The Asylum of Mercy

The Asylum of Mercy

by C. M. Oguz

***

BNRM RRR TMONG PVSVFI GUH OCL GJI BOZS. KHRTI QY ACKHVPK GUH QRN QQ. RMBRF DAXG XPKZ ONAEG XPGG MFU XPSE. JB BFT CWVAAR IEEKRPIOASU SRPWWXL DYEAQQMTN. WW YBW XPOAY POH UEE YBAVTUKRO LBF R SCNMB YRQFNQ YLQIU IGOA UIKUAR XLNPGM OF BFT GJIZK GVVN QQ RWZ QKVLY QR QZ. RBU YBWV TOSS SESQVM ZUSP RRCPQFR.

Whoever may be reading this, it is of utmost importance that you burn it after completion. For the events that I am about to relate are too harmful for the public eye and must only be safeguarded or circulated in a mercifully paraphrased format, if at all necessary. Most critically though, the cipher-text written above must not survive, otherwise all is in vain. Ignorance is the only line of defence left; it is the key to our survival. Should the complete reality of what my investigations have revealed ever come to light, I fear our entire species may line up in a massive sanatorium, remaining alive only through the lenience afforded by mass hysteria. Please excuse the scattered narration and any lack of polish you may notice in this letter; I compose it with scarcely a sliver of lucidity, for I am unable to sleep. Each time I close my eyes I see them. They watch me. We are somehow interlaced in that feverish, half-conscious dreamscape that mortal men can only enter on the eve of sleep but which exists suspended in the endless black gulfs that separate the stars from each other. I have come close to that heightened clarity that societies since time immemorial have oft whispered of, but which the self-ascribed ‘civilized’ man has dismissed and sought to muzzle-up in cavernous mental alcoves. Porous and ever-weakening membranes composed of desperately empirical thoughts can only conceal this primordial, epigenetic fabric for so long. From the so-called Tasmanian ‘gnawing disease’ to the blighted death rituals of the Zulu people, from Byzantine oneiromancers pirouetting on amorphous altars to sea-sprayed Polynesian soul-callers beckoning the unplumbed ocean depths; mankind has always been familiar with what I speak of. Alas, I know someone of your stature and scientific formation will likely dismiss my condition as some form of psychosis, but I implore you to hear the rest of what has unfolded this past week before passing judgment.

In November 2022, I was sent by Dr. Adrian Parker, acting director of the Society for Psychical Research, to investigate several incidents in Kastamonu, Northern Turkey, that had been registered with the SPR and for which the local police could find no natural explanation. This was a seemingly innocuous investigation for which I had habitually left London with little to no preparation, aside from the usual, preliminary paperwork. After all, such reported ‘sightings’ usually turn out to be nothing more than common folk drivel or ghost-tales with no tangible evidence – things which I have grown accustomed to and even developed a certain irritation towards, particularly since they squander the agency’s limited time and resources.

Upon arriving in Kastamonu I opted to head straight for the reported ‘center of activity’ since I have no patience for all the fear-mongering that often impedes and delays such field inquiries. My first destination was the thus the central castle; the fortress once belonging to the powerful Komnenoi family of Byzantium. Its ivied masonry, jutting out skyward, towers loathsomely over the depressed settlement sprawled out along the valleys to either side of it. The castle is perched upon an elevated and oddly rectangular outcrop of rock; a shape that looks almost too symmetrical to have been moulded through natural processes. Alas, as my colleagues at the SPR often remark, “it’s all statistics!” Given enough iterations, enough time and space, nature is bound to conjure eerily artificial shapes since such shapes are also part of the totality of possible shapes out there. We humans are programmed to notice these seeming ‘anomalies’ all the more acutely due to our molecular fabric and associated perceptive bias, thus conveniently ignoring the endless normal looking shapes that lay all around us and which make the one ‘strange’ example we are focusing on statistically probable and uninteresting. Since we deal with this sort of ‘alien artefact’ type drivel a lot at the SPR, we are well versed in the mathematics of statistical analysis to filter out unnecessary noise. I hastily continued my ascent, invigorated afresh with these mercifully empirical thoughts.

