Cold. It’s so very cold. And white. There’s nothing but white everywhere, as far as the eye can see, a vast expanse of blinding white snow. A cold wind blows through Edward’s very core. How is he here? The buzzing that has been building in his head has now reached a deafening pitch. It is the only sound Edward hears. In the distance, a lone figure now stands. From this far off he sees nothing but the barest line of shadow, like a single drawn line of ink on a blank piece of white paper.
FLASH!
One of the alien symbols from his father’s journal flashes in the white and suddenly the shadow is right before him. It is his father, Jake Sanders. Edward tries to speak, but only that incessant buzzing comes out. Jake opens his mouth to speak.
FLASH!
Another of the strange fractals flashes and father and son now stand before a massive mountain range. The buzzing is replaced by what sounds to Edward like millions of cicadas screaming in chorus. Milling around nearby stand massive 6 foot penguins just staring blankly ahead. Jake approaches one as his form begins to shift.
FLASH!
A third symbol and Jake’s form is no longer human. It is horrifying and undefinable and already has one of the penguins halfway in its mammoth mouth chewing voraciously.
FLASH!
A fourth strange fractal pattern and Edward finds himself high above the mountain range just hanging in the air. Jake, now returned to his human form, hovers next to him and points at a spot just on the other side of the range. At first it appears to be dense shadow, until it begins to move. Edward thinks it is getting larger, but then he realizes that he is getting closer. He is falling forward at a rapid rate. The shambling darkness grows larger and larger until that is all there is.
Now in total darkness, Edward feels a sudden lack of breath in his lungs. He is suffocating in the inky black and there is no escape. As panic begins to overtake him, he feels his mind starting to go.
FLASH! A symbol appears in the darkness. FLASH! Another. FLASH! And another. FLASH! FLASH! Coming faster now. FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! The darkness continues filling with strange, arcane symbols in every direction, those curious unexplainable patterns from Jake Sanders’ journal. FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH!
“Flash! Ah-ah...” Edward’s phone blasts the sound of Freddie Mercury’s voice as his alarm song blares. He wakes in a cold sweat gasping for breath, the last of those symbols still burned into his retina, his racing heartbeat beginning to return to normal as he lays back down and his breathing slowly returns to normal. Unnoticed, his left hand taps out an odd series of pips on his thigh.
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Early the next morning, earlier than he would have liked after a restless night of reading and nightmares, Edward finds himself outside the Anthropology department offices waiting for Toma Kent, head of the department and the femme presenting nonbinary professor he had been working under as a teaching assistant for the past year and a half. He hopes they might be able to provide some answers, especially after being named in his father’s letter. He knows that Jake had worked with Toma in the past, and clearly before they identified as nonbinary considering the corrected mistakes in his letter, but why would he specifically tell Edward to come to them?
After an indeterminate amount of time, and fading in and out of consciousness and back into that realm of dreams where inhuman voices whisper to him and bizarre, indecipherable fractal symbols flash across his vision, he finds himself being jostled awake by Professor Kent. They kneel before him in their full skirt, boots tucked under, and gently place their other hand on his face to check on him. “Edward? Everything alright? You were growling.”
Slightly mumbly and confused in his half sleep he responds, “What? No,” he sighs. “Nothing is alright. Do you have a few minutes before your first class? I need to show you something.”
They stand while glancing at their watch and look down at Edward with concern. “Of course. Come inside.” They reach a hand out to help him up off the floor before pulling their keys out of the large messenger bag on their shoulder and unlocking the door to the department offices.
Edward, now standing, takes a moment to gather himself. He stretches his neck to the left, to the right, then shakes it to fully wake up. As he is stretching his midsection, he glances around and catches what he thinks might be a familiar, suspicious pair of faces huddled at the far corner of the hall as he picks up his bag and steps inside behind the professor.
