LABORIOUS

HUEY TWIRPGIRDLE POURED LABORIOUSLY over some obscure manuscript, a tome rendered into the Germanic from the original Latin, the author reputedly a Carthusian monk of a most holy countenance, although there was some question as to sanity.

Huey Twirpgirdle pushed back from his studies, the strange symbols and words of the frenzied calligrapher dancing before his eyes in Bacchanal waltz, orbs not so strained as in need of green tea. The Louis XVI chair scraped rawly across the floorboards, the screeching sound seemingly absorbed into the mouldering den. Huey Twirpgirdle looked about the library: the velvet curtains and cloth tapestries, the damp plushness of the tasseled pillows and cushions, the slightly rotting woodwork of cherry and walnut, the distressed and dusty furniture of ironwood and oak, rosewood and cedar, the wrought-iron girandole with adder-wax candles, the oddiments of ivory and jade and grotesquely carved hemlock, an ancient overstuffed loveseat, all somehow mauve and pansy-purple beyond the edge of conscious vision. He felt the tall bookcases and old volumes and hoarded parchments exude a cruel sensuality.

The temperature pitched. The candlelight flickered and went out. A vast tenebrous shape filled the room suddenly tomblike; fear flowed from it like the breath of a blind-date: dark, discordant, a matter for metaphysical discussion rather than lengthy debate in mere ectoplasmic theory. The lachrymose phantasm, dreary beyond the limits of human Faith, chilling the bone of reason and the marrow of imagination, malice glowing with evil emanation, moved towards Huey Twirpgirdle, embalming fluid pulsing through veins rapidly contracting inwards.

Nonetheless, knowing aforehand, as I did, being a fairly well-educated and traveled man, thus, as you may have wondered, being able to keep such an objective posture as I have struck, that the butler did it, I found myself at leisure to devote my entire thought, my entire concentration, if you will, to the incredible tale told to me by Mr. Twirpgirdle in a state never straying far from total derangement, indeed plunging dangerously, as it were, into that fascinating new realm of schizophrenia of which only the borders and great mountain ranges have been mapped, the valleys and vast interiors as yet uncharted and to my mind not to be deliberately sought out for motives of mere profit, but perhaps you shall yet judge for yourself.

History, if for no other reason, would merit interest in this case, I think, it having precedent and yet expanding the very frontiers of natural law. I will be blunt: Mr. Twirpgirdle was haunted. Or I should say, he had the worst case of manifestations I have ever witnessed, it being a hobby of mine, not quite to the same degree as picture-framing.

The cunning of the evil thing that visited Mr. Twirpgirdle, for I am convinced it was an actual evil entity unto itself, having no medium, disobeying all heretofore accepted tenets of parapsychology, what the less knowledgeable call the occult or even magic.

The night of October the 23rd was the sort of night one only reads about in books: wet, wild, woolly a rather robust acquaintance of mine from America would say; leaves skidding by on their journey down the road like so many lost souls; trees standing in naked dignity, watchful yet growing sleepy; the occasional stir and rustle of a foraging night-creature. Cloak draped closely about him, Huey Twirpgirdle staggered down the cobblestone street heedless of the puddles, feeling the effects of several pewter tankards of stout beer he had tossed off to lessen the chill of the evening.

Although the rain had stopped for a spell, the mist was thick, dampening and chilling also, and thunder rolled off in the distance. Huey Twirpgirdle hurried past the darkened doorways and alleys but a sudden blast of lightening illuminated all in stark clarity. For an instant Huey Twirpgirdle thought he saw, like some hellish kinetograph, as my American friend tells me a Mr. Edison is doing marvelous things with, a skeleton jumbled in a dishonourable ragheap up against the doorway of a particularly ill-kept smeltery. But upon shaking clear his head, Huey Twirpgirdle discovered it to be an old man, a huddled wretch in a ragged grey overcoat, discovered it to be no one more ill-boding than the village beggar who was kept on in pity and memory of what he once was and the service that he had rendered.

For this was old Doc Birney, Doctor Beechcombe Newgate Ashbury Whippleton Fenster Birney, M.D., D.C.S., D.D., LL.D., M.S., Ph.D., Th.D., whose research in entomology fused with the ethological practices and were the eventual cause of his downfall. Indeed, Dr. Birney boasted the finest dung beetle collection in the northern hemisphere. Derived from these pursuits was the nickname ignominiously bestowed upon him, and now he was referred to as Bugs Birney, and the bar-hags would cackle at the name.

