Read Online The Dark Boatman: Tales of Horror and the Cthulhu Mythos by John Glasby - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John Glasby
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were so ghastly and terrifying he had decided against such a course.
Typical as the tales were, speaking of evil rites that had been performed in the manor since early in the Fourteenth Century, possibly far earlier than that—although the more remote history was shrouded in the mists of antiquity and only scattered fragments remained in existence—they did not repel me as Carrington clearly expected. Rather I found them to be oddly stimulating, exciting my imagination. One theme ran persistently through the accounts that had been handed down verbally through the ages. Something unutterably evil had either existed in the house in remote times, or had been born into the Warhope family—or Warr Hoppe —as it had been known during the Fourteenth Century. There were accounts of strange pestilences which had affected the surrounding countryside, of terrible and abnormal growths that had sprouted up from the once fertile soil on top of the cliffs and a little to landward, and of things that had been cast ashore on wintry nights onto the narrow strip of sandy beach at the foot of the cliffs whenever the storms raged along the coast. Carrington had carried out extensive investigations into the possible identity of these odd remains, but with only a limited success. A search among the church records going back for almost four hundred years had revealed isolated, but cunningly concealed, accounts of creatures buried in unhallowed ground or taken out in boats at dead of night and thrown into the sea; but these records were, he felt sure, merely hints of other things, dark and evil things, spawned out of pits deep and remote and unimaginable.
In one ancient chronicle, there was reference to the marriage of one Henry Warhope to Nylene Poiseder in 1521, a union that appeared to have lasted less than a year, ending with Henry Warhope being tried for the abominable murder of his wife. What had been brought to light during the trial by his peers was not given in the chronicle, but the verdict had been a complete acquittal for the condemned man.
“There was something given in the evidence then which they did not repeat to the outside world,” Carrington said. “Something the church prohibited. This fact, that so many things have been deliberately hidden and suppressed, is the most annoying thing about the whole business. It can be explained on the assumption that there is nothing more to this than the ramblings of superstitious peasants, or, as I believe, the events were of such a nauseous nature, were so far outside even the knowledge of the church and the learned men of that period, that they had no other course open to them.”
I assured him I was not in the least perturbed by the stories, even if, in those far-off days, they may have held an element of truth. These things belonged to the realm of spectral lore, and at that time, I was a pronounced sceptic in such matters. Those who search after vague and unspecified horrors spoke of in old legends will often haunt strange, out-of-the-way places; go down into black, slime-covered vaults where catacombs are hewn out of the solid rock wall, linger by moon-infested night in haunted rooms and turrets where sky-rearing towers thrust spectral fingers to a cloud-wracked sky. They see dark, lycanthropic-like figures that flicked through forests of hideous trees among the Hartz Mountains, or midnight things silhouetted against the face of the moon and hidden by day in rotting coffins tucked away from prying eyes in vaults deep beneath the vampire-ridden Rhine castles.
During the six days I spent in Bude, I learned all that Carrington had discovered concerning Faxted Manor, and by the end of my stay, had pieced together a reasonably full story of the house’s black medieval history from the date when the first records were available, to the time when the last occupiers had left, suddenly, and for some unknown reason.
Then, on October 3, 1932, I moved into the manor. Three servants had
Typical as the tales were, speaking of evil rites that had been performed in the manor since early in the Fourteenth Century, possibly far earlier than that—although the more remote history was shrouded in the mists of antiquity and only scattered fragments remained in existence—they did not repel me as Carrington clearly expected. Rather I found them to be oddly stimulating, exciting my imagination. One theme ran persistently through the accounts that had been handed down verbally through the ages. Something unutterably evil had either existed in the house in remote times, or had been born into the Warhope family—or Warr Hoppe —as it had been known during the Fourteenth Century. There were accounts of strange pestilences which had affected the surrounding countryside, of terrible and abnormal growths that had sprouted up from the once fertile soil on top of the cliffs and a little to landward, and of things that had been cast ashore on wintry nights onto the narrow strip of sandy beach at the foot of the cliffs whenever the storms raged along the coast. Carrington had carried out extensive investigations into the possible identity of these odd remains, but with only a limited success. A search among the church records going back for almost four hundred years had revealed isolated, but cunningly concealed, accounts of creatures buried in unhallowed ground or taken out in boats at dead of night and thrown into the sea; but these records were, he felt sure, merely hints of other things, dark and evil things, spawned out of pits deep and remote and unimaginable.
In one ancient chronicle, there was reference to the marriage of one Henry Warhope to Nylene Poiseder in 1521, a union that appeared to have lasted less than a year, ending with Henry Warhope being tried for the abominable murder of his wife. What had been brought to light during the trial by his peers was not given in the chronicle, but the verdict had been a complete acquittal for the condemned man.
“There was something given in the evidence then which they did not repeat to the outside world,” Carrington said. “Something the church prohibited. This fact, that so many things have been deliberately hidden and suppressed, is the most annoying thing about the whole business. It can be explained on the assumption that there is nothing more to this than the ramblings of superstitious peasants, or, as I believe, the events were of such a nauseous nature, were so far outside even the knowledge of the church and the learned men of that period, that they had no other course open to them.”
I assured him I was not in the least perturbed by the stories, even if, in those far-off days, they may have held an element of truth. These things belonged to the realm of spectral lore, and at that time, I was a pronounced sceptic in such matters. Those who search after vague and unspecified horrors spoke of in old legends will often haunt strange, out-of-the-way places; go down into black, slime-covered vaults where catacombs are hewn out of the solid rock wall, linger by moon-infested night in haunted rooms and turrets where sky-rearing towers thrust spectral fingers to a cloud-wracked sky. They see dark, lycanthropic-like figures that flicked through forests of hideous trees among the Hartz Mountains, or midnight things silhouetted against the face of the moon and hidden by day in rotting coffins tucked away from prying eyes in vaults deep beneath the vampire-ridden Rhine castles.
During the six days I spent in Bude, I learned all that Carrington had discovered concerning Faxted Manor, and by the end of my stay, had pieced together a reasonably full story of the house’s black medieval history from the date when the first records were available, to the time when the last occupiers had left, suddenly, and for some unknown reason.
Then, on October 3, 1932, I moved into the manor. Three servants had
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