For the rest of that first day I struggled with the script. When it became apparent that an answer would not be immediately forthcoming, Roger left me alone. I heard him clattering around in the scullery, and then later, I'm sure I heard him singing in the cavern beneath the hall, but for the most part I was engrossed in the puzzle before me.
The figures had been transcribed in Roger's neat, methodical hand and, indeed, for a while I thought they might be a vast mathematical formula, a construct born out of Roger's malaise. But I had seen the carvings for myself. They were obviously from antiquity... And equally obviously baffling.
Night fell, and I was no further forward. Roger fed me with over cooked trout and hard potatoes before once more sitting me in front of the fire. I nursed a large whisky and stared into the flames, trying to clear my head of images of scratches on walls.
I was surprised when Roger started to speak, his voice so low it was almost a whisper.
“We have never talked of the trenches,” he said.
“And we do not have to if it pains you,” I replied, but he waved me down.
“No. It is germane to why we are here.”
He took a long draught from his whisky.
“I dream,” he said. “I see them, there in the mud, half-obscured by acrid smoke lit red by the flares; Private Jones, his face melted by a cloud of mustard gas, Corporal MacLean, his guts on the outside, fighting weakly as the rats tear at them, my batman, Donnie, staring at his legs which are lying in the mud clear across the trench.”
Tears ran down Roger's cheeks.
“And every night it is the same question. Why?”
“Why did they die?”
“No,” Roger said, and sobbed. “Why did I live?”
I could only watch as the grief ate away at my friend. He was quiet for long minutes, but I knew him well enough to know there was more to come.
“I came home, hoping that here at least the memories of a happy childhood might blot out the mud and blood. But still they came, every night.”
He rose and poured himself another stiff drink.
“I have tried everything I can to dull my sense...opiates, ether, but mostly this,” he said waving the whisky glass at me. “But nothing worked... Until one night, in my frustration, I pounded at the piano.
“And, from below something answered. For however a short time, my dreams fell still.”
He downed a whisky that would have floored me, poured another and returned to his seat by the fire.
“The rest you know... I dug, and found the chamber and the carvings.”
“But what is it?” I asked. “I can make neither head nor tail of your transcriptions.”
Once more he stared into the fire.
“I believe it is a window, a way for us to view worlds beyond those which we inhabit. We know that atoms are composed of mostly free space and vibration. Well, possibly, the vibrations set up in the chamber allow us to alter normal space and time, to travel beyond, or maybe, as I suspect is the case, between.”
“But why would you want to?” I said, astonished.
His eyes took on a far away look.
“Because there is a dreamer there whose dreams are stronger than mine, a dreamer oblivious to the petty squabbles of men, dreaming an endless dream in which I might lose myself.”
“But that way lies madness.”
“No old friend," he said softly. "That is something with which I am already familiar. Will you help me?”