The Wind Beyond the Walls of the Mind

Chapter 1
The Beginning and a Farewell

by Gaius Petronius

DISCLAIMER:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all the characters that appear on the show are the exclusive property of Joss Whedon, the WB, Fox and Mutant Enemy, Inc. This story can be read on its own or as a sequel to H. P. Lovecraft's "The Haunter of the Dark" from which the Ancient Ones, the Shining Trapezohedron and the character of Robert Blake are derived.

The Wind Beyond the Walls of the Mind is set roughly in mid-season four shortly following the death of Doyle but before the creation of Adam and the death of Maggie Walsh.

"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
And, in our own despair, against our will,
Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."
Aeschylus - 5th century BCE

Morning dawned bright and cool over Inmann Square on Federal Hill in Providence, Rhode Island. The late March wind that blew up the Providence River from Narragansett Bay had a biting chill. The winter of 1937 had been exceptionally cold and spring was sure to be late in coming. As if spring or even summer's warmth itself could cleanse Inmann Square of the desolation that now lay sprawled across its worn paving stones.

In the center of the square, surrounded by ramshackle tenements and dilapidated warehouse buildings loomed the recently burned out ruins of a large stone church. While the granite block walls of the nave remained standing, the interior was completely gutted and it's wooden steeple lay collapsed in a black nightmarish wreck on the paving stones. Wisps of ash blew up in clouds from the rubble whenever the breeze rose. Massive charred timbers from the remnants of the vaulted ceiling projected above the now burned off roof line and pointed at the leaden skies like bony fingers of a long dead being.

The square was empty save for a solitary figure, a uniformed policeman in his early forties, Sgt. Patrick Donaghy, who stood before the ruins as a guard not so much to keep trespassers out as to maintain a watch over what may have been within. The occasional passerby skirted the square's outer perimeter but no one dared cross the open space around the church. Even the first muffled sounds of the early morning traffic on the neighboring streets seemed hushed..

Donaghy didn't move but only stood staring at the destruction in front of him. At first he was unaware of the tall figure striding out determinedly from one of the side streets. The new arrival, Jameson MacDuffie, was young, in his mid twenties, and bare headed with brown curly hair. He wore a long coat drawn together against the morning chill and his hands were thrust firmly in his coat pockets. The sound of his leather shoes clipped sharply on the cobble pavement and echoed in the emptiness of the square.

As he drew near, Donaghy finally sensed his approach but didn't immediately turn to face him. MacDuffie reached Donaghy's side, and the two stood silently together for a few moments.

"Hello, Patrick," MacDuffie said quietly.

Clearly discouraged, MacDuffie didn't reply but only lowered his head.

"I came as soon as I got Howard's letter. . ." MacDuffie continued slowly. "I can see I'm too late."

"Jameson MacDuffie . . . ," the policeman said smiling sadly as he turned to his companion. "It must have been a long trip from California but thank the Gods you did come."

Both men embraced in silence. They then turned to contemplate the burned out hulk in front of them.

"We lost both of them," Donaghy said, his voice barren of emotion, "Howard and Bobby Blake."

"I didn't know," MacDuffie replied, "But I presumed as much since Howard didn't answer my phone calls. When?"

"Two weeks ago." MacDuffie could see the policeman begin to tremble. He sensed it was not just from the bitter March wind sweeping across Inmann Square.

"They found Howard up at the Arkham Inn. Said it was a seizure brought on by the spreading cancer. And Bobby died two nights later in the College Street apartment. That's when this . . . "

Donaghy nodded towards the ruined church and then fell silent. MacDuffie waited patiently for the policeman to continue.

"And . . .?" he finally asked. "What was the doctor's report on Blake?"

"With the storm that night, the coroner blamed it on the lightning. 'Discharge of extremely high electric voltage compounded with profound emotional shock.' He had to put that part in because of the look on poor Bobby's face. Gods, James it was awful! I got the call and was the first one there. In the final moments, he must have actually laid eyes on Nyarl . . ."

"Sshh!" MacDuffie whispered urgently as he glanced around the empty square.

Donaghy couldn't contain himself any longer. Months of smoldering frustration finally surged to surface as he shouted at the younger man.

"There's no one here, James!" he cried out, and MacDuffie felt the despair in his words. "The few people that lived in the buildings around the square have all fled. No one will come up here! I can't even get officers from the precinct to patrol the area anymore!"

"It's nothing human I'm worried about," MacDuffie answered coldly. "What about the state police?"

"The Mayor would have to put in a request to the Governor for that!" the policeman replied, his voice laced with sarcasm.

