Out of My Mind

Out of My Mind
by Nathan You

'Scared them half to death from what I hear,' said Lance as he picked through some of the remains laid out in the tray. ‘Can hardly blame them, must be quite a shock, stumbling on a skeleton in your backyard.’ He stopped examining the bones, leaving them to their new resting place beneath the acrologists tent. I tried to avoid looking at the horrid things, I should have been used human remains as an archaeologist myself but it was hard to be around them after the events of the last year. Feeling uncomfortable, I attempted meekly to change the subject.
"They found it when building an extension to the house, didn't they?
He nodded
‘Aye, called the police at first but the Scotland Yard lads soon realised the find was more in the remit of our expertise.’ He picked up the skull of the skeleton, holding it aloft like a Hamlet in tweed. ‘As far as we can tell it's female and seems to be an early modern human. Although you and your work on the paintings should help us narrow down the more precise dating.’ I nodded, I was looking forward to getting down to my own work and away from the body. He pointed at an area of the skull. ‘This bit's a little curious though.’ Curiosity overcame my discomfort and looked at the area he indicated.
‘It's a hole.’ The hole was in the side of the skull, a little smaller than the eye socket in diameter.
‘Indeed, a hole right through the lassie's cranium. The other men on the team are of the opinion that it's something called trepanation. Apparently it's some ancient custom for getting evil spirits out of one's head by drilling a hole in it. Mind you, I dare say these days we have easier ways of getting rid of a migraine,’ he chuckled at his joke but I found I couldn't share in his grim sense of humour.

We then made our way to the main site. The owners had begun the process of building the foundations to an extension when one of the holes they had dug hit an underground chamber. Since then the archeological team had widened the hole so the chamber could be accessed easily via a ladder. We entered the underground space where the body had been found, it was largely spherical, maybe a few feet wide and across. The space was dark and cramped, whatever the original entrance had been was now blocked off. The team above passed down a lantern to Lance. He shone it's light onto the chamber's walls,
‘So lad what do ya make of em?’ Covering the walls were a series of prehistoric cave paintings depicting a large array of early humans and the animals they lived alongside. Some were recognisable animals of today, like elk and wolves and others I was only familiar with from paleontology textbooks.
‘They're remarkably well preserved for their age, I must say. Most of this is fairly typical for the area I probably place it in one of the later eras at a guess, given the level detail. Although this is rather intriguing…’ I pointed out an odd piece of artwork scrawled on the cave wall. It seemed to depict some kind of monster, like a worm, perhaps even a stylised snake, although it was difficult to make out the details in the low light. ‘This figure here is rather unusual. As you can tell by those around it, the people in this area tended to be rather literal in their artwork, usually only drawing the animals they'd encounter in everyday life. However this seems to be a picture of a kind of monster existing only in the realms of mythology or the imagination and so it seems somewhat out of place.’ Lance nodded and we and the rest of the team got to work.

Soon we had more lights brought down so we could fully appreciate the full scale of the paintings as well as a camera to take photographs.The vast array of different images truly astonished me and we soon had taken shots of every last one of them. Lance and the rest of the team left to work on the photographs or investigating the skeleton. I was left alone in the cave as I waited for the pictures to develop. I found my briefcase containing my books and work supplies so I could begin doing my own study of the paintings.

I opened it up and started to remove the contents. First several well thumbed books on prehistoric art, with book marks placed in several sections to mark out important passages. Next, my old well worn notebook, I opened up its leather bound cover and skimmed through looking for a clear page on which to document some first impressions. But before I could find one, a slip of paper fell out from between the pages. I reached down to pick up whatever it was from the ground. The paper was roughly square, about five inches wide, slightly glossy and blank on one side. Wondering what was on the other side I turned it over. However as soon as I did I regretted it, when I turned it over I remembered what it was, a picture of Dorthy, my sweet little girl. I had taken down all the other pictures, not able to bear the memories brought up when I looked at them. Somehow this one must have lain there forgotten in between the pages. As the memories flooded back and tears formed in my eyes. I tore the photo up and let the scraps fall silently to the cave floor. I wiped my eyes clear and decided to resume my study to try to clear my head.

Once I had made records of the cave walls I began to start documenting them. I began with the images of the more traditional depictions of animals. As I had suspected they bore a resemblance to the many artworks from the same time and area. As such it was a pretty simple task to sort and classify them. However as I did so I kept coming back to that strange image of the monster. The creature definitely wasn’t any kind of animal that I recognised, its body was vaguely serpentine and wormlike but the face was almost human and somehow childlike. The painting was intricately detailed to the point where I could even see a pair of tongues, or possibly tentacles emanating from its mouth.There was something beguiling and intriguing about the image, I was almost transfixed on it and felt compelled to find out what it was. I searched through all my books looking for some clue as to what it might be but try as I might I couldn’t find anything. I kept searching for some kind of match but I had to stop as an awful pain started in my head. It was a kind of stabbing ache throbbing in the side of my head.

