Haggopian and Other Stories

The Hymn

One of my most recent stories, “The Hymn” was written in July/August 2003, specifically for a new “pulp”, H. P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror. So here we are as I write this, two years or more later, and the No. 3 issue—allegedly a”Lumley issue”—still hasn’t appeared. History repeats! Presumably it will have appeared, at least by the time you read “The Hymn” in this current collection.*

*I received my copies 1st November 2006.

There were six of us—eight, if I include the two men in the cell. Not a cell as in a prison, more a large partitioned room or apartment—or rather a closed, controlled environment with all the necessary life-support systems; also a fail-safe which could be brought into play to cancel the said life-supports in the unlikely event that such action became imperative.

The cell’s walls, floors and ceilings were of welded five-inch thick carbon steel plates, buttressed on the outside; the inlet and outlet conduits, as few as possible, had bores of no more than two inches; the entire structure—its adjuncts and supporting complex—was subterranean in a mountainous region, thus making use of a nuclear shelter left over from a war that had never come to pass. There had been lesser wars, certainly, but not the BIG ONE that we had all been afraid of back in the early ’60s.

Actually, it was during the aftermath of one of those so-called “lesser” wars (as if there ever was any such thing) that the events leading to my current position as director and coordinator of T.M.I. or “The Mythos Investigation” had taken place—but to speak of that now would be to jump the gun as it were, and anyway it will come up later, wherefore it better serves my purpose to proceed with my description of the subterrene facility, also to explain something of my fellow observers, and then to let the principal participants in the experiment, our human guinea pigs in the cell, tell the story in their own words.

So, there was myself: a Foundation Member (I’m afraid I can say no more on that subject), also one other Foundation Member, an elderly colleague; there were two men from military intelligence, both high-ranking, inferior only to the highest governmental authorities; there was a female psychiatric specialist, and finally a technician, a man who—having been responsible for the design and construction of the cell, its adjuncts and surroundings—was completely familiar with its workings. He knew how to run the place, and just as importantly how to shut it down. As for myself and my elderly colleague: we were there by virtue of our alleged expertise in certain matters of grotesque myth and legend.

With regard to the names and physical descriptions of the team: I deem these particulars unnecessary; at this late date I see no reason to compromise anyone. And details of the precise location of our sub-sierran venue are likewise out of the question, since I have no doubt it remains a much guarded secret to this day.

And so back to the cell:

The cell had no windows…it wasn’t required that the men inside should be able to look out. That would be a distraction, and they certainly wouldn’t want to see us looking in. We were, of course, “looking in”, though not through windows as such; for even one-way viewports would not have allowed total visual access. But recessed into the interior walls, ceilings and various fittings were tiny closed-circuit cameras each with an exterior screen. Audio was similarly available, indeed absolutely necessary.

The cell was equipped with small bedrooms, bathrooms, cooking facilities, and a large refrigerator containing enough food and drink for several weeks. Lighting was of course artificial; it could be switched off in the bedrooms, so that our subjects might sleep. But even there we were not to be excluded: bedroom cameras could be switched to infrared. It was of the utmost importance that we should be able to see them—and perhaps even listen to them—when they slept.

As to their names: while I am certain that their real names may be found in Foundation archives, where I have no doubt they are kept secure, I shall nevertheless provide them with pseudonyms…. Letters such as this one may not be as safe as Foundation records. They were Jason and James. On the other hand, I will give them at least something of physical descriptions, if only to enhance the reader’s mental picture of them during the discoursive passages to follow.

They were of a height, perhaps five-nine or ten; also of an age, say thirty-two, with Jason the elder by five or six months. Jason was a redhead, outspoken, careless in both dress and attitude, often flippant but never insulting. Lanky and jaunty if a little lopsided in his gait, he had green eyes, a long straight nose and gaunt cheeks. James was quite Jason’s opposite. Admitting to a sedentary lifestyle, he had wisps of thinning, prematurely grey hair on a bulbous skull, sharp, permanently narrow and penetrating blue eyes, a small mouth and receding chin, all set on a burly, powerful if under-utilized frame. In short, and if in the near future he did not take up some form of exercise, he could expect to go to seed. Also, where Jason was invariably plain speaking James frequently tended to more elaborate prose, perhaps to affect a semblance of personal mystery, an esoteric éclat or occult ambiance.

And why not? Since by his own admittance James was “psychically endowed”, for which reason he’d become one of our guinea pigs of course. As for Jason: at first he had seemed bewildered by the whole thing. But he had been unemployed, and we had made him an irresistible offer.

Their induction had come following various checks and controls. First: they were just two out of two and a half thousand applicants who answered our ad in national broadsheets. Second: after discarding the sad, mistaken, lying, wannabe, and lunatic two thousand four hundred, the finalists had undergone an exhaustive series of parapsychological tests, which further narrowed the field. Both James and Jason had passed with flying colours, once again to the latter’s apparent astonishment. Third: during Zener Card testing at a government establishment, they had been brought into close proximity with an “alien artefact”; this had been caused to occur while they slept in a dormitory unaware of what was happening and under close, covert observation. Both of them had experienced troubling dreams, indeed nightmares.

