"Did you order enough food?" Jackson asked, kicking the door shut after the delivery driver had left, his hands loaded down with plastic bags holding brown paper ones.

He could hear Misty in the kitchen, getting plates and tableware. "You say that, but you underestimate how much fried rice I can stuff in me!" She shouted to him. Jackson looked down to Shoggoth, who had helped him answer the door. The dog seemed to roll her eyes and then trotted into the kitchen, fluffy tail swaying back and forth.

Jackson followed and set the bags down on the large kitchen dining table, a solid dark wood piece that looked custom made and very antique. The entire house was a strange combination of historical elements, a collection of eclectic antiques, juxtaposed with modern appliances and amenities. Misty had told him it was a family homestead that had been passed through the generations until it reached her. A large chunk of the furnishings had apparently been inherited as well. She promised she kept the good stuff out of guest view, but she might show him later if the items became relevant to the case. Whatever she was keeping, she was very interested in protecting it. Her security was a high tech combination of closed circuit systems and external based alarms that she explained would alert her security company, which had its own private policing force.

He was honestly more than a little bit impressed. When Misty said she had an extensive security system he was anticipating one of those cloud based systems you could buy from a hardware store or a standard residential security system. He was also a bit concerned. He wondered what she could possibly be keeping in the house that she felt the need for such tight security.

Misty had promised him that it was just a private collection of occult items and very old alchemical and esoteric texts that were part of her private collection, some of which had apparently been donated to her from the old families of both Arkham and the nearby town of Dunwich. They were very valuable, both for monetary reasons and personal ones. She had assured him that the Miskatonic library had a similar security system, as did her office on campus. There was something in her tone and body language, though, that implied the items that were under protection might be dangerous, but he also didn't feel like he was in any sort of danger around Misty or in her home. She was just a little bit strange and unusual though, not in a bad way. Maybe when they had solved Euphonia's case, he thought, he would take some time to solve the mystery of Mystery Whateley.

Misty set the food out on the table while Jackson dug the files on Euphonia out of his satchel and set them on a clear section of table. "Not exactly a lot to go on there," Misty observed.

Jackson pursed his lips and shook his head, "No, this is mostly the police files on the investigation, some of my notes in regard to contacts Euphonia might have had, some of the canvassing work I've done and the witness statements I've taken." Misty set a plate with a sampling of all the foods she'd ordered in front of him and took a couple of the folders to leaf through. He pulled out his chair and settled at the table, digging into the meal.

He felt eyes on him and looked up to see Misty observing him. "Good, huh?" He nodded an affirmative. She gave him a smile before returning to turning pages and reading the paperwork in front of her. Despite having spent many an evening working through dinner, Jackson had never perfected the art of eating and reading. He would inevitably dump food on his paperwork or himself. Misty though, seemed to be speeding through the documents while shoveling large amounts of her dinner in her mouth. She had the absolute worst table manners, but there was something about the way she had contorted herself into her chair with one knee tucked under her and one tucked up near her chest and all her active attention devoted to reading that was kind of adorable. "You do that a lot." She said, not looking up from the papers she had spread out in front of her.

"Sorry?"

"Observe me," she said, this time looking up to stare at him with those unusual, piercing eyes. Where before they were interesting, now they made him uncomfortable, he felt like she was seeing way too much of him. "I'm sure not just me, you probably observe anyone you spend a lot of time with." She picked up her can of soda and took a drink before continuing, "You've been doing it since we met, it's not impolite, you're not staring or anything. Also your eyes never stop moving, like you're looking for someone waiting to ambush you." She looked down at the paperwork again. "I've worked with men like you in the past and they weren't detectives."

Jackson watched her, but didn't say anything. He could feel a muscle in his jaw twitching and he felt his shoulders tighten. He had a hand under the table, settled on his thigh which his fingers were now digging into. Mystery Whateley had kept him on his toes since he arrived at her office just in time to stop her from a nasty fall and now he wasn't sure how he felt about that.

She finally looked up from her reading to grab a carton containing some kind of noodles which she scooped onto her plate and then offered him the rest of the carton. "I was a military contractor stationed between Abu Ghraib and Camp Fallujah in the early 2000s. You act like the special forces guys." She shook the carton, clearly making a peace offering and he relaxed enough to take it, which earned him a smile, "Doesn't matter the country or the situation, carbs make everything better.” She stated, like it was an absolute truth. Jackson didn't respond.

