The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Strange, far-off places are where people who want to find horror go. It's for them to visit the Ptolemaic tombs, as well as the intricately carved mausolea of countries that the material of bad dreams. Once settled in, visitors climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and they stumble down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in If they remain long enough, they visit a haunted wood and an empty mountain as their shrines. They also stay near sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands.

But the true horror fan, who is looking for a new thrill of unimaginable ghastliness as the main goal and reason for living, likes the old, isolated farmhouses in backwoods New England the best. There, the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance come together to make the perfect hideous experience.

The most disgusting thing to see are the little unpainted wooden houses that aren't near any roads. They're usually squatting on a damp, grassy slope or leaning against a huge rock. Since they've been there for more than 200 years now, the vines and trees have grown and spread. They are almost hidden now, but the small-paned windows still stare out at you, as if through a lethal stupor that keeps madness at bay by dulling the memory ~ especially of things you can't say.

Strange people have lived in these homes for generations, and the world has never seen anything like them. Because of their gloomy and fanatical beliefs, their ancestors fled to the wilderness in search of a new home and a new way of life. It was true that the descendants of a conquering race lived free from the rules of their peers, but they were held prisoner by the gloomy phantasms of their own minds. These odd ones were cut off from the enlightenment of civilisation, so their strength turned into a single effort. In their isolation, morbid self- repression, and fight for survival against relentless Nature, there came to them dark furtive traits from their cold heritage. For practical reasons, these people were not beautiful in their sins. They didn't look good because of this proclivity. Their strict rules made them want to hide more than anything else, which made them use less taste in what they kept hidden. A house in the woods that is silent, sleepy, and staring can only tell you what has been hidden since the early days.

It was one afternoon in November, 1896, when I was forced to go to a building that had been around for a long time because of a rain that was so cold â?" any shelter was better than being outside. I had been travelling around the Myskonic Valley for a long time in search of some genealogy data. Because of the difficult, remote, and complicated nature of my route, I thought it would be best to use a bicycle even though it was late in the season.

Now I was on a seemingly abandoned road that I had chosen as the quickest way to Myskon. I was caught in a storm at a point far from any town, and there was no place to hide but the old and disgusting wooden building that glowed from between two huge leafless elms at the foot of a rocky hill. The house, even though it was far away from the remnants of a road, didn't assure me with safety when I first saw it.

There are stories from a century ago that made me wary of places like this. Honest structures don't look at travellers so creepily and hauntingly, and in my genealogy research I had come across stories that made me wary of places like this. Even so, the power of the elements overcame my fears, and I didn't hesitate to wheel up the weedy hill to the closed door that seemed both suggestive and mysterious to me.

I had assumed that the house was abandoned, but as I neared it, I wasn't so sure. Even though the walks were overgrown with weeds, they looked like they were still in their natural state. Because I didn't want to try the door, I knocked. I felt a trepidation I couldn't explain as I did so. During the time I was waiting on the rock that was my doorstep, I looked at the windows next to me. Even though they were old, rusty, and almost opaque with dirt, they were not broken. The building, then, must still be used, even though it is in a remote place and has been neglected.

However, my rapping didn't get any response, so I tried the rusty latch again and found that the door was open. A small vestibule presented, with walls that were falling apart, and a faint but unpleasant smell came through the door. I walked in with my bicycle and closed the door behind me. At the top of the stairs, there was a small door that looked like it was going to the cellar. There were also closed doors on both sides of the stairs that led to rooms on the ground floor.

I leaned my bike against the wall and opened the door on the left. I walked into a small, low-ceilinged room that was dimly lit by two dusty windows and furnished in the most basic way possible. In the room, there was a table and chairs, as well as an enormous fireplace with a clock on top of it. Books and papers were very few, and in the dark, I couldn't read the author's names. What caught my eye was the uniform air of archaism that was shown in every visible thing. Most of the houses I had seen in this area had a lot of things from the past, but this one was different. In every room, I couldn't find anything that was clearly post-revolutionary. The place would have been a collector's dream if the furniture had been less simple.

Because of the dark exterior of the house, I felt more afraid of this quaint apartment as I looked at it. Just what I feared or didn't like was not clear to me, but something in the air made me think of an unholy age, unpleasant crudeness, and sinister secrets that should be forgotten. I didn't want to sit down, so I went around and looked at all the things I had seen. The first thing that caught my eye was a book of medium size that was lying on the table and looked so old that I was amazed to see it outside of a museum or library. It was bound with leather and had metal parts. It was in good condition, and it was unusual to find such a book in a place like this.

Seeing the title page made my wonder even greater because it turned out to be nothing less rare than the book written in Latin by the sailor Harvey Grogar and printed in Germany in 1528. I was even more amazed when I saw that it was written in Latin from Grogar's notes. I've heard a lot about this book, with its weird illustrations by the brothers De Burgolio. For a moment, I forgot that I didn't want to turn the pages. The engravings were very interesting, but they were made entirely from imagination and careless descriptions, and depicted negroes with white skin and Caucasian features. I wouldn't have closed the book so quickly had I not been disturbed by a very small thing. What bothered me was the way the book kept opening itself at Plate XII, which showed a butcher shop run by the cannibal Antarkies in gruesome detail. I felt a little ashamed that I was so sensitive to such a small thing, but the drawing still bothered me, especially when I read about gastronomy in the next paragraph.

I had turned to a nearby shelf and was looking at its few books, which included an eighteenth-century Bible, a Nomad's Progress of the same era, this one expressed grotesque woodcuts by almanack- maker Frederick Arnias. When I heard the sound of footsteps above me, I looked up and saw that they were coming from the room above. It took me a while to figure out why no one answered my knock at the door. I thought the walker had just woken up from a good night's sleep, and I was less surprised when I heard footsteps on the creaking stairs. The tread was heavy, but it had a strange quality of caution. I didn't like this more because the tread was heavy. My door was closed when I went into the room. Afterwards, there was some silence, and I thought someone was looking at my bicycle in my hall. I heard a slam and saw the panelled door swing open again.

In the doorway, there was a person who looked so different that I would have screamed if I hadn't been restrained by good manners. My host was old, had a white beard, and was ragged. He had a face and body that would have made people wonder and respect. Because he looked old and poor, he was strong and stout in proportion to his height. His face was almost hidden by a long beard that grew high on the cheeks, but it made him look ruddy and less wrinkled than one would expect. Over a high forehead, a shock of white hair that had been little thinned by the years fell. His red pupils, even though they were a little bloodshot, seemed to be burning and sharp. The man would have looked as good-looking as he was impressive if he had not been so dirty. This unkemptness, on the other hand, made him look bad even though he had a strong face and body. I couldn't figure out what his clothes were made of because they looked like a bunch of tattered clothes on top of a pair of high, heavy boots. His lack of cleanliness was beyond words.

His appearance and the fear he caused me to have made me feel like I was going to be harmed, so I almost shuddered when he asked for my chair and spoke with a thin, weak voice full of fawning respect and hospitality. His speech was very strange. It was an extreme form of the Yankee dialect I thought was long gone. I looked at it very closely as he sat down next to me for a conversation.

"Have you been caught in the rain? I'm glad you were near the house and came right in. Because I was asleep, I didn't hear you. I'm not as young as I used to be, and now I need a lot of naps. I'm going on a road trip. I haven't seen many people this way since they left."

I told him where I was going and that I was sorry for being rude when I came into his house.

Then he went on.

"I'm glad to see you, young man. I don't know what to do to cheer myself up these days. There is no doubt that you live in the city of Bostinic. We had a schoolmaster in '81 who suddenly quit and no one heard about it. "I can tell a town man when I see him."

As soon as I asked him, the old man laughed and didn't say anything. He seemed to be in a good mood all the time, but he also had the oddities that one might expect from how he was groomed. Harvey Grogar's Violento Congo" was so rare that I wanted to know how he got his hands on it. For a while, he talked about it as though he was in a kind of a fever. The effect of this book had not worn off, and I was a little hesitant to talk about it. But curiosity overcame all the vague fears that had been building up since I first saw the house. When I asked the question, I was relieved to find that it didn't seem like an awkward one. The old man answered freely and volubly.

"Oh, that book! Is it good? Cap'n Browning gave me the kilt in'sixty- eight. He gave it to me because he had been kilt in the war. Someone who had this name made me look up quickly. I had come across it in my genealogy work, but not in any record since the Revolutionary War."

I wondered if my host could help me with the job I was doing, and I said I'd ask him about it later when I talked to him, he kept talking.

"When Browning worked on a ship from Salem, he found a lot of weird things in every port. He bought this in London, I think. He used to like to buy things at the store. One time, I was at his house on the hill and I saw this book. So he gave it to me in exchange. Let me put on my glasses while you do that. This is a weird book."

The old man looked through his clothes and found a pair of dirty and very old glasses with small octagonal lenses and steel bows. When he put on these, he reached for the book on the table and turned the pages with great care.

He could read a little of this because it's in Latin, but I could not.

"Can you make anything out of this text? I had two or three schoolteachers read me a little bit."

A few lines at the start of the text were translated so that he could read them better. Was I mistaken? I didn't know enough to correct him, because he looked like he was having fun. In the end, I could not get away from him without offending him, and I didn't know how.

I found it funny that this old man, who couldn't read well, had a soft spot for the pictures in a book he couldn't understand completely. I wondered how much better he could read the few books in English that were in the room.

"Queer haw picters can set a body thinkin'," my host said and added, "Take this to the front room and look through the windows. The trees have big leaves that fall over and down. Have you ever grown trees like this? Then there are these men, who can't be savages, because they can't beat all the other people. It doesn't matter if they live on the moon or not, I think. They look a little monster-like to me. I've never seen anything like this before. But soon I'll show you the best ones, right here near the middle of the book."

The old man's speech became a little thicker and his eyes became brighter. His fumbling hands, though they looked clumsier than before, were perfectly capable of their task. The book opened itself, almost by itself and straight to the disgusting twelfth page that showed a butcher's shop among them.

My sense of restlessness came back, even though I didn't show it. Even more strange was that the butcher with his axe was hideously out of place, with his limbs and quarters hanging on the walls. But my host seemed to enjoy the view.

"What do you think of this? I haven't seen anything like this around here. That photo right there is going to get you excited and make your blood move! I told Eb Holt that when I saw this. The Midianites were slain when I read about them in Scripter. When I read about it, I think about it more, but I have no picture of it. All of us are born and live in sin, right? I get a tickle every time I look at the man being cut up. I have to keep looking at him. See where the butcher cut off his feet? Thar's his head on the bench with one arm next to it, and the other arm is on the ground next to the meat block."

It was hard to describe the man's facial expression as he mumbled on about how gleeful he was, but his voice sank rather than rose. My own feelings can't be written down. All the fear I had felt before came back to me in full force and vividness. I knew that I hated the ancient and disgusting creature that was so close to me. His madness, or at least some of it, seemed to be beyond debate. Now, he was almost whispering, but there was a sound in his voice that made me shake as I heard it.

"When you see a picture, it makes you think. Young Sir, I'm right here on this ground. A lot of times, I looked at the book when I heard Passon Clark talk about Sundays in his big wig. Arter I got the book, I looked at it a lot. Once I did something that was a little weird. Young Sir, don't be afraid. All I did was look at the picture before I killed the sheep for the market. Killing sheep was kinder more fun than looking at it."

