The Dream Cycle Mythos

LETRA

The Dream Cycle Mythos

Often with a benign curiosity we
look to the dreams of men..
Never pondering with any real
significance upon the world that
exists within our sleep and perhaps it
is best left this way. For the things
I have seen and heard I cannot
unlearn. Though I will do my best
to relay them here in hopes that
it may provide my own mind with
the smallest bit of clarification that
I have been seeking for months and have yet to find.
This is a personal documentation
of the past year of my life
as it has been... Please bear in
mind when I say a year that
I am referring to solar time such as that
of a calendar yet time as
I have seen it has been much longer.
Perhaps even decades as though
I am yet to reach the age of 30
my hair is streaked with grey and
my skin cracked with wrinkles.
I live alone now in a remote and
small town where I am no doubt
referred to by the local people
as an eccentric and perhaps very
strange fellow. It is not by chance
that I live in such a desolate area
for it imperative for my own safety
and the safety of others that I am
alone with my own diseased mind
. It is not my intent that these
writings be found or read by any
one other than myself. Should you
happen upon these writings you
would be wise to abandon your
reading at this point to save your
own sanity and let what I know
die with me. It began in the most
modest of ways.. I had studied
many years in processes of the human
mind. It was my goal you see to
help people who were besieged
by their own minds and
unable to help themselves.
I have always held a keen interest
with the mind and its secrets.
Upon graduating close to the
top of my class from psychiatry
school I soon found a small
practice and due to a close
personal relationship with one of the
local asylums top doctors
I would occasionally receive some of
the reformed patients
upon their re-entering society.
All was going very well and
I had begun to earn a modest
living at the job I enjoyed so much.
Then one day that all changed.
I received a phone call from my
doctor friend at the asylum and
he asked me if I should like to
visit the asylum as he would like
my opinion on a particular patient.
I of course accepted the
invitation eagerly and made
off the next eve to see him.
After arriving the doctor and
I spent a small amount of
time discussing the patient of
interest. He was apparently
found wandering outside a small
mountain town a couple days
carriage ride from here. His hands and
face were covered in blood and
he was staring vacantly at the sky.
He was locked in the local
town jail for one night until they may
be able to assess his identity
and where the blood may have come from.
The first morning the sheriff
arrived at the jail he happened
upon the man in the cell and noticed
that in his sleep he would
seizure in very short rapid movements
and was uttering something
that the sheriff could not quite
understand as English.
Within a few days he was
transferred to my colleague
at the asylum and was observed
exhibiting this behavior several
more times and upon waking up he
would slowly stand with his
arms folded across his chest very tightly
and stare upwards, sometimes
uttering strange phrases..
Upon entering the room leading
to the patients cell I could not help
but shiver due to a rather rapid
yet slight drop in temperature...
The patient himself was a man of
about forty with a ragged and
long yellow tinged beard and deep
sunken eyes that I could not
quite discern the color of. He was
a slim fellow with very rigid facial
features... It appeared to me as
if he had been starving
himself for weeks or even months.
When I entered the room the
man's gaze set upon me and as
his vacant stare disappeared a look
of desperation and woe filled
his eyes (which I could clearly
distinguish as green now)...
He began to utter strange sounds
which I could not distinguish as
English but some other dialect
or perhaps not even a dialect at
all. My colleague excused himself
and remarked that should I
need anything I should bang on the
door and I will be seen to... At
that he left me with the man and we
sat staring at each other for
what seemed to me to be hours.
I could not release my gaze from
his eyes. They seemed to swirl with
a dark shade that drew me into them.
All at once the patient then
suddenly spoke to me in barely
discernable English... His words
were minced and yet seemed to
make perfect sense all at once.
He spoke of visions and dreams
which plagued him in even his
waking moments. Of unspeakable
horrors which tore at his mind
until little or nothing remained.
When pressed on the origin of
his visions he would stop speaking
suddenly and stare to the sky
with his arms folded so tightly
across his chest his hands would
turn pale with loss of blood.
After several hours with the man I
returned to ask my colleague if
I could spend the night in his room and
observe his sleeping moments..
The doctor reluctantly agreed
under the condition the man be restrained.
The first night I observed the
man I was astounded to see him
in total sleep state open his eyes
and stare at me when suddenly
with a voice so loud I had to cover
my ears lest I fear I should
go deaf he began uttering strange words
that I had never heard before... even from him...
The attacks were frequent yet
lasted only minutes and the man
would close his eyes and lye
down once more... By the morning
I was exhausted. After at least 50
episodes the sun had stared to
flood into the man's room from
his thickly barred window. I rose
from my chair and was about to
ring for the orderly to open the
door and permit me leave from this
room when all at once I heard
a large intake of air from the mans chest
and turned to see his face a pale
green color and his eyes rolled
