| www.domist.net/eng tales - horror |
( Sergio Bissoli ITA – 63 RACCONTI SUPERNATURALI - tran. by G. M.)
Short stories on spiritism, witchcraft, the occult,
paganism, animism, the unusual and the mistery.
At one in the afternoon of a cloudy day I am in front of the small cemetery in ***. I’m waiting for two newspaper-men who are, like me, look forward to knowing the mystery of the tomb. What’s going on is a phenomenon that has by chance been observed inside a family vault a few days earlier on opening it for the burying of another coffin.
Not long after there comes a man wearing an elegant blue suit and accompanied by a woman:
"My name is Adolf. My colleague hasn’t been able to come. I’ve taken the mother of the dead boy with me..."
She’s a thin woman with rings around her eyes and a piercing look. I shake hands with everybody, while Adolf keeps on talking :
"I’ve been granted permission by the Town Hall. I’ve already informed the caretaker who is waiting for us. But we have to hurry as the funeral ceremonies are due at two o’ clock."
We go in through the gate and meet a short man near some buckets. It is the grave-digger. After we exchange a hasty greeting he leads us along a little lane invaded by weeds.
The cemetery is untidy and very ancient. Some big tombstones have got different angles of inclination. Dark clouds are obscuring the sky. Perhaps it is going to rain before long.
After going beyond some yew-trees we get to a gothic tomb shaped like a little temple. It’s made of a type of grey stone covered with lichens and full of spires, corners, protrusions. On top of it there’s an inscription :
Family De Veszelka.
As we get near, we hear a loud noise, like a heavy piece of furniture inside the tomb that is being dragged. We stop in dismay. After a while we cautiously climb the few steps and get in through the little gate of the vault.
A narrow, cold and dome-shaped room is faintly illuminated by an icy light coming in through mullioned windows. The marble walls are inscribed with rows of names, many of which faded and unreadable.
The grave-digger gets a few tools out of a bag. He inserts a lever in the ring of a trap-door of the floor and beckons to us to help him. With great effort the heavy stone is moved and a hollow noise is at the same time heard; it is heaved at last and then we push it aside using wooden rollers.
Now, before our feet, there’s a dark square hole. The sexton slips a ladder into the opening, lights an acetylene lamp and climbs down. Then it’s the journalist’s turn and I myself go down last.
Darkness and dampness all around me. A dripping of water. A noise of footsteps. Then Adolf’s voice :
"The lamp. Please, get the lamp here."
With the help of that diffused light I also reach the two men soon after.
A little water is stagnant on the floor. On the left a pile of black rotten coffins with handles corroded by verdigris. We toddle along and get to the bottom of the crypt.
Here, by the crude light of the lamp, we see the phenomenon : it’s a large, bronze-coloured ramification that stretches all along the wall. It looks like a leafy tree.
I get nearer and try touching it but it has no thickness. I touch the stone in the corner from where the plant comes out, but there is no hole at all.
"Well then, what do you think about it?" Adolf asks.
I don’t know what to say. I hear the hoarse voice of the grave-digger who goes on mumbling :
"I’ve never seen the like of that. Never seen such a thing..."
"What is there beyond that wall?" I ask.
"There’s Erik’s coffin on the other side, a boy dead of leukaemia last year, at the age of 23" the journalist replies.
All of a sudden I realize someone is behind my shoulders. I turn and see the woman who has come down without my realizing it. Her dress is dirty with cobwebs and her face has a hallucinated look. She runs forward shouting in her hysteric voice :
"He’s alive! He’s alive! My son Erik is alive!"
Once in front of the wall the woman embraces, kisses, caresses it frantically while shouting :
"He’s trying to communicate with us! This is his message from the Otherworld!"
The two men get close to the woman and draw her back to prevent her from hurting herself. They take her by the arms, make her calm down, push her to climb up...
The woman little by little lets herself be taken out, but she keeps on weeping and shouting as she climbs up the ladder :
"It’s the life tree! This is the life tree!"
We go outdoors in the open air at last and rush across the cemetery under a downpour that drenches our clothes.
A few months have already gone by. I haven’t seen the journalists again ever since. I haven’t similarly heard any more about that thing which grows down there, in the darkness of a tomb.