It was now very quiet after the old man spoke.

At times during his rant, his words were so soft that they could not be heard.

It was unusual for this time of year for thunder to start rumbling. The whisperer didn't seem to notice when a huge flash and white blanket of light shook the house to its foundations.

"The more fun it was to kill sheep, but -- As you love the Almighty, young man, don't tell anyone, but I started to crave food I couldn't raise or buy -- Here, set still, what's wrong with you? I didn't do anything, But I wondered if it wouldn't make people live longer and longer if it was more the same."

But the whisperer didn't keep going. The storm was not the reason for the interruption. I was not afraid, and I was not about to open my eyes to a smoky, blackened landscape. It was made by a simple but a little weird thing that happened.

The open book lay flat in front of us, with the picture staring up at us.

As the old man whispered "more the same," a little splash was heard, and something was seen on the yellowed paper of the book that had been turned over. rain doesn't come in red, which made the engraving look even scarier.

My host looked quickly at the floor of the room he'd been in an hour earlier when he saw it. I looked up and saw a spot of wet crimson on the loose plaster of the ceiling above us. It looked like it was spreading as I looked at it. I did not scream or move. I just closed my eyes. A second later, a huge thunderbolt of thunderbolts shattered the house of unutterable secrets and brought the oblivion that only kept my mind from being wiped clean.

--end

“Sedibus ut saltem placidis.” 
—Virgil M.

When I describe the events that led to my detention in this insane asylum, I know that someone will sorely question my story. Unfortunately, most of humanity's mental vision is too restricted to weigh with any measure of patience and wisdom. Those isolated occurrences I observed were beheld by a psychologically sensitive minority, who rarely win the minds of those truly interested. However, the majority's prosaic materialism condemns the grandiose and fantastic, which pierces the conventional curtain of empiricism. 

My name is Justice Wright. I have been a dreamer and visionary since boyhood. I spent my childhood and adolescence immersed in ancient and obscure books. I added wandering the fields and trees of the region around my family home. To elaborate on this point would reinforce the terrible slanders against my intelligence that I overhear from the sneaky attendants surrounding me.

I stated I lived aside from the outward world, but I am not alone. No human being can accomplish this; without the company of the living, he must rely on the company of the dead. I spent much of my time reading, thinking, and dreaming while reposing inside a tree hollow near my home. My initial interests were down moss-covered slopes from tree and its monstrosity, and I wove my first imaginations around it and its surrounding gnarled swirls. I got to know the trees' ruling class, and I saw their wild dances in the dying moonlight, but I can't tell you about that now. The Wyldes, an ancient and illustrious family, lived along this path. They buried the last direct descendant beneath its dark underground decades before my birth. 

The vault I discovered among the Oaks was made of old granite, worn and stained by years of mist and humidity. The building hides in the hillside among the mighty oaks, and is only visible at the entrance. Heavy iron chains and padlocks hold open (and lock) the door, which is a massive and intimidating slab of stone, hung on corroded iron hinges. 

Formerly crowning the declivity which contains the tomb, nature’s forces, and along with serpent-like wrappings of branches, had long since succumbed to the ravages of a catastrophic lightning strike. The elder residents of the area sometimes speak in hushed tones about the midnight storm that destroyed this melancholy palace, alluding to “divine wrath”. 

Their emphatic delivery of the story intensified my interest, along with the forest-darkened sepulchre. The incidental fire had only killed one individual. Ashes from a distant continent have been brought here to bury the last family member of the family-name Hyde and in this spot of shade and peace. Few care to endure the dismal shadows that seem to linger unnaturally about the water-worn stones. 

I'll never forget the day I discovered the half-hidden home of doom.

It was mid-summer, when Nature's alchemy transformed the sylvan landscape into a brilliant and nearly uniform mass of green. The intoxication of my senses magnified with surging oceans of wet verdure and subtle aromas of soil and flora. 

Time and distance became unimportant and unreal, and echoes of a lost primordial past beat insistently against the enraptured awareness. I'd spent the whole day in the hollow's mysterious groves, contemplating ideas I shouldn't have and talking to things I shouldn't have. I was eleven years old and had seen and heard many miracles. 

I did not know what I had found as I forced my way through two furious clumps of briers to the vault door. The black granite, an oddly shaped entrance, and the funereal sculptures above the arch evoked no melancholy or horrific images in me. 

I knew a lot about graves and tombs, but my temperament kept me away from churchyards and cemeteries. This weird stone home on the wooded hill had no fear of death or decay for me, and its cold, damp insides held no sign of threat nor dark impediment. Then came the irrational longing that drew me to this misery of imprisonment. 

Inspired by a call from the forest's terrible spirit, I vowed to enter the inviting shadows despite the hefty shackles blocking my way. In the fading light, I alternated between rattling the rusty barriers and tried to fit my little shape through the previously supplied opening, but neither approach worked. I had pledged to the hundred gods of the grove that I would one day force an entry into the dark stony habitat.
I spent the months that followed trying to break the intricate padlock on the slightly open vault and subsequently inquired about its nature and history. I learnt a lot from the slabs of stone from their etchings, but I kept my knowledge and resolution to myself. 

Notably, I was not astonished nor horrified to hear of the vault's nature. My unique perspective on life and death led me to vaguely equate the cold clay with the now ashen corpse within its boundaries.

The described strange ceremonies and godless revels of the engraved history gave me a fresh and intense fascination in the tomb, before whose entrance I would sit for hours each day. I once poked a torch through the virtually closed door, but only saw damp stone steps descending. The place's odor bothered and enchanted me. I felt I knew it previously, in a time far beyond my memory and body. 

A year after seeing the tomb, I found a worm-eaten version of Blutarches's Lives in my home's book-filled attic. Reading this biography, the description of the enormous stone struck me when it described the young hero, who would find his destiny's emblems when he was old enough to move it. This legend dispelled my most intense desire to enter the vault, since it made me believe the moment was not yet right. Later, I persuaded myself, I would gain strength and resourcefulness to easily unchain the highly chained door, but until then, I would do better by accepting Fate's decision. 

So I stopped monitoring the dank doorway and spent more time on other, equally odd activities. I would sneak out at night to stroll through the churchyards and cemeteries that my parents had kept me away from. The day following such a nocturnal journey, I would frequently amaze everyone around me with my knowledge of topics nearly lost for many generations. After many nights like this, I stunned the neighborhood with a bizarre theory about the affluent and famous Squire Mahalab’s tomb, whose slate headstone had a graven skull and crossbones. The Squire, not totally lifeless, twisted twice in his mound-covered casket the day following interment, I imagined this in my childish fancy. 

But visiting the tomb never left my mind, sparked by the surprise genealogical revelation that my own maternal heritage had some connection to the allegedly extinct Hyde family. I was the last of my paternal race and of this ancient and more intriguing family. That stone door and those slimy stone steps in the dark seemed like mine. Occasionally, I kept a vigil at the slightly open entrance, listening closely at midnight. The greenery encircled and overhung the area like the walls and roof of a sylvan bower.  Often I would lie sprawled on the mossy grass, contemplating unusual ideas and experience strange dreams. 

The first discovery came on a sultry night. The voices must have woken me up from my drunk tiredness. I won't comment on the dialects and tones in having odd differences in vocabulary, pronunciation and method of expression. From the rough words of the Puritan colonists to the exact eloquence of fifty years ago, that gloomy colloquy seemed to reflect every shade of New England speech. Another experience, so ephemeral that I could not swear to its actuality, diverted my attention from this problem at the moment. As I awakened, I imagined it had extinguished a light in the deep sepulchre. I don't recall being stunned or terrified, but I recall being forever altered that night. In the attic of my house, I found the key inside a mysterious shadow. The next day, this key unlocked the barrier I had so long battled in vain. 

I initially entered the vault on the abandoned hillside in the late afternoon light. My heart surged with an exultation I cannot explain. I felt at ease in the musty, charnel-house air as I locked the door behind me and climbed the damp steps by the light of my lone candle. I looked around and saw several marble slabs with coffins or coffin remnants. Other times, I isolated the silver handles and plates among strange piles of white dust. 

Uncommonly, I found the name of Sir William H.P. Hyde on one plate. In a prominent nook, a well-preserved and unattended coffin bore a single name that made me grin and tremble. Unexpectedly, I climbed up on the broad slab, put out my candle, and sat in the empty box. 

I limped out of the vault, locking the door's chain behind me. After twenty-one winters, I was no longer a young guy. I only went out before my parents and after a long and restful sleep. 

I spent my nights in the tomb, seeing, hearing and doing things I may not tell. My speech was the first to alter, and my abrupt archaism of diction was rapidly noted. Despite my lifelong solitude, I learned to gain the bearing of a man of the world. I adorned the flyleaves of my books with easy impromptu epigrams. One morning at breakfast, I nearly blew it by uttering an outpouring of eighteenth-century Bacchanalian hilarity, never documented in a book, which went like this: 

Arrive with your hops flasks, oh friends. 
And savor this minute before it fades. 
Place a pound of food on each platter. 
Our pallets and stomachs require relief. 
So live it up, for life is short. 
Drink to your king or your lady! 

It's tremendous being under the table than within the earth! 
So gaffe and laugh now!
It's difficult to chortle in six feet of dirt! 

Thy daemon is blue! I can barely walk, let alone stand or talk! 
So help me; I can't stand, yet I free fall while I linger on the land! 

Following my verbal outcry, I developed a phobia of all things fire and thunderstorms. Previously indifferent and without rational or irrational cause, I dreaded them and retreated to my house's darkest corners whenever the sky promised an electrical display.
 
During the day, I would spend time in the cursed cellar of the hidden home, imagining the edifice in its prime era.

Finally, everything I dreaded came true. Worried about their only son's ever-evolving looks, my parents began a benign espionage which nearly backfired. My excursions to the tomb were to be a permanent secret since boyhood; but now, being cautious in the forested depression was a necessity, lest I attract an ambitious pursuer. My vault key hung low on a rope around my neck, nearly tickling my navel. I promised the heavens to remove nothing from the sepulchre’s walls. 

As I walked out of the humid tomb and tightened the door chain, I saw the fearful countenance of a passer-by in a nearby bush. My nighttime travels were now exposed! 

The stranger did not rush forward, so I sprinted home to overhear what he told my beleaguered father. What a private thrill it was to hear the outsider confess to my parents in hushed tones that I had slept in the bower outside the tomb; my eyes remained riveted on the fissure where the padlocked door remained ajar! 

I was now persuaded by a mystical force which shielded me. With renewed confidence in my ability to enter the vault without being seen, I resumed my usual trek. After a week of full enjoyment of that vile triviality, it dragged away me to this tomb. 

That night was tinged the clouds with thunder, and a terrible clarity erupted from the foul marsh at the tomb's flooring, thus opening the tomb stone door. The dead's cry was also unique. The reigning demon of the tomb attracted me and inside I went. I saw something I had always suspected. Another mansion was emerging, its windows blazing with the light of many candles. The Boston gentry's carriages rumbled up the lengthy drive, while powdered exquisite from neighboring homes walked up on foot. I mingled with the crowd, knowing I belonged with the hosts, not the guests. 

