The Wind Beyond the Walls of the Mind: The Beginning and a Farewell
by Gaius Petronius
The Wind Beyond the Walls of the
Mind - Novelized Version

Chapter 1
The Beginning and a Farewell

by Gaius Petronius

Synopsis:
At the dawn of the new millennium, an ominous planetary
conjunction threatens to tear the fabric of space/time, opening a
passage between the Void where the evil Ancient Ones are
imprisoned and the present reality. Led by Nyarlethotep, "the
three lobed burning eye," the Ancient Ones threaten to break
loose, reclaim their old dominions and destroy the world. The only thing standing between them is a sole legendary Guardian. . . and
a prophecy about a Slayer who is doomed to lose her soul
to save the world.

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. It also contains references
to events chronicled in my own "The Guardian of the Gates
of Dawn" but should be viewed as a separate story and not
a sequel to that tale.

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.


PROLOGUE and Chapter 1

"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, Donaghy 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 and get 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.

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