The Green Lane

from the short story collection Nefastus Venereæ (Wicked Loves)

Author’s Note:

This story is a semi-autobiographical daydream I’ve had for decades. The village of Kettleby is real, as is the Green Lane.

A memory from childhood, the Green Lane has haunted my dreams since first I saw it.

I’ve never been down that road.

— GTJ

Part One

It’s been a mystery to me as long as I can remember. In my earliest memories it was there; a continuation of the road I lived on with my family. It runs north of the fifth concession as the part I lived on runs south. Not once did we ever drive up that way. We either turned left to go to the store in nearby Kettleby, to visit cousins or my father’s parents, or to get to the highway; or right to go to church, school, or to visit my mother’s parents.

We never went straight on.

Most of the countryside in the land of my youth was (and still is) farmland. The Green Lane, however, plunges into a sizable forest. I can still see the gravel road rising steeply between towering deciduous trees until it crests and…I don’t know. I’ve never known what was beyond.

It’s been decades since those dreamy days of youth and, though I’ve often been back, I’ve never succumbed to the temptation, while driving by, to turn my car and see what the road looks like over that steep hill. I don’t know why; maybe it’s just an adult’s cynicism concerning the follies of youth, or that I’m not ready to face the disappointment I’m almost certain to feel if once I see beyond that first rise.

I’m going back to visit the grave of a recently deceased uncle next week. Perhaps I’ll give in and get it over with.

Part Two

My heart rate was up as I approached the Lane. I couldn’t actually see it yet, hidden as it was by the dense summer woods on my left. I slowed, not wanting to miss it, and ended up annoying the car behind me. The driver expressed his displeasure with a series of staccato beeps on his horn.

When he escalated to screaming profanity out the driver’s side window, I pulled over and waved him past. He stopped beside me to express his opinion of my parentage before accelerating away fast enough to leave twin strips of tire on the blacktop.

Normally, I would have responded in kind, but I was bit distracted just then. I sat for awhile on the sloped gravel shoulder. I could just see the Lane ahead of me—a break in the foliage.

Finally, I screwed up my courage, dropped the car in gear, and inched along the roadside toward the end of the Lane. It was little farther than I thought, but after ten minutes or so I was there. After peeking both ways and finding no traffic, I slowly turned the wheel and inched up the Lane.

There were no cars in sight, so I idled the car up the slope of the hill; my palms were slick on the wheel and my heart pounded in my chest as I approached the crest whose far side had been an object of dreamy fancy since childhood.

I braced myself for disappointment and was mildly surprised when it didn’t come. The vista that greeted me when the car finally topped the rise was more than pleasant.

The Green Lane ran gently down between trees that were substantially larger than the ones visible from the concession behind me. It had been cloudy on the slow drive up the slope. Ahead of me, though, I could see a break in the clouds through which sunlight poured. The crack in the cloud layer drifted my way.

I let the car glide down the slope. Halfway to level road, sunlight washed over me. It was more golden than it should have been. Up ahead, the trees closed over the road. I plunged into deep green shadow, my trepidation transformed to joy.

Obeying a sudden impulse, I pulled over and retracted the convertible’s roof. While it stowed itself, I got out for a better look around.

I glanced at a deeply shaded aisles of trees on one side of the Lane. There were no plants other than the enormous oaks. Not a single shoot poked up through the leaf mold. It was as if the trees had driven away all lesser flora.

I looked up, trying and failing to see the sky past the upper branches. From beneath the shelter of their branches, the trees seem even larger than they had before. I glanced back to confirm that impression.

I could see the place where the gravel road went over the hill, but it was farther away than it should have been—at least a mile behind—and much higher. My car definitely had not come down that steep a hill. Considering, I doubted any car could have.

None of this really bothered me, though I had a passing thought that it should do. My mind, it seemed, had also grown larger.

With the top finally down, I got back in the car and carried on my odyssey. The road curved gently to the left and plunged downward, following the course of a brook.

