#0200629

[penninstitute]

Case #0200629

Statement of Miriam Walpoole, regarding the burning of Walpoole University and her subsequent encounter with The Stranger. Original statement given June 29th, 2020.

I cannot write this statement without making it very clear: I loved my mothers. I loved them, and I loved Walpoole University. I have killed and I have burned, but to stop an infection, sometimes a limb must be amputated. 

I write this statement in hope that maybe it will help someone else entangled within The Stranger’s games, that they will see the necessary sacrifices for survival.

I’m not entirely sure when my statement truly begins. In retrospect, it could have started in my elementary years. I read my days away in the Walpoole University library-only encouraged by my mothers’ academic backgrounds-trying to satiate the curiosity within me. It could have started with my mothers, Ingrid and Aphaea Walpoole, when they were no longer truly my mothers. However, that is not a timeframe I can pin down. I don’t know how long I was living with the imposters, so I will start with what I do know; when I begin to perceive things as strange.

My statement begins, with the anatomy class. I am-I was-months away from gaining my PhD in anesthesiology, with honors. I had been attending Walpoole University for seven years, far above courses like Anatomy 101. Yet that is where I was placed on the first day back from semester break. It wasn’t one anatomy class, however. Anatomy 101 had replaced any course I’d signed up for. It didn’t matter if I’d registered for clinical subspecialty labs or an adult cardiothoracic anesthesiology fellowship; they all ended up some breed of anatomy course. I checked my schedule obsessively. It read the correct classes I’d signed up for and I’d gone to the correct lab for each course. I know the labs of Walpoole University better than any student, I practically lived in the building with Aphaea as dean and Ingrid a favored professor. Still, no matter what I did, I ended up sitting through another anatomy course, basic medical information I had long since memorized. 

This continued on for about two months. It had gotten to a point where I was sure the anatomy classes weren’t a review leading into my advanced courses. Complaints to my mothers were met with suggestions to switch out of the class, so that’s what I did. My councilor was skeptical at first, he said I had all the classes that put me on track to graduate, but I convinced him to switch one of my less essential classes. Anything to help get back on track towards gaining knowledge and practice upon material I needed to graduate.

I walked into the west building expecting for notes on the history of amputations, but I didn’t write a single thing. I had the anatomy 101 lecture memorized by this point.

I concluded I couldn’t rely on the university staff to help get my medical license, including my mothers. My entire academic career had led up to this final year. Even in elementary school, it was known that I would attend Walpoole University. Since the university’s founding in 1948, family members have attended and graduated per tradition. Walpoole University was not an Ivy League, and I could have gotten into any other school with the GPA possessed, but attending Walpoole University was a matter of family prestige I was determined, and happy, to uphold. I would fail if I didn’t have the right classes to pass my exams at the end of the semester. Thus began my self mandated education, driven by ambition and frustration alone. 

I spent the majority of my freetime in the university library before life was overtaken by anatomy classes, so my increased presence in the evenings wasn’t anything unusual. I’d known the school’s librarian, Ms. Torres, since I was young. She often snuck me snacks when my mothers were teaching during the day. It was a little gesture that continued through my late nights hunched over multiple different textbooks corresponding with the anesthesiology classes I was supposed to be taking. Despite my growing hatred for the anatomy classes, I still did the classwork. It wasn’t difficult, after all, I had learned the information in my freshman and sophomore years. The biggest nuances were the essays, but I did them without outward complaint. I wasn’t about to let my grade point average slip, other students still needed to see what the dean’s daughter was capable of.

I didn’t keep my evening education to only textbooks, that would have been foolish. Anesthesiology is a particular science, one that requires simulation to test skill. If I didn’t exercise my hands like I did my mind, I would be utterly unprepared for the exams to come. Luckily, I had access to the lab rooms once the university was emptied of its staff. Aphaea may not have been helpful when it came to getting me out of anatomy class, but she was never opposed to my ambition outside of what was required. Ingrid told me I was going to overwork myself, and I’d fall asleep while taking my exams, but she didn’t stop me. 

In the beginning, the labs after dark were exciting. I always stayed in the library long after everyone had left, and though the quiet solitude was welcomed, nothing new came out of it. The labs, however, were a different experience I reveled in. With no instructor nor supervisor, every ounce of progress made could be credited to myself. Be it mistake or success, conducting labs after dark confirmed I was fully competent on my own. I didn’t need my mothers or my professors or my dimwitted councilor. Though it seems like a juvenile thought now, at the time I was proving my independence. I’d lived with my mothers my entire life, something most competent twenty eight year olds don’t do. The labs were to show myself I wouldn’t sink after I graduated, Aphaea and Ingrid no longer there to hold my hand. This sliver of freedom mixed with the isolation was so exhilarating, I was nearly glad the anatomy classes soiled my original course. This vigor was also why I never noticed the feeling of being watched until weeks later.

I was in the labs, working on a more basic surgical simulation. Before I could begin I needed to calibrate the monitor, making sure the machine’s precision matched my own. As I was doing so, I got washed with the feeling of being… stared at. Like eyes locked upon my figure, my movements. I knew it was that feeling specifically because it’s something I’m quite used to. I felt it in operating theaters, doctoral training, the judging gaze of other students. I was used to that the feeling. Except I was supposed to be alone. 

I found this unnerving, of course, but it didn’t feel like a person watching me. The feeling wasn’t quite that deliberate. It was more subdued, filtered, like a security camera. This is why I brushed it off in the beginning. I thought, Ingrid was right. I had been staying up far past what was healthy, and the amount of sleep I got was dwindling each day. Exhaustion could be a deceiving thing.

Though the feeling was bothersome, it didn’t stop me from being in the labs. If anything it became a part of my routine. Some nights were worse than others, however. The sensation could range from a subdued far away state, to someone staring directly at me, just out of sight. Those nights were when my paranoia was the worst, but I held the firm belief it was caused by my lack of sleep and continued nonetheless. 

The first time I allowed myself to be afraid was when I began to hear things. Feelings are fickle. They’re dependent on any given situation and were not something I could rely upon. The senses are different, they’re real and concrete. When I began to hear footsteps, scuttling outside the lab door like someone trying not to be caught, I let fear overshadow my work. I thought someone had snuck into the university. With the built up paranoia and exhaustion, I jumped to the worst case scenario and left the building immediately. In hindsight, exiting the lab directly after hearing someone pass did not display my intelligence well… but at the time I suppose I was as confident in my knowledge of the university’s building as I was exhausted. 