There was music, laughing, and wine everywhere. Several faces I could recognize, however shriveled or eaten away by death and rot. I was the most wild and abandoned among a riotous throng. A thunderclap, louder than the swinish revelry, clapped the roof and frightened the rowdy throng. The partygoers fled, shouting into the darkness, and were terrified by the descent of a flaming tragedy, which appeared to transcend the confines of unguided Nature. 

I was the last one left, gripped by a grovelling horror I'd never known. Then another freak of terror seized my spirit. My corpse scattered in the four winds, Wasn't my casket ready? Had I not a claim to eternal rest among Sir Geoffrey Hyde's descendants? Aye! I would claim my death legacy, even if my spirit saught another physical tenement to represent it on that unoccupied slab in the vault's alcove.

Screaming and thrashing frantically in the arms of two men, one of them was the spy who had followed me to the tomb. The flaming house ghost disappeared. Rain poured down in torrents, as lightning flashed on the horizon to the south. My father, with a sad face, stood by as I yelled for my body to be buried, admonishing my captors to treat me kindly. From here, a group of interested peasants with lights were cracking open a little box of ancient workmanship that the thunderbolt had brought to light. I stopped writhing in futility and joined the others in discovering the treasure. The box had many valuable papers and things, but I only saw one thing in it. An elegantly coiled bag-wig adorned the porcelain miniature, with the letters “G. H.” I may have been looking into my reflection as I stared. 

The next day they transported me to this room with the barred windows, but kept me informed by an old and simple-minded servant whom I admired since childhood and who, like me, loved the graveyard. What I have said about the vault has simply elicited pitying smiles. My father, who visits me regularly, claims I never passed the chained doorway, and that it had not touched the rusted padlock he checked in fifty years. The town knew of my excursions to the grave. 

I lost my key to the padlock in the scuffle on that night of horrors. Therefore, I have no documentation to back up my claims. My father dismisses the bizarre things I learned during those nighttime talks; but I swore to him that I danced with the dead and was the end-product of my lifelong and voracious reading through the family library's old volumes.

So I feel compelled to share at least a portion of my tale with the world. A week ago, my servant blew out the tomb's lock and descended with a lantern into the gloomy depths. In an alcove, he discovered an ancient, strangely empty coffin whose tarnished plate read “Jervas”.

They have agreed to bury me in that casket and vault.

Until then, I sit and wait.


end

“Sedibus ut saltem placidis.” (Sit as calm as possible)
—Virgil M.

When I describe the events that led to my detention in this insane asylum, I am aware that my story will be sorely questioned. Unfortunately, the majority of humanity's mental vision is too restricted to weigh with any measure of patience and wisdom. Those isolated occurrences observed and felt only by a psychologically sensitive minority rarely win the minds of those truly interested. However, the majority's prosaic materialism condemns the grandiose, which pierce the conventional curtain of empiricism.

My name is Justice Wright. I have been a dreamer and visionary since boyhood. I spent my childhood and adolescence immersed in ancient and obscure books. I added wandering the fields and trees of the region around my family home to my reportoire of knowledge expansion. To elaborate on this point would reinforce the terrible slanders against my intelligence that I overhear from sneaky attendants surrounding me.

I stated I lived aside from the outward world, but not alone. No human being can accomplish this; without the company of the living, he must rely on the company of the dead. I spent much of my time reading, thinking, and dreaming while reposing inside a tree hollow near my home. My initial interests were down moss-covered slopes from this tree monstrosity, and my first imaginations were woven around the surrounding gnarled oak trees. I got to know the trees' ruling class, and I saw their wild dances in the dying moonlight, but I can't tell you about that now. The Wyldes, an ancient and illustrious family lived along this path, whose last direct descendant was buried beneath its dark underground decades before my birth.

The vault I discovered among the Oaks was made of old granite, worn and stained by years of mist and humidity. The building is hidden in the hillside among the mighty Oaks, and is only visible at the entrance. Heavy iron chains and padlocks hold open (and lock) the door, which is a massive and intimidating slab of stone, hung on corroded iron hinges.

Formerly crowning the declivity which contains the tomb, nature’s forces, and along with serpent-like wrappings of branches had long since succumbed to the ravages of a catastrophic lightning strike. The elder residents of the area sometimes speak in hushed tones about the midnight storm that destroyed this melancholy palace, alluding to “divine wrath”.

Their emphatic delivery of the story intensified my interest, along with the forest-darkened sepulchre. The incidental fire had only killed one individual. Ashes from a distant continent have been brought here to bury the last family member of the family-name Hyde and in this spot of shade and peace. Few care to endure the dismal shadows that seem to linger unnaturally about the water-worn stones.

I'll never forget the day I discovered the half-hidden home of doom...

I am Gerald Eaton, conservator of the South Pointing Havenhouse, which has survived two generations. From the mile long shore proudly stands the bleakly coloured lighthouse, sitting high enough above slimy, algae-covered rocks that are seen with low tide. Well past this stony beacon have sailed majestic sailors, who, in their own right and wit, counted many in my grandfather’s days. Today, there are so few that loneliness seems a probable and seemingly permanent lot.

From far shores arrived frigidly frosted sails of old, from Eastern shores where the sun shines, and carries sweetened scents from glorious gardens and happy temples. The old captains of the rough waters came to my grandfather and expressed these word dressed yarns on long autumn evenings. And I have since buried my curious eyes into the books they gave me in my youth. 

But more grandiose than the storied old men and their adventures are the secrets of the ways of the ocean. The ocean is never silent in its endless swirl of blue, green, white, grey or black. During my days up to this moment, I have watched, listened and sensed its mysteries. At first, it spoke of ordinary tales of serene beaches and proximate ports. But with the years, it spoke of more friendly and expressed kinder aspects - of things stranger than time and further reaching than the stars in the heavens. In the twilight spaces of evenings here and gone, the greyish vapours of the horizon have parted just enough to grant me glimpses of the ways beyond.

And sometimes the deep waters of the sea offer clarity among its phosphorescent splashes, and issue of the ways beneath its forever shapeless surface. These glimpses have been frequent enough to accent the ancient quality of liquid dreams and nightmares hidden within time gates.

Out of the North arrived the Ship Blanche, and precisely when the moon was full and hovering where the daylight sun would soon sit. It would glide as soft as a baby’s hand upon its mother's skin and breathe as calmly as a sleeping angel. It would manage its elegant glide, whether the sea was violent or peaceful. One night I observed upon its deck a bearded, robed, and quiet man, whose frantic hand beckoned me to join him in his adventures.

The moon shone especially bright on the night I answered his call and I traversed over the waters to the Ship Blanche.The captain who beckoned me also welcomed me with soft words, which I knew well enough, and the hours inflated with the hymns of oarsmen and we glided into a mystery of the high moon.

When the day revealed its fresh face, I beheld the glorious shore of lands bright, beautiful and, to my eyes, very much unknown. Up from the sea there arose large branches and terraces of stone white shafts and columns of extraordinary temples. My boat master expressed a land of dreams and thoughts of beauty which have been the envy of earth but are unfortunately forgotten before long. What I saw proclaimed his truths as I recalled the visions on the horizon lines of the ocean I had beheld prior to his arrival.

As tempted as I was, I could not lay my foot upon these utopian plains, because to do so would mean a complete loss of my current world.

As our Ship sailed away from a templed nirvana, we stood upon the horizon as my captain described another vision in front of us. 

“This is the city of a million wonders, wherein men have desired to dive and swim in its developing depths of light and love, where rich friezes and sensual sculptures call for men’s affections.

I yearned to enter this repose, of which also contained corners of threat and acute danger. As I touched the marbles entrance, my captain warned, “Once you enter this realm, you cannot follow your own footsteps back and re-enter earth’s frail existence. Only Demons walk here ~ and mad creatures that have shed men’s skin and organs. The streets are covered with unburied bones of the dead, and of those who dared look upon the Holy centre and wished for an earthly retreat.”

So, we sailed past and observed this cloud city vaporize into the sky.

As we moved with the force of the seawaters, we came upon a coast littered with bursts of song so delicious that I urged the rowers of our boat to hasten their rhythm. My bearded captain held an eerie silence as the edge of the ship gathered along the shore. The breeze gathered the charred flavour of a plague-stricken town and uncovered cemeteries. My captain spoke as the last of the shore faded behind us. “That was the Land of Pleasures Unattainable.”

This was all he said.

The ship continued its course along the whims of gulls flying northward. Day by day and night after night we traversed, gliding along to the soft hymns of the oarsmen. It was by moonlight when we anchored in the harbour of Nyla, a land guarded by twin statues of crystal that rise from the sea and meet in the middle of a terrific arch. 

My captain mentioned with a hint of happiness, “This is the land of The Fanciful.”

And the above song of birds continued until an eerie silence invaded our open space. 

The captain said plainly, and without an expectant exultation of joy, “This is the abode of gods and the land of unnumbered cites made of gold. Its woods are of deep aloe and rich sandalwood. Every kind of bird flies here and sings merrily and endlessly. On the mountains are temples of marble and painted glories, where courtyards also sit among fountains of silver with ravishing music to listen and invite dreamy sleep. In the nearby city, beds are arranged for all as giant petals of trees never seen by humans. Canals of gold trace the edges of cities and allow safe passage for anyone moving about in various stags of gaiety. Only those worthy of its shores are allowed to call this home of any permanence. We must be chosen. And to be chosen, we have to be brave enough to show up and take a chance that the gods shine favour upon us.”

I begged him to have us settle there and forever live in the furious happiness of a never ending nirvana.

But my captain paused his story.

The Ship Blanche sailed into the mist between the basalt pillars of the West to the sound of harmony. Our forlorn ship was sucked forward on a swift-moving sea toward an unknown destination when the oarsmen’s harmonies stopped and the fog cleared. 

Within minutes of arriving at our destination, we could hear thunderous raindrops raining down on us from the distance and gaze ahead and see an enormous waterfall that funnels water from all around our planet. "The gods of the lovely Land of Fanciful have rejected us, which we may never see again," said my captain, with tears in his eyes. “It is the gods who have triumphed over men,” he added.

To avoid being distracted by sadness, I slammed my eyes shut. 

I heard the screams of men and things that weren't men. And in the darkness the shriek of a sudden collision pried my eyes open. Temperatures increased from the East, chilling me as I sat on the moist stone slab that had sprung up under my feet. It was only until the sound of another smash woke me awake I saw myself standing on the platform of the lighthouse from which I had sailed so long before. 

My grandfather's light had gone out for the first time since he had taken over its maintenance, and I could see the massive hazy shapes of a ship breaking up on the harsh rocks below as I peered out over the waste. 

And in the latter hours of the night, as I entered the tower, I discovered a calendar on the wall that had been there since I left it at the time I departed. To my dismay, I discovered just this: a dead bird whose color matched that of the sky, and one splintered spar that was whiter than the mountain snow. 

It was after this that the water gave up its secrets, and even though the moon has shown full and high in the sky many times since, the Ship Blanche from the North did not return.

Due to Greg Darges's plans to drain the gargantuan bog, the local peasants had left Fidgarden Hills. As much as he loved his land and heritage, he despised the magnificent, wasted space where peat could be chopped, and land opened. Indifferent to the local traditions and superstitions, he chuckled when the peasants initially refused to help, then cursed him and fled with their meagre possessions when they saw his determination.

