The Arms That Howl

The next day, my father visited me.

He had heard of Noble Hiermun’s contract. And he wished to boast of his wisdom in educating me. Again. He still believed I owed him each time I wrote.

On another day I would have made juice, and let him boast, and eaten with him after. But today I was very tired, my eyes stung, and my arms were heavy. I could not give the patience. So I asked him to change the subject.

“What did you say?”

“Could we discuss something else, Father,” I repeated. “I don’t want to talk about this. Noble Hiermun was very gracious. I don’t want to demean his generosity.”

“And how would paying heed to your father ‘demean’ him?” His voice rose at once. My ears began to ring. I had chosen the wrong words. “What disrespect is this? I take time to congratulate my son for his achievement—which he would not have if not for my guidance—and you repay me with insults? Have you no respect for your father?”

I could not think of an answer. My mind clouded as surely as fog poured in my ear. This only made him angrier. “What? Have you no answer? Do you keep something from me, boy? Speak your thoughts!”

I recoiled. He had not called me ‘boy’ in years. Curse my eyes forever, for at that moment they damned us both by flitting to the scrolls and tablets gathered on my writing table.

My father saw. “What’s this?” He reached the table as I stood, and snatched up the Scrolls laid there. ‘Symbols…what is this you write? Where does this come from?”

He glared at me, eyes hard. He pointed one of the Scrolls at me as if to rebuke my life’s career. I opened my hands to placate while I thought with speed.

“It is magic,” I told him. “I received a dream. Lady Ashla said I should write it down to send it away—”

“You practice magic?!” My father’s voice burst at me like cannon. The blood came hot into his face. “So it is true! You have become a sorcerer! My teachings have left you. I must tell my friends of this. They must know not to ask you for writing. You would poison their minds!”

“No, father, wait!” I put out my hands. But he had thrown down the Scroll and raced for the door as though he must guard himself against me. I made a fist as his shadow left. My teeth were locked. He would ruin me now. He would tell all that I was no longer a writer, and make them afraid. Because I was not groveling before him, he would soothe his injured pride by taking away my career.

I grabbed up the Scrolls, my hands white and my chest tight. Red foamed around my sight. One scroll rolled open by my fingers. I put the others down so I could roll it up. I faced the window while doing this. The afternoon sun shone on the paper.

Something moved within it.

I stopped rolling the parchment. Symbols. What I wrote before. Their lines seemed to drift under the sun rays. Like dark branches exposed to wind, they swayed side to side, graceful undulations of ink. I watched in rapture. My anger somehow broken by this dance of signs.

What I did not know then was that my anger was not broken. It had found a way out. While I stared, my mouth betrayed me. From those very symbols, from their mystic sway, came the forgotten speech of their sounds.

I became able to recite the symbols.

And in scorching testament to the naked dangers of such lost knowledge, I did. Scrapings of rock. Predators’ growls. My throat made noise unheard in an age.

=====

The next morning a messenger-boy came to tell me of my father’s death.

I ran with him to my old home, the home of my mother. A neighbor, Good Zechairus the Potter, bent with age, met me at the door. “I have called for the priests,” he said to me, gesturing to soothe. I made past him to get inside.

What I saw, no man should ever see of anyone he loves.

My father lay on his back before the fire-pot. His hands lay beside his head. Each finger bent so cruelly back that bone had broken open the skin. Gouges lined his body, their edges gnawed as though scavengers had their play with him.

But scavengers could not make the deep blood-pooled holes in his stomach. His body was lesser; his killer had feasted on the flesh.

His face held such terror, I could only pray the fright killed him before he was fed upon. Both eyes stuck open, stained red, left for glass facing upward.

It was as though he pushed against a murderous beast atop him.

The priests arrived as I stumbled outside, sick from the sight. They made prayers, and wrapped my father, and took him to the temple. One stopped to look at me while I sat against the wall outside. My thoughts were far louder than Good Zechairus’ comforts.

The priest’s face was as drained as my spirit.

=====

I remember nothing until I returned home that eve and found a woman waiting for me.

I cleaned my father’s home a little. Good Zechairus said I burned some clothing and smashed some tablets, but I know not why. My parents’ home now stood as a cave, empty, meaningless. It had no purpose. To me or to others. I hung a curtain from its door and trudged away. If any tried to speak with me I did not hear or see them.

For I knew this was my doing. The spells I wrote down, for the shaman’s benefit and Ashla’s grandeur, had come into terrible being. They used my voice to speak them. My will to fuel them. Untold ages, and they had once again found a voice. The spells had trapped me.

As they trapped the Dreamed Shaman.

Now I understood his eagerness. It was not peace he sought – but escape. In my helping, I was ensnared.

These thoughts, and the shackling doom inside them, rattled within my head. The only sound I could hear.

Until I arrived home.

The woman wore servant’s dress, with an unpainted face and cascades of black hair. She knelt as I entered, for she had come inside without my permission. “Forgive me, good sir. I came to speak on behalf of Lady Ashla and found your home open.”

My hand bid her rise while my mind stewed of other things. Those hateful spells, murdering my father…!

Ashla’s servant-girl rose. She did not smile or meet my eyes. Seeming to keep distance as well. “She commands me to say she has heard the news of your father. She sensed a great spellworking last night, but couldn’t tell its purpose. She gives her sympathies.”

A pouch rattled in her hand. She placed it at my feet while I stared across the chasm in my skull. “Gold,” she said, “for your loss. Lady Ashla wishes to see you when you are well again. She hopes this tragedy will not cause you to stop what was discussed.”

Since I made no response, she left. As the sun melted away and darkness crept back in, her words sank into my thoughts. And provoked them.

All that mattered to Ashla were the spells. She must know of their potential now. She would want them all the more. Perhaps she would torture me to finish the rest of them. Perhaps she would trick me by offering herself. She would give me whatever I wanted for such power.

Was that all then? Was I Ashla’s plaything, stuck between her ambition, a dead shaman’s plea for release, and a mutilated corpse I somehow engineered? I felt my fists clench. They felt strong. Eager.

Mighty.

This startled me. I pulled them open and looked down. And on one hand, the palm of my left, I found a symbol. Drawn in black, an exact copy of one of the Dreamed Shaman’s spell-symbols.

They failed to protect us. But they may protect you.

This was not the Charm of Stone. How had it come onto my skin? I scratched, but nothing came of. I tried again and again. My fingers scratched so hard blood appeared. Still the symbol displayed its unbroken black lines.

I half-ran to my writing table. I threw the scrolls open at once and searched. There, on the third, lay an empty place.

I gasped.

The spells had begun to enter me!

My breath left in shudders. Was I doomed? Could I escape? Or was this the curse laid upon the shaman, to wait after death until I could pass on this malice?

No.

In his shimmering nether-body, the Dreamed Shaman appeared. His face bore great sadness.

I would have struck him, had his body any weight.

I am sorry. I had hoped we would finish before the spells could affect you. But they were too eager. It has been too long.

“What has happened?” I hissed at his ghost.

The spells are not of this world, but of another. Jurrecz exacts a price from whoever uses his power. It has always been so. The magic must feed in order to grow. I used it to save us. It took my life in return.

The ghostly old man gestured at himself.

It left me in this empty existence. Until I could ensure the magic would have others on which to feed, I would not rest.

“You’ve condemned me old man!” I shouted so hard at him, my throat tried to force him back. “It has taken my father. It has begun taking me! Damn you!” I shook with rage. My hands reached for his spectral face, needing to attack despite it being futile.

No! There is still a way!

The ghost held up both his hands.

The magic has fed. It sent a creature from its world to your father. It has gone back. There is nothing we can do now about it. But if we finish the last Scroll, and then bury them all before it awakens again, you will be safe.

“Are you mad?!” I roared at this bodiless intruder in my life. “You expect me to finish writing now, after those scrolls caused my father’s death?”

The Dreamed Shaman lowered his hands.

I am sorry. It is the only way. Otherwise, it will consume you as it did me.

I sat down hard enough to make the chair move. Long moments passed. Under dim stars I stared at my polluted hand. The ghostly shaman waited beside me, silent.

I thought of burning the scrolls. Or handing them to Lady Ashla and asking her help. Even hurling them into the sea ten days from here.

But in the end, I did what the shaman asked. If only to rid myself of his violating presence, I told myself. If only to be rid of all of this.

In the hour before dawn two days after, in a silent field far from my city, I buried these scrolls deep in a hole. I laid stones upon them to keep them hidden.

