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"What?"
He took his bearings before responding. He was still in his office. Despite the pounding in his head, he seemed to be in one piece. Serafina Fini appeared to be standing above him, an angel in torn jeans and a t-shirt, with a bright halo of a florescent lightbulb behind her head.
Her look of mild concern told him that she had not seen too much. He cleared his throat and tried to appear professor-like.
"Ms. Fini, thank you for dropping by. Were you able to grade those exams?"
She offered a hand to help him up. He took it and slowly got to his feet.
"Those and the essays. They're on your desk," she made a face, "if you can find it."
The spinning was slowing down, and the pounding in his head was subsiding. Apparently he had heard correctly.
"Thank you again, was there anything else?"
"No - Yes. You left your radio on."
"I do that on occasion."
"There isn't anything on that station. Are you sure you're okay?"
A kettle whistled from his pocket. Callidy answered his phone.
"James here."
"Professor Callidy, it's Tim," responded a concerned voice, "Any luck?"
Various answers ran through his mind. He chose the professional one.
"Ah, Mr. Hall. I'm uncertain of the status of the divination, and will be until I get a chance to listen to the recording. Sonumancy requires a trance that makes immediate interpretation rather difficult. Shall we meet tomorrow before class? We can decipher this then. Bring your copy of Alja-Markir."
The Alja-Markir was one of the few Nordic texts on eldritch languages. He was almost certain that the language he had spoken before he went to sleep was located within its pages.
"Yes sir...sonumancy? Sound magic?"
"More like divination using sounds. Not anything you need to worry about at the moment."
If he couldn't get it right, he didn't want young Timothy Hall attempting, either. Hall's somehow succeeding where he failed would bug him on a deeply personal level. He had, after all, been doing this for much longer.
"Oh, well, good night then Professor. Give me a call if you come up with anything before then."
"Good evening Mr. Hall."
Callidy put the phone away and checked his watch. 2030. Time to head home.
Callidy's home made his office look spacious. Books littered every room, piled high in haphazard stacks. Loose sheets of papers covered in mathematical symbols, runes, or both, littered every book.
Haphazard as they were, they were not chaotic. Callidy had read every single one of them over the course of a few nights, thanks in large part to a misfired speed reading mentalist trick. He also knew where each one was; they were configured as per an algorithm belonging to a card catalog phrase he had discovered in an untitled book dedicated to deciphering the arrangement of stars. The effect was strange; the formula doubled as a librarian. The book he was looking for always seemed to be there, and any book he put down seemed to find its way back to the right place.
There were actually few side effects to that one. Whatever bleed-over that existed had caused the interesting arrangement inside his fridge, but he didn't mind. A little Calculus to locate a midnight snack might help him drop a few pounds.
He grabbed a book from the pile: Nocturnum Ocularis.
A bit of light reading before bed, he thought, as he cleared the books off his bed and settled onto it in a lotus position.
Sonumancy hadn't seemed to work out so well before. He was ready to try oneiromancy. Divination through dreams seemed a bit safer, although he rarely remembered their contents.
He opened the book, focused on the symbols of the formula, and drifted off to sleep.
He lay with his back on the ocean, bobbing slowly up and down. He knew it was a dream, even beyond the lack of color. Clouds didn't move like that in the sky, he didn't float that well in choppy water, and everything had some sort of ethereal feel to it. He moved his fingers in front of his face, watching trails of fingers following them. It was all quite peaceful.
Much more in the way of conscious thought proved difficult, and it was some time before he remembered why he was here. Timothy's brother, Robert Hall. Pathfinder.
He focused on the image of Pathfinder, the visual nature of the memory easily accessed in the shadowy realm of deeper slumber.
Where are you?
A rumble of dark clouds filled the sky along the horizon. He could see whitecaps forming and flashes of lightning between the clouds. His view telescoped --
--- and he was there, being pulled under by strong currents. Callidy choked and thrashed against the water before he remembered that he didn't need to breathe. He was thankful, his build precluded a career as a swimmer.
The water was dark here, but some deeper luminescence allowed him to see. A submarine was making its way in the distance. He started to move towards it, but stopped when he saw two figures outside of it, also underwater.