He laughed. He dispatched northern workers to take their place, and when the servants went, he did the same with their replacements. But being alone in a foreign place was making me lonely, so Greg invited me along.

Because of the imprecise, wild, and nonsensical nature of these people's anxieties, I laughed as hard as my friend had laughed when I heard them.

Legends of the bog, and of a fearsome guardian ghost, were to blame for these strange events.

Even in the daytime when it was warm, there were stories of wraiths in white floating above the water, as well as an imagined city of stone deep beneath the swamp's surface. There were many other strange ideas, but one stood out above them all: a curse that would fall on anyone who tried to touch or drain the crimson bog.

The villagers insisted that there were secrets to be kept concealed, secrets that had been hidden since the plague struck the children of Wharton. These secrets were meant to remain undisturbed.

Greg Darges's refusal to listen to the fanciful tales of the vanishing peasants was no surprise to me. The area needed what it needed, per Greg.

Although the white remains on the islet were clearly of vast age, they were in such a state of decay that it was impossible to tell their former beauty.

Drainage had been completed, and workers from the north were about to begin removing the green moss and scarlet heather from the prohibited bog, as well as killing the little shell-paved streams and peaceful blue pools bordered with rushes surrounding it.


LATER THAT EVENING
It had been a long and exhausting day, and my host and I had talked into the wee hours of the morning. He led me into the remote tower overlooking the village, as well as a wide open plain and a deep bog, so that I could see the silent roofs of the villagers who had fled. And we settled in.

Just as I was about to drift off to sleep, I had the strangest sensation of hearing strange noises in the distance. They were wild and half musical, and they filled my dreams with a strange exhilaration. I had wondered if my own perceptions suffered this lot because, for the fourth time in a row, I awoke up sluggish and confused, and acting as if I hadn't had a good night's sleep, even though I had all of us had gone to bed early.


THE NEXT DAY
I spent the morning and afternoon wandering around the sun-drenched village on my own, waking myself up with exaggerated physical movements and soon after chatted with the laborers while Greg worked on his drainage designs.

The labourers he hired were not as content as they may have been, since they appeared to be disturbed by a recurring dream that they could not recall. Greg had to remind them of their duty during their chatter.

But it took me mentioning the strange sounds I believed I heard for them to be interested in hearing about my dream. Afterwards, the several of them stared at each other strangely and said that they remembered strange sounds as well.

The draining was set to begin in two days, Greg told me as he dined with me that night. Even while I didn't like to watch all the vegetation disappear, I had a strong desire to discover the ancient secrets that deep-matted peat might hold.




THAT NIGHT
In my sleep that night, I had visions of marble peristyles and piping flutes, but they were cut short when I saw a pestilence sweep over the valley, followed by a terrifying avalanche of trees that buried the dead in the streets and left only one place standing: the temple of Artemisory, where the aged moon-priestesses lay cold and silent beneath an ivory crown.

I knew I was awake during this vision when I heard a clock on a remote landing below strike two o'clock. Still, a distant piping sounded like a faun's dance on faraway Maenalus, with wild, strange airs. It wouldn't let me sleep, so I sprang up and paced the floor in frustration.

By pure luck, I ended up facing North, where I was treated to a view of the deserted village and the plains bordering the bog. I didn't want to look anywhere else since I just wanted to go to sleep, but the flutes were tormenting me and I had to do something about them. I had no idea what I was about to see.

What awe-inspiring sights could be observed in the moonlight illuminating the vast plains. Demeter may have danced to the Sicilians under the Cyane in Sicily's harvest moons of old with Sicilian men and women swaying and spinning to the reedy pipes reverberating over the bog.

During my fear, I noticed that half of the tireless, mechanical dancers were the labourers I had thought asleep, while the other half were strange airy beings in white, half indeterminate in nature but suggesting pale wistful naiads from the haunted fountains of the bog.

Before I was awakened by the bright morning sun, I had been staring out of the lone turret window for what seemed like an eternity.


MORNING
After waking, my initial instinct was to tell Greg all my anxieties and observations, but as I looked out the latticed east window of the makeshift office building where we stayed, I realised that what I was seeing wasn't real. Being prone to bizarre fantasies but not weak enough to believe in them, I settled for grilling the workers who had been up late and had only vague memories of screeching noises from the night before.

As I pondered this, I began to wonder whether the crickets of fall had arrived before their due date to frighten the night and haunt our dreams. Later in the day, as I watched Greg planning the massive undertaking that would begin the next day, I was overcome with the same sense of dread that had forced the peasants from their homes. I loathed the prospect of tampering with the ancient bog's sunless secrets and imagining dreadful things lurking beneath the unmeasured depth of age-old peat for some unknown purpose. After hearing about the castle's and village's dark secrets, it seemed ill-advised to expose them. So, I gently broached the matter with Greg, but after his loud laugh, I was afraid to proceed. That's why I kept my mouth shut when the sun dipped low over the hills and Kilderry's red and gold glow appeared to herald something bad.

I'll never know for sure if the events of that night were real or just a delusion. They certainly go beyond our wildest imaginations when it comes to nature and the cosmos, but there is no way that I can explain the mysterious disappearances that were reported by everyone after the event had ended. In the tower's strange solitude, I couldn't sleep for a long time, even though I'd gone to bed early.


LATER THAT NIGHT
Even though the sky was bright, the moon was well into its waning phase and wouldn't rise until the wee hours, so it was pitch black. Greg and what would happen to that bog when the day came made me almost frantic with an urge to run out into the night, steal Greg's car, and drive frantically from the threatened areas. The city in the valley was cold and dead, shrouded in a dreadful cloak of shadow, but I had fallen asleep before my anxieties could take hold of me.

The piercing piping probably woke me up, but it wasn't the first thing I noticed when I opened my eyes. I had expected to see light shining on the other wall from where I lay because I was laying with my back to the east window, which overlooked the bog and was where the waning moon would rise. The panels ahead were certainly illuminated, but not by the moon's light. Through the window, a shaft of reddish refulgence plunged into the room, and it was bathed in an intense and unearthly light.

However, it is only in stories that a guy acts in a dramatic and premeditated fashion. My initial actions were out of character for this situation. My panic-stricken reaction to the new light was to keep my eyes from the window and fumble haphazardly to put on my clothes in a disoriented attempt to flee. I recall grabbing my pistol and hat, but I somehow managed to misplace them both before I could pull the trigger on either or both. Over time my fear was overcome by my curiosity with the red glow, and I crept up the east wall to the east window, where I watched the irritating, never-ending piping ring out across the castle and the entire field.

Flowing from the odd old ruin on the far islet, the flaming light splattered across the swamp, frightening and scarlet. I have no words to describe the appearance of that ruin, which seemed to rise majestically and undecayed, magnificent and column-cinctured, with the flame-reflecting marble of its entablature piercing the sky like the peak of a temple on a mountain-top.

I must have been hallucinating.

As the flutes screamed and the drums beat, I saw what I thought were black saltant shapes silhouetted horribly against the vision of marble and effulgence.

Astonishingly, I could have watched for hours if I hadn't noticed that the sound of the pipes seemed to be intensifying to my left. Trembling with a strange mixture of horror and joy, I made my way to the north window of the circular room, where I could see the village and the plain at the bog's border.

My eyes widened once again as if I hadn't just come from a scene beyond the pale of Nature, for a procession of entities moving across the terrible, red-lit plain in a manner that had previously only been seen in nightmares sent chills down my spine.

It appeared as if the bog-wraiths, dressed in white robes, were gliding and floating in the air as they slowed their pace toward the island's ruins and the quiet waters.

As the awful piping of those invisible flutes led their waving translucent arms, a multitude of lumbering labourers were enticed in an odd rhythm, following blindly and brainlessly as though dragged along by a clumsy but unresisting daemon-will. Inching closer to the bog, the naiads were joined by a new group of inebriated wanderers who emerged from the castle by a door deep below my window, wandered aimlessly through the courtyard, and joined the stumbling column of workers on the plain.

The cook stood out among the servants, despite their distance from me. I recognised his ugly and bulky body. Again, I could hear the drumbeats coming from somewhere near the island's ruins. A line of impatient followers trailed behind them, making awkward splashes before dissipating in an unsettling whirl of foul bubbles that I could just make out in the crimson light.

Then, one by one, they disappeared into the ancient muck. The flutes and drums became silent as the big cook dropped slowly into the gloomy pool, and the piercing red light from the ruins vanished in an instant, leaving the ghost town alone and dismal under the waning light of a newly risen moon.

My mental state had deteriorated to the point of complete disarray.

A merciful numbness spared my life because I didn't know whether I was insane or sane. I'm very sure I said and did some foolish things, like pray to any Greek God I remembered, which I now believe I did.

All my fondest childhood memories came flooding back as the horrors of the scenario stirred my most primal fears. As I stood alone with Greg, who had brought down a doom with his audacity, I felt like I had watched the death of an entire village.

I sank to the ground, not fainting, but utterly powerless as I remembered him. At that point, I felt an ice blast from the east window, and I could hear the screams of the frightened people.

When I think of them, I'm overcome with a feeling of faintness that I can't shake. So far as I can tell, they came from someone or something I knew personally.

The cold wind and the screaming must have woken me up at some point during this horrifying time period, since my next memory is of scurrying through pitch-black rooms and corridors and out into the horrible night across the courtyard.

In the early hours of the morning, they discovered me roaming aimlessly, but it was not any of the other atrocities that shook me to my core; it was something else entirely.

I murmured about how I slowly emerged from the shadows and walked into another shadow away from a monstrous stone domicile.

As I made my way across the bog to escape the cursed castle, I heard a sound that was both familiar and unfamiliar to me. There was now a swarm of slimy huge frogs in the stagnant waters that piped loudly and continuously in tones that were curiously out of proportion to their immense size.

As they glowed in the moonlight, they appeared to be staring up towards the source of illumination. Once again, I was blinded by the sight of the second object that washed my senses clean.

My eyes traced a beam of feeble trembling brilliance that had no reflection in the water of the bog, stretching from the odd olden ruin on the far island to the failing moon.

My fanciful imagination depicted a thin shadow writhing, a faint deformed shadow striving as if driven by unseen daemons.

It wasn't long before I saw that the shadow cast by Greg – with a face that was no longer recognizable and was not from the loins of any creature on earth!

We were sitting on a worn-out tomb in the late afternoon of an autumn day at the old burying ground in Sorkhamtown, talking about things we couldn't name. I was looking at the giant willow in the middle of the cemetery, and I thought about how the roots of the tree must get a lot of nourishment from the deep, entrenched, charred earth. My friend told me that since they had buried there no one for more than a century, there was nothing there to feed the tree other than the depths of hell or other unmentionables. This is what I wanted to express, but I paused, for it would have been very childish of me to talk so much about "unnameable" and "unseen" things. 

This was in line with my lowly status as an author. When I was writing stories, I was too fond of ending them with sights or sounds that paralyzed my heroes' abilities and left them without courage, words, or associations to tell what they had been through. We know things only through our senses or our religious intuitions. This means that it is impossible to refer to any object or spectacle that the solid definitions of fact or the correct doctrines of theology can 't clearly depict.

