Extracts from the diary of Dr Mark Royland Jones, late professor of mathematics at University College, Bristol, England.
Sunday 6th October 1878.
Evening.
Oh, how I have longed to be home! It was with a gladdened heart that I stepped three days ago from the train to see the rooftops of my beloved Bristol and, looming beyond them, the new Suspension Bridge that is my city's dearest pride.
How happy I am to be here once again, back in the life of my dearest wife Lucy and in the employ of the new college which has been established in the city of my birth. The Principal of the College has been most kind in lending me his trust, after that unfortunate business last year which is - upon my word - over and forgotten forever. If only I could persuade my sweet wife to see things the same way.
The house which we now call our home is fine and large enough that, as a child in the workhouse, I would have thought it a palace. Now I am returned to the city as a wealthy man, I am determined to partake of its pleasures which were always denied to me during my upbringing. My childhood was beset by a poverty which I have - with the Lord’s good grace - been moving steadily away from in the twenty years since I won that most coveted scholarship. Oh, but when I look back on the young boy I was, clothed in rags, and see how far I have come! That young lad could certainly not have attended the theatre or taken his wife to marvel at the tigers in the Zoological Gardens, much less sampled tea and fine cakes in Bath’s Grand Pump Room.
Classes do not begin at the college until next week, and so I have decided to spend this time reacquainting myself with my city. Yesterday I took myself up alone to the observatory, which sits proud on the hill immediately behind the majestic Suspension Bridge and higher even, as if watching over the population with a singular beady eye. And, what an eye!
I was not aware until now that the observatory is home to a camera obscura, which was of course the subject of many a frustrating exercise completed during my undergraduate study. An exercise is one thing, however, but to actually see one in operation is quite another. This dark box, with its pinhole mechanism, gives one a clear view over the rooftops and spires of the city, as well as into the murky waters of the Avon River far below. That deep vein of dark blood flowing through the valley looks deceptively peaceful when viewed through a camera, although I know too well what subtle violence it hides beneath the surface.
I watched as young couples strolled upon nearby Brandon Hill, as a lady with a perambulator wrestled with the unruly baby within, and as an old man - gnarled and withered, as I one day shall be - made his painful way along the cobbled street. It occurs to me that what this mechanism really shows is the truth, made small and secret, glimpsed greedily from within a darkened room.
Whilst I was there I decided I would also venture into ‘Ghyston's Cave’, or what we would have called in my youth ‘the Giant's Cave’. This is a small, agoraphobic cavern which can be accessed via a steep passage through an unassuming door within the observatory itself. It is a tight squeeze and a deeply unpleasant journey down through the rock of the cliffs but, if one can stomach the climb, one will emerge at a point hundreds of feet below the clifftop, a sanctuary which has been used for many different purposes over the years.
It has a haunting quality unlike most caves I have been inside. Almost as if the very rock walls contain the memories of those long-ago ancestors, the sounds of their voices locked into the stone. In the daylight it is hard to believe such fanciful ideas. In the gloom of the cavern, however, it is easy to believe one hears the whispers of those long-dead.
In fact, this impression rather accords with intelligence I was given by a fellow I got talking to when I re-emerged, who informed me that in the years before the Romans came to these shores, the cave was used as a kind of pagan chapel. A subterranean church, ghastly indeed! The chap who had engaged me in conversation seemed to imply, with a dark look, that the worship they got up to may have been of the wickedest kind.
The cave does, upon reflection, have the air of a church. Quiet and still and almost holy, if holiness is conferred by the sense of an omnipotent presence, a breath close to your ear. I was the only visitor on this occasion, which was just as well as the space in that cave is quite cramped and the ground very uneven.
However, whilst I stood marvelling at the beauty of nature, I had cause to startle momentarily at what I thought was a movement behind me in the gloom. It looked, from the corner of my vision, like a person in a long robe of dirty white cloth. Silly of me; I turned and, of course, found myself alone.
One other odd thing, though; once down there, in the damp, chill silence, a thought came unbidden to my mind quite out of nowhere. It was as clear as if someone were speaking directly into my ear, so exact and urgent was this strange phrase in my mind, and it was as follows:
'What worship does continue here?'
Monday 7th October.
Morning.
Lucy was in low spirits last night. I had finished writing my entry shortly before dinner and had thought to sit with her for some time, reading together and discussing the activities of our day as we were wont to do before my sojourn, but she would not speak to me. She looks thinner and paler every day. I considered calling the doctor but decided against it, for now, as she bid me leave her be. I dare not incur her bad humour, especially after she has so graciously forgiven me my previous indiscretions.
