...welcome back to our cyber-world...

When this blog was begun some six years ago, the cyber-world was a far different place.  Such is the pace of change in our age.  What has not changed is the constancy of friendship and support one person can offer another: the anchor of stability (bit redundant that is) in a raging sea of progress.

The story that began here was just one of many attempts my spiritual brother, Jeff Coleman, and I have made, both as a team and as lone voices in the wilderness, to find artistic meaning that rises above and beyond the dollar-sign that pulls art down to the level of entertainment.  Even if few people read what we wrote here, it did its job.  What we see, what we feel we have to offer, we have continued to offer.  Anyone and everyone are welcome on our boat.

Jeff's story begat my story, and I have found my story to be one that has stayed with me in the six years since it began.  For that, I thank him.

But as I wrote, the cyber-world has changed.  I have changed as well.  I believe in my story such that I wish once more (I have tried this many times) to find a way to make it make its own small contribution toward supporting me, to hope it can do so, and still let it mean something.  In the cyber-world, that is now possible.  The outsider-artist now has a chance not perhaps to succeed, to become the superstar of legend, but both to make his mark and just possibly to survive, not to let his or her art sink to the level of entertainment, but to raise entertainment to the level of art.

To that end, the story I wrote here, enlarged and expanded (new and improved?) will now be available for sale in late June.  Details will follow here, on my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/iain.s.walsh, and my Twitter account https://twitter.com/#!/ICEILL.  As well, I will leave here the opening as what “they”, the ubiquitous “they”, call in the trade a teaser.

Free art, free thought, will never cease to be, never cease serving, never cease to have meaning, never cease to be here.  Jeff and I thank you for your support here and everywhere, in whatever form it takes.

And now, for those of you new to our world, the teaser: The Journal of Dr. Colwyn Rhys-Myers, the first entries…

(This journal was discovered in the remote files of the University of Wales in 1992, after it had been placed there at the behest of the family estate some fifteen years earlier. Since then, it has been a source of interest and occasional study to scholars and researchers of what is generally known to the public as "paranormal science". Its author passed away in 1974 after a respected - if somewhat neglected at the time - career as a physician and self-taught expert in the physical and psychological effects of post-war trauma, what at the time was called “shell-shock”, a field of study rarely acknowledged during his life, but of increasing interest in the generations to follow.)

Opening Entry: 22 March 1919, Llandanwg, Wales.

It is spring here on the coast, and so often spring is thought of as a time of renewal. Certainly, the horrors of the past four years - both for those of us who served, and for those who only stood and waited at home (and in so writing I apologize to Milton, who deserves better than my feeble efforts at literary adaptation) - make this a spring full of greater hope than any in recent memory. Yet what I saw in on the fields of France, and what now I fear I see here so far removed by temperament, if not perhaps by geography, from those continental locales troubles me.

I write not of the Great War, as some already call it; though, for those of us who served and suffered other epithets might better be applied, but of a nameless dread, something that at this point in my experience beggars description.

An almost palpable presence of malignancy shadowed us on the battlefields night and day. It made sense to us then; we were, of course, fighting for our very lives. But that malignancy has followed us home, and in this the season of renewal and hope it shadows us still. I would say it is fatigue; I would perhaps be willing to accept it as nothing more than prolonged melancholy were it not for its almost tangible presence not only in ourselves, but in the very air around us.

Until this past week, I had seen, felt - I am still uncertain as how to describe "it" - the presence only in myself, and confirmed it only in the quiet confidences of my fellow men-at-arms returned from the War. But with the witnessing of the horrible, wholly mysterious fate that befell the Jones family outside the village, and what I experienced when I discovered them, I am now perplexed to a point that I fear my training will little help me in understanding the path I am loath to pursue.

Yet pursue it I must. My curiosity beckons me, my oath demands it, and my humanity makes no other choice possible.

