“Anthony? You awake, buddy? Come on, we’ll miss our chance.”
The man standing over me scratches at the pimples on his cheeks, blinking excitedly as he shakes me with his free hand.
My mind surfaces, pushing aside the sleep that was wrapping its finger around my throat to –
What was going on, again?
My hotel room feels fuzzy, like drinking a cheap scotch you already know will taste terrible and will make you puke later on. Wiping the sweat from my face, a warm dribble against my cheek makes me jolt upright.
My hand is bleeding. When did it get injured?
“Tony, buddy, we gotta go! Come on, this is what you came to see, right? For that blog of yours?”
The sneer is already pulling at my lips before I can snatch it back.
“Dan, Psychology Trends International is a respected scientific journal. And this place is… Look, I’m just a little tired, ok?”
“Well come on! The keynote is going to start any minute! All the Deepers are already assembling. There won’t be any places left unless you grab your notes and move!”
I pull myself up off the sticky couch and shuffle through the stack of haphazard notes stuffed in various pockets. I usually prefer my tablet but the Convention runs under strict guidelines: invitation only, no leaving the hotel, and no electronic recording devices.
Deepers. That’s what they call themselves. It’s hard to say it out loud without making it sound like a bad joke. In an age where an entire library of patient scientific research can be accessed with the swipe of a finger, more and more people are turning to, well… nonsense like this. Personally, I think the internet is to blame. Or at least the goons who use it. Conspiracy theorists and doomsday peppers are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s just so much information now, all of it presented as valid, that people don’t bother to sift through for the truth.
The Deepers are just another symptom of the disease; not quite a cult, but more than mere horror fans. Even finding out about this convention took months of painstaking research. Getting a personal invitation through Daniel took months more. The event is held in a rundown hotel by the side of a lake, and I have to at least applaud the organisers for the location. It’s some hideous ‘80s monstrosity right out of a Stephen King novel. The walls are that awful shade of muddy orange that puts me in mind of a country hospital. The carpets are… well, whatever colour they were originally, they’re currently a smear of mud, coffee stains and cigarette ash. The air conditioning works, at least some of the time, slowly drowning my nostrils in rancid, almost fermented swamp air.
I hastily check the handwritten notes in my pocket, scribbled furtively while observing the convention attendees. It’s not going to be enough. Without my usual tablet or at least my phone, there’ll be things that I’ll miss, small details that might be important later. But I’m not defeated yet.
As Daniel gestures hurriedly to follow down the hallways, my tired minds drifts and expands. Looking for it. Forming it. There it is.
My Memory Palace.
It’s an ancient technique. The Greek philosophers used it. A building in my mind, every room and hall carefully visualised, that contains dozens – hundreds, of memories. Playing catch with my friends. Getting my first science award in high school. Songs, articles, entire chapters of books – I can find them all, walking the well-worn pathways of my mind. Sometimes I simply visit for the enjoyment of it, a curator taking a pleasing stroll through the marble and stucco archways of recollection. From the largest halls I can look out through stained glass windows of Einstein, Tesla and Galileo to gaze at boundless seas of imagination beyond.
Except this time, it’s not quite right. It’s just nerves. It’s because I’m tired, it’s the mind-deadening colours, the awful stench, it’s – this place. Corridors of polished marble are now overlain with stained muddy wallpaper and flickering ceramic light covers.
An error. That’s all it is.
Nothing to worry about.
“Hurry up, Tony!”
I refuse to give him the satisfaction, slowing my pace to peer through the cheap wooden doors lining the hallway to peer into the dim rooms beyond. The Deepers are already making themselves at home, jabbering excitedly in corners and showing off their ridiculous tattoos. Credit where credit is due; the organisers of the con have gathered believers from almost every race and culture, and the attendees are dressed in everything from traditional Indian robes to New York suits to frayed punk rocker jackets. In one room some of the more enthusiastic devotees are already scrawling symbols onto the peeling wallpaper.
“Anthony!”
I try not to sigh. I could really use a cigarette right now.
“Dan, I very much doubt the Grand Master or whomever is actually going to open the doors of your perception. It’s more likely that he’s going to select a few girls – One can only hope they’re over eighteen – and then take them to some kind of private workshop.”
“We’ll get left behind. He promised, Tony. You’re going to really see it. It’ll be undeniable. The real truth.”
“Oh? But what if the next speaker claims to show the really real truth?”
I’ll admit I expected Dan’s face to screw up, or for him to growl and get angry, the way superstitious people always do when you poke a hole in their precious little bubble. But instead, Dan just stops, holding against the slowly moving tide of Deepers. His voice is – I don’t know. Different.
