by S. T. Joshi
Upon leaving my aunt, I returned to my office at the university. Outside of the hospital, in the full light of day, surrounded by people who I had every suspicion to believe were sane, it all seemed ludicrous. It had been an odd impulse to steal the clay figurine, I told myself, clearly the matter of being unsettled by Henry and not acting as I normally would. There was nothing to it: the little statue was simply a curio that Wilcox had collected, or perhaps a keepsake from a patient, and it meant nothing. Telling myself I would find a way to return it to him on my next visit to my aunt, I took it out of my pocket and deposited it in my desk.
The rest of the day passed normally: I taught, had a few meetings with students, attended a late afternoon lecture in the McCormack Theater. By the time I started to walk home, I had completely forgotten about the figurine.
And yet, when I reached the house and felt into my pocket for the key to my front door, I found not only the keys but a small hard object which, when I removed it, I saw was the figurine. All right, I told myself, I must have absently reached into the desk and put it in my pocket upon leaving. I thought about it only for the barest moment and then, once inside, tossed the figurine into the junk drawer, thinking that would be as good a place as any for it until I remembered to return it to Director Wilcox.
* * *
THAT NIGHT, I WAS BESET BY DREAMS OF A KIND I HAD never experienced before. I was, I found, in a strange city, the walls and angles of which were, for lack of a better descriptor, simply wrong. It felt wrong to be there, dizzying even, and I had at moments the impression that gravity had gone wrong as well, that I was walking or standing on surfaces that I should have fallen from or slid off. I was, in this city, little larger than an ant; the dark buildings and monoliths, doorless and indifferent, rose impossibly high above me, splotched with what I thought at first was a mold of some sort but which was damp and wet to the touch. Among them there was one building, much broader than the rest, squat in size and appearance, which, unlike the others, was not featureless but had on one awkwardly swayed side a warped bas-relief depicting a creature of hideous aspect not unlike that of the clay sculpture I had stolen, but more articulated. Here, I could see that what I had taken for spikes on the clay figure were tentacles, as if someone had lopped the head off a squat, misshapen body and put in its place the floppy body of a cephalopod. It was huge, and all the more hideous for being so. I stared up at it, rapt with awe and terror.
And then, as I watched, it moved. Very, very slowly it turned and fixed me with one unnatural and indifferent eye.
* * *
I WOKE UP IN A COLD SWEAT TO FIND THE CLAY FIGURINE balanced upright on the nightstand beside my bed, though I had no memory of getting up and putting it there—remembered clearly putting it in the kitchen drawer and leaving it there. And yet there it was. I live alone, so I could not claim that it had been the work of someone else, unless that someone had broken into my house, moved the object, and then left without leaving a trace of his presence. I had never had a tendency toward somnabulism, could not imagine myself waking in the middle of the night and sleepwalking into the other room, opening the drawer, and bringing the thing back. And yet, unmistakably, there it was.
And so not knowing what to do I took the creature into the kitchen, took up one of my shoes from where it lay discarded near the door, and meticulously crushed the hated object into a fine powder with its heel.
Or at least that is what I thought I did. For when I woke up there it was again on the bedside table, facing me.
* * *
WE DREAM AND WE CONVINCE OURSELVES WE ARE awake. We wake and convince ourselves we are still dreaming. In the few days that followed I did my best to convince myself that this was not happening, that the figure was not moving, seemingly of its own accord, from the places where I thrust it. That I was not, even though I thought I was, repeatedly destroying the figure only to have it reappear again shortly after. Surely, I told myself, there is some logical explanation. But the only logical explanation I could think of hinted of excessive paranoia: Director Wilcox knew I had the figurine and had hired a man, or a group of men, to slip replacements of it into my house each time I destroyed it. I tried to tell myself I was imagining this, that the dividing line between fantasy and reality had somehow ruptured for me. I even tried to convince myself that I had in fact destroyed the figure but then had somehow, in a sort of fugue state, fashioned a new one, and that I had done this again, and again, and again. But none of these explanations satisfied me. Perhaps I was dreaming, perhaps I was mad, or perhaps someone was trying to make me believe that I was mad. Or perhaps something was truly wrong with the figurine itself.
