Dr. Hawthorne was thirty-seven years old when he arrived at Columbia College in the autumn of 1887. He had studied archaeology at Harvard, spent several seasons abroad among the ruins of Europe and the Levant, and possessed the peculiar habit of speaking about dead civilizations as though their inhabitants had merely stepped out for luncheon.
He did not believe in ghosts.
This was not, as one might reasonably assume, because he had never encountered one.
Quite the opposite.
In fact, for the past six years, Dr. Hawthorne had been employed by the American Secure Containment Initiative. His appointment at Columbia was merely the latest in a succession of respectable positions arranged on his behalf by the organization. To the faculty, he was an archaeologist of some distinction, brought in to assume the responsibilities of a colleague whose declining health had necessitated an indefinite leave of absence.
Part of that was true. But it simply wasn't the whole truth.
His predecessor, Dr. Douglas, had also been employed by the Initiative.
For nearly twelve years, the old man's university office had served as an unofficial listening post. Students brought him artifacts they couldn't identify. Professors consulted him regarding peculiar discoveries. Travelers returned from distant corners of the world with stories that most respectable men ordinarily dismissed after supper.
Most amounted to nothing.
A carved idol purchased in Constantinople became considerably less mysterious once somebody recognized the inscription as being a phallic joke.
A supposedly haunted Roman coin proved to be counterfeit.
The severed hand which continued bleeding three days after its owner's death proved considerably more interesting. But, Dr. Hawthorne had learned early in his career that the world contained many strange things. He had also learned that most of them were merely ordinary things that were poorly understood.
That distinction was important.
Dr. Douglas, apparently, had forgotten it.
At least, that was the conclusion Dr. Hawthorne reached upon first examining the office he'd inherited.
It was a disaster.
Books occupied every available surface. Maps had been pinned over other maps. Archaeological journals competed for space with newspapers from Boston, Philadelphia, New York and several towns in between. Most of which Dr. Hawthorne had never heard of. Even a human skull sat inexplicably atop a stack of examination papers.
Three filing cabinets stood against the far wall. The first contained university correspondence. The second contained Initiative records. The third was locked.
Dr. Hawthorne found the key taped beneath the desk.
Inside were seven thick folders.
None bore an Initiative case number.
Instead, written across the first in Dr. Douglas's increasingly unsteady hand were two words:
BURNING KING
Dr. Hawthorne stared at them.
Then sighed.
He had heard of that name before.
Everyone in the Initiative eventually accumulated a few cases they preferred not to discuss. Usually this reluctance arose from embarrassment. Occasionally it came from grief.
Dr. Douglas's own was apparently from Vermont.
Several years before, reports had reached the Initiative concerning a small community in the Green Mountains. Livestock had disappeared first. Then people. Local residents complained of sleeplessness and peculiar dreams. A child claimed that voices spoke from the hills at night.
Dr. Douglas and Dr. Hawthorne had been sent to investigate. The investigation culminated in a raid conducted jointly by Initiative agents, state authorities and local constables upon an isolated compound deep within the mountains. They found thirteen men and women dancing naked around a wicker figure nearly thirty feet tall.
They also found the missing townspeople. Luckily, the fire had not been lit.
Dr. Hawthorne remembered that detail. He also remembered several others as well. The cultists had offered little resistance. Some appeared almost relieved. During subsequent interrogation they denied worshipping Satan, Christ, pagan idols, or anything else that Agents suggested.
They worshipped, they claimed, the Old Gods.
When asked their names, the prisoners insisted they had none.
When asked for images, they laughed.
One woman reportedly told Dr. Douglas:
“Look around you.”
When asked for clarification, she explained;
"Everything which crawled, swam, flew, breathed or grew was in their image.”
Only one among them was consistently afforded a title.
The Burning King.
Dr. Hawthorne had been there and he had read the report.
He remembered thinking it unpleasant. He had also remembered thinking that prisoners were insane. But most reassuringly of all, he remembered being grateful that no one got hurt.
The case was closed.
Now, sitting in Dr. Douglas old chair, he opened the folder.
