r/libraryofshadows • u/gothic-goat • Jul 01 '25
Supernatural Sins of Our Ancestors. [Chapter 1] - 'In His Shadow'
Chapter Index: [1] [2] [3] [4]
Not even the distant sirens of ambulances blending into the low bustling of city life could mask the sound of a stranger's boots striking pavement from the road behind me.
I shuddered as the echo of our footsteps traveled through the intensely quiet night air and skipped sharply off of the old brick and mortar wall of my late father's office.
Very few cars dotted across the neighborhood, looking as if they were left here in a hurry, remaining untouched for years.
I wasn't shocked when I received a call from the police force about my father's gruesome murder in the back alleys of the city of Arkham, Maine.
Just disappointed.
"God damnit, Dad..."
I muttered to myself as I lit another cigarette, letting the taste of tobacco fuse with the cranberry Stella that still burned on my tongue as I navigated the sparesly populated street.
Old masonry and quiet roads lined the once bustling street. Abandoned businesses and decrepit homes did little to add warmth to a place that so actively despises the light.
In the distance, a dark cathedral towered above the surrounding buildings. Its presence felt unnervingly familiar, as if it had visited me in the dream realm on those nights where I could not recall my nightmares for the life of me.
An aggravating recollection worked its way into the back of my mind like a lost memory, taunting me with vague insinuations of an intimate bond to a place I have never been.
Statues of angels and demons were stood amongst the dark stonework and balconies, visible even from afar. Their chastising gaze fell upon me, and although I couldn't see their faces clearly, I knew that they were peering into my heart.
My cigarette puffed into ashes within a minute, my lungs working overtime to keep up with my frantic walking pace, tobacco smoke churning angrily in my lungs.
I knew from the very beginning that this would be a long journey, its harrowing path hidden in the crags of a broken city that had always been bereft of decency and sincerity.
Still, I took the infinitely foolish plunge into an impossible world, turning away from every chance to run that presented itself.
Three weeks before, some poor anonymous soul reported blood soaked dumpsters in a dark alleyway. They barely stopped long enough to make the call before they fled his mangled body.
The witness didn't stick around to answer questions.
Arkham police claim there were no leads to go on. They refused to search through my father's eccentric office space, tucked away on the edge of this despicable city on the once famous Armitage Street, untouched since father's passing.
His body was eviscerated. Limbs were strewn about the cold hard concrete. All that remained of him was left in a pulpy mound of red meat and coagulating blood that was still steaming when the first responders arrived.
That oily pile of viscera and torn clothing could only be identified by my father's drivers license, tucked away in an untouched wallet, still halfway sunken into its owner's gore.
It read: "Kenneth Rooke, Arkham, Maine. 1732 East Armitage St." in bold blocky letters.
It is the last and only way that I will ever get to see that ugly mug of his again.
My father would sometimes mention rituals, spell work... I'm not sure when he started to lose his faculties, but the older I got, the stranger his tales became.
It's easy to stumble into the darkness of Arkham's insatiable palate of secrecy and malevolence, no matter where you might find yourself in this sanctuary for all things taboo. Silent societies that covet occult knowledge and rumors of discoveries and artifacts practically ran this city.
That's probably how I managed to attract someone's attention. My inquiries with the police about Kenneth's death reached the wrong person's ears.
I obsessively checked my phone for service. No bars.
"Fuck, come on..."
Whoever was following me in the shroud of night was taking great care to not be seen as they kept pace somewhere close by.
I lit up another cigarette.
Arkham's residents have willfully severed their connection to the internet, nor do they share an interest in the rest of the world's politics. Either by ignorance, or perhaps out of sheer necessity, these people have effectively cut themselves off from the rest of human civilization.
No cell towers. No internet companies. Just you and the other odd souls of Arkham.
My father left me a note in his will that explained almost nothing, asking me to come alone. I followed his map all the way from Ohio to Maine. Just thank whatever deity you believe in that you may never have to witness the true nature of Arkham.
Tradition is a strange concept to me. We pass down rituals and beliefs from one generation to the next, silently hoping that our legacy is perpetuated by our unwilling descendants until the world's final weakened breath has been drawn.
Father was not one to skip out on our family's inherited responsibilities, passed down for generations. When I was a young boy, grandfather died, and Kenneth disappeared.
"Son, I'm sorry... One day, you'll understand."
His deep, rugged voice permanently etched itself into my head in that moment as he walked out the door, gripping grandfather's letter in a trembling hand.
Father left my mother and I to fend for ourselves, following tradition head first into a lost corner of America that is best left untouched.
He started calling us in my adult years. Occasionally.
Clearly, his sanity was waning at a slow pace, but steadily. He would always end the conversation with the same half-hearted warning.