". . . Wilkins . . . " MacDuffie muttered, now understanding the futility of his own suggestion.

"Yes . . . no one dares approach him." Donaghy almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all. "Thank Gods his removal by the state authorities is a foregone conclusion. I hate to think what would have happened if he hadn't been greedy and got caught embezzling city funds. Everyone figures he'll probably run rather than face a trial. Good riddance, too! No one will make any effort to bring him back to face charges."

MacDuffie gave Donaghy a puzzled look. He couldn't believe events had sunk to this level.

"This is Providence, James!" Donaghy snapped, "Everyone knows what goes on in City Hall!"

"Well, on one thing you can breathe easily," MacDuffie said trying to reassure the policeman. "The Res Profana is safe. Howard retrieved it out of the Middlefield College archives just in time. He must have had Blake mail it to me under cover of the crowds in downtown Boston. It's locked away out in California. No one will have access to those spells for a long time."

MacDuffie knew after he said them that his words would provide little comfort. Too much was occurring too quickly.

"Somehow, after what happened here, it still doesn't make me feel much better," Donaghy said.

"Tell me," MacDuffie asked gently. "Howard was only able to give me hints in his letter."

Donaghy lowered his voice.

"Both he and Blake knew the planetary alignments in conjunction with the vernal equinox were ominous. The Ancient Ones were about to make another attempt to break out and reclaim their old dominions. Howard particularly knew he had to move fast. If he and Bobby could just hold Them off for three more days, the alignments would change, stripping Them of their ability to materialize in this sphere. The threat would be past and not resurface for another sixty odd years."

MacDuffie shook his head in regretful admiration.

"So Howard acted as the decoy," he said finally understanding the nature of the terrible sacrifice, "luring away Yogsothoth, so Blake could sneak the Res Profana out of Middlefield andget it off to me."

"And paid a heavy price," Donaghy replied.

MacDuffie sensed something wasn't right. He faced Donaghy head on and his eyes asked as many questions as his voice.

"But with the key to releasing the Ancient Ones safely out of New England . . . what happened here?" MacDuffie now stared in mounting horror at the ruined church. "What happened to Robert Blake?" and he trembled as he asked the question.

Donaghy answered in a whisper.

". . . he found it, James . . !"

MacDuffie's eyes widened with fear.

". . . the Shining Trapezohedron . . ."

". . . the 'Alexandrian Crystal?' . . ." MacDuffie asked under his breath.

"In the tower of the old abandoned Free Will Church," Donaghy nodded towards the wreckage as he spoke and then suddenly turned away from the burned out monstrosity before them. "Howard suspected it was here. Warned him to keep away until he returned, but . . . Bobby was always so curious. He was a brave lad, James.

"What happened?"

Donaghy struggled to keep his voice low but the memory of the events as he recounted them caused him to speak in an ever faster and louder tone.

"Bobby didn't realize what he had stumbled on. He took it back to College Street to study it. But . . ."

Realizing he was quickly losing control, Donaghy lowered his voice again.

". . . Nyarlethotep and the Ancient Ones could sense the Crystal had resurfaced. With the planets in alignment, It had the power to partially cross through from the Void and manipulate poor Bobby's mind. Thank Gods he realized what was happening before the end! Still, he wasn't strong enough to hold it off. All It needed was darkness, and it seemed even the forces of nature were against all of us that night. The storm blew out the electricity to the street lights. A crowd gathered here at the church armed only with candles! They could tell what was happening from the glowing red beacon in the tower. They were desperate! All they had were candles! Any kind of light to hold It back!"

MacDuffie could see the scene in his mind just as he had sensed it from across the country in California: the running crowds, the panic, the blood red color from the tower, the three lobed burning eye searing out of the Void.

"But then the rains and winds doused every candle," Donaghy continued, his voice quivering, "and It burst in a rush through the louvers of the tower, roaring across the sky, homing in on the Shining Trapezohedron. If it weren't for that one stray flash of lightning that held It off, freeing Bobby's mind from Its control for that extra moment! . . ."

"The lightning didn't kill him . . ." MacDuffie said solemnly as he glared at the burned timbers protruding above the granite stones.

"No . . . " Donaghy replied. "He actually saw It . . . in Its physical manifestation in the lightning flash!"

"How do you know what . . . ?" MacDuffie didn't finish the sentence but Donaghy understood the question.

"He was keen to be a scientist." he answered as he shook his head with sad admiration for the dead student. "He never stopped taking notes . . . even up to the last second! His final words were a desperate attempt to describe what he saw!"