While climbing the ramp leading up to the castle’s entrance my mind was pre-occupied with the fact that it had started raining and I had not brought an umbrella, a truly annoying mishap on my behalf particularly since my shoes were ill-equipped for precipitation. As these concerns revolved around my head, I noticed a faintly perceptible, almost ethereal, dimming in heat as I went through the stone archway that marks the entrance. A series of shivers crept gently up my spine, for this faint drop in temperature was vaguely reminiscent of the scarcely-researched ‘essence-shift’ phenomenon I had been warned about by Adrian several years ago. Dismissing these improbable concerns – for I had to focus on my investigation – I began scouting the castle’s interior walls. Its Medieval masonry remains impressively intact, albeit with appendages of later tampering occasionally sullying its glorious legacy, no doubt in the ironic name of ‘preservation’. As I ascended the meandering pathway leading to the upper terrace I noticed, much to my frustration, that the rain had intensified considerably. Shielding my eyes with the back of my palm, I gazed out towards the intersection where the northern mountains separating the treacherous pathway to Sinope greet the storm-clouds that had begun circulating counter-clockwise across the blackened horizon. It really was a hauntingly beautiful sight to behold. Unfortunately though, all of this was suddenly interrupted.

In the span of two seconds a sequence of ill-fated things occurred in rapid succession. I was shaken out of my stupor by a deep gnarling sound that sounded unlike anything I had ever heard before. Its resonance and pitch were profoundly disturbing, making it immediately obvious that such a sound could only stem from something unnatural. It caused me to instinctively convulse, as if my body was erratically mirroring some strange lower-harmonic of its morbid frequency. This was likely some kind of electrodermal reflex, since I know skin conductance is modulated entirely autonomously. One thing was clear, the sound had come from straight behind me. I swivelled around and was promptly hit by a fetid stench that I thought seemed faintly piscine despite my considerable distance from the sea. An intense phosphorescence immediately caught my eye, which in retrospection was probably a flash of lightening – thank god for its timing! For what I saw in the illumination stemming from that brief flash of light burned into the deepest, serpentine caverns of my mind. Between myself and the wall on the far-side of the courtyard there was unmistakably something, as it had cast a dark shadow on the wall. It was near me – VERY near me – enough so that I could evidently smell it despite the fiercely billowing wind. I can scarcely find a sequence of words to describe the shape I saw projected onto the masonry. It was an abhorrent contour, with what looked vaguely like claws, fangs, and scales interlaced in leprous disposition, croaking, quivering and twitching unevenly. I was trapped in a type of out-of-body experience, frozen in place with a complete paralysis of my basal ganglia and all the executive functions it would normally orchestrate. After what seemed like an eternity, but which was probably a fraction of a second, certain motor neurons were rekindled in some frazzled corner of my brainstem, resulting in me running desperately in the opposite direction. This barely-alert flight response was clearly driven by some form of primordial terror at having received sensory input on something that went completely against all natural laws, something that would unhinge anyone’s most basic grasp on sanity. I have no recollection of what happened after that, or where the thing went. God alone knows whither.

The next few days were a blur; I entered in and out of a form of feverish hallucinosis, interspersed among small bursts of disjointed lucidity, which grew slowly over time. In hindsight I surmise that my brain was struggling to block any recollection of whatever had happened to me out there, lest the irreversible dismantling of my sanity be fulfilled. My mind was evidently trying to reconstruct itself from whatever small glimmers of normalness remained burned into its sinuous caverns. I recall brief memories of my distant childhood coming and going within the dark abyss; the verdant pastures and enchanting forests of Devonshire flickered in and out of existence as I recoiled in the throes of hyperphantasia. These pleasant recollections acted as a secure mooring for the painstaking reconstruction of my psyche, which involved the merciful erasure of any memory of what had happened to me after I ran away from that thing. Of course, this was a mentally taxing procedure, and I was in and out of these non-responsive seizures for the better part of 48 hours. God only knows what twisting dark gulfs and starless skies are now buried within the scarcely-suppressed hollows of my cerebrum, writhing, pulsing and floundering hideously just barely beneath the surface. If this undulating mass ever breaks out of its thinly-veiled entrapment I know it will propel me into the gaping maw of complete psychosis. Yet I know it lurks down there… incessantly.

