I have noticed of late that my dreams are becoming more and more lucid, imprinting with ever increasing clarity upon the more plastic portions of my memory. I am therefore determined to record these recollections, in order to make an attempt at assigning sense to what are increasingly bizarre, and increasingly portentous, communiques to me from my subconscious. What follows will be that record, along with some potentially pertinent notes concerning the preceding day, in case evidence of a causative link might thus be brought to light.
If, as I fear, these dreams are indeed freighted with something more than merely dire significance, the details of which I cannot yet bring myself to discuss, this journal may prove to be the only evidence of what may have come to happen to me. In which case, I thank you, reader, and beseech you to seek for me on the other side of the night.
Also, Mrs. Malloy rather diffidently asked this morning that I increase my nightly dose of laudanum. This was a further sign to me.
Jul. 27
My attendance at the funeral is mandatory, but I do not know who is memorialized by the ceremony. I can only hope that my dress is appropriate, but looking about me at the other celebrants causes me to doubt. However, my linen summer suit attracts no attention, but rather my lack of a masque causes something of a sensation. I believe that I am fortunate to have stopped at the barber for a shave. Whatever my expected part in this affair, the spectacle is unlike any I have ever before seen, involving a vessel in the shape of a viking longship constructed of burnished metal, into which is loaded the corpse and a selection of grave goods, the whole being set aflame. Some sort of cupric acid treatment has obviously been applied to the interior surfaces of the altar, as the flames which thus erupt from the vessel are a brilliant, emerald green, and shimmer and reflect off the glassine sail rigged above the funerary pyre. The heat released by these preparations is more then sufficient to buoy the vessel into the sky, driving upwards under that billowing sail at a fantastic rate until it appears to the eye as if a new, green star has risen in the firmament. I am weeping and I do now know why.
I awoke to a sodden pillow which reeked of champagne. This has always been a beverage which I did not like; and even if I did, Mrs. Malloy has strict injunctions against any sort of spirits within the premises. I could only attempt to hide the evidence in my valise as I made my way to the office.
Aug. 3
He stares at me all through the long silence of the night, the tiny candle of his soul burning blue and shining softly out from his eye sockets and gaping mouth. His long ropy hair sometimes falls to obscure those beams, but it’s never quite enough, not for peace, not for rest. He never says anything, not out loud. But I hear a voice in my mind that isn’t my own reciting a monotone litany of petty atrocities committed against, seemingly, one pathetic and all-unknowing soul.
And when I awaken in the morning, having slept for all of thirty-seven minutes, I find only sulfur-scented sand in a tidy heap on the seat of the straight-backed chair that has inevitably been moved in front of the door, facing the foot of the bed.
I spent the day with Montgomery, reviewing the receivables. There was a discrepancy of one and a half, which could not be reconciled. Lunch was a boiled egg, and a pair of overripe tomatoes. I thought I saw a soft blue glow in the stairwell on my way out of the office, which gave me quite a turn.
Sept. 27
A small man, or at least something like a man, it seems at first. An overlarge head, easily twice the circumference of a normal man’s, but with a curiously sketched-in face occupying no more space than a normal man’s would have. A thick shock of straw-like hair under a precious little boating hat with a blue ribbon. It is a long moment before I discern the figure’s body in the dimness of my sleep-darkened room. Or bodies. Three tiny bodies, perfectly proportioned but no more than twelve inches in height and clad in suits of brown tweed, strive imperfectly to hold upright that enormous cranium. I fancy that I actually hear each neck creaking in turn as the head wobbles all unbalanced above those over-driven bodies. An odd apparition, to say the least, and a welcome change from my usual visitor.
And seemingly in reaction to that unbidden recollection, the figure vanishes, even as its bizarrely carmine lips appear to part in speech. I still wonder who he is and how he came to be here, where he went after. My usual visitor is most vehement in his denials, and the increase in the odor of sulfur inclines me to belief.
Lunch was a boiled egg, and a sliced apple with gouda. I think the grocer overcharged me for the fromage; he rambled on about some sort of plague striking Denmark’s dairy industry, but I’d heard no such thing.
