Author: Tom Darby

I woke up this morning, shuffled past the coffee pot that don’t perk quite right anymore, and stared into the face of my past—plastered all over the walls like a museum curated by a sentimental raccoon.

There’s an old Polaroid of Gerald “Tooth” Miller from when he tried to start a canoe rental business on Johnson’s pond. That lasted two weeks, tops. Turns out canoes sink when you patch them with duct tape and optimism.

Tooth always smiled like he knew something you didn’t, which usually meant he’d done something he shouldn’t. But I liked that about him. I still do, wherever he is–probably in Arizona. Or jail.

Right next to that hangs the lopsided oil painting I made of my dog, Roxy, in ’05. It was a birthday gift for a friend, but they took one look at it and said Roxy looked like a goat with mange, and that was that.

That’s when it hit me. My house is a shrine to memories nobody else remembers. I started pacing, slow at first, then with a purpose.

Each wall told a story. Each shelf groaned under the weight of objects that meant nothing to anyone but me.

A taxidermied bass I caught with Uncle Adam the day he got electrocuted by a fence he didn’t see comin’. A cracked teacup from Aunt Barbara’s cabinet, which she swore was used by Eleanor Roosevelt—though it’s more likely it came free with a bag of flour.

I felt something low in my gut, like an old worm that had slept too long in the dirt. You know that feeling.

The one that says: what’s all this for?

Not in a sad way, but in a way that asks whether you’re the man you set out to be or just a man who collected a lot of junk on the way.

I pictured dragging one of those big metal haul bins up next to the porch, maybe spray-painted orange, so the neighbors knew something serious was happening. I’d open the window and start chucking out all of it.

The broken clock that never ticks. The letters written to me. The high school yearbooks. I imagine the satisfying clatter as it all landed. Lightened.

But then I thought about the worm again.

He’s a stubborn old thing. It lives deep, likes the dark, but always stirs when there’s movement.

He’s the part of me that keeps scratching at the surface, that still believes a good story is worth telling, even if only to myself. He’s the one who says, “Don’t toss it yet. There’s a memory in that mess that still needs finishing.”

So I sat down and had a bagel with cream cheese—the good kind with sesame seeds.

Outside, the morning light curled over the fields like an old dog settling in for a nap. Everything looked just as it should.

And inside, the clutter stayed. Not because I couldn’t part with it. But because it’s not junk. It’s the trail of breadcrumbs back to who I’ve been.

Maybe someday I will rent that bin. But not today.

Today, the worm lives.

The squad had been without coffee for a grueling 14 days, pounding through the dense trails of Central America in pursuit of the Hot Sauce Gang—code for the elusive Sandinistas who seemed to haunt every border from Nicaragua to Honduras. Our chase was relentless, and the absence of caffeine made each step heavier.

It was late afternoon when the four of us—me, Hawk, Rico, and Snipe—spotted a villa nestled into a hillside, shrouded by thick jungle brush and towering mahogany trees. Signaling the Skipper, a Captain, he gave the order to secure the building. That meant kicking in doors and sweeping room by room for threats, a task that set every nerve on edge.

The villa was a ghost house. Dust coated the furniture, and the air smelled of stale time. Whoever had lived here had fled weeks before the U.S. Marines came crashing through their world.

While the rest of the 13-man squad fanned out to lock down the hillside, Hawk, Rico, and I rummaged through the villa for intel, supplies, or otherwise. We tore through drawers and cabinets, finding nothing of value until we hit the kitchen.

A large pantry–stocked with dry goods, rice, beans, and stale crackers, but not a single grain of coffee. I was about to curse our luck when I turned and saw it—a 32-cup coffee percolator still plugged into the wall like a forgotten relic.

The villa had no electricity, and the percolator contents were as dead as the house. I pried open the lid and peered inside. A thick layer of green-gray mold floated on the surface of the ancient brew, the liquid beneath it black as tar.

Rico wrinkled his nose. “That’s a biohazard,” he said, but I wasn’t about to let a little fuzz stand between me and coffee.