I left her sitting upright at her dressing table, in the new lavish bedroom which I do not use, staring into a dark corner. In place of conversation with my love I instead turned to the library.
Until now I had not explored the many books which my predecessor, Professor Montague, left behind when he vacated this house which is now our home. There are some real treasures amongst the dusty tomes. A surprise struck me when I was pulling down some books from a particularly high shelf. Hidden amongst them was a slim box, cast in dark wood, the size and shape of a small ledger. When I snapped the clasp open I found within several items which looked as if they had been hidden undisturbed for a great many years. One was a daguerreotype of a young woman, yellowed and delicate with age, which I put aside after a few moment’s cursory glance.
To my delight, the second item I found was a small, green and leather-bound history of our fair city, right from the year 1200 to the present day. It is a terrific good read but mostly focuses on the mystic. The cave I have previously mentioned, for example, is described here as a place not of worship but of connection with the dead; a place where the supposed veil between our life and the next is worn ragged and thin as an old coat. This rather made me chuckle.
The book also discusses in detail the mythology of the two giants, Ghyston and Goram, who are fabled to have created many of the features of the surrounding landscape through their mountainous struggles. Goram's dead body, lying prone in the nearby estuary, is said to have become the islands which are viewable above the waters. Superstitious nonsense, of course, but I do appreciate the colour in folk tales. Ghyston is the namesake of that cave I visited yesterday and, although it shames me to say so, I felt quite a shiver as I flicked through the book to see a drawing of this supposed giant.
The lines were crude and ugly, as if rendered with charcoal and dirt, and the face of the giant was half in shadow. He was portrayed standing at the mouth of the Avon Gorge, with the cliffs on either side reaching to his shoulders and his immense, claw-like feet braced on either side of the river. In one hand he held what looked like the limp body of a ram and in the other hand… was that a miniscule dangling arm? A woman’s hair, falling over his massive fingers like a shift?
His countenance was one of malevolent glee and I thought to myself that I didn't much like whatever author had conjured such an image. With a snap, I closed the book and pushed it back onto the shelf. No such disturbing thoughts will trouble my mind, not any longer.
Tuesday 8th October.
Evening.
Lucy is speaking to me only sparsely. This old house is a fine and grand one but it is empty, with no sounds of children in it. In the absence of meaningful pursuits, my thoughts turn once more to that small dark box and its strange book of horrors. I must admit that, having banished it unceremoniously from my life, it seemed to call to me with a kind of sick allure.
Once, at Cambridge, I accompanied my friend who studied medicine to an open operating theatre at which all his fellow students were to attend and observe. The subject was the amputation of a gangrenous finger. At the time, being sneaked into such a serious event seemed a bit of a jape. Once the procedure was begun a change came over me.
As I watched the surgeon apply a tourniquet and begin to work, I felt a powerful pull, a fascination, and I couldn’t look away for love or for money. The sight both repulsed and thrilled me and I left the theatre with a flush in my cheeks and a nausea in my throat. This box, then, had the same effect on me as the surgeon’s knife. I had to see more. I could not look away.
I once again took down that black box from its place on the shelf and opened it up with a delicious shiver. I took out the little green book and weighed it in my palm. It felt hefty, satisfying in the hand. I was just about to cast the box aside, my quarry claimed, when I paused at the sight of the daguerreotype I had so thoughtlessly passed over before.
It was an odd thing. It was dated, perhaps by thirty years or more, but the young woman represented in its faded image had the look of someone from a much older period even than that. Her clothes were simple and ugly, in the peasant style, and of the purest white almost like a burial shroud. Her expression was shrewd and somehow wicked, as if aware of some harm which was soon to come to another person, and revelling in that knowledge.
This woman liked to watch, I thought, and then wondered where the thought had come from.
I took up the picture, meaning in a sudden inexplicable frenzy of mind to burn it, and it was at that moment I realised that there was another portrait underneath. I had at first overlooked it, stuck as it was to the first with the gum of age and grime. This was a photograph in the modern style and the sight of it made me pause for a moment, perturbed.
It was almost wholly dark but for faint shadows in the foreground, as if there had not been sufficient light for the photographer to successfully capture the image. The shadows, thin and ghost-like, looked to be several people grouped around a large, rough stone. If I squinted my eyes and brought the photograph so close to my face that my nose brushed the surface, I could imagine that the stone was in the shape of a huge human heart; a clenched fist, wrenched harshly from some gigantic chest, still beating and bloody.
Wednesday 9th October.
Morning.