And I have left this warning. You who read this, place the Scrolls back in the hole and cover them anew. Tell no one of their existence. These spells must forever starve. They will bring doom upon you, and all of your peoples, if they are allowed to feed again.

–Unan the Writer

If you have read the warning, then the spells must have been unearthed. So, ponder this…where are the Enoth-Ikul Scrolls now?
~Lord Glanbrin

The voice I would name as Kaala the Dreamed Shaman spoke again that night.

You must write for me. I beg of you. If you do not you risk the Dreaded coming.

I felt more able to respond this night. As though the gold and good company strengthened me. I tried to form thoughts as the voice did, tried swirling images up from the waves in my mind.

Leave me.

Something heavy leaped into the waves. It stabbed down like a brand-iron, thoughts clouding over with steam. The voice spoke again. It rang out like a bell-sheet.

You would abandon your people to the Dreaded? Send all your neighbors to mangled death, their spirits swallowed, their hands left red and wet? I will show you what comes! Yes! You will see the Dreaded!

And my mind was overtaken by the purest madness ever contained in man’s thought.

It was white. As the white of an eye, stretched hard and frozen from the inside. While slick spidery legs thick as man’s arm stepped hungrily past their pupils.

I saw a land of burning rock. Remains of men, animals and plants lay shattered in between gaseous cracks. A limbless sheep lay atop the body of a woman, both twitching as a nameless abomination, a many-legged monstrosity clawed out nourishment from their flesh.

Then it glanced up – I thank the gods I saw it from behind, and not what its jaws had taken. It vomited out a gruesome cry. It dashed off the corpses behind larger rocks. Above it came a sound. Like scraping, like blades on stone. Many blades. Coming closer, growing louder. More numerous.

I saw the shadows of arms, vast impossible numbers of grasping arms, before a sheet of lightning fear jolted me out of sleep.

You must…you must…

I sat up gasping. My breath came hot in my throat. Flickers of the dream came and left. Horrors even the foulest story had never summoned.

Or had it? Was there such a time, where men fell to monsters so fully we do not remember? How much of a such a terrible history is lost, if no one remained to carry it on?

I rose and walked to the window. The breeze washed my skin. I let it chill me. There was one I could ask, I thought, starlight grinning at me. She might know.

Ashla Kiri’ori was famed for her gaze. Some said it was the source of her magic. Their mythic lights were the reason her spells assured the King of his military victories.

Now I had the gaze drilled into me. She lay on a feather-down seat eyeing up at me from within a pool of copper silk. I looked, trying to avoid the flames of her stare—trying also not to think of the gleaming-skinned body more sensual the finest pleasure-woman.

“Writer,” she said, voice like slow-poured honey wine. “You capture speech. A talent few possess. Some have compared you to me.”

I shook my head. “Such a comparison isn’t right, lady. I could only write a shadow of your magic.”

Ashla gave a snake’s smile. It provided fertile reminder of how dangerous she could be. “How flattering. As if I needed my magic to see your thoughts.” Some silk shuffled; the vaunted sorceress sat up. Revealing more sun-dappled flesh.

“Now. Tell me why you come.”

I glanced up. That spear-like gaze knocked my eyes away again. My hands shook.

I could not lie now, I knew. She would know. So I told her everything about the dreams. About the shaman’s voice, his request, the cruel vision he forced me to see. It ended with the question I had for her.

“Lady Kiri’ori, is it possible another people existed once that no one remembers? Could such an evil work so completely? Or am I going mad?”

During the tale, Ashla’s face had changed. She at first watched me in pliant amusement. Then as I came to the vision, interest grew keen in her features. When I asked my question, deep thought creased her brow.

I waited until she spoke. When she did it was with earnestness in her voice. “You know little of the world. There are places in it no man has seen with his eyes and lived. None can travel to worlds deep in the jungle, beneath the seas, deep within the ices of the north. I have seen them only from afar.”

In all these lands, like ours, there exist evils. The King has fought many. So have I. More surely live beyond.”

She stood. The silk spilled over her arms, slinking her chest, every curve a woman’s. She touched my cheek. It felt as warm wax.

“You are not mad. This dream is real. Do as you were bidden. With such knowledge, we could defend against greater evils. Become greater ourselves. Bring me the scrolls when it is done. I will show them to the King.”

She never did, of course. But even if she had known the result of her command, I doubt she wanted the knowledge for anyone but herself.

That night we began.

At first I wasn’t sure whether to sleep or wait. I waited. After the moon rose, I was rewarded by becoming sudden witness to a ghost!

The old shaman appeared out the moon-shadow in my doorway. Rock-gray, his body never quite there, only a drawing of many lines where nothing was before. I could tell him mostly from the wild excitement on his misty half-present face.

“I cannot appear like this for long,” he said. “We must hurry.”

So we did. We started on the first scroll with me sitting, him beside my left. His finger, only clear enough to see the stone-color tip, would trace a symbol on the paper. Which I swiftly copied into ink. Line by line, pictograph by eldritch pictograph. What took shape was a closed-packed series of symbols–”spell-touches,” he called them. All crude, brick-like. No group or line appeared much different than another.

I could see no meaning. No great wisdom.

After the moon passed overhead, the shaman out of time announced an end.

“This is all I can do tonight,” he said. “I will return in two nights. Bring more of this papyrus.” So demanding, he walked into the moonlight at the window, joined with its rays, and ceased appearance.

I must have fallen asleep after that. But I didn’t remember moving to bed. Nor did I understand why the scroll lay rolled up below the window, and not the writing table, when I awoke.

Here I have copied a line from that first scroll. Only one line, so no evil eye should come upon you by seeing more.

I know not what it means. Do not try to learn.

Two nights after the shaman’s ghost appeared again. I managed to buy two more scrolls, but no more. I also bought four clay tablets.

The shaman’s gray-bearded head nodded to me. “This will do,” he declared, his voice like the rustling of dead leaves on a dry field. And we continued.

He spoke of the why behind his magic through the night. I have tried to collect what he said here.

At first they were simple magics – ways to bless the land, anoint warriors, divine the future. But they quickly fell to a darker nature.

The human greed for victory in battle.

The offering of children’s eyes. Or hands, to some ghastly purpose.

The Blade Dance, done to compel demons of madness to emerge.

Even ways to force the future, and to shape the past. Through horrid mutilation of living prisoners – doomed to agony as spiders were poured into their opened chests. Or insects forced into their mouths.

My foolish brothers. They sought to change the very fabric of our world—without even knowing what results they would achieve! They could have done so much damage that blood would pour from the sky, themselves torn to shreds like old cloth…and yet still they performed the magic!

While he spoke and pointed and my hand traced that night, I felt uneasiness grow within my chest. Doubts came. Doubts of whether I should continue these symbols. We finished one scroll and began the next. Ashla said it was powerful to know. But if the shaman’s people knew, and it did not save them…how would the knowledge help us?

Could it hurt us?

Then the shaman began telling stories. He bade me write them in my language. I did not understand why then. And so I foolishly agreed.

His first story involved the meeting of a man with a lizard that walked like a man. I thought it was a silly story to tell children. It was all backwards – the brave walking-lizard warning the man of great danger ahead! And the stupid man walking proudly into the doom of an animal’s den.

Next the ghostly bearded shaman told of how his people’s great creator Jurrecz took of his own body to make the land and forests. I whispered a prayer of forgiveness to Most High Inanna for writing such falsehood.

Finally, when he reached the end of the third tablet, the shaman bade me inscribe six final symbols on its back. Tracing, as before, in his language. At this I could no longer restrain my unease, and I asked the shaman what those last symbols meant.

He said, as his last words that night, “They are the Chant of the Stone Planes. They failed to protect us. But they may protect you.”

To be concluded…

A translation from Sumerian. The only written record of the Enoth-Ikul Scrolls.
What are they?  Well, I will let you discern that…

When it was done, I wished I had never learned to write.

I was born in the city of Cren in Sumer, in the fourth age of Enoth, under His Greatness High King Kiresh-Thal. My parents lived just inside the city wall in a strong-walled home facing sunrise. My father made bricks. He did well. So did my mother with her weaving, until the day she pricked herself, became ill and died. This was 7 years before I would reach the age of manhood.

My father traded a year’s labor for the sponsorship of Mec-Sineth, a very old nobleman. His beard was so long it covered his chest. But he was kind, and he provided for my instruction into a new invention. A way to imprint learning in such a way as to make it last. It is called writing.

