Dear Brutus,
It has been a while since I last sent you a letter. I confess, I had thought I would be done with this affair entirely, having been quite distraught with the contents of my strange dream. I've delayed sending you another letter about my most recent diversion, both because I've been swamped with work, and also because of the disturbance this odd delirium has caused me. By Janus, where should I begin?
I had quit my medicine entirely. Though my physician insisted it would help with my anxiety, it had only succeeded in making it worse from the numerous side effects. One of those side effects were wholly disturbing dreams. In one, I sat in a car and and watched rats gobble the cloth of the seats ravenously. I picked one up in attempt to toss it out the window, but it started eating me. I tried to pull it off, but it remained. There was no blood, and no pain, but the thought of the rat eating me was horror enough.
In another, as I've mentioned in previous letters, I see hooded, cloaked figures on the other side of a broad river. Their eyes glow in the twilight, and they hold lanterns. They carry staffs decorated with all forms of beads and carvings. They set off in the direction of firesmoke, where no doubt they have occult operations to perform. Why a professor would submit to joining this gang of delusional misfits makes no sense in my waking life, but in the dream, I am strongly drawn to walking in their procession.
I have gotten used to the flies, the mosquitoes, and the stench of this hectic quilt of suburban communities in all its mundane inanity. My complacency is the most frightening thought yet. On my income, I could probably upgrade from my rickety marsh-side residence, but I've found myself lacking all conviction to change my circumstances. I scribble my class notes furiously with a single image emblazoned upon the screen in my mind. A woman with a wide-brimmed hat, her face and hands pallid and skeletal, shouting into every chamber of my mind, I told you not to come!
Who was she? Surely I knew from some experience I'd had during my postgraduate studies. Johnson's short fiction is fundamental to a time in the early 20th when gothics like those of Poe and Lovecraft held a narrative niche. But Johnson's work was different in its mysticism. She writes impartially about circumstances one must be decidedly partial towards. That's what makes the setting addictive, that's how I believe I lost myself in that time and place. I'm over it. I'm done. I won't return. This spectre has forbidden my trespass into her world, and I must obey her wishes.
Anyway, I had used up the vial of clear fluid when I saw her there, sitting precariously on a lakeside park bench. I couldn't reach her again if I tried. Still on my counter was the vial of amber-coloured fluid my physician gave me. These vials, it seemed, were much more than a sedative, ro a sleep-aid. The dreams they brought were far more substantial than mere imagination. They were real beyond reality, and in them, there was the very seed of of some grand conspiracy in the works. I knew this in my soul, and thus it was impossible for me to reject the call.
The night come, and my lesson supplements completed for the next day's lectures, I eased into bed and applied the amber fluid upon my eyes. Sleep seemed to come, and pass by me in an instant. The stench of strewn garbage and drunken vomit that lined these hideous avenues cleared, and again I perceived the scent of perfume wafting in through the unsealed cracks in the archways of my marsh-side home. The sweet perfume overwhelmed me, and it behoved me to follow its trail from my door step to the hideous slough but meters from my property line.
I looked through the chicken wire fence. I saw nothing but the ugly remains of the old slaughterhouse, covered in foul and bloody muck that had still not been showered from its rotting planks. How could such an attractive perfume diffuse from this putrid wasteland?
I spied the hole in the fence as I had before. As I slipped though, its sharp wires tore at my clothing and drew blood from my skin. I looked up towards the remains of the slaughterhouse, but it had disappeared. In its place was the scenic moonlit manmade lake that had been there the last time I visited. As before, it was surrounded by paths, trees now past their spring cherry blossom bloom, path dotted with wrought-iron and stained plank benches, upon which not a soul sat in the darkness of night, but for two.
Lurking behind a seated figure wrapped in a forest green felt cape, that woman who wore a wide-brimmed hat, was a man with a beard and top hat. He wore a coat much nicer than mine over an attractive black and grey three-piece. He looked over in my direction, and smiled.