A disturbing thing happened last night. As has become my custom I went to bed at ten or eleven o’clock, in the room beside the master bedroom, pausing briefly at the door to listen for Lucy’s heavy, sleeping breaths. I soon fell asleep.
This house is drafty but I have thick curtains around the bed and a fire was burning lowly in the grate. The window was of course firmly shut. This may seem an unnecessary detail but without knowing this, nothing to follow may seem extraordinary.
I was woken in the early hours - and it must have been very early, for the night sky outside was still as dark as pitch - by a sound close beside me. I started awake and lay still, listening. I began to shake violently from cold, as the air was as chill as if I were laying outside on the lawn. With a huff of frosted breath I pushed the curtain back and jumped almost clear out of my wits.
The window was flung wide open against the wall, and had seemingly been slammed with such force that the hinge was dangling broken and useless.
I stood in my nightclothes for some minutes staring at the scene before me, until the cold became too much to bear. My first thought was to rush to Lucy’s room and vouch that she was sleeping undisturbed, and this task completed I returned to my icebox of a bedroom.
For the life of me I could not imagine what could have opened the window. There was no wind that I could detect. I supposed that the window bursting open must have been the sound that had awakened me and I resolved to close it as best I could, then attempt to return to sleep. I tried to push away the thought that, truly, the sound I had heard was not at all like that of a banging window but was more like a kind of quiet whisper, or a sigh.
Also came the disquieting idea that it had seemed to come from a point a lot closer to me than the window, which was on the other side of the room. It had been right inside the drawn curtains of my bed. Inside with me.
I woke once again from uneasy dreams and found the house empty. My wife was gone out for the day. I breakfasted late and I intend to set out myself very shortly. Before I leave, however, I think I may stop by the library and collect that little green book, in order that I might carry it with me throughout the day to read if the fancy takes me.
Evening.
I have had a capital day about the town. It was a brisk and chill day, unseasonably so for autumn, which suited me well as I was for the most part inside. I spent most of my afternoon in the library.
I began with works on the history of the area and I took out the little book from my pocket, attempting to compare the information contained within with that which I found in my research. This task proved surprisingly difficult, however; I realised to my chagrin that the intelligence in at least one of these sources must be faulty, as the little green book spoke of events and places which the several learned tomes in the library simply did not acknowledge.
For example, there was no mention of mysticism connected to Ghyston's Cave anywhere in the histories, less still of devilry or evil acts done down in the dark. I found some references to a small Christian chapel which had been connected to the cave at one time, and had sadly been lost in a rock fall, but nothing at all of the occult or of the worship of lesser gods. Disappointed, I put these books aside, and turned onto a new path.
I began to devour every page I could find relating to the pagan belief in spirits or fiends. This was simply academic curiosity, I hope you understand - I am certainly not the type of gentleman to allow an incident such as that last night to trouble my mind with thoughts of ghouls. I am interested deeply, however, in the ways in which the simple peasant population of this land have expressed their fears about life, death and sin in their inclination to see dark faeries and malevolent forces in the very ordinary world.
The majority of this material was diverting enough but the most significant to my purposes were a few pages about witchcraft in the South West and the assizes in Exeter, where the last witch was hanged some two centuries ago. Here, mention was made of a coven at work in Bristol, which had been admitted by some poor soul under torture. What caught my attention was the illustration of the coven at their dreadful worship, clothed in long pale robes and gathered around a fearful idol.
It was, I realised, an altar of sorts. But what kind of altar was this? It was shaped like none I have seen before; lumpen and squat, at least four feet high and just as many across, its surface pitted and not flat, as an altar should be. It was more like a hunk of unpolished marble than a consecrated table, and looked disquietingly organic - like a living, breathing creature which had lain down one day, and been turned to stone. Nothing in that vision looked to be consecrated, in fact, or to have ever known the Christian God.
I shut the book, disturbed, and returned home, mind alive with a thousand thoughts.
Night has fallen whilst I have been recording this entry. I can see from the window that they are lighting the gas lamps. Lucy has still not returned home.
Thursday 10th October.
Day.
Last night I heard the sound again in my bedroom. It was a low sigh, I know that now! There could be no mistake. Somebody was in the room with me. I threw the curtain back, thinking for a moment it would be my dear wife returned to me, but I could see nothing in the gloom.
No, that is a lie. I believed I saw something, but I know I must never admit to it, lest I be accused of slipping once again from the here and now. I thought I saw a hand - a hand! - on the hearth rug, a brilliantly white claw-like thing, with a long arm trailing behind it into the darkness. There must have been a body attached to that terrible limb but mercifully the shadows swallowed it up, so all I could see was this awful, scratching thing.