I told my mothers of the person I’d heard outside the lab. Ingrid was truly considering not letting me return to the labs after dark. I think she felt guilty about letting me drain myself each night. Aphaea was skeptical of my claim, but put my safety over any doubt she may have harbored. She promised to heighten security during evenings while I was working, and would call law enforcement about an attempted break in to have it investigated, if only for my own peace of mind, and Ingrid’s at well. Ingrid allowed me to continue my work reluctantly after what her wife put in place, but urged me to come home earlier. I felt awful for disregarding my mother’s worries, but I thought Ingrid of anyone would understand the importance of the labs. Academic performance would be my ticket into a fellowship. The labs ensured I could perfect surgical tasks, not simply read about them. Without practice I would be unprepared for my exams, and where could I go from there? I had to graduate. The medical world was sink or swim. I couldn’t risk my entire future, the profession and reputation I was building, for a feeling of unease.  

My expectations were, if I continued to attend with heightened security and nobody in the building, the paranoia would dilute. Yet it got worse. What felt like being watched from afar morphed into something inside the room, staring relentlessly from the opposite wall.  I felt the phantom eye sockets, optical nerves inside of them bulging, straining to look through me. Something was in the room with me and yet I knew logically nobody could be there. I turned around obsessively, expecting to catch whatever was there, but all I saw was the lab’s empty walls.

Lab 111 was what finally drove me away. Lab 111, which stunk of formaldehyde. Its cabinets were stocked organs, finger tips, and much to my displeasure, eyeballs. These parts were used for class dissections, all taken from animals. I needed samples for research upon the response of soft tissue to specific drug combinations. It was essential, a crucial part of my practice that could mean a patient’s life or death. 

I stepped inside lab 111 and was washed with the feeling of being watched. Despite the spike of paranoia, it had become part of my routine, just like washing your hands before an operation. 

As I organized my space, I was acutely aware of this feeling. It was different. Not of being watched, but of being stalked. As if the watcher, who had previously been unmoving, was approaching. I had locked the lab door, I had checked every possible hiding space before beginning. There was nobody in Walpoole University with me. This fact brought me no comfort. I tried to concentrate, to stop my hand holding the syringe from shaking. I was not going to flee, there was nothing there and there never had been. 

The feeling creeped up my spine.

 A palpable thing boring into the back of me, through my lab coat, past my skin, into my bones-I couldn’t take it-I whipped around.

Every single eye, trapped within their preserves, stared directly at me. My eyes locked with the countless others. Blue, brown, green. Some bulging, some hidden. I screamed. My legs scrambled backwards, syringe discarded out of view. I think I slammed into the operating table, but I couldn’t feel anything. The only thing filling my head, swirling with an encapsulating sense of terror,  was I knew everything about the eyeballs staring back at me. I saw through every layer of skin, every vein, the soft tissue, the lenses, the pupils that seemed to drink in my mortified expression. 

The eyes began to shake, jiggling their containers. 

I knew where these eyes had come from. They were not from animals. These eyes were from people. Their names laced through my mind like tainted film in a tape recorder at full volume.

My screaming somehow shaped into words,

“I see you.”

It was as if my voice had a force. When the words released from my lips, the glass containers shattered. I cowered to the ground; pain erupted from behind my eyes and I feared the glass had sent shards into my skin. When I thew my hands up to protect my eyes, they came down free of blood or fluid.

Less could be said about the lab’s floor. I smelled the formaldehyde before I saw the mess. Eyes were rolling all over the tiles, fluids sweating off their gelatinous forms. I felt those that rolled under the cabinets still staring at me. 

There wasn’t another option, I had to clean it up. Bodyparts were expensive. As the only person in the university that late, I would be blamed for what happened. I would be expelled. I knew where the extra jars were, and where the professors kept their preservatives. I could fix this. My hands still shook as I pulled on a new pair of gloves. I knelt down, the fluids soaking my tights, and began to pick up the eyeballs one by one. I am not a squeamish person; it’s not a trait one can afford as a doctor. However, the circular forms pinched between my fingers, their pupils straining to meet my own, flew bile up my throat. I swallowed it back down. I didn’t need two messes to clean.

Aphaea was awake reading when I got home. She remarked how late I was up. The next morning, Ingrid remarked how sickly I looked. I went to class despite feeling as awful as I did the night before. In the end it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d gone or not. I didn’t absorb a word that was taught; I was half asleep the entire day and my brain was still caught upon the eyes staring at me from the lab floor. What had caused that to happen? No scientific, logical answer seemed to fit. It hurt my pride to consider the supernatural. Supernatural claims were incoherent, incomplete. Yet what else could explain exploding jars and dismembered eyeballs moving on their own?   

My aloof nature didn’t seem off to anyone. I suppose that was how most students perceived me on a normal day. Professor McCarthy, however, noticed the change in my demeanor. He stopped me before I could exit the lecture hall. Typically I would stay to chat after class was done, I’d known many of the professors before I attended Walpoole University, so we were well acquainted. Professor McCarthy was a favorite of mine, so it wasn’t a surprise he noticed I was feeling off. I told him I was ill and he didn’t need to worry. 

“Ingrid would fuss about and make me stay home tomorrow. A stomach bug caught easily in a room full of students, it was a mistake for me to attend,” I said.

Professor McCarthy was a springy man, equipped with a lanky form and hunched shoulders. He was the type of professor who liked to hide jokes in his lectures in order to keep students’ attention. I remember he laughed as he spoke to me. He said,

 “It isn’t a bad thing that you came to class, Miriam, nor the spread of infection to other students. Perhaps your sickness is lethal,” then, with a smile, “the university could always use more cadavers.”

He placed a hand upon my shoulder blade. From afar, it must have looked like a good natured gesture, but when his hand made contact it felt so wrong I wanted to shrivel inside my skin. It felt like he was wearing a glove, skin rubbing loosely against the fabric of my sweater.

I didn’t laugh. Nor did I accept his touch for long. I excused myself under the guise that I felt nauseous, though it wasn’t entirely untrue. I felt him watch me as I exited the lecture hall.

I reported sick the next day, and I admit being away from the campus was liberating. This didn’t feel good to me, however. Walpoole University was my my heart. My home, and my life, was plagued with something I couldn’t wrap my head around.  For the first time in my life I hadn’t a clear direction of what would happen next; but I intended to find out.

My nights in the labs decreased, replaced by even later nights in the library. The feeling of being watched didn’t follow me there. This only enforced the library as my safe space within Walpoole University. It gave me hope that amid an entire day of unsettling classes, and my professors’ uncanny stares, there was still a sense of normalcy. In the library I stationed my research upon the supernatural. Frankly I was glad I studied after hours, when other students had gone home. The embarrassment of having classmates see me with an armful of books on ghost stories and boogymen made me cringe without fail. Unfortunately, something more important than my reputation was at play.

