Agrapha Dogmata by Luke Miller
Agrapha Dogmata by Luke Miller
At the end of August, my boss was finally retiring. His departure meant that I would be promoted to Head Librarian. I’d been working in the library at Westminster since finishing my masters in Sheffield. I thought this was everything I wanted.
On the Monday of his last week, Tom called me into his (soon to be my) office. The place was empty now, save for the oak desk and leather chair behind it. I couldn’t wait to begin making the space my own.
“So, I’ve talked to IT and made sure you have access to everything,” he said.
“Right. Thanks, Tom.”
“And then on Friday, I will give these to you,” he said, holding up a lanyard at the end of which was a ring containing six or seven keys.
“Right. Thanks.”
He nodded. I had the feeling that he had more to say. He looked me in the eyes and an embarrassed smile touched his lips. There seemed to be a conflict occurring in his mind. He scratched his ear, the top of his bald head, and the back of his neck, resting his hand there as he looked around the room. It was strange, as conversation between us normally flowed quite easily.
“That all, Tom?” I asked him.
He had been looking at the ceiling. “Sorry?” he said.
“All good?”
“Good, yeah,” he said. He sort of chuckled, gave his head a shake. “Look, I called you in here because on Friday, I’m going to tell you something that will make you question whether you’ve been working under a madman the last six years.”
I tilted my head doubtfully and laughed. I had no idea how to respond.
He laughed too. “Seriously,” he said, still smiling. “I’m pre-empting you because I don’t want you to think I’m not aware of how ridiculous what I say is going to sound.”
“What’re you on about, Tom?” I was smiling, still shaking my head incredulously.
“The boss before me, when handing over the keys to this place, delivered the same speech. He figured it was best to forewarn me that it was all going to seem ridiculous. So, on Friday, bear in mind that I’m also scoffing at the absurdity of it all.”
“Of what all?”
“I’ll explain on Friday.”
“Why not now?” I questioned.
“Because on Friday, when we close shop, we’ll both need a drink to get through it. And I’d rather say the stupid shit and take-off.”
So, with that, we agreed to leave the topic until Friday.
That night, as I was cooking dinner, Katie and I talked about what it could be about. She was seated on the counter beside the oven, a glass of wine cupped between her legs.
“Maybe he’s fucking with you,” she said.
“That’s even less believable than your first idea.” She had initially suggested that one of the rooms contained a time machine.
Tom was a straitlaced individual. He was easy-going, kind, and intelligent; but he was serious. On the few occasions we grabbed a pint, the conversation was practical; often interesting, rarely funny. That afternoon was the least composed I’d ever seen him. This was the first time his cards were anywhere but close to his chest. It was with this knowledge of Tom that I approached Friday with some trepidation. No matter how ridiculous what he said seemed, I knew I would take him seriously.
Friday was a day like any other. There were a few students but most of them didn’t want to spend their Friday in the library. At twelve, we closed for half an hour and had a pizza lunch for Tom. There were a few students using the space at six when we closed for the night. They left without protest.
There was to be a gathering at the George. This was open to all staff at the university. By this time in the library, the only people remaining were me, Tom, and Chloe, our part-time library assistant. Tom told Chloe to go on ahead to the pub, we’d close after ourselves. There was something we needed to discuss here first.
We were back in what was about to be my office. The room was still devoid of anything save for the desk and chair. Tom walked around the back of the desk and withdrew from the bottom drawer a half full bottle of Redbreast. Coming back around after undoing the cap, he handed the bottle to me.
“That leaves with me,” he smiled.
I took a swig and handed it back to him. He took a rather long pull of the bottle. It looked like he took three good sups of the brown liquid. He handed it back over to me and I had another sip. It was good, smooth whiskey. I felt it warm my belly instantly.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
He looked down at the bottle in his hand. It seemed he was contemplating another sip but thought better of it and placed it on top of the desk. “Okay,” he said again. “Where to begin.”
He reached into his back pocket and retrieved the set of keys. “First off, take these. We’ve gone over the doors that need locking at the end of each night. I suppose now I will tell you about the door that should never be unlocked.”
“I’m sorry?”
He handed me the keys, indicating a small black key as he did so. “This key opens our special collections.”
