The Towers

1 - A warning

I have visited many cities on the old continent. Major ones including Paris, London, Rome, Berlin, Warsaw or Oslo, but also smaller towns and various villages ranging from the grand Venice to hamlets hidden away in the deep, forest-coated valleys of the alemanic alpine region. In truth, I may claim to know continental Europe as well as the British isles quite well, geograpically, culturally and historically. My profession as an archivist for the Viennese Society of Sciences, where i mosty focus on historical Architecture, fuels a lot of the latter. Having travelled and studied these centers of urban and rural culture - and of course by account of mine spending the major part of my fourty year lifespan in Vienna - I am no stranger to the regular sight of curches practically everywhere. From the smallest, decadent alpine hamlet to the culturally bustling centers of cities - on the ancient continent, one cannot venture far, without glimpsing the shining cross that adorns the nearest church tower - safe for maybe the vast poppy seed fields of Waldviertel; and even there one probably stumbles across a hut, turned chapel hundreds of years ago. Most of these smaller places of worship are slowly falling apart nowadays, owed to the preoccupation of the local denizens with worldly, egotistical matters, brought about by modern captialism that consumes not merely land and people, but also commodifies that which used to be tradition - the bonding stiches keeping the fabric of society whole.

Consequently enough though, these same spaces are turned from cathedrals to an almighty power greater than humans themselfes, into cathedrals of commodity; their mighty symbolism deteriorating to the marks on maps, tourists ought to visit before leaving the city again. While there are still some, that keep being used for their original purpose, their sanctity now becomes violated by blind idiot masses of travellers that only glimpse their grand frescos through the lenses of electronical cameras - a fact and fate undoubtedly not lost on those higher entities, should they exist.

By account of my piecing together various ancient sorces of architectural studies, probably more tied to archeology than my primary field of scientific work and a grave personal experience, that still renders me frightful any time I glimpse one of these bell towers in the distance, I have come to believe, that some of these aforementioned entities do in fact exist - and yet, they are neither what we had hoped for, nor what we would like them to be. Oh, they do crave worship and seek out our most devout - but to what ends, I dare not put on paper. Yet, I shall say, that these sanctums MUST under all circumstances be returned to their original purpose, for we are not even ants under the feet of these so called gods, and they won't for a second consider keeping us around, should they be upset or but annoyed by our very presence.

I know this plea will not, on its own, convince anyone with the power to accomplish this, so in the following I shall record what brought me to this grim conclusion, before I shall obliterate this mind which has been violated by terrors beyond human comprehension with the revolver next to my notebook.

2 - The Tower

Many of us will undoubtedly remember vividly those accursed years a global plague put humandkind in their place, choking off our precious markets, stripping us of social contact, ripping apart families and friends by means of politics and virulent death alike. Otherwise bustling cities became dreadful, empty shells of their former selfs and perpetuated an aura of sadness and depression upon its' citizens, not unlike the barely noticable veil of death noticeable amongst ancient cemetaries. Lockdowns rendered people mad and suicide rates skyrocketed when the dreary, autumn days, which silenced even the most remote noises of police sirens and the like for days, approached. The endtime was upon us - or so many felt. It was on one of these days that I first glimpsed what would later become a recurring nightmare.

My apartment was situated on the south of a 500 by 200 meter wide park, bounded by multiple apartment buildings in the twentyfirst district of Vienna. The park - Kinzerplatz - was lined by a complex system of one way roads not too busy, even under normal circumstances, and was close to one of the more picturesque sidearms of the mighty Danube river, where I would regularly wander about, should the walls of my flat become too oppressive. Most notably, and gorgeosly present from my balcony, was the large church of St. Leopold.

Construction of this roman-catholic church was started in June 1905 and ended in June of 1914, still under the reign of Kaiser Franz Joseph I., a mere twenty days before the murder of his son would trigger World War I. Architecturally, it must have felt out of place back in those days, 115 years later, its mix of early and late gothic styles with features of the renaissance and implements of modernity truely makes for a remarkable building, embedded in an otherwise rather decadent neighbourhood. A mighty tower of 96 meters outstands most buildings within a 5 kilometer (3 mile) radius and presents an excellent landmark for mapless navigation or orientation, should one happen to view Vienna from one of the larger hills surrounding the city. While I have never been particularly interested in churches (let alone ones younger than three centuries) this one never failed to impress me on my daily commute, now rendered superfluous by this plague. Nevertheless, my daily walks still included going past this church one way or another.

