The sense of relief he felt was disproportionate. After all, the mouse had only been in the house for a matter of days. But Jason was a creature of habit. He liked his life to be orderly, to follow certain rules and procedures. He knew it was ridiculous, almost obsessive-compulsive, but equally he knew he would never change. It was the way his brain was wired.
Maybe he needed a holiday. It was something to think about. Certainly it was something his brother Richard often encouraged him to think about. Jason never usually felt the need. He liked walking and he liked the beach. When the weather was good he saw no need to leave Swansea. Yet the events of the last few days had rattled him in a way he suspected would take him time to recover from. A holiday? He would see.
That evening he sat watching TV, the sound turned low, the living room curtains partly drawn. The glass of wine in his hand was meant to help him relax but he ached with tension, his pessimistic side expecting to hear the scuttling and scratching resuming overhead at any time. Being sure the mouse was dead did nothing to unravel the knots his stomach was tied in.
As darkness fell Jason felt a tightening in his chest. His breathing began to sound ragged. It was around this time the mouse had made its presence known. Now on his third glass of wine, his head was buzzing but he remained rigidly attentive.
Then he saw movement along the floor in the periphery of his vision. At once he leapt to his feet, not even registering the wine that sloshed from the glass, spilling on the carpet. “Jesus,” he gasped, while his heart threatened to burst from his ribcage.
Almost immediately, however, it became clear he was jumping at phantoms. Where he could have sworn he had seen movement was a corner without furniture. Had anything been there he would have seen it immediately. There was nothing.
Jason blew air from between his lips and sat back down. He rubbed the wine stain on the carpet with his foot and tried to focus on the TV but it was showing nothing that interested him. Most of the time he only put it on for company.
He saw movement again, the merest glimpse of motion out of the corner of his eye, this time from another part of the room. “Shit,” he said, leaning forward and whipping his head around to try to catch sight of whatever it was before it disappeared. As before, he saw nothing. Sitting back on the sofa, he realised it was just his mind, playing games. Despite himself he was powerless to refuse to play along with it.
He went to the kitchen for more wine. As he opened the fridge door he imagined he saw a dark shape scuttle out of the shadows and into the living room. Whatever he thought he had seen was gone in the instant it took him to turn his head to follow it. Tension and wine combined to make him feel sick. Despite this, he would not stop drinking. It was the only way he could be assured of sleep.
This became a pattern that repeated itself over the next few nights, testing his resolve to the limit. Again and again he would be certain he had seen something moving rapidly across the room, always in the very extremes of his vision. Each ephemeral sighting gave rise to the same breathless sense of panic. He was trained in scientific discipline yet Jason could not bring himself to accept what the evidence pointed to; that they were mere illusions. He found he was drinking more, too, the alcohol a necessity rather than a source of pleasure.
After enduring another haunted night and having emptied two bottles of wine and started on a third, Jason fell asleep on the sofa.
The first thing he became aware of the next morning was the now-familiar pounding in his head, followed swiftly by the pressure on his bladder. It was only when he got up, groaning as the headache made a quantum leap in intensity, that he noticed the bloody gashes on his arms. He examined them once he had staggered out into the kitchen and taken the last of his painkillers, relieved he still had some left. He counted half a dozen scratches, each several inches long. Although not particularly deep, they hurt.
Frowning, Jason tried to see beyond the fog that filled his brain and figure out how he had got them. Surely they could not have been self-inflicted. He had never wanted to harm himself or anyone else. However, once he established the doors and windows were locked, he was left with no choice but to accept he had been responsible. Try as he did, though, he could not remember doing it. Nor could he find whatever blade he had used. Unless he regained his memory the cause would remain a mystery.
That disturbed him to the point where he felt unable to stay in the house, as if distrustful of his own company. Once showered and dressed he went out, making his way to the coastal path that led to Mumbles. Dense swirling mist obscured the bay, deadening sounds. For a few disconcerting moments Jason felt as though he was trapped in one of his own dreams. A shape barely glimpsed in the mist, that of a dark mass like an island a short distance offshore, reinforced that odd sense of displacement.
A cyclist overtook him at speed, snapping him out of his reverie. Before long the mist had gone, burned away by the midday sun, revealing nothing untoward offshore. Overhead was a brilliant blue vault devoid of clouds. Seagulls cackled and ranted as they sliced through the sky. By the time Jason reached Mumbles his hangover had gone. Sea air, he thought. A cure for everything.
Even the scratches no longer bothered him. They could have been inflicted in any number of ways. Maybe he had got them cutting back the overgrown garden yesterday, but had not realised it at the time. Or he could have scratched himself on something while staggering drunkenly around the house in the early hours.
He walked until he reached Mumbles Pier, then turned to make his way back. It was busier now, the promenade heaving with walkers and cyclists. He was glad to be heading home, preferring the village in the cold winter months when he almost had the place to himself.
