This story was originally published in
1895, as part of The Three Impostors. Of the several Machen
stories which I have read so far, I find it the most atmospheric and
grotesque. I'm afraid that whatever the framing device of The
Three Impostors may add, it will diminish these qualities in
particular, so I am treating of it as a standalone work.
It's a first-person account couched as
a tale told to several other characters, and starting with a verbal
autobiography of the narrator. If you've ever read one of Doyle's
Holmes stories, or one of W.H. Hodgson's Carnacki stories or even
certain works by Rider Haggard, you will recognize the device. It
seems to be quite emblematic of Victorian literature. I am in the
minority, I think, in finding this old-fashioned introductory device
charming, especially among the #PulpRev crowd, who want things to
happen on the first page. I would rather get “grounded” with a
character first, and be given some reason to care about them, right
at the outset. Stories that start in medias res tax my
patience.
The speaker is a young woman (this is
not revealed for several pages, autobiography notwithstanding; the
framing device which introduces the character has been removed for
the standalone edition of the story), one Miss Leicester, whose
law-student brother drives himself to a nervous breakdown with his
studies, and whom she finally persuades to get a diagnosis and
receive treatment. He agrees to take the proscribed medicine, but
only from a little hole-in-the-wall chemist whom he frequents for
reasons amounting, more or less, to hipster-ism. Immediately he
begins to not only seemingly feel better, but also to immerse himself
in society—which had formerly never interested him. He rapidly
transforms into a social butterfly, his behavior verging on the
dissolute. His sister begins to feel uneasy, then, as he seems more
and more unlike himself, she is frightened.
The atmosphere is the best element, and
Machen's main strength. It comes in heavy dollops of lurid prose,
passages that inspire jealousy; the sort of prose that makes you want
to bang your head against the wall because someone else used it
first; prose that is just crying out to be imitated.
“...it seems a pleasant evening. Look
at the afterglow; why, it is as if a great city were burning in
flames, and down there between the dark houses it is raining blood
fast, fast.”
“"Oh, Francis!" I cried;
"Oh, Francis, Francis, what have you done?" and rending
sobs cut the words short, and I went weeping out of the room, for
though I knew nothing, yet I knew all, and by some odd play of
thought I remembered the evening when he first went abroad to prove
his manhood, and the picture of the sunset sky glowed before me; the
clouds like a city in burning flames, and the rain of blood.”
And the best scene I have yet read from
Machen's pen:
“We had dined without candles, and
the room had slowly grown from twilight to gloom, and the walls and
corners were indistinct in the shadow. But from where I sat I looked
out into the street; and as I thought of what I would say to Francis,
the sky began to flush and shine, as it had done on a well-remembered
evening, and in the gap between two dark masses that were houses an
awful pageantry of flame appeared. Lurid whorls of writhed cloud, and
utter depths burning, and gray masses like the fume blown from a
smoking city, and an evil glory blazing far above shot with tongues
of more ardent fire, and below as if there were a deep pool of blood.
I looked down to where my brother sat facing me, and the words were
shaped on my lips, when I saw his hand resting on the table. Between
the thumb and forefinger of the closed hand, there was a mark, a
small patch about the size of a sixpence, and somewhat of the color
of a bad bruise. Yet, by some sense I cannot define, I knew that what
I saw was no bruise at all. Oh, if human flesh could burn with flame,
and if flame could be black as pitch, such was that before me!
Without thought or fashioning of words, gray horror shaped within me
at the sight, and in an inner cell it was known to be a brand. For a
moment the stained sky became dark as midnight, and when the light
returned to me, I was alone in the silent room, and soon after I
heard my brother go out.”
What is a masterpiece of a scene! This
image haunts my mind's eye. I will work my own ideal of this image,
as I see it, into some scene of my own, beyond question. The prose is
almost purple, but I believe there is a place for purple. If you're
going to paint a picture with words, you needn't skimp on the color.
A less sensitive reader might find it overwrought. Machen's prose is
already floridly Victorian-horror throughout, but these wonderfully
intense passages are responsible for building the atmosphere.