“Everything will be made clear,” he intones. “You will understand.”
I try and shake the feeling away as we begin to move through the crowd. My Memory Palace is intermingled with the depressing reality around me. In one room I can see a pair of Deepers furiously gesturing at each other. But in the halls of recollection, this room contains my mother, sitting with me late at night, opening the chemistry textbook and showing me the Periodic Table.
“It’s all here,” she says with a grin. “Life, the universe and everything. Science is how we cast a light into the unknown.”
As Dan and I pass down a set of narrow stairs, the Deepers press in close. They’re murmuring now, whispering and hissing to each other as every member of the crowd tries to push themselves to the front. We pass a heavy wooden door leading to a different floor of the building, the paint chipped and covered in graffiti, but the tiny glass window looks into another memory. A woman – Patrice, sitting across a table, her voice cracking and warbling as snatches her drink at stares determinedly at the wall.
“You don’t know what it’s like, Tony. I respect your point of view, I really do, but – why did you have to be such an asshole to him? He’s just a kid, he’s allowed to have faith in something.”
“He has to grow up and face reality sometime,” I reply. Daniel jerks up beside me and gives me a quizzical look.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
The Deepers press in around me as we reach the bottom of the stairs, sighs and murmurs and the smell of sweat mingling with the cold, wet smell of the river pumping in through the air-conditioning. Daniel and I cram through a set of wide double doors and I gasp hopefully at the ballroom we find ourselves in. No such luck. My lungs close up as the rotting weeds and river slime stench assails my nostrils anew. The Deepers don’t mind, the crush of bodies fragmenting into excited groups as they explore the stalls and autograph tables lining the cavernous hall. The sudden breakup of the crowd should make me feel less tense, but it doesn’t. There’s just – something. Something about them that I can’t quite describe.
“I’m going to go save our place in line,” calls Daniel, slipping away into the milling crowd. “We’ve only got a few minutes before the doors open. Don’t be late – I don’t want to have to come and find you.”
The most I can manage is a terse nod. On cue, my hands are already looking for my notes, but the moment I bring them out, I get… looks. Deepers turn and notice. Not threatening, exactly. Just the acknowledgement that I’m not really one of them. This, expectant, tense stare.
I thrust the notes back in my pocket and try to reassert my Memory Palace. I can do this. I can capture whatever it is that’s going on here. On the surface, the Deepers are acting like any other group at a community bonding event. There’re shoppers pursuing stalls of handmade mystic junk, a group of young men in robes cooing over a figure dressed in some kind of mutant costume. Along on wall, rows of Deepers are waiting patiently in line, each holding a copy of a small, blue book that is offered to on old woman behind a table to sign. At the far end of the ballroom is the stage, the deep green curtains drawn against the crowd huddling up against the dais.
The room has been decorated with circles and sigils, some of which are vaguely recognisable from my research into cults. It’s typical behaviour, a form of group memory anchored by common symbols. Like all cults, the superstition is enforced by constant group surveillance and veiled intimidation.
Well they won’t scare me. I won’t let all of this, whatever it is, get to me. It’s just an emotion, brought on by fatigue and theatrics. I’m above this nonsense.
Once again, I step through the marble hallways of my Memory Palace. It’s still… not quite right. I should be able to capture the Deepers going about their playacting, but the mental space won’t settle. The gleaming, pristine hall wavers, twisting a little at the edges, the polished walls deteriorating into dirty orange wallpaper. Even here, the rancid swamp smell is all-pervading.
This isn’t right. I should be able to look out of the stained glass constructed in my memory, but all I can see are the grimy, oxidised swirls of the ballroom’s windows. If I squint, I can see out into the gloom, making out the vague, wandering shape of the river. There’s –
A Deeper bumps me as they crowd towards the stage at the far end of the hall. I shake my head, trying free myself from the confusing images. No. I am here, at the convention. Everything’s alright. It was nothing.
My eyes flick back to the dirty glass. See? It’s fine. It’s-
There’s something moving out there.
“Hey, did anyone – did anyone..?”
The Deepers are still clustered around me, laughing and chatting and whispering in small groups. Some of them briefly catch my eye then look away. Others hold my gaze. Watching. Waiting.
I stumble back a few steps, and my hands clench around the notes in my pockets. They don’t know who I am. They can’t know. I can still-
Thump.
The noise is so loud that every table in the ballroom lurches. Above us, the neon tubes flicker, and one of them expires with a loud pop.
What the-?
