Amy Templeton had not been a star student, or Homecoming queen. She was neither popular nor disliked among fellow students. She was not exceptionally beautiful, nor was she discouragingly unattractive. Her family was neither rich nor poor, and she had only a very small circle of friends, within which she held rank as neither the funny, smart, or pretty one. Amy Templeton was little more than nobody, and little more than nobody cared when she died.
Plenty had cared when she disappeared, however. Many "Thoughts and prayers" and other such well-wishes had been sent out to her relatives by way of Facebook and Twitter. The hashtag "FindAmyT" had been trending for forty eight hours, and in that time not a single clue to her whereabouts was discovered by the police or any relation, save one. Millie Masters was Amy's best friend, and the last person to see her alive.
In the weeks leading up to her vanishing act, Amy had taken Millie into her confidence and shown her an old book she found in her grandmother's attic. Mrs. Isla Templeton recently passed and Amy had been helping to pack up the dearly departed's possessions for division amongst greedy heirs and ex-lovers later. It was during a long day of this arduous compartmentalizing that Amy had stumbled across a copy of the Holy Bible in surprisingly decent condition, considering its location among hundreds of battered, near war-torn literary works. Upon inspection, Amy discovered that only the cover maintained pristine condition, while the pages within were just as yellowed and scarred as any other book in its presence. Curious, Amy began reading. She turned to the first page, expecting copyright information, a table of contents or perhaps even the ever-classic "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth", yet none of these were present. No publishing information or religious mantra were represented. Nothing but a hastily hand-written note that urged the reader to "PUT THIS AWAY". As anyone would do in a situation perplexing as this, Amy continued reading.
It became immediately apparent this was no sacred text, at least to the Christian faith. The pages were obviously torn from their previous cover, and stitched rather shoddily into their new home, which at times made the act of page-turning a minor chore. The pages themselves contained passage after passage of strange incantations, descriptions and scribbled drawings of worlds and creatures that existed only in dreams, and most disturbing, lifelike recollections of men and women who had looked upon a great evil too terrifying and maddening to even be represented by the author's crude sketches. Amy tucked the book into her purse and fled the house.
Later that night she called over Millie and presented the book to her, explaining how she had come across it.
"I don't know why or how Gran had this. If she wrote it, or if Dad did in his 'angsty teenage' years. This thing is freaky! Look at these drawings!"
Millie herself shrugged most of this off and suggested her friend get rid of the book, but Amy protested.
"I...I don't want to. It could have been special to Gran. It might also be part of some really weird family history. Maybe Gran was in a cult!"
The discussion ceased there, and Millie decided not to give the matter much more thought. Amy, it seemed, had also forgotten about the strange imposter of biblical text and seldom mentioned it save for passing quips and jokes like "don't let the Deep Ones bite". Millie always let her friend's strange choice in humor slide, deciding that it would pass soon and Amy wasn't doing anybody harm by making the odd reference to a dusty old omnibus of frankly lame and tasteless fiction. This was a perspective that changed drastically when Amy appeared on her doorstep at half past ten, drenched as if she had been swimming in her clothes, and rambling on in no earthly language.
Millie took her friend into her house and tried to give her some warm clothes, but Amy wouldn't take them. Instead she produced from her pocket a single soaked page from the book. Millie took the page and examined it. Most of the ink had been washed away, which didn't matter much as what was left of the text was hardly legible to begin with. All Millie could make out was a drawing, made by an apparently shaky hand, of a creature that had no discernible form to speak of. A great mass of eyes and tentacles, each ending in an agape mouth. Beside it – holding a flute to its nonexistent lips – was a similarly unsettling creature. Below the bizarre sketch was a single word that was as jumbled a mess as the thing it was assigned to. A random string of vowels and consonants that couldn't possibly be word or name, yet reading it made Millie sick to her stomach.
"Azathoth." Amy whimpered the word and the lights subtly dimmed for only a second before resuming their normal, cheery brightness. It was then that Amy fell back into fitful mutterings and ramblings, Millie could only catch spastic outbursts about a "Flute-Player" and "The Blind Idiot". When Millie attempted to embrace her friend in hopes that it would calm her Amy only fled. Millie gave chase, following Amy for miles until they came to a densely wooded grove, surrounded by hills on the outskirts of town. Amy had created some distance between them, and Millie called out her name through the trees to no response.
In her report to the police, Millie avoided mentioning that she did see Amy again. At the center of the grove, she floated in mid air, staring into the starry night sky before vanishing in a flash of green light. When Millie reached the empty space where her beloved friend had been, there was nothing but sticks and a Bible with crude stitching down the spine. A single note from a flute quietly echoed in the cold air.
It was four months before the search for Amy Templeton was all but called off. She had not been declared dead but most everyone in the community considered her to be so. All except for Millie, who spent every waking moment replaying the events of that night in her mind's eye, and pouring through the heinous volume that she knew had been the cause of all this. At eleven months and twenty two days since the disappearance, Millie had discovered nothing that could lead to finding Amy. The page depicting the entity called "Azathoth" had been in her pocket, and had left in it. The creature was not mentioned in any other text.
It was on this day that her boyfriend, Jacob Falkins, came to her, attempting to put an end to this madness.
"It's been a year," he said, "I understand that you need time to mourn, but blaming some old book isn't going to help anything. You're only making it harder to accept reality."
"And what is reality?" Millie's response was little less than a shout, "People floating in mid-air? Green lights that come from nowhere? Because that's what I saw, Jake! And if there's an explanation somewhere in this book, why shouldn't I try to find it?"
Millie wept, then, and Jacob held her, knowing he could do nothing to bring her comfort.
