I awoke the next morning in a cold sweat. I had terrible nightmares of things you could not even imagine existing in this world, but I do not think they were from this world or even this universe for that matter. These things, these beasts were from some other dimension.
I made coffee and got ready to brave the day. I was still trying to shake off the dark images as I went to the office to submit my reports and receive a new assignment. All morning I was lost in the haze of my dreams and I had a kind of jamais vu towards my co-workers. I was thankful to return home early.
I settled in my study and searched the databases of where the research material I needed was deposited and then I would map out the places I needed to visit tomorrow. It was evening by now and I was working at my desk in the low lighting that
glowed from the brass desk lamp. Usually once I get started on a research project I became unstoppable, it was like detective work. Seek and you will find.
I felt a crawling sensation and was startled as something caught my attention at the periphery of my vision and when I
looked out the window to my left I noticed a sinister black shape moving outside. Holy shit! What the bloody hell is that? It could not have been my reflection in the glass, I had colour, what moved outside was a kind of dark shadow that glistened in the porch lights and it was no dog in the bushes, it stood tall. My heart raced. Was it a burglar or maybe just a shadow from the wind blowing a tree branch? I went to the window and looked out, the streetlights were on but I didn’t see anything in the yard and the roads were empty.
I closed the shutters and turned off the desk lamp. Whatever it was I did not want it looking inside at me. There was also a window behind me and I secured those shutters as well then sat back at the desk to continue working on my laptop in the dark with just the computer screen for illumination. I could feel the tension tighten in my neck and shoulders. It felt like there was something close by watching me.
I had just started typing on the keyboard when I heard it. A long slow scratching sound on the glass behind me, getting up I tilted one of the shutter slats up and I screamed.
I saw it, a shadowy form at the glass, it engulfed me with fear and then it disappeared with my sharp cry. I was in a state of hysteria. Should I run to lock all the doors and windows, should I phone the police, should I get a weapon of some kind? I did nothing. I froze. A feeling of emptiness and total
When I recovered I decided to phone my neighbour. Their phone rang and I got their answering machine but I rang off not wanting to leave a mental ward message that they would play back later and either laugh at me or accuse me of being dotty. Why is it when you are busy and want to be left alone you are constantly interrupted and when you need someone there was never anyone around?
I peeked back out the window slat with the phone in my hand ready to dial the police, nothing.
I took a deep breath and gathered my head for a minute then went to the kitchen to get a butcher knife and a torch like some stupid character in a B-Horror Film. I opened the front door and flashed the light around by the bushes in front of the study window, nothing. Then I went around to the side yard surveying the perimeter. Still nothing, no footprints in the flowerbeds below the window or anywhere else around that I could see.
Okay I’m losing it, definitely time to shut down the
computer for a while. I must be tired from lack of sleep and now my imagination was running amuck. I went back inside the house walking around locking every door and securing all the windows twice like an obsessive-compulsive. Whatever was out there, even if it was only in my imagination, I did not want it in here. I went upstairs and got ready for bed taking a sleeping aid to make sure I got some rest then locked the bedroom door.
I turned on a movie and set the timer to turn off after an hour and hopefully the sleeping pill would have kicked in by then. It did. I had fallen into a deep sleep until I heard a sound that woke me up and it took me a while to regain consciousness because I was still groggy from the pill. I looked at the clock. It was 3:20AM. The noise continued, a pounding, it felt like it was beating in my head.
It was knocking. Someone was knocking on the door in three slow raps. Thinking of the earlier incident with the ominous shadow I paled. Bloody hell! It sounded like it could have come from downstairs but it seemed to originate from everywhere at once. Knock, knock, knock… It was louder now.
Shit! I got up and went to the bedroom window and looked out hiding myself behind the curtain but I could not see anything. I unlocked the bedroom door and tiptoed silently downstairs, the tapping sounded again. Knock, knock, knock… I screeched on an intake of breath as the hairs rose on the back of my neck and I cringed in fright. This was freaking me out!
The saying ‘To him who knocks it shall be opened’ came to my mind but I wasn’t the one knocking was I? And there was no way I was going to open a door to whatever hell might be
waiting on the other side of it.
I stood at the front door and looked through the peephole but there was nobody there. I turned suddenly when I heard scratching noises like steel nails on glass coming from the study
and a primal fear washed over me like a spectre from an opiate dream that promised unsavoury horrors of unknown things.
I moved slowly, step by cautious step, my whole body tingled frying my nerve endings with excited current as I crept into the study. Something was trying to get in.
Knock, knock, knock… Again it beckoned from the window behind the desk. I walked towards it and lifted my hand to open the shutter slats but I could not force myself to do it, afraid that my darkest nightmares might manifest. I decided instead to devise a strategy to defend myself if it broke into the house.
I sat down in the chair breathing in the oppressive darkness and felt as if I was in a Chamber of Reflection in my comfortable Chair of Contemplation letting the silence consume me. I waited, and I waited some more, there was nothing but the perfect stillness before the coming of dawn. If it happened again I decided I’d phone the police but I doubted that they would dispatch someone because I heard knocking.
I looked down at the desk and saw the incunable from the mysterious shop I was reading last night. I picked it up and took it with me to the kitchen to make some camomile tea and then returned to bed locking the door behind me once again.
I sat for a moment sipping my tea and then opened ‘The Levoriqum’ where I had left off and started to read and continue the translation.