So long the nights had been for me, sleepless creature who lurks between bins and streets. I become the exact type of man that I despited, a miserable man.

For how tired I become sleep never comes to me. My life at this point has become akin to a hallucination; never awake, never asleep. Never sure of what I am looking at, passing from one day trying to survive and without doing anything noteworthy; barely managing to scrape the barrel.

When the murders started I didn’t pay attention to them, people die, what else? I continue with my job without any changes. I would never have imagined, not even in my wildest dreams, how the city would become after a few months! But I am getting ahead of myself, I want to tell this story as I lived it.

One cold morning while going to work I saw a man in rags lying on the ground “drunkard” I thought to myself and past him by. He moved a little, murmured something, moved his hands towards me but nothing more. Once on the other side of the street, I turned back and the man wasn’t there anymore. A bit confused by this I went to work as usual. Nearly everyone was chatting about someone named Robert Wilthch, a rich and gentleman with “peculiar” interests, as I was told.

“Disgusting! I say to a colleague, such a gentleman that practice those things! Truly a shame.”

His mansion was outside the city surrounded by trees and vegetations, heavily guarded by dogs and traps.

At first, I was disgusted, then I laugh. I laugh and weep, laugh and cry, fell on the ground and laugh compulsively Even when two of my colleagues helped me I couldn’t stand up. Shock my head and turned with eyes insane and vision of madness.

After a few minutes I continued to work as usual Giving little thought to what had just happened.

Weeks pass by and except a few attacks of hopeless idiocy and mental retardation, I didn’t pay much attention to them. I tried to ignore them as best as I could. “A rare illness,” they told to me “sometimes you lose your faculty of rational behaviour and good conduct and well… you feel to the ground laughing you can control it. I suggest you read this book on self-control and concentration. It has done miracles to me!”

I have had this illness since childhood and since then I heard all sort of opinions and treatments for it. From my mother “good two cuffs” to my father “supportive shouting” to narcotics and drugs by various doctors. None of them worked. And I had to appear as the noblest and gentleman to make up from it.

One day I received a letter from the most unthinkable source, Mr Robert, it said that he wanted to take a look at me. He also offered a good sum of money to make up from the lost day of work, that sum was three times my weekly check, three times! I had to accept, no matter my reputation lose.

The road was strangely well kept and the wildness was kept at bay with strenuous care. The home looked like a decagon made of wood and stone. The precision of the building was impressive, everything was pleasant to look at and in the right place.

Not even the time to ring the bell and Robert opened the door. He was in elegant clothing, albeit light clothes and his arms were naked.

“Hi Mr Paul, I hope that this visit hasn’t been too much a problem for you.”

“No, no, I had to be sincere this walk in the woods was very pleasant.”

The door opened into a corridor that opened into a large room.

The room was mostly empty, except for two chairs in the middle.

“Please sit,” he said

I sit

“So tell me a bit about yourself.”

“About myself…?”

“Yes about yourself, where you went to school, how you got your job, what kind of dishes you like that sort of things.”

“Sorry, I thought that this was a medical visit”

“And it is, I just want to know my patients a bit.”

I said some things about my school, job and dishes, nothing too profound or sincere of course.

“So how can I be cured?” I asked him

“You are not ill”

“Ah, o- wait what?”

“I believe that the root reasons for your suffering are not physical. But I don’t know what is it. In mid-time take this” he gave me a purple flask “drink it twice a day and you should have fewer attacks.”

I shook his hand and went away.

Day after day went by and I didn’t have a single attack, not one. That flask did miracles!

But at last, it finished and the attacks returned.

I couldn’t back down now, I had finally found a cure!

I went again to his house and found him taking cares of some flowers.

“Mr Robert, sorry if I came to his house without a-”

“don’t worry,” he said while his look passed from the flowers to me “follow me, we have a long section ahead of us.”

