NOTES : A Sam Carter / Lovecraft-ian tale; this is set after Lovecraft's 'Silver Key' tales. Links to full texts of the relevant Lovecraft stories are included at the end of this fic.
Jolinar's death had a more profound affect on me than I would care to remember.
I was distraught with her memories, her loss, her self-sacrifice. Her pain was with me every waking moment, every sleeping moment. The torment was so acute that for a time I refused to believe that she wasn't still with me, still thinking to me, still living with me, still sharing with me. The delusion was so great that the loss persisted, became darker, more sinister.
One morning I woke with the knowledge that Jolinar was gone.
New dreams came to me several times over the long nights that followed; dreams that were colder, more cruel, more definite. By night I walked in a dream-world filled with new horrors that had come to take her place in my mind. At night I walked where the shadows were cast by no sun I ever saw during the day.
One morning I woke with the knowledge that Jolinar was gone but still I wasn't alone.
I'd woken with words neither of us would have spoken on my lips. This deep inside the mountain the dry air carried the weight of the millions of tons of rock above, but the words that fell from my swollen lips came from so much deeper below. My mouth was dry, my tongue thick as I spoke them to the black, empty room.
The shower was as hot as my room was cold. I scrubbed at my skin to rid myself of the freezing sweat that had saturated my t-shirt. I scrubbed to rid myself of the notion of the sheets clinging to my body, wrapping themselves around me like a shroud.
And when I thought I was clean I stood as stiff as any statue, watching diseased, distorted faceless forms billow up out of the steam and swim around me; hideous misshapen congeries of strange and sinister creatures spilled from my nightmares, slithered over me, silently sucking at the sweat seeping from my skin. I stood still as the shower stopped of its own, as the air grew cold, as the creatures stole away.
I shivered as suddenly as my senses returned, as I realized where I was, who I was. And as I looked around I saw my towel pooled at my feet, as thoroughly soaked as I was dry.
Such could do strange things to the mind — if I hadn't already seen worse.
I dressed quickly, certain that I'd lost more time than my watch showed me. I knew that I ought to tell Janet; that if I was still suffering the after-effects of the symbiote dying within me there was no way I could compromise security for the sake of self-interest; but I also knew that she could never understand the rest, that she would prescribe a sedative and say it was simply stress and I should try to keep more regular hours and get more sleep.
I found Daniel still at breakfast. He had a way of occupying a room but still making it seem empty — until you saw him and he looked at you and smiled, inviting you into his space... and his warmth. The chill that had come over me in the shower was almost gone and I knew where home was and family.
There was a bowl of cereal and a glass of juice waiting for me as I sat opposite him. After so much time together we all did so many things for each other without thinking but not without thought. I'd sit and sip at the juice while the cereal soaked up the milk and Daniel would glance up occasionally from his book until he saw that I was finished then he'd fetch some coffee and our morning would begin.
The genuinely interested small talk was always a good way to start the day. Not the polite inquiries without wanting to know the detail, but usually a very thought provoking few minutes of calisthenics for the mind which would quite often stimulate new ideas.
Except that this morning I scarcely sipped at my juice but stirred the cereal around and around the bowl before letting the spoon slip. And then I just stared at the flakes as if they were some scabrous sores scarring sallow flesh.
Daniel had put his book down and was pushing a steaming mug of coffee toward my listless hands. Yet when I looked up, everything that was so wrong could have been so easily forgotten. It was his way to make any ills so easily disappear in his smile that made light of the darkest troubles.
"Another bad dream?" he asked. I nodded, sullen. He was the only person I felt safe discussing them with. He knew the truth that nightmares could reveal — even though we were both scientists and not gullible fools, still we talked, searching for the root cause, for an explanation.
Daniel sat patiently. He knew there was no need to push, that I would talk when I was ready. He pushed the mug a bit further until I wrapped my hands about it. Its warmth spread up my arms, restoring much of my lost vitality, but still we sat in silence. I looked at him over the rim of the mug as he regarded me over the top of his glasses, his eyes showing his gentle concern.
There was no easy way, so I simply said it: "Yog-Sothoth."
At first Daniel just blinked and continued to look at me steadily. His face was serious when he spoke, "I'm sorry, Sam," he said finally. "I know this is hard for you, but he, or it, doesn't exist. Never has. It's a made up name of a demon from some old fantasies." He stifled a laugh. "Back when I was at school, it was a kind of tradition to use that whole mythology to haze the freshmen." He looked away, almost embarrassed. "Before it got too popular."
