Mark of the Mole (novel)

This article is about the unpublished 1985 novel by T.D. Wade.
You may be looking for the 1981 studio album or unfinished 1983 video game of the same name.

Mark of the Mole is a novel by T.D. Wade, based on The Residents' 1981 album of the same name. The novel was completed in 1985^{^[1]} and was intended for inclusion in a planned Mole Trilogy box set, which was ultimately never realised when the author (an old friend of the group) withdrew permission to include the novel.

To date, the Mark of the Mole novel remains unpublished, apart from a short excerpt in the 1993 book Uncle Willie's Highly Opinionated Guide To The Residents.

Excerpt[]

Their way to the Melanatory took them near the idol of Disposer, tall and two-horned. The creature had somehow blundered into Havehome not long after Innisfree's death. It was blind, probably ill, and panicked. For two or three nights it prowled the walkway and the tunnels, and whenever it smelled or heard a person, it would charge. Thirteen Mohelmot died on its terrible horns.

Eventually it worked its way to the floor of Echodrome. Many falls had left it bellowing with pain and rage. It was weak, but still dangerous. Dydres, although only a young woman, was then the highest acolyte, and had the confidence of the Melanatrix, Xecca. Though Darkness was silent to Xecca, he told Dydres that Disposer's eyes, useless to it in the dark, were unsettling its mind. The Melanatrix asked for two volunteers with sharpened sticks to put out those eyes. One of them died, but so did Disposer, with crossed sticks hanging from its eyeholes like the protruberant meln-organs of Darkness himself. Alfray had suggested the sticks, though Dydres told the Melanatrix that Darkness had ordered their use.

Now Disposer's bones were interred in its statue, which functioned to appease its soul. The statue also served to warn away the young or incautious from entering the Funeral Tunnel, a natural cavern whose treacherous paths lead to the Doomhole, a bottomless burial pit.

Before Dydres and Allasu reached the walls of the Melanatory, lightning had struck three more times. None of the flashes were any brighter than daylight Urxkanat, but the thunderclaps rung the mountain like a bell. People were retreating into their tunnels, as if they had lost all thought of work. The daily regimen was never interrupted except for the yearly Gathering to chant the Litanies.

Most of the twenty-seven acolytes were brave enough to come to the Melanatory. Within, it was quiet and dark. Dydres gathered them in a circle beneath the image of Darkness. They prayed with bare knees to rock, waiting for the words of Darkness to fill their empty minds. After a time the god told Dydres that the people were overly troubled by this test of faith. They should have a Gathering, right away, with chanting and with music.

Dydres raised her face to shen the image of Darkness. A drop of water suddenly hit her senozel, and she gave a cry, for she was as surprised as if lightning had struck her instead. The Melanatory was roofed, so Urxkanat could not intrude on the god or his worship. Furthermore, all the water in Havehome came, ultimately, from Kebol, a river running beneath the floor of Echodrome.

She gave quiet orders to the nearest acolyte, who was spattered by the next drop. The boy ran out the door and soon was back in.

"Melanatrix, water falls from above and runs down the outside of our temple!"

For a moment Dydres wished she had somehow told her people about thunderstorms and rain.^{^[1]}