For the first time since my childhood, I felt lost in the library of Walpoole University. The building itself was old and expansive, well known for its preserved texts on historic medical practices. However, it also harbored a wide collection of books upon numerous subjects. I was sure we had texts on the supernatural I could use to investigate, I simply didn’t know where to start. 

As any smart person would do, I asked the librarian, Ms. Torres. Students teased she was as old as the university itself, but I always thought that to be rude. Ms. Torres was, indeed, old, but she never acted like it. She had a bold taste in fashion which I always admired: splashes of unconventional color amid a neutral dress code. When I was little, I liked to stare at her brightly colored nails tapping on the desk. They were a bright yellow, like Van Gogh’s sunflowers, when I swallowed my pride and asked her where books on the were kept. 

Ms. Torres lead me to a wide shelf within the back right corner of the fiction section. She recommended specific books on urban legends, possessions, and other levels of the supernatural that made me realize my investigation was going to be much deeper and difficult than expected. After she gave me a quick sweep of the shelf, she added with a wink,

“If you have any questions, dear, don’t be a stranger. I’m quite seasoned with all this spiritual information.” This came as a surprise to me. Ms. Torres never seemed like the superstitious or religious sort. I never saw any pendants, nor saw her conduct any rituals like throwing salt over your left shoulder. I must have displayed my confusion because she said plainly, “It’s was a hobby of mine, much to my wife’s distaste. Still, she lets me keep the ouija board over the mantle,” Ms. Torres punctuated her sentence with a good natured chuckle. “Are there any specifics of what you’re trying to research, dear?”  

I was reluctant to tell her what happened in the labs, but I needed this information more than anything. I decided I had to give up some of my own information in order to receive her’s. I told Ms. Torres, in a hushed whisper only the books could overhear, the strange occurrences after dark; the sensation of being watched, objects moving on their own while I was across the room. I didn’t mention the eyes.

Ms. Torres seemed to darken at my mention of the supernatural within Walpoole University. Even so, she gave me a hefty stack of texts, muttering about how the school wasn’t what it used to be. One tome stuck out as much older than the rest, bound in black leather and embossed with a deep green ink. The spine looked like it could crumble at any moment. 

I thanked her for her assistance. Ms. Torres shook her head and assured me it was no trouble at all, she’d sage the library for me so the spirits wouldn’t bother my work. I smiled in appreciation for the gesture before locking myself in the study room to concentrate. 

As I began to dig through the new well of knowledge handed to me, I realized I knew about as much about Ms. Torres as I did spirits; despite knowing her practically my whole life. I was too wrapped up in my reading to acknowledge her presence half the time, let alone know how much she knew about the school’s history and its ghosts. I told myself I would treat her to coffee once I got to the bottom of this mess. It was the least I could do.

Within first month and a half into my supernatural investigation, my studies in anesthesiology had completely fallen through. I was enamored in trying to connect what I had experienced, and what continued to transpire within the anatomy classes, to an answer. I had to find a cure for the symptoms.

Ms. Torres noticed me going into the same study room every night, so she gave me its key and told me to return it when my investigation was done. I was thankful for her presence in the library during this time. If I was stuck, or needed her more experienced opinions, she was happy to lend a hand. She even joked about bringing in her ouija board if I needed more evidence. Though, I don’t think she was completely joking.

As I began to stay later into the night, my time in the library replacing my time in the labs, it became custom wave goodbye to Ms. Torres before she left. She would turn off the lights as she waved, leaving my study room a beacon of white amid a room soaked in ink. One night, she stopped to chat at my study room door. Ms. Torres frequently did this if she had time before her bus left. She’d ask me how my investigation was going, answer any stray questions I had conjured; sometimes she would make offhand remarks about her life. This evening was no different, 

“I’ve read two and a half volumes this evening, and with what you’ve given beforehand, I’ve concluded my experience aligns best with that of a poltergeist, maybe a demon.” I told her.

Ms. Torres responded with a hum, like she was turning my words around in her brain as an engine does, 

“The demon doesn’t quite fit,” she said. “If it was demonic activity, I have a right mind to think it would have followed you to the library. 

Now a poltergeist, that sounds more fitting: moving objects, the feeling of being watched. Have you ever seen the movie, Miriam? Anyway, the only problem is I can’t think of any deaths on campus, students have gone missing within the past few years, though. Such a shame. Maybe the building itself is built on hallow ground. Oh, speaking of poltergeists,” Ms. Torres dug around in her purse, emerging with a bundle of herbs tied neatly with string. She set it down on the table alongside a box of matches, baby blue nails clacking against the surface. “I got you some sage, considering you’re in here more than I am. Light it if you ever feel that uneasy feeling again, okay?”

Half of me was thankful for her charms and advice, the other still couldn’t believe I was this deep into voodoo and spirits. Ms. Torres eyed my stack of books as she was about to leave. She mentioned the old black leather book, titled: Seeming, Perceiving. It was one of the thinner tomes among my many supernatural encyclopedias. I hadn’t looked into it much; it seemed to be a psychological study, borderline Freudian, rather than a ghost story. She told me it may be more useful to my case than I expected. Unconventional problems require unconventional solutions, after all. With that bit of advice, she turned off the library lights and left me alone to my books and the study room’s white light.

Ms. Torres died the next week.

Aphaea told me. I mentioned her absence, and Aphaea, never one to sugarcoat, told me she had passed away. She said the cause was old age. I genuinely believed her.

The news hit me harder than I realized. I felt numb, like nothing had changed. I continued to shut myself away in the library, eyes more intent on consuming information than ever. If I was reading I didn’t have guilty thoughts. I forgot about how I never genuinely knew Ms. Torres, nor did I treat her with the same kindness she did me. It distracted me from the fact that, whatever was going on within Walpoole University, I now had to face alone.

I tried to honor Ms. Torres’ passing by beginning Seeming, Perceiving.  I had been selfish towards her too many times in life. The least I could do was read a book for her in death. It was raining the night I opened its cover. A more fanciful person may have thought the sky was weeping for Ms. Torres.

I read with the expectation that it would crumble in my hands if not held with care. The front page displayed a latin phrase, written in the same green ink as the title. “Percieve non est intellegens non est perfecte cognoscere percieve”, it read. I had taken Latin as a prerequisite into medical school, so there were a few prefixes I could decipher. It translated roughly to “perception does not mean understanding, but to understand is to perfectly perceive”. Below the phrase was a faded stamp, like in the books belonging to the Walpoole University library. This book was from a library, but not the university’s. I could draw the stamps from Walpoole library while blinded, and this looked nothing like it. I could see faded letters in the center, but it was too eroded to make out what it said. My rationalization was Ms. Torres brought some of her own books in for students to discover. The thought didn’t help fill the pit of guilt in my stomach.

