1 THE BEST BOOK MUSIC

Without music, life would be a mistake

-Friedrich Nietzsche

This is the tale of which I had hoped to take with

me to the grave and had circumstance allowed I would

have done so if only to spare myself the horror of

recalling that nightmare time. But I have not been

spared my terror for if I don't now recant my tale

in full others will venture to that dark and bitter

place and they too will stare into the maw of

madness.

I have been an associate professor of psychology and

occult studies at Her Britannic Majesty's University

of Belfast for nearly five years not including time

spent in the lands of Turkey and Georgia in study of

near forgotten Eastern Cults. Along with this I have

spent a year of study at the prestigious Miskatonic

University in Arkham, Massachusetts immersed in the

ancient and terrible cults of the world long since

passed and recorded now only in that tome of fable,

the Necronomicon.

I make my credentials clear now so that when you

read my story you will know that these are not the

deluded ramblings of a madman but the facts as

recorded by someone versed in the subject matter and

hardened against its horrors as best the human mind

can be.

Most importantly I wish it recorded that I, Benjamin

Constantine have been entirely outspoken against

Britannic University sending any team out into that

dark and bitter part of Tyrone no matter how noble

the quest to find our lost colleague.

My tale begins at my desk under the criss-crossed

windows of our glorious and gothic Britannic

University, back four months ago when I was

researching a paper on the evolution of the Old Gods

and in regular communication with a recluse musician

from Tyrone, himself obsessed with the elder things.

Little was known to me about this contradiction of a

man that was AJ Valjean save that he disliked

meeting people yet was a passionate letter writer,his music was played on an acoustic guitar recorded

onto an old reel player before being copied to

computer and emailed to a local studio. His music

was tinny and often I questioned if the lyrics were

even the vocalisations of a human tongue, but the

strange warbling found a small following in the

nearest large town of Dungannon and in the rural

communities around.

Apart from that I knew him only as being of medium

height and build, short dark hair and nothing else I

could gleam from the single available photograph

found on the internet.

His writing to me was eager, passionate and with a

great depth of curiosity. He asked of things from

only the fringes of my learning, of faraway cults

and mythical beasts of the old north. On occasion he

offered theories on those beasts of myth and how

they came embedded in the human psyche to which I

would counter in turn how some of our modern deity

myths sprang from older antediluvian times. Our

conversations would form the basis of my proposed

paper of which Valjean initially wanted no credit

despite his obvious knowledge and contribution but

through much cajoling on my part he eventually

accepted a footnote reference in the piece.

Over the course of a month his writing became more

erratic, literally as well as figuratively for

understand dear reader that our entire

correspondence was hand written; Language is art, my

dear Prof. Constantine and deserves to be expressed

as such, one must make the time to compose a word

with a quill like one composes any other note for

the ear. He told me that long ago during our

earliest engagements when I made to him what was an

almost insulting enquiry as to his email address,

and from henceforth in deference to his

sensibilities I too would forgo my word processor

and pen my letters to him by hand.

I must confess this was an attempt on my part to

curry further favour with the musician as I had

great desire to plumb the depths of his knowledge.

The change in his writing came gradually at first and accompanied a subtle shift in questioning on his

part, his perfect script became sloppy, almost

rushed in appearance. The questions he asked shifted

from the Great Elder Gods and the Ancient Beasts of

the far off cosmos to strange creatures of the

forest of which I was forced to confess no

knowledge. He asked about amphibian things with skin

that shifted hues like that of a chameleon, large

bulbous eyes that were black with burnished orange

irises, with wide toothless mouths and quills along

the back of the neck.

No such creature existed to my knowledge in any of

the mythos that I had studied, and I struggled to

make any connection even to my readings of that

accursed tome the Necronomicon. I inquired further

as to the nature of these beasts of his fantasy;

their height, the sounds they make, are they

nocturnal, what has been his inspiration for this

flight of the mind? I was curious not only for the

creatures but from a question of psychological study

for you can tell a lot about a person by their

monsters and this creation offered an insight into

the reclusive Valjean.