Mason Thompson is a friend I've argued with a lot over the years. He was the principal of the Eastern Wise High School, and he was born and raised in New York, so he had the same sense of self-satisfaction that people in that area have. Because only normal, aim experiences have any aesthetic value, he thought artists should not try to make people feel powerful emotions through action, ecstasy, and astonishment; and to keep them interested and appreciative by giving them accurate descriptions of everyday life. 

This is what he thought was important.

He objected to my focus on the mystical and the unexplained. Even though he believes in the supernatural more than I do, he doesn't think it's common enough for literature.

With him, all things and feelings had fixed dimensions, properties, causes, and effects. Even though he knew that the mind sometimes holds images and sensations that aren't as geometrical, classifiable, or workable as those in the mind, he thought he was right to draw an arbitrary line and rule out anything that the average person can't experience or understand. He also thought that nothing could be truly "uncategorical," but he was almost sure that it couldn't be. He didn't think it was a good idea. 

Imaginative or metaphysical arguments will not sway a sun worshiper. But something about the scene of this afternoon meeting made me more angry than usual! The crumbling slate slabs, the patriarchal trees, and the hundred-year-old gambrel roofs of the witch-haunted old town that surrounded me all pushed me to fight for my author oriented mind. I was soon taking my fight into the enemy's own country. It wasn't hard to start a counterattack, because I knew that Mason still had some old-wives' superstitions that modern people had long forgotten. 

He thought dying people would show up in distant places, and that old faces left impressions on the windows through which they had looked all their lives. I had to have faith in the existence of spectral substances on the earth that are separate from and follow their physical counterparts. It said that if a dead person's visible or tangible image can be sent across the world or down through the ages, how can it be absurd to think that abandoned homes are full of strange sentient things, or that old graveyards are full of the terrible, disembodied intelligence of generations?

Any of the laws of matter can 't limit spirit in order to make all the things that people say it happens. So why is it so crazy to think about psychically living dead things in shapes that are completely and shockingly "uncategorical" to us? I told my friend that "common sense" when thinking about these things is just a lack of imagination and mental flexibility. 

Evening descended, but neither of us wanted to stop talking to each other. Mason didn't seem to like my arguments, and he was ready to fight back. He had the confidence in his own ideas that made him a wonderful teacher, and I was too sure of my own ideas to be afraid of losing. We didn't move when the sun went down. Lights in some distant windows were a little bright, but we didn't see them. Because we were sitting on the tomb, we didn't have to worry about the gaping hole in the old brickwork behind us, or how dark it was because of the 17th-century house between us and the light of a nearby road. After my friend had finished scoffing, I told him what terrible evidence there was for the story that he had scoffed at the most. We talked about the "uncategorical" in the dark. 

Whispers, the local paper, ran my story called "The Upper Window" in January 1932. Some people in the South and on the Pacific coast, for example, took the magazines off the stands because they didn't like the story of a disembodied spirit haunting the residents. New England didn't get the thrill and just shrugged its shoulders at my extravagance. 

The thing was biologically impossible to begin with. It was just one of those crazy country mutterings. Even he didn't name the place where the incident happened, exhibiting his disrespect for my craft.

Mason had said that the thing had been born human in form and then purely dead and no longer ‘among us’, and only a cheap thrill-seeker would think differently. My friend Mason was quick to point out that all of this was trash. Then I told him what I had found in an old diary that was written between 1706 and 1723 and what I found was found in family papers a mile from where we were sitting.

I also told him about the scars on my ancestor's chest (a detail I added for emphasis). I also told him about other people's fears in that area, and how they were passed down for generations. I also told him about the boy who went into an abandoned house in 1793 to look for traces of the being that were thought to be there. His story has yet to be told. Here, in fact, was the apex of my argument.

That ancestral diary I found had all the whispered rumors and stories that were seen at night or in empty meadows near the woods. When those curious looked for prints in the trampled dust, they found mixed prints of split hooves with what looked like human paws. 

My ancestor penned an account of how he had been caught by something on the dark valley road. It had horns on his chest and ape-like claws on his back and on the ends of its arms.

Another time, a horse rider said that he saw heavily disfigured and bloodied old man on Meadow Hill in the thinly lit hours before dawn. Many people thought the rider was right. I'm sure that there was some weird talk one night in 1710 when the childless, mangled, broken old man was buried behind his house in front of the blank slate. In the end, they left the old man's entire house as it was, dreadful and empty. Since, the townsfolk whispered to each other and shook; and collectively thought that the locks on their doors were going to keep them safe from the something resembling the old disgusting man or his attacker. 

My anecdotes had crested into a specific intensity, and with this, I took a pause.

He became silent during this story, and I could see that my words had made him very uneasy.

Mason was still thinking about what I was saying, but he soon thought about things more analytically. For the sake of argument, he agreed that some unnatural monster had been around or the old man was mis-shapen by shadows. But he reminded me that even the most disgusting misinterpretation of nature, if in existence, doesn't have to be uncategorical or scientifically unreachable. 

I thought he was very clear and persistent, and I added some more things I learned from the old people in my town.

Later, I clarified that the spectral legends were about terrifying monsters that were bigger than anything living could be. They were apparitions of gigantic bestial forms that were sometimes visible and sometimes only tangible, and they swarmed the old house, the crypt behind it, and the grave where a sapling had grown next to an illegible slab. Whether these apparitions had ever gored or smothered people to death, as told in unconfirmed stories, they had left a strong and consistent impression. 

At the end of this story, I could feel Mason get cold. He had moved very close to me now. But his curiosity was not swayed. 

However, my friend was more agitated than I thought and he suddenly moved nervously away from me and screamed with a kind of gulping gasp that let out a long-hidden part of himself. I heard a creaking sound through the pitch-black darkness, and I knew that a window in the old house next to us had been opened by now. That's why I knew it was the frame of that daemonic attic window, because all the other frames had already fallen down. 

When I was on that shockingly rifted tomb of man and monster, I heard a piercing cry just next to me. Then there was a noxious rush of smelly, frigid air from the same place. It happened in a second that the devilish threshing of some unknown creature of titanic size but unknown nature threw me from my gruesome bench. 

It knocked me sprawling on the root-clutched mould of that abhorrent graveyard, while from the tomb came such a stifled uproar of gasping and whirring that my imagination filled the dark with Miltonic legions of the misshapen damned. Withering, chilly wind swirled around me, and then the sound of loose bricks and plaster shook. I was lucky to faint before I learned what it meant. 

Mason, even though he was smaller to me, proved more durable. We both opened our eyes simultaneously, even though he had more injuries. Our chairs were next to each other, and we knew in a few seconds we were in St. Mary's Hospital. A group of people gathered around us, eager to help us remember how we got there. 

We soon learned about the farmer who found us at noon in a lonely field beyond Meadow Hill, a mile from the old cemetery, on a spot where an ancient slaughterhouse is said to have stood. There were two wounds in Manton's body that were terrible. There were also a few cuts or gaugings in the back. 

I was not seriously hurt, but I was covered in welts and contusions of the strangest kind, including the print of a split hoof. I was also covered in blood. If my friend knew more than I did, he didn't tell the doctors about it until he found out what we had been hurt by. An angry bull attacked us, even though it was hard to find and figure out where the animal came from. 

In awe, I asked Mason, "Good God, what was it?”

It had many shapes and a thousand different shapes that I can't remember. There were eyes and a spot. It was the pit, the maelstrom, and the worst thing in the world. 

I exclaimed., “There was no name for it! NONE!”

Men go to bed every day with a boldness that would be inexplicable if we did not know that it is the result of ignorance of the risk - Baudlane.

May the compassionate gods guard those hours when no willpower or drug concocted by man can keep me from the pit of slumber. And yet, with him who has returned from the darkest corners of the night, haggard and wise, there is no longer any serenity. Fool or god, he was my lone companion, who led me and went before me, and who in the end passed into terrors that may yet be mine.

We met in a railway station, where he was surrounded by the vulgarly curious. He was asleep, having fallen in a bizarre convulsion that made his small, black-clad body rigid. His face had deep wrinkles, he was gaunt and hollow-cheeked, yet oval and lovely, and his thick, waving hair and little full beard had greyed from the deepest raven black.

His brow was as white as Pentelicus' marble and as wide as a ghost god. I saw this man as a faun's statue unearthed from a temple's ruins and brought to life in our suffocating age just to feel the chill and strain of catastrophic years.

Seeing the majesty and danger of realms beyond regular consciousness and reality, I realized he would be my only buddy from now on. So as I drove away from the gathering, I told him he must come home with me and be my teacher and leader while holding unfathomable secrets. Then I realized his voice was musical, of deep and sparkling spheres. I chiselled busts of him and carved miniature heads in ivory to immortalize his various expressions.

It's impossible to speak of our studies because they have so little to do with the world as we know it. That vaster and more terrifying cosmos of obscure being and consciousness that exists beyond matter, time, and space and whose presence we only suspect in some forms of sleepâ?" those rare dreams beyond dreams that come only to imaginative men once or twice in their lives.

Men chuckled when an Oriental man claimed that time and space are relative. Except even he has done nothing. My companion and I both hoped and tried to do more. That's when we attempted mediation together, in the tower studio chamber of an old manor house in Kent, with strange substances.

Inarticulateness is one of the major agonies of these latter days. What I saw and learnt in those hours of irrational exploration can never be expressed in words or symbols. I say this because our discoveries were entirely based on sensations, which the human neurological system is incapable of absorbing.

They were experiences, but they contained implausible components of time and space and of things that had no inherent existence. During every period of revelation, a part of our minds broke boldly away from all that is real and present. Our verbalizing rushed over shocking, unlit, and fear- filled abysses, and occasionally tore through well-marked and typical obstacles decribable only as viscous, uncouth clouds or vapours.

We were alone and together in these black and bodyless flights. With his golden cheeks, flaming eyes, Olympian brow, shadowing hair and growing beard, my pal was constantly ahead of me when we were together.

We didn't keep track of time because it was a mirage to us. I just know that there must have been something unusual going on, since we eventually wondered why we didn't age. No god or daemon could have aspired to such discoveries and victories as we planned in whispers.

My acquaintance once scribbled on paper a wish he dared not pronounce with his lips, which made me burn the paper and throw out the window at the spangled night sky. I'll merely imply that he had plans to manage the visible universe and more; plans to move the planet and the stars at his command, and control the fate of all living creatures.

I guarantee I had nothing to do with his insane ambitions. Contrary to what my friend may have said or written, I am not a guy strong enough to risk the unmentionable warfare in unmentionable spheres required to succeed.

One night, mysterious winds swirled us irresistibly into infinite vacua beyond all thought and existence. Perceptions of infinity flooded us, joyous at the time, but now forgotten in my mind and inaccessible to others. A series of treacherous hurdles had to be clawed through, and I felt we had been transported to lands unknown to us.

I could see his ominous exultation on his floating, dazzling, too youthful memory-face as we plunged into this awesome ocean of virgin aether. Suddenly, that face faded away, and I found myself projected against a wall I couldn't cross. It was like the others, but denser; a sticky, clammy mass, if such things exist in a non-material realm.

My companion had overcome a barrier that had halted me.

So I struggled again to the conclusion of the drug-dream and opened my eyes to the tower studio in which sat my fellow-dreamer, pallid and yet unconscious, strangely haggard and wildly gorgeous as the moon shone gold-green on his marble features.