Doc Birney spoke in a high, rasping voice, “Sir, could ye spare twenty quid for a broken man in need of an embracement of tea?”

“I would be only too glad to oblige my man,” said Huey Twirpgirdle, “but tea and cakes and a meat pie besides account to no more than three and a half quid in your nomenclature.”

“Aye, sir,” replied Bugs Birney with a nod and a wink, not yet totally bereft of his wits, “but I'm a big tipper!”

Huey Twirpgirdle continued on to his apartment, a modest affair of few rooms but well laid out and decorated comfortably. He had then his supper, consisting of beef broth and barley, a slab of strong cheese, and a dark loaf and butter, accompanied by a bottle of heady Burgundy. His dinner finished and cleared away, Huey Twirpgirdle smoking deeply by this time, the rorulence of the elements howling outside, stroked a sleek black cat that had come to sit on his lap and purr and preen, sentient green eyes sparking in the firelight.

Huey Twirpgirdle reflected on his evening's affairs. He had sat with Sir Henry Bascombe Heathrow Lamb, a cousin of the poet although they were estranged on philosophical grounds, over canapes and aperitifs off in a close corner between two potted palms. It was an occasion society thrusts upon us, and one cannot refuse, and after all the varied entertainments had been had left him feeling empty and pensive. But he had enjoyed his discourse with Sir Henry, an animated though largish man with a proficiency of auburn facial hair and four scars under his left eye, trophies of a leopard hunt, the taxidermed specimen on display at the Royal British Museum of Natural History in London. Indeed, they had spoken long of the seven spheres of man: the spirit, the mind, the soul, the life force, the astral body, the physical body, and desire.

Huey Twirpgirdle awoke at the first light of day, and the embers being still hot in the fireplace, he stoked up the coals and fried himself some eggs and rashers of bacon. He stood a pot of coffee on the hob. He lit some tobacco in his Meerschaum pipe with a punk from the hearth and settled comfortably into the inglenook.

When he had done, Huey Twirpgirdle quit his abode. Upon his return, he burst across the threshold, arms laden with packages and parcels of many shapes and sizes. He wore an outlandish costume – a black beret tilted at an odd angle on his newly barbered head, a grey artist's smock, pockets bristling with brushes, black hosiery, and robin's egg blue slippers. “I've been struck!” said Huey Twirpgirdle to the cat as he set down his bundles and bounded into the room.

The cat flicked its tail.

“Nay, I have not been to the opium house. I am not addled with the sweet ambrosia of the poets. Yet pulsing with the artist's sorrow I am, that perhaps drives them to excesses and the oblivion of intoxicants.”

And with that, Huey Twirpgirdle unpacked the strange acquisitions: palette, large wooden easel, art paper, drawing paper, stationeries of all description, sketchbooks, sketchpads, knives, spatulas, pencils, crayons, chalks and charcoals, paints, creams, oils, thinners, and also much clay for modeling, mallets, chisels, and hammers for the carving of wood and the sculpting of stone. An expansive drafting table and workbench were erected and he had also the tools of the engineer: T-squares, slide-rules, protractors and compasses. When these were laid out, he proceeded to dispose of the furniture to make room for the piano that was scheduled to arrive that afternoon.

The apartment was given over to the easels and work-tables, and the accumulating detritus of these devices. Clay models and roughly hewn carvings were scattered everywhere, some twisted and broken, some in exquisite detail. Manuscripts and notebooks and musical compositions littered the floor. The studio was stacked with canvasses and drawings, some framed, some painted over, some unfinished with pale colours as of a wraith-world. The works were primitive and hurried, yet fraught with menace.

Huey Twirpgirdle had not eaten, he had not slept, producing only, always creating, until the execution was become a hindrance to his ideas and visions. He sat at the piano in the dead of night, his fingers convulsing across the keys as if some electric current held him in a magnetic trance, a state such as that induced by the Austrian physician, Franz Mesmer, so that he could not pull away but each contact was a new experience in pain and terror, as a lamentation to an Inquisitor to hasten the end.

Huey Twirpgirdle poised over the drafting-board, sat suddenly upright and turned to the sunbathing cat. He let his head fall into his hands. “Did you know that in my friend Peter Roget's dictionary, the heading ART comes after MISREPRESENTATION?” Huey Twirpgirdle brought his fist down hard on the table. “I can do no more with these crippling implements of pen and brush. I must bypass the distractions of the third dimension. Time and space will yield their mastery as I pass into planes of consciousness where I shall become a divining rod for forces of imagination not even Keats or Byron hinted at. Ah, the poor mortal artist trapped in a cage of gold and knowing only in his deathrattle that there is no key.” The cat yawned. “I have an errand that will not wait,” said Huey Twirpgirdle.

