Roots of my fears, p.3
Roots of My Fears, page 3
II
Magdalene stared at the imposing stone-brick mansion belonging to her new husband’s family with awe-widened eyes—Ulọ-Gabriel! Holy Mother! I can’t believe that I’m actually looking at Ulọ-Gabriel, the house that Gabriel built! Once again, she pinched herself, wincing softly as her fingers pierced the pale skin of her exposed arm. Her wide eyes took in the gargantuan structure that had been one of the wonders of creation in the country for over five decades since it was first built by her late father-in-law, Gabriel, a man rumoured to have sold his soul to the devil. Even at the catholic secondary school she had attended, the reverend sisters used Gabriel and his incredible house as an example of the diabolical works of Satan and his evil minions.
Now, as she studied the high turrets, pointed arches, spires, stained-glass windows, gables, and decorated stone masonry, Magdalene knew that there must have been some truths in the stories she had heard about the infamous building—Surely, no mortal hands could have built this house in this country, not even the magical hands of the colonial masters! No wonder the villagers couldn’t burn it down during the famed Day of Disturbance.
Again, Magdalene shuddered as her mind frantically tried to retrieve every tiny bit of gossip that she’d heard about Ulọ-Gabriel in her nineteen years of existence. Rumour had it that the mysterious villager, Gabriel, had annihilated his entire kinsmen in a single day before confiscating their properties and lands for himself. They said that due to some hex, Gabriel was an only son of an only son of an only son. Yet, by the time he died, he had eight living sons and one daughter, who had died a mysterious death in her sleep.
Incredibly, all the sons were twin births, an unheard-of occurrence in the village. In just four pregnancies, Gabriel’s late wife had succeeded in birthing eight living sons. Another strange thing was that each of the eight sons was named Gabriel. Magdalene’s new husband was Gabriel-8, and she was the eighth and final bride to be brought into the notorious mansion said to have been built by demons. But more fantastical was the fact that all the Gabriels were born with deformed eyes, a black right eye and a blue left eye. Magdalene always struggled to hide an involuntary shudder each time she met the unsettling gaze of her new groom.
Village lore had it that nobody ever saw the stonemasons that built Gabriel’s imposing house. The villagers would go to sleep every night, only to wake up to a new addition to the huge structure. Until Ulọ-Gabriel came into existence, nobody ever knew that a hut could grow like a tree, reaching so high into the sky that it dwarfed a palm-tree. But that was exactly what Gabriel’s four-storey house did. Even when the villagers tried to stay awake and catch the invisible builders, they claimed a strange lethargy overtook them at the stroke of midnight, as if they were drugged by the invisible mist that always shrouded their village at that unholy hour. And in the morning, when they staggered from their huts, bleary-eyed like people suffering a Palmwine hangover, they would behold yet another major addition to the house, which continued to grow and rise till it reached its towering four-storey height.
Magdalene had heard from her classmates that Ulọ-Gabriel was built by the entire members of the occupying colonial forces, whose bodies were possessed by the ghosts of all the murdered sons of the Agu clan. They said that the hexed white colonists were stolen from their beds every night and transported by fearsome beasts on great wings to build the stupendous stone-brick house. They were later returned to their houses at the crack of dawn, tired, bruised, filthy, and dazed, unable to recount where they had been or what they had done.
And when the house was almost completed, villagers claimed to see it ablaze at exactly eight o’clock every night, with dazzling lights and wild drumming, even though there was no electricity in their remote village and the unfinished building was unoccupied. Rumour had it that the blazing electricity and drumming lasted for the final eight nights before the completion of the house and in those eight nights, eight villagers vanished, never again to be seen. Their families claimed to have seen them walking into Ulọ-Gabriel like hexed goats, drawn by an invisible and malignant force they could neither ignore nor resist. They never came out of the house once they entered, and yet, every search of the property failed to reveal the missing men.