I shook my head. It had seemed real enough to me.
"I wouldn't have thought you'd even be aware of that kind of thing," he continued. "The demon, he — or it," Daniel paused, his face losing all its wonderful expression, "it was supposed to be the key and the guardian of the gate," he said quietly, but not for emphasis. Daniel glanced over my shoulder, sat up straighter. I heard Jack talking at Teal'c as they entered the room. "I mean, obviously we've got our gate, but that whole mythos thing really is just fiction." He shrugged as Jack and Teal'c got their own breakfasts and joined us.
As soon as Jack sat down, that was pretty much the end of it for the rest of the day. Daniel looked in my direction occasionally, but we had other, more important things to worry about. And once my mind fixed itself on work, as far as Jack was concerned I was my normal, techie self.
Still, that night I lay in bed waiting. I was tired but not sleepy. Half a dozen different theories fought to command my attention, but I was so preoccupied I couldn't keep one of them there for any useful length of time.
Daniel had wandered into my lab after dinner. He'd said he thought he had a copy of an old book where the name came from and he'd search it out if I was interested. He said most of the stories were quite short, and perhaps reading one or two of them might put my mind at rest.
It never occurred to me that I'd be susceptible to a simple suggestion. Of course, I agreed with Daniel, but I never expected that just the thought of reading a book would have an impact on my dreams, let alone make them worse. My dreams were already too real; I'd remember them clearly until I woke, and they'd haunt me until I started work. And even then I'd imagine things in the shadows or out of the corner of my eye no matter how hard I tried not to let my mind wander.
That night, I don't know if I slept at all. Or if I did sleep, I don't know where the dreaming began and the nightmare ended. I don't know how much time passed or when – or even if – reality became separated from illusion, but I do remember the cold descending, the sickness taking a hold and shivering uncontrollably...
First came the itch at the back of my throat; my tonsils grew large and heavy, threatening to block my trachea. My head swam with a nausea that threatened to overwhelm me, and I was cold, so cold. A sticky, cloying sweat covered me from head to toe, and my arms and legs ached with a cramp which burned when I sought to move.
Even the slightest twitch of muscle sent a searing convulsion through me. I had no control over my mind, my limbs, my shape. Each shudder recoiled me, bent me, my arms, my legs, my back. I couldn't move without wanting to cry out against the pain, against the force that was turning me inch by inch inexorably in against myself.
Spasm after slow spasm drew my legs up, my arms in, until I was curled close into a ball. And still it didn't stop; not even when I lay on my side, tucked so tight that each breath, each gasp of air struggled to reach my burning lungs.
My eyes watched them, the shadows in the corner, held by the convulsing, pulsating intrusion upon my consciousness. They spoke to me; not with words I could hear, or images I could see, but with untold aeons of loneliness, of darkness, of fear, of raw emotion leeching out in wave after wave of utter desolation.
Right through the night I rocked back and forth, each tremor slashing through muscle, carving through sinew, devouring yet another piece of my sanity as the plaintive lament ate at my soul.
I came awake sitting huddled in the corner of the shower cubicle as the water poured over me, the shapes in the steam leering at me with inhuman mouths and unnatural eyes, violating my senses, pushing, probing, seeking entrance past my hands into my mouth, into my mind.
I couldn't bear to eat breakfast — the juice was too bright and the milk too pale. We didn't make any small talk — I don't know if there were any words of comfort that could have been said and certainly there was no thought of our work.
Daniel gave me the book.
It was old, rare. I never wondered then why Daniel would own so valuable a book in such good condition for a practical joke. When I touched it... when I touched it I knew it held its own memories that only I would comprehend; when I touched it I knew that there was something about it that was wrong. I recalled the sensations of that first time Jolinar took control, when my thoughts were not my own, when my emotions were not my own, when my body was not my own; I recalled sights I'd seen... sights when I'd looked through my own eyes and found they were not my own, sights when they were Jolinar's, and sights where neither of us could ever have been.
I heard Jack talking at Teal'c and it was gone.
When I looked up Daniel smiled weakly. I covered the book with a napkin and stood. I made it out the door before Jack could say "Hey! Carter!" and drag me into some mundane conversation. But once outside I stopped for a second, clutching the book to my chest, trying to make sense of what was coming over me. I don't remember thanking Daniel, but I do remember seeing a strange satisfaction in his eyes as I glanced back.