The first document was dated:
August 12, 1884.
Doctor DouglasIt was one day after the great earthquake.
The following conversation was between myself and a student. He was a third year by the name of Arthur Whitmore. He can be described as an average student, though he possessed an unfortunate habit of sketching in his notebook when he got bored.
The lecture had ended nearly ten minutes earlier. Most of the class had already filtered into the corridor when I noticed him still sitting near the back of the room.
He was sketching at his desk.
"Mr. Whitmore?" I called. But he ignored me.
"Mr. Whitmore?” I repeated.
The young man looked up, as if awakened from a dream.
"Yes, sir?"
"Class is over." I said.
Whitmore glanced toward the door, then down at his notebook. He chewed on his lip before asking:
"Could I speak with you?"
I walked over to my desk and gathered the remaining papers on it.
"You already are."
"Privately, sir?"
That made me pause. A private conversation usually meant that something queer was afoot. So I dismissed the last few students lingering near the doorway and waited until they had disappeared down the corridor. I shut the lecture hall door and walked over to my desk.
"Very well." I said, seating myself behind it.
Whitmore approached me, with his notebook in hand. Its then that I noticed that the young man looked tired. There were dark circles beneath his eyes. His state, normally well groomed, looked as though he'd worn the same clothes for a few days.
"Are you ill, Mr. Whitmore?"
"No, sir."
"You look ill."
"I haven't been sleeping." The student replied, with a sheepish smile.
"Ah, and you've come to an archaeologist? I myself sometimes forget that sleep is a necessity. But that's what coffee is for, mhm?"
Whitmore smiled faintly at my joke.
"I suppose it does sound rather foolish."
"Only slightly." I replied not unkindly. I find taking a softer approach helps to keep the conversation from derailing.
I gestured toward the empty chair across from him. Whitmore sat. For a few moments, neither I nor him spoke. Then Whitmore asked:
"Did you feel the earthquake on Sunday?"
Douglas raised an eyebrow.
"I believe everyone did."
The earthquake had been the principal topic of conversation around campus for the last two days. I myself had been in my office when the shock came. Books rattled upon their shelves. A framed map fell from the wall. Somewhere outside, a horse had panicked badly enough to throw its rider.
It was truly remarkable. But hardly catastrophic.
"What about it?" I asked. Whitmore rubbed his hands together.
"Do you think something like that can affect your sleep?"
"Certainly."
"Even afterward?"
"I don't see why not."
Whitmore nodded. That seemed to reassure him. But there was something else.
"What have you been dreaming about?" I asked.
The young man's sheepish smile disappeared.
"I don't really know."
"You've lost sleep over dreams you can't remember?" I asked.
"I remember parts."
"Such as?"
Whitmore hesitated.
"Walking."
Douglas waited for more. When none came I prompted him:
"Walking to where?""Where?" Arthur Whitmore asked.
"A familiar place?"
"No."
"I told you this was foolish."
"Most dreams are." I reached for my pen, and notebook. "Humor me."
Whitmore thought for a moment.
"It's warm in the dream." He said, quietly.
"Warm?"
"Very."
"Anything else?" I asked him. He hesitated, and shut his eyes.
"Dry. It was so very dry. I think there's sand."
"Like a beach?"
"No." My student replied, firmly. "There was no water."
I made note of that.
"What else?" I asked, hoping for more details on his dream taking place in some desert.
Whitmore stared at his notebook.
"There's somewhere I'm supposed to go. They wanted me to go to the Mountains, beyond the sea of sand,” my student replied. Whitmore had always been one of my more poetic pupils.
"I don't want to go." Whitmore continued. "But a voice urged me to go."
Whitmore's fingers tightened together around his notebook.
"Because every time I fall asleep, I'm a little closer."
Douglas studied him.
"Closer to what?"
Whitmore was silent for several seconds.
Then:"I don't know."
I waited. Whitmore looked toward the closed doorway as though suddenly embarrassed someone might overhear them. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter.
"But I'm so very afraid to see what it wants to show me."
“Why?” I asked.