Following this scene, Francis seems now
not only to be no longer himself, but perhaps no longer human. Miss
Leicester goes to see the Doctor, who in turn gets a sample of the
medicine from the chemist. He cannot identify it, and sends it to be
tested. The brother has now shut himself up in his room. The doctor
goes in to see him, and comes out in utter terror, begging not to be
called again. Then Miss Leicester catches a glimpse:
“I had glanced up at the window of my
brother's study, and at that moment the blind was drawn aside, and
something that had life stared out into the world. Nay, I cannot say
I saw a face or any human likeness; a living thing, two eyes of
burning flame glared at me, and they were in the midst of something
as formless as my fear, the symbol and presence of all evil and all
hideous corruption.”
Soon black ichor leaks into the room
below Francis'. There are gurgling sounds from above. Miss Leicester
calls the Doctor one last time, and he agrees to return and deal the
the situation, though he tells her it is hopeless. The Doctor was a
minor character before, but I found myself rooting for him almost as
a protagonist when he comes to stand by Miss Leicester as she
confronts the presence that her brother has become, despite being
utterly overwhelmed himself. He provides masculine support in
response to her feminine appeal. It is chivalrous, brave, and
elevates him to the closest thing to a hero that this sort of horror
can accommodate.
The pair break into the occupied room
and see:
“There upon the floor was a dark and
putrid mass, seething with corruption and hideous rottenness, neither
liquid nor solid, but melting and changing before our eyes, and
bubbling with unctuous oily bubbles like boiling pitch. And out of
the midst of it shone two burning points like eyes, and I saw a
writhing and stirring as of limbs, and something moved and lifted up
that might have been an arm. The doctor took a step forward, and
raised the iron bar and struck at the burning points, and drove in
the weapon, and struck again and again in a fury of loathing.”
Now this is grotesque, but not quite
enough for me. In my opinion Machen undoes just a little of his
earlier effect here. This is the reason horror writers tell you not
to show your monster, and yet a reader such as myself would have felt
let down had we not finally gotten to see it. Perhaps it would have
been better to leave it at the haunting earlier glimpse, but that
would still be a disappointment to me. I believe it is the "glowing
eyes" specifically which I find trite. It was entirely within
his capabilities to deliver something properly nightmarish, but he
chose to focus on the "demonic" aspect, and therefore
neutered a fine piece of body-horror.
It might also be said that it is
dispatched too easily, but can see why Machen chose to gloss over its
end. The presence has done it's job already—it is there to scare us
with the sheer horror of its existence, not by posing a threat to the
protagonists. The climax of the story is breaking into the room and
facing the horror head on, not dealing with it afterwards. It's
rather like a very nasty job of pest-removal, no more.
I said that Machen's strength was his
atmosphere, but the end of the story shows his weakness, which is a
reliance on contrivance. The report on the eponymous substance comes
back, and the Doctor's medical buddy who sends it just happens to be
interested in the occult (not as incredible in 1895, but still
smacking of deus ex machina). Contrivance is Machen's crippling
crutch, and some form of coincidence is present somewhere in every
one of his works that I have read so far.
This other Doctor explains that the
medicine was somehow aged into an unholy substance while it sat for
years on the chemist's shelf, and that this substance was used in
Witches' rituals during ancient times, to summon forth their dark
inner natures to partake in their debauched rituals, or something
like that. It's a clever and creative idea. But I still found it
jarringly out of place after the—shall we say, “naturalistic”
nature of the buildup, marring what would otherwise be a horror
masterpiece. I think it would be more chilling if the white powder
had chemically transformed, not into a magical substance, but into a
natural yet unknown substance that has the effects described. If the
story had been published thirty years later in the company of
Lovecraft rather than that of M.R James, it might have been just
that. This would also allow the involved explanation that the story
now ends on to be pruned, allowing the more evocative passages such
as the following to be delivered as speculations rather than
assertions, better preserving their mystique:
“By the power of that Sabbath wine, a
few grains of white powder thrown into a glass of water, the house of
life was riven asunder, and the human trinity dissolved, and the worm
which never dies, that which lies sleeping within us all, was made
tangible and an external thing, and clothed with a garment of flesh.”
Reliance on the supernatural elements
hold the story back. Not a masterpiece, and I wish it was; but still
a great horror story. The quoted text is from the version of The
Three Impostors available on Gutenburg, which is not identical to the
text in the Penguin Collection on my shelf. Read it, with my
recommendation, at: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35517
Starting a story in media res is one of the many generally sound bits of writing advice that is followed too slavishly these days.
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