My worst nightmare came true.
It was an odd little dream, short and simple and not very horrifying at all whenever I described it to friends. Not that I talked about it much, mind; it was the sort of vision that left me shaking and unable to get out of bed until I was very, very certain that I was alone in the room, so naturally I was reluctant to discuss it with anyone. That's no longer the case, thank God and the angels, which is why I can finally, over a decade after I saw my dream actually take place, I'm able to write about it.
I first had it when I was in my late teens, and it was always the same:
I am at the top of a flight of stairs. There is light behind me, but the stairs themselves are dark.
Suddenly there is a noise. It varies - sometimes it's a grinding, whirring sound that proceeds with monotonous rhythm up the stairs, sometimes it's a lively scrabble - but it heralds the the approach of....
Of....
Of a small white thing, only a few inches high but full of menace, its eyes glowing a brilliant, unearthly red as it reaches the top of the stairs....
This was always the point where I woke up. I never got a good look at the Small White Thing. It might have been a robot, a monster, a demon, or even a miniature space alien for all I knew, or cared; I was simply glad that I would always wake before it reached me and savaged my ankles on its way to climbing up my body and doing Something Horrible.
I had this dream periodically for about twenty years. It didn't seem to be triggered by any particular event or memory, nor was it a response to significant life events. It just happened, and then I'd wake up, shaking and cold and much too agitated to go back to sleep. Eventually I came to regard it as just a dream that I'd have from time to time, the way another person might dream of going to school naked, or my mother's recurring dream of climbing a hot fudge sundae the size of a mountain. It was just a dream, albeit a creepy one. Nothing more.
And then it came true.
It was a few months after Wingding and I separated, so I was living by myself. This hadn't been easy at first - Wingding and I had been married for fourteen years - but Beata and her husband lived nearby for care, feeding, and emotional support. I also had a Triple Felinoid to group-greet me, sleep with me, and otherwise keep me company. Two of the felinoids, Arrow and Siren, had been mine before the Great Schism, but the third, Malfoy-the-cat, was a new addition to the household, and quite the addition he was.
I hadn't originally intended to get a kitten; Wingding was making noises about possibly coming home, which meant his cranky gray longhair, Arwen, would be back, and I didn't want to upset her too much. Beata had insisted, on the not unreasonable grounds that a) I needed something to make me laugh, b) her neighbor's cat had a kitten in need of a home, and c) the kitten in question was extremely amusing, so why not adopt the youngling and solve both problems at once? I protested that two cats was enough for the time being, that I had limited time to nurture a kitten, that I was fine, really I was, I wasn't lonely even though I was over at their house several times a week and -
Well. The following picture of the creature best known in these diaries as Malfoy-the-cat shows who won that argument:
Malfoy, who was a flamepoint Siamese mix, was lively, mischievous, and utterly heedless of the trail of chaos, destruction, and general mayhem he left in his wake. Not only did he sit on the piano bench my aunt Betty had lovingly needlepointed by hand in the 1950's, he shed on everything I owned (especially anything black or dark blue), knocked over vases and china ornaments, attempted to eat a pin cushion, jumped onto a pizza and left footprints in the cheese, and fell into a bubble bath when he tried to walk on the foam thinking it was solid (note: it wasn't). I threatened repeatedly to skin him and use his pelt as a bathmat, not that it helped, and I'm convinced that the only reason he lived to adulthood was because half the time I was laughing too hard to be angry.
In short: Beata was right. I needed him, he needed me, and that's all there was to it.
It wasn't all wine and roses, of course. Malfoy once attempted to decamp for Blandford or some other lightly populated hilltown on a cold December's night, and I cursed mightily as I coaxed the little moron out from under my car with a tub of catnip. He was surprisingly clumsy, probably because his eyes crossed enough to wreck his depth perception. He even managed to get close enough to me when I was testing a new vat of indigo dye that I splashed him by accident, giving him a pale blue splotch on his back that neither of us noticed until Roomie asked why the cat was blue a couple of days later.
And then there was the night my cute little kitten turned out to be my worst nightmare.
A couple of months after I adopted him, I was doing the dishes when I heard an odd thumping scrabble scrabble scrabble behind me. The noise seemed to be coming from the stairs leading down to the basement, and I wondered if the cats were chasing a mouse upstairs. I frowned, turned off the water, and turned around...
only to behold a small white thing, only a few inches high, its eyes glowing a brilliant, unearthly red as it scuttled up the stairs -
I scarcely had time to swallow a scream of sheer, unadulterated panic at the realization that OH MY GOD MY CAT IS POSSESSED HOLY HELL WHAT DO I DO NOW AAAAAIIIIEEEEEEE DEMON KITTEN when Malfoy, eyes shifting back to blue as he moved out of the reflection zone from the overhead light, trotted the last few feet up to me, flopped onto his side, and began whacking a plastic Jingle Ball back and forth across the kitchen floor. He was purring loudly enough to sound like a cement mixer, and as I watched he rolled over into a patch of catnip and began squeaking in ecstasy.
