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The Shadow Over Lynchburg, or The Case of Dr. Harry Felwealth

Casey Clabough

The bulldozers, backhoes and scrapers dug and tore more deeply into the previously heavily wooded, sloping northern face of the mountain than anyone gazing upon the denuded wound from the city readily would have surmised. From afar the cleared area – perhaps three or four football fields in size – and the massive insignia now resting upon and into it appeared flat and uniform, not unlike some great adhesive pressed against a willing and expansive synthetic surface. Up close, however, the altered terrain, albeit heavily graded and manicured in the wake of its deforesting cataclysm, had the appearance of a not completely filled crater, its rock contents bleached, jagged and unreal. This rough organization of rock and soil – uniform if glimpsed from a distance yet chaotic, heaped, and unnatural when considered in close proximity – conspired to present to the viewer, whether standing almost upon it or glimpsing it from as far away as a couple of miles, perhaps somewhere in the city below, two great letters: C U. Obvious to all was the inference that the symbols stood for Commandment University, the campus expanse of which sprawled along either side of a great highway which skirted the city limits at the foot of the mountain. The peak itself now bore the name of that fundamentalist religious institution, altered shortly after Commandment’s televangelical president, Dr. Harry Felwealth, had purchased it. Perhaps this meant nothing to the mountain. Yet when heavy rains struck the newly denuded stretch of hillside, the downfalls carved impromptu waterways into the loose red clay soil around the great insignia, staining the white rocks crimson, streaking down the mountain in jagged, eroded channels – like tears of blood.

***

One particular individual in the city below who had been contemplating the mountainside symbol off and on for the last two months was Dr. Isaac VanHolmes, a beleaguered assistant professor of Communications at the crosstown secular liberal arts institution, Hopwood College. VanHolmes was beleaguered because his tenure case was only a year away and he had received very ambiguous and unenthusiastic signals from both his immediate colleagues and his dean. Having arrived at the school five years earlier as a member of the Sociology Department, he had watched as a swift yet clumsy purge swept through the programme shortly thereafter – a kind of ‘Night of the Long Memos’– in which the progressive dean and department chair who had supported his hiring were noisily ushered out amid much fanfare and recrimination. These developments left him almost altogether alienated and unwanted in a programme dominated by stern, quantitative Criminologists. His colleagues quickly made it clear they had little respect for his cutting-edge degree in Adult Film Studies from a top West Coast programme, and, by the end of his second year, had jettisoned him out of their midst altogether and into the equally unwelcoming confines of the Communications Department, where he was perceived as a narrow, unwanted specialist in a suspect field, and, as a result, assigned a former janitorial office and a full complement of low-level courses to teach. So it was that the people who daily greeted him cheerfully and professionally in the office hallway (they were, after all, Communications professors) were at once actively plotting his removal and replacement even as they all grinned, guffawed and backslapped in careful observance of the increasingly precarious and outmoded tradition of academic collegiality.

Contrary to what these developments may lead one to suspect, Isaac was not a bad man, which probably, from the beginning, had destined him for failure in the increasingly corporate and sleazy, albeit ultimately low-stakes, world of higher education. Having come to believe that neither clarity nor logic readily functioned at his institution, he rolled along as best he could, though a number of factors continued to work against him. For one thing, the nature of his field made people suspicious and doubtful of his character. As the only Adult Film Studies specialist on campus he had to carry the colorful banner for that entire harried discipline, which, though home to a number of distinguished scholars at some of the best universities around the country, attracted only thinly-veiled derision from his immediate Communications colleagues who believed their own foci on popular music, television programmes, commercials, Hollywood movies, cartoons, claymation, crossword puzzles, and other valuable intellectual genres to be of far greater cultural complexity and aesthetic worth. Moreover, the nature of his subject of inquiry was exacerbated by the fact that he was both single and nearly a decade younger than the next most junior full-time colleague in his department. Much as he tried to push students away in a coldly formal manner, his scholarly emphasis and personable, boyish demeanor could not help but invite knowing familiarity and occasional ridicule – the undergraduates identifying him to one another, or so it had been reported, as ‘Professor Porno’ or ‘IVH’. It did not help matters that Isaac also was not unattractive in a bookish, vulnerable, preoccupied sort of way, and this too worked to his disadvantage: in the infrequent highly-descriptive sexual comment among his student evaluations and his reluctant rejections of invitations to lead undergraduate groups abroad for fear of having certain females constantly throwing themselves upon him at late, drunken hours in exotic, sensual settings.

So Professor Isaac VanHolmes frequently glanced at the great moniker on Commandment Mountain as he drove, too often aimlessly, about the small sleepy city of Lynchburg, Virginia, the nature of his professional concerns and tenuous future never far from his mind. He wistfully dreamed of landing a better job at another school, yet his laziness, unhappiness and heavy teaching load had prevented him from cultivating the kind of research production necessary to make himself marketable. His book manuscript, Can Porn Matter? Essays on Pornography and American Culture, had been rejected by enough academic publishers for him to doubt its validity, and he steadily had grown disheartened with regard to the prospect of future work in the field. What he needed was a new and radical subject and approach; something that not only would get published but make a big enough splash to propel him through the tenure gauntlet of Hopwood, or at least on to a decent job somewhere else. Idling in his car at a stoplight on Commandment Mountain Road, the peak and its immense insignia before him, the latter glowing slightly in the afternoon sun, a curious and arresting idea came upon him....

