Readers unfamiliar with "Some Very Odd Happenings at Kibblesham Manor House" may prefer to read these notes only after reading the story.
"I know you remember everything of Kibblesham. We didn't, as you know, keep up a big establishment, but I want to emphasize that there were some fourteen or fifteen people coming or going about the house-I mean, besides ourselves and our guests-and never once did we have a single complaint that the house was haunted."
"Was it haunted?"
"Yes," said Andy. "Very haunted. Haunted in the worst possible way."
I was on exceedingly dangerous ground -- my common-sense told me that. But my curiosity, at that moment, was stronger. I simply couldn't resist asking, "What's the worst possible way in which the dead can haunt a house?"
"When they're still alive,'' said
Andy.
* * *
Panic fear of I knew not what
What to read next is always a challenge. Throughout my reading life, however, I have found that way leads unto way. Chance remarks, social media posts, and current readings often direct me to the next story. Madcap and arbitrary dowsing? I like to think it makes sense at a higher contextual level.
Reading Wormwood 38 (Spring 2022) yesterday, I was struck by a remark made by Rosemary Pardoe in her interview.
The wildest, weirdest book I ever read...
[....]Then again, surpassing them both [Robert Anton Wilson and S. G. Wildman] in weirdness is Michael Harrison's The London that was Rome (1971). Harrison was a prolific writer, whose most well-known (or notorius) book may be Clarence, his biography of Eddie, the Duke of Clarence (in which he theorizes that J. K. Stephen was Jack the Ripper). He also wrote a strange and quite disturbing story, "Some Very Odd Happenings at Kibblesham Manor House", which revolves around a cursed object from Roman Britain.
Now, I'm sure I read some of Harrison's Sherlock Holmes titles as a teenager. I quickly found The London That Was Rome unavailable. However, I did find "Some Very Odd Happenings at Kibblesham Manor House," in the April 1969 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
"Some Very Odd Happenings at Kibblesham Manor House" is what today we would call folk horror. The manor rests upon the site of a Roman temple once consecrated to the worship of Cybele, The Great Mother. According to Harrison's tale, this worship was horror from A to Z, and he does not spare the reader any of the facts.
* * *
"Some Very Odd Happenings at Kibblesham Manor House" begins with a chance reunion of two old friends. Andy and our narrator have not seen each other since before the war. The narrator is shocked that Andy, inheritor of Kibblesham Manor House, has aged dramatically: all white hair and beard over a skull clearly visible beneath the skin.
Though Andy initially tries to avoid his old friend, they are soon catching up over drinks. Andy's parents are dead, and his companion (or wife?) Verena is in a nursing home, still suffering from an unnamed malady contracted at the manor on the eve of war.
With prompting from our narrator, Andy soon explains the family horrors disguised by these initial social niceties. The real story begins with an explanation of Cybele's cult of worshippers.
"The greater renunciations ... ?"
"Why, yes," he turned towards me, faintly astonished that I should have cared to reveal my ignorance. "Castration, transvestism, squeaky voice, self-wounding and so on. . . these are merely physical renunciations. The Great Mother, in return for the rewards that She alone could give, demanded renunciations far more important than these. Dehumanization called for a complete break with all one's past, with all one's mores, with all social traditions and obligations. Particularly it called for the complete severance of family ties."
"Well, yes," I said, desperately striving to introduce even the semblance of normality into our conversation, ''but don't all religions call for a break with one's family?"
"The Great Mother wanted something more than that the Chosen Ones should say good-bye to their family ties. She wanted something a great deal more positive. A great deal more final. Something which would prove the neophyte's sincerity. Something so horrible -- so against nature -- that the very act of doing it would not only prove the neophyte's sincerity, but would cut him off forever from humankind. Only then could he enter into the Goddess -- become one with her. Become Her, indeed."
It turns out Verena had explored the foundations of the manor house, and found artifacts from the cult's ritual worship activities.
He stared at me, and reached down into the 'poacher's pocket' of his tweed hacking jacket
"Know what these are?" he said, casually. He reached over, and before I knew what I had done, I had unthinkingly accepted a pair of rust-stained forceps, the arms of which were set with tiny heads, amongst which I recognized those of some Roman gods.
