“We had some aberrations early on, things we didn’t share with the Congressional oversight committee that eventually shut us down. They wouldn’t have understood.”
“What kind of aberrations?”
“Our test subjects began hearing messages that we weren’t sending—messages from an unknown source. Mostly they heard single words or monosyllabic grunts; a few heard sustained mutterings, mostly gibberish. Except for one.” Bernard shuddered as another cold breeze swept over across the landscape. “One of our subjects—a second generation New Yorker whose grandparents emigrated from the Middle East—reported hearing voices speaking in Syriac. Are you familiar with that language?”
“If I remember, it’s an Eastern Aramaic language. Not common these days, although it’s still spoken in a few communities in Syria and Iraq.”
“I asked the subject to record what he heard,” Bernard continued without confirming my definition. His mind drifted as if he had difficulty picturing the man, remembering his name or recalling what became of him. Still, Bernard had no problem recounting the words the test subject conveyed. “He reported hearing the phrase ‘the banished ones are shadows inside the houses of men.’ Does that sound familiar to you at all?”
“Well,” I hesitated, detecting the connection Bernard hoped I would make. In his e-mail detailing directions to the facility, he had added a peculiar request. I had to search through a dozen boxes before I located my copy of Nicolas l’Agneau’s Conversations avec les Morts. The statement echoed one of the most often quoted couplets from the work. “I can see the similarity to l’Agneau, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“How does it go? ‘Those whose empire was torn apart, linger on as shadows in our hearts.’”
“That sounds right,” I said, feigning forgetfulness. l’Agneau’s dark work had originally been shunned by Parisians for its decadent content. Collected in 333 stanzas, its narrative followed the author’s grisly experimentations with necromancy. “It’s been a long time since I read l’Agneau. It’s not the kind of material you can really share with high school seniors. Still, Conversations was written in France in 1664. There’s no reason to think it was ever translated into Aramaic.”
“It wasn’t,” Bernard said, a mordant smile blossoming. His gaze fell to the earth, his eyes tainted with misgivings like a man revolted by his own thoughts. “I underwent the procedure years ago, extended my own range of hearing so that I might verify the phenomenon. I taught myself Syriac to better understand.” He looked at me with the wretchedness of a caged animal subjected to the follies of biotechnology. “The voice is relentless, the ghost of a whisper, speaking in various archaic tongues—like a recording playing over and over again.”
“You hear it now?”
“I hear it always.” Bernard massaged his forehead, wrestling with the torturous babble ricocheting around inside his skull. “I know all of this is difficult to believe. It’s time I showed you something.”
I followed as Bernard led me through three checkpoints inside the facility, each time punching in a code on a numbered keypad, each time verbally confirming his identity, each time nodding to an unseen sentry scrutinizing my presence. Passing through each layer of security, my angst burgeoned. What secrets had to be sheltered so systematically, what hidden horrors had Bernard’s imagination exhumed? Now, his own uneasiness became more noticeable. His nervous, shaking fingers hovered over the last control panel and he peered through a small glass window.
“Inside, you’re going to see a series of 27 scrolls, some intact, some partially disintegrated and reconstructed from fragments.” Bernard gripped my shoulder, impatient but perceptibly cautious. Having been robbed of his first remarkable invention, I understood his vigilance. “It took us months to find it, hunting through archives in Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, and London. No one else knows of its existence; no one else even knows to look for it.”
Contained in individual cases shielded by thick glass, 27 ancient pieces of parchment ringed the sterilized vault. Their restoration must have demanded countless hours of dedication and a degree of concentration and care that went beyond mere occupational merit. I examined each time-worn document with infinite admiration and awe. Though I had no background in reading the old Syriac text, the age and allure of the scrolls attracted me no less.
“This, we now believe, is the source material l’Agneau exploited to compose Conversations avec les Morts. I pulled strings, paid off some disreputable antiquities dealers across the Middle East, and finally confirmed the existence of a document that matched the description.” He reflected as he watched me explore each fragile page, trace each delicately penned inscription. He gestured toward a particular section. “The tract the voice repeats is on this page.”
“Has it been dated?”
“Unfortunately, tests have been inconclusive, with chemical analyses of the ink dating back to the eighth century, and radiocarbon dating of parchment pieces showing results ranging from 13 centuries to almost 10,000 years.” Bernard pointed out visible differences in the parchment, though the penmanship seemed consistent throughout the work. “Our research suggests it was written in Damascus around 730 C.E. by an anonymous Syriac Christian mystic—a contemporary of al-Azrad, in fact.”
Like cyclic cyclones pummeling remote islands in the South Pacific, the twists and tangles of fate lined up before my eyes and tested my deep-seated skepticism. I had no doubt Bernard had meticulously evaluated each puzzle piece, methodically investigating each correspondence, corroborating each link in the chain he had constructed. Still, his obsessive nature might have caused him to make faulty observations. Standing there, captivated by both his unspoken conjecture and the repercussions of his tale, I had to admit to myself that the connection seemed tenuous at best—a curious coincidence linking a handful of fragmentary lines in documents set down hundreds of years and miles apart.
