Weirdbook 31

by Doug Draa

  Word of this got to the head of the Psychology Department, and he requested to see all our data. We were more than happy to show him—hell, we’d documented everything from the first minute we began—and he was impressed, so much so that he suggested we take the experiment to the next level.

  One of the things Jenny had attempted was to use Cymatics as a way to treat mental illness—entraining misfired synapses in the brain to fall into a steady, predictable pattern. So what effect might genuine madness might have on the structure of things, and vice-versa?

  The Psychology Director made arrangements for us to conduct the experiment on a handful of schizophrenics at the state mental hospital. I was amazed he was able to arrange all of this so quickly, but he pointed out that there was nothing about the experiment that put anyone in danger; it was a simple measurement of physiological reactions to auditory and visual data.

  The only difference was that, this time, we’d be doing it with a dozen people simultaneously. The hospital had more than enough EKG and EEG machines to supply us.

  So everything was arranged, and off we went.

  The first part of the experiment went beautifully. The patients sat there and watched the screen and listened to the music—Steve’s original composition, not the reaction recording—and then we made arrangements to come back in two days and play the results.

  There was no deviation. Each of the twelve reaction pieces were the same kinds of tone poems that we’d gotten before, and just like the original batch of recordings, these twelve pieces, when played simultaneously, created a single melody. And just like the first series, there was that chattering on the periphery.

  Steve had isolated the original chattering, but it was gibberish—a bunch of monosyllabic noises, like grunts or hums. This new series of noises was just more of the same, but then we overlapped the two sets of noises…and I suppose that was the moment we damned ourselves, because when combined, the two sets of noises formed a chant, some sort of…I don’t know…incantation—Steve was the one who called that one. He said something about the rhythms and tonal phrasings matching those of Gregorian religious music led him to believe it was chant of some kind. Neither one of us recognized the language—assuming it was an actual language. We thought about taking it to the Language Department, but that would have delayed the second part of the experiment at the state hospital, so we just added that to our To Do list for afterward.

  By this time, the two of us were the talk of the university. Even though the term wasn’t over, we received notification that not only would we remain on scholarship, but would be receiving a small stipend to help continue our work—hell, the Bioacoustics Department even decided to resurrect the Cymatics program for the next term. We were stars.

  A week later we went back to the state hospital to perform the second half of the experiment. Besides the original twelve patients, the state hospital director was present, as were two armed security guards and the head of the university’s Psychology Department.

  The patients’ chairs were arranged in a half-circle in front of the large LCD screen. The hospital director and Psychology Department head sat in chairs a few feet off to the left of the group, and one security guard stood at each end of the half-circle of chairs. Steve and I were hunched over the equipment in a far corner of the room, a good ten feet away from everyone.

  The lights were lowered, and we began the playback. Steve had made two master recordings; one of the patients’ reactions, and one wherein their reactions were combined with those of the original test subjects. We’d programmed the system to play these back to back.

  During the playback of the patients’ reaction recording, Steve and I began to notice that the Fractal Visualization program wasn’t behaving normally; instead of showing a cascading series of images, it was showing bits and pieces of the same image over and over, sometimes combining pieces, but more often just displaying a flash here, a section there. The patients themselves seemed utterly transfixed by it all, so we made a note and sat back to watch what would happen during the next playback.

  The patients’ reaction recording segued seamlessly into the combined recording, but this time, even though Steve had done nothing to amplify the chanting, the words could be clearly heard: Iä-R’lyeh! Cthullhu fhtagn! Iä! Iä!

  We looked at one another. The chanting was the same volume as the music itself, and we had done nothing to alter the recording.

  Iä-R’lyeh! Cthullhu fhtagn! Iä! Iä!

  It didn’t take long to figure out why. Many of the patients were moving in their chairs, rocking back and forth, and repeating the chant over and over.

  Iä-R’lyeh! Cthullhu fhtagn! Iä! Iä!

  I was watching the reactions of the hospital director and the head of the Psychology Department when I felt Steve’s hand grip my forearm and squeeze. I looked at him, and he pointed toward the screen.

  I don’t know if I can find the words to describe the image I saw displayed there. It looked at first like some kind of huge squid with its writhing feelers whipping and curling all over the screen, but the more the music played and the louder the patients’ chanting became, the image began to solidify.

  It wasn’t a squid, not exactly—whatever this thing was, it had the head of a squid. Its shoulders were dark and massive, and it was reacting to the chant and music. Saw something like a clawed hand press against the screen and almost laughed, it seemed so absurd.

  But then the screen itself began to…and I know how this is going to sound…the screen began to bend and expand, almost as if it were melting outward.

  Iä-R’lyeh! Cthullhu fhtagn! Iä! Iä!

  And then it happened: a tentacle moved forward from the screen and out toward the patients. The air was suddenly filled with the stench of dampness and rot. Both Steve and I started choking as soon as the stink hit us, and I saw, for one brief moment, the tip of another tentacle push outward as the screen continued to expand.