On instinct, I start backing towards the double doors. The Deepers don’t seem to have noticed, save the group swarming around the stage, who let out a ragged cheer and press forward with renewed energy.
I don’t know what’s going on here. This is – this doesn’t make any sense.
I shouldn’t look back. Something tells me I should just, just run, but…
I turn to the room, trying desperately to commit this last, strange image to memory. The Memory Palace flickers over my vision, no longer clean and gleaming, but warped and peeling walls of muddy orange, silent weeping foetid swamp water.
It’s just nerves, I can still visualise and capture the Deepers, I-
The floor is slick with blood, gathering in dark, rusty pools over the sigils carved into the wooden floor.
The Deepers are – are…
Lines and lines of robed bodies, chanting at small altars and censers of burning incense around the edges of the temple hall, or clustered in a mob around the stairs and dais at the far end of the hall. There’s bodies. A pile of bodies, sticky with blood, heaped up around the altar. Behind the slab of stone a robed shape stand in silence.
“What’s going on? What’s happening?”
My voice breaks the low, throbbing chant. Slowly, deliberately, the ranks of Deepers turn to stare at me.
The robed figure at the altar raises his arm, the dark cloth falling away to reveal a grey, wizened hand, a single finger extending to point directly at me.
There’s no words. No accusations. Just a desperate, animal roar from the worshippers as they lunge towards me.
My body acts on its own, staggering back towards the double doors and raising my hands to ward off the approaching mob.
“Back! Get away from me! Get away from meee!”
As the bodies close in around me, I clench my eyes shut and scream, thrashing at the hands that are sure to come.
Nothing.
In the darkness behind my eyes, the Memory Palace fades, replaced by the excited hubbub of a convention. The air feels cold, and smells of rancid swamp water.
With the hard wood of the double doors at my back, I slide down into a heap and risk opening an eye.
The faded ballroom is bustling, Deepers laughing and chatting as they examine the trinkets at each stall.
“No, it was… I-”
My hands won’t stop shaking as the Deepers mill about. From the crowd a familiar pimply face emerges, pale with excitement as he reaches down to me.
“Tony! What are you doing down there? It’s time! You’re going to meet the keynote speaker. Come in, let’s go!”
“N-no. Get away – get away from me!”
Daniel’s face screws up in confusion as I flail at him and stagger to my feet.
“But it’s time,” he replies. Calmly. Almost coldly. “It’s time, Anthony. You wanted to see the truth, didn’t you?”
The Memory Palace flickers around me. I didn’t – I wasn’t trying to call it –
The ritual hall is smoky now, and the incense burns my throat as the hands grab my arms and legs. I struggle to get away, but my feet scrabble uselessly on the blood-soaked stones. The press of robes bodies is a shuffling, chanting wall, but as the heads dip to lift me up I can see the figure standing amongst the dead bodies by the altar. His thin hand is drawing a jagged stone knife from his belt. My body flexes, sheer animal terror flushing the adrenaline through my chest as I kick and thrash against the crowd.
“No! I don’t want this! Get away from me! Stop this – stop!”
As my head flops back, I spy the grimy ballroom windows, which are now deep stone slits opening to the starry sky beyond.
The alien constellations are suddenly blocked out as something starts to move beyond the wall.
Thump.
The impact of – something – isn’t a noise, it’s a hammer applied to every part of my body at once. I thrash as the Memory Palace falters into darkness, picking myself up as my shaking hands feel the ballroom double doors behind me. It’s not until I careen into the cold, hard shape of the stairs that I risk opening my eyes.
Just stairs. Just plain stairs covered in crappy cheap carpet with a faded floor sign screwed to the wall at each landing. The signs flick past me as I scramble upwards, barrelling back through the doors of the uppermost floor and into the familiar corridor beyond. My chest is a bright ball of pain as I gulp down the rancid swamp air and risk a peek into the rooms lining the hallway.
Same peeling brown wallpaper. Same dull, grimy light fittings.
It’s ok. Whatever happened, it’s ok now. There’s bound to be a reasonable, logical explanation for –
The impact jolts the corridor, and my vision starts to swirl and flicker.
I squeeze my eyes shut, my voice hissing through my lips as I try and force the images away. But I can’t.
The Memory Palace is all around me. Hunting me.
Devouring me whole.
Stumbling blindly from wall to wall, I lose my balance and stumble, half in and half out of one of the ballroom doorways. The impact knocks the air from my lungs and my eyes open – just a crack. A pair of Deepers are there, oblivious to me, clawing at their ears and screaming as they slam their heads into the cracked wallpaper. The taller of the pair is already covered in blood, the dark red stain on the wall spreading with every convulsion.
