by Douglas Draa
Right now, the world is distant and inaccessible. To it, we are as imperceptible as the bones of the builders of this forgotten monument.
* * * *
Weating is waiting outside having instructed me to take a series of photographs of the inner walls of the temple for the sake of documentation. Intricate murals depict various religious motifs, some of which reverberate with Hindu and Judaic influences; others appear far more pagan and prehistoric. The professor specified some of the more obscure representations he identified, including several names which held little or no meaning for me such as Beelzebub, Chepre, Nyarlathotep and Siggogul-phot.
There is some form of hieroglyph stretched across the stone that resembles no script I have ever seen. Weating claims that scholars from William Whitley have made breakthroughs in translating similar writings from other sources. He supposedly recognizes a few of the more prevalent symbols and connects them with cults that once flourished in Egypt, Aksum and India.
What he has failed to notice here I find simultaneously encouraging and disturbing. My first discovery came before I even set foot inside the shrine: Discarded cigarette butts lay scattered amidst the brown leaves on the ground just outside the doorway. While the crew of the Aurora smokes constantly, I have not seen the professor or any one of his colleagues light up since we set out on this voyage.
There are additional signs of recent visitation hidden in the shadows of the temple. So far, I have found an emptied bottle of cognac, modern candlesticks, alkaline batteries and a cache of 20th century literature including occult pamphlets and issues of a exploitative magazine called Wicked Worship, the most recent edition of which dates to February, 1960.
At this moment, I am standing in front of an altar that has not been denied fresh blood. I cannot estimate its last use, but I doubt more than a month has elapsed since the screams of a sacrifice dissolved in the dark surrounding forest.
I pride myself on being attentive and alert. It takes a sharp eye to discern captivating images through the lens of a camera—picking out details that can be captured and confined and reproduced in the glossy pages of commercial periodicals. Men like Weating have an entirely different set of parameters when it comes to perceiving the world around them. They assemble fragments, arrange pertinent data to arrive at a conclusion. They neglect those elements which do not play into their assessment.
That is why, I believe, Weating did not notice any of these things. That is why, also, he did not notice the bugs.
Admittedly, I did not detect them initially, even when I stood with the tip of my nose no more than a foot away from the wall. Now, I see them clearly—or, rather, I see how their immeasurable ranks quiver ever so slightly. I see how the glyphs on the walls ripple with life every few seconds, how the walls themselves shiver and wobble. They appear to be all-pervading, covering every surface inside the temple.
The flash from my camera agitates them. Each picture I snap momentarily dislodges them from their methodically formed mosaic, forces them retrace the delicate lines of their mural, reform the thousands of symbols that comprise their hieroglyphic composition.
They have sent sentries to encourage me to depart. I feel the pinprick bites on my ankles, feel their slow steady advance up my legs. It is time to go.
* * * *
I did not bother to explain my experience inside the temple to Weating. When I found him outside, the jungle insects had launched an attack. We both felt retreat was an immediate necessity, though I do not believe he assigned any preternatural aspect to the incident.
Short of dismissing it as a hallucination, I am uncertain what to make of it all. Crediting a swarm of miniscule bugs with the creation and continual preservation of the temple’s murals and hieroglyphs seems tantamount to admitting to madness. Yet, I know what I saw in that chamber and I have never doubted my senses.
And there is more.
In our flight from that clearing in the jungle I turned once and looked over my shoulder. There, where the temple should have been, I saw nothing but an indistinct haze—a cloud of frantic insects angrily buzzing at their uninvited guests.
A few moments ago, Weating made an odd comment as he shambled off to bed. He said, “open your eyes.”
Day 5: Screams in the night
I must keep my entries brief.
We are now only four. The captain, the remaining crewmen and one of Weating’s associates vanished overnight. I pray it was not their screams that the forest failed to suppress sometime past midnight.
I had not noticed before this morning that the island changes its facets endlessly. The rock I placed to mark the first mate’s burial plot I cannot find. The tree beneath which we recovered his corpse is no longer there. Even the Aurora has swung about on the beach. Tides might account for shifting sands; anyone might have picked up the grave marker. I might be mistaken about the location of the coconut palm.
I might be mistaken about a great many things. But I am not.
Weating has seen something, too. He will not speak of it, but it has clearly affected him. He stands in the surf, unwilling to set foot on shore. I do not know what he will do when fatigue finally claims him. I do not know if I can convince him to come back to the Aurora.
* * * *
Weating is floating on his back in the Indian Ocean beneath the stars. I am sitting at the water’s edge, calling out to him every few minutes to make sure he hasn’t drifted off.
Just before the last light of day faded from the sky, he said something that seems worth recording.
“At Heliopolis, they worshiped the dung-beetle,” he said. “They believed it sprang from the earth without any generative process—that it created itself. I have a friend in the religious studies department back in Tahlequah. I tell him about the biology of bugs; he tells me why so many people have worshipped them throughout history. There have been cults in every corner of the globe scattered through centuries. They survive to this day.”
