Blood on the boards The red light is on. The recorder…
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Blood on the boards
The red light is on. The recorder works.
This is Elliot Vane. Was a professor. Anthropology. Geology. Twenty-three years. Expeditions. Students. That was all.
Now — Ward number four. East wing. Ashcliff Asylum.
The foundation of this building is laid directly above a geological fault. I am a geologist. I see the cracks in the concrete, the ground subsidence. The ward numbers in the east wing correspond to the depth of the rock strata in meters. Ward number four. Strata four. I realized this when I saw the blueprints in Ashford’s hands.
This room is not a room. It is a seismograph.
The window is shuttered. The door is locked from the outside. I am inside.
Three months ago, I was found in a cave. Turkey. Eastern Anatolia. The name of the site is in my memory — I feel the shape of the syllables on my tongue — but I cannot pronounce it. As if someone is holding the word in my throat with foreign fingers, squeezing every time I try to speak.
Next to me lay my field journal. Open. On a page I don’t remember. My handwriting, not my words. A drawing: a geological cross-section, rock layers. All familiar. But at the very bottom, beneath the basalt, I drew an eye.
Not a symbol, not a metaphor — anatomical. Iris, blood vessels, grown into the mineral. As if the rock is skin, and the eye is watching from underneath.
And next to it — three words:
\*\*“It knows the way.”\*\*
I was brought here. Diagnosis — dissociative disorder. Progressive.
The attending physician is Dr. Ashford. He always wears white surgical gloves, even when not examining. Smiles thinly. Avoids eye contact. His gaze slides over my hands, my nails.
As if he is waiting for something.
Today, Carla, the nurse, brought the tray and dropped a heavy metal spoon. It hit the floor with a clang. Carla froze for three long seconds, staring at the spoon, then picked it up and left without looking back.
She is not afraid of me.
She is afraid of what I bring back with me.
\---
Tonight. Not a dream, not a nightmare.
I closed my eyes and fell — not into darkness, but into a smell.
Smoke. Not from wood — a heavy, sweet, greasy stench, clogging the nostrils, settling on the tongue like a viscous film. And piercing through it a second layer: rusty, warm copper. I am a geologist. I know this smell. Mineral meeting organic matter at extreme heat.
Sound. A bell. One strike. Two. Three. It rang fourteen times and did not stop, because the hands that should have pulled the rope were busy with something else.
Between the strikes — a silence of exactly five heartbeats.
I stood on the pavement. Wooden. Rotten boards flexing under my feet like someone else’s ribcage — and I, an anthropologist, knew exactly how ribs feel under fingers.
Beneath the boards flowed black stagnant water, reeking of hydrogen sulfide. H₂S. Knowing the formula didn’t help. Fear doesn’t know chemistry.
The street was a gorge of dark wood and adobe, plastered with something white that had long turned grey from rain. Five stories looming over each other.
People. They were everywhere, but not standing, not sitting.
They were \*being moved\*.
Passive voice. I am linguistically precise because I saw it: they were being moved. Someone invisible had taken them by the tendons and pulled, like puppets without strings.
A man in a long tunic to his knees shifted his weight. Left, right. Without pause. Pupils fully dilated — no irises. As if the iris is what makes you human. And they had theirs taken.
A woman next to him spun like a cracked top. Bare feet, black soles. I thought — mud. I looked down.
Not mud. Skin rubbed away to the meat. They walked and spun on their own open wounds. The boards beneath them were soaked crimson. And they didn’t stop. There was no “want” in them. Only the reflex to move.
Hundreds of them. No music, no command.
But there was a sound. Not the bell. Wooden. Rhythmic. A thud.
I walked toward it, squeezing between warm, sour-milk-smelling bodies. I felt fear — but the fear was only mine. There was nothing left in them.
I came out to a square. A wooden platform. The most people. Crushed together, hands intertwined, muscles seized in spasm — but they moved in unison. A hundred bodies as one organism, without will.
Right in the center, the bodies parted. A hollow on the boards. Wet. Warm. Smelling of that same greasy, non-animal stench.
I had to approach. My legs carried me without asking.