So I grabbed a spoon, skimmed off the mold, and poured the dark liquid into a large saucepan I’d found in a cupboard. Outside, I scrounged a pinch of C-4, rolled it into a small ball, and set it on the ground.

With a flick of my lighter, the C-4 ignited, burning hot and steady. I balanced the saucepan over the flame, and soon, the coffee got to bubbling and sending up a rich, bittersweet aroma that cut through the jungle air.

The smell hit the squad like a siren’s call. Heads turned. Boots shuffled closer.

Before I could blink, every man Jack in the platoon, including the Skipper, was crowding around with canteen cups outstretched. Carefully, I poured out the steaming brew, cautious not to mention its questionable origins.

Cups got lifted, Grunts sipped, then grinned.

“Best damned coffee I ever tasted,” someone declared, smacking his lips.

Rico nodded, his eyes half-closed in bliss. Even the Skipper, usually stone-faced, grunted his approval.

Not a soul suspected the coffee had been a moldy stew just minutes before. As the squad savored their cups, the villa felt less like a warzone and more like a fleeting haven.

And for a moment, the Hot Sauce Gang could wait. We had coffee, and that was victory enough.

You ever have one of those days, where the wind feels like it’s got a grudge against you? Like maybe it was a cousin of yours in another life that you wronged somehow—stole his girlfriend or dented his Ford Fairlane—and now he’s come back as a Western Nevada gust bent on payback. That’s the kind of wind we had today.

I had every intention of heading down to Yerington this morning. Figured I’d take the camera, maybe catch the early light playing hopscotch across the tin roofs and hay fields. But the clouds rolled in like drunks at closing time, and the thunder—well, let’s just say it had a kind of ‘old man with opinions’ quality. Loud. Unapologetic. Full of static.

Still, I was feeling productive last night, and for reasons known only to me and possibly the ghost of my grandfather, I decided to go out after work and pick up all the deadfall in the yard. I should’ve known better. When the desert wants to hand you a test, it doesn’t call ahead.

So this morning I watched from the living room window as everything I gathered and stacked neatly by the side fence turned into airborne projectiles, tumbling like gymnasts across the property. There went the cottonwood limbs, bits of juniper, and, unless my eyes deceived me, a plastic garden gnome I swear I never bought. I suppose he’s someone else’s problem now.

In moments like that, when the world insists on being unpredictable, I sit still and think about my life. Which, admittedly, I do anyway. Thinking about the past is cheaper than therapy and requires less small talk.

As I inch toward retirement this August, I’ve been doing a lot of inventory. Not just the physical kind, though Lord knows I’ve got enough stuff stacked in my office to open a halfway decent museum dedicated to strange careers. But the mental kind, too. The big questions are: What have I done? What haven’t I? Did any of it matter?

I mean, I’ve been a stuntman, stand-in, sketch artist, cowboy, and paramedic and a firefighter. I rode shotgun on news stories no one remembers and sat in war zones that history hasn’t figured out how to classify. I’ve been told I wasn’t experienced enough to be hired and then told I was too experienced to be affordable. Somewhere in between those two lies the sweet spot where dignity lives, but I’ll be damned if I ever found it.

And now here I sit—surrounded by paintings, photographs, old uniforms, and enough notebooks to build a log cabin if I ever ran out of firewood. Part of me looks around and thinks, What’s it all for? The other part starts mentally pricing a haul-away bin and wonders how far I could throw my past if I tried.

But I don’t throw it away. Not today. Because deep down, I know something I forget too often: that everything I’ve done, all these odd jobs and strange turns, weren’t just filler between paychecks. They were my way of shaking hands with the world.

Even now, in the quiet that follows a thunderstorm and the chaos of a bad wind, I remember that being a witness—being there—matters. Even if nobody claps. Even if the medal never comes. Even if the only thanks is from a dog who liked how you smelled after a brush fire.

So I pour another cup of coffee, listen to the wind rattling around the porch like it owns the place, and wait. Maybe tomorrow’s the day I go to Yerington. Maybe not. Either way, I’ll write it down, because that’s what I do when I can’t do anything else. I turn on the computer, pull up the keyboard, and try to listen through the noise of my mind.

