4chan Zalgo Story

## 4chan Zalgo Story by Vincent Fletcher

(Zalgo was created by Dave Kelley. As the title suggests, this creepypasta was originally posted on the /x/ board of 4chan.)

Despite having the entire English language at my disposal, as well as multiple other dialects ranging from Coptic to Arabic to Hebrew, I find myself unable to fully describe the horrors I have experienced over the last three weeks. Even now, as I begin to write in the light of the rising sun, I feel a grim sense of unease hang over me like an apocalyptic cloud, rank with ill foreboding and malicious intent. I have not slept for two days as of this morning, and I fear that without some sort of release from this restlessness I will waste away to a mere spectre of my former self. I feel feverish and drained. Before some dreadful blight takes me or I fall into a fitful coma, I feel it my bound duty to tell of the events of the last month, and of the artefact which has seemingly unleashed such devilry upon my person. My name is Vincent Fletcher, and this is my true testament to the happenings which plagued me and my late companions on our venture.

Even now I feel the orb’s presence in the room, cloying the atmosphere and leaving it dank and apprehensive. It sits, wrapped in cloth like a precious jewel, on the far side of the room--as far away from my person as I can get it while keeping it within eyesight. As much as it pains me to keep it, I have a far greater concern--that it should fall into hands less benevolent or understanding as mine, and that any true potential it has is unlocked and set free from its spherical tomb.

\* \* \*

It was June the 3rd when 7 of my colleagues and I set out on a private jet to Egypt. The latest in thermal scanning technology had revealed an abnormality deep below the earth in the Valley of the Kings. Further scanning revealed what seemed to be a corridor, beginning out of no-where and eventually opening into this place which provided the scanner such bizarre readings. At a glance, the readings were impossible--dark red tinges mingled with brilliant blue in a way which implied that a full spectrum of hot and cold was present in this area. Understandably, the scientists in charge of the machine believed it to be an error and ran the same scan over the same area. The results were remarkable--a completely different set of readings showing completely different patterns of warmth and cold. Repeating the process resulted in more different, bizarre readings.

The arrangement of the colors--even when viewed across a week of hourly scanning--took on no recognizable pattern and in the end my colleagues and I decided to explain it by way of a complex ventilation system in an ancient Egyptian tomb. As such, a jet was chartered for me and seven of my fellow researchers and archaeologists in order to unearth this ancient structure and uncover its secrets. We left London in the morning and had fully disembarked and checked through the customs officials by early evening. We landed to a gorgeous Egyptian sunset; the blood-red orb spilled ruby rays across the desert and danced across the Nile. Taking but a moment to admire the scene, we piled into a taxi and sped off to our hotel.

The hotel itself was comfortable enough to live in, without being needlessly lavish. The rooms were all clean and well maintained and the beds, while hard, were reassuringly firm and did not creak in the slightest, despite any movement of its owner. I was fortunate enough to get an east-facing room, and before I went to sleep I opened my curtains to the fullest extent so as to enjoy the sunrise. I slept soundly that night--air flights always wear me out--and woke the next day to a torrent of brilliant gold streaming through my open window.

In the bright light of the morning, I could more closely examine my room and its features. The walls were of an interesting rough quality--no doubt built from local sandstone--and felt quite pleasant to the touch. The desk in the corner of the room was of smooth wood, and a pen marked “The Great Nile Hotel” lay upon a similarly marked wad of notepaper. I quickly set up my laptop and searched for any wireless networks, finding two: one clearly belonging to the hotel and another of weaker signal, seemingly owned by the small cafe across the street. Knowing that the hotel charged for internet usage, I decided to work with the weaker connection instead and accessed the cafe network. After a brief pause, I was online and updating my superiors in London of our arrival.

After my email was sent, I further scrutinized my living space. Considering we were going to live here for the month of the excavation, I decided to fully unpack my clothes into the small closet. The en suite bathroom was a small, cozy affair, equipped with a simple yet attractive stone basin and a glass-paneled shower. A wooden panel separated the bathroom from the toilet and an old mirror was perched at head height upon the wall. As I left my quarters, I noticed the heavy lock and bolt upon the wooden door, and felt reassured about the security of the Great Nile Hotel.

Breakfast seemed oddly European for an Egyptian establishment, yet I did understand that the Great Nile was often selected as the lodgings of choice for tourists. The spread contained eggs, beef sausages, baked beans and even a tray of pastries and croissants. At the edges of the table were large jugs of what I later discovered was pomegranate juice--bizarre tasting sweet red nectar, which was not unpleasant in the least. I was the first of our party to arrive in the breakfast hall, and with surprise noted that it was only 08h15 in the morning.

The hotel manager approached me during my meal and--in fluent English--made small talk over a croissant. He spoke of the area and its nuances: the market and its thriving trade, the river and the small communities which have appeared alongside it and the apothecary. The town apothecary was a seemingly ageless doctor who had lived in a dilapidated house on the edge of town for longer than anyone could remember, with only gutted ruins as his neighbours. He had never been seen outside his haunt, the manager mentioned.

“My father,” he had whispered, “bought tonics from the apothecary. And his father as well.”

This man, it seemed, dealt primarily in herb medicine--the type often seen with shamanic witchdoctors from darker Africa. While being a man of science, I understood the potency of many herbs in curing ailments and decided to see this legendary man at a later stage, if for no other reason than a touch of insight into local superstition.

\* \* \*

Days passed, with little of interest happening. The digger had broken down on the first day of excavation, leaving us eight with little to do except sample the local culture and debate the strange thermal readings. Four of us--myself included--believed it to be the result of sophisticated ventilation; something that would aerate the tomb without exposing whatever was inside to the open air. Linda Roan, our expert geologist, held the opinion that the readings were the result of some geological abnormality, possibly a thermal geyser of some sorts. Of the remaining three, two believed it was a result of Nile groundwater seeping into the catacombs through random cracks in the tomb walls. The last of us, James Rourke, kept whatever ideas he had to himself. He was a man of pure, unyielding science--a physicist--and refused to speculate until he had inspected the chamber fully.

On the ninth, we decided to pay a visit to the apothecary. Five of us left our hotel in the afternoon and arrived by his residence within twenty minutes. At any rate, his choice of abode inspired curiosity and would certainly exacerbate any rogue rumors that he had inadvertently created. Surrounded by broken walls and ruined buildings, he had taken up lodgings inside the only structurally legitimate construction nearby. Strange, runic symbols on the walls suggested that this was, in older days, a temple of sorts, yet the runes were either broken or of a dialect unknown to me; I could make neither head nor tail of them.

