That his fictions (his magic if you will) were more powerful than mine?
Or had he really – No, I couldn’t let myself think that. No. No. No.
I stuck his letter at the bottom of the huge paper pile on my desk. Thus I refute this tiki-torch mysticism.
Six days passed before the next letter from Micronesia. This one was from Maya.
Dear Don,
The effect of the ruins on the imagination is tremendous. You have to see the dark angular shadows progressing through the night as the stars wheel by. I know Gabriel has written you, and knowing you as I do, I know that you are suspicious.
And yet I remember the night you proposed that if man had any afterlife – it must be prepared for by training the imagination. You called it a secret path between the pure flame of intellect and the shadows of collective illusion. We seem to have access to that path here in the shadows of these obscenely-angled buildings. Please come, who knows how long this door will be open? I would like to think it was Gabriel and I, our wills, but that would be too easy. The coincidence of this site and Lovecraft’s fiction is explained easily, he just read about an exhibition in the papers. But I feel that there is something real about the site, and some group – whoever sent me the hotel flyer – that wants to direct our attention here. I’m not speculating on their purpose, because I suspect that it is a pale reflection of the current pouring from this place.
I suspect that the basalt buildings are like skeletons of some great beast. When we read certain words, burn certain incenses, when the stars are aright; we reflesh these great beings. We re-create, re-manifest their ageless purpose.
The next day we feel the changes in ourselves as though we created a substance, an essence that is potent, powerful, and immortal. By playing with things, spreading certain secrets we somehow sounded a chord and an echo has come from beyond the stars. Hear my words. Come to us while we exist visibly. Look into our faces. See how far out we have moved. We know; or we are very close to knowing; the exit to the labyrinth of history.
I think the myths the locals tell of the two builders Olo-chipa and Olo-chopa are about more than myths to just explain the buildings. I suspect it all started here. Something came to the planet here. Something that left or as the natives say lies sleeping in the submerged parts of the city. The strangely angled ruins point to other levels of growth, possibly levels of growth that the builders created.
Soon Gabriel and I will try our hand at a ritual text dedicated to Luka-lapalap, the local Prince of Darkness – the god the natives say caused the lands to rise. We will call to him in the name that means the most to our imagination.
Cthulhu. Gabriel paid a not-quite-as-suspicious-as-the-rest islander to point out the most dread site Pan-katara – the so-called haunted island, whose name means “The Sending-Forth-Of-Messengers.”
Surely the spirit of that place must have touched us when we sat at Wing Lee’s over a year ago.
Come to us – at least to witness our passage when we summon the sleeper from unfathomed waters and uncounted years.
Maya.
If this was a hoax, it seemed to be bringing out their best prose. If it was hoax, it was stirring something in the depths – the real depths, those of my soul. My office, my apartment began to seem unreal. My hands would go numb as I designed ads for the local radio stations.
Some parts of the city remained real. The Japanese Gardens, the unworldly beach at Lands’ End, Crowley Plaza at Pier 39. I was getting my work done somehow – maybe one doesn’t have to be conscious to write ads. More and more I was drawn to certain sights, certain sky effects and strange architecture.
In my mind’s eye I kept seeing them. They both looked hot and a trifle silly in their Western clothes. I imagined them taking rooms at the opposite ends of the hotel. They were both very formal people, needing great distances between them and others.
But mainly in the early morning (when it would be nearly midnight there) I could see them performing rites which might predate mankind.
I decided to try and put those mental hauntings to rest. Maybe I could reach out with my mind – give them the witness they needed – and get the whole damn thing over with.
On the morning of July 19 which was a Sunday I tried the glyph and candle trick. It was perhaps the only time in my life I had been awake on a Sunday that early.
I chose the glyph with the ‘V’ sound, perhaps because my father’s name began with a ‘V’, or perhaps because of Pynchon’s novel – which represented the twain powers of obsession and of otherness so great that civilization grows up to cover it entirely. Or maybe ‘V’ for some reason known only to the misty void of my soul.