There was silence between them for a while as he distracted himself by mixing plum sauce with the noodles. "Green Beret, Special Reconnaissance." He finally muttered, just loud enough to be heard. "I was over there too but not at Abu Ghraib. I did spend some time in Fallujah. Tour ended about 5 years ago and then a buddy of mine sponsored me for my private detective license when I couldn't decide what else to do with myself."

"Lot quieter than Iraq, I bet. Academics is practically boring in comparison, but I'll take boring to lethal."

Jackson grunted, "Didn't think civilian contractors ended up in particularly dangerous situations. Ones I knew never got off base."

Misty gave him a wry smile, "Ones with a military background and a top secret security clearance, have the unique circumstances of being born in the US, and can translate both verbal and written communication in eight languages, including three dead ones get conscripted to do a lot of work they probably shouldn't. I mean, I wasn't storming terrorist bases or anything particularly explosive, but I was involved in plenty of backroom dealings that could have gone south. Technically nothing on the front lines or outside the range of a spook's leash."

"But as much as we loved our friends in Iraq…" He trailed off.

Misty nodded a frown crossing her face, "Nothing beats a loyal American willing to die for their country. Or something." She shrugged, "Plenty of those men were willing to die for what we could offer them, but if nothing else Joint Command and the CIA could be certain that my work wouldn't get lost in translation, so to speak. There was more to it than that, but...y'know have to kill you and all." She mimed pointing a pistol at him and shooting, making a soft pow noise.

Jackson pushed his plate away and leaned back in his chair. "Ok, how's a spook end up in a small town in New England working in Occult Sciences?"

"Spook here was born and raised in the small town in New England and was studying occult sciences before she knew it was weird." Misty settled back into eating as she talked, "As you can tell by my appearance, I wasn't the healthiest kid, so I was stuck with family who all worked for the University or in some religious capacity instead of outside playing or whatever. Got swept up in the post 9/11 patriotism and was looking to get away from Arkham. I was recruited into the Air Force, ending up getting a sweet desk gig working with joint command doing threat analysis. Started picking up Farsi and Arabic playing chess with an ally counterpart in Qatar. Did my time, got out, went to school and then got put on a short list of civilians to recruit for contracting work a few years later. I had a working knowledge of Farsi, Arabic and Hebrew by then. I knew Latin from classes in high school and had been working in Egyptian with my Uncle at Miskatonic throughout my childhood."

"Like the ancient kind, with the pictures?"

Misty, who had paused to take a drink, choked trying not to laugh, "Yes, the ancient kind, with the pictures, Hieroglyphs."

Jackson grinned, "Ok, that's two dead languages, what's the third?"

"Teeechnically,” she said, stretching out the first syllable, "It's only a mostly dead language, but I really only know it in the context of religious and esoteric texts." Jackson waved a hand at her for her to get on with it, she rolled her eyes. "It's Aramaic."

His eyebrows shot up, "What? Like that horror movie? The one with the girl who had the bleeding holes in her wrists?"

Misty's fist hit the table and she leaned over, shoulders heaving in silent laughter. "Stigmata." She said once she had herself under control, "and yeah, kind of like that. Interesting choice of reference, most people think of The Passion."

"Never heard of it," Jackson deadpanned, keeping his face straight long enough for Misty to narrow her eyes at him and try to figure out if he was joking. He broke out into a grin and she shook her head.

"Damn spec ops always think they're hilarious," she muttered, rolling her eyes. Then she stood up and he watched her walk to the fridge to pull out two bottles of beers and open them. She handed one to Jackson, it was so cold that mist was rising up from the inside of the bottle.

"You're alright for a spook," he said and clinked his bottle against hers when she held hers out in toast. He felt relaxed for the first time since he had set foot in Arkham. There was something that he couldn't quite place that had him on edge and the feeling was not helped at all by the circumstances surrounding Euphonia's disappearance. But somehow, strange little Misty, who looked and acted nothing like he'd expected, had taken that edge off.

A sudden cold wetness hit his arm and he looked down to see Shoggoth sitting next to him. "Shoggoth wants to know if you're finished with your plate and if she can have it." Misty translated.

"Can she?"

Misty shrugged, "Fine by me, she makes an excellent pre-wash cycle."

