But it is the silent city that frightens them, perhaps all its inhabitants have perished and the rain is only falling to dissolve into mud what has remained standing.
– José Saramago,
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis [1]
The first thing I noticed was the two slots in the wall.
One was at adult height, the other, lower down, at a height more suitable for children – or, for that matter, the wheelchair-bound (any who might have made their way in through the ordeal of that swiftly revolving entrance door, that is).
Was there disabled access? You don’t think to notice such things when they don’t apply to you, but surely … a museum? Perhaps there was a ramp somewhere, out of sight. Certainly a rickety lift formed part of the appurtenances.
Myself, I preferred the stairs.
In any case, both slots were in the same, interior wall, and presumably gave not dissimilar views of the same room. Or so one might have assumed.
I looked in the first, adult-eye-height slot, and saw a four-poster bed in a standard-looking Victorian room: ewer and jug on a stand, wardrobe in the corner. The curtains were pulled back, and one could see a wax dummy sleeping the sleep of the inanimate under a dusty eiderdown.
There was nobody around, or I might have thought better of it, but, after a brief interior struggle, I bent over and looked through the lower, child’s eye-level slot as well.
The scene was the same.
The bed, that is, stood as it had stood before. The body lay quiet. But the other figure was new, and – to tell the truth – somewhat disconcerting.
The idea must have been borrowed from one of the contemporary illustrations to his classic vampire tale,
Carmilla. A figure clad in a white nightgown stood by the door, her eyes fixed on the sleeper in the bed. In one hand she held a lighted candlestick, while the other reached forward, its long waxy fingernails lit strangely by the moon streaming in through the window.
I hadn’t even known that there was a La Fanu museum in Dublin till I saw that torn flyer on the noticeboard at my B-’n’-B. And that surprised me. Of course all the guidebooks were full of Joycean Bloomsday tours, Beckett’s Dublin, Yeats’s Dublin, even Brendan Behan’s Dublin. Most of them seemed to consist of carefully plotted Odysseys between a variety of bars in the city centre, the presumed hive of literary culture then and now.
But Le Fanu!
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, the greatest of all Irish ghost story writers. Possibly the greatest writer of ghost stories in the English language.
Ever since I first read ‘Green Tea’ as a boy, his work had fascinated and transfixed me. The idea of a haunting mental tic, such as the presence of a blaspheming, luminous monkey, visible only to the interior eye, and only to that of the poor afflicted individual at the heart of the story, had terrified me far more than any conventional ghost or ghoul could do.
To this day I’ve always been careful to keep down my consumption of green tea for fear of inadvertently opening what Le Fanu’s ‘psychic physician’, Martin Hesselius, calls ‘the interior eye.’
The hints of Swedenborgian learning scattered here and there through that and other tales also added another dimension of erudite creepiness.
In a Glass Darkly, his 1872 collection of stories, became a kind of arcane bible for me – on the same shelf as
Dracula and the
Collected Stories of M. R. James, neither of which would really be imaginable without their strange, almost infinitely eccentric predecessor.
It’s a bit of a cliché that ghost story writers tend to be the most prosaic of people: it’s all in the technique, much less than in the underlying fascination. Genuine occultists such as Aleister Crowley (with his Simon Iff stories) will always be outdistanced by professional wordsmiths such as Oliver Onions or Algernon Blackwood.
Not in the case of Sheridan Le Fanu, however.
The facts around the composition of some of his stories – the later, more effective ones, that is – sound like the stuff of bad fiction. He wrote at night, like Poe’s Dupin, went out (latterly) only to scour the city’s bookshops for erudite tomes on occultism. He said that one day the old house he inhabited, the one in Merrion Square I was standing in at that moment, would fall in on top of him.
And perhaps it did. He was found in the vestibule, dead of some kind of cerebral spasm, which might well – the specialists inform us – have felt like the roof caving in on him where he stood.
Everyone knows something about Le Fanu, whether they’re aware of it or not. The stories in
In a Glass Darkly, as well as ‘Green Tea,’ include ‘The Familiar’ (considered by M. R. James to be the best ghost story ever written), ‘Mr Justice Harbottle,’ the story of an infernal tribunal – and a strong influence on Bram Stoker’s classic ‘The Judge’s House’ – ‘The Room in the Dragon Volant,’ a tale on the theme of premature burial, and (most famously) ‘Carmilla,’ probably the most compelling and atmospheric vampire story of all, with by far the most seductive female vampire.
