How I wish I had not laid eyes upon it. How I wish I could have gouged out that fetid part of my brain that insisted I see. It was not just the sight of the atrocity before me that froze my muscles and sickened me to the core, nor was it the fate I knew would be consigned to me if I did not act immediately. It was the revelation of the Innominatum’s twisted plan. All at once I understood.
Hargraven was there. But he was not alone.
“My God, Edward, what have you done!”
I had entered a clearing where the fog seemed reluctant to persist. Three semicircular rows of crimson candles illuminated a stone plinth supporting a blood-smattered mattress. I would have thought it to be a sacrificial altar were it not for the bizarre arrangement beside it. A smaller version of the bony trees in the grounds had forced its way through the gravel floor, the branches looming over the altar like a skeletal claw, twitching and swaying as if teased by a faint breeze. It served as a scaffold for a disturbing array of surgical tools, all smeared with a mixture of coppery fluid and thick blood—hooked knives, drills, hammers, and clamps hung there like decorations on a devilish Christmas tree—the clink of metal I heard in my previous visit here. It was a barbaric operating theater.
But infinitely more shocking was the abomination presiding over it all in a high throne behind and above the candles. Twisted and bony, the grandiose chair had grown out of the root system that supported the stamen. The abomination rose from its seat. It stood wavering, taller than the beasts outside, a terrifying chimera of assorted body parts. Its twisted bones and muscle twitched with forbidden, cursed life, entwined with the same metallic segments that polluted the school, and as it confronted me, it opened wide its lipless mouth. The howl of the Innominatum filled the shrine, emanating from the stamen behind me, stimulated by this terrifying creature to which it was connected. I almost dropped the candle as I faltered backward, but somehow I managed to stay upright.
The sight of this pitiful creature would have been horror enough, but what filled me with more terror than anything I had beheld since this nightmare began were the lidless eyes that stared out from beneath its empty skull.
They were crystal blue. They were Elizabeth’s.
I realized then that the heart pulsing within the half-closed ribs must have once belonged to Beatrice. The entrails that sagged and heaved above its naked pelvis were Breswick’s, and it reached out to me with Stromany’s powerful limbs, hanging awkwardly by strands of milky fiber and stitched into place with no thought of aesthetic precision. A cavernous wound gaped above Elizabeth’s eyes—space reserved for the final part I had been drawn there to provide.
I screamed, and as the wretch ambled closer—Hargraven by its side—I felt something cold and cruel slide into my mind. It writhed and groped inside my head with clammy hands, feeling, probing, hating, lusting; and all at once its alien intent was clear to me. All Hargraven’s hope and yearning for heaven’s touch came crashing through my thoughts like an icy, frothing sea.
The Innominatum had been given a glimpse of mankind’s ultimate desire for eternal life, its appetite whetted by the beauty of God’s spiritual kingdom. It saw there a new place to infest, a new and beautiful heavenly flesh to feed upon, and it wanted it desperately. To the Innominatum, Hargraven’s verse was no metaphor. It was the promise of strange meat, a tantalizing feast to sate its gluttony, and all it needed was a vessel worthy of entrance. The verse tore through my head as a screaming mantra, the Nameless Beast’s voice burning like hellfire.
Sing, lofty spirit, sing, for the love of liberty.
Suffer the flesh to free thy soul and rise to heaven’s courts.
For the way to salvation is seen with eyes of virtue.
Thy strength must not waver nor thy heart sink.
Let thy mind ponder the secrets of the flesh no longer,
That thy bowels may divine the way.
The Innominatum was not content with sending a survivor back to the realm of men. It wanted to send the infiltrator to this new realm of angels.
Fingers grasped my shoulder. The nails pressed through my shirt as I was drawn inexorably toward the plinth, and with the pain came the full force of terror. I struggled to escape as fingers from the chimera’s other hand slid across my cheek, reaching into my mouth to hold my jaw. I bit down and tasted the bitterness of dead skin on my tongue, but the creature made no show of pain. Even as my shoes slipped in the fluids on the floor, I felt my legs being lifted up to be placed on the plinth. It pressed my head hard into the mattress, and I could almost taste the gore of its previous resident as wetness met my cheek. I kicked, and the muscles in my neck burned as I strained for release, but I was helpless; the chimera’s grip was too strong, and Hargraven stared in remorse as he leaned down on my shins. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the glint of curved blades and bloodied handles ready for the transplant. The creature, still pressing my head down with one hand, caught my flailing arm with the other and held it tightly by my side. I saw a leather restraint awaiting my wrist and knew that my chances of escape were almost gone.
“Edward, please!”
The torture in his eyes intensified, and for a tiny moment his grip slackened. With one final lunge of desperation, I kicked. My foot made no contact with him, but the violent movement was enough to force me off the mattress, and I came crashing over the side opposite the chimera. The creature regarded me with its beautiful blood-ringed eyes and moved across the plinth, reaching for me. I stepped backward, barely evading its grasp.
