Haggopian and Other Stories

by Brian Lumley

  harvest’ of which you speak. Pray tell me, what shall we harvest?”

  And then a gasp, a cry choked off, his body snapping into a weird rigidity and only very slowly relaxing, and his breathing steadying as his face slackens and he falls more deeply asleep, as if soothed by some unseen

  hypnotist’s persuasions…

  • • •

  The night passes. The pair sleep late, and when they rise they avoid each other…James very deliberately, Jason because he can’t be bothered with the surliness of the other’s moods.

  Jason cooks breakfast for himself; James doesn’t eat until well into the afternoon when he makes a small cheese sandwich, then sits eating it, scowling at the artefact. And finally:

  James: “I believe I heard you call out in the night?”

  Jason: “Unlike the outer shell of this place, the partitions between our rooms are thin as cardboard! You could hear a mouse fart on the other side. As for my outcry: well, my dream was a particularly bad one.”

  James: “Which doubtless accounts for your mood.”

  Jason: “Oh?”

  James: “Your silence.”

  Jason: “Listen who’s talking! We were here for forty-eight hours before you so much as grunted!”

  James: “As I recall, you complained to me about the lack of a TV. You asked why not. I did not grunt. I pointed out that as well as the absence of a TV there was no radio and indeed nothing that might interfere with our seclusion, concentration, the immanence of ulterior forces. And incidentally, I don’t dislike you. You accused me of disliking you, but that is not so. It is simply that I am remote from you…my thoughts are rarely mundane. And when I am disturbed—when my thoughts are interrupted—then naturally it becomes an inconvenience, an annoyance. So you see it isn’t the case that I dislike you, rather that I despise idle prattle. Not dislike but disinclination, disinterest.”

  Jason, sighing, shaking his head: “You don’t seem to realise just how insulting such remarks are. Now I’m not normally a surly fellow, but I can certainly feel myself sliding that way. Today you were the one who commenced ‘prattling’, and I suspect you’re not yet done!”

  James: “Because while you fail to excite my interest, your dreams are quite another matter. On several occasions I am sure I heard you cry out. This was before I myself fell asleep. Were you dreaming of your brother? Or perhaps your mother? I believe I heard you call a name. But I was only half awake and so can’t be sure.”

  Jason: “Is this important to you? I can’t see why. And what with your lack of interest in me—the fact that my presence is ‘an inconvenience’ and even ‘an annoyance’—I don’t see why I should trouble myself to talk to you at all, not a single word! And certainly not about my poor dead mother or brother.”

  James: “But the fact is you were prescient in the matter of their deaths. Could it be that your dreams represent guilt? You foresaw their deaths and could do nothing about it…que sera, sera. And now they come back to haunt you. As to why this is of interest to me: I see the NOW while failing to understand where it is going, while you see what is to be without knowing how to avoid it. I seek to probe deeper, while you turn away from your talent.”

  Jason, shrugging: “So? Is there a lesson to be learned from these supposed facts? What is your conclusion?”

  James, a trifle reluctantly: “That…perhaps we ought to work together? After all, that presumably is why they saw fit to lodge us as a pair.”

  Jason: “Possibly, but it’s a shame they couldn’t have found me a female guinea pig partner. That way I wouldn’t be spending quite so much time dreaming.”

  James, raising an eyebrow: “Sex? I have no time for it and never will have. It is an animal activity. Out beyond the stars…their procreation is different. More a melding, a substitution, a flowing together, and an explosive multiplication.”

  Jason, singing: “…It’s the name of the game, and each generation…”

  James, apparently aghast: “You would do well not to mock!”

  Jason: “Oh, really? I shouldn’t mock? When what you’ve just said sounded like you were describing a clan of alien amoebas?”

  James, apparently in disgust: “Pshaw!”

  • • •

  Later:

  Jason, sitting at the table staring at the artefact, then bursting abruptly into speech: “My brother—and especially my mother—bring me warnings. Yes, I’m oneiromantic, but my precognition isn’t so much advanced knowledge of what to do or to avoid doing but, as you might have it, knowledge of the direction in which my current position or standing is leading me. In other words, their warnings are useless by reason of the fact that the outcome cannot be avoided. They can warn of my going to hell, but they can’t offer me a fire-proof parachute!”

