Sir Thomas Merton had amassed considerable notoriety, and cash, by building some very odd, some say ‘idiosyncratic’, edifices around the British countryside.
There were those that called them follies and others that called them by other, less polite, names.
And yet he was able to sell them. Some survive to this day but that, as they say, is another story.
Sir Thomas built his famous tower in the period surrounding 1780. This was a remarkable time in Europe noted, as it was, for almost nothing of consequence happening. Hundreds were shot in London in the riots and the Dutch were engaged with us in a war that would ultimately end in disaster for the Dutch.
There was an argument between the British in their new colony across the Atlantic resulting in the Royalist troops being defeated, with the aid of the French, and the British sitting in their colony who were now in the somewhat uncomfortable position of having complete independence and no real idea what to do with it. However, they succeeded after a fashion and lived happily, more or less, ever after.
But that was in the future then. One wonders how relevant that would turn out to be.
I was moved into one of the apartments in the Tower towards the end of 1870. Almost forty years later I am still no closer to a result in my searches to get home, or, what used to be home. Perhaps it is a lost cause.
It might be best to describe the Tower for you so that you can get an inkling of the problem.
There are fifteen stories in what is a circular tower building. A more precise description would be that it is an annular tower since there is a hole up the middle at the base of which is a courtyard.
There is no access to the courtyard. This is the first thing that caught my eye—and interest.
The courtyard is very slightly conical; I can see it well from my kitchen window that faces inwards. It is an inverted cone at the base of which is a drain.
You may think that this would be perfectly normal. However, there is, as I previously said, no access to the courtyard and yet it remains in perfectly good order as regards repair and cleanliness.
As I exit from my front door there is, on my left, a lift. How it works is a mystery to me but yet it functions perfectly well; I know of no occasion in which it has failed. This is somewhat of a relief because there are no stairs should the lift cease to function.
It was with the lift in mind that I thought, many years ago, to search the building upwards to see what I could find as regards an operating mechanism.
I failed.
The lift goes to the tenth floor and stops. The doors open and, as is normal on each floor, the doors open onto a corridor that encircles the inner curve of the upper floor of the apartments wherein are the bedrooms.
Halfway around the tower there is another lift that services the apartments on that side but the same corridor links them both. ‘At least,’ I thought, ‘If one of the lifts fail there is a reserve to get us out.’
That thought gave rise to another; I had heard movement in the other apartments and, occasionally, voices but I have yet to see another person. Are we all so private?
There have been times when I have sought out other residents by knocking on their doors. There has never been a response.
Back in the corridor that circles each floor; there are windows looking out over the courtyard. From the top, tenth to us residents, floor it is possible to look up and see the topmost five stories. If they have a lift corridor it contains no windows but the stories below have kitchen and dining room windows overlooking the courtyard.
Curiously, the top five stories have balconies that have no doors to access them from the apartments—if apartments they indeed are for we have no way of knowing what lies within.
The balconies on the eleventh floor project outwards towards the courtyard by, perhaps, three feet. On each successive floor the balconies extend further out by a foot on each floor; I estimate the fifteenth floor balconies to be seven feet from window to rail. Furthermore, each balcony, as it rises from eleventh to fifteenth floor, becomes ever more ornate.
The basic measurements of the Tower are quite simple. Without the roofing it measures one hundred and fifty feet, each floor being ten feet high. It is, thus, five apartments high to the eleventh floor, each apartment being a double storey.
The courtyard is thirty feet across. My apartment is twenty feet from inner wall to outer so that the Tower must be fifty feet in diameter. The Tower appears to taper in very slightly towards the top but that may be an optical illusion on my part for I have no way of measuring the top and no accurate way of measuring the base.
There are four apartments to each floor from one to ten. The top five floors, as I have pointed out, are a mystery as regards construction, content and purpose.
Now you know where I live and you must also know that I am approaching what I believe to be my mid-fifties as regards years of my life.
No friends of mine are now alive. I shall explain why.
You recall that I told you that I was ‘moved in’? Indeed, that is exactly how it is.
At the age of, probably, fifteen, or so, I was an apprentice to a builder in London. The end of my apprenticeship was drawing nigh so my Master sent me, on entrustment, to assist in a major project. We were building a new theatre that was to be called ‘The Globe’. It was, as all such projects are, short of funds. The man who enthusiastically drummed up the cash and worked tirelessly towards the success of the project was, I am informed, an eminent playwright but he was known to all of us youngsters—the cheap labour, as Uncle Billy.