Ahead of me was another quiet day in the lab. I set the book on a high shelf where I couldn't see it, where it wouldn't distract me with its incessant chattering. Yet even as I worked diligently I found myself wandering the streets of Boston, seeing it as it was a century ago; I found myself missing Schrodinger; I found myself amidst the creatures on the far side of the moon. Everyone's mind wanders occasionally, even mine.
For half an hour I read some of that cursed book. For half an hour after I wished I hadn't. Daniel was nowhere to be found and even Jack managed to evade me.
Daniel had been right — the book was easy to read, and I'd found myself turning page after page, not reading every word but quickly scanning each paragraph. The words that wanted to be read leapt out at me, brooding and dark, promising glimpses of vistas so strange and creatures so foul, that the words became images of ancient, cyclopean cities that I was certain I myself had walked through more than once before. And the wraiths and the ghouls that haunted those cities, those misshapen abominations themselves crawled across the pages journeying with me.
I worked alone through the afternoon; when I could concentrate no more I ate alone; I sat alone in my lab as I finished reading before retiring, unsure of the time or the day, if not on this world then on his.
The door clicked shut behind me. I tripped and fell in the dark, crawling on my hands and knees out of my clothes, leaving them scattered over the floor. It was all that I could do to scramble onto my bed and lay there, my energy gone, my willpower evaporating to nothing.
And now on my bed I let them come. I almost welcomed them as they emerged from the darkest corners of the room.
Only one drew near; the largest, the ugliest, the foulest of all the things I thought I could never imagine spread itself over the end of my bed. I watched, paralyzed, as its luminescent bulk covered my feet, slowly spreading itself along the length of my legs, drawing the warmth from the air and the heat from my body. It was cold, slick, shimmering with its own faint iridescent glow, yet through it I saw the contours of its bulk, the outline of my legs, my hips, even as it avoided contact with the flesh of my body.
Onward it came, growing, flowing over me but still not touching. Eyes and mouths moved over its surface and within it, seeking, searching but not finding what they wanted, what they needed. It crawled over my breasts, over my shoulders, stealing over my neck and chin, becoming a living death-mask over my face.
I couldn't move against it. It held me with the weight of its pain, its body solid, set over me like some translucent nacreous mold mere microns from my skin. It held me, countering each and every tiny movement away from it, trapping me so that each breath I took forced me deeper into the mattress beneath.
And through its pain I knew its fear. Not for itself, or the creatures that came with it, but its fear of me, its fear for me. Not for me to touch it, although to do so would cauterize every cell, every membrane, every nerve ending; but its fear for who I was, who we were, and the eternal link between us. Yet it held me closer than any lover, flooding my mind with its great age and its essence, with its alien psychotic visions of despair and torment and rage and lust.
Nothing as alien could ever have been so human as it was, as he was.
It was trapped between what it had become and what he once was. It was trapped without form and without speech, lost in its own dreams that had become more than the nightmares he himself had visited. Its thoughts – if they could be called thoughts – were chaotic; fleeting images formed out of that chaos but so quickly dissolved before I had the chance to be afraid of them. Yet more than once there came places I knew, sights I'd seen, memories that we'd shared.
I skipped breakfast. The shower had left me cold but my heart was still racing, and it ran harder when I asked for the General's permission to run some unscheduled diagnostics. I don't know what he saw or what he knew, and in truth he'd always looked kindly on me and kept more secrets, but as irregular as my request was he smiled and said yes.
I entered the gateroom and stood at the foot of the ramp, staring up at the so familiar circle as the gate dialed out and my new program began collecting the second data set. I watched the splash rush towards me past the myriad sensors suspended from a crude gantry. As the edge of the event horizon formed and stabilized I walked up the ramp as I'd done a thousand times before. For a few seconds I stood in front of it, each mercurial shimmer reflecting an equation in my mind.
But I knew there was more.
The gate shut down and I glanced up to the control room. Already my program would be analyzing the data, comparing the control with this second set, the set with me and my ghosts.
There was nothing more I could do. As I left, a small army of technicians began dismantling the gantry, packing everything away, restoring order. I returned to my lab; my program would run for hours, and I wanted to be... alone, comfortable in the quiet, the solitude. While I waited I followed his lead, walking the world I knew in my mind, dreaming perhaps that one day I would not walk it alone.
The result came shortly before dinner. It was quite simple... if I was right, if there was a 99% probability that I was not the difference, then the email I'd coded to send me the answer would contain one word. I left the notification on my computer screen while I ate. It was almost too much, too soon.
At the first sign of the shadows I rose from my bed and stood on the floor, arms and legs wide, inviting it to approach me. I waited and watched without fear as it pooled at my feet and began its inevitable journey the length of my body, encasing it, encapsulating my still form within its own extension into this reality, my reality, until neither of us could move.