The villagers concluded that their blood had been used to mix their flesh into the cement that glued the monstrously glorious house together. In their rage over their missing relatives, the villagers staged the famous riot known as The Day of Disturbance. On that fateful day, the entire population rose as one and marched with their torched woods and kerosene jars to burn down Ulọ-Gabriel and put an end to the deadly menace lurking inside the cursed house.
They say that Gabriel had stood in front of his gate watching their approach, an inscrutable smile on his granite face. He even opened the gates for the chanting villagers and waved them in. And when they finally doused the house in kerosene and set it aflame, the heavy stones used in its construction swallowed the flames, glowed an unearthly blood-hue, before spitting the fire straight back at its attackers.
Magdalene heard that a countless number of villagers died in front of the gleeful house on that fateful day, writhing on the floor as their burning bodies roasted underneath the blazing sun. And inside the house, the sound of manic drumming could be heard, invisible hands beating a macabre rhythm unknown to the villagers, a sound that filled them with terror as they abandoned the compound and scattered to every corner of the village. By the time the dead were buried, the entire population were finally cowered. Nobody ever went near the building again, not even when it was finally completed in its majestic glory.
As Magdalene gawked at the eight clock-like mouldings sculptured onto each of the eight spires atop Ulọ-Gabriel, it suddenly dawned on her that she was seeing a distinct pattern in the formidable structure, something that would elude a less discerning gaze. What she had thought were random decors were actually built in a distinctive order. Everything in the house was constructed in double sets of fours, from the arched stained-glass windows to the triangular gables on each floor of the four-storey mansion. Even the numbers on the clock-like decorations on the pinnacles ended at eight.
Suddenly, something, an inexplicable knowing, told her that when she finally stepped foot inside the building, she would find that the rooms were equally in sets of fours, all equalling the number eight she now saw on the incomplete clocks—Sweet Mary! What is the meaning of these signs? Are they occultic signs, some demonic numbers perhaps? Holy Mary have mercy on my soul!
Magdalene shuddered, as once again, she allowed her mind to recall the final bit of lore she had heard about the infamous building. They said that Gabriel died on the very day he completed his stupendous mansion and the only time he entered the house he built was on the day he died—as a corpse. His body was laid out inside one of the eight massive living rooms at his wake, which was only attended by his immediate family members and a handful of brave villagers whose curiosity overwhelmed their terror of the cursed house and its fearsome owner. Even more astonishing, a singular white man, said to have owned the reddest hair and bluest eyes on any human, attended the burial. Nobody knew who the white man was; nobody knew how Gabriel had forged a relationship with a white person, not even the white man himself, who had stared at Gabriel’s corpse in silence with a dazed expression on his face. He left as soon as he saw Gabriel’s body and was never seen again.
That was also the last time Gabriel was ever seen. By morning, his corpse had vanished, supposedly taken away by the demons he had sold his soul to. There was no grave hosting his body even though his family had constructed a huge white mausoleum inscribed with his name to convince the world that his corpse still existed. The plaque bore the famed epitaph:
“Here lies Gabriel, only surviving son of Agu of Onovo clan.
Father of eight sons and a proud son of Ukari village.
He departed the world at the unready age of 35 years.
May the ancestors welcome his soul with pride.”
Some villagers wondered why his family failed to use his known name of Ike-wa-Agu instead of the foreign name of Gabriel, a name nobody knew how, where, or why it was acquired. Even Gabriel’s death was shrouded in mystery. All the villagers knew was that they saw him strong and hearty the day before he died. In fact, they would recall that it was the first time they had seen the usually stone-faced enigma laugh out loud, although the sound of his unfamiliar laughter set chills of dread in them rather than cheer. It sounded more like a sinister cackle than genuine mirth, a mocking crow filled with icy malignancy and menace.
Gabriel had walked around every corner of the village greeting the stunned villagers, smiling and laughing and even shaking hands with those brave enough to make physical contact with him. Yet, by the next day, he was dead, and with his death came the sudden deaths of eight villagers, eight strong young men who had retired to bed the previous night in perfect health but failed to come out of their rooms the next day.
