Stories: All-New Tales

Such a period is, of course, where we find ourselves at the moment.

I might add at this point that my interest in the Cult is not a recently flowering one; I have been gathering references to it and carefully formulating my theories for many years.

FOR THE RECORD, MY interest was sparked during the waning months of the free world’s involvement in the Vietnam War. At that time I was a special attaché aligned with a covert arm of American intelligence, checking black-and-white photographs taken by spies and insurgents behind Communist lines—these were photos smuggled out of prisoner-of-war camps and such. I might also add that this was a period in which I was seeking to forget an unfortunate incident in my personal life: my young spouse, understandably lonely due to my lengthy absence, took up with another man and had a child by him. I sought solace by immersing myself in my work.

I began to notice in some of the photos I handled a recurring and curious phenomenon. Here and there, tucked in a corner or peering out from behind a barracks, was a peculiar figure wearing what seemed to be a false nose upon its face. Often the figure was identifiably male; at other times it appeared to be a female, or even a child. Many prisoners of war at that time, due to malnutrition and concurrent emaciation, were barely identifiable by their gender—or their age—so it must be remembered that any sort of positive identification was difficult. Many of the nose-wearing figures appeared beside, or within (though they were apparently not dead) mass graves.

I put these photographs aside, thinking that, though there was little here to interest my superiors, there might yet be something to investigate further.

I began to dream of figures, birdlike, resembling Bosch’s horrid hell beasts, wearing false, beaklike noses.

My collection of photographs grew. I realized that as the scenes of horror increased—by this time we were receiving covert daily pictures from death camps holding Americans and Vietnamese Buddhists—the number of nose-bearing figures increased. In one photograph—one I keep to this day folded in my wallet—a man, woman and child, in a long line of tired and bleakly hopeless prisoners, most of them in tatters of clothes hanging on barely enough bones to stand, being led meekly to an open pit by machine gun–bearing guards, have turned their faces toward the camera, three in a row, and are smiling a death’s-head smile. There seems to be a bit more meat on their bones than on those in front and in back of them.

They each wear the Nose.

OTHER ACTIVITIES SOON SAVED me from complete absorption in the manner of these curious photographs, and it was not until well after the war’s resolution, after I had settled in Montreal, far away from my ex-wife, her son and husband (who traveled extensively) that I came across a small bundle of the grainy pictures in a box (the above-mentioned photo was among them) and all of my former interest was rekindled. I began to search other sources—having a bit of influence, due to my war service, in being able to access materials not easily available by the public—and began to come across other photos taken in other sectors of the war in which figures bearing the Nose appeared.

I then broadened my research, and found similar artifacts among World War II memorabilia. I came across one precious bit of evidence (alas, recently lost to fire) that depicted a Third Reich rally in which two separate nosed figures could plainly be discerned. I remember this photo clearly, because one of the figures stood a few scant feet from Hitler himself, and grinned maliciously at the camera.

Eventually, my interest once again waned, until I picked up one morning in 1979 a London newspaper that contained a news-service photo on the front page presenting the dead body of the assassinated president of South Korea, Park Chung Hee. To the right of the body, barely visible in the deep background, was a figure with the Nose on its face.

I immediately researched other photos that were taken at the time but came up with nothing useful.

However, another reference turned up in a photograph of a train derailment that killed forty-five passengers in Ohio the same week: among the twisted metal a head could be seen poking through with the false appendage attached to it by a thin silver strap. The figure it belonged to, which was surrounded by dead commuters, was clearly alive.

I began to comb picture morgues and newspaper files, turning up hundreds of photos with similar figures in them. Most depicted disasters or near disasters; I began to notice that the number—and demeanor—of the figures often depended on the amount of destruction that surrounded them. Their faces glowed with pleasure in ratio to the amount of mayhem and carnage. This was by no means a strictly quantifiable thing, but the correlation, in general, seemed to exist.

Most of these photos, unfortunately, have also been destroyed by fire.

I began to notice small, easily missed references to the Nose, or the Cult of those wearing the Nose, in literature, and naturally broadened my research to include that area also, as I have already mentioned.

I had apparently stumbled onto something that had gone nearly undetected by the general populace, something that had stayed just outside the general consciousness since the beginning of recorded history. Here was a sect so arcane, nefarious and secret (a kind of truly devilish Freemasonry?) that no more than widely scattered references to it remained, or had ever existed. There were no prime source materials; the only evidence to point to its existence were the photos few and far between and a symbol—the Nose—so thoroughly steeped in the general notion of tomfoolery as to virtually ensure safety from detection.

The next step, of course, was to search for the modern remnants of the Cult.

My task of discovery proved to be a long and difficult one. It would take me days to recount the numerous blind alleys and dead ends I encountered; the false leads, misinformation (deliberate, some of it), the intrigue, deception, the attempts (yes) on my life. For years, I meticulously pored over each scrap of evidence that might at last lead me to the discovery of the true aspect of the Cult.

Eventually, despite all attempts to stop me, I succeeded.

IN THE SPRING OF this year my obsession led me to Paris, where I hoped to meet with a man under the pyramidic shadow of the Eilel Tower. I was to wait at a certain café until three o’clock in the afternoon, and then I was to ask the waiter to change my table to the one next to mine. It was a half-gray, half-sunny day in early April; there were breezes in the air that gave hope of a coming warmth mixed with the threat of a quick return to a latent wet winter. I had a coat and muffler on, and a black bowler hat. I carried a folded umbrella. In these things, too, I had followed instructions. I felt like a figure model in a painting by Magritte, felt I should somehow be floating in midair above the redbrick shop across the street, stiff and sharp as a cardboard cutout. Three o’clock came. I changed my table, tipped my waiter for his trouble and waited. Nothing happened. I bought a paper from a passing vendor, unfolded it before me and began to read. This kind of thing had happened too many times before; I would wait another ten minutes and then make my way, undaunted, back to my hotel. On the front page of the paper was a picture of a man with a black bowler hat on and a false nose. I heard the sound of the metal chair at the table I had just vacated scrape across the patio floor and the man in the photo, in the flesh, sat down across from me. He wore the Nose. The photo in the paper, I now saw, had been pasted on.