The Lost Word

By Joan Sutcliffe

It was a sandstone cottage, burnt orange in colour and basking silently amid a chaotic tangle of luscious vegetation. The approach was not easy through the obstinate barrier of giant ferns, escaping the gluttonous tendrils of throttling vines, but his curiosity was compelling.

On leaving the small village, he had followed a country lane passing through clusters of woodland with dense overhanging green foliage. Every so often a whimsical breeze had cleared a space in the leaves, revealing the terra cotta tiles of a roof top peering out from this jungle in the middle of nowhere, which spiked his inquisitive nature, and he couldn’t resist the challenge.

Now, having reached the goal, he was aware of a desolate quality about these old walls of a house, which was sort of shrouded into itself. It definitely exuded an atmosphere though, one of intense loneliness. An overwhelming sense of destiny nevertheless fired the young man’s heart, and he ascended the steps to the encircling verandah to peep through a dusty window. It appeared deserted, but a sudden excruciating longing made him want to go inside.

To his immense surprise the door was not locked and swung open at his hesitant touch. From inside, a woman’s voice called out imperiously in a tone of mock affectation, “What bold mortal dares to come this way?” 
“Oh…er…I am just a traveler…er…passing by,” he stammered. “My name is Granville. I am sorry if I disturbed you, but I thought the house was empty.”

“Enter, traveler, enter.” It was a resonant voice that reeked of drama. So he was surprised when he found himself inside a large room, cluttered with antique furniture and books piled everywhere. Tables, chairs, desks and the whole floor was covered with manuscripts, maps, drawings, and in the midst of it all stood a little old lady, with skin parchment thin and hair of the most delicate white. She looked to be at least a hundred years old.

“Sit down, Granville. I am pleased to meet you,” again the highly evocative tones, and she moved a bundle of scrolls to indicate a hard-backed armchair.

Barely had he time to more than glance at the intriguing frescoes which graced the major part of each wall, before his attention was turned to her light touch on his arm as she announced, “My dear boy, you need some refreshment.” And she nimbly disappeared into some back room. Expecting tea in delicate china cups, he was surprised when she returned almost immediately with two large goblets of red wine, which she set down on a small table beside him.

Sitting down opposite him, she smiled. “Well, Granville, tell me where you come from,” and her big brown eyes focussed on him in full concentration.

“My business in Naples was completed two days ago,” he offered, as he took a gulp of his wine. “I have had enough of auditing the accounts of our overseas company, and so now I am exploring some of the lovely European countryside.”

“But what country has the honour of your birth?” The question was thrown out like the line in an old drama of Sophocles.

“Oh, I was born in Canada.”

Her eye widened in incomprehension, as though he had told her that he came from the moon.

“Er…you know…Canada.”

Her gaze continued in utter bewilderment, until gathering her wits, as it were, she echoed, “Ah…Canada…yes…Canada… a place of the new world.”

Suddenly a feeling of tremendous antiquity came over him. It was not just the old lady, but something more than that, in the very air he was breathing. As though she caught his mood, she said, “Yes, this is an old, old place. Long, long ago, remote ages ago, this was a house of initiation.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, an involuntary shudder briefly shaking him.

“This is the doorway to Hades!” she announced as though delivering the opening speech on a stage.

After a slight pause in which she rose from her chair, she continued, waxing on loquaciously, “Once, they all came here, young men, young women, old men, old women, virgins, priests, scholars, pilgrims, they came in flocks, or they came alone. They came to learn the secret rites of Persephone and had to pass through the ordeals of the underworld, the dark regions of the soul, and face the trials of terror to secure the resoluteness of will, the purity of purpose.”

Not only the rhetorical nature of her delivery, but also the flamboyant gestures of her hands and arms fascinated him. Now she came close to him and leaned her face so near he could discern every wrinkle and blemish, as in a hoarse rasping whisper she added, “Few there were who passed the test. Oh so many, so many were the ones who failed! Left wandering in the abysses of darkness! You can still hear them howling in the night.”

He moved awkwardly in his seat, wanting to break the tension. “Whew,” he thought, “she is mad as a hatter! What place have I come to?”

Again she picked up on his feeling. “Oh Granville, if you do not believe me, you have only to look at these walls to see the wondrous world you have stepped into. Behold!” With a sudden dramatic sweep she drew his attention to the wall across from where he was sitting, an arm outstretched like a prima donna.

For the first time he really looked at what he had judged previously as merely an interesting mural. As he went to join her in front of it, he realized that this was not just a contemporary work of mediocrity, this was an incredibly ancient fresco that pulsated with meaning, telling a story of strange rituals.

“…depicting the Mysteries of Orpheus,” she continued his thought for him.

The paint was cracking and the plaster had peeled off in places, but the colours were still strong and the images distinctive. On a background of cadmium red, a priestess in blue was washing the hands of a young woman in a veil, slightly faded now, while satyrs and fauns played on strings and pipes. A feral looking dwarf held up a grotesque mask to a woman on her knees weeping and hiding her face, above whom a naked man was wielding a whip, while an aristocratic female held out protective arms and a godlike being in laurels sat on a throne.

“That is Lidia Palmira,” his elderly companion announced, pointing to a dark haired and beautiful figure in a purple robe, who seemed to be caught in the ecstasy of dance. “She was the one chosen above all others, the purest and the best, beloved of the morning and the evening star.”