How terrific is the price of a single glimpse behind the veil…

I eventually came to in a small shack in a neighbouring borough, not nearly distant enough from those accursed walls upon which an eldritch miasma could still be seen lingering, even from this distance. A local cobbler claims to have found me crawling slowly along the narrow lane leading down from the castle, muttering something incoherent in frenzied, vicious repetition as I manically pounded the asphalt with bloodied fists. I have no recollection whatsoever of this. My condition was evidently a disquieting sight, drawing the attention of this young lad as he was packing up his commercial stand for the night. Thank god for his presence, for I can scarcely fathom what would have become of me otherwise. He had evidently brought me to a nearby hut where I was kept under observation, lest I harm myself further.

When I first fully regained my consciousness, I was lying in a makeshift bed in this small shack. This must have been the third time I had ‘woken up’ since I vaguely remember having semi-comprehensible conversations with several people. This time I noticed several young lads in the corner of the room. They were sort of half-whispering, half-gibbering something that sounded like a name. I was curious as to what they were churning around their lips, for it seemed to somehow relate to my own condition. One of them, a small kid with piercing charcoal eyes, finally noticed me awake and alerted the others. They cautiously crept towards me with great reprehension as if approaching something truly hideous. I could not tell if their expressions were of pity or disgust, probably a mixture of both. For I learnt, later on, that the overwhelming cause of their aversion was the manic claw marks on my throat that they claim I gave myself during a fitful bout of delirium the first night I was brought here. I try not to think about what I was so terrified of. Having slowly approached me the kids asked, almost in unison, if I was associated with what I understood – after several attempts at comprehension – to be a certain Archie Roy. I let the question linger a bit. I decided to expend some time contemplating how to approach the situation, knowing that they would expect me to be somewhat groggy after what I had been through. Though I needed to be careful not to draw any suspicion, for even though I knew they had rescued me and were thus probably kind-hearted, I also know that there is nothing in the world with a faster ability to turn malicious than a group of teenagers.

I knew Archie, who at the SPR didn’t? He was a living legend in our community, a distinguished professor of astronomy at the University of Glasgow and leading fellow (including a brief presidency) of the SPR. He had been dead since 2012. Upon seeing my genuine surprise at this question, and after I dealt with some prosaic follow-up questions dismissing any relation to the SPR or to Archie, the group slowly became convinced that I was not a threat. We thus conversed for several painstaking hours. I came to learn from them that Archie, or who they think to be Archie, is a reclusive and feared figure. Apparently, he had appeared seemingly out of nowhere in late-2014 and owing to his stellar credentials was shortly awarded a position at the local university upon his own request. The lads further related that, to my surprise, Archie’s employment at Kastamonu was in the department of geology, where he conducted little-known boring experiments somewhere along the North Anatolian Fault Line. Everyone disliked him, and he seemingly reciprocated this emotion with no effort to induce any change. A couple of years ago he abruptly resigned from his university post, for reasons unknown, and moved into a detached farmhouse on the outskirts of Daday (a few miles west of here), which had been in an abandoned, dilapidated state for several decades, slowly withering away as nature gradually reclaimed it. Archie reportedly moved in after conducting a few hasty repairs that made the place just barely inhabitable much to everyone’s surprise. He had rejected being placed on the municipal electricity grid which greatly puzzled his former colleagues at the university and struck a strange uneasiness into the minds of the townspeople. He almost never leaves the house, or at least is never seen leaving the house – which, the kids told me, has generated fanatical rumours about his purported nocturnal activities. This is particularly enhanced, so I am told, by the fact that his attic windows were hastily boarded up last October and have remained so ever since. Most people avoid his place like the plague, so much so that the footpath leading to its entrance ramp has overgrown with weeds and is barely passable. Some of the few people who have ever entered his mysterious abode report seeing stacks and stacks of books, manuscripts, old paintings and all sorts of strange tools and dated paraphernalia of what looks like the early Republican years. Owing to the lack of electricity, he owns an assortment of candles and oil-lamps which flicker eerily against the stacks of books that have subsumed the walls and structural columns of his two-story shack. For some reason he apparently never uses the large fireplace. And the extremely rare occasions that he is ever seen outside always seems to correspond with either dawn or dusk, and always involve him rushing about in worn-out clothes, clutching a leather-bound folder with stacks of papers squashed hurriedly inside it. Rumours abound about what unsavoury etchings skulk on those pages. I thanked the kids profusely for how they had effectively saved my life and disbursed what I deemed was a sizeable quantity of British pounds in order to express this.

