by Josh Shiben
Chapter 7
Forbidden Secrets
“Language is the map by which we form the path through sensations. It allows us to characterize and understand what we perceive and think to both others and ourselves. An idea without the language to express it is ephemeral - an inkling beneath the surface. A gut, instinctive reaction. Comprehension without language is like trying to picture a fish, having only seen the ripples on the surface of the pond. With the proper language, one can see through the surface of his reality to the beasts of forgotten thoughts and lost understandings that dwell beneath.”
-Gregori Weder
It was early, and David was in the station again, staring into an uneaten cup of yogurt. His stomach was still in knots from his dream, but he forced down another bite. Something told him he’d need a full belly if he was going to get through the day. He was thinking about his nightmare and the goat woman when his ringing phone startled him from his reverie. “David, it’s Tanya. Is it too early?” He detected a hint of nervousness in her voice that he couldn’t remember having heard before.
“Hi Tanya. No, never too early. What’s up?”
“I found that name you were asking about - Shub-Niggurath.” She paused for a moment, unsure of how to proceed. “Are you certain that’s what the person was saying?”
Burfict remembered his dreams, the terrible roar of the flies, and the chanting of the dead man. “Positive,” he confirmed. “Why? What’s up?”
“Well, it’s just...” she hesitated into the phone. “There’s a history to this stuff. I mean this deity in particular.” She paused again and Burfict waited for her to go on. “I’ve seen some of the people who have gotten messed up from this stuff. It gets strange.” Burfict thought back to his dream – to the impossible goat-headed woman emerging from that hole in the world. He understood strange more than she knew.
“Someone died, Tanya. I need to know why.” He felt her still hesitating on the other line; unspoken words dying in her throat.
“I had a friend who started studying her. Shub-Niggurath, I mean. Customs and ancient beliefs. He kind of lost it. Just kept rambling about ‘insights’ and ‘patterns’ he’d found in time. I asked around and apparently it’s not uncommon for people studying this particular deity to just go off the deep end. Totally normal people.”
“Good thing I’m not normal,” Burfict joked, hoping to lighten the mood. “But now you’ve gotta tell me. If people go nuts from these stories, I need to know why. Someone might’ve died over this stuff, and I’m not sure I can establish a motive without it.” He did need to know why. His dreams never lied, and he needed to know what that goat-woman was and where she came from. He was certain now that Tanya had information he needed.
Tanya sighed, and began to speak softly. “The name turns up surprisingly regularly, but just as an exclamation – never any context or explanation. It’s like a celebration or exultation of something. The name almost feels like an achievement or an event. And they keep mentioning it in conjunction with this other figure – ‘The Black Goat of the Woods.’ The two are connected somehow, but they seem to be different beings entirely.” She had whispered the last part like it was a taboo secret. “It kind of reminds me of Christianity’s Holy Trinity – there are these distinct parts that are all sort of different aspects of the same whole.” Burfict took a moment and pondered what she’d said.
“So if Shub-Niggurath is like their god, then the Goat would be their Jesus?”
“Sort of. It’s not a direct translation. But the idea is similar – I think The Black Goat of the Woods is the avatar that Shub-Niggurath takes to interact with our world, because she can’t come here herself. Something about higher dimensions of existence, or something. That’s where it really goes off the deep end. The only people who write about that part are nuts.”
“I guess that picture I showed you yesterday would be what the goat would look like?”
“I’m not sure. There’s never really any indication of what this Black Goat of the Woods looks like at all. It’s possible the two are related somehow, although I’m not really sure how – the guy who first wrote about your Sabbatic Goat, Lévi, he had no connection to Shub-Niggurath. Never mentioned her once. I guess it’s possible that Lévi was influenced by a pre-existing belief, even if it was only tangential, or that the two beliefs had a common ancestor.”
“What does Shub-Niggurath want? To rule the world, or something?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. The only descriptions of it I can find explain what will happen when it breaks through into the world, but there’s nothing about its motivations. I think the goat though, is supposed to be some sort of way for her to get in. The goat is a herald - it comes first, and then it paves the way for the true form of Shub-Niggurath to come through after it.” Burfict paused for a moment, taking this in and thinking about Sullivan in the barn.
“Why would someone want to summon the Goat?”
“The only thing I could find was some allusion to the goat emerging when the stars are right. Some groups think that has something to do with the galactic year; others say it’s more about the emergence of new stars. I don’t think it’s something you summon. It seems like it sort of works on its own timeline, by its own agenda. It’s an outsider. Again, your guess is as good as mine.” Burfict only dreamed about crimes, but if Nathan Sullivan didn’t summon the goat-woman, what was his crime? The sex? Was that the crime? Burfict’s mind raced through possibilities, while his mouth, seemingly on its own accord kept questioning Tanya.
