Jacob and the Psychonauts

​Jacob Bayley lay back and placed the mask over his face, in what used to be his father’s favourite chair, and began to inhale. Dad had been dead for a few months now, and Jacob knew he wouldn’t have thought Jacob had the guts to do what he was about to do, but he wasn’t around to bitch about it.

​The water bath had reached the right temperature, Jacob having put it on a plate warmer lit by a tea light’s small flame. He got the initial ether hit almost immediately, feeling suddenly lighter, as if he was allowing his flesh and bones to melt away, leaving just his skin and his inner sensations to set out on a journey of exploration.

#

​“Are you okay?” asked Cynthia, wiping the interactive whiteboard from the previous lesson, mentally gearing up for the next. She watched Jacob work quietly, rinsing, then drying, beakers and test tubes, setting them back in place neatly with delicate clinks.

​“I’m fine, honestly,” Jacob gave the science teacher a shy smile and returned to gathering the lab equipment together for the students who were hooting and jostling outside the room.

​“I think you came back to work too quickly, Jacob.” Cynthia grasped a stack of textbooks and placed them on the desk at the front of the room. She noticed the normally reticent Jacob was fading more and more into the background since returning to work after months of nursing the imperious, overbearing, and now dead, Head of Science, Dr Max Bayley. She had successfully replaced him, and the entire faculty had breathed a sigh of relief.

​“To be honest, I’ve had enough of spending all my time in the house.”

​Cynthia walked to the door, readying herself for the afternoon battle with 11c and their Combined Science GCSE exam preparation. It meant having eyes in the back of your head when demonstrating evaporation, as Jacob circulated with little phials of ethyl ether. More than once, kids from previous classes had been hospitalised after snorting the colourless, pleasant-smelling liquid.

​“You know where I am if you need to talk,” her words swamped by the swarming rabble. She didn’t know if Jacob had heard her as he calmly and methodically began to weave between the benches and children, preparing for the experiments.

#

​Jacob had made himself a chickpea curry, with brown basmati rice. There was enough to take into work for lunch. His father would have thrown seven fits if he’d even imagined Jacob adopting a plant-based diet. 

​“Meat is good for you,” Max would repeatedly holler, growing somewhat less bullish following his stage four colon cancer diagnosis.

​Jacob, who, unlike his father, disliked confrontation, and avoided provoking him, smirked as he finished his meal. There was enormous satisfaction in washing the dishes and not having to surreptitiously scrape away uneaten lumps of animal flesh into the compost bin. He looked at his watch, six thirty. Good, he thought, time to settle down for another voyage into the unknown.

​Jacob relaxed quickly as he inhaled the vapour, his pupils dilating and his eyes lolling upwards, eyelids closing as he exchanged one form of consciousness for another. 

​He floated above a barren vista, returning to a place he’d visited previously. A milky, opaque mist hung over what appeared to be moorland, white and purple heathers here and there, a chalk pathway rising like a spine across an otherwise dun coloured landscape. Jacob’s feet didn’t reach the ground, he hovered lightly in the gentle breeze, sensations heightened. Which way to go? Sounds, some distance along the path, barely discernible, caught his ears and feeling adventurous he willed himself to speed onwards. The sharp rush of cold air took his breath away.

​A house, squat and ugly, lurked behind a high, ivy infested wall. Through tall, rusted iron gates, hanging open on broken hinges, Jacob slowed and took in the neglected brick building, with its small, dark, shuttered windows and heavy oak door. The mist hadn’t cleared, smothering the tops of skeletal trees circling the house. The sounds he’d followed seemed to be coming from inside; voices, incoherent yet familiar.

​“Ah,” he said to himself, “So, that’s where you are.”

#

​Cynthia gathered up the paperwork. Her day was far from over, she to work on lesson planning and to catch up with Jacob. He’d been a little bit distracted lately, she thought. His appearance wasn’t quite as crisp as usual; a button undone here, a tide line on his collar there, a dark smudge on his normally spotless cuffs and was that a water mark on his tie?

