John Paul | The Terror: Reimagined, Retold, and Illustrated
In its original telling, The Terror, a 1917 novella by Arthur Machen set at the height of WWI, is part murder mystery, part horror story. Machen’s work explores themes of fear, anticipatory war, and folkloric violence wrought by humanity’s failure to steward the Earth. My re-telling of The Terror centers the work on the harm that human activity can pose on the natural world while re-mixing its themes of supernatural horror with Indigenous folktales and stories of the animals.
-John Paul
1.
There were many fears at the beginning of the war—but none greater than the sense of doom that seemed at once incredible and certain. This was especially true when the neighboring towns fell, and the enemy swelled into these spaces like a flood ready to drown our village.
2.
But days turned to weeks, and while the war was all around, our symbolic levees held. For now, the enemy tide progressed no further. We wondered: How much time do we have? When will we fall? Not today. Perhaps tomorrow.
3.
As we awaited freedom from this dread, a number of absurdities befell our community.
One such incident, witnessed by a great number of us, was the downing of a drone. Whether this was ours or the enemy’s, I do not know. During this time of conflict, metal wings were a frequent presence. Often appearing as dark forms against our blue skies, they foretold of approaching battles and attacks on the surrounding land.
Initially, we thought a large span of militarized projectiles had knocked it from the sky. Eyewitnesses noted that the drone had appeared perfectly secure and at ease in the air.
That was until someone called out: ‘What’s that?’ They pointed up, and we saw what looked like a black cloud coming from the south at a tremendous speed. I too was there and witnessed a swirl and a rush quite different from any cloud I’ve ever seen. But for a second, I couldn’t make out exactly what it was. It altered its shape and turned into a great crescent, and wheeled and veered about as if it was looking for something. Someone shouted that it was ‘a flight of birds, thousands of them.’
A flock of birds had bullied the drone from the air.
4.
We ran to the area where we had seen the machine drop dead and when we found it, it was mucked up; the machine was covered in dirt and vegetation from its impact with the earth. The sight of it aroused disgust for it was full of blood-splatted tears and pitted with feathered carcasses wedged in, and around, the machine’s blades.
We wanted to touch the machine—to retrieve it and bring it to the village for inspection and return to the military, but we could not.
Shortly after our attempt to pull it out of the ground, the same flock of birds that had knocked it out of the sky returned to envelope the thing and chase us off.
As they darted in and around us, the noise of their calls and flapping wings was so disorienting that we ran without a sense of direction. As a result of this fear, I myself, imagined a visual deformation: I swear I saw a menagerie of different bird-types—everything from sparrows to pigeons to hawks—working cooperatively in the swarm.
By evening, all that had gone out did find their way home. Shocked by the event, we took comfort in drink, and we laughed at our collective ‘bravery.’ Again and again, we regaled each other with our experiences of this strange occurrence. This progressed late into the evening and was only broken by an Elder in our pack who finally voiced something new:
‘Being physically slow but also mentally curious, I lingered too long to watch what the birds did after they attempted to chase us off and they trapped me. It was like being in the eye of a cyclone. The birds seemed to be working together and the wall existed to block observers, save me, and outside interference. While this wall rotated, another group of creatures flew down to ‘speak’ at me. This number, with their feathers on end and throats inflated, made sounds that resembled the sucking sound of a boot being pulled out of a deep mud pit, and then a booming drumbeat. At the conclusion of this strange happening, the entire flock of birds broke at once, only to immediately reassemble and descend on their fallen comrades. To my shock, the birds—all of them—began feasting on the carcasses of the dead birds that felled the drone. Once done, they were simply gone.’
‘What! Don’t be ridiculous,’ one in our group responded. ‘There wasn’t a vulture in that pack. I only saw blackbirds, starlings, and the like.’
I responded, ‘I did see a strange grouping of birds, and hawks will feed on other birds, but what you say is mad…”
‘I didn’t say feeding, I said FEASTING!’ responded the Elder. They were consuming as though it was a ceremony.’
This Elder, a philosophically minded fellow, went on to lecture the group:
‘Don’t tell me that I didn’t see what I saw. I witnessed an act of spiritual significance. From my perspective, those creatures were practicing a type of cannibalism to honor their dead comrades. It is as though eating the fallen birds was a way to acknowledge their sacrifice and say, we will continue to carry you.’
‘Sacrifice?’ questioned another villager. ‘You mean to say that the birds did this on purpose. That they willfully attacked the drone with the intent of bringing its destruction?’