MacDuffie said nothing more. He'd never met Robert Blake but knew of him from Howard's long letters describing the two's struggles together to hold back the Ancient Ones. Howard had worked largely alone for over ten years since the Leipzig Massacres that had virtually wiped out an entire generation of Slayers and Watchers. In Blake, he had finally found someone who could take up the challenge, someone he could work with him to give the Council more time to regroup, training new watchers and slayers. And now they both had perished.

"Where is the . . .'Crystal?'" MacDuffie finally asked as he took a deep breath.

"At College Street. I'll take you there," the policeman answered.

Both men turned away from the ruins and together walked purposefully across the empty square. The sound of their footsteps on the pavement stones snapped in the crisp morning air. In another moment, Inmann Square was empty once more save for the blackened bony skeleton of the old Free Will Church. Nothing shifted in the ruins and nothing moved across the square save the whirl of ash lifted by the wind.

In less than a half hour, MacDuffie and Donaghy had made their way across the city from the heights of Federal Hill to the long row of stately colonial era buildings that comprised College Street. Climbing up the stairs of a particular gambrel roof building that had been converted into apartments, the two men stood in the doorway of a small one room studio. The light from the hallway framed them as darkened silhouettes and cast their long shadows across the interior of the living quarters. On the wall facing them opened a single floor to ceiling window that allowed the morning sun to spill across the chaos in the apartment.

The place was a shambles. The panes had been blown in leaving the apartment chilled. MacDuffie stared from the doorway at the view through the window. In the distance, looming up across the city, like a giant arched crooked hand, sat the brooding form of Federal Hill. Shabby tenements surrounded it and swept up its sides until they reached the crest where, even from this distance, the burned out wreckage of the old Free Will Church was clearly visible.

MacDuffie imagined a whirlwind had swept through the room. Everywhere, furniture was overturned, glasses by the small sink were all scattered and broken. Blake's few meager possessions were tossed wildly about and now lay in piles along the edge of the walls.

Opposite the window and shoved against the wall was a small single bed, the mattress half pulled off onto the floor, the sheets ripped and torn and peculiarly scorched. There was no headboard. At the top of the bed and outlined against the wall was a smear of a shadowy grey residue forming an image in the shape of a man seated, gazing, almost writhing backwards away from the shattered window across the room.

As MacDuffie entered, he stopped by the bed and contemplated with growing horror the outline on the wall where Blake had faced his last terrifying seconds. At the same time, he could sense flashes and hints of Blake's final moments. He quickly closed his eyes and rubbed them firmly with his clenched fists as if he could exorcise the nightmare images from his brain. Quickly the horror faded away.

". . . dear Gods . . ." MacDuffie murmured as he stared at the twisted shape on the wall.

Donaghy, who had crossed the threshold of the room behind MacDuffie, held back by the door. MacDuffie, his eyebrows raised in a question, looked over his shoulder back at the policeman.

"I was the first here, James," Donaghy stammered. "I found him . . . and his notes. You can understand why I prefer not to . . ." Donaghy left the sentence unfinished.

MacDuffie, standing by the bed and struggling to regain an objective frame of mind, turned his head in all directions studying the details of the destroyed apartment.

"It's just as it was that morning. Nothing's been moved," Donaghy volunteered but he still wouldn't enter the room further. "The landlord won't have anything to do with it. He demanded the city clean up the damage. I ended up having to call a funeral home in Cranston to come and get Bobby's remains."

MacDuffie walked into the center of the apartment as he surveyed everything around him.

". . . where is it, Patrick? . . ."

"In the back corner there, under what's left of the writing table." Donaghy pointed to a mound of clothing and debris pushed up against the wall.

MacDuffie stepped over to a large pile of broken and charred wood fragments, the remnants of a modest desk. Kicking them aside with his foot, he suddenly stopped as the faintest hint of light shined up from the floor. He stooped down and carefully lifted up a crystalline shape, roughly the size of a flower pot but formed like a wildly distorted octahedron with multiple star points thrust out at irregular angles. The object emitted a pulsating light of a peculiar wavelength, not quite blue and not quite red but rather of an unidentifiable spectrum.

MacDuffie breathed quickly as he tore off a piece off the singed bedspread and wrapped it around the object. Donaghy took a step backwards towards the door as MacDuffie bundled up the Trapezohedron. He called out reassuringly to the policeman as he wrapped more scraps of cloth around the crystalline object.

"It's all right, Patrick. It didn't get across. Blake must have managed to seal It up in the aether between our world and the Void where It was originally cast out. . . . It's trapped there now . . . in the realm of the unconscious."

"Gods!" Donaghy exclaimed and he shivered.