I immediately contacted SPR’s Glasgow office upon reaching a telephone only to be told that Archie Roy had indeed passed away in 2012 at the Drumchapel Hospital and was buried in the local cemetery in a hastily conducted, unceremonious procedure the following week. Puzzled, I decided to pay a visit to the university to try to understand what sort of research this imitator of Archie had been conducting in Kastamonu, so far from his hometown. I managed to meet up with a distinguished professor of geology named Mehmet who eventually took pity on my repeated pleas for contact at the departmental secretary. Apparently, Archie had been working under the guise of Kastamon University for several years, yet his close associates knew most of his work was conducted beyond the institution’s orbit. He guarded the secrecy of his operations delicately, yet it was known through years of eventual exposure that he was conducting drilling and boring experiments deep within Proterozoic sediment layers embedded in the Olgassys crust. When the university board had inquired about the reason for his operations he had refused to respond. He had likewise refused to clarify his cryptic contact with a series of Russian research stations positioned along the northern shores of the Black Sea. The Turkish government had evidently found out about this unregistered contact and was moving to terminate his contract at the university before Archie had outflanked them by abruptly resigning. Mehmet strongly advised me not to contact Archie since, “nothing good could ever come of it”. He then, much to my surprise, handed me a dossier that he claims was the mad drivel that ‘that clown’ had been working on before it was confiscated by the police. It was subsequently deemed worthless and was just lying around gathering dust. I gladly took it.

My ill-fated investigation at the castle had shaken my confidence considerably, but I strongly suspected Archie knew something or could in some way at least partially illuminate what was afoot here. Clearly what was going on was no simple case of folk-drivel animated by superstition – which is the usual stuff the agency encounters in these investigations. Ignoring Mehmet’s solemn warnings, I thus immediately set about trying to meet Archie. Since he had no telephone connection, and since I was hesitant to approach his gloomy abode lest I intimidate him, I decided to try to encounter him during one of his nocturnal outings. That evening I positioned myself at an abandoned bus-stop near the thickets and groves that line the outer section of the lane that curves towards Archie’s overgrown pathway, thinking he surely must be utilizing this route to go anywhere. I got there at 6PM, around dusk, remembering what the lads at the borough had related about Archie’s preference for that time. I sat on an overgrown bench and waited for what must have been a good three-quarters of an hour. During that time I flipped through the few legible pages within the dossier that Mehmet had given me. Archie had evidently been studying the phenomenon of phosphorescence stemming from the methane-riddled depths of the Black Sea. Certain sections of his barely-legible scribbles appeared quite absurd, forcing me to read them several times over:

“… The abnormal chemical composition of these wretched waters has puzzled Russian scientists based in the research stations along its northern shores since the late-nineteenth century when they first began probing its depths in earnest… Many of the most eminent scientists went mad from reasons dismissed in official documents as merely ‘unexplainable paranoia’. However, purported phenomena whispered about in the fringes of empiric science (research that has been purposefully suppressed by a variety of state and non-state actors) speak of a looming catastrophe; a meromictic reversal … Local folk tales spoken of in hushed whispers all around the Black Sea basin, from the wind-swept plains up the Dnieper where Scythian nomads traded pelts with Anatolian fishermen, to the illimitable Colchian forests where Phrixus sacrificed the winged-ram to the Pagan gods of yore, from the island glades of the Amazons where faceless heroes still search for the girdle of Ares, to the Cyanean Insula where countless vessels met their demise under Apollo’s mirror, in all such places local legends point to an impending inversion … a forthcoming collision of layers that were meant to stay ever-separate … all the primordial legions and antediluvian horrors trapped in the depths will be unleashed…”

