These visions might be a kind of spiritual fine-tuning, but of course there was no way to test for such a thing. Instead, he contented himself with simply experiencing them, whether they occurred at night in his dreams or grabbed his attention during some idle moment during the day.
His list of things which felt completely understandable had shrunken drastically over the years, until now it was not much longer than a grocery list for a quick stop at a convenience store.
James figured this to be a normal evolution, however—the longer you lived, the more you knew how little you knew.
If he still had a child he might have told him this. His added perspective might have made some small difference.
“So you assumed at this point that your son had passed away?” The man questioning him looked beyond weary, almost to the point of tears.
“On this second flight over, yes, I was thinking that. I concluded he had been kidnapped on that first trip, years ago, and killed.”
“And why do you suppose someone would do that? And who? Perhaps you’re thinking it was someone having to do with the Lovecraft Museum?”
“Well, no. The museum didn’t even exist back then. Unless it was in the planning stages, do you know?”
The man rubbed his face. “I have no such information. But tell me, this madness you admit to having experienced—is it possible this came into play at the Lovecraft Museum, and might have been responsible for what occurred there? Is it possible your madness was related to your son’s disappearance?”
James was alarmed. “No, no! I wasn’t describing a psychological illness of any kind! Just a different way of seeing! Mystics, saints, philosophers—you wouldn’t accuse them of being mad, would you?”
“James, James,” his questioner gazed at him sadly. “Surely you are not suggesting you are some sort of saint?”
James hadn’t been able to sleep on the flight to London, and got up to wander back and forth to the toilet several times. He had read that deadly blood clots were possible on transatlantic flights. But there were always so many things to worry about that he was unable to favour any one potential calamity. He wondered if they had ever thought of taking larger planes, with room for a compact gym, or at least a space where you could run in place, or do jumping jacks. But that would reduce the number of seats, and therefore the airline’s income. Not likely, he supposed. He wondered if they ever under-fuelled these planes. Certainly they oversold the seats. He wondered if any of these planes had ever run out of fuel mid-flight and dropped into the ocean like a bird with a heart attack. Avian heart attacks seemed a distinct possibility, given the smallness of their hearts, and how hard it must be to flap flap flap all day long.
His flight had been delayed for hours, providing him with ample opportunity while lying about in the airport, thousands of passengers arrayed as if in some vast heavenly waiting room, to compare his two trips to England. That first trip had been enveloped in turmoil, beginning long before his arrival at the airport, and had ended in despair. Now he wondered if the strangeness he felt were a clear indication that this was a journey he should not be making.
“The world always feels strange to people who are unhappy,” said his wife’s voice into his ear. He would have shushed her if she had only been there to hear. He’d been hearing her voice ever since he began his preparations for this trip, and it was disturbing. She’d always been relatively quiet, even when she had been alive. Why speak up now? But theirs was a one-way communication—he could not actually speak to her and hope she would listen.
There was undeniable truth in her statement, as there was truth in most everything his wife said, but there was also dismissal, and he had long ago lost all tolerance for dismissal. If he could have replied to her, if it wouldn’t have made him look crazy to any passenger awake enough to hear, he would have said, “Human beings are poor mind readers. And because of that, we can never know another person’s real story.”
Perhaps he had spoken aloud, for he saw several passengers staring at him. He made a silly little smile and an awkward wobbling movement, and either because he had convinced them he was in fact the sandman or because they were embarrassed for him, they all closed their eyes again.
He remembered little about the interior of the plane from his last flight years ago. On this flight he wondered about the small details: if the instruments in the cockpit were similar to or vastly different from the instruments on that previous plane, if the pilot and copilot had less or more facial hair than the pilots of that former era, or if the basic ergonomics of the passenger compartment had changed due to subtle evolutions in human physiology, or perhaps just advances in understanding. He and his fellow passengers were so completely enclosed they could actually have been anywhere; they might have been in some warehouse with blackened windows and hydraulics rocking the craft in order to simulate flight. He had to remind himself that he was actually flying, although he felt reluctant to do so. He might have preferred that warehouse to this endless, featureless night.
Although this was his first trip back to England since that other lifetime, James had returned many times in his dreams, in his daylight fantasies, and in a series of notes he had written to himself over the years during idle moments at work or solitary dinners at home.
My hope in undertaking this trip is for a profound and positive change.
The journey will be implausibly long. The flight may require months, even years, and may likely be followed by additional legs involving a variety of transportation: boat, train, automobile.
Endless journeys through the Underground may be involved. But I’m not bothered by the time investment required, as it may be necessary for a positive outcome.
I might actually arrive in England an old man. Or due to a variety of meta-physical and scientific reasons, I might land at the airport younger than when I began. Or perhaps I may step off the plane an entirely different person.
“And were any of the crewmembers aware of your hallucinations? The flight attendants took no notice of your surprising behaviour? Or perhaps at the gate—were you having these hallucinations at the airport prior to departure?”