He set the plate on the floor in front of the dog, who daintily leaned down and began cleaning his leftovers from it. Shoggoth had better table manners than her owner and Jackson found that very amusing. Not that he would voice that to Misty, who was now back to shoveling food in her mouth as she read the files in front of her. She wasn't kidding when she said she could eat.

Fortified with beer and decent Chinese food, Jackson felt ready to try and tackle laying out what they knew about Euphonia’s case. “I should be able to officially pay your consulting retainer tomorrow,” he stated by way of focusing their conversation.

Misty swallowed a large mouthful of fried rice and washed it down with her beer before responding. “I’m not worried about it. If nothing else, I need to be involved in this case for academic purposes. This could be a serious resurrection of a cult that hasn’t seriously existed in at least a century. Honestly, tracking this could secure my tenureship at Miskatonic, so rest assured, I have plenty of selfish reasons to want to be involved in the case beyond an immediate paycheck and well...I genuinely do care that a girl is missing and in a potentially dangerous situation.” With that she straightened up in the chair and settled so she was sitting cross-legged. This seemed to be her method to transition from eating dinner and joking with him to actually working.

He felt a moment of physical frustration when he considered the actual evidence he had, which was a grand total of not much and what would have been a total dead end if Misty's card hadn't been slipped to him by a patrol officer. "Arkham PD seems intent on keeping this case closed. They're convinced without signs of violence or distress that she's just an adult who moved on without telling anyone. Technically, they're not wrong, adults have the autonomy to just up and disappear if they want to…" He trailed off and Misty picked right up on his thought process.

"But you don't think she just up and disappeared for no reason. Even without the Occult symbology, my gut would agree with you. This girl had a texting habit that bordered on an addiction and active social media accounts. It doesn’t look like she was out of contact with anyone until she moved to Arkham. Which is something I still don’t understand. Why here? Nobody just up and decides to move to Arkham.” Misty frowned, “Even Miskatonic doesn’t have large attendance numbers compared to other private universities in the country.”

“She was attending Harvard for business, but I think her father was pushing her for her MRS, so to speak,” he said with a frown. Misty wrinkled her nose at the statement. MRS was a term that didn’t get tossed around at Miskatonic often, but it referred to women who went to college with the specific intent of finding a man working towards a lucrative degree and marrying him when he started high salaried work. “She was dating a man from a prominent New York family of attorneys. He was attending Harvard Law and seemed to be planning on getting into his family’s multi-million dollar corporate law business. Kid had a partnership practically guaranteed once he passed the bar.”Jackson picked up a file on his side of the table and leafed through it until he found two documents, one with pictures and what looked like brief biographical write up. He leaned forward to place them in front of Misty, tapping on the one with the picture, “That’s him, Jefferson Montgomery. They met at a party his fraternity was hosting when Euphonia was a freshman, they’d been dating for around three years and he was prepping for the New York State Bar when they had some sort of falling out and broke up.”

Misty frowned as she looked down at the picture, “Ok, high stress time for him, relationship gets rocky, so he ends things...but it looks like from her cell phone records that she was convinced they were only on a break.” She pulled a thick pile of papers held together by a binder clip and dotted with different colors of highlighter. It was the copy of Euphonia’s texting records that her father had been able to provide Jackson. Misty flipped towards the last third of the pile and tapped her finger on a note he’d scribbled into the margin. “I see where you marked their break up. Looks like she was doing a lot of texting to her best friend and Jefferson’s best friend, working through what she’s calling a break and planning on how to win him back after the bar was over. Nobody she was talking with thought their relationship was actually done. And I see where she’s also messaging a Realtor about finding an apartment in downtown Manhattan. Girl had plans for the future and again, they don’t involve coming to middle of nowhere Massachusetts.”

“Check the dates and see where her regular messaging starts to die down.” He suggested.

Misty flipped to the last few pages in the binder, using her finger to skim down the listed dates and times. The messages were printed in the order they were sent and received, but not grouped together by contacts, so Jackson had highlighted each contact group with a different color. “Looks as though around sixish months ago, back in June, she basically cut communication with Jefferson all together, stopped responding to the realtor and...Looks like she sporadically texted her best friend until about September and then abruptly stopped. She was still in somewhat regular contact with her father and her sister…until mid October.” Her brows furrowed as she reached the last page. “And then everything stops.” She looked up from the papers to Jackson and asked. “How does she go from texting novels daily to radio silence?”

