March 9th, 1990 (or thereabouts – time’s getting a little unreliable lately)
We were down a few people today.
Knuckles is out of town tending to some kind of family situation. Chad’s on vacation—hopefully not another one of those jungle spirit quests. And Mark… well, Mark’s gone. Presumably figured out how to get back to his own time after what happened to Danny.
That left me, Claire, and Cooter. And Jimmy, of course.
New Arrival – Father O’Malley
Met back up at Jimmy’s trailer/radio station and got introduced to a new player: Father O’Malley.
Apparently, the Catholic Church has its own internal division for dealing with things that don’t fit neatly into Sunday sermons. Jimmy’s been sending them reports for years, and while they mostly consider him a crackpot, about 20% of what he sends checks out.
Which is better than some intelligence agencies.
So they sent O’Malley out from Denver to investigate Jimmy’s theory about a time-warping convenience store bandit. His local contact is St. Bibiana’s Cathedral—patron saint of hangovers. Which makes sense. Across all of human history, no matter the culture or creed, we’ve always made sure there’s someone you can call on when you’re paying for last night’s decisions.
This guy, though, is the real deal—investigated hauntings, miracles, demons, the works. Even performed an exorcism. Keeps a straight face the whole time he was telling us about it.
Cooter immediately denied doing anything wrong and then, five minutes later, agreed to go to confession. Says he’s got a backlog.
I believe him.
Becky — Patient Zero (or Close Enough)
We only had two real leads left: Sara Marks and Becky. Since Sara was missing, we figured we’d better keep Becky close.
We found her at her trailer park mid-afternoon – she’d gotten worse. Hearing voices; the same phrase, over and over, “The pattern is more powerful when carved into flesh than into stone.”
She also had a fresh wound on her wrist—curving, branching lines carved into the skin. Said it was the same pattern she’d seen on Sara, only smaller.
Up close, it didn’t look like a wound. It looked… active. Alive. Wrong. Maybe even thinking.
Every time you looked away, the pattern would shift. Not dramatically—just enough that when you looked back, you knew it hadn’t been the same before.
Cooter suggested butter.
Claire and O’Malley opted for prayer instead.
Good call.
Vision of Voss
O’Malley led the ritual to learn the source of the pattern and how to cast it out, with Claire assisting. Not having been anywhere near organized religion since childhood, I made it my job to stay out of the way and not screw things up. No point triggering the Book of Revelation because I picked the wrong moment to sneeze.
During the ritual, O’Malley had a vision – a field. Knee-high grass. Noon sun. No shadows.
He saw a distant figure ahead of him—and then, behind him, a man in a lab coat. Balding. Glasses. Definitely a scientist type.
The man spoke – the same phrase Becky had been hearing, “The pattern is more powerful when carved into flesh than into stone.”
After O’Malley came back and told us what he’d seen, Becky was doing better. The wound had closed. The voices had stopped and she could remember more.
It turned out that the voices had a name – Elias Voss.
They’d been telling her:
- “Follow me. This is the way.”
- “My name is Elias. I can guide you.”
Now, sure—you could probably find something like that in the DSM-IV if you squint hard enough. But given the rash, the timing, and the whole talking-to-people-from-beyond-the-grave angle, I’m putting my money on recruitment into something a little less clinical.
And I’ve got a feeling it’s going to take more than Haldol— or Cooter’s butter— to fix it.
Voss — Working Theory
Everything then started clicking into place with the research I’d done earlier. Voss wasn’t just another Manhattan Project scientist working on nuclear weapons. His project was even more ambitious… and apparently quite active. He was working on,
- The idea that the laws of physics aren’t uniform throughout the universe
- The structure of spacetime – Euclidean here but potentially very different elsewhere.
- The possibility that, with the right knowledge, you could alter reality locally for military advantage
In other words, he wasn’t trying to build a bigger bomb. He was trying to rewrite the rules the bomb operates under.
And a few years after publishing this work? He vanished.
Which, in my line of work, is never a good sign.
Worse, some of the diagrams we found on Brian Thompson’s walls looked an awful lot like what we were now seeing on Becky’s skin. Same geometry. Same logic. Same… intent.
Father O’Malley floated the idea that Voss might have crossed over into some kind of non-Euclidean space—and that’s where he saw him during the vision.
Personally, I’m less concerned with where Voss went—and more concerned with the possibility that he’s figured out how to come back.
The Hospital — It Wants to Spread
We followed up with Dr. White, the dermatologist.
He was reluctant at first—patient confidentiality and all that—but I mentioned a possible bioterrorism angle and Cooter flashed a badge he’d acquired from somewhere or other, and suddenly we were all working together.