It was crawling towards me, I know that in my bones, dragging itself low on the floor. But it can not have been so. I blinked and it was gone, do you see? So it was never really there! A trick of the light, perhaps, or a symptom of uneasy digestion. Yes, that’s it.
It is raining heavily today, as if the sky is whipping the earth, and the winds have risen in the south over the hills. When dawn broke this morning and I was finally free from the paralysis of my nightmare - for nightmare it was, I know it must be so - I went to enter the room in which my wife was sleeping, and then paused, and knocked in a cautious manner. I did not wish to wake her too harshly.
I could hear her breathing lowly from the other side of the door, and remembered with a melancholy delight the nights when I had felt that breath on my shoulder as I slept. We have been estranged in the bedroom for so long, I can barely remember what it felt like to have her warm body resting next to mine, her soft sighs, her caress.
‘Lucy?’ I called out, voice quiet and trembling. ‘My love, may I join you?’
At the time, I believed I heard a whispered reply - but I know I must have been dreaming again, dreaming in the day, because the voice I heard was not my sweet Lucy’s. It was harsh and mocking, an old crone’s bleat, and I felt I had heard it before.
‘My love,’ it said. ‘My love, my love…’
I briskly returned to my own room. I shall stay home today, and look over that green book once again.
Night.
I have been sitting with my pen in my hand, shaking and staring at the blank page before me. The house is silent; Lucy is once again sleeping, and the night is full of the absence of her. I am glad she is not suffering as I am, seeing the things I have seen. I could not have believed what I witnessed today had I not been able to read back through my writings from the past few days to make certain that I had not imagined it. But no, my judgement is true. At least now, it is true.
Yesterday when I glanced at that daguerreotype it depicted a young woman, plain-faced but very real. Today, however, there is no woman. When I took the box down from the shelf and lifted out the photographs, I saw that the picture of the gloomy scene of worship was unchanged but the other… the other…
I seemed to see before me a photograph of myself, as I was as a child in the workhouse. Standing alone and clad in rags in that hateful drafty room in which all the boys slept. But what was this devilry? I certainly had never had a photograph taken of me at that age, least of all posed on my knees as if in prayer, as I was in that image. But it was certainly me. Unquestionably. The haunted look in my own childhood eyes hurt my heart to see.
As I studied the impossible thing I felt a breath on the back of my neck. Not a gust of wind, as you may be thinking. A breath! Hot and quick and accompanied by the unmistakable sound of a sigh.
I whirled round faster than a dervish and cried out, alarmed, but there was of course nobody there. I resolved there and then to put an end to this ludicrous parlour game. I grabbed up the two photographs and the little green book, throwing the dark box to the ground in my disgust, and bundled them straight into the fire which was roaring in the grate. I watched as the face of the child which had been me began to curl and melt and then to burn. This seemed to warm me immeasurably.
I came here, to write in my journal, and from here I will go to where this may all be ended. If I write again it is because I have succeeded; if I do not, I have failed. Adieu, Lucy.
Friday.
I did not succeed in my task. I set out from the house yesterday, desperate to return to the Giant's Cave, for I had grown sure that this is where I will find my answers. I fear that something followed me when I left that unholy chasm in the earth, something which has haunted me in the nights since, and I am afraid that if I do not see it through then I will never lay in peace again.
I was thwarted however, as a thick bank of fog had risen up overnight and surrounded the house in which I slept so uneasily. It was the most bizarre and unearthly fog I have ever experienced. It seemed to envelop me like I had been dropped into a pool of mercury, making me blind even to the fingers in front of my face. There was no way at all I would be able to find my way to the gate posts, let alone the long walk up to the observatory.
I struggled inside the house once more and felt more lost than I ever have, even more so than I did last year, a time I thought could never be bested in its misery. I had no idea for the longest time what would be the best next move to make.
The fog could not have been in any way natural. I felt sure it had been conjured up in order to prevent me from leaving the house and confronting the source of the misfortunes which had befallen me, the source which flowed like a blood-red river of evil from that cave. As I stood in the hall, panting from my exertions outside, I had a sudden moment of perfect clarity.
I would go to my dear wife Lucy and explain the situation to her! Lucy would know what to do.
Like a man in a sweet dream I moved up the stairs towards our bedroom, the room I had never slept in but where I knew I could find my wife. I gained the stop step lightly and when I pushed open the bedroom door, it opened with no protest.
I stepped into the room and stopped, a choked cry dying in my throat. It was dark, too dark, so dark that it could surely have no window, even one with curtains drawn. It was cold, too, as chill as the tomb.