***

‘That’s about the dumbest and most useless book topic I ever heard of,’ said Lyra Rey, looking across the table at Isaac before taking another swallow from her beer glass.

It was Happy Hour at the Corner Bar just off campus and Isaac had announced his intention to write an unauthorized biography of Dr. Harry Felwealth.

‘Apart from the occasional gay-bashing comment, he’s just not that relevant any more,’ continued Lyra.

‘But I’m not so much interested in the particulars of Felwealth’s life and career,’ countered Isaac, ‘as what he represents – the symbol he is and the symbols he creates.’

‘You should stick with pornos,’ proclaimed Lyra, draining her glass. ‘At least people watch them. I don’t know anyone who watches Felwealth’s Commandment Hour on Sunday mornings. I’m never awake when it comes on anyway and wouldn’t watch it if I was. I guess his followers tune in and probably the kids at Commandment have to, but they’re not going to be interested in reading your book – burning it maybe, but not reading it.’

Lyra was Isaac’s only true friend at Hopwood. Tough, foulmouthed and opinionated, she shared Isaac’s skepticism about higher education, but was much more vocal in announcing her perspectives. Fortunately for her and her career, she worked in the library’s Special Collections stacks, which kept her and her boisterous, yet lovely, mouth largely sequestered from most of her library coworkers and the rest of the college. She was thankful for the isolation and wouldn’t have it any other way. Isaac was in love with her.

‘I think the book could interest all kinds of people,’ said Isaac. ‘I believe it would interest people here. He went here, you know, Felwealth. Was here in the early 1950s and got booted for disorderly behavior.’

‘That I didn’t know,’ said Lyra, laughing.

‘I'd like to look into it more, but I really need your help,’ Isaac was pleading now for fear of his own lack of research prowess. ‘No one knows the old unprocessed administrative records like you.’

Lyra gave him a half-serious stare. ‘Really,’ she said. ‘Are you really serious about this?’

‘If it can produce a book and save my tenure case, why not give it a try? Adult Film Studies certainly hasn’t gotten me anywhere at this place’ Isaac let his right palm drop to the table as he gazed out the window dejectedly.

‘I’ll give it a look, given that some of us would like to keep you around,’ she said, smiling impishly and patting his hand. ‘It’s not like anyone else around here is putting in research requests anyway.’

He looked back at her and smiled. ‘You’re the best,’ he said. ‘I hope you can find something, though I don’t think I’ll need much. The whole book idea, you see, is predicated upon the idea of Felwealth as symbol and symbol creator. He gets kicked out of Hopwood College, eventually builds his own church and university, carves out signs upon mountains – all of these things symbols – and for decades chimes in on all matter of political issues. Yet where is the real Felwealth? Is there a real Felwealth? Or, indeed, has he himself become something grown somehow beyond the being he once was? Well, anyway . . . what do you think?’

‘What?’ Lyra had been staring out the window. ‘This is boring. Buy me another beer.’

***

It suited Dr. Isaac VanHolmes’ work habits, or rather the lack thereof, that he was able to peruse many of the recent events of Felwealth’s history in a lazy, paperless manner using his office computer. It was obvious that Felwealth had been active lately. A couple months back, for instance, in the seldom-objective city newspaper, The Lynchburg News and Testament, known in some quarters as The Mouth of Felwealth, Felwealth had remarked that the new Commandment University mountainside advertisement was only the beginning:

‘It is my goal,’ he said, ‘if God give me strength, to take the 4,600 acres we have on and around Commandment Mountain and create something akin to Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge, where Christian families may come to take their rest in an atmosphere without alcohol, drugs and violence and where family-oriented entertainment is beheld on every corner.

‘We are committing ourselves now to long-term construction of student housing on Commandment Mountain,’ he continued. ‘We don’t see a time that we won’t be building there. The ongoing growth of Commandment University atop the mountains of Lynchburg will be a sight for all who dwell in the city to behold.

‘Also in the works is a lake, which would be crucial if the ministry were to build a ski slope from the top of Commandment Mountain heading north toward the city. In the
winter, the water of the lake could help in the production of man-made snow on a new half-mile ski slope, which could also be used for snow tubing,’ Felwealth said.

‘The new lake will have a watershed of about 1,500 acres,’ he continued. ‘I foresee there will be plenty of God-given water for us to make snow for the slopes we create upon Commandment Mountain.

‘If man-made snow won’t work, the university is also looking into a synthetic surface for the ski slope. Preliminary engineering reports solicited and commissioned by Commandment University say the area’s climate and ecosystem easily could support the slopes and snow created by Felwealth.’

