Worse was that it seemed so real. Her sex and rectum ached dully. Harold would claim the dream meant she didn’t trust anyone, that she subconsciously feared those who seemed the most innocuous. And as for the dull ache, “conative sensory dream-supplantation,” he would say, or something similar. “It’s common for tactile stimuli to linger after night terrors,” he’d told her once.
Her mind felt like a meld of ground meat. She could scarcely distinguish between dream and reality these days. What had happened today? The store, Maedeen’s files. Had that been a dream too? No, no! she felt certain. It couldn’t have been! She’d seen the birth records. In the last fifteen years over a dozen male babies had been born, and they’d all been put up for adoption. Why? Why were the only men in Lockwood transients? Why were the only children girls?
Simmer down, she thought. She went back upstairs, to her room. She hated it here. She wanted to be back in the city, back at the firm. Everything was going wrong. Martin and Melanie had never been more distant. Her mother’s disapproval of her had only intensified. Nothing was right.
Spikes of the dream returned. The mocking, naked women. The bizarre pendants between their breasts, and the even more bizarre words. They’d implied they wanted Melanie for something.
…she’s a virgin…she’s just what we need for…
Surely Dr. Harold would claim this was only her subconscious symbolizing her fear of Melanie’s vulnerability as she approached adulthood. Why did Ann sense something phony about it all?
Through the curtains, she peered at the moon. The moon peered back. Something about the dream pendants bothered her. The pink moonlight seemed to jar something loose. The pendants, like little stones. Of course, she realized. They seemed to bear the same cryptic symbol in her recurring nightmare of Melanie’s birth. Rough, misshapen double circles.
Ann, Ann, a voice seemed to drift in her head. She was suddenly exhausted. Was she dreaming standing up?
The moon shimmered.
Go back to bed, Ann.
Ann yawned, vigorously shook her head.
Go back to sleep…
She climbed back into bed and buried herself beneath the covers.
Go back to sleep and dream…
—
Chapter 26
“It’s English,” the old man said without pause.
Dr. Harold didn’t understand. “English? But how—”
“Old English, Doctor. Or I should say it’s really more of an amalgamation, a rough mix of specific linguistic influences. Old English, Old Saxon, Old Frisian, and…something else I can’t identify. Something that looks older.”
Dr. Harold was at this moment sitting in the faculty office of one Professor Franklin M. Fredrick, who had been referred to him through the campus information desk. Fredrick was the head of the archaeology department, and also an expert on mythology and ancient religion. Various degrees decorated the cramped office, as well as many relics. Dr. Harold had brought Erik Tharp’s entire hospital file in hopes that Fredrick might shed some light on the technical aspects of Tharp’s delusion.
“I use the term Old English as a generalization,” Fredrick was saying, scanning the transcripts of Tharp’s narcoanalysis and psychotherapy sessions. “What I mean is the language of the island of England, or Angle-land, before it became influenced by the Germanic invasion of about 450 A.D. The scant Latin derivations are obvious, from the Roman Occupation of 55 B.C. Old English is a coalescence of tongues, and unique in its incorporation. But this…” He tapped one of the sheafs. “This is unusual.”
“How much of it do you think is invented?” Dr. Harold asked.
“Invented?” The old man looked at him, puzzled. “None of this is invented, Doctor. All of these words are real.”
But that was impossible; he must not understand. “Tharp is an escaped mental patient. We’ve determined that he escaped for a reason specific to his delusion.”
Professor Fredrick looked the part: keen-eyed in his weathered face. Countless digs and years in hostile sun had toughened his skin to the consistency of tanned leather. He was probably sixty but he looked a hundred. On his cragged hand a gold ring glittered, whose mount centered a pebble from Golgotha.
“Is Tharp a professor or language expert?”
“Oh, no,” Dr. Harold replied. “He’s a drug burnout. He never graduated high school.”
Fredrick seemed to smile cynically, if the toughness of his face would permit a smile at all. “That’s difficult for me to believe, Doctor. This mental patient of yours—this drug burnout—is using terms, syntactical structures, and even particularized inflections that are twenty-five hundred years old. And he’s doing it perfectly.”
Dr. Harold looked at him. The old man must be overreacting. Tharp had done well on the standard IQ batteries, but he was essentially uneducated.
“Let me give you some background,” Fredrick offered. His voice, like his face, seemed frayed by the impairment of years. “The island of England is linguistically unique simply because of its geography. The basis of the English language is a direct reflection of the major invasions of the island. The Celts, in 600 B.C.; the Romans, in 55 B.C.; and the Saxons, in 500 A.D. But before the initial Brythonic, or Celtic, invasion, there was another society that we know very little about. They were called the Chilterns, and they had a language all their own. So it is actually the Chiltern language that provides the first root of English.”
“What’s that got to do with Tharp’s vocabulary in those transcripts?”
“It’s not just the vocabulary, Doctor, it’s the syntax too, and the conjugations. Tharp seems better versed in the Chiltern language than the entirety of the archaeological community.”
That’s ridiculous, Harold thought. “Can you translate any of the words?” he asked.
“I can probably translate all of them.” Fredrick pointed to a random page. “This word here, hüsl—it means to sacrifice. An interesting thing about the Chiltern-influenced forms of Old English is that there was little distinction between common nouns and transitive verbs. Hüsl is a good example. It also means sacrifice victim.”
“What about wreccan?”
“Slave. The a’s, strangely, are masculine, and o’s are feminine. Hence: male slave.”
“And brygorwreccan?”
“A male slave who digs graves.”
Dr. Harold felt numbly stunned. “Five years ago Tharp was apprehended by police for burying bodies. Some of the bodies were children and infants. We assumed his vocabulary was invented.”
“You assumed wrong,” Professor Fredrick asserted. “All these words are real. Scieror, one who cuts with a knife. Hustig, a general ritual. Fek, festival. Cnif, knife. This is fascinating, and clearly religious.”
Religious? “How so?”
“These words here, oft repeated, loc and liloc. They’re general references to a demon, a female demon. Many pre-Druidic settlements worshipped female demons via ritual sacrifice. The sacrifices frequently involved children, infants.”
This was maddening. How did Tharp, an amotivate and dropout, become this learned in not only an ancient language but in an ancient religious custom? “Look at the rest, here,” he insisted, and dug into his briefcase. “These are Tharp’s sketchpads from the ward. Tell me what you make of them.”