At the bottom of the hill, the Lane continued level, winding back and forth. After travelling at a moderate speed for about twenty minutes, a gap in the trees was indicated by a gush of that incredible golden sunlight across the gravel.

Part Three

The trees were truly giants now, like living towers or the pillars of some immense cathedral. The light ahead, thrusting through shoals of leaves suddenly roaring in a wind I could not feel, might well have been streaming through stained glass.

As I approached the gap, I pulled a pair of sunglasses from the visor, putting them on just as I reached the break in the foliage. A field of wheat covered an otherwise bare hill, rising in sweeps to a distant ridge crowned with the late afternoon sun.

Another, gentler breeze caused the stalks to wave, giving the field the look of a tawny sea. The glimpse was brief, just two or three seconds and then it was gone again, hidden by the trees.

Just ahead, the road turned right and began to climb. The creek become a chuckling stream, having been fed by others flowing down from some tree-covered hill. It dived under the road at a bridge visible only as a pair of low stone walls flanking the rutted gravel.

My car toiled up the gradual slope, tires crunching the pebbles that surfaced the Lane, and I could see another golden break in the trees, this time to the left, at the midpoint of another right turn.

As I approached, I noticed the quality of the light was slightly different. It seemed bluer.

This gap was larger than the last. As I approached, I again slipped on my sunglasses.

I took them off again rather hurriedly, tossing them carelessly on the passenger’s seat, as my latest view of the world beyond the screen of trees became visible.

It wasn’t the grass-carpeted meadow sprinkled with wild flowers that caught my attention; it was the blue tower rising through the treetops beyond.

Part Four

It looked to be hundreds of feet tall, with a gnarled look as if the stone were elaborately carved. A small, still reasoning, voice whispered that such a thing should have been clearly visible from the concession. But, I hadn’t been paying attention to that voice since I crested that first rise.

I pulled the car over quickly, tires spitting gravel as I jammed on the brakes. Slamming the car door, I sprinted across the road and leaned against a driftwood fence marveling at the structure. I felt a tugging in my mind—I’d seen this somewhere before or maybe I’d read about it or imagined it…

My thoughts soon turned to getting a closer look. There was nothing that might have been a side road on my journey so far, so any path leading to the tower must have lain ahead.

Wasting no more time, I got back in the car and headed up the Lane; this time going more slowly so as not to miss any track that might lead the way to the base of that fantastic structure.

After completing the right turn, the road went straight and level between ordered rows of the giant trees overshadowing the road. As I proceeded, the light started to dim.

At first, I thought was just the density of the overhead foliage but no. To the right, southward, I could see the sky past the trees, whose ranks were thinning, divining a meadow not too distant. Clouds covered the westering sun, only a half hour from setting. The air became decidedly cooler as well. I was tempted to put the roof up again, but I didn’t want to waste time.

As I crawled along, something in my hind-brain told me with complete certainty that I needed to be well off this road after the sun went down.

The ‘why?’ of that judgment came reluctantly. This place was not for the likes of me; it had been waiting for someone more worthy.

I was permitted this time because the sun of this world shone here. When it drops below the horizon, the heirs of this kingdom would claim it. How I knew this as just one more bit of knowledge that it didn’t occur to me to question—that small thinking voice was still at last.

After a time, the trees on the right failed altogether, exposing a wasteland of grey earth. It was probably just a fallow field; all the same, it looked like ages of desolation. The sun peeked out from the cloud cover just as it set, illuminating an iron gate on my left.

Ahead, the road continued, potholed and winding, into the darkness of the south, narrow and lined with brambles. I thought I could hear the howl of wolves from that direction.

I took the hint.

Part Five

I pulled over, just as the sun dropped below the horizon and twilight descended. The gate was ornate, in good repair, and slightly ajar. Decorative brick pillars flanked it, the pair topped by what look like steel spheres, the left etched in a pattern that I almost recognized.

The initials ‘A.T.’, inside an oval of white painted wrought-iron, were prominently placed at the top of the curving span of the gate. Beyond, a one lane track headed off through the verdant woods. Those trees and shrubs held their green more strongly than the fading light should allow.