Perusing this article and others like it, Isaac could not help but marvel at the demagogue’s grand vision and the rhetoric he employed in impressing it into the minds of others. The emphasis was on ‘family fun’, yet the enjoyment would be predicated upon utterly deforesting Lynchburg’s scenic, historic Blue Ridge foothills and covering them in acres of concrete – a process everyone in the city would view for years on end, whether they wanted to or not, and, in some sense, be forced to take part in. Isaac thought of his own trip, not long after he had arrived on the East Coast, to the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area: a mixed menagerie of amusement-park, Hollywood, frontier town, and Bavarian/Alpine village, complete with ‘local crafts’ made by cheap labour in faraway localities – Mexico, Taiwan, China, etc. – all set below and against the stunning backdrop of the Smokey Mountains – the peaks not owned by the National Park Service completely covered in cabins, condos and chateaus. There was no escaping the circus neon there, for the show appeared to always be going on. So it will become, Isaac thought, with the hills of Lynchburg: fun, or someone’s idea of it, impressed and advertised upon the area’s skyline for all to see, admire, envy and lament.

Isaac’s reverie was interrupted by the ring of his office phone. ‘You’d best get your tail over here,’ said Lyra, sounding breathless, ‘You won’t believe what I’ve found.’

‘I’ve been finding some interesting things, too,’ rejoined Isaac, trying to pull his mind back from sprawling visions of ski slopes and vast amusement parks.

‘Screw that Internet surfing you and the kids call research,’ snapped Lyra, ‘I’m talking real meat: Primo Documento.’

‘Well,’ explained Isaac, ‘I’m almost finished with this one article and an hour from now I–’

‘I’ll see you in the Sexon Room in five minutes,’ said Lyra and hung up on him.

***

The Sexon Room functioned as the Special Collections reading area of Hopwood College’s Rook-Caprice Library. Established through a gift from the beloved and long-dead faculty couple Jocephus and Bathsheba Sexon some 60 or 70 years back, it was a forlorn place, seldom used and in dire need of a makeover.

‘Gave enough to get their fucking name on the door, but not enough to protect the books and keep the damn mould out,’ Lyra was fond of saying.

Stepping into the room through its venerable white doors, Isaac was greeted by a palpable increase in humidity and the musty odour of a thriving mould population. A dehumidifier droned on somewhere to no avail. In a corner of the room lined with bookshelves Lyra was bent over a large low table studying a strewn array of papers.

‘So where’s the big goldmine of primary sources?’ asked Isaac, coming to stand beside her and trying to decide which of the hundreds of separate papers to rest his eyes upon.

‘Well, it’s not so much a goldmine,’ she said, shuffling through some of the papers, ‘as some scattered pieces of gold I found in the rough. Put these gloves on and have a look at this.”

Isaac struggled awkwardly into the white cotton library gloves as she held out a college memo dated 1953. He peered closely at the slightly blurred typewriter print on the thin, yellowing paper:

May 1, 1953

Dear Mr. Felwealth,
In the wake of your fourth disciplinary infraction, the last taking place while you were on probation, Hopwood College is terminating its relationship with you. The termination is final. You will not be readmitted.

Hopwood’s strong commitment to character development and Christian values cannot conscience repeated behaviour such as yours. It impairs college life, threatens to debauch fellow students, and compromises our institutional mission. Hopwood College has no place for alcohol, drugs and violence, and those who include such things in their pursuits shall be cast out. Our goal is to keep learning and enrichment in evidence on every corner of campus.

I hope that you will seek help for your recidivist dissipation and attempts to sway others to your example. My earnest prayer is that you ultimately will acquire the capacity to reevaluate your life and make an impact on whatever future community will have you.

Yours Faithfully,
Norvelle W. Rouse
President

Isaac whistled. ‘Wow, that’s intense. “You shall be cast out!”’ He pointed dramatically at Lyra and laughed.

‘Well, that’s not all,’ Lyra said, ignoring Isaac’s antics, ‘It gets weirder. I found copies of two other disciplinary letters to Felwealth and even some write-ups of his infractions. They all seem to point to the fact that his behaviour began to get strange after returning from a freshman study abroad trip. It was just after that time away that he began missing lots of classes, appearing drunk or otherwise impaired at times, and even lashing out at classmates. And later there are these unbelievable documented complaints of loud chanting coming from his room late at night, apparently in a foreign language. One of the disciplinary reports says he told a classmate who ridiculed him that one day he would have the power to make the boy “lose his mind amid the depthless dreams of the Old Ones.”’

Isaac let out another low whistle, ‘Where did he go on the study abroad trip?’ he asked.

‘Of all places: Damascus,’ said Lyra, pointing to a piece of paper on the table.

Isaac was fascinated by these peculiar revelations, yet did not know exactly what to think. He looked at the papers pensively.

‘I also found Felwealth’s library records,’ Lyra continued, shuffling through more of the documents on the table. ‘It seems that after that trip he began checking out books on ancient religions and civilizations of the Middle East. One title appears on the list again and again. He apparently would hold onto it for weeks, until it was overdue even, and then check it out again. Look.’

