The Facsimile of the Silver Key

CW: Mental health, Physical violence, gore or abuse

My dear nephew,

This letter carries my innumerable errors but confesses to one. I ask you to absolve me of my arrogance by burning this, the book, and my body. Take custody of the package, never open it, and ensure it never leaves your possession. My travels concluded this must come to pass.

I curse and credit the elusive Jared Porter simultaneously, for his ilk would never have alerted me to what the cosmos had in store for us all. He was a learned vagabond, granted modest scholarships from the IBWA and the University of Chicago to study Sumerian texts in Boston, while on a stoic’s diet of mulligan stew and naval oranges. He was an undesired colleague as his habitat suggests; however, he earned accolades beyond even my faculty, earning him more travels in New England to eventually happen upon Arkham. There, upon completing his studies Miskatonic University’s provost made allegations of theft against him, warranting dismissal. Although celebrated, they lost a desert treasure. This assigned me the duty to seek him out and complete the intent to translate the Arabic texts he lifted.

Hearsay from librarians and gossip of students was far from what I fancied, though it lured me closer to my purpose. Each who knew Porter recounted accurately his respect for literature and such principle would forbid him from destroying the tome. His rail bound travels led me from Arkam to New Ipswich. What was most perturbing was the many perils that came with it, such as threats of consumption, drunken rioters, and selfish men that would follow the rails and slums that Jared Porter navigated with uncanny ease. A month and three weeks, I arrived to the deceptively compact library, impregnated with my virtuous task. The rusty colored crimson siding, matching colored brick chimney, and equilaterally triangular attic obscured the artifact for sure.

A figure acting as guardian, wearing gray a linen cloak, gauzes, and a mask made of black ceramic, trimmed in green awaited my attempted entrance poised like a vulture. A fetor of incense mixed with a rot emitted from the bandages. The vacant eye sockets of the mask ever careful of my movements. A hissing reverberation into my consciousness that could only be described as cacophonous gibberish filled my head. I fled for the entrance post-haste, wondering what wizardry plagued the town.

The library was permeated with lavender, caressing the books and the minds of its patrons. The fair woman wore bobbed hair examined me, and I reciprocated my interest to her. I greeted her and introduced myself, and gave my purpose, like the many libraries I investigated, but I added another: “Who is the man outside?”

She offered her name Ophelia Krause, and her testimony proved the masked man was not Jared Porter but a different and far more vested scholar from other lands with no name. Upon quizzed the whereabouts of Porter, she stated that he sought shelter and served the library by giving a strange book to them. An offering to be evaluated by the Smithsonian Institute.

Upon my offer to witness it and presentation of my credentials, she obliged me with the privilege. Much like when I found it, the silver trim and lead cover were tempting to rifle through. In your case, dear nephew, I implore you to not open it. I understand how great the temptation is to witness transcribed from Cuneiform, Hebrew, Classical Greek, and Arabic it is a weapon devised to manipulate our consciousness from many Sarasin camps long ago.

I persuaded her to phone Miskatonic University immediately upon the revelation as I secured the tome. She felt the need to call for the library’s superintendent but switched her priority to the police when the room grew cold, foul, and devoid of order upon the masked man’s entrance.

A cracking voice fervently erupted, passing the stench of rot through the mask. “To waste life upon laws that respect time is a fool’s errand. Time is the last beast to tame, yet human lives are too short and petty to fetter it. Each second siphons our youth to feed a void known as Chronos, the insatiable cannibal. A refusal to surrender to it is noble, yet men etch their mind upon fragile pages to misplace their notion of immortality. Misplaced faith is not entirely fruitless. For even a naïve and haughty woman as yourself respects the taming of time, even to enrich your empty purpose. If you are humble and wise, you shall let us have what belongs to us.”

“Us?” I questioned. “You are no student.”

He turned to me. “My flesh grows weak and your soul impatient. We possess knowledge to abolish the natural law enslaving us. Like all men, we relentlessly seek to conquer our fetters and insult the bestial master at any opportunity. We can seek to eliminate his source of livestock.”

The attendant laughed reflexively to soften the rambler’s philosophy. She continued to furnish evidence by letting his epithet flow to the operator as she continued to describe his Arab dressing and bandages. I took a cigarette from my tweed jacket and smoked off the diseased stench away, intrigued by such a ramble. “What is your proposal?” I puffed out.

“I requisition your expertise on dead traditions. That book can shatter our destiny for certain should we accept further trials. My expertise, your persistence, and journeyman’s resources will guide us to the victory over Chronos. You can feed me your visions, as he furnished supply for the facsimile.”

I scoffed at his insane game, “Should you find a way to do so, you may see as I do.”

