There are indeed too many humans on this world. In the past nature was able to curtail them, through plagues and famines and their own deep-seated desire for violence. Now however such methods do not go far enough. Nature waits for the inevitable collision, certain she will then be avenged. Even as she herself is ravaged, she will cry out in victory.

With my next post I will begin a new story. You place much truth in written recordings. It happens that I possess one of the very few written records of Xhol magic. Perhaps its telling will convince you.

The second year of His Rule. The year is known as 689 in the heathen calendar. It is the thirteenth month and the second week.

Today my liege was visited by a traveler. A man of white skin and red cloak, who claimed lordship over small lands in the northwest. He gave to my liege a beautiful ring with a green stone, which he called a “stone of Nat-ruul.”

My liege did not share the full discussion he had with this man. They spoke of some topic in quiet words for many moments in private. Then the traveler gestured in such a way toward the throne, and my liege leaped up as though struck. He ordered the traveler to leave in a booming voice. And to never again enter our lands under pain of lifelong imprisonment.

The traveler laughed rudely in response. He is a fool to displease my liege. Men have died for such actions before my eyes. Yet this traveler was not approached by the royal guards. He departed untouched, allowed to leave his insult in the royal presence. I have never seen this occur.

He called himself a lord, and yet spat in the face of grand Kutran? Either my liege was in generous spirits this day, or there is another reason why he chose not to respond to mockery. Perhaps he is of great influence elsewhere, or he has an army.

This concludes my recording of the day’s events.

==============

Yatoslan, Scribe of the Court for the Grand Kutran, Ruler of Volga Bulgaria

The seventh year of His Rule. The year is known as 694 in the heathen calendar. It is the first month and the first week.

He returned! The red-cloaked traveler, the foreign lord! I remember him well. His sneer insulted our grand ruler; he lived only by the generosity of my liege.

I must write this down quickly. My liege did not give me leave to do so. They have gone into the royal chambers. I can hear my liege shouting something at him. The guards are coming up the hallway. Wait, I can hear. This ‘lord’ is cal

Here the transcript ends. The remainder was burned away in some distant night.

“Is that it?” Angela whispered.

Her three companions all looked in the direction she pointed. Off to the left of the old weed-tufted road was a gloom-ridden block of a building. Abandoned long ago, complete with empty window-slats and brittle dead ivy creeping through the gaping holes in dull white-painted walls.

“Yep. That’s the old Razor,” said Walker.

The four of them stood watching the long-empty Hessh Asylum for several moments. Sunlight crawled back from them toward the horizon. As if it waited for spooky music, or for some crazed old man to run out at them from the scraggly forest grown over the land.

Garrett grinned at both of the girls accompanying them. “It was built in 1816,” he started. His voice went nasal on the ‘in,’ for which he quickly admonished himself and cleared his throat. “They called it ‘The Razor’ because of all the lobotomies performed while it was open.”

Danielle gave Garrett a solidly-patronizing smirk, face half-hidden by her long blonde hair. “And how long was that, hmm?”

“33 years!” Garrett replied, pointing skyward. His eyes practically glowed behind his glasses.

“Not very long,” Walker said. He snorted. “Guess the residents didn’t like the decor!” He chuckled at his own joke.

Angela shifted in place. “Can we just get the rock you need and go? I don’t want to get stuck out here after dark. I mean, it was hard enough finding our way–”

“Not to worry!” Garrett piped out. “I brought a map that shows the way. And an extra flashlight.” He grinned over at Angela, cheeks mashing upward.

Danielle pulled on Walker’s arm. “Come on, let’s go see the place. Maybe we can have some fun inside.”

Garrett rushed past Walker, his legs much shorter (and more eager) than the basketball player’s. Angela wrung her hands while following them in.

1849
Nurse Sandoval raced up the main hallway, the faint echo of her heels on the tile buried under the yelling all around.

Ahead of her lay an old man, facedown just outside an open cell door. Gray-white hair squashed under him jutted out around his ears.

Sandoval kneeled down, pulled up on his right shoulder, and brushed his beard down. “Mr. Sanderson, are you all right?”

