Without music, life would be a mistake
-Friedrich Nietzsche
This is the tale of which I had hoped to take with
me to the grave and had circumstance allowed I would
have done so if only to spare myself the horror of
recalling that nightmare time. But I have not been
spared my terror for if I don't now recant my tale
in full others will venture to that dark and bitter
place and they too will stare into the maw of
madness.
I have been an associate professor of psychology and
occult studies at Her Britannic Majesty's University
of Belfast for nearly five years not including time
spent in the lands of Turkey and Georgia in study of
near forgotten Eastern Cults. Along with this I have
spent a year of study at the prestigious Miskatonic
University in Arkham, Massachusetts immersed in the
ancient and terrible cults of the world long since
passed and recorded now only in that tome of fable,
the Necronomicon.
I make my credentials clear now so that when you
read my story you will know that these are not the
deluded ramblings of a madman but the facts as
recorded by someone versed in the subject matter and
hardened against its horrors as best the human mind
can be.
Most importantly I wish it recorded that I, Benjamin
Constantine have been entirely outspoken against
Britannic University sending any team out into that
dark and bitter part of Tyrone no matter how noble
the quest to find our lost colleague.
My tale begins at my desk under the criss-crossed
windows of our glorious and gothic Britannic
University, back four months ago when I was
researching a paper on the evolution of the Old Gods
and in regular communication with a recluse musician
from Tyrone, himself obsessed with the elder things.
Little was known to me about this contradiction of a
man that was AJ Valjean save that he disliked
meeting people yet was a passionate letter writer,his music was played on an acoustic guitar recorded
onto an old reel player before being copied to
computer and emailed to a local studio. His music
was tinny and often I questioned if the lyrics were
even the vocalisations of a human tongue, but the
strange warbling found a small following in the
nearest large town of Dungannon and in the rural
communities around.
Apart from that I knew him only as being of medium
height and build, short dark hair and nothing else I
could gleam from the single available photograph
found on the internet.
His writing to me was eager, passionate and with a
great depth of curiosity. He asked of things from
only the fringes of my learning, of faraway cults
and mythical beasts of the old north. On occasion he
offered theories on those beasts of myth and how
they came embedded in the human psyche to which I
would counter in turn how some of our modern deity
myths sprang from older antediluvian times. Our
conversations would form the basis of my proposed
paper of which Valjean initially wanted no credit
despite his obvious knowledge and contribution but
through much cajoling on my part he eventually
accepted a footnote reference in the piece.
Over the course of a month his writing became more
erratic, literally as well as figuratively for
understand dear reader that our entire
correspondence was hand written; Language is art, my
dear Prof. Constantine and deserves to be expressed
as such, one must make the time to compose a word
with a quill like one composes any other note for
the ear. He told me that long ago during our
earliest engagements when I made to him what was an
almost insulting enquiry as to his email address,
and from henceforth in deference to his
sensibilities I too would forgo my word processor
and pen my letters to him by hand.
I must confess this was an attempt on my part to
curry further favour with the musician as I had
great desire to plumb the depths of his knowledge.
The change in his writing came gradually at first and accompanied a subtle shift in questioning on his
part, his perfect script became sloppy, almost
rushed in appearance. The questions he asked shifted
from the Great Elder Gods and the Ancient Beasts of
the far off cosmos to strange creatures of the
forest of which I was forced to confess no
knowledge. He asked about amphibian things with skin
that shifted hues like that of a chameleon, large
bulbous eyes that were black with burnished orange
irises, with wide toothless mouths and quills along
the back of the neck.
No such creature existed to my knowledge in any of
the mythos that I had studied, and I struggled to
make any connection even to my readings of that
accursed tome the Necronomicon. I inquired further
as to the nature of these beasts of his fantasy;
their height, the sounds they make, are they
nocturnal, what has been his inspiration for this
flight of the mind? I was curious not only for the
creatures but from a question of psychological study
for you can tell a lot about a person by their
monsters and this creation offered an insight into
the reclusive Valjean.