‘Preposterous,’ another responded. ‘It was simply a bomb-blast or some other noise-of-war that went off and scared them. Those birds were simply dumbstruck and flew into that machine. All it means is that the war is getting closer to home. Why look for trouble?’
After this, we all retired home with a sense that something incredible—or all but the incredible—had happened.
6.
A week or so had passed from the incident with the drone when a child from a lonely home in our village disappeared. We do not know when the child first went missing, nor do we fully know why they went missing.
‘Perhaps this looming nature, this war-anxiety, has become too much, and they ran away,’ stated a neighbor.
‘Perhaps they were called out by a birdsong and were snatched away,’ suggested the Elder.
‘Enough old-timer,’ replied a village member. ‘We are at war, remember? It’s more likely they discovered an unexplored shell and were evaporated—or that the enemy snuck into town and took them.’
‘Have we really looked for this child? Suppose it is none of these fears and they simply went to the river’s edge to play.
We said, ‘Let us go look.’
7.
Our mystery took us to the river’s edge. Unfortunately, we didn’t find the child. Instead, we discovered one of our fellow villagers who had hoped to have gone fishing.
Net cast aside, they were lying on their side with half of their face under the water—an unsubmerged eye starring out.
The conjecture among us was that they took a false step on the slippery rocks that broke and battered their body in the fall.
‘Maybe too much to drink?’
‘No, we know this one to be a teetotaler.’
‘Perhaps subject to fits of imbalance or seizure?’
‘No.’
‘The doctors or those with forensic insight can tell us what happened here.’
‘Nonsense, they’ve all been called into service for the war effort. I say this is just a terrible accident.’
‘Why is their throat cut and the skin loose then?’
‘They were cut up by the rocks when they fell.’
‘In the old days, a tale was told of an angler who died after an alligator gar jumped out of the water and cut his neck,’ said the Elder.
‘What? No fish did this!
‘A shark then,’ one in our group said mockingly. ‘What? You don’t remember the creation stories we were told as kids—the one about the hand of god coming from the sky to draw an outline of a fish in the mud on the riverbank and then, poof, fish!’
Another in the group picked up the words and finished the story:
‘And humans saw this and thought they too had the power of creation and tried to draw a similar image. Only their drawing was imperfect and jagged and ended up bringing sharks into the world.’
‘What is the purpose of this? How does this help us?’ yelled another in the group.
‘I’m saying that we are surrounded by sharks. If their neck wasn’t cut in a fall, then we have spies and sharp teeth among us.’
8.
After the angler’s body had been retrieved and our human rituals of remembrance were tendered, we resumed the search for the child.
We said, ‘Let us search the fields and woods, perhaps they got lost and are waiting for us to find them there.’ But secretly we knew this hope was a strange one, for any country child living here would be able, even at an early age, to find their way home.
What we discovered in our trek into the woods shocked us. One of ours, a hunter, dead in the dirt, body ripped open, their entrails exposed.
‘Who did this? Has the enemy breached our woods?’
‘I don’t yet think so.’
‘Why do you say this?’
‘Look around you. Our footprints are everywhere from just hiking up here. You don’t see anything but our marks. There are no soldiers’ boot prints, no tank tracks, nothing!’
‘Had to be a grenade.’
‘How?’
‘Maybe, thrown from a distance. Maybe a scout was hidden in the canopy and dropped it as our hunter walked underneath?’
‘Not something a patrol scout would do. It would give away their position.’
‘The enemy is stupid and cruel. Likely did it for fun.’
‘I suppose our hunter could have found an abandoned explosive in the woods, picked it up and it went off? Their body could have absorbed the bast and torn them about.’
After considering all of this, I said, ‘What if the attack did come from the trees. But what if it wasn’t human. A big cat like a leopard or a mountain lion could have done this. It could have leapt silently down, torn the hunter apart and escaped back into the canopy.’
‘Not you too, you sound like the old one.’
‘I’m saying it’s a possibility. These foothills were once the place where we sent young people on their journey to adulthood. Youth were asked to track and fight or kill a wild beast in order to share its power.’
‘You are right,’ said another. ‘In the old days, youth went to hunt their desired animal to absorb its traits. To fell a deer was to possess its speed. Others longed to kill a bear in order to call themselves by its name and grow into its strength.’
‘Oh, to hell with you,’ one in our group retorted. ‘This is the enemy’s way—to spread doubt yet remain invisible. To be cunning like a fox,’ they said, mocking me.
‘Why is this not still our tradition?’ a younger member of our party asked.
Remembering some old stories, I responded, ‘Because it was a covenant.’
