Dark Side of Winchester Cathedral

Estate sale shopping, despite the morbid reason why the sale was happening in the first place, was a weekly Saturday ritual for Marcus. Even though he is just 17 years old, Marcus knew he could travel these estate sales to find the great deals from families needing cash just to pay their relative’s debts or just wanting to get rid of anything reminding them of their loved ones. Either way, with estate sales, the seller was desperate, and Marcus was eager to pounce.

Marcus looked through the rows of goods laid out upon the driveway, with a much more organized than the typical estate sale that Marcus would stop and browse. There was a table for clothing, but it was clear that the clothes were for a man with a portlier build compared to Marcus’s slender frame. Yet, Marcus’s eye was attracted to a black t-shirt with that feature the logo from the King Crimson album, Lark’s Tongue in Aspic. Lark’s Tongue in Aspic is an album that, while not obscure, is not well known outside of fans of the rock subgenre known as progressive rock. Indeed, Marcus himself was wearing a shirt that read in large grey lettering “Van Der Graaf Generator”, a band of similar notoriety, particularly within the progressive rock fandom. Marcus and this dead guy, whoever he was, rest his soul, seemed to have the same tastes in music, which made Marcus excited when he saw a voluminous record collection a couple rows over that had to enumerate at least several dozen albums, if not over a hundred.

While most estate sales don’t turn up anything of interest to Marcus, there are some rare exceptions. Marcus once found an old Commodore Amiga computer from the late 1980s that he was able to repair with the help of some Youtube videos, an 8-mm film reel of a recorded Doctor Who from the early 1970s, an unmarked 33 RPM record that turned out to be demo recordings from what would become Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, and a record player from the 1930s that he was able to renovate to make his primary record player with Bluetooth functionality. The musical synchronicity between Marcus and the decedent made the hairs on the back of Marcus’s neck stand at attention at the thought of what treasure trove may await as he sauntered to the records table.

The first record he saw made his heart sink: Peter Frampton’s album, Frampton Comes Alive. “Of course, the dead guy had this album,” Marcus muttered to himself. Every estate sale with albums had this one for some reason. Not an album that interested him or could remotely be called a treasure. Maybe the next record would be better. Marcus moved the Peter Frampton off to the side, hoping that this album was just an aberration. The next album disheartened Marcus even more: Donna Summer’s Bad Girls. A disco album?! At least the Frampton album was rock. But this. This is frightening. How could a man who had a t-shirt of one of the heaviest rock bands of the 1970s also have a disco album? Marcus fingered his way through the albums hoping that the t-shirt was indicative of some sort of similar musical taste. But he kept finding albums that repulsed him. ABBA. Barbara Streisand. Even a Tony Orlando and Dawn album! Each passing album only brought further pop or soft rock that had Marcus further questioning the decedent’s auditory faculties.

Marcus was about to just accept his fate of finding nothing of value in the record collection until finally, something caught his eye: a sleeveless album with a grey bold type on black background in the center emblazoned “THE BEATLES”. But it was the rest of the text that truly caught Marcus’s eye. It read in the same all capitalized bold type: “DARK SIDE OF WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL”. Even more intriguing was the much smaller text below that “Copyright 1974.” This made no sense to Marcus. The Beatles broke up in 1970. There was no album released by the Beatles in 1974.

Marcus pulled out his cell phone and Googled “Dark Side of Winchester Cathedral Beatles”.  With a name that terrible, there had to be some search results for this album. Yet, no results came up outside of photographs of beetles taken at night at Winchester Cathedral. Marcus thought maybe a Wikipedia search would turn up results. Nothing. He then scrolled the Wikipedia page for the Beatles’ discography but no such album name appeared on the page. He even quickly looked through the discographies of all of the members and their related bands, but nothing. It was as if this album didn’t exist.

While Marcus assumed that this was probably some hoax album or some bizarre bootleg of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, he just couldn’t shake the thought that he had stumbled upon some Beatles reunion demo tape: a holy grail in the Beatles collection communities that could net him potentially thousands of dollars.

There was a man in his mid-twenties wearing sunglasses, a polo shirt, and cargo shorts sitting in a lawn chair on the grass, monitoring all of the happenings on the driveway. Marcus yelled to this man “How much for this?” The young man got out of his chair, not without a quick grunt, and sauntered over to Marcus.