A true response was not forthcoming, his next
communication was near illegible in script and the
content of the letter was incomprehensible, the
ineffable penned in the unreadable.
It was at this point in the tale that I was joined
by Jonathan Davids, the man whose death I stand
accused but whom I can only say for certain I last
saw walking in the mist toward that broiling lake,
his eyes dead and seeping that fel substance that
had came at him from within the dark.
Professor Davids had lectured biochemistry at
Britannic from long before my time at the university
had come and it is important that you understand he
and I were friends and though I wish that he would
be found wandering aimless and confused in those
Tyrone backwoods I do not hold hope.
Professor Davids came to be involved during the time
that the change came upon Valjean, he suggested that
it was possible the musician was experimenting with hallucinogens in order to develop his odd music and
that a side effect of the drugs and his
conversations with myself were producing these vivid
illusions of beasts. Whilst I agreed this was
possible I had enough doubt as we had never
discussed beasts the like of which he described,
these things of his mind were the result of some
other invention.
With his final letter I became concerned that
Valjean had suffered a stroke or some other
psychotic break, it was out of concern for his
safety that I enlisted the help of my friend
Professor Davids, for who better to identify if
there were some toxin at play than a biochemist.
Furthermore Davids hailed from a small town in
eastern Tyrone, for the best part he could act as
guide for a part of this small country I was
entirely unfamiliar with.
He agreed on the condition that we would stop for
lunch in a small restaurant he knew in the town of
Dungannon before the drive into the deep country. He
argued this on the point that the letters were
always delivered by second class mail which took two
or more days and so a further hour would have no
impact on the condition of which we might find
Valjean. This may sound cold on his part but
understand the Professor Davids was firmly convinced
that the musician had been experimenting with
psychedelics and was most likely shut away on a
comedown from the chemicals, hiding from the light
and at worst dehydrated and hungry. He did not have
much in the way of sympathy for recreational drug
users but seeing my concern for the musician he was
willing to make the journey.
With that agreed we set out from Britannic in the
early afternoon, the sun was high in the sky but the
day was cold still from an overnight frost and there
lingered in the dark clouds a threat of rain.
Leaving Belfast are two major highways, one leading
around the northern side of the large Lough in the
centre of this small nation and eventually on to
both the cosmopolitan North Coast and eventually to the Maiden City on the far side of the country. The
second highway on the south side was really a road
to nowhere, rerouted into the sparsely inhabited
heart of the country because an insecure planning
department did not want to build a road to Dublin
back in the worse days of the history here.
It was this road on which we now travelled and it
was plain to see the density of population fall
dramatically after passing the city of Lisburn until
soon we were passing by green fields under a morose
sky. The journey was pleasant but uneventful and
after around thirty minutes we passed close to the
grey form of Lough Neagh as the motorway met its
southernmost point, the vast expanse stretching
across the northern horizon.
Professor Davids passed the time enquiring as to my
relationship with the reclusive Valjean, how on
earth a travelled scholar such as myself came to be
in touch with an agoraphobe local musician unwilling
even to journey to a studio to record his works. The
answer in itself was simple, AJ Valjean had sought
me out after having his interest piqued by one of my
early papers available on the Britannic's online
archive and then learning that I was at the time at
study in the Miskatonic in Arkham.
The accursed Necronomicon by the Mad Arab Abdul
Alhazred held particular interest to Valjean but of
all the works I had studied that book, that awful
and terrible book I was reluctant to speak of.
Contained therein were things not meant for this
world, dark and evil knowledge that the curators of
the Miskatonic Library had guarded for an age
because the only thing of which they feared more was
its destruction.
Valjean teased this information from me in snippets,
enough at a time that I would not be forced to speak
a full dark tale but of which I knew he was building
a bigger picture. It was in knowing this that I kept
my own council on the greatest of evils held within,
incantations with the ability to stretch across the
vastness of the cosmos and commune with things best
left undisturbed. That accursed book had the ability not only to
pervert and warp the fabric of space and time but to
bend the very mind itself, to twist the psyche to
breaking point and then go beyond. It was something
not meant for this world.
