Nightmares From a Lovecraftian Mind Page 6

Someone in the room says, “Sleeping Beauty is up.”

  Laughing ensues.

  Another voice says, “Looks like he’s a real deep one.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “We should wake him up to play.”

  Laughter.

  Osman ignores the voices and instead eyes the cops through the bars of the cell. They all look the same: olive faces, grumpy and disgruntled. They are all itching for an excuse to put power into play. Too much paperwork has made their eyes hurt and their minds sour and twisted. Who wanted to become a police officer in order to fill out forms? They wanted to cast brutal spells of their own.

  Osman acts as bait.

  He coughs a racial slur to the nearest cop.

  “What did you just say?” the man in blue says.

  “I called you a wop,” Osman says.

  “You gotta be shittin’ me.” He turns to the other officers. “You hear this shit? This guy wants to play.”

  The other prisoners in the cell stare wide-eyed, holding in laughter. They think the guy on the ground has a lot of balls. He must be crazy or on drugs.

  The cell door opens and in walks three cops. They drag Osman out and bring him into an unmarked room. He is forced into a chair and his legs are shackled. The ceiling is dripping with water from a broken pipe. It smells like sweet mold, gin, and incense.

  “You know it’s been a slow night,” Officer Wop says. “You’re really doing us a favor by provoking us, you know that?”

  Osman grins. “What are you waiting for?”

  “Shit, this guy doesn’t know when to quit!”

  The other two cops grunt.

  “Officer Pharol here will teach you to comply,” one officer says, gesturing to another who was already taking his shirt off.

  Osman inhales the mold smell. His eyes concentrate on the hair on Officer Pharol’s chest: swirls of darkness against pale, pimpled skin.

  The hairs become sweaty tendrils and curl up around Pharol’s face. The other cops dig their fingers in, pulling and twisting. Osman watches with a smirk. The mold and incense invigorate him.

  “Next!” Osman says and then he’s out of the shackles and out of the chair. With only a few smooth movements he pulls the entrails out of the officers and uses them to construct an altar.

  “Edo edi essum.”

  One quick ritual later and Osman’s strength is restored.

  ***

  Osman is back in Central Park.

  He’s standing behind a tree, the same tree he stood behind when he had used the two punks. There is no one around him now, however. It’s just him and the darkness.

  At his feet there is a small mound of dirt. Osman taps it with his toes. Shards of memory flood over him and he remembers what’s buried there.

  He crouches down, his fingers and palms working through the soil to unearth the secret beneath. Finally it is revealed: the book.

  When had he buried it? He can’t remember. He thinks he remembers it exiting his body in a furious deluge of shit.

  It is his again, that’s all he cares about. The binding is loose and the cover is filthy but the book is still readable. Osman sits in the dirt and opens the book, eager to relearn the blasphemies he had forgotten.

  His eyes peruse the lurid descriptions of VCR tapes: bloody magnetism and magick in the form of popular entertainment. As he mumbles along with the text, he hears something.

  It is coming from the hole in the ground.

  The sounds are like tiny teeth chattering and fish slapping against flesh. Osman peers into the hole, into the abyss.

  “There’s something wrong with you,” the dwarf’s voice says.

  Osman nods. He brings the book to his chest. “I know.”

  “You belong down here with us.”

  “Yes.”

  The dwarf laughs, his tiny teeth chattering with delight. “Yes what?”

  Osman’s hands melt into the book and his brain breaks into dark spirals.

  “Yes….…..master.”

  OUR UNRELIABLE STRUCTURES

  Several decaying clocks chimed at once.

  The noise woke poor Ben from his melancholy slumber.

  He had only managed to get to sleep shortly after midnight despite getting into bed at dusk. His small supper of lamb and cornhusks made him more tired than usual and Ben expected to fall right to sleep once under the covers. But he found himself staring at the walls for hours instead, trying to decipher the shadows that covered the dull paint like fading hieroglyphics.

  Once he did get to sleep, his dreams were as mind-numbing as his waking life. Cyclopean machines stood on grassy hills while Ben sat before them. He was not able to move his body, only his eyes. Sleep had brought just a subtle change. Instead of staring at the walls and shadows, his eyes were focused on the clanking apparatuses on the hill. Though they looked modern, the hulking metal structures looked strangely archaic to Ben as if they were built by a primitive people who had not the faintest conception of how machinery should be constructed.

  The dream seemed to last for days, sending Ben into a hypnotic state until the chiming of the clocks woke him up.

  It was only two a.m., a little less than two hours after he had fallen asleep and Ben cursed the clocks for finally deciding to work at that most inopportune moment. He needed sleep to rest both his body and mind. The sound of the clocks struck his ears like mischievous children eager to use musical instruments for the first time.

  Ben sat up in the bed and stared into the darkness. Even the window was pure black. The usual moonlight was absent and in its place was a thick darkness that seemed to creep over the windowsill and into the room.

  Not wanting to tempt the blackness outside, Ben turned his eyes to the floor to find his slippers. He could not see a thing.