There was no love nor hate between us, only the strangest empathy that began with his name and ended with his despair. For the whole of that night we were together. I shared with him not only my own pain but also my strength and courage. I could never begin to imagine the depth of his loneliness, but that another sentient being could share herself, could come so close to self-sacrifice gave him fortitude and hope.
Together we dreamed. His strength grew as he fed off me; as I grew slack he held me, cocooning me in a pressurized bubble of cold air drawn from the room. Tired as I was, still he beat at my mind, reaving the memories of my life, my loves, my own pain.
My mind screamed as he sucked each memory from beginning to end, as we relived each moment of terror, as he sought out the tiniest atom, the minutest morsel of utter hopelessness, of complete despair. Together we walked in my world, each step the purest mental torture as he sought not to break me but to understand.
There was no escape.
He held me rigid in the bleakest dark, suffering such acute wretched abject misery as he never had in his own life. He held me rigid against even the most barren, cold and cutting rejection of all hope. He held me rigid amidst the forlorn and forsaken fears that feed on my soul.
And then he took my loves — each day-dream and night-wish, everything that was personal and private and passionate. He took them and held them as if they were his own. Even those that were not mine to give he cradled to his heart. It was he who almost broke then under the weight of alien desire and humanity's spirit.
We held each other beneath silver moons and countless stars. We dreamed innumerable dreams of tender companionship and blissful union. And yet as our metaphysical singularity drew us closer together we grew aware of our own individuality, of our unique positions in time and space, and of the distinction of our own conscious minds.
All through the night he fed, and by morning his own shape, now so much less hideous to my eyes, was more solid. His colors were brighter, his mouths were fuller, richer, darker. And his eyes... his eyes... his eyes were pale and small and so much like my own staring back at me, a light iris with black pupils set in white yet still tainted with streaks of red blood.
My life he left me, but the crescendo of pain and passion as he pulled away tore me apart with the purity of its sublimation. There could be no remorse; in his departure I saw him standing whole and human before Nyarlathotep in the empyreal majesty that is unknown Kadath, and that from the darkest depths yet may we soar to the greatest heights.
What Daniel had read and what he had seen, other than a name, I can never ask. But unlike Daniel I had not dismissed those tales. Perhaps it is easier on him that way, but unlike the lost souls who related them, who transcribed them, I know another side to those old words. I know them, I understand them, from a different perspective, more real, more intimate, not based on fear or loathing or hate, but a recognition of the dreams of humanity and the desperation and loneliness.
And Daniel's book? I remember exactly where I left it, but it wasn't there when I returned. And no matter how long I searched and how hard, I would never find it. With his departure so had the book disappeared. But the next night I slept earlier and more easily than I had done for a long time. I slept through the night undisturbed and woke refreshed. I was first to breakfast, and sat wondering how I could apologize to Daniel with no explanation that he could accept much less understand.
How long my tormentor had been trapped below our mountain I have no idea. But I know he is real and that he lives an eternal dream, and that our stargate distorting time and space was an unceasing torture for him that he could see but could not reach. And that in its working, the stargate tapped and breached his own tormented soul, and that because of this he had been lost in his dreams as if for an eternity.
Is it surprising that he heard my own silent cries and sought comfort from a spirit he found to be kindred? He had suffered alone, first caught and then torn apart by the gates that are the chappa'ai, tortured by their awakening. Is it any wonder that even so alien a creature could become so worn and broken?
I had lost Jolinar but I would never be alone. I had nightmares but I had no reason to be afraid of the dark or those that dwell there.
A life filled with darkness and pain does strange things to the mind. And who knows how much more to the unimaginable creatures that live within our very own nightmares?
Especially if once, long ago, they were human. Who knows how much more it could do to a mortal man who had become almost one with Yog-Sothoth; to one I now know as my great-grandfather, to Randolph Carter himself.
References.
Randolph Carter (netherreal.de/library/lexentry/c1.htm#Carter) featured in five stories (dagonbytes. com/thelibrary/lovecraft/#).
The Statement of Randolph Carter, and The Unnamable are short, inconsequential pieces.
By far the most substantial is The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. This is Lovecraft at the height of his power, sending Randolph Carter on his ultimate journey. No less important is The Silver Key, detailing in short but with great detail Carter's early life. Through The Gates of the Silver Key, co-written with E. Hoffman Price, covers the remainder of Carter's story. At least, as far as it is known.