  James: “Que…”

  Jason, cutting the other off: “Yes, yes! Of course! What will be will be.”

  James, nodding sagely: “So then, the dead go on; at least their thoughts: they are not dead who can forever lie. Having undergone their change—knowing more of Being by experiencing Not Being—they attempt to communicate their knowledge, their warnings, to the living loved ones they left behind. In which case I suspect—no, I affirm—that we have this in common with the gods of outer spheres. They too go on forever. Except they don’t die but are truly immortal! In my dreams I’ve seen them; their myriad shapes seeping down from the stars!”

  Jason: “I only know of me and mine, which are real things. As for alien beings ‘seeping’ down from the stars: the nearest star—other than Sol—is four and a half light-years away. That is one hell of a seep! I am convinced it’s all a fiction. Think about it. A certain star is a billion light years away. Even at the speed of light your alien ‘gods’ will take a billion years to get here. And if they are only ‘seeping’…?”

  James, with a shrug: “As for it being a fiction, our hosts don’t seem to think so, else why are we here? And as for ‘seeping’: a poetic turn of phrase. The Old Gentleman might just as well have used ‘filtering’, which is another slow process.”

  Jason: “Yes, he used ‘seeping’; but he meant it like poison in a wound, like pus from an open sore. And remember: the gods of his pantheon were evil. Is that what you crave, the destruction of everything we consider good?”

  James, sneeringly: “Hah! Good, bad, love, hate—emotions in general—They are beyond, above all that! And anyway, you miss what should be obvious: that they are timeless.”

  Jason, grunting, and the corners of his mouth turning down: “Timeless—sleeping but not dead—oh yeah, sure.”

  James, dreamily, ignoring Jason’s obvious sarcasm: “Immortal they journey, wandering between the stars, pausing now and then, but only long enough to…to harvest their worlds.”

  Jason: “Immortal? They will be here until the end? Doesn’t that imply that they were here at the beginning? How, immortal? Though I’ll grant you they would need to be to ‘seep’ down from the stars!”

  James: “Exactly! And that is the point you missed. For when you speak of the speed of light you should not forget that time stands still at such a speed! It is the secret of their immortality: that during their journey they do not age!”

  Jason does not answer immediately; when he does, it is only to frown and ask: “Do you think that perhaps we’re confused? Do you feel confused? Our conversations, our arguments, seem to go in circles. And personally my mind never felt so cluttered! But…maybe I’ve asked you that before? Or did you ask me?”

  James, ignoring the other’s question and indicating with a nod of his head and a pointed finger the artefact in its glass globe: “There it is: a ‘lens of light’, or so I believe. But do you know where they found it, these people who are using us in an attempt to prove its properties?”

  Jason, blinking rapidly, as if to clear his head of confusing thoughts: “No, do you?”

  James: “Absolutely! Before I volunteered my person for this experiment, I had them volunteer their sources, their whys
and wherefors. Are you interested?”

  Jason: “I shall try to be.”

  James: “It was five years ago, in Iraq, after the war that deposed Saddam the Dictator.”

  Jason: “Ah, yes! Saddam Hussein and his alleged, er, weapons of mass destruction? I remember.”

  James: “The American forces stopped a truck on its way to Syria. They found a large amount of gold, a million dollars in hundred dollar bills, and certain items of immense antiquity—including an old book or scroll written in an ancient, indecipherable script. The book contained a map of the desert—with a certain area marked out in the shape of a five-pointed star. It transpired that the book’s ancient text was the language of a sunken city or continent lost in Pacific deeps.”

  Jason: “By any chance, (R’xxxx)? Where (Cxxxxxx) lies dreaming?”

  James, nodding: “The same—or so I suspect—though for some reason no one has deigned to confirm my suspicion in that regard. But, learning of the book’s existence, a certain esoteric organisation took steps to obtain it. Among our hosts are members of that organisation….Do you want to know more?”