I took a few days’ sick leave from school. I abandoned the clay figurine near the pond in Swan Point Cemetery only to have it reappear a few hours later on my kitchen counter. I drove across the bridge into East Providence and threw it into the waters of Watchemoket Cove. Still the horror returned. I crushed it and crushed it, and still it returned. I could not get rid of it, whatever I did.
The dreams too kept coming, the figure on the bas-relief watching me more and more attentively, and the strange massive building that the bas-relief was carved into now beginning to reveal a thin band of light, as of the crack of a door. I was terrified by the idea of what I might see when the door opened.
3.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO IN SUCH A SITUATION, I ASK YOU? I was not sleeping, was beset by nightmares, felt more and more that it should be myself, and not my aunt, who should be confined in an asylum. I had to free myself of this thing, this figurine or statuette or fetish, whatever it was. And yet, it would not let me go.
And so I went back to Butler Hospital, ostensibly to visit my aunt but with the actual purpose of trying to replace the object I had stolen, hoping that then it would release me. When I was admitted I asked if I might speak to the director.
I gained his office without difficulty. The difficulty I had worried about having—that the director would be in his office when I was admitted—did not occur. I was free to do as I pleased.
In my envisioning of the scenario beforehand, I had seen myself waiting until the orderly had left me and then hurrying quickly around the desk, slipping open the glass-fronted bookcase, and thrusting the figure deep inside. It would, I was sure, be easy, as long as the director was not in the room. And yet, the director was not in the room and it was still not easy. Why? Because somehow it was not the same room. It did not even seem as if it belonged to the same century. Where before I had seen a heavy wooden desk and leather-backed chairs, I now saw aluminum filing cabinets, a glass-topped desk scattered with papers, and two Eames chairs. Where there had before been a glass-fronted bookshelf there was now only bare blank wall.
And yes, I realized suddenly, every time I had been to the director’s office before it had been like this. Every time except the one time, the time when I had stolen the figurine. Why had I not known immediately at that time that something was wrong?
* * *
DESPITE ALL THIS, I TRIED TO ABANDON THE FIGURE there. I tried at first to leave it in the filing cabinets, but they were locked. I tried to place it somewhere on the desk where it would not be immediately apparent, but when I hid it beneath a paper it made a strange and noticeable mound, and when I left it exposed it was more noticeable still. Finally I stretched on my toes and placed it on the top edge of the window’s lintel, balancing it there, where, with a little luck, it might go for a time unnoticed.
* * *
I MIGHT HAVE LEFT THEN, MIGHT HAVE FLED THAT establishment of incarceration without seeing my aunt, but it was at that moment, with my having had just enough time to return to the chair on the proper side of the desk, that the director entered. When he did, I began to understand the full extent of my deception.
He was a slender, thin man, of sallow complexion, wearing spindly round glasses. He greeted me by name, said it was nice to see me again. And yes, I realized, I had seen him before, had spoken to him in fact many times—
how could I have forgotten? I could even remember his name. Or could at least remember enough to know that his name was not Wilcox.
* * *
HOW I MANAGED TO GET THROUGH THE FIRST MINUTES of that conversation without him realizing how troubled I was, I still cannot say. Perhaps it was simply enough, once again, to fear what might happen to me if I showed any hint of derangement in a facility whose only purpose and specialty was to restrain the insane. Perhaps the doctor did notice my distress and had the kindness not to comment on it, or simply thought it might have to do with whatever I had come to discuss with him about my aunt.
We discussed my aunt, how she was doing, how she was responding to treatment. He confessed to me, after unlocking one of the filing cabinets with a key and removing a thick file with her name on its tab, that she was not responding at all, that she seemed increasingly in her own private world. This I knew, having seen her fairly recently. I was only trying to stall while I gathered myself.