Once in Kent’s office, the two sit on either side of their desk. There is a familiarity to this as both have often been in these same positions many times previously while working together, Edward grading papers while the professor plans out their next lecture. Toma can see immediately that something is very wrong with their assistant. He looks like he hasn’t slept for days and it appears that he has picked up some form of physical tick around the head. He is flinching as if a fly is buzzing around his head and itching his arms like something is crawling under his skin. The scratch marks are visible, whitish chalk lines across his dark skin. If they didn’t know him any better, they would swear he was in withdrawal from some kind of hardcore drug. Bug again, they know their assistant better than that.
After taking a moment to collect himself, pulling the thumb he’s been chewing on absentmindedly from his mouth, Edward reaches into his bag and pulls out his father’s journal. Some of the loose pages threaten to spill back into the bag and he has to cup one hand under it to keep them in place. He passes it carefully to Kent and asks, “Can you make head or tails of this, Professor?” He turns to a page filled with those curious markings that are now seared into his brain and appear on the back of his eyelids whenever he blinks. “My father thought you might recognize some of them.” As they begin to examine them, he holds his hand over the page and cautions, “Be careful. They appear to be... possessing.”
They move the book closer to their side of the desk and glance over the open page before them. Their eyebrows furrow in concern and possible recognition. They turn the page and look through a good amount of the journal before asking, “Where did you say this journal came from?”
“It was my father’s.”
“I see. I’m sorry I had to miss the memorial. As you know, I was out of town at a teaching conference. But, wait... how did you get this if it was with him when he went missing in Antarctica!?”
“He managed to get it to someone he knew at McMurdo Station, apparently. Sent it home to get it away from the people he was working for.”
“Who was he working for?” she queries.
“Something called the American Environmental Society. I don’t think he was working with them willingly.”
She leans back and thinks. “That would explain some things about the sudden disappearance and lack of contact.”
Edward nods in agreement. He gestures to the open journal page and tries to speak, but an odd croak is all that comes out instead. He clears his throat and tries again. “Doooo... *ahem* do you have any idea what that odd writing in the journal is? It looks as if it was copied from something very old, but I’ve never seen anything like it before.” He was playing a little coy, thinking about his father’s final words in his letter about trust he adds, “Why would my father tell me to ask you about all this?”
Toma Kent takes their glasses off and considers their assistant for a moment. They sigh deeply as if making a difficult decision and lean forward placing their elbows on their desk and looking Edward directly in the eye. “Unfortunately, I have. Are you familiar with Miskatonic University?”
Edward thinks for a moment, then nods. “Yes. My father mentioned it in the journal. Something about an earlier expedition to the spot he was taken. And I could swear I’ve seen it mentioned somewhere else. It’s up in New England, right?” After saying this, his whole body tenses up as every muscle in his body seizes at once. The image of a book under glass with one of the symbols from his visions on the cover flashes into his mind.
Toma looks at him with concern and worry until he relaxes, then nods “Yes. I spent a few years of undergrad studying there.” They point to a spot on the wall behind them where a diploma from Miskatonic sits in a gilded frame with their name on it.
He nods, feeling a little stupid. “Right,” he sighs. “Ivy league?”
They chuckle softly. “Definitely not.”
Edward shakes his head to clear it. “Okay, but what does that have to do with my father and these weird symbols?”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
The professor leans further forward and places a hand on Jake Sanders’ journal. “Edward, some of the strange symbols in this journal are exactly like those in a prized text of absolute evil housed in the Miskatonic library currently under more protective glass than the Declaration of Independence after multiple attempts to steal it. From everything I saw in my time up there, anyone who would have anything to do with that book or anything like it cannot be working for the good of mankind.”
Again, the book flashes unprompted into his head. A look of confusion and concern grows on Edward’s face as he listens. “Okay... so a few of the symbols are the same, but what were any of these groups looking for exactly?”
Toma sits back in their chair, picks up their glasses and a cleaning cloth, and begins to wipe them as they speak. They clear their throat. “Almodst a hundred years ago, a group of scientists from Miskatonic made a discovery in the Antarctic which cost many their lives and many more their sanity. The primary account of this trip is required reading for students now and includes a warning from one of the few survivors, Dyer, to abandon any future expeditions into the area. Some took his words to heart, while others thought him a fool and a crank. One thing is for sure, though, there are passages that describe the same horrible things found on that trip that are written of in that horrible book at Miskatonic and are repeated here in your father’s journal. They could be what drove Dyer’s fellow survivor, Danforth, insane.”