Hargraven was closest to me, all signs of my friend’s control now absent, and he reached for me too and caught the cuff of my shirt. I yanked back and pulled him over and, seizing my chance, barged past the chimera. I was delirious with panic, wild with desperate resolve to be anywhere but inside that dreadful torture chamber, and I almost fell as I scooped up my candle and raced back toward the center of the shrine and to the beating organ exposed there.
Gasping for air as my heart pumped like a trapped animal within me, I reeled forward through the fog and collided with the stamen. My palm connected with the exposed tissue, and visions of its hellish dominion filled me like the rushing of a hurricane. I saw age upon age of tyranny wrought by multitudes of beasts across a thousand lost cities. I saw bloodshed beyond imagining and heard the sound of countless screams mingling with my own. But it was not only the Innominatum’s essence that was shared; I could feel its rage as it digested the beliefs and passions of my own mind. It felt betrayed, deceived by its own childlike naiveté and shortsighted lust. In Hargraven’s mind it had been subjected to the intense desire for freedom, the promise of salvation, and it had so deeply craved a fresh feeding ground that it absorbed his hopes with rash acceptance.
But in my mind it saw something new. It saw doubt and disbelief that such a place even existed, and it saw that even if heaven were real, then passage into that place was not achieved by the material creation of the perfect human. It finally understood the allegory. Whether the part of Hargraven that still remained deliberately encouraged this flawed ideal in the Nameless Beast’s mind, I cannot say, but I want to believe that he still had some influence over its instincts and thinking.
With the Innominatum’s thoughts in disarray, I had one last desperate hope that it could be defeated once and for all. I set the candle’s wick upon its beating heart. Wax covered the tissue, and flames instantly lapped across its surface to ignite the ugly growth, burning my hand and forcing me to snatch my fingers away. The fire’s appetite was voracious, and with the melting of coppery membranes came a thick coil of noxious smoke that rose to the ceiling like a black serpent to dissolve into the fog.
I stumbled as I clambered between the withering roots surrounding the stamen, but knew I would not get far. Smoke had entered my lungs and I could hardly breathe. I collapsed far beyond the reach of the door and turned onto my back, coughing up bile as flames caught my clothes.
The monstrous creation approached. I heard its skin sizzle as it leaned
over me, and I caught a glimpse of Elizabeth’s eyes as the thing grasped my hair. Although I knew there was no hope of escaping the school, I felt the rage of righteous victory at seeing the stamen disintegrate into a shapeless mass. The thing was dying, and I could only hope that its hold over Hargraven and this animated cadaver would die with it. I struggled to reach out and share my malice, thrusting my hand into the liquid pulp, willing it to feel my anger, and only then did my body yield to its inevitable ruin. I could hold on no longer. My eyes closed. Darkness followed.
Moon Box Segment Translation 29
Yet one in toil does strive
The archaeological diary of Edward Cephas Hargraven
29th September 1891
It visited me in the night. A cold terror. The Nameless Beast. The Innominatum. I will abandon this place. Return home, burn this diary, bury every scrap of archaeological wonder we found here. While the ancient race of the Kur’hukayia were not as advanced as the people of my day are, their wisdom was superior. Ironically, this is what I came to learn from them. My desire for knowledge was a twisted one. In my conceit I thought that understanding their version of wisdom would teach us more about the roots of humanity. I never once considered that their wisdom would genuinely teach me.
Alas, it is too late now. I know why they built their city on top of the City of the Innominatum. I know why they tried to conceal it. There are ancient terrors that should never be uncovered. Haynes tried to warn me. I did not listen. And that terrible being haunts both my dreams and my waking moments. I cannot escape it.
30
My memory of what happened next is confused at best, for my life should have ended in that shrine. More than anything, I wish it had. In my delirious state I did not recognize the significance of the next moments, but the images still linger like a gangrenous wound.
I woke outside the ruins of the school, face-up and staring at the starless sky. With a tilt of my eyes I saw the smoking ruin of Hargraven Manor and wondered at my miraculous escape. Someone or something had rescued me. As my hearing returned, the sound of guttural moans filled my ears. I turned over, and though every muscle burned with agony, I wrestled to my feet and stood.
The beasts had come, the Behemoth standing before them like a dark emissary—a shadow of its former self but still living. I had been spared only to be torn apart by the children of the Innominatum. I knew that I did not have the strength to make any attempt at escape and felt that I would not be able to remain conscious for long. But they did not attack. They were fawning, and the fierce intelligence I saw before in the Behemoth’s eyes was supplemented with something new, something completely unexpected to me. With dawning shock, I sensed a kind of reverence, perhaps even elation in its keen stare.
With the heart of the Innominatum destroyed, had their servitude been broken? Were its offspring as much prisoners to its influence as the rest of us were inside the school? I expected them to be rampant without the will of their master to subjugate them. Had they instead plucked me from the inferno?
