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bank behind which the hillside door may have lain, nor did any try to
frame a definite image of the scenes amidst which Joseph Curwen
departed from the horrors he had wrought.
Only robust old Captain Whipple was heard by alert listeners to
mutter once in awhile to himself, "Pox on that ——, but he had no
business to laugh while he screamed. 'Twas as though the damn'd
—— had some 'at up his sleeve. For half a crown I'd burn his ——
house."
3. A Search and an Evocation
Charles Ward, as we have seen, first learned in 1918 of his descent
from Joseph Curwen. That he at once took an intense interest in
everything pertaining to the bygone mystery is not to be wondered
at; for every vague rumor that he had heard of Curwen now became
something vital to himself, in whom flowed Curwen's blood.
In his first delvings there was not the slightest attempt at secrecy; he
talked freely with his family—though his mother was not particularly
pleased to own an ancestor like Curwen—and with the officials of the
various museums and libraries he visited. In applying to private
families for records thought to be in their possession he made no
concealment of his object, and shared the somewhat amused
skepticism with which the accounts of the old diarists and letter-
writers were regarded.
When he came across the Smith diary and archives and
encountered the letter from Jedediah Orne he decided to visit Salem
and look up Curwen's early activities and connections there, which
he did during the Easter vacation of 1919. At the Essex Institute,
which was well known to him from former sojourns in the glamorous
old town of crumbling Puritan gables and clustered gambrel roofs, he
was very kindly received, and unearthed there a considerable
amount of Curwen data. He found that his ancestor was born in
Salem-Village, now Danvers, seven miles from town, on the
eighteenth of February (O. S.) 1662-3; and that he had run away to
sea at the age of fifteen, not appearing again for nine years, when he
returned with the speech, dress, and manners of a native
Englishman and settled in Salem proper. At that time he had little to
do with his family, but spent most of his hours with the curious books
he had brought from Europe, and the strange chemicals which came
for him on ships from England, France, and Holland. Certain trips of
his into the country were the objects of much local inquisitiveness,
and were whisperingly associated with vague rumors of fires on the
hills at night.
Curwen's only close friends had been one Edward Hutchinson of
Salem-Village and one Simon Orne of Salem. Hutchinson had a
house well out toward the woods, and it was not altogether liked by
sensitive people because of the sounds heard there at night. He was
said to entertain strange visitors, and the lights seen from his
windows were not always of the same color. The knowledge he
displayed concerning long-dead persons and long-forgotten events
was considered distinctly unwholesome, and he disappeared about
the time the witchcraft panic began, never to be heard from again. At
that time Joseph Curwen also departed, but his settlement in
Providence was soon learned of. Simon Orne lived in Salem until
1720, when his failure to grow visibly old began to excite attention.
He thereafter disappeared, though thirty years later his precise
counterpart and self-styled son turned up to claim his property. The
claim was allowed on the strength of documents in Simon Orne's
known hand, and Jedediah Orne continued to dwell in Salem till
1771, when certain letters from Providence citizens to the Reverend
Thomas Barnard and others brought about his quiet removal to parts
unknown.
Providence, 1 May
Brother:
My honour'd Antient friend, due Respects and earnest Wishes to
Him whom we serve for yr Eternall Power. I am just come upon That
Which you ought to knowe, concern'g the Matter of the Laste
Extremite and What to doe regard' yt. I am not dispos'd to followe
you in go'g Away on acct. of my yeares, for Providence hath not ye
Sharpeness of ye Bay in hunt'g oute uncommon Things and
bringinge to Tryall. I am ty'd up in Shippes and Goodes, and cou'd
not doe as you did, besides the Whiche my Farme, at Pawtuxet hatht
under it What you Knowe, that Wou'd not Waite for my com'g Backe
as an Other.
But I am not unreadie for harde fortunes, as I have tolde you, and
have longe Work'd upon ye Way of get'g Backe after ye Laste. I laste
Night strucke on ye Wordes that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE,
and sawe for ye Firste Time that face spoke of by Ibn Schacabac in
ye ——. And IT said, that ye III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes
ye Clavicle. With Sunne in V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye
Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth Verse thrice. This Verse
repeate eache Roodemas and Hallow's Eve, and ye thing will brede
in ye Outside Spheres.
And of ye Sede of Olde shal One be borne who shal looke Backe,
tho' know'g not what he seekes.
