Straightening his hipster-chic glasses, he glared longingly into the coffee vending machine, which cast an almost unhealthy glow across his ashen skin. It was one of the few lights left running in the entirety of the building. Stokey Hall was quiet in the dark of the late evening. Students had long ago abandoned the building in favour of the parties that would no doubt be running rampant up and down College Avenue in the numerous Greek Life houses. He too had once been a member of these mobs of the intoxicated walking dead, stumbling from revelry to revelry, only stopping when his fogged mind gave out beneath the weight of alcohol and spent cigarettes. He could vaguely recall the clink of bottles and the acrid smell of smoke all around him in that moment, as though he were still passed out on the lawn of Phi Kappa Kappa, cradling an empty bottle of Svedka in his lanky, sparsely-hairy arms.

But that had been so long ago -- over a half decade. Now, the only thing he cuddled, not on the lawn of a frat house but in the comfort of his own bed, was a stack of ungraded, completely inane papers from students. His youth had died that night he earned his PhD, quickly and violently stolen from him in one simple gesture: "we present to you your doctorate." Lots of cheering. A photograph or two, the flashes steadily stealing away what it meant to be a child. The memories erased in little squares and replaced with digital files, rotting away on a memory card his mother had forgotten she'd placed atop the laundry machine downstairs, back at the house he used to call home.

But this was home now. Miskatonic University, nestled in the woods of Essex County, Massachusetts, with its garish, dark brick walls, stood as a sentinel among the trees, guiding the miscreants of intellectualism into its loving embrace. Here, they developed minds into demi-gods. He had heard the rumours of some of the strange folk to graduate from his alma-mater Miskatonic, and all the strange deeds they had undergone upon moving into the world, or perhaps staying in the sleepy city-town that cradled Miskatonic, known as Arkham. Often, he didn't want to recall the experiments of Herbert West or the brutal demise of Asenath Waite following her graduation. Miskatonic University seemed to breed the weirdos, and he hoped, as he finally dispensed his late-night latte from the vending machine, that he himself did not come off as a complete oddity.

Stumbling back down the darkened hall was more than simply a chore for him. It was far too late for him to still be in his office, but there was still so much to do. Time waits for no man, he could hear his father nagging into his ear, as the man had often done during his youth. Always that urging to do better, be better. There was never a moment of being the best. It was the constant strive to move forward. But he had reached the apex now as a professor with his doctorate, and his father had died the previous year from a crippling heart disorder. Perhaps the most loving aspect had been his insistence that his son become everything he had dreamed he could be. Strange. A father's love.

Stepping inside his office, the man paused to admire the plaque bearing his name outside the door.

Sebastian Andrews, PhD
Professor of Victorian English Literature

Thumbing his nose proudly with his free hand, Sebastian stepped back inside the doorframe and flicked the lights to his office on.

But there, seated at Sebastian's desk, with his legs crossed and hands folded with care, was a man he thought he would never see again. Not after the incident several years ago.

"Good evening, Sebastian," the calm, collected figure of David Martin greeted, his eyes locked on Sebastian's, even though they had not adjusted to the sudden burst of light from the iridescent bulbs above. "Or as my dear sister used to call you...Basti."

David said this last word with a sense of bitterness, as though his tongue had just been burnt by a liquid much too hot. His tense, yet confident smile sent chills down Sebastian's spine, and without even consciously realizing, Sebastian dropped the Styrofoam cup of coffee. It hit the ground and left a stain on the white carpet that would certainly be a pain to remove.

"David? David Martin?" Sebastian asked in a whisper, narrowing his eyes at his unexpected guess. David had grown even more wan and sickly than Sebastian remembered. The last time he had seen David Martin, the Liverpool native had been almost jovial in spirit, though that may have been a facade to hide the hurt within. David had once been much more lively, though. He knew this much for sure. Those many years ago, before that disastrous evening in late December, David had been a healthy, brilliant sort of young man, who looked after his younger sister Elizabeth with great care, as though he were playing surrogate father in their real father's absence. He had taken up the responsibilities his true familial line had abandoned. But, how then, did David Martin become so haggard-looking, with his gaunt cheeks sunken into the curve of his bones and the stubble of a few days' lack of shaving blanketing his normally awkward yet handsome face?

"Been a while, Sebastian," David said in a dreary tone as his eyes drooped from lack of sleep. "You've done pretty well for yourself, haven't you?"

David glanced around at the office around him. It was well-adorned with academic accolades and books of every shape and size. A scattered stack of papers teetered at the edge of his desk, and the garbage can to the side of it was nearly overflowing with discarded Styrofoam cups, formerly filled with vending machine coffee. Many a late night had been spent here, indeed.

"I've been busy," Sebastian replied meekly, adjusting his glasses and trying his best to look as successful as possible. He wanted nothing more than to bother David with his superiority. To him, David was just the older brother of an old girlfriend, and a former rival in his secondary education. An enemy.

"Busy enough to question how it is I broke into an academic building and made myself comfortable in your office in the span of time it took you to get a cup of coffee from down the hall?"