At that time I had no idea who Uncle Billy was and yet now, as I sit in my apartment in the Tower, I am aware that his name is on everybody’s lips as William Shakespeare. Not that he spelt it like that in those days because, then, writing was largely phonetic for those of us who could actually write.
One late summer’s evening my friend, Eddie, and I were preparing a batch of cob to go to the top of the building when Uncle Billy sidled up to us.
“Have you seen ought that is strange, boys?” he whispered to us.
“Strange, Uncle Billy? What mean you by strange?” Eddie shot back, “There is much here in London that may seem strange to one from the provinces!” he laughed, pointing at me
“’Ere! I’m not from the provinces,” I replied, punching him on the shoulder in a friendly manner.
“Nah! But you are strange and no mistake!” he cried out, ducking my second playful punch.
Uncle Billy was patient with our giggling, knowing that we welcomed a relief from the drudgery of stamping and beating the mix of straw and London clay that became the cob from which we built much of London in those days.
“There is, I do believe, a ghost that stalks these premises,” he said gravely when we had calmed ourselves, “You have not set eyes upon this apparition?”
Our eyes were at once large and very round, “A ghost, Uncle Billy?”
Ghosts were, to us, very real. Although I had never seen one myself it was common knowledge that there were plenty of people who had witnessed such things. Fearsome things from beyond the grave; things that had changed such people forever.
Uncle Billy looked unusually morose, “I have seen it twice with mine own eyes. It is dressed in a manner not known to me and, although glimmering unclearly, it seems that it would wish to speak with me. Fortunately, I am unharmed by this feckless spirit who seems bent on my attention so I believe it to be safe,” he shrugged despondently, “Who can tell with these spirits what will befall us as a result of knowing them?”
Eddie and I were too shocked to respond. Uncle Billy was always so straight with us although he had a great sense of humour.
There was a brief thought that this was some sort of jest he was playing upon us but, clearly, his demeanour was of someone who was deeply upset.
We looked at one another and then back to Uncle Billy. He shook his head and wandered away muttering, “I’ll call you when next it appears.”
Unsure that we wanted to be called to witness a ghost we decided that, since he was paying our wages, we should go if he called us.
A week later we had all but forgotten the incident when we heard Uncle Billy calling for us, “Come! Come quickly, Boys!” he called, sounding somewhat shrill.
We ran into the building as if possessed, fear lending wings to our feet, even knowing we should be running away and not towards Uncle Billy.
Stunned, we stood there with mouths agape and eyes like frightened rabbits.
Uncle Billy, ashen faced, pointed at a figure from the shades that peered back at him with head slightly to one side and arms akimbo. The whole body seemed to shimmer, fluctuating with the light, so that it was hard to focus upon it.
It was dressed, as Uncle Billy had said, in an unfamiliar manner, in a short jacket, tight trousers and a white shirt with frills and lace at the neck and down the front. The shoes, or pointed toe boots, were black and highly polished.
Then it spoke.
All three of us, I’m sure, sagged at the knees in shock and terror. The speech was not too clear and the language, although obviously English, was foreign to us.
“Why is this building round?” it wanted to know.
Uncle Billy was the first to recover a semblance of his wits, “So that there is nowhere for the Devil to hide. Are you a spirit? Did the Devil send you?”
The apparition laughed. It laughed! I was stunned into a paralysis of fear and panic.
“No, no!” it chuckled, “I am…” and disappeared.
Some months later the theatre was finished. Uncle Billy asked us, Eddie and I, to visit to see the first production but we were anxious not to go there unless we had to.
Then my Master Craftsman called me and said that there were some small repairs that needed to be done to ‘The Globe’ and that I must go there to effect these repairs.
I felt compelled to tell him what had transpired there but he merely laughed and said, “A good tradesman must be prepared to put up with any nonsense and just do a good job.”
Glumly, I set off for the theatre, fearing the worse.
Uncle Billy met me when I arrived. He had lost weight, his face, previously round and healthy, looked haggard and weary. He said nothing but led me to where the repairs were needed then walked away.
Some friends of his came to me while I worked. They asked me about the ghost so I told them all I knew—which was, in truth, very little.
They told me, and I was glad of their company, that Uncle Billy had stopped writing comedies, that his plays were now much blacker than they had ever been.
