V THE LONG VERSION
Saturday 23rd February 1923
The pattern repeats itself
5.45 PM, Brophy Lane. With Banks conscious and patched up as best as Ludwig could manage without medical supplies, the investigators climbed around the festering corpse of the Beddow’s monster to access the upstairs of Makryat’s shop. We passed through the small sitting room and into the study beyond to discover the rug had been rolled back to expose an exact replica of the disturbing pattern in the cellar. This time painstakingly etched into the floorboards in exquisite detail. The rug was laid flat last time we were here. Obviously someone else has been in in the meantime. Ludwig took a book from one of the bookshelves and tossed it onto the pattern. Nothing happened.
The Scroll of the Left Hand
Banks searched the study. It didn’t take long to notice the obvious. On the desk top was a scroll, rolled and closed with a red wax seal. Beside it lay a note: “Master, as you instructed. The simulacrum must be present. Your servant.” Finally, we possessed all of the scrolls. The Duc will be pleased. Banks continues his search, which takes him into the bedroom. There’s nothing to see. He puts his ear to the wardrobe and swears he can hear someone breathing.
Coming out of the closet
Letty throws open the wardrobe door while Percy aims his shotgun. There’s a middle-aged man inside, dishevelled and crouched down low in a ball. He was covering his face and whimpering. Through his loosely interlocking fingers, Banks spies a bloodied marking on the man’s forehead. Someone has cut the disturbing esoteric pattern into the man’s flesh. Banks calls Ludwig into the bedroom.
A missing piece of the jigsaw?
Ludwig takes a guess at the man’s identity. Could he be Arthur Bowman, the missing teacher as reported in the newspaper article? The man wouldn’t be providing any answers. His mind was shattered and he refused to speak. He wouldn’t comply with being examined. It was all Ludwig could do to drag the poor sod out of the wardrobe and make him more comfortable on the bed.
Back in the room
Father Mika broke the seal and unravelled the scroll. It was ancient. The scroll was a mix of illustrations and text. The illustration that immediately drew the eye was one of a man in armour radiating light. Beneath it, was text in the flowing script of an archaic form of Arabic. A slip of paper had been rolled up in the scroll, with a transcript of the Arabic recently penned. Written in a neat hand was a phonetic transcription of a passage from the scroll, inked in the Latin alphabet. The ritual of cleansing made recitable for those unable to decipher the original script. The work of the servant who left the note with the scroll for his master, no doubt.
The Ritual of Cleansing… my arse!
The mystery note stated the Simulacrum must be present. Each of us laid down their piece of the Simulacrum in the centre of the carved pattern. Everyone stood round and steeled themselves. Pierre, Cartwright, Mika, Ludwig, Banks, Percy and Letty. Expectancy abounded. The scroll was passed around those assembled, and from the phonetic transcript each read aloud a few lines at a time, repeating the words, over and over; hesitant at first, until it picked up in confidence and became a chant. The room dimmed in response. The atmosphere was palpable, skin tingled with energy and minds slipped into narrow focus. Something was working.
The thoroughly rotten demise of Simon Percy
Suddenly Percy faltered. A scream erupted, but one that only Percy alone could hear. It came not from the aether, not from any mouth, but from inside his own skull.
A voice clawed through Percy’s mind, shrill and endless, echoing against thought itself. With it came a sensation like acid: a slow, caustic drip of madness seeping through memory, reason, and soul. Every certainty began to dissolve.
There was however, no final cry.
Instead, consciousness guttered and faded, like the dying glow of a projection lamp at the end of a forgotten reel. The light flickered… dimmed… and went out. The body remained.
Before our eyes, Percy’s form warped. Bone twisted. Flesh stretched and puckered. Limbs contorted at angles no living thing should endure; reshaping themselves into a grotesque parody of something once human—once alive. The transformation was wet, violent, and impossibly wrong.
Inside that disintegrating shell, the mind had already gone black. Forever.
We stood helpless as Percy died, and in that moment some terrible inevitability settled over us.
Within the rupturing mass that was once Simon Percy, we glimpse movement, shifting silhouettes beneath slick, livid flesh. The ghastly outline of Mehmet Makryat writhes into being, struggling outward as if forcing himself through living meat.
Makryat is reborn. But he has no skin.
His internal organs are fully exposed, an endless, obscene motion of wet anatomy. They slide and coil across his body like massive worms and glistening slugs crawling through translucent jelly. Nothing is still. Nothing is contained.
Set deep in his forehead burns a third eye, unblinking and terrible. Unlike the rest of him—unlike the sliding organs and crawling flesh—it remains fixed, locked forward, staring directly at us.
And we know, without doubt, that what looks back through that eye, knows us deeply.
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