Exiting the motorway we quickly came to the large
town of Dungannon, a town that had grown rapidly
over the last decade as it had seen an influx of
foreign nationals disproportionate to the rest of
the country, who brought with them a diverse range
of strange theologies and mysticisms. Some of these
I knew as off-shoots of more mainstream theologies,
others I knew to be cults new or old that barely
clung to existence in the world as we know it, and
one or two I had heard of only in legend and existed
here as anywhere else in rumour.
Parapsychology bore little interest to my erstwhile
driver who guided us into the car park of some
quaint local shopping mall that had served as a
linen mill during the industrial revolution an age
ago.
A surprisingly modern bistro sat on a corner unit of
the mall, all glass front with trendy chrome chairs
and dark wood throughout and soon we were guided to
a table and upon ordering we returned to our
conversation about the unusual Valjean. That
conversation did not last a great deal of time
however as we had discussed at length during the
journey the details of my entire communication with
the musician and changing tact Professor Davids
enquired as to how I was adjusting to life in
Belfast after my time spent in Arkham. I confessed
that at times I was still caught out by the quirks
of European life compared to those of Americans, in
the United States life and people were generally
simpler in manner but at a faster pace than in
European nations. The best descriptor I could think
of was that in America politics was an occupation,
in Europe it was a lifestyle choice.
As the waitress arrived with our food I came to
realise that I no longer had the attention of
Professor Davids, indeed nothing seemed to be holding his gaze, as if his mind were absent from
his body.
"It's the music,
" explained the waitress in answer
to the question I had not asked and I then noticed
the crackling warble filtering in that I had come to
recognise as the work of my reclusive penpal,
"AJ
Valjean, some people seem to space out listening to
his stuff, it really speaks to them."
"That could prove dangerous,
" I said snapping my
fingers in the face of my colleague breaking his
trance,
"it's like some form of hypnosis."
"I've never seen the harm in it,
" the waitress left
our food and returned to the kitchen area, passing a
waiter who I saw to be moving in an almost robotic
fashion, and after that had caught my eye I came to
realise that maybe half a dozen of the thirty or so
in the room also behaved in the same trance state.
"That was quite an unusual experience,
" the
Professor spoke,
"I felt as though my mind were
slowly draining, it was peaceful, very calming. Your
friend certainly makes music for the soul."
"It certainly is strange,
" I commented, I found it
unsettling how powerful an effect such music could
have on a receptive psyche. Clearly there was some
subliminal waveform or message in the music that
whether intentional or not was at the very least a
hazard to drivers and pedestrians, at the worst I
would dread to think. I ate my meal in uncomfortable
silence, knowing what I know of the interests of AJ
Valjean I doubted that the trance state was
unintentional and could only hope that it did not
exist to serve some hitherto unknown malign purpose.
My eyes followed those who had been under the
effect, watching to see any peculiarities or
behavioural quirks beyond the generally accepted
norm of human activity, indeed I kept one eye on my
companion for having known academically for some
time now he could best serve as a control group.
During my silent observations however I saw nothing
to make me suspect that there was any lingering
effect from that bizarre music, from the end of the
track those in the trance state almost immediately began to move normally and with the beginning of the
next song by a different artist the spell was truly
broken.
I considered that this may be an unusual gimmick the
reclusive musician had stumbled upon and now sought
to incorporate the effect into his music in order to
achieve some greater fame or recognition, although
so far as I knew such subliminal messaging was
deemed illegal.
As we returned to the car I had considered
requesting that we continued the journey with myself
at the wheel however I could see no ill-effect upon
my companion that would in any way impair his
ability to handle the vehicle. With quiet reluctance
I buried my concerns with the determination that I
would not allow the car radio to be turned to any
local stations, that in itself would be enough to
ensure at least there was no recurrence of the
effect on Professor Davids.
