More Exerpts from a Diary
More Excerpts from a partial diary - presumably Kingsworths'
I seem to be making some progress in my dream. Last night, I saw pale lights through the mist, flickering like dying flames on the horizon. The fog is lifting, and I sense the lights are somehow part of a vast structure - a thousand beacons of some ancient, nocturnal city. The slick surface of the ocean becomes a mirror of an alien sky, where the stars are all black, and strange moons stare at me, like the bulbous eyes of some blind madman. I have told his Lordship of my recurring nightmare - and he dismisses it with a little laugh - saying that I am too concerned, and that it will surely go away once I recover fully from my fall. Perhaps he is right. I do feel better, physically at least. The Lady, on the other hand, is worried. She, bless her kind heart, insists that I allow a physician to attend me again, - but in my vanity I will not hear of it. To think that I, after all these years, can still be frightened by a mere nightmare. Ridiculous.
My condition is worse. Two days ago, I felt well enough to leave my sickbed at Greyston Manor for a short excursion to the surrounding woods. While the beauty of the quiet forest lake just east of here is indescribable this time of year, I suppose that I was not quite prepared for the damp and chill air. As fate would have it, I caught a slight fever, thus delaying my plans to return to Oxford somewhat. So, here I am, in bed again. I try not to sleep too much, but I find myself drifting in and out of strange dreams. The doctor says that it is only natural, given my feverish condition, yet I sense that something is not as it should be. I have never been a vivid dreamer, yet the recurring nightmare - for the dream is a true nightmare - seems more like a recollection of a real event than the crazy images conjured up by a fever. I know now what the lights on the horizon are. In my dream, I am approaching the seaward battlements of a great forgotten city with a thousand dark towers. Slowly, my vessel is carried towards the shores. Each wave brings me closer, and though I begin to see the waves breaking on the shore, there is no sound. It is as if the solid waves are nothing but clouds; silently dissipating as they crash against the bulwarks of the nightmare city. A final, vaporous wave lifts me and I am softly deposited ashore, utterly alone in the empty, cobbled streets of the dim city I know in my dreams only as Carcosa. I cannot describe the sheer strangeness of the place; always half-concealed in shadows and strange mists; constantly drifting in and out of existence. Nothing remains the same. I wander aimlessly through the narrow, mist-shrouded streets, and there is not a person to be seen anywhere. Tall buildings loom ominously over me, dissolving into the ever-present haze above. I hear faint echoes of voices - but they bring me no comfort - for they seem to me like the mad cries of lost and desperate souls. I try to turn back; to reach the shores where the cloud-waves break once again, but to my horror I find that there is no way back! Pure, animal terror grips me, and I run blindly through empty avenues, across yawning plazas, past marble mausoleums and great statues of Heroes and Kings that never were. And the more I run, the faster my sanity is bleeding away to the horror of Carcosa. Eventually, I wake up with a scream caught in my throat, my heart pounding and my head heavy and spinning. Perhaps the strangest part of the whole affair is the song which haunts me during the moments when I recover from the dream. It defies all attempts to remember - yet I can hear it clearly for a minute or two after waking up. It is so wonderful. I cannot describe it in any other way. It is simply wonderful. It calms me down, dispelling the terrors of the nocturnal city like the sun after a thunderstorm. It brings freshness - rejuvenation - hope. I have made feeble attempts to write it down, but the music seems to vanish faster the harder I try to capture it. It seems as if I have heard it before, a long, long time ago, yet I am unable to remember where or when.
Fever is worse. Find it difficult to write. Have been to Carcosa again, but this time, I made a terrible mistake. The dark church in the square. God, how it beckoned me to enter. How was I to know? Dear God, they whispered my name! Should have guessed it. Nothing is the way it seems in Carcosa. The church of the Damned. Now the little horrors with the silvery eyes are stalking me. They claim my Soul - I know it. Have to stay awake. They cannot reach me here. So tired. Air is stale. Cannot breathe. Must find the Song again.
I am safe. The Woman saved me; they fear her Song. Oh, she is an Angel. My Dark-eyed Angel. Leads me through the streets to the House of the Sleeping Dragon. So many like me. She whispers us great secrets. I have seen the Yellow Sign.
It has been more than a month since I took the time to write in this diary. Things have been much too exciting for me. I have recovered completely from my brief spell of fever, and I returned to Oxford shortly after - bursting with new ideas. How could I have missed such connections? I am getting ahead of myself here, but I am still excited about the prospects of my insight. If I add the dynamic variable of Time to the folding process, the resulting curves are astonishingly simple. Who would have thought that seemingly random spatial distortions could produce such patterns? Perhaps space and time are not really all that different - certainly they are entirely equivalent in this geometry. And what of Infinity? The circle expands in radius until the circumference becomes zero! Impossible no more! And the answer was so obvious. Continuous expansion producing cycles of growth. The torus is only a lower-order representation of space-time, each point on the surface referring only to one possible Here and Now - and the structure as a whole is repetitive. Now, what would happen if the torus of space-time was folded? It is a wonderful feeling to be so full of new ideas - it reminds me of the old times! I do feel strangely elated when working on my new concept - and it is quite ironic that the inspiration came during a fit of crazed fever nightmares! Bingham does not quite see the whole picture yet - and I suppose he does not understand my elation. I haven’t the time to worry about it, though. I still need a lot more sleep than I used to, but I do not remember having any bad dreams at all. Furthermore, each morning, I seem to wake up with a head full of new ideas - and for a few seconds after waking, but before I open my eyes, I fancy hearing the sweetest music ever made...