THE CURSE OF THE RAVEN

THE CURSE OF THE RAVEN

By Roger Vilar

CHAPTER I

The cry of the raven sounded through the woods. The strong, hurtful squawk, filtered between the pines and across the mountains. It was like a veiled threat. The bird's summon was filling the emptiness of the sky. The sun still hung above the mountains-line, but it shone with a sad orange glow. The raven squawked again. I thought that it was far away. I saw the trail before me; this was penetrating into the forest as a wound in the earth. The bird screamed once more time, this occasion I heard him a little closer to me. Would it be the same raven or would it be another one? It was impossible to know for sure; nevertheless, the squawk seemed to me to be a scary thing. It could not be any good omen, but it was too late for such fears. I was to arrive as soon as possible to the house of the already deceased Nathaniel David Walden. The path went down among the gray stones while a slight mist began to rise. It would soon spread all over the forest, I assumed.

I knew that I had to hurry. I looked around me; the light was weakening slowly between stones and old trees. I realized my absolute solitude. At that very moment, the raven began to squawk again with more power than before. The scream seemed to come from everywhere. Fear paralyzed me, but suddenly the raven went mute. An infinite silence fell over all things and the entire forest hushed. For a moment in time, I had opposite me an indefinable presence. This one was invisible, it made no noise, but I was sure that I confronted something strange. What kind of creature was this? I did not know this, but a sense of a ghostly being besieging me all pervaded my soul.

I tried very hard to stop these thoughts; I wanted to control my fear to define the being that was stalking me. However, I could not identify what, or what phenomenon of nature, caused that sensation in me. That was neither man nor beast, neither the living nor the dead, but all things mingled, the form of all things but, paradoxically, devoid of all forms. That is what I thought. It was a weird idea. Was the cawing of the crow put in me that fantasy? I told myself that was impossible. That feeling surely had arisen in me by loneliness; but not, I could not reassure myself. I went into the rare idea that the everlasting darkness were watching me.

The raven squawked again. This time the scream looked to be normal. That brought me back to reality and I realized that I had to continue my way faster. It was a particular twilight, an ugly September, like a threshold of the cruel winter. I started walking faster. The backpack weighed on my shoulders, but the contemplation of such beauty gave me encouragement. I listened the chirping of the thousands of birds preparing to sleep. From time to time, as I descended, grey rocks appeared along the route. These seemed to have a stone soul ready to speak up. I sensed unknown beings and archaic faces in them. I wanted to stay among those spirits, but the cold was increasing dangerously.

A thin mist rose from the ravines. The crow cawed again. Now, I felt the sound close to me, how whether this was coming from my left side, but I could not see the bird. A shiver ran through my body. I imagined a cold beak of a raven eats my brain. The squawking was repeated, but now more distant. The bird seemed to flutter away. I tripped and fell down. It took me a little time to get up, because the backpack was heavy. I walked a few more steps onward the mist; I went out to a clearing in the forest and looked up at the sky. There were dark, rolling clouds over my head, and in the air the heavy, oppressive menace of thunder.

The storm still was not beating down; but in a few minutes it would be dark in the Greystone woods. Luckily for me, I was already opposite the huge house of the deceased writer N. D. Walden, a rusty wooden residence, with seven acutely peaked gables, and a big, clustered chimney in the midst.

The aspect of the decrepit mansion struck me like a face with a life of its own, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm and savage winds, but, also, of a long lapse of veiled sadness, or rather of a relentless supernatural illness. There I breathed the smell of the millions of pines that covered the mountains all around; however, the cold air had a slight taste of blood. All the weight of this old house fell over my shoulders. A rapid glimpse of its outer, as it grew black in the prevalent dusk wind, allowed me to see here and there spots of brown moss on its roof and walls.

I walked toward the door, but I did not open it immediately. I stood in silence where I was, for I did not know what to think. Was this where five writers had made their most famous novels? Was this the mansion that N. D. Walden built in the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty? By the scholarship for writers "Edgar Allan Poe”, I could live there six months doing a novel. Nevertheless, I felt doubts and fears crowding upon me. What sort of place had I come in and between what sorts of threatening voices from the past? What sort of grim adventure was it on which I had embarked?