  Jason: “All very interesting. And by all means carry on.”

  James: “As you wish. The five-pointed star symbol is well known; indeed its powers, if any, have long been prone to argument among certain savants—”

  Jason: “Savants?”

  James: “Authorities, such as you and I.”

  Jason: “But I don’t consider myself an ‘authority,’ merely a reader of weird and macabre fiction.”

  James, scornfully: “Not to mention someone who catches the occasional glimpse of the future! But let me proceed:

  “The map indicated or superimposed this pentagram on a portion of the Iraqi desert. And the most important thing is this, that the desert has not changed in a million years, not to any significant degree. Anyway, the esoteric organisation of which I speak sent their agents to investigate, ostensibly to search out elusive weapons of mass destruction said to be hidden somewhere in those great wastelands. But in fact they had predetermined to locate the points of the star symbol—and from these to determine its geometric centre.

  “This was not nearly as difficult as it might at first have seemed. The locals offered up information; they said that there were five ‘holy men’ who occupied the selfsame locations out in the desert. And each of the five—drug-addicted Dervishes, as it transpired, and completely bereft of reason as perceived in our Western society—was discovered to be in possession of a star-stone! Alas, they were also in possession of Russian small arms, which they did not hesitate to turn on the investigators. Enter the military, who dealt with these five ‘terrorists’ with despatch…or so I assume since the star-stones were confiscated or ‘commandeered.’

  “Now we move to the geometric centre: a dried-up well, into which our investigators descend, and down below discover a vast natural cavern, once a waterway—but how many millennia ago?—whose walls are carved with myriad foreign or alien sigils. And upon a marble pedestal at the approximate centre—”

  Jason, pointing at the artefact in its glass bubble: “That thing.”

  James: “Indeed!”

  Jason: “I see. And the star-stones kept it secure, turning aside its malign influence. Correct?”

  James, shaking his head: “This is not how I perceive it…though I can see how such confusion in the Mythos arose originally. No, I believe that upon a time the cavern housed a Being. As for ‘malign’: I fail to see anything malign in this. What I do see is that there are travellers out there among the stars; not gods, not evil aliens, in no way a threat, but scientists! Different, certainly—our superiors in as many fields as you care to number, and in others that you can’t even imagine, you may be sure—but ‘kept secure’, yes, I can agree with that.”

  Jason: “Secure against what?”

  James: “Secure against being disturbed! It is a marker, and perhaps even a Gateway, for those who wander the star spaces.”

  Jason, whose sneer no longer carries conviction: “Sure, and who perform their wandering, seeping, or filtering at the speed of light, eh? As for these five Arab madmen, these zealots: why were they so protective of the star-stones, or rather, this so-called ‘lens of light’? Why would they lay down their lives for it? Were they protecting it as some kind of holy relic, or were they in fact protecting us, humankind, from it?”

  James: “Bah! Your thoughts are mired in fear! You’re a pronounced

  xenophobe!”

  Jason: “Possibly, and on a cosmic scale at that! But in the light of my precognizance, ask yourself this: what do you suppose I am most afraid of?”

  James: “Of the (Gxxxx Oxx Oxxx), the Outer Ones, of course. Of the thought of Them in the spaces between the spaces we know—in the stellar voids—riding the gravitic waves of exploding stars! Of their superiority!”

  Jason: “Wrong! But you’ve mentioned two things that do concern me. One: you spoke of Them harvesting their worlds—”

  James, starting, blinking, obviously taken aback: “Eh? Did I? A harvest? Yes, indeed, I seem to recall saying something of the sort. I may even have dreamed something of it. But now…I can’t seem to remember what it was about.”

  Jason: “There are beads of sweat on your brow. Are you now feeling

  confused?”

  James, wiping his forehead: “Quite right. It’s suddenly hot in here. Whoever controls the temperature is not doing his job. But confused? I’m…not sure.” Then, after a moment’s thought: “And two?”

  Jason: “Two?”