A true response was not forthcoming, his next

communication was near illegible in script and the

content of the letter was incomprehensible, the

ineffable penned in the unreadable.

It was at this point in the tale that I was joined

by Jonathan Davids, the man whose death I stand

accused but whom I can only say for certain I last

saw walking in the mist toward that broiling lake,

his eyes dead and seeping that fel substance that

had came at him from within the dark.

Professor Davids had lectured biochemistry at

Britannic from long before my time at the university

had come and it is important that you understand he

and I were friends and though I wish that he would

be found wandering aimless and confused in those

Tyrone backwoods I do not hold hope.

Professor Davids came to be involved during the time

that the change came upon Valjean, he suggested that

it was possible the musician was experimenting with hallucinogens in order to develop his odd music and

that a side effect of the drugs and his

conversations with myself were producing these vivid

illusions of beasts. Whilst I agreed this was

possible I had enough doubt as we had never

discussed beasts the like of which he described,

these things of his mind were the result of some

other invention.

With his final letter I became concerned that

Valjean had suffered a stroke or some other

psychotic break, it was out of concern for his

safety that I enlisted the help of my friend

Professor Davids, for who better to identify if

there were some toxin at play than a biochemist.

Furthermore Davids hailed from a small town in

eastern Tyrone, for the best part he could act as

guide for a part of this small country I was

entirely unfamiliar with.

He agreed on the condition that we would stop for

lunch in a small restaurant he knew in the town of

Dungannon before the drive into the deep country. He

argued this on the point that the letters were

always delivered by second class mail which took two

or more days and so a further hour would have no

impact on the condition of which we might find

Valjean. This may sound cold on his part but

understand the Professor Davids was firmly convinced

that the musician had been experimenting with

psychedelics and was most likely shut away on a

comedown from the chemicals, hiding from the light

and at worst dehydrated and hungry. He did not have

much in the way of sympathy for recreational drug

users but seeing my concern for the musician he was

willing to make the journey.

With that agreed we set out from Britannic in the

early afternoon, the sun was high in the sky but the

day was cold still from an overnight frost and there

lingered in the dark clouds a threat of rain.

Leaving Belfast are two major highways, one leading

around the northern side of the large Lough in the

centre of this small nation and eventually on to

both the cosmopolitan North Coast and eventually to the Maiden City on the far side of the country. The

second highway on the south side was really a road

to nowhere, rerouted into the sparsely inhabited

heart of the country because an insecure planning

department did not want to build a road to Dublin

back in the worse days of the history here.

It was this road on which we now travelled and it

was plain to see the density of population fall

dramatically after passing the city of Lisburn until

soon we were passing by green fields under a morose

sky. The journey was pleasant but uneventful and

after around thirty minutes we passed close to the

grey form of Lough Neagh as the motorway met its

southernmost point, the vast expanse stretching

across the northern horizon.

Professor Davids passed the time enquiring as to my

relationship with the reclusive Valjean, how on

earth a travelled scholar such as myself came to be

in touch with an agoraphobe local musician unwilling

even to journey to a studio to record his works. The

answer in itself was simple, AJ Valjean had sought

me out after having his interest piqued by one of my

early papers available on the Britannic's online

archive and then learning that I was at the time at

study in the Miskatonic in Arkham.

The accursed Necronomicon by the Mad Arab Abdul

Alhazred held particular interest to Valjean but of

all the works I had studied that book, that awful

and terrible book I was reluctant to speak of.

Contained therein were things not meant for this

world, dark and evil knowledge that the curators of

the Miskatonic Library had guarded for an age

because the only thing of which they feared more was

its destruction.

Valjean teased this information from me in snippets,

enough at a time that I would not be forced to speak

a full dark tale but of which I knew he was building

a bigger picture. It was in knowing this that I kept

my own council on the greatest of evils held within,

incantations with the ability to stretch across the

vastness of the cosmos and commune with things best

left undisturbed. That accursed book had the ability not only to

pervert and warp the fabric of space and time but to

bend the very mind itself, to twist the psyche to

breaking point and then go beyond. It was something

not meant for this world.