Lyra held up a stained piece of paper with a tear in the upper left-hand corner: a list, recorded in various half-interested student scrawls, of the books Felwealth had checked out and allowed to become overdue. One book, Necronomicon, its title appearing slightly darker – or was it an illusion? – than the others, sprung up at sporadic intervals all the way down the page.

‘Necronomicon,’ murmured Isaac, and the room seemed to grow warmer. The implications of what Lyra had discovered crowded in about him. His head felt thick. He shook it quickly and looked at Lyra: ‘Any chance the book’s still here?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘It was listed in the old card catalogue, but when I went to the stacks it wasn’t there.’

‘Too bad,’ lamented Isaac. ‘But then maybe the local library has a copy.’

‘Well, just hold on there, IVH’ said Lyra, smiling mischievously, ‘First thing I did once it wasn’t on the shelf was go to the little side room here where for years the old lost and unlisted books have been dumped and more or less forgotten. Sure enough, it was there, in a bottom cabinet and covered in mould, but there sure enough.’

‘Lyra,’ Isaac seemed at once to arrive back from his attempt to digest all he had been shown and told, ‘You’re amazing. I don’t even know how I can begin to thank you for all this.’

However, the earnest praise on Isaac’s face quickly turned to surprise as Lyra leaned into him and kissed him full on the mouth. Losing his balance slightly, he tumbled backward against the corner shelving, drawing her with him and knocking a couple of books to the floor even as he returned her kiss.

‘That’s a start,’ she said, pulling away from him and grinning.

Isaac, mouth agape and breathing unsteadily, felt his pants tighten as he leaned forward to kiss her of his own volition. Things were heating up in the Sexon Room. As their passion kindled anew, however, one of Isaac’s cotton gloves became hung on an earring as he sought to run his white-gloved fingers through her hair. And as they attempted to disengage themselves their legs became entangled and together they tumbled onto the low table containing Felwealth’s papers, the glove coming free of its own accord and their desperate embrace assumed once more. Documents forged decades ago by long forgotten administrators wrinkled and tore beneath them and rogue papers fluttered from the table as the pair rolled about awkwardly, clutching at each other, lips joined and pressed.

At last, Lyra swung about so that she straddled Isaac. Affording him one last kiss, she pulled back and smiled at him, ‘Time to get back to work, Professor Porno.’

***

In the little lost book chamber off the Sexon Room – really nothing more than a large closet, not unlike Isaac’s office in the Communications Department – Isaac found the Necronomicon laid out for him on a counter top. The cover and binding were mouldy, as Lyra had intimated, and more or less unremarkable, being, as they were, covered in faded black cloth and old, unravelling library tape. The inside of the book, however, was a different story. It possessed no front matter or publication information other than a single page which, at the bottom, printed in some variety of rich, blood-red ink, contained the word Damascus. The book had been translated into English but it included neither translator credit nor introductory note. Rather, it merely began – loathsomely and without ceremony, like the opening of a tomb by grave robbers – the same blood-red ink in bold papyrus type running across rich vanilla-colored pages. Isaac began reading:

It is not to be thought that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters, nor that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth.

Isaac looked up from the book. The dehumidifier out in the Sexon Room had shut off. All was stillness, both in the cramped room and beyond. There was something disquieting about these passages in their rhythmic certainty. Disquieting and menacing. He read on, not unreluctantly:

He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell, a stench of the ageless ocean depths, can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man's truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them.

The room had grown warmer, the air heavier. Isaac idly wondered if the dehumidifier was broken. A trickle of sweat ran down his temple and he suppressed a sneeze before his eyes were drawn back to the pages:

They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They rule again.

A heavy rank smell had gradually made itself palpable to Isaac’s olfactories in the small chamber – a rich, powerful odour as of something close yet separated by a barrier. The mould in the walls, Isaac thought. He suppressed another sneeze and ran his fingers through his hair before flipping through the pages, scanning the obscene and disquieting prose as he went, trying to keep them at arm’s length, yet finding himself drawn, as the man who fears heights is compelled, against his conscious will, cowering upon his knees, to the edge of the precipice.

A pattern of odious and malignant history and intention began to form itself in Isaac’s mind as he took in the terrible passages, turning the pages with a compulsive, hungry urgency, coupled with a growing sense of sickening apprehension. The tale of these strange beings, these Old Ones, revealed itself reluctantly, slowly and obscenely: gargling, welling up, spurting from the page with a sudden fragment of knowledge like blood from a sucking chest wound. Isaac’s heart beat in his temples, the back of his shirt had grown wet, yet the fear that had come to inhabit his heart was as cold as deep space.

It all seemed so old, so ancient, so foreign – yet somehow alive: these extraordinary cosmic beings, ages ago, journeying from another part of the universe, arriving to rule the earth from the now-submerged city of R’lyeh. It is there, even now, the pages mockingly and cloudily revealed, that Cthulhu, the great slumbering priest of their kind, lies in wait, and who – at an indeterminate time, when the stars arrive into their proper alignment – will rise and rule the earth again. But a more proximate terrifying prospect emerges as well, for though he sleeps Cthulhu is not inactive, constantly transmitting his dark, mad, cosmic thoughts to the puny, vulnerable dreaming minds of humans. Isaac shuddered involuntarily despite the rank heat of the little room as he flipped on toward the end.

