Chapter 1

I need help, I'm at my wits end now. It's been a month since this all started and I don't know what I can do. I've maybe had two nights of sleep in the past week, I'm pretty sure I'm going crazy, and the solutions I've been presented with have been… well they're limited and quite undesirable.

This all started one month ago at my university's archive room, the history department's archives to be specific. I have friendly relations with the staff there, so they let me peruse the archive at my leisure and sometimes they'll let me stay after hours. I mostly just go there when I need to get out of my dorm, I'll browse all the documents, books, and resources there. It's interesting having a window to the past all to yourself. It's also a nice place to stay if you're high and avoiding people you don't want to talk to. Last month was one such occasion. I had smoked, planning to order food in and watch a movie in my dorms. When I entered and found my roommate with his partner, I left and walked out, a bit bitter and annoyed. I wandered a bit before I resolved to go to my usual spot in the archives. One of the archivists informed me earlier that they had gotten new materials from a university in England. I figured now's as good a time as any to get a look at what was new that they had gotten in.

I, rather clumsily, walked down the steps to the sub level and entered the archive. The lights were dimmed and in my current state, it made it hard for me to track down where the new stock had been shelved. By the time I found it, the archives and library had closed for at least an hour, and my high had begun to wear off a bit. I poured over RAF after action reports, copies of bills from the house of lords, all sorts of stuff. Then I stumbled upon something, something that clearly didn't belong. For the life of me I can't remember what it was, what was written in it, or even the title. No matter how hard I try I can't remember, it's like it was plucked out of my head. What I do remember is that it was a small book, or manuscript, or treatise. It was old, much older than it should've been. I could feel how worn it was, the fretting at the end of its pages. It was bound in a leather unlike any I had felt, and the feel of the pages was wrong. The leather was smooth in some places, jagged and scarred in others. The pages felt like sandpaper and dollar bills all at once. I remember thumbing through it and every so often being pricked on a page, not like a papercut but like a bee sting or a needle.

Like I said, I don't remember what terrible things I must've read in that damned text. What I do remember is where I ended up after I closed it. In an instant, the archive room was no more, and I found myself in a place that set my heart beating into overdrive. What used to be the archives was now what looked to be a very, very old library. One side was beset by a cobblestone wall, with a propped door in front of me, but to all other sides of me, were endless rows of shelves. All of which were lined with texts and books of all manner. It was almost all gibberish, scrawls in an unfamiliar and undecipherable language. The symbols in the writing looked jagged, sharp but purposeful. They looked and felt as though they had existed for eons and were not meant for human eyes. The more I tried to focus, the more I tried to read, the more my eyes strained and my head throbbed. I saw drawings and diagrams of bipedal boar-like creatures, with human legs and as many horns as they had tusks. I saw what I could only describe as "flesh flowers", and star charts and astrological drawings. Those were what truly frightened me, more than anything they were the most alien, yet the most tangible. The stars were all wrong, they didn't match with earths at all. And the moons. There were several moons. And the sun, how awful the sun was. There was something deeply wrong about the sun. This place is not earth and it is not right.

My head pulsed and throbbed, and as I clutched my temples, I could hear the most terrible thing. footsteps, faint but growing closer. Terrible footsteps heralded by the rattle of chainmail. That jingle of metal chains, with an undercurrent of an indiscernible whisper. With the growing volume of the steps, so too did the whispers, culminating in a crescendo as the footsteps reached the doorway. I held my breath, tears beginning to well. The last thing I remember from that place was a bony hand wrapped around the frame of the door, the whispers now at a deafening volume. And then there was nothing. In an instant I was back in the archives room. My eyes darted, looking for danger. But more than anything looking for any sign that I wasn't going crazy, that whatever I smoked wasn't laced and I didn't hallucinate everything. I looked down at my empty hands posed like they were holding something. I cried, I couldn't help it. I didn't know what to make of the situation. I sat and cried for maybe fifteen minutes before the receptionist came to check on me. I halfheartedly nodded at her and told her I was fine, rushing back to my dorms as fast as I could. That night I remember what I dreamt of. I dreamt of a terrible place, that terrible place. A place of jagged rocks and spires, of fog and dark, a place where something truly malevolent resides. I would only realize later that this would be the beginning of something terrible.

