penninstitute - Tumblr blog

[penninstitute]

Case #0200915

Statement of Chance V. Césaire, regarding his identity. Original statement given September 15th, 2020.

I don’t know who I am.

Well, that is a partial lie- my name is Chance. Chance V. Césaire, that is the one I go by now. It sounds nice, it rolls off the tongue smoothly and nicely. But I used to go by others- William Mercier was the first one I took up, and he was nice. Charming, even. Then he had to go away, I had to change to evade a chase, and then I became Édouard Lioncourt. He was kinder than William, even if the deeds he did were just as bad. Then there was… Francois Boucher. He was far angrier. 

Francois did something that I, Chance, still cannot shake. And it’s been… mm, maybe a year at this point in time. I did not intend for him to become the focus of this statement, but, I suppose I cannot do much about it now. I’m sure you’re curious, yes? Far more interesting than my current identity crisis, hah.

I would like to make it clear that I steal things for a living. I hate to just confess to it, right here, right now, but it makes sense when it comes to my story. I would hope you don’t turn me in- then I’d have to shed yet another life, and I really do not wish to do so. I don’t consider myself evil, even though the authorities may find disagreement in that statement.

When I first became what I am- a thief, I mean, I swore never to steal a life. Those are not mine to take, I only take things from those who do not deserve their material possessions, but not something abstract like a soul. I- Chance is not a murderer. William was not a murderer, Édouard was not a murderer and Ars-

… Francois was different. 

Francois came about when I nearly died. And Édouard actually did, shot in the shoulder. Bled quite a bit. The scar still aches, to this day, especially when it gets cold outside. But ah, I was mad when Édouard died and Francois came around. I think anyone would be mad if they got shot, don’t you think so? I suppose that fury became an influence on the persona, the act I put on for these- characters, I guess? I do not know what else to call them, because I was never them but they were always me. They were always me but those names never sat too right.

Whenever I take up a new name, though, no one recognizes me, despite the fact this handsome face never changes. Maybe I get a new suit or haircut, just to be sure, but each new name is a new person, every single time. It doesn’t help when you have to rebuild connections in a business such as mine, every time. 

My excuse is that whoever the new one is, is a successor to the previous one- in a, well, have you seen the show, “Doctor Who”? Similar to that, how each new Doctor is, uh, a new person but generally the same person at the same time, just successors. I think Interpol believes that there’s some interconnected “thief ring” or something, when it is all just me. But that is, besides the point. I’m getting distracted, aren’t I? Je suis désolé… I should just get on with it.

Someone recognized Francois.

When I was at that party- one for the rich, at a mansion owned by some billionaire- and I heard a voice from behind call out, “...William? William Mercier?” my blood ran colder than it ever had before. I think I stopped breathing for a second.

I turned around and there was a man- a man I knew, one that I... but I wasn’t expecting the look of recognition in his own eyes. I hoped he would say that he thought I was someone else and move on, like everyone else, but he didn’t. Those ocean blue eyes widened as they met my own gaze and I felt like Édouard again- dying.

He ran to me, catching the attention of a few other partygoers as he did, nearly knocking me over from the embrace he pulled me into. He whispered that he missed me. That I scared him, and that I should never, ever disappear again. Of course, many eyes were on us by now, and I laughed. I said that was a preposterous idea.

“Why don’t we take this somewhere else?” I added in a forceful whisper, waving at the other patrons that there’s nothing to see here. He nodded, brushing a strand of brown hair out of his face. His… perfect face. I forgot how handsome he was, until then. 

Dread crept its way into my stomach and up my spine and throughout my body as we walked, my hand clasped around his wrist. He continued to bombard me with questions, and I couldn’t answer. Not at the moment, anyway. I found an empty bedroom in the mansion, and closed the door behind us. 

 “William-” his voice cracked. “W- where have you been? It- it’s been three years, you- you disappeared, I don’t- I couldn’t find you- you promised me you’d never leave.”

“I know- I know, I’m- I’m sorry, Eagan-” is what I managed before being pulled into another hug. It felt… wrong, this time around. It felt weird in front of all those people, sure, but even stranger in private. Something within me- within, Francois began to bubble.

“I forgive you,” Eagan had sobbed into my shoulder, ruining a perfectly good suit, but I didn’t care about that. Not at that minute anyway, I cared about the fact that this had never happened before. I was terrified.

He pulled away and I looked into his eyes, and he looked into mine- and I suppose he didn’t see excitement as he’d hoped. Eagan brought a hand to the side of my face, cupping my cheek, but I leaned away from his touch. Confusion crossed his features. 

“Wh… what’s wrong?” He asked.

“You shouldn’t recognize me.”

“William, what do you mean- of course I recognize you! I lo-”

“My name isn’t William,” I snapped back, my tone much harder than intended.  “And you shouldn’t recognize me. I’m not who you once knew, Eagan, that man is dead. You sh- shouldn’t know me, not anymore.” I found my hands gripping his shoulders with a tightness I don’t think I’d ever have the strength for. 

“Is… Is something going on? Y-you’re scaring me,” a shaky statement escapes his lips. “You vanished, William, I was so scared, I thought you died o-or worse, where have you been?”

A moment of silence passed between the two of us as panic continued to rise in me, making the air feel so much heavier. It felt like a pressure, and it was telling me- telling Francois to do something about this. My whole career revolves around my ability of hiding in plain sight, and if someone was able to spot me, then- then my life is on the line, fear clawed at my chest and then-

Then, I-  

Then, Francois-

...

Hah, did not think this part would be as difficult as it is to, talk about.

My- his- my hands clasped around the soft flesh of Eagan’s throat, and I squeezed, thumbs pressing into his windpipe. He struggled, for a minute, before going limp in my grip. I did not know there was that much strength inside my flimsy arms, but out of the sheer terror I felt, I just- I don’t know, I don’t know. I felt the life drain from him beneath my hands, the heat drained from his form, and I saw the light leave his eyes. 

I sat there for what seemed like… ages. Just, calming down from the rage that filled me, waiting, desperately for Eagan to wake up. I couldn’t have killed him, could I? Why? Because I got upset that someone knew who I am? I’ve gone so long without people remembering me, thinking whoever I was just died or vanished, never to be seen again, and it scared me. That someone I cared for just as equally did the impossible and then.

I just killed them.

Francois ceased that night, when I left that room, when I abandoned that corpse I so foolishly stole the spark from to feed my own fire. 

I, er…

I don’t know who I am anymore. I claimed to be a good man, once. I did everything I do in the name of my own definition of good, I stole from the rich and gave to the poor. I used to be Ar- I. Used to be Ars..

I don’t even remember his name, hah. I’m sure it’ll come back, fleeting as always. All I know is I used to be four other people and then they all died and got replaced by this current persona. Chance. Chance V. Césaire, that’s who I am, for now. Chance is me but I’m not Chance. I don’t think I have a name anymore. I don’t think I deserve one. 

I don’t think I’m human either, not anymore. After… everything. I don’t know what I am, just this thing that wears names like clothes, this thing that tricks and deceives and ruins the lives of anyone that dares to get close to it. It owns this face but it doesn’t belong to it, not really. It’s like a mask, a mask I never put on and it burns. 

I want to take it off.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

This isn’t the first we’ve seen of individuals or creatures changing identities to a supernatural degree, and I’m sure it won’t be the last time we see it, either. This one is... interesting, I guess? It’s not like Natasha, where the creature literally... changes its appearance and identity.

From what I can see here, the appearance never actually changed. It was just the name--I had Felix do a bit more research, and all of the names listed were, in fact, real people, but finding any real trace of them is difficult.

If Mr. Césaire is still around, I imagine it’ll be very difficult to find him for a follow-up interview.

[penninstitute]

So I was reading though your blog. And I noticed the rude comments made by meanies. And so I decided no I will not stand for this. Your blog is really cool and interesting and deserves positive feedback. It reminds me of my really awesome pagan friend, I think that I will have to share this blog with them.

That is very kind of you, Anon! Quite frankly, I don’t stand for the rude comments we received in the past either, it was very... strange, to say the least, to receive comments like those, especially since nothing prompted it... but no matter!

We are humbled by your words, and I’m glad you find what we do interesting and willing to share it with your friend! Have a great day.

-Caesar Bradbury, Archival Assistant

[penninstitute]

Case #0100107

Statement of Blaine Mackenzie, regarding a camping trip made up to Vermont with their friends in 2001. Original statement made January 7th, 2010.

I haven’t told this story to anybody. And as far as I know, Grace Acker never told anybody either. I haven’t spoken to her in years, but it’s safe to say she don’t like talking about it. Neither of us did, back when it happened, and we sure don’t now.

Tommy and I have talked about it a bit. But we both try to leave it behind us.

I don’t know why the Hell I’m even telling you any of this.

Needed to get it outta my system, I guess. Been sitting on this for nine years come May. Haven’t told a soul.

I’m from down in New Jersey, moved to Boston a little over two years ago. Been thinking about visiting your little institute for a while, ever since I heard about it. It’s a funny little thing you’ve got going here. I’m amazed it’s still up, don’t know where you get the funding.

I would’ve been inclined to say it’s all bullshit, and. I still think most of it’s bullshit, but after what I saw that day… I’ll allow for some exceptions.

It was early May, 2001. My friend Severin Read, his girlfriend Grace Acker, and our friend Tommy Hirsch, we were all taking a road trip up the east coast. Wanted to take some time, see the sights, we were taking a gap year before we started thinking about college and the like. Fresh out of high school, and we were raring to go.

We took two cars--Tommy and I in one, Severin and Grace in the other. We would camp out in parking lots or find campgrounds to stay at, restocking as we went.

It was fun for a while. We made it up to New Hampshire, and decided to take a bit of a detour, a little change in plans that would add an extra day to the trip, and after a few hours of driving with no destination in mind, found ourselves in Vermont, in the middle of nowhere. It was just woods, where we were, for as far as the eye could see--which wasn’t very far, mind you, considering how the trees got dark past a certain point.

I think that might’ve been where things started to go wrong. I’d never seen darkness like that, and I haven’t seen it since, save nightmares.

Naturally, at the time, we’d blamed the weird darkness on… y’know, woods stuff, and left it at that. We didn’t care. We were kids just out of our parents’ reach for the first time, we were more focused on the adventure than the potential danger.

We were looking for a place to set up camp for the night when we stumbled across what seemed to be an abandoned campground. I’m still amazed at how stupid we were--our first thought was sweet, free campground.

It wasn’t until later I began to wonder why it was deserted.

We were deep in the woods, so there was no reception. It was just us and the woods at night, which is such a classic horror movie set-up, I don’t know how we weren’t on edge all night. The fact of the matter, though, is that we weren’t worried at all. Just excited to have so much space to ourselves.

We set up a fire, played some games, drank a bit, dared Tommy to eat a marshmallow from an old pack of them we found sitting next to a pre-built firepit. He didn’t get sick, but it was still fucking nasty--funny, though.

The four of us were sitting around our fire when the night began to go downhill. Severin said he needed to piss, and that he’d be back in a minute, before he wandered off.

He was gone for twenty minutes before we started to get worried.

“Takin’ a long shit,” Tommy had suggested, and Grace had swatted his arm.

And then we heard Severin shout. It was a wordless, scared sound, just… a noise, a yell from the parking lot area. We sat there, frozen for a few solid seconds, before I got up and cautiously made my way towards where we’d heard the sound. Grace and Tommy just sat there, watching me, frozen.

Severin wasn’t in the parking lot. There was no sign of him. Just our two cars. Grace was distraught, and I calmed her down while Tommy began looking.

We’d searched every section of the campground by 11 P.M., and Severin was nowhere to be found.

I swear to God I’d heard him shout for us, and yet there was no sign of a fight or anything of the sort. All his things had been left behind, it was like he’d just disappeared. There were no leads, and Grace was starting to lose hope. I didn’t think we’d ever know what happened to him.

And then the Stag showed up.

The main thing about it, was that it was big. The next notable thing about it, was that it was dark. It’s eyes were white pinpricks, and its coat was darker than the shadows that stretched across the campground. It was like it was made of the darkness, shifting unnaturally across the Stag’s skin. And I write Stag, not stag, because there is a difference, and it’s one you couldn’t possibly fathom unless you saw the damned thing.

A dark, reddish-brown ichor dripped from its antlers and face. Too dark to be blood, but I don’t know what else it could’ve been. You could hear its breathing--it sounded sick, every inhale accompanied by a deep, rumbling wheeze.

We had regrouped by our fire when it arrived. It’s mere presence made the light practically die out, leaving a few embers still glowing in the bottom of the pit.

The Stag screamed. It was an indescribable and yet familiar sound. It was the dying shriek of a ghost and Severin’s wordless shout from just hours earlier that had set us searching. It made my blood run cold.

Severin’s whereabouts didn’t matter anymore. We ran.

I ended up separated from Grace and Tommy. I’d run towards the treeline, crashing through the pitch black woods. I could hear it breathing behind me, but not its footsteps--for a creature of that size, I thought for sure I’d be able to hear it trampling the earth, but it was just that fucking breathing.

I just ran. I ran for as long as I could, as fast as I could, but the Stag was on my tail the entire time, I could feel it.

Eventually, I tripped. Because of course I did, right? I tripped over a root or some shit and went down, and by the time I’d realized what had happened, the Stag was right behind me. I flipped onto my back and crawled backwards as best I could, trying to put distance between us, but it kept advancing until I was backed up against a tree.

I was trapped.

I didn’t know what to do. I’d been backed into that corner, and the thing was just staring at me, wheezing all the while. A sound like a growl rumbled from its chest, and it lowered its head to glare at me with those burning white eyes, whatever was on its antlers dripping onto my face and shirt.

It smelled like a rotting animal carcass and burning hair. It carried the sweetness of sickness and death, so thick I was practically choking on it.

“Leave my wood, child,” it said, voice deeper than anything I’d heard, loud enough to shake the earth and trees, enough to leave my head pounding.

I just nodded mutely. It stepped back, away from me, before disappearing. The scent lingered, and I sat there for… I don’t even know how long. I just sat there and tried to breathe. By the time I’d gained my bearings, the scent still hadn’t faded.

I got up and stumbled back to the cars on shaking legs.

Grace and Tommy looked shaken, but better off than me. They’d gone back to the campsite when they realized the Stag had chased after me instead. They asked me what happened, but I didn’t say a word, just dropped my keys in Tommy’s hand and all but crawled into the backseat.

I was covered in what quite honestly looked like blood, smelled like a dead animal, and wasn’t talking. I’m surprised they didn’t just abandon me there.

Grace went back and got our things before transferring anything she wanted from Severin’s car to mine. They’d given up the hunt, it seemed. Grace took the passenger seat, and Tommy drove us out of there. It was around one in the morning. We didn’t stop until we reached a motel, and Grace called the police to report Severin missing.

The last thing I saw of that campsite was the Stag, watching us go, and all I could hear was that rattling wheeze.