Dr. White told us,
- He’d never seen anything like this rash before (join the club, pal)
- The lesion moves when not observed – just like Becky’s though we kept that little fact to ourselves
- It has a fractal structure
He kept trying to connect it to some kind of fungal infection but I wasn’t buying it.
I’ve had fungal infections in the you-know-where, and while they’re itchy as hell, that’s about the extent of it. There’s nothing actively malevolent about them unlike what we were dealing with here.
We brought Becky in and showed him her wound and he agreed to do an impromptu skin biopsy. That’s when things went sideways. While he was taking the sample, something inside the wound lashed out and cut him.
Small wound – ordinarily nothing to worry about. Given these circumstances, though? More than enough to make it a very bad day for the good doctor.
With a bit of coaxing, we convinced him to treat it as both an occupational exposure and something requiring a… supplementary, religion-based intervention.
Claire and O’Malley did their thing again while I stood next to a microscope in the corner and tried to look harmless. Claire had a vision— the same lab coat figure. Voss again. We then tried communicating supernaturally with the infection and it only said one word, “Voss.”
I was getting pretty sick of that name by now.
Before we left, Dr. White gave us the contact information of another physician that we should definitely see; might be able to help us with the problems we were facing. Turned out to be Dr. Simmons, a psychiatrist.
No problem. After it happens a hundred times or so, you get used to it.
After Hours at the Morgue
Cooter got us into the morgue by leaning on the same contact that had gotten them in during that werewolf case I’d heard about. He turned out to be a security guard who seemed to believe he was supplementing his income by helping people with… let’s call them specialized interests… gain access to places that polite society didn’t want them to be.
When he saw us, he didn’t even blink. Just shook his head and said, “Back already? You guys are some sick fucks.”
Which, given the circumstances, felt less like an accusation and more like customer recognition. We bribed him to let us in and asked who else he’d been doing business with. He refused, citing similar confidentiality concerns as Dr. White.
I didn’t push it. In this line of work, you learn pretty quickly that not every door needs opening.
Inside, we confirmed that Thompson’s body was still, let us say, “unprocessed.” And we found his cellphone among his belongings and took a look at his texts.
What? Those messages were sent with the expectation that somebody would read them. And it didn’t look like he was going to get around to it anytime soon. We just stepped in and lent a hand.
The texts told a familiar story.
- Jealousy about a guy named Brad.
- Then reconciliation.
- Then plans.
Turns out both Brian and Sara had discovered separate caves out in the same area and were planning to meet up and explore them together.
Last message from Sara – “Don’t go too deep until I get there.”
And, of course, he went too deep. They always do.
And right about then it hit me—another case, yet another love triangle.
Doesn’t matter whether you’re dealing with missing persons, insurance fraud, or now apparently non-Euclidean skin infections—sooner or later it always comes back to somebody getting jealous of somebody else.
Still, this one had a twist. We compared notes. Caves. Exposure. Timing. And whatever was going on with the patterns. Put it together and the picture started to form.
The caves weren’t just caves. That glowing material we’d seen down there—whatever it is—it’s not natural. Or at least not natural to here.
Some kind of degenerate matter, bleeding through from wherever Voss ended up. Something that doesn’t belong in Euclidean space, and doesn’t particularly care about the rules while it’s here.
Brian went in first. Got exposed. Started changing.
Now Sara’s missing. Which means she either followed him… or something followed her out.
Neither option sat particularly well.
Sara’s Apartment
Naturally, we went to check out Sara’s apartment next. Becky pulled the address for us from her hospital records.
Second-floor unit. No answer to knocking. Door locked, of course.
Cooter reached for his lockpicks—then froze. Left them back at Brian Thompson’s place. We didn’t know it at the time, but the police had already found them, pulled prints, and matched them to Cooter. Turns out he’s got a fairly thick file with the local department. Plenty of samples on record, apparently.
Something to look forward to.
Father O’Malley told us not to worry about the door. Said he’d pray it open. I didn’t hang back this time. Being able to pray locks open would be extremely convenient in my line of work, and I figured I’d better see if I could pick up a few pointers.
He reached into his wallet for a prayer bead and as he pulled it out, a credit card slipped loose. He caught it in midair, turned it just so, slid it into the jamb—
click.
Door opened. Not quite the miracle I was hoping to learn.
Inside, the apartment was a mess. Also present: one very hungry cat.
And, of course, old blood on the walls—arranged in the now-familiar patterns we’d seen in Thompson’s place. Same geometry. Same equations. Same phrase about the pattern being stronger we’d heard from Becky.
Amazing how quickly something like that becomes old hat.
