The Silent Church (Trail of Cthulhu, Bookhounds of London)

 Look at her eyes. Look at her eyes! For God's sake, what happened to her eyes?

The Evil Dead

Body horror is a genre that, Wikipedia helpfully reminds us, intentionally showcases grotesque or psychologically disturbing violations of the human body or to any other creature. 

A ghost story is often seen as cosy, gentle, perhaps a little creepy but not, well, grotesque. Yet some of the best ghost stories take body horror concepts and run away with them. Take M.R. James:

This might have been the result of a fall: it appeared that the stair-carpet was loosened at one point. But, in addition to this, there were injuries inflicted upon the eyes, nose and mouth, as if by the agency of some savage animal, which, dreadful to relate, rendered those features unrecognizable. The vital spark was, it is needless to add, completely extinct … The Stalls at Barchester Cathedral

Somehow, the idea of getting past it and escaping through the door was intolerable to him; he could not have borne—he didn't know why—to touch it; and as for its touching him, he would sooner dash himself through the window than have that happen. It stood for the moment in a band of dark shadow, and he had not seen what its face was like. Now it began to move, in a stooping posture, and all at once the spectator realized, with some horror and some relief, that it must be blind, for it seemed to feel about it with its muffled arms in a groping and random fashion. O Whistle and I’ll Come To You

Interesting how often James resorts to a similar idea: remove or muffle the face, and horror follows. He does this trick in A Disappearance and a Reappearance, for example, and The Tractate Middoth. Whereas in films like The Evil Dead and its many sequels some of the most memorable moments have to do with melting, changing, malleable faces.

After all, what are people without their faces? When we talk about the Uncanny Valley it’s chiefly to do with how faces look to us. We don’t scrutinize hands, feet, legs with the same intensity we do faces. We don’t look for discrepancies elsewhere first, and then look to the face; we look to the face and then elsewhere. 

I once spoke about Lafcadio Hearn and I’m reminded of his spectral Cousin Jane:

Then, as if first aware of my presence, she turned; and I looked up, expecting to meet her smile ... She had no face. There was only a pale blur instead of a face …

Sometimes this can be used to show mindlessness, a lack of soul. Zombies are good for this, those shambling, sightless, soulless things. More often it’s used, through gleaming eyes and sharp or snaggle teeth, to show evil, predatory traits. Very rarely, as with Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, it’s done to accentuate the weirdness of the situation. I suspect at least in Del Toro’s case it may spring from half-remembered Catholic iconography of Satan and the damned, via Hieronymus Bosch and the like.

Sometimes it can be simple, awful. No face. Or no mouth, no eyes. A face of crumpled linen. A peculiar mask that covers almost everything, or show the ‘true face’ – a wolf mask, say, or a tiger mask. Del Toro does something similar by moving eyes from where they’re expected to be to the palms of the hands, and then moving those hands to the head making a mockery of how flesh works – or at least how we think it should work.

Let’s start playing with the idea.

As a reminder, I’ve said this about Hauntings before:

There are any number of tales that could be told, but there are some things the Keeper should bear in mind:

The truth of the haunting will probably never be known for certain, since most of the facts are unavailable.

It cannot be dealt with in the same way as, say, an ordinary antagonist encounter. Ghouls, for example, can be shot, or bargained with. There is no way to communicate with a haunting of place, and probably no way to kill it.

It has a great deal of power behind it, possibly magical power. That means other people besides the protagonists are going to be interested in it. That also means it could be very dangerous.

Let’s say that as a consequence of this Haunting, this memory of things past, there is a sound. That sound is so horrible that it causes those who hear it to want to stop hearing anything ever again. They ram objects in their ears, but it doesn’t stop the sound. So they ram more objects. More still, till their heads resemble porcupines, and yet they still hear. 

A memory of a sound so hideous that people cannot bear to hear it.

The Silent Church

There is a little chapel close to the edge of the Metropolitan Cattle Market, King's Cross. Nobody can remember a time when it was not there. Architecturally it resembles some of the works of Christopher Wren after the Great Fire, but nobody can find any link between Wren and this little church. Best guess is that it was designed by a contemporary or possibly a student.

Nobody worships there. Nobody is seen to go in or out except for a little man who is popularly supposed to be the verger, and he almost never speaks to strangers. He's stone deaf, and answers to the name of Moody; apparently he lives at the church.

On the rare occasions when workmen are called in to carry out repairs - something which, the neighbors say, ought to happen more often given the condition of the place - the workers are always from McCaw and Sons and the elder McCaw claims to have known Moody when he was a boy. McCaw doesn't gossip. His workers do. They say they have to plug their ears whenever they work there, on Moody's orders. They never stay long and are never there before nine in the morning or after six in the evening.

It's not difficult to sneak in. Moody's hardly the most efficient watchdog. However, if anyone's ever tried they've not said what they found there, or what happened when they went.

Sometimes the apprentices in the Cattle Market dare one another to make the attempt but nobody ever has.

Anyone who crosses the threshold notices immediately that the noises from outside can't be heard inside the Church. It's as if the building completely muffles all outside sound whatsoever, however loud it might be. 

If they go early in the morning, or after it gets dark, they hear what seems at first to be singing, perhaps a chant, from far away. It never gets louder but it scrapes on the nerves, as if the words meant something hideous - yet they're unintelligible. Potential Stability 2 loss.

If they stay until it is night - say, between 10 pm and 3 am - then they see shapes. Perhaps shadows perhaps people, they pace throughout the church at all hours, mouths moving. Their ears are spiked clean through by what appears to be thousands upon thousands of needles, so heavy that they make the creatures' heads loll from side to side. It's apparent that these are the singers yet the noise never gets louder, or the words clearer. Potential Stability 5 loss. Anyone who loses 5 or more Stability feels an overwhelming urge to Flee; failing a Fleeing test or resisting this urge means they must deafen themselves by any means necessary. If they cannot or will not then they take +3 damage every round they remain in the Church without deafening themselves.

Those who make the Stability check and remain long enough to hear the music for a minute or more gains 1 Mythos and 1 Magic. This can only happen once. Repeated visits do not increase Mythos or Magic though the Stability loss remains as well as the potential to permanently damage hearing.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!