Darkness.
There has been little conversation in the van since Edward was grabbed and tossed inside. The first thing the men did was toss that dirty sack over his head and tie his hands behind him, so he is trying to gauge where they are by relying on his sense of hearing. The men who grabbed him occasionally whisper to one another as they travel.
The van moves quickly, weaving in and out of evening traffic. Based on the way Edward feels himself being tossed back and forth and thrust forward or backwards, he thinks they may be driving down Market Street towards downtown. He hears shuffling and what sounds to him like a bag being unzipped and emptied.
“Fucker bit me,” one of the men grumbles as what Edward can only assume are his school things hit the floor. Another shushes him.
“Goddamn right I did,” Edward thinks. “And I’d do a hell of a lot worse than that if you give me an opening.”
Eventually, the van comes to a stop after making a short, sharp turn and Edward hears doors opening. He is grabbed and roughly pulled from the van floor. The men surround him closely and begin forcing him along a gravel lot. The sounds around him are muted by a loud fan, likely an industrial air conditioning unit hidden behind whatever building they are near. Edward thinks it is probably a back alley or one of the access lots for the many downtown buildings. He’s pretty sure he knows where they’re taking him.
After a moment of being shoved forward over uneven ground, a door opens and the sound changes. It feels like they are now inside a building. Edward trips a bit at the transition while he is manhandled through a maze of hallways and doors before finally one last door is opened and the men push him forward hard. He stumbles into the room, tumbles to the floor, and slams hard into what feels very much like a pair of wooden chair legs. Whatever it is falls behind him.
In the seeming silence of this room, he pulls himself up into a seated position with his hands still tied behind his back as a familiar voice says, “Welcome back, Mr. Sanders.”
Edwards feels one of Jacob Whateley’s bony hands reach out and rip the sack from his head. A few twists are caught in his captors grasp and get yanked along with it. The young college student growls in pain with his eyes closed. After composing himself, he opens his eyes. They take some to to adjust and focus in the still dim light of Whateley’s office.
“Jacob, old bean. I thought I smelled patchouli,” he sneers up at his tormentor.
Whateley smirks and thrusts his open hand into Edward’s face. “The journal, Mr. Sanders!”
Edward sighs and ignores Whateley’s hand a he leans back on the fallen office chair as comfortably as he can with his hands tied behind his back. He tries to glance up at the man he despises, but the motion causes a brief bout of vertigo and a sudden spike of pain hits his brain. he grimaces and says, “I know what you want it for. I’ve bu... burned it.”
Whateley exhales in exasperation. “I truly hope, for your sake, that you are lying to me, Mr. Sanders.” He kneels over Edward and picks up the chair behind the young man, righting it with the seat facing forward. He motions for Edward’s arm.
Edward simply shrugs and grins smugly. “Ask your men. they already searched me in the van. I’m clean.” He lifts his arm as best he can away from his body. Whateley grabs it and pulls Edward up into the chair. It is a rough exchange, but Edward is glad to be off the floor.
Jacob Whateley puts his face right in front of Edward’s. The man’s breath is rancid. Edward can’t quite place the smell, but it is one of mold and decay... like cat food that’s been left out too long. “You do realize what you’ve done, don’t you?”
“Kept you and your little cult from ending the world by destroying whatever those crazy symbols my dad found for you before he managed to get away.” Edward involuntarily twitches as he mentions the symbols, several flash rapidly across his vision. He tries desperately to blink them away.
Whateley notices this and grins, raising an eyebrow. “So... you’ve read it?”
Edward loses a bit of the bravado he’s been putting on to seem strong when he sees that grin. He shrugs, feeling the pull of his bound hands behind him. “Yeah, I read it. So what?”
“That depends. How have you been dreaming?”
“Fiiiiiiiiiiiine,” Edward groans deeply in a lower pitch than he thought himself cable of, an almost animalistic bellowing. He begins to twitch inadvertently again, muscles spasming. he growls through it and forces it all to stop. Sweat has started to bead on his forehead.
Whateley just chuckles. “For a century I’ve searched for the Elder Things written of in the book of Alhazred. The few remaining fools from that first Miskatonic expedition were too mad by the time I questioned them to tell me anything of value. I tried to get Danforth to tell me what he saw. He refused and spouted a bunch of disconnected nonsense. It was all various references from the book, yes, but useless to me. Now, thanks to your father, I’m so close to my dream.” His look sours. “Of course, he had to learn the truth and run off with his journal and the knowledge I so desperately need.”
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Edward looks at Whateley in confusion. “A century? How is that even possible? You’re practically the same age as my dad.”
Whateley’s dark smile returns. He casually walks over to the shelf Edward looked over the first time he was in this office. He reaches out and grabs one of the specimen jars, shaking it as he turns back towards Edward. The thing in the jar begins to shift. Edward has to keep his eyes from popping out of his head as it wiggles independently of Whateley’s manipulations of the jar. The pale man chuckles. “Yes. I do look extremely good for my age. What would you say if I told you I was over 150 years old?” He gently places the specimen jar with its wiggling resident back on the shelf.
Edward shuffles in his seat trying to find a comfortable position, his hands beginning to tingle from the tightness of his bonds. “I’d say that you were overdue for a change of screws. Yours are obviously all loose.”