And sometimes I want to ask: can you hear my pain?

As a boy, I could climb any tree you pointed at and run for miles without thinking about what I was running from or to. I just ran.

Fast as a barn cat on a moonless night, flatfooted and howling with the wind. These days, I steady myself before I fart, and if I sneeze too hard, I gotta sit down and reintroduce myself to the world.

But I wasn’t always like this. There was a time—Lord, there was a time—when my legs were like spring coils, and I thought gravity was just a suggestion.

One hot June afternoon, when every day stretched out like a new frontier, and chores were just speed bumps between adventures, I decided to race a squirrel. Not on purpose, mind you. I’d just finished hauling feed sacks with Grandpa out to the shed, my shirt stuck to me like wet newspaper, and I was halfway through a Mason jar of ice water when I saw the squirrel.

He was a fat one. Not fat like store-bought chicken fat, but solid.

Thick through the haunches, like he’d been lifting acorns for sport. He’s perched up on the old apple tree that leaned east like it was listening to Nevada, and he was eyeing me like I’d interrupted something private.

Now, I don’t rightly know what came over me—maybe it was the water, the ice, or just the sheer dumb thrill of being twelve—but I locked eyes with that squirrel, set my jar down, and hollered, “You’re on!” even though he hadn’t said a word.

Off we went—him, zigzagging, like dodging sniper fire, and me, arms pumping, legs flying, my sneakers flapping like loose tongues. He bolted down the tree, tail flicking like Morse code, and tore across the yard toward the fence line.

I was close. Real close.

I hurdled over Grandma’s herb bed–crushed the dill, but it never held it against me–and shot past the rusted-out washing machine she used as a tomato cage. The squirrel juked left, and I followed. He went right—I tried.

I don’t remember the exact moment I lost him. He vanished somewhere between the woodpile and the old scarecrow.

But I do remember the moment I lost my footing. My right shoe caught something—might’ve been a root or my pride—and I went sprawling like a sack of flour.

I landed face-first in a clover patch, buzzing with bees and smelling faintly of manure and sunshine. I laid there a good while, breathing hard, grass in my teeth, trying to piece together what happened.

After a bit, I heard the screen door creak. Grandma leaned out, apron on, her hair pinned up in a bun she used for baking and battle.

“You alright, Tommy?” she called.

“I was racing a squirrel,” I mumbled.

Long pause. “Did you win?”

“No, ma’am.”

Another pause. “Then, come in and wash up.”

I learned something that day, though it took a few decades to sink in–sometimes you chase things for the joy of the chase, not because you’re gonna catch them. And if you fall flat on your face, that’s just part of growing up.

In the dim glow of the tavern, where shadows clung to the walls like cobwebs spun from the void, James leaned closer to Barbara. The air was thick with the scent of stale ale and something else, something acrid, unplaceable–as if the universe had exhaled a warning.

Barbara was a vision–her dress a cascade of midnight velvet, her open-toe sandals revealing delicate feet. Her laughter was a melody, sharp and fleeting, and her eyes, twin pools of starless black drinking in the light, held him.

He was charming her, or so he thought, weaving words with the confidence of a man who believed he could tame the night. His gaze drifted downward, drawn to the elegant curve of her foot, where the nail on the big toe of her right foot gleamed under the flickering lamplight.

It wasn’t a nail at all, he realized with a jolt, but an eye—a single, unblinking eye with a blue iris that shimmered like a dying star. At first, he dismissed it as a trick, a painted curiosity, some avant-garde artifice.

Then it blinked, or perhaps it winked. The motion was slow and deliberate, and James recoiled.

“Something wrong, James?” her voice was silk, but there was an edge, a resonance that vibrated in his bones.

Her lips curled into a smile, but her eyes—those on her face—remained fixed, unyielding, as if they were not hers at all but windows to something vast and ancient.

He stammered, his charm unraveling. “Your… your toe… it’s looking at me.”

She tilted her head, and the air grew colder, the tavern’s murmurs fading into a suffocating silence.

“Oh, that,” she said, her tone almost playful yet laced with a hunger that made his skin crawl. “It sees what I cannot. It knows what you are.”

