Hello, my name is Konnor McCormick and I live in the town of Arkham, Massachusetts. If you’ve never heard of it, I’m not surprised. We aren’t on any map and not a lot of people end up passing through, and those that do sometimes don’t exactly… make it out.
Anyway, the reason I’m writing this is because weird stuff happens in Arkham that the rest of the world just doesn’t know about. I’m talking cultists committing human sacrifices, monstrous abominations prowling the streets at night, not to mention the sheer number of eldritch horrors lurking beneath the town’s sewer system.
Those that live here are all aware of this, but almost everyone just chooses to either ignore it, or if they’re like me, try and figure out why this is happening.
I guess I should start with where I live. My home is a rundown old house that used to belong to my parents before they left it to me in their will. I spend most of my time in my bedroom wasting away days, getting drunk and playing video games or working in my so-called workshop that I’ve turned the detached garage into. I live in a somewhat isolated part of town almost completely by the forest, and I kind of prefer it that way. The cultists pretty much leave me alone and I only get the occasional monster trespasses onto the property. If you go deep enough into the woods behind me, you’ll find one of the cults’ altars. I accidentally stumbled upon it one night while they were performing a human sacrifice.
They were all dressed in the ever cliché black hooded robes while one was raising an even more cliché twisted dagger upon some blonde teenage girl splayed on the altar. Sad to say I couldn’t really do anything due to the sheer number of them that were there-poor girl.
I don’t have many friends in this town and since high school I’ve found myself in a sort of social limbo. I do have a couple contacts I still keep in touch with. First, there’s my old friend, Buddy Holliston, who I’ve known since we were kids. He’s currently a sheriff’s deputy and occasionally is willing to let slip any troubling information about the goings on of the town. Admittedly, he rarely does this so he can make sure to keep his job. when he does though it’s always been helpful.
Then, there’s Rand Carter, an aging hippie in his mid-fifties who is widely known as the town drug dealer, but he knows a lot more about what goes on here than most other people do. He’s actually gone down and mapped out quite a bit of the town’s infamous sewer system and found all sorts of strange things like, cryptic writing in another language, supposed underground temples with statues of grotesque beings inside and a community of disfigured homeless people who worship them.
I’ve asked him to take me down there or at least give me one of his maps, but he told me, ‘Son, I’ve seen a lot more things down there than what I’ve told you about, and I don’t want anyone to have to see them ever again’.
Finally, Zoe Jeong, a girl whose family moved here back in high school, is another person, who like me, is obsessed with figuring out the mystery of this town and its people. We don’t talk as much as we used to, and she never stays in one place for very long in that van she lives in. Add that and the fact that she’s only used a burner since we graduated makes her a very tough person to track down.
I remember one night she actually did call me asking for help against something that was stalking her van and told me she was camped near the borders of the woods behind my house. I grabbed my dad’s old shotgun and ran as fast as I could to her location. When I got there, I found Zoe in her van yelling something behind the window that I couldn’t understand.
Suddenly, I heard rustling from my left and saw a star fish looking thing the size of a racoon coming towards me getting ready to pounce. I held up the shotgun and fired from both barrels…and I completely missed. I ran from it as quickly as I could around the makeshift camp screaming as loudly as I could until Zoe opened the van door and said, ‘Get the fuck in already!’ I jumped inside, landing on the mattress she keeps in there and Zoe slammed the van door shut. We decided to stay in there until the thing got bored and wandered away the next morning. That was the last time I saw Zoe and that was almost three months ago; I really hope she’s okay.
I have a lot more stories to tell about Arkham and hopefully recording all of this won’t end up getting me killed in the end. There’s so much more to talk about but I think this is a good start. I’d love to say more, but right now I have a sewer map I need to go try and steal from somebody. This is goodbye for now.