However, the night was falling down. Without fear or with fear, it was dangerous to be in the dark in that forest. I heard a faraway trickle of water, maybe dropping from a rock and sounded like a mystery melody in the darkness. Then I calmed down and enjoyed the marvels of that. It came to fill my nostril the scent of the autumn. I breathed once more, took out the key, opened the door and entered the house. I closed the door, found out easily the light switch, turned it on, and finally I felt calm.

I looked around me. Everything was old and had a madness glow so hard to describe. It was like an unreal glimmer, that I only caught by intuition, a soft shining very different from the electric light, a kind of supernatural dead and drowsy fire inside everything all; but maybe it was normal there. Maybe the still living spirit of Nathaniel carried it out. Plainly, I was in middle of the weird lifestyle of the writer N. D. Walden, who almost two centuries ago had retired from civilization to plunge himself into the wild nature of the mountains and forests of Greystone. The rooms around me were holding on the old-fashioned appearance that Walden wanted to those. The writer´s mystery still emanated from each corner, the cracking of the old timber beams rose a paranormal and disturbing atmosphere.

Mostly the rickety furniture look oppressed my soul in an uneasiness way. I recognized there the Chesterfield couch, featuring a buttoned-up upholstered back and stately proportions with rolled arms. This was first built, I seem to remember, when the fourth earl of Chesterfield was alive in the thirteenth century, but it found new life during the Victorian age. I saw also around me other Victorian furniture had include balloon backs, deep seats, low arms or armless easy chairs for Ladies to accommodate their voluminous skirts. They were women who perhaps once visited the writer N. D. Walden, but now her voices were as ghosts lost in time. Surely, in the Walden mansion they had taken meetings with writers and other artists; however, the chatter of those persons had vanished beneath the rich and heavy festoons of cobweb, which had cost a long ancestral succession of spiders their life's labor to spin and weave.

I approached the back wall and with my hand, I removed the dust that covered a large portrait. I saw then that there was the writer Walden image. He was looking very elegant. The novelist who had given life to the Thoreau family in his works was leaning back in his chair. Mingled in his countenance with a dreamy delight, there was a look of peaceful sadness. Was he on the threshold of his house? Did he contemplate the thick forest of Greystone in that far away time? Maybe he was dreading the spring burst to be a dream, or a play of imagination, and that very soon a hidden threat would come back from those endless mountains. Did beautiful women and intelligent artist surround the writer? If that was the frozen moment into portrait ... How had all these people come into mansion hidden in the heart of the woods? No horse-drawn carriage would reach N. D. Walden residence on, nor in 18th century, nor in 21th one. Even the most powerful truck in now goes not up the Greystone Mountains. It was a very inexplicable mystery. I walked away from the portrait and sat in a comfortable chair. I throw out a suspicious look around me. I did not have an answer to my questions; however, I continued wrestling with that ghostly veil that surrounded me.

Many things there created the disturbing sense in me. The phantasmagoria hunting trophies on the walls, and the frayed carpet on the floor into which the scene of some harpies devouring a child was fading by oldness and decrepitude. The windows were long, narrow, and frighteningly pointed, as blades of dark warriors. From a small bulb, the electric light had spread on. By this cause no more than feeble gleams of crimsoned light made their way through the Victorian furniture; my eyes, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber.

Anyway, I was not in the Walden mansion for cry nor to find out old demons. I was supposed to write a novel there, I had not to forget that. Then I got up and walked by the most of the rooms of the residence. I noticed, in despite the house shadowy appearance, that I had the advances of modernity: a telephone, internet and a well-stocked refrigerator. All this thanks to the 'Edgar Allan Poe' scholarship, which would allow me to live six months in solitude and write a novel of fantastic genre.

I finished my round at the ageing dwelling of N. D. Walden, came back to the hall, and I planned to go to sleep at that very moment, but a rustic wooden table in the living room north corner lured me up. I approached to furniture and saw about thirty books in whole disorder. The titles and themes of those volumes were quite curious. I saw over such table works as the ‘Ververt et Chartreuse’ by Gresset and the ‘Belphegor’ by Machiavelli. In addition, I saw there the ‘Chiromancy’ by Robert Flud; the ‘Journey into the Blue Distance’ by Tieck; and the ‘City of the Sun’ by Campanella. I also found out the manual of a forgotten church: the ‘Vigiliae Mortuorum Secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae.’