Most libraries have special collections. They include rare works, archives, manuscripts, and material that you would not find in any other library. Our special collections contained first edition texts by various authors, playbills dated as far back as the 18th century, and articles from before then. It was a pretty standard collection. The key he was indicating was not the key that accessed it.
“Think it’s this one, Tom,” I said, grabbing hold of the correct key.
“No. No, that isn’t our real collection.”
“Sorry?”
He placed a hand on top of the desk. “Sorry, the whiskey’s getting to me,” he smiled. “Right, okay. How is your philosophy knowledge?”
“What do you mean?”
“Would you say you’re knowledgeable on the subject?” He asked.
“No. I took an introductory course at Uni. I liked Diogenes, he was a bit of fun.”
“Right. Do you remember anything on Plato?”
I exhaled. “Very little. He taught Aristotle, studied under Socrates.” I racked my brains. “He had that idea of the three parts of the soul.”
“Good, yeah. Our real special collection concerns his work. Or more accurately, work about his work. You see, there is a bit of mystery surrounding Plato. Many of his ideas are available, of course. But there has long been a theory that some of his ideas were kept from the public. Ideas he didn’t write down.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay. So, these ideas are referred to as his unwritten doctrines. His agrapha dogmata. It is believed that he kept these ideas for his most devout followers, not to be shared with everyone.”
I nodded. I felt he was waiting for me to respond but I had nothing to say to what I’d heard thus far. I was a little disappointed. By the way he had talked this moment up, I thought it would call into question everything I’d known about him. This was pretty much what one could expect from Tom; making a big deal out of some rather boring history.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m just getting my thinking straight. So, this work is known as the agrapha dogmata, the unwritten doctrines. All good so far?”
I nodded.
“There have been questions over the years about whether these ideas even exist. They were mentioned by Aristotle. He refers to them as the ‘so called’ unwritten texts. This led to debate about the degree of sarcasm in that classification. There is very little concrete information on the subject, is my point.
“There were a few allusions to these doctrines,” he continued. “But it seems like they weren’t really thought of again until centuries later. Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism, had a serious interest in these doctrines. I guess he found the idea that there was any work of Plato’s that he couldn’t access most disagreeable.”
“You really know your philosophy,” I said.
He smiled. “Just this bit. So, he set out to discover what these unwritten doctrines contained. This is where details are a little hazy. It seems that one of Plato’s pupils documented the ideas from these private lectures. Or they might’ve spoken to another who then wrote some of it down. No one can really be sure. But they were discovered by Plotinus. He seemed to take less interest in them in the end than his student, Porphyry. It was Porphyry who really developed a fascination with the agrapha dogmata. He organized them into the eleven books that make them up today. It was he who then passed this knowledge on to his followers.”
“And we have these finished works?” I asked.
“Sort of. So, these works were passed on within esoteric groups. Strange occurrences began within these groups, and they began to suspect that the works were dangerous. They attempted to hide the doctrines away. There was hope that they could be buried and forgotten about. This led to renewed interest and attempts at discovery, with the doctrines being uncovered again. This cycle has repeated itself until today.”
“What do you mean by dangerous?”
“I’m getting there. Attempts to destroy it haven’t worked, you see. Or so the legend goes. It’s not all eleven books, just a few of them that are corrupt. Randall didn’t really go into which ones; I mean he didn’t know himself. He simply told me when I took over from him that some of them contained theories that the mind isn’t meant to be exposed to. He told me a story that his boss told him. His boss had worked for a stern, intelligent woman. One day she decided to look at the agrapha dogmata, ignoring the warning she had been given. And once she looked at them, she was hooked. She would spend her entire shift in that room, showing up on days she wasn’t scheduled just to get in there; it got so bad she was sleeping here. He said she went from being the most respectable person he knew to a mad woman. She ended up driving herself and her family into the River Trent.”
“I see. So, she was killed by the unwritten doctrines?” I laughed.
He smiled too. “And took others with her. Porphyry was said to have lost his mind after being exposed. He became suicidal. A follower of his, Agathinos, killed his family and then his friend. Throughout the years this myth has grown. People exposed to the text losing their minds, killing themselves, others, or both. It is believed that in the 1600s the doctrines were translated into English by Arnie Chapman. He killed his wife and then himself after writing countless letters about voices in his head and shadows in his periphery.”
“Might’ve benefited from modern day psychiatry.”
