Dark Descent Contributors

Coiled in the mountains just north of Madrid lies the town of San Ildefonso. Known colloquially as ‘the Farm’, the town is home to a royal palace that is opened to visitors in the tourist seasons and draws foreigner and Madrileño alike for its gardens, fountains and statues.

The statues themselves are the usual collection of historical or Romanesque men and women in various poses becoming the stereotypes of those genders, but they also tilt towards the fantastical and garish. The tempter Pan plays his pipes while cherubs gambol inches away from the jaws of ravenous wolves. Most of there statues are captured in stone; some are bronzed with paint, a sign which — when taken with the crumbling brickwork and abandoned outbuildings in some places — give strong signs the grounds have seen more prosperous days.

On certain nights of the year, illuminated fountains spew jets of water high into the air to the delight of the nighttime visitors. On others, dense vapor descends from the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains and blankets the town in mists so thick it is impossible to see more than a few meters. This descent, and a fable grown around it, accounts for one of the creepiest sights I’ve ever seen.

One winter morning, I found myself meandering through the gardens, my camera hunting for the few birds and insects whose shadows were drawn long in the low, cold sun. As I did so, I happened upon a sight is have seen nowhere before or since. Overnight (or perhaps very, very early in the morning, as it was before 9 when I was there), the statues had changed. Not just one; not just one row: every single statue in the extensive gardens had been covered with a thick, while plastic sheeting, its cord drawn tight, throwing them into abstract shapes at a distance that the late evening mists could only amplify into the monstrous.

Intrigued by my own disquiet, I looked around for a gardener to ask about this overnight change and was told it was, “For protection. From the mists”. He supposed the constant freeze-thaw of the descending and receding mists might split them in two. Though I wondered, as I passed from statue to statue to statue whether the sheets were also to protect us.

What ominous, grimacing shapes did the freezing mists contort those statues into beneath their sheets? How did they writhe and struggle against their bases, forever bound to haunt the gardens like static spectres? What would it do to the gentile visitor to see such anguish translated into stone? Yes, the gardeners are instructed to tell us it is for protection. From the mists. It’s a little truth that hides the grander lie coiled in the mountains just north of Madrid.