Once I'd calmed down enough to breathe, I realized that, far from being evidence that Malfoy was in thrall to the Dark Lord, this was probably the feline equivalent of the "red eye" effect seen in photographs of light-eyed humans. My vet confirmed this when I called her a couple of days later, and Malfoy and I had thirteen hilarious and non-demonic years together before his kidneys gave out and I had to say good-bye.
Weirdly enough, I haven't had that dream about the strange white creature on the stairs since that night....
If this had been a horror novel and not a true story about my life and weird times, matters might well have been different. The dream would have foretold not that I would someday own an energetic but otherwise ordinary blue-eyed kitten, but a Hellbeast intent on sucking out my soul. The nightmares would have intensified as the creature matured, and the story would have ended with him sitting on my chest one fine night as I struggled and clawed for breath, his eyes glowing cherry red as he opened his mouth and prepared to fulfill his evil destiny. I would have been found the next morning, unmoving, face frozen in a rictus of horror as my innocent cat dozed by the fire, ready to be taken to a shelter and adopted by its next victim as the Prince of Darkness slowly took over the world, one kitten at a time....
Fortunately for everyone, Malfoy was a perfectly harmless cat. But if he'd appeared in a story by Poe? King? Bierce? Or the subject of tonight's diary?
Who knows?
Tonight I bring you only one book, but it's a humdinger of horror, sexualized ickiness, and anti-Catholic ravings. Written in a quiet frenzy over a ten week period, it became such a smash hit that its teenage author was forever afterwards known by its name despite prose as thick as clotted cream, lashed with a goodly dose of misogyny:
The Monk, by Matthew Gregory "Monk" Lewis" - these diaries have profiled many a denizen of Badbookistan, but few are as unlikely as Matthew Gregory "Monk" Lewis. Born in 1775 to a wealthy, high-ranking British civil servant, the future author was intended for a similarly respectable position; the family had extensive estates in the West Indies, which allowed young Matthew to receive an excellent education, travel repeatedly to Europe, and indulge a taste for the literary life.
This love of books included the classics, which was fine. Men of his social class were expected to be familiar with good literature, and if Matthew also enjoyed contemporary French plays (radical!) and German poets (Goethe!), at least he was dutiful enough to attend to his studies at Oxford, take up a position at the British Embassy in the Hague, and stand for a seat in Parliament in accordance with his father's plans for his life. As long as his attempts to translate Schiller's plays, and even get some of his own works produced on the London stage, didn't interfere with his nascent diplomatic/political career, it was entirely his business.
The same compartmentalization applied to his family life. His father may have been the very epitome of Georgian respectability, but his mother, who'd run away with a music master in 1781 and given birth to a non-marital child about a year later, was another matter entirely. Young Matthew somehow managed to stay in touch with his mother despite the scandal and his father's attempts to obtain a divorce, and even served as an intermediary between his parents over the years.
It was his mother who encouraged the future author's literary efforts, and in 1792, when he was only seventeen, he casually mentioned in one of his letters that he was considering writing a novel in the style of Horace Walpole's 1764 Gothic masterpiece The Castle of Otranto. Nothing seems to have come of these plans until 1974, when Matthew, spurred by the success of Ann Radcliffe's lurid The Mysteries of Udolpho, decided that the time was ripe for another go at a Gothic.
To say that he was right is like saying that there's a lot of office space in the Empire State Building. Matthew later claimed that he'd written his own Gothic novel in only ten weeks, start to finish, despite a) his duties at the British Embassy, and b) being only nineteen years old. Whether the resulting book incorporated any of his notes or musings from 1792 is not clear, but given Matthew's voracious reading of German romantic tales and his love of Gothic literature, it wouldn't be a surprise.
What was a surprise was what happened next.
Despite being written in only ten weeks, Matthew's book was surprisingly mature, both in the sense of being "really good for being by a twenty year old kid" and "containing a truly stunning amount of sex, much of pretty damn kinky." It was published anonymously either late in 1795 or early 1796, and was quickly snapped up by eager readers who found the saga of Ambrosio, a Capuchin prior from Madrid who is seduced by the Devil's emissary and embarks on a career of rape, incest, and general depravity before being dragged off to Hell, irresistible. And why not? Compared to the relatively austere novels and plays that had come before, prose like this was a rich and rare treat indeed.