We discussed her situation for a moment, then I thanked him and confessed to him that I was satisfied they were doing the best they could for her. Our conversation moved on to more general topics and flindered away until at last I announced that I hated to run off but I really should be seeing my aunt. I stood up and so did he. At the door, however, I couldn’t resist asking about Henry.
“Henry?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “A patient here. I wonder how he’s doing.”
His brow furrowed. “Normally I discuss the patients only with their family members,” he said.
“I perfectly understand,” I said. “Say no more.”
“But in this case I’m confused,” he said. “I am certain we don’t have a patient named Henry.”
* * *
I WAS TEMPTED TO LEAVE THEN, AND IF I DID NOT IT was because, my paranoid tendencies acting up again, I felt that it would seem suspicious if I did not visit my aunt first.
And so I went and saw her. As usual, she was in her own world, living forty, or maybe fifty years in the past, as if she were a child. We sat cross-legged on the floor, she poured me tea from an imaginary teapot, she babbled at me. I responded when necessary, imagining the whole time my walk back out of the mental hospital, wondering if I would make it to the exit and freedom before they guessed I was mad.
But I am not mad, I told myself. It was only that unholy figurine that made me feel so.
And then, leaning back against the wall, I let one hand slide into my jacket pocket and there my fingers found, once again, somehow with me again, the clay figurine.
* * *
I IMAGINE YOU WILL JUDGE ME HARSHLY FOR WHAT I did next, but I did not know what else to do. I was desperate. For a moment I held the figure in my hand within my pocket, wondering if I could crush it into powder there, though knowing already how useless such an effort would be.
And then an awful inspiration struck me. I removed my closed fist from my pocket and held it out before me.
My aunt stopped what she was doing, regarded my fist with wide eyes.
“What do you have?” she asked.
I feigned for her my best smile. “A present,” I said.
“A present!” she said, and her eyes lit up and she began to find it difficult to sit still. “And who is it for?”
“Who do you suppose it’s for?” I asked.
“Me,” she said, and pointed to her temple as if her finger were a gun.
“That’s right,” I said, and opened my palm. “It’s a present for you.”
* * *
THE WHOLE WAY OUT OF THE ASYLUM I FELT EYES ON my back. I felt something judging me, something weighing and assessing my actions and finding them wanting. But had I not rid myself of the idol or figurine or whatever it is, I would have gone mad—and indeed may still be a little mad already. It was evil, inhuman. As for my aunt, I cannot bear to see her again. I will never go back.
Since my aunt accepted it, the statue has not returned to me. The dreams too have faded, though I now have nightmares of a different sort, from the last moments I spent in the company of my aunt.
Those last moments are these: My aunt took the figure from me and immediately began rocking it back and forth and singing to it as if it were a baby, as if it were her baby. This wouldn’t bother me—she is, after all, mad—and I probably could have steeled myself to bear visiting her except for the fact of what she sang.
For she sang not words but strange barks and shrieks with a peculiar unearthly cadence to them, as if she were speaking a language not meant to be uttered by a human throat.
* * *
Correlated Discontents
RICK DAKAN
Rick Dakan is a longtime Lovecraft-obsessive and a longtime professional writer, but has only recently gotten to do both at the same time. In addition to his newest novel, The Cult of Cthulhu: A Novel of Lovecraftian Obsession (Arcane Wisdom, 2012), he is the author of the Geek Mafia trilogy, the serialized novel Rage Quit, and numerous game-related pieces dating back to 1995.
* * *
“MR. JANNOWITZ, WHOSE IDEA WAS IT TO USE LOVECRAFT for your test case?”
“I was the one who suggested using the letters of H. P. Lovecraft. I was in Dr. Mason’s office at the University. Dr. Mason, as usual, was at his computer, talking to but not looking at me. He said, ‘I’m not familiar,’ his gaze never leaving the screen as he typed the name into Google. ‘A horror writer… I don’t think so.’
