The Dark Rites of Cthulhu (30 page)

That’s why we hold our sessions in the mindhouse. Something about the design of it serves as a prism, an amplifier. I’ve no idea why, or how; I don’t understand the architecture of it, but it’s curiously fascinating.

It’s an odd-shaped space, situated where several of the mansion’s other walls come together at angles that somehow don’t add up. The roof tilts in uneven wedges toward an off-center peak; if you gaze up at it too long, the lines of the ceiling panels start to look like the strands of a web spun by a psychotic spider. I often wonder how they did that, whoever designed the room, whoever built it.

Of course, that might just my own ignorance speaking. Someone who’s studied such things might look at it and find it simplicity itself. Then again, I could be wrong; maybe it would perplex even an expert. Maybe it’d pose a real challenge, a real puzzle. I guess that’s far much more your department than mine. You are the educated one, after all. You’d probably take one look and be able to explain the mindhouse’s peculiar geometric effects in the same way you could those of the House-of-Mystery varieties of tourist trap.

But I honestly believe there’s more to it than that, than mere tricks of vertigo-inducing perspective and proportion. More than optical illusions and subliminal suggestions in the décor.

The floor’s done in tiny mosaic tiles, worn and faded along the paths where people walk, but at the edges it’s still as vibrant as the day it was installed. As with the ceiling, the longer you look at the random design, the more it seems to form patterns… indiscernible patterns with meanings that can’t quite be grasped.

There are windows, but they don’t admit daylight. None of the frames are the same size, and none of the panes have straight edges. Some of the glass is clear and some clouded, or frosted nearly opaque. The stained glass portions are jewel-toned, marbled, and swirled. They glow, as if from within, as if by their own eerie, eldritch illumination.

The mindhouse’s acoustics are as peculiar as the rest of it. Sometimes a whisper will resonate like a gunshot; sometimes the loudest shout vanishes into thin air. It might be silent as a tomb at midnight in that room, or the very space itself might hum with a sourceless vibration, a deep bass-note from everywhere and nowhere. Footsteps echo as if the space beneath is a hollow chasm… or they thud as if on solid ground… or they are swallowed up as if absorbed.

Occasionally, we hear chimes. Silvery, horrible, musical yet atonal chimes. A few times, it’s seemed like distant voices answer back, murmuring in multitudes. Once – thankfully, just that once – we heard a wet, heavy grunt and a slithery shifting I could have done without.

You might think that it’s a weird, creepy place for asylum inmates to be brought for groups, and you’d be absolutely right. As crazy as I was my first time there, I wasn’t so crazy as to realize that it very much was
not
the typical setting of durable stain-resistant carpet, fluorescent lighting, and folding chairs. No. I’d seen plenty of rooms of
that
kind before. The mindhouse was different, very different, right from the first.

Similarly, Doctor Hasturn is
not
the kind of psychiatrist I’d typically encountered before arriving at Evergate. Tall and slender, pinch-faced… jaundiced of aspect and bloodshot of eye, as the poets might put it… nothing of the caring, kindly counselor or the wise, nodding sage here. We never talk about our mothers, or our unresolved issues with potty-training and fears of abandonment. We don’t discuss our anxieties or neuroses; lines like “mm-hmm and how does that make you
feel
?” are never said.

Dreams, though, we do discuss. Dreams, according to Doctor Hasturn, are the secret speech of the universe. They aren’t to be analyzed with trite symbolism, nothing so new age or Jungian as that. They are deeper messages, far deeper than the sub- or unconscious. They are from beyond, from outside, from the primal currents of the under-psyche.

In the dreams, sometimes, the nonsense syllables of our glossolalic therapy chants aren’t such nonsense after all. They begin to seem like words, like a language just beyond our comprehension. I’ve asked the others and we all agree… they’re almost within grasp. Almost.

And sometimes – when Doctor Hasturn has cots brought into the mindhouse, to conduct sleep-studies on us there – sometimes the dreams become much more than dreams. Much
other
than dreams.

Once…

I won’t say it was a vision, because that
would
be insane. But it
was
very vivid, the most vivid dream I’ve ever experienced. Tangible. Tactile. Each sensation true to my senses, so real in its unreality, so unreal in its reality.

I heard the chimes, ringing and clinking, pure as glass, dull as bones. Papery reeds, thin as spider-
legs, hissed a susurration in a hot and airless breeze. I felt the dry, pebbled ground beneath my bare feet, my steps kicking up gritty puffs of yellow dust. It smelled sour. Sour and yellow and old. Tickling my nose. The taste of it settling, dry, so dry, on my tongue. The screaming stars wheeled above me, unfamiliar and hideous constellations viewed through a murky-green veil of sky like dead sea-water. What passed for a sun hung bloated and pustulant above an endless horizon, silhouetting the corroded ruins of some ancient city.

Or palace.

Or temple.

Or tomb.

Doctor Hasturn questioned me extensively when I awoke. Had I seen anyone? Spoken to anyone? Were there landmarks I could name? Had there been any living thing besides the papery reeds? Could I plot a star-chart of those strange constellations?