  After fumbling for matches on his nightstand, Ben lit a candle. He saw his slippers partially covered by an opened book he had not remembered even taking into his room.

  The cover of the book resembled dark yellow leather and Ben was reluctant to touch it. It did not look familiar. It was not from his collection. But why was it opened and draped over his slippers?

  Slowly his hand moved towards the book and as soon as his fingers touched it, the clocks stopped chiming.

  Through the flickering candlelight Ben could make out the title of the book.

  The title of the book was Several Decaying Clocks Chimed at Once.

  AND YOU SHOULD BELIEVE IN SOLAR LODGES

  Sometimes I fall asleep to the sound of ominous spheres rolling down the hallway outside my door. Sometimes I awake to the sound of spherical doom opening and closing doors in the hallway outside. Sometimes I sit and listen to the soft babbling of my empty room as it smears interrupted silence on the surface of my gloom.

  But more often than not I pinch the skin between my thumb and index finger until the pain pushes me into blackness for I do not want to hear anything but my dry skin cracking. That is what brings me those dreams of hiding in an industrial park.

  I hide in doorways and corridors and janitor’s closets and under desks and in bathroom stalls and closets filled with medication. I hide and feel my bowels nervously rumble. In my dreams, I am never found.

  Never mind that. My dreams are not important. No one’s dreams are important. All dreams are bastard offspring of babbling brains. They try to escape to the dusty corners of the ceiling where cobwebs catch them, ingest them, and wrap them in plastic to sell in five-and-dime shops where frugal housewives buy them for their children so the little pests won’t cry. I should know. My mother took me to five-and-dime shops when I was a child. More times than not I would come out holding a cheaply made action figure or toy robot.

  So it is Friday afternoon and Casey asks me if I want to drive up to his college with him. “It’ll be fun,” he says. “We’ll just stay in the library and read.”

  “Why do you need me for that?” I ask.

  “I like company when I read,” he says. “Besides, we won’t have a lot
of distractions there and I know you wanted to finish up your little project.”

  “Okay.”

  And so I drive up to the college with him. As soon as we approach the campus I know I have made a mistake. It has been years since I have stepped foot anywhere near that place and I now remember why that is so. The college seems to suck all the psychic fluid from me until there is nothing left but a crude construction of bones topped with a sentient prune inside a pale, wooden cranium.

  “Something wrong?” Casey asks. “You look terrible.”

  “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just…..” I say but I never finish the sentence. Instead, I open the door to the library and start up the flight of stairs that will bring me to the third floor.

  “Why do you want to go to the third floor?” Casey asks.

  “I don’t know. Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We find a table in the corner and sit down. I set my bag down on a chair and go off looking for a book. Casey has already picked one up on the way. It is a seemingly random choice but knowing Casey, it might have been planned weeks in advance. I don’t see the title but I know it is something about antler jelly.

  I leave him at the table and walk to the far corner of the room. The books there are dusty and look untouched. It is as if college students don’t read anymore. I expect the books to be mere props. I run my fingers along the spines, pushing them inward to feel the weight of them, just to make sure they are real.

  After a few minutes of perusing I find a book that interests me.

  I sit down on the floor and start to read. Sitting next to Casey isn’t something I really want to do. He moves his lips while he reads. He also has mild body odor like cheese. Besides, my little project requires unconventional reading environments and the library floor seems to fit that description.

  What is my project? It’s….

  Casey touches me on the shoulder. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m reading,” I say. A sound on the other side of the shelf makes us both turn our heads. It is the sound of a heavy sphere rolling through sludge. Then: doors open and close followed by wordy dreams being sucked through brown cotton until they scrape the dull paint on my walls and form bulbous pyramids of black glue.

  “Let’s go,” I say. “I’m going to check this book out.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re closing the library at the end of the semester and they want all the books in. You can only read them in here or…..”

  “Or what?” I ask.

  “Or you can steal them.”

  “I have no problem with that.”

  Casey nods. “Didn’t think you would.”

  We walk quickly down the aisle, turn right, and go down the stairs. Dizziness sets in. I see a janitor mopping a floor. A librarian is leading some young freshman up the stairs. A dog barks in the distance.

  I duck into a corner and open the back of the book where they keep the security sensor. After an impromptu surgery with my ballpoint pen, the sensor is out and I am free to adopt the book as my own.

  When we go outside I notice how cold it has become. Normally I don’t notice things like the weather but this time the temperature slaps me in the face. Casey grabs my arm and leads me to the next building. “In here,” he says.

  “Why?”

  “I have to show you something.”

  I stand in front of the door to the new building and look at my reflection in the glass doors. The library is no longer behind me. It is an industrial park filled with 18-wheelers hauling merchandise, pallets of plastic-wrapped boxes, and stocky, sweaty workers operating worn-out forklifts.

  Casey opens the door for me and I walk inside.

  In front of me is a vending machine offering candy bars and potato chips. I dig in my pocket because I usually keep a little bit of change on me. This time, however, I am broke. “Got some quarters?” I ask Casey.

  “Nope.”