“Once the goat comes through, what happens?”
“There’s some vague allusion to a key and a gate that it creates to somehow usher Shub-Niggurath into our world. After that, it’s game over.”
“What do you mean?”
“An eternity of darkness, terrors unseen by man… that type of stuff.There was something called ‘The Great Feeding,’ so maybe it eats us? I’m not entirely sure, but it sounds apocalyptic. Not too many books even talk about Shub-Niggurath, and those that do are pretty sparse.”
“For someone who thinks stuff is dangerous, you seem to know an awful lot about this deity.”
Tanya paused again before speaking, gathering herself. “Like I said before… I had a friend who was studying her. One morning he just started ranting about how he had ‘lifted the veil.’ I think he had a nervous breakdown.”
“Is he ok?” Again, Tanya hesitated.
“I’m not sure…” He could almost see her biting her lip through the phone, the way she did when she didn’t want to discuss something. “He put out a paper on the topic a few years back, but it was a bunch of speculation about other dimensions and religions and ESP... No-one took him seriously. I mean, it was crazy. After that he sort of became a recluse. He just lost it. I tried to keep in touch, but…” she swallowed. “Last I heard, he was working on another paper, but he wouldn’t see anybody.”
“That’s terrible. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s alright. I keep telling myself it was just the stress. Pressure to publish and research, you know? I mean, can there be such a thing as dangerous information?” The question hung in the air, as both parties sought for something to say. Burfict resisted the sudden urge to laugh - to laugh aloud and tell Tanya about the dreams, and the Goat and the Bogeymen. Everything. If only she knew. The thought of her never speaking to him again was all that held his tongue.
“Can I see his paper? There might be something useful in it. You never know what detail’ll crack a case.”
“I’ll email you a pdf,” she said after some hesitation. “It’s called ‘Studies of Ancient Beliefs,’ I think. I don’t think it’ll help, but if you want it, you can have it.” Burfict thanked her, trying not to sound too eager. “I’ve got to go,” Tanya finally said. “You be careful. I mean it.”
“Thanks, Tanya. This has been really helpful. Take care.” There was so much more he wanted to say. There was always so much more to say – words left
hanging in the air between them, like pregnant clouds ready to pour at a moment’s notice. They both hesitated for a beat, and the moment passed.
“You too,” she said, pausing again before hanging up. Burfict slowly hung up the phone and stared at it in silence.
From the journals of Dr. Alan Kaspars
10/6
I awoke this morning to a ringing phone. How long was I asleep? I can’t even remember going to bed. I had the dream again – the one where I skinned John. Spiders came out of him. Thousands of them just poured out from under his skin, like they were wearing him as a suit. Then they were all over me and I was trying to stab them, but I just kept putting holes in my own stomach, and they crawled inside of me, and I could feel them in there. Crawling around my belly, their legs pricking me from the inside.
The phone call was the librarian calling to tell me she found a book that may help in the translations on the base of my idol. Strange thing – the idol was inside the living room this morning. Did I move it last night? I must be more tired than I thought.
I headed over to the library, and was able to ascertain two of the people who have previously looked at the book about the Flüstern translations. The most recent was John, as I expected. I asked the librarian to check for a Stephen Melker, and sure enough, he read the book too – a couple of months before he died. Clearly I’m on the right track. I was able to start studying the Flüstern der Vermaledeit – hopefully it’ll lead to a transcription of the symbols on the idol, and then maybe I can make sense of this gibberish. Or at least find the inspiration behind it.
The language itself is impossible to pronounce. Almost all consonants, and throaty sounds people aren’t supposed to be able to make. It’s also quite complicated, with words having extremely complex meanings that you really can’t translate very well into English. For example, the word “fhtagn” means “dreaming,” but not “dreaming” as any normal person would mean. It almost means something more like “dreaming with apprehension and expectancy,” or “death given life through purpose.” The words are all so loaded with intent that it’s amazing anyone could ever use this language to express any kind of rational thought. Still, there’s something about them. Some sort of significance I keep coming back to. It must be the gothic history surrounding them, but I can’t shake these chills I keep getting thinking about it all.