“I don’t think she did,” he sighed, “I think she got an encrypted messaging app and started using it with someone.” Jackson pulled out a different sheet of paper with a bio write up and pushed it over to Misty. “This someone in particular, Nasir Fayed, an exchange student from Egypt.”

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Huh,” Misty said, studying his picture, “Handsome man. What’s their relationship?”

“I’m not really clear. Euphonia’s sister seems to think they met in a bar near campus, her best friend has no idea who the guy is, but she was able to get me logged into Euphonia’s Facebook page. The two have a couple of messages back and forth, pretty mundane communication, until they start discussing valuable Egyptian artifacts that are in private collections. Should be in the folder the text message printouts were in. Err...ignore the fact that Euphonia implicates her father in potential theft of historical artifacts from a foreign country.”

One of Misty’s eyebrows shot up, “Since you asked so nicely and because she’s missing, I’ll put a pin in it for now.”

Jackson continued as he watched Misty skim the messages. “He suggests switching over to the encrypted service after suggesting he has an artifact belonging to the tomb of some Egyptian Pharaoh that she might be interested in viewing. The problem with end to end encrypted messaging is that without physical access to the phones involved, it’s next to impossible to…" He paused. Somehow, Misty’s pale white skin had gone a concerning shade of gray, her hands, still holding the printouts, were shaking, and her pale eyes had gone wide. “Misty,” He asked, but she didn’t respond, if anything she started shaking harder. He tensed and started to stand to lean over and try to get her attention, but Shoggoth beat him to it.

The dog forced her upper body onto Misty’s lap and started licking her face. “W..what? Oh, sorry, Shoggoth…” Misty put the papers down and used both hands to scratch Shoggoth’s ears.

Jackson settled back into his seat, but kept his eye on her. He’d seen that kind of reaction before, hell, if he was being honest with himself, he’d had that kind of trauma reaction before. He was curious as to what in some social media messaging printouts could have stressed Misty enough to have such a clear anxiety response, but he waited until she acknowledged him first.

It took a few moments, but Misty took a deep breath and finally stopped scratching Shoggoth’s ears. The dog waited for a second, then hopped down to sit next to Misty’s chair. “I’m sor-”

“No need to apologize,” he interrupted. “I’m just curious what you read that triggered that.”

Misty swallowed hard. Then stood up to grab a glass from a cabinet to the left of the sink and filled it with water. She drank half the glass, and then turned to face him, leaning against the counter next to the kitchen sink. “Nephren-Ka.” She said by way of explanation.

Jackson gave her a blank stare as he tried to make connections. “The Pharaoh that Nasir was talking about? The one the supposed stolen artifact belonged to - the, uh….Eye of…”

“Eye of Nyarlathotep,” Misty interrupted. She was staring at the wall opposite the counter she was leaning on. Her eyes were moving rapidly, it looked more like she was reading something rather than scanning for a threat.

“Yes…” He said hesitantly, keeping a careful eye on her in case he needed to move to help her. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Shoggoth flop sideways onto the floor and close her eyes. Jackson decided to take that as a sign to relax. “I did some basic research - at least what I could do from an internet search - but I can’t find anything to say that a Nephren-ka existed. I figured this Nasir guy was trying to run some kind of scheme on a rich girl thinking she might not know better.”

“He existed.” Misty said.

Jackson furrowed his brow, “I mean...you would know better than I do, but you’d think there’d at least be some kind of wiki article if the guy existed.”

Misty pushed off the counter and started pacing around the kitchen. “He existed, there’s not an archaeological record of him, at least not one that’s been declassified, but he was very real.” The uneasy feeling that was putting Jackson on edge earlier came back as he watched Misty pace. He wasn’t sure what exactly the cause was, but he felt the air around him get heavy. On the floor, Shoggoth shifted and made a groaning noise before settling back down to snooze. Whatever the feeling was, the dog wasn’t bothered by it….so maybe it was just him.

Jackson’s throat suddenly felt dry. He gave the mostly finished beer next to him a glance, but decided that he didn’t want to be consuming alcohol, just in case. In case of what? He couldn’t say for certain. But he got up then went to the cabinet Misty had taken a glass from and retrieved one for himself. It took two full glasses of water before his throat felt mostly normal again, but his hackles still felt raised. Suddenly the windows in front of him and the door behind him made him feel vulnerable. He moved to lean on a corner of the counter where he was out of sight of the windows, but could keep an eye on the entry to the kitchen.

