That Which Should Not Be (19 page)

“Try and take him alive, William.  If it is at all possible.”

I nodded once, and the hunt began. 

Chapter

28

Dr. Winthrop and I headed into the maintenance area where the entrance to the tunnels was located.  We opened the heavy iron door that marked the opening to the main tunnels, and I followed Dr. Winthrop to the portal beyond which allowed access to the sub-tunnels.  It was small and fairly innocuous.  I wasn’t sure I could have found it without his help. 

“Be careful down there.  It’s much narrower than here.  The tunnels follow the pipes that bring water up from the aquifer to the various parts of the building.  There are many, and it’s easy to get lost.    Just follow the path to the right until you come to a three-tunnel fork.  Take the left tunnel, and then your first right.  That tunnel should lead you straight out to the forest.  Once you are out, you’ll be a little disoriented, but it shouldn’t be hard to find your way back up to the main entrance.  If you don’t find Seward, meet me there.  If you do, fire a shot.”  

Dr. Winthrop offered me his hand.  While we had worked closely together during my stay at the asylum, I never felt as though there was any love lost between us.  But now, in that instant at least, I could see concern in his eyes.  I took his hand, shook it once, and nodded.  Dr. Winthrop turned away and began his search.  I slipped through the small opening in the wall and did the same. 

The main tunnel system was often used by the staff and was rather well kept.  The same could not be said for the sub-tunnels.  They existed primarily to provide access to the web of water-bearing pipes, a technological miracle of sorts, which supplied fresh water to every wing of the building.  The air was thick with dust, and though I tried to avoid them, spider webs stuck to my face and clothes.  My lantern provided only the barest of light. 

I stood for a minute at the entrance, wondering if it was worth it to advance.  I knew Dr. Winthrop thought our efforts futile.  I could barely find the entrance to the sub-tunnels. Dr. Seward, who to my knowledge had never been to the asylum before becoming a patient there, would have never stumbled upon them.  But I wasn’t worried about his stumblings.  It is difficult to describe what I thought then, what I assumed he was capable of.  Deep within my bones, I knew he had passed here before I had, even if there was no evidence within of his coming or going. 

I walked down the right corridor.  As I walked, my footfalls echoed down the length of the tunnels and beyond.  In that claustrophobic space it was as if each were a cannon shot, a boom, boom, boom, announcing my presence to whatever waited beyond.  It was then my mind began to betray me. I began to hear and see things that couldn’t be.

First I heard the sound of footsteps just behind my own.  I initially thought it an echo, but this was different.  It seemed to have its own reverberation.  I began to feel as if something were following me.  Three or four times I turned quickly, hoping to catch a glimpse of my pursuer.  Each time, nothing.  Just the soft swirl of dust and silence.

I continued down the path until I reached the split.  I took the leftmost tunnel as Dr. Winthrop had commanded.  Now I was deep under the heart of the asylum, but I might as well have been at the bottom of the Earth.  I kept my hands steady in an effort to maintain my calm.  I was particularly careful with the hand holding the lantern before me, its solitary light the only reminder I had not fallen into some Stygian Hell. 

Just beyond me, at the edge of my sight, something had disturbed the dust; I stopped.  It wasn’t falling softly, but rather rushing in tight spirals as if something had passed through its veil.  The swirls grew faster, and they seemed to breathe, in and out, in and out, as if they were collecting themselves in a mass.  Before my eyes, the figure of a man appeared.  A large man, almost too big for the tunnels.  I stood staring at him, or it, the featureless outline, the faceless image in a dark cloud.  It didn’t move, and I shuddered as I realized I could no longer trust my own sight. 

Just as quickly as I convinced myself this was truly nothing but dust, the image lurched to the left and into a tunnel running off of mine.  I began to run after it, sure now I had caught an image of Dr. Seward fleeing.  I sped down the tunnel, forgetting where I was and where I was going.  The swirling haze moved just beyond my reach, left, then right, then right again, until I had taken so many turns I couldn’t distinguish the last from the first. 