I also read up on the history of this stuff – and it gets even stranger. A lot of information about it has been lost, but apparently it was the language-du-jour of various cults in Eastern Germany in the early 1300s. It’s not really clear where the language originated from, but speakers claimed it was a language of “those from beyond.” In 1337, Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV secretly charged the Teutonic Knights with eradicating the language and any who spoke it. Hundreds of cultists were burned alive, along with all known copies of their books, as the order chased heretics as far as Russia and Lithuania. I’ve never heard about any of this before – what the hell happened? It must have been a pretty well-established organization if the Emperor got involved. How was all of this covered up?
I’ve made copies of the pages of translations and hieroglyphics, and plan on starting the translations tonight.
Excerpt from
Studies of Ancient Beliefs – Insights into Time
-By Phillip Kindred, PHD Tuscaron University
“Consider the implications of string theory: that every subatomic particle making up the vastness of the universe is, in fact, composed of one-dimensional ‘strings’ of energy. The vibrations and interactions of these strings create everything tangible in this universe, from solid stones to electro-magnetic forces. We are notes from the violin, echoing through ourselves in a void.
Our very consciousness is a symptom of these vibrations – as the electrons firing through synapses are dictated by the strings. More importantly, the cosmos surrounding us in both time and space is formed and controlled by this unseen energy. Our awareness of our surroundings is all merely a predictable function of the infentesimally small. If these vibrations could be felt, the veil of time itself could be penetrated. By sensing the trembles in the quantum space time, we can feel any past, present and future formed by these strings.
But what then, lies beyond the strings? At the time of this writing, there are 11 dimensions predicted by string theory. Within the universe created by this web of vibrating energy there are already dimensions beyond both our time and space. What could lie beyond that? And how could we ever hope to gain even an inkling as to its nature, when the machines we are using to measure it are composed by the strings themselves?
The solution becomes obvious – we must examine the vibrations of our own universe for persistent alterations from the outsider echoing through time. By tracing vibrations through space-time to their source, we can gain a sense of the force or being creating them. The process is analogous to using the sound of a guitar and knowledge of the guitar’s strings form to make guesses as to the shape of the strumming hand. But what is strumming our strings, and when in time could this strumming originate from? And why is something interacting with those strings that form us in the first place?
The answer comes from a surprising source: the widespread beliefs of mankind, particularly those of isolated communities. It has been widely suggested that some individuals are more perceptive to these vibrations of space-time than most humans, manifesting visions or feelings traditionally labelled ‘extra-sensory.’ These persons appear to be distributed evenly throughout the human population, and oftentimes influence local beliefs according to their visions. These are our prophets, seers and shamans – the shapers of our very basic beliefs. As such, a common, reoccurring belief found in multiple isolated communities which could have no possible way of communication suggests that there might be some type of substance to the worship. This belief needs to be specific, and we must be careful to weed out archetypes that arise in belief structures due to human psychological needs for such a deity, but if we are careful in our analysis, the results still prove stunning.
In the ancient city of Mendes, there was an Egyptian cult devoted to god called Banebdjedet. He bore the head of a goat, and was a god of fertility – believed to be the father of Ramses II. Certain sects believed that at the end of time, his appearance would mark the dissolution of the world.
In Western China, there lived an isolated tribe deep in the Gobi Desert which worshipped a being known as Chúle Shén, which literally translates to ‘Beyond God.’ Chúle Shén was a beast of enormous power that took the form of a woman with the head of a goat in order to first copulate with and then destroy men. The tribe was eventually conquered by the Shang Dynasty sometime in the 13th century BC, but evidence of their beliefs has been found carved into the bones of their dead.
The Aztecs told legends of a titanic beast named ‘Xuitechtuli’ who lived above the sky and would transform itself into a goat-headed woman in order to trick men into fathering itself. The beast would then continually be reborn from the ashes of our world.
Before the fourth crusade, a small Byzantine cult worshipped a being known as Shub-Niggurath. This being was associated with another outsider known only as ‘The Black Goat of the Woods,’ and was believed to be the herald of the end of times. Much of the information regarding this cult was lost during the sacking of Byzantium, but it is believed to have predicted that the appearance of The Black Goat of the Woods would signal the end of the world.
There are many more examples of this singular religious belief, with evidence of it even bleeding over into the better known major western religions with deities like Pan, the Greek goat-legged god of debauchery. While it is impossible to rule out that these beliefs are all the result of coincidence, the notion that this specific belief structure arose independently in each corner of the globe is startling. If these are the result of sensitive individuals feeling the vibrations of an unseen hand, perhaps they can tell us more about the unseen world beyond our web of strings than any experi
mental method.”