It was some time later that Millie once again opened the book. Tomorrow would be one year since Amy's disappearance, and Millie thought that some providence, be it by God or some other cosmic force, would align the stars and today would be the day some new information would be found within these time-battered pages, and all would become clear. Listlessly, she drifted to the very last page – she had seen it all before – to a catalog of signatures. Perhaps the authors of the devilish document, all signed in deep red ink. But it was on this blessed day that Millie discovered something new. The last name, near the bottom of the page: "Amy Tem."
Could it be that it was "Templeton" that was meant to occupy this bit of parchment? Or simply her addled and weary mind playing a fiendish trick? She lightly touched the name with her fingers and shed a few tears, before she drifted off into sleep.
Millie dreamed that night. She stood in the tree grove, the night sky alight with a million stars. Amy stood with her.
"Amy!" Millie cried out, but there was no response. Amy was lifted off her feet and carried into the sky by some unseen force.
"It must be here." Amy called softly from her place in the heavens, "Here, in the same hour. You must sign your name before he comes."
"Before who comes?" Millie shouted, desperate. The sound of flutes filled the air, so loud they were deafening even when Millie covered her ears.
"The Blind God." Amy's voice was accompanied by the appearance of a lawless Thing. It was so vast it filled the sky, and though it was miles away, appeared close as a lover in the final moments before a kiss goodnight. Azathoth. Millie saw him and despaired at his magnitude, the flutes, sweet yet disgusting in their encompassing noise, played by hideous amalgamations of things both ancient and young, large in their own right yet dwarfed by their master. Millie looked away and fell to her knees. She heard Amy's voice, nearly drowned out by the vile flutes.
"Sign your name and be spared."
Millie looked up at Azathoth and his companions, Amy was gone but she saw there was one more among them, a great creature in the sea of stars. Flute in hand, playing for the Blind One.
Millie awoke to the sound of her alarm clock. On any other morning the sound would be irritating but it was music of the angels against the acidic wailing of Azathoth's heralds.
She skipped school, and instead spent the morning writing down her dream, processing her experience.
"Sign your name and be spared", that must be what Amy attempted the night Azathoth took her. Now, he wanted Millie.
Millie felt cold and alone, adrift in the vacuum of space. The Blind One wanted her, and the only thing she knew she could do was to go back to the tree grove tonight, and sign her name in the book. She examined the red signatures, it was unlikely that all of these people had used a red pen. Millie needed to sign her name in blood, "In the same hour." But what if it was a trick? If she signed now, Azathoth would still take her tonight if it wasn't. Millie would take no chances. She would follow the rules.
Her cell rang and she answered it to hear Jacob's voice, asking where she was.
"I can't explain now, but I'll tell you everything tonight. I love you, Jake." She hung up before he could reply and realized that she had just said "I love you" to him for the first time, at the worst possible time she could have said it.
She packed the book into a travel bag, along with a small pocket knife and lantern. She could set up a camp at the grove and wait for nightfall. It had been eleven o'clock when Amy had been taken, that had to be the time the signing should take place. Millie slung the bag over her shoulder and headed out. As she reached the door, it opened on its own and she immediately found herself engulfed in water.
Millie didn't have time to gasp for breath before she was submerged entirely. She drifted, unable to see in the murky darkness. She didn't know which direction she faced, or if directions even existed here. She pulled the lantern out of her bag and tried to ignite it, it lit up like a firefly. A fact which was immediately regretful.
Before Millie, dominating the darkness, floated a massive animal that was no natural inhabitant of planet Earth. Huge and disgusting with octopus-like tentacles protruding from its face, and two great wings on its back that wrapped around its bulbous form like a blanket of scales and flesh. Millie did her best not to gasp at the sight of it, this Elder Thing from the book, described only as "The Great Dreamer". She put out the lantern and the water receded.
Millie was deposited by the ensuing current on the front porch of Jacob's house. The first thing she noticed was how dark the day had become. She panicked and frantically banged on the door. Jacob answered and before he could speak she screamed, "WHAT TIME IS IT?"
Jacob flinched and replied sleepily, "It's a quarter to eleven. What's up?"
Millie didn't answer as she spun on one heel and ran with all the speed and strength her drenched legs could muster. Jacob didn't live far from the edge of town, the grove was close but so was Azathoth.
Millie could hear Jacob calling out to her as she ran but she ignored him. She reached the grove and threw down her bag. Digging out the book and the knife she prepared to sign her name. It had to be at least two minutes to eleven. I made it!
She drove the edge of the knife into her thumb and applied pressure until blood shot from the wound like in an old action film. She threw the knife away and dragged her red-tipped appendage across the page. It hurt, but she was almost free.
M
I
L
L
I
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"MILLIE!" Jacob's voice was closer now. She would finally tell him the truth and be rid of this Thing.
M
A
S
She could hear Jacob's footsteps now. So close.
T
E
R
A flute sounded in the distance. The single note bounced and ricocheted off each hill top before coming to rest in Millie's presence. She had only one letter left, but she froze. She looked up, shaking so hard the blood from her wound fell like rain onto the page. Azathoth had come.
She couldn't see him. The sky, a moment ago filled with the light of so many stars, had gone black and expanded down towards her, as if it were the surface of a pool in the moments before a diver comes up for air. She stood, not of her own volition, for she was lifted into the air by the power of The Great Blind One. She stared into the void that was Azathoth eclipsing every star in God's beautiful sky. Jacob called for her one last time.
Jacob reached the grove in time to see Millie, floating six feet off the ground, turn to him and smile. There was a flash of bright green light, and then nothing but sticks and a Holy Bible with crude stitching down the spine.