He trailed off at the end, drowning in his own musings. I did not question him further. I understand.
The others are gone. Something lured them into that forest, into that oppressive darkness that is crawling with some imperceptible manifestation of primordial malevolence. I feel its pull, too, but I can resist it. I have at least caught a glimpse of it—enough to recognize its mercilessness; enough to see through any illusion it might employ to entice me.
Weating is no longer returning my calls.
Day 6: Alone, with company
As I walked along the shoreline this morning, I saw their silhouettes beneath the trees in the shade of the jungle.
The first mate, the captain, the crew and the team members from William Whitley beckoned me, waving their arms hysterically, determined to draw my attention. From a distance, they looked perfectly normal right down to the tone of their flesh and the fit of the clothing. To my astonishment, they called out when they realized they could not dupe me with their disciplined ruse. Their voices carried a tinny inflection that betrayed the chirp and buzz of the drones that perpetrated the counterfeit vocalizations.
Of course, they were not real. They were effigies orchestrated by those loathsome insects, impatient to add me to their list of victims.
“Don’t go to them,” Weating said, startling me. “They’ll take you. They’ll become you. They’ll use your identity to do their bidding on earth. Open your eyes.” His body floated in the surf face down. Something had taken a chunk out of his hip, and I backed away from the cloudy, crimson aura that tainted the water around him. He was dead, of that I am certain. Still, I heard his voice in my head, a faint whisper like a fading radio transmission. “Their influence is already too strong. Don’t become another faceless entity in their collective. Don’t become subordinate to the Crawling Chaos.”
* * * *
Nightfall threatens to dissolve the world around me, reduce it to nothi
ng more than shadow and fear and the reassurance of inevitable death. I scribble these last few words expecting them to fall into obscurity along with my existence, but hoping that somehow they will survive me. To anyone who finds this journal—consider it a testament to the lingering darkness that maintains foothold in the remote corners of the earth.
We can see more than we imagine.
Open your eyes.
Day 7: Rescue
Before dawn, I saw lights on one horizon; a black, blurry cloud on the opposite one.
I see it now, a boat flying an American flag.
I am on rock in the middle of the ocean.
Where is the island?
January, 1963
I am the only known survivor of the Aurora. My rescuers indicated that there were no islands within 50 miles of the small coral atoll where the found me. During a prolonged hospital stay, I was assured continually that the events recorded in this journal had been part of some elaborate phantasm—a delirium unconsciously contrived to keep my mind occupied while my body deteriorated.
It is the lingering unsolicited lucidity that makes me unwilling to dismiss everything I described in my journal. To this day, I see things that should not be there. In staggered glimpses, I perceive that the things that surround us and the people with whom we interact are not necessarily what science tells us they are supposed to be.
Sometimes, they are real. Sometimes, they are something else, pretending to be real.
I have done a fair amount of research in the last year and I have found references to the deities I recorded on Day 4 amidst an array of obscure but accessible esoteric literature. Though my camera was not recovered, I was able to reproduce some of the symbols I saw in the temple. I sent these to William Whitley College for examination more than six months ago, but to date have not received a response.
In fact, many of my inquiries have gone unanswered regarding the existence of bug-worshiping cultists. I have compiled as much research on the matter as I am able to stomach, and I have decided to shelve my investigation before it becomes an obsession.
I hope that I can put all this behind me some day soon, convince myself that the doctors are right—that it was all just an awful nightmare.
But if that is the case, I have to ask myself—why is it that each word I write on this page seems to flutter for an instant before settling into place?
David Arthur Brown, aged 71, was last seen at the port of Majunga in Madagascar. There, authorities report he chartered a small yacht for sightseeing and game fishing. A month after the vessel sailed from the harbor, it was found adrift some 100 miles north of Mauritius. No trace of Brown or the crew was ever found.
▲
BLACK CARNIVAL, by Bobby Cranestone
Amberfield, a small town in England near the city of Derm. A Saturday evening.
* * * *
“Do you want the normal entry or the full program?”
Sam´s eyes gleamed. “The full program sir.”
The incredible old man at the counter offered him a ticket which seemed somehow to be made of leather. Sam looked at it from all sides and found that there were imprints of ugly faces which seemed strangely alive.
The man leaned a bit over. “Stay always with your pals.” Sam looked around, he was here with his class mates. They had paid and received the normal tickets which sported clowns and other more or less fun creatures.
“But how shall I stay with the others if they have to see the normal tour?”
The old man shrugged his shoulders.
Sam went through a banner decorated entrance and laying beyound, past the first few stores which sold all kinds of stuff from ancient spices, over to socks and from plastic monster figures over to candles. He had a strange liking for the painted placards which were still made like hundred years ago with a real printingpress and not a computer and a laser printer. There was a women which was said to dance like a snake and to be able to scratch herself behind the ears…something which might come handy at times, so Sam thought. There was the first tent which had a dog called cerberus, like the greek beast, and a calve which had ´only´ two heads. He knew those already…it came in tv almost weekly, not too exciting. The next stand was a wizard. The guy there was surprisingly young not like the wizards in circus. He was lean and dark haired and even wore a leather jacket. The cylinder hung upon a hook at the door. Sam wasn´t sure if he was a real wizard but he had something strange about him that promised that there was more than the eye could see. He did a card trick on a low mahogany table. He seemed to practice.
