Visions of the Prophets

Revelations wrought from gods long forgotten.

In the dark, dank halls in the basement of the old sanitarium, a place where not even the mice tread for fear of disturbing the solemn aura of hostile tranquility, a lone voice screeches. In these halls, one after the other, locked metal doors stand guard for the souls trapped inside. Within, the wretches so deranged and removed from reality that they deserve not even the forlorn promise of day that comes with being above the ground. They are buried beneath earth and concrete, waiting for their bodies to match their housing, as a corpse would to a casket. Except the one voice.

            In cell 027, an unusual subject makes his residence. Alfred Hemsworth, as he was known above. Professor Alfred Hemsworth. A man who before graced the halls of universities and institutions of learning, now rampages only in an eight by nine foot cell, his only companion a pioneer in the primitive science of psychology, Lawrence O’Neil.

            “Tell me again, Alfred, and be measured this time, what did you see?” Lawrence spoke, as he had for hours before.

            “What did I see? If only it were so easy. If only it was as easy as describing the devil and hell. If only it was as easy as describing the face of god. We have words for those places, and those things. Hell is evil, pure evil, malevolence and vileness. The devil is a wretch and a b*****d, a w***e and a serpent. God is just, and true, pure and good. Words. Words…” Alfred’s face shrank in as he snarled out the last word.

“I based my whole life around words. Around their meanings, the knowledge within. In the works of Shakespeare and Tennyson, words have such delicious meanings. Love, hate, anger, calm, mourning, bravery, tenderness, humor. Even these vague and nebulous terms have meanings. Something I can describe to you. Something that you might relate to. In the history books I read, of all the horrors wrought by man against his brother, of all the sinful and despicable acts of beasts in human skin, nothing comes within the smallest measurement in all of creation, known or unknown to us, to being close to the terrific sights I have seen. There might be one man you know who has been in my position. Surely you’re a Christian man Mr. O’Neil, and you know who John of Patmos is. John the Revelator? Seven headed beasts with ten horns, fiery avenging angels sent to do battle with the forces of wickedness… these are nice stories, but they are child’s play compared to the nightmare I face. He could describe to you what he saw. I can’t even begin,” Alfred finished, staring at the visually unnerved psychologist.

“Well, Alfred,” He stammered, “That’s the most I’ve heard from you yet. Since, whatever it is that you saw can’t be described to me, at least for the moment, can you tell me anything about it? Anything that might establish some kind of context or framework?” Lawrence asked, trying to give his patient a foothold on sanity, and himself a straw to grasp on to help.

“I was in my study, as I often am, reading. I’m a very boring person, Mr. O’Neil, quite content to live out my days with books and learning and lecturing. But recently, I had grown restless. Books are powerful tools, Mr. O’Neil, and terrible. I had found a string to pull on, so to speak. There were people like John, many centuries before he saw anything. And they were rendered babbling fools. Oracles in Ancient Greece, the soothsayers of the Orient. In the ancient tomes I read, forgotten manuscripts lost in time, I learned of their visions.

However, for all my reading, I was still ignorant of what it is they had seen. I was determined to find out what it it was. I traveled east, to Nepal as it is known today, but it has held other names, names long lost and forgotten. It is there that the most complete records of the visions are kept. I deduced their location tediously, and hired a guide to take me to the locale. He was worthless. He cowed to the local superstitions and took me only to the path leading to the forgotten temple. As the sun was setting, I reached my destination. Vines covered the rusty sandstone structure, which for its age, was remarkably intact.

I was tired, Mr. O’Neil, dreadfully so. The mountains of Nepal end above the clouds, and I hiked up and down them for hours that day, and many days before. But, I sojourned on. I approached the great doors of the long abandoned temple, and with a shove, cracked the seal that had long protected the secrets within. I held my lamp up and to my surprise, there were rows of torches that were ready to be lit. Untouched, they must have sat for a millennia waiting for someone, for me, to light them.

