Jefferson Mental Hospital, Rhode Island, 1975
Dr. Derek Raynor sat slumped over his desk, filling in the latest batch of paperwork. They had recently admitted another patient into the hospital and their original interview with the patient had been conducted, finishing just minutes before. Derek was transferring his notes into the filing system, but was troubled by a noticeable trend.
"Still filling in paperwork?" his coworker Frank said from the doorway. He leaned on the door frame, wearing a smirk, having completed a lap during his rounds.
"Yeah... hey, Frank... can I ask you a question?" Derek asked.
"Shoot."
"Have you noticed a trend this month with our admissions?"
"What kind of trend?"
"Well, this latest patient's delusions read like a carbon copy of a couple other client's interviews earlier this month. Eerily so..."
"I hadn't noticed... all paranoids have a certain common thread to them... a great evil of some form hunting them, always just out of sight, blah blah blah. That kind of thing." Frank said.
"It's not just the paranoia though... there are details that correlate. They all rave over some book, 'The Darkness' and some god, who's name I can't easily pronounce. Those things can't be easily dismissed."
"Chalk it up to contagion factor. They bump into each other outside of the hospital; one paranoid hears the other's mumblings and takes on the delusion for themselves. Rhode Island's a small state..." Frank joked, "I wouldn't lose sleep over it. Do you also believe the patients that the hospital is haunted?"
"Not necessarily, but the hospital has been around for a long time. I'm sure it's got its share of secrets..."
Frank laughed and shook his head. "You are a nutjob...you chose the right line of work. If you believe in all these conspiracy theories and ghost stories the patients ramble about, I think we might have room for you in Ward B..."
"Very funny..." Derek said, as he returned to his work.
Frank pushed off from the doorframe and resumed his rounds around the hospital.
As Frank left, Derek couldn't shake the nagging in his brain that something was wrong about these clients, outside of their paranoia. He looked at the disaster that was his desk and hoped he'd get through all his paperwork in time to allow him to investigate the patient profiles a little further.
Derek compared the records for all three patients that recount their experiences versus 'The Darkness'. All three read like carbon copy descriptions of the same things. He looked through their histories and there was nearly a zero percent probability that contagion was the reason for the similarities. One was a lawyer from Providence, the next a farmer from a rural corner of the northern part of the state and the last was a student in residence at a nearby college. The odds of each client running into one other in any mundane setting were extremely remote.
"So, how are they telling the same story?" Derek asked aloud.
He ran his fingers through his hair and leaned back in his seat. There wasn't another plausible explanation, but something wasn't sitting right with him. There was a nagging in the back of his brain that told him he was missing something.
"Have I seen this before?" he asked himself.
Derek rose from his chair and grabbed his white lab coat and the key ring hanging by the door and stepped out of the office.
"You heading home, Derek?" he heard Frank ask as he stepped out of his office.
"Not quite yet. I have to check the archives for a few minutes."
"OK. I'm heading out soon. I heard a storm's coming and I'd rather get home before it reaches us."
"Thanks for the heads up. I guess I'll see you tomorrow, Frank."
"Yeah, I'll catch you later."
Derek walked down the hall toward Ward B, where the archives were stored, while Frank headed off to the cafeteria. Ward B was the wing of the hospital where potentially dangerous offenders were kept. The heavy deadbolts and in-room restraints contained them when drugs failed, but many clients were on their way to recovery, thanks to new forms of therapy that were being developed.
At the far end of the hallway was a heavy metal door with a simple plastic plaque on it, which read 'Archives'. Derek slid a key into the lock and opened the door, releasing the smell of old paper from the room. Rows of filing cabinets lined the walls of the small room, with case files contained inside, sorted by year and name. Derek didn't even pause and walked right past the cabinets and pulled a chain to an overhead light bulb to reveal an old wooden bookcase in the back of the room.
The bookcase was lined with heavy, bound folios from the old days of the hospital. Before the 20th century, Jefferson Mental Hospital had been called the Jefferson and Coombs Sanitarium. It was a building where the patients had no rights and were thrown into when society didn't know how to deal with the mentally ill. Keeping records on the insane was merely a formality at the time. When Jacob Coombs sold his share of the Sanitarium, Bill Jefferson took steps to improve living conditions within the facility. While the hospital was now a reputable institution, the old records were kept in tribute to the age of the facility.