(Additional to my description of the cell: the “alien artefact” mentioned in the preceeding paragraph was fixed centrally in a strengthened glass sphere upon a marble pedestal in the living area, where its influence if any would be unavoidable by the two men.)

Oh, and one other factor conducive to their recruitment: they were both readers of other-worldly romances, with a penchant for the macabre; and so they were acquainted with the speculative fiction facet of matters which the Foundation had been attempting to fathom for several decades. In short, their minds would not be closed to themes, theories, and suggestions which narrower, more orthodox intellects might find unacceptable and immediately refute: they were “familiar” with notions of parallel dimensions, UFOs, alien encounters, and et cetera.

Enough: I have set the scene as clearly as possible within certain limits. So now let James and Jason speak for themselves.

One last point. While the following conversations are accurate (as covertly recorded by myself) I’ve excised and replaced certain names and references as a further security measure. For as elsewhere stated correspondence such as this—intended only for the eyes of my former Foundation colleagues—may not be as safe as their archive records.

NOTE: for easy recognition, all such altered sections will be parenthesized…

Jason, yawning: “What time do you have?”

James, showing great disinterest: “Does it really matter? After all, we’re not going anywhere.”

Jason: “I like to be regular in my habits and I’m feeling a bit hungry, so I suspect it’s time to eat.”

James: “You could regulate your habits by wearing a watch—but since I know you’ll only ask again, and since I’m already bored by this meaningless conversation…it’s six-forty. And before you ask, that’s p.m.”

Jason, grinning: “Thank you. Most gracious of you. And it seems I was right: time to eat.”

James: “I’m not hungry.”

Jason: “Then don’t eat. Me, I’m frying up mushrooms with a few slices of liver and bacon.”

James, suddenly restless: “Then perhaps I will eat, after all.”

Jason, going to the fridge: “I’ll be sure to set out equal, fresh portions for you…unless you want me to cook them for you?”

James, sighing: “Would that be such an inconvenience?”

Jason: “No more than glancing at your watch occasionally, no.”

James, changing the subject, staring fixedly at the artefact in its glass sphere, where its pedestal rose through the centre of the circular table at which he was seated: “Did you dream last night?”

Jason, frowning, and squirting a mist of olive oil into a frying pan: “Three nights, three dreams, yes.”

James: “The same dream?”

Jason, perhaps slightly troubled: “The very same: But very vague… More a set of sensations than a dream proper. Nothing clearly visual, nothing spoken out loud. Mental whispers, or—I don’t know—instinctive knowledge? Well, if you know what I mean.”

James: “Interesting. And of course I know what you mean! Do you think you’re more sensitive to this stuff than I am? I have been living with the knowledge of the truth of all this for…for longer than I care to think. Oh, yes. And I was dreaming my dreams long before they sat me in front of this thing.” He indicated the artefact, enlarged and distorted by the glass of its globe.

Jason, with perhaps a hint of amusement or gentle sarcasm in his voice: “You have always known you were, er, psychic?”

James: “My parapsychological or ESP skills are different from yours—each to his own mentality—but yes, I have always known. I feel things from afar, and in my dreams they are made manifest. Even though I am not given to understand everything, still I see what is now…unlike you who sees what will be.”

Jason, nodding, turning slivers of liver and bacon slices in his pan: “Or so I’ve lately discovered—but I didn’t know, not for sure. Or maybe I did, but tried to avoid it—because it worried me.”

James, with a snort: “Being able to see the future worried you? You were too dim to find a use for a skill like that? You scored 78 per cent on the Zener test, yet you were too poor to afford a wristwatch? And if you were ‘trying to avoid it’, why on earth did you answer the ad in the first place?”

Jason: “Because I was too poor to afford a wristwatch—or anything else for that matter! We weren’t all born with silver spoons in our mouths, you know! Anyway, why do I annoy you? Is there that about me which reminds you of something intolerably nasty that you stepped in at one time or another? Or could it be some kind of jealousy, because my skills are apparent while yours are—let’s face it—more or less, er, obscure?”

James, straightening up, narrowing his eyes more yet: “My skills may be obscure, as you put it, but our sponsors saw fit to choose me no less than you. In fact, I have always been…chosen. From the very first moment I read of (Cxxxxxx) and the others of the pantheon I knew that they were real; and that one day—when my stars were in the ascendant—I would communicate with them.”

Jason, not quite sneering, but with a cynical twist to his mouth: “Why can’t you say what you mean?”

James, sharply: “I beg your pardon?”

Jason: “Don’t you mean, ‘when the stars are right’?”

James, with a cold sidelong glance at Jason: “Interpret my words as you will—and (Axxxxxxx’s) if you dare! But he wasn’t such a madman, that old Arab. Or if he was, it was what he half knew but could not fathom that made him that way.” And, after a brief pause: “Doesn’t it concern you that you could be a millionaire instead of a pauper?”

Jason, returning to the table with two plates of sizzling food: “Are you talking about gambling again? How I could have beaten the bookies, cleaned up at roulette, broken the bank at Monte Carlo? But you know what they say about practice, how it makes perfect?… Maybe I didn’t want to perfect what I might have suspected I could do. Perhaps I didn’t want to see things—certain things—any clearer. It could even be that some of the futures I had seen were too clear by half.”