He hesitated, still gazing at his notebook.
“I don't know.”
I assured Arthur Whitmore that there was nothing unusual about what he described. Plenty of people have unsettling dreams. Especially after experiencing something as drastic as Sunday's earthquake. I advised him to get to bed earlier, and to avoid coffee and liquor until he feels better. I also asked if he could visit me, if he experienced any other queer dreams.
He seemed satisfied with my explanation.
I was satisfied as well.
Dr. Hawthorne lowered the page. For several minutes he sat there and stared at the skull on the table. There was nothing remarkable about the account. Sure, Arthur Whitmore was experiencing strange dreams, but if anyone other than Dr. Douglas wrote that, there would be nothing of note. But this was Dr. Douglas's account. Not some snake oil salesman. Dr. Hawthorne picked up the page, and began to read again;
August 14, 1884
Dr. DouglasArthur Whitmore visited me during my office hours today. He looked worse.
His hair was unkempt, and the dark circles beneath his eyes had grown considerably since our conversation two days prior. His clothes were wrinkled. The notebook he carried with him during our previous meeting remained tucked beneath his arm. I asked if he had taken my advice.
"I did," he said, in a low, uneasy voice.
"And?"
"I slept."
//"That's generally the desired outcome, isn't it?"
Whitmore didn't smile.
//“What is sleep, but rest from the waking world?” He asked. “Then did I rest? No. I dreamt.”
"The same dream?"
He hesitated.
"I think so."
"You think?"
"Is it the same dream, if it continues from where I left off?"
That caught my interest.
"The Mountains?"
Whitmore nodded.
I gestured toward the chair opposite my desk.
"Then sit. Tell me what happened."
Whitmore did so, placing his notebook across > his lap. For several moments, he said nothing.
Then:"I climbed those mountains. Ancient stone worn smooth by eons of windblown sand. It was warm, under my hands, like the dying embers of a fire.” He said quietly.
"Why?" I asked, writing down his prose into my notebook to compile for later.
"I don't know."
"And the voice?"
He shook his head.
"I couldn't hear it anymore. There was too much wind."
I waited for him to elaborate.
"It was howling through the mountains. I've never heard anything like it." He paused and tugged at an earlobe.
"Strong?" I asked.
"No. Just– loud." Whitmore shut his eyes. "It sounded like people."
"People?"
"Crying out!" His voice rose. "I knew it was only the wind! But that's what it sounded like. Hundreds of people crying out in pain."
"Yet you continued climbing?"
"I had to."
There was that answer again. I asked him what he meant, but Whitmore could not explain. My student only knew that he had to reach the other side. And when he reached the summit:
"It stopped."
"The wind?"
“Yes!"
Whitmore stared down at his journal, suddenly less animated. He stopped tugging at his ear.
"One moment it was so loud I couldn't think! Then I stepped between the rocks and there was nothing." His voice had fallen to barely a whisper.
"Nothing?"
"No wind. No birds. No insects. Nothing!"
"What did you see?"
"More sand." I confess that after his dramatic description of the ascent, I found this somewhat disappointing.
"No." Whitmore paused. “There was a city on the other side."
My pen stopped. This was all starting to sound very familiar.
"What city?" I found myself asking. I knew of several desert ruins, mostly in Egypt and the Levant. "What did it look like?"
Whitmore looked up at me at last.
"Old."
I couldn't help but smile.
"You will have to do considerably better than that if you wish to be an archaeologist."
Normally, such a remark would have earned something from him. It didn't. His dejected expression remained unchanged.
"I don't know how old. I just knew that it was ancient. The place was a ruin. Toppled stone, twisted metal, massive buildings."
"Roman? Egyptian? Persian?"
Whitmore shook his head.
“Greek?”
“No!
"Then what?" I asked, my own voice rising. His lack of details was beginning to frustrate me.
Whitmore shook his head.
"Nothing I've ever seen."
I reminded him that he'd never actually visited any of those places.
"I've seen pictures."
"Fair enough."
"And your lectures."
I confess that this comment pleased me. At least one of my students retained some information.