Yett will this availe Nothing if there be no Heir, and if the Saltes, or
the Way to make the Saltes, bee not Readie for his Hande; and here
I will owne, I have not taken needed Stepps nor founde Much. Ye
Process is plaguy harde to come neare, and it uses up such a Store
of Specimens, I am harde putte to it to get Enough, notwithstand'g
the Sailors I have from ye Indies. Ye People aboute are become
Curious, but I can stande them off. Ye gentry are worse than ye
Populace, be'g more Circumstantiall in their Accts. and more believ'd
in what they tell. That Parson and Mr. Merritt have talk'd some, I am
fearfull, but no Thing soe far is Dangerous. Ye Chymical substances
are easie of get'g, there be'g II. goode Chymists in Towne, Dr.
Bowen and Sam. Carew. I am foll'g oute what Borellus saith, and
have Helpe in Abdool Al-Hazred his VII. Booke. Whatever I gette,
you shal have. And in ye meane While, do not neglect to make use
of ye Wordes I have here given. I have them Righte, but if you
Desire to see HIM, imploy the Writinge on ye Piece of ——, that I am
putt'g in this Packet. Saye ye Verses every Roodmas and Hallow's
Eve; and if yr Line runn not out, one shal bee in yeares to come that
shal looke backe and use what Saltes or stuff for Salte you shal
leave him. Job XIV. XIV.
I rejoice you are again at Salem, and hope I may see you not longe
hence. I have a goode Stallion, and am think'g of get'g a Coach,
there be'g one (Mr. Merritt's) in Providence already, tho' ye Roades
are bad. If you are disposed to travel, doe not pass me bye. From
Boston take ye Post Road, thro' Dedham, Wrentham, and
Attleborough, goode Taverns be'g at all these Townes. Stop at Mr.
Bolcom's in Wrentham, where ye Beddes are finer than Mr. Hatch's,
but eate at ye other House for their cooke is better. Turne into Prov.
by Patucket falls, and ye Rd. past Mr. Sayles's Tavern. My House
opp. Mr. Epenetus Olney's Tavern off ye Towne Street, 1st on ye N.
side of Olney's Court. Distance from Boston Stone abt. XLIV miles.
Sir, I am yr olde and true friend and Servt. in Almonsin-Metraton.
Josephus C.
To Mr. Simon Orne,
William's-Lane, in Salem.
This letter, oddly enough, was what first gave Ward the exact
location of Curwen's Providence home; for none of the records
encountered up to that time had been at all specific. The place was
indeed only a few squares from his own home on the great hill's
higher ground, and was now the abode of a Negro family much
esteemed for occasional washing, housecleaning, and furnace-
tending services. To find, in distant Salem, such sudden proof of the
significance of this familiar rookery in his own family history, was a
highly impressive thing to Ward; and he resolved to explore the place
immediately upon his return.
The more mystical phases of the letter, which he took to be some
extravagant kind of symbolism, frankly baffled him; though he noted
with a thrill of curiosity that the Biblical passage referred to—Job 14,
14—was the familiar verse, "If a man die, shall he live again? All the
days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come."
We have now reached the point from which the more academic
school of alienists date Charles Ward's madness. Upon his discovery
the youth had looked immediately at a few of the inner pages of the
book and manuscripts, and had evidently seen something which
impressed him tremendously. Upon returning home he broke the
news with an almost embarrassed air, as if he wished to convey an
idea of its supreme importance without having to exhibit the
evidence itself. He did not even show the titles to his parents, but
simply told them that he had found some documents in Joseph
Curwen's handwriting, "mostly in cipher," which would have to be
studied very carefully before yielding up their true meaning. It is
unlikely that he would have shown what he did to the workmen, had
it not been for their unconcealed curiosity. As it was he doubtless
wished to avoid any display of peculiar reticence which would
increase their discussion of the matter.
That night Charles Ward sat up in his room reading the new-found
book and papers, and when day came he did not desist. His meals,
on his urgent request when his mother called to see what was amiss,
were sent up to him; and in the afternoon he appeared only briefly
when the men came to install the Curwen picture and mantelpiece in
his study. The next night he slept in snatches in his clothes,
meanwhile wrestling feverishly with the unraveling of the cipher
manuscript. In the morning his mother saw that he was at work on
the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher, which he had
frequently showed her before; but in response to her query he said
that the Curwen key could not be applied to it. That afternoon he
abandoned his work and watched the men fascinatedly as they
finished their installation of the picture with its woodwork above a
cleverly realistic electric log, setting the mock-fireplace and
overmantel a little out from the north wall as if a chimney existed,
and boxing in its sides with panelling to match the room's. After the
workmen went he moved his work into the study and sat down
before it with his eyes half on the cipher and half on the portrait
which stared back at him like a year-adding century-recalling mirror.
