February 15, 1986 - The Dreamlands, Part 2

700 steps. He wasn’t exaggerating. There really were seven hundred god damn steps to go down before we even reached the Dreamlands.

Occasionally we’d hear the Grotesque Reverie’s music, and have to hide in the shadow of a giant step as a group of its distorted carnie freaks passed by, but most of the trip was exceedingly dull. At least it gave us plenty of time to talk.

“Why’d you save me back there?” I asked around step 120.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not exactly on your side. And I kinda forced you to help me at gunpoint. It would have made sense for you to leave me back there.”

Dan shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if you’re on our side or not. I’d rather not see anyone get caught by the Fears.”

A few hundred steps later… “You know, you’re really not what I had in mind when I imagined a crazy cultist.”

Dan laughed at that. “No, I guess not. There’s a couple of us that are a bit fanatical, but most of us are people with a bone to pick against the Fears.”

“Oh? And what’s your problem with them?”

“Long time ago. Back when I still had a normal life. One day I started hearing voices. Whispers, really. I was hearing all the things people were saying behind my back. All the lies and insults that I suspected people were saying, but had never known for sure. At first I was hearing my coworkers’ voices. Then I started hearing strangers on the street talking about me. Then I even started hearing my wife saying things about me. I became irritable and started lashing out at people for what I heard, but they denied saying anything every time. I lost my job, my wife left me, and for a while I was contemplating suicide. But before I could, I was visited by Grendel. He told me about the Fears. That all the voices I had been hearing were caused by one called the Choir, which tortured its victims by distorting and obfuscating their senses. By then it was too late for me to fix my life, but he said there was still a way to get back at the things that had done this to me.”

“And that’s why you joined him?”

“What else was there for me to do? I’d lost my job, my wife, my house, my money. Why not join a cult dedicated to getting revenge against the things that had done that to me?”

As that conversation tailed off, I finally saw a light at the bottom of the staircase. After so many damn steps, I was almost ready to sprint down to it. I’d read a lot about the entrance to the Dreamlands in Carter’s journal. It was a place called the Enchanted Wood, cliché as it sounds. The descriptions had been very vivid (and just as cliché as the name, honestly,) with towering ancient trees and strange mysteries. But a real (well… dream-real) fantasy forest? I had to see that.

At the bottom of the staircase was an archway, beyond which was white light. I stepped through, and the light became so bright I had to close my eyes. When I felt it dim, I opened them, expecting to see the Enchanted Wood.

Well… it was kinda a forest that I saw. What was left of a forest, at least. There were still trees, but they had been burnt black, without any leaves left. The ground was covered in a layer of gray ash almost an inch thick, creating a smooth canvas that was only broken by patches of unidentifiable bones jutting out.

“Not what you were expecting?” Dan said to me.

“What the hell happened here?”

“It was burned.”

“By who?”

“If the answer to that isn’t clear to you now, it will be by the time we’re done.”

“Are you intentionally being vague just to piss me off?”

“No, I’m intentionally being vague because nothing I tell you about the Dreamlands will have the same impact as me letting you see if for yourself.”

“That’s a stupid reason.”

“Maybe. Now where is it you want to go now that you’re here?”

Good question. There were a lot of places I wanted to see in the Dreamlands, but I needed to keep focused. “Where is it Grendel sends you people once you get here?”

“All over the place. Most of the time we’re just scouting, trying to map everything out and keep tabs on what the current situation is. There are also several cities which we frequent, the port city of Dylath-Leen being the most visited due to its size.”

“Alright, let’s go there. How long will it take?”

“On foot? Three days.”

“Wait, days? What, are you just going to be sleeping that whole time?”

“Not exactly. A week here is only half an hour in the real world. From that perspective, it will take us less than half an hour to reach the city.”

“Yeah but from our perspective it’s still going to be an ungodly long walk….”

