Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Backstory for Dr. Phillip Gabroman

The Symposium on Unknown History is a world-renowned event held once every four years. This year The Symposium is being hosted by the Erwight Raleigh Museum of Natural History and features an expert on the subjects of sunken continents and ancient lore: Dr. Phillip Gabroman (b. 1943).

Dr. Gabroman earned all of his three PhD’s from Miskatonic University in 1962 at the age of 19: making him the youngest graduate to earn three PhD’s at once. The more illustrious universities – Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth – only recognize one of his degrees: Ancient Mythology. He has been on many expeditions to exotic locations, including a National Geographic documentary in search of the lost continent of Mu at the age of 23.

The documentary was a complete failure and Dr. Gabroman became the laughing stock of academic society and was left bankrupt. He disappeared in early 1967 and resurfaced in 1988: in Peru. A missionary group was decommissioning a corrupted and neglected Spanish colonial-age sanatorium and bringing the patients to America for study and treatment. He was found, delirious, in the depths of a basement yammering and gibbering.

For six years he had been kept locked in the darkest most isolated cell while his mind purged itself through hell-fire. The pale, emaciated, scholar’s broken mind conjured up terrifying images and summoned the most inhuman screams from his tortured soul until his voice gave out. The staff completely ignored him, except for the rare feeding. He was alone with his terrible thoughts and his mind slowly cleansed itself while his body was ravaged by the effort.

After spending an additional two years institutionalized in America, Dr. Gabroman was deemed mentally fit to reenter society. He maintained a fairly low profile, scratching at the poverty line by writing hokey “non-fiction” about lost lands – like Mu – featuring bland cliché plots stolen from the pulp magazine “Weird Tales.”

In 1988, the aging Doctor was invited to speak at a science-fiction convention in Boston. His lecture on the lost continent of R’lyeh shattered even the strongest theories. Dr. Gabroman provided undeniable proof that over the millennia, the lost continent had shifted and was located somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Doctor was granted an Associate Professorship at Miskatonic University and spent the next 17 years utilizing the university’s vast library and resources to continue his research.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Eye of the Storm

I have survived to see the eye of the storm. The fearful thoughts from which this journal sprang have dissipated in the faint rays of the sun. I didn't sleep last night. But I did dream.
It is that horrible dream which I have tried to record here, only to find the harder I fight to remember, the farther it flees from my mind. And thankfully so. I do not want to recall that terror, that unbearable hopelessness. Yet, I continue to transcribe the things I saw.
The visions were not the cause of the fear I felt in that fitful slumber. There was something else. Something that even now as I write will not return to me. Something that horrid man in the mask said. Some strange truth he spoke. My mind will not let me hear the words.
The hurricane whirls and spins with me at the center. Calm winds soon become strong gales and rip the pages from my hands. I overturn my table as I start upright. There in the shadowy corner where the clouds gather and the fog swirls. He appears. He is speaking but I will not let myself hear. My knees lose feeling and I fall to the ground. Am I screaming? What is he telling me? Why can't I move?
The howl of the winds dies down and I lift my head from my desk. The faint rays of the sun fall on my shoulder, but I feel little warmth. As the clouds clear from the sky I shudder, knowing it is merely the eye of the storm.