The Mystery of the Dodecahedron

Through the abandoned cottage, near-silence reigned. The radiator hummed, and the clock continued to tick, but there was no sign of human life to be found. The blue glow of a police car’s lightbar filtered in through a crack in the closed curtains in the living room, bathing the dim room in its light. At once, the back door splintered, being forced open by an officer in heavy armour carrying a hydraulic ram. Behind him stood two more officers, one male and one female, who cautiously entered the building with their flashlights on hand.

“Police, identify yourselves.” the first officer yelled as he began his sweep of the cottage’s rooms. When he received no answer, he gave a look of confusion. “No sign of the inhabitants leaving this place for days, but no sign of them in here either? This sounds like it isn’t going to be just another normal case…” He murmured to himself as he wandered through the hall, before turning to enter the living room. A dull whitish glow was emanating through the gap left by the slightly-ajar door.

As the two officers walked into the room, they were met with a grisly sight. The white light was coming from a computer’s monitor, the device having clearly been on for days given the hot and plastic aroma that filled the room. In front of it, lying slumped in an office chair with its head resting on the desk, was the form of a human body, pale and shriveled. The officer slowly approached, before realizing that from the angle he was walking towards the desk, the lifeless person was gazing straight at him through its cold, dead eyes, but then, when the officer’s flashlight hit its grey-white face… its pupils narrowed.

Taking a step back in shock, the officer removed his handheld radio from his shoulder and began speaking into it urgently. “Tango six-eight, tango six-eight, this is Echo seven-two, over. We have one injured at the scene, send medical assistance immediately, over.” As he turned away, he paused once again, confused by what he saw. There in a pile of glass shards from a destroyed coffee table, was a decorative dodecahedron. It had twelve five-sided faces, and in the centre of each face was an ornate circular opening. Each of its corners were adorned by spherical knobs, and around each opening were words in Roman Latin.

Within a few hours, the site had been secured by the police, and investigators were hard at work analyzing the scene of what looked to be a gruesome crime. During a pause in the search, two of the investigators stood outside and away from the rest of the action, and talked amongst themselves.

“Did you hear what Jensen was talking about?” the first, a thin but tall man by the name of Oliver Stone asked. “I sure did!” the second, a man by the name of Alex Stirling replied quietly, but with his interest clearly audible. “Some sort of metal artefact, right? It’s been sent off to the lab for analysis.”

“Did you hear anything about the person found in there?” Oliver inquired. “The guy’s a John Doe, taken to the hospital just before we arrived – the others are still searching for anything to confirm his identity. It’s like everything about him just…faded away.”

Meanwhile, at St Mary's Hospital, a stretcher wheeled by a team of junior doctors hurtled through a set of double doors, the group running as fast as they could with it to get the mystery patient to intensive care. Rushing through the maze of corridors towards the ICU, a nurse from the ward joined the small crowd with a clipboard and began hurriedly writing down notes given by the pulmonologist leading the way.

“The patient is a young male, approximately 25 years of age. Was found inside a cottage at 347 Culver Way, Yaverland. Patient is unconscious and appears to be having trouble breathing, will require immediate intubation and supervision.”

As the group reached the entrance to the ICU, the on-duty receptionist got up from her seat and gestured to the junior doctors that they could rest for a while. She then walked around from the counter and approached the pulmonologist.

“Ah, Doctor Richards, good to see you made it. The ward is ready to receive the patient.”

“Good.” The doctor replied bluntly. “I don’t know what happened to this man but it’s essential that we bring him back to some semblance of health. The police are eager to talk to this patient, but we need to heal him first.”

Several days later, the ICU was almost empty, save for the mysterious patient, hooked up to a machine that droned relentlessly and periodically sounded off shrill beeps and buzzing sounds. While still in poor condition, the patient was awake, breathing laboriously, and gazing around the room intently with his pale silvery eyes. Next to the machine, within arm’s length of the patient, was a tattered notebook, most of its pages covered in illegible scrawls. A knock on the door broke the wall of noise, and two of the investigators who were present on that fateful evening, Oliver Stone and Jensen Lapwing, the latter being the lead investigator, walked in.