Exiting the motorway we quickly came to the large

town of Dungannon, a town that had grown rapidly

over the last decade as it had seen an influx of

foreign nationals disproportionate to the rest of

the country, who brought with them a diverse range

of strange theologies and mysticisms. Some of these

I knew as off-shoots of more mainstream theologies,

others I knew to be cults new or old that barely

clung to existence in the world as we know it, and

one or two I had heard of only in legend and existed

here as anywhere else in rumour.

Parapsychology bore little interest to my erstwhile

driver who guided us into the car park of some

quaint local shopping mall that had served as a

linen mill during the industrial revolution an age

ago.

A surprisingly modern bistro sat on a corner unit of

the mall, all glass front with trendy chrome chairs

and dark wood throughout and soon we were guided to

a table and upon ordering we returned to our

conversation about the unusual Valjean. That

conversation did not last a great deal of time

however as we had discussed at length during the

journey the details of my entire communication with

the musician and changing tact Professor Davids

enquired as to how I was adjusting to life in

Belfast after my time spent in Arkham. I confessed

that at times I was still caught out by the quirks

of European life compared to those of Americans, in

the United States life and people were generally

simpler in manner but at a faster pace than in

European nations. The best descriptor I could think

of was that in America politics was an occupation,

in Europe it was a lifestyle choice.

As the waitress arrived with our food I came to

realise that I no longer had the attention of

Professor Davids, indeed nothing seemed to be holding his gaze, as if his mind were absent from

his body.

"It's the music,

" explained the waitress in answer

to the question I had not asked and I then noticed

the crackling warble filtering in that I had come to

recognise as the work of my reclusive penpal,

"AJ

Valjean, some people seem to space out listening to

his stuff, it really speaks to them."

"That could prove dangerous,

" I said snapping my

fingers in the face of my colleague breaking his

trance,

"it's like some form of hypnosis."

"I've never seen the harm in it,

" the waitress left

our food and returned to the kitchen area, passing a

waiter who I saw to be moving in an almost robotic

fashion, and after that had caught my eye I came to

realise that maybe half a dozen of the thirty or so

in the room also behaved in the same trance state.

"That was quite an unusual experience,

" the

Professor spoke,

"I felt as though my mind were

slowly draining, it was peaceful, very calming. Your

friend certainly makes music for the soul."

"It certainly is strange,

" I commented, I found it

unsettling how powerful an effect such music could

have on a receptive psyche. Clearly there was some

subliminal waveform or message in the music that

whether intentional or not was at the very least a

hazard to drivers and pedestrians, at the worst I

would dread to think. I ate my meal in uncomfortable

silence, knowing what I know of the interests of AJ

Valjean I doubted that the trance state was

unintentional and could only hope that it did not

exist to serve some hitherto unknown malign purpose.

My eyes followed those who had been under the

effect, watching to see any peculiarities or

behavioural quirks beyond the generally accepted

norm of human activity, indeed I kept one eye on my

companion for having known academically for some

time now he could best serve as a control group.

During my silent observations however I saw nothing

to make me suspect that there was any lingering

effect from that bizarre music, from the end of the

track those in the trance state almost immediately began to move normally and with the beginning of the

next song by a different artist the spell was truly

broken.

I considered that this may be an unusual gimmick the

reclusive musician had stumbled upon and now sought

to incorporate the effect into his music in order to

achieve some greater fame or recognition, although

so far as I knew such subliminal messaging was

deemed illegal.

As we returned to the car I had considered

requesting that we continued the journey with myself

at the wheel however I could see no ill-effect upon

my companion that would in any way impair his

ability to handle the vehicle. With quiet reluctance

I buried my concerns with the determination that I

would not allow the car radio to be turned to any

local stations, that in itself would be enough to

ensure at least there was no recurrence of the

effect on Professor Davids.