"Professor!" shouted the man cheerily. He certainly seemed to know me, but I was at a loss to identify him. "There are new developments you must observe. I require your input. Let's not delay!"
I made my way to where the couple was, but the woman would not reveal her face. She stayed hidden under the shadow of her hat and lifted her weary body with the help of a sturdy cane. She hobbled on ahead of her well-dressed companion on the path that stretched to the far end of the marsh-turned-lakeside park while the gentleman spoke to me of his experiments.
"Since last we met," he began, oblivious to my confusion, I've taken on a protege or two. My comrades in agriculture here in this rough province are quite interested in our discoveries."
"Our discoveries?"
The gentleman patted me on the back. "Oh, don't be modest. It was, after all, you who pointed me in the right direction, and were brave enough to subject yourself to the experiment. The feedback you'd given Miss Rand was impeccable, as to the bright and industrious future. Who'd have known that such developments were even possible?"
What the gentleman suggested triggered a memory, quite strongly upon his pronouncement. I, in fact, had spoken a little about authors around the turn of the century who infused the realms of science and humanities with mystical rhetoric. I assuredly did recall meeting some fantasy cosplayers in the old Rand House on Bute and Nelson. It seemed ages ago, but it truly did happen, and I really did subject myself to some sort of experiment involving a glowing altar table in the basement of the manor. It could be that the same cosplayers in Vancouver had somehow followed me to this horrid little border city, Which would make this gentleman the industrialist Henry Town.
We walked the path behind Miss Rand, who kept a decent pace, though she hobbled piteously.
"So, then, Professor Mayburn. I should fill you in on our recent activities. Miss Rand has consented to be our chief ambassador to the mysteries of the unknown. She quite regularly enters the lights and reports little details that have caught the attention of industrialists the world over. I have interested parties throughout the Americas, in Germany, France, Holland and even as far as the Orient. The details she's absorbed from the light have led to much profit, and I have both her and you to thank for that."
I viewed the gait of the limping woman ahead of us. Hearing these details seemed to motivate her hands to clench tightly, and her legs to stiffen up. She remained in silence as she sauntered forward, seemingly muttering to herself, her cape weighted towards the soil by fur trim.
I reflected on what Town had proposed. "If this is all true," I queried, "then what brings you to this locale? Should you not be investigating your altar in Vancouver?"
Henry beamed. "Now, what's to say it need be confined to Vancouver? Come with me."
My eye was caught by happenings on the other side of the lake. There I saw an image from my dreams, several robed figures, all cloaked in hooded black vestments. They carried the lanterns from my dreams, but their eyes did not glow. They appeared quite human in their faces, solemnly scowling. They paused in their march to pick up cast-iron cauldrons waiting where the edge of the lake met a dusty trail.
Witnessing all this, I had to ask. "And who are they?"
"They'll be joining us soon," replied the gentleman. "In many ways, they're the most instrumental of all." Miss Rand twitched.
Where the paths converged, there was a rough path leading away from the park. It led to makeshift stairs climbing up to a circle of boulders buried in a lawn of vibrant, closely-cropped grass. The circle was fairly wide, at least 25 meters in diameter. The robed figures had progressed beyond us and taken places among others like them, each standing at a buried boulder in the circle. Each held a cauldron by its rod handle.
Town and I approached in complete silence, for me it was out of awe, and it seemed my companion approached with great solemnity for the affair. Miss Rand went to stand at the centre of the circle where a sapling grew, under which was a buried boulder with a flat surface. On the surface were the same sorts of ritual objects I recall from the Rand house, when I so eagerly threw myself into the light at the altar. At her feet was a patch of dirt that had no grass, as if something was buried beneath it.
The robed participants, some men and some women, each took turns approaching the altar. They murmured a language unknown to me. It was not Latin, I knew that for sure, and did have an asiatic lilt to it, though it bore more resemblance to some form of slavonic. Each adherent poured the contents of their cauldrons onto the base of the altar rock. In the cauldrons was a viscous crimson coloured liquid. Blood, one would assume.