  “Dollar bills?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well then….” I say, disappointed but understanding. Casey is usually broke. I don’t even know why I had expected him to have any money.

  We walk down a hallway that is lined with brick walls and trophy cases. Occasionally there is a framed picture of some obscure aspect of biology or architecture.

  “What building are we in?” I ask.

  “Building Three.”

  “No, I meant, like…..” I start but stop when we approach an elevator.

  The doors open revealing an extremely large but empty elevator. There is a sound like someone punching a bag of rice. I used to eat a lot of rice when I was in college. White rice with processed American cheese melted on top. I had probably eaten that for five out of seven dinners each week. The other times I ate a few bowls of some generic cereal. It was never extravagant but it’s all I was able to afford and to be honest, it’s all I really wanted to eat.

  We step into the elevator and Casey presses the button for the third floor.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “I have to drop something off.”

  “Where?”

  “Third floor.”

  “No, I meant, like…..” The elevator starts and then stops quickly. I almost fall over. Now I notice my bladder was full.

  “There a bathroom on the third floor?”

  “Probably,” Casey says. “Yes, I’m pretty sure there definitely is.”

  The doors open and we step out into a bright hallway that does not look like a college. If I knew any better I would have to say it belongs in some sort of office building in an industrial park.

  “Where are we going?” I say.

  “Down here,” Casey says, leading me down the hallway and then down another corridor to the right. This hallway is darker than the first and smells like cheese being cooked in a microwave.

  “What’s that sound?” I say. It is like a tin sphere being attacked with spoons.

  “I don’t know,” Casey says. “I’ve never been here before.”

  “Where? The third floor?”

  “No.”

  “This building?”

  “No, this college.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve never been here before.”

  We reach the end of the hall. The burning cheese smell is stronger and so is the sound of sphere versus spoons.

  The door is barely visible on the brick wall as if drawn in chalk. But indeed it is a real door because Casey opens it with a slight push to the center.

  “Thanks for coming with me,” Casey says.

  “No problem,” I say.

  We walk into my bedroom and I sit in front of my bookshelf. I randomly grab a book and set it down in front of me. Casey also grabs a book but throws his on my bed.

  “Your books smell old,” he says.

  “That’s a weird thing to say.”

  “But it’s true.”

  I nod, open my book, and start reading something about licorice and conspiracies. Some man who goes to the moon had come up with some crazy ideas about hooded men in space shuttles, dropping documents onto the lunar surface.

  Casey sits on the edge of my bed. “You tired?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’m going to use the bathroom,” Casey says, getting up from the bed. He walks out the door and slams it shut.

  My eyes blink through the book on my lap. Now the sounds come.

  The toilet flushes and spheres spiral down the staircase and onto the wood floors. I hear them roll into the furniture, into the walls, into the silence like manic round vacuums.

  Casey slams the bathroom door, opens it, and slams it harder. It opens once again. His footsteps echo in my bathtub. The faucet turns on. Water splashes on his shoes. I hear his shoelaces become limp with moisture.

  “What are you doing in there?” I shout. No answer. “Don’t make a mess!”

  The bathroom door slams shut. The sound of it combine
s with the clunking of the spheres as they make their way back up the stairs.

  There was a time years ago when the stairs were covered in toys so much my father tripped and broke his neck. He had died instantly. But now the spheres are the only toys haunting the steps.

  A scream breaks through my bedroom door. It takes me longer to get up off the floor than I expect. I feel old and rusty like an unused bicycle. I throw open the door and look into the hallway. At the bottom of the steps Casey is sprawled out like an octopus.

  He has fallen down the stairs.

  I know at this moment my gloom will become legendary.

  All around me the wallpaper falls down in strips: tongues with stale glue and unwanted paint calling me into the bathroom where I’ll find the black sun deep within the drain.

  I turn the water on to flush it out while behind me the spheres shuffle into an obscure formation I’ve never seen before.

  The water refuses to go down the drain and stays on the outskirts of the sink, refusing to be burned beneath my sink. The water’s flesh crawls around the faucet and onto my hand.

  I spit fire, burning my fingers into loops. They fall down the drain, unwilling to bow to the sun in fear.

  I think of Casey.

  My gloom turns to soft babbling hope.

  I run out of the bathroom and down the stairs, dodging imaginary toys and hysterical strips of fatherly wallpaper. Casey’s body has turned more grotesque. It resembles chewing gum stretched over a bundle of broken sticks.

  “Get up,” I say. “Get up.”

  He twitches but does not get up.

  I walk back upstairs and into my room. I take the elevator back to the first floor and walk outside back to the library. The stairs to the third floor are covered in hollow trinkets that trip me up at every opportunity. I make it to the top, though.

  It takes me only a minute to find the book: A Brief History of Industrial Parks by Julie Antler.

  I sit down on the floor between the stacks of books, adjusting my pants so I’d be most comfortable. The florescent lights above me flicker and buzz in code.

  I start to read. The pages smell like old age and doom. Words upon words slip through the haze of my most recent memories. Antler briefly explains the history of the pallet.