Once again, tongues wagged, yet nothing was done. Even in death, Gabriel continued to rule the village with the same icy grip of terror that had been his trademark in life. The villagers never forgot that all it took was a look from Gabriel’s icy eyes to send an enemy to a self-inflicted death. And now, Gabriel’s eight sons occupied the infamous house he built with their wives and children. The villagers prayed fervently that none of them had yoked themselves to the same diabolical powers that had possessed their father’s soul, despite the cursed hue of their eyes.
As Magdalene recalled all the unsavoury stories about her new husband’s infamous family, she felt a sudden shudder overwhelm her body—Sweet Mother Mary! I’ve now joined the damned fraternity of this accursed house! But, why? Why me? Why did Reverend Mother Elizabeth Rose accept Gabriel-8’s proposal and send me into this very house she had deemed as the devil’s handiwork? Is it because of the stupendous money the family paid to the school or is it because I’m a tainted orphan whom nobody will ever marry, unless it’s somebody like Gabriel-8, whose name is as cursed as mine?
Magdalene had always been aware of her unsavoury antecedent, the fact that her mother was a witchdoctor who had been seduced by the white priest that had come to convert her to the foreign Christian religion. Their villagers had lynched her mother when Magdalene was born with the fair skin and silky hair of the white people. They would have killed the infant if they didn’t fear the repercussions from the gunpowder of the colonists. Instead, they had dumped her at the small, white-washed church-bungalow inhabited by her real father. The priest in turn had abandoned her with the nuns who raised her in the convent until she became an assistant teacher in the convent school. It was no secret that no decent man would marry this bastard of a traitorous witchdoctor and a white priest, save a man like Gabriel-8, the last son of the fearsome hermit who built the most infamous house in the entire country, if not the world.
“Good wife, why do you tarry? Hurry and enter your new house,” Gabriel-8 called out to Magdalene, motioning her inside with a nod. His mismatched blue-black eyes seemed to see right through her thoughts and Magdalene gave a nervous smile as she started to comply.
A figure materialised before her, a towering woman with the darkest skin and fiercest face littered with carved Nsibidi inscriptions. The suddenness of her appearance, coupled with a sizzling, unearthly energy in her fiery gaze told Magdalene that she was in the presence of a powerful spectre. The ghost barred her entrance, its arms wide, eyes glowing. Magdalene stumbled back, her heart pounding so hard she thought she would faint—Mother Mary! Oh, Mother Mary…
“Daughter, listen to your blood-mother and obey,” the ghost said in a booming voice that reverberated inside her head like drums. “Do not enter into this house without first seeking the permission of the owner. Otherwise, you do so at your own risk. Pledge your soul right now to Gabriel that he may let you into his house without malice.”
The spectre vanished before Magdalene could catch her breath. When next she heard her husband call her name, she almost collapsed from shock. Then, sudden rage overtook her—Pledge my soul to a pagan? Never! Ha! My mother indeed! Just another savage pagan entity doing the bidding of her kind. She quickly raised her hand to the rosaries she wore around her neck, stroking the beads with frantic fingers—Oh, sweet Mother Mary, I call on you to come to the aid of your daughter and save me from whatever satanic and pagan forces that reside inside this accursed house. I ask this in the holy name of your beloved son, Jesus Christ, Amen!
With a strong resolve, Magdalene took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and stepped into the house that Gabriel built.
A fury-wind like nothing she had ever experienced came at her with such force that it knocked her out. The wind seemed to wear a shadowy human form, and as darkness stole her consciousness, she thought she saw a smirking face carved of cold granite. It leered at her with black icy eyes and before she could scream, a new visage superimposed itself over it, a white face with the reddest hair and terrified blue eyes that wept endless tears of sorrow.
A savage battle ensued as each face sought dominance over the other in a whirring match of overlapping features—black-white, white-black, black-white, on and on and on. In a blink, the two faces quickly merged and Magdalene saw a brutal cold mask that bore an eerie resemblance to her husband superimpose itself over the other pale and tragic face.