“‘Not his stories,’ I said. I glanced at the talking points I’d typed on my phone’s notepad app. I didn’t want to fumble my arguments up again. ‘His letters. He wrote thousands and thousands of them.’
“Dr. Mason responded with more typing. It was the only sound he liked in his office besides his own voice. He’d paid for the soundproof panels himself when both the department and the university had balked at the idea. He’d covered over the built-in bookshelves and his window in the process, leaving just the ceiling fluorescents, the battered oak desk, three chairs, and four flat screens. I knew from experience that a thousand people could gather for an African drum world cultures festival on the quad just outside and we wouldn’t hear a thing at the desk.
“I let Dr. Mason scan the screen in front of him, a click, some typing, the faint noise of a mouse wheel turning. I shifted in the chair, also special-bought. Solid metal coated in foam and stain-resistant blue fabric. No creaking joints or squeaking leather.
“‘Only a fraction has been digitized,’ he said. ‘Who else?’
“I took encouragement from my prepared notes and said, ‘But it’s all in print now. Volume 25 of the Collected Letters just came out last month.’ He was reading something on the screen, probably his e-mail, but I knew he’d both heard and understood me. I also knew he was waiting for my point, so I went off notes and added, ‘I could scan them in,’ and then held my breath.
“‘That would take at least three weeks,’ he said, glancing over to the screen on his right where the latest build was compiling. It showed 32% complete.
“‘I could bring in some undergrads. We could do it in a week.’ I exhaled the words in a rush, which probably would have sounded panicked to Dr. Mason if he’d been paying me his full attention.
“He glanced up at me, his left eye squinting just a fraction. The pale light from the screen casting his dark complexion in stark chiaroscuro relief. ‘Why have you already made up your mind?’ he asked.
“I had prepared an answer for this question. I knew that Mason didn’t care about why I thought Lovecraft was the perfect choice. He wanted my assessment of the neurological processes that had led me to rule out other options. I glanced at my talking points and said, ‘My estranged brother introduced me to Lovecraft when I was a child, before we drifted apart. I associate Lovecraft with better times and I’m already familiar with him. Therefore, I’m personally interested in his letters and learning more about him.’ I knew this wasn’t exactly what Dr. Mason was looking for, but I wanted him to know it anyway. He just kept looki
ng at me, probably guessing my motivation. A last glance at my notes and then I gave him what he wanted. ‘The repeated exposure, combined with my basic human need for resolution, combined with familiarity with the subject, all come together to bias me toward the solution I’ve already decided is best and discount other options of equal or greater merit. Also, Lovecraft wrote about monsters, which is cool.’
“The corners of Dr. Mason’s lips curved ever so slightly up into a smile, but his eyes lit up. ‘Coolness is not an insignificant factor,’ he said and then nodded to me.
“His smile lit up my own eyes and seeped down into a wide grin of my own. ‘I’ll log into interlibrary loan and put in some requests,’ I said, as if I hadn’t already done just that, closing my laptop and slipping out without another word.”
* * *
“AND A MONTH LATER YOU BEGAN. DO YOU REMEMBER the first successful test session?”
“Yes. I remember Dr. Mason’s voice over the intercom in the test lab. I was in the pilot’s chair, complaining that the words were too fast. He told me to relax my eyes and to stop trying to guess what word was coming next. The words sped up, until I couldn’t think ahead of them. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“The thirty-inch screen in front of me was the only source of light in the room, an off-white background with large, bold Times New Roman words taking over the screen one at a time before being replaced a fraction of a second later by their successors. I started speed-reading my way aloud through the sentence: ‘LANGUAGE VOCABULARY IDEAS IMAGERY EVERYTHING SUCCUMBED TO MY ONE INTENSE PURPOSE OF THINKING AND DREAMING MYSELF BACK INTO THE WORLD OF PERIWIGS AND LONG S’S WHICH FOR SOME ODD REASON SEEMED TO ME THE NORMAL WORLD.’
