Faces in the Furniture.

 

Dave Fawcett.

 

 

Bacon sizzled in the frying pan on the stove as I scurried round the house getting ready for work. I was a little bit late this morning but no matter; I could always make up my time at the end of the day.

 

I had moved into this flat the previous evening and cardboard boxes and black bin liners were scattered all over the floor. These boxes and bags contained all my worldly goods but I wouldn't be able to start unpacking until I got back from work.

 

Finding the pans the previous evening had been a stroke of good fortune. I had gone out to get a few necessities from the corner shop; bread, milk and the bacon that was even now sizzling away in the frying pan. On my way back home I had spotted the frying pan in a junk shop window where it nestled with the rest of the set; three pans of varying sizes and a stock-pot, all with lids. The whole set was made of cast iron with intricately carved wooden handles of a very dark wood.

 

As late as the hour was the shop was still open. I had no idea which box my pans were hidden in and as I had just purchased a pound of bacon the acquisition of a frying pan suddenly seemed like a very good idea.

 

Venturing into the shop I was immediately accosted by the owner. “I was just about to close” he informed me “but I'll be happy to wait while you have a look round”.

 

“I'll not keep you. I simply wanted to ask the price of that old set of pans in the window; the ones with the carved handles”.

 

“Ah you mean the Woodville Hall pans. I got hold of quite a few bits and pieces from there when they auctioned the old place off. It's taken quite some shifting I can tell you. The stuff had a bit of a whiff to it when it came in but a good airing soon cleared that up. There are a lot of superstitious fools in this town if you don't mind me saying so”.

 

“I'm not in the least bit superstitious. I just wanted to have a look at the pans and find out how much you're asking for them”?

 

“By all means Sir.” The proprietor went to the window and rummaged around for a bit. With much grunting and straining he managed to extricate the pans from all the rubbish that had accumulated around it and placed them on a convenient table. “There you are sir” he said triumphantly. “Yours for twenty five pounds”!

 

Twenty five pounds was cheap for any good set of pans and this set was more than good; it was superb. The cast iron gleamed with the seasoning of much use and care and it had obviously been oiled frequently. As for the handles; they were works of art in their own right. Each handle had a smooth shaft for about three quarters of its length. The carving on the final quarter was a detailed and intricate bust. The end of each handle was carved into a head; a portrait; and the whole set comprised what appeared to be a family group.

 

The largest pan carried the head of a handsome woman, hair bound and eyes almost glowing with an inner pride. The original of this carving must have been a magnificent and formidable woman. The smaller pans bore facsimiles of two younger people; teenagers; a boy and a girl. She was stunningly pretty with long hair flowing down perfectly proportioned shoulders and clinging to the shaft where it met the carving. The boy was just as beautiful as his sister, for sister she had to be. Their looks told of a sibling relationship; twins perhaps.

 

The face staring out from the handle of the frying pan was unlike the others though. The face itself was commonplace and undistinguished; a face that would blend into the background and be completely forgettable. The eyes were a different matter though; strange and disturbing; they seemed to look into the depths of my soul. Although carved in wood they burned with an intensity that was almost alive.

 

I dabbled in oils a little but I knew nothing about sculpture. Looking at these miniature carvings though such lack of knowledge was irrelevant. Each head was a work of art in its own right and the work on the frying pan handle was outstanding; a masterpiece in wood; a Grinling Gibbons of the kitchen. I had paid the price for the pans without a quibble. Now I was using a work of art to cook breakfast.

 

Having got the pans home the previous night I had sat and looked at them for a long time. At first I had determined to pack them away until I could find time to have them valued. I was sure they were worth far more than I had paid for them. As I sat there though the conviction became fixed in my mind that these pans were meant to be used; that packed away the metal would corrode and the handles would split and warp. . So now my bacon sizzled in the frying pan and the rest of the set stood on the shelf waiting to be used.

