Mask of the Macabre Read online

  He was of course, kept in a cell on the second floor, and chained to the wall like so many others. And like so many others he screamed and wailed at the cause of his downfall. In Lovett’s case it was the name Fettiplace he muttered, uttered and cursed throughout his waking and dreaming hours.

  The hopeless entreaties to the unseen figures who sat in their minds echoed along the dim galleries of the hospital. A dark and mournful dirge sung by a lunatic cast.

  Lovett was not treated for his condition, for what treatment could possibly bring him back to the realms of supposed normality? He was however given an almost unprecedented amount of attention by London society. The gentlemen, and surprisingly ladies, paid two pennies to come and observe him, and of course, the other miserable wretches in our care. It was, for them at least, a demented melodrama performed by a grotesque troupe; but amuse them it did. As utterly abhorrent as this was, the financial rewards could not be underestimated so the matinees continued.

  Lovett’s case provoked a curiosity in me which I was unable to shake. Whether it was the macabre nature of his actions or the eloquence of his voice, I cannot say; but I took to standing outside his cell, heeding his rants.

  “Masks, hundreds of them hung on the wall. Hundreds I tell you, hundreds!”

  “Where is Fettiplace? Bring him to me and I shall rip his mask and show you his true face!”

  “Bring me my mask so I may show you!”

  My enquiries told me, this mask of which Lovett spoke, was discovered at his home when he was arrested. He wore it as the officers took hold of him and fought to keep it in place. At his trial it was found to contain the flesh of at least six men, perhaps more. What dire mind had this creature been afflicted with? Delusions and manias were in the very spirit of these men and no man can see his own delusion particularly if he is at the root of it.

  I took to delivering his molasses sweetened gruel personally and watching him for a while. Chained at the neck and utterly filthy he clung to the wall of his putrid cell like a frightened animal. His eyes never left mine, not once.

  “You, Doctor Harvey are wearing a mask, are you not?” Lovett’s face bore the signs of scratches and scars where his fingers had clawed at his flesh.

  “A mask Lovett? No, not I.” I took hold of my flabby cheeks to illustrate the point.

  “But you are, Doctor Harvey, I can see it under your skin; just below the surface.” He smiled; a grim and soulless leer which left me cold.

  Lovett was a lunatic, of that there was no question, but his manner, so calm and measured in conversation left me uneasy.

  Back in my room I wrote up my notes, for even an acting physician must have papers. I simply substituted the names of the patients on the older reports from my predecessor, for were they not all the same?

  The doctor’s room was scarce any larger than Lovett’s cell, and although there was a desk and comfortable bed, the room was a cheerless and desperate place. I was thankful it was beside the quieter patients on the first floor. The miserable screams of Lovett and the others on the floor above was but a distant and ghostly echo.

  For the next few days, Lovett and I conversed daily, and I began to spend more and more time in his company. For all his eloquence and intelligence, his obsession with Fettiplace and his macabre masks was never far from his thoughts. They were both literal and figurative but real to him in equal measure. I could not remove the chains from his neck but I could at least try and remove them from his soul.

  That is not to say, all was well with Lovett, for the longer we spoke about the horrifying masks the more agitated he became.

  “I’ll show you what lies beneath!” He shrieked and dug down into his hollowed cheeks and opened a trench. Such was his desire to mutilate himself that it took four men to restrain him. What lay beneath his skin was nothing more than what lay beneath all our flesh; blood and bones. But Lovett was convinced something more than that lay beneath and try as I might I could not convince him otherwise.

  “What mask do you wear, Doctor Harvey?” Lovett asked.

  “I wear no mask, I am simply Doctor Harvey and that is all.” I replied.

  “But is not Doctor Harvey a faceted man? Are you unflawed, without blame or fault? I do not believe such a man exists.” Lovett peered at me, diverting his eyes to my cheek. “You have an injury, Doctor Harvey, your cheek is bleeding.”