More interestingly, we found a few things worth taking a closer look at:
- Sara’s journal
- Her voicemail—Brad trying to reach her repeatedly, with a level of urgency and intimacy that suggested Brian’s jealousy hadn’t been entirely misplaced
- Brad’s contact information
Sara’s journal filled in the gaps.
About two weeks ago, things started to go sideways. Brian didn’t know about Brad yet, but he was already getting suspicious. She writes about it in that careful way people do when they’re trying to convince themselves everything’s fine. It wasn’t.
Around the same time, Brian found a cave and went in alone. Sara says something about it unsettled her—couldn’t put her finger on it, just knew she didn’t want to follow him inside. Instead, she felt drawn—her word—to a different cave nearby. She went in.
That’s where things really started.
She describes carvings on the walls. Spiral patterns. Says she had some kind of spiritual experience in there. Doesn’t go into detail, but she makes it clear it left her feeling changed.
About a week ago, the physical symptoms started. An itchy rash that moved when she wasn’t looking at it. First whispers she’d ever heard in her life.
Four days ago, the whispers became voices and called themselves Elias.
Started talking about how the structure of spacetime isn’t localized. And the same line over and over, “The pattern is more powerful when carved into flesh than into stone.”
For a guy bending reality, Voss doesn’t have much dramatic range.
She writes that the voices—and the rash—kept pulling her thoughts back to the cave. Like everything was pointing in that direction whether she wanted it to or not.
Three days ago, she went skinny dipping with Brad and noted that she felt better afterward. In retrospect, I’m starting to think that wasn’t the romance talking. More like sunlight.
Two days ago, she decided to go to the hospital.
Which is about the last normal decision she made.
Interviewing the Witnesses
Now, every apartment has at least one witness and in this case, it was the cat. I pointed that out to Cooter who took one look at it and shook his head, “Frank, no.”
“Cooter,” I said, “that cat was here when everything went down.”
“It’s a cat.”
“It’s a witness.”
He gave me the look people usually give me right before they ignore me and do something regrettable.
“I don’t talk to cats unless I absolutely have to.”
“That sounds like a man who’s never closed a case,” I said. “You interview everyone. Neighbors, ex-lovers, bartenders, janitors—if they were there, they get asked. That includes the cat.”
He glanced over at O’Malley, hoping for backup. O’Malley shrugged. “I see no theological prohibition,” he said.
Claire nodded like this was all perfectly reasonable.
That settled it.
Cooter sighed, crouched down, and looked the cat in the eye and there was a moment of silence. Then he spoke. “Alright, pal,” he said. “What happened here?”
Another pause. Then he stiffened slightly, like he was listening to something only he could hear.
When he finally stood up, his expression had shifted from annoyance to something closer to unease.
“It says…” he started, then stopped.
“What?” I said.
“It says the big friendly cat wrote on the walls in blood.”
We all looked at the walls. Then back at him.
“Big friendly cat?” I asked.
He shrugged. “That’s what it called her.”
Sara. That tracked.
“And?” I asked.
Cooter looked back at the cat, then sighed again.
“And it says it’s still hungry.” We all turned to the cat. Father O’Malley had already given it some food earlier but it didn’t seem to have made much of an impression. We gave it more.
You always take care of your witnesses.
Even the ones that shed.
After that, I swung by the police station to file a missing persons report on Sara Marks—figured I’d at least keep things official. Turns out her parents had already beaten me to it. Desk sergeant confirmed she was in the system, took down my name, and gave me the usual look people reserve for men who talk a little too precisely about things they shouldn’t know.
I considered mentioning the apartment—the blood, the patterns, the whole situation—but decided against it. My first two involuntary psych holds were educational experiences. After that, they’ve felt more like a subscription service I forgot to cancel.
Claire, Public Health Professional (Apparently)
At this point, Claire stepped in and did something none of the rest of us were equipped to do.
Despite—or possibly because of—her vow of celibacy, she demonstrated an uncanny aptitude for what I can only describe as STD-style contact tracing.
No hesitation. No embarrassment. No wasted time. She got Brad on the phone and, within a couple of minutes, talked him into letting us come by immediately.
When we got there, Claire pivoted seamlessly into full clinical mode—questions, examination, calm reassurance.
Brad’s place told a story all its own: a red Camaro with a gaudy eagle decal out front, an apartment decorated primarily in empty beer cans, and—most importantly—a rash on his arm and back in the now-familiar moves-when-you’re-not-looking pattern.
He was also hearing voices.
Now, I understand keeping voices in your head on the down low (see earlier notes on involuntary psych holds), but that rash was something special. The fact that he hadn’t gotten it checked out yet said some unflattering things about his priorities.