Harsh light bleached the world and he wished he had remembered his sunglasses. By the time he neared home he was tired and thirsty. There was a faint throbbing behind his eyes that mushroomed into a resurgent hangover. Instead of going straight to the house he detoured to the Spar where he bought more painkillers and, despite the ache that had claimed the space between his temples, two bottles of wine. On impulse he also bought a pack of cigarettes. He was not a regular smoker but there were times when he craved the nicotine rush and this was one of them.
Home again, he put the wine in the fridge and took four painkillers, then sat in the living room with his eyes closed while he waited for them to kick in. Before they had chance to work he fell asleep in the chair. He remained asleep for two hours and would have slept longer were it not for the flaring pain that snapped him awake.
“Jesus, what?” he mumbled, his mouth and throat so dry the words were more croaked than spoken. He raised a hand to rub his eyes, which was when he saw the blood dripping from his wrist. Turning his arm revealed a long hairline gash that must have been deep to have bled so copiously. Frowning at it, Jason caught sight of a flitting motion from the corner of his eye. Then came a searing pain in his lower leg and he looked down to see a livid fresh scratch across his ankle. It too was bleeding heavily.
“What the fuck?” Jason lunged up from the chair, ignoring the agony from the wounds in his arm and leg. There was another fleeting glimpse, closer this time, and almost instantaneously something that felt like a razor sliced a gash across his forehead. He made a sound that was half gasp and half scream and bolted from the room, barging into the kitchen door in his haste to get out, half blinded by the blood trickling into his eyes.
The back door was locked and he fumbled with the keys for several panicky moments before he got it open. Then he ran the length of the garden, almost out of his mind with pain and confusion and fright. He was gasping for breath when he stumbled to a halt at the fence. This isn’t possible, he told himself, repeating the thought again and again until it became a mantra in his head. Yet it provided no solace, for not only was it possible, it was happening and it was happening to him.
“Okay,” he said, running a hand through his hair while he struggled to bring himself under control. “Okay.”
Realising he could not
stay there without attracting the attention of his neighbours, he returned to the house where he hesitated outside the back door. On the one hand he knew there had to be a rational explanation. On the other he was scared to go in. Something had attacked him. Not a mouse … it had moved too quickly to be a mouse and, though he had only glimpsed it, he had gained an impression of it being larger.
The open door beckoned. Still Jason hesitated. Then he saw the cigarette pack on the kitchen table and felt a sudden urge to smoke. He darted into the kitchen, remaining there just long enough to grab the cigarettes and the box of matches he kept by the gas oven.
Once outside he hurried away from the doorway and lit a cigarette with shaking hands. The taste of it was as vile as he remembered but he welcomed the rush like he would an old friend. He sat on a patio chair while he considered his next move, working through the options with characteristic thoroughness.
There was something in the house. Whatever he had seen was too big to be a mouse or even a rat. Having disregarded the supernatural, on the basis that there was a rational explanation for everything, he eventually concluded it was a neighbourhood cat that had got in through one of the upstairs windows he kept open in the warm weather. Maddened perhaps by the scent of the mouse it had turned on him, clawing him while he slept.
There were logic gaps in the theory one could drive a bus through. But in his desperation, and in the absence of a viable alternative, he seized on it like a drowning man grabbing hold of a lifeline.
So then. There was no reason to fear going inside. It was a matter of searching the house, making sure the cat had gone, and then closing the windows. His nights would be warm and airless but he considered that a small price to pay.
A strange sound like a roar in the distance made him look up sharply. It had sounded like it came from somewhere near the seafront. Intrigued, glad of the distraction, Jason dropped the cigarette and ground it out with his shoe, then set off to investigate.
The roaring came again, rumbling like an invisible freight train. Perhaps there had been an explosion in the steelworks across the bay, the sound carrying far without diminution on the still summer air. Jason hurried down the path to the side gate and through to the front garden.
What he saw almost stopped his heart with terror.
It was as if a photograph of our world had been overlaid with that of another, far stranger realm. Squatting in the bay like some grotesque toad was an island where no island existed. It was as black as coal and at its centre was a volcanic peak from whose glowing summit sulphurous clouds belched forth, obscuring the sun.
Winged creatures, like birds spawned by a nightmarish mind, circled the peak, while the island itself writhed as though alive from the multitude of grotesque beasts that crawled and lumbered across its surface.
Even from a distance Jason, held rigid by fright and by shock, could see these animals bore no resemblance to the fauna of our world. He saw a great many tentacles and a great many gaping maws. The sounds they made, keening and gibbering and howling, were a symphony of madness. And then came that dreadful roar again and a monster that dwarfed the others rounded the mountain. It walked on two legs like a man but its head was akin to that of an octopus. Scales clung to its rubbery body and long slender wings emerged from its back. It had claws on all four of its limbs.
The ground shook with each stride the thing took. It traversed the island in mere seconds before wading into the sea, sending a tsunami to engulf the shoreline. Even though he knew the creature had seen him and was heading his way, Jason could not move. He realised he was making a tremulous squealing sound, like a siren rising and falling. There was nothing he could do but watch in frozen, dumbstruck terror as the creature emerged from the bay, water falling from its scales like a series of cataracts. Its tentacles lashed back and forth. Then its hideous maw opened wide and another deafening roar emerged, making the world tremble.