Derek wiped the dust from the spines of the books to reveal the dates on them and upon finding the book for the mid 18th century, pulled the book from the shelf and carefully opened the ancient book. As the book opened, the light in the archive room flickered and Derek could swear a cool wind blew through the room from the hallway.
"Frank must have opened the front door...storm must be coming on quick," he said aloud to himself.
He flipped through the book, being careful not to damage the brittle papers inside. Near the center of the book, he found what he was looking for.
Name of Inmate: Dr. Maximillian Roivas
Year of Admission: 1760
Reason for Admission: Claims that a ruined city resides under his Rhode Island residence and that the city is inhabited by unnatural beings. Says that an ancient god, named Xel'lotath, is trying to free itself from its prison and it will spell the end of mankind. Has forged autopsy documents of the creatures he believes he fought and claims to have a book called the 'Tome of Eternal Darkness', which allows him to use magic to combat the minions of this god. Dr. Roivas recently murdered all his servants, believing they were possessed by creatures of Xel'lotath.
Chance of Recovery: None. Recommend that Dr. Roivas spend the remainder of his days in his cell with minimal human contact.
Derek stood slack-jawed, as he read the record for Dr. Roivas. The record once again read like those he'd seen recently. But this was 200 years ago!
Seeing movement out of the corner of his eye, Derek turned to look down the hallway and saw a faint light shimmering in the hallway. Forgetting the records, he walked down the hallway to find the source of the light. As he got halfway down the hall, he saw the ghostly image of a man floating down the hall.
"My God..."
The man was in an old straitjacket, being dragged down the hallway by unseen orderlies. He was kicking and thrashing, trying to free himself from their grip. He was screaming the whole time, though Derek couldn't hear his words. He was clearly distraught, as he was practically frothing at the mouth, trying to persuade his carriers that he wasn't insane.
The ghost paused outside one of the cell doors before being tossed through the door and into one of the cells. Derek refused to move at first, but he slowly made his way over to the cell the ghost had been tossed into. He peered in through the heavy glass window in the door and saw the room was unoccupied. With some hesitation, he slid the door key into the lock and unlocked the deadbolt. He took a deep breath as he stepped into the room.
Derek found the light switch on the wall and turned on the light. The light only lit partially, casting a faint sickly yellow glow over the room. The room's temperature was distinctly lower than the rest of the building. Derek scanned the room for anything out of the ordinary and noticed the bed. All the sheets had been removed from the bed and all the restraints were tightly fastened, rather than open and concealed, like they usually are. Looking further, Derek noticed the bed sheets crumpled in a heap in the far corner of the room. He walked over to the sheets and tossed them back towards the bed. Under the sheets sat a tired wooden box, with a simple hinge and old thumb latch.
Kneeling beside the box, Derek slid the latch off and lifted the lid. Inside he saw a powdered wig, typical of nobility in the days of the British colonies. He lifted it aside and noticed an old cavalry saber and a heavy book resting at the bottom of the box. Setting the sword aside, Derek hoisted the book and studied the surface of it. As his hands ran over the surface, his mind tried to place the texture of the material the book was made of. He soon realized that the book's cover was made of skin and bone and he dropped the book in revulsion.
"Who would make such a vile creation?" he thought. He noticed the symbol on the front of the book and remembered a sketch one of his patients made of the cover of the 'Tome of Eternal Darkness'. Sliding on a pair of latex gloves, Derek resolved himself to pick up the book and peruse its contents.
He flipped the pages, absorbing the sheer volume of what he was reading. The Tome spoke of ancient beings that predated mankind that were moving to regain their freedom from a being called Mantorok. Stories of the undead and other supernatural horrors that had hunted man from the days of ancient Rome to World War I and possibly still to this day. The book appeared to be unfinished, as he finished reading the last chapter, but there was no statement as to mankind's or Xel'lotath's defeat.
