My first thought was that I had been discovered, and the police had arrived to arrest me. My immediate instinct was to hide, or flee, or destroy all evidence, but I knew at once that these efforts would prove futile. My crimes were obvious, and if the authorities had arrived now in the dead of night, then they had already no doubt gathered concrete and damning evidence against me.

I took a deep breath and steeled myself, deciding to surrender with some small vestige of my dignity intact. I moved quickly to the front door with the intention of a full confession. I would answer all their questions, deny nothing, and allow myself to be clasped in irons and taken away. This, I decided, was to be my end.

I almost felt a sense of relief, as I moved towards the hallway, and my only regret was that I could not test my vile concoction before my surrender.

But when I came to the door, there came a second bang, then a crash, as if a body was being flung against the frame, and then the door burst from its hinges, and fell clattering upon the floor, and a half dozen men spilled violently into the entrance hall.

They were not the police.

Intruders! The baleful men bore masks that hid their faces, and wore loose fitting muslin robes that covered them from head to toe, leaving no part uncovered or modicum of flesh revealed, so of their forms I could not say if they were men or women, or even human at all.

The masked men moved with an unusual gait, as if they were constantly re-balancing themselves, and their hideous masks – pale, carved from bone, bearing strange and meticulously detailed arabesque patterns, filled me with a stark, unknown terror.

The group was an unseemly sort, with clear violent intention and capabilities, and finding myself far outnumbered, I beat a hasty retreat back into my study to find a weapon with which I might defend myself against the malicious mob.

I scrambled to my small laboratory, and threw open the cabinetry doors, the masked intruders close on my heel. I hoped to find a beaker of acid I might fling in their direction, or a sharp tool, but with precious few seconds, I only managed to locate a small, thin scalpel before they were upon me.

One of the masked men placed a roughly bandaged hand on my shoulder with such force that I loosed a sharp cry, and my flesh was instantly bruised. He wrestled the scalpel from my grip with an inhuman strength, but not before I gave him a mean swipe across the chest with the blade.

The cut man did not bleed, or even seem the least perturbed by the attack, or of the long, cruel looking cut in the fabric left behind in the scalpel’s wake, and I wondered if he wore a thick leather armament beneath his robes.

In an instant, my arms where wrenched firmly behind my back, and when I tried to squirm free, pressure was applied to my already wounded shoulder, and I resigned myself without further struggle to becoming their prisoner.

I had just taken note of an unusual odour, akin to some foreign perfume or fragrance, not dissimilar to some of the herbs and exotic medicines I had acquired from the textile merchant, when three more figures entered the room.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Unlike the half dozen individuals already present, these three did not wear masks. Instead, their faces were intricately tattooed with bizarre and outlandish iconography. The woman, who appeared to be their leader, was the most frightful of all, and I shuddered as I noted several occult symbols inked on her face and fingers, whose obscene meanings I had previously decoded in the Necronomicon.

She also had a large number of strange piercings, fitted with a precious, alien stone or metal I could not readily identify. Her dress was neat yet extravagant, composed of rich fabrics in subdued hues, and rife with emblems and tokens that indicated her station and position.

I immediately deduced that the woman was some sort of Priestess, and envoy, representing whatever cruel authority or occultic church she hailed from, and the two men who flanked her sides were likewise clergymen and her grim assistants, for although they bore similar raiment, theirs were of a much less ornamental variety.

Given the vast difference in dress between the trio and the others, I also concluded that the masked men were either their servants or slaves. And unlike the slaves, who walked clumsily or weakly, these three strode about my laboratory with a unique and knowing confidence.

The clergy began to rifle through my belongings, taking special interest in my chemical reagents, materials and notes. Upon discovering the three teas of tongue, the Priestess was called, and she inspected my work with a queer and particular curiosity.

She seemed to know what she was looking for, and she examined the powder carefully, and withdrew from her dress several curiously shaped and inscrutable instruments whose function I could not discern. She proceeded to take a sample from all three container, and performed several small experiments upon each with her mysterious tools.

Then, seemingly satisfied, she signalled to the slaves, and two of them left the room for a moment, only to promptly return with a heavy wooden crate, into which they, and the rest of the masked slaves, began packing the contents of my laboratory. Special care was given to my tea, so as not to damage or spill a single grain of the precious powder. Even the small samples taken for testing were dutifully returned to their original containers.

Thinking they had come to murder me and take my work for themselves, I seized a moment’s distraction to throw the bulk of my notes into the fireplace – an action that pains me still, for the papers represented months of work – but this roused little reaction from the assemblage, and I deduced that they were not here for a translation of the Necronomicon, but rather had come for me.

As the masked slaves worked to pack away the contents of my laboratory into their crate, the Priestess drifted towards my library and amused herself with a curt perusal of Dr. Eliza Hugo’s collection. She worked quickly, thumbing her way over book and tome in a manner that betrayed her familiarity with the bulk of the content.

From the shelves she selected a dozen odd books, seemingly at random, including The Narmada Pentha and The Romance of Chantey, a frivolous drama popular among the sorority sisters at Miskatonic University during the time of my studies there. These volumes were added to the material to be packed away for transport, although the logic behind her selections was a complete mystery to me.

Finally, she tore a strip of muslin from one of the masked men’s robes, and wrapped the dread Necronomicon and its taut leather cover carefully in the cloth, which she then placed innocuously back on my bookcase.

I surmised they had access to far better copies of the tome than the aged text which the late Dr. Hugo had acquired. It then occurred to me that the copy I had in my possession was possibly only a Sumerian translation of the original, and that the origin of the black book might be these invaders themselves.

Meanwhile, the masked men had finished their task, and when the Priestess motioned to her clergymen, the slaves picked up the crate and I was led outside.