AN: To "Demon Lord" and "Public-Cockblocker", thank you for reading and taking the time to review. I'm only sorry I didn't have this chapter out sooner, but I should hopefully have this story moving again soon enough. I hope this continues to be interesting and well worth the read.
Thanks to the efforts of my tutors over the years, I was able to effortlessly pass the entrance exam which so distinguished the Solfirth Institute from its contemporaries, and thus was shortly attending the illustrious institution. My years there proved remarkable to the professors. They found within me a fully able and learned pupil who, even with his wealthy background, was both confident enough to support his arguments with skilled reasoning and yet humble enough to admit to his own ignorance and mistakes. Or at least that is how I see my time there. I have little doubt that the modesty of youth has since been replaced by the self-assurance of age, and thus may I have imbued my experiences with more positivity and self-promotion than they may otherwise deserve. It is surely either a symptom of the human condition or else a sign of British mentality that even now, close as I am to my own apportioned fate, I may show some thin veneer of humour in my writings, and also apologise to whoever finds these pages for my immodesty. How very droll, that my final days are spent looking at how I must seem to those whom I shall never meet.
I will not detail my time at the Institute too greatly, as evidence of my successes there may be found within my published essays on "Cultish Behaviours and the Mentality that Surrounds their Practitioners", "Psychoses of the Occult" and my most famous early book "Possession: A Psychoanalytical Discussion which Seeks to Pinpoint, Excise and Analyse the Internal Mechanisms which the Unconscious Promotes". Such efforts raised my name to a near household level among occultists, psychologists and even a fair portion of the general public, and also netted me a tidy sum which greatly supported the production of my second book "Occult Texts and the Role they play in Distorting Our Perceptions". Such work required my reading of these texts, for which I learnt many languages in order to read these texts in their original setting. Thus did I discover the mysteries within the copy of Unaussprechlichen Kulten existing at the Institute within its original German, and travel to the Miskatonic at Arkham to read their copies of the Pnakotic Manuscripts and De Vermis Mysteriis. I was even able, with a great deal of negotiation, to read the now-infamous Necronomicon at the British Museum and supplement the notes I had scribbled during my brief perusal at the Miskatonic's library.
Also included in this work was what I could remember from the lessons of Mr. Mayweather. Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, despite my best efforts very few of the volumes which he showed to me were found to exist anywhere excluding his collection; I could not consult Mr. Mayweather's collection either, as he had left the house once my entrance into the Institute was confirmed. I therefore had little surprise when, shortly after the release of my book, letters arrived asking about where I had found these texts and why it was that very little of their knowledge was known to researchers despite my clear quotations from their pages and the titles that I provided. What did prove confusing, however, was one envelope, written in an odd, cramped and somewhat messy style, as if the author was not used to writing. The words penned in this bizarre fashion read "The Pupil", and within was the picture of that bizarre being whose image I had drawn for Mr. Mayweather that one afternoon. I remember asking the porter of my university residence if he had seen who had delivered the letter, but he replied that he had seen nothing all morning and heard naught save the faint suggestion of a swishing sound as of silk sliding against itself.
The rest of my time at the Institute proved uneventful, and my labours proved fruitful when I graduated with full honours from the establishment and was subsequently asked to stay on as a professor for Occult Studies and thus replace the current occupant, a kindly old man whose health had suddenly taken a turn for the worse following an unexpected attack of pneumonia. Such luck at the expense of my previous teacher proved too irresistible, and I accepted the position with all enticing benefits therein provided. The older professor suffered for a while, shrieking at his children of some unseen creature who tormented him and drove his wife to madness with insane chattering and whispers of what lay beneath his hideous mask. The night the old man finally expired on 17th December 1899, locals claimed that a large, bald, black man whose face was obscured by some strange dog-like mask was seen exiting the ex-professor's house, accompanied by an unidentifiable smell that brought to the mind images of some far-off abandoned city beside some giant, misty lake whose pristine and tranquil beauty belied a far more disturbing and horrifying reality. Whether this man was truly real, or else some imaginative creation of the uneducated and superstitious, I cannot comment. All I can say is that such an impression, so specific in its particulars, hints at the interests of those whose motive are of decidedly unknown depth, and whose agents serve as mortal instruments for designs far greater and more terrible than any human may imagine. However, such conjecture is fruitless. Perhaps the city was not lost Carcosa whose dim song echoes over the shores of Lake Hali where it rests 'neath the gaze of its twin suns and many moons; perhaps this man was not the incomprehensible King In Yellow but was instead imagined up by some dim-witted or else lore-inspired individual, or even some prankster with an eye for cruel jokes. This is certainly what I hope occurred.
Editor's note: Mr. Heighton-Lewis' bibliography for "Occult Texts and the Role they Play in Distorting Our Perceptions" (pub. 1898) lists the following as source material for his research: the Necronomicon (An image of the laws of The Dead), the Pnakotic Manuscripts, De Vermis Mysteriis (Mysteries of the Worm), Unaussprechlichen Kulten (Nameless Cults), The King In Yellow, Eloquia Deos (The words of the gods), LesServiteursperdus (The Lost Servants), Mizungu Wakazi (Conjuring Residents) and Der Hellste Dunkelheit (The Brightest Darkness). Of these works, only the Necronomicon, Pnakotic Manuscripts, De Vermis Mysterii, Unaussprechlichen Kulten and The King In Yellow are confirmed to exist. The rest are believed either to have been either fraudulent works made by Mr. Heighton-Lewis' former teacher, or else created by Mr. Heighton-Lewis (either consciously or unconsciously).