Some of the books had a sinister appearance as if the malignancy imprisoned in its pages might lead a secret life of their own. I saw and touched the manual of the Holy Inquisition ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ written by the friars Kramer and Sprenger. I had read this book a few years ago. The ‘Directorium Inquisitorum’ got to hook me more. I have never seen that manual, but I knew a little about it. The ‘Directorium Inquisitorum’ was written at least a century before the ‘Malleus Maleficarum.’ It was Nicholas Eymerich's most prominent and enduring work. This treatise caused, like the ‘Malleus Maleficarum’, millions of women burned at the stake. Most of the victims were never sorcerers, but had to confess, under torture, that they practiced witchcraft up. I felt repugnance for the inquisitors and his sick minds.

Nearly all of those volumes were about black arts or mysteriousness subjects, like the ‘Grimorium Verum’, by Quiscaecus Mordrec; or the hideous and evil ‘Schetika me tous daimones kai ti synitheia na trone ptomata’, by Scuriteno Skjulta, forbidden many centuries by the Holy Inquisition on pain of death. The unknown collector of books also had there works as ‘Heaven and Hell’ by Swedenborg and the ‘Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm’ by Holberg.

I saw other books, all of which were works by Edgar Allan Poe. I checked them one by one, expected to find out some title unknown to me. I was not lucky. I had already read all of Poe's books that I scanned. Among them was ‘The Masque of the Red Death’. The story ends on chilling line, ‘And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all’. Finally, I saw a deluxe book of poem ‘The Raven’, which also contained comments from such important writers as Paul Verlaine, Howard P. Lovecraft, Alfonso Reyes, and Stephen King. At that moment, I was scared again. I remembered the raven that I had heard squawking in the woods. That bird's horrible screams and the presence of a very expensive book with a leather cover and the words ‘The Raven’ in golden frightened me. I thought it was not a coincidence, but an evil omen. I opened the book. The pages were made of high quality paper. Then, I read the often-quoted verses, 'Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary...' A talking raven had visited a writer, the man questioned the bird, but the black intruder only answered with the famous word 'nevermore'. A year ago, the term 'Nevermore' did not matter to me. However, at the time, just saying that meant the hell was hovering over my head.

I closed the book and my tired eyes traveled across the wall in front of me. I knew out that many years slept there and no little mysteriousness lore as well. It calmed me and gave me peace. I automatically put the volume ‘The Raven’ on the books pile and stopped looking at the wall. Then I turned down my eyes and I discovered the most unhallowed work. A large manuscript volume entitled ‘Evidence that the crow is the devil's favorite bird’, signed by Roderick Usher, was reposing there. Roderick was the main character in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher”, a story about a decadent and illness artist. Roderick had suffered a form of sensory overload known as hyperesthesia, hypochondria and acute anxiety.

My curiosity was more than my fatigue and my fear. I opened the book. I did not read any full page, just a few paragraphs. That was enough for me to know what the content was. It seemed that alone pleasure of the owner of that manuscript was in the reading, compiling, and rearranging what he has called ‘Evidence that the crow is the devil's favorite bird’, and as I engaged in this pursuit the night seemed to fly away. I was as tired as never before, but I tried to hold on reading, because the book was interesting, weird, and creepy. Finally, the consequences of extreme fatigue and overwhelming mental stress fell upon me like great stones. I already was feeling so sleepy and I went into the more comfortable room as I needed to get rest in a feather bed. I decided to take a hot shower before I went to bed, just so I wanted to relax too much. I warmed up in my nightclothes and after several minutes, I chose to open a window to breathe in the fresh air of the night.

Outside the night was as dark as the wings of a raven. My mind then linked four separate facts: the crow that chased me through the forest, the manuals of the Holy Inquisition on Lucifer and witchcraft, the luxurious book ‘The Raven’ and the manuscript that was attempting to show that crows are the birds chosen by the devil. These were too many coincidences. My fear became stronger than before. Plainly, a malignant entity was hovering over me. I thought about running down, but the forest could be very dangerous in the darkness. I would not find out the way back, and I would dissolve in the absolute glooms.