After holding a brief internal debate on the propriety of driving down what was obviously a private road, I pulled the gate wide, got in the car, and drove through. I paused long enough to move the gate back to the position in which I had found it.

I drove at idling speed down a lane so narrow, if I encountered a car coming the other way, I’d have to back right up to the Lane to let it pass.

The drive was lined with huge willows, trailing their long, limp branches in front of the car. They made slapping, sliding sounds as they hit and trailed along the car’s flanks. Occasionally, one would make stinging strikes on my hands or face. The susurrus of my passing almost drowned out the evensong of the birds. The scent of sap was strong and bitter in my nostrils.

Twilight lingered here; a glow staying well past the close of day.

As I rounded a gentle left bend I could see the tower through the distant branches of oak trees. It was hit by the last light of the sun; a warm benediction striking the tower’s upper face. From my better vantage, I could see that it was crowned by seven, slender, curving spires like horns.

The driveway continued for another five minutes, winding lazily, giving me occasional glimpses of my destination.

Finally, I broke through the last of the tree cover and onto a wide lawn. Two dirt ribbons lay before my tires, pulling the car along to the ruins of a large farm house on my left. I didn’t notice the state of the structure until I was almost on top of it; my gaze was held by the tower, now tantalizingly close.

I pulled up to the house and stopped. Turning off the engine, I got out and walked around it on its right, heading for the tower. Only now did I take a good look at the former.

It was missing a good chunk of its roof. I could see right through the house, courtesy of sashless windows and empty rooms, to a field, dotted with clumps of trees, just visible in the fading light.

Once past the house, I finally had an unimpeded view of the spired column of blue stone. It was only a few hundred yards away on the other side of a small valley covered with well manicured grass.

I could see rows of spikes, like the set that crowned the spire, spiraling up the sides. Elaborately carved windows in a profusion of styles lined the sides of its…nine, ten, eleven levels.

Also, for the first time I could see the tower’s foundations. It was fronted by a high walled enclosure, also blue stone. I could see a large pair of gates, tightly closed. As I approached, I could also hear what sounded like a party. There was music, speech, and laughter coming from the other side of the wall.

I approached the entrance, a sense of anticipation welling within my breast. As I got nearer, I noted the pointed arched silver doors were densely incised with two great columns of words.

It wasn’t until I was within a couple of paces that the text was clear. I smiled as I noted the left hand column which began: “Here enter not…” and the right most which started: “Here enter you…” ¹

1. see the poem at the end of the story

Familiar though I was with them, I nevertheless studied both lists carefully as full night descended, or should have done. The dim light of early evening still lingered.

The former list didn’t contain anyone like me, I was almost sure. A couple of the descriptions on the right fit me well enough, I fancied.

I was about to knock and beg admission when I heard a woman’s high musical voice from just behind me, “Ya mustna disturb th’ Revel.”

I turned quickly—and there she was. She was not quite five feet tall and slender, with wavy auburn hair, threaded with gold. Her diminutive features were exquisite. Dressed in shimmering blue silken rags, she was a vision come to life. Her skin, ivory pale and sparkling silver, was tinged with a blue iridescence. I was faintly surprised that she hadn’t any gossamer wings.

Belatedly, I noticed the sky had retained a diffuse white glow around the horizon, as if this valley were floating just above the full moon. Light clung to everything, banishing shadows.

I responded as if none of this was strange—indeed it didn’t seem strange to me. I should have been surprised. “Am I not welcome here?”

She shook her head sadly; the sorrow of her visage was enough to make stones weep, as she said, “You are not free.”

“From what?” I was on the edge of tears, suddenly.

“From yourself.” She gestured to me. No, not to me; to my clothes.

I looked down and saw my suit—Italian, as were my shoes. I had a Rolex on my wrist and a platinum cell phone in my breast pocket. My heart sank. My car had cost six figures.