“Hello.”
The man looked up. “Hello, boy.”
“What can you do?”
The guy rolled with the eyes as if he had expected a question like that from a small boy like him but he chuckled and didn´t seem to mind. “Almost everything.”
“But don´t do that coin from my ear thing…that´s soo old. Even my sister can do it. Well, actually she put a penny into her ear once and we had to drive to the hospital.”
The wizard laughed and Sam wondered why he told him all that.
“Well, I can do a bit more. I am a real wizard.”
“Hmm?”
“You know there is more about an wizard than those tricks…that are magicians. Wizards are as old as the mankind. They know the secrets of the earth, the plans of nature and even the mind of people.”
“Isn´t that a bit numb? Well, I mean this is a carnival, aren´t you supposed to do a show…not that I mind you talking about that kind of stuff, it´s quiet interesting.” Damn….Sam scratched his head and wondered again what kind of rubbish he told.
“I did not say that there isn´t a show to follow up.” the wizard walked past a plaque where stood “Aznagel—the wondrous wizard” and took up an old frame.
“Nice cat.”
Sam looked around in surprise. Really there sat a small black kitten next to him. “it isn´t mine.” he said and patted it but he felt strangely touched when he saw the wise and allknowing eyes.
“It sure is yours. Every boy should have a cat.”
“Doesn´t the saying go, every boy should have a dog?”
Aznagel shrugged his shoulders. “How old are you Sam?”
“I´m eight.”
“Well then you should like what I show you…”
“Is it scary?”
“Not too much, you´re still a little boy.”
Sam made a face as if he had bitten into a lemon. “I came to a carnival to become scared, not to be pampered.”
“Be careful what you wish for. It could become granted. This place must be handled with care.”
Sam was impressed by the serious look on his face.
“Sorry…”
Aznagel smiled only and put the frame before the boys face. “What do you see?”
“Nothing. The frame is empty. There is no picture inside.”
“Well, some sure think it´s empty but if I´m right you´re the kind of person to see through that.”
Sam starred at the frame for some time. At once he thought that he saw some fine lines. They became brighter, pulsating in some strange rythmus…faster and faster. It took some time until Sam found that it was in the rythm of his heart beat. There were the outlines of a tree and dark clouds that moved slowly over a velvet sky. A stroke of thunder went over the picture. Once, twice, three times… at last it hit the tree. All vanished in a wild dance of forms and shapes.
“There was a tree. But unlike any tree I ever saw…more like a bended man.”
“It was a picture of your soul.”
“What? What does a tree have in common with me?”
“The old indian cultures believed that every human has something in nature that resembles it´s true self. It´s a tree in your case.”
The cat mewed as if in agreement.
“hmm”, was Sam´s not very intelligent answer. “That sure was an trick, wasn´t it?”
Aznagel gave the frame to Sam to check it for some hidded electronic parts.
“You can keep it if you want to.”
“No, thanks.” He returned it to the wizard. It was too heavy to carry around anyway.
A cold, chill wind tore at the tents and brushed Sam´s cheek.
“It seems to get stormy.” Guessed the man after a testifying look. “Don´t stay too long and if you loose track of time don´t forget the way back or what I told you.”
A flash of lighting struck over the sky. Sam had turned his head to watch it when he looked around to answer Aznagel he found that he was gone.
Sam wasn´t sure what kind of trick this was but he didn´t quiet like the feeling that crept up inside him. He had wanted to be scared, right. But he wanted to have that funny feeling that you have watching a horror film and when it´s over you laugh because you behaved so foolish, knowing all along that it was only a film. But this felt real. Somehow.
Sam passed on. He saw an exhibition held by an women who reminded him of his aunt, who showed pictures of elves around and from some meeting place of theirs. There was also a small golden cup which she said was once the belonging of an elve given to her. The next attraction was a fortune teller which looked at a glass ball and the smoke that seemed to issue from it´s inner. When Sam looked around he saw that the small black kitten still followed him. After a while he wondered where his classmates had all gone to. There was no stoppage which kept him from the normal tour and he had not entered a special area so they should actually be somewhere around..but they were all gone. Even of other visitors there were few. Sam looked at his watch and found that it was after eight..late but a carnival was only fun when it turned dark outsite. He had to hurry to see the other attractions he longed for. He didn´t quiet like the men working at the carnival, they all seemed to be sinister chaps fit for a news message. It wasn´t the first time that he went to a carnival but these guys were even for a place like this, which attracted many strange people, unusually sinister. Their looks were very grim. Next thing Sam went to was a creature show. There was a big ugly toad on display. Unusually big and with a skin so white that one could see the arteries in a sickish pink where the blood floaded through the creatures body. Sam was dismayed.
