by Lynne Jamneck

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
– Robertson Davies

17 January 1914
Oxford, England

I have never been good at keeping diaries. I start off eager, filled with the promise of a new year, some new project. Then my enthusiasm diminishes when I realize that I am destined to spend another year bogged down by books and research papers, trying to prove myself to the archeology department.

I am keeping a diary this time only because I know I will have things to write. Important things. But I will not keep myself to the rigor of writing purely for the sake of entry.

Doctor Mendelssohn was upset when I informed him I would have to postpone my thesis. I thought he would understand but maybe I expect too much. I could not relate to him the full nature of the expedition, but when I mentioned my father he refrained from asking more questions. I think he attributes my actions to feminine emotional instability.

The lawyer gave me my father’s letter the day of the funeral.  I was surprised when he pulled me aside and stuffed the envelope into my hand. He made it clear I should keep it to myself.

3 February 1914
(at sea)  HMS Astraea

I am beginning to grasp an understanding of the mystery that has always surrounded my father.  Mother never talked about his work. As children we had asked but never received satisfying answers. Like myself, he had been a student of archeology and anthropology; unlike his daughter, the rules and regulations of the university could not keep him bound.

The Astraea will take us to Angola, on the West African coast. From there we can trek north to the Congo. There are five of us: Otto Mann is a rugged-looking German who prefers butcher knives to guns.  Basil Abbot is an excellent marksman. His claim, not mine.  He talks loudly and smiles too much.  First-class bastard, if you ask me. Nonetheless, he came highly recommended, and I had little choice. Allister Stanley speaks several African languages and is to be our interpreter. He was a missionary and a priest when younger but at the age of forty-five he no longer feels himself bound to the Church. The fourth is a Frenchman, Lucien Malgier, an occult specialist and former lecturer at Cambridge.  A man of nervous disposition, he turned down my initial request to join our party. At the mention of my father’s name, however,  he changed his mind.

As soon as we found ourselves at sea, Malgier’s apprehension and anxiety started rubbing off on everyone else. I have endeavored (with the help of Otto) to keep him intoxicated until we reach the mainland, a plan that seems to be going well. It helps that he does not refuse us. He stays in his bunk most of the time, sleeping or mumbling. A pity that others, like Abbot, become more obnoxious the more they drink.

15 February 1914
(at sea)

There was an incident between Abbot and Malgier.  Apparently the Frenchman said something the hunter didn’t like. It sparked a fistfight that could easily have spiraled out of control had Allister not intervened. Otto and I were up on deck, watching the deep, dark water swell and dip, drinking sailor’s liquor and smoking cigarettes in silence. The ship has been traveling at a steady 10kts since leaving Portsmouth. I didn’t mind that Otto didn’t talk. He didhoweverpropose to have a “talk” with Abbot about the fracas with Malgier but I dissuaded him. Everyone is getting restless.

I handled Abbot myself. I promised him that if there was a repeat of his performance I would have the ship’s captain put him in the brig for the rest of the journey. I asked Malgier what had happened but by the time I found him in his bunk he was drunk again. One of the officers has informed me that we will reach Angola in roughly a week.

23 February, 1914
Luanda

I am relieved to feel solid ground beneath my feet. We all are. A renewed vigor fuels our party. I think we are all looking forward to getting on horses, even if it is just to Kakenge. There we will pick up the porters who will help us with our equipment and navigation into the jungle.

I have only ever been in a few port cities. There will be drinking tonight and even I am looking forward to the respite before the next phase of our expedition.

5 March, 1914
Kakenge, Belgian Congo

The Afrikaner who runs the porter service was ruthless and charged us a fortune. Enterprising, too; his service was staffed entirely by Zulus. I didn’t wonder about it too much. After all, some would say that we didn’t belong up here either.

We managed to secure the services of three Zulus. They are tall and fit and when they smile at us I am not sure what it is they are laughing at. I think we must look ridiculous to them, dressed up in so many layers of clothing. I quite like the heat after the miserable weather we left behind.

We had a chance to talk last night after the porters had gone to sleep.  As usual, Otto said little. Abbot and Malgier have steered clear of one another since coming to blows on the Astraea. Once we enter the jungle we need to stick close together. There will be no room for unresolved animosity.

