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October 20, 1939
San Sebastian, Spain
The veranda behind the hotel was a patio of clay paving stones overlooking a picturesque garden surrounded by neighboring buildings. A view of the ocean would have suited the setting, but given the establishment’s location deep in the city, one could appreciate the effort which went into providing some sort of outdoor space in which to relax.
Wilkins took a sip of red wine, a fruity blend that had a hint of spice to it. Richard slouched in a chair opposite him, across an iron mesh table, leaning back to let the sun strike his face while he took a long draw of a cigarette.
“You know,” Richard said, “this wouldn’t be a bad spot for a vacation.”
Wilkins frowned. “Yes, if the fabric of all reality wasn’t coming undone around us.”
Richard shot him a sideways glance and a scowl.
“You always had a flair for the dramatic, young Professor Chapman,” another voice said from the rear entrance to the hotel.
Wilkins turned to see his old friend and mentor—Benjamin Mathers—standing in the doorway. Despite the heat, he wore a light brown woolen suit with a vest that reached almost to his neck. His neatly trimmed beard of white whiskers came to a point level with a small bow tie, and a semicircle of thin hair in the same color crowned his pate. The old professor met Wilkins’s eyes and beamed.
They had not seen each other in almost a year, and despite the circumstances, the reunion overjoyed the young anthropologist. He leaped from his seat, strode over to the older man, and vigorously shook his hand. “It’s so good to see you, Professor Mathers. I’m glad you could make it.”
“I wish it were under better circumstances.” Benjamin walked over to the table and placed a broad-brimmed hat, which matched his suit, atop his head to block out the intense sunlight. “And this must be your American friend, Richard?”
“A pleasure,” Richard said as he sat upright and met the professor’s hand in greeting.
Wilkins took his seat and offered Benjamin some of the wine.
“No, thank you. I’ve taken a fancy to something stronger of late.” Benjamin reached into his coat and removed a steel flask from his breast pocket, unscrewed it, and took a long draw of whatever was inside.
“I think I’ll like this guy,” Richard said.
Benjamin reached over and offered the flask to the American. “If you can stomach a real man’s drink, I think we’ll get along swimmingly.”
Wilkins shook his head. It was no surprise the two would find this as their common ground. Benjamin had always been a heavy drinker, but this was the first time he had seen the professor with a flask. “You’re drinking more often than normal?”
Benjamin accepted the proffered vessel in return from the American and took another drink. “It is the end of the world, is it not? Might as well be numb for it.”
“It’s not all that bad, is it?” Wilkins asked.
“Oh?” Benjamin set the flask aside and leaned in close. “You tell me. What has transpired since finding this idol in Peru?”
Wilkins explained in brief what happened, glossing over the details of their journeys to the other side. He was uncomfortable recounting those events, and wasn’t completely sure himself how real they were.
After hearing the tale, Benjamin drained a good portion of the flask and set it on the table with a shaking hand. “There are more strange things happening. You’ve heard some of the local rumors? Perhaps the young man at the reception desk told you of his peculiar ailment?”
Richard nodded. “Something about a demon dog haunting his dreams.”
“The pesanta, yes,” Benjamin said. “And that’s the least of the wild stories going around. Even back in England, there have been disturbances. People vanishing, horribly mangled bodies being found with no sign of a culprit, and sightings of creatures once resigned to folklore. I presume you’ve discovered a connection, young Wilkins.”
The anthropologist felt like he was back in Professor Mathers’ lecture hall at Oxford. One peculiarity of the man’s teaching method was to prompt his pupils for conclusions he already possessed, simply to coerce them into thinking for themselves. Of course, Wilkins had long since suspected the connection. “These... events, for lack of a better term, have to do with various of myths and legends of the past.”
“Exactly,” Benjamin said. “And do you suppose this means that, all of the sudden, these fanciful tales are simply coming true? Or is there another possibility?” He leaned back and picked up the flask, a sign he expected Wilkins’s answer to take a moment to form.
Richard cut in before the younger Englishman had a chance to respond. “That’s what I was thinking. Maybe these idols are making nightmares come true?”
“How would this explain the other side?” Wilkins asked.