By mid-afternoon I had completed my task and, rather than wait for payment, I decided to just leave. The place still gave me the chills yet others had remarked that it was a place of pleasure, warmth and happy times. They had not seen that which Eddie, Uncle Billy and I had seen.
I finished packing up my few tools and straightened up to walk away when I was confronted by that same figure. Clearer now, almost lifelike, he stood, smiling, in front of me.
“You are,” he said, “a clever boy. You shall, surely, figure it out. Where, you must discover, is the Devil?” he laughed, somewhat mirthlessly, and touched my shoulder. A ghost touched me! I felt my bladder empty in shear dread just as everything around me swam into a blur of strange and colourful shapes; the shapes swirled and buffeted so that I felt giddy, unsteady, nauseous.
There was carpeting under my hands and knees. I should have been feeling stone but this was definitely carpet. I could smell urine and realised that it was mine. My tights were soaked.
Eventually, I managed to stand erect but very shakily. Looking around I could see a well-lit room with a curved wall that had a window set in it. I went to the window; I was some way up and overlooking green fields in one of which was a man with a pair of horses. They were ploughing. The trees were without leaves but frosted lightly with green so I surmised that it was late winter.
This was all unreal to me. I searched the room and the others connected to it. Then went up some stairs to some more rooms where I found some strange white stone like devices. After trial and error I discovered that water could be obtained from some metal objects that had a cross-shaped device secured horizontally to the top. Turning these produced hot or cold water by magic. There were sweet smelling blocks that produced froth when wet and rubbed.
I stripped and washed. Not wanting to waste these facilities I washed copiously in the hot water and used much of the soaps. There were other items there that seemed to be mysteriously connected with these ablutions but their purpose I could not resolve.
After cleaning myself I explored some more. I found keys and a large amount of paper in a cupboard with a stack of coins. From the printing on the paper I assumed that it was also currency but for what purpose I was unable to determine.
In another cupboard there were varieties of clothes, many of which were similar to those I had seen the ghost wearing.
Was I dead? It occurred to me that I could have passed on; perhaps these were the fashion of clothes worn by people who had ventured beyond the grave! The idea filled me with dread so that it would be a considerable time before I was able to venture forth. Even then, I was only driven out into the streets by hunger.
Little by little, in small measures, I managed to acquaint myself with the surroundings. There were things of marvel. I saw horses drawing wonderful carriages the likes of which even Good Queen Bess would delight in having. There were wonderful houses and order in the streets.
Our precious ‘Globe’ theatre was missing. It was nowhere in sight. I came to know that there had been a fire. A huge fire that had devastated London town had swept away our theatre. Much of London was unknown to me; much of society was unknown to me. I was lost in a future filled with strangeness.
Somehow I had been swept up and transported over two hundred and fifty years into a life that was unutterably strange.
I was consumed with a desire to go home. Yes, dirty and disease ridden though it was; a town that was full of hunger, poverty and despair was still my home and not this place full of singular wonders.
Now I feel the weight of my years upon me. I have read all the plays that Uncle Billy had written all those long years ago. I have heard how my theatre was completed, late, in the year before the close of the century and that, four years later our wonderful Queen Bess passed on her way to Paradise.
I am weighted heavily with the blackness of knowing I shall never return home. I am doomed to die here in this foreign time and place. Yea, London it may be but my home it is not.
Even the music of this time is jarring on my ears although, in truth, I am glad of the deafness that creeps over me as it masks the jangling of those strange notes.
I suppose that I must now be approaching my half-century. A few years ago some soldiers came to see if I wished to enlist in the effort against the Boer Farmers of South Africa. I feigned a more acute, and chronic, deafness than I really suffered and they left me in peace.
My time is running out. There must be, I am certain, an answer somewhere. The ghost cannot have been on a one-way trip because he appeared to us—Uncle Billy, really, several times. It is evident that he travelled backwards and forwards on each occasion.
How many times have I let myself into that accursed lift and taken the trip up to the tenth floor? How many times have I thought hard about what the ghost told me? I remember as if it were only yesterday that he said, “You must find the Devil.”
Was this cryptic? I had written it down and endeavoured untiringly to solve this puzzle but each time I came up with a blank piece of paper and a blank mind.
It was a clue without meaning or purpose.
The doors open on the lift; I step out and survey the familiar scene. My mind goes back to that time with Uncle Billy and his amusement at the plot he was writing for a story he was to call ‘A Pleasant Conceited Comedie called Loves labors lost’. That was the time that the ghost had appeared and asked why the ‘Globe’ was circular.