After the hall was well lit, the scale of the structure hit me. It was the size of Westminster Abbey, and the majority of the building was carved out from the mountain itself. The edifice presented outside gave me no idea of how deep the building went. It was one great, long hall, and on the sides were shelves and shelves of scrolls, books, grimoires, and even stone slates. I am a learned man, I can read Greek, Latin, Arabic, Spanish, French, German, Italian, ancient Hebrew, some Chinese, and some Russian, but within this hall there were records with every known language, and some languages that are totally alien to us.

I read what I could. Ancient rituals and rites. Forgotten histories of forgotten peoples. Forbidden and dangerous knowledge. I was consumed by it. I had provisions enough to last three days at the temple and the day’s trek back to the village at the base of the mountain. I stayed there for weeks, commuting every few days to resupply. I bought a mule as well. I was going to take some things back home.

It was on my final day there that I explored the end of the hall. There was a door, a door I suspect that has never been opened. I grabbed a torch and walked up to it. There was an inscription carved into it in a language I could not read, nor had I ever seen, even in the pages of the temple. But then, after blinking, it appeared to me in Latin.  Inside lies the nothingness of everything, and the everything of nothingness, it would say in english. I opened the door. I heard the stone scrape as it gave in to my push. I felt air rush around me as the pressure changed. I smelt death inside.

Not as in decaying flesh or rot, but something more… sinister. It was not the scent of death’s after effects, it was the scent of death. I cannot tell you how or why I knew that that was the smell, but you must believe me, it was the odor of the reaper. It was unsettling. Inside the small room, not much larger that this padded one I’m in now, was a pedestal of onyx and jade. Atop it rested a scroll. For a second it looked like a Torah scroll, but it was not Hebrew affixed on it, it was the language the door first bore to me, only now, I understood the language.”

Alfred took a moment to breathe. Lawrence looked at his notes and asked,

“Alfred, how do you think you were able to read the language on the scroll?”

“Mr. O’Neil, it was they who I saw in my visions that let me read their language.”

“Why do you think they would they do that?”

“It’s not what I think, It’s what I know. They that lived before life, those whose ageless age predates time, feed on the fears of the mortals. On their suffering and agony. On hate and anger. Violence. Evil. Punishment. Revenge. But, they need creatures to be aware of them sometimes. They need the raw energy that comes with torment. And betrayal.

For the first month after my trip, I could feel their power in me. I had access to knowledge, past, present, and future, that no one had. In the past, I saw the birth of man, the start of civilization, the fall of empires, none of them recorded in history books. In the present, I saw things for what they truly are. Priests, politicians, the police, teachers, judges, kings, queens, generals, they are all liars. Some knowingly, some unknowingly. Those in the pulpit are the worst liars. There is no God, as we understand Him to be, and there is no divine love or grace. I am convinced that if there is a God, He was created by those monsters.

And in the future, I see many things. Industry will give way to technology. Science will supplant the supernatural. And people will live for ages. But this is a fraction of the future compared to the suffering. Death, is what I mostly see. A madman will shape Europe in his twisted image, and millions upon millions will die as tyrants seek to solidify their power over what meager scraps of land they hold. Machines will fly high above us and rain death at levels you and I cannot comprehend. Wars will be fought over lies. Innocent lives will be lost by lunatics with machinations as crazed as you believe me to be. Fire will spread from one corner of earth to the others as all life is extinguished and earth becomes like hell, but it will be worse. They will come.”

As Alfred finished his warning, he grinned.

“Alfred, why are you grinning?” Lawrence asked, cocking an eyebrow and tilting his head back ever so slightly.

“Long after you are dead, and your grandchildren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren are long gone too; when the moment is perfect, the Ancient Ones will be made manifest on earth. They will make slaves of masters, sinners of saints, the strong will cower in fear as their reality slips beneath them, leaving them incapable of grasping the nightmare around them. But it is no dream. It is very real. The seas will boil red with the blood of children. Canopies of human flesh will supplant the forests and jungles of earth, our bones making the trunks. Bile will rain from the sky. And maggots will crawl and cover any living thing left, torturing the remaining souls with an endless barrage of agony. Hell is a place everyone will long for.”

The smile on Alfred’s face grew as his eyes widened.

Truly this man has gone completely insane, thought Lawrence.