I drew the glyph. I lit some copal incense I had bought at a shop in the Haight. I lit my green candle.
The vision came swiftly as though I had already been seeing it in some level of my being.
They stood on the roof of a hexagonal building intoning a strange guttural language toward the northern stars. Certain stars seemed brighter, more vivid. Algol, Polaris, the constellation of the Bull. As they chanted I became aware of a presence or force that seemed to flow out of the building. It hurt all constant regular things – as though it were set apart from the natural universe. It was like a black wind that blew against souls causing them to be uncomfortable – forcing them to change and awaken – or wither and die. It sent strange dreams. It caused beauty and terror – or more precisely it brought into being that beauty which is the beginning of terror we can just bear.
This evil force had nothing to do with natural life, save that when it met it an intricate dance would begin in which all things were possible. Names like Satan or Lucifer didn’t begin to explain this dark current.
The current wasn’t steady. Sometimes it flowed quickly. Other times it was chaotic and turbulent. The chants somehow sped up the flow but introduced countless vortices. I could sense strange turbulences forming.
Something unseen began to flow counter-clockwise around my friends. They could sense it because their voices momentarily faltered. The current eddied faster. Suddenly they were engulfed.
They rose in the air spinning at dizzying speeds. A body fell hard on the rocks. Then the eddies disappeared. I couldn’t see who had fallen, my contact was lost.
I felt like I had the worst case of the flu I had ever had. I tried a couple of times during that sick Sunday to renew my contact – but no matter how hard I tried to push my imagination, the images wouldn’t come.
I called in sick to work on Monday. In my mail came an airline ticket to Hawaii, a ticket for a boat tour of the seven major islands of Micronesia, and reservations for me at the Rainbow Cliff Hotel. There was a note from Gabriel.
Don,
See, I’m paying. Please come.
Awareness restful & fake is fatiguing.
I think you will be an interesting companion in Allternity.
Gabriel.
I thought long and hard for two days. Then I called and confirmed all my reservations.
I went.
But I wasn’t prepared for what I found.
In Kapinga there was a semi-paralyzed black woman, who couldn’t speak. I visited the hospital on some trumped-up excuse.
It was Maya. Her breathing was laboured. The conditions were pretty primitive. I was wondering how I could contact her family. If I could get her out of here. I was wondering if it was worth it – she’d been pretty badly damaged – the doctor said it looked like a fall. People shouldn’t play amateur archaeologist.
I asked if there had been anyone with her.
No. But a man had left the island on the same night.
I sat with her. I sat long into the night when she started coughing. I started to ring for the nurse, but I realized she was coughing out words.
‘...hard to operate at this distance ... everything wonderful here ... levels of being far beyond what we guessed ... hard to operate ... don’t need it now ... leave the robot to the jackals of time ... Iä Cthulh
u ... Iä Chau-te-Leur ... Iä Luka-lapalp ... Kef ... ir...’
She died in the morning. I spent damn near every cent I had getting the body and myself back.
I’ve thrown myself into my work, but everything I write takes on a transcendent quality. It’s as though something has changed in me and the beauty and terror of it have to come out.
So this may have been a little hoax we played – a group of pranksters wanting to call up the Great Old Ones over pressed duck and Mu Shu Pork – but our hoax seems to have swallowed us up. So pranksters beware.
Everyday I look in the mirror trying to figure out what new thing looks back at me.
There were others involved. The book from the now-closed P.O. Box in Illinois. Maybe the Great Old Ones do have human agents that help the process along. Or maybe it was a cosmic hoax and Gabriel just wound up as lunch. Maybe Maya’s dying words were a cosmic prank from some other dimensional equivalent of a kid asking me if my refrigerator was running.