(https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Donaufelder_Kirche)

The 7th of September was a particularly lothsome day. Heavy downpour in the morning, accompanied by a bone chilling wind, rocking the trees in front of the church intensly, was followed by a thick and heavy fog, casting the world into a misty void. Even the trees lining the park but 10 meters away were barely visible. Yet, the weather has been the same for days and I could no longer stand the confines of mine own four walls, so I decided to use the probably brief break in percipitation for a walk along the waterline.

Wrapping myself in particularly waterproof and windbreaking jacket and trousers, I ventured outside, navigating the foggy streets. This at least was never a problem - I knew the area well and could have found my way to the waterline and back blindfolded if needed be. The churches bells struck 3 PM just after I left the house, their chime dampened and barely recognizeable through the mist - chilling even, since fog in cities exhibits the peculiar trait of spreading sounds in such a way, that it is impossible to tell whence they originated. I did not lend that any attention though - it was, after all, nothing I had not observed hundreds of times thorughout the last weeks.

Surefootedly, and without haste, I made may way through the empty streets vanishing into white void into all directions. I could hear the quiet taps of one, maybe two other adventurers fleeing their confines probably 80 meters away in some direction. Paying closer attention, I realized they were moving away. Leaving the apartement was not strictly forbidden and still, I wanted to avoid any encounter with other people, disinfection teams or indeed the local authorities. The past weeks and the news informing me about the death rates, the movement restrictions, the protests, and arrests had made me uneasy anyway. So I avoided social contact that could be avoided and was, to my big surprise not too unhappy about it - social detox, though forced, was not as detrimental to my perceived mental health as I had anticipated, had I been asked half a year ago.

Alone with my thoughts I had arrived at my usual spot overlooking an otherwise marvellous lake of pristinely clear waters. Now there was only the thick mist, casting the waterline in gray and the lake into a seamless continuation of the white void. Even the few waves produced by the stately birds that could always be found here diving for food were barely visible. One could have known the view was as bad as today - fog tends to get even thicker around bodies of water - and yet, I was still left with disappointment. I felt that I could have seen farther within my own apartment. Nevertheless, I started turning left, strolling idly along the waterline, wondering whether the birds minded the thick air - would they keep to the ground? Would they actually dare to fly at their usual speeds? Not arriving - and not wanting to arrive - at any conclusions, creeping onto me was the vague feeling of being stared at.

Times of crisis such as these left me with a solid reportoire of coping strategies for keeping sane and unburdend by panic attacks, so I slowed my pace for better audible perception ... Nothing. Not a sound could be heard - not even the tiniest wave, draft, siren. One could have heard a pin drop onto a cushion in the dead silence that greeted me. I stopped and turned around, and, for a second, did not even breath. It felt like the world had just stopped, as if my heartbeat was the only rythm that kept time flowing and the universe from collapsing in on itself. I looked around again, tried to make out any shapes through the mist, tried to determine where I had wandered in my absent mindedness. The waterline was still discenrable, but no trees, no buildings. Only a paved sidewalk and some unhealty patch of grass next to it. Never had there been any paved sidewalk on any of my routes next to the Danube - at least not within one or two kilometers of my apartment, places I certainly could not have reached in the few minutes I had been about. In fact, I was not even sure, which direction I had come from.

I took a couple of deep breaths, told myself, that I was just overreacting - I just had never focused on the quality of the ground I trod before - and that I should just venture on. I would reach a familiar row of houses or streetsign soon enough and would have a laugh once I got home. And so I trod on. Minutes went by in which the fog seemed to move slightly - the ever so slightest breeze had picked up, drawing nearly psychedelical mandalas into the whiteout in front of me. After another minute, I could finally discern a darker patch of fog up ahead. Definately tall enough to be a bell tower, I felt a relieve, since only the very familiar tower of Donaufeld church could have been visible in any viable distance. The feeling of the stare had never left me, but the anticipation of a hot drink and my somewhat boring book was undoubtedly welcome and powerful enough to suppress this marker of primal panic.

