Autopsy of an Eldritch City: Ten Tales of Strange and Unproductive Thinking (22 page)

Still, all good things must come to an end. You might find this final part of the video curious. You might even ask yourself, “Why is Professor Noe pulling what appears to be the shadows of benthopelagic homunculi out of a jar and sticking them in Mabel Osterman’s body?” Well, it’s partly insurance: to make sure that the model doesn’t reveal my secrets to the profane. Those little monsters, the dark elves that I mentioned just a moment ago (which, by the way, were hydroponically harvested on the shadows of demons captured from some festering Fairyland), will snuggle up in your guts and make sure you behave. Don’t worry, after awhile you won’t even know they’re there. If that sounds crude, look at it this way: many artists like to sign their works upon completion. Consider those little monsters to be my signature, written within the walls of your body: a living and demonic autograph.

Mabel’s been stitched up good as new, and our video has come to an end. Now it’s your turn. But wait, what’s this? Are these tears trickling forth from your eyes? Are you crying, poor Adrian? There there... I promise you won’t feel a thing, and it’ll all be over before you know it, though it might take you a few weeks to recover, and it
will
leave a scar. But I can assure you this: when all is said and done, you’ll get a copy of the session, and you’ll have that rarest of pleasures: the chance to see your very own Aphotic Zone, that Godly shadow that exists within you. I will show you treasures within you whose existence you never even suspected, buried deep within your interior la mer like sunken ships of gold.

And now, for the scalpel...

“Where God has his church

the Devil will have his chapel.”

—Spanish proverb

“…he was never a fiend or even truly a madman, but only an eager, studious, and curious boy whose love of mystery and of the past was his undoing. He stumbled on things no mortal ought ever to know, and reached back through the years as no one ever should reach; and something came out of those years to engulf him.”

—H.P. Lovecraft, “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”

I

St. Peter’s Keys All Bloody

Of the many gifts that Timothy Childermass had received on his sixth birthday, his favorite one had been a kaleidoscope that had been a present from his father. This kaleidoscope, which his father had purchased at a local church bazaar for the grand total of $7.59, was encased in a cardboard tube whose outer surface was decorated with artwork of a Christian nature, mainly depicting scenes of martyrdom. These scenes included reproductions of Guido Reni’s 1616 painting of Saint Sebastian being shot with arrows (this being a work of art that had not only inspired Oscar Wilde but had also led Kochan, the narrator of Yukio Mishima’s 1948 novel
Confessions of a Mask
, to experience his first sexual ejaculation), Caravaggio’s 1616 painting
Crucifixion of St. Peter
(which portrayed St. Peter being crucified upside-down on an inverted, or Petrine cross), Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 19
th
century work
The Christian Martyr’s Last Prayer
(which displayed an Imperial Rome scene in which a small band of imprisoned Christians huddle together in prayer in the center of the Circus Maximus, with lions and tigers slowly approaching them for the kill), and, finally, Rembrandt’s 1625 painting
The Stoning of St. Stephen
, which depicted the Protomartyr being stoned to death by a mob of infuriated Jews following his trial before the Sanhedrin (this scene being taken from the New Testament’s “Acts of the Apostles”). It seemed a very odd and somewhat morbid way in which to decorate a child’s toy, but years later Timothy had done some research on the kaleidoscope and found out that it had been manufactured by a Waco, Texas-based company (named Mt. Carmel Curiosities) that specialized in the creation of Christian-themed children’s toys. Apparently, the illustrations on the front were to remind the child about the sacrifices that Christians are often demanded to make, while the beautiful colors within the tube symbolized the beauty of the human soul, something that can’t be seen on our outer forms. 

As a child, Timothy could often be found in his bedroom, gazing into this kaleidoscope as he held it up to the light. He loved watching the hypnotic patterns formed by the bits of colored stained glass that had been placed within the tube. He often felt like a tiny astronaut stranded on some alien world, staring up into a prismatic sky of fractalizing colors. Other times, he felt as if his kaleidoscope was no mere toy, but a sort of seraphic lachrymatory, a tear bottle that, in this case, contained tears that had been wept by the choirs of the angels themselves. For if an angel were in fact to weep, then surely their tears would resemble watery stained glass (or so Timothy thought, when he was a child: it should be noted here that he did possess a somewhat overactive imagination).

In any event, it was this kaleidoscope that got him interested in both the art of stained glass windows and also Christianity in general, and so it was perhaps no surprise that years later, as an adult, he would find himself mixed up in a sordid bit of business revolving around an old church and its artwork.