A cracked voice echoes through the screams.
“You don’t know what it’s like, Tony. You don’t know. Don’t know don’t know don’t know…”
I don’t want to look, but a hand grabs me and pulls me around. A woman is sitting at a table of broken crockery, her face bleeding from a dozen cuts and rents. She locks eyes with me and shivers.
“Patrice…”
The manic figure lets out of peal of laughter, tears streaming down her face as picks up a piece of shattered porcelain and hold it to her face.
“Patrice – Patrice! No!”
Her laughter climbs into shrieks as the shard of white ceramic disappears into her eye.
Thump.
The jolt sends me sprawling, but I can’t pick myself up. Somehow, I’m – I’m back. Back in the hall. The hands of the cultists are all over me, holding me fast, and the roof of the temple flashes above me as I’m carried onto the dais. A thin hand passes over my vision, still gripping its knife. The stone altar slams against the back of my head and I taste blood.
The smoky air is throbbing with the chant. All I can see is the roof above me, shaking, bending. Cracking.
I can see the shape of slow movement. Something – something –
Thump.
The vision fades as the hallway shimmers and flickers around me again, the muddy brown walls flexing and sighing as the muddy brown wallpaper peels back into waving tendrils. I stagger. I fall, feeling the acrid rotting stench of the carpet as I pull myself up and stagger forward some more.
I lurch through the door to my room and collapse back into the couch, feeling the cheap fabric warp and shift beneath my touch.
“It’s all here, Anthony. All the answers.”
No.
No.
My eyes are stinging from sweat, and I can barely wipe my hair from my eyes as I grudgingly look up.
She’s there. Standing over me. My mother is bald, her scalp and face vandalised with hideous sigils carved deep into the skin. She’s wearing a Deeper robe, and her muddy hands are opening a leather-bound tome that groans in protest at being opened.
“It was all a lie,” she rasps, her rictus grin stretching until her lips start to split and bleed. “The darkness was always all around us. There was only ever one thing we could do.”
“Mom, please…”
“Only one thing we can do, Anthony!”
The wretched figure – it can’t be my Mother, it can’t – looks at the book and begins to speak, the words an acid poison dripping into the wavering air. In response the walls shudder with horror, cracking and splitting with a chorus of high-pitched screams.
The robed woman laughs, screaming peals of madness as the roof and walls reach out to wrap her in thick tendrils. With a frenzied heartbeat she’s barely a shape within a writhing, mud-brown cocoon. There’s a sickening crack as I hear the bones being to break. A rivulet of blood begins to drop through the coils, lubricating the ropy tendrils.
She’s still screaming with laughter as the tentacles snap her body in half.
All I can do is curl up on the blood-flecked couch, bawling, howling as the tears stream down my cheeks.
“Go away!” a voice screams. It barely sounds human. Perhaps it’s mine. “I don’t want this – go away!”
Thump.
The world shifts, and now the hands are back, holding me tight against the altar. The stone itself is vibrating as the chanting reaches a crescendo. Above me, the priest looks up, holding his blade at the ready.
Thump.
The impact barely slows the Deepers, but the walls crack, the fractures merging and connecting in the dark vault above. My throat burns from the scream, but the sound is snatched away as masonry falls upwards, spinning out into space.
Thump.
It’s almost like I’m looking down, the hands of the Deepers stopping me from spiralling into the abyss. The roof groans and tears away completely, and the chants of the Deepers turn to screams: desperate, terrified, exultant.
Thump.
A shape is silhouetted against the spiralling galaxies beyond. All I can make out is its edge. Trying simply to trace its shape sends my senses careening off into the warped and broken walls of the temple. But it’s moving. Something – something unspeakable bends the tiniest fragment of itself to observe me.
Thump.
The darkness splits and an eye the colour of stagnant river water looms across the horizon, it’s iris a hideous jagged scar of pure darkness.
Thump.
The priest bellows in joy. The tiny frame shouldn’t be able to sound so loud. The knife rises above me. In a desperate frenzy I free my hand. The knife it already arcing towards my chest, cutting through the smoky incense, tearing through the muscles of my palm as I try to stop it.
Thump.
The blade isn’t cold, at first. There’s just a hollow prickle as I watch the blood pump out around the hilt buried deep –
Thump.
“Anthony? You awake, buddy? Come on, we’ll miss our chance.”
The man standing over me scratches at the pimples on his cheeks, blinking excitedly as he shakes me with his free hand.
My mind surfaces, pushing aside the sleep that was wrapping its finger around my throat to –
What was going on, again?
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