I searched my case for some kind of medication that I could use to ease the pain. I checked all the compartments but despite my certainty that I had stowed some somewhere I couldn’t find it for the life of me. I looked to the cave exit but the pain in my head made the idea of climbing out seem exhasing. Resolving in simply grin and bare it, I lay my back against the cave wall and decided to rest my eyes.

I stood in my garden, the mid-day sun was high in the sky. I looked over to the rosebed next to it was a bench on which sat a basket and my wife Elizabeth. She beckoned to me and I walked over to her. As I sat down beside her she gave me a smile, the like which neither of us had been able to muster in so long.
‘She's here,’ Elizabeth said as she passed the basket to me. I looked into the basket and saw it was filled with swaddling cloths. I pulled them back and revealed the face that had longed to see in the flesh for so long. It was Dorothy, my beautiful girl just as she had been before the fever took her. I was so used to feeling sorrow whenever I thought of her but as I looked down at her now I felt nothing but joy. I looked around to share my amazement with my wife but found her gone. I wondered how she could leave during such a miraculous moment. But it didn't matter, I had my perfect little girl back again.
‘How could I have ever thought my work could fill the hole you left in my life?’ I said to her as I lifted her up from the basket. ‘I'll never leave you again.’

I reached down to stroke her cheek and one of her tendrils slithered from her mouth and curled around my finger. My heart melted at this tiny display of affection. I pulled back slightly and she held tight until eventually letting go of her grip on my finger. In response I tickled her under her chin and her whole body writhed and squirmed with laughter. I held her up to my eye level and watched as her face tried it's best to mimic my facial expressions. This time it was my turn to giggle as I watched her round mouth scrunch and gurn. I placed her back down on the bench and began to unwrap her from her blankets, hoping to see more of her than just her face. She was still so small and delicate but also still the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Her serpentine body wriggled and tried unsuccessfully to sit up. Her tiny head bore a cherubic face dominated by a sucker-like mouth from which two tentacles spilled. I looked down on her, as lovely as she has ever been. No, no that wasn't right. Something was amiss but I couldn't place my finger on it. I tried mentally comparing her to my memories. Had her skin always glistened like that? No, something else still seemed wrong, she had had arms, hadn't she? Looking at her again now she was nothing like my baby girl. This thing that lay in her place was some kind of monster! A realisation of that nightmarish form scrawled on the cave wall. I panicked, the horrid thing slithered over to me and wrapped its tendrils around my wrist. I tried to shake it off but it levered itself up and began to climb up my arm. Soon it had reached my shoulder and prepared to strike at my face.

I awoke with a start. Looking around I found that I was still in the cave. I reached for my head, the awful stabbing pain in it had somehow worsened. I tried to stand up but the pain was so intense it caused me to lose my balance and collapse to the ground, knocking my papers around as I fell. I began to tear up, wasn't sure if it was because of the pain or that horrible dream. That ghastly thing had stolen my poor girl's place. The image of the squirming thing where her face should have been filled my mind. I needed to get out, out of this damn cave where the idea of that thing had come from. As I crawled to the hole that would lead me out of the dark, I tried to remember her face, her real face. Hoping to banish the imposter's from my mind. I struggled to focus in spite of the pain in my skull, I had to get out, I had to remember. To remember how her face had looked, back when she was alive. But I found that I couldn't remember what she looked like. I scrambled in the dirt but couldn't even find the shreds of the photograph. I kept fighting against the pain but try as I might I couldn't remember what she looked like. Had her hair been fair or dark? Her eyes, brown or blue? I couldn't remember anything about her. All that I could think of when I tried was that terrible worm. To think I couldn't even remember the face of my darling… oh god, what was her name? I couldn't lose that too. The light of the exit seemed so far away. The pain was unbearable now, I was sure I was going to die in this horrid place and without a single memory to call on for comfort. I felt as though my head would split apart at any moment. I opened my mouth and screamed.

The next day, Lance found his friend's body lying sprawled on the floor of the cave. Scattered around him were his paper's depicting the cave paintings. Calling out his name Lance rushed over to him but found that he was not breathing, his body now just a lifeless corpse. A short smear of blood on the ground led from his head. Lance turned over the man’s head to find its source and gasped in horror as he found a hole in the side of his skull.