Jason blacked out. When he came to, the creature and the island, along with its loathsome menagerie, were gone. The bay stretched out before him, looking exactly as it should. Jason, who had fainted onto the grass, head missing the bordering wall by inches, sat up slowly, not sure whether to laugh with relief or cry from sheer despair.
He had contrived an explanation for the scratches but could find no satisfactory explanation for his freakish vision. The island, the monster, that terrible roaring … none of it existed in the real world. He did not take drugs and was not an alcoholic, though he was drinking more than was good for him. So he was either losing his mind or experiencing something his scientific background allowed for but had in no way prepared him for.
He returned unsteadily to the back garden, where he sat chain smoking as he tried to come to terms with the unthinkable. He knew he was not going insane. Once he discounted the logical, all that remained was the illogical. The impossible truth.
There were any number of theories relating to parallel worlds; alternative dimensions, invisible realms that existed alongside ours. Jason was convinced he had somehow parted the veil between this world and another, a place where evolution had followed an entirely different path. As to the how of it, he could only imagine his revulsion and fear had been so intense as to create a heightened state of sensory awareness. So convinced was he that he had seen peripheral movement that did not exist in our world, he had somehow glimpsed movement that did exist in another.
If he could see them, it followed they could see him. Presumably he appeared as strange to these otherworldly creatures as they did to Jason. An intruder and therefore a threat. Their first reaction would be to attack.
So excited was he by the implications that he forgot to be afraid. He wanted to call his work colleagues, call his brother, call anyone who would listen. Yet no sooner had he thought this than it occurred to him he had no proof. Nobody would believe him. Had he heard the story from anyone else, he wouldn’t have believed it either.
Jason looked down and was surprised to see a dozen or more crushed cigarette butts scattered on the patio around him. The light was fading, too, leaving much of the garden obscured by shadows. He looked apprehensively towards the house and wondered whether he could summon the courage to go inside. Just because he could not prove the truth of his story did not make it any less real. Whatever those creatures were, they were hostile and they were dangerous.
Then the world seemed to shift. He could find no other way of describing it. Away went the sky, obscured by sulphurous smoke, and the evening silence was shattered by a terrifying roar.
He needed no more persuading. Grabbing the cigarette pack and matches, he ran inside the house, to a night of sheer hell.
Jason’s voice, which had grown increasingly hoarse as he related his story, now fell silent as if it had given up on him altogether. I stared at him. My brother appeared to have aged years in the time it had taken him to tell the tale. His head was lowered and his hair appeared sparser and greyer than I recalled. I wanted to go to him, to hold him, to tell him everything would be fine. Instead I did nothing but wait in silence for him to continue.
Finally he looked up and gazed at me with moist red eyes. “They were all over the house,” he said, voice flat and dreadfully bleak. “There was no escaping them. Everywhere I went, those fucking things followed. They hurt me, Richard. I had no way of protecting myself. It was like trying to fight off smoke.”
He wiped a hand across his mouth. “I couldn’t leave either. I knew what was out there. That other place. That island. That thing. I was damned if I did, damned if I didn’t. I swear to God, Richard, if I’d had a gun in the house I would have ended it there and then.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” I said softly. Yet even as I spoke the words I found myself doubting them. I had never seen my brother like this. I had never seen anyone like this. I had no idea what he was capable of, just as I had no idea what to do.
“You do believe me, don’t you?” He was almost pleading. “You know me better than anyone. You know I wouldn’t make up
something like this don’t you?” He started to cry then, before quickly regaining control. “Because if I can’t convince you, Richard, how could I hope to convince anyone else?”
“I believe you,” I said.
He looked at me directly for a moment, as if searching for the lie behind the statement. Then, apparently satisfied, he nodded. “Well thank God for that. So what are we going to do?”
I did not have the first clue. My brother had suffered some kind of breakdown. Parallel dimensions, mysterious islands, giants with octopus heads … it was all insane. The scratches were patently self-inflicted, even if his tightly curled fists meant I was unable to surreptitiously check his fingernails for blood.
“Well?” he demanded, his mood abruptly hostile.
I got to my feet, feeling a sudden urge to be away from there. I could not bear to be around this stranger masquerading as my brother a moment longer. Nervous breakdowns were not my specialty. I felt I needed professional advice.
Jason’s eyes widened. “You’re not leaving?”
“I have to,” I said. “I need to think about this. Get help.”
“But who can possibly help?”
“That’s one of the things I need to think about.” I had to steel myself against the stricken look on his face. While his story was utterly crazy I had no doubt he believed it. “I promise I’ll be back as soon as I can. You’ll be safe in the meantime.”
“How can you say that? I told you, they’re all over the house!”
“Then sit in the garden. Smoke a few cigarettes.” I spoke to him as one might a difficult child. “You were safe there yesterday, yes?”
“Until I heard that roar and the island appeared.”
“The island only appeared when you went looking for it,” I said, turning his own twisted logic against him. “If you hear anything, stay where you are. If you can’t see the creature, it can’t see you.”
Cthulhu Cymraeg Page 12