Mr. Sanderson stared at her, panic in his wrinkle-framed eyes. Not the distant kindness he usually showed the staff. “It doesn’t matter,” he mumbled. Lips quivering as though he would cry. “Jurrecz will come. We won’t remember.”

Nurse Sandoval stared blankly for a moment. Normally they ignore patient ramblings. But Sanderson’s sincerity radiated from his eyes.

She touched the cross around her neck.

Why would he be scared of Jesus?

“Come on Mr. Sanderson. Up you go.” She looped an arm around his shoulder. Mr. Sanderson got to his feet, allowing her to direct him back into his cell.

When she closed the door, Mrs. Taylor was waiting in the hall.

“For your own good,” she croaked. Glaring past Nurse Sandoval as if the much younger woman wasn’t there. “Twice a day.”

Nurse Sandoval sighed. Mrs. Taylor never said anything except parroting the nurses & orderlies’ daily phrases. As far as she knew, it was the reason her children had left her here 5 years ago.

Sandoval walked around Mrs. Taylor, leaving her standing in the long cold hall. She was fine on her own. The violent episodes only came when she was forced toward someplace.

At the end of the hall was a T-junction; hall to the left, hall to the right, & a door in front of her to the staff offices. Nurse Sandoval had intended to enter the office and take her break. But a shuffling caught her attention, drawing her eyes to the leftside hall.

Patients milling about was common in the Hessh Asylum. But not over there. Not from the walled room hallway. No one went over there. The hallway wasn’t even lit.

Yet she could see the outline of a young man in pants and a strange decorated shirt, without a patient’s gown on. He was hammering his fists on the exterior of the Walled Room. Screaming in a squeaky youthful voice, “Let me out! Let me out, please!”

NOW
“Woah. They weren’t kidding,” Walter said. His eyes drifted over their surroundings.

Inside the long-deserted asylum the four students were surrounded by a ruined skeleton of a building. To their right was a long broad hallway, lit here and there by open patches in the ceiling letting in moonlight. Scraps littered the floor, everything from cracked tiles to small weeds. Jagged holes stood in the walls on all sides, like black-filled sentries.

Angela breathed out, one hand gripping the other elbow. “Is it…did they paint it like this?”

“No,” Garrett said, shaking his head. Eyes on the gaping hole across from them, tracing along the edge. “Guess the story’s true.”

Walker crouched, long legs splaying out like a spider’s to both sides. He picked up the nearest chunk of masonry to him. “Yeah. Look. It’s red. All the way through.”

They stood facing the long central hallway now. Some of what they thought were holes turned out to be doors. Doors opening into cramped patient cells. A warehouse row to store dregs of humanity.

And every wall around them was an ugly, grimy red.

Danielle shifted in place. “It looks like blood. Is it supposed to look like that?”

Garrett nodded. He remembered the flashlight in his hand, and turned it on. “The story is that the walls all turned ‘the color of blood’ after the patients disappeared. Some people thought the staff killed them all. Others said the devil took them. That’s why the walls are all stained.”

A hollow noise came from somewhere down the hallway. Air grating. Wisps of sound.

Walker froze half-standing. The red masonry chunk cradled in one hand. “Dude. You hear that?”

Garrett gave his friend an inquisitive look. Angela bit her lip, saying nothing. Danielle however snorted. “Oh come on. His voice echoed and you’re all scared?”

She grabbed Walker’s right hand with both of hers. “Come on big guy. I want to see the old scary loony bin.” She gave a cutesy pout. “Won’t you protect me?”

“But, he got his frat pledge,” Angela said, pointing toward the masonry chunk in Walker’s hand. “He got what he came for. Let’s go okay?”

“Fascinating!” Garrett suddenly added. He had moved a few steps into the hallway to examine another of the torn-out holes in the walls. He rubbed two fingers along its edge, pushing flecks of red dust off.

“It IS red all the way through.” The scrawny teen wrinkled his nose to adjust his glasses. “Look at this as well–the rubble on the floor.”

Angela looked where he aimed the flashlight down toward his feet. “It’s just a few rocks,” she said, still eager to leave.

“Exactly!” Garrett beamed at her. His face was half-covered by reflected blobs of light, turning the expression into a warped, wicked-looking grin. Angela wasn’t quite as pretty as Danielle. But that was okay. If he could just impress her, maybe she would be nice to him. He could ask her out–just keep trying! “Where’d all the rest of it go? There should be a lot more debris here.”