back into his head... His hair
seemed to take on a life of its own
and began to whip and twirl as
if there was a fan under the mans head...
I rushed to his side and knelt over
him... Looking back now I curse
myself for such a thoughtless
action for as I knelt before the
man his eyes flooded with a black
liquid and I felt something that
I had never imagined any human could
ever feel.. It was as though a
hand was coming from this mans body
and grabbed my forehead...
Then it began. I felt a fire coming
through the air and seared with
a cold burning sensation that seemed
to scorch to deepest part of me.
Then I was gone... My physical
body could or would not contain
me any longer... The horror I found
when my mind retreated from
my physical self could not be explained...
The forms of unspeakable
abominations grasped and clung
to me and the eyes? those empty
vacuous eyes that held nothing
but death and pain... I tried to
scream, but no sound would come...
I was somewhere else now..
It felt as though I had plunged to
the deepest depths of the black
ocean only to find the edge of
time and space... I was being
pulled in every direction at once and if I
could have I would have removed
my eyes to offer some relief at the
horrors that surrounded me...
All the while the voices... those
unexplainable voices that entered
my brain though not through my
ears were deafening me with
sounds of torture... Through it
all one voice came to me in clear
English and silenced all things
surrounding me. The voice was
not one of man nor woman... It simply was.
?Inna sogoth... Mortal you are
not known to this world. The
one before you had not the capacity
to accept the things it saw and
thus was an unusable host...
Your kind is frail yet here you
have come and here you shall stay..
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh
wgah'nagl fhtagn."... As quickly
as it had come to me it was gone...
I woke to find several men standing
over me including my colleague
who understandable was
very pale and full of concern..
Not wanting to alarm anyone I
told them that I had been lying
there watching the patient and had
slipped and fallen when I heard
him make those terrible inhaling noises.
The look in my friends eyes told
me he most certainly did
not believe me but accepted
my excuse anyways...
As I steadied myself I looked
over to see the patient lying still
strapped to the bed... I asked
if he was alright and they informed
me he had died shortly after I
had my little accident. I didn't
know what to think... All I had just
experienced was too much at
the time for me to accept it as a reality...
Though the feelings at the back
of my head told me otherwise...
I left for home shortly after
regaining consciousness and
was terribly relieved to be back at
home in my own manor...
I spent the day running errands and trying to
distance myself from the events
of that morning though the back
of my mind could not move past them...
I had a very troublesome sleep
that night... If I slept at all.
Visions of the things, shapes
and forms I had seen plagued
my dreams and that voice...
Filled with an emotion I had never
experienced before in my lifetime
simply replayed itself over and
over in my mind... The last thing
it said to me especially. I had no
idea what it meant but I had the
feeling that it was possibly
the key to all this horror...
The next couple weeks passed
without anything substantial and
I began pushing the thoughts
of all of it out of my head finally
and then one night after a rather
indulgent evening out I was found
once more in my sleep... I felt the
sensation of drowning and
through the blackness I could see eyes...
staring at me... some angrily
and some appearing to be full of
sorrow but all were intently
looking to me... Then it happened...
I looked down to see lights
and what appeared to be a city...
There were buildings and
apparently manmade structures that existed
here... As I descended upon
it there was a shrill shrieking
noise that pierced my senses
and flooded my body with pain.
?human... the city of r'lyeh
holds him... dead but dreaming... Cthulhu fhtagn?
It was then that I arrived upon
what I guessed was the city of
R'lyeh... I spent an immeasurable
amount of time there... Most
of it I spent in the darkest shadows
hiding from the forms that moved
through the alleys and buildings...
I had no idea why I was there
or what brought me to that place...
I just wanted out... Then it
happened. I came upon a large
open area and in the middle of
this area was a circle with strange
symbols inside of it...
One was a star and also some partially
formed triangles... When I stepped
upon the circle I was suddenly
awake in my bed.. Covered in
sweat and trying to catch up to my
breathing... And the sky opened
and giant tentacles came from it...
Something was coming out..
I screamed in horror and fell to the
floor and then I saw it...
A giant arm first and then the head of it...
It was that of a sea monster...
An almost human face surrounded
by tentacles and emitting the
smell of the dead.. It was then that
my mind finally shut down...
and visions of the apocalypse haunted me...
The world is a sea of flames and cloud...
Unspeakable horrors befalling all
of mankind as it walked among us...
I spent much time in that world of death...
So much now that I am unaware of life's true reality...
And still they come to me...
Dead but dreaming?They come to me...
As I sit here now and prepare
to finish the last of this testimony
I cannot help but think back to
that patient and hope for my end to
come soon... Perhaps I will get
in touch with my old friend at the
asylum.. I'm sure I would be quite the study...
Still it calls.. It finds me where
I hide and I can no longer run... Death is waiting and I
have many miles to travel...