“Well, no, no. I’d hardly call this kind of thing hallucinating. Really, I’m not crazy.”
“What would you call them then?”
“I don’t know…Idle thoughts, maybe? There’s nothing wrong with that—people have the craziest thoughts when they’re sitting, waiting for a length of time. I think we all do that.”
There was a pause as the interrogator conferred with his uniformed colleague. When he came back he said, “Most people do not confess their idle thoughts, particularly to those in authority. Perhaps that is our issue. Do you understand why that might surprise us?”
“You said to tell you anything, anything that might help. And I do want to help you find my friend. And if you could help me find my son, that would be just wonderful. So I’m telling you everything I know. And these idle thoughts? I’m not sure I would have come to England if I hadn’t been thinking these things.
“It’s really the dirty little secret of all individuals, isn’t it? This ocean of illogic swishing about in our skulls. These mad ruminations, these flights into the unimaginable. We dare not speak of them, really, because the authorities, well, they might lock you up for them, eh?
“I read the particular books I do because of those kinds of thoughts. I suspect Lovecraft must have had similar thoughts, crazy thoughts, but of course much more elaborate than anything I’ve ever thought of. Much, much crazier.
“But I think he understood that those insane idle thoughts pointed to a reality beyond this one, that perhaps those thoughts were simply a vibration created by movements in that other world. And if you follow them, well, perhaps we can find out where my friend has gone. And if my son, well, what if my son is in that same awful place?”
“So you are convinced they must be in an ‘awful’ place? ‘Awful’ is the word you would use?”
“Oh yes, pu
tting it in its mildest terms. I think they must be in a terrible, terrible place.”
The curtains were closed at the end of each aisle to block the lights in use by the flight attendants. Such curtains had been used when he was a child to separate the rooms in their tiny house. He and his parents, a grandmother, aunt and uncle, three brothers and two sisters had lived together in one small crate of a home—you always knew what the others were doing, however trivial or banal. You were a direct witness to their daily desires and despairs. But at least you knew. You thought you understood.
He found himself pacing the narrow aisles. The flight attendants eyed him suspiciously. He tried to reassure them with sly smiles, but he was sure he’d only made matters worse. He tried not to look into the faces of the sleeping passengers. He was uncomfortable with the facial expressions of sleeping people, wondering what they might be dreaming. But still, on that long night over the dark ocean he was able to walk around in his stockinged feet, sleeplessly padding back and forth between his seat and the toilet. It was like being at home, but better.
He warned himself to be cautious and alert. What if during one of his mindless strolls he accidentally walked directly into the landscape of some other passenger’s dream? With that in mind, he was careful where he stepped, and there were certain passengers whose proximity he deliberately avoided.
Here he was in a capsule hurtling through space, surrounded by comatose bodies, and the most disturbing thing was that this was not a circumstance which felt foreign to him.
He tried not to look into their sleeping faces, but sometimes he simply could not help himself. A child suddenly opened her eyes and stared at him. He realised there were several children on the plane, ranging in age from toddlers to teens. It angered him how parents could just yank their children out of comfortable surroundings to travel on some dangerous foreign journey. Children rarely had a choice in such matters, and every day they were exposed to the unpredictable jeopardy of travel. The girl fluttered her eyes closed, no doubt thinking he was a dream. Beside her, her mother opened her eyes partway in order to peer at him, her face tense, alert.
He knew how he must look to such a mother. Despite his age, he knew that his face was childish, puffy, his eyes always wet, red, irritated. And he had a boy’s body: short, awkward, his chest underdeveloped. People took one look at him and they knew something was wrong, they just didn’t know what. They didn’t want their children around him. He nodded, attempted a reassuring smile, but left before it was complete.
A number of the passengers wore clothing covering almost every inch of skin, even when they were sleeping. He had noticed several of them during boarding, bandages peeking out of their long sleeves and high collars, visible on cheeks and foreheads under their floppy, low-slung hats. He didn’t think they were American, but it would be difficult to say why. Something about their size and the way they held themselves, he supposed. He imagined they might have travelled from their homeland for treatment in the US and were now returning. The edges of exposed skin near the tightly wrapped bandages appeared raw, red, and not-to-be-touched. He imagined some accident affecting an entire village, or some long-standing abnormality genetically linking these unfortunates. Were such perceptions prejudiced? He hoped not.
He returned to his seat, his thoughts multi-tracking as his brain attempted to sort through a confusing array of contradictory memories, dreams, and impulses. This didn’t feel odd to him, but simply part of the physics involved when flying across a vast expanse of ocean.
He had been lucky enough to find an empty seat beside him, where he spread out his books and made a transatlantic nest for himself. He had brought along three by Lovecraft—The Shadow Over Innsmouth, At the Mountains of Madness, The Colour Out of Space—out of which he read paragraphs at random during the flight. This exercise had a meditative effect, enabling him to somewhat control the anxiety. He believed this method also had the potential to reveal aspects of the great author’s work which he had been hitherto unaware of.
