From Beyond

There are places that men are not meant to go no matter what the reason. When I worked on the Montauk Project we broke that fundamental rule on a daily basis without regard or regret. It was not until our punishment came with swift and terrifying retribution that we learned the error of our ways, but what a price to pay for our ignorance.

I am getting ahead of myself though. If this story is to be told I must retell the events in the order that they occurred so that every detail may be known. Here is my strange account as told seven years after its happening:

I will not tell you my name. In the years 1954 and 1955 I was a part of the Montauk Project based out of Philadelphia. Little was known outside the project of its existence and that remains true to this very day. Though over half a decade has passed since the experiment ended I can still say little regarding the actual purpose of what we were doing at Fort Washington. It is probably better if it remains this way for the truths that I am to reveal here are terrible all on their own without adding to their vileness.

It is necessary to reveal some little know information about the project if this manuscript is to be decipherable. I can say that the project was funded by the United States Army though the applications of the technology that we were developing were not necessarily for military use. To be blunt, the Montauk Project was the culmination of many years of study into the field of dimensional travel. It began just prior to the out break of World War II. This long period of scientific effort by the best minds the country had to offer resulted in a device that was not only able to prove the existence of other dimensions beyond our own but allowed people to travel to them instantaneously. It is a secret that the government has kept hidden for many years.

The device is impossible to describe technically. It used technology that was so radical to what we know today that it would seem to be pure fiction to even the most astute layman. I was not connected with the invention or construction of the machinery used in our explorations beyond space and time. It was hinted that the technology originated from a much more ancient source than previous to the Second World War. Pieces of it were said to have been recovered from carefully hidden crypts discovered beneath the Great Pyramid of Cheops. During my time with the project I heard still more wild stories of how some of the machinery may have originated from the lore-steeped lost land of Atlantis itself, though where surviving remnants of that misled island nation can be found I do not know.

The actual act of navigating between dimensions is even more difficult to explain than the components and workings of the devices used. Conventional words fail to convey the strange roads that are followed to move between this sphere and others. The limited senses with which we perceive our surroundings are woefully inadequate to comprehend the obscure processes involved in traveling among the different realities. Space and time, as we know them, are somehow bent to come in contact with realms beyond our own, allowing the inhabitants of our own dimension to enter freely into another and return again just as easily.

There are many wonders to be found beyond our universe and I have been privileged enough to see some few of them. There are places that are as Eden must have been at the beginning of time and worlds that seem like the paradise that men have always dreamed of. Numerous and unbelievable are the sights that I beheld in my two years with the project: Oceans as white as milk, mountains made entirely of shimmering glass, three moons waxing and waning in the night sky, trees as tall as skyscrapers, creatures straight from fairy tales and myth. Yet there are dark things lurking beyond our sphere as well, things that should never be encountered by any man lest he lose his sanity. The endless shrieks of the Mountains of Madness, dimensions of crawling chaos, cyclopean ruins brooding beside oily seas, lurking shadow things hungry for the warm flesh and beating hearts of unwary explorers. It was one of these unspeakable things that descended upon us with such blood-curdling fury that the Montauk Project was wiped out forever.

We had grown bold in our explorations of the spaces beyond our own. Many wonderful and mysterious things had been revealed to us in the early months of the experiment and these discoveries drove us onwards with feverish anticipation to seek even more extraordinary sights. Though the records were purposely vague for regarding morale, I knew that prior to my appointment to the project many men had ventured through the gateway between the spheres and perished in those unknown dimensions that were unsuitable for human life. Whether suffocating in poisonous atmospheres, or killed by savage beasts, they succumbed to unknown perils as explorers into the unknown have for time immemorial. But, despite these tragedies, we were eager to press on, and continue to explore the cascade of realities that awaited us.

I will never forget the utter terror I felt as things went so horribly wrong that fateful day in 1955. We stood on the transportation platform, I and my three comrades, whose names will forever remain untold, though never forgotten, awaiting the exhilarating moment when the gateway between the dimensions would open, admitting us to a strange new world. It was the unfamiliar whine from the machinery that first alerted me to the fact that something was wrong. Indescribable fear clutched my heart as my eyes fell upon the familiar shimmering in the air before us. The dimensional gate was opening but this time from the other side!

There was a great discharge of electricity and the lights failed at that moment. I thank God for that small mercy for I think that I would have gone mad had I seen the Thing that came oozing through. Its outline against the swirling white glow of the gateway was beyond any sane description. It seemed to be made of a jelly-like viscous fluid crusted with nameless sensing organs and howling orifices. Its screams of fury and triumph still echo in my shaken mind even all these years later.

This was not some strange beast mistakenly stumbling through an open doorway that suddenly materialized in its path. This Thing had been laying in wait for us. It had bent space and time to intercept our roving and now it burst upon us full of sentient wrath. I cannot imagine where it was from or why it had waited until now to confront us. All I know is that we had taken one step too many from the shelter of our placid reality and were now going to pay the cost of our ignorance.

Circuitry burned and popped as some great energy tore through the innards of the rows of intricate mechanisms that controlled our journeys through the ether. By some unknown power the creature was taking control of the machinery and bending it to its own will. My companions and I tried to throw ourselves from the transportation platform as we realized the monstrosity's malicious intent but it was far too late. The howling gate pulsed open and one by one we were hurled into it.

The first man tumbled out into what appeared to be a scene from Hell itself. A molten sea raged and churned for as far as the eye could see, miles-high columns of flame spewing up into a raging sky. Into this maelstrom he plunged, having not even a chance to scream before he was gone forever.

The second man sprawled out into a place of dark stones and shadows. He did not attempt to rise from where he lay, but remained prone, twitching and quivering horridly, the sound of his bones shattering audibly beneath the unthinkable gravity of a lifeless cinder orbiting a distant dying sun.

The third man stumbled out into a green fog that obscured all else of his surroundings. Not a sound came from him as he convulsively flung himself back to the gateway, haltingly stumbling towards us, arms outstretched beseechingly. Yet even as he took those short steps the flesh was sloughing steaming from his very bones like melting butter, leaving only a disintegrating skeleton to tumble wetly onto the acid scarred ground.

All of this happened in mere seconds as I watched with horrified eyes. That terrible entity, that horrid Thing from beyond, exulted in its malice as I too fell through space and time towards the looming gateway which gaped wide to engulf me. With terror focused clarity I looked beyond the swirling vortex and saw my own unspeakable fate. There, unknown realities away, yet about to consume me, waited the Thing's own dimension. Dark and cold it was amidst ravenous stars, full of screeching masses like itself, waiting hungrily to tear me limb from limb and devour my very soul.

I spoke earlier of God's mercy in the failure of the lights hiding the creature's hideous form from me. That small act was nothing beside the veritable miracle that saved my unworthy life on that day. The delicate equipment producing the dimensional gateway succumbed at last to the effects of the potent energies pouring through them, and with a thunderous roar they exploded, hurling me into blessed unconsciousness.

I was found hours later, battered and broken, in what remained of the building that had housed the heart of the Montauk Project. The machinery used in our explorations was destroyed completely in the blast as were any signs of what may have occurred in the last terrifying moments. It was considered a miracle by all that I had survived amid the destruction that had obviously slain my comrades, for you see, no man but I lived to tell the tale of these events, and to preserve my sanity I dared not say a word - until now.

That Thing survived, I think. It escaped back to its own dimension even as the flames consumed the laboratory behind it. It remains out there somewhere, watching and listening deep in the fathomless ether, waiting until the day that mankind once more leaves his placid island of so called reality and ventures out into the black seas of infinity.