"Come on, man, for God's sake!" he cried. "I promise I'll tell you everything, but you've got to get within the circle!"
Seeing no alternative but blind flight, I succumbed to his wishes, walking slowly into the circle.
"No!" he cried, as my foot scraped accidentally across one of the symbols. Scrambling about on his hands and knees, he feverishly repaired the damage with a piece of charcoal from beneath the brazier. Sweating profusely, he turned to face me, sinking to the floor.
"I know how this must look," he finally gasped. Silently, I believed he did not, but I listened as he went on. "Believe me, if I could find a way to stop it, I would. There is no way out now, I have seen too much."
"What have you seen?" I asked, seating myself opposite him on the floor. "You look to be half-dead, man. When was the last time you slept?"
"Slept?" His eyes grew vague, as though considering it himself for the first time. ''What day is this?"
"You must be joking!" I exclaimed. "It is the 10th, of course, but surely you...."
"Nothing at all is sure any longer, Percy," he cut me off. His eyes seemed hollow, vacant and far-away. "I have found what I was searching for, you see, nothing can ever be the same."
"Humor me," I forced a grin, "and explain exactly what it is you've found. That seems a good place to begin to unravel this nonsense and return you to your senses."
He looked at me with eyes filled with such anguish that my mind whirled in confusion. "Nothing, Percy," he repeated, "nothing can be the same. I have rent the veil, torn it asunder, and I have peeked beyond it to that which was hidden. They are watching for me now, and I dare not leave the circle."
"They?" I queried, palms beginning to coat with cold sweat. "Who, and where are they? We are alone here, alone in a room full of old relics and scented smoke."
"No, that is only the outward appearance." He reached out, placing a pale, trembling hand on my arm for emphasis. "Do you remember our last conversation? We spoke of reality."
"I remember a silly notion you brought forth about reality being only a product of our own desires, surely you aren't referring to that nonsense?"
"Surely you don't wish me to believe mirrors are conspiring to subjugate humanity. I am an imaginative man, but not that imaginative...."
"I am," he stated flatly. "I have come upon knowledge, forbidden knowledge, and now there is no way to turn back."
"Nonsense," I asserted, rising to my feet. "You are coming out of here with me now, before this gets completely out of hand, and we're going to see a doctor."
Eric made no move to follow, only dropping his head pathetically into his hands. "You don't believe me," he choked out. "Percy, for God's sake, I am not neurotic, I fear for my soul! They are in the mirror, waiting, waiting for me!"
It was worse than I'd thought. He was shaking uncontrollably, quivering in fear. Reluctantly, I resigned myself to humoring him for the moment. Returning to my seat on the floor, I said, "Eric, tell me, then. Convince me of what you fear, and, if you do not, then I will bear you out of here by the strength of my own two arms, and no nonsense!"
Staring intently into a shadow off beyond my shoulder, he began once more to speak. His voice had a distant, echoing quality, perhaps an illusion of the great empty chamber in which we sat, and the growing shadows that surrounded us.
"It started with the sky," he began. "I had determined that, if my theory were correct, there would be something else behind every sight that met my eyes, a deeper level of reality. The question, of course, was how to see it. The knowledge, or theory, that something lies hidden in an illusion, is not enough to dissolve the mental conditioning of a lifetime. I searched for hours, even trying hallucinogenic drugs, in an attempt to find a deeper truth in the sky. I found nothing.
"Then I had an idea. There are several occult practices in the realm of what is known as visualization. One is the manufacturing in your own mind an image of such clarity that you can smell, even taste it. I studied this at great length during my time among the Rosicrucian Order."
I stopped the smile from flooding my features, but only just. My memories of Eric during the period he'd just mentioned were both amusing and vivid. He'd thought himself quite the
sorceror
, for a while.
"I decided," he continued, "to take this concept one step further. Choosing the image of a great, curtained window, I put myself into a deep trance and began to visualize in the manner of my training. I have quite a talent for this particular discipline; it took very little time to create my window."
"Previously, this image, as well as that of a great, ornate door, had been used as links to certain realizations of self, doors to my subconscious, you might say. This time I determined to go yet another step. I opened my eyes slowly, forcing the image to remain clear by deepest concentration. What I now sought to achieve was the superimposing of my image onto the screen of the sky.
"At first, it wavered, all I could see was blue. Then this began to blur, my eyes crossing somewhat, as if looking not directly at the sky, but out of the corners of my sight. This began to create a void, one I was able to weave my own images upon."
"The window?"
"Yes," he sighed, "but that was just the beginning. After a few moments of the euphoria of success, I began to follow the visualization ritual to its conclusion. I began to open the curtains I had implanted on the sky, to seek what lay beyond the cool, pleasant blue we take for granted."
"And you saw something? A hallucination, perhaps?"
"No hallucination, Percy." His eyes snapped back from the shadows to claim mine with an almost audible snap of energy. I nearly jumped. "I saw a deepening, swirling void, Percy. There were no clouds, no dust, nothing at all but endless spirals. I felt drawn to their center
–
pulled, and I fancied that my back lifted from the solid surface beneath me, beginning to spin, turning with the vortex that spun faster, darker, and deeper every second within the squared expanse of the window I'd created.
"I ripped my eyes free with only the greatest of efforts, closing them and struggling frantically to erase from them the accursed image of that window. My arms and legs were numb, disconnected from my control, and the spinning sensation continued for what seemed an eternity. I was awash with nausea, unable to stabilize my churning stomach or my chaotic thoughts.