The eye on her toe blinked again, its pupil dilating, and James felt a pull as if his soul were dragging toward it. The blue iris pulsed, and in its depths, he glimpsed something–a writhing, formless mass of tentacles and voids, a cosmic entity that churned in a realm beyond stars, beyond time.

It was not merely watching him; it was knowing him, peeling back the layers of his existence until he was nothing but a fleeting thought in its incomprehensible mind. He tried to look away, but the eye held him, its gaze a chain forged in the heart of a dying galaxy.

Barbara leaned closer, her breath cold as the void.

“You thought you were the hunter, didn’t you?” she whispered her voice no longer hers but a chorus of dissonant tones, as if a thousand mouths spoke from beyond the veil. “But you are the prey, James. You always were.”

The tavern dissolved, its walls melting into a starless expanse. The floor was no longer wood but a pulsing, fleshy surface writhing beneath his feet.

Barbara’s form shimmered, her body stretching and twisting, her limbs elongating into tendrils that reached for the heavens—or whatever lay beyond them. The eye on her toe grew, consuming her foot and leg, until it was all that remained–a single, massive orb floating in the void, its blue iris fixed on him, unblinking, eternal.

James screamed, but no sound came. His body was unraveling, his thoughts scattering like dust in a cosmic wind.

The eye saw him, knew him, and in its gaze, he was nothing–a fleeting spark in the infinite hunger of the cosmos. And as the last of his consciousness dissolved, he heard Barbara’s laughter, or perhaps the laughter of the thing that wore her skin, echoing through the endless dark.

In the tavern, the lamplight flickered. A woman in midnight velvet sipped her drink, her sandals gleaming.

The space across from her was empty. It was as if no one had ever stood there. And on her toe, an eye blinked, or perhaps it winked, searching for the next soul to claim.

 

Slowly, I pulled onto the Black Rock just as the sun sank, the sky blazing orange and purple, and climbed over the padlocked gate meant to keep vehicles out. I’d picked a spot—a lonely patch of sand by a dry wash–for its solitude and the promise of a star-soaked night. My plan for the weekend was simple–unplug, breathe, and let the desert do its thing.

Setting up camp felt like a ritual. I pitched my tent first, its nylon walls snapping tight against the evening breeze. Then, I built a fire pit, circling it with stones from the wash. Putting on a flannel shirt as the air cooled off, I grabbed a cold beer from the cooler and skewered a hot dog to roast. The fire crackled, and I sank into my creaky folding chair, feeling the world slip away.

Night hit fast, and the desert woke up. Coyotes yipped somewhere far off, their calls sharp and gone in a blink. I leaned back, beer in hand, and let the Milky Way steal my breath. Stars blanketed the sky, so thick I tried counting them before laughing at myself. Instead, I traced Orion and Ursa Major until my eyelids got heavy.

Sleep was tricky. The desert’s never quiet–the wind hissed through the creosote, and something small skittered near my tent. I lay there, half-dreaming of ancient man who’d crossed this land, their fires long faded.

Morning came with a blazing sun and a fine layer of sand in my sleeping bag. I brewed coffee over the fire that tasted better than anything from a café. Sipping it, I watched a Raven fly into the wash, its cawing at me almost cartoonish.

Saturday was for wandering. I hiked a ridge, where my boots grew dusty, Stumbling on petroglyphs carved into a boulder–spirals and bighorn sheep etched by hands long gone–I traced the lines with my eyes, wondering about their stories.

Lunch was a peanut butter sandwich. The heat was evident, but I had enough water, and the desert paid me back with quiet gifts—a hawk soaring overhead.

Back at camp, I read a Louis L’Amour paperback, its pages curling in the dry air until the sun dipped again. Dinner was chili straight from the can, warmed over the fire, and I ate it from the pot, too content to bother with dishes.

The night sky was even brighter than before, and I stayed up late, tossing logs on the fire and letting my mind drift. I thought about work and life, but the desert made those things feel distant. It was just me, the alkali, and the stars.

Sunday morning crept in too soon. I broke camp slowly, savoring the last of my coffee and the crisp dawn air.

