Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Original Story by Mark Kodak!!

I'm proud to exhibit here this great story by Mark.

I'm simultaneously publishing it with +Horror Library+.Due to its length, read the intro, and then click ...more... to read the full, chilling story.

London, 25th of January, 1886
There is a veritable portal to Hell itself locked away in my basement. A nameless perdition held in abeyance, that serves as a reminder that some doors are best left unopened, and certain levels of knowledge are simply not worth the price of their attainment. The constant awareness of this reality haunts and chills me to the core

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Chris Perridas said...

The Shadow Of Oblivion
By Mark Kodak 2007

[The following account is a curious entry found posthumously in the diary of physicist Dr. Archibald Kretzmer, an otherwise mundane journal detailing several of his experiments with electricity. The book was found in its entirety, unharmed, amongst the charred remains of his house on December 3rd, 1894. Kretzmer’s body was never found, though police have presumed that he died in the blaze. The cause of the fire remains uncertain.]

London, 25th of January, 1886
There is a veritable portal to Hell itself locked away in my basement. A nameless perdition held in abeyance, that serves as a reminder that some doors are best left unopened, and certain levels of knowledge are simply not worth the price of their attainment. The constant awareness of this reality haunts and chills me to the core.
What some might consider a valid reason for questioning the very foundation of their sanity, I have rather chosen to accept as a suspension of, or should I say an “interruption” in, the empirical puppetry of time and space as it is conventionally understood. The particular event that awakened me to such "interruptions" opened my mind to a broader plane of consciousness, and a deeper reverence for the metaphysical reality I believe to be present within each one of us.

My revelation was induced by an experiment which I pursued within an environment of non-fluctuating vacuity. I wanted to be in a place where my mind would perceive itself from the perspective of being nowhere. I wanted to achieve this goal through scientific means and not meditation. Regretfully, I succeeded at my task, and I will hereafter refer to this specific existential mode in my professional writings as the "shadow of oblivion".

Let me first affirm that this was not brought about by any typical nepenthe of various opiates or absinthe. I was completely sober. I set forth to create an environment severed from all external stimuli, using only a specially prepared chamber in order to achieve such an artificial state of oblivion.

To begin with, I designed and built a suspension box roughly in the shape of a coffin, and imperviously sealed except for a few small vents for air tubes. I also fabricated a breathing apparatus for my nose and mouth. I then hung that casket midway from the ceiling of a carefully built and tediously calibrated room. I shall not describe the details of its construction at this time, nor in any of my forthcoming manuscripts. I have destroyed all my notes regarding the chamber, and have requested in my will that, in the event of my death, this very house should either be demolished, or burned to the ground.

After performing a final round of tests on both the room and the casket, and then verifying them with consistent results according to strictly controlled standards, I decided it was time to substantiate my theories. I spent the following three days fasting from solid foods, drinking only water and undergoing a regimen of basic physical exercises. It was on the eve of the third day that I made one final check of the apparatus, entered the room, locked the door, and climbed into the chamber completely naked.

I lay there in the cold black vault and waited for the automated sequence that would enclose me within the steel cocoon to commence. The lights dimmed, the machinery squeaked and groaned, the lid closed, tubes filled the box with salt water, and with one final click of the locks I was sealed inside. I cannot say how long I had been in the chamber before experiencing the awakening. I had no pocket watch or other timing devices.

It was in this view from nowhere that I began to sense a curious and foreboding presence. I felt as though some invisible phantasm which I presumed to be from my imagination, loomed immense somewhere just beyond the fringes of my perception. Floating adrift in that primeval void, I began to hear, (or perhaps dreamt of hearing), a chorus of soft liquid whispers welling up within the black ocean around me, slowly emerging from every direction at once.

I am not saying I "heard" these whispers in an audible sense, because that would be impossible considering the measures I took to occlude all sensory input. These susurrations were somehow known to me, not by the usual empirical pathways, but by some deep internal awareness beyond the tethers of tactile, optical, or aural feedback mechanisms in my neurology. They reverberated through the emptiness like murmuring siren echoes from some unnamable realm.

The sinuous language, if it could be called a language, was marked by smooth phonetic shapes flowing effortlessly with complex rhythms as they were spoken, drawn, or by whatever other means impressed upon my sensorium. The images inscribed upon my mind’s eye while drinking in the languid melody, can only be conveyed as bright coruscating tongues of cerulean fire dancing lambent upon a motionless sea.