Also spread open on the seat was a collection of e-mail printouts he’d carefully hand bound inside an attractive blue cloth cover. This was the majority of his correspondence with Clarence, who’d first told him about the construction of the Lovecraft Museum somewhere north of London, including random reports concerning the progress of the project and a chronicle of what Clarence had witnessed and experienced there on opening day. This, too, he dipped into at random:
I cannot imagine who must be funding such a project. Obviously some wealthy enthusiast of the author must be involved. Doubtless some British peer with considerable clout, intent to honour, on British soil, a rather eccentric American author of narrow appeal, of all things. Already it is obvious that millions of pounds have been spent. The land may be some distance outside London, but surely it cannot have come cheap.
Not that I am complaining, actually. As a lover of all things Lovecraftian, it will be quite thrilling to have such an institution so close at hand.
They refuse anyone entry to the building site, but some photographs have been leaked (see the link). There appears to be a great, glass-domed foyer whose individual pieces are joined by means of an intricate webbing of brass…
One of the more startling details to emerge is the excavation and filling of a large artificial lake behind the museum, which places the museum on its shore. Rumours abound that several rich patrons are involved, all with an obsession with weird fiction, Lovecraft in particular. I also remember reading a random late-night internet posting claiming that the lake had been populated by a number of unusual aquatic species, but since that time I have been unable to track down this particular comment, despite my usual good luck with search engines…
Attendance was quite small on opening day. But that gave those who were there more opportunity to study the exhibits. Some are specific to Lovecraft personally—an array of pens, manuscripts, his favourite hat—there are also a number of artworks inspired by his stories. Other authors—their artefacts, their inspirations—are represented to a lesser degree. A large collection of mechanical devices seems unrelated to anything else housed here, except for the compelling sense of strangeness one feels when trying to rationalise their functioning. On that first day we all spent a great deal of time in the gift shop…
I am having the most difficult time explaining the ambience of the museum. It is true to Lovecraft, but not in the most obvious of ways. This is not the old musty facility a reader of his fiction might expect. It is a thoroughly modern, even hyper-modern construction, as if Lovecraft’s ideas and views had been allowed to develop into something a bit more mainstream, a projection into an alternate future in which his aesthetics have informed the predominant modes of popular entertainment…
The e-mails had been long, enthusiastic, and detailed. But James was able to discern very little in the distant, out-of-focus pictures Clarence had provided. When he grew tired of reading, he slid open the window shade and looked out: endless black cloud outlined by the occasional flashes of lightning coming, apparently, from underneath. In the distance they appeared to be shredding into nothing, but he could not determine the origin of this effect. His fraying nerves buzzed in his ears.
He had begun to wonder if his fantasies of a near-endless plane flight could possibly be based in reality, when he pushed himself awake through a cloud of static-charged imagery to the pilot’s announcement that they were less than a half-hour from landing at Gatwick.
III. Anarchy in the UK
The walk to passport control with his carry-on luggage seemed unnecessarily long and complicated. The occasional signs from the international arrival gates led them up some stairs and down a series of long, declining corridors which were otherwise empty, their windows providing desolate early morning views of vast fields of tarmac. But for lengthy stretches there were no signs at all, and James could only assume the arriving passengers were supposed to stay within the confines of corridors and not take any of the several closed doors that le
d away from the main route from the planes. He thought about trying a door every now and then to make sure it was locked and not an available option, but he was afraid to. Surely cameras were everywhere, and it seemed quite possible this was somehow part of the airport’s security system. Foreign passengers who tried the doors might be considered troublemakers and hauled off for questioning based on their persistent curiosity. And anyone contemplating committing any sort of havoc in Britain would have a great deal of time to ponder the possible consequences, building anxiety to a level of maximum discomfort.
How could a passenger who was physically handicapped deal with these distances? Possibly there were separate accommodations for those with special needs. Or perhaps it was intended that their travel be curtailed. So far he had seen no motorised carts or wheelchairs.
The arriving passengers proceeded at their own individual paces, and very soon James lost sight of the young man far ahead of him and could detect no signs of the couple following behind. He was alone in the echoing halls, with no evidence of fellow humanity, and as he entered a series of passages which showed extensive signs of construction, flowing sheets of clouded plastic making more walls and openings to go through, he was increasingly agitated, almost to the point of panic.
Was this what they wanted? Was this how they weeded out those who came into the country with a guilty attitude, with secret yearnings for destruction, or those who in general did not belong?
“You seem to have been very concerned about our methods of security as you entered the country,” his interrogator said.
“No, not so much.” James shifted nervously under the man’s gaze. “I just didn’t really understand why the distance, and, well, the apparent lack of supervision. I’d actually have felt more at ease if there had been armed guards stationed at regular intervals. But perhaps that is part of the design, to maximise anxiety while perhaps saving on personnel costs?”
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