Three days of traveling. Three blasted days. I suppose I could have tried warping there, since the few test I ran showed I could still do that in the Dreamlands, but that would mean leaving Dan behind. Plus I had no idea where I was going.

The trip did give me the opportunity to see more of the Dreamlands. However, it wasn’t quite what I’d envisioned. It kinda resembled a generic fantasy environment (by which I mean it looked like New Zealand,) but something about it was off. Everything looked like it had a slight gray filter over it, making the place seem dull and colorless. Various signs of destruction were scattered along our path. Massive craters which scarred the ground. Ruins of once massive buildings, torn into pieces which were thrown for miles. Until we reached the city, neither of us saw another living creature. Saw plenty of dead ones, their unearthly bones lying uncovered on the ground. But apart from the two of us, the place seemed empty.

The weather followed no reason: the temperature would change from scorching to freezing and back in seconds, rain fell sideways without any wind, the sky would turn black even with the sun visible in the sky. I asked Dan about the phenomenon, but he said that the Dreamlands had been like that for as long as he’d visited them.

Most unnerving was the silence. Apart from the occasional talk between Dan and I, the Dreamlands were dead silent. Only rarely would we hear another sound: the melody of that familiar carnival music. Whenever we heard that, Dan led us on a long detour around.

Three days later, we arrived. I cannot express my relief when I saw the black basalt wall on the horizon. Dylath-Leen wasn’t the most inviting looking place. Everything was built of black brick, and the streets were windy and narrow. The people I saw were rude, with the only greeting I heard being a “Get out of my way!” shouted at me as they quickly skulked between buildings. And I don’t even know how to describe the smell that came from the port, except maybe “unforgettable.” But after days in that empty wasteland, I’d take anything!

“Tell me about this town, Dan.” I said after getting a chance to take the place in.

“It’s the largest surviving city in the Dreamlands. Apparently it used to be a trading center, a long time ago, but any large scale contact with other settlements is almost nonexistent these days. Now the city tries to sustain itself through fishing, but that won’t keep up much longer. Whole place is bound to fall apart eventually.”

“And what’s Grendel’s reason for being so interested in an old decaying town like this?”

“Because it is old and decaying. It’s filled with malcontents. People who’ve got nothing to lose rebelling against their oppressors.”

“Oppressors?”

Before he could answer, a bell started ringing from inside the city. Everyone in the streets paused, and then panic erupted. The people ran into the buildings, slamming the doors shut and barricading the windows. I felt Dan grab my arm, and shout, “We need to get off the street right now!”

He pulled me toward a door, but it was closed in our face. Every home was being barricaded, leaving out us in the street. I began to hear screams coming from other parts of the city, while Dan desperately looked around for a building that hadn’t been closed to us.

With no visible escapes, Dan pulled me toward a wall, and placed his hand on the black brick. The wall bent inward, creating a shadowy alcove that blended in with the dark building.

“What did you do?”

“With the proper practice, a Dreamer can manipulate their environment here. This is the best I can do; we’ll have to hope it hides us.”

We got inside the shadows, and I waited to see what the hell was going on. One of the screams sounded like it was coming closer. Soon, I saw a man running down the street. He stumbled and fell, but quickly scrambled back to his feet and looked behind him. When he didn’t see anything there, he visibly calmed. And then the Rake leaped from a roof onto him and tore him apart.

Well that made me jump. Moments later another person came onto the street, a woman crawling across the ground. Large bumps were moving beneath her skin, wriggling through her flesh in writhing movements. She stopped moving, and then hundreds of insects tore out of her body, leaving a mess of blood behind.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“Sport.” Was Dan’s answer. “Some of the Fears like to pay settlements in the Dreamlands the occasional visit to kill off a few people.”

The house across the street from us threw open its doors, and the people who had been hiding inside ran out. They were screaming in terror, but I couldn’t see anything unusual around them except for a shimmer in the air. Without any warning, the people started to viciously attack each other with any weapon they could grab, or their fists if necessary. Didn’t stop until all of them were dead.