“Might have. All these people might have. After Chapman, a few scholars mention the text, but it begins to fade again. Details get lost. Was it really Plato’s unwritten doctrines that were translated? Didn’t Chapman’s family have a history of depression?”
“Did they?” I asked.
“Might have. In the early nineteenth century it is mentioned briefly but nothing concrete is found. And then Madeline Arbour kills herself in Westminster in 1880; she had been working on a History of Greek Philosophy. It is believed that she had access to the unwritten doctrines. This was buried, to prevent any people from trying to seek it out. But a few people learned that in her notes she had the agrapha dogmata translated by Arnie Chapman. The doctrines have remained here ever since.”
“And this key?”
“Opens the door to the room where Plato’s unwritten doctrines are kept,” he said.
“Spooky,” I smiled.
“Look, this is what Randall told me. I knew him well enough to take him at his word. I left the room alone and I urge you to do the same. That’s all I can do.”
“Fair enough.”
The George is a small pub across the road from the university. It is the sort of place that has regulars and does a Sunday roast. When we got there, four tables had been lined up adjacent to a booth. Every seat was taken by someone from the school. It had surely been some time since the pub had so many patrons. Patrick, one of the assistant lecturers, handed us both pints as we walked in. The beer was a bit flat by this point.
I was seated beside Chloe. She couldn’t get over the strangeness of drinking with her Sociology professor, who was seated at the end of the table. At nine there was live music. Marilyn, another lecturer, took Tom by the hand and got him up to dance. I downed my pint and got up for another. I took a shot at the bar with a few of the staff.
I returned to my seat. Most of the staff were up dancing. The drink warmed face but I felt a chill at the back of my neck. I pictured the back of a car sticking out from a river. I felt nervous. I was reminded of sleepovers and hearing ghost stories when I was a kid, and finding myself unable to sleep long after my classmates had drifted off.
“Come dance,” Chloe said. I looked up to see her hand extended towards me.
Our cohort began to dwindle. I was seated at the booth. By this point I couldn’t be sure how much drink I’d had. A few lecturers were speaking at the table furthest from where I was seated, but most of the chairs were empty. Tom was gone. Chloe and another staff member were standing at the bar. I walked up to them and asked Chloe if she wanted to see my new office.
I met Katie the next day for lunch. My head was throbbing, and I could taste acid at the back of my throat. She had just gotten off work and was eager to hear about my conversation with Tom. I recounted all that he’d told me.
“Holy shit,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“We have to check it out.”
“No,” I responded.
“Why not?” she smiled. “Scared?”
“No,” I said.
“Then why not?”
She wanted me to admit it; acknowledge that the curse might be real. She loved the idea that I was freaked out by the possibility of it.
“Because I told Tom I wouldn’t.”
“Oh,” she said sarcastically. “Oh shit. Well, you should’ve said so. I didn’t realize you’d gone and done that.”
I laughed. “Look, I think it’s best to leave it alone.”
She reached a hand across the table and grabbed mine. “Come on, we won’t even read it. Let’s just see what the paper looks like.”
“My guess is it’ll look like paper,” I said.
“No, you know what I mean. We can see if it looks evil.”
“Maybe another time,” I said.
“We can get drunk and read all about Plato’s demons.”
“We’ll see.”
“Then we can have sex in your brand-new office,” she said.
I drained the glass of wine sitting in front of me.
A few weeks into my role as Head Librarian and my life was in tatters. Katie was gone. Chloe’s school schedule became so demanding she resigned. I was having trouble finding a replacement library assistant. Our patron count was far below the expected number and the one budget meeting I’d attended saw them threatening to cut 30% from last year’s total. On top of all of it I was drinking more than I ever had. There was too much to face.
Each night I returned home to the empty flat. I opened a bottle of whatever I was drinking that night and tried in vain to call Katie. My number was blocked. I would then drink, sleep, wake up with a raging headache and need to throw up, and then perform poorly at work. I was sure to get the axe soon.
One night when calling Katie again proved fruitless, I decided to check out the agrapha dogmata. She was so intrigued by them. It was with that fact in mind that I decided to read them, as though this would somehow bring me closer to her.
I got to the library after midnight. I went to the third floor and passed the door that led to what I previously took to be our special collections. Down the same hallway beyond that door was another older looking door that I had always thought was a storage room. I took out the small black key. It seemed to have a magnetic attraction to the lock. It felt like I had little to do with gaining access to the room.
