Spawn of Man Read Online Free Page A

spilling over the whiskers of his bearded chin and onto his bare chest. Daniel wondered what other appendages he had gnawed on.
    ‘Bartholomew, you said the dead instructed you on the chair’s design. How exactly did they achieve that? Please tell me again.’
    Although Bartholomew was adamant any attempt to construct the chair would result in calamity, if he were engaged intelligently he would become animated on the subject.
    Consequently, Daniel had become adept at walking the thin line between encouraging the patient’s disclosures, without being condescending.
    Bartholomew replied, ‘I trained my mind to become detached from my body and to ascend to the next plane of existence, to the place after this place, the first stage of our journey after physical death.’
    ‘Are you saying you visited this other world with your mind, actually witnessed life after death?’
    ‘Yes, that is precisely what I am saying doctor. The human mind is able to project itself independent of its physical body; it is just a matter of the correct schooling in the procedure.’
    ‘And once there, on this other plane, you interacted with the dead? They perceived your presence?’
    ‘Of course. I assumed a body fitting the realm my mind existed on. That realm is made of a universal substance, a universal matter, and one may adapt it to best represent oneself.’
    Bartholomew again became restless; he now knelt and had again shuffled nearer to Daniel. He seemed eager now to impart more information and Daniel could see in more detail the extent of his self-mutilations. The man had removed his ear lobes and the skin was ragged and livid around the raw wounds. But how had the patient managed to slice off his flesh without an implement , thought Daniel?
    ‘And the entities you encountered gave you the plans and said they were a means to contact them, but you had already achieved this, why would you require the chair, for what other purpose?’
    Bartholomew gave Daniel a grim smile, no suggestion of childishness now, and he spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘You know full well the answer to your question, good doctor. You play me for a fool sir. The chair enables the sitter to dissolve the barriers between our world and theirs. Allows them to enter our physical dimension. That’s what they want, that’s what they crave. They are mad with lust for a return to their corporeal state, to be human again and to indulge and satiate their carnal longings. To walk the Earth and to live again. And in return they would invest me with riches and reward beyond my dreams!’
    And his voice rose to a shout, the other inmates howling in unison.
    Daniel grabbed the bars, his eyes shining with the same ferocity as the inmate now, and the sound of the generator in the other room spiraled to a din, accompanying the wailing from the cells.
    Daniel stared down at Bartholomew, the inmate having now dragged himself to the bars, and spoke frantically. ‘Then I shall open the portal and I shall rip asunder the barriers that keep my son trapped in that place and I will bring him back to this world!’
    Daniel did not have time to realize something was wrong. The chain was still affixed to the wall at the rear of Bartholomew’s cell, and so restrained he should not have been permitted to reach as far as the bars. Then, too late, Daniel understood why the inmate’s mouth was so bloodied. He saw the manacle’s iron collar still fastened around the inmate’s foot, halfway across the stone floor. Bartholomew had chewed through his own ankle and the task must have taken days, yet Bartholomew had accomplished it secretively and without screaming or fainting. He had then pulled himself to the bars and reached through to grab Daniel’s shaving mirror, before returning to the back of his cell. Daniel gasped, but the noise was cut short as he glimpsed a glint of light reflect off the jagged sliver of glass in the inmate’s hand.              
    Bartholomew