The large wooden door opened soundlessly at our touch, and we stepped from under the bright Egyptian sun into a darker world. We were surrounded by countless shelves, all heaped over with bottles and jars and bundles of leaves in no apparent order. Looking closer, I could translate some of the Arabic labelling into its English counterpart: cures for migraines and ulcers, creams for warts and rashes and tonics for almost every malady imaginable. We stood by the door for a few seconds, expecting anything, when suddenly a man dropped from the eaves above and landed on all fours in front of us, creating a small explosion of dust at the point of impact.

If the house had implied anything of the apothecary, and if legends had described him in any way, they fell short of giving full credit to this bizarre creature. Despite the desert heat, he was wrapped from his neck to his toes in dark, loose cloth and his hands were tightly gloved in the same material. Over his head hung a loose-fitting hood, shrouding his face in darkness to the point that only his rows of teeth could be distinguished in the half-light of the house. These teeth had been filed to needle-sharp points, for either show or function (I could not fathom which). He spoke with a peculiar rasp of the throat which, when coupled with his otherwise silky tone, gave the unnerving and entrancing impression of multiple voices speaking. He never rose from all fours in all the time we were together and would leap with astounding agility around his home in order to get where he wanted.

In short, one could easily understand how this creature had become the stuff of legends. There was a brief silence as we surveyed each other before he spoke, addressing us by name. This only further strengthened the effect that this mystic man had upon us, and we were all awestruck save for James, who made a soft cough of distaste in the back of his throat. The apothecary then asked why we had come--a simple taste of the local culture? Or perhaps we required local knowledge before our venture into the earth? At this, James could hold himself no longer. In his mind, this man had obviously read of our arrival and plans through some newspaper and had decided to squeeze this for maximum effect.

“Charlatan!” he spat contemptuously. Suddenly, the air was thick with tension. The apothecary didn’t respond to the accusation directly. Instead, I noticed his teeth, bared in a derisive sneer, and heard a venomous hiss as air sluiced through those razor ivory shards. The light in the room seemed to retreat from the cloaked figure, and nothing was said for almost a minute before Rourke broke the silence and stormed out. Another awkward moment followed, which was ended by the apothecary himself.

“So, my friends. How can I help? Medication? Something to soothe an upset stomach?”

While I could see no eyes, I felt that he was speaking to me. I had, in fact, been having recent feelings of nausea, and was aware of the effect a dank, musty tomb might have on me. I nodded briefly and started as the doctor leaped into the air and started ruffling through the top level of one of the shelves. A moment later he had slithered down again and held out a corked vial containing a green liquid.

“Drink at the first sign of illness,” he instructed. I nodded dumbly, hardly believing that I was going along with all of this. I felt myself passing a five Euro note into his hands and pocketing the bottle. All in all, it was an unnerving display of the apothecary’s showmanship and charisma. He turned to my other friends, asking if they had had any similar troubles. When the answer was negative, he then ran his hands over a set of talismans, promising everything from good fortune to protection against evil forces. While I was still in awe of his first sale, my companions were less taken aback, and Malachi and Michael even bought a trinket or two. These were composed mainly of bone or wood carvings on beaded leather straps, depicting strange symbols not unlike the ones on the outside of the building.

It was early evening by the time we made it back to our hotel. Over dinner, we were told how our digger-- which had been repaired that afternoon--was ready for excavation. The scans suggested an alcove or entrance of sorts at the most northerly point in the corridor, and the plan was to delve 25 feet downwards right next to this spot. From thereonin we would enter the catacombs ourselves and document our initial findings by hand, rather than relying on bulky machinery and robotics.

It was past ten o’clock when we all retreated to our rooms. I sat at my desk, eyeing my purchase while absentmindedly writing the apothecary’s symbols on the hotel notepad. While they remained elusively cryptic, I could recall them each vividly. Just before eleven, a shriek pierced the quiet desert night. I jolted to my feet and took a step towards the door before something dropped past my window and fell with a gruesome thud. Blood pulsing through my veins, I peered out as the second scream of a passerby rang out. There, two stories below, was a body, contorted out of shape, lying in a spreading pool of blood. With horror I remembered that the room above me belonged to James, and I wasted no time in getting down.
By the time I had reached the parking lot a crowd had already gathered around the body. I shoved my way through to get to the center, but recoiled as I saw the ghastly expression on of terror on Rourke’s face. Forcing myself to overcome my own fear, I rushed in closer to the broken figure, tentatively feeling for a heartbeat I was already sure would not be there. Sure enough, James Rourke was dead. I announced this, and the paramedics who arrived on scene minutes later confirmed it. The police came later and asked me and my companions a series of questions. Was James possibly suicidal? Had he gone through a divorce or tragedy recently? The answer to these questions was undoubtedly negative. James, while never the life of the party or the comic genius, was the most logical, levelheaded man I knew, and would never throw his life away without reason. After this brief interrogation, I rushed upstairs to his room, only to find more police midway through an attempt to break the heavy wooden door down.
Once inside, the police denied anyone else access. I waited patiently outside, hoping to receive word of any progress made in the late night investigation. After an anxious half-hour, policemen announced that they had found marijuana in James’ room. This information met us all with shock. James--we had thought--would be the last one of our number to turn to narcotics for any reason whatsoever. The police concluded, in the end, that James had been experiencing a hallucination which turned for the worse, and in his fright had forgotten he was three stories up. There was little room for foul play, they said: the door was locked and the key was inside, and there was no other way into the room.

Despite the events of the night, the remaining seven of us decided to try to sleep. We would visit the coroners in the morning, and make arrangements for James’ transport back to England. As I fell asleep, an image rose unbidden from the crevasses of my mind: the hateful, poisonous snarl of the apothecary.

\* \* \*

We rose early the next day and busied ourselves with James’ affairs. Linda set about contacting his only living relative--a sister of his who lived in Belfast. I went with Michael Ward to the coroners in order to arrange for the cadaver’s transport home. Despite his own ruthlessly scientific outlook, his sister was known to be very religious, and would definitely want an appropriate funeral. Two of our number went to oversee the initial excavations--Malachi Rench and Taylor Stride--while the remaining three began the sombre work of packing up James’ belongings.