My assertion that you must be familiar with it in one form or another is based not so much on the elegant prose of Le Fanu’s parable, however, as on the various films made of it to date: Hammer Horror's
The Vampire Lovers (1970) is still probably the best known of these, but Roger Vadim's
Blood and Roses (1960) and Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer's
Vampyr (1932) are – particularly the latter – rather more powerful.
His indirect influence, then, might almost be said to exceed his continuing viability as an author. Henry James’s remark about one of his longer novels being the almost inevitable accompaniment to a stay at an English country house is due to the fact that most of them are mystery stories in the Wilkie Collins vein, compulsively plotted but basically realist in their assumptions.
It’s also worth noting that only the first three of his novels are set in his native Ireland. However ‘Irish’ the dark surrounds of such novels as his masterpieces,
Uncle Silas and
Guy Deverell, may seem, they are all (at least ostensibly) located in out-of-the-way corners of England.
Very little of his output is directly ‘supernatural,’ then – despite the clear fascination he felt for the subject. Did he fear to dwell too much on such themes? Only one of the stories he set in his imaginary North Country village of Golden Friars deals with ghosts and occult matters: ‘The Haunted Baronet.’ It is, however, one of his very best pieces, with a strange subtheme of the animal forms taken on by certain of the damned.
I suppose, too, that everyone knows that story about the haunted house on the square and the young man who arranges to visit it. It’s very foggy when he gets there, and the estate agent who greets him can hardly be made out in the darkness of a London pea-souper. There’s some fumbling with the lock before they get in, and it isn’t until he’s up on the second landing that he turns to ask his companion which room is the room.
Only to find out who’s really behind him.
I did have some feelings of that sort after finally managing to make my way through the confusing signposts and aggressive traffic of a rainy day in Dublin to the museum itself.
The original number of the house was 18. Changes in zoning and new construction have moved that number up to 70. Is there any particular significance in that? If so, it’s hard to see. 52 is the sum of 70 minus 18. 5 plus 2 equals seven, as does seven plus zero. One plus eight equals nine, a more harmonious, less doom-laden number.
Who is this crazed numerologist you may ask? Who is this person you’ve inadvertently taken on as your guide? Relax. I’m just summarizing part of what was inscribed on one of the stranger plaques in the vestibule.
The woman at the front desk was refreshingly normal. Not to mention very pretty indeed.
She greeted me warmly, with a beaming smile, and indicated a nice wide trough in which to deposit my umbrella.
‘Welcome to the Le Fanu house,’ she went on, a little mechanically. ‘Would you be wanting the audio tour’ – at this she flourished a crude looking gadget with a couple of earbuds protruding from it – ‘or would you prefer to go it alone?’
‘Oh, I think I’d rather go it alone,’ I said – I’ve never been a fan of the mechanical tour: the demands it makes on one’s patience to stay in each room till all of its curiosities have been exhausted. In fact, at Thoor Ballylee, Yeats’s tower, I was up on the roof while the device was still maundering its way around the ground floor. Yeats had, it seemed, hymned every corner of the building at one time or another, and each passage needed to be quoted from beginning to end.
‘To be sure,’ she replied (to which I silently added something to the effect of ‘and begorrah’). ‘Would you be wanting one of our pamphlets, then, to guide your steps?’
Kind Katie Scarlett O’Hara (for so I had mentally dubbed her) waved a dusty looking document, which I was glad to receive from her hand. Though actually, now I was a little closer, I could read the nametag on her lapel: MS. M. CARR, it said. Would that be Mary, or Maud – or even Milly, I wondered? It seemed a bit forward to ask.
‘Thanks very much, Ms. Carr. I’m a great fan of Sheridan Le Fanu. I think I have copies of almost all his books: except
Haunted Lives, that is. The copy I bought of that online only included half of the book, so I never got to find out how it turned out.’
‘Oh well, then,’ she said, ‘You’ll know all about it. You’ll know how he was found, out there, just where he said he’d be.’
‘Ye-es,’ I said, slightly less cockily. ‘Just there, you say. On those tiles just by your desk. Don’t you find that … just a little bit …’
‘Oh, I did just a little at first, but there’ve never been any disturbances in the house since I’ve been here, and … all that was over long since.’