“The Choir.” Dan hissed.

As if called by its name, the slight shimmer in the air appeared around us. So much for our hiding place. Dan began to scream like the others, and ran out to the street. I tried following him, but as I was reaching out to him, I heard a shrill note echo through the street, and Dan collapsed, blood coming out of his ears.

Then the Choir must have decided I was a fun target, because it turned its focus to me. I began to hear a wild chaos of noise pounding in my ears. I saw all kinds of twisted and impossible images darting all around me. The streets of Dylath-Leen disappeared, and I instead was floating in a place where sight was smell and smell was sound and sound was touch….

One sense was unaffected. Time. I could still clearly see time. And it was shifting again, shifting around Dan’s body similar to how it had when he entered the Dreamlands. The lines were moving away from us, out of this plane and back into reality. Without hesitation, I grabbed onto them, and was thrown out of the Dreamlands and back into the motel room. It took a while for the adrenaline to go away and for me to make sure that absolutely nothing had followed me out, but… when I calmed down, I checked on Dan. He still had a pulse, was still breathing, but he wouldn’t wake up. Didn’t respond to anything. I didn’t want to leave him, but the best I could do was call an ambulance and tell them that there was a man in a coma in the room.

So it would seem that the Fears have turned the physical manifestation of the collective human subconscious into their personal hunting ground. I know Grendel’s a psychopathic murderer, but after seeing that, and after talking to someone as sane as Dan, I dunno. Can’t call it sympathy for the cause. Maybe just uncertainty. Still need to figure out exactly what it is Grendel’s planning. Then I can figure out what I’m going to do about it.

I-330

February 15, 1986 - The Dreamlands, Part 1

82

Goal: Get into the Dreamlands and find out what Grendel’s doing in there.

Obstacle: I have no fucking idea how to get into the Dreamlands.

Solution: Kidnap a cultist and force them to tell me.

Used the binder to figure out when/where I could find a meeting at. Then I waited for their ritual/meeting/whatever to end, and watched as they started to exit the building where it had been held in. Picked one guy at random, and followed behind him as he walked from the building to his car. As he was unlocking the driver’s door, I appeared next to him.

“Hi.”

He looked at me, eyes grew huge, and just started to say “You” before I punched him in the gut, opened the car door, and tossed him inside. I pulled the keys out of the door, hopped into the driver’s seat, and took off.

“Oh gods,” my captured cultist said. “Y-you’re that I-330….”

“Yup! That’s me.” Pulled out a pistol and pointed it at his head. “Question time!”

“Please don’t shoot!”

Pulled the trigger, just barely missing him and shooting out the window. “Well that depends on you, doesn’t it? There were plenty of you at that meeting. I could always go back and get another if you don’t want to help.”

 “I’ll help, I’ll help! Our lord Grendel ordered us to give you all assistance if you asked for information about the Dreamlands!”

That gave me pause. “He… what?”

“At the meeting we were just at! He said you’d approach one of us, asking about the Dreamlands! And when you did, he said we were to obey you as if you carried his authority!”

I stopped the car there. “Seriously?” He nodded. It sounded absurd. Maybe a lie, but I couldn’t see why. Though I also couldn’t see why Grendel would be giving such orders. “So you’re saying that if I asked you to show me how to get into the Dreamlands, and then show me everything that Grendel’s planning to do in there, you’d have no choice but to do exactly what I said?” He nodded again.

O…kay then. “Well then.” I said. “That’s exactly what you’re going to be doing. How do we get in?”

“We enter through a practiced lucid dreaming. One must find a staircase inside a conventional dream, which one must descend before facing the Dreamland’s guardian. After that, there’s another stairway, which takes you into the Dreamlands proper.”

“And that’s how Grendel gets inside?”

“Well… not exactly. That’s how we get inside. He follows us in.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t really know…. He says that when we enter the Dreamlands, we open a path through space which he can follow….”

