the story thus far

Book 1 (06.07): The Providence Prophecies

"We lie on the placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction have hitherto harmed us little;" - H.P. Lovecraft, 1926.

Some of us had known Bryce for years. He was one of the few original Sentries still around from the founding of the Outpost back at the dawn of the new millennium. When you know someone that long, it is hard to imagine that they had kept their insanity a secret from you - but then he wasn't the only Sentry with secrets. Even the boil seemed to feed on secrets.

Kevin, a tech savvy performance artist, happily admitted to attending an event resembling a Chorazos ritual, but then also claimed not to remember any details in the hedonistic fog. Howard, who dropped out of the graduate program at Miskatonic University after some kind of accident, argued that Chorazos was rumored to be behind that as well (and then only because the deaths happened on a Halloween.) Other stories emerged about a time in 2003 when many Sentries chose to leave the Outpost and conflicts nearly tore them apart.

B.A.'s nightmares continued to trap her in a city turning on itself in chaos, but our dreamers found ways to connect to her. Her personals seemed to sense that some dream elements were connected with particular places and people, but never in the ways we expected them to be. Sometimes her dream images seemed directly connected to us, like the image of Providence the dog.

Then some of those personals revealed that Kevin had visited B.A. in Florida, and that he showed B.A. one of the strange letters he had received but never shared with us. Even more surprising, she claimed she never mailed any packages to us, and yet still felt a connection to Kevin as soon as he walked in the door. That wasn't all that Kevin faced: his personal computer had all the signs of the same intrusion that happened on the Outpost. By the time our techno-wizards explored the intrusion, the boil began to reveal its worst secret yet.

We hadn't heard from Kevin in days, so Marie tried to reach him on the phone. His father's voice answered on the other end of the line, confirming our suspicions.

We had lost another.