He paused and read more slowly when he reached the appendices, for though they were inked in the same dark crimson, the terrible linguistic descriptions of the main text now gave way to strange and arresting maps and illustrations. Like the rest of the book, however, they made little sense, the maps containing places of unfamiliar name and the landmasses corresponding with nothing Isaac had ever seen. It was as if aspects of an unknown era before man, a time never meant to be known by us, were revealing themselves to him, though he had not the faculties to grasp or process them. And what, after all, can one know without context? What meaning may be gleaned when the foundations upon which our collective body of knowledge are built are reduced, demonstrated, to be but puny straws – frail remainders of an alien wisdom as vast as the time between stars?

In the illustrations, things possessed of the appearance of great hulking, blubbering sea creatures – seemingly part-humanoid, part-fish, yet somehow not derived of either – moved upon and in relation to massive structures constructed of something resembling smooth stone, yet arranged in such a manner as to foil altogether the regularity of human architecture. Features resembling balconies and twisted towers hung and soared at impossible angles, seemingly without support, yet from the design, irrational as it was, there issued forth a vigorous and unknowable power. The landscapes upon which these gigantic forms rested were of seas and deserts and snowy wastes – expansive open places, yet each strangely filled and dominated by the extraordinary structures and beings depicted – enforced – upon them. On one such page Isaac paused and peered closer. The illustration was of a bare, rocky hill rising above a lifeless desert plain. One of the great structures – this one roughly circular, though its ceilings and spires groped upward with the same unlikely angles – hovered just above the hill as if in the midst of descending from the heavens to settle there. Squinting closer still, Isaac could discern upon the top of the hill and directly beneath the gigantic alien object, a rough constructed circle of jagged rock. And enclosed within it – depicted deftly and subtly in the same blood-red ink, and barely discernible against the fine grain of the rich vanilla page – was an arrangement of stones that formed the letters C U.

Isaac sprang back from the book and blinked his eyes rapidly. His mouth had gone dry and he was suddenly aware of his own body odour – his shirt sticky against his back. Taking deep breaths, he leaned forward once more and peered at the page. The faint hilltop letters, or whatever they were, whatever symbols they stood for in some language beyond learning, revealed themselves once more, and as they did some forceful variety of dark knowing palpably sought entry into the mind of Dr. Isaac VanHolmes. Slamming the book shut, he stumbled back, gagging on the fecund smell of mould now joined by a terrible fish-like odour, as of some impossible slaughterhouse of the deepest sea reaches. He left the little room hurriedly, colliding with a cell phone-toting undergraduate as he burst through the Sexon Room doors. Outside the library, one arm pressed against a tree trunk, the other braced against his knee, he vomited violently onto the immaculate campus grass.

***

‘You need to get a grip and quit worrying so much about this stupid book and Felwealth,’ said Lyra. They were at Isaac’s apartment and she was stretched out carelessly with a beer in his favourite easy chair, watching him as he stood at the stove poking glumly at the stir fry he was preparing for both of them. She had just popped open his last expensive imported beer and shoved it into an insulated beer coozy that had printed on it the declaration, ‘I’m not fluent in Idiot; please speak slowly.’

Isaac, appearing pale and haggard beneath the fluorescent kitchen lights, did not answer her as he put down his spatula and sullenly took a sip from a can of Bud Light. The weekend had arrived, but it had brought with it no solace or relaxation for Professor VanHolmes. Even Lyra’s indefatigable mischief and energy had failed to sway him from the funk into which he had been cast by the horrid, perverse contents of the Necronomicon. In particular, the image of the great airborne alien structure, ingloriously poised to set down upon a desert hilltop, had haunted his every waking hour, only now the peak in his imagination was Commandment Mountain.

‘He wants it to land there,’ he said quietly at last, turning the knob to shut off the stove and dumping the stir fry onto a couple of white chipped plates. ‘Felwealth has built that sign on his mountain to try to bring one of those awful things to Lynchburg.’

‘Oh for Christsakes!’ exclaimed Lyra, rolling her eyes as she swivelled to and fro in his easy chair, ‘Granted that’s one crazy-ass book, but what you’re talking about is absolutely insane. Now it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if it came out that Felwealth has built that thing as a landing pad with the equally insane idea that J.C. and his Daddy might come back in a space ship one day, but hostile aliens? Come on!’

‘I know it sounds crazy,’ said Isaac, ‘but that’s what it all points to.’ He set the plates on the kitchen table and looked at her, ‘Look, you did the research. What do we know? We know Felwealth went more or less nuts, or at least underwent some kind of severe alteration, following his study abroad trip to Damascus; we know he coveted and quoted from the Necronomicon, a rare and evil book that hails from Damascus; and you know what else we know? We know the same accursed symbol that’s on that goddamned mountain now is in that f’d up book with a freaking space ship hovering over it!’