Derek closed the book and rubbed his eyes. Time had managed to escape him as he had read the Tome, seeing that several hours had elapsed. It had been strange, in that he seemed to be able to see each of the previous owner's lives after they touched the Tome.
A peel of thunder echoed outside and there was bright flash as all the lights in the hospital went out. Derek slowly rose to his feet. In the encompassing darkness, he heard all the deadbolts of Ward B room doors open in rapid succession.
"Oh no..."
He heard the rapid scurry of steps out in the hall and a few bodies slam into his door but then the hallway became silent as emergency power came online.
Derek grabbed the saber and the Tome off the floor and crept over to the door. He looked out into the hallway and saw it free of people. He opened the door and stepped into the hall. Every room's door was slightly open, but there was no trace of any of the inhabitants. He slowly crept down the center of the hall, in case anyone was still in their room, lying in ambush.
"NOOOOO! Help! She found me!" came a shriek from one of the rooms down the hall from Dr. Roivas' old cell. Derek recognized it as one of the three witnesses of Xel'lotath, Henry Jackson.
"Henry? Are you alright?" Derek asked. He voice sounded flat in the hallway. Normally his voice would echo slightly off the stark white walls, but this time it sounded as if his voice had barely carried more than a few feet from him.
Henry's screams became incoherent the closer Derek got to his room. As Derek's hand landed on the door to peer inside to check on the patient, he heard a wet crunch from inside and he was sprayed in a warm stickiness that splashed across the doorway. Looking down, he saw that he was covered in fresh blood, which rolled down his white coat in thick globs.
He staggered back from the door, trying to stifle a scream that was building in his throat. He was pulled from his shock when he saw a green glow rising up from the floor of the hall a few feet ahead of him. He noticed that it was the rune of Xel'lotath and the light from it brightened, forming into a pillar of nauseating green light. He watched as a moldy green corpse rose from the sigil and slowly stepped off the symbol towards him.
"This...this can't be happening..." he stammered, as he stumbled backwards, away from the shambling corpse.
Derek was unable to act until the zombie was almost on top of him, when he swung the saber in a defensive swipe. The zombie's arm from the elbow down fell to the tiles and faded into dust. The zombie briefly paused as a new arm made of translucent green light coalesced into existence where the other one had been severed.
As the zombie fixed its eyeless gaze on Derek once more the doctor got over his shock and broke into a sprint, running past the zombie and out of the ward. As he entered the main lobby, he saw several shapes moving in the corner of his eyes, but he didn't dare stop to find out if they were patients or more zombies. He ran until he arrived at a door with a similar cheap, plastic plaque to the archives that read 'Security'.
He opened the door and was about ask for help, when he noticed that the office was empty save for a green trapper crawling across the floor. He had read about trappers in the Tome and certainly didn't want to find out anything about the 'Trapper Dimension', as it had been coined. He slowly crept into the office, with his eyes on the gun locker at the far side. His sneaker squeaked on the tile floor and he froze as the trapper wheeled around and began advancing toward him. Clenching his eyes, he jumped over the desk, but his foot caught the edge of the desk, causing the desk to drag across the floor. The trapper spun and clenched its muscles, sending out a ring of energy.
Derek landed hard onto the floor on the opposite side of the desk, just in time to watch the desk vanish and the trapper collapse, crumbling to dust.
He pulled himself to his feet and pulled open the door on the cabinet. Most of the weapons were non lethal means of subduing aggressive patients, but he found a service pistol at the back of the cabinet, as well as a couple boxes of bullets. He pulled the gun out and a box of bullets and was about to situate himself at the desk, when he remembered that it was no longer present.
He set the box of bullets onto the water cooler and struggled to remove the clip from the gun. Once he figured it out, he started loading bullets into the clip. His hands were shaking so bad that every second bullet seemed to slip from his hands and scatter onto the floor.
He had managed to load half a dozen bullets into the clip when the phone mounted on the wall rang loudly in the small room. Derek let out a yell of fright, before he set the pistol down and approached the phone.
Lifting the receiver, he asked, "Hello?"
"You don't seem to be dealing very well, for a man who deals with the insane every day..."