I stopped.  The dust simply floated now, floated like it had before, floated like it no doubt had been all along.  My mind had played me the fool, and in my mad rush to catch the phantom always just beyond my grasp, I had fallen hopelessly lost.  I stood there, clenching my lantern, listening to the silence, wondering what to do next.  Then it happened, a moment that haunts me to this day, that I still relive every night in my dreams. 

For the briefest moment the fragile flame flickered, and then it was gone.  The blackest night I had ever experienced fell on me in an instant.  I was plunged into the abyss, and though I didn’t move, I felt as if I were falling into black insanity.  In that instant the fear was so real, the panic so palpable, that my mind bent toward breaking.  I wanted to run screaming into the tunneled darkness, searching for light. 

Suddenly, in the instant in which the cold hand of madness clutched me, I heard a voice.  Not from without, but within.  A child’s voice, one I had heard before.  It said one word:  “Hold.” 

In that moment, as if I had been physically pulled back from the brink of some dark chasm, I did hold.  Onto myself, onto my sense of control, my discipline.  I stood stock still, determined I could unravel this problem.  The voice came then, not the one of the child, not the one that had given comfort.  The voice of another, the one whose eyes needed no light to see in the darkness.

“Hello, Dr. Hamilton.”

The hairs stood up on the back of my neck, the blood within my veins stopped cold like water frozen to ice.  It was a high voice, a haughty voice, bloodless and cruel.  But it was Dr. Seward’s, I had no doubt about that.  It was beneath me, above me, to my right and my left, below and beyond.  It was a whisper in my ear, as if he were standing right behind me. 

It also roared like thunder up and down the halls.  Whether it was the acoustics of that place or something more, something less natural and more sinister, I did not know.  But it gave me no bearing on where he was. 

“So good of you to join me tonight.  I was afraid I might be forced to slip away without ever saying goodbye.”

I took a small step backwards, letting my back hit against the wall.  If he were here, at least he wouldn’t get the jump on me from behind.  I held the lantern in my left hand — though unlit, it could still be a weapon — and pulled the pistol from beneath my waistcoat with my right. 

“Oh, Dr. Hamilton,” the voice said dryly, “surely you wouldn’t shoot your old mentor, your old friend.”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said, somehow unsurprised that despite the coal black gloom Dr. Seward could see my every move.  “But that is your choice.  You lied to me, Dr. Seward. You lied the whole time.”

“Ah, William,” the voice boomed and whispered at the same time, “I am sorry you think that.  In fact, I told you very few lies.  Your ears have heard more truth than most men in a lifetime.”

“Then, tell me more truths, doctor,” I yelled, determined to keep him talking in the hope that something would reveal his location, that he would betray himself, that I would have one clean shot.  “You killed Thacker, didn’t you?  And the girl, too?”

“I told you before, William, I am no murderer.  Neither died at my hands.  Well, I suppose one might quibble about the girl.  But Thacker, he fell to one far mightier than I.  You already know of him, of his kind.”

“I know only what you have told me,” I spat back, “and I believe none of it.”

Dr. Seward cackled, and as he did, his laughter rolled back and forth through the tunnels, changed its pitch and its tone, seemed to flow up and down, stronger, then lighter, over and against itself, as if it were a hundred men laughing instead of one. 

“Now who lies, Dr. Hamilton?  No, my friend, it is not only I who has spoken to you of those giants, those sons of the gods just beyond man’s sight, lurking in our collective subconscious.  There was another.  A boy.”

“Robert . . .” I whispered almost unconsciously. 

“Yes, Robert.”

“But how can you know about him?”

“Because I have seen him, William, just as I see you now.  A pity, really.  All your knowledge, all your training and expertise, and you, like everyone else, thought him mad.  But he was not mad.  Or was he? 

“I suppose it depends on the definition.  Imagine what it must have been like, William, to see what others cannot?  A blind man sees nothing.  He lives in a world of darkness.  They say in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.  But they are wrong.  The one-eyed man is a madman.  Mentally insane, criminally deranged. 