Never before have I kept, nor even considered keeping a record of my pursuits, a journal, if you will.  Medical research, patient records, scientific data: those are the writings of my trade.  Diaries have always seemed to me the private literary province of young girls full of youth and dreams with no past, but all future promise: memoirs the reflective province of the aged and learned – the far more learned than I.  Perhaps in this I have been mistaken.  In these pages I intend now to keep I hope some good is found, and even if answers will not be forthcoming, at least I pray the questions, and the path upon which they send me, will remain clear.

Entry: 24 March 1919.

The Jones family had been the village’s woodworkers for many generations, but only in the last few years had they moved out of the village to take up residence in a cottage and workshop on the edge of the forest. The reason for their move was one of those odd tales that often it seems only we Welsh can produce.

The brothers Jones were opposites, very much the black and white sheep of their family.  Lloyd Jones, it had been clear almost from the moment of his birth, was the one to follow in, and hold up, the family tradition.  He took to his craft with alacrity and innate understanding, watching and learning from his father as soon as he was able to handle the tools of the family trade.  Lloyd’s brother, Simon, was a clumsy, sickly little boy who became quickly and intensely jealous of his older brother’s knack with carpentry, and the attention it afforded him.  Simon grew into a foul-tempered inebriate who, after squandering away any talents he might have had (in the family business, or no), spent his days wandering the village speaking most ill of anyone and anything that took his fancy, all the while watching his brother’s reputation and standing in the village grow. They became known locally as “Jones-Building Up”, and “Jones-Tearing Down”. In any other village, Jones-Tearing Down would have been ostracized, driven out even; but, in our peculiar way of sheltering even the most difficult and despised of our fellow creatures, the town took pity on him, and supported him as best they could. Jones-Building Up, however, could no longer abide the presence of his brother, and moved his family and business out of the village; though, he took care to stay close enough so as not to inconvenience his trade. (His wife’s as well: Jones’ wife, Aerona, was a baker of significant local repute, and though she did not run a business in the formal manner of her husband, her gifts were in near-constant demand.)  It was in this manner that what befell them did not come to my attention immediately.

Several days had passed, and none of the villagers had seen Jones-Building Up; in fact, he had left several projects unfinished, which was most unlike him. Thinking perhaps he had taken ill, I took it upon myself to visit him. The first – and, perhaps, most unnerving – thing I noticed was that all around his property, in a ragged circle, not a tree, not a plant, not a blade of grass was alive. That there were no trees did not surprise me; I merely assumed that these trees were ones Jones was using in his trade, but the absence of any plants, any garden, vegetable patches, even weeds was most unexpected. I felt apprehensive in a way I had not felt since walking the fields of France during the War searching for the wounded.

I approached the house cautiously, and a strange scent of decay, something like the stench of death I had known all too well, but sweeter, with a sense almost as if it was beckoning to me, curled around my nostrils. I went quickly to the front door, but for some reason that even now I do not understand, I stopped just short of the threshold.

I heard a shuffling inside. Could perhaps someone still be alive? My apprehension and confusion passed, and I broke in. Jones-Building Up (though we knew his first name, none of us - not even his closest friends - used it) was lying on the floor, face up, one hand shielding his eyes. I rushed to him, and found he was still barely alive.

His skin was grey, almost as if he was already dead, and parched like dying leaves. His eyes, when I moved his hand away from them, were wide open as if frozen in horror. It was so like the "thousand-yard stare" of the broken soldier I had to catch my breath and stifle a cry.

"Colwyn?" He spoke.

"Jones," I replied. "What...are you?..."

"Aerona...," he said, his voice papery and faint, "my girls...mad...ran..."

He tried to move. "Don't; lie still," I said. "I'll help you."

"Mad...them...all of it...no release...no salvation..." I tried to make sense of what he was saying.

"Can you tell me anything? What happened here?"

A huge gasp racked his chest. "Judgment...on everything...we're not the ones...WE'RE NOT THE ONES!..." His last words were a ragged scream.