“How can you be certain?”
“Until now, I could not completely verify the correlation between this document and the work of l’Agneau.”
“So you brought me here for my copy of Conversations avec les Morts.” An undeniable rarity, the book had been republished occasionally over the years by obscure presses—though the reissues usually contained errors and omissions. Mine was an original copy, handed down from my great grandfather who collected such antiquarian tomes. “Why me? There are other copies available.”
“Half a dozen intact copies remain in North America. I couldn’t risk contacting William Whitley College or Miskatonic, for that matter. Inquiries would be made. Academics would gossip—they always do. I won’t tolerate prying eyes.” The glint of fanaticism I’d expected to see in his eyes suddenly materialized. In that instant, I knew he had withheld some crucial piece of information—something that might deter me from helping him achieve his objective. “You must understand: There is more to it than simple confirmation. These scrolls were found in disarray, lacking proper order. I believe that by comparing the two texts, we can properly sequence the original.”
“And then?”
“Let’s take this one step at a time, Preston.”
“Listen, if you want my help, you’ll have to level with me. What are you planning to do once I’ve put all this in order?”
“Read it in its entirety. I’ll use my transmitter to broadcast these words to that other world, that distant dimension that has been waiting to hear some sign of sentience. That’s what they’re waiting for.” Bernard believed there to be a passage of considerable importance encoded within the text, one that if transmitted might necessitate a transcommunicative response from some supernatural source. To underscore his commitment, Bernard sat down at a small desk on the far side of the room, fingers racing over the keyboard. An instant later, I heard a confident and commanding voice muttering what sounded like nonsense—its intonations visible in a digitized graph displayed upon a monitor screen. “I made this recording years ago, before the government took over the project. The test subje
ct—U.S. Army communications specialist Anthony Khan—replicated the words he heard in his head, recorded them in Aramaic. He said it repeats itself in loops, like a distress signal—like the very signals we beam into outer space in our search for alien life. I set out to develop a new form of communication, and I seem to have found an invisible shimmer in a dark and weary world, a connection to the distant past.”
I cringed at the sound of the recording, recoiled like prey facing a traditional predator.
“Some things are better left undiscovered.” My feeble assertion fell on deaf ears as Bernard immersed himself in the antiquated dialect, listening absorbedly, as if entranced. I knew ultimately I would comply out of incurable curiosity. I knew, too, that Bernard would furnish me with the tools I required to complete the task. “I’ll do my best, but I have my reservations. We’re doing this for different reasons.”
“Even a skeptic can become a believer, Preston. Wait and see.”
I awoke to the sound of my own muted screams.
Bernard had provided me with a stipend, allowing me to take a much-earned leave of absence from my teaching career. I had rented a small efficiency in the little mountain town of Cohutta, a modest flat with a gas stove, a Murphy bed and an alley view. The elderly landlord maintained the property well, making it appealing to seasonal tourists by embellishing it with country crafts and various Appalachian accoutrements.
Neither the rustic décor, nor the landlord’s periodic offers of “a nice cup of tea chased with a snifter of brandy,” could displace the persistent nightmares that had plagued me since my arrival. Nightly visions of abandoned cities haunted me, images of emptied streets and silenced screams and the dreadful stillness of a desolate world decimated by some unnamed tragedy. Through these unsettling dreams resonated a mellifluous mantra, subtly spoken yet unrelenting—unfamiliar words uttered in an alien tongue that seemed to conjure chaos and set shadows squirming.
The dreams, I believed, merely mirrored events unfolding daily, illustrated so vibrantly and narrated with such voyeuristic delight on cable news networks. Clawing at the edges of civilization were natural disasters, emerging epidemics, terrorist threats and bloody wars motivated by religion, greed, and ideological differences. Anarchy, like an undiagnosed tumor, lurked in the bleak newsprint beneath banner headlines.
Still, an ominous but formless menace haunted my consciousness, prompting fits of despondency and dread that made the nights crawl.
With hours separating me from dawn and the distraction of my ongoing vocation, I slipped on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and wandered downstairs and out onto the front steps of the aging apartment building. To my surprise, I found the landlord stationed in a lawn chair in the middle of the parking lot.
“Couldn’t sleep? Me neither,” he said. The old man noticed the pack of cigarettes in my hand and offered me a light. “Gets harder as you get older. Have to tinkle every half hour, for Christ’s sake. Bed’s not giving you trouble, is it?”
“The apartment’s fine,” I said, wishing I had grabbed a sweater. “Just can’t sleep.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not the only one,” he said, gesturing back toward the complex. I followed his gaze and counted the number of curtained windows flickering with glow of televisions. Insomnia seemed endemic in the building. “Been like that for a while now. Ever since that young man did himself in.”
“Sorry?”
“Oh, you weren’t here then. Happened a few months before you moved in.” The landlord’s face twitched unnaturally and his eyes closed for a moment. A trembling hand scratched at his wrinkled brow. “Arab fellow—quiet, kept his place clean and neat. Lots of books. Police came looking for him one morning and found him dead. Said he’d shot himself in the head.”
“You don’t happen to remember his name, do you?”