Indeed. The ghost had asked why the ‘Globe’ was circular. Uncle Billy had told him that it was to prevent the Devil from hiding in the corners.
This tower is circular. The Devil cannot hide in the corners. The ghost said, “Find the Devil”. If the Devil is not in the corners, where is he? Clearly he is somewhere or the ghost would not have told me this and yet there is nothing but arcane patterns on the wall.
I am about to get back into the lift having given up already such is my grief when I realize, after all these years, that the other floors—that I rarely, if ever, visit, have no patterns on the walls
I turn around and squint at the walls around me. Through fuzzy, out of focus eyes a gravestone appears. It is flat on the ground. My heart freezes; it is Uncle Billy’s. I know. I have seen it and recognize this one as the same even though it has no writing or inscription upon it.
The inscription comes into my mind unbidden, “Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,
To digg the dvst encloased heare.
Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones,
And cvrst be he yt moves my bones.”
There is no dust here and no man has moved Uncle Billy’s bones. I know of no cleaner that comes here and yet there is no dust. This tower is the Devil’s work and no mistake.
I turn away once more yet, from the corner of my eye, I perceive something strange. It is over Uncle Billy’s gravestone that is now difficult to see without squinting up my eyes.
Looking intently at the gravestone I cannot see what I thought I saw but, looking away and half closing my eyes, yes! There it is again. A curved horn wrapped around the grave as if to encompass it about.
I stand back in the lift but hold the doors open. My knees fail me, I sink, as if palsied, to the floor unable to steal my gaze away from that hideous figure that appears before me.
From this vantage point, and only from here, I perceive that beast, that goat of hell crouched with rampant member pointing at Uncle Billy’s grave, leering at me. He is daring me to come to him. I tremble with fear. So many times I have been here and never observed this... this... foetid—yes, foetid for I can smell the sulphur in the air, this foetid image.
I know the odour is in my head. I know that this is all in my mind but it is no less real for all that.
I almost see movement in the picture—that cursed picture. Uncle Billy was right. Why did I not listen to him? How many times did he tell me about writing his plays, how many times did he curse and swear and rant about ‘getting it right’?
The Devil,” he would shout at us, “Is in the detail!”
So it proves. I have found the Devil but the ghost never told me what to do if I found him.
Idly, but still full of fear, I trace the great spearheaded tail around. It ends on an eye. The eye belongs to some grotesquely misshapen goblin with dissimilar eyes.
I look again, feeling small quiverings in my vitals. The goblin’s eye nearest the point of the tail is shinier than the other. Gathering my fading courage I go to the eye and poke it.
I feel a vibration. The whole building feels that it is tearing itself apart. I stagger to the lift hoping to get out before it tumbles down but the room dissolves into a blur. I feel that I am being torn limb from limb.
The ground is hard under me; I am fearfully cold.
There are voices, faint but discernable.
“Another one for the plague cart, Joe.” a rough voice speaks out.
Rough hands grasp me under the shoulders, I try to speak but my throat is dry. They throw me onto a pile of something soft; the idea comes to me that they are bodies. I panic but I cannot move. The smell is dreadful, it is rotting flesh and sickness. I squeeze my eyes shut, the image of that accursed goblin and his shining eye swim into my focus. In anger I jab my mind’s finger at it.
The cart tips. Bodies are flying everywhere. I am slapped by limbs of all textures and thicknesses; entrails wrap themselves around my neck; a face covered in black, swollen blemishes is pressed into mine its mouth agape so I see rotting teeth and smell foul grave odours pouring from its maw.
I must have passed out. There is soft carpet under me. My legs are being beaten by something. Turning, I see the lift doors trying to close on them. I withdraw my legs to let the doors close.
Was it a dream? A terrifying dream? Yet I still smell the death on me.
Wait, there is flesh stuck to me. It was never a dream. I have been in a plague cart being taken to the pits. The smell is not a memory it is real, it is clinging to me even now.
I press the button for the lift as hard as I can. It is taking an age to reach me but, finally, I stagger into my apartment. I am grateful now for the hot water and soaps that are always there.
I tear off my clothes and throw them in the bath to soak with a sweet smelling and frothy powder while I scrub myself until I am raw under the shower.
In the lounge now I sit in my comfortable armchair, still shaking with the fear of it. Shock and horror spread icy fingers through my stomach and up my spine.
The goblin’s eye is bad. I must never touch the goblin’s eye again.