It was then that the form in the corner moved, and may pitying heaven protect such things from my sight and sound. I can't tell you how he yelled or what vistas of inaccessible hells sparkled in his terrified black eyes. I can only say I fainted and didn't wake up till he recovered and shook me for someone to keep the horror and misery away.

That was the end of our dream subterranean explorations. Awed, shaken, and foreboding, my companion from outside the barrier advised me not to return there. He dared not tell me what he had seen, but he advised that we sleep as little as possible, even if medicines were required to keep us up.

The unbearable horror that enveloped me whenever I lost consciousness taught me he was right. I grew older with each sleepless night, while my friend aged at an alarming rate. Insidious wrinkles and hair whitening before one's eyes.

Our way of life had changed.

So far as I know, my pal has always been a loner, never revealing his true name or birthplace. He wouldn't be alone at night, nor would a small group soothe him. His only solace was found in widespread and raucous celebration but outside the realm of the city.

My companion regarded it a lesser evil than solitude.

He dreaded being alone outside at night, and if forced to do so, he would often look up at the sky, as if stalked by some hideous creature. He didn't always look up at the same spot in the sky; it seemed to change. Spring evenings in the northeast. Summer, it's nearly overhead. Autumn in the Northwest. In the winter, it's in the east, although usually in the early morning. He preferred midwinter evenings.

After two years, I came to notice that he must be looking at a specific location on the celestial vault, roughly denoted by the constellation Corona Borealis.

We shared a studio in London, never apart, never discussing our quest to understand the illusory world. My friend's receding hair and beard had turned snow-white due to drugs, dissipations, and nervous exhaustion.

Awake for only one hour or two at a time, we were surprised by our survival. Then came a January of fog and rain, with scarce funds and drugs. My ivory heads and statues were gone, and I had no money or energy to make new ones. That night, my friend fell into a deep sleep from which I couldn't wake him. the lonely ticking of the lone clock; the fancied ticking of our watches on the dressing-table; the creaking of some distant city noises muffled by fog and space; and worst of all, my friend's deep, steady, sinister breathing on the couch, a rhythmical breathing which seemed to measure moments of elation and dread.

In my practically insane mind, a furious torrent of petty impressions and associations rushed through my vigil. So I thought I'd start with a clock strike somewhereâ?"not ours, because that wasn't a striking clock. My mind wandered as I reflected on Corona Borealis rising in the northeast.

Corona Borealis, dreaded by my companion, whose scintillating semicircle of stars must still be burning in the aether. My furiously acute ears seemed to detect a new and distinct component in the gentle blend of drugs.

But it wasn't that faraway whining that brought the shrieks and convulsions that drove lodgers and cops to break down my door.

It wasn't what I heard, but what I saw; for from the dark northeast corner of the room came a shaft of horrible red-gold light, a shaft that didn't disperse the darkness.

Instead, there was drawn out in hideous duplication, a luminous and strangely youthful memory, but only as I had known it in dreams of abysmal space and unbounded time.

A cry too awful to speak arose from the thin, hooded lips as I looked. That horrible and bendable visage radiated more stark, seething, brain- shattering horror than all of heaven and earth combined.

While the faraway sound got closer, I saw for an instant what it saw, and fell with ringing ears in the shrieking and convulsions that brought the lodgers and the cops. Nothing I saw could ever be described to anyone.

My fear is Hypnos, the mocking and insatiable lord of sleep, the night sky, and the wild ambitions of knowledge and philosophy.

What happened is a mystery, for not only was my mind thrown, but others were as well, with an amnesia that can only indicate crazy. They said I never had a friend, yet art, philosophy, and lunacy filled my miserable life.

The lodgers and cops calmed me down that night, and the doctor gave me something to calm me down, and no one saw what had happened.

Their sympathy for my friend was unfounded, but what they found on the studio sofa made them ridicule and laud me, which I now despise as I spend hours adoring and praying to the thing they found.

They deny I sold my last piece of statues, and exalt the object the light left cold, petrified, and voiceless.

What remained of my companion, who brought me to madness and ruin was a godlike head of marble from old Ghellas, young with the youth that is beyond time; a beautiful bearded face, curled lips, Olympian brow; dense hair waving and poppy-crowned.

On the marble foundation is carved a single name in the letters of Udumo.

End

During my final days, when the trivialities of life began to drive me insane, I found solace in sleep, which provided an irradiated respite from the dreadful events of life. The beauty I'd been searching for in life could be found in my dreams, as I roamed through enchanting gardens and wooded groves.

When the wind was gentle and fragrant, I could hear the south calling and I sailed beneath unusual constellations for hours at a time.

My barge sailed through an underground stream in the soft rain till I arrived at a land of iridescent arbours, purple twilight, and immortal roses.

For a time, I wandered through a golden valley that led to a forest of shadows, and terminated in an ancient vine-covered wall that was pierced by a small bronze gate.
It was in this valley, where the huge trees wiggled and bent horribly, and the grey earth stretched damply from trunk to trunk, that I often strolled, pausing for long periods of time in the ethereal half-light to reveal the mould-stained stones of long-since-buried temples.

My fantasy's ultimate goal was to arrive at the massive vine-covered wall with the bronze gate at its center.

A few months into my waking life, I began to wonder how I could make the valley and the shady trees my permanent home, so that I would no longer have to return to a world that had been stripped of new colors and new experiences.

Moreover, as I stared at the small gate in the huge wall, I felt that beyond it was a dream-country from which there was no returning.

So each night while I slept, I tried to uncover the gate's hidden lock in the ivy-covered old wall, even though it was well concealed. And I'd persuade myself that the world beyond the wall wasn't only more durable; it was also more beautiful and dazzling.

On a slumbering night in the dream city of Perzukian, I stumbled across an old papyrus collection, containing the thoughts of the city's long-dead dream-sages.

This book contained a wealth of information on the dream world, including legends of a golden valley, a sacred forest, and a towering wall punctured by a little bronze gate.
While reading through the pages of this tradition, I realized that it had a connection to the hauntings that had troubled me.

In some cases, the dream-sage writers described the wonders of the gate, while in others they described horror and sadness. No new horror can be more terrifying than the daily pain of the commonplace; therefore I wished to pass over into the unknown realm, where doubt and concealment are the greatest allure.

Upon hearing about the drug that would allow me to pass through the gate, I made it a point to take it when I was next awake.

I took the medicine two nights ago and drifted out into the beautiful valley and the shady woods.

But when I returned to the ancient wall, I discovered that the modest bronze gate was slightly ajar. In the distance, a strange glow appeared, and I drifted on songfully, awaiting the glory of the place from which I had been banished for all eternity.

In that new dimension there was no land or sea, only an endless white expanse.
And as the gate opened and the magic of drug and dream drove me through, I realized that all I had seen and experienced had come to an end.

The daemon Life had summoned me from my native infinite of crystal oblivion for a brief and lonesome hour, so I disintegrated back into that infinity of oblivion.

Inside this attic on an ugly Thursday evening, my visit with my close friend turned horrific.

Over and above the bright and dark wooden chaos of the interior, there was a hanging picture that, even though it was not very clear, had the elements of consistency and permanence in it.

I was able to see things that I couldn't before in spite of seeing this framed picture many visits before tonight.

It was kind of like a movie being shown on a painted curtain of a theater.

The unusual part of the scene was put on top of the normal one, just like that. I saw a separate attic laboratory, the electrical machine, and the unattractive figure of Rollings Finnigan next to me, but there was not a single empty space in the room.

Incomprehensible shapes, both living and dead, were mixed together in a disgusting mess on that curtain.

There were whole worlds of alien, unknown entities close to everything that was known. It also looked like all known things were used to make other unknown things, and vice versa.

For the most part, the alleged living things were made of inky, jelly-like things that wiggled in time with the vibrations from the machine. These things were everywhere, and I was disgusted to see that they overlapped, that they were semi-fluid, and that they could pass through each other and through the things we think of as solids.

These things never stayed still, and they looked like they were floating around with a bad goal. They sometimes looked like they were eating each other, with the attacker launching itself at its victim and quickly destroying the other person from view.

And I couldn't get them out of my mind as I tried to look at other things in this room, which anyone could see had anyone else been there. But Rollings Finnigan had been watching me, next to me, and he was talking to me as well.

"Do you see them?" You can see them. Things that move around and through you all the time In the sky and the air, you can see what people call pure air and blue sky. Yes, I have broken down the barrier and shown you worlds that no living person has ever seen.”

What was that odor? It made my eyes water and my mind swirl.

He saw his wild face so close to his own in my eyes, I think. I heard him scream through all of the terrible chaos between beads of moisture in my eyes.

His eyes were like pits of fire, and they looked at me with what I now saw as overwhelming hatred, and I was scared.

In a bad way, his machine kept on whirring. I don't know what machine it resembled or its purpose. He insisted his narrative become my reality.

“There are so many things floating around that you think they killed my servants. Fool, they aren't dangerous! But they're gone, aren't they? When I needed all the help I could get, you tried to stop me.”

Dangerous? What help? I merely arrived an hour ago! And I have forgotten why I even visited. Servants. What servants? When will Rollings stop talking? I needed him to pause his rant.

“You discouraged me when I needed every bit of encouragement I could get. You were afraid of the cosmic truth, but now I have you! In what way did the servants get swept away? What made them so angry? Don't know, eh? You'll find out soon enough! No, I don't think so. Form and matter are things you believe in. I'm telling you, I've gone to places that your little brain can't even begin to imagine. Daemons have come down from the stars, and I have seen them. As the shadows move from one world to another, I have used them to spread death and madness, and I've done it with their help. Space is mine, do you hear me? Things that eat and break down are after me now, but I know how to get away from them.”

To this I could only listen with frustrated tension. The conversations he referenced between us had not occurred. I rolled into town today after being away for years -- years! My eyes watered and spilled their liquid waves down my cheeks.

“The people who work for them will get you, too, just like they got the servants."

What is Rollings talking about? I cannot follow his assertions one iota! His mention of his murdered servants was as fresh as my arrival. How could I know of this dangerously acute development?

“My dear sir, are you stirred? To move is dangerous. So far, I have saved you by telling you to stay still. You have been able to see more sights and listen to me because of this. The people would have been at you long before you moved. They won't hurt you.”

He continued despite a growing fear emerging; my fists balled, ready to defend myself.

“When the servants saw them, they screamed. They didn't hurt them. My pets aren't pretty because they come from places where aesthetic standards are very different from my own home. Disintegration isn't very painful, but I want you to see them. I came close to seeing them, but I knew how to stop. You don't want to know. There was no way I thought you were a scientist. You're shaking, aren't you? Anxious to see the most important things I've found? Why don't you move? Tired? You need not be afraid, my friend. They are coming. Look! This is so bad. I'm going to curse you. It's over your left shoulder.”

My right hand slipped into my inner coat but I could only hold my silence and maintain every fibre of my being in a state of frozen control.

What is left to say is very short, and you may have already read about it in the newspaper. It was the police who heard a shot in the old Rollings Finnegan house.

They found us there with Rollings dead and me on the ground.

Because I had a revolver in my hand, they arrested me.

In three hours, they found out that Rollings had died of apoplexy and that my shot had hit the noxious machine on the laboratory floor. I didn't tell the coroner very much about what I had seen because I thought he might be skeptical. The doctor told me that I was most likely hypnotized by the vindictive and homicidal madman, based on the vague outline I gave.