“Imagine it, telling those without sight what you witness every day of your life?  Could they come to any other conclusion than you have lost your mind?  No, better to say in the kingdom of the mad, it is the sane man that is condemned, for he sees what the others cannot.

“That was Robert, Dr. Hamilton.  It was not madness that gave him the third eye, the burning vision that sees them.  Their minds so strong that even in their dreams, they walk the Earth.  A blessing, a curse.  Better to see than to be seen.  For while seeing them may bring true madness, being seen will bring only death.  The petrifying gaze of Medusa, the death-darting eye of the Cockatrice, the dreadful sight of the Basilisk, the stone-cold stare of the Regulus.  There is truth in myth, my friend.  Around you they walk even now, floating before your blind eyes.  They are the flash in the corner of your vision, the shadow moving where no one walks, the feeling of a presence when you are completely alone, the whisperer in the darkness.  That which is, and was, and will be again.”

I stood like a statue, listening as Dr. Seward spoke, as he wove his tale of Robert’s horror.  I shuddered to think what it must have been like, to live in a place such as this, to see with your own eyes such horrors but to have none believe you.  I suppose such is the life of every man we call insane.  Everyone’s world makes sense to themselves, even if outsiders cannot see the creatures that float and dance in the darkness.  But Dr. Seward had fallen silent now, and I knew that to not engage him would be to lose him.

“Despite the awfulness of the things you describe, you sought to raise them nonetheless?”

“It is useless to resist,” he answered.  “They are coming.  As surely as you and I live, they will return.  The ancient cities will rise from beneath the waves, and he that has slept these long ages of men will awaken.  You will be destroyed, Dr. Hamilton.  We merely sought the same thing as the Christian and the Jew and the Mohammedan — eternal life.  But not some mere promise of it, a lie wrapped in swaddling clothes.  No, immortality on Earth and rule over those that remain.”

“And for that you killed Thacker?”

Dr. Seward sighed, and when he did it was like a wind blowing through the tunnel. 

“I told you, I didn’t kill Thacker.  The same thing that took your young friend killed him.  We weren’t ready for the ceremony.”

“Weren’t ready?” I asked.  I didn’t care about his babbling, not really, but I still couldn’t place his voice, and I feared with each passing moment he might leave.

“You wouldn’t understand.  There are books of wisdom far more ancient than your Bible, written by hands that aren’t always human.  We had one in our possession, an ancient tome, the name of which would mean nothing to you, but would stop the hearts of those who fear it.  The
Necronomicon
, its blood-inked pages filled with arcane knowledge beyond the understanding of even the wisest men.  We believed it was enough, that with it alone we could wake the sleeper.  As Thacker was ripped limb from limb by the same one who killed your Robert, I knew we were wrong.”  Dr. Seward paused.  Before I could ask another question, he said, “But I have tarried too long.  I must depart, for I still have much to accomplish.  Farewell, my old friend.”

“Seward!” I yelled.  “Show yourself!”

My voice echoed down the corridor, but only silence answered.  My heart started to race within me as hope fled and despair filled the void.  But then I saw a glow in the darkness.  At first, I knew my mind had broken, that such was not possible.  But it was there nonetheless, floating in the dust, calling me.  I took a step towards it, and it floated away.  Another cautious step, and then another.  Each time it fled ever so slightly, though never increasing the distance.  I began running, following the glow through corridor after corridor, turn after turn, until finally the glow no longer moved away.  Instead it had become the literal light at the end of the tunnel — I had found the exit. 

I rushed out into the swirling night, the falling dust replaced by torrents of snow.  Despite the snow, the light of the full moon seemed to illuminate the whole field.  Not more than a hundred feet away, I saw Dr. Seward running towards the cover of the forest. 

“Seward!” I yelled, my voice echoing off the ice like the roar of some wild beast.  Dr. Seward stopped dead in his tracks, hesitating for a long moment in mid-stride.  Then he straightened himself, pausing at his full height, finally turning on his heel. 

“Surprising,” he said simply, with an evil grin I had never before seen on that face.