The pair, lapsing into silence while they eat. But after a while James asking: “What is it you saw that frightened you so? Myself, I have no fear with regard to the Mythos. I might possibly fear my own imaginings, which are not real, but I cannot fear what is real—and imminent! What is real exists, and what exists will find ways to impinge and may not be avoided. Wherefore what use to fear it?”

Jason, around his last mouthful of food: “But exactly! Que sera, sera! Ah, but would you really want to know the day, hour, and minute of your own death? And can’t you see how knowing it you would try to avoid it?—to no avail. Que sera, sera!”

James, his eyes fully open, staring now: “You saw your own death?”

Jason, thoughtfully: “Not my death, no—but my brother’s, and my mother’s. Enough to put me off.”

James: “Interesting. Can you tell me about it?”

Jason: “Not now. Some other time, maybe. But now I’m tired. A glass of white wine might help me sleep…hopefully not to dream.”

James: “But that is why we are here! Surely you’ve divined that much?”

Jason: “Of course. But still I get paid, whether I dream or not. And I prefer not.”

To which there is no answer…

• • •

Jason tosses, turns, and sweats in his sleep. He cries out, but feebly, on several occasions. The wine has not helped.

James is similarly affected. But he isn’t so much nightmaring as experiencing; which is to say that while Jason is trying to escape from whatever pursues or threatens, James accepts it. His claim that he does not fear the Mythos (the effects wrought by the artefact) appear to be borne out. Our psychiatric specialist is at least of that opinion: that unlike Jason, James has been having—or perhaps receiving?—dreams such as this for a long time, even as long as he claims, and has become inured.

But he is voluble.

He speaks of a (Shining Txxxxxxxxxxxx): an odd geometrical figure, and of a “prehistoric city, Mnar”—not the ruins in the Deer Park at Benares. He spouts of “the outer spheres” and “star-spawn”, and “the lenses of light”, before his subconscious ramblings become unintelligible gibberings—a mush and a mumble, defying reproduction by normal human vocal chords, and proving equally difficult to represent, even as writing. Then, after a period of lying perfectly still in an attitude of rapt attention, as if he were listening to something or someone, he states quite clearly, “I shall be your vessel, your gate, your embodiment. And through you I shall visit the farthest places: that roiling lake where the puffed (Sxxxxxxxx) spawn, the spiralling Towers of (Txxxxxxx), the dark light-years twirling like leaves blown in a storm. But…this ‘great

harvest’ of which you speak. Pray tell me, what shall we harvest?”

And then a gasp, a cry choked off, his body snapping into a weird rigidity and only very slowly relaxing, and his breathing steadying as his face slackens and he falls more deeply asleep, as if soothed by some unseen

hypnotist’s persuasions…

• • •

The night passes. The pair sleep late, and when they rise they avoid each other…James very deliberately, Jason because he can’t be bothered with the surliness of the other’s moods.

Jason cooks breakfast for himself; James doesn’t eat until well into the afternoon when he makes a small cheese sandwich, then sits eating it, scowling at the artefact. And finally:

James: “I believe I heard you call out in the night?”

Jason: “Unlike the outer shell of this place, the partitions between our rooms are thin as cardboard! You could hear a mouse fart on the other side. As for my outcry: well, my dream was a particularly bad one.”

James: “Which doubtless accounts for your mood.”

Jason: “Oh?”

James: “Your silence.”

Jason: “Listen who’s talking! We were here for forty-eight hours before you so much as grunted!”

James: “As I recall, you complained to me about the lack of a TV. You asked why not. I did not grunt. I pointed out that as well as the absence of a TV there was no radio and indeed nothing that might interfere with our seclusion, concentration, the immanence of ulterior forces. And incidentally, I don’t dislike you. You accused me of disliking you, but that is not so. It is simply that I am remote from you…my thoughts are rarely mundane. And when I am disturbed—when my thoughts are interrupted—then naturally it becomes an inconvenience, an annoyance. So you see it isn’t the case that I dislike you, rather that I despise idle prattle. Not dislike but disinclination, disinterest.”

Jason, sighing, shaking his head: “You don’t seem to realise just how insulting such remarks are. Now I’m not normally a surly fellow, but I can certainly feel myself sliding that way. Today you were the one who commenced ‘prattling’, and I suspect you’re not yet done!”

James: “Because while you fail to excite my interest, your dreams are quite another matter. On several occasions I am sure I heard you cry out. This was before I myself fell asleep. Were you dreaming of your brother? Or perhaps your mother? I believe I heard you call a name. But I was only half awake and so can’t be sure.”

Jason: “Is this important to you? I can’t see why. And what with your lack of interest in me—the fact that my presence is ‘an inconvenience’ and even ‘an annoyance’—I don’t see why I should trouble myself to talk to you at all, not a single word! And certainly not about my poor dead mother or brother.”