As I packed the truck, a rabbit watched me, ears twitching. Walking out, I glanced back at the campsite, already fading into the vastness. The desert didn’t care I’d been there, but I carried its stillness with me, a quiet piece of the wild lodged in my chest, waiting until I returned.

Written by someone who should’ve stayed in bed.

I knew it was one of those days when my truck wouldn’t start until the third turn of the key, and even then, it coughed like a smoker at a prayer meeting. I finally got the truck to rumble awake, but once at work, I realized I’d forgotten my key card—the one thing that gets me into the building since they installed that fancy “electroconic” system last month.

That’s what the tech guy called it. I reckon he meant “electronic,” but who am I to judge?

So, I circled back home, grumbling words you don’t say in front of a Sunday school teacher, only to run straight into a construction zone with more orange cones than a high school marching band’s got brass. By the time I finally got home, retrieved the card, and recalculated how long it’d take to play the detour hokey pokey again, I knew I’d missed my whole air shift.

I called the boss, who took it surprisingly well—said she’d had worse days.

The storm two nights ago had come through like a drunk uncle at a wedding—loud, messy, and leaving behind a trail of trouble. The east side of the fence had blown down, exposing my backyard to the neighbor’s demon doggos, who bark at birds, clouds, and once, I swear, a plastic bag for twenty straight minutes.

Still, I figured I’d take a crack at fixing it. After all, how hard could it be?

On the third swing of the hammer, I missed the nail entirely and introduced my left thumb to the raw, righteous power of human error. I’ve never seen a color quite like that purple. It’s the shade of royalty—if royalty screamed profanities and danced around holding its hand like it was on fire.

While hopping and cursing, I dropped a full pressboard on my right foot, just above the toes, missing the steel toe by this much. A place the body doesn’t protect well.

Nature, it turns out, never expected us to be that dumb.

Then came the dogs. I forgot they had the run of their yard again. As soon as I leaned toward the fence line, they shot out like furry rockets, like I owed them money. I stood there, one hand cradling a swollen thumb, one foot throbbing like a cartoon anvil had landed on it, staring down two canines who were enjoying my suffering.

It wasn’t even eleven yet.

So, I limped inside, poured a modest bourbon—doctor’s orders, probably—and sank into the recliner. My dogs jumped up, looked me over like a disappointed mother, and settled on the side of my good foot. They figured I’d earned it.

Life’s like that at times. Some Thursdays are just a series of misfires, dropped boards, and unfriendly dogs, but you get through them.

You patch the fence, ice the thumb, and remember to keep the bourbon within reach—but only after the first hammering.

We were training outside Panama City, where the jungle is thick and the night is black. The first few nights, we had a walker with us. He didn’t say much. He watched and chewed our asses later.

But that night was different. No oversight. No handholding.

I was the point man. My team leader, Staff Sergeant Reeves, worked the route out with me. Simple job–get dropped in the jungle, find our way back to the bivouac without getting caught by the patrols or the instructors.

We got in the blacked-out vans. They dumped us at some nameless spot, and we spilled out, took a knee in the mud, pulling security.

That’s when my cammies tore wide open at the crotch. I laughed under my breath, though it felt like a bad omen.

The van rolled off, and the jungle swallowed us.

We moved in a ranger file, tight, careful. The first quarter mile went easy. Then, we crossed an old runway–wide and open under the moon. After that, things started to turn.

My compass went sideways when we hit the trees again. The needle jumped like a fish on a line. I thought maybe a power line was nearby, but there was nothing above us but the dark. I held the compass away from my rifle, thinking it was that, but it didn’t help. I probably looked like an idiot stretching the lanyard out as far as it could go, squinting at the dial.

Eventually, the needle settled. We paused. I took my azimuth. I felt a tap on my shoulder and a whisper, “Go.”

So I went.

I could hear traffic on a road nearby, but it faded quickly. Thirty feet in, it was dead quiet. No bugs. No birds. Just the heavy silence that you can feel pressing on your ears. A cold feeling prickled at the back of my neck.

I stopped. I turned to ask Reeves something. But there was no one behind me.