I wavered, still reeling from my ordeal, but with the knowledge that I was somehow safe from harm, I fell to the ground again, my brief moment of wakefulness slipping slowly back toward the dark.
I felt claws grasp me and drag my body over the grass. The beasts left me there, at what could easily have been a shallow grave. Barely aware of my surroundings, I felt harsh tendrils of metal slide across my charred skin, over my legs, over my arms, over my head. Cool soil engulfed me, and then came the rumbling of moving earth and the rushing of air. I felt the shape of the Moon Box in my grasp. It crackled with energy, lighting the dirt, engulfing me in brightness. In my last few seconds of consciousness I felt powerful forces tugging at me, propelling me, the Moon Box dragging me through a vast and twisting void at a speed that seemed impossible. I passed through the other side of comatose delirium with a vague notion of warmth on my skin. I cannot describe my exultation when I realized it was the gentle touch of morning sunlight.
This would seem like a happy ending but for the reality. For I was not the same man. I had survived only in part, returning to civilization as a seed of destruction, holding back the doom of another community, day by day, in fits of momentary will.
Moon Box Segment Translation 30
Or imparted wisdom given
The archaeological diary of Edward Cephas Hargraven
30th September 1891
How I wish I had not come to this accursed city. How I wish I had never heard that word. Innominatum. Innominatum. Innominatum. Innominatum. Innominatum. Innominatum . . .
31
I would tell the story of how I came to be in my new home, but time is short now. It has taken me years to come to tell this story, and many months to write it down, but with each passing day my strength wanes while that of the new incarnation of the Innominatum increases. The next time I lose control, it may be the last, and I must conclude this tale with explanation and warning before that happens.
I did not escape from the realm of the Innominatum. I was released. Hargraven warned that the final survivor would be sent back to civilization to begin its cycle once again. I thought I had destroyed it in the fire at Hargraven Manor and that its flawed plans to reach the heavenly realms had been thwarted with the destruction of its chimeric creation. But I know now what happened. The stamen was only one part of the entity, and it continued with its plan despite knowing it could not succeed in reaching heaven. The Alexander Drenn who once lived, who once had a family, who once had a future, was killed in Hargraven Manor, and the Innominatum concluded its design of the chimera with the final piece from my body. My mind now lives in the body of that abomination. I am only grateful that I have no memory of the operation that was performed.
Soon after its completion I was sent out of the ruins of the school in my new body to present myself to its brood. It truly was reverence I discerned in the Behemoth’s eyes, for it recognized the continued essence of its master living in a new host, a new seed, and it was paying homage to the superiority of its parent. As its last incarnation withered and died within the wastes of its latest trophy—Dennington Cross—the Innominatum’s seed was ready for the next implantation, ready to be sent back out into the world to bring back more food. The Nameless Beast knew it would not breach the gates of heaven, but it was content in the knowledge that it had succeeded in beginning a new cycle. Heaven would wait.
And now here I am, hiding in a deserted barn within a wasteland, inflicted with the same curse that drove Lord Hargraven to nurture this evil intelligence. I exist within a burnt shell, a monstrosity forced to conceal my form beneath a hooded cloak, working ceaselessly to gather the materials and tools needed to construct the creature that will ultimately infest another city or village or town and drag it to the Innominatum’s domain. And I have succeeded. The hell seed—the first metallic strand that will creep and grow under the earth—after months of experimentation, lies in the palm of my hand, ready for implantation. The stamen will grow. It will mature. And then the Innominatum will take this place too. The story of its disappearance will be shrouded in mystery, unexplained and perhaps covered up, much as it was with Dennington Cross and Newton Fremming.
I weep with Elizabeth’s eyes, feel with Beatrice’s heart, build with Stromany’s hands, persist with Breswick’s courage, but with my own mind—when it is not controlled by the growing will of the Innominatum—I mourn.
It will not let me die during these lucid moments; it has enough will for that, but I have at least prevented it from entering into a heavily populated city, just as my predecessors did.
For a time it will be still. But I feel it stirring. It is almost ready to usurp my reasoning, rise again, and cast me aside, my work complete. I can do nothing to stop it now.
I have the Moon Box with me. This was the original container for the Innominatum’s means to infiltrate our world. The seed of its intelligence was insidiously planted within the cryptic words locked inside, the subconscious instr
uctions to program the mind of the reader and begin its inception, a shortcut to its original evolution. With the same instinct it forced upon me to survive, it drives me to use the box, just as it did with Hargraven and those before him. Whether it be his story or mine, and whatever the medium, the result is the same. My only hope now is that my own tainted words will find the right person, and this madness will be over. If that person be you, dear reader, my sincere wish is that you will have the strength to overcome its influence.
The cycle must end. Here.
Dark Seed Page 23