Although it had been many years since Timothy Childermass had broken away from the Catholic Church, he had never quite been able to exorcise his appreciation for Christian art and literature, the pomp and regalia of the Liturgy, or his love for many of the old churches associated with Christianity. Though quite liberal when it came to social issues, when the topic concerned itself with places of worship he was ultra-conservative, and it was his opinion that many churches built these days looked more like factories or gymnasiums than appropriate temples to pay homage to God. By far his least favorite modern churches were the so-called “megachurches,” which he considered to be less-than-divine eyesores.

Fortunately for him, it just so happened that the city he lived in, Thundermist, was a very old city that was also home to quite a few very old and very beautiful churches, many of which had been built by the hard-working and pious French-Canadian immigrants who had flocked to the city upon its foundation in the late 19th century. In the 1970’s, the city of Thundermist (which was located in Northern Rhode Island) began undergoing a massive renovation, to the extent that the city now bore little trace of its French heritage. But there had once been a time where the city had so many French people living there that it had been informally nicknamed “Little Quebec,” and where more people had spoken French as their first language than English, and the memory of these people lived on in the lovely churches they had erected. Back in the day, these churches had served as their sanctuaries, places that had given meaning and purpose to their tedious and hardscrabble lives (as many of these immigrants had barely made a decent living working in the dirty and dangerous textile mills that lined the banks of the Blackstone River, which cut through the center of the city and divided it into two diagonal halves).

Timothy himself was descended from these French-Canadian immigrants, and being something of a Francophile himself (he especially loved their literature: on his bookshelves one could find many titles by J.K. Huysmans, Jean Genet, Lautreamont, Pierre Guyotat, Charles Baudelaire, and Arthur Rimbaud), it was perhaps no great surprise that as Timothy grew older he began to find himself spending some of his free time wandering through the crumbling Catholic cemeteries that were located throughout the city, and every now and then even attending Mass at some of the old Catholic churches of Thundermist, Lamb’s Blood Church being one of them (which was built all the way back in the early 1870’s: it was the city’s very first church, in fact). Even though Timothy suspected, in his heart of hearts, that he could never return to Catholicism (as a gay man, he simply couldn’t justify being part of an organization that considered people such as himself to be “intrinsically disordered,” though he did kind of like the new Pope), he did try to lead as Christian a life as possible, in his own unorthodox way.

Of all the old churches that could be found in the city of Thundermist, the one that fascinated him the most was St. Durtal’s Church, which was located in the northern half of the city, on Broderbund Street, facing the Blackstone River. On the east side of the church was Locust Street, while on its west side was the rectory and, beyond that, a three-story office building named Plaza Center that housed a number of psychiatric practices and law offices. Timothy passed by this church every day while driving to his job at the public library on Main Street, and he always marveled at how it seemed to dwarf the local buildings around it, including a dumpy apartment building on Locust Street and a Tim Horton’s located on the street opposite it. The church was 200 feet long and 118 feet wide, built on a granite block foundation, its main body constructed of light-colored brick with cement stone trimmings. Like many old churches, it was built in the form of a large Roman cross, in the Modern French Renaissance style. Its architecture was Romanesque in design, inspired by the work of the 16th century architects Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola (who is perhaps best known for his Jesuit Church of the Gesù in Rome) and Andrea Palladio. The roof of St. Durtal’s was covered with slate and copper trimming, while the front of the church was flanked by two 160-foot-tall towers, each of which was topped by an eight-foot-tall copper gilded cross (the tower on the Locust Street side also had a belfry which housed three giant bells). Eternally brooding near the tops of these two towers were a number of grotesque and demonic gargoyles that bore a strong resemblance to the ones that can be found at Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris. There could be no doubt about it: St. Durtal’s Church was a truly impressive structure, and this building, which looked like something that had been transported into Thundermist from the Middle Ages itself, looked utterly incongruous placed as it was next to more modern-looking buildings.

Timothy was well aware of the history of the church. In June 1913, the Bishop of Providence, Rhode Island had given Father Marcus Duchamps permission to build a new church to meet the growing demands of Thundermist’s parishioners. In August of that year plans were drawn up by the architect Louis Fontaine, and that November ground was broken for excavation of the church’s foundation. On May 24, 1914, the church’s cornerstone was blessed, and by the fall of 1917 the church was almost completed. Finally, it was open to the public on February 17, 1918. As the years went by, the church underwent a gradual beautification process. Between the years of 1923 to 1925 forty stained glass windows were installed, and in 1928 local Redemptorist Fathers donated to the church a life-sized figure of Jesus on the Cross. And, most importantly, between the years of April of 1941 to the autumn of 1948 the interior of the church was painted by Professor Fausto Mancini, who had painted the entire church in the buon fresco technique. For many years, the church had served the needs of its community, and was a popular gathering place for the faithful of Thundermist.