​“Jacob?” she asked, “How are things going at home? I expect you’re rattling around that old place all by yourself?”

​Jacob, in his lab coat, washed beakers and wiped down aluminium stands. He’d dabbed Vaseline around his nostrils and lips as they were sore. The tip of his tongue tasted the grease, and in the back of his throat he caught the corrosive tang of ether. He pretended not to hear Cynthia.

​“What are you doing with yourself, with all this extra time on your hands?” Cynthia knew he was listening, his shoulders had stiffened, and his movements became self-conscious.

​“Oh, this and that. Clearing out Dad’s stuff, mostly.”

​Cynthia placed a hand on his shoulder, “It’s tough, I know what it was like when I lost my mum. Emotional attachments to personal possessions, things like that.”

​Jacob shrugged her off and dried his hands, unbuttoning the white coat, “I don’t have emotional attachments. See you in the morning.”

​Cynthia watched him leave. She did her usual tidy round, locking the chemicals cabinet, frowning as she did so as there was a damp ring beneath the plastic ethyl ether bottle. Touching it, the quick evaporation left a cold spot on her fingertip. Funny, she thought, Jacob was normally so careful not to spill any of the chemicals, let alone allow some to drip onto a shelf. She grabbed a roll of blue paper towel and wiped the shelf, and then wiping and shaking the container, “I could have sworn this bottle was a new one,” she said, “What’s going on, Jacob?”

#

​Inhaling deeply, Jacob drifted away, before emerging again above the misty, cold, barren moorland. He looked down at his hands, his torso and legs. His clothing seemed brighter, clearer, more intense. “Focus, Jacob,” he whispered, and began to glide over the earth, through the all-enveloping mist, before arriving at the tall walls and gates of the house. 

​The voices were there again, men’s voices, quarrelsome, each one trying to outcompete the other. Jacob moved across the overgrown garden, fingertips touching a writhing mass of brambles. His eye was caught by movement near the side of the house. Small figures, blue skinned, large heads attached to scrawny bodies, scuttled back and forth through an open doorway. They ignored Jacob’s presence, going about their business of wheeling little barrows filled with what looked like rotting corpses of rats. He slipped easily into the dark house and followed the voices.

​A long, unlit hallway stretched ahead, the men’s arguments drawing him in, both intrigued and worried, “what if they see me?” he mulled. He paused at an open doorway to a large room.

​Fog-like, he drifted into the chamber where two elderly men sprawled in aged, torn, button backed, leather chairs, facing each other. The room was squalid, tall shelves covered the walls, filled with the broken spines of rotting, crumbling books. Thick dust coated all surfaces, cobwebs stretched from ceiling to floor. At the men’s feet lay piles of discarded animal bones, the stench making Jacob gag. A group of the large headed, small bodied, blue people were attempting to gather up the remains as the men bickered.

​“I tell you, I left the greatest legacy. I was knighted, I’llhave you know, not merely a doctor like you, but Sir!” The ancient man who spoke was thin, his scrawny neck rising like a weed from the flowerpot of his grey shirt collar, his Adam’s apple bobbing, great shaggy eyebrows threatening to obscure his view. His head was a great bald dome, itself coated with a patina of grime.

​“I taught generations of students who became great scientists, leaders in their fields. That’s a real legacy you vain old fool!” The other man, whilst seemingly less elderly, was wizened and drawn, his skin blotchy and pale, his jacket frayed at the cuffs and lapels, straggly hair hanging around his shoulders.

​Both men continued to trade insults, looking about them for more food. “Meat, I demand meat!” yelled the younger of the two, stamping his feet. The small figures, with their barrows, bustled through the door and dumped carcass after carcass beside each man’s chair, the thick tails of the rats chopped off and piled in a heap between the men.

​Jacob willed himself upwards towards the ceiling where a filthy chandelier, broken and twisted, hung above the room. Bobbing like a soap bubble, he sat among the grubby crystals and wires, fascinated at the sight of his father and grandfather feasting on vermin, trading insults.