‘All that? You mean his death?’
‘We-ell, yes, his death, and … afterwards. It hasn’t been a museum long, you see. There were people living here before, and some of them said … well, never mind what they said. The usual silly stories. But the City Council loves that kind of thing. The moment they heard what we had planned they jumped at the chance – right in the centre of the town, even better than Bath and Edinburgh and those other places.’
‘Those other haunted places?’
‘Well, you said it yourself.
Haunted Lives. Not that I’ve read it myself. Or really very much of his work, to be honest with you. The online summaries are good enough for me. A few of the stories, yes, the ones we get asked about: like “The Drunkard’s Dream.”’
‘Is that the one about the man who wakes up in hell, and then gets one last chance to redeem himself, but can’t keep himself off the drink even so?’
‘That’s the one, and a creepy tale that is. They say that he wrote it about himself. It wasn’t the drink that was his downfall, though, it was …’
‘What was it? I’ve always wondered,’ I interrupted, stupidly.
‘Well, I suppose that your guess would be as good as mine on that one. I wouldn’t be knowing any more than you do about that. So if you have the pamphlet, perhaps you’d remember that we have a wee bookstall you can visit when you make your way downstairs from the exhibits above. We may not have all of his books, but perhaps we’d be after having some things you haven’t seen before …’
Things such as clockwork monkeys guaranteed to run as long as the batteries last, or even longer, I thought – or a dusty old edition of the collected works of Emanuel Swedenborg, with annotations in the Master’s crabbed hand – or a lock of hair from the head of a girl called variously Millarca, Carmilla, Mircalla, dead in a small Eastern European kingdom some centuries before.
Clearly she’d given me my dismissal, so I turned and started up the stairs. Just as I turned onto the landing, though, I could have sworn I heard her call out something, something like: ‘Watch out for the …’
Watch out for the what? Watch out for the cheetah? The bulldog (like the one in ‘Squire Toby’s Will’, which insists on sleeping in grotesquely elongated form on his bed)? I almost turned back to ask, but was afraid of outwearing my welcome even further.
I’d only half-heard it, in any case. She’d probably deny indignantly having said anything at all, rustle her important papers in an officious manner, look at me like just one more middle-aged creep, trying to prolong his conversation with the pretty, desk-bound girl.
I’ve already described the two slots in the wall.
I really must emphasise just how ingeniously they had been staged, though.
Whenever I looked through the upper slot, all was calm and peaceful.
Whenever I looked through the lower one, the action had advanced a little: the night-shirted figure had moved a bit closer to the bed, until, finally, when I forced myself to turn away, she was crawling her way up it like a vast sticky fly.
How did they
do that? Was there a loop of film which was triggered every time someone looked through? But how could they time it so exactly?
It reminded me – as I suppose it was meant to – of M. R. James’s story ‘The Mezzotint’, where a child is abducted in front of the eyes of the viewers of an old-fashioned engraving.
What the young woman hadn’t told me, however, was that we weren’t alone.
It made sense, mind you. The building was large and dilapidated, and it would be unwise to leave one person in sole charge. What if she had to leave her desk to use the facilities, or even to go out for lunch (or a smoke)?
He gave me a bit of a start, though, I must confess.
I’d just turned round from admiring the ‘Carmilla’ exhibit – such, though unlabelled, I presumed it to be – when I saw a dark figure flit across the end of the corridor.
It was clearly a man. Dressed in a suit, with white flashes of shirt visible against the dark fabric of the rest of his clothes.
‘Hello?’ I whispered.
No reply.
‘Hello,’ again, a bit louder.
This time there was a response – of sorts.
A figure emerged from the penumbra at the back of the long, curving corridor, and made its way, slowly, towards me.
As he got nearer, I saw that his clothes were a little old-fashioned, and presumably he’d been encouraged – or, for that matter, encouraged himself – to affect something of a Victorian air. How else to explain the side whiskers?
Not that they didn’t suit him.
‘Yes?’ he said, as he approached a little nearer.
‘Oh, I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m just visiting the museum, and I was very struck by this exhibit, the one with the two slots in the wall that show different things …’
‘Yes?’
‘Is it you? Are you the one who fixes up the machinery? It’s very clever!’