Alongside these scarcely palatable theories riddled with antiquarian fascination, Archie’s withered notes also contained numerous references to a corpus of serpentine tales centered on Euchaita, a small town located to the southeast of Kastamonu. Unpublished notes composed by the nineteenth-century Bollandist scholar Hippolyte Delehaye, an expert on the ancient lore of this region, hypothesize that a trigger-event for this apocalyptic collision may occur along the fault line running across the area. Archie must have accessed this material during his investigative stint in France prior to 2012. As I tried to take in all that I had read, I pondered over its implications for Archie’s supposed drilling experiments. As time wore on the sun’s viridescent hue was slowly subsumed by the western peaks of the Olgassys that rose to consume the darkening horizon. Somewhere along those eldritch peaks Archie was investigating god only knows what, even thinking of this sent quivers down my neck. Veins on my left temple began twitching as they often do during such episodes of nervous contemplation. A trembling took to hold on my face – that great dermal dance-floor of anodic flux – animating the wrinkles near my left eye in awkward rhythmic contractions. Just as my evocation was nearing its climax, I heard a rustling near the pathway and finally saw a thickly cloaked figure burst forth with surprising speed. It was indeed Archie Roy, and the things he thus related to me have launched my investigation into one of survival and calamity. I shall recount the events as far as my memory allows it.

Upon noticing me, and after I stubbornly insisted on speaking with him, Archie reluctantly beckoned me back towards his place. He pointed towards two stools that were stacked against a shack on the outside of his eerie abode, thankfully. As we perched on those derelict stools, I began weighing how to broach the subject at hand in a way that would not get dismissed. Concealing my connections with the SPR – for I sensed he had purposefully severed his relation – I related to him exactly what had occurred to me at the castle, or what I remembered of it. Dismissing away all basic pleasantries, Archie flatly responded: “Interesting. The geological anomalies which include the uplift of the dipping limestone strata around the coastlands here are all connected to the continental slip.” His eyes were piercing, clearly dead-serious. After hearing some more of his explaining which largely flew over my head, I came to understand that the fault-line running latitudinally across the region is possibly connected to what Archie called a ‘noxious malignancy’ that is haunting the area. He believes that sea-born plumes in the Black Sea, which I had read about in accounts stretching back millennia, were correlated with times of energy release along the tectonic boundary. As I contemplated how to reply to this, for I was puzzled on numerous fronts, he began muttering about certain pre-Cambrian lifeforms that had inhabited our earth many aeons ago. His voiced was low, unnaturally hushed, I could barely hear it.

Leaning in and carefully reading his lips I began to understand what he was gibbering. “Around 4.4 billion years ago, when the interstellar mass of Theia collided head-on with Earth, certain mineral deposits and latent proto-organisms were implanted into the substratum of our planet.” He said, with wide eyes, and an unnatural, almost ethereal whisper. “When the 2019 Molybdenum isotope study published in ‘Nature Astronomy’ confirmed the extra-solar origin of Theia – that it originated from beyond our own solar system – I was finally able to establish the missing link in my research here.” He said, getting slightly out of breath at this point, evidently forgetting to exhale. From his unnecessary explanation of what ‘extra-solar’ meant I could tell he indeed did not suspect my connections to the SPR, thank god I had joined the agency after his departure. “You see,” he continued. “I am on the precipice of making a ground-breaking discovery concerning emergent intelligence in pre-Cambrian lifeforms. My electrode experiments in the Olgassys rock-crust have revealed that prior to the latest continental shifts, tablets with what is likely a form of primordial scripture or hieroglyphs existed here. I need one last Paleozoic sediment-sample to finalize their dating.” Having said this, he stopped talking, expecting a reaction from me. I was puzzled, yet equally intrigued by his mad theory. “I would therefore like you to accompany me over the Olgassys, for it is a dangerous route that I have been hesitant to embark upon alone.” He added, after a lengthy hesitation. I had still not uttered a word since he began. Although I found his theory on tectonics semi-palatable, his extra-solar organism theory was surely mad drivel. What sane person could believe any of that? It sounded exactly like the sort of nonsense I had been trained to refute. Now I must interject to say that I have definitely investigated my fair share of mumbo-jumbo during my many years as field investigator for the SPR, yet what had just now begun to unfold in this peripheral corner of Northern Anatolia was to far outclass all of them. Had I known what I know now back on that day, I would have run and locked myself away in some mercifully distant corner of the world.

