N. Y. Poetry and Science Fiction. $2.00 per year, fifty cents per copy. Lilith Lorraine, Editor.
A Voice of the Atomic Age
resumes publication at 79-14 266 St. Glen Oaks, Floral Park, Long Island, N. Y. Poetry and Science Fiction. $2.00 per year, fifty cents per copy. Lilith Lorraine, Editor.