Rather than return to the motorway we skirted the

edge of the town until we found a country road

leading to a village by the name of Aughnacloy, a

well maintained road lined with trees and winding

through hills that had our minds not been focused on

other things we would have found particularly

peaceful. The occasional home or farm served as a

reminder of civilisation in what only a few miles

from a large town felt as though it were the wilds

in somewhere like Washington State or Canada.

Passing alongside a glade through which there ran a

narrow stream the road curved right to follow the

edge of thee glade, however a narrower road led

straight on and up a rise into the trees and the

name on this road indicated that it was the route we

must take.

Darkness closed around the vehicle as we climbed

into the trees and soon we were truly in what some

might call God's Country, the houses becoming fewer

as the road got narrower and less well maintained.

The car rocked as we hit bumps and potholes, my

companion slowed for fear of damaging the vehicle

and allowed slip his lips more than a single expletive, understandable as we ventured into what I

could only describe as deep isolation.

After what had felt like half an hour of traversing

rises and falls we saw a left turn onto an even

smaller road upon which I knew lived the reclusive

musician AJ Valjean. How far along the road exactly

I did not know but for the sake of the vehicle I

hoped not too far as this was more like a remnant of

an ancient track than a true road. The surface was

cracked and dotted with water filled potholes and

down the centre grew a thick track of grass, leaves

and branches had fallen from the trees that had

grown up to create a dark tunnel through which we

could pass in what felt like a perpetual twilight.

Through breaks in the cover we could see hills

rising on either side as though we were driving

through a rift valley from a time forgot or a time

that nature itself was attempting to hide.

Ahead of us natural light appeared and soon the

canopy gave way to a lake around which the hills

were bent, the road continued ahead but on the left

the cottage of the reclusive Valjean sat overlooking

that calm dark water. The curtains were drawn in the

windows and a car sat parked in the gravel driveway

the stones of which crunched under the wheels of our

vehicle as we pulled to a stop in the wide lane

around the house.

"Beautiful setting,

" Professor Davids commented as

he stepped out of the vehicle,

"it's so calm."

Taking in the setting I agreed that it was quite

remarkably peaceful, a place in which a person could

truly become contemplative without the distractions

of city life. There was no noise of traffic, no

bustle of people and even the calls of birds seemed

distant. A forest rose steeply behind and around the

cottage and across the lake the scene was much the

same save a lack of road or any other sign of

habitation, the site was ideal in its isolation for

a reclusive personality.

The cottage itself was quite large with yellowish

walls and a slate roof, the paint was quite fresh

and the windows were clean. It seemed that for his other personality quirks the musician was quite

fastidious in the maintenance of his property.

Ringing the doorbell I rocked on my toes as my

companion stood below admiring the view, when there

was no response I rang once more and peered through

the side window that beyond was a Spartan hallway in

which there was a door to the right before the

hallway reached a t-junction. The door to the right

was open but the room appeared to be in darkness

much like the corridor beyond.

Rapping the door hard after still receiving no

response I decided next to try the handle. The door

opened easily and I was struck immediately by how

cold the air inside was and it carried with it the

bitter tang of ozone that you normally get a hint of

around electronics that have been running for a

while.

"Mr Valjean?"

I called into the darkened hallway and noticed a

faint echo in my voice,

"AJ, it's Ben Constantine,

from Britannic University."

I was greeted only with silence, looking back to my

companion we shared a look before I took a step

forward into that cold and dark hall.

Within a couple of feet I heard a crunch of broken

glass that caused me to inspect my shoe, it was a

very fine and light glass the kind of which you'd

expect to find in an incandescent bulb and looking

up I saw jagged glass hanging from the socket. The

bulb had exploded.

Looking into the darkened room to the right I felt

along the wall until my hands found the light

switch, and when I flicked it the room remained

entombed in darkness. Light streamed past me from a

small pocket torch carried by my companion and as it

spilled across the room I spotted a black leather

couch and a flat screen TV, and glittering on the

floor were tell-tale shards of glass.

"It seems there may have been some kind of

electrical surge, all the bulbs seem to have blown."