James: “But the fact is you were prescient in the matter of their deaths. Could it be that your dreams represent guilt? You foresaw their deaths and could do nothing about it…que sera, sera. And now they come back to haunt you. As to why this is of interest to me: I see the NOW while failing to understand where it is going, while you see what is to be without knowing how to avoid it. I seek to probe deeper, while you turn away from your talent.”

Jason, shrugging: “So? Is there a lesson to be learned from these supposed facts? What is your conclusion?”

James, a trifle reluctantly: “That…perhaps we ought to work together? After all, that presumably is why they saw fit to lodge us as a pair.”

Jason: “Possibly, but it’s a shame they couldn’t have found me a female guinea pig partner. That way I wouldn’t be spending quite so much time dreaming.”

James, raising an eyebrow: “Sex? I have no time for it and never will have. It is an animal activity. Out beyond the stars…their procreation is different. More a melding, a substitution, a flowing together, and an explosive multiplication.”

Jason, singing: “…It’s the name of the game, and each generation…”

James, apparently aghast: “You would do well not to mock!”

Jason: “Oh, really? I shouldn’t mock? When what you’ve just said sounded like you were describing a clan of alien amoebas?”

James, apparently in disgust: “Pshaw!”

• • •

Later:

Jason, sitting at the table staring at the artefact, then bursting abruptly into speech: “My brother—and especially my mother—bring me warnings. Yes, I’m oneiromantic, but my precognition isn’t so much advanced knowledge of what to do or to avoid doing but, as you might have it, knowledge of the direction in which my current position or standing is leading me. In other words, their warnings are useless by reason of the fact that the outcome cannot be avoided. They can warn of my going to hell, but they can’t offer me a fire-proof parachute!”

James: “Que…”

Jason, cutting the other off: “Yes, yes! Of course! What will be will be.”

James, nodding sagely: “So then, the dead go on; at least their thoughts: they are not dead who can forever lie. Having undergone their change—knowing more of Being by experiencing Not Being—they attempt to communicate their knowledge, their warnings, to the living loved ones they left behind. In which case I suspect—no, I affirm—that we have this in common with the gods of outer spheres. They too go on forever. Except they don’t die but are truly immortal! In my dreams I’ve seen them; their myriad shapes seeping down from the stars!”

Jason: “I only know of me and mine, which are real things. As for alien beings ‘seeping’ down from the stars: the nearest star—other than Sol—is four and a half light-years away. That is one hell of a seep! I am convinced it’s all a fiction. Think about it. A certain star is a billion light years away. Even at the speed of light your alien ‘gods’ will take a billion years to get here. And if they are only ‘seeping’…?”

James, with a shrug: “As for it being a fiction, our hosts don’t seem to think so, else why are we here? And as for ‘seeping’: a poetic turn of phrase. The Old Gentleman might just as well have used ‘filtering’, which is another slow process.”

Jason: “Yes, he used ‘seeping’; but he meant it like poison in a wound, like pus from an open sore. And remember: the gods of his pantheon were evil. Is that what you crave, the destruction of everything we consider good?”

James, sneeringly: “Hah! Good, bad, love, hate—emotions in general—They are beyond, above all that! And anyway, you miss what should be obvious: that they are timeless.”

Jason, grunting, and the corners of his mouth turning down: “Timeless—sleeping but not dead—oh yeah, sure.”

James, dreamily, ignoring Jason’s obvious sarcasm: “Immortal they journey, wandering between the stars, pausing now and then, but only long enough to…to harvest their worlds.”

Jason: “Immortal? They will be here until the end? Doesn’t that imply that they were here at the beginning? How, immortal? Though I’ll grant you they would need to be to ‘seep’ down from the stars!”

James: “Exactly! And that is the point you missed. For when you speak of the speed of light you should not forget that time stands still at such a speed! It is the secret of their immortality: that during their journey they do not age!”

Jason does not answer immediately; when he does, it is only to frown and ask: “Do you think that perhaps we’re confused? Do you feel confused? Our conversations, our arguments, seem to go in circles. And personally my mind never felt so cluttered! But…maybe I’ve asked you that before? Or did you ask me?”

James, ignoring the other’s question and indicating with a nod of his head and a pointed finger the artefact in its glass globe: “There it is: a ‘lens of light’, or so I believe. But do you know where they found it, these people who are using us in an attempt to prove its properties?”

Jason, blinking rapidly, as if to clear his head of confusing thoughts: “No, do you?”

James: “Absolutely! Before I volunteered my person for this experiment, I had them volunteer their sources, their whys and wherefors. Are you interested?”

Jason: “I shall try to be.”

James: “It was five years ago, in Iraq, after the war that deposed Saddam the Dictator.”

Jason: “Ah, yes! Saddam Hussein and his alleged, er, weapons of mass destruction? I remember.”

James: “The American forces stopped a truck on its way to Syria. They found a large amount of gold, a million dollars in hundred dollar bills, and certain items of immense antiquity—including an old book or scroll written in an ancient, indecipherable script. The book contained a map of the desert—with a certain area marked out in the shape of a five-pointed star. It transpired that the book’s ancient text was the language of a sunken city or continent lost in Pacific deeps.”

Jason: “By any chance, (R’xxxx)? Where (Cxxxxxx) lies dreaming?”