I asked them all if they were superstitious. They claimed not to be, but I’m not sure I should take such blatant claims at face value. Otto at least declares he is unsure of what he believes. He says maybe that is what he has come to the jungle to find out. Abbot confesses to being an atheist, Stanley an agnostic. Malgier says that superstitions are for people who refuse to see what is right in front of them. More often than not I don’t know what Malgier means. He says weird things, sometimes in languages none of us understand.  But my father’s letter insisted he come along if I were to do this.

7 March 1914

The jungle terrain is dense and difficult to navigate most of the time. I wish my father had told me more about his expeditions here.

Allister walks up front with the porters. They seem eager to talk to him. Malgier spends his time complaining about insects and studying tree trunks. God knows what he’s looking for but at least he’s not upsetting anyone. I make sure Abbot stays where I can see him. He’s so preoccupied with shooting something—anything—that I don’t think he notices.

8 March 1914

We have left civilization behind. The jungle is darker now. The atmosphere vacillates between eerie silence and the screeching sounds of animals I have read about but never seen. Allister asked the porters how far we were from the ruins. They seemed to disagree at first but their final estimation was four days, unless we are interrupted by rain or injury.

Malgier is still looking at trees and he seems to have taken an interest in the soil. Today, while we stopped to have lunch, I saw him sniffing a handful of the rich, dark earth. He looked pale. The sun does not seem to affect him the way it does the rest of us. My English skin has turned a deep brown from the African sun.

9 March 1914

Three in the morning — I’m writing by the hue of a paraffin lamp. I do not think anyone minds the flickering light. I can smell the liquor from where my shaking hand has spilled some on the page.

We were woken up by what started out as a low rumble. It became rapidly louder and then the earth beneath our feet began to shake. I’d grabbed my lamp, and in the low light I saw that Abbot had his gun aimed at the ground and was shouting something but it was too dark to see and Allister was fumbling as he tried lighting as many of the lamps as he could find. The porters all climbed up nearby trees, which, in retrospect, was probably the best thing to do.  Abbot then began shouting something about elephants but I doubted if elephants could cause the tremors cracking the hard African soil.

The chaos stopped so abruptly that I became disorientated. The instant silence froze us all with faces pale in the low light. I heard something, at first thinking it was my own shallow breath. It became louder — an angry gasp accompanied by a rush of foul wind that was ten times worse than the half-eaten buffalo corpse we found out in the sun yesterday. This was something that jarred me and filled me with a dark terror. It was putrescent, cloying and nauseating. Then Malgier was there, in the middle of us all, and he was reading something from a book, holding it up with one hand and from a vial in the other he was pouring something onto the ground.

It stopped then. The smell was gone and I could breathe again. Something felt different; we have all chosen to ignore it.

Allister has given up on trying to talk the porters down from the trees. Abbot’s pretending to be asleep, cradling his gun. Malgier’s staring into the darkness. Otto’s tending the fire. I need another drink.

11 March 1914

We were all quiet yesterday. No-one wanted to talk about what had happened. Malgier pulled me aside and asked me if I really wanted to go through with the expedition. I asked him to tell me what that noise had been, and the stench. That was when he admitted to me that he had been here before, with my father.

I asked Malgier why he had agreed to come and he said he had promised my father he would if I ever asked him. Another reason was more personal, and involved his research.  He was reluctant to talk about it but I convinced him that, as a scientist and a woman of my word, he could trust that I would not breach his confidence.

Malgier was a Miskatonic graduate who had studied occult sciences and mathematics. MU was where Malgier had met my father, who on several occasions gave lectures there covering the relationship between magic and archeology. When my father planned his first expedition to Africa he asked Malgier to go with him. The two men had much in common and Malgier agreed easily.

Apparently my father had been looking for the remains of a pre-Adamite race. I knew about his interest in the work of Isaac La Peyrère. This was part of a theory that had soured his reputation at Cambridge, where he had been teaching at the time. He was eventually asked to leave. As Malgier tells it, he had been happy to do so.

We were trekking to the same ruins my father had been looking to explore. Malgier said they had never found anything substantial; nothing that would conclusively support my father’s theories. But he said that they had experienced several strange incidents, some similar to what had happened to us two nights ago. They had also found a cave beneath the ruins, which they were about to start exploring when my father received news that my mother was ill with tuberculosis.  He was back in England a month later. She died ten days after his return.