I was fascinated with this at first. To remake speech, to place it in clay and parchment so that words outlast man? I remember asking Mec-Sineth if it was sorcery. He laughed and said, “Writing is not what makes us kings. What we write does.”

He was correct.

Mec-Sineth died the year before I reached manhood. Even though I was not yet a man, the others allowed me to attend his celebration. His grand-daughter stayed close to me seeking comfort. She was betrothed to Noble Heirmun’s son a month later on her mother’s swift order.

My lessons ended, and I soon was spoken of as a ‘writer.’ Friends treated me differently. A Sorcerer nodded to me on the street. I gained respect from my skill.

My father reveled in the respect paid to me. He told nobles and merchants of my skill. They contacted me to write down matters of business, orations, pledges and other such things.

This became my life. I left my father’s home and built my own, a small house at the edge of the city of Cren. My days became solitary. I would carefully inscribe pottery, or tablets, or parchment when I could acquire it. On many days I did not leave my home at all, nor receive guests. I sometimes became lonely. No mate. Few friends. I did what I could.

Then the dreams came.

That first night I struggled to sleep. My bed mat was at first too cold, then too hot. I tossed side to side as if rolling between ice and fire. My body refused rest, pinpricks and sweating on every limb. The moon rose over me in vigil. My thoughts vaguely registered her behind the fog crawling in the window.

Just when sleep began to drown me, just when my body spent its last and succumbed, he came. It was as though a crooked cavern reigned within my mind. At first it was far away, below a gasp, like a faraway voice in a chasm.

You who hear, listen!

My sleepy mind didn’t know what to do. As though my body, it shrank back. Is this a dream? How could this be otherwise? Who speaks?

Then the voice came as close a stalking wolf. My mind, as though my body, shrank.

You who hear, listen. You must help me. I have waited too long past my death. I cannot go forth without passing on my knowledge. You must use your skill, your ‘writing’ for me.

My writing? In this deep fog, my thoughts drifted. I could not remember myself, not what this chasmic voice sought. Sleep coiled about me.

I will come again before next moon. We will speak again. I was Kaala once…

I slept.

The next day I rose with a terrible sense of difference. The window appeared differently placed. The ground had a tilt. I lack words even now to describe the seeming strangeness.

A vivid dream following a restless night. Surely that was all.

I set to work for the day. The writing went quickly. My hand glided true across the fresh tablets. Its sureness pleased me, as did the clear pictographs I created. I fired the tablets, set them to cool under the window, and decided to visit one of the pleasure-women before last meal.

On my way through town I saw Noble Heirmun come towards me through the mill of buyers. He raised a ringed hand to me. I smiled, thinking how much more beautiful his golden robes were than my white tunic.

“Unan!” he said, his beard splitting with a grin. “It is good to see you! How fare you?”

He offered his hand. I took it. My skills afforded me a certain respect, but Noble Hiermun was of good nature to almost everyone. He had well earned his nobility through trade of metals.

“I fare well, Noble Hiermun. How is your family?”

“Oh, very good!” Hiermun laughed. “My eldest daughter is soon to wed! It is a good time. In fact, I was coming to see you. I have need of your ability.”

“Of course, good sir. What do you need written?” Much as I wanted to go on to the pleasure-den, a noble offering work was not to be refused.

Noble Hiermun gestured high to his left. He pointed toward the High King’s stone palace. “I must make a speech to the King’s advisors in five suns. I would like to leave the speech with them on parchment. Can you do this for me?”

I blinked. My skin became warm. To my knowledge, my writing had never been brought to the palace. Noble Hiermun offered me not just work—but a great honor!

I heard myself accepting a breath after I’d decided. Noble Hiermun’s face brightened anew. “Wonderful!” he declared. “Come to see me tomorrow after morning meal. I will have parchment for you.” He clapped me on the shoulder and made his way past.

I stood there a moment, savoring the good fortune. If my skills were noticed, the King could ask me to become a royal scribe! The highest honor a writer could gain.

If I had known what awaited me in response to these events, I would have felt hand-quivering terror in place of lurid excitement.

That night the voice came again. It stirred a dreamless sleep, like a boat’s prow does still waters.

You who hear, listen. You must write my knowledge. It must survive the scourge which killed us.

My thoughts lapped about in my head, myself a breath of air amid the lazy waves. I wished for peace, for quiet.

Many suns ago my people lived north of these lands. We were not many. Winters were harsh. My rituals protected us from the winds. But they failed against the Dreaded. It came from beyond the veil of night, sending drought ahead of it. We sought to drive it back by numbers. It seized us all and crushed us. Nothing remains of us now.

My murky awareness wafted in ways not bound by direction. The boat continued through.

You must write. I cannot find another. You must…

I arrived at Noble Hiermun’s estate early, finding the streets open to my feet. A servant younger than me brought me to a stately room with tall windows and azure silk hangings. I sat in a chair softer than my mother’s embrace. Noble Hiermun came in a few moments later, followed by another servant bringing tea. I began to think, is this how a royal scribe is treated?

True to his claim, Hiermun has purchased papyrus. Many scrolls of it! Much more than needed, even for many copies. He insisted I take it all, and coin in payment. Such opulence baffled me. Noble Hiermun was a great man.

We set to work following tea. Hiermun would speak, then wait, and then continue. He talked about a proposal to build a new method of bringing water from the river. He called it an “aqueduct.” He even offered some of his own borderland to build on.

Twice he changed his mind, returning to a point and restating himself. His excess papyrus was a boon; we lost many sheets this way. I thanked the gods he spoke slowly.

The sun had come to the end of day by the time we were finished. Noble Hiermun smiled as he gazed down each of the final three scrolls. Even though he could not read. “Very good!” he exclaimed, as servants arrived to light candles. He rolled up the scrolls and tucked them into a pouch. Then he brought out a gold coin.

“Sir!” I breathed, before manners could halt my tongue. A gold coin was five times what such work would normally earn. “That is generous of you. But I could not accept it—”

Hiermun laughed. “Yes you can. Am I not allowed to pay what I believe your work is worth? Worry not, my friend. If the King is as pleased as I am, soon you will command this and more. Now, I insist you join us for dinner.”

I left that night with a month’s earnings in my pouch and belly full of roast boar. I met Hiermun’s eldest daughter and her soon-mate. He shook my hand with the strength of a soldier, and invited me to their wedding. I accepted. I hope in the time since I wrote this, Cehu and I have become friends.

For you see, I carried away the dreaded beginning. A tool with which the dream-haunting shaman ruined my life. Hiermun gave me the four remaining sheets of papyrus. The left-over from his speech.

That which was to become the first of the Enoth-Ikul Scrolls.

Take comfort, my friends. Those who do not know will be removed. This massive infection humanity has made of itself will be culled down by the Hessh Scrabblers and the Wild Tribes, once Lu’kk-Enoth comes into merging and the One Realm Comes.

There are indeed too many humans on this world. In the past nature was able to curtail them, through plagues and famines and their own deep-seated desire for violence. Now however such methods do not go far enough. Nature waits for the inevitable collision, certain she will then be avenged. Even as she herself is ravaged, she will cry out in victory.

With my next post I will begin a new story. You place much truth in written recordings. It happens that I possess one of the very few written records of Xhol magic. Perhaps its telling will convince you.

Yatoslan, Scribe of the Court for the Grand Kutran, Ruler of Volga Bulgaria

The second year of His Rule. The year is known as 689 in the heathen calendar. It is the thirteenth month and the second week.

Today my liege was visited by a traveler. A man of white skin and red cloak, who claimed lordship over small lands in the northwest. He gave to my liege a beautiful ring with a green stone, which he called a “stone of Nat-ruul.”

My liege did not share the full discussion he had with this man. They spoke of some topic in quiet words for many moments in private. Then the traveler gestured in such a way toward the throne, and my liege leaped up as though struck. He ordered the traveler to leave in a booming voice. And to never again enter our lands under pain of lifelong imprisonment.

The traveler laughed rudely in response. He is a fool to displease my liege. Men have died for such actions before my eyes. Yet this traveler was not approached by the royal guards. He departed untouched, allowed to leave his insult in the royal presence. I have never seen this occur.

He called himself a lord, and yet spat in the face of grand Kutran? Either my liege was in generous spirits this day, or there is another reason why he chose not to respond to mockery. Perhaps he is of great influence elsewhere, or he has an army.

This concludes my recording of the day’s events.