The hooves of the bay hackney plodding funereally, Huey Twirpgirdle climbed a last steep slope and emerged from an evil wood animate with creeping mosses and brightly coloured fungi, zoetic with poisonous mushrooms and toadstools deadly to the touch. Gargoyles leered above him from the ramparts of a decadent castle. The crumbling citadels and broken parapets and cracked battlements wavered amid the sulfurous fumes and mists that seeped from the ground and rose up to occultate the moon, a magnetic axis in the full. Shrill yelps and guttural barking broke out about him, howlings and the plaintive wailings of lamias and werefolk. Furtive scufflings on the flaked stones and thorny undergrowth drew close. And in the darkening night, luminous points of ruby and emerald enmity sparkled from the penumbra of wood and shadow.

Two large portals were cut into the grey bricks on either side of the portcullis, and liverwort and scarlet pimpernel twined about the choking lattices. Two great doors of oak shod with iron, hung on iron hinges driven into the very rock. Huey Twirpgirdle struck the cast-iron knocker, in the shape of Marley's ghost, three times. The doors slowly swung inwards. He came into a wide foyer, torches sputtering in caged brackets casting wavering shadows on the faded flower print wallpaper. Two spiral staircases of worn stone without handrails led from the back of the greatroom to pillared loggias overlooking the central court. Huey Twirpgirdle could discern towerhouses at the four corners of the bastion, campaniles connected by low tunnels to the main structure, giving him the impression of being inside some nightmarish chesspiece.

Behind a counter sat a squat, corpulent teenager clothed in black leather. Neon purple hair spiked about her head in wild frizzes and knots. Her face was livid with suppurating blemishes. Her sallow cheeks sunk into a lipless slit of a mouth, and a fleshy growth appeared where a nose should have been, gaping hirsute nostrils adorned with piercings. Her face contorted into what can only be construed as a smile and Huey Twirpgirdle noted that the yellow teeth manifested by the effort were jagged and caked. Huey Twirpgirdle found her quite attractive.

Huey Twirpgirdle surveyed the racks of greeting cards and shelves of gift items that filled the space. “Welcome to Hellmark,” said the salesclerk.

After making his purchases and loaded with packages, the salesgirl asked Huey Twirpgirdle, "Can I help you out?"

"Thank you," said Huey Twirpgirdle. "My conveyance is parked right out front. I'm driving the Quasi-Moto."

Upon returning to his lodgement, Huey Twirpgirdle began to clear away the offal of his artistic dementia and righting the furniture that had been jumbled into corners. He sorted out the bags and parcels and set about bunches of Indian corn and a tabletop scarecrow. There were accordion centerpieces of black cats and witches, and cardboard cutouts of owls and haunted houses. He had there garlands of leaves for the table, and swags for the doors and windows. He set out crystal dishes of Mary Janes and orange and black wax paper wrapped candies. He lit black and blood orange candles. He brought out varnished gourds preserved from previous years and placed ceramic leaves and pumpkins about the space. A fresh custard pie sat cooling on a wire rack as hard apple cider warmed on the stove. He hung chains in the hallway like a curtain.

“You see,” said Huey Twirpgirdle to the cat who was busily batting a ball of tissue paper across the floor, “anyone can paint or compose or write, there is nothing to these. But to tastefully decorate, ah, there's the rub!”

But something was amiss. Amid all the festiveness, an angst gripped Huey Twirpgirdle. He settled back into an overstuffed wingchair and tugged his red velour smoking jacket closer about him. A handsomely bound volume embossed in gold, inscribed and autographed by E.A. Poe, lay across his lap. He read the words with his eyes but not with his mind, his mind's eye focused on the universe between the lines:

"Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch – as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? - from the covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow? But, as in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been."

Huey Twirpgirdle was aroused by an unaccountable horripilation on the back of his neck, the goosebumps raising the hair on his head. A stale, antiseptic odour permeated the room, the prophylactic smell of codeine tinctured the air. He felt the clamminess of the sick room, the sour despondency of the sanitarium, as an effluvium, the offensive exhalation of some doleful spirit. Huey Twirpgirdle slumped back into the chair, gripping the armrests with trembling hands. He sighed deeply, and stared into the flickering face of his jack o'lantern on the mantelpiece. It slowly came to him that there was purpose behind those eyes. Huey Twirpgirdle sank deeper into his ottoman. The antique grandfather clock struck midnight ushering in All Hallows Eve. Huey Twirpgirdle stuck his knuckles in his eyes, but imperceptibly the blessed realm of Morpheus offered him repose.