Urged on by the youth, I continued:
‘Once, during a long night of sleep, the people of the village were visited in their dreams by a council of animals. As a result of having been hunted to near extinction, the animals told the humans, ‘We have built a passageway into the sky and will soon take refuge beyond the moon.’’
The humans, fearful of losing their ability to hunt with this great emptying of the animals from the Earth, asked, ‘What can we do to prevent this?’
‘We will stay, but only if you allow us to have a sacred space to heal, a space that is off limits to hunting, and you need to learn to ask for forgiveness as a result of your cruelties against us.’
The animals continued, ‘Those that show reverence will be taught kin-songs to sing before the killing of an animal, should you need its meat or body for survival.’
‘Is there anything else?’ asked the humans.
‘Yes. Any future killing of an animal solely to claim ownership of its name or essence, will no longer be permitted. To honor an animal and be worthy of its name, one should speak to it in the language of kinship and await response and permission to claim its name.’
‘So, you are saying what exactly?’ a villager asked. ‘You’re saying the animals are hunting us?’
‘Punishing us seems a better description,’ said the youth.
‘No. I’m not saying that. We haven’t hunted these woods in a long time, and the war is making us desperate, pushing us to hunt in an area we deemed off limits to such activities. It’s likely doing the same for the wild beasts. Our neighbors’ fields are cut open with trenches, and their forests flattened by bombs. The animals have nowhere.’
‘I think we are losing this war, and enemy soldiers are here now,’ yelled another in our party.
‘Animals do not behave this way; we are being hunted from within.’
‘Have we forgotten the songs of kingship?’ asked the youth.
No one answered.
9.
The leading theory explaining these deaths, held by the majority, was that there must be a spy—a killer—among us.
‘One of us is an enemy hiding in plain sight.’
‘But why?’
‘Possessed by the enemy’s money to create chaos and instill fear.’
‘Or they carry the passion of their ideology.’
A louder voice concurred with the first, ‘The presence of a concealed adversary in our village is the only possible explanation for these murders and disappearances.’
‘No! It can’t be one of us,’ another protested. ‘We are a community here. It must be stranger or an outsider.’
‘It has to be one of us. Any stranger is instantly noted, noticed, and confronted.’
Another replied, ‘An outsider then. Not a stranger, but a one who has lived here for a while but has never fully integrated.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean a person who pretends to be one of us, but someone who still speaks with—and prefers even—the enemy’s tongue. One who practices their folkways, but not ours.’
‘There is the home near the old highway—the immigrant house whose family claims to be from an ancient bloodline not intertwined with our own. If we go pay them a visit, I’m sure we will find a considerable body of evidence to show us where their loyalty lay.’
‘Do you suppose they kidnapped the missing youth?’
‘Remember this is all just a theory,’ came a dissenting voice in the crowd. ‘We must not yet name them murderers and come to believe this as a hard fact without evidence. If we are to visit their home, I think we should frame it as a check on their welfare.’
The crowd smiled and nodded their heads in agreement that there might be ‘something to this plan.’
It was decided that we would make the journey the following morning.
10.
The lands on either side of the path leading to the house of the immigrant were wild. Ditch flowers, trash, and broken farm posts littered the way. In truth, these were the only things we spied on our long walk to the suspected home of enemy agents.
However, all of this changed when we arrived.
The home had been transformed into a fortified place surrounded with a broad trench and a thick tangle of barbed wire.
‘See! I told you they were with the enemy. They knew we would be coming—that we would find them out.’
‘Let us hide, before we are shot at.’
‘Watch out for booby-traps,’ whisper-yelled one in our group as we drove into the ditches and woods surrounding the home.
Finally, after a long and tiresome hide—and with no alarm having been raised from inside the home—one in our party emerged daringly to creep around the trench and wire and onto the property.
‘This place is abandoned,’ they shouted out. ‘I looked in the windows and didn’t see or hear anyone. They must have fled back to enemy territory.’
‘Still, I think it would be best to break in through a window or back door. They could have wired the front door to explode.’
‘Before we do this, I think it wise to search the barn and huts to make sure a trap hasn’t been set for us.’
Though no traps were found, the back side of the barn did contain an individual slumped against a wall with an exploded face.
‘Shotgun blast?’
‘Looks like a suicide. Probably knew we were coming and decided to end it before we could get to them.’
‘Where’s the gun then? Its missing.’
‘One of the others in their unit took it.’
‘Unit? You’re still assuming they are soldiers. Where is the rest of the family? Maybe they died out here defending themselves against the enemy.’