Isaac suddenly realized he had been shouting and ran his trembling fingers through his hair. Lyra had stopped swivelling in his easy chair, but her face was unreadable. He couldn’t tell if she was about to laugh at him or tell him to go to hell. ‘Look,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m not saying I believe one of those things is going to land on Commandment Mountain. All I’m saying is the evidence suggests there’s some connection – a very real and ongoing connection – between Felwealth and what’s in that damn book.’

She took a swallow from her beer bottle and eyed him steadily. ‘OK,’ she said, beginning to swivel back and forth again, ‘Let’s say what you’re saying is true. Then the next step is to establish the nature of the connection today. How do we discover if Felwealth is actively involved in this Yog-Sothothery, or whatever it is you called it?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Isaac. ‘I know my research findings weren’t as good as yours–’

‘Well naturally,’ Lyra interrupted and blew him a kiss.

‘Yeah, rub it in,’ said Isaac, lightening a bit, ‘Anyway, one of the things I read in the News and Testament was that all the rock they used in creating the sign has peculiar mineralogical qualities and it all came from the same place: somewhere in Lebanon.’

‘This is starting to get kind of weird,’ said Lyra. Her chair had stopped moving.

‘I did some more checking,’ he said, ‘and discovered that there’s only one receiving and storage area for all of Felwealth’s and Commandment’s big shipping orders. It’s a rundown warehouse complex right on the James River, in the old Lynchburg downtown.’

‘I may turn you into a researcher after all,’ said Lyra and took a final swig from her near-empty bottle.

‘Anyway,’ said Isaac, dumping the rest of his warm Bud Light into the sink, ‘That’s where I think we should look.’

‘For what?’ asked Lyra.

‘Shit, I don’t know. Anything out of the ordinary,’ said Isaac, becoming agitated again.

Now Lyra was laughing and Isaac’s face grew red.

‘Think fast!’ she said, tossing him her empty beer bottle. Isaac bobbled it once, twice, before he had it. ‘Looks like your instincts could use a little honing, IVH,’ she said, rising and sashaying over to him suggestively. She kissed him on the mouth and ran the back of her hand down his face. ‘Let’s do something sexy and dangerous,’ she said.

Now it was Isaac’s turn to laugh. ‘You are the best,’ he said. ‘I don’t deserve you.’

‘Microwave my plate,’ she said. ‘You’ve let my supper get cold.’

***
Lyra was laughing again when Isaac emerged from his bedroom later than night clad in incongruous dark clothing of different colors. On his feet were black bowling shoes, out of which woolen brown dress socks emerged briefly before disappearing, just below his calves, into tight black jogging pants that were at least three sizes small both in length and width. The pants seemed even tighter as a result of the enormous, baggy hooded navy sweatshirt which engulfed all proportions of Isaac’s upper body and hung down past his crotch. Crowning the outfit was a faux U.S. Special Forces beret, purchased by Isaac at an Adult Film Studies conference silent auction that consisted entirely of costumes worn by pornstars who had perished from various STDs.

‘Cute,’ said Lyra, when she had finished laughing, ‘but I’m not taking you around any of my gay guy friends in that getup. I have plans for you and don’t want you stolen away just yet.’

Isaac scowled momentarily before brightening, ‘Well, at least no one will mistake me for a college professor in this outfit,’ he said.

‘No,’ Lyra was laughing again, ‘You can bet that jogging pants-encased ass of yours they damn-well fucking won’t.’

***

Though the Lynchburg downtown had been privy to a measured, years-long movement toward revitalization and improvement, there remained whole corners and blocks that were as dark and rundown as they had been three or four decades previous. The rectangular quarter-mile expanse of the Felwealth warehouse complex constituted one such stretch. Built along the Richmond-Roanoke railroad, which roughly paralleled the James River between those disparate municipalities, the complex rested almost upon the water and during periods of flooding it was not unusual for the westernmost building to have brown river muck standing as much as a foot-deep on its ground floor. In the early 1980s Felwealth had decreed that a flood wall be constructed to protect the complex, but the James had other ideas and, during a week-long period of heavy rains, washed away the preliminary building materials, wrenching them from their platforms and moorings or soaking them into uselessness, before they could ever be utilized. The river, at least to this point, had faired better than Commandment Mountain in its dealings with Felwealth.

Isaac and Lyra parked a couple blocks distant and worked their way toward the complex along the shore of the James. It was well after midnight, perhaps 3 a.m., the moon gibbous yet partially obscured by clouds. Somewhere in the dark the river current alternately gurgled and rushed over invisible washboard rapids of varying sizes, effectively disguising Isaac’s curses as he tripped over gnarled roots, slipped on riverbank mud, and felt the sting of branches and briars upon his exposed skin. Notwithstanding his careful attention to his wardrobe, the idea of a flashlight had never entered his head. Lyra followed a short distance behind him, gauging how and where to proceed by Isaac’s missteps. As in most other things, she fared considerably better than he did. As they neared the westernmost building a skeletal sycamore branch knocked Isaac’s beret from his head and into the James, the waters of which quickly claimed it once and for all.