But the woman next to me suddenly froze. For the first time. Slowly turned her head. Her neck cracked like dry breccia when you split a sample in the lab.
Looking at me. Mouth open wider than possible. And inside — no tongue, no teeth.
Darkness. A mobile presence of something that absorbed light and air.
She spoke. The sound didn’t come from her throat. It came from inside me. From my bones, like plucking a string, forming a vibrating word.
\*\*“You are already here. You have always been here.”\*\*
Before waking, she smiled with a mouth full of darkness and uttered one word. Not to me. Through me. Like a transmitter.
\*\*“Fourteen.”\*\*
\---
Three seventeen. I’m on the floor. Pajamas are wet. They smell of smoke.
Carla turned on the light. I said: “Look at my feet.”
She lost all color in a second.
Deep crimson abrasions on the soles. Dark splinters, soaked in organic matter, protruding from under my nails.
Carla returned with Ashford. He didn’t look surprised. Not calm — precisely, \*not surprised\*. He sighed, tiredly rubbing the bridge of his nose — a gesture of an ordinary man at the end of a long shift — and only then took a pair of tweezers and a glass test tube from his pocket.
Carefully extracted the splinter. Put the tube into the inner pocket of his coat. Away from Carla. Away from protocol.
He said: “Psychosomatic manifestation, Elliot. Expected.”
Expected…
He was waiting. The test tube was in his pocket before I closed my eyes. I am a geologist. I know how to observe.
He knows. This isn’t treatment. I’m a sample. And I’m not the first — there were other test tubes… other patients… other artifacts, long before me.
Ward number five.
When they left, I lay in the dark and listened through the wall. Not a scream. A thud. Wooden. The same one. And the pause between beats — five of my heartbeats.
Someone was scratching the wall from the inside. Slow. Methodical. Trying to call out.
My field journal from the cave is in the nightstand. Page forty-seven. Eye in the rock. “It knows the way.”
Last night, before lights out, I opened page forty-eight. It was completely blank.
This morning I opened it again.
There was text. Not mine. Alien. But in my handwriting.
One line in the middle of the page:
\*\*“The fifth is already listening.”\*\*
#entertainment
source
The red light is on. The recorder works.
This is Elliot Vane. Was a professor. Anthropology. Geology. Twenty-three years. Expeditions. Students. That was all.
Now — Ward number four. East wing. Ashcliff Asylum.
The foundation of this building is laid directly above a geological fault. I am a geologist. I see the cracks in the concrete, the ground subsidence. The ward numbers in the east wing correspond to the depth of the rock strata in meters. Ward number four. Strata four. I realized this when I saw the blueprints in Ashford’s hands.
This room is not a room. It is a seismograph.
The window is shuttered. The door is locked from the outside. I am inside.
Three months ago, I was found in a cave. Turkey. Eastern Anatolia. The name of the site is in my memory — I feel the shape of the syllables on my tongue — but I cannot pronounce it. As if someone is holding the word in my throat with foreign fingers, squeezing every time I try to speak.
Next to me lay my field journal. Open. On a page I don’t remember. My handwriting, not my words. A drawing: a geological cross-section, rock layers. All familiar. But at the very bottom, beneath the basalt, I drew an eye.
Not a symbol, not a metaphor — anatomical. Iris, blood vessels, grown into the mineral. As if the rock is skin, and the eye is watching from underneath.
And next to it — three words:
\*\*“It knows the way.”\*\*
I was brought here. Diagnosis — dissociative disorder. Progressive.
The attending physician is Dr. Ashford. He always wears white surgical gloves, even when not examining. Smiles thinly. Avoids eye contact. His gaze slides over my hands, my nails.
As if he is waiting for something.
Today, Carla, the nurse, brought the tray and dropped a heavy metal spoon. It hit the floor with a clang. Carla froze for three long seconds, staring at the spoon, then picked it up and left without looking back.
She is not afraid of me.
She is afraid of what I bring back with me.
\---
Tonight. Not a dream, not a nightmare.
I closed my eyes and fell — not into darkness, but into a smell.
Smoke. Not from wood — a heavy, sweet, greasy stench, clogging the nostrils, settling on the tongue like a viscous film. And piercing through it a second layer: rusty, warm copper. I am a geologist. I know this smell. Mineral meeting organic matter at extreme heat.