When he came to his senses, Huey Twirpgirdle found himself gagged, naked, and securely bound to a medieval cucking-stool. A short solid black man with a golden hoop through his right ear, bald shiny pate, teeth gleaming like ivory, full red lips, stood before him in nothing other than a loincloth, hands on his hips, a spectacular sapphire stone set in a silver band on the medius of his left hand. He braced himself on stout thick legs corded with muscle and let forth a great laughing and his whole body shook with joviality.

The ebony cavalier laughed again, but not at Huey Twirpgirdle, there was only friendship in that deep resonance. “I am Bendy, Ned Bendy, most just call me Old Ned. Let me tell you a story, nay better yet, a tale.

The voice was music, the words poetry.

“I studied under von Goethe and apprenticed under Herr Sigmund. I am the master of hypnosis and the pupil of hysteria. I have undertaken the analysis of dreams and the scholastics of trauma. I am the manipulator of psychic energies. I invade the spontaneous flow of thought and devour the infant. I revel in the defections of Adler and Jung. I am conqueror of religion and mythology. Art and literature are enslaved to me!”

Huey Twirpgirdle began to comprehend the depth of his guilt.

“Yes, we shall be good friends, you and I.”

This time the laughing was cruel, like the small wickedness of children. Huey Twirpgirdle swooned and the laughing ceased. Old Ned played only to an audience. In the quietus that followed, Huey Twirpgirdle heard his own heart beating.

“That too shall soon be mine,” said Old Ned once more peaceful and serene. “We need entertainment to lighten the mood,” and with a clap of his hands, a dark pool opened in the floor at Huey Twirpgirdle's feet. "This is the pool of Phobias. I can produce anything, since that's where the money is. Do you like rats?”

The pool suddenly became a deep vat roiling with Rattus Norvegicus, grey, coarse-haired hellspawn, spitting and screaking. The stool began to lean forward under its own motorium, teetering on the brink.

“Snakes? We have snakes.”

The vat churned with ophidian coldness, serpents coiling, hollow fangs dripping seductively. “Did you know that the history of the word venom can be traced back to the Latin?” said Old Ned. “Venenum it was – love potion.” Old Ned stood lost in some fair memory, but came back with a quick laugh. “Oh, but you don't like snakes? Pardon-moi.”

And with a wave of his arm, the pool gauzed over with cobwebs teeming with arachnidans. “Could you fall for me?”said Old Ned with a wry smile, cocking an eyebrow. Huey Twirpgirdle gripped the very edge of the stool with gluteal muscles he didn't even know he had. Old Ned slapped him on the back, quite jocularly, and Huey Twirpgirdle plunged into the abyss.

Huey Twirpgirdle braced himself for he knew not what horror or pain. For a breathless eternity he felt nothing except air rushing past him, and then something that crackled and crunched broke his fall. He opened his eyes to discover that he had landed in a great pile of russet and wine and marigold and maize leaves. He was on the outskirts of a vast forest of oak and he saw the emanation of a fire at some distance within the woods. At length, loosening his bonds, he crept close enough to peer out from behind the bole of an antiquitous beech. A bonfire exulted in the center of a wide clearing in the trees. The flicking tongues of crimson and cobalt jubilated in the refracting oculii of a noble assemblage.

A gaunt figure, taller than the rest, hoary and nimble-fingered hands uplifted to the uttermost moon, stood before a broad dolmen, an alter of stone. The frontal was carved with strange symbols: crosses, swastikas, and three-leafed trefoils. Two ancient timbers flanked the dolmen, august oaks arrayed in thick, green mistletoe leaves with luminescent pearl-like berries. The Archdruid (for these could be no other than the venerable sorcerers and wizards of the Isle of Man, the priests and prophets of the Celts, the Keltoi, the Lofty Ones) wore a great dark blue mantle, chevrons and spirals embroidered in gold and silver. A silver neckring, ornamented with patterns of ferns, the two open ends fashioned with the golden heads of owls, adorned his throat.