"He isn't in this room anyway,

" I said as I moved

back to the hallway, where the corridor branched right it led to a large but equally lifeless

kitchen,

"I guess we'll check each room."

Shining his torch down the length of the corridor

into the black there was revealed two doors to the

left and three to the right, and lying directly in

front of us in the middle of the floor was a snub

nosed revolver. At the back of my throat there was

the sudden steely taste of adrenaline and I felt a

whole new concern for my absent pen pal.

"Perhaps we should contact the police,

" my

colleague's voice had dropped to a level barely

above a whisper and checking my phone I saw that I

had no reception.

"No cell signal."

"Not surprising out here,

" Davids scanned the beam

over the doors then let the ring of light fall back

to the gun,

"perhaps we should leave and get them to

investigate?"

"We don't even know if a crime has been committed,

"

hunkering down I lifted the gun and was surprised by

its weight, slipping it into my jacket pocket I rose

again,

"we should check first if there has been any

act of foul play or any suspicion of such."

"Or if someone is still here."

Cautiously opening the first door to the left I

grimaced as it let what was probably a soft creak

but to my ears in this unearthly silence sounded

more like the grinding of metal, a sure sign of our

progress through the building to any person or

presence still within. Feeling the light switch on

the wall beside me I gave it a flick and saw that it

too was blown, my colleague swept the torch over my

shoulder revealing an office of sorts, or a

makeshift studio.

A computer sat on a large desk next to an old reel

to reel recorder that was plugged into a simple

microphone assembly, and a well-used acoustic guitar

sat in pride of place next to the desk. The wall

next to the door was dominated by a single large

bookcase filled with what appeared to be handwritten

notebooks all of a similar black binding on natural

cardboard design. The final wall contained what appeared to be a large map drawn by hand in

painstaking detail of the lake and the land to the

south including the house and a significant portion

of the hill behind.

As Professor Davids appraised the map I crossed to

the window, hearing the crunch of glass underfoot on

my passage I drew back the curtains allowing the

late afternoon light to spill into the cold room and

had to blink back from the momentary blindness. The

view beyond was somehow starker from this room,

colder or oppressive due to some unseen or

indefinable force, as if this room had become the

subject of observation rather than the vista beyond.

I do not know if that makes sense to you reader but

understand that such was the queerness of that

place, we should have left then, should have taken

that sinister atmosphere as an omen that we were not

welcome.

"The legend on this map appears to correspond to

specific notebooks on the case behind us,

" my

colleague observed as he thumbed through one of the

notebooks that had sat on a small desk next to the

map,

"he appears to have been compiling some form of

massive analysis of the various points of interest

around the lake and his cottage, the subject in hand

for instance regards an ancient and forgotten trail

leading from the lake."

Handing me the book I recognised immediately the

script I had come to know as being the prose of the

musician Valjean, his analysis seems to be taking

the form of a journal of discovery.

I stumbled upon the first marker quite by accident

one afternoon upon yet another investigation of that

strange effervescence on the lake. The marker lay as

I suspect it has done for centuries next to the

lough shore, and curiously not so much as a weed or

hardy grass would grow around it, indeed the very

soil itself was like lifeless dust as if this

ordinary stone were somehow poison or repugnant to

life itself. Having procured a Geiger meter from an

old friend in Belfast I can say with certainty that

whatever the cause the danger is not of radioactivity, and so using thick rubber gloves and

a lever I have rolled this stone revealing

engravings on the surface only partially faded by

time as they have been largely protected from the

elements.

The symbols are the like of which I have never seen

before, pictographs of some description but ancient

and beyond anything in our Celtic heritage, I must

make note to contact a person knowledgeable in such

things.

Within a couple of days the grass around where the

stone now lies has died, whatever lies within this

stone has lost no potency, and it has made me

consider a patch of my own garden upon which nothing

will grow.

…

Another of those accursed stones lies buried under

my lawn though it is broken in two, probably by the

contractors as they shifted the earth during the

laying of the foundations to my home.