Before the terror-gasp left her mouth, unholy hands started to tear at her clothes, exposing her secret parts. Even as she fought her attackers, she felt her body violated, ravaged by an entity she could neither fight nor resist—G--Gabriel! Oh, sweet Mother Mary, save thy handmaiden from Satan’s hold…
III
The next time Magdalene awoke, she was lying on a plush sofa, surrounded by her anxious husband and her new family, a family of great numbers, with several sets of twins among the children she saw—Thank you, Mother Mary! It was just a horrible nightmare brought on by the heat and everything else! She heaved a sigh of relief as she made to get up.
A sudden swoon toppled her back to the sofa as she felt a painful throbbing in her groin, a searing pain that resembled a knife-cut in her vagina. And in that instant, Magdalene knew the terrifying truth—Oh, Holy Mother! Oh, my accursed soul! I am truly damned!
Exactly nine months after she first stepped into Ulọ-Gabriel, Magdalene gave birth to a set of twins, all boys. Except they weren’t the normal twins seen in the family, but octuplets; the first of such births ever witnessed in all the region. Unlike all the other children in the Agu family, the numerous twin nephews and nieces of her husband, Gabriel-8, all the octuplets bore the same mismatched eyes of Gabriel’s eight sons.
Magdalene did not survive the birth. She took one look into the black-blue eyes of her sons as they wailed their first plaintive cries to announce their humanity and gasped herself into eternal silence.
THE FACES AT PINE DUNES
RAMSEY CAMPBELL
I
When his parents began arguing Michael went outside. He could still hear them through the thin wall of the caravan. “We needn’t stop yet,” his mother was pleading.
“We’re stopping,” his father said. “It’s time to stop wandering.”
But why should she want to leave here? Michael gazed about the caravan park – the Pine Dunes Caravanserai. The metal village of caravans surrounded him, cold and bright in the November afternoon. Beyond the dunes ahead he heard the dozing of the sea. On the three remaining sides a forest stood: remnants of autumn, ghosts of colour, were scattered over the trees; distant branches displayed a last golden mist of leaves. He inhaled the calm. Already he felt at home.
His mother was persisting. “You’re still young,” she told his father.
She’s kidding! Michael thought. Perhaps she was trying flattery. “There are places we haven’t seen,” she said wistfully.
“We don’t need to. We need to be here.”
The slowness of the argument, the voices muffled by the metal wall, frustrated Michael; he wanted to be sure that he was staying here. He hurried into the caravan. “I want to stay here. Why do we have to keep moving all the time?”
“Don’t come in here talking to your mother like that,” his father shouted.
He should have stayed out. The argument seemed to cramp the already crowded space within the caravan; it made his father’s presence yet more overwhelming. The man’s enormous wheezing body sat plumped on the settee, which sagged beneath his weight; his small frail wife was perched on what little of the settee was unoccupied, as though she’d been squeezed tiny to fit. Gazing at them, Michael felt suffocated. “I’m going out,” he said.
“Don’t go out,” his mother said anxiously; he couldn’t see why. “We won’t argue any more. You stay in and do something. Study.”
“Let him be. The sooner he meets people here, the better.”
Michael resented the implication that by going out he was obeying his father. “I’m just going out for a walk,” he said. The reassurance might help her; he knew how it felt to be overborne by the man.
At the door he glanced back. His mother had opened her mouth, but his father said “We’re staying. I’ve made my decision.” And he’d lie in it, Michael thought, still resentful. All the man could do was lie there, he thought spitefully; that was all he was fat for. He went out, sniggering. The way his father had gained weight during the past year, his coming to rest in this caravan park reminded Michael of an elephant’s arrival at its graveyard.
It was colder now. Michael turned up the hood of his anorak. Curtains were closing and glowing. Trees stood, intricately precise, against a sky like translucent papery jade. He began to climb the dunes towards the sea. But over there the sky was blackened; a sea dark as mud tossed nervously and flopped across the bleak beach. He turned towards the forest. Behind him sand hissed through grass.