Derek looked at the phone. The strange female voice was disjointed and erratic. The voice changed from a whisper to full volume without warning. As he set the receiver back to his ear, he could hear two distinct voices lightly giggling at the other end.
"It's not every day you're swallowed by your patient's delusion," Derek said.
"One man's delusion is another man's reality. Who are you to say which is which, mortal?"
Derek was about to reply, but realized that he likely wasn't speaking to the real Xel'lotath. He hung up the phone and went back to pistol to resume loading the gun.
"Did you think you could escape me that easily? You truly don't understand the depth of your situation..."
Derek jumped and turned to see the source of the voice. He pinpointed it in a small radio sitting atop a filing cabinet.
"Leave me alone, you crazy bitch..."
Derek reached into the box to grab more bullets and felt something squirm on his fingertips. Spinning around, he saw the box crawling with insects. He let out a scream of fright and knocked the box onto the floor, scattering cockroaches and centipedes across the floor.
"I don't appear to be the one that's crazy...I love it when they start slipping..."
Derek ran over to the radio and ripped its cord from the wall. "I am not insane!"
He hurled the radio against the far wall and shattered the plastic casing into tiny pieces.
Laughter filled the room, as thick rivers of blood began to trickle down the walls and the rune of Xel'lotath appeared in the center of the ceiling. As the blood began to pool on the floor, he could hear Xel'lotath's voices in his head repeating, "DIE DIE DIE DIE..."
Clenching his eyes, he repeated to himself, "Not real... it's not real..."
He slowly opened his eyes and all the blood was gone. The symbol on the ceiling was gone and the voices had vanished as well. The insects he had seen scurrying across the floor were actually bullets. They were now scattered all over the floor. Loading the pistol would take longer, since he'd have to pick up each individual bullet.
Derek physically jumped as a body slammed into the door of the security office. When the hit came again and he heard the hinge plates starting to crack the wood of the doorframe, he hurried to grab the pistol and stuff it into his jacket.
Brandishing his saber, he spoke in a voice other than his own. "Antorbok, Pargon, Magormor, Pargon, Chattur'gha"
As each word was spoken a red spire of light in the form of the rune rose up from the ground. On the pronunciation of the God's name a red arc of power rose from each rune and impacted the sword, infusing it with power.
As he looked at the glowing red blade, the door burst open and a zombie stepped into the room and locked onto Derek. The doctor charged the shambling corpse and swung the sword at the creature's head. The blade growled as it cleaved through the corpse, severing its head and part of its torso in one swipe. The corpse collapsed to the ground, as its head began to reform out of green light. Derek ran past the fallen corpse and out of the office, running down the hallway, back towards the lobby.
He headed straight for the front door, but the simple glass doors had been replaced by heavy iron doors that were locked from the outside. No matter how hard he pushed, the door didn't budge in the slightest.
"Back door..." he said, as he gave up and ran for the door at the back of cafeteria.
The darkened cafeteria was in shambles, the tables overturned and chairs scattered around the room. The door on the far side of the room had a mountain of chairs against it. Refusing to be defeated, Derek began navigating the maze of toppled furniture to make it over to the exit.
He held the sword out in front of him to ward off anything that might try to come at him as he snaked his way through the cafeteria. He nearly jumped out of his skin, when he heard a moan beside him and heard chairs shift. He turned to square himself against whatever it was, when he noticed Frank laying under a large pile of chairs.
"Frank! Are you alright?" Derek asked, as he hastily moved chairs aside to unbury his friend.
Frank moaned and clutched the side of his head, as Derek pulled him up to a seated position. "What happened?"
"I'm not sure what happened to you, but even if I did, I'm not sure I could explain what's going on around here," Derek said.
Frank swayed as he rose to his feet and surveyed the cafeteria. "Someone redecorated a little bit..."
"You don't know the half of it...c'mon, we've gotta get through that door."
"Do you know how long it'll take us to get through all that?!" Frank asked.
"We have to try... it's our only way out."
"There's another problem though..."
Derek looked at Frank with an arched eyebrow. "What's that?"