Hm. Following a path through space…. Sounds a bit like the warping we do. “Alright, we’ll do that. Whatever it is you do with Grendel when you go into the Dreamlands, you’re doing that with me.”

Ended up driving him to a motel, where we rented a room. Kept my gun on him at all times. Even if he seemed cooperative, I wasn’t sure I could trust him.

The motel was also the first time I got to see him outside of the night’s darkness. He was older than I expected; maybe in his forties, maybe early fifties. Bit overweight, balding a bit, looked just like a tired man who was getting old. Nothing like the image I’d had in my head for what a fanatical cultist should look like.

“What should I call you?” I said to him. “I’ve just been thinking of you as The Cultist, but I’m assuming you have a real name.”

“Dan.” See, even his name completely failed to match my expectations. I was almost wondering if I should have gone backed and picked up someone else. Someone who cackled madly and wrote on the walls in crayon.

Waved the gun at him, and pointed at the room’s bed. “Alright Dan. Nap time. Open up that path to the Dreamlands or whatever.”

Perhaps it was the stress from having me keeping a gun aimed on him the entire time, but it took him a while to actually fall asleep. Once he did… well, that’s when the fun started. The timelines around Dan freaked the fuck out, rapidly shaking and moving all over, then stretching away from the world into something that my mind could just barely see beyond….

I grabbed onto those timelines, and was pulled along them. KI was dropped off in a cloudy grey field, featureless save for a huge ebon staircase descending into the ground.

“You look the same!” I heard someone behind me say. Turned around, and saw an oddly familiar young man. “Usually people look different here from what they are in the real world, but you’re exactly the same. The only other I know like that is… Grendel….”

Then it hit me who the young man was. “Dan?”

He nodded. “Appearance here is determined by the mind. Though it’s more a subconscious matter, since you can’t actively change how you look-”

“Yeah yeah I get it. Now let’s get moving. I’m impatient and there’s stuff I want you to show me. If I remember what I read, down these stairs we’ll find Nasht and Kaman-Tha, the guardians of the Dreamlands?”

“Ah… I see you’ve read the Carter journals. Things in the Dreamlands are not quite the same anymore as what was described in that book.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see at the bottom of the stairs.”

Gun was out and aimed at him again. “Okay, I know how this is going enough that when the evil hostage starts making vague statements like that something is up. What’s at the bottom of the stairs?”

“The Grotesque Reverie.”

“… That’s a Fear. What’s a Fear doing here?”

“You’ll understand when we get inside. For now, just… follow close behind me. Don’t look or speak to anyone or anything except me until we’re in the Dreamlands proper.” Then he began walking down the stairs.

So then. The Grotesque. A Fear which exists in dreams, taking its victims while they sleep. I guess it makes sense that it would be hanging around the Dreamlands, but there hadn’t been any mention of any of the Fears in Randolph’s journal. I’d kinda assumed that maybe they were a safe place, like Miskatonic used to be.

I descended down the stairs after Dan. The steps clearly hadn’t been built with human legs in mind; each was enormous, forcing me to jump, not step, down each one. As we went further in, I began to hear a chaotic music, like something out of a carnival, only distorted and out of tune. Even further down, I saw the flickering lights of fires ahead. And on top of the music, I could hear cheers.

Seventy steps down, we reached a landing. And on that landing, spreading farther than my eyes could see, was a massive circus. There were red and white striped tents of every size and shape, from massive domes that looked larger than a city block to tiny things which should barely have been able to hold a single person, much less the crowds of shadowy figures I saw entering them. Between the tents were rows of twisted outdoor exhibits: I saw a man tear apart his throat while swallowing a sword, only to grab another; a lion tamer stick his head in a lions mouth, then the lion bit his head off; a contortionist twist their head completely around, accompanied by the sound of snapping bone.  Torches illuminated the festivities, giving everything a hellish orange-red hue.

“Stay close. Keep your eyes on me.” Dan started to walk through the circus, his eyes locked solidly on the ground. I kept close behind him, trying not to look away from his back.