“Alfred, I’m going to ask you one more time, who are these ‘masters’ or ‘Ancient Ones’ you speak of? Please Alfred, I want to help you,” Lawrence asked warily, unsure of what the lunatic before him would do. 

“I think you have enough context now, Mr. O’Neil. I will tell you of them. In Hebrew, Tohu wa-Bohu, is in reference to the universe before Elohim made order. Chaotic and without form, void and desolate, there are many ways to interpret it. But it was not empty. It was the home of they who walk through time. They who weave the fabric of the universe. They who hold ultimate power. They who predate and lord over God. There are no words to describe their age. Or their look. Their names are unpronounceable and their appearance causes the sane to go mad. They are the Alpha and the Omega. They are the void. They are desolation. Chaos.

To them, the meddling of our kind means so little that the realm by which we perceive reality is but a facet of theirs. They exist in a realm completely beyond our understanding. Shapeless, endless, tireless, they wait. They make their existence known only so that they might feed off our suffering, and take perverse pleasure in the horror they inflict on those hapless beings that become aware of them. Have you seen under my straightjacket, Mr. O’Neil? It’s not a pretty sight.

After they took my wits and senses, they revealed their forms to me. Ever since then, I have clawed away at my skin. I flayed myself with my hands, desperately seeking a way to expose my body, my mind, my soul, essence… any and every part of me. I tore away chunks of my flesh, ripped holes in my hide, in the hopes that by taking my viscera from inside to out, I might find in me something untainted by them. I see now that nothing can stop them. My wounds are deep and, to any other man, mortal. But they, they won’t let me die. The lesions that I bear will not close. They throb in agony as puss oozes from the gashes. I long only for death, so that maybe, just maybe, the pain can stop.

 Would that I could turn back the passage of time and leap from that temple and smash my body against the rocks below, so that I could die without having seen what I have seen. Without having known what I know. Even now they speak to me, whispers in my mind. I suspect the only reason you and I are having this conversation is because they are willing it. They have stopped racking me with their cruel inflections, agonizing me with unclean knowledge. As soon as they wish though, it will continue.

One final thing, Mr. O’Neil, while I’m still lucid. Tell my wife I love her. Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her,” before he finished, Alfred’s body contorted in pain, his arms struggling against the tight confines of the white straightjacket as otherworldly strength possessed him and he burst from his bindings.

“Tell her,” he continued in a dissonant and distorted voice, “that when the time is ready, I will bathe in her blood, and her head will be staked on the top of the temple. He eyes will be gouged out by my hands and he body will be food for carrion. Tell the w***e that nothing can save her, and that the pathetic ‘god’ she worships is a dead as the world is,” Alfred finished, heaving up and down.

His body was now exposed and Lawrence saw for the first time the gaping wounds that covered his body. Deep were the gashes that he had made with his hands, and puss boiled from his cuts.

“We’re done, Mr. O’Neil. Don’t bother returning, Alfred is dead,” and with the final message from whatever conscious had control of Alfred, his body dropped to the ground, lifeless.

Lawrence could only stand there in disbelief at what he had just seen. Everything he thought he knew about the world, the universe, and even God were suddenly called into question. He turned and left, yelling to a guard that something had happened.

“Mr. O’Neil, is everything alright?” The guard yelled as he ran down the hall to cell 027.

“Alfred has died. Violently. He was telling me about,” at this, Lawrence paused. What was he going to tell the guard?

“about something, I don’t exactly know what,” was all he said. “I’m going to leave now, I don’t think I’ll be back for a long time,” he walked out before the guard could call after him.

Several days later, Lawrence went to Alfred’s real home. A housekeeper answered the door and let him in. The wife wasn’t in and was in Paris for a holiday. He went to Alfred’s study and took a look around. On the desk, he saw a satchel with a book poking out of the pouch. He walked over to it and read the title. “Visions of the Prophets: The Origins of Prophecy, Lunacy, and Religion as it is Revealed by the Ancients”. Lawrence grabbed the book and, with a moment’s hesitation, stuffed it inside his coat. He said goodbye to the housekeeper, and with haste, walked out of the house.