Part Eight

*A dark cavern, an ancient cult, a monstrous creature...*

### Content Warnings

Claustrophobia, widowhood, grave-robbing, panic attack, murder, noises of assault (bludgeoning with rock on skull), ableist terms (psycho), police brutality.

## Summary

Arthur descends the ladder underneath the widow’s house, reaching an elaborate series of stone passageways. Exploring the passageways reveals an abandoned underground hideout that once belonged to a cult that worshipped Shub-Niggurath and a library containing Amanda’s research about the being that came through the gateway in the ritual. In the caverns, a terrifying creature was released and now stalks the tunnels, hunting for Arthur. They only just manage to escape -- before Arthur is apprehended by the police who came looking for him after he stole the boat from Harper’s Hill.

## Synopsis

Arthur and John discover a narrow passageway leading deeper underground. They follow it, eventually finding a large room with large rectangular holes in the ceiling: the graveyard has been dug out from underneath. An eerie shriek is heard from deeper in the caves, and John theorizes something was set free when the lighthouse wick was extinguished.

John points out symbols carved into the walls, the same as the book John was trapped in. Moving further, the passageway opens into a crafted stone hallway with rooms branching off. The first door leads to a bedroom, where a mannequin startles John.

They move into the adjacent room, which appears similar, and are startled by the creature shrieking again. The sound is closer, and Arthur hides under the bed. The creature enters the room, growling and sniffing, clearly searching for them. John describes it as an ancient woman with sagging skin, possibly the widow.

John looks around the room more thoroughly, and notes it's a woman’s room, with clothes on the floor and a torn, blood-stained mattress. Uniform gouges in the wall look like tallymarks. A table next to the bed contains a series of portraits and sketches, the first being of the widow, and subsequent ones being of the previous lighthouse keeper, a man named Antoine. The nature of the drawings suggest Antoine and the widow were intimately involved. The rest of the sketches start to devolve, turning to rough sketches of the caves until they are no longer discernible.

The Widow cries out again, and Arthur and John move further into the tunnels. They reach a fork in the road and turn left, stumbling upon a dead end with a soft patch of recently disturbed dirt. John reveals that their surroundings look like a nest, and tells Arthur that they need to leave immediately.

They return to the fork in the road, go right, and continue searching for any sign of Amanda Cummings. They pass a dining area first, then a library. A table sits in the room, covered with Amanda’s research and translations. They note two books: the first has the symbol that Amanda drew on her note to A and the second bears the symbol from the book that John came from.

John wants them to read the book with his bound book's symbol first, but Arthur chooses to trust Amanda and reads the other one. The book is in another language, and John is able to read the text. However, he is unable to understand what it means. They check Amanda’s notes and find reference to a pallid mask. A fragment of translation that reads “Song of my soul, my voice is dead, die thou, unsung as tears unshed” and the underlined phrase “The King in Yellow.”

As soon as John reads the name he becomes unresponsive, not answering Arthur. Eventually, he begins chanting something quietly, gradually increasing in volume. Arthur shouts his name and snaps him out of it but, unfortunately, gains the attention of the Widow. He hides, and John slowly comes back to himself as she lives. He is unaware of anything that happened since reading the phrase “The King in Yellow”.

John reveals that Arthur has hidden in Amanda’s cot. Arthur picks up a sealed envelope with the name ‘Anna’ written on the front, but before they read it the Widow shrieks again, forcing them to try to escape. Before they leave the library, they grab the books from the table.

The Widow blocks their path back to the ladder. Arthur moves deeper into the tunnels. The tunnels slope downwards before opening up into a massive cavern containing a raised stone dais and sacrificial altar. The ceiling has been sculpted with a massive image of Shub-Niggurath, and the stalactites resemble trees.

Upon seeing this, they take out the letter again. The letter addresses Anna and mentions ‘that night in the basement’, ‘Antoine’s final plan’ and ‘Henry’s sacrifice’. Amanda explains she saw a picture of Antoine as the lighthouse keeper in a history book, dated almost 100 years prior, and that she came to the island to look for answers,. She found evidence that he intended to conduct a ritual to summon Shub-Niggurath and bring about the end of the world. She reveals that the King in Yellow was merely an opportunist who snuck through the portal and now wants to eliminate her. At the end of the letter, Amanda mentions an order that worships the King in Yellow based in a town called Leerie, north of Harper’s Hill. She bids Anna to stay safe and stay hidden, and signs the letter ‘Sarah’.

They finish reading the letter and continue searching for an alternate exit but reach another dead end. The Widow closes in on them. Arthur pushes a crate out of the way to reveal a small tunnel in the earth. He has to drop onto his belly in order to crawl through it. He expresses fear from claustrophobia, and John makes a sarcastic remark. Still, he convinces Arthur to continue, and they make it through to the other side.