Sept. 30
He appears in the mirror over my shoulder as I brushed my teeth. An eyeless face, glistening fishbelly white; a flat, tiny nose and thin, bloodless lips; long, thin, greasy black hair. I feel that my reflected gaze is met, somehow. Certainly, my attention is fixed, immobile. I can no more move or complete my dental hygiene routine than I can fly. His lips part, revealing a multitude of translucent, needle-like teeth. I await his profession; I feel certain that there will issue some sort of instruction which I cannot deny no matter how distasteful or immoral. I discover that I am holding my breath, that I cannot in fact draw breath. The face seems to grow larger in the mirror, as if drawing closer to me, and a froth of tiny bubbles begins to spill from between those awful teeth. The face grows larger, draws closer in the mirror, until it simply engulfs my own, superimposing itself on my own reflected image. I am finally allowed to draw breath, choking on the foam of the toothpaste still in my mouth. I cough, spilling minty froth down my chin, and a sudden sweat breaks out all over my face. And I feel how good it is to finally see properly, without the intermediary requirement of fallible organs, liquid-filled orbs always half-popping out of my face.
The day was unseasonably warm, and I felt that I could not get enough water no matter what I drank. Even Montgomery commented upon it, and he feels neither heat nor thirst. I wonder sometimes about his breeding and upbringing, but his education cannot be faulted. Lunch was a poached fish, which I had to return four times before the chef got it right.
Nov. 4
There is sand in my room again this morning. And a warm spot in the air, hovering three feet off the floor just in front of my door. There is sand, too, in the keyhole, such that I almost cannot lock up as I leave. Great quantities of sand cover the floor of the hall, in drifts several inches high as if there had been a great and persistent wind blowing through the house all night. And heat there is also, although I know Mrs. Malloy never turns on the boiler before Thanksgiving. The hallway seems overlong, as if the house had been stretched in the night, and there aren’t enough doors. The wallpaper, damp and curling at the best of times, now hangs in strips, sand caked to its reverse side. I shuffle along, suffering from an immense thirst, and the sand gets in my shoes and the blows up into my hair and my eyes. The sun overhead is a hammer on my soul, and I wonder into what sort of weapon I am being beaten, will I be used for good or for evil, and by whom.
I don’t believe I ever found the front door.
I don’t know where Montgomery has gotten to, nor the rest of the staff. Chef has apparently taken leave as well, as there was no lunch today. I shall have to speak to Mrs. Malloy about that, if I can ever find her rooms again.
Nov. 24?
Always sand. But this sand will not shift with the wind, no matter how it howls.
And in full truth, the wind does not howl here. Cannot howl. The air is too thin, too meager, too lonesome at this elevation. It can only keen softly over the lumps and ridges of ancient exposed stone. Where the wind in the hot places howls its anguish, lashes the sand with its futile grief, the wind in this place cries and moans as softly as the oldest broken heart.
Wind, and sand, and cold.
I think there might be something approximating diurnal motion in the heavens, but I can’t be certain. I can detect only a perpetual gloaming, a dimness without even stars for reference, let alone a sun or a moon. Cold, creeping with the wind, seeping from the sand.
How long have I been here? And who brought me here?
The cats, I think, know the answers to my questions. But I am too cold to excite their interest. One looked at me once, passing through my field of vision, but I could no more draw its interest than I could rub my hands together to create friction and the illusion of warmth. They come and go, seemingly as they please, although why they should please to come at all is far beyond me. Little sparks of flame seem to drip from their whiskers, without lighting the dimness or warming the frost. Perhaps they are not entirely here. Not ghosts, nor figments, but shadows of themselves, passing through other realms and reflecting in this place as through an aged mirror. But I am here.
And I think there is something else here, something vast and ancient and full of a kind of life. But as I think this, the thought evaporates from my mind like a whisper. It was only the wind, like an immense and prolonged breath. That is what I tell myself: it was only the wind, whispering to the frozen sand.
Of course, I did not dine today, confined as I was to another plane. I should have a liked a bit of mince pie.
Dec.?
I see the constellations wheeling overhead: the Badger, the Boar, the Thing With Tentacles On Its Face. The not so very enigmatic stars, put in place by an ancient alien race, long dead, which wanted us to know. And we do know. I know. I can feel what they meant, feel the change coming over me, feel the hair sprouting from every pore. We went the wrong route, took the wrong branch of evolution. But there is time – time to go back. That is what the stars say, the Badger and the Boar, the Thing and the Thought. Greater than all the others, Badger, Boar, and Thing, is the Thought Which Cannot Be Unthought. The stars spell it out, as plain as night: “TIME TO GO BACK”. And we will, you and I. Together.