  Both security guards unholstered their weapons and began firing at the tentacle, but by then the second one was fully free and they…Christ, they never had a chance. Each of them were grabbed by a tentacle that wound around their torsos, lifted them from the ground, and began crushing them. They dropped their weapons as blood began fountaining from their mouths and by this time the hospital director was running for the alarm and the head of the Psychology Department was screaming for us to turn everything of, turn it off now, and we did, we yanked the cords and hit the switches but the music continued, it grew in volume and intensity as the screen kept expanding and more tentacles began slithering through, only now I could see the first few clawed fingers tearing through the scrim, and I realized that whatever this thing was, it was the size of a small mountain on its side of the screen, but when it emerged into our world, it easily tripled in mass and if it somehow managed to get all the way through….

  I started to move—where I was going or what I was going to do, I had no idea, it just seemed to me that it was important that I do something, anything to ground myself, to get a hold on matters, to somehow come to grips with this…this nightmare that was unfolding before my eyes, so I began to move and my foot kicked against something solid and when I looked down I saw one of the security guard’s guns and I grabbed it up and fired into the nearest tentacle, but it slammed me aside and grabbed the Psychology Department head while another took care of the hospital director, and within seconds there were four crushed, thrashing, bleeding bodies bouncing around in the air above our heads like marionettes and I couldn’t move without having blood rained down on my face and in my eyes, and that’s when I realized that the music and the chanting were coming from the patients themselves, many of whom had risen from their chairs and fallen to their knees, arms reaching upward, imploring, giving me my answer, telling me that, yes, all consciousness is connected as a primary wavefront phenomenon that allows us not only to resonate to such notes, but to play a fe
w of our own back here and that there was a base wavefront to which all of them are connected, and I would have been wrong calling that base God but not a god, because right here, right now, that god was pushing through the boundaries of perception to reclaim some part of the world over which it once must have ruled and, ohGod, God, God, there was no way to stop it, no way to send it back because the nested hierarchies of vibrational frequencies that had opened this doorway were no longer under the control of our machines, they were in the control of those kneeling before this god and howling Iä-R’lyeh! Cthullhu fhtagn! Iä! Iä!, and for a moment I was paralyzed with this knowledge, and then I saw Steve’s broken, bleeding body dance across the air over my head and I did the only thing I could do, I scrambled on hands and knees to find the gun that I had dropped, and I found not only it but the other guard’s gun, as well, and I ran to the front of the room and I began firing at each every one of their heads. Some of them looked at me before I killed them, and their eyes…ohgod, their confused, frightened eyes…there were in the grips of some form of rapture that was both euphoric and terrifying and they couldn’t choose, they couldn’t fight against it—maybe they didn’t want to fight against it, I’ll never know—but I killed them, I killed all of them, and with the death of each one some part of this thing, this god, this monster, this creature of rot and death and putrescence, recoiled back into the screen until it was done, until they all lay dead at my feet, and I faced the screen and I saw it looking at me, sitting very still, and I felt as much as heard its voice vibrate through my body.

  You have shown me the way back, and here I will wait, for I will not have to wait long. Thank you for this music of bleak entrainment, this song that will very soon call me home.

  I was in the process of removing the discs when the authorities arrived.

  And that, as the saying goes, is that.

  What? Yes, I know I was charged in all seventeen deaths, but I’m telling you for the record—for all the good it will do—that I only purposefully killed twelve people. Though I suppose, in a way, I did kill them all.

  Now let me ask you something—why are you here? I mean, I’ve been locked up in here for one-third of my life and you’re the first reporter to show up here since the initial circus right after it happened. What’s going on that’s made me the focus of interest all of a sudden?

  They what?

  Oh, dear God…who’s got them? When were they found? Have they been played yet?

  Listen to me—they must never be played again, do you understand? Never. Because that’s what it’s waiting for, what it’s been listening for ever since that night. Please, please, tell whoever has them that those discs must not be—

  —why are you calling for the doctors? There’s no need to—

  —hello, folks, look, yes, I got a little excited, but she’s got to be made to understand that—oh, Christ, not with the needle again, wait, wait one second, just give me ten fucking seconds and I’ll—

  —ohgod—

  —please tell them, please, I beg you…don’t play the discs…never play them…because…if you do…he’ll come home…

  …feeling so tired now…so tired…

  …he’s still listening…he’ll always be listening…

  …sing him no songs, or the world will never sing again….

  WALPURGIS EVE, by K. A. Opperman

  The crickets chirp their plaintive tune

  To charm the mystic afternoon,

  While through the amber mist the moon

  Gleams wanton, wild, and white.

  The faeries dance their roundelays,

  Glimpsed only by the vagrant gaze

  That scans the florid sward, where haze

  Of dreams enchants the sight.

  When twilight falls the witches ride

  Their brooms to sabbats far and wide,

  Each one to be a devil’s bride

  And dance around the fire.

  They skip around the sickly flames,

  All naked, shrieking ancient names.