James, nodding: “The same—or so I suspect—though for some reason no one has deigned to confirm my suspicion in that regard. But, learning of the book’s existence, a certain esoteric organisation took steps to obtain it. Among our hosts are members of that organisation….Do you want to know more?”

Jason: “All very interesting. And by all means carry on.”

James: “As you wish. The five-pointed star symbol is well known; indeed its powers, if any, have long been prone to argument among certain savants—”

Jason: “Savants?”

James: “Authorities, such as you and I.”

Jason: “But I don’t consider myself an ‘authority,’ merely a reader of weird and macabre fiction.”

James, scornfully: “Not to mention someone who catches the occasional glimpse of the future! But let me proceed:

“The map indicated or superimposed this pentagram on a portion of the Iraqi desert. And the most important thing is this, that the desert has not changed in a million years, not to any significant degree. Anyway, the esoteric organisation of which I speak sent their agents to investigate, ostensibly to search out elusive weapons of mass destruction said to be hidden somewhere in those great wastelands. But in fact they had predetermined to locate the points of the star symbol—and from these to determine its geometric centre.

“This was not nearly as difficult as it might at first have seemed. The locals offered up information; they said that there were five ‘holy men’ who occupied the selfsame locations out in the desert. And each of the five—drug-addicted Dervishes, as it transpired, and completely bereft of reason as perceived in our Western society—was discovered to be in possession of a star-stone! Alas, they were also in possession of Russian small arms, which they did not hesitate to turn on the investigators. Enter the military, who dealt with these five ‘terrorists’ with despatch…or so I assume since the star-stones were confiscated or ‘commandeered.’

“Now we move to the geometric centre: a dried-up well, into which our investigators descend, and down below discover a vast natural cavern, once a waterway—but how many millennia ago?—whose walls are carved with myriad foreign or alien sigils. And upon a marble pedestal at the approximate centre—”

Jason, pointing at the artefact in its glass bubble: “That thing.”

James: “Indeed!”

Jason: “I see. And the star-stones kept it secure, turning aside its malign influence. Correct?”

James, shaking his head: “This is not how I perceive it…though I can see how such confusion in the Mythos arose originally. No, I believe that upon a time the cavern housed a Being. As for ‘malign’: I fail to see anything malign in this. What I do see is that there are travellers out there among the stars; not gods, not evil aliens, in no way a threat, but scientists! Different, certainly—our superiors in as many fields as you care to number, and in others that you can’t even imagine, you may be sure—but ‘kept secure’, yes, I can agree with that.”

Jason: “Secure against what?”

James: “Secure against being disturbed! It is a marker, and perhaps even a Gateway, for those who wander the star spaces.”

Jason, whose sneer no longer carries conviction: “Sure, and who perform their wandering, seeping, or filtering at the speed of light, eh? As for these five Arab madmen, these zealots: why were they so protective of the star-stones, or rather, this so-called ‘lens of light’? Why would they lay down their lives for it? Were they protecting it as some kind of holy relic, or were they in fact protecting us, humankind, from it?”

James: “Bah! Your thoughts are mired in fear! You’re a pronounced

xenophobe!”

Jason: “Possibly, and on a cosmic scale at that! But in the light of my precognizance, ask yourself this: what do you suppose I am most afraid of?”

James: “Of the (Gxxxx Oxx Oxxx), the Outer Ones, of course. Of the thought of Them in the spaces between the spaces we know—in the stellar voids—riding the gravitic waves of exploding stars! Of their superiority!”

Jason: “Wrong! But you’ve mentioned two things that do concern me. One: you spoke of Them harvesting their worlds—”

James, starting, blinking, obviously taken aback: “Eh? Did I? A harvest? Yes, indeed, I seem to recall saying something of the sort. I may even have dreamed something of it. But now…I can’t seem to remember what it was about.”

Jason: “There are beads of sweat on your brow. Are you now feeling

confused?”

James, wiping his forehead: “Quite right. It’s suddenly hot in here. Whoever controls the temperature is not doing his job. But confused? I’m…not sure.” Then, after a moment’s thought: “And two?”

Jason: “Two?”

James: “The second thing I said that concerns you. What was it?”

Jason: “Ah yes! You called the lens a ‘Gateway’. And if so, well, wouldn’t that be something to fear?”

James, throwing his arms wide: “For thought! A Gateway that allows my thoughts to reach out to Them…and theirs to reach me—to reach us, if you would only help me, assist me in opening up our minds to them!”

Jason, thoughtfully: “I think we’ve both been somewhat confused ever since being put in this place. I certainly have not been thinking clearly, and you’ve blown hot and cold—contradicted yourself—on several occasions. But if what you say is right: that the lens is a Gateway for mental communication…well, perhaps that would explain it.”

James, snapping his fingers: “And there you have it! Their thoughts are incompatible with ours, or at best only marginally readable. Can we explain ourselves to sea snakes or gibbons? No of course not! Likewise their purpose—their messages—come unclear, distorted, and misunderstood by us.”

Jason: “You admit it, then? That we are being influenced by that thing in the globe?”