Dec.?
I sit in the hard, straight-backed chair, staring at the bed, willing the occupant to stand, to act, to speak. To do anything. He only stares back at me, grinning with horror, and I cannot blink away the blue tears welling from my eyes. I am burning, I think. Turning to sand and dust. If the man in the bed would only stand. If he would only speak. Even something so small as a Word might be enough to save me. I can feel my extremities dropping off, can hear the trickle of sand even over the sputtering of the flame in my skull.
I am too late.
Dec.?
Instead of sand this morning, ash. A strikingly black, greasy pile of glossy flakes. And instead of a dry, crackling heat in the air, I feel an oily warmth, quickly dissipating. My duvet cover is blackened and quite ruined, and I feared that the little man with the bright blue candle in his skull will never visit me again. Something about the smell of burning meat and charred bone speaks to my memories of the life I’ve left behind. Memories I thought I’d had removed. Memories I certainly do not wish to have recalled, or recounted, or recorded as in a court of law. I stand a long while, indecisive as the cold creeps slowly back into my room. I cannot leave now, for fear of discovery. Nor yet can I remain, for fear of recovery. What is lost should stay lost. But as it seems that I have found myself, with whatever unwarranted prompting, what are my choices? Discovery, and personal destruction? Or recovery, and universal destruction. And why has the candle man forced this decision upon me?
Mrs. Malloy knocked this morning, and asked if I was all right. I informed her that I had never felt better, and she responded only the Montgomery sent his regards. Whatever could the man mean? Chef sent up a Cobb salad, in spite of my express denial of vegetables.
Feast of Saint Wenog
I see a great black-hulled Viking longship floating serenely in a pale sky. Its oars are filligreed in gold, and its great square sail looks like a sheet of blood snapping in the breeze. From my angle standing below on the sands of an ancient dry seabed, I cannot see whoever is manning those oars, but they sweep across the sky, leaving arcs of crackling black emptiness against the eternally pale firmament. The sun never quite rises here, I am sure. Time does not pass to erase the scar of those great oars. But there is motion, movement, as attested by those marks seemingly walking across the sky. Time must pass, even if I cannot feel it and the sun never moves. Nothing moves, except the oars, the sail, the ship. I can see it moving, even when I cannot myself move, and while it does move and I do not, it never manages to move beyond my sight.
The voice of the Candle Man in my head tells this is all correct. My training is progressing satisfactorily.
Lunch was a single, enormous, brown mushroom cap. I am close to conceiving a hatred for Chef.
Printempts
The image (I pray) of a hugely corpulent man, fully nude and as pale as an exsanguinated corpse, accosts me while I shave. He struggles, wedged and overflowing the claw-footed tub that Mrs. Mallory had installed last season. He is not a guest, and I do not understand his speech, but I feel certain that he implores me somehow to do act upon his behalf. The feeling is like a physical tug inside my brain, as if the blood were rushing from one lobe to another in a grisly parody of the tides of the deep Bay of Fundy. My balance is…affected. I tip slightly toward the quivering image in the tub. I must remain extraordinarily attentive to my razor work, for the whole contents of two fully-grown men would certainly not be enough to sate the creature’s carmine thirst. Were I to nick myself, I am not certain that there is anything about his condition, bloated and stuck though he appears to be, that would prove sufficient to save me from a gruesome attack. Is that what his speech, low and guttural and atavistic, impels me to? Is that how he is released? If I could afford to waste the motion, I would shudder at the thought. I might wish that this were not the only mirror in the house, if I didn’t also know and fear the power of mirrors, counteracted only by the presence of water.
I believe this knowledge is shared by the corpulent man, and is how he came to be wedged into the tub. If there is a correlation there, mirrors and blood and water, I cannot discover it, not with sufficient distinction to leverage the knowledge against the strangely physical image.
Though unfashionable, perhaps I will grow a beard.
Lunch was not yet dead.
