Catch up here.
Where last I left off, horror had nestled itself deep within my heart. My associates had contacted me, not as individuals were prone to do but as a group, in one collective voice, a cold, inhuman thing. Speech of such otherworldly nature as to leave no doubt within the depths of my mind that some terrifying thing, some consciousness that is wholly alien to man, spoke through these men and women who had forced my hand into sin.
There is no greater test of strength for a man, to come face to face with all that he has dreamed about and feared, and not break. This test, I failed; the cost left my sanity splintered beyond repair.
The voice called inside my head, slick with blasphemous and sweet deceit, and slowly it demanded of me; and then it promised such chaos as no thing, be it human or animal or something wholly alien, could imagine. In so doing, it reduced me to little more than a slab of flesh, precipitously close to a state of uselessness.
Doubtless, this ancient presence that now filled every corner of my mind felt the undescribable damage that it did, for it recoiled as if afraid that too much strain would break its favored tool.
The whispers begun, then.
I have difficulty holding a steady hand as I scribble this in my notebook, for the lone memory of words of depthless madness alone is enough to weaken any resolve a mere man could muster. And so I listened, and obeyed.
I do not recall what followed.
Come morning, I awoke in bed, my mind aflame. Joints ached and cried out as I forced an unwilling body to prepare for the day ahead. Professor Harold Millson, my patron and great friend, had requested I join him in his office on that morning; his invaluable help and credentials as chair in the Philosophy department had long since allowed me study of some of the Miskatonic University Library’s forbidden corners. While he did not seem to share my fascination with all matters esoteric in this world, he nevertheless steered my hand on several occasions. Had I only suspected…
When I made my way to Millson’s office, what I saw tore off the heavy cloth that shrouded my mind. My friend sat on his heavy cushioned chair, his eyes gouged out, his body — exsanguinated. A gruesome ghost of a smile sat on the dead man’s pale lips.
I crumbled to the ground, my cries a low and guttural thing, sounds I never thought my throat capable of producing. I couldn’t leave this man – my benefactor for five long years – to rot away any longer, and so I got to my feet, intent on finding aid, alerting the authorities.
An etching on Harold’s desk caught my attention. A name that whispered madness in my mind, that suddenly made the night before as vivid, as real as nothing else in life.
The name was “Nyarlathotep,” translated years ago by men wiser and more knowledgeable than I, as “The Crawling Chaos.”
The Grimoire Reliquary 
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