“…What is this place? Who are you?” asked the patient intently, as Jensen pulled up two chairs for Stone and himself to sit on. He retrieved a notebook from a worn leather briefcase he had been carrying, before choosing to reply.

“You’re in the intensive care unit at St Mary's, and we’re two investigators working on the case as to how you ended up in this state.” Jensen reassured. “Are you in a lot of pain? We can always send for medicine if you require.”

“No…” The patient murmured. “I feel…nothing. I can sense the world around me, yet I feel so distant from it all. It’s as if… my body and my mind are not connected properly.”

While Jensen scribbled the information down, Oliver decided that now was the time to bring up the most important question. “When we found you, we also found something that didn’t quite belong. Do you recognise this?” he asked, handing the patient a photograph of the dodecahedron taken from the cottage for analysis. Instantly, the patient’s face grew even paler than it already was, and he recoiled in horror.

“So, you have it now. You must seal it away, far away from those who might meet the same fate as mine…”

“Forgive me for asking, as clearly this is making you uncomfortable, but how did you come into the ownership of this object?” Jensen asked.

“I suppose I have no choice… my body is going to die soon, so I might as well tell you how I came across that horrid thing, so that you may not make the same mistake I did.” Jensen and Oliver both took their seats and leaned in intently to hear the still-unnamed man tell them what he knew.

“My name… or, what my name used to be, at least, was Christopher Selby, an archaeologist from the University of Brighton. I had been taking a masters in the subject when I found this device.” He began, pointing at the photograph. “It’s called a dodecahedron; no name for it has been found in the language of its place of origin, nor the language of those who created it. I found this device during an investigation into a drowned settlement on the south east coast; it had risen to the surface of the sand after centuries underwater. Such a beautiful thing… made from silver and gold and with indentations that used to hold gemstones...”

“When we found the device, we noticed it had inscriptions in Latin written on its faces.” Jensen remarked. “Do you know anything about what these inscriptions may mean?” After pausing to look over the inscriptions visible in the photograph, Christopher gave an explanation.

“Look upon the conduit, and your future is secured, that is what it says. Each face of the dodecahedron has a different phrase, all of them similar to that. When I found the dodecahedron, it was in poor condition, yet still recognizable – I took it home and treated it as carefully as I could, and when it was polished, I could see it as it appeared to the eyes of its creators. I spent many weeks pouring over my notes and every book in the University’s library that had any sort of information related to the item’s origin and use, but all that I learned was it was most likely made at some point in the second and third centuries of the first millennium – no texts from that time describe what the Romans used it and other dodecahedrons for.”

The patient shivered vigorously, and a look of concern crossed Oliver’s face. He noticed a panel next to Christopher’s ECG that controlled a radiator in the tiny room and turned it up one setting, to heat the tiny space. “This still doesn’t explain how you ended up like this.” Oliver insisted. “According to your patient notes, you are 25, but you look as if you have lived several lifetimes in the blink of an eye.”

Christopher stared into a mirror set up in the corner of the room, eying his own decayed form with a look of helplessness in his eyes. “Yes… you are correct. This is what the Dodecahedron did to me – if you wish, I can explain my own thoughts on why and how that god forsaken device turned me into this…husk.”

“That would be very good,” replied Jensen, “but if any of this becomes too much, don’t be afraid to end the interview – we can come back and continue it whenever you wish.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Christopher replied immediately. “It is of the utmost importance that you hear this now.” He then tore out a sheet of paper from the notebook and began to construct some sort of diagram onto the page. Jensen stood up and walked over to get a closer look.