My breath curdled in the air. I reached out my fingers and touched the wall that should have been smooth brown wood, but which felt like slimy damp rock. A thin, hollow silence surrounded me, not the quiet of an empty room but the void of noise which you find in dank holes under the ground. I knew, instinctively, that I was in Ghyston’s Cave.
I staggered backwards, my feet sliding on what should have been the soft carpet of the landing outside but which was replaced with a hard, slippery floor of stone. I spun around and saw, in place of the door I had come through, nothing but chill darkness empty under my outstretched hands. I shouted then, a long strangled yell which I heard echo back to me as loud as the mocking of jackdaws.
Somewhere in the sound of my own repeated cry was another sound, under the first but as piercing to me as the howl of the wolf to its prey. I heard the sound of my Lucy, calling out to me, as if from across a great distance. A distance such as that which parts the two sides of a veil, or two opposite ends of a bridge.
‘Mark,’ she called, and in her voice I heard my own terror. ‘Mark, my love. What have you done?’
I flailed my arms desperately, reaching out for any purchase, and my fingertips brushed against something large before me which was suddenly blocking my path. With trembling hands I felt all around its chilly features and leapt back as if stung.
It was the altar from the drawing, that depiction of bestial worship I had puzzled over in the library. And I knew now, with my hands having touched the wretched thing, what shape that strange altar took. It was no table, and it was a natural rock or stone. It was a tooth. A huge, ancient molar, such as would come from a man whose face could blot out the sun.
The thought came once again unbidden in my mind as the sound of Lucy's cries grew and grew in the cavernous space:
'What worship does continue?'
All of a sudden a shimmering light seemed to grow before me, rising in the darkness of the cave. I blinked and looked away from its shrill brilliance but I could not keep my eyes from it for long. Within the pearly glow I could see shapes moving, whirling into being like paint swirling on a palette in order to create a dreadful picture. The images before me were fearful to me, as I had already lived them once before.
I saw myself, standing on the Suspension Bridge, one foot on land and the other on high, cold metal. Its great iron posts and chains soared above me and, over the short rail, the roaring waters of the River Avon fell far below. I was standing over the Gorge and the void was calling to me. But it wasn't only I who heard its call.
Looking up, I saw a figure in a pale dress balancing on the rail, one hand clinging onto it and the other clutching up her brilliant white petticoats. She seemed to ebb and flow in the wind, like a feather caught in a draft, and her face was cast down towards the terrible drop before her. If she were to slip, even for an instant, she would tumble over the edge to her death hundreds of feet below.
I saw myself call out to the woman and start to run towards her, and as I watched I felt the bridge shudder beneath my feet, felt the damp of the morning mist on my face and the chill of the wind. I was gaining on where the woman stood but I was still too far from her, too far to grasp her and pull her to safety as I so desperately wanted to.
The woman looked up at my cry and regarded me, just for a moment, with a look of serene distaste. Then she swayed forward and was gone.
I did not need to watch the images of myself running to where the woman had been, did not need to see once again the horrifying vision of the white falling body, slipping beneath the waters below without even a sound. I had seen this before. I had lived it once and relived it many more times than that, in the dead of night when sleep eluded me. My Lucy. Dead, for love of me. Dead, for despair at my unfaithfulness.
As the vision dissipated I fell to my knees on the harsh, cold floor of the cave, and howled like a child. My tears came fast and hot and I felt I would never raise myself up again. It had been more than a year since her death but the memory of it, so long oppressed, felt like a knife to my spleen.
It was only after many minutes or perhaps hours had passed that I became aware that I was no longer alone in this dark chamber. I could see a shape on the edge of my vision, a pale shape which may have been the hem of a white robe, or perhaps the skirts of a dress. I became cognizant of a low humming sound, like that of the buzzing of many hundreds of bees. I felt a pressure in my head and my thoughts began to swim.
With great effort I looked up and around at the figure which had joined me in the gloom. I recognised her with a sigh of relief. I saw that she was not alone, but accompanied by many others moving towards me out of the darkness, shapes on the very edges of my perception which drew closer to me with every moment. The great stone tooth shook and rumbled, vibrating with the mountainous laugh of the giant who had shed it. It was Ghyston’s tooth, I knew at once; that cave had been his mouth, that rock was once his flesh.
I looked into my wife's face and she smiled, reaching out to me. Gratefully I took hold of her, barely noticing how cold and thin and claw-like her hands had grown since I last had her in my arms. My vision darkened as the others crowded in on me and I felt no more fear.
I believe this may be the last entry in this diary. Tonight, my wife and I will rest together. Oh, how I have longed to be home.