The White Hands and Other Weird Tales (2 page)

***

Four weeks later Muswell died.
 

The doctor’s certificate listed the cause of death as heart failure. I had been careful, and as he was already ill, there was little reason for the authorities to suspect anything.

Thus I became Muswell’s literary executor and his collection of Blakeiana was left in my sole care. I also gained possession of his rooms. Frankly, I had never countenanced the idea of fulfilling any of Muswell’s requests and I arranged for his body to be cremated and his
ashes
scattered
at
the
St
Marylebone
Cemetery
amongst the tidy ranks of graves and bleached headstones. At least I would now be in a position to peruse the remaining papers and writings without further interference. There was much to be done, so much to be deciphered, so many mysteries to unravel. If Lilith Blake was the portal to the world beyond, then I would be the one to whom its secrets would be revealed.

I managed only to read the title story of
The White Hands and Other Tales
. The book seemed too hideous for anyone but a lunatic to read in its entirety. Even the title story was more like an incantation. The further one progressed the more incomprehensible and sinister the words became. The text had sometimes been reversed and was increasingly obscene, conjuring visions of eternal desolation and an agony of depraved despair.

Through the months, through the spring, sultry summer and again into winter, each day I drew down the blinds in Muswell’s room, shutting out the world. I sought to solve the riddle beyond life and death, yet something in me feared the answer. I began to feel that it lay not in Blake’s seemingly endless notes and manuscripts. All seemed to point elsewhere. It was becoming clear to me that Muswell may have been close to the truth, and that the solution lay in the corpse of Lilith Blake herself. I would need to see her in the flesh.

I decided that I would arrange for the body to be exhumed and brought to me here in Muswell’s—
my
— rooms. It took me weeks to make the necessary contacts and raise the money required. How difficult it can be to get something done, even something so seemingly simple! How tedious the search for the sordid haunts of the necessary types, the hints dropped in endless conversations with untrustworthy strangers in dirty public houses. How venal, how mercenary is the world at large. During the nights of sleeplessness Lilith Blake’s voice would sometimes seem to call to me across the darkness. When I was able to sleep I encountered beautiful dreams, where I would be walking among pale shades in an overgrown and crumbling necropolis. The moonlight seemed abnormally bright and even filtered down to the catacombs where I would find Lilith’s shrouded form.

At last terms were agreed. Two labourers were hired to undertake the job, and on the appointed night I waited in my rooms. Outside, the rain was falling heavily and in my mind’s eye, as I sat anxiously in the armchair smoking cigarette after cigarette, I saw the deed done; the two simpletons, clad in their raincoats and with crowbars and pickaxes, climbing over the high wall which ran along Swains Lane, stumbling through the storm and the overgrown grounds past stone angels and ruined monuments, down worn steps to the circular avenue, deep in the earth, but open to the mottled grey- and-black sky. Wet leaves must have choked the passageways. I could see the rain sweeping over the hillside cemetery as they levered open the door to her vault, their coats floundering in the wind. The memory of Lilith Blake’s face rose before me through the hours that passed. I seemed to see it in every object that caught my gaze. I had left the blind up and watched the rain beating at the window above me, the water streaming down the small Georgian panes. I began to feel like an outcast of the universe.

As I waited, the eyes in the clock on the mantelpiece stared back at me. I thought I saw two huge and thin white spiders crawling across the books on the shelves.

At last there were three loud knocks on the door and I came to in my chair, my heart pounding in my chest. I opened the door to the still-pouring rain, and there at last, shadowy in the night, were my two grave-robbers. They were smiling unpleasantly, their hair plastered down over their worm-white faces. I pulled the wad of bank notes from my pocket and stuffed them into the nearest one’s grasp.

They lugged the coffin inside and set it down in the middle of the room.

And then they left me alone with the thing. For a while, the sodden coffin dripped silently onto the rug, the dark pools forming at its foot spreading slowly outwards, sinking gradually into the worn and faded pile. Although its wooden boards were decrepit and disfigured with dank patches of greenish mould, the lid remained securely battened down by a phalanx of rusty nails. I had prepared for this moment carefully; I had all the tools I needed ready in the adjoining room, but something, a sudden sense of foreboding, made me hesitate foolishly. At last, with a massive effort of will, I fetched the claw hammer and chisel, and knelt beside the coffin. Once I had prised the lid upwards and then down again, leaving the rusted nail-tops proud, I drew them out one by one. It seemed to take forever—levering each one up and out and dropping it onto the slowly growing pile at my feet. My lips were dry and I could barely grip the tools in my slippery hands. The shadows of the rain still trickling down the window were thrown over the room and across the coffin by the orange glow of the street lamp outside.