The man took the album and popped up his sunglasses to have a better look. His eyes widened and his arm quickly extended to give the album back to Marcus, like the arm was pulled back on a rubber band that had just been released. “TAKE IT! JUST TAKE IT!” The man’s voice quivered, barely below a scream. “This…this is the album papa was listening to…when we found him. Just his…his…skeleton…” Marcus swiveled his head, looking for any way out of this conversation. “No flesh. Like he burned. He burned but nothing else did.”

Marcus started walking backwards, “Uh. Thank you I gotta go,” walked a half-second then paused and mumbled, “Oh yea. Sorry for your loss.” Marcus bolted out of there as quickly as was socially acceptable under the circumstances. He went into his car and drove home, ecstatic to figure out what he had sitting in his passenger seat. He knew it was probably a mislabel. But what if? What if he hit the jackpot? Forget the apocryphal chalice Jesus drank from at the Last Supper, what if this was truly the Holy Grail?

               When Marcus came home, he noticed that nobody else was home. His parents must have gone out to lunch. Marcus immediately went to his room, put the record in the player, put the needle to the outer edge of the album, sat in his gamer chair, and put on his Bluetooth wireless headphones. A high up-tempo synthesizer riff jolted out of the headphones, a sound not unlike an Electric Light Orchestra album. Then a blast of what sounded to be an orchestra playing came washed through his auditory canal. He closed his eyes, embracing the music.

Suddenly, the sound started slowing down to the point where it felt like a note a minute. Marcus blinked and his room became colors that he had never experienced before. Shades of blue, purple, orange, white, yellow that he never comprehended possible flashed throughout the room. He felt like a bubble passing through a lava lamp. Marcus tried to move a muscle, any muscle, but none responded. He was frozen except for his eyelids.

Marcus blinked again. He saw the room starting to twist in an S-shape and being stretched, like it was paint on a swivel with the centrifugal force of the spin pushing the room out.

Marcus blinked again. He was now in a bubble surrounded by an iridescent blue light, his room grainy like an image on an old well-worn Polaroid. Marcus blinked again. His room was back to normal, but he was immobile. Suddenly, the room started to burn from the edge, like someone lit a piece of projected celluloid film on fire.

Marcus blinked again. He was outside his house, feeling a rumble below him. The ground fractured, opening a fissure in which the entire street was bifurcated. His body was the center point in which the fissure emanated from. His legs were being split by the separating earth beneath him. Marcus tried to will his legs to move to no avail. Marcus attempted to plant his feet, but again, there was no response from his legs. The earth kept sliding until his feet reached the end of both edges. He could see in his peripheral vision magma boiling below him. He could feel the heat. The earth slipped further and his feet fell off both of the newly-created cliff edges, causing him to plummet.

Marcus blinked again. Suddenly, he was floating in space. In his peripheral vision he could see the Earth's ocean blue below him. He saw the moon rising from the other side of the planet. Suddenly, a pure red centaur, with a tail bookended with an arrowhead, black hooves, and the face of Paul McCartney appeared. He turned to Marcus, gave a wry smile, chuckled, and stated “Oh, you listened to the album that never existed, di’n’t you?” The Paul McCartney faced created gave an ear-shattering chuckle and galloped away whilst singing the popular “Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah” refrain from “Hey Jude”.

Marcus blinked again. Suddenly, in front of him was a massive white star. The size of the star to him was how an ant must feel approaching Mount Everest. The light emanating from the star was brighter than any light he had ever seen. Marcus felt blinded by the light, except he could still see space in the periphery of his vision. Yet, that space was dissipating. Marcus felt unknown forces pull him towards the star. He didn’t even think to move anymore as he knew resistance was futile. Within a few seconds, his entire vision was just the pure white of the star.

Then, Marcus felt the solar heat. Marcus felt every atom within his being melting and evaporating. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel his body turning into something finer than dust. He was no longer matter as he conceived it. Within what felt like minutes but must have been instantaneous his body had become nothing more than residual radiation from what were the electrons and protons in his body bouncing all through the cosmos.

Marcus’s parents opened the door to their abode and stepped inside. Belinda, Marcus’s mother, gave a quick sniff and asked her husband, Robert, “What’s that smell? Don’t you smell it?”

Robert replied with a sigh “He’s probably smoking weed again.” He then stated with a rising anger “I thought we told him to knock that shit off!”

