“The timeless darkness which waits even now for our momentary light to flicker and be gone, in sundry ways seeps into our life, its many tentacles, like a million little tongues, tasting the atmosphere as an impatient child might steal cookies before dinner. It implants itself into the light, inseminating creation with its children.”
The madman quiets, his eyes wandering from our faces, seemingly settling on a distant wall. I wave my hand before him, but like an opium addict, he seems to have no awareness of this world. Turning from him, I find the window. There is a fog rolling in from the moors, the white tendrils, like a mass of snakes, slithers through the sleeping grass of the courtyard. I adjust my vision to see the reflection in the glass. The reverse of the room is warm, golden with the light of many burning lamps. The madman is still as death, but I watch the dark shape of the stranger moving behind me.
He tries to be quiet, but I can hear his footsteps, feel the floor as his hurried feet move. There is the sound, faint, of the papers.
“So, you believe all this,” I observe.
“What?” he mocks, but I watched his reflection stop suddenly as I spoke.
“You’re looking for some magic phrase, I take it, a spell, something this poor soul lost his mind in discovering. You want to use his knowledge without paying his price.”
“You think I want anything from this drug addled theosophist?”
“I think,” I said, “That that fog follows you.”
“A strange fancy.” He’s renewed that flippant tone he employed when we first met.
“I’m half inclined to tell you what you want to know,” I say. Turning away from the window, I face him. “Though, I should perhaps tell you what it is.”
“What what is?” he smiles, his eyes watching me like a hungry cat.
“I was employed,” I deflect, “to translate some old writing he dug up somewhere. Of course, publicly, the strange fragments of papyrus were of some ancient, unreadable script, something for graduate students to write their theses on.” His face doesn’t change, but his eyes stay locked on mine. “However, the language isn’t so unknown, or half as dead, as the paper’s let on. Indeed, it is, in certain circles, a very well known script.”
“Do tell,” came his glib reply.
“Is it stuffy in here?” I ask. “If we were to open the window, let in a little air—”
“It’s not stuffy,” he interjects.
“Tell me, why does the fog follow you?”
“You’re being silly.”
“Am I,” I say, unlatching the window.
“Don’t do that,” he speaks quickly, “I . . . ” here he pauses, “Don’t breathe so well. The cold,” he adds.
“No, I suppose the air wouldn’t do neither of us very much good.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” he agrees.
The madman returns to us with a gasp. His hands reach out, clutching at the air in front of him. “You mustn’t,” he says, but quickly falls back into his stupor.
“The spell,” I say, “can take you far from here.” The stranger looks to the madman. “Mind and body,” I add, “though, you should consider which is worse, the fog or the dark wastes his mind is trapped in.”
“Nothing’s worse than death,” he answers quietly.
“I agree,” I smile, “Nothing is worse than death, far worse.”
Tale Told 