“I am sure you are familiar with the mechanisms of energy transfer?” Christopher asked, then continued after seeing Jensen and Oliver confirm his question with a nod. “The dodecahedron, it… it interferes with that natural cycle. I can describe it best as some sort of siphon. When in close proximity to it, you begin to have your energy stolen away by it, taken to somewhere unexplainable. You first see its gruesome power take hold when your mental faculties begin to leave you, and then, day by day, your body and mind decay as one… a truly horrid fate awaits me, wherever my energy, my soul, is headed.”

“But… surely you would have gotten rid of the dodecahedron when you noticed these things happening!” Oliver exclaimed confusedly. “If you could see its effects taking hold on your body, why did you keep it?”

Christopher’s eyes stared wearily into the distance, and with hesitance, he replied. “The dodecahedron, it has ways of keeping you close by… you see, it lures you like a siren, using your own memories as fuel for its ‘song’. I tragically lost my parents in a car crash when I was only four years old, and the memories of lying pinned in the mess of metal next to the bodies of my loved ones never left me. When the dodecahedron began siphoning my energy, it took those memories and began broadcasting them to me, mimicking my parents as if they were really there beside me. Very quickly, the delusions that followed prevented me from disposing of it. I witnessed the souls of everyone the dodecahedron had come into contact with, from the smith who crafted it, to the centurion it had been buried with, all those centuries ago, and everyone in between. I witnessed through the dodecahedron’s visions the memories and experiences of hundreds, and it successively drove me mad.”

Fully engrossed in writing an account of the events Christopher had described, Jensen failed to notice the patient’s pale and skeletal hand about to close around his wrist. At once, Christopher gripped the investigator’s arm with unusual strength, causing the young man to wince.

“Where is it?” He asked in a desperate yet sinister tone. “Where have you taken it?”

Inside the gloomy evidence storeroom of the vacant police station, the box containing the dodecahedron rested at eye-level, ready to be retrieved the following morning. All was silent, until the sounds of footsteps echoed through the maze of corridors. Retrieving a telescopic baton from a locker that had carelessly been left open, the intruder’s face was illuminated by the moon shining through the windows, revealing him as one of the other investigators working on the case.

“Those saps… they don’t know what they’re holding…” The investigator, a thin and weaselly man named Jack Silverstone, murmured slyly. He continued to amble along the corridor until he found the door to the evidence room. Shattering the door’s thin window with the baton, he reached in, and after some fumbling, managed to release the latch that held the door closed, then kicked the door open. He couldn’t quite explain what he was doing, or why he had ended up here. But for now, none of that mattered. All that stood between him and the dodecahedron was a lone security guard patrolling the huge room that lay before him. “They always were careless with keeping this place secure…” Jack thought to himself. “They’ll soon learn the consequences of their negligence…”

At once, the glow of the security guard’s flashlight began advancing down the corridor. Finding an alcove near the western wall, Jack stood quietly, and raised the stolen baton to shoulder height.

Just a few moments later, the guard had reached the alcove, and before he could react, Jack delivered a swift blow to the back of his head with the baton, sending the guard tumbling to the ground, unconscious. Now without any opposition, Jack began his search, shining his own flashlight over the thousands of labels. After several minutes, the beam of light illuminated a case with a label reading “EVIDENCE ITEM 00235: CASE DATE 05/08/2019”. The strange sensation he felt was growing stronger with every passing second as he began opening the box. It felt as if his skull was about to splinter from the pressure building inside, but he still carried on.

“At last… there it is…” Jack murmured. Removing the foam blocks that held the dodecahedron in place, he lifted it out of its case and held it in his arms. Waves of relief that competed with the pain washed over him as he stared deep into the device’s vacant centre.

Jack was so occupied with studying the mysterious object, that he was taken by surprise by the appearance of another man, hazy and translucent, who placed his hand atop his shoulder. Turning around, Jack was met with the face of Christopher Selby, the spectre’s eyes cutting deep into his soul.

“You have made a terrible mistake.”