23rd of Ascension
I can feel…something. I awaken from a deep sleep to an uncomfortable sensation, a sort of subcutaneous horripilation, rippling up my right thigh. There is movement within my leg, as of some sort of wriggling creature. It almost feels as if something were in some fashion swimming in the layer between my muscles and my skin, without actually parting the tissue. There is no pain, nor any numbness. Just a feeling of something alien crawling within my body, making its way from my extremities towards my head, my brain. I cannot attempt visual verification of this sensation, as the gas has been shut off and it is sometime past midnight. Nor do I dare to move my hand to my thigh, to move my nightclothes and attempt to feel this thing with my most sensitive organs of touch. I dare not.
There is, naturally, no sound to register, beyond the regular surge of my pulses within my ears.
Of course, I am only assuming that the thing’s destination is my brain. I assume that it is an alien creature seeking to take control of my body, to direct my ambulent corpse through the world in pursuit of its unfathomable alien business. I must suppose that it is just as likely that the creature intends merely to set up housekeeping in my intestines.
Perhaps it seeks to raise a family within the warm, moist, protected environs of my torso, feeding on what would normally feed me, or perhaps feasting on my blood, as it raises its young. I imagine myself swelling, my bowels distending until the brood bursts forth to seek new lodgings, to renew the cycle in some other sad group of hosts. Will I be able to move at all while this is happening? Will I be drugged into stasis by the thing’s metabolic byproducts? Or will I remain aware?
I am not at all decided upon which of these courses is the worst for me, brood-nest or zombie.
I have almost made up my mind to rush to kitchen, to procure a cleaver or other utensil with which to dig this thing out of my flesh. But I find that I am quite unable to move. It is already too late. The thing’s venoms have already penetrated my bloodstream, and I am now completely at its mercy. I suppose I shall directly discover my fate. If I can remain awake. I become very drowsy, in spite of the weird sensations within my flesh. Perhaps this is another symptom of the creature’s venom. Perhaps then I will be fortunate; perhaps my duties as host may performed without my conscious will or knowledge.
I just have time before I succumb to unconsciousness to wonder what the Candle Man makes of my transformation.
Of course, this means I shall miss lunch, which was to have been a fine pork shoulder roast.
Auchtennesch of Quorn
The endless hammering glare of the eternally motionless sun reflecting from particulate gypsum, mica, and salt. The grit and grind of tiny mineral cubes in every secret crevice. The withering, super-heated air. The omnipotent silence.
This is the world.
Actually, I think that the silence at least is rather a good thing. It highlights my perfect solitude. Nothing survives out here. Alone with one’s thoughts. Free, at last, to think what one wishes, and follow those thoughts, finally, to some sort of real, uninterrupted conclusion.
A little slice of heaven in this otherwise perfect hell.
Or so it seemed at first. I am not so certain, now. I cannot be certain how long I have stood here: an hour; a day, one hundred years. Or perhaps I simply lack the psychic depths to which I had once attributed myself, privately. Whichever of those is truly the case, I now find myself bored. I have seemingly exhausted every thought I think I ever had, and now lack for any kind of diversion in this otherwise featureless locus. The only thoughts I now entertain concern my perception of and reaction to my environment. Which, as I have already stated, is something less than stimulating.
Oh dear.
Where once I contemplated the very bounds of existence, I now find my existence bound entirely in the experience of heat and chafing. It is a sort of inveigling agony, all the more torturous for its mildness.
I feel no triumph in enduring this hateful desert.
How long can such an experience persist? Is this eternity? Is this life? Or simply my life? Is there a quantifiable difference between “life” and “my life?”
In this perfect solitude, I do not know if these questions can ever have resolution; I am screaming into the void, and it will not scream back.
Lunch was, in observance of the Auchtennesch, held in a delightful outdoor cafe of the Italian persuasion, and consisted for a new-fangled dish called pizza.
I think Cook means to kill me.
Twelfth April
He stares at me all through the long silence of the night, the tiny candle of his soul burning blue and shining softly out from his eye sockets and gaping mouth. His presence is somehow soothing to me, even if the sulphur irritates my sinuses. But my visitor entertains a guest tonight, one whom I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting. His head is all triangles and teeth.