  I touched my face and gazed at my finger. A smudge of blood adorned its tip. “A shaving cut no doubt, Lovett.”

  “Yes quite.”

  I took my leave and made my way down to the first floor, past the never ending cries of tormented souls and the stench of their waste. A single spot of blood had dried on my cheek leaving a scarlet mole where none had been before. I dabbed it away and fell on my bed. Lovett and his damn masks were infuriating. The echo of his madness swept along the gallery and fell on my room. I began to wonder if he would not benefit from a visit to the filthy tiles of the treatment table.

  I awoke early the next morning. In Bethlem, the morning chorus is not the sweet song of a lark. It is the screaming howl of a waking nightmare from a resident. The refrain was as familiar and unremarkable to me as the cries of the hawkers at Covent Garden are to the common man. My thoughts returned, as was often the case these mornings, to Lovett. There were no treatments for a man such as he, save for the collar and chain. His days of disfiguring and torturing innocent people had finished. Yet, he possessed a peculiar charm which made me consider my own position.

  The skin on my face itched with the night’s growth, but as I rubbed my face, I felt the stinging sensation of an open wound. The nerve endings twitched through my skin and jolted me from my Lovett reverie; shocking me from my bed. I looked to my hands and saw the creases lined with blood. There was no great amount, but enough to paint a crimson disguise. I must have scratched myself in the night with a loose and jagged fingernail.

  I washed, dressed and left my room. I was determined to speak with Lovett again and to convince him of his need to remove this Fettiplace from his mind; to accept that whatever masks he had seen were those of a theatrical nature and nothing more.

  I arrived on the upper floor and walked the distance along the gallery to Lovett’s cell. A thin and despairing light fell from the windows, perfectly matched with my mood. I had all but stemmed the drops of blood from the mark to my face, but as I reached for the door, a solitary drop landed on my hand. It congealed in an instant and I wiped it away.

  In the half-light of his grim lodgings I spied a great pool of black liquid beside his cot. I need not enter to see it was blood, Lovett’s blood. But what had become of this poor tormented soul?

  I took the gallery stairs at pace for there were only two places Lovett could be. The infirmary or the mortuary and I prayed it was the former. A great scream of despair rose from one of the cells as I passed but I dared not stop to observe the source.

  I had scarce been in the infirmary, but in contrast to the rest of the hospital, the walls were clean and brightly tiled in the most vivid white imaginable. Imprisoned, like the rest of the souls in Bethlem, a single golden canary sat lonely in his cage by the door. His cheerful little song was unable to change my disposition.

  Were it not for the board above his bed, I would not have recognised him, such were his injuries. He lay in the only occupied berth, at the far end of the room, beneath a small window overlooking the inner courtyard.

  “Lovett, who has done this to you?” I asked although I knew the answer. He did not reply. His face, if that is what was left, was nothing more than a gruesome vista of meat. The wound wept slowly onto the already soiled sheets. He had finally done what he so badly wanted. He had shown me a monster existed beneath his flesh.

  He opened his lips to speak, the flash of pain evident through his eyes, but no sound came.

  “What is it Lovett? What do you want to tell me?”

  I fought back the revulsion and put my head close to his mouth.

  “The monster is not
here, he has flown.” His voice croaked.

  “There was never one there Lovett, only in your mind you poor demented soul.” I spoke softly.

  “I never killed those men. It was Fettiplace.”

  My flesh crawled as I stared into those weeping eyes. “Be still.” It was all I could say. “Be still Lovett.”

  Before I could pull away he reached out a hand and took my arm. “You have given much of your time making me see the monster for what he really is. Now let me aid you. Look to your own mask. Look to your room and see what is real and what is not.” He fell back; the effort clearly too great to continue.

  The utterances of a lunatic in his death throes would not normally trouble me so; but Lovett had invaded my mind and something resonated inside. ‘Look to your own mask.’

