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by Gregory A. Wilson, November 21st 2000
I.
It is always always the dreams that get to me, not for some amorphous
ambiguity of shapes less seen than felt no, more rather because of their
absolute clarity and reality. The smells are their as pungent as in waking
and the sights are clear and crystal keen and the words have all of the fulness
of speech in our daily lives. But they are not my own thoughts and smells
and sights and words, no, that is only partially true some are in my realm
of experience, yet still others belong to terrifying vistas that I have not
seen and dark mutterings I have not heard.
I am, I still believe, though
the line in my memories and those grafted to me so long ago often blurs,
Parnell Warren Hardigan. I was, I am, I will be, a man in the shadows of
history, belonging to deeds that never happened and friends and foes who
will never exist. In a word, conspiracy. Yet what I have to tell goes far
beyond OUR limited understanding of the term....
It all began, in a library....
II.
My credentials are impeccable, my work would be known to all I write to if it could be, for I have studied thoughts and things that cannot be let out, and have suffered the shuddersome horrors thereof. Yet still, in the main I research. And that was where I was then, it seems so long and removed from me now. Just like the man(?) I have become in that time.
The white gloves were on my hand, I had forceps and all of the other tools for the protection of the manuscripts I was researching. My other compatriots were, I believe, still out west at the time, but I had been called to the sedate and cotton halls of Miskatonic University in the small hamlet of Arkham, Massachusetts, a seat of vague suggestions and abhorrent hints. Nevertheless, I was sent to research very specifically, certain bound journals and reports and sketchbooks, nearly as old as this century. Professor Henry Dyer, Professor Littlejohn, Starkweather-Moore, these names were threaded throughout the accounts and their discoveries.
Their discoveries, I wish I had never read them, rather they should have been left to die in the place they were found, at the End of the World, in Antarctica.
Had my superiors always known these stark facts, of our true nature in the scheme of this planet's history?
If so how have they survived, I know I only handled it because my minds path are a circuitous melange of pathways and blind alleys that never quite connect with what it was reading. Thus my copious notes, though on many deep levels I could not truly understand the nature of these texts. I questioned of course, why, why was I there?, To what end?
Quicksilver played in the pit of my stomach as I realized the only real possibility.... I felt more than heard the entry into my viewing room and wondered if my time was up. But no, there was a man there, a wizened vicious skeleton of a man, whose name I almost spoke, "A-"
"Now, now" the charming dry rattle of his voice let out "None of that now old man".
I laughed lightly at the witticism, life is full of those moments when stuck between What Is and What Waits, that you do find the strength to laugh.
He actually smiled then.
"You must know why I had you do this."
"It was you directly?"
"Yes, does that trouble you?"
I didn't know.
He closed the books a gentle gesture from one whose very words can do much harm. And he sighed, another human gesture,"The days grow long, and yet short all at once. They beat upon us. You and your compatriots must go to this palace of ice and secrets, now and return what information you may, a name must be confirmed, it is on my lips but I will not speak it, no not at all".
I bowed my head I knew what he implied, what we were seeking, and then there, I know it could not have been my imagination, the room blasted cold and I shivered, he did too, more perceptibly it seemed to me then. My mind refused to place anything in plain terms, yet I KNEW I KNEW!
"We probably won't come back", I muttered.
"Perhaps"
The word was no comfort to me.
"Go now and plumb the mysteries of our place in this world, seek to find what others did not find all of, return to us, full in the knowledge of what we have hidden the hints of for so long".
I stood and put on my jacket and called for the clerk to take the books back to storage and I turned and he was gone. And I thought"We are all ghosts here". An old dead friend had told me that as her last words, that last bad time that made me who I am. I left the University and outside the gates and looked into the night sky full of stars and no clouds. They winked, in the night, a brief miracle of the heavens. I did not wink back.
III.
The man in the gray flannel suit sucked in breaths and tried to calm himself as he dialed the phone and place the small black disc against the receiver, "Sir, sir, oh dear heaven sir, I know where they are headed sir. Sir, I think you should, I mean..."
"Out with it", a shadowy, shadowy man said testily.
"They are headed for Antarctica, the World's End sir".
The man behind the phone almost sighed if he were a person to allow himself such luxuries"Then it has all been for nothing, hasn't it?"
"What do you mean sir"
But the line was dead.
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