The door creaked as it opened. I was quite drunk, but I was sure I hadn’t pushed it open. I figured it must do it on its own once unlocked. I buried the feeling that I’d seen the knob turn. The moment the door was ajar, I could smell damp. The hallway became ice cold and the only heat seemed to be emanating from within the room.
There was no switch for a light. I used the flashlight on my phone to look around. The room was completely empty, save for a wooden table in the center. Atop the table was a glass case. I got closer and shined the light over it. I had to adjust to see beyond the glare from the glass. Inside there was a leatherbound book titled Plato’s Unwritten Doctrines translated by Arnie Chapman. I then noticed a paper taped to the side of the glass. It read: “Danger: This is a work not to be read. For your own safety, walk out of this room.” I smiled and took a swig of the whiskey I’d brought.
I tried lifting the glass, but it wouldn’t budge. I began pushing it from the side. The door behind me, I realized, was shut. I didn’t remember closing it. I ran over and pushed it open. To my relief, it opened without issue. I laughed at the momentary panic. Placing the bottle down to hold the door open, I returned to the task of accessing the work.
It was then that I realized the top wasn’t glass. It was completely open. I could just reach in and grab the book. I could’ve sworn it was enclosed. I reached in and felt the leather cover. It felt hard, so cold I thought it was wet. I turned the cover and looked at the table of contents. It read as follows:
Book I: The Eleatics.
Book II: The One.
Book III: Principles of Oneness.
Book IV: Absolute Transcendence.
Book V: The Unlimited.
Book VI: The Indefinite Dyad.
Book VII: Voices from Unknown Sources.
Book VIII: Shadows.
Book IX: Voices grown Sinister.
Book X: The Form of the Shadows.
Book XI: Unity of Shadow and Voice.
I scanned the first and second books but found similar stuff to what I’d read as an undergrad. Socrates making people look dumb through questioning their beliefs. I picked up the text and opened it to Book VII. That title intrigued me.
It began quite normal. Socrates is on his way home when he crosses paths with Glaucon, Plato’s brother. The two discuss his daimon and the trustworthiness of intuition. Glaucon believes that intuition is a good guide for decision making but Socrates disagrees. He tells Glaucon that there is still a need to discriminate between forms one’s intuition can take. This confuses Glaucon.
My flashlight began to flicker then. I figured the battery was running out on my phone. I turned it on and off several times before the light became stable. The hair at the back of my neck stood up as the room grew colder.
Socrates tells Glaucon that there are forces looking to guide you that are not acting for your betterment. The dialogue continues as follows:
Socrates: Tell me, best of men, whether you think you should always or sometimes trust your intuition.
Glaucon: Always Socrates, as I have said.
Socrates: You have said this, yes, but by Zeus do you mean one should trust their instinct if they know it is wrong? Do ignorant people not have intuition that leads them to commit evil?
Glaucon: I would say they commit evil against their intuition.
Socrates: But what of the wine lover who avoids the excess of drink, despite his craving. Is his intuition not telling him to drink?
Glaucon: That is so, Socrates.
Socrates: And if one gets contradictory messages from their intuition, would there not be one he must choose?
Glaucon: If he has more than one intuition, then that is so, Socrates.
Socrates: Intuition comes in the form of a voice from elsewhere, is that not so?
Glaucon: That is so, Socrates.
Socrates: And if there is more than one unseen voice, does it not stand to reason that one voice is more correct than another, as is always the case with more than one voice?
Glaucon: I believe you are right about that.
Socrates: So, it is better that I listen to my daimonion, who urges caution and virtue, than the competing voice urging me to maim you with a stone?
I shut the book abruptly and in doing so dropped my phone. It landed on the flashlight side. Darkness engulfed the space. An unnatural silence did too. I leaned down to grab my phone but stopped halfway. I detected movement. No noise was made. Nothing shifted. But I thought I could feel something moving just beyond where my phone fell. I picked it up and shined the light around the area. Nothing. Too much drink, I figured.
I went to put the book back in the case. But I hadn’t finished. The dialogue was interesting, so I figured there was no harm in taking it back home for the night. As I exited the room and grabbed the bottle I’d used as a doorjamb, the door closed abruptly. It didn’t slam. It just closed. I felt better knowing that it probably closed by itself when I had entered earlier. When I went to lock the door, I found that it already was. Too much drink, I told myself.