MARCH 1994
THE NIGHT WATCHMAN
I’ve managed to get a job as a night watchman in virtue, so to speak, of my leg being deformed. There was another fellow who scored me off at the qualification exam, but he renounced the post at the very last minute.
Thus, here I am, quite alone, in this factory of tinned vegetables. It’s 45 past 1, one night of November. From behind the porter’s lodge I can hear a few noises in the distance. They are something like repeating strokes, now loud, now hardly perceptible.
At a point I decide to make an inspection at the store-house.
The store is a raised place with lots of boxes, piles of cans, a weighing machine and a lift... Out of the windows the wind makes the lamp swing, over there, in the sunken-in courtyard full of barrels. The pointed iron rods of the gate create toothed shadows. The factory is old and would want some restoration works.
In the meanwhile, the noises are over. Not long afterwards, there they are back again.
I get into the washing room and step on a flooded floor. By the harsh light of the lamp I find everything in order. The long belt conveyors, the darkened boiler. The belts provided with holes for onion-sizing, the vegetable-shearing machine for carrots, turnips, cucumbers... Everything is motionless and seems for ever abandoned. Cold and silence are all over the place. The noises seem to come from a farther place, though.
I open another door and go down to inspect the cellars. The row of lamps below the ceiling illuminates the low, damp place which is crammed with barrels. The silence is oppressive. The smell of pickle is pungent.
When I open the door of the next cellar, I hear a noise of footsteps and a difficult breath. I draw out my revolver and turn on the electrical switch crying out: "Who is there?"
I step forward amid the barrels quite suspiciously. There isn’t anybody here. I’m inclined to think that maybe I was mistaken about the noises and that maybe it was the mice.
All of a sudden I feel a cold draught against my back. I abruptly turn. Nothing. The back door is shut.
I open the next door and get into the store kept for the vinegar vats. The big vats highly placed upon pedestals tower dark and imposing. A cold and sour smell are all over the place.
I climb up a flight of stairs and get into the other room : the joiner’s work-shop. A smell of dry wood diffuses in the place and a layer of dust is all over the working-tables upon which saws and planes are have been laid down in confusion. After making sure everything is in good order here, too, I sheathe my revolver to dry my sweaty hands.
Soon afterwards, I hear some rather faraway noises that now seem to come from the offices. They look like dull thuds spaced by moans : "Oooh...Oooh..."
I can’t tell what they are all about. I must go back now.
I go away from the work-shop and climb down the stairs again.
As I am passing across one of the cellars, an unexpected event happens. The lamps become reddish. Then the lights fade till they die out. There must be a contact in the electric system, I am therefore to light my battery.
Over there, in the darkness, behind the barrels, something is moving. It appears in the shape of long, white, luminous filaments. I stop to watch the phenomenon.
The filaments are silently moving along, then they melt together in a corner of the cellar, bringing about a rather faint luminosity.
In the dark corner I can see it very clearly now : it’s egg-shaped, maybe a metre high and of a white colour soiled with grey. The thing seems made of fog or smoke and is in perennial motion. Now it seems to take a vaguely human shape with sketching limbs.
I am paralyzed with astonishment. I keep wondering what it may be, when an intuition breaks through in my mind : the factory must be haunted!
Then I make a leap backwards. I instinctively go across the cellars in a rush, stumbling over the barrels, by the battery-lamp light.
I get to the stores where the light is back and enter into the porter’s lodge. I am in a sweat, trembling with fear while my heart beats stronger.
It’s two thirty at night. I don’t hear the noises any more and the stillness is restored. From behind the glass door I see the small offices on my right with no people inside them, but only with furniture and filing-cabinets. The wood-burning stove goes out and it’s cold. I keep wondering what on earth the little entity haunting the cellars may be.
It’s three twenty at night. I feel quite restless. Just to relax a bit I get the paper of riddles and take to solving some rebuses and charades. How odd! The page is thoroughly scribbled. There are also some words written by an unsteady hand : "I am in the second cellar under the wall facing east".
I am high-strung and my hands are trembling. Who can have written these words? Is this a spiritualist way of communicating, perhaps?
At six o’ clock my duty is over. I’ve decided not to reveal anyone the reason why I resign the post as a watchman.
It would be interesting indeed to know who is buried in the second cellar under the wall facing east.
