Abigail Layton

I was seven at the time and my brother was around 10, when my parents put us in the car with no explanation of where we were going. “You will see when we get there,” they repeated time after time. The drive, as usual for us, was long and boring but after about three hours we were traveling down an old, beaten up, lifeless grey cobble road. Most roads in Italy look similar but something about this one looked deathly almost. We were in one of few wooded areas in Sicily, and the area around us was overgrown and un-kept. After a bit of a drive up this lifeless road, we arrived at a building. It was a small square building with the same color palate as the lifeless cobble. The cement walls were chipped and cracked, with few spots of graffiti in Italian, most screamed warnings of curses and hexes. I could only think of the few hoodlums who were dared to near this building, to spray their art and scamper off with a new vote of confidence from their friends. It smelled of musty historical importance; I don’t know how else to explain the smell, but it is of maybe old books, and alabaster.

                  We got out of the car and approached the only opening in the wall that was large enough, and shortly after climbed in. The eeriness that radiated from this building made my hair stand on end and my childish curiosity peak. There was a short moment of silence coming from the hollow abandoned building before my father’s face popped out of the window with a look of assurance. “Okay,” he said.

 He helped my brother and I into the building, and my mom climbed in last. Once inside we all gaped at the magnificent paintings covering the walls,  all the dreams and insane ideals covering the floors broken by people scared of what they don’t understand. I took a step forward watching, my balance on the crumbled pieces of wall and ceiling, feeling the crushed maniac’s life under my feet.

                  On all the doorways there was scripted Enochian rolling with the foundation, an endless babbling of words in different languages coating the walls. I later found out that we were at Aleister Crowley’s, Abbey of Thelema. Aleister Crowley was irrefutably a mastermind of all things out of ordinary. He was, in no other way to describe it, an insane genius. The musty smell from outside was only amplified from inside the building. With each step of my family, I could hear the crunching of his work, his life. The building was semi-average comparatively to a normal house. There was a living room, kitchen and another room, maybe a bedroom, but all of the furniture had been removed over time. The texture of history was undeniably there, falling apart, fragile, old.

                  My mother to this day is obsessed with history and all things old, and over time I learned fascination about these things as well. I remember her saying, “Not looking at everything, but feeling it,” not with our hands but a sort of combination of all the senses put into one, to get a feel of the general area. Thinking back on it, I wish I had been old enough to appreciate the historical and social value of going to this place of mysteries, this place of a mad man who was so sorely misunderstood. The feel of fear that radiated from the unknown only peaked my interests more.