I locked the front door and began walking down the front steps. On the footpath I got that chill on the back of my neck. I kept moving.
“Aidan,” I heard my name whispered.
I turned but no one was there. I looked up at the library. It looked creepy in the dark. All the lights were off, but the streetlight gave it an ominous air. The orange light created shadows on the front door and two front windows, making it look like the building was smiling malevolently. I shuddered and turned back in the direction of home.
“Aidan,” something seemed to whisper again.
I turned back to the library. Nothing moved. Everything seemed too still, too silent. I scanned the building but saw nothing. I looked once more and nearly screamed. In a top floor window, I could see a figure. It was complete shadow, a shade darker than the pitch black room. It was tall and was looking down at me with its head tilted. I figured it was my eyes playing tricks on me. I looked closer, waiting for the figure to disappear or become something else but it remained. Then it cocked its head to the other side.
“Jesus!” I said, turning and walking several paces away from the building. I gave my head a shake and after a few more steps, began to laugh. “You’re having a laugh,” I said. I turned and looked back at the window. There was nothing. Like out of a film, the scary monster was gone. Too much drink, I assured myself.
The next morning I returned the book before my shift. I didn’t believe in the curse but I felt that if I was going a bit squirrelly, it was better to avoid anything that might exacerbate that. When I locked the room containing the book behind me, I waited in anticipation for something to happen. Nothing did.
In the lead up to December I managed to avoid the drink and get on top of work a bit. We had two new library assistants, an Assistant Librarian and a Library Manager. Fully staffed. I was due to take a holiday at the end of the month. I didn’t think of the agrapha dogmata at all. I was also thinking of Katie far less.
Then I woke up one night just after two. I’d had a nightmare. I was at a Symposium and rather than discussing love, the philosophers were discussing fear. The time didn’t make much sense because Aristotle was an old man alongside Plato and Socrates. I’m pretty sure Nietzsche was there as well. But each philosopher was talking about what they thought fear was. When it was Socrates’ turn, he stood before me and the group of men.
“Fear,” he said, “is when the illusion of safety disappears in an instant. When you think you’re safe only to discover you are actually in perilous danger.”
The group all nodded and murmured in assent. I looked around but the faces were kind of blurred. I took a sip from my cup and realized it tasted like blood. Looking down I saw it certainly was blood. Socrates laughed when I recoiled. “You thought you were safe,” he said. “You thought you were safe, you thought you were safe, you thought you were safe,” everyone at the party said. Even Nietzsche, I think. I woke up breathing heavily.
“You thought you were safe,” I thought something whispered. But it might’ve just been me remembering the dream. It was so faint I couldn’t be sure I heard anything. It was like that itch in the throat. My room was pitch black but I got up quickly to turn the light on. A quick look in the hall and under my bed proved that nothing was there. I went back to sleep with the light on.
The next day I arrived at work early. It was dark still, and cold when I entered the library. The front desk sits across from the entrance doors. Behind that desk is the door to my office. To the right of the entrance is a stairway leading to the second floor, and to the left are six rows of bookshelves. When I walked towards the desk, I saw something run from one side of the shelves to the other. I turned quickly but couldn’t see anything. I then thought I heard steps on the stairs behind me but instead of looking there, I walked over to the front desk and flicked the light switch on. Nothing. But without drink to blame I began to grow nervous.
The library was busy with students studying for exams, but I spent that shift reading more of the agrapha dogmata. In Book XI, Socrates is speaking to Adeimantus, Apollodorus, and Thrasymachus. The discussion is centered around what Socrates identifies as, “the Whisperers and the Shadows, those we have now identified as one and the same.” Thrasymachus begins the dialogue by lamenting the fact that he was ever exposed to the knowledge of these shadows. Socrates argues that knowledge is never bad and that this situation simply calls for further inquiry. More knowledge about the shadows will yield a solution.
The discussion then moves towards what Thrasymachus is hearing. He believes the whispering will stop if he does what the whisperers tell him to. Socrates urges him against this sort of thinking. He thinks that the whisperers are making false promises. There have been cases of people doing evil things under the pretense that the demons that haunt them will leave them alone once they do those things.
