The Dark Domain (6 page)

Wrzesmian got drunk with the gloomy frolics of these fantasies, letting their creations run loose. According to his whim he changed their direction or drove them away from sight, in the next moment conjuring up replacements … .

No one bothered him. The secluded street in the distant quarter of the city was not disturbed by any inopportune intruder; no noisy cart interrupted the atmosphere.

Thus he had spent the last several years – years untouched by the outside, but full of menace and marvels from within.

Until suddenly one day some changes occurred in the house across the street, instantly stopping the fantasies that had already started to adopt forms set by habit and practice.

It happened one fine July evening. Sitting, as usual, by an open window, his head propped up by his hand, Wrzesmian had been sweeping a meditative glance about the villa and the garden. All of a sudden, looking into one of the windows in a wing of the house, he shuddered. By the windowpane, gazing stubbornly at him, was the pale face of a man. The unmoving gaze of the strange stare was sinister. Wrzesmian became seized with a vague dread. He rubbed his eyes, walked about his room a couple of times, and looked again at the window: the severe face had not disappeared, but continued to stare in his direction.

‘Has the owner of the villa returned?’ Wrzesmian threw out the feeble supposition in an undertone.

In answer, a sarcastic smile twisted the features of the dreary mask. Wrzesmian pulled down the blind and lit up his home: he couldn’t endure the gaze any longer.

To obliterate these impressions he immersed himself in reading until midnight. At twelve he wearily raised himself from a book, and drawn by an overpowering temptation, he lifted the edge of the blind to peek out of the window. And again a shudder of fear chilled him to the bone: the pale man was still there, standing motionless by the window in the right wing. Illuminated by the bright magnesium shine of the moon, he paralyzed Wrzesmian with his gaze. Uneasy, Wrzesmian returned the blind to its position and tried to fall asleep. In vain. His imagination, imbued with dread, tormented him terribly. It was already morning before he finally fell into a short, nervous sleep, and even then it was one full of nightmares and visions. When he woke up around noon, with a giddy head, his first thought was to look at the villa’s windows. He breathed a sigh of relief: the obstinate face was gone.

Throughout the day there was peace. But at evening he saw, by a window on the first floor, the mask of a woman staring at him, her streaming hair bordering a face already withered but with traces of her former beauty, a face maddened by a pair of wild, intense eyes. And she was looking at him through frenzied pupils with the same severe gaze as her companion from the right wing. Both seemed unaware of their coexistence in the strange house. They were joined only by their menacing gesture directed toward Wrzesmian … .

And again after a sleepless night, interrupted by looking at his persecutors, a day free of masks followed. But as soon as dusk was entering into its secret conspiracy with the night, a third new figure appeared by another window and it also did not retreat until dawn. In the space of several days all the windows of the villa were filled up with sinister faces. From behind every window looked out a pair of despairing eyes, or ovals marked with suffering and madness. The house gazed at him with the eyes of maniacs, the grimace of lunatics; it grinned toward him with the smile of the demented. Not one of these people had he seen in his life, and yet all of them were somehow known to him. But he knew not from where. Each one of them had a different expression, but all were united in their threatening demeanour; apparently he was considered a common enemy. Their hatred was terrifying, yet mesmerizing. And, strangely enough, in the deepest layers of his mind, he understood their anger and acknowledged its justness.

And they, as if fathoming him from afar, gathered certainty of expression, and their masks became more severe with every day.

Then one August night, while he was leaning out of his window, enduring the crucifying gazes of their hateful eyes, the immobile faces suddenly became animated; in each flashed simultaneously the same will. Hundreds of pale, thin hands raised themselves in a movement of command, and scores of bony fingers made beckoning motions … .

Wrzesmian understood: he was being summoned inside. As if hypnotized he leaped over the windowsill, crossed the narrow street, jumped over the railing, and began to walk along the alley to the villa … .

It was four in the morning, the hour before dawn’s tremblings. The magnesium jets of the moon bathed the house in a silver whirlpool, luring long shadows from its curves. The path was a dazzling white in the midst of sorrowful shrub walls. The hollow echo of Wrzesmian’s steps reverberated on the stone slabs, as the fountains rippled quietly and their bent waters drizzled with unsolved mystery … . He went up the terrace and jerked strongly on the door handle: the door gave way. He walked along a lengthy corridor of two rows of Corinthian columns. The darkness brightened the glory of the moon, whose beams, pouring through a stained-glass panel at the end of the gallery, unreeled green fables onto porphyritic floor tiles … .