Rather than return to the motorway we skirted the
edge of the town until we found a country road
leading to a village by the name of Aughnacloy, a
well maintained road lined with trees and winding
through hills that had our minds not been focused on
other things we would have found particularly
peaceful. The occasional home or farm served as a
reminder of civilisation in what only a few miles
from a large town felt as though it were the wilds
in somewhere like Washington State or Canada.
Passing alongside a glade through which there ran a
narrow stream the road curved right to follow the
edge of thee glade, however a narrower road led
straight on and up a rise into the trees and the
name on this road indicated that it was the route we
must take.
Darkness closed around the vehicle as we climbed
into the trees and soon we were truly in what some
might call God's Country, the houses becoming fewer
as the road got narrower and less well maintained.
The car rocked as we hit bumps and potholes, my
companion slowed for fear of damaging the vehicle
and allowed slip his lips more than a single expletive, understandable as we ventured into what I
could only describe as deep isolation.
After what had felt like half an hour of traversing
rises and falls we saw a left turn onto an even
smaller road upon which I knew lived the reclusive
musician AJ Valjean. How far along the road exactly
I did not know but for the sake of the vehicle I
hoped not too far as this was more like a remnant of
an ancient track than a true road. The surface was
cracked and dotted with water filled potholes and
down the centre grew a thick track of grass, leaves
and branches had fallen from the trees that had
grown up to create a dark tunnel through which we
could pass in what felt like a perpetual twilight.
Through breaks in the cover we could see hills
rising on either side as though we were driving
through a rift valley from a time forgot or a time
that nature itself was attempting to hide.
Ahead of us natural light appeared and soon the
canopy gave way to a lake around which the hills
were bent, the road continued ahead but on the left
the cottage of the reclusive Valjean sat overlooking
that calm dark water. The curtains were drawn in the
windows and a car sat parked in the gravel driveway
the stones of which crunched under the wheels of our
vehicle as we pulled to a stop in the wide lane
around the house.
"Beautiful setting,
" Professor Davids commented as
he stepped out of the vehicle,
"it's so calm."
Taking in the setting I agreed that it was quite
remarkably peaceful, a place in which a person could
truly become contemplative without the distractions
of city life. There was no noise of traffic, no
bustle of people and even the calls of birds seemed
distant. A forest rose steeply behind and around the
cottage and across the lake the scene was much the
same save a lack of road or any other sign of
habitation, the site was ideal in its isolation for
a reclusive personality.
The cottage itself was quite large with yellowish
walls and a slate roof, the paint was quite fresh
and the windows were clean. It seemed that for his other personality quirks the musician was quite
fastidious in the maintenance of his property.
Ringing the doorbell I rocked on my toes as my
companion stood below admiring the view, when there
was no response I rang once more and peered through
the side window that beyond was a Spartan hallway in
which there was a door to the right before the
hallway reached a t-junction. The door to the right
was open but the room appeared to be in darkness
much like the corridor beyond.
Rapping the door hard after still receiving no
response I decided next to try the handle. The door
opened easily and I was struck immediately by how
cold the air inside was and it carried with it the
bitter tang of ozone that you normally get a hint of
around electronics that have been running for a
while.
"Mr Valjean?"
I called into the darkened hallway and noticed a
faint echo in my voice,
"AJ, it's Ben Constantine,
from Britannic University."
I was greeted only with silence, looking back to my
companion we shared a look before I took a step
forward into that cold and dark hall.
Within a couple of feet I heard a crunch of broken
glass that caused me to inspect my shoe, it was a
very fine and light glass the kind of which you'd
expect to find in an incandescent bulb and looking
up I saw jagged glass hanging from the socket. The
bulb had exploded.
Looking into the darkened room to the right I felt
along the wall until my hands found the light
switch, and when I flicked it the room remained
entombed in darkness. Light streamed past me from a
small pocket torch carried by my companion and as it
spilled across the room I spotted a black leather
couch and a flat screen TV, and glittering on the
floor were tell-tale shards of glass.
"It seems there may have been some kind of
electrical surge, all the bulbs seem to have blown."
