Disaster and Calamity: Gas

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I was dining with a friend at the Historical Society when word reached us of a curious situation. A man had come stumbling out of a door in the Cross Branch of Miskatonic University. While this might not seem out of place for a university, even one as storied as Miskatonic, it was the particular door from whence the stranger came.

There are several doors, one of them located in the Department of Dead Languages, that lead to worlds other than our own. None of these worlds are safe, and interlopers are far from benign.

Begging my friend’s pardon, I exited and sought out this stranger, but he collapsed just outside of the Department for Dead Languages before I could reach him. What occurred next could only happen in Cross.

The man was brought inside to a classroom where several young men attempted to perform life-saving techniques upon him. What they did was dislodge an item in the man’s throat. An item that expelled a noxious, poisonous gas into the building.

Of the 61 students and staff members affected, five – including the stranger – died from the gas. The others were injured to greater or lesser degrees. Some were blinded, others went mute or deaf. Of those who survived unscathed, they would all be dead within five years, suffering terribly from the growth of malignant tumors on their skin.

All the dead are buried on one of my small, barren islands. Their bodies are poison, and it is safer for me to watch over them than to have them sicken my town.

#horror #CrossMassachusetts #monsters #supernatural #skulls #death #fear #evil #horrorobsessed #scary #ghosts #DuncanBlood #halloween #ghoststories #paranormal

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Nicholas Efstathiou

Husband, father, and writer.

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