I later learned from Nathan that I was not the first to have such a dream. In his, there’d been a road, cart-tracks having worn ruts in the dirt, and a pile of stacked stones like a mile-marker. Some of the others had glimpsed sticklike figures moving in the distance, wearing tattered garments of coarse brown cloth.

It doesn’t
mean
anything, of course. They weren’t actual visions of an actual, real place. Let’s not go nuts, here. Subliminal suggestion, mass hallucination, any of that’s unsettling enough without…

Though, now that I think about it, Doctor Hasturn did start questioning me even before I’d really begun describing my dream. Pressing for specific details about things I don’t remember mentioning. Asking if I’d noticed marks on my skin, for instance, painted symbols, or designs like henna tattoos.

If dreams
are
messages…

And messages have to come from
somewhere
…

If the mindhouse is the focal channeling point of a psychic vortex, as Doctor Hasturn says, then what is on the other side?

On the
outside
?

Outside of ourselves, outside of everything?

What else might be there?

What… entities?

What feeds upon our mental chaos?

Nothing good, I can tell you that much.

Dark forces? Evil powers? Otherworldly elder beings who will one day shatter the dimensional barriers, enslaving or destroying us all?

Whatever happens, it’ll take far longer than our meager human lifetimes to reach the tipping point. Therefore it isn’t
our
problem, right? Because we’re such small and insignificant portions of the greater scheme of things. From the big-picture perspective, I mean.

From our individual, personal perspectives…

It takes away our madness. We have our own minds again, our own thoughts and lives and souls and selves.

Yet we’re helping to empower and strengthen something. Something dangerous. Destructive. Something
other
. Something
Outside
. Each contribution, however slight, pushes this world toward the brink. The clearer we get, the closer we all come… the closer to crossing that threshold.

Save our sanity, doom humanity.

Kind of catchy.

If horrible.

I know how this sounds. How crazy it all sounds. But I’m not crazy. Not now. Not anymore. My symptoms haven’t just been managed with medication or suppressed by behavioral tricks. They’re gone.
Gone
.

I’m not expecting you to believe me. I’m not asking for your forgiveness.

I just want someone to know. To understand why we do this.

Why we want, and
need
, the mindhouse.

Besides, it’s not like there aren’t others. Other mindhouses, situated at key points around the globe. A dozen more, at least.

It’s still not enough, though. When I think of all the people out there, suffering like I did… when I think of the families torn apart like ours was… when I think of all that pain, all that torment…

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to help them?

To restore their sanity? To heal them? To spare anyone else from having to go through what I‘ve endured? I know I’d want to do what I could. I’m sure you would, too.

The thing is,
you
could. If you wanted to.

Doctor Hasturn showed me the articles you’ve written, the papers you’ve had published in the leading journals. You’re about to embark upon a brilliant international career, sure to make a lasting and memorable mark.

They’re calling you a prodigy, you know. The most innovative, intuitive and accomplished young architect of our time.

You should definitely come to Evergate for a visit. I’d love to see you again. I’m so proud. And, who knows? Maybe you’ll pick up a few new ideas
.

The Half Made T
hing

By T. E. Grau

“Let us sing, let us sing,

Of the Half Made Thing.”

Miles of rolling green rose and fell under a tight vest of mist that almost seemed alive with the way it clung to the low parts of each valley, creek bed, and sudden crevasse marked by dead Roman wall. These were clouds jealous of the earth, who came to dwell amongst man in this lonely part of Northumberland, and were therefore assigned living qualities. Moods, quarrels, secret pacts. You could tell the weather by the fog, the locals said, and sometimes the future. Today the mists said nothing.

Through this veil of milky white burst a pair of mares, froth flecking the rounds of their massive jawlines. Mudded haunches churned like pistons as they careened down a winding country road first hewn by occupying Norsemen that could accommodate only one vehicle at a time, which presently was a dark green carriage, accented in gold and piloted by a cloaked figure leaning expertly into his task. 

             
Up ahead, a herd of sheep trundled from the fog and crossed the path, bumping into each other and mewling softly. The horses didn’t slow a step as they charged into the flock, which parted like a woolen sea of terrified sideways pupils and bleating tongues. One goat emerged from the group and stared defiantly at the carriage as it sped by.

Horseshoes forged from Birmingham iron clattered upon worn flagstones. Plumes of steam shot from the horse’s nostrils as the carriage came to a stop in front of a towering English mansion. Built a millennium past, it was more castle than home, covered in ill-tended ivy and shrouded by that dank mist which remained unmoved by the cold North Sea wind blowing in from the coast.

The carriage door banged open, and from it emerged Thomas Nevill, a once handsome man worn to sinew and worry by years of backbreaking labor in East London mills. He chafed inside his velvet waistcoat and baggy breeches, scratching at the lank, bone-colored wig that topped his high forehead, as if still adjusting to the stiffness of finery. The costume of a dandy.