“We’ll just see how crazy you think I sound in a minute.” He looks just over Edward’s head. “Spencer, if you wouldn’t mind?”
Edward glances to his left where Whateley is looking and sees one of his kidnappers standing there brandishing a blackjack. “Ah shit. Not again.”
Spencer grins malevolently down at him with nicotine-stained teeth before conking him on the head and knocking him cold.
Darkness returns.
----------------------------------------
Edward awakes in a dank, dark room. Water is dripping somewhere, and there is a low buzzing and chittering all around him. The buzzing reminds him of the scream of the cicadas in the summer, but it isn’t anywhere near as loud, and it’s winter. He strains his eyes to see anything in the dark, noticing that the symbols from his dad’s journal seem to be constantly moving across his vision like eye floaters on a bright, sunshiny day.
The squeal of audio feedback cuts through the air as an old tinny speaker springs to life overhead and Jacob Whateley speaks. “Mr. Sanders, I want to convince you that what we are doing is right. I would rather have you on our side than against us, after all. The things your father has helped us learn are absolutely incredible, even if he and that fool Dyer were too weak to stomach it.”
A skittering comes from somewhere off to his left and the insect chittering gets louder. There is also a strange musical piping that sounds to Edward a little like... “tequila?” Edward’s mind begins to flash to the bizarre things in his dream last night and his arm begins to spasm violently. This is when he first realizes that his hands are no longer bound.
The speaker squelches as Whateley continues his rant. “We believe that life on this planet began from the experiments of the Elder Things, alien beings from another star that came to Earth to rule it as gods. They deserve our praise. Our worship. Our subservience.”
Something large skitters past Edward, just brushing his leg as it goes. he shudders in revulsion as a deep, primal panic begins to set in.
“The things we have found have taught us so very much. The most important of which, and my primary goal in staging this expedition in the first place, was something that according to Dyer and Danforth even terrified the Elder Things. Imagine that. Somewhere beyond their mountain home exists an even more terrifying mountain range that houses some horrible mind-bending evil that scares even beings from another planet who once flew through space unaided by spacecraft. What could that horror be, I wonder? Well, I plan to find out. That’s what your father found that scared him so much. And now, you’ll help me finish what he started.
“I know you read your father’s journal. I could read the symbols’ effects on you as soon as you were tossed into my office. It will only get worse, I assure you. But, if you help us recover the missing parts of his research, find the secret of that horrible further range, we might be able to keep you from going completely, irretrievably mad and turning into a mass of writhing flesh. Your father might not be dead, but he probably wishes he was. Of course, he didn’t manage to hide everything he discovered from us. Before he made his escape, he found something truly remarkable, a creation of those scientifically superior Elder Things from eons ago. Those remarkable beings designed a thing that can be... anything. There are some that believe these creatures are the origins of all life on Earth. Some believe that something in our DNA can be unlocked to allow us to return to this primal, malleable form.”
Edward begins sweating profusely. As Whateley’s ravings reach a fever pitch, the skittering and chittering get louder, closer. That musical piping that still sounds like “tequila” gets a little clearer in the din. Flashes of strange visions assault his mind as Whateley’s words bring up things Edward read in that damn journal or witnessed in his terrible dream.
“I’m sure you remember my secretary, Miss Goff. Her name is a bit of an in-joke for us here at the AES. We named her Sha Goff, a name similar to what her kind is called in Alhazred’s book. Like her predecessors, she serves us and aids our research by allowing us to observe her as she learns more about us. It’s symbiotic. She allows us to test her abilities and see exactly what she and others of her kind are capable of. Allow me to introduce you to your father’s greatest discovery.”
Light fills the room as a flood light blazes to life. Edward shields his eyes and those arcane floaters burn brightly behind his eyelids. After rubbing them for a moment, he finally opens his eyes. For a moment he swears he sees a writhing, shifting mass of bubbling plastic, but that immediately coalesces to reveal the secretary he admired just yesterday. Now that he gets a really good look at her in this bright, blinding light, he can see that she is not quite as human as she seemed to him before. Her eyes are reptilian slits, the greenish tint spilling over the pupils and making the rest look yellowish. The left eye appears to have two pupils floating within. Her mouth is just little too wide to be considered normal and is filled with sharp, jagged teeth. Her gait is... off, seeming almost ape like. Her arms are long and thinner than they should be, and one leg is bent slightly outward for being just a bit longer than the other. He is reminded of something from the mind of Junji Ito.
Taking in this disturbing visage, Edward’s head begins to shudder and shake as his dream is made flesh before him. He feels something hot on his upper lip as his nose begins to bleed. For the first time, the secretary abomination speaks. It is the musical piping that Edward has been hearing. He realizes now that it is not “tequila,” but more “Te-ke-li-li.” “Teke-li-li! Tekeli-li!” Miss Goff’s form begins to shift into flowing liquid plastic just like the abominations in his head and he screams almost uncontrollably as his brain tries to process Miss Goff’s true form.
In the comfort of his office, Jacob Whateley grins as Edward Sanders’ screams pour through the small speaker box on his desk mixed with Miss Goff’s cries of “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!” He enjoys it for a moment before switching off the sound to the basement and leans back in his chair contentedly.