Aromatic smoke rose from incense cups on the altar, the cisterns enameled in bands of waterfowl in red and yellow and blue and green. The Archdruid, attended by his prophetesses as he celebrated this high sylvan ceremony, summoned the earth gods and woodland genii and heavenly deities which contested with Saman, the Nether Lord, who sought to raise the dead on this last day of the Celtic year. The necromancers recited the litany of the cosmos and chanted the magic invocations that revealed the hidden secrets of the animals of the forest, and the inviolable powers of the plants of the heath. All at once, the great Priest lifted up his voice and the murmurs of the others receded.

“He's making a direct appeal to the Druid deity, Muck-Olla,” said a hooded figure who had stood unnoticed just in front of Huey Twirpgirdle's hiding place."The head muckity-muck, you might say. My name is Hain,” he said sitting down on a tree stump next to Huey Twirpgirdle, “Sam Hain.”

The moon sank behind the trees. Now a gathering of men and women, and also many children, held convocation around the bonfire. The Priest took a chalice of ram's blood and raised up the cup whereupon the congregation cried out as one, “Master, help us!” All the congress came forth to receive their communion.

The diabolical mass concluded. but the Chthonian worship continued as the celebrants fell upon the banquet tables. The boards were laden with flesh, butter, bread, cheese, and drink. There was no salt.

“Salt, which figureth out wisdom and understanding, they eat not,” said Sam Hain. Huey Twirpgirdle shot him a look, but Sam Hain just shrugged and turned back to watch the merrymaking. All took their places and the feast commenced with much lascivious talk and idle dalliance until all were sated. Then the foul liquors began to have their effect and the women danced in a frenzied ring, back to back and in other absurd manner. Music was provided by some of the idolators, as viols and other instruments were brought thither by those that were skilled to play them.

“These witches must be stopped!” said Huey Twirpgirdle sickened by the utter humanity of the scene.

“WITCHES! WITCHES! Did you say WITCHES?” cried Sam Hain. “No wiccan in history ever acted like that. Only a witch would try to cast off suspicion by denouncing others. YOU must be a witch!”

“WITCH!” cursed Sam Hain.

“WITCH!” he spat.

All the revelry ceased. As one body they turned to stare at Huey Twirpgirdle who with a shock realized he was still naked.

“Thou shall not suffer a witch to live!” said Sam Hain.

Huey Twirpgirdle turned to face the oncoming mob and looked into the face of his own past. Schoolmates, teachers, relatives, neighbors, chance acquaintances. All the faces that haunted him, taunted him, in the late hours of the night. The beast with many heads came at Huey Twirpgirdle and took him.

“You are accused of crimen laesae majestatis Divinae, the crime of injury to Divine majesty,” said Sam Hain.

Huey Twirpgirdle was cruelly bound so that blood seeped from under his nails, his shaven head, a humiliating abrasion. He knelt before the multitude on a cushion of broken glass. They displayed before him all the devices of their cunning: the thumbscrews, toe clamps, and bone vises that would be used to cripple his limbs. They showed him the leg grip fitted with an iron bar that slowly pulverized the shin so that the marrow would be squeezed from the bone. They offered for his review the iron boots he would wear as molten lead was poured in. They submitted for his approval the whips and pincers and tongs that would soon tear his flesh from his soul. His hands were tied behind his back at the end of a long rope in a punishment from the 17th century called Strappado. The other end of the rope was thrown over a high treelimb by a kid he had lost a fight to in eighth grade. They tied weights to his ankles, and to Huey Twirpgirdle came the most wracking pain he had ever experienced, pain beyond imagining except by experience, as they hauled him up into the air.

The girl he had first loved made ready to release the rope so that Huey Twirpgirdle would be jerked to a halt inches above the ground, ripping his limbs from their sockets and breaking his body. Huey Twirpgirdle looked down past his legs at the pitiless reflections below him. Huey Twirpgirdle blinked through his tears, he shook his head to clear away the cobwebs of pain. On his feet were some sort of crystal slippers that sparkled in the light of the bonfire as if made of ruby. And even as he fell, he closed his eyes and tapped the heels together three times and said, “There's no place like home, there's no place like home . . .”

Huey Twirpgirdle found himself back in his own library, in his own worn chair. Numb with fear and exhaustion, a sharp metallic chiming came to him. With the last fiber that still connected will to sinew, Huey Twirpgirdle laboured to the front door. He grabbed the doorknob and with a last desperate effort wrenched it open. There on the welcome mat stood three small figures – a pirate, a princess, and a superhero.

“Trick or treat!” they said.