At last, I touched my face with the back of the hand I was using to carry the skull.

With a glance, I saw, in the light of the torch left on the ground, the blood there. I realized, when looking at the door from whence the unhallowed ruckus issued and looking at the creatures on the walls, and looking for an escape, that I could not discern distance accurately.

And the pain of my open eye socket was rising to the fore.

So.

What can I tell you next?

Did I go insane? Would it be a wonder if I somehow did not? I was half-blind, and even more blinded by a growing agony. I was surrounded and fighting off tentacles worse than any stinger that I feared as a child. I was lost in an ancient underground, with no way out, committed to missions that I was absolutely determined to complete. And ... they were coming.

I fled. I know that much.

I ran with the black skull pressed tightly to my bosom. I no longer used my one eye, for the torch was left in the room far behind me. My hands and fingers, like tentacles, saw horrible things. I heard terrible sounds from the mouths of beasts, sounds that could not be copied by the most skilled singers or creative actors of our race. They sought me. I ran.

And I am sure that, for a time a continual epoch, perhaps, if only days or weeks, while I ate the hemp I wore and drank whatever moisture I splashed through I will agree that I was insane.

When I came to ... which is to say, when I remember thinking clearly again ... I was in the bed of a well-lit room. The soft lips of a woman were pressed, cupping and lovingly over my mouth. The scent of roses and potent oriental blossom cradled me.

The Lady de Siverey sat over me, a smile of softness upon her face.

I shut my eye, afraid of the horrors attacking once more, afraid of the consequence of my sin of kissing a woman's mouth.

When I looked again, she was standing near the open door of the room. "Well done, Jacques de Ronnay. Now, go, and do thou likewise."

I told you before that I never saw her again. I am not sure that I did even then. For I wept and studied the door through which she might have pa.s.sed. It was tightly shut, as if it had never opened to admit her. Perhaps this was my troubled mind and nothing more. Perhaps I have still never touched a woman so and am therefore clean before all the Saints and Mother Mary.

I a.s.sure you that I am now quite rational. Likewise, I know that I shall run and hide for the rest of my life.

I never laid eyes on that skull again, though I know I carried it for as long as my memory will replay. I also lost the map.

Yet, my story must go forth.

There are people, humans on the errands of nasty fools prancing as educated,, who would have us nurture and protect ancient secrets, as if to harness them in some future day or be harnessed by them as servants in reverence to unholy and alien G.o.ds.

Please. In holy houses and elsewhere, copy this letter. It must be shared with all. It is my testimony that this witness is correct in every account and that Man must know. These secrets cannot be trusted with the uncouth soul any longer. And you need look over your shoulder and into the night, forevermore.

Jim Blackstone is a scholar, educator, and writer with a pa.s.sion for foreign languages and history. His most recent science fiction novel, Interference, was recently released by Golden Acorn Press.

Broken Notes.

By Maria Mitch.e.l.l.

Broken notes, anemic strokes,

and withered snakes of wire

Incited the fear. The frenzy. The fire.

What was the reason?

What was the threat?

What horror was so dire?

Dust. Distortion. Solitude.

The truth of this room without

artistic interlude.

Rust. Contortion. Inept.i.tude.

The truth of this mind

without artistic interlude.

One hand can do many things

while the mind and horror sing.

Maria Mitch.e.l.l read the poem "We Organized" from Patricia McKissack's compendium The Dark Thirty in elementary school. Compiled from actual slave narratives by the Library of Congress in the 1930s, it had a vivid imagery of tyranny, slavery, Gothic horror, and retribution that motivates much of her poetry today.

Ghosts & Death.

"There are two bodies the rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the b.u.t.terfly. What we call "death", is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design."

"The Mesmeric Revelation", Edgar Allan Poe.

The Malcontents.

By Mary E. Choo.

Curious,

I planted the seedlings

just as the catalogue said:

on the stroke of midnight,

in late spring,

when it was more than warm.

They did well enough

in that part of the garden

behind the secret gate.