Sweat beaded on Wes’ brow. Slow trickles of the stuff snaked its way down his forehead and into his stinging eyes. No matter how much he blinked, he couldn’t seem to clear his vision. While he was thankful that the room was dimly lit so as to avoid further discomfort, it did make him feel very much like he was at the bottom of a well. The claustrophobic effect was enhanced by the stale smell of old wood and dry paper. The gentle creak of the wooden floor boards seemed to echo unnaturally loud to his ears.
He risked a furtive glance ahead to the heavy, thick table at the head of the room and at the five darkly robed figures seated behind it. Their chiseled, humorless faces didn’t seem so much as look at him as through him. It was almost, he reflected with a brief chill, as though they could see his very soul; see it, judge it and find it wanting. One of them opened the black maw that served as his or her (it was almost impossible to tell) mouth.
“Think carefully before you answer Mr. Farnham. More than you can ever guess depends on how you answer. It is not a thing to be rushed, not a thing to be dealt with lightly at all. Consider this Damocles’ sword hanging over your head. Should it fall, what it will sever will not be the thread of your life, but your life’s work…” the voice spoke in perfect English but the tone was so flat, dispassionate and yet authoritative that Wes could not help but begin a blinking fit anew.
His breath caught in his throat, he seemed to be gasping for air and unable to fill his lungs. The edges of his vision swam and darkened. As he sat there he realized that the question had been asked already. He knew that. He remembered the question, but was unsure of how to answer. No that wasn’t precisely true was it? He knew how to answer, but was it the right answer?
He swallowed, or rather, he tried to swallow. The saliva in his throat was thick and congealed, like oil left to sit for too long. Making matters worse, there was a sharp dry spot that did not seem to want to abate despite his attempts to swallow it away.
It was then he noted his hands, hands that shook despite his efforts to calm himself. He could not decide if he was smothering in the suffocating heat of the still, close air or freezing from the chill grip that seemed to grip his heart and guts. The sensation was almost like being placed in a coffin that was being lowered into a crematorium whilst simultaneously having a hoar frosted skeletal hand wrap itself around his heart and guts and withdraw them with a faint sucking sensation from his body cavity.
Another furtive glance at the arrayed figures ahead of him did nothing to calm his nerves. Arrayed as they were with other long tables extending towards him from the one they sat behind, he noted with vague humor that it was like he was facing the horns of some mythical many-headed beast. But he had taken enough time musing and dreading. He needed to answer. It was now or never.
His voice did not come at first. Instead there was a sensation of cracking leather being split asunder and then a quiet dry whistle issued forth from his mouth. He gulped once more, trying to force some lubrication from his desiccated mouth into his throat.
“I believe it was a footnote in Lang’s 1899 The Homeric Hymns,” Wes croaked.
The assemblage of robed figures collapsed in upon themselves very much, Wes thought, like the witch in Wizard of Oz when water was dumped on her or possibly Obi Wan Kenobi when Vader struck him down. He could hear the whispering of their voices. It sounded a bit, he mused, like the hissing of a brood of vipers. There was the occasional raised or sharper tone followed by hushed mutterings and the sharp moving of their clawed, bony talons.
“Very well. We can accept this. Well done indeed…DOCTOR Farnham.” The stony faced, almost carven creature sitting in the middle of the darkly robed figures seemed to actually smile. It was then that Wes realized that his dissertation chair had conferred his degree.
“Doctor…Farnham…” he grinned openly, feeling the anxiety and stress wash off of him like the tide receding from the beach.
Subscribe to RSS Feed