They never did find Severin’s body.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

... God, I hate anything relating to the dark like that. Personal grievances aside, this statement has... a lot to go off of, actually. Blaine Mackenzie (now Blaine Hirsch), Grace Acker, and Tommy Hirsch are all alive and well. Mx. Hirsch refused our request for a follow-up interview, said nothing’s changed since their original statement.

Mr. Hirsch and Ms. Acker didn’t have much to say, just confirmed what Mx. Hirsch reported in their original statement.

I’d say the statement is believable enough. Animals made out of darkness aren’t too far-fetched a concept. I don’t think we’ll be looking too much further into this.

[penninstitute]

Case #0071202

Statement taken from a loose page of notebook paper that looks as though it were ripped from a larger book, regarding… some situations. Original statement recovered December 2nd, 2007.

Anything written on this page will come true.

[ARCHIVIST’S NOTE: The first sentence is written in dark red ink of some kind. The rest of the page is written in various other kinds of material, but pencil and pen are the most common.]

i’ll find the ring i lost by tonight.

the dog won’t bark at the mailman.

my little sister’s stuffed animal is not broken.

my little sister’s stuffed animal can’t be broken.

i’ll get a 100 on my math test tomorrow.

… my homework will do itself.

my hair is red.

my hair is brown again :/

… my hair is red until i decide if i like it or not

i don’t care about amy barker.

the dog will be able to get any trick on the first try

the dog is a very good boy :D

i am a girl.

mom won’t give me shit for being a girl.

my hair is a little longer and curlier!

i have enough money to get that dress i want.

i know if i like girls or not

i have more confidence

i can talk to girls without sounding stupid

amy barker gets what’s coming for her.

my legal name is lyra rose langley.

i can change my appearance at will

we get a cat

dad gets the job

mom will stop being shitty about me liking girls.

mom will go away.

mom will come back to life.

[ARCHIVIST’S NOTE: The last sentence is scratched out viciously, to the point where the paper tears a little bit.]

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

The... implications this statement leaves you with are. Interesting and unpleasant. Not necessarily the getting rid of your abusive, transphobic, homophobic mother aspect, that’s honestly fine with me. I would’ve taken full advantage of a magic notebook that can get rid of transphobia when I was a teenager. What’s more worrying is the attempt to bring her back, only to cross out the sentence again.

It’s unsettling, at the very least, and horrifying at most. I don’t think I want to know what happened when Mrs. Langley woke up.

We were able to find Ms. Lyra Langley’s contact information, though she declined to speak to Institute staff for now. She said she may reconsider at a later date, but it isn’t something she wants to speak of with us as of now.

I’m going to send this down to Artifact Storage. I don’t know if the page still holds any power, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

[penninstitute]

Case #0190831

Statement of Mallory Cecil, regarding… a vase in their home. Original statement given August 31st, 2019.

Um. Okay.

There’s a vase in my parents’ attic. Or. Maybe I should give some context, first? Okay. Hold on.

My grandpa, Nikolaus Cecil, studies the supernatural. Or. Studied, until he, um, died, but! He taught my mama and her friend Amelia a lot, and they helped him research… whatever he researched. I’ve read some of his notes and stuff and it was all kinda confusing to me? I mean, I’m interested in it all, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just. There’s so much content, and I’m… not really much of a hands-off learner, hehe.

But the whole thing is, my family is really interested in the supernatural! We collect haunted stuff, or, supposed haunted stuff, and my mama’s a witch, and - I mean, I didn’t learn the practice, but I’m still carrying on the family tradition of… interest in this stuff!

But yeah. We have all these supernatural artifacts, and the most… impressive? Real? I don’t know, maybe even um, the most dangerous one, it’s the vase.

It just kinda sits in the attic most of the time, but my mama checks on it every day. Something about making sure it doesn’t break? It’s real important that the vase doesn’t break or get damaged or lost, and we aren’t allowed to touch it.

… Obviously I’ve broken that rule. It’s just a vase, really.

My mama watches it, just like her father before her and his father before him and… so on and so forth. Family heirloom of the supernatural sort!

It’s… creepy. I don’t like it. Sometimes, I can hear whispers coming from the attic. No real words, I think, at least nothing in English, just… soft, nearly inaudible whispers. The voices are deep, and… they feel mocking, almost. I’m sure it’s the vase. I don’t know what else it could be.

I suggested handing it over to your Institute, but. Mama said we can’t get rid of it, so that’s not an option.

It… weirds me out. I don’t like having it in the house. I always get such a bad headache if I’m holding it, and it’s always so… everything about it is just wrong. I get this weird… being watched feeling, and it - I never really feel. Right when I’m holding it, like my skin doesn’t fit right. I always feel like I’m close to… melting or falling apart or something when I hold it. It’s not a good feeling.

It’s just dark inside it, too. It’s not empty, there’s something in there, but it’s just black. I’ve never tried sticking my hand in. I don’t think I want to.

It’s real creepy.

… I feel like it moves on it’s own, too.

Maybe I can show it to you guys sometime.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

According to Institute records, Mx. Cecil made a follow-up statement roughly a month later, and then another statement after that, but we’ve yet to find any of them.

While I can’t say for certain that it’s real, there have been plenty of haunted artifacts in the past, and considering half of the stuff in Artifact Storage, I’m sure a whispering vase is pretty par for the course.

[penninstitute]

Case #9991002

Statement of Hannah Winters, regarding… mirrors. Original statement given October 2nd, 1999.

I hate mirrors. I hate everything about them. But the worst part is looking at a mirror, and being able to see yourself reflected back at you. Yourself in your purest, most… most quintessential form.

I hate it. I hate how looking at myself makes me feel. It scares me, the way my own eyes stare into me. The way how it… copies my every move, how it is me, fully and entirely. It almost feels mocking. Look at yourself and all your imperfections, you’ll never like what you see when you look in the mirror, hate yourself for it. Strive for an impossible goal, because you fear the thing looking back at you more than you fear the harm that comes with working for a goal like that.

… so I hate them.

I also hate how they crack. Whenever I look at mirrors, they always… splinter, break, shatter, and I’m left to stare at myself in the broken reflection. It’s not normal. Other people don’t have this problem, I know they don’t.

Without fail. Every time I look at my reflection, the mirror shatters.

It’s scary. Startles me each time it happens. I can never explain it, either. I’ve given up trying. Nobody really realizes it’s me doing it, anyways, but. I think I’d prefer it that way.

How do I explain it to someone? That’s almost just as terrifying as the mirrors themselves. If I admit it was me, I admit that I fucked up somehow, because how else would I have broken it?

I don’t know. I just hate mirrors. I don’t know if this’ll mean anything to you.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

... Aside from the mirrors that shatter when looked at, this statement isn’t... too remarkable. Ms. Winters makes an... interesting argument for why she hates mirrors, but the reasons aside from the shattering aren’t exactly supernatural material.

One thing that struck me while reading this was the similarities to case #0120701, specifically the cracked mirror described in that statement compared to the shattering mirrors here. Whatever the Fault is, it may be prevalent here as well? I’m not sure.

[penninstitute]

Case #0190811

Statement of Jameson Kisler and his writing ability. Statement given on August 11, 2019.

I would like to preface this statement with something very important: I never meant harm to anyone who has read my works. 

I suppose I should start from the beginning. I have been writing for 30 years now and I’ve built up a fanbase with my works. Countless people have come to my book signing and those people have credited my novels to be extraordinary and different from other authors they’ve read. At the time, I’d feel a sort of ego boost and simply thank them for the compliment. 

It is always the silence afterwards that hurts the most, I think. When the person leaves, they walk down the sidewalk and to their life, unsuspected to their nearing doom. A week passes and they’re found dead, run over by a bus or a sudden heart attack or their apartment complex has a gas leak and they’re never able to escape in time. They die and I’m the reason for it. The death toll is different each time, too, but it rises and rises each time someone new reads my books. 

At first, though, my writing was simple. There was a beginning, a middle, and an end. It was just that. I was working as a freelancer writer, too, and I never had a deadline. I could write and not worry as much. There is a certain joy in writing something you can enjoy. I found myself in a zone and sometimes, I would write the whole day. I lost contact with most of my friends as a  result, but I had a job to do, and it was to write. 

Who knew that could change in one day. 

Another thing I find important worth mentioning is I write on a typewriter. It is old, but it gets the work done. Many, many people use laptops, but you can never trust the internet.There are ghosts that live inside of the screens. Loved ones have died, but they’re still online, as if they’re waiting for someone to talk to them. I never want to encounter the ghosts of the past. A typewriter doesn’t have this problem, though. It works just as well as a laptop or phone can, and there is nothing like the feel of paper between your fingertips. The gentle click click of the words as they’re pressed into the paper gives me a sense of purpose when it comes to writing. The shrill sound of when you successfully finish a page, that was it for me. Surely, though, I have to adapt to the continuously changing world that is around us. 

At least, that is what my editor wants me to do. 

I’m not fond of change. As much as I want to accept the change of the days or the passing of the seasons, I can’t bring myself to it. I know by the end of the day, the end draws ever closer and at some point, as a whole, we must accept that. As I write these stories, I write endings for each and every one of them, knowing someone will read it and experience the satisfaction that comes from a complete storyline. To be an author is to be willing to accept that change will not come unless you alter the writing yourself. To be a part of the future is to be a part of the present, knowing and accepting that oftentimes than not, things will happen without your acknowledgement. 

I fear, as mentioned, the same has happened to me. 

This change… first occurred when one Olivia Gracestone had read my first piece in my new series, the ones I’ve been tasked to write by my editor. I remember the event clearly as it was at a book signing and she was very adamant about my works, even going as far as saying she had been a fan for a while. I signed the first page as she began to ramble and, as rude as this sounds, I was hardly paying attention. She left with the book and that was the last I heard from Ms. Gracestone. 

I received a call from her parents a week later. Olivia had died, tragically, in a car crash as she was passing an intersection. A speeding semi, they told me over the phone, was the reason for her death. When I had asked why they decided to call me, they had mentioned my book. Coincidentally, in the same book, the protagonist had been killed by a speeding semi, two, if I remember correctly, and it was the book that Olivia had read before she left that afternoon. She had, as her parents told me, going on about the book, describing how she really began to feel connected to the character and how they shared the same issues. College, I believe, was the main issue in that book. Olivia was going to be a freshman in college, just starting out. At the time, I brushed off these incidents as coincidences. 

The tragic death of Olivia Gracestone plagued my mind for weeks, but I continued to write because my editor was expecting something to be done by the end of that month. It was around May, I believe, I realized my works were becoming more of a problem in reality than actual fiction. As mentioned previously, I’ve grown quite a fanbase with my novels and collections, and because of that, more and more people were ready to buy my books. There were lines outside of the bookshops and talk on the internet about what my next big work would be. I was used to this type of pressure and excitement, as it was the driving force for completing my next work, which featured a small town coming together after an earthquake had occurred. 

A week passes. News coverage of a small town in Nebraska reported to have been hit by a 5.9 magnitude earthquake. Lives were lost and homes were torn apart, rattled from their foundations. Coincidences. It was all coincidences, right? I watched the news with a solemn face and told myself it was a coincidence. The feeling vanished when I saw a face of a family, faces dotted by the small pigments of the TV screen. There was a little girl… with blonde pigtails and she was crying, clutching a stuffed bunny, and her father was speaking to the newscaster with a hand firmly gripped on his daughter’s shoulder. 

I briefly encountered a bit of writer’s deja vu as I continued to watch the scene. It shifts from the little girl and her father, to the entire town, again. The image pans until it settles on a house, amongst the carnage. A female steps out of the house with a book tucked under her arm, her face concealed by the curtain of brown and in that small moment of coverage, I was able to get a good look at the cover. 

It was my newest release. 

My center of gravity had shifted and the sounds hallowed out from around me. My room darkened as thunderclouds formed outside, and at some point, I had dropped the remote. The television continued to play the scene, but my focus was blurring. Tears were falling just as the rain began to cry from the clouds outside. Pent up emotion, I believed, and realization. The thunder shook the house when I went back to my room that night. I didn’t touch my typewriter for a week, I just watched it from my bed. 

Was this my change? 

I have this one piece I’m working on. A longer piece, I’m afraid. It details the life of an older man, unnamed for the time being, and his story is harder to write. I believe it is only because I haven’t found… myself drawn to this project. 

I’m afraid to finish it, I think, because if I finish it, will that be all I’m good for? For now, I’ll continue writing about other people’s lives and ignore the deaths that continue to grow around me.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

While none of our employees (at least the archival employees) plan on actually reading Mr. Kisler’s works, just for... safety precautions, we do have a few of his books at the institute. We sent them to Artifact Storage for further inspection, but at a glance... they seemed mostly normal. Something about them just felt... off. I don’t really know how to explain it.

They just... looked strange. But none of the others seemed to notice anything, so. I don’t know.

Mr. Kisler wasn’t available to speak to institute staff, but... there wasn’t really anything in this statement we needed further clarification on, so. We’ve looked into the events and deaths detailed here, and confirmed all of them. Whether or not the books had a part to play, it’s unclear, but it isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Reality-altering books are actually a pretty common phenomenon, considering the nature of Leitners and the like.

I think it’s safe to assume that this statement only states the truth.

[penninstitute]

Case #0040107

Statement of Katie Woodsman, regarding… her existence, or supposed lack thereof. Original statement… recovered January 7th, 2004.

How do you know if you’re real?

I am… not sure if I ever was, real, not anymore. I think at one point I was- or, or I believed it. I thought I was real, at one point, but I’ve forgotten everything before this.

I am sitting on an abandoned playground. It is dark. I do not know what time it is.

This body does not feel like my own. I am not sure who I am. Katie. Katie Woodsman. That’s my name. That was my name, at one point. Maybe. I do not know. I cannot be sure. All I know is that there is a notebook here, and I have a pen in my hand, or there is at least a pen in this hand and supposedly I am writing this down. I do not feel like I am doing anything. I am thinking, are these my thoughts? Regardless, these words are appearing here, on this page, and those are real, and yet reading back the words already written I cannot fathom they came from my hand.

I do not have a hand. I don’t think I do. I cannot be sure.

These hands are pale. This body is strange. Too long, almost. Exaggerated. Not right. Faded at the edges. I don’t believe a person is supposed to be so fuzzy around the edges. I don’t believe an identity is supposed to be so fuzzy around the edges. I’m not sure what an identity is, only that I supposedly have one.

Katie. That’s what I wrote earlier. That’s…  it should be right. And yet I don’t know if it is, really.

How can you be a person if you don’t exist? How can you have a name?

I think I had a mother. At the very least, I had a mother, there was an older brother, two dogs, then no dogs. I’m not sure what a mother is. I do not think it was very kind to me. Pretended I didn’t exist.

It doesn’t have to pretend anymore, at least. Though I do not think it is alive anymore.

These hands are… these hands belong to Katie Woodsman. I think.

It is very lonely here. Very quiet. I saw someone, earlier, but I do not think they saw me. I’m not sure who “me” even is.

There is snow on the ground. It’s supposed to be cold. I’m sitting in it, and yet I feel nothing. It’s supposed to be cold. Why isn’t it cold?