He raised his gauzed hand dripping in black oily residue before the attendant, humming in tongues us both. I placed the tome into my satchel, unintimidated by such raving. The woman was consumed by fear, fainting from shock to the floor. I set her back upon the chair. “So, unto me your eyes shall serve for The Ultimate Gate!” he said at last and left for the door, “Let us meet again.”

I lunged for the dervish that dared to threaten our lives with evil words engulfed in a foul stench. Though as soon as he exited the library, I gave chase. I saw no trace of the man, no steps, not even the trail of ink. I returned to the pale woman and inspected her. Her eyes welled in tears as she stared into my eyes.

Months passed as I translated the book named The Eduba Kashshapu, The School of Witches of Ancient Sumeria, a school that must be left unremembered. I performed this duty in Chelsea, as it was the only way to relieve myself of the migrainous neuralgia I seemingly contracted. Though peace was upon me, the nameless figure’s impression in my dreams. He and the other wizards and witches danced singing their mad songs, with a percussion of cold steel etching runes upon silver as I slept.

On the eighteenth of September, 18th, 1928, I received telegram from Miskatonic University’s Henry Armitage regarding another attempted robbery of the libraries and was demanded an update on my task. I assured him the book was under my custody and Jared Porter was missing followed by my prosecution of his occult interests. He was said to be an esteemed colleague, but I found myself as intrepid as Porter.

I wrote in a vain attempt to keep a beautiful friendship with Ophelia. She succumbed to a sickness beyond the skill of psychoanalysis and beyond my purse’s charity. I visited her in New Ipswich and saw she was in a room by herself for a treatment for hysteria and deviant thoughts. Her cousin Thomas made sure she was under the best of care. Come October, she was sentenced to an asylum after ripping the wallpapers and raw flesh of her cousin from madness. The robed man’s whereabouts were unknown. Jared Porter was deemed missing and not sought for my heart was too heavy, and mind in pain.

My work was finally completed on the eleventh of December, 1928, followed by weird crimes in Boston. Many professors became vigilant as many robberies of artefacts were becoming explosive. I was ready to deliver my translation to Miskatonic University and relieve myself of the task once and for all, tightly gripping the folios in my breast. The masked robe appeared before my threshold, to relinquish any clemency once more.

“Your work is truly meet indeed. Let us meet at the Springdale Ruins.”

He turned made a slice in the air with a twisted blade as I screamed to inform the law. He then disappeared entirely into a prism of lights and dark shimmering shapes. I kicked my door shut before the sight of such a foul illusion. I fell with my backside to the door in a fetal position to safeguard all secrecy, knowledge, and my own life. All pain was absolved of me and the warm redness of the backs of my eyelids washed me over. I held tight, slumbering.

That morning, I packed the works into a my lockbox, then bound in chains, packed within the floorboards, and moved my furniture over it in any way to remain inconspicuous. An invisible slime would coat my back, causing me to violently shake whilst my own shadow conspired. The pain in my head came to me again in clusters shooting itself down through my veins. It sent me screaming in sorrow, anguish, and madness. I finally succumbed to its call and dressed myself for another long trek.

Atlases of past times and current showed me the way to the Springdale Mill, a decommissioned wool mill set on the Quinapoxet River, along a set of rails if the B&M Railroad. The bitter Boston cold nipped at my face. I stumbled to find the station was not in operation, as the last and only car left for the day.

My pain was numbed by the frigid air, manufacturing nostalgia for New Ipswich and Ophelia. A stray rail push car was on the rails behind the station, on it, Jared Porter beckoning me with frost-bitten fingers. His face succumbed to a ghastly jaundice, only masked by a crooked beard with bald spots from abscesses past. “The gate is this way,” he climbed to the front, and lit an oil lantern.

I questioned, “Why did you steal the book, Jared?” Without an answer, he donned a robe with familiar pungency over his patchwork trenchcoat and gave another to me. Jared’s right hand curled upon the handles of the cart and he pumped, holding himself at the ribs tight with the left. Such strength forced down and up was uncanny, even in his state.

“The gate is this way,” his voice was chilled. The rails screeched and turned onto the main line, wind cutting into the cloth. Jared’s hands remained on the handles. In pity, I assisted the wanderer. Even with my Polish-make gloves, scarf, and hat began to succumb. His speech made inference to me other than how the witches would address their god. Such a sickness gripped him like my headaches. “Why did you run with the book, Jared?”

“The gate is this way,” Jared pumped faster as we continued to traverse into the dark. Failure to pump stuck invisible probes within the creases of my mind. A pain from elements was preferable to such voodoo witchery. I pushed on and pumped with the hobo with all my might that the primal adrenaline could muster.