 

Over the following weeks the pans were put to constant service. They were the best set I had ever used. Nothing ever burned in them and they were so easy to wash that they were almost self cleaning. The cooking smells that lingered in the kitchen were spicy and aromatic and the simplest meal always tasted superb.

 

One night after a particularly tasty beef casserole I lounged contentedly in front of the fire. It was the first time that I had used the stock pot and the results had been outstanding even compared to my recent culinary successes. I was replete and sleepy, thinking of nothing in particular when a thought began to prickle at the back of my mind.

 

At first it was nothing more than a nebulous feeling, an idea that I had forgotten something important. I racked my brain trying to remember what it was. Had I forgotten to do something at work? Nothing came to mind. I had not missed any social event. In fact since moving into my new place my usual routine of the theatre, dining out and entertaining friends had dwindled to nothing. I was quite content to stay at home with my books, my music – and my cooking!

 

As far as I could remember I had forgotten nothing but the insidious nagging continued to tap at the back of my skull. I could almost feel a presence; almost see a face; almost distinguish a voice. I could feel hunger, taste meat and smell the aroma of cooking. I had to eat again.

 

The meal that I cooked was insipid and tasteless. Suddenly my pans had let me down. The aroma was gone from the kitchen and in its place lingered a sweet sickly smell that overpowered everything and lingered in the apartment through the night.

 

Setting off for work the next morning I encountered a couple of the other tenants going down in the lift. Something appeared to have upset them both.

 

“It was disgusting” one man was saying. “It got right through the flat and made the old girl queasy. She's still in bed trying to catch up on some sleep”.

 

“I know what you mean” his friend agreed. “It got that bad in my place that I had a scout around to see where it was coming from”. He turned to me. “I couldn't really pin it down but it did seem to be stronger on your floor”.

 

“What was?” I said, startled.

 

“The smell man! The smell. Don't tell me you didn't notice it?”

 

“Can't say that I did” I replied, muttering an excuse automatically. “I've got a bad head cold at the moment; couldn't smell a bloody thing”.

 

“Lucky bugger!” the second man commented. “I couldn't tell you what caused it but it smelled a bit like bad meat that had been overcooked; very sickly sweet”.

 

As I left the building I was struggling to recall something that someone had said to me when I had been out one night. God – how long was it since I had been out at night. I must have been out since that night I purchased the pans but I couldn't for the life of me remember where or when.

 

Then I had it! The junk shop owner had said something about the locals being a superstitious lot. He had also mentioned something about a smell. What had he called it? ‘A bit of a whiff'; that was it. If it was the same smell I had experienced last night then calling it ‘a whiff' was a bit of an understatement.

 

I decided to go back to the junk shop to see if I could find out anything more about the pans or the smell. My job could wait for an hour or so. Hurrying into the town centre I turned into the main street and into chaos.

 

The street was cordoned off and fire engines stood on both sides; lights flashing fluorescent blue while fire crews damped down a fire that had ravaged several shops. In the middle of the ravaged block was a black gap where the junk shop had stood. The scene reminded me incongruously of a great rotting jawbone with a blackened toothless stump where the junk shop had stood.

 

As I watched an ambulance reversed carefully up to the ruin. The doors were opened and two men appeared from the still smouldering building carrying a shrouded stretcher. They disappeared into the ambulance, the doors closed and the siren began to moan a dirge. I knew that I would never be able to ask the junk shop owner about the pans and a faint anxiety drifted on the edge of my senses, triggered by the sudden faint aroma of roasted flesh.

 

That evening I took a kebab home from the local chippie. I couldn't face cooking again after the tasteless, slightly sour food of the previous evening. Pottering round in the kitchen, making coffee and warming a plate for the kebab I could almost feel the pans glowering at me. Once I even turned round, convinced that someone or something was watching me. The pans stood there sullenly.

 

The kebab tasted fine; nothing spectacular though. Not as good as my own recent cooking had been but better than last night's meal had been. Tired, I went to bed almost immediately after the meal.