Who is “I”?

Whatever is writing these words down, I do not think it is helping it to do so.

… Katie. Who is Katie?

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

Katie Woodsman did, in fact, exist, though supposedly went missing around December of 2003. Family members claim she hasn’t been seen since, but was already fairly distant from the family around that time, so it wouldn’t be surprising if she simply cut ties.

Other notes in this case file, however, say that this statement was found in an envelope on the ground, addressed to the Institute but with no return address on it, just outside in the courtyard. I have... no idea what that means, but it’s probably not the strangest way we’ve received a statement.

[penninstitute]

Case #9970407

Statement of Katherine Rivera, regarding the death of her sister Emily. Original statement given April 7th, 1997.

You.

I don’t know what exactly you did, but your people murdered my sister.

Your workplace is really rather interesting, Ms. Hall, and while I certainly wasn’t in opposition of the place before, after what your hunters did to my sister--all because of you--I think the place has earned my hatred. Emily trusted you, despite your opposing sides she liked you, even as the Beholding and the Blindness clashed, Emily still enjoyed your company. And you sent the dogs after her scent when you decided you were done with her.

Do you realize how horrible that is?

Emily hadn’t even done anything wrong. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got caught up in your investigations. Investigations into what? 

You’re secretive, for a beholder. Was this really about the ritual? I doubt it. Emily didn’t even have a part to play in that.

Never reach out to my family again.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

... For a number of reasons, this statement is confusing. Honestly, it reads more like a break-up letter, but worse, somehow. I have... no idea what the context is, or what exactly Natalie Hall did, or who Katherine and Emily Rivera are.

It’s... interesting? I guess? The hunting department doesn’t hunt regular people, so whatever was going on here had to have been supernatural. If not, then. I don’t know.

I don’t know what the Beholding or Blindness are, but I feel like the Beholding may have come up before? I’m not sure--it just seems familiar. I’ll have to double check.

Otherwise, there’s not really anything else I can do with this statement. Maybe I’ll have Caesar or Felix look into the Rivera family.

[penninstitute]

Case #9991012

Statement of Jason Stone, regarding a strange flight he took. Original statement given October 12th, 1999.

I’m not a fan of flying. A lot of people aren’t, they don’t like the whole process, they don’t like the people, some people are afraid of planes--for me, it’s a little bit of all of those things. I hate how long it takes, and I’m not the most sociable person on the planet, and being that high up in the air… it just rubs me the wrong way. Being trapped inside a plane with all those people, and being the kind of person that watches YouTube videos or TV shows about plane crashes, among other disasters…

… Yeah, I’m basically setting myself up for an anxiety attack every time I need to fly somewhere.

I still… do it. Or. I used to. Since the last flight I took, I’m not really… I don’t know if it’ll happen again, but I’d much rather avoid it if possible.

But. Yeah. I hate flying, but I still do it when I need to, which is why I’m here, talking to you guys in the first place.

The entire flight felt off from the beginning. From security to the gate, I was on edge--more than usual. I mean, I’ve always been a kind of anxious dude, but this was like--this was worse than its ever been. I felt like I was being looked at, my skin was crawling, it was an all-around terrible time. I basically sat by the gate with my carry-on clutched to my chest and my headphones on while I waited, watching to see what was watching me.

… I never saw anything looking at me.

I don’t remember the faces of any of the people in the airport. Which wouldn’t be… that odd, since there are so many people in airports and you meet so many people in your day to day life, but--but I don’t remember being able to properly focus on anyone at the time, either. I want to just attribute it to my own anxiety distracting me too much, but… I was watching the people around me like an overly-paranoid hawk.

I boarded the plane without issue. I sat down by the window and waited for take-off. They went through all the safety videos and instructions and stuff, and then--

It was only after take-off that I realized that feeling was still there. That skin-crawling feeling, that itch on the inside of my skin, the sense that something was wrong. It--I wrote it off as anxiety, told myself it was nothing, but it just felt different. I almost felt nauseous, but… not, at the same time. It was nausea but it felt good, almost. It was then that I noticed.

Every single person on the plane was breathing in unison.

The nausea got worse--or, or better, maybe? I’m not sure how to describe it. I felt sick but it didn’t feel wrong. Every single thing on that plane was breathing in unison, too slow, too steady, too… inhuman. It felt like something mocking the process of breathing. There was a full… almost forty-five seconds between each inhale and exhale, and each one lasted so much longer than any regular inhale or exhale would.

I realized my… my own breathing was slowing to match it. The nausea lessened as I did. But--breathing in time with whatever was on that plane hurt. I wasn’t getting enough air, and my chest began to ache pretty quickly. I’ve never been good at holding my breath.

It didn’t even strike me as scary until I realized the edges of my vision were going dark. I tried to take a deep breath, tried to bring myself back to normal, but I… couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

That’s when I started panicking, which--well, I was already kind of panicking before, but now it was the visible panic, the loud panic, not the quiet well-hidden panic of someone with anxiety, but the panic of someone who was pretty sure they were about to die.

Everything on that plane turned to look at me, and I think I honestly stopped breathing entirely.

And then they exhaled, and I inhaled, and felt like I was going to vomit. I started to hyperventilate, and everyone on that plane stopped looking at me, and everything was still breathing in time with each other and I couldn’t escape, because we were thousands of miles up in the air.

I don’t know how I got through the rest of that flight. I’m just glad I did--I don’t want to know what would’ve happened had I passed out.

I got off the plane, picked up my luggage, and all but ran to meet my sister, who was picking me up. I haven’t taken a plane ride since. I swear to God, sometimes, when I’m out--sometimes I’ll still struggle to breathe, and when I do, everything around me--

It all just looks at me.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

Unfortunately, as seems to be the case with most statements we upload, Mr. Stone was unavailable for a follow-up interview, and couldn’t be reached by any of the Archival staff.

I’m not sure what’s more concerning here--the events he goes over in the main part of the statement, or the fact that the effects seemed to last even after he’d gotten past the worst of it.

Either way, I don’t really... have hope for Mr. Stone’s survival after he gave his statement, since his sister Danielle claimed he disappeared in late March of 2003 and hasn’t been seen since, so. Another dead end.

No airline or specific flight was mentioned in the statement, which would’ve been at least a little useful, but it’s another dead end. I don’t think there’s much else we can do.

[penninstitute]

Case #0180717

Statement of Damien Piper, regarding his life. Original statement given July 17th, 2018.

I am dangerous. That is a fact.

To share my story when I am a threat and a menace is ironic. After all, who hears out the beasts? Who wants to? You know that their teeth are sharp. But part of me cannot stand keeping it a secret. Withholding information - it’s a burden that weighs you down, and one that can only be alleviated through sharing the truth. It isn’t a secret to you, I’m sure. You, dear Archivist, who reads this now - you will know, sooner or later, against your will. Such is our nature. Such is fate.

With that, I give you my story.

I am a musician, and have been since I was young enough to still have my mother with me. I didn’t keep her for very long, because when I turned 12, she was taken, and I got another mother in her place. That other mother didn’t make music like my true one did. Its tune was scratchy, and ragged. It didn’t like my guitar, while my real mother liked it

It killed my father when I was 16. So I killed it. And after that, I was alone, later thrust into the hands of foster care with nothing but an instrument from another time.

My new foster parents were pleasant enough. They had three other children that they were taking care of, and I got along well with them. School, however, was a different story. I got bullied a lot, called various names, beaten and bruised on certain occasions - all not very fun things. I bore it, though. The last time I took action was when I killed the other mother, and since then I hadn’t the strength or will to do it again. I let myself be pushed around. I didn’t have the energy to fight back. That, I speculate, made me a prime target.

The only solace I found was with my guitar. It was a hand-me-down, given when I was 10. The instrument helped ease the discomfort of the harassment in school at first. Soon, however, the abuse worsened. And again I ignored it, telling myself I had no business trying to resist.

I think this was when it started growing, that throbbing, beating something inside of me. There was a connection being forged against my will inside my heart. Thankfully, I graduated without any fuss, but that feeling still lingered. It was only a matter of time before it would show itself.

On the night of my 21st birthday, I wrote my first and last song.

It came to me in the middle of the night, a strike of red lightning that scorched me and kept me awake until I’d written every last word down. And when I finished, I sat there, staring at it, uncertain of its conception but certain of its purpose. I knew what this song would do. I knew what I would do.

I was going to perform at a bar tomorrow evening, some dingy little establishment few would’ve heard of. The audience milled around in the dank space, sleepy and lethargic like the place itself, and the whole scene spoke of laziness. And there I was, clutching my instrument with white knuckles, desperately aching to start playing. That inspiration from the night prior had grown to a crescendo inside of me. If I didn’t let the crimson song out soon, it would’ve surely consumed me.

Onto the stage I got, and I introduced myself, trying to temper the tension in my jaw. I held my guitar tightly and poised my fingers fatefully over the strings. Droopy eyes turned to look at me.

I strummed the first chord, and I sang that song.

Do you know what euphoria feels like? I’m sure you could attempt to draw up descriptions; I’m sure you will even say that yes, you know what it’s like. It’s unlikely you could understand what my euphoria felt like, however. Despite this, I will try my best to tell you.

It is like a pure, unbridled, madness. It is a joy you can’t resist, a song that fills your ears and swallows you whole, dragging you down into the depths of mayhem. It is motion, movement, that commands your limbs to move and begs you to dance.

And dance the audience did - they moved, oh they did. They swung at one another and howled with rage. Broken glass flew and knives went deep into vocal chords, splitting them open and spilling the song onto the floor. Bodies were broken. Bones snapped. Chaos and bloodshed reigned.

And through it all I sang.

Mind you, I couldn’t stop. It wasn’t my choice to continue singing. Being possessed by that feeling is… not something you choose. It takes you and it makes you sing.

It was a long time before I finally stopped. The experience had left me greatly winded. My throat was raw, and my eyes watered with emotion that I wasn’t sure about. I glanced up tentatively at the messy scene around me.

The human body has a lot of blood in it, didn’t you know?

Red. Red. Red. So much of it throughout the bar. And it was very quiet too. Seeing as there was no one to stop me, I left.

That is the end of my story. Since that day, I have done the same thing over and over and over and over again. They whisper my name in the back alleys. They talk of that mysterious band, Hamelin - the band that, they say, has music which is to die for. I can assure you, it is.

Perhaps you are wondering why I would willingly expose myself like this. After all, sharing my crimes puts me at risk of being arrested, and surely a beast doesn’t want that?

Well, it’s true I don’t fancy being arrested, but at the same time I felt I had to tell you. To serve something the way I do - it’s a burden, all forms of servitude are. My kind just so happens to be an extremely deep lifelong debt I can never repay.

Do I regret it? Sometimes. Sometimes I feel something heavy in my chest, a deep seated guilt telling me - rightfully, I’ll add - that I’m a monster, that the slaughter left in my wake is an act that can’t be condoned no matter the reason. Other times I enjoy it, letting myself really get lost in the music, embracing that madness. Most of the time, I try to ignore it. It doesn’t always work.

Did I choose it? In a way, maybe I did. Or circumstance was just cruel.

Regardless, now you know. Hate me, fear me, inspect me like some prized specimen - do what you wish. But whatever you do, I implore you to be aware, for it may come for you just as it did for me.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

This statement has a direct connection to Case #0140111 – the band described there, Hamelin, is the same name Damien Piper uses here. The connection between violence and music is… not one I would’ve made on my own. It’s an interesting association.

Mr. Piper makes… interesting claims, but Blair has found several consistent reports about violent brawls in establishments across the country, all of them ending with no survivors–and all of them occurring on nights where the band Hamelin is playing.

It’s interesting, for sure. No contact information for Damien Piper was in the file, so we aren’t able to reach out to him for more information.

[penninstitute]

Case #0100102

Statement of Apollo Bancroft, regarding his sister. Original statement given January 2nd, 2010.

How well do you know the people around you?

Whatever you think, you’re wrong. You can’t know the people around you, not truly. I knew Allie since birth, and look what happened. I thought I knew her better than anyone, I thought I knew her better than she knew herself, and I was wrong. You can always be wrong. That is simply the way it is. You can’t trust anyone. You can’t believe you know anyone, not even for a moment. Because even if you think you do, you can be horribly, horribly wrong.

My sister Allie was my parents’ biggest achievement. She was successful, popular, talented in everything she tried. She was perfect. And that included being perfectly sweet and kind. If she had flaws, people did not see them.

In fact. She was too perfect. She didn’t have flaws, not really, save for a sense of perfectionism, but even then, it never seemed to truly get in the way of things. Because it didn’t matter what she did. It was perfect. It didn’t matter, there was never a single mistake. I had never witnessed her getting yelled at or scolded. It just didn’t happen, not to Allie. Because she did everything right the first time.

I didn’t know how someone could be so peppy, but I did not see any issues under the surface. I was never privy to arguments or disagreements between my parents and Allie--she just didn’t get into trouble. Everything she wanted, she got, because she wanted just enough and not too much.

Allie never got hurt. Allie never got acne, never had issues with her health. I can’t remember her getting sick or injured a single time in our lives, save for--

Well, save for the end. But the point is, she was flawless in every way. And I didn’t see anything wrong with it until recently.

Her face was perfectly symmetrical. She was proportionate and perfect, like a manufactured doll. It was too perfect, to the point of her being uncanny, almost, once I started noticing. At first glance, she was perfect, and then you looked closer.

Her skin was too smooth. Too plain, it didn’t look like skin--more like porcelain, really, smooth and white and perfect, without a blemish or freckle to be seen.

Allie did not blink. Her laugh was the same every time--the exact same. Everything about her was polished and perfect in a way that does not belong on humans. And I don’t know how I didn’t realize how wrong it was until now. Eventually I didn’t even think to question her--she was always right, always perfect, there was never anything wrong, so why would that change? Why would that ever change?

She texted me one night. Said she needed help with a project.

Allie did not ever need help with anything. If you were helping her with something, it was meant to be a group activity. She did not take on tasks that would be too much for her by herself. She was not someone who ever needed help, or so I thought.

I was… put-off, but I--I tried to be a good brother, I agreed to help her, and made my way to her apartment. She didn’t give me any details, just told me to come over.

I knocked on the door, and I will never forget this moment.

“Come in, and don’t mind the mess,” said something that was not Allie.

A chill ran down my spine in those few seconds in front of the door. First and foremost: Allie did not make messes. She was always tidy and perfect. Nothing ever fell out of place with her around. Second: her voice was wrong. It was her voice, sure, but it was stilted. Her inflection was all… off. She didn’t pronounce words quite right. It almost sounded robotic.

A morbid curiosity overtook me. What was going on? What happened? What was wrong? Everything was wrong, I knew, I could tell, everything around me was wrong in a way that made my skin crawl, and I pushed open the door.

