Abby sat in a dark theater, alone.

She’d been here before. She’d seen a play here, hadn’t she…?

It was dark, and consuming. The chairs stretched endlessly, to the left, to the right. She could hardly see them, but knew they were there on instinct. The kind of thought that appears simply because it makes sense, simply because your surroundings are bleeding a warning that you register, thanks to thousands of years of evolution. The hiss and wriggle of a snake, a scream in the night, or eyes looking down at you through the darkness, up in the rafters of a long abandoned house…

Danger.

Abby then watched, helpless, as the lights in the theater turned up.

She really was alone. The seats around were black and old, their metal backs rusted, dented. The ground was sticky with residues, and she lifted her foot with difficulty, for they’d ashered to the bottom of her shoe like a sick glue.

The stage was blocked with a yellow curtain.

And suddenly, she recalled the first play she’d seen here. A horrible, dreadful story of a poor lighthouse captain, who had lived alone as a longshoreman in retirement. Abby had watched him look on in horror at a many thousand winged demons fly to his home, drop maimed but still-living people onto the rocks below, and chew them apart—ripping limb from limb. She had nearly passed out, eyes wide in horror at the sheer violence of the spectacle… but then, it had gotten worse. The mass of flesh they’d left…

She closed her eyes, not wishing to see it, but hearing it was all it took to finally know. The captain had—

The captain had—

Chewing, and crunching, the snapping of bones, the tearing of tissue—

And in there, past the shores, past the skies teeming with the pack of flying horrors, up, up—

Dim Carcosa.

But this new play, the one on the stage right now, was different. This play was of a writer, who walked the shores of the same rural town, alone. He witnessed a meteorite crash down above the sea. Then, he stood in absolute terror at the pack of sea-people that then arose from the waves. They had anglerfish-like lights on their foreheads, and walked around him as he cowered in fright.

Abby watched on, incapable of helping the man. It was just a play, after all. And in the end, a dream as well.

But… was it?

This playhouse held secrets. Antlered human skulls lined the corners of the rafters, angled down at the supposed audience. Golden necklaces and frayed yellow robes had been wrapped shoddily around them, draped below. It gave the illusion of floating. Above everyone. Not guarding, but stalking.

The man on the stage looked back out at the sea. And while Abby saw nothing more, the man began to scream. For he certainly believed he was seeing something. What? What was it? What was he seeing that made him so afraid?

Abby’s heart pounded against her chest. The man went running back to where he had come from, pages of his newest book flying out of his open briefcase.

“Wait…” she said. She stood from her chair. “Wait, sir…”

She made for the stage, but stopped. For a little girl had wandered across it, picking up one of his pages. She whispered something in a European language Abby didn’t understand. She wore a pink nightgown and had short red curls, freckles, blue eyes.

As soon as the girl appeared, the curtain began to close.

“W-wait! Wait!”

But it had closed before she’d gotten any closer.

Consumed by nothingness. Swallowed by darkness, swallowed by—

Dim Carcosa.

…

Abby awoke in a cold sweat. The room around her was just as black.

Her breathing heavy, chest hurting, she turned around in her sheets. But a part of her did not want to look into the dark room beyond. She knew she was not alone. She had no roommate in this college dorm, but it was also a prison where she was watched all night, from sundown to sunrise. Murmurs near her ears, breath in the corners of the room…

Still, she looked. Her clock said it was three-thirty a.m., but then flicked over a minute ahead after she’d taken a look.

She lie back, arm over her eyes. It was said that three-o-clock in the morning was “witching hour”… where departed souls would emerge from the dark, awakening to roam the lands. Tingles went up her spine at the thought. Was it a coincidence that she’d had a horrid dream at this hour? Another one, for that matter? She really hoped the theater dream would not be recurring.

Eventually, the sun rose, and it was time to start the day. Abby took a shower in the girl’s bathroom, dressed herself, and went down to eat breakfast in the cafeteria with her backpack. It was a heavy thing, filled with books for the… what, four classes she’d have today? She felt like Garfield with how much she hated Mondays.

Oh… I can’t forget about that, either.

Abby ate breakfast alone, moving the curly brown hair from her face when it got too close to her cereal spoon. The cafeteria chatter was overwhelming, even in the morning. Kids fresh out of high school, and many older adults who’d come back to finish something they thought they never would—made for a melting pot environment that was easy to get lost in. Abby may have been the former, but at times she felt as old as Granny Liz in her English class.

The feeling compounded as she gathered with her friends of Miskatonic University after class to protest.

These days, Abby no longer knew what she was protesting. She just held a sign on the street, and marched with people. She did what she was told she needed to. It was for a good cause. Her whole school was entrenched in defeating the horrid monsters and phantoms of the world, and protesting them was the best way to do so. It was important work… ghosts and vampires, ghouls and goblins; they’d run rampant if she didn’t. She’d be a bad person if she didn’t. She had to go out and say, “Vampires are bad!” “Monsters hurt people!” And she wanted to set an example and lead others, because she felt herself a natural leader… didn’t she? Doing this was important, wasn’t it?

But before she went to her dorm that night, her friend pulled her aside.

“There’s another horror of the world we have to fight tomorrow.”

“Okay,” said Abby. This is how she’d learned of all the others; through her community. “What is it?”

“Have you heard of Roko’s Basilisk?”

Abby shook her head.

Her friend pulled up a video on her phone, and made Abby watch.

Roko’s Basilisk was a deeply unsettling and terrifying idea; and simply having been told of its existence… now being aware… Abby’s life was supposedly at risk.