The journal went on to detail finding another stone

not far into a dead patch in the forest behind us,

realising that they may have been waypoints he began

to search deeper in the woods and sure enough found

what he believed to be a trail of ancient origin.

The presence of the curious glyphs or pictographs

went some way toward explaining his drive to contact

me and his curiosity about the more speculative

aspects of my work.

As Professor Davids perused the bookshelf of

investigations I borrowed from him the torch and

felt for the hilt of the gun, not drawing it but

simply taking comfort in its weight as I had renewed

vigour to conclude the search of the house to find

my friend in chirography.

The first door on the right of the corridor was a

bathroom that bore no unusual features save a fine

layer of frost over the mirror and a dim halo of

light flaming around the Roman blind at the window.

Towels lay folded over the edge of the bath and a

bead of water clung to the edge of the faucet

threatening to drip at any moment, underfoot was the crunch of a blown bulb in this room too.

Before leaving I rolled up the blind to allow in

what little natural light penetrated from the wooded

hill behind the house, anything at all to banish the

void that dwelled in the darkness.

The next door, also on the right was a linen closet

packed with a few towels, some bed linen, and

nothing of interest to my search. The door beside it

however was locked by means of a deadbolt and I was

about to walk on when a glint on the edge of the

torchlight caught my eye, about two feet from the

door lay the key. The door had been locked from the

outside.

Investigating the key by torchlight I turned a wary

eye to the door and in my mind I was suppressing the

ancient subconscious fight or flight instinct, that

door could be locked for no good reason.

Gingerly rapping on the wood I was met by the solid

sound of my own knock that said if nothing else that

the door was sturdy, there came no response from

within and so cautiously I leaned my ear against the

sealed portal. There was nothing but silence and I

began to feel rather foolish about myself until from

beyond came the sound of gentle shuffling, not

moving toward the door but like the sound of someone

working in one place.

"AJ?"

My call went unheeded and the shuffling did not

cease, under the door I saw the occasional pale

flicker of movement in natural light and knew

without doubt that there was someone locked in that

room.

With a shaking hand I slipped the key into the lock

and felt for the gun in my pocket, reassured by the

feel of the cold steel of the trigger I gently

turned the key with my torch hand. My breath was lit

as a haze in the cold as the beam swung with the

turn of the key, inside the sound of shuffling

remained unchanged.

Taking a deep breath I carefully turned the handle

and then swung the door wide sweeping the torch and

gun about the room, and then a feeling of relief washed over me as I saw that the shuffling had come

from the curtains blowing in the wind. Stepping

across what was obviously a guest bedroom I pulled

the curtains wide in order to close the window and

saw that the glass had been smashed, at an educated

guess it had been broken from the inside by someone

or something looking out, there were few fragments

or shards on the inside.

I could see nothing suspect in the trees beyond, but

then the light was beginning to dim and the shadows

were growing long and dark. The path below the

window was gravel and I could see broken glass

trampled into it by a single heavy print that would

seem to indicate that the room's former occupant had

indeed headed for the seclusion of the woods.

Listening out the forest was still eerily quiet,

there was not so much the chirp of a bird or the

crack of a twig that would indicate the passing of

some animal small or otherwise.

Glancing once more about the room for my own sanity

I saw that other than the bed being unkempt there

was nothing remarkable, that is until I saw the

scratch marks on the doorframe at my height and

taller. Closing the door slightly I saw that it too

was criss-crossed with gouges like claw marks, some

going deep into the wood and I found myself uttering

a profanity of which there is no need to repeat.

Looking back to the window to make sure that nothing

was there I fancied that I saw some movement in the

shadows of the trees, a hint or a change in the

shape of the darkness, the movement of branches.

The wind in all probability but it was enough to

spark concern in me and so with all haste I returned

to the corridor and locked that door, my heart at

this time racing in my chest. I leaned back on the

wall behind me and took several deep breaths in

order to compose myself, there was still one room

left to investigate.