The sight that greeted me makes me want to puke even just thinking about it. There was blood all over the floor, smeared around, and the worst thing--

The worst thing was Allie, sitting there on the floor, her torso cracked open. Not sliced, cracked. The skin was perfectly broken, and it was like there was no flesh underneath. It was like--it was porcelain, cracked cleanly and evenly, the jagged edges caked in blood. A portion of skin was on the floor, one side of it wet with blood. It was like a puzzle piece, it would fit perfectly in the space on her torso where the skin was missing.

There was nothing inside but red, a fleshy mass of pulsing red.

“I had a bit of an accident,” Allie said in her distorted voice, smiling too perfectly at me, eyes rolling back. “I just need you to hold that piece in place while I stitch it up.”

I didn’t. Know what to say. Or do. I just. Nodded mutely and shuffled forward to do what she asked. She smiled impossibly wider at me when I picked up the skin--it felt like porcelain beneath my fingers. It was stiff and solid and cold, the blood on it just as cold as the skin itself, if not colder.

It fit perfectly in the hole in her torso. She took a needle and thread and began sewing it back into place with fingers drenched in blood. I couldn’t do anything but sit and watch her do it.

Once she was done, she ran her fingers over the thread, smoothing it away as though it were a part of the flesh. There wasn’t even a scar left behind. I still couldn’t say a word.

She thanked me, and said she needed to go lie down, but that I was free to stay for as long as I liked.

I didn’t stay.

I haven’t seen my sister in weeks. I don’t plan to see her again, if I can help it.

That’s it.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

... The statement, while detailed, unfortunately does not provide enough information for good follow-up. We were unable to get in contact with Mr. Bancroft, he refused to speak to us, but Caesar did some digging and found that Bancroft apparently went missing for a short while in July of 2010, before reappearing at his sister’s apartment in New Haven, Connecticut.

Apparently Alison Bancroft moved out in the fall of 2011, but we were unable to find where she moved to, so that’s a dead end.

While the cases aren’t... too similar, the themes of skin and something being wrong about a person make this case similar to others we’ve seen so far. Whatever the Stranger is, I think it may apply to this case?

I’ve been unable to find any information on the Stranger, speaking of. Cordelia says she’s never heard of it, and Hazel didn’t have any ideas. Neither did any of the others. I’m probably going to do some more research on my own to see what I can find, but... I don’t exactly have high hopes.

[penninstitute]

Case #9941018

Statement of Valentina Gagnon, regarding the woods behind her family’s home in Virginia. Original statement given October 18th, 1994.

Our family has owned land in southern Virginia for decades. We’ve had roots here since before the American Revolution, and one of the things we’ve always been known for is the furs we sell. We sell the pelts of creatures that for all intents and purposes, should not exist.

There are things in the woods behind the house. Things that howl and scream at night. Things that hunt, things that were the hunters - at least until we came along.

A great grandfather of mine, Henry Gagnon, wrote down stories of his youth in the area, before the family really took advantage of the interesting prey in the area. Children were told not to go into the woods, as more often than not, they wouldn’t come back out again. They would go into the woods and would not return, and the howling would be louder and more frenzied that night.

One summer evening, my great grandfather disregarded his mother’s warnings, and went out into the woods. But his mother had had enough.

Armed with nothing but a kitchen knife, she marched out into the woods and brought her son home, and did not say what the blood on her skirts belonged to. And so, the hunting began. The howling of the beasts was replaced with the howling of the family’s hounds, replaced by gunshots and cries of triumph whenever a beast was slain. I have only ever killed two beasts from the woods - they are a difficult catch, but make for a rewarding hunt.

My first kill was a fox.

It did not act like a fox, but it looked like one. It was red, with black feet and a black-tipped tail, and a white muzzle. The fur around its jaws was stained with black ichor and blood, and its eyes were a solid black. It was just a bit too long, and its ears were torn and strange. It stared me down from the other side of the clearing, and it walked proudly, as if daring me to challenge it.

It bared its teeth, stained with black and blood, and a long, thin, barbed tongue flicked out to taste the air. This thing that may have once been a fox was ruined. It was monstrous, and beautiful, and I wanted it as a trophy.

It was hard to catch. It made no sound - silent, quick, and deadly, a perfect hunter. I managed it in the end, it was not the most frightening monster in that woods.

My second kill was my father.

Sometimes, a family member still gets lost in the woods. Someone will be sent out to fetch them or put them down, depending on their luck. Sometimes, the howling of the beasts sounds more like music, and sometimes, a person is inclined to sing along. My father was one of those unlucky souls.

He did not look like my father when I killed him, save for the eyes.

He was one of the monsters by the time I reached him. With sharp, uneven teeth, with talons that raked through the dirt, blood and black ichor crusted on his teeth and underneath his fingernails, some still dripping from his jaws.

I killed him, there in the woods. It was not a corpse I was proud to bring home, but it had to be done.

The corpse was set to be burned. I thought it was over with.

It was not.

I woke up in the middle of the night to a bloodcurdling scream, and when I rushed to my sisters’ room, the two were already dead or dying, drenched and drowning in their own blood. They had been torn open, ravaged by the thing that had been my father, and he was no longer in the room. I heard two gunshots, then a scream from my mother’s room, and I knew just before I ran down the hall that she, too, was already dead.

I shot the monster that had once been Jameson Gagnon eight times in the head before it finally fled, leaking blood and black ichor all the while. He has not been seen since.

I wonder if he’s still one of the things howling in the woods.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

The name Gagnon is familiar--while I haven’t seen it in any statements so far save for this one, I believe the family helps fund the institute. I’ll have to check again with Cordelia, but I don’t know where else I would have seen it.

The Gagnons refused any attempts to speak with them. The family does have a reputation for being... prickly and standoffish, so I’m not really surprised they won’t talk to us.

Ordinarily I would send one of my assistants to do more research in the area, but Hazel and Cordelia have deemed it unsafe to leave the Boston area for the time being due to the Skinsnatcher case, so it will have to wait.

[penninstitute]

Case #0000918

Statement of Dorothea Hart, regarding her mother’s death. Original statement given September 18th, 2000.

My mother, Angela Hart, died on November 7th, 1996, at 5:46 P.M.

I’ve always known that this is when she would die. I woke up one morning in the summer when I was around ten, and I just knew. I knew other death dates as well--I had the family dog’s death down to the millisecond. A childhood friend’s death to the last breath. Every person in my life, and then some, I have known exactly when they would die.

I never questioned the knowledge. I just knew it would happen, and it did. Every time, without fail.

At least, until my mother.

She was a good mother, for the most part. She didn’t believe me when I told her I knew when someone would die--naturally, no-one would believe a twelve year old when they say that, not unless you’re especially strange, but she indulged in my “predictions” and would hum and nod and say “good to know, sweetheart” or “thank you, doll,” and left it at that.

She was not always the kindest mother, for all her going along with my prophetic knowledge. More often than not, she was stressed about something, and she was rarely around to give my siblings and I her affections, since my father had left the family right after my youngest brother’s birth.

Once I was about sixteen, I was used to playing babysitter, as the oldest of three. My two younger brothers were not exactly responsible, though we were close enough in age that I did not need to keep an eye on them, I did anyway. We went to each other for comfort, rather than my mother--oftentimes she would even lock the door to her room so we could not get to her. Only if there was a real issue, like when Ryan broke his wrist, and I sent Daniel to pound on her door.

She loved us, she was just… a bit absent, in the later years of our childhood. She was struggling to get us through high school, and college would be even worse, but we managed well enough, and all the while I was predicting deaths.

Like my mother’s. I knew, I had been so sure, she would die November 7th, 1996, at 5:46 P.M.

And then… she… didn’t.

It reached 5:46 P.M., and the clock froze. Everything froze, and the world fell still, and I was the only thing still moving, save for the breathing of the living things around me. And I felt, if I did not do anything, it would stay this way forever.

I never knew the cause of death. Only that it would happen. My mother was perfectly healthy, no issues that might lead to death, she was not doing anything this evening that would endanger her life, and as I stood there on my front porch, I realized what was happening.

Angela Hart needed to die. She needed to die now, and nothing else in this world was willing to kill her.

She was home alone that night. I returned to my childhood home by way of walking, as nothing else would move, and I was only across town, as I hadn’t gone far when I first moved out. My footsteps made no sound on the gravel driveway as I stalked up to the door.

I didn’t know how to feel. All I knew is that she needed to die.

I needed her to die.

It was an insatiable need, one that demanded it be fulfilled, and I did not want to find out what the consequences would be if I did not fulfill it. I craved her death as much as I feared it, and my movements grew manic, excited, rushed--the door opened soundlessly and closed the same way behind me. 

I don’t know how I knew that I was running out of time, but I did. My terror, my excitement, it made me sloppy and rushed as I grabbed a knife from the kitchen, before returning to where my mother sat, motionless save for her breathing, in the living room.

I could feel my own blood rushing. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears as I stared down my mother’s unmoving, unblinking gaze, and I knew that I was witnessing her very last moment alive.

It did not scare me.

It thrilled me.

I stabbed her thirty-seven times, piercing organs, her throat, going through her skull--I had to be sure she would be dead the moment it ticked past 5:46 P.M. The corpse did not move from its seated position, but by the time I was done, it did not look like my mother anymore.

So yes, I killed my mother. The cops were right. But I didn't do it out of malice--it’s simply how it was meant to be.

She needed to die. I fulfilled the request.

Some things simply can’t be changed.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

... For lack of better words, this is one of the more fucked up statements I’ve come across. It’s unclear if this is a true paranormal experience, or the ramblings of your run of the mill murderer, but I guess I’ll operate under the assumption that the events stated here are fact.

Dorothea Hart was arrested on November 7th, 1996, for the murder of her mother, Angela Hart. That much is true. Dorothea was only 20 at the time, and had just moved across town from her childhood home.

According to records here in the case file, she supposedly only said one thing while being arrested: “She needed to die.” She refused to say anything else, and was convicted of second-degree murder, only to disappear from custody a day later. Supposedly she hasn’t been seen since, but if this statement is anything to go by...

It’s concerning, to say the least.

[penninstitute]

Case #0200629

Statement of Miriam Walpoole, regarding the burning of Walpoole University and her subsequent encounter with The Stranger. Original statement given June 29th, 2020.

I cannot write this statement without making it very clear: I loved my mothers. I loved them, and I loved Walpoole University. I have killed and I have burned, but to stop an infection, sometimes a limb must be amputated. 

I write this statement in hope that maybe it will help someone else entangled within The Stranger’s games, that they will see the necessary sacrifices for survival.

I’m not entirely sure when my statement truly begins. In retrospect, it could have started in my elementary years. I read my days away in the Walpoole University library-only encouraged by my mothers’ academic backgrounds-trying to satiate the curiosity within me. It could have started with my mothers, Ingrid and Aphaea Walpoole, when they were no longer truly my mothers. However, that is not a timeframe I can pin down. I don’t know how long I was living with the imposters, so I will start with what I do know; when I begin to perceive things as strange.

My statement begins, with the anatomy class. I am-I was-months away from gaining my PhD in anesthesiology, with honors. I had been attending Walpoole University for seven years, far above courses like Anatomy 101. Yet that is where I was placed on the first day back from semester break. It wasn’t one anatomy class, however. Anatomy 101 had replaced any course I’d signed up for. It didn’t matter if I’d registered for clinical subspecialty labs or an adult cardiothoracic anesthesiology fellowship; they all ended up some breed of anatomy course. I checked my schedule obsessively. It read the correct classes I’d signed up for and I’d gone to the correct lab for each course. I know the labs of Walpoole University better than any student, I practically lived in the building with Aphaea as dean and Ingrid a favored professor. Still, no matter what I did, I ended up sitting through another anatomy course, basic medical information I had long since memorized. 

This continued on for about two months. It had gotten to a point where I was sure the anatomy classes weren’t a review leading into my advanced courses. Complaints to my mothers were met with suggestions to switch out of the class, so that’s what I did. My councilor was skeptical at first, he said I had all the classes that put me on track to graduate, but I convinced him to switch one of my less essential classes. Anything to help get back on track towards gaining knowledge and practice upon material I needed to graduate.

I walked into the west building expecting for notes on the history of amputations, but I didn’t write a single thing. I had the anatomy 101 lecture memorized by this point.

I concluded I couldn’t rely on the university staff to help get my medical license, including my mothers. My entire academic career had led up to this final year. Even in elementary school, it was known that I would attend Walpoole University. Since the university’s founding in 1948, family members have attended and graduated per tradition. Walpoole University was not an Ivy League, and I could have gotten into any other school with the GPA possessed, but attending Walpoole University was a matter of family prestige I was determined, and happy, to uphold. I would fail if I didn’t have the right classes to pass my exams at the end of the semester. Thus began my self mandated education, driven by ambition and frustration alone. 

I spent the majority of my freetime in the university library before life was overtaken by anatomy classes, so my increased presence in the evenings wasn’t anything unusual. I’d known the school’s librarian, Ms. Torres, since I was young. She often snuck me snacks when my mothers were teaching during the day. It was a little gesture that continued through my late nights hunched over multiple different textbooks corresponding with the anesthesiology classes I was supposed to be taking. Despite my growing hatred for the anatomy classes, I still did the classwork. It wasn’t difficult, after all, I had learned the information in my freshman and sophomore years. The biggest nuances were the essays, but I did them without outward complaint. I wasn’t about to let my grade point average slip, other students still needed to see what the dean’s daughter was capable of.

I didn’t keep my evening education to only textbooks, that would have been foolish. Anesthesiology is a particular science, one that requires simulation to test skill. If I didn’t exercise my hands like I did my mind, I would be utterly unprepared for the exams to come. Luckily, I had access to the lab rooms once the university was emptied of its staff. Aphaea may not have been helpful when it came to getting me out of anatomy class, but she was never opposed to my ambition outside of what was required. Ingrid told me I was going to overwork myself, and I’d fall asleep while taking my exams, but she didn’t stop me. 

In the beginning, the labs after dark were exciting. I always stayed in the library long after everyone had left, and though the quiet solitude was welcomed, nothing new came out of it. The labs, however, were a different experience I reveled in. With no instructor nor supervisor, every ounce of progress made could be credited to myself. Be it mistake or success, conducting labs after dark confirmed I was fully competent on my own. I didn’t need my mothers or my professors or my dimwitted councilor. Though it seems like a juvenile thought now, at the time I was proving my independence. I’d lived with my mothers my entire life, something most competent twenty eight year olds don’t do. The labs were to show myself I wouldn’t sink after I graduated, Aphaea and Ingrid no longer there to hold my hand. This sliver of freedom mixed with the isolation was so exhilarating, I was nearly glad the anatomy classes soiled my original course. This vigor was also why I never noticed the feeling of being watched until weeks later.

I was in the labs, working on a more basic surgical simulation. Before I could begin I needed to calibrate the monitor, making sure the machine’s precision matched my own. As I was doing so, I got washed with the feeling of being… stared at. Like eyes locked upon my figure, my movements. I knew it was that feeling specifically because it’s something I’m quite used to. I felt it in operating theaters, doctoral training, the judging gaze of other students. I was used to that the feeling. Except I was supposed to be alone. 