Sound. A bell. One strike. Two. Three. It rang fourteen times and did not stop, because the hands that should have pulled the rope were busy with something else.
Between the strikes — a silence of exactly five heartbeats.
I stood on the pavement. Wooden. Rotten boards flexing under my feet like someone else’s ribcage — and I, an anthropologist, knew exactly how ribs feel under fingers.
Beneath the boards flowed black stagnant water, reeking of hydrogen sulfide. H₂S. Knowing the formula didn’t help. Fear doesn’t know chemistry.
The street was a gorge of dark wood and adobe, plastered with something white that had long turned grey from rain. Five stories looming over each other.
People. They were everywhere, but not standing, not sitting.
They were \*being moved\*.
Passive voice. I am linguistically precise because I saw it: they were being moved. Someone invisible had taken them by the tendons and pulled, like puppets without strings.
A man in a long tunic to his knees shifted his weight. Left, right. Without pause. Pupils fully dilated — no irises. As if the iris is what makes you human. And they had theirs taken.
A woman next to him spun like a cracked top. Bare feet, black soles. I thought — mud. I looked down.
Not mud. Skin rubbed away to the meat. They walked and spun on their own open wounds. The boards beneath them were soaked crimson. And they didn’t stop. There was no “want” in them. Only the reflex to move.
Hundreds of them. No music, no command.
But there was a sound. Not the bell. Wooden. Rhythmic. A thud.
I walked toward it, squeezing between warm, sour-milk-smelling bodies. I felt fear — but the fear was only mine. There was nothing left in them.
I came out to a square. A wooden platform. The most people. Crushed together, hands intertwined, muscles seized in spasm — but they moved in unison. A hundred bodies as one organism, without will.
Right in the center, the bodies parted. A hollow on the boards. Wet. Warm. Smelling of that same greasy, non-animal stench.
I had to approach. My legs carried me without asking.
But the woman next to me suddenly froze. For the first time. Slowly turned her head. Her neck cracked like dry breccia when you split a sample in the lab.
Looking at me. Mouth open wider than possible. And inside — no tongue, no teeth.
Darkness. A mobile presence of something that absorbed light and air.
She spoke. The sound didn’t come from her throat. It came from inside me. From my bones, like plucking a string, forming a vibrating word.
\*\*“You are already here. You have always been here.”\*\*
Before waking, she smiled with a mouth full of darkness and uttered one word. Not to me. Through me. Like a transmitter.
\*\*“Fourteen.”\*\*
\---
Three seventeen. I’m on the floor. Pajamas are wet. They smell of smoke.
Carla turned on the light. I said: “Look at my feet.”
She lost all color in a second.
Deep crimson abrasions on the soles. Dark splinters, soaked in organic matter, protruding from under my nails.
Carla returned with Ashford. He didn’t look surprised. Not calm — precisely, \*not surprised\*. He sighed, tiredly rubbing the bridge of his nose — a gesture of an ordinary man at the end of a long shift — and only then took a pair of tweezers and a glass test tube from his pocket.
Carefully extracted the splinter. Put the tube into the inner pocket of his coat. Away from Carla. Away from protocol.
He said: “Psychosomatic manifestation, Elliot. Expected.”
Expected…
He was waiting. The test tube was in his pocket before I closed my eyes. I am a geologist. I know how to observe.
He knows. This isn’t treatment. I’m a sample. And I’m not the first — there were other test tubes… other patients… other artifacts, long before me.
Ward number five.
When they left, I lay in the dark and listened through the wall. Not a scream. A thud. Wooden. The same one. And the pause between beats — five of my heartbeats.
Someone was scratching the wall from the inside. Slow. Methodical. Trying to call out.
My field journal from the cave is in the nightstand. Page forty-seven. Eye in the rock. “It knows the way.”
Last night, before lights out, I opened page forty-eight. It was completely blank.
This morning I opened it again.
There was text. Not mine. Alien. But in my handwriting.
One line in the middle of the page:
\*\*“The fifth is already listening.”\*\*
#entertainment
source
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