When we had finished with the coroner, Michael and I returned to the Great Nile Hotel to help with the packing. We were accosted at the doorway by an ashen faced manager, who asked how we were, and apologized profusely for the incident. We tried to calm him down and quell his worries, yet I was aware that the events of the night were likely to damage his income and reputation more so than ours. Once we extracted ourselves from the man, we were stopped again by Samuel Finch (our Egyptian expert) at the foot of the stairs. They had apparently finished packing a half-hour prior to our return, and that one of them was heading to the post office now in order to send his final belongings to his sister. He mentioned how no other drugs had been found in James’ room, though I dismissed this at the time as the result of a thorough police search.

It was early afternoon by the time we were all together again, and we lunched in the hotel restaurant. No-one, it seemed, was in the mood to eat, yet the ones made of sterner stuff forced a few morsels down their throat. Even Samuel--a man of unflinching determination who knew next to nothing about nausea and feelings of distress--remained quiet and subdued throughout the meal.

In an attempt to break the awkward tension, Taylor and Malachi told us of the excavation. The machine was digging at a rate of no more than five meters a day, which was slow, but we all agreed that slow was preferable to overstrained and broken. At that speed, it would be little over a week before we reached the level of the site.

I slept restlessly that night, and the next, dreaming up screams of terror and the cold, contorted face of James. By the third night, however, we had all made a recovery from our sober state, and it seemed that we had all decided implicitly to continue on the mission undeterred.

\* \* \*

On the fourth day, I was posted to watch the site myself, along with one of my closest friends, William Kuzner. William and I had studied in the same university for many years, both at the opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. While I studied ancient civilizations and immersed myself in languages and inscriptions, William studied a raft of mathematics--pure, applied and theoretical. We had formed a close relationship based on our shared love for the ancient--I with the art and dialects, and he with the age-old mathematicians and scholars. Together, we complemented each other well, and very few could combat us if we decided to set our minds to an argument.

However, William was hardly his normal cheery self. Throughout or shift he was tacit and broody, and one could tell that there was something on his mind. When pressed, he dismissed me with a wave of the hand and a vague muttering about feelings of unease. Aware of his reluctance to talk, I left him alone and our shift passed in silence.

\* \* \*

On the fourth day, I was posted to watch the site myself, along with one of my closest friends, William Kuzner. William and I had studied in the same university for many years, both at the opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. While I studied ancient civilizations and immersed myself in languages and inscriptions, William studied a raft of mathematics--pure, applied and theoretical. We had formed a close relationship based on our shared love for the ancient--I with the art and dialects, and he with the age-old mathematicians and scholars. Together, we complemented each other well, and very few could combat us if we decided to set our minds to an argument.

However, William was hardly his normal cheery self. Throughout or shift he was tacit and broody, and one could tell that there was something on his mind. When pressed, he dismissed me with a wave of the hand and a vague muttering about feelings of unease. Aware of his reluctance to talk, I left him alone and our shift passed in silence.

\* \* \*

Days passed without incident, until at last our digger had reached the level of the subterranean corridor. With great trepidation we collected our tools and surrounded the deep maw in the desert rock, and then descended by means of a shifty looking rope ladder. I was the last to descend, with Malachi remaining at the top in case of an emergency. By the time I reached the bottom, lights were already flashing from headpieces and William had already succeeded in removing two sandstone blocks from the wall. This created an entrance barely a meter high, but all of us managed to fit in and found to our relief that the corridor was large enough to comfortably accommodate even the largest of us.

Trailing behind Taylor and William, we carefully worked our way down the passage, taking a few minutes to appreciate the delicate glyphs and inscriptions upon the wall. In the flickering light I could decipher little. It took us less than ten minutes to reach what seemed like the end of the passage--closer inspection proved it to be a gateway or door of some kind. Despite being made out of solid-looking marble, Taylor managed to work around the locking mechanism and pull it open with little effort, and one by one we stepped into an entirely different chamber.

I desperately fought to control myself while grabbing for the apothecary’s tonic. Throwing it down with only a moment’s hesitation, I was shocked at its immediate and remarkable effect. Below me, the two were still emptying their stomachs onto the hard floor, but I was entirely unaffected. I had begun to truly understand why the apothecary was such a man of myth and legend.

Those who followed us groaned and held their stomachs but seemed to take the shock better than us first few. Once the sickness had subsided, we fanned out and inspected the room more clearly. The contrast was stark and surprising. While the hieroglyphs in the passage were intact and intricate, the carvings inside this tomb were eroded and chipped, as if exposed to the winds of an aeon. The temperature was noticeably lower than the outside, yet I found it would warm up considerably as I walked to another part of the room.
Almost nothing in the room was unbroken. Splayed out towards the door lay a crumbling skeleton--undoubtedly a valuable slave or servant buried alive in the room--with one bony appendage outstretched towards the door as if crawling to safety. The roof was hardly much better than the walls, and I felt a chill run up my spine which was entirely unrelated to the temperature as I looked to the center.
Upon a cracked marble plinth in the middle of the tomb sat an onyx sphere, perfectly rounded and smooth looking. At a first glance it seemed like expertly polished granite, yet as we got closer, we realized this was not the case. While it may have been my imagination, I thought that our headlights seemed to dim and flicker upon drawing nearer to the sphere and noticed that it seemed to reflect and absorb light in strange, surreal patterns.

William looked at me.

“What is that?” he whispered, a look of confusion dancing across his face. I shrugged. It looked like no artefact I had ever seen or read about in all my studies and excavations, and I myself was wondering what it was.

White, gloved hands reached through the beams of light and closed over the sphere. A feminine voice cursed loudly.

“Christ, it’s warm!”

One by one we reached out and touched it, and found to our amazement that this was the case. Despite the fluctuating room temperatures, the sphere was almost hot to the touch, and Taylor lifted it gingerly and placed it in a woven bag, and passed it to Samuel, who quietly left the tomb to bring the object to the surface.

With the object safely removed, we began to set up a more comprehensive lighting scheme, with Linda and Taylor ferrying equipment through the tunnels while we did our best to fully illuminate them. All previous theories were proven false: no groundwater was seeping through any ceiling cracks, and there was no geothermal activity. Despite close inspection, we could find no ventilation system, and no possible way of regulating the heat inside the room. I departed from the eroded chamber baffled and left the photography of the passages to Michael and William.