I found this unnerving, of course, but it didn’t feel like a person watching me. The feeling wasn’t quite that deliberate. It was more subdued, filtered, like a security camera. This is why I brushed it off in the beginning. I thought, Ingrid was right. I had been staying up far past what was healthy, and the amount of sleep I got was dwindling each day. Exhaustion could be a deceiving thing.

Though the feeling was bothersome, it didn’t stop me from being in the labs. If anything it became a part of my routine. Some nights were worse than others, however. The sensation could range from a subdued far away state, to someone staring directly at me, just out of sight. Those nights were when my paranoia was the worst, but I held the firm belief it was caused by my lack of sleep and continued nonetheless. 

The first time I allowed myself to be afraid was when I began to hear things. Feelings are fickle. They’re dependent on any given situation and were not something I could rely upon. The senses are different, they’re real and concrete. When I began to hear footsteps, scuttling outside the lab door like someone trying not to be caught, I let fear overshadow my work. I thought someone had snuck into the university. With the built up paranoia and exhaustion, I jumped to the worst case scenario and left the building immediately. In hindsight, exiting the lab directly after hearing someone pass did not display my intelligence well… but at the time I suppose I was as confident in my knowledge of the university’s building as I was exhausted. 

I told my mothers of the person I’d heard outside the lab. Ingrid was truly considering not letting me return to the labs after dark. I think she felt guilty about letting me drain myself each night. Aphaea was skeptical of my claim, but put my safety over any doubt she may have harbored. She promised to heighten security during evenings while I was working, and would call law enforcement about an attempted break in to have it investigated, if only for my own peace of mind, and Ingrid’s at well. Ingrid allowed me to continue my work reluctantly after what her wife put in place, but urged me to come home earlier. I felt awful for disregarding my mother’s worries, but I thought Ingrid of anyone would understand the importance of the labs. Academic performance would be my ticket into a fellowship. The labs ensured I could perfect surgical tasks, not simply read about them. Without practice I would be unprepared for my exams, and where could I go from there? I had to graduate. The medical world was sink or swim. I couldn’t risk my entire future, the profession and reputation I was building, for a feeling of unease.  

My expectations were, if I continued to attend with heightened security and nobody in the building, the paranoia would dilute. Yet it got worse. What felt like being watched from afar morphed into something inside the room, staring relentlessly from the opposite wall.  I felt the phantom eye sockets, optical nerves inside of them bulging, straining to look through me. Something was in the room with me and yet I knew logically nobody could be there. I turned around obsessively, expecting to catch whatever was there, but all I saw was the lab’s empty walls.

Lab 111 was what finally drove me away. Lab 111, which stunk of formaldehyde. Its cabinets were stocked organs, finger tips, and much to my displeasure, eyeballs. These parts were used for class dissections, all taken from animals. I needed samples for research upon the response of soft tissue to specific drug combinations. It was essential, a crucial part of my practice that could mean a patient’s life or death. 

I stepped inside lab 111 and was washed with the feeling of being watched. Despite the spike of paranoia, it had become part of my routine, just like washing your hands before an operation. 

As I organized my space, I was acutely aware of this feeling. It was different. Not of being watched, but of being stalked. As if the watcher, who had previously been unmoving, was approaching. I had locked the lab door, I had checked every possible hiding space before beginning. There was nobody in Walpoole University with me. This fact brought me no comfort. I tried to concentrate, to stop my hand holding the syringe from shaking. I was not going to flee, there was nothing there and there never had been. 

The feeling creeped up my spine.

 A palpable thing boring into the back of me, through my lab coat, past my skin, into my bones-I couldn’t take it-I whipped around.

Every single eye, trapped within their preserves, stared directly at me. My eyes locked with the countless others. Blue, brown, green. Some bulging, some hidden. I screamed. My legs scrambled backwards, syringe discarded out of view. I think I slammed into the operating table, but I couldn’t feel anything. The only thing filling my head, swirling with an encapsulating sense of terror,  was I knew everything about the eyeballs staring back at me. I saw through every layer of skin, every vein, the soft tissue, the lenses, the pupils that seemed to drink in my mortified expression. 

The eyes began to shake, jiggling their containers. 

I knew where these eyes had come from. They were not from animals. These eyes were from people. Their names laced through my mind like tainted film in a tape recorder at full volume.

My screaming somehow shaped into words,

“I see you.”

It was as if my voice had a force. When the words released from my lips, the glass containers shattered. I cowered to the ground; pain erupted from behind my eyes and I feared the glass had sent shards into my skin. When I thew my hands up to protect my eyes, they came down free of blood or fluid.

Less could be said about the lab’s floor. I smelled the formaldehyde before I saw the mess. Eyes were rolling all over the tiles, fluids sweating off their gelatinous forms. I felt those that rolled under the cabinets still staring at me. 

There wasn’t another option, I had to clean it up. Bodyparts were expensive. As the only person in the university that late, I would be blamed for what happened. I would be expelled. I knew where the extra jars were, and where the professors kept their preservatives. I could fix this. My hands still shook as I pulled on a new pair of gloves. I knelt down, the fluids soaking my tights, and began to pick up the eyeballs one by one. I am not a squeamish person; it’s not a trait one can afford as a doctor. However, the circular forms pinched between my fingers, their pupils straining to meet my own, flew bile up my throat. I swallowed it back down. I didn’t need two messes to clean.

Aphaea was awake reading when I got home. She remarked how late I was up. The next morning, Ingrid remarked how sickly I looked. I went to class despite feeling as awful as I did the night before. In the end it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d gone or not. I didn’t absorb a word that was taught; I was half asleep the entire day and my brain was still caught upon the eyes staring at me from the lab floor. What had caused that to happen? No scientific, logical answer seemed to fit. It hurt my pride to consider the supernatural. Supernatural claims were incoherent, incomplete. Yet what else could explain exploding jars and dismembered eyeballs moving on their own?   

My aloof nature didn’t seem off to anyone. I suppose that was how most students perceived me on a normal day. Professor McCarthy, however, noticed the change in my demeanor. He stopped me before I could exit the lecture hall. Typically I would stay to chat after class was done, I’d known many of the professors before I attended Walpoole University, so we were well acquainted. Professor McCarthy was a favorite of mine, so it wasn’t a surprise he noticed I was feeling off. I told him I was ill and he didn’t need to worry. 

“Ingrid would fuss about and make me stay home tomorrow. A stomach bug caught easily in a room full of students, it was a mistake for me to attend,” I said.

Professor McCarthy was a springy man, equipped with a lanky form and hunched shoulders. He was the type of professor who liked to hide jokes in his lectures in order to keep students’ attention. I remember he laughed as he spoke to me. He said,

 “It isn’t a bad thing that you came to class, Miriam, nor the spread of infection to other students. Perhaps your sickness is lethal,” then, with a smile, “the university could always use more cadavers.”

He placed a hand upon my shoulder blade. From afar, it must have looked like a good natured gesture, but when his hand made contact it felt so wrong I wanted to shrivel inside my skin. It felt like he was wearing a glove, skin rubbing loosely against the fabric of my sweater.

I didn’t laugh. Nor did I accept his touch for long. I excused myself under the guise that I felt nauseous, though it wasn’t entirely untrue. I felt him watch me as I exited the lecture hall.

I reported sick the next day, and I admit being away from the campus was liberating. This didn’t feel good to me, however. Walpoole University was my my heart. My home, and my life, was plagued with something I couldn’t wrap my head around.  For the first time in my life I hadn’t a clear direction of what would happen next; but I intended to find out.

My nights in the labs decreased, replaced by even later nights in the library. The feeling of being watched didn’t follow me there. This only enforced the library as my safe space within Walpoole University. It gave me hope that amid an entire day of unsettling classes, and my professors’ uncanny stares, there was still a sense of normalcy. In the library I stationed my research upon the supernatural. Frankly I was glad I studied after hours, when other students had gone home. The embarrassment of having classmates see me with an armful of books on ghost stories and boogymen made me cringe without fail. Unfortunately, something more important than my reputation was at play.

For the first time since my childhood, I felt lost in the library of Walpoole University. The building itself was old and expansive, well known for its preserved texts on historic medical practices. However, it also harbored a wide collection of books upon numerous subjects. I was sure we had texts on the supernatural I could use to investigate, I simply didn’t know where to start. 

As any smart person would do, I asked the librarian, Ms. Torres. Students teased she was as old as the university itself, but I always thought that to be rude. Ms. Torres was, indeed, old, but she never acted like it. She had a bold taste in fashion which I always admired: splashes of unconventional color amid a neutral dress code. When I was little, I liked to stare at her brightly colored nails tapping on the desk. They were a bright yellow, like Van Gogh’s sunflowers, when I swallowed my pride and asked her where books on the were kept. 

Ms. Torres lead me to a wide shelf within the back right corner of the fiction section. She recommended specific books on urban legends, possessions, and other levels of the supernatural that made me realize my investigation was going to be much deeper and difficult than expected. After she gave me a quick sweep of the shelf, she added with a wink,

“If you have any questions, dear, don’t be a stranger. I’m quite seasoned with all this spiritual information.” This came as a surprise to me. Ms. Torres never seemed like the superstitious or religious sort. I never saw any pendants, nor saw her conduct any rituals like throwing salt over your left shoulder. I must have displayed my confusion because she said plainly, “It’s was a hobby of mine, much to my wife’s distaste. Still, she lets me keep the ouija board over the mantle,” Ms. Torres punctuated her sentence with a good natured chuckle. “Are there any specifics of what you’re trying to research, dear?”  

I was reluctant to tell her what happened in the labs, but I needed this information more than anything. I decided I had to give up some of my own information in order to receive her’s. I told Ms. Torres, in a hushed whisper only the books could overhear, the strange occurrences after dark; the sensation of being watched, objects moving on their own while I was across the room. I didn’t mention the eyes.

Ms. Torres seemed to darken at my mention of the supernatural within Walpoole University. Even so, she gave me a hefty stack of texts, muttering about how the school wasn’t what it used to be. One tome stuck out as much older than the rest, bound in black leather and embossed with a deep green ink. The spine looked like it could crumble at any moment. 

I thanked her for her assistance. Ms. Torres shook her head and assured me it was no trouble at all, she’d sage the library for me so the spirits wouldn’t bother my work. I smiled in appreciation for the gesture before locking myself in the study room to concentrate. 

As I began to dig through the new well of knowledge handed to me, I realized I knew about as much about Ms. Torres as I did spirits; despite knowing her practically my whole life. I was too wrapped up in my reading to acknowledge her presence half the time, let alone know how much she knew about the school’s history and its ghosts. I told myself I would treat her to coffee once I got to the bottom of this mess. It was the least I could do.

Within first month and a half into my supernatural investigation, my studies in anesthesiology had completely fallen through. I was enamored in trying to connect what I had experienced, and what continued to transpire within the anatomy classes, to an answer. I had to find a cure for the symptoms.

Ms. Torres noticed me going into the same study room every night, so she gave me its key and told me to return it when my investigation was done. I was thankful for her presence in the library during this time. If I was stuck, or needed her more experienced opinions, she was happy to lend a hand. She even joked about bringing in her ouija board if I needed more evidence. Though, I don’t think she was completely joking.

As I began to stay later into the night, my time in the library replacing my time in the labs, it became custom wave goodbye to Ms. Torres before she left. She would turn off the lights as she waved, leaving my study room a beacon of white amid a room soaked in ink. One night, she stopped to chat at my study room door. Ms. Torres frequently did this if she had time before her bus left. She’d ask me how my investigation was going, answer any stray questions I had conjured; sometimes she would make offhand remarks about her life. This evening was no different, 

“I’ve read two and a half volumes this evening, and with what you’ve given beforehand, I’ve concluded my experience aligns best with that of a poltergeist, maybe a demon.” I told her.

Ms. Torres responded with a hum, like she was turning my words around in her brain as an engine does, 

“The demon doesn’t quite fit,” she said. “If it was demonic activity, I have a right mind to think it would have followed you to the library. 

Now a poltergeist, that sounds more fitting: moving objects, the feeling of being watched. Have you ever seen the movie, Miriam? Anyway, the only problem is I can’t think of any deaths on campus, students have gone missing within the past few years, though. Such a shame. Maybe the building itself is built on hallow ground. Oh, speaking of poltergeists,” Ms. Torres dug around in her purse, emerging with a bundle of herbs tied neatly with string. She set it down on the table alongside a box of matches, baby blue nails clacking against the surface. “I got you some sage, considering you’re in here more than I am. Light it if you ever feel that uneasy feeling again, okay?”

Half of me was thankful for her charms and advice, the other still couldn’t believe I was this deep into voodoo and spirits. Ms. Torres eyed my stack of books as she was about to leave. She mentioned the old black leather book, titled: Seeming, Perceiving. It was one of the thinner tomes among my many supernatural encyclopedias. I hadn’t looked into it much; it seemed to be a psychological study, borderline Freudian, rather than a ghost story. She told me it may be more useful to my case than I expected. Unconventional problems require unconventional solutions, after all. With that bit of advice, she turned off the library lights and left me alone to my books and the study room’s white light.

Ms. Torres died the next week.

Aphaea told me. I mentioned her absence, and Aphaea, never one to sugarcoat, told me she had passed away. She said the cause was old age. I genuinely believed her.

The news hit me harder than I realized. I felt numb, like nothing had changed. I continued to shut myself away in the library, eyes more intent on consuming information than ever. If I was reading I didn’t have guilty thoughts. I forgot about how I never genuinely knew Ms. Torres, nor did I treat her with the same kindness she did me. It distracted me from the fact that, whatever was going on within Walpoole University, I now had to face alone.

I tried to honor Ms. Torres’ passing by beginning Seeming, Perceiving.  I had been selfish towards her too many times in life. The least I could do was read a book for her in death. It was raining the night I opened its cover. A more fanciful person may have thought the sky was weeping for Ms. Torres.

I read with the expectation that it would crumble in my hands if not held with care. The front page displayed a latin phrase, written in the same green ink as the title. “Percieve non est intellegens non est perfecte cognoscere percieve”, it read. I had taken Latin as a prerequisite into medical school, so there were a few prefixes I could decipher. It translated roughly to “perception does not mean understanding, but to understand is to perfectly perceive”. Below the phrase was a faded stamp, like in the books belonging to the Walpoole University library. This book was from a library, but not the university’s. I could draw the stamps from Walpoole library while blinded, and this looked nothing like it. I could see faded letters in the center, but it was too eroded to make out what it said. My rationalization was Ms. Torres brought some of her own books in for students to discover. The thought didn’t help fill the pit of guilt in my stomach.

I could hear the rain pounding on the library’s high walls, like something begging to be let in. I began reading.

The contents had nothing to do with the supernatural, though I suppose it was linked to my specific case of being watched. It described the art of seeing, of looking and looking again and looking closer until you can truly see something. To perceive it.