Without Cambridge’s funding my father didn’t have the means to return to Africa as he had planned. Malgier thinks that was why my father left me the letter; that he saw in me a part of himself. Would he knowingly lead me into a dangerous situation so he could vindicate himself from beyond the grave?

I asked Malgier what he had poured onto the ground that night when the ‘disruption’ happened. He didn’t tell me, but said he had sanctified the ground we slept on. I asked if that was why he had smelled the soil. He said yes. I asked him about the trees. He said there were markings on some of them, on the bark. I asked what kind of markings. He said they were warnings. That’s when I wondered if we should turn back.

Abbot tells me that the porters are talking less. I find it amusing that a former priest has formed such a close bond with what his church calls “savages”. I can see why he no longer wears that collar.

12 March 1914

We have found the ruins. They are very confusing. Nothing about them seems familiar. The hieroglyphs are vaguely reminiscent of Akkadian. The remains of the dwellings that used to be here are in extremely good condition. I am reminded of Tikal and its temples but the peculiar un-African characteristics of the site disturb me. It instills in me the notion that I have missed something in my studies, or that the books I depended on so religiously for my education have led me astray.

When I asked the porters about the well-preserved state of the ruins, Allister translated that they do not usually bring anyone here. They say the ruins have been here “since the beginning of time” (the best Allister could translate), and because earthquakes do not occur in the area, the site remains well protected.

14 March 1914

A unanimous decision was made yesterday that we should rest. We spent the day setting up camp and gathering fresh water. Abbot took one of the porters and went exploring. He’s still looking for something to shoot.

15 March 1914

After a somewhat confusing exploration of the ruins we found the underground cave but we are having trouble measuring the depth. The porters won’t come into the ruins. At least we have them to protect our food from roaming animals. I made sure to bring a lot of rope, even when the Afrikaner back in Kakenge asked me if I planned on doing my exploring at the center of the Earth.

After some debate about weight and manpower I told them to lower me down.  Otto tried to change my mind and said he should go down instead. I told him I was well capable of taking care of myself and that this was my expedition.  He said we had no idea what we would find down there, that he could defend himself if he had to. I asked him what exactly he expected to find. He stormed off, leaving Abbot, myself and Allister alone in the darkness. We decided to postpone the descent until tomorrow.

16 March 1914

We are down one man. Abbot is dead. I need a drink.

16 March 1914

I made sure not to spill any of the Scotch this time. My hands have stopped shaking enough to write. It happened again, in the middle of the night.  Only this time there was a thing among us.  We take shifts sleeping. Someone has to be awake at all times to feed the fire. We keep it high for obvious reasons. There are wild animals roaming the jungle—they say there are leopard-eating apes in the Congo.  The more light we have, the better we feel about the ruins, too.

I woke with a start, thinking that the sound was that of an animal. It sounded like a low growl but became progressively louder and higher, rapidly pitched to a howl. Then I saw Abbot, next to the fire, struggling. He was grasping at his neck with both hands. I thought maybe he had been eating some of the wild pig he had killed earlier in the day for our dinner and that a bone had got stuck in his throat. I was getting up to help him when I saw it. A shadow moved between Abbot and myself. Not cast by the fire, of that I was sure.  Whatever it was did not flicker, but rather folded in on itself.

I heard yelling and saw Otto run towards Abbot with his hunting knife. I blinked and the shadow was gone. Abbot was still clawing at himself.  Otto was yelling at me and then so was Malgier. I couldn’t make out what either of them was saying. I decided to try and help Abbot; how, I didn’t know, but his face was turning blue. Then I heard Malgier’s voice behind me, talking in a language I did not recognize. Abbot was trying to reach out to me, clearly in great distress, and I was about to reach out to him when, horrifically, there was a rupturing sound. Several things then happened at once; someone grabbed the back of my overcoat and pulled me back, away from Abbot, who – dear God – was torn in half by something unseen. Otto seemed frozen in place, the knife still in his hands. There was blood on his arms and down the front of his shirt because he’d been coming up behind Abbot. Allister was shouting from the edge of the campsite that he could not find the porters. I remember that all of us looked up, into the trees. We couldn’t see anything. Then Allister saw Abbot and that was the first time I heard him say anything religious.