Richard opened his mouth as if to answer, caught himself, and went back to his own drink with a frown.
“Have you been there?” Benjamin whispered, his eyes locked on Wilkins’s, as if to demand the entirety of the truth.
“The other place... What is it?” Wilkins asked, reluctant to admit, even to himself, that he had been transported to some nightmare world. Although, by merely asking about it, he confirmed he was aware of its existence.
“Since your first telegram,” Benjamin started, pausing to light a cigar and take several puffs, “I have scoured every source I could think of for answers to your riddle. I started with South American histories, of course. Then, I delved into their folklore. I found very little of relevance from either.”
Wilkins suddenly thought of the book he stole from the library in Lima. In all the rushing about, he had almost forgotten about it. A sudden pang of loss shot through his chest. The book, along with his most recent journals, were lost when Henri sent their train to the other side. “All I was able to find was an obscure folk legend about a gateway to the underworld.”
Benjamin nodded. “I found similar legends, but not from South America. I stumbled upon my first clue while perusing an account of an expedition to Mongolia in nineteen oh-eight. There was a description of a small ruin containing a central artifact—a small idol—which very nearly seemed the twin of what you described in your initial letters.” The professor leaned forward at this, grasping the table in excitement. “It was incredulous! The same markings, described in so exacting detail, appearing in both ancient South America and Mongolia? Impossible. Even so, I could not put aside the correlation.”
Benjamin reached out and offered the flask to the young scholar, who accepted. Wilkins realized his own expression must have betrayed his shock at the revelation. He muttered after taking a drink. “Peru, Louisiana, Spain, and now Mongolia? How? How could a culture have spanned the entire world and left so little trace that nobody has made the connection before now?”
“Because...” Benjamin took another swig from the flask. “Somebody has been hiding it.”
Richard perked up at this. “Wait, are you saying that somebody has been hiding an ancient global empire for thousands of years?
“Just so,” Benjamin said. “And they may be the ones who have been causing you trouble as of late.”
“I still don’t get it,” Richard said. “What exactly is going on? What are these idols? What’s that... What did you call it, Wilkins? The other place?”
Benjamin’s eyes met Wilkins’s with an intensity which seemed to drill into his very soul. “You have been there.”
“Yes,” Wilkins said.
“I don’t blame you for not wanting to share more about it. I’ve found a few stories which may or may not relate, and all of them ended poorly. More often than not, with the poor chap who told the tale going insane and ending his own life.”
“Oh, great,” Richard said, then flagged down one of the hotel staff. “We’re going to need a bottle of something strong. Whiskey, bourbon, scotch?”
“Anisette?” the young concierge offered.
“That’ll be fine,” Benjamin said. “And bill it to my room, if you please.”
The man nodded and rushed off.
Richard rubbed a hand across his eyes and pulled out a fresh cigarette. “So, I’m still lost.”
Benjamin stroked his beard and puffed on his cigar, something Wilkins knew he did while gathering his thoughts. “Have you ever considered the veracity of the myths and legends of the world’s myriad cultures, young Mister Jericho?”
Richard cocked a head to the side. “You mean, have I ever wondered if they were real?”
“Just so.”
“Of course not. I’m not even the religious sort, if I’m going to be completely honest.”
The concierge returned with a silver tray bearing the bottle of anisette and three squat nosing glasses. After setting this on the table, he hurried away.
“Religion aside,” Benjamin said as he poured out the sweet liquor, “I’m speaking of older things. Tales from the dawn of human history. The long memory of cultural myths and legends.”
While the two spoke, Wilkins turned over possibilities in his mind. Finally, he said, “Are you saying there is some truth to those legends?”
“Some?” Benjamin asked with a chuckle, which seemed intended to hide his own discomfort with the revelation. “What if I told you they were true? Not some grain of truth, but absolutely real?”
Richard drained his glass, reached over the table to grab the bottle, and refill it. “I have a feeling you’re leading up to something.”
“He’s always leading up to something,” Wilkins said, then downed half of his own glass.