"He isn't in this room anyway,
" I said as I moved
back to the hallway, where the corridor branched right it led to a large but equally lifeless
kitchen,
"I guess we'll check each room."
Shining his torch down the length of the corridor
into the black there was revealed two doors to the
left and three to the right, and lying directly in
front of us in the middle of the floor was a snub
nosed revolver. At the back of my throat there was
the sudden steely taste of adrenaline and I felt a
whole new concern for my absent pen pal.
"Perhaps we should contact the police,
" my
colleague's voice had dropped to a level barely
above a whisper and checking my phone I saw that I
had no reception.
"No cell signal."
"Not surprising out here,
" Davids scanned the beam
over the doors then let the ring of light fall back
to the gun,
"perhaps we should leave and get them to
investigate?"
"We don't even know if a crime has been committed,
"
hunkering down I lifted the gun and was surprised by
its weight, slipping it into my jacket pocket I rose
again,
"we should check first if there has been any
act of foul play or any suspicion of such."
"Or if someone is still here."
Cautiously opening the first door to the left I
grimaced as it let what was probably a soft creak
but to my ears in this unearthly silence sounded
more like the grinding of metal, a sure sign of our
progress through the building to any person or
presence still within. Feeling the light switch on
the wall beside me I gave it a flick and saw that it
too was blown, my colleague swept the torch over my
shoulder revealing an office of sorts, or a
makeshift studio.
A computer sat on a large desk next to an old reel
to reel recorder that was plugged into a simple
microphone assembly, and a well-used acoustic guitar
sat in pride of place next to the desk. The wall
next to the door was dominated by a single large
bookcase filled with what appeared to be handwritten
notebooks all of a similar black binding on natural
cardboard design. The final wall contained what appeared to be a large map drawn by hand in
painstaking detail of the lake and the land to the
south including the house and a significant portion
of the hill behind.
As Professor Davids appraised the map I crossed to
the window, hearing the crunch of glass underfoot on
my passage I drew back the curtains allowing the
late afternoon light to spill into the cold room and
had to blink back from the momentary blindness. The
view beyond was somehow starker from this room,
colder or oppressive due to some unseen or
indefinable force, as if this room had become the
subject of observation rather than the vista beyond.
I do not know if that makes sense to you reader but
understand that such was the queerness of that
place, we should have left then, should have taken
that sinister atmosphere as an omen that we were not
welcome.
"The legend on this map appears to correspond to
specific notebooks on the case behind us,
" my
colleague observed as he thumbed through one of the
notebooks that had sat on a small desk next to the
map,
"he appears to have been compiling some form of
massive analysis of the various points of interest
around the lake and his cottage, the subject in hand
for instance regards an ancient and forgotten trail
leading from the lake."
Handing me the book I recognised immediately the
script I had come to know as being the prose of the
musician Valjean, his analysis seems to be taking
the form of a journal of discovery.
I stumbled upon the first marker quite by accident
one afternoon upon yet another investigation of that
strange effervescence on the lake. The marker lay as
I suspect it has done for centuries next to the
lough shore, and curiously not so much as a weed or
hardy grass would grow around it, indeed the very
soil itself was like lifeless dust as if this
ordinary stone were somehow poison or repugnant to
life itself. Having procured a Geiger meter from an
old friend in Belfast I can say with certainty that
whatever the cause the danger is not of radioactivity, and so using thick rubber gloves and
a lever I have rolled this stone revealing
engravings on the surface only partially faded by
time as they have been largely protected from the
elements.
The symbols are the like of which I have never seen
before, pictographs of some description but ancient
and beyond anything in our Celtic heritage, I must
make note to contact a person knowledgeable in such
things.
Within a couple of days the grass around where the
stone now lies has died, whatever lies within this
stone has lost no potency, and it has made me
consider a patch of my own garden upon which nothing
will grow.
…
Another of those accursed stones lies buried under
my lawn though it is broken in two, probably by the
contractors as they shifted the earth during the
laying of the foundations to my home.