17 March 1914

We left England two months ago. It feels much longer.

There was still no sign of the guides this morning. We thought at first that they had gone to look for fresh water, but it’s afternoon now and they haven’t been back. I am not expecting them to return. I wonder if they led us here with the purpose of abandoning us to the ruins. I cannot afford to think like that. Not when I still plan on going down into those caves.  We threw Abbot’s body down into the cave.  Allister said that burying the body might attract predators but I got the distinct feeling he had a different reason for doing so. He was once a religious man, after all. That’s Otto calling now. They must be ready to go.

21 March 1914

As unbelievable as it sounds, we measured the cave at just over 6 000 ft before the rope ran out. I dropped an empty tobacco tin down into the darkness. There was no sound. If the others were calling down to me from the opening of the cave, I could not hear them.  Our agreement was that I would pull three times for them to pull me up.

Hanging down the sheer wall of rock in the darkness with no light but the feeble beam of my headlamp, I wondered what would happen if the rope broke.  I calmed myself; my mind was starting to run away with me. Perhaps we were spending too much time in the jungle. But I am not ready to leave. Not yet.  We need more rope.

22 March 1914

Otto got hold of one of Malgier’s books.  It’s called Unaussprechlichen Kulten, which he tells me translates to something about nameless cults. He was upset and clearly didn’t like what he’d read. Malgier was trying to calm him down and trying to get the book back at the same time. Then Otto threatened to throw the book in the fire, and he would have done it had it not been for Allister coming up behind him. Malgier yelled something at Otto in French. He picked up the book, which Otto had dropped in the dirt and as he walked past me he reverted back to English. “We should leave.” That’s what he said. But in his eyes I saw something else; a longing to see something he knew he wasn’t supposed to see. I’m sure that same look is reflected in my own eyes. Maybe that’s the connection between myself and my father.

23 March 1914

I found an extra coil of rope in Abbot’s pack. He must have been keeping it for hunting. The sun is setting. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Malgier drew strange pictures in the sand and told us not to wipe them away. Otto looks pale. That knife is now in his hands all the time.

24 March 1914

Going down the hole for the second time, I did not have much hope. But just a few meters further down from where I had stopped the day before, I was surprised to find something solid beneath my feet. A small ledge that seemed to spiral round the cave wall into the darkness.

The outcropping of rock was narrow, barely wide enough for me to stand on. I kept the rope around my waist and tried not to think of what could happen if the ledge beneath my feet crumbled. I used my headlamp to scan the cave wall. There were hieroglyphs similar to the ones we had seen on the walls of the ruins.

Why had my father wanted me to come here? His letter had only told me what he himself had found. About the ruins and the possibility for discovery. Knowledge changes the world. That’s what he’d always said. But what if the things I didn’t know were the foundation that held everything else together? What if what I didn’t know turned out to be what I didn’t want to know?

I was shuffling along the ledge, lost in thought, when I realised that the wall was beginning to curve. I kept moving. At one point I stretched out an arm into the darkness. It felt cold and damp and empty. The wall kept curving but my rope was starting to pull tight and I could go no further. I shone the light and saw the wall curving further into the darkness. It made no sense but I was convinced then that what I was seeing was a pillar of gargantuan size. I was moving slowly and with marked precision, shifting my feet inches at a time, turning around to face the other way. That’s when I saw different marks on the rock wall that I hadn’t noticed before. I shone the flashlight up, then down; it looked like something had been dragged along the wall. The tow marks disappeared into the darkness below.

I decided to go back and walk around the other side, to see if it too was curved. I was sure that the rock ledge was sturdy now, and this confidence allowed me to move a little faster. Indeed, off to the right side of the rock face there was a curve exactly similar in angle to the left. The rope was starting to pull tight again when something in the rock caught my eye. Familiar lines. I held the headlamp at eye level. It was writing. Crude as it was, I could read it.

THEY ARE LEAVING ME HERE FOR IT. I WILL BE FOLDED AND MOLDED TO FIT ITS SKIN.

All the anxieties I had pushed away since first reading my father’s letter came rushing over me, bubbling in my brain like some pot of vile stew. I’m not sure if my imagination was playing tricks on me but I had hardly read the words when I smelled that stench again, the same one that had accompanied that shadow in our camp. With horror I remembered how we had tossed Abbot’s body into the mouth of the cave.