Suddenly, as he was walking, a figure emerged from behind the shaft of a column and followed him. Wrzesmian shuddered but silently went on. A couple of steps further a new figure detached itself from a niche between two columns; then a third, and a fourth…a tenth – all followed him. He wanted to turn back, but they blocked his way. He crossed the forest of columns and swerved to the right, into some circular hall. It was illuminated by the shimmering moon and crowded with strange people. He slipped between them, looking for an exit. In vain! They surrounded him in an increasingly closed circle. From pale, bloodless lips flowed out a menacing whisper:

‘It’s him! It’s him!’

He stopped and looked defiantly at the throng:

‘What do you want from me?’

‘Your blood! We want your blood! Blood! Blood!’

‘What do you want it for?’

‘We want to live! We want to live! Why did you call us out from the chaos of non-existence and condemn us to be miserable half-corporeal vagrants? Look at how weak and pale we are!’

‘Mercy!’ he wailed, desperately throwing himself toward a winding staircase in the depth of the hall.

‘Hold him! Surround him! Surround him!’

With the speed of a madman he ascended the stairs to the upper floor and burst into a medieval chamber. But his oppressors entered after him. Their slender arms, their fluid, damp hands joined in a macabre line.

‘What did I do to you?’

‘We want full life! You confined us to this house, you wretch! We want to go out into the world; we want to be released from this place to live in freedom! Your blood will fortify us, your blood will give us strength! Strangle him! Strangle him!’

Thousands of hungry mouths extended toward him, thousands of pale, sucking lips.

In a crazy reflex he flung himself toward the window, ready to jump out. A legion of slimy, cold hands seized him by the waist, dug crooked hook-like fingers into his hair, wrung his neck. He struggled desperately. Someone’s fingernails cut into his larynx, someone’s lips fastened to his temple … .

He staggered, supported himself on the embrasure with his shoulders, and leaned back. His convulsively extended arms spread out in a sacrificial movement; a weary smile of fulfilment crept over his whitened lips – he was already dead … .

At the moment when the interior cooled with the agonized throes of Wrzesmian’s body, the pre-dawn silence was interrupted by a dull ripple. It came from the vat at the corner of the house. The surface of the water, mouldy from the green scum, seethed; inside the rotten barrel, encompassed by rusty hoops, swirls rose, refuse undulated, sediment gurgled. A couple of large, distended bubbles escaped, and a misshapen stump of a hand appeared. Some sort of torso or framework emerged from the depth, dripping with water, covered with mould and a cadaverous putridity – maybe a man, beast or plant. This monstrosity glinted its amazed face toward the sky, opened spongy lips wide in a vague imbecilic-enigmatic smile, extracted from the vat legs twisted as a thicket of coral, and, shaking the water off, started to walk with an unsteady, swinging step … .

Daybreak had already arrived; violet luminosities slithered about the boundless regions of the world.

The monstrosity was heading toward the deep-blue forest on the distant horizon. It opened the gate in the garden, hobbled on bowlegs along a narrow path, and, drenched in the amethystine streams of morning twilight, tottered toward fields and meadows slumbering in daybreak’s obscurity. Slowly, the freakish figure diminished, became diluted, and started to expire … until it dissolved, dispersing in the gleams of early dawn … .

For two years after the mysterious disappearance of Giovanni Tossati, gravedigger of the main cemetery in Foscara, the town’s inhabitants, particularly those settled near the place of eternal rest, complained of continual disturbance by the souls of the dead. Apparently, one group was tormented by all sorts of nightmares, another group had the onset of sleep blocked by phantoms, while others were bothered during the evening by ghosts moving about noisily from room to room. Masses conducted in these houses and exorcisms carried out by the bishop over the graves didn’t help. On the contrary, the unrest flowing from the main cemetery seemed to spread, almost infectiously, to other cemeteries, and soon the entire city fell victim to the capricious deceased.

Only the arrival of the learned archaeologist and art scholar, Master Vincent Gryf of Prague, and the effective advice he gave the distressed councillors of the town, put a stop to this dangerous phenomenon.