"Sometimes, tradition gets you killed. The sins of our ancestors burn bright within our blood."
When I first arrived in Arkham, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I should have left this accursed city behind the moment I stepped foot on that ill-kempt sidewalk at the end of Armitage Street.
His office has no windows, save for the opaque glass on the front door that barely revealed a silhouette of furniture waiting within.
A crooked wooden sign hung above on the wall of the only possession my father passed on to me in his death. It read: Rooke Investigative Services.
There is an oppressive atmosphere that blankets the city in shifting shadows of the night, imposing the impression that perhaps, the very city itself is waiting for you to put your guard down so it might strike and claim it's next unsuspecting victim.
I won't lie to you - I still think about the vile chill that crept into the veins when I grasped the handle of that frost tinted glass door. My hand quivered against the cold brass door knob as I pondered whether I should turn away now, or not.
I stopped and strained the muscles in my chest and my ears as pure dread took its time piercing my psyche with the surgical precision of a scalpel, slowly stripping me of my liquor fueled mental fortitude.
All that met my ears was the sound of wind rushing past the rooftops, and yet... Something else was there.
A pulse of unseen energy filled my head and engulfed the world around me for just a split second. It felt like chittering insects were swarming against my spinal cord. The world let out a slow breath as the pulse extended outwards into everything around me.
"Not now..." I felt the overfamiliar ripples in reality as they reached for the heavens.
I focused on the shadows of darkened buildings standing tall above me, waiting for it to pass. Occasionally I would get bouts of... Mania? Perhaps psychosis?
Whatever it was, my hallucinations were getting worse the longer I remain in Arkham.
I saw no skulking man lurking in the dark. I could hardly make out anything outside of the dim streetlamps that guided me to my father's office.
The building itself was practically pulling the life force out of me, replacing it with an icy numbness that clawed at my thoughts with a menacing mental signal.
A forewarning of the evil yet to clasp its awful maw shut around my mind.
I anxiously pressed my tongue against the back of my teeth as I opened the door, not entirely sure what I should be expecting, or feeling.
With an uncertain tone, I called out into the office.
"Hello?"
My voice reached the inside of the dark room before my eyesight. I fully expected someone to be waiting for me inside, hoping to deliver one last killing blow to the Rooke bloodline.
Raspy whispers of the past inched their way across that anarchic, disorganized space and through the growing cracks of the door frame as the entrance slowly opened.
Stale, grit filled air rolled across my arms and face as the musty breeze made its escape into the cold embrace of the night.
I can't hold back the gut wrenching feeling I get when I think about the irony.
In many ways, that disheveled and dust ridden office was a reflection of the old man's soul. A little hole in the wall, a one room studio space with sagging wooden support beams holding the structure up with precarious balance.
I am greeted by a strange fragrance every time I enter that space. A deep seeded scent of burnt sage and the stinging sensation of dissolved formaldehyde.
Sturdy bookshelves stood against the far wall, covered in strange hand-carved symbols and filled with ancient tomes.
Manilla envelopes, files, and old paperwork jutted chaotically out of the corners of every cabinet and drawer. The raw odor of dust and leather bound books reached my senses and, for a moment, I was transported back to my own library space at home.
I was far from an organized man, myself.
A thick, unmistakable presence of unease hovered in the air, choking my every breath just enough to steep unease into my body with each slow step.
A dog-eared black binder full of papers contrasted against the other scattered notes and files that had been yellowed by cigarette smoke and time. I ran my hand over its surface, feeling the brittle texture crinkle against my skin. My breaths filled the stuffy space with a muffled reverberation as they caressed the thick stacks of paperwork.
I sighed in slight relief, satisfied that no interloper was about to ambush me.
The only reason I brought myself to this hell hole is because I felt guilt. I felt responsible for my father's legacy, despite us never getting to know each other in a meaningful way. I wanted to bring the old man some closure in his death.
I figured maybe if I solve his last case, I can start sleeping through the night again. Get some closure of my own.
The last words he ever spoke to me rung through my mind as I lit the half melted candle sitting on his weathered desk.
"Lawrence, the men in the Rooke family have always been out in the field, getting their fucking hands dirty, searching for the truth. If you aren't going to carry the torch, you are no son of mine."
His rough voice is forever burnt into my memory, like a low rumble over loose gravel. I recalled every word as the candle light twists the darkness in the office, allowing the shadows to explore every crack and crevice of the room.
It was a harsh ultimatum set by a rigid man who lived in a different era. He was an asshole - but I respected the man's drive. He had solved many cases. Saved a few lives.
I knew the cases took a toll on him. Every night, he had whiskey and tobacco for dinner. Still, I always knew it wouldn't be liver failure that killed him.
