Stars Of Madness

Chapter 1: The Hidden

What was that sound? That accused sound....it rings throughout the halls of my mind permeating through every nerve and enticing every sense. It sounds like a crack, or a snap, or even a break? But what is breaking; glass, fragile rock, or just a simple toy? This sound, however, had a certain flesh like sound, like the one when you pick up jello, or when you stumble upon a jellyfish on the beach. I wondered whether this disguised sound was hidden for a reason, or am I just not meant to see entirely? I suppose only time will tell.

I woke up around 7:30, the light from the window made the room ignite in a slight orange haze of color, making my white room seem almost pink in comparison. I decided to just sit on my bed and observe outside my window. It was quite early in the morning so no-one would be out at this time, but since I live in a suburban area people are usually always outside at some point during the day. Already at this time of morning my neighbor, Mrs. Kelly, a middle-aged woman with blonde hair, was outside jogging. I was going to say hello, but I refrained from doing so because she might find it odd that I would say hello this early. I continued to look out the window observing my neighborhood seeing all that I could see, my car was still parked outside from last night's adventure to the local supermarket, that was a grave mistake. I looked at my phone for the time and it was 7:46, I guess it was time to go on ahead to work. I hopped off my bed and started down the stairs to my living room. My dog Magnus, a German shepherd, was downstairs waiting for me. He was sitting at the bottom of the stairs waiting for me, his head tilted slightly in a playful manner.

"How's it going this morning Mag?"

He barked back at me with what seemed like reassurement, I nodded and fed him some food, my home was large, so I kept most of my work stuff in my basement and I worked in the living room on my laptop. My work consisted of collecting rare and unique items to be sold on the open market, me and my co-workers would get online every day to sell these peculiar items; that is after we retrieved them from the crooks and crevices of the world. A recent find by one of my colleagues was that of a strange book, I was fortunate enough to have look before he took it home, it was bound in a leathery like substance that was yet to be identified and was spoken in legends to have powerful spells in it that could rival, "The Old Gods." Which is just a bunch of superstious nonsense and myths created overtime to give the book some character. And it had a symbol on the front of it that resembled a star of some kind, but it was not a natural kind of star, but it was also intentional in design and form. It had weird almost ghost-like spectacles of fire rising from its curved and twisted lines and its lines folded in a perplexing and impossible way. And what lay in the middle of the star was almost resemblant to an eye, yet its retina was unrecognizable, fire also rose from this in its ghostly haze.

Its strangeness was still bewildering to me despite my many years of collecting. To be frank, I have been collecting and selling for about 10 years and nothing at that time struck me as strange as this was. I tried to draw it to prove to myself that it was just a cleverly drawn picture but I through the next 13 minuets could not figure out how it was done. This was truly one of the more unique books I have seen. Intrigued by this book I decided to look for it and references for it online and abroad. Eventually after tireless hours of searching I had found something that had given me a name, it was supposedly called, "The Book of the Dead." I found this to be somewhat underwhelming because of this books peculiarity so I thus kept searching, I happened upon another name for it, "Necronomicon." This name sounded much more fitting for a book such as this, with this information I emailed my co-worker Gavin, the one who found the book.

"Hey! I think I may have found a name for the book that you found. It is supposedly called the Necronomicon. We can just call it Necro for short, I think."

"Very nice, I was hoping I would be able to find a name for it at some point. I managed to also find who wrote it as well, it was written by a "mad poet," he was an Arab called Abdul Alhazred. He was called insane because of his heretical beliefs in the eyes of the Islamic religion."

"Did you find anything more specific than that?"

"Why are you so curious about the book?"

"It's just piqued my interest is all."

"Fair enough. Our poet was accused of being a worshiper of "false gods" represented in the book, one of them was mentioned by name. Whatever the gods name however, I cannot seem to find here. I will continue to look for it wherever it may be, in the meantime I suggest you try to look for any references towards the sign on the front of the book, unless you have lost interest?"

"I'm already looking Gavin, my dude."

"Coolio. I will text you again if I find anything."

Interestingly enough, for a pair of 26 year old's we still talk like we are 16. Ive known Gavin since kindergarten, we went through middle school together and an awkward high school together, those years just flew by and before you knew it we were both 21 and had our whole lives ahead of us with little bit of college and we managed to land this job. And to be honest, I'm quite content actually. Me and Gav have had our fair share of differences, but we always outgrew them, the ones that mattered anyways. And without warning a loud knock came from my door nearly making me spill my coffee.