It was hard to do, since so much around me was clamoring for my attention. There were smells and sounds unlike any I’d heard before; repulsive yet curious. I could only catch hints, glimpses in my peripheral vision, of the terrible things happening around me, and a part of me wanted to know more, wanted to look and see just what was causing those screams.

We were reaching the end of the circus when an elephant, with its skin turned inside out and its loose hanging organs trailing blood behind it, walked between me and Dan. When it passed, I couldn’t see Dan anymore. I looked around to see where he had gone, but all I saw was the circus, the tents seeming to come closer, pressing in from each direction. Laughter was added to the noise, and the figures I had glimpsed surrounded me, dancing and laughing. They were almost human, but their features were twisted, as if their skin was constantly melting off their bone. They danced in closer, until all I saw was their lopsided sneers.

I felt something pick me up and carry me along, and suddenly I was inside one of the tents, standing in the middle of a tightrope. The almost-human things were in the audience, still laughing and pointing at me. At the center of the tent, right beneath me, was a man dressed as the ringleader. He waved his baton and the crowd cheered; he pointed his baton at me and they booed, some throwing fruit. I tried dodging, but fell off the tightrope, only barely catching it with a hand before plummeting.

The crowd seemed to love the danger, so the ringleader waved his baton, and the tightrope rose higher into the air, until everyone below seemed like dots. I managed to grab on with my other hand. And then I started to inch along the rope. I don’t know why, but something in my head was telling me I had to reach the other side. Couldn’t think clearly, could only think that one thought, that I had to get to the end of the rope.

Didn’t manage to make it. Didn’t even manage to make it halfway. The rope suddenly began to move on its own, as if trying to shake me off. I barely held on, but then the rope changed. And instead of holding onto a tightrope, I was holding a snake.

Panicked and let go, which isn’t the best idea when you’re suspended hundreds of feet in the air. I fell, down and down, as the crowd cheered me on. Before I splatted on the floor, the ground opened up, creating a chasm of darkness underneath me, which I fell through, helplessly tumbling into the blackness.

Someone grabbed my arm and pulled me back, and suddenly I wasn’t falling through emptiness, but lying on cold ebon stone. Dan was beside me, having just let go of my arm. Somehow I was on the other end of the landing, with the circus behind me. And in front of me, the stairs resumed their descent.

“Well,” Dan said, “only 700 steps to go.”

The Dreamlands. Truly a fascinating place. A universe made entirely of thought, building itself on the collective subconscious of the human race. A place of power, where thought is reality. Even our old gods, for all their apathy and cruelty, understood the importance of maintaining a balance and stability within it.

But our reality is under new management now, isn’t it? And the new boss is certainly not the same as the old boss. No, the Fears have their own views on how the land of human subconsciousness should be handled.

You’ll see it soon. See the unforgivable things they have done to it.

I expect you may be filled with anger after witnessing it. But do not worry. They will receive their dues. Come the Revolution, the Fears shall receive their rightful punishments for their transgressions against our kingdom.

Sincerely,

Grendel

This binder….

This beautiful, beautiful binder….

I believe JACKPOT MOTHERFUCKERS is the appropriate response.

This thing has everything. Grendel has been building up dozens of cults across the U.S. dedicated to his old gods. And all their activity in the early 1980s has been carefully recorded in the binder. I have names. Addresses. Meeting times. Everything.

The transcripts of interrogations are particularly interesting. Jacob didn’t lie; the cultists are boasting about the rituals Grendel had them doing. Their confidence seems to stem from the claims that there’s “Nothing any of you can do to stop us from succeeding!” Gee, where have I heard that line before? I think it was from some government guy with a silly name who I last saw being ripped to pieces by the Slender Man.

Well let’s their confidence put that to the test.

Most of what they talk about is a place called the “Dreamlands,” which they claim is a realm partially constructed by the collective human subconscious. It was part of the old gods’ kingdom, prior to the Fears. And now the cultists are trying to reclaim the place, sending their members in as preliminary scouting.