I could hear the rain pounding on the library’s high walls, like something begging to be let in. I began reading.

The contents had nothing to do with the supernatural, though I suppose it was linked to my specific case of being watched. It described the art of seeing, of looking and looking again and looking closer until you can truly see something. To perceive it.

The writing could have been called Freudian. It conjured far fetched hypothesisis in an almost manic tone; yet I kept reading. As I did, as the front cover started to weigh down with the growing number of pages, chills wracked my body. Like rainwater leaked from the roof and trickled down my spine. I didn’t want to read the book anymore, but I couldn’t stop. I had to know how it ended, how these nonsense pages could be tied into a conclusion that actually made sense. I tore the pages as I flipped through them. The crackling of paper harmonized with the wailing of the storm outside and I wanted noting more than to put down this book and go home. 

There was an eye. 

It was green, and though it was an illustration, it seemed to bulge. The pupil was just a spot of ink but I felt swallowed in it. There were secrets hidden within and if I leaned a little further into the hole I could try and reach them-

Thunder shook the building.

Everything was wrong.

Pressure bloomed behind my eyes like they were becoming too large for my skull, squishing against my eyesocktets. It burned. I felt sick, dizzy, like I was suddenly thrown upon a rocking boat. My head was simultaneously clear and overwhelmed and I couldn’t comprehend what I was feeling. A dread realization seeped over me, emerging from the marrow of my bones. Everything I had done, all my research, was completely and utterly wrong. Ghosts and demons had nothing to do with what conspired within Walpoole University; it was something much older. Dangerous. 

The library was not safe.

I looked back down at the book in my hands, now shaking vigorously and sending pages flopping every which way. I couldn’t read another word if I tried, it felt like stuffing matter down my throat and into my sick stomach. Yet I couldn’t get rid of it. The idea of not knowing what was held between the unread pages made me sicker than knowing what I already did. The book itself was small, but it was heavy in my hands. I couldn’t return it, I couldn’t let someone take it from me. I scrambled to hide the book, tearing up the vintage floorboards with nothing but my fingers. 

I needed to read the rest of it, to drink its knowledge even if it tore me apart. However, there wasn’t time for that now. I had work to do. 

The black leather and green title disappeared beneath the dark wood. I wouldn’t let myself be destroyed, not yet. My old goal of graduation was so small and insignificant, but one thing still mattered: an infestation crawling in my university. It was worse than I thought. I felt it in my knotted stomach that no matter what, this would end in a suffocating emptiness and tragedy. 

But infections can be expunged if a limb is amputated in time.

Disease symptoms can appear as insignificant: a common cold, fatigue, allergies. Thus, they are often ignored until it is too late.

It was too late for my mothers. 

When I arrived home from reading Seeming, Perceiving, the two figures sitting in my home were not my mothers. I stared at them from the doorway and I knew, they had not been for a very long time. They were in the exact same spots as always, Aphaea on the big chair and Ingrid across the couch, but the figures with books in their laps were not Aphaea and Ingrid Walpoole. 

They smiled at me when they noticed my presence, but there was nothing behind the curled skin of their lips. I tried to meet Aphaea’s gaze but as I looked I could only comprehend a suffocating hollowness that had long eaten away the insides.

These things were not my mothers. I saw that clearly now.

Ingrid tried to welcome me home, but all I could see was the moving mouth of a puppet, a far away voice coming in one ear and spilling out the other. 

I claimed illness and excused myself.

 Sickness no longer twisted at my stomach, but rather an angry revolution. The only people I had ever put my trust into, laid my skin out for them to see, were a facade. I had let myself be controlled, tricked. 

I tried to cry that night, to mourn the loss of my mothers, but I realized I couldn’t even remember what they looked like. Aphaea never had brown eyes, and Ingrid didn’t have blonde hair. I knew this, but I couldn’t imagine them looking any other way. I couldn’t separate these infestations, these puppets, from the women who had raised me. 

I used factual knowledge as my anchor. My mothers were gone, replaced by creatures who didn’t look quite right. No tears could change that. 

I couldn’t mourn my mothers, but I could avenge them.

Everything changed in the university building after what I had saw. The insignificance of going to class each day grew. As I sat in the lecture halls, I could comprehend nothing but the husks parading as professors. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before, their inhumanity was blatant. I saw the imperfections in their movements, like a puppet limb pulled by the wrong string, the twitching in their joints as if adjusting a loose screw. From afar it may have seemed natural, but now I was looking closer. I tried to enhance my scrutiny, stare down exactly what wasn’t right about their bodies, but if I looked too close, the things stared back. Not with their eyes, but with a resistance of their whole being. As if what I was perceiving, what I was trying to understand, was never meant to be perceived in the first place.

Whatever was wrong with my professors, whatever was wrong with me, created a new understanding. I locked eyes with Professor McCarthy during a lecture. He blinked slowly, as if he had forgotten to wet his eyes. A shiver ripped through my spine. We looked into each other. I understood, and so did he. This charade couldn’t go on much longer.

He stopped me before I left for the library, blocking the door with his hollow body.

“How is your outside research fairing, Miss. Walpoole?” He asked.

“It’s fine, thank you,” I responded. “I’d like to continue as soon as possible to save daylight.” I began to exit. He didn’t move from the door.

“Oh, but tell me the details, Miss. Walpoole, the little things. Don’t I have a right to know what’s been keeping you from our pleasant after class conversations? I haven’t scared you away have I?” I started to give some half witted, polite response, but he cut me off, “I’m sorry my class hasn’t been enough to satiate your drive to learn, but I would be cautious, Miss. Walpoole. Curiosity killed the cat, I believe the saying goes,” he pushed his glasses up the dead stump of a nose on his face. There wasn’t anything under his skin, but there was something under his words. He didn’t want me to continue. They didn’t want me to continue. I was interfering with something, a plan. Perhaps, then I was close to stopping it. I grounded myself, clutching my books to my chest.

“Unfortunately, Professor, your classes haven’t been what they seem to be. If you’ll excuse me, I have much to do before they make sense again.”

Professor McCarthy let me through.

Walking down the hallway, I sealed my decision. Something irreversible had been done to my school, my future, my family. What could I do but return the favor? All I needed to do, was look deeper. 

