Eleventh Hour of Investigation

Aran Dervin

by Aran Dervin

Story

Opening the cover of the second book, the detective flinched. It was a far cry from the neatly written pages of the last one. Hastily scribbled, the words flew over the pages. There was no coherent structure to the lines. He had written in all directions. Diagonally, up and down, left to right and right to left.

The deeper he got into the book, the worse it became. Crude drawings were made on some of the pages. Black voids and thousands of eyes.

“He sees me.” “He hears my thoughts.”

“HE IS IN MY HEAD!!!!’

“HELP ME!!!!” “PLEASE!!”

“MAKE IT STOP!! MAKE ME FORGET!!”

Horrified Ethan read his own mind becoming undone. It felt wrong to read this. No one should know these kinds of things about themselves. Something in the back of his mind grew bigger and bigger. A sense of dread.

The book detailed his own descent into madness. Ethan really had to force himself to read on, but he needed to know what had happened to himself.

Soon after he had gotten the artifact he seemed to have studied the entity Azatoth a lot. So much that he had even gone to a renowned scholar of the occult. Ramirez Indirovich. He had shown him a copy of the ancient book, known as the Necronomicon. The information in that book had changed his mind forever.

Humankind wasn’t special. It was a joke! An afterthought to cosmic deities that didn’t care if they lived or died. These creatures had traveled to Earth a long time ago and only waited for their time to rise from the seas and rule the Earth.

It was too much. He couldn’t handle it. The constant thumping of that stupid effigy. That blasted piece of metal.

Detective Burke had wanted to forget. It was memory loss, or a bullet in his brain. Thankfully he had the means to amnesia right at his fingertips. But the cultists were never allowed to find it. So he hid it away and only left clues for his later self to eventually find it and hopefully destroy it. Because he wasn’t strong enough.

That was the end of the notebook.

Back in the present, Ethan Burke stared at the dreadful manifest in his hands. The gnawing sensation in the back of his mind grew stronger. He heard strange sounds from within his skull. Like something was chewing. Loudly. The world swirled before his eyes.

Hardly keeping himself together he opened the final book. It was an instruction on how to use the idol.

“Stare directly at the idol for three full minutes and the process will start. In about five hours, the mind will be wiped completely.”

With a sinking feeling he looked at his watch. Only half an hour left. Oh no…

© Aran Dervin 2023-08-09

Genres
Suspense & Horror
Moods
Dunkel, Mysteriös, Angespannt, Dark