Perhaps, one day or another, somebody will find out.
JUNE 1994
We are all gathered together around a little table for our monthly spiritualist séance. We are in the small, modern-style room of a little house surrounded by elm-trees in the outskirts of B***.
Corinne, the medium, a slender woman with hollow cheeks, is near me. Then there’s professor Lorentz, a stout man wearing a checked shirt and braces; he’s got a chubby, bearded face and wears a pair of big glasses. Then a young couple bereaved of their son non long ago. And there’s Marion, an old spinster of a woman, tall and thin and dressed in grey ; she wears so many rings and golden bracelets at her bony hands.
There is a sensation of suspense in the semi-dark, silent house.
Lorentz is asking questions and his voice turns out to be calm and low. The medium’s head is bent forward and her black hair hides her face. She gives sighs and answers back in a whispering voice. This is the recorded dialogue between the two of them :
"Guide Spirit, what is your name?"
"Call me Blue Entity".
"Can we communicate each other?"
"Yes, in so far as the human language allows to".
"Does Personality, that is Ego, survive death?"
"Yes".
"What do the Spirits do?"
"All of us here behave in such a way as to complete our missions complying with the universal plan".
"What kind of things do the Spirits bring to an end?"
"All they do is for the sake of the spirits, of the incarnated beings and of the universe".
"What does the Otherworld consist of?"
"Your world is very like ours, with old houses, books and natural panoramas, since the Spirits here are endowed with the capability of creating these things. At higher levels there are worlds of indescribable richness, wisdom, harmony and beauty."
"Is there reincarnation?"
"Yes".
"As well as on other planets?"
"Yes".
"What purpose is this mechanism inspired by?"
"The Spirits leave the spiritual world from time to time and travel into matter in search of new experiences and new achievements. And in this way a Spirit progresses".
"Must we trust in the law of Kharma?"
"Yes, you must. The law of Kharma is dreadful and neverforgetful. Every deed is a seed."
"Does God or Gods exist?"
"Gods exist. I mean that there is a hierarchy and that there is a Supreme God uppermost."
"What is the nature of God?"
"An intelligent and creational energy".
"What does God do?"
"He creates physical universes. He creates spiritual universes. He creates imperfect Spirits evolving through innumerable incarnations..."
"What is God’s purpose in doing so?"
"Creativeness characterizes evolutionary Spirits."
" Who created God?"
No answer is given.
Now the séance is over. The candles have burnt out, the clock says two at dead of night and I make for the passageway and go out.
I look at the moon high and white in the sky as I’m walking along the narrow pebbled alley through the shades of thickets.
I feel I am a poor great thing within an infinite game I cannot understand.
AUGUST 1994
The strange events occurring to Francisco in G*** have given rise to a great deal of gossip and suppositions. His case has been reported on a local newspaper.
Therefore, in a September afternoon, I decide to go and see this man.
Mr Francisco is a man of sixty, rather plump, his hair is grey and looks tired and a bit discouraged. I tell him that I am a poltergeist student and let him know my great interest in knowing the facts. He gives a sigh, then begins to narrate :
"There has already come a crowd of curious like you here. I’ll therefore repeat to you the same things I’ve already said to the newspaper-men. Before retiring, I lived in a small house in the surroundings of G***. One morning, my wife, who had been suffering from her heart for many a year, had a heart attack and there was nothing to be done about it... After my dear Jenny died, I remained alone and it is from that moment that the phenomena began. The lights were on at intervals, the doors opened by themselves... I asked my neighbours, a priest, a sorcerer, for help, but that proved to be pointless. Not that I was afraid, but just couldn’t stay any longer. Two weeks later I moved here to my married daughter’s house and I began to live again."
I stop writing my notes, then make my request :
"I would like to see the house".
The man gives a start and for a while he seems to be doubtful about my proposal. Then he exclaims :
"Let’s go."
He gets a bunch of keys, slips his jacket on and we both go out. After half an hour’s drive we arrive at a new neighbourhood in the outskirts of G***. We make for n° 54 which is a little, semi-new, yellow house with a small untilled garden in front. While the owner is releasing the lock, I notice the neighbouring people are looking at us with suspicion.
We get into the house at last.