==============

Yatoslan, Scribe of the Court for the Grand Kutran, Ruler of Volga Bulgaria

The seventh year of His Rule. The year is known as 694 in the heathen calendar. It is the first month and the first week.

He returned! The red-cloaked traveler, the foreign lord! I remember him well. His sneer insulted our grand ruler; he lived only by the generosity of my liege.

I must write this down quickly. My liege did not give me leave to do so. They have gone into the royal chambers. I can hear my liege shouting something at him. The guards are coming up the hallway. Wait, I can hear. This ‘lord’ is cal

Here the transcript ends. The remainder was burned away in some distant night.

Sergeant Rezavich did not like what he’d found so far.

He stood in the mangled remains of the head doctor’s office, leafing through a jumbled collection of files he’d pulled from the wreckage and dumped on the desk. ‘Jumbled’ was a kind phrasing though. Dr. Merriweather had been running a terrible shop out here if the records were any indication.

Missing treatment records. Mean-spirited documents about patients AND staff. The only part that seemed consistent were the admittance records.

Nurse Sandoval stood across from him. Hands clasped in front of her, anxiety and eagerness mingled on her dust-streaked face. Rezavich tried not to pay her too much attention. If he did, she’d ask that they make another search of the building and grounds. Another fruitless and very dangerous search, since the forest was not tended. And if it held a slew of crazies, well…

“Lot of Irish patients in here,” he murmured, mostly to himself. Papers flapped past one another as he turned admittance records over. “I’m not seeing a why though. Miss? You know why?”

He looked up. Sandoval was already shaking her head. “No sir. Most of our latest patients did arrive in one group, and they were Irish. But I don’t know anything else. Can’t we–”

Sergeant Rezavich returned his attention downwards. He shuffled his crisp leather notepad out from under the latest stack. It was a new device to him, this portable note-taking tool and its pencil. Still, it had been valuable thus far. He wrote down a note about this group of Irish crazies.

Then he wrote down his theory about where the patients had gone.

“Now then.” The hefty sergeant stood, collecting a pile of records under one arm and his notepad into his trench coat pocket. “Miss Sandoval, if you’ll join me, I’d like to search the surrounding forest treeline.”

“The forest?” Nurse Sandoval unclasped her hands. “But why? They vanished like ghosts, I know it…” Her eyes trailed up and around.

Sergeant Rezavich put up a hand. “They had to get out somewhere. I think they headed to the forest for cover. That means they’re going in the wrong direction for town, so there’s no immediate danger to people. If I find where they went in, I’ll know where to send my men. Come on.”

He turned about and walked through the gaping crack in the wall behind him. Nurse Sandoval followed him dumbly. Outside, Rezavich hissed at the cold while his eyes scanned a clump of evergreens north of the building.

They must be crazy to escape in this weather, he thought. But with the treatment they apparently had at the Razor – and those were just the documented accounts – he couldn’t blame them for trying.

He thought there was movement past the treeline to the north. His eyes narrowed, trying to pierce Night’s veil.

Then a tremendous visage appeared in the night over them. Larger than the Razor itself and filled with atrocities upon sanity, it sneered down as a god to displeasing followers.

The face was gnarled and chitinous. Four terrible mandibles sprouted from it at top and bottom, grinding like they crushed the very space between them. Hundreds upon hundreds of voices burst from the visage, whispers and wrenching cries and things only heard when angry insects mass.

Sergeant Rezavich seized his head. His screams could not drown out the sounds drilling into his mind. In seconds he collapsed to the ground unmoving. Dead from fright. He would never find the truth.

Nurse Sandoval, shrieking as though the devil himself was behind her, fled down the road.

NOW
Walker was the first to claw his way out of the dreamscape.

He wasn’t sure how it happened. His eyes at first showed shiny yellow gym floor. Then dimness, polish fading at the edges. Then a gritty texture, and finally the shrouded glistening of moonlit concrete.

He lay facedown in the Razor’s main hall. Dust caked his cheeks. He forced himself to hands and knees, coughing.

Walker shook like a dog, sloughing off rocks and gray. It felt like the floor, the very building trying to suck him in. He got to his feet, casting about. Danielle lay on her side facing him, eyes unblinking. Dust had collected so thickly on her hair & clothes that she appeared petrified.

Angela crawled up the hallway on his right. Jaw locked, eyes fierce. One hand reached ahead and pulled her forward. Then the other.

“Angela,” Walker said. Voice coming out gritty. “Where you headed?”

“Garrett…find…” she hissed.

“Oh god,” Walker responded. Garrett. Where was he? Walker lurched forward. His legs stumbled him up into a loping run. He ran past Angela, reaching the end of the main hall in seconds. To the right was a short hallway with a collapsed roof. To the left was a badly-damaged room, gaping holes in both walls facing him.

Inside it lay Garrett. He was slumped forward on his belly, bent almost straight up with his hips still on the floor. His face cruelly pressed into a shadowy wall, arms dangling limp at his sides.

Beside him lay a brittle human skeleton. Bones brown with age.
In exactly the same position.

Walker picked his way over rubble to get through one hole. “Garrett! Hey Garrett, you okay?”

Garrett made a muffled unintelligible sound.

Did he fall? Hit his head? Walker braced himself with one hand above Garrett’s head on the strange-painted wall. Then grabbed his shoulder. Garrett didn’t move.

“Garrett? Hey man, if you can hear me, I’m gonna pick you up. Say something if it hurts.”

No response came. Walker hunched down and worked his hands under Garrett’s shoulders. He moved his feet for good positioning.

Someone screamed.

Walker started so suddenly he yanked up on Garrett. The boy made no sound. Even when his lip scraped up the wall, leaving blood in a diagonal line.

Another scream echoed out. Walker jerked his head up and around. Different voice. Where? Who? Walker breathed harder.

Screams. Female, far away. No. Getting closer. More frequent now.

A woman crying. One called his name. The girls. “Garrett, man, get up.” Walker’s voice sounded hollow to his own ears. The screams washed over it, still more. Where were they coming from?

Then Walker knew. He saw one of the warped symbols beside Garrett’s lolled head. It glistened a sickly red as though inscribed with fresh paint.
Or fresh blood.

They came from the walls. From INSIDE the walls!

All at once he heard Angela yell out, voice shot through with terror.

“What are you?!”

Walker heaved, managing Garrett up alongside him. They had to get out right now. He would carry Garrett out through the nearest damaged wall, then do the same for the girls.

When he got out of the formerly walled-up room, there was an old woman in a ratty smock with wild hair and hawk’s eyes standing in the hallway.

Old Mrs. Taylor rubbed her wrinkled hands together. “One voice,” she whispered. “Free to one voice.”

Walker stared, dumbfounded. “Where’d you come from?” he asked. Then he realized he’d shouted it. His lips were trembling.

“The wall,” said Angela, kneeling in the hall past old Mrs. Taylor. Fear tightening her voice, she pointed a shaking hand at the crumbled concrete.

“From the wall.”

“One voice! We saw beyond!”

Old Mrs. Taylor raised up her hands like a preacher stirring their flock.

Or a witch summoning some demon.

Down the main hallway, past them all, something began to emerge from another wall. Concrete pushed outward, flexing like gray rubber. Handprints – two, then four. The shapes of bodies grew forth, defiant of all reason. Splendid madness showing in lively shapes out of unliving surface.

More people began to step free of the walls. Stone spilled like slime around them, pouring as liquid around their wizened legs, castoffs of a torn chrysalis.

Walker and Angela watched the spectacle, mute, gaping. All the people emerging were aged, unkempt, and wearing ragged medical smocks. Some looked about eagerly. Others wailed in wild despair on their knees. Their voices clashed, words piled over each other, one person finishing another’s sentence.

“We didn’t ” “Reach him! Weren’t many ” “Enough! But was the space-creature” “No! Jurrecz’s punishment! We have to app ” “-pease instead! Different, one voice many ” “Thoughts now!” “When? Is it too late?”

Walker’s feet finally obeyed his panicking senses. He leaped for a doorway on his left into one of the former cells, behind the old woman with raised arms. Kicking aside remnants of old furniture, he raced up to the gaping hole in the cell’s far wall. Outside stood a calm forest, a hushed night-breeze, and the old roadway. Way home. Safe.

Garrett sagged against him, feet dragging. His legs bashed against the ruined bed. Walker didn’t slow. He couldn’t now.

He dumped Garrett on the grass outside the Razor Asylum. Jumping back up, he spun about, intending to go back for the girls.

