Esteemed Chairman,
Hereby I deliver unto you the documents as requested. They were found among the significant number of unsorted files recovered from the recently unsealed wing of Sanctuary.
The original composer of the collection and its origins are unknown. Therefore the authenticity of the documents and the truthfulness of their content is dubious at best.
I suppose my recommendation is to be mindful of missing person cases in libraries and warn Associates with a keen interest in Enochian literature.
Sincerely,
Dr. Brandy
Description
C-21 is a collection of documents describing a hypothetical construct written by an individual only known as ‘Teddy’. How these documents came into the Association’s possession is unknown.
The source described the construct as follows; a humanoid automaton whose upper body is concealed beneath a bell-shaped exterior shell which it carried around in a similar fashion to a hermit crab. See the addenda C21-1 and C21-2 for more information.
Addendum C21-1:
The following letter was recovered from a file cabinet inside a drawer labeled, Remember for later, along with other unrelated documents such as a grocery list written on a wax tablet. Seen in the right-hand corner of the tablet, a scratched numeral is partly visible, 18*4.
The letter reads as follows;
“My dear wife,
Please, for both our sakes and that of our unborn, don’t tell anyone I wrote you this letter.
I’m sorry for my sudden absence without warning or reason. My awareness that I've had to abandon you for these past months when you needed me the most weighs heavier on my shoulders than any danger currently presiding around me. However, I am privy to many secrets which I cannot share. I have made many enemies, and during my mission I will make many more. Therefore, they cannot know about us. And nothing distracts me more than thinking of you.
Forgive my ramblings, for only the most potent of opiates relax my muscles enough to write you this letter. I implore you, don’t think of me as weak. On the contrary, I might be stronger and more dangerous than ever. I will now explain to you how this came to pass.
I was in the ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ library when it came to me. Reading in the oldest part of the building, where all the books were chained at the spines to the railing separating me from the bookshelves, I was studying a medieval manuscript for a paper; The treatise on Enochian on which I have labored off and on for these past few years.
As I perused the folios for useful sources, I heard the rattling of chains. That's when a book fell down, striking the ground with a loud thud.
Shifting my attention to the upper shelf, that's when I saw it peering down. Red lights blinded me as they stared me right in the eyes from on top of the closet. Two glowing eyes peered through a barred latch concealed inside a dark copper shell like a goblin from the fairy tales. A type of mechanical man enclosed inside its bell, which it wore just as a hermit crab would.
It leaned over the ledge of the closet in a crouched position as if it was about to lash out at me. Instead, it bated its time, silent, motionless, when suddenly, a humming began to resonate through the interior of the bell. It was the noise not unlike that of a gong that grew exponentially louder, so I had to cover my ears. It grew louder, making my innards tremble, and the ground shook beneath my feet. It grew louder, the air itself rumpled as if it had turned fluid, and I couldn't breathe. Tremors that turned my muscles to jelly, making me collapse on the ground. That’s how paralyzed I was by the noise resonating throughout my body. The pain and the sheer terror of the experience still make my muscles tense and my nerves tingle.
The encounter likely lasted mere seconds, but the experience felt ongoing for hours. As I felt my body being turned inside out, the vibrations turned into a rhythm. The humming became like the lyrics of a song. The droning noise started to speak to me in verses pronounced in some long-dead language. Yet, their meaning was revealed by invoked memories inside my mind, amalgamating into a dark phantasm of things that transpired and events yet to come. When I recovered, the Herald of Dark Tidings had gone. The books were back on their shelves, and the world was just as if nothing had transpired. I had recalled the experience to close friends, but they blamed it on a stroke and other afflictions known to make men feeble.
But the Herald is very real. I see it. Hear it. Sometimes, I even notice the sour smell of burnt metal and brimstone as I pore over private and illicit collections for the artifacts I seek. Then there are visions of unreality that haunt my dreams, instructing me to visit other worlds. And it revealed to me what would become us, you, and our unborn if I do not act.
I cannot let that happen.
Forever yours, Your Teddy
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If you enjoy these stories, maybe you'll enjoy the author's published work, like "The Wrench in the Machine".