I rose to the surface to find Malachi and Samuel staring intently at the orb. Samuel was scribbling down notes in a small booklet while Malachi photographed the object from every angle. Finally, it was wrapped tightly in sackcloth and taken back to the Great Nile Hotel for further examination.

\* \* \*

The exploration continued well into the afternoon, but by the evening it was anything but finished. The secondary wing of the passage was almost entirely unmarked, and numerous minute passageways had been discovered in the walls. These ducts were too small to be explored manually, and would require robotics and delicate machinery to uncover their secrets.

We spoke excitedly over dinner, each discussing different parts of our discovery. The three women were running through the wall inscriptions together, while Malachi and Michael compared photos. I spent my evening half-listening to William discuss the structural integrity and mathematics which had clearly gone into the architecture of our find, but my mind was dwelling upon that elusive pitch-black globe in Samuel’s possession. Samuel himself was not at the dinner table, nor was he seen or heard for the rest of the night.

\* \* \*

A bloody, red sun glared into my room the next morning, and a strange feeling of unease settled over me as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. Descending to the restaurant area, I realised that our table was already full, and that I was one of the last to arrive. My sleep had been consumed by flashes and images of that tantalising sphere. Samuel was not at breakfast when I arrived, nor did he appear during the morning. At 11h00, I was sent up to rouse him from what was obviously a solid slumber.

I knocked once and froze as the door slowly swung open to my blows. I called his name, but when there was no response, I pushed harder to open the heavy door fully and took a step into the room. A hungry sliver of light pierced the dark curtains and fell across a scene splashed with red. In my fright I leapt backwards, frantically slapping at the wall in desperate search of a switch. Oh Gods, had I not beheld the scene before me! A figure, drenched with a thick scarlet liquid, lay across the desk as if paralysed. My flailing fingers eventually found a switch, yet to no avail, for the lights did not turn on at my touch. Eventually I found a voice again, and a strangled cry escaped my lips, followed shortly by the appearance of Taylor by my side. She stared at me and understood immediately that something was gravely wrong. Clasping my hand she stepped into the room, half-dragging, half-coaxing me in behind her. I heard a horrified intake of air as she too became accustomed to the murky gloom.
Samuel lay slumped across a desk soaked with blood. He was clearly dead. In his right hand was a handgun and in his left he held the black orb which had been of so much interest to me. A shudder of revulsion shook me and I suppressed the urge to pick it up and throw it into the Nile. I became aware of Taylor’s slow gasps, and then her hold on my hand relaxed as she ran out the room. The next hour flickered by me as if incorporeal--my legs walked and my mouth uttered responses to questions, but I was entirely numb inside.
\* \* \*

Dinnertime arrived, and our table now had two empty spots. No-one ate; no-one drank. Little was said, other than a brief mention of the police. Samuel had long been taken away, along with his belongings, and his bloodstained room had been cordoned off by the authorities. I sat right on the edge of the table, silent and ashen, as we all internally contemplated our next move.

In the end, and through much hesitant murmuring and reluctant speech, we had split. Two of our party--Michael and Linda--had decided to return home. While one death may seem a tragedy, two was definitely more than they had bargained for, and they were far too spooked at the recent turn of events to remain in Egypt. The remaining four agreed on staying long enough to document the ruin, and then to return home as soon as possible. We were all disturbed greatly by the two deaths, but we had an obligation to continue our work. Taylor reasoned that, were Samuel or James in our position, they would certainly have done so.

\* \* \*

The next morning, I went to the coroners alone to confirm the details of Samuel’s next-of-kin. The coroner herself was a young girl with large, mournful eyes, and I felt the pity streaming out of them as I arrived in her morgue for the second time is as many weeks. Once finished with the cadaver, I moved on to the police station in order to get Samuel’s possessions. The officer gave me a set of clear plastic bags, containing mostly what was on his desk at the time. One bag had been marked with a star in black pen, and closer inspection showed that it was a page from his notebook. Looking at the bloody page I could make out only two words, scribbled in a dreadful spidery handwriting unlike his own.

"̶̝͐Ĥ̴̝̂̑͝͠E̶̡͈͚̱͎̿͐ ̵͈̥̮͑̌̃̋C̶̻͂͐͘ͅȮ̴̙̭͛Ḿ̶̳̘͝E̶͚͌̔̏S̸̖̟̓̀͒͊͜.̵̯̦̙̣̋̀̚"̴͚̦̟̦̓

I asked the officer what this meant, but all I got in return was a shrug and a blank stare. They would investigate this case further, they told me, but fingerprinting had proven useless in determining the nature of Samuel’s death. I left the station with a heavy heart and returned to the hotel to an equally disconsolate team. The orb passed into Taylor’s hands. Despite my previous interest in it I could not bear to look at it without imagining the dark, slumped figure of Samuel. The end of the day was a welcome release, and I collapsed into a desperate, deep sleep.

\* \* \*

A day passed, the Egyptian sun rising over us as we toiled in the labyrinth that had brought us here. We all looked haggard, and despite what had seemed like a solid night’s sleep I also felt fatigued. Taylor was the worst of all of us: dark rings clustered around her eyes like nooses and she barely spoke throughout the day.

Having mapped out the entire navigable section of the catacombs, we had the next few days to control miniature robots down the smaller crevices and ducts. If all went to plan, we would have left Egypt in little over a week. Had I not stayed! I now wish I had left with Linda and Michael. I shall regret it for the rest of my days--possibly a shorter span of time than even I know.

\* \* \*

I was jolted out of my bed at midnight by a loud hammering on the door. Cold fingers of fear trailed down my spine as my imagination ran amok, yet these were dispersed as I heard Taylor’s voice on the other side. Moments later, she stumbled through my newly unlocked door and collapsed onto the floor. I helped her to her feet and as I did so the stench of vodka struck my nostrils. Clearly drunk, she stumbled onto my bed the moment I stood her up, and clutched at my arm while she muttered incoherently to herself.

If she had looked grim earlier on in the day, she looked like death now. Her face was sickly and pale, apart from the dark, sleepless circles around her eyes. Those eyes, usually blue and entrancing, had been replaced with bloodshot globes, and her hair had gone from its silky texture to a tangled heap. Her pulse was racing, and her breath came in short, sharp gasps between her slurred ramblings. All of a sudden, she pulled me in closer and spoke her words into my ear in a torrent of whispers and choked half-phrases. I could make out little, but as she tugged me even closer, I began to recognize words:

“It is to invoke...that we fear...too long...carved from suffering... whispering... bewitching... watches me....”