"It was enormous.” Whitmore continued. “It stretched out from the mountains farther than I could see. There were towers sticking out of the sand. Walls. Roads. Buildings everywhere."
His thumb ran along the edge of his notebook.
"But there was something wrong with it."
"What was wrong?
"I don't know!" He sighed.
"Mr. Whitmore, you've said that rather frequently today." That earned the faintest smile.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be, Arthur, just try to describe it." I urged.
Whitmore became quiet. Finally, he opened the notebook in his lap.
"I drew it."
That interested me considerably more than his dream. Whitmore had always possessed some artistic talent. More than once I had caught him filling the margins of his notes with sketches during my lectures. Most were harmless caricatures, landscapes, faces, or whatever else happened to occupy his imagination when I apparently failed to. He turned several pages and placed the notebook upon my desk.
The drawing occupied both pages. I could make out dark scribbles: winding lines weaving over one another, gathering into darker patches, before converging a single black mass in the center. It looked nothing like a city.
"What am I looking at?" I asked.
"The city.”
Dr. Hawthorne continued reading. There were several more accounts concerning Arthur Whitmore. Very little seemed to change over the following days. The student continued to dream of the city, wandering deeper into its ruins each night. Of the city itself, however, he described very little. Whenever Douglas pressed him, Whitmore insisted that the buildings were arranged ways he struggled to describe. His drawings became increasingly elaborate, though to Douglas they remained little more than scribbles.
The voices returned as well. At first they were distant and unintelligible, their language hard for Whitmore to identify. There were figures too. He called them ghosts. And so the appointments continued into September.
September 11, 1884
Dr. DouglasWhitmore arrived nearly twenty minutes late for my class. I almost did not recognize him. His clothes were badly wrinkled, as though he had slept in them. There were very dark circles beneath his eyes. Several days' growth had accumulated along his jaw.
“Is this World History?” He asked, not seeming to remember me, despite having known me since he came to this University.
“No Sir, I'm afraid this is Intro to Underwater Basket Weaving.” I joked.
He blinked at me as if I had spoken Ancient Greek. At least the rest of my class got my joke. When I invited him to sit, Whitmore silently sat at a desk in the back row. He remained motionless for the rest of the lecture. At the end of which, I closed the door on the last student, and approached Arthur. It took me four tries to get his attention. When I did, he flinched so hard that his desk moved.
Throughout our previous meetings, Mr. Whitmore had possessed a nervous habit of tugging at his left ear whenever discussing his dreams. He was doing so again. Only now the skin had been rubbed red.
"How have you been sleeping, Arthur?" Whitmore stared at the floor.
"Arthur?"
His hand dropped.
"Sorry?" He said, his voice barely above a whisper.
"I asked how have you been sleeping."
"I've been sleeping!" He replied, his voice suddenly raised.
I held up my hands in reassurance.
"How much?"
A shrug was his only answer.
“Arthur?”
At the sound of that name, he flinched again.
"I don't know. I'm sorry." He said, when he finally looking up at me his eyes were bloodshot.
I took the desk next to him."You don't know?"
Whitmore shook his head. Almost unconsiously, his fingers wandered back to his ear.
"Does that hurt?"
He looked at me.
"Does what hurt?" He snapped.
"Your ear, Arthur.”
Whitmore glanced at his hand as though noticing it for the first time. Slowly, he lowered it into his lap.
"No."
For several seconds neither of us spoke.
"Have you continued dreaming of the city?"
"Yes." He whispered.
"And the voices?"
His fingers twitched.
"Yes."
"Are they still distant?"
Whitmore did not answer. I repeated the question. He looked toward the door.
"Arthur?"
Beneath the desk his left leg began to bounce.
"Please don't."
"Don't what?" I asked, leaning forward.
"Talk so loudly!” He raised his voice again, despite me not raising my own voice.
“Then perhaps you should see a physician,” I said, uncertain what else to suggest. Yet there remained a queer part of me that wanted to get to the bottom of it.
"They can't help!" Yelled Mr. Whitmore.