The journal went on to detail finding another stone
not far into a dead patch in the forest behind us,
realising that they may have been waypoints he began
to search deeper in the woods and sure enough found
what he believed to be a trail of ancient origin.
The presence of the curious glyphs or pictographs
went some way toward explaining his drive to contact
me and his curiosity about the more speculative
aspects of my work.
As Professor Davids perused the bookshelf of
investigations I borrowed from him the torch and
felt for the hilt of the gun, not drawing it but
simply taking comfort in its weight as I had renewed
vigour to conclude the search of the house to find
my friend in chirography.
The first door on the right of the corridor was a
bathroom that bore no unusual features save a fine
layer of frost over the mirror and a dim halo of
light flaming around the Roman blind at the window.
Towels lay folded over the edge of the bath and a
bead of water clung to the edge of the faucet
threatening to drip at any moment, underfoot was the crunch of a blown bulb in this room too.
Before leaving I rolled up the blind to allow in
what little natural light penetrated from the wooded
hill behind the house, anything at all to banish the
void that dwelled in the darkness.
The next door, also on the right was a linen closet
packed with a few towels, some bed linen, and
nothing of interest to my search. The door beside it
however was locked by means of a deadbolt and I was
about to walk on when a glint on the edge of the
torchlight caught my eye, about two feet from the
door lay the key. The door had been locked from the
outside.
Investigating the key by torchlight I turned a wary
eye to the door and in my mind I was suppressing the
ancient subconscious fight or flight instinct, that
door could be locked for no good reason.
Gingerly rapping on the wood I was met by the solid
sound of my own knock that said if nothing else that
the door was sturdy, there came no response from
within and so cautiously I leaned my ear against the
sealed portal. There was nothing but silence and I
began to feel rather foolish about myself until from
beyond came the sound of gentle shuffling, not
moving toward the door but like the sound of someone
working in one place.
"AJ?"
My call went unheeded and the shuffling did not
cease, under the door I saw the occasional pale
flicker of movement in natural light and knew
without doubt that there was someone locked in that
room.
With a shaking hand I slipped the key into the lock
and felt for the gun in my pocket, reassured by the
feel of the cold steel of the trigger I gently
turned the key with my torch hand. My breath was lit
as a haze in the cold as the beam swung with the
turn of the key, inside the sound of shuffling
remained unchanged.
Taking a deep breath I carefully turned the handle
and then swung the door wide sweeping the torch and
gun about the room, and then a feeling of relief washed over me as I saw that the shuffling had come
from the curtains blowing in the wind. Stepping
across what was obviously a guest bedroom I pulled
the curtains wide in order to close the window and
saw that the glass had been smashed, at an educated
guess it had been broken from the inside by someone
or something looking out, there were few fragments
or shards on the inside.
I could see nothing suspect in the trees beyond, but
then the light was beginning to dim and the shadows
were growing long and dark. The path below the
window was gravel and I could see broken glass
trampled into it by a single heavy print that would
seem to indicate that the room's former occupant had
indeed headed for the seclusion of the woods.
Listening out the forest was still eerily quiet,
there was not so much the chirp of a bird or the
crack of a twig that would indicate the passing of
some animal small or otherwise.
Glancing once more about the room for my own sanity
I saw that other than the bed being unkempt there
was nothing remarkable, that is until I saw the
scratch marks on the doorframe at my height and
taller. Closing the door slightly I saw that it too
was criss-crossed with gouges like claw marks, some
going deep into the wood and I found myself uttering
a profanity of which there is no need to repeat.
Looking back to the window to make sure that nothing
was there I fancied that I saw some movement in the
shadows of the trees, a hint or a change in the
shape of the darkness, the movement of branches.
The wind in all probability but it was enough to
spark concern in me and so with all haste I returned
to the corridor and locked that door, my heart at
this time racing in my chest. I leaned back on the
wall behind me and took several deep breaths in
order to compose myself, there was still one room
left to investigate.