I feared she was feverish and delusional, and forced her to drink some water, which she choked down more out of surprise than willpower. I clutched her hand tightly and mopped her brow, which was slicked with cold sweat, and she slowly began to calm down. Over the course of an hour her muttering grew fainter and fainter, and she became less agitated and more fatigued. Looking into her half closed eyes I saw not fear or panic anymore, but desolate surrender. Before falling entirely asleep, she pulled me closer and spoke into my ear.

“He comes.”

A cold chill prickled down my spine again, and above my head the lights flickered ominously. Taylor was now asleep and twitching gently, but she had left me in this cursed consciousness with the night noises and my own electrified imagination. Outside my window was pure darkness, and as I locked my door I felt as if the landing had been replaced with a black, noiseless abyss, which glared at me through a million baleful eyes of pitch.

The night dragged on horribly, and I had never felt such a dread isolation before. Outside my window and behind my door lurked roiling coils of dark power my imagination had only just begun to furnish, and every creak slashed through the deathly stillness like a fin through a glassy pool. I began to hallucinate and slip into sleep, yet I would always jerk awake as images rose from the grim corners of my mind in a gruesome montage. Even with the prostrate form of Taylor on my bed, I felt completely alone.

I greeted the long-awaited glow on the horizon with a rushing feeling of relief, despite my exhaustion, and it was all I could do to prevent myself shouting out in joy. My weary mind celebrated as the Egyptian sun rose over the sandy plains, and even the feverish woman in my room seemed to silently rejoice in her sleep.

By the time the sun had risen fully, I had washed the fears of the night off in a cascade of hot water. I shook my wet hair vigorously and sent droplets of water flying through the sunlight, each competing against one another for light in a dazzling array. Taylor had begun to stir and by the time I was fully dressed she was staring at me from the bed. A look of worry crossed her face as she saw me standing over her, yet she seemed to remember enough about the night to dispel such fears.

“Thank you,” she whispered to me. “I don’t know what got into me. First James, now Samuel... I started drinking, and it got out of hand.”

I held up a hand to silence her apology, but she continued on unabated.

“Thank you for not taking advantage of a situation where you clearly could have done so. Thank you for taking care of me. I guess this is why it’s always good to have friends you can count on.”

I remained silent, unsure of whether or not I should speak of her fearful rambling. She rose, drew closer, and kissed me gently on the cheek. Last night’s perfume fought valiantly against the cloying stench of sweat and alcohol, which invaded my nostrils as I held her to me.

“Thank you,” she whispered a final time. Her lips lingered alluringly on my cheek, long after the sound of her footsteps had faded.

\* \* \*

The day passed hazily, as days do when proceeding sleepless nights. Small scraps of cloud had gathered in the morning like a lazy sky-armada, but by the time we rose from the ground at noon they had congealed to form a dull blanket. A light breeze swirled around us, and the weather in its entirety was mild and emotionless. Further investigation into the ducts had proven little--they simply wound through each other in curious, intricate patterns, and were devoid of glyphs or symbols of any kind. These were ventilation systems and water channels as we knew them--passages designed to preserve and protect the internal pieces of art and scripture. None were present in the final chamber, however--that vile room wherein we had come across the artefact.

Taylor spoke nothing of the night before, neither to me nor to William and Malachi. Her eyes retained their sleepless rings, but she held about herself a more resolute air than previously. The day moved on as we toiled below the earth, and the sun eventually set behind dark, looming clouds.

I was at my desk documenting the day’s work when the lightning started. Jagged serpents of electricity danced through the sky, illuminating the town in an eldritch light, and barely a second later would one hear the brutal shattering they made in their wake. At the third strike, I was plunged into eerie, bitter darkness. It seemed that the entire area had lost power, for the lights outside had also been extinguished. An unshakable sense of fear began inching through my veins, paralyzing me. The temperature in the room dropped noticeably, and as I gazed through my window, I noticed icy condensation forming on the glass.

Lightning struck again, and my fear was fully realized upon the adjacent rooftop. There, revealed by the flash, was that all-too-familiar crawling chaos of black cloth, creeping across the slates and tiles like some dreadful creature. He stopped, and what could have been his head turned directly towards me. Oh Gods, the eyes! But they were not eyes, not by the reckoning of the most disturbed human. Twin orbs of blackened fury stared out from beneath the hood, reflecting only the thunderous display above our heads. I flung myself backwards, devoid of sense or rationality, with only the desperate desire to escape that stare. I became aware of a choked scream fighting to escape my throat, and realized that I had crushed myself under the bed in my frenzied scrabbling.

Purple light ricocheted around my room again, and my heart missed a beat. There, beside my head, in the center of my room, were two clothed feet. My heart stopped for a moment; my breath froze in my chest, and all I was aware of was a savage, soul destroying fear. Words entered my head, and through my haze of terror it seemed like the apothecary was speaking into my mind itself.

"The end days are coming, human. The chaos--He who waits behind the Wall--is coming."

My terrified mind tried to make sense of this, but rationality had been replaced by a mortifying horror.

"His is the Beast who will devour your soul. His is the Legion crafted from the tears of the Dead, clad in armour carved from the suffering of mothers. He will bring chaos to this plane once more. There will be a screaming of children as He rises from his palace of tortured glass, and all sanity shall be bereft before Him."

This grim invocation pierced my skull, burrowing into me like a parasite, yet it still continued unabated.

"He carries the Candle whose light is Shadow. From six mouths He will speak six different tongues, and the seventh shall sing the song that ends the earth. Such a beautiful song; such a beautiful night."

The chant had become fainter now, and another flash of lightning shone on an empty room. Slowly, torturously, the lights flickered on, and I found myself finally able to move. After what felt like an hour I crept out from under the bed and forced myself to look outside the window. There was nothing; no annihilative eyes to stare into and no horrifying being of darkness to flinch at. My heart was hammering in my chest, and my entire body was shaking violently. But relief was not to be. Five more words were whispered into my ear, freezing me once again.

"He is Zalgo.

He comes."

I was plunged into blackness yet again.

\* \* \*

Adrenaline pulsed through my system, spinning me around more out of fear than forethought. Even in the dark, I could see that my room was totally empty. As I stared into the murk, a shudder seemed to run through the entire structure of the hotel, and a dreadful scream reverberated through the halls, followed by a heavy banging sound. Taylor! My body carried me out into the hallway and into a terrified Malachi, who had his eyes locked upon her door.