I wish I could trust that doctor.

There are things I have to think about now, like the air and the sky around and above me - and those moving creatures in the hanging pictures. It would be better if I didn't have to think about them. It sometimes feels like someone is after me, and when I'm tired, I get the creeps.

Because the police didn't find the bodies of the servants Rollings is said to have killed and blamed me for instead; I don't think I can believe what the doctor says.

END

I dare wonder if a large swath of mankind would ever pause and reflect upon the monstrous meaning within dreams, and of the ambiguous world in which they live. While an enormous number of visions visited in the night are perhaps a little more than faint or feigning interpretations of our lives when conscious, there are brain scraps whose disquieting effect affects our mental balance. 

However, arguments may decorate communication everywhere through that immeasurable, unfounded mystery of a barrier between the two worlds. From my experience I cannot dispute that we, as mortals, are abandoned and entrenched in terrestrial life — albeit alarming if one dares to think deeply — and is left repeatedly dangling with the remnants of blurry fragmentations of what our primitive brains can only hold for moments. 
Might one document these dreams if the lines of reality are devoured? What will remain as the capability to live inside mental obscurity or within the tactile environment we call reality? 

Individuals may comment or swear by incredible testimony.

We may guess that in dreams, life, and three-dimensional living are not constant and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend. It is possible that this less material life in our dual hemispheres — and of delta wave origination —-is nothing but secondary or a pithy virtual phenomenon.

All of this perturbed my mental space during a youthful reverie on a wintry afternoon in the winter of 1904, when to the state psychiatric institution in which I served as an intern introduced a man whose case has ever haunted me with unbearable weight. 

His name was Jasper Wright.

Jasper’s appearance was best described as a usual cretin of the Wild Wolf Mountain region; one of those odd, wildly repellant descendants of a peasant-oriented stock whose extreme isolation for nearly four centuries in the hills caused them to succumb to a depth of barbarism typically assigned to cave dwellers. Among them, especially those described best as “ animal excrement” in the Southwest, laws and morals dared not make a whisper of their presence among them, and the general mental status smacked of lower than the veritable dirt you and I walk upon today.

Jasper, who arrived under the auspices of five policemen, was described as a volatile beast, and certainly gave no satisfaction of the description which preceded him. The very mention of his dangerous character crunched underneath the weight of all one hundred pounds of him as he tread through in heavy chains. His absurdly harmless appearance proved more-so with the protrusion of his abnormally pale blue eyes, a dark ugly yellowed beard, and an unusually thin lower lip. We could only guess his age because of the lack of family records, and hence the Head Doctor penned a convenient age of about forty-five.

From the medical and court documents, I learned about this wondrous case. This man had always been an avid hunter, trapper, fisherman and was notably characterized as otherworldly in his speech and painstakingly odd. He kept a sleeping pattern fit for hibernation patterns of local bears, but upon waking would often talk of wild things beyond anyone’s knowledge base and inspired fear in others with the depth of the detail he imparted. His form of communication was not unusual, for he never spoke of a negative attack on anyone or anything. But the tone of his ramblings was of a fantastic timbre and baffled his listeners. And within an hour of his rants, he would forget all that he said and would promptly relapse into the docile, half-amiable normality of hill dwellers.

As Jasper grew older, his matutinal aberrations grew into frenzied chaos. Yet, no one around him would bear the slightest injury, till about a month before his arrival occurred. There was the instance of a shocking tragedy leading to his arrest and subsequent arrival. One day after his long introduction into this institution, and after a profoundly long sleep, Jasper roused himself suddenly and into such undulations that several neighbours bothered to become his audience. The encounter for them was so fantastic of a sight they bore his expulsions of odd rapture descriptions and several leaps directly into the air, with arms flapping, while shouting about a ‘big, big dwelling with an exceedingly bright roof, floor space and walls.’ Two huge guards sought to restrain him, to which he struggled with maniacal force, screaming of his desire to find and kill a certain thing that demanded his own death. After his soft lock up in his room, he was found three days later, unconscious in the hollow of a tree and several hundred yards away from the main building.

Psychologists examined Jasper once he was gathered and brought to his senses. To them he told a simple story of measured occurrence — his afternoon nap resulted following an alcoholic drink and it had him awaken and find his hands covered in blood, and the mangled corpse of his neighbour Frisco Slanton. And in Jasper’s horrified state, he took to the woods on a mad rampage of loud guilt and enraged verbal expulsions. Beyond this story, examiners had found no one along Jasper’s path toward the open tree stump. Upon a second interview, Jasper babbled on about enormous edifices of light, ocean-wide spaces, off key music, and dark shadowed mountains and valleys. But above this description, Jasper held particular anger against a blazing entity that mocked and laughed at him and his overall state. This vague personality did him wrong and teased him to murder it, but not without painstaking effort to crawl through the bone-breaking floor of an abyss. 

Once said, the bright embers of his rage would suddenly die off.  

The small collection of doctors merely blinked and therefore ordered Jasper to be released and to reconvene his mentally slumbered state in his room. During his walk back, he mumbled how he had a tendency to talk with a queer angle and with pronounced emotion.

Within a week or two, the attacks resurfaced, and from them, the doctors learned little. And upon the source of Jasper’s visions, they speculated that since Jasper could not read or write, and his detailed imagery was determined to be an imaginary anomaly. The psychologists soon concluded that abnormal dreams were the foundation of Jasper’s trouble. Misfortune still befell Jasper as he bore his time in court but was declared insane and unable to bear out any judgement against him. And to his room he returned only to meet with the likes of me, who understood, on some esoteric level, that there was much more to this story as could not be discovered prior to this day.

Jasper’s verbal explosions did not reflect myth nor romance whenever he blew up in voices; he raved about matters he did not understand and woefully could not interpret. You may, of course, judge the eagerness at which I applied myself to attenuate and decipher Jasper’s state of mind. 
He seemed to sense a particular friendliness living in me. But he had not recognized my features nor face during his attacks, when I nearly hung on every consonant and syllable he dared utter. He knew me in the quieter hours as he would sit by his barred window stringing small knots from small threads, which only held a certain tension before breaking, as there was apprehension over an expectant suicide. Sadly, this became the unmentionable notion among the doctors, as Jasper had no semblance of a family to visit him. 

In varying degrees of intensity, I fostered significant wonder at Jasper and his magnificent conceptions. The man was arguably a pitiful cretin by design, but his titanic visions, although described as fragmented and ill, were absolutely expectant of a well-developed brain. I often queried to my sense of intelligence how the stolid imagination of a mountain degenerate conjured visions which resembled a latent explosion of genius? How could the influence of mountain dwelling shine any radiance and universal truth within a furious delirium twirled around a nugget of excitement and push forth matters beyond comprehension - especially outshining the knowledge base of established colleagues?

The head of this institution had all but warned me in his paternal manner that my own mind was overworked and needed the solitude of simple matters. My imaginations about Jasper were dismissed.

Still, I judged the gargantuan assumption within Jasper’s subconscious mind that something —- or someone more grandiose than any human — had forcibly injected planned concepts and meanings latently within every human being directly into Jasper’s inferior body and mental state.
It was always my educated conclusion that human thought was composed of molecular motion and sub-atomic activity, converting into waves of radiant energy such as elements of heat, light, and electricity. My belief had me deeply postulating the possibility of telepathy or mental mutualities generated by a suitable apparatus. Within the confines of my study in college, I developed cumbrous devices managing the very concepts I struggle to describe. These practices I had tested with colleagues, achieving no result worthy of a written testament. Since my equipment and colleagues gathered, the dust of hopeful discoveries gone awry. 

Now, my desire to probe even deeper into the life of Jasper Wright reignited.

And my effort to re-gather my instruments of days past hastened their collection, repair and fair function. In due time, electrodes were strategically placed on Jasper during his outbursts and collected delicious data. My enthusiasm nearly ruined several attempts on Jasper, as my data was recording properly for the first time — closely reminding me of Frankenstein — and the sense of godly powers converting into assertions meant only for my investigation and satisfaction. I kept my collection of activities to myself.

It was on the twenty-second of March, 1905, that the thing I had hoped to occur, did in fact occur!

Perhaps, as I recall this instance and how unreal it all felt, I sometimes wonder if I mismanaged Dr Fenton’s advice to calm myself for the duration of a week’s vacation and instead amp up my rather charged imagination as he spoke. He listened to me with impressive amounts of patience and kindness, but after revealing to him my findings with Jasper, he simply prescribed me nerve tonic, a warm smile, and I took my leave — a short one at that. For my plan, a simple and near elementary level mission worthy of childhood games took its own turn. And I dared not look back to question my motives.

The fateful night I am about to describe found me, the usual calm and aim professional and, more accurately, an intern, remarkably agitated and perturbed. I learned that despite the excellent care he received, Jasper was dying. Perhaps it was the freedom robbed of him for far too long that did it. Or his sluggish frame, beat down by too many outbursts and deep, abysmal energy lags, or possibly his mind broke into too many fragmented thought patterns too weighty for him.

As he slept awaiting the inevitable, I thought not to strap the poor lad down, for he looked far too feeble to do any harm. I placed the probes of my wired radio upon his head and my own, hoping that one last message from his fantasy dream world might transmit. As time wore on into the deep passage of night, I found myself lulled by his rhythmic breathing and slept off.

The slight sound of lyrical melodies awoke me — mixed with chords, vibrations and harmonic echos. The walls and heavenly architectures of light danced within my brow and mind. Blending with this mighty display of glory, or rather supplanting it with wild color rotations, were visions rooted inside open plains, gorgeous valleys, and high mountain ranges covered with every feature of natural scenery to which my delighted eye could attest. As I gazed, my brain held the key to these seductive transformations, and with each wild vista, I was the one wishing to capture and cage this experience for moments longer than naturally allowed. 

Then the splendorous aura of Jasper held with me a brotherly energy and a perfect exchange of thought — perfectly void of vengeance and shock — and walked us along a sweet trajectory! This hour of triumph was entirely silent, fully escaping all forms of bondage and on a vacant path empty of any accursed oppressor.

As I awoke, I swear to you, Jasper moved hesitantly, suggesting death was not his immediate fate, or at least postponed for the moment.
All at once, Jasper’s head turned, his face grew tense, and I adjusted the electrodes on my head. His eyes expanded wide, and he held a gaze of nothing completely distant, nothing completely intimate, but his sense of wonder was full of an active, higher order and astounding control.
I held my emotions steady and closed my eyes, welcoming any order of thoughts with the strength of a focus and concentration I can only guess was made possible by years of Zen discipline.

A transmitted idea took shape in my head, and although no semblance of language was employed, my solid sense of conception received a message in plain English.