They entered the warehouse complex through a broken-out window, beneath which they had heaped a number of rotting pallets. Isaac had wiggled in headfirst, but his hood caught on a rusty window latch as he attempted to drop to the floor inside, constricting his sweatshirt’s drawstring about his neck and choking him briefly before one of his own flailing arms struck the latch, relieving his dangling form and sending it crashing to the floor in a heap. Lyra slipped in quietly after him, giggling softly.

The sole source of light in the warehouse arrived from the square-shaped bulbs of emergency light boxes, which appeared along the walls every 20 or 30 feet. Their dim illumination offset great stacks of crates and cardboard boxes organized in rows to allow navigation between. These heaped towers of wood and paper receded into darkness toward the middle of the building. Close to Isaac and Lyra a forklift rested silently next to a pile of pallets, its front reflectors gleaming slightly in the weak light. They had entered the westernmost building not far from where a hallway supposedly connected it to the central structure, and indeed they could discern its entrance even now, cast in the glow of one of the emergency lights. A sign above it read MAIN OFFICE.

Isaac pointed without speaking and the two made for the hallway, their shoes echoing slightly against the expanse of the building and its smooth concrete floors. The hallway itself was dark but a light in the building ahead marked its terminus. Isaac and Lyra emerged into an even more cavernous room, the ceiling of which could not readily be discerned, yet another emergency light shone upon a glassed-in room, which stood next to a set of bay doors along the north wall, perhaps 30 feet ahead of them. A sign identical to the one that led them here identified its purpose. The office interior consisted chiefly of two paper-laden desks, a switchboard, a phone, and three large filing cabinets. Lyra began sifting through the papers on one of the desks as Isaac flung open the nearest filing cabinet drawer. The sounds of their searching echoed beyond the enclosed office space and faded into the darkness and immensity of the warehouse. Somewhere outside a faint train whistle pierced the night.

‘Here’s something,’ whispered Lyra. She held out the sheet she had just picked up beneath the main shaft of light from the nearest emergency box. It was an invoice for a large shipment of rock from Lebanon to Felwealth by way of Monarchy University.

‘What’s this?’ asked Lyra, pointing at the institution’s name.

‘A religious school in Virginia Beach,’ muttered Isaac, ‘run by another televangelist like Felwealth. He has a national TV show, much bigger than Felwealth’s. You’ve probably heard of it: it’s called The Chosen Hundreds Club.’

Lyra raised her eyebrows and shook her head. The train whistle sounded again, closer.

‘They could be in this together,’ Isaac whispered emphatically, his eyes large. He turned back to the filing cabinet and pulled open another drawer. The files were organized by subjects, places and dates. He sighed at the realization that it would take hours to go through them all.

‘Come look at this!’ exclaimed Lyra suddenly. She had moved on to the other desk and was bent over an open file. Hurrying to her side, Isaac glimpsed a grainy aerial photo of the symbol on Commandment Mountain – a depiction of how it might look from perhaps a thousand feet up. Isaac gulped hard and tiny beads of sweat broke out upon his forehead. The rumbling volume of the approaching train was increasing. He turned the page to the one beneath it and let out a gasp, for before him, twisted and horrible, despite the fact that it was merely a black and white xerox copy, was the terrible illustration from the Necronomicon that had sickened and haunted him so.

‘Look,’ said Lyra, holding up another sheet entitled ‘Mountain Landing’. The page consisted primarily of navigational coordinates and indecipherable passages in some kind of language with characters resembling Arabic, but the implication of the last line was plain: it listed a time, 6 a.m., and today’s date.

‘Lyra,’ exclaimed Isaac, ‘we have to – ’

Isaac’s words were drowned in the roar of the passing locomotive, which vibrated the sheet-metal of the bay doors and reverberated thunderously throughout the rest of the warehouse. One of Isaac’s hands grabbed the folder from Lyra and the other seized her arm. They exited the glassed-in office and backtracked toward the hallway, the train’s racket having lessened somewhat by the time they entered the umbilical cord connecting the two buildings. As they approached the point at which they had entered the complex, the sound of the train nearly had faded altogether.

‘What’s the big rush, Professor P?’ asked Lyra, now that she could hear her own voice.

‘If that thing’s landing at 6 this Sunday morning,’ said Isaac, ‘I want to be over there to see it with my own eyes.’

‘If it’s as bad as that awful book says it is,’ replied Lyra, skeptically, ‘I’d think we’d want to be as far away as possible.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Isaac, looking about them and ignoring her comment.

What?’ she said.

‘That,’ said Isaac. A wet, slapping sound – like that of a slimy dead fish cast onto a slick concrete floor in some dank seaside wharf – had made itself known from somewhere in the recesses of the dark.

Lyra and Isaac froze and looked at each other intently, listening.

It came again, closer – an awkward flopping sound, as of something large attempting to move stealthily in an environment that did not suit it. As Lyra and Isaac absorbed the implication of the noise, there came from its general direction, suddenly and potently, an overpowering odour of ocean rot, as if the world’s seas had regurgitated their collective foulness onto one small stretch of beach, and there, incredibly, the refuse had conspired to arrange itself into something alive.