‘This doesn’t look like a shotgun blast. It’s like their head has been caved in by repeated blows and the body is all beaten to hell. It’s like they continued to beat on ‘em long after they were dead.’
‘A rifle butt could have been used.’
‘Yeah, but look around the body, it looks like someone went mad and hit all around them. The wall is scuffed up—like someone was flailing wildly.’
‘As if a group went by and took turns kicking at or swinging at them when they marched past. Some connecting and some missing with their blows.’
‘You know, the farm’s livestock, sheep, horses, and cows are missing. Maybe the enemy rustled them up and stampeded their owner on the way out. As you said, food is scarce, and we are nearer to the front than ever before.’
‘Killed by horses and cows?’
‘Killed by the enemy using the animals as weapons.’
11.
Once we crawled through a window we found two more departed souls. The first was a woman barricaded in a washroom. She was wearing a peculiar outfit.
‘What the…? Is she wearing a gas mask?
‘Maybe the home came under a gas attack—a chlorine bomb or something?
‘I don’t’ know. I don’t smell anything.’
‘Oh my god. We should leave. Look at her body. It’s all swollen and blotchy like an allergic reaction. This has to be a chemical attack.’
In our collective rush to get out of the room, we stumbled against each other and then collided as we pushed into a long hallway. This is where we failed to see the child and tripped over a second body.
‘This isn’t our missing child.’
‘No. Must be theirs—belongs to the one in the bath and the one out by the barn.’
‘This child looks asleep.’
‘Not true. Dead like the others.’
‘No. Not like the others. Not poisoned or beaten.’
‘Just because there is no rash, doesn’t mean they weren’t poisoned. Check their mouth. I heard that the mouth and tongue turn black if poisoned.’
Covering my mouth with my sleeved forearm in order to avoid the potential escape of toxic fumes from the body, I pressed the fingers of my other hand into the child’s cheeks to force their mouth open.
A great moth was seen beating to-and-fro and circling inside the child’s upper and lower teeth. After it showed us its dance, it darted down the throat.
I am ashamed to say that I dropped the child’s head against the floor with a thump. I jumped back in horror and ran from the home.
12.
‘Something terrible has happened here. If this was a gas attack, we should burn this place and leave.’
‘We should definitely leave,’ I responded.
‘But we don’t know what happened here. Why the barbed wire and defensive positions?’
‘Clearly, they came under attack. In an attempt to keep out the enemy, the immigrant set up these barricades, fought back and died trying to protect their family. Fearful of what other traps lay in the house, the enemy thew in a smoke grenade or something, killing the rest of the family.’
‘You and your grenade theories,’ I responded. ‘Why did the child’s mother have on the mask, but not the child. Wouldn’t it have made sense that they would have attempted to protect the child first?’
‘Not if they saw the child die first. What if the mother witnessed the gas seeping into their child’s lungs. Realizing there was nothing she could do, she then ran to put on the mask.’
‘She did close herself in the bath. It did look as though she tried to jam the door’s frame with towels.’
‘It was an antiquated thing wasn’t it. The mask I mean—it was a relic. I doubt it would have even worked against fumes.’
In a state of exhaustion, I replied, ‘Maybe it wasn’t about filtering out toxic gas. Maybe the mother needed something to cover her mouth, so she still had her hands free to fight back.’
I continued, ‘You saw the moth in the child’s mouth—I know you did! What if the mother and child came under attack by winged insects and they were able to drown the child but not the mother. And because they couldn’t get into her windpipe, they called in reinforcements—ants, wasps, other creatures that turned savage and overtook her like a swarm. Like the cloud of birds that took down the drone!’
‘You’re in shock!’
‘What if it was an attack from a group of animals and insects, together. The immigrant’s stock of horses and cows rose up and attacked the home. That’s why barbed wire was strung, and a trench dug. But still, they got through and managed to kick him to death. Then the insects came and did the rest.’
‘Stomped and stung to death is indeed what happened here’ replied another in the group. ‘But only it is as you described earlier. The immigrant was stampeded by soldiers that stole and drove the livestock into him. The rest of the family was ‘stung’ by the prick of some kind of poison, either from a grenade or other man-made weapon.’
‘And what next,’ I replied?
‘We torch this place and go home.’
13.
Later that night I told the Elder about the moth and they replied, ‘This is an inversion of creation. Butterflies were made to gladden the hearts of children and chase away thoughts of aging and death. Destruction is upon us.’
After hearing this and following what we experienced at the home of the immigrant, we posted sentries in the village and set ourselves on high alert.
14.