I had gone to bed with very little hope of surviving. I covered me well with the blankets and my mind came to be inside the soft fragrance of the old wood beams. My comfortable sensation was accentuated by a fine, homogenous texture of the bedcovers reminiscent of the smoothness of silk. There I fell into a kind of hypnotic state, which slowly transformed fear into pleasure. The mystery of the place contributed greatly, not the mystery as an evil force, but this as a deep and untold beauty. The cold and smell of the forest penetrated in and mingled with the odor of old of the house. I heard or fancied thousands of sounds: mice and rabbits hiding in their burrows, an owl flying over the trees, the wind, the crackling branches and a distant creek. All that world of wonderful sounds lulled me, then I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

I dreamed something strange. I did not feel fear in that dream; I could not describe it as a nightmare. This was rather mysterious and very difficult to define. I dreamed that I was alone outside the N. D. Walden house and the building faded before me, until it looked more than smoke than wood. There were wolves as well, gaunt grey shapes stalking through the trees all around me, their eyes shining. Whenever I looked at them, I remembered the taste of blood. Would I have ever drunk human blood? The beasts scared me and I ran down by a dark path, which took me out to a bleak moor. Then I went to an ill-regarded island in a river, and made a sketch of a singular Druid fort built by the moss-grown rows of grey standing stones whose origin was obscure and immemorial. There the great truth burst upon me, and I saw, mapped out in lines of fire, a whole world, a sphere unknown; continents and islands, and great oceans. That sphere was like an unthinkable gulf that dreams profound between two worlds, the world of matter and the world of spirit; I saw the great empty abyss before me. Maybe those are the words to describe what I dreamed about, but also the content of such fantasies could have been very different. I cannot say anything reliable about that strange dream. Perhaps this inability to remember it well was because the sound of a few blows woke me up. At first, still half asleep, I could not imagine that could cause those sounds. I opened well my eyes, and then I had a curious sense that some unknown, some evil being, was stalking me, a diabolical entity which might or might not belong to my dream. I decided to face up the invisible presence and focused on the sounds. The noise resembled the blowing of a bird's beak on a timber frame. Maybe I was not fully awake, maybe not, maybe that was the reason that the terror did not paralyze me. I stood up willing to investigate what was happening.

I took a lantern that was on my side, and walked towards the window, because from there was coming the sound. It happened to me slightly strange at this moment, was as if my soul had been going out of my body, and I did not know where I was. I saw a very high wall that was coming up in the sky full of stars. As time wore along, my absorption in the irregular wall increased, for I began to read into the odd stones a Celtic runes that seemed to offer vague clues regarding my purpose to write a novel. I could never understand the secret meaning of the runes; the wall vanished so fast as it had arisen. My soul was going into my body again and I came back to the Nathaniel's house. Then I could see, thanks to the yellow, weak light of the lantern, the shape of a dark bird that was in the window, and he was pecking furiously the wood. I detained up amazedly. I did not know what to do. What do you do when you are in front of a bird that seems to be unreal? Was it a raven or an illusion of my own mind? Was he the same raven that had followed my track across my route?

I felt emotions and strange feelings, difficult to define. I thought that a vague and singular aura of desolation hovered over the house, over the forest and over me. I was in a place, I supposed, where only the dark and morbid birds were doing its nests, they were surely no birds that sing and bring joy in the forest.

I guessed that the pigeons and swallows shunned those shady hills where it seemed to inhabit a wickedness unutterable. It was a curse hard to imagine, and to try to define it had left me as hypnotized and out of the reality. I turned back from those illusions and fancies due to the noise of a bird flapping and I looked at the window. Now there was nothing except the faint light of an autumnal sunrise. Did I imagine the raven there? Was the shape of the bird just part of my own dream? I could not answer my own question as a feeling of great emptiness was hovering over me.

I went to the window, put my hands on the old timber frame and watched into the forest. The landscape was not at all cheerful there was nothing that made me smile. Desolation and decay hung like a pall above the archaic trees, which branches were looking like the claws of a cruel predator. I felt a touch of the evil. I felt a peculiar sense of oppression in being in the deeper in that spectral forest. I was at the unthinkable limit that exists between the day and the dream and in an imprecise mood. I returned to the bed and I fell asleep without knowing if the raven and the shaded forest were real