The writing could have been called Freudian. It conjured far fetched hypothesisis in an almost manic tone; yet I kept reading. As I did, as the front cover started to weigh down with the growing number of pages, chills wracked my body. Like rainwater leaked from the roof and trickled down my spine. I didn’t want to read the book anymore, but I couldn’t stop. I had to know how it ended, how these nonsense pages could be tied into a conclusion that actually made sense. I tore the pages as I flipped through them. The crackling of paper harmonized with the wailing of the storm outside and I wanted noting more than to put down this book and go home. 

There was an eye. 

It was green, and though it was an illustration, it seemed to bulge. The pupil was just a spot of ink but I felt swallowed in it. There were secrets hidden within and if I leaned a little further into the hole I could try and reach them-

Thunder shook the building.

Everything was wrong.

Pressure bloomed behind my eyes like they were becoming too large for my skull, squishing against my eyesocktets. It burned. I felt sick, dizzy, like I was suddenly thrown upon a rocking boat. My head was simultaneously clear and overwhelmed and I couldn’t comprehend what I was feeling. A dread realization seeped over me, emerging from the marrow of my bones. Everything I had done, all my research, was completely and utterly wrong. Ghosts and demons had nothing to do with what conspired within Walpoole University; it was something much older. Dangerous. 

The library was not safe.

I looked back down at the book in my hands, now shaking vigorously and sending pages flopping every which way. I couldn’t read another word if I tried, it felt like stuffing matter down my throat and into my sick stomach. Yet I couldn’t get rid of it. The idea of not knowing what was held between the unread pages made me sicker than knowing what I already did. The book itself was small, but it was heavy in my hands. I couldn’t return it, I couldn’t let someone take it from me. I scrambled to hide the book, tearing up the vintage floorboards with nothing but my fingers. 

I needed to read the rest of it, to drink its knowledge even if it tore me apart. However, there wasn’t time for that now. I had work to do. 

The black leather and green title disappeared beneath the dark wood. I wouldn’t let myself be destroyed, not yet. My old goal of graduation was so small and insignificant, but one thing still mattered: an infestation crawling in my university. It was worse than I thought. I felt it in my knotted stomach that no matter what, this would end in a suffocating emptiness and tragedy. 

But infections can be expunged if a limb is amputated in time.

Disease symptoms can appear as insignificant: a common cold, fatigue, allergies. Thus, they are often ignored until it is too late.

It was too late for my mothers. 

When I arrived home from reading Seeming, Perceiving, the two figures sitting in my home were not my mothers. I stared at them from the doorway and I knew, they had not been for a very long time. They were in the exact same spots as always, Aphaea on the big chair and Ingrid across the couch, but the figures with books in their laps were not Aphaea and Ingrid Walpoole. 

They smiled at me when they noticed my presence, but there was nothing behind the curled skin of their lips. I tried to meet Aphaea’s gaze but as I looked I could only comprehend a suffocating hollowness that had long eaten away the insides.

These things were not my mothers. I saw that clearly now.

Ingrid tried to welcome me home, but all I could see was the moving mouth of a puppet, a far away voice coming in one ear and spilling out the other. 

I claimed illness and excused myself.

 Sickness no longer twisted at my stomach, but rather an angry revolution. The only people I had ever put my trust into, laid my skin out for them to see, were a facade. I had let myself be controlled, tricked. 

I tried to cry that night, to mourn the loss of my mothers, but I realized I couldn’t even remember what they looked like. Aphaea never had brown eyes, and Ingrid didn’t have blonde hair. I knew this, but I couldn’t imagine them looking any other way. I couldn’t separate these infestations, these puppets, from the women who had raised me. 

I used factual knowledge as my anchor. My mothers were gone, replaced by creatures who didn’t look quite right. No tears could change that. 

I couldn’t mourn my mothers, but I could avenge them.

Everything changed in the university building after what I had saw. The insignificance of going to class each day grew. As I sat in the lecture halls, I could comprehend nothing but the husks parading as professors. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before, their inhumanity was blatant. I saw the imperfections in their movements, like a puppet limb pulled by the wrong string, the twitching in their joints as if adjusting a loose screw. From afar it may have seemed natural, but now I was looking closer. I tried to enhance my scrutiny, stare down exactly what wasn’t right about their bodies, but if I looked too close, the things stared back. Not with their eyes, but with a resistance of their whole being. As if what I was perceiving, what I was trying to understand, was never meant to be perceived in the first place.

Whatever was wrong with my professors, whatever was wrong with me, created a new understanding. I locked eyes with Professor McCarthy during a lecture. He blinked slowly, as if he had forgotten to wet his eyes. A shiver ripped through my spine. We looked into each other. I understood, and so did he. This charade couldn’t go on much longer.

He stopped me before I left for the library, blocking the door with his hollow body.

“How is your outside research fairing, Miss. Walpoole?” He asked.

“It’s fine, thank you,” I responded. “I’d like to continue as soon as possible to save daylight.” I began to exit. He didn’t move from the door.

“Oh, but tell me the details, Miss. Walpoole, the little things. Don’t I have a right to know what’s been keeping you from our pleasant after class conversations? I haven’t scared you away have I?” I started to give some half witted, polite response, but he cut me off, “I’m sorry my class hasn’t been enough to satiate your drive to learn, but I would be cautious, Miss. Walpoole. Curiosity killed the cat, I believe the saying goes,” he pushed his glasses up the dead stump of a nose on his face. There wasn’t anything under his skin, but there was something under his words. He didn’t want me to continue. They didn’t want me to continue. I was interfering with something, a plan. Perhaps, then I was close to stopping it. I grounded myself, clutching my books to my chest.

“Unfortunately, Professor, your classes haven’t been what they seem to be. If you’ll excuse me, I have much to do before they make sense again.”

Professor McCarthy let me through.

Walking down the hallway, I sealed my decision. Something irreversible had been done to my school, my future, my family. What could I do but return the favor? All I needed to do, was look deeper. 

Every free hour I possessed was dedicated to a new vein of research. Time spent with my mothers or my professors was replaced by time spent among parchment and ink. Away from them and their empty stares, it was easier to focus. My first diagnosis was wrong, and I couldn’t afford a second one. This thing I was trying to pull apart was more complex and… consuming than I had thought. Walpoole University’s library was expansive, but this topic was more outlandish than anything it possessed. I had to read nearly every volume upon supernatural occurrences, skimming through every detail for a semblance of information on what I had to face. Every waking moment was consumed by a barrage of thoughts and questions about what this could be. I couldn’t sleep, I rarely ate because it all seemed so trivial compared to what I was trying to discover. 

Not only was I drowning in books upon books of foreign supernatural material, but stacks of outside classwork pushed me further under the surface. The homework for anatomy classes tripled. Despite that, I tried to complete it. It wasn’t a smart decision, I know, but at the time it was the only semblance of reality and normalcy left in my life. In the back of my head, and surely in my heart I still wanted to graduate. I wanted to carry on. Besides, homework from anatomy class was the only thing I was productive on. Any new material I consumed lead me to the same dead ends of poltergeists and demons. The one real connection I could find to my predicament was an essay by Sigmund Freud upon the Uncanny. A phenomena that incited terror in its victim through a sensation of familiarity that was’t exactly right. However, it was a psychological essay for the terrorized and insane. Despite its close connections to the way my mothers and the staff of Walpoole University behaved, it seemed to only enforce my own madness rather than theirs. 

I began to see my professors in the library after hours. They lurked in the dark under the facade of research or pleasure reading. The eyes within their skulls were trained on the pages, but whatever manifested inside them was locked on me. They wanted something from me. There had to be a reason why they kept me alive this long despite my resistance. Surely my mothers hadn’t survived this long. I was running out of energy, out of time to keep myself alive.

I had an option I was reluctant to use: Ms. Torres’s office. I wasn’t keen on snooping there after her death, it seemed wrong to look through her things before her body began to rot. Besides, I hadn’t been close to her in the way other relations were, like her wife. Yet nobody had come to empty her office since her passing months before. I would have seen them come in, I was in the building nearly every hour of the day. I knew there had to be information that could me move forward, considering Ms. Torres’s expressed interest in the supernatural. She had given me Seeming, Perceiving, after all. Perhaps she had more.

Ms. Torres’s office didn’t reflect her quirks like her accessories did. The only thing that told me she had resided there was a tea cup with different sigils etched into the rim. There was still liquid inside, it left a ring around the inside.

Ignoring the heavy feeling it brought, I rummaged through her cabinets and shelves for anything I could use. I tried to be neat, but with little time and so much to look through, the things I found irrelevant ended up strewn on the floor. I knew that I would find the information I needed here. I didn’t even need to think about it, the knowledge was simply there. I didn’t know how I had obtained it, but that investigation could wait.

Finding the journal of Abraham Janssen felt as if my head was pulled from a bucket of water gasping my first breath of fresh air. There was a calm as I held its inconspicuous binding. An exhilarating surge within my brain told me this would feed me, tell me what I craved to know. Standing there in the ransacked office, I dove into its pages.

The journal of Abraham Janssen called the thing in Walpoole University by name: The Stranger. The name held the same hollow ring as my professor’s lectures, as my mothers’ voice. In its pages emerged an account of inhumane figures, empty bodies, a grotesque masquerade of flesh. The fickle game that is human identity. Something very, very old had been waiting to emerge from behind its mask for far too long. Flames, gunfire, the bubbling and sizzling of flesh beyond repair. 

A way for it to be stopped.

Not a cure, but an execution.

The part of me that grappled onto the childish notion of normalcy withered. I knew this was coming, but it didn’t make it easier. The realization that I had to destroy my mothers’ bodies was more sickening than I expected. That to destroy the manifestation I also had to destroy the vessel. No more discussions over coffee, or reading together in the living room. Aphaea wouldn’t give my hand a tight squeeze before an exam, Ingrid wouldn’t pin back my hair after I’d forgotten to cut for too long. 

Those were sentiments; I had to cling to facts. Cling to them as I clung to the leather bound journal of Abraham Janssen. Those things were not my mothers. The Stranger had consumed them. It would consume me too if nothing was done. 

I skulked back to my study room. This book would hide with Seeming, Perceiving. It was too precious to allow elsewhere. I was so wrapped possible possible plans and ways to put an end to the Stranger’s games before it could reach a climax, that I didn’t notice the figure rummaging through my study room.

I didn’t need to see the lanky figure and hunched shoulders to know it was Professor McCarthy. He turned around.

His eyes met mine immediately. I think the thing inside him tried to smile. A shiver wracked my bones. I tore my eyes away to make it stop, to compose myself, and instead focused on the study room behind his figure. It was in complete disarray. My books were discarded upon the floor, organized notes destroyed. I tried to scan the room but my gaze snagged on McCarthy’s feet. Blood, dark and shining, splattered his leather shoes. What had he done, what had I walked into? Muffled through the pounding in my skull, I heard his voice say good evening. I needed to do something, to run, to stop staring, but that bloodstained shoe was dangerously close to my loosened floorboard. A breath away from Seeming, Perceiving. I couldn’t run, I wouldn’t let him find the book; my book.

I told him good evening.

“I knew you were here late, but this is much more extreme than I expected. Perhaps I can escort you home, Miss. Miriam?”

I forced myself to meet his stare and ignored my quivering hands.

“Mother told me not to accept rides from strangers.”

“We’ve been acquainted for longer than you think, Miriam.”

“Not long enough for you to ransack my study room.”

“Such nasty accusations.”

“Indeed.”

“Miriam, dear, I’m sure you know that we, your mothers and I, only want what’s best for you and your future-“

“Get out.” The journal clutched in my hands began to flop mercilessly against my chest. Professor McCarthy sniffed, and straightened his tweed jacket with one hand,

“Very well,” he said. “Goodnight, Miriam.” Professor McCarthy stuck out his other hand. My eyes fell, unable to hold his unblinking stare for much longer. McCarthy was a thin man, but the hand he offered to me was too slim, too delicate to be a man’s. 

Nor did Professor McCarthy wear robin egg blue nail polish.

I wanted to throw up, but I couldn’t allow myself to be vulnerable like that. If I shook the hand, he would bid me goodnight. He would leave leave. This was just another one of the Stranger’s games. I could sacrifice a piece to win.

My hand wrapped around the one dismembered from Ms. Torres.

It was cold, waxy. I watched the chipped robin blue nails grip my palm with strength a hand that thin could never possess. I pulled back to break the handshake but the spindly fingers gripped harder. Dread trickled into my stomach. I had sacrificed the wrong piece.

Before I could react, the hand yanked downward, almost pulling my shoulder from its socket. Dread turned to horror in the split second before the corner of the study room table rushed to meet my head. Pain split through my flesh, cracking into my skull. 

I was on the floor. The beacon like light of the study room flashed over my vision, everything too overbearing look at. I knew I was about to pass out, I needed to get up, I needed to steady myself, to at least reach my book. Professor McCarthy would find it, he would destroy it. My elbow flew out from underneath my body. I tried to support myself but every limb seemed detached, dismembered like Ms. Torres’s hand.

I felt fingers wrap around my ankles as my eyes stared hopelessly at the floor. I knew which one did not belong to Professor McCarthy, its cold touch sent a shocking sensation slithering to my very fingertips. The carpet dragged beneath my body,  into the darkness of the library and the things that lay beyond. My eyes lolled inside their sockets. A growing stain of deep red was left where my head rested upon the floor.

I had passed out. The next thing I remember was a blaring pain in my skull, painted white, and an awful stench that grabbed me by the throat and spilled my stomach’s contents onto the floor. I managed to flail onto my stomach as not to choke, but the direct smell of my own vomit mixed with whatever else plagued the air only made me feel worse.

I stayed on the floor there, shivering and heaving, for god knows how long. My mind was trying to grab at strings to piece together what had happened. I didn’t know what time it was, how long I was unconscious, where I was. All I could see as my vision came back into a blurred focus was a bright linoleum floor, now marred with vomit. I grit my teeth. My shaking hands wouldn’t listen as I tried to move. My head was whirring too fast for my body to respond to, but I couldn’t let myself be vulnerable, I needed to know where I was.

I took in a deep, blubbering breath, stared at my hands upon the floor, and tried to let my body stabilize itself.

I managed to tip my head up. The sterile walls and sleeping defibrillators told me I was in an operating room. Their setup told me it was one within Walpoole University, but the creeping sensation of eyes upon my back could tell me that much. Slowly, I traced the feeling like invisible puppet strings upward, past the painfully bright surgical lights, and through the dark windows of the operating theater. Hollow sockets stared down upon me. I could barely make out the masks they called faces through the shadowed glass, but I saw Aphaea and Ingrid. I couldn’t hold their stare for long, and my eyes dropped to the operating table.

Like a neatly arranged feast, body parts lined the surface. From my kneeling position, I could see the porcelain skin contrast against the blue plastic. My throat closed. My arms gave up once again. My legs flailed on instinct, slipping through the vomit on the floor, uncontrollably trying to scuttle backwards.

Aphaea’s voice pounded into my eardrums.

“No need to be squeamish, Miriam. I can’t always be there to hold your hand,” she said. “Get up, your final exam for anatomy begins now. Build us a body.”