James: “Is there any need to admit what was obvious to me from the start? It is why we are here; to enable our observers to discover to what degree we are influenced. For after all, we are the guinea pigs—the ones with enhanced psychic senses—whereas they are merely…observers.”

NOTE: In this James was only partly right. I was not lacking in certain psychic sensitivities myself; not as intense as James’s or Jason’s, true, but certainly I had experienced and was still experiencing something of the lens’s peculiar influence, a sort of mental confusion—as had the Dervishes in the Iraqi desert, to the extent that prolonged exposure was probably responsible for their madness. It was not our intention, however, to allow so grave a deterioration in our subjects; the experiment could be brought to a close at any time. No, our main interest lay in whatever other properties the lens might or might not possess.

• • •

James, continuing: “So then, shall we work together rather than continue to constantly needle each other?”

Jason: “If I have needled it was only or mainly in riposte. And I think I’ll sleep on the idea of working together. Perhaps someone will advise me in that regard.”

James: “Your…relatives?”

Jason: “Perhaps. My mother was clairvoyant, and my brother…was my twin. We were all three in a traffic accident. I saw it coming but could do nothing about it. In the moment of their deaths…maybe something transferred to me. It strikes me as possible that they had seen it coming, too. As to why that may be relevant to our current situation: I have been experiencing similar feelings of imminence.”

James: “You are worried that you’re going to die?”

Jason: “I feel…a sense of transference, metamorphosis—as if I were about to take flight!”

James, nodding: “Light-headedness. I can feel it, too—the pressure of my thoughts.”

Jason: “Ah yes, thoughts! Which reminds me of something you said earlier. On that same subject, tell me if you will how you intend to exchange thoughts with alien Beings who could be billions of light years away? That is, assuming the speed of light to be the ultimate reach of material things.”

James: “But you have supplied the answer to your own question! Thought is not material. It may take time and myriad small electrical impulses to cogitate, but once a thought is set free it exists everywhere. The lens amplifies thoughts, directs them and makes them accessible. But a thought in itself, in its immanence, is as far ranging as the entire universe!”

Jason: “Accessible, but not understandable?”

James, nodding: “Hence the confusion, our confusion. We are less than successful at comprehending the incomprehensible, the mental emanations of minds that think in a great many more dimensions than our pitiful three.”

Jason, tiredly now: “Well anyway, let’s sleep on it…”

• • •

But of course the observers must sleep too. We were taking the watch in shifts; that night it was the turn of our psychiatric specialist and myself. The technician slept as best possible on a couch in a room adjacent. It was not the best of times for my mental processes; I was feeling the strain; indeed, the thought had crossed my mind that despite the strength and thickness of the cell’s walls I, too, was in close proximity to the lens.

The lens:

Three inches across, a scalloped, faceted disc of what appeared to be smoky quartz. Its constituent elements had not been analysed for fear of damaging its as yet unknown properties. It seemed inactive; had never shown any kind of activity; might as well have been some not especially elegant paperweight.

I asked my companion of the night watch for her thoughts on the subject.

“The lens?” She brought the object in its glass bubble into focus on one of the screens. “I find it…disturbing.”

“Its looks, shape, opacity?”

“Its presence.”

She meant its proximity, of course. “Do you feel in any way…confused?”

She smiled. “Tiredness, that’s all. Leading to a perfectly natural lack of concentration.” Which confirmed what I had suspected…

• • •

James, his eyes hollow, red-rimmed: “Well, we’ve slept on it—myself, badly. And frankly, I have had enough of this so-called experiment. I suggest we put our minds to it, see or experience what we see or experience, and however it goes we call it a day and demand to be out of here. As far as I am concerned they can keep their money. I know what I know, and that must suffice.”

Jason, cooking breakfast, his voice far-distant: “I dreamed of dinosaurs; herds of them, thousands of them, stampeding.”

James, with a start, his sore eyes blinking rapidly: “Why, so did I!” And then, recovering himself and rather more calmly, “What do you suppose it means?”

Jason, having apparently failed to hear, or having ignored James’ question: “I also dreamed of my mother and brother. They didn’t say anything and looked sad, but in any case I knew what they were thinking: that I wouldn’t be joining them.”

James: “That you are not going to die? A good omen, eh?”

Jason, shaking his head: “No, just that I won’t be joining them. I also heard a song or a chant…no, it was more properly a hymn or song of—I don’t know—thanksgiving? Possibly.” And giving himself a shake. “Breakfast is up. We might as well enjoy it.” Then, as they commence eating: “We always assumed it was a meteorite or comet that took out the dinosaurs, right?”

James: “So?”

Jason: “What if it was Them?”

James, nodding: “I know what you mean, but it just doesn’t fit the picture. You’re talking about prehistory. Who was there here to call them down from the stars? Man’s earliest ancestors hadn’t as yet crawled up out of the oceans, let alone come down from the trees!”‘

Jason, bringing the food—eggs and bacon—seating himself close to James and handing him a plate; then absentmindedly, or even fatalistically picking at his own food: “What if They were already here? Or maybe they just happened to be passing by, and saw how rich it was—the planet, I mean. Personally, I believe that one of them was here, alone in a crazily angled city maybe something like (R’xxxx). And he/she/it called through a lens to its friends in the stars. And the closest of them came—”

James: “—To the harvest? Is that what you are saying? But even if I thought you could be right, still it might have taken them millions of years to get here.”