That same scream rang out again, and shattering glass could be heard from her room. In the gloom I could see her door shaking as someone, or something, hammered upon the other side. Minute tendrils of darkness were seeping from under it, and as I stood frozen the screaming intensified into an inhuman howl. Electrified into action, I leapt forward and desperately tried to open the door. It remained shut fast; despite the brutal bashing it was now taking from both sides. It bulged outwards as if an immeasurably heavy weight was on the other side, and I feared for my own safety if it were to explode.

I heard a second cry and swiveled to see William behind me, with an axe raised high above his head. With one arm he batted me aside and then sunk the blade deep into the door. I lay on the ground as the wail reached an unbearable pitch; writhing in pain as I tried to cover my ears from the sound. I saw the silhouette of William raising the axe again and saw pieces of wood fly out of the door as he struck a second time.

As suddenly as it had started, the din ended, with the shriek petering out into a vile gurgle. The lights flickered on again, and with horror I saw a thick red fluid oozing out from under the door. Most dreadful of all was the audible click of the lock being unlatched from the other side. For a few seconds, we stared aghast at the door, too scared to open it. Finally, summoning up more reserves of courage than I knew he had, William pushed open the door and stepped inside.

A brief second of silence ensued, followed by a clatter as William dropped his weapon and barreled out of Taylor’s room. In my state of shock, I could hear him retching violently in the corridor and could make out an anguished moan. Barely in control, I rose to my feet, and steered towards the door.

My mind has blotted out much of what I experienced that night. I remember seeing that red-painted abode with horror and blanching at the sight of Taylor. Her arm was outstretched, not unlike the desiccated skeleton in the tomb, and her neck was bent backwards at an impossible angle. Her eyes were the most grotesque of all: that which had once been soft and blue had been scorched and blackened to globes of darkest pitch. A scarlet river ran from each down her bloodied face. Her clothes were torn and even burnt in some areas, and there were savage wounds down her back. I stared numbly around her ravaged room, and saw the orb lying on the windowsill, in front of a badly cracked window. Madness clutched me and I grabbed it unthinkingly, desiring only to keep it away from anyone else. In my heart I knew this onyx artefact was responsible for all this fear and devilry.

The rest of the night is dazed and broken into faded images: Malachi fleeing our cursed hotel straight into the embrace of a speeding truck; William falling into bloody convulsions and being swept off to the hospital. Police officers crowded the hotel, asking questions and desperately trying to avoid the scene inside. I retreated to my room, silent, still attempting to process the night. The orb sat on my desk, taunting me and whispering to my diseased and afflicted imagination, until I threw a towel over it to hide it from my sight. All I could think about was Taylor’s eyes: horrific and staring into what may have been the bowels of chaos. I did not sleep that night.

\* \* \*

The sun rose resolutely into my worn-out eyes. Throughout my sleepless ponderings I had come to two conclusions: firstly, that the artefact was an object of evil not entirely of this world, and secondly that the normal laws of physics seemed to be corroded in its presence. Since its arrival the temperature of my room fluctuated between chillingly cold to uncomfortably hot, while small objects were shifted slightly by temporary winds without a source. None of my lights brightened fully, and my laptop which sat next to it refused to work, its screen displaying a tangle of unresponsive pixels which formed strange, jittering structures.

I felt both exhausted and electrified, yet I decided to put the orb to the test. Being but a layman of physics and its intricacies, I ran two basic tests upon the orb. The first was simple: I picked it up with my excavation gloves and held it close to the main room light. The effect was instantaneous: the light flickered more vigorously for a few seconds before dying with a loud burst. My second test was to roll my pen down a slight incline: the first time I did so it acted as a rolling cylinder should, yet upon bringing the orb closer one found that the pen would catch and slide at random intervals, turning its path into a jerky swirling mess.

The way this thing distorted the laws of reality disturbed me intensely and proved unendingly distracting and I attempted to uncover its secrets. My pen would stick and scratch over the page, reducing my impeccable handwriting to spidery mess, and more than occasionally my room lights would die completely. I tried scraping a piece off with a knife taken from the hotel kitchen, but it proved resilient, and even a solid knock against the sandstone left it unharmed. In the end I decided to leave it and work on deciphering the hieroglyphs in its burial ground.

\* \* \*

Our excavation had been flooded from the night before, and the floor of the tunnels had been reduced to almost ten inches of thick, sucking mud. Fortunately, there were no inscriptions on the lower half of the walls, so I turned my headlamp on full and started copying the hieroglyphs. My backpack weighed heavily on my shoulders, and I felt the sphere brooding in its folds.

I wasted no time trying to decipher the runes, rather focusing on writing them out as accurately as possible. Despite my own headlamp and the sunlight through our entry point, the ends of the tunnels remained a forbidding black in the corner of my eyes. Thoughts and whispers entered my head as I toiled, and I could sense the presence of something otherworldly in the catacombs.

I worked further down the passage, and the inscriptions split to flank a large mural. My heart jumped as the beam revealed a scene centred on the very object I had grown to hate. To its sides were scores of worshippers, some human and some disturbingly different. Unlike most Egyptian art, the proportion of the figures seemed to fluctuate as they got closer to the orb, and more than one was depicted as a skeletal creature rather than a man. A great maw opened up beneath that dark circle, and my chest tightened as I recognized the manic head of Sutekh. My unease grew as I saw the smaller body of Horus crushed in his grip.

My horror mounted as I began to draw conclusions from the mural. Dark lines radiated from the orb, many piercing its worshippers, while around the legs of Sutekh swarmed Oxyrhynchal, scaled bodies and vile looking scorpions. This was XXVI Dynasty religion turned on its head. Worship was always centered around Ra: the god of creation and the sun. These worshippers and this mural were altogether more evil and more sinister. I touched the dark blot and read the miniature inscription beneath.