The final door gave me pause, beyond this panel of
wood could lie the body of the reclusive musician or
some other nameless clawed horror imprisoned and
awaiting the moment of its escape. Filled with dread I turned the handle and the door swung easily into
the darkness beyond and of which I was hesitant to
enter.
Framed by the pale light of the pocket torch was a
dark chest of drawers upon which sat a bottle of
cologne and several picture frames of a light wood,
next to the drawers was a linen laundry hamper and
to the other side it appeared to be clear to the
curtains. When I was convinced that the room was
still I stepped forward across the threshold and
appraising the darkened surroundings I was to have a
different kind of shock.
The wall above the double bed was covered with a
plethora of pictures in which I recognised the
musician, but they were pictures of a man who
enjoyed sports, who played music in bars, and who
seemed to have many friends. The pictures showed an
outgoing young man far removed from the reclusive
hermit I had come to know, and yet some of these
images could not be more than a few years old. It
was both remarkable and disturbing that such a
change could come over him in so short a period of
time and it gave every sign of an abhorrent
personality disorder, perhaps a split or emergent
personality.
Certainly it was in this time that Valjean had made
contact with me, was his obsession with ancient and
occult forces a product of this mental disturbance
or an old curiosity whose flame had been fanned by
the unusual artefacts uncovered in the local
environs?
Wherever the answer may lie this new information had
brought with it greater questions about the
mysterious man I had been in contact with and about
whom it now seemed I knew a lot less than I had
previously thought.
"Ben?"
My heart skipped a beat and I nearly dropped the
torch as I spun hearing my name, I could feel a
flush of red rush to my cheeks in embarrassment as
Professor Davids stood in the doorway. In all the
searching and the peculiarities uncovered I had completely forgotten about my companion studying the
journals in the would-be office just two doors down.
"He isn't here,
" I said as I drew back the curtains
allowing the cold light to spill into the room
causing the layer of frost over the pictures and
furniture to glitter. The vista beyond the glass was
of the car I assumed to be Valjean's and beyond that
out to the mirror lake and the forested hills that
surrounded it like a crater.
"I think you should read some of these journals,
"
the professor held one for me, pausing when he saw
the gun in my hand.
"Sorry,
" I slipped the firearm back into my jacket
pocket,
"I got a little spooked back there."
"Understandable,
" he passed the book to me,
"I don't
know what you'll draw from reading those but to me
it reads like your musician friend has had a
complete break from reality."
Opening the book at a random page I read a passage
in the same handwritten script that I was used to
seeing from Valjean, it was an explanatory passage
detailing how he had followed the trail of decay
created by those malign standing stones far into the
hill that loomed to the rear of the house. Somewhere
far above us now was a ring of those fel rocks that
within there formed at night a shimmering prism of
light with rainbow edges, he swore that it was still
there however invisible during the day and that it
was revealed only under starlight.
I can postulate only that this was some ancient
place of worship, why else create a ring of standing
stones to contain this bizarre thing, marked by a
path to the lake with waystones of death? Water
often is representative of life, perhaps mystics of
the past believed this place to be some kind of
crossroads between life and death.
There has been no mention of any object matching the
nature of such a prism in any of the information
provided to me by Prof. Constantine, if only he
would tell me more of the Necronomicon, or if I
could get my hands on that book I am certain my
answer to these unnatural lights and the stones of death lies within.
He lamented for several further passages about my
unwillingness to share the secrets held at
Miskatonic and about the unwillingness of scholars
there to even reply to his communiqués. He referred
to it as a 'deplorable snobbery among academia to
withhold the hidden secrets of which mankind should
be fully aware and prepared for' as if our
reluctance to share these things that in the past
had driven unprepared minds insane was some act of
arrogance on the part of myself or my colleagues in
Arkham.
That in itself indicated that the mind of Valjean
was unprepared for the darker secrets of our study,
it had been learned through bitter experience that
the curious but uninitiated are destined only for
madness, death, or a fate far worse. But from what
passages I had read I could see no sign of madness,
however unusual the subject matter of his logs the
text and discourse was in itself perfectly coherent.