Misty stopped pacing. “I feel the unease too,” she said, “It’s the subject matter. Nephren-ka doesn’t exist in an internet search or any encyclopedia, because the dynasty that succeeded him went to great lengths to strike his name from record. He was probably the last Pharaoh of the third dynasty of Ancient Egypt. Err...simply put, that’s the one that made the step pyramids which predate the ones in Giza that people typically think of. This would have been late 2600 BCE. Nephren-ka was considered a great sorcerer during his time, he had the gift of prophecy, and he brought a new wave of religion to Egypt. A distorted version of the one we think of today with the animal headed gods. The symbology involved in the religion was a very early version of what you saw in Euphonia’s apartment.

“This religion marked the first known mention of a series of cosmic gods that certain occult researchers call The Great Old Ones and The Outer Gods. Nephren-ka was supposed to have been visited by a messenger of The Outer Gods, who exchanged the gift of prophecy for human sacrifice. The messenger was called Nyarlathotep. It was never clear where exactly his power in this particular pantheon sat, as for centuries the only written records are some third party accounts that could be entirely fictional, and a book known as the Necronomicon.” Misty emphasized her words with large gestures, like she was lecturing to a classroom. “Nephren-ka himself could be chalked up as a work of fiction, except for the discovery of mass graves near Memphis with bones dating back to the end of the third dynasty. There was evidence in the grave that the killings had been performed with some level of ritualistic intent instead of outright execution. Thing is, that the Ancient Egyptians were not large-scale practitioners of human sacrifice. Some Pharaohs’ retainers might have been killed after his death so that they could accompany him to the afterlife, but it was by no means a common practice and their bodies would have been buried with the pharaoh.”

Jackson was silent as he waited for her to continue, “To make a long story short, there were vague indications that Nephren-ka actually existed, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that his tomb was discovered by a team of Egyptian and American archaeologists with large scale funding from the US Government.” Misty stopped pacing and went back to staring, this time out the window into the darkness of the night. “I was part of that team.”

“Wait, hold up,” Jackson interrupted. “Feds funded a massive archaeological dig, which discovered something of historical significance, and then...what? Covered it up?”

“The US and Egyptian governments agreed to it mutually.” She said, not looking away from the window, “The dig was a front for the US to funnel a lot of money to bolster the Egyptian government’s counter terrorism efforts after diplomatic tensions denied them a shipment of Military Equipment and training with US troops.” Misty bit her lip and nervously picked at the fingers of her left hand with her right. “The tomb itself was incredibly strange, completely unusual for tombs of the time. Pharaohs were being buried in step pyramids, but Nephren-ka shut himself in a tomb underground.”

“Shut...himself in?” Jackson asked.

“Mhmm,” Misty affirmed, “Or at least that’s how the story goes. Thing is, we never found a mummy or even a body. We saw signs that life had been in the tomb, it was sealed from the outside, but really there’s no way to know whether or not he was actually in there, or if he just evaporated into thin air, or whatever...that’s not the point.” Jackson motioned for her to continue, but she didn’t look in his direction, she was still staring out the window. “The point is the entire tomb was covered with occult symbology incredibly similar to the language of The Great Old ones later discovered in the Necronomicon...like what was in that grimoire. We never finished transcribing the tomb, but through later photographs we discovered it was both a prophecy and a spell book, essentially foretelling the end of the world. Long story short, it has some scary accurate prophecies in it, but most concerning from my research perspective were a few centered around Arkham, that ultimately came true several decades ago...and a prediction set to happen by the winter solstice of this year.”

Jackson narrowed his eyes at Misty, “You realize you sound absolutely insane. The only reason I haven’t walked out of here is your background lending credence to the fact that you might not have absolutely lost it, but...” He paused for a second, watching her, Misty still did not look away from the window, “you’re going to have to start making sense soon or I’m out of here. I can find Euphonia on my own.”

“When the dig was ultimately canceled and we left the tomb, we weren’t supposed to take anything.” She continued like Jackson hadn’t said anything, “Everything found on a dig, regardless of who discovers it, rightfully belongs to its country of origin. But, I was pretty sure that some of our party were treasure hunters who went back to the tomb before the dig site was closed off.”

“What is this? Some mummy’s curse bullshit?” This had come out much harsher than Jackson had intended, but Misty didn’t react.