A small, semi-dark room with a black and white lozenged flooring. A few pieces of furniture, a vase full of plastic flowers, a little window containing glasses. There is a sewing-machine in a corner. On the right there’s a gloomy space under a staircase with shelves crammed with shoes and dresses hanging from nails on the wall. It’s very cold in here.
We step a little forward and get into the kitchen room. A little light comes in through the fanlight over the back door. The kitchen is small and dirty. Some white tiles have come off and the water is stagnant in the sink. A broom leans against the wall.
From the kitchen we get to the first floor after climbing the steep wooden stairs. We enter a room that smells musty, with a double bed, a cupboard, a chest of drawers. There are small coloured bottles, lipsticks, boxes of powder...
The silence is broken by faint, mysterious noises. We hear the ticking of a sewing-machine coming from downstairs.
I pretend not to have heard it not to scare Mr. Francisco who already looks very nervous. I tramp on the waxed wooden flooring in order to drown those unaccountable noises coming from the ground-floor and suggest in a loud voice :
"Let us also have a look at the other room."
The adjoining room is a store-room with a child bed and a few trunks.
The noises downstairs are intensifying. Some dripping waterdrops and tinkling, knocking plates can be heard.
I see Francisco’s face grow even paler and the man’s left arm is trembling. I must resolutely intervene lest he has a heart-failure :
"Mr. Francisco, quiet down! Now we have to go downstairs. Haven’t you ever tried to talk to your wife since her death?"
"No-oo, I haven’t".
"Try now."
"And... what should I tell her?"
"Tell her that you feel her presence but that you don’t intend to communicate with her. Tell her to stop it. Just tell her to leave us alone."
The man begins to speak in an excited and moaning voice :
"Jenny my dear... leave me alone... I pray you, Jannette... go away... go away... do not stay any more here..."
In the meanwhile, followed by Francisco, I’ve started to descend the narrow stairs. The first step, the second, the third one...
The disquieting obsessing noises are going on downstairs. Then I syllabize in a loud voice :
"Guide Spirit, convince the spirit of Jenny to give up. Guide Spirit, convince the spirit of Jenny to stop it..."
The fourth step, the fifth...
"Guide Spirit, convince the spirit of Jenny of stopping it. Her attempts at communicating do disturb and frighten her husband."
The noises go on, but lower their intensity little by little.
I have reached now the landing at the end of the stairs.
When I enter the room I see for a while the broom move by itself in the kitchen and then fall to the ground.
Francisco also turns up, but normality is back again in the kitchen. We hurry across the small room and gain the exit.
The next months the phenomena happen less frequently, till they die out completely. By now the spirit of Jenny will have grown accustomed to the Otherworld, and the house has become quiet again.
SEPTEMBER 1994
Widow Mirelle lives with her twelve years old daughter Yvette and an old woman-servant. Mirelle is a lady of forty, left a widow three years ago and in these last days she has insistently asked me for help.
When she comes and meets me to take me into her house, she wears a black dress with white lace collar and cuffs. The old maid puts a tray and some tea-cups on a small table and retires quickly.
Mirelle looks hesitating and confused. Her face is pale and hollow, her very dark-brown hair is put up into a chignon, her long hands are trembling. She speaks in a low voice as though she were afraid of telling me her troubles :
"Strange things happen in this house, not long since. They’re little accidents, unexplainable facts, coincidences, strangenesses..."
She stops talking at a point, then I invite her to go on :
"Please, madam, tell me what has happened exactly".
"For a few months has the light been going out, have the doors been closing by themselves... When going past a mirror I hear voices".
"Voices? And what do they say?"
"I hear the noise of a crowd, as if it were brought about by a lot of people talking in the distance... Yesterday afternoon we could clearly hear the door of the sitting-room open. My daughter jumped to her feet and shouted ^Mum, mum, there’s someone in the drawing-room!^ I rushed to see, but no one was there. My daughter was frightened because she had seen the shadow of a body going past the skylight of the staircase".
Her narrating was at this point broken off by a bustle and a hysterical screaming from upstairs :
"Help! Fire! Fire! The house has caught fire!"
Mirelle and I rush up the marble stairs. The door of the bathroom along the passageway opens and some screams and noises come from inside.
I rush into the room.
The maid is throwing wet towels onto the fire, while the little girl is crying.