Claire and O’Malley decided to attempt a full-blown exorcism and I decided to retreat even further into the corner of the room than usual.
This time, O’Malley had a different experience. Said his consciousness expanded—spread out across space for a brief moment—and that, in that instant, he understood the scale of it all on a deeply personal level.
Turns out Catholic priests are no better equipped to process that than the rest of us. He clawed at his eyes hard enough to impair his vision. But didn’t go to the hospital, figuring it would pass. At least he’s got the backing of God. Brad, on the other hand, seemed to be managing his rash with the power of bro-hood.
Anyway, the patient was much improved and reported that the voices were gone and that the rash felt much better. He was able to tell us about,
- The voices that said “My name is Elias” and “I will show you the way” and “Don’t be afraid” and that same tired line about the pattern in the flesh.
- He was having dreams about caves whose walls were decorated with spirals that looked like his rash (bro, when you start dreaming about your rash, that’s a sign you need to see the doctor ASAP).
- In the dreams about the caves, it seemed like the walls were moving around and even collapsing down on him.
Claire carried on with the public health nurse thing and quickly figured out that Brad was also in intimate contact with Kim. She convinced him to call her up (like I said, she’s good) and after Brad explained about Sara and got chewed up, Kim said she had the same rash and agreed to see us where she was right now… at a tattoo parlor.
Why was I not surprised?
The Tattoo — Containment?
When we got to the tattoo parlor, we had no trouble picking out Kim.
She was the one lying back in a reclining chair, midriff exposed, displaying the now-familiar rash. A tattoo artist named Tina was sketching the pattern into a notebook with the kind of focus usually reserved for fine art or tax fraud.
Apparently, a number of people had seen this pattern out in the wild, decided it looked “cool,” and started requesting tattoos in the same design and this was Tina’s first chance to see it up close and she was not going to pass up this opportunity to adapt to market demand.
That’s Adam Smith for you.
This time, instead of just trying to treat the rash, we decided to try to contain it. Put it somewhere we could control it. Study it. Ask it questions. Maybe get ahead of things for once.
And what better place to store it than on the skin of one of us? I don’t think I need to say whose idea that was.
Cooter.
To his credit, he insisted on being the guinea pig. Wouldn’t hear a word about anyone else taking the risk.
Claire and O’Malley got to work designing what they called a containment sigil, which Tina agreed to tattoo onto Cooter’s forearm. They also “blessed” a bottle of ink. Either that, or they spiked it with something radioactive. All I know is that when they were done, it glowed in the dark.
In exchange for getting to keep the glowing ink for future customers, Tina agreed to do the work for free.
There was just one complication. While all this was going on, the Devil apparently took exception to how close Claire was getting to God and responded by inflicting first- and second-degree burns on her legs.
I get it. I’ve been divorced more than once and I’m familiar with that kind of targeted hostility.
Once the sigil was in place, Cooter held his forearm next to Kim’s abdomen and we saw the same thing we experienced at Dr. White’s office – the rash jumped and transferred clean into Cooter’s arm. Immediately it tried to spread beyond the lines of the sigil—but the sigil flared, held, and forced it back.
Containment. For now at least.
Even better, Cooter reported no voices; even if he concentrated on the rash itself, he heard only the faintest whisper—no words, no structure.
Claire, on the other hand, heard a female voice –“You cannot stop the process.” Seems when you interfere with someone’s long-term project, they get a little pissy about it.
We ran a few tests and noticed that when viewed in a mirror, the pattern stopped moving. Under the tattoo parlor’s UV lamp, the motion stop as well… but not only that, the spiral portions of the rash fluoresced.
That, along with the glow-in-the-dark ink, got Tina thinking in directions I’m not entirely comfortable with.
And then we noticed something else. When we compared the patterns—on Kim, on Cooter, on our photos—they didn’t look random anymore.
They looked connected. Like fragments of a larger design or pieces of something that only made sense when viewed together.
A pattern. Maybe a map. Maybe instructions. Maybe something worse.
My money’s on something worse.
Contact with Sara
After talking it over at the tattoo parlor, we figured our next move was obvious – head back out to the caves. Between the patterns we’d already seen and whatever we could find out there, maybe we could piece together the full image.
Maybe figure out what it was trying to do.
Unfortunately, we didn’t make it that far.
The moment we stepped outside, Cooter’s van started to crumple—slow at first, then all at once—like one of Brad’s empty beer cans getting crushed in a giant invisible hand.
And down the street—there was Sara Marks.
Floating.