Very slowly, I lifted the lid.

Resting in the coffin was a figure clothed in a discoloured muslin shroud. Exquisite long hands were folded across its bosom. The head was lost in shadow, so, slowly and carefully, I lifted it up to the light. The neck was supple and still youthful, the throat pale and long. Her raven-black hair seemed to have grown longer whilst she had slept in the tomb.

Then the light touched her face. I saw that it was magnificently unchanged. It was perfection. For a hundred years she had lain undecayed in glory: her deathly beauty was overwhelming. I bent down to kiss those dark, fleshy lips. Her eyes were closed and even the lashes seemed longer, as if they too had grown: they reminded me of the limbs of a spider. As my mouth brushed hers, Lilith’s eyes flickered open. For an instant she seemed bewildered, but then her porcelain face cracked into an expression of the starkest terror. It was as if I had awoken her from a deep nightmare, a dream so filled with horror that one could only emerge from it utterly insane.

Within an instant her white fingers were wrapped around my throat and squeezing hard. While I struggled in an ecstasy of terror, she laughed, hideously. But then her grip on my throat slackened and her whole body convulsed in agony. Her flesh seemed to crumble away. She shrieked at me and her words invoked a curse in the sinister language of her final stories. Specks of red foam splattered from her open mouth and her sharp little teeth gnashed in anguish.

At last, her whole body collapsed in on itself. Her skin became a darker and darker shade of grey, and the raven hair turned white. Soon, only the white shroud and a pile of black dust remained, a desiccated heap on the coffin floor.

That night, during a lull in the rain, I burned the coffin in the back yard. It was only after many days that I discovered that the marks made by her long white fingers remained permanently impressed upon my throat.

***

I travelled abroad for some months afterwards, seeking southern climes bathed in warm sunshine and blessed with short nights. But my thoughts gradually returned to
The White Hands and Other Tales
. I wondered if it might be possible to achieve control over it, to read it in its entirety and use it to attain my goal. Finally, its lure proved decisive. I convinced myself that I had already borne the darkest horrors, that this would have proved a meet preparation for its mysteries, however obscenely they were clothed. And so, returning once more to Highgate, I began the task of transcribing and interpreting the occult language of the book, delving far into its deep mysteries. Surely I could mould the dreams to my own will and overcome the nightmare. Once achieved, I would dwell forever, in Paradise. . . .

***

Text of a letter written by John Harrington whilst under confinement in Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital:

My dearest wife Lilith,
 

I do not know why you have not written or come to see me.

The gentlemen looking after me here are very kind but will not allow any mirrors. I know there is something awful about my face. Everyone is scared to look at it.

They have taken your book away. They say it is gibberish. But I know all the secrets now.

Sometimes I laugh and laugh.

But I like the white hands that crawl around my bed at night like two spiders. They laugh with me.

Please write or come.

With all my heart,

John.

The Church of St Ignatius of Loyola appeared to be empty but the Reverend Mooney, S.J., still sat waiting in the confessional, squinting at his watch in the shadows. Would anyone be attending the sacrament of penance today or could he now retire to his comfortable armchair and study some chess problems? His mind was already wandering to the chessboard and the intellectual intricacies that awaited him there.
 

All seemed quiet. He stretched his legs, got up and opened the box door, glanced across the nave towards the entrance and confirmed that there were no further absolutions to grant today. Watery light filtered through the stained glass windows. Outside it was a grey October morning and rain pittered upon the church roof. It appeared to be increasing in tempo and the noise began to echo around the building’s interior. Father Mooney walked over to the crucifix above the altar, knelt and genuflected, and offered up a silent prayer.