The walls of the bathroom are covered with white tiles that come up to man’s tallness, but the fire comes from two mirrors hung over the sinks. White flames come out of the mirrors. It is the crystal mirrors that are burning!
Mirelle also throws wet towels to overcome the flames, but as soon as the towels are taken off the mirrors the flames appear gain.
I’m staring at the phenomenon of the bright, innatural and silent flames which don’t burn, though.
They fade away little by littletill they completely vanish and the mirrors turn out to be as they were before. The reflecting surfaces appear misted and wet. Mirelle hugs her daughter who is crying and trembling and takes her into the kitchen.
I stay by myself in the bathroom to watch the mirrors. They seem precious and old. One of them has got the shape of a crescent with a thin silver frame around it. The other mirror is oval with a thin metal frame engraved with ivy leaves. I try to move them away from the wall but the wall behind them is perfectly regular.
When I go down the stairs I find Mirelle in the sitting-room and ask her where she got those mirrors.
"Ah the mirrors... But I don’t know... They were in my father-in-law’s house. My husband, at the time still alive, wanted to carry them here..."
The morning after, on my suggestion, we unhook the mirrors from the wall and take them away.
At daybreak we walk along solitary roads till we get to the riverside. Here I lay the mirrors on the parapet and look at the panorama around me. There’s a grey mist in the distance beyond the glittering sunbeams. The wind is whistling, the waters down there appear turbulent, rippling with tiny waves, dirty with mud and pieces of broken branches.
Then I resolutely throw the mirrors into the stream.
The little girl who had been silent until then now cries out :
"Mum, look... look".
When the crystal sheets reach the waters of the river we see two dark shades coming out of the mirrors. Woman-like shades in their nineteenth century costumes with hats, shawls, bootees and long skirts. A few shouts can at a time be also heard.
Soon afterwards, the stream sweeps, sinks and takes everything away.
JANUARY 1995
The spiritual universe vibrates with sparks and colours. The Otherworld is run through by currents of variegated, fluctuating, pulsating lights, messingers of knowledge and beauty.
Here peace is dynamism, joy, creativity, potentiality. Here is the source of the many causes to be found, in a harmonious, continuous, interdimensional movement of waves.
And other mysterious and sublime dimensions are outlined at even higher levels, even further on, beyond my own capability of understanding and perceiving.
The Primordial Energy that gives life to and weaves this multiform plan is reflected above all things and inside all things.
The thoughts of the other interlocutors flow all across me and bring me exchangeable knowledges and experiences. One among the others who has accompanied and guided me through the evolutionary pathway, now says to me :
"You have accomplished the long sorrowful cycle of incarnations. A path of light stretches now before you towards more and more rarefied and perfect spiritual dimensions. This is the very ultimate possibility for you either to redescend into matter, this time not as a man, but as an avatar, or to leave matter for ever. What do you choose?"
Only one vibrant word radiates from my essence :
"Avatar. It would be a great pleasure for me to become an avatar because what I’m going to choose now is to be born again in the state of a rich man".
"That would be a sheer waste of your incarnation indeed! In order that you live your own incarnation at its best, that you have the most sensations, the most experiences you’d better in poverty to be taken into a new life. Why is that that you are still inclined to sink again into wants, ignorance, deseases?"
"Compassion for those who have become incarnate, for all those people who have become incarnate pushes me to do it".
"The people incarnate will not recognize you. If you teach them, they won’t believe you. If you quicken their evolution they will bar you. If you heal them, they will hate you. Only after you’ve died, only after a long lapse of time, some of the people incarnate will be able to enjoy your gifts and will recognize you. Will you then?..."
"Avatar. For I’ve got the certainty now that matter is nothing but illusion".
"But in order that you live your own incarnation into matter in an intense way you will have to at least blindly believe in matter. In this way, during the whole spanning of incarnation, you are bound to lose knowledge of the Hereafter, the recollection of all your experiences will be kept cryptic to you. Will you still?..."
"If I am to lose this knowledge temporarily, it’s equally true that life is so brief, as quick as lightning, and I will be back here thereafter".
"60 years for a lifetime will be appearing long and unbearable to you. You’ll be tormented with doubts, with anguish and with insufferable nostalgia which is the echo of memories coming from this Otherworld. Will you still?..."