He couldn’t move again.

His legs locked on him. They refused to approach. Walker stretched his arms out, hoping they could somehow reach the girls from there. Shouts and cackles wafted out at him. Mocking his immobility. Celebrating the two remaining people left inside.

People began to come out through the holes in the walls. Walker froze completely. Their eyes were clouded. Their hands grasped at vapor out in front of them.

Stuttered laughter flowed from the stream of people. It reached Walker before they themselves did. His breath came hot as it dawned on him. These were the patients from many years ago.

The patients who disappeared.

They had come back.

Every patient muttered as they trudged past Walker and Garrett. Like a statue in a park at night, he bore unwilling witness to their mad ramblings.

They spoke of creatures in great damned hordes. Of living swamps and apathetic beast-gods. Of inevitable forces in space and Earth. And of their failed “attempt to join.”

Through the walls.

He and Garrett were witness to secrets undreamt by mankind since well before history was recorded. The weavings between place and its opposite dribbled out of thoughtless words. They were forced to hear of the El’Shem’Kri Tower and the closeness of Lu’kk-Enoth’s bubbling flourishes where Chaos runs wild.

They never again knew sanity as whole people. Ever again.

TOMORROW
Ever since then, a lingering fester has dwelt around the town of Crenim. Visitors tell of a frightful clicking or grinding that emanates from the surrounding woods when the night is grim. Its meeting-places forbid any mention of the crumbled dwelling once called the Razor. Even children dare not venture there now.

Friends discovered the four at the ruins of the Hessh Asylum the next day. Garrett was committed, and caught several times emerging from his catatonia to scrawl grotesque symbols with unknown meanings on his cell walls. Using his own torn fingers.

Walker bought a pistol four days later and put it in his mouth.

Danielle moved to California and became involved with a sociopathic woman there. They found her beaten and stabbed in a cliffside crevasse two months later.

Angela roams North America in pursuit of the Razor’s patients. They didn’t believe her when she told them. They even tried to commit her alongside Garrett. But she escaped and ran. She had to find them. They were missing the walls society pushed upon her. The unity they shared, she felt, it was all one. She had to seek it out again.

They would give it back to her.
They would take down the missing walls again.

For those patients who once dwelled within the Razor are still free. Where did they go? Could they seek what they found in another place upon Earth’s crust? Why, when people hear the many croakings, were they always seen on ocean shores?

And out a thousand leagues from Saturn, advancing with the certainty of venom, the star-insectoid Enah-k’k continues to drag itself across the black ocean of space.

–THE END–
–…for now–

“A ship carrying a group of Irish immigrants passed by the submerged Atlantic isle of Nat-ruul in 1847. Consider that magnetism may not always involve metal.”
–Lord Glanbrin

1849
Dr. Merriweather burst out of the meeting room doors, his face beet-red, jaw clenched back. Out in the hall stood their two burly orderlies and two more nurses. Behind him, Nurse Sandoval and Nurse Winfield slunk out the door to each side. Winfield wrung her hands over & over.

They all looked as white as their uniforms. Each stood limp, staring at him. Directionless. Caught like flies in a web.

Dr. Merriweather pointed past them all. “I want all the doors checked, all the windows checked, and all the storage rooms searched. Right now!” He bellowed the words out, voice echoing back down from the ceiling. “Nurses, windows. Orderlies, doors. And don’t forget the treatment room. I’ll check the storage myself. You find even one patient, you sound off. Go!”

The staff took off like he’d fired a gun. The nurses split to both sides of the main hallway, checking the first pairs of cells there. Not all of them had their doors open. The sound of keys rattling echoed out.

The orderlies bounded down toward the main hall’s far end, heading for the doors on either side of it. Dr. Merriweather went that way too, angling right toward the narrow hall extending down past the main hall on the right side. Producing his keyring, he moved toward the only door on the right of that dim gray hallway, a lonely green metal door marked ‘STORAGE’ in white letters.

Unlocking it with a heavy frown, he slipped through.

Inside was the Hessh Asylum’s sole storage room. From records boxes to foodstuffs to emergency supplies, all were neatly arranged on open steel shelves eight feet tall. The lighting came down in harsh swathes, not strong enough to chase away the pools of shadow surrounding many boxes & some patches of floor.

Dr. Merriweather took a slow breath. The door had been locked. It was unlikely anyone else was in here.

So why had his neck begun to tingle as soon as he entered? Why did it feel like someone was watching?

Uncertainty, he told himself. And the room. The room was cold. It was always cold.

He walked between the shelves. The shadows drew his eye more often than boxes. Did that one move?

Nothing lay on the floor. No hiding patients, no spilled boxes. Yet each moment Dr. Merriweather felt more compelled to look over his shoulder. Some invisible presence, growing, weighing down on him.

Who was THERE?

Finally, finding nothing amiss in the storage room save the growing invisible weight, he scurried out & re-locked the door. Seth Hamish, one of his orderlies, lumbered up to him at the mouth of the main cell hallway.

“Nothing, Doctor Merriweather sir,” he drawled in his Georgia accent. “Doors in the back were locked. No sign of anybody outside neither. No sign of anybody at all.”

The hair on the back of Merriweather’s neck bristled up. He looked up the long main hallway. Finding three nurses approaching them, all with the same nervous confusion on their faces. He knew what they’d say.

Gone. 16 patients. All vanished.

He fought to keep stiff-lipped composure while his mind raced. He had to assume they’d gotten out somehow. If they did, they’d wander into the forest or up the solitary road back to Crenim. Even in their addled states, some would surely find their way the four miles south to town. There would be panic, commotion for the papers, people clamoring for his job…

A thunderous crack sounded up the hall. The nurses shrieked, their voices adding to the pounding noises that came next. Chunks of concrete exploded out of a cell doorway. Like volcanic eruptions, terrific screams of rending stone came at them.

Dr. Merriweather went cold. The walls. The walls were collapsing!

“Get out!” he roared, shoving Seth’s arm. He pointed to the door down the hall to their right. A wrenching crack surged into the ceiling above them. “Get out now!”

They ran. Crashing sounds chased the asylum staff up the narrow side hall. Concrete tore free of itself so violently they felt the floor shudder. The ceiling-crack followed them up. It threw down gray clumps at their heels. Merriweather’s chest heaved, exhausted in seconds. Seth was ahead of him, knocking the door open with his shoulder. A sea of stone screams harried the other six out into the chill night air.

They all tumbled onto the ground, either tripping or dropping to knees, lungs burning. Gray dust stung their eyes. Nurse Sandoval burst into tears. Dr. Merriweather, wheezing against exertion and concrete dust, turned back to look at the Hessh Asylum.

The collapsing noises had stopped. Sooty smoke billowed up out of gaping holes in the walls. He could see at least four of them on this side. He blinked. More along back, probably.

First the patients disappear. Now this? His jaw tightened.

His job was over.

NOW
Walker grabbed onto the pockmarked empty door frame. His mind needed something solid to touch, to hold. He heard one of the girls scream. But right now he had to keep from screaming himself.

He was looking at outer space. As though the doorway to this one tiny cell was some portal out into the vastness of the cosmos beyond Earth. He saw stars twinkling among a tremendous emptiness. He saw large green and yellow orbs that he guessed were planets. The scale, the sheer impossibility of it all being right before him took his breath away and strained his senses.

But it was the creature that made panic force its way up his spine.

At first he couldn’t see it. So covered over by black, so blended into the star-streaked tapestry was it that it wasn’t visible.

Then it moved.

A tremendous pair of hooked claws rose up, stretched forward and struck down. Walked pulled pack despite the claws coming no closer by his perception. The arm that held them was as night. Long and wiry in shape. With a twisted, cruel nature that echoed of pains and bizarre truths hidden among the wastes beyond their puny world.

The claws seemed to sink into space itself. Walker saw another pair of the ugly barbarous claws raise slowly up. Then another. They too stamped onto the soundless aether. And a fourth pair rose.

Pulling itself, Walker thought, terror curdling in him. The thing was pulling itself through outer space! Like some nameless insectoid dragging its body toward prey!

One pair of arms wrapped around his waist, startling him so much he jerked. He looked down to see Danielle. Crying. “Don’t let it in!” she shrieked. “It wants in, don’t let it!”

The star-insectoid clamped down with its final patch of claws. A noisome shuffling occurred, blackness rippling like uneven smoke as its gigantic body moved closer. An orange-yellow globe with many rings lost part of its bulk, blocked from view by the thing.