“That doesn’t smell like weed. Let me check.” Belinda walked up the stairs and knocked on Marcus’s door. “Marcus, sweetie!” There was no response. She knocked again. “Marcus!” Again, no response. She noticed there was a light smoke plume coming from the top of the door. She instinctively turned the knob and a plume of darkened smoke wafted in her direction. Yet, through the smoke, she could see exactly where it was coming from: Marcus’s chair.

“Marcus?” Belinda whimpered, “Are you okay?”

She then shakily pushed the chair around its swivel. What she saw made her shriek so loud, the neighbors could clearly hear it. There was a skeleton in Marcus’s chair with smoke coming from the skeleton. Not a single bit of flesh on it. Yet nothing on his desk was burned. The only other items that even were burned were the earmuffs on his headphones were slightly melted and there were some singe marks on the white chair. If it wasn’t for that and the smoke, one could have easily assumed it was a fake educational skeleton being used as a prank. Belinda’s legs collapsed under her as she grew light-headed. The last thing she heard was the thud of her body hitting the floor.

“Ma’am. Ma’am. Stay with me now!” Belinda awoke to a bright light shining in her eyes.

“What?” Belinda stated groggily. The light stopped being shone in her eyes and she looked around. She saw Marcus’s Legend of Zelda posters and realized she was still in his room. Yet there was a group of people milling about within the room.

“How are you feeling, ma’am?” the voice came from her right. She saw a man with a military-style haircut squatting and looking at her. He wore a blue uniform that read “Los Angeles County Fire Paramedic.”

“She’s fine and awake. We need to ask her some questions.” A man in a black suit with a black tie pushed the paramedic out of the way. He was skinny, middle-aged, yet his skin was shriveled in a way that made him look decades older. He then turned to Belinda and pointedly stated “Now what did you see?”

“Sir, we need to run concussion protocols on her!” the paramedic almost shouted, the shock of him being pushed aside like that coursing through his veins.

The man ignored the paramedic’s pleas and put his right arm up as a brace to prevent the paramedic from talking to her. The man then repeated his question more slowly, with a hint of annoyance, “Now…what did you see?”

Belinda whimpered, “I…I…saw nothing…except…Marcus,” then she let out a squeal “OH GOD!” before becoming unconscious again.

He then rolled his eyes, muttering “Four. We’ve had four spontaneous human combustion incidents in this area and nobody thinks to call us until now when we get hysterical mom and oblivious dad. How are we supposed to stop this phenomena when we can’t get any clues?”

“Sponta..what what?” the paramedic stared at the agent perplexed.

The man responded flatly, seemingly annoyed at the interruption. “Spontaneous human combustion. When the human body disintegrates without any external combustion source.”

The paramedic’s eyes shot wide open. “That happens?” he shouted, but the man did not respond.

“Agent, I think I found something. Did the Beatles ever have a record called ‘Dark Side of Winchester Cathedral’?” came from a blonde woman in her late twenties dressed in a navy blue dress and skirt standing near the record player and pointing at it.

The agent turned to the woman, “Not in this reality. I think I would remember if the Beatles released an album with that atrocious of a name.”

“You think it’s a PRO?” she replied, enunciating the P, the R, and the O separately.

“A PRO?” the paramedic chimed in.

“A parallel reality object,” the man flatly replied in his gravelly tone.

“A parallel reality object?” the paramedic asked in a completely dumbfounded voice.

The man sighed and responded clearly annoyed. “An object that is within our reality that is not native to this reality. Now look, this doesn’t look like a game show set and I’m busy, so please stop asking asinine questions that are clearly above your trade school education.” He then pointed to Belinda. “Go be useful and help her out.” He then turned to his partner. “Put that in the decontamination chamber.”

“Way ahead of you,” she replied, waving an ordinary Ziploc bag containing the record, pleased at her ability to anticipate what the agent would ask of her.

“Good,” he mumbled. He clicked his tongue and said “Let’s get out of here.”

The two sauntered off to their car while holding the record player. Their car was a black Dodge Charger. The two partners strapped in their seatbelts with the man in the driver seat and the woman in the passenger seat. The woman then asked the pertinent question “Where exactly are we going with this?”

“There’s a site for storing PROs right outside Edwards Air Force base. Let's head there so the labs can examine this,” the man spoke in a manner less brusque than with the others before. The car then sped away from the suburban neighborhood, its occupants hoping that this record could help piece together why matter from parallel realities can cross into our reality.