But whatever, the call is great in me and grows greater every day. Soon I too will go to the strangely-angled ruins. Soon I will say the rites. I have deciphered the List book and fate led me to another book whose name I will not record, so that the foolhardy among you will not be tempted.
I can’t let someone else fall the hoax, but as the old liar said:
‘Maybe there is gold in them hills.’
Perhaps soon I will know what truths lie beyond this world of mirrors.
BEYOND REFLECTION
John Beal
“Things still come upstairs,
things that split husbands from wives.”
– from the film poster Things Still Come Upstairs.
The poster was in the newspaper. It was plain; the title, an array of white block capitals, crossed beneath the picture in an orthodox fashion. In fact it appeared perfectly orthodox.
More unusual was the film poster beneath, depicting a couple of young women struggling to comprehend their lesbian love for each other.
As he stared at the pictures the first sent a shiver up his spine. It showed a young woman in an ochre Arran sweater. She wasn’t screaming and didn’t even look afraid, yet he knew she was alone. The phrase repeated itself over and over: Things still come upstairs, things that split husbands and wives. He was sweating, images flooded his mind, axes and blood-splattered, screaming forms. Blood splattering onto a cinema screen. His thoughts were frenzied, they sparkled and flashed, like a lightning-strewn autumnal night.
Another phrase, this time from the film, entered his thoughts: You don’t have to go out to play!.
The image was menacing; a clown’s face, mask-like, screaming laughter, as a dishevelled tangle of limbs suddenly appeared from the dark recess of a bedroom corner. It was so dark, he couldn’t decide if they were bodies or dummies; when he suddenly, shockingly realised it didn’t matter, an involuntary hiss left his mouth. He unclenched his teeth, the effort created more images.
A mad tangle of snakes, eyes ablaze with the desire to kill. They seemed in some way just like the corpses in the alcove. Moving, squirming, hissing and pealing laughter.
Startled he looked up – a gust of wind, sudden and unexpected, had crashed a volley of rain against the window. His heart leaped and then dropped like a stone; the feeling of nausea cut across his stomach. He realised that he had been fantasising and once again glanced at the picture.
It was all that was necessary: once more he was drawn into a web of images.
A woman running and falling, typical horror film material, and yet dreadfully real. Nothing was chasing her.
Or rather he saw nothing, the corridor beyond her was poorly lit, dreary and claustrophobic. From the door leading to the attic he saw a hand move back into the shadow. The woman was retching – bile and laughter.
‘A bitter-sweet embrace my dear, come on and kiss me; you know how hungry I am for you!’. The words were said in total darkness, utter terror gripped him as his mind staggered at the implications. A figure appeared, semi-obscured by the gloom, unless, he thought, the figure was only partially there. All in white, like a man in a nineteen-forties film. Casablanca, or some other heat-soaked romantic drama, dragged his thoughts again from the poster. Some-how unrecognisably the picture had changed. Thrusting the paper under a chair cushion, he swore he would never look at it again.
Weeks later he found himself returning from America. Squealing tyres on tarmac, like pigs being slaughtered. A rough landing, but he was relieved to be down. The engines whined at peace. Rest from the nail-biting altitude made him gasp. The sunlight high above had been replaced by a sullen grey stratus enclosure. Up high he had felt like Icarus flying to his death. With the roof replaced, the sky seemed less dangerous. He had been too close to the unspoken space beyond. The thin metal screening him from the full horror once again solidified, enabling it to hold the reality he was secure in. If only he hadn’t had to cross the ocean to the convention. It seemed like a night-mare; the flight there was difficult, but the crossing back had been impossible. He was amazed to find himself on the stairs leading to the ground. It reached up for him in a secure embrace. This was the last flight he was ever going to take, he concluded.
Back home he walked the hallways, examining the reports. His work would mean going back. He hated the thought of it. The view from the window high above the dreamland clouds shattered his concen-tration. He was sweating; he knew he couldn’t do it. The journey was too much, he would write instead. This thought calmed him. He eased into the room immediately to his left. Once inside he realized he had been walking in circles, traversing mechanically through the downstairs rooms and hallways until he had once again retreated into his library.