Or perhaps I am only seeing a mask in pressed leather. I cannot tell. In any event, his soul is not blue but rather red, and shines forth from his eye sockets and mouth with a rich, liquid brightness, as if the inside of his skull were an ancient silvered mirror. He is quite striking, and made all the more so for the contrast to my regular visitor.
This Man of Teeth and the Candle Man hold a long discussion as I lay in bed and quite keep me awake, although I have no recall of the subject of their monotone discourse. It is presumptuous of me to think their entire interview is spent upon my person, and yet…and yet.
Again, there is only sand in the morning to indicate that I had any visitation at all. Two piles of sand, and the memory of the odor of sulphur.
Mrs. Malloy is becoming quite cross about both.
My session with Montgomery today was quite vexing. He seemed to think that this newly invested Commissioner of Internal Revenue means to audit in some fashion my annual contribution to the Treasury, even though my income most certainly fell well below the required threshold of taxation and my contributions were therefore entirely voluntary. But then, I also thought it no coincidence that our new scrip portrayed pyramids with eyes and tentacles, which did not even register to Montgomery’s jaded eye. Cook produced a delightful escargot for our lunch, which Montgomery declared repugnant and inedible. I am worried for him.
Apr. 3
Something causes me to awaken suddenly in the night. I become aware of the Candle Man whispering unintelligibly in my ear, closer to me than he has ever been before, the light of his soul dazzling in the darkness. Slowly, my groggy consciousness recognizes a dim glow in a corner of my chamber. The Candle Man’s whispers become more urgent, but no more intelligible. I can see the beams of his soul in the lantern of his skull dimming, even as the suffusion of orange light increases next to the coal scuttle.
And then he is gone, the blue beams snuffed out, while the glow invading my room has taken on the tones of a Maxfield Parrish sunset, if the painter had had only one hue left on his palette and no choice but to finish his work. I am paralyzed, as a cold, sweaty dread saps my will to move, even to breath.
A cold blare of tinny trumpets heralds the arrival of a being new to my midnight chambers, and a vast, luminous orange head, with drooping lips and sagging jowls, its eyes squinted quite shut against its own glare, erupts into existence in a fountain of ectoplasm which splashes over every available surface, even my own prostrate body.
I am certain that Mrs. Malloy will have something unkind to say about the spectral deposit left by this visitor.
The being speaks, gibbering madly in a tongue that I take to be English but which is completely indecipherable. There are promises made, a contract offered, but I cannot comprehend so much as a single clause. Montgomery would naturally counsel me not to accept until some legitimate legal power has had the opportunity to peruse the articles thus offered, and I would agree with him. But I am so paralyzed that I can neither consent to nor deny said articles. The muscles of my throat spasm uncontrollably, and I fear that I will choke, either upon the ectoplasm which has spattered grotesquely onto my face or upon the bilious mass rising from my gorge.
The head, visibly vaster than the space it occupies, seems to take my lack of response as consent of a kind, sufficient unto its cause. It radiates an Infernal smugness and laughs, ectoplasmic spittle spraying across my chambers. It then rushes at me, as if from a great distance in spite of the evident smallness of the space, and seems to pass into – and I dare hope through – me in another splashing wave of faintly luminous ectoplasm.
I am now doubly drenched, and weakened beyond endurance. And whether I truly expire – and the world with me – with the passing of the orange glow, or simply lose consciousness, to awaken in the morning to a world changed and yet not changed and unrecognizable in either case, I think I will never know.
Chef prepared a delightful trifle of acorns, although I cannot fathom where he might have acquired such in this season.
First April
As is the custom, Chef has tried again to kill me. Or perhaps he is attempting to exercise some unholy control of me through my bowels. The wind he creates there does not credit my fortitude, however, and I live. For now.
The Candle Man came to me last night, and enquired after the Man of Teeth. But I had not seen that worthy gentleman in some time and was therefore of little use to my interrogator, in consequence of which he set the cats upon me. Their claws were like fire in my flesh, and I burned with a fever for some days before Mrs. Malloy came to my aid with a peppermint tonic.
Jacquard Pape deNeuf
I am lonesome. All have abandoned me: the Candle Man, the Man of Teeth, Mrs. Malloy, the cats; even the diabolical Chef has been avoiding me. All the irregular deities of my bleak, midnight existence. Even Montgomery sent around a short note to the effect that he regrets his inability to leave his chambers for even a short visit. Which I know to be false as that man has never regretted a single debauched act in his richly immoral life.