  James: “The second thing I said that concerns you. What was it?”

  Jason: “Ah yes! You called the lens a ‘Gateway’. And if so, well, wouldn’t that be something to fear?”

  James, throwing his arms wide: “For thought! A Gateway that allows my thoughts to reach out to Them…and theirs to reach me—to reach us, if you would only help me, assist me in opening up our minds to them!”

  Jason, thoughtfully: “I think we’ve both been somewhat confused ever since being put in this place. I certainly have not been thinking clearly, and you’ve blown hot and cold—contradicted yourself—on several occasions. But if what you say is right: that the lens is a Gateway for mental communication…well, perhaps that would explain it.”

  James, snapping his fingers: “And there you have it! Their thoughts are incompatible with ours, or at best only marginally readable. Can we explain ourselves to sea snakes or gibbons? No of course not! Likewise their purpose—their messages—come unclear, distorted, and misunderstood by us.”

  Jason: “You admit it, then? That we are being influenced by that thing in the globe?”

  James: “Is there any need to admit what was obvious to me from the start? It is why we are here; to enable our observers to discover to what degree we are influenced. For after all, we are the guinea pigs—the ones with enhanced psychic senses—whereas they are merely…observers.”

  NOTE: In this James was only partly right. I was not lacking in certain psychic sensitivities myself; not as intense as James’s or Jason’s, true, but certainly I had experienced and was still experiencing something of the lens’s peculiar influence, a sort of mental confusion—as had the Dervishes in the Iraqi desert, to the extent that prolonged exposure was probably responsible for their madness. It was not our intention, however, to allow so grave a deterioration in our subjects; the experiment could be brought to a close at any time. No, our main interest lay in whatever other properties the lens might or might not possess.

  • • •

  James, continuing: “So then, shall we work together rather than continue to constantly needle each other?”

  Jason: “If I have needled it was only or mainly in riposte. And I think I’ll sleep on the idea of working together. Perhaps someone will advise me in that regard.”

  James: “Your…relatives?”

  Jason: “Perhaps. My mother was clairvoyant, and my brother…was my twin. We were all three in a traffic a
ccident. I saw it coming but could do nothing about it. In the moment of their deaths…maybe something transferred to me. It strikes me as possible that they had seen it coming, too. As to why that may be relevant to our current situation: I have been experiencing similar feelings of imminence.”

  James: “You are worried that you’re going to die?”

  Jason: “I feel…a sense of transference, metamorphosis—as if I were about to take flight!”

  James, nodding: “Light-headedness. I can feel it, too—the pressure of my thoughts.”

  Jason: “Ah yes, thoughts! Which reminds me of something you said earlier. On that same subject, tell me if you will how you intend to exchange thoughts with alien Beings who could be billions of light years away? That is, assuming the speed of light to be the ultimate reach of material things.”

  James: “But you have supplied the answer to your own question! Thought is not material. It may take time and myriad small electrical impulses to cogitate, but once a thought is set free it exists everywhere. The lens amplifies thoughts, directs them and makes them accessible. But a thought in itself, in its immanence, is as far ranging as the entire universe!”

  Jason: “Accessible, but not understandable?”

  James, nodding: “Hence the confusion, our confusion. We are less than successful at comprehending the incomprehensible, the mental emanations of minds that think in a great many more dimensions than our pitiful three.”

  Jason, tiredly now: “Well anyway, let’s sleep on it…”

  • • •

  But of course the observers must sleep too. We were taking the watch in shifts; that night it was the turn of our psychiatric specialist and myself. The technician slept as best possible on a couch in a room adjacent. It was not the best of times for my mental processes; I was feeling the strain; indeed, the thought had crossed my mind that despite the strength and thickness of the cell’s walls I, too, was in close proximity to the lens.

  The lens:

  Three inches across, a scalloped, faceted disc of what appeared to be smoky quartz. Its constituent elements had not been analysed for fear of damaging its as yet unknown properties. It seemed inactive; had never shown any kind of activity; might as well have been some not especially elegant paperweight.