"Jones!" I cried, but with one last, desperate gasp, he was gone.

I searched the rest of the house, but Jones was right; his wife, Bryn, and the girls, were gone. I searched his small barn, and all of his dairy animals were dead. Oddly, his store of grain had putrefied to an almost gelatinous mass. Part of my mind, the small part that always remained calm and detached (the quality friends and family had said they knew would make me a doctor), thought to save a sample to try and analyse later. I put some in a small vial I found back in the house, and wrapped it carefully in a piece of linen. I had no idea - and feared greatly - what had affected the grain, and what would happen if whatever it was spread beyond the Jones' property.

I would have to bear the sad news to the village, and hoped most sincerely as I walked back that whatever this was, it would be the last time I would see it.

Entry: 03 Apr 1919.

It has been ten days since my most unfortunate discovery at Jones' cottage, and my hopes that any quick answers would be afforded any of us in this mystery have been sadly optimistic, and equally sadly mistaken. In truth, the mystery has only deepened.

For three days after being the last to see poor Jones alive, I tried futilely to analyse the substance I assumed was all that was left of the grain in the barn. The afternoon of the third day, I took it upon myself to repair to the village pub for a hearty meal, and a few brief moments to clear my head. I have always been one to delve perhaps too obsessively into any query scientific in nature, and as I had received only two patients with maladies most minor in nature over those past three days, I had spent almost every waking hour in my laboratory.

Not moments after settling down to eat, Terry the Miller burst in the establishment. He came straight to me, eyes wide with astonishment, yet jaw set with purpose. 

“Dr. Myers,” he said.  “I’ve seen her!”  

“Whom?”

“Jones’ daughter, Claire,” he replied.

“Are you sure?  Where?”

“As sure as I can be.  If it wasn’t her, it was one of them.  It had to be.  No sprites or fairies at this time of day.”  Terry was a man given to hold the legends of the area close to his heart.  “I was working at mill, and stepped outside for a break, to cool off, you know.  That pint looks inviting.”  His astonished gaze turned to a near-clinical interest in my stout. 

I turned to the innkeeper.  “One for Terry, if you please.”

“On its way.”

“’Ta, Colwyn.  Anyway, I was standing there, just staring off into the woods, not really thinking of anything, and then, there she was, walking out of the trees.  She were sort of half-staggering, but moving fairly fast.  She didn’t see me.  She didn’t seem to see anything.  It were obvious she were in some sort of bother.  I figured she had to be one of the Jones girls, and I ran after her.  I got close enough to see it were most likely Claire, but then I lost her.  She went back into the trees.  She didn’t turn when I called, and I called out loudly enough to wake the dead.”

“We’d best get a search-party together,” I replied.

“My thoughts exactly.  Boys…” Terry said as he turned, and found himself staring straight into the faces of a half-dozen men in the pub.  His story had quickly caught the attention of most everyone in the establishment.  “Well, you lot’ll do for a start.” 

“I’ll round up as many as I can from the village,” I said.

“Good’o.  The men at mill are already searching.  I’ll tell them there’s more coming.”

Some thirty of us, villagers and friends of the Jones’ all, gathered at the mill and split into groups of four or five each.  The search lasted until near-dark, but just as we feared we would lose her to the night, the young girl was found perhaps a mile from where Terry had first seen her.  I was told she had been standing in a small clearing, staring into the sky, not focused on any one constellation, any one point of light, but seemingly lost in the deep purple and black of the coming night sky.

Terry and his mates brought her back to the pub (not the best place for a child, perhaps, but certainly the best meeting-place for them who had been searching for her), and all the search-parties were called back to gather there.  I had been with a group on the opposite side of the village, far from where she was found, and was among the last to return, having received word from a runner sent from the pub.

