Weeping Walls

"-Who are you?

-Angels to some, demons to others. We are explorers in the further regions of experience".

   Ring any bells? If you're a horror fan like me, you surely identified this quote. This is how the cenobites describe themselves in Clive Barker's masterpiece novel The Hell-bound Heart, later adapted into a major film, Hellraiser. 

 

  A few hours ago, I came across the very first post I ever published in this blog, and I thought whoa, this is what this space was meant to be in the first place. Exploring those remote corners of our minds where we dare not linger by, dissecting those unearthly places where the brave will not venture. This blog was supposed to become a view-frame into our most intimate fears as a species, me being your humble host. But somehow this blog became my all-thoughts-basin, where I have poured all sorts of experiences, from architectural practice to social critique, from poetry to humor; but I never again played with those concepts that obsessed me at the time: primeval fear, irrational horror and abhorrent lunacy. Well, that is until now.

   The short story I'll give you now comes from that compendium I first named The Darkest Hour. I thought it might be of particular interest since it deals with two topics I have dealt with here before: architecture and religion, and... well, find out for yourselves. Maybe afterwards this blog will retake the path it was so eagerly following, maybe I'll continue writing in spanish and not in english (as it was originally intended). But alas, no time as the present; so let me remind you that little piece of advice I gave you more than a year ago: there is no avoiding what here is withheld, darkness is very wise. Be warned. 

WEEPING WALLS

or the house of impossible life

"It is life and death that are imaginary solutions, existence is elsewhere"

André Breton

   Weeping Walls was not precisely an ideal home. 

As a matter of fact, it was not even a home for that word implies the concept of inhabiting, and nobody ever had lived in Weeping Walls. The house was there before the town of M. was founded, before there was any trace of civilization. That piece of over-cluttered stone had been there long before history was recounted.

   It had always been there, but where? Nobody could tell precisely. The oldest folk of M. usually recalled having seen Weeping Walls in the middle of the nearby forest, one time when they got lost at night while walking home. One man was convinced that Weeping Walls was the house next door, another seemed very positive when assuring  the infamous house was behind M.'s industrial district. The truth is Weeping Walls could be found anywhere it chose to be found; and the townsfolk of M. had learned to live with its shadow on the back. 

   M. was a silent, misty town beyond the western highlands of Urdull; a farming community of peaceful protestants. Even though one could never listen to a bird sing in M,  folks there developed a very unnatural sense of awareness, for danger always lurked behind every corner of their little town; but take not this idea erroneously, there was hardly any crime registered in the streets of M. Whenever a little child was reported missing or a strong, capable man found with the genitals in the mouth the authorities would file the case as "W.W.". In their peculiar culture, mothers would never tell their children about boogeymen or faeries, those tales of the uncanny were rendered too real to be dealt with; they would only warn them never to listen to that strange voices coming out of nowhere, asking them to come closer. As for the adults, they never found Satan needed in the Church. All they did was sit down quietly, trying to rid their minds of any impure thought, feeling always that chilly drops of sweat cover the back of their necks. 

  Sometimes, in the middle of the night, those too stupid to remain awake could listen to the house whisper its nameless prayers; sometimes in arcane voices and languages that they deemed were not of this earth, sometimes with very human voices and very human languages. And Weeping Walls always knew precisely what to say to those whose ears were listening. One little child, who was never able to sleep again, remembered hearing this folly one May the 5th:

Jesus and Mary, wounded and weary,

thy death hath been in vain.

Little children who lie now dreary

and have sworn by thy name

shall in sadness find me instead.

For every prayer there is fear,

for every smile there is a tear,

no hope, no death, all love has gone,

all safety is undone.

Jesus and Mary, martyr and whore.

  Very few were ever found alive after failing to resist the temptation of  crossing Weeping Walls' threshold; all of them muttering incoherent rubbish about what they had seen. They sometimes spoke in that strange language only those damned walls know, using sounds and vocals that had never been accounted for. Some people thought this men were still inside Weeping Walls, their consciousness bound to those bizarre structures that, for what they told, constituted the house. One man told of a huge room which contained the ocean, dark and turbulent. He cried as he described the waves breaking on the white walls, the ceiling all rotten by moisture and the raging depth which tried to swallow him. He said there was no visible source of light, yet he could see perfectly some kind of life forms dwelling in the water and the very narrow strip of sand; life forms he described as geometrical and polyhedric in  nature. Another man talked about a gang of fetuses that live behind the hall of mirrors, sucking and licking the pustule-ridden skin of a naked old crone; an abhorrent female madness who never stopped crying and screaming. A woman in her mid twenties found herself having a nice tea party with a blind hog, who happened to be an expert in trans-universal metaphysics. He talked her into eating herself. The story was never the same, but they all died within the week. No human soul could take damage as the one Weeping Walls inflicted upon its guests. 

  This is all I was able to chronicle when I came across the little town of M. and its colorful tale of the ghastly house. No one ever talked about ghosts or witches, what those walls kept within was a secret only the darkest forces of the earth could utter, and I was willing to listen. For weeks that turned into months I searched for Weeping Walls, I violated every sacred inch of woodland, broke every protocol of manners in my hunt. I knocked in every door, looked through every window, descended through every passage and climbed all stairs, but encountered no such thing as a moving house.  All I found was the broken foundations of a quite peculiar structure which I estimated was older than eons could tell. There, in the midst of the cultured stones, I detected a strange carving depicting a symbol reminiscent of M's coat of arms, bordering some kind of text written in archaic characters. I copied them into a notebook and handled it to my old friend, Mr. D., a renowned scholar of lost languages, months after my scavenger-hunt for Weeping Walls. 

   What he told me, dear reader, I dare not transcribe here. I just found out that M. was not precisely an ideal town to live in. As a matter of fact, it was not even a town for that word implies the concept of township, which implies the concept of inhabiting human beings; but no one had ever lived in the town of M. I returned to that dreamlike place past beyond the western highlands, years and years after my first visit, and found no trace of civilization, not then, not ever. 

   All I found was a desolated house in the midst of the forest, a house no human words could ever describe. I took residence there, and named it Weeping Walls. And I could never stop crying.