​“And that useless son of yours,” bellowed Sir Charles Bayley, celebrated anaesthetist and less celebrated human, “He’s come to nothing so far and will amount to nothing by the end. You should have taken a stronger hand with the boy. Spare the rod and spoil the child, that’s what I say.”

​Jacob was unsurprised to hear his grandfather’s low opinion of him. It was a thread his own father, Dr Max Bayley, had continued with fervour.

​“Beating the child made no difference,” his father said, spitting out bones and claws, “It made him sullen and dull headed, he gets that from you. Jacob isn’t an adventurer and never will be.”

​Jacob had had enough, he breathed in the stench of room and closed his eyes, opening them to gaze up at the ceiling of his kitchen, with its long single fluorescent light, and the curious eyes of Cynthia.

#

​“What on earth possessed you to do it, Jacob?” Cynthia had dealt with the piles on unwashed dishes and was wiping down the kitchen surfaces. This was not what she expected of the fastidious Jacob Bayley.

​He was embarrassed, and cross at Cynthia breezing into his home. The headache following an ether trip began to wane, and he reached for a small notebook, titled in neat handwriting, ‘The Memoirs of a Psychonaut.’ 

​“This was written by my great-grandfather. 1912. He was a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and an adventurer.” Jacob flicked the pages, wondering why Grandad’s dad wasn’t sharing the house with his son.

​Cynthia wiped her hands and pulled up a chair. Jacob had dark wings around his eyes and his skin was sore, especially around his lips and nose. His mask was on the table, attached to a tube, plugged into a retort, clamped over the sort of plate warmer you used to find in oriental restaurants. ​“I should report you, really. Drug abuse for one thing, then stealing chemicals from the school.”

​“Will you? I’ll get the sack.” he asked, a note of concern in his voice. He couldn’t afford to lose his job. Dad hadn’t left any money as such, and what Jacob had inherited had gone on the funeral, such as it was. Unsurprisingly, few people came to pay their respects and the caterers took plates of uneaten sandwiches and cakes back home.

​Cynthia shook her head, “Not on this occasion. But I will if you carry on stealing ether and lab equipment.”

​Jacob pouted, sulkily, “The equipment is mine, it comes with the house. I can do what I want in my own time, in my own home.”

​“Of course you can. Oh, Jacob, why are you doing this? Aren’t there better ways of getting kicks?”

​“Kicks? No, you don’t understand, I’m the next generation of psychonauts, explorers, adventurers. And anyway, I’m looking for something.”

​“Every night? Jacob, you could die. You need to get help, see a counsellor, join a programme, anything. Please, stop this.” The tone in Cynthia’s voice was of genuine concern. 

​Jacob nodded, turning to Cynthia, “I will. I have one last thing to find, and that’ll be it.”

​“Promise?”

​“Promise.”

#

​Jacob added equal parts ethyl ether to water inside the beaker, poured it through a funnel into the retort, inserted the rubber stopper and placed it at the right distance above the warming plate. He adjusted the mask for comfort and settled back, the vapour slowly forming as the temperature rose, inhaling gently.

​The house. That was quick. He was floating like a balloon over the crooked hovel, looking down at broken slates and a chimneypot blocked with a Jackdaw’s nest. The quarrelling voices carried upwards, and with a sinking feeling, Jacob drifted down and into the open door on the side of the building. The little blue creatures hurried back and forth, bones in one direction, rat corpses in the other.

​“My father built this house, and don’t you forget it,” roared Sir Charles, banging his claw-like hands down hard on the scratched arms of the chair, horsehair poking through where the leather had disintegrated.

​“Of course he did, you never created anything worthwhile, you stupid old fool,” Dr Max Bayley practically bounced in his seat with rage.

​Jacob wondered how they sustained their animosity, hoping he’d find the answer to that question. He’d read his great-grandfather’s notebook, as page by page the man had grown increasingly distracted, his thoughts more unnerving, observations of unspeakable horrors and terrible knowledge eventually overtaking him. The book didn’t end as much as peter out. 