  It was the mask of a fabricated Doctor in an asylum for lunatics; that is what it was. I wandered back to my room, pausing at Lovett’s obscene den, and peered inside. Unseen in my earlier haste, pieces of flesh littered the grimy floor, like birdseed for doves in the park. “Poor Lovett” I whispered into the void. I could stand the sight no longer for I felt suddenly nauseous and hurried to my room.

  ‘Look to your own mask. Look to your room and see what is real.’ A drop of fresh blood fell to the floor beside my desk. It was true my room was little more than a cell, a small square cell. But a warm rug lay across the cold floor beside my bed. Look, there it…Where was the rug?

  Drip, drop.

  And where are my desk and patient reports? This infernal scratch on my cheek is unrelenting. I cannot soothe it away.

  Drip, drip, drop.

  My hands around Staniforth’s scrawny neck and the last of his breath on my cheek. A billy club cracked on my skull

  Drip, drip, drop drop.

  So much blood on the floor. A chain beside the bed, a neck collar. Am I the patient? No, it cannot be, I am Doctor Harvey.

  “Fetch a nurse!” A voice in the gallery. “Fetch the nurse!”

  Hands on my arms, grabbing my hands but I must free them. I am no patient. They must see that. I must show them. Beneath this mask is my true face; beneath the mask is Doctor Harvey.

  “I am beneath the mask! Look beneath the mask!” I can feel my fingers beneath the skin; brushing against the bone and muscle then ripping it off. Rip it all off.

  “I am Doctor Harvey!”

  “Be still, Doctor Harvey.” A soft voice in my ear. “Be still, or you will find your lodgings on the second floor, once again.”

  Memento Mori

  The first occasion I observed a corpse, I was beside the bed of my deceased father. Perfectly still, yet only seconds prior, he had been gripped by a hideous convulsion which threatened to break him in half. There, under the stained and bloody sheets, I looked for the final time upon the lifeless body of my progenitor. I was not frightened and I was not grief-stricken, for I felt that his body had been released from the terrible pain it had long endured. Amid the wailing sound of my mother’s misery I gazed at his face and tried not to forget.

  In the moments that passed, his body was covered with the soiled sheets, and taken away. As to where it was taken, I did not know, but I remained where I was and closed my eyes. I kept the image of him in my mind for as long as I could.

  Memories are fleeting, some more than others, but none is eternally exact. We embellish and decorate our reminiscences with elegant mendacities where our wits fail to recall. This is humanity, and some may say, it is a failing in our creation.

  The image of my father’s body remained with me for as long as it took me to pass through puberty. After that, he was merely an indistinct figure, present only in my dreams.

  A cologne bottle stands empty on my dresser, the last drops long since gone. The faintest of his scent still lingers on the stopper and reminds me of him. It won’t be long before the trace is entirely departed; like the sound of his voice and the touch of his gruff, calloused hand, lamented so long ago.

  This yearned for loss of memory led me to my current profession as a photographer. For many years I completed an apprenticeship under the experienced guidance of Mr. Saundersfoot, who apart from being a competent photographer, was a skilled teacher. His studio, modest by some standards, was always well used and popular, if not necessarily with the class of society he had hoped to attract.

  Saundersfoot taught the basics of the craft, but his ambitions were, at least to me, infuriatingly humble.

  “We must cater to the tastes of the masses now, Richard. Photography is not an art; It is merely a function which we use to help us remember.” That function is exactly the reason why I adore this profession.

  Saundersfoot passed, and without an heir, I took his studio as my own. Fashions change like the passage of the seasons and photography was no different. The stilted images of grim faced families sitting precisely on the posing couch were no longer in demand. My training under Saundersfoot, as comprehensive, as it had been, was deliberately conservative. It had focused entirely on capturing the grim faced stoicism of the common man and nothing more adventurous. As a result of this dogmatism, and whilst under my care, W.A. Saundersfoot (Photographer) almost became a financial ruin. I take my share of the blame for that but, had Saundersfoot been alive, the result would have been the same.