Just consider the opening paragraph, which manages to get in a slam at Catholicism while purporting to give a description of exotic Madrid:
Scarcely had the Abbey Bell tolled for five minutes, and already was the Church of the Capuchins thronged with Auditors. Do not encourage the idea that the Crowd was assembled either from motives of piety or thirst of information. But very few were influenced by those reasons; and in a city where superstition reigns with such despotic sway as in Madrid, to seek for true devotion would be a fruitless attempt. The Audience now assembled in the Capuchin Church was collected by various causes, but all of them were foreign to the ostensible motive. The Women came to show themselves, the Men to see the Women: Some were attracted by curiosity to hear an Orator so celebrated; Some came because they had no better means of employing their time till the play began; Some, from being assured that it would be impossible to find places in the Church; and one half of Madrid was brought thither by expecting to meet the other half. The only persons truly anxious to hear the Preacher were a few antiquated devotees, and half a dozen rival Orators, determined to find fault with and ridicule the discourse. As to the remainder of the Audience, the Sermon might have been omitted altogether, certainly without their being disappointed, and very probably without their perceiving the omission.
Then we have the Prince of Darkness himself, who is seems to have scored some hairdressing tips from Medusa:
”Lucifer stood before him a second time. He borrowed the Seraph’s form to deceive Ambrosio. He appeared in all that ugliness, which since his fall from heaven had been his portion: His blasted limbs still bore marks of the Almighty’s thunder: A swarthy darkness spread itself over his gigantic form: His hands and feet were armed with long Talons: Fury glared in his eyes, which might have struck the bravest heart with terror: Over his huge shoulders waved two enormous sable wings; and his hair was supplied by living snakes, which twined themselves round his brows with frightful hissings. In one hand He held a roll of parchment, and in the other an iron pen. Still the lightning flashed around him, and the Thunder with repeated bursts, seemed to announce the dissolution of nature.”
Not to mention a real dislike of the woman who's just taken his virginity:
”Dangerous Woman! said He; Into what an abyss of misery have you plunged me! Should your sex be discovered, my honour, nay my life, must pay for the pleasure of a few moments. Fool that I was, to trust myself to your seductions! What can now be done? How can my offence be expiated? What atonement can purchase the pardon of my crime? Wretched Matilda, you have destroyed my quiet for ever!”
Not that she seems to mind:
“She sealed his lips with a wanton kiss; 'Though I forgive your breaking your vows to heaven, I expect you to keep your vows to me.”
Needless to say, none of this ends well, for anyone; Ambrosio murders his mother, has sex with his own sister and then murders her, Matilda the seducer dies at the hands of the Inquisition, people are disguised and exposed, women are worshiped and reviled, and Ambrosio, who began as a respected (and virginal) monk, ends up making a pact with the Devil that does not end well in any way, shape, or form:
'Our contract? Have I not performed my part? What more did I promise than to save you from your prison? Have I not done so? Are you not safe from the Inquisition—safe from all but from me? Fool that you were to confide yourself to a Devil! Why did you not stipulate for life, and power, and pleasure? Then all would have been granted: Now, your reflections come too late. Miscreant, prepare for death; You have not many hours to live!'
On hearing this sentence, dreadful were the feelings of the devoted Wretch! He sank upon his knees, and raised his hands towards heaven. The Fiend read his intention and prevented it—
'What?' He cried, darting at him a look of fury: 'Dare you still implore the Eternal's mercy? Would you feign penitence, and again act an Hypocrite's part? Villain, resign your hopes of pardon. Thus I secure my prey!'
As He said this, darting his talons into the Monk's shaven crown, He sprang with him from the rock. The Caves and mountains rang with Ambrosio's shrieks. The Daemon continued to soar aloft, till reaching a dreadful height, He released the sufferer. Headlong fell the Monk through the airy waste; The sharp point of a rock received him; and He rolled from precipice to precipice, till bruised and mangled He rested on the river's banks. Life still existed in his miserable frame: He attempted in vain to raise himself; His broken and dislocated limbs refused to perform their office, nor was He able to quit the spot where He had first fallen. The Sun now rose above the horizon; Its scorching beams darted full upon the head of the expiring Sinner. Myriads of insects were called forth by the warmth; They drank the blood which trickled from Ambrosio's wounds; He had no power to drive them from him, and they fastened upon his sores, darted their stings into his body, covered him with their multitudes, and inflicted on him tortures the most exquisite and insupportable. The Eagles of the rock tore his flesh piecemeal, and dug out his eyeballs with their crooked beaks. A burning thirst tormented him; He heard the river's murmur as it rolled beside him, but strove in vain to drag himself towards the sound. Blind, maimed, helpless, and despairing, venting his rage in blasphemy and curses, execrating his existence, yet dreading the arrival of death destined to yield him up to greater torments, six miserable days did the Villain languish. On the Seventh a violent storm arose: The winds in fury rent up rocks and forests: The sky was now black with clouds, now sheeted with fire: The rain fell in torrents; It swelled the stream; The waves overflowed their banks; They reached the spot where Ambrosio lay, and when they abated carried with them into the river the Corse of the despairing Monk.