How BIG was it?!

Danielle pulled on Walker. “Don’t let it in!”

Three baleful eyes, red creases in the fabric of its eager body, fixed upon Danielle. Her eyes remained on Walker, but a grasping fear glazed over them. She tried to speak. But then a pulpy gurgling came from her throat. As though sounds never meant to pass now forced their way up.

Weshouldgo
Nomustremainthecall
We are one in many
Whenheisnotmanyinone
The plane-burner is seen
Lightsoutatten
Must to go now

“Stop it, stop it!” Angela yelled. Her fists pressed to her forehead, she dropped to her knees, jagged masonry edges poking her flesh. Tears spattered onto her wrists. “Stop yelling, it’s crazy, go away!”

Walker had begun doing the only thing he could – moving away from the terrifying vision of outer space and a sickening invader dragging itself nearer. Concrete chips scraped as he staggered back over them. He hauled the gibbering Danielle with him, her arms fastened to his waist tight enough to hurt.

Walker called to Angela, but she remained on her knees beside the star-gaping doorway.

The first pair of ghastly claws raised once more.

A voice intruded then, deep and singular and droned with power.

Inevitable of Between…
Enah-k’k, Enah-k’k…

Danielle screamed a piercing scream once. Then she crumpled against Walker’s leg and went still. The deep droning voice spoke again.

Return whence cast…
Claim the new followers…

The droning voice fell silent. The star-insectoid heaved its vastness forward.

Then Angela moved, crawling after Walker’s fleeing feet like a bug. Her tears left dark wet circles on the dirty floor. “I have to go, have to leave, please!”

An horrendous shriek came over all three of them. It was a one voice churning in on itself, cacophonies of different pitches and unmatchable tones. Like a dozen human beings or more all speaking the same thing at the same time in different states of agony.

“LEEEEAAAAVVVVEEEE?”

“The asylum gained the nickname ‘The Razor’ in 1847,” mumbled Garrett. “Due to its continually-high percentage of lobotomy patients.”

Reciting from books came naturally to him. He often read aloud when he wanted to memorize facts. It was calming.

Calming was what he needed.

He stood in front of a wall, cracked open like the others, somewhere near the asylum’s far end. Blackness lingered close about him. His flashlight shone through the hole into a cell.

A cell with no door. This hole was the only entry or exit. It had come too late for its former occupant.

A human skeleton lay sprawled against the opposite wall from Garrett. Its skull leaned against the masonry, sockets pressed against it. The arm-bones had crumpled down alongside the ribcage.

Above them, long scratches raked the red-stained surface. Brown dried blood-streaks mingled with the pale scratch lines.

Garrett was sure his face was white. His stomach groaned a protest of his thoughts. Someone HAD died here. Who? No one was mentioned in the records as being confined like this. From the look of it, he (or she) had been walled into this cell. Never to leave. Left to rot.

He let the flashlight drift. Its ghostly beam traveled over the walls. Garrett caught his breath.

Symbols. Scratched into the walls, every wall, were all manner of wrenched alien symbols. They twisted about themselves, like suicidal dancers trying to snuff their lives once the music ended. They were completely unfamiliar to Garrett. And the more he saw them, the more he wanted never to remember their rippling madness, their archaic whisperings.

Then he felt eyes upon him. From far away, a deep voice droned words he could not fathom.

1849
Nurse Sandoval heard someone else crying. She blinked at the tears in her eyes, grit fast replacing them from the soot and dust choking up the air. Was someone still in there? She got up off her knees and peered back.

More crying echoed from the dust-shrouded remains of the Hessh Asylum. A single voice, far away, sobbing like an abandoned child.

“Someone’s still inside!”

Dr. Merriweather and Seth saw Sandoval straighten up. Both men glanced at each other.

They got to her before she could charge back inside. Each took hold of one arm, firmly holding on. Sandoval was a kind soul; she really would charge into a burning building to save someone.

Or in this case, a partially-collapsed one.

The wailing came again, shooting out from behind the shrouded concrete skeleton that was their workplace. This time it spoke. A man wailed out, the sound pitiful and soaked in despondence.

“They left me! They found him and left me behind!”

Dr. Merriweather snorted. It figures. All the other patients suddenly vanish, the whole building spontaneously crumbles…and Josias Kegal weathers it.

Kegal was deemed so dangerous that they walled him permanently into the last cell. His ravings had led to many severe injuries among neighborhood pets and children in Pennsylvania. His file stated that he’d lost his sanity after his father died under mysterious circumstances at sea. Evidently some discovery in his father’s effects – a dark family secret, or proof of some unspeakable event – shattered the man so thoroughly he became no more than a screeching animal.

Screeching like he was now. Half-buried under a collapsed roof, thought Dr. Merriweather. The bitter edge of a smile stole across his wrinkled face. Good. It’s all he deserves.

Merriweather would lose his job for this. An entire patient population (save one) somehow escaped? The entire building tearing itself apart as if by some divine retribution? No rational explanation fit. So the state would dismiss it all by dismissing him. And Seth. And Nurse Sandoval, who now stood crying into her hands. And all the others too.

Dr. Merriweather gestured with a dismissive hand to the cobbly dirt road behind them. “Seth. Head back up to town and bring the police. Tell them we’ve got escaped patients.”

Seth nodded mutely and lumbered for the roadway. Merriweather listened to his shoes crunching dirt, slowly receding south. He wondered how the patients had gotten out. Maybe they broke a hole in one wall, causing the collapse? He shrugged.

Possible.

But he found he didn’t care.

It meant retirement. It meant being home with his nagging wife all day. But it also meant no more screaming patients. It meant a slight bit of relaxation.

The Hessh ‘Razor’ Asylum staff waited for the police to arrive. Each staring at the jagged rubble to which their workplace had violently reduced itself.

NOW
160 years later, four young people fought to keep sanity in a place for the insane.

Walker lurched forward, then back. His eyes flew every which way. Trying to find where the voices came from. There were more now. They spoke up and down and near and far. Different words, male and female, all shouting and whimpers and shrieked babbles.
I REMEMBER!
THE DEMON CRAWLS
TWICE A DAY, DON’T FIGHT NOW

The air seemed to whip around him, the voices banshees that struck at his lean body time and again.

Danielle had collapsed at Walker’s feet. Her eyes were wide, vacant. Her body gone fetal. Tiny burbled sounds dripped from her lips. Across from her Angela was a blaze of frenzy. She scratched at the air, flailing arms glistening with sweat and streaked with dust. Her tear-streaked face knotted in panic from the bodiless howls.

Walker put his hands over his ears. It didn’t dim the tide of howling. He wanted to run. To get past that abyssal window into some nether-space. Get to a broken-out wall and run for it. Save himself.

But his feet wouldn’t take any steps for him.

Couldn’t leave his friend? Chivalry for the women? Too scared of the pounding voices to move at all? Any or all, it didn’t matter. He hated whatever was responsible for this torment.

Then he heard the tone change.

The voices began to soften. To turn away from them, as though their many unseen speakers all faced another direction.

Even the words changed.

ANOTHER JOINS
WE REMEMBER FEELING
ONE FROM NOW TO SEE THROUGH THEN

Walker felt his breath catch. He did not like those words.

Garrett stood with one leg over the broken closed-off cell wall’s lower foundation. This way he could lean in and examine the strange symbols more closely. Unlike his companions only thirty yards away, he heard not a sound. The only noise that came to him was a thready whisper, so quiet it seemed to Garrett the voice of his own mind.

“These aren’t runes,” he mumbled.
-stories of plane burner- came the whisper.
“Must be some kind of ritual thing,” Garrett continued. The scrawny young academic reached forward, trailing his fingertips over the ragged lines.

Another tenor joined the whisper. Warm, flowing like honey, its barely-felt presence so enticing Garrett found himself shivering. It spoke so low he couldn’t determine the words. Only their sensations, so warm, soothing, comforting. He felt his mind stir, images slowly bubbling into being there.

Images of bliss, comfort. Lying on a bed. Soft cloth over him. Women all around, half-naked, glowing with desire. Was that Angela? He couldn’t tell. It wasn’t important. When your dream comes true, you don’t ask questions.

-welcome- was the whisper. -come-

Garrett’s body slowly eased forward. His forehead came to rest against the wall. His eyes closed. Breath left him.

All at once, the other three visitors came face-to-face with fantasies of their own.