“Well let’s go find it,” said Danielle. The shadows covered her slight smirk. She pulled on Walker’s arm again. He took a few half-hearted steps forward.

“Great idea!” trumpeted Garrett. Then he took off down the hallway. The flashlight beam bounced over dirt-coated floor patches and holes in walls.

“Hey Garrett, wait up!” Walker called after his friend.

But darkness had closed about the flashlight. Garrett was out of sight.

NEWBETWEEN
Whenisitnow
Weunsure
Onepulled
One?
Weremember
Wallsbrokedown

Garrett coughed. The dim hallway had few cobwebs, but dust jumped up at him with every step.

He felt slightly ridiculous at running on ahead like that. The others hadn’t followed him. And he’d readily admit it; most of his reason for being here was impressing the girls. He learned all he could about the Hessh “Razor” Asylum to show how smart a guy he was. Girls said they liked smart guys—don’t they?

Swatting at another cloud of dust, he blinked as he found himself facing a wall. What? He flicked the flashlight up, another crack-riddled red concrete face showing in the beam.

Did he get turned around?

He looked over his shoulder. Grim darkness greeted him on all sides. Only the wall was distinct.

Where was he?

“Okay, don’t worry Garrett,” he said to himself. His voice emulated a quivering reed. “You can’t get lost in here. There’s a dozen ways to get out through the walls. Just find your way back, or get out through a hole. And then ask Angela out on the way home. Yeah.”

Then an airy sound breathed out of the blackness on all sides. Like a dozen disparate noises circling him.
“Oooouuuutttt….?”

1849
Doctor Gunther Merriweather sat in the meeting room at the far end of the main hallway. A thick tuna sandwich hung between his beefy hands, its innards trying hard to slide back out onto the table before he could take another bite.

Nurse Sandoval walked in the door, nudging the head doctor’s eyes up toward her. Lovely woman, to his sentiments. Pity he’d been married to a nagging shrew for…what, has it been 35 years now? And the staff wondered why he preferred being here, among crazies, over his own home?

Nurse Sandoval came right up to him. He saw a paleness on her face that wasn’t a frequent visitor to the ordinarily-vibrant woman. “Doctor,” she said. “I just saw something.”

Dr. Merriweather licked some tuna off his finger. “What something?”

Sandoval rubbed her left arm. “Well, it was…there was a young man in the hall. The Walled Room hallway. I’m sure he wasn’t a patient either. He had strange clothes on, not a gown or anything.”

Dr. Merriweather chewed on his next bite. He grimaced as the last of the sun’s rays intruded on his eyesight from the window off to his left. “Strange clothes. Is that all?”

The nurse shook her head, dark blonde hair wagging back and forth over her cheeks. “No sir. He was pounding his fists on the Walled Room. And he kept yelling, ‘Let me out!’ I tried talking to him, but he didn’t seem to hear me.”

Merriweather made a small noise in his throat and put down his sandwich. A little tuna finally crept out the side. He grunted at it. “Sounds like a patient to me. Get Mr. Hunt to help you bring him to a cell. I think #32 is still open if you can’t find his. He can spend the night there; I’ll look him up in the morning.”

Nurse Sandoval frowned. The idea struck her as unlikely to work. The yelling boy didn’t belong here. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she felt it was true. All the same, she wouldn’t get any more out of Dr. Merriweather once he’d made a pronouncement. So she nodded and turned on her heel to leave.

Then Nurse Winfield burst into the meeting room, hands up, face white. “They’re gone!” she shouted out, panting furiously. “The patients, they’ve all vanished!”

NOW
Danielle giggled at the decrepit remains of one of the asylum’s patient cells.

Walker shot her a funny look. Standing on the other side of what was left of a metal-backed cot, he watched her face. “What’s funny Danielle?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head, then gave the basketball star a playful look. “Just thought it was a pity the beds are broken like this.”

Walker blinked, and looked down. The cot was only a rust-coated frame now, with scraggles of old mattress springs and flecks of brittle cloth atop it like some nightmare forest.

“Girl, what’s going through your head?”

Danielle simply smiled at him.