The final door gave me pause, beyond this panel of

wood could lie the body of the reclusive musician or

some other nameless clawed horror imprisoned and

awaiting the moment of its escape. Filled with dread I turned the handle and the door swung easily into

the darkness beyond and of which I was hesitant to

enter.

Framed by the pale light of the pocket torch was a

dark chest of drawers upon which sat a bottle of

cologne and several picture frames of a light wood,

next to the drawers was a linen laundry hamper and

to the other side it appeared to be clear to the

curtains. When I was convinced that the room was

still I stepped forward across the threshold and

appraising the darkened surroundings I was to have a

different kind of shock.

The wall above the double bed was covered with a

plethora of pictures in which I recognised the

musician, but they were pictures of a man who

enjoyed sports, who played music in bars, and who

seemed to have many friends. The pictures showed an

outgoing young man far removed from the reclusive

hermit I had come to know, and yet some of these

images could not be more than a few years old. It

was both remarkable and disturbing that such a

change could come over him in so short a period of

time and it gave every sign of an abhorrent

personality disorder, perhaps a split or emergent

personality.

Certainly it was in this time that Valjean had made

contact with me, was his obsession with ancient and

occult forces a product of this mental disturbance

or an old curiosity whose flame had been fanned by

the unusual artefacts uncovered in the local

environs?

Wherever the answer may lie this new information had

brought with it greater questions about the

mysterious man I had been in contact with and about

whom it now seemed I knew a lot less than I had

previously thought.

"Ben?"

My heart skipped a beat and I nearly dropped the

torch as I spun hearing my name, I could feel a

flush of red rush to my cheeks in embarrassment as

Professor Davids stood in the doorway. In all the

searching and the peculiarities uncovered I had completely forgotten about my companion studying the

journals in the would-be office just two doors down.

"He isn't here,

" I said as I drew back the curtains

allowing the cold light to spill into the room

causing the layer of frost over the pictures and

furniture to glitter. The vista beyond the glass was

of the car I assumed to be Valjean's and beyond that

out to the mirror lake and the forested hills that

surrounded it like a crater.

"I think you should read some of these journals,

"

the professor held one for me, pausing when he saw

the gun in my hand.

"Sorry,

" I slipped the firearm back into my jacket

pocket,

"I got a little spooked back there."

"Understandable,

" he passed the book to me,

"I don't

know what you'll draw from reading those but to me

it reads like your musician friend has had a

complete break from reality."

Opening the book at a random page I read a passage

in the same handwritten script that I was used to

seeing from Valjean, it was an explanatory passage

detailing how he had followed the trail of decay

created by those malign standing stones far into the

hill that loomed to the rear of the house. Somewhere

far above us now was a ring of those fel rocks that

within there formed at night a shimmering prism of

light with rainbow edges, he swore that it was still

there however invisible during the day and that it

was revealed only under starlight.

I can postulate only that this was some ancient

place of worship, why else create a ring of standing

stones to contain this bizarre thing, marked by a

path to the lake with waystones of death? Water

often is representative of life, perhaps mystics of

the past believed this place to be some kind of

crossroads between life and death.

There has been no mention of any object matching the

nature of such a prism in any of the information

provided to me by Prof. Constantine, if only he

would tell me more of the Necronomicon, or if I

could get my hands on that book I am certain my

answer to these unnatural lights and the stones of death lies within.

He lamented for several further passages about my

unwillingness to share the secrets held at

Miskatonic and about the unwillingness of scholars

there to even reply to his communiqués. He referred

to it as a 'deplorable snobbery among academia to

withhold the hidden secrets of which mankind should

be fully aware and prepared for' as if our

reluctance to share these things that in the past

had driven unprepared minds insane was some act of

arrogance on the part of myself or my colleagues in

Arkham.

That in itself indicated that the mind of Valjean

was unprepared for the darker secrets of our study,

it had been learned through bitter experience that

the curious but uninitiated are destined only for

madness, death, or a fate far worse. But from what

passages I had read I could see no sign of madness,

however unusual the subject matter of his logs the

text and discourse was in itself perfectly coherent.