Finally nearing the tower, features of it revealed themselves through the fog. This is not a figure of speech: The fog quite literally seemed to open up, directing my eyes at certain features of the structure while no other building seemed in sight. And the details revealed were not of the church I knew: A perfectly pitch black black, marble like stone formed the outines not of one, but two towers, undeniably gothic in style. Gothic and yet, ever so slightly off. The common gothic arches did not have the correct geometry - indeed I wondered how the stone might conceivably support itself. The angles were all wrong and twisted in ways impossible to describe. Clearly the mist, playing a trick on my perception. However, there were also other unholesome features. Blasphemous spires, statuettes and terrible heads of demons and entities never to have adorned any cathedral of note, I could feel my stomach turn. My vision by the eery lighting and the fog seemed to zoom in on those blasphemous details. My stride came to a halt and muscular tremours shot through my legs and down my neck. Not moving closer, yet still the cathedral seemed to come closer. Two stupendously giant towers loomed unnervingly close - as if over me, their dark tainted, yet still stained windows staring not only at me, but directly into my very soal, where my heart threatened to freeze and stop. The imagery on those grandiously cacophonic glass panes showed scenes of cosmic wars; of entities devouring whole planets in the dark and cold loneliness of an unfamilar universe. The scenes even seemed to move. I was terrorstruck, but could not for the sake of my own sanity avert my gaze from the terrors unfolding on these windows. Meanwhile, the demon-like heads and the very embellishements of the architectural style itself seemed to come alive. Crawling, or rather slowly morphing towards me as if the cathedral itself was a living entity; a primal predator that sits and waits for its' prey - not evil in it's intent, even though the terror that it ensued in me made it seem otherwise, but rather absolutely egalitarian to such simple and small an entity as myself.

Before some of the horns turned tentacles that were shooting for me at an astounding speed through the now blackish haze that the fog had become during my freeze, my legs got the better of me and I ran away, into the opposite direction. Plunging through the mist down unknown streets and blocks, all whilst it seemed I could not put any distance between the black, looming shape of the cathedrally monstrous entity behind me. Finally, I could make out the grassy strip next to the Danube, and without a thought, i plunged in and frantically swam to the other side. I did not even recognize the sudden cold of the water that took my refuge, before everything turned dark.

3 - The Visit

I don't know how long it was before I awakened. It could not have been a whole day, for I suddenly shot up, as if from a bad dream, with a feeling of drowning. With heavy coughs I expelled water from my lungs onto the carpet next to my bed. I was missing one shoe and my clothes, as well as my bed were soaking wet. Yet, I seemed to be alone, and I could see, that the door was locked and the key was in the inside lock. Cautiously, I dragged myself through the few rooms of my apartment that seemed undisturbed since my absence, carefully checking for anything weird or anyone who might have brought me here - Nothing.

In the bathroom I pinpointed the huge cut above my right eyebrow to be the source of my pounding headache. Flashes of the experience haunted me, but the mysterious blow to the head seemed to tone down the more maddening aspects I had experienced, at least a little. Semi professionally, I cleaned and taped the wound. Reaching for the pain killers in the cupboard to smoothe the headache, but resolved to go for a strong drink instead - at least that would also quiet my thoughts, which were busy trying to piece together the last hours and the ringing in my ear. Filling a tumbler with a triple shot of a whiskey, too bland, to be of use for anything else, and, after an auditory memory of the sinister cathedral bells sent my ears ringing louder again, I gulped it down, just to refill the glass. The sound of these bells still lingered, but drew more quiet. It wasn't the sound one expects a bell to make. No bell made from any known material would produce a changing piping sound like this, and for some reason, I was sure, it couldn't have been anything but the bell that struck my ears in this moment of terror.
The second glass finally soothed my thoughts.

I did my best to clean up the wet tracks I was drawing through the apartments, got a long warm shower to drive the chill from my bones and tried to get comfortable. Before going to bed, I could not help, but glance outside my bedroom window. Afraid of what I might find there, the familiar sight of the Donaufeld church plunged in the familiar, thick, weirdly moving fog helped calm me, before a hopfully, alcohol-induced, dreamless sleep.