Edward slowly sits back in his chair exasperated and blows out a breath. “So, what you’re saying is that my father and his crew found the same thing those men found a hundred years ago and went mad?”
Professor Kent puts their glasses back down on their desk, leans to one side, and pinches the bridge of their nose between their fingers. “What I’m saying, Edward, is that the people who pulled him into this extremely dangerous situation are likely already incredibly insane.” They point to Jake’s journal and continues, “They specifically went looking for that same horrible mountain range the men from Miskatonic stumbled onto all those years ago.”
Their assistant’s confusion begins to turn to anger as he shakes his head and says, “So my father died for the whim of some psycho looking for some kind of ancient lost alien city at the bottom of the world? They drove him mad for their own insane purposes?”
They cup their chin with their hand as they think. “Jake being driven mad might have been an unfortunate side effect of entering the mountain tunnels. But these are the same people who contacted you about the journal?” They put their hand almost protectively over Jake’s journal.
“Yeah. The AES. The American Environmental Society, led by a man named Wwwww *grr* Whateley.” Edward’s eyes go wide as he realizes what he just did and clears his throat again while stretching out his neck.
At the mention of the name Whateley, Toma Kent’s right eyebrow twitches slightly in recognition, but Edward fails to notice this while dealing with his loss of vocal control and Kent becomes immediately more concerned with what has been happening to their assistant while the two speak.
They clear their throat as well and lunge across the desk, grabbing Edward’s hand in desperation and agitation. “How much of this journal did you read, Edward?”
“I read through most of it last night. Why?”
“It’s starting to affect you, You’ve noticed, right?”
Edward tries to deny it, but then he notices that his hand is fighting to get free of Professor Kent’s and tapping out some asynchronous rhythm completely out of his control. He pulls the hand away, now in control, and shakes it to get rid of whatever has taken a brief hold. “I’m sure it’s fine,” he says more for himself than anything. “What can I do about it now, anyway?”
“Burn that,” the professor says pointing at his father’s journal, “and stay as far away from Whateley and this environmental group as you can.”
“So you don’t think their just simple hippy conservationists either, do you?”
Kent gives him a withering look. “Why would a bunch of hippies essentially kidnap an archaeologist and take him to Antarctica?”
Edward sighs and nods. “Okay. Sound point.” He leans back and begins to play with a random twist of his hair, an affectation from high school that usually meant he was thinking deeply. “So, instead of trying to save the world... they’re, what? Trying to destroy it?”
Kent looks down at the journal, then back at Edward and exhales sharply while leaning back. “I think in their own twisted way, they believe they are saving the world. If these people are who I think they are, or are connected, they’ve been trying to unlock the terrible secrets of that text since its discovery.”
Edward continues to play with his twists as he contemplates.
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Hours later, Edward’s location has changed but his position is the same, still pulling a twist of hair as he thinks. The Hawk’s Nest Student Center is a beehive of activity at this time of day. The transition between morning and afternoon classes left most students and a few teachers free to simply find a way to kill time or grab a bite to eat. Edward has been using this time to give his friends the lowdown on everything currently happening so he can ask their opinions of his situation. That ended about ten minutes ago, and he has adopted his deep thought pose while they fully digest everything.
Gathered are Andrea, who while already aware of the first part of her friend’s curious adventure, is very worried about what Edward now tells her has happened since she left him last night. Next to her sits Dilworth K. Smith, a perpetual student a few years old than the rest of the assembled. He is large, approaching 300 pounds or so, with short dark hair, a beard, and pasty skin with a reddish undertone. He breathes heavily as he thinks about everything said so far. And finally, there is Chris Warren, a year or two older than Edward with shaggy brown hair and a large hookish nose that is currently buried into his phone. The muffled sounds of some sporting event playing. It is unclear if he is even listening to his friend’s dilemma.
Dilworth adjusts in his chair and pulls the tail of his brown plaid open button down shirt out from under him and asks, “So, what are you going to do?”