"You cannot possibly know that." I replied.
My student uttered something resembling a laugh, though there was very little humor in it. What remained was bitter. I asked whether the voices had become clearer. Whitmore looked at me again. There was something in his expression that made me recoil. Even now, I cannot say precisely what. His lips parted. For a moment, I thought he was about to answer me. Instead, he whispered:
"I need to go."
He stood.
"Arthur—"
"I'll come back tomorrow." He snapped. He snatched up his notebook and hurried from the room before I could answer. The classroom door slammed behind him.
He did not return the following day.
Dr. Hawthorne sat back in his chair. He wanted to find Arthur's notebook. Instead, he reached into his coat and withdrew his pipe, followed by a box of matches. He struck one and lit the tobacco, then picked up one of the many baubles cluttering Dr. Douglas's desk and used it to tamp the bowl.
Hawthorne took a long draw. Then he continued reading.
September 12, 1884
Dr. DouglasIf this was a gothic novel, I'd say I have no words. But this is my account. And I am no Poe or Stoker, so I'll keep the hyperbole to a minimum. Arthur Whitmore did not attend my lecture today. Nor any of his classes. This was unusual. Despite his recent condition, Whitmore had continued to attend his classes with admirable consistency. More concerning was his failure to arrive for our scheduled meeting that afternoon. I waited nearly an hour. But he did not come. Given the nature of our previous conversations, I grew concerned. So I decided to visit his dormitory.
I knew something was wrong before I reached it. A crowd of students had gathered upon the green. Most were staring toward the building. Several spoke excitedly amongst themselves. Then came a crash. Even from outside, I heard it clearly. Glass, I believe.
Another followed. Then more shouting. I pushed through the gathering of students and entered the building. The shouting grew louder. I recognized the voice. It was Whitmore. I called his name. But he did not answer. Something struck the wall upstairs with sufficient force to shake dust from the ceiling. I nearly ran up those stairs. Once I reached the second floor, I could see the carnage he left behind.
A table had been overturned. Several framed pictures had been torn from the walls. A chair lay broken near the stairwell. Books and papers littered the floor. At the far end of the corridor, a door stood open. The screaming had stopped around the time that I worked up enough courage to investigate. The worst unknown to encounter in any investigation is a human being. Even if said threat was another person.
"Arthur?" I called out, walking slowly.
Nothing.
I approached the room.
It was dark beyond the hallway. The curtains had been pulled shut, allowing only a narrow blade of daylight between them. From what I could make out, the room itself was in worse shape than the hallway. A mattress had been dragged from the bed. Books had been thrown from their shelves and torn to shreds. There was a washbasin. It lay shattered upon the floor in a wet puddle. Papers covered nearly every surface.
I entered the room, my hand, sadly to say, reaching for a nonexistent revolver. That is when I heard it; a wheeze…
It was low. Wet. I froze. Another followed by another heavy pause. Then another. It came from somewhere beyond the narrow strip of daylight, in the darkest corner of the room. As my eyes adjusted, I began to make out a shape. Someone was sitting there.
"Arthur?" I called again.
The shape moved. And then it looked at me. I wish I could adequately describe the condition in which I found my student. I fear that anything I write will sound precisely like the sort of embellishment I promised to avoid. It was Arthur Whitmore. He had folded himself into the corner of the room. His knees were drawn tightly against his chest, and his back was bent forward at such an angle that his face nearly disappeared between them.
His hands were clamped over his ears.
At first, I thought he had injured himself during whatever frenzy had destroyed the room. There was blood upon his fingers. Several nails had been torn clean off. Crescent-shaped wounds surrounded both ears where he had dug them repeatedly into his own flesh.
"Arthur?” I called out again.His head rose. I stopped. His eyes were so terribly wide that for an instant they seemed too large for his face. The whites had gone pink with ruptured vessels. And his pupils had dilated so much that they appeared to be black!
He looked directly at me. Yet I had the distinct impression that he did not see me. His lips moved. That was when I realized the wheezing was not merely his breathing. He was speaking. Quietly at first. The sounds bore no resemblance to any language with which I was familiar. They came in broken, breathless fragments; noises I would have thought impossible to produce deliberately.