For the next week and a half, my life would continue on as normal, intermittently plagued by bad dreams and sleepless nights. That would change when my roommate tried to set me up on a blind date. Now I knew he wasn't just doing this out of the kindness of his heart, I think. I was ninety percent sure he just wanted me out of the dorm more so he could spend more quality time with his own partner, nonetheless, I wasn't exactly complaining. My dormmate took me to a coffee shop and sat me down in front of a woman with a mess of blond curls shooting every which way, eyes shooting into me with reserved expectation. I won't lie, she was quite beautiful and I started to grow nervous, not wanting to screw it up.

"Hey, I'm Oliver. I'm a history student at the university up the road, it's really lovely to meet you" I spoke with care not to stutter, reaching out my arm for a handshake.

"Oh my gosh, hi. It's great to meet you, James has told me all about you. I go to the same uni, although I'm an econ and business studies major. Oh, my name's Sarah by the way." she said back with a genuineness and sweetness I hadn't come to expect and to be frank, it made me blush a bit.

she grabbed my hand and shook, forcing a genuine smile out of me. It felt nice. It felt good to be seen, to be heard, to communicate and to listen. We started talking for a while, ranting about professors, chatting about our fields of study, and discussing hobbies. For thirty minutes, I was in bliss. Thirty minutes. Then fate reared its ugly head as I heard something under her voice.

"Come with me, to my domain."

It confused me at first. It wasn't Sarah's voice. I had to look around at first to try and understand where the voice was coming from. When I turned back to Sarah. When I turned back… My heart sank, my throat closed, and the tears just started flowing.

The thing… The creature was cloaked. It dared not show its face to me, not because it feared me, but because it relished in my desperation to assign it identity. To assign it reason, faith, motive. anything I could understand. But I was simply at its whim. The thing loomed behind Sarah, her and everyone else apparently oblivious to the thing's presence. The pressure alone was enough to bring a country to its knees. I couldn't look away from the thing. Unnaturally tall, with disproportionally elongated arms ending in talon adorned gauntlets. a cloak concealing its face in a veil of darkness, going to hug the rest of its form under the weight of a chainmail hauberk. The thing floated inches above the ground, just menacing at me, I couldn't take it anymore. I apologized to Sarah and stumbled out of the coffee shop, tears streaming from my eyes like a waterfall. I ran and ran and ran, dodging through alleys and all manner of obstacles till I turned myself into a corner. When I turned around, that thing was there, standing in front of my only exit. I was panting at this point, exasperated, scared, angry. I did what anyone in my shoes would've done. I lashed out.

"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!" I screamed, shooting almost bloodshot eyes into the dead opening of the cloak where the thing's face should've been.

The thing cocked its head, as if it was an animal that couldn't comprehend what I was trying to emote at it. the thing… well, to say it said would be a mischaracterization of both it's true nature and my own experience.

what I did hear was.

"I want… I want you."

I heard a thousand voices at once harmonize and deliver the message. vibrations ringing in my brain and body as the simple desire massaged into my head, burrowed into my psyche. I blinked, and in an instant, the thing was gone. I glanced around, trembling, looking for any sign that the bastard was still lurking somewhere. When I knew I was safe, I ran back to my dorms, and dry heaved as I scrambled into the dorm. I felt exhausted, and as all the tension and knots in my body began to fade, so too did my consciousness. But when I fell asleep, all I could dream of were dark spires jutting into the corpse of a whale. Its song singing into the stars, screeching a desperate plea to any who'll listen. Despite knowing the despair that awaits those who answer the whale call, it cries out anyway, fore a worse thing to be tortured, is to be tortured alone. And I fear I have answered the call. I have answered a siren's call that cannot be unheard.