After another prolonged silence from him, Andrea places a gentle hand on Edward’s arm to get his attention. As she does, she notices how his hand is twitching uncontrollably. “Ed?”
“Hmm?” He shakes himself out of his stupor and looks down at his hand, which stops twitching, then looks around before saying, “I don’t know yet.”
Andrea pulls her hand away as if it has been burned. “Don’t know!?” she screams. She glances around and slightly lowers her voice. “Why would you even stop to think about it? Burn the book and forget it just like Professor Kent said.”
He focuses on Andrea. “It’s not that simple Whateley knows what happened to my father, and I want answers. I need answers. I’m not ready to just forget about it.” He looks down at his left hand and flexes it, cracking a few joints as he does. “Besides, I don’t know if that would stop anything.”
As his attention is on his left hand, both Andrea and Dilworth notice as his right hand counts out each word he says. Edward doesn’t seem to notice that he is doing this. Andrea and Dilworth share a worried look.
At this point, Chris takes a chance to glance away from his phone and the latest game he has put money on to add, “Yeah. I say you figure out exactly what that book says and blow the whistle on this whole thing. Or ask this Whateley guy for a buttload of money, then burn it anyway.”
Andrea and Dilworth look at Chris incredulously, then turn to one another and shake their heads as they realize he hasn’t heard a word Edward just said. Edward also shakes his head, but it lasts a little longer than normal or natural, then looks at Chris frustratedly. “Also not an option. Professor Kent seems to think this whole thing is connected to something bigger and even more dangerous.”
“More dangerous?” Andrea asks confusedly, wondering how it could possibly be more dangerous than it already is.
Dilworth nervously chuckles a bit and whistles a spooky tune. “They’re coming to get you, Barbara.”
Chris picks up on this and points behind Edward without looking up adding, “Look, there comes one of them now!”
Edward panics and whips his head around. Andrea shoots them both a hard look. “This isn’t a joke, you guys.”
Dilworth puts his hands up in surrender and shrugs his shoulders, causing his neck to disappear almost completely. “I understand that, but I deal with anxious situations with humor. If I didn’t, I’d be long dead from stress. I have a bad feeling about all this. I say burn the book or put it somewhere this Whateley guy will never find it.”
Edward lets his friend’s words sink in, then finally says, “Alright. I’ll do it when I get home tonight after class.” he glances around nervously. His neck twitches as he turns back to the group.
Chris nods and glances up again. “Good idea. Be done with it.” He then turns back to his very important, all encompassing game and yells, “C’mon you bums! Run out the clock!” He shakes his phone in agitation.
At the mention of a clock, Edward looks at his phone and stands up abruptly. “Shit. I have to get to class! I’ll see y’all later?” He grabs his bag and hikes it up onto his shoulder.
Without looking away from his phone, face contorted in anger, Chris says, “See you around, Ed.”
“Later on, man.” Dilworth adds with a wave and a slight look of concern on his face.
Andrea shares Dilworth’s look of concern and asks, “I’ll see you tonight, yeah?”
Edward nods to her, his head continuing longer than he intends, turns, and leaves the Hawk’s Nest.
Once outside, he begins to make his way towards his next class, which involves crossing a parking lot. Suddenly, a dark van pulls up in front of him. The side panel flies open and several men jump out to grab Edward. One of the men forces what seems like a pillow case or a sack over his head. The last thing he sees before the darkness is the face of one of the men he recognized earlier outside Professor Kent’s office. Multiple hands grab hold of him and force him into the van, tossing him roughly to the floor. He hears the van door swish shut behind him.
Nearby, a young student also walking to class sees all this happen and starts recording a video on his phone the moment he hears the tires squeal when the van pulls up thinking he might catch a horrible accident. What he first assumes might turn into a hit and run now appears to be a fraternity prank or hazing ritual. As soon as the van is out of sight, he turns the phone’s camera to himself and says, “Fuckin’ frat boys, am I right?” while shaking his head in disbelief.
This video will go viral. Thousands of people will see it, but it will take about a month before anyone realizes what has actually been captured this day is the last verifiable visual appearance of Edward Sanders.