That definitely sounds interesting. So I went back to Miskatonic (what little was left from after the fire,) and searched through the books they’d saved until I found one which talked about the Dreamlands. The journal of Randolph Carter, a man who seems to have spent many of his nights journeying through the Dreamlands. Looks like a promising avenue of research.

I-330

October 1, 1984 - Miskatonic University, Arkham Part 2

I’m going to try my best to describe what I felt when I crossed out of campus property. My description probably won’t come anywhere near the truth, but I’ll give it a shot.

To use a metaphor, imagine that the timelines inside Miskatonic were like, say, a Picasso painting. Looking at the whole you can see a picture, but it’s a chaotic mess of shapes, angles, and distorted figures. And then when I stepped off campus, without a single moment of transition, it was as though the timelines were a Van Gogh painting. The painting’s still pretty abstract when compared to reality, with its distorted angles and colors, but when put alongside the Picasso painting? It looks downright orderly.

My first reaction when I felt that change was an overwhelming urge to turn around and sprint back onto campus. Didn’t get the chance to; I had just turned around when a figure rose out from the ground. It wore a black cloak which covered its body, its hand held a black cane, and covering its face was a white, beaked mask. The Plague Doctor.

Oh, Running The Hell Away From Things. It’s been so long. Did you miss me? I didn’t miss you. Grabbed Sarah by the hand and took off down the street. I think I know how Future Me felt having to drag Lisa around everywhere. Yeah, you could just teleport yourself to safety, but you’ve got this normal person you need to keep safe, and suddenly you find yourself limited to traditional means of escape.

Thankfully, Sarah wasn’t as horribly out of shape as I used to be. And she’d read enough to realize that we were facing the embodiment of disease and therefore should be running as fast as possible.

We raced down the streets of Arkham, weaving between the people on the sidewalks. Looked back to see if it was following. Yeah, there it was, drifting along the ground after us, keeping pace no matter how fast we ran. No one but Sarah and I seemed able to see it, but as it passed by the pedestrians, they all began to cough violently, some throwing up, a few collapsing. Had to get away from people. Turned into the first alley was came to, and of course it was a dead end, with a chain fence blocking our path. I could make it over easy, but I doubt that Sarah would be fast enough. Cornered by the Plague Doctor. Not the best spot for us to be in.

Quick look around to see if there were any other ways out. There was a fire escape on one building, but it was too high to reach. Maybe if I teleported away, I could grab some explosives and then teleport back to the moment I’d left and with then I could… do something that’s right bombs don’t usually work on Fears okay next idea. It was continuing its slow drift toward us, so at that point I just decided, fuck common sense, and pulled out a pistol to try shooting it.

No effect at all. It suddenly lunged forward toward us, swinging its cane at me. Raised my hands to defend myself, but it wasn’t interested in me or Sarah. The cane hit the Necronomicon, knocking it out of my hands. I’d almost forgotten I was carrying it. The book hung in the air for a moment before landing behind the Plague Doctor. It began to reach for the book, but then there was a loud bang came from above. Looked up, and saw several men in black military uniforms along the roofs. More men were coming in to block the alley’s exit, carrying heavy weaponry aimed at the Doctor. It paused to examine the soldiers, which I used that as a chance to dive for the book.

Except another hand grabbed it before me. An inhumanly pale hand, and a black sleeve along its arm. My eyes followed that arm up… and up… and up… until I was looking at the Slender Man’s blank face.

Caught between the Plague Doctor and the Slender Man. Likely the only reason I’m still here to write this is because both seemed much more interested in the book than me. The Slender Man raised the Necronomicon into the air, and then the book burst into flames. And that’s all I remember, because the moment the flames started to consume the book I felt pain rip through my entire body, and I blacked out.

Woke up lying down in the same alley, with two of those black uniformed soldiers looking over me. As soon as they saw me open my eyes, both jumped to attention.