The following two weeks were filled with nothing but misery as I lived a hellish existence with… whatever it was that was following me now. Wake up, attend lecture, study, eat with what little appetite I had. That would be my routine. All this while dodging my own personal demon. I began seeing that asshole, that fucking thing in the corners of my vision. I'd hear those whispers ride the background conversation around me and straight into my head. and the dreams, Jesus. Sleep was no longer an option. The dreams kept getting more real, more vivid, more esoteric and stranger, more terrifying. mazes in four dimensions, scaling one of those spires just to be cast off of it into that terrible lake, falling through that fog like molasses with all sorts of it sticking all over and smothering me, being pulled into that lake by mouths without faces, teeth forming to bite me and drag me under. the one place I felt safe had been turned into my prison, and nothing helped. melatonin, alcohol, weed, none of it helped.

I was worn thin by it all, deprived of sleep and sound mind. It came to me during the last day of that two-week period; it was bold that day. It came to me as I was nursing a bottle of beer in a park, and showed itself to me. I was shit-faced and more than terrified, I was angry. I was angry that the life I had was being taken away from me. I was angry that of all people to fuck with, it chose me. I mean what'd I do to deserve any of this? I set the half empty bottle down next to the small pile of finished bottles.

"L-Listen he-re prick, I don't know why it is that I was the one you chose. But I do know that I'm not afraid of you. You think you're tough fuckface, I can show you tough. Why don’t you show me that ugly mug under that hood?" I spat at him, hiccupping and slurring my words through the delivery.

The thing reached out at me, and it grabbed me by the throat. It was real, and it grabbed my throat and squeezed. The metal of its gauntlets was so cold. It threw me to the ground in an instant. Before I could recover, it lowered itself to the ground and in an instant, I felt that cold and dreadful metal press deep into my chest as the thing drove the heel of its boot into me. It lowered its face to mine, just inches away. That all-consuming blackness never revealed its face to me, but it didn't have to. I could feel the hot, nasty breath hit my face and nose. Its breath smelled like death, like sickly sweet burning flesh and vomit. I heaved and heaved, but my body wouldn't respond to anything I tried to do. I could hear its ragged and raspy wheezing; its chainmail rattled in rhythm with its breathing. I could feel what it felt in that moment. Hunger. Arrogance. Excitement. Anticipation. It spoke to me then in that same fashion it loved to. The message drilling, burrowing into my head like rats trying to run from a blazing inferno.

"Soon."

It kept repeating, over and over and over and over. I shut my eyes as the cacophony of voices screamed into my head.

And then it was gone, and there was nothing. No voices, no pressure, no pain. I opened my eyes and found myself surrounded by concerned onlookers. I felt the urge to cry, but nothing came from my puffy eyes. I think I had been crying for some time. I could only stumble off and run, not knowing if anything I had experienced was real. That is until I got to my bathroom and lifted my shirt, seeing a mark in the center of my chest where that thing left its boot print.

The next day was awful. I started noticing changes to the town. Patches of cobbled stone where asphalt once was, torches and sconces placed in seemingly random places, the things I saw back in that place were slowly seeping into my reality, and it seems no one notices these changes. People walked over the tattered pages and patchwork roads and sidewalks like nothing was wrong. I really don't know if this thing… this world is truly seeping into the world or it's all in my head. I don't know what to believe anymore. Real or imagined, when I came back to my dorm, I couldn't help but sit on my bed and cry. Cry and Cry and Cry. When my roommate found me, he asked me what was wrong and it all came spilling out of me like a waterfall. I was done with it all, done with everything, and really I just wanted to tell someone what was happening to me. I was tired of being alone and I was tired of keeping this all bottled up. He sat and stared at me as I went over the event's of the past month, wide eyed but never judgmental. When I was done, he simply got up and walked to his desk, pulling out a half-crumpled receipt and handed it to me. On the back of it was a location.