‘Very clever,’ he repeated, in a musing way. ‘Am I very clever? I’m not sure that I am. Certainly I do have some duties here around the place. And some of them may include the objects you just mentioned, but you understand …’
‘Oh, a professional secret. I get you. I was just curious. Have you worked here long?’
‘Oh, a fair long time, and am like to be here a while longer. If you take my meaning.’
‘I’m not sure that I do. You don’t live here on the premises, do you? Are you the caretaker?’
‘Well, that’s as good a word as any for what I am. And I do live here, on one of the upper floors – not open to the public, I’m sorry to say – so I suppose it could be said that I too am one of the exhibits.’
‘Is that why you’re done up like …? I mean, no offence, but you do look so much like one of his pictures – the side-whiskers.’
‘Well, sure. What other explanation could there be for that, right in the heart of his house – my house, that is.’
‘Unless you’re his ghost!’
‘His ghost, you say!’
‘I mean, nobody mentioned anything about this part of the proceedings: running into you in the upper corridors …’
‘No, they wouldn’t, would they? I mean, wouldn’t that ruin the surprise? I imagine that you’ll be dining out on this story for quite some long while – how you met a fellow who was the living spit of … him … on the upper landing, and how you thought he was just done up that way, but maybe, just maybe – I mean, it was a bit dark, and a stormy day, almost like that day young Philip went out on the lake at Golden Friars and came back as – well, you’ll know what he came back as, won’t you?’
It was quite a performance, I had to give him that, and not wasted on the present audience, but I was getting a bit tired of all these hints and double entendres, and made as if to move on.
He flushed, slightly, as if out of sorts.
‘Well, I’ll let you get on, since it must be so. Just do me one favour, though, would you? Don’t mention our little conversation to the young lady down at the counter? She does have her own ideas of what should and shouldn’t be said on these occasions, and I fear that I may have strayed slightly from my brief: the wall-show, for instance, and some of the animals.’
I had heard some strange scratching as our colloquy proceeded. Now, however, as he opened a side door, apparently with the intention of disappearing inside it, I saw the faces staring out at me: a cockatoo, I think, and a dog, and even – it may have been – surely not – a monkey.
I shuddered slightly, and decided that I’d had enough of this particular museum for one afternoon.
There was no-one at the desk, or in the (locked) gift shop, as I made my way out, so I never got to see if they did have a spare copy of
Haunted Lives – perhaps a facsimile of the original Victorian three-decker – for sale inside.
I’m not sure that I would have bought it even if they had.
‘Nervous, yes, very nervous, I have always been, but why will you say I am mad?’ I’ve always felt that that was a brilliant note on which to begin a story. Not perhaps quite so much now, though.
You see, there
is no Sheridan Le Fanu museum in Dublin. Not in Merrion Square, not in Chapelizod, not anywhere. Of course I would have spotted it if there had been. It could hardly have escaped me when I was planning my trip there in the first place.
Nor could it have evaded my subsequent online and on-the-spot enquiries over the next couple of days.
‘You were dreaming. You thought you had got up from bed and gone out, but actually you were still asleep.’ I came up with that one independently, thanks very much. And I understand how convincing it must sound to someone who’d never walked around that rather dusty, slightly dull, intensely real museum.
My question is, rather, what does it mean?
‘The Drunkard’s Dream,’ yes – the occult fiction obsessive’s dream instead, perhaps. Does it mean: Watch out, keep off the grass, the green tea and the demonic monkeys are coming? Or, like so much paranormal fiction, does it not mean anything clearly translatable into advice for the workaday world?
Was it just a short glimpse into the clockwork behind this strange institution – a short stroll through Swedenborgian space, or, at the very least, outside the walls of my cage?
Notes:
[1] José Saramago,
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. 1984. Trans. Giovanni Pontiero. 1992 (London: The Harvill Press, 1999), 3.
[2] Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart.’
The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition. Ed. Stuart & Susan Levine. Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing. (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1977), 259.
Jack Ross: Haunts (2024)
[12-13/7-27/8/19]
[3434 words]
[Published in
Haunts (2024)]
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Cover image: Graham Fletcher / Cover Design: Daniela Gast
Graham Fletcher, "Untitled: Red, Yellow, Blue and Black" (2018)