“Rick Coulson, senior Scoobies field agent, ma’am.” One said. “We apologize for interfering in your activities; had we known you were in the area, we would have awaited your orders before moving in.”

Um… okay. “Who… What’s going on?”

“Both paranormal entities disappeared shortly after you collapsed, ma’am. Not long after, a major fire broke out in the university. Based on its size and the speed of its spread, we expect that one of the entities to be involved. We’re providing resource assistance to the local fire brigades, but half the university’s already been destroyed. In addition, we’re quarantining and providing treatment to those infected by the Plague Doctor. Do you have any further orders?”

Asking me for orders? Seriously, what the hell was going on? “No, just keep doing… that stuff you’re doing.” I said. The soldiers nodded, and both prepared to leave, before I stopped them. “Wait! There was another girl with me! Is she alright?”

“Yes ma’am. She was extremely lucky; most wouldn’t survive being that close to the Doctor. We’re providing her treatment along with the rest of the victims. She’ll probably lose one of her legs due to infection, but all the diseases we’ve found in her are treatable, given enough time.”

Thank god. Don’t know how well I’d have taken her getting killed because of me getting her involved.

Just moment after I asked that, another soldier came forward and saluted me. He offered a binder toward me. “HQ sent this to us as soon as they heard you were here. Mr. Marchetti said to give this to you.”

I took the binder, and opened it. The first page was a handwritten letter addressed to me.

“Good to hear you’re still out there kicking ass, I-330. There’s been a lot of activity since your last visit. That Grendel guy you’ve had us following? Seems like he’s lost his edge at subtlety. We’ve managed to uncover a shit ton of information from his cultists we’ve captured in the recent raids. The crazies are practically lining up to brag about their plans to us. Everything we’ve gotten out of them is included in this binder.

Good luck. And give that Grendel asshole a good kick to the groin for me.

Jacob Marchetti”

Jacob Marchetti? Wasn’t he the blind guy I met when I was Lisa? The one who said he used to be head of a paranormal CIA branch called the Scoobies?

Okay, two things on my to-do list. Number one, read through this binder and get all this info it claims to have on Grendel. Number two, find out why the hell I’ve got CIA paramilitary people treating me like I’m their ranking superior.

I-330

October 1, 1984 - Miskatonic University, Arkham, Part 1

77

I remember saying how fortunate it was that Miskatonic was in flu season. It meant that I could monopolize these Peter’s, Benjamin’s, and Sarah’s time while they could tell their professors that they were home sick.

But while a few students out sick is flu season, half the student body of the entire university sick is something else. And then Peter and Benjamin had to go and suddenly become deathly ill.

Well something was up here. It was time for an investigation!

Just as I was preparing to leave for the hospital to see if I could find anything there, when I ran into Sarah. Literally ran into her. I had to catch all the books that went flying into the air after our collision.

She didn’t seem to mind. “I330Ifoundsomething!” Her words charged out without a single pause.

“Great. Can you talk while walking?” She nodded, so I grabbed the Necronomicon and I resumed traveling to the hospital.

“This whole time I’ve been wondering why there’s so many discrepancies between the Necronomicon and everything else we’ve looked into, I mean it’s supposed to be one of the great occult tomes but nothing in it matches up with anything else, so I started researching the history of the Necronomicon itself, and I found this picture of the original copy of the Necronomicon when it was first brought to our library.”

She opened one book to a page with a large picture on it. I glanced at it, and, “That isn’t the same Necronomicon.” It really wasn’t. The book in the picture was a regular, if old, book. Nothing like the imposing tome which had a cover that seemed made of darkness.

“And it gets even weirder! According to what I’ve read, the British Museum, the National Library of France, Harvard, and the University of Buenos Aires all supposedly once had copies of the Necronomicon, but when I got into contact with them I was told that they had never had any book by that name.”

“Yeah that’s definitely weird. But everything about this book is weird; we need something to get through the weirdness.”