Jason: “But the dinosaurs were here for millions of years—for a whole lot longer than we’ve been here, anyway.”

James: “And that cavern out in the Iraqi desert? You think it’s all that remains of that prehistoric city? Forget it! That cave is recent by comparison. A million, or perhaps two million years old, but no more than that.”

Jason: “I agree. No, I think who or whatever was there in the Iraqi cavern got called away long ago, perhaps to a harvesting somewhere out in the stars. But he had seen the beginnings of Homo sapiens, and he left the lens for us to find. Maybe old (Axxxx) was something of a dreamer—maybe he was gifted, that old Arab—like us, but he got it wrong. Maybe the stars don’t ‘come right’ until some intelligence finds them and takes them away! Because they aren’t stars in the sky after all but starstones buried deep in the earth! Too many maybes, I agree, but maybe, just maybe…”

James, scathingly: “And maybe, just maybe, you want to give in, quit right now—right?”

Jason: “Quit? On the contrary. I think we should go ahead, speak to them through the lens. Why? Because we can’t avoid the unavoidable. And I know you’ll do it anyway, because you’re ignorant, arrogant and pig-headed. And what the hell…Que sera, sera!” He shrugs, again fatalistically.

James, tight-lipped: “Putting insults such as that aside—if only because contact will probably be easier with your help—when do you propose we do it? Tonight?”

Jason, shrugging: “Tonight, tomorrow night, next Friday…what difference does it make down here? Why not right now?”

James, turning to stare at the lens in its glass globe, the lens that Jason has been staring at from the moment he sat down at the table: “Right now? Are you sure?”

Jason, putting his plate aside: “It’s all…all very confusing, isn’t it?”

James: “Do you feel you’re being lured?”

Jason: “Lured? Let me think about that.” And a brief moment later: “Yes, I believe I can feel that thing tugging at me. But mainly I just feel as I think you feel—that come what may we have to know. Or we have to know come what will.”

James, also pushing his plate of untouched food aside, and resting his chin in his cupped hands: “Very well then, let’s do it…”

• • •

NOTE: Following our night shift—myself and our good lady psychiatrist—we could by now have been asleep; but something had kept us at our stations, where we had been joined by our Military companions and my Foundation colleague. Our technician was drowsing in a room close by, but such were my feelings of—of what? Uncertainty, confusion, imminence—of interference with my thinking, that I had known I would be unable to sleep. Which was probably also true of my night’s companion.

I have mentioned my own somewhat shallow extrasensory perceptions; but now through the medium of this ESP I “perceived” a current that was almost electric, a faint tingle in my scalp. And I was aware that on my viewscreen the forms of the two men in the cell had taken on a kind of rigidity. Their eyes—and their sensitive minds, obviously—were now rapt upon the lens in its bowl atop the pedestal.

And that was when I fought back against my own feelings of almost hypnotic lethargy to send one of our Military number to wake the technician…

• • •

Jason, his eyes wide open, staring; his mouth agape; his voice little more than a whisper: “I can hear them singing. The same song or hymn I heard in my dream. It’s dark, yet somehow joyful…a strange dark joy.”

James, excitedly, but at the same time oddly dull or vacant of volume: “Then rejoice in the contact! Out there in the stars, they have heard us!”

Jason: “In the stars, or between the spaces we know? Is the lens a telepathic transmitter, or is it in fact a true Gateway? What if They…what if they’re extra-dimensional?”

James, a bubble of foam forming at the corner of his mouth: “How far away is an extra-dimension? ‘Beyond’ the universe?”

Jason, twitching, his knuckles turning white on the table’s rim: “But what…what if…what if it’s parallel?”

James, beginning to shudder violently: “I hear the singing, too! And although it’s alien, I believe there are parts that I recognise or at least understand.”

Jason, his body jerking, threatening to topple his chair: “Their thoughts are merging with ours; either that or they are translating them for us, making them recognisable. And the lens…it is a Gateway. And they’re using it! They’re coming!”

James, dead white, foaming at the mouth, his eyes bulging, entire body vibrating: “I think…I think we should stop now. I think we should…think we have to withdraw. I sense chaos. And the lens: it’s glowing, blazing, opening! Ah! Ahhh! Ahhhh!”

• • •

NOTE: It is difficult to describe what we saw happening on our screens from this point on. But I shall try.

The lens in its globe was shimmering, emitting lances and arcs of bright white light that came through the glass to dart around the cell like living things, like snakes of fire. These dozen or so streamers or coruscations were certainly sentient; they appeared to be searching, or perhaps surveying, the immediate vicinity, but in something less than five or six seconds they converged into two main beams that struck unerringly home at the heads of our subjects. It happened that fast, literally with lightning speed, and “confused” as we four observers were (our technician and the Military man I had sent to awaken him were only now returning) there was nothing we could do to stop it. And on our screens—

—The pair appeared to be melting! Their faces were showing extraordinary agony; they glowed until their eyes and gaping mouths were black sockets in bright, luminous silhouettes; their shaking seemed to be tearing them apart, so that glowing bits were drifting from them like fiery snowflakes…and yet they were singing!