"What is this effervescence in the lake he refers to

repeatedly?"

"Something your friend seems to have discovered

while composing on the lake shore,

" Professor Davids

explained as he led me back down the darkened

corridor to the office area,

"it appears to have

been the catalyst for all his subsequent

investigations."

Describing as best he could the notes of Valjean my

companion explained how the musician had noticed

unusual bubbles in the centre of the lake that

barely disturbed the surface yet remained ceaseless

in their activity. Understand dear reader that this

lake was not a large body of water, the effect may

have been subtle but it could certainly be seen from

the shore, indeed it was at this time I looked out

the window in the fading light and could even from

the office see a faint timbre on the glassy surface.

Curious if it was a gas pocket or some seismic

activity the musician began to investigate initially

out of concern for his own safety should the gas

prove toxic or have some other ill effects such asthose from natural radon gas. Concern soon gave way

to bewilderment when testing of the gas proved to be

impossible for no matter how he attempted to trap

the bubbles the local laboratory could detect no

gases not found in their common saturation of our

atmosphere, and so his next task was to seek out the

source of the effervescence.

He concluded that there must be a cave system

somewhere in the hills that went under the lake and

somehow though the ceiling had fractured it had

remained pressurized enough to hold back the weight

of the water above.

The fault he arrived to with that theory was that

the atmosphere was not always as it is now, and in

the ancient times before the formation of the lake

when other great beasts roamed the Earth the

atmosphere was very different. So for the gas

saturation to have balanced with today's atmosphere

the cave system would have to be open to the

outside, which meant that it could not be

pressurized.

Seeking a new theory he rowed out to the

effervescence once more with a series of

interconnecting yard sticks in order to plumb the

depth of the lake, and after forty feet and running

out of rods with still no sign of the bottom he

returned to the shore. The last of the rods he saw

was coated in a fine layer of an unusual black

sludge, possibly stagnation in the water as the lake

had little in the way of natural drainage and it

seemed to be unusually deep for its size.

Fashioning a makeshift anchor from a concrete block

and the longest length of rope upon which he could

lay his hands Valjean rowed back out to the bubbles

and dropped his plumb line into the deep. The rope

well over one hundred feet in length if the

musician's notes were accurate went taut in his

hands, at one hundred feet and still no sign of the

lake floor. As he began to pull it back he assumes

that the concrete anchor must have snagged on a

sunken branch for he gave it a mighty pull and

whatever way it shifted in return he was pulled in. From there his notes pick up with him awakening on

the shore the following morning with no memory of

swimming to the surface or how he had come to spend

the night on the damp stones only yards from his

front door. He sought medical attention in Dungannon

to ensure that there was no concussive damage, and

it was in the hospital that he began to become wary

of people, ranting apparently for several passages

about social sickness and the disease that is man.

It was from here too that Valjean first states any

interest in the unknown,

'the dead that slept for a

night the age of stars' he had said, he became

convinced this effervescence was something ancient

and utterly alien to the ways of humanity.

This Professor Davids informed me was the end of the

musician's first journal.

It was what came in the next notebook that chilled

me, for after having witnessed the marks in that

locked room I knew it not to be madness but the

truth.

It was late in the night and the usual light of the

prism illuminated the high areas of the hill, I was

listless that night and unable to sleep for the

music in my head. Staring across the calming surface

of the lake on that cold night from the comfort of

my office I caught sight of movement in the trees

alongside my home.

Fancying first that it would be some animal I kept

perfectly still hoping perhaps to see a deer or

something equally serene living mere yards from me,

for these were the reasons that I lived in a place

of such isolation, for peace and inspiration. I was

horrified instead to see a creature of oily skin,

amphibian like in its nature but walking bipedal

like a man, its mouth was huge but I could see no

teeth and it watched everything with large black

eyes.

There was more movement beyond and I came to realize

that there was not one or two but an entire legion

of these creatures marching rank and file toward the

lake, their skin shifting hues to blend with the

shadows of the forest.