She did, however, acknowledge him this time, “No. Nothing of the sort. The artifacts that were stolen, in the wrong hands, could spell disaster, the kind of power those artifacts could grant to someone who knew what they were doing should not belong to anyone. They shouldn’t exist, but they do. Man is a naturally selfish and greedy beast and so they will be used. I started working my contacts and eventually discovered what I believe to be the majority of the items stolen from Nephren-Ka’s tomb. Various scrolls and small artifacts, some jewels and other valuables. Thing is, I was certain that the Eye of Nyarlathotep had been taken, but it never surfaced anywhere...well until now, I guess.”

“Assuming it’s the real thing,” Jackson said, still not sure how much longer he was willing to listen or how much of this to believe. “You still haven’t reassured me in any way that you’re of sound mind regarding this occult stuff.”

Misty nodded, “Can’t prove a negative, I’m afraid. You won’t believe me until you truly experience something dangerous and otherworldly. Believe me, continue pursuing this case and you will. That's not meant to be as ominous as it sounds, but it's one of the reasons you need to stay here. The safest place for you currently is either with me in this house, or in the middle of the Miskatonic University Library.”

There was a moment of silence before Jackson said, “At least this explains your security system.”

“Yes.”

“So why is the Eye of Nyarlathotep so dangerous?” he asked, his voice tinged with frustration as he tried to move Misty along with her explanation so he could begin to make sense of what she was saying.

“By itself,” she answered, “It’s probably not. In the hands of a Gate Breaker who is familiar with the magic to rip open the veil between our world and the void and invite Yog-Sothoth in, it’s incredibly dangerous, end of the world, insanity causing apocalypse dangerous. I’m thinking Nasir has the knowhow and the willpower to do so.”

Jackson frowned, “Then why bring Euphonia into this?”

She finally looked away from the window and shook her head at him. “I don’t know. I haven’t figured that bit out yet. But regardless she’s either groomed and dangerous, or in a whole lot of danger she hasn’t begun to understand yet.” She paused, and then said, “There’s more to it. The Eye of Nyarlathotep is an incredibly powerful object on its own, but to break into the void, there’s another artifact required.”

“And that is?” He was getting progressively less annoyed and feeling more out of control of the situation. It wasn’t that he completely believed Misty, but from his research into her background and his interactions with her from the day, he felt that she was quirky, but not completely insane. Some part of his gut wanted to believe her. That foreboding feeling also wouldn’t go away. He’d never felt anything like it, not even when he was infiltrating some of the most dangerous locations in Iraq under constant threat of death.

“The ritual to break into the void requires the correct spell, the correct markings, The Eye, and another artifact called The Tongue of Nyarlathotep.” She was back to staring out the window, then her eyes narrowed and she turned to him. “We have to move now.”

“Why? What’s going on?” He stood upright, getting swept up in the urgency of her tone. Shoggoth shot to her feet and started growling.

Misty turned and led the way out of the kitchen, leading him down a hallway to a door that opened to a flight of stairs leading down. “My security system is state of the art, but it doesn’t just include all of the electronics I showed you. I have some pretty advanced warding around the property and something has been probing them for the last twenty minutes.” She started leading the way down the stairs, to the stone lined basement and towards a wall at the back. “Just now whatever it is broke through. It’ll be here any minute.”

“Excuse me?” Now Jackson was anxious. He was itching to run for the front door and out of the crazy lady’s house. His hand twitched as he thought about reaching for his sidearm, then he remembered that he didn’t have a license to carry in Massachusetts, his gun was in a lock box in his apartment in New Hampshire. “Fuck,” He snarled under his breath.

Meanwhile, Misty had popped open a panel concealed in the wall that was hiding a keypad. She tapped a code in and there was a whirring noise as a section of the wall cracked open to reveal a door. Misty pulled the door open and gestured for him to go inside. “Get in the panic room if you want to live.” She joked with a weak smile. Jackson glared at her before stepping into the room, Shoggoth followed him and Misty was last, securing the door behind her before turning around to gesture at the room. “Make yourself at home. If you’re lucky….or unlucky as it may be, you might soon be able to see your first eldritch horror creature.” She motioned to a couple of monitors installed on one wall of the panic room. “The closed circuit security feed is routed to the computer over there.” With that, she settled into one of the rolling chairs in the room and leaned over her knees, rubbing her temple with one hand and petting Shoggoth with the other.