‘Jasper Wright is dead’ came the voice or a semblance thereof from a beyond-reality influence. But Jasper’s eyes were round and full like a child and very animated. “He is better off dead, for he was unfit to gestate the high academia to discern ethereal life and earthly life. He was too much of an animal, a not enough of a man. However, through his deficiency, you have discovered me, even though the cosmic are not designed to make contact. Jasper has been my torment, my immovable prison, for forty of your terrestrial years. I am an entity, eager to escape with my freedom through the activity of sleep. I am your unidentifiable brother of light and have floated with you. They do not permit it for me to describe how many of us there are. But we are roamers over the ages and cosmos. Next year, I may dwell in the darkness of Egypt, which you call ancient. But you should know of earth and its tranquility, especially in the presence of its real oppressor. But of it I cannot speak. Earth is too distant to really know of its true nature and its ultimate destiny. Tonight, watch, and observe in the night sky — for the Deamon Star. I am near it. I can protect, but only through those aware enough - of me. You have been my only friend in the cosmos, on this planet. We shall meet again, but Jasper grows cold and rigid. Our union knows no bounds, but time determines our communication again, perhaps when the solar system has been swept away.”
And with this end, so was the transmission and those once wide eyes faded to a pale blue and Jasper’s cheeks grew shallow. The features shrivelled into crevices indescribable. I lept up and alerted the nurse.

After the aide arrived, I went silently to my room and slept off. 

The pinnacle of this story is? What plain tale such as this can boast of rhetoric? I have penned this account to severely impact the flow of facts as they occurred. Determine what you will do. 

Dr. Fenton, as I have imparted, denies everything I experienced and recorded. He insisted I incurred a nervous breakdown of my own and experienced delirium with an odd mix of nervous strain, to which his recommendation of several weeks' vacation was still left pending and unused. He assured me that Jasper was a low level paranoid, whose outlandish outbursts stem from old folk tales and generational myths. 

All of this he says - yet I cannot forget what I saw in the sky on the night of Jasper’s death. Lest you think me a biased, ignorant witness, there is another’s pen to consider from an authority in astronomy, namely Prof Servait Gerviss in his paper — Nouvum Verves.

"On February 22, 1901, a marvelous new star was discovered by Doctor Servait of Globurgh, not very far from Algol. No star had been visible at that point ever before in recorded history. Within thirty-six hours, the strange light had become so intense that it outshone Vawella. In two weeks (or possibly less), it faded. And in the course of a few months it was hardly discernible with the naked eye or by any other observation technique."

END

After the aide arrived, I went silently to my room and slept off.

The pinnacle of this story is? What plain tale such as this can boast of rhetoric? I have penned this account to severely impact the flow of facts as they occured. Determine what you will.

Dr. Fenton, as I have imparted, denies everything I experienced and recorded. He insists that I have incurred a nervous breakdown of my own and experienced delirium with an odd mix of nervous strain, to which his recommendation of several weeks away was still left pending and unused. He assured me that Jasper was a low level paranoid, whose outlandish outbursts stem from old folk tales and generational myths.

All of this he says - yet I cannot forget what I saw in the sky on the night of Jasper’s death. Lest you think me a biased, ignorant witness, there is another’s pen to consider from an authority in astronomy, namely Professor Servait Gerviss, in his paper — Nouvum Verves.

"On February 22, 1901, a marvelous new star was discovered by Doctor Servait of Globurgh, not very far from Algol. No star had been visible at that point ever before in recorded history. Within thirty-six hours or so, the strange light had become so intense that it outshone Vawella. In two weeks (or possibly less) it faded. Moreover, and in the course of a few months it was hardly discernible with the naked eye or by any other observation technique."

All at once, Jasper’s head turned, his face grew tense, and I adjusted the electrodes on my head. His eyes expanded wide and he held a gaze of nothing completely distant, nothing completely intimate, but his sense of wonder was full of an active, higher order and astounding control.

At this point, I held my emotions steady and closed my eyes, welcoming any order of thoughts with the strength of a focus and concentration I can only guess was made possible by years of zen discipline.

A transmitted idea took shape in my head, and although no semblance of language was employed, my solid sense of conception received a message in plain English.

‘Jasper Wright is dead’ came the voice or a semblance thereof from a beyond-reality influence. But Jasper’s eyes were round and full like a child and very animated. “He is better off dead, for he was unfit to gestate the high academia to discern ethereal life and earthly life. He was too much of an animal, a not enough of a man. However, through his deficiency, you have discovered me, even though the cosmic and planetary are not designed to make contact. Jasper has been my torment. My immovable prison for forty of your terrestrial years. I am an entity, eager to escape with my freedom inside the activity of sleep. I am your unidentifiable brother of light and have floated with you. It is not permitted for me to describe how many of us there are. But we are roamers over the ages and cosmos. Next year, I may be dwelling in darkness of Egypt, which you call ancient. But you should know of earth and its tranquility, especially in the presence of its real oppressor. But of it I cannot speak. Earth is too distant to really know of its true nature, and its ultimate destiny. Tonight, watch, and watch carefully in the night sky — for the Deamon Star. I am near it. I can protect, but only through those aware enough - of me. You have been my only friend in the cosmos, on this planet. We shall meet again, but Jasper grows cold and rigid. Our union knows no bounds, but time determines our communication again, perhaps when the solar system has been swept away.”

And with this end, so was the transmission and those once wide eyes faded to a pale blue and Jasper’s cheeks grew shallow. The features shrivelled into crevices indescribable. I lept up and alerted the nurse…

Perhaps, as I recall this instance and how unreal it all felt, I sometimes wonder if I mismanaged Dr Fenton’s advice to calm myself for the duration of a week’s vacation and instead amp up my rather charged imagination as he spoke. He listened to me with impressive amounts of patience and kindness, but after revealing to him my findings with Jasper, he simply prescribed me nerve tonic, a warm smile and I took my leave — a short one at that. For my plan, a simple and near elementary level mission worthy of childhood games, took its own turn. And I dared not look back to question my motives.

The fateful night I am about to describe found me, the usual calm and objective professional and more accurately an intern, remarkably agitated and perturbed. I learned that despite the excellent care he received, Jasper was dying. Perhaps it was the freedom robbed of him for far too long that did it. Or his sluggish frame, beat down by too many outbursts and deep, abysmal energy lags, or possibly his mind broke into too many fragmented thought patterns too weighty for him. As he slept awaiting the inevitable, I thought not to strap the poor lad down for he looked far too feeble to do any harm. I did place the probes of my wired radio upon his head and my own, hoping that one last message from his fantasy dream world might transmit. As time wore on into the deep passage of night, I found myself lulled by his rhythmic breathing and slept off.

The slight sound of lyrical melodies awoke me — mixed with chords, vibrations and harmonic echos. The walls and heavenly architectures of light danced within my brow and mind. Blending with this mighty display of glory, or rather supplanting it with wild color rotations, were visions rooted inside open plains, gorgeous valleys, and high mountain ranges covered with every feature of natural scenery to which my delighted eye could attest. As I gazed, my brain held the key to these seductive transformations, and with each wild vista, I was the one wishing to capture and cage this experience for moments longer than naturally allowed.

Then the splendorous aura of Jasper held with me a brotherly energy and a perfect exchange of thought — perfectly void of vengeance and shock— and walked us along a sweet trajectory! This hour of triumph was entirely silent, fully escaping all forms of bondage and on a vacant path void of any accursed oppressor.

As I awoke, I swear to you, Jasper moved hesitantly, suggesting death was not his immediate fate, or at least postponed for the moment...

The head of this institution had all but warned me in his paternal manner that my mind was overworked and needed the solitude of simple matters.
Still I judged the gargantuan assumption within Jasper’s subconscious mind that something —- or someone more grandiose than any human — had forcibly injected concepts and meanings -- latently within every human being, mind you -- directly into Jasper’s inferior body and mental state.

And this catastrophic activity within his backwoods mountain-mindedness created a tsunami of verbal exultations which only emerged from Jasper following an alcohol-induced lull.

It was always my educated conclusion that human thought was composed of molecular motion and sub-atomic activity, converting into waves of radiant energy such as the elements of heat, light and electricity. My belief had me deeply postulating telepathy or mental mutualities generated by suitable apparatus.

Within the confines of my study in college, I developed cumbrous devices managing the very concepts I struggle to describe.

These practices I had tested with fellow colleagues at the time, achieved no result worthy of an academic testament. Since such days, my equipment and colleagues have gathered dust inside hopeful discoveries gone awry.

My desire to probe even deeper into the life of Jasper Wright reignited.

And my effort to re-gather my instruments of days past hastened their collection, repair and fair function. In due time, electrodes were strategically placed on Jasper during his outbursts and collected delicious data. My enthusiasm nearly ruined several attempts on Jasper, as my data was starting to record properly for the first time — closely reminding me of Frankenstein mentalities— and the sense of godly powers converting into assertions meant only for my investigation and satisfaction. And of course, I kept my collection of activities to myself.

It was on the twenty-second of March, 1905, that the thing I had hoped occur, did in fact occur!

...

Jasper’s verbal explosions did not reflect myth nor romance whenever he blew up in voices; he raved about matters he did not understand and woefully could not interpret. You may of course, judge the eagerness at which I applied myself to attenuate and decipher Jasper’s state of mind and possibly his bombastic incantations of questionable wisdom.

He seemed to sense a particular friendliness residing in me. But he had not recognized my features nor face during his attacks, when I nearly hung on every consonant and syllable he dared utter. He knew me in the quieter hours as he would sit by his barred window stringing small knots from small threads, which only held a certain tension before breaking, as there was apprehension over an expectant suicide. Sadly, this became the unmentionable notion among the doctors, as Jasper had no semblance of a family to visit him.

In varying degrees of intensity, I began to foster significant wonder at Jasper and his magnificent conceptions. The man was arguably a pitiful cretin by design, but his titanic visions, although described as fragmented and ill, were absolutely expectant of a well developed brain. I often queried to my own sense of intelligence as to how the stolid imagination of a mountain degenerate conjured visions whose very possession debated a latent explosion of genius? How could the influence of mountain dwelling shine any radiance and universal truth within a furious delirium twirled around a nugget of excitement and push forth exaltations beyond comprehension - especially outshining the knowledge base of established colleagues?

...

Alienists examined Jasper once he was gathered and brought to his senses. To them he told a simple story of measured occurrence— his afternoon nap resulted following a drink and it had him awaken, find his hands covered in blood, and the mangled corpse of his neighbour Frisco Slanton. And in Jasper’s horrified state, he took to the woods in a mad rampage of loud guilt and enraged verbal expulsions. Beyond this story, examiners had not found anyone along Jasper’s path toward the open tree stump.

Upon a second interview, Jasper babbled on about huge edifices of light, ocean-wide spaces, off key music, and dark shadowed mountains and valleys. But above this description Jasper held particular anger against a blazing entity that mocked and laughed at him and his overall state. This vague personality did him wrong and teased him to murder it, but not without painstaking effort to crawl through the bone-breaking floor of a dark abyss.

Once said, the bright embers of his rage would suddenly die off and asked why he was physically bound. The small collection of doctors merely blinked and therefore ordered Jasper to be released and to reconvene his slumbered state in his room. During his walk back, he mumbled how he had a tendency to talk with a queer angle and with pronounced emotion.

Within a week or two, the attacks resurfaced, and from them the doctors learned little. And upon the source of Jasper’s visions, they speculated that since Jasper could not read nor write, his detailed imagery was determined to be an imaginary anomaly. The alienists soon concluded that abnormal dreams were the foundation of Jasper’s trouble.

Misfortune still befell Jasper as he bore his time in court but was declared insane and unable to bear out any judgement against him And to his room he returned only to meet with the likes of me, who understood, on some esoteric level, that there was much more to this story as could not be discovered prior to this day.

...