Every free hour I possessed was dedicated to a new vein of research. Time spent with my mothers or my professors was replaced by time spent among parchment and ink. Away from them and their empty stares, it was easier to focus. My first diagnosis was wrong, and I couldn’t afford a second one. This thing I was trying to pull apart was more complex and… consuming than I had thought. Walpoole University’s library was expansive, but this topic was more outlandish than anything it possessed. I had to read nearly every volume upon supernatural occurrences, skimming through every detail for a semblance of information on what I had to face. Every waking moment was consumed by a barrage of thoughts and questions about what this could be. I couldn’t sleep, I rarely ate because it all seemed so trivial compared to what I was trying to discover. 

Not only was I drowning in books upon books of foreign supernatural material, but stacks of outside classwork pushed me further under the surface. The homework for anatomy classes tripled. Despite that, I tried to complete it. It wasn’t a smart decision, I know, but at the time it was the only semblance of reality and normalcy left in my life. In the back of my head, and surely in my heart I still wanted to graduate. I wanted to carry on. Besides, homework from anatomy class was the only thing I was productive on. Any new material I consumed lead me to the same dead ends of poltergeists and demons. The one real connection I could find to my predicament was an essay by Sigmund Freud upon the Uncanny. A phenomena that incited terror in its victim through a sensation of familiarity that was’t exactly right. However, it was a psychological essay for the terrorized and insane. Despite its close connections to the way my mothers and the staff of Walpoole University behaved, it seemed to only enforce my own madness rather than theirs. 

I began to see my professors in the library after hours. They lurked in the dark under the facade of research or pleasure reading. The eyes within their skulls were trained on the pages, but whatever manifested inside them was locked on me. They wanted something from me. There had to be a reason why they kept me alive this long despite my resistance. Surely my mothers hadn’t survived this long. I was running out of energy, out of time to keep myself alive.

I had an option I was reluctant to use: Ms. Torres’s office. I wasn’t keen on snooping there after her death, it seemed wrong to look through her things before her body began to rot. Besides, I hadn’t been close to her in the way other relations were, like her wife. Yet nobody had come to empty her office since her passing months before. I would have seen them come in, I was in the building nearly every hour of the day. I knew there had to be information that could me move forward, considering Ms. Torres’s expressed interest in the supernatural. She had given me Seeming, Perceiving, after all. Perhaps she had more.

Ms. Torres’s office didn’t reflect her quirks like her accessories did. The only thing that told me she had resided there was a tea cup with different sigils etched into the rim. There was still liquid inside, it left a ring around the inside.

Ignoring the heavy feeling it brought, I rummaged through her cabinets and shelves for anything I could use. I tried to be neat, but with little time and so much to look through, the things I found irrelevant ended up strewn on the floor. I knew that I would find the information I needed here. I didn’t even need to think about it, the knowledge was simply there. I didn’t know how I had obtained it, but that investigation could wait.

Finding the journal of Abraham Janssen felt as if my head was pulled from a bucket of water gasping my first breath of fresh air. There was a calm as I held its inconspicuous binding. An exhilarating surge within my brain told me this would feed me, tell me what I craved to know. Standing there in the ransacked office, I dove into its pages.

The journal of Abraham Janssen called the thing in Walpoole University by name: The Stranger. The name held the same hollow ring as my professor’s lectures, as my mothers’ voice. In its pages emerged an account of inhumane figures, empty bodies, a grotesque masquerade of flesh. The fickle game that is human identity. Something very, very old had been waiting to emerge from behind its mask for far too long. Flames, gunfire, the bubbling and sizzling of flesh beyond repair. 

A way for it to be stopped.

Not a cure, but an execution.

The part of me that grappled onto the childish notion of normalcy withered. I knew this was coming, but it didn’t make it easier. The realization that I had to destroy my mothers’ bodies was more sickening than I expected. That to destroy the manifestation I also had to destroy the vessel. No more discussions over coffee, or reading together in the living room. Aphaea wouldn’t give my hand a tight squeeze before an exam, Ingrid wouldn’t pin back my hair after I’d forgotten to cut for too long. 

Those were sentiments; I had to cling to facts. Cling to them as I clung to the leather bound journal of Abraham Janssen. Those things were not my mothers. The Stranger had consumed them. It would consume me too if nothing was done. 

I skulked back to my study room. This book would hide with Seeming, Perceiving. It was too precious to allow elsewhere. I was so wrapped possible possible plans and ways to put an end to the Stranger’s games before it could reach a climax, that I didn’t notice the figure rummaging through my study room.

I didn’t need to see the lanky figure and hunched shoulders to know it was Professor McCarthy. He turned around.

His eyes met mine immediately. I think the thing inside him tried to smile. A shiver wracked my bones. I tore my eyes away to make it stop, to compose myself, and instead focused on the study room behind his figure. It was in complete disarray. My books were discarded upon the floor, organized notes destroyed. I tried to scan the room but my gaze snagged on McCarthy’s feet. Blood, dark and shining, splattered his leather shoes. What had he done, what had I walked into? Muffled through the pounding in my skull, I heard his voice say good evening. I needed to do something, to run, to stop staring, but that bloodstained shoe was dangerously close to my loosened floorboard. A breath away from Seeming, Perceiving. I couldn’t run, I wouldn’t let him find the book; my book.

I told him good evening.

“I knew you were here late, but this is much more extreme than I expected. Perhaps I can escort you home, Miss. Miriam?”

I forced myself to meet his stare and ignored my quivering hands.

“Mother told me not to accept rides from strangers.”

“We’ve been acquainted for longer than you think, Miriam.”

“Not long enough for you to ransack my study room.”

“Such nasty accusations.”

“Indeed.”

“Miriam, dear, I’m sure you know that we, your mothers and I, only want what’s best for you and your future-“

“Get out.” The journal clutched in my hands began to flop mercilessly against my chest. Professor McCarthy sniffed, and straightened his tweed jacket with one hand,

“Very well,” he said. “Goodnight, Miriam.” Professor McCarthy stuck out his other hand. My eyes fell, unable to hold his unblinking stare for much longer. McCarthy was a thin man, but the hand he offered to me was too slim, too delicate to be a man’s. 

Nor did Professor McCarthy wear robin egg blue nail polish.

I wanted to throw up, but I couldn’t allow myself to be vulnerable like that. If I shook the hand, he would bid me goodnight. He would leave leave. This was just another one of the Stranger’s games. I could sacrifice a piece to win.

My hand wrapped around the one dismembered from Ms. Torres.

It was cold, waxy. I watched the chipped robin blue nails grip my palm with strength a hand that thin could never possess. I pulled back to break the handshake but the spindly fingers gripped harder. Dread trickled into my stomach. I had sacrificed the wrong piece.