Darkness wrapped me quickly in its' embrace, yet it was not a good or restful sleep. Inmidst of the night, I awoke in terror, but thankfully could not remember the horrors from which my waking mind fled. I arose and walked to the balcony door, opened it and stepped outside into the fog, eerily lit in swirling patches where streetlamps would be. The movements were hypnotizing, but that might as well have been the latent effects of the liquor, since I knew not, what time it was. As I gazed at the fog and tried to make out the shape of the moon above, some of the nearby trees and the church, I froze again in horror. The familiar church that had been there but hours before, was gone, replaced by the evil, cosmic-gothic, two-towered black stone abomination I had encountered before my frenzied flight. It was absolutely quiet. An instant later, a bell the size of a planet must have been struck in that eldritch tower. I could feel every cell in my body ring, threatening to burst open like the radiation burns of heavily exposed individuals before their final struggle against death. Blood ran down from one of my nostrils to my mouth - the metallic taste made the experience even worse.

Trembling, I held onto the railing of my balcony. The longer I stared at this cosmic entity that mimiced a sinister church, the more of its horrible details were imprinted on my mind. Starry designs with dotted mounds in absurd placement on them, colours in windows that seemed to suck the light and colour from the real world around it, chantings only the Mad Arab Abdullah al-Ḥaẓrad could dream up in his most deranged states of mind, echoed from walls outside the three dimensions we call reality. Even today, all these insults to reality itself are never suppressed in dark corners of my mind - they are very much projected into every corner of my perception. Then and there, I was prepared to let go of this world, to exist no longer, but I could not move an inch closer to that dreaded cathedral, which a relieving jump over the ballustrade onto the pavement 8 meters below would have required.

Once I could rip my gaze off the thing, that started to morph again before my eyes, I turned around and wanted to flee into the library to end it all with the revolver hidden in one of the older tomes on the archeology shelf. Reaching for the handle of the door, opening it and stumbling in, I found to my absolute horror, that the balcony I had been standing on was itself part of the horrible church, and that by accident I had rushed into it's bowels. A blanc panic struck me and I began to run aimlessly down an infinitely seeming dark, gothic corridor. The walls somewhere inbetween what we would call organic and anorganic - shifting and pulsing with menacing intent. I ran past galleries, that, at a glance hinted at beings so powerful, they were one with the fabric of reality itself. Gods and things that gave birth to them. Flutists shaping all the universes at once with their heinous tunes. I stumbled down a long winding stone staircase on my left, when i perceived the vague movement of something I can only pray to have been a hellhound, as that would be an easier pill to swallow than the reality of an entity whos' cry alone contained all of Dantes Inferno down to its' grittiest details.

After more stairs, frantic turns and more glimpses of frescos hinting at the dreadful creationist origins of life on earth, the sudden movement of the black, eldritch-geometrically crested carpet brought me to a sudden halt. I fell hard and tried to dazedly orient myself. I seemed to be in nave of the cathedral not too far from an altar shaped like a flipped pyramid, made out of the same black stone as everything else. Seats or benches for entities unimaginable lined the carpet to the left and right. Two red moons beamed the blasphemous, animated stories of the gigantic stained glass windows horizontally onto the stone on the opposite side of the room and gigantic flames of an unnameble colour blazed on either side of the three-pointed altar, from which a high priest - an entity so foreign it cannot be described by any reference to earthen beings - screamed it's maddening mess in words that stung like knifes in my ears. The entity took hold of one such hellhound with tentacles for fur, cried a word, ripped it apart with its three arm like appendages and fed it to the three flames. T'keli-li!

I cried out in terror. The sight and realization that the benches around me were not in fact empty, but filled with beings, each one more dreadful than anything I had ever imagined made me pass out. My last prayer was to never wake again.

4 - Do not go gentle into that good night.

I awoke in a hospital bed, one arm, one leg and my neck bandaged and fixed in place by heavy plaster. Every cell in my body ached and I nearly screamed when I tried to remember what had happened, but caught hold of me, realizing quickly the danger of being submitted to an asylum. The sole occupant of the room, I determined the hospital to be the nearest to my apartment. By the state of the plaster and my bodily hygiene, it seemed to be at least two to three days after that night of horror. The fog outside had given way to the dreary gray sky, that made winter in Vienna such a drag. This suspicion was later confirmed by one of the nurses. Lying about my memory, I learned, that I had been hauled to the hospital after my neighbour had heard a loud scream and saw that me and the ballustrade had plummeted off the balcony - my fall somewhat slowed by one of the trees in front of the house. Police had deduced that I had had a drink too much and simply had not properly looked after the ballustrade in recent years, which gave way, due to my leaning against it. I was happy enough to let them rest in this believe.