“Just so,” Benjamin said. “Wilkins, I tore apart my entire library and half the university’s collection chasing clues from around the world. Tales of portals to another realm or ways to open them. Assertions from classical and medieval scholars, known to be grounded in reality, which claimed various supernatural events had some truth to them; even those which were considered ancient history in their own time. I found hints and whispers of some ancient culture, lost to time, who knew more than we ever could of what lies beyond the veil.”
“Beyond the what?” Richard asked.
“A veil that separates our world from the one young Wilkins here referred to as the other place. You asked what it was, Wilkins. I’ve danced around the question, but one must set the stage for such a revelation, lest it seem a mere flight of fancy.”
Benjamin stood and paced around them, one hand holding his glass with his cigar between two fingers, while he gestured with the other to accentuate his words. He could have been back at Oxford in a lecture hall if not for the tropical garden serving as a backdrop to his presentation. “All of reality as we know it,” he made a wide, sweeping motion, “is but a glimpse into the true fabric of time and space. Scientists have been working to peel back the layers of ignorance for centuries now, and we’ve come close to thinking we understand the cosmos.”
He set down his glass, put his cigar out inside it, and plucked a flower from a nearby potted plant. He began pulling off petals with every other word. “We peel back layers to see what lies beneath, looking ever smaller into the elements and building blocks which make up what we consider reality. But when we have pulled back all the layers, what does that leave us with?” He held up the flowerless stem. “The flower could not exist without the stem to feed it. What if there were something feeding our own reality? What if, once we peel back all the layers until there’s nothing more we can observe with our senses or measure with our instruments...” He gestured to the petals lying on the table, then grabbed the potted plant from which it came and shook it violently. “What if, even then, we have not even begun to understand the grandness of the cosmos itself?”
“Okay,” Richard said as he lit another cigarette. His patience obviously growing thin from his tone. “So, you’re saying that reality as we know it is a flower, but can’t see the bush underneath it?”
“Precisely!” Benjamin smiled. “Wilkins, your friend is quite astute.”
Richard shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
Benjamin sighed in frustration and sat back down, rubbing his hand over his eyes. “There’s an entire aspect of reality which we can barely perceive, separate from our own, yet connected in the most subtle ways. There’s barrier that separates us from it. But it’s not impermeable. It’s porous, like a veil. Sometimes, things pass from one side to the other. Beyond the veil lies truths about the cosmos which we cannot begin to comprehend.”
Wilkins drained the rest of his glass before jumping in. “So, you’re saying all of the world’s myths and legends came from there? That where this veil was penetrated, mankind peered beyond or encountered creatures who passed into our world, and those eyewitness accounts became the myths and legends we discount as fictions?”
“Precisely!” Benjamin was growing excited, evidenced by both his tone and his shaking hands. It was as if the man had been holding in this arcane knowledge and would burst if he couldn’t share it.
“So,” Richard asked, “where do the idols fit into all of this?”
Benjamin sighed and slumped back to his chair in defeat. “I’m not exactly sure.” He leaned back and grabbed his glass, then raised it to his lips, stopping himself at the last moment as his eyes focused on the remains of his cigar floating in the murky, once-clear liquid. He set it down with a frown and continued. “They seem to weaken the veil wherever they are. It’s as if they consist of some material or are imbued with some quality that causes their mere presence to erode the barrier between our reality and the next. Many of the accounts I found about them seemed to mention gaining insight into what lies beyond, and some to opening portals to another place. The context varied depending upon the culture, but the theory was essentially the same no matter the interpretation.”
Wilkins took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. A sudden realization struck him. “Henri has two of them now. What if their effects are compounded by having multiple idols in the same place? Could he open some sort of rift between the realities?”
Benjamin grabbed the bottle of anisette and took a long swig directly from it. “That’s precisely why we needed to meet here, and I’m glad your own search led you to the same conclusions. The idols were likely spread throughout the world to prevent just such a thing from happening. This Henri is following the same trail you picked up from your Spanish explorer in Louisiana. He is trying to gather more of them in the same place. What he hopes to achieve is beyond me, but the results may be nothing short of catastrophic.”
“Like end of the world kind of stuff?” Richard asked.
Benjamin took another long drink from the bottle, then handed it to the American. “That, my new friend, would only be the beginning.”