I grabbed the rope with trembling hands and pulled hard on it three times. Nothing happened. I pulled again, then realised that the rope wasn’t hanging straight; I had to get back to the middle of the ledge. I did not care then about the possibility of the rock crumbling beneath my feet. My mind was blank with terror. When I pulled the rope again I felt it tighten and then my feet were lifting off the ledge. I was talking gibberish to myself and could have sworn, staring down into the abyss as I was slowly being hauled toward the light, that I saw something move. Not a shadow, but something solid. Something with mass. Something huge. I yelled for them to heave harder. When they finally pulled me out I was weak with shock and my teeth were chattering uncontrollably. Allister was praying, and at the same time trying to calm me down. It seems he’s found God again.

26 March 1914

No-one slept last night. Malgier keeps tracing his strange symbols in the sand. I’m not sure how much longer we can keep out whatever’s hiding in those ruins. Allister confessed that he had thrown Abbot’s body down the cave in a bid to placate whatever was down there. I yelled at him. It didn’t make me feel any better. I can feel it watching us. We are scared to leave. We are scared to stay.

27 March 1914

We are leaving. We’ve had a second night without any sleep. Somewhere close to our camp we heard the sound of low chanting. It continued the whole night.

29 March 1914

I cannot find my compass. I remember Abbot asking me to use it when he went out exploring. I am sure he gave it back to me before – before he died. Each of us has volunteered to go out into the jungle, to try and track our way back to Kakenge. Other than myself, I only really trust Otto to have any modicum of luck in such a trial. He can take care of himself. I want some more time with the ruins and would feel better if Malgier was with me. Allister has retreated into himself. All of us are scared but he’s not hiding it very well. A dark cloud has settled on him. At times he appears genuinely scared. Other times he appears disabled by melancholy and a profound sadness.

28 March 1914

Otto is gone. No-one saw him leave.

29 March 1914

I spent most of yesterday and today sitting at the edge of the hole in the ground. Really, that’s what it is. I would like to go down again but do not trust Allister and Malgier to be able to lower me and get me back up again safely. Allister’s will to live has seemingly left him. He doesn’t talk. He does nothing but stare into the fire. When I close my eyes all I see are those words scratched in the rock. Folded and molded.

30 March

It seems completely ridiculous, but I cannot recall what year it is. I look at my previous entries and something about the date I have been putting down looks wrong. It seems as if the world – out there – is something that never existed. That the jungle is all there is. All there ever was.

—-

Allister killed himself. He used one of the machetes. I had to pry the piece of bloodied paper he was clutching from his stiff, dead fingers. It was an apology to God. There was a quote from the Bible. They sacrificed to demons, which are not God, gods they had not known, gods for whom time does not exist, gods your fathers should have feared.”

—-

The chanting doesn’t stop now. Last night there was screaming in the jungle somewhere close. It sounded like Otto but I told myself my mind was deceiving me. Otto would never scream. Not like that. Malgier and I have drunk most of the water. I asked him why he had really come on the expedition. He couldn’t give me a satisfying answer. He only said that he would die anyway if he didn’t. He too, seems resigned to his fate.

I do not feel any sense of guilt. They all came on the expedition of their own free will. But I did not tell them everything. I only showed Malgier my father’s letter. I know now what it was I’d felt when that shadow appeared in our camp; when I saw the writing on the rock.

It’s now a matter of choosing how we want to die. Malgier keeps drawing his symbols in the sand. When the sun sinks below the horizon and the jungle darkness sets in we can both feel something stirring at the perimeter of our camp. The chanting gets louder. We have no food and almost no water left. If we venture out into the jungle we will die.

—-

We’ve drunk the last of the water.

—-

I cannot find Malgier or his books. There are footprints leading into the ruins toward the cave. I’m afraid of following them because I do not trust myself. I have decided I want to see what it is; I want to see what haunts us. I want to know what the jungle hides. My father must have known me better than I thought. Terror and beauty – they are one and the same thing. I have wiped clean all of Malgier’s symbols. The dust has settled. I am sitting in front of the slowly dying fire. When it comes for me tonight I will meet it alive. If it wants me, I want to know why.

Copyright © 2011 by Lynne Jamneck

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