Main Story: Intermission : Final Confession

The Deep Ones Project

By David Reichen


Intermission

Curse of Rayleh: Final Confession


Don't remember where I was
I realized life was a game
The more seriously I took things
The harder the rules became
My life passed before eyes
I found out how little I accomplish
All my plans denied

So as you read this know my friends
I'd love to stay with you all
Please smile when you think of me
My body's done that's all

{A Toute Le Monde, By Megadeth}




These are my final words. I confess them to the Lord, that even at my final moments in life, I still believe in. As I lay here, waiting for death to claim me, I reflect on the recent events that have brought me to this moment in time.

It was a proud little fleet that left port. Beautiful weather and the crew's high hopes of a successful mission to an undisclosed island near the Iberian Peninsula made it seem like a vacation cruise. We never suspected that what we were to encounter there could possibly exist

I was stationed on one of the ten ships that were assigned as an escort of some expensive looking private yacht. We were merely there to observe the activities of those who landed on the Island. A precaution which I thought of as to elaborate but I was unwilling to argue the point with my superiors, a Milk Run of an mission is always welcomed.

Everything went according to plan until the moment when they had gathered all of the heathen worshipers against their temple wall so that they could be properly disposed of. As the shots rang out across the water, things rapidly turned their worst.

The first and only hint that we had was that radio communications became unusable. Someone or something was jamming our signals. The next thing that happened was that our fleet of ships exploded. As they sank into the sea, what few of us that survived the blasts were attacked by mermaids. These mermaids were not the pleasant ones of Hans Christian Anderson but those of whom only the Brothers Grimm could dream of.

They left me there, barely alive, floating amongst the wreckage. I drifted in and out of delirium for what seemed like an eternity. I must have been rescued by a passing merchant ship for I did not recall clearly much until I was taken from the ship. I woke up while they were transferring me to our local base of operations in that area.

I gladly would have joined the rest of my shipmates, in their watery grave, but it was not my fate. Instead, I was brought before the council to relay my observations of what became of the fleet that was sent to subdue the small island village. I tried hard to convince them of what happened but they did not think that such things that I described could possible occur. They even went as far as suggesting that the whole fleet was lost to some freak mechanical failure and that I was mistaken in what I saw that day. I saw what I saw and no amount of their constant persuasion could make me forget what happened there, those were ten ships in perfect repair when they left and none returned.

They reassigned me to a desk job, once they were finish in questioning me; however, a chance to go in the field once more came with a report of a group of scientists doing genetic experiments in the United States. This sort of thing is frowned on by our organization. I notified my supervisor, who then brought it to the attention of the Council of the Elders, who deemed it of sufficient urgency to dispatch a team to deal with it. I was given the task of accompanying one of the Elders. It was decided to only send us two to deal with the situation. How hard can it be, dealing with just two wayward souls?

After making our preparations, we went to the airport for our flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Upon arrival at the boarding gate, we were told that they had made a mistake in booking us on the fight we had chosen and that we would have to wait for the next one. Since we did not want to call undue attention to us, which getting angry at the perplexed clerk would have done, we decided that she was right and waited for another fight. Before we left, I decided to check and see if there was in fact no seats available on the fight we were to originally take. I found out that the plane had seats available when it departed. A team of soccer players had reserved seats but was unable to take the fight back home because their bus was stuck on the freeway, they missed their flight. Had we been more forward with the clerk, we would have already been on our way to America by then.

After landing at Kennedy Airport, we rushed to catch our flight from there to Boston. We missed that flight because our plane was put in a holding pattern when it reached New York, a wind shear warning was given at the time that the plane was to land. There was a glitch in the computers that issued the warning but no one noticed it until we had already landed.



As a result of the delays that we encountered, we missed getting to our connecting flight from New York to Boston.We ended up taking a commuter train to Boston and arrived there so late in the evening that we decided to spend the night at one of their fine hotels and take the bus from Boston to Arkham the next day.

Refreshed from our overnight stay in Boston, we were in a good mood the next morning and had an enjoyable ride to Arkham. It seemed that yesterday, all we were doing was going from one crisis to the next but today, all was going well for us. It felt like some force or entity that was toying with us yesterday had decided to leave us alone for the day. When I mentioned this to the Elder, I was chided at the time for being overly superstitious. How I wish now that he had believed me at the time, we may have been better prepared for what was to follow.