The widow attempts to follow them through the tunnel, but Arthur kills her by smashing her skull with a rock. He continues hitting her even after she dies, causing John to become uncomfortable. He expresses concerns that perhaps they didn’t need to kill her, and that she seemed like someone who had been taken advantage of. Arthur tells him that she deserved to die for being a monster, and when John suggests perhaps she was manipulated with the promise of getting her husband back, he says she deserves it for being so ‘eagerly duped’ and expresses that he wouldn’t allow himself to be manipulated like that.

Their differing views cause John and Arthur to argue and the two stop speaking to each other. Arthur makes his way through the passageway and discovers he is under the lighthouse. He finds a ladder and climbs out, but trips over the lighthouse keeper’s body before he reaches the door. John laughs at him when he falls.

He finally emerges onto the island, intending to find a boat, when he’s stopped by two police officers, searching for the man who stole the boat back in Harper's Hill. They tell him they’re looking for his alias ‘Laurence Holder’ and Arthur denies the identity. The younger officer checks the lighthouse, finds the mutilated corpse of the lighthouse keeper, and is clearly shaken. The officers take Arthur into custody, putting handcuffs on him and leading him to their boat. They command him to stay put as they complete their search of the island, and during this time Arthur confronts John again. John responds by revealing he killed Parker, simply because he wanted to.

The officers return, loading Arthur into the boat and driving it out onto the lake.

## Sarah's Letter

My dear friend Anna,

I miss you. I hope things are well with you. I don’t know if you’ll come find me; this letter may go unread for centuries. Perhaps it will never be found, buried within the rock and stone beneath the island in the library I now write this from. Or, perhaps I will return, grab the letter myself, and find the answers I know we both desperately seek. Perhaps I’m being too dire.

As I’m sure you must be able to understand, I never left that basement. The events that happened ten years ago: the stone slabs, the cavernous walls, Antoine’s final plan, the portal, and Henry’s sacrifice… all of it stayed with me. I’ve carried it for these 10 years.

I thought coming here to Harper’s Hill would give me the tools to start again, and maybe it would have, had I not seen him: Antoine. Not alive, but in a photo. He was the same, like he hadn’t aged a day, and yet the photo I saw in the book called ‘A History of Harper's Hill’ was from almost a hundred years ago. He was the lighthouse keeper. I knew I couldn’t run from this anymore. I mean, this man, this monster, who ruined our lives, who ruined Emily’s life, he was staring back at me from the pages of a book.

I sought to find the island and discovered what was beneath it: this cavernous hideout. I spent weeks poring over rooms, over pages, texts, diaries, to form what I think brought Antoine here: the promise to a dying master of his, from far too long ago, to summon Shub-Niggurath and bring about the end of the world. A task that could only be completed by finding those who were connected by blood to those who first started the ceremony 600 years prior. Obviously, as you and I know, it failed.

But something didn’t add up. I didn’t understand how he fit into this story. Not Antoine or the creature that Henry killed, the abomination that Antoine tried to bring to this world – no, the one that came out of the gateway after. You know who I’m talking about. The one who wore yellow.

With Antoine’s story tied into a neat bow, I looked through other texts that he had here, other tomes that seemed to reveal more of this other world, and then I found it: “The King in Yellow”.

The King has nothing to do with Antoine, Anna, nor his plans. He simply used the portal because it was there – an opportunist who chose to enter our world. It sent a chill up my spine. Then, I saw his eyes in town. I don’t know how, but he found me. He is active, still. I knew that it was only a matter of time, so I learned all that I could.

Anna, this temple is not dedicated to him. It is here to serve Antoine’s machinations, to fulfill his original goal in summoning Shub-Niggurath. He spent hundreds of years between here and the lighthouse, waiting… but all of that had ended now. The King in Yellow is the real threat ,and he seeks to find me. There is an order that may still exist, those who worship the King, in a town north of here called Leerie.

You and I were young… or, younger. I understand why we didn’t see the form that emerged as something different, but he is here, and he will find you just as he found me.

The only two who know he exists in the world.

Good luck, Anna. May you find answers in Leerie.

Your friend, Sarah

## Votes

* Chapter 36: **Hide under the bed [12]** / Lock the door [4]
* Chapter 37: The Symbol On John's Book Originally [5] / **The Symbol on Amanda's Letter [10]**
* Chapter 38: **Head Deeper In [12]** / Head to back, attempting to stealth past the creature [5]
* Chapter 39: **Kill the Widow [10]** / Wait for her to Enter [4]
* Chapter 40: no vote

## Additional Notes

* Arthur theorizes that Antoine must have seduced the widow into joining the cult.

* The symbol on the book and on Amanda’s note to A is described as somewhat resembling a coiled body or serpentine lines, with two tentacles branching upwards.

* John tells Arthur that he’s been pleasantly forgetting about the dark world, and that part of him feels as though he was alive once before.

* The moment John reads “The King in Yellow” the audio distorts and an intercom chimes, much like the one in the asylum Arthur woke up in in Part Five. John claims he was ‘somewhere else’ during the time he was unresponsive.

* Antoine’s ritual could only be performed by blood descendants of the people who first started the ceremony some 600 years prior.