Pathfinder? No, this is a woman... and some sort of dog? How am I supposed to interpret this?
Something was happening and the figure was in trouble. He pushed forward to help, somehow, but the water changed, becoming gelid. He was stuck.
This isn't happening now, either. This is some sort of echo.
A movement in the liquid behind him turned him around, and he saw something. Dark ink hid a central mass from his view, while grotesque tentacled limbs twirled around each other in a random fashion. Five baleful red lights blazed out from the darkness. Chitinous barbs extended the length of the limbs, and it was these barbs that hooked into Callidy's flesh.
He shuddered and thrashed, but was unable to move. He opened his mouth and water rushed in.
A sharp yank drew him towards the inky darkness, leaving his bowler hat in his wake. He realized that the ink wasn't really that. It was a shell. Behind it was the creature in all of its glory, and so much more.
A rhythmic buzzing noise throbbed against his ears. He tried to close his eyes, but his lids became clear. The buzzing grew ever louder, and the hooks felt like thousands of ants crawling on his skin.
The dream began to fade. The ink parted, and he saw...
... his ceiling. For the briefest moment, he couldn't move. His skin crawled with pins and needles. He sat up with a start, cleared the books off of his bed, and turned off the alarm. Fog slowly lifted from the window in his room and he saw that the sun was already out. It was 10 in the morning and he was late to class.
A dark liquid seeped out from under Professor Callidy's office door.
A mathematical formula had been carved lightly into the wood, and Timothy Hall understood that it somehow obscured the entrance. Even with his sight active, even with knowing where exactly the door was, he still needed to pass by it at least twice before he could find it.
Callidy hadn't shown up this morning, and now this.
Am I in some sort of horror movie? If so, I'd better leave.
He shifted the tome and his backpack into his other arm and slowly opened the door.
Stacks of books greeted him. The Professor had always been reticent to discuss why, but books seemed to follow him everywhere. Maybe the liquid was ink. Tim pictured all of the ink from every book having fallen off the pages and pooling on the floor from a spell gone wrong.
Whoops, formula.
The professor hated it when people called it spells or magic, even though their nature was readily apparent. Tim allowed him that obfuscation along with his other eccentricities. After all, Callidy had found many interesting books for him.
His thoughts were cut short when he noticed Professor Callidy's assistant lying on the floor behind the desk. The dark liquid was pooled around her head. She lay motionless, and mostly intact, save for her eyes. They had been removed. In their place were little mouths that drooled some sort of black fluid down the sides of her face.
Tim froze. This can't be happening.
The mouths moved.
He realized that they were about to speak, and that he needed to not hear what they had to say. Some sort of self-preservation instinct kicked in, and he bolted towards the door, flicking the volume on the white noise generator up to full on his way. The loud static drowned out most other noise.
He slammed the door shut behind him and stuck a post-it note with a five pointed geometrical figure on the door. He backed up against the far wall and let himself slide to the ground.
The day was not going well. He had missed his first class and Professor Zenny had to cover for him. Then he had found Timothy Hall in a fetal position outside his office. There was a black stain on the floor coming in from the door, and a vigil sigil stuck to it. He wouldn't be going in there any time soon.
He took a deep breath and sighed. At least Hall had brought the book. For once his bulk came in handy, Tim's thin frame was easy to carry. Callidy headed towards the library, repeatedly whispering an eldritch phrase to keep attention focused away from the two of them.
The library had a rare book room. No one seemed to enter it, thanks to a similar effect to the formula that guarded his office door. The room itself had been stripped bare long before, the only evidence that anything special had ever existed in it was a handwritten card catalog. He suspected that whoever took the books left it there to taunt him.
He sat Tim down on a chair and lay the tome on the table. He began to randomly flip through the pages.
Everything I need is here. Timothy's brother is in trouble, and whatever that is must be related to what's going on here.
The words he had spoken the night before remained fresh in his mind, and it was not long before he was able to locate the section of the book that contained them. It was from a dark tongue from a land that existed on a branch of the World Tree that had long since withered and fallen from it.
dher kresk'ctha dar'fehrt en'kel'dlth com'li haaldaar dehrsht mekt'duen glasn'keth.