"Yes. You’ll always be with me, Guide Spirit, all the time".
"I’ll be by your side during your going down into matter. I’ll watch over you, I’ll inspire you if you only ask me. But you won’t see me and therefore you won’t trust in me. Will you?..."
"Avatar".
"Well then, plan your incarnation and put goals before yourself to be achieved and put limits too, so that they’ll be preventing you from deviating from those same purposes you want to fulfill. Be careful now, not to overvalue your strenghth. Are you ready?"
"Ready".
A whirl; an eddy is dragging me downwards, downwards, downwards and downwards, into the darkness, into the solidness, downwards into the unconsciousness of a new incarnation.
AUGUST 1996
At the end of a cloudy, sad afternoon I’m walking and making for the building my uncle lived in. The plaster of the building has fallen off and the grass has grown on the roofs.
I get in through the hall.
"I’ve come here for the funeral... I wish to see my uncle..." I say to the ugly janitor with a big face full of boils, seated at the table.
He gets the key from key-rack and hands it to me :
"Last floor and last door but one at the bottom of the corridor".
The staircase is faintly illuminated through the large dirty windows. I get upstairs leaning on the railings and once on the landing I go along a dark corridor with unfixed tiles.
Somebody has hung a notice on the last door but one with these words :
^Family mourning^.
I open it. The wooden door dreadfully creaks as it rubs the floor. A smell of wax and of whithered flowers.
A little semi-dark room with a few clothes-hooks. Another open door leads to the kitchen.
The coffin, supported by two trestles, is in the middle. There are some curious chairs round it, a few bunches of flowers...
My uncle is inside the open coffin, the cover lying on the floor. Two candles are quietly burning in silence. I draw nearer and look inside the coffin.
He is lying on his back, as if he were waiting for... He has got a napkin tied in a knot round his head to keep his jaws shut. His face is shaven and looks like wax. He wears a blue-dark jacket and a pair of new trousers of the same colour; a white shirt and an azure neck-tie. I’ve never seen him so smartly dressed as in this circumstance in all of his lifetime. Perhaps he’s never thought of wearing this suit before just to keep it for the future...
The flames of the candles are trembling. There’s a draught somewhere.
His face is very pale, his eyes are closed. There isn’t any difference from someone who is asleep. So firmly am I convinced he’s sleeping that I at times have the sensation that his breast moves by breathing. But not. It’s only a suggestion. By dint of staring at him I’m not any more sure of anything. I try to touch his hand. It’s cold and as hard as marble.
Time goes by, it slowly drips down the well of eternity. I’m perfectly sure at a point I hear a drop fall somewhere. I raise my head. The ceiling is scratched and the framework is visible. A drop is falling from a corner and on the floor, below, a humidity spot has been formed.
Some more time goes by. Because of this semi-darkness my sight is being dimmed. In fact the cupboard along the wall appears to me more confused, almost hazy... I am more careful and concentrate on the phenomenon.
A light-blue fume is slowly rising from the head of the dead. It’s a very light, steam-like substance.
I hear someone step forward behind me and I turn to look. A meagre, lame old woman has come. She sits down on a chair and gets a napkin out of her handbag. The old woman crouches in the chair remaining still and she also seems dead.
After this occasion of inattention I resume to watch the air over the head of the dead. Now the fumes expand, rise and become more transparent. And inside the fume something else is appearing. It’s got a flat, whitish shape, but vaguely
iridescent at times. It looks like an egg.
I keep watching it and wonder what might be, till the gas shape and the white spot become thinner and thinner, lighter and more indistinguishable.
When everything seems to be over I move and have once again a look all over the room. The old woman, who is probably one of his relatives, is already off. I, too, am going to leave at once.
Now I am aware my uncle is no more here. His spirit, his soul is free. The thing lying here, by my side, is but a mass of flesh covered with rags.
AUGUST 1996
Among the many errands I have to carry out there is one consisting of my going once a month to the small graveyard in Roven and tidying up the family tomb, and it’s for pleasing my old aunt that I do that.
It’s a September day when I go along the little country road leading to the cemetery. Two old men wrapped up in their cloaks are walking slowly. Cats are warming in the sun that is already low. Big yellow flowers along the ditches are swaying.