  A goat-god, Master of the Games,

  Foul offspring soon will sire.

  INTO THE MOUNTAINS WITH MOTHER OLD GROWTH, by Christian Riley

  She drove like a woman heading to her husband’s funeral, hit the dirt road off the main highway at a snail’s pace then began limping over washboards, dragging their Subaru Outback into a canyon of ancient trees and countless ferns.

  Kevin didn’t mind the slow crawl up the hill, and to the trailhead. He was having second thoughts about his plan, though he had told himself that this would be the case. He had prepared for such mental detours, and promptly focused on the steps he would need to take to get through his first night.

  “I still think you’re crazy,” Vanessa said. Her voice was a reed instrument and her eyes shimmered like wet glaciers, cold and blue. “What if you get lost?” The question was insignificant at this point, asked a dozen times already, amongst a host of other What-ifs.

  “How am I going to get lost when there’s a trail?”

  “You don’t have to be smart about it.”

  Half an hour later Vanessa edged the car up to the trailhead then put it in park. She left it running. Kevin knew his wife wasn’t impressed with him, and that she was likely holding back a mouthful of obscenities. She had never understood his desire to spend two weeks alone, up there in the rugged mountains of northern Washington, and had taken the notion as a mild affront. Also, there was that horrific incident last year with that backpacker, Spencer Heathrow. Kevin thought that that might have weighed heavy on Vanessa’s mind. No, she didn’t understand his wild notions one bit, probably thought he was crazy. For her, a good time meant holding hands on the beach and watching the sunset. Or cuddling on the couch, sunk halfway into a bottle of Pinot blanc before the movie started.

  “You just don’t get what it means to be a man,” Kevin said. “I’ve got instincts, you know? Kind of like an ancient calling.” He climbed out of the car and retrieved his backpack from the trunk, slid into it. “Read Jack London’s, Call of the Wild.”

  Vanessa gave Kevin a defeated look, which softened his pride, because frankly he was scared shitless. Growing up in the suburbs of Portland marked him as a “city-boy” in all approximations, and he shivered at the thought of spending a single night alone, off the beaten path. He shivered at the thought of the very evening looming before him. Of course, he’d gone backpacking a few times with some chumps from college, but that was safety in numbers.

  “I don’t need to read any stinking book, Mr. Cooley.” She had changed her tone, did that about-face she often did when confronted with the inevitable. Kevin smiled as his wife crashed over him then, arms wrapping him in a tight hug, whispering into his ear to be careful, that she loved him, and couldn’t wait to see him again. But when Vanessa drove away, Kevin had never felt so alone in his life, and his smile fell from his face like the drop of a dead hand.

  * * * *

  The media had suggested the work of a serial killer, but the authorities were quick to caution that one such murder, however brutal and grotesque in quality, did not necessarily indicate the presence of a homicidal maniac roaming the Northern Cascades. They added that in all likelihood, the murder was simply a crime of passion brought on by a former acquaintance of Heathrow’s.

  Theories notwithstanding, the horrific incident oddly served as a catalyst for Kevin’s decision to spend two weeks alone, backpacking in a similar area of northern Washington. As a high school English teacher, he was prone to frequent philosophical ruminations. He knew this about himself, and as such, was not surprised that the murder had played into his unrelenting internal battle. While his gut carried the weight of the primordial fears associated with being alone, in the outdoors, his mind often dissected the rational explanations to each of those fears. And there were many rationales to consider.

  Ta
ke, for instance, the case of the dead backpacker. Albeit the authorities might have hit the nail on the head with the crime being passionate in nature, a possibility that occurred to Kevin was that Spencer had simply bushwhacked off the trail, then stumbled across marijuana farmers, or game poachers. Since Kevin had no intention of “bushwhacking,” the minute quandary of getting beheaded and quartered while on vacation seemed irrelevant.

  There were other problems though; such as becoming lost, breaking an ankle, or being attacked by a bear or mountain lion. But Kevin felt prepared for these concerns, and others like them. And while stewing over the various situations he could potentially face, Kevin reminded himself that “history” was the tome of evidence to look back at, on those nights when he sat alone near the fire, nothing but the wind and the trees, and the surrounding darkness. History had thousands of accounts where individuals had succumbed successfully to the call of the wild: Native Americans, fur trappers, miners, cowboys, survivalists, etcetera, and etcetera, and if they could do it, then why couldn’t he? Logically, it seemed more than rational. It seemed obvious.

  * * * *

  The trail broke into a wall of earthy colors, reds and browns and every shade of green imaginable. Massive sequoias—trees bigger than life—stood so still. It baffled Kevin how something so big could be so quiet. He imagined every tree a poet, lost in thought, searching for that next perfect word. Serrated fern leaves reached along the trunks of these trees, or into the trail, brushing Kevin’s legs as he walked by—the silence ever known to a forest this old, broken at last. It was peaceful, and Kevin briefly observed this…only because it was daylight.