I continue to see figures in the mirror while I attend to my ablutions, but they no longer attempt to contact me as they once did. They seem now only to be passing, as if my mirror were little more than a connecting platform between two disparate modes of transport. My own reflection is more perfectly recognizable as my own than has ever before been the case, a circumstance which gave me quite a turn once I recognized it. He then sang “O sole mio” but would not give up the libretto, so I remain uncertain what I mean in the choice of the season’s entertainment wonder as an attempt at communication. It’s all clicks and whistles and bar, bar, bar.
I hope I have not gone mad. I hope that this, madness I mean, is not the reason for my abandonment. I thought better of the Candleman, at least; his soul was always so soothing, so reassuring in the night. Now, only the cockroaches will approach me, begging for suffrage. It is all so unbearable. Or were my midnight friends always cockroaches all along?
I will have fillet of salmon for lunch. That much, at least, I may yet control.
Apr. 2
It seems always to be a rainy day in April without my chambers, and the blackest of midnights within. Chef stands at the end of my bed, the blue flames of his tears streaming down his stubbled cheeks. He wrings his hands and pleads most piteously, most unmanfully, but I will not be swayed. Indeed, I am quite disgusted by his display, and will happily gorge upon the feast laid out before me. A feast the preparation of which he had no hand. I think it professional jealousy alone that drives his current abject behavior.
It is some manner of fish, I believe. Certainly, there are gills, and scales suggesting that it has not been adequately prepared. But the scent rising off the platter – which takes up nearly the whole of my bed! – is beyond enticing! The cats cluster about me, politely refraining from jumping up, but most insistently purring and rubbing their sinuous bodies against my legs in a manner that is almost disagreeable. I find that I am drooling, an action which under any other circumstance would be most shameful but which here seems somehow demanded.
I can withstand the temptation no longer, and plunge my hands through the skin of the repast into the hot flesh beneath. The heavenly odor intensifies beyond reason – this must be the same manna upon which the angels feed! I confess that I lose any semblance of control and scoop handfuls of steaming meat directly into my mouth, barely bothering to chew before I swallow. If I were to watch myself from without my own body I would doubtlessly retch at this display; fortunately I have no mirrors in my chambers. The flavor is, unbelievably, more potent than even the scent.
Something occurs now which I have not the language to convey. The aftermath is simple enough, however. Chef removes the platter from my bed, and the cats immediately fall to; there is adequate remaining from my early essay to provide the entire kettle. He wipes his tears with his apron and arranges what remains of me upon my bed. His leaving removes the last source of light from my chambers, which are plunged into unassailable darkness, in which I hear only the sounds of the cats eating, magnified by the isolation.
Only Montgomery had the gauche simplicity to comment upon my head today. Although I suppose it must have been somewhat amazing to see a man whose head had been entirely replaced by a single, enormous, blue flame, only the lowest, most cretinous oaf would have demonstrated his awareness of the alteration even to a close associate – I may begin to hate Montgomery for this. I craved escargot for lunch, but the grocer did not understand what I meant by the word. He offered me an eel, which I thought in very poor taste under the circumstances.
Apr. 2
I begin to see them everywhere, even in the Waking World. The Fat Man, his vast corpulence supported by some invisible fluid, bobs along the High Street, his feet never quite touching the ground, dripping loathsome water onto the pavements. I shudder to think of what must have passed to free him from his prison.
There are diverse others with the candles of their souls shining undimmed by the sun, walking unabashed amongst the People. But they are not talking and shopping as the People do. They walk, and cast the beams of their souls about in much the same way that the beams of a lighthouse – small lamps of whale oil multiplied a million times through the crystal series of the Fresnel lens – are cast through the foggy darkness of a dangerous nautical night. And I wonder then, against what strange shoals the beams of their souls, all blue and red and daisy-yellow, are warning, out here in the Waking World?