Once beside the tomb I throw the dried flowers away, change the water and begin cleaning the marble slabs with a rag.
A fellow with a pen in his hand is standing in front of the tomb next to mine. He’s dressed in black and wears a pair of big glasses typical of the short-sighted people.
Before going away, pushed by curiosity, I ask him :
"Do you have your dear ones buried here?"
"No, I don’t. I come here solely to learn..."
"To learn what? Life’s shortness?"
"Yes, but not only that. In this place we are very close to the mystery of death..."
He pauses a while before going on: "Have you ever asked yourself where the ego gets to? ; and where all experiences, knowledges, emotions, feelings?..."
"Everything comes to an end together with the death of the body".
"Nature has this law, that nothing is destroyed and everything is transformed. The physical body is turned into a psychic body during one’s life. When the physical body passes away the psychic body outlives it..."
Then the man moves towards another tomb and I go away.
The next month, in October, I’m going along the same narrow winding road to the cemetery. A grey mist is stagnant under the yellowed poplar-grove.
The cemetery inspire desolation. There are vases turned upside down, flooded graves from which there comes the smell of the rotten earth. In front of the sexton lodge there’s an earthed up spade and a toilet brush ; on the left a placard advertising votive lamps.
The man with glasses is staring at the oval photograph of a girl with a sad face and big eyes. I stop to say hello to him and he says :
"Look at this girl. She seems too frail to endure life’s harshness".
"It is like this. Who knows what sorrowful story is hidden behind!"
"Nobody has ever been able to explain the mystery of young deaths. What is the ultimate end of this brief life of hers? What is the purpose of a life that has begun but has not been accomplished?"
A long pause :
"Only reincarnation can answer this. That’s to say : many a life at one’s disposal through which to be able to evolve and mature. That’s what I’m also seeking in a cemetery. I’m looking for my previous body in order to get my memories stirred up again, or some bygone emotions..."
November has come. In the fields some bushes have withered to the ground because of the white frost and the ditches are iced. A stretch of ghastly light is lingering in the sky south.
The cemetery seems more and more desolate and dilapidated. The same fellow, stiffened by the cold, is once again standing in front of a family vault.
On going past him, I ask :
"Do you follow a method in your research somehow?"
It’s my own inspiration that I follow. I am struck by a face, a look, a certain way of dressing... I perceive the story of a life in a face, all aspirations, all hopes that have not come true..."
"And what have you found in this tomb?"
"I try to foresee who is bound to occupy the niches of the tomb still vacant. There’s been an arrival in 1958, then in 1970, and then in 1979. At intervals of 12 and 9 years. This one was born in 1948 and is dead in 1979; just remark how eight becomes nine. This one was born in 1911 and is dead in 1958. Can you see the scheme behind all this? Nothing happens by chance..."
But the cloudy and rainy weather of December is coming forward and I am forced to put off my visits to the cemetery.
During the winter my aunt was taken seriously ill and died in two weeks. My cousins put up her house for sale. I myself have moved to another village where I have begun a new job.
Some years later, in July, while going back to Rover, I call at the old graveyard. The place is changed a bit during all this time. My bizarre friend with glasses is not there. What a pity. Right now I’d like to ask him quite a few questions.
For years have I been going back there, but without being able to meet him again.
MARCH 1997
I’ve rented a small house enclosed in an inner courtyard at Kalag. The price is low and it is a quiet place.
The same evening when I arrive there, at sunset time, the sky is lurid, run through by yellow, frightful streaks. Through a front door I get in a courtyard between old warehouses that have dark windows caged by iron gratings.
The small dwelling-houses are on the left side. In the first one lives a family of greengrocers and their head is a man more than a hundred years old. In the second one is the tavern; the third one has been assigned to me and in the last one there’s an old scullery-woman who has a son deficient from birth. The old woman comes back home from work in the evenings and her son spends all day sticky to a narrow window and looking out and pulling faces with his mouth.
On overcast days, I look out of the window at the facing wall on top of which are glass potsherds. It’s a cold, grey morning. On the opposite side there’s the manhole of the sewer pipes. On the left there’s a cellar and a heap of scrap-iron : a rusty three-legged stool, chains... There is also a very narrow door leading to the hen-house.