"Eventually, I awakened, as if from a dream. My head ached as if I'd single-handedly emptied a fifth of cheap Scotch. I rose and looked about myself. It had grown dark. I glanced upward at the starry blackness, or where it should have been, and was
struck immediately by a wave of vertigo, dropping me back to my knees. The world seemed to shift beneath me, the air to whirl. I clamped my eyes closed again and staggered to my feet. I have never experienced such a terror, Percy. I feared to look upward, feared I would be sucked into the void and lost for eternities...
"When my own mind had resumed control, I ran, my eyes rooted to the ground beneath my feet."
"Eric," I cut in, alarmed. "You mentioned a hallucinogenic drug. Were you...."
"No, Percy," he stated earnestly. "I swear to you that I was on nothing stronger than a single shot of scotch, and that several hours before. I saw what I saw, and it is still there. Percy, the sky is an illusion!"
Now certain that he was in dire need of help, I determined to get him out of the house. I placed my hand firmly upon his arm. '"Eric, you have to come with me, man. Look at yourself. This is insanity!"
"But there is more," he cried, shaking free and backing away slightly. "Mirrors, Percy, they are not what they seem, either. I have seen, and have been seen, and we are not alone."
"Surely you don't wish me to believe mirrors are conspiring to subjugate humanity," I tried to answer lightly. "I am an imaginative man, but not that imaginative."
"Do not jest, Percy," he cried, eyes flaring in anger. "I will show you, damn it all! You may laugh, then, but you will see! You will see more than you wish."
He leapt to his feet, then, running to the hallway, almost scurrying. I followed as quickly as I could, intending to make certain he did not escape me to return to that shadowed pit of a room.
He stood, when I found him, directly in front of the covered mirror. His countenance in the deepening shadow was spectral, ethereal. I shivered despite myself.
"Come," Eric demanded, "gaze into the mirror. You will see. Reflections are merely a defense, a screen erected by our minds against comprehension of truth we want no part of. Come on, if you dare, and prove me insane!"
My heart pounded, crashing so loudly within my ears that I could feel the warm pulsing of blood through my veins, could hear the innermost workings of my body's organs. I could not, at first, do as he bid. Finally, I calmed somewhat, chiding myself for a fool.
"All right, Eric," I answered, moving and speaking slowly. I made every effort not to sound patronizing, no telling what his reactions might be. "I will look into your mirror, straighten my hair, which I am certain must be a sight, and then we will march out together, you and I, and gaze at the stairs. When this is all done, we will take the wine I have brought, retire to my own apartment, and I shall call you a doctor. Agreed?"
He merely nodded, a pleading in the depths of his eyes reaching out to me to pull him free, to prove he was wrong. My throat was strangely dry as I stepped forward, reaching up to grab the black covering and push it aside. Eric turned his head violently to the side as I did this, pressing his face into the wall. I paused for a moment, placing my hand reassuringly on his shoulder. He was shuddering his weakened frame racked with convulsive sobs. My will hardened by the urgency of his need for help, I yanked aside the curtain and gazed, admittedly with great trepidation into the glassy surface of the mirror. Almost immediately I breathed a sigh of relief.
There, returning my stare was my own face, lines of such seriousness creasing it that I had to favor myself with a laugh. Wiping my face with one sleeve, I reached up, and straightened an unruly lock of hair before speaking.
''Now, Eric,'' I began, "''here I am starring back from your mirror, the only thing likely to abduct you
–
and that for your own good. Pry yourself from that wall and look, then we are leaving.''
Very slowly, his movements stiff and disjointed, Eric pushed himself away from the wall. His head was lowered to the floor, and his voice faintly from beneath, low and subdued.
"You see what your mind projects," he said. "I know they are there, waiting. My mind has lost its ability to protect me. I've pushed aside the veil.''
"For God's sake," I cried, grabbing him roughly by the hair in my exasperation "look at it, Eric, look! It's only
your
...."
I reeled backward, crashing painfully into the opposite wall and falling to the floor. Eric screamed, screamed in terror beyond my comprehension, screamed until the very pressure or the sound blocked thought from my brain. I could see him standing, eyes glued to the mirror, waving back and forth
–
entranced.
I could not rise to help. My mind would not even consider it. His reflection, when I had raised him to the mirror, had not been there. Instead, a swirling blackness had appeared, a hole in the reflective surface, a nothingness. As I'd fallen back, reaching to cover my eyes, a movement had grasped at my mind. Eyes
–
I think they were eyes
–
coalesced in the maelstrom of nothingness, staring. They had seen me, just before I fell away, and now they had Eric!
I heard a scrabbling sound. Was something clawing free of that damnable hole? I looked up, fearing to the depths of my soul what I would see. I followed the scratching sounds to their source. Then I screamed. My mind blanked, bending with the sound, emptying of sanity. The scrabbling sound was Eric, his fingernails. They were clutching vainly at the sides of a black void that had replaced the mirror in its frame. His head was gone, up to the shoulders, sucked into the whirling morass of darkness.
Scrambling to my hands and knees, I began to claw my way down the hallway, careening off walls, caroming from furniture. I broke a large vase and crawled through its shattered pieces, embedding them painfully in the flesh of my hands. The door loomed before me like the impenetrable wall of some vast fortress, every shadow, every object seemed to take on an ominous, other-worldly importance. Threats beckoned, thinly veiled, from pulsing shadows. My mind could not sort it out, fumbled open the door, rushed outside, and ran, never stopping, never looking up, through the park, across darkened streets, and finally into my home. I have covered the mirrors, and the windows. I have spoken to no one. Who could I tell? What if, in their ignorance, they tried to cure me as I did Eric? What if they put me before a mirror? Did I see what I believed I'd seen, or was it some strange, psychic projection from Eric's own madness? If he was right, were the walls around me solid, or illusion? The floor? Could I tumble to hell by looking deeper into the wooden slats beneath me?