When he passed on, I was the sole beneficiary of his will. All of his belongings became mine. It wasn't a lot, he didn't even own a house. He lived in his office when he wasn't out solving everyone's problems.
Everyone's except his own.
I was almost excited to be given control over the family business, despite it coming at the cost of never making amends with Kenneth.
I decided to start with the black binder and go from there.
What I read disturbed my mind right down to the core, frying my nerves as they tried to process it logically. I would have written him up as a complete lunatic... If I had left it all right then and there.
Instead, I spent hours unfurling ill managed files that seemed to flow endlessly inside that black binder of lethal secrets.
Some of the manilla folders were in better condition than others, their contents only somewhat less disorganized. I paced across the scuffed wooden floor while I prepared the documents to read. When I worked up the nerve, I began.
Files crinkled under my hands as I sat at the old mahogany desk in the the corner of his office. The room was dimly illuminated by the single flickering candle, casting just enough light to shift through the photographs one by one.
I pulled out another cigarette and lit it on the small flame, taking a long drag as my eyes made one last weary search across the cryptic room.
The feeling of being stared at from the corners of the room began to permeate my thoughts as my fingers tenderly split open the black folder.
"Alright, Kenneth... Let's just see what the hell you have been up to."
The hairs on the back of my neck flared warnings into my head as I tried to understand the impossible scenes and implications that were printed out in those papers.
Pictures of murder victims were the majority of the contents, along with hastily scribbled notes and newspaper articles with highlighted and underlined words.
Sometimes, photographs of objects or runes written upon walls would send an indescribable unease through my entire being.
Clippings from defunct newspapers, often discredited local by government officials, spun stories about the Bleakmire murders. A string of macabre killings that cropped up in the Bleakmire Parish District last year. Each case was just as inexplicable as the last.
The first victim was a Jane Doe in her thirties. March of 2024. Her death was detailed in an interview conducted by a third party.
"Her organs were ruptured from the inside out. Skin was completely dried when the paramedics arrived. Her innards were scooped out with insane surgical precision. I've never seen anything like it."
I took a look at the accompanying picture and fought to stave off a nausea born of disgust and acute alcohol poisoning.
"What the hell is this..." My voice shook as the taste of sick taunted me from my tongue.
Her outer layer of skin looked like it had been removed, then draped back over an abnormally brittle skeleton - save for all of her ribs, which were removed.
They weren't broken. They were just... gone without a trace.
The waning candle flame helped spiral the unnerving imagery into my head as I placed the photograph back into the folder.
The next file showed an old looking man in rags named "Reverend Grunfeld," an old testament preacher who's church was shut down after the Bleakmire Parish suffered one of its mysteriously short-lived plagues.
The coroner's report made my eyes feel heavy, and I fought the urge to look away. Instead, I read on, forgetting about the cigarette that now dangled loosely from my lips.
"He was known to have frequented the district, likely living there in one of the homeless shelters. Those present reported his pained screams aimed up into the sky as he knelt at the stairs of his abandoned church, gripping his belly in a pain-stricken frenzy.
He died before emergency services arrived."
My hands shook as I picked up the laminated autopsy photos that revealed a blackened and bulging stomach that expanded to a volatile state.
His wretched looking organ expanded to the point where it split open on contact when the coroner attempted to collect a sample of the affected tissue.
The statement continued.
"His bulbous stomach let loose a pressurized hiss and leaked a putrid dark-purple ooze onto the operating table. The smell... God, that smell. It was rancid, like rot and vomit. I've never seen anything like it. Everything the vile substance came in contact with was stained a deep black. It took weeks of scrubbing to get the room cleaned properly."
The most recent case was a redacted police report, a statement given by an officer of Arkham P.D.
The man claims to have spotted his first partner in the force. While no names are given officially, my father had scribbled and underlined in red ink "Officer Lensworth?" Next to the word partner.
The reporting officer was responding to a call about a possible domestic abuse at an apartment building. Borer's Apartments, in Bleakmire Parish. When he arrived, the police officer was unable to elicit a response through knocking and verbal warnings.
"Arkham police — this is a wellness check. Is anyone home?"
His testimony states that upon looking inside the apartment, his mind was flooded with an 'incomparable shock and confusion,' as his therapist put it.
His first partner in the force, shot and killed over a decade ago, was in the middle of butchering a cadaver.
"It was a mental breakdown. I'm fine now. In the moment, I swore he was pulling out a grey mass of... Of this putrid looking meat, from the open chest cavity of the victim. I fell into a catatonic state, imagining my partner running off with the tumorous shape tucked under cradling arms. Like he was holding a fucking baby. That's all I remember. Can I go now, chief? I'm exhausted as is..."
The sight of their deceased partner destroyed the reporting officer's psyche for weeks, up until his mind rationalized the whole thing as a mental breakdown from stress.