 

Dreams began to disturb me that night and as the weeks wore on they became more and more vivid. At first they left me feeling uneasy but slowly they began to frighten me more and more. Within a month terror began to consume my every night-time hour. I couldn't sleep properly and a voice echoed constantly in my skull telling me that it was hungry. My health began to go downhill and however much I ate I was always hungry. My weight plummeted, clothes no longer fit and I had stopped going to work. I was too tired.

 

But I could not bring myself to use the pans!

 

The moment finally came when I realised that I was dying. At that moment I also recognised that I had to do something about it! I had to get help – or information.

 

That night I slept well. No nightmare voices intruded to horrify me. The next morning feeling slightly refreshed I was impelled to leave the apartment.

 

I lurched and staggered the few streets to the library. People looked at me cautiously and one man even approached me to ask if I needed any help. I shook my head and tottered on.

 

The librarian offered help, obviously hoping that I would request an ambulance. This time I accepted and told her what I wanted.

 

“Woodville Hall”? She pursed her lips as if she had just smelled something distasteful. “Let me think” she continued. “That file was closed some time ago. I'll have to look it up in the archives. Sit down please. I'll be back in a moment”. With that she scurried away into the labyrinth of shelves.

 

Returning within a few minutes she handed me a slim folder. “This is all that we have” she stated, laying it on the desk in front of me. “It's a news service that the library subscribes to. Most of these files go back at least thirty years. It should contain any newspaper stories about Woodville Hall or the Hudson family published in that time”.

 

The file was a slim one, mainly containing items about weddings, funerals and other social trivia about several generations of the Hudson family who it seemed had occupied Woodville Hall for at least the previous century. Two items caught my attention however.

 

The first was a five page photo story from ‘Countrylife'. Pictures of fine rooms filled with quality furniture filled the pages. Staring out from every picture were the Hudsons . Not the actual family but representations of them staring out at me from every object and every surface.

 

Faces were carved on every item of furniture. Eyes shone from the silverware on the vast sideboard which itself had heads carved in relief on the doors. Woven faces looked out from the curtains and even the carpets carried a family group portrait in the central panel with an individual face at each corner. The master bedroom was just as outlandish. Furniture, bedding, curtains, carpets and paintings; the family stared out from everything woven, sculpted, painted or cast.

 

Even the kitchen contained its share of family portraits. Cupboard doors had brass handles cast in individual faces. Shelves were supported by gargoyles of family likenesses and the pans – my pans – stood resplendent, gleaming dully on a rack. The stock pot stood on the cooker, wisps of steam rising from beneath the lid.

 

I turned to the brief text which accompanied the photo montage. Here I read that George Hudson, the head of the family at that time, had an eccentric desire – the article stopped short of describing it as obsessive – to be surrounded by reminders of his family wherever he was in the house. It appeared that over the years he had commissioned piece after piece for the house; all from major traditional artists and all depicting himself and his family within the design. The result of this obsession was the surreal house captured in the photographs.

 

I allowed the images to soak into my memory before turning to the final cutting. Dated 25 th September 1994 , the previous year it reported on the murder of Matilda Hudson and her teenage children by her husband George.

 

Reading through it a growing comprehension dawned on me. The details were scanty; probably suppressed by the police; but it seemed that George Hudson had killed his family in a fit of madness and dismembered the corpses. The police had broken into the hall after receiving reports that the family had not been seen for several days. Inside George Hudson was sitting at the dining table eating his evening meal. He had seemed affable and chatty but could not account for the whereabouts of his family. A search of the house was begun and almost immediately a young policewoman made a grisly discovery in the kitchen. The stock pot stood on the cooker, its contents simmering gently. Attracted by the smell she lifted the lid to be confronted by the sight of a human hand floating in a thick stew. Cooked flesh was slowly separating from the finger bones and a wedding ring still nestled around one finger.

 

In a flash of inspiration I finally knew what was wrong with me. I had to find a telephone. I needed to invite a friend; any friend; to dinner.

 

The stock pot needed feeding!