Is it any wonder that so many people bought this masterpiece of English prose? That the publishers quickly made plans to bring out a second edition? Or that Matthew now proudly claimed
The Monk as his own, thus acquiring the nickname that followed him for the rest of his life?
As for the critics? Well, Samuel Taylor Coleridge liked it well enough, even though he was well aware of the book's flaws; he called it the "the offspring of no common genius,” and heaped praised on as Matilda, the demonic seducer who is Ambrosio's downfall, "exquisitely imagined, and as exquisitely supported," while at the same time pointing out that lurid passages involving incest, rape, bleeding nuns, etc., were evidence of “a low and vulgar taste.” He also said that Ambrosio was “impossible... contrary to nature” and chided Monk Lewis for:
"...blending, with an irreverent negligence, all that is most awfully true in religion with all that is most ridiculously absurd in superstition.”
This isn't quite as vivid as more modern reactions - I'm particularly fond of the review on Goodreads by "Petra Xtra Crunchy" who said that this book "out-Gothics all the Gothic novels you ever read" - but it certainly does point out that The Monk was not precisely the most uplifting read on the stands.
It was also not the most original. As one might expect from something written when its author was barely out of his teens, a lot of the ideas and incidents were inspired/lifted whole from the German supernatural tales that young Mr. Monk had read during student visits to Weimar. Although the majority of these borrowings were from folktales, not original works, he was still stung enough by the criticism to admit that yes, he had been heavily influenced by other works but had not consciously stolen from anyone.
Worse, Mr. Monk's father was less than pleased, even though the book was selling like scorching hot hellcakes. He hadn't raised or educated his son to write Gothic tales about mad monks who raped their sisters, imprisoned pregnant girls in such miserable circumstances that they miscarried, and had their eyes torn out by eagles while insects drank his blood. So angry was he that Matthew wrote in 1798 that:
"...twenty is not the age at which prudence is most to be expected. Inexperience prevented my distinguishing what should give offence; but as soon as I found that offence was given, I made the only reparation in my power: I carefully revised the work, and expunged every syllable on which could be grounded the slightest construction of immorality. This, indeed, was no difficult task, for the objection rested entirely on expressions too strong, and words carelessly chosen; not on the sentiments, characters, or general tendency of the work.”
None of this prevented the book from continuing to fly off the stands, especially after its author edited the fourth edition to soften or excise Ambrosio's worst moments. It also didn't prevent him from using his popularity to induce producers and publishers to bring out yet more of his works, including such tales as
The Bravo of Venicein 1805 or
Adelgitha; or, The Fruit of a Single Error. A Tragedy in Five Acts a year later.
He also authored The East Indian: A Comedy in Five Acts in 1800, which must have surprised all the readers who loved the overblown drama of The Monk.
Mr. Monk, Member of Parliament, continued in his literary endeavors until his father died in 1812 and he had to devote the bulk of his time to administering the family estates. He did manage to impress the early Romantics - Lord Byron, whose personal life was nearly as messy as Ambrosio's, called him "Wonder-working Lewis, Monk or Bard, who fain wouldst make Parnassus a churchyard" - even meeting Lord Byron and his BFF Percy Shelley in Switzerland the year before Shelley's charming young wife Mary wrote her own first novel.
Alas for literary history, Mr. Monk died just about the time that Mrs. Shelley's work, a trifle called Frankenstein that she'd written in response to a bet, was published to great acclaim and even greater sales. He was on his way to Jamaica to see if the reforms he'd instituted on the family sugar plantations to improve the lives of the slaves had worked, but thanks to a sudden case of yellow fever he never made it to shore. His notes on plantation life were eventually published, and still serve as an invaluable look at life on a sugar plantation, at least if you're the owner.
That like Ambrosio, his most famous character, Matthew Gregory Lewis ended up with his earthly Corse being taken by the waves, is one of the great unconscious ironies of literature.
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Have you ever read The Monk? Frankenstein? Had a blue eyed cat? A bad dream that eventually came true? Come into the oubliette, my friends, and confess!
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