Jackson stared at Misty for a second before going over to sit at the chair in front of the closed circuit monitors. The software with the camera display was already running, he took a moment to orient himself with the software and the controller, but it was pretty standard equipment for a closed circuit system. It wasn’t long before he was cycling through the cameras. The cameras outside the house were turned to night vision, and most of what he could see on those were the vague outline of trees in shades of dark green and gray, bits of dust were also light up and obscuring some of the picture. He tried to focus to see whatever it was that was supposed to be invading the property, but there was nothing. He switched to the cameras that were focused on the front of the house, the one framing the front door was a Pan, Tilt, Zoom camera that could be rotated almost full circle. He shifted it around, trying to spot someone or something that might be coming up the gravel driveway. For a while, there was nothing, then the automatic security light switched on, causing the screen to go white until the night vision mode was forced to switch off and the picture returned to full color. He scanned the area, trying to figure out what could possibly have triggered the light. Then he spotted his car, it was rocking on the suspension enough to be visible on camera, it wasn’t like an earthquake, and seemed to be focused on his car specifically, nothing else at the front of the house was moving like that, not even the outdoor lighting that was hanging down from chains over the front entrance of the house. It looked like something was underneath the car, pushing it from side to side. Then the alarm lights started flashing and all four of the car’s doors flew open at once. “What the fuck…” he muttered.

Suddenly Misty was standing next to him, he hadn’t heard her get up, but her hand was on the back of his chair and she leaned over his shoulder to point at something on the monitor. He watched as the shadow under his car, spread and black shadowy tentacle things rose up from the shadow, probing inside the vehicle. “Shadow beast, nasty things, they have a level of intelligence to them, enough to respond to orders.”

Jackson watched as the tentacles retracted from the vehicle and disappeared back into the pool of shadow. The creature then shifted out from under the car and started making its way toward the direction of the house. “No fucking way,” he insisted, “Absolutely no fucking way. This is some kind of recording, a dumb prank.”

“Seriously?” Misty said as she pulled her rolling chair up next to his and sat down. “I got video footage of your car, splice it into three hundred sixty degree footage of the front of my house, and then...what? Digitally included a fake monster? Think about it, man, that’s a lot of fucking work even for a skilled animator, and I only met you a few hours ago.” She twisted the chair around, so the back of hers was near the arm of his, then propped her feet up on the desk corner furthest away from him.

Jackson made a noise that was somewhere between panic and frustration in response.

“Yeah, I hear you.” There was sympathy in Misty’s tone, “It’s a lot different when you’ve grown up around this stuff.”

On screen, the shadow creature had made its way to the side of the house and started sliding up the side towards one of the front windows, probing out tentacles, searching for openings. “So are these ward things supposed to keep it out?”

Misty shook her head, “Gosh no, do you know how expensive and hard to maintain magic like that is? The wards on the outskirts of the property are just an early warning system.” She held up her left hand and pointed at some of the tattoos there. “They’re connected to these symbols and make an obnoxious itching feeling when things start messing with the wards.”

“Nope. You’re insane. This is insane.” The shadow creature had found a crack between the window and the frame large enough for it to slip through.

Misty reached for the controller and he pushed it to her hand, then watched as she flicked through the cameras on display with practiced ease until she located the shadow creature working its way through the front hallway. It had spread out even wider, and several tentacles had appeared from its sides and center. The tentacles probed over everything, searching for something. “Oh probably, I’m pretty sure you can’t get involved with this shit and not go a little mad. But I’ve got my coping mechanisms. Knitting helps sometimes, that’s an easy hobby to pick up.”

He shot her an incredulous look. “Ok, so assuming this is all real - I’m still not convinced it is - what is it looking for? Us?”

Misty frowned, “Doubtful. I mean it would happily snatch us up if it could. Supposedly their bodies contain a whole dimension and they like trapping victims there, but I’ve never seen anything to actually support that. I’m sure it could tear us to shreds if it wanted to, we’d probably amuse it briefly. No,” She sighed, “I imagine its master is after what I’ve got stored in my vault.”

“Which is?”

Misty only gave him a conspiratory grin. “Three guess. The first two don’t count.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he groaned, “You what? Have the Tongue of Nyarlathotep, hidden in a vault in this house?”

“Ding, Ding!” She exclaimed and patted him on the hand. “Smarty points for you, Mister Detective.” The woman was clearly insane.

“Fuck me. I am not getting paid enough for this.”