I whispered to Henry, "blood?"
He nodded. "From cattle," he whispered back. "I'm not sure how necessary it is. The Swedes allegedly did something similar with their idols in the Dark Ages."
"Hm." I nodded as if the sight was a routine banality.
As the chanting drew to a close, the final robed figure touched each of the altar objects and spoke in the enigmatic tongue as if he were speaking to the objects directly. The light looked like a spark at first, like a sputtering fuse. Its sputtering went from hectic jitters to a smooth outpour of pale yellow. It became silky and bulging. It unfolded, less like fire, and more like water suspended in a field devoid of gravity. Within the pale yellow, a prism of subtly glowing flints and echoes emerged.
"This is what I want you to investigate, professor," whispered Henry. "Look at that odd protrusion."
I saw a thin line of light reaching from the bulge. It traced itself to the southwestern corner of the circle, a tenth the way to the westernmost boulder.
"Any thoughts?"
"Not quite," I answered. "But let me consider it."
"I'd be in your debt."
This whole time Miss Rand stood, her face still pointing away from us, propping her weight upon her cane. I was divided between looking at her and looking at the light. The light looked much like it had in that dream of the basement, now feeling less and less like a dream as the moments passed. The light grew until it appeared to reach out for the lady, her back still facing it. She nodded her head down, with a face that could have dropped a tear of humble acceptance, submission to something terrible and necessary.
In a swift motion, she turned, threw her arms up in the air, opened her cape, and exposed her whole body to the illumination of the altar rock. I half-expected her face to be as skeletal as the night before, and although gaunt, she was as fleshy as the rest of us. The light devoured everything in the darkness of shadow until nothing outside of her body was visible, or, it seemed, even existed. Her skin was discoloured in spots, singed without wrinkling, and her eyes flashed wildly. She pressed her body nearer to the light, and wind circled around her, flinging her cape aside.
As for the light, it embraced her, and for a moment, she had vanished. She flickered back into view. With an ecstatic look upon her face, her mouth agape, her eyes glowing white, her neck long and her arms slowly drooping, she dropped to the ground. One robed figure rushed to embrace her and cover her with a cloak he'd prepared in anticipation. I started towards her, but the gentleman put his arm up to block my way.
"This isn't the first time," the man said dryly.
Several more adherents dashed over and lifted the robed woman and began walking her down the path, back to the bench in front of the lake. They sat her up and one of the crowd pulled down his hood. He sat with her, and I could see from afar that he was asking her some questions. Henry walked me past her bench and towards the gate.
"She's become quite good at it," he told me. "At first, she was simply upset, but soon, she was able to make accurate predictions. There will come a day when our wealth will be beyond measure. At present, I make a mere twenty times the average worker. Within only decades, I'll be making an excess of two hundred times the average worker. The gift you've introduced me to, good professor, is beyond any of my imaginings. I can only show my appreciation by giving you all you desire."
We shook hands. I looked back once more at Miss Rand. She looked despondent. She was shaking. I didn't want to leave, not until she shot a glance into my eyes.
I told you not to come.
I was escorted through the park gate. When I turned to look back at the scene, I found myself faced with chicken wire, staring into a rancid bog, a faint trace of perfume still hanging in the air.
Dear Brutus, I wouldn't feel any of this odd dream was of any consequence if it hadn't been for what occurred before I crawled into my bed to sleep. As I pulled down my nightshirt, I spied in my mirror the oddest thing: a few spots of smeared blood on my back. I pressed them. These cuts were in exactly the place where the fence had scraped me.
Please tell your readers that all this has been a lovely fiction, but that it is a complete diversion containing nothing of truth. I thank you for your continued patronage of my silly letters, and wish you all the best in your career. For me, it is time to do as the Bible instructs and put away childish things. Hopefully this letter was a satisfying conclusion to my little saw.
Sincerely,
Professor Weller Mayburn.
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