The terror only accelerated at that point. That night one of our sentries was reportedly attacked by a bear and dragged into the forest. An eyewitness stated that it was a most uncommon act that appeared to be ‘predatory in nature.’ The village leaders deemed the eyewitness a coward and concluded that it had to be an enemy scout because there was no food or water at the post that would have precipitated a bear attack.
‘The war must have finally arrived,’ they said, and our sentries were pulled further back into the village.
We no longer ventured out and we abandoned our quest to find the missing child.
15.
Hereafter, we were haunted by a sound that lasted both day and night. It was like a howl. A long, drawn-out, stinging wail coming from a great way off, faint with distance, followed by a period of silence—and then it began again.
‘A broken air raid siren; that’s all it is.’
‘The trumpet of the apocalypse,’ stated one.
‘The western wind calling everyone home,’ replied another.
And as though prophetic, what followed next was nothing but broken gates and bitten hands! Our caged birds picked their locks and gouged our eyes. Our house cats went into the shadows and never returned from their hiding places. Our beloved hounds bared their fangs, lunged at their masters, and ran into the woods—all save one.
A big white dog was found in the town square. The dog, it seemed, had been waiting for a congregation to appear. It barked furiously and rushed side to side, wagging its tail and barking at intervals, seemingly intent on leading people away from the town itself.
Now mistrustful of all animals, one in our pack asked, ‘Whose dog is that?’
‘Don’t know,’ answered another.
‘Well, then, why doesn’t it go with the others? Is it sick? Go away then,’ as they went through the gesture of picking up a stone from the road and throwing it at the dog. ‘Go!’
But the dog never stirred. It barked and ran up to the people and the gate that would have led them out of town. At last, the white dog came into large crowd and took hold of a corner of a blanket that was wrapped around a child and tried to pull them in the direction of the gate.
The parent shook the dog off and carried the youth away. In response, the dog ran alone up the road and watched them. When they were out of sight, it put up its head and uttered a long and dismal howl that was despair.
16.
Returning home, I informed the group gathered there of what had happened and the Elder reacted with a mix of anger and fear.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘The dog. We are truly lost. We must leave this place,’ the Elder answered.
‘We can’t abandon our homes to the enemy,’ replied another.
‘Not the enemy. This outlying war has destroyed the great Clan Homes. We must leave and offer our houses as shelter,’ continued the Elder in a tone more aggressive than ever before heard.
‘You’re mad!’
‘Fool!’
‘Senile!’
Ignoring most of group’s responses, I asked, ‘What does the dog have to do with this?’
‘When I was a child, my grandparents gifted me a little hand-carved dog and told me that it was for protection in this living journey and the next. They believed that if you were kind to a dog in your life, it would aid you well in the afterlife, allowing you to grab onto their tail as they towed you across the starless void, past the land of the dead and into the next. The White Dog’s tail would be visible in the darkness.
‘Leave then!’ a voice in the crowd shouted. ‘You have been a troublemaker from the beginning of all of this. You’ve been manipulating us from the beginning, making us blind to the enemy’s ways. Leave now before we shut you up for good!’
‘What do you mean by that?!’
‘You know what I mean by that!’
The Elder responded, ‘This war has become a great wasting of life—both human and animal and though we have not created this particular conflict, it is now at our doorstep, and we bear the burden.’
‘What burden?’
‘When the deer gives its life in the hunt, we give an offering for consideration of the animal’s spirit. When the fish is pulled from the water, we kiss it with prayer to release its soul back into the stream. This war is the pointless cleaving of meat. I don’t know what else to do but leave and offer my house as an act of contrition, and I ask you all to do the same.’
At this, all hell broke loose with people shouting, shoving, and cursing one another.
17.
The next morning, I made up my mind to go with the Elder. Some in my family chose to stay—others chose to leave. We asked our neighbors—those who remained behind—not to move into the homes, and to leave them open as an offering to the animals.
Several spat at our feet and issued violence upon us but we prayed, asking for intercession and a hope for the animals to re-teach us their songs.
That night, as our band made distance from the village once called home, we heard faint roars and screams from behind us. The Elder warned us not to turn around and look.
To this day, I do not know if the village was overrun by the enemy forces we so feared, or by the animals who gave us warning. We simply walked ahead, and I stared at my feet.
At one point on our journey, I looked up from the path and stared into the future. There, I thought I caught a glimpse of a missing child holding the tail of a dog.
John Paul is a mark-maker and a “re-mix” artist who uses the techniques of juxtaposition and layering to create new visual narratives from existing works of art. John is also a community-arts-builder who works with artists and residents to identify and leverage cultural assets to enhance creative-civic engagement.