During the next two days I was kept under surveillance due to my uncommon EEG patterns and mental states during the three day coma, I pulled all available strings to rent an apartment at the far end of town, and have all my stuff moved there. "I need the old one for my niece who will enter university in five days time, starting her law degree", was enough to shrug off most of the questions regarding the speed of my relocation.

Three days later and with just my left arm still in plaster, I could leave the hospital and move into my new apartment. I had carefully inspected the surroundings of the candidates and picked the one farthest from any religous temples or churches possible. Not the easiest of tasks in Vienna, but even though I had a marvellous view, no towers or churches were visible, even in the best of weather. But I am rambling, I should get to the point of mine putting all this down.

Since that fateful night, that changed my life and understanding of the universe forever, I cannot walk the streets of Vienna without fear. I turn a corner and suddenly, there they are, those menacing black marble towers, where none should be. I never again saw the cathedral as close as I had seen it before. On asking which church this is, poeple seem to shrug or name a random curch, without wondering whether the towers belong there. Whether out of morbid couriosity, a mad instinct, calling or some delirium I find myself time and time again, trying to get closer to these towers with a sense of disgust and horrible anticipation - but I never seem to get any closer, or lose my bearings before reaching them, just to find them gone later. A constant fear and fascination gripped me in the weeks after the incident.

Months later, no amount of research and cautionary inquiry helped in learning anything about similar experiences or the existance of similar entities. Not even a weird, small newspaper detailing somtehing akin to the horror I had seen in the time past. Fearing, or rather greatful, I might have imagined all this, I mustered all my psychological strength and entered one of the older churches in the vicinity. I could not have gone near the Donaufeld church even if I tried without going mad. At least, if i had imagined all of it, the blasphemous insults to reality that still haunted me whenever I thought of the incident, before I drowned the memories in alchohol, if they were not real, the mental condition causing them could be curable.

The vicar of the was an old chap, kindly offering me a tour and to visit the library in the cellar of the church. It was one of Penzings' oldest churches, though more modern in style, since it was rebuilt after a devestating fire that nearly burnt down the whole building in the 80s. Allegedly an arsonist dressed in a templar like outfit was spotted by several eye-witnesses, yet never caught, such was the local lore the vicar relayed to me while unlocking the basement door and showing me the archives and remaining frescos that had survived the fire. There, he left me to my own devices since he knew me to be a reputable archivist.

Studying the rather uninteresting and common tomes of the small archive at the reading table, I could not help but notice the fresco on the opposite wall. Stepping up, I could discern the content to be John the Baptist, standing in a stream, holding up a bronze bowl of water to the heavens. And the closer I looked, I could not believe my eyes: One of the angels floating in the sky was not the simple winged child-like depiction so commonly found in christian lore. It was a being, not unlike the blasphemous entities staring at me lying on that carpet in the cathedral of eldritch horrors. Tiny, and yet distinctly visible. My heart started to race, I touched the fresco to ensure it was not only a play of light. The stone was flat and could not have produced such an illusion, yet, the instant I touched it, a familiar, horrible cold creeped into my bones. Stumbling back, rubbing my eyes, they fell on a single, small tome lying beneath the fresco, where I could have sworn, no book was present before I approached.

In terror I picked it up. It was the "Sacrosanctum Diaboli Aeternum" by the somali-italo alchemist Frederico Xaange. A mad occultist that is sad to have discovered the philosophers stone, and could not be brought to death by any means, and whos' books could not be burnt by the hottest of fires - folklore ... and yet here it was. Horrified i flipped the pages, read fragments and caught glimpses of drawings so deranged, I nearly fainted. I hid the book in my pocket and quickly made my way home to put it under lock and key. Since, however, I can see it's prophecies and threats hidden in every church fresco, hinted at in every stained glass window and looming over every altar in any church I visit.

I leave the book, my notes and theories to a trusted archeology aquaintance of mine in my will. I made sure, she knows what she is getting into, and has started verifying my claims under the greatest precautions, but for now, it is imperative that society heeds my call: Do not go gentle into that good night. These sanctums MUST under all circumstances be returned to their original purpose. Worship those that crave for it, for we are not even ants under the feet of these so called gods, and they won't for a second consider keeping us around, should they be upset or but annoyed by our very presence.

Suicide note found in the apartment of Marie Garcia, Archivist at the Viennese Society of Sciences.

Cosmic Horror