He did not say them out loud. Nor did he speak the translation.
Beware the Judge of Eyes. You have seen what should not be seen. You have been judged.
Great, Callidy thought, my first real attempt at divination and I've already annoyed some elder being.
His phone began to ring. People were going missing.
Professor Owen Zenny held the black stone expertly between two fingers and placed it on the board, sliding it dramatically into place. He pushed his spectacles up his nose a bit and smiled.
"In the chess world, we would call that check-mate. You don't seem like you have your heart into it today. Or your mind."
Callidy nodded, saying nothing.
"You're having trouble with a book."
It was a bit more than that, but most of his problems were related to books. Callidy nodded again. This was a game the two of them played. Zenny always told him that he wore his problems like a sign on his face. He hated being an open book.
"Keep this in mind," Zenny continued, "books are like tiny little boxes. Anyone can put something in it and anyone can take something out. If you don't keep your eye on the box, who knows what's inside?"
"Can you watch Hall for me? There are a few things that I need to figure out."
This time Zenny nodded.
Callidy realized that he was in his office. How long had he been here? He rubbed his forehead and stood up from his chair. The white noise machine was on and loud.
Has this all been a dream?
There was a knock on the door. He walked over and opened the door.
Standing behind it was a robed man, a hood pulled down far enough to conceal most his face but failing to obscure the too-wide smile of his muscular jaw. A waved blade in his hand was dripping an ichorous black liquid onto the floor.
"James Callidy?" the man intoned softly.
"Brother Theo?" Callidy responded randomly. The man looked momentarily confused.
Callidy slammed the door shut, and traced a close sigil on its surface. A soft glow trailed his fingers. The knocking began again. There was no way out of his office without opening up a path, and he hadn't figured out how to take anything with him.
He played back the recording he had made last night.
The knocking grew louder. The fading soft glow of the sigil started to pulse in time with the knocking. His recorded self began repeating himself about the Judge of Eyes. He fast forwarded it.
"mthk.kryn.tshkt.slyn.slyn.slyn.slyn.skrth.j'hurth.dhaad.tshkt."
Callidy in the recording began to repeat individual syllables. He committed them to memory. His speaking slowly faded into shallow breathing, and he heard the door open on the recording.
The knocking on the door in the present grew even louder.
"Professor Callidy?"
It was Serafina's voice. He heard her footsteps approach the recorder. That's when the screaming started.
The knocking became a pounding. Bits of glowing sigil began breaking off the door and flickering towards the floor like cigarette ashes. The door began to heat up. The hotter it got, the harder the knocking became.
Callidy pathed.
To Professor Callidy, a path was a simple physics calculation that could bend the fabric of space to move someone from one spot to another. The benefits of this were great, and he understood what kind of power it gave up.
Unfortunately, it only took him.
When Callidy appeared in the rare book room, his clothing remained behind. This was why he avoided paths; it was hard to find tweed jackets with leather elbow patches in his size.
He felt a surge of acid reflux and his stomach growled. Its contents also were missing. He hoped the cultist slipped in it.
Timothy Hall and Owen were gone, but Zenny had somehow known to leave his trench coat and the Alja-Markir behind. Open book indeed, it had benefited him this time. He wouldn't have left the book behind if the situation was reversed.
He flipped open back to where he had left off. The branch language had an alphabetical numeric system, so it seemed like it might refer to a number. Eleven syllables, eleven numbers. The first number was primary.
Callidy pulled out his phone and made a call.
The address that the phone number mapped to was a small studio shack not too far from the college. Dilapidated would have been a kind word to use; the portions of the windows that could be seen over wild undergrowth were caked with grime and silt.
Callidy treaded carefully through the yard, mindful that his bare feet could step on anything in the yard.
I feel like I should be at a football game.
He pushed the thought from his mind. Now wasn't the time for mirth.
The door opened with a creak, and a thick fog of dust floated in the air, particles glistening where light did manage to pierce the semi-translucent windows.