But why is the Devil himself focused on Uncle Billy’s grave. His massive horn is wrapped around it as if to protect it and his enormous member.... ugh! I cannot think on that.
After several drinks I decide that I shall go and look again. Thirty years of failure have resulted in some sort of answer even though it was not one I wanted. Now I need to see if there is a better solution.
I see the Devil clearly now. Now that I know what to look for he is readily apparent and leering back at me from the wall. I am aware that he is not alive but, still, I am uncomfortable and try to avoid his gaze even though I know it is a sightless impression on the wall.
The inscription on the tomb of Uncle Billy is faint and illegible. Try as I might I cannot make out any detail on it. It is almost as if the words have faded over the last thirty years.
I see the angle at which the great horn curling out of the Devil’s head is pointing and also see that it intersects with a line drawn from his erect member that is disproportionately huge.
The lines cross on a depiction of a jewelled cross—one of the jewels is slightly darker than the rest; this one seems to be right on the lines.
After the last time with the goblin I am not sure if I have the courage to press it. I feel that I can still smell the corpses’ rotting flesh and feel their soft bodies under me.
Seizing all my courage, I press the jewel. Nothing. I am on all fours expecting the building to shake but there is nothing.
I look towards the lift thinking to go down and see that the lights in the lift are brighter than they were. I stand unsteadily, get into the lift and press the ‘down’ button. Nothing happens. Experimentally I press the ‘up’ button.
The lift goes up.
I am shocked. The lift has never gone up beyond the tenth floor before.
It stops. The doors open. I realise that I am pressing myself up against the back wall of the lift. Fearfully I step out. Before I can move again the lift doors close. In panic I search for a button to summon it but there is no button, the wall is completely blank.
Now terrified, I smear myself against the wall. This is all unknown territory. At last I am relaxed enough, barely, to see around me. The walls curve around to my left and to my right. Clearly these are the inner and outer walls of the Tower.
Above me there is nothing but five rows of windows passing around each of the walls at vertical intervals of around ten feet.
Spiralling around both of the walls is thick copper tubing, bright and shiny as if new. The floor is bare. Nothing.
Behind me is the lift shift that ends just above my head. I can walk around it. There is no mechanism that I can see for raising and lowering the lift car, only some more copper piping passing over the top of the lift shaft.
After studying the little that was there I find myself back at the lift doors. There is still no button but the doors open. I step back in horror. For none other than the ghost himself steps out. He is smiling at me as if we are long lost friends.
“Winston,” he says, “How have you been? Have you enjoyed your visit to this future?”
“This future?” I stumble, unsure of what to say and too shocked to think, “There are others?”
“Oh, yes,” the ghost cries, “So many. And so many pasts, too!” he takes a step towards me; I stagger a couple of steps back.
“How rude of me,” he is positively gushing with great humour, “I should introduce myself. Thomas Merton. I built this tower.”
“For what purpose?” I hear myself asking.
“Ah! The right question,” he smiles broadly, clearly enjoying himself at my expense.
“The Tower, as you have probably realised since you are here from the very late 1500’s, is a time machine. I sort of collect people from different times and accommodate them here. Some die because they cannot adapt but some, like yourself, adapt, survive and, ultimately, find yourself up here. Well, a few, anyway,” he beamed jovially.
“I am an experiment?” I feel anger rising.
He laughs, “Experiment? Not really. Just weeding out the best of the best. I shall send you back now.”
“Back?” I am aghast! “To the plague cart?”
“What plague... Oh! You pressed the eye of the Demon! That’s a test. That will always send you back in the worst possible circumstances to a time just after you were taken,” he grinned, “You survived the ‘Eye of the Demon. Good for you.”
Apprehension wells up in my chest like a heavy weight on my heart, “I am too old to be of much use but it will be nice to return to my old haunts.”
“Ah! Old... yes. I shall return you to an aristocratic family. You will be born on the 30thNovember, 1874. Unfortunately for you, you will remember all this as you grow up.”
“Born?”
“Indeed. Enjoy your new life and your new success in it.”
With another beaming smile he begins to fade. There is more I need to know but, before I can voice a question, he taps me on the shoulder and bids me goodbye.
The last I can hear is, “Farewell, Winston. Think of me kindly.”
The ground rises up and hits me hard and cold. The light shimmers, swirls and fades.
Agony. Somebody hits me on the back, “It’s a boy,” I hear them say, “It’s a boy, Mrs. Churchill...”
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