“Sure. Fahid Al-Salhi. Worked up at that old observatory.” The old man let his eyes trace the omnipresent stars, searching for familiar arrangements. Spread like diminutive diamonds across the vast black abyss, they shone with a collective condescending radiance that suddenly made the earth seem overwhelmingly insignificant. “Poor man had awful headaches. He was always pounding on my door in the middle of the night begging for aspirin.” Even as he uttered the words, I felt a nagging twinge inside my skull—a dull, throbbing ache that had been easy to ignore up to that point. “You work at that place, don’t you? Surprised they didn’t tell you about it.”
I thanked the landlord for his late-night hospitality and returned to my room. As I drifted along the treacherous chasm of sleep, I wondered how many other translators Bernard had lured before he remembered my name. The following day, I said nothing about the revelation. I had already come too far to extract myself from my dark destiny.
While I spent long days engaged in unraveling the mystery of the parallel texts, working collaboratively with a soft-spoken scholar from Lebanon whose understanding of the archaic dialect enabled me to establish key correspondences, Bernard worked tiresomely with his development team constantly trying to improve his innovation. By manipulating newly developed recording devices, he explained, he had discovered additional vocalizations. Though the recent electronic voice phenomena clearly indicated an attempt at communication, the languages spoken could not be identified.
“Here’s a dozen different voices speaking in as many different dialects,” Bernard said holding a digitized recording captured the previous night. “It’s almost as if they know they have an audience now. They’re trying different languages, hoping for a response.”
“Even if you’re right, even if somehow something beyond our perception is trying to make a connection with us—why now? Why haven’t they found some other medium more accessible to us?” I sipped cola from a Styrofoam cup hoping the caffeine would alleviate a raging headache. Lack of restful sleep had begun taking a toll on me, though I refrained from discussing my nightmares. Bernard could see my fatigue and I saw it reflected in his face. He rarely left the facility, took short naps on a cot in a cramped room he shared with a row of filing cabinets overflowing with copies of pages from various manuscripts. “Do you really believe that these … these things … have been waiting for someone like you to commune with?”
“No, not at all. Don’t you see?” Bernard lifted his chin and scratched at the scruffy beard he had allowed to flourish over the last few weeks. “Look back through history, at all the instances of people who heard disembodied voices. They’ve always been attributed to angels, demons, gods, ghosts. Those born with the capacity to hear are labeled either saints or psychotics, depending on society’s reaction to their story.” I had begun to wonder whether Bernard saw himself as a saint or a psychotic, a martyr for science or a madman fixated by an unproven theory, willing to sacrifice integrity and prudence to substantiate a problematic presumption. My lingering skepticism must have been evident. “I’ve seen that look before, Preston. I know it all too well. I’m used to being called a crackpot, a mad scientist. I wear those monikers proudly. How many researchers over the centuries, on the verge of an important breakthrough, found only derision and disdain from their peers? Be proud to be a part of this. History will remember our names.”
That history would record our names, I had little doubt.
How historians would regard our enterprise, however, I dared not consider. Shedding light upon the shadowed spaces of the world often exposed things best left festering in the dark. Blinded by his ravenous thirst for knowledge, Bernard identified his quest as an innocuous pursuit of enlightenment, rejecting any possibility of catastrophic results.
“Every time you try to reassure me, I get a little more spooked.” I smiled, masking my apprehension. “I should be getting back. Walid will wonder what has become of me.”
“Strange one, Walid.” Walid Moawad, the Lebanese linguist assigned to assist me, rarely deviated from the task at hand to socialize. My initial inquiries about his background had been answered courteously but quite curtly. He never spoke of family
, friends or how he came to be employed by the institution funding the research. “The company produced him at my request, pulled him out of their back pockets like they had just been waiting for me to ask.”
“That’s something I’ve been meaning to ask, about our employers,” I began, but seeing Bernard’s sudden change of expression, I shelved the question for another time, another place. The oppressive environment in which we worked extracted a severe toll on us as the omnipresent eyes of our patrons scrutinized each step of our progress. Bernard never named those who had resurrected his research, never enlightened me as to their interest in his project or the prospective applications such breakthroughs might engender. He guarded the identity of these silent watchers vigilantly, and with each passing day their impatience proliferated. “Well,” I said, defusing the situation, “I was just wondering if I could get a company car.”
Another week’s worth of work saw the scrolls translated, judged against my edition of Conversations avec les Morts, sequenced and methodically examined for discrepancies, correspondences and omissions. Once the 333 stanzas had been properly ordered, Walid read aloud the complete text while Bernard recorded the session.
Regrettably, the touted transmission produced no immediate response. Hours stretched into days, days into weeks. Research continued, halfheartedly, as Bernard scrambled to validate his apparent failure—and to justify my continued involvement in the project.
“Something’s missing,” he said one evening, sitting at the same picnic bench where he had shared his revelations with me months earlier. Stars diligently occupied their fixed positions, arranging themselves industriously to etch familiar constellations in the darkening heavens. “We’re overlooking something. There must be something hidden in the text.”
Dark Horizons Page 18