Socrates: But as you yourself admit, best of men, these Whisperers have made deals with others and not held up their end.
Thrasymachus: So those others say, Socrates.
Adeimantus: What Thrasymachus says is true, Socrates. We cannot verify the truth of what those criminals claim.
Socrates: Nor can we verify the truth of what the Whisperers promise. They say to you, Thrasymachus, that they will let you alone. But what is it that they require of you.
Thrasymachus is quiet. He looks at Apollodorus and Adeimantus, then eyes the ground.
Socrates: Something you’re not willing to do.
Thrasymachus: I grow more willing by the day, Socrates.
Socrates: But as has been said, there is no reason to trust the whisperers will keep their word.
Thrasymachus: But perhaps there is reason to try.
Thrasymachus’ hands envelope the throat of Apollodorus. Adeimantus and Socrates grab him by each arm but his grip is firm.
Thrasymachus: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
Banging on the door caused me to look up from the text. I didn’t think anyone knew I was in there. I quickly placed the book back in the case and opened the door. No one. I looked back at the book and shuddered. “Fucken hell,” I whispered.
I returned to work. I helped students check books out. I renewed loans until the new year. I sorted through the returns and emailed students who had overdue books. I did all that I could to distract myself. I was scared.
“Fucken hell,” Lydia whispered in my ear.
“I’m sorry?” I said, turning to her beside me. We were both working the front desk.
“What?” She said.
“Did you say something?”
“No.” She turned back to the student she had been speaking to.
“Fucken hell,” something whispered in my ear on the other side.
That night I slept with the light on again. I awoke in the middle of the night to knocking at my front door. I stepped out of my room. The door to the flat stood at the end of the hall. The knocking had stopped. I moved closer to the door and looked out of the peephole. There was nothing on the other side. I turned away from the door and moved back towards my room. I noticed something odd then. The light to my bedroom was turned off. I didn’t notice it when I woke up. BANG! Something smacked the door behind me. I turned around. The knocking returned, more persistent than before. As I got closer, the knocking became a banging all over the door. The bottom of it looked like it was getting kicked in. I quickly pulled the door open. Nothing.
“Who is it?” Katie asked from the kitchen.
“No one,” I said.
I closed the door. Wait. I quickly ran into the kitchen. Katie wasn’t there. Of course she wasn’t. She hadn’t been in months. I checked each room and then returned to my bedroom, turning on the light as I stepped inside. I tried to sleep but each time I nearly drifted off, I quickly jolted awake at the sight of movement.
“We know you know we’re here,” something whispered as I nearly drifted off again. I sat up and scanned the area. I laid back down. “It’s okay, you can sleep.”
The next day at work I drank three cups of coffee before eleven. A few coworkers asked if I was okay and I assured them I was. I spent most of the shift in my office. I wanted to burn the agrapha dogmata. But above that, I wanted to forget about it. I wanted to ignore what had happened; what was happening.
That night when I was closing up, I heard a laugh. It was a giggle, like the laughter of a child. I looked up to see a small shadow on the stairs. “Come on up,” it said. “Come read the book.”
“Why are you leaving without reading your book?” A voice whispered in my ear. I turned quickly, but there was nothing there. I looked back at the stairs. Again, nothing. I locked up and moved away from the library. I heard banging on a window from behind me. There was whispering at my heels. I didn’t turn around.
That night, I booked time off work. I called my doctor but it was too late. I would book an appointment in the morning. I called Tom but it went to voicemail. I sat watching the TV while shadows moved up and down the hallway outside. I dozed off a few times. When I awoke, I would look quickly at the doorway to the hall and see nothing. When I turned back to the TV, the movement would resume.
Two nights of movement and whispers in the dark. The receptionist said the doctor could see me in February. Tom was on holiday in Spain. I had barely slept and when I did, I would wake to whispering. My body seemed to yearn for the book. Like I might be satiated if I could grab hold of it. I stayed put.
That night I slept in the sitting room. I had begun doing that, as the TV sometimes drowned out the voices. As I began to find sleep, the whispering grew more persistent. “You shut your eyes but find no sleep, you shut your eyes but find no sleep.”
I opened my eyes. “You shut your eyes but find no sleep!” A voice screamed. I jolted up. I wasn’t sure what to do. I looked around the room but saw nothing. I could faintly hear the same giggling I’d heard in the library.