Her voice left an echo bouncing along the operating room walls. The same voice that had read me classics as a child was now ordering me to become a grotesque imitation of Doctor Frankenstien. The bitter irony complimented the dull terror upon my tongue. I forced my body upright. The body parts upon the operating table came into full view. Every limb was pale, accented by the cleanly amputated muscle on each end. A torso lay in the center, female. At the end of the table was a head. The sockets were dark and barren.

My eyes locked on the display, and I began to realize I was more terrified of what would be done to me if I refused to complete the procedure than the body parts. My possible fate lay right in front of me. With a dull yet throbbing pain in my skull, I approached the operating table.

The stares from above watched me the entire time. They consumed every movement, every stitch. My hands shook at the beginning, to the point I was unable to thread a needle. But habit is a useful tool. I slipped into a working trance after managing a few sloppy stitches along the right thigh. Horror diluted into terror, a dull sickness clinging inside my throat.

Hours went by. My fingers and my thread ran along every seam of the parts given to me: the crooks of the fingers, the dip of the neck, the tough muscle of the shoulder. I snipped the black thread. The finished product, with all its pale parts and its empty eye sockets was waxy, almost like a mannequin.

Applause fell from the darkness above. My head snapped up in time to see the audience and their gaze file out of sight. I tore away from the stitched creation on the operating table, trying to observe a clue of what would happen next, but the harder I tried to concentrate the louder the thrum in my skull grew. I stumbled to approach the window upon the operating room door, to anticipate if my mothers and the professors were approaching but I froze.

A scream erupted from behind me. From the operating table. Disoriented and terrified, I whipped around, but I was crashing to the ground, only comprehending the sudden inability to breathe. The body on the table, the lifeless parts, had flung itself and toppled me over. Its cold hands were crushing my throat. It used one hand to crush the wind in my trachea, the other hand let go, curled its nails, and began to tear at the skin of my face. The thing was screaming, I was screaming. I stared into its open mouth as dark and empty as the sockets of its eyes. Footsteps joined the chorus. Heels and dress shoes entered my blurring periphery, swarming, circling.

The thing was still screaming, still clawing, as two of the professors pried her off my suffocating body. Air shot through my throat, sterile and painful. Through my gasping coughs, I could hear my mothers talking to the thing. The cooed in calming tones not to damage the details.

I was hoisted from under my arms. My body writhed, voice fighting pathetically to let out a scratchy yell. I was so tired, so scared, but I didn’t want to die. It was the only thing I could think of as multiple hands, fingers, palms, pinned me to the operating table. Waxy fingertips wrapped around my ankles and wrists as the plastic covering screeched beneath my fighting body. 

I didn’t want to die.

I saw my mothers’ faces. The masks of Aphaea and Ingrid hovered above me. Ingrid was smiling. Aphaea’s mouth began to move,

“We’re so proud of you Miriam,” the flesh on her palm cupped my cheek. “You’ve graduated. Your new body is complete. It took so much patience to gather the right parts but, you’ll look so beautiful, so powerful.” Her hand trailed down my neck, past my collarbones and my heaving chest, to the curves of my palm. “Such small hands. Ingrid almost insisted we use a child’s. At least we could agree upon your eyes.” Aphaea reached for the utensil table, just out of my view. I tried to follow and keep her in my vision, but hands, stolen from those I once valued as professors, gripped my temples towards the blinding surgical lights. Their fingers crawled to my hair, my chin, my eyelids as they fleshy fingertips pinned the skin open. Aphaea’s gloved hands returned, a scalpel gripped within her shadowed fingers.

I pleaded. With the little air still caught in my lungs I begged for my life. My vocal box rang against my throat. A familiar, wrinkled hand with robin egg blue nails clamped over my mouth.

Aphaea lowered, and dug, the scalpel into my eye socket.

The pain was excruciating. I never thought something so awful could bloom beneath my skull. The pain was accentuated by the pairs of hands pinning my head to the operating table like a corked butterfly. I let out a ragged sob against the wrinkled skin over my mouth. 

Aphaea slid the scalpel in further.

Through the pain I couldn’t think, my senses were screaming, crumbling into a mortifying state of shock.

Aphaea pulled. She pulled and pulled and pulled and my head was on fire.

I saw my own eye clutched between my mother’s fingers, the blood dripping onto my cheeks, my nose, and the nerve running out of view still connected to the opposite socket. My nerves pulled away from my mother’s blood drenched fingers. They protested with tension as the scalpel snapped my eye from my skull. The green iris rolled in her fingers and stared back at me.

Static, numbness washed over my body. My limbs began to kick as the static began to sizzle, turning to energy. The feeling flew through my spine, through every bone, and out of the pores of my skin in a punching wave. I heard numerous, sickening crunches, thuds one after another. The waxy, shifting skin holding my body was gone. The rampant beat of my heart told me to sit up, but the pain and trauma made my mind slow to catch up. My chest rose and fell at a dangerous speed against the operating table. Get up, Miriam. Get up, get up, get up! I heaved my chest up, head lolling behind. The left side of the operating room was swathed in darkness. The right half was strewn with bodies. They slumped against the wall like sacks of skin; limp and bloodied. In blurry, half visible scene of crooked bones, and opened skulls, my mothers were there. Aphaea’s jaw was broken, her legs bent into shapes that would have sent any surgeon heaving. In the palm of her gloved hand, my eye sat in atop a glob of tissue and gore. 

A scream bellowed through the darkness of my right side. I whipped my head to see the body I built, my replacement, bounding toward’s Aphaea’s shattered form. The screaming from its vocal box tried to form a word, a cry,

“mother.”

I ran. I didn’t stay long enough to see if the others were incapacitated as Aphaea was or what I had made was capable of, I simply knew this would not be my fate. My legs swung across the operating table, heavy as body bags. They scrambled upon the floor. My hands followed behind, throwing themselves over the cart of tools and wrapping around whatever seemed palpable. With an object, hopefully a weapon, in my grip, I bolted. Across broken legs and blood pooling on the white linoleum, I crashed through the operating room entrance, unlocked as the professors filed in to complete the prodedure. I slammed it shut behind me, submerging the hallway from half darkness into complete darkness. Drenched in my own blood and vomit, I heaved in two gasping breaths. I knew the halls of Walpoole University, even in the dark. My head throbbing, and my legs on the verge of collapse, I ran down the hall. Voices began to follow me from the operating room, Ingrid’s shrill one among them. I had no plan yet, I simply needed to be out of their grasp.

The silhouettes of doorways flew past my periferie. I needed to think, if I didn’t have a plan I would be outsmarted. I would die. In chess, one must think at least three moves ahead of their opponent, so I began to list, to rationalize the loose thoughts rattling in my brain.

1.My eye wound may kill me before my professors do.

Even at the thought, my head pounded. My blood covered skin to itself as it scrunched from my labored breaths. How can I win with a check mate? Think, Miriam! The words became accentuated by the pounding of my running feet on the floor. Think, think think!

The journal!

2. In Abraham’s journal, he wrote that The Stranger was stopped by firearms. I didn’t have firearms.

Ms. Torres’ blue nail polish. Her sage. Her matches.

3. I did have fire.

I was going to burn Walpoole University, and the sickness within it, to the ground. I needed to get to the library, to keep running because I would not allow myself to be overtaken again. 

My first move was a crucial one, I needed to stabilize my eye. As one of the doorways flew past in a yawning silhouette, I swung inside, narrowly missing the doorframe. The chairs and curved desks of the lecture hall were diluted to dark shapes. If I was caught in here, I would have been cornered, so I stuffed myself under one of the tables. Its wide legs served as cover for hiding. Sitting on the carpeted floor, the underbelly of the desk scraping the top of my head, I took a moment to examine the object I had taken from the operation room. It was heavier now that the adrenaline of being chased had somewhat cleared. I glanced down at its shadowed form, a heavy handle with an even heavier rectangular shape attached to one side: a bone mallet. That would do. I set it down next to me. With my hands free, I rose a fingertip to my lost eye. The lids were glued shut by mounds of dried blood and tissue, but I could feel wetness of fluids still leaking through. My sweater wasn’t the cleanest, but it was the only thing on hand. I tore off a generous strip, careful not to reveal my hiding spot with too much noise. I wrapped the strip around my head twice, securing enough pressure to catch the blood and fluid, but not enough to damage my eye socket even more. I needed medical attention as soon as possible, but at least my eyesocket wouldn’t kill me before my professors did. I took the next moment to scrutinize my surroundings. I had mostly escaped the operation wing, the library would be a straight shot through the lecture halls and down two levels. I mentally mapped my course. The fastest and most efficient way to get there. 

I’d used enough time already. I began to crawl from my short lived hiding spot, when footsteps from the hallway froze me in place. I fell back on my knees, gripping the mallet with both hands. I clamped my mouth shut. My breathing sounded so loud. I took inhales through my nose, counting the breaths.

One.

The footsteps slowed outside the lecture hall door.

Two.

It was quiet. My hands were shaking.

Three.

Shifting. Fabric rustling. Footsteps scuttling away, heavy as if limping, until they faded into nothing. Dread in my stomach began to choke me, leaving this spot felt like a death sentence. 

I counted to 30. 

Numbers, logical and unchanging, the passing of time always there. Something I didn’t have much of. I needed to get up or I would die. It wasn’t comforting, but it was factual. It put momentum beneath my feet to stand, and to run.

No longer was I only playing chess, I was playing hide and seek. I navigated the halls I knew so well with trepidation. Squeezing the mallet in my palms reminded me this was very real, and very deadly. Any sound caused me to duck into classrooms, to ready my arm to swing. Footsteps would shuffle by. Sometimes I would catch a glance at the shambling forms searching for me. They looked like broken dolls, limbs twisted, ribcages caved in on themselves. It gave me hope that in their state, I could outrun them. 

The library was so close. Anticipation, and adrenaline, and fear fought inside of me until I was practically buzzing with an energy that fought my fatigue at bay. I was going to bring this nightmare to an end.

The hall leading to the library was long, with tall windows reduced to specters, and pillars towering giants into the hidden ceiling. I broke into a sprint. I didn’t care how loud my footsteps were until my ears picked up a second pair, duetted by coughs of labored breath. I swore, ducking behind one of the ancient pillars. Not too far behind me, the shuffling of feet drew down the corridor. It had seen me, it must have. The shuffling became louder, the breathing closer and more ragged. It was drawing out its time, savoring the chance to finally catch me so close to my goal. My teeth bit together, gripping onto the spike of anger burning on my tongue. My head began to throb again, painfully. Its labored breathing was close now, the sound was palpable enough I could practically feel it on my neck. 

My hands shifted upon the mallet handle. Solid, real. I swung my body around the pillar, and as soon as my view locked on the professor’s body I swung the mallet. My weapon collided with its spinal chord with a hard crack. I pushed the impact further, even when the metal hit flesh and bone. The professor fell in a heap and I stumbled forward. Its hands sprawled out, gripping at the floor for purchase but its legs refused to move in turn. 

But it realized its jaw still could move. The professor let out a thick, curdled scream.

Terror spiked through my blood, I would be swarmed in no time. My stumbling feet broke into another run, slipping across the floor and barging into the library’s doors. I slammed them behind me, desperately clicking the lock in place.

I was going to end this.

I whipped around, ready to move my final pawn and win in checkmate, but my feet stayed rooted to the ground. 

Ingrid’s figure, swathed in pale clothes, stood against the black backdrop of the library. She knew I would come here, she anticipated my strategy. Mother knows best, after all. 

I couldn’t run. The door was bared and the professors searching for me knew I was behind it. Ingrid blocked my way to the study room. I could see its light still on, glowing white.

“We really did want to help you, Miriam.” Ingrid said. I noticed her arm was dangling uselessly at her side.

“I’m afraid I don’t see your kind intentions.” If I could keep her talking, maybe I could run past, or incapacitate her. I needed to stay keen. Three moves ahead.

“There’s something much uglier inside of you than the Stranger. The Beholding spit its filth into you. Your new body is clean. Did you think we could loose you to the Eye, Miriam? Your own mothers?”

“You’re not my mother.”

“But I am, just as Aphaea is. We were the ones who raised you, cared for you better than the originals ever would have.”

“I never knew my actual parents?”

“We are your actual parents.” Silence. I subtly twisted the mallet between my palms. “Miriam, darling, we can make this better. Things can return to the way they were, you just need to trust me,” she held out her one good arm, a mock invitation of a hug. “Come here, dear. Drop that silly thing. I love you so much.”

My breathing was labored, hitched in my chest. I think I was crying. I heard the mallet drop against the floor with a heavy thud. My feet shuffled forward, and I rested my body against Ingrid’s. Her arm wrapped around my back. Both of mine curled around hers. She smoothed my matted, blood knotted hair.

With every ounce of strength I had, I used my arms to throw Ingrid to the side of her broken arm. She had nothing to catch herself on, and fell without stopping. Her hand in my hair held fast, yanking me down with her. Her fingers tore out a lock of hair, burning my scalp. I threw out my arms to catch myself, kicking backwards to release her grip on my head. It loosened and I scrambled toward the mallet waiting for me on the ground. I kicked as I scrambled, hitting finger and palm, keeping them at bay until my hand wrapped around the now familiar handle. Mallet in hand, my legs pulled under me, launching me to full height and I stared down at Ingrid’s body. Her free hand looked mangled and I took the opportunity without second thought. My foot kicked her onto her back and my knees dropped to either side of her neck. 

The mallet raised above my head like a halo, and I swung down. Blood flew up onto my already filthy face, bits of bone scratching past my cheek. The mallet was stuck for a moment within the flesh, but I yanked upward threw it down again. Again, and again, and again. I couldn’t tell if I was screaming because the sick sound of metal meeting flesh on repeat like a sick broken record drowned out everything else.

I no longer recognized Ingrid. Now, she truly wasn’t my mother.

My knees wobbled as I rose, one eye locked on the pummeled face. I forced my heavy body toward the study room, and the precious matches within. Its glow welcomed me back.

The books caught first. So old and dry, the pages made for efficient kindling. In no time, the shelves, too, were crawling with flames, warding away the dark as they spread. The smoke grew faster than I expected. My breathing was getting more difficult by the second and with the flame rushing ever closer to the library doors, it was time for me to escape. The fire exit was past Ms. Torres old checkout desk. 

As I jogged, sweat mingling with the gore across my body, I couldn’t stop myself from ducking into my study room one last time. My dirty fingernails found the loose floorboard easily, and the black leather book inside. I tucked it safely under my arm. The sage Ms. Torres had gifted me was withered upon the study room desk. With the last matches, I set it alight to consume the study room behind me.

On the other side of the fire exit, the night air felt like the most rejuvenating thing I’d ever tasted. I wasn’t done yet, though. I needed to make sure my work was final, that the building would burn to hell and the things inside with it. I rounded the building lethargically. The heat was strong, I could feel the flames working through the ancient woodworks. Smoke shrouded the front entrance. The grand doors of Walpoole University and its historical plaque were no longer visible through the unforgiving black matter and the heat it brought behind.

