The Confession of Forsworn Matthew

The sound wracked his body. It went beyond the human threshold, scything through his every fibre. Fluting high notes seared into his consciousness and the undulating arrhythmic drums pounded his innards. He shuddered. He couldn’t see it. Because you can’t. To see would be to know, and the stygian void allows for no knowing. But you feel: waves of nausea, great shifting pangs of interminable ache and the foetid noisome atmosphere clogs each polyp of the lung. Matthew felt it all and the roiling of his eyes spoke of the unmentionable pains within.

But still he travelled, on through the nameless arena to the shimmering iridescence of the conical court. Here housed the unknowable amorphous creature of his farthest comprehensive reach. Matthew’s figure flickered in the dream walk. He was at the very fringe of his vision, on the cusp of the deepest unknowable chasm. Beyond the edge of reason, lurking in a collective pit of hunger and idiot despair, he had reached the court of that boundless daemon sultan. Matthew’s waking screams had subsided, for the silence in that cyclopean expanse was absolute and no amount of wailing or gnashing could influence the greater matters at hand. Besides, Matthew knew what he needed to know. The resting at the centre of our blackest fears and most morbid of unspoken thoughts was over. Azathoth was coming. 

Charlie Kane took down the final words in a meticulously kept notebook. Stowing it carefully about his person he produced an initialled handkerchief and deftly mopped his brow. “Thank you, Matthew.” Charlie nodded to the guard and Matthew was gently lifted to his feet. “You’ve been very helpful, so very helpful Matthew. I’ll be back soon, I promise you.” Matthew drooled, his eyes were slack with the effort from recalling. He mumbled unclear.

Charlie strode from the wrought iron gates of Arkham under the gloaming sky. He had several ‘Matthews’, delicate souls he paid for the welfare of in various institutions. Their abilities made them useful in that way. Charlie had seen things that made him believe but he couldn’t travel the way Matthew could. As he entered the back of his limousine his driver passed him a dark briefcase, the endless business of a public servant. Charlie operated this double life, one of public smiles, promises and crisp wholesome American-ness. But Charlie could maintain this and still help in a greater cause.

Matthew was his final warning, the messages and visions tallied too clearly with what he’d heard from the others. There was a shadow greater than petty politics on the horizon. Charlie would have to start pulling strings, his network of contacts from the state office and further afield; from his time in Tokyo and Singapore, the official visits in Europe. A lifetime in office, a web of accrued favour and promise, Charlie would have to collect.