She was in truth, Claire, Jones' youngest daughter, dirty and ragged in appearance, but seemingly unharmed physically. She had however - God help me, but my hand shakes even as I write this - the stare. It was the face of all the soldiers I had treated, and her father, yet again.

I asked Terry if she had said anything when she had been found.

“Naught that I know.”  Terry turned toward his best-friend standing behind him.  “Griff, you found her, right?”

“Aye.  She said not a word.  Didn’t even recognize us.  She were in a trance like.  She didn’t fight, didn’t react; it were almost like picking up a doll.” 

I took hold of her gently – she flinched a touch, but not enough to startle her, or me – and turned her to face me. 

“Claire?  Claire?  It’s Dr. Myers.  Can you hear me?”  I turned to Griff.  “Might I have a match, if you please?”

“I feel like a fag, too.  Just a tick…”

“No,” I replied, straight-faced, “just a match, please.  I want to check her eyes.”

“Aye, sorry.”  He fished a match from his pockets and handed it to me.

I struck it away from her face, and moved it carefully back-and-forth in front of her eyes.  She seemed to see it, but followed its path slowly, almost distractedly.  Her pupils were unusually dark as well.

I could not rouse her to awareness, and then suddenly her eyes gained clarity and sureness of vision.  At first, I thought she had finally fixed her gaze on the match, when I realized she had fixed her gaze on what later I realized was a stain on my shirt the same colour as the substance I had been studying the past three days and nights. (Absentmindedly, I had let the sample drip upon my shirt at one point in my investigations. My then-immediate concern that I had contaminated myself proved fortunately to be groundless. Whatever it was, is, it is nothing that would react with cloth, or skin.)

Upon seeing the stain, Claire's eyes grew almost impossibly ever-wider, her neck muscles went taught, her lips peeled back, and a scream such as I pray never to hear again welled up and exploded from the depths of whatever horror was still enslaving her. As the scream subsided, she sunk back into her trance, and once more, she was unreachable, but not before she had curdled the blood of every man and woman in the pub.

“Ministers of grace, what were that?!?” Terry gasped.

“Whatever she saw,” I replied, “and I have to find out what it was.”  I pulled myself back from an inner horror only slightly-better concealed than Terry’s, and said, “But for now, she needs rest.”

“If it’s quite alright with you, Doctor, I’ll take her home with me.  Emlyn and I will be happy to look after her.”

“Thank you, Terry.”  Terry and Emlyn, whose children were grown, were looked upon as the unofficial grandparents to any children in the village.  With Claire’s family taken from her, there was no better place for her to be.

The most tender and deliberate ministrations of many of us that night, and well into the next day, would not bring her round. Many in the village were more-than-willing to take her in; however, I knew that alone would not be enough to restore her even to a semblance of the child she was.  The mystery trapped inside her must be brought out.  Who among us knew if what happened to her poor family would not happen again to some other unfortunate souls? 

After much consultation, it was decided that, with Claire's best interests at heart, I would send her to a medical and psychological expert, colleague, and trusted friend of mine in Cardiff.  Terry and Emlyn were more than willing to travel with Claire, and I commenced making arrangements for my colleague, Dr. Daniel Frasier, to meet them when they arrived.  With this decision, the only sign of hope during this unholy event arose.

That afternoon in my office, as I put together what notes on the events, and Claire’s condition, I could, Jones-Tearing Down came to see me.  Usually, he would burst through any door in his way, almost as if he knew he was not wanted, and the door itself would make to bar his progress to save the unsuspecting on the other side from Jones’ cynical wrath.  As such, when the almost-timid knock came, I did not expect it to be he.

“Come in,” I said.

Slowly, the door opened.  “Doctor,” Jones said, making the one word a question.

“Jones?  What might I do for you?”

“Claire.  She’s leaving today.”

“That’s right.  Terry and Emlyn are taking her to Cardiff.  It’s best for her.  I have a colleague there.  If anyone can help her, he can.”

“He’ll need payment, won’t he?” Jones asked.

