The night was going to be long on the road to Jacksonville, Illinois.

After driving for two long hours I began to question myself about the utility of this pathetic attempt. Eddie was old when I was young, and I had no idea if he was alive, or still living his old house on the West Beecher Avenue. I remembered his perfectly trimmed grass and his luxuriant flower beds, and these thoughts distracted me from the lack of purpose of my excursion. I had joyful thoughts about my childhood in Illinois. My mother was very sweet and my father was virtuous, strict, but played baseball with me every Sunday. Everything went more complicated when I entered the police in Indiana. The dreams I had about dark places far beyond our time and space made me very stressful and seeing all the crimes the streets can bear made me loose interest in God and his senseless gospel. The dreams intensified and I finally left the police and became detective for a private office. This kind of work suited more my headaches and lack of sleep. There is a lot of other reasons concerning my disinterest in the police forces but they are... complicated and bitter. I knew all the policemen that died that painful night...

I finally arrived at my destination around 6A.M. and was fairly sad to see how the house was neglected. It was a small stone house, the only one made from such expansive material on that street. There was a little tower with cone-like roof tainted in blue shades. The vines had infested all the walls letting them show only a hint of stone. The once magnificent flower beds were icons of wilted and time lost vegetation and the grass was worthy of the most savage jungle. I decided to sleep an hour in the car before going out, by sheer politeness to the homeowners. I think I was more scared of what I would or would not find in the house, and wanted to wait a little more before affronting reality, as always.

I lit up a cigarette, took a sip of Jack and left my car. I walked to the door and knocked. I waited for a minute or so, and knocked again but there was no answer. After an other minute, Miss Brown finally opened the door. She was Eddie's wife, the most kind person I knew in all my life. Anyways, she stared at me silently and hugged me strongly in a most familial fashion like only a grandmother can. She looked bad. Her eyes were vitreous and she was extremely pale. She told me to enter, so I did. I walked in the dusty kitchen where she offered me a cup of tea and had me sit down. I ate a cookie and then, after a few words, she explained to me that Eddie was no longer living here, but he was still alive. I was surprised at first, because she told me that he was at Jacksonville's mental hospital. I asked why but she didn't answer, she asked me politely to leave a few minutes later. I got back in the car, thinking that this situation could never get weirder and decided to visit Eddie at the mental hospital.

I arrived at my destination after eating in a pub, I was a little drunk, but it was making everything easier. I was accepted by the hospital as a visitor and was lead to my old friend's room by a nurse. The place was very weird. A strange feeling you can only get in a mental institution overwhelmed me, the kind of feeling only a place tainted by the insane and the wicked can inflict. I finally entered Eddie's room where he was peacefully writing a letter at a small desk by the window. He asked me to sit down, so I sat on his bed. He turned his chair around and smiled. He told me he was very glad to meet me again. He looked very healthy and sane to me. He explained me that things we simpler here, that he was here by himself. I finally gave him the rusty band I found and he manipulated it while I was explaining the unbelievable incident that occurred. Eddie was apparently newly blind but he seemed to recognize the ring. His face expressed contrition and discomfort. He told me to stop asking questions about that and to throw the piece of metal away, but I refused and confronted him. All the time and sanity I had invested in this could not be wasted by an old man's delusions. He agreed to speak to me about it if I promised to stop this investigation, so I lied...

He told me that the hand I found with the ring was the brand of a very old and evil creature that he had encountered once. He explained to me that the elder and dark being fed on the very body and soul of mortals. The creature always left the decayed hand of the dead body it had possessed and a link of the chains that kept him in this world. He told me that the only way to find this thing was to summon it through a painful ritual lead by some kind of medium.  I lost all hope in solving this case when he told me that, how could I believe such thing!? If only I knew...

I thanked him and left for Indiana. I was discouraged and profoundly sad. I found myself very stupid to go ask an insane about all this. I drove all the way back, entered my apartment without care. Too tired to think clearly, I slept soundly until the night. I awaken in my apartment, surrounded by the darkness of the night. I took a shower, dressed up, picked my gun and left for the Willow Cemetery. Arrived there I lit up a cigarette, took a sip of Jack and entered the precincts. It was a moonless night and the wind was cold and strong. I walked up to miss Erskine's tomb and I saw the thing. A dark silhouette in the night with apparently one hand missing walked slowly to me. I was paralyzed by fear as it approached, almost gliding on the ground. The bell of the church aside knelled for an unknown reason and I pulled out my gun slowly. I saw the face of the thing. It was a woman visage, rotten and decayed by time, her skin was blueish and damp. Her eyes were liquefied. Her smell was horrible and warm like she was rotting under the sun. She talked but there was no voice... I was still alive but I had no breath. I felt the blackness of the soul inside this corpse and almost fainted. How could this be true? Why did it came to me? I felt my blood bursting out of my skin by every pores and felt my body dragged. I was not dead, but yet bloodless... and then there was darkness and pain. When she was finally done with eating my body, breaking my bones and devouring my soul... there was darkness again...

Some things are to be unknown.