"What is this effervescence in the lake he refers to
repeatedly?"
"Something your friend seems to have discovered
while composing on the lake shore,
" Professor Davids
explained as he led me back down the darkened
corridor to the office area,
"it appears to have
been the catalyst for all his subsequent
investigations."
Describing as best he could the notes of Valjean my
companion explained how the musician had noticed
unusual bubbles in the centre of the lake that
barely disturbed the surface yet remained ceaseless
in their activity. Understand dear reader that this
lake was not a large body of water, the effect may
have been subtle but it could certainly be seen from
the shore, indeed it was at this time I looked out
the window in the fading light and could even from
the office see a faint timbre on the glassy surface.
Curious if it was a gas pocket or some seismic
activity the musician began to investigate initially
out of concern for his own safety should the gas
prove toxic or have some other ill effects such asthose from natural radon gas. Concern soon gave way
to bewilderment when testing of the gas proved to be
impossible for no matter how he attempted to trap
the bubbles the local laboratory could detect no
gases not found in their common saturation of our
atmosphere, and so his next task was to seek out the
source of the effervescence.
He concluded that there must be a cave system
somewhere in the hills that went under the lake and
somehow though the ceiling had fractured it had
remained pressurized enough to hold back the weight
of the water above.
The fault he arrived to with that theory was that
the atmosphere was not always as it is now, and in
the ancient times before the formation of the lake
when other great beasts roamed the Earth the
atmosphere was very different. So for the gas
saturation to have balanced with today's atmosphere
the cave system would have to be open to the
outside, which meant that it could not be
pressurized.
Seeking a new theory he rowed out to the
effervescence once more with a series of
interconnecting yard sticks in order to plumb the
depth of the lake, and after forty feet and running
out of rods with still no sign of the bottom he
returned to the shore. The last of the rods he saw
was coated in a fine layer of an unusual black
sludge, possibly stagnation in the water as the lake
had little in the way of natural drainage and it
seemed to be unusually deep for its size.
Fashioning a makeshift anchor from a concrete block
and the longest length of rope upon which he could
lay his hands Valjean rowed back out to the bubbles
and dropped his plumb line into the deep. The rope
well over one hundred feet in length if the
musician's notes were accurate went taut in his
hands, at one hundred feet and still no sign of the
lake floor. As he began to pull it back he assumes
that the concrete anchor must have snagged on a
sunken branch for he gave it a mighty pull and
whatever way it shifted in return he was pulled in. From there his notes pick up with him awakening on
the shore the following morning with no memory of
swimming to the surface or how he had come to spend
the night on the damp stones only yards from his
front door. He sought medical attention in Dungannon
to ensure that there was no concussive damage, and
it was in the hospital that he began to become wary
of people, ranting apparently for several passages
about social sickness and the disease that is man.
It was from here too that Valjean first states any
interest in the unknown,
'the dead that slept for a
night the age of stars' he had said, he became
convinced this effervescence was something ancient
and utterly alien to the ways of humanity.
This Professor Davids informed me was the end of the
musician's first journal.
It was what came in the next notebook that chilled
me, for after having witnessed the marks in that
locked room I knew it not to be madness but the
truth.
It was late in the night and the usual light of the
prism illuminated the high areas of the hill, I was
listless that night and unable to sleep for the
music in my head. Staring across the calming surface
of the lake on that cold night from the comfort of
my office I caught sight of movement in the trees
alongside my home.
Fancying first that it would be some animal I kept
perfectly still hoping perhaps to see a deer or
something equally serene living mere yards from me,
for these were the reasons that I lived in a place
of such isolation, for peace and inspiration. I was
horrified instead to see a creature of oily skin,
amphibian like in its nature but walking bipedal
like a man, its mouth was huge but I could see no
teeth and it watched everything with large black
eyes.
There was more movement beyond and I came to realize
that there was not one or two but an entire legion
of these creatures marching rank and file toward the
lake, their skin shifting hues to blend with the
shadows of the forest.