Her face lit up as she gazed like a doting grandmother on the exquisitely portrayed young dancer. Then her mien turned to that of the tragic actress as with both hands clasped in front of her chest she sighed, “Oh, she had the gifts, god given talents, but alas she was misused, as are all the great ones!”

“Do you know her story?” he asked, interested in spite of himself.

“Oh yes, indeed! She was the daughter of an illicit love affair between a priest and priestess, and given away to the care of a wise old magician who claimed to have discovered the philosopher’s stone. She became his disciple and learned the secrets of his magic and all the arts of occult prophecy.”

“So, what happened to her?” he ventured.

Then she turned to him with an amazing flourish and curtsied coyly, “Lidia Palmira, yours truly, here now in front of you!”

Granville wanted to snigger but he daren’t. There was something fierce in the face of this little old woman, whoever she was, so he tried to be serious. “I am honoured to meet you, Lidia Palmira,” he offered with a formal bow.

“Oh Granville, you mock me at your peril,” she sounded like some abandoned operatic heroine. “I hold a terrible secret. You have no idea, no idea. You would fall on your knees, if you knew, and tremble to the roots of your being.”

“Er…um…I’m sorry…”

“So many, many long years! For oh… too many years! I have carried a fearful burden, beyond the scope of imagination, no concept of yours can stretch so far. And there is no rest for me, no peace for my soul until I can pass it on.”

Hiding a smirk, he decided to play along with the eccentricities of this strange old lady. So he said, “Any way I can help you with the problem?”

“Oh Granville, you may just be the one! Finally I think my prayers may have been heard. At last I believe the Fates have sent you to me. My deliverer!”

Returning to his seat and his wine, he put on a pseudo solemn voice, “So, Lidia Palmira, tell me all about it. Stretch my mind to its utmost limits.”

She came to sit opposite him again. “My dear teacher was sick and he was growing extremely old,” she began, an aching throb in her voice.

“You mean the magician?” he interrupted with a slightly patronizing tone.

“Oh he was a great soul! His knowledge reached the ends of the earth, but his poor body was wracked with pain. His legs would no longer carry him and his eyesight was practically gone. But he was the only one left in possession of a magic formula which he held in a cryptic code, and he could not attain the peace he craved until he had whispered the secret words into a willing ear.”

“Sounds like the ‘lost word’ of the Masons to me,” Granville laughed.

“So, you do understand, Granville,” she gasped with a flutter of delight. “He had been everything to me, father, mother and my spiritual mentor. I loved him so dearly that I was willing to sacrifice my future to be that ear.”

There was a silence for several seconds, during which Granville experienced a mild apprehension, before she continued. “So I too became doomed to wander. A restless spirit looking for a saviour! It has been dreadful. Endless years of useless searching. Pursuing every student of alchemy, every disciple of the occult arts. No one anywhere willing to relieve me of this intolerable weight.”

A wild premonition was starting to grip him, leading up to her final words. “And now, dear boy, you have arrived, and offered yourself of your own accord. At last I can pass on this weighty secret. My gratitude to you is immense.” 

Before the mounting sense of panic could instigate a response in him, she lunged forward quick as a cobra and pressed her mouth to his ear, and he could not help but listen to the terrible words.

He could not remember how he got up and left, and found his way back to his room at the hotel. But he will always remember that feeling of desperation, the horrific perception of an enforced doom spreading like a cold sea in his heart, encapsulating his freedom. His sleep that night was disturbed by tortuous dreams, and one time he was awakened by a frightful scream, only to discover it was his own voice. Then came the memory of a phrase she had uttered, “…you can still hear them howling in the night…lost in the dark abysses…”

Spine chilling nightmares continued to haunt his sleep, so that he dreaded to put his head onto the pillow, and his waking hours were hounded by an unnamed fear. Like a mouse on a treadmill his brain repeatedly echoed those terrifying words. He did not understand the meaning or the message, but they held a cryptic power over him, and he could not forget the pronunciation of that strange archaic sentence, never ever.

For five consecutive days he set out to return to the old lady and beg her to remove this memory, but try as he would, he could not find the cottage. Although he followed the same road, each time the woodland appeared less dense than the time before, until finally nothing remained but open country barren of any sign of habitation. He questioned the locals of the village, and ransacked the library ad nausea in search of any information. All to no avail! 

Then one day he came across an old bookshop, where a strange little bent-over fellow appeared to have been left in charge. Resembling a gnome with a long nose and pointed chin, he gave a sly grin as he took Granville’s arm and led him downstairs into the cellar “to peruse the archives,” he suggested.

Among numerous dusty old volumes, ancient looking scrolls and documents, he suddenly discovered one leather bound book, the pages yellowing with age, which purported to be a historical record of this part of the country. Flipping idly through the chapters, he stopped when he came to a section on the village and surrounding area. The indication was that this had once been the location of a small Roman settlement. With shaking hands he read on, until just a few lines at the bottom of a page suddenly jumped out at him:

“On the left-hand side of the market place stood the Villa of Orphic Mysteries, presided over by a prophetess named Lidia Palmira, said to be the bearer of a dreadful curse imposed by the gods in the 1st century A.D. Above the entrance to the underground chamber was written in gold the ominous instruction ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.”

Bio: Originally from Yorkshire, growing up in the untamed countryside of the Bronte's where she enjoyed the romantic literature of that period, particularly that which gave voice to the restless spirit seeking the mysteries of its own source. This led her into the field of eastern philosophy and mysticism, and for many years she has been a keen student of Theosophy, as introduced to the West by H.P. Blavatsky.