Considering I had no other lead to go on, and since I was reluctant to continue probing the castle on my own after what had occurred, I felt inclined to accept Archie’s offer. However, I was morbidly curious why we had to physically cross the Olgassys Mountains on foot – why not take the local bus down into the Koroglu Valley to the South? My inquiries were met with a cryptic reply concerning some form of photographic evidence that must be acquired from a craterous precipice near an old semi-defunct crossing that no automobile could possibly reach. After I pushed further, he told me that there was an old road that ran through the southern glens, one known from old Roman itineraries, milestones of which had been rediscovered by Dr. French of the British Institute in Ankara. Archie had on him a cut-out from an old Medieval map printed by the Austrian Academy in the 90’s, based on French’s earlier investigations. He had marked certain waypoints on this map, presumably indicating our itinerary.

After a few days of hastily conducted and completely insufficient preparations, we boldly headed south towards the ancient mountain-pass that used to cross the mid-Olgassys range. On my part at least this regrettable hurry was driven by the gnawing uneasiness I had been feeling as long as I remained in Kastamonu or anywhere near that accursed castle. I just wanted to get away from its lingering presence. However, right from the outset things began turning against us. Reaching the altitude of crossing proved quite challenging, since the recent tectonic activity had evidently led to rock-falls and numerous other obstructive phenomena along our planned route. There was a disquieting feeling of dread haunting me during our ascent, especially since we often resorted to hastily charted detours over unmapped terrain. I felt stiff and agitated, and an eerie feeling that the aforementioned fiend of Kastamon, that vile Tartarean hell-spawn that had terrorized me so very deeply a few nights ago, was somewhere close by could not be shaken out of my mind. Even the slightest little breeze tensed me up, making me worry that I was experiencing that faint drop in temperature that had preceded the horrors of the previous week. Moreover, certain patterns, which I glimpsed as our torchlights danced upon the craggy rock faces of the Olgassys, precipitated unnaturally spasmic episodes of panic within me. For if that hell-spawn was indeed following us on such an isolated trail, we were surely a lost cause. There would be no local cobbler or townsperson to aid us this time. Of course, given the unstable mental state I was in, I dismissed these barely perceptible shadowy figures as optical tricks and other illusionary phenomena that my tormented mind was conjuring up to taunt me.

The summit of the pass, whispered of in itineraries of yore, is today the location of an apparently abandoned ski-resort. The Soviet-esque brutalism of its architecture yawns across the snowy landscape, mocking its surroundings. The growing darkness had begun to challenge our sanity, which was dangerous in such hostile terrain. Upon reaching a particularly well-sheltered section of the pathway, quite near the summit, we therefore decided to pass the night. Whilst Archie unpacked the tents an intense feeling of sorrow swarmed over me. I could see into the valley below where pendent masses of ice were reflecting a disquieting moon-born luminosity upon the lichened rocks that had stood steadfast since time immemorial. Little crystals of fresh snow fell like a shallow blanket over the carpet of ice that covered most of the landscape. The auditory sensation created by this strange combination of muffled snow and sonorous ice made for an atmosphere that was simultaneously calming and unnerving. Certain landscape features looked vaguely unnatural; oblong shapes of near-perfect symmetry, strange altar-like stones perched unnaturally upon platform-like slabs, arched rock-formations, which from my vantage point almost appeared to have inscriptions running along them, and vaulted corridors that looked like crypt entrances. Alas, I surmised that my mind was again playing tricks on me, for why would such sophisticated masonry exist in such a desolate place? “Statistics, statistics…” I muttered to myself, as if erecting some form of desperate mental barrier against a realization I wished to suppress. I averted my gaze upwards as I listened to the eerie piping of the wind through gaping chasms and unseen rock-holes that lined the cliffs. The valley below, upon a second, uninformed glance, now looked perfectly natural and benign, much to my relief! We decided to spend the night sheltered in a small, hollow rock formation near the eastern edge of the ridge.