Over and above a high-pitched, alien keening—a blast of noise I can only describe as a battle of unknown elements, the sound of waves breaking on some cosmic shore—came the words of that song driven into their shattered minds and out through their mouths, that “hymn” translated from its original form by who or whatever they had contacted. And in my own mind I heard or sensed something of that original form—that hideous cacophony that human vocal chords could never hope to duplicate—and I knew its relevance!

“Stop it!” I cried then, to anyone who was listening—if anyone was listening. “Shut the thing down!”

My companions were reeling—shocked, numbed, made useless, by what they, too, were receiving from the lens, that now fully open portal. But as for the physical intruders, those shafts of alien light or sentient fire: they were only the vanguard. For what was coming through now was more properly the stuff of our most terrifying nightmares.

They moved too quickly, too strangely, to be viewed in any kind of clear detail. But in colour they were a pulsing yellow-veined or marbled purple and black, and in shape reminiscent of spiders, scorpions, octopi or dragons…all these things from moment to moment, and others utterly indescribable. Yet I knew that even these were only a squad of advance troops.

James and Jason: they were beginning to slump into themselves, like slowly collapsing columns or candles of intense white light; but even so, quite beyond pain as we understand it, they continued to sing their joyful song.

“Shut the damn thing down!” I yelled again, this time right in the ear of our technician, who was looking at his instrument panel as if he had never seen it in his life before! His confusion was apparent from his gaping mouth and bulging, stupefied eyes. While in the cell a nightmarish metamorphosis was taking place.

What was it James had said that time, of alien procreation? Something about, “A melding, a substitution, a flowing together and explosive multiplication”? Well, what was happening in the cell may not have been procreation—unless it was by assimilation and duplication—but it was certainly everything else he had spoken of. The scuttling insect-octopus-dragons were invading the radiance of our disintegrating guinea-pig subjects only to emerge in a stream of yet more fantastic shapes and figures; and as James and Jason melted to nothingness, so the star-spawn multiplied in number, bursting forth from those—consumed?—human remnants to come nosing, thrusting at the tiny cameras.

They bloated large on our screens; they knew we were looking at them, scrabbled to send hairy, spiked and multi-jointed legs right through the audio and visual systems—through the screens themselves—into our control room! While in the cell the globe containing the lens shivered to shards and something huge, black, bloated and baneful began to squeeze through from some Other Place, some other space, into ours.

One of our military men was leaning forward, his hands supporting him on the ledge in front of his screen, hypnotised by what he could see but scarcely believe was taking place in the cell. A vibrating black spider-leg eighteen inches long stabbed through the screen into his mouth and out the back of his skull—and he jerked like a puppet as he hung there suspended on it.

I cried out—a gurgled shriek, something quite inarticulate—and aimed a blow at the back of our technician, catching him between the shoulder blades. Driven forward, he flailed his arms; his hand came down on one of the controls…sheer luck!

Five pipes or shafts, pneumatic conduits descending at different angles to locations buried in the steel walls, hummed and pulsed. And from up above five star-stones hurtled under pressure down these channels to form the points of a pentagram surrounding the cell. With which it was over.

The alien insect things shrivelled to nothing; the cell exploded with such force that the walls were actually scarred and even buckled in several places; the gonging reverberations were such that my eardrums burst and I lost consciousness. But I was fortunate, for the others with me lost a lot more

than that…

• • •

From then until now I have kept mainly silent, and from time to time I’ve mimicked the conditions of my four surviving colleagues, which has meant spending time in various institutions. But I did not want anyone questioning me too deeply; I did not want to become any kind of guinea pig in my own right; I had no more interest in any facet of the Mythos Investigation.

You see, I know why I was the sole survivor—the only one to live through it with his person and sanity intact—for I, too, had heard their singing; They saw me as a possible future vessel, or as a radio signal, or a lighthouse to guide them in to harbour. Which is why it is only now, as my cancer kills me and I have mere days to live, that I’m able to report the occurrences of that time as they happened.

As for the lens Gateway: it was vaporised in the blast, of course. I can only hope no other device of that sort exists in our world. The star-stones were likewise destroyed; I hope and pray others have been discovered, or that you, my once colleagues in The Foundations are at least seeking them out.

And meanwhile:

I have come to believe in God and would even be a regular churchgoer…except I cannot bring myself to attend services in the harvest time. There is a certain hymn they’d be sure to sing, and I know I couldn’t abide it. Even now I find it difficult to think about it, and even harder to write the words of the song down. But since this is probably the best way to make you understand:

Waiting for the harvest, and the time of reaping,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

Sometimes I dream of great lizards—dinosaurs stampeding in terror through tree-fern forests—and then I wonder about all the other mass extinctions our planet has known. But—

—I long ago retired to Dublin, Ireland, where I discovered that while white wine doesn’t help a lot with my sleeplessness, Guinness does the trick every time.