An empty fridge was missing a door, and a rotting mattress lay in the corner. A wooden trap door with a giant pig iron ring handle lay in the center of the room.
Of course, Callidy grimaced, why wouldn't there be a basement? Next paycheck for a scrolled copy of Gao Mei Si says that it creaks when it opens.
Callidy walked to the trap door and pulled at the ring. It obliged, creaking as it opened. He climbed the wooden stairs into the basement. The stairs creaked as well, but for a different reason. He was too good at Calculus.
The basement was a large room dug out into tightly packed dirt. Stone pillars randomly provided some support for the floor above, but seemed to serve as great a purpose in casting shadows. Torches in sconces lined the walls.
A stone altar lay on the other side of the room. Part of the altar was a table, with grooves connecting the center to the edges. Reddish-brown residue stained the grooves and the sides of the table. Before he could get to the unpleasant task of contemplating that, Callidy noticed the statue above the table. It was about the size of a trophy, and the idol was at once both familiar and indescribable. He felt drained and tired. He stepped forward.
A circle of shadowy figures stepped out from behind and between the columns. They wore dark robes, their hoods pulled low. Too-wide smiles dominated their faces. Most of them had knives.
There was no exit. He was too drained to path. One of them stepped forward.
"Professor Callidy," he said, placing odd emphasis on the name, "I had been remiss earlier. I neglected to introduce myself. I am --"
Callidy could not catch the name. It hovered at the edge of his consciousness.
"and we represent --"
Callidy was thankful that he couldn't catch this one. Even without understanding, he felt it draw on memories best left forgotten and places he hadn't been and never should go.
"We want to help you, with your current situation. Great and wondrous times are coming. We've seen them. Let me share."
The robed figure slowly approached, holding the wavy dagger as if it were some sort of offering.
How did they know I was going to be here, Callidy thought, I moved here as fast as a path. Maybe I really am an open book.
Comprehension dawned on him. His previous conversation with Owen. The inconsistencies with Serafina. His random position shifting. It all aligned like the stars. The Judge hadn't been speaking to him earlier. The Judge was speaking through him.
"dher.kresk'ctha.dar'fehrt,en'kel'dlth,com'li.haaldaar.dehrsht.mekt' duen.glasn'keth."
He felt the words leave his mouth as much as he heard them. The cultist winced.
"dher.kresk'ctha.dar'fehrt,en'kel'dlth,com'li.haaldaar.dehrsht.mekt' duen.glasn'keth."
He felt his vision begin to fade as the Judge of Eyes took control. He heard a dagger drop, and then silence. It was beautiful.
James Callidy rarely had disturbing dreams. Now he had two sets in a row. He dreamed of sweeping alien vistas, seeing without eyes. He dreamed of a throng of cultists, lying dead and dreaming on the floor, their mouth-eyes whispering warnings of their secret visions. He dreamed of tiny little boxes full of books, statues, and elder things. He dreamed of longing and emptiness, when he felt the presence of the Judge leave him and disappear back into the static.
He dreamed of a woman and her dog.
"Wait, what?"
Callidy looked around, confused. He was standing on a green and yellow grassy field. The sky was light blue, and puffy white clouds dotted the sky. The woman was dressed in a t-shirt, jeans, and a nice looking bowler cap. The dog was dressed in black, brown, and white fur.
"See?" the dog intoned in an intellectual British accent, "he is most definitely not a Dreamer."
"Yeah, yeah," she muttered, then seemed to perk up a bit. "What's your name?"
Callidy blinked, then extended a hand.
"James."
They shook.
"Chloe. And this is Tuffy. So... what were you doing at the submarine?"
Callidy frowned. The memory was blurry. "I was at a submarine?"
The woman shook her head and sighed. "Never mind."
The dream started to fade. "Hey, wait! You dropped this. It took me forever to find you."
She tossed him his bowler.
James Callidy knew of only one person that had the resources to identify the statue that had somehow come into his possession. It was the same person that donated the money to fund the school's library. Andrew Weinstein. He made a call.
Next: Tiny Little Boxes
Characters created by Jesse N. Wiley and Chris Reid
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