The voices changed again into a musical cant, chiming spoken bell-sounds that bounced in scattershot. Walker, Angela and Danielle gasped in unison.

Walker saw himself driving the lane at the national championships. Up went the ball. Camera flashes went off. Through the net.
No cheering.
No one watching.

Angela gasped at finding herself on a cliff overlooking the sea. Crisp air caressed her face. Forest noises fluttered behind her. A sense of peace flooded through her mind, suffusing into her body as well.

She cried. Both from feeling so calm, and from having no one with whom to share it.

Danielle jerked so violently she came to a sitting position. What she saw was a dream–but not hers. The music-voices pierced down into a piece of her mind no one else knew. Primal urges. Unchecked instinct.

She saw herself stabbing basketball players while Walker ran past them on the court.

She saw her naked self climbing on top of a grinning Garrett.

She saw herself racing up a cliff at Angela’s back. A rope held between her hands.

Her twitching face drew a smile. A shallow reflection of the twisted glee pumping through her in each dream.

1849
Officer Patrick O’Brien simply did not believe what he was hearing.

“You’re saying all the patients got caught in the building when it collapsed, aye?”

Dr. Merriweather looked at the much younger man with tiresome distaste. “No, you idiot. I said all the patients were gone before the building collapsed.” He waved a wrinkled hand dismissively in front of him. “They must have gotten out the back.”

Officer O’Brien frowned. Again he looked about for his sergeant. This ‘doctor’ had been nothing but disrespectful since he & his staff had entered the Crenim Police Station.

But his sergeant had gone up the told Razor with one of the nurses. Given how crabby this old man was, he couldn’t blame him.

Even if it was all a bunch of crazies.

“Patrick,” a dry voice said beside him. O’Brien looked over to find Officer Murdoch there. A troubled look on his colleague’s face.

“Excuse us,” O’Brien said to Dr. Merriweather. Then he got up and moved over to the briefing room’s far corner, beckoning to Murdoch before the old doctor could protest much. Murdoch followed.

“What is it?”

“It’s their stories, Patrick.” George Murdoch rubbed his forehead, eyes searching the floor. “Their stories aren’t matching up. A couple said all the patients got out. But the others…they’re saying the patients all DISAPPEARED. Like poof! Magic.” He made a puffing gesture with one hand.

Nervousness writ large on his face.

“The doctor’s not telling me whatever happened to them either.” Patrick O’Brien rubbed at the bristly red chunk of beard on his chin. “You sure they’re not joshing you, the other ones?”

Murdoch quickly shook his head. “No sir. The big guy, Seth?” He pointed in the direction of a broad-shouldered man in a white orderly’s uniform, sitting hunched over rubbing his face with both hands. “I grew up two houses down from him. His father and mine both came over on the same ship. He’s no liar. He swears to me that all those patients up and vanished. Like something took ‘em all away.”

Patrick’s frown deepened into his face. Murdoch wasn’t the brightest sort—but he wasn’t a liar either. And with the doctor’s abrasive account, they had two stories here. One explainable.

One not.

“Guess we should wait until Sarge comes back. See what he finds.”

Here is the beginning of the second story in my collection of tales concerning The Arms That Howl. It tells of four young students who traveled to the site of a ruined asylum. And in doing so, called out to the past…

“Is that it?” Angela whispered.

Her three companions all looked in the direction she pointed. Off to the left of the old weed-tufted road was a gloom-ridden block of a building. Abandoned long ago, complete with empty window-slats and brittle dead ivy creeping through the gaping holes in dull white-painted walls.

“Yep. That’s the old Razor,” said Walker.

The four of them stood watching the long-empty Hessh Asylum for several moments. Sunlight crawled back from them toward the horizon. As if it waited for spooky music, or for some crazed old man to run out at them from the scraggly forest grown over the land.

Garrett grinned at both of the girls accompanying them. “It was built in 1816,” he started. His voice went nasal on the ‘in,’ for which he quickly admonished himself and cleared his throat. “They called it ‘The Razor’ because of all the lobotomies performed while it was open.”

Danielle gave Garrett a solidly-patronizing smirk, face half-hidden by her long blonde hair. “And how long was that, hmm?”

“33 years!” Garrett replied, pointing skyward. His eyes practically glowed behind his glasses.

“Not very long,” Walker said. He snorted. “Guess the residents didn’t like the decor!” He chuckled at his own joke.

Angela shifted in place. “Can we just get the rock you need and go? I don’t want to get stuck out here after dark. I mean, it was hard enough finding our way–”

“Not to worry!” Garrett piped out. “I brought a map that shows the way. And an extra flashlight.” He grinned over at Angela, cheeks mashing upward.

Danielle pulled on Walker’s arm. “Come on, let’s go see the place. Maybe we can have some fun inside.”

Garrett rushed past Walker, his legs much shorter (and more eager) than the basketball player’s. Angela wrung her hands while following them in.

1849
Nurse Sandoval raced up the main hallway, the faint echo of her heels on the tile buried under the yelling all around.

Ahead of her lay an old man, facedown just outside an open cell door. Gray-white hair squashed under him jutted out around his ears.

Sandoval kneeled down, pulled up on his right shoulder, and brushed his beard down. “Mr. Sanderson, are you all right?”

Mr. Sanderson stared at her, panic in his wrinkle-framed eyes. Not the distant kindness he usually showed the staff. “It doesn’t matter,” he mumbled. Lips quivering as though he would cry. “Jurrecz will come. We won’t remember.”

Nurse Sandoval stared blankly for a moment. Normally they ignore patient ramblings. But Sanderson’s sincerity radiated from his eyes.

She touched the cross around her neck.

Why would he be scared of Jesus?

“Come on Mr. Sanderson. Up you go.” She looped an arm around his shoulder. Mr. Sanderson got to his feet, allowing her to direct him back into his cell.

When she closed the door, Mrs. Taylor was waiting in the hall.

“For your own good,” she croaked. Glaring past Nurse Sandoval as if the much younger woman wasn’t there. “Twice a day.”

Nurse Sandoval sighed. Mrs. Taylor never said anything except parroting the nurses & orderlies’ daily phrases. As far as she knew, it was the reason her children had left her here 5 years ago.

Sandoval walked around Mrs. Taylor, leaving her standing in the long cold hall. She was fine on her own. The violent episodes only came when she was forced toward someplace.

At the end of the hall was a T-junction; hall to the left, hall to the right, & a door in front of her to the staff offices. Nurse Sandoval had intended to enter the office and take her break. But a shuffling caught her attention, drawing her eyes to the leftside hall.

Patients milling about was common in the Hessh Asylum. But not over there. Not from the walled room hallway. No one went over there. The hallway wasn’t even lit.

Yet she could see the outline of a young man in pants and a strange decorated shirt, without a patient’s gown on. He was hammering his fists on the exterior of the Walled Room. Screaming in a squeaky youthful voice, “Let me out! Let me out, please!”

NOW
“Woah. They weren’t kidding,” Walter said. His eyes drifted over their surroundings.

Inside the long-deserted asylum the four students were surrounded by a ruined skeleton of a building. To their right was a long broad hallway, lit here and there by open patches in the ceiling letting in moonlight. Scraps littered the floor, everything from cracked tiles to small weeds. Jagged holes stood in the walls on all sides, like black-filled sentries.

Angela breathed out, one hand gripping the other elbow. “Is it…did they paint it like this?”

“No,” Garrett said, shaking his head. Eyes on the gaping hole across from them, tracing along the edge. “Guess the story’s true.”

Walker crouched, long legs splaying out like a spider’s to both sides. He picked up the nearest chunk of masonry to him. “Yeah. Look. It’s red. All the way through.”

They stood facing the long central hallway now. Some of what they thought were holes turned out to be doors. Doors opening into cramped patient cells. A warehouse row to store dregs of humanity.

And every wall around them was an ugly, grimy red.

Danielle shifted in place. “It looks like blood. Is it supposed to look like that?”

Garrett nodded. He remembered the flashlight in his hand, and turned it on. “The story is that the walls all turned ‘the color of blood’ after the patients disappeared. Some people thought the staff killed them all. Others said the devil took them. That’s why the walls are all stained.”

A hollow noise came from somewhere down the hallway. Air grating. Wisps of sound.

Walker froze half-standing. The red masonry chunk cradled in one hand. “Dude. You hear that?”

Garrett gave his friend an inquisitive look. Angela bit her lip, saying nothing. Danielle however snorted. “Oh come on. His voice echoed and you’re all scared?”