"̷̡̙̩̹̇̄̎̕̕T̵̫̥̈́͋̕H̵͎͚̼̖͠E̵̦̼͕̜̅͗̌ ̷̢̠͎̅̌ͅE̸͚̍͆̑͒̍Y̷͉̻̻̦͕̌Ȩ̷̊ ̴̗̬̯̀͛̾͝Ó̵͚̜̹̀̊̅̂F̴̢̲̐̽̓͝ ̶̛͓̻̪̾T̴͖̳̾́͛̓͜͝H̷̬͙̮͎͊̈͊́͘ͅḚ̸̻̗̮̈́̈̈́̓̕ͅ ̴͓͊͗D̸̖̮̯̈́̚E̴̺̘͔͉̿S̴̻̤̜͉̙͒Ț̷̀͊R̴̭̠̎Ö̶̫͙́́̓̅̕Ỹ̷̭͔̙͎̈̃E̴̪̓̊͝R̸̜̯̹̈́͌́̐́.̷̝̎͐"̵̢͉̬͔͆̆̓̃

This was followed by a short series of symbols which clashed together meaninglessly. I touched them gingerly and two fetid syllables dripped off my tongue as if by instinct.

“̸̥̗̤̅Z̶̨̢͖̊́̿̕Á̷̤̣͈Ḷ̶̛̬̓̈́Ḡ̴͓̺̥O̶̠̾̈́̃̈́.̶̝̒"̸̡̧̫͚̦̌̓̔̉

The breath caught in my throat. The weight of the must and darkness crushed me and I felt more claustrophobic than I ever had before. Without thinking I rushed to the exit and hauled myself up the rope ladder, trying to convince myself that the dreadful sucking of the sand and mocking echoes that remained were nothing out of the ordinary. After ascending I threw myself onto the hot desert sand and lay, gasping and prostrate, until I finally began to calm myself.

\*\*\*

As the afternoon crawled on, I retreated to my hotel room. The hallways were entirely empty apart from a group of detectives brooding in Taylor’s room and the hotel was silent. Clearing my defunct laptop from the desk I spread out all possible data of the tomb: photos taken by William and Michael interspersed with notes and sketches cluttered the desk entirely. I began to organise it into categories, sorting them firstly by location and then by chronology.

Three pictures held a particular interest in me. The first was of that eldritch mural I had seen personally earlier, and was a close-up shot on a group of worshippers. To the side, almost cut out of the frame, crouched a figure different from the rest. Instead of the normal pose, he had both arms outstretched and both hands upturned. This figure, painted more than two thousand years ago, resembled that horrifying shadow-draped creature to an extent which surpasses coincidence. The detail of the cowl and the gnarled fingers left no doubt in my mind that this was the same apothecary who had infected me with such fear and loathing.

The second image was that of a large excerpt of hieroglyphics from one of intact walls outside the ruined room. As I translated the writing, I started noting a repetition of key phrases, and I realized that many of these had been whispered into my ear and spoken in my room over the previous nights. It spoke of legions carved from the tears of the dead and clad in armor crafted from the suffering of mothers; of endless chaos and torment and of an infectious malady of madness and insanity.

The final picture was a grainy one of the tomb itself, taken by Michael. At a first glance it seemed like a perfectly normal photo, albeit one of poor quality. Through the lighting I could see Taylor and William looking at the orb, while Linda and Samuel’s faces were just visible in the light of their headlamps. To the side, below a fifth headlamp, I could see myself. I had almost passed over this when something caught my eye. In the lower left corner, obscured by the dark and barely in the picture at all, was the crouching silhouette of the apothecary.

\* \* \*

By the time I had finished my work, my hands were trembling visibly. From fear or exhaustion, or a partition of both, I am unsure. The sun had long set when I was done scratching the last of my notes, leaving my room once more a cautious island of light in the endless abyss of the night. I thought about fighting the creeping lethargy and forcing myself to stay awake, but as my vision slowly blurred, I decided to try sleep. Covering the orb up with my thickest coat, I stowed it in the furthest corner of my room and threw a few extra garments over it. I refused to rest while it was in sight.

My dreams that night were haunted and scattered, forming a portmanteau of terrible images. I am convinced that I was cursed with a ghastly preview of the end of reality as we know it--a grotesque upheaval of the laws of nature in manners so vile I can only suggest the tamest of them in this text. I witnessed the corrosion off all sanity and order--widespread anarchy and war across every continent, and agony in every tormented mind. I gazed upon dark-eyed children crouched over the bodies of their elders, a morbid red spilling over their bared teeth and torn lips. The dead rose again in a grim parody of life, their faces twisted into a death rictus as their limbs jerked to the demon dirge of an infernal artiste. Horrendous, tearing vistas stretched across the darkening universe, giving glimpses of another dimension too terrifying and surreal to describe in simple writing. All I can suggest here is that--should my vision be but a fraction of the future--then it is better to succumb to the sweet spell of destruction now than wait for the anguish and woe which will beset humanity. My nightmares all ended in desolate, unending blackness.

I woke yesterday morning to a room drenched in blood. The grim sunrise oozed through my curtain and stained everything a macabre red. Exhausted, I lay still, waiting for the room to brighten out of its dark stupor. Maddening voices darted in and out of my mind: whispering doom and despair to my drained consciousness. These voices plague me still... and I fear they shall do so until I die. Has this vile globe driven me insane? Or are these words real--a true harbinger of woe from the great power which lurks on the fringes of reality? I shudder to contemplate it.

I spent hours brooding over my predicament, pacing around the room feverishly and starting at every tiny sound. I ate neither breakfast, nor lunch when the time came, and when I stepped into the shower to wash, I became so overpowered with a feeling of nausea and imprisonment that I almost threw up there and then. So great an obsession had settled over me that I could think of nothing more than the artefact and its identity; it had entirely consumed my waking thought.

I jumped at a light tapping was heard from my door. I nervously opened it, to see a seemingly equally exhausted hotel manager on the other side.

“Phone for you--from the hospital,” he intoned dully. The festive spark had long left his eyes, and there was only resignation to be found in his entire character.

I locked my door and quickly took the stairs to the reception. The phone was lying to the side, unattended, and I grabbed it and announced myself.

Five minutes later, I dropped the receiver and numbly walked up the stairs. My mind baulked at the grim news and it’s even more disconsolate implication. I felt entirely alone and isolated from humanity and everything I had previously known and understood. Sadness fettered at the corner of my mind but I would not--or could not--let it in. My mind quailed once again as I thought of the grotesque picture the doctor had depicted for me, in a quavering, fearful voice. Five lives, all snuffed out in ghastly ways. I fear I will be the sixth.