Recalling a similar stench from the confines of the small chamber off the Sexon Room, Isaac briefly managed to master his fear and revulsion and shoved Lyra toward the window. Choosing not to argue, she proceeded of her own accord and, gathering herself, leapt at the rusty window latch, some eight feet above them. Watching her fail twice, Isaac bent down and motioned for her to climb atop his shoulders. Bracing himself against the wall as he rose, he felt one of her feet press down heavily upon him and then the dissipation of her weight as she pulled herself up and through the window.

The clumsy wet flopping sound had become more audible and drawn closer still, almost to the outer fringe of light, only now Isaac could hear something else: a gibbering noise, vaguely vocal yet not really a voice – a kind of barely audible dissonant muttering, neither animal nor human.

Isaac, his fear renewed, made a series of wild leaps at the window, failing to grasp the jutting latch at each attempt. Breathing hard, he stopped to look behind him. He could not discern anything definite, but at the far perimeter of faintest light, where the largest of the avenues retreated into darkness, he felt something there, watching him. We may say ‘felt’, for indeed Professor Isaac VanHolmes could see nothing, yet a presence of staid motion, of harnessed indeterminate malevolence, occupied space amid that darkness. As his breathing improved so did his hearing, and he noticed that, despite some slight rummaging outside the window (Lyra, he thought), all sound had ceased. He could hear neither movement nor utterance within the warehouse, but the overpowering presence of malevolence, of focused ill-intent, remained and its target was him.

The silence was interrupted by a sudden high-pitched clanging behind him and, turning, he beheld a rusty steel cord now hanging from the window. He jerked at it once and, grunting, feet braced against the wall, began pulling himself up awkwardly. As he did so a terrible and piercing sound resembling a wail arose behind him, ascending in volume and intensity until Isaac thought he must let go the cord. Yet even as this prospect occurred to him, two things happened simultaneously: the emergency light above him exploded and a pair of hands jerked him bodily through the window.

On the other side Isaac fell heavily, his plummet broken by the rotting pallets they had heaped earlier beneath the aperture. He lay there dazed for an instant, experiencing the vague smell of decaying woods and termites, before Lyra appeared, standing above him, and helped pull him to his feet. Together they stumbled back along the river, paying no heed to the mud and branches, pausing once to catch their breaths. Yet as they rested, panting in the damp night air, a great splash was heard from downriver, in the direction of the warehouse, as if something of great size had dove, aggressively and with haste, into the moving waters. Dimly reading the fear in each other’s faces, they hurried on, arriving at the car gasping, Lyra stabbing the gas pedal once they were inside, their squealing wheels echoing through the deserted late night streets of downtown Lynchburg. Not until they reached the expressway and the security of its orangish overhead lights, did there occur a palpable slowing of both the car’s speed and their racing pulses.

***

No spacecraft landed on Commandment Mountain that Sunday morning, nor in the days and weeks that followed. Isaac had watched for its arrival at the end of that eventful night from a parking lot off Wards Road while Lyra slept uneasily in the car. At first there had been only dimness and the last vanishing of stars. But then the white light from the east broke through a fragment of cloud, revealing the mountain and the other peaks of Lynchburg’s south range of hills, the sign on the mountain palpable, yet somehow diminished by the illuminated rippling undulation of raised geography upon which it lay. Shadows offset the hollows and ravines, while light poured full upon the ridges and peaks. Isaac had never looked upon the hills of Lynchburg at sunrise. He felt as though they were awakening, but in a way that was their secret. A powerful feeling came upon him, but he did not know its name.

Dr. Harry Felwealth died later that spring, the truth of his plans, of his past and intentions – if indeed such things existed or exist – likely passing with him. For his part, Isaac had given up his idea to write an unauthorized biography of Felwealth’s life. He was in love with Lyra Rey and spent much of his free time trying to make up for the craziness into which he had cast her. She tolerated both his ongoing buffoonery and his aversion to the library. She did not tell him that the copy of the Necronomicon they had discovered had disappeared mysteriously in the days following their excursion to the Felwealth warehouse complex.

The campus of Hopwood, the faces of its students and administrators coming and going with the ever-changing breezes and seasons, afforded its mundane sanctuary to them both. What before had seemed odious stagnation was now a pleasant lethargy – the comfort of predictability in a universe to which order remains ever alien. They found cause to rejoice in each other as the world about them ever offered up its riddles.

Early one summer morning Isaac stood naked at the kitchen bay window in Lyra’s townhouse, gazing out – as had become his habit during such clear dawns – at the extraordinary view of the city’s southern mountains. Construction projects had been initiated on three of the ridges, but it still pleased him to dwell upon the range of hills in the early morning light. Having filled his glass of water, he paused, allowing his eyes to linger upon the symbol on the mountain, before heading back to the bedroom. Had he prolonged his gaze but seconds longer, he would have witnessed a shadowy circle of darkness announce itself upon the center of the sign and slowly begin to expand, as if some great object, matching the symbol both in shape and circumference, had begun descending from somewhere high above to rest there.

 

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