Before I could react, the hand yanked downward, almost pulling my shoulder from its socket. Dread turned to horror in the split second before the corner of the study room table rushed to meet my head. Pain split through my flesh, cracking into my skull. 

I was on the floor. The beacon like light of the study room flashed over my vision, everything too overbearing look at. I knew I was about to pass out, I needed to get up, I needed to steady myself, to at least reach my book. Professor McCarthy would find it, he would destroy it. My elbow flew out from underneath my body. I tried to support myself but every limb seemed detached, dismembered like Ms. Torres’s hand.

I felt fingers wrap around my ankles as my eyes stared hopelessly at the floor. I knew which one did not belong to Professor McCarthy, its cold touch sent a shocking sensation slithering to my very fingertips. The carpet dragged beneath my body,  into the darkness of the library and the things that lay beyond. My eyes lolled inside their sockets. A growing stain of deep red was left where my head rested upon the floor.

I had passed out. The next thing I remember was a blaring pain in my skull, painted white, and an awful stench that grabbed me by the throat and spilled my stomach’s contents onto the floor. I managed to flail onto my stomach as not to choke, but the direct smell of my own vomit mixed with whatever else plagued the air only made me feel worse.

I stayed on the floor there, shivering and heaving, for god knows how long. My mind was trying to grab at strings to piece together what had happened. I didn’t know what time it was, how long I was unconscious, where I was. All I could see as my vision came back into a blurred focus was a bright linoleum floor, now marred with vomit. I grit my teeth. My shaking hands wouldn’t listen as I tried to move. My head was whirring too fast for my body to respond to, but I couldn’t let myself be vulnerable, I needed to know where I was.

I took in a deep, blubbering breath, stared at my hands upon the floor, and tried to let my body stabilize itself.

I managed to tip my head up. The sterile walls and sleeping defibrillators told me I was in an operating room. Their setup told me it was one within Walpoole University, but the creeping sensation of eyes upon my back could tell me that much. Slowly, I traced the feeling like invisible puppet strings upward, past the painfully bright surgical lights, and through the dark windows of the operating theater. Hollow sockets stared down upon me. I could barely make out the masks they called faces through the shadowed glass, but I saw Aphaea and Ingrid. I couldn’t hold their stare for long, and my eyes dropped to the operating table.

Like a neatly arranged feast, body parts lined the surface. From my kneeling position, I could see the porcelain skin contrast against the blue plastic. My throat closed. My arms gave up once again. My legs flailed on instinct, slipping through the vomit on the floor, uncontrollably trying to scuttle backwards.

Aphaea’s voice pounded into my eardrums.

“No need to be squeamish, Miriam. I can’t always be there to hold your hand,” she said. “Get up, your final exam for anatomy begins now. Build us a body.”

Her voice left an echo bouncing along the operating room walls. The same voice that had read me classics as a child was now ordering me to become a grotesque imitation of Doctor Frankenstien. The bitter irony complimented the dull terror upon my tongue. I forced my body upright. The body parts upon the operating table came into full view. Every limb was pale, accented by the cleanly amputated muscle on each end. A torso lay in the center, female. At the end of the table was a head. The sockets were dark and barren.

My eyes locked on the display, and I began to realize I was more terrified of what would be done to me if I refused to complete the procedure than the body parts. My possible fate lay right in front of me. With a dull yet throbbing pain in my skull, I approached the operating table.

The stares from above watched me the entire time. They consumed every movement, every stitch. My hands shook at the beginning, to the point I was unable to thread a needle. But habit is a useful tool. I slipped into a working trance after managing a few sloppy stitches along the right thigh. Horror diluted into terror, a dull sickness clinging inside my throat.

Hours went by. My fingers and my thread ran along every seam of the parts given to me: the crooks of the fingers, the dip of the neck, the tough muscle of the shoulder. I snipped the black thread. The finished product, with all its pale parts and its empty eye sockets was waxy, almost like a mannequin.

Applause fell from the darkness above. My head snapped up in time to see the audience and their gaze file out of sight. I tore away from the stitched creation on the operating table, trying to observe a clue of what would happen next, but the harder I tried to concentrate the louder the thrum in my skull grew. I stumbled to approach the window upon the operating room door, to anticipate if my mothers and the professors were approaching but I froze.

A scream erupted from behind me. From the operating table. Disoriented and terrified, I whipped around, but I was crashing to the ground, only comprehending the sudden inability to breathe. The body on the table, the lifeless parts, had flung itself and toppled me over. Its cold hands were crushing my throat. It used one hand to crush the wind in my trachea, the other hand let go, curled its nails, and began to tear at the skin of my face. The thing was screaming, I was screaming. I stared into its open mouth as dark and empty as the sockets of its eyes. Footsteps joined the chorus. Heels and dress shoes entered my blurring periphery, swarming, circling.

The thing was still screaming, still clawing, as two of the professors pried her off my suffocating body. Air shot through my throat, sterile and painful. Through my gasping coughs, I could hear my mothers talking to the thing. The cooed in calming tones not to damage the details.

I was hoisted from under my arms. My body writhed, voice fighting pathetically to let out a scratchy yell. I was so tired, so scared, but I didn’t want to die. It was the only thing I could think of as multiple hands, fingers, palms, pinned me to the operating table. Waxy fingertips wrapped around my ankles and wrists as the plastic covering screeched beneath my fighting body. 

I didn’t want to die.

I saw my mothers’ faces. The masks of Aphaea and Ingrid hovered above me. Ingrid was smiling. Aphaea’s mouth began to move,

“We’re so proud of you Miriam,” the flesh on her palm cupped my cheek. “You’ve graduated. Your new body is complete. It took so much patience to gather the right parts but, you’ll look so beautiful, so powerful.” Her hand trailed down my neck, past my collarbones and my heaving chest, to the curves of my palm. “Such small hands. Ingrid almost insisted we use a child’s. At least we could agree upon your eyes.” Aphaea reached for the utensil table, just out of my view. I tried to follow and keep her in my vision, but hands, stolen from those I once valued as professors, gripped my temples towards the blinding surgical lights. Their fingers crawled to my hair, my chin, my eyelids as they fleshy fingertips pinned the skin open. Aphaea’s gloved hands returned, a scalpel gripped within her shadowed fingers.

I pleaded. With the little air still caught in my lungs I begged for my life. My vocal box rang against my throat. A familiar, wrinkled hand with robin egg blue nails clamped over my mouth.

Aphaea lowered, and dug, the scalpel into my eye socket.

The pain was excruciating. I never thought something so awful could bloom beneath my skull. The pain was accentuated by the pairs of hands pinning my head to the operating table like a corked butterfly. I let out a ragged sob against the wrinkled skin over my mouth. 