She saw my comprehension, knew that I would not, could not, give up my comforts. They were not a part of me, yet they cling to me like leeches.

“I have to go back, don’t I?” My voice was hoarse with emotion; my vision blurred by tears.

She only nodded.

“Can I ever hope for welcome, here?”

“Only when ya free yerself from yer chains.” I knew she was not talking about my possessions this time, but about those things which made them attractive to me.

Feeling more dejected than I could ever remember, I trudged slowly back to my car, trying, and failing, not to hear the joy of the guests beyond the wall.

Part Six

The elf woman watched as the car moved slowly back down the gravel drive, small smile teasing the corners of her rosebud lips. She shifted her feet, as she waited, and fanned herself with the translucent, almost crystalline wings that he had been unable to see.

Others might call it a long time that she waited, but she had waited centuries already. Another half hour was nothing next to that.

In time, she saw the glow over by the road. She was too far away to hear the flames, but she did see the column of sooty smoke rising against the pale horizonal glow.

After almost as many minutes more, she saw him striding back to her from the trees, naked as a day he was born. (She smiled fondly in remembrance of that day.) Seeing her smile, he quickened his pace, genitals bobbing, to her waiting arms.

He was panting as he arrived. His upward gaze told her he could see her wings at last. The man’s cheeks were still shiny with his tears, but his smile was beatific. “I almost didn’t figure it out!”

After a warm, lingering embrace, she answered, gleefully, “So long as you did. Come. Your guests await.”

Taking him by the hand, the wingéd fæ led him to the gates. She breathed gently on them and they swung wide. The merrymaking company greeted him with an enthusiastic shout, calling him by a name he hadn’t known was his real one until that moment.

He looked slightly puzzled, as if he couldn’t figure out how they knew him. She only chuckled her reply; he would figure it out, in time.

A portly man, dressed all in green handed him an equally green drink and introduced him to others, mostly women barely covered more than he, who lounged by the pool in the center of the garden.

He gazed in wonder at the enclosure. It was seven sided, and lined with a covered stone walkway, like a cloister. Wooden porticos of patterned holes like lace, arched overhead to meet at the center of the space. They were covered with flowering vines and strung with Chinese lanterns.

At the furthest end, stood the tower; a frosted blue layer-cake of stone, stretching farther up than he could make out in the misty, perpetual twilight. Time enough for that mystery later.

He turned his gaze to his new companions, looking for the pixie who had admitted him, but she had hidden herself away, Returning to her vigil, she again waited beyond the gates for the next soul—the next flowering of the seeds she had planted and cultivated so long ago—to find her and the Abbey.

The land around the tower and cloister was now grey sand stretching to a horizon impossibly distant. Large, gibbous twin moons, red as flame, were just cresting the cloudless yellow twilight of this plane. They threw the two figures striding toward her into silhouette.

The pair were too far away to make out details, yet she knew those twins and had done since their birth. They would be at the gate soon enough.

Afterward

CLAYTON MYSTERY DEEPENS

KINGS COUNTY Aug. 21 – The story of the disappearance of millionaire Brendan Clayton took a took a grim turn last night with discovery of his black Mercedes C-class parked along the Fifth Concession, near a sideroad called the Green Lane by locals.

When interviewed, an officer on the scene stated that no signs of foul play were evident, but that clothing belonging to the missing man was found folded neatly on the driver’s seat…

—Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, July 2019

Copyright © 2020 Gideon Jagged
All Rights Reserved

The Inscriptions on the Gates of the Abbey of Theleme

Left

Here enter not vile bigots, hypocrites,
Externally devoted apes, base snites,
Puffed-up, wry-necked beasts, worse than the Huns,
Or Ostrogoths, forerunners of baboons:
Cursed snakes, dissembled varlets, seeming sancts,
Slipshod caffards, beggars pretending wants,
Fat chuffcats, smell-feast knockers, doltish gulls,
Out-strouting cluster-fists, contentious bulls,
Fomenters of divisions and debates,
Elsewhere, not here, make sale of your deceits.

