The morning fog felt thicker than the night before.
Harrison left the boarding house at first light—or what passed for it in Arkham. The sun was nothing more than a pale disk struggling to pierce the gray, like a dying eye behind a cataract.
Every step down the cobbled streets seemed harder than the last, as though the town itself wanted him to turn back.
But Harrison had made his choice. He was in too deep now.
⸻
He began with the Essex Hotel.
The clerk behind the counter—a lanky man with thinning hair—watched him approach with a blank expression.
"Grace Whitmore. She's staying here," Harrison said, trying to sound like he belonged.
The clerk didn't blink. "Room six. But she ain't there."
"What do you mean?"
"She checked out this morning."
Harrison's stomach sank. "Where'd she go?"
The clerk shrugged. "Didn't ask. She left this for you, though."
He slid a folded scrap of paper across the counter.
Harrison hesitated, then unfolded it.
In Grace's neat cursive:
Don't look for me. Don't look for Clara. He sees you.
Beneath the words was a crude drawing: a tall, faceless figure with outstretched arms.
The Black Pharaoh.
Harrison crumpled the note in his fist. "Damn it."
⸻
By midday, the streets seemed emptier than they had in decades.
Shops stood dark behind dust-filmed glass. The air buzzed faintly, like a far-off swarm of insects.
And always, in the corner of his eye, Harrison saw shapes moving just beyond the fog.
⸻
The Arkham Public Library seemed a logical next stop.
The librarian—a rail-thin woman with a voice like dry leaves—watched Harrison prowl the stacks.
"You won't find her here," she said.
"I'm not looking for her here. I'm looking for answers."
The librarian's eyes flicked to the blue of his irises. "Then you're already doomed."
"What do you know about the Black Pharaoh?" Harrison asked.
The librarian hissed like a cornered cat. "Don't say his name. Words have weight here."
"Just tell me."
She leaned closer. Her breath smelled of mold and ink.
"He's the messenger. The mask. The thousand voices of the Outer Dark."
"Sounds like a fairy tale."
"Then why do your eyes glow when you dream?"
Harrison stepped back. "What did you say?"
"You know what I said."
Before he could ask more, the librarian turned and vanished into the stacks.
Gone.
⸻
The streets felt wronger still when Harrison stepped outside.
Buildings leaned farther, bending like soft wax. Street signs warped and twisted in on themselves, their letters forming alien glyphs.
A faint chanting reached his ears—low, rhythmic, almost like breathing.
He followed the sound.
⸻
It led him to the outskirts of town, to a crumbling stone chapel strangled by ivy.
The door stood ajar.
Inside, the air was heavy with incense and rot.
Figures in tattered robes knelt around a sigil drawn in ash and blood.
At the center stood a man—or what Harrison thought was a man. His skin was slick and dark, his limbs too long, fingers tipped with claws.
He wore a golden mask shaped like a screaming face.
"Brothers and sisters," the masked figure intoned, "the vessel draws near."
The chanting grew louder.
Harrison's Sixth Sense screamed in his skull.
Get out.
But he couldn't move.
⸻
The masked figure turned.
And spoke directly to him.
"You should not have returned, Prophet."
Harrison staggered back. "What… what are you?"
The figure laughed.
"I am many."
The mask shifted. Melted.
Where the golden face had been, there was now only a shifting blur of mouths and eyes, weeping black ichor.
Harrison's heart thundered. His revolver felt like a toy in his shaking hand.
"You came for the girl," the figure said. "But she's already with me. She's already part of me."
The cultists rose, their faces hidden behind crude, bone-white masks.
"Bind him," the figure commanded.
⸻
Harrison fired once, twice.
A robed man crumpled with a scream.
Harrison turned to run, but the world seemed to fold in on itself. The chapel walls bent like wet paper. The door twisted into a jagged grin lined with teeth.
And then—
⸻
Blackness.
⸻
When Harrison woke, he was lying in the dirt outside the chapel.
His gun was gone.
The sigil inside had been wiped away, and the chapel stood empty.
But scratched into the earth beside him were three words:
"YOU ARE HIS."
Harrison's sixth sense throbbed like a war drum.
And somewhere deep in the fog, a child laughed.
⸻
End of Chapter 3