​“I don’t know why you ever came here,” spat Sir Charles, “You’re not worthy to lick my boots.” He grasped a rat’s tail and gnawed on it, chewing with brown, rotting teeth.

​“It wasn’t to find you, that’s for sure,” snarled Dr Max, who also grabbed a tail, sucking the juices out with a slurping noise that made Jacob feel nauseous. 

​A deep thud made the two men pause mid row, and they looked upwards. For a second, Jacob thought they’d seen him, but instead they looked through him and at the crumbling ceiling, where huge clumps of plaster had fallen, exposing rotting joists from the floor above.

​“It’s your turn,” Dr Max said quietly to his father.

​“I went last time,” replied Sir Charles.

​Jacob noted their sudden de-escalation of hostilities, they were afraid. The back and forth went on interminably until several louder bangs made Dr Max stand, muttering curses, brushing the accumulation of dirt and meat debris from his filthy outfit, tottering towards the door. 

​Jacob’s wraithlike presence took off after his father as he stomped up a narrow, gloomy staircase of bare boards. At the landing, the old man stopped and placed his hand on the corroded brass handle of the only door Jacob could make out. With a shuddering creak, Dr Max pushed his way into what Jacob could only describe as one enormous, cluttered, ramshackle room, stuffed to the ceiling with trunks and wooden chests, piles and piles of books and objects. A stuffed crocodile hung from the ceiling in the only spare area of space. Jacob’s father weaved between the obstacles until he reached his destination, a cold empty fireplace, filled with ash and cinders, and before it, in a ragged, worn chair similar to those downstairs, sat a tiny figure. Coming closer, Jacob could see it was an old man, ancient, folded in upon himself, swamped by his stained and torn tweed jacket.

​“What do you want?” Dr Max said quietly.

​The little old man gave a barely noticeable nod of his head, opening large, pale, yellow eyes. The dilated pupils fixed on the bent over man, and then, without any apparent effort, he opened his toothless mouth, wider and wider, until it gaped like a waste bin.

​Sighing, Sir Max came closer and when his face nearly touched the old man’s, he began to regurgitate into the open mouth. Jacob threw his hands to his face in horror as his father vomited up undigested lumps of rat tails, bones, unchewed sinew and gristle. 

​Eventually, closing his mouth in apparent satisfaction, the tiny old creature lowered his head and appeared to doze off, digestive sounds grumbling around him. Jacob watched Dr Max retreat, deferentially, out of the room.

​He’d seen enough. He had what he had come looking for.

#

​Cynthia found Jacob’s house on the market during an evening of flicking through local property on her iPad. She shouldn’t have been surprised since he’d handed in his notice that morning.

​“What’s happened, Jacob?” she’d asked, making him a cup of tea. He looked better, she thought, less peaky. The sore skin had cleared up in the last week, and he was back to his usual, immaculately turned-out self, if a little less anxious, a tad more confident.

​Jacob paused before responding, “You see, I’ve learned that in my family we’ve burdened ourselves with extraordinary expectations, yet each generation manages to disappoint the one that went before. I explored their world, as you know.”

​Cynthia wouldn’t have called inhaling diluted ether ‘exploring’, but she let it go.

​“Through my ether dreams I witnessed generations of my family, and saw them for who they were, monsters,unquestioningly repeating mistakes with diminishing returns, feeding their own myth. I don’t want to be part of that cycle, I’m opting out.”

​Cynthia nodded, thinking she was just about grasping what Jacob was telling her, “What are you going to do? Travel? See the world?”

​Smiling, Jacob shook his head, “I’ve had enough of new places and faces, and science, and my family’s legacy. I’ve put an offer in on a remote cottage in Scotland; a fresh start.”

​Cynthia tried to hide her surprise, “Ok, wow! Good for you. What will you do?”

​Jacob sipped his tea and looked thoughtful, “Read, sketch, I might even write a book.”