Walpoole University, my home, was burning. I stayed to watch, blood soaked and a book clutched to my chest. Sirens began to wail, far enough away that I knew they wouldn’t make it in time.

With my heart clogged in my throat, I turned to flee. A white blemish among the smoke made me stop. I squinted my one eye, trying to make out who or what it was, but by the horrid feeling in my stomach, I already knew. Its white flesh was burnt in some places but utterly unmistakable: the body I built. My replacement. I stared, and as I looked at the pale figure backed by smoke and flame, a singular green eye looked back.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

- … There is… a lot to cover with this one, but I’ll start here: Walpoole University was a college located just outside of Boston, where the Penn Institute is located. The building caught fire a week ago due to “faulty wiring,” but this statement proves otherwise, if it is to be believed.

- It keeps coming back to skinsnatching. Lovely. Ms. Walpoole is currently recovering from her injuries, so we aren’t able to speak to her, but the statement has enough depth and detail that I think we’ll do fine without a follow-up interview.

- The professor and librarian mentioned in the statement were both confirmed as missing, not dead, though whatever creature this was certainly did not leave them alive, from what I can tell.

- The strange books described in the statement seem like Leitners–they fit the mysterious supernatural book requirement, so I don’t believe there’s much more to look into there–when I’m able to speak to Ms. Walpoole I may ask her if I can take a look at the books, but that’s not my top priority at the moment.

- Finally, we seem to have a name for the monster behind the Skinsnatcher, if these similarities mean anything. The Stranger. This statement doesn’t go into the specifics of what the Stranger is, so I’ll probably have to do my own digging on that front. It also mentions something called the Beholding--or the Eye? It could use both names. I don’t know what it is, but it feels important.

- I think this statement is pretty solid. There’s not much I feel I can argue against–there are probably plenty of people inclined to disagree, but I believe Ms. Walpoole wholeheartedly.

[penninstitute]

Statement of Patience Norris, regarding her reflection. Original statement given October 10th, 2019. Audio recording by Perry Greer, Head Archivist of the Penn Institute, Boston.

Transcript under cut.

[Click.]

ARCHIVIST

Statement of Patience Norris, regarding her reflection. Original statement given October 10th, 2019. Audio recording by Perry Greer, Head Archivist of the Penn Institute, Boston.

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

I don’t recognize my reflection anymore.

That’s a silly thing to say, isn’t it? It looks normal. My reflection, that is. It’s my face. My eyes, brown and narrow, my nose, with a gentle curve that crooks it to the right ever so slightly. My dimples, my freckled cheeks. My hair, curled and red and falling past my shoulders, partway down my back.

That is what you see, at least. You said so, anyways. You saw red curls and brown eyes and all I saw was that thing, staring back out at me. The way you looked at my reflection was almost pitying. Did you not believe me when I said it was all wrong?

I suppose believing these sorts of things is your job. What did you see in that lost little girl in the mirror? What made you look at her like that? What made you look at me like that?

Did you see me?

My mother Emily has jet-black hair and blue eyes. My father Harrison has brown hair and blue eyes. They’re both fairly tall individuals, both have glasses, both have narrow frames and are incredibly bony.

The woman that looks back at me from the mirror has small brown eyes, bright red curls, is short and curvy. She looks nothing like her parents, and they have never seemed to notice. I looked like the two of them, once, I think. I was thin and tall and had glasses, because bad vision runs in the family, and I had long jet-black hair and bright blue eyes.

I was the spitting image of my parents in different ways, and then one day, something changed. And then another day, another thing changed. And so on and so forth.

It started when I moved back in with my parents once college hadn’t exactly worked out. I looked in the mirror one morning, and my blue eyes were brown. My mother had just laughed and said I’d always had brown eyes, and at the time I decided to believe it.

It kept happening. The next thing to change was my hair. It became shorter, shoulder-length, curly and red, and my mother had just said something about my great grandmother having red hair, and hadn’t we had this talk before, Natasha?

My name is not Natasha.

I have been clinging to that for as long as I can, but I do not know how much longer I’ll be able to. I have forgotten my original middle name. I can feel the fake name prodding at the back of my mind, aching to replace my real one, digging its claws in and dragging itself into my memories. This thing wants me, wants everything that makes me myself, wants to devour the entirety of my identity, and I don’t know what to do.

Next was my face. It became round, freckled, with a scar above the right eyebrow. It is from an accident, I fell off of the treehouse at age eight. We did not have a treehouse. We did not have a yard with a tree at all. I was adopted. I was not adopted.

My height changed the very next day. That was a week ago. Nothing has changed since, but I’ve been having constant headaches and trouble with my memory. Something bad is going to happen, I can just feel it, and I do not know what to do about it. You can help. Your institute is supposed to know about these things, isn’t it?

And yet I hate you and your work, for some reason. Something inside of me despises you, and maybe it is the monster stealing my skin and making it its own, but you and your people disgust me.

You yearn to understand, and that is everything I seem to stand against, now. I had a crush on my best friend Olivia in sophomore year of high school. I did not have a best friend named Olivia in high school, and I did not like girls until yesterday.

On its own that would be an unconcerning development, but in light of all of the things that are happening to me… I am sure you understand the cause for concern.

I can still feel it, in the back of my mind. Even here. It is trying to take me as I write this. Trying to hollow me out from the inside and use me as its own body. I can hardly think straight enough to write this down. My skin itches on the inside. My head feels as if it is going to split apart.

Natasha. What a plain name. Lovely, normal, perfectly ordinary in every way.

Perhaps it suits me.

ARCHIVIST

… Statement ends.

… Right.

I wanted to, um, go over this statement again properly. Record it, post it again, if only to refresh myself on the details of the Skinsnatcher’s process and the perspective of its victims. I, uh, I don’t know… what this told me, really.

There’s been no new information on this case since we last looked into it.

I don’t know what to do. Caesar said he’s seen the Skinsnatcher a few times outside of work. I think I’ve begun to see it. I’m beginning to feel like I’m being watched when I’m in here.

I’m… I don’t know. I don’t know if it’ll show up here or not. I’m hoping it won’t.

Hazel says that destroying the entire physical form tends to work with these things. I’m not sure how we’ll do that, but… I guess it’s the plan. It’s better than nothing.

I’m just… scared, I’ll… I’ll admit it.

We’ve never had an encounter like this before, in all my time at the Institute.

I just don’t want anyone to get hurt.

... End recording.

[Click.]

-

The Archivist: @cacowhistle 

[penninstitute]

Case #9910208

Statement of Adrienne Tasker, regarding her childhood friend Kennedy Holst. Original statement given February 8th, 1991.

First things first: I will never forgive the town for what they did to Kennedy Holst.

She was the one good thing I had there, and everything about her was destroyed to create something worse.

I know I should start from the beginning and give a proper explanation, but Corsica deserves this, even if they’ll never read it. Whatever thing is ruining that town, whatever thing ruined Kennedy, it needs to be said that it is horrible and disgusting and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell anyone.

Kennedy and I grew up in Corsica, Pennsylvania. The Holsts moved into town one July evening when I was four, and my mother made fast friends with them. Right away, Kennedy and I took a liking to each other. We were the same age, we both had older siblings who also became friends, though I don’t know what really happened to Josephine after she got out. I know Alex still lives at home. He never did escape, not the way I did. Nor the way Kennedy did, as fucked up as it was.

I don’t know if I feel bad for him or not. I think I was scared for him, once, but now… I don’t know. I don’t know if he knows what’s really happening there.

I’m not sure I do, either. But I’m not afraid of it anymore. Just angry.

There is--was--a house in Corsica, Pennsylvania, we called the Crucible House. It was old and abandoned and always smelled vaguely of smoke. People reported hearing screaming or smelling burning hair when walking by, but investigations into the place found nothing. It was named the Crucible House because of rumors about modern-day witch trials that took place there, rumors about girls being burned at the stake within its walls. I thought it was all bullshit, just a spooky story told by the seniors in high school to scare the freshmen that had just read The Crucible for their summer work--watch out, or you’ll get sent to the Crucible House.

I thought it was entertaining. Now it’s not funny anymore.

Kennedy and I stuck together all the way through high school. The two of us were best friends, you wouldn’t find us anywhere without the other. I told her all of my secrets, and she… well, I thought she told me all of her own.

I was a little in love with her, if I’m being honest. She was so sweet, one of the kindest people I’d ever met. Despite her family’s struggles with money and mental health and whatnot, she managed to keep smiling through it all. Managed to keep her chin up, almost until the end. She was… so pretty, too, with long blonde hair and the prettiest brown eyes. Admittedly, I was more than a little in love with her.

We were two parts of a whole, people would joke. We were fated to be friends, platonic soulmates in their eyes. Though I would’ve liked to drop the platonic part. I don’t know if Kennedy would have felt the same way, before everything happened, but… I think she did. I think she still felt it, even after everything. I kind of hope she did.

I just don’t know if that would bring her back to me. I’d like it to. But I don’t know how any of this works.

Kennedy stole a lot. It was a bad habit of hers, something she did all the time, she’d pocket anything small enough that she could get away with. Sometimes, she would return things, but more often than not she’d just forget what she’d bought and what she’d stolen. I thought it was a bit endearing, the forgetfulness, but the stealing was a touch concerning.

But I never bothered her about it. It was her life, who was I to tell her what she could and couldn’t do? Fuck capitalism, anyways, these were big stores that could handle a few losses. It wasn’t that big of a deal.

But then her father found out.

James Holst started out a kind, understanding, patient man. I remember him, back when I was little, he was always so sweet. He was like a father to me, since mine was never in the picture, up until sophomore year of high school. Then, he began to change. I don’t know what it was about him, but he grew temperamental, rude… hot-headed, I guess works. And his eyes were a horrible red, it was unnatural--they’d always been brown, but one day they weren’t, and quite honestly, I’m still a bit scared of him. I don’t know where he is now, but he’s not dead. He did not die in that fire, that night.

James caught Kennedy stealing one afternoon, and yelled at her out in the yard for everyone to see. It was one little thing, and he brought Hell down on her head, screaming like a lunatic--it scared me. It scared my brother, it scared Josephine, it brought Kennedy to hysterics. And the neighbors just watched like it was a show. Kennedy’s mother looked almost amused as James shouted about damnation and Hell and how Kennedy was awful, horrible for all of these little things. He even said some queerphobic bullshit about Kennedy and Josephine, and nobody did a fucking thing.

I don’t know how I didn’t notice it until that moment, but everyone’s eyes had turned so… cruel. My own mother, who would have clutched her pearls at the idea of someone screaming at a child, was silently staring, eyes alight with intrigue, as if wondering how this would play out.

Kennedy was dragged inside, and I had never felt more afraid than I did in that moment. I honest to God thought James was going to beat her.

I almost wish he had, as horrible as that sounds, because she may have been able to escape that. She may have been able to get away, if that was all he did.

Later that night, my mom said we were going out with the Holsts for dinner and a show to try and lighten the mood. Alex and I were apprehensive, but I went over to Kennedy’s house to bring her back to mine so we could get ready together. She needed the space from her father.

She was quiet when she came over. Had I known that would be our last night together, that quiet, afraid July evening like the one she moved in on, I would have done more, I would have said something, I would have told her everything I felt. But the truth of the matter is that I didn’t, and I don’t know if I will ever be able to tell her.

I remember how she looked that night, in a plain white dress and sneakers, because she didn’t have any nicer shoes to wear. I thought it was cute, charming--the typical thoughts of a young girl who was hopelessly in love with her best friend. I sat her down, took her by the shoulders, and told her that I would always be there for her, through everything, and she could tell me if things were worse than they seemed. She could tell me what was wrong, what was going on with her father.

“It’s over, Adri,” Kennedy said. “We won’t have to worry about it anymore.”

I didn’t know what she meant. But I loved her, I trusted her, I had to trust her. So I did.

I shouldn’t have.

I only realized just how bad things were when we pulled up in front of the Crucible House. James was there, waiting, with his wife and Josephine, and about two dozen other people from town. It’s a small town, I had known these people for years, the families had been nothing but kind, but that night--that night their eyes were cold.

Millicent Jacobs, the kind, young, single mother of two-year-old Evan Jacobs. Romeo Payes, my English teacher. Ellie Johnson, the eldest daughter of the Johnsons. Kind, regular people, big names in a town of roughly 300, people I knew and people that knew me.

Turns out I didn’t know them at all.

The building was hot when we entered. Stuffy, stifling heat. I began to sweat almost immediately, and it was disgustingly dry inside. I couldn’t get away. I was afraid, I didn’t know what was going on, this wasn’t what my mom had said was happening, and I did not trust a word anyone said to me from there on.

James sat Kennedy down on a chair at the front. Everyone else took their seats in benches that surrounded the large, wooden stake in the center of the room. It was all so closed in, so hot and cloying and awful, and Kennedy looked afraid and resigned all at once and I wanted nothing more than to hold her hand, than to run with her, than to get away.

But I sat and looked pretty, because I could not escape without these people going after me--I knew, then, that they would chase me if I ran. I didn’t know how to get us away safely, so I sat, frozen, clutching Alex’s hand so tightly it hurt. Josephine held my other one. We didn’t know what was happening, but we were afraid, and we knew it would be bad, whatever it was.

James tied Kennedy’s wrists above her head, pinning them to the wooden stake. I clutched Josephine and Alex’s hands so tightly I thought I would break them. I couldn’t do a thing as the kindling was arranged.

Kennedy did not scream when she was set on fire.

The crowd cheered when she went up in flames. I think I may have been screaming. Josie and I were crying. Alex didn’t even look present. Kennedy burned alive in her pretty white dress without a sound, and everyone was happy.

She died.

And then she didn’t.

Cheers turned to screaming when the building caught fire, and Kennedy tore away from the stake, still burning. Her eyes were golden in the rising flames, and she shoved through the crowd, leaving footprints burned into the wood in her wake, and she grabbed my arm and ran.

It burned. There is a handprint scorched into my skin where she grabbed me. We left that house, and she left me on my front porch in tears.

“Stop crying, Adri,” she said softly, “it’s over.”

I was afraid of her in that moment. She was different, leaving burned footprints in her wake, smoke curling off of her shoulders, looking untouched by the flames. She did not touch me again, and disappeared before anyone returned to find her.

The next morning, the Holst household had been burned to the ground. Josephine had taken the car and left. I moved away for college two months later, and I’m never going back.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

- This is not the first time Corsica, Pennsylvania has come up. In Case #9971014, Ms. Coombs moved to Corsica before her home caught fire in 2002, and she has not been seen since.

- Fire seems to be a commonality between these two statements. It’s interesting, to say the least, along with the sudden shift from kindness to cruelty noted here. I don’t know what would cause such a thing, but whatever is afflicting this town seems to enjoy causing pain.

- As for Ms. Holst, she reportedly died in a house fire on July 19th, 1990, though that is clearly not the case if what’s stated here is true.

- The people of Corsica, Pennsylvania refuse to speak to Institute staff at all. I may send Felix, Blair, or even myself up to check out the town in person, once the Skinsnatcher case is over with.