Aphaea slid the scalpel in further.

Through the pain I couldn’t think, my senses were screaming, crumbling into a mortifying state of shock.

Aphaea pulled. She pulled and pulled and pulled and my head was on fire.

I saw my own eye clutched between my mother’s fingers, the blood dripping onto my cheeks, my nose, and the nerve running out of view still connected to the opposite socket. My nerves pulled away from my mother’s blood drenched fingers. They protested with tension as the scalpel snapped my eye from my skull. The green iris rolled in her fingers and stared back at me.

Static, numbness washed over my body. My limbs began to kick as the static began to sizzle, turning to energy. The feeling flew through my spine, through every bone, and out of the pores of my skin in a punching wave. I heard numerous, sickening crunches, thuds one after another. The waxy, shifting skin holding my body was gone. The rampant beat of my heart told me to sit up, but the pain and trauma made my mind slow to catch up. My chest rose and fell at a dangerous speed against the operating table. Get up, Miriam. Get up, get up, get up! I heaved my chest up, head lolling behind. The left side of the operating room was swathed in darkness. The right half was strewn with bodies. They slumped against the wall like sacks of skin; limp and bloodied. In blurry, half visible scene of crooked bones, and opened skulls, my mothers were there. Aphaea’s jaw was broken, her legs bent into shapes that would have sent any surgeon heaving. In the palm of her gloved hand, my eye sat in atop a glob of tissue and gore. 

A scream bellowed through the darkness of my right side. I whipped my head to see the body I built, my replacement, bounding toward’s Aphaea’s shattered form. The screaming from its vocal box tried to form a word, a cry,

“mother.”

I ran. I didn’t stay long enough to see if the others were incapacitated as Aphaea was or what I had made was capable of, I simply knew this would not be my fate. My legs swung across the operating table, heavy as body bags. They scrambled upon the floor. My hands followed behind, throwing themselves over the cart of tools and wrapping around whatever seemed palpable. With an object, hopefully a weapon, in my grip, I bolted. Across broken legs and blood pooling on the white linoleum, I crashed through the operating room entrance, unlocked as the professors filed in to complete the prodedure. I slammed it shut behind me, submerging the hallway from half darkness into complete darkness. Drenched in my own blood and vomit, I heaved in two gasping breaths. I knew the halls of Walpoole University, even in the dark. My head throbbing, and my legs on the verge of collapse, I ran down the hall. Voices began to follow me from the operating room, Ingrid’s shrill one among them. I had no plan yet, I simply needed to be out of their grasp.

The silhouettes of doorways flew past my periferie. I needed to think, if I didn’t have a plan I would be outsmarted. I would die. In chess, one must think at least three moves ahead of their opponent, so I began to list, to rationalize the loose thoughts rattling in my brain.

1.My eye wound may kill me before my professors do.

Even at the thought, my head pounded. My blood covered skin to itself as it scrunched from my labored breaths. How can I win with a check mate? Think, Miriam! The words became accentuated by the pounding of my running feet on the floor. Think, think think!

The journal!

2. In Abraham’s journal, he wrote that The Stranger was stopped by firearms. I didn’t have firearms.

Ms. Torres’ blue nail polish. Her sage. Her matches.

3. I did have fire.

I was going to burn Walpoole University, and the sickness within it, to the ground. I needed to get to the library, to keep running because I would not allow myself to be overtaken again. 

My first move was a crucial one, I needed to stabilize my eye. As one of the doorways flew past in a yawning silhouette, I swung inside, narrowly missing the doorframe. The chairs and curved desks of the lecture hall were diluted to dark shapes. If I was caught in here, I would have been cornered, so I stuffed myself under one of the tables. Its wide legs served as cover for hiding. Sitting on the carpeted floor, the underbelly of the desk scraping the top of my head, I took a moment to examine the object I had taken from the operation room. It was heavier now that the adrenaline of being chased had somewhat cleared. I glanced down at its shadowed form, a heavy handle with an even heavier rectangular shape attached to one side: a bone mallet. That would do. I set it down next to me. With my hands free, I rose a fingertip to my lost eye. The lids were glued shut by mounds of dried blood and tissue, but I could feel wetness of fluids still leaking through. My sweater wasn’t the cleanest, but it was the only thing on hand. I tore off a generous strip, careful not to reveal my hiding spot with too much noise. I wrapped the strip around my head twice, securing enough pressure to catch the blood and fluid, but not enough to damage my eye socket even more. I needed medical attention as soon as possible, but at least my eyesocket wouldn’t kill me before my professors did. I took the next moment to scrutinize my surroundings. I had mostly escaped the operation wing, the library would be a straight shot through the lecture halls and down two levels. I mentally mapped my course. The fastest and most efficient way to get there. 

I’d used enough time already. I began to crawl from my short lived hiding spot, when footsteps from the hallway froze me in place. I fell back on my knees, gripping the mallet with both hands. I clamped my mouth shut. My breathing sounded so loud. I took inhales through my nose, counting the breaths.

One.

The footsteps slowed outside the lecture hall door.

Two.

It was quiet. My hands were shaking.

Three.

Shifting. Fabric rustling. Footsteps scuttling away, heavy as if limping, until they faded into nothing. Dread in my stomach began to choke me, leaving this spot felt like a death sentence. 

I counted to 30. 

Numbers, logical and unchanging, the passing of time always there. Something I didn’t have much of. I needed to get up or I would die. It wasn’t comforting, but it was factual. It put momentum beneath my feet to stand, and to run.

No longer was I only playing chess, I was playing hide and seek. I navigated the halls I knew so well with trepidation. Squeezing the mallet in my palms reminded me this was very real, and very deadly. Any sound caused me to duck into classrooms, to ready my arm to swing. Footsteps would shuffle by. Sometimes I would catch a glance at the shambling forms searching for me. They looked like broken dolls, limbs twisted, ribcages caved in on themselves. It gave me hope that in their state, I could outrun them. 

The library was so close. Anticipation, and adrenaline, and fear fought inside of me until I was practically buzzing with an energy that fought my fatigue at bay. I was going to bring this nightmare to an end.

The hall leading to the library was long, with tall windows reduced to specters, and pillars towering giants into the hidden ceiling. I broke into a sprint. I didn’t care how loud my footsteps were until my ears picked up a second pair, duetted by coughs of labored breath. I swore, ducking behind one of the ancient pillars. Not too far behind me, the shuffling of feet drew down the corridor. It had seen me, it must have. The shuffling became louder, the breathing closer and more ragged. It was drawing out its time, savoring the chance to finally catch me so close to my goal. My teeth bit together, gripping onto the spike of anger burning on my tongue. My head began to throb again, painfully. Its labored breathing was close now, the sound was palpable enough I could practically feel it on my neck. 