“Daniel and I have an arrangement.  No debts between us.”

“Ah.  The War.”  Jones stood there as if waiting for the right words to come to him.

“Simon…is there something?...”

“I’ll take her.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, my two words sounding as questioning as Jones’ one did just before.

“Claire.  I’ll take her to Cardiff.  I’ll stay with her.  I’ll find a job.  Get a flat.  I’ll look after her.  She’s family.  She's all that's left of my brother. I was never any good to him. At least I can do this."

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.  Been sober since Lloyd’s…since the family’s…well, it cleared my head.”  A brief, sad chuckle escaped his throat, and a hint of a rueful smile crossed his face.  “Hell of a way to come to your senses.  Got to do rightly by her I have.”

“Settled then.  I’ll tell Terry and Olwyn you’ll…”

“No need.  I’m packed already.  Not much to me in possessions.”  He pointed to a small haversack he had set beside him.  “I’ll be coming with you to the station.  Tell them then.”

I finished my notes on Claire, put them in a small, leather folder, and gave them to Simon. 

“These are all the facts, and…well, educated guesses I can make on what’s happened to Claire.  Please see that Dr. Frasier gets them.”

“I will.”

We went straight to the station, and met Terry and Emlyn on the platform.  They were as surprised at Simon’s transformation as was I, and were happy to accede to the new arrangements.  Terry offered to travel with Simon and Claire to Cardiff.

“You never know.  Something could go amiss.  Be happy to help you settle in,” Terry said.

“I can take care of…” Simon stopped himself just short of renouncing his new-found civility.  “Perhaps you’re right.  Been a while since I’ve set up house & home.”

As they talked, Emlyn walked Claire to the passenger-car, while I followed.  “You’ll be safe, luv.  The Doctor and your Uncle and everyone are going to look after you now.”  Claire still stared off into some unknown point in the far-distance, oblivious to all.  Emlyn stopped and gave her a fierce hug.  “We’ll bring you back.  From wherever you are in there, we’ll bring you back.”

Terry and Simon caught up with us, and with Claire boarded the train.  As Emlyn and I watched the train pull away, she turned to me and looked me squarely in the eyes.

“It’s as if she’s a shell: an empty shell.  When you came back from France, there were days you looked that way.”

“That’s what frightens me most.”

“Will she be alright?”

I thought carefully before I answered, and the extra moment’s thought produced nothing better than a cliché.  Still, clichés by their very nature are born of truth. 

“Time.  She needs time.  She’s with the best man I know.  And I’ll find whatever answers I can here.”

In the week since then, I have renewed my investigations with fervour, spending more time at the Jones cottage in search of anything that might give me those answers, even if all they do is lead me to another question. My nights are spent in the laboratory, examining and reexamining that perplexing sample.

I do not believe myself to be a boastful man. None of us are above each other in God's eyes, nor should we be in each other's. But still, I have confidence in my training. I would not be a man of science if I did not believe the discipline affords us such insight and answers into the mysteries found throughout Creation. I write this because every test I have run on the sample - that purplish, translucent, gelatinous abomination - suggests biological life, yet laughs at it in the same blink of an eye. Under the microscope, its structure appears to be cellular in nature, but a cell that is almost a parody of what that novelist fellow, Mr. Wells, might term "terrestrial" biology. I am at a loss.

There is one man who might be able to help me. An exceptionally learned, if somewhat eccentric, young Frenchman, he worked alongside me as a Field Surgeon during the War. With the cessation of hostilities, he returned to his peacetime origins, and hopes of a normal life, as did I to mine.

In the months since the War ended, it has been my hope to leave its far away places and memories as just that: far away, and in the province of memory. It would seem I will not be granted that most fortunate of passages of time and place just yet. My duty, my curiosity, and my calling compel me to continue my search for answers. My old French compatriot, and his unique skill, is my next, best hope.

It seems I must return to Amiens.