Angela, pressed to the yawning doorway with Garrett’s extra flashlight in her hand, rolled her eyes.

Danielle suddenly changed the subject. “Why’d you bring the nerd along, Walker? He’s funny, but really.”

Walker pointed at her. Long and lanky, his arm almost reached across the cell entirely. “Don’t you go calling him that again, y’hear? Garrett’s my friend. Has been since 6th grade. He’s got more the right to be out here with me than you.” Walker snorted and went for the cell door.

Danielle followed him out into the hall – breezing past Angela as if she wasn’t there – and stuck herself in front of Walker. “He doesn’t have these, though,” she said, pushing her breasts together with her hands.

Angela snorted air out of her mouth. “Danielle, honestly. Let’s just find Garrett and go already.” The darker-haired girl looked up along the rotted ceiling, its surface riddled with gloomy pockmarks and dangling bits of aged white tile.

Walker, despite being honestly tempted by the display in front of him, mustered the resolve to walk around Danielle. It wasn’t the first time a girl offered herself, eager to take advantage of his image around campus. Walker may be the school’s best chance for a new league title. Danielle would love to brag to girlfriends about him.

Okay, he’d love to brag at the frat house about Danielle too. But dissing Garrett wasn’t—

Up ahead he heard a whisper.

Walker’s pace slowed on its own. “Hey Garrett? It’s me. Don’t do nothing stupid man, you’ll scare the girls.”

Danielle scoffed, a few steps behind him. Angela, half-hidden behind their flashlight’s weak halo, said nothing.

As they went further up the long broad hallway, the whispers continued. The sound grew close enough to shape a pitch. That of an old woman.

Walker became aware of pebbles scuffing under his shoes. It was an old woman’s voice, yes – croaking syllables, huffs between words. He could hear words now. It sounded like his grandma.

What would she be doing here?

“For your own good.”

An old woman’s muttering. Coming from…the next cell on the right.

“Administered daily.”

The part of him that gripped the chunk of masonry wanted to turn around. Or throw it. But the part that didn’t know better kept moving his feet.

“For your own good,” the voice croaked.

Walker reached the cell, its open doorway welcoming him as a spider would a fly. Danielle behind him, pressed to his side. Angela still hung back in the hall. He gulped, and looked inside the cell.

What he saw made no sense at all.

Here now is the last piece of the Riddle of Meln’k, the Spider Prophetess who scaled the walls of El’Shem’Kri. Who will die in the Insect War to build the dead insect god Knk’k-lusz.

The truths she presents are mysteries of time. Contained within the riddle are four secrets. Solve it and gain fore-knowledge.

Here are the previous verses:
Verse 1 of 4
Verse 2 of 4
Verse 3 of 4

Solve it if you can. I await your guesses.

The third verse of four. Meln’k has not yet described what she found inside the peak chamber of El’Shem’Kri…that will come with the final verse.

Who is the ’she’? I confess I never pried this answer from Meln’k herself. I suspect it a reference to The Woman Enwebbed, but cannot be certain until the Woman awakens.

Which she will not do until Meln’k dies.

Did I give too much away there? Perhaps.

Local Boys Discover Walled-Up Room at ‘Razor’ Asylum

April 13, 1952

NEWARK, N.J. – A trio of teenage boys made a gruesome discovery at the site of the former “Razor” asylum last night.

The three boys, after vandalizing one of the long-abandoned Hessh Asylum’s inner walls in what they termed ‘just a bit of fun,’ discovered a sealed-off room in the process.

“We just wanted to see in the Razor,” said Sherman Multin, one of the three teen boys. “We found a couple walls that weren’t torn up like the others. John brought a sledgehammer, so he knocked a hole out of one. That’s when we saw it.”

“It” was the full skeleton of a human male, imprisoned in a windowless room built at some point during the asylum’s operating years. It was slumped against one pitted cement wall, facefirst. On the walls surrounding the skeleton, the no-doubt former patient had painted a large number of weird symbols.

“Frankly, I don’t know what they mean,” said Patrick Wildfire, psychologist and nephew of Dr. Anna Wildfire, responsible for the construction and naming of the Hessh Asylum in 1804. “I never even knew about a room like this. All the symbols look like gobbledygook. Some poor soul’s ravings, I’d call it. That’s all.”