I lay there in the simulated amnion listening to that fascinating music for what seemed like only a few minutes, when quite another feeling arose within the rapturous dark. I began to “know” and urgently resist a deep and penetrating dread from the very center of my consciousness, a feeling previously foreign to my memory and experience. This anxious terror swiftly bloomed and suffused into my body and soul the most unbearable torment I have ever encountered.

Those same flames of serenity that I felt only moments before had now become tenuous needles of scorching pain so sharp and agonizing, that I was hurled into a state of catatonic shock for some period of time before I could grasp the reactive ability to writhe beneath the ubiquitous torture. I could not even conjure the will to cry out in anguish.

The intensity of the suffering was indescribable. I can only liken it to a myriad of razor-sharp blades, or teeth, slicing and rending my naked flesh within the tightly cramped space of that impenetrable box. I would have given anything to be free from that agony.

When I finally did find the strength to reach for the safety switch, my movement only amplified the suffering. When I used my voice to scream out for help, I heard only the music of those liquid voices in rejoinder, echoing back with cold demonic laughter from the eternal dark. It seemed an inhuman and sinister expression of revelry mocking my attempt to find an answer beyond the phenomenal world.

In regret for both conceiving of, and attempting such an experiment, I mentally cried out to whatever deity I may have provoked to vouchsafe some shred of mercy, to deign some degree of deliverance from that torrid misery. I surrendered my arrogant desire of being the first to scientifically discern some ultimate meaning and purpose behind this vast indifferent and mechanical universe.

It was at this disclosure of self-awareness that the affliction abruptly ceased. A hot white flash flooded my field of vision, and when my eyes were able to focus again, the entire Erebus around me was transformed into my library, upstairs, at the opposite end of my house. I sat there naked, wet, and shivering at my desk for several minutes unable to believe that any of it was real. I thought perhaps I had fallen asleep and just awakened from some dreadful nightmare. My rational mind tried to explain it as some sort of psychoactive hallucination provoked by the extreme insomnia I had recently suffered. Yet the longer I remained there trying to convince myself it was merely a dream, the stronger that dream infused my actual flesh and blood.

I stood up and ran downstairs to visit the sensory deprivation room. Seeing the chamber undisturbed would give credence to my theory of experiencing some form of delusion. When I arrived, I found to my surprise that the door was locked. I remembered locking it as I began my experiment, but never at any time since. I left a key in my library desk drawer and posted a note upon the door itself in order that others might gain entry should my efforts prove disastrous. I proceeded back upstairs to fetch it and to put some clothes on.

I returned and inserted the key. And when I placed my hand upon the handle, my mind suddenly froze with an overwhelming sense of the most awful perplexity. I realized with panic that what I might find lingering behind that door may not be the remedy for my confusion, or even the answer to existence itself, but rather an infernal portal to a real and everlasting nightmare. A horror which I was merely granted a foretaste and perhaps given a second chance to reconsider. With this choice before me, I found myself impotent to act and utterly incapable of shrugging that possibility away as mere fantasy or foolishness. After all, I suppose I could just as well find simply an empty room, with no light, or sound, or smell.

To this day I have not re-opened that door. I never intend to, and in fact have taken measures to have the lock welded shut. I had the key melted down and molded into a pendant in the shape of an Ankh, the Egyptian symbol for both physical and eternal life. The loop of the cross is said to be held by the gods, like a key. It is that symbol that hangs around my neck as a constant reminder that each of us has a time appointed to face that interminable realm, and how we live in this life might very well determine the shape of our experience when we do finally embrace it.

I had intruded upon that “shadow of oblivion”, and stood uninvited upon the shore of the river of forgetfulness. The encounter has led me down a different path for meaning, not through shutting out the world in my search for knowledge, but by embracing it. Instead of trying to find meaning in the “nothingness”, I will look for it in the “substance”, through the sensory world of blood and bone and other souls.

I took this epiphany as a warning to not delve too deeply into the arcane mysteries of the universe. I am now resolved in a feeling of singular contentment. And while many of those itching questions remain unscratched, I find a great deal of satisfaction in the glimpses of the numinous all around me. The various and sundry “interruptions” I have experienced almost every day since.

Tue Aug 07, 08:18:00 AM

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