Your filthy trumperies
Stuffed with pernicious lies
(Not worth a bubble),
Would do but trouble
Our earthly paradise,
Your filthy trumperies.

Here enter not attorneys, barristers,
Nor bridle-champing law-practitioners:
Clerks, commissaries, scribes, nor pharisees,
Wilful disturbers of the people’s ease:
Judges, destroyers, with an unjust breath,
Of honest men, like dogs, even unto death.
Your salary is at the gibbet-foot:
Go drink there! for we do not here fly out
On those excessive courses, which may draw
A waiting on your courts by suits in law.

Lawsuits, debates, and wrangling
Hence are exiled, and jangling.
Here we are very
Frolic and merry,
And free from all entangling,
Lawsuits, debates, and wrangling.

Here enter not base pinching usurers,
Pelf-lickers, everlasting gatherers,
Gold-graspers, coin-gripers, gulpers of mists,
Niggish deformed sots, who, though your chests
Vast sums of money should to you afford,
Would ne’ertheless add more unto that hoard,
And yet not be content — you clunchfist dastards,
Insatiable fiends, and Pluto’s bastards,
Greedy devourers, chichy sneakbill rogues,
Hell-mastiffs gnaw your bones, you ravenous dogs.

You beastly-looking fellows,
Reason doth plainly tell us
That we should not
To you allot
Room here, but at the gallows,
You beastly-looking fellows.

Here enter not fond makers of demurs
In love adventures, peevish, jealous curs,
Sad pensive dotards, raisers of garboils,
Hags, goblins, ghosts, firebrands of household broils,
Nor drunkards, liars, cowards, cheaters, clowns,
Thieves, cannibals, faces o’ercast with frowns,
Nor lazy slugs, envious, covetous,
Nor blockish, cruel, nor too credulous —
Here mangy, pocky folks shall have no place,
No ugly lusks, nor persons of disgrace.

Grace, honour, praise, delight,
Here sojourn day and night.
Sound bodies lined
With a good mind,
Do here pursue with might
Grace, honour, praise, delight.

Right

Here enter you, and welcome from our hearts,
All noble sparks, endowed with gallant parts.
This is the glorious place, which bravely shall
Afford wherewith to entertain you all.
Were you a thousand, here you shall not want
For anything; for what you’ll ask we’ll grant.
Stay here, you lively, jovial, handsome, brisk,
Gay, witty, frolic, cheerful, merry, frisk,
Spruce, jocund, courteous, furtherers of trades,
And, in a word, all worthy gentle blades.

Blades of heroic breasts
Shall taste here of the feasts,
Both privily
And civilly
Of the celestial guests,

Here enter you, pure, honest, faithful, true
Expounders of the Scriptures old and new.
Whose glosses do not blind our reason, but
Make it to see the clearer, and who shut
Its passages from hatred, avarice,
Pride, factions, covenants, and all sort of vice.
Come, settle here a charitable faith,
Which neighbourly affection nourisheth.
And whose light chaseth all corrupters hence,
Of the blest word, from the aforesaid sense.
Blades of heroic breasts.

The holy sacred Word,
May it always afford
T’ us all in common,
Both man and woman,
A spiritual shield and sword,
The holy sacred Word.

Here enter you all ladies of high birth,
Delicious, stately, charming, full of mirth,
Ingenious, lovely, miniard, proper, fair,
Magnetic, graceful, splendid, pleasant, rare,
Obliging, sprightly, virtuous, young, solacious,
Kind, neat, quick, feat, bright, compt, ripe, choice, dear, precious.
Alluring, courtly, comely, fine, complete,
Wise, personable, ravishing, and sweet,
Come joys enjoy. The Lord celestial
Hath given enough wherewith to please us all.

Gold give us, God forgive us,
And from all woes relieve us;
That we the treasure
May reap of pleasure,
And shun whate’er is grievous,
Gold give us, God forgive us.

—Gargantua and Pantagruel, Chapter 54, by Francois Rabelais