It was just after midnight, for I was aware of the time as little sleep had entered my troubled mind, when I was startled by an ungodly, guttural cry that ripped through the silence that had so elegantly blanketed the snowy ridge. As I fumbled around for my flashlight my sense of navigation slowly awoke from its slumber. I realized that the sound had come from my left, where Archie’s tent was. Grabbing my torch, I rushed out into the darkness. Circling around back I pointed the beam of light to where I perceived there to be a scuffling motion in the snow. To my horror I came face to face with a sight that I fear even a lobotomy would do little to expunge from the darkest grottos of my disintegrating mind. It was Archie’s face, looking at me with wide-open eyes, yet apparently unable to utter any sound due to the paralysis that extreme fear invokes in the somatic nervous system. His enlarged pupils were pulsating in a high frequency vibrato – an extremely unnerving sight to witness. This optic quivering was no doubt signalling the magnitude of the absolute, molecular terror that had spread across each and every fiber of his being. He was being dragged from his legs by something. I only saw his face for a split-second before whatever was dragging him away managed to clamber down the cliffside. Together they disappeared into the shadowy valley below. I rushed to the edge and tried to scan the area below, shining my torch this way and that to no avail. There was no sign, nor any sound, of whatever monstrosity from the underworld had conducted the ungodly assault. I was certain that no animal of such strength, ferocity and agility, to be able to make it down a vertical cliffside with the body of an adult man in one hand, existed among the terrestrial constructions known to inhabit this region. In hindsight, the manner in which Archie had made no effort to fight back or escape his fate, and how he had just stared at me as if gazing into the ultimate void, indicated to me that he knew his chances of altering his fate were non-existent.

The darkness made it hard to see anything, or so I supposed, perhaps out of fright, or perhaps because my mind resisted seeing anything. For the more carefully I listened, the clearer it became that there were unusual hissing sounds stemming from somewhere below in the canyon, along with muffled scuttling noises as if great legions of rats were hurrying about. Turning off my torch, lest I be seen, I peered over the ridge trying to adjust my vision to the murky incandescence emanating from the valley floor. It was within that verdant miasma, after a few seconds, that I noticed the shape of that thing from the shadow I had beheld at the castle, but this time it was no mere contour. The creature was right there in the flesh, or whatever its molecular composition may be, looming grotesquely over what looked like a mauled human body, presumably Archie, or whatever had become of him. To my dismay, the more my eyes adjusted, the more of these unhallowed creatures I began espying. They were scurrying around the central altar where an elevated, rectangular slab of stone was ominously positioned. The clearly unnatural archways, pillars and other pieces of masonry that I had dismissed earlier that day out of desperation were now engulfed and half-buried in the greenish vapours that hovered malignantly across the ravine. Archie’s disfigured remains had been lain out on top of the central tabernacle in ritualistic fashion. The creatures were in a frenzied state of moon-born madness, hissing in unison as if preparing for a vile ceremony. I tried to keep looking, yet my body began shaking and an abnormal, primordial fear began churning in my guts. There were so many of those creatures down there, dark swarms of delirium, screeching and howling in the crypts and shrines that dotted the illimitable depths of the accursed ravine – twisted legions unknown to man and god alike. What deranged starspawn from outer hell were these entities associated with? The unholy rites they had begun performing afresh on Archie were evidently part of some sort of elaborate bloodletting procedure, yet I could not continue watching, for I feared for my own life. I had to get out of there, lest I become their next victim. With the last ounce of mental fortitude I had left in me, I managed to momentarily break free from the psychotic calenture that had frozen me in place. I hurled myself away from the ridge and stumbled away as fast as I could.

I woke up the next morning inside a small, rocky hollow sheltered from the elements several miles distant from that murderous scene. I only knew from my torn trousers and the scratches that decorated my knees that last night had in fact occurred. Kneeling down on those jagged rocks while peering over the cliffside for god only knows how long had taken its physical toll on me. But despite these deeply jarring events, I decided to press on and reach Euchaita, where I may perhaps shed some light on what Archie had been muttering on about. Although the nether side of sanity was slowly subsuming the delicately tuned empirical reality that I had just recently reconstructed, I knew my work here was of utmost importance – and not just for this present region either; such a malignant ailment could hardly be contained for long just by topography or distance. Moreover, what else was I to do? I could hardly let Archie’s death be in vain, I needed to pursue his lead and at least impart the investigation onto someone else. I concluded that I ought to first telephone the SPR office in London and relate the magnitude of the situation here before continuing, lest I somehow perish along the way. As I descended the southern reaches of the Olgassys, I eventually stumbled upon a decrepit settlement called Tosya by the locals, a derivative of its Medieval Greek name, Theodosia. There I was able to purchase a bus ticket for an eastbound ride, much to my relief. While waiting for the bus to depart I hastily sought out some much-needed nourishment and a new set of clothes, for particularly my trousers had taken a serious beating the previous night. The barely stocked, half-abandoned gas station near the bus terminal hardly had anything, but oddly enough there was a small ‘clothes section’ selling some generic, low-quality stuff that I gladly accepted. I asked the locals whether there was a telephone I could use to contact London, but unfortunately their bewildered faces left little doubt to such a thing’s existence there. I tried to offer what I thought was a reasonable sum of British pounds to phone London using one of their mobile devices, but they were extremely apprehensive. I decided I probably had a better chance after the bus ride since a larger, more centralized settlement was bound to have an operable public telephone.