I was alone.

The dark was thick, with no moonlight. The NVGs were useless. I moved by the faint glow of my tritium compass, heart hammering in my chest.

That’s when I heard them. Voices. Women and kids, playing, laughing. Men talking. Muffled and far away, like a radio down a long hall.

Bushes rattled. I shouldered my rifle and backed away, slow. I had no live rounds, but I was ready to buttstroke anything that came out at me. The movement stopped.

Turning, I ran, low and fast, dodging trees, trying to find my team. Through the brush, I saw moonlight glinting off the runway. North and south—nothing. Somehow, I had ended up way north of where we crossed, with no idea how.

I pushed south. Jogging, careful. Breathing hard. Then, through the trees, I found them–still in their 360.

Reeves grabbed me, his voice low and sharp, “Where the hell did you go?”

I told him he had tapped me and said to go.

He shook his head. He said he was busy taking notes from the ROC when I wandered off. His eyes softened a little when he saw how confused I was. He just told me to stay sharp.

We moved out again.

The jungle was still dead silent, but now I had my team’s boots behind me, which helped.

We patrolled until we hit a small trail. And there it was, the building.

Massive. Black. Crescent-shaped. Like a hangar half-buried in the trees.

We tried to go around it right. No good. Left. No good. It was always there, always in front of us.

Under the camo tarp, with a red light, we checked the map. We decided to risk it. Follow the trail to the stream. There was no other choice. We left the strange building behind.

Near the stream, the brush got high. We moved along the edge, heads low. That’s when I saw headlights.

“Vehicle,” I hissed.

We dove into the elephant grass. Thick. Sharp. Suffocating.

The van rolled past, hunting us.

It turned around and came back slower, sweeping its lights over the grass. I held my breath. Mud soaked through my sleeves.

It moved off. We crept out.

And then–movement across the stream. A man. Or something that looked like a man–walking the treeline. The moonlight hit him wrong. His shape was wrong. His clothing was incorrect, not cammies or civvies.

I froze. Reeves froze, too. I put my night vision goggles on to get a better look. Gone like smoke.

We moved quickly, crossing the bridge in short sprints, one at a time.

When we got across, our radio operator, Lance Corporal Delgado, asked to take a leak. Reeves gave him a nod.

Halfway through, headlights again. Reeves tackled Delgado midstream, dragging him into cover. Delgado was cursing, holding himself.

The van rolled by, slow, searching.

When it left, we had a good laugh. Delgado complained he scratched his junk.

We moved out again, avoiding the roads, and finally returned to the bivouac.

After debriefing, I went to the guys driving the van. I asked if one of them had gotten out across the stream.

Nobody had. There weren’t supposed to be any other bodies in the training area but us.

So, who did I see? And who tapped my shoulder?

I never found out, and maybe it’s better that way.

1937, and Howard Phillips Lovecraft, a reclusive writer in Providence, Rhode Island, is frail and dying, his body ravaged by illness. His stories of cosmic horror—tales of Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, and the Necronomicon—have earned him a small but devoted following.

Unknown to him, his writings have brushed too close to forbidden truths, drawing the attention of the Mi-Go, fungal aliens from Yuggoth who serve darker powers. As Lovecraft pens his final manuscript, a fragmented tale of an entity called Zhul’thar the Veil-Warden, he unwittingly channels a ritual that thins the membrane between realities.

The Mi-Go, sensing his proximity to cosmic secrets, descend to silence him, but their interference awakens something far worse. Lovecraft’s death becomes a battleground where his mind, stories, and Mythos collide in a terrifying crescendo.

The gaslight in Lovecraft’s attic study flickered, casting shadows that writhed like tendrils across the peeling wallpaper. His skeletal hands trembled as he scratched ink onto yellowed paper, the words spilling out despite the fire in his gut.

The manuscript, untitled, spoke of Zhul’thar, the Veil-Warden, a name that had haunted his dreams for weeks–a shimmering void with fractal tendrils, whispering of unmaking reality. Howard coughed–a wet, ragged sound, and wiped blood from his lips. He didn’t know why he wrote–only that he must.