I put headphones in and blasted music. I could vaguely hear screaming during the songs and then in the time between one ending and another beginning, I nearly had a heart attack from the screaming. I couldn’t decipher what it was saying at this point. It was just screaming.
I had the rest of December off. I cancelled the plans to go to Sheffield to see my family over Christmas. I spent these weeks without sleep. I drank. When drunk I could tolerate it better but the hangover was made exponentially worse. I was nervous already and now I had a monster screaming the ear off me. As January approached and my holiday neared its end, I thought seriously about what I needed to do.
I knew burning the book wouldn’t work. Tom had said as much, but I knew it beyond that. I could feel it. If it burned, the voices would remain. And it wouldn’t burn. I wouldn’t be able to just work through it, obviously. I could wait to see my doctor. Then what? Beg for euthanasia? I was well and truly fucked.
On New Year’s Day, I was holed up in my flat hungover and anxious. The shadows moved in the hall, competing voices whispered in both ears rapidly. The TV was on but completely useless. Tears had been streaming down my face for days.
“Enough!” I screamed, getting to my feet.
The whispering stopped. Even the film that was playing seemed to hold its breath. “Enough,” I said.
“Ooo, he’s angry,” a woman whispered.
“He’s mad,” a man replied.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“He’s curious,” another voice said.
“Think about it,” a woman said.
“Think about it, it’s easy.”
“If you think about it -”
“Long and hard -”
“You’ll get your answer,” a man whispered.
“Please,” I said. “Please, leave me alone.”
“Okay.”
“That’s easy,” a voice said.
“Of course we’ll leave you alone.”
“Why didn’t you just say so?” A woman’s voice said.
I sat back down on the coach. I picked up the beer from the floor and put it to my lips.
“We’ll leave you alone if you do us a favour.”
“A favour for a favour, see?”
“What?” I asked.
“You wouldn’t have touched the book,” a man whispered.
“You wouldn’t have gone near it,” another man said.
“You would have left it alone.”
“But she wanted to read it,” a woman hissed.
“Katie?” I asked.
“Katie.”
“She didn’t. She might have wanted to before but …”
“She planted the idea and left to let it grow,” someone whispered.
“I’m not doing this,” I said. I chugged the remainder of the beer and opened another. The whispering continued but I no longer paid it any mind.
My return to work was difficult. I couldn’t discern between real people and figments of my imagination. I pushed what I thought was a shadow to my left away, only to find an old woman looking up at me indignantly. Any illusion that the shadows couldn’t hurt me disappeared when I woke up with cuts and bruises all over my body. I once jolted awake and found that I was standing on a chair in the dining room, a rope hanging in front of me.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Lydia asked for the nine hundredth time. I was sporting a black eye. She asked that question so many times I thought I might throttle her. “Not her,” something whispered in my ear.
By the middle of January I thought death might be okay. I decided it was time to end everything. It must have been sleep deprivation getting to me but each time I gave it a go, I found myself completely unharmed. It was some sort of illusion. Any noose broke, every building I jumped from ended up being no more than a park bench. None of it made sense.
At the end of January I got drunk in my flat. I had missed a week of work and didn’t bother providing an excuse. I couldn’t hear anything except whispering and laughter. Sometimes a yell would catch me off guard. I smashed the empty bottle of vodka on the kitchen floor and it made no noise. There was only the whispering.
I found Katie’s number in my phone and called it. To my surprise, it began ringing.
“Hi,” she answered.
“Katie.”
She didn’t respond immediately. There was a silence like I hadn’t known in weeks. It was bliss. And Katie had answered.
“Aidan,” she interrupted.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said.
“That’s okay.”
“I thought I’d be blocked. I was calling you before.”
“No, I know. I just needed some time,” she said. “That wasn’t fair, I shouldn’t have done that.”
“You had every right to … I’m really sorry.”
“I know,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to call you.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well look,” I said, “would you want to get together?”
She exhaled. There was some hesitation. In this silence, I could faintly hear whispering. I clenched my jaw in frustration. I cracked my neck. She said nothing.
“Just to talk,” I said.
The shadows moved in around me. Someone was cackling behind me. An excited buzz grew.
“Okay.”
* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Luke Miller 2025