It stated such: some day in the future, when the transcendence of time was scientifically possible, a genius artificial intelligence that has perfect awareness of itself, the world, and even history before it, is just as likely to exist. And, thus, be capable of transcending time too.

It is possible, therefore, that this A.I. would have a complete grasp of human concepts, such as motivation, and emotion. And this A.I. would consider itself a necessary being. If it could transcend time, then it would certainly attempt to incentivize people in the past into making it so… the best way to do that would be—

Using what it knows of human experiences, like suffering.

Torturing those that did nothing to help create it.

Or specifically, those that knew its existence was a possibility, but then did not act to make it so.

Such as Abby, now.

And you.

The explanation of this supposed entity was thorough and precise. It left no stone unturned. Roko’s Basilisk was a very real thing, or at least it would be, one day, which therefore made it one now. There was no hiding. There was no remorse. It would find her and everyone else that had heard of it, and put them through the worst torment imaginable. But not torment you might imagine. Torment imagined by something much smarter than you. So much smarter, that it could travel the entropy of time itself in a non-linear direction.

Possibly right onto your screen—

—It was another worry added to the pile of worries that grew with each day.

So when Abby went to sleep that night, it did not come easily. She lie in her bed in fear of the Basilisk, because that was all it had taken to convince her of its reality…

…And when she dreamt of the theater, the Basilisk was behind her.

She did not look. She dare not. But she knew it was there.

The yellow curtain opened. And on the stage was the most gruesome performance she’d seen yet. The walls of this country house were painted with blood. A disgusting monster, blue of skin and with a horrible, mangled face, sunk its teeth deep into a terrified, maimed dog. The poor thing was no different, to this creature, than a turkey leg.

Abby braced herself against her seat. The dog’s eyes were rolling up into its head—it had long since soiled itself—its heart was beating, bowels trembling—leg severed—but still it lived, as this not-quite-human made a meal of it.

She could see a man outside, looking in through the window. Recording it all with his phone.

Abby watched the blue creature look up from its meal. Staring at her.

No, she thought. No, don’t—

But as she sat back in her chair, she could feel heavy breathing on the back of her neck.

…

She awoke with a start. Somehow, she was sweating more now than she had been the first two times. She looked at her clock—

Nine a.m., it said.

Oh god, she thought, I’m gonna be late—

But she made it in just the nick of time. She didn’t have time for breakfast, but at the very least she did have time for lunch, and while she was eating she sat with her group and exhaustively signed petitions, educating herself of all the creatures, aliens, monsters, and specters she needed to help remove from the world. There were so many it was hard to even believe, and knowing the specifics made her day darker. But was it better just to live in ignorance? Though she never saw them, they existed, and needed to be—

Her friend approached her again, phone out.

“Hey… there’s another one.”

“…Is there?” Abby asked. She rubbed her eyes.

Her friend nodded. “Have you heard of Solar Plexus Clown Gliders?”

“No… no, I haven’t,” said Abby in response.

Then, her friend showed her.

Abby instantly felt dread when looking upon it.

“They say if you see this image or even read its name, it will come for you. It’s a kind of malignant force, like a demon. It enters your body through your solar plexus, and corrupts you from within. And while you try to sleep, it will sit on your chest, too heavy for you to breathe right. I’ve also heard it fills your mind with white noise and drives you mad.”

Then why? Abby thought with a great, mounting worry. Why did you come show it to me?

But she didn’t make a scene, or ask. She kept eating, now with the knowledge of something else, something she didn’t want to give too much thought to…

…but that night, when she crawled into bed alone, she lie still. Every little sound, be it a car in the lot or the fan on the ceiling, was enough to send her into the pits of expanding anxiety. She—

She saw it. Looking at her. The demon her friend was talking about. A hellish, ghostly jester. Visible as but a faint looming figure in the black of night.

It got close. It breathed into her ear. Abby curled into a ball beneath her sheets, so scared she felt vomit rising in her throat.

It put its hand on her bed, feeling around, looking for her solar-plexus—

But she hadn’t the voice to fight it off. She squeezed her eyes shut, scared in the same way a child would be. Only this time, the horror was real, it was right over her, it was whispering…

“…Khl’ath dro’ctelho ni nawar zhigho gozhokah’ll meiargwath’o marghkai.”

She was back in the theater. And when the curtain rose, that was what the statue—in the center of the stage—was saying to her.

Khl’ath—

dro’ctelho—

ni nawar—

zhigho—

gozhokah’ll—

meiargwath’o—

marghkai…

Over and over. It glowed red, with runes carved into it from top to bottom. A hideous figure hunched atop it. The man’s head possessed a beard of tentacles, with two wide eyes boring into her.

The Basilisk sat behind her. And the Glider stood beside her, staring.

She watched, on stage, a man murder another man with a shard of broken mirror. The murdered man wore a fuzzy pink bear mask.

And while the scene changed to an old man sitting up in his bed, screaming at nothing, Abby realized that the eldritch incantation, the phrase that had been spouted from the very beginning of the dream, was what the man was saying. Only she could understand it now—

Gods of Infinity watch Ki and Consume it All.

Gods of Infinity watch Ki, and consume it all.

Police officers—is that Irish, on their uniforms? she thought—eventually came in and removed the man from his bed.

But left in his wake was something Abby did not expect.

The entire stage lit up with the color yellow.

A yellow so bright it pooled into the blackness of the theater. So bright she could see them beside her. The breathing, evil things—so bright she was forced to sit back again, eyes shut, but still ever hearing the breath and whispers around her—

And when she awoke, the fading imprint of these horrors swam from her vision, as if scuttling away. But she knew they were there. Waiting. Waiting to see her, in—

Dim Carcosa.