Nicknamed “The Razor” due to its high number of lobotomy patients, the Hessh Asylum operated from 1804 to 1849. It closed in the summer of 1849 due to a sudden, violent collapse of the main building and an alarming number of patients gone missing. Even today, over thirty patients remain unaccounted for.

Its last administrator, Dr. Henry Merriweather, made several bizarre claims about his patients’ behavior before the collapse. As Dr. Merriweather was committed shortly after the Razor’s roof caved in, these claims are likely baseless.

The three boys were released to their parents after they flagged down a police officer and drove with him back to the police station. None of the parents decided to comment for this story.

The symbols found on the room’s walls have been copied and sent to Dr. Stephen Crestfall, a linguistics expert at Stanford University in California, for study. Perhaps they had some meaning to the unnamed patient. Other efforts to determine the patient’s identity have turned up nothing.

In a bizarre final note, police found one word that was written in English on the walls. However the word – “Jurrecz” – has no known meaning.

These circumstances were forced. I don’t know this house. I don’t even know when I am.
I must have done something to get me here.

It’s like some god put seeds in our minds from before. When we will make him mad some time in the future. That makes sense, right? No, how could it?

I thought it was seven, but it’s 4. Seven was the Knives I saw for cutting the gates open.

4 is worse. 4 is faster.

Only 8 Keys left!

It hurts me to think. I shouldn’t try, there’s something inside…

ONLY AEYONS SUN EERIE TWIN MOTE CREST LAIRDS WASTES ARMORS PIERCE MUU HIDDEN GATES BEYOND ONCE MUSED RITE CXL GOD INSECT MEN FORCES IMMIX BURSTER MERGE

What is that? What did I write?

Oh proto-gods, I see it. Every four. Every four!

The mammalian brain changes its thoughts, and reality grates upon that new perception. Clashing truth to belief. Sometimes reality gives way. Or perception adjusts. Only will may decide this, at any given moment.

The question of the parallel then arises. Which is order, and which is chaos?

Most fools would presume that human perception is fundamentally chaotic. Unable to focus, difficult to process. Reality however does not change from blink to blink. This must be true; it always has been. Yes?

Heh.

What if I told you that Order was perception, and reality was Chaos? What would you think if perception was what pulled you back from absolute electrifying madness?

It is true. The universes are insane.

As bracing as such a concept may be, consider its further implications. If perception paints an order upon it in which the human mind may function…what happens when you change your perception?

Can you change the color of songs, of thoughts, of color itself? Yes. There is a power in this. Build what you wish to see. Take turpentine to physics or nature.

But a price must also be paid. And when it is…there will come a moment when perception goes awry. As it finally, inevitably does.

There are incidents where perception shattered in the wake of chaos. A few of these incidents you have recorded in history; I will reveal them at a later date. What is important to learn from them is a truth abominable to human understanding.

Chaos is not bound by time.

Things done now (not perceived) may affect the past. They bend themselves into existence by brittling Time’s arrow.

And the future is influenced by the present. Both can be equally warped, but in different directions. It has happened because it will happen. Reality obeys Chaos, and Chaos does not coincide with the notion of before-now-after.

When the warping of today collides with the implacable whorls of tomorrow…what happens then?

The universal walls of Order – of Perception – begin to fray.

And in between those frays lurk the Arms That Howl.

Does she live? Sleep?
Is her spirit chained?
The skin a garment
What moves between shown in their weaves

When Meln’k is gone
Realms fold
The Woman Enwebbed
Lifts her head at last

Too deep in truth
Realms will cull
You may not like what you find
You may not like what you awaken.

The sights from El’Shem’Kri Spire haunted Meln’k. Even a spider can have nightmares.

Meln’k went to the Inevitable Call for peace. For a chance to rid herself of the truth, escaping into the bliss that is blackness between existences.

Unfortunately for her, her tale is not yet over. That day is for me to decide.

Thus far you have seen half of her great riddle. I decreed that when it was solved, she would have her escape. But none have solved it yet…for its solution is not merely one phrase or idea. Four secrets are tangled within its quatrains. Only when all four are unraveled shall the Spider Prophetess know peace.