At first, I said nothing of truly sincere in my sections, then, slowly and not so slowly, I begin to open. He was a decided and charming man, his words to me appeared nearly divine. I follow his instructions as it were the gospel. I said to him anything and everything, from my childhood to my financial situation, anything. And he listened to me, that listening so active that it appeared to me as if he was talking to me. With each section, I was refreshed, with each section I was reborn.

“That freaking idiot!” I said to him “he looks like a pig, he is a pig that betrays his wife! And what he tells me? That I am not respectable! Good God how much I hate this job!”

He gave me a sharp and decided look.

“This damn useless job, I didn’t want it. My father wanted me to go to college and I did! He wanted me to get a nice job and I did! And what he said to me? Nothing! He is dead and I am stuck in this useless and meaningless circle of idiocracy! God good what I wouldn’t give to see the whole place burn in the flames of hell!”

A few seconds passed

“So you want to quit your job but don’t know what you will do next. You dread tomorrow and are anxious to what will happen if you quit your job; right?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“I understand. I was in the same position as you.”

“When? How? I mean you are an extraordinary man how did you end up like… you know, me”

“It’s a long and weird story. In short, I met a person who saved me, who made me look beyond the usual roads and direction that lives takes… unfortunately that person is now dead and I can’t continue his works. To complex and advance for me.”

“Who was he?”

“Good question, if only I knew the answer”

…

Many weeks after that the murders started happening. People would disappear nowhere and be found days later nearly unrecognizable, with arts and organ missing and all types of injuries.

Robert obliviously was the primary suspect and the police were already gathering, or better, manufacturing evidence. I continue to go there regardless and enjoyed the talking with him.

“I must show you something,” he said, he led me to his room, a very ordinary room by all standards, nothing out of the ordinary, all in order “this is my room, I don’t really use it because of how frequently I fall asleep in the laboratory “he picked a big book that lay on the desk “read this book. When you have finished reading it come here again, no sooner than that.”

Little did I know that was the last time that I would ever saw him.

Two days later the police launched an assault on his home. If the tale is to believe a policeman “accidentally” shoot a bullet through poor Robert head. If the tale is also to be believed he was a necromancer and a student of the dark art who kidnapped children and adult alike, but I don’t believe any of it. He was a good man and now he is dead. The only thing that remains of his home, laboratory and vast research are ashes…

Many people felt relief when they heard that the mad man was dead. However, that sense of relief quickly disappeared when they found another corpse and then another and another. In a month forty people were dead, the next eighty! Whatever was killing people Robert at least kept him at bay or something.

I read that book that he gave to me many times over, it talks about theology to some reference to esoteric and occult rites. Nothing too out of the norm, if a similar text appeared as a college text it wouldn’t stand out. It’s only once I arrived at a page about ‘rites of passages’ that I found a strange remark in pen. “three baths of blood, at least a litre of wine and two bulls should be enough. Remember to transcribe this note on the archive.”

I spoke to the policemen, all nice person whom many I knew personally. Yet even the most loquacious of them became mute when I asked about the archives or a laboratory; when of them responded to me in this way “some things are better forgotten. Robert was a genius undoubtedly if he only was another type of genius…”

Most people have abandoned this city but not me. There is something here, I can feel it, something just waiting to be discovered. A strange mist has arrived when most people have deserted the city and many people claim to see a man in Robert clothing or to see strange lights from where the old house was.

Others claim that terrific creatures came out of the forest at night. Whatever the truth is, what is certain is that no one has had a decent sleep in a long time.

If I must say I don’t know what to think about this whole story. There is anything tremendous or horrifying, no nightmares or monsters. Just long talks and a man much misunderstood. However, if there is one thing that I still ask myself to this day is the laboratory. There was no laboratory in Robert house, it burned to the ground and no secret passage was found…

I think about what may lay there, maybe just an archive, maybe a giant black church, I don’t know. But if I have just one wish that would be to see it, to see it and continue the work of a great man who made me see life differently.

The end.