As I fell to my knees in the ruin of what I would have in better days called home I let my mind wander. When did I go insane? When did I go mad? When did I lose the thin hold I had on reality? I cast my consciousness about searching for answers to these questions, but a voice in my mind tells me, you were always mad, all I had to do was push you over the edge. I am mad now nonetheless.

I let a wail of utter horror pass my lips as the world darkens, my hands reach out to the figure before me, “I’m sorry…I’m sorry…please save me!!” my thoughts cloud but I remember that day, the day I began to read that play, The day the dreams started, the day my mind began to break. I remember the day I began to read The King In Yellow.

The day was September 23rd, 1934; I had just taken a position as a Professor of Ancient Theater at the Miskotonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts. I never thought the work would inthrall me so. I was new to teaching and had got the position because my father knew Henry Pullver, the department head of occult studies at Miskotonic. I owed him a lot, but maybe not as much as I thought at first, it is partly his fault I’m where I am now.

I was studying Homer’s Iliad and investigating claims of an epic play mentioned there in. My search was as of yet fruitless when Henry entered the library and made his way to my table. He was wearing his usual brown suit with a tie of a powder blue tone, he looked very much the eccentric professor of the occult he was. His salt and pepper hair was in worn in the fashion pioneered by Albert Einstein, and his large eye-glasses made him look like a flesh colored beetle sitting atop a withered gangly body, all legs and arms. The most significant, but not totally unexpected feature was that he was carrying a large black leather book.

The thin old man set the book on the table before me. “Here. What do you make of this?” he asked with that spark of interest he reserved for the eldritch and occult, an unusually common topic of study at Miskotonic.

“Hello Henry, you shouldn’t just come barging in here and stop my work, I can tell you what I make of it when you tell me what it is.” I retorted with a peeved smile. I snickered as he flushed, becoming very professional as he replied in a bookish tone.