That all changed in the year 2000, when the Diocese of Providence announced that it would be closing the church, on account of a dwindling number of parishioners and rising maintenance costs. The church closed down at the end of that year, and there was even talk of it being torn down entirely, a thought that horrified both its former parishioners and secular art lovers in equal measure. The building was saved in September of 2004, when the Diocese turned over the ownership of the church to a nonreligious-affiliated non-profit corporation that came to be known as the St. Durtal’s Arts & Cultural Center (SDACC for short). This corporation was dedicated to the restoration and preservation of St. Durtal’s Church, and they set about renovating the building and halting the progress of its decay. Even though Masses were no longer held at the church, the SDACC still held tours for the public every Sunday, from one to four in the afternoon. In addition, couples could also rent out the church as a place to hold their weddings.

Sadly, during his youth Timothy had never really had the pleasure of attending Mass at St. Durtal’s Church, as his family belonged to another parish (Our Lady of Sorrows, which was located across the street from a Stop & Shop supermarket that Timothy had worked at part time during his college years). Visually speaking, Our Lady of Sorrows Church had been a very modern and somewhat boring-looking church, nowhere near being a feast for the eyes like St. Durtal’s (though he had very much enjoyed listening to the sermons of Father Severin). However, he did have vague memories of attending a dead uncle’s Requiem Mass at St. Durtal’s in the mid 1990’s, and he recalled how he had been blown away by its epic beauty at the time. But that had been many years ago, and now all that Timothy was left with were hazy memories of the place, memories that lingered in his brain like the smell of incense.

One cloudy Sunday afternoon in early December 2013, Timothy decided to take a tour of the church to quench his longstanding curiosity about the place. As it was, he had that particular day off (as the library where he worked was closed during the weekends). In other words, he had nothing better to do, so why not?

As Timothy drove to the church, the instrumental version of the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s “Christmas Time is Here” playing softly on the radio, he would glance at his surroundings and realize that Christmas seemed kind of somber in Thundermist that year. It was almost as if all the candy canes were drooping, and the Christmas trees being sold were so sickly looking they made Charlie Brown’s tree look like the picture of health. Even the Santa at the mall had seemed seedy, less a jolly old elf and more Goya’s Saturn, more apt to devour the children perched on his lap than listen to what they wanted on the morning of December 25th. To take his mind off this gloominess, he reflected on his own lifelong spiritual quest. From the time of his birth to the age of 18, he had been a member of the Roman Catholic Church, and had dutifully attended Mass with his family every Sunday during that time period. But upon graduating high school and coming to the realization that he was gay, he found that he was unable to reconcile his sexual orientation with the beliefs of the religion he was raised in. So he had broken away from the Church. After a period of hazy agnosticism, he began to dabble in the occult during his second year of college. During this time period he had done tarot spreads, consulted Qabalistic correspondences charts, cast runes, used haunted Ouija tables to communicate with the dead, studied ancient alchemical texts, and invoked the Great God Pan into his fragile body. He had assumed the Death Posture, swallowed his own semen, studied the contents of his fecal matter for divination purposes, all in the name of the Great Work. He had even mastered the art of astral travel, and had projected himself into alien dimensions and achieved contact with fantastic and bizarre spirits and monsters (one of whom had resembled a multi-eyed tenticular monstrosity with antennas, similar to the one encountered by Spaceman Spiff on pg. 138 of the
Calvin & Hobbes
collection entitled
The Days are Just Packed
).

But then, after four or so years as a practicing occultist, he had suddenly lost all interest in the topic and had begun to drift more towards Buddhism and Eastern religion. He read the
Dhammapada
and the
Tao Te Ching
and the
Upanishads
and the
Bhagavad Gita
, at the same time studying the teachings of beloved gurus of Hinduism such as Sri Ramana Maharshi. Still, despite all of this, he had never been able to lose his fixation on Christianity. As Antonia White had observed in her book
The Hound and the Falcon
, “Nevertheless, if one has been brought up as a Catholic and for many years has unquestionably believed in its doctrine and practiced with some degree of fervor, the pull of the Church is very strong. It is like one’s native language and, though one may become denationalized, one cannot help reverting to it and even thinking in its terms... often I long to embrace it again—even to practice it without literally believing in it—if that is possible. But I find it an impossible problem.” These days, Timothy found his spiritual beliefs to be a weird combination of Christianity, Gnosticism, and Eastern religion. Or as he often stated, Eastern religions appealed to his intellect while Christianity appealed to his heart.