She grabbed Walker’s right hand with both of hers. “Come on big guy. I want to see the old scary loony bin.” She gave a cutesy pout. “Won’t you protect me?”

“But, he got his frat pledge,” Angela said, pointing toward the masonry chunk in Walker’s hand. “He got what he came for. Let’s go okay?”

“Fascinating!” Garrett suddenly added. He had moved a few steps into the hallway to examine another of the torn-out holes in the walls. He rubbed two fingers along its edge, pushing flecks of red dust off.

“It IS red all the way through.” The scrawny teen wrinkled his nose to adjust his glasses. “Look at this as well–the rubble on the floor.”

Angela looked where he aimed the flashlight down toward his feet. “It’s just a few rocks,” she said, still eager to leave.

“Exactly!” Garrett beamed at her. His face was half-covered by reflected blobs of light, turning the expression into a warped, wicked-looking grin. Angela wasn’t quite as pretty as Danielle. But that was okay. If he could just impress her, maybe she would be nice to him. He could ask her out–just keep trying! “Where’d all the rest of it go? There should be a lot more debris here.”

“Well let’s go find it,” said Danielle. The shadows covered her slight smirk. She pulled on Walker’s arm again. He took a few half-hearted steps forward.

“Great idea!” trumpeted Garrett. Then he took off down the hallway. The flashlight beam bounced over dirt-coated floor patches and holes in walls.

“Hey Garrett, wait up!” Walker called after his friend.

But darkness had closed about the flashlight. Garrett was out of sight.

NEWBETWEEN
Whenisitnow
Weunsure
Onepulled
One?
Weremember
Wallsbrokedown

Garrett coughed. The dim hallway had few cobwebs, but dust jumped up at him with every step.

He felt slightly ridiculous at running on ahead like that. The others hadn’t followed him. And he’d readily admit it; most of his reason for being here was impressing the girls. He learned all he could about the Hessh “Razor” Asylum to show how smart a guy he was. Girls said they liked smart guys—don’t they?

Swatting at another cloud of dust, he blinked as he found himself facing a wall. What? He flicked the flashlight up, another crack-riddled red concrete face showing in the beam.

Did he get turned around?

He looked over his shoulder. Grim darkness greeted him on all sides. Only the wall was distinct.

Where was he?

“Okay, don’t worry Garrett,” he said to himself. His voice emulated a quivering reed. “You can’t get lost in here. There’s a dozen ways to get out through the walls. Just find your way back, or get out through a hole. And then ask Angela out on the way home. Yeah.”

Then an airy sound breathed out of the blackness on all sides. Like a dozen disparate noises circling him.
“Oooouuuutttt….?”

1849
Doctor Gunther Merriweather sat in the meeting room at the far end of the main hallway. A thick tuna sandwich hung between his beefy hands, its innards trying hard to slide back out onto the table before he could take another bite.

Nurse Sandoval walked in the door, nudging the head doctor’s eyes up toward her. Lovely woman, to his sentiments. Pity he’d been married to a nagging shrew for…what, has it been 35 years now? And the staff wondered why he preferred being here, among crazies, over his own home?

Nurse Sandoval came right up to him. He saw a paleness on her face that wasn’t a frequent visitor to the ordinarily-vibrant woman. “Doctor,” she said. “I just saw something.”

Dr. Merriweather licked some tuna off his finger. “What something?”

Sandoval rubbed her left arm. “Well, it was…there was a young man in the hall. The Walled Room hallway. I’m sure he wasn’t a patient either. He had strange clothes on, not a gown or anything.”

Dr. Merriweather chewed on his next bite. He grimaced as the last of the sun’s rays intruded on his eyesight from the window off to his left. “Strange clothes. Is that all?”

The nurse shook her head, dark blonde hair wagging back and forth over her cheeks. “No sir. He was pounding his fists on the Walled Room. And he kept yelling, ‘Let me out!’ I tried talking to him, but he didn’t seem to hear me.”

Merriweather made a small noise in his throat and put down his sandwich. A little tuna finally crept out the side. He grunted at it. “Sounds like a patient to me. Get Mr. Hunt to help you bring him to a cell. I think #32 is still open if you can’t find his. He can spend the night there; I’ll look him up in the morning.”

Nurse Sandoval frowned. The idea struck her as unlikely to work. The yelling boy didn’t belong here. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she felt it was true. All the same, she wouldn’t get any more out of Dr. Merriweather once he’d made a pronouncement. So she nodded and turned on her heel to leave.

Then Nurse Winfield burst into the meeting room, hands up, face white. “They’re gone!” she shouted out, panting furiously. “The patients, they’ve all vanished!”

NOW
Danielle giggled at the decrepit remains of one of the asylum’s patient cells.

Walker shot her a funny look. Standing on the other side of what was left of a metal-backed cot, he watched her face. “What’s funny Danielle?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head, then gave the basketball star a playful look. “Just thought it was a pity the beds are broken like this.”

Walker blinked, and looked down. The cot was only a rust-coated frame now, with scraggles of old mattress springs and flecks of brittle cloth atop it like some nightmare forest.

“Girl, what’s going through your head?”

Danielle simply smiled at him.

Angela, pressed to the yawning doorway with Garrett’s extra flashlight in her hand, rolled her eyes.

Danielle suddenly changed the subject. “Why’d you bring the nerd along, Walker? He’s funny, but really.”

Walker pointed at her. Long and lanky, his arm almost reached across the cell entirely. “Don’t you go calling him that again, y’hear? Garrett’s my friend. Has been since 6th grade. He’s got more the right to be out here with me than you.” Walker snorted and went for the cell door.

Danielle followed him out into the hall – breezing past Angela as if she wasn’t there – and stuck herself in front of Walker. “He doesn’t have these, though,” she said, pushing her breasts together with her hands.

Angela snorted air out of her mouth. “Danielle, honestly. Let’s just find Garrett and go already.” The darker-haired girl looked up along the rotted ceiling, its surface riddled with gloomy pockmarks and dangling bits of aged white tile.

Walker, despite being honestly tempted by the display in front of him, mustered the resolve to walk around Danielle. It wasn’t the first time a girl offered herself, eager to take advantage of his image around campus. Walker may be the school’s best chance for a new league title. Danielle would love to brag to girlfriends about him.

Okay, he’d love to brag at the frat house about Danielle too. But dissing Garrett wasn’t—

Up ahead he heard a whisper.

Walker’s pace slowed on its own. “Hey Garrett? It’s me. Don’t do nothing stupid man, you’ll scare the girls.”

Danielle scoffed, a few steps behind him. Angela, half-hidden behind their flashlight’s weak halo, said nothing.

As they went further up the long broad hallway, the whispers continued. The sound grew close enough to shape a pitch. That of an old woman.

Walker became aware of pebbles scuffing under his shoes. It was an old woman’s voice, yes – croaking syllables, huffs between words. He could hear words now. It sounded like his grandma.

What would she be doing here?

“For your own good.”

An old woman’s muttering. Coming from…the next cell on the right.

“Administered daily.”

The part of him that gripped the chunk of masonry wanted to turn around. Or throw it. But the part that didn’t know better kept moving his feet.

“For your own good,” the voice croaked.

Walker reached the cell, its open doorway welcoming him as a spider would a fly. Danielle behind him, pressed to his side. Angela still hung back in the hall. He gulped, and looked inside the cell.

What he saw made no sense at all.

“A jewel of screams
I saw the many vessels of Ur
The Proto-Gods delivered by millions
One Realm of nemesis creatures.”

Here now is the last piece of the Riddle of Meln’k, the Spider Prophetess who scaled the walls of El’Shem’Kri. Who will die in the Insect War to build the dead insect god Knk’k-lusz.

The truths she presents are mysteries of time. Contained within the riddle are four secrets. Solve it and gain fore-knowledge.

Here are the previous verses:
Verse 1 of 4
Verse 2 of 4
Verse 3 of 4

Solve it if you can. I await your guesses.

“She traveled the mirror
Saw eight legs joined in thousand twain
One mind cannot reach through
Two realms in one mind plunge.”

The third verse of four. Meln’k has not yet described what she found inside the peak chamber of El’Shem’Kri…that will come with the final verse.

Who is the ’she’? I confess I never pried this answer from Meln’k herself. I suspect it a reference to The Woman Enwebbed, but cannot be certain until the Woman awakens.

Which she will not do until Meln’k dies.

Did I give too much away there? Perhaps.