Tag archives for Octobernomicon2022

“Good afternoon, I’m Dr. Gilman. Amanda, I and the rest of the staff at Sefton are here for your benefit. You understand that, right? Good. Now, for the record, I’m Dr. Theodore Gilman, chief psychiatrist at Sefton Asylum in Arkham, Massachusetts. Will you state your name and then tell us what happened?”

“Phagos” is the Greek suffix for “eating”, and “auto” means the self. The Autóphagos are  humans who devour themselves while becoming an appalling creature. Whether they are infected with a disease, cursed, able to transcend death and transform through intense self hatred or, instead, are preternatural creatures incubating as homo sapiens has not been  determined. 

It looked just like any normal human. It was only under closer examination that the true horror that had lived in our midst became clear. Vile abomination! An unholy blending of human and alien flesh used to invade and undermine our civilization. What’s worse it wore the flesh of an old friend. If I could hunt down every last one of those monstrosities and all of their alien kin I would! Unfortunately you idiots have me locked up in this ‘institution’.

Taken from a transcript of an interview with Martin Case, a patient at Agnews State Mental Hospital, Santa Clara, CA.

Alternative names: Vile abominations. 

Elijah, Nathan, and myself, along with a few others, including some of the town’s older boys, went out to the Willow place. Old Jeff had hung himself on the porch, twisting in the wind before his yard. The yard had been plowed up like a field. There were some string-like plants growing there. Pure white with purplish bulges. Kind of rope like. Whole thing was damnable. We hadn’t set one foot on the property and yet we could barely walk given the shudders. You’d think a blizzard was coming in the way we shook, trembling there on the fence line. Elijah finally went forward. I followed. The first stalk we came across was about four feet tall. By far the tallest of the lot. Elijah nudged it with his boot and the thing moved. No wind. It just folded over. Trying to get away. It was then we saw the veins. Thin red ridges pumping away. One of the purplish bulges blinked. Elijah screamed. I’m told I fainted. By the time I came to that “field” had been all torn up. Emma and the children were above ground again. Her had had been split with a plow. Same with the brother and his sisters. Not from us. That must have been old Jeff’s doing. Their bodies had roots and shoots like potatoes. They writhed. They… bled. The Willows and their place were burned that very night.

C. Davis: “I already said, these fuckers aren’t growing plants!”
R. Miles: “Just breath, Cynthia. Be honest with me. Are you off your meds?”
C. Davis: “Fuck you.”
R. Miles: “Please be calm, Cyn—”
C. Davis: “Are you even listening to me?! I’m telling you. They have some… thing in this lab. Something big. Bigger than a house.”
R. Miles: “I am going to call someone, Cynthia. You need help.”
C. Davis: “Don’t you hang up on me! Don’t you understand? It whispers things, Ron. It told me how to make the seeds. Oh, God! All those missing people…”
R. Miles: “I’m calling the cops, Cynth. You’re not well.”

—Transcript from the last known phone call of Cynthia Davis, Investigative Reporter, Missing since last January.

         It was just a glass, or so I thought. That’s how it appeared anyway. Really simple, like from a cafeteria–complete with those white rings of tiny little scratches from the dish machine shaking them around. 

I chose physical and drank down the water. It happened fast; I felt confused and a little dizzy. I have to admit, since that day I’ve felt a little dumb. But strong, really strong

–William Watkins, a member of a group of friends who have stumbled onto greater truths.

Every kid sees danger in the dark, it’s the primordial instinct that allowed us to survive and thrive into what we are now. But this isn’t just kids being scared of the dark, there’s something there taking them! There’s been a consistent number of disappearances and I think I found a pattern. I think something is taking them, every year the pattern goes to a different state, but all of the victims attended the same health care centers before disappearing. There is something actually in the dark, preying on children and using the parents as patsies for their crimes. I have a lead, a serious lead, I think that the murderer is using the system of treatment to identify suitable families to prey on and then blame the parents to keep the heat of them. I am meeting a contact tonight who reached out to me after my last attempt to interview a Dr, whom I think is connected to it all. If all goes well, I should be able to blow the lid on this and help to capture Dr Death. 

The closet doors opened on their own. From the darkness inside, five hands reached forth, each grabbing the doorframe. The wood beneath the clawed hands groaned as it pulled itself forward. A blackened mist, a miniature storm cloud, spilled out of the dark. Within the cloud, a half-dozen mouths of dagger-like teeth swirled and snapped. Four pairs of red eyes, spider eyes, swirled as well. They fixed themselves forward as the cloud glided toward the little girl asleep in bed.  

Life is a secret to be cut open and understood

I will find this being and make it teach me all it has learned. So many deaths can’t just go to waste without a single human profiting from it—anonymous note on an edition of “Monsters and Their Kynde” containing lore on the vivomancers.

The Alpaca

Darkness falls, the stars go out, and the faint moonlight disappears leaving the investigators in complete darkness. A wave of blackness seeps towards them like a deadly fog. Mesmerising shapes that swirl inside it reflect the nightmares of those that stare into it as it forms tendrils and tentacles that writhe around one another