The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

Lambshead’s hand.

As it stands, the matter may likely never be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. Following a break-in on the evening of April 12, 2010, the hand and key were discovered to be missing from the collection of Brown University’s Department of Anthropology, where the artifact was on long-term loan from the National Museum of Ireland (Ard-Mhusaem na hEireann). Reports indicate that the thieves took nothing else. . . .

Aeron Alfrey’s eerie rendering of the Castleblakeney Key

Excerpt from “An Act of Rogue Taxidermy? Preliminary Report on the Morphology and Osteology of the ‘Castleblakeney Hand,’ ” P. O. Davenport, American Journal of Zooarchaeology, vol. 112, no. 1 (2007):

. . . that evidence provided by these high-resolution X-ray CT images leads the author to the conclusion that the artifact is no more representative of the remains of a single animal than are other chimeric forgeries, including jackalopes, Barnum’s “Feejee mermaids,” the Minnesota iceman, the Bavarian Wolpertinger, Rudolf Granberg’s skvader, or the fur-bearing trout of Canada and the American West. As will be demonstrated, these X-rays reveal fully intact terminal ungual phalanxes (bones and keratin sheaths) indistinguishable from those of members of the family Tytonidae (barn owls), articulated to the proximal metacarpophalangeal and ginglymoid surfaces of the phalanges of an adult Barbary macaque (Macaca sylvanus). It is not possible, at this time, to determine whether or not Lambshead himself was involved in fashioning the hand or whether he believed it to be authentic, having been duped by its creator, but that question is irrelevant to the current investigation.

The form and function of claws varies significantly among vertebrate species, though the composition of the claw sheath does not. Claw sheaths, nails, and hooves are comprised of an exceptionally tough class of fibrous structural protein monomers known as keratin (Raven and Johnson, 1992), which protects the bone of the terminal phalanx and assists in providing traction during such activities as climbing, defense, prey acquisition, and intraspecific combat associated with mating (brief review in Manning et al., [2006]). Mammalian claw sheaths are composed of a-keratin (helical), while those of avians, nonavian archosaurs, and non-archosaurian reptiles are composed of ?-keratins (pleated-sheet) (Fraser and MacRae, 1980). The results of this study leave no doubt that the claw sheaths associated with the Castleblakeney artifact are composed of ?-keratin and so cannot have originated from any primate or other mammal. Before addressing . . .

Excerpt from a letter found among the correspondence of the late Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead, from M. Camille Dussubieux (n?50, Rue Lepic, Paris) to Lambshead, dated November 17, 1957):

. . . do hope that your time abroad in the States was not in any way especially inconvenient, and that it proved helpful and productive in all your various researches. I hope to one day see Chicago and Manhattan for myself.

Setting aside casual pleasantries for another day and another letter, I am writing this evening to inform you that Monsieur Valadon and his circle of associates continue to press the matter of ———, that objet curieux now residing in your care. Indeed, I begin to believe that you may have made a terrible error in taking the thing from les carrieres de Paris. As you well know, I’m not a superstitious man, nor am I even particularly religious. But my concern is that Valadon’s “warnings” that you may be visited by some mystic, infernal retribution are, in fact, thinly veiled threats of physical violence by members of his order now residing in Britain. If there’s any truth to his unsavory reputation (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), these threats should be taken with the utmost seriousness. I would caution you to make such precautions as you may, if, indeed, I cannot persuade you to immediately divest yourself of that abominable relic.

It is beyond me what you hope to learn from ———, and seems far more likely, my dear friend, that you have merely convinced yourself it has added an additional measure of mystique to your cabinet. By now, I know you well enough to feel confident in drawing such a conclusion, and I hope you won’t find it too presumptuous. You must not consider possession of ——— to be a privilege or to carry any prestige. It is, at best, a burden.

I have taken the liberty of contacting our mutual acquaintance at the Musee Calvet a Avignon, who assures me that ——— would be safe in that institution’s care, even from the likes of Valadon, Provoyeur, and Rykner. She is also willing to travel to England to receive ——— in person, rather than entrusting it to any courier or post. She only awaits word from me that you are agreeable to this arrangement.

Those passages you quoted from Balfour’s Cultes des Goules are grim enough to rattle the nerves of even an old skeptic like myself. . . .

Excerpt from “Artifact, Artifice, and Innuendo” by Tyrus Jovanovich, Art Lies: A Contemporary Art Quarterly (no. 62, Summer 2009):

. . . and so have allowed questions of biological and historical “authenticity” to dominate the discussion. Insistent, unrelenting authority intervenes, and we are not allowed to view an object as a work. The potential for message is denied by the empirical demand for objective meaning. If we are to gain access to the intriguing conceptual dimensions and dialectics presented by this hand and this key, by the unity of hand with key, key with hand, it becomes necessary for us to invert, or entirely disregard, the inherent limitations of that scientific enterprise and its attendant paradigms. First off, we must cease to view the work—as it is now reconsidered, rescuing it from the mundane—as fragmentary or in any other sense lacking in fundamental wholeness, though questions of fundamental [un]whole[some]ness will be evaluated in light of complexities of the object-subject relationship.

As we refocus our attention from a normative default, it is neither the hand nor the key that consumes our need for understanding. Rather, we find, literally, new direction by implication. The hand holds the key, and the key moves our eyes from the visible towards the invisible. Here, a moment is brilliantly captured, and yet entirely escapes stasis. The hand is always and forever acting upon the key, and the key is ever pointing, moving, urging us towards the implicit lock, which is the truest locus in this configuration, even if the lock exists only by implication. So, too, the existence of a mind behind the hand and key and lock is unspoken, but no less essential. Finally, the efficacy and undeniable kinetics make themselves known, and we are drawn away. . . .

Excerpt from a letter found among the correspondence of the late Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead, from Ms. Margaret H. Jacobs (7 Exegesis Street, Cincinnati, Ohio) to Lambshead; undated but postmarked May 4, 1979:

. . . to put it out of my mind. But the dreams return night after night, each incarnation almost identical to every other, except that they grow worse, more horrifying. They’re unrelenting. I’ve never suffered insomnia, but now I find myself afraid to sleep. I put off going to bed as long as possible. The thought of a catnap is enough to make me anxious.

As I’ve said, the dreams didn’t begin until shortly after my visit with you last December. Don’t get me wrong, Dr. Thackerey [sic]. I’m still grateful for having been allowed to view your collection and photograph the key. But I’m beginning to think I’m paying an awful price for that opportunity. Yes, I know how that must sound to a man of science such as yourself. By divulging my situation, I more than half-suspect I might find myself described in some future edition of your medical guide. But I don’t know who else I would tell this to. Friends or family? No, they all think me odd enough already. They would dismiss it all, and ridicule me in the bargain. A psychiatrist? A priest? I can’t abide the former, and, despite my Catholicism, have always been unable to open up to the latter.

That leaves just you, Doctor. I suppose it’s like they say, and no good deed goes unpunished.

Please don’t feel obligated to read what follows. Just because I had to write it down and send it to you doesn’t mean you have to subject yourself to these grotesque, absurd ramblings. But I implore you again, please, please destroy the key (as I have destroyed the pictures I took). If I am certain of anything at all (and I doubt that more each day), I’m certain that the destruction of that thing will stop the nightmares, just as I believe my lifting it from its box, and daring to hold it, triggered them. And I suspect, too, there’s something greater than my sanity at stake. How can I convince you that what you’re harboring beneath your roof is more virulent than any disease? Burn it, Doctor. Melt the damned key to slag, and scatter the ashes of that mummified claw to the four winds.