Frank lashed out with a burst of speed Derek hadn't been expecting and batted the enchanted sword out of the doctor's grip, sending it spiraling into the dark corners of the ruined cafeteria.
"You can't be allowed to escape..." Frank said with a grin. Behind the smile, Derek heard a faint hiss from deep within his friend. For all purposes, Frank was gone.
Derek pulled his arm away from his former friend and started backing away.
"Where are you going to go? Lady Xel'lotath controls this place. She controls you. You just don't know it yet..."
Frank lunged forward as Derek pulled the pistol from his pocket and raised it. The gunshot echoed in the darkened cafeteria as Frank fell backwards with a large wound in the back of his skull to accompany the small dot in his forehead. Derek stood silently over his fallen friend. He wanted to scream, cry and vomit, all at once. He entertained the thought of turning the pistol on himself for a moment until he saw movement under Frank's coat.
The sound of splitting bones and tearing skin echoed in the room, as a bony claw erupted from Frank's chest, soon followed by a second. The possessing bonethief emerged from Frank's body, tearing its former vessel wide open as it stepped clear. The swirling globes of light that passed for the creatures head were incapable of showing any intent, but Derek understood well enough and ran back into the hospital.
He heard the claws of the creature scurrying behind him and heard it screech as it leapt for him. He felt the fabric of his coat tear as it reached for him and caught only clothing. Derek grabbed a nearby chair and turned to hurl it, just as the bonethief leapt again. The chair slammed into the creature, sending it sprawling back into the cafeteria.
Derek ran into the lobby and saw all the escape patients standing in the lobby, side by side. They stared at him with identical smirks on their faces.
"We've got a bone to pick with you, Doc..."
Derek resumed his sprint, heading down the only hallway that wasn't blocked. He charged down Ward B, feeling the horde of the insane behind him. He snapped off shots behind him and managed to down one of the pursuers. He turned into one of the rooms and closed the door behind him. As the door closed, he heard the door latch, locking him in.
He noticed a foul odor in the room and when he turned around, he noticed that he was back in Maximillian's room, but not in its modern form. The smell of death, vomit and feces was thick in the air. Rats scurried in and out of the drainage gates near the floor. Gone were the modern pleasantries they had installed and he had been thrust back into 1760.
He surveyed the tiny prison and noticed markings on the walls, the random scribblings of a presumed insane man, likely driven to insanity in this tiny cell. How Maximillian could have made the writings is unknown, but they were random words from his experiences. Xel'lotath, guardians, Ehn'gha... runes adorned the walls like some form of bizarre decoration.
Derek was startled by rotting arms reaching through the bars on the heavy iron door. He turned and fired his pistol, only to hear the hammer click. He had forgotten he hadn't been able to load many rounds...
Green light began flowing in from the drainage gates. Derek could hear the shambling of corpses and the scurrying of bonethieves approaching, as well as the weight of bodies pushing against the door. He recited the runes for the Damage Field spell and huddled inside the protective walls. He clung to the Tome tightly as he began to rock in his tiny circle. The book that he had reviled not long ago was now all that he had left.
Maryanne Davis struggled to keep her teenage son from lashing out, as she dragged him into the Jefferson Mental Hospital. As he stepped across the threshold, several orderlies came to assist her with her violent son, gently gripping his arms to keep him contained.
"Hello, miss. How can I help you?" Derek Raynor asked, as he emerged from the office.
"My son is having some kind of psychotic episode. He's been raving about the undead hunting him down and some creature called Xel'lotath... I don't understand."
"We've actually had a rash of similar cases. It's making me wonder if psychotic agents might have made it into certain foods or something..." Derek said. "Not to worry, Miss...?"
"Maryanne Davis," she said, filling in the blank.
"Miss Davis...if you could fill in a few forms, releasing your son to us, we'll treat him and find out what's wrong and get him back to you as soon as possible."
"Thank you so much..." she said, as an orderly handed her a pen and a clipboard.
"You're very welcome. The insane always feel right at home with us..." Derek said with a winning smile.
Almost inaudibly, as Maryanne disappeared into the offices, a faint hiss could be heard from deep within Derek's throat.
"We're almost like family."