Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

I went to the back door. It was still a little open, and I yelled out, “Mr. Tillinghast!”

In a couple minutes he came puffing up, his face red and all sweaty, and he had a smile on his face that I think would’ve scared Bebe. “We baffled the fools, boy! They took my grandfather’s equipment — only the parts that don’t matter. Of course the key piece was destroyed.” He was digging out his wallet. “Long ago, destroyed. By an oaf.”

I asked, “They didn’t take the stuff that shakes makes that hum, the dream hum?”

“What’s that you say? Dream hum?”

He had the money halfway out of his wallet. He was staring at me like I just said I was working for the cops.

“I . . . that’s what I call it. When your equipment makes that noise like bees and that other hum and I feel a little sick but then I get a tingle in my head and then I start to have those dreams.” It all came out at once like that. I felt stupid.

“A tingle. Where in your head.”

I tapped my forehead, between my eyes.

“You feel it there — that is an indication of extrasensory activation of the pineal.”

I shrugged. I was wondering, back then, what a pine-eel was.

“Yes,” he went on, looking at my head like he might want to do one of those frog dissections of it. “The tingle. I know it well. One feels it between the eyes, inside the skull — but it originates deep in the vertebrate brain, between the cerebral cortex and the midbrain you see. At the pineal! Yes.”

I was looking at his hand. It was still frozen to that money.

“Oh, your remuneration!” He took the money out and handed it to me. “You did a fine job. We cut it fine but we fooled them, boy.”

“My name’s Vester.”

“Indeed? What is the derivation of the name?

“Derivation? Oh. It’s from . . . Sylvester.”

“Then why not go with Sylvester! I like it much better! Or Syl , perhaps?”

“Syl — I like that better.”

“Syl it shall be. This business of . . . dreams. What sort?”

“Like . . . at the aquarium.”

“You dreamed you were at an aquarium?”

“No. The dreams — sometimes I dreamed of giant things like the jellyfish from the Providence aquarium. But I seen big ones right in the room with me. But not exactly jellyfish. And a slow-motion exploding thing. Like in a video game if they show a explosion playback. You know?”

He was gaping at me. “Good lord. You saw all this over there , at the trailer park?”

“Yes.”

“Remarkable! Do come in, boy, we’ll have a glass of wine and discuss it.”

Wine?

I was suddenly wondering if I should trust him. Maybe he was going to get all handsy on me.

But we went in the living room, that had only two old chairs in it, that smelled like someone’s grandmother, and he poured us two glasses of something he called red port. I’d had beer before, and some of my mom’s Carlo Rossi, but not this. I liked it.

“Only one glass for the youngster, ha ha,” he said. He said ha ha that way when he was in a good mood. “This is old port, old like me. I like old things, apart from the productions of science. I am, like my father, an antiquarian yet I like technology that is quite modern — if only my grandfather had computers!”

Then he started telling me about Crawford Tillinghast, his grandfather, and how he was a genius but “a vile person, in himself” so that Grandmama — he pronounced it grandmahMAH — ran off from him when she was pregnant. She had a baby, who was Mr. Tillinghast’s father. A letter came to her from someone with a story about Crawford Tillinghast and someone who shot his machine because of what he saw. And Grandmama told Mr. Tillinghast’s father that the letter was true. It was a story of how he had a machine that used “resonance waves” to transport some secret frequency — that’s Mr. Tillinghast’s words. Secret frequency . He sent it right to the pineal gland in the brain and it allowed the person to see a world that’s all around us, real close, but you can’t see it.

“Yes yes yes, the servants were affected, they attracted a predator from that world, yes yes yes they died, but what of it? That was not Grandfather’s intention! All truly vital research entails risk! His research was unprecedented! It was of vital importance to science and then it was rudely interrupted. Such a tragedy. So much to explore!” He gave out a big sigh at that. “Of course, I have continued from precisely where he was forced to stop.” Mr. Tillinghast drank some more of his port and smacked his lips like he was tasting what he was thinking. “Consider, Syl! There is the microbiological world we all know of. Bacteria, viruses . . . Yet imagine how startled the first researchers were to realize these tiny creatures were everywhere! And then there was the hidden worlds of radio waves and X-rays and cosmic rays. Naturally there are other kinds of hidden worlds with organisms quite unknown to us and I do not mean the worlds to be found in other planetary systems! I mean a hidden world right here, Syl! Oh my grandfather knew — yet there’s so much Grandad Crawford did not know! Why, consider quantum effects and neutrinos. I have gone much further than he! I have superior equipment, I have annuities from Great-granddad’s oil wells, I have endless time for research . . . but I am beginning to grow old, child.” He looked at his hands. “Arthritis troubles me. And I do not trust physicians.” He gave me that weird smile again. I guess it should have scared me but it didn’t. “I shall need an assistant! Someone like you, who evidently can see the truth and not go mad! But perhaps youth is the key to keeping sanity when exposed to the secret world as youth is not mentally ossified.” (I still haven’t looked up ossified yet.) “Still — why not test this hypothesis?”

“Yeah. I guess.” I wasn’t saying much. I was, like, whoa, how did this guy get so talkative? He always seemed like he never wanted to talk to anybody. But I guess he didn’t have anybody he could talk to about this stuff before.

Then I seen he was looking at me like he was waiting for something.

When I didn’t say anything he said, “Well? Are you willing?”

“Willing to do what?”

“To test the hypothesis about your gland.”

I was looking at the front door thinking yeah, I should run for it . . .

He made a kind of “oh, sorry” noise in his throat. “To be clear — your pineal gland. Within your brain! Your ability to see the . . . you called them dreams. They are not dreams, however. You see, the pineal gland, though deep within your brain, is a kind of sensory organ, Syl. It has other functions, too, but when properly stimulated it allows you to see more than anyone else — a whole new world alongside ours! The Alternating World!”

“Oh. Yeah that’s okay,” I said. “Can I have a glass of water first?”

After moving all that stuff I was really thirsty.

“You can call me Oswald, if you like, Syl,” he said, as he powered up the equipment.

I sat on an old kitchen chair set up at one end of the attic facing the equipment. There were little wired up circles he called monitoring devices taped to me. He promised they wouldn’t hurt.

The attic was long and narrow and it surprised me how big it was. There was equipment in I had never seen, but I haven’t seen much. One piece had a screen that showed waves on it. There was something in the middle of the attic pointed upward that reminded me of a satellite antenna. There were windows in the walls at either end of the attic but they were covered up with sheet metal.

I was starting to feel scared. But I was thinking about him saying, You can call me Oswald, if you like, Syl.