His parents subsequently recalling his conduct at this period, give
interesting details anent the policy of concealment which he
practiced. Before servants he seldom hid any paper which he might
be studying, since he rightly assumed that Curwen's intricate and
archaic chirography would be too much for them. With his parents,
however, he was more circumspect; and unless the manuscript in
question were a cipher, or a mere mass of cryptic symbols and
unknown ideographs (as that entitled "To Him Who Shal Come After
etc." seemed to be) he would cover it with some convenient paper
until his caller had departed. At night he kept the papers under lock
and key in an antique cabinet of his, where he also placed them
whenever he left the room. He soon resumed fairly regular hours and
habits, except that his long walks and other outside interests seemed
to cease. The opening of school, where he now began his senior
year, seemed a great bore to him; and he frequently asserted his
determination never to bother with college. He had, he said,
important special investigations to make, which would provide him
with more avenues toward knowledge and the humanities than any
university which the world could boast.
During October Ward began visiting the libraries again, but no longer
for the antiquarian matter of his former days. Witchcraft and magic,
occultism and daemonology, were what he sought now; and when
Providence sources proved unfruitful he would take the train for
Boston and tap the wealth of the great library in Copley Square, the
Widener Library at Harvard, or the Zion Research Library in
Brookline, where certain rare works on Biblical subjects are
available. He bought extensively, and fitted up a whole additional set
of shelves in his study for newly acquired works on uncanny
subjects; while during the Christmas holidays he made a round of
out-of-town trips including one to Salem to consult certain records at
the Essex Institute.
It was toward May when Dr. Willett, at the request of the senior
Ward, and fortified with all the Curwen data which the family had
gleaned from Charles in his non-secretive days, talked with the
young man. The interview was of little value or conclusiveness, for
Willett felt at every moment that Charles was thoroughly master of
himself and in touch with matters of real importance; but it at least
forced the secretive youth to offer some rational explanation of his
recent demeanor. Of a pallid, impassive type not easily showing
embarrassment, Ward seemed quite ready to discuss his pursuits,
though not to reveal their object. He stated that the papers of his
ancestor had contained some remarkable secrets of early scientific
knowledge. To take their vivid place in the history of human thought
they must first be correlated by one familiar with the background out
of which they evolved, and to this task of correlation Ward was now
devoting himself. He was seeking to acquire as fast as possible
those neglected arts of old which a true interpreter of the Curwen
data must possess, and hoped in time to make a full announcement
and presentation of the utmost interest to mankind and to the world
of thought.
As to his graveyard search, whose object he freely admitted, but the
details of whose progress he did not relate, he said he had reason to
think that Joseph Curwen's mutilated headstone bore certain mystic
symbols—carved from directions in his will and ignorantly spared by
those who had effaced the name—which were absolutely essential
to the final solution of his cryptic system. Curwen, he believed, had
wished to guard his secret with care; and had consequently
distributed the data in an exceedingly curious fashion. When Dr.
Willett asked to see the mystic documents, Ward displayed much
reluctance and tried to put him off with such things as the photostatic
copies of the Hutchinson cipher and Orne formulae and diagrams;
but finally showed him the exteriors of some of the real Curwen finds
—the "Journal and Notes," the cipher (title in cipher also) and the
formula-filled message "To Him Who Shal Come After"—and let him
glance inside such as were in obscure characters.
He also opened the diary at a page carefully selected for its
innocuousness and gave Willett a glimpse of Curwen's connected
handwriting in English. The doctor noted very closely the crabbed
and complicated letters, and the general aura of the seventeenth
century which clung round both penmanship and style despite the
writer's survival into the eighteenth century, and became quickly
certain that the document was genuine. The text itself was relatively
trivial, and Willett recalled only a fragment. But when Dr. Willett
turned the leaf, he was quickly checked by Ward, who almost
snatched the book from his grasp. All that the doctor had a chance to
see on the newly opened page was a brief pair of sentences; but
these, strangely enough, lingered tenaciously in his memory.