In the dry afternoons there’s a little bustle. The courtyard is used by the clients of the tavern to play bowls. When the weather is grey and damp or when it rains, the courtyard becomes a quagmire.
People shut themselves up quite soon here in the evenings, they bar doors and windows as if they were afraid of ghosts. So much the better, that will allow me to hopefully sleep more quietly.
Instead, I was mistaken. One night I wake up with a start. Somebody is screaming as if he were about to be butchered in some room or other.
It’s two at dead of night. Beastly screams, alternated with furious exclamations can be heard. I get up and run to the window to have a look outside. A cold, biting wind slaps my face. The September moon, with its pale light, illuminates the desert courtyard run through by the serrated shadows of the eaves gutters. There is not a single soul. The screams outside are being deadened. The curled up leaves of the vine below the window are rustling against the wall.
Early the morning after, my centenarian friend is as usual taking a stroll in the courtyard helping himself with two sticks. As soon as he sees me he comments :
"Today the playground is perfectly dry and we can play bowls..."
Then he goes on and points at the little window with the end of his stick :
"It is him, he kicked up a shindy tonight. He just leased his hold. It happens now and then..."
I suppose he’s referring to the servant’s son, the man born moron who spends all day looking out of the window.
The next nights the moron is calm, and everybody can sleep. A few tranquil nights follow one upon the other, although a bit cold. October is at the gates.
Then early one morning I happen to smell something odd in the courtyard. The source of it is spotted there in the ground in a square metre large stain, in the south-eastern corner. I’ve already noticed this stain before, which continuously appears and disappears, according to the weather. The grating of a manhole cover is on the other side and perhaps the sewer pipeline passes through here underneath it.
The morning after, sick and tired of that disgusting smell, I tip a couple of labourers I find at the tavern in exchange for helping me dig in that spot. The host is as kind as to lend us his working-tools.
We begin to fill buckets with that mud and to throw it away. The old man who is not far from us ups and mumbles :
"You won’t find anything at all. Others have already digged before you, and they could find nothing. In that way you’ll be ruining the bowls playground..."
We continue to dig. Our boots slid on the slippery ground. As we dig more deeply, the ground becomes drier.
After digging a whole morning, we find a layer of yellow, clayey ground. It’s pointless to dig more. We could find absolutely nothing, so decide to fill the hole carrying whelbarrows full of good ground taken from the hen-house.
During the next nights the moron is quiet and we all can safely sleep. Also the ground in the courtyard, now, doesn’t give us any trouble.
But one morning, when I set foot outside the house, an unpleasant surprise is awaiting me. A smell of rotten eggs is coming through the air. While pressing a handkerchief against my nose, I get near to have a better look.
The ground in that very spot appears slippery and as black as tar.
The old centenarian moves forward leaning on his two sticks :
"The moron has been calm tonight and now we cannot play bowls..."
I look without understanding what has happened. Perhaps now we’ll have to dig again to take away the rotten ground... I enter again in the house completely dishartened and decide to keep my windows closed all day.
That very night I turn over in my bed and keep brooding over. Perhaps I am to face the problem in a quite different way...
After a month I have been living in the house, I hold I have solved the courtyard mystery. I have jotted down all the things that have happened during the last few days. The moron averages a fit every three or four days. If a week goes by without our hearing his screams, the phenomenon in the courtyard will be taking place : the ground rots and becomes corrupted.
There’s a relationship between the fits of the mad man and the phenomenon in the courtyard. When the mad man passes one night a week screaming, he vents his psychic energy like that. When the mad man has been calm for over a week, he unconsciously throws his psychic energy out, which accounts for the phenomenon occurring in the courtyard.
It would be interesting to examine this case more thoroughly along with the phenomenon of the courtyard itself, but winter is coming along and I have found a more comfortable house in another village.
On the day of my moving the sun is shining, but the air is icy and biting. The new tenant unloads his furniture from the cart. Then he notices the quagmire in the corner of the courtyard and I hear him say to the proprietor :
"There must be a broken pipe in that very spot. I myself will take care of having it repaired..."
The moron pulls faces standing behind the little window. The old centenarian shakes his head.
We will have to dig into the head of that mad man if we want to put an end to the problem.
APRIL 1997
Copyright by Bissoli Sergio