Whilst still on his knees, he heard the church door opening quietly behind him, a momentary increase in the hiss of the rain, and the door closing once more. He struggled to his feet and saw a man with a hat, scarf and raincoat tottering down the aisle, making for the confessional. The priest hastily resumed his position in the box and listened to the squelching and uncertain footsteps. The man slumped into the seat beyond the thin wooden partition that separated them. Father Mooney attempted to get a look at him through the latticed window but the man’s head was lowered and the brim of his hat obscured his face.

‘Bless me Father, for I have sinned.’

‘May God, who has enlightened every heart, help you to know your sins and trust in his mercy . . .’ Father Mooney responded.

‘Father, this is no common confession.’ The voice sounded unhealthily breathless.

‘Please try to continue. Don’t be afraid or ashamed. Let Christ enter your heart and be sincere in your repentance. There is nothing so terrible that it can keep out his forgiveness from those that truly seek it. When did you last go to confession?’

‘I’ve lapsed Father. Tell me, do you believe that evil really exists?’

Father Mooney shifted uncomfortably. He leant back and thoughtfully drew his fingers across his chin. Finally he spoke:

‘There are certainly wicked men in the world, but much evil can be ascribed to folly or ignorance.’

‘No, Father. Not in this case. If a man comes back from the dead it means he is too wicked even for Hell to contain him. I’ve come to you because you are the only one that can help me.’

Well, thought Father Mooney, this is a curious case. He noticed that it felt rather cold in the box and he rubbed his hands together for warmth.

‘What assistance can I offer that any other priest could not?’ He said.

The man took a deep, rattling breath and said:

‘I know that you were one of the finest chess players in Europe before you were called to holy orders.’

Father Mooney’s brow creased.

‘I am not sure that I understand,’ he replied. ‘You’d better explain.’

***

My name is Leonard Hughes. You may have heard of me. I caused something of a stir at the Hastings Chess Tournament a few years ago. I entered the challengers’ section as an unknown and swept all opposition before me. I had beaten the British champion John Summers and the Russian grandmaster Dr Kominov before a very close defeat at the hands of the American genius Billy Burns. However, when I entered the tournament the following year I was easily beaten by all three.
 

My system was very simple. I have a phenomenal memory. It was possible for me to recall every single piece of data that I had seen from the age of four. My memory has brought me many benefits in life. Over a period of some years I had amassed a fortune through financial dealing, using a system involving borrowing capital and investing it, by selling on businesses that I had set up in order to acquire others in turn. I knew every detail of the contracts that I had negotiated and every fluctuation in the share prices of my portfolio. And yet once I had acquired sufficient wealth to ensure that the rest of my life would be lived in any way that I wished to live it, my interest in it deteriorated. The challenge had been met and overcome and I realised that it was the chase, rather than the kill that had fascinated me.

My obsession with chess came about when I overheard a chance remark made by a man to his dining companion at a restaurant in Charlotte Street where I often took lunch. He said: ‘Do you know that it has been calculated that there are more possible moves in the game of chess than there are estimated to be atoms in the entire universe?’

Thereafter, I began to read deeply in the subject and to try my hand at mastering a pursuit that I knew would test my memory to its limits.

Before I played a game I would analyse every single scrap of available information about my opponent’s past tactics (in fact, memorising every recorded game they had ever played) and then use this against them. I focused on my opponent’s weaknesses, whilst I relied on my memory of the most advantageous moves from the millions of possible variations. At the first tournament I succeeded, as I have said, brilliantly. Commentators did seem to baulk at the ruthlessly mechanical nature of my strategy, the merciless grinding down of my opponent. Of course, at the following tournament, my rivals were better prepared. They had realised that I was simply repeating sequences of moves from historic games, and so all they had to do was introduce just one slightly odd or irrational move and I would be at a loss to find a precedent. It would take several moves before I could regain my confidence, by which time they had me beaten. Once my weakness was exposed I suffered defeat after defeat.

After that tournament I decided to lock myself away from the world in my mansion-house in Highgate, freeing myself from distractions until I’d studied every possible strategy of the game. I had pushed my memory to its limits. Now I needed to learn how to think originally.

It was a hard, lonely task. Every day, four hours on, one hour off, I would lean over a chessboard, moving pieces, trying endless combinations. Previously I had mentally digested every variation of the game I had been able to find in chess magazines and manuals, but now I tried to understand how winning strategies had been devised.