“I know I know, which is why I kept digging for stuff on the book, and I found this.” She fumbled through her stack of books until she pulled out a small journal. “This is the journal of Henry Armitage, head librarian for Orne during the 1920s and 30s. He’s the only librarian who mentioned the Necronomicon in his personal writings. It’s… also weird, and there’s a lot of context in here that we’re missing, but it’s more than we’ve found elsewhere. Here.” She opened the journal to an entry and handed it over to me.

The writing on the page was shaky, but still readable. Several coffee stains across it, more than a single cup would make.

“For many years I have recorded all manner of strange and occult within these pages, but never before have I found myself amidst such impossible occurrences. The suspicions which I have had for the past several days have proven themselves right: history itself is changing. Before my very naked eyes, I have born witness to the pages of books altering themselves as I read them, or pictures changing into new images in merely the time it takes for me to blink. And yet when I raise the issue of these alterations to my colleagues, I appear to be alone in my observance. None but I remember the original state of the world; for all others, this new history is the only which they claim to have known. It is as if I have fallen into a different world, appearing similar, and yet completely different.

It is only through the whisperings of the dark Pharaoh that I have retained my sanity. When I first heard his blasphemous voice echoing through my dreams, I was gripped by maddening terror. Yet strange as it sounds, the monstrous Pharaoh has become my last bastion of sanity in this new world. For he approached me not with torment, but with an offer.

Is a partnership of mutual benefit even possible with such a being? I have heard much of the Crawling Chaos’s manipulations, but I cannot help but feel that he is being forthright in his dealings this time. For if what he has whispered has even the scantest resemblance to truth, then I would gladly make any Faustian deal necessary to try and delay what is to come. The Pharaoh has shown me the new gods which have come to claim our world, and learning of them has filled me with terror beyond all imagining. I once confronted the spawn of Yog Sothoth himself, and yet the fear I felt then is nothing compared to the dread these new gods bring me. In the history I remember, we had a chance to at the very least delay our extinction, and when all else failed, we could find escape in the peace of death. In this new history, there is no escape. We cannot delay these gods. We cannot thwart their plans. Even oblivion can no longer protect us, for now death is only the beginning to an eternity of torture.

Already one of these gods has turned its attention to me. I can hear it hunting me whenever I close my eyes and dreams, the flap of its wings echoing through the corners of my mind every night. Only the protection of the Pharaoh has kept the thing at bay, and his influence is fast waning. We must act with haste if we are to save at least a small fragment of our world.

For that is precisely what we intend to do: create an island of the old world amidst this storm of change. The Pharaoh will merge a part of himself with the Necronomicon, and act as the key for the barrier which will keep Miskatonic University protected from this new world. While we cannot undo the changes already wrought, at least we may halt the spread of its influence.

It is clear that the Pharaoh is only doing this for the sake of self preservation. He has become prey for these godlike hunters, and even with all his power he cannot elude them long. A small fragment of himself trapped within a book is not much, but it may be the only way left to him to preserve himself. And here our interests align, for to keep this fragment safe, he must also keep the university around him safe.

The Pharaoh has whispered to me knowledge of the ritual needed to fuse him with the book. We shall perform it tonight, hopefully in time to prevent any further damage from occurring. This will likely be my last entry here, for once the ritual is performed, I will no longer be under the Pharaoh’s personal protection, and there will no longer be anything preventing the Dream God from taking me. But while my reward may be unending torment, at least I will have done what I could to protect my university. And so, this is my final farewell.”

We’d walked in silence as I had read. That was… well, that was a helluva lot of stuff coming from a few pages in an old journal.

“Well?” Sarah said.

“Well. You were definitely right about finding something.”

“Do you know what it means?”

“Not all of it. You were right about missing context. But I can make some guesses. We need a new plan. What we’re going to do is-”

She never got to hear my brilliant new plan, because as I was talking we stepped off campus property. And that’s when all hell broke loose.

I-330