"Go to the physics building, room 322 in the sub-basement." My roommate said, "guy there's been working on a few crazy projects, and I think he's dealt with someone in your boat, If not someone in similar circumstances."

I stared blankly at the receipt paper, looking over it with half glossed eyes. I knew it was my only opportunity, so I dragged myself wearily into the sub-basement and knocked on the door. When no one answered, I tried the knob, letting myself in after finding it to be unlocked. The inside of the room looked to be the average lab, at least as far as I knew. The back had machines and test equipment, with the center of the room having a large table strewn with stacks of papers. To the left side of the room, a man I presumed to be the professor was standing in front of a large corkboard. On it were newspaper clippings, notes, pictures, all strung together with yarn weaving connections I couldn't fathom.

He turned towards me and gestured for me to sit at the desk to the right of the room. I shuffled over and sat myself as he asked me to explain my situation. We went over the events of the past month, the book, the figure stalking me, reality seeming to begin warping. All while I explained, he sat across from me taking notes, asking for clarifications and elaborations. When I finished and his questions were seemingly sated, he sat for a long minute before asking me a question.

“Son, you ever heard of phasing?”

I shook my head no.

He sighed and explained, “Broadly speaking, it's dimensional travel. Travel between worlds, universes, etc, in some form of involuntary manner. Most often, a phased individual interacts with some sort of trigger that facilitates the phase. Caves, doors, that kind of thing. Some cases, individuals themselves periodically phase without any trigger. In virtually all cases, the best recourse is to identify the trigger and isolate it to prevent further phases. In cases of individualized phasing behaviour, best you can do is help them cope with their condition.”

The professor looked down, sighed again and spoke, “Listen kid, I don’t think I can help you.”

I felt tears welling, anger filling me as I began to diatribe. “What the hell do you mean you can’t help me?! I thought you were supposed to be an expert on this. I mean, clearly you know so much, so why? Why can’t you help me?!”

The professor looked sullen, looked guilty as the words came out, “kid, I really wish I could help. I do. But truth be told, I've never encountered a case like yours before. Some entity creating a trigger presumably as bait, manifesting phased reality into your subjective reality, I mean the fuckin thing crossed worlds and touched you, It’s using you for something or it wants you for something. I mean this thing is bending reality like a rubber band just to get you or use you. Whatever this is, I don't think anybody or anything can help.”

I couldn’t stop the tears now, they came rushing out like a waterfall. “So what do I do?”

“My advice, live life your best as long as you can. Then, go out on your own terms. Go out with some dignity”

I was sick, my stomach rolling as I screamed. “Killing myself, that's your advice!? So there’s nothing I can do? I’m losing my mind and my life here, and you think it's a game?”

“Yeah, I do. I think that you sat down for a game of chess with the devil. By opening that book, you already lost the game, you opened Pandora's box. So you ask me what you can do? Flip the fucking chess board. Don’t give it what it wants.”

I sat there, trying to take in what he was saying through my wheezy breaths and misty, puffy eyes.

Throwing his hand in the air, he finished, saying, “or don’t kid. This is your life here. You wanna chance it with that thing, go ahead. But it doesn’t take a degree to know that you don’t want whatever that thing has in store for you. I’ve done all I can for you, but if there are any developments with this thing you got, call me.”

He handed me his card, before walking me out of his lab.

It's been maybe four, five hours since then. I’ve been holed up in my dorm, the one final place I thought I could feel safe. But lately, the cinderblock walls of the dorm have started to resemble the cobbled walls I so dread seeing. Worst of all, I can’t enter the bathroom until my roommate can remove the mirror. It’s begun showing up behind my reflection. So please, has anyone hear heard or experienced anything like this? Please help, I don’t know how much time I have left.