I saw no one. I spoke to no one. Indeed, after months of this intense monomania I feared that I was able to think only in algebraic chess notation. And yet I felt a sense of extreme exhilaration. Although I could still not play naturally or originally, I played audacious variations of my own devising, and when they were successful I memorised these strategies down endless avenues of black and white squares, seeking to make up for my own lack of inspiration. In truly mastering chess I felt that I was undertaking a task more complex than unravelling the secrets of the universe.

Then, one morning, six months into my regime, I caught sight of a pale, gaunt face in the hall mirror while on my way out to catch a breath of fresh air. I hardly recognised it as my own. All the life seemed to have been sucked from it.

One afternoon off. One afternoon of aimless perambulation. Perhaps the distraction would do me good. But it really wasn’t any good. My thoughts kept wandering back to my analyses and nothing else made any impression on me. Only when passing a second-hand bookshop did I feel a prick of interest. I entered, intent on seeking more chess books.

The shelves in the shop were very close together and I had to squeeze along the narrow aisles, avoiding boxes of books on the floor. Although the stock seemed quite general, I did actually find one or two simplistic chess primers, and I decided to ask the young assistant if she could help any further.

I went up to the desk and cleared my throat; she was engrossed in reading a tattered copy of Borges’
Labyrinths
, the Penguin edition, open at page ninety-four. She put down the paperback, marking the page by folding its corner, and peered at me over steel spectacles.

‘No,’ she said in answer to my query, ‘all of the stock is on the shelves. Oh, we did find a funny-looking chess set in amongst a carton of books the other day. Do you want to look at it?’

I nodded unenthusiastically. She stood up, went into a little back room and returned carrying a wooden box under her arm. She cleared a space among the piles of dusty volumes and laid the box on the desk in front of me.

It contained a rather gaudy chessboard of gold and purple. More remarkable, though, was the bizarre collection of black chess pieces that went with it. I picked up one that might be a queen and examined it closely. There was something horrible about its misshapen appearance; it gave the impression that it had been crudely carved from a peculiar piece of bone.

Inside the box were fashioned recesses in which the black pieces rested. But I could find no white pieces, and no recesses in the box for them. I looked up at the assistant, who was eyeing me with barely concealed boredom.

‘How much?’ I asked, wondering why I was bothering with the thing at all.

‘As it’s only half-complete, say £10.’

I nodded my assent, put the black queen into my pocket and wrote out a cheque. When she took it from me her expression was distasteful, perhaps as a consequence of my banking at Coutts in the Strand. I suspect that she regretted not having asked for more.

When I left the shop it was raining outside and I hastily buttoned up my mackintosh. The edge of the chess box dug uncomfortably into my ribs as I walked along the deserted, rain-sodden streets. I put my free hand into my pocket and found the queen that I had slipped in there.

As I drew it out I dropped the thing on the pavement. It lay in a puddle, and I hesitated before retrieving it. I was sure that the piece had wriggled sharply in my hand like a worm. . . .

By the time I got back to my house I’d managed to convince myself that the writhing chess piece had been an hallucination brought on by mental strain. I slumped down in a chair and took the chess set from the plastic bag provided by the assistant, opened the box and let the contents spill onto my desk. It occurred to me that in order to test my mental sharpness, it might be a good exercise to play a game against myself.

I gathered the scattered black pieces and put them in place on the board opposite some ordinary white pieces from another set. The black ones looked like a regiment of misshapen demons. At that moment it did not seem quite so ridiculous to believe that the queen had actually squirmed in my fist. I began with white, moving a pawn to e4. But before my fingers reached the black pawn it moved of its own accord to c6. The movement was swift and I heard a little thump as the piece settled forcefully on the square. I stared in disbelief.

After some hesitation, I stretched out a trembling hand and played d4. My eyes focused and unfocused as I awaited a reply. Another black pawn thumped down aggressively on d5. I bit my fist and drew blood. My brain was swimming. The room seemed to be closing in around me, the shadows lengthening. I reached over to my cigarettes and stuck one in my mouth, lit it, and sucked the smoke greedily into my lungs, rapidly inhaling and exhaling as I struggled to get a grip on my sanity.