We took a cab from the bus station to the Miskatonic University and went to the Campus Information Center when we got there. We found out where the two scientists had the laboratory, in the Biology Department, and that they were there at the moment so that we could go over there and interview them. We told them that we were foreign correspondence sent from one of the Spanish newspapers, so we did not have to explain to them why we needed to see the two scientists.

When we got to their laboratory, they were not there. This left us free to do our Holy Work. The first thing we did was to download all of the information that they had stored on their computers and shred the contents of their hard drives, replacing what was stored on their hard disk with random data so that nothing could be recovered once we were done with siphoning their information. The process takes a while, even on the fastest computers, this left us with time to look the rest of the place over. While doing this, I spotted what had bought them to our attention, it was in the back of the work area. The fishy mouse that had caused such an uproar within our organization was swimming contentedly in its aquarium.

I called the Elder over to me, as I reached for a nearby fire extinguisher. When the Elder came to me, I pointed out the thing in the tank and hurled the fire extinguisher at the glass wall of the tank. The glass broke into shards and water cascaded onto the floor, carrying the abomination with it. As it lay on the floor, flapping around and gasping for breath, just like a fish out of water, the Elder crushed it under his shoe.

Once we were satisfied with the things demise, we waited for the computer work to finish. Sitting on the desk, where we were at, was a picture of the two heretics holding their monstrosity in the palms of their hands. There was a third person pictured there, standing between the two of them. In the published pictures, you could not get a clear view of this other person's face. The head was tilted down and the cap it wore made it hard to tell who it was. The picture that I was looking at had a clear view of the face and the glasses he was wearing. What really disturbed me the most was what he had hanging around his neck. It was one of the sigils of The Ancient Ones. We had finally found our mysterious force, a Merkur, a minion of Nyarlathotep and the Veiled King of Leng. At seeing this picture, it dawned on me that this was not a normal case of just a bunch of curious scientists meddling in things that they should not be concerning themselves with. There was a demon among us and in league with the beasts, Lord, have mercy on us all!

We logged onto the computer network and accessed the campuses personnel files, to find out who this other person was and where he might be located. It turned out to be someone named Lief Chancey, an obvious Allis. He had an office at the Advanced Computation Research Facility, on campus.


We finished our work, in the laboratory, and decided to confront the monster in his lair. When we got to the door leading to the demon's office, we took out our guns. I took a position next to the door while the Elder grabbed hold of the door and opened it. No sooner than when the door open, something shot through the doorway and hit me in the chest, it felt like a truck hit me. I fell to the floor. The Elder released the door, took aim and fired at our attacker. He missed hitting both of us as he fell to the floor himself, the attacker had swept the Elders leg out form under him making his aim off.

The attacker, which I had a good look at by then, was dressed in black, from head to foot. He got up and stood there, as if waiting for something to happen. An explosion, from within the office, blew smoke into the hallway we were. Through the obscuring smoke, I saw him quickly reach into his pockets and draw something out in each of his hand. Thin threads streaked out from what he held and connected with both of us, laying on the floor. Both the Elder and I convulsed for a few seconds and then it was all over for us. The shock must have somehow shorted out most of our nervous systems out, making it impossible to even whimper. The smoke cleared after this and our attacker casually walked away from us, as if going for a leisurely stroll.

The security guards, sent to investigate the source of the explosion, found us there on the floor. They called an ambulance, when they found out that we could not move. The Elder died before the Emergency Technicians reached us and was sent to the morgue. He must have known want was to happen later. I was not so lucky. They rushed me to Arkham Medical Center and put me in a private room after they did test to find out why I was unresponsive but not in too critical a condition. They put armed guards outside the room because they guessed that we had destroyed the laboratory of the heathens. They also thought that we blew up the computers that were in the office that we were trying to get into but I could not tell them that they were wrong.


Tonight, moments ago, it is dark and eery shadows play upon the walls of my hospital room. Some of the shadows coalesce to one and it emerge from the wall, flowing into the room. It looks like a giant black slug. Slithering on the floor, it moves to my bed. It oozes on top the bed with me, opens its great mouth and swallows me, head first. It engulfs me through that slimy mouth and I move deeper into its throat.

It is impossible to breathe now as I lay here, choking, unable to move, gasping for just one more lung full of air but it will not come. I know that my life is drawing to an end so I make peace with my maker and wait for the inevitable.



If my heart was still alive
I know it would surely break
And my memories left with you
There is nothing more left to say

Moving on is a simple thing
What it leaves behind is hard
You know the sleeping feel no pain
And the living are scarred.

{A Toute Le Monde, By Megadeth}