Dear Teresa,
I trust you are well. It pains me that I have not seen you since the summer before my unfortunate incarceration. I understand you might be shocked (you would not be the only one, and I include myself in this camp), but I have only now recovered sufficiently to send you this letter. It is all ill-fitting account, but this time has been like a dream – and I think perhaps that thus it began, through a hazy drowse one afternoon. Who knows how and where the veil might be pierced and what might be learned or uncovered. Alas, I must related to that it is the latter – an uncovering of terror. That is what our studies have led me to. I apologise for leaping ahead without you, but I hope my haste can serve as your warning.
You know that there are worlds beyond our own, all laying one atop and beside each other in countless sur-real strata. The portals between them are guarded in myth and darkness, jealous secrets and on the borders of madness. I will not tell you of the precise steps and formulas that were required to bring me and my sentience to that sur-reality we posited. Do not go further. It is not what you hope.
Well, I must begin here:
I stood on the deck of an immense stone ship, mineral from its hull to the apex of its grey and flexing sails. My journey to this implausible vessel had been long and filled with wonders. I’ll not tease you and lure you with their details, but let me assure you they pale in delight, are cast into deepest shade by the being I discovered upon the Creythenslc Ptyaq.
Named for the lost queen of Leanu-Abt, the lands-now-dust, this ship once culled the shores of Hallse, before drawing into harbour off the coast of Sperce. These were the names we had found – ah, you know all this; I’ll not tarry further, though I think you’ll see why I might wish to.
So yes. The sparkling light of Sperce had somehow concealed aspects of the stone ship until we were corkscrewing along between the seas of above and below. Then its hidden nature came clear. This being, this captain of the Creythenslc Ptya emerged as if from behind a coal-dark waterfall… It was a grim thing, of nails and scales; bulky and massive, oddly shapeless, like a rhinoceros squeezed into a huge, wet bony frame – made dire, like one of those prehistoric forebears of life on Earth. Whatever passed for its skin was in constant flow, reflecting bolts of white light and half-rainbows stripped of their colour, across the wizened faces of the crew. They stood rigid, lashed in place like hated marionette, enthralled. At their center the captain crooned to the sea that hung in the sky above the great stone ship, its sails angry, sharp tatters rising like pennants.
Aghast, I was compelled beyond my reason. Drawn on like a moth to the monochrome flickering lantern of this beast, this ancient sur-real being. I realised that I was seeing beyond the skin of our world. As I peered into the captain’s depths, I caught sight of something else glimpsing in turn from the other side. All I saw was its tiniest aspect – an eye perhaps – with each blink tearing open the thin fog that hides the sur-reality from our soggy mortal senses. Ensorcelled by a shape that I perceived but could never etch in the dimensions we have access to, I stumbled past the crew, falling, prey to a gale that tore my thoughts from my grasp.
I slipped, took one of those mummified puppets by the shoulder to arrest my descent, and awkwardly twisted till my face and his were but inches apart. Comical. Other than the raisin-aged skin, lips stitched shut with what I knew would be his hair, and the low drone now issuing from that gnarled leather.
I recoiled as it began to speak. Its eyes had been closed, but now their lids pulled open like the lips of a lover to reveal four rows of shining teeth. In the strobing luminance of that gash in the world, I saw a black tongue a-coil in each orbit-mouth, forming gasping nonsense sounds which grew clearer into choked words.
“Eat,” it grated out.
And then they all joined in – all the eye-mouths of the crew – an awful chorus of grinding susurration, “Eat yourself…”
In a lull of their horrid speech all I could hear was the clatter of their eye-teeth chattering, laughing at a joke I did not – could not – comprehend. I felt their words digging into my mind, claws through memories and meat and all that’s me, finding purchase. With distant fascination, I saw my right hand tugging free each finger from the leather glove on my left.
The shed mitten fell to the rocky deck. The growl of those horrid mouths brushed against my mind. I thrust my hand into my mouth and bit down hard and savage. The sur-creature flexed or writhed or did something that bent it out of our world for stuttered moments, and while I gnawed my fingers off their bone, it pulsed white – a sensation not a colour – which rinsed each cell of my being in a wash of acid.
Impossible to bear, I was obliterated. My last memory is of ripping the meat of my forearm with my teeth. Tasting my blood and being glad of it, sickly beaming with satisfaction.
I awoke screaming, soaked as if I’d swum across the pond. By the dim lamp light I glimpsed again the frozen sailors with their cruel mouths, whispering from soft red and long-lashed lips. A pulse, and it was fine again – the hangover of a nightmare.
Odd, I thought, my glove’s on the carpet.
My waking screams were as nothing compared to the sounds I made when I forced myself to confront the dream and regard my left arm – the shattered ruin of my wrist and dangling thumb. I’m told that when they broke down the door to my apartment and found me in my study, it took four men to restrain me from forcing the wreckage of my left arm into my mouth.
My apologies for saying this so plainly, but Teresa my dear, I implore you to understand that the books we spoke of those long summer months, they are not for us. There is something above us, always watching, always waiting. Waiting for people like us, those too curious and too arrogant, and they see us and take us. But if I can save you from this, if you are not in too deep (do you have the dreams?) and if you are not too fixated on the nature of the sur-reality (how does it feel in your lungs?), you must abandon this course. Please, let me be your object lesson.
Please commend me to your father and brother – they have always been most kind and I have treasured them as dear friends. I consider you all to be my family. I regret that we shall likely not see each other again.
I will go now to post this warning and entreaty to you. I wish you well, and in one last remonstrance to your intentions, I must tell you that I fear my eyesight is failing. It feels as if no matter how much I blink there is some hardening shape in there which I cannot dislodge.
Farewell, my dear Teresa.