Sebastian froze. He actually hadn't considered this. Yes, he had been unnerved at David's sudden reappearance in his life, but he hadn't had the time to ponder the fine details. Impossible. David would have had to have moved at an inhuman speed. Unless he had been waiting in the building for a long, long time. Recalling the strangeness of this man, Sebastian didn't put it past David Martin to have done something so drastic as breaking into Stokey Hall in the wee hours of the morning and hunkering down until he had the opportune moment to surprise the professor.

"W-what do you want, David?" Sebastian asked, his voice unintentionally stuttering in surprise.

"What I require from you is two things," David announced, tenting his fingers over his lips in thought. "I've become entangled with this silly boy's body."

What? He was talking madness now. Sebastian was clueless on these matters. In their time apart, he had never heard of David's interaction with a horrid thing from beyond the stars that slept, even now, in the blanket of tundra just outside civilization in northern Canada. Furthermore, Sebastian was too innocent to understand that he was not currently speaking to David Martin. He took in a deep breath.

"Sorry, I uh...don't know what you're talking about."

"Hadn't figured," Mystica replied with a scoff. "You humans and your pesky little minds. Let's get to the point then, hm? I'm looking for a very specific document. One I have traced to this hodunk little town you call Arkham."

"Hodunk?" Sebastian piped up in offense. "This town is a brilliant hub of intellectualism and discovery!"

"And have you ever wondered why that is?" Mystica chuckled, leaning back from the desk and fishing a small object out of his sport coat's pocket. He placed the object, a miniaturized compass, upon the surface of the desk so that Sebastian could clearly see. Much to the doctor's awe, the needles of the compass were slowly spinning in place and refusing to settle on which way was actually north.

"This town is an anomaly," Mystica concluded, smiling down at the compass as it continued to defy all laws of physics. "Now, you have a choice. Either hear out my demands, or face something even more anomalous."

Sebstian glanced up from the compass and into Mystica's frosty blue eyes. They seemed to go on forever, as though there were no physical end to the depth of their cold gaze. He could feel them staring right through him -- no, into him, reading him like the multitude of books in the room. He was just words on a page, and Mystica knew all his little secrets. All the things he had never wanted to reach the light of day. This odd feeling began to develop a nausea that spread through the professor like a wildfire, burning up his insides in patches of ice and snow. He grasped at his wrenching stomach and leaned over the desk in desperation.

"Fine, fine!" Sebastian yelped. "What do you need?"

"There's the boy I remember from my sister's embrace," Mystica snickered, then paused in a moment of surprise. "No, not mine. Not my sister! David's sister! See, this! This is what I've made the mistake of doing!"

He slammed his fists into the desktop, sending the precariously positioned stack of papers tumbling off and onto the floor in an orgy of words and run-on sentences.

"You, my friend, know many a medical student that now works residency at Arkham Asylum," Mystica said, jabbing Sebastian in the chest with a skeletal poke of the finger.

Sebastian nodded weakly, swallowing a breath.

"Good. I require access to a document that has been stored away there, due to its questionable ethics. It is a case study performed by one Dr. Casey Jones regarding the subject of mind control and manipulation of consciousness. I would very much like to get my hands on this study for personal use. Now, with your ties, I'd expect you could pull some strings with the residents."

"Sure," Sebastian sputtered. Anything to get this horrible excuse for a man out of his presence so that the knot in his gut would unravel and leave him in peace. "Anything you need. I'll call them up, and--"

"Good," Mystica interrupted with a satified smirk. "Secondly, I require the address of a man both you and I know. Doctor Marcel LeCourt."

"Professor LeCourt?" Sebastian pondered aloud. "We had him together at Oxford for that Late Romantic Literature class. He's never left England. What do you want with him?"

"Don't lie to me," Mystica spat back with menace and hatred in his voice. "I have been looking into the records of Miskatonic! LeCourt taught here two years prior to this very date! You have knowledge of his address. And you shall surrender that information to me, you lying scrit."

Mystica snapped his fingers in frustration, and Sebastian felt the knot in his stomach tighten, and a pain like a thousand daggers dissecting his innards swept through, causing the intellectual to lose his footing and drop to his knees, hitting his face on the edge of his desk during the fall. His glasses cracked with an audible sound, and he found himself looking up through funhouse-mirror vision at the figure of Mystica now standing over him.

"Okay, okay!" Sebastian pleaded, holding his hands up in meek defense. "Doctor LeCourt lives in this refurbished farmhouse in Dunwich! 12 Ego Lane! Please!"

"Very good," Mystica sneered, stepping over the fallen man and walking toward the door. "I will expect the file to be at my disposal by midnight tomorrow, or I shall be returning to...persuade you further."

From the floor, Sebastian posed one last question to the madman that had just shattered his perceptions of what was real and not.

"What...what are you going to do to Doctor LeCourt?"

"...if all else fails, and Dr. Jones's study is inconclusive to my peril...I'll need a new host."

Sebastian found himself wrapped in darkness as Mystica clicked the office lights off.

"Oh, and I'll tell Elizabeth you said hello."

SLAM. The shutting of the door.

Steps down the hall.

Frightened tears in the dark.