  It was because this threat that I made the decision to widen the appeal of the studio. For some time I had admired the trick photography done by men far more skilled than I. A headless man with his face served on a salver was a particular favourite. It was with regret that I realised I was unable to produce such wonderful images.

  So, for all his inflexibility, Saundersfoot’s stoic resistance to change gave me the necessary training to become one of London’s finest exponents in the art of Memento Mori. The taste for ‘Remember your mortality’ photography amongst the whole of society was almost an overnight phenomenon. It provided others with something I would never have; an exact recollection of their loved ones in death.

  You may find this somewhat distasteful, and indeed, when my first assignment came I found it an arduous task. As they say though, money is money, and when that commodity is in short supply, it is sometimes necessary to do tasks against which your soul rebels.

  My first assignment was a simple task. Yet, as it was my first, it forever remains with me. A girl of twenty years had been taken by consumption. In life, no doubt, she had been pretty with a ruddy complexion but in death, as one would expect, her features were wan. Since the death of my father, this was the first corpse I had seen. If it had not been for the weary look in their grief stricken eyes I am ashamed to say my revulsion would have been obvious. Nevertheless, I remained professional, and photograph her I did. There were three beating hearts and one stopped for eternity gathered in the little parlour of their home as I arranged my equipment.

  Dressed in a black silken gown with a string of pearls hung around her neck, she was propped between her parents. Her eyes were closed as they had been in her dying moments and were left so; after all she was merely sleeping to them. Her mother grasped her daughter’s stiffened hand and wailed briefly before her husband brushed away her tears. I cannot stand to think what this loss did to their lives and what became of them after the photograph was taken. In my mind I hope it provided a small amount of comfort. My wish was that they could look upon their daughter everyday, as I was not able to with my father.

  I will not trivialise the matter with talk regarding the technical aspect of photography. Suffice it to say, it is nothing more than a gruesome scientific joke, that in memento mori the living becomes the ghost. The very tranquillity possessed by cadavers negates the lengthy exposure the image requires. In contrast, the living cannot be still for even a moment. The beat of our heart and the blood in our veins send silent messages to our nerves; like a shudder in the cold or a flinch from the debauched touch of a corpse’s hand. It is in the instant that they move that their image becomes a ghostly blur on the copy.

  It was not always the case th
at I was called to photograph the dead. I have, on many occasions, been called to record an image premortem. That is to say, in the moments where all hope is gone, I am called to record their image forever more. It has often been the case where I wait in the shadow of some darkened room until the priest has said his piece. Then, like the reaper himself, I come to take their soul. It is no different, for they say at the moment of death our souls can go anywhere they choose and why not the lens of my camera? It is I though, and not the reaper, who leave a living image behind and not some faded memory of what went before.

  The images I leave behind record the moment perfectly. Unlike my brain which fails to recall much at all. So, with that in my mind, I will not attempt to recollect any more of the appointments I’ve been given. Besides, it may be considered in bad taste to reveal very much more.

  This précis of my career brings me to this point and the story I now wish to tell. For, although I am well used to being in the company of the dead, and as you have heard, recording their image. My most recent assignment was unalike any other I had previously taken and left me disturbed.

  I received a call at my studio one morning from a well presented, and clearly, affluent gentleman. His entrance, however, was far less elegant than his attire. Such was his haste that he tripped on the stoop as he entered, almost falling to the floor.

  He removed his top hat. “Sir, I am Rowland Eldritch from Eldritch and Maypole, solicitors at law. You may have heard of us?”

  “I’m afraid not, Mr Eldritch. Fortunately I have had little use for legal matters thus far. What service may I be, sir?”

  Eldritch assumed a distinct look of disappointment to his flabby face. It was clear his reputation was of great importance to him. “You are Saundersfoot I presume?”

  “No sir, I am Richard…” Eldritch held up his gloved hand. My name was obviously unimportant.

  “I have come to request your services.”

  I took up my ledger and made preparations to record the details. “And who are you acting on behalf of Mr Eldritch?”