"What the fuck..." I whispered aloud, shuffling the papers and pictures around in the black file to feel some form of control over this situation.
However, as I shifted the file, I realized there were at least a hundred cases just like those.
My hands trembled as I started to mull over everything I had seen. The files covering my father's desk began to agitate my nerves as they slid under my shifting weight. I could feel the years of secrets worming around the desk as I tried to find comfort in fidgeting with the paperwork.
My voice croaked past my dry tongue and the deathly flavor of smoke and ash escaped my lungs.
"What is all this, Kenneth?"
As my eyes drifted to the corner of the desk, a printed map of Arkham caught my eye.
The edges were scribbled with notes written in haste. A red circle was drawn over Saint Jacob's church in the Bleakmire district.
Strange ramblings and thoughts lined the edges of the paper, as if put there by a mad entity in my father's hand writing. Much of it was gibberish, and what was legible was far from comforting.
Things like, "The Ones Who Devour," or "The district has eyes that thirst for the flesh." Strange little runes that seemed incomprehensible to the naked eye, dotted about the page.
In one section, he argued with himself about whether to keep going to the district, or just go into hiding.
It didn't feel like my father was writing this anymore. These were the ramblings of a mad man... Words of an insane prophet.
My chest burned hot with regret as I turned the paper over and read the scrawlings of an unrecognizable mad man, one that I once held dear. I only had a moment to think on his depressing downward spiral.
My cyclical thoughts were quickly dashed into the dirt when I finally registered it. A slow, deliberate exhale released centimeters behind my head. Every muscle in my neck stiffened as fear fell upon me.
I whipped around in my seat, hoping to catch a intruder off guard.
No one.
I stood from the chair and scanned the walls, slowly searching the room. It took only a moment to realize that the brick walls had begun slowly rippling and expanding as the sound of a deep inhale tip toed its way into my consciousness.
It was like my neck was locked in place as the room continued to move around me. Pouring sweat made the disgusting warm breaths much harder to endure.
The room sweltered with the hot breath of an impossible source, bringing with it a rank smell that lingered in my brain. The room itself became lungs for a thing that should not exist.
Those odd symbols cut into the walls and shelves puddled onto the the wood planked floor and seeped between the cracks, practically forcing its way through the imperceptible gaps between the boards.
Each breath conjured a new ghost-like image in my head. Gnashing sharp teeth that leaked an ethereal black mist with every bite. Thousands of hooded figures standing at the entrance to a yawning cave. Arkham herself melting and drowning in darkness. Many arms reaching forth from impossible shadows.
I stood and watched as reality around me twisted out of proportion, almost completely swallowed by the void.
Without warning, the grip of those dark hallucinations was shattered by the shrill sound of a phone ringing. It was a landline, a relic from the 90's.
A corded black phone that hung on the wall shook in it's receiver with each metallic chime.
I blinked.
Without a sound, the room stopped moving. It was completely still, except for the small dust storm I stirred up by digging through the crinkled paperwork and scratched up folders.
I took a deep breath, not exactly wanting to know what just happened to me.
Floorboards weakened by years of use creaked under my shoes as I took a few hesitant steps, making my way to the phone on the back wall of the grim office space.
Ignoring the chatter in the back of my skull that told me to run away and never look back, I wrapped my fingers around the black phone and lifted it to my ear.
I spoke firmly into the phone to mask my fear.
"Hello? Who is this?"
A half-panicked, half relieved man spoke in a quickened pace,
"Hello? I'm looking for a Mister Rooke. Are you there?"
I sighed. "This is his son, Lawrence Rooke. What can I do for you this evening, Mister...?"
"Please, call me Oliver. Yes, I know your father is no longer with us, Mister Rooke. A terrible tragedy. He told me a lot about you, Lawrence."
I fought the urge to scoff. My old man hardly knew me at all. What could he possibly have relayed to this stranger to make him believe he has any inkling of who I really am?
The man nervously clicked his tongue for a moment, before whispering with an impatiently paranoid tone.
"My name is Oliver Krueger. I believe I can help you with some of the details on Kenneth's death, if only to give you some small closure so you'll leave this business behind you."
I paused, letting his words sink in for a moment.
I was almost stunned to silence. I wanted to hang up and run far away from this twisting web that only just tonight materialized before me. I felt my voice falter just a bit as I replied.
"Why exactly should I trust you? Just who in the hell are you?"
I felt despair and curiosity battling for supremacy in my words. The smell of the melting wax paired uncomfortably with the suspense I felt in the air.
"Because, Lawrence," Oliver answered bitterly, "I was there when he was killed. I saw it all."
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u/Kitchen-Witch-1987 Jul 03 '25
Nicely done!