The winds we faced and air we sliced cut into our cloth, skin, flesh, and bone. His skin became frozen as he delivered us further into the night, at speeds I thought impossible by the strength of two men. Jared’s motions were jerky and queer. The car was clangoring of the steel below our feet, scratching rust, tearing wind, and ringing my ears. The lights of houses and stations were gliding past us. The lights then became watercolored streaks across the cold black. The fluttering leaves kicked up under our headwinds as we continued forward at speeds I refused to imagine. Water flowed under an icy sheet, trickling the hopes of an end slowly to my eyes.

Porter smiled, teeth reflecting under the midnight moon. Both quickly disappeared before the roof of the thick forest. Rotting flesh wafted from Porter. Beyond all common sense, the lantern he bore had oil in it and burned bright enough through he winds. After several minutes of pumping the cart in the still abyss, Porter pulled the handbrake. The steel gnashed and screamed under us, letting dormant sparks fly from the sides of the rigging. Bile and vomit flowed from my stomach and splattered caustic acid upon the wooden panels that froze as quickly as it fell. Tears precipitated and glided into the night, to remain as unseen flakes. I kept breathing the crisp air wretched, as if nearly suffocated. Porter hopped from the cart with his belongings and wandered uphill to a forlorn path. “What is the meaning of this?” I call to him as he foraged sticks. He refused to turn but his voice was booming like it always did at the lyceums he presented in.

“The meaning is apparent. You written the instructions and I forged the key. Now, we await the next nightfall, as the master said.”

“You are crazed at last, Porter?” I sat at the belongings, wrapped in the gray linen under protest.

Porter returned to his things to retrieve a stack of heralds and yellow journalism, balling them up under the sticks. His jowls remained shut. Eyes dark and peering into my consciousness. He lit the fire with a tinderbox and allowed it to reveal his ailments. The jaundice was not ordinary. It rot his skin from his neck below, with pus eager to burst. The putrid sight made me yearn to forage for more sticks. I laid my branches upon the fire as much as I could. I uttered my favorite ancient prayers, to which Porter laughed manically to, as I drifted to sleep.

The morning after, I was the resident pyrolater. I gathered mindlessly throughout the day, with a hope civilization would find me. No trains came. No rangers. No police. Not even a curious one. My hands were irritated from the oak, pine, and birch. Oak leaves were the only source of nutrition and were buried beneath a blanket of snow. My thirst drove me to the dirty river. Porter was nowhere to be seen until dusk.

My mind dissolved for hours and was rescued by my assumed master. “We must see to The Gate,” the New Ipswich ghost commanded and rubbed a gauze upon my shoulder and gave an inhuman tug to prop me upright and pushed me forward like a child passing through.

The granite wall was held a simplistic ritual. The masked one, Porter and I stood before the sunset. Porter made his stance upon the granite dam and brandished a large ornate key of silver, initially mistaken for a Colt. The trimmings and etchings into it were the runes I transcribed from the Eduba Kashshapu itself, with artisanal precision to that of my own writing. He extended it to the fading sun, breaking the vision we saw with a prism of epilepsy, flushing the world with voices of the past all around us. I could hear many men and women trifling in conversation with their superior. But the prism kept breaking further and further into a dimension that should never be. For we lurked in a world petrified, only inhabited by yet another mummified corpse, floating and gliding. Porter attempted to reconcile to converse with the figure, but he fell from shock, unable to recover. I seized the key from him, as his flesh sublimated into the abyss.

“His facet has chosen to sleep, but you two are fortunate and stout. The first gate is unlocked with a second Key. The Ultimate Gate is now ready for your trial. You may return unharmed if you wish. Should you choose to advance, I can only be your guide, not your protector.”

The robed man was stripped of his linens, revealing a horrid creature that defied conventional language. An insect-man with a strange snout, claws coiling like a lobster’s antennae, slouched under a cape, fitted with a plume of odd feathers, uttering a whisper of a strange statement. It wore a strange tattered yellow robe and further extended its arms made of chitin. I let out a cry and ran back. The Guide, should the Sumerian Witchcraft Tablets be true, would lead us to his evil god. I crouched down, sniveling mad. By then it was morning at last and made my way to Chelsea once more raving, gripping the Silver Key tight.

Now the visions of the Silver Key, the Keeper of the Gate, and it’s Guardian are depriving me of sleep, corroding my soul, and finally dissolving my mind in an unseen oubliette. I ravaged the libraries of Miskatonic University to find that a Silver Key could influence time beyond any recognition and bring perils to us if left unfettered. I attempted to smash The Key with no success. I birthed an evil into this land with my work. Now I leave it to you to burn it all.

Posthumously,

Ernest Harding