Outside, Providence was silent, the snow muffling the world. But the air in the room grew heavy and thick with an acrid, fungal scent. His pen faltered as a low hum pulsed in his skull, not unlike the one he’d imagined in his tales of R’lyeh’s sunken depths. The window rattled, though no wind stirred.

“Who’s there?” Howard croaked, his voice barely a whisper. He clutched at the manuscript, pages scattering across his desk.

A shadow moved in the corner—not a man, but a shape that buzzed, its edges blurring like a poorly focused photograph. It was tall, insectoid, with membranous wings and claws glinting like obsidian.

Its face, if it had one, was a cluster of writhing filaments. A Mi-Go, though Howard didn’t recall the name he’d given them in The Whisperer in Darkness. Its voice was a chittering cacophony, yet the words formed in his mind–cold and precise.

“You have seen too much, scribe,” it said. “Your words tear the Veil. Zhul’thar stirs because of you.”

Howard’s heart pounded–his vision swimming. “Fictions,” he gasped. “They’re only stories. I’m no sorcerer.”

The Mi-Go glided closer, its claws clicking. “Stories are keys. You have written the unmaking. The Warden hears your call. The Mi-Go must stop you.”

It extended a claw, and the manuscript glowed, the ink pulsing with iridescent light. Howard recoiled, knocking over an inkwell.

The hum grew louder, vibrating in his bones, and the room warped—walls bending into non-Euclidean angles, the ceiling rippling like water. His desk cracked, and through the fracture, he glimpsed it–a shimmering void, infinite and empty, its fractal tendrils coiling toward him. Zhul’thar.

“No!” Howard screamed, clutching his head.

His memories frayed—his childhood, his mother’s madness, his tales—each unraveling like threads in a tapestry. He saw himself reflected in the window, his face dissolving, eyes bleeding starlight, mouth a silent scream.

The Mi-Go hissed, its filaments twitching. “You have summoned it! Fool! We sought to stop this!”

The tendrils burst through the crack, not fully manifesting but enough to shatter reality. The room became a kaleidoscope of impossible colors, the hum a deafening chorus–Unweave. Unmake.

Howard’s manuscript burned without flame, each word rising as fractal smoke, feeding the void. The Mi-Go lunged, claws slashing, but the tendrils enveloped it, reducing it to a cloud of iridescent dust save for a part of its dark claw.

Howard fell to his knees, his body crumbling. He tried to speak his name—Howard Phillips Lovecraft—but it was gone.

The tendrils brushed his mind, and he saw the truth–his stories were not inventions but echoes of realities he’d glimpsed in dreams, channeled through his pen. Zhul’thar was no fiction but a force he’d unwittingly invoked, drawn by his tales of cosmic dread.

“Please,” he whispered to no one, to everything. “I didn’t know.”

The void pulsed, and the tendrils retreated, the crack sealing with a sound like a dying star. The room snapped back, but Howard lay still, his eyes wide, unseeing.

Outside, the snow fell–undisturbed. And when found the following morning, the doctors called it cancer.

Days after her encounter at the Innsmouth lighthouse, Eliza Marrow is a ghost of herself. Her memories are fragmented, her name a faint echo she clings to like a lifeline.

Plagued by dreams of shimmering fractals and a hum that never stops, she’s tracked rumors of a new outbreak of disappearances to New Detroit, where a viral video called The Signal mirrors the horrors she faced.

Samir Khan, meanwhile, thought he’d destroyed the cult’s server farm, but The Signal persists, spreading faster, and his identity frays with each sleepless night. The hum in his skull grows louder, whispering of a place where the Veil is thinnest.

Drawn by forces beyond their control, Eliza and Samir converge on an abandoned industrial pier in New Detroit, where the Order of the Unraveled prepares a final ritual to summon Zhul’thar. The two must confront the entity as realities merge or lose themselves forever.

The pier jutted into Lake Erie like a broken spine, its rusted cranes clawing at the fog. Eliza Marrow shivered, her coat too thin for the November chill, her flashlight flickering as if reluctant to pierce the dark.