My hands shifted upon the mallet handle. Solid, real. I swung my body around the pillar, and as soon as my view locked on the professor’s body I swung the mallet. My weapon collided with its spinal chord with a hard crack. I pushed the impact further, even when the metal hit flesh and bone. The professor fell in a heap and I stumbled forward. Its hands sprawled out, gripping at the floor for purchase but its legs refused to move in turn. 

But it realized its jaw still could move. The professor let out a thick, curdled scream.

Terror spiked through my blood, I would be swarmed in no time. My stumbling feet broke into another run, slipping across the floor and barging into the library’s doors. I slammed them behind me, desperately clicking the lock in place.

I was going to end this.

I whipped around, ready to move my final pawn and win in checkmate, but my feet stayed rooted to the ground. 

Ingrid’s figure, swathed in pale clothes, stood against the black backdrop of the library. She knew I would come here, she anticipated my strategy. Mother knows best, after all. 

I couldn’t run. The door was bared and the professors searching for me knew I was behind it. Ingrid blocked my way to the study room. I could see its light still on, glowing white.

“We really did want to help you, Miriam.” Ingrid said. I noticed her arm was dangling uselessly at her side.

“I’m afraid I don’t see your kind intentions.” If I could keep her talking, maybe I could run past, or incapacitate her. I needed to stay keen. Three moves ahead.

“There’s something much uglier inside of you than the Stranger. The Beholding spit its filth into you. Your new body is clean. Did you think we could loose you to the Eye, Miriam? Your own mothers?”

“You’re not my mother.”

“But I am, just as Aphaea is. We were the ones who raised you, cared for you better than the originals ever would have.”

“I never knew my actual parents?”

“We are your actual parents.” Silence. I subtly twisted the mallet between my palms. “Miriam, darling, we can make this better. Things can return to the way they were, you just need to trust me,” she held out her one good arm, a mock invitation of a hug. “Come here, dear. Drop that silly thing. I love you so much.”

My breathing was labored, hitched in my chest. I think I was crying. I heard the mallet drop against the floor with a heavy thud. My feet shuffled forward, and I rested my body against Ingrid’s. Her arm wrapped around my back. Both of mine curled around hers. She smoothed my matted, blood knotted hair.

With every ounce of strength I had, I used my arms to throw Ingrid to the side of her broken arm. She had nothing to catch herself on, and fell without stopping. Her hand in my hair held fast, yanking me down with her. Her fingers tore out a lock of hair, burning my scalp. I threw out my arms to catch myself, kicking backwards to release her grip on my head. It loosened and I scrambled toward the mallet waiting for me on the ground. I kicked as I scrambled, hitting finger and palm, keeping them at bay until my hand wrapped around the now familiar handle. Mallet in hand, my legs pulled under me, launching me to full height and I stared down at Ingrid’s body. Her free hand looked mangled and I took the opportunity without second thought. My foot kicked her onto her back and my knees dropped to either side of her neck. 

The mallet raised above my head like a halo, and I swung down. Blood flew up onto my already filthy face, bits of bone scratching past my cheek. The mallet was stuck for a moment within the flesh, but I yanked upward threw it down again. Again, and again, and again. I couldn’t tell if I was screaming because the sick sound of metal meeting flesh on repeat like a sick broken record drowned out everything else.

I no longer recognized Ingrid. Now, she truly wasn’t my mother.

My knees wobbled as I rose, one eye locked on the pummeled face. I forced my heavy body toward the study room, and the precious matches within. Its glow welcomed me back.

The books caught first. So old and dry, the pages made for efficient kindling. In no time, the shelves, too, were crawling with flames, warding away the dark as they spread. The smoke grew faster than I expected. My breathing was getting more difficult by the second and with the flame rushing ever closer to the library doors, it was time for me to escape. The fire exit was past Ms. Torres old checkout desk. 

As I jogged, sweat mingling with the gore across my body, I couldn’t stop myself from ducking into my study room one last time. My dirty fingernails found the loose floorboard easily, and the black leather book inside. I tucked it safely under my arm. The sage Ms. Torres had gifted me was withered upon the study room desk. With the last matches, I set it alight to consume the study room behind me.

On the other side of the fire exit, the night air felt like the most rejuvenating thing I’d ever tasted. I wasn’t done yet, though. I needed to make sure my work was final, that the building would burn to hell and the things inside with it. I rounded the building lethargically. The heat was strong, I could feel the flames working through the ancient woodworks. Smoke shrouded the front entrance. The grand doors of Walpoole University and its historical plaque were no longer visible through the unforgiving black matter and the heat it brought behind.

Walpoole University, my home, was burning. I stayed to watch, blood soaked and a book clutched to my chest. Sirens began to wail, far enough away that I knew they wouldn’t make it in time.

With my heart clogged in my throat, I turned to flee. A white blemish among the smoke made me stop. I squinted my one eye, trying to make out who or what it was, but by the horrid feeling in my stomach, I already knew. Its white flesh was burnt in some places but utterly unmistakable: the body I built. My replacement. I stared, and as I looked at the pale figure backed by smoke and flame, a singular green eye looked back.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

- … There is… a lot to cover with this one, but I’ll start here: Walpoole University was a college located just outside of Boston, where the Penn Institute is located. The building caught fire a week ago due to “faulty wiring,” but this statement proves otherwise, if it is to be believed.

- It keeps coming back to skinsnatching. Lovely. Ms. Walpoole is currently recovering from her injuries, so we aren’t able to speak to her, but the statement has enough depth and detail that I think we’ll do fine without a follow-up interview.

- The professor and librarian mentioned in the statement were both confirmed as missing, not dead, though whatever creature this was certainly did not leave them alive, from what I can tell.

- The strange books described in the statement seem like Leitners–they fit the mysterious supernatural book requirement, so I don’t believe there’s much more to look into there–when I’m able to speak to Ms. Walpoole I may ask her if I can take a look at the books, but that’s not my top priority at the moment.

- Finally, we seem to have a name for the monster behind the Skinsnatcher, if these similarities mean anything. The Stranger. This statement doesn’t go into the specifics of what the Stranger is, so I’ll probably have to do my own digging on that front. It also mentions something called the Beholding--or the Eye? It could use both names. I don’t know what it is, but it feels important.

- I think this statement is pretty solid. There’s not much I feel I can argue against–there are probably plenty of people inclined to disagree, but I believe Ms. Walpoole wholeheartedly.