"They're the forceps used for the ritual castration – when the novice, having passed his tests, made the final renunciation of his manhood to the Great Mother. Henceforward, having lost his manhood, having sacrificed the severed parts to Cybele, he would no longer be a man. He would dress as a woman; speak as a woman; use the places reserved for women. On the Day of the Great Mother, he would come out into Rome, and all the other cities of the Empire where the Great Mother was worshipped, and down the streets he'd run and dance, gashing himself, scourging himself. . ."
''Why?" I wondered. 'Why on earth did they do it?"
"Eh?" said Andy, as though I had asked a question whose answer was obvious. "Why, for the rewards, of course."
I gulped. How much of all this wild stuff that Andy was talking had a basis in fact? Did any of it have a basis in fact? Andy was mumbling now -- and I had to strain my ears to catch the words.
"Great rewards, though," he muttered, "don't come to one except for having done great acts. Only a few could ever find the strength to go through with it . . .with the trials, I mean . . .
and the tests . . . and the final renunciation. But," Andy continued, staring through the window with unseeing eyes, "castration and all that were nothing, really, compared with the greater renunciations. . ."
"The greater renunciations ... ?"
"Why, yes," he turned towards me, faintly astonished that I should have cared to reveal my ignorance. "Castration, transvestism, squeaky voice, self-wounding and so on . . . these are merely physical renunciations. The Great Mother, in return for the rewards that She alone could give, demanded renunciations far more important than these. Dehumanization called for a complete break with all one's past, with all one's mores, with all social traditions and obligations. Particularly it called for the complete severance of family ties."
"Well, yes," I said, desperately striving to introduce even the semblance of normality into our conversation, ''but don't all religions call for the break with one's
family?"
"The Great Mother wanted something more than that the Chosen Ones should say good-bye to their family ties. She wanted something a great deal more positive. A great deal more final. Something which would prove the neophyte's sincerity. Something so horrible -- so against nature -- that the very act of doing it would not only prove the neophyte's sincerity, but would cut him off forever from humankind. Only then could he enter into the Goddess -- become one with her. Become Her, indeed."
"Something so horrible . . ." I whispered. "What could be so horrible that one would dehumanize oneself in the very act of doing it? What sin against the Holy Ghost could it be which would prevent one's ever becoming human again?"
"There's a moral in that story of Arthur's taking the sword out of the stone. The sword was for him -- for him only. Yet, the moment that he had got the sword, he was the King. The forceps . . . the forceps have the same sort of power .... "
"What do you mean?" I asked, my blood running cold in panic fear of I knew not what.
"They are the instrument of the priest, but they are, in a fashion I don't quite understand, the controller of the priest. No one can handle them and ever be the same again."
I stared down in horror at the rusty object in my hands, and cast it violently from me.
"It doesn't matter now," said Andy, in a tired voice. "What you and I want doesn't matter. We are the slayers and the slain. We are the priests and the victims. We are the sacrifice and the Goddess herself. I don't know . . . but when I heard Father scream like that . . . scream, scream, scream . . . I knew that he was the very special sacrifice, and that, in using the forceps on Father, Verena was proving that she could perform the act which would cut her off from all humanity.
"I don't know whether Father ever realized what had happened. He wasn't a young man, but he was physically very strong. He said nothing . . . after that terrible scream. Mother was in her own room, and Father -- God knows how he did it -- said that he'd had a terrible nightmare when Mother carne in to see what the noise was all about.
"He saw Dr. Lawrence -- and you know that country doctors aren't like the modern city boys: the country doctors still don't talk. They fixed up a crack plastic surgeon, and repaired the damage to Father. Then, a few months later, behind a door on which the locks had been changed, Father committed suicide, without fuss, without scandal."
"How on earth did he do that?"
"He was a diabetic . . . I don't suppose you knew that? Well, he was. So all that he had to do was to 'forget' to take his insulin, fall into the diabetic coma, and die. He left it to me to see that Verena was dealt with suitably, poor old Governor! What an end! To be castrated by one's own daughter. . . no wonder he was glad to die!"
I was swamped in the horror of the tale, whether or not it were true. If true, it passed the bounds of decent terror....
* * *
"Some Very Odd Happenings at Kibblesham Manor House" offers the reader a radical reordering of ancient worship tropes and their horrific ramifications. I have not touched on the story's myriad supernatural aspects. The reader can study those terrors sublime at a time of their choosing.
Jay
19 June 2022
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