Books he had read a long time ago studded the shelves along the walls. He had lost interest in most of them, but some still held fascination. The truth was that he just couldn’t concentrate long enough on one subject. Most of the time he was blissfully apathetic, uncaring in his solitude for the irrelevant mumbo-jumbo of the outside world, encapsulated in any form.
The weather had closed in; cold, damp and miserable daylight sulked through the window. Sunlight seemed restricted to his childhood. He decided to tidy his house.
After leaving it for a while, he was acutely aware of the disorder. As he tidied he became aware of something awesome in the room. It reminded him of a picture he’d seen. A cavern, gouged out by centuries of screeching, clanging, torrential water.
A vast black cave, whose stalactites hung crazily from the roof. Angler-fish jaws had the same appearance, and held the same life-force. He remembered then another picture. The film poster was as vivid as if it were in front of him; its metamorphosis, however, had progressed. He was aware of the force, a whimsical yet horrific malevolence.
Ancient incarcerated evil, a djinni of the sands. Its body, matted with sores and hair, repulsed him; and the head, a globular twisting of indescribable mush, created an uncontrollable sense of vertigo. A frog’s head began to laugh, quivering lips; screeching low-pitched cackles. The sound was bizarre, nothing he had ever heard before sounded like it. Nothing except the title music of the film he thought he had forgotten. His mind raced, he had never seen the film, he couldn’t know what the title music sounded like.
Yet he did, he knew with certainty what it sounded like; to the last dull chiming note he could recall it. It was the music of the dentist’s chair as the gas’s effect sent him spinning into the vortex of the mask.
He was sure he was ill – something like a fever-dream gripped him, he walked somnambulantly to a chair and sat, shivering and perspiring. The chair felt uncomfortable. He realised something was beneath the cushion. Half trembling his hand crept beneath the seat into darkness. He felt what he knew would be there, what anyone in his situation would have known was there.
The newspaper, although crumpled, was still open at the page on which he had left it. He heard the gas fanfare begin to exude from the mask. Uncontrollable laughter filled wild stretches of deserte
d land, deserts, moors, forests and lakes.
On the poster everything seemed to be as he could remember it. Yet he couldn’t be sure. The picture, he was certain, had changed. He couldn’t recall what had previously appeared above the title, but now there was a vast oceanic lake. The borders of the photograph, and the reflection of sky on the lake surface, gave the impression of a mirror. A terrifying dark lake, a picture on a bill-board – an insane carnival mask, made from black decaying marine crustaceans, octopus limbs and jellyfish. He stared, and the eyes stared back.
He was screaming, laughter echoed back. From the picture, arms seemed to entangle the mask, which had taken on three dimensions, dragging it back beneath the waves.
All was quiet. A deathly silence. The theme had stopped.
The scene was totally devoid of noise. Then he heard a steady rushing of waves, the blood in his ears echoed by sea-shells. The shore-line faded and soft sand beneath his feet stretched away behind him. He was facing away from the sea, away back into the landscape beyond. A landscape made solely of the library, strangely orientated and coloured.
Uncontrollably he moved, turned away and walked toward the becalmed waters. He entered between the water, not feeling wet, as the unreality lived on. Yet he was going deeper, deeper and deeper. Still the water did not touch him, it encased him and held him, until with a sudden rush it swept him away.
He was falling, forever, not knowing which way was down, he felt each direction pulling incessantly. He felt infinity dragging at him. The scream that broke free of his mouth left him on soft wings, fluttering away to leave him alone.
THE DREAMERS IN DARKNESS
Peter Smith
The candles flickered, painting the walls with tilting light.
In the narrow corners of the attic room, shadows alternately advanced and retreated like clusters of black spiders.
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