Not walking. Not running. Just… suspended a few feet above the sidewalk, drifting toward us. Hair, clothes, body—all moving independently of gravity, like they’d stopped agreeing with it.
Horrifying doesn’t quite cover it.
The same voice Claire had heard earlier now came out loud, clear, and not at all friendly, “You will not stop the process” and “You are meddling in things you don’t understand.”
A nearby streetlight bent inward toward the road, like it had been caught in some kind of non-Euclidean distortion.
Frankly, I liked Sara better when she was missing.
O’Malley, on the other hand, took a more optimistic view of her condition—something I’m going to have to ask him about later. Possibly involves never having been married.
He invoked the power of the saint of hospitality and attempted to compel her to behave.
And, to my surprise—she did. Reluctantly. But she did.
O’Malley offered her a drink from his ever-present flask—the kind of industrial-strength booze that could strip varnish off a table.
She accepted.
By peeling back her own skin and extending it outward to take the flask.
In the process, she revealed geometric patterns carved into the muscle underneath. Same shapes. Same logic. Just… deeper.
O’Malley asked her what would happen when the “process” was complete and her response was just as logical as you’d expect from someone reaching for objects with their own skin,
“We live in a cosmic daycare—a crib—and we must expand beyond it.”
“You seek to stop a ripple crossing a pond.”
“You fail to see that it is inevitable.”
Same cadence, style, and nonsense as Brian Thompson. I was trying to figure out a hospitable way to say that out loud when things escalated.
The windows of the tattoo parlor bowed outward and a strand of glass peeled free and lashed out, wrapping around Claire’s neck.
Remembering how the rash reacted to UV light, I dove into what was left of Cooter’s van and, by some miracle, found his blacklight still intact and shined it on the glass and at Sara. The strand loosened and Claire dropped free and Sara faltered and fell back, confused. And I got electrocuted for my trouble.
Sara recovered quickly by raising a section of the sidewalk into a ten-foot barrier, blocking the light. Then she pulled Kim and Tina out of the parlor—stumbling, half-aware, moving like puppets—and had them shatter what remained of the windows.
City zoning’s going to have a field day with all that.
I managed to freeze the two zombies in place with the black light while Claire made a run into the parlor to grab a mirror. Kim tried to reach into her mind to compel her to stop but what actually stopped Claire was far more pedestrian. She slipped while carrying the mirror and came down hard on top of it, shattering it.
Meanwhile, outside, things were going no better for Cooter as the ground opened up under him. He later described it as falling through a kaleidoscope—shifting colors, angles that didn’t agree with each other—before reappearing on the other side of the sidewalk barrier, right next to Sara.
He did the logical thing and took a swing at her but it never landed. She was faster – tendrils lashed out from her torso and drove into his chest. When they withdrew, Cooter was left covered head to toe in the pattern. Along with what I can only assume were some serious internal rearrangements.
That’s when O’Malley went for the nuclear option and called on a saint associated with light. At this point, I’m starting to think the Catholic Church has as many saints as some religions have gods.
The streetlight flared—this time with a UV intensity we hadn’t seen before.
Sara recoiled and fled, vanishing into the night. We would have followed but Cooter was down; Becky and I performed first aid while the others called an ambulance to take him to the hospital. After that, it was triage.
I’ve got a feeling Dr. White is going to have a very bad day when he sees Cooter.
Because it’s one thing to deal with a strange rash. It’s another thing entirely when that rash shows up covering a man from head to toe—and you already know what it can do.
Next Steps
- Find Sara Marks
- Monitor Becky
- Investigate Voss’ descendants
- Return to the caves and identify the full pattern structure
And one more thing. We need to start thinking tactically because whatever this thing is—whatever Voss turned into or unleashed—it reacts to light.
We’ve seen it:
- Blacklight disrupts it
- Reflections interfere with it
- Certain wavelengths slow or freeze the process
So from here on out, we gear up accordingly. I’m talking:
- Mirrors, lenses, prisms, and anything else that bends, splits, or amplifies light
- Lenses
- Ultraviolet and infrared lights. And cameras if we can get them
- Hell, even the emitting element from a microwave oven if Cooter can rig it safely after he gets out of the hospital
Because if this thing lives in the cracks between how we normally perceive reality—
Then light might be the only way to pin it down long enough to fight it.
And one more thing.
If this “pattern” really is rewriting reality and if it’s teaching people to think in pieces… Then I’m starting to see a connection I don’t like. Because I’ve seen this kind of thinking before.
Modular.
Structured.
Repeatable.
Snaps together clean.
…yeah.
I’m keeping an eye on the LEGOs. The Danish have got to be behind all of this. I can feel it in my bones.