They ran: "Ye Verse from Liber-Damnatus be'g spoke V
Roodmasses and IV Hallows-Eves, I am Hopeful ye Thing is breed'g
Outside ye Spheres. It will drawe One who is to Come if I can make
sure he shal bee, and he shall think on Past thinges and looke back
thro' all ye yeares, against ye which I must have ready ye Saltes or
That to make 'em with."
Willett saw no more, but somehow this small glimpse gave a new
and vague terror to the painted features of Joseph Curwen which
stared blandly down from the overmantel. Ever after that he
entertained the odd fancy—which his medical skill of course assured
him was only a fancy—that the eyes of the portrait had a sort of
tendency to follow young Charles Ward as he moved about the
room. He stopped before leaving to study the picture closely,
marveling at its resemblance to Charles and memorizing every
minute detail of the cryptical, colorless face, even down to a slight
scar or pit in the smooth brow above the right eye.
Assured by the doctor that Charles' mental health was in no danger,
but that on the other hand he was engaged in researches which
might prove of real importance, the Wards were more lenient than
they might otherwise have been when during the following June the
youth made positive his refusal to attend college. He had, he
declared, studies of much more vital importance to pursue; and
intimated a wish to go abroad the following year in order to avail
himself of certain sources of data not existing in America. The senior
Ward, while denying this latter wish as absurd for a boy of only
eighteen, acquiesced regarding the university; so that after a none
too brilliant graduation from the Moses Brown School there ensued
for Charles a three year period of intensive occult study and
graveyard searching.
For two months or more after this incident Ward was less confined
than usual to his laboratory. He exhibited a curious interest in the
weather, and made odd inquiries about the date of the spring
thawing of the ground. One night late in March he left the house after
midnight, and did not return till almost morning; when his mother,
being wakeful, heard a rumbling motor draw up the carriage
entrance. Muffled oaths could be distinguished, and Mrs. Ward,
rising and going to the window, saw four dark figures removing a
long, heavy box from a truck at Charles' direction and carrying it
within by the side door. She heard labored breathing and ponderous
footfalls on the stairs, and finally a dull thumping in the attic; after
which the footfalls descended again, and the four men reappeared
outside and drove off in their truck.
The next day Charles resumed his strict attic seclusion, drawing
down the dark shades of his laboratory windows and appearing to be
working on some metal substance. He would open the door to no
one, and steadfastly refused all proffered food. About noon a
wrenching sound followed by a terrible cry and a fall were heard, but
when Mrs. Ward rapped at the door her son at length answered
faintly, and told her that nothing had gone amiss. The hideous and
indescribable stench now welling out was absolutely harmless and
unfortunately necessary. Solitude was the one prime essential, and
he would appear later for dinner. That afternoon, after the conclusion
of some odd hissing sounds which came from behind the locked
portal, he did finally appear; wearing an extremely haggard aspect
and forbidding anyone to enter the laboratory upon any pretext. This,
indeed, proved the beginning of a new policy of secrecy; for never
afterward was any other person permitted to visit either the
mysterious garret workroom or the adjacent storeroom which he
cleared out, furnished roughly, and added to his inviolably private
domain as a sleeping apartment. Here he lived, with books brought
up from his library beneath, till the time he purchased the Pawtuxet
bungalow and moved to it all his scientific effects.
In the evening Charles secured the paper before the rest of the
family and damaged part of it through an apparent accident. Later on
Dr. Willett, having fixed the date from statements by various
members of the household, looked up an intact copy at the Journal
office and found that in the destroyed section the following small item
had occurred:
Nocturnal Diggers Surprised in North Burial Ground
Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground, this
morning discovered a party of several men with a motor truck in the
oldest part of the cemetery, but apparently frightened them off before
they had accomplished whatever their object may have been.
The discovery took place at about four o'clock, when Hart's attention
was attracted by the sound of a motor outside his shelter.
Investigating, he saw a large truck on the main drive several rods
away; but could not reach it before the sound of his feet on the
gravel had revealed his approach. The men hastily placed a large
box in the truck and drove away toward the street before they could
be overtaken; and since no known grave was disturbed, Hart
believes that this box was an object which they wished to bury.
The diggers must have been at work for a long while before
detection, for Hart found an enormous hole dug at a considerable
distance back from the roadway in the lot of Amosa Field, where
most of the old stones have long ago disappeared. The hole, a place
as large and deep as a grave, was empty; and did not coincide with
any interment mentioned in the cemetery records.