"Arthur?" I called again, from the doorway. Not daring to move an inch.
It is then that I realized that he was not looking at me, but through me.
Then his eyes moved. Slowly at first. Then violently. They darted from one empty corner of the room to another, following things that I could not see. Arthur twitched, as if recoiling from it. His shoulder jerked violently toward his ear. His fingers tightened against the sides of his head, and another broken string of sounds escaped his lips.
I listened. There was rhythm to it. A madman may babble. He may shout nonsense or repeat meaningless sounds. Arthur did neither. There were pauses. Inflections. Certain sounds returned in different arrangements. Once he stopped as though waiting for something, then answered with another rapid string of incomprehensible syllables. It sounded like conversation.
His gaze drifted past my shoulder and settled upon some distant point which, so far as I could tell, existed neither within the room nor beyond it. His lips continued to move. I dared not get closer. I had seen madness before. My time with the Initiative had introduced me to men whose minds had been damaged beyond repair. Yet there was something uniquely dreadful about seeing it in Arthur Whitmore.
Perhaps because I knew him?
This was the same young man who sat near the back of my lecture hall and drew pictures when he ought to have been taking notes. The same young man who smiled sheepishly when I called on him to answer a trick question. The same young man who, less than two weeks earlier, had been embarrassed to admit that a dream frightened him. Now that same young man sat before me in his nightclothes, bloody fingers pressed against his ears, staring blindly through me and speaking to something I could neither see nor understand.
"Arthur." I tried one last time.
Nothing. I took one step into the room. His entire body convulsed. I stopped. Arthur's eyes suddenly found mine. For the briefest instant, I thought he recognized me. His mouth opened. He spoke a single phrase.
“Help me.”
His face twisted. I shall remember that expression for as long as I live. He looked like a drowning man. Arthur let out a shrill scream. He threw himself backward against the wall with such force that the impact shook one of the remaining pictures loose. His hands returned violently to his ears. He began shouting in that incomprehensible language, rocking back and forth, his bare feet scraping against the floorboards.
Footsteps thundered down the corridor behind me. Several men appeared at the doorway. A university physician arrived moments later, followed by two policemen who had apparently been summoned by one of the students outside. The physician took one look at Arthur and said:
"Good Lord."
"His name is Arthur Whitmore," I said. "He's one of my students."
"How long has he been like this?" Asked the physician.
"I don't know." I said.
The physician attempted to approach him.
What followed was unpleasant. Two attendants entered first. Arthur kicked at them before either could lay a hand upon him. One caught his arm. Arthur bit him. Another seized him around the chest, and Arthur fought with such frantic strength that both men fell.
Then the policemen joined them. It required four men to restrain him. All the while, Arthur continued screaming. Even when he was pinned against the floor, he kept screaming. One of the policemen looked toward me.
Eventually they bound Arthur's wrists and lifted him from the floor. His resistance had diminished by then. Whatever strength that possessed him moments earlier appeared to have vanished entirely. He simply hung limp between the two orderlies while they dragged him away. As they carried him into the corridor, the students gathered there retreated against the walls. Some stared. Others looked away. I followed as far as the stairs. For a moment, I considered intervening. My Initiative credentials were inside my coat. I could have produced them. I could have stopped this madness. Saved him from spending time in an asylum.
But I had nothing to prove that this could be related to an unknown. People suffer nightmares. Men lose sleep. Some unfortunate souls even lose their faculties entirely.
No. Of course not.
There was nothing inherently anomalous about this madness.
The Initiative had not placed me at Columbia to chase every ghost story whispered by an undergraduate, nor to compromise my position whenever a young man suffered a nervous collapse.
So I said nothing.
I watched them carry Arthur down the stairs. His voice followed them. It grew quieter as they descended. Then quieter still. Until, at last, I could no longer hear him.
I returned to his room.
Amid the wreckage, something lay on the floor beside his overturned desk.
Arthur's notebook.