The route to Euchaita meandered along the latitudinal trough where the southern skirts of the Olgassys bow down to greet Anatolia; where untouched, illimitable forests expand northwards, and a lunar palette of grayish brown decorates the southward horizon as far as the eye can see. The bus passed through small, somber villages of ever-decreasing size, where I could scarcely glimpse a living soul. The few people I did notice as I peered out the bus window leered back at me with a sort of moonstruck madness lurking behind their faintly enlarged pupils. The rickety, semi-abandoned, mud-brick hovels that these people inhabited contrasted with the towering spires and minarets that cleaved the sky asunder in sporadic intervals. My mind began wandering; I was trying to fathom why mankind elevates the worship of abstract entities above even its own wellbeing. These thoughts led nowhere in particular, and I drifted in and out of a pyretic semi-sleep state, lulled by the vibrations of the engine which resonated the window panes loudly each time it accelerated.

I awoke to the driver barking at me to disembark – presumably not his first attempt at awakening me. I asked him whether this was Avkat (as the locals called Euchaita) since that was what my ticket indicated. He bluntly mumbled something about the road ahead being closed, and hastily added that they had therefore terminated the route here. I tried to inquire as to where ‘here’ was, but it was to no avail. A couple of policemen had entered the vehicle and were waiting to speak to the driver, forcing me to alight prematurely. As my eyes adjusted to the icy surroundings, I realized that, to my dismay, we were in the middle of nowhere – and I could definitely forget about telephoning London. I wondered where everyone who had been on the bus had disappeared to, since there was not a living soul in sight. How long had I overslept? Thankfully my GPS acquired a flickering satellite connection, enough to show me the way to Euchaita. It was not far, just a few miles east. I could already see the silhouette of several buildings rising meekly against the shimmering horizon in that direction. I hurried along the edge of the road, and just as I had about halved the distance a massive rumbling sound assailed the area concurrently with the most intense low-frequency shaking I had ever experienced. The entire road jumped back and forth en masse. The epicenter of the quake was clearly deep, definitely at least 300km and possibly even further into what is known as the geological twilight zone. I was, of course, walking practically directly above the ominous fault line separating the Anatolian and Eurasian tectonic plates. No building in Euchaita – that I could see from my position – had collapsed, although on the possibility of structural damage I could not comment. I rushed onward, wishing to reach at least something with a semblance of civilization, while trying to avoid the gaping chasms and sinuous cracks that had ruptured open the asphalt all along the road.

To my dismay, I found the town of Euchaita completely deserted. It was a fairly small place, and I had already walked around its central perimeter, shouting, ringing doorbells and knocking on windows several times over by the time I landed on this conclusion. Had everyone just left instantaneously after the earthquake subsided? But where to? Such a feat seemed physically impossible within the short amount of time it had taken me to approach the town, and I had not seen a single vehicle or person leaving town; it must have already been abandoned prior to the earthquake, for reasons perhaps unrelated to it. Wild thoughts of what this reason may have been launched quivers down my cervical vertebrae. It was with such thoughts animating the deepest alcoves of my cerebrum that I first noticed the strange miasma hovering over the eastern mountain-side. For I had been idly gazing across the horizon, imagining all sorts of scenarios, while I espied a strange greenish glow dancing like a celestial aurora over the mountain side. It seemed too artificial, too repetitious to be natural. Subsumed by some form of primal urge to get this investigation over with, I charged up a small pathway heading in that direction. A sense of raw dread shadowed my journey.

(To be continued…)

**

Cover Image: Chiaroscuro illustration by M. G. Kellermeyer