I notice also the Thing With Tentacles On Its Face standing in a shadowed doorway. Its well-turned-out overcoat bulges and ripples with a random series of undulations. It watches me pass its doorway – I can feel the pressure of Its eyeless gaze. And then It is in another doorway. The tentacles on Its face drape lanquidly over the sharply creased collar, oozing some benthic substance down the front of the oiled felt of Its coat. It watches me as I pass Its doorway and again I feel the pressure of Its eyeless gaze all over, as if I am inside some sort of invisible hyperbaric chamber. And then It is in another doorway. And another. Over and over. Only the fact that my head was a great blue flame, I think, keeps It from acting on whatever inhuman acts It contemplates against my person.
I begin also to see cats everywhere. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that I begin to notice the cats that have always been there? Except that they are frequently in places I had previously thought impossible for a living creature to occupy. Have they always been there, lounging atop the tables of every cafe? Sitting balanced precariously but upside-down on the bottom of the street signs? Sunning themselves atop every lamp post. Disappearing into shadows even at the height of the noonday sun. Trapped, and yet seemingly unconcerned and therefor perhaps not actually trapped, in the reflections in a pane of glass glanced at on the oblique.
I believe that I feel…no. I do. I do most certainly feel comforted by the knowledge of their presence, their constant vigil, even though I know they would not quiver a whisker to save me from even the slightest of dangers.
It is an odd sensation.
But I am forced to acknowledge that there is little that is not odd about the whole of my experience of late.
Lunch was a flank steak of zephyr, bloody rare and lightly seasoned with herbs de provence. Montgomery dined on wine only, and became quite jolly by the end of the hour.
Apr. 2
The boarding house catches fire while I sleep. The Candle Man and the Man of Teeth rescue me from the flames and carry me to safety. But they could not bring me into the Waking World. They are unable to walk there themselves, or so they tell me. Beside that restriction, however, they may go where they please, and promise to secure a similar dispensation for me as soon as they are able. But they counsel me to patience, and say that it is Chef who burns the boarding house this night. I am not safe in the Waking World.
I protest that I am never safe in the Waking World. No one is. It is a fact of life that it is dangerous, that it may be lost or taken on a whim at any moment. My rescuers register horror at this statement, and I assure them that while it is true, most people are unburdened by the awareness of the fact. This assurance comforts the Man of Teeth rather less than I thought it ought.
We stand in a place of great, deep darkness. Stars shine coldly overhead, unwinking and hard, but they are not the stars I know. The Word is changed, and I cannot read it. The Badger is gone, replaced by a Horrible Mollusk. I search for the Thought Which Cannot Be Unthought, but it is not there. I cannot even recall what it says in my own mind, wherein I have Thought it may times. And the Thing With Tentacles On Its Face walks behind me, no longer restrained in the sky, an unseen presence in the back of my mind. The beams of their souls, the Candle Man’s blue and the Man of Teeth’s red, shine forth from the lanterns of their skulls like the beams of lighthouses, cutting through the darkness without illuminating anything.
I want to crouch down , to make myself small, to curl up and burrow deeply into the still-warm sand. The Man of Teeth tells me that I must not hide in the sand, that I must not block out the light of my soul, or I risk being taken. But he will not tell me what – or who – would take me. Nor where, but evidently the World of Sand is no safer than the Waking World. This thought, unvoiced, causes my rescuers to laugh, a sound like wind over sand. They refuse to explain their reaction.
Something of their words echoes around in the darkness surrounding us, and I am confused and frightened. For in the Waking World, at least, oceans of sand do not support echoes. All the soft edges of the dunes, the millions of sharp, tiny edges of the individual silica particles, serve to refract and shatter and mute sounds such that no utterance survives to produce and echo. But I am reminded that the World of Sand has different laws; and echoes survive, thrive, and multiply here, living rich, full, and thoroughly diverse lives so sadly denied to them in the Waking World. They talk to each other across our heads, and whisper into my ears the repeated phrase, “You must not block out the light of your soul.”
I stagger, and the Candle Man catches one arm while the Man of Teeth catches the other, and they together half carry and half guide me deeper into the darkness. Deeper into an almost palpable blackness quite unlike the darkness of night. A darkness which even the beams of their souls do not wholly penetrate. But I know now where they are taking me, and I do not fear.
The candle of my soul has been lighted. The lantern of my skull is being refashioned, remade, to reflect and concentrate the light. And soon the Waking World must be awakened from its dread slumber.
Search for me, readers. Seek me out, here on the other side of the night.
And tell Montgomery to go straight to Hell.