The master, carefully examining the main cemetery, and particularly its monuments and tombstones, released shortly afterwards a small volume entitled
Satanae opus turpissimum, seu coemeterii Foscarae, regiae urbis profana violatio.
This little book, a curiosity of its type, printed in the year 1500 in medieval Latin, today belongs to those rare works forgotten under piles of library dust.

On the basis of his scrupulous study of the tombs, Gryf came to the conclusion that the main cemetery at Foscara had succumbed to a desecration unprecedented in Christian history.

Vincent’s claim was met at first with violent opposition and disbelief, as his reasoning was based on details too subtle for the unskilled eye of the community. But when artists and sculptors from neighbouring towns verified his judgement, then there was nothing left for the city councilors to do but gracefully accept the verdict and apply his advice.

And, in truth, Gryf’s opinion was most interesting and unique. For he noticed the desecration precisely in those splendid monuments and eloquent inscriptions of which the Foscara cemetery was celebrated throughout the entire country, and which every traveller visiting charming Tuscany had to see at least once.

And yet, after his thorough examination, which lasted more than a month, Master Vincent showed that behind the pious, seemingly dignified works of art was hidden a sacrilege exhibiting truly devilish skill. The monuments, the marble sarcophagi and family tombs were one uninterrupted chain of blasphemies and satanic concepts.

From behind the hieratical poses of tomb angels appeared the vulgar gesture of a demon, on lips bevelled with suffering flickered an illusive smile of cynicism. Statues of women, bending with the agony of despair, aroused the libido with sumptuous bodies, unfurled hair, hypocritically bare breasts. The larger compositions, formed of several figures, created the impression of a double meaning, as if the sculptor had intentionally chosen
risqué
themes, for the boundary between lofty suffering and lewdness was ambiguous.

The least amount of doubt, however, was awakened by the inscriptions – those celebrated Foscara stanzas whose solemn cadences were admired by all lovers of poetry. These verses, when read backwards from bottom to top, were a scandalous, completely cynical denial of what was proclaimed in the opposite direction. They were rank paeans of honour for Satan and his obscene affairs, hymns of blasphemy against God and the saints, immoral songs of falernian wine and street harlots.

Such, in reality, was supposed to have been the cemetery. No wonder that the dead didn’t want to lie there, that they raised an ominous revolt, demanding of the living the removal of the sacrilegious monuments.

Because of Gryf’s findings, it was decided that the cemetery had to undergo a radical change. In the course of a few weeks all the suspect monuments and statues were shattered, the tombstones dug up and broken, and labourers carried off the pieces beyond the city. In their place, wealthy families put up new statues, while the poor stuck simple crosses on their family graves. The parish priest conducted obsequies in the cemetery chapel for three nights, ending with a great purification service.

And so, after the execution of all these acts, the dead stopped haunting the city, and the cemetery became soothed, plunging into the quiet reverie of previous years.

Then various stories began to circulate about what had happened, and slowly a legend developed in connection with the gravedigger, Giovanni Tossati, now nicknamed John Hyena.

Contributing considerably to these stories was the death of one of the gravedigger’s helpers soon after the reconstruction of the cemetery. This person made a most interesting statement on his deathbed, which suddenly clarified Tossati’s disappearance and spared the authorities a fruitless search for the supposedly fugitive criminal.

This confession, travelling from mouth to mouth, was spread widely about the region and, coloured with the exuberant imagination of the populace, with time entered into the circle of those gloomy tales which, stemming from nowhere, unreel their black thread on the spinning wheel of All Souls’ Day evenings and frighten the children.

Giovanni Tossati had turned up at Foscara approximately twenty years earlier. Shabbily dressed, almost in rags, he immediately provoked suspicion, and the council even wanted to expel him from the city. Soon, though, he managed to gain the confidence of the inhabitants and the authorities, to whom he presented himself as an impoverished stonemason and sculptor of monuments. Given a trial examination, he demonstrated excellent skills and a seasoned hand in his craft. So, not only was he allowed to stay, but, owing to his oddly persistent pleas, he was appointed gravedigger of the main cemetery. From then on his job was to create monuments and bury the dead. He maintained that, for him, the simultaneous fulfilment of these two duties was an inseparable whole, that the rites for the dead were interwoven tightly with sepulchral art, and that he wouldn’t be able to erect a monument to a deceased person if he couldn’t bury him with his own hands. That’s why later, even though his fame spread widely, he never accepted any of the more profitable positions offered from other regions; he immortalized the memory of the dead exclusively at his cemetery.