\* \* \*

My name is Vincent Fletcher. I have written since the morning, and these may be my final words. If you are reading this, I am already dead, or worse. If there is no body, do not try to find one. Be aware that this is not the fictitious account of some madman viewing the world through warped and twisted glasses. This text is now my only link to the world outside, and I pray that it is not devoured when I am. Whoever finds the Eye, do not destroy it, for it cannot be destroyed. Throw it into the deepest chasm of the ocean, or better yet, jettison it into the fiery heat of the sun. Do not touch it; do not look at it. Let no man keep it in his possession, for that is what powers it--us. I have stayed by it too long to escape my fate--longer than the others, I think, due to the poison given to me by that vile creeping creature. The translations which alert me to my impending fate detail why the orb must be treated this way are attached to this writing.

Zalgo--and the room darkens as I write that word--descended from some twisted reality to earth many millennia ago, and in the first lumbering, slouched humans instilled a pervasive fear of the dark. It is this fear that he feeds on, through the Eye--that onyx artefact which I have placed on my bed. He is the reason we are loathe to stare into a darkened window; the same reason the creeping feeling of terror invades us as we hear strange sounds in an empty building. This strengthens him; gives him a firmer foothold in the dark recesses of our mind. The apothecary is his greatest priest--the last remaining member of his cult. It is he who gave me the potion which has let me survive exposure to the Eye for so long.

And now that my purpose--to feed the Eye as much as I can--is complete, I feel that the apothecary will kill me as a witness to his evil deeds if Zalgo Himself does not. While I am fully certain that Taylor and Samuel were slain by the Eye or its grip on their sanity, I am sure that James was killed by the witchdoctor in anger. As for Malachi, my mind still highlights the unnatural spasm of his body as he fell in front of his doom. William’s death is moot in origin--be it corrosion from exposure to whatever was in Taylor’s room or some vile toxin from the apothecary, I shall never know.

I do not know what prevented Zalgo from rising aeons ago and destroying our planet while we were simple cave-dwellers--and I quake to think of a power superior to it--but something destroyed Him and banished Him again, with nothing but a simple globe with which to view the universe.

I will not allow Him to return. I cannot allow Him to return.

\* \* \*

Oh ͝ gods. Room is now freezing. Whispering increases in my min̬̫̪̳ͣ͑͋̏d. It is time. God help me. Something spills out of t̬̫̪̳ͣ͑͋̏he Eye. And I hear the screams! Oh gods save us, the screams! A th̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡ousand c̸hildren, no: a million, filling my head. No – not sc̸reams. .̨̈́̀͝ Oh god, it’s a song.... The walls are cracking around me. I don’t want to ͝ die. Getting darker. Can’t see anything. God, god, save us all. Save me! Can’t die don’t want.̨̈́̀͝ to die I can’t see can’t feel s ͞creams are getting louder help me the void is opening.... No, I am Vͬͨ̉ͅincent Fletcher! Born.̨̈́̀͝ on 24th Jų̴̛͙̖̜̖̯͂̈͂̀ͭ͠͞ly, 1975. I must not submit! I must be stron̬̫̪̳ͣ͑͋̏g! Cannot... will not....

Zalgo will n͞ot tell you what Za̢̲͕̠̙͑̄̌̈ͦͧ́lgo is for Zalgo is not until the ̒̓̔̕̚ End of Days Zalgo wͩ̚ills the c͇̺͎̖ͨ̌ͮ̈́͊̅ͬ̈ͤ͑͛ͦ̔̀ͥͧ̅ͩͭ͟͟orruption of innocence and the d̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡esecration of reality Zalgo waits̏̐̑̒̚̕̚ Behind the Wall in a palace of tortu͜red glass and legions i͠n arm̕our carved from the suf͠fering of moth͢ers Zalgo̓̔̿̿̿̕̚ will be the End oh god it burns s̏̐̑̒̚̕̚ave me

H̯͇͌̋͛ͥ͛̆͊̋ͯ̕͞e C̶̒̓̔̿̿̿ͮ̎ͩͤ͆̕̚̚̕̚̕̚̕̚̕̚̕̚̚̚o̵̝̦̲͕͗ͤ̇̆ͮ̕͜m̵̡̬̂͑͊̑ͣ̀ͥ

e̞̠̓ͤṡ̬̫̪̳ͤͣ͑͋̏.̨̈́̀͝҉

\* \* \*

POLICE REPORT: June 23rd, 2002.

ORIGIN: Cairo Police Department (translated from Arabic)

REPORT TITLE: Vincent Fletcher, Murder Suspect

1. On the 4th of June, 2002, a group of eight researchers arrived from London in order to oversee an investigation. Of the eight, five are now dead: James Rourke, Samuel Finch, Taylor Stride, Malachi Rench and William Kuzner. Two left the country prematurely: Linda Roan and Michael Ward. The final member, Vincent Fletcher, fled his hotel on the evening of the 22nd, June, after setting his room alight and has evaded the authorities since.

2. James Rourke died on the 9th of June, due to a fall from his hotel room. Drug abuse was initially suspected, but toxicology showed no such substances in his system.

3. Samuel Finch died from a single gunshot wound to the head on the 17th of June. Vincent Fletcher discovered the body.

4. Tayor Stride and Malachi Rench both died on the 20th of June. Taylor Stride died of blood loss and trauma caused by an unknown source. Wounds were discovered down her back and multiple contusions were found across her body. Vincent Fletcher was present when police arrived but failed to answer questions clearly. This was initially dismissed as the result of trauma. Malachi Rench was killed by a speeding truck on the same night and died instantly from the impact. The truck driver reports a dark figure pushing Malachi into the road in front of him. NOTE: this may be a fictitious statement from the driver to avoid charges.

5. William Kuzner died on the 21st of June from severe internal haemorrhaging and organ failure while in hospital, after being admitted for convulsions and bleeding the night before. The hospital reported a death like this to be the work of poison.

6. Vincent Fletcher’s hotel room was set on fire on the 22nd of June. No body was found, yet a used notebook was discovered outside the window, containing a clearly fictitious story detailing the deaths of his companions and attributing them to some magical power.

These facts, when placed together, imply that Vincent Fletcher was involved in the deaths of his companions and summarily fled before police returned to question him a second time. It is advised that he is unlikely to be armed, yet caution is to be taken in apprehending this man as he may be mentally unstable. The fictional nature of his story is clearly apparent to any reader, along with multiple inaccuracies. For example, the ‘translations’ he promises are not attached to his document. Additionally, the artefact Vincent blames for these events was never recovered, and no proof that this item exists was ever found.

END