Sam's Spooky Story
| Sam's Spooky Story Worn Unique |
| Sam's spooky story. |
| Used in "Spooky Stories of Solomon Island" |
Used for the mission Spooky Stories of Solomon Island, but given as a reward from the mission The Death of Dr. Armitage
Transcript
by Sam Kreig
From the start, you should know that I am not an accomplished writer. But I am a writer, and we are, all of us, liars.
None of this has happened. All of this is true. I promise.
I despise the trope of the unreliable narrator, so you can imagine my self-loathing, tonight, as I bleed black upon the blank pages. I was full with self-loathing that night too. I was a writer, barely at the start of my career, and I'd run out of stories.
Desperate. Very desperate.
Never mind whether I found him, or he found me. Never mind the ritualistic particulars - whether I waited at a cross roads under a harvest moon or drew a chalk circle or invoked his name nine times before a dark mirror - whether I sacrificed a cat, swallowed a leech ballooning on virgin blood, or answered an odd ad in the Personals. Pick your cliche and suckle on it.
We met.
"So your pen has run dry, eh Jack?" the doctor asked. I wrote under the name Jack Fatuus.
I nodded. We both sipped strong coffee the colour of bog bodies. He wore lambskin gloves. It was a cafe, the same one these things always happen in.
"Am I to believe you're that doctor?" I asked. "You're the one traipsing about Dunwich, doing battle with horrors?"
"Yes," he said, "or rather...that was a story written about me. You see, I once met a boy who was made entirely of fear. He was afraid in the night and afraid in the day. He was afraid of the world outside, but terrified he would never get to see it. He was afraid of foreigners, but fascinated by them. He was afraid of his psychotic father. Afraid of disappointing his mother. He spent a lifetime of people watching from the windows of his skull, which he kept shuttered fast. This prodigy child of Providence loved stories, but was afraid he would never trap them on the page, never be read. So I made a deal with this anxious son of fear."
"A deal?"
"He would be forever full of stories, the cup never empty. And the people would read his stories. On one condition: he had to write a story about me."
"Why?" I sipped my coffee. My head throbbed.
He spoke in a rushing whisper. Tectonic plates in my brainpan shifted. He told me he was indeed a doctor of the occult. Long ago, he stumbled upon hideous combinations of dissociated knowledge. His hands dipped into the murmuring ink, and he did not clean them off. It stained like blackworm jism. It erased his name from the book of life, and rewrote it along countless dimensions. The sentient ink. The virulent ink. Story as contagion. Language as pathogen. He existed as a legion of fractals dancing on impossible curves.
"I'm dying somewhere, always dying," he said. "I'm dying right now. But I can buy more life if someone inks me onto the page. That frightened child of Providence did. So I showed him an echo of the truth, opened up such terrifying vistas of story. I am offering the same deal to you, Jack."
My hands shook, rattling the coffee cup on the saucer.
"It's important I survive, Jack. I am burdened with terrible knowing. That knowledge must get to certain people. Stories ever-flowing, Jack, a whispering tide, yes or no?"
"Yes," I said without meaning to speak.
Off came his lambskin gloves. Each fingernail was a platinum fountain pen nib bleeding black ink. All I could see was the gleam of those claws and that grin. He grabbed my forearm, and the needle points pierced my flesh. With the index finger of his free hand, he wrote my name, my true name, on the napkin sitting in front of me. Something gaped open in my head, a nocturnal flower aching for the pollinator bat.
The doctor rose, tipped his hat, and left the cafe just like that. Outside, a soft drink trunk promptly smashed into him as he crossed the street. There were screams, of course. There was a crimson and ebony, like black cherries smashed on summer pavement. I fled.
The stories were there, wriggling like worms.Al I had to do was pen a tale about Dr. A first. But I hesitated. The doctor was not, by profession, a writer. But he could still be a liar. Maybe such a creature shouldn't be allowed to continue. Maybe his knowledge is dangerous. Maybe he doesn't mean any of us any good.
I was afraid, so I waited. I've waited like a good boy. My career has gone nowhere. I've watched all of my peers surpasses me in every possible way. Now I can't wait anymore. I still have that napkin. Maybe...maybe if I lock this story in a desk drawer, if I wait years before publishing it, it won't happen. I suspect that frightened child of Providence did the same thing. But it's a pretty lie. I know that right this second, as I type, the doctor is birthing from a gory puddle of ink, fully formed -- hat and grin and gleaming nails.
If you're a writer, he might contact you someday. It might be by rumor or a cryptic phrase written on a bathroom stall wall or a raggedy flyer that blows into your leg as if by its own agency. If you're a writer you know. We are, all of us, liars. If you're not a writer, then beware. We hide behind pseudonyms and ciphers. Even as you confide in us, we steal pieces of your life to feed the entities we sustain on the page.
None of this happened. All of this is true. I promise.
I am Jack Fatuus. I am not Jack Fatuus. I am not an accomplished writer. But I will be. God have mercy on my soul. I will be.