"It can't get out for now," MacDuffie replied as calmly as he could, "but It is close, very close . . . in dreams and nightmares . . . among the comatose and the dying, that's where It lurks . . . waiting." He could sense Donaghy's panic finally bubbling to the surface.

"James! With Howard and Bobby gone there's nothing standing between us and . . !"

"Calm down, Patrick . . ."

Donaghy was not so easily soothed. He stared back and forth like a cornered animal, and his words now came in a torrent.

"James, all our defenses are down! The minions of the Ancient Ones are on the move everywhere!"

Donaghy now began whispering as if the dreaded dark forces themselves lurked just outside the apartment doorway.

"There was even another assassination attempt in England last week against the Council itself! No one's talking but I'm pretty sure at least three Watchers were killed. It's like the beginning of the Leipzig Massacres all over again!"

"I know," MacDuffie gritted his teeth with hatred as he spoke. "The attack had that scum Goebbels' fingerprints all over it!"

"They even have troops and tanks massing on the Austrian borders right now! They're about to break out James and if they've found a way to open the Void . . .!"

MacDuffie set the wrapped Crystal on the bed and turned to the frightened officer. He reached out and took the policeman by the shoulder.

"Easy, Patrick," he said firmly. "They haven't! They're overconfident, possibly fatally so. We must keep our wits about us, especially now. Besides, it's not all as bleak as that."

MacDuffie gazed out the window across the city to Federal Hill. Donaghy followed and both men stared over the rooftops at the growing sunshine spilling down from the sky.

"Howard and Blake did what they knew they had to do," MacDuffie said with respect. "Howard especially. He stood alone over the last ten years, and bought us all valuable time. There's a whole new generation just finishing training right now thanks to him. Slayers, Watchers. We're ready to fight back Patrick! It's going to be a dark few years, no one says it'll be easy, and the end won't come in our lifetimes. But at the Dawn of the new millennium our childrens' children will sleep the better for it."

"You've seen it then, lad?" Donaghy asked and his voice trembled, this time with hope.

MacDuffie nodded slowly.

"Yes," he answered. "The One who's yet to come. She'll be special, different from all the others. She's the one who'll close the portal for good and seal the Ancient Ones up forever. Powerful, passionate, She and a group of young people like her will accomplish what we can only dream."

MacDuffie pointed to his forehead as he spoke.

"Patrick, you and I, we fight with our minds, but they will fight with their hearts. In their eyes, we struggle as in the past since they will be of the future. Howard, in his last letter, called them . . . the 'Guardians of the Gates of Dawn.' He swore that no matter what happened, he would stand and wait for them."

"I wish I could see . . . like that," Donaghy told the young man.

Sometimes it's a gift, sometimes a curse," MacDuffie mused. He then faced the older policeman and spoke with conviction.

"The key is to act upon what you see!" he said. Finally reassured, Donaghy nodded in agreement. MacDuffie turned back towards the bed and scooped the Shining Trapezohedron, now hidden beneath layers of torn rags, up in his arms.

"It's time for us here to do our job!" he announced. "We, too, must prepare the way. This must be secreted away now along with the Res Profana. It must not see the light of day until She's ready to fulfill her destiny, and that will be long after you and I are gone."

MacDuffie swept by Donaghy as he quickly left the room. Donaghy trailed behind as the two men descended the second floor staircase.

"James!" Donaghy cried out. "Where are you going?"

"Back to California," MacDuffie replied brusquely. "There is nothing more to accomplish here. But I do have to make one final stop."

The Swan Point Cemetery overlooking Narragansett Bay sprawled down the hillside with the icy waters of the bay seeming to float in the distance somewhere between the end of the land and the horizon. Here the winds were even stronger than they had been in Providence and, overhead, billowing clouds rushed in off the stormy Atlantic. Jameson MacDuffie stood alone by a marble obelisk marker in the center of a family burial plot. Both his curly hair and long coat blew in the ocean breeze. Under his arm he held the Shining Trapezohedron concealed in the tattered pieces of cloth.

At first he stared at the ground near the marker where the earth had been recently turned. It was a fresh grave with no individual stone to indicate who lay there. He then looked up and gazed out into the empty air in the direction of the bay. Several seagulls floated by overhead, effortlessly riding the steady breeze on their way out to the open ocean.

"I don't know how to tell you . . . how much we owe you," MacDuffie said quietly as if to someone who was no longer there.

"I'll miss you Howard, especially your kind letters. We are all the poorer. But I envy you one thing, you know. "

He waited for a moment in silence as if the wind off the bay would bring him an answer.