Black was playing an outrageous variation on the Caro-Kann. I spotted its significance after two more of my own moves. It was a strategy of titanic deviousness. Unless I could recover I was bound to lose a knight. Suddenly I knew that I must not lose this game. I did not know what losing would mean, but the mere thought of it filled me with unfathomable dread.

The cigarette I held had burnt down to a drooping finger of ash. The debris detached itself and fell onto the board.

Something blew it away. I heard a rasping, hollow wheeze, an asthmatic exhalation fading gradually to silence.

I played on, moving the pieces with slippery fingers from which I was periodically forced to wipe the sweat with a handkerchief. Five moves later black broke through and his misshapen pieces gradually scrabbled towards my surrounded king. And finally, when black delivered checkmate, I felt a searing, intolerable pain shooting into my face and left hand. The pain was so great that I toppled sideways and writhed on the floor in agony. Half an hour later, though it seemed like an eternity, the sensation ebbed away and I got to my feet.

I was changed.

***

Father Mooney sat patiently during the hiatus that followed. Leonard Hughes seemed to be fighting for breath and his heavy gasps fell and rose disturbingly.
 

‘Can you continue?’ The priest said.

‘I think . . . it’s best . . . if I show . . . you, Father.’ Hughes said between breaths.

The effort involved in recounting the tale seemed to have exhausted him. Father Mooney heard the door of the confessional being opened. Hughes staggered out, and Father Mooney followed. He stood there in the church, facing the stranger, still unable to make out his features clearly due to the scarf wrapped high around the chin, and the turned-down hat. Father Mooney had experienced nothing like this before. It was an encounter with the sort of problem that had previously seemed safely confined solely to medieval theology. Could something beyond God’s mercy have really entered the portals of his church?

Slowly, reluctantly, Hughes removed his hat and scarf. He was still fighting for breath, but seemed to have gained at least a modicum of control over his lungs.

The man was obviously still in agony for his face was constantly contorting from grimace to scowl. As his expressions changed it was as though his features altered, and although it unsettled Father Mooney, it also intrigued him that at times the stranger’s visage appeared familiar.

‘You recognise the face? I can see it in your eyes, Father.’ Hughes said.

Now that his memory had been jogged Father Mooney also began to feel that the wheezing breath was familiar to him.

It all came back.

Father Mooney remembered Boris Petrovski. He remembered the chess player’s devilish face across the board during the 1964 Masters’ Tournament in Kiev: the tortured brow, the ferocious eyes glaring beneath shaggy eyebrows, the sardonically curling lip, the way he ran his tongue across his long teeth in a feral manner and, above all, the heaving of his weak lungs, deafeningly asthmatic, during play. He had been a player of immense deviousness. Mooney had taken only a single game from him, but this, coupled with a series of three draws, was ranked as brilliance against a player then considered to be one of the greatest ever to have graced the world of chess. There was absolutely no doubt that Petrovski possessed a genius of the first order but there was also something very disturbing about him. He had an uncanny skill, virtually telepathic, of unsettling his opponent and ruining their concentration. It was as if one were being contaminated by malevolence.

Petrovski socialised with no one. At tournaments he was avoided and detested. For this reason he did not achieve the recognition that he felt was due from his peers and from commentators on the game. His ability to alienate even admirers of his play was remarkable. Such was the animosity he aroused that records of his matches were extremely sketchy. Petrovski’s own notes were never published and he made sure that they were destroyed shortly before his death. He hated the thought of anyone else benefiting from his genius. It was even said by his detractors that Petrovski dabbled in dubious occult practices, and that this was responsible for his serpentine deviousness and his frighteningly accurate power of anticipation.

When Mooney had defeated him that one time it had been due to a continuous shifting of his strategy requiring almost intolerable mental gymnastics. He had proved that it was possible to counter Petrovski, but one risked forfeiting the game by exceeding the time limit. Relying on this utterly draining method of play was thus hazardous, but no other tactic had ever succeeded.

Some said that it was the mental strain of playing Petrovski that had caused Mooney to abandon his career as a professional chess player. It was after this that he had pursued the private study of theology that eventually culminated in his reception into the priesthood some years later.

‘Will you come with me Father?’ Hughes said.

‘I know what I have to do.’ The priest replied. He turned to the altar, genuflected, and went to fetch his hat and coat.