The hum was deafening now, a pulse that drowned out her thoughts. She’d followed cryptic X posts to this place, messages from faceless accounts whispering of “the Seam” and “the Warden’s awakening.”

Her reflection in a puddle rippled, her face half-gone, one eye a void of fractal light. She whispered her name—Eliza—but it felt like a lie.

Samir Khan crouched behind a shipping container, his breath ragged. His phone was dead, but the hum lived in his bones, guiding him after The Signal reappeared on every screen in New Detroit.

He’d seen his face in a hacked billboard, featureless, dissolving into static. The USB drive, reloaded with a new kill script, felt useless against the weight of what he’d glimpsed in his dreams–a shimmering abyss, its tendrils threading through reality like a virus.

The pier’s center glowed with an unnatural light. A circle of figures—some in robes, others in hoodies—stood around a massive, cracked touchscreen panel embedded in the ground, its surface pulsing with The Signal’s fractals.

Cables snaked from it to rusted machinery, humming in sync with their chant–“Zhul’thar, unweave us. Zhul’thar, unmake.” The air shimmered, reality splintering like glass, and through the cracks, tendrils of iridescent void coiled, infinite, and hungry.

Eliza stepped forward, her voice trembling but defiant. “Stop this! You don’t know what you’re summoning!”

A figure turned, their face a blank expanse of flesh beneath a glitching AR mask. Their voice was a chorus, echoing from the air, the cables, the cracks. “We know, Eliza Marrow. We are the Unraveled. You bear the Warden’s mark. Why fight the unmaking?”

Samir emerged, clutching his USB drive, his eyes wild. “You’re killing people! This thing—it’s not freedom, it’s oblivion!”

The figure’s mask flickered, showing their faces—Samir’s, Eliza’s, then nothing. “Oblivion is truth. Zhul’thar is the Seam of All, where names dissolve. You both hear it. Look, and be unbound.”

The touchscreen flared, and the cracks in reality widened. Eliza and Samir froze as Zhul’thar emerged—not fully–but enough.

A shimmering void, vast and empty, its fractal tendrils branching through the air, ground, and their minds. The pier warped–concrete twisting into non-Euclidean spirals, the lake boiling with colors that burned the eyes.

Eliza’s flashlight shattered, and Samir’s phone sparked, its screen showing their reflections—faces unraveling, eyes bleeding light, mouths screaming without sound.

“Who… am I?” Eliza gasped, her hands clawing at her face.

Her skin felt soft, like clay, dissolving under her fingers. She saw her life—every choice, every regret—fracture into countless versions, each collapsing into dust.

Samir staggered–the hum a scream in his skull. “I’m Samir! I’m—”

But the name broke, and he saw himself as code, lines of identity deleting. The tendrils brushed his mind, and he felt nothing—no past, no self, only the pull of the void.

The figures chanted louder, their forms flickering, dissolving into motes of iridescent ash. The touchscreen pulsed faster, the cracks merging into a single rift.

Zhul’thar’s presence grew, its hum a cacophony of whispers–Unweave. Unmake. Eliza’s vision swam, and she saw Samir, his face half-gone, reaching for the panel.

“Do it!” she screamed, her voice barely her own. “The script!”

Samir lunged, slamming the USB drive into a port on the panel. The kill script triggered, and the touchscreen screeched, fractals collapsing into black.

The tendrils recoiled, the rift shuddering, but the hum didn’t stop. It grew, vibrating in their bones, their souls. The figures wailed, their blank faces splitting, leaking void before they vanished entirely.

The pier trembled, reality snapping back—but not completely. The rift lingered, a hairline crack in the air, and through it, Zhul’thar watched.

Not with eyes, but with an awareness that crushed. Eliza and Samir ran, the hum chasing them, their reflections in the lake showing strangers, then nothing.

They collapsed in an alley miles away, the city’s neon flickering like a dying star. Eliza tried to speak, but her name was gone. Samir stared at his hands, unsure whose they were. The hum was faint now, but it never stopped. In the distance, a street screen glitched, showing a 17-second clip of static and fractals.

Above, unseen stars align, and Zhul’thar lingers.