"I have none of the powers you command. I doubt I'll be around . . . to meet Her . . . when She comes. I try but I can't even imagine what She'll be like except maybe . . . the smile. And the strength of her spirit that will be willing to sacrifice all that She is. . . to save the world."

MacDuffie shook his head and sighed deeply once more.

"It's not fair," he said slowly, "that we should all depend so greatly on one soul. Howard, comfort her if She's afraid; wipe away her tears when She realizes what She must lose. And when She finally falls, as She is fated to do, stand guard over her soul so that it may find the peace and happiness that so eluded her in life."

MacDuffie stared out into the distance and concentrated, trying to see beyond the cramped and ancient stones of the Swan Point Cemetery, beyond the bay, beyond the horizon, beyond the walls of time itself. In his mind, he saw night falling and the old stones all around him metamorphosing into the ordered rows and neat landscaping of a new cemetery somewhere distant in the future. For a moment, he felt himself there, actually standing on the site.

"I hope you've heard my prayer . . ." he whispered to the midnight darkness in a time not yet come and to the stones of those still waiting to die.

"Howard, my good friend . . . farewell."

And then he was gone.

For a few moments nothing stirred.

Then, Buffy Summers, stake drawn, eyes glaring tensely ahead, strode purposefully from between the tombstones in the Sunnydale Cemetery as she moved on patrol. Clearly nervous, she sensed something just beyond the limits of her vision. She stepped out into a clearing between two crypts and came to a sudden halt.

Emanating from beyond the surrounding monuments, a red glow rose from one focused point out in the darkness. It built in intensity as it floated forward into the clearing towards Buffy. She raised her arms in a defensive stance.

"All right, that's it!" she yelled defiantly at the phenomenon. "You've been stalking me for three nights now! Get out here so I can kick your butt!"

Suddenly Riley Finn slipped sheepishly out from a border of bushes on the edge of the clearing where he had been hiding. Clothed in his camouflage outfit, he carried an electronic rifle mounted with an infrared scope. In surprise, Buffy glanced over her shoulder. The fury welled up in her again, the fury at his constant meddling in her work, the fact that he continually followed her while on patrol as if she couldn't take care of herself.

"Shit! Not you, you jerk face!"

Ignoring the insult, Riley raised his rifle and took aim at the threatening red light, now coalescing into an oval shape. Within the sphere, the light formed into three separate orbs each with a central focal point. Around its outer perimeter, the red light started to whirl about the focus in a sweep of growing flames. At the same time, the voices of Xander, Anya and Willow shouted from out in the darkness. The beam of a flashlight, penetrating through the bushes, waved wildly in the air.

"Will! I know it's this way!" Xander announced, trying his best to be assertive.

"Xander! Buffy's over here."

"No Will! This is the path! I'm sure of it!"

Suddenly Buffy and Riley heard the dull thud of flesh hitting stone . The flashlight beam suddenly dropped to the ground.

"OW!" Xander squalled from out of the bushes.

"Is this fun?" Anya's sarcastic voice cut through the darkness like a loosed arrow. "You said when Willow called we were going to go have fun. I don't see any fun here, just a lot of dead people."

Finally Willow stepped into the clearing followed by Anya who held up a limping Xander. Xander nursed his bruised knee with one hand and waved the flashlight around with the other.

"What the hell are you guys doing? Get outta here!" Buffy screamed.

The coalescing red form floated in ever closer. A stench from the crimson shape swept around them all, and Willow began to gag. Buffy stepped back as Riley advanced to her side. Anya's eyes fell on the entity which she recognized immediately.

"This . . . is not fun!" she announced firmly.

Quickly, she grabbed Xander's flashlight and directed the beam into the center of the three forming red orbs. A rush of air swept by them. Buffy imagined that the entity was emitting some kind of silent scream. Then, like the vanishing ripples where a stone has fallen into a still pond, in an instant, the blazing phenomenon dissolved away as the artificial light made contact. Buffy, Riley, Xander, Anya and Willow were left standing in the darkness with only the beam of Xander's flashlight to illuminate the surrounding graveyard.

Buffy dropped her defensive stance and glared in anger at each one of the Scooby Gang.

"Oh, oh, here it comes," Anya said under her breath.

Buffy's last look of fury was reserved for Riley. She tried to speak but at first she couldn't form the words to express how furious she was with them all for following her.

So instead she just seethed while the rest of the Scooby Gang stood waiting for the explosion.

"This is not good! This is sooo not good!" Buffy finally spat out as she turned in disgust and stormed out of the clearing.

No one moved.

"Well, . . . that wasn't so bad," Anya finally announced with a perky grin.